Actor Jayce Bartok says that he was inspired to try his hand at writing a screenplay by working in actor-turned-writer/director Thomas McCarthy’s film The Station Agent. And so he wrote The Cake Eaters, inspired somewhat by incidents in his own life, a film that will appeal to the same viewers who liked The Station Agent even though the stories don’t have much in common. Set in an unidentified small town in what is clearly New York State (ordering Gennys at the local bar is a dead giveaway), the story involves two families. One is comprised of three men: Easy Kimbough (Bruce Dern), the local butcher, whose wife recently died; his son Beagle (Aaron Stanford), who attended to her dying days when his father couldn’t bear to; and prodigal Guy (Bartok), back from failing to make much of a dent in the music industry. The other is primarily female: well-grounded Marg Kaminski (Elizabeth Ashley), artist daughter Violet (Talia Balsam), and granddaughter Stephanie (Kristen Stewart), who is losing control of her body to a progressive neurological disorder. With a cast like that you don’t require much for a watchable film, and as directed by actress Mary Stuart Masterson, The Cake Eaters is more than that. If the film (which was produced by Buffalo natives Robert and Carol Morris) has a fault it is that at 86 minutes it’s too short to do justice to every character, or at least to every actor: Dern is a standout in a more mild-mannerd role than he usually gets to play, while Stewart, two years before her breakthrough role in Twilight, gives a strong performance as a teenager who knows what she wants to get out of life before an inevitable early death. Filmed in 2006, The Cake Eaters is just now getting a release after a few years of playing film festivals to appreciative audiences and indifferent distributors. It will be playing at the Screening Room in Williamsville this weekend, with shows on Friday at 7:15 and 9:15pm Saturday at 9:15pm, and Sunday and Tuesday at 7:30pm.

—m. faust