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By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, December 27th, 2016 - 7 Comments »
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BYOB: Carrie Fisher

Carrie Fisher

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7 Comments »

7 Responses to “BYOB: Carrie Fisher”

  1. EtGuild2 says:
    December 27, 2016 at 12:59 pm

    I hate 2016. RIP you beautiful mess <3.

  2. Movieman says:
    December 27, 2016 at 6:19 pm

    Carrie Fisher first flew onto my radar in Hal Ashby’s zeitgeist masterpiece, “Shampoo.”
    In her few brief scenes as Lee Grant’s bitter, hyper-competitive teenage daughter, Fisher was tough as nails…and hysterically funny.
    Little did I know those same traits would define her persona–both onscreen and off–for many decades to come.
    I feel like I’ve lost a big sister.

  3. Geoff says:
    December 27, 2016 at 7:27 pm

    Very sad indeed – of course, most will remember her from the Star Wars films and her impact as a bad-ass yet feminine heroine in that series really can’t be diminished.

    But I LOVED her in When Harry Met Sally…she played the original “rom com best friend” but she did such a dazzling job at it, pretty much stole the movie and I’m surprised that she didn’t get as much attention for that role – Crystal, Ryan, and Kirby seemed to get all of the plaudits.

    And Postcards from the Edge which came out the next year was such a watchable/quotable movie – the dialogue is hyper-sharp and Mike Nichols directed it beautifully…..really under-seen pseudo classic in my opinion that got lost in the shuffle against an ABSURD deluge of mob dramas (Goodfellas, State of Grace, Miller’s Crossing, King of New York) that all seemingly came out at the same exact time (Fall 1990)! Wonderful meta-emotional scene near the end between Gene Hackman and Meryl Streep which also showed how high Fisher’s dialogue could soar with the best of actors delivering it.

    I wish I could have seen more of her writing reach the big screen….

  4. chris says:
    December 27, 2016 at 9:31 pm

    I really like the linked piece about her script doctor work. One other thing that didn’t get reported much is that she was a great speech writer. I believe she wrote many of Streep’s acceptance and presentation speeches for years.

  5. JS Partisan says:
    December 27, 2016 at 9:32 pm

    Geoff, we bicker a lot, but we agree on When Harry Met Sally. She’s awesome in that film. Overall though, she will be sorely missed. Fuck this year. Fuck it, in it’s eyes.

  6. Geoff says:
    December 29, 2016 at 11:01 pm

    Sure on this we can agree JS – I would have loved to have seen her in more comedies after that kick (I think her film just prior to that was The Burbs with Tom Hanks) but I guess she ended up doing more writing.

  7. Greg says:
    December 31, 2016 at 8:19 am

    Probably the only star wars entry in internet history with 7 comments.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

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~ David Simon