100 WOMEN WE LOVE 2008
Lily Tomlin’s extraordinary career as a funny lady bloomed on the TV show Laugh-In in 1969, the year of the Stonewall rebellion. Fittingly, she has woven feminism and LGBT life into her characters—the not-so-hardworking phone operator Ernestine, Violet Newstead in 9 to 5 and the numerous personas populating The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, the one-woman play written by Tomlin’s partner Jane Wagner, for which Tomlin won a Tony Award. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for her turn as Linnea Reese in Robert Altman’s Nashville, played recurring roles on TV shows from Murphy Brown to The West Wing, and has won six Emmys, a Grammy, and a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 1977. Tomlin, who has called Wagner the most influential person in her life and career, narrated 1995’s landmark LGBT documentary The Celluloid Closet. –KL
In no particular order…
Hats off to the 100 Women We Love, class of 2008 (in no particular order, ’cause we love ’em all!).
Shari Frilot
Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer Shari Frilot is one busy woman; she’s currently developing the New Frontier program for Sundance, scouting new work in New York, working on a multimedia project about water, putting together an art book and inventing a top-secret new game. In fact, she hasn’t slowed down since she graduated from Harvard and went from television producer to award-winning filmmaker and co-founder of MIX BRASIL and MIX MÉXICO, the first gay Latin American film festivals. Her multimedia vision promises to effect a radical positive change in the future of film. “The field is actually set for a quantum leap,” claims Frilot. “I hope when that happens, we stop making box office grosses part of our cultural conversation and refocus our discussion on how bad-ass the art of cinema is.” –MF
In no particular order…
