Tig Notaro Had a Hilarious Run-In With Patti Smith, Who Inspired Her Character in Am I OK?

Tig Notaro plays a mystical, free-spirited woman who runs an outdoor camp for hammock lovers in her Sundance feature Am I OK? which she co-directed with Stephanie Allynne. The inspiration for Notaro’s character, Sheila, was none other than the rock n’ roll poetess Patti Smith — and Notaro got a chance to tell her that when she ran into Smith at a party recently.

“I was trying to channel Patti Smith. And it’s funny because I went to the Tribeca Film Festival, and Patti Smith was at the party,” Notaro said during a Q&A after the premiere of Am I OK? on Monday at Sundance. “I turned to the woman that I was sitting next to and I said, Oh my gosh, there’s Patti Smith. I’m gonna go talk to her and tell her that my character in this film was — she was my inspiration.”

Little did Notaro know, her night was about to get a lot more interesting.

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“The woman was like, ‘Oh, no, no, you can’t just go up to Patti Smith. She’s not that kind of person. You have to have an introduction. She can be tricky.’ And this woman got distracted, and I said, ‘It’ll be fine. I’ll just go up to Patti Smith and just say hello,’ and I did,” Notaro said. “And she was very much like, ‘I gotta go. What do you need?’ And I was like, ‘I just want to show you a picture. I did a movie and you were the inspiration for my character,’ and I showed her the picture and she stared at it, and she went, ‘Okay, what?’ And then she said, ‘Wait, that’s not me.’ And I said, ‘No, it’s me. That’s why I thought it was kind of — I wanted to show you because I thought it was pretty crazy how much [we look alike.]'”

“She loosened up a little bit in a moment, but it was Patti Smith,” Notaro laughed.

Am I OK? stars Dakota Johnson as Lucy, a 32-year-old woman coming out as a lesbian for the first time, and Sonoya Mizuno as Jane, Lucy’s best friend who gets an opportunity to leave Los Angeles and move home to London, throwing she and Lucy’s friendship into chaos.

Main Image: Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno appear in AM I OK? by Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne, an official selection of the Premieres section at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Emily Knecht.