MetroWeekly Interviews Jeffrey Tambor about “Transparent”

Posted on October 9, 2016 at 3:42 pm

Actor Jeffrey Tambor calls his Emmy and Golden Globe-winning role on “Transparent” “the role of a lifetime — and the responsibility of a lifetime.” He plays Maura, a transgender woman in her 60’s.

My friend Randy Shulman interviewed Tambor for Washington DC’s Metro Weekly and their conversation is fascinating.

I’ll be very blunt, I think it’s made me a better person. I think it’s made me more present, certainly more aware. I think it’s made me a better daddy, a better husband, and ultimately, I hope, a better citizen. It certainly has made me an ally….I can only speak for Maura, but Maura’s on a journey trying to find out who is Maura, what is Maura? Where does she live? Who are her friends? What are her duties? Not only how do you do this, but how far do you go? You have to understand that even when she goes to the LGBTQ center, most of the kids she works with are not of her age. She’s just trying to find home base. That’s what she’s trying to do. She’s trying to find her community. She’s trying to find her friends. Who can you trust? She wants to know if she can ever have romantic love, and what gender will that romantic love be, and will her heart ever have that again?

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Actors

Five New Films About Breast Cancer Premiere Oct 10 on Lifetime

Posted on October 4, 2011 at 3:55 pm

Every life has been touched by breast cancer.

About 1 in 8 women in the United States (12%) will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime.
Although death rates have been decreasing since 1990 due to earlier diagnosis and more effective treatment, about 39,840 women in the U.S. were expected to die in 2010 from breast cancer.
Breast cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer among U.S. women after skin cancer. Breast cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death after lung cancer.
More than 1 in 4 cancers in women (about 28%) are breast cancer.
In 2010, there were more than 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in the U.S.

The Lifetime Channel pays tribute to those who face the challenges of breast cancer treatment with “Five,” an anthology of five short films made by women, exploring the impact of breast cancer on people’s lives. “Five” highlights the shared experience each short film’s title character endures from the moment of diagnosis, through an interconnected story arc that uses humor and drama to focus on the effect breast cancer and its different stages of diagnosis have on relationships and the way women perceive themselves while searching for strength, comfort, medical breakthroughs and, ultimately, a cure. The five directors are Jennifer Aniston, Alicia Keys, Demi Moore, Independent Spirit Award winner Patty Jenkins (“Monster”) and Penelope Spheeris (“Wayne’s World”).

The all-star ensemble cast includes Academy Award nominee Patricia Clarkson (“Pieces of April”), Rosario Dawson (“Sin City”), Lyndsy Fonseca (“How I Met Your Mother”), Ginnifer Goodwin (“Big Love”), Josh Holloway (“Lost”), Taylor Kinney (“The Vampire Diaries”), Jenifer Lewis (“The Princess and the Frog”), Jennifer Morrison (“House M.D.”), Kathy Najimy (“WALL-E”), Golden Globe Award winner Bob Newhart (“Horrible Bosses”), Annie Potts (“Law & Order: SVU”), Tracee Ellis Ross (“Girlfriends”), Emmy and Golden Globe winner Tony Shalhoub (“Monk”), and Emmy nominees Jeffrey Tambor (“Arrested Development”) and Jeanne Tripplehorn (“Big Love”).

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Television

Paul

Posted on March 17, 2011 at 6:01 pm

Director Greg Mottola (“Superbad,” “Adventureland”) is an expert at mixing raunch and sweetness. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz”) are experts at making funny but knowing and affectionate tributes to movie genres. Together, they’ve made an uneven but amiable road trip sci-fi comedy about an alien with sly references to everything from “Star Trek” and “2001” to “Alien” and “Battlestar Gallactica.” And, of course, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “ET.”

It begins, as all pop-culture-obsessed stories should, at Comic-Con, the annual San Diego fanboy extravaganza. Two English fans, Graeme (Pegg) and Clive (Frost) begin their long-awaited first visit to America, starting at Comic-Con and continuing on a road trip to Area 51, Roswell, and other legendary UFO locations. They happily put an “Alien On Board” bumper sticker on their camper. But that doesn’t mean they are prepared to actually have a close encounter of their own.

And certainly Paul (stoner-ish voice of Seth Rogan) is not at all what they had in mind. He immediately reassures them that the business about the probes is just an urban legend. He’s been on Earth for quite a while, so he has had a chance not just to absorb a lot of American culture but to influence it as well (Steven Spielberg has a clever cameo). He thought he was a guest, but has learned he was a prisoner. Now a fed (Jason Bateman) and a pair of cops (“SNL’s” Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio) are after him and Graeme and Clive are in for an adventure beyond their wildest dreams, which were already pretty wild (as shown in their comic book).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5ipZwwQPcY

They meet a variety of people along the way, including Jane Lynch as a sympathetic waitress and Kristin Wiig as Ruth, a fundamentalist Christian with a bad eye who wears a creationist t-shirt showing Jesus shooting Darwin. Paul and the Brits cause her to have massive cognitive dissonance, questioning everything she has ever believed. Wiig manages to make Ruth’s child-like delight in catching up on a lifetime of unused swearwords is sweetly innocent. Mottola keeps things going briskly with some surprising cameos as more people join the chase, including Ruth’s gun-totin’, Bible-thumpin’ father, some angry biker types, a woman whose life was transformed by a close encounter with Paul when he first landed, and the head of the shady government agency trying to capture Paul before he makes it to the mother ship. The crudity, drug humor, and attempted satire about fundamentalism fall flat most of the time, but the affectionate understanding of fanboys and their obsessions, the unpretentious sweetness of the friendship and budding romance, and a couple of plot surprises make this something to phone home about.