ARTICLES AND INTERVIEWS: 1. PRODUCTION INFORMATION Christopher Guest turns the camera on Hollywood in For Your Consideration. The film focuses on the making of an independent movie and its cast who become victims of the dreaded awards buzz. 2. SYNOPSIS Debut feature director Jay Berman (Christopher Guest), steers cast and crew through a typically tumultuous independent film Home for Purim, an intimate period drama about a Jewish family’s turbulent reunion on the occasion of the dying matriarch’s favorite holiday. 3. ABOUT THE STORY While Guest’s previous three films incorporated a documentary crew into the plot, this time the filmmakers eschewed the fictional documentary format for a straightforward narrative about the little indie that could and its fragile and frantic mob of actors, crewmembers, media figures, executives, and various hangers-on. 4. ABOUT THE PRODUCTION For Your Consideration revolves around the making of an Awards-bait low-budget movie, Home for Purim, which has attracted a group of very committed artists. 5. ABOUT THE CHARACTERS As with previous Guest excursions, the actors were encouraged to develop the looks and accoutrements of their own characters. 6. ABOUT THE INDUSTRY For Your Consideration’s story and setting provided the actors with particularly fertile ground in which to grow their comic personalities. After all, they’re ultimately satirizing themselves by mocking their own self-seriousness and odd industry rituals.

ABOUT THE STORY

While Guest’s previous three films incorporated a documentary crew into the plot, this time the filmmakers eschewed the fictional documentary format for a straightforward narrative about the little indie that could and its fragile and frantic mob of actors, crewmembers, media figures, executives, and various hangers-on. Guest and Eugene Levy provided their expanding company of regular actors with a 27-page script full of scene set-ups, brief character background sketches, and occasional suggested jokes. They also included a handful of scripted scenes, with songs, for the film within the film, Home for Purim, and several entertainment news television shows.

“The idea of doing something related to show business came up as a little bit of a surprise,” Levy says. “Normally we've tried to stay away from show business. It just seems too easy. The notion of Oscar® dropped in relation to somebody's performance, what it does to that person, and then what it does to everybody else working on the same project -- it was a fragile premise, but I thought very funny.”

The original idea did have some roots in reality. Several publications preemptively kicked around Levy’s name for Best Supporting Actor for A Mighty Wind in 2003, “which was shocking,” Levy says now. “And once it's in your head, no matter how you shake it, you can't get it out. You try and talk yourself out of it, but it's still there, and if somebody else mentions it: doubly hard to get out of your head.”

“We've opened a whole new door,” says Fred Willard, who plays “Hollywood Now” co-host Chuck Porter. “Waiting for Guffman, I don't think there was any outline. Best in Show, we got about a twelve-page outline. Mighty Wind is about a sixteen-page outline. This time we had make-up sessions, camera testing like back in the old days of Hollywood, hairstyle meetings, and rehearsals... This time it's like a real movie.”

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ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
For Your Consideration revolves around the making of an Awards-bait low-budget movie, Home for Purim, which has attracted a group of very committed artists.