The Pallbearer, a dark comedy by first-time director Matt Reeves that opened 3 May in the US, is the production which - by luck rather than design - launches the film career of David Schwimmer.
The actor's other big-screen outings, which include Wolf, Crossing the Bridge and Twenty Bucks, were disappointing, but he hit the big time on the small screen playing Ross, the hopeless romantic in NBC's hit comedy series Friends.
Somewhat unusually, Schwimmer entered into a deal with Miramax Films last November that commits the young star to act in upcoming Miramax productions running alongside his shooting commitments on Friends. The agreement also offers him the opportunity to make his directorial debut with an as-yet-untitled ensemble comedy in which he will also take the lead.
"The Friends phenomenon hadn't even started when we were casting," explains Reeves about their leading man. "David came in at the end of a very long day of auditions and all these people had prep-ped me, saying: 'This is the character.' But everyone had said that about someone else, and I thought: Yeah, OK, we'll see. And then he came in - and for the first time, we saw the character come to life."
Schwimmer also took a risk in going with a first-time director, but he says he was attracted by the freshness of the screenplay and the strength of his character: "I read the script and I thought: I have to play this part. Tom Thompson is a very rich character who finds himself at that awkward time of life when every move he makes seems to seal his fate for ever."
In The Pallbearer, Schwimmer plays a young man who, just out of college, can't find a job, a girlfriend or a way out of his mother's house in Brooklyn. Still surrounded by loyal friends from his youth, his heart leaps when he is reunited with his high-school crush Julie DeMarco (Gwyneth Paltrow).
Yet, just when his luck seems to be changing, he receives a mysterious call from a woman, played by Barbara Hershey (a two-time back-to-back winner of the Best Actress prize in Cannes with Shy People in 1987 and A World Apart in 1988). She asks him to be a pallbearer at the funeral of an old classmate, and Thompson obliges. There is only one problem: he can't remember who the classmate is.
Thus, the funeral marks the start of a series of errors and cases of mistaken identity that sends Thompson's life and world spinning back into uncertainty.
Christopher Pickard
Prod Co: Abrams/Katims/Webster
Prod: Jeffrey Abrams & Paul Webster
Dir: Matt Reeves
Scr: Jason Katims, Matt Reeves
Ph: Robert Elswit
Art dir: Stephen Alesch
Prod des: Robin Standefer
Cos: Donna Zakowska
Mus: Stewart Copeland
Ed: Stan Salfas
Cast: David Schwimmer, Gwyneth Paltrow, Barbra Hershey
Running time: 97mins
International sales: Miramax
