This film is rated R for language.

www.weathergirlmovie.com/sonoma

Weather girl plays the beautiful Sebastiani Theater in Sonoma August 31-Aug 3. Q and A with writer/director Blayne Weaver and star/producer Tricia O’Kelley.
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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ibb3c8829af8d949487b91ac7d06599f1

Forecast good for ‘Weather Girl’
Blayne Weaver’s comedy sells multiple rights
By Steven Zeitchik

June 17, 2009, 09:03 PM ET
“Weather Girl,” a relationship comedy that’s set to play the upcoming Los Angeles Film Festival, has sold off a slew of rights.

Blayne Weaver’s movie has been picked up for home video by Screen Media Films and for television by Lifetime, which plans on airing the pic in October. The pic will be self-released theatrically in Los Angeles this summer by producer Secret Identity Prods.

Tricia O’Kelley and Mark Harmon star in the film as a couple at a Seattle news station whose relationship unravels on the air, resulting in both of them losing their jobs. Jon Cryer and Kaitlin Olson co-star.

Kevin Iwashina of IP Advisors and Josh Braun of Submarine Entertainment represented the filmmakers. Regent Worldwide sales is repping international rights.

The film, which unspools at LAFF this Friday, premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival earlier this year.

LAFF: ‘Weather Girl’

Sunny Skies Ahead

Actor-producer Tricia O’Kelley on her early preparation for ‘Weather Girl’

By Sarah Kuhn

June 18, 2009

Marc Harmon and Tricia O’Kelley, “Weather Girl”

PHOTO CREDIT

Eric Hyler

In the offbeat indie romantic comedy Weather Girl, Tricia O’Kelley stars as Sylvia, a “sassy” morning show personality who must re-evaluate her life after an on-air meltdown. Luckily, O’Kelley didn’t need to do much in the way of research—she was already all too familiar with the surreal world of local television. “I focused on broadcast journalism for a while in college, and I had internships at two news station in Madison, Wis.—the ABC and NBC affiliates,” she recalls, chuckling. “They weren’t morning shows, but the personalities were very similar. It’s a whole different world. You’ve got to be happy and cheery at 6 a.m. You need a lot of coffee.”

O’Kelley, who has appeared on Gilmore Girls and currently has a regular gig on the sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine, also served as a producer on the film. Weather Girl is playing at the Los Angeles Film Festival and will be released in L.A. on July 10.

Back Stage: How did you end up producing as well as starring in the film?

Tricia O’Kelley: [Director Blayne Weaver] and I have known each other for about seven years. I had starred in his first feature, Outside Sales, and it was one of the best work experiences I’ve ever had. He had completed this script, Weather Girl, and he had passed it along to me just to get my thoughts on it. I was a few pages in, and I called him and said, “I’m loving this. If I still love it on Page 90, I think we need to make it.” I finished it, and I called him, and I said, “I’ll come on as a producer and let’s do it.” He tried to talk me out of it for like an hour, and I won. I have not regretted it for a single second since.

Back Stage: Why was he trying to talk you out of it?

O’Kelley: Because he sold his house to make Outside Sales. He went into huge debt to do it. He doesn’t regret it—it’s a great movie; he’s really proud of it. But he was afraid to see that happen to me. He didn’t want me to regret it, but I haven’t at all.

Back Stage: What did your producing duties encompass?

O’Kelley: Everything from the casting to scouting out locations to raising the money to doing the distribution deals with everybody. I liked some parts of the process more than others. I did not care for the raising money part at all, but the thing that made it a little easier was that I never believed I was asking investors for a favor. I always believed they would make their money back and we’d make a really good movie they’d be proud of.

Back Stage: As an actor, what was it like to be on the other side of the casting process?

O’Kelley: The coolest thing ever. I had actually sat in on a few casting sessions years ago, so I knew a little bit about what it was like. I think we were a very warm and welcoming room, because I definitely know what it’s like to walk into rooms that are not. We like to give the actors a lot so they’re not reading with a brick wall. But it was so cool, and I have a new appreciation for actors, especially for the actors that we hired. We saw a lot of fantastic people, but there was just something extra special about the people we ended up casting.

Back Stage: You have such great, well-known talent in this movie, like Jane Lynch and Mark Harmon. How did you get them to come on board?

O’Kelley: We knew, because I’m not a star, that we were going to have to surround me with some recognizable people. I had worked with Jane Lynch before. J.D., the part that she played, was originally written for a man. I thought of asking Jane to play J.D. and making [the character] a woman, and I sent her the script, and she loved it and said yes. She was the first person we cast in the movie. And she actually helped get us a lot of submissions, because people knew who she was and that she was attached.

We wanted somebody great to play [Sylvia's cheating boyfriend] Dale. Our casting director, Lauren Bass, brought in a wish list of actors, and Blayne and I both zeroed in on Mark Harmon. I think he’s fantastic and ridiculously dreamy. Lauren called his agent, sent the script, and he took a liking to the script and wanted to meet with me and Blayne. After we struggled over what to wear, we went for coffee. He’s like, “Look, I love the script, and I’d love to do this; I just don’t know if it’s going to fit into my schedule. But if it doesn’t, I’d love to do a smaller role.” We were blown away by that. Thankfully, he was able to do it, and he made our movie even better.

Back Stage: Why is it so important for actors to be proactive in creating their own work, like you were with this film?

O’Kelley: I owned a company in Chicago that catered to the acting community. Our motto was “Take control.” It dawned on me in my 20s, as a struggling actress, that there is so little that is in our control as actors. We’re at the mercy of everybody else. So what I created there was a place where you could feel productive and proactive in your career and do something every day that made you feel like you were moving forward in some way, even if it was something as little as networking with another actor or checking audition notices. I think once you start working, you’re making a living, that’s great; but you’re still sort of at the mercy of other people. You’re working when they want you to work, and you’re doing the part you get hired for and not necessarily the parts that you want. I think it’s really important to always be finding ways you can take control of your career and constantly be moving forward.

“Weather Girl”plays at the L.A. Film Festival Fri., June 19, 7:30 p.m., at the Majestic Crest and Wed., June 24, 9:30 p.m., at Landmark 4. www.lafilmfest.com.

"Weather Girl" has the honor of being selected as the Closing Night Film at The Vail Film Festival.

http://www.realvail.com/RealAE/629/Vail-Film-Festival-to-screen-more-than-50-films-April-2-5.html

"Weather Girl" is an official selection of the 2009 Nashville Film Festival.

www.nashvillefilmfestival.org

Kaitlin Olson’s

Sunny Disposition

words by Randy Gambill, photo by Patrick Mcelhenney

Funny women have it tough. They are either ghettoized as funny but unsexy, reviled as abrasive man-haters, or relegated to bimbo status. But there is a new strain of funny women: Sarah Silverman, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, and Leslie Mann among them, who seem to have the whole package: Smart, sexy, and undeniably funny enough to keep the most virulent, beer-swilling women-haters at bay. Add Kaitlin Olson to the list.

When I present Miss Olson with the idea that she is the latest addition to this list of hilarious and beautiful women she responds with charming modesty, “Thank you. I really appreciate that. That’s funny. Out of those people that you named – I think all those women are beautiful, but I don’t think if you ask any of them, they would describe themselves as beautiful. They wouldn’t identify themselves as beautiful. I think that you just need that tough junior high school experience to kind of toughen you up and give you something else to fall back on. And I know it’s true for several of them, I don’t know about all of them. But, thank you for the compliment.”

Olson is entering her fourth season on the hit FX show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia . As “Sweet Dee”, the lone women amongst a group of raucous cut-ups, Olson’s prodigious comedy chops get a workout as she matches wits (or witlessness) with the fellas in the depraved comedy world that Sunny inhabits. Keeping up with the boys is no stretch for Olson, in fact, when describing her style of comedy, the old Secret deodorant tagline “Strong enough for a man but made for a women” comes to mind. “I just think it’s funny, but people often describe my sense of humor as very male.” I offer, Well I think so, you seem to get along with the boys pretty well . “Yeah, and that’s what I find funny. I loved Saturday Night Live . So, I had a lot of male inspiration, like Will Ferrell I think is hilarious. I love that he is hilarious and clean at the same time, which is really great.”

When I mention that many of the most recent standouts on SNL have been women, Olson is quick to join in, “I love Kristin Wiig – she is really wonderful and I always loved Gilda Radner.” Olson shares some other sources of inspiration, “I think Annette Bening is brilliant. I love Jane Lynch and Joan Cusack is wonderful; they are all very real. I don’t like overblown, showy. I like it when it’s big, but real. That’s why I really love shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development , all that stuff is very big, but it’s based in reality.”

One of Olson’s realities when she first signed on for Sunny duty was what her place on the show would be. Sunny was created by Rob McElhenney, and it was also developed by him and co-star Glenn Howerton, as well as co-star Charlie Day who was also involved from the very beginning. So of the original quartet, Olson is the only one to have come from outside the circle. I ask her if that was a scary situation to come into. “It could have been tough if they were dicks, but they’re not. They are so great, but when they wanted to cast me in the show, the Dee character was not defined really.”

Apparently there was nothing written for the Sweet Dee character at the time of auditions. Show creator McElhenney had Olson read a scene written for Dennis (Glenn Howerton) which Olson was unaware of at the time. “Yeah! I wanted to take the role because even though they hadn’t developed this character yet, they did write this awesome scene for her. It turns out it was Dennis’ scene. But Rob called me and said, ‘We want you to be in our show, and we want you to be our fourth person, equally. We want you to be funny; we want to write well for you.’ And he said, ‘I know that the character isn’t defined, but what I would love to do is have you help us define it. And we haven’t really written for women so, it’ll be a process for us. But we want your input, we want see stuff that you would love to do, stuff that you do well, stuff that you think is funny.’ And I didn’t know him at all, but I just had to believe him because I thought that the show was really funny! So, I just went for it, and he absolutely didn’t let me down. I feel like my character is getting stronger every year, and they really write for my strengths, and they ask for my input, and they let me play around with my dialogue.”

Olson’s performance as Sweet Dee is a comic tour de force, whether pretending to be disabled, getting addicted to crack, or almost having sex with her father, (Danny DeVito, who turns out not to be her father-don’t ask) she hurls herself headlong into one depraved situation after another. Speaking of depravity, Olson sheds some light on the commonplace gripe that the show sometimes skirts too far over the edge, “But it’s not like we’re trying to be edgy. Everyone throws that word around, it’s not like we’re trying to be terrible. It’s that, what’s funny to us is stuff that hasn’t necessarily been done before. Just seeing the same stuff over and over isn’t funny to us.”

Of the four original Sunny cast members, Olson has arguably chalked up the most extensive showbiz resume. In addition to Sunny she has recurring roles on two other series, as Becky, Larry David’s sister-in-law on Curb Your Enthusiasm and as Hartley Underwood, the one-armed neighbor on The Riches . Olson has racked up a series of other comedy gigs that are strangely impressive, appearing on Punk’d, The Jamie Kennedy Experiment and the short-lived Kelsey Grammer Presents: The Sketch Show .

On the horizon for Olson is a co-starring role in the upcoming feature film Weather Girl , “Mark Harmon is in it and Tricia O’Kelley is the star. She’s currently on The New Adventures of Old Christine . She’s adorable. And Mark Harmon and I play off of each other. We’re co-anchors. There are lots of good characters and Jane Lynch is amazing in it.”

Olson was born in Tigard, Oregon, and after graduating from the University of Oregon with a degree in Theatre Arts, she made her way to the City of Angels where she promptly began training at the legendary Groundlings Improv school: “The Groundlings is an amazing training ground. It’s a war zone. But, it’s an amazing training ground if you can get through that. I was in the Sunday Company, every single Sunday for a year. It was great and offered me a lot of great exposure. That’s where the producers of The Drew Carey Show found me.

Olson’s career is nothing if not eclectic, her break on The Drew Carey Show was playing the office nemesis of Mimi (Kathy Kinney) for two seasons and her film debut was in the cinematic classic, Coyote Ugly , “Yeah, you can see me in that amazing flick. Coyote Ugly was actually one of my first jobs. (laughs) “I was bidding on the male lead (Adam Garcia) in the bar, and I was drunk and screaming and loud. And I’m fighting for him and I don’t win. I never win.”

On the contrary, Miss Olson, in the deliriously beautiful comedic actress game, you’ve hit the jackpot.
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