King of documentaries and king of comedies switch places

By Steven Zeitchik

Fiction, nonfiction, what's the difference? Filmmakers with surprisingly different backgrounds are moving fluidly between the two this holiday weekend.

One of the holiday hopefuls to try to close the day of Twilight these next few days is "Four Christmases," which comes courtesy of Seth Gordon, who's about as likely a candidate to direct a big Hollywood comedy as your Uncle Murray is to finally get everyone's names right at Thanksgiving dinner.

Gordon was a producer on Barbara Kopple's unfairly underrated "Shut Up and Sing" a few years back and directed one of the best movies of 2007, straight up, with "King of Kong," his look at the machinations, characters and even integrity of the retro gaming scene. But he's switched to the slick holiday comedy of Vince Vaughn & Co. How did he find the shift?

Not that difficult, it turns out....at least not when it came to the creative elements. "When you're making a film all by yourself," he tells Jay Fernadez, "that requires you to have quite a bit of a point of view in order for anything to get done. The hard part (with 'Christmases') was never the filmmaking; the hard part was the politics and fielding and understanding all of the different opinions."

Meanwhile, Michael Cera seems like about as much of a fictional character as you can get. The guy is so entwined in the public mind with his characters that fans are known to show up on set and call him "Superbad." Try looking at him and _not_ thinking of the track shorts from "Juno."

Yet he's going to want us to do just that in a few months, when a documentary -- yes, a documentary -- he stars in makes its bow at Sundance. The movie is called "Paper Hearts," and you basically get to see him and real-life grilfriend Charlyne Yi (she of the stoner girlfriend in "Kocked Up") in all their various states of love and harmony and comedy and whatever it is they do when they're alone. That seems about as intituitve as, well, a documentarian and holiday hijinx.

Then again, Cera's actual personality is described by people who've worked with him as opaque, deadpan, awkward and sometimes awkwardness-inducing. Maybe truth and fiction can live together.