10 Small Movie Roles You Didn't Know Held Signifigance

Writing about writers is a difficult task, just ask anyone who's struggled with a scene in which a character writes "Chapter One" on a keyboard only to delete it out of frustration moments later. The most interesting portrayals of writers haven't focused on their output, but their lives that served as fuel for their product. Such was the case with Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. Alan Rudolph's film was more interested with the Algonquin round table of Jazz Age-era writers like Dorothy Parker, particularly her relationship with author Robert Benchley.

Asking for cameos would likely be too much, as most of the round table was dead, drunk or more likely both in 1994. And while Jennifer Jason Leigh and co-star Campbell Scott are certainly game for recreating the environment, Rudolph cast an actor who'd only had bit parts in adaptations of his own work: Robert's son Peter.

The hit author of Jaws appears as Vanity Fair editor Frank Crowninshield, and he's not the only connection to the literary world the film boast. Wallace Shawn's character is featured heavily in a subplot about the founding of The New Yorker, for which his father William served as editor.

The film even goes a few generations beyond the roundtable, casting Martha Plympton, eight removed cousin of both writer George and animator Bill.