Screening times:
Saturday, March 21, 8:30 PM

Christopher Guest | USA | 1996 | 84m

We fondly remember late, great Canadian actor and comedian Catherine O'Hara (1954-2026) with a select range of films screening on Saturday nights in March. We look back at O'Hara's career via an early role in Martin Scorsese's neo-noir comedy After Hours (1985), to her iconic turn in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice (1988) and a lead part in Christopher Guest's ensemble mockumentary Waiting For Guffman (1996).

O’Hara is the small town, stage-struck Sheila in this mockumentary about a community theatre production, that aptly employs the improvisational genius of its cast.

When the town of Blaine, Missouri, approaches its sesquicentennial, there's only one way to celebrate: with a musical revue called "Red, White and Blaine." Hoping the show will be his ticket back to Broadway, impresario Corky St. Clair (Christopher Guest) rounds up a cast of enthusiastic but untalented locals (Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Catherine O'Hara) to perform his masterwork. But, when Corky reveals that theater agent Mort Guffman will attend the opening, things really kick into high gear.

This riotously deadpan mockumentary about aspiring community theater performers never stoops to ridicule oft-ridiculous characters.

"The movie doesn’t bludgeon us with gags. It proceeds with a certain comic relentlessness from setup to payoff, and its deliberation is part of the fun." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (1999)

"The songs (co-written by Guest and Tapster Harry Shearer) are suitably ridiculous and the deadpan gags come thick, fast and too numerous to mention, all delivered with knuckle-gnawing subtlety." - Neil Jeffries, Empire Magazine (2008)

Tickets $12 ($11.40 at the door if available)