| Lily Tomlin to Offer Laughs at Chicago's Rosemont Theatre |
[Jul. 7th, 2008|08:25 pm] |
Lily Tomlin to Offer Laughs at Chicago's Rosemont Theatre
By Adam Hetrick
June 10, 2008
Tony and Emmy Award winner Lily Tomlin will make a stop at Chicago's Rosemont Theatre for an evening of comedy in November.
The Chicago visit is billed as "An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin" and promises career highlights, including visits from her inimitable repertoire of characters. The one-night-only event will take place Nov. 1 at 8 PM.
Additional stops for Tomlin include Portland, OR; Greensboro, NC; Sacramento, CA; Oakville, ON; Austin, TX; Minneapolis, MN; Atlanta, GA; Key Largo, FL; and Tacoma, WA.
Known for her Tony-honored Broadway run of The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Tomlin's extensive screen credits include "Nine to Five," "And the Band Played On," "All of Me," "A Prairie Home Companion," "I Heart Huckabees," "The West Wing," "The Incredible Shrinking Woman," "Lily: Sold Out" and "Edith Ann's Christmas: Just Say Noel."
Tickets for the Rosemont engagement range $37.50-$75 and are available by phoning (312) 559-1212 or by visiting www.ticketmaster.com.
The Rosemont Theatre is located at 5400 N. River Road in Chicago, IL. |
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| Tomlin's act never comes across as one |
[Jul. 7th, 2008|08:25 pm] |
Story available at http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/06/29/news/local/33-tomlin.txt
Published on Sunday, June 29, 2008.
Last modified on 7/1/2008 at 9:00 pm
Tomlin's act never comes across as one
By JACI WEBB
Of The Gazette Staff
What was so satisfying about Lily Tomlin's act Saturday night at the Alberta Bair Theater's Gala was that it wasn't an act.
At least it didn't feel like a comedy routine. Rather, it took on the shape of a candid conversation with a wacky new friend. Tomlin's delivery is so natural that her characters just gurgle up, sort of like syrup on a pickle - part saccharine, part salt.
Tomlin headlined the ABT's 21st Annual Gala, providing a welcome shift away from musical acts. About 525 people took in Tomlin's performance, and hundreds were treated to the lavish pre-party at US Bank and post-party under tents set up in the alley behind the ABT, with dancing inside on the stage.
Tammy Yow and a group of friends raved about Tomlin's energy and spirit.
"I loved her impression of the phone lady," said Yow, of Billings. "I used to watch her all the time on 'Laugh-In.' "
Tomlin turned the phone operator, Ernestine, into a clerk at an HMO, turning down every claim with her nasally jibes.
"Shot in a subway? Next time, eat at Quiznos," she tells one claimant.
Some of Tomlin's jokes were more revelations than jokes, like when Ernestine told a caller trying to file a health claim: "Your health is our business, not our concern."
Or when Tomlin casually slipped in a reference to being gay, then added the observation: "No one was gay when I was a kid, only shy."
Tomlin opened her routine with comments about Billings and Montana. She called Skypoint "Billings' way of saying 'sock it to me' " and noted that having a strip club, Aphrodite's Inferno, open in the former Billings office for the Barack Obama campaign probably wasn't "the change Obama was talking about."
She drew boos along with cheers when she trod too heavily on Republican candidate John McCain and referred to Obama as the next president.
"I hope Obama gets in the White House before they repossess it," Tomlin said before shifting to safer topics, like angry teenagers and second-grade teachers.
Tomlin, who became an overnight sensation when she joined the cast of "Laugh-In" in 1969, proved a physical and quick-thinking entertainer. She performed a cheer from her high school days and sang a song a rival candidate used against her ninth-grade campaign for class treasurer. Her stories were a highlight of her the almost two-hour show. It was never obvious whether they were true or not, but so many of them touched on the same threads that make up our lives that it felt like she was one of us.
Contact Jaci Webb at jwebb@billingsgazette.com or 657-1359. |
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| The serious side of Lily Tomlin |
[Jul. 7th, 2008|08:22 pm] |
The serious side of Lily Tomlin
Yvonne Zacharias
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, April 26, 2008
LILY TOMLIN
Unique Lives & Experiences
Orpheum Theatre, Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets $31 - $70 at Ticketmaster
- - -
One ringy dingy. Pause. Snort.
"A gracious good morning. Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?"
So began the monologue by comedienne Lily Tomlin for the irascible telephone operator, Ernestine, one of the most memorable characters in television comedy.
She did it on Laugh-In, the late 1960s, early 1970s show that was indeed very, very funny.
With her angular face that always seemed to carry a hint of surprise, Tomlin was a key player in the show.
One normally associates Tomlin with comical characters like Ernestine and the devilish six-year-old Edith Ann. But Tomlin, that is the real Tomlin, says she isn't all that funny in real life.
"Unless I am really in the moment, I am kind of serious," said the 68-year-old actress from her home in Los Angeles. "If I am not laughing, I look serious."
Tomlin did sound very serious in a wide-ranging interview that covered politics, humour and her 37-year relationship with Jane Wagner.
On the latter, Tomlin confessed she was somewhat jealous of Ellen DeGeneres who made television history in April 1997, when her character and DeGeneres herself personally revealed she was lesbian.
There was no such earth-shattering moment for Tomlin, partly by her own design and partly because of the times. News of her lesbianism just seeped out.
She remembers getting a call from her publicist in the summer of 1975 with an offer of being on the cover of Time magazine if she would come out in the article.
"I was more insulted that they thought I would do it just to get a cover. In some ways, I regret that I didn't do it, that I didn't take that opportunity. But at that time, my inflated idea about myself as an artist superseded everything."
She didn't make any big announcements also out of concern for her staunch fundamentalist Christian mother, a woman from the South who had trouble dealing openly with the fact that not just Tomlin, but her brother as well, was gay.
"I think my inclination was more protective of her. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. She had gone through a tremendous downward spiral when my brother was a young boy and having trouble at school because he was gay. I saw her go on a pretty rough trip over that."
It was fairly common knowledge in entertainment circles and among journalists that Tomlin and Wagner were a couple but nobody wrote about it for the longest time. "It was a time when people didn't write about your personal life. There was restraint. As the culture became more tabloidized, it was more fair game."
Tomlin is at heart a committed left-wing Democrat. Not surprisingly, she had much to say on that score. She rails against consumerism, materialism and, not least of all, the George W. Bush administration.
Generally, she tries to steer clear of humour that ridicules or debases any members of society. Bush and his acolytes are an exception.
"They absolutely deserve anything that we can come up with that is perceptive and illuminating about them. It's like vanquishing them with humour because it's a pretty severe situation and it calls for it."
She said she is truly afraid that Republican candidate John McCain will win the U.S. presidential election. "Before I thought we couldn't lose; now I am worried we might not win." The problem, she said, is when cultures fail, it is usually because their economy is failing. At such times, they look for a big daddy to whom they can run for cover. McCain might be just that strong, authoritarian figure.
She said both Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have shown enough cracks in their campaigns to cast doubt. She is prepared to support either. "The soul of me wants Barack. The cynical more heady side of me thinks, well, maybe it's better to get Hillary."
All of this sounds fairly political for a woman who has made her mark as a funny entertainer. But she says if you look beneath her material, "it was always intended to be really funny and human but it would always rail against abuse of power or inequity and other things that went on in the culture."
When she appears as part of the Unique Lives & Experiences series Tuesday, her audience will get a taste of her gentle brand of humour. She plans to bring her characters to life for them.
The inspiration for many of them came from growing up with her working class parents in an old apartment house in Detroit that had all kinds of people living in it -- blacks, pensioners, the educated, the uneducated, the very political, the apolitical, the very radical, the very conservative. "I just was in love with the way people talked or their accent or their lifestyle." Just a few blocks away lived people in what looked to her like mansions. She spent summers on a farm in Kentucky with aunts and uncles and cousins.
This colourful, eclectic cast of people in her life gave her a window on the world and insight into human character.
She grew up with radio which gave her an appreciation for different voices. "We didn't get a TV until I was 10."
She also had a grade school teacher who, in the last 10 or 15 minutes of the school day on Fridays, would treat the class to a reading of dialect poems.
It was no ordinary reading. She would deliver a whole scenario, a scene played out in different voices. "I would see her sitting there acting out this whole playlet. I just thought it was wonderful that she could it. It was like radio, but I was watching her live."
She finds modern comedy to be somewhat harsher than it used to be as it often derides or ridicules people. Even Survivor or game shows are built on humiliation. Eschewing this path, she tries to make her comedy "a tender embrace of all of us."
Not that you can't share the fraud, the stupidity and the weakness of the human race, "but you share it as all of us in the same boat."
Get ready for a big hug.
yzacharias@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2008 |
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| The queen of comic characters - Interview |
[Jul. 7th, 2008|08:22 pm] |
The queen of comic characters
By KRISTIN TILLOTSON, Star Tribune
May 6, 2008
On the big screen, Lily Tomlin will next be seen with Steve Martin in "Pink Panther II." If you can't wait that long, she's in town Saturday for a show at the O'Shaughnessy, where she will call up several of the characters made famous from her days on "Laugh-In" through her stage show "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe," written by her partner, Jane Wagner.
We caught up with Tomlin last week in her Los Angeles office. Her telephone voice -- when she's not channeling Ernestine the bossy telephone operator, Edith Ann the child philosopher or Trudy the bag lady -- is surprisingly soft, delicate and ageless.
Q What characters will you be trotting out Saturday night in St. Paul?
A Whoever I can summon up that night. All of them together are probably a reflection of the neighborhood I grew up in, in Detroit.
Q Do your classic characters ever go on any new journeys?
A Some monologues are timeless, but Ernestine is one of the easiest to get into new things, she's so domineering. She goes where the power is. Most recently she's been working at a big HMO, denying health care to everyone. She has also modeled in a fashion show, ankling around in a coat that gets caught on her big bracelet when she tries to flamboyantly fling it off. Then she has a tantrum onstage. That's one of the secrets of her popularity -- everyone's id lives through her because she's not intimidated by anyone or anything. We can all misbehave vicariously.
Q How much time do you spend contributing to wowowow.com, the new blog you're a part of with several other notable women?
A As much as I can give it. I've done three or four of those conversations they have every day. I don't know how people do it, keeping up with all these websites. I've never even been entirely through my own website [www.lilytomlin.com].
Q Besides you, who's funny working in comedy now? How about It Girl Tina Fey?
A She's a very good comedienne, but she's more of a creator. More in the mode of what I'm attracted to, Tracey Ullman is brilliant, all the characters and the commenting on culture.
Q So, despite the opinion of Christopher Hitchens, women can be funny?
A [Laughs] He's not the first to say that. There was a big fracas about Jerry Lewis doing it, too. That's been going on since the beginning of comedy. Here's one of my favorite stories from back in the early '60s, when I was working at the New York cabaret Upstairs at the Downstairs. Backstage in the dressing room, this actress who played the beautiful ingenue had me doubled over with her stories. So funny. She could make her hair expand by her own will. When I asked her why she didn't put it into her acting, she said, "I wouldn't want anyone to think I was unattractive." That was the thing, you couldn't be both funny and pretty.
Q What about Allison Janney playing Violet Newstead, the role you made famous onscreen, in the upcoming stage-musical version of "9 to 5"?
A Allison is terrific; I worked with her on "The West Wing." I don't think I would do a musical. It's hard to step into someone else's project. Even in the original "9 to 5" movie, I was used to doing my own characters, so the only way I could do it was to pretend I was really some woman named Violet Newstead who had been hired to make an instructive film for office workers.
Q HBO canceled the show "12 Miles of Bad Road," in which you played a Texas matriarch, before even giving it an on-air try. What gives?
A It's not perfect, but it didn't deserve to not be aired. I think the show got caught in the middle of internal fighting at the network.
Q You've been widely quoted as saying, "Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy 2 percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them." Is that apropos of your feelings in the current political climate?
A How about my other one, "No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up." In the beginning I gave money to Hillary, but I can't let go of my desire to have both her and Obama.
Q What was it like working with Garrison Keillor on "A Prairie Home Companion"?
A That was a sublime shoot; you've got Altman and Keillor. And Meryl Streep. Altman was in the middle of his next film when he died, but he was going through chemo during our shoot, so you did have that sense of mortality. Now Garrison, when I've gone to the Hollywood Bowl to see the show live, I see that dour face of his and it's 10 times funnier than on the radio. It tickles me to death. That "Prairie Home Companion" persona is so much a part of him, he almost doesn't want to violate it himself. He's just very dry, and Meryl -- well, she's like a bad kid in some ways, you'd never believe it about her. Always up for a little foolishness. Once in a while he would give her a line reading, or put his two cents in on what she should do in a scene, and she would turn and do exactly the opposite to rile him up. We were always trying to get a rise out of him; we liked to tease him.
Q Any other fun memories of filming in St. Paul?
A When Meryl and I were rehearsing our singing, we went out for a break and the sky turned red and the air was really still. We thought it was just beautiful until someone yelled, "Get back inside, there might be a tornado coming!" Lindsay Lohan's fans were always on the street ogling. Meryl and I would just step over them.
Kristin Tillotson • 612-673-7046 |
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| Fundrace: What Celebrities Gave Candidates In 2007 |
[Feb. 2nd, 2008|11:59 pm] |
Huffington Post | Katherine Thomson | February 1, 2008 06:27 PM
New campaign numbers are out, and available in a variety of search functions and mapping tools on Huffington Post's Fundrace. Now donations in the 4th quarter of 2007 are public.
Hollywood celebrities continue to voice their political support with their wallets. Many gave in the first three quarters, and for more on that go here and here. But as shown a quarter ago, there are still a number of holdouts. However, the new donation numbers added more than a few noteworthy names to the list of givers.
After campaigning for Kerry in 2004, Ben Affleck has finally picked a presidential allegiance. The actor-director gave $4600 to Obama. But a search for wife Jennifer Garner still turns up nothing.
Oscar nominee Viggo Mortensen gave $2300 to the late campaign of Dennis Kucinich. Expanding on previous donations, "West Wing" alum Bradley Whitford added a 4th quarter donation of $2300 to Hillary Clinton (Whitford is seen here at the Kodak Theater for Thursday's debate). He'd previously made handouts to Obama and Joe Biden.
Also weighing in on the election with funds was comedian, talk show host and Huffington Post blogger Bill Maher, who gave $1000 to Edwards' failed bid. Actor and fellow blogger Ryan Reynolds gave $1200 to Obama at the end of 2007.
Actresses have also opened their wallets. Rita Wilson added a 4th quarter donation to Clinton, and has now given $4600 to Clinton and $2300 to Obama. Glenn Close is only playing one side though, with a new $2300 donation to Hillary Clinton. Ellen Barkin has taken the other side with her $2300 donation just to Obama. And funny lady Lily Tomlin added to a previous $2000 Clinton donation with a $500 check to Obama.
And Obama has rallied Hollywood's youth! Raven Symone, known as precocious toddler Olivia on "The Cosby Show" and more recently "That's So Raven," Symone is now 22 and an Obama backer, giving $2000 in the 4th quarter.
On a musical note, Dave Matthews donated $2300 to Obama. Also joining in was singer-producer Babyface (nee Kenneth Edmonds), who has now given $4600 to Obama's campaign. Ex-wife Tracey (recent ex of Eddie Murphy) had previously given $500 to Obama. |
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| Tavis Smiley Show Oct 8-04 |
[Feb. 2nd, 2008|11:06 pm] |
Lily Tomlin
original airdate October 8, 2004
Actress and comedienne Lily Tomlin was a pre-med college student before choosing to take her chances in the entertainment business. Her performances have resulted in Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards and an Oscar nod. Tomlin's role on TV's Laugh-In led to nightclub appearances and successful comedy record albums. The Detroit native made her film debut in Nashville and has numerous TV credits, including The West Wing. Tomlin stars in the ensemble comedy feature, I [Heart] Huckabees.
Tavis: It is a pleasure to welcome Lily Tomlin to this program. There isn't much in show business that she hasn't accomplished. Seminal TV shows like 'Laugh-In,' 'Murphy Brown,' and now 'The West Wing,' films like 'Nine to Five,' 'All of me,' and 'Nashville,' the latter earning her an Oscar nomination. Also, just add in a few Emmy awards and a couple Tonys here and there. Her latest movie role is the new David O. Russell comedy 'I Huckabees.' The movie features a terrific cast. Here's a scene from 'I Huckabees.'
Vivian: How's the sex?
Bernard: How is the sex?
Dawn: The sex?
Brad: Come on, guys. Come on. That's private.
Dawn: That's gross.
Vivian: A preliminary surveillance indicates it's been infrequent and short, 8 to 9 minutes, typically.
Dawn: Surveillance? You've watched us?
Vivian: No, just listened.
Brad: So your surveillance is wrong.
Dawn: Yeah. It's quantity, not quality.
Vivian: Quiet.
Brad: She meant quality, not quantity.
Dawn: I know. I was only joking.
Bernard: Were you joking when you said quantity and not quality?
Vivian: In regards to sex?
Tavis: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Lily Tomlin, nice to see you.
Lily Tomlin: Nice to see you.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you here.
Lily: By far. Thanks.
Tavis: David O. Russell, the director of this movie, was here earlier this week, and I said to him that I've read a number of actors who said that they wanted to work with him, but really didn't in totality get the script that he had written. Did you get the script?
Lily: Well, you know, maybe I'm too full of myself, but I thought I pretty much got the script. I mean, you know, maybe I may not have been able to tell you what it was entirely, but because I have such regard for David and I kind of--'cause I was in one of his other movies a few years back, 'Flirting With Disaster,' so I knew--I can intuit what he wants to do, where it's going, and I'm excited by that kind of material, anyway. Material that's really about something, and also about something deeper and human, and yet the absurdity of being a human. You know, I love that extremely.
Tavis: Let me ask you--I don't want to belabor this point 'cause I raised it earlier with Mr. Russell, but to your point now about scripts that are about something--I love that phrase 'about something'--have a deeper meaning. Are you seeing enough of that coming across your desk these days in this business?
Lily: Um--ahem--let me think. Um, probably not my desk, but--
Lily: But, uh, I--
Tavis: Anybody's desk! Yeah.
Lily: Maybe a few people. Sure. There are movies that are made. I mean, just like David and a lot of the new, um, raft of film--there's not a raft--but the handful of filmmakers that are daring and outrageous. I've heard you say on the show that night that the 'O' in his name, David O. Russell stood for-- maybe it stood for outrageous. And, you know, they're outrageous in their own desire to make art and make something that the audience wants. And I heard David say he never underestimates the audience's intelligence, and that's right. That would be how I would feel, too, if I could make a film, but I don't think I could.
Tavis: Um, you set me up so nicely. Why?
Lily: Why not make a film?
Tavis: Why does Lily Tomlin think she couldn't make a film? You've done everything else. I just said, you've done everything in this business.
Lily: Well, kind of. I mean, I have done a lot of stuff, but, you know, to make a film... I mean, maybe I could make a film about something really personal, but I mean, it's a real... There's a lot of people involved. It's like this huge thing rolling down the track behind you, you know, and you can't stop it. It's like a locomotive, and it weighs tons, and you have to get it right that day. You have to get it right that hour. You very seldom get a chance to go at it again. And it's just-- It takes a lot of real vision to make a special movie, and this is a very, very special movie.
Tavis: Here's a crazy question--not the first time, not the last time I'm sure I'll ask one--but you, as I intimated earlier, do so many things and so many things well. After having been around for a few years now, have you figured out what you do best?
Lily: I think I'm best on the stage.
Tavis: You think so?
Lily: Yeah. In my heart, I do. I mean, I think it's because I'm so available on the stage and it's really very personal to be on the stage and to be doing pretty much your own sensibility and your own desire to do something, to communicate with the audience. The audience is right there and you're in the moment. And I think it's... And I saw a documentary a few years back about really elderly people in a nursing home. Show business people, you know? And people who were in their 90s and quite infirm in chairs and so on, and for a documentarian, they got up and they would do, like, their turn, their old vaudeville turn, and I'm telling you, like, 25 years just left them, see, because they're so alive in that moment. They're gonna sing their song or do their patter or whatever it is that they were known for in their heyday. And it's like--it's glorious. You know?
Tavis: There's no business like show business.
Lily: Well, kinda. Kinda.
Tavis: Yeah. I'm amazed that--I shouldn't say amazed--but I'm fascinated that you chose as this thing that you do best that thing that I'm told--I've never done either--but I'm told that thing that causes the most pressure for a thespian. It's one thing to be on the set with Mr. Russell and you can do take after take after take, but you just happened to choose a thing that you think you do best as that thing where you gotta get it right and you gotta get it right the first time.
Lily: But, you know, but a movie, you make a movie and you do a scene once. I mean, maybe you do a few takes, but you've done that scene. And once it's in the can, you can't fix it. It's done with, you know? And that's the great thing about theater or standing up and doing material and performing because you can keep doing it till you do get it right.
Tavis: That's why I love you. That is the most fascinating take on that I've ever heard, because the conventional wisdom, I think, is the other way around, that you get a gazillion takes on a set to get it right, so then when it does go in the can, it is right. But your attitude is the exact opposite.
Lily: No, but I don't think you'll find any actor who thinks when it gets in the can it's really great. They're on the way home driving--you know, it's like when you have an argument with a friend or an argument with an enemy, and on your way home you know what you would have said to really, you know, triumph, let's say, or prevail. And when you shoot a scene even on 'West Wing,' every time after a take, you see actors, like, going around talking, talking 'cause they're reliving the scene and they're thinking, 'Oh, I should have done this. I should have done that. Oh, if I'd only done this it would have been so much better, you know?' And so you can never, uh, you know... There's that great phrase about art about 'A painting is something you fool with until you get it right and then you leave it alone.' But, you know, and some things you have to leave alone and some things you don't. And that's why I love the stage, I think.
Tavis: And I'm learning from you just sitting here talking.
Lily: But I don't want to do just one thing.
Tavis: Right, but you don't. And I'm not saying you have to.
Lily: No, I know. I mean, I'm--
Tavis: I don't want you to stop. I don't want you to do just one thing.
Lily: I'm just grateful, you know, that I've been able to do a bunch of different stuff.
Tavis: Yeah.
Lily: But I think that's because I've always been pretty naive, and it never occurred to me that because I was, like, Ernestine on 'Laugh-In,' the telephone operator, or something like that that I couldn't be anything else that I wanted to be. You know, it never occurred to me, but... That was hard to cross over in those days.
Tavis: To what do you credit your staying power? I mean, there are a lot of folk who come and go in this business. And to your point, the fact that you can do a number of things and that you're still doing a number of things, what is that thing about Lily Tomlin that has allowed her to remain in our face all these years? In a good way!
Lily: I think, uh, probably I have good joints. I don't know. I don't know. I'm very--I'm very flexible.
Tavis: I can take that a number of different ways, but you--
Lily: No, OK. No, I--
Tavis: Lily Tomlin has good joints, y'all! But I'll leave that alone. Yeah.
Lily: I could keep going longer, too, 'cause there'll come a time when I'll still be jumping around and turning flips on the stage and stuff and they'll say, 'Let's go tonight to see if she breaks her hip this time.'
Tavis: Yeah, yeah. This whole thing started for you back in Detroit.
Lily: Yes.
Tavis: This is my favorite Lily Tomlin fact--factoid--I like that word, factoid. I got that from CNN--a factoid. So here's my favorite Lily Tomlin factoid: you grew up in Detroit.
Lily: Yes. That's right.
Tavis: And as you know, Aretha Franklin, the queen of soul, was on this program not long ago, and I don't care even if you're the queen of soul, everybody--or as we say, err'body--err'body in Detroit wants to know what high school you went to. I don't care how big you become. 'What high school did you go to in the Motor City?' And you went to Cass Tech.
Lily: That's right.
Tavis: I can't believe that. You went to Cass Tech.
Lily: What is that? Yeah, what's the big deal?
Tavis: No, I'm just--I didn't know that you grew up in Detroit and that you went to Cass Tech.
Lily: Oh, yeah. I went to Cass Tech. Yeah. 'Cause Cass had-- Now Cass has an incredible performing arts curriculum, but they didn't have it when I was there. You know, I graduated in '57 and they didn't institute it I think till '65 and oh, I just was envious, you know? Because in my day in the fifties when you're growing up, you didn't even want to be in the drama club because if you were, people, you know, they, if you were in the drama club, the girls were considered affected. Affected. You know, like, hoity--stuck up or something.
Tavis: Hoity-toity.
Lily: And boys were considered sissified, you know? And this was as bad it gets: for a girl to be affected and a boy to be a sissy. You know, this was like as bad as it gets in the fifties and so I was a cheerleader. And that's how I got my--
Tavis: 'Cause you had great joints.
Lily: I had great joints, and that's how I got my performing thing going, you know?
Tavis: Let me ask you what it was like growing up as a white girl in a city that has so many African Americans. What did you learn out of that experience in inner city Detroit?
Lily: Uh, well, first of all, I lived in a black neighborhood, and I lived in an old apartment house where every kind of person in the world lived. You know, people who were educated, uneducated, people who were radical politically, very conservative, reactionary, just every--and old people who were professional but couldn't move 'cause they were on a pension, and so I would go to every apartment and I was just sort of in love with all these people, you know? And then getting to also be immersed in part of the black culture, have friends who were black, go to their houses, hang out, um, whether they wanted me there or not. You know, and have girlfriends and kids over that were black in my house, you know?
Tavis: I think it's just a fascinating experience because I find that people like you who have a worldview, who are humanist, who are involved in issues that matter, I always look for that something in their life that allows them to be more open-minded, more willing to hear and to listen and to consider other points of view. And I knew that about you, but couldn't put my finger on it till I realized that you grew up in inner city Detroit.
Lily: Yeah, inner city Detroit. Right. My old apartment house burned down in the '67 riots.
Tavis: Wow.
Lily: And, uh, I was living in New York then, but I had a lot of friends in the neighborhood and everything. And I've always drawn from that old neighborhood, you know, on material and stuff. And then I also had the flip of my parents were southerners from Kentucky. They came up to work in the factories and so I'd go to Kentucky every summer, you know? And I'd see the contrast there and the racial contrast and--
Tavis: See, you're just all screwed up.
Lily: No, no, I was--I think I was cool.
Tavis: Yeah, I think you're cool, too. I'm just teasing you. You have been so politically active for so long. I don't want to ask you a loaded question, but we are in a political season. Does Lily Tomlin want to share anything about this political season that we're in that occurs to her this close to Election Day?
Lily: Well, sure, I'd like to say, uh... I'd like to see us, you know, wind the war down as fast as possible and change our policies toward a lot of countries in the world and try to rebuild and recapture the moment when we struck in 9/11 and recapture that moment somehow by showing our real purpose and good faith when most of the world was in our corner and we had that chance to seize that moment. We can always attack, we can always do something violent because we're the strongest country in the world, but we should also be the best country in the world, you know? And we had that window, and, you know, my thought was always, you know, when the flight landed--hit--you know, crashed in Pennsylvania, and the other planes had gone straight into the towers and so on and... But when the people on that plane had that little time span to re-evaluate what was going on and they knew where they were going, it's like a metaphor. They said they tried to change the direction of that plane and I know that at the time that we decided to, you know, create war that we had a chance to react differently, in that same way change our direction.
Tavis: Let me close with this quick question.
Lily: Maybe the direction of the world.
Tavis: Yeah, I hear you. Speaking of changing direction right quick, do you think that we can... How can I phrase this? Can we get that moral authority back?
Lily: That's what I'm saying. Yes, I think we can. I think-- I think we must. And I think we'll get it back by absolutely changing directions and showing that we have that will and that we can set that example again. That we can be better as the country that people used to believe we were, you know? I used to love the Yankees, you know?
Tavis: I still love the Yankees. I still love Lily Tomlin, and you see why now. Nice to see you. Nice to have you on.
Lily: Thank you. Yeah, great, Tavis. Thank you.
Tavis: That's our show for tonight. As always, you can catch me on the radio on NPR. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, thanks for watching. Good night from Los Angeles and keep the faith.
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200410/20041008_tomlin.html |
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| Janney to play Tomlin's role in '9 to 5' |
[Jan. 22nd, 2008|10:31 pm] |
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- Actress Allison Janney is set to begin rehearsals for her starring role in the Los Angeles stage musical, "9 to 5," USA Today reported Monday.
Janney will play Violet, the character portrayed by comedian Lily Tomlin in the 1980 film, which was later made into a short-lived TV show without the movie's original stars.
Janney and Tomlin co-starred on the TV show "The West Wing."
The new production of "9 to 5" is slated to begin in Los Angeles in September and possibly move to Broadway.
"Lily is thrilled that I'm doing it," Janney told USA Today. "I'm doing my singing and dancing lessons and getting myself in shape."
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Entertainment/2008/01/07/janney_to_play_tomlins_role_in_9_to_5/2811/ |
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| Performer Lily Tomlin talks of causes, writer's strike and childhood |
[Dec. 1st, 2007|04:09 pm] |
Actress, comedian to perform at Mount Baker Theatre
ZOE FRALEY
Lily Tomlin doesn’t know how she caught the performing bug, but thankfully she did.
“Kids played office or doctor, and I played show business,” says the actress and comedian. “Even as a kid I put on shows. It’s sort of in my blood to do that. If I can get an audience, I’ll put on a show.”
Tomlin is putting on a show 8 p.m. Saturday at the Mount Baker Theatre as a benefit for Mount Baker Planned Parenthood.
Tickets for the event will run from $55-$150 and are available at www.mountbakertheatre.com. Tomlin took some time out of her hectic touring schedule to answer our five questions.
Q: Why did you decide to do the Planned Parenthood benefit?
A: They’ve asked me so many times to do something for them, so this one seemed to work out for us. I support the group in terms of conscious parenting.
Q: What are some of the causes closest to your heart?
A: I’ve always been pretty active, usually around women’s issues and homeless issues and AIDS. I came up in the era where there were no shelters for women. They only really came up in the ’70s. I came up in the women’s movement at that time, so that became a part of what I did.
Q: How is the writer’s strike going?
A: The writers, they live from project to project and half of them live from paycheck to paycheck, and they don’t really have a fair share of anything. They have no participation in the new media. … They should get a fair share of what they create, and they don’t get a fair slice now. A culture needs creative people and artists. They need those kinds of passionate convictions, and new ideas and new thoughts.
Q: You’ve done just about everything — theater, comedy, movies and TV. Is there one that you prefer?
A: I like to work on the stage; I like the theater — any kind of live performance. That’s my first love, is that live performance with an audience. It’s like a romance.
Q: What will you be talking about at the benefit?
A: I’m working up to the last minute. I’ll be trying to come up with stuff about Bellingham. I’ll talk about the administration and hopefully make a point but still be funny about it. It’s the easiest way to do anything. That’s why comedians can more easily make a point.
Nov, 29, 2007
TAKE FIVE |
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| Film and television celebrities express support for striking writers |
[Nov. 14th, 2007|12:34 am] |
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
Film and television celebrities express support for striking writers
By Joanne Laurier and David Walsh
14 November 2007
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
Click here to download this article as a leaflet.
A mass picket outside Universal Studios in Universal City, California Tuesday brought out scores of film and television personalities to support striking writers in the second week of their walk-out.
Television stars came out in significant numbers. They included Nicolette Sheridan and Felicity Huffman of “Desperate Housewives,” Matthew Fox of “Lost,” Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, formerly of “Seinfeld,” Katherine Heigl of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Camryn Manheim, Ray Romano, Kathy Nijimy, Kathy Griffin, Bill Paxton and Jon Cryer. Others in attendance included Sarah Silverman, Zach Braff, Lisa Kudrow, Rachel Griffiths, Calista Flockhart and many, many more.
The writers and their supporters packed the sidewalks outside Universal’s main gates, several thousand strong. The noise of car and truck horns was deafening. The mood was buoyant, but determined. The performers spoke in quite defiant terms about the giant conglomerates that dominate their industry.
Veteran film actor Elliott Gould told us:
“The World Socialist Web Site—great, cool! What I think about the strike is that we’re up against multinational corporations. You have major conglomerates that are controlling the content of what is being fed to the general public. It’s terrible and it’s somewhat fascistic, and it has dire consequences for culture.
“I think socialism would be a good thing. I’ve never read Karl Marx, but I think I should.”
Brad Garrett, formerly of “Everybody Loves Raymond” and currently in “Til Death,” commented:
“I’m here to support the writers. First of all, they’re right. I’m not sure why there’s an impasse; the writers should be compensated for what goes up on the Internet. It’s the wave of the future, forever and ever. And just as they are compensated for films and TV, they should be treated the same if it’s on the Internet. I’m hoping that everyone can get back to the table because as wonderful as it is out here today, we would like to get back to work.
“The producers have to get rid of that greed quotient. This is probably the number one collaborative business in the world. Hundreds of people work on each show. The genesis of everything in the industry starts with the writer. It starts with a script.
“There is so much intransigence because they know how much money there is. The companies keep saying, ‘we don’t know what to give the writers in the negotiations.’ We’re asking for a percentage, just a piece of the pie, because if it works for you a lot, it will work for us a little. It’s ludicrous, the producers are better than that; they know what it takes to run this business.
“I hope this ends soon because 95 percent of the people in this industry will not be able to survive a strike that goes on for more than a month or two. It’s sad, these are the first to arrive and the last to leave at night. We’re shut down as is every other TV show. We support our writers fully and whether a script was done or not, we would not shoot without our writers.
“Sitcoms especially are a writer’s medium and always will be as is everything else on TV. And so we’ll wait it out and hopefully it will be a short fight, it won’t become a game of chicken. You have huge egos involved. I think people need to step aside and think about the big picture and the people it’s really going to affect in the long run.
“The problem today is the industry is dominated by just a few companies. Fifteen years ago, you were talking to CBS and 20th Century Fox. Today, you’re talking to Viacom and GE. And the problem with dealing with people on that level is that everyone is expendable. And we’re just numbers, so many of these people that are high up and run these corporations are totally unfamiliar with the process. They’re not capable of sitting down with the stockholders and explaining why you need a writer. That’s the level of capitalism. These studios and networks have started to be owned by huge conglomerates. We have lost a lot of the power.”
Bruce Weitz, longtime actor (“Hill Street Blues” and many others), told the WSWS:
“I’m here as a member of the Screen Actors Guild because if the writers don’t get what they want, we won’t get what we want. I’ve been a member of SAG almost 40 years.
“Without writers there is no television. It goes without saying that if there are no writers there are no scripted shows. Without the written word ... nothing. They begin the creative process. If you talk to any film actor, any big film actor, the first thing they look for is the script. And if it’s not well-written, they’re not interested.
“The companies are full of shit and you can quote me on that. They’re greedy. You know, we’re not asking for a large piece of the pie from the millions and millions of dollars that they stand to make. Management is getting all the money from the Internet, we’re not getting a penny. So if they were at all humane or human, they would deal out a small portion of their enormous profits to the three guilds that create the process: the actors, the writers and the directors.
“I think it’s horrible that big corporations own the entertainment industry and media. It has changed the business completely. It has destroyed the creative process. You cannot run a TV show or a feature film by committee. Over the last 10-15 years, it has changed dramatically. This whole country, the whole world, has a problem because there are a few companies that run the world. That’s not going to change, it’s only going to get worse. I would love to see the corporations run as public enterprises, but I don’t see it happening.
“I’m a Democrat and I’m ashamed. That election that they won a year ago, they haven’t done anything. And they waste their time on trivial crap. Bush is the worse president this country has ever had since Warren Harding or James Polk. It’s not him, he’s an empty vessel. It’s the people that he surrounded himself with and helped get him elected, because they knew they were going to have a puppet. But it’s a horrible thing that has happened to this country and the way the rest of the world looks at this country compared to 20 years ago or 10 years ago. It’s horrible.”
Actor Ben Stiller commented:
“I’m here as a WGA member and a SAG member to show solidarity and support our union and I feel it’s an important issue about what the new media’s going to bring in. Everything that’s on the table is going to affect writers and creators for many, many years to come. We’ve got to stand up for it now.
“Obviously, there’s a lot of money involved and I think that all the writers are asking for is fairness. If you go back to the beginning of Hollywood, writers have always been the low man on the totem pole and they’ve always been the most integral part of any movie or TV show. It’s important that they stand up and we stand up for them.
“I hope there is a lot of support for the strike. I think people will realize what’s involved as time goes on. They’ll realize when they don’t have their television shows or that the movies being made aren’t as good. All that stuff that we take for granted is not there anymore—the late night shows, etc.—and we are an entertainment-obsessed culture. Whenever the power is centered in one place, it’s never really a good thing. What the strike is about is trying to take back what is fair.”
Actor Danny Woodburn told the WSWS:
“Technology and art should be treated in the same way, as when an inventor gets a patent for his invention. Writers should get what they deserve no matter what media from now to perpetuity. And I’m an actor and I’m out here today because without writers, I’m just another pretty face at 24 frames per second.
“Companies find it hard to let go of the money and they don’t want to report back to their stockholders, ‘Oh, we’re going to have to take a little hit here.’ I think it’s about increasing profit margins. It’s a scary thing that there’s been so much consolidation in the industry. With any monopoly, you lose the aspect of competition, the aspect of impartial journalism. You lose a lot of that when one company owns everything.”
Actress Minnie Driver came along with other cast members from “The Riches”:
“All the actors that have showed up today, it’s great, it’s great. Today is the day that the writers asked their actors to come. So there’s a ton of actors here from every TV show showing solidarity for what is really a David and Goliath type situation. The conglomerates are the Goliaths and the rest of us are the Davids. When it comes down to it, people take care of each other.
“Reality television as a way around programming is disgusting, and nobody’s going to put up with it for long. I support unions because they protect people in what is an enormously profitable industry generating massive amounts of revenue. The writers deserve a part of this. The writers’ contract expires before SAG’s and it’s going to set a precedent for all of us.
“I come from a country [Britain] with very strong trade union traditions and many things have been won. But it’s bigger than that. It really is taking a stand against the giant conglomerates. They don’t just want the lion’s share, they want everything. The writers are people responding to an untenable situation. There is so much money at stake—between 17 and 19 billion dollars that’s going to be generated from the revenue. But nobody really knows. It’s ridiculous.
“We all know that the Internet is the wave of the future. The union gave in on the DVD residuals in the hope of opening up talks and the companies have accepted none of that. So we really have to come out swinging. Any time a monopoly is created, it needs to be reminded that it is not all-powerful. I think if the message gets out, then the working people of America will really understand that these are everybody’s issues. There’s no great love lost for these companies.”
Longtime comic performer, writer and actress Lily Tomlin spoke with the WSWS:
“I’m here to support the writers. Our show was shut down; our whole cast is here to say SAG supports the Writers Guild. The central issue right now is that the writers have no share of the new media, and everyone knows that’s where the future is heading and they certainly deserve their fair share.
“Writers seldom get their fair share when you consider that they are really the seminal factor in the creation of a project. Hopefully the executives will come to the table at some point and do what’s right. I think the corporate intransigence is a sign of the culture. Our government is pretty intransigent. So these companies are out to make as much money as they can, lean and mean and that’s sort of the watchword of the times.
“Whatever the manipulation of the conglomerates, this is the story of our present life. There have already been consequences for creativity. However, people will prevail and humans will prevail, well, for as long as the planet survives.” |
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| HBO party channels Thailand |
[Oct. 7th, 2007|12:45 am] |
Lily Tomlin looked around the lavish HBO party and said, "This looks like the king of Thailand's wedding reception." Precisely. HBO's Billy Butchkavitz-designed Thai-themed party filled a 10,000-square-foot tent with massive Southeast Asian statuary, purple and gold decor, 1,500 guests and enough costumed staff to remake "The King and I."
Though there were no Thai royalty on hand, an Emmy-winning former U.S. vice president received a fair amount of attention when he arrived. Al Gore was just a few tables away from comedian Louis Black, who said of Gore: "The reason he's winning Emmys is he's not good at winning the other things." |
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| A bit silly, a bit serious |
[Oct. 7th, 2007|12:32 am] |
Lily Tomlin can be many things — mainly entertaining
By EVERETT EVANS
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
Lily Tomlin has won six Emmys, two Tonys, a Grammy (for her comedy album This Is a Recording), a New York Film Critics Award and Oscar nomination (for her role in Nashville) and two Peabody Awards (one for narrating the documentary The Celluloid Closet).
Heralding her SPA-sponsored performance Saturday at Jones Hall, Tomlin took time out from filming her new HBO series, 12 Miles of Bad Road, to discuss her life and career with the Chronicle's Everett Evans.
Q: Which was the first impulse for you — to act or to make people laugh?
A: To entertain. I used to entertain for my dad. My brother and I started doing stuff to make our relatives laugh — imitating relatives or neighbors.
Q: Who and what had the biggest influence on your comedy?
A: One of the first films I recall was Sitting Pretty, with Clifton Webb. My mom and I laughed so much we stayed through the second feature so we could see it again. On TV, I used to watch the women who did comedy: Joan Davis; of course, Lucy; Imogene Coca on Show of Shows; Bea Lillie on Ed Sullivan. And there was a woman stand-up named Jean Carroll. We did a tribute to her at the Friars Club about a year ago. She's 96 or 97 and still very sharp.
Q: When you moved to New York in 1965, you began performing at popular clubs like the Improvisation and Upstairs at the Downstairs. What was your act like then? Was there anything fans today would recognize?
A: I still do some of those monologues. A lot were timeless. I always did characters. I started getting on the Merv Griffin Show right away. That's how I got Laugh-In, because (producer) George Schlatter saw me on Merv Griffin.
Q: Is it true you'd turned down his initial offer before finally accepting?
A: I didn't want to be on TV, I thought it was square. I wanted to be a New York actor. When I went to California in fall 1969, I got persuaded to do one show called Music Scene, because that was hip. We had Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix. But it also had a comedy troupe of four or five people doing sketches. David Steinberg and I were among them. Anyway, Music Scene was quickly canceled. I still had the offer to go to Laugh-In, which I did because I loved George. He seemed to really get me.
Q: And Ernestine caught on just about instantly, right?
A: She was immensely popular. You remember, all the others on the show were well-known, because it already had been running a couple of seasons. It was like being a kid in a new school, and you want the other kids to accept you. When I first did Ernestine, people would pass me in the hall snorting and things like that — and I wasn't sure what they were doing! The character hit so fast, everyone else was in love with her before I was sure what I was doing. I was just glad I was well-embraced on the show.
Q: Ernestine and Edith Ann (the precocious tyke) are your best-known characters. Does that also make them your favorites to play?
A: The fun is doing a variety of stuff — different ages, genders, cultural types, points of view. But the brazen characters are the most fun to play.
Q: What would you say has been the biggest challenge to you?
A: Search was a big challenge. (The Search of Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, the solo play written and directed by Tomlin's longtime collaborator and partner, Jane Wagner.) Just to honor that material, bring all those 12 characters together in a really coherent piece.
Q: Did your relationship with Jane Wagner predate your collaboration? Or vice versa?
A: It was just about simultaneous.
Q: Did you both immediately realize this would be the relationship?
A: It happened immediately for me. I already felt I knew her from her writing, I thought she was divine. I don't know about her — I had to court her.
Q: Another major influence has been Robert Altman, and Nashville certainly was a turning point for you. How did he cast you in it?
A: We had the same agent, Sam Cohn. I had optioned a wonderful Cynthia Buchanan book called Maiden. I had Jane write the screenplay, and Bob wanted to produce it. So he had me come down to work on Nashville, with the understanding we'd do Maiden next. Columbia, which had done California Split with Bob, was going to make Maiden. But when (their executives) came to Nashville, wanting Bob to cut eight minutes from California Split, he punched one of them, who fell in the pool. So Maiden never got made.
Q: Fortunately Nashville did. Besides being a landmark film, it brought you recognition as a serious actress.
A: Bob was probably the only person who would have given me that opportunity. I'm sure part of the impact was that dichotomy of Ernestine, what I was known for on TV, then appearing in one of Altman's best films. He gives an actor so much latitude just to be, and she (Tomlin's role) was a great character.
Q: And you did several more projects with him, including Short Cuts, weaving together those great Raymond Carver stories.
A: Another I loved making, especially since I got to work with Tom Waits.
Q: Your work with Altman culminated in your role with Meryl Streep, as a singing sister act, in his final film, A Prairie Home Companion. Was there a feeling on the set that it might be his valedictory?
A: There was some sense of that, because he was getting chemo and was somewhat frail. But certainly not as an artist. He was unflappable: totally at ease, always in authority, but never authoritarian. He was remarkable to work with — and to do a sister act with Meryl, on top of all that!
Q: What can you tell us about your new HBO series 12 Miles of Bad Road?
A: It's a contemporary show about a very, very rich Dallas family. I'm the matriarch, Amelia Shakespeare, my sister is Mary Kay Place, Leslie Jordan is Cousin Kenny. We're real-estate tycoons, which we do that just for fun, though we're selling $20-$30 million houses. We're in cattle and oil, too. Linda Bloodworth, who did Designing Women, created it. It's really funny. Every script gets better and better. We're just doing the fourth episode. We had a reading last week and it was so funny, we we were just laughing so much. It begins airing in midseason and I really think it has a good chance to be a hit.
Q: Your Saturday show here is called An Evening of Classic Lily. Does that mean it's basically your greatest-hits show?
A: They're not all old monologues. They're the old characters, but there's some new material.
Q: In today's world, what's the most important purpose of humor?
A: To me, it's to unite, to create empathy. Empathy for other people who are very different from you, or you think are different — and then you see they're not so different. |
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| An Evening of Classic Lily: Tomlin relives more than a dozen of her memorable characters |
[Oct. 7th, 2007|12:31 am] |
By Dusti Rhodes
Published: October 4, 2007
Lily Tomlin is a master of characters. The actress is known for her versatility on various late-’70s variety shows, where she developed a vault of characters, from Ernestine, the short-tempered telephone operator, to the devilish six-year-old Edith Ann. Tomlin will visit Jones Hall today for An Evening of Classic Lily to journey back through more than a dozen of her comedic alter-egos. Tomlin was known mostly to an older generation from her days on programs such as The Merv Griffin Show and Laugh-In, but her recent appearance in movies such as I (Heart) Huckabees and Orange County and on TV’s The West Wing as Deborah Fiderer has gotten her the attention of a younger generation — one which Tomlin says currently holds the most power in the business.
“In the old — I don’t want to say the old days — you had to earn your place in the culture. Teenagers were not pandered to,” she says. “Things are just absolutely made for them [today]; their sensibility is honored.” Tomlin believes this developed from kids’ abilities to challenge authority and demand recognition. “This generation sees through so much — look, when you can start tape recording your teachers when you’re like eight years old and report them to the authorities you lose a good deal of intimidation,” she says, remembering her own, similar experience. “I was about eight years old or so, and I read [in the newspaper] ‘Mother jailed for negligence,’” she said. Tomlin asked her mother what it meant and learned sometimes parents are locked up for not treating their children well. “And that was like an epiphany — any time my mother went to raise her hand to me, I was like, ‘Go ahead, hit me! Hit me!’” She’d do the same thing if her dad strapped her on the leg with his belt. “We lived in an apartment house, and I went to every apartment to show them that my father had struck me and left a mark on my body. So, you can imagine, flash forward 50 years, what kids have absorbed and been socialized with.”
Tomlin says this kind of self-realization spills over into their creativity, which is why characters today are so off-beat. “[Kids] see how really, absolutely most everybody is a misfit, except the most uninteresting people, and I guess they’re interesting just because they’re uninteresting,” Tomlin says, then realizes she just had another epiphany. “That was profound — be sure to get that down word for word.”
Sat., Oct. 6, 8 p.m., 2007 |
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| Classic Lily Tomlin |
[Jun. 17th, 2007|01:32 am] |
The timeless comedian recalls New York City of the ’60s.
By JONATHAN WARMAN
Jun. 15, 2007
Lily Tomlin has gotten her act together and she’s taking it on the road. Specifically, she’ll take the show June 23 to Red Bank, N.J. We caught up with the out, comedic legend about her new show and her New York beginnings.
Without giving away the good stuff, tell us about the new show, “An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin.”
It’s much more informal, more freewheeling than if I was doing a more theatrical piece like ‘Search for Signs.’ There’ll be more interaction with the audience. I’ll try to talk about local stuff, plus topical things about Washington, D.C. The show will truly be classic Lily Tomlin, doing a lot of different characters, like I’ve always done. For example Ernestine the telephone operator has a reality webcam chat show now. So she calls President Bush or whoever’s in the news.
The Ernestine character showed up on TV’s “Laugh-in” during the later ’60s, but you started in New York. What impact did the city of that period have on you?
Really, a lot. I first came to New York in ’62 because I’d gotten into a show in college, and for the first time I consciously created a character. It was pegged to the fact that Grosse Pointe [an affluent suburb of her hometown Detroit] was covertly segregated, which had just been exposed, the little bit I did was very relevant. I thought, ‘Maybe I can make a living doing this, maybe I should try my luck in New York.’
When I first came here I lived with a friend, Jenny, who I knew slightly in college. She was living with a guy, Jerry. They didn’t speak, they hated each other. So in I come like Holly Golightly—that was the year “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” came out, and I was profoundly influenced by that. I could show you photographs where I had major Audrey Hepburn damage.
So I get to New York I borrow nine dollars from five people, I go to the thrift shop where by some lightening of god there was some cream-colored trench coat like Audrey wore in the movie, and I got my hair up like hers. And I immediately am going to clean up the apartment and get rid of the roaches, and I painted the whole place. I eventually got an apartment up on the fifth floor. A couple of gay guys had lived there and it was fantastically finished. I was so lucky to get this apartment, the windowsills in those old tenements are covered with years of different paints, but these were all sanded down beautifully, it was like living at the Pierre Hotel or something.
What was the artistic scene of New York like then?
In those days, even in the bohemian East Village, women weren’t artists. Nobody believed even in musicians—you had to be a composer. You were nothing if you were only an interpretive artist like an actor or musician; you had to be a playwright or composer to be taken seriously. To be an actress was just so narcissistic!
And in the early days, you studied to be a mime?
I went to the American Mime Theater, and lasted about three weeks because it was so movement-driven. Of course, I loved words, so I wasn’t going to be happy being a mime. Everybody there was so physically gifted anyway; they’d fall from one end of this huge dance studio to the other wall, and do it differently each time. I didn’t think I wanted to put in that kind of work to just fall from one end of the room to the other, because I could do a fairly decent job of that anyway, and when I got there I’d rather say something, or better yet, say something on the way—and that’s what I’m still doing today!
“An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin” 8 p.m., Sat., June 23 at the Count Basie Theatre, 99 Monmouth St. at Maple Ave., Red Bank, N.J., $38–$125, 732-842-9000, countbasietheatre.org.
© 2007 The New York Blade | A Window Media Publication |
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| A Gracious Good Evening with Lily Tomlin |
[Jun. 11th, 2007|12:38 am] |
by Heidi Fellner
Lily Tomlin’s career seems to be the stuff of dreams and destiny—a talented young girl from Detroit gets her big break, and the rest is Hollywood history. However, the real Tomlin biography doesn’t read that way.
She started life as a regular inner city kid, making her parents laugh by imitating their neighbors. Tomlin explains, “The people in our building were so interesting, and each one was so different…I was delighted and amazed and astonished by it all.”
Despite her comedic skill, Tomlin didn’t consider a career in theater. She explains, “In my time in high school, being in the drama club or anything like that...was not favorably viewed.” Instead, she channeled her desire to perform through her high school’s cheerleading squad. However, Tomlin’s showmanship got the better of her—she found herself in trouble for cheering too “suggestively.”
After high school, Tomlin decided to major in premed, but bit by bit, she finally began to get involved in theater. She states, “I got into a college show, and I was a big hit, and it was so much more fun than cutting people up!” After the show closed, Tomlin eagerly moved to New York. However, without guidance or direction, she found herself back in Detroit just a few months later, taking jobs in coffee houses, doing unpaid theater, and inventing monologues and bits for herself.
Tomlin didn’t return to New York until 1965, when she found steady work as a kind of “temporary waitress.” She explains, “I would call up at 6 to get a lunch job—Bernie would say ‘Go down to Bun ‘n Burger on 54th.’ You’d put on your uniform and go down there…hang up your sweater, say, ‘Bernie sent me,’ and you’d work lunch and get $10-15.”
Times were tough, and Tomlin was thinking she’d end up returning, yet again, to Detroit, when she received the check from one of her first commercials—Vicks VapoRub. The extra money allowed her time to go on more auditions, and little by little, things started to happen. First, it was an appearance on Merv Griffin, then The Garry Moore Show and Music Scene. But it wasn’t until she joined the cast of Laugh-In that Tomlin found her niche.
Finally, characters she’d been working on for years—like the mischievous Edith Ann—had America’s full attention. Tomlin began work on an Edith Ann album, which introduced her to writer, and eventual partner, Jane Wagner. “She had written this song about a kid in Harlem, and she turned it into a screenplay. It won a Peabody, and it was aired every year on CBS…I saw it when it played in 1970.” Tomlin knew instantly that she wanted Wagner as a collaborator. She states, “I got her to come out to California and produce this Edith Ann album for me, and we stayed together ever since.”
Working so closely with one’s romantic partner isn’t the best recipe for some couples, but Tomlin and Wagner dedicated themselves to making it work. “There’s always going to be disappointments and failures and artistic struggles, but we’re different enough that I guess we both bring whatever it is we bring to the occasion, and we need each other,” Tomlin concludes.
Ernestine, Tomlin’s snorting telephone operator, also proved to be a fantastically popular character…maybe too popular. She says, “Mervyn LeRoy, who produced Wizard of Oz…he wanted to produce a movie with Ernestine, and in retrospect, I think, ‘Why didn’t I do that?’” Tomlin continues, answering her own question, “I didn’t want to get ‘typed’ into Ernestine…but I still wonder what would have happened if I would have done that movie.”
Perhaps Tomlin made the right choice, but at the time, it was a huge gamble. Then and now, going from a television variety show to film was almost unheard of. As chance would have it, Tomlin’s next career move would come through every actor’s best friend—a personal connection. Her agent happened to also represent Robert Altman, and when his next film project, Nashville, lost its supporting actress—Louise Fletcher of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—the role of Linnea Reese went to Tomlin.
The movie was an instant success, and Tomlin was nominated for an Academy Award. More film and television work followed, and she also appeared on Broadway with Appearing Nitely, and The Search for Signs of Intelligent in the Universe, both written by Wagner. Recently, Tomlin starred in I Heart Huckabee’s, and A Prairie Home Companion, filmed here in the Twin Cities.
Though released in 2004, I Heart Huckabee’s was the epicenter of a recent Internet PR debacle: in two behind-the-scenes clips released anonymously, Tomlin and director David O. Russell are engaged in heated arguments. In one, Russell calls Tomlin foul names and kicks his own set. Tomlin discusses the Internet leak with characteristic frankness. “David’s kind of a wild guy anyway—it’s part of his gift and part of his demon. I have a great affection for him. I don’t like that he got a little physical, but still, I’m pretty volatile myself,” she laughs. “I think David has some issues with his mother and things like that! I don’t ‘excuse’ him, but I excuse him. I excuse most humans, unless they’re really, really rotten. I don’t excuse Bush!”
Despite tense moments on the set, Tomlin says she would work happily with Russell again. But these days, she is awaiting the release of her new film, The Walker, which also features Kristin Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall (she and Tomlin have now become friends) and Woody Harrelson, who plays a gay, high-society escort—not unlike real-life Jerry Zipkin.
Tomlin is also featured in a new HBO series entitled 12 Miles of Bad Road. She will be portraying family matriarch Amelia Shakespeare alongside Leslie Jordan of Will & Grace. She says, “It will probably come on midseason, because we don’t start shooting until mid-August.”
Twin Cities audiences can catch her a lot sooner: the multitalented Miss Tomlin will be returning to Minneapolis just prior to Pride weekend. Fans who missed Tomlin’s last local appearance in 2005 would do well to buy their tickets in advance—at press time, tickets were moving briskly. |
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| Lily Tomlin to bring along old 'friends' |
[May. 21st, 2007|02:42 am] |
By MATT EAGAN, THE HARTFORD COURANT,
© May 1, 2007
LILY TOMLIN burst into the spotlight on "Laugh-In" playing a variety of oddball characters.
She made the jump to the movies a few years later, gaining an Oscar nomination for her performance in Robert Altman's 1975 masterpiece, "Nashville."
Recently she was a memorable part of the cast in "The West Wing."
But during all this time, Tomlin has continued to act on the road in search of a live audience. Her one-woman show makes a stop Wednesday at the Ferguson Center for the Arts in Newport News.
Q. Describe the show.
A. I bill it as an evening of classic Lily Tomlin, and I do those old classic characters that people know from television, like Ernestine and Edith and Mrs. Beasley. I do different characters I have done through the years, either on television specials or on Broadway. I probably do 10 or 12 characters.
Q. Why do this?
A. I've never stopped doing this. I had an act before I got on 'Laugh-In.'
Before I got famous... I used to beg this agent in New York that I knew (Irv Arthur) and ask him to book me into clubs, but the clubs were like Vegas clubs, and I did such quirky stuff, and I'd say to Irv, 'You'll see; if you'll book me, I can play. I can play to anybody.'
He booked me into this little club called the Living Room.... I opened for a singer.... We would have to do three shows a night, and it was like a little Vegas club.
After my first show - the first show of two weeks - the boss came to me and said, "Have you thought about changing your act?" I said "No, what do you want me to change?" and he started at the bottom and went straight to the top.... I never gave this up. This is show business.
I like that aspect. I think the bottom line is that I like to perform live. I like the immediacy of the concert. I just love it.
Q. People know you from so many different roles.
A. Your own sense of your self is that if someone likes you, they must know everything you do, and of course they don't.... Even when I first got on 'Laugh-In,' it never occurred to me that people would think I was Ernestine, but of course they did. |
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| A comedian's tragic take on modern living |
[May. 18th, 2007|09:25 pm] |
Lily Tomlin, who performs in Tampa on Saturday, doesn't consider herself a pessimist. But she bemoans the shift toward mean-spirited comedy and the dumbing down of society.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published May 4, 2007
Twenty-two years after her Broadway triumph, Lily Tomlin still seeks signs of intelligent life in the universe.
She doesn't find them on YouTube or reality television shows, and certainly not in the halls of government power. Tomlin, 67, locates only traces of astuteness among her comedy contemporaries, hidden beneath crude attacks and celebrity artifice.
It is enough to make a twinkle-eyed optimist wonder if intelligence, like dinosaurs and dodo birds, has become extinct.
"We're getting technologically advanced but people aren't getting any smarter," Tomlin said recently from a stop in Connecticut on a tour that brings her to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center on Saturday. "Maybe we can survive long enough to evolve some intelligent life.
"I'm not pessimistic. I can't be. I have to live as much in the present as I can, as opposed to projecting our downfall in the future. But who knows what we've unleashed?"
That's the real Lily Tomlin speaking, not "Edith Ann" babbling childish wisdom or the pushy operator "Ernestine," despite a telephone being involved. Those characters created on the countercultural TV show Laugh-In and dozens since on stage and screen are Tomlin's creative friends, not her mouthpieces.
She doesn't need their help in that regard. Tomlin admits she is a "meanderer," urging an interviewer to keep her on track through personal and political tangents. Not easy, but necessary.
No fan of cutthroat comedy
Nothing kept her more focused during this particular conversation than discussing what comedy has become, the fallout from a coarse culture.
"Everything today is about humiliation, tearing someone else down," she said. "That goes for comedy and political discourse. The easiest way to undermine someone is to ridicule them. That kind of material never appealed to me, anything that debased other people.
"I mean, politicians are exempt from this. World leaders are exempt because they have too much power over our lives not to be pulled up short. But other human beings - it's one thing to talk about something in general, but picking out one specific group or ethnicity? No. It's too divisive, too ridiculing."
Tomlin first noticed the shift in manners while watching Survivor, the reality TV show in which cutthroat strategy and false alliances lead to success. Not too different from show business. Tomlin never understood the need for it there, either.
"It seemed only for corporate life, this jockeying for position at someone else's expense," she said. "I never was savvy on that."
A different approach
Maybe that is what set Tomlin apart, even in the years before Laugh-In. Not only her angular face twisting into a different personality at the drop of inspiration, but her reluctance to play the feminine role that audiences expected in the 1960s.
"Almost all the women who did comedy back then generally played on some kind of negative stereotype: women as fat, homely, couldn't get a man, scatter-brained, whatever."
The almost imperceptible exception was Jean Carroll, whom Tomlin remembers as the first woman she ever saw doing stand-up comedy, on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Carroll looked conventional for the era, dressed in a mink stole and dripping diamonds: "Very breezy and talking about her husband, kids, shopping, all that stuff," Tomlin said. "But she was very sly; funny but with a little subversiveness under it."
More often, female comedians were like Totie Fields and Phyllis Diller, exaggerating their plainness into gargoyle humor.
Tomlin recalled a stint at the Upstairs at the Downstairs comedy revue in New York, as a second or third banana upstaging a lovely female star Tomlin wouldn't name.
"She was the ingenue who was absolutely boring onstage. You could hardly tolerate it. But in the dressing room she'd be incredibly funny, the way she would characterize things, just hilarious.
"I'd tell her: 'You have to do that onstage.' She would puff herself up and say: 'Oh, I wouldn't want anyone thinking I'm unattractive.'"
A piece of pop culture
That never fazed Tomlin, whose muse - especially with the Tony-winning one-woman show The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe - hinges on exploring ugly truths and appearances. She even laughed off her recent YouTube infamy, profanely blowing her stack at director David O. Russell on the set of I Heart Huckabees.
Without realizing, Tomlin became part of the coarse culture she tries to avoid, downloaded for kicks by people seeking cheap thrills at someone else's expense.
"It's the whole tabloid-ization of our culture," she said. "In a way, it's sort of liberating. Everybody has moments of bad behavior that you wouldn't want displayed to the world. Now it's out there and I can't do anything about it. But that's this generation, going to the Internet for communication and community."
Tomlin remembered being 8 years old, reading a newspaper account of a mother jailed for child neglect. Young Lily didn't know what "neglect" meant. Her mother explained that the mother didn't treat her children well.
"That was it for me," Tomlin said. "That leveled the playing field. I knew my mother could go to jail if I didn't like the way she treated me. An illusion had been destroyed.
"Kids today go to the Internet and there are no illusions about anything. Everything is exposed, including people's genitals. Maybe it creates kids who are really smart and who challenge authority. But it usually gets directed to wanting to be on YouTube.
"I don't know where it all ends but meanwhile people continue to live longer and longer. What are people retiring at 60 going to do? They might have 30 or 40 years left at this point in our evolution."
Tomlin ruefully laughed and added: "if the planet lasts."
Steve Persall can be reached at (727) 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com.
Lily Tomlin's career highlights
TV
The Garry Moore Show (1966-69)
Laugh-In (1969-73)
And the Band Played On (1993)
The West Wing (2002-06)
Film
Nashville (1975). Nominated for an Oscar.
Nine to Five (1980)
Short Cuts (1993)
I (Heart) Huckabees (2004)
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
Stage
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (also available on home video). Tomlin won the Best Actress Tony in 1986.
If you go
"An Evening With Lily Tomlin, " a one-woman tour of the comic-actor's classic characters from TV and stage, 8 p.m. Saturday, Morsani Hall, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. $35.50 to $55.50. Call (813) 229-7827 or (800) 955-1045 or go to www.tbpac.org. |
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| Even approaching 70, Lily Tomlin has little time for looking back |
[May. 15th, 2007|07:39 pm] |
Peter Birnie, Vancouver Sun
Published: Monday, May 14, 2007
LILY TOMLIN
Unique Lives & Experiences
Orpheum Theatre
Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets $36 - $66 at 604-280-4444
or www.ticketmaster.ca
On Tuesday night you can take a stroll down memory lane with Lily Tomlin. Then you can wait with anticipation for her to stroll on screen in The Walker.
Tomlin arrives in Vancouver to speak as part of the Unique Lives & Experiences series. In a telephone interview from Nashville where she was helping her brother celebrate his birthday (and, by coincidence, speaking from the city whose name graced the 1975 Robert Altman film that garnered Tomlin an Oscar nomination), the actress addressed her work in Paul Schrader's The Walker.
Premiered at this year's Berlin Film Festival, it's the tale of a well-connected man in Washington, D.C., whose charming nature makes him a natural for the role of "walker."
"It interested me," says Tomlin, "because it's this slim little slice of life and politics in Washington."
The story is based on a real-life gentleman who was once acquainted with the likes of Nancy Reagan, Betsy Bloomingdale, Wallis Annenberg, Lee Radziwill and other socialites.
"They were social friends," explains Tomlin, "but because their husbands were always off doing something, probably ruthless, he would 'walk' them to the opera or ballet or theatre."
Tomlin's character is married to a man, played by Ned Beatty, who she describes as being somewhat similar to the current U.S. vice-president.
"He's the Cheney type, someone who has never been elected to office but has immense power, and never really has to answer to anyone."
While topical humour is too tied to today's headlines to appeal to Tomlin, she will nevertheless be happy to fire a shot or two across the bow of the Bush White House.
"This administration has just been too out of control for me. It's very hard not to make some kind of comment. Anything to change this administration and its callousness toward everything."
That's not quite how her most famous character, Ernestine the telephone operator, might see it.
"She still has every possible connection in the world," says Tomlin. "She's done lots of wiretapping, at least according to all the political cartoonists who had a field day with her heading up that campaign to eavesdrop on the American population -- and probably the Canadians too."
Tomlin tours the continent on a relatively easy schedule that has her flying home to California quite often. But that's being squeezed these days so she can leave time late this summer to co-star, ironically, as one of the powerful people, in a new HBO series.
"It's called 12 Miles of Bad Road," she explains, "and I'm the matriarch of a very, very rich Texas oil and real-estate family."
The series is created by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason of Designing Women fame.
"The emphasis is on comedy," Tomlin says, "in a big, sprawling family with too much money and too much time on their hands."
As she approaches 70, Tomlin has little time to look back on a life that has had her in the spotlight since Ernestine and precocious little Edith Ann first appeared on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In in the late '60s. She also enjoyed great success with her one-woman stage show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, written by her lover and partner (for 36 years) Jane Wagner.
"I'm always hoping that she's working on another show for the stage," says Tomlin, "but she doesn't confide in me. That's how The Search appeared -- I was actually on the road and she sent me a huge package, 60 pages of Agnes Angst, the punk performance artist."
Tomlin tucked right into the material, and by 1985 she was finessing the final version at a series of shows in Santa Fe. After arriving on Broadway, her performance as many eccentric characters landed Tomlin, among many other prizes, a Tony Award for best actress in a play.
"I'm hoping Jane will write a new Search," she confesses. "That's what I hope she's working on."
Any way she can, Tomlin will be working on the same anti-war campaigns that have bookended her career, first during the Vietnam War and now the Iraqi occupation.
"When the Iraqi war started, in fact when we went to Afghanistan, I got out my old 1968 medallion from Mothers for Peace -- 'War is not healthy for children and other living things' -- and I've worn it almost continuously since."
"It's too much," she says after a pause. "It's so wrong." |
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| The Incredible Versatile Woman |
[Mar. 26th, 2007|07:25 pm] |
Lily Tomlin brings diverse cast of characters to Greeley
By Valerie Singleton
The Daily Times-Call
Lily Tomlin will perform more than a dozen of her famous characters Saturday in Greeley.
Photo by Brett Patterson
Giggle and give in, Robert Altman used to say.
It was part of the acclaimed director’s calm, cool modus operandi, something with which Lily Tomlin became familiar in her years as an Altman ally.
Last month, during a New York memorial service for the late filmmaker, Tomlin recalled time spent with the man who first introduced her to the movie world by casting her in 1975’s “Nashville.”
“If you’re making a movie with him ... everybody watches dailies at the end of the day,” Tomlin, 67, says by phone from the California home she shares with her writing partner and girlfriend, Jane Wagner. “You’d eat dinner, you drank wine and smoked a lot of grass. ... Well, not everyone (smoked pot). No matter what went on the night before, the next morning, he was the first one on the set.”
It was not until after Altman’s death in November that Tomlin received perhaps the greatest compliment from her late friend. A reporter for The New Yorker magazine wrote Tomlin to share something Altman had told him during an interview: The director always looked for a role for Tomlin when preparing to make a film.
“I think he saw something in me,” she says. “In ‘Short Cuts,’ (my character) runs over a boy. He goes to sleep and doesn’t wake up. I think maybe Bob saw something in me that was sympathetic, that maybe I could be responsible for the boy dying, and the audience wouldn’t blame me.”
Tomlin isn’t sure that she really has this quality. But her eclectic repertoire — from her impressionable characters featured in the late 1960s comical variety TV show “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” and on stages nationwide to a stream of dramatic and comical film and TV roles — has won Tomlin a fan base as diverse as her career itself.
“Very few people crossed over from ‘Laugh In,’” Tomlin says of the show, which she left in 1973. “People totally pigeonhole you.”
Tomlin had talent and luck on her side. She also had a good agent, who happened to represent Altman. The rest became cinematic history.
For all the notoriety the movie world earned Tomlin, her characters continued to charm theater audiences. She has performed several one-woman stage shows. Tomlin escaped pigeonholing by being more than a comedienne. By transforming into characters such as Ernestine the saucy phone operator, precocious 5-year-old Edith Ann and consumers’ advocate Mrs. Beasley, Tomlin proved herself to be a versatile performer.
“(Ernestine) doesn’t work for the phone company anymore,” Tomlin says of perhaps her best-known character. “They were a monopoly when they were divested. She’s done a lot of jobs in between (such as) wire tapping. Recently, she had a Web-based chat show, and so she uses computer cameras. She can call most anybody in the world and still talk to them on the computer.”
Tomlin doesn’t create her characters as much as they grow and evolve in her mind and body, she says. Growing up, she enjoyed the funny stories her younger brother shared after spending time at their mother’s workplace in a Detroit hospital. The two siblings reigned supreme in their home, where both would stay up late and pretend the water they were drinking was vodka.
Tomlin matured in an age when drug users were social outcasts. In the 1960s, when she started developing the characters in her mind, she used this as the impetus for a character addicted to eating rubber. She debuted the character on “The Merv Griffin Show,” a launching pad for her future work on “Laugh-In.”
Dozens of strange characters followed: Mrs. Beasley, sidetracked from her mission of selling laundry detergent by the discovery of lipstick on her husband’s shirt collar; an obnoxious sorority sister; little Edith Ann, who offered wise, humorous words as her feet dangled from her throne-like rocking chair (the prop now sits inside her home).
Her film heroines, such as Violet from the women’s lib classic “9 to 5,” receive praise from baby boomers and their children, who could see a modern rehash of the 1980s flick.
“They’ve batted that around for a long time,” Tomlin says. “Jane Fonda let the film rights slip. Jada Pinkett Smith is working on an African-American version of ‘9 to 5.’ If she gets off those rights, Jane would try to pick that up again. Oh, the three of us would (love to do a sequel). We had a great time when we made it.”
She’s working on other characters and more film projects, including Paul Schrader’s upcoming “The Walker.” Tomlin was prepared to play a role in Altman’s final project, “Hands on a Hard Body.” Now, she’s focused on her current nationwide tour, which she hopes somehow contributes to the betterment of humanity.
“You’re supposed to do well by doing good,” Tomlin says. “Giggle and give in.
“It’s helpful sometimes — especially if you pop open a bottle of champagne.”
If you go
What: Lily Tomlin
When: 3 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Union Colony Civic Center, 701 10th Ave., Greeley
Tickets: $23-$75
More info: 970-356-5000; www.greeleygov.com/UCCC |
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| Laugh-out-loud Lily |
[Mar. 26th, 2007|07:18 pm] |
All performers have "an act." The best ones -- a select group that includes Lily Tomlin -- have the ability to make their act se
by: JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
3/20/2007 6:25 AM
Lily Tomlin brings her easy wit to a Tulsa stage
All performers have "an act." The best ones -- a select group that includes Lily Tomlin -- have the ability to make their act seem ... well, not like "an act" at all.
Tomlin presented "An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin" Sunday night at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center. And while much of the evening was obviously tightly scripted, the feeling one had after spending two hours in Tomlin's company was that every joke, every vignette, was spontaneous.
That's a testament to Tomlin's naturalness as a performer -- her personality on stage is so engaging and direct, so apparently without artifice. But it also points to the quality of her material -- much of it written by Jane Wagner -- which treats topics that are both delightfully silly and deadly serious with disarming yet penetrating wit.
She began the evening with some pointedly local humor: wondering if, having heard about "Vision 2025," Tulsans had not heard of lasik surgery; mentioning that, when Dr. Phil played football at the University of Tulsa, the "Golden Hurricane was only Category One;" that Mayor Kathy Taylor and her rental-car mogul husband did not have a pre-nuptial agreement, but "he did insist on collision insurance."
Even Ernestine the Operator got into the act, carrying on a one-sided conversation with Sen. Tom Coburn, threatening to release some 96 hours of incriminating taped conversations until Coburn came through with a generous donation to the arts.
"Privileged information? Oh, that is so cute!" Ernestine said. "Senator, haven't you read the Patriot Act?"
Then came Trudy the Bag Lady, pointing out that "reality is the leading cause of stress for those in touch with it." Judith Beasley, the oh-so-proper housewife extolled the joys of a device called "Good Vibrations.
The 6-year-old Edith Ann related her adventures among her peers -- "I am not bossy -- it's just my ideas are better" and how she cleverly talked her way out of trouble when she was discovered in the store with an empty box of animal crackers.
And there was the always impressive "Dracula's Daughter" bit, where Tomlin plays four very different characters -- Marie and Lud, their screaming daughter and a visiting insurance salesman -- discussing one very plain piece of cake.
Tomlin also shared some more "confessional" bits -- about a crush on her elementary school teacher Miss Sweeney, and about how her career in show business kept derailing her dreams of being a waitress at Howard Johnson's.
And there were some vignettes that seemed to come out of nowhere, to create a moment of disquiet and unease amidst all the laughter.
A mother calls her son to dinner, complaining about the tank tracks in her roses, and shouting above the sounds of landmines exploding and bombs dropping on her suburban lawn.
A rich girl and a poor woman start comparing the things their fathers own, and the dialogue between them grew more and more poignant until Tomlin broke character and said, "I just had a horrible experience at the grocery store -- I discovered that bread crumbs cost more than bread."
It was one of those vertiginous moments, that gave one the sense of watching Tomlin's mind at work -- the silly non-sequiturs that pop into one's head at the oddest, even most inappropriate moments. And it becomes a way to laugh with, rather than laugh at, the people Tomlin brings to life.
And when people are able to laugh together, then maybe there's hope for us all.
At one point in the show, Trudy the Bag Lady said she thought the criteria by which the human race should be judged needs to change from "survival of the fittest to survival of the wittiest."
If the world decides to follow Trudy's idea, then Lily Tomlin just might live forever. |
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| Lily Tomlin Reacts to Leaked Videos |
[Mar. 22nd, 2007|07:09 pm] |
Even 67-year-old actresses can have their moments of Internet infamy, as Lily Tomlin discovered this week, when the sister blogs of celebrity snark, Gawker and Defamer, posted guerrilla video shot on the set of I Heart Huckabees, the 2004 film in which Tomlin clashed with director David O. Russell. Along with the sparks, F-bombs and even the “C” word fly.
The video was the subject of a New York Times article in 2004, when it was rumored to be making the rounds of West Coast talent agencies.
Miami New Times spoke to Tomlin the day after it appeared online for the first time. New Times was interviewing the actress in advance of her upcoming show at the Carnival Center, but we couldn’t resist a mention of the formerly clandestine video, which has since migrated to YouTube.
“Oh my God, the one in the car is on there too?” Tomlin asked, referring to one of the two videos, which were shot during two different scenes. In “the one in the car,” Tomlin tells Russell: “Leave me the fuck alone! Do you know what the fuck is going on, period? Fuck you! Fuck you motherfucker!”
“I can’t believe the damn car is in there. I’ve never seen it. Is that when I’m sitting in the seat and really going nuts? Oh my God, I’m gonna die when I see that,” Tomlin told New Times, laughing.
“I love David,” she said. “There was a lot of pressure in making the movie — even the way it came out you could see it was a very free-associative, crazy movie, and David was under a tremendous amount of pressure. And he’s a very free-form kind of guy anyway.”
In the second video, shot on the set of the office of Tomlin’s detective character, Russell turns the freak out around on Tomlin: “Fuck you! I’m just trying to help you, you understand me? I’m not here to be fucking yelled at!” He sweeps his arm across the desk at which Tomlin sits, scattering its contents. “I’ve been working on this thing for three fucking years, not to be yelled at by some fucking cunt! So just fuck yourself!”
“Adults have fights and go through stuff,” Tomlin said Tuesday. “I know some people are more dignified in the world, that if you transgress against that kind of professionalism, that it’s some kind of great sin, but I don’t see it that way.”
She called the episode “in a way liberating… now it’s all over, and so what, and I don’t have to keep up some great pretention I’m the most dignified, eloquent, elegant, perfect, smart-thinking, kind, generous person. I’m just a plain old human with a whole bunch of flaws.”
Tomlin mostly laughed off the incident, and the leak of the video from the set. “After poor Britney Spears, with her poor little legs open … I’m not the least bit upset about it,” she said. “That’s part of the upside and the downside of the Internet.” –Frank Houston |
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