The Amateurs

I completely missed The Amateurs¹ on its UK release. This review suggests I’m going to have to track it down on DVD some day:

[The revelation...] to me was William Fichtner as Otis the church janitor who owes his lowly and desperate station in life to his being the most relentlessly, brutally, and compulsively honest man in town.  He knows what’s right and what’s wrong with everyone, and he can’t help telling them.  But the person he’s most honest about is himself, making the case that one of the key qualities of a successful person is a large capacity for self-delusion.  When Otis asks for a job on the movie he’s careful not to request anything that would require real talent or skill because he knows he doesn’t have any of either.  “Is there a guy on a movie,” he asks Andy, “whose job is to just stand around?”

He’s made executive-producer.

Fichtner handles Otis’s merciless truth-telling with a mixture of anger and self-loathing that is somehow charming and admirable and necessary because it both keeps his friends grounded in reality when they are about to float away on the balloons of their dreams and keeps them going when after crashing to earth they are tempted by despair into giving up.

Beyond that there’s not much to The Amateurs.  It’s a slight, if pleasant, film, and I only recommend it to die-hard fans of Jeff Bridges, great ensemble work, the Northern Exposure School of Film and Television making – ensemble dramadies set in impossibly crotchety and eccentric small towns – Glenne Headly’s spectacular cleavage, and the idea of Judy Greer getting her thong spanked by another woman.

1. Also known as The Moguls. ^