At the Movies with Governor Tom: 10 from Your Show of Shows

Now this was a special event! Tonight I ventured down to the Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Blvd. to see Ten from Your Show of Shows. Ever hear of that? You've got ten skits from Your Show of Shows starring Sid Caesar and a cast of comedians like Carl Reiner and Imogene Coca. An unknown Mel Brooks was one of the writers on the show.

And guess what? Mel and Carl were here tonight! You believe that? It's kind of hard to emphasize how awesome that is. Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks are hands down two of the most legendary comic geniuses pretty much of all time.

While you know who they are, have you ever heard of Your Show of Shows? I'm in my thirties and didn't really know what it was until a couple years ago when I watched a couple episodes on an old VHS collection at my Dad's place in Jersey during my annual Thanksgiving visit. It was a weekly show of comedic sketches. Like Saturday Night Live, each episode was ninety minutes. Sid Caesar didn't actually create it, although you could say he inspired it. The real brain behind Your Show of Shows was Pat Weaver, father of Sigourney Weaver. No, you never saw him on the show, just as you never see Lorne Michaels on SNL. The geniuses devise their plans and then find the charismatic comedians to make it happen. While Your Show of Shows would've been enough to cement Pat Weaver's name in the annals of TV history, this guy did quite a bit more. He wasn't even thirty when he was the producer of Town Hall Tonight, an extremely popular radio comedy program with maestro Fred Allen. It was a weekly show that ultimately became the longest-running hour-long comedy show in radio history. Among the recurring skits was "Town Hall News," which quite clearly had an influence on "Weekend Update" on SNL, not to speak of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In's "Laugh-In Looks at the News," and just about every other faux comedy news skit/program. Shit, just look at The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. With a notch like that in his resume, not to speak of the fifteen or so years of broadcast producing experience under his belt in general, it's no wonder NBC hired Pat Weaver to take on CBS.

Pat didn't waste a minute at NBC. He created Your Show of Shows almost right away. And you know The Today Show, which airs every morning to this very day? Yep, that was his baby, as is The Tonight Show. Awesome, huh? What's ironic is that Pat wasn't at NBC all that long, maybe five or six years or so, the last couple of which saw him run the joint. And he did even more as head of NBC, not in terms of creating more awesome shows but more in the way he steered the network's ship. You take programming, for instance. Pat decided NBC should produce its own programming, as opposed to having an ad agency do it, which was common in radio broadcasting and early TV. Pat actually never worked for a radio station. When he produced Fred Allen's Town Hall Tonight, he was working for an ad agency called Young & Rubicam. But at NBC he changed the system. NBC would do its own thing....and then sell ad time during broadcasts. Sound familiar? That's pretty much how it's still down today. He never meant to blaze a trail (or rock the ad world's boat). Pat's reasoning was strictly practical. By having an ad agency produce your content, if that agency decides they don't like you for some reason and defects to another radio station or TV network, your station or network's revenue could be impacted severely. Under his new system, of course, a single defecting agency or advertiser wouldn't be as big a deal. Pat was by all accounts a classy guy, a consummate professional. He thought shows should do more than entertain. They should educate a little as well. And so that's why he mandated all shows produced by NBC include something cultural. That could be tricky, right? How do you do that with Your Show of Shows? We got to see at least one example tonight. One of the skits took place at the opera. There ya go. Culture!

Now how about Imogene Coca? You heard of her? If you're a child of the eighties like me, the first time you saw her was in National Lampoon's Vacation. She played Aunt Edna, the one who kicked the bucket during the road trip. Remember when they put her corpse on the roof of the station wagon? At night? In the rain? Classic. I had no idea until much later that she was a comedy legend. About the same age as Pat Weaver, Imogene toughed out her twenties and thirties without much to show for it. It wasn't until the late 1940s, as she herself was approaching forty, that she and Sid hit it off with The Admiral Broadway Revue, which put them on the TV map. That's the show that caught Pat Weaver's eye and inspired him to create Your Show of Shows. After that show's four-year run, Imogene kept working steadily. She even had her own eponymous show, albeit for just one season. She landed a couple other steady TV gigs that carried her through the sixties. From around 1970 onward, she scaled back. Indeed, Vacation is probably the most memorable thing she did in her golden years. All told, Imogene Coca blazed a trail for comediennes. Your Show of Shows scored her a Primetime Emmy for Lead Actress in a Comedy, making her the second woman ever to get that prize. She also scored a Peabody for excellence in broadcasting and got a bunch of Emmy nominations over the years.

It would be crass for me to describe all 10 skits. I could never do justice to the hilarity. I will say, though, that the hilarity doesn't come from datedness or quaintness (i.e. unintentional hilarity), although once in a while that popped up. Most of the comedy is still fresh and clever. But not raunchy. No toilet humor here, and I can't tell you how refreshing that is. One of my favorite skits is the Bavarian clock one. You've basically got this big old clock you sometimes see in German and Swiss towns. When the hour strikes, these little toy figures dressed in lederhosen and dirndls come out and perform some simple little moves before going back into the door beneath the clock face. Well, in this skit, Sid and gang play the little toy figures. Hilarious! Pure. Comic. Genius. And no one says a word. Again, they're toys. Like most comedy, it all comes down to body language and timing. And then you've got the Verdi opera skit I mentioned above. Another skit parodied From Here to Eternity. Anyway, I'll leave you to discover the skits for yourself. I'm not sure if 10 from Your Show of Shows is on DVD, but I do know you can find several different Sid Caesar anthologies on DVD which, like my dad's VHS collection, include these skits.

And now let's get to the rowdy Q&A with two funny old guys with more energy and spunk than folks a quarter their age: Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. Suffice it to say they got a standing ovation when they came up front afterward. The first thing Mel talked about was cutting his entertainment teeth at Catskills summer resorts when he was in his teens and twenties. He was what his Jewish ancestors would call a tummler, an MC. Mel became especially known for his awesome celebrity impersonations. But he didn't just do standup. Mel played drums in a band. I had no idea. That's pretty cool. And speaking of the 1940s, here's another thing I didn't know: He served in the U.S. Army during World War II. I guess it makes sense, he'd've been in his late teens in the early forties. But more than just serve, dude saw action at none other than the Battle of the Bulge. That's kind of amazing, actually.

Mel wasn't the only musician/comedian who yukked it up/jammed during the Catskill summers. A comedian and tenor saxophonist named Sid Caesar was also making a name for himself at that same place and time. This is where they met. Think about that. Mel Brooks and Sid Caesar jamming and doing standup. The Catskills must've been a really awesome place to be. Sid's four years older than Mel but was even further ahead than that in his career. He started playing the sax in the Catskills when he was all of fourteen as part of a band called the Swingtime Six. He did standup and performed in sketches as well, but he really wanted to be a musician. He sacrificed a lot toward that end, quitting his job and living poor while taking classes at Julliard and whatnot. A Swan Lake, Catskills hotel called Vacationland was where he got the most gigs. As for his involvement in the war, Sid joined the Coast Guard but didn't see any action. He was basically an entertainer, putting on military revues in Brooklyn. And you want more networking? Enlisted on the same base at the same time was Vernon Duke, the man behind Autumn in New York and Taking a Chance on Love, among other things. Sid and Vernon were transferred to a base in Palm Beach, Florida to do another military revue. The director of that show was Max Liebman...who would later go on to produce Your Show of Shows. See how it all comes together?

As much as Sid wanted to play sax, everyone, including him, knew he was better at comedy. Max Liebman became a sort of mentor to Sid following the war. He helped him develop material and land representation at William Morris, then and now one of the hottest talent agencies in the country. With reps like that, Sid landed gigs right away, mostly in New York. And then of course it was time for Your Show of Shows. Tonight Mel made no bones about it. The only reason he knew Sid was because of their jamming together in the Catskills, even being in the same band at one point. And it was only because of Sid that he landed the writing job on Your Show of Shows. Networking!

While Sid took a shining to Mel, Max Liebman didn't. Mel didn't say why, but apparently Max couldn't stand him. He'd even throw lit cigarettes at our man Mel. You might wonder why Max didn't just fire him. Well, Sid wouldn't allow it. And in the end everything went Sid's way since there'd be no show without him. Mel said his first day on the job saw him literally wander into the theater like a hobo off the street. As the producer of the show, Max was accustomed to interviewing and vetting everyone who wanted to be on the writing staff, but Sid had basically guaranteed Mel the job. The theater, by the way, was the International Theatre on Columbus Circle. Don't bother looking for it today. Like too many historic theaters, the International (also called the Park Theatre) was torn down.

Sid may have been Mel's champ, but he had quite the temper too, apparently. Mel called working for Sid "mostly heaven with a little bit of hell." One anecdote he shared was when they were touring Chicago. Mel and Sid were up late in their hotel room. Sid was chain smoking cigars. Finally, when it was really late, Mel complained that he was exhausted and couldn't breathe from all the cigar smoke. Could they just call it a night? Guess how Sid responded. He literally picked up Mel and held him out the eighth floor window until Mel agreed they could work a little more. It wasn't as abrupt as it sounds. Mel said the whole night Sid was frustrated at the tepid responses his jokes got from the Chicago crowd the previous night. You won't think the whole balcony incident is farfetched when you see Your Show of Shows. Sid was a big mutha. And if you've seen Mel onscreen once, you know he's just a little guy. Other examples of Sid's temper in action include picking up a car that was parked in a spot he considered his, by the curb in front of the International Theatre. When someone else parked there on another occasion, he didn't have the patience to pick up the car or go looking for another spot. So he double parked. Lest we think Sid was a complete monster, Mel and Carl emphasized that he had a great sense of humor about his blowups. He was terrific at making fun of his crazy temper and even parodied himself in some of the sketches on Your Show of Shows.

One big reason Your Show of Shows has become so legendary is all the genius writers who got their start there. Mel Brooks is a shining example, of course, but did you know Neil Simon was a staff writer? Yep. And so was his older brother Danny Simon. Danny didn't find the success his kid brother found in the theater, but he did okay for himself with TV. After Your Show of Shows, he eventually landed writing gigs on My Three Sons, The Carol Burnett Show as well as two shows I grew up on in the eighties, Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life. Danny was quite the influence on Woody Allen, who said about him: "I've learned a couple things on my own since and modified things he taught me, but everything, unequivocally, that I learned about comedy writing I learned from him." Speaking of Woody, Mel and Carl said he did not in fact write for Your Show of Shows. Lots of people think Woody did because he did, in fact, help write some of those one-off specials for Sid after Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour went off the air.

Larry Gelbart was a staff writer as well. In terms of TV work, he is by far best known for M*A*S*H. He adapted the original Robert Altman film for the small screen and also wrote and directed a bunch of episodes. M*A*S*H scored Larry a Peabody as well as an Emmy. He did okay with movies as well. Larry wrote the script for Oh, God! with George Burns (I loved that movie when I was a kid) and co-wrote Tootsie, both of which earned him Oscar nominations.

Just to show you how chockfull of writing talent Your Show of Shows was, Mel and Carl said the office secretary was a twentysomething guy named Michael Stewart. Know who that is? Me neither until Mel and Carl revealed that Michael Stewart's the playwright responsible for Broadway smashes like Bye Bye Birdie and Hello, Dolly!. Wow, huh? And he wasn't even writing for the show. He was just the stinkin' typist! It paid the bills while he pursued his MFA from Yale School of Drama. He got the degree around the time Your Show of Shows ended. When Sid started Caesar's Hour the following year, he brought Michael along, this time as a staff writer.

Carl reminded us that, while Your Show of Shows was a TV hit, the TV medium itself was still very new. People weren't "obsessed" with TV the way they can be today. No, theater was the place to be. That's why most entertainers back then went to New York, not Hollywood, to get their start. And that's why Your Show of Shows was broadcast not from a soundstage in Burbank, but from a theater on Columbus Circle in Manhattan. Even today I sometimes hear a veteran actor saying that aspiring actors, even if they are aiming for TV and film, should understand the stage first. When I saw Samuel L. Jackson at the Aero for a double feature of Resurrecting the Champ and Black Snake Moan in December 2007, someone in the audience asked him what advice he had for young actors: "Go to New York," I remember him saying, just like that. Not just for the stage experience. Sam said that in New York, where everything's closer together, you have a better sense of community. It's easier to be part of a social group of actors, whereas in L.A. it's more spread out and competitive.

When asked what they like on TV today, both Carl and Mel gushed over Family Guy. As for today's comedians, Mel's a fan of Steve Carrell. He also gave a shout-out to Dave Chapelle, whom he discovered when he cast him in the early nineties for Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Chapelle was only twenty at the time. I saw that in the theater with my mom and remember cracking up at Chapelle's "White men can't jump" line. Most people of course know him from Chapelle's Show, which ran for a good three strong years before he bailed to South Africa. I really liked his Block Party film, a concert doc he made in Brooklyn about six months or so before his abrupt departure from Comedy Central but which wasn't released until after he returned to the States. He still does standup but otherwise stays out of the limelight, living with his wife and kids in the same area of Ohio where he visited his father as a child. "I miss him," Mel said.

At the Movies with Governor Tom: The Kids Are All Right

Writer-director Lisa Cholodenko arrived on my radar in 1998 with her critic-proof debut feature, High Art. The main reason I saw it was Ally Sheedy. I grew up in the eighties watching her in stuff like War Games, St. Elmo's Fire, Oxford Blues, The Breakfast Club, Short Circuit... She was awesome. I loved her smile and how she laughed. Trite as it may sound, Ally Sheedy always lit up the scene. And then the nineties happened, to her and to me. She continued working, I guess, just not in anything I was watching. Then again, I wasn't watching much. The first four years of the nineties saw me in high school. The next four, college. Luckily, studying film in college expanded my interests to include low-budget indie fare, just in time for Ally Sheedy to reemerge, so to speak. I wouldn't've blinked twice at a movie like High Art before college, but after college, I couldn't get enough indie. I was a celluloid astronaut discovering a new world teeming with ineffable life. I didn't have a chance to catch High Art during its theatrical run which, like all too many indies, wasn't very long. So I ended up renting it at some point during my first year at SC, 1998-99. I have to be honest, in spite of Ally Sheedy and all the terrific press it had garnered, High Art was tough for me to watch that first time. The plot doesn't exactly zoom ahead, if you catch my drift. Plus, Ally Sheedy wasn't the Ally Sheedy I remembered.

She plays this wreck named Lucy Berliner. The backstory has her as a photographer who became a living legend in the New York art scene. But then the fame became too much and she went AWOL in Europe. When the film starts, she's back in New York with a German girlfriend named Greta, but her (former) fans in New York have no idea she's back. Lucy just happens to live in a flat above the main character, Syd, played by the underrated Ozzie actress Radha Mitchell. Syd's an assistant editor/gopher at a photography magazine. When she learns that Lucy Berliner lives right above her, she's shocked. The legend is here! But then it gets interesting. She sees that Lucy's not into photography anymore. She's listless, idle, on drugs. Totally unmotivated. And then they start falling for each other, much to Greta's chagrin. And by the way, let me give a shout-out to Patricia Clarkson as Greta. You talk about one of the best examples of an actress cast against type. Here you have a Southern belle from Nawlins playing a smoky-voiced German junky who always seems like she's about to nod off (and sometimes does). Soon enough you forget this is Patricia Clarkson. I know Ally Sheedy and Radha Mitchell got the props for their performances, as they should have, but Patricia Clarkson is the unsung hero here. Her very believable jealousy helps spur the same plot I had a hard time discerning at first. Yes, I've seen High Art a few more times, and it gets better each time. The plot is actually very visible, and equally simple, as the best plots tend to be. Indeed, High Art's plot is perfect. Each scene serves a purpose when the film is viewed holistically. Not to waste a single scene is a rare thing.

Another thing film school has made me do is follow directors. Most folks don't give two hoots about the credits beyond the leading actors. I'm not most folks when it comes to movies, though, as this blog makes abundantly clear. I very much pay attention to who directed a piece, who wrote it, who photographed it, who composed the score, all that stuff. So naturally, after High Art, I had to keep tabs on Lisa Cholodenko's career. Her follow-up was 2002's Laurel Canyon, which also got rave reviews. This time I didn't dawdle. I caught a weekend matinee show of it at the local art house near me in the Valley. Two years later she did a flick called Cavedweller, produced by and starring Kyra Sedgwick (Mrs. Kevin Bacon) just before she started that series The Closer. Somehow I missed Cavedweller. It's possible it got an extremely limited run or, as happens quite a bit with indies, went straight to DVD. I keep meaning to get to it but, like a lot of things, I get sidetracked by this pest called life. I'll get to it, though. It's already on my queue. After that, I'll've seen all her films, including her fourth and, unless Cavedweller is spectacular, best one yet: The Kids Are All Right. I just saw it today at the ArcLight Sherman Oaks. And yes, Lisa Cholodenko was there afterward for a Q&A.


I won't spoil the plot for you, but if you've seen the trailer, you already know the crux of the problem here. You've got a lesbian couple played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. They have a daughter and son who were both conceived by artificial insemination. The daughter, Joni, has just turned eighteen and wants to take advantage of her newfound right to look up the man who donated the sperm. (Side note: That gal who plays Joni's friend Sasha is Zosia Mamet, David Mamet's daughter by Lindsay Crouse.) As luck would have it, the biological father, Paul (the always dependable Mark Ruffalo) lives nearby. He runs this great restaurant and bar with a menu entirely informed by the produce he harvests himself. Lest you think he's a total do-gooder, Paul's also a sort of Casanova. Among many other women rotating through his sex life is one of his waitresses, Tanya. He's never been married, which suits his bohemian lifestyle just fine. Soon enough, of course, he meets the two kids and takes a shining to them. They don't want their moms to know, but of course they have to know if this plot's going to get any thicker. Paul comes over and they all have dinner at the family's beautiful house. At first it seems like Paul might be just the distraction the couple needs to escape the tension we noticed between them at the start of the film. Annette Bening's Nic is a whip-smart, if high strung, doctor. Very type A and focused. Julianne Moore's Jules, meantime, is a landscape designer, a creative and free spirit, pretty much the exact opposite of Nic. During that first dinner with Paul, Jules talks about her landscaping business. This perks up Paul's ears. He talks about growing his own food and that he's all into gardening and whatnot but has never had the time to give his backyard the attention it deserves. Would Jules be interested? Sure she is! You can tell Nic's not crazy about the idea, but Jules doesn't care. So she starts working for Paul. The chemistry between Jules and Paul is palpable. For one thing, Jules loves how Paul is so interested in her work. Nic’s never shown any such interest. Can you see where this is going? Yep, Jules and Paul have an affair, which you know Nic, smart as she is, is bound to uncover.


I'll stop there. Sounds juicy, huh? You should definitely see this. Special shout-out to Annette Bening. She was absolutely brilliant. I totally forgot that she was the cutie with whom Michael Douglas's President became all smitten in The American President, or that she was Virginia Hill in Bugsy. I also liked her in Being Julia a few years ago. Her choice of roles is awesome. It's like she's always trying to throw her fans a wickedly fun curve ball.

Today's Q&A was conducted by this guy named Ari Karpel, a New York-based writer who co-runs Modern Tonic, a blog for "gay-approved pop culture gems before they've been co-opted by everyone else." He also contributes to the New York Times Movie section. The first thing he asked Lisa Cholodenko was where she grew up. As it turns out, she's a Valley girl. More than that, she's from Sherman Oaks, where today's screening took place. "I grew up five minutes from here," she said. That's cool. I'm not sure I've ever been to a screening with a director who hailed from the same neighborhood as the movie theater, not to speak of the movie itself, at least some of which was shot in the Valley.


The first movie-related question Ari asked was why Lisa hired Stuart Blumberg to help her write the script, a clear break from the trend of her earlier three films, which she wrote by herself in addition to directing. Lisa said it was specifically because she'd written her first three features by herself that she didn't want to write her fourth one alone. Now that she's done the solo thing three times, she's decided she doesn't like it. Plus, she credits Stuart, a MADtv veteran, with having a more mainstream comedy sensibility, better equipped to craft scenes with solid comedic timing that would appeal to a broad audience. Going back to how I called High Art challenging, that's another thing Lisa's gotten tired of, writing stuff that's challenging and therefore won't make much money. She stated quite bluntly how bothered she was that more people didn't see High Art and Laurel Canyon even though both did very well at the festivals and got all that great press. So for The Kids Are All Right, she stepped out of her comfort zone and took deliberate aim at the mainstream and brought Stuart aboard so she wouldn't feel too insecure.


Lisa also had personal reasons for approaching Stuart. They've known each other since their college days in New York back in the eighties (Lisa studied film at Columbia). She said that when he was in college, Stuart donated sperm to make some extra cash. As I said above, the backstory with Mark Ruffalo's character Paul is that he too donated sperm when he was in college because he was strapped for cash. And so, in addition to the reasons already given, Lisa brought on Stuart to help make the Paul character more believable. Lisa, meanwhile, drew from her own experiences for the Nic and Jules characters. She didn't go into it too much since it is, after all, personal, but she and her partner Wendy used an anonymous sperm donor to have their four-year-old son Calder. Now you'll know what it means during the credits when you see the film was dedicated to "Wendy and Calder."

The film's title was originally just a working title. Lisa liked the ironic title of the 1979 The Who concert doc. She slapped it on this project, and it stuck. One clue as to why her films are spaced so widely apart came when Ari asked her about raising money for the film. I quote Lisa when I say fundraising for Kids was "miserable." She didn't elaborate on that too much. I have a feeling having done so would've brought hard feelings back to the surface. Suffice it to say she shouldered the fundraising responsibilities by herself. And of course Calder is another reason it's been a while since Cavedweller. Lisa and Wendy have been fulltime parents since 2006.


Talk about anticlimax, Lisa said after all the time since her last film, and after all the time it took to raise money for Kids, shooting the film hardly took more than three weeks. Twenty-three days to be exact. That's incredibly fast for a feature film, but she didn't have much choice. The longer you keep stars who are in high demand, the more you'll have to pay them. The tight budget decreed a tight schedule, in other words. She stated quite plainly that if she'd had more money, she would've been happy to pace herself with a less intense schedule. She also admitted how pessimistic she was during the shoot. It could get so chaotic sometimes that she was convinced she'd miss well wide of the mainstream mark. But sure enough, as she was putting a rough cut together, she became "pleasantly surprised."

Even though it only officially came out last week, she did get to show it at Sundance six months ago. That meant working through the holidays to put the final touches on the film so it would be in tip top shape. It paid off. Focus Features scooped it up before she left Park City. Thanks to that and the week it's officially been out, Lisa said she's been blown away by the huge cross-section of people who've seen it and responded favorably. She's had kids come up to her and rave about it. That's interesting. I wonder if I would've watched this as a kid. I reckon so. Joni and Laser aren't the main characters, but Lisa still does a decent job conveying their sympathetic points of view. And so now, after all the hardship and cynicism, Lisa admitted to being "cautiously hopeful" that Kids will be her first film to achieve mainstream commercial success. With a budget of about four million, tiny by mainstream Hollywood standards, I'd be shocked if this doesn't turn a profit.


As for how she was able to corral such a great cast together, Lisa said it started with Julianne Moore. They've known each other a good while now and have always talked about making a movie together. But Julianne Moore is, after all, Julianne Moore which, coupled with Lisa's methodical MO of building a film from the ground up, meant the planets had to align just so if they were ever going to work together. When Lisa and Stuart were happy with the script, they sent it to Julianne as a shot in the dark. Julianne loved it....and was available. In fact, it was her idea to cast Annette Bening as Nic. The only problem was that Lisa didn't know Annette. Neither did Julianne, but somehow Julianne knew Annette's e-mail address and pinged her about the script. Hilarious, huh? Simple as that. Just shoot an e-mail to Annette friggin' Bening to see if she wants to read a script. I know Lisa feels down on her luck sometimes, but do you have any idea how many writers and directors would love to have connections like that?

Annette's coming aboard, though, did have its proviso: She wanted to work on the script some more. Lisa said Annette peppered her with questions about the story and the characters. With Annette's motivation, the three of them really anatomized the script, which Lisa said was another reason pre-production took a while. Someone in the audience asked if the actresses' husbands visited the set. Lisa's response: "The one you're thinking of did not." But Julianne's man, indie filmmaker Bart Freundlich, stopped by now and again.

Another person in the audience asked how the three leads prepared for their roles. Simple, Lisa said. All three actors have been married a good while now. All they had to do was bring their life experiences, which is what Lisa did when she wrote it.

An older woman in the audience was confused about how Julianne Moore's lesbian character could suddenly like a guy. "How could she suddenly turn bisexual?" she asked. I'm paraphrasing, but not by much. Lisa shot that down, albeit politely, as did Ari. They're both gay and said as nicely as they could that what Julianne Moore's character does is, in fact, very believable.

At the Movies with Governor Tom: Cyrus

If you're a movie buff, you can appreciate the perk that is living in L.A. This is where all the people who make the movies live, so the fact that they appear at a movie theater following a show is no big deal, right? It's a quick and easy drive. Well, not necessarily quick and easy. Again, it's L.A. Anywho, this perk crops up time to time in the form of these impromptu, almost last-minute announcements by the ArcLight Hollywood that so-and-so from such-and-such new film will be at the ArcLight following a particular show on a Friday or Saturday night.

And so it was a few days ago when they announced on their site that actor John C. Reilly and the writing-directing brothers Jay and Mark Duplass would be at the ArcLight Hollywood this Saturday after a screening of the new film Cyrus, which stars John as well as the always adorable Marisa Tomei and the always hilarious Jonah Hill. I'd seen previews of Cyrus a few times before tonight, and it was hard to know what to make of it. Obviously it was a chance for Jonah Hill to expand a little bit, because one thing the preview made clear was that, while he was still flexing some comedic muscle, he was also supposed to make you squirm a little with his character's deadpan weirdness.

The gist of the story is this. John C. Reilly's this guy named, yes, John. Like a lot of characters the real John's played, the fictional John's sort of a sad sack who couldn't buy a break even if he had all the money in the world. When the film starts, we find him seven years divorced from this gal Jamie, played by the always awesome and dependable Catherine Keener. The way we meet John and Jamie is hilarious. It's one of those very bold, in-your-face type scenes that you'd only see in a movie starring talent like this. And that's all I'll say about John C. Reilly's intro in this film. John and Jamie are great pals. Seven years is long enough for them to get over their marriage's collapse and reestablish some amicable relations. More than that, though (and this you don't see often, in films or in life), Jamie's become his best friend and confidant.

In addition to introducing us to John and Jamie in hilarious fashion, that first scene also gets the main narrative going. Jamie convinces a gloomy John to go to the party she's throwing with her fiancé Tim, played by comedian Matt Walsh, one of the brains behind the Upright Citizens Brigade. He's always a stitch. You've definitely seen him if you've seen anything directed by Todd Phillips, one of our great comedy directors today: Road Trip, Old School, Starsky & Hutch, School for Scoundrels, The Hangover. Matt's awesome as Jamie's new squeeze, and of course his character helps you sympathize with John. Not surprisingly, John gets wasted at the party and makes a scene of himself. Most folks keep their distance...

...except Molly (Marisa Tomei). She's not only not weirded out by John, she takes a shine to him. Much to the surprise of just about everyone, including and especially John, they hit it off. They start going out and eventually start sleeping together. But here's the thing: They always sleep at John's place. And then Molly gets up really early to head back home. At first, John's okay with it, but of course over time he's going to think it's kind of weird. Is she married or what? And so one morning he follows her home and stakes out the place and eventually meets the other man in Molly's life: Her twenty-one-year-old son Cyrus, played by Jonah Hill. An aspiring musician, Cyrus has this whole studio setup in the house. That scene where he plays a demo while staying so deadpan is something few people can pull off.


While at first John and Cyrus get along, Cyrus catches on that he's not going to see much of Mom anymore if her relationship with John continues. So what does he do? He becomes a masterpiece of passive aggression. I won't spoil the fun for you, but suffice it to say John doesn't take the shenanigans lying down. The meat of the film becomes this tête-à-tête of passive aggression between John and Cyrus. They use every devious and underhanded scheme they can concoct at the other's expense while maintaining a hunky dory facade for Molly.

After the show, John C. Reilly and the Duplass brothers came out for a very casual Q&A. The ArcLight didn't provide a moderator like they sometimes do. It was just the three of them standing up front taking turns with the mic. They're very down to earth dudes. John said one of the things that attracted him to Cyrus right off the bat was that it didn't take place in, as he called it, "fantasy Westside L.A.," a sentiment that struck a chord with me as well as many others in the audience judging by the laughter and applause. You know what he means if you live in L.A. It's similar to the fantasy New York depicted in Friends, where you've got young people with low level jobs living in a huge awesome apartment that you'd be hard pressed to find in the real Big Apple. And if you did find one, chances are you couldn't afford it.

John was born and bred in Chicago. He talked about that a little bit and about eventually moving out here when his career got going in the nineties, shortly after Brian De Palma discovered him while casting Casualties of War and expanded his role to accommodate his talent. One interesting thing he said was that ever since he and his wife, a producer he met during the Casualties of War shoot in Thailand, moved out here, they've lived on the Eastside. That is, the section of L.A. east of downtown and which has historically been very Latino. Of course, the city and county of Los Angeles have significant Latino populations, but East L.A. goes further. It's almost all Latino. You ever see Cheech's Born in East L.A.? Exactly. I don't think I've ever met a Hollywood star who made it a point to live in East L.A. because they considered it the real L.A. That's awesome.

As for Cyrus, he didn't say where his character was supposed to be living. In retrospect, though, I think it was East L.A. He and the Duplass brothers did point out that Cyrus and his mom lived in Highland Park. Like East L.A., Highland Park is one of the city's oldest neighborhoods, located to the immediate north-northeast of downtown. It became largely Latino in the latter half of the twentieth century but has recently experienced some gentrification. Like nearby Echo Park and Eagle Rock, Highland Park's got a lot going on these days. You've got long-time Latino families as well as the so-called hip, urban youth, dive bars and clubs that only those in the know would know about, all that stuff. It looked like Marisa Tomei's house was one of those historic homes restored in the late twentieth century at the start of the gentrification. It was a pretty nice house, actually.

So with his character living in East L.A. and his love interest in nearby Highland Park, John could relate to the fictional John. And no doubt it was nice to go to a film shoot and then go home to his family at the end of the day. That was another thing he mentioned, how he looks for opportunities to make films in L.A., not just to stay close to his family, but to support the local economy. A recurring theme in the local news is the anxiety about producers taking their projects elsewhere because it's cheaper. Speaking of which, John's about to leave L.A. for Ann Arbor to make a comedy called Cedar Rapids. He'll be in a supporting role this time, the main character played by that guy from The Hangover who had the chipped tooth. The dentist guy. Besides the fact that Cedar Rapids is set in that general vicinity, John said the main reason for the location was a 42% tax break offered by the Michigan Film Commission.


As for his fellow cast mates, John said he knew he'd like working with Jonah because they'd already worked together on Walk Hard, so it was sort of like picking up where they left off. Now Marisa Tomei, he'd never met before. Not only that, they didn't meet until two days before the shoot began. When their characters have that first dinner together, it takes some effort to feel at ease in each other's presence. According to John, that awkwardness wasn't all acting. That was the first scene they shot. John said it's one of his favorite scenes in the film. The night they shot the dinner scene was the first time they got to hang out and "look each other in the eye," he said.

When someone asked the Duplass brothers where they got the idea for the story, they said at first they weren't sure. They just sorta thought of it out of thin air. But as they continued writing and rewriting the script, they came to the uncomfortable realization that Jonah's attachment to his mother mirrored their attachment to each other. They each went through a string of girlfriends who had a hard time cracking their wall until finally finding the right gals.

All three wives were here tonight, as were the Duplass brothers' mom and John and his wife Alison's moms, sitting up at the front railing. It was actually thanks to Alison, the indie producer John fell for while filming Casualties of War, that he met the Duplass brothers. Alison Dickey is still very much in the indie scene, and she'd already gotten to know the Duplass brothers over the years due to their attending the same film festivals. The brothers made a Sundance splash in January 2005 with Puffy Chair, which went on to win the audience award at SXSW. It's got a pretty interesting premise. You've got this guy who discovers a chair for sale on eBay that looks just like an old lounge chair his dad used to have in the beforetimes. It was Dad's favorite chair. So he buys it and convinces his brother to go on a road trip with him to pick up the chair and deliver it to Dad. Mark Duplass plays one of the brothers. And the father is played by their real father. Puffy Chair has that same inspiring backstory you may have heard already if you follow indie films. Like many first-time indie features, such as Kevin Smith's Clerks, Puffy Chair was made for next to nothing, $15,000 to be exact, which barely constitutes chump change in the biz. The brothers did what a lot of first-timers do to raise the money. They used credit cards and any donations they could get from friends and family.

Alison's a big fan of the film and of the brothers’ work in general. But apparently it took quite a bit of coaxing to get John to sit down and watch Puffy Chair. She was determined to get him to watch it before introducing him. So he finally watched it, and sure enough, Alison got them all to meet at a festival. John and the brothers hit it off, and eventually they sent him the script for Cyrus. In fact, they said they wrote the script with John in mind and wouldn’t have made it had he said no. Jonah was the second one to be cast. At first, it was supposed to be more of a straight-up comedy, but Jonah surprised them with that dark edge he brought to the role. The brothers really dug it and just went with it. “It was a whole new Jonah,” one of them said.

When someone asked the brothers about their documentary shooting style, the handheld shots and shaky camera movements and how scenes are never perfectly blocked, they said it started with a short film they made in 2003 called, appropriately in light of tonight, This Is John. They only used handheld for that film because they had neither the time nor the budget for fancy setups with dollies and cranes and what have you. This Is John did well, not only on the festival circuit, but in terms of meeting their own personal standards, which is more important if you’re an artist. This Is John wasn’t their first film, but they said it was the first film they made that they thought was good. So they’ve used handheld ever since.

Another question posed to the brothers was about improv. This is something that always comes up with comedies, but no two comedies are alike. Some directors mandate their cast follow the script to the T. Others use the script less as a stone commandment and more as a general guide. Consistent with their casual way of shooting films, the Duplass brothers do allow for improv. They told John not to sweat it if he didn’t have all the lines memorized and that he could ad lib where he saw fit. One example is the scene early on where John’s spending the night at their place. He and Jonah have a little chat when Marisa Tomei’s not around. On the surface, the chat seems harmless, but the subtext is that John and Jonah’s characters are feeling each other out. And then at one point Jonah goes, “Don’t fuck my mom.” John’s response? “Actually, I already did.” That scene was almost entirely improvised.


They also talked about the voiceover that John provides now and again. I thought it worked fine. But according to John and the two brothers, the voiceover was an instance of making lemonade from lemons. The actors read all the lines right, but after the rough cut was put together, they discovered that some of the scenes didn’t work on their own. Hence the voiceover. The brothers gave a big shout-out to their editor Jay Deuby. He’s basically their unsung hero, not only on this film but in general. Jay’s been with them a while now. He edited a short they did called The New Brad, and he also did Puffy Chair. Indeed, the Duplass brothers echoed what I’ve heard a lot of directors say at these Q&As: The film is really made in the editing room. I forget who it was, but I remember another director saying that you make the film three times: Writing, shooting, and editing. The Duplass brothers said to make no mistake, Jay Deuby rescued a lot of their scenes in Cyrus.

One question I would've asked if someone hadn't beaten me to it was: How in the heck did the legendary director brothers Ridley and Tony Scott get involved? A flick like Cyrus is ostensibly miles away from the stuff they normally do. Especially Tony Scott. If you've never heard of him, I can all but guarantee you've seen something by him, especially if you're partial to action movies starring Denzel Washington. Unstoppable, Deja Vu, Man on Fire, Crimson Tide: All Tony. His first big film was Top Gun. He also did Days of Thunder, which was basically Top Gun with race cars. My favorite film from him is True Romance. Of his more recent stuff, I really liked Domino, although I have to admit some of that hyper-stylistic camera work gets a bit fatiguing. Now his brother Ridley Scott's a bit more diverse. If only a bit. He's still partial to action, only his action tends to be more epic. Think Gladiator, American Gangster, Robin Hood, Kingdom of Heaven. But once in a while he'll surprise you, like with Matchstick Men or A Good Year or even Hannibal. Alien and Blade Runner are two of my faves from his oeuvre. The Duplass brothers said their involvement was thanks mainly to an indie producer named Michael Costigan. In addition to being a producer in his own right, this guy runs the Scott brothers' production company, Free Scott Productions. With the Free Scott banner, the brothers Scott produce not only films (mostly the films they direct) but also TV shows, such as The Good Wife. Michael Costigan runs their office and sometimes exec-produces indie fare of his own, like Brokeback Mountain, in addition to stuff directed by the Scotts, like Robin Hood, American Gangster, and Body of Lies. The Duplass brothers said Michael Costigan was their champion for Puffy Chair and was the reason it achieved the visibility it did. After that success, he told the brothers that no matter what they did next, he, and by extension Free Scott Productions, wanted to be involved. Hence the Scott names appearing in the Cyrus credits. The Duplass brothers said one nice thing about Michael and the Scott brothers was that they didn't pressure them to forgo shooting in L.A. in favor of a cheaper locale.

And that does it for a pleasant night at the ArcLight Hollywood to see a great, quirky little movie. After tonight, I feel motivated to add Puffy Chair to my queue to see what all the fuss is about.