Chris Kattan claims Lorne Michaels pressured him to sleep with director to get SNL-based film made

The A.V. Club

Amy Heckerling, the director of Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless, was poised to direct the 1998 comedy film A Night at the Roxbury, based on Kattan's and Will Ferrell's Saturday Night Live "The Roxbury Guys" sketches, when she allegedly propositioned Kattan during pre-production, according to an excerpt posted on Twitter from Kattan's new memoir Baby, Don't Hurt Me. The next day, Kattan writes that he received a call from a "furious" Lorne Michaels saying that Heckerling was threatening to to pull out of the movie and that Kattan should keep her happy. “Chris, I’m not saying you have to f*ck her, but it wouldn’t hurt,” Michaels allegedly told Kattan. “What the f*ck was that supposed to mean?" Kattan writes in his book. "I mean, what was this, my casting couch moment? I had no idea what Amy had actually said to Lorne, or how much was being assumed. Was I really supposed to be a reason for Amy to direct the movie? That seemed insane. And why wasn’t Will on this call? I thought. He was my partner—he should be hearing this. I started to say that I need to talk to Will, but Lorne cut me off, telling me that this conversation didn’t concern Will or anybody else, and it was best if I didn’t mention it." Kattan writes that he ultimately decided not to tell Ferrell. “I was too scared," he said. "I thought that maybe I could tell Will and make him promise to keep it secret from Lorne, but that seemed risky, too. The last thing I wanted was to have someone hear Lorne say 'career ender' about me. To this day, whenever I think about that conversation with Lorne, I still feel repellingly pathetic.” Heckerling wound up not directing the film -- John Fortenberry served as director instead. Neither Heckerling nor Michaels have commented on Kattan's allegation, but Decider reports that "a source with knowledge of the situation told Decider this did not happen." This is the second SNL allegation Kattan has made in his book that has made news. Just before his memoir's publication earlier this month, Variety reported on Kattan's allegation in his book that he broke his neck during an SNL sketch. But there seemed to be no hard feelings since Kattan was allowed to promote his book on May 9 on the Lorne Michaels-produced The Tonight Show.