PLUS SCARLETT JOHANSSON, LINDSAY LOHAN AND ANGELINA JOLIE SHARE THEIR DREAMS

interview|CHRISTOPHER GUEST & EUGENE LEVY
Many of the most astonishing bigscreen
moments have been quiet
close-ups of characters’ sedate
faces that reveal storms of emotion raging
just beneath.
Glenn Close has one at the end of
Dangerous Liaisons as her shamed 18thcentury
temptress scrubs the makeup
from her face. Kevin Spacey’s corrupt
cop catches a glimpse of himself in the
mirror behind a bar in L.A. Confidential,
and you can see right through to his core.
And Catherine O’Hara has one about
halfway through For Your Consideration
when her aging actor thinks she just might
get an Oscar nomination for her turn in
a laughably bad indie drama.
It’s an odd place to find such a moment,
in the middle of Christopher Guest’s
latest over-the-top comedy. In the tradition
famous 26 | november 2006
Home for Purim’s
cast, from left:
Christopher Moynihan,
Harry Shearer,
Catherine O’Hara and
Parker Posey
Director Christopher Guest
works with Parker Posey on the
set of For Your Consideration
Laugh until you cry
Yes, For Your Consideration is pee-your-pants funny.
But Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy also want you to see
the tragedy behind the humour I BY MARNI WEISZ
of Guest’s other recent movies — Waiting
for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty
Wind — this one is crammed full of
painfully funny jokes from start to finish.
But in that one scene, as O’Hara stares
upward ever so slightly with hopeful,
vulnerable blue eyes, you don’t feel like
you’re watching a comedy at all.
“The important part of this story is
the emotional part,” says Guest — who
directed, co-wrote and stars in the film
— during a tandem interview with
Eugene Levy at the Toronto International
Film Festival. Levy, a Hamilton native
who now lives in Toronto and L.A.
co-wrote the script, as he did for Guest’s
last three movies, and also has a role.
Both look surprisingly conservative in
nearly identical dark blue blazers.
“We’ve been in this business a long time
and we’ve seen a lot of these bizarre
people, that’s the easy part,” continues
Guest. “The hard part is weaving the
somewhat tragic story through it, and
without that there’s no movie.”
Like all of Guest’s movies, For Your
Consideration is a mass ensemble, and
you’ll recognize most of the major players
from his past films. Much of the story
takes place on the set of the shlocky,
low-budget, 1940s-set movie within the
movie, Home for Purim. Written by a
couple of too-earnest playwrights
(Michael McKean and Bob Balaban),
Purim stars Marilyn Hack (O’Hara) and
equally past-his-prime Victor Allen Miller
(Harry Shearer) as the heads of a Jewish
family in the American South. When
their lesbian daughter (Parker Posey)
arrives home for the holiday with her
partner (Rachel Harris) it causes much
tsuris…sort of like Yiddish for angst.
In what may be the first instance
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©2006 P&G