You may clock Mark Webber as the talent, the creep, or the kid from cult favorites like “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World,” “Green Room” or “Broken Flowers.”
What you might not know is that the well-traveled character actor has embarked on an ambitiously self-interrogative directing career as well, culminating in his latest film: “The Place of No Words.” In the five quintessentially independent films to his name, Mark Webber has cast Mark Webber as a widower, an ex-con, and a dying man—all named Mark Webber.
Titles like “The Place of No Words,” “Flesh and Blood” (2017), and “The End of Love” (2012) resound more like alternate histories of Webber’s life than they do strict fiction or autobiography. The stories tug on some thematic thread of Webber’s life and unfurl into “what ifs” that rewrite the trajectories of his marriages, his impoverished upbringing in North Philadelphia, or the ways he introduces his young children to death.
“The Place of No Words” hits VOD and select theaters this Friday, Oct. 23, and finds Webber acting alongside his three-year-old son Bodhi and wife Teresa Palmer (“Warm Bodies”, “Lights Out”) in a blend of “Princess Bride”-style fantasy allegory and Malickian meditation on letting loose of this mortal coil with transcendent dignity and freedom.
Press play on the latest’s Be Reel below to hear Webber discuss Jim Jarmusch’s stewardship, leafing through graphic behind-the-scenes photos from “Green Room,” and acting with his children in movies they’re not ready to watch.
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