FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION 2006

Although I like to think of myself as having a good sense of humor, I’m afraid I’m not what you might call an “easy laugher.” (My partner would beg to differ. Given my fondness for Peter Sellers, Benny Hill, and particularly Don Adams; I think he ranks my funnybone somewhere in the “easily-amused, lowbrow laugh-whore” zone.)

But be that as it may, I just don’t happen to find many motion picture comedies to be particularly funny. This is especially true of contemporary comedies, a great many of which seem little more than 5-minute skits painfully dragged out to feature-film length. My face turns to stone at just the mention of the names Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Tim Allen, Rob Schneider, or Vince Vaughn; each of whose films (of which I’ve mercifully experienced but a smattering) feels like an eternity spent in the frathouse kegger from hell.

Looking over my DVD collection, I note that a preponderance of what I consider to be my favorite comedies are actually of the unintentional variety: Showgirls, Mommie Dearest, The Oscar, The Poseidon Adventure. But also represented are the '70s comedies of Mel Brooks; Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? and Paper Moon; the counterculture black comedies of John Waters and Paul Morrissey/Andy Warhol; and, although I haven’t found Woody Allen to be particularly funny since Manhattan Murder Mystery and Bullets over Broadway, I can’t deny that I own virtually all of his early, Diane Keaton-era films.

Jane Lynch and Fred Willard do a terrifyingly spot-on send-up of those vapidly cheerful, vacant-eyed hosts we've all seen on Hollywood news magazine programs like Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood.

These days, I find television to be the most satisfying and consistent source of comedy. Or, more accurately, the whole TV/Internet/DVD connection. From the brilliant The Larry Sanders Show to Arrested Development, Lisa Kudrow’s Web Therapy and The Comeback, Parks & Recreation, Ricky Gervais’ The Office and Extras, and Louis C.K.’s Louie…the comedy stuff being made for television nowadays (owing, perhaps, to the briefer format) is head and shoulders above what’s being done in film.

The sole exceptions to the above-stated criticism leveled at motion pictures are the (all-too infrequent) ensemble comedies of Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy & Co. This is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and my personal favorite, For Your Consideration, rank, in my estimation, among the best American comedies ever made. 

Catherine O'Hara as Marilyn Hack:  32-year veteran actress

Harry Shearer as Victor Allan Miller: 40-years in the business, still works for scale

Eugene Levy as Morley Orfkin: Worst Agent in the World

Parker Posey as Callie Webb: "I don't act for trophies."

Christopher Guest as Jay Berman: Alleged Film Director

Ascribable perhaps to its departure from the usual “mockumentary” format they’re known for, For Your Consideration is regarded by some devotees of the Guest/Levy films to be one of their weaker efforts. For me, it's the total opposite. While I wouldn't go so far as to insist any of these films is better than the other (each manages to be uproarious in its own unique way), I can say that due to its satirical targets being topics near and dear to my heart (movies, Hollywood, The Academy Awards, fame culture), For Your Consideration is the film I relate to the most. I get all the inside jokes, I understand the characters, I recognize the absurd world depicted. For Your Consideration achieves the impossible in creating a flawless and riotously funny satire of an industry that increasingly teeters on the brink  of becoming a satire of itself.

John Michael Higgins as Corey Taft (alias Jo-Jo): Movie Publicist

For Your Consideration tells the story of what happens when three otherwise rational actors in an inconsequential little independent film allow themselves to get swept up in the frenzy surrounding the self-propigating hype of the Academy Awards. Following Christopher Guest’s usual mode of commenting on the large by focusing on the small; Hollywood and the film industry is savagely lampooned when we're allowed behind the scenes in the making of Home for Purim— a by-all-appearances dreadful family drama (think Lifetime or Hallmark Channel caliber) in the southern gothic tradition of Eugene O’Neill. Minus the talent. 

The amusingly overwrought Home for Purim chronicles the domestic travails surrounding a family reunion in the Pisher household in 1940s Georgia (pisher being Yiddish slang for just what it sounds like…pisser). From its team of hack writers, dedicated cast of never-quite-made-its, and barely-up-to-the-task production crew, Home for Purim is journeyman filmmaking in every department. But because it's an independent feature, cast and crew indulge themselves in the delusion that what they are making is art.
Once The Academy starts knocking, principles and pretensions are put to the test. In depicting the many (hilarious) ways in which Hollywood types are willing to quickly sell out when fame and fortune comes calling makes For Your Consideration a laugh-a-minute look at a world where high-flown pretensions of “art”commingle uneasily with standard-operational workday mediocrity.

Bob Balaban (I love that guy) as Phillip Koontz (not Kuntz) and Michael McKean as Lane Iverson.
The conjointly-disregarded writers of  Home for Purim

As was the case with the delusional regional theater thespians of Waiting for Guffman, For Your Consideration mines its (occasionally poignant) comedy from the big-time dreams and ambitions of the talent-challenged. But since it takes place in Hollywood, the absurdity ante is considerably upped, because, as we all know, being absolutely terrible at one’s job has never been an obstacle to success in the movie business. Hope springs eternal in an industry where individuals of no discernible talent (Kristen Stewart, Vin Diesel) can rake in the millions, or truly abominable, full-on crap directors like Michael Bay and Dennis Dugan (IMDB him, if you dare) never cease to be employed.

Wake Up, L.A.!
For Your Consideration's television spoofs are so off-the-chart deranged, they don't look like spoofs at all.

For Your Consideration shows what happens when career actors for whom working in the movies has always meant earning a living and not being on the A-List, are given a last-gasp shot at a ride on the red carpet of fame.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Hollywood satires are as old as the industry itself (the 1937 Leslie Howard comedy Stand-In is a good example). But too often they’re either kid-gloved jabs at the easy targets of greed, egomania, and artifice (i.e., Jerry Lewis’ The Patsy, Walter Matthau’s Movers and Shakers, Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie, Singin’ in the Rain); or embittered, not-very-funny, revenge-fueled vendettas by tarnished Golden Boys no longer at the top of the heap (Blake Edwards’ S.O.B., Joe Eszterhas’ Burn, Hollywood, Burn). The flaw of the former is the toothlessness of the satire; the flaw of the latter: the convenient way the filmmakers tend to posit their onscreen surrogates as the principled victims of a morally corrupt industry (an industry you sense they'd sell their mother for to get a chance to again be a major player in).

Jennifer Coolidge as producer Whitney Taylor Brown & Jordan Black as production assistant Lincoln.
Not a functioning brain cell between them. 

In the end, the biggest lie of these satires is their being rooted in the questionable notion that somehow the movie industry is this monolith of empty values and avarice operating independently of the individuals it employs. If the movie industry is creepy, it's because of the Brett Ratners and Charlie Sheens it attracts, not its profit-based corporate structure.

Where For Your Consideration shines (and why I find it so hilarious) is that it presents Hollywood as an industry that is only as empty-headed and superficial as the people who seek to make their living in it. The humor comes out of the character flaws of individuals who willingly subject themselves to its rejections and petty humiliations; who delude and flatter themselves that they are absolutely NOT a part of the system; and who, pitiably, are so fueled by longing and vulnerable to temptation that they readily sell out every last principle and ideal they have when an opportunity for fame and fortune presents itself.

 For Your Consideration finds both the humor and humanity in people of unexceptional gifts harboring the dream of being extraordinary.

There's not a movie made that couldn't be made better with the casting of Parker Posey.
Rachael Harris as Debbie Gilchrist: "Dying is easy. Playing a lesbian is hard!"

PERFORMANCES

As is always the case with Christopher Guest’s ensemble comedies, the entire cast is absolutely brilliant, making it impossible to point out one favored bit without leaving out a dozen more. Suffice it to say there’s not a single character in the film I wouldn't have enjoyed seeing more of. Even after multiple viewings, I keep catching new bits of business and finding more layers in the marvelously comic characterizations. They are all just great.

Ensemble members Rachael Harris, Ed-Begley, Jim-Pidddock, and Deborah-Theaker 

Of course, special mention must be made of Catherine O’Hara, who just shines as Marilyn Hack. Her performance here is doubly notable because it inspired real life to imitate art (O'Hara garnered considerable Academy buzz for the film. A buzz that never materialized in an Oscar nod). 

There’s no way that I can watch her sympathetic portrayal of an actress who so humiliatingly loses her grip at the thought of being nominated for an Oscar without thinking of Sally Kirkland. For those unfamiliar with the name, Sally Kirkland is an actress who’d been appearing in films since the 60s without making much of an impact when, in 1987, a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Anna, thrust her into the limelight. And she ran with it.

Serious Actress                                      Movie  Star

Catherine O'Hara's transformation from dedicated professional to potential Oscar-nominee is nothing short of chilling in perfectly capturing that "perpetually startled"  look of the face-lift set. Amazingly, there are no special makeup effects involved. She's just using her facial muscles! 

Determined to reverse decades of obscurity, Kirkland (who in Anna beautifully portrayed an unglamorous, middle-aged stage actress) launched herself into an exhaustive campaign of self-promotion memorable for its shamelessness. Almost unrecognizably glammed-out, wearing perilously short skirts that enhanced her always-on-display, recently-enhanced breasts; the 46-year-old veteran actress carried on like a giggly starlet on a string of nighttime talk shows—most frequently The Arsenio Hall Show. A sad coda to her tale is while she continues to work in films, her Oscar nomination never did result in stardom. In addition, Kirkland suffered so many serious health issues as a result of her breast implants that she had to have them removed and later became an advocate for the banning of the surgical procedure.

Don Lake & Michael Hitchcock as the squabbling Siskel/Ebert-like TV film critics

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

A few of my favorite bits of dialogue.

Victor Allen Miller: "It’s just a bit silly about the Oscar stuff, don’t you think?"

Sandy Lane : Silly? It’s the Backbone of this industry!"

Victor Allen Miller: "An industry noted for not having a backbone."

Corey Taft: “In every actor there lives a tiger, a pig, an ass, and a nightingale. You never know which one’s going to show up.”

Simon Whitset (cameraman): "Do you know how tight my aperture is right now? Have you any idea?”

Jay Berman (director): “If you’re being a smart-ass, you know what I'm gonna do? I’m gonna put you across my knee.”

Variety Headlines
Pointing Guy Scores Big  / "Let's Shoot The Puppy" Gets Axed: Studio Pulls Plug

Lane Iverson: “You can't throw the baby out with the bathwater because then all you have is a wet, critically injured baby. And I don’t think that’s what you want to put your name on.”

Debbie Gilchrest: "I feel like it's ambiguous. I don't think it's clear that I'm gay. I mean, I got the look, but I think that we're pussyfooting around the subject."

Brian Chubb: "That made you sound gay..."

Sandra Oh & Richard Kind as the marketing directors for Home For Purim

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy make comedies about dreamers, and as such, their humor always has a touch of wistfulness to it. Being a huge film fan and a dreamer myself, perhaps that's why For Your Consideration is my favorite of their films. Or maybe it's just that I get a kick out of a movie that takes a bit of the air out of the kind of people who go around saying things like: "It's all about the work," "It's important to hone one's craft," or refer to their voices and bodies as "My instrument." 

Copyright © Ken Anderson