Updated 05-May-2020.
Mondo shtuff from around the internet, all about LIZA WEIL!
I was 19, hadn’t graduated high school, was living in a tiny studio on Wilshire Boulevard in L.A. Movies were my social life, my church, my meditation, and my hiding place — all at once. Gregory Corso has a poem about how sometimes you just need to go to the movies, you can’t explain it to nobody, you just gotta go or things might explode. That was me, all the time.
The late ’90s, the height of my moviegoing fever, was a beautiful time for American independent film. Movies like High Art, Lawn Dogs, The Whole Wide World. They were modest movies that felt huge. And Susan Skoog’s Whatever was one of them.
I never knew what people meant when they said they saw a performance and felt like they knew that actor/that character/that person until I saw Liza Weil as Anna Stockard. The familiarity was like a balm. Here was someone as uncomfortable as I was. As unsure. But unlike, say, James Dean or Claire Danes, I believed it. I didn’t feel like I was being put on by a performance. I couldn’t see any performance. It was like a documentary. Looking back on it now, it’s a credit to Susan Skoog and Liza Weil that it felt like that. But at the time — I remember thinking — this actor is not lying. That’s all that mattered. This actor is not lying to me. She’s not pretending to be anything she’s not.
Weil as Anna Stockard is standing there or sitting there in the room. Or lying down there in the room. But she’s also not there. Two big, curious eyes looking out from somewhere faraway. Wondering if she’s safe enough to be in her body. When I think about the movie, I see those two eyes.
A few years later I was making my first movie. A tiny high school indie. It was my attempt to depict and also dignify those teen years. And I tried like heck to get Liza Weil in the movie. And we met, and she was game to do the movie, but the TV show she was on wouldn’t cut us any slack with schedule stuff.
Some years went by, and whenever I got a movie together, I’d always offer her whatever roll I could. And she’d always say yes. Even though the parts were small and not that well developed at all. Even though she was busy, a successful television actress. And then a wife and mama too. But whenever I’d write a script, I’d always think of her. And I always knew she’d be there if it was at all possible for her to be.
There are lots of actors who can do accents. Or cry well. Or even bring electric charisma. But an honest actor is something else. Actors like Jeff Bridges, Martin Balsam, Patricia Neal, Takashi Shimura, and Frederic Forrest (who was also in Whatever.) These actors give something much more open and generous and quiet than a star on fire. Liza Weil is one of them.
Anyways, we recently decided to make a movie together for around $3,000, Liza and me. And we’re about half way thru the shoot as I write this. It’s mostly been the two of us, the sound fellow, Chris Thueson, and the DP, Robbie Renfrow. We’re shooting on the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. No crew. Guest actors like Brendan Sexton working for free till 5:00 AM on the street. The movie may turn out ok, or maybe not. But as we make it with no producers around, no contracts, no agents or managers involved, I’ve been reminded of why movies were so important to me back when I was a teenager. It wasn’t the cool camera move, or the heartbeat crush sugar rush romance moment, or the suave magnetic matinee idol glances, or the dolly, or the pop track, or the cigarette flame, or the eyeliner. I guess really what I was looking for, all alone in the dark, far from home, was that rarest of rare things — a friend.
My botty best at summarizing from Wikipedia: Liza Rebecca Weil (born June 5, 1977) is an american actress . she was raised in, and continues to practice, Reform Judaism . her parents, Lisa and Marc, toured Europe with their comedy troupe weil was a self-avowed average student in high school who focused more on her budding acting career than her studies . a 1995 graduate of north pen high school, she graduated in the summer rather than the regular term alumna of u.s. college, weil received first major feature film role co-starring with Kevin Bacon in Stir of Echoes . before that role, she was the star of the 1998 independent film weil has starred in several short and feature-length independent films . she has also appeared in a number of behind-the-camera projects . weil also voiced a public service announcement in support of a in 2009, weil returned to her roots as a regular guest star in various television series . in 2010, she began a run as Dr. Glass on the popular internet series Anyone but me . she is the aunt of child actress Scarlett Estevez, who plays Trixie Espinoza on the Fox/Netflix series Lucifer . Weil married actor Paul Adelstein in a Reform Jewish ceremony in November 2006 Weil filed for divorce from Adelstein in March 2016, citing irreconcilable differences. The divorce was finalized in November 2017. Weil then dated Murder co-star Charlie Weber from mid-2016 to February 2019.