Off Camera with Sam Jones

If you've always thought of Hollywood as a competitive, jealousy-ridden place where success is watched, compared and envied, Mike White is not here to disillusion you. And his latest film suggests the world inside your own head might not be so different. Few writers understand our inner dialogs better, and that can be embarrassing. Not to mention touching, depressing and yes, funny. We talk to one of the business's most talented screenwriters (and directors, and actors) about why he feels more alive the further he gets from it, and his uncool struggle with the siren call of ambition. But if the result is work like Chuck & Buck, School of Rock, Year of the Dog, Enlightened, Beatriz at Dinner, and Brads Status, can ambition be so bad? Throughout his career, White has worked to create an alternate kind of story and protagonist. It makes me feel like I'm not completely crazy. Us, too. Thanks, Mike.

Hi Folks! Well, summer is almost over. Kids are shuffling back to school, the sun is setting a bit earlier, and over here at the Off Camera studios, we are hard at work on our fall season. To kick things off, we proudly present our second annual Call In Podcast, chock full of conversations with listeners like you, as we touch on a multitude of creative and show related topics.That podcast is available right now, right here. Opening up the phone lines is a lot of fun for us over here, and we were flattered by all of the calls and emails we received. I was particularly struck by the stories of our listeners forging their own creative identities through struggle and risk, and honored that Off Camera is a part of their journeys. We are fortunate to have so many thoughtful, curious listeners, and I hope you enjoy hearing their questions, critiques, and creative conundrums as much as I did. I also want to apologize to anyone who I didnt get to talk to. I am overwhelmed by the support and loyalty of the Off Camera listeners, and I feel lucky to be a part of this community. Thanks to everyone who called in and reinforced something we really believe here at Off Camera Headquarters nothing beats a great conversation. Our regularly scheduled programming starts next week with a lineup that I am very excited to share with you all. Enjoy the waning days of summer, and I will see you. Off Camera! Thanks, Sam

Get ready all you eager artists. On Aug 18th starting at 10AM (PST) Off Camera is opening up the phone lines to take questions from YOU, the listeners. So call in and talk to Sam about whatever's on your mind!

It's ironic Holly Hunter won an Oscar for The Piano, in which she did her own playing. If she'd had the chops she wanted, we'd never have seen her in that movie, Raising Arizona, Broadcast News or so many others that made us swear she was born to act. Fortunately, she found acting almost as sacred and transportive as music, her original dream. Working with a string of the best directors in the business right out of the gate helped - and led to some later-career disillusionment. But Hunter's not as ambitious for her career as she is for her characters and what they can tell us about each other. An actor's actor talks about empathy, and how she makes us feel things we never see on screen in The Big Sick and Strange Weather. She also shares what it's like having Bill Hurt call bullshit on you, and why she will not be having the stuffed crab, thank you.

The woman huffing in impotent rage in a frozen Marshalls' checkout line with an armful of bras. The jubilant loudmouth barely able to articulate the awesomeness of a Monster! Truck! Rally! The lady blithely terrorizing passengers with her wheelie as she pushes up to the boarding gate. Nobody wants to be these people. Except Lauren Lapkus. She loves them. She wants to inhabit them. If it means being odd or ugly, it's also license to say and do anything she wants without repercussion. Oh, to be free of self-awareness and filters, if only for a few exhilarating moments. Oh, to be Lapkus, one of the best improvisers and sketch comics in the business. Just don't look too hard at the fine print about exposing yourself on stage without a script, props or any idea what's going to happen. Despite the thousands of people jumping into improv these days, she says - and proves - it's not for amateurs.

We all have one or two turning points in life, but Michaela Watkins' life seems like an endless string of them. There was the classical music camp that unleashed her inner comic. The spontaneous road trip that became five years of regional theater. There was the backstage decision that doing Shakespeare actually kinda sucked. And then the double epiphany: she should be on a TV show in Los Angeles and join The Groundlings. Getting cast on Saturday Night Live and then inexplicably dropped after one season was not a turning point she'd anticipated. It was never even in the plan. So, she found herself at yet another: Wallow, or move on? Well, the suspense isn't killing anyone who's been watching TV for the last 10 years, but watching one of the most gifted supporting actresses around finally show what she can do with a lead role is one of the best endings we can think of.

What makes a kid cry on her birthday? The occasional cake-induced stomachache or bouncy-house bruise, sure. For Zoe Kazan, it was a sense of what she was leaving farther behind, and she cried every year. A direct and unselfconscious view of our imagination and its creative expression gets harder and harder to find in the rearview mirror unless you cultivate and protect it. Kazan tries hard to do just that through work that she loves, in a business she often doesn't. Acting is a joyful challenge (just watch Olive Kitteridge and The Big Sick); writing, especially stage plays, is a painful one. Both expose her voice and ideas - her soul - for all of us to judge. If you believe the only true art is personal, you must decide if you'll risk your ego to make it. If the answer's yes, you're in the right place. It's a thrilling, terrifying place, and Kazan rather likes the neighborhood.

Struggle is just how Zoe Lister-Jones rolls. She watched her parents struggle to make a living from their art, and tussled with her own decision to pursue acting versus stability. She struggled to break into film, finally deciding that instead of fighting the system, she'd create one, co-writing and acting in her own projects. The biggest yet is Band Aid, which just happened to help women battling for a place on a film crew. It's a comedy about artistic and personal failure, and our struggle to understand each other as men and women. In exposing her own insecurities - Do other people have it more figured out? A better relationship? - she reminds us that if we're far from perfect, we're about as far from it as everyone else. Lister-Jones will continue to struggle for her art, but she's learned it doesn't have to be so hard - it's about your mindset, not your circumstances.

When you don't know who you are or what you want to do, and you have no real intention of doing what your family wants you to do, and then you decide you have to do something you have no idea you can do, what should you do? First, avoid thinking about it. Lie to your loved ones a little. Then, write a movie about it. So far, so good. But how do you know if your life is entertaining enough to be a movie? If Judd Apatow tells you it is, that's a start. Standup-turned-leading man Kumail Nanjiani puts a face on immigration, religion, racism, family and ultimately, growing up in The Big Sick. Coming to the U.S. from Karachi, he found a career and a woman he loved, then nearly lost her to a mysterious illness and his own uncertainty. It's an uncommon story he's somehow made completely relatable. In the process, he's given us one more reason to embrace our differences: They're funny.

With a slew of acclaimed films and several TV series in the last two years alone, it seems Hollywood's come gunning for Sam Elliott. Fair enough; four decades ago, Elliott came gunning for Hollywood. But not for stardom or money. "It wasn't about anything but making film, and I knew the kind I wanted to make." He admired Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne - and the dudes who wrangled their horses. Guys who stood for simple, honest acting; guys we didn't want to watch being anyone but themselves. That less-is-more approach linked Elliott indelibly with Westerns and inscrutable tough guys for most of his career, but is now proving just as mesmerizing in a surprising range of new roles. When Elliott talks about his (very) storied career, he mentions luck more than talent, but adds that good luck is usually the residual of hard work. Well raise a Coors to that.