Parker Posey Asks For Your Consideration (page 2)
by Robert Urban, November 16, 2006
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Christopher Guest ensemble regulars Jane Lynch and Jennifer Coolidge both have roles in For Your Consideration. Lynch plays hyperkinetic news co-anchor Cindy Martin, and Coolidge plays dim-witted Home for Purim producer Whitney Taylor Brown. Film fans will recall Lynch and Coolidge as the lesbian couple Christy and Sherri Ann from Guest's film Best in Show (2000).
Lynch jumps into the character of Cindy Martin — a kind of Kathie Lee Gifford on steroids — with particular gusto. She is teamed up this time with Fred Willard, who plays her Hollywood Now co-anchor Chuck Porter.
“That relationship is kind of interesting,” says Guest. “Anyone working with Fred Willard has a task.” He laughs. “It's hard to describe what that force is in Fred. Jane is one of the few people that can stand up to Fred Willard's world, which is another world from the one you and I know. She is incredibly smart and funny and can deal with that. I said to her, ‘He is this really abrasive guy and a buffoon, and you are really going to need to be able to hold your own.' And she did.”
The characters of co-anchors Cindy and Chuck offer a wicked take on the patronizing, superficial and supercilious nature of today's entertainment media. They use their gossipy TV show to fan the flames of public interest in the possibly “hit” film Home for Purim, and as awards fever grips everyone in the film's production, pre-Oscar nomination tensions rise. Longtime relationships within the film team become strained. Will any of the hopefuls in Home for Purim receive a much-coveted, life-changing award nomination?
As with all Christopher Guest's films, much of the fun of For Your Consideration is seeing his now familiar stable of character actors take to their various roles. Unlike Guest's previous films (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind), For Your Consideration is not a mockumentary but a narrative, although there is still plenty of improvisation from its cast members.
By far the funniest and most entertaining moments in For Your Consideration come in the Home for Purim filmmaking scenes. The cast brilliantly parodies that kind of 1940s acting style that relies heavily on stylistic line delivery. Actor Bob Balaban, who plays Purim screenwriter Philip Koontz, says, “It's funny, but it's not funny because anybody's exaggerating something. It's just funny by tilting it a few degrees. It kind of looks like Donna Reed lives there.”
In the hands of Home for Purim 's all-too-human team of D-list screenwriters, director, crew, publicists, agents, producers and actors, the film becomes a laughable throwback to Hollywood's Golden Age of hammy acting, overstylized film noir camera work and overbaked plot devices. The Pischers are a typical, old-world Jewish family through and through, but their home is set in the Deep South and oddly, everyone in the family speaks with a Southern drawl.
There are so many roles in this movie's somewhat convoluted film-within-a-film plot, however, that most of the characters are never satisfactorily fleshed out. There simply is not enough screen time to allow for all of them to be fully drawn. Some of the film's characters, like Eugene Levy's sleazeball Hollywood talent agent Morley Orfkin and Ed Begley Jr.'s makeup artist Sandy Lane, are fairly stock and thus a bit ho-hum.
And although our current tabloid and reality-saturated society is ripe for parody, the corrupting effects of the lust for Hollywood stardom are as old as the original A Star Is Born, adding another predictable layer to this film.
“It's gotten even crazier in the last five years,” Posey says of our culture's obsession with celebrity. “The genius of Chris' movies is that the film seems to tap into something that people have gone a little crazy about. Everyone's caught up in it. People who just like to watch movies get caught up in it. It's like ‘royal behavior' or ‘I think so and so should get an Oscar!' It's kinda kooky.”
Despite some of its well-worn story lines, For Your Consideration is a timely satire on our modern-day fascination with stardom. It skewers those who would strive for it (actors); those along for the ride (hangers-on); as well as those hooked on observing it (fans).
For Your Consideration opens on Nov. 17 in
limited release and nationwide on Nov. 22.
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