TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• I Huckabees official site
• Ms. Tomlin's official site
• Bio on Ms. Tomlin

E-mail a friend

Tavis: It is a pleasure to welcome Lily Tomlin to this program. There isn't much in show business that she hasn't accomplished. Seminal TV shows like 'Laugh-In,' 'Murphy Brown,' and now 'The West Wing,' films like 'Nine to Five,' 'All of me,' and 'Nashville,' the latter earning her an Oscar nomination. Also, just add in a few Emmy awards and a couple Tonys here and there. Her latest movie role is the new David O. Russell comedy 'I Huckabees.' The movie features a terrific cast. Here's a scene from 'I Huckabees.'

Vivian: How's the sex?

Bernard: How is the sex?

Dawn: The sex?

Brad: Come on, guys. Come on. That's private.

Dawn: That's gross.

Vivian: A preliminary surveillance indicates it's been infrequent and short, 8 to 9 minutes, typically.

Dawn: Surveillance? You've watched us?

Vivian: No, just listened.

Brad: So your surveillance is wrong.

Dawn: Yeah. It's quantity, not quality.

Vivian: Quiet.

Brad: She meant quality, not quantity.

Dawn: I know. I was only joking.

Bernard: Were you joking when you said quantity and not quality?

Vivian: In regards to sex?

Tavis: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Lily Tomlin, nice to see you.

Lily Tomlin: Nice to see you.

Tavis: I'm glad to have you here.

Lily: By far. Thanks.

Tavis: David O. Russell, the director of this movie, was here earlier this week, and I said to him that I've read a number of actors who said that they wanted to work with him, but really didn't in totality get the script that he had written. Did you get the script?

Lily: Well, you know, maybe I'm too full of myself, but I thought I pretty much got the script. I mean, you know, maybe I may not have been able to tell you what it was entirely, but because I have such regard for David and I kind of--'cause I was in one of his other movies a few years back, 'Flirting With Disaster,' so I knew--I can intuit what he wants to do, where it's going, and I'm excited by that kind of material, anyway. Material that's really about something, and also about something deeper and human, and yet the absurdity of being a human. You know, I love that extremely.

Tavis: Let me ask you--I don't want to belabor this point 'cause I raised it earlier with Mr. Russell, but to your point now about scripts that are about something--I love that phrase 'about something'--have a deeper meaning. Are you seeing enough of that coming across your desk these days in this business?

Lily: Um--ahem--let me think. Um, probably not my desk, but--

Lily: But, uh, I--

Tavis: Anybody's desk! Yeah.

Lily: Maybe a few people. Sure. There are movies that are made. I mean, just like David and a lot of the new, um, raft of film--there's not a raft--but the handful of filmmakers that are daring and outrageous. I've heard you say on the show that night that the 'O' in his name, David O. Russell stood for-- maybe it stood for outrageous. And, you know, they're outrageous in their own desire to make art and make something that the audience wants. And I heard David say he never underestimates the audience's intelligence, and that's right. That would be how I would feel, too, if I could make a film, but I don't think I could.

Tavis: Um, you set me up so nicely. Why?

Lily: Why not make a film?

Tavis: Why does Lily Tomlin think she couldn't make a film? You've done everything else. I just said, you've done everything in this business.

Lily: Well, kind of. I mean, I have done a lot of stuff, but, you know, to make a film... I mean, maybe I could make a film about something really personal, but I mean, it's a real... There's a lot of people involved. It's like this huge thing rolling down the track behind you, you know, and you can't stop it. It's like a locomotive, and it weighs tons, and you have to get it right that day. You have to get it right that hour. You very seldom get a chance to go at it again. And it's just-- It takes a lot of real vision to make a special movie, and this is a very, very special movie.

Tavis: Here's a crazy question--not the first time, not the last time I'm sure I'll ask one--but you, as I intimated earlier, do so many things and so many things well. After having been around for a few years now, have you figured out what you do best?

Lily: I think I'm best on the stage.

Tavis: You think so?

Lily: Yeah. In my heart, I do. I mean, I think it's because I'm so available on the stage and it's really very personal to be on the stage and to be doing pretty much your own sensibility and your own desire to do something, to communicate with the audience. The audience is right there and you're in the moment. And I think it's... And I saw a documentary a few years back about really elderly people in a nursing home. Show business people, you know? And people who were in their 90s and quite infirm in chairs and so on, and for a documentarian, they got up and they would do, like, their turn, their old vaudeville turn, and I'm telling you, like, 25 years just left them, see, because they're so alive in that moment. They're gonna sing their song or do their patter or whatever it is that they were known for in their heyday. And it's like--it's glorious. You know?

Tavis: There's no business like show business.

Lily: Well, kinda. Kinda.

Tavis: Yeah. I'm amazed that--I shouldn't say amazed--but I'm fascinated that you chose as this thing that you do best that thing that I'm told--I've never done either--but I'm told that thing that causes the most pressure for a thespian. It's one thing to be on the set with Mr. Russell and you can do take after take after take, but you just happened to choose a thing that you think you do best as that thing where you gotta get it right and you gotta get it right the first time.

Lily: But, you know, but a movie, you make a movie and you do a scene once. I mean, maybe you do a few takes, but you've done that scene. And once it's in the can, you can't fix it. It's done with, you know? And that's the great thing about theater or standing up and doing material and performing because you can keep doing it till you do get it right.

Tavis: That's why I love you. That is the most fascinating take on that I've ever heard, because the conventional wisdom, I think, is the other way around, that you get a gazillion takes on a set to get it right, so then when it does go in the can, it is right. But your attitude is the exact opposite.

Lily: No, but I don't think you'll find any actor who thinks when it gets in the can it's really great. They're on the way home driving--you know, it's like when you have an argument with a friend or an argument with an enemy, and on your way home you know what you would have said to really, you know, triumph, let's say, or prevail. And when you shoot a scene even on 'West Wing,' every time after a take, you see actors, like, going around talking, talking 'cause they're reliving the scene and they're thinking, 'Oh, I should have done this. I should have done that. Oh, if I'd only done this it would have been so much better, you know?' And so you can never, uh, you know... There's that great phrase about art about 'A painting is something you fool with until you get it right and then you leave it alone.' But, you know, and some things you have to leave alone and some things you don't. And that's why I love the stage, I think.

Tavis: And I'm learning from you just sitting here talking.

Lily: But I don't want to do just one thing.

Tavis: Right, but you don't. And I'm not saying you have to.

Lily: No, I know. I mean, I'm--

Tavis: I don't want you to stop. I don't want you to do just one thing.

Lily: I'm just grateful, you know, that I've been able to do a bunch of different stuff.

Tavis: Yeah.

Lily: But I think that's because I've always been pretty naive, and it never occurred to me that because I was, like, Ernestine on 'Laugh-In,' the telephone operator, or something like that that I couldn't be anything else that I wanted to be. You know, it never occurred to me, but... That was hard to cross over in those days.

Tavis: To what do you credit your staying power? I mean, there are a lot of folk who come and go in this business. And to your point, the fact that you can do a number of things and that you're still doing a number of things, what is that thing about Lily Tomlin that has allowed her to remain in our face all these years? In a good way!

Lily: I think, uh, probably I have good joints. I don't know. I don't know. I'm very--I'm very flexible.

Tavis: I can take that a number of different ways, but you--

Lily: No, OK. No, I--

Tavis: Lily Tomlin has good joints, y'all! But I'll leave that alone. Yeah.

Lily: I could keep going longer, too, 'cause there'll come a time when I'll still be jumping around and turning flips on the stage and stuff and they'll say, 'Let's go tonight to see if she breaks her hip this time.'

Tavis: Yeah, yeah. This whole thing started for you back in Detroit.

Lily: Yes.

Tavis: This is my favorite Lily Tomlin fact--factoid--I like that word, factoid. I got that from CNN--a factoid. So here's my favorite Lily Tomlin factoid: you grew up in Detroit.

Lily: Yes. That's right.

Tavis: And as you know, Aretha Franklin, the queen of soul, was on this program not long ago, and I don't care even if you're the queen of soul, everybody--or as we say, err'body--err'body in Detroit wants to know what high school you went to. I don't care how big you become. 'What high school did you go to in the Motor City?' And you went to Cass Tech.

Lily: That's right.

Tavis: I can't believe that. You went to Cass Tech.

Lily: What is that? Yeah, what's the big deal?

Tavis: No, I'm just--I didn't know that you grew up in Detroit and that you went to Cass Tech.

Lily: Oh, yeah. I went to Cass Tech. Yeah. 'Cause Cass had-- Now Cass has an incredible performing arts curriculum, but they didn't have it when I was there. You know, I graduated in '57 and they didn't institute it I think till '65 and oh, I just was envious, you know? Because in my day in the fifties when you're growing up, you didn't even want to be in the drama club because if you were, people, you know, they, if you were in the drama club, the girls were considered affected. Affected. You know, like, hoity--stuck up or something.

Tavis: Hoity-toity.

Lily: And boys were considered sissified, you know? And this was as bad it gets: for a girl to be affected and a boy to be a sissy. You know, this was like as bad as it gets in the fifties and so I was a cheerleader. And that's how I got my--

Tavis: 'Cause you had great joints.

Lily: I had great joints, and that's how I got my performing thing going, you know?

Tavis: Let me ask you what it was like growing up as a white girl in a city that has so many African Americans. What did you learn out of that experience in inner city Detroit?

Lily: Uh, well, first of all, I lived in a black neighborhood, and I lived in an old apartment house where every kind of person in the world lived. You know, people who were educated, uneducated, people who were radical politically, very conservative, reactionary, just every--and old people who were professional but couldn't move 'cause they were on a pension, and so I would go to every apartment and I was just sort of in love with all these people, you know? And then getting to also be immersed in part of the black culture, have friends who were black, go to their houses, hang out, um, whether they wanted me there or not. You know, and have girlfriends and kids over that were black in my house, you know?

Tavis: I think it's just a fascinating experience because I find that people like you who have a worldview, who are humanist, who are involved in issues that matter, I always look for that something in their life that allows them to be more open-minded, more willing to hear and to listen and to consider other points of view. And I knew that about you, but couldn't put my finger on it till I realized that you grew up in inner city Detroit.

Lily: Yeah, inner city Detroit. Right. My old apartment house burned down in the '67 riots.

Tavis: Wow.

Lily: And, uh, I was living in New York then, but I had a lot of friends in the neighborhood and everything. And I've always drawn from that old neighborhood, you know, on material and stuff. And then I also had the flip of my parents were southerners from Kentucky. They came up to work in the factories and so I'd go to Kentucky every summer, you know? And I'd see the contrast there and the racial contrast and--

Tavis: See, you're just all screwed up.

Lily: No, no, I was--I think I was cool.

Tavis: Yeah, I think you're cool, too. I'm just teasing you. You have been so politically active for so long. I don't want to ask you a loaded question, but we are in a political season. Does Lily Tomlin want to share anything about this political season that we're in that occurs to her this close to Election Day?

Lily: Well, sure, I'd like to say, uh... I'd like to see us, you know, wind the war down as fast as possible and change our policies toward a lot of countries in the world and try to rebuild and recapture the moment when we struck in 9/11 and recapture that moment somehow by showing our real purpose and good faith when most of the world was in our corner and we had that chance to seize that moment. We can always attack, we can always do something violent because we're the strongest country in the world, but we should also be the best country in the world, you know? And we had that window, and, you know, my thought was always, you know, when the flight landed--hit--you know, crashed in Pennsylvania, and the other planes had gone straight into the towers and so on and... But when the people on that plane had that little time span to re-evaluate what was going on and they knew where they were going, it's like a metaphor. They said they tried to change the direction of that plane and I know that at the time that we decided to, you know, create war that we had a chance to react differently, in that same way change our direction.

Tavis: Let me close with this quick question.

Lily: Maybe the direction of the world.

Tavis: Yeah, I hear you. Speaking of changing direction right quick, do you think that we can... How can I phrase this? Can we get that moral authority back?

Lily: That's what I'm saying. Yes, I think we can. I think-- I think we must. And I think we'll get it back by absolutely changing directions and showing that we have that will and that we can set that example again. That we can be better as the country that people used to believe we were, you know? I used to love the Yankees, you know?

Tavis: I still love the Yankees. I still love Lily Tomlin, and you see why now. Nice to see you. Nice to have you on.

Lily: Thank you. Yeah, great, Tavis. Thank you.

Tavis: That's our show for tonight. As always, you can catch me on the radio on NPR. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, thanks for watching. Good night from Los Angeles and keep the faith.