Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2009 > February > 26
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Chortling with Lily Tomlin 3
For Parts 1 & 2, see posts below …
Lily Tomlin’s show at the Paramount on Saturday will draw on some of those inspirations, touring through her familiar characters. But she’ll also ad lib, talking about Austin, she says, and taking questions, like Carol Burnett, who recently appeared at the same theater.
She described a near-riot she caused in Flint, Mich. early during the Iraq War.
“Someone asked, ‘Who would I rather have for president, Bush or the Marquis de Sade,’” she snorts. “I riffed on it and a fight almost broke out. ‘We’re for the war,’ some shouted, ‘We need to be there!’ Then someone else: “Then you go fight the war!” I tried to get people on the stage to discuss it. Nobody came up.”
Speaking of controversy, what about Proposition 8, the recently passed California initiative seeking to ban gay marriage? (Tomlin and her longtime partner, Jane Wagner, have become prominent backers of gay rights, after years of being out to industry insiders.)
“I’m hoping it gets turned over,” she says. “As much as I was repelled by Prop. 8 and taking rights away, I grew up in the church. These are like my relatives. I told another journalist, when (Pres. Barack) Obama chose (proposition supporter) Rev. Rick Warren to speak at the inauguration, these people don’t frighten me. He’s like one of my uncles.”
Tomlin is hoping a generational transformation and perhaps, “people who are rigid and calcified will evolve and have a change of heart.”
One of Tomlin’s less controversial and more local causes is the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, to which made an early contribution and which she toured, speaking to the assembled students.
“One of the young girls, about 12, asked, ‘Do you think your work has made the world better,” Tomlin says. “I don’t often get that question. I had to search my soul to be honest.”
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Chortling with Lily Tomlin 2
For Part 1, see post below …
Lily Tomlin reflected on the loss of Austin leaders — Lady Bird Johnson, Ruth Denney, Ann Richards, Molly Ivins — who served as role models for two or three generations of women … and men.
“Molly I didn’t know as well,” she says. “But what a fantastic gang of women!”
“She’s is still going strong,” Tomlin says. “She just had her 86th birthday and she turns out so much stuff every day. She absolutely candid and totally reliable. And totally heartfelt.”
Among the “amazing Texas women” she got to know was stage manager George Boyd’s mother in Teague.
“George’s mother very tall, the first time I met her, ankling across the Dallas airport terminal, hair piled on top of her head,” Tomlin fondly recalls. “She carried a purse that looked like a box and was verbose as she could be. The purse turned out to have cocktails in it. Whole little bar. Texas women are dazzling.”
Tomlin’s roots tend more to Detroit than to Dallas, but she spent time with southerly relatives in Kentucky, and her family were pillars of the Southern Baptist community in Michigan.
“When a famous preacher came to town, you’d go down early to get a front-row seat,” she says. “I ate it up. I was attracted to anything theatrical. That’s where I got Sister Boogie Woman (one of Tomlin’s classic characters). She’s not black, you know, but mountain Southern — all for freedom and cheap thrills for seniors.”
Tomlin drew many of her inspirations from the predominantly black Detroit neighborhood where she grew up.
“It was full of characters and I was attracted to all of them,” she says. “It was a funny, wonderful, sad, outrageous microcosm.”
More to come …
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Chortling with Lily Tomlin 1
Lily Tomlin’s original Austin connection was her production stage manager, George Boyd, who grew up in Teague, 150 miles to the northeast. He knew the capital city’s underground social scene well.
That residency cinched the deal. Tomlin grew fond of Ruth Denney, the legendary drama teacher who founded the Houston School of Performing and Visual Arts before teaching in the UT theater department. Then Austin investor Chula Reynolds introduced her around to other Austin-linked women, including columnist Liz Smith and then-Travis County Commissioner Ann Richards.
“I hit it off with everybody,” Tomlin remembers. “Ann was a striking person, a touchstone. When she ran for state treasurer, Liz, Ann and I would stage fundraisers, one at Esther’s Follies. We all had the same birthday (Sept. 1). Liz was the funniest. I was a distant third.”
Through the 1980s and ‘90s, Tomlin made so many visits to Austin, she purchased three lots on the Pedernales River.
“Wish I hadn’t sold them. That was a big mistake,” she says. “But maybe I’ll look a bit again. I still have so many friends there. It’s an easy place to be.”
More to come …
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CharityBash at Molotov
Kids today! Running around. Going to clubs. Raising money for charities. Wait. That’s a good thing, right?
Zach Gostout, Jen Ohlson
Charity, once the exclusive province of older generations, has been embraced with enthusiasm by twentysomethings who you might expect to be spending their club years in a whirl of frivolousness.
Andy Nguyen, Sherrie Nguyen
Oh sure, there were always the young, saintly types who gave up two or three years to help the needy. But where were the masses?
Alexandra Pineda, Charlotte Ice, Alex Winkelman
Thanks to Facebook — and trustworthy sources like Alex Winkelman and Matt Curtis — I discovered the latest CharityBash, meant to introduce giving opportunities to youngbies.
James Kinney, Derrick Boyb
The crowd did what crowds do — massed in certain places, split off for intimate conversations, but also asked questions at two tables — one explicitly devoted to the I Live Here, I Give Here program.
Jill Bauerlein, Blair Newberry
Met or re-met all sorts of young leaders, including the bursting-with-energy Winkelman, the forward-looking Jason Williams and somebody we’ve tracked from afar, Craig Saper, who skipped from the Austin stage to movies and TV in Los Angeles, and now back in Austin working in advertising.
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