I spoke to Carrie Fisher on the phone in October. It was pretty damn exciting even if it was just in the context of a piece about her new documentary for the LA Times. I mean, how many times in your life do you get to talk to Princess Leia herself?
Of course, it’s sad that everyone has to be reminded, but she was so much more than that iconic character. She was a best-selling author, a mother, a celebrated screenwriter, a script doctor on some of the biggest hits of the ‘90s and an actor of substantial talents as demonstrated by her one-woman show “Wishful Drinking” and roles in films such as “Hannah and her Sisters” and “When Harry Met Sally…,” among others. And, unbeknownst to many, she was also a daughter who simply adored her mother.
Fisher had pseudo-fictionally chronicled her relationship with her mother, legendary actress Debbie Reynolds, in her novel “Postcards From The Edge” which eventually became a 1990 Mike Nichols-directed feature film starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine. That movie was an exaggerated look at their relationship at the time, but in the decades following Fisher slowly became the doting caregiver who did everything she could to let her mother keep working into her 80s (Fisher often says Reynolds doesn’t know how to retire).
Reynolds also moved onto Fisher’s relatively modest Los Angeles compound and their interactions were so entertaining it sparked an idea for a documentary. Eventually, filmmakers Fisher Stevens and Alexis Bloom chronicled almost a year of their lives for the doc “Bright Lights: Starring Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher.” The film first premiered as a work in progress at Cannes before hitting the Telluride and New York Film Festivals this past fall. Sadly, it didn’t make Oscars’ documentary shortlist, but will air on HBO in the new year.
“It was my idea. My mother was retiring and she’s never really been seen as she is. She’s very candid on stage, but it’s still a performance,” Fisher says. “I wanted her to compete with me and I thought we were sort of a funny couple. I called [my friend] Charlie Wessler about Fisher Stevens whose work I really enjoy and admire.”
You could miss or misinterpret the line “I wanted her to compete with me” but it was said to get me – the interviewer – to laugh which it succeeded in doing. Fisher is an epic charmer and conversationalist. That being said, neither she nor Reynolds were truly prepared for the intrusion the cameras became in their lives.
“It was endless sometimes and even though I also tend to be endless there were times when we were endless at different times,” Fisher recalls. “My mother wouldn’t want to do it a lot. She wasn’t feeling well. Her health was in decline during the filming and the timing of it was pretty amazing because she got extremely ill after the SAG Awards. She was already ill then and almost died, but she didn’t because she’s Molly Brown and she came back from somewhere really bad. The timing was amazing.”
“Molly Brown” refers to Reynolds’ Oscar-nominated role in “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.” Even though they lost some privacy Fisher wished the cameras had been around to capture even more of their interactions.
“All the time. My mother? All the time? I wish people were filming her,” Fisher says. “She’s hilarious. On purpose and by accident, she’s hilarious.”
Like many documentaries, “Bright Lights” also went down some different tangents than the filmmakers or its subjects intended.
“Originally my mother was retiring and it was good to get this this last stuff,” Fisher says. “It was also like ‘Baby Boomers taking care of their mothers and their tasks are multiplying in terms of family, but obviously that’s not what you are going to focus on when you have my mother and myself. So, yes, she wouldn’t really know what it was because it was too much. So, it was either Debbie performing or me doing, y’know, stupid autograph shows or smart autograph shows, wherever I was and her retiring and me performing with her [during her last show]. There was a lot of stuff. You keep filming. You don’t know how to cut it I think.. You don’t know how to balance it? I dunno, I’m not the filmmaker.”
You could also predict her favorite parts of the end result before she provided an answer.
“My mother performing and my being with my mother,” Fisher says. “And she looks fabulous in it and I look like s**t. I don’t like that and I don’t have a good time watching myself anymore. It’s hard to watch for that reason, but all the rest of it I’m quite proud of.”
Proud being the operative word.
“Oh, my god. Her work ethic is crazy. It’s crazy great. And that’s how she didn’t die. She will power through anything. There is no obstacle my mother won’t acknowledge. She broke her leg once while on stage and went back on and sang ‘Tammy.’ She’s this amazing creature, y’know?” She’ll still ask, ‘Are we going back and doing a show?’ It’s been awhile now. She can’t really walk.”
It took Fisher a long time to understand her mother’s never-ending urge to put on a show, but she gets it now.
“She gets vitality from audiences. I understand this now having done the one-woman show and not when I was a child performing with her,” Fisher says. “She drives her life force from an audience, but as she’s gotten older and continued to do the shows she paid a heavy price. She would do the show and get all that wonderful gestalt, that mutual gestalt that she shares with her audience and then she has to go to bed and recover for a week. That’s not a good balance. But it is for her! She’s the one to say whether it’s a good balance or not. I can’t say. She looked good to me but I’m worried. She went and performed at Fire Island, flew to my brother in Las Vegas, collapsed and had to have spinal surgery. She’s unbelievable. I don’t respect anyone more than her.”