Wishful Drinking (5 page)

Well, if you have a life like mine, then these experiences gradually accumulate until you become known as “a survivor.” This is a term that I loathe. But, the thing is that when you are a survivor, which fine, I reluctantly agree that I am—and who over 40 isn’t?—when you are a survivor, in order to be a really good one, you have to keep getting in trouble to show off your gift.

My mother says, “Well, dear, what are the choices? Not surviving?”

But this is from a woman who when asked for dating advice says, “For what age?”

My mother, who incidentally lives next door to me, she calls me to this day and says, “Hello, dear, this is your mother, Debbie.” (As opposed to my mother Vladimir or Jean-Jacques.)

I have a very loud voice. I used to say that my voice was designed to wrest people from dreams. My mother grew up in Texas, on the border of Mexico, but she learned to speak “properly” with the assistance of Lillian Sydney, her vocal coach at MGM. Over time, she was able to gradually but completely lose her accent—unless she got really angry or frustrated with Todd and me—then she’s been known to say, “Carrie Frances—y’all get your butts in here!” But my mom has what I can only describe as a movie star accent. It’s very breathless and elegant—kind of mid-Atlantic. My brother and I frequently talk this way to each other now: “Hello, dear, this is your brother, Todd.”

A few years back I interviewed my mother for this tragic cable talk show I was doing. This was for the Mother’s Day show.

Anyway, we’re chatting along pretty gaily for straight people, and then suddenly somewhere in the middle of our little chat my mother casually says, “You know, dear, it’s like that time when I was a little girl and I was kidnapped.”

Huh?

“Oh, darling, I told you about all of this, you’ve just forgotten.”

(This was before my ECT, so there’s no way I’d forget something like that. I doubt that even electroconvulsive therapy could banish a story as creepy as that one.)

So on she goes with this horrendous story, which I’m sure you’re all dying to hear, like I was. Just desperate to hear each and every horrifically vivid detail of a tale increasingly tinged with darker hues of molestation. Happy Mother’s Day everyone! After my panic subsides somewhat, I hear her saying that when she was eight or maybe younger, her eighteen-year-old neighbor and his friend scooped her up for a little joy ride. I’ll spare you the more grisly details, but the good news is that despite the fact that something extremely unsavory occurred, my mother wasn’t, in fact, raped.

Anyway, long gross story short, the father of the boy who encouraged my mom to consider a part of his anatomy as a lollipop called my grandmother and pleaded with her not to go to the police.

“I guarantee you I’ll make absolutely sure he’ll never do this again.”

“How?” asked my grandmother, to which the boy’s father somehow conveyed his intention to castrate his son.

“I’ll fix him so he can’t.”

At this point my grandmother generously reminded the boy’s father that he hadn’t raped her daughter, to which the father allegedly replied, “I just wanna make sure he don’t have the chance to do what he done again and maybe next time it’d be worse. He’s disgraced our family enough.”

Ah, the lovely family stories one has.

When I was about fifteen, my mother had started dating a man named Bob Fallon, and my brother and I called him Bob Phallus, because he came equipped with exotic creams and sex toys. You know, aphrodisiacs. Well, actually, Anglo-disiacs, because we’re white. Anyway, thanks to Bob, that Christmas my mother bought both my grandmother and myself vibrators! As unusual as a gift like this sounds, you have to admit that they are the ideal stocking stuffers. I mean, you can fit the vibrator into the long top part of the stocking and still be able to get another cute little gift in the toe!

Well, I have to admit, I enjoyed mine, but my grandmother refused to use hers. She was concerned that it would short-circuit her pacemaker. She said that she had gone this long without an orgasm; she might as well go the whole way. (And that pacemaker, by the way, was later recalled.)

Now, look, I know you might be thinking that a lot of the stories I’m telling you are way over the top, and I would totally have to agree—but you can’t imagine what I’m leaving out!

Anyway, I’d been singing in my mother’s nightclub act since I was thirteen (like most teenagers) and I continued to perform with her until I was seventeen. The last show we did together was at the London Palladium, and I got pretty good reviews. So this choreographer contacts me and asks if I want to do my own nightclub act. And I thought, well maybe. I mean, I could end up being financially independent

and Liza Minelli—but you take the good with the bad. Anyway my mother thought this was a lousy idea. She thought it would be better if I went to drama college in England because it would bring respectability to the family. Like we were a bunch of hookers, and drama college in England is the only way to eradicate a taint like that.

So now it’s 1973 and I’m seventeen and I’m enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. And, like I said, I really didn’t want to go, but once I got there, it turned out to be some of the best times of my life. Truly. I mean it was the only unexamined time of my life, where I was just a student among students, going to voice and movement classes and learning weird little tongue twisters like:

All I want is a proper cup of coffee,

Made in a proper copper coffee pot.

You can believe it or not,

But I want a cup of coffee

In a proper coffee pot.

Tin coffee pots

And iron coffee pots,

They’re no use to me.

If I can’t have a proper cup of coffee

In a proper copper coffee pot,

I’ll have a cup of tea.

Now if you enjoyed my performance as Princess Leia—and who could resist my stunning, layered, and moving portrait not-unlike-Mary Poppins performance—then it’s thanks to tongue twisters like that.

Consider: “You’ll never get that bucket of bolts past that blockade.” Proper coffee pot?

Or: “Why, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder!”—proper copper coffee pot, I’ll have a cup of tea!

And don’t forget, I had that weird little English accent that came and went like weather or bloat all through the movie.

And all my friends made fun of me because they said the title of the film sounded like a fight between my original parents—Star Wars!

ACCUMULATIONS OF INCARNATIONS

Forty-three years ago, George Lucas ruined my life. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. And now, seventy-two years later, people are still asking me if I knew Star Wars was going to be that big of a hit.

Yes, of course I knew. We all knew. The only one who didn’t know was George Lucas. We kept it from him, because we wanted to see what his face looked like when it changed expression—and he fooled us even then. He got Industrial Light and Magic to change his facial expression for him and THX sound to make the noise of a face-changing expression.

Not only was he virtually expressionless in those days, but he also hardly talked at all. His only two directions to the three of us in the first film were “faster” and “more intense.”

Remember the trash compactor scene in the first Star Wars? When Harrison and Mark and Chewie have just rescued me from my prison cell on the Death Star and we’ve just slid down the garbage chute and landed on a bunch of Death Star garbage and water? Well, under the water lived this serpent-like creature that in the script was called a Dianoga (though I don’t think anyone ever referred to this thing by name in the actual film). So this creature, Dianoga, was meant to slither over to Mark, wrap itself around his neck, and strangle him as it pulled him under the surface of the water, leaving the rest of us up above to flip out. Well, in between takes of Mark simulating the strangulation, he would pick up a little piece of rubber trash and start singing (to the tune of “Chattanooga Choo-Choo”), “Pardon me, George, could this be Dianoga poo-poo?” (Okay, I guess you had to be there.)

Anyway, during one of the takes, Mark was so intent on making his strangulation look realistic that he ended up bursting a blood vessel in his eye, which in turn left this bright red dot. So, the following day we shot our next scene—which happened to be the last scene in the movie. You know, the one where I give out all the medals? Mark had to grin like a motherfucker in that scene in order to conceal his red dot. Because, ultimately, who’s going to give a medal to someone with a big, stupid red dot in their eye? I don’t care how much force is with him.

George also made me take shooting lessons because in the first film I would grimace horribly at the deafening sound of the blanks from the blasters and the squibs that the special effects team would place all over the set and on the stormtroopers. So George wanted to make me look like I’d been shooting them for my entire Alderaan existence. So, he sent me to the same man who’d taught Robert DeNiro to shoot weapons in Taxi Driver and so the shooting range was in this cellar in midtown Manhattan, populated with policemen and all manner of firearm aficionados. I used to have this fantasy that in some distant Star Wars sequel, we’d finally stop all the shooting and screaming at each other and would go to a shopping-and-beauty planet, where the stormtroopers would have to get facials, and Chewbacca would have to get pedicures and bikini and eyebrow waxes. I felt at some point that I should get—okay, fine, maybe not equal time—but just a few scenes where we all did a lot of girly things. Imagine the shopping we might have done on Tatooine! Or a little Death Star souvenir shop where you could get T-shirts that said “My parents got the force and jumped to light speed and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!” or “My boyfriend blew Jabba the Hutt and all I got”

etc.,
etc.
You get the gist of my drift. But I have to admit, after a series of weapon instruction from a very pleasant ex-cop, I became quite proficient with an assortment of guns, including a double-barreled shotgun. Obviously my family was so proud. Because for fuck (or Darth) sake, I was always doing their endless stupid fucking boy things.

But back to the first film. Shortly after I arrived, George gave me this unbelievably idiotic hairstyle, and I’m brought before him like some sacrificial asshole and he says in his little voice, “Well, what do you think of it?” And I say—because I’m terrified I’m going to be fired for being too fat—I say, “I love it.” Yeah, and the check’s in the mail and one size fits all and I’ll only put it in a little bit!

Because, see, there was this horrible fat thing going on! When I got this great job to end all jobs, which truly I never thought I would get because there were all these other beautiful girls who were up for the part—there was Amy Irving and Jodie Foster; this girl Teri Nunn almost got the part

Oh! and Christopher Walken almost got cast as Han Solo. (Wouldn’t that have been fantastic?) Anyway, when I got this job they told me I had to lose ten pounds. Well, I weighed about 105 at the time, but to be fair, I carried about fifty of those pounds in my face! So you know what a good idea would be? Give me a hairstyle that further widens my already wide face!

So you see, George Lucas is a sadist. But like any abused child, wearing a metal bikini, chained to a giant slug about to die, I keep coming back for more. Now why, you might ask? Well, (I would answer), let’s face it, George Lucas is a visionary, right? The man has transported audiences the world over and has provided Mark and Harrison and myself with enough fan mail and even a small merry band of stalkers, keeping us entertained for the rest of our unnatural lives—not to mention identities that will follow us to our respective graves like a vague, exotic smell.

Speaking of graves, I tell my younger friends that one day they’ll be at a bar playing pool and they’ll look up at the television set and there will be a picture of Princess Leia with two dates underneath, and they’ll say “awww—she said that would happen.” And then they’ll go back to playing pool.

And don’t forget, George Lucas was the man who made me into a little doll! And it barely even hurt. A little doll that one of my exes could stick pins into whenever he was annoyed with me. (I found it in the drawer.) He also made me into a shampoo bottle where people could twist off my head and pour liquid out of my neck. Paging Dr. Freud!

And then there was a soap that read, “Lather up with Leia and you’ll feel like a Princess yourself.” (Boys!) Oh! And the nice people at Burger King made me into a watch. And you know Mr. Potato Head? Well, they just came out with a Mr. Potato Head Star Wars series so you might recognize me as Princess Tater? (With my husband Dick and our daughter, Rehabili-tater.) And I’m a tiny little stumpy Lego thing—which are delicious, by the way. And now there’s even a stamp, which is totally cool—and not only because of the licking. But the thing I’ve been made into that has really enhanced the quality of my life? I’m a PEZ dispenser. True story. Which not only has really made my life great, but it’s enhanced the lives of everyone I run into. If you can get someone to make you into a PEZ dispenser, do it. And my daughter loves it because like I told you, she’s a teenager, and they love to humiliate the parent for sport, so all she has to do is flip my head back and pull a wafer out of my neck. But ultimately, I really don’t mind. Even though, among George’s many possessions, he owns my likeness, so that every time I look in the mirror I have to send him a couple of bucks! That’s partly why he’s so rich! Because I’m vain. So, I look in the mirror a lot, and it adds up.

You know I saw yet another Leia figurine recently at one of those comic book conventions—which yes, I go to when I’m lonely. Anyway, this doll was on a turnstile. And when it got to a particular place on the turnstile, you could see up my dress, to my anatomically correct—though shaved—galaxy snatch. Well, as you can imagine, because this probably happens to you all the time, I was a bit taken aback by this, so I called George and I said, “You know what, man? Owning my likeness does not include owning my lagoon of mystery.”