Cake or Death's Groovy News

[thanks Jean!]

[from playbill.com]

Tony Award nominee Eddie Izzard has signed on for a guest appearance in the upcoming season of the CBS series “The Good Wife,” according to TVGuide.com.

Izzard will play Abbott Thrush, an upper-class English barrister brought in to fight Lockhart/Gardner in a libel case that finds its way into British court.

The actor is currently scheduled for one episode, but co-creators and executive producers Robert and Michelle King are leaving it open for a possible return.

“The Good Wife” stars Emmy Award winner Julianna Margulies (“ER,” Festen) as a wife and mother who boldly assumes full responsibility for her family and re-enters the workforce after her husband’s very public sex and political corruption scandal lands him in jail. According to CBS, “Pushing aside the betrayal and crushing public humiliation caused by her husband, Peter, Alicia Florrick starts over by pursuing her original career as a defense attorney.”

Izzard was nominated for a Tony Award in 2003 for his performance in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg and has also been seen on Broadway in Race. His film credits include “Ocean’s Twelve,” “Ocean’s Thirteen,” “Across the Universe” and “Valkyrie.”

“The Good Wife” will return to CBS Sept. 25 and air Sunday nights at 9 PM ET.

[from bexhillobserver.net]

IT’S NOT everyday that an internationally acclaimed megastar can find time in their busy schedule to offer their support to a local charity.

However Eddie Izzard did just that earlier this week when he joined in double celebrations at the Sara Lee Trust.

The world-renowned comedian, actor and charity fund-raising marathon runner, fresh off the plane from his appearance at the Hollywood Bowl, officially opened the Sara Lee Trust charity shop in Endwell Road.

Along with guests, including trustees, volunteers, friends and patients, he also celebrated the Trust’s 15th birthday.

Eddie grew up in Bexhill and wanted to offer his support the Trust, which provides complementary therapies, creative arts therapies, counselling and sanctuary days to people living with cancer, motor neurone disease and HIV/Aids in Hastings and Rother

The charity was launched in 1996 by Sally and Jeremy Lee, following the death of their daughter Sara to cancer in 1995. Sara used complementary therapies throughout her two-year illness and Sally said she had found them to be a great source of comfort and support.

It was Sara’s wish that, after her death, a Trust be set up to help people with cancer who found it difficult to source their own therapies and pay for them.

After her death her family and friends set up the Sara Lee Trust to allow others to experience what Sara had achieved, “to live life to the full in spite of the cancer within”.

Sally said she was “delighted” that Eddie found time out of his busy schedule to attend the event. Bravely speaking of her family’s loss and Sara’s inspiration for the Trust, Sally said: “Sara really wanted to look as well as she could right to the end and continued to work right up to six weeks before she died.

“It’s marvellous that out of the terrible tragedy for our family something lovely has begun. It’s great to be able to offer some respite to patients who are having a dreadful time.

“Sara would love it.”

Eddie spent close to two hours at the celebratory event, posing for photographs, signing autographs, chatting with guests. He spoke candidly of his feelings, praising the work the Sara Lee Charity and of his thoughts on Bexhill.

Eddie said: “I think this charity is a brilliant idea, and that your daughter could be so pro-active when she was so ill is amazing. I never saw enough pro-activity in Bexhill, and to see this is brilliant.”

It’s a charity that Eddie empathises with, having lost both his mum to cancer when he was just six years old and his grandfather suffered from motor neurone disease

Losing his mum at an early age made a big impact on his life but Eddie said he found a way of dealing with the emotions the tragedy evoked. “When I do comedy I release a lot from my childhood from when mum died.”

More insight into his childhood along with treasured home-movie clips can be seen in Eddie’s DVD Believe, The Eddie Izzard Story, an openly frank and fascinating documentary released in 2010.

Eddie said his energy is in his genes, passed down from his grandfather and his dad, John, a well-known figure in Bexhill for his many charitable works. “Age is an attitude of mind. Dad is 83 and still has a lot of energy. I’m 22 in my head.”

Eddie recently appeared at the De La Warr Pavilion and says he longs for Bexhill to return to its former glory days:

“I have mixed feelings about Bexhill. It was built as a ‘young’ town from the Victorians to the motor-racing that used to happen here.

“I’d like to see motor racing, or something like that, return. I believe in a youthful Bexhill.

“What is there in this town for young people to do? I want to see more shops in Bexhill but I know there is this battle going on with those who want change and those who don’t .”

He added: “I like to shake things up!”

[from digitalspy.com]

Eddie Izzard has suggested that Glastonbury festival does not pay comedians enough.

The stand-up made the comment in conversation with Ross Noble for Absolute Radio about his comedy festival Laughs in the Park.

Asked about the challenges of outdoor events, Izzard said: “I’d say all the hassles that music festivals have already found – weather is the primary one.

“Comedy also knows, because we’re often the poor relation tent to the big ‘I know what I’m doing, I have a lot of gear and a lot of roadies and getting paid actual money as opposed to breadsticks’, you know, which is what Glastonbury… there is a comedy tent in Glastonbury and they do get paid buttons. Buttons?”

Noble agreed: “Yeah, buttons.”

Izzard continued: “Comedy is a mind gig and music is a field gig, people can get right out of it and still be in a field gig and a music gig, they can really get kind of wasted.

“We need people to be happy, slightly buzzed but not too out of it because we’re doing quite subtle stuff here; we’re putting juxtaposing stuff that works in the brain.

“I’ve had people from music festivals in the tent laughing their heads off, but all the way through, at anything, and so it doesn’t help you, doesn’t help us finesse our timing.”

Noble quipped: “Although it’s fine if you just want to laugh in my set. If you want to just p*ss yourself all the way through.”

Laughs in the Park featured Izzard, Noble and Tommy Tiernan and took place on 22, 23 and 24 July at Verulamium Park, St Albans.

Izzard was recently reported to be in talks alongside Bob Hoskins to appear in Kristen Stewart’s Snow White and the Huntsman.

Watch the Eddie Izzard and Ross Noble Absolute Radio video interview below:

From @amandasphoto on the Twitter… Enjoy!

Eoghan decided to test his French on the multi-lingual comedian… with mixed results…

>> LISTEN HERE

[from the latimes.com]

But could he have done it in heels?

On Wednesday night British performer Eddie Izzard became not only the first solo comedy act to appear at the Hollywood Bowl, but he also raised the performance bar all the way to where the Bowl ends and the night sky begins.

“Maybe I should do the gig here,” he mused as, moments after coming on stage for “Eddie Izzard: Stripped to the Bowl,” he edged along the narrow wall separating the Pool Circle from the rest of the box seats. “Or maybe,” he said, lifting his eyes to the cheering crowd of more than 12,000 that rose before him, “I should do it in the back.”

And then he was off, clambering over those right in front of him before jogging 115 feet from the stage to the promenade and then up the 168 steps that zigzag their way to the back row. Unlike previous tours, in which Izzard, who is a transvestite, took the stage in semi-drag, “Stripped” refers in part to his decision to go “bloke,” with jeans, a tuxedo jacket and, most important, men’s shoes.

As security bolted to keep up with him and the crowd cheered its approval, Izzard made impressive time — less than five minutes to make it to the top. “I don’t know if everyone can hear me,” he said into the microphone, “but this looks amazing.

“And,” he added, “this was not necessarily a good idea. I’m coming back down.”

Back onstage, he seemed only slightly winded — he has of late become a marathon runner — though he dramatically fell to his knees. “If you’re thinking of playing the Hollywood Bowl, don’t do what I just did,” he said. “That was my 50th birthday present to myself.

“As a street performer I learned that if you say something to the audience, you have to do it,” he added before suggesting to those in box seats that they use their time at intermission to jog up and take in the full open-sky glory of the Bowl.

It was a fine and physical endorsement of the Bowl, which Izzard, fresh off performances in Paris which he did tout en francaise, admitted was not as sexy a name as it might be “although you did tack Hollywood on which helps” but still hallowed ground. “Monty Python played here, and the Beatles.”

None of them ran the steps, of course, and certainly none began their sets by announcing, as Izzard did, that there is no God. The “Stripped” tour, which opened three years ago in London and made a stop at L.A.’s Nokia Theatre last January as “Stripped Too,” is quintessentially Izzard, a manic, psychedelic trip through pop culture and the annals of history, making random stops at Wikipedia, iTunes (“Who here has ever read the terms and conditions?”) the dinosaur age, the Stone Age, Shirley Temple, the Battle of Hastings, Nuremberg, the Romans, the Greeks and assassins on hashish.

But the show’s leitmotif is the absence of God, with frequent references to his Parisian tour and more than a few digs at Sarah Palin — “America, be very, very afraid.” Although, he concedes, God could be there, he probably isn’t, might be, definitely isn’t. Contradiction and outrageous contrast are what Izzard does best — in “Dressed to Kill,” the tour that launched him to stardom in the U.S., he introduced the term “action transvestite” to the lexicon. With “Stripped,” it’s “spiritual atheist.”

The Izzardian essentials, however, remain the same, the impressive tool belt of a former street performer which made him a perfect first solo act for the Bowl — Izzard may be one man, but he is many, many characters.

A gifted mime with the best sound effects in the business — a hilarious set exploring the many limitations of the dinosaurs included his interpretation of dinosaur poetry and dinosaur “administration” — Izzard, as action transvestite or bloke, remains a child at heart. Running and bouncing around, making fabulous noises (the recurring jazz chicken was particularly effective) and scribbling mental notes to himself on his hand, Izzard is, above all, a joyful performer, his comedy a boyish exploration of all the “how comes,” “what ifs” “why nots” and “but that doesn’t make any senses” that can drive a parent crazy on a hot summer day. If there is a God, how come he didn’t flick Hitler’s head off? If the world was assembled by intelligent design why did the dinosaurs never evolve? Who thought of naming a problem with understanding words “dyslexia? What if those iTunes terms and conditions include “we will cut off your buttocks and sell them to the Chinese”?

Embodying myriad human characters and animals as diverse as a speechless giraffe, a journaling giant squid and a squirrel that survived Noah’s ark (“it was a nightmare, man, like ‘Ghost Ship,’ without the gold”), Izzard had no problem filling the Bowl, with his sly wisdom and, more important, cascades of laughter. Though his timing flagged a bit after the intermission, he quickly found his footing and finished to roaring crowds. After one brief encore, he slipped quietly backstage without taking a victory lap. But then again, he didn’t need to.

[from sfweekly.com]

Saturday night’s Stripped on the Shore at Shoreline Amphitheater is a comedy act that’s been performed since 2008. But when the comedian is Eddie Izzard, that doesn’t mean much. The great British humorist who’s known for calmly pacing great expanses of stage during his routines is not known for sticking to a script. And, staying true to another part of his nature, Izzard tackled broad, serious subjects, so he had lots of figurative room to move in addition to the literal.

Against Earth-tone fabric backdrops branded with hieroglyphics, Hebrew, and Arabic, he summarized the history of civilization while also explaining his shift from agnostic to atheist. He built a case on the idea that God does not exist — or is, at best, a poor planner. He also took more detours than a sane mind can process, making for a dizzyingly funny monologue that didn’t come off like an anti-religious sermon.

Stripped was also a show that the incomprehensibly brave and self-proclaimed “transvestite with a career” serves up in full “boy mode,” meaning he traded in the shiny glam outfits and heavy lipstick that have characterized past performances to cut a chiseled and manly figure in simple, well-worn outfit of wrinkled jeans and black tails. All he currently retains from a girlier time is a sexy slick of black eyeliner.

Part of the transformation back into boy mode was a longing to take off the teetering stilettos and really get to feel grounded to the stage again, an important change for someone with such elastic physical comedic skill. He looked free and unfettered Saturday as he made good use (as expected) of the large stage.

One of Izzard’s many endearing qualities is when he talks to himself, rating how his jokes are doing with the audience. Saturday we learned, for example, that the mention of the Northern England town of Swindon gets laughs all around the world for some reason. Later, when he did a panto of himself and a sheep, ripping off his fleece – eliciting a collective shriek from the audience – he noted, “Shoreline is very susceptible to mimes.”

Despite referring to Mountain View as Palo Alto a few times, he kept a strong sense of place, weaving in a thread of tech talk. He playfully juxtaposed Macs and PCs, comparing the latter to a dusty old opera singer. Whenever he had a question he wanted to Google, he wondered aloud if he couldn’t just go knock on the office door to ask.

After an hour, Izzard explained that there would be an “interlude” and he’d step off for 12 or 14 minutes, which sped by with the screening of several cute fan-made YouTube videos that capture some of his most beloved classic bits, including one about the world’s easiest choice and another about Darth Vader’s frustrated lunch adventures.

Later we learned that merchandise booths were selling covet-worthy “Cake or Death” T-shirts and “I’m Jeff Vader” tote bags.

I’ve been an active attendee of concerts at Shoreline, and it was both refreshing and interesting to see a comedian rather than a mega rock star on stage coming alive in the open air and holding the place in thrall.

[from sfgate.com]

Five Clicks to Jesus is an Internet game in which players start on a randomly selected Wikipedia article – the entry for Kevin Bacon, perhaps – and then must navigate their way to the entry for Jesus by clicking five or fewer hyperlinks.

Eddie Izzard’s comedy is kind of like that. An Izzard joke that starts as a riff on the Heimlich maneuver can end up as a jab at the National Rifle Association. Chiropractor satire evolves into a routine about Scrabble. Discussions of human evolution segue into the lyrics from “I Can See Clearly Now.” Naturally.

This Saturday, Izzard will take a break from his dramatic roles, political ambitions, foreign-language gigs and marathon running to bring his scatterbrained stand-up shtick to the Shoreline in a show called “Stripped on the Shore.”

Q: What makes history funny to you? Were you a really good history student?

A: I was a not-good history student. The idea of arguing very lengthy things – like in the U.K. you seem to see the question “Why did the First World War start?” endlessly debated – always kind of floored me. I don’t think I find history funny, but I noticed that no one was doing it. And so I consciously pushed into it because I thought, that’s a good place to go and live. It’s more interesting than saying “men are like this, women are like this,” or talking about things on television programs.

Q: You’re just wrapping up a string of 21 gigs in Paris, performed in French. Does your sense of humor change when you do your routine in a foreign language?

A: No. This is my big theory: Senses of humor are exactly the same, but there are several senses of humor in each country. In the last 15 years, I’ve taken out all my references to local products in Britain or America. But I always start off by talking about the place I’m in. Like, after 13 weeks in Paris, I was talking about the sex shops on the Boulevard de Clichy. But I can’t use that anywhere else. I think the sense of humor is the same. I just plug into the people who like stuff like Monty Python in France, and off I go.

Q: You recently ran 43 marathons over the span of 52 days. What exactly compelled you to do that?

A: It’s just something I wanted to do. And I did it for a charity called Sport Relief. I was running with the English flag, then the Welsh flag, then a Northern Ireland flag which I invented, then a Scottish flag. I’m going into politics in nine years, and it sort of said, “We are totally different people, but we’re also exactly the same, and we are a United Kingdom.” We used to kill each other, and now there’s an Englishman running with a Scottish flag. It was beautiful. And we raised about $2.7 million. Hopefully some kid somewhere will think, “Oh, here’s a transvestite who runs marathons, does gigs in French, plays Shoreline and the Hollywood Bowl. Sure, I’ll do that.” It’s a good thing to put out.

Q: It sounds like you’re pretty certain that you’ll go into politics. Do you have an exact plan?

A: Well, it was 10 years last year. Now it’s a year later, so I’m saying nine years. I’m going to try to pull an Al Franken. As opposed to an Al Sharpton, I guess.

Q: Will you be running for Parliament?

A: Probably mayor of London or Parliament. I am very positive on the European Union, so maybe the European Parliament would also appeal. I’m being advised that you can get a bit lost out there. The British press pays no attention to what they do.

Q: Are there any projects you’re working on that people don’t know about yet?

A: I’m doing a “Treasure Island” drama which is coming out next year in America. “Pirates of the Caribbean” had a sort of swashbuckling tone. We did a real down-and-dirty version. And a film called “Lost Christmas: An Urban Fairytale,” where I play a curious, somewhat mystical figure who seems to find things that people have lost. And apart from that I’ve got gigs to do in German, Russian and Arabic.

Q: Have you done shows in those languages before?

A: No. I don’t speak any Russian or Arabic. I do feel like now is the time that people from Europe should be reaching out to the Arabic people. It’s sort of my duty, in a way. I’d love to go back to Aden, Yemen, where I was born, and do a gig in Arabic.

Q: You played a part in David Mamet’s play “Race” recently. What do you think about his recent shift to the political right wing?

A: Well, I wish David wouldn’t be shifting. We had big arguments about football, of all things. The World Cup was on at the same time as we were rehearsing for “Race,” and I said that soccer can save the world. He scoffed at that. What I feel that soccer can do is redistribute dignity around the world. Teams from smaller countries go and win. It’s amazing. They don’t have to go to war. They don’t have to come up with a GDP that blows everyone out of the water.

Q: Have you planned your wardrobe for the San Francisco show yet?

A: I have. I’m not in girly mode at the moment. I’m in boy mode. I argue with people when they say, “You have to wear these clothes.” No. I don’t have to do anything. I can wear what I want.

Eddie Izzard: “Stripped on the Shore.” 8 p.m. Sat. Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View. $25.50-$131. www.livenation.com.