Icon #20 - Carrie Fisher: She Did It All For The Wookie

In this episode of The Iconograph, Jack and special guest co-host Jamie Loftus are joined by writer/comedian Caitlin Durante to talk about THE script doctor of the 90s:

Carrie Fisher!

They'll explore her famous (and weird) parents, her legendary parties, her many burned bridges and much more!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Rolling. All right, here we go, roll limbroll lim roll,
lim roll, limb the chocolate starfish.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Water.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
I don't really know why I'm out of my desk.
Holy shit, so fucking confused. Hello the Internet and welcome.
Is that is my intro kind of limp biscuity. I'm
realizing we're just doing limp biscuit stuff right before now
I'm reading.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Hello the Internet and actong to this spinoff episode of Guys.

Speaker 4 (00:37):
Yeah, yeah, you're a personal Fred Durst.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
That's always He's always been an influence, but I didn't
know how much until this moment. I've always felt that
in your in your performance. Yeah, same same, I carry
I carry the anger. You know if podcasting, if I
ever got on WTF, I would have said, my guys
are Fred Durst and uh, just that's about it. Just Fred.

(01:03):
There's but uh, let's see, we're calling this episode or
this version of the show Iconograph. My name is Jack
O'Brien on, one of the founders of crack dot com.
Uh and Miles is out this week. But I couldn't
be more thrilled, blessed really for the first time when
I'm doing solo Iconograph to be joined by both hosts

(01:24):
of the Truly Great Legendary movie podcast, The Bechdel Cast.
It's Jamie Loftus and Kaylin Durante.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
We should have written a song, We should have written
a biscuit tribute.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Man Ah, I don't.

Speaker 4 (01:42):
I wait? Is it because I know you say like,
do you say, wait, I'm gonna embarrass myself. Do you
say putting on the lead when you talk about Led Zeppelin?

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Do I personally, Jamie, I believe you get your ass kicked?
Said something.

Speaker 4 (02:00):
To quote off they get the lead out?

Speaker 5 (02:03):
What is I think it's. I think it's I think
it's getting lead poisoning. Yeah, because I'm gonna say, let's
get the limp out. But it's really hard to make
it sound cool to say I'm throwing a limp biscuit.
Yeah yeah, Brian says, gets zipped up up.

Speaker 4 (02:23):
I think I'm thinking of a line from School of
Rock that I'm misremembering. It's like, get the lead on,
get the lead poison I'm not familiar.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
I think busy.

Speaker 5 (02:35):
I think it's having biscuits and gravy.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Biscuits, biscuits and gravy. Yeah, we're taking a dip in
the chocolate water and start it's hot water, Chocolate Starface water.

Speaker 5 (02:55):
Of the star Face, It's chocolate starfish and the hot
dog flavored water.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
I have decided that we need to do a Olympus
kit iconograph, so stay tuned for that in a couple
of months. Yeah, and you will both be on We
Witness Something Dark Happy. Uh. But on this version of
the show, you guys have both been on the regular
Zeikeuist and Jamie, you've been on this one, so Caitlin,

(03:24):
So what you're gonna have to understand about this version
of the show is instead of talking about the Zeus
through current events, we're talking about it through an icon.
You guys have a test at the center of your podcast.
We've got a little icon test. Whether they make sense
it's a Halloween costume, Whether people make up weird conspiracies

(03:46):
about their death, whether people attribute fake quotes to them,
usually some of the ingredients. Today we've got a certified
Halloween costume. Banger, an actress, best selling author, the top
script doctor of the nineties, all around Hollywood royalty behind
one of the most iconic characters in the history of movies.

(04:09):
I'm talking, of course, about the character Marie Meg Ryan's
friend from when Harry met Sally. Yes, a hero. No,
we're talking Carrie Fisher and I didn't realize until we
started talking before the recording. You guys are both Fisher
King Fisher queens.

Speaker 4 (04:28):
I think in different ways too, we're like different eras
of Carrie Head.

Speaker 5 (04:33):
Yes, I mean I mostly know Carrie Fisher as Princess Leiah.
That's what I did to prepare is watch all the
Star Wars original movies in my childhood. That's how I've
prepared for this. And thank you for your service. And Jamie,

(04:53):
you're a fan of her as an author.

Speaker 4 (04:55):
Yes, Carrie Fisher is one of my favorite She's like
one of my heroes, one of my favorite writers ever.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
She's incredible.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
Like I first, I think I don't remember if I
saw her like One Woman show that was on HBO
that was also like adaptation of Wishful Drinking. But I
think I first sat in college read all her books,
was like totally blown away by her and yeah, and
then like learn that like through the Buckle Cast, how

(05:23):
much she had done script doctoring.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
I remember like when she like.

Speaker 4 (05:29):
Reading The Princess Diarist, right, I believe right before or
after she passed.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
I think it was right before the book. Yeah, the
book came out right before I think, yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:40):
And then like later reading Postcards from the Edge and
just she's such an incredible writer.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
The edge rips like everybody. Yeah, everybody should read Postcards
from the Edge. It's like really well written, just like
a shot of espresso. Like the writing style is awesome.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
I really appreciate that all the stuff she wrote about
Paul Simon is way better than the stuff he wrote
about her.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
In my opinion, she does not. So I read a
biography that I'm just gonna say, at a certain point,
I was like, I think they just got like another
thing wrong. Like they said that Whinney Houston died right
before the Oscars, and like we just because we just
did the Whitney Houston iconograph. I was like, no, it
was before the Grammys. And then there's just like a

(06:30):
few things from the biography that I was like, I
don't think that's right. But it doesn't. It seems just
like lazy. Doesn't seem like they were talking for like
sensational It wasn't like the sensationalism. All the sensational stuff
like kind of could back up with other sources. It
was just like weird things. But if if I get
a detail wrong here there, you can blame this book

(06:53):
Life on a Life on the Edge. Postcard from the
Edge is the name of her book, you see.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
Ohoah, And they were really thinking, they're really cooking. And
she's like such an iconic mental health advocate too.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yes, mental health. She's diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the
early eighties and then like kind of accepted it later
in life and kind of came out and told everybody
about it and was on the cover of Psychology today
and was really owned it and like spoke at conferences
and stuff. So yeah, I knew she was Princess Leah.

(07:30):
I knew she was a script doctor. I knew she
did cocaine during the making of Empire Strikes Back, But
everything was like more and crazier and like just more
than I expected. She's just like so interesting, the story's great.
She's just generally a fucking blast. Everyone loved her. She

(07:51):
loved everyone. She once turned down sex with one of
the biggest stars in Hollywood, saying I decided for reality
over anecdote, meaning I decided to like not do the
thing that would make the best story and take care
of myself as a person instead. But like reading her
biography and like reading some of her memoirs, you like
really get the sense that that is a constant consideration

(08:13):
where she's like, how good of a story? What will
this be? Is she reminds me of a lot of
like Nora E.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
Froun and weirdly, even though they're obviously very different people,
but like sort of the same strain of like Lena
Dunham's style memoirst where it's like, I don't know, really
deliberately deciding like I'm gonna do this and then write
about it later.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
It's great. Yeah, so let's get into her biography. I
didn't One of the things that I hadn't fully appreciated
is that she was like truly Hollywood royalty. Her mother
was Debbie Reynolds, who appeared in over forty films, including
Singing in the Rain, Were Singing in the Rain, The
Early like kind of Singing in Apostrophe, and nog and

(09:03):
Oscar nominator performance in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. She was
born in El Paso, Texas. She grew up like in
the sort of hardcore poverty that like you don't really
get like they her family all shared a bed, their
kitchen was a hot plate, and they all bathed and
like went to the bathroom at a nearby truck stop.

(09:24):
So like, and then she made it to Hollywood and
became like a massive star. Her father was Eddie Fisher,
who usually described as a crooner. I was familiar with
Debbie Reynolds's work singing in the Rain for people who like,
don't watch old movies, that's one of the old ones
that like, I'm not usually a big old movie person.

(09:46):
Singing in the Rain is great. It is just a
great time in the movies. Yeah, it's so good. This
guy's work doesn't hold up quite as well Eddie Fisher.
His hits included Oh My Papa, and I'm Walking behind
You and who can forget them walking behind you? Scary?

Speaker 4 (10:06):
That kind of seems to align with what his general
vibe seemed to be.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
He was like a drug addicted, you know, womanizer throughout
his life. Many anecdotes of him saying creepy things to
his own daughter his weirdly so he like had a
really squeaky clean image. They were called like America's Sweethearts,
but his show was called Coke Time with Eddie Fisher,
which and very appropriate. This man loved drugs. There are

(10:37):
scenes in her biography where like she's been clean for
a while and then he comes and visits and people
are like, why are Carrie and Eddie coming out of
the bathroom together like sniffing. So like her dad was
like a horrible influence on her. And I do have
a quick aside here because so his thing initially was

(11:00):
shooting speed. And this this actually came up on a
regular episode a couple of weeks ago with the comedian
Mel Stevens. Her search history was about this guy who
injected Mickey Mantle with amphetamines and ended up like injuring
his hit at an important point in like Yankees history

(11:21):
or whatever. And like it turns out this guy was
like the original doctor feel Good. His name was Max Jacobson.
It is the same guy who was shooting up Eddie Fisher,
and he was like the Johnny apple Seed of speed.
He was the Johnny apple Speed. He also shot up

(11:41):
you Set Yourself Up. He shot JFK with Speed and
Jackie Kennedy and they'd like go out in the hallway
and like do wind sprints in their hotel hallway like
they were just like flying on speed speed again, is
that the amphetamines? It's mask Okay, So it was like math,

(12:03):
but instead of smoking it, they were shooting it into
He was shooting it into well like he would shoot
like JFK would be like, I have a rah sore
throat and he would be like, all right, let me
shoot meth into your career youth.

Speaker 4 (12:18):
That's so funny because you're I was almost like, how
did he have the like ability to get around to
that many people? And you would think it was probably
kind of the meth kind of energizing.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Towards the end of his life, was like I don't
have to sleep. Uh, it all fell apart for him.
The New York Times did like a big expose on him,
but like towards the end of his life and he
lost his medical license, but he told people they were
vitamin shots. So everyone was just like, oh my god,
I feel fucking amazing. This is vitamin B twelve.

Speaker 4 (12:50):
Yeah, that's how I feel about celsius, where I'm like,
this is this is not going to be legal for
much longer. There's something too much, there's some there's something
disgusting in there.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Your milligrams of caffeine is too much. It's so much caffeine.
Celsius is for loco minus the alcohol. Yes, truly, I
like I do feel like I'll have a Celsius.

Speaker 4 (13:14):
Feel amazing for an hour and then feel like become
convinced I'm having a heart attack.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah. Like RFK literally was like saw his brother being
a LUNATICY was like, dude, what what is in those shots?
Had the like had the FBI test them, and was like, oh,
those are drugs, and JFK was like, I don't care.
I don't care if it's hoss piss uh. They make

(13:39):
me feel so good. And so he kept taking him
until he died. But so also he had started in
Germany and like during the thirties became famous for these
vitamin shots, and the Nazis were like some of those
vitamin shots, and he gave them his formula. And some
people think he's like one of the reasons that all
Nazis were on amphetamines during World War Two. Why, Like,

(14:03):
if you've ever seen that video of Hitler like tweaking
during the Olympics he escaped Germany when he was treating
a Nazi soldier for an STD with you guessed it
meth Matt and the Nazi soldier was like, oh, by
the way, they're going to kill you in your whole
family tomorrow because he was Jewish and so he like
escapes a deby like by the skin of his teeth,
ends up in America, starts, you know, uses this this

(14:27):
one simple trick doctors don't want you to know about
of being like, hey, take these vitamin shots, and it's
actually met people he treated, like in America are like
a who's who of people who had like a substance
abuse issues in early Hollywood. He treated Elvis, Judy Garland, Truman, Capoti,

(14:49):
Leonard Burns Son, Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mannle, Tennessee Williams, and
like like all people who like died from drug stock.

Speaker 5 (14:56):
Yeah, and so he was also treating Eddie Fisher's he.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Was treating it. That's what we got here. Yeah, he
was Eddie Fisher.

Speaker 4 (15:03):
Yeah, So he truly was just like the enabler across
the enabler.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
But he also was like tricking people into doing drug
Like he was being like, these are vitamins, psych you're
addicted to math now, So just a crazy you know.
Backstory shadow history of like the twentieth century, that this
guy was just like there shooting everybody up with math
is the Max Jacobson.

Speaker 6 (15:29):
Oh, it does seem like when when rich people are
doing hard drugs, they always have a different name for it,
like vitamins.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yes, yeah, yeah, right. The Trump administration is I think
doing modathanil is what you always hear about them, which
is the medicine that they give fighter pilots. But it's
just like it's speed, I think. Anyways, they so that
this guy who is like this clean cut crooner secretly

(16:01):
shooting Speed and Debbie are America's sweethearts. She is like
everyone is aware of her before she's aware of herself.
Carrie Fisher like she people are like, oh my god,
they're pregnant, like before she's born. And Debbie is pregnant
with her while shooting like a couple movies, including one

(16:22):
called a Bundle of Joy co starring Eddie. So yeah,
she's immediately like born into being a massive celebrity. Her
father's barely around. She said she saw him on TV
more than in person. He's too busy being on Speed.

Speaker 4 (16:38):
Yeah, and having numerous affairs.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
Numerous affairs. The famous one is so that they are
best friends. They're like super close with Elizabeth Taylor and
her husband Mike Todd. And Mike Todd is this like
high powered executive whose plane goes down. He died, and
Eddie goes to console her, and as Carrie Fisher would

(17:05):
put it, he consoles her with his penis. Penis, yes,
and uh so that ends their marriage. And but like
they're so close that her Harry Fisher's younger brother is
named Todd after this guy, Mike Todd. They're like besties.

(17:26):
It's so sad.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
I'm still like Eddie Fisher is fully the villain of
this story. Like Elizabeth Taylor, I'm going to come to
her defense. She was so vulnerable. Her husband had just
died in the fiery explosion.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Literally he was there the night that he died, and
he was like, he was like, hey, your husband died.

Speaker 4 (17:44):
I'll be right over gayabolical, absolutely diabolical.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
I don't know. I love this.

Speaker 4 (17:51):
I love the Debbie Reynolds Elizabeth Taylor Lore on a
longer timeline because they've become friends again and you're like that.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Guy, yes, Christ, what were we doing that?

Speaker 4 (18:00):
Meth had really came between us for a while, didn't
he Elizabeth Taylor eventually leaves Eddie for Richard Burton.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Eddie has five wives over the course of his life,
and Debbie also similarly unlucky in love. She has two
further husbands, both of which are like scammers, like they
both take all of her money and like one of
the real estate developer and others like a shoe tycoon

(18:29):
who's not really a shoe tycoon. Carrie said that her
mother was extremely bad at heterosexuality, was her description of
her mother. Yeah, yeah, that's all bad.

Speaker 4 (18:44):
Her casino husband in particular, You're like put him through
the human shredder.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yes. Really. Eighty nine year old Richard Hamlet was charged
with bankruptcy for like very recently. Oh my god, we
out here doing it. Hey, when you love your work,
you know, you never work a.

Speaker 4 (19:06):
Day, and you're like it is so like evil really
does preserve, doesn't it.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
That's wild. So Carrie first tries drugs at thirteen. She
says that, like they had this rental property in Palm
Springs and like one of the people who were renting
it left a bag of weed behind and her mom
found it and was like, I found your weed, Carrie,
if you're going to be smoking weed, you might as
well smoke it with me and like leave, But then

(19:34):
forgets she said that, and so Carrie is just like, well,
I guess I have weed now, So she tries weed,
loves it, is a big pot smoker for a while.
There's another piece of weird mothering from Debbie where kind
of similar philosophy, where Carrie kept making out with like

(19:55):
gay men who were in her mother's orbit, like Ripped
Taylor's secretary Lynn. She said, I had a crush on Lynn.
He was good looking, Warren Ascott. He was Rip Taylor's
gay secretary. And then I'd like be making out with
my mother's backup dancers, and my mother was eventually like,

(20:15):
if you want to have sex with Albert, I'll watch
if you like, so I can give instructions.

Speaker 5 (20:23):
Debbie also wanted Carrie to have a baby with Debbie's
then husband. I forget which one, Jesus yeah, But she's like,
She's like, I don't want you to have sex with him,
but you can just get pregnant if with an injection
in your arm, right, And.

Speaker 4 (20:45):
I'm actually not Debbie objectively, She's like, objectively not a
good mom.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
But then I watched Bright lights, and I was.

Speaker 4 (20:55):
Like, well, I don't know, Yeah, I like their Greg
Garden situation. But yeah, every anecdote about young Debbie, you're like, dude.

Speaker 5 (21:05):
Jesus, yeah, how old was she when she got famous?

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Is she, uh, Debbie Reynolds as a teenager?

Speaker 5 (21:12):
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that had something to do with it.

Speaker 4 (21:15):
You really got to like get that frontal low blocked
in before you experience any success.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
I say, every morning, lock into my frontal low, lock
in front.

Speaker 5 (21:27):
Fascinating that Carrie Fisher turned out to be as like
I guess, level headed and like having as good of
a sense of humor about herself as she does growing
up so famous, and she's I think I think she
like is really it's really about found family, you guys.
For me, it's family, But for her, I really do

(21:48):
think like she is this She's just constantly like making
friends and like bringing people into her orbit, and she
has this like incredible group of people that she keeps
around her. Sometimes like not so incredible when she's like
really in the depths of the drug addiction. But like, yeah,
I think I think partially what she did with like

(22:08):
that lack of like parental and familial support was like
building out a family around her and like everybody's like
she was just the best friend that you could possibly
ask for, and she was like always so much fun.
So at this point at thirteen, she is like singing songs,
Carrie singing songs in Debbie's nightclub act like I Got

(22:32):
Love and Bridge over Troubled Water. Uh, foreshadowing because she
eventually marries Paul Simon. But she was like, this is
this is what I'm gonna do. I'm going to be
like a nightclub act. And her mom, so you know,
if we're going to call out her l's as a mother,
we got to call out her wins. Her mom was like, no,
you're going to drama school in London. You need to
like get the fuck out of here. Stop only hanging

(22:54):
out on the strip with like my backup dancers. I
feel like this is not good for.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
You to dance.

Speaker 4 (23:00):
We're making out with I have to stop making out
with middle aged gay men.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
Carrie stop wearing Yeah, And I was like, so shout
out to Debbie on that one, because that's a big one,
Like she could have been doing nightclub acts, which you know,
like a certain type of toxic parent would be like yeah,
she's falling in my footsteps and like she can be
a draw and instead her mom was like, what about

(23:24):
a career in film, you know, presumably knowing that that
is better than a nightclub act. So she goes to
the Central School of Speech and Drama in London in
nineteen seventy three and she like goes kicking and screaming
and then absolutely is like it's one of the best
times in my life. When she's in London, her habit

(23:48):
of throwing amazing parties begins. There's a story from a
party in London where someone threw a baby grand piano
out the window of her marble, which, like she goes
on to Her and Penny Marshall have like birthdays that
are close to each other, and for thirty years they
have this joint birthday party at Carrie Fisher's house that

(24:11):
is the best, Like it's the hottest ticket. Like if
you can get invited to that, It's like there's only
two hundred invites that go out. You can't come if
you're not invited. There's like two people who have standing invitations.
I think it's like Jack Nicholson and Shaq people standing invitations.

(24:33):
Incredible and The only person who successfully crashed the party
was David Bowie. They were like, all right, David Bowie,
you can stay, but don't tell anybody we let you.
You're on the list. People like say, it's the proto
Vanity Fair Oscars party. It's like that exclusive that just
like wall to wall a list. And it's actually why

(24:58):
Meryl Streep is in Defending Your Life because Albert Brooks
is like, holy shit, Meryl Streep is here. It's just like, hey,
do you want to be in my movie? And like
she's like, I guess sure. And that's so that that
happened at her birthday party. But yeah, she's famous for
throwing amazing parties. And this is by being in drama school.

(25:20):
People start putting her out there for auditions and she
makes her film debut in the social comedy Shampoo. Have
you guys seen Shampoo? I haven't, no.

Speaker 5 (25:31):
I yes, but also I might be confusing it with hair, yes,
and might see where I'm getting too confused, But I
confuse it with soap actually, and I could use that.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Cherry Fisher is also yes, Oh wow, Shampoo. She is seventeen.
She plays like this. I think it's about like warm
baby being a hair dresser who like has sex with
all his clients, and one of his clients is an
older woman, and Carrie Fisher is her daughter, and she

(26:08):
like plays this like temptress like and is like asks
him if he wants to fuck, and then cut to
them like getting dressed, and she's seventeen and it is
the seventies, and everyone was like, cool, awesome, dude, awesome,
he's thirty eight. I believe there. There's an anecdote that
like gets skipped over in the Life on the Edge

(26:30):
of Biography that I read, but then like I was like,
that didn't sound like a joke because she But this
is from a Rolling Stone interview between Madonna and Carrie Fisher.
Madonna says, okay, back to things we have in common,
let me ask you something. Did you fuck Warren? And
Carrie Fisher says no, And She's like, you didn't, And

(26:50):
Carrie Fisher said, I'm one of the few I could
have And Madonna says, okay, but we both made a
movie with him, so we both could have fucked him.
And Carrie Fisher said, at the time, I was seventeen
and making shampoo. He offered to relieve me of the
huge burden of my virginity four times. That was the
big offer. I decided against it. I decided for reality

(27:13):
over anecdote. That's where that quote comes from. But and
then and then Madonna responds next, we're both fag hags,
just like heard in like twenty years. Yes, moving right alone.
Also just like moving right past that. Yeah, you were seventeen,
he was thirty eight.

Speaker 5 (27:34):
Cool men are not okay they what's the weash gap?

Speaker 1 (27:39):
What was the age gap between Kerrie Fisher and Harrison Ford.
We're about to get to it. Yeah, this is he
was thirty hapening three thirty four and she is nineteen.
So for off of that, she starts getting auditions. She's like,
she's going out and auditioning for movies like Days of Head,

(27:59):
like the tear It's Malick movie, Days of Heaven. Star
Wars was actually this is so weird, Like this is
the sort of thing that you would like make up for,
like just to make a scene in a movie more interesting.
Her audition for Lea was actually a joint to audition.
George Lucas and Brian de Palma were holding joint auditions

(28:21):
for Star Wars and Carrie the movie Carrie. Wow, And
they were like, does she work for Lea? No, let's
move on to does she work for Carrie? They should
do this Carrie to be Carrie. Yeah, that was she.
She commented on that she was like, I wonder if
I wonder if that is why I didn't get it,
because it just would have been too redundant to a

(28:42):
movie poster. But yeah, dozens of actresses are considered, including
Sissy's Basic and Jodie Foster. But she goes in to
read for a completely silent George Lucas and Brian de Palma. Uh,
and she gets the callback for Princess Leah receives the

(29:02):
entire Star Wars script to prepare and then read with
Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford was a placeholder, as they deemed
him too old for the role, and also George Lucas
was like, I, you know, I don't want to keep
using the same people in all my movies, and he
had been an American graffiti but he was like, yeah,
this guy's like a middle aged guy. It doesn't totally

(29:24):
make sense, but she gets the role. It's interesting, I
don't know, interested in your thoughts, Jamie as someone who's
probably read more of her memoirs, But it feels to
me like there is some revisionist history where she is like,
now she knows how good the Star Wars fan base

(29:45):
has like been for her career and stuff. So she's like,
I always loved it. I was always so thrilled to
have it, But like at the time, they are like
anecdotes from the time, where like she called Griffin Dunn
from the set, Griffin Dunn, you know, famous actor from
After Hours, was like her best friend from high school,
iconic director of practical magic. Yes, yeah, mainly that's where

(30:08):
we know him from. But she called him and said,
oh god, I'm acting opposite a nine foot fucking eight
and we hold these little ray guns and we're not
even on a set. So there's indications that at the
time she thought the movie was going to suck shit.
But yeah, she described Lucas's directing style thus Lee. She said,

(30:32):
not only was he virtually expressionless in those days, but
he also hardly talked at all. His only two directions
to the three of us in the first film were
faster and more intense, which you can feel.

Speaker 4 (30:45):
And well, we did a we did a tour about
the Star Star Wars prequel Last Year, and man, you
can really You're like, Wow, they're just.

Speaker 5 (30:55):
They're just reading, They're just reading in this. Yeah, he's
not a he's not an actor's director. He famously is
a special effects guy. He's a computerist, doesn't know how
to really talk to other humans.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
I think he gets to shed some light on why
he was not the director of the second and third
film in the original trilogy, and why the prequels. Some
people love the prequels, but not known for their amazing performances,
naturalistic performances. What are you talking about, Samuel L.

Speaker 4 (31:34):
Jackson so good and those he's just sort of looking
like no one is ever quite making eye contact with
each other.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
It's it's awesome my understanding.

Speaker 4 (31:45):
So a lot of this is in the Princess Diarist,
where I think that the backstory there is that she
found some of her old diaries that she was keeping,
specifically I think during the first Star Wars movie, and
I don't know, it definitely seems like she had a
weird relationship with the Star Wars fan base because I

(32:06):
don't know, especially later on when she sort of has
to do I think she refers to in maybe Wishful
drinking of like going to Star Wars cons as like
dancing for them, Yeah, and that.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
She felt very performative.

Speaker 4 (32:20):
Yeah, yeah, she was like you sort of had to
go and like do the dance and talk to five
hundred thousand men in a row who were like, I
used to juck off to your poster written to me
and which like she had a consistive herobot but can
have been fun.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
I don't know. Yeah, that's yeah, it seems it seems. Yeah,
I'll say, a conflicted relationship, but one that maybe she
like comes to appreciate as she gets older, but also
it also comes to get weirder weirder as she gets
older and more and more guys are like, hey, oh
this is so weird. The guys are starting to look weird,

(33:00):
more decayed, and they're like, hey, I used to check
off to you when I was fourteen, Like how do
you even remember that? She was told that she had
to lose ten pounds for the role, and so she
went to a quote fat farm in Texas where she
met advice columnist Anne Landers and Lady Bird Johnson and

(33:24):
then based on her experience on that and you know,
Return of the Jedi, where she was like, what the
is this actually what you want me to wear? When
it came to the metal bikini, she became a vocal
critic of how the entertainment industry overvalues weight in appearance.
And there's a good conversation between her and Daisy Ridley

(33:44):
on the set of one of the You Know Later
Star Wars where she's like, you should fight for your outfit,
don't be a slave like I was, And Daisy Ridley's like,
all right, I'll fight. She was like, you keep fighting
against that slave outfit. So I don't I don't know
if they were at the time being like what if?

Speaker 2 (34:02):
What if?

Speaker 1 (34:02):
In the second movie days are really just like it
was in the slave Outfit again, Like, I don't know,
could be cool, It's just a thought, could be more
fodder for men to jerk off too, Yeah, right right there.

Speaker 4 (34:16):
That like George Lucas anecdote where like he tells her like, oh,
you can't wear a bra, there's no bras in space.

Speaker 5 (34:24):
She's like yeah, yeah, and she was like what if
there was? He also doesn't he also say that to
Natalie Portman in the prequels or something.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
It's a standing. I mean, if it was true in
the seventies. It's got to be true still, I mean,
it's we're talking about physics here.

Speaker 4 (34:41):
No, I'm trying to remember the extra creepy thing George
Lucas said, I have it and I'll find it because
he said something he's he's talking about like Natalie Portman's
like she's like she's really matured, or like one of
those creaky old man yeah things. I forget what it was.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
The quote from Carrie Fisher is which comes up to
me the first day of filming and he takes one
look at the dress and says, you can't wear a
bra under that dress. So I say, okay, I'll bite
Why and he says, because there's no underwear in space.
And then he presumably went down to Harrison Ford and
Mark Hamill and looked at their dicks and was like, guys,

(35:19):
no underwear. You gotta I gotta be able to see
that dick under the pressure shorts off.

Speaker 5 (35:26):
Guys, what does he mean writing you can travel like
across twelve parsex, but underwear hasn't been invented yet, Like
there's a technology to.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
Sure he said it in good faith. I'm sure you
mentioned there's plenty of ways to interpret this in good faith. Yeah,
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 4 (35:46):
I found I found the quote where it's like it's
Natalie Portman talking about her like costuming and how in
episode two they make her.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Wear the crop top.

Speaker 4 (35:56):
Oh, and she said, once you're over the hump of eighteen,
you're allowed to show tummy, and she sounds uncomfortable saying it.
And then it comes to George Lucas being like, yeah,
this is a good costume.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
You said what I told you to say. You said
the thing you put use the word hump in eighteen
in the same sentence, Okay, cool, good morning. So in
the twenty sixteen memoir The Princess Diarist, she shared that
she had a three month long affair with Harrison Ford

(36:30):
during production on Star Wars. She was nineteen, he was
thirty three and married with two children. She described him
as the center of my off center, kilter free world.
My affair with Harrison was a very long, one night stand.
I was relieved when it ended. I didn't approve of myself,
she writes, beautifully, like The Princess Diarist is like her

(36:50):
diaries from the time are really like, she agreed, makes.

Speaker 4 (36:54):
Her feel so bad about any journaling you've ever done.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Oh yeah, exactly like Jesus Christ, where it's like any
turtle entry that like most people would be like, I
got horny, it went poorly, Like she.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
She's just like writing, just rhapsodizing about in a way
that I'm sure as a teenager, and they're like, god,
she really like got to the core of Harrison Ford.
This is like a kind of both a amazing appreciation
of and a brutal takedown of Harrison Ford. And like
everything about him seems like it is like there's this

(37:31):
one anecdote where Mark Hamill comes by unannounced to Harrison
Ford's apartment and like Carrie's there and it's like eleven
in the morning and Harrison Ford like takes her hand
and is like we're engaged in this like sarcastic way,
and she's like so that was the end of that.

(37:53):
But like it's also like that is how a Harrison
Ford character would interact with that situation. Like it just
feels like he is And she talks about a lot
about how he rewrites a lot of his dialogue, so
it just seems like he is the character that he
plays in movies, and in the same way that like,

(38:14):
there's creepy shit about Indiana Jones and Raiders, isn't there
Isn't there like a thing where she's like I was
sixteen and he's like, you knew what was going on? Yeah?

Speaker 5 (38:25):
Yeah, we talked about that on that episode of the
Bechdel Cast. There's a conversation that was recorded between Spielberg
George Lucas and uh, what's the same castin uh oh
a lot of that do Yeah, And they're discussing like
the backstory between Mary and Ravenwood and Indiana Jones and

(38:47):
they're like, should she be twelve or maybe fourteen?

Speaker 1 (38:50):
I don't know. It's horrifying, Yeah, it is.

Speaker 4 (38:56):
I like how anytime she writes about Mark Hamill, it
is in like the most sexless way possible, where she's like,
so Harrison Ford, like, oh sexy, beautiful emotionally withholding like
this sexy, evil older man she's having an affair with.
And she's like and then there's Mark and he's just
kind of a fun little guy and sometimes we get

(39:19):
lunch together.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, yeah, she's she's truly like, should why did I
have an affair with Mark? Like?

Speaker 4 (39:25):
Mark is well, well, because it would have been boring
probably that's her brother.

Speaker 5 (39:31):
That's her her Jedi twin brother.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
That's true.

Speaker 4 (39:35):
Yeah, thats it's fun that Mark Hamill also somehow it
comes off exactly like he's.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Like keeps whining about Uncle Owen's academy. Now anyways, ended

(40:06):
production on the first Star Wars marked a turning point
in her relationship with drugs. She'd been using marijuana since
she was thirteen and discovered it when her mom was like, babe,
why don't we do like a fun little thing and
totally forgets about it. And she said that like marijuana
turned on her, became creepy and dark and scary, and

(40:28):
in fact wrote it turned out to be Harrison Ford's
pot that did me in. And this is like the
other thing that is legendary about Harrison Ford is she
calls him a brutal strength stoner and like his pot
is apparently like crazy crazy strong, and it like fucks
her up and she never wants to smoke pot again,

(40:48):
and so she do you guys know the story about him.
On the set of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade,
he like runs out of rolling papers and he has
to like to set and he like obviously to film
Indiana Jones the Last Crusade, you have to be like
incredibly hot high apparently, so he just like put all

(41:10):
his weed in a dishpan or in a saucepan and
like got in the back of the car that was
like driving him to set and like just lit it
on fire and was just like taking massive like rips
out of like the saucepit, like taking the top of
the thing off.

Speaker 5 (41:24):
Just like And I don't understand the mechanics of that, even, Yeah,
it does really yeah like ceremonial a little bit.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Yeah, But anyways, she does not like sooaking his spot,
and so she seeks out a new replacement drug starts
experimenting with hallucinogens and painkillers. She also used cocaine while
filming Vampire Strikes Back. And yeah, this is when she
also starts her on again off again relationship with Paul Simon,
who she writes very beautifully about him. She's like, you

(41:54):
meet a magic person, and every so often you meet
someone from your tribe, which is how I felt when
I met Paul. Paul and I had the secret handshake
of shared sensibility. I think that's so pretty. That's such
a nice way of describing someone. Star Wars is then
released nineteen seventy seven. She becomes massive celebrity that a

(42:15):
bunch of now sixty five year old men are checking off.

Speaker 4 (42:20):
Really horny, and we'll spend hundreds of thousands of dollars
to let her know.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah, but I didn't realize it was also like so
like it was nominated for ten oscars. I didn't really
Star Wars was four yeah, the first one. Wow. But yeah,
it is just funny like she was auditioning for like
Grease and Days, like Terrence Malick films, and then ended
up doing Star Wars and you know, again, like her

(42:45):
life takes it a crazy turn. Empire Strikes Back is
described as the hardest shoot of all the Star Wars movies.
She suffered from influence and bronchitis. Her weight dropped to
eighty five pounds while working twelve hour days. She collapsed
on on set from allergic reactions to steam or spray paint.

(43:05):
But this is she's also like overusing hallucinogens and pain killers.
It sounds like Titanic lore.

Speaker 4 (43:12):
It sounds like Kate Winsley getting pneumonia from the Titanic
Hallway and having to like work through it, yeah, damns.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
But it does feel like there are different drug anecdotes
for like every different planet in Empire Strikes Back. There's
like a famous anecdote about them doing cocaine on the
Ice planet. There's an anecdote about how they were up
the entire night before arriving on the Cloud planet drinking
what Carrie Fisher calls Tunisian table cleaner, which is like

(43:43):
some manner of like stimulant liquor. And she was like,
the toffing bleach sounds like, I don't know, it's really weird.
Like Eric Idol had brought it back from the filming
of Life of Brian in Tunisia and was and it
was like so legendary that the Rolling Stones were like,

(44:04):
we got to try this. They just like had to
try every new drug, I guess. And so Carrie Fisher,
Harrison Ford, Eric Idyl and the Rolling Stones stayed up
the entire night before they arrived on the Cloud planet
drinking Tunisian table cleaner and anecdote, yes exactly. She said

(44:25):
that you can like see in their performance that they're
still fucked up. Said the next day, Empire Strikes Back
comes out in May Blues Brothers comes out in June
of nineteen eighty, and they're both like massive hits. She
plays the mystery woman in Blues Brothers. I've never seen

(44:46):
Blues Brothers. It's I watched her scenes. I remember watching
it like when I was a kid. It was like
one of those comedy classics that I, for whatever reason,
like the Blue She thing, I just never really got.
I think it was because Chris Lee's whole thing is
like kind of built on top of Lushi a little bit,
and so it was just like, I don't know, I

(45:07):
feel like I've already laughed at someone whose sensibility had
digested to this and is like the next iteration. But
she becomes like really good friends with Lucy. She's briefly
engaged to Dan Ackroyd. Yeah, and so this is when

(45:28):
her like the people are like, oh, she's hanging out
with like these people. Maybe this is when her like
drug use. Maybe they were like a bad influence on her.
But like people at the time said that they were,
Like I actually thought I was surprised. John Belushi odeed
I thought it was going to be Carrie Fisher, like
she was actually using more heavily than anyone, like John

(45:50):
Belushi once was like, you might have you might be
doing too many drugs to her, Oh no, that's a
problems problem. Yeah, that is. But it's charisma is just
a phrase that like, you know, through all of this
and like she's you know, having health issues and you know,

(46:12):
going off the edge into drug addiction. Just the phrase
that comes up more and more often is just like charisma,
which like is usually used to describe like presidents and
serial killers. But like everyone's like she just like lights
up her room, like she is like people like Rosie Schuster,

(46:34):
one of the original like SNL co founders, is like
she's just like the funniest best like hang in the world,
somebody who would like know a lot of charismatic people.
Yeah and yeah, everyone said, like when you're around her,
she's just like laser focused on you and you feel
like you're the most important person in the world. And
that's like from her freshman year of high school through

(46:56):
her death. She's so special.

Speaker 4 (46:58):
I love I love reading how her daughter writes about
her as well. It's like every Mother's Day there's a
really good Billy Lord post.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
About her mom. It's really sweet. Is Billy Lord still
with Taylor Lautner or has that ship sow. No, you're
here about ten years behind. She's married with two kids.
I didn't know that. Yeah, she was great in a
very Jonas Christmas movie. I'm to report, Yes, is that
her voice in the Princess Diaries audio book like reading

(47:34):
the Younger. I was curious who who was reading the
because it switches from Carrie Fisher reading like.

Speaker 4 (47:41):
The Oh yes, sorry, I thought you meant she did
an audiobook for the Princess Diaries.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
I was like, if so the Princess, Yes, that is okay,
got it. She's also, as menched, an extravagy, a gift giver.
If someone's like, oh I love that painting in her entryway,
they would like get it in the man the next day.
She once bought a really luxurious bathrobe that she loved

(48:06):
so much she bought twenty five more and just like
started giving them out to everyone as like party gifts,
just for like coming over to her house. A producer
assaulted her friend, like was you know, tried to sexually
proposition her friend and like her friend like ran away
and he was like you'll never work in this town again.

(48:28):
And Carrie Fisher sent him a hand delivered tiffany box
with a cow tongue inside it, with a note that said,
if you ever touch my darling, Heather or any other
woman again, the next delivery will be something of yours
in a much smaller box. She's so awesome, she would

(48:49):
ask people, like, so, there's this anecdote from her childhood
that she would like sleep on her mom's floor just
to get like sometime with her mom. And when she
like got older and was like always had cool people around,
she would like call people in the middle of the
night and be like, hey, could you come over and
just like sleep around me? And so, yeah, I think

(49:13):
there's like something connected to that like hole that was
left from her parents, like not always being around or
in her dad's case, never being around, and like what
an amazing friend is you know? She turned that into
like an amazing pro in people's lives.

Speaker 5 (49:29):
She jokes in Wishful Drinking her like solo show that
I didn't finish, but I watched the first like forty
minutes of crammed it before Zoom call.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
But she just read that biography this morning that I'm
tired that I keep referring to that. Yeah, you you
mainlined it yeah.

Speaker 5 (49:53):
Yeah, that guy shot you the way he shoots speed
into people exactly.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
Doctor go over and shoot in Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (50:01):
But she jokes that in the delivery room when she
was being born, all the nurses were like fawning over
her mother, just being like, oh my god, it's Debbie Reynolds,
and then fawning over her father because he like fainted
or something when theatrically, Yeah, and so they were kind

(50:23):
of like tending to him. And then like she jokes
that she just like came out of her mother and
no one was like tending to her, this newborn baby,
and that she's been trying to like make up for
that lack of attention ever since. So she immediately started
tap dancing.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
She's like, what about me?

Speaker 4 (50:44):
God, with Eddie Fisher, it reminds me of because he
was like he had that like squeaky clean image and
you're like that is like the red flag maybe with
the exception of Mark Hamill speak Yeah, but you're like,
there is a there's a dark soul inside of that guy.
It's like Jason Sedakis energy.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Right, Yeah, I comedic personas that I'm just like the
best guy.

Speaker 4 (51:12):
Oh You're like, yeah, you wouldn't take a narcissistic personality
to demand.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
That, right, although I yeah, I do think speed can
drive narcissism, you know, like people who are like street addicts.
Like it definitely does something. I was reading an article
about that guy and I forget who it was, but
there was like some person who was a patient of

(51:37):
that guy. Who was I think it was like some
celebrity who you know, my dad would know the name of,
but like I didn't. But like they talked about how
in between the time of him not being treated by
Max Jacobson and then like five years on, he was
like he just like became this massive narcissist that like
totally you know, and I he doesn't gave out.

Speaker 4 (52:01):
Yeah, okay, God, it's such a bu because it's like
I know that she It's I just want to ship
talk Eddie Fisher so bad. But like, yes, acknowledging he
also had addiction issues, but he was mean and Carrie
was nice, So.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
Yeah, exactly, this shows like some people with addiction issues
are just like amazing friends, you know, and some people
are fucking selfish nightmares, you know. Yeah. So Return of
the Jedi, as mentioned, she was very open about hating
the metal bikini costume, but was like, what redeems it
is that I get to kill Jaba for like essentially

(52:39):
for putting her in it? Right, because this Jaba who
puts her in it? And then he gets to like
she gets like saw strength, saw his head off with
a chain. Kind of very metal, very very limp. Yeah,
you think about it, very wow. So so biscuit, such
a Biscuit fan. I could see her and fred Durst

(53:00):
having a friendship. Why the hell not?

Speaker 5 (53:03):
Yeah, she's got friends all over town. Yeah, isn't he
secretly cool?

Speaker 4 (53:07):
I remember seeing him and I saw the TV glow
and being and being like, wait, was kind.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Of a fucked up dad, right, Like, yeah, plays an
Eddie Fisher type. He's at least at home.

Speaker 5 (53:19):
He plays himself in that movie was it called Y
two K That came out really like a couple of
years ago. It was not good, but he plays himself,
and it's like I remember that part being pretty funny.
But I also remember him directing commercials for a while.
I'm pretty sure he directed like Harmony.

Speaker 4 (53:41):
He's like, I look, I hope I hope he's cool,
because what a life?

Speaker 1 (53:46):
What a life?

Speaker 5 (53:48):
He?

Speaker 1 (53:49):
I think I think we might. I was talking on
the Whitney Houston one because she was like groundbreaking model
before her singing career. I was talking about the heady
Lamar All Star Hall of Fame celebrities who are like
randomly amazing at the other thing, like this other thing
that you didn't know about. Eddy Lamar like invented Wi

(54:10):
Fi and was this famous actress also on the list
of people treated by Max Jacobson. Yeah, but say what
you will about speed, but maybe we wouldn't have without it. Yeah, both. Oh,
it's like the switching. So she created a like switching

(54:30):
a way of like randomizing switching us for steering torpedoes
during World War Two that has then been used in
either Wi Fi or Bluetooth. Actually not clear anyways, Uh,
it's her Her invention is super producer Catherine says in
every one of our cell phones and her family got

(54:54):
no money. Isn't that the fucking way? Yeah? Certainly seems
to the guy who.

Speaker 4 (55:01):
Made Chuck E Cheese animatronics also his his prior lore
is that he also invented whack a Mole and then
like got tricked out of the patent, and so he
invented animatronics as revenge.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
Wow, yeah, go and did he get rich off that one?

Speaker 4 (55:21):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (55:22):
Question Mark just got animatronics.

Speaker 4 (55:25):
He's sort of like Sketchy Posts from Florida, So maybe
he was rich at one time?

Speaker 1 (55:31):
Right, all right? Post Star Wars gets uh into more
and more hard drugs. John Belus She dies, and people
I think it's Judy John Belushi's wife who said I
would have put money on her dying before John, which
is a fucking crazy thing to say about. Yeah, your little.

Speaker 5 (55:53):
List placing boats.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Over unders on your friend group. She In nineteen eighty three,
she marries Paul Simon at their New York City apartment.
She was twenty six at that time. They divorced the
next year, but continued dating on and off, and she
says I was really good for material, but when it
came to day to day living, I was more than

(56:19):
he could take. He comes off in this biophy looking
like a real asshole. Yeah, she had an ectopic pregnancy,
and he is like mad at her and is like
cold and withdrawn. At one point she was out, like
they were out with friends at dinner and Carrie was
talking about a book and she was like very she

(56:41):
dropped out of high school. Like, so she was kind
of insecure about her you know, intelligence and education. She
was talking about a book she was reading and he
like kind of shut her down and was like, as
an intellectual. And one of our friends was like, wait,
you don't get nobody gets to start a sentence with

(57:03):
as an intellectual and you are a toonsmith, buddy calling
him a toonsmith, which I kind of love.

Speaker 5 (57:11):
She's like writing circles around everyone around her.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Yeah. Songs that he wrote about their relationship include Graceland
and Hearts and Bones, which are both songs that I like.
But she kicked his ass. She was on to be
right on so many things and write an amazing novel.
This is She has a couple of d's At this time.
She od's on the set of Under the Rainbow, a

(57:37):
movie with Chevy Chase that doesn't exist, like people aren't
aware of it. That was when she was like twenty four.
In nineteen eighty four. She was doing so much cocaine
that she was hanging out with Rick James in nineteen
eighty four and friends saw that, and we're so worried
about her health that they would stop by her house
and just like leave food in her refrigerator. So yeah,

(58:01):
she was on Woody Allen's Hannah and her sisters. There's
a moment where she like passes out while riding at
the elevator with Mia Farrow and then she has an
OD after that movie that is like kind of it's her.
She calls her friend and is like, I think I

(58:21):
took too much and like she's learning her words, and
her friend like comes to her house and like finds
her dying on the floor of her own house being ignored.
It's like a full house of like other drug users.
There's this like lit all over again. Yeah exactly. There's
this uh unnamed, very famous celebrity who like so they

(58:44):
take her to the hospital. There's this addiction specialist guy
who uh like pumps her stomach and is like, we
have to like keep this out of the press, but
you need to call the house and find out what
she's taken. And when they call, this very famous celebrity
who they name in the biography, like won't let his
girlfriend speak to them because he's like, we don't want

(59:06):
to be involved with this, Like if this gets out,
like we're she is. Also when she od's wearing a
fox fur and dripping in diamonds for like no reason
on our way to the hospital. So just a fucking icon,
no matter, like can't can't be helped. But yeah, an

(59:28):
important part of the drug experience that should shouldn't be
left out is like, you know, you're around creepy people
who are treating you like shit and like don't actually
care about you. And that's where she finds herself at
that point. But she this is becomes the inspiration for
Postcards from the Edge, released in nineteen eighty seven, and

(59:52):
is like just raves, like pure raves from like the
New York Times. Every major publication is like, holy shit,
She's like fucking incredible writer, becomes the best seller, gets
adapted into a screenplay for a film directed by Mike
Nichols starring Meryl Streep, who Meryl Streep gets a nomination

(01:00:16):
for playing essentially Krrie Fisher, and it's adapted by her.
She writes the script and this is where her scrypt
doctor career starts. We're about to cover.

Speaker 5 (01:00:28):
The movie adaptation on an episode of The Bechdel Cast,
and I've never seen it. I'm very excited to watch it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
It's great.

Speaker 4 (01:00:36):
She also wrote a couple of other novels that did
not end up getting getting adapted into anything, but there
I've tried, Yes, Surrender the.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Pink, Surrender the Pink nineteen ninety. Yes, that's a good one.
It was about Paul Simon.

Speaker 4 (01:00:53):
People say, yeah, that one reminds me of Heartburn by
Nora Efrat, Like it's because it's just like my ex husband,
like you, yeah, yeah, it's very like hood my beer energy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
I haven't read Delusions of Grandma, but yeah, same, Like
there is something so she is like really good at
like kind of Quippi one liners, but then like sometimes
they overwhelm her writing a little bit, and like the
Delusions of Grandma feels like the like the Quippi one
liner kind of overwhelmed. It's a little too Auntie. I

(01:01:28):
think the title is kind of all fuddy. Yeah. She
like opened up with like a fucking Postcards from the Edge,
what a title, and then like just nothing but missus
Surrender the Pink, Delusions of Grandma and then pretty mes

(01:01:51):
of Grandma the best awful not not a terrible one.
That is h a sequel to Postcards from the Edge
about her relationship to her second husband, Brian Lord, who
is still like a massive, like I think he's the
head of c A A. Now he's the father of

(01:02:13):
her daughter, Billy Lord, who a year into their marriage
or you know, I actually don't know how long into
their marriage it was was like, Hey, I'm actually gay
and I'm leaving you for a man, and that She's like, right, right,
She's like, I have a lot of practice. Like yeah,

(01:02:34):
I mean she did say like if I had had
a normal, like high school upbringing, I would have like
you know, been having relationships with but like I was
on the strip kissing gay mancoted, Yes, ripped, Torn's ascotted assistant,

(01:03:00):
ripped towards One Man Show. Yeah. Mike Nichols is so
impressed with her adaptation of her novel that he's like,
she's a born screenwriter. Everyone trusts him because he's Mike Nichols,
and so she becomes Hollywood's number one script doctor. One

(01:03:20):
of the lines from Hook that she wrote was between
awake and a sleep, That's where I'll always love you, uh,
And he says, That's where I'll be waiting for you.
She she wrote on sister Act Lethal Weapons, a little
film called Lethal Weapon three three Anastasia, Anastasia, the River

(01:03:41):
Wild She's like, they're not all winners, you.

Speaker 4 (01:03:44):
Know, but well and let's not forget these old brods.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Well yeah, well I guess that's just her script.

Speaker 5 (01:03:51):
That's her script.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
The Wedding Singer. The Wedding Singer was yeah, and like
that's one where you like the there's interviews with the
director of The Wedding Singer who like it seems like
she was very involved in that. They spent like a
lot of time together on The Wedding Singer. Her trick
for polishing script, make the woman smarter and the love
scenes better. Hell, yeah, exactly. Huh.

Speaker 5 (01:04:16):
She should have worked more, She should have worked on
every movie. Yeah, what made so wait to say? All right,
so that was a crazy idea. What if the lead
character here wasn't a fucking idiot? What if women were
she was like a real person, yes, and not an obstacle.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
So yeah. She's first diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age
twenty four, but she says it took her some time
to accept the reality of the diagnosis and it was
also difficult to get proper treatment because of her struggle
struggles with addiction. But she described and wishful drinking. She
describes once staying up for six days straight and believing

(01:04:58):
everything on TV was about her, include the murder of
Gianni Versacei and but eventually in two thousands, she revealed
her diagnosis in an interview with Diane Sawyer and became
a mental health advocate, doing things like attending Psychiatric Association
events and Psychology Today cover story.

Speaker 4 (01:05:20):
So, I mean she talks a lot of I think
that it's what is her memoir about, chacoholic, right, that's chacoholic. Yeah,
chocoholic not my favorite one, but still good, like about
all of the like various treatments and like attempts to
get her mental health under control that she that she.

Speaker 5 (01:05:41):
Did over the years, she underwent electroshock therapy.

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
She became a big advocate for electroshock therapy, which is
like I think, you know, everybody who saw One Flew
over the Cucka's nest is like that's something from the
Middle Ages. But there are people well forget that One
flew over the Cuckoo's ass was was fiction, yes, and

(01:06:06):
written completely by somebody who's completely out of their mind
on acid. Yeah. Wow, although you wouldn't like it doesn't
seem like it. That's what he's like not, I just
really you know, yeah, but you know, she began performing
her one woman show in two thousand and six, which
for Drinking two thousand and eight nominated for an Emmy

(01:06:29):
for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her
work on thirty Rock So Good. And then you know,
Star Wars comes back and she's, you know, gets to
rewrite her lines this time, and like there are some

(01:06:51):
good lines in the episode seven that are her and
she does the whole you know, hangout for hours and
hours with Ryan Johnson and like helping him rewrite the
Last Jedi.

Speaker 5 (01:07:06):
I think she also punched up some of her dialogue
in like the Star Wars movies of like the original trilogy.
Yeah she was, Yeah, she was doing it as early
as then. I don't like how significant I'm that sure, Yeah,
but yeah, I know that she was like doing like
punch ups and script doctoring as early as like yeah,

(01:07:28):
those late seventy Star Wars.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
Yes. Her line on that is like you can say this,
you can type this shit, but you can't say it
about the lines and the original Star Wars. But yet
she talks about how in the original Star Wars, like
Harrison Ford would like rewrite his line, like he rewrote
the line like I love you, I know, And she
was like, well, what the fuck? Like he got to

(01:07:52):
rewrite his side, I should I should get to rewrite
my side. And so yeah, she did start to get
the ability to punch up her lines in the original ones.
But she dieded way too young in twenty sixteen, after
suffering a heart attack on a flight from London to la.

Speaker 5 (01:08:10):
I can't believe it's already been ten years since she knows.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
It's crazy, and I forget that she was only sixty too.
She was only sixty. Yeah, Debbie Reynolds, her mom died
of a stroke the next day, which is super tragic,
so wild.

Speaker 4 (01:08:24):
It's really that there's a like I reread this recently
when I was watching These Old Bros, which everyone should watch.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
It's on two b these old broads, These old broads.

Speaker 4 (01:08:33):
That's the only other script besides I think, besides Postcards
from the Edge that she has sole credit on. And
it's a weird TV movie that stars Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor,
Joan Collins, and Shirley McClain. And it's I think, like,
is that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
The clip we were watching earlier with that you okay.

Speaker 4 (01:08:55):
Yeah, where Elizabeth Taylor's giving the most unhinged performance in
the whole world.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
She goes, it's so weird. Yeah yeah, cgi and previously
filmed footage allowed her to appear in episode nine. But
people say that episode nine was supposed to be her movie,
Like it was supposed to really like star her, And
maybe that's why that movie sucks so bad, sucks so

(01:09:23):
falkin hard. What if it's just Leah Organa and Babu Frick.

Speaker 4 (01:09:27):
For all episodes just a bottle episode the Elevator.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
But yeah, I you know, she did like the toxicology
report when she passed, like she tested positive for cocaine,
heroin in ecstasy, like so she was still you know,
struggling with addiction and like going back through her life
like it's that she's so fun and like such a

(01:09:57):
like ray of light despite having like lived through just
this this world where she's like treated like shit and
like objectified and like this horrible world of Hollywood, like
just anecdote like right also around the time when she
was like you know, for like nineteen where she's in
a TV movie with Laurence Olivier and he keeps asking

(01:10:20):
her if she's on her period, like over and over again, like.

Speaker 5 (01:10:24):
That you just need to stop talking.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
Yeah, but like this and then to have to just
like internalize that and be like this is the thing
I joke about now, like you know, is just it sucks.
Like I feel like there's like a lot of unprocessed
trauma that she had to work through, and like the
way she worked through it was by just being a

(01:10:47):
complete fucking blast Weekend of Light.

Speaker 5 (01:10:50):
I mean that's true for so many people. They're suffering
so much on the inside, but they project a very
like kind, warm, loving positive energy externally.

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
And her legacy is so huge.

Speaker 4 (01:11:04):
In this video essay about her screenwriting career that be
Kind Rerun released recently, it is like really good and
turned me onto these old broads.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
I'm gonna keep mentioning it.

Speaker 4 (01:11:19):
They mentioned that she and Patty Duke also like I
kind of forget about, but she and Patty Duke were
both really instrumental and sort of like starting to change
cultural narratives around bipolar and like reducing stigma, especially like
women with mental illness. So her legacy is like really

(01:11:41):
huge and yeah, very cool.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
Absolutely well, thanks thanks for coming on to talk Carry Fisher.
You guys, thanks for having us anything that we didn't
get to from you guys's cramming or lifelong knowledge with
carry Fisher. There's one quote that she says in Wishful
Drinking that I liked and.

Speaker 4 (01:12:05):
Has mentioned a lot that she says, no matter how
I go, I want it reported that I drowned in Moonlight,
strangled by my own braw which just feels so her.

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
She's so great. There's no bras in space though. Oh yeah,
but I guess.

Speaker 7 (01:12:25):
Yeah, Caitlin, anything you want to do not really just
I guess h plugging the fact that we do have
an upcoming episode of the Bechdel Cast on Postcards from
the Edge and an upcoming episode on Empire Strikes Back,
because that's the movie I'm picking for my birthday this week.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Nice. Yeah, you guys haven't done as many Star Wars
movies as I would have expected for Weirdly, yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:12:54):
And that's not even my favorite one, because my favorite
one is Return of the Jedi. Really is yeah, because
well I've seen it once.

Speaker 8 (01:13:03):
I mean the Ewoks, so yeah, got it got a
hard like people are like, that's a kid's movie and
it's like, yeah it is, ye, so don't be mad
about that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
And also, uh, the Woks fucking rip like they're so cool.

Speaker 5 (01:13:18):
Yeah, I'm sure Empire is probably better, but return the fun.
There's Woks there.

Speaker 4 (01:13:25):
I haven't seen a second of The Mandalorian, but I
will be going to see the movie because of the
return of Frick, Frick and Frick on the big screen.

Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
Freakin imags. Yeah, this is making me regret not asking
you to come on next week's Iconograph, which is about Babu.

Speaker 5 (01:13:41):
Fred will come back, Bobby Frick and lit Biscuit.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
Yeah. Whatever, it's a crossover episode. Where can people find you, guys,
follow you all that good stuff other than on the
upcoming episode about Postcards from the Edge on the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 5 (01:13:58):
Yes, you can follow you on Instagram at Caitlin Dronte.

Speaker 4 (01:14:03):
I can follow me on Instagram at Jamie christ Superstar.
And I think my new book is going up for
pre sale and sometime in the next couple of months,
so I'll post about it incessantly.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
Have you revealed what what the book is about and
what But it's.

Speaker 9 (01:14:22):
Fiction Postcards from the Edge too, an extremely to the Edge. Yeah, yeah,
that was the Edge.

Speaker 1 (01:14:33):
Nah, amazing, so wonderful. Thank you guys so much for
doing this, and I'll be right back with the no
no, no notebook dump.

Speaker 10 (01:14:43):
Uh oh right, that was our Carery Fisher conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
Thank you to Jamie Loftus and Caitlin Dorante. What a treat,
what a get. Thanks to super producer Victor Wright who
helps coordinate the booking, and to Meredith Danko for the
research help. And thanks to Sheila Weller whose biography of
Life on the Edge gave me a lot of the
great details for this one. This is the notebook Dump.

(01:15:25):
No no, no, no notebook dump. I know there's a lot
of drugs in this one, believe it or not. I
left out a lot of drug stuff. She once had
a friend smuggle and eye dropper of LSD into Africa
so she and Paul Simon and their friends could drop
acid in a pharaoh's tomb. But yeah, I mean you

(01:15:47):
may be noticing like I have, that a lot of
these icon episodes end up having a lot of drug content,
and them Marilyn Monroe, Sherlock Holmes, Whitney Houston, Elvis and
now Carrie Fisher, a lot of icons who I knew
had drug use in their story. I did not know
the extent to which they would be using drugs heading

(01:16:09):
into the research. Three of those people, by the way,
either directly or generationally affected by Max Jacobson, Johnny Applespeed,
doctor feel Good, and eventually feel bad. We when we
call him doctor feel Good, we should we should mention
it's not that good. Feelings aren't that good by the end.

(01:16:31):
But I do just want to, you know, kind of
put into context why I think the drug stuff is
interesting and important. There's there's a great study called the
Tucson Garbage Projects that I've talked about before on I
think Zeitgeist definitely on the Cracked podcast. But it was
conducted by a guy named doctor William Rathgee, and they

(01:16:52):
used the contents of the residents of Tucson's trash for
the purposes of archaeology. Essentially, it's kind of an interesting idea.
We researched the trash of ancient civilizations to see how
they lived what they left behind, and so they go
garbage picking to see how we actually live. One detail

(01:17:16):
I loved from you know, this was done in the
seventies and eighties. Anyone who was alive at that time
will remember multiple times a year. Usually you would get
giant phone books on your porch. Everybody just up and
down your street giant phone books. And he said that
when you dug down into the landfill, it's like cutting

(01:17:37):
into a layer cake with these layers of just like
pure phone book, because everyone was throwing out their phone
books all at the same time. But the main thing
they discovered was that our self reported consumption habits do
not match with the contents of our waste bins, and
for instance, what really jumped out of them, alcohol canssumption

(01:18:00):
was significantly higher in reality than in questionnaires, and the
implications of that are pretty crazy because almost all of
our evidence for what people do and how we live
is self reported. So there there's kind of this shadow
history of the world just generally beneath the official surface

(01:18:24):
level one. The surface level one is what we tell
each other about how we live. It's the you know,
magazine articles and you know, the stuff that goes through
the pr Agency. And then there's how we actually live.
And the only way to get at that is either
by digging through our trash, which doesn't happen very often,

(01:18:46):
or having an investigative journalist write a rigorously sourced biography
where they go through an interview all the people who
are around when you are alive, which also doesn't happen
that often except with these icons. And with drug use,
I think there's even more shame than alcohol use, even
more incentive to come in after the fact and clean

(01:19:09):
up the crime scene in the immediate aftermath by the
PR teams and editing it out though gives us an
incomplete picture of how people actually lived and you know,
how the drugs actually turn on people, why they use them,
and her dying at age sixty with cocaine, heroin and

(01:19:32):
MDMA in her system, like, there was something about that
detail that really kind of stuck in my brain. And
you don't really and I think it's because you don't
really see older people using hard drugs in pop culture
other than I think like Little Miss Sunshine where the
grandpa starts doing heroin like kind of as a bit.

(01:19:55):
But there are plenty of people getting treatment for addiction
who are like in their fifties and sixties. I've seen
old people who look like they just stepped off a
golf course tell gnarly stories about you know, hard core
drug use. And I've seen them beat addiction. So I

(01:20:15):
don't know, it's just something that you don't really see
that much. I think it's an interesting aspect of this
shadow history that is worth telling, is worth kind of
undeleting from the official record, speaking of things that are
usually too dark for the official account, and tying into
an icon who is currently in the news, currently starring

(01:20:37):
in a blockbuster the life is the subject of a
new biopic that is apparently doing pretty well. There's this
anecdote that she wrote into Chacoholic that I think is
worth reading to you. She wrote, remember that dentist who
sued Michael Jackson for molesting his kid? Yes, that was

(01:20:58):
my dentist, Evan Chandler, dds dentist to the stars. And
this same doctor Chandler, long before the lawsuit was brought,
though not necessarily before it was contemplated, needed someone to
brag about his son's burgeoning friendship with Michael Jackson. Side note,
Carrie Fisher is just so she will burn bridges in

(01:21:22):
her memoirs. That's what makes them so good. Anyways, continuing
on parenthetical, this was years before Michael had children of
his own, and so my dentist would go on and
on about how much his son liked Michael Jackson, and
more importantly, how much Michael Jackson liked his son. And
the most disturbing thing I remember him saying was, you know,

(01:21:43):
my son is very good looking. So here was doctor
Chandler telling me how Michael was buying his kid computers
and taking him to incredible places and sleeping in the
same bed and getting him. Wait, hang on, I said,
I have to enter up here. Let's go back a tick. Okay, sure,

(01:22:03):
Chandler said, they're sleeping in the same bed. He blinked, well, yeah,
but my ex wife is always there, so it's okay.
And his stepfather. And then one night some months later,
doctor Chandler came up to my house again and told
me that he and his wife were going to sue Michael. Why,
I asked, because he explained rationally, Michael is sleeping in

(01:22:25):
the same bed with my boy. All right. That's the
end of the excerpt from Chacoholic. Her takeaway from that
story is not the one I would have. I think
her thing is like I never thought Michael's whole thing
with kids was like that weird, which I don't think
is the right takeaway, but I do think it's a
powerful story about the narcotic effect of fame on people,

(01:22:50):
how people can like sublimate things just generally that they
don't want to be true. But yes, the narcotic effect,
that's something we come up against repeatedly in the stories
of these icons, people doing just amazingly stupid things because
they are being affected by the drug of celebrity. So anyways,

(01:23:17):
couldn't not read that anecdote?

Speaker 7 (01:23:20):
All right?

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
A few more odds and ends from Carrie Fisher on
her script Doctor Work be Kind Rewind, which is a
great video I highly recommend. Checking out points out that
the first character that she rewrote in herscript Doctor Work
was tinker Bell in Hook, which is a character literally
brought back to life by applause, which seems like a

(01:23:43):
character she would really know well given who her parents were.
Carrie Fisher, while sober, went on a double date with
Ted Kennedy and a senator I had never heard of
named Chris, but she had kept it very quiet because
I guess he was a big deal. I don't remember him,
but anyways, during the dinner, Ted Kennedy was like, Carrie, ir,

(01:24:08):
do you think you will have sexual relations with Christopher
after the date and she was like, she just reports
being very creeped out by Ted Kennedy. We do always
ask would they be if their timelines had linked up?
Would they be on the Epstein flight logs. I think
if Carrie Fisher was in the Epstein files, she would

(01:24:32):
be in there telling him to get fucked with some
clever gift, like she did to that film producer. All Right.
Postcards from the Edge, as mentioned bestseller critical smash, but
a rumor was started at the time that the male
editor of the book actually wrote it. Guys, she was
a man. She was Princess Leah, so it couldn't have

(01:24:53):
actually been her who wrote this brilliant work. The rumor
was allegedly started by the famous SI I writer Harlan Ellison.
The editor himself was like, wait, wait, why no, I'm
credited as an editor, and that's what I did. She
gave him kind of a visible credit on the book,
and people who wanted to not believe she wrote the

(01:25:16):
book were like, she must have had to do that
because he actually wrote the book. And the editor has
on multiple occasions been like, no, she's just generous to
a fault. Anyways, that's going to do it for Carrie Fisher.
What a ride. Always curious to hear from you guys
about what you thought, anything I missed, Any cool anecdotes

(01:25:38):
from past icons that I missed, You can hit me
up on Blue sky Jack ob one And next week
we have the icon that probably grew the most in
my estimation of how big and famous they were. During
the research, we had our guest on next week's episode,

(01:25:59):
Amy Miller, recommend mister Bean, and I thought, okay, I
remember him kind of. This will be like doing an
episode on Ernest. I've always thought it'd be funny to
do an episode on the character of Ernest from Ernest
Goes to Camp and Mister Bean would be similar. I
had no idea what I was in for how massive

(01:26:21):
and weird the following of mister Bean as anyways, highly
recommend you tune in for our episode about mister Bean
with Amy Miller and tomorrow. Ye yeah, that's a week
from today. Until then more Zeitgeist. Have a great week everyone, Bye,