To hear Parker Posey tell it, the way she eventually became part of Christopher Guest’s preferred cast gang for more than 20 years is a pretty typical story of Hollywood celebrity connections.
Posey played a very small role in the 1993 Saturday Night Live spinoff The Coneheads, but he did enough to impress producer Lorne Michaels – so much so that SNL head honcho at Guest and his producer Karen Michaels were looking for someone who could improvise at age 18. Posey traveled from New York to Los Angeles to audition for a recurring role on the sitcom Murphy Brown, but she didn’t land – but on the trip, she met Guest, who quickly cast her in the 1997 comedy Waiting for Gaffman.
However, Guffman, which opened in theaters 25 years ago Monday, was by no means a typical Hollywood project. The film, about a Missouri community theater group preparing a stage play for the 150th anniversary of their town’s founding, introduced the world to a new subgenre: the “Christopher Guest movie,” a completely improvised comedy in which a group of eccentrics collide over their leftist passions.
Posey told Yahoo Entertainment in a 2016 character recap interview, “There’s such a high level of commitment to Chris Guest’s films that you can really live in your own language because it’s all improvised.” (See above, Goofman from 2 :33).
In addition to Spinal Tap alum Guest as troupe leader Corky St. Clair and Posey as spunky Dairy Queen worker-born local actress Libby Mae Brown, Guffman also appeared as Fred Willard, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Lewis Arquette, Matt Kislar and Bob Balaban.
Posey immediately fell in love with Guest’s production process and the collective of characters created by the cast, so much so that she found herself severely affected by the time she ended the film.
“I was devastated on the last day,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m never going to see these people again. I’m never going to see Corky again.’ I was sobbing in the van …… and then Chris held my hand.”
While it’s true that we won’t see most of these characters again, she is regularly reunited with many of the same actors who played them in Guest’s four follow-ups: Best in Show (2000), Mighty Wind (2003) , For Your Information (2006) and Mascot (2016).
She was wrong and never saw Corky again. The guest made him a cameo in Mascot.
