Tom Schiller, writer and director of short subject films, came to Yale on Wednesday to screen some of his work and to speak about "The Art of the Short Film." Sponsored by the Berkeley Film Society and the Film Studies Center, the event was to promote the New York Film Academy, where Schiller now teaches, and which is offering a six-week immersion course at Yale this summer. But since Schiller is best known for his work as one of the original writers for Saturday Night Live, it was no surprise that the evening turned out to be, more than anything, a nostalgic trip back to the '70s heyday of that television show. His large body of short subjects consists almost entirely of SNL sketches and other shorts featuring the Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Players.
Schiller's sketches, assembled in Schiller's Reel, features the major actors of the SNL era. In the Fellini spoof La Dolce Gilda, Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd wallow in Roman decadence while an accordion plays in the background. Perchance to Dream features Bill Murray as a transient who dreams of delivering a monologue of Shakespeare non sequiturs. Teri Garr and Peter Aykroyd star in Java Junkie, about a recently laid-off worker who seeks refuge in caffeine and becomes an overnight coffee addict. In Don't Look Back in Anger, John Belushi plays himself at age 80, guiding us through a graveyard of filled with former SNL actors. Ironically, Belushi explains that he is the lone survivor of the performers.
Yet the indelible images of these sketches are only a small part of Schiller's memories of the early days of SNL. His anecdotes are testimony to the legendary hedonism of that 1970s scene. "It was a lot of money, drugs, sex, celebrity, good restaurants," he recalled.
Although he has worked on the show as recently as last year, he acknowledges that SNL is "on a downward spiral. They probably should have killed it after four years." He believes, though, that there will always be an audience for SNL's brand of late-night comedy.
Before working for NBC, Schiller made documentary films, first as an apprentice to Robert Snyder. Snyder was himself a student of Robert Flaherty, one of the fathers of documentary film. Working independently, Schiller made Henry Miller Asleep & Awake following a seven-year friendship with the novelist. "The film takes place entirely in his bathroom," Schiller explained, "and he talks about the pictures on his wall." He also worked on documentaries profiling Willem de Kooning and Anaïs Nin.
It has been more than two decades since Schiller worked in documentaries, though, and he is now firmly committed to work in shorter subjects. The art of short films, he said, is their ability to keep the audience riveted and to exclude superfluous detail. Schiller concluded, "The more you hone your skills on short films, the more prepared you are for most other work in film, because you know what holds people's attention."
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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