BackTalk: John Lithgow

As a performer, you've done everything. Do you prefer TV, movies, singing, or the stage? I would say the Broadway theater - it's so much at the heart of things. But I just signed on to do a new sitcom on NBC, Twenty Good Years, and it's incredibly fun. We're going to have a ball on that show. It's a real treat to vary my diet. I'm just trying to stay curious, you know?

And you've got a role in the upcoming movie Dreamgirls? What do you think of that?! It's a small, one-day part as a Hollywood producer. I have this David Crosby hair. It will be out later this year - it's a big Christmas film.

What are some of your favorite movies? I love David Lean's films - I would put Bridge on the River Kwai in there. Chinatown, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove - they're classics you can watch over and over again. Of the more recent films, I saw a whole rash of small, independent ones this past year that were spectacular - Capote, Good Night, and Good Luck, and that Woody Allen film, Match Point. That's the kind of movie they just don't make anymore. You see something like that and it restores your faith.

What about Sideways? Sideways was actually our reference point for the new sitcom. It's about how unlikely some friendships are. You've got two guys who are absolutely friends for life, but so unlike each other, so combative and contentious, and yet they depend on each other. And in their way, they love each other. It's a wild comedy about friendship where one looks at the other and says, "Why are we even friends?"

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