10 Movies Starring Wallace Shawn

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Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, apparently playing themselves, share their lives over the course of an evening meal at a restaurant. Gregory, a theater director from New York, is the more talkative of the pair. He relates to Shawn his tales of dropping out, traveling around the world, and experiencing the variety of ways people live, such as a monk who could balance his entire weight on his fingertips. Shawn listens avidly, but questions the value of Gregory's seeming abandonment of the pragmatic aspects of life.

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Garvey is a San Francisco pawnshop operator. His unemployed and criminal friends Dillard, Turtle, and Weslake, team up with Boardwalk, a local pimp, to burgle Garvey's shop while the owner is out of town. During the elaborate planning process, Dillard falls for a Hispanic woman, the sister of a friend. Also, Boardwalk is assigned to case a local apartment, where he meets and falls for the maid. Amidst all these romantic hijinks, Weslake puts together a burglary plan, which is executed by the makeshift gang.

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This film is the story of the spectacular life and violent death of British playwright Joe Orton. In his teens, Orton is befriended by the older, more reserved Kenneth Halliwell, and while the two begin a relationship, it's fairly obvious that it's not all about sex. Orton loves the dangers of bath-houses and liaisons in public restrooms; Halliwell, not as charming or attractive as Orton, doesn't fare so well in those environs. While both long to become writers, it is Orton who achieves fame - his plays "Entertaining Mr. Sloane" and "Loot" become huge hits in London of the sixties, and he's even commissioned to write a screenplay for the Beatles. But Orton's success takes him farther from Halliwell, whose response ended both his life and the life of the up-and-coming playwright.

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Nick Hart is a struggling American artist who lives amongst the expatriate community in 1920s Paris. He spends most of his time drinking and socializing in local cafès and pestering gallery owner Libby Valentin to sell his paintings. He becomes involved in a plot by wealthy art patroness Nathalie de Ville to forge three paintings. This leads to several run-ins with American rubber magnate Bertram Stone, who happens to be married to Hart's ex-wife Rachel.

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Doug Simpson lives alone with his two daughters Katie and Bonnie. Katie has just turned 15 and when Doug is out of town on a business trip she gets herself a treatment at a beauty parlor. She removes her braces and her thick glasses. Without those, she is a beautiful young woman and the boys line up outside the front door to date her. But Doug won't accept that his *girl* is seeing *men*...

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Tom Noonan's dark comedy features a husband-and-wife team of psychotherapists who run a New-Age therapy group out in the wilderness. Late one night, Jack and Rita are visited by one of their patients, Cosmo, and his wife, Arlie. Cosmo's wife has felt "left out," since her husband spends so much time with the therapists and confides all of their secrets to them. Arlie has insisted on meeting them--the evening begins awkwardly, then painfully grinds on, as various tensions and power struggles emerge between and among the two couples.

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Harold is a tour bus driver. While visiting a good friend in a trendy Hollywood cafe, Harold spots his favorite actress, Amanda Clark. She is with her agent Sidney Stone who is repeatedly getting up to make phone calls. When Harold sees Amanda sitting alone, he decides to introduce himself. Instructed not to mention his profession to her, Harold doesn't correct Amanda when she mistakingly assumes he is a writer. When she asks who his agent is, Harold innocently throws out the name of super-agent Arthur Blake. Amanda is impressed and charmed, and to Harold's amazement she proposes a date to discuss her next movie with him. As their relationship grows, so must Harold's charade to keep Amanda from discovering he is a Beverly Hills tour guide and not a hot-shot writer. He promises Amanda a script rewrite and convinces Arthur Blake to represent him. Harold's father is not so easily swayed, and tells Harold to snap out of it, "We show people movie star's homes, we do not date them!" With a rewrite deadline looming, an actress swooning, and his whole world rocking, Harold must choose what to write as well as do what is right.

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Filmmaker Richard P. Rogers tried for twenty years to make a documentary about his own life. He died in 2001, leaving the project unfinished, until his widow, acclaimed photographer Susan Meiselas, commissioned his former student Alexander Olch to make a film out of the pieces. Starting in the Hamptons, in the town of Wainscott, the film weaves Rogers' footage into a journey through childhood memories, a less than encouraging mother, a family background of privilege, and Rogers' persistent, dogged attempts to document his own life. Rogers' friend, actor and writer Wallace Shawn, joins in the process, as the film investigates the differences between documentary and fiction, and tells the tragic story of Rogers' life.

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Simon is a timid man, scratching out an isolated existence in an indifferent world. He is overlooked at work, scorned by his mother, and ignored by the woman of his dreams. He feels powerless to change any of these things. The arrival of a new co-worker, James, serves to upset the balance. James is both Simons exact physical double and his opposite - confident, charismatic and good with women. To Simons horror, James slowly starts taking over his life.

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A successful, ego-maniacal architect who has spent a lifetime bullying his wife, employees and mistresses wants to make peace as his life approaches its final act.