Jennifer Aniston in Sundance

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A Trip on the Couch With Jennifer Aniston
Filling a Void, From Crevasses to Space

By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 24, 2006; C01

PARK CITY, Utah -- We arrive in the late afternoon at the interview couch, which is low and puffy and covered with fake fur. Jennifer Aniston is supine, sprawled. It has obviously been a long day, but she looks tiny and perfect, if slightly sleepy. Catherine Keener sits upright. She has sparkly eyes and appears to enjoy her caffeine. The pair are friends in real life, and during their time together in Park City, they are inseparable. They hug onstage. They cling in photo shoots. Keener seems protective of Aniston, who for those visiting from another planet has had a difficult year. One of the ground rules for the interview: If you want Jen, you get Catherine. It turns out to be a good deal.

They are here at the Sundance Film Festival for the premiere of "Friends With Money," an arty ensemble piece about a quartet of Los Angeles women from writer-director Nicole Holofcener ("Lovely and Amazing" and "Walking and Talking") and also starring Joan Cusack and Frances McDormand. Keener, currently on a roll with recent turns as Harper Lee in "Capote" and the comedy blockbuster "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," is a relatively private person. Aniston is currently on the covers of Us Weekly ("How Jen Found Out"), Life & Style Weekly ("Jen Says: It Should've Been My Baby") and OK! ("Who Really Told Jen?").

In the new film, which is scheduled to open in Washington April 7, Aniston plays a burned-out high school teacher who now works as a maid while her three rich friends live in houses with excellent lamps. The Aniston character smokes pot, steals her employers' rejuvenating creams and borrows their sex toys. Oh, and she can't find a boyfriend. Plus, she's a stalker. Sony Pictures Classics describes the film as "a painfully hilarious examination of modern life that manages to be both brutally honest and ultimately uplifting."

Our 20 minutes on the couch goes something like this.

Aniston, suddenly: Do you smell fire?

Keener: Yeah, I do. Maybe they're smoking outside?

Reporter looks at coffee table, which appears to be glowing, and points.

Keener (snorts): Those are plastic ice cubes with little lights inside.

Aniston (sniffing): Smells like a match.

Reporter: We could run out the back door.

Aniston: And there's about 20 paparazzi that would catch us.

Keener: Or shoot us.

Reporter: Literally.

Keener: You're funny.

The paparazzi have been chasing Aniston up and down snowy Main Street all weekend. Keener says fans will glom onto celebrities and not even know whom they're gawking at. "Your head shouldn't swell about it," she says. "You can't take it personally."

It's true. Earlier in the day, newshounds pursued a young man up the sidewalk after he emerged with bundles from the Fred Segal swag suite. A spectator with a cell phone camera huffing alongside said, "It's Lance Bass!" Who? "The dude who wanted to go into outer space!"

"For $20 million," Keener says, nodding her head, up on her current events. She recalls that it was Bass who was scheduled to visit the Russian space station for a reality show that fell through.

Aniston, stirring: Who?

Keener: The boy band guy. Which one? New Order? New Kids on the Block? What?

Aniston: Menudo?

This cracks Keener up.

Reporter: The Justin Timberlake one.

Aniston: Oh, 'N Sync.

Keener: Boyz II Men, that was a big one.

Aniston: Now why is he the dude who wanted to go into space?

The interview, for reasons beyond this reporter's control, then touches on the allure of suborbital tourism. Keener says she would go in a minute. Aniston says no outer space for her.

"I'm there too often," she says. She's back in the game.

Reporter: You could go for a quickie.

Keener: That's Disneyland.

Aniston: Doesn't it cost a fortune?

Reporter: That's relative.

Keener: You don't want to go? See all the planets?

Aniston: I'd go if they guaranteed I would come back.

Keener: There's no guarantees, Jen.

Aniston: Don't I know.

This leads to a discussion of dream vacations. Aniston says Italy with friends. Keener would like to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. The conversation veers toward the mountaineering documentary film "Touching the Void."

Keener, with feeling: It's incredible.

Aniston, with less feeling: Amazing.

Keener: Such a metaphor for life. Do you know anything about it? They climb the back side of this mountain. And they achieve it, but one partner falls and they are tethered together. They fall into a crevasse. Thirty feet. He sees daylight. But there's absolutely no way to climb up. So he spends a couple days there. His only choice is to go further into the void. He's got to go down. He's got to go deeper.

Reporter, not realizing maybe Keener is talking about life and love, free-associates: Like that kid who sawed his arm off?

Keener: Oh, yes!

Aniston: I love that kid.

This would be climber Aron Ralston, author of "Between a Rock and a Hard Place," who, trapped in a remote Utah canyon, had to amputate his own right forearm.

Aniston: It blows me away.

Reporter: I couldn't do it.

Aniston: Saw your arm off?

Keener: That's the void! In order to live, I have to saw my arm off. In order to live, I have to go deeper in.

Aniston: You don't even know. You don't know what you'd do until you found yourself in that situation.

We three pause and think about that.

Keener: Our resistance is amazing. How do you recover from the death of a loved one? Losing your home? The hurricane . . . everything.

Aniston: And their wives and their children and their animals.

Keener: The people with their dogs on the roof?

Aniston: Who wouldn't leave without them?

Reporter: Throw down the kibble. I'm not leaving without my dog.

Aniston waves a hand in front of her face and squints. She is going to cry. Her eyes well. It's that damn dog on the roof. In her September Vanity Fair profile, Aniston talks through her divorce from Brad Pitt, his romance with Angelina Jolie and how she was comforted by her circle of friends -- and her loyal corgi-terrier, Norman.

We're saved by the wait staff (for the second time) offering beverages.

Reporter: We could all probably use a drink about right now.

The girls look tempted, but pass. The conversation circles back to the movie. Keener asks reporter's opinion. Reporter demurs, he is no critic, but confesses two things bothered him. In one scene, Keener's husband in the movie, played by Jason Isaacs, complains that she has a big butt.

Reporter: I didn't buy it.

Keener: Because I don't.

Reporter: Exactly.

Keener: But can I tell you something? There are times when a woman with my ass feels like it is too big. Which is absurd.

Aniston: No question about it.

Keener: But I too have said, 'Does my ass look big in these?'

Aniston: Me, too.

Reporter, unsure how to navigate these dangerous shoals, freezes.

Keener: So this was a way to get at me in the film. We've all been in those relationships, where someone knows your button and is mean.

Aniston: Yeah.

Keener asks what else the reporter doesn't buy in the film.

Reporter: I didn't believe Jennifer would be stalking a married man.

Keener: You talked to Nicole [the writer-director]? You told her that? What did she say?

Reporter (kidding): She said I was full of it.

Aniston: I have to agree with her.

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