The Wonder Wheel quartet — Kate Winslet, Jim Belushi, Juno Temple and Justin Timberlake — sat for a 10 pm q & a last night inside the Arclight Cinerama Dome. Moderator Pete Hammond presided over what turned out to be a lively, somewhat competitive conversation.

Winslet, trying to land one of the five Best Actress nomination slots (and in so doing will have to dislodge one of the well-ensconced pack leaders — Frances McDormand, Sally Hawkins, Meryl Streep, Saoirse Ronan or Margot Robbie), scored first with a riff about the high-quality script, the responsibility of making a melodramatic, life-and-death piece come to life, and the excitement of working with director-writer Woody Allen.

(l. to. r.) Wonder Wheel costars Juno Temple, Jim Belushi, Justin Timberlake, Kate Winslet, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond.

Then it was Justin Timberlake‘s turn, but he took too long in telling about his initial meeting with Allen. (Woody doesn’t audition his actors — he just smiles and says “hi.”) Then the effusive Belushi had the mike (both he and Timberlake stood up and acted out portions of their stories), and then the British-born Temple, who arguably gives the most open-hearted, least-denial-imprisoned performance in the film, had a couple of minutes. And then Winslet took over again. And then Timberlake and Belushi got into a joust.

It was a four-way competition of sorts, a friendly scrimmage about who could score with the most interesting observations and/or pass along the most amusing anecdotes.

For some reason the Arclight staff refused to turn up the lights, which made the actors harder to see, caused the photos to look grainy and rendered the brief video clip I shot all but worthless. Winslet, Belushi and Timberlake were immediately swarmed by security guards when the chat ended. Temple, on the other hand, was cool with mingling and posing for selfies, etc.