Nancy Balbirer, ALMOST ROMANCE: A Memoir
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[0:40]Nancy Ballbier is the author of Almost Romance and Memoir.
[0:44]Nancy wrote and performed the critically acclaimed solo show I slept with Jack Kerouac,
[0:50]re-occurred on both remote control and sign felt,
[0:53]and annually stars as a rotating bevy of flisies in Charles Bush's cult classic
[0:58]Times Square Angel.
[0:59]She is the author of The Memoirs, Take Your Shirt Off and Cry,
[1:02]and Amarid and Dog Ears.
[1:04]She lives in Los Angeles with her family.
[1:06]Well, go, Nancy.
[1:07]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books
[1:10]to discuss Almost Romance and Memoir.
[1:15]Thank you for having me.
[1:16]It's great to be here and great to meet you, Sivi.
[1:19]It's great to meet you, too.
[1:21]OK, tell listeners what your memoir is about.
[1:24]OK.
[1:25]Almost Romance is a memoir which tells the story of the 32 year
[1:31]Almost Romance.
[1:33]I shared with one of my dearest friends
[1:36]and how we were able to turn it into a real romance
[1:40]with the help of the Bryson-Frankie Writers Room
[1:43]and the denizens of a fabled but cursed Manhattan
[1:47]Department building.
[1:50]It's a real life romantic comedy.
[1:52]Love it.
[1:53]So back up and I want you to talk about how you even got here
[1:57]because you're acting and all that career started early.
[2:00]And I said, Instagram, you're a little cliff,
[2:02]which is so funny if you like kissing.
[2:04]Anyway, so go back and talk about how you got into where
[2:08]did you grow up, how did you get into acting and writing?
[2:11]And just like take me from the beginning
[2:13]because The Memoir, of course, is like the towards the second
[2:16]half more.
[2:17]Well, it actually, yes, but it does traverse 32 years.
[2:21]I do get a little hit of the acting career as well
[2:25]because that's how how he, my romantic hero and I met.
[2:29]We met at NYU Tisch from the school.
[2:32]I grew up in a small town in Connecticut
[2:35]and as born in New York, grew up in a small town in Connecticut
[2:38]and I acted from the time of his child as a child performer
[2:43]and went at 17 back into New York to go to NYU,
[2:49]which is where I'm, as I said, I met Howie.
[2:53]And I fully, I was an actress and I did television.
[2:59]I did stage, did a little film.
[3:02]And what happened was, and I thought that this was it.
[3:07]I mean, this was my career.
[3:09]It was my love.
[3:10]It was my passion.
[3:11]I couldn't imagine doing anything else.
[3:13]And then one day I went into an audition for a project
[3:18]called the Untitled Luke Perry Project.
[3:22]And for some reason, despite the title,
[3:25]I was stunned to see Luke Perry sitting behind the audition
[3:28]table that like flash dancing, audition table.
[3:33]And this kind of like that I've been with with very other so
[3:36]much even more starry people in other rooms.
[3:41]This rattled me because I don't know.
[3:43]I just had an off day and the feedback that my manager
[3:47]or agent gave me at the time was that I had bored,
[3:51]Luke Perry.
[3:53]This made her drop me.
[3:55]Yes.
[3:56]And I was 31 years old or something like that, knocking around
[4:02]Hollywood and newly married in my first marriage.
[4:07]And I did not know what I was going to do.
[4:09]And at that time, there was no cute things like YouTube or,
[4:12]you know, Instagram where you could just put yourself out
[4:14]there as the kids do now.
[4:17]So the only thing that you could do to procure other
[4:20]representation was to get into a show.
[4:24]So I had to write myself a show, which was called,
[4:28]I slept with Jack Kerouac, which is about a jazz musician.
[4:32]This was a true story.
[4:33]A jazz musician.
[4:34]I had dated and fallen madly in love with and who dumped me
[4:39]because he said he was the reincarnation of Jack Kerouac
[4:41]and as such couldn't be in a committed relationship.
[4:44]I know.
[4:45]I have a talent for getting hurt.
[4:48]Pretentious dudes.
[4:49]Anyway, so I wrote this play and it was true.
[4:53]It was a solo show and I performed it.
[4:56]And what happened in the process was it was a success.
[5:00]But I fell in love surprisingly, at least to me with writing.
[5:06]And it began my writing career.
[5:09]And as my writing career started to cut a more full sum,
[5:14]I had less and less interest in the acting part.
[5:19]When I when I got pregnant with my daughter,
[5:22]I realized because I had all this time to kind of just reflect.
[5:27]And at that time, I was just doing voice over work
[5:29]because I was heavily pregnant.
[5:31]I realized that the truth of it was that my favorite,
[5:34]when I got very, very honest and quiet with myself,
[5:37]that my favorite part of acting was the storytelling part,
[5:41]was being a part of the story.
[5:43]And certainly the connection with the audience.
[5:47]And after that, I just couldn't imagine going back to acting,
[5:54]but not in the way that I had been doing it.
[5:57]You know, acting the day to day of being an actress is not
[6:00]actually acting.
[6:01]You're, you know, going around from audition to audition
[6:04]saying pick me, like me, you know,
[6:08]whereas writing, even if you don't have a publishing contract,
[6:11]you can be writing, you can be, you know,
[6:13]you can be trying to achieve that.
[6:16]And just really when I started doing it,
[6:19]it was just so clearly the right fit, the right relationship
[6:23]for me, my relationship to that career, you know,
[6:27]so I think a lot of the themes in my life
[6:29]are about finding the right fit for myself.
[6:32]And sometimes that doesn't happen in the 30 under 30 category.
[6:36]You know, so, yes, it's hard because when you're under 30,
[6:40]you're still changing.
[6:41]So whatever fits, right, it's like, it might not continue to fit
[6:45]if you're still one of yourself.
[6:47]Yes.
[6:47]And then there's also the attendant pressure that comes with that.
[6:51]It's like, oh, well, I've set myself up for this thing.
[6:54]I must stay in this thing, you know,
[6:57]if you achieve something in it, you know,
[7:00]it's part of our culture a little bit.
[7:03]Americans really want you to have an idea of who you are
[7:08]and you stick with that thing, you know,
[7:10]like you go to one college and you have to know what your major is.
[7:14]And it's all very linear.
[7:16]And I just don't know that it's always linear for everybody.
[7:20]Definitely wasn't linear for me.
[7:22]No, it wasn't.
[7:24]You're a perfect example.
[7:26]Linear is overrated.
[7:27]Who needs that?
[7:29]It's, no, I believe in certain times.
[7:31]You're cute, it is.
[7:32]Yeah, why not?
[7:34]What's that song?
[7:35]Like God bless the winding road that let me straight to you.
[7:37]Whatever can apply to the long and winding road.
[7:41]Beels.
[7:41]Yeah, that too.
[7:42]Yes, of course.
[7:44]Okay, so tell me then about your first two books,
[7:47]which looks so good.
[7:48]And now I have to go back and read this.
[7:50]My first book, Take Your Short-Off and Cry,
[7:52]is actually a chronicle, a memoir chronicle of my acting career.
[7:59]And what I learned being in the blistering trenches of show
[8:06]business as a near fame performer,
[8:11]but not a famous performer.
[8:13]And really, it's also very much a deep dive and exploration
[8:18]of what it is to be a woman actor.
[8:21]And this is years before, it was very long guard.
[8:26]The time is pre me to pre Harvey Weinstein revelations.
[8:31]I pray all of that.
[8:33]But I certainly had some stories in there.
[8:37]And again, my sort of take on things is humor,
[8:43]largely, but it's not all humor.
[8:46]It's not like I'm a stand up.
[8:47]So it's just all that kind of funny all the time stuff.
[8:52]It's got some gravitas to it.
[8:54]So that's what that book's about.
[8:56]And then a marriage and dog yours is a memoir of the year
[9:03]I tried to save my dog and my first marriage.
[9:08]And it goes from one independent stay to the next.
[9:12]My dog was dying, but I didn't know it at the time.
[9:16]And my marriage was dying.
[9:18]And I also didn't know that at the time.
[9:21]And they were very deeply intertwined,
[9:23]because we'd gotten the dog as a sort of marital wedding
[9:28]gift to each other.
[9:30]So many couples do that when they get married
[9:32]to not necessarily ready for the baby yet,
[9:34]but let's do something that needs our taking care of.
[9:37]And so that's what that's about.
[9:42]And it's an exploration of loss and grief,
[9:47]but most significantly it's about surrender
[9:50]and how I'd always believe that surrender was giving up.
[9:54]You know, when there is letting go,
[9:57]but there is a great deal of wisdom.
[10:00]and strengths in doing so.
[10:02]And I had to go through a lot to learn that.
[10:06]And yeah, so that's what that looks like.
[10:10]And then for this memoir, when did you know
[10:12]that you had to write about this?
[10:13]Or did you kind of know in the back of your head
[10:15]starting at the very first meeting that you write
[10:17]in the scene where you're like,
[10:19]but I feel that way too.
[10:21]So when did you know it was a book?
[10:24]I had an inkling when we got married.
[10:27]New York Times did one of their vows columns
[10:32]and that comes out in style section on Sundays.
[10:35]And we got this super intense response to it
[10:41]from people we knew, but also from people that we didn't.
[10:45]And in fact, the first time I ever met Jane Fonda
[10:49]was at the season two,
[10:52]Grace and Frankie Premier Party.
[10:55]And when my husband introduced me to her,
[10:57]she said, oh my God, I just read the vows column.
[11:02]And she was in one hand, she was holding her
[11:04]cut on to Tullier dog.
[11:06]And in the other, a rolled up copy of the vows.
[11:10]And she was like, I had to bring it to Lily
[11:12]because it made me cry.
[11:14]I was like, what?
[11:17]This is the first thing that you're saying when I meet,
[11:19]I mean, it was insane.
[11:20]So I thought, wow, you know,
[11:24]people kept saying, well, I really love the story.
[11:26]And I thought it's so nice,
[11:28]but it's so not the whole story
[11:30]because how could you get the whole story into a column?
[11:33]There's all this, the nuance and the back and forth of it all.
[11:36]So cut to a couple of years later,
[11:40]emergent dog years had just come out
[11:42]and Carmen Johnson, my editor.
[11:44]And I were sitting down to lunch at the Breslin bar
[11:49]and over some very delicious Caesar salads
[11:52]because they are truly sublime there.
[11:54]She said, what do you wanna do next?
[11:56]And I said, well, I was thinking that,
[12:00]remember the story in that vows column.
[12:02]And she said, yeah, and I said,
[12:04]I think I can make for a very interesting memoir
[12:07]because it's actually a super happy story,
[12:12]but there's a lot of back and forth in it
[12:14]and certainly painful times,
[12:16]but it's by and large a very uplifting, hopeful, joyous story
[12:22]and not typical romantic comedy
[12:25]because it deals with people who are pushing 50
[12:28]or have just crossed over the line 50.
[12:31]You know, so she said, listen, I love that story,
[12:35]but what makes it a book and not a column?
[12:38]And so totally extemporaneously
[12:40]because she asked me that question
[12:42]and I had to answer it.
[12:44]I had to answer it for myself as well.
[12:46]And right there in the Breslin,
[12:48]I just was able to pitch it out to her.
[12:52]I saw it completely.
[12:53]I saw that it was in three parts.
[12:55]I saw that it started with this email
[12:58]that I wrote to him and that that would be the prelude.
[13:02]I knew exactly what the first line would be
[13:05]sitting in the Russian Samivar.
[13:08]It was just so clear to me and at the end of it,
[13:10]she said, yeah, it's a book.
[13:12]And then of course I had to go write it.
[13:15]So that's all other thing.
[13:18]But that's how I knew.
[13:21]And as we talked about before,
[13:23]Carmen Johnson is also my editor at Little A for my memoir
[13:27]and I am just over the moon,
[13:29]like just could not say enough nice things about her.
[13:31]She's so great.
[13:32]She is so wonderful.
[13:33]And like the whole process having been through it
[13:37]with a different company and going through now two books
[13:41]with Little A, it is night day.
[13:45]And the way they do things, the model of it all,
[13:48]it is you are so much more empowered
[13:51]and you just I'm really happy for you
[13:54]because they're fantastic, especially Carmen.
[13:58]Amazing.
[13:59]Okay, so then you went and wrote it.
[14:01]So tell me what was that like?
[14:03]Well, the book was mostly written
[14:09]during the very darkest days of the pandemic,
[14:15]the beginning of the lockdown.
[14:17]And writing is always navigating the challenges
[14:21]of truly if you're a mom and a wife
[14:25]and you've just got other things going on,
[14:28]it's always hard to navigate all the things that you have,
[14:31]all the things you're juggling.
[14:33]And then when you add into that mix,
[14:36]the fact that you're writing space is now being taken over
[14:39]by Zoom High School and by husband's Zoom writer's room
[14:45]and comedy writers are loud people.
[14:47]So, and then the dog barking at the extra Amazon deliveries,
[14:54]it made for a soup that was really, really thick
[15:00]and not the easiest.
[15:03]And then you compound all of that with the ADD of it all,
[15:09]the, you know, what's gonna happen today
[15:12]and just being completely freaked out
[15:15]and afraid about, you know, all of the things
[15:19]that were going on, the civil unrest, the pandemic,
[15:22]the political unrest, all of it,
[15:26]made for something that was really hard to do.
[15:30]But when I finally was able to actually bring my attention
[15:37]to this time that I'm writing about,
[15:40]the present day, the time that's the present day in the book.
[15:44]And I was able to be once again with Howie
[15:48]in that glorious moment when we realized,
[15:51]oh my God, it's always been you.
[15:54]Or when I was able to swim in the pool of the past
[15:58]with my extraordinary neighbors at London Terrace Gardens
[16:03]and be with them again, or my delightful daughter,
[16:06]Google Bear, when she was the adorable eight,
[16:10]nine-year-old that she is in the story,
[16:13]I found that it was such a tremendous escape for me
[16:18]to be able to be there that it became this joy
[16:23]to write it, to tell this story to other people
[16:27]who might need hope or an escape.
[16:31]Yes, anything that can get you through all of that is...
[16:35]Yes, I love that you just described it as a thick soup
[16:39]to get through, that's like, I love that visual.
[16:42]Yeah, because I think I've called it like a slog.
[16:45]I'm more like in like a tough,
[16:47]butter competition, you know, where you're on your,
[16:50]like you're going through sludge,
[16:52]but like, yes, a nice bowl of soup,
[16:53]that sounds much better, so I'm gonna go through that.
[16:55]Well, there's so many ingredients
[16:57]and it's like everything's been dumped into it.
[16:59]It's like how to parse this.
[17:01]And what is the thing that's making it difficult?
[17:04]I mean, I'd have these Zoom therapy sessions
[17:07]and, you know, you can go in through if I shrink,
[17:09]like, what am I doing?
[17:11]You know, I have to concentrate, I have to focus.
[17:15]And so I was, you know, I had to get a delay,
[17:18]I had to get an extension.
[17:19]But, you know, the slowdown of that also,
[17:22]the slowdown of life and the slowdown,
[17:25]I think really gave me something that I actually needed
[17:29]in my creative process.
[17:31]I think what comes also from acting for me
[17:34]is this need to be liked and to be a good girl
[17:39]and get everything right.
[17:40]And sometimes that doesn't necessarily serve your work
[17:45]or the project.
[17:47]You know, I needed to take a little bit more time
[17:50]and that was okay, actually.
[17:52]It was fine.
[17:54]That's good.
[17:55]So this feels very cinematic.
[17:58]Nancy Meyers' movie-esque.
[18:00]Is there news of an adaptation yet?
[18:02]Are you working on that?
[18:03]Or we are working on that?
[18:06]And I say, we, because this is a project
[18:10]that my husband and I are very excited to adapt together.
[18:15]We've already started that process.
[18:17]So we will see, there was this new newsletter
[18:21]that's part of the Enchler and it's called The Optionist.
[18:25]And it was just selected for that just a couple of days
[18:29]before it was published.
[18:30]It just came out two days ago.
[18:32]And a couple of days before that, he selected it
[18:35]as a book that he said, he said,
[18:39]Meryl, call your agents.
[18:41]LAUGHTER
[18:43]I love it.
[18:46]It's really so great.
[18:48]That's awesome.
[18:49]Well, I have to start following that, The Optionist.
[18:51]Oh, yeah, it's brand new and it's super cool.
[18:55]Oh, OK, done.
[18:56]Yeah, I'm always interested in what's going on.
[18:59]I feel like some, not that I'm always the best judge,
[19:01]but I don't know.
[19:02]Some books, I'm just like, I have to be with this.
[19:04]These characters again in another way.
[19:06]They're just calling out for more airtime or brain time
[19:10]or whatever it is.
[19:11]Yet, I have been hearing that from a lot of readers
[19:14]damning me that, saying that they just
[19:20]can't seem to let go of these people.
[19:23]It's such an extraordinary feeling.
[19:24]Because I have this thing where I feel
[19:28]I always the reader is very prepping for me.
[19:31]Again, that might come from the theater,
[19:33]but there isn't a word in anything I write,
[19:36]but especially this book that hasn't been read aloud
[19:40]by me, like everything is read aloud,
[19:43]because I want the reader to feel like we're together.
[19:46]And I'm more friends, and I'm telling you this story
[19:51]that you're kind of not going to believe, but here it is.
[19:55]Well, that's the best way to experience it.
[19:57]I mean, obviously, they're different types.
[20:00]books and summer, they're for the form and function, but to just get a good story, that's
[20:06]really what people, everybody's dying for a good story. They want to escape, you know, like
[20:11]you're writing into your people just need that, especially now. So when you have a good one,
[20:15]you have to do it, which is awesome. I also think that there's a real lack of narratives about
[20:24]women of a certain age or couples of a certain age. And this is, I don't know, I feel like there's a
[20:29]huge spotlight on this empty stage area, if you will, where people should be standing and we're just
[20:36]like, where are the characters? Like what's going on? Because yeah, so many people are going through
[20:41]so much stuff that is not being written about or thought about so much divorce, so many people
[20:47]meeting up again later. There's so much opportunity, I think that people are able to see themselves
[20:51]in your writing and feel very understood and validated that they aren't getting from other places.
[20:58]Absolutely. I mean, this is a huge, there's a huge void and where are the women who are approaching
[21:06]50? Because they, you know, and this is why in just like that, you know, there are some, but very,
[21:12]it's kind of, it's a very small amount and we need to see more representation of this.
[21:19]You know, people as I believed that love was a parade that had passed me by and I was not,
[21:26]I wasn't mad at that. I was like, okay, you know, I had, I had that in my life. I've been through
[21:32]the mill, love and relationship wise and, you know, I had a very full life. I was a single mother.
[21:38]I had a career. I had wonderful, a wonderful community, but it's all very nice, but not very good.
[21:45]And you, I think that people really need to know about their potential, their tremendous potential
[21:54]for love and for joy and how that goes on past whatever expiration date you believe in.
[22:02]You have all these, the messaging is all about age-defying. It's like, what about age embracing?
[22:09]What about, you know, being a person who, who's most, who's sexiest decade is yet to come,
[22:16]you know, or most fulfilling decade is yet to come, you know, and I think especially women,
[22:24]especially women, need to hear that and to know that that is true. And yeah, if I, and if I can be a
[22:32]part of, of, of shedding light on that or pulling the curtain back on that, I couldn't be more
[22:38]psyched. I couldn't agree more. That's amazing. So what, what is next? Are you going to do another
[22:43]memoir? What do you, what are you thinking? Aside from the adaptation? Yeah, I always, I gravitate
[22:50]toward memoir I do, but I have some ideas for fiction and it's not, you know, I see these things as,
[22:57]as very, you, you employ the same tools, toolbox techniques as a memoirist as you do a fiction
[23:07]writer and vice versa. People in fiction, I mean, my husband uses things I say all the time.
[23:14]Honest shows, you know. So, but I have some ideas of, of things that have been occurring to me
[23:21]lately that I, that I need to explore. So I think there might be a novel.
[23:27]Or some short stories. I'm also obsessed with short story and that like to explore some of that as
[23:34]well. That sounds amazing. Love it. What advice would you give for an aspiring writer?
[23:41]Never give up. Never give up. And, you know, something that I have to do, this is three books
[23:46]later. I still, I'm afraid somebody's going to find out I didn't go to school for writing for
[23:52]or say, she's just a dumb actress. How could she write something, you know? So I have to trick myself.
[24:00]And this is what everybody should do if they think, if they're, if they're plagued with
[24:05]performance anxiety around writing or feeling like, you know, too self-critical. I do a thing when
[24:13]I'm beginning any project, including this book, where I begin in the notes app on my phone or laptop
[24:22]and I write there because the critics, the inner critics can't find me. And so I write there for
[24:30]a long time until I have enough that I can cut and paste it into a word document and I know that
[24:39]I'm off to the races. Do whatever you need to do to trick yourself into, I'm not writing, I'm just
[24:46]chatting, whatever it is, dictate it to yourself, whatever it is, just don't give up. When you
[24:54]have a story to tell, you must tell it of that amazing advice. I've been using more Google Docs to
[25:00]be honest with you for, oh, yeah, I don't know. It's something new. I feel like the time it takes for
[25:05]word to open on my computer, I'm like, I should just do something else. And so I'm like, it's just
[25:12]like it's easier for me to get into it to a Google Doc. I don't know. So now I have my kids doing like
[25:16]their own little stories and they're on the Google Docs and we like it around and I'll write
[25:19]onto our Google Docs. Oh, that's so cute. I love that. Oh, okay. Now you've given me something. I have
[25:26]to try that. I have to try something. Yeah. Because then it's any computer and it's, you know,
[25:31]he's find it. And I mean, I guess never meant this is a silly conversation, but I don't know. I've
[25:36]really liked it. Psychologically, I don't know why it makes me feel like it's less of a big deal or
[25:42]that's the thing though. It's whatever you have to do. It's whatever it takes to get you through
[25:46]the writing day, you know, you just, you just have to get it down. And, and it's none of your
[25:54]business to judge it. Just get it down. Yeah. Just get it done. Easier said than done. But I'm glad
[26:02]you got it done. And thank you for coming on to talk about almost romance. Where can everybody
[26:06]find you? I'm very easy to reach on Instagram at Nancy Belvedere. Also on my website,
[26:12]Nancy Belvedere.com, I answer everything. I, I mean, I do it right away. If I'm, if I'm super slammed,
[26:20]but I answer everything. And I love it. I've been getting so many fantastic messages and so much love,
[26:28]and I cannot tell you how much I love my readers. They're just, it just gives me so much joy to know
[26:36]things are resonating that, that I'm making connections. It's, it's everything. Oh, that's amazing.
[26:42]Amazing. It's all worth it. It's all worth it. All the, all the pulling the hair out,
[26:50]the hiding from me, the inner critics. They can't find me.
[26:54]It's all worth it. One of these days, I hope that you and Carmen and I can go
[26:59]out to lend to something in the month to the monkey bar, the Roslyn bar, that's our places. Sounds good.
[27:06]I want thanks so much, Nancy. It was so great to get to know you a little bit today. And
[27:09]so great. Thank you. So, thank you so much, Sydney. Thanks so much. Of course, my pleasure. Bye bye.
[27:17]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't
[27:21]forget to follow me on Instagram at zibioens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign
[27:26]up for my newsletter at zibioens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors
[27:31]on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[27:36]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.