Barbara Harris is back. I went down a tangent last night picturing Robert Altman jumping over people across this parking lot to capture this hilarious interview between us because it’s so real, really. She didn’t know, I didn’t know. But she knew some things, I knew other things. In the end, we weren’t really sure, though.
I happened to end up on her page on my website yesterday, and I just spent some time on Day II, which expanded, but it’s fun, I don’t know what that is yet, and I’m working on something for a magazine, so read it. Barbara Harris just might be what the world needs right now, people in Turkey confused, “who?”
The world might need to hear “reality happens between us” more so than “you create it your own…” I made an unusual choice, inspired by her, to be vulnerable, to reveal myself first, even, as I understood how this exchange could be strange. I tried to be thoughtful to her mysterious mental illness or sci-fi conundrum that made for a real genius. She was the woman with many people forget personalities inside of her. So as an interview with one of the greatest actresses of all time, as she was introduced to me, it’s memorable and touching, I hope. She was.
It’s an interesting portrait of a person who could not be public about whatever the heck mental problems she had among clever phrases on towels about how fucked up you can get on alcohol — who’s crazy?
My family story ends up mirroring her story to open up new perspectives on her, I could relate to her, strangely, angles.
I’ll keep updating her page, because I still don’t know what I’m doing with this exactly, but the inclusion of the landscape, the theme being connection, really works. It’s insightful about mental health and what the problem is. Reality is connection, the connection between us, we cannot forget that. Picturing Cher tossing the bouquet…
I look forward to fully being able to work on this book because it’s so unusual, from the perspective of the interviewer, as I call this the “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” of film, of scripts, hilariously, as I was dealing with an unusual subject, and the way I played it was thoughtful, came from real experience, in what it means to engage ethically with someone — famous, mentally ill, genius, pick the word. They will all come into play.
I mean, I hope I’m right that I have a good feeling about it, and I’ll say that the “star energy” could sometimes confuse me. I want to respect her…as a sci-fi conundrum, supernatural performer, and yet I don’t… always understand it.
I, too, became supernatural, in my real life, for mysterious reasons, because of my background. It’s interesting to note what we pick up on, most certainly, but I had to recover from the “psychic period” as I got involved with people who believed that I was psychic, even to my demise and detriment. So Hannah Arendt was instrumental in understanding this strange problem I got into as well as Harris’ case. She was a psychological case, meaning, she had a remarkable psychological profile, I mean, people spoke about her as if she could contribute to that field. Or was all that talk somewhat unreal? Apparently not. Apparently, her ability to change personhood appeared like a magic trick, and she was quick, she changed states, she could.
But the idea I’m contending with is vulnerability. She was vulnerable. I was vulnerable, first, as an approach. I thought about it. When I plugged my ears, so I wouldn’t hear her personal details, yes, she was vulnerable, which could make people I knew even cry, but how that affected her in real life could be overlooked and forgotten, but I also don’t know enough about her inner circle. It’s less what they told me, it’s more that I didn’t observe them relating to her. It’s not to say they aren’t telling me the truth, I just don’t know enough. Relationships can be tricky. I experienced it myself. She might not totally know what she’s doing, all the time, I don’t know. But this exchange with the public, and that’s what the press is, which is funny in my case, as I was not the press, was not easy for her due to her too visible to not mention mental health struggles that were too easily forgotten as having played a real role in her ability to deal with her success.
I’m sitting at AJs, eternally, with a stuffed baby elephant. It was a meeting between the stage and real life, and at times, it was rather brilliant, an intuitive design, though I don’t know if that’s totally true, but it did appear that there was truth in it.
I’m just trying to make a big break, no? Find that, I keep telling myself that I’ll figure out the way, it’s just, my mind sometimes returns to old passageways, because the guru harped so much on ME MAKING IT, IT BEING POSSIBLE, JUST MEDITATE ON IT, all that, so I find myself in these loops that feel manic, when I didn’t have a problem with it…and also that relationship made me forget life, so, sure, maybe I’ll include some of my experiences with “stardom” that wasn’t real at all. I even, listen to this, just please. A screenwriter, a friend, that’s it, he said, sure I’ll read your pages, and my closest friend went off the rails… he was talking about my character behind my back, claiming it, “I thought I would play him,” and “a woman can’t play him?” And then, he said he wanted to kill a politician, and then, he’s calling himself my manager. I did not DO anything that required a manager, so with talk of wanting to kill someone, I got freaked out, but if I do decide to get back into acting, and it goes well, I ain’t calling him. You see? It was Altman. A fame shadow. I got out of the hospital, and he said, after the movers were magically not coming after a pretty bad phone call faking it with this moving company, another point I didn’t understand, that I should write the movie — in a tone — about what happened. Is it? Is the highest compliment? Is it the best thing that could happen, considering, and here’s when the difference between “just mental health emergencies” and “trauma related emergencies” really really piss me off, that I was struggled with abuse? Write the movie about what happened. Imagine? Sure, I thought, I could probably write a good movie about that, if I ever get there? I liked that idea, of going into that arena, but I found all that starry heightened energy to be a bit maddening where my closest friend didn’t see me as real. And listen to Adrien Brody, he’d be the first to ask himself, “but you’re not even famous…” truly! And I saw the dark side of fame and the ghost of Barbara somehow, even as a really good joke, helped me through this. But whatever, that was then, and this was now, but I did engage with a fame shadow. So, unreally, truly, I became psychic, also, on the brink of acting superstardom with movies spontaneously being made within minutes, not years, Tom Cruise getting rejected because my friend did a better job at that audition, even, “no worries,” my story is being shot to the forefront of everyone’s to-do list. What a crazy moment I had.
Meanwhile, my eyes shifting, Barbara Harris… didn’t want to be famous. “Uh oh,” picture her ghost, in the fiction, where she’s like, “what are you doing with that?” And then, “uh oh.”
“Now who’s this?”
This girl is in trouble.
I got the impression that some people believed I was a movie star, or a star, but why, I didn’t know, I was vaguely gifted, psychic, and everyone is one, so no one is really special, but I was special, I was specialized, for sure. You can keep it. Interesting were Harris and I met, and respectfully, where we truly differed. I’m not getting onstage and changing worlds basically. Maybe I could, I don’t know, but Harris was… the real deal.
I’m excited now, as I’m going to get back into it, I’m going to try and just see what happens. I have an audition next month, hey, for NYU grad, so I thought that was a good move to audition for the next generation. I think more so than anything else, I don’t have any of these blocks anymore, so I just wanted to see what it would be like, and I’m a smart person, I can make choices, and think about what I’d like to play, could play. I’m excited about it because she helped me gain that confidence. I might not feel like I’m where I belong, but that feeling is more available, and I’m trying to go in that direction.
Even that CD cover, right? Just picture Harris and I… and Arendt looking down on us, lol, somehow.
Isn’t she perfect though? She’s a difficult woman, she’s rebellious, she’s the cutest, she’s mentally ill, she’s a genius, she’s a comedy legend, she’s groundbreaking even today. I just thought, her whole, I’m wearing FRUMPY sweater for YOU “press agent” coming to “set” strangely “to watch me and try to talk to me,” I thought she’d be some kind of hero today… on the cover of glamorous magazines really not in it for the fame. I can picture her whole looking at the public in disdain being received as refreshing… so I hoped she would resonate as I got the sense that she very well as someone who was uniquely herself in a world of the same the same the same — soriginality isn’t exactly anyone’s best friend anymore, as yet, she was, a real original, and a unforgettable one. Be you. Charming. Reading her pick up lines by the melons…and she’s touched. The way she looked at me at the fridge.