Fri., Jun. 18, 2004 12:00 AM PDT
Reality programming just got better. In his elliptical, fascinating documentary, director Michael Almereyda points his intentionally unobtrusive camera at a San Francisco stage production of
Sam Shepard's
The Late Henry Moss, starring
Sean Penn, Nick Nolte,
Woody Harrelson and
Cheech Marin. Then he waits to see if backstage brouhahas unfold. For the most part, they don't, but what the audience does get to see is Shepard's idiosyncratic directing style and method actors (well, not Harrelson, who just seems amiably stoned) philosophizing about the meaning of the difficult play they're rehearsing, how they became actors and a lot of other stuff that makes at least a few moments in
Waiting for Guffman look less like fiction.
In the end,
Disaster (which refers to Shepard's father's opinion of his own life, not to the play on display) is a fractured but compelling piece of reality theater.
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