After it’s clear that Sage’s idiot boyfriend Cam (Nat Wolff, “Paper Towns”) isn’t going to cough up the scratch, Elle and her granddaughter set out in Elle’s vintage Dodge to get the money together before Sage’s appointment later that afternoon. Both Weitz and Tomlin have primarily worked on studio comedies before – he directed American Pie and About a Boy with his brother, Chris, while any good misandrist knows Tomlin in part from 9 to 5 – and both spoke favorably of the change of scale afforded by an indie. Tomlin’s first performances were sketches mocking her neighbors – “I would perform by myself, [since] I was much more reliable”, she joked; “I think I was the world’s first performance artist” – and an irritating college classmate inspired one of her most iconic characters, Suzie Sorority.
Advertisement
As Elle, Tomlin is Tomlin, which is to say great.
In the slight but sprightly “Grandma“, Lily Tomlin flips the bird to all of Hollywood’s sweet old Nanas and Bubbes. A visit to a lesbian-run café-where, true to life, the employees’ interpersonal drama is far more interesting than the food-provides a reminder that, although she claims to have a plan to raise the money, Elle has a poet’s impracticality. “I liked the script enormously”, she said. After all, she performed a two-hour, one-woman show in the San Fernando Valley the night after Grandma wrapped at 3 AM, and during the audience Q&A, she recalled her beginnings as a character-based sketch comedian, later the basis of her television big break on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. “Grandma” is a tightly conceived road picture, one that allows us a glimpse into Elle’s past while showing us how and where her relationships went wrong (and occasionally right) over the years.
Use the player above to listen to the full interview, in which Tomlin discusses playing male characters, her culture shock visiting Kentucky relatives as a child, and her productive acting career as an older woman. Hence Elle, who has neither of those problems. Tomlin fills out the role like a tree spreading its branches and roots, though she brings a superb lightness to it, too: Elle’s acidity often has a comic kick – for her, wisecracks aren’t just a defense mechanism but a means of surviving the worst.
In the film, Marcia Gay Harden plays Tomlin’s daughter and Julia Garner plays her granddaughter.
Later, the discussion turned from Grandma to the state of female-centric film at large.
Advertisement
It was a vote of confidence that any young actress would be lucky to get. She’s a consummate scene-stealer, and her comedic rapport with Jane Fonda is about the only reason to watch her Netflix series “Grace and Frankie”, but Weitz lets Tomlin loose on the architecture of a complicated, lovable, hate-able, exasperating, irascible and ultimately dependable woman, and it’s extraordinary to behold.
