About that movie I made with Eric Roberts

The Times’ list of 37 favorite sandwiches doesn’t seem to have my favorite — an open-faced club — but I think it makes for a good road map for a month’s worth of weekend adventures. Who doesn’t like a good feeding frenzy now and then?
I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, host of The Envelope’s Friday newsletter and someone who understands why you might not want to spend $292 to take your 3- and 4-year-old children to Disneyland, but then maybe just take them to the playground instead? Who doesn’t like a swing set and a good spiral slide?
In his new memoir, “Runaway Train,” Eric Roberts notes that he has 750 acting credits to his name. By the time writer Marc Weingarten got around to talking with him for a story in The Times, that total was up to 850. And that was a couple of weeks ago, leading you to wonder: What’s the count now? How can IMDb possibly keep up? And with a filmography that enormous, is there anybody who hasn’t made a movie with Eric Roberts?
Even I have. And I’m not an actor. But last year, I found myself sharing a scene with Roberts in a movie called “R,” a fanciful take on how the 1968 crime thriller “The Split” became the first film to receive an R rating. Roberts played producer Irwin Winkler, who, in this version of history, was none too pleased with the fact that the Motion Picture Assn. of America was about to slap his movie with a restrictive rating. I was playing MPAA President Jack Valenti, the guy delivering the bad news.
Our director, Holden Pollak, was all of 19 at the time we shot the scene in March of last year. Holden went to high school with my son, Sean, and is an aspiring filmmaker, industrious and ambitious. He found Roberts’ contact info on IMDb and was soon talking with his wife, Eliza, who works as his manager. They negotiated a fee and Eliza laid out her husband’s needs — all his lines had to be written with a thick, black Sharpie on huge cue cards. And Roberts wanted the camera to be positioned at a certain height, for reasons known to anyone of a certain age who has posted a selfie on social media.
My job was to essentially stand behind Roberts, look stern and to explain what an R rating meant.
Roberts arrived prepared and didn’t really use the cue cards, more of a safety net. He treated Holden and his dad, Brad, a novice playing “The Split” director Gordon Flemyng, with respect. Roberts kept telling Holden, “You’re the boss, you’re the boss” and seemed to be having a ball playing a character pouring gasoline on another man’s dreams.
In between scenes, Roberts enjoyed the Boar’s Head spring rolls Holden had picked up from Gelson’s. When we wrapped, Roberts hugged Holden and he and Eliza departed, leftovers in hand.
“I’m an actor, and I like to work,” Roberts told me that night. “It’s as simple as that. If the phone rings, I’ll answer it. You never know who’s going to be calling. It might be Paul Thomas Anderson. It might be this kid [Holden] out there. It keeps life interesting.”
Four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan has a new movie in theaters next Friday, “The Outrun,” a portrait of a damaged woman trying to overcome her addiction to alcohol and a rough family history. It’s the first of two high-profile films starring Ronan in the coming months. In November, you can see her in “Blitz,” Steve McQueen’s gripping look at the bombardment of London during World War II. (“Blitz” will be in theaters Nov. 1, then on Apple TV+ on Nov. 22.)
For The Times, Emily Zemler visited Ronan at her London home, where they (of course) drank some tea and talked about the two films. “The Outrun” provides Ronan with a bigger role; “Blitz,” in which she plays a mother hoping to ensure the safety of her son, is the better movie.
Don’t get me wrong. If only to watch Ronan, I’d recommend “The Outrun,” which finds her character, Rona, traveling from her London home to the remote Scottish islands of Orkney to reckon with her past.
“Life is full of highs and lows and a lot of trudging forward in between,” Ronan told Emily, talking about Rona’s journey. “If you can just hold out for those brief moments of joy and light and life, it makes it worth it and it helps you carry on. You see Rona experience every facet of it, so it feels like a celebration of life, warts and all.”
My old friend Mark Olsen will be speaking with Ronan on Wednesday following an Indie Focus screening of “The Outrun.” Interested in attending? You can RSVP here.