“The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” Jane Wagner’s one-woman Broadway play written for Lily Tomlin, has now been transferred to the screen, amplified but more or less intact. Though the experience of watching it is different, the show is pretty much all there.
On the screen as on the stage, “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” is a breezily convoluted, pertinent and sometimes hilarious rundown on the lives and times of a dozen characters. Mostly it’s a record of how these characters have interfaced (as some of them might say) with the last 20 years of women’s liberation, sexual revolution, dome houses, political commitment, having-it-all, Cuisinarts and two-timing husbands.
Up front there is Trudy, the gabby Times Square bag lady, who suspects that going crazy was the best thing that ever happened to her, though she wouldn’t recommend it for everybody. Trudy is a philosopher for prime time. “Going crazy,” she suggests, “could just be the evolutionary experience trying to hurry up mind expansion.”
She’s a “creative consultant” to a group of aliens doing research on earth, as well as the unwitting means by which all of Ms. Wagner’s other characters are drawn into a single, madly coherent whole.
The cast includes Agnus Angst, a runaway teen-ager and sometime performance artist; Kate, a rich lonely woman in need of just about anything; Brandy and Tina, Eighth Avenue hookers who are tired of being interviewed for graduate papers, and Lyn, Edie and Marge, friends from the early days of the women’s movement whose early aspirations have altered, in sometimes permanent ways.
he Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1977) is a one-woman stage show written by Jane Wagner and starring Lily Tomlin, which won the Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience and was turned into a film in 1991.
The film was directed by John Bailey and edited by Sally Menke, and stays true to the original stage performance, earning the Golden Space Needle Award at the Seattle International Film Festival. For her efforts on the film, Tomlin received a Funniest Actress in a Motion Picture American Comedy Awards, amongst other notable accolades.
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1991)
Directed by: John Bailey
Starring: Lily Tomlin, Clay Walker, Clay Walker
Screenplay by: Jane Wagner
Cinematography by: James Mathers
Film Editing by: Sally Menke
Art Direction by: Sonny King
Music by: Jerry Goodman, Alan Howarth
Distributed by: Orion Classics
Release Date: September 27, 1991
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