Best in Show

Best in Show may refer to:

Christopher Guest

Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest (born February 5, 1948), better known as Christopher Guest, is an English-American screenwriter, composer, musician, director, actor, and comedian who holds dual British and American citizenship. He is most widely known in Hollywood for having written, directed and starred in a series of comedy films shot in mock-documentary (mockumentary) style. Scenes and character backgrounds are written, but actors have no rehearsal time and the ensemble improvise scenes while filming them. This series of films began with This Is Spinal Tap (directed by Rob Reiner), and continued with Waiting for Guffman, Best In Show, A Mighty Wind, and For Your Consideration. Guest also had a featured role as the evil six-fingered Count Rugen in the film The Princess Bride.

He holds a hereditary British peerage as the 5th Baron Haden-Guest, and has publicly expressed a desire to see the House of Lords reformed as a democratically elected chamber. Though he was initially active in the Lords, his career there was cut short by the House of Lords Act 1999, which removed the right of most hereditary peers to a seat in the parliament. When using his title, he is normally styled as Lord Haden-Guest. Guest is married to the actress and author Jamie Lee Curtis.

Eugene Levy

Eugene Levy, CM (born December 17, 1946) is a Canadian actor, comedian, producer, director, musician, and writer. He is the only actor to have appeared in all eight of the American Pie films, with his role as Noah Levenstein. He often plays nerdy, unconventional figures, with his humour often deriving from his excessive explanations of matters and the way in which he deals with sticky situations. Levy is a regular colloborator of actor-director Christopher Guest, appearing in five of his films, commencing with Waiting for Guffman in 1997. Levy received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award, Canada's highest honour in the performing arts, in 2008. He was appointed to the Order of Canada on June 30, 2011.

Early life

Levy was born to a Jewish family in Hamilton, Ontario. His mother was a homemaker and his father was a foreman at an automobile plant. He went to Westdale Secondary School, and attended McMaster University. He was vice-president of the McMaster Film Board, a student film group, where he met moviemaker Ivan Reitman.

Catherine O'Hara

Catherine Anne O'Hara (born March 4, 1954) is a Canadian-American actress, writer and comedienne. She is known for her comedy work on Second City Television and films such as After Hours (1985), Beetlejuice (1988), Home Alone (1990), Home Alone 2: Lost In New York (1992), and The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), and also in the mockumentary films written and directed by Christopher Guest, including Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003), and For Your Consideration (2006). In 2015, she appeared in the leading role of Moira Rose in the new CBC sitcom Schitt's Creek which has been renewed for a second season.

O'Hara won the Genie Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 1999 film The Life Before This and received an Emmy Award nomination for the 2010 television film Temple Grandin.

Early life

O'Hara was born in Toronto, Ontario, into a large family of Irish descent. She was raised Roman Catholic. She is the sixth of seven children. She attended Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute, where she first met Robin Duke, who went on to her own comedy career.

Waiting for Guffman

Waiting for Guffman is a mockumentary comedy film, co-written and directed by Christopher Guest, that was released in 1997. Its cast included Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, and Parker Posey.

The title of the film is a reference to the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot. As in the other mockumentaries created by Guest, the majority of the dialogue is improvised. Because the film is about the production of a stage musical, it contains several original musical numbers.

Plot

In the fictional small town of Blaine, Missouri, a handful of utterly delusional residents prepare to put on a community theater production led by eccentric director Corky St. Clair (Christopher Guest). The show, a musical chronicling the town's history titled Red, White and Blaine, is to be performed as part of the town's 150th anniversary celebration.

Cast in the leads are Ron and Sheila Albertson (Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard), a pair of married travel agents who are also regular amateur performers; Libby Mae Brown (Parker Posey), a perky Dairy Queen employee; Clifford Wooley (Lewis Arquette), a "long time Blaineian" and retired taxidermist who is Red, White and Blaine's narrator; Johnny Savage (Matt Keeslar), a handsome and oblivious mechanic, who Corky goes out of his way to get into the play; and Dr. Allan Pearl (Eugene Levy), a tragically square dentist determined to discover his inner entertainer. High school teacher Lloyd Miller (Bob Balaban) is the show's increasingly frustrated musical director.