The Amiable, Accidental Star

It's Abraham's first time to direct, having spent his career producing movies as widely varied as "Bring It On" and "Children of Men." Abraham bought the film rights to a long 1993 New Yorker article about Kearns, and then spent years trying to raise money to make it. Studios were "meh" on the idea, especially with no star. "Flash of Genius" was made with investor money.

"I'll be honest with you," Abraham says, when Kinnear is not around. "To get this done, you make a list of people, you know, it's very simple, it's not rocket science. Matt Damon, George Clooney, Johnny Depp. Any of those and a pretty good chance you'd get this movie made, right? And had the universe given me any one of those guys, I might've just taken the easy way out. But it doesn't work like that. You know, there's this list of who you need. Nick Cage! Russell Crowe is on that list. Now you're on the second page of the list" --

And we are to presume there is something nice to say in all this about Greg Kinnear, right?

"Getting to it, hold on," Abraham says. "I had Greg on that list. He knows, he's not an idiot. He knows there's five guys on that list that could get this movie made for me a whole lot easier. Tom Hanks. . . . I think there's all these people who think Greg's skill level is as much about serendipity as it is talent. But they're wrong. I really think he has what it takes to be a pantheon actor if he continues to get the right roles. I liken him to one of my favorite actors, Jack Lemmon."

Kinnear saw the script for "Flash of Genius" and cold-called Abraham, not thinking he was on a list at all. The two met over coffee and Abraham felt Kinnear understood the story and character exactly. "I just planted my flag," Abraham says. "Kinnear's the guy. It has to be him. But I told him, 'You're too cute, you're too cut.' . . . But you see him work, he just completely changes."

* * *

Kinnear and Abraham spend part of their day here at the Washington Convention Center, where 25,000 AARP members are having their annual expo, perhaps a target audience for a movie about a cranky genius screwed over by big business? Sure! Next they're off to XM to talk about the movie on Bob Edwards's show.

In between, back at the hotel, Kinnear plops down on a couch, wearing jeans and a dark green shirt that brings out a greenish hue in his eyes. He has that rare knack some movie stars just have, where you sit with him for a while and the whole time it feels like you're both waiting for the celebrity to walk in.

What seems like a very long time ago, Kinnear used to do what we do for a living -- interview movie stars. He'd go to junkets, to film festivals, with a microphone and a camera guy.

First he did it for a cable outfit called Movie Time, in the late 1980s. He had moppy hair and neon sports jackets with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. It was the lowest and cheapest form of prehistoric cable showbiz chatter. "You had Movie Time in your [cable] market? You actually saw it?" Kinnear asks.

He remembers getting a few minutes of sit-down with Charles Bronson: "We start the camera, and I'm sweating a lot, and I say, 'How are you, Mr. Bronson?' and he says, 'NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!' It was a lot of stuff like that. But it was a great education, it was like being in college."

But what was he studying for, where was it all headed? No one watching Movie Time had any idea he'd be up for a Best Supporting Actor award at the Oscars just eight or nine years later. The son of a diplomat (the Kinnear family lived everywhere from Indiana to Reston to Lebanon to Greece), he majored in broadcast journalism at the University of Arizona. A single acting class had put him off the craft and drove him to TV infotainment.