January 26, 2023 • 39 mins
Heather Duffy reads some passages from Anne’s book, Call Me Anne.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
When I think about Anne, I think about her passion,
her life, her sense of humor, her jabbing other people all.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Out of love and fund.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
She had such a heart for serving other people, particularly
when it comes to mental health issues, and time after
time when I was on her show, she wanted to
know what people can do to help themselves. And I
hope that we'll all take that with us, that passion
for life, that excitement, that sense of humor, and that
sense of service to really help others.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm on a steward. I played Anne's mother on Another World.
The first time I saw Anne was from my living
room in Los Angeles on the tell Vision screen in
a bubble bath because I had taken a leave of
absence from the show and I was returning. So they
called me and said take a look at her. And
(01:10):
she was a pretty girl and she was doing good,
and I said, I'll be able to work with her.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
But then.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
When I met her, my heart exploded. I don't know
how I was to say it. We bonded instantly. It
became like two teenage girls giggling all the time. She
was irrepressible, maddening, but lovable, always lovable, and the whole
(01:47):
company took her under our collective wing to protect her.
And I still have a black filmy blouse covered with little,
tiny satin buttons that she brought to me when I
was in the hospital so I would feel sexy when
my boyfriend came to see me. She also brought me
(02:14):
a live Christmas tree that she put on my deck,
covered it with cranberries and raisins and popcorns so I
could watch the birds have fun with it. When I
came home from the hospital and recovered, I grieve her,
(02:38):
but I choose not to focus on the loss, but
to celebrate that extraordinary time that we spent together. And
I know she's gone, but I feel her around me,
so I know she's here.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
What can I say?
Speaker 5 (03:02):
And haysh, we miss you, we love you. You will
always be in our hearts. I had the pleasure and
honor of working with Anne. I directed her in a
picture that I wrote, and I remember meeting of the
first time. What a firecracker, What a wonderful, what a
(03:26):
wonderful is light just just shining from her and and
like so creative, so creative, so many wonderful ideas. She
was an incredible mother, an incredible actress, a great friend,
and today isn't a day to mourn, and it's a
data celebrator because that's what she would want.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
She would want us to.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
Sit there and smile and celebrate the incredible life that
she had.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
So here I am in celebrating you. I love you.
Speaker 6 (04:01):
I met a season twenty nine of Dancing with the Stars,
and when I found out she was going to be
on the season, I was secretly hoping we'd become best
friends because I always always loved her. I was such
a fan and was a brilliant, brilliant actress. So we
became friends and it was exactly what I thought it
(04:24):
would be. She was just magnetic, energetic, fabulous, gentle kind, enthusiastic, loving,
forgiving every time you said hi to her, and she
loved you.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
You saw that.
Speaker 6 (04:38):
Sparkle in her eyes, you saw how happy she was
to see you. And what I take away from it is.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
I want to be a little bit like her.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
I want to be more gentle, I want to be kinder,
I want to be happier, I want to be more enthusiastic.
I want to live on a apologetically like she did.
And I love her and I miss her.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Anne came into my life, and she proved to me
that you could change things, that you could change the
way people loved one another, that you should be allowed
to love who you want, and inspire me to look
(05:34):
at the shame that ruled my life for such a
long time, and that it didn't matter what anyone said
about me, that I knew who I was. That's all
that matters.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
In memory of Anne and the launch of her book,
I want to say that the greatest things she gave
me when we were shooting together in Vancouver last year
is unbridled enthusiasm about absolutely everything. She's a truth teller,
vulnerable and truly has unbridled enthusiasm for everything she does
in life, from the work that she does, the friendship
(06:11):
she has, the food that she eats, the celebration she
participates in her motherhood, and all of that is what
she left with me. So it was a great joy
working with her, and I celebrate her book launch and
I know that people will really be moved by the
work that she put into that.
Speaker 7 (06:28):
To me, Anne was the most fun person I've ever
met in my life, and the most entertaining person, the
most wild and free person. She wasn't like a lighting
up the room. She set the room on fire a blade.
Speaker 8 (06:51):
She was.
Speaker 7 (06:53):
Just the sweetest person. She was so little with so
much energy. She was so big in a room, she
was so big. She would just take over. Wherever we went,
she would take over. So I assume wherever she went
without me, she would do the same thing. So I'll
(07:13):
never forget her, and uh, I'll always remember the good
times and the bad times.
Speaker 9 (07:22):
We had.
Speaker 7 (07:23):
Some ridiculous things happen. That's what happens when you're you know,
a shooting star. She's and I'm making them like that.
That's a rare person. I'm just so happy that I
got to meet her and spend time with her, because
magical people like that are, you know, some of the
(07:46):
it's the most important experiences of my life is to
is to realize that there's people out there that are
that special. Makes me believe that anything's possible, because.
Speaker 9 (07:56):
She truly.
Speaker 7 (07:59):
Was fantastic, say, such an awesome person.
Speaker 6 (08:02):
I love you.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Anne.
Speaker 10 (08:04):
My name is Gregory Arlt and I'm a makeup artist.
Not only my a makeup artist. I had the great
honor and privilege of being Anne's personal makeup artist for
over twenty years and also a dear friend. I remember
the first time we met. I just was taken by
her electricity and her light. She always allowed me to
not only be an artist, but feel like an artist,
(08:26):
trusting the process, being collaborative. She wouldn't make a move
without me in terms of doing a photo shoot or
an event, or a new idea that she might have had.
I just really loved bouncing ideas off of each other
and just sharing space with her. She was one of
the kindest, most loyal, hilarious, brilliant women.
Speaker 9 (08:47):
I have ever met.
Speaker 10 (08:48):
And I know that she is surrounded by love wherever
she may be.
Speaker 11 (08:54):
And I love you. I will love you for the
rest of my life. I am so blessed to have
had my life with you, any part of my life.
For your children. I am here. I am here for
our friends, and you, my darling, are star amongst stars.
(09:16):
I knew you'd love this hat, so I had to
wear it for you, because that was our relationship. I
cannot believe that you've left us, but I do believe
that your words, this book, everything that you've done in
your life will come back and help so many people.
(09:38):
So many will gain from the love you had and
everything you've done for them. I cannot express how much
I miss you every single day, how our friends miss you,
your children, and I feel so happy be that we're
(10:01):
here to celebrate you tonight and who you are and
everything you stoid for which was enough. You were always
more than enough, and whether they saw it or not,
and for so many years they didn't, we knew. We
know you are an angel and I love you so
(10:27):
much and I missed you every single day.
Speaker 12 (10:32):
Hi. My name is John Whitfelt, and I moved to
Los Angeles in twenty sixteen and was the very first
client that I had the privilege of working with. And
I say privilege because it was a privilege. And always
pushed me to do my most creatious work and think
(10:55):
outside the box and do the unexpected and push myself
and we over the years created some really killer hairstyles
that were memorable not just to us but to the world.
And I have heard a thing for that. She always
let me be an artist. She always trusted me, never
(11:17):
second guessing me, and helping me all the time to
push through anything that I might be fearful of. She
was the most beautiful soul and I am so thankful
that I had the gift of Anne.
Speaker 9 (11:35):
Hey, it's Alec Baldwin, and I just wanted to say
that I worked with Anne twice. We worked on a film,
The Juror, and we did the play The Hector MacArthur
Play The twentieth Century on Broadway. Anne got nominated for
a Tony. That was a wonderful bonus to that experience.
(11:56):
And Anne was, of course very bold and very adventurous
when we work together. There was a scene we did
in The Juror. We had two scenes, and she had
these ideas for the scene, and she would like lean
in and whisper to me like what she wanted to do.
And I will literally sit there and go, oh my god,
(12:18):
that that sounds so great, Oh God, let's do that.
And she was brave, and she was funny, and she's
so many things. But all that aside all the anecdotes
of working and so forth, is she was kind. She
would reach out to me in tough times I've had
(12:39):
or wonderful times I've had, and I would hear from
her intermittently and always how are you, And nothing attached.
There was nothing transactional about Ann's love, at least in
my case. It was always just like, Hey, I just
wanted to check in with you and see how you're
doing and send you my love? What have you And
(13:04):
and someone as talented as her, and someone as prolific
as her, she was working it seemed all the time
to take a moment and to find out how I
was doing was just so touching to me. I spoke
to her just a couple of weeks maybe or a
month before she passed, and I think it was one
(13:25):
of those phone calls like how are you doing? Anyway,
I'm sending all my love to her family and friends
and colleagues who are going to see this, and and
I have only the most beautiful and r rated remembrances
(13:47):
of the great great ad Hash.
Speaker 8 (13:54):
Thanks so much everyone for coming. This is such gosh,
it's such an incredible such an incredible night. This would
have meant the world to Anne. And I should be
sitting in that front row, worried about what she was
going to say up here, that she was going to
(14:15):
say too much. And now I'm up here worried that
I might not say enough. What can I say about Anne?
I mean, she was an incredible human being who made
the most of her time on this earth, She was
(14:38):
somebody who lived her life with such joy and such kindness.
She woke up every day incredibly optimistic, despite being somebody
who had a lot of challenges in her life. And
to have that optimism when you have challenges is something
(14:59):
that is not easy to do. But she did it authentically,
beautifully every moment of her life. I think a lot
of the younger people here don't all know the stand
that she took back in the nineties for gender free love.
(15:23):
That stand that she took wasn't easy. It impacted her
life in a lot of ways, but it changed the world,
and it made us more understanding and more accepting and
made a world now where somebody can bring somebody of
the same sex to a red carpet and it's not
even a blip on the radar, and that doesn't happen
(15:46):
without the heavy lifting of somebody like Anne. And she
should be recognized for that. And I think the world
is starting to catch up with her and recognize that
that now. Anne was somebody who, Gosh, she embraced you
(16:09):
for you. She let you be exactly who you are.
And she did that because she was so honest and
lived with such honesty and if you think about her life.
Even the story that I just said about her stand
she wanted everybody else to be honest and who they are,
and it gave people the freedom to be that and
(16:32):
for people to explore they're true their true selves. I mean,
I'm a different person for having known her and having
been around her. I'm more me than I would have
been without her. And that's a big gift she gave
to everybody she knew. But it's also a message that
we should all take. You know, be you when you're
(16:56):
really you. There's more peace in the world. And when
there's more peace in the world, there's more kindness in
the world. And that's what Anne was, just total and
complete kindness. Oh what else can I say about her?
(17:18):
What I can say is this, And I'm going to
read from her book and talk a little bit more.
But you know, Anne rewrote the script of her life
many times, and I think that that's going to happen
right now. I think that we're going to rewrite the
script of her life. I'm going to rewrite the script
(17:40):
of her life because she deserves the respect now that
she didn't have when she was here. She deserves the
respect as somebody who changed the world, literally changed the world.
I know that sounds hyperbolic, but she did. She changed
(18:02):
the way we look at the world. She impacted every
single person who knew her and loved her. She showed
us how to lead with kindness, how to lead with love,
how to lead with honesty, how to embrace humans, and
(18:25):
do it all while having fun. On the way here,
we were talking with our friends that we were with
before that. Anne would always say that we were the
party on the way to the party. We had just
as much fun getting ready to go to the party,
maybe more than we even did at the party. And
that just goes to show how Anne made fun out
(18:49):
of anything and everything. She was a blast. And she's
here with us tonight and proud, and she loves everybody
here and is so appreciative of all of you, of
all of the people that have supported her from the beginning.
(19:11):
She loved our Better Together tribe. They meant the world
to her. She wrote this book in part for that
tribe because she wanted people to live a better life
and to find that happiness. For her, in our early
years as a child, I think happiness was a little
(19:33):
more elusive to her, so she appreciated it more. The
same thing with kindness, and I think that that's a
remarkable thing to have somebody who didn't grow up with
kindness available to them, yet it was the thing that
they gave the most, and that was Anne. So shall
(19:58):
we read a little of Call Me Anne. Anne passed
while this book wasn't quite finished, but it was. It
was almost finished, and so I just had to find
(20:20):
ways to tie it up, and in doing that, she
helped me a little bit along the way, because that
was Anne. I've said this before, but I said once
on a podcast, if you died, you really haunt me,
wouldn't you. And she said, yeah, you definitely feel me,
(20:42):
and I definitely feel her, and she definitely helped me.
And in the beginning of this book, there's a little
passage that you'll see and that I'm about to read.
But what you don't know is that I found that
passage after she past written on a notepad on my desk,
(21:05):
and it was the perfect way to start the book.
And it was incredible. As I was sitting there at
my desk flipping through pages trying to figure out what
to say, I wasn't even looking for a message from her.
I was looking for a clean piece of paper to
write on, and I see this. I believe in life everlasting.
(21:28):
I believe it is ours to choose for all the
rest of my time on this earth. I choose to
live to the fullest of my potential. I wake each
day to another adventure and seek the wisdom it offers.
That is the truth of me. The joy I feel
in that commitment has provided me with purpose, love, meaning,
(21:50):
and excitement. This is what I share, This is what
I care about. The book is part memoir with stories
filled throughout, and part her tips about how she lived
a happy life and lived an optimistic life, and the
part that kindness and honesty and love plays into that
(22:17):
No one chooses the circumstances they are born into. I
was born into a family culture of abuse. It took
years to come to terms with that, and honestly, it's
a lifetime's work that will always be ongoing. This book
is meant to give you a glimpse into that lifetime.
It's a guidebook to some of the lessons I've learned
(22:37):
over time, and contained suggestions about how to put those
lessons into practice in your own life. Every phase of
life has lessons for me, and my hope is that
what I've learned might help ease the way for other people,
even those fortunate enough not to be born into difficult
situations experienced trauma through their time on earth. When learning
(23:00):
from your life, you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
There are situations that you can't control. All you can
control is how you react to them. The lessons I
share here come from my own life. Experience is the
best teacher, and everyone learns from their own mistakes, but
(23:22):
you can also learn from mine. Each chapter in this
book is divided into three parts, a lesson, a practice,
and a challenge. The lessons are stories from my life.
The practices are behaviors I learned along the way, which
I hope will be inspiring for you and help shape
the way you think about your own reactions and responses.
(23:44):
The challenges are exercises, often creative, to help you process
your own life and experience, and to help you think
of ways to amplify joy in your life. The book
is meant to be fun, while the practice of Joy,
as I try to live it is a serious philosophy.
It's also a process of finding happiness and laughter in
your life and making these gifts a more central part
(24:07):
of your days. I hope you will find the challenges interesting,
thought provoking, and fun as you bring a new lens
to bear on your own experiences. It can feel next
to impossible to get out of your own head when
you are going through difficult times. But the universes out there.
These challenges are intended to shake you out of your
routine and help you open to the possibilities around you.
(24:30):
It's important to be able to let yourself play. All
of these exercises are intended to help you understand yourself
more deeply. And learning should be fun. She was all
about fun. She wanted this book to be playful and
interactive and not overly serious, and not preachy, and just
always finding the fun. I'm going to read you one
(24:54):
of the memoirs that's a point in her life, and
it's interesting because this If you knew Anne, she was
so big on signs, signs from the universe. She would
find signs in anything and everything. She would always say,
the mistake is in the messenger, which means that if
(25:15):
something went wrong or didn't go as planned, there was
a lesson in that and she followed it and she
believed it, and so this couple pages that I'm about
to read you is why Anne listened to those signs
and why she is an actress and not an architect.
(25:39):
After four years on Another World I determined that I
would never have real security and independence unless I pursued
something normal that could be a career. I was accepted
into Parsons School of Design to study architecture. My other
passion I was to begin attending the week after my
contract playing Vicky Hudson and Marley Love on Another World. Over,
(26:01):
I had done over half a thousand episodes of television.
You'd think that would have sunk in as something meaningful,
perhaps a road to a destination. Not for me. I
decided I needed to go back to school to prove
myself I am worthy of something. I decided i'd needed
a degree of some sort, any sort. Every single person
(26:25):
who had worked with me for four years was gobsmacked
over my decision. Go to Hollywood was the mantra they
were shouting, but it was lost on me. Two weeks
before my departure, my favorite producer handed me a novel
on my way out the door after shooting all week.
Put simply, I don't read novels. It isn't anything against
(26:45):
the form. It's just a lot of very dense information
to take in in long blocks of type on the page,
and my brain doesn't seem to want to process it
that way. Scripts saved my life. They were written in
short paragraphs. I could see them, understand them, and teleport
them into my brain, which was necessary because since I
was playing twins, I had up to sixty pages of
(27:07):
dialogue a day. Half was one character, the other half
the other. And as I've said, I was never allowed
to read. As a child. We had one book in
the house. It was the Bible. I had to memorize
verses every week. Other than that, it was me and
my imagination. Now she makes me act in this book, Anne,
(27:32):
what's this the novel? Oh? My no, what novel? The
novel was Willi Cather's O Pioneers. You'll like it, I
promise me. And Pioneers, Hm, I doubt it. Later that
same day, I sat at my kitchen table alone with
my dog Sammy, as I almost always was on a weekend.
(27:53):
I opened this novel Susan had promised I would like.
I'd barely gotten past the title page when the phone
rang it was my agent. Sorry to bother you on
a Saturday, but an opportunity has presented itself for you
to play the best friend of Jessica Lang. Wait what,
I'm not acting anymore? I know, I get it, but
(28:14):
it's Jessica Lang. There was one actress I could claim
as an idol after seeing Tutsie. It was Jessica. So
suddenly I was interested. It's shooting next week in Nebraska.
It's a really good project and you may want to
consider reading it. I was waving the book in my
face for air as she continued, It's called Oh Pioneers,
(28:35):
and they're really interested in reading you. Are you effine
kidding me? I stopped fanning my face. I looked at
the title of the book in my hand, Oh Pioneers.
If ever, there was a sign you can't make this up.
Cut to a week later, with me sitting on the
(28:56):
bed of a motel six in Nebraska, having spent the
day on the filming O Pioneers. As I was eating
a cheeseburger and unwinding, I learned that I won an
Emmy for playing the twins Vicky and Marley love on
Another World. I picked up the phone and called Joanne
my agent. Does this mean I'm supposed to be an actress? Yes,
(29:18):
and I think it does. That's the universe winking at you,
at all of us who chooses to engage and take flight.
All we can do is smile and say, okay, I
accept put simply. The rest is history, or her story,
as I like to say. She also wrote poems I'm
(29:42):
going to read you one. Love is a practice, it
is an art. Love is the seeking, Love is the start.
Mistakes are teachers. Learning. A must detours God's actions that
lead us to try. Common is yesterday, Lazy is stubborn,
(30:06):
Life offers choices, risk is forlorn. All knowing is farce.
No one is all. That's where we depart, diverge from
the call. It's ours to wonder the spirit of quest.
I offer a ponder the door that opens. Yes. Another way,
(30:28):
she helped me finish this book, which she kept playing
this damn song and I don't know why, and then
somebody texted me the song Weird things like this happened.
It was spanned out Ballet's Gold, so I kept listening
to it, and I was trying to figure out a
way to end a paragraph that didn't seem finished, and
(30:52):
so I took the line from the song and it
is this, you have the power within. Now I'm laughing
because I feel like I should be singing it, but
I won't. You have the power within. Believe in your
soul that you are indestructible. And that is so Anne.
(31:13):
You have the power within. Believe in your soul that
you are indestructible. You'll hear it when you hear that song.
Anne wrote twenty commitments. She loved these commitments. She talked
about them all the time. I'm just going to read
you a couple of them because I really want to
(31:33):
get to one in particular. So, for example, one is
stop ignoring what you know, and that is so Anne.
And again, think about it, you know, like take something
from this book. We all we all know what we know, right,
and then we ignore it. So that was her message,
(31:58):
stop ignoring what you know, risk looking further. That was
so Anne. Risk looking further, like push yourself, do more.
And this is the one I'm trying to get to
because I always had a thing with it with her,
and I always wanted to rephrase it because it worried
me as her pr person. And the funny thing is is.
(32:24):
I think I changed it in the draft, but when
the book came out there it was. Anne was very
against tolerating abuse and hate. She thought we tolerated it
too much in this world, and so she wrote the
(32:47):
commitment and stood behind it, build a community of zero tolerance,
which I get what she means, but I get paranoid.
Are people going to to misinterpret that? Are they not
going to understand that? And so it's funny because the
more I saw it in print, now, like it makes
(33:10):
you think, like really think, like, yeah, we are too
tolerant of certain things. And that's exactly what Anne did
was make you think, like really make you think, and
so yeah, build a community of zero tolerance. Let's not
tolerate hate. Let's not tolerate abuse. And also, now that
(33:32):
I've said that out loud, I feel better about number
three of her commitments. All Right, I'm going to read
the I'm going to read the end of a poem
that she loved, but it's long, so I'm only going
to read a portion of it. It's titled Junipercy and
(33:54):
it's the end poem of the book. Now is the
time to flip the dime, state the old as un fun,
demand it undone, and arrive at the place of joining
God's grace, each and everyone deserving its taste. I say no,
thanks to the walls that have been built around through
(34:15):
towers of babble and endless mind scrabble, deceiving the self
by teaching something else. Goodbye Sin, Hello, Grin, kick the
lie away. As of this day, the day I say,
I am here to stay, and no one or some
can convince me any other way. I'll meet you where
(34:37):
the juniper meets the sea, and evermore choose to be free.
You plus me equals we. And that was something big
for Anne. She thought that together we were more, which
is why our podcast was is better together. You know,
(35:01):
this book reminds us that living in truth gives you
peace and peace Foster's kindness. So I'd like Anne in
this book to really remind us to be free and
be you and let others be the same. And I think,
(35:22):
since there's so many people gathered here in this room,
that Anne would want us to make something of it.
So how about an honor of Anne and this just
you know she works in mysterious ways here in honor
of her, that we all this week do one act
of kindness doesn't matter how big or small. Anne would
(35:45):
always say, let it ripple and triple and let's do that.
Let's do that for her. Thank you so much everybody
for coming. The support means the world to me, I
know to her kids. It's a real tide turning for her,
(36:13):
and I appreciate you all being a part of that.
I think that Anne's story needs to be told in
the right way by people who understand her, by people
who read her book and understand her more deeply. And
I know that she would want everybody to take this
book and really really use it to make your life better,
(36:37):
to make you kinder, to embrace honesty, to embrace all
different types of people and let them, let them be
and celebrate diversity and difference and uniqueness without judgment. It's
(36:59):
like the time for judgment is just so over, Like
it's just enough enough, you know. It's like, thank you.
Anne has been judged enough in her life, and then
that ends. That ends now, That ends now, and from
(37:19):
this moment on she is going to be respected and
admired and revered for the incredible human being that she
was and the incredible gifts that she gave everybody who
knew her and the lessons that she taught us, and
(37:40):
the lessons that she leaves behind in this book. And
I celebrate her, I honor her. I will live fearlessly
for her, which is something that she taught me how
to do recently. But you know what, if you're if
(38:03):
you're kind, if you're honest, if you live and joy,
what is what is there to be afraid of? There
is no fear, you know, So just I would say
it on the podcast all the time all the time,
I'm just going to say it now, just don't be
a dick, right and and there is no fear. There
(38:23):
is no fear if you live as a good human being.
And that's what That's how I'm going to honor Anne,
and I hope I hope you all do too, because
that is exactly what she would want. And that is
her definition of ripple and triple. So please ripple and
(38:43):
triple kindness, honesty, and non judgment for Anne. Hash she
deserves it. H
When I think about Anne, I think about her passion,
her life, her sense of humor, her jabbing other people all.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Out of love and fund.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
She had such a heart for serving other people, particularly
when it comes to mental health issues, and time after
time when I was on her show, she wanted to
know what people can do to help themselves. And I
hope that we'll all take that with us, that passion
for life, that excitement, that sense of humor, and that
sense of service to really help others.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm on a steward. I played Anne's mother on Another World.
The first time I saw Anne was from my living
room in Los Angeles on the tell Vision screen in
a bubble bath because I had taken a leave of
absence from the show and I was returning. So they
called me and said take a look at her. And
(01:10):
she was a pretty girl and she was doing good,
and I said, I'll be able to work with her.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
But then.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
When I met her, my heart exploded. I don't know
how I was to say it. We bonded instantly. It
became like two teenage girls giggling all the time. She
was irrepressible, maddening, but lovable, always lovable, and the whole
(01:47):
company took her under our collective wing to protect her.
And I still have a black filmy blouse covered with little,
tiny satin buttons that she brought to me when I
was in the hospital so I would feel sexy when
my boyfriend came to see me. She also brought me
(02:14):
a live Christmas tree that she put on my deck,
covered it with cranberries and raisins and popcorns so I
could watch the birds have fun with it. When I
came home from the hospital and recovered, I grieve her,
(02:38):
but I choose not to focus on the loss, but
to celebrate that extraordinary time that we spent together. And
I know she's gone, but I feel her around me,
so I know she's here.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
What can I say?
Speaker 5 (03:02):
And haysh, we miss you, we love you. You will
always be in our hearts. I had the pleasure and
honor of working with Anne. I directed her in a
picture that I wrote, and I remember meeting of the
first time. What a firecracker, What a wonderful, what a
(03:26):
wonderful is light just just shining from her and and
like so creative, so creative, so many wonderful ideas. She
was an incredible mother, an incredible actress, a great friend,
and today isn't a day to mourn, and it's a
data celebrator because that's what she would want.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
She would want us to.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
Sit there and smile and celebrate the incredible life that
she had.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
So here I am in celebrating you. I love you.
Speaker 6 (04:01):
I met a season twenty nine of Dancing with the Stars,
and when I found out she was going to be
on the season, I was secretly hoping we'd become best
friends because I always always loved her. I was such
a fan and was a brilliant, brilliant actress. So we
became friends and it was exactly what I thought it
(04:24):
would be. She was just magnetic, energetic, fabulous, gentle kind, enthusiastic, loving,
forgiving every time you said hi to her, and she
loved you.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
You saw that.
Speaker 6 (04:38):
Sparkle in her eyes, you saw how happy she was
to see you. And what I take away from it is.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
I want to be a little bit like her.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
I want to be more gentle, I want to be kinder,
I want to be happier, I want to be more enthusiastic.
I want to live on a apologetically like she did.
And I love her and I miss her.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Anne came into my life, and she proved to me
that you could change things, that you could change the
way people loved one another, that you should be allowed
to love who you want, and inspire me to look
(05:34):
at the shame that ruled my life for such a
long time, and that it didn't matter what anyone said
about me, that I knew who I was. That's all
that matters.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
In memory of Anne and the launch of her book,
I want to say that the greatest things she gave
me when we were shooting together in Vancouver last year
is unbridled enthusiasm about absolutely everything. She's a truth teller,
vulnerable and truly has unbridled enthusiasm for everything she does
in life, from the work that she does, the friendship
(06:11):
she has, the food that she eats, the celebration she
participates in her motherhood, and all of that is what
she left with me. So it was a great joy
working with her, and I celebrate her book launch and
I know that people will really be moved by the
work that she put into that.
Speaker 7 (06:28):
To me, Anne was the most fun person I've ever
met in my life, and the most entertaining person, the
most wild and free person. She wasn't like a lighting
up the room. She set the room on fire a blade.
Speaker 8 (06:51):
She was.
Speaker 7 (06:53):
Just the sweetest person. She was so little with so
much energy. She was so big in a room, she
was so big. She would just take over. Wherever we went,
she would take over. So I assume wherever she went
without me, she would do the same thing. So I'll
(07:13):
never forget her, and uh, I'll always remember the good
times and the bad times.
Speaker 9 (07:22):
We had.
Speaker 7 (07:23):
Some ridiculous things happen. That's what happens when you're you know,
a shooting star. She's and I'm making them like that.
That's a rare person. I'm just so happy that I
got to meet her and spend time with her, because
magical people like that are, you know, some of the
(07:46):
it's the most important experiences of my life is to
is to realize that there's people out there that are
that special. Makes me believe that anything's possible, because.
Speaker 9 (07:56):
She truly.
Speaker 7 (07:59):
Was fantastic, say, such an awesome person.
Speaker 6 (08:02):
I love you.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Anne.
Speaker 10 (08:04):
My name is Gregory Arlt and I'm a makeup artist.
Not only my a makeup artist. I had the great
honor and privilege of being Anne's personal makeup artist for
over twenty years and also a dear friend. I remember
the first time we met. I just was taken by
her electricity and her light. She always allowed me to
not only be an artist, but feel like an artist,
(08:26):
trusting the process, being collaborative. She wouldn't make a move
without me in terms of doing a photo shoot or
an event, or a new idea that she might have had.
I just really loved bouncing ideas off of each other
and just sharing space with her. She was one of
the kindest, most loyal, hilarious, brilliant women.
Speaker 9 (08:47):
I have ever met.
Speaker 10 (08:48):
And I know that she is surrounded by love wherever
she may be.
Speaker 11 (08:54):
And I love you. I will love you for the
rest of my life. I am so blessed to have
had my life with you, any part of my life.
For your children. I am here. I am here for
our friends, and you, my darling, are star amongst stars.
(09:16):
I knew you'd love this hat, so I had to
wear it for you, because that was our relationship. I
cannot believe that you've left us, but I do believe
that your words, this book, everything that you've done in
your life will come back and help so many people.
(09:38):
So many will gain from the love you had and
everything you've done for them. I cannot express how much
I miss you every single day, how our friends miss you,
your children, and I feel so happy be that we're
(10:01):
here to celebrate you tonight and who you are and
everything you stoid for which was enough. You were always
more than enough, and whether they saw it or not,
and for so many years they didn't, we knew. We
know you are an angel and I love you so
(10:27):
much and I missed you every single day.
Speaker 12 (10:32):
Hi. My name is John Whitfelt, and I moved to
Los Angeles in twenty sixteen and was the very first
client that I had the privilege of working with. And
I say privilege because it was a privilege. And always
pushed me to do my most creatious work and think
(10:55):
outside the box and do the unexpected and push myself
and we over the years created some really killer hairstyles
that were memorable not just to us but to the world.
And I have heard a thing for that. She always
let me be an artist. She always trusted me, never
(11:17):
second guessing me, and helping me all the time to
push through anything that I might be fearful of. She
was the most beautiful soul and I am so thankful
that I had the gift of Anne.
Speaker 9 (11:35):
Hey, it's Alec Baldwin, and I just wanted to say
that I worked with Anne twice. We worked on a film,
The Juror, and we did the play The Hector MacArthur
Play The twentieth Century on Broadway. Anne got nominated for
a Tony. That was a wonderful bonus to that experience.
(11:56):
And Anne was, of course very bold and very adventurous
when we work together. There was a scene we did
in The Juror. We had two scenes, and she had
these ideas for the scene, and she would like lean
in and whisper to me like what she wanted to do.
And I will literally sit there and go, oh my god,
(12:18):
that that sounds so great, Oh God, let's do that.
And she was brave, and she was funny, and she's
so many things. But all that aside all the anecdotes
of working and so forth, is she was kind. She
would reach out to me in tough times I've had
(12:39):
or wonderful times I've had, and I would hear from
her intermittently and always how are you, And nothing attached.
There was nothing transactional about Ann's love, at least in
my case. It was always just like, Hey, I just
wanted to check in with you and see how you're
doing and send you my love? What have you And
(13:04):
and someone as talented as her, and someone as prolific
as her, she was working it seemed all the time
to take a moment and to find out how I
was doing was just so touching to me. I spoke
to her just a couple of weeks maybe or a
month before she passed, and I think it was one
(13:25):
of those phone calls like how are you doing? Anyway,
I'm sending all my love to her family and friends
and colleagues who are going to see this, and and
I have only the most beautiful and r rated remembrances
(13:47):
of the great great ad Hash.
Speaker 8 (13:54):
Thanks so much everyone for coming. This is such gosh,
it's such an incredible such an incredible night. This would
have meant the world to Anne. And I should be
sitting in that front row, worried about what she was
going to say up here, that she was going to
(14:15):
say too much. And now I'm up here worried that
I might not say enough. What can I say about Anne?
I mean, she was an incredible human being who made
the most of her time on this earth, She was
(14:38):
somebody who lived her life with such joy and such kindness.
She woke up every day incredibly optimistic, despite being somebody
who had a lot of challenges in her life. And
to have that optimism when you have challenges is something
(14:59):
that is not easy to do. But she did it authentically,
beautifully every moment of her life. I think a lot
of the younger people here don't all know the stand
that she took back in the nineties for gender free love.
(15:23):
That stand that she took wasn't easy. It impacted her
life in a lot of ways, but it changed the world,
and it made us more understanding and more accepting and
made a world now where somebody can bring somebody of
the same sex to a red carpet and it's not
even a blip on the radar, and that doesn't happen
(15:46):
without the heavy lifting of somebody like Anne. And she
should be recognized for that. And I think the world
is starting to catch up with her and recognize that
that now. Anne was somebody who, Gosh, she embraced you
(16:09):
for you. She let you be exactly who you are.
And she did that because she was so honest and
lived with such honesty and if you think about her life.
Even the story that I just said about her stand
she wanted everybody else to be honest and who they are,
and it gave people the freedom to be that and
(16:32):
for people to explore they're true their true selves. I mean,
I'm a different person for having known her and having
been around her. I'm more me than I would have
been without her. And that's a big gift she gave
to everybody she knew. But it's also a message that
we should all take. You know, be you when you're
(16:56):
really you. There's more peace in the world. And when
there's more peace in the world, there's more kindness in
the world. And that's what Anne was, just total and
complete kindness. Oh what else can I say about her?
(17:18):
What I can say is this, And I'm going to
read from her book and talk a little bit more.
But you know, Anne rewrote the script of her life
many times, and I think that that's going to happen
right now. I think that we're going to rewrite the
script of her life. I'm going to rewrite the script
(17:40):
of her life because she deserves the respect now that
she didn't have when she was here. She deserves the
respect as somebody who changed the world, literally changed the world.
I know that sounds hyperbolic, but she did. She changed
(18:02):
the way we look at the world. She impacted every
single person who knew her and loved her. She showed
us how to lead with kindness, how to lead with love,
how to lead with honesty, how to embrace humans, and
(18:25):
do it all while having fun. On the way here,
we were talking with our friends that we were with
before that. Anne would always say that we were the
party on the way to the party. We had just
as much fun getting ready to go to the party,
maybe more than we even did at the party. And
that just goes to show how Anne made fun out
(18:49):
of anything and everything. She was a blast. And she's
here with us tonight and proud, and she loves everybody
here and is so appreciative of all of you, of
all of the people that have supported her from the beginning.
(19:11):
She loved our Better Together tribe. They meant the world
to her. She wrote this book in part for that
tribe because she wanted people to live a better life
and to find that happiness. For her, in our early
years as a child, I think happiness was a little
(19:33):
more elusive to her, so she appreciated it more. The
same thing with kindness, and I think that that's a
remarkable thing to have somebody who didn't grow up with
kindness available to them, yet it was the thing that
they gave the most, and that was Anne. So shall
(19:58):
we read a little of Call Me Anne. Anne passed
while this book wasn't quite finished, but it was. It
was almost finished, and so I just had to find
(20:20):
ways to tie it up, and in doing that, she
helped me a little bit along the way, because that
was Anne. I've said this before, but I said once
on a podcast, if you died, you really haunt me,
wouldn't you. And she said, yeah, you definitely feel me,
(20:42):
and I definitely feel her, and she definitely helped me.
And in the beginning of this book, there's a little
passage that you'll see and that I'm about to read.
But what you don't know is that I found that
passage after she past written on a notepad on my desk,
(21:05):
and it was the perfect way to start the book.
And it was incredible. As I was sitting there at
my desk flipping through pages trying to figure out what
to say, I wasn't even looking for a message from her.
I was looking for a clean piece of paper to
write on, and I see this. I believe in life everlasting.
(21:28):
I believe it is ours to choose for all the
rest of my time on this earth. I choose to
live to the fullest of my potential. I wake each
day to another adventure and seek the wisdom it offers.
That is the truth of me. The joy I feel
in that commitment has provided me with purpose, love, meaning,
(21:50):
and excitement. This is what I share, This is what
I care about. The book is part memoir with stories
filled throughout, and part her tips about how she lived
a happy life and lived an optimistic life, and the
part that kindness and honesty and love plays into that
(22:17):
No one chooses the circumstances they are born into. I
was born into a family culture of abuse. It took
years to come to terms with that, and honestly, it's
a lifetime's work that will always be ongoing. This book
is meant to give you a glimpse into that lifetime.
It's a guidebook to some of the lessons I've learned
(22:37):
over time, and contained suggestions about how to put those
lessons into practice in your own life. Every phase of
life has lessons for me, and my hope is that
what I've learned might help ease the way for other people,
even those fortunate enough not to be born into difficult
situations experienced trauma through their time on earth. When learning
(23:00):
from your life, you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
There are situations that you can't control. All you can
control is how you react to them. The lessons I
share here come from my own life. Experience is the
best teacher, and everyone learns from their own mistakes, but
(23:22):
you can also learn from mine. Each chapter in this
book is divided into three parts, a lesson, a practice,
and a challenge. The lessons are stories from my life.
The practices are behaviors I learned along the way, which
I hope will be inspiring for you and help shape
the way you think about your own reactions and responses.
(23:44):
The challenges are exercises, often creative, to help you process
your own life and experience, and to help you think
of ways to amplify joy in your life. The book
is meant to be fun, while the practice of Joy,
as I try to live it is a serious philosophy.
It's also a process of finding happiness and laughter in
your life and making these gifts a more central part
(24:07):
of your days. I hope you will find the challenges interesting,
thought provoking, and fun as you bring a new lens
to bear on your own experiences. It can feel next
to impossible to get out of your own head when
you are going through difficult times. But the universes out there.
These challenges are intended to shake you out of your
routine and help you open to the possibilities around you.
(24:30):
It's important to be able to let yourself play. All
of these exercises are intended to help you understand yourself
more deeply. And learning should be fun. She was all
about fun. She wanted this book to be playful and
interactive and not overly serious, and not preachy, and just
always finding the fun. I'm going to read you one
(24:54):
of the memoirs that's a point in her life, and
it's interesting because this If you knew Anne, she was
so big on signs, signs from the universe. She would
find signs in anything and everything. She would always say,
the mistake is in the messenger, which means that if
(25:15):
something went wrong or didn't go as planned, there was
a lesson in that and she followed it and she
believed it, and so this couple pages that I'm about
to read you is why Anne listened to those signs
and why she is an actress and not an architect.
(25:39):
After four years on Another World I determined that I
would never have real security and independence unless I pursued
something normal that could be a career. I was accepted
into Parsons School of Design to study architecture. My other
passion I was to begin attending the week after my
contract playing Vicky Hudson and Marley Love on Another World. Over,
(26:01):
I had done over half a thousand episodes of television.
You'd think that would have sunk in as something meaningful,
perhaps a road to a destination. Not for me. I
decided I needed to go back to school to prove
myself I am worthy of something. I decided i'd needed
a degree of some sort, any sort. Every single person
(26:25):
who had worked with me for four years was gobsmacked
over my decision. Go to Hollywood was the mantra they
were shouting, but it was lost on me. Two weeks
before my departure, my favorite producer handed me a novel
on my way out the door after shooting all week.
Put simply, I don't read novels. It isn't anything against
(26:45):
the form. It's just a lot of very dense information
to take in in long blocks of type on the page,
and my brain doesn't seem to want to process it
that way. Scripts saved my life. They were written in
short paragraphs. I could see them, understand them, and teleport
them into my brain, which was necessary because since I
was playing twins, I had up to sixty pages of
(27:07):
dialogue a day. Half was one character, the other half
the other. And as I've said, I was never allowed
to read. As a child. We had one book in
the house. It was the Bible. I had to memorize
verses every week. Other than that, it was me and
my imagination. Now she makes me act in this book, Anne,
(27:32):
what's this the novel? Oh? My no, what novel? The
novel was Willi Cather's O Pioneers. You'll like it, I
promise me. And Pioneers, Hm, I doubt it. Later that
same day, I sat at my kitchen table alone with
my dog Sammy, as I almost always was on a weekend.
(27:53):
I opened this novel Susan had promised I would like.
I'd barely gotten past the title page when the phone
rang it was my agent. Sorry to bother you on
a Saturday, but an opportunity has presented itself for you
to play the best friend of Jessica Lang. Wait what,
I'm not acting anymore? I know, I get it, but
(28:14):
it's Jessica Lang. There was one actress I could claim
as an idol after seeing Tutsie. It was Jessica. So
suddenly I was interested. It's shooting next week in Nebraska.
It's a really good project and you may want to
consider reading it. I was waving the book in my
face for air as she continued, It's called Oh Pioneers,
(28:35):
and they're really interested in reading you. Are you effine
kidding me? I stopped fanning my face. I looked at
the title of the book in my hand, Oh Pioneers.
If ever, there was a sign you can't make this up.
Cut to a week later, with me sitting on the
(28:56):
bed of a motel six in Nebraska, having spent the
day on the filming O Pioneers. As I was eating
a cheeseburger and unwinding, I learned that I won an
Emmy for playing the twins Vicky and Marley love on
Another World. I picked up the phone and called Joanne
my agent. Does this mean I'm supposed to be an actress? Yes,
(29:18):
and I think it does. That's the universe winking at you,
at all of us who chooses to engage and take flight.
All we can do is smile and say, okay, I
accept put simply. The rest is history, or her story,
as I like to say. She also wrote poems I'm
(29:42):
going to read you one. Love is a practice, it
is an art. Love is the seeking, Love is the start.
Mistakes are teachers. Learning. A must detours God's actions that
lead us to try. Common is yesterday, Lazy is stubborn,
(30:06):
Life offers choices, risk is forlorn. All knowing is farce.
No one is all. That's where we depart, diverge from
the call. It's ours to wonder the spirit of quest.
I offer a ponder the door that opens. Yes. Another way,
(30:28):
she helped me finish this book, which she kept playing
this damn song and I don't know why, and then
somebody texted me the song Weird things like this happened.
It was spanned out Ballet's Gold, so I kept listening
to it, and I was trying to figure out a
way to end a paragraph that didn't seem finished, and
(30:52):
so I took the line from the song and it
is this, you have the power within. Now I'm laughing
because I feel like I should be singing it, but
I won't. You have the power within. Believe in your
soul that you are indestructible. And that is so Anne.
(31:13):
You have the power within. Believe in your soul that
you are indestructible. You'll hear it when you hear that song.
Anne wrote twenty commitments. She loved these commitments. She talked
about them all the time. I'm just going to read
you a couple of them because I really want to
(31:33):
get to one in particular. So, for example, one is
stop ignoring what you know, and that is so Anne.
And again, think about it, you know, like take something
from this book. We all we all know what we know, right,
and then we ignore it. So that was her message,
(31:58):
stop ignoring what you know, risk looking further. That was
so Anne. Risk looking further, like push yourself, do more.
And this is the one I'm trying to get to
because I always had a thing with it with her,
and I always wanted to rephrase it because it worried
me as her pr person. And the funny thing is is.
(32:24):
I think I changed it in the draft, but when
the book came out there it was. Anne was very
against tolerating abuse and hate. She thought we tolerated it
too much in this world, and so she wrote the
(32:47):
commitment and stood behind it, build a community of zero tolerance,
which I get what she means, but I get paranoid.
Are people going to to misinterpret that? Are they not
going to understand that? And so it's funny because the
more I saw it in print, now, like it makes
(33:10):
you think, like really think, like, yeah, we are too
tolerant of certain things. And that's exactly what Anne did
was make you think, like really make you think, and
so yeah, build a community of zero tolerance. Let's not
tolerate hate. Let's not tolerate abuse. And also, now that
(33:32):
I've said that out loud, I feel better about number
three of her commitments. All Right, I'm going to read
the I'm going to read the end of a poem
that she loved, but it's long, so I'm only going
to read a portion of it. It's titled Junipercy and
(33:54):
it's the end poem of the book. Now is the
time to flip the dime, state the old as un fun,
demand it undone, and arrive at the place of joining
God's grace, each and everyone deserving its taste. I say no,
thanks to the walls that have been built around through
(34:15):
towers of babble and endless mind scrabble, deceiving the self
by teaching something else. Goodbye Sin, Hello, Grin, kick the
lie away. As of this day, the day I say,
I am here to stay, and no one or some
can convince me any other way. I'll meet you where
(34:37):
the juniper meets the sea, and evermore choose to be free.
You plus me equals we. And that was something big
for Anne. She thought that together we were more, which
is why our podcast was is better together. You know,
(35:01):
this book reminds us that living in truth gives you
peace and peace Foster's kindness. So I'd like Anne in
this book to really remind us to be free and
be you and let others be the same. And I think,
(35:22):
since there's so many people gathered here in this room,
that Anne would want us to make something of it.
So how about an honor of Anne and this just
you know she works in mysterious ways here in honor
of her, that we all this week do one act
of kindness doesn't matter how big or small. Anne would
(35:45):
always say, let it ripple and triple and let's do that.
Let's do that for her. Thank you so much everybody
for coming. The support means the world to me, I
know to her kids. It's a real tide turning for her,
(36:13):
and I appreciate you all being a part of that.
I think that Anne's story needs to be told in
the right way by people who understand her, by people
who read her book and understand her more deeply. And
I know that she would want everybody to take this
book and really really use it to make your life better,
(36:37):
to make you kinder, to embrace honesty, to embrace all
different types of people and let them, let them be
and celebrate diversity and difference and uniqueness without judgment. It's
(36:59):
like the time for judgment is just so over, Like
it's just enough enough, you know. It's like, thank you.
Anne has been judged enough in her life, and then
that ends. That ends now, That ends now, and from
(37:19):
this moment on she is going to be respected and
admired and revered for the incredible human being that she
was and the incredible gifts that she gave everybody who
knew her and the lessons that she taught us, and
(37:40):
the lessons that she leaves behind in this book. And
I celebrate her, I honor her. I will live fearlessly
for her, which is something that she taught me how
to do recently. But you know what, if you're if
(38:03):
you're kind, if you're honest, if you live and joy,
what is what is there to be afraid of? There
is no fear, you know, So just I would say
it on the podcast all the time all the time,
I'm just going to say it now, just don't be
a dick, right and and there is no fear. There
(38:23):
is no fear if you live as a good human being.
And that's what That's how I'm going to honor Anne,
and I hope I hope you all do too, because
that is exactly what she would want. And that is
her definition of ripple and triple. So please ripple and
(38:43):
triple kindness, honesty, and non judgment for Anne. Hash she
deserves it. H
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