Inside The Making Of ‘Masked And Anonymous'

Twenty years ago this month, one of the weirdest films ever to be distributed by a major studio in the 21st century came out. Released in a small handful of theaters the same weekend as Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life, the movie marked the directorial debut of Larry Charles, the behind-the-scenes right-hand man for Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David during the ’90s on Seinfeld who later achieved cinematic notoriety for his collaborations with Sacha Baron Cohen on the films Borat, Brüno, and The Dictator. For his first movie, Charles corralled an all-star cast headed up by John Goodman and Jeff Bridges — their first onscreen pairing since The Big Lebowski five years prior — that also included Luke Wilson, Jessica Lange, Penelope Cruz, Angela Bassett, Val Kilmer, Mickey Rourke, Ed Harris, Bruce Dern, Christian Slater, Chris Penn, and Giovanni Ribisi.