Magnolia Pictures

Morton Downey, Jr.

Years before reality TV and today's conservative political pundits, we had Morton Downey, Jr., whose The Morton Downey, Jr. Show in the late '80s was Jerry Springer, Geraldo, The O'Reilly Factor and Jersey Shore all wrapped up into one, giant hoagie.

On May 21, Cinefamily screens a montage of the show's clips, as well as the L.A. premiere of Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie, a documentary by Jeremy Newberger, Daniel A. Miller and Seth Kramer that looks at the late talk show host's rise and fall, and how he gave folks like Gloria Allred, Ron Paul, Alan Dershowitz and Al Sharpton (and his feathered hair) their first national forum.

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Alexandra Wyman/Invision for LD Entertainment/AP Images

Duplass and Aselton

Mark Duplass has established himself as half of an independent film power couple. Over the last few years, the writer-director-producer-actor of the micro-budget mumblecore genre and his brother Jay (who are together known as the -- and whose production company is called -- Duplass Brothers) have worked on character-rich feature films like Safety Not Guaranteed, Cyrus and Jeff, Who Lives at Home.

But this isn't the only way Duplass keeps it in the family. With his latest film,Black Rock, he re-teams with his wife (and co-star on the F/X comedy The League) Katie Aselton. The feature, which Duplass wrote and Aselton directs and co-stars in with Lake Bell and Kate Bosworth, centers on childhood friends who set out on a camping trip to rekindle their friendships and end up in life-threatening circumstances after a drunken night of flirtation goes awry, opens May 17.

The film is, at times, dark with disturbing scenes that take on hot-button issues like war veterans' mental wellness and a woman's right to say no. The writer-director collaboration in making the film, however, wasn't nearly as polarizing.

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Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in Before Sunrise

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*More L.A. Weekly Film Coverage

Friday, May 17

In 1995, audiences met Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) in Before Sunrise, the story of a chance meeting on a train that turns into a night of conversation and roaming around Vienna. With only a short time together until Jesse's flight back to the States in the morning, Jesse and Céline fall in love quickly and promise to meet at the train station in six months. Their relationship continues in Before Sunset, which takes place nine years later, in Paris. Jesse, now doing a book tour for the best-selling novel he'd written based on his time in Vienna, spies Céline at the bookstore. Once again, the two have until Jesse's flight to talk, catching one another up on their lives and discovering their mutual dissatisfaction with their current relationships.

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Anna Kendrick in Pitch Perfect

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*Anna Kendrick: She's Just a Girl and She's on Fire
*Our entire 2013 People Issue

We profiled actress/singer/comedian/Twitter celebrity Anna Kendrick for our People Issue, but didn't have space for everything.

Here are some of the best deleted bits from our interview:

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Kevin Scanlon

Davy Rothbart

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here.

Davy Rothbart sits at a picnic table in Elysian Park with a Discman in his pocket. Someone actually stopped him on the street recently while he was traveling on a book tour and said, "That must be the last Discman in New York!" Rothbart shrugs telling this story. Gadgets and tech aren't really his thing. "I guess I'm just a lo-fi person," he says.

Rothbart, 38, is many other things — a writer, documentary filmmaker, This American Life contributor and creator of Found magazine, a print publication that pieces together stray letters, lists, drawings and photos.

Most people would have migrated Found over to a Tumblr by now. Not Rothbart. He's a literary slow cooker in a world of microwave media.

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Kevin Scanlon

Tyrese Gibson

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here.

Tyrese Gibson is checking out new office space for his expanding record label, Voltron Recordz, while talking to a reporter and fielding phone calls from underlings. "I like this space," he tells his real estate agent. "This is obviously a medical office. It looks like a few heartbeats have been checked in this room."

The 34-year-old had his heart checked recently, along with other vitals, as he admits to spreading himself too thin with movies (Fast & Furious 6 hits in May), music and behind-the-scenes moves. This spring he released A Black Rose That Grew Through Concrete, which includes a documentary, a double album and a book about his life. The latter will be the fourth title on Amazon bearing Gibson's name as an author.

Yeah, the kid from Watts who broke into America's consciousness as the star of John Singleton's Baby Boy in 2001 seems to balance more gigs than Bon Jovi, and sometimes it shows. Gibson says he never dreams; his whole life is a dream. "I dream with my eyes open."

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Kevin Scanlon

Jennifer Lee

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here.

In Disney's blockbuster Wreck-It Ralph, Vanellope is a digital princess in a video game who's stripped of her coding and mistreated as a flickering computer "glitch." Vanellope's moxie — plus help from video villain–turned-friend Ralph — saves her.

Of course, that's not how Jennifer Lee rose from the industry mists to co-write the Oscar-nominated Ralph with Phil Johnston (writer of Cedar Rapids), or how she was tapped to be the first female director of a Disney theatrical feature (the upcoming Frozen, co-directed by Chris Buck). But there are intriguing parallels.

Raised in East Providence, R.I., Lee, 41, was a flute-playing band nerd who "became a cheerleader — a nerd cheerleader." She graduated from the University of New Hampshire and went to New York to work as a graphic artist in publishing. But after the shattering death of her true love at age 20, she yearned to tell her own stories. She was shocked to be accepted at Columbia Film School as an older, married grad student. There she met her writing partner, Johnston, also married and nearing 30, on the first day of school.

See also:
*More L.A. Weekly Film Coverage

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Kevin Scanlon

Tim Heidecker

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here.

When Tim Heidecker says his wife is in school studying "criminalistics" to be a "private investigator, in law enforcement," it's hard to know whether to believe him. After all, the Atwater Village–based comedian is known for his stunts, pranks and fabrications. Last year he impersonated Bob Dylan in a 15-minute song about the sinking of the Titanic, and he continued the joke by later "announcing" to his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers that Dylan would be replacing Beyoncé in the Super Bowl halftime show. (Folks in many corners of the Internet were hysterical.) For a web series called On Cinema at the Cinema, meanwhile, he pretends to be the hackiest, least knowledgeable film critic imaginable.

But that's just part of his charm. The 37-year-old, eastern Pennsylvania–bred parodist is best known for his experimental, schizophrenic Adult Swim comedy Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, which ran for three years in the late aughts and was created with his former Temple University film school classmate Eric Warheim. Since then, Heidecker has been involved in practically a new project every week, including films (Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie), albums (a parody tribute album to failed presidential candidate Herman Cain) and even commercials — he and Warheim directed a series of Old Spice ads.

See also:
*12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013
*10 Best Stand-Up Comedy Shows in Los Angeles

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Kevin Scanlon

Anna Kendrick

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here.

See also: *Outtakes from our Anna Kendrick People Issue interview

From a booth at the restaurant Birds, actress Anna Kendrick eyes a TV commercial across the room. "How about that pocket hose, huh? It's a little tiny hose and it gets big. It's a real space-saver," she says. "If you have a yard that needs watering, I think you've got enough space for a hose. Sorry."

In addition to ridiculing infomercials over lunch in Franklin Village, Kendrick does many other things that adorkable, 27-year-old Angelenos are supposed to do — not because they're cool but simply because she wants to. She frequents hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurants and art-house theaters like Cinefamily and the New Beverly, sometimes by herself. She uses Instagram, and Snapchat, the latter of which is perfect for celebrities since the images disappear in seconds. She obsesses over the hoarding phenomenon, even hanging out in the Reddit community devoted to discussing the gory details.

She's done most things right in her career, too, rising to a level of welcome ubiquity that rivals Neil Patrick Harris and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, fellow actor-singer-dancer-comedians who are so likable and of-the-moment that they can do no wrong. Kendrick effortlessly bounces from a Twilight sequel to Joe Swanberg's upcoming micro-brewing indie, Drinking Buddies, to the in-production film version of the cult musical The Last Five Years. Her solo in the a cappella movie Pitch Perfect — which involved a 75-year-old Appalachian folk song and a cup used as a percussion instrument, a trick she discovered via a video posted on, yes, Reddit — hit No. 64 on the Billboard Hot 100.

See also:
*More L.A. Weekly Film Coverage
*12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013

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Bobby Martin

Directors Maria Demopoulos and Jodi Wille in the lobby of the Standard, with a Source Family-inspired fabric sculpture by Elena Stonaker

It was not your typical happy hour on the Sunset Strip. Last Thursday, the Standard Hotel hosted the L.A. premiere of The Source Family, a documentary by Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos. In honor of the 1970s Hollywood commune portrayed in the film, which is the first feature for both directors, the lobby was swathed in colorful fabrics and bedecked with flowers. Psychedelic music snaked through the speakers while longhaired boys and girls milled about, dressed in their flowing finest. In a glass case behind the counter, two young women lounged and did yoga poses, much to the obvious bemusement of the tourists who stood by with rolling suitcases, waiting to check in.

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