San Diego Reader April 21, 2016 67
You are invited
knit group of friends (and a couple of hand-picked interlopers) to gather at a dinner party that initially had all the makings of a crisis interven- tion. Crisis, indeed! Arbitration? Not likely. It takes about 15 minutes to figure out the “why,” but hats off to director Karyn Kusama and screen- wri ting/marriage partner Phil Hay (he shares credit with Matt Manfredi) for encouraging me to want to stick around and see just how they were going to pull it off. At any moment, this one-location shoot could have swerved in the direction of canned theater. Rely on Kusama’s telling arrangement of actors in the frame (particularly the background movements of John Carroll Lynch) to establish a character hierarchy. After that, the tension is all uphill until an unforeseen curtain shock slaps an extra coat of chills on all that’s come before. Lynch shares credit with a superb ensemble, but it’s his halcyon turn as a pitiable demon that unifies the action. In the shot or out of it, once onscreen, his presence permeates every ensuing frame. With Logan Marshall-Green and Tammy Blanchard.
T — Scott Marks
AN INVITATION TO JOIN THE JOHN CARROLL LYNCH MOB! Normally when I interview an artist, their best work is either three films up the road or four films behind them. John Carroll Lynch’s performance in the thrilling The Invitation, opening Friday at the Digital Gym, is that of a character actor at the top of their craft. Lynch is the one soul I’ve yet to
interview who’s worked with the Big Four: Scorsese, Eastwood, Albert Brooks, and Beetlejuice. This is but a snippet of our 30-minute inter- view. For more, be sure to visit The Big Screen. Scott Marks: I assume that John Lynch was taken when you first filed for a SAG card. What’s it like going through life with three names? John Carroll Lynch: I chose John Carroll Lynch as my SAG name when I was 19 years old. I was working in D.C. and I got my SAG card by doing a first aid film for the Red Cross called Bleeding Control. They had a union contract. I called 911 — that’s what my character did on a construction site.
oo long since your gut’s had a good churning? The Invita- tion was sent out for a tight-
MOVIES
One of my coworkers cut his femoral artery with a circular saw. The lead of the show was getting clean cloth and putting pressure on the wound as special effects put a pump with Karo syrup and peanut butter inside his fake femoral artery cut. While this was happening, I went offstage and waited for them to cover my call to 911. SM: Riveting! JCL: Yeah. Riveting stuff. Spoiler alert: He survives. Just in case you can’t find that particular opus.
SM: Like I’m not going to hit YouTube the second I hang up. (It’s not to be found.) JCL (Laughing): I’m sure you will. I went to choose a name, and as you surmised, there was already a John Lynch: the Irish actor who starred in Cal. They wouldn’t let me have just an initial, so I ended up with all three names. It was fine until I realized peo- ple think three L’s together looks really weird, so they end up dropping one. I’ll have it on call sheets and various contracts where they spell the Car- roll without the two L’s. Other than that, it’s been fine. It’s just a really big handle. My only caveat about it is, it’s a lot to write down. And it will certainly be challenging if I get paid ads and they have to find the right font. Especially if I ever have the good fortune of [working with] someone like Daniel Day-Lewis. I mean, we’d be in pica 10 by the time we finished. SM: Before appearing in movies, you had an extensive theatrical résumé. You didn’t make your first movie — Bleeding Control doesn’t count — until you were 30. Could you tell me a bit about your background and why it took so long for you to make the leap to the big screen? JCL: I never imagined I was going to do movies. My dreams were to be- come a regional theater actor. I got a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Catholic University of America in D.C. and started working as an un-
There’s gonna’ be a wing ding tonight: Michiel Huisman, John Carroll Lynch, and Tammy Blanchard star in The Invitation.
derstudy at the Arena. (I think I was 20 when I did that Bleeding Control movie, fyi.) I got my Equity card at 24 at the Guthrie Theatre in Minne- apolis and they asked me to join the company. I was content and happy working in the company there for a long while until I really started to feel as if I hit a bit of a glass ceiling artis- tically. So, I went to New York for a brief period of time before getting an offer I couldn’t refuse to go back to the Guthrie, to do plays that I wanted to do. That year was also the year that the State of Minnesota started a Snowbate program to entice producers to come there. That worked out quite well for me because I ended up being cast in a series of films there, one of which
was...the first one was Grumpy Old Men and then after that I did The Cure and Fargo, and then did five films in a row. Suddenly I was making a living as a film actor in Minnesota. That’s when I decided that maybe I should try movies out. With the support of my then-fiancée, I went to Los An- geles and started looking for work as an actor here.
SM: You’ve been married for going on 20 years. Kinahora, as we say in Ireland! Congratulations. That’s won- derful to hear, especially coming from someone in this business. JCL: Thank you very much. I am ex- traordinarily grateful for the partner I’ve chosen, and that she’s chosen me. SM: There’s always talk of not enough
good roles in Hollywood, yet you seem to have had the pick of them. Last month audiences saw you play a Pastor in Miracles From Heaven, and this month you take a much darker turn as Pruitt in The Invitation. How do you go about selecting a character to play? JCL: The primary way one selects
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