Virginia Madsen

A few weeks late, but I'm finally posting my interview with Virginia Madsen. Who knew Haunting in Connecticut would still be around?

Virginia Madsen's love of horror films and belief in the paranormal pushed her to star in The Haunting in Connecticut.

By Andrea Warner

She’s played the ingenue (Electric Dreams), the sexpot (Third Degree Burn) and the scream queen (Candyman). But it wasn’t until her Oscar-nominated turn in 2004’s Sideways, as wine-loving waitress Maya, that Virginia Madsen finally proved herself a major player in Hollywood.

Now, the honey-blonde starlet is indulging her love of horror and the paranormal with The Haunting in Connecticut (opening March 27), based on the alleged true story of a family terrorized by ghosts.

What attracted you to this movie? Do you like horror films?
Madsen: I do. I’m a huge fan. And I’ve been looking for a good horror script for years! Literally for years. Sometimes they’ll have a good idea or an okay story, but not a good ending, and a lot of times the horror films being made right now aren’t character-driven; they’re just the gore-fest thing, and that’s okay — they’re lucrative, fun, campy. But [with Haunting], I knew by page three that I really cared about this mother and child, and I was intrigued by that, and I found that the story was about the whole family, and I really loved that.

Candyman scared the pants off of me when I was younger.
(Laughs) What I liked about Candyman, and what I like about this movie, is that they play on our most basic childhood fears: what’s behind that mirror; what’s down that hall; what’s under the bed; is someone watching me while I’m in the shower. It’s all the stuff that naturally frightens us around the house. Even as grown-ups, there’s that half a second between where you hear a noise outside the window and you know that it’s just the wind — there’s a half second there where I think, “Monster.” (laughs) You know, it makes no sense at all, but you still do it because you have that basic instinct of fight or flight. You know that’s probably your cat under the bed, but you look and (in a scary voice), “THERE’S THE CAT UNDER THE BED! OH MY GOD!”

So you like being scared?
I love being scared in movies, and I’m a great fan of the genre, but I’m also a great fan of the whole hunt for the proof of the paranormal. There’s just such cool stuff on YouTube — like, really, really great-bad ghost footage. But there are some things on there that you can’t explain. And, I mean, just as when we look into space, we know that it’s naïve at best, arrogant at worst, that we think we’re the only living things in the universe, because of all that we know that we can’t see, much is the same as our life on Earth. There’s so much about our perceived existence that we don’t even know about. So, how are we to just discount all of these experiences as “fake” or “just their imagination.” I’m fascinated by all the different experiences people have had. It’s a scientific fact that there’s cell memory, but what if there’s DNA memory?

Like past-life flashbacks?
Our basic DNA connected to our great, great, great grandmother, and when we see a “ghost,” what if something just goes ‘flash’ in our brain from that ancient DNA memory, and what if we’re actually seeing what our great-grandmother saw when we see a ghost? It’s fascinating stuff, and there’s some investigation about that. Because you can’t just say that millions and millions of people that have experienced something paranormal are just lying or just imagining. But then, how much can we manifest with the power of our own fear?

Maz Jobrani

I also got to interview Maz Jobrani for WE's comedy issue.

Raised on a steady diet of Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor, the forefathers of button-pushing comedy, Maz Jobrani felt he had no choice but to follow suit. The Iranian-American comedian irks the politically correct with brashly subversive routines that alternate between mocking and debunking Middle Eastern stereotypes. See his Axis of Evil special on Comedy Central for proof, or better still, see him at the Commodore.

Did you always want to stir the pot with your comedy?

Jobrani: You know, I never thought of it that way. I just wanted to be funny. But Eddie Murphy was my first influence, and the first time I was going to do stand-up — which I chickened out of, by the way — I was 17, and I started writing material that was all sex-based. I was trying to do a bit about why was our genitalia in the middle of our body, in the most inflexible place, as opposed to our palms, which would be great, and then every time you shake hands you’re having sex, or if you high-five somebody. I’d write it and think it was brilliant, and then the next day I’d read it and go, “Ohhh, that’s stupid.”

Do you get criticized by politically correct organizations?

I think a lot of times people take offense to it because they’re not listening to the context. They just hear a red-flag word and go nuts. After September 11, I was doing a joke about the guys who crashed the planes and, I mean, they affected everybody, including me as a Middle Easterner, and now I have to deal with all this backlash and the people, obviously, who died. But the one group nobody is talking about is high-school students, because in the future, history tests are going to suck. When the teacher asks them to name the people who hijacked the planes, the students are going to be like, “Umm, there was Al-Kafee, Al-Kafeek Kafou, Al Kafee Kafoococoapuff.” (Laughs.) And so, I’m making fun of their names and a lady took offense. Or, around the Iraq War, the administration sold the line that if you criticized the Iraq War, you’re criticizing the troops, and I was doing a bit about George Bush and a couple times people were like, “You shouldn’t make fun of the President!” And I’m like, that’s the whole point of this country!

I want to do a little word association with you, if you’re up for it. Give me your initial gut reaction or thoughts on each one: George Bush.

AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

Barack Obama.

Yesss!

Democracy.

We kind of have it. We kind of don’t.

Iran.

Leave ’em alone.

Axis of Evil.

There’s only one left, which is Iran, so it’s kind of just a Point of Evil now. It’s so 2004.

Lily Tomlin interview

I got to interview Lily Tomlin for this week's WE. Pick up a copy if you get the chance!


An interview with the legendary Lily Tomlin is a remarkable way to spend Christmas Eve. Her throaty laughter punctuates every anecdote, and conversation quickly becomes the equivalent of a meandering stroll behind the scenes of late-20th-century Hollywood. From her first regular paying gig, opposite Madeline Khan and Dixie Carter, to her recent stint on Desperate Housewives, Tomlin has continued to revolutionize and redefine what it means to be a woman in comedy.

Which female comedians inspired you when you were younger?

Tomlin: I had very eclectic tastes, from the most sophisticated to the most out-there person. As a kid growing up, when we first got a TV, I would see a lot of women who had sitcoms, like Joan Davis from I Married Joan — she was very range-y, she wasn’t pretty, but a very character-looking woman. And, of course, Lucy [Lucille Ball]; I loved her and Ethel and the stuff they would get into, the physicality. One time, at [New York comedy club] Upstairs at the Downstairs, one of the young girls was the ingénue, but she was hilarious offstage. She’d be telling me stories and doing stuff, and I’d be telling her she should do that onstage because she was always so boring, because the ingénues are always boring, and she’d fluff up and her hair would get real big and she’d say, “Oh, I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was unattractive.”

Speaking of the attractive element of women in comedy, have you seen the cover story on Tina Fey for this month’s Vanity Fair?

I saw the cover, but I haven’t read it yet. Was there a lot of character stuff inside?

Well, the author, Maureen Dowd...

Ah, well, forget it. As much as I love her sometimes, she’s really a piece of work.

It’s all about how Tina Fey has become hot, and how her attractiveness has finally caught up to her brains. I can’t imagine being Tina Fey and reading it. It’s really just a sum of her body parts.

I’ve gotta read it before I jump to any conclusions, but that’s a shame. Maureen’s not a very generous person. I don’t know her, I shouldn’t make these pronouncements, but, from her pieces, she doesn’t seem very generous, and I would think she’s not very kind to other women.

Yeah, I don’t think you need to be lovely to every woman because you have matching parts, but still...

I think it clouds her objectivity, and I don’t read Maureen with any intense regularity. Primarily, in the ’50s and ’60s, people would say, “How can you do stand-up? You’ll lose your femininity.” That was an old song. Frankly, it didn’t even occur to me. I wasn’t crazy about anybody who debased the species. In the old days, [male comedians] would always say, “Take my mother-in-law... please!” and I always wanted to play the mother-in-law.

What made you decide to get back out on the road now and do stand-up?

I never stopped doing stand-up, one-nighters or two-nighters. From the time I got on Laugh-In, I had an act, and it was the only thing that kept me off Match Game [a popular ’70s game show whose guest panel was ostensibly a dumping ground for has-been celebrities]. Unless I was doing a movie or doing my one-woman show, I always had my act and did 40 to 50 dates a year.

What sorts of things are on your mind right now?

Everything to me is sort of political, so it depends on what’s going on in the times. Ernestine [one of Tomlin’s famous characters from Laugh-In] is a good character and she can speak to anybody. She’s irascible. Lately, she’s been working at a big healthcare insurance company, and so she can deny healthcare to everyone, and that makes her happy. And it speaks to that issue.

Almost everyone in Canada was really excited about Obama getting elected. Are you still feeling that sensation of hope and change?

We’re praying for it. I mean, even the whole Rick Warren thing — I can sort of buy Obama’s justification about different points of view and so on. When I was on Laugh-In, we were so political about the Vietnam War — those of us against the war — and John Wayne was on the show and I wouldn’t even be photographed with him. In retrospect, as a mature person, I regret those times. I wish I’d been more outgoing with them and found out what they think and why they think it, see if I could influence them. But when you’re younger, you have this sort of righteous thing, and it’s not good.