Jenna Brister’s movie debut features big hair and bigger laughs.
Brister ’06 appears in Permanent, a comedy about bad hair, awkward family members, teenagehood and the 1980s. The PG-13 film stars Rainn Wilson and Patricia Arquette and will be released in theaters and on iTunes Dec. 15.
Brister, a comedienne, actress and screenwriter, plays a hairdresser named Sally. “Sally’s an over-confident rascal who has never given a perm, but she gives one and ruins this poor girl’s life for the rest of the movie,” says Brister.
She credits a January Term screenwriting class at Linfield for lighting her storytelling fire.
“I tell so many stories about my time at Linfield,” she says. “It’s such a close-knit community and everyone is so supportive. I was able to be creatively free.”
Brister has appeared on multiple stages across the country, including Comedy Sportz in Portland, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York, and The Moth and The Hollywood Improv in Los Angeles. She created a character named Maven while at The Groundlings, comedy theatre in Los Angeles, and has developed a screenplay set in small-town Oregon based on that character.
Brister is focusing on screenwriting going forward. She has a movie, The Deadly Double, in production at Lifetime. There’s no word, however, on how big the actors’ hair will be in this movie.
