For Your Consideration

For Your Consideration is the latest Christopher Guest ensemble film this time skewering Hollywood and the fast approaching award season. By now the actors and the sense of humor are familiar after Waiting For Guffman, Best In Show, and A Mighty Wind but Guest and his cast of superb character actors are able to bring something new to each film. This time Guest and his amiable troupe take on the Hollywood awards hoopla and show its effects on one small independent film and its actors. For Your Consideration is fun and fresh but I can’t help thinking that an intimate knowledge of the Hollywood scene and the awards season processes would make the film even more enjoyable.

The title of the film, For Your Consideration, for example, is not explained but it is the tag on the Variety advertisements and at the beginning (and often at the bottom) of promotional material, including copies of the entire film, that is sent out to those of the voting bodies for whatever award the film is seeking. The film For Your Consideration is after the granddaddy of the filmmaking industry, the elusive Oscar. For Your Consideration introduces the cast of a small independent film called Home For Purim, a tearjerker about a Jewish family in the 1940s gathering for one last holiday celebration as its matriarch slowly dies. The film production and its crew are suddenly plagued by vague Academy Award rumors during production which change not only the film, but the actors and the people around them.

Now initially I thought that For Your Consideration was billed as a skewering of awards shows themselves, kind of a behind the scenes at the awards show much in the way A Mighty Wind revolved around putting on a folk show. But it is actually about the hoopla leading into awards season which is a far more interesting and broad topic. In fact the film never really gets to the awards themselves and one is left wondering who exactly won. But, after all, it is an honor just to be nominated right.

In each film a few different characters take center stage and the actors really get great material to work with. This time around Catherine O’Hara gets a gem of a role as Marilyn Hack, an aging actress who gets carried away with the Oscar rumors surrounding her performance. Marilyn begins the film as a reasonable Hollywood pro who takes her work more seriously than herself and is at least pleasant, if clueless, to those around her. The role of the Jewish mother seeking to restore her family in her final days is just another job in a long and fairly successful career. Once the Oscar rumors start swirling Marilyn becomes increasingly neurotic and jealous of her peers. Marilyn degrades into a booze swilling plastic nightmare of hysterical proportions. The makeup alone was magnificent originally making O’Hara much older than she generally appears and then giving her a Frankenstein facelift for the finale.

Joining Marilyn in Home For Purim is longtime character actor and hotdog shill Victor Allan Miller. The film makes light of not only Miller’s work, but just as much of Harry Shearer’s own very successful voiceover career. He and his agent, varying between indifference and cloying kowtowing by Eugene Levy, get just as carried away with Oscar visions. Victor Allan Miller goes overnight from commercial spots dressed as a giant hot dog to appearing on late night television and turning down choice film roles. Parker Posey rounds out the flabbergasted cast as Callie Webb the film’s ingenue. As all three are caught up in the Oscar buzz they and the world around them change enhancing the absurdity of their unrealistic expectations. What is best about these characters is that the audience feels for them in every absurdity that proceeds because everyone knows that win or lose these characters will be disappointed in their gargantuan expectations.

Not only do the actors change but Home For Purim changes as the studio suits show up to intercede on the studio’s behalf. In some of the best scenes Ricky Gervais appears as a studio exec who decides to juice up the film and its script so that they have greater appeal and are more likely to win awards and make lots of money. Even Sandra Oh as a studio PR person with the most absurd of film promotions are right on the money. There are few parts of the political run up to the awards season that escape the attention of Guest and his co-writer Eugene Levy.

Of course the most absurd part of the whole proceedings is that in a year which has been rather thin for quality films For Your Consideration itself might be an award worthy candidate. Though it is to be expected that in general the industry has thinner skin than it is willing to admit and might take offense in granting For Your Consideration any awards there is certainly an opportunity for Catherine O’Hara to potentially garner a nod in the notoriously thin best actress or best supporting actress categories. At least for the Golden Globes where comedy and drama are given an equal chance For Your Consideration has to be considered a candidate for an award.

For Your Consideration was fun, not too long, and as always, delicately written. Plus it is a film that pokes fun at the very Hollywood system that created it. Christopher Guest and his cast have their quirky sense on humor well honed and they let it shine in For Your Consideration. What results is an enjoyable film and another set of memorable characters. So let the absurdly long and crazy awards season commence.