How a Tampa man went from the SNL set to Cannes Film Festival darling

TAMPA ― “Saturday Night Live” was mere seconds from rolling cameras in front of a studio audience and millions watching at home when the stage manager realized the set’s black door had a large scratch on it.

“It was going to look terrible on camera,” said Steven Demmler, then a fourth-year stagehand. “People started freaking out.”

But Demmler remained calm, grabbed a black sharpie and colored the scratch so that it was invisible on camera.

“As they’re shooting, the stage manager whispered to me, ‘It turns out you’re not a total idiot,’” Demmler said with a laugh, “And I was like, ‘Yes, now I’ve arrived.’”

That was around 2003.

Since then, the Tampa resident’s career has been on an upward trajectory.

He’s graduated from television crew to executive producer of movies.

His latest production, “Oh Canada,” is considered a darling of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, which runs May 14-25.

Based on the 2021 novel “Foregone,” “Oh, Canada,” is about a tormented writer living out his final days in Canada, where he fled decades earlier to dodge the Vietnam draft. It marks the reunion of writer and director Paul Schrader and actor Richard Gere, who last worked together on “American Gigolo.” “Oh, Canada,” also stars Uma Thurman and Michael Imperioli.

Demmler, president of Talon Entertainment Finance, raised the money to make the movie.

“It’s pretty nuts,” Demmler said. “I’m just excited.”

But he hopes this is far from his Hollywood pinnacle.

Talon Entertainment Finance recently purchased and is refurbishing South Side Studios, an 11-acre Dallas facility that offers sound stages, prop shops and office space to productions.

One of the studio’s upcoming projects might be scribed by Demmler. He wrote three movie scripts that garnered him representation from 3 Arts Entertainment, a production company and talent management agency whose credits include “The Office,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Edge of Tomorrow.”

“Everything has been pretty incredible lately,” Demmler said. “I’m just taking it all in.”

He’s also carrying on the family legacy.

The Demmler name has been associated with the entertainment industry since the late 1800s. The family got their start as stagehands at the New York Hippodrome Theatre, which was known for hosting circus acts and illusionist Harry Houdini before it closed in the 1930s.

His mother, Prudence Demmler, was a Radio City Rockette and father, also Steve Demmler, was chief of props at “Saturday Night Live” for the iconic show’s first 47 1/2 seasons.

“So, I’m a stagehand nepo baby,” Demmler joked, “which is much less profitable than nepo babies of actors.”

He worked under his father for around 150 episodes, Demmler estimates, spanning 1999 through 2013.

“Steve Martin was my all-time favorite guest host I got to work with,” Demmler said. “Musically was Lady Gaga. She showed up for rehearsal without any makeup or anything crazy. I remember her playing the piano and singing and just being floored and like, ‘Dear God, she’s so talented.’”

Perhaps the most famous sketch on which he worked was when guest host Sean Hayes and cast member Jimmy Fallon spoofed rude fashion employees at a designer boutique. It remains a YouTube favorite because the two cannot contain their laughter when Will Ferrell, playing the pretentious boss, pulls out a Lego-sized flip phone. Demmler acquired the prop phone.

Demmler married and had a child, temporarily leaving the entertainment industry for a career in finance.

“It’s really difficult to support a family” in entertainment, Demmler said. “I saw that from firsthand experience over decades. Call it family economic trauma.”

While working for a firm in Las Vegas, Demmler and his wife decided it was best to raise their son elsewhere. They chose Tampa because she grew up here.

“We didn’t want him to have a card habit by 5,” Demmler said. “We moved here in June 2019 ... Then COVID hit and, like many people, I had an existential moment ... I realized I hated finance.”

But rather than walking away from that industry, he sought to marry it with the one he loved.

He founded Talon Entertainment Finance, which initially fronted a dozen productions the money they were guaranteed to later receive back from governments in tax incentives.

“It was a little less risky,” Demmler said. “It was a good way for me to wrap my head around how the mechanics work.”

From there, he became a silent investor for productions that were overextended.

“I offered to take a little off their hands for no credit, just to be attached to every communication so I could scoop up the process of how it works and who’s involved and what’s what,” Demmler said.

That led to connections that enabled him to become an executive producer, on “Bookworm” starring Elijah Wood, “Spider & Jessie” shot in Plant City and starring Mckenna Grace, and then “Oh, Canada,” while also earning a master of fine arts in dramatic writing from New York University.

“I want to be creative too,” Demmler said. “They believe in me now as a producer and trust me as a businessperson. But I don’t want to just be that. I want to be a writer-producer.”