BEFORE: I'm finally getting to the Carrie Fisher chain - which will set me up perfectly for the premiere of "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" on Friday. And that will really be MY Christmas this year, sure I'll send out Christmas cards and have dinner with my family, and exchange gifts and all that - but this year, Geek Christmas comes on December 15. I'm taking a half day off from work to attend a noon screening, that was the best I could do. But really, this plan has been in the works since January 1, when I sent out a dedication to the late Ms. Fisher - and it took almost a whole year to come to fruition.
Since this is a relatively short feature, I'm programming another short today to precede the feature - it's Carrie Fisher's hour-long HBO special "Wishful Drinking", which is a cable broadcast of her one-woman show from 2010. I taped it to fill up the DVD and I've seen about half of it before, tonight I'm watching/re-watching the entire thing to preface the documentary. My favorite part is when she pulls out a "Family Tree" chart of Hollywood marriages, divorces and lineage to figure out if her own daughter, Billie Lourd, might be related to a man she was interested in dating, who was a grandson of Liz Taylor and Mike Todd. I guess you wouldn't want anyone in Hollywood to date their own half-sibling or anything. Surprisingly Liz Taylor is NOT the person on the chart with the most marriages...
I might have screwed myself here, though - I was so anxious to get here that when I saw the link between "Bob Roberts" and this film, I set the plan in motion. Only the link is Fisher Stevens, who did a cameo in "Bob Roberts" as a news reporter, and he DIRECTED this documentary about Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. That doesn't count by my linking rules, unless he appears in this film somehow. What the heck was I thinking? Perhaps I figured that if these actresses were being interviewed for this documentary, then the director would be the one asking them questions, so I'd at least be able to hear his voice, and then that would count as an appearance.
It's also an appropriate film for the first day of Hanukkah, though, right? At least according to the title...
THE PLOT: An intimate portrait of actress Debbie Reynolds and her relationship with her beloved children, Carrie Fisher and Todd Fisher.
AFTER: Great news, Fisher Stevens does appear briefly in this documentary he directed - some kind of fire or burglar alarm goes off at Debbie Reynolds' house at one point in the filming, and I caught a glimpse of him standing among the chaos. So the linking is preserved, and I don't have to wonder whether that's his voice asking Debbie questions.
"Bright Lights" (taken in conjunction with "Wishful Drinking") gives us a peek into the "typical" (if there is such a thing) Hollywood family, and a lot of it is not pretty. Multiple marriages, multiple divorces, drug and alcohol abuse, stepfathers who gamble and frequent prostitutes, etc. Debbie Reynolds was regarded as "America's Sweetheart", but ignored the advice she got from Frank Sinatra ("Don't marry a singer") and there seemed to be something of a domino effect from there. Eddie Fisher went and slept with Liz Taylor, his best friend's widow, and this led to a high-profile divorce. He had five wives in total and four children, while Liz Taylor went on to marry Richard Burton, her co-star in "Cleopatra", and divorce, re-marry and re-divorce him. Carrie's take on the whole thing casts Liz Taylor as the Angelina Jolie of her time, breaking up the happy marriage between Eddie Fisher (Brad Pitt) and Debbie Reynolds (Jennifer Aniston).
Carrie, meanwhile, found herself with a stepfather who was a tycoon in the shoe business (instead of show business, there must have been a miscommunication there) and rooming with three new step-children, one of whom apparently should have been in some form of institution. And Carrie herself was bi-polar, only they didn't call it that back then, or really understand that condition, I think "manic depression" was the favored name at the time. She describes it as having two driving internal forces - "Roy", always in search of a good time, and "Pam", the sedentary one who stares out at the beach from the window. Teen experimentation with drugs and alcohol only then fueled more addictive behavior, and I'm sure pulling her out of high-school to appear in her mother's stage act in NYC didn't help things.
With the odds stacked against her, it's surprising that Carrie Fisher had such a great attitude, and could make humor from her own life. Everything from interaction with fans at Comic-Cons (which she often referred to as "giving lapdances") where the fans thought it would be a compliment to tell her stories about pleasuring themselves while thinking about her (umm, inappropriate) to her failed marriages to both Paul Simon and a gay talent agent to her time in rehab - with enough time, everything became grist for the comedy mill. That's how she ended up writing "Postcards From the Edge", which became a hit movie - you take the tragedies in your life and you try to make something artistic from them that other people will connect with. It's the very definition of a writer/artist, even when you factor in the electro-shock therapy that helped her find some form of daily peace.
Carrie and Debbie lived next door to each other for many years, and spent time together every day, assuming both were in town. And then the film show that even when one went to do a concert or an awards show, the other was likely to come along. Somehow they grew old together, became co-dependent on each other, kept each other in check and acted more like best friends than a mother-daughter pair. It's somehow both comforting and pathetic at the same time, if that makes any sense - two damaged people living next door, taking care of each other, giving each other advice and help as needed.
I didn't know that Debbie Reynolds had done so much to preserve the artifacts of old Hollywood, like costumes and props - not just the ones she wore and used, but from other films like "The Wizard of Oz", often buying them with her own money in the hopes of opening up some kind of Hollywood-themed museum someday. She and her family worked on this for decades, but ultimately had to auction off most of them just to keep the project afloat. Meanwhile, Carrie managed to amass her own collection of personal and Star Wars-themed memorabilia, and I got to take my own little tour of that this past July at San Diego Comic-Con, where many of the items were on display.
We're coming up on the first anniversary of Carrie Fisher's death, now just two weeks away, and as we all know, Debbie died just a few days later, in the way that some married couples that have been together for decades end up dying - one just can't face the reality of life without the other, in a semi-symbiotic relationship. And in two days, I get to see Carrie's last film (along with millions of other people) and that's going to be bittersweet. I'm glad I got to meet her in person about 11 years ago, I'm glad that I kept the conversation on topic when asking for her autograph, and I'm glad I got my picture taken with her, I keep that handy on my phone at all times.
It was one thing to watch "Rogue One" last year with a stand-in/CGI version of Princess Leia that was made to look like she looked in 1977, but this Friday's going to be quite different, seeing her on-screen for the last time, knowing what happened one year ago. Time moves on, and eventually everything becomes a little nostalgic and sad - I just hope that like many of the things in Carrie's life, with enough time and distance, eventually they become fun again.
Also starring Debbie Reynolds (last seen in "Three Little Words"), Carrie Fisher (last seen in "Wonderland"), Todd Fisher, Catherine Hickland, Griffin Dunne (last seen in "Dallas Buyers Club"), Eddie Fisher, with cameos from Elizabeth Taylor (last seen in "The Taming of the Shrew"), Liberace, Billie Lourd (last seen in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"), Oprah Winfrey.
RATING: 7 out of 10 home movies
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