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Philadelphia Gay News www.epgn.com April 27 - May 3, 2012
tionable. There’s always a little bit of shading and motivation. PGN: Do you see your influence on any of today’s performers? LT: I really couldn’t speak to that. Any of us, we all take from each other. I was influenced by a lot of people I saw on television as a kid. I also discovered other kinds of performers. I was influenced by the first standup I ever saw, a woman named Jean Carroll, and I saw her on “Ed Sullivan” when I was a child. As a teen I discovered Ruth Draper on records, who for me was a great monologue artist. I never saw her live. She died in the 1950s. Everything that comes before is part of what we build from, whether we do it consciously or not. I was very influenced by radio. I was very influenced by anything that was sort of gay or wacky, especially anything that was character-driven. There was an old radio show [“The Beulah Show”] that was on when I was a kid. There was politics in the show because she was a black maid who was working for upscale white people. I grew up in a very mixed neighborhood and my parents were Southern and I lived in inner-city Detroit. So I was exposed to a lot of politics very early and a lot of humanity. Beulah, I would always get a kick out of her because she was always muttering her mutiny under her breath about her being taken too much for granted. I thought it was hilariously wonderful that she was fighting back in her own way against the inequities between them. I was aware of all of those women that were funny.
FEATURE
PGN: Why do you think, after all these years really appeals to them, or if that is what is and all the strides that women have made in necessary to get a large audience to play on comedy, the attitude still persists among audi- that field. There’s nothing wrong with it. It ences and comedians that women comedians depends on how clever it is or how artfully it’s done. I mean, look at the fuss they made aren’t funny? LT: It’s cultural and it’s a male attitude over about Mel Brooks farting around the campfemale attitude. I can’t get into a discussion of fire [in “Blazing Saddles”]. Women just didn’t do stuff like that. boys’ humor over girls’ Men belch, fart and do humor. You can see evieverything else in front dence of it in women of of each other. Girls this era who are trying would never do that. It to making it in film. just wasn’t ladylike. Whether it’s conscious or not, they’ve adopted PGN: Being a trailthis sensibility that blazer in comedy and they aren’t going to having worked with the break through or have likes of comedy icons an impact unless they Richard Pryor, do you play on some part at think comedians are the boys’ level. Even more scrutinized today [Judd] Apatow will say. for the things they say “A little heart, a little — and, if so, do you semen.” So now you think they should be see in “Bridesmaids” apologizing for the conhow easy it is to do troversial things they say just a big scatologion stage? cal joke. They need LT: No. I think that is this outlet that it’s OK their business. That’s to shit in the street or what they said and they shit in a sink. The girls should just own it. If they did because they got TOMLIN AS TOMMY VELOUR have a change in percepa hit movie out of it Photo: Brett Patterson tion, I suppose ... but they and that means they’ll should just own it and if get to make more movies. I can’t speak to whether their sensibili- it works out, fine. If it doesn’t, they may pay ties are informed that way or if that is what a big price or they may get a big reward for it.
hitchcock will be rolling in his grave and
you’ll be rolling in the aisles!
April 24 – May 20 Adapted by Patrick Barlow From the novel by John Buchan From the movie of Alfred Hitchcock Directed by Mark Shanahan With Michael Thomas Holmes, Stacie Morgain Lewis, Howard McGillin and Mark Price This production is sponsored by The Karma Foundation.
Box office: 732-246-7717 • Online: www.GSPonline.org Only at GEORGE STREET PLAYHOUSE 9 L i v i n g s t o n Av e n u e , N e w B r u n s w i c k , N J 0 8 9 0 1 David Saint, Artistic Director • Norma Kaplan, Managing Director This Program is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, A Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. Stacie Morgain Lewis and Howard McGillin, photo by T. Charles Erickson.
The culture is a mixed bag. I don’t think they should have to apologize for it. No. That’s the antipathy of free speech. People are apologizing because they are afraid of losing something. If that’s their real view, then I’m glad I got to see what their real view was. I wouldn’t ask them to apologize. I wouldn’t ask them to do anything. I may not care about them anyway. But if they have real intelligence and real perception, then I’m going to be interested in what they said. Sometimes people do things for the impact or the shock of it or to pander to one faction or another. To me it’s not an instance of brilliance. If you’re saying something that is really perceptive and it really has observation in it, then it is worth anything. But if it’s just bullshit and meant to be shocking, as sometimes it is, and people lash out, you see what in their real interior is going on. All I can say about it is that the hand that is on it can tell you what it means. Everybody is different. If I couldn’t hear you say it and I didn’t see how you were informing it or what your sensibility is, I wouldn’t have any idea of what you were doing. People’s own styles and self inform me. You get to know performers over time and it’s not the whole picture one way or the other. I’m not very judgmental because I grew up around too many people. ■ Lily Tomlin performs 8 p.m. May 3 at Keswick Theatre, 291 N. Keswick Ave., Glenside. For more information on Tomlin, including her entire career in art, text, photos and videos, visit www.lilytomlin.com. For tickets, call 215-572-7650.