REPLAY: Tovah Feldshuh, Lilyville
[0:02]Welcome to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books, hosted by me, Zibi Owens.
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[0:50]Maybe you miss them. There have been over 2,000 episodes.
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[1:02]So that is happening in the new year. In the meantime, have a listen, enjoy, and let me know what you think. Bye!
[1:10]I was so lucky to do a live event with Tova Feltja. She's the author of Lilyville, mother, daughter, and other roles I've played.
[1:19]Tova is a six-time Emmy and Tony nominee and has been awarded three honorary doctorates of humane letters.
[1:25]Additionally, for her theater work, she's won four drama desks, four outer critic circle awards, three drama logs,
[1:31]the OB, the theater world, and the Helen Hayes and Lucille Lortel awards for Best Actress.
[1:38]Listen to our conversation here. She is so entertaining. Oh my gosh.
[1:43]Hi Tova. Thanks so much for doing this with me.
[1:46]I Zibi, it's my honor to do it. Wow. Oh my gosh. First of all, I have so many great things to say about Lilyville.
[1:53]But the thing that was the greatest was even from the start, the way you structured this book as like a play in three acts and you so much clever theater is all throughout.
[2:06]Tell everybody about Lilyville, what inspired you to write this book and how you came up with this adorable innovative structure.
[2:14]There was an agent on his way to his office now at UTA, a wonderful man named Albert Lee.
[2:20]He was listening to an interview I had given entertainment weekly with Dalton and Ross.
[2:26]My mother had recently died and within five months of my mother's death, I made plans to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
[2:32]And I had just come down from that peak, which I climbed with our son Brandon.
[2:37]All events, he listened to my interview. He went to his office. He called my managers in LA and said this Tova felt you have a literary agent. They said no.
[2:46]And he said, I think she has a writer's voice. I'm glad he thought so. I had no idea.
[2:52]He showed up in my living room with his wonderful partner Lane Zachary.
[2:56]And they asked me what did I want to write. And I said, I'd like to write about my mother Lily.
[3:00]And I recently passed away and she was remarkable in our journey to find each other was remarkable.
[3:07]When Hashette asked me to write a book when the book deal was made and I was becoming a paid author.
[3:14]They wanted a celebrity autobiography and I've auditioned all my life and I tried to figure out how to stop the conveyor belt on this.
[3:22]Not autobiography, but memoir. I don't regard myself as some international entity. I'm a Broadway kid. So I'm local talent.
[3:29]And I had the honor of playing Houston and love Houston.
[3:32]God, I think I got my first cowboy boots at a place called Carter bills, but it was part of some time it was in 1980.
[3:39]And all events I decided to write about my mother. I decided to look at my life, not chronologically and say I was born. I did this.
[3:47]Who cares. I decided to look at my life through the eyes of my mother and my mother's life to my eyes. My mother and I are 40 years apart.
[3:56]So we didn't have a generational gap. We had a generational chasm.
[4:00]And then my friend Jeff Harner, wonderful man who directs me in my one woman concerts like Tova out of her mind.
[4:07]And I said, you know, I know that theater is a theater piece and that is when the whole manuscript took off and I structured it in three acts with two intermissions and a pallet cleanser between each between each chapter.
[4:31]she gets scenes and set it getting forward, a forward, you get an overture instead of getting an after we get exit music instead of getting it knowledge.
[4:39]And I go a cast party to honor all those who helped me, particularly Jeff Harner and my wonderful assistant Oliver Shulson, who was a linguistics major at Yale, who was typing the manuscript furiously and knew where every comma and every colon went.
[4:53]It's real that it has been received so graciously and I hope that Zibi then in writing this memoir, which also has pallet cleansers between each scene, involved in the old days.
[5:07]The actors would come down stage the most shallow curtain at the stage, almost on top of the first floor of the audience and do a song and dance tap dancer sing as they changed the scenery behind stage.
[5:19]Henry Higgins house to Freddie Einsford Hills singing I have often walked down this street before when the curtain opens to do that scene change you had to be what we call in one.
[5:31]Sir Lauren Marino, who is absolutely great said don't say in one it's two feet people won't know what you're talking about, so I call them lily isms and tova isms, and that was the way also to bring in my career in between the chapters, but this is really a look.
[5:47]It's an ancient ancient primal relationship between a parent and a child and it you know there's a person saying that a tree in order to bear fruit, a branch in order to bear fruit must learn to bend.
[6:03]There are trees were on different lawns and scars down the york and eventually lily live so long and I grew up enough that our branches could bower together become intertwined and truly intimate and what the book really says and it has a happy ending.
[6:20]So what you are experiencing between you and another primary relationship your husband your child your mother or your father it can be solved.
[6:29]I promise you if I could solve this you can solve that that is my gift to you for mothers day.
[6:38]I also thought city last last thing and then please go ahead that how do you hit the river of universal experience, so that this is a book not just for tilva but for you sippy and for you and in for the jcc of beloved use to you have to get the primal.
[6:56]Relationships that exist for homo sapiens actually for for the whole living world, which is that we all were given birth from somewhere.
[7:04]And these people gave us our lives, they gave us our life, so how do we manage this they tried the best they couldn't if they didn't love us in a way we could understand.
[7:15]Somewhere they tried the best they could in somewhere you can try to empower them to be able to love you the way you need you you have to do the work to you have to do the work.
[7:27]I wish you were my therapist, I would have saved so much time and money if I just had this conversation with you.
[7:35]You know it's so funny I love reading books about mother daughter relationships, especially memoir people really put it out there what their relationships and the the difficulties they have and I'm continually struck as I was with yours.
[7:48]How different every single one is and some of the struggles like your mother who you are so funny the way you capture exactly who she was I feel like I completely know her.
[7:59]The things that you throw in like the fact that you talked about going to Juilliard and she calls it a trade school like you're not going to do that like you're not going to do this.
[8:07]She was so dismissive of you at times and the like when you got your big trapeze role and she was like oh look you have to go on a trapeze to get this job you know like what all of these things that like these little digs as you grow and become your own person like it's hard to get over that type of background noise.
[8:28]Tell me a little bit about you I mean you write about it with such humor but there's also sadness in there.
[8:35]Well first of all my mother was a mitzvah machine.
[8:38]She did deeds of kindness probably deeds of loving kindness except for one little thing she was silent.
[8:45]So therefore she didn't tell I don't believe she told my older brother David either or myself that she loved us like I love you like I get up as a young as a young mother with my own children and I always said
[8:57]I love you because you breathe I love you because you've been you have unconditional love in this house now when you go out of this house.
[9:04]You have to learn the respect but earn the respect of other people and when you're 16 and particularly once you're 18 you are subject to the laws of the United States of America.
[9:14]You are responsible you are accountable so be a mensh be a human being. However, so my mother you know there was a book I forgot the author but five different ways of loving so my mother loved to deeds through actions and many people says we are not who we we are not who we are we are what we do you know.
[9:33]So she did these things but she was a silent partner and my father was litigator and very vocifer so really played my father in law and order when I played Daniel Melnick and he had known death early.
[9:46]His father died when he was 16 and then he was drafted in the army and spent his years abroad in the intelligence and didn't get home to 1946.
[9:55]So he was there under general bright day for us now for some time and he saw death and new.
[10:00]death from the fight against the, against the fascists.
[10:03]And as a result, because I was born well after the war,
[10:07]I became his only infant.
[10:08]So he really never left my side.
[10:11]He flanked me and that saved, that saved my life,
[10:15]saved my emotional life.
[10:16]Finally, when I was 18, I went to my mother
[10:18]and I said, Mommy, do you love me?
[10:21]And she came right out of fiddling.
[10:22]Do I love you?
[10:23]What do you mean, do I love you?
[10:24]Who takes you in the Chrysler to Hebrew school?
[10:26]Who takes you to your singing lesson?
[10:29]Who buys you clothes at Saxfeth Avenue?
[10:32]Only undergarments at Alexander's.
[10:34]Who makes the not kept?
[10:35]Who makes the straw very short?
[10:37]Who makes that dollar pancakes?
[10:40]So, you know, of course, I love you.
[10:42]That's about as far as I got.
[10:43]Of course, I love you as if it, again, dismissive.
[10:46]When I took her to see Golda's balcony
[10:48]and Golda's balcony where I played Prime Minister
[10:50]Golda Mayor did become the longest running
[10:52]one woman play in the history of Broadway in 100 years.
[10:56]And if you do what you're supposed to do,
[10:58]you know, the greater the transformations
[10:59]and the actor, the greater the actor gets credit.
[11:02]So, with Golda's balcony, I had a fat suit.
[11:04]I had big breasts, I had false legs, I had a false nose.
[11:07]I had a wig.
[11:08]I mean, I was a size 16 and I'm a size 4-6.
[11:12]So, after the show, I said, Mommy, mommy, how did I do?
[11:15]And she said, tauva, I rate your plots by how you look.
[11:18]Dollyly, if I was a 10, Golda Mayor, zero.
[11:22]So, kids, this is what we were up against.
[11:25]There is an Eastern European tradition.
[11:28]I don't think it's just Jewish.
[11:29]Well, you're not to over praise your child.
[11:31]Yes, less they have hubris and they are struck down
[11:34]by the gods.
[11:35]From that, come the little red ribbons,
[11:38]we tie around our cribs and our strollers
[11:40]so that the devil will think he's already been there
[11:43]and pass over our children.
[11:45]So, that trickle down of that kind of superstition
[11:50]is what led my mother to this tough love thing,
[11:56]plus the fact she was born in 1911
[11:59]on a dining room table in the Bronx.
[12:01]She put herself to NYU
[12:02]as she met the love of her life, Sydney Felshew.
[12:05]She was 17, he was 18.
[12:07]She paid for entire college career.
[12:09]And in those days, a woman was as good as her match
[12:14]as good as her match.
[12:15]So, she married her Harvard lawyer and the son Rose
[12:18]and set around my father along with her incredibly
[12:22]beautiful obligations to her children.
[12:24]But she also remained silent
[12:25]so that daddy could take the son in the spotlight.
[12:28]And it wasn't till my father died on May 11th, 1996.
[12:32]I'm actually writing a pitch now for a TV series
[12:34]and it starts with my father's funeral.
[12:37]That my mother unexpectedly bloomed.
[12:40]She was the only survivor of my six aunts and six uncles.
[12:44]Each parent was one of four children.
[12:46]So, 12 people were dead and with my father the 13.
[12:49]And when I say survivors, please understand,
[12:51]we did not experience the God forbid the European Holocaust.
[12:54]We came to this country in 1902.
[12:56]So, she was the only sole survivor of her generation.
[13:00]And the light came to her given to her
[13:03]by our entire large family.
[13:05]And Aunt Lille was very wise.
[13:08]And Aunt Lille used to give out wisdom.
[13:11]Like I said, my brother who graduated sumo cum laude
[13:14]from medical school and also was a director of plays.
[13:17]He headed the theater for now.
[13:18]So, he practiced emergency remettison on Saturday and Sunday
[13:21]and he was a professor during the week at Cornell.
[13:23]He still is.
[13:24]So, I mean, I've had you doing a lot with COVID now,
[13:26]set up a stand and busy and not doing any.
[13:29]So, my mother says to him, this is a great scholar, my brother.
[13:32]He says, David, I'm so glad I'm not your patient.
[13:34]Two days a week in practice.
[13:36]There's two days a week.
[13:37]You break it like on Saturday, fine.
[13:38]You break it on Wednesday called Gottomens.
[13:40]Gottomens is the local Jewish funeral.
[13:43]Oh, oh, oh, oh.
[13:45]So, let me put this way.
[13:46]Though all my roles as an actor took place on Broadway,
[13:50]off Broadway in concert halls and film and television,
[13:53]they all truly took place under the dome of Lilleville
[13:57]where my mother Lille rained supreme.
[14:01]And so, with the applause of thousands,
[14:04]applause of thousands was created by me
[14:07]to substitute for the lack of applause of one human being
[14:11]who finally came my way.
[14:12]When my dad died, she lived for another 18 years
[14:15]and we did not waste a second making sure
[14:18]that we were intimate, that we were intimate.
[14:21]Well, it's so funny how you have to look
[14:24]to these external rewards and praises
[14:27]for what this primal need for love that's deep down.
[14:31]And I know it was offset by your dad,
[14:32]but that's just such an image of you on stage
[14:36]with everyone applauding and your mom being like,
[14:39]oh, and even when your brother got,
[14:41]you got the same fellowship as your brother
[14:43]or whatever that was.
[14:44]And she was like, two actors, oh my gosh, you know,
[14:47]like just so not one of the wrong,
[14:50]what did I do wrong to have a room of theater, right?
[14:53]What did we do, Sydney?
[14:54]What did we do?
[14:55]But I'll tell you what my mother gave me
[14:57]and there's light for all of us.
[14:59]Any obstacle that a parent unintentionally
[15:04]or intentionally dishes out as they're trying to best
[15:07]people really do try their best
[15:09]and nothing is personal, nothing is that.
[15:12]I can't imagine how my mother was brought up by her,
[15:14]by her British mother.
[15:16]This is British Jewish, let's not pass them off.
[15:19]So please pass them off.
[15:21]I have a donation that isn't exactly the Queen's English.
[15:24]It's not that key I would say.
[15:25]It's not that very, very, very elegant,
[15:28]up across thing.
[15:29]It's more of a dint of the station.
[15:31]Just like when you've got a long island,
[15:32]they have TS for D, I'm going to the dentist
[15:36]and the dentist is going to,
[15:38]she's going to drill my cavities.
[15:40]Anyway, what my mother gave me was resilience.
[15:44]That was a thing.
[15:45]When the going that rough at the Guthrie,
[15:47]when I was a midnight fellow,
[15:48]the know I got from two directors
[15:51]as in you are worthless as an actor,
[15:54]was not new news.
[15:56]It was similar earlier experience
[15:59]when it was much of a traumatic.
[16:00]So it was my mommy.
[16:02]It was my mommy.
[16:03]At a mommy who said to me,
[16:04]and I say this in respect to anybody who is adopted,
[16:08]but my mother did say when I was three or four years old,
[16:12]are you adopted like that?
[16:14]So I was worried that I was adopted.
[16:16]Now what she said she meant later is you're so capable,
[16:19]you're so extroverted and I'm so shy and so introverted,
[16:22]you couldn't be mine.
[16:24]Well, tell that to a three year old.
[16:26]I mean, we're dealing with a time in a life
[16:28]when you say to a three year old,
[16:29]keep your eye on the ball.
[16:31]You know, you're trying to train them for baseball,
[16:33]keep your eye on the ball.
[16:33]The little boy takes the ball and he puts it on his eye.
[16:36]so this is the situation with a mother who just lovingly,
[16:41]I suppose, not a loving style.
[16:43]I could understand, miscommunicated with her child.
[16:48]And when I went to my brother David,
[16:50]I said, does mommy love us?
[16:52]And he said, of course, she loves you.
[16:53]I said, that's what she says.
[16:55]How does she love us, Davey?
[16:56]And he said, mommy loves us because she's always there.
[17:01]And that was remarkable.
[17:03]I don't know about you guys,
[17:04]but I was a careerist as well as a mother.
[17:07]And I wasn't always there.
[17:09]I had this alternate vacation universe called
[17:13]Theatre Film Television Entertainment
[17:15]where even in my marriage,
[17:17]I told my beloved husband,
[17:18]we're married almost 45 years.
[17:20]I will never give up my work.
[17:22]I said to Andrew Harris leaving.
[17:24]He said, it's okay.
[17:25]I said, you better really look at this.
[17:27]I will never give up my work.
[17:28]Not because I love it so much,
[17:30]but because I need a backdoor,
[17:31]I need a vacation.
[17:33]I need a vacation for myself.
[17:35]It's going to get rough.
[17:37]That's how you perceive your work.
[17:39]I love my work.
[17:40]I'm playing.
[17:41]I'm playing a little less time on that.
[17:42]I'm doing a little less on play.
[17:44]I'm going to be filmed as Dr. Whoop,
[17:45]the less time.
[17:46]And she is an orphan of the Holocaust.
[17:49]And she has such a will to be optimistic
[17:51]that she lives up the end of all her sentences.
[17:54]You'll say, they go up, they go up, they go up.
[17:58]Is this how you are at home?
[18:00]Do you always do the voices like this?
[18:02]Is this just like what you're like?
[18:03]I'm here with you and Amy and the JCC and fabulous Jake.
[18:07]There's a tech guy here who is a genius.
[18:10]He's a Phi Beta Kappa Bravo, Jake Bravo.
[18:13]I'm here to be with you,
[18:15]to be a master storyteller, to entertain you,
[18:18]and to hope that you take Littleville
[18:20]as your favorite Mother's Day gift.
[18:23]And it's not just for mothers.
[18:24]It's for fathers and sons.
[18:27]It's for parent and child.
[18:29]It engenders hope.
[18:32]You can solve, if I solve Lily, you can solve anything.
[18:37]No, at home I listen.
[18:38]I'm a much more of a listener
[18:40]because the children are there.
[18:42]And also, not they're not there.
[18:44]They're married now with children,
[18:45]but one tries to be flexible and one tries to be available.
[18:49]I'm now in rehearsal and getting ready to be filmed
[18:51]in the next two weeks that I'm going to the Hamptons.
[18:54]And I'm gonna open with becoming Dr. Whoop,
[18:56]live in Bay Street at SAG Harbor,
[18:59]which is a person that opened their theater
[19:01]is where equity only allows us 100 people a night.
[19:04]So the theater will be one third film.
[19:06]That's what's allowed.
[19:07]It's person, space, space, person, space, space, person.
[19:11]I'm gonna come, I'm totally gonna come.
[19:14]I didn't know that was opening, that's exciting.
[19:16]You know, the other thing that I loved,
[19:18]aside from the structure and all the amazing stories
[19:21]and everything else in the book,
[19:23]I love that you say like, okay,
[19:26]are you here for this book to get all of my salacious stories
[19:29]about all these famous people I've worked with?
[19:31]Okay, you'll get some of that.
[19:32]But like, this is mostly about my mom.
[19:34]And yet, then you go into this whole thing
[19:35]about Barbara Streisand and you're so funny about it.
[19:38]How you woven the lofty, like the most famous people
[19:43]of all time, and then like the most tender moments
[19:46]with family members and, you know,
[19:48]how it is to leave Skarsdale,
[19:50]how it is to land in Skarsdale and suddenly feel so lonely
[19:54]and get the next moment you're with, you know,
[19:58]emailing with Barbara Streisand and everything.
[20:00]How do you, how do you like catch your breath in the midst of sort of these big personalities
[20:06]and your onstage life and you're, I think that's why I was asking, are you like this
[20:10]all the time?
[20:11]Because for public personas, I wonder, like, how do you just, how do you shuffle back
[20:16]and forth?
[20:17]What does that do to somebody?
[20:18]Well, it's like when I taught the children, I would put in the children what I hoped
[20:22]for the children.
[20:23]I have a son, Brandon, and a daughter, Amanda.
[20:26]They married, Brandon married a marvelous woman named Jamie and Amanda married a phenomenal
[20:32]husband named Joel.
[20:33]And at night when I would put them to sleep, I would say, I'm the luckiest mother in the
[20:38]world because I have the most empathic child.
[20:41]I have a child who walks into a room and knows what's wanted and needed in that room
[20:46]and does the right thing.
[20:47]A person who knows the difference between a library and the Yankee stadium and Amanda
[20:51]would say, Mama, what empathic?
[20:54]And I'd say that's to feel with somebody.
[20:56]So you would put in them what you hoped for them.
[20:59]Likewise, my function as a mother is very different than my function as your author tonight.
[21:04]So the first thing that the children call me every night, I miss them terribly, but I love
[21:10]my work.
[21:11]So I've had to balance.
[21:12]I haven't worked in, like many actors.
[21:14]I haven't worked in a theater in 14 months.
[21:16]My last concert was in Houston, February 22nd, unless I'm crazy.
[21:23]I sang somewhere in Houston, February 22nd, because I came home and I got COVID.
[21:27]I got COVID starting May, it works 9th to 19th a year, over a year ago.
[21:32]And I've been double vaccinated, like most elder states, when I've been double vaccinated
[21:36]since February.
[21:37]So New York state really had it together.
[21:39]How are you guys doing in Texas?
[21:41]Are you getting your vaccinations?
[21:42]I'm in New York City.
[21:43]I know Zippy.
[21:44]Sorry.
[21:45]So you're with me.
[21:46]So you were fine.
[21:47]But eventually, I assume you guys in Texas are not going to do any hocus pocus and believe
[21:52]in some anything but science.
[21:55]Anybody who doesn't get double vaccinated in my book is selfish.
[21:58]You're jeopardizing your countrymen, you're jeopardizing your family, you're jeopardizing
[22:02]your children.
[22:03]That's what I've seen.
[22:04]Everybody had a great, we had a great time in New York getting those things.
[22:07]Anyway, I switched channels, depending on what's wanted and needed in the space.
[22:12]When I'm with my wonderful director, David Ellenstein, and he has something to say, I'm
[22:17]quiet.
[22:18]I listen to him.
[22:19]When I'm with, I will be with Scott Schwartz in Bay Street at St. Carber to do becoming
[22:24]Dr. Ruth.
[22:25]And he directed me in Goldis balcony.
[22:27]So that'll be a lot of fun.
[22:28]I'll finish this filming, which is streamed for all their subscribers.
[22:32]And you can buy a ticket to the North Coast Rep production of becoming Dr. Ruth.
[22:36]It will be released June 8th through July 4th.
[22:39]As I am opening in Bay Street, June 5th, June 5th through June 27th.
[22:44]It's so wild.
[22:45]We should write a piece about that, Zippy.
[22:48]And I think it's the first time in pandemic days that an actor is both live and on film
[22:52]with the same property at the same time.
[22:55]Wow.
[22:56]Yeah.
[22:57]So having written this book, do you feel like you want to write more books about all sorts
[23:01]of other things?
[23:02]Or is this like your magnum opus, like you did what you wanted to?
[23:06]This is what you wanted to achieve with literature.
[23:08]And now you're back to your, I mean, you have so much creative energy.
[23:12]It's just like sort of radiating off you, you could do, obviously, a zillion things.
[23:16]Is writing not your thing is your thing?
[23:18]How did you feel about it?
[23:19]I'm sure.
[23:20]I mean, if you're a writer, you know this, it's the hardest thing.
[23:22]It's the most challenging thing I've ever done.
[23:24]It was an opus.
[23:25]And then also you want to curate your book.
[23:28]You want to curate.
[23:29]Oh, look.
[23:30]There's mom, mom and dad and being a flapper, she's a flapper.
[23:35]God.
[23:36]You will curate your book.
[23:38]So you need to pick your verbs, your subjects, your way of inviting the reader into the
[23:47]canvas, which you don't need to do in the theater in the theater.
[23:50]If I move a shoulder or look at somebody and have a clear thought, the audience is brilliant.
[23:55]They'll pick it up in a book.
[23:56]It has to be on the page to invite the reader into the canvas of your life.
[24:02]You know, I was on my way to the Galapagos with Andrew and the day before I was to board
[24:06]a plane for Ecuador.
[24:07]I got a call for my Hollywood manager to ask if I could audition for a series for the walking
[24:12]dead.
[24:13]Have you seen it over the ass?
[24:15]No, I replied.
[24:16]I'm close enough to death that I don't have to see it walking.
[24:21]So that takes honing skills.
[24:24]That's not a first draft.
[24:26]That's figuring out what is the music of this?
[24:28]How do I make this not only apprehendable, but how do I engage the audience and tell
[24:33]them that I've taken care with language?
[24:36]I also have the audiobook for those of you who are interested in.
[24:39]I do sing on it.
[24:40]Sony gave me permission to sing parts of where's the bathroom.
[24:43]I might need to find your bathroom, tell me that you have your bathroom in a novel you call
[24:47]home.
[24:48]I need to do so.
[24:49]I'll do that on the audiobook.
[24:50]What was the experience of recording the audiobook leg for you?
[24:53]It was thrilling.
[24:54]I had just done a very, very complicated major opus called the Slaughterman's Daughter by a man
[25:00]named Eatskovich and the woman who directed me and at Christina Rooney was brilliant.
[25:08]And when I was asked to do the audiobook by her shed, I said, man, please have this director
[25:12]and they gave me that director.
[25:13]So I think we did a bang up job.
[25:15]I haven't listened to it though.
[25:16]I did get it on audible and I can keep you company, all of you who jog or who exercise
[25:22]or your on your elliptical.
[25:23]You can put me in your earphones and I'll keep you company, I'll keep you company.
[25:29]Everything gotten through to the end of this journey and now the book is coming out in
[25:33]the world and it's so exciting.
[25:35]What advice would you have for someone who's just starting out or who wants to do a writing
[25:39]project wants to be a writer?
[25:41]First step toward brilliance is to know you don't know.
[25:44]So I was the first time author.
[25:46]I knew I didn't know how to write a book.
[25:49]I knew that.
[25:50]I knew I knew how to tell a story and I told stories very, very well and I handed in
[25:56]my first manuscript and my editor had said this is brilliant, this is brilliant, this is
[25:59]brilliant because I would check with her every week because I went to Sarah Lawrence
[26:02]College.
[26:03]It was under the Cambridge Oxford system.
[26:04]We had a Don, Elia wax professor, Elia wax, thank you for believing in me, first person
[26:09]who believed that I could write.
[26:12]In all events I handed in that first manuscript and my editor said this is not a book.
[26:17]I said what?
[26:18]This is not a book, these are pearls on a coffee table, not strung together and then it
[26:23]was Jeff Horner that says that said what do you know best?
[26:27]And I said theater, he said write it as a theater piece.
[26:30]And I put Horner in Schulz and that's Oliver Schulz and then Jeff Horner.
[26:34]In the writing room with me, I write, I write, I write, Oliver's typing, I'm talking,
[26:38]I'm talking, we go back, I redo it, I say it to Jeff, he says, is that the verb you really
[26:43]want to use?
[26:44]We go to the synonym diction, look at the synonyms I start to hash through, cultivate,
[26:48]curate, curate, every word.
[26:52]So it was a real upward journey, but it hung together beautifully within a play format
[26:59]because I know, please be doing them for 50 years is my 50th year as an equity actor.
[27:04]So that's very thrilling.
[27:06]Do I have a sequel like Sydneyville?
[27:09]Maybe, but my biggest ambition now is to make this into a television series.
[27:14]If you dream of being a writer as Joseph Campbell would say follow your bliss, this was
[27:21]not sought by me.
[27:23]This was, if you will, thrust upon me, I was given the opportunity and then the world
[27:27]collaborated, the pandemic broke out, actors had no work.
[27:31]I was a paid author by Hashette.
[27:33]I had a very, very nice advance and I wrote this book because I wanted desperately to
[27:39]write about my mother.
[27:40]Why do I really want to write about my mother?
[27:42]Because I want her to live forever.
[27:44]I want her to be ubiquitous.
[27:46]I want her on my shoulder, I want to hear, want to hear.
[27:49]This is the night of my butt mitzvah.
[27:51]I'm going to dress from Bondwood Taylor with a Kelly Green cover bun and matching green
[27:56]shoes that we had died to match from Miles Schuster in White Plains.
[28:01]I had a little pill box hat made by my mother's milliner that looked like, you know,
[28:06]something like Jackie Kennedy because she was coming into fashion.
[28:09]I have on my butt mitzvah pearls.
[28:12]So that's why I, one thing about that's great about a memoir is that you revisit your
[28:16]whole life, you excavate your life and you choose the best, best finds to give to the
[28:23]reader and say, this really was a unique in my life, maybe it will help you, maybe it
[28:30]will help you.
[28:31]We're still in service to each other if we're not in service to each other, who are
[28:35]we?
[28:36]I completely agree.
[28:37]Well, thank you so much.
[28:38]Thanks to the JCC and thank you for all of everybody for coming.
[28:43]Have a great night.
[28:46]Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books.
[28:49]If you love it, please leave a review and follow us on social at city Owens and at city readers.