Episode 1014 - Jane Fonda
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:How does it sound?
Marc:I've got the new mixer.
Marc:I got my old mixer crapped out.
Marc:I've had that mixer forever.
Marc:Ten years on that thing.
Marc:I don't know what to do with it.
Marc:I'm thinking about creating some sort of art piece.
Marc:I'm thinking about mounting the old mixer on a board.
Marc:with the original master locks from the old garage and maybe a picture.
Marc:I'm going to create my own little small curated exhibit representing the origin and history of this show, and that would be that mixer and the locks on the garage and a picture.
Marc:That would be the whole exhibit.
Marc:It would be easy to tour with.
Marc:So I'll write a nice information card for the exhibit.
Marc:And well, maybe maybe I can put some photos.
Marc:There was a bunch of photos done of the old garage before I got out of there.
Marc:So we tour with it and I'll write one note card.
Marc:I'm not going to.
Marc:I know what it feels like to go to a museum, have to do a lot of reading.
Marc:before the exhibit the information that sets it up historically i'll keep it real brief one paragraph uh there there was a garage a lot of people came to it we talked to him in there it was filled with clutter it got dusty sometimes the president was here uh this was the lock on the door the two locks this was the original mixer that everybody who came into that garage spoke through uh enjoy the show
Marc:So Jane Fonda is here today.
Marc:And that was daunting for me.
Marc:It wasn't daunting.
Marc:I mean, it's always daunting when I talk to somebody who's had a tremendous and full career.
Marc:I mean, Jane Fonda was a movie star by the time I was born, really.
Marc:And you kind of forget.
Marc:Maybe you don't.
Marc:Maybe you're not like me or maybe you don't put it into context.
Marc:Just what a fucking great actress she is.
Marc:I mean, I went back and watched movies that I'd never seen before from the 60s and just like astounding.
Marc:I don't know when the last time you watched They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Marc:I don't know when the last time you watched that was.
Marc:But what a weird, insanely good movie.
Marc:I actually talked to the producer of this movie of They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Marc:On Thursday, Erwin Winkler is going to be here.
Marc:Another guy that's had this 50 year career.
Marc:And it's just a little it's a little intense.
Marc:You know, I've got an hour or so.
Marc:Jane had other things to do, but I went back.
Marc:I watched Coming Home.
Marc:I watched They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Marc:But I watched Clute, which I'd never seen before.
Marc:And maybe I saw it when I was a kid.
Marc:And I'm an Alan Jay Pakula fan.
Marc:I believe he did the Parallax View and he did All the President's Men early on.
Marc:But Clute, the way it's shot, the way it builds Donald Sutherland, Jane Fonda, just her acting is fucking astounding.
Marc:And it's so beautiful, the print and the time it was made.
Marc:It must have been 19...
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I could probably find out exactly.
Marc:1971.
Marc:So it's one of those great early 70s movies.
Marc:But I could not believe what I was witnessing in terms of what Jane Fonda was putting out there.
Marc:It was a real honor to talk to her.
Marc:I'll talk to you about her a little more in a minute.
Marc:But I'll get you up to speed.
Marc:Honestly, I ran out of cashews and I might have eaten all of them.
Marc:I mean, on the planet.
Marc:I'm not sure there are any cashews left.
Marc:And if there are, don't tell me.
Marc:Maybe it's better off I don't know that there are more cashews because enough already.
Marc:I think I'm getting I'm getting doughy from the nuts.
Marc:Yeah, doughy from the nuts is what I said.
Marc:And I think that that's a T-shirt.
Marc:No, doughy from the nuts.
Marc:What does that mean?
Marc:It's very specific.
Marc:It can only mean one thing when you think about it.
Marc:But as a phrase, it travels.
Marc:I think there's a poetry to it.
Marc:But if you go to WTFpod.com,
Marc:You can get on the mailing list.
Marc:I do put some effort into creating a newsletter for you people every week.
Marc:So if you want to get that, you can.
Marc:You can also see my upcoming tour dates, which are still happening.
Marc:Everything is still moving forward.
Marc:I have not shifted out of my tour.
Marc:It's all happening.
Marc:I believe tickets are selling good.
Marc:I'm going to be in Madison, Wisconsin, May 23rd through, geez, the 25th.
Marc:I'm going to be in Vermont.
Marc:That's sold out June 6th through 8th.
Marc:I'm going to be in St.
Marc:Louis, most likely, June 13th through 15th.
Marc:I don't got a lot of people in St.
Marc:Louis, and I know that.
Marc:Raleigh, North Carolina, August 1st through August 3rd.
Marc:Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon on August 9th is sold out.
Marc:We added a second show on August 10th.
Marc:Still tickets for that.
Marc:Majestic Theater in Dallas, August 22nd.
Marc:Paramount Theater in Austin, August 23rd.
Marc:Wortham Center in Houston, August 24th.
Marc:Vogue Theater in Vancouver, September 6th.
Marc:Moore Theater in Seattle, September 7th.
Marc:The Vic in Chicago, September 20th.
Marc:Masonic Temple in Detroit, September 21st.
Marc:Pantages, Minneapolis, September 22nd, where I taped my last special.
Marc:The Merriam Theater in Philly, October 10th.
Marc:The Kennedy Center in D.C.,
Marc:October 11th.
Marc:The Schubert in Boston, Massachusetts, October 12th for two shows and a special taping.
Marc:The James K. Polk in Nashville on the October 18th.
Marc:That's the October 18th.
Marc:Yeah, I did say that.
Marc:The Tabernacle in Atlanta on October 19th.
Marc:The Masonic in October 26th in San Francisco.
Marc:And then I will retire.
Marc:There is a Toronto date coming.
Marc:I can't announce it yet.
Marc:The tickets aren't on sale because it's in collusion.
Marc:Is that it?
Marc:Is that the hot word?
Marc:I'm colluding with Toronto, with a festival in order to do the show.
Marc:So I don't have the date on that yet.
Marc:A little update about my state of mind, a little better.
Marc:I'm stubborn, folks.
Marc:I'm a stubborn old man, and I've had enough of it.
Marc:In a lot of ways, a lot of it is really just that simple.
Marc:It's just stubbornness.
Marc:Like, why don't I meditate?
Marc:I don't know, because it's silly.
Marc:Why?
Marc:You know, people are now getting on me about the definition of mindful.
Marc:Why am I not really activating mindfulness?
Marc:I don't know, because it's like just it's sort of like trendy.
Marc:Why am I not?
Marc:Yeah, I definitely exercise.
Marc:I eat pretty well.
Marc:Cashews, man.
Marc:So many fucking cashews.
Marc:Now I got a bag of fucking almonds down there.
Marc:I'm buying dates because I'm making my own almond milk.
Marc:I put the dates in and then I eat 90 of them.
Marc:I'll buy a box of dates, you know, from Trader Joe's.
Marc:And I don't know who I think I'm fooling.
Marc:I'm not really eating these.
Marc:Why are they gone in three days?
Marc:Why am I doughy from nuts and dates?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Why?
Marc:But but yeah, I'm going to I started therapy the other day.
Marc:We're going to do some EMDR therapy again.
Marc:That's a thing where, you know, it did kind of like scrambles your brain a little bit so you can get right in there to the amygdala.
Marc:How do you how do you say it?
Marc:The diglia do the diglia do amygdala do.
Marc:in the brain and it gets right in between your trauma and your uh behavior and it kind of scrambles it up a little bit and kind of pulls the link out something like that but you got to hold sensors and they buzz and you're like come on man what was i born yesterday huh where was this 10 years ago what is this with the buzzers what am i dumb is this a what am i is this a scientology stress test where we at with this come on are these cans these are just cans hooked to wires
Marc:But it apparently has been quite successful with post-traumatic stress and whatnot.
Marc:So I'm doing a little of that.
Marc:We'll see how it goes.
Marc:Some part of me just doesn't believe I deserve to be doing well.
Marc:I don't deserve to succeed.
Marc:Some part of me, where can I, can we shift the, can we blur the link between that belief and the reality?
Marc:Or just like, can we just...
Marc:excise that particular piece of uh malignant perception self-perception can we mindfully rip that out of my fucking brain people can we do that not complaining the world is ending uh you know we're doing all right some of us it's fucking anti-semites man seriously
Marc:Stay strong, Jews.
Marc:Jesus Christ.
Marc:This president has really opened a portal to hell and we're living in it.
Marc:But, you know, I'm going to try to be mindful, going to try to meditate a little bit, going to do the EMDR, going to reconfigure my brain and do the best I can.
Marc:That's the thing.
Marc:When you get overwhelmed, what can you do?
Marc:I can eat a lot of cashews, apparently.
Marc:Comedy's been all right.
Marc:I was at the comedy store all weekend, tightening up some things.
Marc:I go on the road.
Marc:I do the hour and a half, hour 45s.
Marc:I go to the comedy store.
Marc:I do the 15 minutes, you know, and I try to tighten up some things.
Marc:It's weird, man.
Marc:It's weird what I do.
Marc:Sometimes someone will give me some advice, maybe kind of reconfigure a joke a little bit.
Marc:Neil Brennan.
Marc:Neil Brennan is always reliable for the tight joke advice.
Marc:Comes up to me, he's like, why don't you try it like this?
Marc:And I'm like, yeah, my first thing.
Marc:Here's the thing about me.
Marc:in general, is that my first reaction, and I know you might not know this about me, but generally, if somebody suggests something, my innate, immediate reaction is like, I don't know.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:Why?
Marc:No.
Marc:But deeper, I'm sort of like, really?
Marc:You think that would make it better?
Marc:But I still like, why does it take me two fucking steps to just go like, okay, I will embrace that idea and see if it works for me, as opposed to like, wrong, who are you?
Marc:What?
Marc:Stop it.
Marc:But yeah, it's kind of fun.
Marc:Like now that I'm sort of see my hour of material evolving and coming together to kind of like, you know, tighten it up and think through some things, try some new stuff, take some new risks.
Marc:My brain's been kind of fucked up all week.
Marc:And I read this new I read a book, man.
Marc:Devastating book that's not out yet.
Marc:Maybe I should talk to her.
Marc:Eve Ensler, she wrote the Vagina Monologues and several other books, has written a book called The Apology, which will be out.
Marc:I think it'll be out next month.
Marc:I got some sort of press advance copy.
Marc:And wow.
Wow.
Marc:Just fucking devastating, deep, horrible, you know, painful, cathartic investigation of the most of the worst type of toxic masculinity on a personal level.
Marc:Her father.
Marc:And I don't want to go into it because maybe I'll talk to her.
Marc:But that's a brave book.
Marc:That's a courageous undertaking, how she structured this book as a posthumous, almost stream of consciousness apology from her father that abused her in every way.
Marc:And he's writing from limbo.
Marc:And it's like the sort of investigation and process of true evil with applied empathy without apologizing or without letting anybody off the hook was just devastating and haunting.
Marc:And it was one of the most powerful things I've read.
Marc:So maybe I'll talk to her if I can do that.
Marc:So, well, it's it's sometimes it's hard, man.
Marc:Jane Fonda was not hard.
Marc:Jane Fonda is one of the great actors, actresses.
Marc:I say actor in a general sense of all time.
Marc:And oddly, she's about my mom's age.
Marc:and she's built like my mom.
Marc:So there was this, I had this, when she came to the house, I had this immediate kind of, she actually walks like my mother and they kind of look a little similar.
Marc:And it was just, I had this very strange, innate connection just around her physicality and the way she moved was like my mom.
Marc:But I was, you know, I was really honored to talk to her.
Marc:I mean,
Marc:You'll see.
Marc:You'll see.
Marc:Oh, man, I hope that there's no more cashews.
Marc:I really do.
Marc:I really do.
Marc:Now, okay, so let's enter this Jane Fonda thing.
Marc:As I said, it was a little daunting because of the arc of her career, because of the time we had together, but it was a real honor talking to her.
Marc:All five seasons of Jane's series with Lily Tomlin, Grace, and Frankie are now streaming on Netflix.
Marc:They've been renewed now.
Marc:for a sixth season so catch up on those early seasons now if you want also go look at some of her early films i mean just go watch yeah a lot of like coming home uh clute uh china syndrome was a big one on golden palm with her father like she just just great so this is me talking to jane fonda
Marc:So, I'm very excited you're here.
Marc:I guess you're not going to wear headphones.
Marc:You've got TV to do, right?
Guest:The Bailey Center.
Marc:That's a live thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and it's a panel?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:For Grace and Frankie?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So have you stayed in touch with Lily Tomlin since forever?
Marc:Have you guys always been friends?
Guest:We became friends in 1979.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:When I was developing 9 to 5.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you stayed friends.
Guest:And we've stayed friends, yeah.
Guest:We support each other's issues.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And do you like, do you socialize?
Marc:I always wonder that because I was, you know, I watched the documentary about you.
Marc:It's like, it's hard to, you know, to sort of wrap my brain around, you know, Jane Fonda as a cultural momentum figure, you know?
Guest:Me too.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because, you know, you want to have a conversation, but there's so much.
Guest:No, Lily and I, we socialize mindlessly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, I finally, in my dotage, now I have a house for just me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there is somebody who takes care of the house and cooks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I can have dinner parties.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, for example, I think the last time Lily and her partner Jane came over, it was a dinner for Judy Chicago.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Who they also had met years and years ago.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So, you know, that's a fun kind of gathering.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, or the theater critic Hilton Isles from The New Yorker, he came, Jane and Lily came over to dinner.
Guest:So I have them come over.
Guest:They never invite me to their house.
Guest:The last time I was in their house was, see, my dog was about five months old.
Guest:She's now 14.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's a long time ago.
Guest:And then...
Guest:You know, I spent a lot of time, in fact, the last two years in Michigan working on one fair wage for restaurant workers.
Guest:Tipped workers don't get a minimum wage.
Guest:They earn a lot less, and then they're expected to live on tips.
Guest:With an organization called Restaurant Opportunity Centers, we've been working all over the country to change that and have one fair wage.
Guest:One reason to do that is because...
Guest:in the seven states that have one fair wage, sexual harassment is cut in half.
Guest:And so Lily gives me my street cred because she comes from Detroit and she was a waitress there.
Guest:And so I dragged her to Michigan for weeks at a time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when you say you do that, what exactly, when you go to do that work,
Marc:What do we do?
Marc:Well, is it the same as, is it organizing?
Guest:It's organizing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm on the board of Restaurant Opportunity Centers.
Guest:And we, so when Lily comes, we travel around the state.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we raise money in each place.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Lansing, wherever.
Guest:And in people's homes.
Guest:Sure.
Yeah.
Marc:And you just go.
Marc:You just show up.
Guest:Yeah, we just go.
Guest:We show up.
Guest:People come.
Guest:Jane Fonda's in my house.
Guest:And Lily Tomlin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, Grace and Fran.
Guest:A lot of support for Grace and Franke.
Guest:I tell you what, it's a lot easier to do this when you have a hit series.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Then we do media.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We do radio.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:We do Sinclair is really where we do television to talk about.
Guest:It was a ballot initiative.
Marc:You go on Sinclair?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because I think, aren't they kind of the bad guys?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Here's the thing.
Guest:The local people, you know, the versions of you in Kalamazoo or Grand Rapids who are, you know, journalists for television journalists for Sinclair, they're not rabid ideologues.
Guest:But sometimes they get, you know, demands from on high to say certain things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But because I asked them about it, you know, but our experience with it has been okay.
Yeah.
Marc:Now, if we can go back to like the, I was just kind of looking at the overview of what you achieved and then I watched a documentary and then for some reason, you know, I realized I'd never seen They Shoot Horses, don't they?
Guest:Oh, that's a good one, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:And it seems that, like, culturally, you know, politically, culturally, and within the movie business, that your life is sort of signposts of how all of it's evolved.
Marc:Of the zeitgeist, yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That, you know, I mean, you were in Kapaloo, and five years later, the entire industry changed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, then all of a sudden you're shooting movies with, you know, with Ashby and with Pollock and stuff.
Marc:And then, like, on top of that, you know, in the documentary, you talk about how you realized your own authenticity so late in life.
Yeah.
Marc:now when you look back on it because now as an activist like you're doing this thing with the restaurant workers but you'll apply your your energy to any you know cause that you believe in however is necessary so when you think about what compelled you initially was it when you because you're very self-aware and you've obviously done a vietnam war right but like you know but do you find when you when you think about the pushback on the generation your father came from that was also emotional yeah
Marc:That your father represented something of an old guard and that tension was created with your activism?
Yeah.
Guest:One of the sad things about that period, and it wasn't just the Vietnam War, it was the whole counterculture thing, was what happened within individual families all across the country.
Guest:Sure, yeah, right.
Guest:Everywhere.
Guest:And the Vietnam War only exacerbated that.
Guest:And I understood that my dad was very opposed to the war.
Guest:But his way of expressing it was to campaign for Lyndon Johnson.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:And, you know, guys that he would campaign, the guys, they were always guys and white guys.
Guest:And then, of course, the war never ended that way.
Guest:But it was a generational thing coupled with the problem just talking about him in relation to the Vietnam War, the war that he fought.
Guest:And the wars that he understood were wars where you knew who was an enemy combatant.
Guest:They were in uniforms and there were battle fronts.
Marc:Lines drawn.
Guest:Lines drawn.
Guest:Suddenly there's a war where the woman bringing you laundry could very well have a hand grenade.
Guest:And, you know, where you, you know.
Guest:A war where the basic people are against you.
Guest:That's a whole different thing.
Guest:And it was very hard for him to wrap his head around that.
Guest:So it caused friction between us, but I never really got mad at him.
Guest:I remember...
Guest:And in 70, I went to – I think it was 70, I went to visit Angela Davis.
Guest:She was in prison here in California.
Guest:And when I got back, he said to me, if I find out that you're a communist, I'm going to turn you in.
Guest:And that – I've never been ideological.
Guest:I wasn't a communist, but I loved Angela Davis.
Guest:But he was very confused.
Guest:He just –
Guest:And he worried about me.
Guest:He lived through the McCarthy era.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Guest:And so he was worried that I was going to get hurt.
Marc:So he had a fundamental belief just by nature in the way he was brought up in the system itself.
Guest:Yeah, he was a moderate Democrat.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Felt very passionately about things.
Guest:I mean, he would go out.
Guest:He campaigned for a year for Stevenson.
Marc:I think what really related to me and what moved me was the emotional result of being brought up by narcissistic parents and parents with mental problems.
Marc:Because I have it.
Marc:You do personally.
Marc:I do, yeah.
Marc:And what I identified with was that strange kind of missing chunk of self that you have to somehow put together over time.
Guest:You have to become your own parent.
Marc:Yeah, and the parent you put in place initially is never that great.
Marc:Like I read this thing, you know, like the reaction, the thing that blew my mind, I read this thing by Robert Firestone, a psychologist.
Marc:He said that if your parents, if you're not getting what you need from your parents, when you're young, you automatically assume it's your fault.
Marc:So the parent you put in place to replace them is the one that's going, you're terrible.
Marc:You're a piece of shit.
Marc:And that's what drives you.
Marc:Now, did you find that for yourself?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I thought that I was a worthless human being.
Guest:And it was very interesting how I dealt with it.
Guest:I was ashamed of myself.
Guest:I wasn't proud of the life that I was living.
Guest:So I thought, if I pretend to be generous, maybe eventually I will become generous.
Guest:If I pretend to have a spine, maybe I will become brave.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You become what you do in a way.
Guest:Fake it till you make it.
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:And you just knew that instinctively.
Guest:I thought, I don't know what else to do.
Guest:I don't like myself, so I'm going to pretend to be a better person.
Guest:And I started to become a better person.
Guest:And that began then to conflict with the life that I was living.
Guest:So all along the way, you have choices.
Guest:Well, do I continue living the life I'm living?
Guest:Or do I try to proceed with trying to get better and be better?
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I chose the latter.
Marc:Yeah, but it took a while, right?
Guest:Yeah, 60 years, 70 years.
Guest:No, it does.
Guest:It takes a long time.
Guest:I mean, you're always essentially the same person.
Guest:person.
Guest:That's why writing my memoir was such an important thing.
Guest:And really the documentary was just a filmed version of my memoir.
Guest:You know, when you write a memoir, if you really dig down and really take the time, you realize, you know, it's kind of what T.S.
Guest:Eliot said in the quartet poem.
Guest:I'm paraphrasing, you spend your life exploring and at the end of all the exploration,
Guest:You're back where you start.
Guest:You circle back where you started and know it for the first time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And what I realized at the age of 63, 4, 5 and writing my memoir is that I had started out decent.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And brave.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because you were on your own in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then for girls, you know, the problems start at puberty where you just want to fit in and be skinny and all those kind of things.
Guest:But basically, I was working my way around to come back to where I started, only with more knowledge and stuff.
Marc:And acceptance of your past self.
Guest:Yeah, you have to forgive.
Guest:You have to forgive everybody, including yourself.
Marc:Yeah, that's hard, isn't it?
Guest:It's essential, but yeah, it is hard.
Guest:It is hard, and you can't do it until you really examine what I'm one of those typical liberals.
Guest:I always, you know, the perpetrator, but look what was done to him.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So I always tend to want to forgive.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think it's interesting, too, that the acting as if because when you when you have parents that aren't fundamentally nurturing, that there's a lack of like the inability to receive or give love in second nature.
Marc:You know, you do have to try.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Until it sticks, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, the one thing that I realize now at the age of 81 and a half, you start to count halves when you get older like you do when you're young, is the one thing that I could never totally fix is my ability to be in a relationship.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With the opposite sex.
Guest:You know, that's the one area.
Guest:I mean, I've kind of healed in a lot of different ways, but I'm just not good in relationships.
Marc:Where does it... Like, I find that I hit a wall where I can't get over it.
Marc:Like, what is it that... Because, I mean, you've been... I guess in the memoir and the documentary, you did find yourself...
Marc:living in relationship to a lot of different men.
Guest:A lot of very, very strong men.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And who do you think that started with after your father?
Marc:Was it Strasbourg?
Guest:No, it was Vadim.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Well, the marriages.
Marc:But, I mean, it seemed like Lee Strasberg was a pretty important force in your life.
Guest:Not really.
Marc:No?
Marc:No.
Marc:Did he teach you how to act, though?
Guest:Not really.
Marc:No.
Guest:I was too fucked up to learn anything.
Guest:At that time?
Guest:I mean, what he did for me was he said, you have talent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it all happened way too quick.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I never really learned how to work.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I've only started learning lately.
Marc:How to work?
Marc:How to do the work.
Marc:What were you doing before?
Guest:And sometimes it worked really well.
Guest:When you accept to become another person, there are levels that you can stop at.
Guest:I didn't always know how to go really deep.
Guest:I didn't know the questions to ask, the tools.
Guest:Lee didn't teach me what I needed to know there.
Guest:In a way, I wish that I'd studied in England and...
Guest:classical different kind of training right in a way but you know for the movies where I really did do well yeah you know coming home because I had spent three years talking to the people whose lives had been impacted by the war the wives of soldiers who who went away one person and came back quite different and
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, there was the wife that said, you know, I talked to him and I feel like my voice goes down into an empty barrel and just echoes.
Guest:There's nobody there.
Guest:I knew that story.
Guest:And so that's what allowed me to play that character the way I did.
Guest:Clute.
Guest:Clute was like, they shoot horses, don't they?
Guest:I just went, I just said, fuck it.
Guest:I'm going to, I'm going to.
Guest:I'm just going to go and go as deep as I can and take the things that I know to be true about myself and apply them to this character.
Guest:And it worked.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I really kind of entered those people.
Marc:So that was a darkness.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And they shoot horses, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But...
Guest:You know, that's just not always the case.
Guest:But now, you know, now I have a coach who's basically teaching me how to do the work.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so what that I'm 80?
Guest:So, you know, who cares?
Guest:But also, it's never too late.
Marc:You've taken those risks, though.
Marc:You've gone that deep with yourself.
Marc:So, you know, you have that ability to do that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So it's accessible.
Marc:It's not a threat anymore.
Marc:I imagine early on it must have been frightening on some level.
Marc:No, no, no.
Guest:It would have been frightening for my dad.
Guest:That's why he hated so much that I went to acting class with Lee.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Just like acting class, church, therapy, all those things.
Guest:Hated them, hated them.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, because it required you to look into yourself.
Guest:And it's not my dad's fault.
Guest:It was the way he was raised, and it was a certain generation of men, especially from the Midwest.
Guest:It was weakness.
Guest:It showed weakness.
Guest:Oh, right, right.
Guest:Crutches.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:All crutches.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I never was that way.
Guest:It's just that I never had – there were just certain roles that allowed me to do that and beckoned me in ways that, you know.
Marc:It's so amazing to watch you in anything because, you know, it's like in They Shoot Horses, you're –
Marc:And there was a lot of actors that were doing great work at that time.
Marc:But the difference between something like some of the more Hollywood movies of an earlier time that really didn't offer you a window or a portal to go that deep.
Marc:Now, all of a sudden, the sort of art of it breaks open.
Marc:And like it was it's so visceral and so like immediately moving.
Guest:Well, you know, I was basically a very unhappy person.
Yeah.
Guest:Who happened to have done Barbarella right before.
Guest:That was the film I did prior to They Shoot Horses, don't they?
Guest:And so people sort of thought of me as that person.
Guest:But They Shoot Horses, I was coming more back to myself.
Guest:I was kind of a dark person.
Guest:I've actually overcome that.
Guest:Yeah, it seems like it.
Guest:But it wasn't difficult for me to do it.
Marc:And, like, okay, so, like, getting back to these men and being in relation to men and what you learned and where it stops, I mean... I just... I was trained from the get-go to give it up for men, you know, just to give over.
Guest:And I just can't hold my own.
Guest:I just can't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I, you know...
Guest:Now I know that, and so I'm not going to be in a relationship again because I don't want to give myself over.
Marc:Right, because the boundaries... I lose myself.
Marc:Right, right, yeah.
Guest:My boundaries are... I'm a colander when I'm in a relationship, you know, full sexual relationship with a man.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, it's weird when that happens because, like, you know, it can go on for years, right?
Marc:And then all of a sudden you look at yourself and you're like... When you get a year away from it, you're like, what the fuck was that?
Yeah.
Guest:Somebody asked me the other day, how do you know it's not working?
Guest:And I said, well, when the time starts to come, it's usually about four years from the end, when I start to fantasize their death.
Guest:And that's the truth.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Well, it's better you're fantasizing theirs.
Guest:And after three marriages, there's a pattern here.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:And you're not fantasizing your own, which is better.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I still live.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I get to do what I want to do.
Marc:And that is the core of your feminism, really.
Marc:You're not fantasizing that you're the victim.
Marc:Right.
Marc:They're the ones that got to go.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:So what did you like?
Marc:I imagine looking back on it, like with Vadim and with Hayden and with Turner, that there were definitely lessons learned that made you a stronger person, right?
Marc:And not just by tolerating them, but by what they had to offer.
Guest:Oh, listen, I do not regret those three marriages.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were utterly fascinating men, and I learned a huge amount from all of them.
Marc:How's your French still?
Guest:I'm fluent.
Guest:And interestingly enough, the wife after me, Vadim's wife after me, we're like this.
Guest:We are so close.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:We just spent a week together in Lyon, a film festival.
Guest:We're very, very close.
Guest:Tom's wife after me, Barbara, we're so close.
Marc:Interesting.
Guest:I see her all the time.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And we love each other, yeah.
Marc:How did those relationships evolve?
Guest:They all had good taste in women.
Guest:And I don't know.
Guest:I mean, they're interesting women.
Marc:And it's just like, did they reach out to you?
Marc:How does a relationship like that happen?
Marc:Like, can we go over our experience?
Guest:Just...
Guest:It's too personal.
Guest:I don't want to talk about it.
Guest:But Barbara and I just found a kinship.
Guest:We have a lot of things in common.
Guest:And then there's the son.
Guest:Tom and Barbara had a son.
Guest:And Tom was always worried that this son wouldn't know exactly where he fit in.
Guest:So I feel a real responsibility to keep a family unit together, including Barbara and Liam.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:Liam is the age of my grandson.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that's okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's my 45-year-old son's brother, but he's the age of my grandson.
Guest:I mean, it's interesting, but these are the families of today, right?
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:And you can... I just sort of know instinctively that when the end comes, and it's not that far off, you know, it could be 20 years, but maybe not.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But that when the end comes, I'm going to want to know...
Guest:that I kept us all together.
Marc:And when did that impulse start?
Guest:When I saw my father die.
Guest:And I knew that he was full of regrets, that he wasn't able to do the forgiving, to do the facing up and the apologizing and the listening and the things that need to be said before it's too late when you can no longer talk.
Guest:And it's always the things you don't do that you regret at the end.
Guest:I just know that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm fortunate enough to not be afraid of dying.
Guest:I'm really afraid of dying with regrets.
Guest:So I've, you know, the big epiphany for me when I hit 60 and knew that it was probably my last act and the importance of last act that I had to, I've got to spend this remaining time figuring out what my regrets would be.
Guest:You can't be 81 and say, oh, my God, I better start getting my life together.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I can't I can't make my life longer, but I can make it wider and deeper.
Guest:And I have to start doing that now.
Guest:I said it's 60.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I deliberately did.
Guest:That's why I wrote my memoir.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what went in in terms of looking back on those struggles?
Marc:You know, there was the codependency.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And the pressure of show business.
Marc:And when did the eating disorder start?
Marc:Start?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:14 in boarding school, all-girls boarding school.
Guest:My best friend had been doing it and told me about it.
Guest:And I swear, I thought only the two of us were the only people besides the Romans.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because when we studied Roman history, we discovered that the Romans used to do that, binge and purge.
Guest:Was it for body image reasons?
Guest:Yes, it was.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:I didn't realize, of course, that...
Guest:A lot of people with body images don't resort to that.
Guest:I think that it – you see, we're like chalices, all of us.
Guest:And that chalice in the center of us, at our chi, our solar plexus, needs to be full.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:ideally full of spirit, of at oneness with others and with everything, with love and compassion and forgiveness and a sense of authenticity.
Guest:That's what we're supposed to be filled with.
Guest:If we're empty, we're going to fill it with, depending on who we are, booze, drugs, sex, workaholism, food, whatever.
Guest:And mine was empty and I was filling it with food.
Guest:And I only was able to stop when I began to fill it with authenticity.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so that was a long time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What age did you really start to kick it?
Guest:I went cold turkey and I wasn't authentic yet, but I was dying.
Guest:And so I just went cold turkey at about 45.
Marc:It took a long time.
Guest:And it's impossible to have a true relationship if you are an addict of any kind.
Guest:You can't.
Marc:Until ever?
Guest:No, you can't.
Guest:As long as you are an active addict, you can't have a real relationship.
Guest:Not a real one.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Not an authentic relationship.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Why do you think that is?
Guest:because you can never show up totally because you have this addiction that always becomes the most important thing.
Guest:And essentially you have to hide the addiction so you're also lying and being inauthentic.
Guest:But I stopped before I started the workout.
Marc:Well, that was the other thing that I didn't realize because I didn't know the nuances of your life.
Marc:that having been through protesting the Vietnam War and the other activism you were doing, which took insane courage, and you took a lot of hits for it, and it seems like the next or even the third generation of the people that were originally tearing you down are now still doing it.
Marc:You're still an example of some kind to that ilk.
Marc:And I didn't realize that when you were married to Hayden,
Marc:That the workout video was actually to fund activism.
Guest:It was to fund the campaign for economic democracy.
Guest:When the war ended, we began to focus on the economy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which this is, I'm talking in the late 70s because I actually, it didn't become famous until the 80s, but I actually started the workout around 78.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:That was when it was becoming increasingly apparent the corporate takeover of everything.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:And so that's what we wanted to take on, you know, the notion of economic democracy.
Guest:And it was a statewide effort.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And California is a big state and there was a recession.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I didn't know what to do because I was the main fundraiser.
Guest:And I read that member Lyndon LaRouche.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:The guy that paid people to hold terrible signs up at the airport.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The LaRouchis.
Marc:They're not around really anymore.
Marc:There's something worse here now.
Guest:He funded the whole operation from a business, his computer business.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought, I got to start a business.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it turned out to be the workout.
Marc:But, you know, I thought was amazing about that moment is that you're moving from, you know, the other type of active activism you were doing and then trying to fund this is that the direct personal engagement of, I think, primarily women with the empowerment that was available through just that workout video, which is easily it's easy to make fun of or trivialize on some level.
Marc:But it was you felt it immediately that there were women that needed that connection to take hold of their lives.
Guest:Yeah, it's very interesting.
Guest:Because Tom did not like the workout, even though it funded the organization.
Guest:He did not like it.
Guest:He felt it was a vanity project.
Marc:Was that the beginning of the end of that?
Guest:It was...
Guest:It was the beginning of the end of our marriage.
Guest:That's what I mean.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just the things I was doing were things that didn't it didn't feel comfortable for him.
Guest:But before I actually opened the workout, I was teaching it in places like when I was in in St.
Guest:George, Utah, making electric horsemen.
Guest:And every night after we worked, people would come and I would teach the workout.
Guest:And they would come from miles away.
Guest:And they were not all women, but mostly women, but also members of the crew.
Guest:And they would come up to me after a few weeks and say, I don't have to take sleeping pills anymore.
Guest:I don't have to take insulin anymore.
Guest:Stuff like
Guest:And then I would start getting letters once it became, you know, I put out the videos and the records.
Guest:And, you know, one woman said to me, I was able to stand up to my boss for the first time today.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then I began to realize, oh...
Guest:I knew that this was much more than just being thin.
Guest:But you didn't know it initially.
Guest:Well, I knew how it made me feel.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But it never, I wasn't, I didn't think this is going to empower women when I started.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I was just, I was, I...
Guest:The guy, you remember Delancey Street?
Guest:Well, Delancey Street still exists.
Guest:John Mayer, who started Delancey Street, was a close friend of mine in Tom's.
Guest:And we told him, I said, I'm trying to raise, to start a business to run the campaign for economic democracy.
Guest:And he said, never go into a business you don't understand.
Uh-huh.
Guest:Well, that seriously narrowed my options because exercise was really the only business I understood.
Guest:And I had been exercising forever.
Guest:And so that's what I did.
Marc:And look what happened.
Marc:It's amazing because, I mean, I didn't realize that you really made exercise videos for decades.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Made 23 of them, yeah.
Marc:And you sort of like without knowing it started that business for everybody.
Guest:It started the video business.
Guest:That's why I'm the only non-engineer, non-scientist in the Video Hall of Fame.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I thought like the other thing that I thought was interesting is that when you were making these movies with these guys, you know, in the 70s and the late 60s, which were, you know, socially relevant movies meant to have a message or meant to push the envelope either artistically or otherwise, philosophically, some politically.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:that some of them were kind of out there.
Marc:And what I thought was interesting in terms of your evolution as a producer was that you were able to come back and create narrative film that was appealing to regular people that didn't require some sort of deeper understanding of art that still had a powerful social message.
Marc:And how conscious were you of that transition?
Guest:Well, I was very conscious that if I'm going to make a movie about soldiers that have fought in Vietnam, there has to be...
Guest:It has to be something that someone would want to see even if they didn't agree what the war was wrong.
Guest:Okay, right.
Guest:So a sexy, sexy love story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at the time, that love scene was probably the sexiest love scene that had ever been shot.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If we're going to make a movie about... This is coming home.
Guest:That's coming home.
Guest:If we're going to make a movie about nuclear energy, it's got to be a thriller.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If I'm going to make a movie, you know, one of my close friends was organizing women office workers, Karen Nussbaum.
Guest:And, you know, I decided I wanted to make a movie about it, that it would have to be a comedy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:You know.
Guest:You always have to cloak it in a style that's going to be appealing to people even if they don't care about the issues.
Marc:Were you frustrated with some of the movies that were made in the 70s that were more oblique?
Marc:Such as?
Marc:If Arthur Penn does Little Big Man as a response to Vietnam on some level, as a metaphor, that the move away from metaphors that are confusing to this is what's happening seem to be a decisive thing.
Marc:Does that make sense?
Guest:It does make sense, but I frankly had never thought about it.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Because the people that you work with, is it Pakula, is that how you say his name?
Marc:And Ashby, and even people like Joseph Losey, who I didn't realize that you worked with.
Marc:He was a big activist and paid the price for it.
Marc:But these guys were big intellectual artistic dudes.
Marc:And I think Ashby made very accessible movies, though.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:But it seemed like they were artists that were that like for a lot of reasons were sometimes, you know, consumed with the art of film to some degree without, you know, wanting to get everybody on board.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, there was a certain friction.
Guest:There was a lot of friction between me and Losey.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because he was a lefty, but he was not a feminist.
Guest:And it's a feminist movie.
Guest:And Delphine Searig and myself really objected to his rewrite of the script and had a lot of friction.
Guest:Fighting?
Guest:Fighting with him, yeah.
Guest:It was not a good experience.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And with Ashby, how much input did you have in that, in coming home?
Guest:Well, I had a lot.
Guest:I mean, the concept was my idea.
Marc:Okay, yeah.
Guest:Because of what I'd heard Ron Kovic say at rallies, I may have lost my mind.
Guest:I may have lost my body, but I've gained my mind now.
Marc:Does it surprise you like now, you know, the direction?
Marc:Because I don't know people personally and I build a relationship with you people, you know, from your roles.
Marc:Does it surprise you like that Jon Voight has gone so far the other direction?
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:It does.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because he wasn't.
Guest:Not at all, no.
Guest:He was one of Tom's and my biggest supporters.
Guest:And, you know, he would rally his Hollywood friends to come and see Tom's slideshows.
Guest:He was my closest friend in Hollywood.
Guest:And I don't know why this has happened.
Marc:Have you talked to him?
Guest:About... Oh...
Guest:Maybe in 2006 was the last time that he called me on the phone and started talking about the war in totally terms that I just couldn't relate to, and he wouldn't stop, and I hung up.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Guest:It makes me so sad.
Marc:It's very strange because the phenomenon of that now, like realizing somebody who's done enough self-examination and fought the fights that you have, it has to be surprising as it is to me just how malleable people's minds are when they need closure or when they're afraid or when they're angry.
Marc:And it seems that a lot of what's happening today with a good chunk of the population is irreparable in terms of their point of view.
Guest:It's not irreparable and it's not a good chunk.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I think it's... There is a chunk, and it's not a big chunk, that is irreparable, I think.
Guest:But there is another influx piece of the puzzle.
Guest:That's a piece that interests me a lot.
Marc:Which is?
Guest:The middle America...
Guest:The scared, the feeling forgotten and unseen working class that used to have unions kind of helping to define their perspective on things and don't anymore.
Guest:Who voted for Obama and then Trump.
Guest:I think we cannot leave that alone.
Guest:fuzzy gray area out.
Guest:I don't know if we can win.
Guest:I don't know if democracy can win without them.
Guest:But even if we can morally, I don't think that we can forget about those people.
Guest:Because the truth is that the direction that they've moved in is not in their interest.
Guest:So we have to do everything we can to
Guest:Help them understand that their interests don't lie there.
Guest:Their interests also don't lie with the neoliberals.
Guest:And that's why we have to be sure that the person who runs our country next is not a neoliberal.
Guest:Not just not a Republican Trump type person, but not a neoliberal.
Guest:Someone who really cares about these people and cares about the value of work.
Guest:Not just...
Guest:Silicon Valley work.
Guest:But labor.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Labor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We can create jobs for everybody.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But you have to be committed to it.
Guest:And I get into a lot of arguments with my liberal friends, progressive friends, because...
Guest:They say, no, we have to spend all our time with the low-hanging fruit, the natural base of the Democratic Party, women and people of color.
Guest:We can't be spending time and money going after people who voted for Trump.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I don't agree with that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's heartbreaking, the kind of lines that are drawn now.
Marc:And the people that I've talked to who lived through Nixon, I mean—
Marc:There's two kinds that say, like, well, you know, it was worse, but it doesn't seem like it.
Guest:No, it's not worse.
Guest:And I'll tell you what gets left out of this until very, very, like, last week.
Guest:Here's why it's, well, there's never been an existential threat to our democracy like there is right now because of the nature of Donald Trump as a human being and who he has surrounded himself with.
Guest:But the bigger existential threat that would exist...
Guest:you know, even without Donald Trump, is climate.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:We've never had a ticking time bomb.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Overarching every single thing that we do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's never existed before.
Guest:It didn't exist during the Nixon time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's a reality.
Guest:It is.
Guest:And, you know, so people can poo-poo the Green New Deal, but something like that has to happen.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, at the core of what you're talking about in being a full stomach person and being somebody who has love and empathy and all that is that, you know, that the way that hopelessness has somehow turned to nihilism, you know, in the hearts of people that have given up, you know, any sort of future in a way.
Marc:And they just want to burn it all down.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, you know, there are Christian fanatics who are ready for the big burn.
Guest:For the end days.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, I once had a boyfriend that was so unhappy and messed up and wounded that he liked war.
Right.
Guest:Because he didn't feel alone.
Guest:I mean, that is a reality.
Guest:But, you know, I have spent time.
Guest:I have canvassed in San Diego.
Guest:I have canvassed in the Central Valley, in Bakersfield, and talked to people who were Trump supporters.
Guest:And I have friends that have done that.
Guest:And they can...
Guest:be made to think differently.
Marc:Yeah, if you talk to them as people, like one on one.
Guest:Nobody has been talking to them, but the politicians that talk to them and the human beings and the canvassers who talk to them
Guest:Without sunglasses on, looking them in the eye and saying, what matters to you and why?
Guest:Okay, what are we going to do about it?
Guest:And you don't ever criticize Trump and you don't ever criticize Fox News.
Guest:You simply tell them something they don't know.
Marc:Yeah, and they can hear it and it goes in.
Guest:And then you stay in touch and you explain that.
Guest:This is really hard now.
Guest:And the only way we're going to do it is strength in numbers.
Guest:And guess what?
Guest:Your neighbor gets it.
Guest:And I've signed up 15 people in this neighborhood.
Guest:And we're going to stay in touch with you.
Marc:And you do that.
Guest:And we do.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how have you, for all this time, been able to kind of choose how do you balance the acting and the activism and the family?
Guest:Well, my family's grown up.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Guest:And my grandkids are growing up.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:I had your brother on the show.
Guest:I'm not very good at balancing.
Guest:I was not a very good parent because I didn't know how to balance well enough, although my kids are just fine.
Guest:But, you know, now there's just me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I work to earn money to do the stuff because, you know, I'm going to be dead soon, but I've learned a lot.
Guest:I've learned so much from Tom Hayden about the importance of talking to people and work on the ground.
Guest:So I look for the organizations that have the best track record of doing on-the-ground work, front-door conversations.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And in terms of like, you know, the art, like, because you still love to act, you know.
Marc:I'm having a blast with Grace and Frankie.
Marc:Because that seems to be like also the interesting thing is that aside from, you know, major activism that got you into, you know, the crosshairs of Nixon in a very personal way.
Marc:And, you know, in dealing with that pressure that when you show up on screen, I mean, I can tell unless I'm stupid, you love doing that.
Marc:I do.
Marc:And on some other level as a person, along with Tom Hayden, but you work with Pollock twice, you work with Otto Preminger, you work with Ashby, you work with all these men primarily.
Marc:Fred Zinneman.
Marc:Fred Zinneman.
Marc:Even like George Cukor, was it?
Marc:And he was an old studio guy, right?
Marc:So you actually saw those guys try to adapt to the new thing.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Now, like, when you look back on all that experience and your nature of boundary, did you find most of those to be learning experiences with these directors?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I feel really lucky that I had all those experiences.
Guest:They were great directors.
Guest:Pollock seemed like an amazing guy to me.
Guest:He was.
Guest:He was an amazing guy.
Guest:Zinneman, what a brilliant director.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I mean, that's what's so fun about acting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Every single, each individual of these, they're all guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But if they were women, it would be the same thing.
Guest:They all call upon different muscles in your psyche as an actor.
Guest:So, you know, it's just a challenge to kind of create that marriage between you and the guy.
Guest:But you see, because it's a limited, there's a limited time frame, then the whole dynamic is very different than it is in a marriage or an affair.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:This is going to be over in six months.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, by necessity.
Marc:Or nowadays, a month.
Marc:A month, right.
Marc:They shoot out quick, right?
Marc:A month, yeah.
Marc:And how's your relationship with Robert Redford?
Guest:I admire him very, very much.
Guest:I think what he has done with Sundance is just extraordinary.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And what about people like Donald Sutherland?
Guest:Oh, God, I haven't seen him.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:I mean, I'd love to work with him again.
Guest:I haven't seen him in years and years.
Marc:It's so weird.
Marc:For some reason, like with your generation of actors, I just assumed everyone sort of hung out together.
Marc:No.
Marc:You don't.
Marc:It's a business.
Guest:No, Lily and I hang out together.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And my co-stars from book club, Candy Bergen, Diane Keaton, and Mary Steenburgen and I. I talk to Mary.
Marc:I love her.
Guest:I love that woman.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:She's just magic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I just love her deeply.
Marc:Very full stomach in terms of the love and the spirituality.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:She is the real deal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had no idea.
Guest:I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to make that movie and get to know her.
Marc:In terms of Hollywood and in terms of this dynamic and feminism and patriarchy and having been in the business as long as you've been, what is your feelings about... Obviously, the Me Too movement is necessary, but where do you find yourself in that discussion?
Guest:In the Me Too, Time's Up discussion?
Guest:Well...
Guest:My activism in that regard goes toward the farm workers, the domestic workers, and the restaurant workers.
Guest:And I've been to Washington to lobby with them on things like doing – and in Sacramento, doing away with statute of limitations, doing away with forced arbitration.
Guest:Not doing away with arbitration, but make it a choice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then there's the financial stuff, doing, you know, overtime and equal pay and things like that.
Guest:Because when, you know, the fact that restaurant workers in seven states, including California, get one fair wage, whatever other workers are getting minimum wage, that's what they get, plus tips.
Guest:They keep their tips.
Guest:And in those seven states, sexual harassment is cut in half, which shows that there's a relationship with
Guest:between what a woman earns and how a man treats her.
Guest:And so the people that are the worst treated are the farm workers, domestic workers, and restaurant workers, the women.
Guest:And so that's where I put my time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, what about show business?
Marc:I mean, you've been in it long enough.
Marc:You've been around enough of these type of powerful men.
Guest:Well, I mean, other people are doing that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I never had any experiences, probably because my father was Henry Fonda.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Or maybe, I don't know, I wasn't sexy enough or something, but I never had.
Guest:I don't know if you'd go there.
Marc:I never had that experience.
Marc:I had your brother over here.
Marc:Do you talk to him?
Marc:We email a lot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's an interesting guy.
Marc:And you guys, do you find when you think about yourself and about what you both grew up with, how you both handled it, it's interesting that when I talk to him, he spends a lot of time trying to wrap his brain around his trauma.
Marc:And, you know, it's an active fight for him, you know, even at this age.
Marc:Do you find it interesting the way you both handled it in the sense that you handled it very differently?
Marc:Do you help each other at all?
Marc:Do you lean on each other at all?
Guest:Not as much as we should.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:We have handled it differently.
Guest:See, I think I've always felt that the child that is the same gender as the parent has a harder time.
Guest:I think my father was harder on my brother than he was on me.
Guest:And I think Peter suffered a lot.
Guest:He suffered a lot.
Guest:And I'm just not sure that he's gotten the kind of help that I have.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because you, it seems like that your pursuit of social justice and your pursuit of authenticity, you know, was, you know, of primary importance, you know, to sort of resolve, you know, your stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I'm not a pothead and I don't do drugs.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Don't go for that relief.
Guest:I use pot to go to sleep.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Does it work?
Guest:And it turns out Peter does too.
Guest:It does work.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it's a whole lot better for you than Valium or Ambien or that other stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I found it very touching in the docket that the two things, you going back to visit Ted Turner.
Marc:We're very close.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's a very sweet thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I stayed close to my three husbands.
Guest:I was with Tom when he died.
Guest:I saw Vadim in the hospital before he died.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's amazing.
Guest:Well, you have to, I think, there's about two years where if you're smart, you write all the hate.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You write the letters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you don't send them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you get it out.
Guest:And starting at about four or five years, you begin to realize I was equally at fault or almost as equally.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Or I made a mistake and the guy's really sick.
Guest:That wasn't the case with me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you think there were reasons that I loved him.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:And so I have to stick with those.
Guest:And then if you've had children with them, I was always afraid that if I didn't invite the ex-husbands to spend Christmas with me, that my kids would choose to go with him and not me.
Guest:So Vadim would come to Christmas with me and Tom.
Guest:And Tom would come to events with Ted.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and Vadim met Ted and I just brought them all along.
Guest:They're really kind of so different in terms.
Guest:And so alike.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought they were so different.
Guest:None of these guys are like my dad at all.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Whoops.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, see, here's the thing.
Guest:They're all addicts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, of course, they're perfect for me.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:You know, if you're an addict, you don't want to, you know, I'm sure that the perfect man for me has come along.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And looked me in the eye and said, come on, show up, Fonda.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I ran away scared.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I picked instead three absolutely riveting, fascinating, brilliant men, none of whom were able to say, come on, Fonda, show up.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, because they were like, how were they addicts?
Marc:They were workaholics?
Guest:Drinking.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Drugs.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:Drinking in most cases, yeah.
Marc:And it seemed like it's very clear how Hayden had an influence on you in terms of the things you learned to move your own agenda forward.
Marc:What was it that you really gleaned from Ted as a person?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Ted is a genius.
Guest:He really is a very wounded genius, but a genius.
Guest:His...
Guest:You know, I'm micro.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he's macro.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And for me to experience that and learn from him the macro realities...
Guest:Right.
Guest:Was just invaluable.
Guest:Also, extremely practical.
Guest:You know, he was once the greatest sailor in the world.
Guest:He won the America's Cup.
Guest:And this was before computers.
Guest:This is when you did it with your own brain and brawn.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To be a great sailor, you have to be the kind of person who forgets nothing.
Guest:You can't be 50 miles out at sea and think, oh, shit, I forgot the – you know what I mean?
Guest:So he was very meticulous.
Yeah.
Guest:He paid a lot of attention to detail.
Guest:And he was always on time.
Guest:And I learned the value.
Guest:I'm kind of that way anyway, but I really learned the value of that.
Guest:He brought me so much.
Guest:One of the things that he brought me, because he had been so abused as a child by his father.
Guest:I mean, just terrible.
Guest:At the age when the boy is most vulnerable at five and stuff.
Right.
Guest:He needed me.
Guest:He needed me, and he wasn't afraid to let me know.
Guest:And I was the one who was grounded.
Guest:I could bring him stability.
Guest:That was new for me.
Guest:And it gave me tremendous confidence, and it sort of fleshed out that part of me that was responsible for bringing stability.
Marc:And being able to nurture a bit.
Guest:Yeah, I think, you know, he learned, even though I was not a good parent, but he learned, I had a lot of step-parents, so I knew how to be a step-parent.
Guest:And I think he watched me with his children, and I think he learned to be a parent.
Marc:Oh, that's nice.
Guest:Yeah, and he's a good parent.
Marc:And the other thing that I thought was amazing, you know, was, you know, when you went to visit your mother's grave, you know, after, you know,
Marc:It took you a long time to be able to do that.
Marc:And were you able to forgive yourself and forgive her?
Guest:Oh, I forgave her.
Guest:When I was writing my memoirs, I found out things about her childhood that allowed me.
Guest:It was like, oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I always knew that something terrible had happened to her because she was not normal.
Guest:But I just didn't know what it was.
Guest:And when I found out, I was able to totally forgive her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I became the mother.
Guest:She killed herself when she was 42.
Guest:I wanted to just hold her in my arms and rock her and cradle her.
Guest:And I was able to forgive everything.
Guest:But I wanted to go to her grave with Peter, my brother.
Guest:And it just didn't work out.
Guest:So for the benefit of the documentary, I went on my own.
Marc:Has he been...
Guest:No.
Guest:But we'll probably go together.
Marc:Oh, that's nice.
Marc:Now, you talk about spirituality, and we can kind of move towards the end here.
Marc:Your father was an atheist?
Guest:Well, his parents were Christian science, and I think that that embedded itself somewhere in his DNA.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But he called himself an agnostic.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And criticized me whenever I would go to church.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So he was really kind of...
Marc:And now you seem to be a very spiritually driven person.
Guest:I am.
Marc:In what form is it?
Guest:I study the Bible.
Guest:I study the life of Christ.
Guest:I read the Gnostic Gospels.
Guest:I have actually enrolled in the interdenominational seminary in Atlanta.
Guest:I was the only white person there.
Guest:It's where black ministers are trained.
Guest:And I believe in historical Christ and historical Buddha and historical Allah.
Guest:And I think these were real people who
Guest:who were tuned in.
Guest:I think there were women as well.
Guest:I think Mary was his favorite disciple.
Guest:And if you read the Gnostic Gospels, that's proven true.
Guest:So I think there were some women that were tuned in, too.
Guest:And when I say tuned in, I mean they understood that we're made of the molecules of stars, that we are part of everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:there is something greater than us.
Guest:And that we must be humble before that.
Guest:And that we must, with every ounce of our being, try to aspire to goodness and greatness.
Guest:That we have to try to make our lives, for me, it's something that would have made Jesus proud.
Guest:Because of my culture,
Guest:Jesus is the person that I identify with and relate to.
Guest:I have studied Buddhism as well, and I meditate.
Guest:But Jesus is my guy, and I often think, what would Jesus do?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But there's a whole lot that's in there that I don't, you know, I think the Bible is a metaphor.
Guest:A very beautiful metaphor.
Marc:And it's okay not to have boundaries with Jesus.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just find it utterly fascinating.
Guest:If only I could go back to that time.
Guest:I would love to experience that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That.
Guest:You know, Jesus had women perform in the Eucharist.
Guest:Women more than anybody supported Jesus.
Guest:He loved women.
Guest:He supported women.
Guest:He was a feminist.
Guest:Charismatic fella.
Guest:He had charisma like all.
Guest:those guys did.
Guest:And the women just got forgot along the way, but there were women like that too, I think.
Guest:And it has to do with, and you know, that's why this all kind of came together for me around the same time when I stopped being a food addict and when I got filled up in my solar plexus was this understanding of
Guest:Being part of something greater than myself.
Guest:I didn't need to binge anymore.
Guest:And it just changed me.
Guest:It did.
Guest:And that's when I suddenly, you know, I've known so many alcoholics.
Guest:Jason Robards, for example.
Guest:I'll never forget.
Guest:We made a movie called Comes a Horseman Together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was sober by then.
Guest:And he told me about hitting bottom.
Guest:And he told me about a higher power.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember thinking, what a lot of BS.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Higher power.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:I was talking like my father.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Suddenly I realized, oh, my God.
Guest:That's what that means.
Guest:My solar plexus have been filled with spirit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That chakra, the middle chakra.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I got it.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Guest:And I know why it's so hard for so many people, especially guys, because to receive that, you have to humble yourself profoundly.
Guest:It's very hard for a lot of people to do that.
Marc:Sure, they want control.
Marc:I mean, that's what eating disorder is all about and addiction is all about.
Guest:Alcoholism, yeah.
Guest:And so, you know, I don't talk about my feelings about Jesus and about all of this very much because it was very hard when I lived in Georgia because if I don't hew to the...
Guest:every word is, you know, true and all of that, you'd be cast out.
Guest:You know, people would get very, very upset.
Guest:Um...
Marc:But you have a personal relationship and a personal understanding, and that's what's important.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you're doing great work for all of the things you do.
Marc:And showing up in North Dakota was amazing.
Guest:See, when you're full with that, you can go forth in the world, and nothing can hurt you.
Guest:Nothing can hurt you.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Marc:That's beautiful.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It is.
Guest:I feel very, very blessed.
Marc:And I feel very honored that you talked to me today.
Guest:I feel honored that you asked.
Marc:And I'm thrilled with the success of Grace and Frankie.
Marc:And if you want to tell Lily to come over, I'm more than happy to have her.
Marc:Great.
Guest:I'm about to go see her.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, really, thank you so much, Jane.
Guest:It's a pleasure.
Thank you.
Marc:wow what a treat really i really love talking to her i did that was jane fonda and all five seasons of jane's series with lily tomlin grace and frankie are now streaming on netflix you know they got the uh the uh they've been renewed for another season but you can catch up on the early ones now now i'm going to mindfully play some guitar at a lower volume
Marc:Less distorted, but still with the bounce.
Marc:Still with the Echoplex pedal.
Marc:I'm using the gold top for those of you who ask questions.
Marc:The Les Paul Deluxe through the Echoplex through the 1957 Fender Deluxe amp that's been completely cleaned up.
Marc:That was just information for guitar nerds.
Guest:guitar solo
Thank you.
Thank you.
Marc:Boomer lives!