Aisle Seat

Reynolds Rap
Rick Reynolds hits town this week with All Grown Up and No Place to Go, a chronicle of the trials of adulthood (marriage and parenting, for example). It's his first time back to the boards since he performed Only the Truth Is Funny, a megasuccess that ran here as well as in L.A. and New York. So what's he been up to in between? Writing, writing, writing. He landed several film-scripting gigs, including one for a flick called Tucson (Columbia Pictures), which he co-wrote with Dana Carvey, who also stars. And he wrote a play, The Boy in the Basement, which was optioned by Outlaw Pictures (Don Juan De Marco; sex, lies, & videotape). His latest screenplay, Could This Be Magic, is being readied for Steven Spielberg's Amblin Productions at 20th Century Fox. Reynolds' producers for All Grown Up and No Place to Go are Kevin Pollak (actor/comedian who appeared as Tom Cruise's co-attorney in A Few Good Men) and Pollak's partner, Lucy Webb, who together comprise Calm Down Productions. Pollak is fresh off shooting The Usual Suspects, to be released in August. It had good buzz at Sundance -- and sources say that the movie's leading man, Gabriel Byrne, will attend opening night.

Would-Be Wackos
Marin Theatre Company artistic director Lee Sankowich held auditions last week for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, to go up this fall, and 250 wannabe loons showed up to try out for roles -- including a few folks who had played in the original New York and San Francisco productions 25 years ago. Hope they know what they're in for -- Sankowich's modus operandi is to take the cast on a field trip to a mental ward, and he's had the misfortune of getting accidentally locked in to one on occasion. It's a tried-and-true technique, however: Sankowich's long-ago S.F. production of Dale Wasserman's stage adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel ran for five years and caught the attention of Kirk Douglas, who'd purchased rights to the book but had bungled a production on Broadway (gotta give the guy a break, though -- it opened the night after President Kennedy was shot). After seeing Sankowich's S.F. production, Kesey sent Douglas a telegram: "Get off your Hollywood ass and come to San Francisco to see how it should be done." So Douglas did, and that's how Sankowich ended up directing the second New York production, which ran for two-and-a-half years. Eventually, Douglas gave the rights to sonny-boy Michael, who produced the screen version with Jack Nicholson.

By Laura Jamison