In the delicious new road comedy Grandma, a 75-year-old lesbian, Elle Reid (Lilly Tomlin), gets behind the wheel of a 1950s clunker and, with her very pregnant granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) riding shotgun, sets off to collect on some very old debts. They're from a bevy of aging girlfriends, a pissed-off adult daughter (Marcia Gay Harden), and a sarcastic, white-haired ex-boyfriend (Sam Elliott) whom Elle wouldn't give the time of day if she didn't so desperately need $600 for Sage's abortion. In 80 briskly paced minutes we witness some bitter if wickedly funny truths, relish the sight of Elle wielding a hockey stick to the groin of Sage's shiftless college-age boyfriend (a comely Nat Wolff), and discover a risky path for passing on the rules of the road from a disgruntled septuagenarian to a smart but socially clueless millennial.
The core pleasure of this acidly funny comedy is the pungent back-and-forth between Grandma and granddaughter in the front seat of a family sedan.
Sage: "What happened?"
Elle: "A little girl punched me, a karmic boomerang!"
"You've got an anger problem."
"No, I've got an asshole problem!"
"That's a horrible solution!"
"I'm a horrible person."
While they may not represent a return to the classic age of screwball comedy, director Paul Weitz (About a Boy, Being Flynn ) and comedian Lily Tomlin (Nashville, 9 to 5) know how to deliver a roughhouse brand of big-screen hijinks with an adroit mix of verbal and physical gags above and below the belt. Grandma is Paul Weitz's 10th film as director. Our conversation ranged from the origins of his latest comedy to lessons learned from his unique position as a mainstream filmmaker whose work displays the heart and soul of a true indie.
David Lamble: Did the idea of Grandma originate with the obvious pleasure of creating a splendid comedy vehicle for Lily Tomlin?
Paul Weitz: I had done a film with Lily called Admission, where she played Tina Fey's mom. Just hanging out with her, I felt there was unfinished business, and I wanted to see a film where she's in every scene. Writing it, I heard her voice and the character took over. I sprung it on her over lunch. She ordered steak salad, and I remember thinking, "Oh, I hope she doesn't choke on the steak when I tell her."
Her character in Admission, the 2013 prep school comedy with Paul Rudd and Tina Fey, really stands out. She's very feisty when she's onscreen.
This is a deepening of that character. More important was spending a little time with Lily and realizing so clearly, if you were in the position of this girl [Sage] who has no idea how to stand up for herself and has zero concept of women's history in America, how much you would have to gain from being with Lily. At the same time, Lily, while she appears to be completely accurate in her cynicism about human nature, is also very kind. I loved the idea of doing a mentorship movie where the mentor was able to overcome some things in herself while teaching her granddaughter.
She's also a bit of a misanthrope. She attacks Sage's ex-boyfriend, who's impregnated her granddaughter.
That wasn't her idea when she comes in, although she comes in with some swagger. But when the guy claims he's not the one who knocked her up, then calls Lily's character "a bitch" and starts swearing at her, he gets his comeuppance.
You do those zero-to-60 scenes very well, like the one in Being Flynn where Robert De Niro leaps out of bed to attack his neighbors with a stick with a nail on the end.
I like the idea of a character who does the things we think we would like to do but never do. People have compared Lily's character, somewhat oddly, to Stiffler, Seann William Scott's character in American Pie, who's pure Id. I love a character who's completely out of control and a septuagenarian.
The granddaughter, Sage, has obviously strayed from the path. Now she wants 600 bucks from Grandma, and Grandma has to pull a lot of changes to get the dough.
I don't think she's intending to spend the day with her grandma, but Lily dangles the carrot �" "I think I'll be able to get the dough" �" which leads to this odyssey, which leads to the much-feared figure of Lily's daughter (Marcia Gay Harden), the one person both of them are intimidated by.
Lily's character has just cut up her credit cards and made them into a wind chime, an act that really screws them.
She's mourning the loss of her longtime female lover. She's finally paid off all these medical bills, and she cuts up her credit cards. Like a lot of people living from paycheck to paycheck, in a couple of weeks she'd have some cash, but she doesn't now.
You're great at creating characters who bottom out, then recover quickly, like Paul Dano's alcoholism-recovery counselor in Being Flynn. Here Lily unintentionally shows her rocky journey to her naive granddaughter.
At one point Lily's character was in a similar state to Sage's now. There's this man who's been carrying a torch forever since. He keeps a little safe where there's a picture of a 21-year-old Lily, a picture Lily graciously loaned me for the movie, her at 21 lounging across a car.
Elle and her daughter have this insult fest that's a fairly erudite one where they call each other "solipsists." Sage says, "Me and my friends pretty much call each other bitch, ho and slut." Lily replies, "Who are these friends? I don't want to hear you use those words again." Sage is suffering from the consequences of not knowing how, historically, women have had to stand up for themselves.