For Your Consideration

I don't have much to say about "For Your Consideration," except that I liked it, in spite of the negative reviews it received, and I wanted to say that here in case other viewers, like me, put off viewing it because the reviews put us off.

"For Your Consideration" is a small, brief (86 minutes), sweet, funny movie. It's not as laugh-out-loud funny as "Best in Show" (few movies are) but I liked it better than "Mighty Wind," which I also liked.

Christopher Guest's usual crew is in its usual fine form. Catherine O'Hara is funny in a whole new way, with at least one scene that is quite poignant and unforgettable, at least to struggling artists. John Michael Higgins does a very funny William H. Macy-like character. Jane Lynch is dead-on as an "Entertainment Tonight" style tabloid "journalist."

I even liked the ventriloquist Nina Conti -- and I normally run from the room when a ventriloquist comes on.

There is something both enchanting and disorienting about watching a Christopher Guest film that features conventional camera angles and a narrative structure. It is a brave, and ultimately, a rewarding choice for a director who has built his impeccable reputation on the strength of his mockumentaries.

Like its predecessors Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration is largely improvised, and reunites the same winning cast. Gone, however, are several of the conventions of Guest's previous films. For Your Consideration avoids the need to give every last character an extended 'interview' segment and instead weaves minor characters naturally into the fabric of the story. The narrative structure also prevents Guest from relying too heavily on cuts to b-roll sight gags that, while funny, are never more than gags. By challenging himself to tell this story in the absence of these and other mockumentary techniques, Guest is allowed to focus instead on scenes that show how his characters really respond to one another in the moment.

Half the fun of course is waiting for all the familiar faces to show up, and discovering what crazy character they have inhabited this time around. All the usual suspects are back in For Your Consideration, playing a colourful array of Hollywood types. Insecurities, foibles - and just a few quirks - are in full display.

Jennifer Coolidge is a brilliantly clueless producer, and Eugene Levy has a nice turn as a somewhat smarmy agent who has no faith whatsoever in his client (Harry Shearer's Victor Ann Miller). Guest himself is hilarious playing director Jay Berman, and one only wishes that we got to see more of his rehearsals with the actors, as these are some of the funniest scenes in the film. Mike McKean and Bob Balaban are a fun team as the cowriters of Home for Purim, the movie-within-the-movie. Making his first appearance in a Guest film, Ricky Gervais grabs perhaps the biggest laugh of all with a line that I won't spoil here. And while Fred Willard and Jane Lynch are dealt very broad characters, their send-up of Access Hollywood is laugh-out-loud funny, and provides the perfect vehicle for Willard's boorish shtick.

John Michael Higgins is in amazing form as Corey Taft, sporting surreal philosophies on actors and life that outdo even his colour-worshipping character from A Mighty Wind. And the doe-eyed and endlessly endearing Christopher Moynihan tosses off several absolute gems in response to the inanity going on around him. Much like his character in the film, he's likely to go unnoticed in favour of some flashier performances, but deserves accolades of his own. He and Parker Posey have a sweet, unrehearsed chemistry playing actors in puppy love.

While it is impossible to give due screen time to all of the troupe's mainstays, some deserved better. Jim Piddock is dealt a potentially juicier part than he's had in the past, as the irritable AD who is all too aware that he's surrounded by idiots. But his screen time is far too short to let it amount to much, and fans wanting to see him play against type are better advised to check out his brilliant performance in See This Movie. Meanwhile, Ed Begley Jr. is hideously miscast as the film's token flamboyant gay man. Furthermore, having such recognizable actors as Claire Forlani and particularly Sandra Oh show up for bit parts in For Your Consideration is more distracting than anything, and breaks the illusion of the self-contained world that worked so nicely in Guest's previous efforts.

Despite all of the comedic talent on display however, this is Catherine O'Hara's show, and she more than delivers in her role as fading screen star Marilyn Hack. Her insecurities, dreams, and vulnerabilities are handled with such poignancy and humour that O'Hara fully deserves whatever accolades may come her way in the months to come. She is luminous.

If For Your Consideration comes up a little short, it is in the story department. The outline devised by Guest and Levy suffers somewhat from a lack of focus. If, as Guest insists, this film is not intended as a satire of Hollywood but is rather the tragicomic tale of what happens to someone when they are told that they deserve an award, we should be spending less time on all the Hollywood in-jokes and parodies, and more time with the characters themselves.

We don't learn quite enough about our main characters – those portrayed by Catherine O'Hara, Harry Shearer, and Parker Posey – to really understand how monumental it is for them to be caught up in the Oscar hype. We see that, professionally, they desperately need the break. But we get no perspective on how this effects their personal lives, or changes the way that they relate to the people closest to them. Where are their families? Their friends? They don't seem to have any. And if that was the point in and of itself, it wasn't brought across clearly enough.

Whatever the film's shortcomings, it is the smaller details that are purely Guest which make this film a triumph and future classic: Guest's perfect intonation as he instructs one actor to deliver his line as though "Mommy is going… now?", Jennifer Coolidge jumping in at the absolute perfect moment with "But what about me!?" in the midst of a heated argument that has nothing to do with her, or the sight of Harry Shearer suddenly wearing Rachael Harris' hat to help him get into character. These are the small moments that give Guest's works the rare distinction of being films that get progressively funnier with each viewing.

My hope for the next Guest film is that it continues to stretch the troupe in the way that these last two films have done. Ideally, we'll see an improvised, narrative comedy with some heart, all the expected hilarity… and a little more plot structure. Until then, here it is, for your consideration

The thing most Christopher Guest movies have going for them is their humanity. I always could believe the universe the characters were operating in, and their realism (see the dog owners in Best in Show or the small town citizens of Waiting for Guffman). That humanity transcended the satire and made the movies both hysterical and moving. FYC completely lost the humanity that drives these films. Almost all of the characters were not believable. In this instance Guest's improvisational technique failed him as the actors were all over the top, playing too much to the satire. Only two actors seemed in touch with their characters - Parker Posey (who we really saw too little of to understand her) and the great Catherine O'Hara, who sold both the aging actor she was portraying and the Jewish mother in the film within the film.

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. In an impressive string of wonderful mockumentary farces over the past few years, guiding lights Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, and their brilliant comedic acting ensemble, have joyfully savaged the self-important cultural "worlds" of small town amateur theater ("Waiting for Guffman"), dog shows ("Best in Show") and folk music ("A Mighty Wind").

But a winning formula can't go on forever unchanged, nor should we expect it to. Inevitably, the group have hit a bump in the road with their latest film, "For Your Consideration," a send-up of Hollywood movie making and the assorted vanities of movie makers. Not that it's bad. But compared to those earlier works, it isn't inspired; it doesn't grab you with its efforts to lampoon; and the performances of the actors - always uniformly of a high caliber in most of their movies – is highly variable in this new movie. Perhaps the theme hits too close to home: it's hard to gain the distance necessary to properly ridicule your own ethos, your own cultural world. Or maybe it's just that the recipe Guest and Levy have used to such delightful advantage has just gotten old, for viewers and for Guest's company.

The plot, for what it's worth, concerns a film within a film: the making of a new movie, the ethnically freighted "Home for Purim," which is later rewritten and retitled "Home for Thanksgiving" to broaden its commercial box office appeal. All the stereotypes one expects are on hand: the avaricious executive producers; the harried director; the screenwriters, pained by the incremental decimation of their work; the aging stars in decline; the young up and comings; the vain chase after that holiest of grails: an Oscar, the hangers on – the parasitic, disingenuous talent agent, talk show hosts, film critics and entertainment reporters. They're all here.

Parker Posey (young actress possibly on the way up), Catherine O'Hara ((veteran actress on the way out), Jennifer Coolidge (ditzy producer), and Eugene Levy (actors' agent) provide decent turns but none of these superb talents gives a truly inspired performance here. Harry Shearer is better as a long-suffering actor who is glad enough just to star in a feature film after years of making commercials, Oscar or no Oscar. But the comedic scene stealers in this movie are three pairs of actors who play off each other to wonderful effect: Fred Willard and Jane Lynch as a TV entertainment reporting duo, Bob Balaban and Michael McKean as the beleaguered screenwriters, and Don Lake and Michael Hitchcock as Siskel-Ebert style TV critics. There are several competent cameo contributors as well, the best of whom is Carrie Aizley, a movie journalist.

This is decent fare, but I think Guest and Levy need to re-imagine their formula for successful farce. I never thought the day would come when I would regard a comedy written by David Mamet as superior to work by Guest & Levy, but here's a tip: if you want to see a good send-up of movie making, try Mamet's 2000 film, "State and Main." My grades: 6.5/10 (low B) (Seen on 11/15/06)

Having just searched through 137 IMDb comments (whew!) of Guest's film I was quite surprised that nobody noticed the central in-joke at work here, one that spoiled an otherwise mildly amusing effort for me. I guess you have to be a film industry insider, or at least have a working knowledge of film history, to analyze these seemingly transparent recent movies, and everyone struck out.

The central character, played so winningly by Catherine O'Hara, is obviously based on a real-life actress and her Oscar campaign. The real Hollywood actors, namely the typical Academy members who make up the Oscar voting population that selects the nominees annually, will instantly recognize who I'm referring to, even though those intrepid IMDb addicts dropped the ball. The answer is plainly Sally Kirkland, a talented character actress who indeed was nominated for best actress in 1987 for her performance in the indie film ANNA. I knew Sally quite well at the time, and she was completely sincere in the campaign she launched, unsuccessfully, to try and win the coveted Oscar, losing out to Cher for MOONSTRUCK that year. Her campaigning predated what has become merely customary, as the Weinsteins later perfected the art of actively manipulating Academy voters to get annual nominations and wins for their various Miramax (subsequently TWC) films, right up through somehow managing a Penelope Cruz nom for "Nine".

Sally's large breast implants are an easy target for O'Hara here, with Willard's funny line about her décolletage after interviewing her post-Oscar snub: "Now I've seen the Grand Canyon". For the uninitiated, if you click on Sally's IMDb page you will see how her face in the '80s/'90s closely resembles the look O'Hara captured in her impressive bit of "frozen visage" acting of the final reels of Guest's satire. I shudder to think of how Nicole Kidman, Jessica Lange and Meg Ryan will fare as potential future targets of the merciless Guest/O'Hara team.

We all know from numerous lectures by the latter-day greats like Steve Martin that "comedy isn't pretty". But I was disappointed at Guest and company taking potshots at Ms. Kirkland. She is a sincere artist and while everyone in the entertainment world is out there available for ridicule I was taken aback by the somewhat underhanded, infra dig lampooning here. Knowing Sally I'm sure she took it in her stride when FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION was released, but no one likes to be mocked. Even masochists would prefer some old-fashioned corporal punishment to being humiliated in front of their peers.

As an aside, I admire the talent of these comedy geniuses, including Levy and Guest. But I think a telling anecdote of an incident I witnessed long ago shows that many of them have feet of clay. As a film critic I was attending the press screening for about 50 people at Magno on Times Square in NYC in 1980 for the new film THE FIRST DEADLY SIN, starring Frank Sinatra and Faye Dunaway. The film when released soon after was not successful with critics or audiences and proved to be Frank's final big-screen role, in fact his only movie role after 1970. There is an etiquette at press screenings, but not just critics are invited. Sitting near me was Harry Shearer (a key member of Guest's stock company, and of course immortal from his THIS IS SPINAL TAP participation), whom I recognized immediately from his Saturday NIGHT LIVE appearances plus a friend who I couldn't place. Starting a few minutes into the Sinatra film, which was a gritty, NYC-set thriller, the two of them launched into a series of catcalls and shout-out jokey remarks at the expense of the movie that would have made the yet-to-be-invented stars of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRE 3000 proud, or fit well within the current drag queen-led mocking of movies that goes on weekly at my local Chelsea cinema. I even shushed them (!) to no avail. This uncouth behavior stuck with me, and always made me wonder about the sincerity of comics at the level of talent, which I readily concede, of a Shearer, or a Second City denizen. I know contemporary comedians famously study people they see on the street, subway, etc. in ordinary life to build material, but the disrespectful attitude of Shearer & bud toward Sinatra, Dunaway and their earnest (if not at the top of their game) movie collaborators appalled me no end. It's not surprising that poor Faye met a similar fate the following year with the release of MOMMIE DEAREST, which stands as perhaps the most-ridiculed and campy of modern Hollywood releases.