Park City, Utah The life of an insurance agent might not seem like a source of comedy gold, but screenwriter Phil Johnston struck the motherlode in "Cedar Rapids." The film stars "The Hangover's" Ed Helms as a bumpkin agent whose innocent idealism takes a beating during an annual convention in the wide-open Iowa metropolis. His raunchy adventures throw his moral compass off kilter before he rights himself with the help of fellow conventioneers John C. Reilly, Anne Heche and Isiah Whitlock, Jr. Johnston an Emmy-winning TV reporter in Rochester and Minneapolis in the early 2000s, was greeted by waves of applause following his film's Sundance Film Festival world premiere Sunday night. After the screening he said he found the world of life, home and auto policies a natural springboard for comedy. "I went to all these conventions out of film school," he said. "I was shooting industrial ads and more than anything I saw the weird double lives of people at these things and found that to be very interesting." The very concept of insurance struck him as silly, he said. "In life there kind of really is no insurance other than love and trust and people in your life and friendship. The insurance was a theme that was thematically relevant to the story that we all wanted to tell."
