Ray Pride

John Waters once said the only subversive act left to him would be to make a sweet, G-rated movie. After collaborating on sketch comedy with "The State" and "Stella" and the teen-movie parody "Wet Hot American Summer," actor-writer-director Michael Showalter wanted to do a 180 of his own, and the result is "The Baxter," a romantic comedy of social embarrassment, with soft-spoken characters propelled from 1940s movies into the present day. Showalter's Elliot Sherman, a nebbish office worker who muffs romance left and right is a gentle cousin to "King of Comedy"'s Rupert Pupkin: he will get it wrong again and again but he will not stop trying.

The character's name sounds like Elliot Nugent or Vincent Sherman, people who made screwball comedies.

SHOWALTER: I love hearing those connections made. Also, "Baxter" is Jack Lemmon's last name in "The Apartment." A lot of people think that's where it comes from, but it's not. I always thought of it as a cross between Dexter and bowler, like a bowler hat and the [name] Poindexter.

So, one of your first times working away from sketches or material that's essentially a succession of sketches, you wanted to make something more shaped?

SHOWALTER: I wanted to do a well-made Hollywood movie. I wanted it to have the feeling that every little bow was tied, very neatly at the end. It's an old-fashioned Hollywood story with every I dotted and every T crossed. When you see an old movie, everyone's in on it. That's what this movie has. I wanted also to make a movie that was polite and graceful and not gross and shocking. Just something sweet. I tried not to have any cursing in this movie, or anything too bawdy.

Is that a reaction to what you're known for? To say, "I can do something else, I'm not just absurd."

SHOWALTER: "I can do something else and I want to do something else." There are two sides of me. One side is what I do in these collaborations with the guys I work with. I can express that side in the collaborations. But working by myself, my leaning is more toward what "The Baxter" is, more character-driven, more story, more narrative-driven. Less gross. Less absurd.

What is it about characters suffering that make for comedy? Elliot ought to be mortified, what he goes through.

SHOWALTER: Yeah, I think certainly in this film, what should be funny about it is cringing. Cringing for him. Basically, there's something painfully satisfying about watching somebody struggle to get by as much as he does. He's just in a constant state of getting it wrong.

When we feel that as a person, those frustrations, you're dying inside.

SHOWALTER: But that's a real emotion, that's a real feeling. I guess it is mortification. You're mortified for him. `Cos it's just so mortifying to get that shit wrong. I know in my own experience, those are the things that stand out, when you're at a party and you say the wrong thing and you're thinking about it for five days, "Did I say the wrong thing, did I say the wrong thing?" That's a lot of the fuel here. Social anxiety [offers] a lot of fodder, for me, anyway. Elliot has social anxiety but what's different about him than me, let's say, is that he's gonna try, he's constantly trying to get past it and succeed in a social situation instead of just receding. He's attacking.

(2005-08-31)

Also by Ray Pride

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Wong Kar-Wai's high swoon of style suffocates some viewers; his trial-and-error manner of shooting bankrupts financiers with each new production
(2005-08-30)

The Politics of Love
"The Constant Gardener" is a smashing surprise: a movie made quickly by a director with nothing to prove but who proves his prowess with a literate, agile, cosmopolitan thriller with heart and soul
(2005-08-30)

Tip of the Week
Michael Winterbottom's "9 Songs" sketches the physical relationship of a mismatched London couple, a grizzled, fortyish "glaciologist" named Matt and 21-year-old Lisa, a skinny barmaid on antidepressants, through nine concerts at London's Brixton Academy, which alternate with the explicit details of their sexual acts
(2005-08-23)

Begin the penguine
For whatever mysterious reasons, the alchemical miracle so far in 2005 has been the American version of "The March of the Penguins."
(2005-08-23)

Tip of the Week
(2005-08-16)

All that useless beauty
(2005-08-16)

Tip of the Week
(2005-08-09)

Down to the bone
(2005-08-09)

Tip of the Week
(2005-08-02)

The Raconteur
(2005-08-02)

Bye-bye Bucktown
(2005-07-26)

Tip of the Week
(2005-07-26)

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