LOS ANGELES, Nov 26, (AP): When Seth Gordon was lugging bundles of cash and a video camera around rural Kenya 11 years ago, he didn’t see it leading to a gig directing Vince Vaughn in a big-budget Hollywood comedy. But sometimes that’s just where altruism takes you. With “Four Christmases,” a New Line release co-starring Reese Witherspoon that opened Wednesday , Gordon has reached a new peak in a filmmaking journey that began on a volunteer mission to Africa in 1997. Several documentaries (“Shut Up & Sing,” “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters”) and a fortuitous pitch meeting later, and Gordon unveil his feature directorial debut on thousands of screens Wednesday. He sees it all as part of the same cinematic mission.

“I’m really interested in stories about identity — who I am now versus who I used to be,” Gordon said. “I think that’s really what ‘Kong’ was about. That’s what ‘Four Christmases’ is about, too. That’s a real throughline for me.” At Yale, Gordon pursued an architecture degree until he realized that New Haven was not his kind of town. So he decided to teach high school for six months in the wilderness of Shimanyiro, Kenya (not far from President-elect Barack Obama’s father’s village).
After discovering that the Kenyan infrastructure leaves school-building to the locals, he helped get philanthropic U.N. financing to finish up Shimanyiro’s school and then filmed the students and residents as they experienced the ensuing changes.

“How you learn in Kenya is you behave and you get whipped if you don’t behave, and I was trying to break them out,” Gordon said. “I had them debating gender equality and the importance of AIDS training. So I would record them arguing about that.” The result was “Building Shimanyiro,” a documentary that he edited about “the difference between Third World corruption and what we understand as corruption, and how problematic that was to be in the middle of it.” This led to a gig directing behind-the-scenes spots for the touring Dixie Chicks. Those videos became a global phenomenon after one of the members of the country trio, Natalie Maines, dropped her infamous remark slamming President Bush onstage in London in 2003. Gordon, who caught it on video, continued on tour with them as one of the cinematographers and contributing producers of the resulting documentary, “Shut Up & Sing,” which covered the vituperative aftermath.

Vyings
Similar fortuitous timing hit “New York Doll,” a documentary he produced, edited and shot about the New York punk band’s reunion. The film’s tone and content deepened when bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane discovered that he was dying of cancer. “Kong” then became Gordon’s first full-length documentary, a fanciful 2007 drama about two men vying for the ultimate high score on the classic arcade game “Donkey Kong.” The popular doc got great word-of-mouth, and a disc ended up in Vaughn’s DVD player. The motormouthed comedy star invited Gordon to discuss the script for “Christmases,” a comedy about a couple who have to visit all four sets of their divorced parents on the same day. He ultimately got the job and quickly had to adjust from a DIY guerrilla crew of five and a $200,000 budget to daily crawl sheets jammed with 150 crew names and $80 million with which to work.

“The hardest part of the transition was the sheer volume of opinions and interested parties and the huge amount of pressure as a result of the budget,” Gordon said. “When you’re making a film all by yourself, 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.”
With the bankable Vaughn toplining a holiday romp that opens on an extended weekend with no other comedy competition, box-office prospects look strong for Gordon’s debut. Vaughn’s past three comedies — “Wedding Crashers,” “The Break-Up” and “Fred Claus” — grossed $582 million theatrically worldwide.

But Gordon is not necessarily looking for a career in big-budget studio comedies. He and producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa are trying to persuade Sony to let him move forward with “The Only Living Boy in New York,” a much smaller slice-of-life dramatic comedy written by Allan Loeb (“Things We Lost in the Fire,” “21”).
“In ‘Kong,’ there was a real balance between comedy and heartfelt emotion that I would like to find in future projects,” Gordon said. “But it doesn’t have to be a budget of a certain size to meet those requirements. It’s more about what the story is. I certainly don’t intend to stick only to these big things. For me, it’s all about good scripts that strike that balance because that’s where my comfort zone is.”

Impact
Marriage, kids and divorce have all had their impact on Oscar-winning Reese Witherspoon, so when it comes to planning the holidays and extended family visits, she has this advice: go with the flow.
Witherspoon, 32, sees “Four Christmases,’’ telling of an unmarried couple whose relationship is forever changed after a series of holiday visits to their four divorced parents.
The actress, who has two young children with her ex-husband Ryan Phillippe, said in recent interviews that she deals with her own family dynamics at the holidays by trying to stay open and communicating with everyone concerned.

“It’s all very go with the flow, whatever happens in the moment,’’ she said.
After seven years of marriage, she and Phillippe separated in 2006 and finalized their divorce this past June. She said her feelings about marriage have changed, somewhat.
“I had a certain idea of what I thought marriage gives and the whole life and how things are, and sometimes it doesn’t work out that way,’’ she said. “So you have to be open to whatever comes your way in life, and life and love and relationships take all kinds of shapes.’’
Divorces and extended families are often the norm in today’s world, but Witherspoon said the story being told in ‘’Four Christmases’’ seemed very unique for moviegoers.

“I’ve never really seen someone have to deal with the idea of blended family and how they have to go to a million different places,’’ Witherspoon said. “But I hear people complain about it constantly.’’
Witherspoon, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of country singer June Carter in “Walk the Line,’’ produced “Four Christmases’’ through her company Type A Films.
She and co-star Vince Vaughn play a couple living together in a posh San Francisco apartment, who every Christmas come up with an excuse to avoid their families.
But this year when their flight to Fiji is canceled, they spend Christmas shuttling through visits to all four of their divorced parents and learning more about each other.

The parents are played by Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen and Jon Voight.
Steenburgen, who is married to actor Ted Danson, said her Christmas resembles the way one of the households in the movie handles their holiday.
“There’s my kids and their friends and my ex-husband and his kids and there’s Christians and Jews, and it’s pretty crazy,’’ she said. “And everybody has a dog and everybody brings the dog, so it’s just kind of riotous and silly and funny, and we’re deeply immature and have a great time.’’
Witherspoon added that when she was growing up each member of her family often got only one gift, but it was extra special, such as a nicely made chocolate.
Things are different for her children, who Witherspoon said expect gifts even on Halloween and will probably ask for a horse for Christmas. Witherspoon owns a farm.

Also:
LOS ANGELES: Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon says she is baffled by reports of tension between her and co-star Vince Vaughn on the set of new holiday season comedy “Four Christmases.”
Speaking in Beverly Hills ahead of the new film’s US release on Wednesday, Witherspoon described towering “Wedding Crashers” star Vaughn as the “funniest man she has worked with.”
“Every co-star I ever work with I’m either having an affair with him, I’m about to get married with him, or having a baby or we absolutely cannot stand each other,” Witherspoon, 32, said of gossip reports.

“We got along great, we were very good friends and we were very much partners on this movie,” added Witherspoon, who won an Academy Award in 2006 for her performance in Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line.” “Vince is the funniest person I’ve ever worked with. It was a challenge for me to stay there and keep up with him. But I feel really a better actor for that experience,” she added. The difference in height between Witherspoon and Vaughn — he stands at 6ft 5in, she is a petite 5ft 2in — did cause headaches.

In some dancing scenes Vaughn was required to carry Witherspoon in order for her to fit in the camera frame. Mother-of-two Witherspoon, who is now romantically linked to “Brokeback Mountain” star Jake Gyllenhaal, said she was attracted by the story of juggling family commitments at Christmas. “I’d never seen anyone do the idea of the blended family and how they have to go to a million different places at Christmas,” she said. “But I hear people complain about it constantly and it’s a situation my own children will have to deal with.”