Rage Monthly Magazine

The gift of laughter is a precious one. Lily Tomlin has been giving audiences throughout the world many reasons to smile and laugh during her over 40-year career in show business. Whether it is her characters of comedy on television’s Laugh-In, her numerous films such as Nine To Five and Big Business filled with many hilarious moments or her live stage performances including the acclaimed Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Tomlin is definitely a queen of comedy.

 

The Rage Monthly spoke with Lily Tomlin as she was preparing to perform for the very first time in the city of sin…otherwise known as Las Vegas on November 10 through November 18.

 

Lily Tomlin: Yeah, it is. I’ve never played Vegas. I did a show years ago in 1981. I had a special and it won an Emmy. It was called Lily: Sold Out about going to Vegas for the money but I didn’t really play Vegas. I shot the special there at Caesar’s. The showroom was dark during the Christmas week or something and we were able to go in there and shoot.

LT: I always do characters so…the show is hopefully funny and a little bit over the top or wacky, but the kind of thing I’ve always done. On a literal level, you’ll see a lot of playing cards with my characters on them. So, when I perform, literally when I perform I wouldn’t have time to do a full deck. But on a content and aesthetic level, I’d be kind of not playing with a full deck. Just fooling around and having as much fun as I can…without being too…not being too in earnest like Ernestine (laughter).

 

LT: No, I’m making it to play in that showroom. Some bits I might be doing maybe in a different frame or a different essence but certain things I’m adding to the show are meant to be just for that showroom.

LT: Oh! You poor thing.

LT: That was back in the 1980s…heck, I’m sorry.

LT: That theatre fits only about 1,600 or something. Oh my God and I looked like a little gob of a stand-up comic and you were only seeing the top of my head.

 

LT: Oh yeah. I made that for Saturday Night Live. That was way back in 1977. The conceit was that Mrs. Beasley was driving all these characters to Broadway to do that first Broadway show. We drove my old 1955 Dodge and on the back it says, “Broadway or Bust.” Then they pick Crystal the quad up on the highway and they take off and you see her chair on top of the car. Susie Sorority is (laughter)…Trudy tries to get in the car and Susie Sorority says, “Why can’t people like that just stay home?” and then she says, “I could just barf!” She doesn’t want Trudy to get in the car…but she does.

 

 

LT: It’s hard to say…like most writers, she doesn’t really want to write. You know, it’s pretty lonely looking at that page. And so, she avoids it as much as she can. I might beg her to help me with something or she might surprise me and give me a couple of great lines. Like, we’re working on Vegas now so she has to kind of IMMERSE herself in work and she doesn’t want to do it!

I’m more inclined to keep chugging along because I love to perform. I like to do live performance. I’m having fun getting ready for Vegas and adding stuff and trying to create a little production without overwhelming what I do. I also have a part on Damages this year and I’m flying back and forth to New York to shoot. If I had more time and less things on my plate, I probably would have opened for myself as Tommy Velour. That’s the kind of place that allows me to do something like that…

LT: Oh, I know, I know. I just love the show. I’ve been crazy about it like a fanatical fan. I had met the guys who created it…actually, it happened at a photography opening. I just went crazy for them. I leapt all over them and hugged them and punched them. Anyway, I guess it paid off. I got on the show this year.

 

LT: How sad. She probably gave it, like, to her grocer.

 

LT: No. I don’t think she even did that well.

 

LT: I’ve been surprised. I think it’s somewhat calculated but it doesn’t matter,

it still kind of comes to a kind of sweet or softer sensibility. What do they call them? Bro-mos or buddy movies that they are making like Seth Rogen or Judd Apatow…they have a real sweetness to them. I think they even say like “sperm and heart” or something like that (laughter). If they go too far in one direction, they try to bring a little heart back and more humanity. Instead of really “balls out” hard-hitting, ugly, rejecting comedy.

LT: That’s what I worry about. That’s what I’m saying about the bro-mo movies. From my perspective, it seems like they’re the big hits or something. At least they back off of some of the really terrible crass ridicule and segmenting people and rejecting them as groups. It’s still very much a male culture. Those kind of young people’s films and old people’s films too. In my day, I saw it too. People like Gilda [Radner] or any of those women who came up in Saturday Night Live. They never had the opportunity to make movies that the boys did.

 

LT: The boys could even have a failure but they always had three. They had one in the can, one they were shooting and one in the early stages. They were covering all their bases. The managers had just managed to keep film after film coming. It’s well known that girls will go to see men-starring vehicles but men seldom want to go to a woman-starring vehicle.

LT: Oh, sure. I was totally immersed in the good woman/bad woman syndrome. Those days in the 1950s, there were good women and bad women. The bad women seemed to have a better time and were more fun. And they lied indiscriminately you know? They did bad things. They were great all through the picture but at the end, they had to get punished for being bad women. But, during the movie, they seemed to have the best of it. I was crazy about Dorothy Malone. She was the bad, sexy girl. Or Butterfield 8 with Liz Taylor, the Butterfield 8 character would go out and then she’d come in at seven in the morning like she’d stayed all night with somebody (laughter).

LT: Oh, thank you Bill. Oh, Ernestine…when we’re on the phone. [Tomlin goes into character and says] “I’ve been taping every word you said! Believe me. You’re gonna pay for it!”

LT: Take Care.