Waiting For Guffman at The Gothic Theatre

Waiting For Guffman

Corky St. Clair: Christopher Guest
Dr. Allan Pearl: Eugene Levy
Ron Albertson: Fred Willard
Sheila Albertson: Catherine O’Hara
Libby Mae Brown: Parker Posey

Directed by Christopher Guest. Written by Guest and Eugene Levy. Running time: 84 minutes. Rated R (brief strong language).

By Roger Ebert

Blaine, Mo., was founded, we are told, 150 years ago, by settlers who were trekking to the West Coast and stopped when their leader ’’smelled the salt air.’’ Its place in history has been assured by two events: A wooden stool made in Blaine, presented to President Grover Cleveland, led to the city becoming ’’stool capital of America.’’ And in 1946, a flying saucer landed nearby. Within the resulting crater, it was ’’always 67 degrees with a 40 percent chance of rain.’’ Local residents were invited aboard for a potluck supper, and one of them still has no feeling in his buttocks.

Obviously, such events cry out for dramatic treatment, and for its 150th anniversary, Blaine obtains the services of Corky St. Clair (Christopher Guest), a ’’relocated’’ Broadway wanna-be who will stage an amateur theatrical pageant. Corky’s credits include ’’Backdraft,’’ an improbable musical based on the Hollywood film. He allegedly has a wife named Bunny, who has never been seen, though he buys all of her clothing and knows a great deal about depilatories. Such is the setup for ’’Waiting for Guffman,’’ directed and co-written by Guest, who also was the co-writer for ’’This Is Spinal Tap,’’ the very funny 1984 mock-documentary about a failing rock group. ’’Guffman’’ is not as insistently funny, perhaps because it has a sneaking fondness for its characters (’’Spinal Tap’’ ridiculed its heroes with true zeal). In a sequence which, I gather, was improvised by the actors themselves, a group of locals audition for Corky and the local high-school music teacher (Bob Balaban), and we see an extremely literal interpretation of ’’Teacher’s Pet’’ by a local fast-food worker (Parker Posey).

Others in the audition include travel agents (Fred Willard and Catherine O’Hara), who have never been out of town but have travelers’ imaginations. The pair, known as ’’the Lunts of Blaine,’’ perform ’’Midnight at the Oasis.’’ And there is the local dentist (Eugene Levy), who sings a vaudevillian medley for his audition.

The movie doesn’t bludgeon us with gags. It proceeds with a certain comic relentlessness from setup to payoff, and its deliberation is part of the fun (as when it takes its time explaining the exact nature of the travel agent’s plastic surgery). Some of the better laughs are deadpan, as when the travel agent and his wife take the dentist and his wife to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. It has a neon sign two stories high that announces ’’CHOP SUEY’’; the dentist asks, ’’How did you find this place?’‘