Atticus Finch : King of the Corner

Last night I saw a wonderful film called King of the Corner. Paul Riegert co-wrote and directed it. And at the showing I saw he introduced the film and took questions and answers afterwards. It was the second time this summer that I saw an actor take questions after their performance. About a month ago I watched Antony Sher take questions after his grueling work portraying Primo Levi.

I believe that we can learn a lot from portrayals of people. There was a lot of good character portrayals in this film. Eric Bogosian stood out as a rabbi without a pulpit named Evelyn. He is very defensive about his name and everything else. He made the audience laugh hard. His performance prompted me to google his name and I found this quote that sounds right.

Back to film acting for a sec...Is it art? Is it making something or is it just showing up and slapping your face on celluloid? If it's the latter, I think some very bad karma can be incited. And I try to watch out for that. When I act on film, I want to be doing something, make something. Be awkward. (Oh, if we could all dance like Malkovich!)

Before seeing the film I noticed Steve Landesberg's name in the cast. When I was a kid I was a big fan of his stand up. He did these wildly imaginative routines in which he combined impersonations with outlandish situations. What if Henry Kissinger played on the Harlem Globetrotters, he wondered. He'd be sitting in the locker room after the game complaining in his accent: "Meadowlark, you don't throw me the ball!"

After watching the entire movie, I couldn't find Steve Landesberg. So I paid close attention to the credits and found that he played "the voice of Gregory Peck." I won't give away what this means, but suffice it to say that he does not appear in the film, but his Gregory Peck impersonation is heard several times.

In the question and answer session I provided a lighter question (it seemed to me like many questions were critical bordering on mean). I said that I noticed the billing for Landesberg and wondered how that came about. Peter Reigert said that he remembered that Steve did a Gregory Peck impersonation. So they called him and asked him if he'd do it. And Landesberg asked, "which Gregory Peck do you want?" And they said "Atticus Finch." And that's what it is.