Lily Tomlin, Seriously

Q: Bette said she made you laugh a lot on the set of Big Business. What made you want to make the film?

A: I did it because I wanted to work with Bette. I wanted to have a movie, when I'm sitting out there at the Motion Picture Home, I want to see the cassettes lined up there and say, "Well, here, let's watch this movie I made with Bette Midler."

Q: Is that also why you did 9 to 5, because of Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda?

A: I turned that down initially. I was doing The Incredible Shrinking Woman at the time. It was much harder for me then to do something that had been created outside like that, you know? That's 10 or 12 years ago, I'm quite different now. But at the time, I just hated some of the jokes. They're sort of lame. I can't imagine why anybody thinks they're funny.

Q: So who convinced you to do it?

A: Jane [Wagner]. She said, "You're going to regret this. After Jane Fonda developed that part for you, you turn around and throw it in her face? When you see whoever that other woman is who gets to be with Jane and Dolly, you're going to be sorry that you didn't do it." And she was right. But after I shot the first couple of days, doing the Snow White sequence, I called [producer] Bruce [Gilbert] and Jane [Fonda] and begged them to let me out. I thought I was just awful. Of course, they thought I was real good. I said, "Please, just let me out. I'll help you get anybody you want." Then I went to see the dailies, and I was real good.

Q: Speaking of replacements, you replaced Louise Fletcher in Nashville, didn't you?

A: I didn't know about it until a couple of years later, but yes, the whole thing about the deaf was inspired by Louise. I found out later that Robert Altman had fallen out with her husband--they'd all just done Thieves Like Us. I was lucky to get into an Altman movie, especially one where I didn't have a lot of screen time, and I could be brought into his fold. Then I got The Late Show together with Robert Benton and Art Carney. I didn't want to do it because I wasn't sure about the part. I'm glad I did it now, but at the time I resisted doing it.

Q: And then came Moment by Moment with John Travolta.

A: Moment by Moment was a terrible shock. None of us expected to be massacred for it. John Travolta was so hot, I'm sure it was devastating to him. Jane and I didn't escape either, by any means. I'd seen a sneak of Saturday Night Fever and I loved John. And he came backstage after seeing Appearing Nitely. He owed Robert Stigwood another movie so he told Stigwood he wanted to do it with me and Jane. We thought it would be a good movie. I had a great time with John. Everybody said we were just awful and we didn't have any chemistry at all, so what can I tell you? I spent much more time with Travolta, playing around, being pals, rolling on the sand, than I did with Steve Martin during All of Me. I felt almost maternal towards Steve. I liked All of Me, though I didn't particularly like myself as that spinster character in it.

Q: What do you like of yourself in films and videos?

A: I love The Search, and my Vegas special, and I like my cameo in The Player.

Q: You've got another Altman film, Short Cuts, coming out this fall. Elliott Gould saw a rough cut and said it's the best film Altman's done since Nashville.

A: That's what everybody's been saying. I think so, too.

Q: You're paired with Tom Waits, aren't you?

A: Yes, I loved that immensely. He plays a limo driver, I'm a waitress, and we live in this trailer park. We're both kind of binge drinkers. Every night, Tom called me after we'd been shooting, and he'd talk to me for an hour like he was the limo driver, just like he was my husband. We kind of played it like teenagers that never quite grew up.

Q: Are you more satisfied with this than with anything else you've done for the screen?

A: No, I'm not. I like it. I think Tom is great. I do think I could be better if I have one more closeup in my last scene. I was playing the scene very differently than how they cut it for me.

Q: Will Altman listen to your suggestions?

A: He might. It's not the The Search for me, it's not something that's personal. It's nice to be in a movie. I'm enough of a careerist to know what it means--I'm not naive about it.

Q: You had a small part as a prostitute in Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog. How differently does Woody direct compared with Altman?

A: They're very different as individuals. I don't know Woody at all, but Altman is totally available. Altman is like this big, menschy patriarch. He's like if you had a father who could fall down and get drunk every night, but still you somehow respect him? His humanity just moves you. Even if he's not like a traditional good father.

Q: Was Woody going through his troubles with Mia at the time?

A: Well, if he was, I didn't know it. I came back from New York and was saying things like, "They're really nice people, a nice couple, really cute. And their children are really cute." But I'm kind of goofy that way, I don't get what's going on. Woody and Mia walked to the set each day holding hands, they seemed very devoted to the kids. Mia's dressing room was like a nursery, very much for the children. And I'd watch Woody play with his boy, he was always hugging him, picking him up, and the little boy's almost as big as Woody.

Q: Now you're doing The Beverly Hillbillies. Did you ever watch the television series?

A: Never. But I've begun to watch it religiously. It's on cable two or three times a day. There's a huge audience. I'm sure that's why they're making it. I'm always glad that something comes along that's fun to do. I'm looking forward to playing Miss Hathaway. People say, "Oh, Miss Hathaway...you're just perfect!" And I think, it's a wise woman who knows herself [laughs].

Q: You'll also be appearing in And the Band Played On for HBO, won't you?

A: Yes. I play Dr. Selma Dritz. She was the head of communicable diseases in San Francisco at the time. It wasn't until Richard Gere committed to it that it was able to go forward on HBO. I only got in it because Whoopi Goldberg got sick. I stepped in at the last minute. I was glad, I wanted to be in it.

Q: Do you think it will make a difference?

A: I think so. I'll tell you why. Because it shows very clearly the cover-up, and people's lack of integrity, and the idea that people could isolate and dismiss a group of people. We're all paying a terrible price for it.

Q: How many friends have you lost to AIDS?

A: Maybe 30. Maybe 10 good friends.

Q: You said in The Advocate that you didn't think Hollywood did a good job representing lesbians and gays. You felt it was either titillation or comic relief.

A: Yeah, I probably said that. Occasionally, when I do see something, it's something exploitative, some gay scene that's meant to be ridiculing or derisive in some way. Anything to keep the puerile interest up.

Q: Were you offered a role in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues?

A: I turned it down, I don't know why. I wanted to work with Gus [Van Sant]. But I didn't love the book as much as everybody carried on in the '70s.

Q: How difficult is it finding good material?

A: It's extremely hard. For me it's almost impossible, because I'm not competing for the roles that Meryl Streep and Sally Field are.

Q: Meryl Streep is of the opinion that there is no substitute for beauty in the movies. Do you agree?

A: You do get an extra leg up if you're beautiful and you're good, but just being beautiful isn't enough. It's not so much beauty, really, as it is youth. I look at myself when I was 20 and I was really quite beautiful. I didn't know.

Q: Are there any films you've seen that you wish you could have done?

A: Once I see the person in it, it's hard for me to imagine myself doing it. I would have liked a part in Thelma & Louise, because it was a landmark.

Q: How about Clarice in The Silence of the Lambs?

A: Nah, because I don't like all that imagery. I liked The Grifters, but I wouldn't have liked to have killed that boy in the end.

Q: What's more important to you, your life or your work?

A: My work was, without realizing it. But not anymore.

Q: Do you consider yourself a role model?

A: No, but I am. Anybody who is public is to some degree a role model to somebody.

Q: How do you think people perceive you?

A: I think people perceive me as talented, funny, maybe down-to-earth, accessible. And basically not different onstage and offstage. Beyond that I couldn't say.

Q: Do you know anybody who doesn't like you?

A: God yes. Lucy [Ball] didn't like me. In People magazine she said, "And Lily Tomlin, I don't get her." And Red Skelton said something bad about me once in the press. I didn't care overly about Red, but I did care about Lucy. I got to meet Lucy a year before she died. Bette and I had dinner with her. I was a little scared, but she was just great.

Q: Did you write about it in your journal?

A: At some point, yes, but I don't keep it religiously.

Q: Do you put other writers' names on your journal?

A: I have, yes. [Laughs] I'll buy a leather book and put Hunter Thompson's name on it.

Q: Ever plan to publish your journals?

A: No, God forbid. I'm illiterate. I live in fear that my personal correspondence will be published one day.

Q: Are you familiar with the writings of Camille Paglia, who seems to have pissed off a lot of feminists?

A: Yes, some of her stuff is maybe valid, but she's so displeasing personally that it's hard to get past her. She's like an exhibitionist to me, just wants to be famous and be out there. But a lot of people do. Certainly not everything she says is wrong, it's just so theatricalized and overdone.

Q: She believes that most men and women can never understand one another.

A: I dare say I fear that's true.

Q: She also thinks that the way we urinate and the way we have sex ultimately forms the way we see the world.

A: I don't have any idea if that's correct or not. Do you know what that means? It's just clever, that's all.

Q: Finally, she says that the masculine male homosexual is the ultimate symbol of human freedom.

A: There's a lot of validity to that statement, because first of all, they have the masculine role to play. All the sex in the world is accessible to them, and they don't have the responsibility of marriage or fatherhood. But if you really start analyzing it, it's surface. Gay men are just like heterosexual men in the sense that beauty and youth are absolutely paramount in a relationship. An older male homosexual has just as much difficulty as an old heterosexual female in being abandoned, dismissed, discounted. So it's not so profound.

Q: Is this? "Why is it easier to have your uterus lowered and made into a penis than to get a prescription for Valium?"

A: That's something I said. I probably invented an operation. In this culture, in this world, they will cut your penis off, but if you go to a doctor and ask him to cut your finger off, they won't do that. But he will cut your penis off.

Q: Last question: If you found something valuable on the street, would you pocket it or report it?

A: I found a hundred dollar bill once on the lawn outside The Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. It was at night and I was walking my dog. The bill was on the grass. I just took it. Put it in my pocket.

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Lawrence Grobel interviewed Stephen Frears for the October 1992 Movieline.

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