THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE: ART HOUSE THEATER DAY!

JULY 24

"Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse."

— Lily Tomlin

“Someone should start a petition to put Lily Tomlin’s face on the $20 bill. It wouldn’t solve all our problems, but it would be a pretty good start.”
— A.O. Scott, The New York Times

Jane Wagner created this one-woman show for Lily Tomlin in 1985 so that audiences could appreciate not just Tomlin’s comic timing but also her extraordinary acting talent. Tomlin inhabits 12 characters in this tour-de-force anchored by bag lady Trudy, an everywoman for all time. As Tomlin explained onstage at the restoration’s world premiere, “Trudy is a philosopher… the wise fool.” Asked by Jane Fonda, her comrade-in-arms and the evening’s moderator, if she sees any signs of intelligent life in the universe at the moment, Tomlin replied, “I see a lot of intelligence, but we apply that intelligence so stupidly.”

Gloria Steinem praised The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe as “a work of genius and compassion.”

Frank Rich of The New York Times called it “the most genuinely subversive comedy to be produced on Broadway in years.”

The Search for THE SEARCH is Over!

Lily Tomlin fans have searched in vain for access to the movie version for years.

As reported by Peter Debruge in Variety:
“For nearly a decade — since comedy legend Lily Tomlin played a salty septuagenarian in Paul Weitz’s “Grandma” — I’ve been trying to track down a copy of her one-woman show, “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.”

Well, the search is over.

[On December 6, 2024,] Tomlin sat down with “Frankie and Grace” co-star and frequent collaborator Jane Fonda for the first public screening of the newly restored film, which made its debut at RescueFest — IndieCollect’s first-ever showcase of films restored by the organization — in Los Angeles.

Long out of print and nearly always incomplete, the feature version (directed and shot by John Bailey) was released in 1991, six years after Tomlin performed — and perfected — her show live at New York’s Plymouth Theater…Bailey’s film had become all but impossible to see, that is until Ed Carter (who’d been Academy Film Archive curator until the organization’s restructuring earlier this fall) discovered the original negative among a pile of reels rescued from Deluxe Labs.”