A Quote by Stephen Adly Guirgis
I had just done something in TV, but my real love is theater. I had won this award and I was up at Yale, and I was happy because it came with money.
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It was the last generation of writers [ the Cheers] that had grown up reading books instead of watching TV. So you weren't getting anything that was derivative of I Love Lucy or Happy Days. You were getting real characters [like those] they read in P.G. Wodehouse or Dickens or somewhere along the line, because they had all grown up with a love of literature.
Yale men do not like to be told anything by people who didn't go to Yale. The closest I came to Yale was once I had one of their padlocks.
In 1989, I had a fellowship to teach for Yale in China for two years. I came back from California to New Haven to spend the summer learning Chinese, but because of Tiananmen Square, Yale cancelled the program.
The Jews are an artistic people. It's clear from the music, the actors, the writers. They are just artists. In the early part of the 20th century, when they first came over, they had no money, but they still went to theater. The theater and education were the two biggest things in their lives.
When you had just three and then four channels, I could always find something that was watchable because the standard of TV was much higher. In those days, they had so much more money to put into so many less programmes.
So often, we blame other people when, really, the problem is right down in here. I'm not happy. I don't know what's wrong. If I just had another job, I could be happy. If I just get married, I would be happy. Well if I just wasn't married, I would be happy. Well, if I just had some kids, I'll be happy. I'll be happy when these kids finally grow up and get out of here. If I had a bigger house, I would be happy. Well, I got a big house. Now if I just had a maid to clean, I'd be happy. Well, now if I just had a maid I could get along with better, I'd be happy.
You still could go to some industry or some university or the government and if you could persuade them you had something on the ball—why, then, they might put up the cash after cutting themselves in on just about all of the profits. And, naturally, they'd run the show because it was their money and all you had done was the sweating and the bleeding.
It's real great to be known on TV. I had the opportunity to do something that I always wanted to do, and now I have done it.
Before 'Titanic,' yes, I had done some things and, yes, I had been nominated for an Academy Award, but I had never been sort of world-famous. And I suppose, yes, I am really famous now. But I feel embarrassed to say that because it's just a bit daft for me.
You know, if a TV show dropped into my lap out of the blue, I would have a hard time turning it down because there just isn't the money in theater that there is on TV.
I've had so many people just come up to me and say, 'When you came up on the screen, everybody in the theater applauded.' It's just so sweet, really.
My son was staying with me, and we got up to watch it, just before they announced supporting actress, he came up and put his arm around me. I think it was like, 'Either way, mom, I still love you.' But then it was funny because I saw it. I saw my picture, and I heard them announce it, but I had to ask him, 'Did I really see that?' I wasn't sure I was seeing it, but he assured me that yes, I was nominated for the Academy Award. We just sort of cried a little bit.
Well, the thing that I realized - I had this very happy, rosy memory of Yale. And I had even described it in the past as my Hogwarts.
When I saw what painting had done in the last thirty years, what literature had done - people like Joyce and Virginia Woolf, Faulkner and Hemingway - in France we have Nathalie Sarraute - and paintings became so strongly contemporary while cinema was just following the path of theater. I have to do something which relates with my time, and in my time, we make things differently.
I love acting, but I am a mom, and the roles just weren't coming because of a mixture of things: because I'm not ambitious, and because I'm older, and I had a baby. I really felt like I had said a graceful and completely happy goodbye to acting in a significant way. And I had sort of made my peace with that.
At midnight every night, I would methodically leave the house for a couple hours' walk, come back in, and record. And then the sun came up. If I had done something good, then I'd be happy and go to sleep.
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