The Screengrab : rob reiner

Screengrab's Favorite Movies About Music: Fiction Edition (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Last week, as part of our ongoing coverage of the South-By-Southwest Film, Music & Interactive Festival, we decided to get our collective groove on with a list of our favorite movies about real-live musicians.

But who says musicians have to be real to be memorable? Sure, Mitch & Mickey may be fictional characters portrayed by Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara in Christopher Guest’s faux-folkumentary, A Mighty Wind...yet despite the fact the duo never really existed, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when my lovely Polish bride and I danced at our wedding reception to that non-existent classic hit of sweet, sweet romance, “A Kiss At The End Of The Rainbow." And, sure, the real Sid Vicious was nice and all...but I have equally fond memories of Gary Oldman’s fictional version in Alex Cox’s Sid & Nancy.

To blur the lines of fiction and reality even further, this week’s list also includes movies about make-believe people affected by real musicians and real musicians transforming themselves into make-believe people as your pals at the Screengrab salute OUR FAVORITE MOVIES ABOUT MUSIC: FICTION EDITION!

THIS IS SPINAL TAP (1984)

Yes, we all know it's hilarious. But This Is Spinal Tap is a classic for more reasons than simple hilarity. This was one of the first major films to be classified a "mockumentary", and in order for the style to work at all, director Rob Reiner and stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer had to get all the details down cold. This meant concocting an elaborate backstory involving multiple group names, format changes, and a parade of dozens of drummers who met their respective ends under bizarre circumstances. But beyond the more obvious references, Spinal Tap had to walk, talk, and play like a real aging rock band, from the principles writing and performing their own songs before actual crowds to the shorthand that the band members have with each other, as when Nigel (Guest) calls out "GSM" during rehearsal to signal that he wants to practice the song "Gimme Some Money." The gambit worked -- numerous moviegoers at the time were convinced that Spinal Tap was a real touring act, and the movie quickly became a favorite of legitimate rock acts, who identified with such scenes as the group getting lost on their way to the stage. Soon enough, life imitated farce, and Guest, McKean, and Shearer began touring as Spinal Tap, even releasing a second album in 1992 entitled Break Like the Wind. Even today, Spinal Tap endures, both in its cinematic form and its real-life incarnation, with a tour coming later this spring.

24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE (2002)

Steve Coogan has a motor-mouthed smart-guy comedian's dream role as Tony Wilson, TV reporter, pop theorist, and the man behind Factory Records, which brought the sound of Manchester to a postpunk world. Directed by Michael Winterbottom, the movie, which also provides plum roles for Shirley Henderson (as Wilson's first wife), Paddy Considine (as his sidekick Rob Gretton), Andy Serkis (as the deranged genius producer Martin Hannett), and Sean Hayes (as Ian Curtis), covers the first public performance by the Sex Pistols, the rise and end of Joy Division, the band's resurrection as New Order, the slaphappy career of the Happy Mondays and the coming of rave culture, and Factory's death throes, with Coogan's Wilson walking through it explaining himself and the culture he's part of, always talking a mile a minute. Coming from the cerebral Winterbottom, the movie itself could be called a sustained work of rock criticism, except that rock crit hasn't been this funny since Lester Bangs swigged his last bottle of Romilar.

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (2001)

John Cameron Mitchell energetically transposed his hit off-Broadway show to celluloid with 2001’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the story of a transsexual punk rock goddess named Hedwig (Mitchell) who narrates her life story while travelling across the country playing second-rate venues, her shot at stardom stymied by a former lover and disciple (Michael Pitt) who became a music sensation by stealing her songs. Hedwig’s is a lunatic odyssey which begins in East Berlin where, as a young boy, she undergoes a sex change operation in order to marry her U.S. army lover and escape the Iron Curtain, and which is partially conveyed via a bevy of musical numbers and animated sequences that are striking in both their ingenuity and power. Bolstered by rollicking, blistering tunes that are as well suited for arenas as they are for the stage and screen, Mitchell’s film is rowdy, bombastic, idiosyncratic and heartfelt, a combination to which only a select few movie musicals can legitimately lay claim.

THE DOORS (1991)

A close friend once derided The Doors’ music as “bad poetry with keyboards,” and while I’m generally inclined to concur with his assessment, there’s nonetheless something transfixing about Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic, which has the type of on-the-edge, trippy-druggy dynamism that typified the director’s creatively fertile early-‘90s period. Stone’s anything-goes aesthetic showmanship is an ideal approach for a portrait of the L.A. band and, in particular, lead singer Jim Morrison, whose larger-than-life persona – drunken fool, callous bastard, earnest poet, sex god – naturally appealed to a filmmaker fascinated with mythologizing socio-political icons. The Doors oozes reverence without alienating those who might think the film’s subjects and their classic-rock canon fall somewhat short of greatness, due in part to uniformly superb performances led by Val Kilmer’s pitch-perfect embodiment of the lizard king, but mostly thanks to Stone’s lack of inhibition, his madman stylistic excesses (and yes, I’m including the Indian in the desert), supremely well-attuned to the careening rollercoaster energy of The Doors.

VELVET GOLDMINE (1998) and I'M NOT THERE (2007)

With these two films, Todd Haynes has produced the finest examples of fictional rock movies that I can imagine. Both have taken the lives of real rock musicians -- Bowie & Iggy in the former, Dylan in the latter -- and played up the mythic qualities to create a transcendent hyper-reality. No, Bowie and Iggy and Dylan didn't really live like this. But speaking from the point of view of poetry and mythology and literature, these are more true than mere reality can manage. That's what myths and stories are about: heightening everyday reality into a more universal truth. Most people's lives aren't up to the examples set by Ulysses or Hercules or even Ishmael or Natty Bumppo. But I think few would deny that there's a universal recognition of the truth in the lives of these wandering heroes. Celebrities sometimes play the role of real-life analog to idealized heroes. That's why so many urban myths leap up about the lives of celebrities; people need to believe in the extraordinariness of others. Rock musicians in particular often play the debauched Dionysian role of the glorious artistic mess, the pleasure-seeker who indulges in sex and drugs to feed his or her creative output. With these movies, Haynes pushes past the mere facts to feed the stories, and the results are fascinating, part narrative and part critique. In Velvet Goldmine, Christian Bale plays a journalist in an Orwellian Britain of the late '80s. A series of events causes him to investigate -- and recall -- the heyday of glam rock and its figurehead Brian Slade, who is basically the Platonic ideal of David Bowie (with elements of Brian Eno thrown in for good measure) as played by Jonathan Rhys Meyer. Slade's closest associate is Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), who is mostly Iggy with a little Lou Reed thrown in. The two are lovers, and Slade gleefully expresses his fluid sense of sexuality. So there's three layers right there: Orwellian future, permissive past, rockers as trangressors. But there's more. Haynes dares to suggest that the bisexual/creative impulse was a gift from aliens (or angels) to Oscar Wilde in the Victorian era, and has passed down through the ages to the instigators of glam. That's, well, audacious as all hell. Haynes specifically compares Slade to both Wilde and his horrendous creation Dorian Gray. So, that's at least two more layers, maybe more. So, yes: gay theory, rock theory, lit theory, treatises on repression and freedom combined with the cults of youth and beauty. There's a lot going on in this movie. And it rocks like hell.

In I'm Not There, Haynes similarly adopts all of the myths about Bob Dylan into a narrative that's both fractured and more meaningful than a straightforward film could convey. There are six Dylans in this film, which is fewer Dylans than real life has given us. But these six Dylans represent the greatest periods of his life. Marcus Carl Franklin, an 11-year-old African-American boy, represents the youngest Dylan myth, the farmboy who rides the rails calling himself Woody Guthrie, learning America's traditional folk and blues music along the way. Ben Whishaw plays the interior Dylan, the playful interviewee who calls himself Arthur Rimbaud and comments cryptically on the rest of Dylan's life. Christian Bale plays the young and sincere New York folksinger Dylan, the socially active songwriter who calls himself Jack Rollins and travels to the South to sing to Civil Rights workers in a field. Rollins will later morph into Pastor John, the born-again Christian Dylan of the late '70s and early '80s. Heath Ledger plays the actor Dylan, the one who is horrible to his beautiful wife and torn in two by their divorce. His name is Robbie Clark and his wife, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, is Claire, and their story evokes the mid-'70s Dylan of Renaldo and Clara and Blood On The Tracks. Cate Blanchett plays Jude Quinn, the rock star Dylan of the mid-'60s and Don't Look Back. Quinn is explicitly shown as dead from a motorcycle accident at the beginning of the movie, which references Dylan's 1966 motorcycle accident which effectively killed off his Don't Look Back-era persona. Richard Gere plays Billy the Kid, who is the Dylan of The Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding, and Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid. Gere's Billy lives in Riddle County, where the carnivalesque/Old West/Old Testament world of the Basement Tapes springs to life. So, that's the shallowest overview I could provide, and it more or less ate up all my space. Layers and layers in these films. Watch 'em again. And again.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager, Hayden Childs

Morning Deal Report: Freaks and Straights

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Fresh off the Pineapple Express, David Gordon Green is preparing to lead the Freaks of the Heartland. The horror flick will be based on a Dark Horse graphic novel by Steve Niles. The “six-part 2004 series about the horrible secret of a rural Middle American town involves Trevor Owen's attempts to protect his ‘monster’ of a 6-year-old younger brother and Gristlewood Valley's other ‘freaks’ from their parents' worst instincts,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

If you couldn’t get enough of John From Cincinnati, there’s more surf-noir on the way. Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban have optioned Tijuana Straits, a novel by Kem Nunn, who collaborated with David Milch on the aforementioned HBO obscurity. Variety reports: “The novel's about a reclusive ex-surfer drawn into helping a Mexican woman who's being hunted by a killer hired by cartels to silence her before she exposes corruption in Tijuana.”

Rob Reiner, who apparently missed the Blair Witch sequel a few years ago, will direct Book of Shadows for Castle Rock. “The story follows a young man who must embark on the perilous journey of first love and face many trials of maturity while on the dangerous quest to close a mythical tome called Book of Shadows in order to restore balance to the world,” sez THR.

Related:
Face/Off: Judd Apatow and "Pineapple Express"
OST: This Is Spinal Tap

The Top Ten Great Scenes From Not So Great Movies (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:30:00 GMT

The watch scene from THE COTTON CLUB (1984)

Francis Coppola spent the first half of the 1980s despoiling his reputation and laying waste to his bank account by turning out a string of movies that concentrated on technological wizardy and hollow flash to such a degree that involving the audience in what was supposed to be going on became a moot point. Reduced to working as a gun for hire, he signed on to direct this elephantine period musical about the legendary Harlem night spot, and made all the same mistakes that he'd made with his own labor-of-love fiascoes. He and his screenwriting partner, William Kennedy, were not helped by their producers, who signed Richard Gere to star in the movie, and accepted his demand that he get to play a cornet player, before a script had been written. (This meant that Coppola and Kennedy had to vamp their asses off to come up with a story that would be set at a jazz club which only employed black musicians yet had a white musician at its center.) The best scene in the movie is a throwaway moment between the Cotton Club's gangster owner, Owney Madden, and his baleful partner, Frenchy Demange, played by Bob Hoskins and Fred Gwynne, who were not considered to be among the most glittering members of the movie's crowded cast. (At the time, Hoskins was largely unknown in America, and Gwynne, at 58, was just beginning to crawl out from under the shadow of Herman Munster, a role that had left him badly typecast for twenty years.) Frenchy has just been released from the clutches of a sociopathic thug (Nicolas Cage) who kidnapped him for ransom; Owney is reluctant to let Frenchy know how worried he's been for him, and Frenchy is pissed off because he's heard, falsely, thay Owney tried to bargain down the price of the ransom. Reunited, they use the ostensible subject of a busted watch as an excuse to dance around and finally reveal how much their friendship means to them. It's the only fully human scene in the movie, and not only does it not involve the leads, but Coppola and Kennedy didn't write it. Hoskins and Gwynne came up with it while hanging out together on the set, waiting for something to do.

The pie-eating scene from STAND BY ME (1986)

I know that a great many people have tender feelings for this gentle look at the bond between little boys -- or, to put it the way the grown narrator (Richard Dreyfuss) puts it at the very end, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" I guess that's sort of true: later on, I was never so hard up for someone to hang out with that I was willing to tolerate having friends who ate worms. The fact is that some of us would rather not even have to think about the possibility that Stephen King has a soft, sensitive side (and that goes triple for Meathead). However, there is one scene that fully lives up to what some of us might have hoped for in a collaboration between the author of Carrie and the director of This Is Spinal Tap. It's the scene where the kid who likes to tell stories (and who's going to grow up to be Richard Dreyfuss, i.e. Stephen King) gathers his mates together and enthralls them with the tale of Lardass, the fat kid who rewards the people of his town for their years of abuse with a little plan involving a pie-eating contest and a dose of castor oil. I never heard any gross-out stories that could top the ones invented by twelve-year-old boys who were secretly a lot less sensitive than they wanted to believe. Jesus, does anybody?

Darth Maul, Sebulba & The Pod Race from THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999)

After the pure, cinematic orgasm of Star Wars blew my pre-pubescent mind beyond any hope of repair, even The Empire Strikes Back was something of a let-down (although watching the teaser trailer for the sequel during one of the theatrical re-releases of the original may stand as the most exciting two minutes of my entire movie-going life). In retrospect, it was pretty obvious that seeing The Phantom Menace as a grown-ass man (especially after HOURS in line waiting for a seat at the Mann’s Chinese screening in Hollywood on opening night) would never come anywhere close to replicating the experience of watching the original trilogy at more or less exactly the right age. But from the dense trade federation blather and Sesame Street robots of the film's opening minutes through all the disheartening talk of mitochlorians and CGI miasma of its overlong running time, Phantom Menace barely even achieved the all-important Star Wars “feel” until Darth Maul unfurled that wicked pissa double-sided light saber and Sebulba hopped into his souped-up muscle car for the big Pod Race midway through the movie. Here, at last, were some worthy additions to that far, far away galaxy I'd known and loved, swaggering, mysterious and truly alien figures who (like Jango and Li’l Boba Fett in Attack of the Clones, General Grievous in Revenge of the Sith and Ian McDiarmid’s series-spanning, scenery-chewing evil Emperor) were far more compelling than whatever nonsense was going on with Jar-Jar Binks and the rest of the so-called “main” characters over in the boring “A” story. And the Ben-Hur pod-race sequence (despite the hokey, sub-Spaceballs intrusion of those “wacky” sports announcers and the fact that Sebulba wuz robbed) was such a breathless, seemingly effortless mini-masterpiece of lucid storytelling and high tech filmmaking that it gave me the smallest flicker of hope that Lucas wouldn’t blow the rest of the new trilogy as badly as he'd blown Episode One.

Click here for Part One & Part Three

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Andrew Osborne

OST: "This is Spinal Tap"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Song parodies are tricky business. Done well, they're delightful, working on their own terms musically, delivering on the joke, and rewarding the listener for spotting the various musical and comedic references. Done poorly, they're about the lowest form of music there is. One of the reasons that the ouevre of Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer works so well (and here we include This is Spinal Tap, which, although directed by Rob Reiner, was written by the three performers in much the same way that the later, Guest-directed films like Best in Show and A Mighty Wind would be) is that they have some degree of genuine affection for the medium they're skewering. If Guest and company simply despised heavy metal, their parody would fall flat -- their unfamiliarity with or contempt for the music would result in unconvincing musical numbers, and their lack of feeling for the characters and the milieu would come across as patronizing rather than funny. It's an undying tribute to how successful their parody truly was -- and how deeply it comes across as both affectionate and mocking -- that amongst actual heavy metal musicians, This is Spinal Tap is treated with the kind of reverence normally saved for people who play it completely straight. The movie gets it just right, and real metal musicians know it.

One shouldn't minimize Reiner's contribution to the film -- he's a much more technically sure-handed director than Guest, and he did provide some of the funnier lyrics to the fictional group's songs -- but it's never hard to figure out, from the delightfully offhand, improvised quality of much of the dialogue to the fact that Guest, McKean and Shearer not only wrote all the music, but performed it themselves without the aid of the usual ringers, who's responsible for Spinal Tap's success. In a bizarre testament to the power of successful comedy, the soundtrack to This is Spinal Tap -- which, after all, is a movie about a comically incompetent heavy metal band -- became a huge success. Many of those who bought the soundtrack album no doubt did so as a goof, merely to remember the mocking songs of this groundbreakingly awful British hard rock outfit with the constantly rotating drummers. But many more bought it because, intended as a joke or no, these were damn good songs, written by damn good performers, who may have meant them to be insulting, but didn't do so from a position of ignorance. How good were they? So good that punk legend Mark E. Smith of the Fall lifted the riff from "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" in its entirety for his own "Athlete Cured". So good that, when you take into account official releases and fan-created bootlegs, the fictional Spinal Tap has more records available than a lot of really good heavy metal bands that actually exist. So good that the aforementioned "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" is something of a heavy metal classic despite its jokey genesis, and even appears in the video game Guitar Hero II alongside such genuinely legendary songs as "Freebird", "War Pigs" and "Billion Dollar Babies". And so good that the soundtrack itself, almost unique among movies in the musical spoof genre, is strong enough to stand on its own detached from the movie: if you have any affinity at all for the classic heavy metal sound, these are songs you're going to sing along to on your iPod even if you know, deep in your hard-rockin' heart, that they're really jokes at your expense.

BEST TRACKS: Aside from the indispensible "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight", with its merciless bassline and barely legal teen-queen lyrics, there's at least half a dozen stone classics on this soundtrack, even if they contain the seeds of their own destruction: "Big Bottom", the classic ode to fat fannies, has parazlyzingly funny lyrics to go along with its monster hook; "Hell Hole" is a tremendously catchy screamer with New Wave of British Heavy Metal influences so strong you can easily see Rob Halford belting it out instead of McKean's David St. Hubbins; and the Motorheady "Heavy Duty" is crushingly appropriate from a band that sometimes takes to the stage with three bass players. And if for some reason you don't like metal -- like, say, you don't enjoy things that are fun -- there's also the ludicrous hippie anthem "(Listen to the) Flower People" and the dead-on early Beatles parody, "Gimme Some Money". Go, Nigel, go!

DVD Digest for June 10, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

The run-up to Father’s Day continues with more dad-friendly DVDs, including a handful of the most acclaimed films of 2008 to date.

DVD of the Week: After last week’s wide selection of testosterone-heavy actioners, this week finally brings a DVD for the thinking dad- HBO’s critically-feted seven-part miniseries John Adams. Based on the book by David McCullough and starring Oscar nominees Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney, John Adams is a prestige project through and through. But the big surprise is how exhaustive and complex a portrait of the man and his time this really is. Some highly unpleasant events take place on the way to revolution, and the film doesn’t shy away from this reality. Likewise, in addition to Giamatti and Linney’s accomplished turns as John and Abigail, the film also boasts some note-perfect supporting work from the likes of David Morse as George Washington and Tom Wilkinson as Ben Franklin. As far as founding fathers go, Adams has long taken a backseat in popularity to these two men as well as Thomas Jefferson, but if nothing else, John Adams is invaluable in helping to pin down his importance in the history of this nation.

Other new releases this week include: Doug Liman’s Jumper (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in Meathead’s The Bucket List (Warner, also Blu-Ray); 2007’s Funny Games (Warner), the film so nice Michael Haneke made it twice; Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson in the historical bodice-ripper The Other Boleyn Girl (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner 4 Months 3 Weeks & 2 Days (IFC Films); the Exquisite Corpse-styled indie thriller The Signal (Magnolia); and of course, the best-reviewed theatrical release of 2008, Larry the Cable Guy in Witless Protection (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray).

In classics on DVD, this week’s big news is Lionsgate’s High Noon Two-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition, which brings the guy-movie favorite back to DVD with a number of new features. Included among these are a number of documentaries and featurettes, along with a video of Tex Ritter performing his Oscar-winning song from the film. But if dad’s tastes run more to looking at babelicious European actresses of yore, Lionsgate’s got that covered too, with the Catherine Deneuve 5-Film Collection (including Le Sauvage, Hôtel des Amériques, Manon 70, Le Choc and Fort Saganne) and the Sophia Loren 4-Film Collection (which includes I Girasoli, Carosello Napoletano, Attila, and Madame Sans-Gene).

Finally, being released this week exclusively in Blu-Ray: Broken Trail (Sony), Natural Born Killers (Warner), and The Professionals (Sony).

Rose McGowan: TCM's Latest Essential

Phil Nugent — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:00:00 GMT

So it turns out that Rose McGowan is a total movie geek! (Man, does Robert Rodriguez's cup runneth over, or what?) As of last month, McGowan has been supplementing her income by co-hosting Turner Classic Movies' "The Essentials", a weekly slot where TCM host Robert Osborne chews over whichever film classic has just earned the title designation with a regular partner. The show has gone through a different co-host every season, and most of them have been best known for their behind-the-camera talents, even if some of them, such as directors Rob Reiner, Sydney Pollack, and Peter Bogdanovich, have also dabbled in acting. Before McGowan, Osborne's last couple of sparring partners for Osborne were film critic Molly Haskell and Carrie Fisher, who has evolved from actress to professional wisecracker. Whether it was just the luck of the draw or the gender differences had something to do with it, both Haskell and Fisher juiced the show up a little; they were more inclined to turn prickly and even quarrel with the programming choices than their predecessors had been. McGowan's selection may have something to do with the desire to add some youthful glow to its viewing demographic that once had TCM lure Rob Zombie to its studios so that he could stalk out onto the set of what looked like his mom's basement and lecture viewers about Arch Hall, Jr. at two in the morning. But to listen to McGowan talk about movies is to see that the woman does have game. And she likes The Great Escape!

The Osborne-McGowan team has also torn through The Music Box and The Bad and the Beautiful, a movie that McGowan should probably remake, just so we can see her name on the posters next to that title. Of the selections coming up, McGowan is especially high on Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter, a hallucinatory masterpiece starring Robert Mitchum as a murderous preacher. “It’s heavy-handed, sure, I get it. It’s just so smart. It’s very much a classic metaphor for the big person to proclaim for all to hear how Christian he is, and then there’s Lillian Gish, who probably only weighs about 90 pounds. … And she’s the quiet Christian, and it’s her behavior that speaks for her about her Christian belief.” Of the TCM gig itself, McGowan says, “I had no idea that they were even going to pay me. Seriously, a job where I get to sit and discuss these movies? Are you kidding me? I’ve been boring my friends for years!” One can't help but wonder how any lost soul could become so miserably jaded as to ever be bored by the sight of Rose McGowan rhapsodizing about Laurel and Hardy, but perhaps she has better tastes in movies than in friends. Rose, call us! We'll introduce you to some really cool new people at Trivia Night.

That Guy!: Wallace Shawn

Peter Smith — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:00:00 GMT

"Squat", "toadlike" and "bespectacled" are not the first three adjectives you want on the list when you're building your movie star résumé. But That Guy! isn't about movie stars. It's about character actors, B-listers, stock-in-traders — and Wally Shawn is one of the best. Best imagined as the guy who gets parts for which Bob Balaban is simply too macho and charismatic, Shawn suffered perhaps the ultimate indignity when, playing Diane Keaton's ex in Manhattan (his movie debut), he was described as a "homunculus" by none other than Woody Allen, himself not entirely lacking in homuncular qualities. Still, the son of legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn has managed to carve out a decent Hollywood career playing nebbishes, losers and schnooks — while simultaneously building an eminently respectable career in New York as an insightful, volatile playwright whose work is intelligent, fiercely political and often controversial. Harvard-educated and terrifically well-informed, Shawn has written opinion pieces for The Nation, interviewed Noam Chomsky, and produced a widely-read translation of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera, all while appearing in Hollywood fare ranging from Clueless to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. His distinctively nasal, high-pitched voice has made him a natural for animation, and he's provided memorable voice-overs as Rex the dinosaur in the Toy Story franchise and Bob Parr's insufferable boss in The Incredibles. Only a few of Wallace Shawn's outstanding plays have made it to film; while a David Hare-directed version of The Designated Mourner (perhaps his finest work) was made in 1997, it was seen by precious few people, and his most popular script, Aunt Dan and Lemon, remains unfilmed. But as an actor, Shawn has endeared himself and his ungainly appearance to thousands of people who know nothing about his off-Broadway existence.

Where to see Wallace Shawn at his best:

MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (1981)

The movie that put Wally Shawn on the map — and gave him his first and last leading-man role to date — was made at a time when he was still known only as the author of some well-reviewed plays in New York. Louis Malle's filmed adaptation of a number of actual conversations Shawn had with his friend Andre Gregory, who has been the director of a number of Shawn's plays, turned out to be a surprise hit, proving that there was a bigger audience than previously suspected whose idea of a good time was watching two overeducated Manhattanites argue about whether or not an electric blanket is morally defensible.

THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987)

Wallace Shawn's best-known role is as the not-so-masterful criminal mastermind Vizzini in Rob Reiner's beloved adaptation of William Goldman's The Princess Bride. It is here that he gives new meaning, or lack thereof, to the word "inconceivable," and gets to play straight man to Andre the Giant in one of Hollywood's oddest comic pairings. (Shawn claims that he played the role of Vizzini perfectly straight, since he lacks a sense of humor. That claim in and of itself would seem to suggest otherwise.)

VANYA ON 42nd STREET (1994)

A meta-referential film that is both an adaptation of Anton Chekov's Uncle Vanya and a movie about making that adaptation (and making the movie about making the adaptation), Vanya on 42nd Street is one of the most successful blends ever of film and theatre, thanks largely to its explosion of talent: aside from Wallace Shawn in the title role, it features great performances from Julianne Moore as Yelena and Brooke Smith as Sonya, a crackerjack script by David Mamet and tight, taut direction by Louis Malle, and a big-screen reunion of Shawn and Andre Gregory, again playing himself.

— Leonard Pierce