A Quote by Carol Burnett
I was in California, and I was going to UCLA, and I knew I certainly didn't have movie star looks. I remember seeing pictures and photos of Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, who were kind of average looking. I said, 'Well, that's for me, then, to go back to New York and try to be in musical comedy on Broadway.'
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I worshipped Ethel Merman and I worshipped Ethel Merman a lot. It's incredible - Ethel Merman was a conventional singer. Her naming her child Ethel Merman, Jr., was, to me, one of the coolest feminist things.
Mary Martin was Broadway's biggest closet king. Everyone thought Ethel (Merman) was butch and maybe a lesbian, but she wasn't. And everyone thought that lovely little Mary was Miss Femme, and she was -- except next to her gay husband. In other words, don't judge a star by her cover.
Ethel Merman would stay with a show for years and tour with it. So would Mary Martin, the great stars. They recognized the value of that success and nurtured it. Now, you come from Hollywood, you play 12 weeks and go away. I don't think that's the best policy.
Nobody ever said, "Well if you want to be in movies, you should go to L.A." Everybody else was going to New York. So I went to New York with them. And then I was like, "How am I supposed to get a movie?"
I knew I liked art. I knew I liked photography. I remember seeing photos of Linda Evangelista in Italian Vogue as a teenager, and at the time I didn't know who she was. There were two photos - one shot by Fabrizio Ferri and another one by Steven Meisel. I didn't know who any of those people were. I think it was the first summer I was modeling, I saw these magazines sitting out and looked at them. I remember thinking, These are the kind of images I want to make.
When I was 18, I drove from New York to California to be a movie star. Not an actor, mind you, but a movie star. Have you ever heard of anything so silly?
If you don't go to Broadway, you're a fool. On Broadway, off Broadway, above Broadway, below Broadway, go! Don't tell me there isn't something wonderful playing. If I'm home in New York at night, I'm either at a Broadway or an Off Broadway show. We're in the theater capital of the world, and if you don't get it, you're an idiot.
It wasn't exactly a cattle call. I had an agent, and they were seeing people for the parts, so my agent said, "Here's the script, see if there's anything that speaks to you." And I did, and I called my agent and said, "I think this character Data is kind of interesting," and she said, "Well, okay, I'll get you the appointment with Junie Lowry." I had to read with the casting agent first, 'cause nobody really knew me then. Then after that, I had, I think, six different auditions for the role. And finally it was me [on Star Trek].
We had to do something at [a festival in Washington, D.C.]. I remember Chris Martin, by then we all knew him, there were certain people who were regulars. He would say, "Oh, my God, you guys, I think I'm going to throw up." It was a daytime festival, and they went on right after some really heavy band, and he was saying, "I don't think I can do this. I think I'm going to throw up." He was in the bathroom thinking he was going to be sick. He said, "They're going to hate us." In fact, they hated them. They hated Coldplay - did not go over well. His instincts were correct.
But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: "It's there.
Broadway has changed tremendously from the early days when the shows were referred to as musical comedies. Musical Theater is now a more expanded art form. Back then, singer/actors were not the norm. From the 60's to now, it is necessary to do it all to be a consummate Broadway performer.
For some reason as a kid growing up in Lubbock, Texas, I always thought I was going to go to UCLA. I think it was because they had such great sports teams, and it was in California, where the actors were. But even though I was talking about being an actor when I was young, I was first going to be a football player. My dream was "I'm going to go to UCLA and be a football player."
I was looking at the work of the New York street artists and then discovering Basquiat and Haring after that and seeing how the contemporary art scene was, and then going back into Warhol and all that was happening in the 60s.
Well, it's a little harder in New York. It's not as forgiving to a film crew. You hold up a bunch of New Yorkers who can't cross the street, they're not going to take it well. Southern California? They'll wait. It's cool man. In New York, they're like, 'Are you kidding me? I gotta get to work.'
When I first arrived (in New York), it seemed to me the most terrifying city in the world... all those big buildings. I remember walking on Broadway, looking up at this huge, mountainous place-and being so lonely. But things started to clear up when I met a few people on the street whom I'd met before-all of a sudden there got to be a certain familiarity about the place, and the terror kind of evaporated. There was a lot of playing going on, and the New Yorkers, of course, were a completely different crowd from what I'd known.
We knew of Sartre and we dressed like the French existentialists. Our philosophy then, and remember we were only little kids, was more in following their looks than their thoughts. We were going around looking moody.
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