Peter Sagal has been an institution of National Public Radio since the inception of his show Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me in 1998. The comedy news and quiz show grew in popularity thanks to Saagal’s nonchalant hosting approach, the voices of serious newsmen like Carl Kastle and Bill Kurtis as announcers, and the show’s circulation of comedian panelists like Paula Poundstone, PJ O'Rourke, and Alonzo Boden who also was once a contestant on the reality show Last Comic Standing.
It might surprise a few die-hard NPR fans to learn that Saagal was also a screenwriter and has two IMDb credits to his name. He wrote 2004’s Dirty Dancing Havana Nights starring Patrick Swayze, and almost 10 years before that he wrote a little-known straight-to-video action film titled Savage starring Olivier Gruner, a kickboxer and the French wannabe version of Jean-Claude Van Damme. The film is a nonsensical pile of trying too hard, mixed together with all of the most cliché aspects of action, sci-fi, and time travel films. Long story short, a farmer discovers that his family is murdered and gets transformed into a prehistoric savage living in the middle of the desert.
Sagal opened up about Savage, his first failed foray into Hollywood, when it was re-released by the famous comedy website Rifftrax in September 2021. In an interview with Bill Corbett, a Rifftrax host, Saagal was more than blunt about why his name is attached to a film that has a Rotten Tomatoes 20% audience rating (which somehow feels too generous).
7 Peter Sagal Got Started In Theater
Sagal started his career as a playwright in Minneapolis. There his work got him some clout and notoriety. It was thanks to his play titled What to Say that gained Sagal the attention of the man who would be the cause of what is arguably the lowest creative point of Sagal’s career.
6 He Worked With An Israeli Director
Avi Nesher, who today is credited as an instrumental influence in the modern Israeli film scene, came to the United States in the early 90s to become a major Hollywood director. Sagal met Nesher at a screening of one of his films, Rage and Glory, where Nesher also complimented Sagal’s plays. He then recruited Sagal to write a genre movie that Nesher intended to use to jump from indie art films into the Hollywood mainstream. This was how Sagal ended up writing Savage.
5 Sagal Was Screwed Out Of First Credit By A Nonexistent Co-Writer
As Sagal wrote Savage, Nesher bombarded him with nonsensical notes and ordered Sagal to make constant changes to every page he wrote. Many times Sagal was forced to completely rewrite every scene as he finished them and Nesher made bizarre demands for the script, for example, because the movie’s star struggled with English, Nesher demanded Sagal limit using the letter "R". Not only this, but although Sagal was recruited to write the film, Nesher inserted himself as a co-author in the credits and put Peter Sagal’s name second. Top billing is a very serious thing in Hollywood especially for writers, who have union rules that prevent directors from taking credit away from them like this. But to add insult to injury, Nesher didn’t even use his real name, he invented a pen name (Patrick Highsmith) to create the illusion the film had more collaboration than it did.
4 The Director Returned To Israel
Nesher never made the cut in Hollywood. Before Savage, his film Timebomb was a box office disaster, and his other Hollywood film Doppelganger (which stars an awkwardly cast Drew Barrymore) was derided by film critics. However, it seems to be for the best because Nesher has gone on to a lucrative career directing films in Israel and has even mustered up a few awards. In 2021 he received the Excellence Award from the Academy of Israeli Motion Pictures.
3 Sagal Got 'Wait Wait Don't Tell Me' In 1998
After his first attempt at a Hollywood career fumbled. Sagal left Los Angeles and returned to the midwest to continue writing plays. There he would start a career in radio, and eventually he got a show on Chicago Public Radio called Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me which debuted in 1998 and soon afterward became syndicated nationally on all NPR stations. Sagal would also get the chance to write a good film a few years later, when he wrote Dirty Dancing Havana Nights, the sequel to the 1987 classic.
2 Rifftrax Discovered The Film
After Savage flopped, going straight to video and not getting any of the Hollywood glitz and glamor treatment (i.e. there was no premiere, no after-party, and no raving critical reviews) Savage lied dormant as an obscure blip in the lives of both Sagal and Nesher. But in 2021, the riffing comedy website Rifftrax rediscovered and rereleased the film, although it now features the voice-over comedy of the three comedians heckling the movie to death. Sagal however, a Rifftrax fan and a former contemporary of Rifftrax comic Bill Corbett from the Minneapolis theater scene, took the ribbing he got in stride and graciously agreed to an interview with Corbett where he told the story of making such a debacle. In the interview, we also learn that Corbett acted in the play that inspired Nesher to hire Sagal.
1 The Aftermath
All in all, it worked out for everyone. Nesher found a more lucrative career in his homeland than he ever could in Hollywood, Peter Sagal is now a household name for anyone who listens to NPR, and fans of movie riffing got a good chuckle out of a bad movie. Sagal admits in his interview with Corbett that he knew one day Savage would come back to haunt him, and thanks to Rifftrax it will haunt more audiences than it ever did when it was first released over 25 years ago.