Oscar the grouch

Have you ever walked into a movie theater five minutes before showtime and seen nobody else? It happened to me today, at the final matinee screening of For Your Consideration at the Balboa.

Although it features the same cast as Waiting For Guffman, A Mighty Wind and Best In Show, FYC isn't a mockumentary. Director Christopher Guest seems to be going for something else, something that often resembles more familiar indie cinema but still feels like a series of vignettes. More, if not all, of the movie is scripted, and there are several scenes you wouldn't find in Guest's other films, such as shots of people alone in their houses.

Some of FYC's characters seem to be assembled from parts of others we've seen before -- Fred Willard's dim sportscaster in Best In Show more or less reappears as the host of an Entertainment Tonight-type program, for example. This isn't really a bad thing; Willard may have been the funniest person in Best In Show. (Here, he actually gets to wear the Sherlock Holmes costume he suggests the BIS bloodhound ought to wear!) There are too many dick jokes, and the technophobic publicist character never quite sat right with me. But Catherine O'Hara's transformation from bit-part character actress to monstrous, facelifted, Botoxed Hollywood beast is hilarious, and she gets a well-scripted (albeit brief) monologue at the film's end.

Lots of films have been made about Hollywood, with contempt for shallow artifice usually among the themes. Few have aimed so squarely at the culture of awards, which seems to have gotten out of control in the past few years. What's an American Music Award for, anyway? And a Billboard Music Award? Couldn't they just do one show for country music? Why are they giving out trophies for the records that sell the most? (I can't help but think of Woody Allen in Annie Hall, lamenting the idea: "Best fascist dictator: Adolf Hitler!") FYC spares us red-carpet scenes (and leaves one very significant award-related question unanswered), but is most effective at lampooning celebrity talk-show appearances and gossip mavens during the run-up to Oscar time. I admit I was prepared for something of a letdown, and this may not be the best in Guest's recent series of films (Guffman may be unbeatable), but I came away from this one feeling like it was worth my afternoon.


FMFM: The sound me pulling out some Atlantic wax from the 1950s. Just a few months after Arif Mardin died, Ahmet Ertegun has passed as well. Ray Charles and the New York Cosmos? What a life.

[UPDATE: Fine remembrance here.]