Jospeh Pascal: This evening, I want to conduct a conversational style interview of Mr. Lithgow and then open it up to audience questions. John Lithgow is an actor with a broad range of interest and talent in every area of the entertainment industry and even outside of it. He has been working in show business for almost 40 years and has achieved stunning success in widely varying ventures. In the early 90's Mr. Lithgow began to make a major mark in films. At the time he was nominated for Oscars in back to back years for The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment. In the years before and after he has appeared in over 30 films, notably among them have been All that Jazz, Dreamgirls, A Civil Action, The Pelican Brief, The Manhattan Project, Footloose, Shrek, Kinsey, Blow Out, The Twilight Zone, Hary and the Hendersons, Raising Cain, and the list goes on and on. He won the Tony Award three weeks after his Broadway debut. Since then, he has appeared on Broadway eighteen more times, earning another Tony, three more Tony nominations, four Drama Desk Awards, and induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame. His performances have included roles in M. Butterfly Mrs. Farnsworth, Sweet Smell of Success and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. For his work on television, Mr. Lithgow has been nominated for 10 Emmy Awards. He has won four of them, one for an episode of Amazing Stories, and three for what is perhaps his most celebrated creation. This was the loopy character of the alien High Commander, Dick Solomon, on the hit NBC comedy series 3rd Rock from the Sun. Since 1998 he has written seven New York Times bestseller children's picture books. Mr. Lithgow's one comic book The Poets' Corner is a compilation of fifty classic poems aimed at all ages. Mr. Lithgow believes it is important to welcome people back to people to poetry and he has handpicked some of the best poems ever written in this quintessential collection and he provides a luminary commentary in each selection. After the event is over he will be greeting all members and signing any books. Ladies and gentlemen please join me in warmly welcoming John Lithgow. John firstly, I hope I don't get the award for the longest introduction ever of you. I hope you will feel this is the leader of Cuba talking here. But anyway my first question for the audience is you are like Woody Allen's character, a solo. You have almost done everything. You have put together an impressive collection of favorite poems and commentary. How did this come about?
John Lithgow: Well the Poets Corner, I also did I mean something that you did not mention in the introduction. I did some books a few years ago not for kids but mostly for parents, kind of activity books, which we called polooza books. Just suggesting fun things to do with kids, it didn't cost anything and were sort of created and the sort of subliminally got them interested in the various arts and crafts. And we used poets to take off on a lot of these activities. Like, for Halloween Edgar Allen Po projects. And teaching kids a little bit about a ground pro, little side bars suggesting poems and those particular little polooza items were the inspiration for creating the book. We thought why not an entire book of poetry? I just selected 50 poems that I have loved; of all kinds, from all generations and that I loved from different eras, different stages of my own life. And accompanied every one of them with just brief biographical, historical, contextual ruminations and my own reasons for including them in the book, and in each case we suggest other other poetry by that poet. You know we kind of liked the I say we I did work closely with a couple of other writers, just sort of helping helping me organize this massive project. The idea of being stir and a little bit of an interest more of an interest in poetry, and if the way and trying to help, make poetry mean to this generation what it meant to generations passed. When people really did memorize poems, recite poems poems were a way of connecting with each other. All of us have parents and grandparents who knew long poem, am I right? And certainly my grandmother could recite for half an hour at a time, right. And I remember thinking this is astonishing, nobody does this anymore. And in so many ways we are losing literature as an important element of our corporate lives. Something as basic as letter writing is evaporating in front of our eyes well, why not do something kind of retro? Get people back see if you can get people particularly young people and even children and families, just sort of stir an interest in the written word. Anyway that's I feel like Don Quixote tilting it but -.
Jospeh Pascal: That's actually superb. Now let me ask you most people have poetry in their mind until the age of 16 and then just disappears, what do you attribute that to?
John Lithgow: Well I think poetry hasn't wrinkled to high school English classes junior high school and high school English classes and a lot less of that now than there used to be too. But I found it amazing it happened to me and I think it happens to most people as they read through this book. You know poetry better than you thought you did. You know if you go I urge all of you to buy the book of course. I will suggest that, even if you don't buy it, just open it up, no matter what page you turn to there will be the introduction to Canterbury Tales, there will be mergence by Robert Frost, there will be jewel like little poems by William Carlos Williams or the The Owl and the Pussycat. There is the Nightmare Song from Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe, just the lyrics. So I just tried to sort of like a like a bumblebee going from flower to flower, but I think everyone of us looks back and connects with some number of these poems. And there are plenty of them that you never heard of, I mean it's not all just familiar poetry. To me it's just a way of reminding people of what they already know.
Jospeh Pascal: Do you know what poet Bob Dylan took his name from and also explain why do you think poetry is so important?
John Lithgow: I believe I can only guess that he took it from Dylan Thomas, am I right? And why don't just ask him? What is poetry or so? That you know there are a hundred answers to that and I think everybody who has any interest in poetry has a different answer. To me of course its its important because I do write poetry, but I write it for little children. I write dog role poetry all of my children's picture books and story books, a told in verse. It's a certain kind of poetry. But I think also poetry like any art it's a way of stirring people emotions, exercising emotions, that's what artists do. They put their emotions to work and try to create some object of identification for other people and the way we communicate with people.
Jospeh Pascal: Most people don't realize that you didn't grow up too far from here and you actually grew up in Princeton. Could you briefly describe what it was like growing up in Princeton?
John Lithgow: Well, I went to high school the last two years of high school in Princeton. My dad was the Director of the McCarter Theatre for 10 years. And I graduated high school in Princeton, went to Harvard and here I am at the Yale Club? What is wrong with this picture? Princeton was a wonderful community, actually I am going down there to a book signing on Saturday and giving a concert for kids, in Trenton I still stay a little bit connected with that community although my family has moved on. I loved you know it's a small university town. I had many, many friends among the professors, kids; there was fantastic music in that community. I McCarter Theatre, of course where my dad worked had amazing programs of visiting artists and I regularly sneaked in. So in high school I saw Rudolph Serkin and Alvin Ailey and Marso and Cleveland Symphony Orchestra and it was just a sort of basket full of riches. It was a wonderful place to graduate high school.
Jospeh Pascal: You have done something that few have done; back to back years you were nominated for an Academy Awards in The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment, why do you think both films resonated so well with audiences around the world?
John Lithgow: Well in Terms of Endearment, its one of the great weepys of all time. It's you cannot watch that film unless it's done. Its still happens to me every time I see it. And it's a fabulously made, apparently witty film, but it is also overwhelmingly emotional. Yeah everybody loves Terms of Endearment. The World According to Garp was a particular phenomenon. I still think it was more of a literary phenomenon than movie phenomenon. The film it was a very good film and an unusually good film version of a novel. But the novel perhaps you all had this experience, I read the novel and thought, this is great, but they will never make a movie out of this. Little did I know that two years later I would be Roberta Muldoon? I feel the film was in fact way ahead of its time. If you think about The World according to Garp, its really about its about the women's role in society, and if you remember the Ellen Jamesians and Jenny Fields, the character played by Glenn Close, all those issues you know it was an awful lot about women's control over their bodies. Jenny Fields was assassinated by a fanatic. I saw the film at a Film Festival in Santa Barbara about five years ago, first time I had seen it since it came out uncannily it came out the same week that the abortion doctor was assassinated in Pensacola, Florida. I saw the film I thought god this was oh incredibly prescient, because there wasn't quite that fanaticism back in that era early in late 70's, early 80's, but Irving saw the seeds of it in American societies, it was quite uncanny. But it was way ahead of its time.
Jospeh Pascal: Talking about Roberta, the character that you played sexually changed character; how did you prepare for that role? You were well ahead of .
John Lithgow: Well I it was funny because I had curiously enough I had done unwitting research. I don't know whether remember Jan Morris, an extraordinary woman, a male to female transsexual, who is still quite an esteemed travel writer in Britain. She wrote a memoir called Conundrum in the late 70's. I saw her on the Dick Cavett Show and I was absolutely fascinated by this woman. Then I got the book and I read it. I I just thought it was such an intriguing subject, and here was a woman writing very, very candidly about what it was all about. Why she had done it? Why she had always felt that she was in the wrong body? It was quite an intriguing and beautifully written book. I auditioned for the role of I screen-tested for the role of Roberta Muldoon and George Roy Hill a Yale man. He interviewed me off camera and had me simply improvising, full make-up and drag in the character of Roberta Muldoon and all I did was spout all these stuff that I remembered from two years before. He thought I had done all these research and was this deeply committed and serious actor, he couldn't have been more wrong, but I did that.
Jospeh Pascal: Did you know before the movie that Robin Williams was actually a serious and talented actor?
John Lithgow: Well nobody had seen this side of him. I am not sure even Robin knew that that was in him. George was a very, very tough on him. He even he used to say and you would hear him saying these shocking things to Robin Williams like, "don't give me any of these comedy shit." I mean he literally pounded the comedy out of him. He gave him one scene where he could cut loose a little bit, when he was playing with his children on the front yard, pretending to be a samurai warrior. Apart from that it was a very, very muted performance. And I always said that if nobody had known Robin Williams as Mork from Ork before The World according to Garp had come out, he would have been hailed as this incredible discovery, the young serious actor. I think he was wonderful for the role, you can't really imagine many other actors for it.
Jospeh Pascal: Please discuss your views on the tragic ending of The World according to Garp and why did John Irving involve with the movie at all?
John Lithgow: He was John was around all the time. It was the script was adapted by Steven Tesich the playwright from Irving's book and very faithfully and beautifully. Irving you know he is a very interesting writer. He really does believe in torturing the reader. If you remember if you remember the experience of reading that book you all know what I am talking about. This is about 20 pages in The World according to Garp, which are the most agonizing pages of writing, because the younger son something awful happens, and you are and there is a car accident if you recall with very particular circumstances. And you wonder what has happened to the boys, to the two young boys. And one of them has lost the sight in one eye and there are long, long descriptions of the activities of and there is this sort of mournfulness that hangs in the air, but John Irving chooses not even to mention the younger son for about 30 or 40 pages. And as you read and read, you wait and wait and wait to see some reference to what has happened to this son. And he you just know, he sat down and decided, I am going torture the reader; and my god, he does. I mean he is ruthless. And of course you know when we any kind of art, you are just seeking some sort of very, very intense emotional experience, that's what I mentioned in passing about poetry that's a very good example of that.
Jospeh Pascal: How did you prepare for the role as the preacher in Footloose?
John Lithgow: How did you know to ask that question? Do you know the answer to that question?
Jospeh Pascal: No I actually don't and may be you could surprise or entertain us.
John Lithgow: Well you know I was I was playing a very fundamentalist kind of a Baptist preacher, I guess. And I am not a very religious person, to the extent that I was ever a church goer as a kid. I was I was a very good actor. I we were in Provo, Utah, during the rehearsal period, leading up to the shooting and I felt that it was very important that you really do believe the passion of this man, that you will not be a cardboard villain, that he really, seriously believed that Rock-and-roll and losing control of kids was very, very bad for them and that they had to be brought to god. I looked in the yellow pages for Assembly of God. I called up and I asked a preacher to give me spiritual counseling. And I went and sat with him for an hour and told him you know that I was very lonely and unhappy in my life. It was the most hypocritical moment of my entire life. But I sat and listened to this man and he was tremendously moving you know, and it was a very good thing for me, because I reflexively you know I simply never took a man like that very seriously. And he believed so deeply in what he was saying and he really was trying to help me. I I almost flung myself and prostrate in front of him and apologized. At one point he said, "oh you are in this movie?" Yeah. "They are shooting some scenes that you know a friend of mine is Minster in a church in American Fork, and I suddenly felt, oh my god, may be he found out. I said, yes yes that is our film. It did help me a lot in preparing the role, but I I felt like a true snake in the grass. I was not converted, by the way.
Jospeh Pascal: You know, usually musical movies do not succeed at the box office. Why do you think Footloose defied the convention? And it was also the first movie of its kind.
John Lithgow: Well Footloose was a very genius piece of work. It was innovative in all sorts of ways. They they did a huge amount of like all those are original songs, written by Dean Pitchford, the man who actually wrote the screenplay to Footloose. It was a very good teeny-bopper screenplay, I mean I think that's that's the short answer to your question. They took the characters and the stories very, very seriously. The music was very much incidental even though it was it was really kind of good pop music. It was mainly a vehicle for great dance numbers. And even the dance numbers were organic, if you remember bopping around and the driving theatre or the dancers in the gym, when they finally get to dance. And then they released an album which was I think the first of it's kind I think by far it broke all records of movie soundtrack albums, because there was all these brand new songs, about four of which were Billboard yeah Kenny Loggins songs and all those other artists, all of it prerecorded, recorded before we ever started shooting. So it was just a very genius way of sort of pulling every thing in kind of synergy that that you know, people have been imitating ever since.
Jospeh Pascal: We are not going to ask you dance this evening.
John Lithgow: You'll remember I do not dance in this film. I am the one who is against dancing.
Jospeh Pascal: That's right. Please describe to the audience from a segment in the Twilight Zone and what do you think made it so creeping?
John Lithgow: Well, it was based on the great TV Twilight Zone episode in which Bill Shatner originated the role. It was directed by George Miller, fantastic comedic movie director from Australia the man who created the Mad Max films, and most recently won the Oscar for Happy Feet, a guy who has a great sense of kind of panicky energy on screen. And I made it, the way I approached it was it was all about fear of flying. In fact I spoke to a friend of mine, another actor friend, I knew that he had terrific fear of flying and I called him up. I guess I am talking a lot about my preparation process. Usually, I don't regard myself as an actor who prepares much at all, but I am spouting one instance after another. And I called my friend Johnny Braden and I said, tell me about your flight fear. And he spoke to me for about an hour and he absolutely blew my mind, I couldn't believe the extent of his fear. If the telephone rang he would he would break into a sweat fearing it was his agent calling him about a job which he would have to fly to do. I mean it was that extreme. And when he was on an aero plane he was afraid, if he had to go to the lavatory, he was afraid to too put too much weight on one side or the other, for fear would open and all these all these little bits of behavior, and if you look at the film I made use of all of them. There is a moment when I grab on to the to the thigh of the flight lieutenant like an iron clasp; I mean something you would never do to a woman. I mean it's just you know it's just not done. But his panic was so great that he couldn't he couldn't let go. I mean I just used one instance after another that he described to me. And I think that's what made it was so scary, because it was about emotion that people really know very well. I mean when that plane started to go like that, everybody knows what that feels like.
Jospeh Pascal: I am sure the audience would agree with me, that it was not only intriguing but I think you gave a generation of people a scare of flying. All That Jazz was a fascinating film. Why is it so hard for films to capture a period which All That Jazz did so well?
John Lithgow: Well, I don't know, All That Jazz was made in 1978 or 79' and that was the period of I will tell you what when its usually very hard is creating backstage on authentically on film. If you think about it, you can name on the fingers of only one hand, you can count the movies that really get it right - backstage theatre. And even those are fairly creaky like All About Eve. All That Jazz got it exactly right and that's because it was Bob Fosse who lived and breathed theater; theater and tobacco smoke I might add. And if you in that huge cast; first of all it's entirely theater actors who really know that world. A lot of them musical theater actors like Leland Palmer and Ann Reinking who somehow or other turned very shy during her musical theater acting. But also there are five or six people who were actors in the film, who actually are what they play. Jules Fisher, the lighting designer plays the lighting designer. Now the Stage Manager and the Assistant Stage Manager, and the Assistant Choreographer, all of these were the people that Bob Fosse worked with. They shot in locations; all these fabulous rehearsal rooms that were still in use, to rehearse Broadway musicals. He was absolutely intent on making it authentic. I saw All That Jazz you know a stored print, just a year ago. And that's what struck me more than anything, how well it just the feel of a musical theater. Since then I have done musical theater myself and it's just so accurate. You know, panicky, hysterical lyricist you know, they are all just dead on.
Jospeh Pascal: Talking about theater your Broadway career which is just as it were more impressive than your film career, for the wonderful performances of Sweet Smell of Success, please describe before the audience what was involved in the preparation and how do you recuperate every evening after the show?
John Lithgow: Well, Sweet Smell was quite an amazing experience because I was I guess 55 at the time and it was the first Broadway musical for me. John Guare called me upon the blue and told me about it. It was John and Nick Hytner and Christopher Wheeldon, the great ballet choreographer, Marvin Hamlisch, Craig Carnelia a very unusual creative team. And they knew that this part J. J. Hunsecker had to be a real, legit theater actor's role. It would be it would be nice if he could sing well. But it was extremely important that he act well. So they gave me this extraordinary opportunity to sort of enter musical theater at the very top of the food chain. I went right to work, studying voice and taking dance, it was exhausting and hard work. I was terrified and I I think that it's always a very good thing for when an actor reaches my age to do things that really, really challenge you and and hopefully even scare you. And it ended just a tremendous experience. I mean the the musical I am afraid has been more or less defined as a big Broadway flop. But I thought it was a great success, in certain ways you know it's it was a very dark piece of theater drama and it's not what people wanted in the making of Broadway musical. So it didn't survive, but I consider it as just a great, great experience.
Jospeh Pascal: I agree, I am sure the public does assume with you. But just explain the process when you finished playing, after being so intense singing, dancing, acting, what do you do? Do you open up the newspaper? Do you turn on the television? Do you have a bar the glass of scotch? How do you come down to be able to fall asleep after doing this and night after night?
John Lithgow: Well it is exhausting, you have no troubles sleeping. The first thing I did was take showers, as I recall. I did two musicals in the space of three years. Scoundrels Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was more recent and that one was a hit. That ran for an entire year and it was much, much more exhausting than Sweet Smell you know. I had six numbers in that and a huge amount of dancing and clowning around. I don't know, I always felt it was it was just I felt this must be awfully good for me, that I don't have to go pound and do workout, I do that on the stage every night. And you really, really work. I did the show 438 times and I never missed a performance for an ailment of any kind, everybody else did. But I and I think it was good for me. I think it I got in great shape. I gained 15 pounds since then.
Jospeh Pascal: It sounds like we got to get back onto Broadway. What do you attribute the success of 3rd Rock from the Sun?
John Lithgow: 3rd Rock was just lightning in a bottle. I mean that was you know it was it was completely unique, nobody had seen anything like it on America Network Television in years, I think since the marking around of Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca in early 50s. It was we took off from a kind of comic manic comic energy of British comedy, Fawlty Towers and Monty Python that ends that all the writers were huge fans of that that kind of high energy farce. They just came up with this amazing premise these four people sort of doing their best to try to be an American family, and just sort improvising. I think that was the heart of the success of the film, basically that's what human beings are doing too. We were all aliens, but humans are only trying to get by too, trying to figure out how to function in this crazy world. And they they had this wonderful cast; I was involved in the casting process and we were drawing for months, getting all those superb people together in that crazy combination. It was just and we were all theater actors, we used to very much saw it as a theater activity. You know, we performed for a live audience and it was the best show in town out there in Hollywood. We pride in ourselves when giving them a fabulous performance. And I think it have that kind of performed energy.
Jospeh Pascal: My last question before we open to the audience, if you are comfortable could you tell us what you have in the pipeline, theater, film and television, since you do almost every thing?
John Lithgow: Well, I don't have any the only definite job I have coming up, I am doing my children's concert Five Times, at the New Victory Theater on Broadway in January and we are filming the last two of those five concerts for an HBO Special. That's my only actual job coming up. We are trying to get together a major Broadway revival of a play for the spring, but that's not definite yet. In meantime, I am sort following my own rule which is; when you are out of work develop something on your own, so that you are not sitting around waiting for somebody to hire you. I have devised a solo piece which I have got a couple of times now and I won't tell you about it. I will leave you in suspense. But it's a it's perfectly wonderful.
