Interview: Eugene Levy, Christopher Guest For your Consideration

In his latest film, "For Your Consideration," director Christopher Guest and co-writer Eugene Levy turn the camera on Hollywood and focus on the making of a low budget, indie melodrama and its motley cast of washed up Hollywood veterans and up-and-coming young actors who become unwitting victims of Hollywood hype and the dreaded awards buzz. Unlike Guest’s previous films "Waiting for Guffman," "Best In Show," and "A Mighty Wind," this latest project breaks away from his trademark mockumentary form but continues to feature smart performances from his regular ensemble. Guest’s repertory company delivers its own unique version of buzz-worthy performances (especially Catherine O’Hara) while offering a sharp, satirical and darkly funny send up of the entertainment industry’s favorite season.

Since carving out his niche as a maker of mostly improvised fictional documentaries, beginning with his spoof rockumentary "Spinal Tap," Guest’s hilarious ‘mockumentaries’ have poked fun at everything from heavy metal music to small town theaters to dog shows and folk music. Guest has attracted both his devoted regular players and comedic newcomers eager to inhabit his stories. "People really love working for him in front of a camera because they will never get the chance to have this kind of freedom anywhere," Levy explains.

While Guest’s previous three films incorporated a documentary crew into the plot, this time the filmmakers eschewed the fictional documentary format for a straightforward narrative about the little indie that could and its fragile and frantic mob of actors, crewmembers, media figures, executives, and various hangers-on. The film’s story and setting provided the actors with particularly fertile ground in which to grow their comic personalities as they go about satirizing themselves, mocking their own self-seriousness, and lampooning odd entertainment industry rituals.

In Guest and Levy’s latest collaboration, actually a film within a film, debut feature director Jay Berman (Christopher Guest) steers cast and crew through a typically tumultuous independent film "Home for Purim," an intimate period drama about a Jewish family’s turbulent reunion on the occasion of the dying matriarch’s favorite holiday. When internet-generated rumors begin circulating that three of Purim’s stars – faded luminary Marilyn Hack (Catherine O’Hara), journeyman actor and former hot dog pitchman Victor Allan Miller (Harry Shearer), and ingénue Callie Webb (Parker Posey) – might be turning in Award-worthy performances, a spark of excitement ignites the cast. Once "Hollywood Now" anchors Chuck Porter (Fred Willard sporting a faux-hawk that gives new meaning to air head) and Cindy Martin (Jane Lynch) pick up the buzz, Award fever infects the entire production.

Smarmy unit publicist Corey Taft (John Michael Higgins), hapless talent agent Morley Orfkin (Eugene Levy), and vain producer Whitney Taylor Brown (Jennifer Coolidge) all smell the sudden potential for a sleeper hit. When Sunfish Classics President Martin Gibb (a bitingly witty Ricky Gervais) suggests some last-minute changes to the film to broaden its appeal (think more commercial, less Jewish), Purim’s screenwriters, Lane Iverson (Michael McKean) and Philip Koontz (Bob Balaban) start to panic as they watch the first film adaptation of their work diverge from their original story. As the hopeful Purim team careens towards the end of production and the upcoming Award season, tenuous relationships and brittle dreams play out in unexpected ways.

At the Los Angeles press day for "For Your Consideration," Movies Online caught up with the brilliant master of deadpan, a stern-faced Christopher Guest who rarely jokes unless he’s in front of the camera, and his long time writing partner Eugene Levy who is a cult comedy icon in his own right. We asked them about their new film and their fourth collaboration as creator/writers. Here’s what they had to tell us:

Q: Chris when you and Eugene had the idea of doing this film, did you ever consider doing it like the others in the documentary format?

CG: Nope.

Q: And why not?

CG: Well we thought we had done 3 films in one format and then it was time to try something new and so we did.

Q: But you still have the interview aspect through it?

CG: Well, not really. It's only in the EPK interviews but in a documentary style, you can at any point cut to interviews or photographs or anything to jump cut within things and it doesn't have that so this is very, very different in shooting and editing actually.

Q: This is certainly more scripted than your other films?

CG: Nope. Only Home for Purim.

EL: The movie within the movie.

CG: Yeah. The rest of it is improvised which amounts to maybe 8 or 10 pages so it is improvised.

Q: The Hollywood Now segments weren’t scripted?

EL: Yes.

CG: Yeah, they were so that’s 14 pages (laughs). 14 out of 120 pages so that's true.

Q: We were just speaking with Jane (Lynch) and she said she's very confident that you're happy with this movie.

CG: She's confident that I'm happy?

Q: About this movie.

CG: Really (laugh) Huh! (pause) OK. I don't know what I’m supposed to say.

EL: You can say I am, I am happy about it.

CG: Oh I see. (Long pause).

EL: I am happy. You still want an answer from him? Lunch is at 12.

CG: I've worked on this for 2 years. It's a long haul and you look at a movie when you finish it and at some point, you have to say, OK, that's kind of it. I'd say for the most part, I like the film, but I always feel even after finishing a movie that it's a work in progress that you don't get to finish. Because you change as a person and you look back on a film and you think about what would have happened if it was different. But in general, I would say that the main feeling would be satisfied, and especially with the end of the movie, I would say because we were very much committed to showing the bad side of this and the serious side really, unfortunately, the tragedy of what happens to Catherine's character. There are funny things in the movie, I hope, that people will like that but then I think we really both felt at the end that we didn't want to pull punches because this is tragic, I guess at the end.

EL: It's hard to tell sometimes what you have when you see the final product until you see it with an audience. It was the same way with Waiting For Guffman which is you're on it so long - Chris is on it for so long - and then you're looking at different cuts and looking, looking, looking and you're only seeing what is not working for you and then you put it in front of an audience and WOW. The screening at Toronto Film Festival for Guffman was amazing. It's one of those nights I’ll never forget. Laughs just started right off the top and just kind of cascaded through the whole movie and you're going, whoa, boy things are working that I had no idea. So I understand that kind of unfinished product and that you're always looking at it as a work in progress thing, you'll still looking at it saying, ‘Ummm, if I had another day, Ummmm.’

CG: And the fact is I have really an unlimited amount of time which is different from a conventional movie. I'm fortunate to have this situation at Castle Rock where this movie doesn't start with a release date and then work back. I shoot these movies in 27 days which is much less than a regular movie which could be 80 or 100 days or whatever, and then I edit for nearly a year. But they say when the movie is finished, then the movie is finished. This is not a Christmas thing...these are small films but because they're small, I get to control all the elements in them. That's what's important to me.

Q: When you’re writing a movie about Hollywood, do you ever write something that so accurately depicts the industry but is also so absurd that you don't think the general public is going to buy that it really is this way?

CG: Well this is toned down...you, of course, are in the business. There are things that have happened to both of us in our lives and in show business that are so much more bizarre, so much worse on some levels, that if we showed those things no one would believe them, or think they were funny. I’ve had things happen… It's extraordinary. So what's in the movie is a balancing act between trying to find something funny but accurate as well.

EL: We kind of rounded the edges here. If you're trying to portray a more kind of accurate slant on the business, then you're dealing with times of nastiness that sometimes aren't necessarily funny and we're trying to keep our characters kind of on the funny side.

CG: And we do work to… I can only speak for the two of us because we have this discussion all the time, it's more fun playing people that aren't competent and that are stupid, than funny. Because if you're doing a comedy and everyone is doing something correctly, then there is no comedy. Laurel and Hardy delivering a piano and nothing happens. (deadpan delivery)‘Here's your piano. Thank you.’ Having said that, I've been in interviews with journalists where a woman showed up dressed as a dog to interview me. (laughs) I think if I showed that in the movie, it would just seem a very bad joke and not very well written or observed. But this actually happened. Eugene was there.

EL: It was for a Best In Show junket.

CG: So I sat there and the woman in full suit with whiskers and ears and you say, what am I supposed to do, what am I supposed to say? (laughter) And that's just the tip of the iceberg, to be honest. There are things that are much sadder than that [that] have happened.

Q: The hair in the film is brilliant. Can you talk about the hair a little bit?

CG: If hair can be brilliant.

EL: Yes, and hair can be brilliant. Judi Cooper-Sealy is brilliant. She's the hairstylist on these movies and worked with us on SCTV and she's just quite amazing. We are kind of comic character actors so all of that stuff is important. I'll speak for myself. For me, I like these little crutches. I like a crossed eye, kind of a wig. You need the hair to kind of get into it. Even to discover the character, because I don't honestly know who the guy is until I see him and then voice comes and mannerisms come. But this was a great little wig, speaking of hair. I’ll tell you how brilliant Judi is. I had another way to go with the hair so she got a wig that she was going to use for this other style and she kept this other little moppy thing as a second choice. My choice after combing and blowing, it just wasn't working for either of us and then she said, ‘why don't we try this other piece over here and here's what I'm thinking - we'll put a little bald pate down below, we’ll create a little bald patch on top, and we'll brush, and we’ll do a thing. Put that on.’ She did her thing and said, ‘Okay, well there's Morley. Hey, how ya doing?’ (laugh). And Chris - I saw polaroids in stages as he was developing his character. He'd send us these pictures on the email and I realized where the bar was being set. (laughter)

CG: Well it's not really being set. It's being laid on the ground. (laughter)

Q: When you have so much of the film that’s improvised, how much of the original structure of the film remains?

CG: It's all there. You can't go off that. A film that's done in this way, and not many people are making movies like this, you have to have a very strict outline. We have back histories for all the actors, everything they've done in their lives...all their resumes essentially much deeper than in a conventional movie.

EL: Much more extensive.

CG: You have a 1st, 2nd and 3rd act. You have an epilogue. We do 110 cards on a board that delineate every single scene. You can't move away from that because then where are you going? We know what has to happen and within that structure, they improvise.

EL: And every single scene, every piece of information is in the outline that has to come out. How the actors do it is up to them. The improvising, honestly in these movies, is the delicious icing on the cake but the cake is fully baked in the office. We know what it is, the shape it is, the flavor of it, and everything else. But the magical part is what the actors do.

CG: It's a very difficult thing to describe and I've been trying to do this since we did Spinal Tap 20 years ago, but it's very hard to articulate how this is done and I always compare it to playing music and jazz where you always have to play it in the same key. And it's not a random slug fest where people are just playing music at the same time. You have to listen to other people and it takes great skill. And there are not many other people who can do this. That's why these actors are in these movies. This is very specific; this isn't who I could get, these are the people to get. Period!

Q: You got Ricky Gervais which was wonderful. What made you think of adding him to your film?

CG: Well I got to meet him a couple of years ago and I am a great admirer of The Office which was a scripted show, incidentally, that looked improvised. And then his next show, Extras, and I asked him if he wanted to do it. He had never been in a movie and this was his first film and he said yes.

Q: Has there ever been a subject matter you wanted to tackle in a movie that for one reason or another just didn't work out?

CG: We talked originally about doing a political movie…

EL: about campaigning…

CG: in a small town election. Then there was a movie being made that was in a similar area.

EL: It was beyond being made. It was actually almost coming out.

CG: So we thought that wouldn't be such a great idea so we went off that. I truly don’t remember the name of it.

EL: I can't remember the name. I think it was Ray Romano and Gene Hackman.

Q: When the two of you are writing these scripts, how do you choose the parts that you're going to play?

EL: Certainly with Waiting for Guffman, the idea came with Corky, the character Chris wanted to do fortunately. And then Best In Show, you create these characters that just seem right for certain people. You know when it’s right for you and I think Chris, you had a good idea in Best In Show, the kind of character that you wanted as we were going through the bloodhound. Maybe it was the association with the bloodhound.

CG: Because I’m directing these movies, I tend to be alone in these movies it occurred to me recently which I’d never thought about consciously while I was doing them. But I think part of that is I'm so concentrated on directing during the day that I'm just this solitary figure. It was true in the Best In Show.

EL: And in A Mighty Wind, we knew what we were doing and certainly Chris did because they had done the Folksmen. That was part of that thing. And we needed an amalgam of different folk groups like the New Christy Minstrels so we had the big group and then we wanted an Ian and Sylvia duo and I think we kind of pegged me and Catherine for that.

CG: When we have a concept for the story, we then write the parts for the actors. They're not generic parts. They're very much written for Fred, Jane, and whoever. Catherine being the central figure in this movie, we always knew it was going to be Catherine that was going to be the person who was going to take us from the beginning of this until the end. We always knew that.

Q: What is it about Eugene that does allow you to collaborate and take his ideas?

CG: I generally come with the idea for the film. I call Eugene, we collaborate on this, we create this. The cast, they're not writing the movie, other than speaking the dialogue, but they're not inventing their characters. We have their characters laid out. They are speaking on their own obviously in these scenes, but if someone were to come to me having given them this outline and say, ‘can I be?...’, the answer would be "no." They have a tremendous amount of freedom in the way they look, they pick what they say.

EL: They can do a dialect. You know, it happens from time to time.

CG: Jennifer Coolidge came to me when we were making "A Mighty Wind," and literally 10 minutes before we were shooting, said to me, ‘Which voice is funnier? This or this?’ And I said, ‘The first one is funnier.’ And then ten minutes later we were shooting that. It was such a bizarre, funny voice that Larry Miller couldn't even do the takes. He had to leave the room. Every time she did that voice which sounds like some country that we don't know where that it. It's probably not on Earth. (laugher) It’s probably some other place. So they (the actors) have a huge amount of freedom.

Q: Can you talk a bit about Fred Willard and how far back you go with him and the casting of him in Guffman?

CG: I was in a play with Fred in 1969 in New York City called Little Murders. Alan Arkin directed this play. I had never been in a play. No, that's not true. A professional play. I was in college and one of the actors was leaving and it was the first audition I ever did and I got into this play and Fred was in it. I met Fred and Paul Benedict in that play. Fred was then in Spinal Tap. And really a lot of the people from Spinal Tap started to appear and Paul Benedict was in a number of these films and Fred obviously. Fred being from Second City and being just a legendary, bizarre person. He is also from another place. We don’t know where that is. (laughter)

Q: From Guffman to later films, his roles changed a little bit. He’s kind of a Greek chorus or commentator just coming on like a force of nature. Is that something you had in mind?

CG: Well that's Fred. You need to build it around who Fred is. You’re not going to dictate. Fred has his Fred energy which is not like anyone else's in the world. It's insane. He comes on screen and people laugh. Ricky Gervais said to me, ‘You know what’s amazing. I’d never met Fred. I saw Fred on the set and he was turning away from me talking to someone’ and it made Ricky Gervais laugh. He just saw part of his shoulder and it made him laugh and I thought, ‘well, that’s…, yeah.’

EL: If you remember Ace Trucking which was one of the great comedy groups of the 60s, one of the great improvisational comedy groups, and Fred was really the lynchpin of that group. He was so charismatic to watch and he was so funny and he looked like a salesman. He was so straight looking and this comedy was just coming out as if he was just the funniest straight man I'd ever seen, but he wasn't a straight man. So that's kind of what he's been doing for all these years. I've worked with him in scripted situations too, which is not exactly the same thing because he doesn't get a chance to show you the gift that he's got that nobody else has. But these vehicles really allow him to do that. You've just got to clear a path for him because he kind of keeps the elbows up (laughter) and it's fun watching other people in a scene with him just ducking and weaving.

Q: Have you guy had a chance to see Borat?

CG: I haven't.

EL: I've seen it.

EL: I thought it was funny. I didn't think all of it was funny but I thought a lot of it was funny. He's a very, very talented comic actor. Great character work, but he goes in a direction that doesn't necessarily interest me personally which is pushing the envelope and seeing how close you can come to actually offending somebody. But I do find him funny. It’s the Andy Kaufmann kind of school of comedy which I was not a huge fan of, particularly toward the end. I think he happens to be funnier. He does what he does. Who'd have thought that kind of humor is going to bring in $26 million.

Q: Do you get the same satisfaction from writing as you do from performing? Or is it apples and oranges?

EL: Personally, I don't like writing. I can’t sit in a room. I did a lot of writing when I was younger on our TV show and for eight years. It was fun. I enjoy writing with Chris on these movies. It's about the only writing I do anymore. The idea of just sitting down with a thing and … I lose patience too quickly if I don’t have Chris in the room. But it's fun. I have fun. We have laughs while we're doing it. It's a great kind of process. It's different though. When you're on the set, it's …

CG: a different kind of fun and then editing is a different kind of experience.

Q: Do you feel the media takes away from the purity and fun of coming up with a film after a while just because they sensationalize the people?

CG: Do you think this is taking away from the fun? We do a lot of it; it's hard for anybody. It’s hard for you. You see 40,000 films and you’re supposed to like it? I don’t know. So it's hard because we've been traveling now for a long time. We’ve been to Europe and Florida, and back and forth to New York and Boston and literally just hopping every 15 hours to another place, and ending up doing probably 500 interviews. It's difficult. I don't like repeating myself. So I’m trying to entertain myself.

EL: It's a little late for that, I think. (laughter)

CG: And I’m trying to not have a stock answer because then I would find it even more difficult. It's a challenge. It really is. It's it's own thing. I guess you have to do this. I've wondered if you have to do anything. Really, truthfully. What if you just made the movie and the movie came out. I really don't know if it makes a difference if you do 200 interviews or 700 interviews. I don't know.

Q: What is the most fun part of editing?

CG: Lunch is unbelievable because it's a break in the day. It's a long process. But fun? Well ‘fun’ is not the right word. I worked with Robert Leighton who's a great editor. He's done several films with me. We talk a lot and not always about the movie. We talk for hours sometimes about other things -- politics, books we’re reading.

EL: That's why it takes a year to edit. (laughter)

CG: It's interesting. It's intellectually stimulating more than fun.

Q: Is it painful when you see a really great comic moment that you know has to go?

CG: No. It isn't, because you have to be ruthless right from the beginning and say, this is the story we are serving. And there’s always going to be funny things which right away you know aren’t going to fit in because you can't get to them and it takes you off the course. Those scenes are generally on the DVD where you get to see maybe half an hour or forty minutes of other stuff. If you lingered on that, you'd just kill yourself. There really are funny things but they’re funny moments in a scene that just doesn't work and so you learn very quickly to get past that.

Q: Something I’ve been wondering…

CG: The Jane Lynch thing again? (laughter)

Q: No. Why is Jamie Lee Curtis never in your movies?

CG: Jamie Lee Curtis? The actress Jamie Lee Curtis? (laughter) When I married Jamie 22 years ago, we kind of agreed, we said, let's have our private lives and personal lives separate from our work. I think it has been good to just have a separate life from our work. So that’s one reason. The other reason is that she doesn't improvise. I like that we have our regular lives and it’s not overlapping.

Q: Do you ever show her your ideas or talk to her about the ideas?

CG: No. I don't. I don’t until we finish the outline and then I'll show her the outline. But that’s down the line a bit. We don’t have a writing collaboration. It’s Gene and I say, ‘here’s this.’ She likes it usually.

Q: Has she ever given you an idea?

CG: No. I don’t think so.

Q: Will we be hearing from Spinal Tap anytime soon?

CG: Who's we?

CG: Oh. I don't know. We were offered this gig this year. It's a huge thing to gear up to do these shows which are two-hour shows and it takes a lot of energy. Michael McKeon is doing a play in London. Harry is selling his book around the country. It's really hard to get everything together. I wouldn't say no for sure. I really don’t know. I think we are going to go out next year and play some music but not as those people. As us.

"For Your Consideration" opens in theater on November 17th.