The It List - Movies

It Bit Player
Allison Janney
AGE: 38
WHY HER? If W.C. Fields were alive, he'd say don't work with dogs, kids, or Janney. She's sparkled in bit parts (Primary Colors) but moves center stage as a press secretary in NBC's fall series The West Wing.
WEIRDEST CAREER MOMENT: "For The Impostors, Stanley Tucci recorded me doing sex noises over the phone. I'm in my apartment screaming, 'Ohhh! Johnny!' My whole building knows I live with my boyfriend, Dennis."
NEXT: Drop Dead Gorgeous (July 16) and The Taming of the Shrew (on stage in New York)

It Family Guy
Jez Butterworth
AGE: 30
WHY HIM? Even though he has only one little flick on his resume (the 1997 thriller Mojo), Butterworth's script for Birthday Girl, a comedy about a Russian mail-order bride, was so winning that fellow Aussie Nicole Kidman agreed to take a pay cut to star in the $5 million film.
WORK HABITS: Keeping it all in the family. Writer-director Jez cowrote Birthday Girl with his brother Tom and will coproduce with his brother Steve. "It's something that's either the most natural thing or your worst nightmare," he says. "For me it's both."
CREATIVE CRUTCH: A ride in the country. "We can't write in London. Tom and I [go to] places in the sticks."
NEXT: "In 10 minutes, I'm shooting a scene set in a motel entirely in Russian with Nicole." (Birthday Girl is shooting now.)

It Scene Setter
Eugenio Zanetti
AGE: 50
WHY HIM? An Oscar winner for 1995's Restoration, he earned a second nom for last year's What Dreams May Come. With July 23's The Haunting, Zanetti whips up a spook house on steroids (above and top right), complete with a tentacle-sprouting Gothic bed. Director Jan De Bont "told me it should be like The Shining on the sets from Citizen Kane."
WORK HABITS: Loves to brainstorm in bed right before sleeping, like his idol Leonardo da Vinci. "There's an area between waking and dreaming that's very powerful for the left side of the brain."
NEXT: Trying to sell Jim Henson Productions on letting him write and direct an animation-and-puppetry extravaganza, The Road to Janabad, about a mythical animal kingdom.

It (Silent) Film Composers
The Alloy Orchestra
Terry Donahue, 38; Roger C. Miller, 47; Ken Winokur, 45
WHY THEM? Telluride Film Festival faves, these Boston-based musicians have rejuvenated the art of silent film with thrillingly quirky, percussive scores for such classics as Sergei Eisenstein's Strike
UNLIKELY SOURCE OF INSPIRATION: Everything. They make beautiful music using horse-shoes, plumbing pipes, air-conditioning ducts, and even a bedpan.
WEIRDEST CAREER MOMENT: Crossing the border into Slovenia while on tour last year. ''They couldn't understand how three musicians could have so many instruments.'' says Winokur. ''They assumed we were going in to sell off scrap metal.''
DREAM PROJECT: Scoring Clara Bow's It.
NEXT: Performing their scores for Strike and other films this summer in New York and Telluride.

It Lesser EvilVerne J. Troyer
AGE: 30
WHY HIM? The 32-inch actor and stuntman from Arlington, Tex., is drawing the biggest raves in Austin Powers 2. As Mini-Me, a 1/8-size clone of tightly wound Dr. Evil, Troyer is a greater threat to swinging Austin Powers than the feminist movement. By summer's end, no one will feel complete without their own inanimate Mini-Me.
SECRET CONFESSION: Grew up Amish. ''We had to bale the hay, ride the wagons, not use zippers, and wear suspenders. The one good thing was, I didn't have to wear one of those hats.''
THE DOWNSIDE: ''No normal dating.''
KNEW HE'D MADE IT WHEN: He had not one but two action figures bearing his likeness — a talking Mini-Me doll and an 18-inch Mini-Me plush toy. ''They're almost life-size,'' he says.
WORK HABITS: Studied gorilla documentaries to play a monkey in Mighty Joe Young and learned breath control to be an alien baby in Men in Black. ''I had to breathe out of a one-nostrilled snout.''
WORST JOB: Playing a dog called Sundae for a McDonald's home-video series. ''I was down on all fours constantly, it was hot, and the head was so big, I kept falling down.''
MOMENT HE ALMOST GAVE UP: During the year-and-a-half dry spell he hit after 1994's Baby's Day Out. ''Doing stunt work has been fun,'' he says, ''but there aren't too many roles that call for babies who need stunt doubles.'' He finally landed a role as a panda bear in The Amazing Panda Adventure.
DREAM PROJECT: He says it's time for a little man to play a leading-man role.
NEXT: He'll play a drug dealer in the indie Here Lies Lonely, but he's hoping for a part in Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
AUSTIN POWERS OR DR. EVIL? A shocker! Austin Powers. ''It may be surprising, since I'm Dr. Evil's clone, but Austin gets to shag a lot more.''