For Your Consideration
Character actress Marilyn Hack (O'Hara), despite having been in the entertainment industry for 30 years, is best known for playing a blind prostitute in a film from the late 1980s. Victor Allen Miller (Shearer) is also an acting veteran who is known to the public as the hot-dog wearing mascot for a kosher line of frankfurters. Together they are cast in a new low-budget film called Home for Purim as the patriarch and dying matriarch of a Southern U.S. Jewish family in the 1940s.
A newcomer ingenue, Callie Webb (Posey), plays their lesbian daughter, who has come home along with her girlfriend (Rachael Harris). Rounding out the cast is Brian Chubb (Christopher Moynihan), playing Webb's brother who has returned home from the Navy. The family reunites in time to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim.
Home for Purim's cast and crew are in the process of making what appears to be a cheap melodrama. The director (Guest) is constantly adding bizarre camera shots and acting notes. The producer (Coolidge), heiress to a diaper service, dresses flamboyantly but doesn't seem to know much about managing a film beyond paying for expenses. The two writers (Balaban and McKean) are at odds with the director, seeing their script mash together Southern genteel with out-of-place Jewish references and words.
The film-within-a-film's plot centers around the daughter's confession of her lesbianism as her mother gets nearer to death and the family celebrates an awkward Purim.
Because of an off-hand remark that turns into a full-blown rumor, Oscar buzz begins around all of the cast (with the exception of Chubb). Each begins obsessing about the award potential in his or her own way.
Hack pretends not to care while secretly pining for the award. Miller begins to demand a higher salary and push his agent (Levy) for more dignified work. Webb breaks up with Chubb (her boyfriend), claiming he is not being supportive. He is virtually left in the dark. The obnoxious entertainment news program Hollywood Now and its hosts (Willard and Lynch) fuel the awards-season buzz, even coming to the set to interview the cast.
At this point, studio executives butt in and force the writers to make script changes, feeling the film is "too Jewish." It is retitled Home for Thanksgiving. Despite the changes, the Oscar buzz intensifies to the point where Hack, Miller, and Webb are convinced they will be nominated for Academy Awards. An inept publicist, Corey Taft (Higgins), becomes very excited about the film's word of mouth, even though he only has a vague idea of what the Internet is.
They all begin to do major press appearances for the film. These are often embarrassing, both for the actors and the movie audience. Miller appears on a hip-hop teen show called Chillaxin' in youthful attire with capped teeth, a tan, and dyed blonde hair. Hack gets breast implants and extensive plastic surgery to the point where her face is comically ecstatic. Callie goes on an L.A. shock-jock radio show, only to field questions about topless scenes rather than her performance. All rise early in the morning for the televised announcement of the Oscar nominees, although Miller doesn't even own a TV.
Ultimately the only person nominated for an award is Chubb, the one person for whom there was no buzz at all. (He sleeps in on the morning of the announcement of the nominations.) Miller goes back to auditioning for food commercials and other infomercials for useless products. Webb revives her failed one-woman show, No Penis Intended. Hack (after a drunken, explosive rant on Hollywood Now) becomes an acting teacher and seems uncomfortably at peace with her mediocre career.
satire