By Christy Marshall
Think of the early days of Saturday Night Live, and the names light up in neon in your mind: Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner. But Tom Schiller? Nope. Never heard of him.
Michael Streeter has. A St. Louisan originally from the Netherlands, Streeter is a film historian. He became an SNL fanatic and Schiller fan years ago, and now he has penned Nothing Lost Forever: The Films of Tom Schiller (BearManor Media). The book examines all of Schiller’s work, but focuses mainly on his critically acclaimed but unreleased film Nothing Lasts Forever, a black-and-white sci-fi comedy that died on the studio vine. “MGM thought they were getting Animal House II,” Streeter says. “They got an art movie, so they decided not to release it.”
Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of SNL, was a friend of Schiller’s parents’ and ultimately a friend of Schiller’s as well. In 1975, Schiller became part of the first team to work on the show. Although initially hired as Michaels’ assistant, Schiller immediately began writing some of the sketches. In that first year, his most memorable contribution was “Samurai Hotel,” starring Belushi, Chase and that episode’s host, comedian Richard Pryor. Chase and another writer, Alan Zweibel, wrote the subsequent samurai skits, but Streeter quotes Chase saying that Schiller “was always around to come up with an idea, a line or a concept on any sketch that I might be working on. ... It’s a lot more valuable than saying, ‘He wrote the samurai sketch.’ That’s a very easy sketch to write. He was really much more valuable than that.”
Schiller left the show after five years to make more films—a pursuit that he began as a teenager with his first project, “The Door,” a bathroom-humor piece. Later films—considerably edgier, wittier and more articulate—included one titled “Henry Miller Asleep and Awake” and many short films for SNL, including “Perchance to Dream,” “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” “Love Is a Dream” and “Hidden Camera Commercials.”
Today Schiller directs TV commercials, including the Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” campaign, and Streeter is busy writing a screenplay of his own.
