Sam Rockwell vs. Justin Theroux
Battle of the Chameleonic Hipster Goofs

It seems like it's been a while since the entertainment press identified a new group of stars as a "pack" or "posse" or "repertory company" or something of the sort. The Frat Pack has dispersed, P.Diddy barely seems to go out anymore (and therefore has no more need of his coattail-riders from the late cast of That '70s Show), and though Christopher Guest's regular cast members still appear to be pretty tight, they only make a new movie like every five years or so. Meanwhile, do we even have a name for the people who have ended up in the orbit of the comedy troupe formerly known as The State, or for those who've become entangled by the Strangers With Candy universe? Or are those just two subsets of a larger constellation of cool yet low-key actors who live in New York, guest-star on Law & Order and Sex & The City when they're starting out, and hang out with each other having dinner parties (featuring Amy Sedaris's cupcakes and/or cheese balls (not euphemisms))? To what tribe or tribes do Sam Rockwell and Justin Theroux properly belong?

Fame isn't something we seek, ourselves, but watching the careers (and, in a more limited way, the lives) of people like Theroux and Rockwell does make us think it might be okay. They just seem to be doing everything right. Staying in New York always seems to us to be the mark of a superior kind of showbiz celebrity. (We were about to add "Sarah Jessica Parker aside," but hell, even she's cannily wriggled her way under the hipster umbrella, both by casting Amy Sedaris in a recurring role on Sex & The City, and by cameo-ing entertainingly in the Strangers With Candy movie.) And just the fact of living in New York seems to indicate that an actor is potentially available to headline whatever no-budget lark of a movie may be shooting in the East Village this week, be it Frogs For Snakes (Theroux) or Bad Liver And A Broken Heart (Rockwell). Then, having gained notice for your indie cred, you'll be sought after to add hip cachet to a blockbuster, be it Matchstick Men (Rockwell) or Miami Vice (Theroux), for which Ricky Jay and Maya Rudolph can tease you for selling out at Liev Schreiber's next dinner party. Come on! That's a good life!

It may seem as though we're creating a fantasy social life for Rockwell and Theroux out of the whole cloth of our most embarrassing celebrity fantasies, here, but the surprising thing, when you really look at their work over the past several years, is how many ways and through how many co-stars Theroux's and Rockwell's careers have intersected. Both appeared in 1996 movies that featured actors playing Andy Warhol -- Rockwell in Basquiat, and Theroux in I Shot Andy Warhol. David Bowie played Warhol in Basquiat, and went on to play himself in Zoolander, in which Theroux played the dreadlocked, breakdance-fighting Evil DJ opposite Ben Stiller, whose dear friend and frequent collaborator Janeane Garofalo had a crush on him as Cowboy back in Romy And Michele's High School Reunion. Theroux also played opposite Stiller in Duplex, whose Drew Barrymore had sexed up Rockwell in Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind. Not only do both of them have connections to alumni of The State -- Rockwell was in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy with the voice of Thomas Lennon, and has been involved with both the TV series and online-shorts incarnations of Stella, while Theroux starred in The Baxter with Michael Showalter -- but they've both played villains in the Charlie's Angels movies (Rockwell in the first, Theroux in the second). If they don't have at least some friends in common by now, it may be because no one wants to introduce them for fear of causing a rift in spacetime.

It's hard to say which of our two hipster goofs is the more expendable when we treasure them both so. Rockwell may have the advantage in terms of career growth -- he's the one who was garnering Oscar buzz for Dangerous Mind when Theroux was just coming off The District (yes, the CBS Saturday-night procedural with Craig T. Nelson -- THAT The District), and he's also the one whose next movie will find him co-starring opposite Brad Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. On the other hand, Justin Theroux is hot. Though Theroux's hotness may triumph in the long term, evidence of Rockwell's chameleonic abilities is currently winning the day: his roles may get smaller as his movies get bigger, but even in the likes of Matchstick Men, he got to show a lot of the humour and playfulness that delighted us in wee tiny movies like Box Of Moonlight, whereas poor Theroux didn't get to do one interesting thing, as far as we could see, in Miami Vice. Though he probably cares more that Amy Sedaris knows how entertaining he can be than he is that Colin Farrell does...which is exactly what makes him cool, anyway.

Advantage: Rockwell.