Comedian Harrison breaks out in grounded role
Even from the recent virtual year of Sundance, there are still bound to be breakout performances and newly minted stars-to-be. A solid bet for that distinction is Patti Harrison, one of the leads in the grounded comedy “Together Together.”
Written and directed by Nikole Beckwith, the film stars Harrison as Anna, a 20-something woman who is hired as a surrogate by a 40-something single man (Ed Helms). As the pregnancy progresses the two loners soon strike up an unlikely friendship.
The sensitive earnestness of her performance in “Together Together” is something new from Harrison, who first made a name for herself as an acerbic, absurdist stand-up comedian. She has appeared on television shows such as “High Maintenance,” “Broad City” and “Shrill” and was also in the 2018 film “A Simple Favor” and worked as a writer on the series “Big Mouth” and “Dispatches From Elsewhere.”
This interview with Harrison has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: Do you consider yourself more of a comedian, an actor or just sort of an all-purpose performer?
A: I think I identify as a comedian before kind of anything else. Before I identify as a person, as a human being with empathy. I would say that in terms of tracking the career paths of a lot of comedians, it’s an interesting one because there’s so many different ways to do it. … It is a very cool kind of open-ended place to enter because I don’t know if I ever really imagined myself working in a writers room or acting in that capacity.
I’ve been pretty open
to just seeing what my opportunities are and what comes my way. And this was something that I definitely hadn’t imagined happening. I mean, I think everyone has those weird side fantasies of, “What if one day I did something more dramatic?” People in creative industries have these adjacent creative urges, “But what if I became a musician? What if I became a painter?” I think it kind of fell under that.
Q: Do you see the performance in the movie as essentially a dramatic one?
A: I think it’s because I have this bias of me being somewhat aware of myself and knowing myself, that it’s way more grounded and anchored in an emotional drive and purpose and the story that it’s telling than anything I write for myself. A lot of the stuff that I want to create personally
is usually pretty absurd or silly comedy stuff.
So this does feel — even though I understand that it is a comedy, a lot of the goofier moments in the movie don’t come from Anna’s character necessarily. It comes from these orbiting characters like Julio Torres or Greta Titelman or Anna Konkle coming in. And they have these opportunities to add this levity and a fun chemistry. But I think the purpose is more nuanced than anything I ever aspired to do as a comedian, as someone who identifies as a silly comedian.
Q: Was it hard for you to adjust to what this role needed?
A: It was a weird adjustment. Any time I get something sent to me I just assume they want something very silly. I get typecast as kind of … a young millennial assistant. I don’t know if millennial is young
anymore.
At first, I was very hesitant about the tone and what (Nikole) specifically wanted me to be able to deliver to it. And I’m transgender. Is this like a stunt casting thing? There were all these questions because we hadn’t met before. And then when we did meet initially, it was like a beautiful first date. I feel like the story of the movie, the skeleton of the movie is kind of the skeleton of my friendship with Nikole now. Where I’m platonically deeply in love with her.
Q: As a trans performer, to be cast in a cisgender role where your transness is not part of the role, what does that mean to you?
A: I think that it can be looked at in probably a pretty heady way, if you think about just all of the layers of it, but I think it was a lot simpler than that.
It’s been interesting to
think about why I started trying to make stuff, do comedy and act and write. And a lot of the stuff that I found personally interesting to write and create was stuff that didn’t have to do with me being trans. Because for me, getting to do comedy or getting this creative outlet served as an escape to not think about this one lens that I’ve been pigeonholed in for this part of my life and that people have a hard time seeing me outside of — to see me as a fully fleshed-out person.
Everything else that I’ve ever filmed I’ve had to shoot maybe two or three days a week, ’cause I’m in a scene or two, I’m a supporting character. So it’s really fun and breezy, and I just get to fly in and be silly and leave. But this was a lot more work, and it was in this character who wasn’t trans, and it’s a plot point the movie depends on, the fact that this character is cis. But it really helped. I was focusing on anything else for a full month than me thinking about being trans, and it was just a lot of work, and it took me out of this headspace. I was pretty tired, but I think it was a good kind of tired.
This movie specifically felt really special because it was something that I never really thought I was going to get to do. And when I say that, I just didn’t think I’d be playing a pregnant woman in a movie that is earnest. And I want there to be more opportunities for marginalized people who are in the creative industries. Because I do think representation is really important.
I know that a lot of people say that, but not all representation is good, and we need good representation. And that means letting people play roles outside of what their boxes are, what society tells them their boxes are. So this really felt like that for me.
President Joe Biden has challenged those who oppose the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion bill disingenuously dubbed “COVID relief,” or the more deceitful “American Rescue Plan.”
“What would they have me cut?” he asks. Challenge accepted.
Even The Washington Post editorial board thinks the spending is too much and misdirected: “...concerns about the bill’s costs are growing across the political spectrum.”
With COVID-19 cases, hospital admissions and deaths decreasing, with vaccines promised to be widely available to the general public by July, and with possible herd immunity coming soon, the best stimulus to the economy would be to open up businesses, allowing people to return to work while practicing health and safety measures.
Many who received money from the government the last stimulus go-round banked the checks and spent little or none of it.
The Post editorial also notes that money targeted to state and local governments don’t need it. It references Moody’s Analytics examination of state finances, which “shows that 31 states have enough money ‘to fully absorb the economic stress of COVID-19’ without substantial budget cuts or tax increases.”
That’s just for starters. Pork doesn’t even begin to describe the unrelated COVID-19 spending.
As The Wall Street Journal has noted, most of the House bill has less to do with the virus and more to do with paying lobbyists and other groups favorable to Democrats.
There’s another $7.2 billion for paycheck protection, which again would be less expensive and possibly unnecessary if businesses were allowed to reopen. When this money runs out and businesses are still mostly closed will there be more spending, adding to the already unsustainable debt?
There’s $86 billion to rescue 185 pension plans, which, as the Journal notes, have been “chronically underfunded due to lax federal standards and accounting rules. Yet the bailout comes with no real reform.”
That’s the thing about so many government programs. They never have to fix a problem, only demonstrate good intentions so politicians can save their careers.
Public elementary and secondary schools, most of which remain closed thanks to teachers unions that wish to extract even more money for themselves, without returning to classrooms, are targeted to receive $129 billion. Schools don’t have to reopen to get the money, despite the science, which Biden promised to rely on, that says young children are least likely to become infected. The Congressional Budget Office has said that Congress previously authorized $113 billion for schools, but that most of that money has not been spent.
There’s plenty more, including massive amounts of cash for programs favored by Democrats.
In addition to Planned Parenthood, notes the Journal, included are billions to defray premiums for the Affordable Care Act, $39 billion for child care, $30 billion for public transit agencies, the $15 an hour minimum wage, which may lead to more layoffs and fewer hires, $1.5 billion for AMTRAK, a bridge to Canada (not to be confused with Alaska’s notorious “bridge to nowhere” some years ago), and as the CBO notes, “$500 billion grants to fund activities related to the arts, humanities, libraries and museums and Native American language preservation.”
If not properly cooked, pork can be infected with trichinosis, a disease caused by a small parasitic worm. That seems a good analogy when it comes to the “parasitic” congressional worms infecting our economy with nonstop spending of money we don’t have and borrowing that can’t continue without causing serious economic harm.
Nations of the past have not been able to survive massive debt. What makes us think we can?