Gigi Levangie, BEEN THERE, MARRIED THAT
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[1:01]I'm here today with Gigi Lavange,
[1:03]who's the author of several novels,
[1:05]including The Starter Wife,
[1:06]which was adapted as an Emmy-winning miniseries
[1:09]starring Debra Messing and Man-Eater,
[1:11]which was adapted for a lifetime miniseries,
[1:13]starring Sarah Chalki.
[1:14]Her latest novel has been there, married that.
[1:17]She also wrote the screenplay for the movie Stepmom
[1:19]with Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon.
[1:21]Her articles have appeared in Vogue,
[1:23]Harper's Bizarre and Glamour,
[1:24]and she currently lives in Los Angeles.
[1:26]So welcome Gigi.
[1:27]Thanks for coming on, Mom.
[1:28]Don't have time to read books.
[1:30]Thank you so much for having me, Libby.
[1:32]Gigi's being so patient,
[1:34]because I just had about 15 minutes of technical difficulties
[1:36]when my computer decided to, you know,
[1:38]update for no apparent reasons.
[1:40]So anyway, thank you so much for being so chill.
[1:42]Thank you.
[1:43]Okay, been there married that, loved this book,
[1:46]laughed like the entire time I read it.
[1:48]What has been there married that about
[1:51]and what inspired you to write it?
[1:52]Okay, it's basically a funny take on a ruthless Hollywood divorce.
[1:58]It's about a Hollywood writer who one night finds herself
[2:02]locked out of her own home.
[2:04]And afterwards, she has to navigate a high-stakes divorce
[2:08]with her OCD producer, husband,
[2:11]with the help of her jailbird sister.
[2:13]And it's also, at the same time,
[2:15]she's dealing with Perry Menopause
[2:17]and a pre-Pbessan teenager.
[2:19]Basically, it's hormones and divorce all at once.
[2:23]Yay.
[2:23]Real life.
[2:25]Yes.
[2:26]Hashtag.
[2:26]This is 40s or something.
[2:28]Oh my gosh, yes.
[2:29]How autobiographical is this book, would you say?
[2:33]I would say it's semi-autobiographical
[2:36]because I do borrow from my own life.
[2:39]I try to use universal themes.
[2:42]They sort of come to me,
[2:44]widowhood, divorce, loss.
[2:47]Loss, but wait 20 minutes and becomes a comedy.
[2:51]So it's autobiographical,
[2:52]but I do change a lot of the,
[2:54]I really heighten it and I put a funny spin on it.
[3:00]I feel like even each sentence that you throw in
[3:04]is something funny.
[3:05]It's like your observational humor
[3:06]and just all the everyday stuff.
[3:09]I look at it and we were talking about this earlier
[3:13]when I started paging through my book.
[3:16]I thought, wow, where are all these one liners come from?
[3:19]Because you don't realize when you're writing something
[3:23]and you're in the flow and it's coming
[3:25]and there are no breaks, you know?
[3:27]What it's going to turn out like,
[3:29]but I really, in my life, like I said,
[3:33]tragedy plus 20 minutes is comedy.
[3:36]And that's what I like to write down.
[3:39]And that's what I like to entertain people.
[3:41]Well, you certainly do that.
[3:43]Thank you very much.
[3:45]One of the parts of the book that I found just so funny
[3:49]and like a total just escape, I don't know, just so funny
[3:52]was how you wrote about your characters
[3:56]lavish LA lifestyle and the jokes you made about it.
[3:59]And I'm just going to read a couple of parts
[4:00]because I thought they were really funny.
[4:02]You wrote, you're never alone living in a 10,000 square
[4:04]foot house.
[4:05]I know it's counterintuitive because staff.
[4:08]Staff is everywhere you want to be.
[4:09]You hire a team of gardeners, housekeepers,
[4:12]a house manager, unless you want to make your concrete
[4:14]tyrant a full-time job, a chef, a florist, a feng shui master.
[4:18]Every day there are people coming in and going out
[4:20]and half the time, you have no idea who they are.
[4:22]I binge watch down Navi recently and I can tell you
[4:25]the tears the sisters cry are real, the housekeepers and gardeners
[4:28]and assistants get to leave to go home.
[4:30]The rest of us are surrounded by invisible trip wires.
[4:33]Yes.
[4:34]I thought that was so funny.
[4:36]So obviously as we joked about before, you know, first world
[4:39]problems, right?
[4:39]Oh, beyond.
[4:40]Yeah.
[4:41]But still so funny.
[4:42]Did you get any pushback at all about making this relatable?
[4:46]Or, you know, there's so much I feel like the trio
[4:49]against the wealthy right now.
[4:50]Is it still funny?
[4:51]Is it still okay to talk about?
[4:53]Well, I love making fun of rich people, you know.
[4:57]I don't because I'm sort of an outsider or I was an outsider
[5:02]in that world.
[5:03]I could really observe from an outsider's point of view.
[5:06]And also my protagonists are always relatable.
[5:10]They're clumsy, they're vulnerable, they make mistakes,
[5:13]they don't fit in.
[5:15]They're kind of like me.
[5:17]And so that's my point of view.
[5:21]So that's how I come into it.
[5:22]And who doesn't love, like when I grew up watching Dallas or
[5:26]watching Dynasty.
[5:28]And we love watching rich people falter.
[5:32]And that's kind of what I do with my books.
[5:36]You know, I'm not putting them up on a pedestal, as you know.
[5:39]That's right.
[5:40]Yes, that's true.
[5:42]One more passage that was really funny about this house
[5:44]situation, which I feel like plays a big role in the book.
[5:47]I mean, you refer to this house a bazillion times and what goes on in
[5:50]the house is, you know, the dead zone, how there's no cell service.
[5:54]And it just becomes so funny.
[5:56]Anyway, you write every time Trevor left town, he'd be replaced
[5:59]by a crew working in the house, men in jeans and work boots,
[6:02]full belts, slung low around their billowing waste.
[6:04]There was always something broken in a house this size,
[6:07]usually more than one thing, usually many things.
[6:09]That light, this faucet, that chair, this psyche.
[6:12]Meanwhile, whatever was broken was guaranteed to cost as much as a kia.
[6:15]What's that dude working on?
[6:16]Finn said, Finn's the sister of the protagonist.
[6:18]Finn said, and she sniffed and narrowed her cat eyes at a man
[6:21]traipsing through the kitchen with paper booties covering his work boots.
[6:25]No idea.
[6:25]I said, light fixtures.
[6:27]And I think a deck chair is broken.
[6:28]Huh, she said.
[6:30]And then another worker was cutting through the kitchen from the deck.
[6:32]Cat felt toolbox booties, I guess.
[6:34]Electration?
[6:37]I don't know.
[6:37]I just like really just tickled me.
[6:39]I thought this was just so funny.
[6:40]What do you get out of like poking fun at this whole way of life?
[6:44]Does it just amuse you?
[6:45]Do you laugh at it too?
[6:46]Does it just like tell me about what you get from this?
[6:49]Well, I get a lot of pleasure from exposing the downside of living in that way.
[6:58]Really, my whole, I really want to downsize everything in my life.
[7:03]I want to my closet, you know, all that stuff.
[7:06]And I think there's so much comedy in these worlds that people don't really see
[7:13]on a day-to-day basis, you know.
[7:15]I mean, what is it like to have people in your house all the time?
[7:18]If you live like I used to know one bedroom apartment, you don't have staff.
[7:25]And people think that's well, it would be great to have a ton of people taking care of you.
[7:31]It kind of gets old.
[7:32]And I don't have that anymore.
[7:35]But I do think I remember I think it's funny and, you know, hearing the stories about people
[7:40]dealing with all the different personalities, like these movie stars and everything kind
[7:47]of at the beck and call of the people who work for them, you know, I think that's really funny.
[7:53]But as a writer, I like my solitude.
[7:55]I like simplicity.
[7:57]I like structure.
[7:58]And so that's just not the world for me.
[8:02]But I thought I just find a lot of comedy to be mind there.
[8:06]I mean, I don't want to make fun of poor people.
[8:08]You know?
[8:09]There's still...
[8:10]Where's the fun in that?
[8:12]I don't, you know, so there you have it.
[8:16]You also joke a lot in this book about the consequence of having highly overprivileged
[8:22]kids in this environment.
[8:24]You make some joke about the protagonist Agnes, as her friend Liz, she says,
[8:27]do you know any kids who do chores?
[8:29]Yes, Liz said, they're east of the 405, which is funny.
[8:32]We're sitting here in LA doing this interview.
[8:34]And it's a geography joke, really.
[8:36]But by saying like, yeah, they're kids who do chores, but we don't know any of them.
[8:39]Yes, no, they don't live west of the four of us.
[8:43]I was told once by a psychologist that there's neglect, you know, on both sides of the spectrum,
[8:50]if there's too much money, parents aren't as invested as invested in their children,
[8:56]but they throw money at the problems, and we see that, right, all the time.
[8:59]And then the other side of the spectrum, people are working two or three jobs.
[9:04]They can't keep tabs on their kids, and that's difficult as well.
[9:09]So raising kids with money, I really think you have to try to keep things as normal as possible,
[9:17]or else your kids are going to be food someday when the revolution comes.
[9:23]I have that line before that way.
[9:26]I might be misquoting myself, but there are a lot of lines like that.
[9:31]But I think it's like with anything you have to be grounded in best time in your kids,
[9:37]not so much money as we're seeing with the college buying their way into college.
[9:43]That catastrophe, it's just too easy to do things the easy way, and it's never the right way.
[9:50]Very true.
[9:53]There's another section.
[9:54]And I'm sorry, I keep being like this section so funny.
[9:56]I love it.
[9:56]This section so funny, so sorry to be like boom, boom, boom, but...
[10:00]The section where Agnes is researching the symptoms of parry menopause was so I just read this out the entire last night
[10:06]Oh my it's so funny. I mean this that the other thing and you're like, how can you get
[10:11]You said something like reduce stress?
[10:14]It's just funny. It's like everybody every problem everybody has the advice is always to reduce stress. It's like yeah
[10:21]And how do you do that right like if that's so easy? I wouldn't have these other for I don't know exactly like that's like easier
[10:27]Said than done sort of that the funny is part of that whole thing is that the mom has a daughter who's now going into puberty
[10:34]As she is going through parry menopause right has to deal with her being like mom. I have this hair. Do you want to see it?
[10:39]And she's like oh no, yes her first pubic. Oh my gosh, so and you were certain you said something funny
[10:44]I can't remember exactly what something like you know for the love of God like why why would why would God put these things at the same time in life
[10:51]That the girl and the mom would go through these same time just talk to me a little about that
[10:56]Well first on for those of you who aren't in parry menopause or are menopausal yet
[11:02]Congratulations
[11:05]Good for you
[11:07]It is when I was going through it and I'm
[11:10]in my mid 50s now it was and I was going through a divorce at the same time
[11:16]And it was like a rollercoaster ride but to hell
[11:22]You know insomnia
[11:24]Night sweats, but having the hot flashes
[11:29]You know when you're meeting with your attorney or whatever
[11:33]Embarrassing but also there's something great about
[11:38]The fact that we are just freaking animals that we're not special that this is the cycle of life
[11:46]And this is what we're supposed to experience if we are lucky enough to make it pass a certain age
[11:52]So I'm very grateful just to be here. So if I have to if every single
[11:58]bit of me has to dry up
[12:03]Like dust and blow away. I'm okay with that because I can still function
[12:10]It's really the sound so corny it's really gift but as we know hormones are everything and I was lucky
[12:17]I got through it without murdering anyone that I
[12:21]That I know of right so there you go
[12:26]You talked a lot in this book about the book industry and it was so nice to have a character
[12:31]Who's a writer? I mean I feel like I can't believe more people don't end up doing that in their books
[12:35]But you have all these funny references to book readings at book soup and having to leave yesterday because the traffic and how
[12:41]The reading culture in LA is is funny and that there's a book group and people are like
[12:47]No, I didn't read the book reading is depressing
[12:49]I know these funny things. What is it like? What is book culture like in LA?
[12:54]Well, there are definitely book clubs and I've tried a couple of them
[12:58]So there are definitely avid readers in LA
[13:02]But I think they're more so than in New York. There are people who
[13:06]Read the reviews maybe a paragraph of the reviews
[13:12]They kind of know the book, you know
[13:15]Look we're all on our and it's gotten worse because we're all on our phones at night when we should be reading books to go to sleep
[13:23]We're on our phones scrolling through Instagram
[13:26]Commenting in our heads about somebody's plastic surgery, you know, that sort of thing
[13:32]So we're not we're probably not reading as much as our brains would like
[13:37]But I just kind of I love poking fun in LA. I'm a native. I grew up in Hollywood
[13:42]I went to Hollywood high UCLA
[13:45]LA to me is like the most fun
[13:48]To make fun of so of course that goes into books and I used to sign books like I
[13:54]You know, I know you'll never read this but thank you for buying
[13:59]My book signing is out
[14:01]Hopefully this book will be read and people will enjoy it. We'll see
[14:08]You also poke fun again. Let me talk about the 50 things you poke fun at and I know be
[14:13]optioning of
[14:15]material and you are in the throes of it all you've had several things made starter wife and many there and how
[14:22]So I can read this paragraph, but I feel like I've been reading half of this
[14:26]Conversation, but it's just so funny. I just love reading you read
[14:30]Okay
[14:32]So there's this one scene and this might be my last quote, but probably won't be there's this one scene where the makeup artist
[14:37]Tells Agnes that she must feel so cool for getting her book optioned and you write
[14:41]I didn't tell her
[14:42]Option in Hollywood is like with Rango for don't quit your day job my project had a point
[14:48]1% chance of getting made option means a Hollywood reporter or variety announcement that you paid more to your
[14:54]Publicist to run then you deposited in your bank account at the end of the day. There's night
[15:00]An option costs you more than no option a better option not option. Okay. I'm done a matter of options
[15:08]Okay, so but you've got two things made and I'm not sure about this yet has this been optioned
[15:13]This was optioned. Yes, it was optioned. So how how do projects cross the finish line? And kind of yours
[15:20]Oh, it's so difficult first of all
[15:22]I started writing movies. I wrote a screenplay called stepmom
[15:27]Wasn't my first screenplay had written several been optioned at all
[15:30]But I wrote a movie called stepmom a screenplay called stepmom
[15:33]And that was made but off of that experience so sad and so good. Oh my god. One of my favorites. Thank you. Julie Roberts
[15:41]Played me
[15:43]Julia Roberts was the stepmom the ideal stepmom and Susan Sarandon and Ed Harris who I when I met Ed Harris
[15:50]I couldn't even look them in the eye
[15:52]Just a temple of testosterone
[15:54]So off of that though I I really wanted to work by myself
[15:59]I started reading I started writing books and how does I had agents
[16:06]And I was lucky enough to have an agent for my first book and that was actually
[16:10]Rescue me was made into a screenplay
[16:13]We had Carl Franklin attached to direct the movie
[16:17]Along with his wife Jesse to produce and that never got made that was my first book
[16:22]I was that 20 years ago who knows everything was 20 years ago
[16:27]If it's not 30 years ago is 20 years ago and
[16:31]So everything takes much longer than you think if you have an agent they send out your book and
[16:40]You know maybe somebody wants to option it
[16:43]I think with me it could be a little bit harder because some of my books have sort of a Hollywood theme and
[16:49]One season that's popular the next season. It's not blah, blah, blah, but all my books except for one have been options
[16:59]And I feel very lucky about that, but it takes sometimes years
[17:04]For it to go any further than that. I have screenplays all over the place people have written
[17:09]for my books and they're great and didn't get made, you know queen takes king and
[17:16]Chirkus wrote a screenplay that was so good and didn't get made, you know, you just never know
[17:22]I'm always on the next project. I have three screenplays right now
[17:26]two of which are options in development and
[17:30]You know, I will probably wait years for them to get made
[17:34]So I write the next screenplay
[17:36]Or I'm writing the next book. I'm like a shark. That's what I do. A shark with a computer
[17:44]With a poseable thumbs and fingers
[17:47]Too funny
[17:49]My gosh, I know it's endless
[17:53]The heart of the story though is about this divorce. Yes, and
[17:58]The Agnes the protagonist in this book is very unexpectedly cast out of her home
[18:05]As to navigate what comes next being sort of profoundly disadvantaged because the man has all this like power and
[18:13]His lawyer is like, you know, everybody's freaking out about his lawyer and just you know
[18:18]All the the cards are stacked against this woman in the book and yet
[18:22]She has to fight for her daughter, which means more to her than anything which as someone who's been divorced I understand
[18:29]That the most important thing and the thing well
[18:31]You're willing to give almost anything up for is more time with the kids period, right? So
[18:37]Agnes's divorce lawyer is also divorced and tells her how
[18:43]You know, she waited like Agnes is in this position of pain and and is trying to give her advice and says well
[18:48]You know, I waited till my kids went to college
[18:50]So I didn't have to deal with this, but then I wasn't really myself the whole time they were growing up
[18:55]So there's a trade-off this whole waiting on for the kids versus leaving but risking time with the kids like what do you think
[19:03]I'm pulling off the band-aid and just going for it every divorce is
[19:08]Special like a snowflake
[19:12]That's a nice way to say that
[19:14]So I'm kind of known as the divorce whisper in my neighborhood
[19:18]People will come to me and you know because of the starter wife and
[19:22]Etcetera in my own life and they they come to me and they ask me
[19:26]Should I divorce? How do I do it? What are the steps and you really have to weigh
[19:32]Everybody has to weigh their options and really look at their lives if you're just bored
[19:37]Maybe that's not the answer, you know
[19:41]To get divorced if it's something if there's abuse drug abuse alcohol abuse
[19:47]verbal
[19:49]ongoing verbal abuse and physical abuse obviously do whatever you can to get out
[19:54]But I don't think for a while. I thought the right answer was not to divorce. I wrote
[20:00]something for Huffington Post that actual marriage counselors used seven reasons not to get a divorce.
[20:06]And I wrote this after I was divorced because I could see how hard it was on the kids whose parents
[20:14]were divorced and, you know, going back and forth between houses and all that stuff that's even
[20:21]as adults we would find difficult. But you yourself know what you need to do if you're a grown
[20:26]woman. You know what you need to do for yourself and your kids. You have to like really ask
[20:33]yourself those questions and plan accordingly. Nobody else is going to have the answer for you.
[20:39]It's just something you have to go through one way or the other. I mean some people stay together
[20:44]and then, you know, 20 years later they're happy and fulfilled. I did see that for myself. You
[20:52]didn't see that for yourself and your kids and my kids. So I made that choice. And sometimes
[20:58]it's not even really clear, but you have to make the best with what you've got. Oh,
[21:03]adulting. It's so hard. Isn't it? It's really so hard. Yes. And then you're making if you have
[21:09]kids, you're making that choice for your children. It's terrible. Yeah. I want to go back to bed.
[21:15]How did you first even get into writing the screenplays that you were writing? Were you someone
[21:24]who like always had a notebook as a kid or always read? Oh my god, I did have a notebook as a kid.
[21:29]That's interesting. I know you have been all that stuff. Diaries, notebooks, because I read,
[21:33]I loved Harry the Spy. So I would write my notebook. I would observe, observe, observe, observe.
[21:41]And that's when, you know, kids had notebooks instead of pads, right? Yeah. So that was the start.
[21:47]And it was always a huge reader. I grew up in L.A. in the L.A. basin when it was completely smoggy,
[21:54]terrible air quality. And I was allergic to smog. So I had to stay inside. So my mother was a
[22:01]principal. A teacher and principal. My father was a stay-at-home dad who used to be in the
[22:07]staff sergeant in the Air Force. He stayed home and raised four daughters. We're all 18 months apart.
[22:13]Oh my gosh. So basically, if we got in a fight at school, he'd say, who got the last punch?
[22:20]Hilarious. So I was raised like a little boy. But reading was my first love, absolute first love,
[22:27]besides my dog Snoopy, a beagle mix. And off of that, I started working for Think of the Night.
[22:35]I was an intern on Alan Thicks Show. And I thought I could write some sketches. And I did.
[22:42]And they, they were put on air when I was still in college. So I got a little taste of what
[22:48]could happen. And I was always a pretty good right. I was not good at math, but I was always a
[22:52]pretty good writer. I'd surprised my English teachers. You know, I was like with all the gifted kids.
[22:58]And they were always, I was 10 years old in seventh grade. I'd skip grades. But I was only good
[23:04]writing and reading. That was it. It ended right there. So it was always inside of me. And then
[23:10]I saw when I was working for Fred Silverman after college who had been head of all three networks.
[23:18]And now he was head of me. That was it. That's all I had. And we managed to get seven shows on the air.
[23:25]But I saw him much. This is so me. I saw him much. The writers were getting paid. The TV writers.
[23:32]And I thought, can I swear or no? I thought I can write just as, let's insert bad word,
[23:39]but just as badly as they can. Like I can write this crap and get paid this much.
[23:45]I didn't think I can write just as well. I can write this. This is terrible.
[23:51]And so I started writing screenplays. And I took classes and just getting up at five o'clock in
[23:57]the morning and writing before I went to work in my old Ford Falcon. And eventually I had
[24:03]screenplays options. And then like I said, stepmom was made. And to my husband, I call my husband,
[24:09]it's much nicer. My husband's credit, he always believed in me that I could get a movie made.
[24:17]And he gave me the time, the gift of time. So I was able to stay home and write books.
[24:24]I could quit my job after eight years and just write. So I will, I'm so grateful for that.
[24:31]And of course in addition to our beautiful boys were kind of adults now.
[24:38]So that's it was always just in me. And it's my solace. And it's my tyrant. Like Winston Churchill
[24:46]said about writing. He said, started out as my mistress and became my tyrant. Basically I
[24:50]paraphrasing Winston Churchill because for so similar. But that's what I did. You know, it comes,
[25:00]you can't give it up. If you are compelled and you, you must follow through because you will be
[25:06]very unhappy if you do not. Right, true. Yes. So what are you working on now? Okay. Well, like I said,
[25:12]while I'm working on another screenplay, now I go back and forth between books and screenplays.
[25:18]I like that because screenplays are mostly dialogue, you know, and you have to work within
[25:24]a paradigm. And then novels, you can kind of let loose more. So I like to toggle back and forth
[25:32]between screenplays and maybe someday I'll do a play. But my next book, I'm kind of,
[25:40]I'm looking to see what that is. But I think it's somewhere in, I always believe that my sisters
[25:46]witches, like they could predict things that I didn't see coming. And I've been able to do
[25:52]that sort of thing myself. And sometimes bad things. So there's something in that arena. And I'm
[26:01]just finding out about LA and their, their covenants. It's really interesting. There's a whole
[26:06]world out there. It's not just yoga people. I mean, it's a lot of that too. So it says the woman
[26:14]drinking alkaline balance water. Exactly. Exactly. I need that. Do you have any advice to aspiring
[26:24]screenwriters or novelists? Yes. Learn everything you can and keep learning and just write five days
[26:33]a week, write five days a week, take a half an hour, even 20 minutes. And just that, just sitting down
[26:40]with no distraction, even for that short period of time, you will, at the end of the year,
[26:48]at the end of six months, you will come up with something that is complete. It's a first draft,
[26:53]but it's still complete. I mean, Stephen King said, write a thousand words a day, he writes
[26:59]two thousand words. So that's what I do with the first draft, novel. And honestly, the slower you
[27:05]go, the faster you get there. It's just methodical. There's no magic in it. The magic comes from
[27:13]doing. Does that make sense? Totally. Or am I just hot? I like when you said the slower you go,
[27:18]the faster you get there. That's my theme. I like that. I don't put that on some pillows or
[27:23]maybe some journals. I feel like I came, I came up with that a long time ago because I
[27:29]was so embarrassing, but in junior high, I was the slowest runner in my entire PE class
[27:35]in public school. Can you imagine? Meanwhile, my sister, 18 months older, fastest.
[27:42]But so I relate to turtles, tortoises, to snails, the slower you go, the faster you get there,
[27:48]just every day's new opportunity. Just keep moving. I like that. Thank you. Well, thank you so much
[27:56]for coming on mom's no time to read books and sharing your hilarious story. I'm so honored.
[28:01]Nary that. Thank you. Thank you. You've been listening to moms don't have time to read books
[28:06]with Zibi Owens. Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com to get more updates
[28:12]about episodes like these and also lots of live events. Thanks so much to Claire Maiser and Eric
[28:18]of Surullo and their amazing podcast, a thing or two, which you should definitely check out.
[28:23]You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time to read books. Thanks so much to
[28:28]Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morningmoon Productions
[28:33]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music. Thanks for listening. You could always
[28:37]email me at zibiadzibiowens.com.