{"id":9626,"date":"2009-10-01T07:38:06","date_gmt":"2009-10-01T11:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9626"},"modified":"2015-06-22T08:11:51","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T12:11:51","slug":"carrie-fisher-wishful-drinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9626","title":{"rendered":"Carrie Fisher: “Wishful Drinking”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nLast night I went to see Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show Wishful Drinking<\/i> at Studio 54. (Side note: Ingrid Bergman’s daughter was there. Pia Lindstrom. Spitting image. And I heard her laughing at one point, and thought: Holy crap, that’s Ingrid’s laugh.) I’ve been a fan of Fisher’s writing for a long long time, and if you haven’t listened to her commentary track on the DVD of Postcards from the Edge<\/i>, all I can say is, you are missing out. She’s smart, hilarious, acerbic, and when she nails<\/i> a phrase, there is sometimes a moment of stunned recognition in an audience, like: wow. Let me just SIT in that for a minute. There were many moments like that in last night’s show, which was wonderful. I would find myself laughing uproariously, and then she would say something that yes, would be funny – because she just has a knack for putting things in a humorous way – but the underlying truth would be so searing that you could FEEL its impact in the audience. So we were laughing, but we were also nodding to ourselves thinking, “How true that is …”<\/p>\n

“Resentment,” she said, “is like feeding yourself<\/i> poison, and waiting for the other person to die.”<\/p>\n

There wasn’t a self-indulgent moment in the whole night, and that’s really saying something, when you consider the story she has to tell: addiction, mental illness, rehabs, not to mention her absolutely insane upbringing. She can see it all as funny. Not because it IS funny, but because she lived through it. And some things you just can’t make up.<\/p>\n

For example, she was diagnosed with manic-depression. A couple years later, someone told her that her picture was in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, used to illustrate bipolar. She was baffled by this. What? What picture of me is in there? Me in therapy? She eventually tracked down the journal, and saw the picture. There was a big screen at the back of the stage, where pictures were projected throughout the night, and suddenly there it was: On one side, an official-looking page of text: BIPOLAR blah blah blah … and on the opposite side? A sulky picture of her AS PRINCESS LEIA. Insane. She was a middle-aged woman when she got her diagnosis, and Princess Leia’s image was the one they chose. Hysterical. So bizarre. Like – who has a life like that?<\/p>\n

She is also a Pez Dispenser, which became a running gag throughout the night.<\/p>\n

“So not only am I a Pez Dispenser, but I am also used as an illustration in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.”<\/p>\n

I think my favorite part of the night was when she was trying to explain the insanity of her parents’ marriage and what went down back then. Her daughter, who is 17 years old, had a little flirtation with a boy who was somehow related to Mike Todd (Elizabeth Taylor’s husband who died in a plane crash). Now, if you are up to date in Hollywood lore, then you know that Eddie Fisher (Carrie’s father) went to “comfort” Elizabeth Taylor in her time of grieving, and he left his wife (Debbie Reynolds) within the week to be with Elizabeth.<\/p>\n

Carrie said, “He RACED to her side to comfort her. And then he comforted her from THE FRONT.”<\/p>\n

Carrie’s daughter came to her and said, confused, “Now … help me understand … am I related to this boy I have a crush on?”<\/p>\n

So began Carrie’s lecture to us on “Hollywood Inbreeding 101” (those words were projected onto the back screen). Down from the wings above came an enormous flow-chart, covered in familiar faces, with lines drawn from one face to the other. She got a big pointer, and then walked us through the whole thing. It was a masterpiece of self-deprecating and honest humor. There was audience participation, because there was so much repetition in the story (infidelity, divorce, remarriage – often to the same person – divorce again) – that Carrie would ask a specific audience member in the first row (her name was “Judith”) to finish her sentences. “So then the clouds came in, and Judith, what happened next?” Judith called out from her seat, “They got divorced.” Carrie went on, “But then they ran into each other again, they felt nostalgic, and then what happened, Judith?” Judith called out, “They got remarried.”<\/p>\n

The Hollywood Inbreeding lecture was my favorite part of the show. I could have watched her walking around with that pointer for an hour more.<\/p>\n

Her words about the insanity of Star Wars<\/i> were awesome, and the best part is is that George Lucas came to see the show in San Francisco. She tells the well-known story about how she was doing a costume fitting, and she went to show George the white dress that Leia wears. He looked her over and said, “You can’t wear a bra.” Carrie asked, “Why, George?” He said, “Because there’s no underwear in space.” Carrie was laughing, saying, “And he said it with such certainty – like he had BEEN in space, and he KNEW.” So George Lucas comes backstage after seeing the show, and the first thing he said was, “You know why there is no underwear in space?” (Not “good job, Carrie”, not “great show”) She said, “Why, George?” He said, “Because of zero gravity, you could be strangled by your own bra.”<\/p>\n

Makes perfect sense.<\/p>\n

Fisher was told she needed to lose 10 pounds when she got the role of Leia. “Please realize,” she said to us, “that I weighed 105 pounds at that point – and 90 of it was IN MY FACE. So what do you do when someone has a wide face? Naturally you give them a hairdo that MAKES IT EVEN WIDER.”<\/p>\n

The set for her show was like a comfy cozy living room, with big overstuffed chairs, and cans of soda that she would sip on throughout the night. She would curl up in the chair, as though she was in her own house. She also was basically wearing her pajamas. Silk men’s pajamas and a long bathrobe, which I just loved, because it took the edge off. It made it all seem perfectly normal, that she would be telling us intimate details of her life – because why wouldn’t she? She was in her pajamas.<\/p>\n

Her sensibility is inherently comic. That was probably her saving grace. She knows her demons very well, and she has given them room to breathe and express themselves. She doesn’t seem bitter, although her humor can be quite sharp.<\/p>\n

What I am left with, ultimately, is the impression that I just spent 2 hours in the presence of a really nice woman, someone I am glad I got to know. Just a little bit.<\/p>\n

And this may be strange to say, since I don’t know the woman, and have no stake in her life whatsoever.<\/p>\n

But watching her up there, stalking around with her pointer, cracking jokes about her crazy parents, and making an entire packed Broadway audience roar with laughter – I felt really proud of her. I thought: Good for you. Good for you.<\/p>\n


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\n(Pia Lindstrom. Yes. I am a member of the paparazzi)<\/p>\n

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