The Liza Minnelli duet? :cheer:

It's not really a duet Dan, She sings one line :lol:

 

Still lovely to hear her :wub:

Liza Minnelli’s having too much fun

 

 

You’d think that after nearly 50 years in show business that includes three Tony Awards, an Oscar, an Emmy and a special Grammy, as well as millions of records sold and audience members wowed, Liza Minnelli would be thinking about kicking back.

 

“I don’t know why!” she says. “Not as long as it’s this much fun.”

 

Listen to Minnelli’s voice in conversation; watch a recent clip of her performing on YouTube; heck, just look at a picture of her getting out of a car. Either she’s an even better actress than she gets credit for, or after two hip replacements, knee surgery, reported brushes with drugs and alcohol, tabloid-worthy marriages and the waxing and waning of her brand of brassy song-and-dance entertainment, she really is enjoying all of this.

 

“Oh God yes, or I wouldn’t do it.”

 

Minnelli’s latest project involves a tribute to her godmother, Kay Thompson, who was an arranger and vocal coach at MGM — “That’s how she met my parents, and that’s how she became my godmother.”

 

Thompson was also the author of the Eloise series of children’s books, the title character of whom was a thoroughly urban girl based on Minnelli. “She had the most spectacular nightclub act ever,” Minnelli says, and a section of her current live show, which she brings to Providence Saturday, is a replication of her godmother’s act. “It’s her music — her arrangements,” she says, as well as a few bits from Minnelli about what Thompson meant to her. “I never talk about my life, and then here I am doing it!”

 

Minnelli is also working on a televised version of Thompson’s show, which she describes as reminiscent of the Liza With a Z TV special that helped Minnelli make the transition from star to superstar, and will start filming in April.

 

Liza With a Z was restored and re-released on DVD in 2006, so a whole new generation can check out the Bob Fosse-directed live performance. Minnelli says that she had always had the footage, “but I didn’t know what to do with it.” For seven years, the restorer worked on the footage “and he just did a brilliant job. I said ‘I don’t have any money to pay you!,’ and he said ‘That’s OK.’ ”

 

When Minnelli saw the restored footage, she says, “I thought, ‘This is what Fosse wanted it to look like.’ Because you couldn’t see it well enough on the 16 [millimeter film]. The lights were blaring and you just couldn’t see it. Now it’s on film the way he wanted it on film and I’m just thrilled.”

 

The variety of Minnelli’s classic singing, dancing act is becoming a rarity in an entertainment world that is more specialized and more focused on the screen (large and small) than the stage. Minnelli agrees, but cites Michael Buble as an inheritor of her style. “He’s right up there, and he moves around, and he dances and sings and he’s wonderful!”

 

Not that she’s cranky about the modern state of entertainment. “I like a lot of things, I guess because I’m a dancer. I love rock ’n’ roll.” She recently guested on a track on The Black Parade, by the modern rock group My Chemical Romance.

 

How’d that come about? “They just called me! And I love them! The guy (singer and songwriter Gerard Way) is just great, and he’s so smart! That kid is really, really knowledgeable. It was fun!”

 

The death last year of her longtime drummer and musical director, Bill LaVorgna, left a void, even though he’s been succeeded in both roles by the “wonderful” Mike Berkowitz, who had subbed for LaVorgna in the past. “He’s a good friend, and the minute Pappy died, I called him.”

 

“There was nobody like Bill,” Minnelli remembers, not only for his musicality but his history. “I worked with him for 33 years, and he knew me since I was 11. He caught me driving when I was 13! And he never told my mom! I thought it was great.”

 

While friends from the old days are, well, getting older, Minnelli says there are still a few around. Three of the four dancers who portray Thompson’s cohort, the Williams Brothers, in the Thompson tribute knew Thompson herself. “It means a lot to all of us.”

 

While Minnelli has had plenty of success in the electronic media, live performance, the most work-intensive, high-energy way to build a career, is still her primary focus. And she wouldn’t have it any other way, even after all these years. “To me, walking through a show, or taking it easy through a show, is unheard of. Because all you have to do is take a look into the audience and you’ll find somebody who hasn’t seen you. You do the whole thing for them.”

 

And while she puts new songs in her act all the time — “I’m always changing it up because it keeps it fresh for me” — she says she never rolls her eyes when it’s time to haul out “Cabaret” or “New York, New York” again. “You find new ways to do them and you find new thoughts behind them. It’s the work as an actress, that part of it.” As an example, she cites “Come In From the Rain,” written for her by Melissa Manchester, which she recently reintroduced to her show. “You can just visualize what these two people have been through.”

 

Minnelli collapsed during a show in Sweden last month, but says “I feel fine now. Just wonderful,” and is looking forward to returning to Providence, where she has performed twice before and where her mother performed at the Loew’s Theatre, housed in what is now the Providence Performing Arts Center. “It’s a good audience. They appreciate what they see, and I always have a good time there.”

 

Still, it has to take it out of a 61-year-old, no? “It does, but I love it and I always have.”

 

Minnelli is the only Oscar winner (Cabaret in 1972) who is the child of two Oscar winners (Judy Garland for The Wizard of Oz in 1939 and Vicente Minnelli for Gigi in 1968), so while it seems as though there may not have been much of an alternative to the life she chose, she says that her early exposure to Hollywood’s workings left her wanting to be an ice skater. “Watching movies being made is really boring. Broadway and live performance is really exciting, but to hang out in a studio and watch people sitting around is dull. I thought, ‘I don’t want to do this!’ ” Seeing Bye Bye Birdie at age 13 “changed everything.”

 

And even now, the mix of singing, dancing, cracking wise and entertaining hasn’t lost its thrill.

 

“Oh yeah! With two false hips and a wired-up knee! And I still go!”

 

 

Funny how she relates to Gerard as a kid :o The guy is 30 :lol: