The Berkeley Beacon

Issue date: 11/16/06 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Media Credit: courtesy of Warner Independent Pictures For Your Consideration's satirizing of filmmaking and awards season even extends to celebrity gossip shows.

Working in an industry that is rumored to be full of narcissistic, avaricious and superficial twits, it's unsurprising that some of the sharpest filmmakers, like Robert Altman and Billy Wilder, have successfully put their cinematic knife in the belly of the moviemaking machine with The Player and Sunset Boulevard, respectively.

Christopher Guest is no stranger to scrutinizing a community of losers and uncovering some bizarrely hilarious and dark truths. While small-town theatre, dog shows and folk music were all fresh areas for mockery, Hollywood is not unexplored territory. Exposing vanity in the moviemaking business is akin to revealing Elton John's sexuality. In fact, Guest previously satirized the movie industry in his directorial debut, The Big Picture.

For Your Consideration, however, focuses on a different aspect of the filmmaking trade, one that should not have a large impact but indubitably does: award season. Despite this more concentrated scenario, on the effect "buzz" has on actors and overwrought Oscar bait, this monotonous movie still does not have much new to say.

The centerpiece in this overstuffed assembly is veteran actress Marilyn Hack (Catherine O'Hara). While filming the preposterously melodramatic Home for Purim, Hack hears from a crew member that there is gossip on the Internet of a possible Academy Award nomination for her.

Elated by the news, the buzz surrounds the set with most actors modestly stating their happiness for her. Suddenly and inexplicably, Home for Purim, which is just too lame to believe even the most idiotic Academy voters could nominate, begins to gain media coverage for two other stars in the film, Victor Allan Miller (Harry Shearer) and Callie Webb (Parker Posey).

In an interview with The Beacon, co-writers Guest and Eugene Levy disclosed their unorthodox methods of scripting.

"The film, aside from the movie within a movie, is improvised," Guest said.

"There is a screenplay without dialogue, just scene-by-scene breakdowns of exposition and story and the actors have to get certain information out however they would like," Levy said. "It's an outline of only about 25 to 30 pages, but we spend nearly three months delineating scenes and characters. What the free actors do to it in terms of look, sound and voice is completely up to them."

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