Carrie Fisher (1956-2016)
“I’m a product of Hollywood inbreeding. When two celebrities mate, something like me is the result.”
The whole wide world mourned for Fisher’s shocking passing in December 2016, but here at World of Wonder, we took it especially hard because she was family. In 2010, HBO Documentary President Sheila Nevins suggested World of Wonder make a film version of Wishful Drinking, Fisher’s solo stage show about her struggles with addiction, the pressure of “Hollywood in-breeding” and becoming a bestselling action figure at just 19 years old. Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato produced and directed the film. When it was first shown, Los Angeles Times critic Robert Lloyd wrote:
“This is not one of those emotional journeys in which the teller comes finally to forgive herself and the world and we get out our handkerchiefs. Craziness is Fisher’s baseline. Wishful Drinking begins and ends before the image of a padded cell, and clarity the thing she buys with comedy. Life will kill you, she seems to say: You might as well laugh.”
I have loved her so much; ever since her performance in the terrific Warren Beatty classic Shampoo (1975) where, at 18 years old, she held her own working with Beatty, Julie Christy, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant and Jack Warden. Of her screen debut Fisher wrote:
“One movie which came about by accident was Shampoo. I became Lee Grant’s daughter, who sleeps with Warren Beatty- underage, everything. There was a bad word said in the script. I was supposed to say ‘Wanna fuck?’ in the movie, and my mother asked if I could say ‘Wanna screw?’ instead. My mother was against bad language. I remember that my mother once said: ‘That fucker’. Debbie Reynolds actually said the f-word to me.”
Fisher starts off Wishful Drinking with a delightful story about finding a dead guy in her bed. Then she asks the audience if they have any questions. Among some of the queries she was asked: “How did you know he was dead?” Fisher’s answer:
“Have you ever seen a dead body? They’re blue and yellow… which are the international colors of death… and they’re really bad conversationalists.”
Her final film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, released in December 2017, is dedicated to her.
Watch WoW’s Wishful Drinking on Carrie Fisher’s birthday! It’s streaming on HBO NOW:
