Today, I acted in the film Registered Sex Offender. The film is is written and directed by my friend Bob Byington (who also directed "Shameless" and "Olympia"). He asked me to improvise a short scene in which I play a recently arrested sex offender at a mandatory counseling session. The counselor was played by Kevin Corrigan, best known for his stand-out role in Nicole Holofcener's Walking and Talking. I found him to be an unusually kind, sensitive, and down-to-earth person, and I really enjoyed talking with him afterwards. He has a small role in the upcoming Scorsese film, The Departed, (he also had a small part in "Goodfellas") and it was a real treat to hear him tell on-the-set stories about Scorsese (his imitation of Scorsese is pitch-perfect).
There is something incredibly gratifying about intersecting, however fleetingly, with others who have been a part of the cinematic landscape to which we are all trying, in our various ways, to contribute. The time it takes for films to become part of our shared "history" seems to be getting shorter and shorter, and even a film as recent as "Walking and Talking" already feels like an historical artifact. I always enjoy meeting anyone who has been a part of this history that we are all trying to write, and today was a case in point.
posted by Caveh Zahedi at
11:51 PM
