Cardinals, Conspiracies And A Crock Or Two

Cannes 2009: The global village, all in one French town

The first Cannes Film Festival press screening for Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” was held at 8:30 a.m. in the midst of a gutter-filling downpour, and yet there were only a handful of empty spots inside the 2,300-seat Grand Théâtre Lumière early this morning. The turnout for the latest movie from the director of “The Piano” was remarkable given the circumstances (and all the late-night partying), but equally noteworthy was the film’s international provenance, an across-all-borders production history that is being repeated with many Cannes titles.

Campion’s first feature since 2003’s “In the Cut,” “Bright Star” follows the love story between the young romantic poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). The New Zealand-born filmmaker’s movie was backed by Australia’s Film Finance Corp., Britain’s BBC Films and UK Film Council and France’s Pathé Renn Productions. It will be distributed in the United States this fall by Bob Berney’s new (and still unnamed) American distribution company.

The second Cannes competition title screening to the press today is the horror movie “Thirst,” a co-production between New York’s Focus Features and South Korea’s CJ Entertainment, who are splitting all costs and revenues. Director Chan-wook Park’s story of a medical experiment gone wrong already has opened in South Korea, where it is generating blockbuster sales. It is scheduled to open in the United States in July.

“The future for people like us is to understand that it’s a big world out there, and you don’t have to speak one language,” said Focus CEO James Schamus. In addition to “Thirst,” Focus’ international co-productions include the Brazilian movie “Adrift,” and it recently released the Spanish-language titles “Sin Nombre” and “Rudo y Cursi.”

The potential global rewards for movies like “Bright Star” and “Thirst” cannot be told by U.S. theatrical grosses alone. Director Ang Lee (who is premiering his latest Focus movie, “Taking Woodstock,” in competition Saturday) released 2007’s “Lust Caution” to modest domestic revenues of just $4.6 million. But the NC-17-rated love story grossed $50 million in Asia alone.

â€" John Horn

Here for the 'Party' and full of 'Glee': A talk with Jane Lynch

Jane Lynch fled her first acting opportunity.

In her freshman year at Thornridge High School in south suburban Dolton, Lynch was cast in a one-act play. But one day she stopped going to rehearsals.

“I wanted nothing more, and I was so afraid of failing that I just walked away from it and joined the tennis team,” Lynch said in a recent interview.

Lynch eventually embraced her desire to perform, and now this Chicago theater and comedy veteran is one of the hardest-working actors in TV and film.

She currently stars in the delightful comedy “Party Down” on Starz, which has its second season finale Friday. The show has been renewed for a second season, but there’s a catch: Lynch is so busy that, though she’d love to return, she’s not sure her schedule will allow it.

That’s because she’s also a cast member in the highly anticipated musical dramedy “Glee,” which gets a post-“American Idol” tryout Tuesday on Fox. As if that weren’t enough, she has two films coming out this summer: the romantic comedy “Post Grad” and the Meryl Streep-Amy Adams film “Julie and Julia,” in which Lynch plays Julia Child’s sister, Dorothy McWilliams.

The chef had “a big, eccentric energy and [Streep] completely immersed herself in that,” Lynch said. The same words could be said of Lynch, whose characters retain their amused compassion even as they embrace their eccentricity.

“I guess maybe I’m kind of an extreme person, and I guess when I make a choice, I make a big one,” Lynch said with a laugh.

Since her breakthrough nine years ago as a dog handler in Guest’s “Best in Show,” Lynch, 48, has been a mainstay of comedies produced or directed by Judd Apatow (“The 40 Year Old Virgin,” “Talladega Nights”) and a key ensemble member in Guest’s improvisational films (“A Mighty Wind,” “For Your Consideration”). But those roles were shoehorned in among dozens of appearances in various TV shows, everything from “The L Word” to “Boston Legal.”

Only  in the last couple of years has  she  occasionally turned  down roles.

“That part of it is brand-new to me,” she said. “When you’re a struggling actor, the mentality is, ‘Just take it.’”

But if there’s a rule book for achieving success in Hollywood, Lynch has ignored it. Not only has she flourished in the mostly male comedy world, her major break in the business came the year she turned 40. And she’s always been truthful about her sexuality: She’s out and proud.

“I don’t remember hiding it,” she said.

Lynch’s honesty is admirable, but it’s of a piece with her approach to acting. Colleagues past and present cite Lynch’s generosity and her willingness to take chances.

Zach Gilford (“Friday Night Lights”), who worked with Lynch in this summer’s “Post Grad,” recalled how, even when she was off-camera, Lynch was trying out comedic bits.

“I was at a table with her, Alexis Bledel, Michael Keaton and Carol Burnett, and I was just watching Jane Lynch,” Gilford said. “She would be picking her teeth with a chicken bone or something like that. She was always so totally there and complete, in a comedic way, but not over the top.”

On “Party Down,” a show about actors who moonlight as catering waiters, Lynch plays the sweetly clueless Constance Carmell, who thinks all of her bit parts have actually been meaningful career breakthroughs.

“She’s taken a character who would could have been merely an oddball outsider and turned her into someone you root for despite her rather large disconnect from reality,” executive producer John Enbom said. “I think she brings a wonderful sense of warmth and lightness to the show. Her Constance is so grounded and satisfied in her delusions.”

Though she’s pleased with her role in “Glee,” in which she plays a  taskmaster of a cheerleading coach, she calls “Party Down” “the most fun I’ve had in my life.”

“It’s what I really love to do. I love being part of a team where everybody’s kind of got equal weight,” Lynch said. “It’s about teamwork. There’s really no room for the big ego-trip thing that you hear about.”

“Jane gets it,” says Faith Soloway, the creator of “The Real Live Brady Bunch,” an early ’90s off-Loop production in which Lynch played Carol Brady (Steve Carell and Andy Richter also had roles in the show). “She knows how to play every note of comedy and drama. She almost reminds me of a brilliant musician when she acts. ... She is more in the moment then most comedic actors I have ever worked with. And that’s why her performances are so subtly uproarious.”

Lynch may be fearless as a performer, but, she said with a throaty chuckle, many of her life choices in the past were “driven by fear.”

She loved performing, but she started out at Illinois State University as a mass communications major, and only later transferred to the theater program. A brief stint in New York after graduate school at Cornell sent her scurrying back to Chicagoâ€"the Big Apple kind of “ate me up,” she said.

Once ensconced in Chicago’s theater scene, where she did Shakespeare, appeared in plays at Steppenwolf Theatre and elsewhere, and performed with Second City’s touring ensemble, she was nervous about heading to Los Angeles. But a breakup, plus the fact that most of her “Real Live Brady Bunch” pals had moved to L.A., helped change her mind. She moved there in 1994 and spent years scrambling for guest roles and short-term gigs.

A few months after working with her on a Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes commercial, Guest ran into Lynch at an L.A. restaurant, and later that day, cast her as a dog trainer in “Best in Show.”

“I can absolutely pinpoint that as a moment when new doors opened,” Lynch said.

Though she loved her time in the Second City touring company, Lynch said that the skills required to succeed in Apatow’s and Guest’s comedies are different than those seen on the improv company’s stages.

“The Second City improv is different. It’s sharperâ€"it’s a more masculine improv, let’s put it that way,” Lynch said. “It’s kind of about getting to the joke. It’s fast and kind of harder hitting. The stuff I do with [Guest and Apatow] films, we meander a lot more. We don’t rush headlong into a joke. We’re more interested in characters and situations and seeing what comes out of that.”

Yet the thing that Lynch sounds happiest discussingâ€"working largely without scripts when making “Virgin” and the Guest filmsâ€"is a concept that would terrify many actors. But Lynch is willing to trust the process and her choices, especially when she knows the other participants well (Carell’s wife, fellow Second City veteran Nancy Walls, recommended Lynch for  the “Virgin” role  of electronics store manager that was originally written for a man). Lynch describes her approach as “close my eyes and fall into it.”

Coming out was never really a choice for Lynch, because she can’t actually remember being in the closet, certainly not since she’s lived in L.A. She has played both gay and straight characters, and Lynch said she’s never felt typecast. ] “I think the reason for that is that we, as a society, have come a long way in accepting that it’s just another way of loving,” Lynch said. “I also think it’s because I’m a character actor. I don’t think it’s so easy a road for an ingenue, male or female.”

Therapy allowed her get in touch with the truths that have affected her life most deeply, which led to a “profound shift” in her work, she said. And it helped with the comedy too.

“The more truthful something is, the funnier it is,” she said.

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Cardinals, Conspiracies And A Crock Or Two

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