Catherine Keener: Indie Film Queen Who Cameos In Mainstream Movies

Midway through Spike Jonze’s ADAPTATION (2002) Nicholas Cage stepping in for the real screenwriter of the film, Charlie Kaufman, speaks to his fictitious brother Donald (also played by Cage) on the phone. Donald mentions to the forever frazzled Charlie that Catherine Keener is hanging out and wants to play a role in his just optioned movie project.

“Catherine Keener is in my house?” Charlie asks with all of his wide eyed angst. Playing herself at the time of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, Keener is only briefly in ADAPTATION (it’s an uncredited walk on), but it marks the beginning of her high profile in film – Keener, after over 15 years in the business, was finally a “name.”

That was nearly a decade ago and Keener’s profile is still high with 2 independent films out this summer – PLEASE GIVE and CYRUS. She was also recently seen in big budget studio fare like PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS – THE LIGHTNING THIEF and last year’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE of which she also was an associate producer.

Keener has built a sturdy career playing a series of sassy yet cynical women who taunt their romantic partners and many times leave them. A few examples of this include SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK and HAMLET 2, both very different films that dealt with a similar subject – personal artistic struggle. Keener’s characters symbolized dissatisfaction coupled with a yearning for freedom away from the obsessed ego of a lousy life partner.

Keener has played this type of part perhaps too often. In the 4 films (WALKING AND TALKING, LOVELY AND AMAZING, FRIENDS WITH MONEY, and PLEASE GIVE) she’s made with Nicole Holofcener, she’s perfected the role of a New York intellectual suffering with liberal guilt and seething hostility. It’s a character that’s obviously close to her heart, but it lives or dies on the strength of Keener’s acerbic line readings and lately, in “Please Give” it died.

Initially her role as Steve Carrell’s love interest in the uber commercial hit THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN appeared to be severe miscasting. Her style seemed better suited to the edgier indie worlds of Holofcenter, Steven Soderbergh, or, of course, Charlie Kaufman, than the raunchy boys club milieu of Judd Apatow, yet it was refreshing to see her having fun in a less stressed comic identity.

Keener’s Oscar nominated role as Harper Lee in CAPOTE (2005) was also a bit of a change from her patented snarky persona. Another out of character part came in a little seen TV movie produced by Showtime based on a true story - AN AMERICAN CRIME. Although she played yet another divorcée, Keener’s acclaimed performance as Gertrude Baniszewski, a Indiana woman who tortured and murdered a teenage girl, was definitely a different stroke for the active actress.

So Keener keeps her indie cred although she often pops up in mainstream movies usually playing a hip single mother like she did in PERCY JACKSON and WILD THINGS. She’s got a healthy crop of films coming up including David O. Russell’s political romantic comedy NAILED in which she plays the fictitious Rep. Pam Hendrickson. It looks to be another welcome change of pace. Keener may not be an A-list star, but she’s a familiar face and name to movie lovers no matter the genre or budget of her films.

For nearly a decade she’s replaced Parker Posey as the queen of independent film, one who can survive the crossover and come back again to her home turf. As her reign continues here’s hoping she’ll aspire to do more with her crown.

More later...

Hail To The Reigning Indie Film Queen: Catherine Keener

Midway through Spike Jonze’s ADAPTATION (2002), Nicholas Cage stepping in for the real screenwriter of the film, Charlie Kaufman, speaks to his fictitious brother Donald (also played by Cage) on the phone. Donald mentions to the forever frazzled Charlie that Catherine Keener is hanging out and wants to play a role in his just optioned movie project.

“Catherine Keener is in my house?” Charlie asks with all of his wide eyed angst. Playing herself at the time of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, Keener is only briefly in ADAPTATION (it’s an uncredited walk on), but it marks the beginning of her high profile in film – Keener, after over 15 years in the business, was finally a “name.”

That was nearly a decade ago and Keener’s profile is still high with 2 independent films out this summer – PLEASE GIVE and CYRUS. She was also recently seen in big budget studio fare like PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS – THE LIGHTNING THIEF and last year’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE of which she also was an associate producer.

Keener has built a sturdy career playing a series of sassy yet cynical women who taunt their romantic partners and many times leave them. A few examples of this include SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK and HAMLET 2, both very different films that dealt with a similar subject – personal artistic struggle. Keener’s characters symbolized dissatisfaction coupled with a yearning for freedom away from the obsessed ego of a lousy life partner.

Keener has played this type of part perhaps too often. In the 4 films (WALKING AND TALKING, LOVELY AND AMAZING, FRIENDS WITH MONEY and PLEASE GIVE) she’s made with Nicole Holofcener, she’s perfected the role of a New York intellectual suffering with liberal guilt and seething hostility. It’s a character that’s obviously close to her heart, but it lives or dies on the strength of Keener’s acerbic line readings and lately, in PLEASE GIVE it died.

Initially her role as Steve Carrell’s love interest in the uber commercial hit THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN appeared to be severe miscasting. Her style seemed better suited to the edgier indie worlds of Holofcenter, Steven Soderbergh, or, of course, Charlie Kaufman, than the raunchy boys club milieu of Judd Apatow, yet it was refreshing to see her having fun in a less stressed comic identity.

Keener’s Oscar nominated role as Harper Lee in CAPOTE (2005) was also a bit of a change from her patented snarky persona. Another out of character part came in a little seen TV movie produced by Showtime based on a true story - “An American Crime”. Although she played yet another divorcée, Keener’s acclaimed performance as Gertrude Baniszewski, a Indiana woman who tortured and murdered a teenage girl, was definitely a different stroke for the active actress.

So Keener keeps her indie cred although she often pops up in mainstream movies usually playing a hip single mother like she did in PERCY JACKSON and WILD THINGS. She’s got a healthy crop of films coming up including David O. Russell’s political romantic comedy NAILED in which she plays the fictitious Rep. Pam Hendrickson. It looks to be another welcome change of pace. Keener may not be an A-list star, but she’s a familiar face and name to movie lovers no matter the genre or budget of her films.

For nearly a decade she’s replaced Parker Posey as the queen of independent film, one who can survive the crossover and come back again to her home turf. As her reign continues here’s hoping she’ll aspire to do more with her crown.

More later...

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK: The Film Babble Blog Review

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (Dir. Charlie Kaufman, 2008)

Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut is unlike any other first time director’s film, but then it’s unlike any other film in existence, period.

The noted screenwriter of such modern day masterpieces as BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTATION, and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND now is presenting us with an epic construction in which art imitates life and life imitates art in such a spellbinding manner that they become entangled so that one isn’t sure if it’s art or life’s parts flailing on the screen in front of them.

Attempting to describe the plot may be futile, but I’ll still have a go – Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Cayden Cotard, a playwright in a loveless marriage to an aspiring abstract painter Adele (Catherine Keener). Keener leaves with their daughter to conquer the German art community forcing Hoffman to deal head on with his loneliness and various sicknesses yet he is still inspired with the aid of a large grant to mount what he calls “a massive theater piece.”

Tormented but not creatively constipated, Hoffman assembles a cast and crew in a large warehouse in Manhattan’s theater district to set about building a vast replica of the city outside. Every actor is given notes on their individual scenarios because as Hoffman relates: “None of those people is an extra. They’re all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due.”

Dealing with the women in his life alongside his literally towering ambitions is just as tangled as he clumsily courts Samantha Morton as an eager assistant, Michelle Williams as a devoted thespian, a self-help book plugging therapist (Hope Davis), and Diane Wiest as an actress who oddly takes over Hoffman’s role of a director not long after he tells her she is weirdly close to what he visualized for the character. “Glad to be weirdly close” she responds.

Tom Noonan, who can be seen in the background following Hoffman throughout the first half of the film, is hired though he has no acting or theater experience. His experience is in knowing everything there is to know about Hoffman including the address of his ex-wife and he even takes up with Morton. Morton has her own theatrical double in the form of Emily Watson who is neatly attired (and nearly indistinguishable) as a Morton clone.

Hoffman takes up with Watson, albeit briefly, but these relationship mechanics hardly define or dominate; they are restless and surprisingly realistic elements that wind in and out of this colossal collage. Though there are many funny moments, the tone is not intensely comical but there is the case of Morton’s house that is on fire and burns for years - echoing the successful surreal tangents of Kaufman’s earlier work.

As layered and multi-leveled as the mock city that Hoffman creates, SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is a mind bogglingly beautiful film. It isn’t concerned with notions of time (years pass with no convenient “six months later” or “a year later” titles), there are no pat emotional resolutions, and there is no big climatic reveal of the massive production to provide a soothing finish. What it does provide is ideas – themes on top of themes with implications and allusions to ponder over for years.

At many pivotal points Hoffman, struck by revelation, states “I know how to do the play now” and he and the film take us one step further into the blurring of oblivion. Kaufman has already blown moviegoers synapses with his fantastical tangents but this time he goes places many accomplished film makers would never even think of venturing.

It’s extremely exhilarating that he’s discovered on a grand scale that there’s no need for films to have designated integrated dream sequences; the films themselves are dreams. For his first effort as director to be as incredibly challenging as it is powerfully pleasurable will certainly kick off an extraordinary career of craft.

As yet another troubling frustrating female in our desperate protagonist’s life, Jennifer Jason Leigh says: “It’s all about your artistic satisfaction”. She says it with an air of smug condescension but she’s right, though in the end SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is all about everybody’s artistic satisfaction as well.

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