Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
When I first dreamed up the AICN Legends column, Pam Grier was among a small handful of names I conjured of people with whom I would kill to do these kind of longer, career-based interviews. I also envisioned a legion of publicists and agents contacting me to see if their clients might be interviewed for the column. And that's kind of how my lengthy chat with Ms. Grier came about. It didn't hurt that Pam was in the midst of a nationwide book tour for her exceptional and unflinching autobiography "Foxy." It's a testament to the life lived that Pam's path before she made a single film is just as worth knowing as her days working with or for Russ Meyer, Roger Corman, Jack Hill, Richard Pryor, Daniel Petrie, Paul Newman, Andrew Davis, Steven Seagal, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, Tim Burton, Quentin Tarantino, and the cast and crew of "The L Word," not to mention her recently completed work opposite Julia Roberts in the Tom Hanks-directed LARRY CROWNE.
For many millions of fans, this one included, Grier is one of the most beautiful women to ever step in front of the camera. She brought great strength to every role that she played, and effortlessly made the transition from exploitation to blacksploitation to mainstream over the course of her long career that has spanned such work as a small role in BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS to THE BIG DOLL HOUSE; WOMEN IN CAGES; THE BIG BIRD CAGE; BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA; COFFY; THE ARENA; FOXY BROWN; DRUM; GREASED LIGHTNING; FORT APACHE THE BRONX; ABOVE THE LAW; THE PACKAGE; BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY; POSSE; ORIGINAL GANGSTAS; ESCAPE FROM L.A.; GHOSTS OF MARS; MARS ATTACKS!; the recent JUST WRIGHT (playing Queen Latifah's mother) and, of course, JACKIE BROWN.
At 61 years old, Grier is still devastatingly lovely and the picture of elegance. She also loves to laugh and feels that part of mission on earth is to pass on what she's learned about overcoming prejudice, self-confidence, love, health, acting, and life in general. The strange and unintentional thing about out interview was that in the process of me making small talk at the beginning of the interview, we got into a lengthy discussion about some very personal things in Pam's love life. I'm a bit out of my element when it comes to asking actors about their personal lives; the fact is, unless it's relevant to the film we're discussing, I never bring it up. That's never been what AICN is about, and I'm insanely proud of that. But when a woman like Pam Grier wants to talk about love, you damn well better be prepared to listen. The other thing I liked about Grier is that she called me herself. When I picked up the phone, there was no intermediary. You may not realize it, but that's pretty rare, especially when it comes to actors.
Enough preamble. I got to interview the woman of my dreams, and she was a lot of fun to talk to. I was given 20 minutes to chat; I took 40 without meaning to, and that gave us the chance to cover a lot of ground. Please enjoy Foxy herself, Pam Grier…
Pam Grier: Hi, this is Pam Grier.
Capone: Oh, hello. I thought there would be somebody connecting us. That’s awesome. How are you?
PG: I’m well. Well, I was waiting and I thought you know, I let all of the usual connectors know that if we haven’t began our interview after five minutes of our appointed time, we have to call so we don’t lose time and we can have a great time.
Capone: That’s great. Thanks for looking out. You are in Chicago right now, correct?
PG: Yes, I am. Go Blackhawks!
Capone: You missed the big victory parade by a day.
PG: No, no. I was here for the parade.
Capone: Oh, you were? Okay, good.
PG: I was book signing. I was at Borders on Friday.
Capone: Okay, so you have been here for a while. I’ve gotten about halfway through the book, because they just told me about two days ago that we were doing this for sure, but the one story I remember about Chicago is this is where you met Freddie Prinze. That’s a very sweet story that you tell in the book.
PG: Yes. Thank you. It was a wonderful and bittersweet story, but he was a dear friend and I learned a lot about myself through him. When you meet someone in a relationship, and it becomes a loving relationship of great support and respect and honesty that I was honest enough to say, in the beginning, he wasn’t indulging in drugs and to see him be that innocent, to see him so vibrant with possibilities and youth and energy, it was just great. And then you suddenly see him mature and get older and more confident, yet he had another side of him that was emerging and you could see his growth.
We all change you know, every week, every month… No one stays the same. We grow and you hope to grow a long with your mate or your partner, who are your friends in your life, and I can see and determine honestly where I would be with him or not, and the fact that I had the strength to love him and walk away and “set him free,”--from the song by Sting--and allow him his growth, not to smother him, and yet I could still be his friend at a distance and a state of mind that was protective. I found that I could love someone, yet I could love myself more, and I think that’s because of so many things that have happened in my life personally that led up to the fact that I understand what love really means on an intrinsic level you have to ask yourself, If at some point for your survival, who do you love most?
Capone: I love that you understand yourself so well, and it seems like you have since a fairly young age. You've really thought about the things in your life that defined you, and you understand that there are certain things that you have to do to survive and to grow and to “let other people grow,” as you said. That’s really kind of wonderful, because I don’t think there’s a lot of people that are quite that self aware of their own needs.
PG: That was my impetus for writing my memoir, to show from my experiences how to be the best person you can be. And what’s really interesting is that in some of the interviews I've done or with people who have spoken to me at the book signings, they are curious how I was able to recover and still have some sense of a healthy and whole life of wellness and not to have succumbed or just wallowed and drowned in despair from so many things that had happened and not everyone recovers well.
I just tell people, some people live their lives a lot more that I do [laughs] and I have lived my life a lot more than others and at some point I realized to be the best woman I can be, they feel “Will I be able to have a relationship ever?” because of the things. I said “Absolutely,” but after each relationship or encounter… Some have thought “My God, the relationship with Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] ended up negative or Freddie negative or Richard [Pryor] negative…” They weren’t negative at all. They were positive, but I had great respect for their journey and where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do. With Richard, I made him laugh. Who makes Richard Pryor laugh? When I put his horse in the backseat of my Jaguar to take to the vet, he was hysterical. He said, “You are crazier than I am?” I was going to save a life, and if that meant I was crazy, so be it! [laughs] We were going down the 405 with Richard in a bath robe and a horse in the back seat and all of America following us thinking we were absolutely insane--yes I was.
And before I start another relationship after I am examining my life, and whether it’s disappointment, painful, like the last relationship, which I thought would have been the healthiest was for eight years. And I had helped someone [marketing executive Peter Hempel], I thought was a partner, to ascend the corporate world, and I had supported him in his darkest days of unemployment and convinced him to write that novel that he wanted to write, and then when he had a new employment and ascended the corporate ladder at my urging, I didn’t fit. There is some world where they are elite and corporate, where the actor, the “artist” isn’t as “acceptable,” and I didn’t know that. Yet in retrospect as I did a great examination with counseling, I think he was identifying with his parentage in his family, and children learn what their father acts out and says and does. Basically, he was not even sounding himself any more, he was sounding like his father, and I could understand that and when you do have that understanding…
It’s almost a piece of mind, a veil of piece comes over you when you realize it wasn’t anything you didn’t do well or right, it was basically how someone else was brought up, and it was more social. But at the end, I realized from examination that I had, because of his ascension to a higher position in a company, that I had now threatened his political, intellectual, and professional image that he had led other people to believe when I was the person behind him and he didn’t want them to know that “Here’s an actor, one year of college, not Ivy League, not an elite from an elite family helped him be the best he could be.” So I understood, and it was painful, yes. I am very human and I enjoyed the fact that I did understand what that meant in the separation, but here again I was able to not distance myself, but totally feel every emotion about it, but I wouldn’t take to start a new relationship with someone else. It was a committed relationship. I realize that it was very painful and the “Who would be the next person?” I won’t bring that element of emotion to him. We will start out fresh, and he can ask about that and see how it affects me, if he’s strong enough to experience and accept what I will tell him. Of course my entire life is in the book. [laughs]
Over all, none of those relationships ended up negatively. They were very, very positive, and to this day with Kareem, you know with Islam we are much more involved with understanding it today than ever before. It is monolithic, but it’s diverse. It’s a monolithic community, but it has moderates, conservatives, fundamentalists, and radicals. At the time, he had only embraced it for, I don’t know, maybe two or three years and he had given me three months to understand how to become a Muslim woman and the whole world of Islam. I had asked him if he would give me more time, because he didn’t really have a plan of where we would be as a couple and I needed to know that, so the day that he requested that I make a commitment for conversion and for marriage, he said if I didn’t commit that day, he was going to marry someone else that afternoon. And traditionally, he thought it was fair and right.
From a western perspective, we can’t comprehend and my confusion… I think I was 20, going on 21 perhaps, I thought, “Were you seeing someone else along with me?” I remembered in the teachings, the first wife has to approve the second wife, and that those were real issues, and I couldn’t think of them as being negative. I just thought of them as “That’s the tradition that is written, and I have to respect that and respect his wishes and his way of life he is embracing.” So with all happiness extended to him, I let him go and I loved Pam more. I let him go. It was, to some people, negative, but I loved Pam more.
Capone: Well you should. We all love Pam more!
PG: Not all women do that. They give up their identity, their family, to be in love with a man, and often men will do the same. But it’s not always what it should be, and when someone gives up their identity and so much of themselves, I think sooner or later that person they gave it up for will resent them and they wont like them. I can see that in relationships happening all around me. That’s why I think men relinquished a lot of the image and the philosophy and theory of the woman should be pregnant and in the kitchen. When we were having the women’s liberation movement, men were struggling with that. “My wife wants to get a college education and work?” or “My wife now makes more than I?” Intimidation, threat, and fear of what? The men actually though in some of the films that I did that we were taking away their jobs and we were castrating men. No, we were just asking for equanimity, and being an actor and in the industry and in the home and in business. A women could own a construction company, and she didn’t have to be married to be validated by society and it was an off balance, which found it’s balance.
Capone: In terms of acting, were the actresses that you admired the most, ones who also embodied that forward-thinking spirit?
PG: All around the world.
Capone: Can you give me a few examples?
PG: For example, whether it was Barbra Streisand, whether it was Diane Keaton, very much so. We have a newer generation of course of women, whether it's Angelina Jolie or Helen Hunt--a lot of women who are in television and were also film actors, they were embodying that, but it was global. I think we are a vibrational connection, where you and I are talking on the phone now and someone on the other side of the world in another country, in another culture is doing the same thing.
I was talking to Ireland the other night at 3am, one of their top public radios. They were talking about the oil spill in Louisiana. They were talking about sending their therapists from their community to learn more about child psychology in America, so they could address their social issues of children falling through the cracks and being abused. People are so global. Whether it’s the internet as an emerging cultural happening, we are just so much more connected today, and I think it was evident then, it was just that we didn’t really have the proof or the way to monitor it. We didn’t have the communication like we do today, but I think it was always happening. Whether it was my mentors who opened doors for me, whether it’s the late Lena Horne and her book "Stormy Monday," or Hattie McDaniel, who graduated from my high school in Denver, or the late Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan and Bella Abzug, or my mentor Gloria Steinem. We didn’t know those women, yet they were connected and had the same thoughts of women’s equality and women’s liberation.
Capone: I love talking to you about these things, and I could go on all day doing so. But I’ve got to at least ask a couple movie-related questions, and hopefully we can weave the two lines of thought together.
PG: Well you know what establishes film is reality, real life. PHILADELPHIA, a man, you talk about a lot of the issues about film, but there has always been men surviving. Or whether it was PRETTY WOMAN with Julia Roberts, who I just did a film with--she and Tom Hanks--in the LARRY CROWNE film. It’s still “Does art reflect life or life reflect art?” [laughs]
Capone: Yeah, I’d like to think it’s cyclical and doing both.
PG: It is, it is. I think filmmaking reflects the history of life and records it. The filmmakers just want us to live, so they can get the stories from us.
Capone: Yeah, well here’s an example of which comes first, life or art? The story you tell in the book about auditioning for FORT APACHE THE BRONX, that’s another fantastic story about how you basically just ran yourself ragged before you walked into the audition. That’s such a wonderful story.
PG: Yes, that's such a method thing. That’s such a Stanislavsky "An Actor Prepares." I ate nothing but cherry pie for three days. I cut up my wardrobe, put on a blonde wig, and walked down Avenue of Americas to my audition nearly being arrested, scaring the hell out of Carroll Burnett on the elevator.
Capone: Also in the book you mention that a lot of the characters that are still identified with, especially in the '70s and '80s, were based on women that you knew in your life. When these scripts came to you at the time, how much of a say did you have in adding or subtracting specific character traits to match the women you knew?
PG: A prime example is FORT APACHE THE BRONX with the razor blade in the mouth, I was telling them that--and they had seen I think it was probably FOXY BROWN, where I knew gang members in urban areas that had razor blades in their hair, so when the girl gangs fought they would cut their hands when they grabbed the hair, so I was saying that was believable. “There’s women who put razor blades in their hair,” so was it going to affect me to put a razor blade in my mouth? Yes. Was it going to affect me if I had to cut someone’s neck? Yes. It was going to be the most horrible scene for me as an actor. “How do I separate myself and embody this crazy image?” I knew about that and I would have to work towards that, but yes I brought that almost conditioning. Had I done it? No. Had I been a gang member and put razor blades in my hair? No. But I had seen it done and just to discuss what would happen if I did or I had would have been interesting, but I hadn’t, but I knew that existed.
With most films, rarely can you change anything. You can add in emotion and a certain depth, but if you can come up with dialogue or some direction that is more interesting than what is on the page, most directors will allow that. They will want that authenticity, and I’m trying to think of other instances and it was just to imagine the horror, to survive the horror of that type of enactment. I had never been to shooting galleries before, and to see every aspect of life passed out from heroin or whatever drugs they were taking, that was horrific. I had walked along the areas at night at 10th Avenue in the meat packing area, where ladies of the evening were servicing their clients on the street. That was frightening, and I could bring that horror of “How do I invert myself to be those women who are doing those things?” They never know what client can take their life, or if the police drove up and arrested everyone, “How would I survive the horrors of that?”
Those intense roles… thank God I didn’t have a lot of dialogue and interaction with the actors. It was very difficult, when Paul Newman said he wanted to take me to lunch, I said “I can’t right now, because in my work I have to be so despicable. I have to be so dangerous that I can’t have lunch with you now.” [laughs] "You’ll take away my danger. After we finish perhaps, but right now I’ve got to kill you. I’m out to cut your throat, kill you, castrate you, burn you, whatever they are going to have me do to you.”
So I’ve had a body of work that hasn’t been a large body of work, has been substantial enough where I can dabble a little in humanity and survive the work and meet and work with great outstanding writers and directors and through my work. I haven’t worked with Jonathan Demme yet, but he considered one of my screenplays. We have talked; he’s loved my work. I was hoping to see his play, his theater piece while I was in New York, but I’m still on tour and shooting. It’s been very difficult to just have a day of leisure to go see my friend’s plays. And on hiatus from any series, I’ll do a movie for a short time. Last summer, while I was doing "Smallville," playing Amanda Waller, the first African-American character that’s not a superhero, she runs a group called “Checkmate” which is like Blackwater on steroids.
I was doing that and starting the book tour and doing another movie and it was insane, but to have some life experience or contact or acknowledgment or revelation and bring to the work is just a gift to the production and you hope you have lived enough to do that, because otherwise it’s a lot of research, which is great of how you build your role and your subtext, but to be able to bring some emotional authenticity is just the icing on the cake if one can do so.
Capone: You are always humble about your influence on female action stars and several generations of African-American actresses. You never struck me as someone worried about your legacy; you seem to want to be known as a working viable actor now. You don’t want to dwell too much on what you have done or who you might have influenced.
PG: Or what I didn’t get. [Laughs] Well, you have to understand the marketing aspect of the industry. You’re leaves basically represent the widest profit margin, and you have to honor that, and that keeps an industry going. If you are a part of the fiber and the magic that goes on, it’s a blessing, and to be viable and energetic and to be at the right place at the right time is a wonderful thing. There are roles that people say “Why can’t you do this?” or “Why didn’t you do it?” Well, I wasn’t available or I was working or I was too tall or I was too thin or I was too fat or I was too old or too dark or I was too green or I was too purple, and you try to let them know that we can’t do all of the work and that they don’t understand the dynamics of the business of the industry, the business of acting.
Like when I was as to test for WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT, the Tina Turner story, I was like “Tina is five feet! I’m five nine!” I would be the tallest Tina Turner, and they had already hired Lawrence Fishburne to play Ike and I was like “How tall is he? I just saw him at his one man play in New York and he came out of the theater and I had on flat shoes, he had on flat shoes, and I looked him dead in the eye. If I put on high heels, I’ll be looking at his forehead." I said, “That’s not going to work.” “But we want you to test with him.” I said, “No. I would love to. I would absolutely love to, are you kidding me? I can sing. I can dance. I have the energy. I’ve always wanted to be one of the Ikettes and Tina." But I knew I wouldn’t get the role, and it would break my heart, because I was too tall and there’s no way they could do it. My skin coloring was similar to Tina’s, but I was too tall and I wasn’t going to get it.
Capone: You must have felt pretty good when Roger Corman got his honorary Oscar recently.
PG: Oh, I did and I had nothing to do with it. I was supposed to be Jonathan Demme’s date for that night and I was working and couldn’t come. I had to go to Canada. I had to do "Smallville," and those commitments with the network and with the production company, no one can shoot and substitute you that day, so you really have to go, and I was going to be there as a surprise and sitting at his table with Julie Corman and Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, and I said “Oh what a night that would have been? What a night!” The first thing I thought was, “Well maybe I’ll get a job with George Lucas if I go and… Oh shut up!” Of course I want to work with George and be in anything he has to do with STAR WARS. I just love the fantasy of the future and I couldn’t go, and I thought for Roger, I had nothing to do with it. The only thing I embraced Roger for is that he said to me that it was a must that I work in his film, and he felt confident enough emotionally that I had something.
Capone: Did he ever tell you what he saw, like what it was that he saw in you?
PG: No, they all say “It.” “That’s it huh? ‘It’?” They said, “You have something that’s captivating, that people want to watch you” and I realized that I had “It” when I did FORT APACHE THE BRONX, when I had very little dialogue, and they were watching me stumble and be high and drag my feet and slur my words. They were watching “It,” and that’s some type of magnetism, whether it’s our features or how we breath or our body movement or all of the things that I embody from the traumatic events in my life to illness surviving cancer and relationships and whatever, everything that’s under my skin that could be that “It” thing that people have that they want to watch. “Well I don’t know what she says, but I’ll watch her.” So whatever that “It” is, Roger wanted to experiment with it.
And I told him, “Roger, I can’t get fired. I’m working several jobs trying to become a resident, live here, be a student, I must graduate. I must do something with my life and I’m the only person that’s supporting me, so I can’t be fired. I really have to do well at this acting thing.” “I don’t know what that 'It' is or the acting thing, I’ve never been an actor,” but I knew that if I became a filmmaker or a cinematographer that’s more tangible and if I failed as an actor, I still probably would have remained in the film industry as a cinematographer or a director. I just love film. I loved photography as a little girl. That had to be my calling. I just loved photography, capturing an image, a moment in time capturing it on paper. That’s fascinating to me.
Capone: We were talking before about some of the characters you played early on. A lot of them are people that we just didn't ever get to see on the screen in a traditional Hollywood film.
PG: Well we're not interesting to Hollywood. We don’t make money for Hollywood. I have to write a book to show character and different diversity and I don’t depend on Hollywood. I love being in it. I love being a guest and getting small roles and doing the work with it. Even in my youth, would I have been in Julia Roberts’ position as the attraction of male America or Europe? I don’t know. Obviously I’m not there, so it wasn’t going to happen. However, just the fact that I get to be a part of it and like Stanislavsky said in the book "The Actor Prepares," "There’s no such thing as a small role." And Quentin Tarantino knew that and invested two years of his life to write JACKIE BROWN.
Capone: That was my example, even Jackie Brown is a character that we never see in a movie as a lead character, even today.
PG: There’s only one Quentin Tarantino!
Capone: Exactly.
PG: Okay, there’s no other person that would write from the female side of his brain. I owe him at least one child. Maybe two, with his chin, my tan, and a 'fro. I would raise them; send them back to them when they graduated from college. “You can do whatever you want with your children, I owe you them. You don’t have to do anything, but just show up for holidays.” But in honor of someone who would write that, and that’s from my womanhood to honor a man with a child. [laughs] I’m still a woman, not a robot, and I tried to humanize my characters and my journey and myself and be human to people and not be that distant star that lives in some far far away land that you only see shopping coming out of a supermarket. He did something that was just extraordinary that doesn’t happen to everyone and maybe back in the day with Elia Kazan or Mike Nichols or someone like that with Marlon Brando. But today I had my moment, and nothing can surpass what he did and with the body of work. I had Robert De Niro, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Bridget Fonda, and Robert Forster. And Sid Haig!
Capone: Yes, your old friend.
PG: Sid Haig, who played the judge. Sid Haig! But Quentin loved the films back then. It was the greatest honor.
Capone: Did you know he was writing that before he presented it to you?
PG: Yes, I bumped into him with [producer] Warrington Hudlin on the streets of Los Angeles and literally--I have a witness. He was standing out in the street talking to someone and then Warrington called him over to the car and said “Hi Quentin, Warrington Hudlin, this is Pam Grier,” and he went berserk. He said “I’m writing a movie for you. I know it’s cliché, but I am!” And I went “Oh my God.” I’m looking at him, going “This is PULP FICTION, RESEVOIR DOGS” He is iconic globally of his vision, and I said “That can’t be possible for a white man writing a lead film for a black woman. That’s preposterous! That’s insane!,” and it shows up in a manilla envelope with 44 cents due. Stamps all over it and it was from “QT” at the return address and I open it and there’s JACKIE BROWN.
And I read it and I called him and he’s like “I was about to pass. I thought you didn’t read it or you didn’t like it and you weren’t going to return my call, and I was going to go start something else.” And he says, “Well, do you like it?” I go, “Yes, it’s extraordinary! It’s three stories within one. It’s how you structure story with the surprises in the beginning, but you don’t know it,” and I said, “So what role do I play?” I thought it would be for Bridget’s role. [laughs] He says, “No, you’re Jackie Brown. Or maybe not, because you are that dense.” [laughs] But he said, “No, you are Jackie Brown. We are going to do it if you like it.” I said, “Yes, how could I not? I love it. I adore it. It’s fabulous.” Then he said, "Well get the book 'Rum Punch' blah, blah, blah." He talked so fast, and my head is spinning, and I’m going “Oh my God, he’s written this film for me.” How can you plan that? How can you even comprehend the magnitude of this gift?
Capone: And the film opened up a whole new generation to some of your older works, because younger people want to know “Who is this person that Quentin Tarantino is fixated on?”
PG: “Who is this woman that can handle fire arms, she jet skis, she drives a tractor, she flies planes, all of this stuff I do in my real life and they go “Oh my.” And then to see the box sets of those movies and JACKIE BROWN in Russian and all of the other languages all other the world 30 years later is just extraordinary. All I can do is be humble and take it in and take the magic and hope that I will get to work with the great directors. Someone was asking me regarding the end of my memoir where I talk about myself and the journey that it was, it’s a whole different turn and introspection of my life, like Tolstoy did with "War and Peace," the last part of the last act and how he changes the direction of your view point and gives this example. It’s towards the epilogue with my journey, how I talk about it and… [she pauses and gives a big sigh, as if taking a moment to compose herself].
It’s wonderful and it was my impetus not only to write it, to share my wisdom and my lessons learned, painful or not, with others to help them navigate through their lives, take short cuts. “Don’t do what I did! Pay attention!” I think we owe that to one another, so as in life we can keep it fresh and keep people curious and love this wonderful existence that we have. I had cancer and I was given an expiration date. It scared me to death, and days that my mom couldn’t go with me to the hospital with me or for the next surgery, I had to go by myself, because my boyfriend had abandoned me. He was afraid of me dying. He was afraid of illness. Do you know how many people will get sick, and they are abandoned by their spouses, mates, and friends? It’s the most frightening and loneliest… You say “If I could just go to the hospital, take the treatment, go home and sleep it off,” and no one is going to the supermarket for you or bringing you soup and your dogs are lying across your tummy to keep you warm. That’s humanity. That’s what I went through.
I’ve had people call me weeping “I just read…Oh my God…” “Okay, well come over and we will talk about it, okay?” Then there are other people that have had similar experiences who don’t talk about it, who are actors who haven’t been able to talk about what they have gone through and whether or not they are doing it or displaying emotion in their work. One of the journalists asked me and he thought that I didn’t crumble so much where I couldn’t function and some people--I’ve talked to women and after they had gone through one tragic event in their life, they couldn’t marry. They could barely function in life. I was fortunate.
Capone: And you have seemed to have taken the opportunity to thrive. It’s not about going back to where you were for you; you want to do more.
PG: Well tomorrow is not given. It’s a gift today, and I know what it’s like and I have friends who are surviving and I’ve lost friends and family, so for me I just said “I just want to be able to be around and enjoy what being on this planet means.”
Capone: Before I let you go, you mentioned LARRY CROWNE earlier. Who do you play in that film?
PG: I play Frances Taylor-Briegh, a professor at City College, where my colleague Julia Roberts… She and I are friends, and I support her character in her divorce and watch her and Tom Hanks fall in love.
Capone: He’s the next man? Is that how it works?
PG: Well, he is the next man, but he is “the” man. He is so charming, you will just want to bite him, he’s so lovely. I just want to eat him alive; well, Rita is eating him alive. He’s so wonderful, but yeah it’s a wonderful movie about a man who loses his job in these economic times and reinvents his life and meets a wonderful woman, and they bring life and love to one another. They are both going on this same path of despair and they find each other.
Capone: And he directed it too, right?
PG: Yeah, he’s directing it now.
Capone: It was a really nice surprise actually to see you in JUST WRIGHT. I didn’t know you were in that until I was sitting there watching it as Queen Latifah’s mother.
PG: Yes and Paula Patton’s adopted mom, and to see these two daughters emerge. I had my own perception of how the film should have been with the story and bringing about why the differences in daughters--how the one who was not my biological wanted to be more like me, and the one who was my biological daughter did not or could not be, and there were some really good psychological elements in that that could have been addressed, but you know it wasn’t my movie, so I was just there. [laughs]
Capone: If you see what Queen Latifah has accomplished with her production company, she is breaking probably as much ground as you did at one point.
PG: Oh yes, she has it in her heart. Her passion and her drive and family and support, and she has done an excellent job with that.
Capone: Okay, I’ve gotten way more time than I thought I would. Pam, thank you so much for talking for so long. This really meant a lot, and I’m glad you could do this. I can’t wait to finish the book, although apparently I’m going to cry when I get to the end, so now I’m worried.
PG: Oh, you are not going to cry! Not at all. You are just going to revel in an exhilarated moment of “Yes, this is a winner!" And hopefully you'll feel like you can make it through anything.
Capone: Excellent. I hope you're right. Have fun with the rest of your time in Chicago.
PG: Oh my God and book signings and interviews, and what is today? Today is Saturday, when everyone else is off.
[Both Laugh]
Capone: Well, you and I are working today.
PG: Yes we are.
Capone: Okay, thank you so much.
PG: Alright, you’re welcome. Bye now.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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