Nothing Lasts Forever

The children of Saturday Night Live continue to populate movie screens. That landmark show was great television, but it has been responsible for some of the worst film comedy of recent years.

The newest big-screen arrival is a real oddity. It’s not a vehicle for an SNL cast member, although Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd have small roles. No, Nothing Lasts Forever is the debut feature of the director of those eccentric short films that used to show up toward the end of the show.

His name is Tom Schiller, and he’s the writer and director of Nothing Lasts Forever. Not only that, he’s gotten Lorne Michaels to produce the film for him. Michaels was the producer and instigator of SNL in its glory days.

Schiller and Michaels have continued the tradition of their fellow alumni. This movie is a mess of disconnected, intermittently funny bits. The sketch humor that flourished on Saturday Night Live doesn’t work in a 90-minute, sustained-narrative format.

Nothing Lasts Forever does have a plot – sort of. A boy (Zach Galligan, the hero of Gremlins) returns to New York City to be an artist. He’s not sure what discipline he wants to pursue, but no matter – the drive is there. After a series of surrealistic events, he lands a job watching cars go through the Holland Tunnel. There he meets a fellow would-be artist (Appollonia Van Ravenstein – no kidding), who introduces him to conceptual art, as well as other less highbrow pursuits.

One night he is informed by some mysterious underground dwellers (chief among them Sam Jaffe and Paul Rogers) that he has been chosen to lead a mission that could save the world (it’s impossible to tell just when the film is set, but it seems to be in some futuristic society).

All he has to do is travel to the Moon, which he does by sneaking aboard a tour bus marked “Miami Beach.” Its true destination is La Luna, and there he meets his soul mate (Lauren Tom) while everyone else is shopping in the moon’s extensive mall. After the trip, the hero returns to Earth, where he is a successful pianist at Carnegie Hall.

All right. All of this is pretty well jumbled out of any recognizable cinematic form. Still, some yuks might have been gotten out of it. But the film’s unevenness just becomes grating after a while.

There are also pointless cameos: Eddie Fisher sings “Oh My Papa,” and is so pathetically bad that it’s not campy (as was presumably intended). Mort Sahl and singer Anita Ellis are Galligan’s uncle and aunt, Imogene Coca a fellow passenger to the Moon, and you’re left to guess at what the possible casting strategy might have been. Even Bill Murray, playing an unctuous flight attendant, seems ill at ease.

Most of the film is in black-and-white; some of it is in color. For a while, I thought I knew what the distinction was for; but then the movie changed its ground rules. If you can figure out what the idea is, fine. I’ve got better things to do.

First published in The Herald, August 1984

When you read about this film online the standard line is that MGM/UA dumped it after a single test screening in Seattle. But here is proof that is actually opened for a regular run, which presumably was a test engagement that did not go well (it was not uncommon in those days for movies, especially difficult ones, to be taken out to Seattle to test the waters). It played at the Crest theater, if anybody wants to know.

Now, in part because of its impossible-to-see status, the film has a strong cult following. I would give it another try. Schiller did not direct another feature, although he made a lot of commercials – and, of course, many SNL shorts. Howard Shore did the music.