Carrie Fisher - Postcards from the Edge

“My shrink, Norma, says it has something to do with not getting enough affection as a child,” she said. “So I’m trying to make up for it by getting as much attention as I can now. That’s why I have a very seductive nature. Because, you know, you go off on a lot of calls, and you meet people for a brief period of time, and it’s very important to cram your entire personality into that meeting so they’ll really want you for the job. Even after you get successful it never gets any easier. You always have to please people. Fill their every possible fantasy about you. And you can never show that it’s hard, so you’re always looking like you’re having the best time, and everybody thinks they’re your soulmate. And you don’t feel comfortable with anybody .”

“Producers have to meet people and pretend we like them,” he said. “Put them at ease. Everybody becomes more sensitive to other people’s feelings and desensitized to their own.”

“You can’t find any true closeness in Hollywood,” she said, “because everybody does the fake closeness so well. Your phone rings all the time and you have all these friends, and you feel like if you were a little less successful, they would never call you.”

“I know just what you mean,” he said. “For years I went to hookers, because, let’s face it, I’m a very successful producer and writer, and I’m thinking of directing—Columbia really wants me to do a picture for them and direct it, and I feel it’s the right time. I mean, I’m certainly developing films I feel I could direct. There’s this one about high school that—Anyway, I’ve been doing this for a while now, and people might like me for my money. So I figured, if someone’s gonna like me for my money, it might as well be a hooker, who’s gonna like me for my money anyway. There was this girl, though. I don’t know that we were in a committed relationship, but we went out for a while. But, you know, I saw other people. It’s hard for me to… I don’t know why, I think… When you grow up the way I did, maybe…”

“You have an intimacy problem,” she said.

“It’s not that I have an intimacy problem ,” he said. “I just don’t want to be intimate. I don’t see the point. I mean, I’m very involved in my career and… It’s not really that I don’t want to be intimate. I don’t want to be committed . I don’t know, I suppose that’s finally just an excuse. My lawyer says I am afraid of any real involvement. He lives with a girl, and it just looks like, what’s the point? I don’t really know what the point is. I love sex, don’t get me wrong. One could even go so far as to say I’m compulsive about sex. I mean, I hope you don’t think I’m blunt—I’m sort of known for my bluntness—but, you know, I’d like to have sex with you. I mean, you seem like someone who’d be great to have sex with.”

“How romantic,” she said.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m cold. I’ve recently noticed a coldness about myself that scares me. It scares me that I don’t really care about much but my work. I guess you could say I’m a workaholic. If I wasn’t a producer I’d be a football coach, ’cause it’s so intense. I need intensity, I thrive on it, I am it. So I love environments that complement me. I can relax at a Bruce Springsteen concert. In the middle of that kind of energy, I can relax. I would have been great in the army, I think, as long as… Well, I wouldn’t have liked being wounded, I don’t like pain. Which I know doesn’t make me unusual.”

“But you thought you might mention it,” she said, “in case I was thinking of stabbing you with my fork.”

“Anyway, I’d like to want a relationship,” he said, “because everybody else does, and it looks nice.”

“Intimacy to me is two people sitting in front of a candle listening to important music nude,” she said. “Thinking it means something that you both love the same video and neither of you could finish The Sot-Weed Factor . I was out with someone the other day and I said I didn’t like sushi. I called it ‘whale gums,’ and he said, ‘Really? You don’t like it? I hate it, too.’ And it was like he was saying, ‘ Finally! Somebody who understands me!’”

“We live in America,” he said. “Everyone who speaks English understands you. How they interpret you is something else.”

“There’s usually one thing that targets somebody for you,” she said. “Like, he says something nasty about shrinks, and you say, ‘Oh, you don’t like shrinks? I think they’re awful, too. You can do it yourself, everyone did for years. What did the pioneers do? I can’t cut down that tree, I’ve got a noon appointment with my therapist? My shrink told me killing Indians was acting out aggression?’”

“I’ve noticed that people who admit they’re lonely and angry tend to clump together,” he said. “Like that’s enough of a common denominator. A little club of dissatisfied people filled with angst. Phi Beta Rage.”

“Phi Beta Rage,” she said. “I’m stealing that.”

“When you first meet someone on that first date, all the emergency adrenaline is there,” he said. “You bring out your best material as though you do it all the time. As though this is just a natural environment for the great parts of your personality to come through. And it’s not. It’s totally forced.”

“I went out with this senator,” she said, “who kept saying, ‘You are so terrific, what a great girl you are.’ And I thought, ‘Well, shut up about it!’ He was telling me what he thought I needed to hear, rather than what he really felt to be true. And if he really felt it to be true, I would know . I would be able to glean that he thought that. Anyway, I know I’m a terrific girl. I don’t want to be a terrific girl. That’s what I am for auditions. I want to be something else to someone.”

“When the actors come in on my pictures, my heart goes out to them,” he said. “I started out as an actor. I went to acting college, Jeff Bridges was in my class. In fact, I’ve been in a couple of my movies. I think I’m a natural performer. My father was a preacher, so I got that kind of energy from him. A lot of preachers’ sons are actors—Olivier, I mean, you could name a few of them. Anyway, I do all the readings with the actresses. I’m surprised you never came in to read with me.”

“I read for you six years ago,” she said. “You were very nice, but you seemed preoccupied. It was a huge call.”

“Really?” he said. “I would have thought I’d have remembered someone like you. Wait, was that on Why Is Ruth Dead? I was doing a lot of cocaine then. I read that you were in a clinic recently, so I figure you know what I mean. I never got into free-base, but I was… I was taking a lot of cocaine. And I really, you know, I like cocaine. I had to stop ’cause I was having anxiety attacks. Still, I would think I would have remembered you, because you’re very attractive and mainly because you’re bright. It’s this new thing I’ve been saying lately—I don’t mean to quote myself, but if I don’t, maybe no one else will. In India they say that the body is the envelope of the spirit, and the spirit, I guess, is essentially who you are. Well, we live in a city of envelopes. The thing that’s terrific about you is that you are a letter . I mean, it takes a letter to know a letter, and I can see we’re really two letters in a town of envelopes—”

“‘ The envelope, please,’” she said.

“—so when you find someone who actually has an interesting letter, you want to read it,” he said. “The only problem is, you’ve gotten so conditioned to reading your own mail, so immersed in the letterness of it all, you just… Sometimes I think maybe I’ve met Her, and I just can’t see her because I’m so busy looking at myself to see if I look all right in case she should arrive.”