Apple cider vinegar Is Pilates for you? 'Ambient gaslighting' 'Main character energy'
MOVIES
Sundance Film Festival

Lily Tomlin is Sundance's hippest 'Grandma'

Claudia Puig
USA TODAY
Lily Tomlin and director/writer Paul Weitz, who wrote the title role in 'Grandma' with Tomlin in mind.

Lily Tomlin has been palling around with Jane Fonda at Sundance Film Festival, making for the coolest duo in Park City — the fest's Thelma and Louise.

Tomlin, 75, is in Utah for Friday's premiere of her film Grandma. She arrived earlier in the week to speak on a panel about women in Hollywood with her 9 to 5 co-star.

Now, she and Fonda, 77, are doing what too few actors do at Sundance: watching movies. (Most are too busy promoting their own projects and lament they aren't able to see much.)

"We're seeing a bunch," she says. "I let Fonda pick out the movies."

She's particularly interested in documentaries on Gore Vidal and Marlon Brando, and The Wolfpack, about six New York brothers locked away from society who learn about the world through films.

The conversation is wide-ranging and engaging. A promised 15 minutes lasts for 45.

She has only good things to say about Grandma, written and directed by Paul Weitz (About a Boy), who also directed her in 2013's Admission.

She plays Elle, a witty lesbian poet whose longtime partner has recently died. When teenage granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) unexpectedly arrives on her doorstep, the two set out on a road trip.

Tomlin is feisty and funny, imparting profanity-laden advice. "You need to be able to say 'Screw you' sometimes," Elle tells Sage.

Making the art-house film "was kind of effortless," Tomlin says. "We did it in 19 days, for a very low budget."

Lily Tomlin and Julia Garner take a road trip in Tomlin's own 1955 Dodge in 'Grandma,' which is screening at Sundance Film Festival.

They used Tomlin's own 1955 Dodge Royal for the trip.

"I've owned it since 1975," she says. "I paid $1,500 for it. It's not a prize car. It's not a car that people yearn for. But it has a nice look to it."

The car's unreliability plays into the misadventures of grandmother and granddaughter in the course of the humorous and poignant film.

"The car is almost a character in the movie," says Tomlin. "I knew I kept that car for a reason."

She found the Dodge 40 years ago through an ad. "I couldn't stand new cars, I thought they were so un-sexy and uninteresting," she says.

Weitz says he wrote the part expressly for Tomlin: "She's so smart and scabrous and funny."

Indeed, Tomlin's spot-on comic timing gives Weitz's sharp dialogue extra zing. Still, he had other reasons for wanting to work with Tomlin.

"When one deals with icons of the culture, you hope that along with their intelligence and talent, there are human lessons you can learn from hanging out with them," says Weitz. "I hoped that would be the case with Lily and it certainly was. Lily is not categorizable in terms of her identity. As opposed to other actors and creative people who fall into stereotypical depictions, she's always got an edge, her humor is always questioning and self-questioning."

Tomlin was last at Sundance for another road-trip comedy, David O. Russell's hilarious Flirting With Disaster (1996).

"I haven't done that many independent movies," she says. "I just haven't been asked to do them. I would love to do more of them."

In the midst of the phone interview, another telephone rings. Tomlin apologizes graciously.

"I've got to answer this," she says. "Jane Fonda is calling me."

Her side of the conversation is audible. "Have you cleared out of your room?"

Her closing line: "Well, meditate for me."

And she's back.

She doesn't need to come back, of course, but she explains the interruption.

The two were staying next door to each other at a Park City hotel. But it turned out the festival covered only two nights' stay. Neither Fonda nor Tomlin wanted to shell out $900 a night for the rest of Sundance. So Fonda has arranged for both of them to stay nearby, at a friend's home.

That's one of the many charms of Tomlin: She tells it like it is.

"It all worked out," she says. "And Jane went to meditate."



Featured Weekly Ad