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PARK CITY, Utah -- Michael Rapaport has good reason to feel special.
Despite the critical barbs hurled at his Fox comedy The War At Home, the series has emerged as one of the season's survivors. And he's currently at Sundance touting Special, a dark independent comedy in which he portrays an everyman who either is a) developing superpowers or b) having a mental collapse.
"I love the dichotomy of doing a network sitcom and doing this little gritty, dirty independent film. If I could do both of those things for the rest of my life, I'd be happy."
Not that Rapaport, sitting at a bustling delicatessen in downtown Park City, is immune to the potshots critics take at him.
"I was disappointed by the reviews (for The War At Home). I just think reviewers have their own agenda," he says, denying charges the politically incorrect show, about a suburban family, is homophobic and offensive.
"I know the show has class. Although sometimes the characters act classless, it still has class, heart and integrity and so do the characters.
"All the critics complain about how everything's the same on television and you do something that's different and you get slammed. I love working on the show. It's coming back on the air in February and I think it just keeps getting better."
Rapaport hesitates when asked if he anticipates a second season. The ratings are good, aren't they? "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you never know until you know. I think, knock on wood, we'll be alright."
In the past decade or so, the New York native has appeared in movies ranging from True Romance to last year's hit Hitch. Despite this longevity, he admits he'll always feel like an outsider in Hollywood.
"I don't think I'll ever make peace with the industry. I have a lot of qualms about it -- the way actors are chewed up and used. I feel for young actors. I haven't had any bad experiences, but I've seen my friends have them."
Friends that include megastar Leonardo DiCaprio.
"The amount of scrutiny and isolation he's forced to live his life with, it makes his job as an actor very difficult. Leonardo can't sit in this deli because if he was sitting in this deli, everybody would be watching him and who wants to live like that?"
The current celebrity culture, he adds, "affects all art and music. What's a 20-year-old R & B singer making $30 million a year, got to sing about? He's driving around in a Rolls-Royce. Marvin Gaye would sing about taking care of his family or a personal problem and you could hear that cry, that truth, in his voice, even if you didn't like the music. If you're a 20-year-old wearing platinum diamond earrings, you've got nothing to sing about but shaking your ass."
This isn't to suggest Rapaport is a snob. He enjoys being in a hit as much as the next actor. "I've always had my eye on the prize and that's to feel proud of what I do ... I've done a couple big movies that haven't been that good, but that's the way the cookie crumbles, you know. If I could be in Mission Impossible 3, which is a big action movie that everyone loves and gets their money's worth from, I'd love to do that. If I have 20 more Specials ahead of me, I'd love that too."