Stephen Tobolowsky is a Hollywood character actor. You know him, even if you don't know
him. For over 25 years he's been one of L.A.'s reliable workhorses,
one of the broad-gauge, nearly anonymous actors you've seen everywhere —
Groundhog Day, of course ("Ned Ryerson?" "BING!"), Memento, The Insider, TV episodes of Seinfeld, C.S.I., The West Wing, Deadwood, Heroes, recent high-profile recurring roles in Californication, Community, and particularly as Sandy Ryerson (Ned's brother?) on Glee — and, oh, some 200 other films and TV gigs. His IMDb page lists more than a dozen titles since 2010 alone. His series of podcasts at /Film, "The Tobolowsky Files," makes a fine companion to our title under discussion here. If staying
active is the secret to a good life, he has raised the bar for the rest
of us. (Frankly, I'd rather be sitting in front of the bar, but I'm
working on that other thing too.) It turns out that when you get him off the set and into the comfort of his Malibu home, with a pot of beer-boiled sausages for the barbecue, he's also one hell of a storyteller.
That's who we find in Stephen Tobolowsky's Birthday Party:
a naturally affable raconteur at ease telling his friends funny,
epiphanal, moving and often bizarre tales from his life. Think of
Stephen (and we may call him Stephen) as a softer, rounder, more
existentially content Spalding Gray, or the film as a My Dinner with Andre
in a pullover sweater and sensible shoes. Both classically trained and
disarmingly "one of us," when he employs the Pinteresque pause it's
usually to hoist a beer.Shot over one day in 2004, the birthday party is the setup for this album of Stephen's stories. Hosting friends over cake and candles and glasses clinked together, he dramatizes his twenty-one hours in a freezing pool with "vegetarian piranhas" and faulty mechanical face-eaters on the set of Bird on a Wire. And that time he talked his way out of a gun pressed to his head in a supermarket by inviting the gunman over to dinner. Being dragged off the street in Thailand and beaten with sticks by monks (it was a great honor). His mano-a-mano stare-down with an alpha-male dolphin. The effects of ammonia-laced marijuana while fronting a rock band. His early experiences as a young and hungry actor (Ronald McDonald had no need for commedia dell'arte training). The Christmas LSD ("if the dog talks to you, always listen"). The time Buzz magazine nominated him, temporarily, for the 100 Coolest Guys in L.A., a city he describes as "like Hell but with good restaurants."
His account of his girlfriend's (now wife's) unplanned pregnancy becomes a way to illuminate connections between the life-altering joys and losses we share with others. He played a KKK leader in Mississippi Burning, and his memories of a harrowing experience with real Klansmen during a late-night shoot leads to drinks raised in a toast to a young boy's courage and grace under pressure.
That bland average-joeness really accents the telling of his more ribald stories, and most of those are in this DVD's 90 minutes of extra scenes. That's where we find his misadventures as a naif among the sex shows in Thailand, his all-night date with a stripper (it's not what you think), "live bug tacos," and a college frat party that involved a 300-pound prostitute and the phrase "sloppy twenty-seconds."
How many of the details are authentic and how many does he embellish for dramatic or comedic license? When the teller is such good company, does it matter?
For first-time director (long-time cinematographer) Robert Brinkmann, this project is a personal labor of love for his old friend Stephen. With co-producer and editor Andrew Putschoegl, Brinkmann keeps the film simple and plain-speaking. After an opening story on Malibu beach — with a timely cameo from a pair of dolphins — we're in Stephen's kitchen (copper cookware, nice), out back by the grill, or in his living room, where the camera places us in the semi-circle of a dozen or so show-biz friends such as actors Mena Suvari, pre-Junebug Amy Adams in blue jeans, Greg Wagrowski and Stephen's wife, actor Ann Hearn. The rhythm gets shaken up now and then by personal testimonials from Suvari, Hearn and Wagrowski, but the rest of the time it's all Stephen's show.
It never pretends to be more than what it is, and that's one of the reasons it works so well. It's entertainment stripped down to Aristotelian elementals: a gifted artist telling stories. Its intentions toward a personal connection between subject and audience deliver such a pleasant change that Stephen Tobolowsky's Birthday Party deserves an audience beyond the festival circuit where its buzz began.
In an email Putschoegl told me that "it appears to have an almost universal appeal." Indeed. While viewing this disc a second time, my wife, smitten, uttered, "I want to know him." Then our resident hip-hopping teenager, transfixed, turned to me and said, "Why isn't he your friend?"
So Stephen, next time you're in Seattle, call.
It's a well-produced disc. Shot on high-definition video, the image delivers a faultless presentation. The DD 2.0 stereo surround audio isn't showy, though Stephen's occasional piano support (Bach's Prelude #1 in C Major, Debussy's "Clair de lune") spreads the sound around the room a bit.
For extras we get those 90 minutes of extra scenes already mentioned. Any of these fourteen self-contained outtakes could easily work within the film. Together they become a slightly raunchier ad hoc STBP: Part II that's longer than the main attraction's 87 minutes. It's all gold, and their presence here is a welcome bonus.
Music: Sharon Isbin, "Duarte: Appalachian Dreams, Op. 121 - 1. Fantasia"
Near at hand: The moleskin reporter's notebook for "In the Human Museum"
