Two pleasant people made the film "Intolerable"

by Euan Kerr, Minnesota Public Radio

St. Paul, Minn. — David Rackoff is best known as a writer and a performer on "This American Life." This weekend filmgoers at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis can see him in a very different light. Rackoff plays a manipulative casting director auditioning actors in a short film called "Intolerable."

Rackoff tells the actors they are to imagine an intolerable situation and then flee. The performance is to continue as the actor leaves the room and hurries through the corridor crowded with more waiting actors. After the performance is finished, the actor is not to return.

Those few instructions filmed with hidden cameras form the basis for "Intolerable."

David Rackoff and Alison Maclean will introduce "Intolerable" as part of the Women with Vision program at the Walker. They told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr they originally intended to gather material for a four-minute piece. But after 100 actors and two days of shooting, Maclean and Rackoff had so much good material they had to make a longer film.

Broadcast Dates

• All Things Considered, 03/09/2007, 4:50 p.m.