Austin Film Festival 06–The TV Set

Jake Kasdan has been working in television for a while. Longer than we all think, actually. Soon after his awesome Zero Effect in 1998, he worked on “Grosse Pointe,” a short lived series about a bunch of actors in a high school drama. Then he was one of the originators of one of my personal favorites ever, “Freaks And Geeks.” Again, criminally short lived. After that was “Undeclared,” another short lived show about college kids starring about half of the “Freaks And Geeks” kids. And, soon after that, a pilot of a tv version of Zero Effect…that was, of course, never picked up.

So Jake knows from “failed” television.

It’s no surprise, then, that his third feature (his second being the hack job Orange County, which wasn’t too bad) would be about a writer (David Duchovny) who is having problems getting his pilot made the he wants it made.

Mike (Duchovny) has just written the most personal story of his career. It’s about a young man who returns home after the suicide of his brother. And it’s a comedy! He reunites with a high school flame and things start to get a little crazy.

But when he doesn’t end up with the lead actor he wants, things just start to go to hell. And the studio exec in charge of choosing new shows, Lenny (Sigourney Weaver in full Working Girl bitch mode), keeps making him change things. “Does the brother really have to commit suicide? It’s such a downer.” Richard (Ioan Gruffudd from King Arthur and The Fantastic Four) is an import from the BBC where they know how to make intelligent and edgy comedy. He tries to help, but his hands are sort of tied. And he’s preoccupied with the fact that his wife (Lucy Davis from Shaun Of The Dead and the British “Office”) is completely unhappy.

Meanwhile, Mike is getting more pressure from home because his wife (Justine Bateman!) is pregnant and things are going to be getting financially tighter for them.

And it’s a comedy!

Actually, it’s really funny in a tragic sort of way. You can see Mike being crushed under the weight of wanting to do what’s right for his soul and still getting his show on the air. And Lenny is such a bitch that it’s hard to not do what she says.

Her part, by the way, was originally written for a 50 something year old man. Then it was going to be Ben Stiller, I guess doing an updated version of his character from Reality Bites. Then, when he had to drop out, Sigourney was called in, which was perfect. I still like Ben (which, as evidenced by the “ewwww”s from the audience when Jake told us about Ben, not many others do anymore), but I think she was perfect in this role. I hated every fiber of her soul. It was amazing.

Duchovny was great, too. I’ve always known that he could be funny as hell, and he finally gets a really good forum to show it off here. Hopefully, he’ll make more good movies like this.

All in all, this was a great way to open a festival for screenwriters. I can imagine that just about every tv writer in the US goes through this same bullshit every time they make a pilot. It shows the casting, filming and test processes and skewers them perfectly. It may not be a perfect film, but it’s damn funny and calls every tv exec out on how stupid they think the public is. Of course, it could just be a reflection of how stupid they are.