Leaves of Grass The Movie in Denmark,
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Genre: Comedy drama
Synopsis:
An Ivy League professor (Edward Norton) returns home, where his pot-growing twin brother[C1]has concocted a plan to take down a local drug lord.
Release Date: -0/17/2010
Running Time: 104
Rating: R - Restricted
http://www.leavesofgrassmovie.com/
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Cast:
Edward Norton, Keri Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon, Melanie Lynskey, Josh Pais, Tim Nelson, Ty Burrell, Maggie Siff, Lucy DeVito, Randal Reeder, Krystal Mayo, Steve Earle, Lee Wilkof, Naima Lett, Tim Ware, Lisa Benavides
Crew:
Director - Tim Nelson, Screenwriter - Tim Nelson, Producer - Tim Nelson, Producer - Edward Norton, Producer - Elie Cohn, Producer - Bill Migliore, Producer - John Langley, Producer - Kristina Dubin, Executive Producer - Stuart Blumberg, Executive Producer - Boaz Davidson, Executive Producer - Danny Dimbort, Executive Producer - Avi Lerner, Executive Producer - Trevor Short, Executive Producer - David Koplan, Original Music - Jeff Danna, Cinematographer - Roberto Schaefer, Film Editor - Michelle Botticelli, Casting - Avy Kaufman, Set Decoration - Maria Nay, Costume Designer - Caroline Eselin, Production Design - Max Biscoe, Art Director - Rob Simons, Set Decoration - Marina Nay
Production Companies:
Class 5 Films
Distributors:
First Look
Notes:
- Notes provided by First Look Studios - When Ivy League classics professor Bill Kincaid receives news of the murder of his estranged identical twin brother, Brady (both played by two-time Academy Award(R) nominee Edward Norton), in a pot deal gone bad, he leaves the world of Northeastern academia to travel back to his home state of Oklahoma. Upon arrival, he finds that reports of his brother's death are greatly exaggerated, and he's soon caught up in the dangerous and unpredictable world of drug commerce in the backwaters of the Southwest. In the process, he reconnects with his eccentric mother (Academy Award(R) winner Susan Sarandon), meets a wise and educated young woman who has bypassed academia in favor of the gentler rhythms of life (Keri Russell), and unwittingly helps his troubled brother settle a score with a pernicious drug lord (Academy Award(R) winner Richard Dreyfuss) who uses Tulsa, Oklahoma's small Jewish community for cover. Leaves of Grass follows a twisting narrative path merging crime drama, drug comedy, classical philosophy and sudden violence in pursuit of answering one of humanity's oldest questions: What does it truly mean to live a happy and constructive life? Written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson, Leaves of Grass stars Edward Norton, Keri Russell, Tim Blake Nelson, Susan Sarandon, Richard Dreyfuss, Josh Pais, Pruitt Taylor Vince and Melanie Lynskey. The film is produced by William Migliore, Tim Blake Nelson, Edward Norton, Elie Cohn, John Langley and Kristina Dubin and executive produced by Avi Lerner, Boaz Davidson, Danny Dimbort, Trevor Short, David Koplan, Stuart Blumberg and Eric Gitter. First Look Studios will release Leaves of Grass on April 2, 2010. I. FILMMAKER'S STATEMENT Prologue: A monologue or dialogue preceding the entry of the chorus, which presents the comedy or tragedy's topic. In certain respects most of the stories we encounter - in novels, in plays and in movies - are really versions of the same stories told over and over. What we try to do is to make them new and current for our own generation, as well as specific to our own experience. There is a whole history of classical comedies with identical twins like The Menaechmi by Plautus, which in turn is based on a Greek play by Menander leading on through Shakespeare who furnishes his own examples in Twelfth Night and The Comedy of Errors. In film, the twin metaphor can operate on an entirely new level because you can have a single actor inhabit two characters, and no matter how successful he is in making them different, the audience will always know it's one actor playing both roles. The notion of twins then becomes this irresistible metaphor for the strikingly different poses one can take in a single life. In our iteration, the results are unpredictable, messy, funny, violent and wildly divergent in tone, reflecting (we hope) the gorgeously incoherent mess of life itself. Try as we might to define its terms, it always surprises us, often in violent and tragic ways. In addition to having this game of twins, Leaves of Grass is peppered with classical, literary and philosophical references. Scattered throughout are allusions not just to Whitman in the title, but to the works of Shakespeare, Catullus, Plautus, Sophocles, Sappho, and many others. We quote a number of philosophers including Epicurus, Aristotle and Socrates. We want people to consider these thinkers as vital, with ideas that are directly applicable to our daily lives. As Bill says in the film's first scene, ``these people were alive, they thought these things, breathe them into life. With any luck, we have done just that. - Tim Blake Nelson II. ABOUT THE PRODUCTION Parode: In which the chorus takes up a position either for or against the hero. When conceiving the overlapping worlds of Leaves of Grass, director-screenwriter-actor Tim Blake Nelson realized he only had one actor in mind for the twin roles of Bill and Brady Kincaid. ``I knew that I wanted to give the movie to Edward while I was writing it, says Nelson. ``I was certain that he was not only the actor to pull off both roles, but also the best actor to play each role individually. At the time Edward was taking some time off, but I insisted that he read it, because I thought that this might be an exception. Luckily, he agreed. Norton was struck with the script - not just as an opportunity to craft two indelible performances - but as a project to produce through his Class 5 Films. ``When my partner Bill and I set out to produce movies, we knew we wanted to shepherd filmmakers and help their passion projects. When Tim gave me this script, it was immediately clear this guy was the only one to make this film. It was funny and smart and challenging. I get more satisfaction both as an actor and as a producer in servicing a story that really was sculpted out of someone's personal experiences. It's the best kind of filmmaking for me. And I think Tim is in his absolute dead-center target with this. ``It was one of the best scripts Edward or I had read in the last five years, says Producer William Migliore. ``My first question was 'how does he know Edward so well?' It made complete sense why Edward would be attracted to these two roles. However, as their collaboration blossomed, what struck Migliore was the writer/director's own resemblance to both Kincaid boys: ``He's a force of nature, says Migliore. ``Like Bill, he's brilliant and disciplined. At times he has an outright terrifying mind. He's also funny, impulsive, charming and winning, like Brady. Not so much dangerous, but wildly winning. It's almost impossible not to love Tim. With Nelson agreeing to co-produce the project with Class 5, he next turned to a previous fruitful partnership. ``I had been fortunate enough to work on my previous film The Grey Zone with Avi Lerner of Millennium Films. I took him the script for Leaves of Grass and, particularly in light of Edward's participation, he quickly agreed to finance the production. III. CASTING THE FILM Agôn: Two speakers debate the issue and the first speaker loses; Choral songs may occur towards the end. Assembling the cast of Leaves of Grass proved to be a relatively easy task. ``Every actor on this movie wanted to work with Edward and Tim, states Migliore. ``Even with the most minor roles, where they have one scene, they have something to do. They have a voice, a point-of-view or an opinion. It's rare in this business that a person writes a script and then the actor that they wrote it for does it. That happened a number of times on this project. As in so many classical stories - both comedy and tragedy - the root of the drama can be traced back generations, and in Leaves of Grass, that crucial parental figure is brought to vivid life by Academy-Award Winner, Susan Sarandon. "Just as I had Edward squarely in my mind's eye for Bill and Brady," says Nelson, ``I similarly always imagined Susan as I wrote the part of their mother, Daisy. In all respects, including who Susan is off the screen, her presence in the film delivers both a humor and a poignancy that I simply don't think could have been achieved by another actress. Her performance is simple, honest, and gorgeously textured." For the role of Janet, the other woman in Bill's life, Nelson knew he needed an actress capable of depth, grace and unassuming humor: ``For Janet - the character is, more than anyone in the film, living a life that is truly balanced between structure and anarchy. In Whitman's poetry, rather than applying an a priori set of rules to each poem, he allows each individual work to determine its own direction. I believe that each and every human being can do that in his or her own life - and as the embodiment of that idea, we are extraordinarily lucky that Keri Russell decided to join us and play the part. ``I've always loved 'Leaves of Grass' as a poem, says Russell. ``It's so beautiful. What I took from the way it's used in the film, is that it's Janet's way of saying 'I see you.' Bill is so wrapped up in the daily factors of his life, and while those concerns are real, Janet is capable of seeing beyond them, of seeing who he truly is. He needs to hear that. He comes home on this emotional journey where he just needs to find the core of himself and Janet is the only one who can see it. Russell is equally clear on what she hoped to bring to the role. ``In our country there is still this stigma attached to the South - that people aren't that educated or whatever - and it's completely opposite in my experience, especially with the women. The women have so much backbone. They just handle things. They're very opinionated at all different ages. Despite remaining unseen for much of the film, the role of Pug Rothbaum required an actor of suitable presence and comic malevolence to counterbalance Norton's Brady Kincaid. Given the roles' admitted basis on Shakespeare's Shylock, only an actor of Richard Dreyfuss' stature could fit the bill. ``The trick about playing a bad guy is not winking at the audience, as if to say 'it's not really me,' says Dreyfuss, ``which is what a lot of actors do. An actor's got a bag over his shoulder, metaphorically speaking. And in that bag is everyone from Hitler to Jesus. You just have to take out what you need. It's all inside you. ``I hate when actors refer to a role as a 'challenge,' Dreyfuss chuckles. ``To me acting isn't a 'challenge,' it's fun. It's like playing cops and robbers when you're a kid. If you can lose yourself in that, then it's not a 'challenge.' It's fun. I don't seek 'challenges,' I seek cops and robbers. As his cast filled with accomplished actors, this left one plumb role for Tim Blake Nelson - that of Bolger, Brady Kincaid's literal and figurative partner-in-crime: ``It's like a vacation for me to act in a movie. Directing isn't always a good time. I wanted to up the stakes this time and try to do both. I felt this was the right movie on which to do it because acting-wise, the script is kind of a love letter to the guy who was going to play the twins, and I thought it would be appropriate rhetorically for the director of the movie to play the sidekick and be there in the frame in support of him. While Nelson is quick to cede the spotlight to his accomplished star, producer Migliore is equally quick to correct him: ``Tim will always say that the movie is all about Edward's performance, but I would have to disagree with him on that. Tim has written such a compact, satisfying story, filled with great characters. It's that thing where the more specific something becomes, the more universal it is. There's something very specific in Leaves of Grass about places he's been and people he's known. Tim went to Brown. He's from Oklahoma. He's Jewish. These are worlds that he's floated in and out of. ``This whole thing is very much an expression of who Tim Nelson is, agrees Norton. ``He's dreamed up the unlikely interplay between classical philosophy and Oklahoma pot dealers. They say 'write what you know,' and knowing Tim a little bit, I felt like he had really dug down into the full spectrum of what interested him as a person. Tim is really erudite in an Ivy League sort of sense, but he's also a deep aficionado of Oklahoma backwater culture. He's got all that within him, and I think he's had a lot of fun making these worlds collide. IV. TWINS ON FILM Parabasis: After the other characters have left the stage, the chorus members remove their masks and step out of character to address the audience. ``The challenge was, both technically and artistically, to blur that line you sense in these movies, says Edward Norton on the challenge of bringing the Brothers Kincaid to life. ``To really blur the line to where you can't help but go 'there's no way those two people aren't actually interacting with each other.' ``Edward is so meticulous, and capable of such aesthetic latitude in terms of these two characters, says Nelson. ``He has taken these scenes and approached the acting work in a way that allows astonishingly spontaneous interplay between the two characters, when the very notion of spontaneity is literally impossible. He's able to create that illusion because he's so precise in his preparation. ``There's the Mark Twain line about how the best extemporaneous speeches are the ones that are most meticulously rehearsed, says Norton of his parallel acting process. ``We knew from the beginning that in doing the twins we had to go for a level of interplay that's beyond what we've seen in other films. Usually there's a tendency to crosscut between the two twins and then occasionally do shots where you see them standing and talking across a space - with little or no interaction. The art of it is to understand the way conversations flow. People overlap each other, they don't finish sentences, they cut each other off and talk over each other. They also respond to each other's physical presence in space. People bump into each other or lean on each other. So for me, the challenge was to play the scene in my head with another ``actor - how I would cut them off or over-talk them - then map that. To hear it as though it were live and real - and then manufacture it. The physical look of the two characters played a key role in setting the twins apart. For Head Hair Stylist Bonnie Clevering, Leaves of Grass presented a whole new set of challenges than her previous work on studio films like ``Ocean's Eleven, ``Any Given Sunday and ``J.F.K. ``On the big period pieces, we go through many different hairstyles. I have a big crew of stylists with lots of wigs. So it's an issue of scope rather than time. On Leaves of Grass we had days shooting both sides, where we had to rush the transition during lunch taking little more than an hour to get Edward into a whole other 'look.' ``We have beards, tattoos, eyebrow extensions - a whole gamut of things that make the two brothers different, says Makeup Department Head Randy Westgate. ``I've never worked on a show before where the lead actor played two different parts, so that in itself was very challenging, time-wise. We have to try to make it as believable as possible, in the shortest amount of time. Technically, the twins presented a different set of challenges, namely that the bulk of effects shots were daytime-exterior, with a range of natural light that varied literally from second to second. ``We shot in a season where the sun wasn't high in the sky for very long, says Director of Photography Roberto Schafer. ``The changeover from Brady to Bill took quite some time. So while that was happening you had to use a lot of controlled light to sell the illusion. When you put the two halves of the shot together, you can't have shadows going different directions or crossing frame. This process was aided by shooting with the RED camera - a lightweight digital camcorder designed to mimic the exposure latitude and texture of motion picture film. ``Reloading the camera takes twelve seconds, says Schafer, ``which is faster than any loader with any film camera. Visual Effects Supervisor Gray Marshall views his process as a deconstructive one: ``We start by putting together a list of the most critical shots. We only have six or seven scenes where the twins appear together. In each scene we chose key points - either wide master shots where you see everything or specific moments where they really needed to be seen together. From there we broke it down to twenty or so shots that would be most effective for the twins work. To the best of our ability, we storyboarded them, figured out whether the camera was going to be moving or locked down and then planned accordingly from there. However, on the day, when you get to the location, anything might have changed - like the weather or the blocking. The entire experience of making a live movie comes in. You have to come in with a plan, yet evolve with it and change on the fly and still make it work. V. SETTING THE SCENE Episodes: Primarily elaborating on the outcome of the agon. After scouting various shooting locations, the filmmakers finally decided on Shreveport, Louisiana. They were surprised to find that this single location suggested the architectural, environmental and climatic specificity of both cities featured in the film - Providence, Rhode Island and Tulsa Oklahoma. Thanks to the state's production incentive programs, Leaves of Grass found a home. For Nelson, the filming location was all about authenticity, "Effective story telling depends on attention to detail, and shooting regionally specific films in the appropriate setting is essential, says Nelson. ``For Leaves of Grass, being able to shoot in Louisiana just an hour away from the Oklahoma border meant we could nuance our film with the colors, accents, sounds and detritus of this very specific place. This occurred within the production and peripherally as well - not only did we shoot in perfect settings, we were able to spend evenings and weekends hanging out with just the sort of people the film depicts." Producer Migliore agrees with Nelson, ``Both Louisiana in general and Shreveport in particular were extremely hospitable to our production. It's a great place to shoot in. The majority of the crew and a lot of the cast are locals. It's as solid of a crew as you could find anywhere else. We initially had a number of questions about what we would find there - but we were never disappointed. As a former habitué of each of the films primary settings, Nelson had firm notions as to the separate visual vocabularies that he wanted employed in Leaves of Grass: ``Tim had a pretty clear idea of how he wanted to approach the two sections, says Director of Photography Roberto Schafer. ``For the New England section, he wanted it to be very fine-grained and cool, with almost no reds. Very composed, neat and orderly. By contrast, the Oklahoma section needed to be more grainy and colorful, more saturated, filled with red and messier frames. Not as architectural, with things creeping into frame. VI. COMEDY vs. TRAGEDY Exode: As in tragedy, but with a mood of celebration and possibly with a riotous revel, joyous marriage, or both. ``There's a lot of talk in the story about the notion of balance, says Norton. ``How hard it is to find balance between order and rationality versus chaos and spontaneity. As concerned as it is with this core philosophical conflict, Leaves of Grass is equally rooted in one of the deepest concerns of storytelling: the tenuous balance between comedy and tragedy. ``Its whole conceit is a sort of game, says Nelson. ``Sometimes that's sort of intellectual, sometimes it's sad, often it's poignant. Hopefully, on occasion it's pithy. Above all, it has to be funny. You have to feel like we're having a blast making the movie and therefore you can have a blast watching it. For Norton, the comedy of Leaves of Grass arises from the juxtaposition of character and dialogue: ``You can take a line that would look very straight on paper and if the person is six foot four and three-hundred and thirty pounds with a ZZ Top beard and a heavy, heavy accent that makes him almost unintelligible - that's a different kind of humor, explains Norton. ``That's the humor of character and accent, and there's a huge amount of that in the script: the place and the dialect and the way these people articulate themselves. Tim has a great sense of heightened style. There's always that challenge of how far off the ground is too far. How much fun can you have with characters and caricatures and archetypes and things that are a little extreme and not pull it too far away from being anchored in real emotion? It is in this ``real emotion that Leaves of Grass finds equal potential for tragedy - embodied by relationships between characters like Bill and his Mother, Daisy, played by Susan Sarandon. ``When you grow up, it's difficult to separate your memory of what your parents were for you, or did for you, or did to you, says Norton. ``As you age, you realize they were just young people who didn't really know what the hell they were doing either. They were just struggling to find their own balance, their own way. Each of the characters in this family is very contradictory. They're all very multi-layered characters with distinct flaws. I always find the most interesting parts of characters to be their contradictions rather than their consistencies. Along with the emotional conflict, the film also features a scattershot helping of physical violence. For director Nelson, this violence is an inevitable traveling companion to the film's warmth and character-based humor: ``If the movie is actually funny, then the violence is all the more surprising. We're not playing it in a cartoonish way. We're underscoring it for percussion, and in doing so, we're playing it to make the point that you can't control your life. So even when you think that life is funny or joyous or predictable, stuff can happen in a very sudden and destructive way that just upends you. That's how it's meant in the film - not gratuitously, but in a very specific rhetorical way. ABOUT THE CAST EDWARD NORTON (Bill Kincaid/Brady Kincaid, Producer) Edward Norton has acted in the films Primal Fear, Everyone Says I Love You, The People vs Larry Flynt, American History X, Rounders, Fight Club, Keeping the Faith, The Score, Death to Smoochy, Frida, Red Dragon, The 25th Hour, The Italian Job, Down in the Valley, The Kingdom of Heaven, The Illusionist, The Painted Veil, The Incredible Hulk, Pride & Glory, Leaves of Grass and Stone. He has been nominated for two Academy Awards, for Primal Fear and American History X, and won a Golden Globe along with numerous other awards for his performances. He produced and directed Keeping the Faith and also produced Down in the Valley (Cannes Film Festival selection), The Painted Veil, and the documentary By The People: The Election of Barack Obama. Norton founded and runs Class 5 Films in partnership with writer Stuart Blumberg and producer William Migliore, to develop and produce both narrative films and documentary projects. Past credits for Class 5 include the features Down in the Valley and The Painted Veil. Upcoming projects from Class 5 include adaptations of Dan O'Brien's Buffalo for the Broken Heart and Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn for which Norton is writing the screenplay. Last year saw the release of Class 5's By The People: The Election of Barack Obama, a feature length documentary film about the Presidential campaign of Barack Obama, produced by Norton, Migliore and Blumberg and directed by Amy Rice and Alicia Sams. Past documentary productions for Class 5 include: The Great Rivers Expedition, a film made by Jim Norton for the Outdoor Life Network about an historic whitewater adventure that took place in China in 2003; and Dirty Work, a film by David Sampliner that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and aired on the Sundance Channel. Class 5 also collaborated with the Sea Studios Foundation on their highly acclaimed, multi-million dollar series about earth system sciences for National Geographic, Strange Days on Planet Earth, which Norton hosted and narrated, and which premiered on PBS in April 2008. Class 5 is currently working in partnership with Brad Pitt's Plan B and National Geographic to produce an epic seven part series for HBO based on Stephen Ambrose's acclaimed book Undaunted Courage about the Lewis and Clark expedition. Norton and Brad Pitt will executive produce the series. Norton is also a committed social and environmental activist. President's Committee for the Arts and Humanities Norton was recently appointed by President Obama to his committee for the Arts and Humanities. The committee advises the President on strategies to promote the arts and humanities in America, not only for their intrinsic cultural value but as key components in the administration's education and economic development agendas. Enterprise Community Partners He serves on the Board of Trustees of Enterprise, which works to move families up and out of poverty and transform low-income communities through the development of decent affordable housing and social service networks. Enterprise works in over 250 American cities and is one of the largest non-profit developers of affordable housing in America with well over 200,000 new affordable homes created in the last two decades. Edward Co-Chaired Enterprise's successful $125 million capital campaign which he led with a personal contribution of $1.1 million. Enterprise was created by Norton's grandfather, James Rouse, the celebrated developer and philanthropist. In recent years, Enterprise has made special efforts to confront the challenge of greening affordable housing. Enterprise's Green Communities Initiative, a $500 million commitment to promoting sustainable and efficient development practice, puts the foundation in a leadership role nationwide on this issue. Norton founded the Solar Neighbors program as a pilot project within Green Communities and he recently testified on behalf of Enterprise before the Congressional Select Committee on Climate Change in their hearing to explore the central role of development and construction on greenhouse gas emissions. Solar Neighbors Program Norton conceived and negotiated a groundbreaking arrangement with BP Solar to provide solar power technology to low-income homeowners in Los Angeles and New York. Through the Solar Neighbors program, each time a celebrity or public figure buys a home solar system, BP donates a full system to a low-income family, eliminating most or all of their electricity costs for as long as they own their home. Over 25 actors, musicians, politicians and broadcasters have purchased systems for their homes and BP has donated nearly 75 systems to low-income families. The selection of the families and administration of the fund are handled by the Enterprise Foundation's Los Angeles office. Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust Norton is the President of the Board of MWCT, a community conservation organization that partners with traditional communities in East Africa to conserve key ecosystems by developing sustainable, natural resource-based economic revenues. Norton recently ran the NY Marathon with 3 young Maasai warriors from Kenya and raised $1.2 million dollars for MWCT's programs. Middle East Peacemakers Fund Another of Norton's projects is the Peacemakers Fund at Yale University. As a response to the events of September 11th and the increasing conflict in the Middle East, Norton contributed $100,000 to establish a fund that will provide travel study grants that give college undergraduates opportunities to study in the Middle East. In the interests of increasing our understanding of the people and cultures of that region, the fund provides a minimum of five grants a year while raising an endowment to expand the program. Fundraising for the fund's endowment is ongoing. Signature Theater Company Norton has been on the Board of New York's Signature Theater Company since 1994 when he made his Off-Broadway debut there. Signature is the only theater in the country that devotes an entire season each year to the work of one living American playwright. Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, Horton Foote, John Guare, Lanford Wilson are just a few of the playwrights who have spent a season in residence with Signature. In its fifteen years, Signature has been repeatedly recognized as one of the most important and outstanding new theaters in America, winning every award available to an Off-Broadway theater. In 2006, Signature's productions virtually swept the Lucille Lortel Awards for outstanding achievement in Off-Broadway theater. Friends of the High Line Norton is also one of the founding Board members of Friends of the High Line, an advocacy group working to convert an abandoned freight rail line into a unique and spectacular park. Running over two miles through Manhattan's industrial West Side, the High Line will be one of the largest additions of public space in the history of New York City. Norton has hosted FoHL's gala fundraisers for the last three years and has been a major financial supporter of the effort. In less than five years, FoHL has prevented the destruction of this major piece of historic infrastructure and secured the city, state, federal and private support necessary to redevelop the line as a park. Groundbreaking on the project took place in April 2006 and the first section of the new park will be opened in the summer of 2009. In addition to these efforts, Norton is a major financial supporter of: the Nature Conservancy's Yunnan Great Rivers conservation project, the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, the Grand Canyon Trust, and EarthJustice. The benefit premieres of his films at the historic Senator Theater in Baltimore have raised over $750,000 for a variety of Baltimore organizations and causes including the Johns Hopkins Neuro-oncology Research Lab. KERI RUSSELL (Janet) Keri Russell has starred in a number of major motion pictures, independent films and television shows. Most recently, audiences saw Keri in the Buena Vista Pictures film Bedtime Stories opposite Adam Sandler. In 2007, Keri received rave reviews for her starring role in the Fox Searchlight romantic comedy Waitress. Her other film credits include The Girl in the Park, August Rush, Mission Impossible III, The Upside of Anger, We Were Soldiers, Mad About Mambo, The Curve and Eight Days A Week. Keri first garnered attention when she starred in the title role in the hit television series Felicity. Just four months after the show's acclaimed premiere on the WB, Keri was honored with the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Drama Series. Russell's television credits include the mini-series Into the West, executive produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Simon Wincer, and the Hallmark Hall of Fame Presentation The Magic of Ordinary Days. In 2005, Keri made her stage debut in the off-Broadway production of Neil LaBute's play Fat Pig as Jeannie, a vindictive girl furious at her ex-boyfriend, played by Jeremy Piven, for having the gall to fall in love with someone who is overweight. RICHARD DREYFUSS (Pug Rothbaum) Three of Richard Dreyfuss' films are included in the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest Films. At age 29, Dreyfuss won the Academy Award for Best Actor in The Goodbye Girl. Twenty-nine years later, his role as the teacher in Mr. Holland's Opus received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor. Throughout his life, Dreyfuss has been known not only for his acting, but also for his commitment to political and social activism. He has campaigned for candidates and causes and given testimony advocating for national service before congressional committees. Together with Columbia University and the Center for Strategic an
