vip in the city

Joshua

The final film seminar of the season: Joshua, starring starring Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga as a perfect, privileged Manhattan couple, and Jacob Korgan as their 9-year old son, who has difficulty adjusting to the arrival of his new baby sister. Another film in the creepy-kid genre – see The Bad Seed and The Omen — which I tend to find too preternaturally disturbing to enjoy even when done well, which was not the case here.

At the post-film discussion: co-stars Celia Weston and Dallas Roberts.

It took me a few minutes, but I finally recognized Roberts from 2004’s A Home at the End of the World – the independent film adaptation of a Michael Cunningham novel, perhaps better known as “that movie where [Colin Farrell]’s naked but it was apparently ‘too distracting’ so they’ve cut it out.” (Yeah, seriously.)

I’d seen Weston in perhaps a dozen film and television appearances without ever knowing her real name – a level of fame just short of stardom that the now-hiatused Fametracker.com used to refer to aptly as “Hey! It’s That Guy!”

When asked what inspired them to take on their respective roles of a flamboyant gay uncle and an evangelical Christian grandmother, Roberts jokingly (but candidly) responded, “Money is a great motivator.” Weston, for her part, concurred, citing one film part she had been hesitant to accept after reading the script, but ultimately, was glad she did; the movie went on become a “cash cow of residual checks,” thanks to its endless airings on television. Despite our pleadings, she tactfully refused to name the film. I’m pretty sure she was referring to How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.