Interview conducted by Josh Horowitz
February 27, 2004
Carrie Fisher has been plugged into Hollywood, it seems, every moment of her life. Let’s begin with her parents, legendary entertainers Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. Then there’s the matter of that iconic role as a girl named Leia in the original STAR WARS trilogy. Then there’s her writing. She’s been an un-credited script doctor to many features, often lending her acerbic wit to films that need that extra something. Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear talked about using her tennis court when they were getting to know each other for STUCK ON YOU. Just recently, her home hosted actress Selma Blair and Ahmet Zappa’s wedding when a venue change was decided upon at the last minute. Hell, Fisher was even romantically linked once to Ben Affleck.
And I haven’t even gotten to the books. Her four novels have mined many of the ups and downs of her personal life, most famously in POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE, which became a Mike Nichols directed film with Meryl Street playing the author’s doppelganger—Suzanne Vale.
Her new novel, THE BEST AWFUL, revisits Vale and some of Fisher’s most traumatic personal experiences including a stint in a mental hospital and her boyfriend leaving her for another man. The first line of the novel memorably reads, “Suzanne Vale had a problem… She’d had a child with someone who forgot to tell her he was gay. He forgot to tell her, and she forgot to notice.”
Of course, since it’s Fisher’s voice, it’s a decidedly comic tale. I spoke to her on the phone recently from her home.
Josh Horowitz: Hi there. How are you?
Carrie Fisher: Okay. Well, I have very bad laryngitis. Or very good laryngitis.
JH: Oh no. Is there a good kind?
CF: I hope so.
JH: Is the book tour already getting to your voice?
CF: No no, I caught something in New York.
JH: I’ll try not to be too taxing on your voice. I read that you spend a lot of time on the internet. I assume MoviePoopShoot is a favorite of yours?
CF: (SARCASTICALLY) Oh yeah, I’m constantly on that. No, I didn’t even know about it. But I e-mail a little bit with Kevin [Smith] sometimes. I do a lot of research on the internet. It’s easier for me. Paper always falls apart in my hands. I can’t imagine how I ever got along without it as a resource for looking up things. I really love the internet. They say chat-rooms are the trailer park of the internet but I find it amazing.
JH: Ok, on to selling some books. You’ve got a humdinger of an opening line in this book. Did that line come first?
CF: I always like to start off with a strong opener. I didn’t have that line until I’d written a lot of the book because I sort of started writing it from the mental hospital out.
JH: Do you outline what the parameters of the story are going to be or do you start with the mental hospital and sort of work your way out from there?
CF: (LAUGHS) I did that but then I started to outline it more. This time I wasn’t as autobiographical as I normally am in terms of really sticking to what happened to me. But a lot of it, of course, is what happened to me. I felt more at liberty to screw around with it.
JH: That brings up something of an obvious question. Why not just write a non-fiction book?
CF: I actually tried this time. I’m not good at it. I’m not good at that form. I find it almost claustrophobic to use the word, “I”. I think that the truth is a really stern taskmistress. I don’t have a good memory. I’ve read these great memoirs where they remember things from when they were three and four. I don’t remember anything from then! I’d rather say that I’m making this shit up than say I’m writing a memoir and make stuff up.
JH: Not to mention the lawsuits.
CF: And I really don’t want that. If you write memoirs there are a lot more restrictions for you. This way I know that people assume that all of it happened to me and quite a bit of it usually does. I’m not as restricted about what I can write about others. I’m never restricted about what I can write about myself. Now I say I’m a diarist with an explanation I’ll get back to you on. Someday I may try and write in memoir form. I gave it a try this time and I didn’t like the results so I went back to this.
JH: What happened to THE BEST AWFUL THERE IS? That was the original title.
CF: I liked that title! What I do is listen to the last person I talk to and somebody said just make it THE BEST AWFUL. Now I think I shouldn’t have done that but that’s what I do. And now I regret that.
JH: A lot of this stuff was painful to live though at the time I would think. It’s one thing to write about it alone in a room in a fictional way but what about rehashing this stuff with Katie Couric, Bill O’Reilly and a guy from MoviePoopShoot?
CF: As you say, at the time, it was very unpleasant. Not exclusively unpleasant because I can’t live that way. It’s my job as a human to make things funny as fast as possible. That’s why I say, “if my life wasn’t funny it would just be
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true and that’s unacceptable.” Katie Couric said to me, “having been left for a man, in some ways that must have been not that bad, in effect the entire sex is being rejected.” It’s like THE GODFATHER. Tell Michael it wasn’t personal. It was just business. It’s just funny. What I was trying to do was make my brand of mental illness sort of accessible and if at all possible amusing.
JH: You’re very upfront and outspoken talking about mental illness. What do you think the biggest misconceptions are out there about it?
CF: It’s not all bad. The manic end of is a lot of fun. I try to encourage people to envy my mania. A lot of it is just fantastic. Mental illness sounds so horrendous and it can be. But it’s kind of a broad term. People that are depressed have mental illness. I don’t think [mental illness] describes it well, the range of it. A lot of what’s wrong with me is, I feel like, a bank error in my favor. It can be fantastic. Whenever I read about it in other books, it’s very, very heavy and awful. I was trying to get to the positive side. (LAUGHS)
JH: Tom Cruise has said in recent interviews that he doesn’t believe in psychiatry. Then again he was usually dressed as a samurai warrior swinging a sword in most of those interviews. What are your thoughts on psychiatry?
CF: He’s a scientologist! I think it can be very helpful. It’s not good for everybody. But it can be helpful in a lot of cases. It’s the talking cure. I think people can stay in it too long. Ultimately it’s a job that should put itself out of a job. I believe in expertise in any area. So if I find someone that is a gifted anything, a psychiatrist, a podiatrist, a philosopher, a reporter, an actor, a writer, that’s going to be interesting. They’re going to have something to contribute. I think to completely say, “I don’t believe in psychiatry…well I don’t believe in scientology!” I’m sure in some whacked out world even that has something of value to offer somebody. I just…(LAUGHS)
JH: We just can’t think of anything off the top of our heads.
CF: Right. I just think you can’t dismiss anything like that. Has Tom Cruise ever been in psychiatry? It’s been helpful to me in my life.
JH: I love your Oxygen interview show, CONVERSATIONS ON THE EDGE. Are you doing more?
CF: Yeah. Hopefully I’ll interview Tom Cruise about psychiatry.
JH: I know Ben Affleck was your first guest on the show and I remember the rumors about you two.
CF: (LAUGHS) That was hilarious.
JH: Are you going to get him on the rebound now that J-Lo is gone?
CF: I really hope so. I think that now he’s ready for a much older bossy lady. I think we’d make a really good couple.
JH: I saw you on CELEBRITY POKER SHOWDOWN on Bravo. You two could gamble together.
CF: Exactly! We can gamble. We can go to AA meetings together. We have a lot of the same problems. And I think that was what was the matter with Jen and him. They didn’t have a lot of the same dysfunctions. Clearly he needs someone like me.
JH: US WEEKLY should be talking to you as an expert on all of this.
CF: They have to stop now. We need another topic. We need another couple that’s insane. I used to e-mail with Ben. He’s a lot of fun to e-mail with. Once he started with Jennifer I lost my e-mail companion so I’m hoping I get him back now.
JH: Once he reads this he’s sending you an e-mail. I guarantee it.
CF: He better! Because it’s been devastating for me and at some point I promised him my daughter’s hand in marriage. I think that would be better for him too. We could start shaping her into the kind of fiancé he really needs.
JH: Your one-time onscreen paramour Harrison [Ford] was just fodder for the tabloids recently. Did you see that?
CF: Oh my God. Yeah.
JH: Any fun Enquirer stories about you that you’ve clipped for your scrapbook over the years?
CF: Oh God yes. Of course. There was one that I was at a porno shoot but here’s the horror…it’s true! (LAUGHS) Those guys that do SOUTH PARK were doing “research.” Ha ha! So my friend Charlie lent them their apartment to film a porno shoot and then he invited some friends. So I went with Buck Henry, Tim Hutton, Richard Dreyfuss, we all went! But guess who it was who was reported to have went?
JH: Just you?
CF: STAR WARS star and porno aficionado Carrie Fisher, of course. None of the other people were there, just me. A friend of mine had just been diagnosed with cancer that day and I said to him, “I’m going to take you somewhere and you’re going to completely get your mind off your diagnosis.” And it did take his mind off of it. Now that wasn’t my sole motive in going.
JH: Well you had to have your noble reasons.
CF: Yeah, It was very altruistic. But it was actually hilarious. So that was my best appearance. I’ve been in [the tabloids] when I went into the mental hospital. They literally put it in as “Carrie Fisher’s Tragic Life.” (LAUGHS) That’s my favorite one.
JH: (LAUGHS) That could be the title of your memoir when you do it.
CF: It is. That’s the subtext of everything I do. The undercurrent always is “Carrie Fisher’s Tragic Life.”
JH: You don’t have many “official” writing credits in film despite being known as a top script doctor. Does the compensation in the bank account make up for the few actual credits you receive?
CF: No. I don’t do that much script doctoring anymore. I do a lot of scripts that don’t get made that I’m very proud of. I started another book now. I’m writing something for HBO and something for Irwin Winkler. Kevin [Smith] and I did a rewrite on something. We followed each other on a rewrite.
JH: Did you really?
CF: On COYOTE UGLY.
JH: Any lines I should look out for?
CF: No, I don’t remember it at all.
JH: Any Oscar commentary from you with the nominations out?
CF: No, in fact I’m not even completely sure what happened. It’s been a weird year I think.
JH: What’s the last movie you fell in love with?
CF: Oh man, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? What about you?
JH: I liked LOST IN TRANSLATION a lot.
CF: I like that a lot too. [Sofia Coppola]’s a really nice girl. I got an email from her mom once asking if I could help her daughter when she was a kid. It was just funny to hear from her mother. I think Sofia’s really talented.
JH: Speaking of awards, you’ve done some writing for awards shows. What does that entail?
CF: A lot of times when they write something for a celebrity and they don’t like it, you’re sent as kind of the emissary.
JH: We’ve brought in Carrie Fisher to soothe your concerns.
CF: Yeah, you’re the diplomat to the country of whatever celebrity it is that’s flipped out.
JH: That must be bizarre.
CF: That’s how I met Courtney Love.
JH: You’re in an upcoming film called STATESIDE with Val Kilmer. Between this and WONDERLAND, you two are working together a lot now.
CF: Yeah, all the time. We’re the new Fred and Ginger. And I’m appearing a lot as a nun or a born-again Christian.
JH: I know Meryl [Streep] was at your book signing the other day. Any chance of another big screen adventure for Suzanne Vale?
CF: (LAUGHS) Meryl should only play me. Somebody came up to the two of us a few months ago and I pointed to myself and said, “before” and then I pointed to her and said, “after.”
THE BEST AWFUL is out in stores now.
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