The Comet spoke to British comedian Eddie Izzard, currently filming in Los Angeles, about Laughs in the Park, Tony Blair’s memoirs, being a marathon man and why the name ‘Steve’ keeps cropping up in his act.

NG: I hear you’ve been busy with acting recently but the focus will be back on comedy for Laughs in the Park. Have you ever worked with comedians Dylan Moran and Reginald D Hunter?

EI: I know both of them but this will be the first time we’ve all done a show together.
Laughs in the Park

NG: It’s a bit of a one-off all round, as Verulamium Park will be the UK’s first purpose-built outdoor stage for comedy. What happens if it rains?

EI: I will carry on if it rains – no one worries when there’s rock and roll…

I just felt, why should it always be rock and roll which has the festivals? Comics need to do their own festivals.

NG: As a Labour supporter, what do you make of Tony Blair’s comments in his memoirs

EI: I don’t think it really matters but it’s good that it came out now, as that’s a lot better than after the new leader is in place. The truth is there are always going to be difficult relationships but politicians are not going to go into great details at the time as they don’t want the two other parties – whether it’s the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives or Labour – to be going over it and over it, so these things will always come out after. But I’m not going to take sides.

NG: Stevenage hosted a Labour leadership hustings debate in July. Have you ever considered throwing your hat into the ring?

EI: I’m not moving into politics for 10 years. At the moment what I want is to have a strong leader and a lot of the people running have the experience with a new look and a new vision and direction.

NG: When your name is mentioned many seem to associate you with your incredible feat of completing 41 marathons last summer. Is that strange?

EI: That’s fine if that’s the way it’s going to go. Some people will say you know he was in that film or whatever. When I started I was known for nothing so I don’t mind that at all. And it was 43 marathons not 41, I did two extra!

NG: And finally, our deputy editor (Steve) is desperate to know why the name Steve appears in your act so much.

EI: Jeff and Steve? They’re mates from school. Comedians often invent ridiculous names and it loses the reality of it. I give them real names so that it resonates on a real level.

Eddie Izzard, Dylan Moran and Reginald D Hunter will be performing at Verulamium Park in St Albans on Friday, September 24, Saturday, September 25, and Sunday, September 26.

Tickets start from £35. Visit www.hmvtickets.com

British comic Eddie Izzard has been tapped for a recurring role on United States of Tara, Deadline reports.

In the Showtime series about a woman grappling with Dissociative Identity Disorder, Izzard will play a brilliant psychology professor skeptical about the disease. However, his growing fascination with Tara (Toni Collette) will lead him to explore the condition further.

Check out photos from United States of Tara

The role will mark Izzard’s return to American TV following his work on the short-lived 2007 FX drama The Riches. Izzard, 48, recently appeared on another Showtime original series, The Green Room with Paul Provenza.

Production on the third season of United States of Tara begins next month for a premiere in 2011.

David Mamet’s provocative legal drama Race, starring Eddie Izzard, Dennis Haysbert, Afton C. Williamson and Richard Thomas, ended its Broadway run Aug. 21 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Mamet also directed his play, which began previews Nov. 17, 2009, and officially opened Dec. 6. Race is not only the longest-running play of the 2009-2010 Broadway season, but upon its closing after 320 performances, there will be no plays represented on Broadway until the Roundabout Theatre revival of Mrs. Warren’s Profession begins Sept. 3.

Race, which tests the dynamics of a law office when a crime is committed against a black woman, recouped its entire $2.5 million investment in late April. The original cast featured David Alan Grier, James Spader, Kerry Washington and Richard Thomas. Grier, Spader and Washington departed the production in June. Thomas is the only original cast member to remain with the play.

Producers announced Aug. 11 that plans are underway to bring the work to London audiences, as well as individual regional theatres in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Washington, DC, in 2011.

Here is a look at Race’s final Broadway curtain call: > PHOTO GALLERY

> Ramona’s pics

> Kathryn’s pics

If you have photos you’d like to share, send them HERE.

Biopics are normally saved for the icons that are old and wrinkled octogenarians reflecting back on their life of accomplishments. But what if through sheer grit, determination, talent and an unyielding belief in yourself, you’ve managed to cram all that life and success into half a lifetime?

Sarah Townsend began working with Eddie Izzard back at the Edinburgh Fringe Festivals in the 80s when he could barely get a time slot, if a laugh. Her career as a budding theater director and filmmaker followed a similar trajectory as the two learned by trying and failing and trying again. Sarah began filming Eddie’s journey and what culminated over the past ten plus years is the documentary Believe. The film is an Emmy nominated, uplifting look of how a transvestite street performer can become one of the most iconic and lauded performers of his time.

ALI MACLEAN: Let’s talk about your early days at the Edinburgh Festivals — starting with the Salieri/Mozart rivalry you had with those evil Fry & Laurie characters who thwarted you.

EDDIE IZZARD: They weren’t evil, they were just better. I think I’ve gotten better since then. Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson were in the Cambridge Footlights where Monty Python had come out of. I was trying to get into Cambridge, just to get into the Footlights. So these were the guys who succeeded in getting into Cambridge, and being in the Footlights. And they were better, so it was two kicks in the head, really.

A: Was it hard for you to believe back then? Did it take time for you to build your confidence?

E: I decided at seven to become an actor and at sixteen I made a private pact in my own head that I was going to do this and I wasn’t backing out of it. At the same time I was going to career advisors with my Dad and Step-mom and saying I might be an architect, but I just was coming up with things. I knew I wasn’t going to do those things. I wanted to do this. It just seemed a million miles off.

A: Your one hundred percent belief in yourself has worked out for you. I, for one, am glad that you didn’t give up, but are there any people out there that you wish had given up on their dream?

E: I don’t know if I should start that list. If you think about determination, if people have a heart and are determined, they can get to that place. But there are a lot of negative people who were enormously determined. All the Nazis were determined. They wanted to murder everyone. Everyone with a bad heart, who doesn’t care about people, I wish they hadn’t started. People with a bad heart can all fuck off.

A: What do you think about mass marketed guru stuff about believing like ‘The Secret’ and best selling books that teach people how to manifest their dreams? You know, all the books on tape and workshops and week long retreats.

E: I have done my own version of that for myself. I do realize that the word ‘believe’ is part of the word ‘faith’. And I don’t believe in God. So I’m a non-believer in the non-visible. I’m a believer in us; in humans. I think people either see the glass half full or half empty and suffer from depression or are prone to depression. I’m like my Dad and I don’t seem to have that. I’m consistently able to regroup fairly quickly. It’s much harder if you suffer from depression. You know, comedy improv has a lot of positive thinking in it. It’s all about ‘Yes, and…” If someone says “I am the King of Prussia.” You have to say “Yes, and I have your new shoes.” It’s a glass half full method. So positive thinking is great, as long as you’ve got a positive message. If you’re a positive thinker and you’re a dickhead, well, these are the complicated things of human existence.

A: Sarah really showed in the film how controlled and structured you are with putting together a show. A lot of comedians and actors spend their lives complaining on TMZ or their act is completely neurotic, like a Rorschach test. Do you attribute your success to your military background and that discipline?

E: It definitely helps. I kept pulling back and regrouping. You get knocked down and you get up and go back into the fray. Though, I don’t feel that disciplined because I’m incredibly lazy. I’m like a large ship. Once you get the ship going you can’t stop it. But once you stop it you can’t get it going again. I tend to like to watch black and white movies on Turner Classic or AMC. Apart from talking to you today I’m not doing anything and I like that.

A: I have a feeling our ideas of lazy are different. I think I could challenge you to a sloth-off and I could probably win.

E: Oh, I don’t know. Get me going…but I do start hating myself. People are offering me things now. So I’m trying to catch up on the years when I had nothing going. As you know the media is full of people taking off at seventeen. At sixteen years old they come in at number one.

A: Yeah, but they go to rehab when they’re twenty-three.

E: Yes. If I had to do it all again I’d do it the same way, but at the time, you want it to happen immediately. Learning that you have stamina is an excellent thing to know. If a project fails, I know I can pick myself up. Just like Clint Eastwood in a Fistful Of Dollars.

A: You’ve talked about future plans for politics and that your model would be more Franken than Schwarzenegger. I’m wondering if you think if Schwarzenegger would be a better politician if he were funny? Or maybe not a Terminator?

E: I’m more linked to Al Franken because of the comedy and because he’s a democrat. There’s no particular advice I can give Schwarzenegger…I’m pleased Prop 8 was overturned in California.

A: Do you think there is something about comedy and Al Franken’s satirical mind that lends itself to critical thinking and political policy?

E: Comedy is good at tearing down. If the right wing government is in power, comedy is good at tearing away at that. If the left wing government is in power, they will tear away at that too. So, I think comedy may be a hindrance in a way. I don’t subscribe to the theory that all politicians are crap. I think the ‘cool people’ often take that position.

A: So, are you prepared, when you take office in 2020, for Larry the Cable Guy to make fun of you for giving people clean drinking water?

E: Oh yeah, it’s gonna happen. If you’re a performer, people tend to be quite positive about you or they have no opinion. If you go into politics, it will be polarized. I’m ready for people to take swings at me. But then again I am a transvestite, so how much harder can it be to deal with political pressure?

A: You’ve talked in your shows and on The Riches about The American Dream. And you’ve mentioned the European Dream. Do you think you’ve achieved either?

E: I’ve started saying that I’m living the European Dream. Now I want Europeans to have the dream too.

A: Congrats on the Emmy nomination for Believe.

E: Well, I’m not nominated, Sarah is. She made my life worthy of being nominated. But hopefully there’s some lesbian girl in Pakistan or some transgender kid in Chile that sees the documentary and says, ‘Shit, I can do that!”

A: Or maybe some kid who’s trying to put together a tight ten-minute set to go up at The Comedy Store.

E: As long as they have something interesting to say and a good heart.

A: Yeah, we’re not trying to encourage any more Hitlers.

E: No. They can fuck off.

***

As Eddie said, Sarah Townsend made his life worthy of being Emmy nominated. How does one follow a man that runs 43 marathons in 51 days, performs his shows to sold out crowds at Wembley Stadium, and films blockbuster like Oceans 12. How do you capture a hummingbird on film?

ALI MACLEAN: This is your first feature length film and you are nominated for an Emmy. You run the risk of being called an overnight success — even though the film took, what, seven years to make?

SARAH TOWNSEND: Well over seven years. It’s one of those magical overnight successes that wasn’t really overnight. That’s really the storyline of the film. People really do work for ages. We wanted to make something that reflected what Eddie has put into his career because he gets the same comment. And of course it wasn’t. It was years and years before he finally got attention.

A: Eddie seems like a private person and the film shows that he is in control of things, certainly his emotions. Did you feels, as a filmmaker that it was hard to get behind that? Were you surprised that he wanted to do a documentary and let you behind the scenes?

S: I don’t think he thought that’s what we would be doing. I thought “Oh, because I know him, this will be so much easier.’ Far from it. I don’t think it was easy for anyone. It took four years to get an interview that was genuinely in the moment that was absolutely honest. He has like a sixth sense of when that little red light on the camera was on. It was unbelievable. If something interesting was going on and we started shooting he would instantly change his demeanor. Just at the point where we thought, “What are we doing? This is a special, but not a full movie”, then it happened. We got that scene with him. I think it was a real moment for him – he really shocked himself.

A: With his military background and the marathon running, he is so disciplined.

S: With the military stuff I was trying to show that he is a very early 20th century character. They don’t really make them like that anymore. Very stiff upper lip, “Carry on chaps”. You don’t encounter that much. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t say: “That’s not fair.” He’ll just say: “Right, I’ll do some extra work, then.” In Britain we have a very powerful tabloid culture with celebrities on the front page crying with their make-up smeared and tears, and it’s kind of what you’d expect from someone who likes to dress up that way. It’s a very contradictory bunch of things going on with him, and that’s what makes him so fascinating.

A: Would you ever consider doing a documentary about Eddie’s future political run?

S: No. At this point it will be a while before I do another documentary. Doing it was an enormous film school experience and I don’t regret it for a moment. It was very humbling and exhausting and an incredible experience. I’m grateful for every moment of it now.

A: The theme of the film is believing in yourself. Eddie talks in his shows about believing in the American Dream and the European Dream. Do you believe in those?

S: In the UK a lot of people don’t like to try. There’s a different cultural thing. Here if you try and fail, you get up again and start again and keep going. People respect you for it. Even if you keep failing, they respect the tenacity.

A: We are a country of failures.

S: I love the fact that trying is respected. The American Dream: if you try, if you build it, they will come. I love that. It’s honorable. That’s part of what got this film finished in the end. It’s not really how it is in the UK.

A: It’s funny that you bring up ‘If you build it they will come’ the Kevin Costner movie quote, because he just built that oil spill machine and sold it for millions.

S: What? Not the Hadron Collider? In Geneva?

A: No, Kevin Costner, the actor, invented some centrifuge type device that supposedly separates oil from water and he sold it to the US government to help clean up the oil spill.

S:…You’re kidding.

A: No. He went before Congress. I guess anything is possible. I mean after The Postman and Waterworld, he staged this comeback. It’s The American Dream.

S: That’s the maverick spirit.

Believe has been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Non Fiction Special at the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards 2010. It is available on DVD.

Eddie Izzard is currently performing on Broadway in David Mamet’s Race through August 21.

Eddie Izzard, whose turn in David Mamet’s Race ends Aug. 21, is already focusing on his next gig. “I’m reading Treasure Island for a possible role,” he says.

Mr. Izzard, increasingly known as much for his acting skills as his comedic chops, is one of several actors up to play one-legged antagonist Long John Silver in a British TV adaptation of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson pirate tale.

In addition to prepping for the part, the cross-dressing Brit is no doubt busy deciding what to wear to the Emmy Awards later this month. Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story, the Sarah Townsend-directed documentary that tracks the comedian’s rise to fame, is up for an award for Outstanding Nonfiction Special. It’s the first program from new cable network Epix to garner such an honor.

Check out Review Fix Editor-In-Chief Patrick Hickey Jr.’s exclusive interview with Emmy Award nominated director and producer Sarah Townsend, who discusses the trials and tribulations that went into producing her documentary, “Believe,” which is based on stand-up comedian and actor Eddie Izzard.

You can listen to the interview by clicking the link below:
Sarah Townsend Interview

On September 24, 25, and 26, three of the UK’s best loved comedians, Eddie Izzard, Dyaln Moran and Reginald D Hunter, will take to the stage together in the glorious surroundings of St Albans Verulamium Park.

For those lucky enough to secure tickets this will be a chance to enjoy one of the very last evenings of the summer in historic style. Tickets for just one of these acts are difficult to come by, but the chance to see all three on the one stage on the one night is a unique, rare and magical experience.

The three-day event, which will take place on the UK’s first purpose built outdoor comedy platform, will have outside bars and food stalls.

Tickets are available at www.hmvtickets.com/events/1055