William Hurt‘s short speech last night in Santa Barbara on behalf of Isabelle Huppert was a quiet corker. His remarks were clearly directed at the horrific political climate being generated out of the White House these days; more than a few came up to Hurt later and said “great speech!” Hurt costarred with Huppert in Ned Benson‘s The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (’12). Plus he’s fluent in French and owns (or at least owned the last time I checked) a residence not far from Paris. During the after-party we spoke about LSD, Altered States (i.e., Paddy Chayefsky vs. Ken Russell), Buddhism (a few years ago Hurt took a Columbia course in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and computer science), Hank Paulson (whom Hurt played in 2011’s Too Big To Fail), etc.