Harlan Jacobson's Talk Cinema

"The Extra Man" to be screened at May 25 Talk Cinema

PURCHASE — Get an early head start on the summer film season with a sneak preview of "The Extra Man," the featured movie in the May 25 edition of the Talk Cinema series at The Performing Arts Center at Purchase College.

            Following the 7 p.m., May 25 screening of Harlan Jacobson's Talk Cinema in The Center's PepsiCo Theatre, there will be a discussion with Anthony Bregman, the producer of "The Extra Man," which stars Kevin Kline, Katie Holmes and Paul Dano.*

Tickets are $22.50.

Louis Ives (Dano) fancies himself a hero in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. He favors neckties, blue blazers and sport coats. After an embarrassing incident involving a brassiere fetish, he loses his teaching job at a Princeton prep school and heads to New York to fulfill his dream of becoming a writer.

In New York, Louis rents a room in the wildly confusing apartment of Henry Harrison (Kline), a failed but brilliant playwright who dances alone to old Broadway records, sneaks into the opera, and with great style, performs the duties of an "extra man" -- an escort for the rich widows of the Upper East Side. While Louis dreams of escorting dowagers himself one day, he becomes infatuated with Mary (Holmes), a socially-aware co-worker at the environmental magazine where he is employed and befriends Gershon (John C. Reilly), Henry's hirsute musical neighbor. Louis and Henry separated in age by more than 40 years, eventually develop an irascible mentor-apprentice relationship.

"The Extra Man" premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in January and is scheduled to be released in late July. The balanced humor and pathos is by writers and directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini ("American Splendor"). "Bregman's other credits include "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "The Savages."

For more information and to buy tickets, call The Performing Arts Center ticket office (914-251-6200).  For more information, log onto The Center's Web site www.artscenter.org. Purchase College, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, N.Y.