Podcast appearances and mentions of neil as

Actor Kathleen Turner talks about not bringing characters home. Neil wonders if he himself created COVID. ABOUT THE GUEST Among Kathleen Turner’s numerous accolades are Golden Globes for Romancing The Stone and Prizzi’s Honor, an Academy Award nomination for Peggy Sue Got Married, Tony Award nominations for Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. Most recently she guest starred on The Kominsky Method, Mom and Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings. Her film credits include The Man With Two Brains, Jewel Of The Nile, The Accidental Tourist, The Virgin Suicides, among many others. On Broadway, she has starred in High, The Graduate and Indiscretions. Also a best-selling author, she wrote the books Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts On My Life, Love, and Leading Roles and Kathleen Turner On Acting. ABOUT THE HOST Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com. ABOUT THE TITLE SHE’S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast. CREDITS This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund. Producer: Devon Guinn Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue Mixer: Andrew Litton Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver Theme Song: Jeff Hiller Website: Itai Almor & Jesse Kimotho Social Media: Lourdes Rohan Digital Strategy: Ziv Steinberg Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Larry Krone, Tod Lippy, Sue Simon, Jonathan Taylor TRANSCRIPTION NEIL: Kathleen Turner, thank you so much for being on SHE'S A TALKER. KATHLEEN: I think this is going to be a pleasure. NEIL: Oh. Let's check in at the end and see. What's something that you find yourself thinking about today, May 16th? KATHLEEN: Oh my. I'll tell you, being able to tolerate this isolation. Because I live alone. I have a wonderful cat, thank you very much, but this really means that I ... I don't have a spouse or a kid or something with me. And I've had a women's poker group for about ... some of them have played together for over 30 years. NEIL: Wow. KATHLEEN: And we get together at least once a month and play poker and eat and have a silly time. And so, we are Zooming together every Sunday evening, but they almost ... well all of them have spouses or people that they are isolating with, but it's hard. It's really hard right now. NEIL: I can totally imagine. Are you finding outside comfort in having your cat there? KATHLEEN: Yes, I do. He's this beautiful black. A little black cat. He can seemingly pretty much sense when I need him. NEIL: This podcast, the mascot of this podcast, is my black cat, Beverly. What's your cat's name and what color are his eyes? KATHLEEN: His name is Simon and his eyes are mostly yellow, sometimes into green. But when I went to get another rescue, I'd had one that died, I've been told that black cats are hard to get adopted out of superstition, or I have found out, being difficult to see in the middle of the night, especially if you have a dark rug. NEIL: Yes. Yeah. Often, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I will mistake certain things for the cat. Let's say I've left my backpack on the floor, and the tender way I touch my backpack makes me kind of think about the backpack differently. If only I touched everything as tenderly as the things I thought are my cat. I know you were born here, but you seem like such a quintessential New Yorker to me. Do you feel that way? KATHLEEN: Oh yeah. I do. I always knew I was coming to New York. I never thought of settling in Los Angeles. And even the time I've spent there working, which is the only reason I go, I'm not comfortable. I'm just not comfortable there at all. Never have been. Never lived there, never invested, which people tell me makes a difference. But no, all I ever wanted was New York, which I consider to be as close to the rest of the world as possible. NEIL: Can you identify what it is about Los Angeles that made you know it wasn't for you? KATHLEEN: Oh, heavens. There's no communication, there's no commune, there's no colony. People get to know each other's cars better than they do the people. They go, "Oh yeah, you're the black BMW 550," or something. You go, "Well, yeah." And it's so isolating. It's so lonely. I don't know how people survive. NEIL: The experience you're describing I connect to in my own way powerfully. My work has always been about New York, and I question everything about my life, but I never question New York, even now. KATHLEEN: Right. NEIL: But this is the first time in my whole time in New York where I'm finding it unpleasant to be on the street. And how are- KATHLEEN: It's hard. NEIL: Yeah. KATHLEEN: It's hard to go out and not being able to see people's faces. NEIL: Yeah. KATHLEEN: I miss that because I love looking at people's faces and seeing how they use them, and it might give me ideas for a character or something. So now this seeing just part of people, and then the shock of seeing somebody with no precautions, without a mask, without anything. NEIL: Yeah. I know. It does bring up a whole level of, for me, among other things, a type of not crankiness, but a like, "What the hell are you doing?" KATHLEEN: Yeah. NEIL: In New York, I can often feel pre-COVID, sort of, I appreciate generally how New York relative to other cities, there's a kind of sense of your body and space. That's something I noticed in LA, for instance, going into a supermarket. The way people occupied space there suggested that they didn't fully take in, "Hey, you know what? We're all sharing this space, so we have to be attuned to the fact that- KATHLEEN: Oh, I agree with that. Yeah, no, I like the unspoken treaties we have. NEIL: Thinking about what you're saying about the masks and not being able to read people's faces, it makes me realize how much I use ... One of my cards is I love mouthing, "Sorry." KATHLEEN: Yeah. Mouthing, "I'm sorry." Yes, I know it. The way somebody moves, holds their lips, you can immediately get a grasp of that person's personality. Does their mouth turn down at the corners in rest, or does it turn up? When they're not thinking about it, when they're not doing anything, what are the signs that their personality is left on their face? I like that stuff. NEIL: First of all, when you're wearing a mask and you want to kind of communicate, I don't know, acknowledgement to someone, do you find you're kind of making a lot of extra use from the nose up or something? KATHLEEN: Well, yeah. I think you kind of see when someone's smiling just from the eyes. I don't know. Yeah, it turns into a kind of sign language, but you use your body for that too. It's its own challenge, but I do miss seeing people's faces. NEIL: Let's just launch right into some of these cards. First card is, "I could see when I get toward the end of my life thinking, 'I'm done with this particular personality, I've worn it out.'" KATHLEEN: It seems to me that I've already had several lives. And I expect that this is the beginning of another. I kind of accept that easily, actually. I like change and having to adapt, it's not frightening to me. NEIL: Where do you think that comes from? KATHLEEN: I think I'm a pretty down to earth person, pretty practical, and some of my experiences fighting rheumatoid arthritis for years and other injuries have just made me more accepting. NEIL: It also seemed like your childhood involved a lot of the need to adapt. KATHLEEN: Oh yeah. A lot of change. NEIL: Yeah. KATHLEEN: Yeah. Yeah. I was the only one of the siblings born in the States, but then we moved to Canada by the time I was three months, and then from there, to Cuba. From Cuba, we had a year or so in Washington, and then Caracas, Venezuela for five years. And then we transferred from Venezuela to London, which was a marvelous thing because it was my high school years, and that's where I was so sure. I became so sure that this was the career I wanted. Many, many actors have had a kind of transitory background, either in the service, or with their parents being high-level executives, or in the military. And I think it kind of makes for good actors, I guess. NEIL: Could you break that down? What about that, do you think? KATHLEEN: Well, I can remember vividly when I went from Venezuela to London thinking, "Well, I can be anybody now. I can be anybody I want to be because nobody there knows me, nobody has any history with me. So how I present myself when I start school or something is completely up to me." And I thought that was rather exhilarating. NEIL: That's interesting. You also in your book talk a lot about the role of empathy in acting. KATHLEEN: Yeah. NEIL: I wonder if having to move around a lot develops empathy. KATHLEEN: Well, I'll tell you one thing it does is it takes away some of your sense of control. These things are out of your control, and that's kind of how I've approached the dealing with the rheumatoid arthritis and other things. I don't control this. Now, if you give up the idea that you control everything around about your life, then you are open to thinking about others and their choices and their needs because you're kind of advocated here. NEIL: So as long as we're talking about thinking about others and empathy, I'd love to talk about this card, which simply says, "Empathy poisoning." And that comes from a place in me where I found myself often as a kid overwhelmed by the empathy I felt for my parents who were going through some tough stuff, and I found that past a certain point, empathy can almost feel toxic. KATHLEEN: Empathy poisoning. If anything, I might get that more from the characters that I play than other people. You play Martha in Virginia Woolf for 500 performances and there's no way you're going to keep yourself completely separate from her. So I would say that that's more empathy poisoning to me than other people. NEIL: So in other words, your empathy with the character can kind of embody itself in you. KATHLEEN: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yes. It's like when you're creating a character, take Martha. At first when you really start to study her, you think, "What is wrong with this woman? She's sitting around drinking endlessly and ruining the one friendship relationship in her life, what the hell?" And then you go a little deeper and you think, "All right, this is 1962, and no women held any tenured position in any university. All their energies and praise came from the status of their husbands." KATHLEEN: She has a husband who has assiduously worked to remain an associate professor for 17 years. She's ambitious, she's intelligent, she has energy, and absolutely no way to use it. What's she going to do? Just host faculty wives teas? And then you start to understand, "Okay, wait a minute now. If I had these endless barriers in my life, how would I fight?" Anyway, you can understand how you would start to really, really feel something for this woman and with her. The rage, I think more than anything. Yeah. NEIL: At the end of a performance, is there a process by which that empathic connection is released, or is it over the course of a run? KATHLEEN: Well, I used to believe that I did not bring any characters home. My ex-husband and my daughter have made it clear that that's not entirely true. Anyway, part of it's the energy at the end of a performance, say. Maybe you just had a standing ovation of 1100 people. It's thrilling, it's fantastic, and you can't just say, "Okay. Well that's all right, now I'm going to go home and have a different life." I have to work it off. I've been known to go up and down the stairs in my building just to get rid of some of this energy that keeps me going. I try to just, I don't know, tire myself a bit, I guess. NEIL: Since we're talking about acting, which I'd love to keep talking with you about, next card would be acting. Pretending to notice something when you walk into a room. I could never do that. That, to me, seems like a monumental challenge. KATHLEEN: But if you wanted to talk about what acting is, I'll tell you that acting is a very carefully chosen series of communications, both physically and through the text. It is incredibly deliberate and detailed, and never really spontaneous. I don't do ... what do you call it when you get thrown something and the- NEIL: Improvisation? KATHLEEN: Yes. I'm not good at improv, no. NEIL: But how does one perform surprise? KATHLEEN: Oh. Well, it isn't just performing. You allow yourself to be surprised. This stuff is half physical, half in the body, and half in your mind making the choices, but then you feel them in the body. NEIL: You teach acting, correct? KATHLEEN: I do. I coach, and now I'm starting to teach online a bit, which is very difficult, really, because I can really work on the text. I can really work with them on the meanings and the basic, but I cannot get them on their feet and have them move. Because then I really wouldn't be able to see them well. And so that, I really miss. I miss being in the room with somebody and looking at them from their feet to their head and going, "Okay, wait a minute. You just said, 'I hate you,' and your legs are crossed." It doesn't work like that. The body is not saying the same thing your mouth is. So I miss not being able to be in the room with them, but still, we can do good work. NEIL: Do you feel effective as a teacher? Yeah. Do you feel- KATHLEEN: Yes. Yeah. I find it very fulfilling. I really enjoy it. NEIL: See, I teach art, visual art, and I also find it super fulfilling, and I also feel effective, but sometimes when I step back, and I'm curious how this is for you, recommending references and theory. I do believe it works, but I don't know. I don't know, I sometimes feel like an effective quack or something like that. KATHLEEN: Well, heavens to Betsy. I'm not sure that's our responsibility. We give them what tools we think they can use, but we're not responsible for what they actually do with them. NEIL: I love that you're able to comfortably ... to own that. And it may be a difference between teaching acting and teaching visual art in that I wonder if there's something less mediated, more direct, I wonder, about teaching acting. KATHLEEN: Well in acting, we have a specific text. Chosen words to work with, which is a structure, and I don't know that you have that in art. NEIL: Not really, no. And I think so much of the teaching of art involves almost manufacturing parameters to contain the ideas. The worst thing you can do for a student is to say like, "Make a video," versus, "Make a video that has to be two minutes long and that doesn't use sound and that involves some aspect of memory." Whereas I guess, as an actor, that's such a great point. You always have the text as a kind of infrastructure for your teaching, correct? KATHLEEN: Yes. Yes. NEIL: I love it. Next card. Actors and animals. They're both about commitment. I feel like my cat is never fully other than 100% in what she's doing, and that could just be a question of I don't know if I'm interpreting her correctly. But it seems to me that actors, to be effective, kind of have to have something akin to that. Do you sense a connection? KATHLEEN: I do. I do. I believe very strongly in getting commitment. Again, you make your choices, and then you have to fill them. You have to fill them physically, vocally, mentally. I can tell when an actor hasn't committed to the role they're playing. It's very clear to me. NEIL: And when you look at Simon, are you ever inspired as an actor? KATHLEEN: I look at Simon and I see just a cat boy. He walks around with this swagger with his ass kind of swinging around and you go, "Oh, you're a real Butch, aren't you, cat?" No, I enjoy him that way, yes. NEIL: Oh, I love their embodied presence. I love the way they walk. KATHLEEN: Yeah. NEIL: You mentioned you can tell when actors aren't committed. Next card would be actors who are bad at acting, even in the posters. KATHLEEN: Oh. Wow. Well, that's very poor photography or choice then. I find still photography very difficult because I feel so fake. I feel staged- NEIL: Interesting. KATHLEEN: ... as opposed to the actual doing of the character, which feels quite natural to me. So then I really have to say, "All right. The PR people, the photographer they choose, I'll listen to them." NEIL: That's interesting. So it's sort of that fact that your character, when you're performing, unfolds in time. KATHLEEN: Yeah. He's moving. NEIL: Right. KATHLEEN: And it's stopped in a poster, in a photograph. NEIL: So do you have any tricks for that? Are you trying to kind of- KATHLEEN: No, I've never been very good at it. I don't like being photographed. Just still photography. It makes me uncomfortable to be just still. NEIL: What's your relationship to a fear of failing? KATHLEEN: Oh, I'm going to. I have to. If I don't risk failure, then I'm not going far enough. If you don't, and I say this to all my students as well, look, you go to the point of failure, you will have to risk to the point of failure. Now, sometimes that means, uh-huh (affirmative), yeah, you will go over the edge. But at the other times it means that have pushed yourself further and found more than you had previously, and I think that's our job. NEIL: Do you feel like in acting, is there the notion of having succeeded? KATHLEEN: Yes, I think so. I know when I've done a good performance when I've hit all the marks that I set up for myself. I know when I have done what I hoped and wanted, what I set out to do. I will never forget opening night on Broadway. Well, any opening night on Broadway, but Virginia Woolf, and there were four of us in that play. And when the curtain came down, I was holding onto two of my co-stars, and I said, "Do not ever forget this moment. Don't ever allow yourself to forget this because they are few and far between." NEIL: As a visual artist, you rarely get that experience. KATHLEEN: Yes. NEIL: It's always mediated. I always say I love attention, but I like it kind of bounced off a wall. But what you're describing sounds so powerful, for lack of a better word. KATHLEEN: It is. It's astounding. There's such an extraordinary phenomena in theater where people sit so close, or they used to sit so close to each other. Total strangers. Closer than they sit in their own homes to people and they start to breathe together and they start to hold their breath at the same time and they laugh at the same time. So in a way, they become one body, one person, and it works for them in that they leave the theater feeling that they were part of something. They weren't just the individual that walked in that door to begin with. That it was something more than that. And as they become more attuned to each other and more one, they're easier in a way for me to work with. NEIL: Is there work that has to be front-loaded in a performance to kind of help create that feeling of coalescent? KATHLEEN: A lot of it has to do with the actor's confidence. Because if they see that you feel confident and good about what you're doing, then they'll trust more easily. NEIL: Do you always go out feeling confident, or do you perform confidence? KATHLEEN: I always think that I'm so much more confident in my working self than in my private self that I'm quite sure the decisions I make as an actor are right. But then take me off the stage and give me a decision to make about whether you want to see these people or not and I'm like, "I don't know. I don't know." Yeah. And so it's very difficult sometimes. NEIL: I'd love to do sort of a quick lightning round of a couple of quick cards. First card would be gratuitous eye work in movies. I notice certain actors sort of try and telegraph a type of subtlety or something by way of a whole lot of stuff going on in the eyes that doesn't need to happen. KATHLEEN: That's interesting. Yeah, I can see that. I don't know, I guess. To me, for example, it will be too much smiling also. It's hiding. It's hiding yourself. It's feeling like you're keeping busy and you're doing something, but in fact, you're just dodging. NEIL: One of the cards here says, "Friendships that are tenured." KATHLEEN: That are what? NEIL: Tenured. KATHLEEN: Oh, yes. Well, to me, and this is something that I learned from my mother, for me, women friends. Really strong, interesting women friends are essential. And out of this poker group, we have an investment banker, a gynecologist, a film editor, a retired lawyer. I don't think any of the businesses are repeated, necessarily. And these are women I've met over the years through some reason or another and wanted in my life and said, "Come on. I want you in my life." I will actually say that. KATHLEEN: Anyway, my mom, when she got older, she had three or four very, very important friends in her life, and they would check on each other, and they would celebrate birthdays together, and they'd go to concerts together, and they'd volunteer at the library together. And so there was a constant. She didn't end up feeling that she was that alone. NEIL: People are less surprised by my age as they used to be. It used to be I would tell people, especially students, I'd say, let's say 10 years ago, I'd say, "I'm 45," and there'd be a, "What?" Now, when I tell them I'm 56, they're like, "That's about right." That's what the look says. KATHLEEN: No. For years and years, I always played characters older than I was, and it started with Body Heat, that once I was cast, only then did the director, Larry Kasdan, say, "By the way, how old are you?" And I said, "Well, I'm going to be 26." "No, you're not. No, you're not. You're 29." It was wrong for a woman to be that powerful that young is what he said. So then for years I played women who were older. I was not 42 when I did Peggy Sue Got Married, for God's sake. I don't think it was until Virginia Woolf, where the character is 50, that I actually got to be 50 playing 50. KATHLEEN: And now, I tell you, the thing that I find most extraordinary, I'm turning 66 next month, and I find it fascinating how the looks have changed over the years. How time and everything that contributes to your life has affected how you look or if you care. NEIL: What is your relationship to caring? KATHLEEN: Yeah. I don't. I certainly don't care as much as I know I used to. I still like to look nice as it were, but no, I don't set out to knock somebody out, you know what I mean? NEIL: I'd love to end, if you don't mind, with two questions I like to ask. First question is, fill in the blank for X and Y. What is a bad X you would take over a good Y? KATHLEEN: What is a bad ... Oh. Hell, why would you? Well, I suppose a bad meal but with good company would be doable. NEIL: I love it. And what's something you're looking forward to when this crisis, as it were, is over? KATHLEEN: Oh, getting back on stage. Theater is just shut down. I was booked for the fall at the Guthrie in Minneapolis and looking forward to that, and they've closed their whole fall season. There's to lot of figure out how you can get an audience again. And if you can only sell half the seats, how do you survive? Because these companies need full houses. So there's a lot of figuring out that's going to be there, and whether we survive or not. And I miss it. I miss being on stage. NEIL: What's something that keeps you going? KATHLEEN: Oh, I suppose a kind of a belief. I'm thinking that there will be something after this and there will be changes to be made and understood, and that keeps me going. NEIL: That seems like such a wonderful place to end it. Kathleen Turner, huge, huge, thank you for being on SHE'S A TALKER. I so appreciate it. KATHLEEN: Well, it was good, Neil. You said I'd know at the end. NEIL: Oh, right. KATHLEEN: Yes. It was good. NEIL: Thank you. I really, really appreciate it. KATHLEEN: You're most welcome. NEIL: All right. Have a great rest of your day. KATHLEEN: I'm leaving the meeting. NEIL: All right, bye-bye. KATHLEEN: Bye-bye.  

Neil discusses the micro-acting exercise of saying “my husband.” Writer Cassie da Costa finds deep truths in customer service language. ABOUT THE GUEST Cassie da Costa is a writer and editor who works for The Daily Beast and the feminist and queer film journal Another Gaze. Her newsletter of stories, Mildly Yours, is irregular and mysterious. ABOUT THE HOST Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com. ABOUT THE TITLE SHE’S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast. CREDITS This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund Producer: Devon Guinn Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue Mixer: Fraser McCulloch Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver Theme Song: Jeff Hiller Website: Itai Almor & Jesse Kimotho Social Media: Lourdes Rohan Digital Strategy: Ziv Steinberg Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Larry Krone, Tod Lippy, Sue Simon, Jonathan Taylor TRANSCRIPTION NEIL GOLDBERG: I'm so happy to have with me on SHE'S A TALKER, Cassie. Hi Cassie. CASSIE DA COSTA: Hi Neil. Thanks for having me. NEIL: Oh, it's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. When you're meeting someone for the first time, how might you succinctly describe to them what it is you do? CASSIE: Succinctly. NEIL: Yeah. CASSIE: I would say I'm a writer and an editor, and I write both criticism and sometimes reportage. I sometimes do more investigative stories. NEIL: I believe both of your parents are around. Correct? CASSIE: Yes. They are. NEIL: So how would, if they were talking to their friends, how might they describe what it is you do? CASSIE: They would say that I'm a writer, and that I write for the Daily Beast, and that I used to work at the New Yorker. Yeah, that I'm a writer and an editor, I guess they would say. My dad's always been saying I'm going to write a book, and I'm like, oh dear. It's been a struggle to get beyond 5,000 words. So, I don't know that. NEIL: Right. What's the book he would have you write, do you think? CASSIE: I think he's thinking about a novel or something narrative, because it goes along with my personality as a child growing up and making up stories and being very much in my own head and in my own world. But it's funny because I didn't go into fiction writing. I thought maybe in college that I would be a poet, and then I kind of ... I'm very scatterbrained, so I just didn't do it. I ended up just doing other things, not for any thought through reason. NEIL: But I feel like you're already, if I may, writing poetry, For me, Mildly Yours, I understand that at least partly as poetic. I don't know, I guess- CASSIE: Yeah, it is. It definitely is. And I don't think that poetry has ever left the work that I do. I got in trouble a lot because the pieces that I wrote were too lyrical, and I've done things- NEIL: In trouble with who? CASSIE: Well, not in trouble in trouble, but just, editors would be like, what is this? Or, even professors in college, I would write a term paper and they'd be like, what the hell are you talking about? NEIL: I love the idea of getting in trouble for poetry. CASSIE: Yeah. That's my orientation towards poetry, that it is a kind of trouble. NEIL: Yeah. CASSIE: In a good way. NEIL: I would love to move on to some cards. Shall we? CASSIE: Ooh, yes. NEIL: Okay. First card, in the song, Proud To Be An American, the lyric, "Where at least I know I'm free," the at least. CASSIE: Hmm. NEIL: To me, that contains so much of the depressed side effects of individualism or an acknowledgement of our unhappiness by saying, "At least I know I'm free." CASSIE: Yeah. It really gets to the core of everything that's happening now around like mask wearing and all of that kind of [crosstalk 00:00:32] where it's like, there's genocide, yet I'm free. And also, it makes you wonder who the speaker of that sentence is, or you can certainly imagine who it is. Yeah. At least I... NEIL: Exactly. At least I... That should be like an instead of E Pluribus Unum. It should be, at least I... Oh my God. But I also wonder what is the, there's something on the other side of at least. It's like, so dah, dah, dah, dah, but at least. CASSIE: Right. NEIL: There's a but there. CASSIE: Yeah. I think they're getting at something very real there, which is like they need to say, well, at least I'm free comes from a very dark place. NEIL: Right. Exactly. Yeah. CASSIE: And it means that what you've done is you've already presumed the kind of defeat- NEIL: Exactly. CASSIE: And you have to overcome it. Yeah. NEIL: Exactly. Oh my God. That's so true. CASSIE: Weirdly baked into exceptionalism is a victim narrative, which is kind of funny in a dark way. But yeah. NEIL: That's so true. That is so true. CASSIE: I'm having a lot of thoughts about this. I really feel this about that whole freedom of speech letter that was in Harper's. NEIL: The Harper's thing. Oh my God. Can you describe for those who don't know it like just in, very quickly what that Harper's letter is, although I'd like to think that the SHE'S A TALKER audience is well acquainted with this kerfuffle. This highbrow kerfuffle. [crosstalk 00:02:17]. CASSIE: [crosstalk 00:02:17] I'm sure deep in this highbrow kerfuffle. A writer, I believe for New York Times magazine named Thomas Chatterton Williams, he wrote an open letter about cancel culture let's say, what he believes to be cancel culture. And a bunch of writers signed it who are amongst a certain set of people, controversial or not liked very much. They would disagree with this obviously. And it really represents, I think this idea that there are dwindling institutions and they represent something to people who have very different ideologies. And some of those people feel like we should all get to be in these institutions as long as the head honchos approve of us and other people who say, "No, I would like to remake these institutions to be tolerant and to be rigorous." CASSIE: And so that's the argument, but it's been framed very differently by the former group as a question of free speech. NEIL: [crosstalk 00:00:03:30]. CASSIE: It's such a silly thing, but it does come from a place of self-victimization, but it's really strange to me where I'm like, wow, these people really feel like they've lost something in all of their like, I don't know, jobs at major publications where they're writing all of their ideas. They really feel maligned, that is very American. NEIL: As you're talking, it reminds me of one time I was filming something and there were a group of us and it was, I think it was raining and we held a cab. This is when one did that, and got in the cab. But it turns out there had been someone who was waiting for the cab that we didn't see and who was like, understandably made a fuss when we started getting into the cab. So I was like, "Oh, sorry, take the cab." And they said, no, they weren't going to take it. And then when we drove away, he gave us the finger. So it's like, that is it. It's like you could... I mean, it's not the same maybe. I don't know. We could deeply deconstruct it. CASSIE: I see the resonances there where it's like, yeah, someone has already decided that unless it happens in their way or the way that they already imagined, then there's no path forward. NEIL: Right. Yeah. CASSIE: And I think when the response to people saying, we live in a world that's undressed in these ways, in which opportunities are hoarded, in which there's a culture of this and it's toxic. And people's response is, "Well, this isn't who I am, and that's not the truth." And it just, it forecloses any meaningful engagement. I don't know. I get that it's frustrating to be criticized by people who you don't really know or who have followings that you don't understand. But anyway, I have nothing else insightful to say about this. NEIL: Next card, more than happy, a term with genuine spiritual potential embedded within the customer service language of late capitalism. More than happy, I'd be more than happy to help you. CASSIE: Yes. NEIL: I remember early in therapy, a million years ago, I mentioned something about being happy and my therapist is like, "That's not what it's about." But I deeply on a deep spiritual level, whatever that means, think this whole happiness thing is such a ruse because so many of the, it feels important things to accomplish as a participant in the world don't have to do with happiness, yet it's lodged itself within that, I do love the language of late capitalism in the service industry. CASSIE: Yeah. I agree. There is actually some beauty in that statement, but it's probably not in its intended meaning. The way that certainly late capitalism positions this language is very telling. And I think that sometimes what happens as a result is that we want to reject all of it outright because that's the context in which we know it, which is fair. But I do feel like there's some power in interpreting it differently and saying, actually, this is how I think about it. NEIL: That's wonderful. Talk about a kind of odd form of reclamation. You're reclaiming something that was never yours. It's not like reclaiming queer. CASSIE: Right. No one called me happy, but... NEIL: So true of me. I bet people have called you happy. CASSIE: I don't know if that's the first thing that comes out of people's mouth. NEIL: Right. CASSIE: She's happy. NEIL: God. CASSIE: It reminds me of when people are like, thank you in advance. NEIL: That's so hostile. That's so hostile. CASSIE: But it's a very hostile statement, but it also in a way speaks to something true, which is that we in polite society have to conduct ourselves in such a way as if we are already grateful for the promise of goodness to come. NEIL: We've really changed the way I think about thanks in advance. CASSIE: Oh yes. NEIL: I guess the question is then, okay, thanks in advance, but what happens if the person you're thanking in advance doesn't do the thing or whatever that you're thanking them in advance for. Does the thanks still hold? CASSIE: Yeah. I think that's where I think sometimes we talk about, ooh, the ultimate zen, like your ability to be, oh, this word is so loaded, but be grateful even when you do not get the outcome you hoped for. I actually think that maybe the best version of gratefulness is how do I hold space for myself to be okay even when things don't turn out how I wanted them to turn out? To not to be okay right then, but to eventually be okay. NEIL: Right. Yeah. It's dispositional or it's a chosen relationship to something. Is that right? CASSIE: Yeah. A chosen relationship and not everyone has to make that choice. I think that's the argument, right? That maybe we're forcing everyone to try to have that disposition and not everyone's going to have it and that's okay. NEIL: Yeah, exactly. Oh, my God. All right. Next card. I don't like when someone pantomimes putting a gun to their head and pulling the trigger. I notice it's usually done by someone experiencing or describing something as annoying, that it's actually a privilege to experience. I have a relative who will be unnamed, who often will do that about a kind of domestic issue that they're dealing with, that actually they're secretly happy to be dealing with. CASSIE: I feel like it may be, I could be wrong, I'm making this up. But it could have originated as a slapstick gesture that was very purposefully an exaggeration. And that's why it was funny, because obviously you wouldn't shoot yourself in the head for this reason. NEIL: Right. CASSIE: Maybe you would, but the common thinking would be that you wouldn't, and now maybe the affect has changed. NEIL: Yes. Yes. It used to be ironic, I guess would it be? It used to be the mismatch between the thing and the gesture was what made it funny. And now, what makes it not funny is the mismatch between the thing and the gesture. CASSIE: Yeah. Yes. It's gotten too on the nose, which I think is so true for a lot of gestures, lot of affect has become ... Even the affect of I don't have to wear a mask and people in the grocery store yelling. I think in a way it comes from that, because it's kind of like, well, you better kill me first. NEIL: Right. Exactly. CASSIE: You know, before I ... But the thing that they're so angry about, it doesn't really matter? And they're kind of deriving glee out of all of this. NEIL: Absolutely. It is a way to have, that whole mass thing, is such a way to have outsized impact. CASSIE: It's a built narrative. It's an imagined narrative. And I think, yeah, like the shooting yourself in the head pantomime has weirdly gotten subsumed into people's own little stories, rather than like a way of entertaining other people. NEIL: Yeah. It speaks of a type of feeling of being put upon, maybe. Is that part of it? CASSIE: Yeah. Right, right. Or, if someone's nagging you and you pantomime shooting yourself in the head, or whatever. NEIL: It still has a little bit of the trace of that original irony, you know what I mean? But it really, it's flipped, or the balance has flipped, so that we really should be identifying with you for how frustrated you are because you have to whatever, be on a conference call about whatever, that you're lucky to have a job about or something. CASSIE: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, I think that's been a big conversation across different issues that have come up in the last few years on the internet and elsewhere. Which is to say who gets to complain and to what degree? And obviously there's no straight answer, but I think there has been more criticism about whose grievances get projected the loudest, or historically have been. And how they've been positioned and taken seriously, whereas other people's haven't. A lot of the things I write about are ultimately about that, and how for some reason, the people who have maybe had dominance in those areas, somehow all of a sudden feel like, oh, I'm the victim in this, and my grievances are not being heard, and I'm oppressed. And it's really alarming. It's just like, what? NEIL: Right. CASSIE: Why do you think this. NEIL: Right. Right, and actually it does, I would think, provide a conduit through which you could feel empathy. You could actually, I think, step back from that feeling and think like, okay, I am genuinely feeling not heard. That's my subjective experience. Okay. That's unassailable. Then, maybe you might want to look at why this feels like you're not being heard. But then you could indeed then think like, well, what does not feeling heard feel like? Who has been heard? It seems like that could be a gateway drug to a type of useful transformation, I think. CASSIE: You would hope. And I think for some people it is. But, unfortunately, for many people it really isn't. I think it's also because whether it's the way that we grew up and we were taught about feelings, a lot of people, you learn that when you feel bad, then it's good to blame someone. NEIL: Yes. Yeah. CASSIE: It's not good to reflect and look around. And maybe in a way, look to your own behavior in the past. Yeah, there's just not a great template for most people, for how to deal with those feelings. NEIL: This doesn't apply here around in the political context about who's heard, who's not heard, but then there is the kind of existential scenario of there's no one to blame. And that's a tough one for me. I have a card that I've talked about in the past which is, whenever I stub my toe, I look for someone to blame. I guess, because if there's no one to blame, then it's like, I don't know. That's a much scarier world to live in, which is actually the world. CASSIE: Yeah. Yeah, and I think I have probably the stubbed toe problem all the time. I'm embarrassed, or I'm hurt, and I'm just like, this is somebody's fault. NEIL: Exactly. Exactly. Next card. Thinking about all the bad theater that's going to be made about Corona. CASSIE: I'm glad I'm not a theater reviewer, but I'm sure there'll be many a TV show and movie made. NEIL: But maybe not as egregious as how it will manifest itself in theater. CASSIE: Yeah. Theater does have a way of taking things a certain place that they never needed to be taken. NEIL: [inaudible 00:23:26]. CASSIE: Yeah. Well, the opportunism that will erupt if it hasn't already. I think to be optimistic or to be kind of silver lining about it, I think there has been some good reflection that's taken artistic form. And people, who are led by their curiosity rather than their need to make things, who've made things. And that those have been good. But yeah, there's certainly going to be people who are like, all right, I got to make something out of nothing in the time of COVID. Here's my show. NEIL: Right. CASSIE: And I wish those people the best. I really do. NEIL: Yes. Thanks. And thanks in advance. I say COVID, but also there are the uprisings around racial justice, which I don't know in a certain way, maybe are not as available to the people. But I am not thinking about the bad art or theater that could arise from that. CASSIE: Yeah. NEIL: I somehow don't imagine it. CASSIE: Yeah. I see what you're saying actually, which is to say that the people who I think would have the courage to make theater about this, for the most part, at least that I'm aware of, even if I didn't love it, would probably actually do something that wasn't egregious. But, maybe I'm naive. NEIL: Yeah. Yeah. CASSIE: That did happen with Black Lives Matter. I felt like there were films that were made that I just thought were just completely ridiculous, that were made in the years following. NEIL: Is there an example? I can't think of, and maybe this is just me not going to movies a lot, but I can't think of any movies that addressed or obliquely engaged with Black Lives Matter. CASSIE: I wrote a piece about Queen & Slim earlier this year, it was very disparaging of the film. NEIL: Oh, uh-huh (affirmative). I didn't read it. CASSIE: And some people were very mad at me for going in on the film in that way, even though I think quite a few people agreed that it wasn't good. My feeling was that the film ... I'm not going to make any claims about the intentions. From what I've read in the interviews, and I think it came probably from a very earnest place, I don't really know what's in these people's hearts and minds. But the effect of the film to me felt like a kind of a stylization of Black Lives Matter that was ultimately shallow, that was hollow. And, that there's a major risk run there when there's an economy being made of these issues. It's hard if you're like, okay, if people are only going to hire black filmmakers and writers to write about these issues, and it's much harder to get hired to write about anything else, even if that's where your work is, then, okay, how do you criticize this kind of work when it misses the mark? And for me, I was just like, well, I'm just going to criticize it like anything else. Because I'm black, I guess this work is made for me, but to other people. So, I'm going to be honest about how I feel about it. But yeah, It's funny because I do think there's some very careful treading that's done around certain films, and it's not merely because of the subject. It's also because of who might be making it and how they're positioned in the industry. Do some of these critics writing want to have careers in the arts outside of criticism? And if they're too mean about this thing, will that compromise their ability to get certain opportunities? I think all of that stuff is at play. Maybe that's why it seems like, oh, I haven't seen anything or heard of anything like this. It's because people either won't write about it, or they'll just write something very lukewarm that doesn't really say anything one way or another. NEIL: Right. Yeah. Props to you for, I was going to say, for that courageousness. Although I feel like that's another word like grateful. Courageous and generous. CASSIE: Well, I laugh because I don't think it's courageous. I think people who know me would say that the reason I don't have fear is because I don't value what I would get out of not saying anything. So to me, there's not really a dilemma. I wasn't like, ooh, should I publish this? Will people even mad at me? I was like, okay, well. I'm not ambitious in that way. I'm sure there are other ways in which I'm ambitious, but it's not in that particular way. NEIL: I love it. What is a bad X you'd take over a good Y? CASSIE: Oh. Okay. This is a good question. I would take a bad Whitney Houston song over a good Taylor Swift song. Is that too easy? NEIL: It's pretty easy I'm going to say. But that's okay. CASSIE: I'm trying to think deep. NEIL: Yeah. CASSIE: But, I guess my point is that I would take a bad song from a nostalgic tradition, over a good song from something that I feel like, yeah, is kind of ubiquitous in a way. I love- NEIL: And contemporary. CASSIE: And contemporary. I love bad stuff that comes from what feels to me like a very, I don't know, something that's kind of disappeared because everything is so crafted now. Everything is so branded. So even when stuff is good, I'm kind of like, okay. I do have to, and I do listen to new music all the time because of the work I do, but I don't listen to it with the same frequency and allegiance that I listen to stuff maybe made from 2005 and before that. NEIL: Okay. I love that highly specific demarcation point. CASSIE: I don't know. I might have to amend it in the post. NEIL: Okay. The question is, what are you looking forward to when all this is over, but I'm not really sure what the all this is anymore. CASSIE: Well, on a very simple level, I can't wait to see my family. My parents, I really miss, and my sisters. And I look forward to, hopefully, I guess more instances in our society of people being proactive to take care of each other, rather than waiting until when things go wrong. But I don't know if that's actually something that will happen. NEIL: Right. CASSIE: It's a hope. NEIL: Why would it happen? Why would it happen? CASSIE: Well, because I think that the vulnerability of this time, for not everyone, but for a lot of people has meant that they've had to become more engaged. Whether it's with their own family members and friends or wider communities, that they've had to be more attentive and more aware of things going on around them that maybe don't necessarily directly affect them. But I also think that people really struggle to do this and fail to do this in many ways. So I hope that there's learning there, and change that happens as a result. But also it's very possible that that really won't happen. So, we'll see. NEIL: On that note, Cassie, thank you so much for being on SHE'S A TALKER. CASSIE: Thank you, Neil. This was a real pleasure, and a very welcome break from my day.  

Neil discusses the pleasure of medical touch. Designer/entertainer Isaac Mizrahi consoles us that at least Stephen Sondheim isn't the best bridge player. ABOUT THE GUEST Isaac Mizrahi has worked extensively in the entertainment industry as an actor, host, writer, designer, and producer for over 30 years. He is the subject and co-creator of Unzipped, a documentary following the making of his Fall 1994 collection which received an award at the Sundance Film Festival. He hosted his own television talk show The Isaac Mizrahi Show for seven years, has written two books, and has made countless appearances in movies and on television. Mizrahi has directed productions of A Little Night Music and The Magic Flute for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and has also performed cabaret at Café Carlyle, Joe’s Pub, West Bank Café, and City Winery locations across the country. He currently serves as a judge on Project Runway: All-Stars and his memoir, I.M., was published in February 2019. ABOUT THE HOST Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com. ABOUT THE TITLE SHE’S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast. CREDITS This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund, Western Bridge, and the David Shaw and Beth Kobliner Family Fund Producer: Devon Guinn Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue Mixer: Fraser McCulloch Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver Theme Song: Jeff Hiller Website: Itai Almor & Jesse Kimotho Social Media: Lourdes Rohan Digital Strategy: Ziv Steinberg Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Larry Krone, Tod Lippy, Sue Simon, Jonathan Taylor TRANSCRIPTION NEIL: Isaac Mizrahi, thank you so much for being on She's A Talker. I really appreciate it. ISAAC: So happy to do it. NEIL: I'm curious, today, May 15th, what is something that you find yourself thinking about? ISAAC: May 15th. I think about, of course, I think what everybody else is thinking about at the moment. Like, what the hell is going on? Really! What the hell is going on? It's so scary. Like, I was looking at Instagram, I follow this one dancer, this one beautiful dancer called David Hallberg. I love him, he's an old friend of mine. Anyway, so I was following him and I was looking at pictures of him dancing on stage in a costume with other dancers thinking like, “Excuse me? Will we ever get to go to a theater again?” I know that's really what I'm thinking. A lot about theater and how much I love theater, opera, ballet. So that's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about David Hallberg in tights. NEIL: That's inspiring. ISAAC: I know. Never will I ever see David Hallberg in tights again. NEIL: May it be soon. May it be soon. ISAAC: I know, may it be soon! Exactly. NEIL: So that's what you're thinking about on May 15th. Do you have kind of like a recurring thought that seems to return to you? ISAAC: You know, I gotta say the recurring thing that I think about, especially in May, is my dog who died on May 12th, 2016, right? Since May 12th, I've been thinking about my first dog called Harry. My screen saver on my phone is still Harry and Dean, who we got, I don't know, six or seven years later. We got a second dog called Dean. And Dean is still with us. And he's aging now. I'd say he's like 14 or 15, and we have a younger dog named kitty. (dogs barking) Oh, there they are on cue! That's funny. All right, Dean, relax. He's a beagle mix so he’s very talkative. NEIL: I love it! Well, it's perfect for the podcast called She's A Talker. ISAAC: I know! She's A Talker! She's A Talker! And it's so funny because kitty, the bitch, is not a talker at all. She rarely opens her mouth. I was going to say that I was thinking about my screensaver and then I was thinking about, Jesus, when he goes, right, I don't know when that's going to happen, five years from now or seven years from now. When he goes, what would my screensaver be? To me, that screensaver is the truth of my life. It's those two dogs together in this house, in Bridgehampton. I have to say, like, I don't have a big fabulous mansion in Bridgehampton. I have a shack that I love! That's my home! And I've been here since the middle of March thinking, “Do I care if I ever see my apartment again?” Which is fabulous, the third-best apartment in the whole city or something, you know? And I keep thinking like, “Do I need to see that place again?” No, I would rather just be here now. But I think a lot about the dog situation! Like, when Dean goes does that mean that my screensaver has to change? Right? Because the truth of my life, the truest moment of my life is being here with Dean and Harry, even though he's still not here. Isn't that weird? His ashes are here. Harry’s ashes are on my shelf, in the den. I know it's a little morbid. Did we expect for She's A Talker to get so morbid today? NEIL: Oh, I'm fully prepared to go there, and also that doesn't feel morbid at all! That feels comforting. And it's interesting, you know, the show is based on these index cards I've been writing down over the years and one of the cards, I can't remember it exactly, is something about the different durations of our pets lives and our own lives. It creates a kind of musical counterpoint in that, you know, my partner is 12 years younger than I am, my husband, and my cat is five years and together we're all operating on these different lifespans. It feels somehow musical to me. ISAAC: Right. You know, I often think, especially, like, I've been writing more and more— I know this sounds insane to you probably. (dog barking) It sounds insane to Dean, but I've been writing a novel. I finished at the Carlyle February 8th or something like that. Then I had like four days off and I felt like, “Okay, what am I going to do?” I feel I’m in postpartum depression, I have to start something. So I started writing this novel that I've been taking notes about and thinking about for 30 years or something. And the more I think about writing, the more I think about what you're saying, which is if you stories going on, if you have simultaneous stories going on, you know the characters affect each other in this way. So the timeline you're talking about, I often think about that. And especially now. Like, you know, my husband and I are not cohabitating through this. My husband is in the city. He preferred to shelter in the city. I couldn't face it. I couldn't do it. NEIL: Yeah. ISAAC: Anytime I talked to him on the phone, I think to myself this thought that you're saying. This timeline thing, this emotional timeline of what's going on in his life. Because he has this whole other 90% of something else that's going on. You know what I mean? Like we think that's going along in parallel lines, but it isn't, and yet it works. My husband and I, we have separate bedrooms and I feel like we need that for a lot of different reasons. And we're comfortable. Like, I always kind of spoke about the fact that I was an insomniac and that's what kind of prescribed the separate bedroom thing. But it's not so much about that as much as, like, really sort of standing for the fact that we have separate lives, you know? I mean that. That's a really, really important part of our partnering. NEIL: Next card is— I'm going to mention this person's name and maybe bleep them out. It's really within the context of adoring their work, but— How the third story in ****’s latest collection is a little bit disappointing, but that feels like a relief from the relentless virtuosity. Do you ever have that feeling about like where something is so masterful, where it falters a little bit it's almost like— ISAAC: And you go like “phew,” yes. Thank goodness they're human. I have, but I can't think of any real examples of it. I will tell you I'm sort of friends with Steve Sondheim, right? Literally, he has never written anything bad. Like you can't find anything bad. But I played Bridge with him a long time ago. We used to play bridge and he wasn't the best bridge player. And that made me feel a little bit better. NEIL: Another card says: The technical differences between a performer being naked versus wearing a bodysuit; How that probably gives rise to a lot of fetishes. ISAAC: What a hilarious question on so many levels. That is a hilarious thing to ask. Dance belts, thongs, sports bras... Talk amongst yourselves, right? That's basically what you're doing. I think that people go to see dance shows not merely because it's an incredible art form or it's beautiful, but also because they're horny and it's like a sexy thing. NEIL: Of course, yeah. ISAAC: It's a really sexy thing to watch people dance. You see like body parts jiggling, you see butts, you see titties, you see, like, baskets on men. The weights of these things. I do. Of course, you can scream, you can laugh at me, but I swear, like, a large percent of what I have been doing all these years is that. You know, when I see a woman with beautiful legs and a tutu, I go like, “what?” You know, your legs just can't look any better than if you're wearing a tutu and pointe shoes. It just doesn't get better. Sometimes I design short short short tunics for boys so that when they fly up you get to see the flesh color dance. I mean, like, I just do because I'm a pervert and also because it’s beautiful! NEIL: Oh absolutely. ISAAC: It’s beautiful. But, by the way, you know, there've been times where I go like, “Oh, wouldn't it be great if this was naked?” You know? And, you know, it wouldn’t because then it's not about anything but the bodies, you know what I mean? Like, yes it’s all about the body, but it's not just about-— it's not only about a body. I rarely like naked dancing. There was one show I saw when I was a kid that I loved that was, oh, what's her name? It was Garden of Earthly Delights. That wonderful choreographer I can't remember. But they were all naked and I loved it. It was a great show. Cause it was set in the Garden of Earthly Delights! But yeah, I don't love nudity on stage. I never think it really has a place except to shock people, you know? NEIL: Mhm. But your talking makes me realize that something about— in a way it's about abstraction. You know, the bodysuit creates almost an abstraction of the body. Is that it? So you're not getting, like, balls and cock and ass and tits or et cetera, but you are— ISAAC: Yeah, maybe so! To me, the figurative is stronger than the literal. I don't know. I always feel like it's kind of a let down when you see someone without their clothes. NEIL: Absolutely. ISAAC: And I don't think it's an abstraction of a body. I think it's a kind of leveling of the body, and it's the best way to see the body. Sometimes I think the only great costume is a leotard. And the more I work as a costume designer, which I don't really do that much, I work with Mark Morris. Still, it's really interesting to me because we're really, really close friends. We're best friends. So it's really interesting for me to do that. I always love rehearsal clothes better than any costume you could possibly come up with anymore. It makes me focus better. Does that make sense? NEIL: Did you see that recent Cunningham documentary? ISAAC: Yes, I did. NEIL: The balance so many of those costumes struck between— You know, they were often bodysuits, but adorned and decorated. ISAAC: I was actually gonna bring up Merce because, you know, usually it was some kind of a bodysuit. I'm a huge Merce Cunningham fan. I loved that stuff so much growing up. I was there so often and, by the way, not liking it and not understanding it a lot too. It never stopped me from going. I kind of went so as not to understand everything. I didn't want this feeling of understanding when I went to see Merce. I wanted to be immersed in something. Almost like being immersed in your own organs or something. It's like the insides of your own body that you're looking at. NEIL: For me, Merce— I have such a similar relationship to the whole cognitive experience of watching Merce and not getting it. I almost feel like it's about a type of productive spacing out. Like, the ways in which I don't connect or the way it throws me back into my mind by virtue of not getting it is a productive space. Is that part of what you're saying, perhaps? ISAAC: Absolutely! Yes, 100%. One of the things I don't think a lot of choreographers answer is the question: Why the hell are we here? You know what I mean? Why are we here? Right. A lot of choreographers don't do that. Some of the best. And it bugs me. I can't work with them unless they can answer that question. And with Merce, the question doesn't even arise. You are there because you are there. To me, it transcended everything. I mean, that music, that idea about what art is, I mean, to me, it's what it is. And you know, for a long time, my favorite movie was 2001: A Space Odyssey because of the attraction and because of the wonderful coming together of this kind of futuristic look at something and this ancient look at something. Monoliths and space people and ape-men, et cetera. I thought it was this incredible thing. And then I saw it again and you know what? It didn't really age that well. I have to say it didn't stay with me. And if you look at Merce it not only ages well, it's just the most beautiful damn thing. It's as beautiful as anything you will ever look at. NEIL: I so agree. ISAAC: Graham doesn't age that well, does it? It's like a little drama. It looks great out of costume. If you ever get a look at Graham in rehearsal out of the costumes, it looks so beautiful. It looks so beautiful. NEIL: That makes sense because it adds to the melodrama, the costumes. ISAAC: Merce was just doing it all without costuming. You know, you look at some of the pivots, and some of the flexing, and some of the arched back, and that kind of deep, deep plié, and the relevé, everything on the relevé never touched. It's Martha Graham only without costumes and on steroids and an abstract— no subject matter, no story, nothing. You know? NEIL: Yeah. Yeah. Product placements: the kind of psychic work you have to do to get past them. How do you connect to that, if at all? Like when you're watching a TV show or a movie and you see— “Okay, there's that Coke.” ISAAC: Yeah, exactly. Right. You know, I think they're doing a really good job because I notice it less. You know? I notice it less. You know when I notice it? Is on, like, Ellen or something. Like talk shows? NEIL: Interesting. Uh-huh. ISAAC: I notice it a lot. You know, it's like, “Oh, who made that deal to use that spatula on the cooking segment?” You know what I mean? That's when I think about it. In the movie, I don't exactly think about it unless there's a giant product name. I don't know why, but it doesn't bother me. And I feel like they're doing a good job or something. They're doing a good job. NEIL: Well you know they're measuring it. God knows. ISAAC: I know. Or else I'm getting callous and I don't care or something. I don't judge a show by its ability to place a product without notice. But at a talk show, it's like, well, of course it's about— that's all it's about. Why else are you watching the talk show right now? It's to plug someone's new movie and someone's new spatula. Right? That's the only reason to have a talk show. NEIL: Do you have a favorite spatula? ISAAC: I do actually. My favorite spatula is an OXO Good Grips spatula. NEIL: Absolutely know what you're talking about. ISAAC: I love it. NEIL: I know you're into astrology and see, for me, I feel like, as a hardcore four planets in Virgo, that the spatula is the Virgo tool. ISAAC: Yes it is. You know I have a Virgo ascendant. Yes, NEIL: Yes. you're a Libra. Right? If I remember correctly? ISAAC: Yes, a Libra with a Virgo ascendant. NEIL: As a Libra, does your choice in kitchen tools connect at all to your— ISAAC: A few things. A few things that I adore. I have the best ice cream maker in the fucking world, it’s huge! And it makes basically a cup of ice cream, but it does— It's so great. When you turn it on the whole house vibrates and you know this ice cream is being churned. And I loved it so much I got another one for the city. So now I have two of these babies and I feel so rich. I feel like I’m a rich person because I could afford two ice cream makers, you know, like, of such quality. And then the other thing I have, which is so special and I love it: if you go on my Instagram page— speaking of product placement, Isaac Mizrahi! Hello? Hello!— So the thing is that I did this cooking segment. I made this really good pasta with— NEIL: With pork! I saw it! ISAAC: Yeah, exactly. And I have this wonderful sausage smasher. It smashes the sausage really effectively NEIL: Sausage smasher sounds like a euphemism somehow. ISAAC: Doesn't it? It sounds like something you would— like a terrible thing you call someone. NEIL: Okay. Another card is: I always feel the gesture of holding something away from my eyes to read it because I'm not wearing reading glasses somehow looks cool. Like I do it in front of students, but of course, it looks just the opposite, but I still haven't let go of it. ISAAC: No, you mustn't do that. You mustn’t. That ages you so much. You know what else ages you? If you wear glasses and, at some point, you look over your glasses to see something. NEIL: Oh, don’t do it. Don't do it. ISAAC: I remember, I'm not gonna mention any names, but I worked for an older designer at a time and he used to look over his glasses and I was like, “You're so old.” I came close to saying it to his face once. Like, you gotta stop doing that because it's just so aging, you know? Don't do it! Do not do it. NEIL: I'm thinking of your life in cabaret, this other world that you occupy. So how I wrote it down on the card is: The connection between camp and paying the check while performers are still singing at Joe's pub. And I know it's the cafe Carlisle as well. I remember seeing Justin Vivian Bond breaking my heart with a song, but, at the same time, the server is coming or I'm doing that tip. And somehow navigating that mental space between being moved by something on stage, but also having to negotiate this transaction feels like the essence of camp. ISAAC: You know, I honestly, and especially after that exhibit, shall we call it, last year at the Met called Camp, I don't know what the hell camp is. I always thought I knew what camp was and I always kind of understood that people associated a certain amount of camp with me because I embrace it. I do love camp but I don't know what it means anymore. You know? NEIL: Yeah. ISAAC: And so all I can say to you is I would never associate the word camp with the confluence of those two things happening at once. Like, you know, on stage singing a heartbreaking song with the fries coming and paying a bill. That's not, to me, campy. To me, that's ironic. And it doesn't detract because that's the understanding that you have as a performer in a nightclub. That’s the understanding that you have. The irony kind of adds to it. It makes it better in a certain way because all artists are there to be appreciated. Right? So if this person came and is sitting there and the agreement is that he can order food and he can pay his bills while you're doing what you're doing, then I say, “Bring it, bring it, bring it on.” I mean that. I never— I don't flinch when that happens because I think, you know, I'll tell you this one thing: I used to kind of be friends with Azzedine Alaïa a little bit, a little bit. Like, we had dinner three times. I said to him, “Oh, you know, this person was wearing the dress and she was wearing it with this bra—” and he was like, “Darling, I don't care if she's wearing it with a flower pot on her head, she bought the dress, bless her.” You know? And I was like, well, thank you Azzedine. You know, I thought that was a great piece of advice. Like as I age, I get less and less precious about certain things and more and more precious about other things that I didn't. One of them is not people paying attention to me on stage because if they already paid, they can do— I count the sleepers sometimes. I’m not kidding you, it’s like, “Oh she’s sleeping, he's sleeping…” And I'm counting people who are asleep. If you play a big room, you're going to have some sleepers. You know? And I go, “Hurray!” Because darling, some of the best sleep I ever got was at ballet or the opera or the theater. And I love the show, by the way. I come out thinking “That's the best show I ever saw in my life.” A) Because it was great. And B) because I got like a 10-minute nap and it was my favorite thing. NEIL: Yeah. And sleeping is a form of interactivity too. It's like an edit. ISAAC: Exactly. This is true. It's like a way of making it your own, shall we say? NEIL: Yes, yeah. ISAAC: Hooray! I'm glad we got that straight because I mean that. NEIL: I love that idea of the things that you become more precious about and less precious about. Does anything immediately come to mind as something else you've gotten less precious about or more precious about with age? ISAAC: I've got less precious about meet and greets and autograph signing. I’m much less precious about that. And I’ve gotten more precious about, like, what happens to me before a show, because I feel like I have to be in a certain space to do a show. NEIL: Mhm. ISAAC: I'm more precious now. Like I beg people to get me this or not offer me with that. You know, make sure that something is set up properly so that I can make my entrance because I feel like doing that thing that I do at the Carlyle or whatever I'm playing, you have to show up exactly right. Because if you don't show up exactly right they'll eat you alive. You have to really believe that you're not nervous. And in order to do that, you know, there's a lot of preparation. But now afterward, I can meet people, I can do meet and greets, I can sign autographs, I can do all that. In the fashion business, I hated doing meet and greets. I hated— I couldn't do trunk shows. God. I mean, like, really? I have to now sell the shit? Like I designed the shit, I showed the shit, I taught the shit, and now I have to sell the shit. I don't know why, but I feel like this is just on more of a personal level. Like, I guess I just like theater better. I like the theater better than I like fashion. It’s just better— Sorry. I'm old enough. I can judge. It's probably sour grapes. NEIL: Well, that's for you to decide. It doesn't sound like that. That sounds more like what artists do, which is that they have an evolving relationship to the forms that they engage with. Two last questions. What's a bad— I mean, it relates to this “what's precious, what's not anymore.” Fill in the blank for an X and Y: What's a bad X you would take over a good Y? ISAAC: I would take a bad episode of Mary Tyler Moore over, hm, oh, I shouldn't say this, over, a really, really good fashion show. NEIL: Cheers. Cheers. ISAAC: I mean it. I shouldn't say that, but I did. I said it. You got it. But could I tell you something apropos of Mary Tyler Moore? NEIL: Please. Anything. ISAAC: I have been inspired by Mary Tyler Moore before in my life and everyone knows that. So people think that that's all I think about and I live for or whatever, but, I mean, I watched the show when I was a kid a lot, whenever it was on. And then here and there, because it really wasn't one of those shows they reran to ad nauseum, you know? Anyway, I've been here since the middle of March. I swear to you, one of the first things I started doing was watching that show every single night. I watched like two or three episodes of the Mary Tyler Moore show starting from season one. By the way, it’s seven seasons of literally like 24 shows or 26 shows. So it's like 175 shows. NEIL: Wow. ISAAC: It is the most brilliant, heartbreaking, beautiful shit in the world. The writing is so unbelievable. The grasp on, like, the quality of comedy, but it's not really— I mean, comedy, yes, but it's so melancholy and it's so— it's like Peanuts, but adult Peanuts. You know, like, Charlie Brown or whatever. They're all kind of hapless and just, they're all bordering on depressed, and they're all so fucked up, and, like, so three dimensional, and they deliver you three jokes on every page. I mean, it is unbelievable. That's been getting me through. I watch whatever I'm supposed to watch on Netflix or whatever. You know, I get through all that, and then I put on Mary Tyler Moore right before I'm going to go to bed and I just watch the two or three episodes and I eat ice cream while I'm doing that. NEIL: Heaven. ISAAC: It’s heaven. Ice cream and the Mary Tyler Moore show, darling. I'm serious. NEIL: Finally: What's something you're looking forward to when this is over? ISAAC: Here's what I'm really looking forward to: David Hallberg or any male dancer in tights. Like, seeing that on stage. That's what I'm looking for. NEIL: I love it. May you have it soon. On that note, Isaac Mizrahi, thank you so much for being on She's A Talker.  

Is having a 9-5 easier than being an entrepreneur? Marketing master Neil Patel shares his perspective on the realities of running a multi-seven figure business and the one thing that you need to be doing to drive demand in the next 90 days as a coach or entrepreneur.   In This Episode Would it have been easier working 9 to 5? Why you need to love what you do Marketing 24/7 Whether you like failure or not, it’s going to happen   “It takes years to see results” - Neil “When I get to 6 figures, everything will be amazing” - Jess “Sometimes I think we assume that entrepreneurship will be easier” - Jess “At the end of the day you really just gotta figure out what works for you” - Neil “If you don’t love what you’re doing, you’re not going to put in the time and energy that you need to succeed” - Neil “I’ll be taking a shower and I’ll be thinking about marketing” - Neil “You’re never batting 100%, if you are, you’re not taking enough risk” - Neil “As a young person, I didn’t always learn from my mistakes” - Jess   Download The Free Workbook For This Series: https://smartleaderssell.com/6-figure-success-stories/   More Neil! www.neilpatel.com   More Jess!https://podcastingthatpays.com/ http://bit.ly/SLSGroup https://jessicalorimer.com/supersize-your-sales https://jessicalorimer.com/list-building-legend Content DisclaimerThe information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article, video or audio are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article, video or audio. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article, video or audio. Jessica Lorimer disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article, video or audio.Disclaimer: Some of these links are for products and services offered by the podcast creator

Welcome to episode 55 of the Maximise Potential Podcast. Over the last few years we have been fortunate to share the accounts of individuals who have created multi-million pound businesses, faced near-death experiences, have broken world records, made countless sacrifices to achieve their dreams and have found an inner strength to drawn upon at times of despair. Yet in testament to the wonderful array of interviews that we have shared on this podcast, the individual who you are about to listen to has somehow managed to tick each and every one of these boxes. Please allow me to introduce you all to Neil Laughton and allow him to share some of his inspirational stories with you on the Maximise Potential Podcast… Key messages from Neil: As with all of our interviews, I’m always left with a sense of awe at the level of accomplishment individuals, such as Neil, have been able to amass within their life. As always, I find myself jotting down one note after another when I’m playing back the interviews – and here are a few of my favourites from Neil’s interview: “Being not too proud to ask for help” was one in particular that sprung out at me, as did “Look for opportunities and opportunities will come your way.” Yet the one that stood out the most to me was Neil’s closing statement, which was to “never, ever give up.” If you visit the webpage for this episode you’ll find several other superb mantras of Neil’s for you to digest and consider within your own life. Neil Laughton, I know we recorded this some time ago now, but thank you once again for sharing your inspirational story with us on the Maximise Potential Podcast. Neil Laughton Quotes: Set some goals, make and plan and go for it! I always had a goal to aspire to Recognise when you need help - and don't be too proud to ask for help Something will always come up if you keep as long as you keep yourself in the game Don't play the victim You have to be aware that you are selling yourself - people have to want to buy from 'you' Look for opportunities and opportunities will come your way never, ever give up Connect with and Learn more about Neil Laughton: Neil's website: Neil Laughton Twitter: Follow Neil on Twitter Listen to the interview: Click on the following link: http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/neil-laughton/ European Podcast Awards: http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/maximise-potential-wins-european-podcast-of-the-year/ Rate & Review the Maximise Potential Podcast on iTunes: http://bit.ly/itunes-maxpotential Sponsors: Jenrick Recruitment - specialists in Engineering, Food and Drink, IT and Commercial recruitment services Xerxes Music