Celebrity Detox: (the fame game) (8 page)

But as September slipped by, and as autumn tilted toward a creeping coldness, I began to miss the pickups, because I got too busy. There were meetings in the city, there were fund-raising events or phone calls or crises or I was just too damned exhausted to get the car going, to weather the weather outside. First I missed one afternoon pickup; then by early October I missed two or three a week. I craved time alone, time where words were not necessary. I spent whatever slivers of free time I had in my craft room, which overlooks the Tappan Zee Bridge, jeweled with lights that come on ever earlier as the darkness settles like a dust cloth over the town of Nyack. High up the hill, I could hear the car leaving, and I could hear it coming back, the sound of my kids as they tumbled from its heated interior and raced toward the main house.
Go up there and greet them, Ro
. Sometimes I did. Other times, though, I did not.

The time for filming the first Streisand concert was coming closer. And I knew I was going to make this movie regardless of
The View
’s interest in its creation as a possible segment. “What would we get out of it,” I could just hear them ask, because they might not know the obvious. Ratings, guys, ratings. But they didn’t understand much about how to get ratings. In all likelihood, they’d decide the story had no place on their show, but that didn’t mean the documentary itself needed to die.

Kelli, however, didn’t want me to do the Streisand documentary. She thought it was a bad idea. I was already booked to the gills, and now I was planning on jetting from city to city, red-eyeing it back to Manhattan in time for live
View
s every day at 11:00 a.m.? Barbara Walters from the start saw my love of Streisand as more of a silly obsession than anything else. Other people simply thought that logistically I couldn’t film every concert while maintaining my career commitments. I knew what I needed to do though. I knew filming Streisand was not a further departure from myself; it was, instead, a possible route of return. Therefore, it seemed obvious to me. I had to do this, as a mother, as an artist, as a person.

Jen Le Beau and I gathered our gear. We talked.

We planned. “A love letter,” I said to Jen. “Streisand needs to know the impact she has had on this nation.” The more we talked, the clearer our goals became to us. A love letter, yes, but then more. By documenting Streisand’s fans, by capturing their words on camera, their faces on film, we thought we could weave together a portrait of this country in its highest hopes and deepest dedications.

As I said, time in celebrity land blurs and blends. Days flip past like cameras clicking—next shot. Next shot. Next shot! I got familiar with the new routine, the early a.m. awakenings, the dressing room without a bathroom; I became a night pooper, and that started to seem normal. Or, if not normal, then just the way it was. A familiar distance wedged itself between me and Kel—a distance born of busyness, and impatience, and the occasional entitlement that comes from relapse. I remembered something Parker had said to me a long time ago, during my first show, when he was young. I was dressed to go out—some charity event, a fund-raiser for my foundation. Kel was coming with me. She was glittery; I was coiffed; the babysitter had arrived. “We’re going to make money to take care of some sick kids,” I told Parker. “Why,” he said. “Why don’t you just stay home and take care of us?”

Why indeed?

My four years away were perhaps at their core an acknowledgment of his question’s validity—not an answer but a simple, humble nod. During my four years away from fame, the guilt had gone for a while, and so the blade had dulled. Now the guilt was back, and so were the sharp edges.

My children started to seem further away. What working parent has not had this experience—hearing what a child says but failing to actually listen? Or the experience of brushing your girl’s straw-blond hair without once considering its color, or the way it pours over your palms.

My art began to feel dry to me, my yellows muddied. I wondered: How could we make
The View
better? What would the ratings tomorrow be? I watched those ratings go up, and I watched the trees turn colors, and I saw the real yellow was there, in the season and out of reach. Viv, my youngest, brought a leaf in from the yard. It was perfect, saffron and see-through, the veins raised in delicate ridges, the stem cool and pale.

And I dreamt. I dreamt deeply but without serenity or rest. I dreamt long lists of dry facts: DOBs and DODs and IFBs and ABCs. Sometimes Elisabeth was in my dreams, but I could never remember how, or where, or why. I’d get that feeling, though, that weird inner tug you get when you see someone or something and suddenly recall a fragment of a dream from the night before, or the year before; who knows when? She was in a crosswalk, or saying her times tables, 9x2, 5x3. Even in my dreams she stayed inside the lines. What would she think if she knew who I really was, if she knew the plain mundane facts of my mundane life that is nevertheless probably so different from hers: tummy mummies, Aunt Minnie, Chelsea’s silver keys, the waffle house. Yes, no question we were different, but even in this strong brittle girl I saw something.

I invited her to my house that first fall of my being on
The View
, as the ratings were going up and my private life was coming down; I asked her to come over. And she did. And it was one of those beautiful blue September days when she showed up with her handsome football husband and perfect porcelain baby, and what I saw in her face was something like shock. Here was my house, pretty, pale yellow, with a tasteful round window made of stained glass, and four well-kept children who know their manners and have respect. Elisabeth came over and saw me in my suburban kitchen, and on my suburban deck. She saw that my daughter Chelsea has two blond braids, and my other daughter, Vivi, wears her hair in a close neat cap. She saw my boys play with Nick, a pooch so fat and friendly that he drags his nubbed tongue across your palm giving kisses. Elisabeth saw our family. I can’t recall a thing we said when her family visited ours. Except this. “Your children are so
well behaved
.” I had impressed her as a mother. This was a connection—for sure.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck was the captain and MVP of her division one softball team at Boston College. Who gets to be captain of a softball team as good as the one she was on in college? It’s the rare woman, that’s who. You have to be a leader. You have to want to win. Show me that girl. That’s what I was saying to Elisabeth right from the start. Put down your IFB and pitch me a curve like I know you can. Stop with your sound bites and your predigested politics and think on your own two feet. I said to her, “You should throw a ball from the top of the set all the way across at the targets to win prizes for the audience.” Imagine that. What a segment that would be. In some weird way, I figured
The View
would be successful if I could just get Elisabeth to throw that damned ball.

Set it fly. There it goes. Look up. It’s padded, white, sutured with stitches; fat but still aloft, the ball arcs through the air, on the air, above the audience.

Waiting, watching—confetti! I asked for a monthly “Hasselbeck Hurl” to show her off, to remind her of herself.

It never happened.

I don’t know why.

Blog 9/23/06

i hate rainy days

i would not survive seattle

gloom descends

necessary

it feels like a job

not my whole life

gratitude

earned

again . . . the press screams

my name in bold

skip good or bad

distraction

a gay one showed up

surrogate perfect girls in photos

from long island

my age 2

no matter how much i opened

he could not see in

took the easy way out

gay flag and all

jim mcgreeveys hands were shaking

in the green room

humanity trumps celebrity

grace enters for all

quitting aol

as my face appears

way 2 often

with a survey underneath

believe what u feel

u know

inside

what is real

CHAPTER 8

Talking about Barbra

Q&A with Rosie O’Donnell,
Producer Jen Le Beau, and
Interviewer Lauren Slater

ROSIE: Streisand is a direct connection to the light. She transmits on a frequency that comes in very clearly to nearly all of the population that samples her. Her channel comes in true and strong. She was broadband at a time when most people were dial-up.

LAUREN: And your mom loved Barbra Streisand?

R: Completely.

L: What would your mom think of you, if she were alive, and could see all that you have become?

R: I wonder about that. I think about it. If my mother had lived, I don’t think I would have been able to accomplish all that I have.

L: Why?

R: I don’t know. I do know that in many ways I am a child of Streisand’s. I mean, she’s only twenty years older than me. She was born April 24, 1942. I was born in 1962. My generation, we were all raised on her. Metaphorically we were nursed on her music, her essence and her individuality. She was the role model and an inspiration, a once-in-lifetime talent.

L: So what did you actually
do
to make this documentary?

R: The film is a tribute to her. It’s a long love letter. It’s a gift to her about the effect she’s had on the culture and consciousness of so many people . . . My producer, Jen Le Beau, and I got into a car with our equipment and drove to Philly for opening night. Jen rigged the SUV with cameras. And we drove down.

JEN: On the way down we had a little movie marathon. We watched
A Star Is Born
.

R: We sat in the front row with her husband, Jim Brolan, and Donna Karan—

J: We were in the family section.

R: And the music started, the orchestra, the “Funny Girl” overture began. Barbra came out.

J: And Barbra’s first words were “Rosie, I think I hear you.” Ro and I looked at each other and her face went white.

R: What I felt, impossible to say.

J: And then Barbra sang “Funny Girl.” When she was done she looked down at Rosie and said, “I think that was for you.” And Ro burst into tears. It was truly incredible.

L: And did you guys go backstage after the show?

R: I decided not to go backstage at this point. I needed time.

L: So what happened?

R: We went home. I had a show in the a.m.

J: The ride back, from Philly to New York, was great. We talked. Ro kept saying, “So this is the part in the movie where the copter crashes and the music swells. Because real life can’t be this good. Something bad is going to happen to me now.”

L: I don’t get it.

R: I can’t help but feel I must be dying. Because I’ve gotten so much, been so lucky. If my life were an actual movie, it would be too, too flat almost, too
much
. I mean, my life is in some ways a story about a girl whose dreams
came true
. Because I spent my whole childhood dreaming of fame, of meeting Barbra, of being on Broadway, and it
all happened
. How weird is that? If my life were a screenplay, it would be a flop. The author would have to remedy the problem of too-muchness, of pure comedy, by inserting some tragedy to balance it all out. So here I am, just waiting for the tragedy to hit. If I were a screenwriter authoring my own life, the story would be this: girl from Rhonda Lane dreams of fame, dreams of Streisand, grows up, gets fame, gets Streisand, goes to Streisand concert, sits in front row, Streisand personally addresses her, the climax comes, and then—something tragic’s gotta happen or the movie will fall flat—so then the girl from Rhonda Lane gets some incurable disease and is gone. This would have to be the ending of the screenplay.

On a less dramatic level, I wonder. I always wonder:
am I worthy? Why am I in the company of people like this?

L: It’s a dream come true, and that can be scary, in a knock-on-wood sort of way.

R: Yeah. Exactly. There’s a moment in your mind where you’re just like, “What the hell.” But the strange thing is, even when all your dreams come true, you can keep making more.

L: So what are your dreams now?

R: In my dream version, we’d finish the film, and then I’d fly out to L.A. I’d drive to her house and I’d sit down and I’d bring her the chocolate cake that she loves from the bakery in Brooklyn, and we’d sit down and watch the film and she’d think it was fantastic. But that’s a dream. And it’s a ways away. Right now we have a lot of very good raw material, but it’s still being shaped.

L: Has she seen any of it?

J: Just a six-minute trailer. But she liked it!

R: Right. And that’s huge. Because first there was a question of whether or not she would even allow us to do this documentary, this tribute, and then she did allow us. And then there was the question of whether she would watch it. And she did. I didn’t go backstage after Philly, but I did go backstage after the New York City concert. And I handed her team the disc.

J: And then we waited.

R: Nerve-racking.

J: Very.

R: And finally, some time after Philly, we got the call. The call from her manager, Marty, who said she’d seen the footage on the plane, and loved it, and it was a go. October 24.

J: We thought it would be fun to get to Chicago real quick. So right after
The View
ended, on October 8, we flew down. We set up a tailgate party. We wanted to know what people say, and think, and feel, and do, when they hang out before a Streisand concert. So we put a button on Ro’s blog: “Send us an e-mail and tell us if you’re going to the concert and what Streisand means to you.” From these e-mails we picked eighty-five or so people, and organized a party at a little restaurant around the corner from the concert. The party was a blast. Really special people there. We had a barbecue.

R: And then we went to the concert. When we went down to Philly, I had just started
The View
, and we went down, just me and Jen in our car. But Chicago happened in November. By then I’d been on air for well over a month. It was a whole different experience.

J: The difference in the experience between Philly and Chicago really shows how celebrity-ness changes your life. The Philly show was September 28 and we could go and be noticed but not overwhelmed. At the Chicago show, we couldn’t even get down the aisle of the concert hall; it took us so long, because people were reaching out, trying to shake hands, get autographs, it took twenty minutes to move forward a foot.

R: But what was more stunning was to see Oprah come in, at the New York City show. One of the security guards said, “Winfrey’ll be here in ten minutes.”

You could hear the buzz of Oprah coming in. There was a rumble. You could feel it. It was an intense energy, something building to a pressure point, very intense, and I was thinking, “Whoa!” I stood up with Kelli and Georgette and Charles, and I was clapping like everyone else watching her come and she came right down. I was two rows behind her. I said, “Excuse me, Ms. Winfrey. I’m a very big fan of yours.” She shook my hand and looked at me and then gave me a hug the way she does. It is odd to watch Oprah hug, because she’s not a good hugger, she is more of a lean-in-and-pat kinda hugger. I am the grab-and-hold-on kinda hugger . . . Yeah, it was really surreal and the audience was clapping and it was wild, it was wild, the whole thing.

L: I hate to admit this but I’m still not sure I really get what it is about Streisand, why she means so much to you. Honestly, what makes this story interesting to me is not Streisand, but how much you love her.

R: All people want to do is connect, right? And so many of us have been able to connect to ourselves, and to each other, through her. She’s like a huge power outlet with millions of plug openings and millions of people have plugged into her, and are therefore able to shine on their own.

L: Well, I don’t feel that way about Streisand at all. To me, she’s, I don’t know. She has not been a big part of my life at all. I mean, do you honestly think she’s, as a talent, that she’s heads and tails above Elvis? Or the Beatles? Here’s the thing. The Beatles, what made them great is that they pushed the envelope. They pushed conventional music to its limits and in doing so defined a new genre, basically. They made rock ’n’ roll. I don’t see Streisand being that kind of innovator, and that’s what I need in order to admire someone to the degree that you do.

R: She is an innovator. But if I have to explain it to you, then you simply can’t see it.

L: Try.

R: No. That’s like trying to explain why chocolate tastes good. You either get it or you don’t, Slater. You don’t have Babs’s plug. You’re not set to receive her signal.

L: Well, what is her talent, exactly? What is it that she does that’s so extraordinary?

R: Singing. And the oddest thing is, she doesn’t like to sing. She never wanted to be a singer. And twenty-seven years ago, she went onstage in Central Park, and she forgot the words to a song, and she was so horrified that she didn’t perform live onstage again. She had massive stage fright, for twenty-seven years. This is a woman with the best voice in the world. And in 2000, when I saw her perform, I realized she actually used a teleprompter and refuses to go without one. And I thought, “God, if I were her friend, I would encourage her to do it without a net.” Because we love her so, the audience would catch her if she fell.

L: So Streisand uses a teleprompter, which is not an IFB, but along the same lines, and it bothers you to no end that Barbara Walters relies on such props, and you say it makes Walters inauthentic, but when Streisand does it it’s okay?

R: Here’s the thing. When someone is really, truly genuine, it doesn’t matter, the props don’t matter. Streisand is genuine and it comes through. Even her anxiety comes through; she doesn’t try to hide it. Walters uses the IFB to hide behind; she uses it in part in the hopes that it will make her appear smoother than she is. Streisand uses these props the way someone might use a crutch, or have a cast. It’s obvious these things are there. It’s obvious they need them. You can see it. I don’t object to the props, or the technology or whatever. I object when they are used inauthentically.

For instance, in the recent Streisand concerts, I could tell, probably everyone could tell, she was nervous. She didn’t try to hide who she was or what she was experiencing. And the remarkable thing was that I, and the audience, witnessed the growth of her confidence from the first concert to the last. By the end, she was having fun. She was relaxing. She was improvising. It was phenomenal for me to watch her acceptance of herself as a person. It was phenomenal to witness this transformation.

J: The whole tour in some ways was about transformation. Because during the Chicago concert we found out the Democrats were sweeping.

R: There were a lot of things changing then. Maybe the biggest thing for me, personally, was having Streisand stay at my house. I was always extremely nervous around Streisand until she stayed at my house in Miami. She was flying to Florida with her crew and something fell through with their hotel. So they called Kendall, my assistant. This is how it works in celebrity-ville. Somebody called Kendall because they knew I had a house, and it was an emergency and they needed it right away.

And Kendall came to me. She said, “You’re not gonna believe this.” I’m like, “What?” She said, “No, seriously, sit down. Streisand’s people just called from the plane, they’re en route to Miami, their hotel room fell through, and they want to stay at your house.” I said, “Good God Almighty, Kendall! Call them back and say yes immediately!” She said, “I already did.”

And so Streisand slept at my house in Miami for a week while I did not sleep at my house in Nyack. Because I was just, it was just too much for me, in a great way. I could not, no way, fall asleep that night. Kelli kept telling me to go to sleep, but I didn’t sleep the whole time she was there. I was always wondering, “Where is she right now?” And then she actually called me, in our New York apartment.

L: So you’re in your apartment in the city for the night and you pick up the phone and it’s Streisand?

R: I think Kelli picked up the phone. I’m not sure. I think Kelli answered it and she whispered, “It’s Barbra Streisand!” I’ve talked to her before on the phone. But this time she was calling me to thank me about the house. Before this, I was to her just a fan who loved her, who said nice things about her, who sent her flowers a lot, constantly, who wrote her letters of inspiration. I’m sure in some part of her mind she’s been like, “Oy vey.”

But then when she came and used my house, she saw that I had a whole life there. She saw that I had children, and a craft room. She saw that I have a
Funny Girl
poster in my hallway, but she also saw that I was more than a crazed, obsessed fan. She saw me as a mother and a sister and an equal and all those things that you hope for. She painted me a picture in my craft room, and it was absolutely adorable. And she left me notes all over my house. “Sleep well. Sweet dreams.” She is what I dreamed show business would be, and for those few days, that’s also what it was.

J: And now you know, Ro, how your fans feel about you.

R: Yes, I do. And that’s a startling thing to have to deal with. And this year is in part about coming to an acceptance of that, and taking responsibility for that, understanding that I am a satellite dish, smaller than Barbra but still a dish, and I have been given this job. I have been given the task of transmitting signals to people, and I have to hope my signals are clear and good.

But the bottom line right now: it is startling to realize that what I feel for Barbra is likely what others feel for me. And the question then becomes not only a who but a what. The questions are who am I and what does it mean to be real and also what will I do with my power?

L: What do you think you will do with it?

R: That’s a question I have for myself. I have not answered it yet. I am first learning how to deal with the responsibility that comes from being what I am. Last time around, I’m not sure I knew so clearly that I was a transmitter. Now that I have understood this, I am also understanding that I need to develop some kind of spiritual practice, in part just to keep the chaos at bay, and to not get re-addicted. Barbra was a part of this.