TV's "Prairie Bitch" on Her Costars, Being Hated, and the Horror of Incest

Chatting with Alison Arngrim, eavesdropping on Jennifer Coolidge

Comments (0) By Michael Musto Tuesday, Jul 27 2010

...continued from page 1

The double-brush crowd might squirm over the premise of Dinner for Schmucks, the movie that left me wondering why I've gotten so many dinner invitations lately. But it's a scream, from the dead lobster bit to the lost clitoris remarks and the face-licking scene. "Fine, I'll be your schmuck," director Jay Roach cracked to me at the premiere bash, agreeing to be interviewed. "Could the lead actors have switched roles?" I wondered, knowing they easily could have. "Yes," said Roach. "They're a great team—like Matthau and Lemmon. I want to do a political movie with them. Paul Rudd would make a great candidate, and Steve Carell could be a great anxious campaign manager." Or vice versa.

Totally invited but not a schmuck, reality star Ronnie Kroell popped up, fresh off his Playgirl spread. Did he suffer any self-consciousness about the nudity of it all? "No!" Kroell swore. "On Make Me a Supermodel, they made me do that every week." Hmm, I'm going to have to start watching more cable.

Arngrim: Far from the prairie

Details

ALSO
La Daily Musto
Michael's got his own blog!

More About

This week's theater trend involved dark Off-Broadway comedies about parties gone awry, like Viagara Falls, in which two old men got down with a gerontophile hooker while my penis retracted into my body and came out past my hemorrhoids.

Far more ambitious is Bachelorette (a/k/a Klonopin Falls), in which a bride-to-be's three girlfriends share coke, champagne, and colorful attempts at destruction. By the end, the surfacey banter became so strangely compelling that I was desperate to grab for the anti-anxiety pills the bride had thrown onto the stage.

A bride at Viagara—I mean Niagara—Falls is one of the characters looking for connections at various American landmarks in See Rock City & Other Destinations, an environmentally staged musical that has the audience seated on the first folding chairs they can grab. Several of the scenarios are missable, but the rest had me willing to keep traveling with these people—though next time, a set, an intermission, and a real seat wouldn't be horrifying.

And finally, my own landmark site the next day was the James Beard Foundation's "Chefs & Champagne" event at the Wölffer Vineyard in Sagaponack, a one-horse town that suddenly became host to a pig named Michael. After three hours of food-station-hopping with honoree Martha Stewart, I moved to the adjacent tent for an after-party filled with ravioli and cannoli. If I wore a tight T-shirt right now, you'd be yelling, "Get a load of those jugs!"

musto@villagevoice.com