Caffeinated Clint
It’s been a few moons since Stockard Channing played Rizzo in "Grease" (1978), but as she proves with her role in "Must love Dogs", the acclaimed actress has – still got it.
What did you like about playing your character, Dolly?
I think just being able to kiss Christopher Plummer. (laughs). I mean it’s obvious she’s sort of out there, so it was nice. I just thought she was sort of wild and interesting.
BAre you consciously looking for comedic roles because you have a sitcom coming up too?
That was another thing. Abigail [from West Wing] has her witty moments but I think basically the whole show is not exactly a side-splitter. So when the sitcom came I just looked at that so that’s I guess where it came from.
How did they pitch this character to you?
Well, I mean she’s of a certain biological age but she didn’t have to go around with fat patches and stuff. I think that’s the phenomenon of our time is that a lot of women keep themselves in good shape but that there’s not a lot of accommodation or people out there to connect with and the technology. I thought that was funny that whole thing. And then that kid, I thought that was just great.
How do you keep in great shape?
I work out a lot like everyone else. But I was not left with an athletic, lean body so I need to workout a lot.
What do you think about online dating? Have you ever done it before?
No, I’ve never done it. I can barely even run a computer. God knows what I’d get on online dating. I’d get something that was subhuman or something. I have no idea how it really works. I just thought it was kind of funny that this day in age this kind of thing could actually happen.
As an actress, you character was playing roles in her own life. Is that something you could relate to?
I never really thought of that. I just thought she was funny. Really, I just thought this was funny, sort of sweet, touching and human.
What advice would you give girls who are dating?
You’re talking to someone who has been married to various people for the last 40 years of her life. Dating is not really something familiar. I’ve never really been a dater.
Does it surprise you to learn about how dating is going on now?
It’s terrifying. I couldn’t do it at all. I was never really good at it, but I can’t imagine what it can be like as a fortunate person not having to deal with it. I mean, people of all ages, not just my age, 25, 35, all the way down the line. You guys tell me, I don’t know.
Then, what tips do you have to keep a man?
I don’t know. Someone said to me you’ve got to have a short memory. When it doubt, forget and keep on going. There’s a bit of that involve, which isn’t a really stylish thing to say. But I do think it’s a lot about a give and take.
Grease has become some a staple film from one generation to the next, did you ever think it was going to become this big?
I actually had a feeling it was going to be a successful movie because it was, I just had a feeling but I had no idea. No one had an idea of how successful it would be because the technology wasn’t in play. And it’s really the technology. The VCRs and now the DVD that made it. It just keeps impacting geometrically into the zeitgeist and then it goes off to generations and generations. These things have a life of there own and never existed when I was growing up certainly worrying when one would get made. It’s kind of amazing how that one movie kept living through all these years.
Yeah, I mean it’s funny how movies that were made in the late 70s you can see on DVD or VCRs. But the fact that [Grease] caught on I can’t tell you why. But it certainly has.
What about West Wing… will your character be coming back?
I have a commitment to them for 3 episodes. It’s funny, I had dinner with my dear friend John Spencer last night and I’m not in the first episode, but he’s at the beginning of it and he was telling me about it and I thought this sounds very hot because I think this is definitely the last year of West Wing. And I think it’s sort of great that they can say that because I think people will start watching again. And they can do whatever they want because they don’t have to wait around for the acts to fall or whatever and having that natural end to it I think will only help the series.
Will you be sad at all when that chapter comes to close?
Oh sure, we all were. I think the end of last year when we were aware of that transition was for everyone in their own way kind of bittersweet, but it’s also what the show’s about, one administration ends and another begins. That’s the nature of the reality of the office. Now I think they’re going to examine the implications of that in terms of the characters. But I’ve always been slightly tangential to the series anyway, I mean not out of my choice, but just the way my character works, etc… I can’t imagine what’s it’s like for someone showing up every day for the past 6 years.
Do you want to talk about acting with Diane and Christopher?
I’ve adored Chris Plummer for ages, and I seen him in New York over they years but I’ve never worked with him before. But I’ve had this tremendous crush on him since Daisy Clover. You ever see that movie? He’s so hot in it. Don’t ever think I’d dare tell him. So that was easy. There was a tremendous amount of ease. Diane is fantastic. And Elizabeth and I are friends. And Dermot I’ve known for years, we made a movie something like 18 years ago. So it was very very easy, happy set for everybody, which doesn’t have to necessarily do with the end result but that was the atmosphere on set.
What about Gary’s contribution, what he brings to a romantic comedy?
I think that he brings his own comedic background and also the role of television in that you have to be a realist. He would do adjustments or rewrites and I think he kept a lot of it in his head to a certain degree. Also, don’t forget there’s a huge cast in this movie and I’m not that familiar with the whole just the bits that I was in, and I was literally in the Warner Brother’s lot doing Dolly and then go across the thing and get into my zipped up suit, put on another wig and suddenly I was first lady. So for me that was kind of my focus on trying to get that right. I wasn’t around for the whole movie, so I’m not really an expert on how Gary rated.
You have a couple of films in the can…
I have a Canadian independent movie called “3 Needles”. It’s directed by Thom Fitzgerald and Lucy Lui, Chloe Sevigny and I are in three stories. We never interact. But since the title is “3 Needles”, it is about a bit of international drug calamity should we say. I’m a French Canadian waitress mother… the stories are so brief that if I tell you who I am, I tell you about the movie. Lucy Lui is a Chinese worker and Chloe Sevigny is a Montreal girl who becomes a nun and works in Africa. It’s a lot about the corruption of the drug trade.
What about “Red Mercury”?
That kind of mirrors what happened in London [a few weeks ago]. Potentially a hostage situation and a bomb threat by three guys who were raised in England of Pakistani decent and so I was thinking about that…. That wouldn’t be taken lightly. It was extraordinary that we were making it once and never dreamed that such a thing would actually happen.
You have three movies in the can, a sitcom about to start, you have the West Wing… do you enjoy working on two or three things all at once?
I like it obviously. I mean I do like it. It’s sort of what I do. People always make comments like, “You work all the time”. First of all, I wish they wouldn’t have to make that comment because I wish it wasn’t so unusual for people be working all the time. And some of the stuff is crap and some of it is great. Our beginnings do not know our end. SO basically you show up, do the best job you can and you try to work with the people you’re working with… I think that’s my life, my little creative endeavor. It’s not business, it’s not necessarily calculated… I’m ironically doing what I want to do even though at the beginning I was launched into you should be this kind of person and then I had a follow up in my first television series and I was going to be the next Mary Tyler Moore but nobody asked me what I wanted to do. It would be interesting if this sitcom works, so I could be doing one thing all the time instead of going back and forth between all this different media which I sort of thrive on, I’m a bit of a moving target in that way.
MUST LOVE DOGS is now showing
