The life of a character actor can be a fairly anonymous one, but there’s something about Stephen Tobolowsky’s malleable visage — ranging from plaintive to droll — that earns him an easy place in your memory. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he’s been stealing scenes and memorably serving stories since first parlaying his education in theater at the University of Illinois into a string of television roles in the mid-1980s. Movies soon consistently followed, both comedic and dramatic work, and from Groundhog’s Day (“Phil? It’s Ned… Ned Ryerson!”), Mississippi Burning and Spaceballs to Memento, Sneakers and Single White Female, among many others, Tobolowsky has become a go-to guy for all sorts of bit parts officious, unctuous, exasperating and craven. In the deliciously entertaining Stephen Tobolowsky’s Birthday Party, though, he takes center stage as never before.



Directed by good friend Robert Brinkmann (cinematographer on the black-and-white segments of U2’s concert doc Rattle and Hum, and Mena Suvari’s ex-husband), the movie is a cinema verité slice-of-life which finds Tobolowsky holding forth in absorbing, good-naturedly verbose style with all sorts of stories and anecdotes from his life. It was shot in simple, straightforward fashion to mark the real-life occasion of its subject’s 54th birthday celebration, but the idea came much before that, from Tobolowsky’s esteemed status as a great party guest.

“The genesis was 17 years ago, with Coronas in hand, in my kitchen,” recalls Tobolowsky, “with me telling stories about being held hostage at shotgun (one of the movie’s best bits) and other things that had happened to me, and everyone standing around laughing. Robert immediately said it would make a great idea for a movie. So it only took 15 years to do it. I think one of the other people in the kitchen was a woman who became a producer at NPR, and years later she asked me to write one of these stories down and perform it live on the radio. And that forced me to put pen to paper, because the expectation of performance is much different in a kitchen… than when people are paying $25 bucks a head on stage to see someone on stage read a story. They expect professionalism at that rate, and because it was successful on the radio I had the confidence to think that Robert’s idea might work on film.”

The movie holds sway because of Tobolowsky’s gift as a beautiful storyteller, a weaver of colorful detail, but also because the tales are all so relatable. Well, almost all of them — maybe not the one about the evening with the stripper spent looking through her high school yearbook. “Robert wanted lots of Hollywood-type stories,” says Tobolowsky, who admits he has a few, some of which are included here, “but the thing that I felt and still maintain is that stories that are not about film or celebrities or Hollywood figures are ultimately more exciting, because they have a chance to be more universal and consequently more powerful. Some of the strongest memories I have are not necessarily of Hollywood dinner parties, but more of evenings on front porches where people would tell me stories about their lives, or talking with the trucker at 3 a.m. Those seem to be the ones that stick with me.”

Despite the movie’s sometimes frank diversions into adult arenas, Tobolowsky has had no problems sharing it with his two boys, ages 12 and 17. Surprisingly, he says, they both loved it. “My oldest son started inviting groups of friends over, I guess because they couldn’t believe some of the sex and drugs stories,” he says with a laugh. “I try to be truthful about everything,” he continues. “What I tell them is that, at my ripe old age now, I don’t know a single soul who wishes they had smoked an extra reefer as opposed to read another book. I haven’t done drugs in years and years and years, and I regret the amount of time that I wasted doing them, but we all wish that we had used that time in a more valuable way. That’s what I tell them.”

Both for those who’ve sparked to Tobolowsky’s rich performances over the years or merely sort of recognize him, his Birthday Party is a wonderful and funny insight into the man behind the poker-face. With stories like these, you won’t feel bad about skipping out on your ex-roommate’s lame party. For more information, visit www.STBPmovie.com.