Tuesday, November 14, 2006

FYC In 3 Days!

I'm taken rather abruptly by it, but exctiement for Chris Guest's newest flick, For Your Consideration, has crept up on me and I am practically dry-heaving high expectations all over my desk right now. I mean, I have been looking forward to it for some time, but suddenly I'm a bit overwhelmed by it. And it's only three days away now!

Anyway, over at the Village Voice, there's a brief chat between Guest-alum Catherine O'Hara and Michael Musto, which I am reproducing in it's entirety because I feel like doing so. So there!

FOR RICHER OR PURIM

On another plane, CATHERINE O'HARA's place in CHRISTOPHER GUEST's demented ensemble will hopefully never end. She's a regular riot in For Your Consideration, his new spoof of awards mania and his first dip into a narrative experience. And what a narrative. O'Hara plays Marilyn Hack, the star of Home for Purim—an overheated potboiler about a Yiddish-speaking family in the deep South—who hears Oscar buzz about herself and becomes so transformed she practically thinks she can get into Avalon.

"Have you ever witnessed that kind of sickness in the biz?" I asked the SCTV vet over fruit salad at the Waldorf Towers last week. "I've seen people lose and be very upset," O'Hara admitted. "Shellshocked, like they've gotten horrible news about their family." But her husband, production designer BO WELCH, has a much healthier attitude, of course. "He's been nominated four times," related O'Hara, "and he says, 'I'm not gonna win. I know how it works'—even though he deserves to. But by time you get there, all your friends are saying, 'Of course you're gonna win!' Somehow they feel they have to encourage you and you get sucked in."

Consideration should be nominated just for the fact that the cast members were given elaborate résumés and backstories for their characters. It turns out Hack was a big hit playing a blind prostitute, went on to appear in a prime-time hospital drama, and currently voices two Japanese characters on an animated kiddie show. "She's a workhorse actress," said O'Hara, "who doesn't question the script or the authority of the director, even if it's Jay [the meshuggeneh one for Home for Purim, played by Guest himself]."

But come on, woman, could a movie like Purim actually get made, let alone nominated? "Anything can get made," O'Hara replied, drolly. "Look around!" I glanced out the window and saw a big sign for The Santa Clause 3. Point taken.

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