tomlin "damage" (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} special_tribute) wrote,@ 2007-10-07 00:32:00 |
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A bit silly, a bit serious
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.
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.
