Karyn Parsons ("The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air") stars opposite Tim Meadows as Julie, Leon's radio producer, who loves the true sweetness and innocence that lies in this heart. Billy Dee Williams ("Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back/Return of the Jedi") appears as Lester, the film's smooth-talking narrator and owner of the bar where Leon hangs out with his friends. Tiffani Thiessen ("Beverly Hills, 90210") stars as Honey DeLune, who has promised Leon passion and, more important, money, but who has failed to tell him where to find her. Appearing as Barney, one more husband whose wife has fallen to Leon's charms, is British comedian Lee Evans ("There's Something About Mary"), while "SNL" regular Will Ferrell stars as Lance, a Greco Roman wrestling fanatic who leads a band of wronged husbands seeking revenge on Leon.
Meadows, a "Saturday Night Live" regular since 1992, debuted his "Ladies Man" sketch on October 17, 1997, and continued to refine the persona of Leon Phelps in subsequent "SNL" sketches. Soon guest hosts like Cameron Diaz and Helen Hunt were appearing alongside Tim's character, and Monica Lewiusky's appearance in a Ladies Man sketch drew national attention.
Meadows had based Leon, a ladies man with a '70s sense of style, on the kind of men he had encoun tered while working in a liquor store in Detroit as a teenager.
"They were the sort of guys who played the lot tery every day," he recalls, "and always wore outfits which, though they were cheap, were completely matching. The shirt matched the belt and the shoes, and they had a lifestyle of having lots of women. None of these guys had girlfriends, but they all had lots of women, and they thought that was pretty cool."
At the urging of Lorne Michaels, "SNL's" celebrated executive producer, Meadows began writing a feature film based on Leon with writers Dennis McNicholas and Andrew Steele, who had been instru mental in developing The Ladies Man character for the television show.
Producer Michaels says of bringing the Ladies Man character to the big screen: "Watching Tim light up the screen for 90 minutes as Leon Phelps makes me very happy."
With a finished script in hand and a production deal in place through Michaels' SNL Studios, Meadows found himself in the unusual position of interviewing directors rather than the other way around. Reginald Hudlin, creator of the "House Party" series and director of the box office hit "Boomerang," was suggested by Paramount Pictures and proved to be a perfect fit for the material.
"It was a very easy decision to make," says Hudlin, who took on the project immediately after read ing the script and reviewing a compilation tape of Ladies Man sketches from "SNL." "When I read the script, I thought that I was uniquely qualified not because I'm such a ladies man but because I did relate to the character, the material and the era in which he was living."
"Reggie always knows where the joke is and, more important, how to make it work," says veteran comedy producer Robert K. Weiss. "We have a cast that is brilliant at improv and amping up the material. For some directors, that's a problem, but Reggie was perfect because he was able to follow the actors wherever they and the material went."
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