The Butthole of the Joke
Paste visited the NerdMelt to check out Theresa Guleserian's "portal" art, featured in The Overnight.
Patrick Brice’sThe Overnight starts simply enough, with two families getting together—the adults having dinner and the kids having a playdate. But then the young ones are put to bed, and things get a little freaky.
As the couples (Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godrèche; Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling) begin to open up, they bare their souls to one another—and much more. In one of the film’s more memorable scenes, Schwartzman’s Kurt, who fancies himself an artist, gives Alex (Scott) a tour of his studio, which Alex discovers is a room filled with Kurt’s “portal” works: sketches, drawings and paintings on canvas dedicated to the…butthole.
In an only-in-Hollywood meta-moment, the “portal” series recently got its chance to shine with an actual, in-real-life gallery debut. Dozens of guests crowded inside the NerdMelt Showroom, a small theater located in the back of Meltdown Comics, one of L.A.’s most popular comic book shops, to celebrate The Overnight’s on-demand (Sept. 8) and DVD release (Sept. 15). In attendance to support the show were writer/director Brice, as well as Adam Scott and his wife Naomi Scott, who both served as producers on the film.
Unfortunately, the mind behind the anal art, production designer Theresa Guleserian, wasn’t able to attend the opening. Guleserian, who’s also currently attached to Togetherness on HBO, was working on location in Atlanta on Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.
During the gallery show, Naomi praised Guleserian’s Herculean efforts to create all of Kurt’s paintings for their compact 12-day filming schedule. “Theresa, on her own, painted these paintings in one night to accommodate our shoot schedule,” she said. “She thought she had some extra hands to help her out, and unfortunately it fell through, so she was on her own to do all of this.”