After securing the 2013 Sundance Film Festival’s Screenwriting award, a slot on the National Board of Review’s top ten list of indie films, and the vocal support of critical heavy hitters like A.O. Scott, Lake Bell’s pitch-perfectly precise comedy In A World… announced itself as one of the more confident debut features in recent memory, let alone from an actor-turned- director/writer. If you haven’t seen this film about voiceover artists in Los Angeles, it expertly defines the multidimensional barriers to success that women face any time they wish to advance upward – and it’s the movie where Tig Notaro met her wife.
This week Bell announced her follow-up feature What’s the Point?, continuing her series of personal, sharp social commentaries with titles that end in grammatical whodunits. According to Deadline, What’s the Point? poses the additional question of whether marriage should be a seven-year contract with negotiable renewals – which, if you’ve listened to her episode of WTF, you know she has no shortage of smart answers when it comes to the topic of married life. Bell will again attack the issue from three angles - as director, writer, and star - and Ed Helms will anchor the other half of the onscreen couple.
While we patiently wait for the film, here are a few suggestions to pass the time:
- Make sure to check out her wise deadpan playing dumb on Netflix’s Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp. In this series and others, Bell’s witty ability to crack open nuts without ever showing her hand often recalls some of Madeline Kahn’s most blistering, hysterical work.
- Watch every episode of Children’s Hospital and then re-watch In A World… and then count up all the actors who appear in both.
- Support other TV actors-turned-directors with your ticket dollars. This year we’ll see Clea DuVall’s debut The Intervention – which won Melanie Lynskey an acting award at this year’s Sundance – as well as Jason Bateman’s follow-up to Bad Words, The Family Fang starring Bateman, Nicole Kidman, and Christopher Walken. And right now you can see her Wet Hot sorta-love interest Michael Showalter’s full-on Sally Field crushfest, Hello My Name Is Doris (Nathaniel’s review).
Have you caught up yet with In A World… and does the promise of another Lake Bell joint sound like your thing?