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.

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.