The Amiable, Accidental Star
Greg Kinnear Wasn't Drawn to Acting, but It's Proved Agreeable

By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 3, 2008

Is it okay to compare an actor to a dog, when you mean it in the best way?

Because there's something even more spaniel-like about Greg Kinnear these days, as he ages a little. Good dog? Great dog. (You know -- the kind that intuits the doorbell before it rings but never barks his head off, and never demands attention?) With his crinkly brow and the graying scruff, Kinnear is still, at 45, almost about to be someone's idea of today's Jimmy Stewart -- but most times he's just there for support.

That's why they use him for cute-husband parts ("Ghost Town"), or for integrity-compromised executives who have to check into forlorn Courtyard Marriotts ("Fast Food Nation"). They use him for parts like the football coach who keeps his cool in a desperate season (as Dick Vermeil in "Invincible") or for playing the unexpected boyfriend of the gal who's long since given up on men (as with Tina Fey in "Baby Mama"). Nice work, and he can get it.

On a recent Thursday afternoon, Kinnear and a film director/producer named Marc Abraham are making the rounds in D.C. for their new movie, "Flash of Genius." It stars (actually stars ) Kinnear as Robert Kearns, a Michigan engineering prof who invented the intermittent windshield-wiping device in his basement in the 1960s, and then spent almost two decades suing Ford and Chrysler for stealing his idea. Kearns finally won some $30 million.

Intriguing story, but tough sell.

"Bob Kearns [who died in 2005] is not a likable character, in the usual sense," Kinnear says, sitting a spell in the Georgetown Ritz-Carlton. "Yes, he eventually won some money. Great. But this is clearly not the message. . . . The fight he had is all-consuming. He just couldn't find a bridge to compromise to anything around him -- his children, his wife, his attorneys who are trying to help him. Everything is a struggle. I found myself wanting him to find satisfaction. I'm not sure this movie characterizes him as ever really finding it."

There is no getting around the fact that "Flash of Genius" is about a prideful and enigmatic nerd. Also, there's really a lot about windshield wipers in it ("Only of course it's not just about windshield wipers," Kinnear says). Finally, you never really root for the hero; you're glad for him, but it stops shorts of heroics.

In which case, clips of the movie probably are not destined to be shown at personal motivation seminars -- the kind attended by guys who look just a little like Richard Hoover, the guy Kinnear played satirically in "Little Miss Sunshine," who preached his "Nine Steps" claptrap of self-help positivity.

"You could easily make that upbeat kind of movie out of 'Flash of Genius,' though, with the same story," Kinnear offers. "All you have to do is play the music LOUDER in certain moments, change a few looks from people in the [courtroom] scenes and really leave people much more energized, skipping out of the theater in triumph."

This is Kinnear's first serious, meaty starring part since he played Bob Crane -- the murdered, sex-addicted star of "Hogan's Heroes" in 2002's creepy but intriguing "Auto Focus."

"It's funny when you've done a movie like that, how people say 'I liked"Auto Focus"!' with that emphasis," Kinnear says, half-smiling. "Did the 'i' have to go up several octaves in 'liked,' stretching it out? I l iii ked that movie! Meaning nobody else liked the movie, I guess."

So, anyhow, windshield wipers. The lone inventor vs. the monolithic corporation. Kinnear's performance suggests something much more morose than playing the boyfriend or doofus dad parts. To play Kearns he put on 20 pounds, and quite a lot of polyester, and even more of a sense of gloom. He looks a little like William H. Macy in this movie.

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.

Movie Time was subsumed by what became E!, and Kinnear was fired and then rehired to start a show with seemingly no budget and no hope, called "Talk Soup." It has since evolved into "The Soup" and is still on, and the template is markedly the same: They watch dreck so you don't have to, all the talk-show-reality-dramas-singing-and-dancing-contests siphoned into clips. Kinnear was among the first of a new species of humans who dwell on cable for the sole purpose of deadpan snark.

"We have two young children" -- Kinnear and his wife, Helen, have daughters named Lily, 5, and Audrey, 2 -- "and my wife pretty much limits any TV in the house. I have no idea what goes on in the world of shows like ["The Soup"] anymore. . . . But I was there at the beginning of it. [But] I am not Dr. Frankenstein. Don't blame me," he says, with mock protest.

He followed "Talk Soup" by replacing Bob Costas on the wee-hours NBC talk show that followed Jay and Conan. That show had a live audience (which unnerved Kinnear) and higher stakes, and when Sydney Pollack cast him in a 1995 remake of "Sabrina," Kinnear became an actor and never looked back.

"Though there's times, you know, people you'd just love to sit down with and get to ask them the questions," he says. "With the election, you know, to have access to them -- Obama, McCain. Sarah Palin."

But no, he says, that's not for him. He's too nice, always has been.

Even printing out the archive of old clips about Greg Kinnear is a pleasant experience and not quite a waste of toner. He's always good with a quip and never offensive and never part of a scandal, of any kind. Does TMZ even know he exists? Who out there has a voice mail of him screaming obscenities at an assistant?

Guess what? There is no assistant.

"Never needed one, I guess," Kinnear says. "I'm not sure what an assistant would do, except they'd be getting me lots of tea all the time, and I'd feel terrible about that."