Guest blogger Chris Kaltenbach here:
Baltimore's own John Rothman (left, in United 93), whose film resume includes small, but memorable, roles in such movies as Reservation Road, The Devil Wears Prada, Pollock, Gettysburg and Woody Allen's Zelig, plans to spend much of this weekend at the festival, both as fan and active participant.
At 4 p.m. Friday, he'll be on-hand for the Dark Comedy Shorts program as the star of "New Media," a 19-minute effort from director J.J. Adler that, when he first read the script, impressed him so much that he almost opted out of starring in it.
"I said, 'I love this script, it's so great, but I'm too vain to do it,'" Rothman remembers with a laugh. "This (character) is a total impostor, a very interesting impostor. It pushes all kinds of buttons."
Fortunately, Rothman said, he re-considered.
The shoot took 10 days -- a lot of time for a short film. Director Adler, he said, was making the film as her senior thesis for the Columbia Film School -- even though she'd been out of school for eight years. Adler's day job is main director and post-production supervisor of The Onion News Network -- which should give you some idea what to expect from "New Media."
"It's very sad and very sweet," Rothman said, "very dark in its way."
Later Friday, Rothman will be on hand for the 7 p.m. screening of Paul Greengrass's United 93, this year's festival pick from John Waters. Rothman stars in the film as Edward Felt, who dialed 911 on his cell phone while locked in the bathroom during the plane's fatal flight on Sept. 11, 2001.
Making United 93 "was an amazing process," Rothman said, "unlike any movie I have ever been in. The entire script was improvised during rehearsal. "The day you got there, you got a big notebook with the 911 Comission report and all kinds of personal information about your character, what he did on that day, his last contact...We, together, tried to make sense of what happened, where the terrorists were sitting, what happened once they took over the plane."
Rothman will be joining Waters for the post-film discussion.