BEFORE: Just like the McRib, I'm back for a limited time. I have not watched a movie in 5 or 6 days, which feels weird, but I've been super busy. I managed a screening of "Wicked: Too Good" that wasn't a full house, and another screening of "Hamnet" that WAS a full house. Go figure. Also I worked the final night of Doc NYC, the festival for doctors - no, wait, documentaries - and I still have to browse through their festival program to get some inspiration for next year's doc chain. See, there is a madness to my method. No, wait, reverse that.
Anyway, I'm back for two more films in November - like a lodge in the Catskills, I'm going to shut down for a couple weeks, but I will re-open for Christmastime and/or hunting season. But first we're going to have a blow-out feast and clear out the pantry, also hire a very creepy caretaker to watch the place while I'm away. What could POSSIBLY go wrong there?
Frances Conroy carries over from "Nimona".
THE PLOT: Aging actor Lester Rosenthal, who has lost his way in his career, with his family, and with his friends, finds out that the way out is through.
AFTER: This film seems like a total blank - there's NO plot description on the Wiki page, no notes about the film's writing or production, and barely anything about a theatrical release back in 2016. Well, it only grossed about $20,000 so I don't think hardly anyone has ever seen this film. I recorded it off of PBS a few months ago, that might be the largest audience this film ever had, people who watched it on public TV for free. They didn't even interrupt the film to ask for pledge money and offer tote bags in return, because even PBS didn't expect many people to tune in for this.
Well, it would be great to say that the world really missed out on a good movie, and that this is an undiscovered little gem, but I'm afraid that would be a bit of a stretch. We have terms like "sleeper film" and "underdog movie" for good movies that somehow got lost in the shuffle or had bad distribution deals and maybe one day will earn some kind of cult following, but I don't think we have a term for films that got overlooked and really, it's just as well. "It's perfectly understandable why nobody knows this movie," is a statement that you just never hear, but I'm saying it now. I will go talk to people about this movie and nobody is going to be familiar with it, and that's going to make perfect sense. I'm trying to think of another example of a film that I've seen that simply no one else is familiar with - maybe "Hangdog" from last year or from this year, "Sun Dogs" or "Proxima" or "Long Weekend" would be good examples. Like, not good enough for people to spread the word about, and not bad enough for people to trash-talk.
"About Cherry", "The Benefactor", "The United States of Leland" - once I know what I'm looking for, those films are everywhere, I probably average about one per month now. Films that nobody will ever ask me about, and if I bring them up, I will be met with only blank stares. "Fade to Black", "Luckiest Girl Alive", "Land", "Boogie Woogie". Not terrible films, but they're not going to make my top 10 for the year, either. "Bigger Than the Sky", which was on a similar topic, actors trying to be cast in a play, only that was about staging "Cyrano" and tonight's film is about "King Lear". The idea's the same, there are no small parts, only small actors. Or you can audition for the lead and be cast as the Fool instead, only you can take that small role and just do the best you can with it, because that's what an actor does.
But all the world's a stage, and all those in it, merely players. We play roles in our personal lives, too, and this film also brings up the fact that our central actor feels he has also failed in his roles as a husband, a father and as a friend. Perhaps also as a dog owner, the film ends with Lester (or Lawrence) having to euthanize his dog, though of course the dog's stomach cancer is not his fault, but this probably feels like yet another failure in his life.
Lester's agent gets him an audition for "King Lear", and so he auditions to play the king, but, well, it doesn't really go as planned. Anyway he finds out that the play will be performed in Dayton, Ohio, where he grew up, so at least there would be a chance to visit his father, who's in a nursing home. Oh, sorry, "adult living facility". When he doesn't get the part, Lester instead hooks up with an old playwright buddy who based a character on him, and really wants Lester to play that part - but even after they work the songs out, and do a table-read, something goes wrong and the play has to move venues and they can no longer use union actors or something. And by the time he circles back to the film that wanted to fly him to Scotland for a location shoot, Lester finds that his "friend" Stephan has been cast in that role, and so it's no longer an option.
There are lots of threads left hanging here, like the blind guy who Lester reads the newspaper to, who might not really be blind - what was going on there? What does he gain by pretending to be blind, and who reads to him while Lester is out of town? What happened, exactly with the play that the Roundabout Theater was producing? There's either no time to follow up on these asides, or else some writer forgot or just didn't care.
Without any wrap-ups there really is no point, and without any point to it, I just really don't know what to make of this movie. Which is sad because I really wanted to like it, but I can't really find anything to like about it, there's no place to hang my hat, if you know what I mean. In the end it's just about somebody who couldn't find work any more in their chosen field, so he had to pivot. That also happened to me this year, and I had to pivot, so this subject should really appeal to me, but for some reason it doesn't. It's just kind of sad, if that counts for anything.
There's one thing that's really meta about it, though, it's not much, but the film is about a bunch of fading actors who are finding that their work is drying up, and most haven't starred in anything for a while, so they all hang out at the Actors Equity lounge. The inside joke (I'm guessing) is that a lot of the actors in the film, at least a few anyway, are actually actors who haven't starred in anything for a while either. Well, it's nice to see old friends again, I suppose - like THERE is that guy who starred in "Silver Spoons" back in the day, and there's Ellen Foley, who was on the old pre-reboot "Night Court" and also sang on that very famous song on Meat Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell" album. But that's not a lot to work with, I'm sure if I went digging I could play a great game of "Hey, it's THAT guy!" with this film - but that loses its charm pretty quick.
Eventually the actor resigns himself to taking a teaching position, not just because the acting roles have dried up, and not just because he burned all his bridges with his friends, but because it's a positive thing to do with his life, and also it's a thing to do, you know, to pass the time. I'm kind of in that same boat myself, after my long employment in the animation industry ended, I fell back on working at this movie theater that's run by a college. From time to time the animation department comes by and screens the work of the students, so I've still got one little toe in the animation business, after all. Plus I'm doing what I believe is a positive thing for students, also for guild members who come to screenings, plus film festival goers and people who come to hear symposiums about diversity or climate change or the dangers of A.I. As long as I can be proud of the work I'm doing and it's not too physically taxing, I've got a reason to get up in the morning (OK, afternoon) and go put in another shift.
Directed by Lee Wilkof
Also starring Gabriel Byrne (last seen in "Jagged"), Nathan Lane (last heard in "Spellbound"), Zoe Perry, J. Smith-Cameron (last seen in "Vengeance"), Donna Murphy (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), Valerie Mahaffey (last seen in "Jack and Jill"), Ethan Sandler (last seen in "The Bourne Supremacy"), Jeremy Shamos (last seen in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"), Loudon Wainwright III (last seen in "Elizabethtown"), John Bedford Lloyd (last seen in "13"), Mark Blum (last seen in "I Don't Know How She Does It"), Ellen Foley (last seen in "Random Hearts"), Joe Grifasi (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), Jon Michael Hill (last seen in "Widows"), Jeanine Serralles (last seen in "The Woman in the Window"), Joel Higgins, Ben Sinclair (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Louis Zorich (last seen in "Club Paradise"), Boyd Gaines (last seen in "The Goldfinch"), Craig "Radio Man" Castaldo (last seen in "Nonnas"), Catlin Adams (last seen in "The Jazz Singer" (1980)), Lee Wilkof (last seen in "Addicted to Love"), J.R. Horne (last seen in "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"), Esther Paige, Alex Draper, Yusef Bulos (last seen in "Her Smell"), Arthur French (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Julian Leong (last seen in "You Hurt My Feelings"), Tina Tanzer, Jesmille Darbouze, Larry Gevirtz, Mark Quiles, Danny Binstock, Marissa Rose Gordon (last seen in "Chuck"), Janet Stanwood (last seen in "Rebel in the Rye"), Tim Falter (last seen in "Winter's Tale"), Nancy Duckles, Ines Martina, Connie Grappo, Shawn Uebele
RATING: 4 out of 10 vocal exercises
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