Posts Tagged ‘lithgow’

In todat’s New York Times is a review of Hal Holbrook’s memoir — whom we hosted on September 7 — and John Lithgow’s memoir, Drama: An Actor’s Education, whom we host on October 6. Ticket info here...

An excerpt from the review on Lithgow’s book:

“Drama” is a brisk book, packed with funny stories. Lithgow returns to America from a Fulbright grant in London as “an insufferable Shakespeare snob” with a British accent. “Wot acksnt?” he asks when called on it. After he botches the job as curtain puller for Marcel Marceau, “predictably, the famous mime said nothing.” Especially entertaining are the stories of Lithgow’s encounter with an amorous dog while trying to impress a powerful casting director, his micromanagement of a costume for his third-grade production of “The Sleeping Beauty” and a catalog of the devious scene-stealing tricks of an older co-star named “Rock Masters.” (Masters and other anonymous figures in this book are delightfully easy to unmask through a little online ­sleuthing.)

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:   

We host John Lithgow on October 6 at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica.  Here’s an interview with Lithgow in the New York Times on September 2.  An excerpt:

You mention that winning a Tony was one of the proudest moments of your life but then go on to say, “acceptance speeches are generally a graceless cavalcade of pomposity, crocodile tears and egregious false modesty.” Did you have anyone in mind?
Of course. But I’m not going to tell you! Mainly myself. Early on, I was very ponderous about accepting awards and I became more lighthearted about it the more awards that I won. But they’re very emotional moments, no question about it. Actors, it’s our reflex — we make a big scene out of everything. Particularly theater actors. The Tony awards always strike me as akin to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Everybody’s full of helium.

Your father, Arthur Lithgow, was a great theater impresario, particularly noted for his Shakespeare festivals in the 1950s. He supported your career in various ways, giving you your first parts. But in the book he seems at times critically distant, not commenting — good or bad — on your performances. What did he think of you as an actor?
He was once interviewed about me for an A&E “Biography,” and he talked about my acting in ways that he had never spoken to me. It’s very typical. We’ll say things to millions of people that we would never say to the people very closest to us. But he talked about the opening of “M. Butterfly,” when I was alone on the stage looking out at the audience and just grabbing their attention in what he described as a very uncanny way. I thought, My God, my father never said any of that to me. Isn’t that life?