Salon.com > Jessica Hundley

Christopher Guest: The jazz of jocularity

Fri, 06 Oct 2000 17:39:00 +0000

Christopher Guest is not the man you think he is. Look at his career. He worked as a scribe during National Lampoon's heyday. He had an extended and hilarious stint on "Saturday Night Live." He has made successful directorial forays into the world of the mockumentary ("Waiting for Guffman," "Best in Show"). And most infamously, he created a powerful alter ego in Spinal Tap's mullet-haired, dim-brained lead guitarist, Nigel Tufnel.

Guest, who's married to actress Jamie Lee Curtis, has written comedy for Lily Tomlin (for which he shared a 1976 Emmy) and music for the National Lampoon albums in the '70s and "This Is Spinal Tap." From these varied endeavors one would logically assume Guest to be a wacky, goofy, fun-loving fellow prone to loud guffaws and even louder ties. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Demented duo

Fri, 11 Aug 2000 19:00:00 +0000

Stephen Dorff is ashing his cigarette into the orchid pot and talking about how you don't get rich starring in films like "Cecil B. DeMented." It's the first leg of the movie's press tour and the much-maligned young star is living up to the dubious reputation he established with his first interview ever, in which he claimed his superiority to most of his contemporaries -- and then went on to name names.

Take a good look at Dorff's track record and you'll find that, at 27, he not only has worked with some of the best actors around -- Jack Nicholson, Harvey Keitel, Susan Sarandon -- but has consistently taken interesting and risky roles, most notably with his performance as transvestite Candy Darling in "I Shot Andy Warhol." When he tells me he does these films not for the money but because they challenge him, it doesn't sound like the usual actor's rhetoric.

There is something charming in the earnest way he tilts his head as he speaks, in the flush of his cheek, in the way he sits eagerly at the very edge of the linen-covered couch as he talks excitedly about his new role. Under the hard-shelled veneer of 10 years in the Hollywood gristmill, I glimpse something that looks surprisingly like innocence.

Mr. Misery, he's not

Mon, 01 May 2000 16:00:00 +0000

Elliott Smith is not depressed. He is not feeling grim or dissatisfied or angry or filled
with a nameless ennui. His is, in his quiet, steady way, actually quite happy.

After his hit "Ms. Misery" (from the href="/music/sharps/1997/12/23sharps.html">"Good Will Hunting" soundtrack)
was nominated for an Academy Award, Smith was tossed without warning into the rough
seas of celebrity, where he floated, vaguely bewildered at first and gasping a bit for air.
Amid the bloated pomp-and-circumstance of the Oscars, Smith wandered onto the
stage with a perplexed smile, a clean white suit and an acoustic guitar. In the shadow
of a sprawling and monstrous set, he sang with a quiet intensity that managed to
silence a roomful of people more adept at speaking than listening. The Oscar, of
course, went to Celine Dion, but that beautiful moment won a new audience for Smith's
unique and gorgeous sound.

Where the boys are

Wed, 22 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

It's no great revelation that the film industry has always worshipped -- and objectified -- women. Female sexuality in particular, refracted through the lens of a male-dominated medium, has undergone several curious transformations.

There have been goddesses like Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Louise Brooks, who embodied sexual power through regal haughtiness and disdain; wisecracking tomboy princesses like Barbara Stanwyck, Lauren Bacall and Katharine Hepburn, who were luminous women with soft hair and strong chins and mouths that spit out a barrage of sharp-tongued witticisms; and kittens like Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, who filled out the hard edges with voluptuous curves and exchanged wit for bewilderment. There have been long-limbed, silken-haired 1960s sexual adventurers, delicately sensitive '70s waifs, '80s power bitches and quirky but vulnerable '90s girls (portrayed almost exclusively by Winona Ryder).

Ribisi rising

Fri, 18 Feb 2000 17:00:00 +0000

In the fickle game of Hollywood celebrity, hot young actors are a
dime a dozen. They seem to appear on fame's radar within moments, and
then disappear just as suddenly; bright blips who go dim because of
fading looks, lack of talent or simply bad luck. Some are arrested,
some fade into oblivion, a select few manage to beat the odds and
graduate from teen dream to respected actor. A handful are admitted
to the fabled land of Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Robert De Niro -- the land where roles portray actors.

The remarkable thing about this process is not the limited and
predictable array of fates that awaits them but, rather, the ease with
which some young actors seem to appear on the scene in the first
place. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an actor seems to be everywhere at
once: smiling down on us from newsstands, waving benignly to the
paparazzi, escorting young starlets to award shows. It is not until
much later that you begin to remember that it's the same face from a
sitcom you liked in high school; or that comedy (what was it
called?), playing somebody's brother; or an old
McDonald's commercial. That's when you realize that the trail to
overnight success is blazed in a pumpkin, not a coach, and that it
almost invariably consists of at least 10 years of forgettable
roles, near misses and mild humiliations.