PopGoesTheNews.com • Funnyman Jimmy Fallon found out that his movie career wasn't going to take off – while in Toronto making a movie.
According to an interview with New York magazine, the former Saturday Night Live star was shooting the romantic comedy Fever Pitch in late 2004 when he got a call from a Fox executive warning him that Taxi – his first post-SNL project – was a stinker. "He said, ‘Jimmy, it’s not going to open. It’s not going to be good,'" recalled Fallon.
Devastated, Fallon asked SNL creator and Toronto native Lorne Michaels to help him disappear for a weekend. Michaels put him in touch with Canadian comic Martin Short, who has a cottage on Lake Rosseau roughly two hours north of Toronto.
"My friend Gary and I went up to Martin’s cabin in Muskoka and we got a bottle of Jack and just got wasted," Fallon, 36, told the magazine.
Taxi, which co-starred Queen Latifah, earned only $12 million in its opening weekend and went on to gross little more than $36 million. (Fever Pitch, which Fallon made in Toronto with Drew Barrymore, grossed about $42 million.)
Fallon, who has hosted Late Night since March 2009, hasn't had a lead role on the big screen since Fever Pitch but has taken a few small roles in films like Whip It and Factory Girl.
