One of the screen's great comediennes talks about being directed by Robert Altman and Woody Allen, chats about everyone from Bette Davis to Bette Midler, and reveals why she's selling videos out of her garage.
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Lily Tomlin is running late. To find a few hours for this interview, she has to take time off from a schedule that includes getting ready for her role as Miss Hathaway in The Beverly Hillbillies, preparing an animated prime time special--à la "The Simpsons"--about her wise-child character Edith Ann, screening a rough cut of Robert Altman's Short Cuts, in which she stars with Tom Waits and 20 other actors, and sending out boxed sets of her videotapes, which she sells from her garage. Before we even begin our chat, however, she remembers that she needs to use the phone.
"It's going to sound a little bit show-offy," she excuses herself, "but I'm ordering flowers for a famous old movie star, Lana Turner. I missed her birthday."
She dials her secretary and asks her to look up Turner's number on her Rolodex. "Call up the florist in Santa Monica," Tomlin instructs. "I think she likes white roses, I can't remember, it says on her card. Simple, simple, elegant. Just send it to L. Turner. Then put 'We love you, Lily and Jane.'"
She hangs up the phone, and apologizes again. Nothing to be sorry about, I say. It's a perfect lead-in to talking about the influence of the movies on her life and career.
Growing up in Detroit, Tomlin once worked as an usherette, so she saw a lot of movies. Her favorites were the "bad girl" films which featured the tough-talking chippies like Dorothy Malone, Jennifer Jones, Beverly Michaels, Brigitte Bardot, and, of course, Lana Turner.
These women definitely had their effect on the teenage Tomlin. After she saw Bardot in ... And God Created Woman, she suffered what she has since called "Bardot damage": "I went around Detroit wearing a red shirt-dress with a black leotard underneath, unbuttoned almost to the waist. Walking the streets of Detroit barefoot as if I were in the south of France, I felt womanly, bohemian, abandoned!" When she saw Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Tomlin suffered "Hepburn damage"; then "Moreau damage" after seeing Jeanne Moreau in Jules and Jim.
But Tomlin was also watching TV, enthralled by Lucille Ball and Imogene Coca, laughing at "The Honeymooners." So she abandoned her med student dreams and, after leaving Wayne State University, set out to make people laugh.
By the end of 1969 she'd joined the cast of "Laugh-In," where she hit a national nerve with her characters Ernestine and Edith Ann. Tomlin went on to do nightclubs, and then got her first movie offer, to appear in Robert Altman's Nashville, for which she received an Oscar nomination. Her next film was The Late Show. And then came Moment by Moment, which seemed to halt the career of John Travolta, but Tomlin went on to do The Incredible Shrinking Woman, 9 to 5, All of Me, Big Business, and cameos in Shadows and Fog and The Player.
But it wasn't her film career that made her so unique. It was her one-woman shows: Appearing Nitely and, later, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. She won Tony awards both times out.
While she lives in W.C. Fields's former home in Los Angeles, she prefers doing her talking on more neutral grounds, so we met first at my office, and then at her publicist's. Though the setting was somewhat sterile, the company was anything but. When Lily Tomlin smiles, the room lights up.
LAWRENCE GROBEL: How did you become friends with Lana Turner?
LILY TOMLIN: I was on Jay Leno one night when he used to sub for Carson and I was talking about my being an usherette, and I did this whole thing about when Lana Turner pushes her hair back in The Flame and the Flesh, when she's kind of renewed, going to change her ways, and not ruin good men's lives anymore. When I was a teenager, I was very addicted to "bad woman" movies. In terms of women's roles, they were the only movies that were of any real interest to me. The roles that other women played were too suffering, too sacrificial. Anyway, after that Leno show she wrote me and I made friends with her.
Q: What was it like getting to know one of your idols?
A: Well, one doesn't want to belabor it or inflate it, it's not like they levitate. In a way, I'd almost rather never meet them. Not that they disappoint, they don't. But it's like... the world is just so finite, so mortal, so simple.
Q: You've said that you were not only affected by movies, you were molded by them.
A: As a teenager, movies certainly molded one's sexuality and one's role-playing as a female. Like Wicked Woman with Beverly Michaels. You probably never saw it, because you can't get your hands on it. I remember seeing it with The Moon Is Blue, which was square as a box. Wicked Woman was about this bad woman who dominates everything. She's the sexual aggressor, doing all the lying, all the manipulating. You just didn't see that in other films.
Q: Was this anything like Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not?
A: No, that predates Wicked Woman and it's maybe a classier film, but it's not the same because Lauren Bacall still had it both ways. Beverly Michaels was like taking the Greyhound. She was truer to life--she had to work her way across the country via gentlemen with a two-day growth.
Q: Talk about the influence of Brigitte Bardot, Audrey Hepburn and Jeanne Moreau.
A: What can you say? You could do worse.
Q: If you could have had the career of any of those three, which would you choose?
A: Jeanne Moreau, just because she's French and she's very smart. More bohemian, too, and she directs. Well, I'd like to be Jeanne Moreau but get to wear Audrey Hepburn's clothes.
Q: What if you were a teenager today?
A: If I were 19 years old today, I'd probably want to be Thelma or Louise.
Q: Which one?
A: It doesn't matter. Thelma and Louise are like one person.
Q: You can't say that about Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Did you know either of them?
A: I met Bette Davis once.
Q: Was she intimidating?
A: My God, yes! I was at this dinner party with about 10 people, all writers or performers, and Davis came by. She was still in very good shape and boy, she was full of vinegar. You couldn't say a word at the table without her challenging you on it. Totally outspoken, just as brash as she could be. That's why I like to be Ernestine--we all would like to be like that.
Q: When you were growing up, how important were breasts for you?
A: Oh God, profoundly! I grew up in the '50s and Kim Novak was the body image to aspire to. Very full-figured, full bust, full round hips. I used to pad my hips because I thought you were supposed to have round shapely hips from the front, because straight skirts had a little extra material on the sides. And when I was a kid, I didn't like to have my hair pigtailed. I wanted to have movie star hair, so I used to lie on top of my mother's dresser in the bedroom, with a horizontal mirror, and I'd pin curl my hair, and admire myself. Then I'd walk around the neighborhood in this two-piece bathing suit with my hair real fluffy. I thought this was a movie star look.
Q: Did you read many movie magazines when you were young?
A: Sure. I remember all the stuff in movie magazines like Modern Screen about how, when Doris Day got in the shower, she would always run her fingers over a bar of soap, so when she got out her fingernails would be real white. These things were important. And I was hip to Confidential and True Confessions, too, when I was about six. We didn't have the most evolved library in our home. My family was blue-collar.
Q: Meaning they weren't encouraging you to be anything you wanted to be, like a lawyer or a doctor?
A: The general feeling in my family was, as long as the girl doesn't get pregnant and the boy doesn't wind up in the joint, you've done pretty good.
Q: Did your parents ever embarrass you?
A: Things of modesty were embarrassing to me. Like if we'd go to the beach and my mother would make me change my bathing suit. People treat children like they have no sense of dignity. Even if I was seven or eight, I definitely wanted privacy. Because I was very adult. I used to read marriage manuals. When I'd go visit somebody, I'd go right to their bookshelves and look for their sexy books. This was when I was under 10. See, very early I'd gone through a realization that my parents had been children. I'd look at their baby pictures and suddenly I'd think, "My parents are just like me." So I knew they didn't know anything.
Q: Did that make you independent from adults?
A: Yeah. We lived in this old apartment house in Detroit, and I was fearless. I can remember coming home at 10 p.m., eight years old, running, jumping. I'd have to jump over certain fences and swing on certain poles. And I'd hear my mother screaming for me, crazy, because here I was a little tiny kid and she'd been out looking for me for three hours with the neighborhood kids.
Q: Didn't you also discover orgasms sliding down those poles?
A: Oh jeez, it was actually worse than that! I would actually hump the clothes poles. And I would tell all the women in the building who were hanging their clothes out, "Look at this great game I discovered." I would demonstrate it for them. Then somebody told my mother and she said, "Don't do it outside," so I took my activities indoors.
Q: Later, you were a cheerleader in high school. What did that teach you about life?
A: How easy it is to shock people.
Q: Which is why they kicked you out?
A: No, I got suspended from time to time for shocking people on the field. Doing a cartwheel and having my underwear show, or doing some vulgar pose. Just being sexual on the playing field. Instead of going, "Rah, rah, sis, boom bah," I was doing, "Bom de bom ba." Very soulful.
Q: Did you ever get caught stealing bathing suits?
A: No. We did that because it was a challenge: could we get every bathing suit in every color and every manufacturer? There were two of us, and we would brazenly take half a dozen at a time. We literally had two or three big old suitcases full of bathing suits. We took them to the beach, and we'd change every five or 10 minutes. It was totally insane.
Q: Did you ever get caught for shoplifting?
A: Yes, once. I was already grown and was doing a show in Detroit. I was in this store and I had this impulse: I wanted to get caught to see what it was like. I took a skirt that was very bulky, just put it in my purse--it was hanging out of my purse, and I saw a woman tailing me. When I went for the escalator, she took me by the elbow and said, "Come with me." What they think you are is part of a ring. So they want to come to your house to see if you have a lot of their merchandise.
Q: Did they come to your house?
A: No, I confused them. Oh, I hate to have all this written about me.
Q: Let's talk about your early success on "Laugh-In." Why did you refuse to pose for a picture with John Wayne?
A: When I was first on "Laugh-In," the war was still on, everybody was real political. I felt that every act was a political act. There was going to be a big cast photo taken and I said, "I cannot be photographed with John Wayne." [Laughs] Today I'd like to have that picture! The same kind of thing happened when Martha Mitchell came on.
Q: Is there anybody now who you wouldn't be photographed with?
A: Probably not. I wouldn't want to be photographed in some kind of exploitative way, but to say you don't want to be in proximity to another human being because they are just so horrific and horrible, that's maybe naive.
Q: When you were performing in clubs, were you inspired by Joan Rivers?
A: I go back with Joan to [Upstairs at] the Downstairs, when she was already famous. I was in the review Upstairs. I used to come down the back stairs when I wasn't on and watch her through a crack in the door. I'd be literally laughing so hard I had to stifle myself not to be a real distraction.
Q: Now Joan has her own talk show, and she says you're a very tough interview.
A: She really said that? The last time I went on her show she brought my mother and brother out from Tennessee. I fool around with her, because I really like Joan, so on that show I wore my brassiere outside of my clothing. I was supposed to be the president of the Madonna fan club. And she didn't notice at first. But someone from her staff noticed, so when we came back from a break, Joan had one on over her blouse. Well, my mother has really big breasts and if I'd known she was there, I would have had my mother come out like that. [Laughs] It would have been hilarious.
Q: How did you meet and begin working with Jane Wagner?
A: I was on "Laugh-In." She did J.T., this thing about a kid in Harlem for children's programming, and it was so well-received that it was broadcast at night in prime time. I was fixing to do my Edith album and what Jane had done was very poetic, naturalistic and styled, so I wrote and asked if she would work on the album.
Q: You've said you'll spend the rest of your life explaining that Jane is the writer and you don't write. Has it been hard for her?
A: Yes, I think so.
Q: You've also said that she's smarter.
A: Yes, more verbal.
Q: After working with Jane, can you go back to working on your own?
A: I can't. I'm not good enough.
Q: Does she feel frustrated by your success with her words?
A: Only when people say The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe was written by us. Because it's so natural to me, they can't believe that somehow I don't have a hand in it. And I don't.
Q: One of the characters in The Search, Trudy, says she'd much rather be exploited than ignored. Is that true of you, too?
A: No, I don't want anybody to pay attention to me. I don't want to be exploited or ignored. I can't take it all seriously. The only thing I can take seriously is maybe getting a nice new bag of mulch, and taking the time to go out and dig in the yard.
Q: How seriously did you take the time Katharine Hepburn, Barbra Streisand and Meryl Streep all came to see your show on the same night?
A: You read about that? In fact, Streisand said she got sick and left during the first act. [Laughs] I never spoke to her about it.
Q: Would it have affected your performance, knowing they were out there?
A: Oh God, yes. If I'd known they were there, I wouldn't have been able to speak. I would have been too scared.
Q: You mean you don't yet feel a part of the industry?
A: I don't see myself that way, yet I know I am. I'm well known enough and liked enough and respected ... it's part of my family, but it's sort of like I don't go home every year to the reunion.
Q: Are you really selling a boxed set of your videos out of your garage?
A: It's true. There are five videos, and when you buy the entire collection you get a priceless keepsake, a lock of my hair captured forever in a crystal-inspired, plastic pendant. But you can only get this through direct mail, it's very underground.
Q: Why are you doing this yourself?
A: So many fans asked Jane and me for copies of our Broadway and TV shows, and though we could have sold the shows to a big distribution company, it's been an expensive lesson, over the years, to realize that "net profits" usually means little or no money for the artists. Also, since Tomlin and Wagner Theatricalz has always been a woman-owned and operated company, it was a natural step to start up a distribution effort out of our garage. [Laughs] All I had to do was back my '55 Dodge out! Part of the fun of doing this is having to make a brochure to send out. It's like a performance. Jane calls it a performance hairpiece. [Editor's note: to order, call 1-800-GET-LILY]
Q: When Pat Collins had her Hip Hypnotist act she mentioned that you were a client. Is hypnosis a useful tool?
A: Yes. I believe in hypnosis. I'm a very good subject. I can do self-hypnosis. I wish I practiced more mind stuff, like athletes do when they visualize themselves performing.
Q: Do you consult with astrologers, palmists, tea leaf readers?
A: I have this one woman in Sacramento I call because she's so much fun. And I call the Psychic Connection on TV.
Q: Bette Midler once said that she always wished her chest were smaller, her hair thicker, her eyes bluer, her IQ higher, her shoe size smaller. Have you had any such wishes about yourself?
A: Her shoe size smaller? She wears about a six!
Q: What would you change about yourself today?
A: Well, I never had those wishes before, but in the last five years, because so many people get plastic surgery now, I've thought maybe I've been too pure on this point. I've been, in the past, just horrified at the idea that you would have to change yourself so radically, but now it's like some kind of flung-out fantasy, like saying, "I'd like to fly to Paris for lunch." You know, "I'd like to have my armpits suctioned," or, "Gee, I wonder how I'd look with a different nose?"
Q: Wait till Bette reads this. She'll have plenty to tease you about.
A: Bette who? Oh, don't print that! [Laughs, then speaks directly into the tape recorder] Why, I saw Bette just the other day.
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.