by Pete Hammond
LOS ANGELES, CA – JUNE 10: Actress Julia Garner, Lily Tomlin and Marcia Gay Harden attends the premiere of “Grandma” at the Opening Night of the 2015 Los Angeles Film Festival at Regal Cinemas L.A. Live on June 10, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic)
“I’m not sure why we don’t try to use this festival to kick off Oscar season in a bigger way,” Sony Pictures Classics’ co-President Tom Bernard observed at last night’s opening party for the Los Angeles Film Festival, which launched with SPC’s upcoming August 21st release, Grandma. Since it is only still June, others might disagree and want to stick with the standard Fall Fest trifecta of Venice/Telluride/Toronto as the “official” opening of the already grueling six-month-long season. At any rate, Bernard said SPC is going for it with their opener, particularly for lead actress Lily Tomlin and supporting actor Sam Elliott. And they should. The film, which originally premiered at Sundance, played extremely well with the LAFF crowd gathered at Downtown’s L.A. Live. And in fact, I counted a large number of Oscar voters in attendance, particularly from the actors branch. It was the same group you see often at Academy events during the season, so maybe this was a soft kickoff after all, at least for Grandma. Past Oscar nominee and Academy member Brenda Vaccaro was one of many who celebrated writer/director Paul Weitz’s human comedy. “This is the kind of movie we need more of. It is actually about people, ” she said. Weitz told me he shot the small indie in just 19 days. “Honestly it was originally a completely different idea, but I started to hear Lily’s voice in the character and I just did it. Weirdly I don’t even know where it came from. Seeing it in L.A. is so strange because I shot it here, but I shot it for under $600,000 bucks. It’s so strange to me to see it finally projected here,” he said of the perfect choice for this year’s LAFF opening night.
This was my second time seeing the film. Before it went to Sundance I was asked to see it and give an opinion, and like so many movies today, I was sent a link to watch it on my computer. Not the ideal way to see a movie but I was oddly affected by the film- even that way. But there is nothing to compare with seeing a work like this with a big audience on a big screen like Regal Cinemas Theatre #1 where it unspooled last night. Co-star Marcia Gay Harden is terrific in just a couple of scenes as Tomlin’s daughter in the road movie about an acerbic, hardened and cranky woman taking her granddaughter to get an abortion. She told me she had originally seen the film by herself in an office, but was so much more impressed viewing it this way with such an appreciative crowd. “It makes all the difference,” she agreed. There was immediate awards talk not only for veteran Tomlin, Oscar-nominated just once before in 1975 for Nashville, but also for never-nominated Sam Elliott, who just kills it in one eight-minute scene opposite Tomlin. The Supporting drumbeat has begun for him, also very fine in another indie out now, I’ll See You In My Dreams. “What can I say? It was a great year to get these roles (not to mention his recent Critics Choice award for Justified). And this one was just 11 pages,” he told me as he was besieged all evening by well-wishers. Weitz said he even had no idea the direction that Elliott was going to go with it. Earlier that night before the film played, Tomlin flat out predicted he would be nominated. “He is just so good in that scene,” she said.
Speaking of Tomlin, she was honored by LAFF at the festival yesterday with their Spirit Of Independence Award . It was presented by her co-star Julia Garner, also very fine in the film, who plays her pregnant teenage granddaughter in Grandma. She told me she was honored to be in a movie with the legend. “Every generation has their own specific Lily Tomlin memory whether it was Laugh-In, or then Nashville, or 9 To 5. For me it was when she played Ms. Frizzle on The Magic School Bus. But I never dreamed I would be playing her granddaughter one day,” she said. In a half-hour chat with LAFF curator Elvis Mitchell, Tomlin talked about her early inspirations growing up in a lower income Detroit neighborhood, playing phone operator Ernestine on Laugh In and using her middle finger to dial until censors figured out what she was doing, working with directors like Robert Altman and Woody Allen, etc. She was particularly funny when asked about championing Richard Pryor once she became hot enough to get her own TV specials. “We did two TV shows. He wanted me to go to a porno movie with him. I said ‘I will go but I will pay my own way. We went. It wasn’t that good,” she said to much laughter. She also revealed how she resisted doing 9 To 5 and tried to get out of the movie after she saw dailies from the first two days. “I just wasn’t good,” she said, but her now Grace And Frankie co-star Jane Fonda nicely talked her off the ledge and the rest is history. As for getting Grandma, the 75-year-old legend says, “It was one big gift to get a part like that in my juncture in life”.
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