Bill Hader Has Highbrow Taste in Children’s Movies

Bill Hader’s Highbrow Guide to the All-Time Best Children’s MoviesThe SNL alum and two-time Emmy Award winner, who voices the titular feline in a new adaptation of The Cat in the Hat, knows that kids' movies are for adults, too.Warner Bros./Everett CollectionYou can trust Bill Hader on movies. From gushing about John Ford and Akira Kurosawa in the Criterion Closet, to spoofing Errol Morris and D.A. Pennebaker in Documentary Now!, to creating, directing and starring in four seasons of HBO’s Barry—the SNL alum’s cinematic expertise is well-documented. Hader knows a thing or two about kids’ movies in particular, having lent his iconic voice to animated tentpoles like Inside Out and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. This week, you can hear Hader in The Cat in The Hat, a new adaptation of the 1957 Dr. Seuss classic, in which he voices the titular troublemaking feline.Written and directed by Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja, this new iteration of the beloved children’s story is an inviting romp that is mischievous enough for kids, grounded enough for grown-ups, and teeming with gags and good nature that all can enjoy. The film is an ideal showcase for Hader’s gymnastic vocal talents, and also boasts Quinta Brunson, Matt Berry, and Giancarlo Esposito among its cast. (It’s a more family-friendly—though no less amusing—take on the Cat than when Hader last played the character, in a 2014 SNL sketch.)A father to three daughters, Hader has seen it all—from Frozen and Tangled to Off Campus—and does his part, when possible, to pass down the classic films that were formative during his own childhood. “You don’t want to push it too hard,” he tells GQ on a recent call. “For every one I show them, there’s 10 that I start and they go, ‘Ugh, Dad, this is boring.’” The rest of us, however, are eager to take note. Below, Hader shares some of his favorite quote-unquote “kids’ movies” whose cinematic merit makes them a must-see at any age.Shane (1953, dir. George Stevens)Everett Collection“When I was young, my dad told me that was a movie that he watched as a kid. I didn't grow up in a time when there were a lot of Westerns, but [for] my dad and uncles, that was all that was on TV.What I was moved by was the relationship [between] Alan Ladd as Shane and this little boy [Brandon deWilde] enamored with a gunfighter. It has this heroic sensibility to it, but underneath was this honesty of, ‘You don't want that life,’ which I thought was interesting. To me, Van Heflin, the dad, was the cooler guy. So it upended those expectations of what the movie was going to be.It has this ending where it's poignant and kind of sad, but I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that's good that that's what happens at the end of the story.’ It's a good coming-of-age story… It's kind of sneaky. You could see it on the face of it just being this cut-and-dry, Western-hero type of movie. But when you really think about it, even as a kid, I got a sense that there's a lot of depth to it.”Sherlock Jr. (1924, dir. Buster Keaton)Everett Collection“Buster Keaton is one of my favorites, and that was one I showed my kids. I have three daughters. Now they're 17, 14, and 12, but at the time, they were very little. I'm a movie nerd, so I was gonna show them some silent movies, and I was like, ‘I know. Everybody's gonna roll their eyes at me for showing the kids silent movies. How pretentious.’ But they really responded to Buster Keaton, specifically Sherlock Jr. and Three Ages, his take on the movie Intolerance by D.W. Griffith. They just loved it, and it was fun getting to watch it through their eyes.I recently took my youngest [to see] it at the Aero Theater in LA, and it still was great. To see a movie that was made over a hundred years ago still work on all [levels], like… it works better than most movies now. It's just very simple. [Keaton] wasn't some kind of auteur guy. He was a vaudeville comedian that was curious about filmmaking; what you could do with editing, what you could do with shots. And I think he ended up making the blueprint of how you shoot physical comedy and action. It’s pretty amazing.What's interesting about some of those silent movies is that they don't really know what they're doing. The best stuff comes out of, ‘I don't know, I had this idea, let's figure it out in a really open, curious way.’ And in doing that, you invent the language.Charlie Chaplin, too. [I’ve shown] them City Lights and The Circus and The Gold Rush. But they were really drawn to Buster Keaton, I think, because he was kind of dry and you didn't really know what he was thinking, and so you could put all your feelings onto him.”It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963, dir. Stanley Kramer)Everett Collection“That's one that my parents showed me when I was a kid. It's a long movie, but it has so many crazy [moments] and a lot of physical comedy. I just love all those comedians in the movie. Every time someone pulls up, you're like, ‘Oh my God, it's Jonathan Winters. I love Phil Silvers. Oh my God, Spencer Tracy's in this movie!’ Dick Shawn is my personal favorite in that movie, the guy who's the real mama's boy.It's kind of the one Stanley Kramer movie I like. Stanley Kramer movies tended to be, I don't know, a little sentimental, or overtly didactic or something, [but] this movie is just having a ton of fun. I have very fond memories of watching it with my parents and my grandparents. My dad was in town recently, and when I came home, he was watching it with my kids, and they were all laughing really hard and telling me scenes from it.They really loved it, but [just like] with the silent movies, you don't want to push it too hard. For every [classic movie] I show them, there's 10 that I start and they go, ‘Ugh, Dad, this is boring,’ and I go, ‘Alright, we can watch Nobody Wants This or Off Campus.’”The Secret of NIMH (1982, dir. Don Bluth)Everett Collection“The Secret of NIMH was one that I loved as a kid, because it was ostensibly a kid's movie, but it was incredibly dark and disturbing. It has stuff that I still find really frightening. And I loved the mythology of it. As a kid, I liked the idea that in your backyard [there] could be this whole kingdom that you don't even know about.There's specifically a shot in it with the crow, played by Dom DeLuise, and in the distance they see this cat. There's this long shot [of] this field, and then suddenly, just really quickly, you see this cat pop up and go back down under [as] it's trying to catch a bird or something. That shot had a huge effect on me. I thought, ‘Oh man, that's so terrifying.’And then the story of the rats and NIMH, and they're all being tested on, and they fall into this abyss, and the whole ending where they're having this sword fight… I just thought it was fantastic. Everything was high stakes. And it wasn't Disney. I liked Disney, but Disney never went that dark.Maybe not a lot of people agree with me, [but] I’m definitely someone [that] likes when something's scary for a kid, within reason. A lot of people are like, ‘No, no, no, they can't see that.’ And it's like, ‘No, let them see it. Get scared. That's good.’ I was happy that I was scared.I'm sure if The Secret of NIMH came out now, they would have a whole room of executives going, ‘You can't have the owl with its head upside-down, turning around and with cobwebs all over him. It's just too scary.’ But for me, it scared me to death, and then I would keep watching it, and then it became less scary, and then I started to appreciate it. I think it's good for kids to be scared.”The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, dir. Henry Selick)Buena Vista Pictures/Everett Collection“That movie came out when I was a freshman in high school. I got a job on the school paper, and my first job was to write a review of all the new movies, and it was the week that that movie came out. And so I remember I went with a notebook, I was writing my thoughts down, and then I ended up writing a pretty bad [review]. I liked [the movie] a lot, but my actual writing was terrible. The editors took it and rewrote it all.But I loved it. I love Tim Burton. I loved the music in it, specifically the song that Catherine O'Hara sings as Sally; I think it's such a moving song. And Henry Selick’s direction in it is amazing. People always think Tim Burton made that movie. He didn't. It's Henry Selick. He spent every day there with those animators making that thing work.I love the scope of it and how grand it is, from the beginning—that ‘This Is Halloween’ song, there's something almost operatic about it. And it's its own thing. The best stuff, to me, is always when the filmmakers and the writers [are] doing a thing that they want to see, and they trust an audience will get it.When it came out, I remember it wasn't what it is now. It was kind of this weird oddity. And then as time went on… I remember moving to LA, and it was the 10-year anniversary of it, and they had a screening someplace, and I drove past all these people dressed like the characters, they had Jack Skellington t-shirts on and all that stuff, and I went, ‘Wow, that's crazy.’ Cause I was a huge fan of it, and had the soundtrack, and I absolutely adored that movie.[Once] I had kids, it was one of the first movies I showed them, and they watched it every Halloween and every Christmas. My youngest daughter [recently] played Sally in a school play, and she got to sing that song, and so it was full circle. I got very emotional. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, there she is, singing that song.’ And I had become friendly with Catherine O'Hara, and she passed away, and it was really… Yeah, I was a blubbering idiot when she started singing that song.”Sign up for Manual to receive useful advice on style, health, and more, six days a week.