Its a wood-beamed lodge with a cartoonish kitsch decor couched in an American West motif.
Vines of Christmas twinkle lights, plastic fish, and corn cobs festoon a stained-glass bar.
But in this instance looks are deceiving.
Credit: Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage
Its much too quiet.
Maybe if the TV were on and I had to fight something, but I cant work in silence.
This month the movie of Fishers 1987Postcards, for which she did the screenplay, has opened to raves.
Yet despite the current adulation, Fisher, a dependably sardonic sort, is somewhat miffed.
I call myself The Hunted Beast, she says.
[She throws her hands up in mock despair] Theyrealldistant and exhausting.
is notreallyabout her and Debbie Reynolds, even though there are some obvious similarities.
I wrote about a mother actress and a daughter actress, she says.
Im not shocked that people think its about me and my mother.
Postcards heroine Suzanne (Streep) is a wisecracking actress re-entering the Hollywood scene after a drug clinic sabbatical.
Shes not like that.
Although Fisher chose not to appear in the film (There were too many celebrities.
She picked at her thumb like Carrie, says Reynolds.
And shes got Carries vulnerability.
In fact, says director Nichols, in a bizarre way MerylbecameCarrie.
They became best friends.
Shes better than the mother I deserve, Fisher says.
Carries adorable, says Reynolds, adding that both the movie and MacLaine are terrific.
I cant think of anyone else playing whats supposed to be part of me.
But actually I think the character is more Joan Crawford.
As it’s possible for you to see, theres a lot of support.
Fisher is renowned not only for being irrepressibly chatty, but for her bottomless quiver of sharp-edged one-liners.
Some lines I say and save, she concedes, and some I hear.
I pay particular attention to my male characters, which is why I have so many men friends.
They love being paid attention to without agenda, and theyliketo be the characters.
Its like shes studying to be a colorful character.
All this is not to say that Fisher doesnt bring her own flavor to her work.
Shes a born screenwriter.
As for real-life resemblances, Carrie doesnt draw on her life any more than Flaubert did, he says.
Its just that his life wasnt so well known.
Fisher and Nichols occasionally collaborated on rewrites in Nichols New York office, discussing and sometimes acting out scenes.
Then Carrie would write them up in five minutes on her big yellow pad, says Nichols.
Writing pours out of her so easily and gives her such pleasure.
It also helps obscure some pain.
I talk well because I feel bad, Fisher says.
I take things too hard and its just loony.
Postcardswas just such an antidote.
I knew I was a drug addict long before I did anything about it, she says now.
But insight is one thing.
software of insight is another.
Thats how slowed-down I was.
I got off lithium and started writing.
Readers were equally taken with her written renditions.Postcardsspent three weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.
Fisher began thinking of herself as a writer, and, ironically, her acting improved.
Writing gave her an authority beyond acting.
Recalls Fisher, I heard it pornographically, but I mean it metaphorically give up the feminine side.
I thought it was so upsetting she had to go through all these things, she says.
When I told Carrie, she said, Mother!
I said, You write much too real, dear.
That trait was not music to ex-husband Paul Simons ears.
Rudy,Pinks somewhat bloodless anti-hero, is a prospering playwright who prefers women low on the profile pole.
It just doesnt work out when two people are ambitiously pursuing their careers, he tells Dinah.
?A woman has to have a less intense job.
He asked that he be given more jokes because people were going to think it was him.
He got off easy, says a friend.
Where there should be a flower and a gardener, we were two flowers.
In the bright sun.
Meryl makes less than Patrick Swayze, okay?
It doesnt matterwhothe female is!
Jeezus itssomuch better being a man than a woman, she says.
And get to buy purses.
Men can have it all so easy!
Fisher has been through this drill.
Carrie kept waiting for him to call and come home, says Reynolds.
He was a big recording star and shed hear his music on the radio and say Daddy?
Inside, she never got over it.
AsPinks Dinah puts it, My father loved me and I never saw him.
He might as well not have loved me.
She was a hilarious smartass kid.
It was our only confrontation, Reynolds says.
She wanted to stay home and go shopping with her girlfriends on Rodeo Drive.
In 1985 she was rushed to a hospital with an overdose of Percodan.
A by-product of the worst thing, says Fisher of that experience, is that now I write better.
Romance has recently skidded in on the heels of Fishers successes.
She and Bryan Lourd, a Creative Artists talent agent, have been seeing each other for several months.
Neither of us can remember meeting, Fisher says.
We just have to assume we did.
So are her prospects.
Im not being careful anymore, she promises of its subject matter.
Its going to be about a homosexual grandmother who commits incest with most of her family.
Her acting career is percolating too.
Acting is a relief now, she says.
As long as I dont have too much dialogue.
Shes also entertaining serious offers to direct.
On the other hand, as herPostcardsalter ego puts it, Instant gratification takes too long.
