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The Screenwriter and the Serial Killer
Will Steven Kampmann be the one who helps jump starts Darrell Hammond’s film career? Since he had the guts to cast him as a murderer, all things are possible.
Thursday, August 30, 2007 at 1:25 PM
By FilmStew Staff
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Jim Spellman/WireImage.com
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On paper, a killer role
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It’s been a while since Steven Kampmann directed a feature film. His first and only previous effort, Stealing Home, a comedy-drama starring Mark Harmon and Jonathan Silverman, came out in 1988. Now, all these years later, a man best known for his work as a writer, story editor and producer on the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati is back with a low-budget indie shooting in New Jersey and California.
Titled Buzzkill, the black comedy stars Daniel Raymont as a British-born screenwriter making his way from the east coast to the west, and Saturday Night Live’s Darrell Hammond as the serial killer he meets along the way. Reiko Aylesworth, a former regular on 24, co-stars as the writer’s girlfriend.
Hammond was virtually invisible on Saturday Night Live this past season, at the opposite end from Andy Samberg’s digital shorts on the hip comedy scale. The actor’s film credits blur together, like the titles on the bottom row of a video store’s comedy films section. He played Captain Jack Swallows in Epic Movie (har har), suffered through the Olsen twins’ New York Minute and has another movie coming up called Wieners, about three guys who also travel across the country to beat the crap out of a Dr. Phil style daytime talk show therapist, Dr. Dwayne, played by Hammond.
Hammond is the longest running cast member in the history of Saturday Night Live, logging 236 episodes and a record number of impressions since his arrival in 1995. But his film career can in no way, shape or form be described as Dan Aykroyd-esque. More like Al Franken-esque. Will a pair of offbeat road movie comedies change that? Possibly, since the twin roles of a Dr. Phil and a serial killer are the best he’s had in quite some time.
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