Making a smart entrance
April 23, 2008THE new American comedy Smart People has a cast that the director of any independent movie would covet.
Dennis Quaid appears as a wearied, widowed university lecturer and father to Vanessa (Ellen Page). He is the brother of Chuck (Thomas Haden Church) and potential squire of a doctor played by Sarah Jessica Parker.
Director Noam Murro has assembled a watchable and very marketable cast. “I’m just a lucky schmuck, you know,” he says.
He’s still pinching himself that such stars came into alignment for his first feature.
“I’m not particularly good-looking or incredibly convincing, it just sort of happened,” he says. “The actors all read something in the script that they thought was good, which I did too.
“We talked about it and we all had the same point of view about cinema and about life and how to do things and we all went out and had some fun for a few months.”
The result is a small and pleasing comedy that goes some way to restoring faith in American independent movies: an influential stream of global cinema that has slowly lost its way and impact since the 1990s.
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