Moment by Moment (1978) - the disastrous film teaming of John Travolta and Lily Tomlin

2019, New Yorker critic Richard Brody wrote a positive defense of the film, labeling it as one with "a tonal ambiguity to the bumptious romantic pursuit that follows, a surprisingly tremulous and fragile air, which may be what dismayed critics who were expecting a more conventional drama."

Trailer

Its worst sin is being boring. I love Lily and have seen pretty much every movie she’s done but I’ve never been able to make it through this

That trailer has no scenes from the film!

Karina Longworth, the host of You Must Remember This, is a fan of it too.

I agree that it’s dull but it’s not risible except for the fact that Travolta’s character’s name is “Strip.”

Matching hairstyles is never a good idea. See Jane Fonda and Kris Kristofferson in rollover.

I’ve always been morbidly curious about seeing this, but it’s not streaming anywhere, apparently.

OP- Lesbo and a Homo just don’t click.

R5 I can’t stand that women’s voice.

Just watch this and mercifully save yourself from the other 95 minutes.

Lily Tomlin looks so much like his real life sister, Ellen Travolta. It makes the romance seem kinda awkward. Well that and the gay stuff.

At least this TV spot has scenes from the film.

R7 - it's on Internet Archive.

I couldn’t even get through more than three minutes of R10’s clip. It was awful. So stilted. So awkward. Zero chemistry.

I’d never seen that trailer (R2). But it seems like a promo for soft-core porn.

What surprises me is that this mess was directed by Lily’s (very) long term partner. Not because it’s so awful, but what made her think anyone would buy this romance?

In my gut I feel Lily hated making this movie. In the clips she just seems so… “un-present.”

^^^^^ I should have said wife. They’re married. Been together 54 years!

I can't believe Lily gets top billing over John.

A great drinking game is to take a sip every time Lily sighs.

[quote]R14 In the clips she just seems so… “un-present.”

I think her character’s addicted to Valium?

I only made it through 7 minutes of that horrendous video at R10.

It felt Iike getting hit with a tranquilizer dart.

The theme song is sung by Yvonne Elliman.

WHET Yvonne?

Yvonne says hi.

Yvonne looks really good for her age.

More info on the tour.

Lily plays a woman who has trouble sleeping but all she has to do is watch the movie and she'll zonk right out.

I remember Valerie Harper saying in a newspaper interview (promoting the movie 'Chapter 2' in 1979) that she had auditioned for the role that Tomlin got. She was contracted to her last season of 'Rhoda' (1978-79) and wanted to transition to movies after that. From what others were saying, she believed she had the role and even cleared her schedule that Spring during the 'Rhoda' hiatus to be available for filming (April - July, 1978). She found out in the trade papers a week or two before filming that Tomlin got the role, instead. Through some contacts she made, her audition led to an audition for 'Chapter Two' several months later, and she got that role, instead. (Her movie career was rather brief, and she went back to TV a few years after).

I can't imagine that anyone else would have been considered for the female lead besides Tomlin as Wagner wrote the screenplay and was the director and they were already partners at that point for many years.

R26 Maybe they brought other actresses in to audition, just to please Stigwood or the studio ? (I can't recall if she wrote about this in her memoir from 10 years ago). I think Harper may have been better, actually.

I haven't thought about that film since God was a boy. It never made sense, even then, and for awhile it hurt both their careers. I have found that Travolta, for the most part, has very little chemistry on screen with his female co-stars. Also Lily is far too smart and talented to lower herself to this bullshit.

This was about Lily sacrificing her own creative wants and desires in order to give the overshadowed Jane a chance.

Tomlin had been Oscar nominated for playing a straight lady having an affair in NASHVILLE. So maybe that was the jumping off point for the plot, hoping lightning would strike twice?

I wish Sandy Duncan had played Lily's role. She had a spark of pizzazz that would have lit up that dull script like a bonfire.

No I think Sandy Dennis would've been better.

I think Dennis Weaver would have been better.

[quote](Her movie career was rather brief, and she went back to TV a few years after).

Valerie lost weight and dyed her hair blonde to do movies like Chapter Two and the putrid Last Married Couple in America. It's clear she wanted to get as far away from the Rhoda persona as possible but it didn't take with the public. She lost her individuality.

Travolta and her would have been an interesting pairing though.

R29 She wasn't very believable as a straight lady having an affair in "Nashville" either.

Or, as a black gospel choir leader.

R33 I forgot about LMCIA. I do remember she got very good reviews for her supporting role in C2. She hired fitness instructor Tony Cacciotti to 'look her best' at age 40, in C2. I'm sure the blonde hair also convinced her she was 'sexier' than her 'Rhoda' days. (He then became her manager).

[quote]No I think Sandy Dennis would've been better.

Maybe Sandy Baron?

WHAT ABOUT ME??

It was so awful that I left the theater before it was over. I got sideswiped by a drunk driver on my way home. I hate that movie.

R11 for years I thought Lily Tomlin had made a cameo as a waitress in Grease

Casting Valerie Harper makes as much sense as casting as Karen Lynn Gorney.

This is like Lily's Friendly Fire. A woman known for broad comedy plays it straight and humorless to show her supposed acting range.

One of Lily's comic characters was The Tasteful Lady, a somewhat prudish and prissy, conservatively dressed middle-aged apolitical woman who dispenses advice on gracious living and a life of elegance. Lily is playing the same type here just without the highfalutin voice.

They should have gotten Paul Lynde to play her husband to complete the gay trifecta.

[quote] Karen Lynn Gorney.

Oy. I remember an old article about her in PEOPLE at the time Saturday Night Fever was released. It tried hard to make her seem like the next it girl.

They showed a picture of her, quite plump, as her character Tara from All My Children. But she was all skinny for Saturday Nigjt Fever. Her response to an elderly relative who asked about the drastic weight loss, "It's the heroin, Auntie!"

Probably the cocaine.

Then she disappeared. Only to returnto her soap about 15 years later, looking like Ruth Gordon in a Mortici Addams wig

R42=Donna Pescow

Travolta had signed a 3-picture deal with Robert Stigwood. Saturday Night Fever and Grease were hits. This was the 3rd and referred to in a documentary I saw as the one we don't talk about.

That RSO logo usually meant I'd hate it

John is quite charming and sexy in the opening scenes so her resistance to him creates an unintentional subtext that there is more going on than just Lily being a married woman.

It should have been played by David Arquette's grandfather Charlie Weaver.

Jane Wagner should have cast someone other than Lily if she wanted to strike out on her own. But I guess no one would have hired Jane without Lily. It's a catch 22.

It was a terrible movie just boring and negative chemistry between the two of them.

"You need something to mellow you out. You're so uptight."

For those who have seen it would it have worked with different leads? Was the story interesting enough on its own?

R51. You think I remember the plot from a boring movie I saw 47 years ago?

She offers him some home-cooked chicken. He wants to give a piece to her dog but she says no. Then after he leaves, she gives a piece to the dog.

I was suprised the kept in the line where Travolta tells her that her face smells like pussy.

Here, at 12:56, Fran Lebowitz claims she was approached to write it.

And, I believe she makes the world's first Travolta is gay joke. She calls Tomlin and Travolta a "blazing duo." Haha. Letterman is clearly clued in as he leaves to topic rather quickly.

It was painful to watch. Beyond boring and not believable then when we didn't know what we know now about the leads' sexual orientations!

There's a similar subplot in Robert Altman's Nashville with Lily and hot as fuck Keith Carradine. I'm guessing Moment by Moment was inspired by it. Or, at least the casting of Tomlin was.

Two films. Same basic premise: Lily Tomlin hooks up with a younger man. One is brilliant, layered, and quietly devastating (Nashville, 1975). The other is a slow-motion car crash in a fog of cologne and bad dialogue (Moment by Moment, 1978). Let’s unpack.

In Nashville, Tomlin plays Linnea, a married gospel singer with deaf children and a closet full of repressed desire. Enter Keith Carradine as Tom, a narcissistic folk singer with a guitar and zero moral compass. They share one night together—and it's electric. Not because it's romantic (it's not), but because it feels real. Painfully so. These are two lonely, complex adults momentarily colliding. No violins, no swelling music. Just subtext, heartbreak, and a devastating silent cry from Lily at the end. Altman knew what he was doing.

Now cut to Moment by Moment. Lily again, but this time she's Trisha, a rich, bored Beverly Hills housewife who falls for a leather-jacketed drifter played by—brace yourself—John Travolta. Yes, that John Travolta, still smelling of Grease and Brut, trying to play a soulful beach bum named “Strip.” It’s supposed to be steamy. It’s supposed to be deep. It’s neither. It’s awkward, stiff, and unintentionally hilarious. The kind of movie that makes you want to peel your skin off from secondhand embarrassment.

Why does one work and the other flop like a dying fish?

1. Chemistry: Tomlin and Carradine smolder in that low-key, adult way. Tomlin and Travolta? Like watching a cactus fall in love with a dolphin.

2. Dialogue: Altman let the actors breathe. In Moment by Moment, they deliver lines like, “You’re not just a kid in a leather jacket, are you?” with all the sensuality of a tax audit.

3. Tone: Nashville is subtle and self-aware. Moment by Moment thinks it’s a Bergman film but plays like a very special episode of The Love Boat: Existential Edition.

4. Power dynamics: In Nashville, Tomlin’s Linnea knows exactly what she’s doing. In Moment by Moment, Trisha seems confused, and not in a “finding herself” way—in a “Did she hit her head before this scene?” kind of way.

Look, I love Lily. She’s a genius. But Moment by Moment is what happens when two people with no sexual tension are forced to make goo-goo eyes for 90 minutes while the camera tries desperately to convince us something profound is happening. Spoiler: it’s not.

Moment by Moment wants to be a bold, intimate character study. Instead, it’s a camp classic with foggy beach shots, sweaty close-ups, and Travolta giving his best “sad boy” while Lily looks like she’d rather be doing stand-up. Meanwhile, Nashville gives you one devastating subplot in a mosaic of American dysfunction—and somehow, in five minutes, makes you feel more than Moment by Moment does in its entire runtime.

Discuss.

If only they'd just been honest and called it Homoment By Homoment.

They should've done a comedy together!

Well, it is factual to say that there was one man and one lady sharing top billing.

I like Lily but I would have preferred that Louise Fletcher had played the role in Nashville as originally intended; it was written with/for her. Fletcher was the daughter of deaf parents.

She would have been a lot more believable in that bed scene with Keith Carradine.

R61 I thought the dynamic between Lily and Keith Carradine was very interesting. This woman's a gospel singer with deaf children- living a pretty selfless life. And here she's allowing herself to indulge... I don't know, it worked for me. Though im sure Fletcher would've been interesting too.

So far in my viewing Jane Wagner has had John in a speedo and his hairy body wet and shown off after swimming whereas Lily has been covered in a caftan.

None of them probably could not have saved it but an older actress that had some sensuality and sex appeal could’ve made it a bit more interesting. Angie Dickinson, Bridget Bardot, Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway, or Catherine Denueve would’ve added some realistic sex appeal that Lily was lacking.

Lily participated in the tv specials promoting Saturday night fever and grease that Robert Stigwood/RSO records put together. I think she was stigwoods date at one of the premiers.

Jane could have cast Anne Bancroft or Shirley MacLaine who were both hot after The Turning Point. Plus they were both hilarious when playing rich bitches because it seemed so against their natures.