John Lithgow in the news (reviews and interview)…We host him Oct 6 at Live Talks Los Angeles

We host John Lithgow on October 6 at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica.  Ticket info here.  He’ll be in conversation with Geoff Boucher of the Los Angeles Times.  Excerpts from review and interviews with Lithgow follow…

From the Wall Street Journal:

Why did you decide to write a memoir?

In fact, there was another stage, the first thing that happened was the solo show. The experience was so intense and so important to me and it was all involved with the telling of a fantastically funny story. That’s the ironic thing. Reading P.G. Wodehouse to my father. So I did the solo show, which was very autobiographical, and it was only then at the suggestion of other people, that I had the impulse to write the memoir. I had never had the courage to write that frankly about myself and communicate it to people, and it really reached them, and it really moved them, and I thought well, yes, I think I can do this. That was three years ago, and there have been many moments in the intervening time when I thought nope, I can’t do it. [laughs]

From the New York Times:   

John Lithgow is probably best known for playing oddballs and weirdos: a psychotic physicist in “Buckaroo Banzai,” an extraterrestrial college professor on the long-running sitcom “3rd Rock From the Sun” and most recently the creepy serial killer Arthur Mitchell in the Showtime series “Dexter.” With his big, almost hulking frame and long, quizzical-looking face, Mr. Lithgow on screen or onstage effortlessly manages to seem like a panic-stricken creature imprisoned in the wrong body.

But in person Mr. Lithgow, who has an equally long résumé of conventional characters and a sideline in making recordings for children, is disappointingly normal. His new memoir, “Drama: An Actor’s Education,” which comes out Tuesday, recounts in graceful, considered prose a life that after a few wrong turns is now happier and more well adjusted than most.

 

 

Jane Lynch (at Live Talks 10-2)..More reviews, interviews…

An interview with Jane Lynch (whom we host on Oct 2 at Live Talks),  in PARADE today….And another in the Washington Post.  And here’s an excerpt from an interview in The Atlantic:

With characters you’ve played like the one in Best in Show or Sue on Glee, the comedy is mined from their extreme personalities. When you play such extreme characters, do you have some sort of barometer that keeps you from crossing a line or going so far that it undercuts the comedic effect?

It’s got to be connected something real emotionally. You’re not being weird just to be weird. You can tell when someone is trying to push envelopes for the sake of pushing envelopes. It’s always something that I explore from the inside-out, absolutely. And I love it. That’s one of my favorite things in the world to do: Find an emotion and pump it up with air to see how far I can go before it pops.

Then with Party Down and Julie & Julia, you played characters that were quieter and more soulful and introspective. Do you wish you had more opportunities to play characters like that?

I’d love it. I like doing a whole bunch of stuff. Both of those characters are great, especially the Party Downcharacter, in that there was nothing aggressive or cynical about her. Shes very, very honest, and a little deluded and kind of in her own thought-place and world. That was fun, and almost a relief, to play her every day.

And now that you’re settling into a groove with Glee, which is officially a hit entering its third season, where do you want to take Sue this year? After playing her for over 50 episodes, where do you want Sue to go?

I think this whole running for Congress thing will expand who she is. I don’t think she’ll ever change her stripes. She’s always going to be that person who lashes out and then has tenderness for the weak link. But I think being on a different stage now, the community stage and who knows perhaps how far she’ll go with this political career, but I think that will invite an expansion of her own image of herself.

Jane Lynch’s (at Live Talks 10-2) Happy Accidents book reviews, book excerpt– LAT, NPR

We host Jane Lynch who hosts the Emmy’s this weekend on Oct 2 at Live Talks in conversation with Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation). She appears on NPR’s Morning Edition today, and there is also a review of Happy Accidents on NPR.  Hear the piece and read the review here. Here’s an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times review of her new memoir:

“Happy Accidents” is, on one level, a straightforward, well-observed chronicle of Lynch’s life. She leaves Second City and gets a break playing Carol in the play “The Real Live Brady Bunch,” which becomes a huge hit. She drinks so much she finally decides to stop (replacing booze with NyQuil.) The show moves Lynch to New York, where she blows her sobriety and then ditches the NyQuil and joins AA, becomes obsessed with the Indigo Girls and yoga, and discovers the gay and lesbian community center. She moves to L.A., finds a good therapist and decides to come out to her parents who are, not surprisingly, not surprised. She gets a role in “The Fugitive,” does a one-woman show, meets Christopher Guest and is cast in “Best in Show.” Then comes “A Mighty Wind” and “The L Word,” a role as Meryl Streep‘s sister in “Julie & Julia” and though she’s working all the time, she can’t seem to get one steady job until, of course, “Glee.” She finally really truly falls in love, wins an Emmy and gets to work with Carol Burnett, who wrote the foreword to the memoir.

And here’s an excerpt from the book.

Jane Lynch (at Live Talks on Oct 2) — inside her book….

The Daily Beast has a piece titled “14 Juiciest Bits From Jane Lynch’s Memoir.”  We host Jane Lynch Oct 2 in conversation with Adam Scott, so get yer tickets.  Here’s a couple of the Daily Beast items:

Happy Days star helped launch her career.

In the summer of 1974, 14-year-old Lynch called into a Chicago-based radio station when the stars of her favorite show, Happy Days, were in town for a promotional tour. She asked how she could go about breaking into the business and upon the advice of Anson Williams, who played Potsie, Lynch set out to find an agent. She went to the Screen Actors Guild office in Chicago so she could get a list of talent agents, to whom she then proceeded to write letters. She wrote a letter to Universal Studios after visiting there, and then to the casting agent on The Brady Bunch, whose name she wrote down while watching the credits. Lynch got a crushing letter back from the assistant to the head of casting for Universal Studios that read, “We do not have the luxury of training young actors who are in the learning stage when we are working under such demanding professional conditions.” Still, Anson Williams would write her personal notes in the years that followed.

 

Story on Jane Lynch and her memoir in USA Today. We host her Oct 2 with Adam Scott.

Nice piece on Jane Lynch with a video element in USA Today.  We host her October 2 in conversation with Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation) and her former cast member on Party Down.  Here’s a couple excerpts:

The book, a story that evolved from a series of personal speeches Lynch made to gay organizations, chronicles her life from growing up in a loving family outside Chicago to her acting experiences, and to her personal relationships. It carries a comic tone but also addresses Lynch’s tougher challenges, including her time drinking (she stopped in 1991), and conveys her philosophy of embracing life as it is instead of how we wish it were.

And here’s another about those “Accidents,” some of which include: Being directed by Guest in a Frosted Flakes commercial, then bumping into him again at a coffee shop, a meeting that evolved into the role in the movie Best in Show.

Having a TV series to which she was obligated not get picked up, allowing her to accept a breakout role in hit Glee, which returns Sept. 20 (8 ET/PT);  Being on the same airline flight with Mark Burnett, this year’s Emmys producer, where he proposed she host the show.

And another excerpt:

Lynch is proud of the phenomenon Glee has become, particularly in its advocacy of arts education. And she enjoys the recognition, whether from Emmy voters or youthful fans. “I’m one of those kids,” says Lynch, who was in her high school choir. “I would have been the No. 1 Gleek.”

As for her Emmy nomination, “It’s very gratifying. I’ve wanted nothing more than to be special and told ‘You’re exceptional.’ And now I’m going to do the best work I can whether I get an award or not.”

And she says she isn’t worried about the Emmy gig; she has hosted Saturday Night Live and two Do Something Awards shows. Her strategy? Take it in “little bites. That’s the only way I can think of it.”

Get yer tickets for what promises to be an entertaining evening…