Chris Lemmon talks about memoir for his father Jack Lemmon [Interview]

Chris Lemmon is a multi-talented actor, producer and author who just happens to be the son of the famous actor Jack Lemmon. In 2006, Chris wrote A Twist of Lemmon, a memoir about life with his father. He has continued to pay tribute to his father by writing a stage show based on the memoir, as well as a CD of original piano pieces inspired by the book.

TheCelebrityCafe: For Stone Manor Productions, it shows that you’re working on so many things in so many mediums. So which one are you more comfortable with?

Chris Lemmon: Well, all of them actually. I enjoy hopefully being a Renaissance man or a jack-of-all-trades. I’ll take either one. But we just finished a documentary, which I’m extremely proud of. I loved doing the documentary work, because it’s... you know. I always try to...

TCC: That was my next question, by the way. About, the Day By Day documentary?

CL: Yeah... I always try to bring as much positive to the world as I possibly can and I really thought was Day By Day a poignant subject that hasn’t been explored all that much. The whole aspect of the siblings of sick brothers and sisters and how that effects them and their lives and their interactions with the family... and in some cases where the tragically children die because of these cases...and the whole aspect of starting with the negativity of that situation and evolving into a place of understanding and acceptance and going a step further into wanting to help other children with other illness and I think it’s just terrific subject matter. And we’re very proud of how the documentary turned out. We just completed it a couple of weeks ago and it’s just fabulous. So obviously I’ll be standing behind it and hopefully we’ll see good things come out of it and get a good distributor attached to it. So, I love doing documentaries. You know, my first one was with Sony...based on my father about the life and times with my father. That was a book I am very proud of and remain so until this day. So, there’s another project.

Actually, we just finished cutting an album of all of my music. These are piano pieces I’ve written over the years.

TCC: Yeah...I’ve never heard of a memoir inspiring an album.

CL: ...And the album turning around and inspiring a one man play! That’s our newest project we’re just launching now. I think we just had our fourth or fifth performance in a week or two with a few more in a week or two. So, it’s just starting to get momentum and I’m hoping to follow the same kind of performance model that Carrie Fisher did with her terrific one person show. It’s based on the book and I’m extremely proud of it. It’s just been a wonderful undertaking and we’re getting wonderful reactions, so it’s all good.

Then we have our little dream projects....my film, Publicity Stunt, which is maybe the most important. I’ve been trying to get made for years now. But there’s a $10 million budget and it’s not easy to get people to give you $10 million these days. But it remains a real pet project. I finally got Charlie Matthau, a buddy of mine, to get the budget.

TCC: Is Publicity Stunt still going to be directed by Joel Zwick [who directed My Big Fat Greek Wedding among others]?

CL: No. He was originally attached to it, but then he got busy with his Broadway project. He is a dear friend...we really worked together closely and he made a huge contribution to it, but then he became busy with the musical he’s developing of Sleepless In Seattle.... So, he had to bow out and that’s when I turned to Charlie Matthau and said, ‘Hey, this is just crazy. The two of us should be working together and I think you’re just perfect, so let’s get something going.’ So Charlie came on board. This business is just so frustrating, you know and we were an eye blink away from signing the dotted line and getting the financing. Then the financial world went kahootsies and our investors just backed off. So, we still have the whole package together. Hopefully somebody gets smart because it’s a really classy comedy like Some Like It Hot or [It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World] and we haven’t seen something like that in a while.

TCC: Especially considering this summer, where you have so many R-rated comedies that are playing at the box office...

CL: Hey, nothing against them. I think they’re really good. It’s just that this is an area of opportunity that hasn’t been utilized for quite a while... Somebody’s going to be smart and make it one of these days. In the meantime, I’ve having a great time doing all the other stuff.

TCC: You told me before the audience’s response has been great for the shows.

CL: Yeah, a standing ovation the other night at the last performance. So I got no complaints. Listen, it’s just, you know it’s a wonderful subject matter. It’s the reason the book was published...its’ not because it’s about Jack Lemmon. I’m sure that didn’t hurt, but it’s about the relationship of a father and son. A very unique relationship, obviously because it was Jack Lemmon. It’s universal in so many aspect. People come up to me after the shows or at the book signings I used to do and say ‘I had the same thing happen to me.’ you know the father and son relationship is very enigmatic....an amazing thing. That’s what the book is about. It jsut so happens the father is Jack and the son is me. It’s a story that I translated to the stage show and the music that tells the same story, too. It’s really my life journey...it’s an attempt to answer that one ethereal question: What is it like to be Jack Lemmon’s son? How does any son answer that question?

TCC: Do you tell the same stories every night or do you like to change it up a bit?

CL: No, this is a scripted piece. It’s a one man show that needs to be tight and it needs to move. You know, I can’t just bulls**t. That’s all fine and well at a book signing. This is not an improv.

TCC: I saw a clip from your show. You impersonate a lot of people in Jack’s life. Do you like to imitate your father or the other people in his life, like [Walter] Matthau?

CL: As far as imitating my father, I’d call that capturing his voice and anytime I’m going to lapse into my father saying something, well, my father’s just going to come out of me and I just happen to sound so much like him that is’s a pretty damn good imitation. But, as far as imitating people, yeah...I imitate a lot of people. My very favorite is, of course, Walter Matthau and I tell a lot of Matthau stories... Of course, I have to talk about Matthau, he was my father’s illegitimate brother.

TCC: Yeah, it’s great to see in stuff like The Fortune Cookie where the report between the two of them...it’s almost impossible to believe they’d never been in a movie before that.

CL: Yeah, it was magical. And I tell a story about The Fortune Cookie, too. You know, Walter got sick just before they started filming. You know I was talking about that trust - a lot of friendship is based on trust. And they had such wonderful trust with each other and Walter was in the hospital and ended up calling my father in to take an envelope to pay off his bookie... That’s just two weeks into their friendship...It was the beginning of a true love affair!

TCC: You and your wife [Gina Raymond] are involved with the American Cancer Society. Could you talk a little bit about that?

CL: Both my parents died of cancer, so it’s obviously had an enormous impact on my life. The book deals a great deal with cancer and how it effected me. And quite honestly, I don’t think there’s not a single person on the face of the earth who hasn’t been effected by cancer. So, it’s an insidious disease and I feel that I have a right to want to wage a personal war against it since it took away two of the most important people in my life. It took my mother at the age of 62... It’s a horrible disease that has no business doing what it does. I just want to honor those incredible people who are making cancer a memory. Something our children will be able to say ‘Hey, do you remember that thing called cancer?’ instead of having to look down on their loved ones dying in front of them. And if you’ve ever been through someone who is dying of cancer, it is not a good thing. I mean, my father’s death took a year and that’s where the book was born. Once it came out, I knew I could focus my efforts on this battle. I also felt that I should affiliate with one of organizations and really be able to focus my efforts. That’s why I chose the American Cancer Society and why [they] chose us. We’ve entered into this wonderful partnership together. Gina and I both serve on the external advisory board of the ACS and the ambassadors for the northeast division. We can go places and spread the word and give our talents...what little we can give and convince people to give back. These are the people that are supporting what really is going to cure cancer one of these days...One of our greatest friends is Dr. Richard Edelson, who is the head of the Yale Cancer Research Center. This is the guy that literally invented y-cells...it could literally be a cure for leukemia. We are getting that close... It’s all great stuff. It gives us great personal satisfaction to be able to use our selves to endorse not just the ACS, but any fight against cancer.