| Talk Show Appearances - 2002 | ||
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Clicking on the thumbnail images will cause larger versions of the images to open in a separate window. 1. Second City Presents (Bravo US), Oct. 21
NOTE: Although this aired in October, I believe it was recorded much earlier in the year, most likely in February or March. I say that because Bill Zehme referred to Tracey's daughter Mabel as almost 16 (she turned 16 in April), and the death of Princess Margaret was treated as a recent event (she died in February). As the program begins, host Bill Zehme says he knows some things about his guest tonight: she's never alone. People live inside of her, then they'll burst out (like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, but without the green gunk). She's a British spy with a license to steal your soul -- and your voice. She's watching us, ready to make fun of us, and is nothing but fun. And with that, he introduces Tracey, who comes out on stage, takes a few bows, then sits down with Bill. As they sit, she tells him that it's lovely to see him again, to which he replies "They don't know about us"; she catches the reference to her hit song ("Trivia!" she says). She's been in L.A. for 18 years now, and she's getting used to it, but she still keeps a home in England and always spends some part of the year there. Bill mentions that her daughter Mabel is about to turn 16, hard to believe that may be, then asks what she was doing at 16. She was performing in Berlin, she replies. Then they talk about her school days at the Italia Conti Stage School. No spontaneously breaking out into fancy production numbers in the halls here, she says; no, you just had a lot of snotty kids who'd been in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and were doing Barbie commercials and whose careers were on the wane. She didn't fit in that well there; she was this strange sort of Hebrew-looking child who laughed at everybody. There were some sweet teachers, but overall, the place was a joke, and she didn't hesitate to say so. Their response to her: go home (to coin a phrase)! But she did learn some useful skills there, such as tap dancing. It's useful as an icebreaker, as she proceeds to demonstrate for the audience. Bill asks Tracey when she first felt as though she was performing on stage. It was on her mother's window sill, she replies. In fact, she was a spinoff of her sister Patty's show. She'd be anybody and everybody. At age nine, she'd be portraying a welfare wife whose husband is in prison. Bill notes the interesting leaning towards darker subjects early in her life. She loved documentaries, she says, and admits to being very inspired by the films of Ken Loach. She'd watch them, imitate the women, pretend to smoke. She then proceeds to do one of those women who's got 4 kids, rats in the back room, fungus growing on the floor, etc. Her mother would come up, rap on the door, and ask "You're not imitating women with fungus on the floor again, are you? Stop talking to yourself." [little did she realize -- RR]. She never wanted to be the glamorous women. Then Bill asks if she remembers her father's voice, for he died when she was only 7. She gives a mock sob and says "This is the Barbara Walters moment." Bill asks if she could do her dad's voice, or that's what he meant to ask (he originally said "Can you do your dad -- let me rephrase that.". She then proceeds to do a Polish-accented voice similar to her character Madame Nadja -- he would say "sex" for "six" and would say "my Tracey, she'll be a big star" [how right he was -- RR]. He used to stand her on the counter in her stop, where she'd be imitating everyone in town, like Mrs. Hass, who used to work for her father. It was rough losing her father at 7, she says [it's not that easy at any age -- RR], and things were grim in the house for a while. But the shows she and her sister did helped to cheer her mother up; making her laugh was heaven, she says. Bill then mentions the London Drama Critic award that Tracey received for being the most promising actress. That was for a play called Four In A Million, she explains, and it was a big break for her. She'd done some dancing to get her union card, and now she wanted to do theater. The play was totally improvised, got great reviews, and led to the BBC calling, which led to Three Of A Kind. She was wary of sketch comedy initially, she says, for her only real examples were the Benny Hill girls. Bill uses that to talk about her parody of Benny Hill, Jenny Hill (revenge, perhaps?). She describes Jenny as touching blokes' willies at bus stops. Bill wouldn't mind if they talked about her some more, but the conversation continues. Three Of A Kind was great, says Tracey, for she and her co-stars could try anything they wanted to do. Then the conversation turns to Jim Brooks and the creation of The Tracey Ullman Show. He came calling while she was pregnant with Mabel, she explains, and said he wanted to do a show with her after she had the baby. He took her under his wing, and that let to 4 great seasons. But that first year of 37 episodes was a killer! Brooks protected her from the wrath of Fox network executives; whenever they'd be spotted on their way over to the studio, he'd give the command to lock the studio doors. On TTUS, she experimented and got to try everything. It was an amazing time, but it was also a hard, intense and frightening experience. She recalls an incident where Brooks saw the run-through an hour before taping, then declare that they didn't have a show. Sometimes, she'd go out and just make it up as she went along; "what have you got to lose?", she explains. If it works, you're a hero, but if it doesn't, then you'll hear "what are you DOING?" You had to be a kamikaze to get through it. Bill calls her a beautiful kamikaze as they go to commercial. As they return, Bill tells Tracey that the piano player is Fred Kaz, the musical soul of Second City Chicago. She recognizes him and recalls that Dan Castellaneta spoke very fondly of him. When she was looking for actors for TTUS, she was acting on a theory: go to Chicago because New York actors are too neurotic and Los Angeles actors aren't quite smart enough. She has thought highly of many Chicago actors such as Dan C. and Gary Sinese. She recalls seeing Dan at a Second City revue, and his performance as a blind comedian made her cry. She knew then that she wanted him for the show. He auditioned the next day and did poorly, but she stuck up for him and said she wouldn't do the show without him. She says he can be anybody; he's like an "empty vessel and you fill him." Next, Bill mentions Julie Kavner. This gives Tracey the opportunity to do her Julie K. voice, a voice that Julie thinks sounds nothing like her. Then we here Tracey doing Julie doing Tracey. She loves working with her. Bill next mentions some of the TTUS characters, starting with Francesca. It's clear that Tracey is very fond of Francesca and misses doing her. She recalls the first sketch with Frannie: her first date. Matthew Perry played her date [not so! He was on the show, but he was never in a Francesca sketch -- RR]. He was 18 or so at the time, and he was really shy, for it was one of his first roles. And what would Frannie be doing today? Working for a congressman, never getting sexually harassed and not understanding why (much of this is being delivered in character). Frannie would still be a virgin; she's just a really nice person with integrity. Dave and William would be in New York, sipping their wine. Tracey thinks of her characters as existing somewhere out there. Kay's out there, too, still riding on her moped, still working at the bank, still caring for her mother, still selling sanitary napkins and stamps at her desk. She recalls working with a woman like this in an office once; this woman was doing it to make contact with the younger girls -- she wanted someone to talk to her. Bill points out that we got to see Kay not only in TTUS but also in Tracey Takes On, her HBO series. That's because Tracey has always owned Kay, explicitly by contract. When she was putting together TTO, it was pointed out to her that Fox owns the other TTUS characters, so she could not do Francesca anymore. So she created some more characters. Getting back to Kay: we see a clip from TTO Marriage in which Kay meets attorney Sydney Kross, who suggests that Kay marry her pen-pal death-row prisoner to save him from the gas chamber. Next, Bill asks Tracey how she can love her characters equally; they must be like children to her. She keeps their wigs in boxes. When is it time to go back to work? When she starts taking the wigs out of the boxes and stroking them and speaking to them, that's when it's time. She acts out a conversation between herself and "Kay". Mabel saw her doing this once and told her it's time to do another show. Another sign that it's time to get back to work: she starts putting too much into the stories she tells the children. This turns into a discussion about The Simpsons ("I breast-fed those yellow people", she says again). Back when TTUS was being readied, she says, they knew they wanted to include some animated segments. They knew of Matt Groening and his work and asked him to come in. He did not want to use his Life In Hell characters, so he came in with some new ones -- and we know what happened after that. She'd still like three minutes in the middle of The Simpsons, she says, recalling the days when they appeared in short segments on her show. But she's not bitter; "they don't finance bitter in this town," she says. Besides, she's got a piece of the merchandising -- a small piece. As the commercial break looms, Bill tells the audience that there will be more with "Tracey the Benevolent." After the break, we see Bill referring to the Big Book of Comedy he is holding (this will become important later). He asks Tracey where her energy comes from. It's the quadruple espresso she just had, she says. No, it comes from being a pretty clean-living person. She neither smokes nor drinks nor does drugs; she's never even seen cocaine! Now how is it that in nearly 20 years in L.A., she's never been offered it? She did try marijuana at a party at age 15, but it made her think she was a pixie; it freaked her out and ticked off the other partygoers! No, she can't do anything to mess with her neurological balance. She just enjoys laughing, and she's been married to someone for nearly 20 years who can make her howl! Allan's comments during the Winter Olympics had her wetting the sofa! Her kids make her laugh, too. Changing the subject, Bill reminds her that she once said that limiting herself to one personality takes some effort. She agrees. She can't see herself doing a sitcom -- well, maybe when she's older, but maybe not; it'd be too boring. She's a happy schizophrenic. Bill then asks Tracey about method actors. Some are good, and some -- ai-yi-yi! She then recalls something Meryl Streep said to her once: an actress is more than a woman, but an actor is less than a man (that got a reaction from the audience). It is true, she says; we women are grateful to get a job in this male-dominated world. Name three actresses over 50 who's had the career of Gene Hackman or Sean Connery. She then proceeds to do an extended riff or rant (take your pick) on Sean, how he can portray a Russian submarine commander or a doctor in the jungle yet always have a Scottish accent. She then recalls (unfavorably) Sir Sean's comments about violence against women. But then she remembers: "They don't finance bitter in this town!" Bill then brings up Tracey Takes On... and the new characters like Linda Granger. Naturally, Tracey becomes Linda for a moment, talking about her solid homosexual fan base and her being 100% cancer-free, how there are actually people who make a career out of having had cancer, how she sees people like Linda around town, having lunch with their friends, and disapproving of the collagen and botox treatments. Bill mentions Fern Rosenthal, and we learn about Tracey meeting a Jewish family in Baldwin, Long Island in 1984, while she was in the States promoting "They Don't Know." She sensed the surge of energy with them; she also noted how the couple loved each other but could be so rude to each other. We then see a clip of Fern in the hospital with Harry (Michael Tucker -- "a top Jew"), who's recovering from a heart attack. Fern can be exhausting, but she loves playing Fern. On to the royal family: Princess Diana was very nice to Mabel once. They met when Mabel was 6. At the time, Mabel was saying outrageous things; she once told Jane Fonda to shut up on an airplane ("you're boring!"). Anyway, Mabel said to Diana that she had no crown and that she had short hair but that princesses were supposed to have long hair. Diana replied that she left her crown back at the palace. Diana was OK, says Tracey, but the others: "oh, please!" The French had the right idea, she says. She then goes into her standard rant against the royal family, decrying the class system and why the British taxpayers pay them millions of pounds to be better than us. And they are Germans -- Saxe-Coburgs, you know. Living in extreme luxury like she did, the late Princess Margaret has to think that Heaven has to be an anticlimax! Oops, she's getting political -- save the political stuff for Charlie Rose, but keep it funny with Bill. And more with her royal comic presence in a moment... As they come out of the break, Tracey tells Bill that she loves the piano; it adds a touch of class to the show. As Bill replies that you don't get one on any old show, she plays some funky air bass (what you might expect to find elsewhere). The conversation turns to Woody Allen. She was so taken with Broadway Danny Rose and how it celebrated the loser, something she had not associated with American films before (there is more of that nowadays, though). It was so poignant, it made her cry, much like Dan Castellaneta did at Second City. So she wrote to Woody Allen while she was pregnant with Mabel, offering her services for his films -- trade places with Mia Farrow, that sort of thing. Eventually, she got a video of her work to him by way of Julie Kavner. He hadn't responded before, but he did this time; he told her (by way of agents) that he would use her in the future and that she was funny from the inside. She got this message on her phone while pumping gas, she remembers, and it made her day. Her first time working with him was on Bullets Over Broadway. The day before she got the offer, she had received another offer for a holiday special with the Olson twins [what was her agent thinking? -- RR]. She was not too thrilled about that, she says, pretending to slit her wrists. Then she puts the question to the audience: at what age will the Olson twins pose for Playboy? It will happen someday, she says; her choice is age 37. She then proceeds to do some mock centerfold poses. Getting back to Woody Allen, Bill asks how it feels being directed by him. It's fantastic, replies Tracey. He does things in long shots, she explains. She's not too fond of moviemaking, for it can be slow and boring, taking 3 hours to set up a simple shot. She's inhibited by the process, and that's why she likes TV, with its attitude of "hurry up, we don't have the money and time to waste" -- somewhat like this show, in fact. With Woody, it still takes 3 hours to set up a shot, but the shots are longer and more complex; you do 8 pages of dialogue at a time. It's liberating! You get a fantastic script, but as for the money, well... Still, it's wonderful to work with him. Bill mentions her next role for Woody, one that never saw the light of day: Everyone Says I Love You. In it, she was to have sang to Alan Alda a song called "I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl." No, replied Tracey, the song was actually called "I Want A Hot Dog For My Roll". It's an old and very saucy blues number [sure sounds that way from the title -- RR]. Bill shrugs off the mistake, and this prompts Tracey to grab the Big Book of Comedy from him and thumb through it. It's mostly empty, she says; it's a beige binder that he must have gotten at Fred Siegel when he arrived in town. The book's a phony! Back to Woody: yes, she got cut from the film, but it was still great to work with him again. It led to her getting a lead role in Small Time Crooks. Meanwhile, Bill is complaining about her messing his book up. "Don't be a pouf!" she tells him. Then she talks about being Frenchy. She loved wearing those green leggings ("talk about the Vagina Monologues"). She's up there on the screen, slightly overweight [very slightly, if at all -- RR], wearing those leggings -- it's reality! She then summarizes the plot ("be careful what you wish for -- you may get it"). The whole experience was just divine, she says. She loves how Woody chooses the right performer for the part, not considering if you're big box office or if you're beautiful enough, etc. Bill then mentions Robert Altman, whom Tracey worked with on the "debacle" of Ready to Wear, a.k.a. Pret-A-Porter. Still, it was a great experience to go to Paris and see the haute couture shows. What a scene! Fashion is a passion, she says. After saying she disapproves of anyone over 29 wearing miniskirts, the conversation turns to her Oxygen TV show Visible Panty Lines. What a great name for a fashion program, she thought. It's very experimental, set mostly in her office. She didn't want to do anything that required lots of dressing up or heavy rubber appliances, she says, and this fit the bill. It lets her be herself. Bill asks if she can spot a performer's equivalent of visible panty lines. She never answers the question; she comments on what an intense, Bravo-like question that is. "I dropped out of school at 14", she says; "give me a break!" That was for making fun of his book, Bill replies. She then grabs the book and proceeds to ridicule it again. It's all soft like a teddy bear, she says. Then she says that Bill is the kind of guy who'd let you cut his hair and put mascara on him. He's just a big teddy bear. "I wouldn't have sex with him, but I would cut his hair," she says jokingly. Well, perhaps she would have sex with him if she weren't married. "Gotta build their ego up," she says. Bill says that was the nicest thing anyone has said to him. "You love women," Tracey responds, pointing out that there are men who don't, angry men who've gone into comedy and who just don't get women. You can find them in late night TV, she says, doing a facial impression of David Letterman [this may explain why she hasn't been on his show in a while -- RR]. And with that, they go to commercial. In the final segment, they take questions from the audience. The first questioner asks Tracey if she ever dreams in character. No, not really, she responds, though sometimes the energy of a character stays with her for hours afterward, and she has to clear her brain of them. The next questioner, who looks like a starving artist, is in fact a starving artist and asks if she collects clown paintings, for he paints them. No, she doesn't, and she gives him a hard time. She's not a clown fan in general, though she likes Bill Irwin ("genius") and some of the Cirque du Soleil performers. The last questioner asks where her signature closing of "Go Home!" came from. He does it in a wimpy manner, though, and Tracey tells him so. Do the arm waves from the shoulders over your head, not the elbows. The "Go Home!" came about because they needed a way to end the show. She can't tell jokes and couldn't resolve anything at the end, so why not tell everyone to go home? The Fox network executives didn't care for that, she says; they thought it was really unfriendly and didn't make her accessible to American homes. That was when Jim Brooks started to say "Lock the studio doors!" and block the execs. But people remember it [they sure do -- RR]. Fittingly, Bill asks if she can send them out with a "Go Home!" She does, but first she proceeds to mess with Bill's hair ("he's so adorable!"). She also attempts to teach Bill the "Go Home!" bounce or jump or whatever you want to call it. Prepared by Roger Reini |
