Eight years ago a college student and aspiring actress named Halley Feiffer traveled to the Sundance Film Festival for the premiere of Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, in which she played Sophie Greenberg, a classmate of Jesse Eisenberg's character Walt who shares a very memorable, very awkward sexual encounter with him. In real life her Sundance experience was probably glamorous and fantastic, but in the new film He's Way More Famous Than You, Feiffer makes it seem terrifying and awful-- and even worse when you see the impact it had on her six years later.
Now things are coming full circle, with Feiffer bringing He's Way More Famous Than You to Slamdance, the funkier cousin to Sundance that takes place in Park City at the same time. In the movie she plays a character named Halley Feiffer, who also co-starred in The Squid and the Whale with Jesse Eisenberg, but who turned that brush with fame into becoming a mess of a wannabe star. In this exclusive image from the film, you can see our first glimpse at Halley six years after walking the red carpet-- at home, smoking a cigarette and drinking champagne out of a curly straw.
If you think it can't get much worse from there, oh believe us, it can. And it can get the Karate Kid involved too. Here's the official synopsis for He's Way More Famous Than You:
When once-up-and-coming indie film starlet Halley Feiffer loses her boyfriend, her agent and her career in one fell swoop she finally realizes that something in her life has got to change...she has to become WAY MORE FAMOUS! Armed with a stolen script and two pitchers of sangria, Halley enlists the help of her brother Ryan and his boyfriend to make her own movie, starring herself (of course), and any A-list celebrity she can land along the way. From seducing the Karate Kid to kidnapping Hollywood's biggest name in comedy, Halley will stop at nothing to get her movie made even if it means hurting the only people who truly care about her in the process.
Directed by Michael Urie, the star of Ugly Betty and Partners, and co-starring Eisenberg, Natasha Lyonne, Ryan Spahn and, yes, Ralph Macchio, He's Way More Famous Than You premieres at the Slamdance Film Festival on Sunday, January 20.
