Lily Tomlin

Lily Tomlin is the dark-haired, lanky actress with the broad grin, who featured in films by Robert Altman (in Short Cuts, she plays Tom Waits‘s wife), and in Hollywood comedies from the early eighties like Nine to Five and All of Me. In the United States, Tomlin was also successful as a comedienne in the seventies and eighties. In 1985, Broomfield filmed the preparations for her prospective hit show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. The documentary begins with images of a public workshop presentation in Austin, Texas and ends with the première of the show on Broadway, in September 1985. The film is an entertaining account of a creative process and also contains clips from Tomlin‘s earlier one-woman shows. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)