Salon.com > Paul Rudd

“Admission”: Hollywood blandness claims Tina Fey!

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 20:20:00 +0000

Is someone deliberately sabotaging the movie careers of beloved TV comedy actors? Or is some inexorable force of Marxian historical overdetermination at work, compelling Steve Carell and Tina Fey to make the kinds of sub-mediocre, machine-produced formula pictures that would once have starred Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston (and may yet!), and so rendering irrelevant all the qualities that made them irresistible on television?

I’m being slightly unfair to “Admission,” a rambling, well-meaning and largely unfunny Ivy League comedy that tries to establish Fey – famed for her Sarah Palin impersonation on “Saturday Night Live” and her star/writer/creator role on “30 Rock” – as a rom-com leading lady. That doesn't turn out to be a good idea, but my actual point was that Vince Vaughn would never have taken the role Paul Rudd actually plays, as the do-gooder founder of a crunchy alternative high school in the New England woods. The movie’s just too boring and middlebrow; there’s not enough sports talk or jokes about how chicks are maddening and gays are, you know, so gay.

Lily Tomlin: “Young people don’t even know who Bella Abzug was”

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:23:00 +0000

Lily Tomlin doesn't just play a feminist in the upcoming film "Admission" -- she's been a real-life pioneer, making her way in the movie industry and openly sharing life with her partner, Jane Wagner. In "Admission," Tomlin milks the movement for laughs as Tina Fey's mother, a woman who lives in isolation, building her own bicycle and reading up on theory; she even demands that Fey's character call her by her first name: "Mom" is too outmoded a term. We spoke to Tomlin about "Admission" and her life in Hollywood.

What inspired your performance as a radical feminist?

I was part of the feminist movement! I knew feminists who'd written important books. I felt I understood a little bit about where Susannah was coming from, how she'd lived her life, or tried to live her life. I didn't really input dialogue except in the most perfunctory ways. Ideally I wanted to have -- I'd had a double mastectomy as the character. I wanted her to have a breast plate tattoo -- that empowerment, that Amazonian response, was part of her statement too. But it was a demanding thing to get finished. I settled for a tattoo of Bella Abzug, even though young women don't even know who Bella was.

Tina Fey: She’s on everyone’s A-list, including Hollywood’s

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:58:00 +0000

A wise woman once said that women in comedy are labeled "crazy" after a certain age. In a land of "Hangover" franchises and comic book blockbusters, a female on the verge of 43 is not often considered a hot commodity. One whose television series has recently ended would generally be considered a tough sell, lucky to get a steady gig as the flustered mom on another, lesser sitcom, or supporting roles as the wisecracking co-worker in a string of forgettable chick movies. She would not be regarded in savior-like terms. That is, unless she happened to be Tina Fey -- that same woman who said that line about being labeled crazy.

Defending Judd Apatow’s midlife crisis

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 16:05:00 +0000

In the first week of its release on Dec. 21, "This Is 40” has been met with poor box-office sales and middling reviews, with many critics branding Judd Apatow's latest as sloppy, overlong, self-indulgent claptrap. Both receptions are a shame, since "40” marks not only a continuation of the filmmaker’s creative evolution but also a culmination of what has been most compelling in comedy over the past couple of years. With its unflinching honesty, ruthless candor, and fascination with uneasy truth over pat payoffs, Apatow’s latest feels less like his previous work and more like a 132-minute episode of "Louie." Sure, the aesthetic is markedly different — "This Is 40” has the gloss of slick studio product — but the spirit and sensibility are the same: It's a stark autobiography and uncomfortable confession, where laughter is the casual byproduct of situation and personality (rather than the other way around) and dramatic beats ring painfully true.

Adam Scott, Jon Hamm in “The Greatest Event in Television History”

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 18:33:00 +0000

The video you are about to watch takes you behind the scenes of a multi-million dollar, 11-minute "film" featuring actors Adam Scott, Jon Hamm, Megan Mullally, Paul Scheer and Paul Rudd.

It's a remake of the opening credits of the 1980s sitcom "Simon & Simon," with special "backstage footage."

It has been dubbed (or at least, self-titled), "The Greatest Event in Television History."

Watch it now: