My grandma, JoAnne Astrow, likes to tell a story that her grandmother, Ottolie, apparently left her family in present-day Austria to become a circus entertainer. I have absolutely no idea if that is true because this woman also lied to my face about having slept with Sydney Poitier for 10 years. JoAnne has been an actress in commercials and plays, did improv shows in New York City in the 70s and was a touring standup comedian. She met my grandfather, Mark Lonow, at an acting studio in NYC. He was the stage manager for the first production of Hair, I think, before doing some acting roles and then ended up as co-owner of The Improv. My mom, Claudia Lonow, was Diana Fairgate on the show Knots Landing, was a touring standup, and then became was a showrunner multiple times over.
I lived with all of these people in a house until I went to college. With such eccentric characters around all the time, my mom’s work, and subsequently mine, became quite autobiographical. We had a lot of good material! My mom created show after show based on our life and came home and filmed me doing bits in the bathroom (always the bathroom for some reason) such as a completely improvised song as Moses’ mom from The Prince of Egypt sending her baby (a tupperware) down the river. I don’t know why I thought there needed to be a different song of that, that character already has a song doing that?!
After college, my mom and I tried and failed at several plots to team up and combine our talents: two podcasts we didn’t feel like seeing through; a couple of unpaid development deals; I was her assistant at one point until we both fired me because I didn’t want her to tell me what to do and neither did she; and a non-failed improv show called Mom-prov we’ve done at UCB a bunch of times where we improvise for as long as we can with my grandma. One time my grandma pulled her pants down in front of the audience. Another time (we think) she sort of forgot to wear pants entirely.
So when my mom told me her idea for a movie where she sees my recently deceased dad in every mirror, it wasn’t contentious or awkward that I decided to take that idea and make it about me (and into our upcoming film, D(e)AD!). She was occupied with another script of hers that is one of the best things I’ve ever read and I can’t believe hasn’t been made yet. We’re very used to having conversations about making each others’ ideas better, but we also still really hurt each others’ feelings in the process. I mean, she’s my mom. I’m gonna say something to her that’s unnecessarily mean for absolutely no reason and she’s going to say something she also definitely shouldn’t have but had already brought it up, only to go “No, nevermind,” to which I go, “Well now you brought it up, so I want to know…” and so on.
My mom met her partner, Jonathan Schmock (they’ve been together 25 years and never lived together, slay), when he was a part of the comedy duo The Funny Boys before he went on to work in a bunch of awesome movies and TV shows of his own as actor, director, writer, creator, what-have-you. (Fun fact: my grandma, my mom and my “step-dad” were all on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson at separate times!)
I feel like we’re all each others’ muses. Not to be TOO good at bringing it all full circle, but in our own way, we’re the modern version of my great-great grandma Ottolie’s Austrian circus and we’ve just adapted the family business.
We’re going to bring the family business to YOU very soon, with your help! D(e)ad needs a little funding to finish, so if you are able - we’d love your help funding a Kickstarter to finish the movie!
We’re launching soon… but before that, we’d love to get an idea of how many folks will be able to help us out. If you think you might back the project or just want to follow along, please go to this page and click “Notify me on Launch!” That will help us a lot as we make our nefarious—I mean artistic—family plans!
-Izzy
PS here is some amazing newsletter-specific fan art that is just amazing by Mado Chadebec on instagram!
