October 21, 1956– Carrie Fisher:
“I’m a product of Hollywood inbreeding. When two celebrities mate, something like me is the result”
I have loved her since her performance in Warren Beatty’s Shampoo (1975) with Beatty, Julie Christy, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant & Jack Warden. Of her screen debut Fisher writes:
“Bad memories stay with you when you get older. One movie which came about by accident was Shampoo. I became Lee Grant’s daughter, who sleeps with Warren Beatty- underage, everything. There was a bad word said in the script. I was supposed to say ‘Wanna fuck?’ in the movie, & my mother asked if I could say ‘Wanna screw?’ instead. My mother was against bad language. I remember that my mother once said: ‘That fucker’. Debbie Reynolds actually said the f-word to me.”
“I was street smart, but unfortunately the street was Rodeo Drive.”
Fisher started off her fabulous one-person show Wishful Drinking with a delightful story about finding a dead guy in her bed. Then she would ask the audience if they have any questions. Among some of the queries she was asked: “How did you know he was dead?” Fisher’s answer:
“Have you ever seen a dead body? They’re blue & yellow… which are the international colors of death… & they’re really bad conversationalists.”
Very few subjects are off limits with Fisher. She has written about the scandal of her superstar parents, Debbie Reynolds & Eddie Fisher, when her father ran off with Elizabeth Taylor; her brief marriage to Paul Simon; the fact that the father of her daughter left her for another man; & the morning she woke up next to the dead body of R. Gregory Stevens, a gay, Republican lobbyist, platonic friend who had overdosed in her bed. Fisher would be hard to beat in an anecdote competition.
Fisher may be most famous for my generation in her role as celestial royalty a long time ago in a galaxy far far away in the original Star Wars (1977) & its first 2 sequels.
“I think of my body as a side effect of my mind.”
Fisher came into her own, both on & off-screen in those nutty 1970s, but her career has never really stalled. Leaving famous Princess Leia behind, she published her first novel, Postcards From The Edge (1987), a bestselling semi-autobiographical tale of a show biz mother & her daughter with a drug habit. She later did the screenplay for the film version starring Meryl Streep standing in for Fisher & Shirley MacLaine as a thinly disguised Reynolds, deliciously directed by Mike Nichols.
“I don’t have a problem with drugs so much as I have a problem with sobriety.”
It makes me happy that she spun the scandal of her famous parents’ divorce into the TV film These Old Broads (2001), writing & serving as executive producer. It starred Reynolds with old nemesis Elizabeth Taylor, along with Joan Collins, & Shirley MacLaine. In this romp, Taylor’s character explains to Reynolds’ character that she was in an alcohol haze when she married Reynolds’ husband.
Among her film roles in all sorts of genres are supporting turns in The Blues Brothers (1980), Hannah And Her Sisters (1986) & When Harry Met Sally (1989), working for A-list directors John Landis, Woody Allen & Rob Reiner.
“As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people don’t.”
My own favorite is Fisher’s work opposite Laurence Olivier & Joanne Woodward in a made-for-TV version of gay playwright William Inge’s great Come Back, Little Sheba (1978). I also appreciate her singing, dancing Princess Leia in the demented TV special, Star Wars Holiday Special (1978), which appropriately, I watched while on mushrooms.
“Drugs made me feel more normal.”
A talented writer, Fisher has worked as a “script doctor” polishing screenplays for no credit, including Sister Act (1992), Outbreak (1995) & The Wedding Singer (1998). She turned her own life experiences into the books as Wishful Drinking (2009) & Shockaholic (2012), both big bestsellers.
Fisher has faced down her demons & she has survived. She has the courage & humor to share it all in her very funny books: the drug habits, the mental breakdowns, her relationship with her famous mother & her disastrous marriage to gay entertainment mogul Bryan Lourd with whom she has a daughter, Billie, currently appearing on Ryan Murphy‘s terrifically funny TV series Scream Queens on the Fox Network.
She writes that Lourd blamed her & her prescription drug abuse for making him gay:
“He told me later that I had turned him gay… by taking codeine. I said: ‘You know, I never read that warning on the label.’ I thought it said ‘heavy machinery,’ not homosexuality, it turns out I could have been driving those tractors all along!’ “
In just a few weeks Fisher returns as Princess Leia Organa in the film franchise as that made her famous. Fanboys & fangirls must be dizzy with excitement to line up for J.J. Abram‘s special reboot Star Wars: Episode VII along with original costars Harrison Ford & Mark Hamill. I am not a big fan of the most popular series in film history, having only seen the original when it first opened in 1977. I like to think that in the new one, Princess Leia is now an intergalactic bag-lady.
“I do believe you’re only as sick as your secrets. If that’s true, I’m just really healthy.”
Fisher gives good Tweets, I follow her on Twitter & this is one of my faves:
“If you don’t like me please suck my big bovine tiny dancer cock”.
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