March 17, 2022 • 56 mins
On today's episode, Jamie sits down with Naomi Foner for a beautiful conversation about their friendship. They discuss the importance of curiosity and honesty, how their families have brought them closer together, and so much more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Something, I'll get it. I'm a good friend. Hi everybody,
it's Jamie Lee Curtis and you're listening to the Good
Friend Podcast, presented to you by I Heart Radio. It's
a podcast about friendship. We talk about everything, we cry,
(00:24):
we laugh, we think about what it really means to
be a good friend. And I have conversations with some
of my best friends, some people I've never met, and
sort of everything in between. So I hope by the
end of it that you have a really good sense
(00:47):
of what friendship means to me and the people that
I consider friends. And I hope you can take those
same ideas into your own friendship groups, and I hope
you enjoy it. I don't know an longative I'm a
good friend. They're beautiful, loving, original people, and they are
(01:15):
from an original, loving, creative person. My friend Naomi Phoner,
who is our guest today on the Good Friend Podcast. UM,
Naomi was just describing although we will not share with
our listeners the description of your recent birthday party with
your family, UM, but I think it would be safe
(01:38):
to say that we could share that one of your
granddaughters sort of started a poetry slam with you where
she offered a poem, and now it's your turn to respond.
Do you write a lot of poetry? I do. I
mean I don't write it constantly, but it sort of
insists on coming out every once in a while. And
(01:59):
I mine that there are things I can't say accepted
a poem, and so I often will write a poem
for a gift, r birthday, or an event because it
somehow allows me the freedom to speak something that I
can't find a form otherwise. For For the uninitiated listener,
(02:24):
Naomi as a writer, um do h Well, I mean
it's a doll moment um who primarily writes screenplays. Um.
Naomi and I have been friends since I met Christopher Guest,
my husband. Um. I was introduced to Naomi and her
(02:47):
husband at the time, Stephen Jillen hall Um, and there
little children. Jake was five, maybe even younger. Yeah, it
was I think he was about five year wedding right,
so well, and as you know, we met and married
within a few months, so it was pretty quick. But
so Jake was, you know, little five and Maggie was
(03:10):
eight or right, so they were little, and um, you
were you know, when you you're in a relationship, you
know how it is when you meet people connected to
your relationship. UM. I think anybody listening, man, woman, child,
anything in between can understand. You want to make a
(03:34):
good impression. You want two feel connected to the people
that you're feeling super connected to, which is your significant person.
And you were that so completely for me that it
took my breath away. UM. I wanted so much to
(04:00):
be happy with Chris, and in order to be happy
with Chris, I needed to be happy with the people
around him, his family, with who I became close to.
But you also represented the first sort of adult family
that I really had ever spent any time with. UM,
(04:23):
do you remember that first time when we first met. Yes,
I remember that you said, and after a couple of meetings,
and I completely understood it that it was as if
we saw each other from the very beginning. And I
certainly felt seen, and I certainly felt like you know,
(04:43):
every one in a while you meet someone that you
think you always knew and that you had you know.
It wasn't like it wasn't there was nothing awkward about it.
There was nothing. It was almost like we we had
we were picking up some thread from another life. And
I remember you giving me a birthday gift. It was
(05:06):
I think close to was my thirty ninth or birthday,
and you had picked out a few things for me,
and each one of these little things that came you
had wrapped as you off and do, in a beautiful box,
and each one of the things We're like, oh my god,
she knows who I am. It was that, it was
that feeling, and it was it was remarkable. But I
(05:29):
think that's what happens with good friends. I think what
I've been interested in, particularly in just doing this podcast
the way it has begun, is what is it what
happens when you meet someone like that? And I feel
that way? And I felt that way with you completely. Um,
(05:52):
I know you felt that way with me. We had
never met. Chances are we might not have ever met,
just given where our lives, where you were married with
young children, you were focused on school and your own work.
You were working a lot and raising your children, and
so um, I do remember there have been many people
(06:17):
in my life who feel like I wanted everything you
had it You made sense to me. The way you
lived a family life made sense to me. And I
know I'm not alone in feeling like I wanted I
watched you to see how you did it, because I
(06:41):
don't think you know what you want until you're there.
I just don't think you know it. And you wanted I.
I wanted you. I wanted I just wanted that life.
It felt very free and creative and esthetically pleasing to me,
someone who was trying to figure it out. And here
I was in this new marriage and here you were,
(07:05):
this lovely sort of guide where you you just sort
of welcomed me. And because you know, a family is
like a river. Family life is like a running river,
and you know you cannot you you have to enter it.
You just have to get into it. You can't. You
(07:28):
can look at it from afar and go, wow, look
at that river, but ultimately, if you want the experience,
you have to get in it. And you just allowed
me in it right away. And I, you know, obviously,
have never forgotten that feeling. It's a feeling that you have. Yeah, well,
it's it is like a river. You can't control it.
(07:51):
It's it's it's got a current. Things come in and out,
they float by, and it's a it's a kind of
lovely chaos of family. Um and I having grown up
in a very complicated family where things always had to
be controlled. Was probably leaning over backwards to do less
(08:15):
of that, although it was sometimes overwhelming. But the strongest
feeling I had with you was there was no performance necessary,
no the rules to it. It was natural. It felt
completely comfortable. And yeah, and I was I was up
(08:36):
older than you, twelve years I think, but it I
never felt the age difference except circumstantial, because you were
one of those young people who was already wise, and
you were very open to everything. You know, it was
it's it's really interesting how you have maintain that through
(09:01):
your whole life. You you know, you're you're always curious. Curiosity,
I think in young children, in people in general, is
one of the most telling things about who they who
they are they're not It means that they might be
a little afraid, but they're more afraid of not knowing
(09:22):
what's new, what's interesting. And you were incredibly curious about
everything and committed to everything you chose. You committed yourself
to your marriage, to the to all those people in
Chris's family, to all of your friends. You were you
were always such a good friend and and and a
(09:47):
really good friend because a really good friend I was
thinking about this conversation we're going to have today and
what makes you such a good friend. It's aside from
being you know, incredibly loving, and you can't really love
somebody else unless on some level you really love yourself.
(10:10):
But you you're incredibly honest, and you're honest in a
generous way. You tell the truth and I always turn
to you to hear it because I know you'll tell
me the truth. Sometimes you don't want to say too much,
but you will never actively lie and I can count
(10:33):
on that. But isn't isn't that a component? Don't you
look for that in a good friend? Yes, but there
are very very few who are like that. They are
very real lack of that ability to to say the
truth in a in a generous way, because you know
(10:54):
you can tell the truth. Is it comes in different
forms when it's really when it comes with love, and
I think it's part of parenting also, which may be
you know, an odd version of friendship or certainly of love.
Um when you have the courage to tell your children
the truth, even if they won't like it, even if
it will mean that there's going to be either a
(11:16):
temporary or um significant withdrawal from you as a result
of having done that. It's really an act of love
because they need to hear it from somebody who cares
about them. And you know what, what is the truth?
It's only your truth or my truth. It's as much
as we've discovered up to a certain point. There's no
(11:37):
absolute truth. But you can tell when somebody is telling
it to you with love because they care about you,
because they want you to survive or to get through something,
or to get better or to and you have always
done it from me from the very beginning. Well, I
want to go to the very beginning, if I may
(11:57):
please go back now me let's go time travel together,
shall we? Um? You know, you have a very interesting
beginning of your life. Um. And without it being a
psychological session, this is obviously a podcast talking about sort
of origins of friendship, early friendships, how do you build them,
(12:20):
how do you hold onto them? How do you let
them go? You know, it's an exploration. It's there's no
set form here. It's pretty open. But I know your past,
and I don't think our significant listeners know your past,
which I think informs a little bit about the kind
of friendships you make, Which is that you were very young,
(12:41):
and your parents were both doctors, they weren't yet full doctors,
they were interns and they were interns. And but you
were left with your grandparents for a significant part of
your early life. And when you lived with your grandparents,
did they provide access to other kids for you? Did?
(13:03):
Were they quote surrogate parents and therefore did what most
parents do? Or were you more isolated from other kids? Well,
I was with HI until I was about two and
a half, so um full time, and I was in
my parents were doctors in a hospital in New York,
(13:25):
were they And those days you had to live in
the hospital. If you were an intern and a resident,
you you were there full time basically, and that's where
your abode was. So when I was born, I think
I wasn't actually a planned child, and I think my
mother was extremely worried about my arrival and what it
was going to do to her. At the time, very
(13:46):
hard one career. There were very few women doctors at
that time, so my grandmother, who was the great caretaker
who had three daughters, moved to an apartment across the
street from the hospital. My mother is really worried about
what having a baby is going to do to her career.
(14:07):
So my grandmother took me to an apartment across the
street from the hospital, and not long after that, my
grandfather had a heart attack and they decided they would
move for his help to Florida, and they took me
with him. So I moved for the first two years
of my life to live with them in Florida. They
were first generation immigrants, warm h and very very sensual
(14:33):
people like I still remember my grandmother, you know, holding
me her to her gigantic bosom. I have the same
grandmother's bosom, not me, Jamie Perth, Well I do too,
but yes, yes, Grandma Helen, I referred to the mess
one big giant breast with a line down the middle,
and so I called it a Uni boob. Yeah. I
(14:55):
lived with him until I was too and a half.
I think a parents, not only They took a long
time to come and get me again, and I don't
think I went back to see them, and or maybe
I did very briefly, and I went back to um
to New York. I don't think I did. But my
(15:18):
grandparents A life with my grandparents was very loving. My
grandfather adored me. He would tell me stories um, but
I don't have any memory of other children, right, So
it wasn't as if they were taking you to parks
necessarily and you didn't have but I mean, by the
(15:39):
way you were too. So when you came, when you
came back to New York and you were living with
your parents, did you have early friendships that you felt
the real connection to and and have you continued any
of those yet? I had. I had one friend who
was the child of another set of doctors who lived nearby.
(16:03):
I had lots of friends in elementary school. And if
you look at my work, it was very surprising to
me to see that one of my earliest friends, whose
name was Eleanor Stein, is the basis of both of
the big movies in my life, Running on Empty, because
she later went on to join The Weather Underground, and
(16:25):
she she was my introduction into you know, teenage the
music of the time, which was sort of Bob Dylan
and folk scene and you know, Joan Bayez and also
politics or parents were pretty big lefties, and so she
was very very important to me. And then when I
(16:48):
wrote and directed the first thing I directed, which took
a long time to happen, it was very good girls.
That was about my relationship with her as well. So
it's very interesting how that early early friendship has kind
of infused my work even without not being completely and
totally aware of it. I still have friends from those days,
(17:09):
from my early childhood, from certainly from high school, definitely
from college. But friendships became a family for me. And
when I moved to southern California, uh, I was without
family because what family. And my mother died when I
(17:30):
was when I was young, and she was forty eight,
and the only I had my father around, but he
was a kind of strange character surgeon of all surgeons,
but mostly holidays and birthdays and things like that was
celebrated with a created family that came from the people
(17:51):
we knew who had children the same age as as
we had, and um people we met and work we
connect into. And I always felt like it was the
table and food became a real center of connection. And
I think I got that from my grandparents because in
(18:12):
many ways food was loved, you know. I have memories
of my grandmother cutting a big piece of pumpernickel bread
the wrong way towards her breast, but I thought she
would lose her left nipple that she rather with butter
and honey, and hand meat his plate sized piece of
brown bread with butter and honey. So yes for me.
Friendship love it's very connected to that. So there would
(18:35):
be always, you know, dinners with big bowls of salad
and plates of food, and always an extra chair available,
and conversation and music and and interestingly enough, that's kind
of the way my birthday went. Last night. My daughter
had me to her house with table full of food,
(18:56):
and we danced and we talked about all kinds of things,
and it felt like I was swimming in love because
the history I have of it well, and my experience
and my experience as your friend, as a new friendship. Um,
as we built that friendship from my marriage to Chris
(19:20):
was exactly what you just described. The house you lived in.
Both houses that you lived in in Hancock Park were
open seasons. They the door was unlocked. You people every weekend.
I think we went to your house every single weekend
(19:41):
that first year of our marriage. It was either your house,
to Rob's or Billy's. I mean it was some version
of that. Where As you described, I've copied your kitchen
now six times over. Open shelving, no cabinetree, big bowls everywhere,
(20:01):
because that's exactly what it felt like to be your friend,
to be a good friend of you in that time.
For me, a young, unformed twenty six year old actress
who married someone after knowing them four months and having
never spent more than two days together physically in the
(20:24):
same space before we married, we got together and we
would have these weekends, but that was it, and then
we got married, and so kind of being pulled into
your home life gave us a direction to go. And
I do think it's an incredibly helpful and hopeful thing
for a young married woman to be brought in with
(20:47):
a seat at your table. By the way, for the
uninitiated listener, maybe just maybe somewhere on some website somewhere,
I will post my Caesar salad rest people, which has
followed me a bit around the world. But I would
make a big salad in your kitchen and with your hands,
(21:12):
with my hands, you hug the salad. Is the direction.
You do not use tongs. You hug the salad, you
touch it. Um. But it it was that feeling. It's
so interesting because from your grandparents, see, I was going
for something which was not going for I was investigating
with you right now to see if the isolation of
(21:35):
without a lot of kids around, um, if that impacted anything.
And the truth is, it sounds like it didn't because
you were, as you said, surrounded by love and it
was very a loving, sensual experience food. And so when
you became an adult, as you said, and moved out
here to California, um, that's what you created. I've been there. Um.
(21:57):
I think for anybody listening who was drawn to that friend, yes,
you are. You older than me, so you had a
lot more experience. You were a mother. I had no
friends who had kids, and I watched you and followed
the way you did it. You know, I was a
bit of a sponge. I don't want to say that.
I just sort of studied you like a scientist, but
(22:21):
I I absorbed you. I absorbed you and easy. No,
I was making a lot of it up since I
didn't have anything to go on either. When Maggie was born,
I didn't have a single friend who had a child,
and it was deep in the middle of the whole
feminist movement were being pregnant and having a child was
almost a betrayal of the politics I was very significantly
(22:45):
part of, and I I didn't know what to do.
I remember being hugely pregnant. I gained about sixty pounds
when I was pregnant, and having people look at my
stomach and I would be like, what are you looking at?
I was, and I had nobody to ask any questions.
(23:06):
I had one aunt who had never had a child.
I didn't have any friends who had never had a child.
So I was making it up kind of full bore
out of nothing with whatever memories I did have from
my grandparents, which probably saved my life. I mean, I
remember my grandmother. When I grew up, grew older, they
never told me that I had been living with my grandparents.
(23:30):
I think that it was like the end of World
War two theory where they thought children were. I didn't
remember anything or know what happened to them when they
were children. They weren't like fully formed in some way,
and so they never discussed it or else. They were
pretty guilty about it. And my grandmother would come to
visit and they would only tell me, well, you're very
special to her. They didn't say, because you lived with
(23:52):
her for three years, right, because she nurtured that and
we now know, of course how crucial those first that
first year of bonding with a mother and you know
all the rest of it. We've both done enough work
in that arena to understand the import of that and
(24:13):
what happens when you have a when you don't get
to have that. There something iative. I'm a good friend.
We'll be right back with more good friend after this
quick break, so stick around, good friend. It's interesting to
(24:41):
me because you say you were making it up. I
think we all make up almost everything. I mean, I
I can tell you being a mother obviously now of
two adults, people, Um, I know there have been things
that I know. For instance, my daughter has said, I
wish you had taught me this. And it's funny because
(25:04):
I didn't feel like I had that from my family,
and so I just made an assumption that everybody would
just pick it up, sort of through osmosis that there
was that if you saw me do something. Yeah, I'm
a worker. I say I'm a worker, meaning I'm somebody
(25:24):
who likes to pitch it. I'm I am not someone
who's idle. I am active and doing things all day long,
and I'm a very active person. So I just assumed
that people would see that activity and then basically pick up, oh,
that's how you do that, and then do it. And
I think many people, particularly many people listening to podcasts,
(25:48):
many women are now at home, you know, either exercising
or doing some sort of chore at home while they're
listening to a podcast, or driving somewhere on a long
distance and listening to a podcast. And I think we
can all relate to what you just said, which is
we we kind of all make it up. Um, being
(26:10):
a good friend is that idea that you you sort
of do something and another person does it. I've certainly
how many times have I told you I've copied your kitchen? Yeah? Well,
and I think there are things we don't even know
we're copying. You know, My grandmother would arrive on those
visits when I was a little girl, and she would
(26:31):
My grandfather loved being in southern Florida because he'd grown
up in Russia, had a garden and he would plant
fruits and vegetables, and he she would arrive with her
foluminous self and take off her dress, and out of
her dress would fall avocados and and all these things
(26:55):
which she wasn't technically allowed to bring across straight lines.
And I don't know if she was teaching me something,
but the sensuousness of that was so extraordinary that I
and I and like nothing I've ever seen in my
parents house where everything had to be in order. So
I'm we absorbed something some things and they have huge
(27:19):
impacts on us that are even knowing it. And that
was comforting and wonderfully I felt so good. You know,
all that stuff was fantastic. Well, I think that's very much, um,
sort of on brand for you. Is that sort of
sensual tactiles all the factory, Like your sense is what
(27:44):
you do, how you do things, Uh, is a very
sensory experience. Um. You're a writer, and you're an extraordinary writer,
and the way you put words together is a sensory experience.
It's the beauty, it's the sensuality of language. Um, the
way it can be combined into a thought or an idea.
(28:05):
I was thinking when you talked about feminism. Now you know,
I was a kid of the seventies from a movie
star mom who was not political or had been more
of a Democrat, and then married a Republican and sort
of didn't really have um, honestly, I think probably a
little homophobic. I know that when I remember when Ellen
(28:28):
kissed Laura dern Or on TV, and I remember my
mother had, I think, some issue with it. I think
it was hard for her to see that. UM. I
remember her saying it was fine what somebody did in private,
but that she didn't want to be confronted with it.
And the reason I bring it up is another thing
(28:49):
that happened, which was, you know, a Good Friend podcast
is about how to friends help each other? Um, how
do you relate to friends? And I was when we married,
you know, I just, um like wanted to be Mrs
Gass like immediately, like I gave up Jamie Lee Curtis
(29:09):
so quickly and was Jamie gassed? And um, I remember
when we started at a school together. We followed you again,
I copied you. I saw how and where you sent
your children to school, and I thought that sounded like
a good, creative, interesting Petrie dish for young minds to
(29:31):
grow in and that sounded great, and we were able
to send Annie there to a school. Um. And I
remember there was a period of time where you know,
there's some fundraising, there's always fundraising by the way anybody
young listening to this, it's there's always fundraising. Any for
anything worth anything, you're gonna have to raise money for it.
(29:53):
And you know, I'm on the board at Children's Hospital
Los Angeles and I worked very hard on their but
everything is and raised thing. But we were at the
school and I remember we were asked to give a
certain amount of money, and we gave an amount of
money and we gave it as Mr and Mrs Christopher Guest,
you know, was listed in the little program or whatever.
(30:14):
And then I remember there were tons of people older
than me, and everyone was Naomi Phoner and Stephen Joellen Hall,
so and so and so and so, and I remember thinking, wow,
you can have your own identity. And you know, for me,
(30:37):
someone who was not raised around a feminist with a
feminist mother, I wasn't raised around feminist discussion. I was
not raised in a really a particularly political home. Those
ideas didn't get tossed around for conversation. And you were
a full on activist feminist. And your daughter, Maggie has
(31:02):
become one your granddaughters have both carried on that mantle
of the power of activism mhm. And that was a
great help for me is what I'm basically long winded
way of saying thank you. I have to on some level,
I do have to thank my that women in my
family who as difficult as it was for me as
(31:25):
a child. UM, the positive aspect of them was a
kind of unspoken expectation that I was to use whatever
talents I had, and that the expectation that I do
that at the time that I was going through the
(31:45):
various stages of my life was the feminism that I
learned because I was young and right in the middle
of the you know, all the exploration of feminism that
was going on in the sixties and seventies, and there
are a lot of women who didn't even know they
were entitled to it. And not only did I know
(32:06):
that it had been inculcated in me as a kind
of expectation. You you use what you've been given in
some kind of service, and it doesn't matter what sex
you are, you do that. And that was a gift
because I never had to go that first hurdle into
(32:28):
feeling entitled to it. It was something I knew I
was born with, so I didn't work too hard at that.
UM and I think that it's been kind of a
great thing to watch our daughters, both Annie and Maggie,
and Maggie's children move forward from the place where we
(32:50):
where we got and expect all the things that they
saw and move on from that, so that there is
there is lot of growth in that. And I have
to say that those things came from the very problems
that I had as a child. My mother was a doctor.
I remember having fist bites with people in the street
(33:12):
in front of school where they boys, she can't be
a doctor, she's a nurse. No she's not, she's a doctor.
You know, those were silly times, but they were very real.
And Um, what's interesting to me is to see from
my viewing of you is how you have you again
(33:35):
from both curiosity and a kind of build an energy
that you have. You have so much wonderful energy. You
have reached for everything that you were interested in. You
know you could have seen that and done nothing, but
you didn't. What you do with all these clues and
(33:57):
cues is you use them. And I I know that
we have been there for each other at moments when
it didn't feel like we could get there. Um, that
there are things that we were doing that didn't seem
after a while realistic, and that the other thing that
that this friendship for me has always provided is a
(34:19):
cheering section. I mean, when I directed my first movie
at sixty three, you shired up in sundance when they
screened it. I remember, and I remember you writing the
first thing you wrote. You you went on to be
a serious author. Your children's books aren't just celebrity children's books.
(34:40):
They are really wonderful. But the first time you wrote something,
you weren't so sure about it. And what I do
when I knew reading it, was that you weren't following
anybody's path. You weren't following anybody's rules. You were writing
from some place in you that was the same place
(35:01):
that made you compelling as an actor. The originality of
you was in what you were writing. And there were
people around you saying, well, you know, it's not make
the sentences different, and you know, put your put your
punctuation in this place, so use a different word. And
the thing that made it so great was you. Nobody
had taught you those forms, and you were doing it
(35:24):
in the most original and wonderful way, and you needed
to embrace your very originality, which you know by the
way it's knocked out of you by school. All. Yes,
for sure, I mean, and I obviously I appreciate that
it's funny you brought that up. I was going to
bring that up because I have a vivid memory of
(35:49):
writing something and then sitting on that purple Victorian couch
or burgundy Victorian couch in your living room. Um, having
you talk about what I had written? Was I for
the uninitiated listener who knows nothing about we're discussing. Um.
This was before I had ever written children's books. I
(36:11):
was twenty six. And you know, I think we all
many people don't really know who they are what they're doing,
and we we go along in life and and sort
of follow the next thing and then we oh, now
we're doing this. And that's very much the way it
(36:33):
was with me. I didn't have a vision of it.
I wasn't in scholar on any level. I barely got
out of high school. And yet I was very observant
of things, and I found things very funny, and so
I kept a little book and I would write little
um observations, UM, a little funny ideas, a little funny
word plays, whatever. And I did cobble together a couple
(36:57):
short stories. UM, I made it a challenge to myself,
which was I came up with the title first and
then wrote a short story to it. I guess that's
sort of like poetry slam, or like eight Mile gave
me the refrigerator at I was supposed to write, right, yes,
(37:17):
and you know I remember. UM the idea of writing
something to a title felt like an exercise for me. UM.
I recently watched UM wonderful talented improvisational actress named Eadie
Patterson who just did a one woman improv our show
(37:44):
where she played all of the characters that she then
created out of the improv So she, like somebody, came
up with a title for the show and her name
and that was it. And then for an hour she
(38:04):
improvised the story of that title, like from the title,
and the title was No Mama, and her name was
Chance Tomorrow. And from that this woman created this entire
(38:27):
world of characters, scenarios, times and places that I never
thought I'd go. And then some at the end of
the hour came back and figured out a way of
ending it with No Mama. Like I, my mind was
(38:52):
blown open. But that's what my early Sorry, I went
on a really weird tangent, but I'm glad I did
because it was so talented. Um. But I remember I
wrote a short story to a title under the davenport
with Mrs Stein's right now, I I I just I
(39:14):
remember writing the title and then writing the story to
go with it. It was a woman who was a
volunteer at the zoo and there was an earthquake and
she went and got the chimpanzee that was her like
a little friend in the zoo and brought it home
and hit it in her house. So when the zoo
people came to try to find it, the chimpanzee was
(39:37):
hiding under the davenport with Mrs. Her name was Mrs Stein.
She was the Habermaniac. She was happy all the time. Anyway,
it was I remember this so well, and I remember
the feedback from you, and I'm telling you, Naomi, the
reason I'm bringing up this very long winded story. Everybody,
I'm so sorry. I hope you've gotten some work done
during this. The reason I brought it up is the
(40:00):
infinance you gave me because you looked at me. I
will never forget it. And you just said you are
a writer. You can write, you need to write. Don't
worry about anything, just right, right, right, right, right right.
And I from that somehow when that moment with Annie
(40:22):
happened where she was four and said something funny and
I wrote it down on a piece of paper and said,
when I was little, a four year old memoir of
her youth and made me laugh and cry. I knew
in that moment, and that was directly responsible, or you
were directly responsible for that occurring because of the gift
(40:46):
that only could have come from a friend. My husband
liked it, but he would not give that to me
the way you did. Well you what what what? What
I was saying before you told me all this is
what I remember, which is that you had written was
so original and so not formulaic and so unique to
(41:07):
you that there was nothing else anybody could have said
about it except that this was the work of somebody
who is really a creative and you needed to know
that because people have responsibility to that. And um, it
wasn't It was true, you know, And I'm not that
surprised when I think about the fact that the best
(41:30):
actors I know, and in some ways I think comedy
is harder to do than drama, and uh, you know,
I think about the Honeymooners Jackie Gleason, you know, who
became a significant dramatic actor. But I think you can
do that. You can go from comedy to drama. And
(41:52):
it's not necessarily true, you can go from drama to comedy.
And that's my little digression. Um, but in order to
do what you did it yourself in order to be
the observer that you were that made it possible for
you to be as good as you were as an actor.
It's the same thing writing, except you have a little
(42:15):
more leeway because you don't have to put it all
through your own physical body, so you can fly in
many other directions. But it was it was just so
obvious to me what you could do, and um, it
felt easy. Again, I can't think of many things between
us that weren't easy, except for when things weren't, when
(42:40):
when somebody was unhappy, you know, unhappy about something that
they hadn't said. But basically, I think the the dynamic
it is pretty easy because it was genuine and generous.
I do, and I think that's friendship. I mean, ultimately,
(43:04):
when we think about good friends. When I talked to
I'm going to talk to a lot of people, and
I were starting to hear a calm and thread of
that sort of generosity, of that site, of that sort
of somehow immediate knowledge of someone you know. It'll be
interesting at the end of the recordings to really be
able to make some sort of distillation of all of it.
(43:27):
And there is. They're starting to be a theme in
what makes people connectthreative, I'm a good friend. We'll be
right back with more good friend after this quick break. Friend. Now,
(43:53):
we also have a very interesting sort of thing that
I don't have with many people. I have it with
a couple of people, which is your children are now adults,
and I am friends with them independent of you, and
(44:13):
most of the time your friendships through children, we stay connected.
It's all intertwined. Um and I have been able to
make separate relationships, albeit sometimes a little distance because I
live on opposite coast. So for the uninitiated listener, Maggie
(44:37):
Gillen Hall and Jake gillen Hall are Naomi's two adult
children who I've known since they were little kids, since
they were five and eight. And as Naomi is doing
with her finger which you can't see, I remember going
over to their house once, and Jake was full of energy,
(44:59):
and I remember like he could not calm down or
he was doing something, and I didn't. I had never
really been around kids that much. I'd never been raised
with any people with kids, never been around any babies.
And I remember looking at Jack and saying, I bet
you can run around that tree five hundred times, and
(45:20):
he looked at me and he was like, yes, I can,
and he went outside ran around the tree five hundred times. UM.
That was an example of Uh, that moment of kind
of understanding kids, probably where I started writing children's book.
I should write a book about Jake and the five
hundred trips around the tree. Um. But what's been interesting
(45:45):
for me, um, is that both of your children are performers.
Both of your children are performers in the same industry
I am in. I refer to your children as my
god children. UM. I have referred to it at the
beginning ing. I did it because what I said to
Jake when he first began acting, was I'm your celebrity
(46:07):
godmother in the way of Cinderella. I know the game,
I know the BS part, I know the fun part.
And if you ever need celebrity godmother, Jamie, I'm yours
and I always will be, And somehow it has gotten
(46:28):
the words celebrity has just been pulled out of it.
And I feel, honestly like I am both of your
children's godmothers, and I feel it in my heart and
in my soul and in our independent relationships. Um. Has
that been hard for you? Or is that because it
is tricky when uh, if I'm seeing them separate from you,
(46:54):
I've We've never discussed this. I'm not looking for any
big I'm not trying to do a gotcha moment like
you on some one of those horrible got your Moment
TV shows. It's not seeing them separately, which I think
is really good for everybody. It's them, I think it.
I think it has um. You guys have had an
(47:16):
experience that I haven't had, which is to be recognizable
in the world in a way that you may they want,
may not want to be. You know all the time.
Certainly I know Jake has hated it at something and
Maggie hated it. I believe me, there was a moment
I remember being by the way the only time in
(47:38):
my life, in my entire life as a celebrity. The
only time I ever felt anxious was coming back to
Maggie's house and the people were there and she I
just she was pregnant and they were waiting to see
(47:59):
when it was the very intense time, and so I
I feel that both of them had much more of
that than I've ever had, to be perfectly honest, but
finish your thoughts, because the the intensity of the Internet
and the you know, the money for paparazzi photographs and
(48:20):
all that stuff, it was different as they By the way,
the only good reason for selfies, Yeah, the only good
reason for selfies is that it virtually put the paparazzi
out of business because now all these celebrities post pictures
of themselves. So, you know, the the paparazzi pictures that
(48:40):
used to be the only time people got to see
people in their kitchens, now we're no longer valuable because
people were boasting pictures of themselves. So maybe that's the
only good part about selfies. The only place I have
ever felt any kind of twinge of something is in
the not knowing what it is that you guys have shared,
(49:05):
in the kind of a in the dialogues about things
like that. That is um, and it's not only with
you and the kids. I think I remember going to
remember going to a wedding of one of our mutual
friends or somebody's daughter, and all of the people who
(49:26):
are actors were seated at the same table. And even
though that's my group, that was where my friend I
was seated with a bunch of people I didn't know
because I wasn't an actor. So there was a kind
of there was a thing like that that it was
sometimes difficult. But um, the actual relationship I'm very grateful for.
(49:48):
I have nothing but um good things about the fact
that certainly that Jake and you got so close this year. Um,
I think that it It was fabulous for him, and
very grateful for all the things that you did that
made it possible. But it's but it's also such a
(50:11):
I mean, it's hard for me because of distance. Just
literally I live in a separate in the country, and
so I don't get to see um you. I don't
get to see Maggie and her family very much. It's
usually when I'm in New York or they're out here
for a brief moment. We haven't lived in the same sphere.
(50:36):
You and I have more. We you and I have
absolutely and I remember that time. I remember all those
times when you were here. And you know that was
another aspect of this that I wanted to touch on
before we finished, was distance. You know. There's that. Um,
there's a wonderful loud and Wainwright song. Absence makes the
(51:01):
heart grow fonder and the mind begin to wander back
to happier days. Um. It's about a relationship falling apart,
a man and a woman falling apart. And I don't know,
I I it's difficult when you've now lived on the
East Coast for ten years. Yeah, but I've spent in
(51:23):
the last some years, I've spent large months of time
on the West Coast. But yes, when I do come
back to the West Coast, I feel like I have
to break into people's lives in order to reconnect with them,
you know. And I don't know how long I'm going
to stay, and I don't know, um, you know, so
it's it's like, am I coming for a couple of
weeks and we better make a date right now? Right?
(51:46):
The taking, for granted is something that's kind of wonderful
in relationships that just I could drop by and and
bring you a cake I just baked, or we could
take a walk together just because we feel like it.
Right now, there's something wonderful and all deep relationships haven't
being able to take them for granted. There is in
(52:06):
our lifestyle, as people who have been in movie making
and show business, a kind of gypsy quality where we
do we all at some point or they disappear for
months at a time, and you're about to do that again.
Um So that even inside your own family, you might
be disappearing for months at a time. Because of my
(52:30):
particular upbringing where I went from my parents to my
grandparents and then backed my parents again. And you know,
I'm always every time a transition is about to take place,
I'm clutching it's I'm not really good at it. I
don't always trust that it's that it's going to come
back again, and um so it's particularly difficult for me.
(52:54):
But I do feel and this you will probably find
again repeated many times, is among people who are good
friends that when you have a forced intermission, a real
friendship picks up as if it never had the intermission,
and you don't even need to know what went on
in the middle. You just are back, and it's just
(53:17):
the quality of it. Sometimes it can take on I mean,
be interesting if you and I decided to write letters
to each other for some period of time and see
how people who didn't have all this stuff that we're
using right now actually communicated when they weren't together, uh,
and what that would do to the relationship. And people
used to leave England and come to America and think, well,
(53:38):
maybe we'll never see those people again, even their mothers
and their fathers and their siblings. But I think we're
all taught, all of us who work in this industry,
a kind of okay by I'm going away for you know,
I think, Melick, I'm going off into another universe and
(53:59):
I will be back and I love you, yeah, exactly,
And we know how to do it. We turn it
off and we turn it back on when it comes back.
But I remember William Wilder's daughter Katherine, who was a
friend of mine for a long while, saying that when
her dad went off to make a movie, it was
like watching him at the bottom of the swimming pool.
He would even sometimes come home at night, but she
(54:21):
couldn't reach him. He was preoccupied in another world. And
I think it's a it's it's it's not uncommon for
that to happen even in other kinds of of occupations.
You know, a lawyer on a big case, or a
politician office, or or a doctor doctors, my goodness, I
(54:42):
mean doctors. I've heard a lot of children of doctors
talk about that same mental obsession about their parents work.
I love you so much and I appreciate you being
so open here on the good Friend podcast. There really
has been a lot of above for a very long time,
(55:03):
and I look forward to it continuing. I adore you, Hey,
adore you too, Thank you, Thanks everybody for listening. Um,
God bless you all, and let stay Saying good Friend
(55:26):
is produced by Dylan Fagin and is a production of
I Heart Radio. Our theme song, good Friend is written, produced,
and performed by Emily King logative I'm a good friend,
(55:50):
don't already I'm a good Friend. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Something, I'll get it. I'm a good friend. Hi everybody,
it's Jamie Lee Curtis and you're listening to the Good
Friend Podcast, presented to you by I Heart Radio. It's
a podcast about friendship. We talk about everything, we cry,
(00:24):
we laugh, we think about what it really means to
be a good friend. And I have conversations with some
of my best friends, some people I've never met, and
sort of everything in between. So I hope by the
end of it that you have a really good sense
(00:47):
of what friendship means to me and the people that
I consider friends. And I hope you can take those
same ideas into your own friendship groups, and I hope
you enjoy it. I don't know an longative I'm a
good friend. They're beautiful, loving, original people, and they are
(01:15):
from an original, loving, creative person. My friend Naomi Phoner,
who is our guest today on the Good Friend Podcast. UM,
Naomi was just describing although we will not share with
our listeners the description of your recent birthday party with
your family, UM, but I think it would be safe
(01:38):
to say that we could share that one of your
granddaughters sort of started a poetry slam with you where
she offered a poem, and now it's your turn to respond.
Do you write a lot of poetry? I do. I
mean I don't write it constantly, but it sort of
insists on coming out every once in a while. And
(01:59):
I mine that there are things I can't say accepted
a poem, and so I often will write a poem
for a gift, r birthday, or an event because it
somehow allows me the freedom to speak something that I
can't find a form otherwise. For For the uninitiated listener,
(02:24):
Naomi as a writer, um do h Well, I mean
it's a doll moment um who primarily writes screenplays. Um.
Naomi and I have been friends since I met Christopher Guest,
my husband. Um. I was introduced to Naomi and her
(02:47):
husband at the time, Stephen Jillen hall Um, and there
little children. Jake was five, maybe even younger. Yeah, it
was I think he was about five year wedding right,
so well, and as you know, we met and married
within a few months, so it was pretty quick. But
so Jake was, you know, little five and Maggie was
(03:10):
eight or right, so they were little, and um, you
were you know, when you you're in a relationship, you
know how it is when you meet people connected to
your relationship. UM. I think anybody listening, man, woman, child,
anything in between can understand. You want to make a
(03:34):
good impression. You want two feel connected to the people
that you're feeling super connected to, which is your significant person.
And you were that so completely for me that it
took my breath away. UM. I wanted so much to
(04:00):
be happy with Chris, and in order to be happy
with Chris, I needed to be happy with the people
around him, his family, with who I became close to.
But you also represented the first sort of adult family
that I really had ever spent any time with. UM,
(04:23):
do you remember that first time when we first met. Yes,
I remember that you said, and after a couple of meetings,
and I completely understood it that it was as if
we saw each other from the very beginning. And I
certainly felt seen, and I certainly felt like you know,
(04:43):
every one in a while you meet someone that you
think you always knew and that you had you know.
It wasn't like it wasn't there was nothing awkward about it.
There was nothing. It was almost like we we had
we were picking up some thread from another life. And
I remember you giving me a birthday gift. It was
(05:06):
I think close to was my thirty ninth or birthday,
and you had picked out a few things for me,
and each one of these little things that came you
had wrapped as you off and do, in a beautiful box,
and each one of the things We're like, oh my god,
she knows who I am. It was that, it was
that feeling, and it was it was remarkable. But I
(05:29):
think that's what happens with good friends. I think what
I've been interested in, particularly in just doing this podcast
the way it has begun, is what is it what
happens when you meet someone like that? And I feel
that way? And I felt that way with you completely. Um,
(05:52):
I know you felt that way with me. We had
never met. Chances are we might not have ever met,
just given where our lives, where you were married with
young children, you were focused on school and your own work.
You were working a lot and raising your children, and
so um, I do remember there have been many people
(06:17):
in my life who feel like I wanted everything you
had it You made sense to me. The way you
lived a family life made sense to me. And I
know I'm not alone in feeling like I wanted I
watched you to see how you did it, because I
(06:41):
don't think you know what you want until you're there.
I just don't think you know it. And you wanted I.
I wanted you. I wanted I just wanted that life.
It felt very free and creative and esthetically pleasing to me,
someone who was trying to figure it out. And here
I was in this new marriage and here you were,
(07:05):
this lovely sort of guide where you you just sort
of welcomed me. And because you know, a family is
like a river. Family life is like a running river,
and you know you cannot you you have to enter it.
You just have to get into it. You can't. You
(07:28):
can look at it from afar and go, wow, look
at that river, but ultimately, if you want the experience,
you have to get in it. And you just allowed
me in it right away. And I, you know, obviously,
have never forgotten that feeling. It's a feeling that you have. Yeah, well,
it's it is like a river. You can't control it.
(07:51):
It's it's it's got a current. Things come in and out,
they float by, and it's a it's a kind of
lovely chaos of family. Um and I having grown up
in a very complicated family where things always had to
be controlled. Was probably leaning over backwards to do less
(08:15):
of that, although it was sometimes overwhelming. But the strongest
feeling I had with you was there was no performance necessary,
no the rules to it. It was natural. It felt
completely comfortable. And yeah, and I was I was up
(08:36):
older than you, twelve years I think, but it I
never felt the age difference except circumstantial, because you were
one of those young people who was already wise, and
you were very open to everything. You know, it was
it's it's really interesting how you have maintain that through
(09:01):
your whole life. You you know, you're you're always curious. Curiosity,
I think in young children, in people in general, is
one of the most telling things about who they who
they are they're not It means that they might be
a little afraid, but they're more afraid of not knowing
(09:22):
what's new, what's interesting. And you were incredibly curious about
everything and committed to everything you chose. You committed yourself
to your marriage, to the to all those people in
Chris's family, to all of your friends. You were you
were always such a good friend and and and a
(09:47):
really good friend because a really good friend I was
thinking about this conversation we're going to have today and
what makes you such a good friend. It's aside from
being you know, incredibly loving, and you can't really love
somebody else unless on some level you really love yourself.
(10:10):
But you you're incredibly honest, and you're honest in a
generous way. You tell the truth and I always turn
to you to hear it because I know you'll tell
me the truth. Sometimes you don't want to say too much,
but you will never actively lie and I can count
(10:33):
on that. But isn't isn't that a component? Don't you
look for that in a good friend? Yes, but there
are very very few who are like that. They are
very real lack of that ability to to say the
truth in a in a generous way, because you know
(10:54):
you can tell the truth. Is it comes in different
forms when it's really when it comes with love, and
I think it's part of parenting also, which may be
you know, an odd version of friendship or certainly of love.
Um when you have the courage to tell your children
the truth, even if they won't like it, even if
it will mean that there's going to be either a
(11:16):
temporary or um significant withdrawal from you as a result
of having done that. It's really an act of love
because they need to hear it from somebody who cares
about them. And you know what, what is the truth?
It's only your truth or my truth. It's as much
as we've discovered up to a certain point. There's no
(11:37):
absolute truth. But you can tell when somebody is telling
it to you with love because they care about you,
because they want you to survive or to get through something,
or to get better or to and you have always
done it from me from the very beginning. Well, I
want to go to the very beginning, if I may
(11:57):
please go back now me let's go time travel together,
shall we? Um? You know, you have a very interesting
beginning of your life. Um. And without it being a
psychological session, this is obviously a podcast talking about sort
of origins of friendship, early friendships, how do you build them,
(12:20):
how do you hold onto them? How do you let
them go? You know, it's an exploration. It's there's no
set form here. It's pretty open. But I know your past,
and I don't think our significant listeners know your past,
which I think informs a little bit about the kind
of friendships you make, Which is that you were very young,
(12:41):
and your parents were both doctors, they weren't yet full doctors,
they were interns and they were interns. And but you
were left with your grandparents for a significant part of
your early life. And when you lived with your grandparents,
did they provide access to other kids for you? Did?
(13:03):
Were they quote surrogate parents and therefore did what most
parents do? Or were you more isolated from other kids? Well,
I was with HI until I was about two and
a half, so um full time, and I was in
my parents were doctors in a hospital in New York,
(13:25):
were they And those days you had to live in
the hospital. If you were an intern and a resident,
you you were there full time basically, and that's where
your abode was. So when I was born, I think
I wasn't actually a planned child, and I think my
mother was extremely worried about my arrival and what it
was going to do to her. At the time, very
(13:46):
hard one career. There were very few women doctors at
that time, so my grandmother, who was the great caretaker
who had three daughters, moved to an apartment across the
street from the hospital. My mother is really worried about
what having a baby is going to do to her career.
(14:07):
So my grandmother took me to an apartment across the
street from the hospital, and not long after that, my
grandfather had a heart attack and they decided they would
move for his help to Florida, and they took me
with him. So I moved for the first two years
of my life to live with them in Florida. They
were first generation immigrants, warm h and very very sensual
(14:33):
people like I still remember my grandmother, you know, holding
me her to her gigantic bosom. I have the same
grandmother's bosom, not me, Jamie Perth, Well I do too,
but yes, yes, Grandma Helen, I referred to the mess
one big giant breast with a line down the middle,
and so I called it a Uni boob. Yeah. I
(14:55):
lived with him until I was too and a half.
I think a parents, not only They took a long
time to come and get me again, and I don't
think I went back to see them, and or maybe
I did very briefly, and I went back to um
to New York. I don't think I did. But my
(15:18):
grandparents A life with my grandparents was very loving. My
grandfather adored me. He would tell me stories um, but
I don't have any memory of other children, right, So
it wasn't as if they were taking you to parks
necessarily and you didn't have but I mean, by the
(15:39):
way you were too. So when you came, when you
came back to New York and you were living with
your parents, did you have early friendships that you felt
the real connection to and and have you continued any
of those yet? I had. I had one friend who
was the child of another set of doctors who lived nearby.
(16:03):
I had lots of friends in elementary school. And if
you look at my work, it was very surprising to
me to see that one of my earliest friends, whose
name was Eleanor Stein, is the basis of both of
the big movies in my life, Running on Empty, because
she later went on to join The Weather Underground, and
(16:25):
she she was my introduction into you know, teenage the
music of the time, which was sort of Bob Dylan
and folk scene and you know, Joan Bayez and also
politics or parents were pretty big lefties, and so she
was very very important to me. And then when I
(16:48):
wrote and directed the first thing I directed, which took
a long time to happen, it was very good girls.
That was about my relationship with her as well. So
it's very interesting how that early early friendship has kind
of infused my work even without not being completely and
totally aware of it. I still have friends from those days,
(17:09):
from my early childhood, from certainly from high school, definitely
from college. But friendships became a family for me. And
when I moved to southern California, uh, I was without
family because what family. And my mother died when I
(17:30):
was when I was young, and she was forty eight,
and the only I had my father around, but he
was a kind of strange character surgeon of all surgeons,
but mostly holidays and birthdays and things like that was
celebrated with a created family that came from the people
(17:51):
we knew who had children the same age as as
we had, and um people we met and work we
connect into. And I always felt like it was the
table and food became a real center of connection. And
I think I got that from my grandparents because in
(18:12):
many ways food was loved, you know. I have memories
of my grandmother cutting a big piece of pumpernickel bread
the wrong way towards her breast, but I thought she
would lose her left nipple that she rather with butter
and honey, and hand meat his plate sized piece of
brown bread with butter and honey. So yes for me.
Friendship love it's very connected to that. So there would
(18:35):
be always, you know, dinners with big bowls of salad
and plates of food, and always an extra chair available,
and conversation and music and and interestingly enough, that's kind
of the way my birthday went. Last night. My daughter
had me to her house with table full of food,
(18:56):
and we danced and we talked about all kinds of things,
and it felt like I was swimming in love because
the history I have of it well, and my experience
and my experience as your friend, as a new friendship. Um,
as we built that friendship from my marriage to Chris
(19:20):
was exactly what you just described. The house you lived in.
Both houses that you lived in in Hancock Park were
open seasons. They the door was unlocked. You people every weekend.
I think we went to your house every single weekend
(19:41):
that first year of our marriage. It was either your house,
to Rob's or Billy's. I mean it was some version
of that. Where As you described, I've copied your kitchen
now six times over. Open shelving, no cabinetree, big bowls everywhere,
(20:01):
because that's exactly what it felt like to be your friend,
to be a good friend of you in that time.
For me, a young, unformed twenty six year old actress
who married someone after knowing them four months and having
never spent more than two days together physically in the
(20:24):
same space before we married, we got together and we
would have these weekends, but that was it, and then
we got married, and so kind of being pulled into
your home life gave us a direction to go. And
I do think it's an incredibly helpful and hopeful thing
for a young married woman to be brought in with
(20:47):
a seat at your table. By the way, for the
uninitiated listener, maybe just maybe somewhere on some website somewhere,
I will post my Caesar salad rest people, which has
followed me a bit around the world. But I would
make a big salad in your kitchen and with your hands,
(21:12):
with my hands, you hug the salad. Is the direction.
You do not use tongs. You hug the salad, you
touch it. Um. But it it was that feeling. It's
so interesting because from your grandparents, see, I was going
for something which was not going for I was investigating
with you right now to see if the isolation of
(21:35):
without a lot of kids around, um, if that impacted anything.
And the truth is, it sounds like it didn't because
you were, as you said, surrounded by love and it
was very a loving, sensual experience food. And so when
you became an adult, as you said, and moved out
here to California, um, that's what you created. I've been there. Um.
(21:57):
I think for anybody listening who was drawn to that friend, yes,
you are. You older than me, so you had a
lot more experience. You were a mother. I had no
friends who had kids, and I watched you and followed
the way you did it. You know, I was a
bit of a sponge. I don't want to say that.
I just sort of studied you like a scientist, but
(22:21):
I I absorbed you. I absorbed you and easy. No,
I was making a lot of it up since I
didn't have anything to go on either. When Maggie was born,
I didn't have a single friend who had a child,
and it was deep in the middle of the whole
feminist movement were being pregnant and having a child was
almost a betrayal of the politics I was very significantly
(22:45):
part of, and I I didn't know what to do.
I remember being hugely pregnant. I gained about sixty pounds
when I was pregnant, and having people look at my
stomach and I would be like, what are you looking at?
I was, and I had nobody to ask any questions.
(23:06):
I had one aunt who had never had a child.
I didn't have any friends who had never had a child.
So I was making it up kind of full bore
out of nothing with whatever memories I did have from
my grandparents, which probably saved my life. I mean, I
remember my grandmother. When I grew up, grew older, they
never told me that I had been living with my grandparents.
(23:30):
I think that it was like the end of World
War two theory where they thought children were. I didn't
remember anything or know what happened to them when they
were children. They weren't like fully formed in some way,
and so they never discussed it or else. They were
pretty guilty about it. And my grandmother would come to
visit and they would only tell me, well, you're very
special to her. They didn't say, because you lived with
(23:52):
her for three years, right, because she nurtured that and
we now know, of course how crucial those first that
first year of bonding with a mother and you know
all the rest of it. We've both done enough work
in that arena to understand the import of that and
(24:13):
what happens when you have a when you don't get
to have that. There something iative. I'm a good friend.
We'll be right back with more good friend after this
quick break, so stick around, good friend. It's interesting to
(24:41):
me because you say you were making it up. I
think we all make up almost everything. I mean, I
I can tell you being a mother obviously now of
two adults, people, Um, I know there have been things
that I know. For instance, my daughter has said, I
wish you had taught me this. And it's funny because
(25:04):
I didn't feel like I had that from my family,
and so I just made an assumption that everybody would
just pick it up, sort of through osmosis that there
was that if you saw me do something. Yeah, I'm
a worker. I say I'm a worker, meaning I'm somebody
(25:24):
who likes to pitch it. I'm I am not someone
who's idle. I am active and doing things all day long,
and I'm a very active person. So I just assumed
that people would see that activity and then basically pick up, oh,
that's how you do that, and then do it. And
I think many people, particularly many people listening to podcasts,
(25:48):
many women are now at home, you know, either exercising
or doing some sort of chore at home while they're
listening to a podcast, or driving somewhere on a long
distance and listening to a podcast. And I think we
can all relate to what you just said, which is
we we kind of all make it up. Um, being
(26:10):
a good friend is that idea that you you sort
of do something and another person does it. I've certainly
how many times have I told you I've copied your kitchen? Yeah? Well,
and I think there are things we don't even know
we're copying. You know, My grandmother would arrive on those
visits when I was a little girl, and she would
(26:31):
My grandfather loved being in southern Florida because he'd grown
up in Russia, had a garden and he would plant
fruits and vegetables, and he she would arrive with her
foluminous self and take off her dress, and out of
her dress would fall avocados and and all these things
(26:55):
which she wasn't technically allowed to bring across straight lines.
And I don't know if she was teaching me something,
but the sensuousness of that was so extraordinary that I
and I and like nothing I've ever seen in my
parents house where everything had to be in order. So
I'm we absorbed something some things and they have huge
(27:19):
impacts on us that are even knowing it. And that
was comforting and wonderfully I felt so good. You know,
all that stuff was fantastic. Well, I think that's very much, um,
sort of on brand for you. Is that sort of
sensual tactiles all the factory, Like your sense is what
(27:44):
you do, how you do things, Uh, is a very
sensory experience. Um. You're a writer, and you're an extraordinary writer,
and the way you put words together is a sensory experience.
It's the beauty, it's the sensuality of language. Um, the
way it can be combined into a thought or an idea.
(28:05):
I was thinking when you talked about feminism. Now you know,
I was a kid of the seventies from a movie
star mom who was not political or had been more
of a Democrat, and then married a Republican and sort
of didn't really have um, honestly, I think probably a
little homophobic. I know that when I remember when Ellen
(28:28):
kissed Laura dern Or on TV, and I remember my
mother had, I think, some issue with it. I think
it was hard for her to see that. UM. I
remember her saying it was fine what somebody did in private,
but that she didn't want to be confronted with it.
And the reason I bring it up is another thing
(28:49):
that happened, which was, you know, a Good Friend podcast
is about how to friends help each other? Um, how
do you relate to friends? And I was when we married,
you know, I just, um like wanted to be Mrs
Gass like immediately, like I gave up Jamie Lee Curtis
(29:09):
so quickly and was Jamie gassed? And um, I remember
when we started at a school together. We followed you again,
I copied you. I saw how and where you sent
your children to school, and I thought that sounded like
a good, creative, interesting Petrie dish for young minds to
(29:31):
grow in and that sounded great, and we were able
to send Annie there to a school. Um. And I
remember there was a period of time where you know,
there's some fundraising, there's always fundraising by the way anybody
young listening to this, it's there's always fundraising. Any for
anything worth anything, you're gonna have to raise money for it.
(29:53):
And you know, I'm on the board at Children's Hospital
Los Angeles and I worked very hard on their but
everything is and raised thing. But we were at the
school and I remember we were asked to give a
certain amount of money, and we gave an amount of
money and we gave it as Mr and Mrs Christopher Guest,
you know, was listed in the little program or whatever.
(30:14):
And then I remember there were tons of people older
than me, and everyone was Naomi Phoner and Stephen Joellen Hall,
so and so and so and so, and I remember thinking, wow,
you can have your own identity. And you know, for me,
(30:37):
someone who was not raised around a feminist with a
feminist mother, I wasn't raised around feminist discussion. I was
not raised in a really a particularly political home. Those
ideas didn't get tossed around for conversation. And you were
a full on activist feminist. And your daughter, Maggie has
(31:02):
become one your granddaughters have both carried on that mantle
of the power of activism mhm. And that was a
great help for me is what I'm basically long winded
way of saying thank you. I have to on some level,
I do have to thank my that women in my
family who as difficult as it was for me as
(31:25):
a child. UM, the positive aspect of them was a
kind of unspoken expectation that I was to use whatever
talents I had, and that the expectation that I do
that at the time that I was going through the
(31:45):
various stages of my life was the feminism that I
learned because I was young and right in the middle
of the you know, all the exploration of feminism that
was going on in the sixties and seventies, and there
are a lot of women who didn't even know they
were entitled to it. And not only did I know
(32:06):
that it had been inculcated in me as a kind
of expectation. You you use what you've been given in
some kind of service, and it doesn't matter what sex
you are, you do that. And that was a gift
because I never had to go that first hurdle into
(32:28):
feeling entitled to it. It was something I knew I
was born with, so I didn't work too hard at that.
UM and I think that it's been kind of a
great thing to watch our daughters, both Annie and Maggie,
and Maggie's children move forward from the place where we
(32:50):
where we got and expect all the things that they
saw and move on from that, so that there is
there is lot of growth in that. And I have
to say that those things came from the very problems
that I had as a child. My mother was a doctor.
I remember having fist bites with people in the street
(33:12):
in front of school where they boys, she can't be
a doctor, she's a nurse. No she's not, she's a doctor.
You know, those were silly times, but they were very real.
And Um, what's interesting to me is to see from
my viewing of you is how you have you again
(33:35):
from both curiosity and a kind of build an energy
that you have. You have so much wonderful energy. You
have reached for everything that you were interested in. You
know you could have seen that and done nothing, but
you didn't. What you do with all these clues and
(33:57):
cues is you use them. And I I know that
we have been there for each other at moments when
it didn't feel like we could get there. Um, that
there are things that we were doing that didn't seem
after a while realistic, and that the other thing that
that this friendship for me has always provided is a
(34:19):
cheering section. I mean, when I directed my first movie
at sixty three, you shired up in sundance when they
screened it. I remember, and I remember you writing the
first thing you wrote. You you went on to be
a serious author. Your children's books aren't just celebrity children's books.
(34:40):
They are really wonderful. But the first time you wrote something,
you weren't so sure about it. And what I do
when I knew reading it, was that you weren't following
anybody's path. You weren't following anybody's rules. You were writing
from some place in you that was the same place
(35:01):
that made you compelling as an actor. The originality of
you was in what you were writing. And there were
people around you saying, well, you know, it's not make
the sentences different, and you know, put your put your
punctuation in this place, so use a different word. And
the thing that made it so great was you. Nobody
had taught you those forms, and you were doing it
(35:24):
in the most original and wonderful way, and you needed
to embrace your very originality, which you know by the
way it's knocked out of you by school. All. Yes,
for sure, I mean, and I obviously I appreciate that
it's funny you brought that up. I was going to
bring that up because I have a vivid memory of
(35:49):
writing something and then sitting on that purple Victorian couch
or burgundy Victorian couch in your living room. Um, having
you talk about what I had written? Was I for
the uninitiated listener who knows nothing about we're discussing. Um.
This was before I had ever written children's books. I
(36:11):
was twenty six. And you know, I think we all
many people don't really know who they are what they're doing,
and we we go along in life and and sort
of follow the next thing and then we oh, now
we're doing this. And that's very much the way it
(36:33):
was with me. I didn't have a vision of it.
I wasn't in scholar on any level. I barely got
out of high school. And yet I was very observant
of things, and I found things very funny, and so
I kept a little book and I would write little
um observations, UM, a little funny ideas, a little funny
word plays, whatever. And I did cobble together a couple
(36:57):
short stories. UM, I made it a challenge to myself,
which was I came up with the title first and
then wrote a short story to it. I guess that's
sort of like poetry slam, or like eight Mile gave
me the refrigerator at I was supposed to write, right, yes,
(37:17):
and you know I remember. UM the idea of writing
something to a title felt like an exercise for me. UM.
I recently watched UM wonderful talented improvisational actress named Eadie
Patterson who just did a one woman improv our show
(37:44):
where she played all of the characters that she then
created out of the improv So she, like somebody, came
up with a title for the show and her name
and that was it. And then for an hour she
(38:04):
improvised the story of that title, like from the title,
and the title was No Mama, and her name was
Chance Tomorrow. And from that this woman created this entire
(38:27):
world of characters, scenarios, times and places that I never
thought I'd go. And then some at the end of
the hour came back and figured out a way of
ending it with No Mama. Like I, my mind was
(38:52):
blown open. But that's what my early Sorry, I went
on a really weird tangent, but I'm glad I did
because it was so talented. Um. But I remember I
wrote a short story to a title under the davenport
with Mrs Stein's right now, I I I just I
(39:14):
remember writing the title and then writing the story to
go with it. It was a woman who was a
volunteer at the zoo and there was an earthquake and
she went and got the chimpanzee that was her like
a little friend in the zoo and brought it home
and hit it in her house. So when the zoo
people came to try to find it, the chimpanzee was
(39:37):
hiding under the davenport with Mrs. Her name was Mrs Stein.
She was the Habermaniac. She was happy all the time. Anyway,
it was I remember this so well, and I remember
the feedback from you, and I'm telling you, Naomi, the
reason I'm bringing up this very long winded story. Everybody,
I'm so sorry. I hope you've gotten some work done
during this. The reason I brought it up is the
(40:00):
infinance you gave me because you looked at me. I
will never forget it. And you just said you are
a writer. You can write, you need to write. Don't
worry about anything, just right, right, right, right, right right.
And I from that somehow when that moment with Annie
(40:22):
happened where she was four and said something funny and
I wrote it down on a piece of paper and said,
when I was little, a four year old memoir of
her youth and made me laugh and cry. I knew
in that moment, and that was directly responsible, or you
were directly responsible for that occurring because of the gift
(40:46):
that only could have come from a friend. My husband
liked it, but he would not give that to me
the way you did. Well you what what what? What
I was saying before you told me all this is
what I remember, which is that you had written was
so original and so not formulaic and so unique to
(41:07):
you that there was nothing else anybody could have said
about it except that this was the work of somebody
who is really a creative and you needed to know
that because people have responsibility to that. And um, it
wasn't It was true, you know, And I'm not that
surprised when I think about the fact that the best
(41:30):
actors I know, and in some ways I think comedy
is harder to do than drama, and uh, you know,
I think about the Honeymooners Jackie Gleason, you know, who
became a significant dramatic actor. But I think you can
do that. You can go from comedy to drama. And
(41:52):
it's not necessarily true, you can go from drama to comedy.
And that's my little digression. Um, but in order to
do what you did it yourself in order to be
the observer that you were that made it possible for
you to be as good as you were as an actor.
It's the same thing writing, except you have a little
(42:15):
more leeway because you don't have to put it all
through your own physical body, so you can fly in
many other directions. But it was it was just so
obvious to me what you could do, and um, it
felt easy. Again, I can't think of many things between
us that weren't easy, except for when things weren't, when
(42:40):
when somebody was unhappy, you know, unhappy about something that
they hadn't said. But basically, I think the the dynamic
it is pretty easy because it was genuine and generous.
I do, and I think that's friendship. I mean, ultimately,
(43:04):
when we think about good friends. When I talked to
I'm going to talk to a lot of people, and
I were starting to hear a calm and thread of
that sort of generosity, of that site, of that sort
of somehow immediate knowledge of someone you know. It'll be
interesting at the end of the recordings to really be
able to make some sort of distillation of all of it.
(43:27):
And there is. They're starting to be a theme in
what makes people connectthreative, I'm a good friend. We'll be
right back with more good friend after this quick break. Friend. Now,
(43:53):
we also have a very interesting sort of thing that
I don't have with many people. I have it with
a couple of people, which is your children are now adults,
and I am friends with them independent of you, and
(44:13):
most of the time your friendships through children, we stay connected.
It's all intertwined. Um and I have been able to
make separate relationships, albeit sometimes a little distance because I
live on opposite coast. So for the uninitiated listener, Maggie
(44:37):
Gillen Hall and Jake gillen Hall are Naomi's two adult
children who I've known since they were little kids, since
they were five and eight. And as Naomi is doing
with her finger which you can't see, I remember going
over to their house once, and Jake was full of energy,
(44:59):
and I remember like he could not calm down or
he was doing something, and I didn't. I had never
really been around kids that much. I'd never been raised
with any people with kids, never been around any babies.
And I remember looking at Jack and saying, I bet
you can run around that tree five hundred times, and
(45:20):
he looked at me and he was like, yes, I can,
and he went outside ran around the tree five hundred times. UM.
That was an example of Uh, that moment of kind
of understanding kids, probably where I started writing children's book.
I should write a book about Jake and the five
hundred trips around the tree. Um. But what's been interesting
(45:45):
for me, um, is that both of your children are performers.
Both of your children are performers in the same industry
I am in. I refer to your children as my
god children. UM. I have referred to it at the
beginning ing. I did it because what I said to
Jake when he first began acting, was I'm your celebrity
(46:07):
godmother in the way of Cinderella. I know the game,
I know the BS part, I know the fun part.
And if you ever need celebrity godmother, Jamie, I'm yours
and I always will be, And somehow it has gotten
(46:28):
the words celebrity has just been pulled out of it.
And I feel, honestly like I am both of your
children's godmothers, and I feel it in my heart and
in my soul and in our independent relationships. Um. Has
that been hard for you? Or is that because it
is tricky when uh, if I'm seeing them separate from you,
(46:54):
I've We've never discussed this. I'm not looking for any
big I'm not trying to do a gotcha moment like
you on some one of those horrible got your Moment
TV shows. It's not seeing them separately, which I think
is really good for everybody. It's them, I think it.
I think it has um. You guys have had an
(47:16):
experience that I haven't had, which is to be recognizable
in the world in a way that you may they want,
may not want to be. You know all the time.
Certainly I know Jake has hated it at something and
Maggie hated it. I believe me, there was a moment
I remember being by the way the only time in
(47:38):
my life, in my entire life as a celebrity. The
only time I ever felt anxious was coming back to
Maggie's house and the people were there and she I
just she was pregnant and they were waiting to see
(47:59):
when it was the very intense time, and so I
I feel that both of them had much more of
that than I've ever had, to be perfectly honest, but
finish your thoughts, because the the intensity of the Internet
and the you know, the money for paparazzi photographs and
(48:20):
all that stuff, it was different as they By the way,
the only good reason for selfies, Yeah, the only good
reason for selfies is that it virtually put the paparazzi
out of business because now all these celebrities post pictures
of themselves. So, you know, the the paparazzi pictures that
(48:40):
used to be the only time people got to see
people in their kitchens, now we're no longer valuable because
people were boasting pictures of themselves. So maybe that's the
only good part about selfies. The only place I have
ever felt any kind of twinge of something is in
the not knowing what it is that you guys have shared,
(49:05):
in the kind of a in the dialogues about things
like that. That is um, and it's not only with
you and the kids. I think I remember going to
remember going to a wedding of one of our mutual
friends or somebody's daughter, and all of the people who
(49:26):
are actors were seated at the same table. And even
though that's my group, that was where my friend I
was seated with a bunch of people I didn't know
because I wasn't an actor. So there was a kind
of there was a thing like that that it was
sometimes difficult. But um, the actual relationship I'm very grateful for.
(49:48):
I have nothing but um good things about the fact
that certainly that Jake and you got so close this year. Um,
I think that it It was fabulous for him, and
very grateful for all the things that you did that
made it possible. But it's but it's also such a
(50:11):
I mean, it's hard for me because of distance. Just
literally I live in a separate in the country, and
so I don't get to see um you. I don't
get to see Maggie and her family very much. It's
usually when I'm in New York or they're out here
for a brief moment. We haven't lived in the same sphere.
(50:36):
You and I have more. We you and I have
absolutely and I remember that time. I remember all those
times when you were here. And you know that was
another aspect of this that I wanted to touch on
before we finished, was distance. You know. There's that. Um,
there's a wonderful loud and Wainwright song. Absence makes the
(51:01):
heart grow fonder and the mind begin to wander back
to happier days. Um. It's about a relationship falling apart,
a man and a woman falling apart. And I don't know,
I I it's difficult when you've now lived on the
East Coast for ten years. Yeah, but I've spent in
(51:23):
the last some years, I've spent large months of time
on the West Coast. But yes, when I do come
back to the West Coast, I feel like I have
to break into people's lives in order to reconnect with them,
you know. And I don't know how long I'm going
to stay, and I don't know, um, you know, so
it's it's like, am I coming for a couple of
weeks and we better make a date right now? Right?
(51:46):
The taking, for granted is something that's kind of wonderful
in relationships that just I could drop by and and
bring you a cake I just baked, or we could
take a walk together just because we feel like it.
Right now, there's something wonderful and all deep relationships haven't
being able to take them for granted. There is in
(52:06):
our lifestyle, as people who have been in movie making
and show business, a kind of gypsy quality where we
do we all at some point or they disappear for
months at a time, and you're about to do that again.
Um So that even inside your own family, you might
be disappearing for months at a time. Because of my
(52:30):
particular upbringing where I went from my parents to my
grandparents and then backed my parents again. And you know,
I'm always every time a transition is about to take place,
I'm clutching it's I'm not really good at it. I
don't always trust that it's that it's going to come
back again, and um so it's particularly difficult for me.
(52:54):
But I do feel and this you will probably find
again repeated many times, is among people who are good
friends that when you have a forced intermission, a real
friendship picks up as if it never had the intermission,
and you don't even need to know what went on
in the middle. You just are back, and it's just
(53:17):
the quality of it. Sometimes it can take on I mean,
be interesting if you and I decided to write letters
to each other for some period of time and see
how people who didn't have all this stuff that we're
using right now actually communicated when they weren't together, uh,
and what that would do to the relationship. And people
used to leave England and come to America and think, well,
(53:38):
maybe we'll never see those people again, even their mothers
and their fathers and their siblings. But I think we're
all taught, all of us who work in this industry,
a kind of okay by I'm going away for you know,
I think, Melick, I'm going off into another universe and
(53:59):
I will be back and I love you, yeah, exactly,
And we know how to do it. We turn it
off and we turn it back on when it comes back.
But I remember William Wilder's daughter Katherine, who was a
friend of mine for a long while, saying that when
her dad went off to make a movie, it was
like watching him at the bottom of the swimming pool.
He would even sometimes come home at night, but she
(54:21):
couldn't reach him. He was preoccupied in another world. And
I think it's a it's it's it's not uncommon for
that to happen even in other kinds of of occupations.
You know, a lawyer on a big case, or a
politician office, or or a doctor doctors, my goodness, I
(54:42):
mean doctors. I've heard a lot of children of doctors
talk about that same mental obsession about their parents work.
I love you so much and I appreciate you being
so open here on the good Friend podcast. There really
has been a lot of above for a very long time,
(55:03):
and I look forward to it continuing. I adore you, Hey,
adore you too, Thank you, Thanks everybody for listening. Um,
God bless you all, and let stay Saying good Friend
(55:26):
is produced by Dylan Fagin and is a production of
I Heart Radio. Our theme song, good Friend is written, produced,
and performed by Emily King logative I'm a good friend,
(55:50):
don't already I'm a good Friend. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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