| 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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| 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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| 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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