VIDEO: Contender Q&A with 'The Visitor' star Richard Jenkins

                        

Horace Greeley famously wrote, "Go West, young man," and before long I'll be heeding his advice and heading to Los Angeles for the final leg of this year's Oscar race. In the meantime, though, I'm still on the East Coast, surveying the awards landscape for The Envelope from New York to Boston — yes, contrary to popular opinion, the Oscar wars are waged out here too.

Not long ago, it occurred to me that one neat contribution that I could make from here would be to start up an East Coast edition of The Envelope's hallmark "Screening Series" that my colleagues have so capably run for years on the West Coast. Now, thanks in large part to a wonderful partnership with Brandeis University (and especially professor Alice Kelikian), that hope has become a reality.

We debuted our new model on Nov. 3 at Brandeis in the Edie and Lew Wasserman Cinematheque, the largest movie theater on a college campus north of New York City, where a 35-millimeter screening of Overture Films' "The Visitor" (trailer) was followed by a Q&A with its star, Richard Jenkins. As you can see for yourself in the video of the discussion, those in attendance (a mix of undergraduate students, aspiring filmmakers, movie buffs, and SAG and Academy members, as well as your humble moderator) could not have asked for a more gracious or fascinating first guest.

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Richard Jenkins is not a name that every moviegoer knows, but his face should be instantly recognizable because he's appeared as a character actor in many of the most critically and commercially successful films of the last three decades. Chances are you've seen him in "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986), "The Witches of Eastwick" (1987), "There's Something About Mary" (1998), "Me, Myself, & Irene" (2000), "North Country" (2005), or some of the other 50-plus films in which he has appeared.

This year, Jenkins portrayed the father of John C. Reilly and stepfather of Will Ferrell in the hilarious comedy "Step Brothers," in which his comedic talents so impressed Ferrell and writer-director Adam McKay that they asked him to appear on their website Funny or Die in a self-parodying series called "Hollywood Tales with Richard Jenkins" (see here, here, and here).

He also portrayed a gymnasium manager whose employees include a couple of whackjobs played by Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand in the Coen brothers film "Burn After Reading."

But the 2008 movie for which Jenkins will be most remembered is writer-director Tom McCarthy's "The Visitor," in which, at the age of 60 and after decades of playing small roles, he was offered his first opportunity to star in a film of his own. What makes Jenkins one of the big film stories of 2008, and what makes him a serious contender for the 2008 Academy Award for best actor, is the fact that he knocked it out of the park.

As this video will reveal, Jenkins is an actor's actor — he's has worked with everybody and seen it all ... he's just as happy playing character roles as starring roles ... and he's honest enough to admit that the biggest difference between most successful actors and most unsuccessful actors is simply luck. His blend of battle-tested wisdom and self-deprecating humor had the audience enraptured — and, before long, his performance could well have the same effect on members of the Screen Actors Guild and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Enjoy.

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Special thanks: Joe Smithey (Overture Pictures), Chris Kanarick (ID-PR)