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 CHARACTERS

As with previous Guest excursions, the actors were encouraged to develop the looks and accoutrements of their own characters. “I think this is the first time characters actually had to do a screen test for their look to see how it's going to look on film,” Levy says. “Normally, you just create your look and walk on set for your first day of filming, and that's when everybody sees what you look like and hears what you sound like.”

According to Harris, the actors’ choices include some not-to-be-missed highlights. “Harry Shearer's fantastic, Hollywood white teeth are amazing,” she says. “[There’s also] some really, really fine cleavage in this movie. John Michael Higgins’s thighs, I believe, he says are ninety-eight percent muscle. That is a big thing to be looking out for.”

Many of the actors relish this freedom to create the external aspects of their characters. “Fred Willard, he's a busy guy, but Fred thinks about what his hair's going to be like eight months in advance,” Balaban says. “I mean, he's just brilliant. I saw his hair today. I was like, How did he think of it?”

“It's called a ‘faux-hawk,’” Willard explains, “and they style it after something that David Beckham was wearing. I can't go out like this. I'll put a hat on. When you do something like this, it adds a little bit to your character. You're a little goofy going in there, you've got one foot in the door.”

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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.