E-mail a friendVirginia Madsen
original airdate July 1, 2008
Actress Virginia Madsen can adapt to any role. Born and raised in Chicago, she comes from a show biz family—her mother is an Emmy-winning filmmaker and brother Michael is an actor. Perhaps best known for her role in The Rainmaker and her Oscar-nominated turn in Sideways, Madsen's also made numerous TV appearances. She has three movies in the pipeline: Amelia, The Haunting in Connecticut and Diminished Capacity. She's also promoting a voting-awareness campaign sponsored by the League of Women Voters.
Actress talks about growing up in Chicago and rooting for the Chicago Cubs. (1:52)
Full Interview. (11:30)
Virginia Madsen
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Virginia Madsen back to this program. The Oscar-nominated actress stars in a new project with Matthew Broderick and Alan Alda called "Diminished Capacity." The movie opens in New York and L.A. this Friday, July 4th. Here now a scene from "Diminished Capacity."
[Clip]
Tavis: "Diminished Capacity." Do you want to explain that scene?
Virginia Madsen: Oh, well, he actually grabs me and kisses me in a very lusty manner right after I finish yelling at him.
Tavis: Hey, hey, where's the rest of the clip? (Laughter) Why'd we stop the clip there?
Madsen: It's a very sweet little comedy that came out of the Sundance Film Festival and Alan Alda - Matthew is wonderful too, but the both of them are like kings of comedy, and I really wanted to learn how to do comedy. So surrounded by the two of them, I thought oh, I can't lose.
Tavis: Yeah, two good people to learn from.
Madsen: Yeah, and Alan Alda, like, he ages himself, because he plays a man who is in the very early stages of Alzheimer's, and his insurance company defines him as having diminished capacity. And so he's just - but he aged himself in such a subtle way that you just think my goodness, he's really aged. But it's an interesting transformation he made, it's beautiful.
Tavis: Tell me more - I get the "Diminished Capacity" title now, you explained that. Tell me more about the role that you play, juxtaposed against Matthew.
Madsen: Well, I'm kind of the girl that got away, and he's the boy that got away. We're high school sweethearts, and we both went off and had our own lives, and now he comes back to our small town and we fall in love again.
Tavis: He's coming back for what purpose?
Madsen: Well, he's coming back to save his uncle, who's Alan.
Tavis: Alan Alda, yeah.
Madsen: From an old people's home. And Alan Alda has this very old baseball card, a Cubs card from 1909, which is the only time we ever won, and he has this idea - or it's 1902, I think - does anybody know? I can't remember. And so he has this idea that if he can sell this card we can buy a restaurant for him and everything will be great and he'll be saved. And so we go on a road trip, and chaos ensues. (Laughs)
Tavis: I stayed quiet. I actually know the answer to that Chicago question, but since we're on in Chicago -
Madsen: Is it 1909?
Tavis: - I'm not even going to say it again.
Madsen: Oh, okay. Oh -
Tavis: It's been so long.
Madsen: Nineteen - oh, I know.
Tavis: We try not to remind folk in Chicago of that, yah.
Madsen: Do you know what, I heard something really sweet the other day that they said, "Well, the curse is over," and I was like "It is?" Because it's run out. And I love that. Oh, it just - ran out.
Tavis: Oh, yeah, the curse has ran out.
Madsen: So it's over now, it ran out. (Laughter)
Tavis: They just had that series with the White Sox, like, last - the (unintelligible) played last week, so.
Madsen: Very exciting for us.
Tavis: They're not doing so bad this year.
Madsen: No, it's going really well, but I wouldn't like to speculate because that would - I wouldn't want to put the kibosh on it.
Tavis: Are you a baseball fan?
Madsen: I was growing up in Chicago, and I think we all - not so much anymore, but I think -
Tavis: Kind of hard not to be, growing up in Chicago.
Madsen: Yeah, and I think my dad liked the Sox and my mom liked the Cubs, and I think when you from the Midwest, you are. And you just can't help but root for the underdog, I think, because we feel like we're the underdog, and we have really hard winters there. And so no matter how many times the Cubs would lose or almost get there, they sort of - I think we all felt like they were a reflection of us, in a way, and struggling in the lower class and the middle class and just trying to get ahead. And so we loved our Cubbies for that.
Tavis: Chicago's a great city, did you like growing up there?
Madsen: Yes, I loved it. I was born on the South Side and I was just there. And there's this pizza restaurant that is across from a little company (unintelligible), where I was born. And so it's weird when I go there and I'm eating pizza and I'm like, "This is where I came from." It's a very odd feeling that I still find myself there whenever I'm in Chicago.
Tavis: I want to go back to the movie now. You mentioned the Sundance. Tell me how this broke at Sundance, how it was received at Sundance. I'm always fascinated by these movies that actually break out of a place like Sundance as opposed to the more traditional route of the studio release. But tell me the Sundance experience for this movie.
Madsen: Well, this is my first time going to Sundance, and I never wanted to go. I just always - especially it seemed like in these last several years it had become - it is a marketplace, it is a wonderful opportunity not only for films to be seen but bought and sold. But it's gotten to be all about stuff we get, all the swag, and people that are there just to get their picture taken, and it didn't seem to really be about film.
So I went. I thought, well, they really need us to be there for this movie, for all the selling and the picture-taking. But I stayed till after that was done and found it to be this wonderful film festival, in the snow, and taking buses everywhere, and bundling up and going to see movies. But our film was shown in an enormous theater there, and everyone trudges in with their snowy boots, and it was received so well. The great thing about film festivals is that the audience is there just because they love film.
So they're very generous, so we got great laughs and it was the first time that I got to be funny. I'm always - even if I've been in comedies, I'm more the straight man, like in "Sideways." But this time I got to be funny, and I beat up this guy at one point in the film - like, really beat him up - and I got a great laugh. (Laughter)
And I thought, oh, it worked, I was funny. And then we didn't sell. Nobody bought the film. And we had a wonderful producer who was tireless and so believed - her name is Celine Rattray. She's with Plum Pictures. And that's the hardest thing about a little movie with a small budget, is how to sell it and how to get it seen.
And she was so tireless in her efforts that a few weeks later, from some meetings that were held at the festival, we sold and we got a distribution. So it needs your support, so go see it.
Tavis: When you have a Virginia Madsen, Oscar-nominated, when you have an Alan Alda, when you have a Matthew Broderick, what - if it's hard for that crew, that cast, then I can imagine what other people struggle trying to make happen. Why hard with a crew and a cast like that?
Madsen: You'd be surprised at some of the movies that I saw there that weren't sold and that are at all festivals. If you have a festival in your hometown, go and support it because it's the lifeblood of independent film. It's sometimes the only way that you're ever going to see those movies or those films and documentaries will ever be shown.
Because I think it has a lot to do with the way that money is made in Hollywood in distribution. The way that money is attained and the way it's become such a corporate thing that it's hard for someone just to distribute a movie because it's got a great cast and it's a fun film. Because there is a certain way that the money is recouped, and a lot of that has to do with foreign sales, so it's complicated. But once in a while, a little film like this will break through and it'll get shown.
Tavis: You mentioned a couple times now that this is the first time you've done comedy in the way that you've done it in this movie. What's the pull at this point in your career to want to try it now? The comedy thing, that is.
Madsen: Well, because I'm always experimenting. I've always experimented from the very first movie I ever made to what I'm doing now. That's exciting to me. To do - to go out of my comfort zone, to do something that I don't think I might be very good at or I just want to learn about it. Because that's when amazing things can happen, that's when growth happens, when you step out of your comfort zone in whatever area of your life and you expand and you grow.
Tavis: You mentioned documentaries earlier, and I think I read this correctly - you started a film company, Title IX.
Madsen: Title IX.
Tavis: Great name.
Madsen: Thank you.
Tavis: So with a name like Title IX, the first project has to be about -
Madsen: Well, it's not about sports, but it is about women.
Tavis: About women, exactly.
Madsen: And my mother is directing. She won an Emmy for a documentary in '87, I think. And I encouraged her to go behind the camera again, and - well, I kind of had to, like, manipulate her and force her into doing it.
Tavis: (Laughs) But it worked.
Madsen: But it's about a group of women from '64 to '94 that are vibrantly engaged in life at a time when the world tells you to go away and get old now. And our women are defiant and are not, and, like, our oldest, who's 94, is a waterskiing champion.
Tavis: A 94-year-old woman waterskiing?
Madsen: Yeah, and we film her competing. But all of our women are not athletic.
Tavis: Wow. (Laughs)
Madsen: And some of our women have - one woman said her body had betrayed her because she's had some injuries and she's in poor health. But it's their spirit. And we're not looking back and saying, "Look how great they look now." It's really just looking at their lives now, and asking what makes a woman like that? What makes a woman like that when other women do disappear or do start doing this, or what makes a woman like my mother? What makes you like that?
So watching her have these conversations with these like-minded women was so inspiring, and watching her edit the film and surrounded by technology, because she's much more computer savvy than I am, and doing all the editing on computer, it's been a remarkable experience.
Tavis: Be sure to send me a copy of that. I want to see that 94-year-old water-skier.
Madsen: Yeah, you do. (Laughter) She's phenomenal.
Tavis: And how nice of you - your mother gives you life, and you give her work. (Laughter)
Madsen: Oh, yeah.
Tavis: That's kind of you. The movie starring Virginia Madsen and Matthew Broderick and Alan Alda is called "Diminished Capacity." Virginia, nice to have you back.
Madsen: Thank you.
Tavis: It's good to see you.
Madsen: Thank you.
Back to July 1, 2008