“Bright Lights” also features footage of Fisher with her father (originally shot for the HBO special of “Wishful Drinking”), Eddie Fisher, before his passing. The two had been estranged for most of her life, but she ended up caring for him in his later years.
“It’s hard to watch and I don’t know what I’m looking at when I watch myself being so fat and talking to my father, but it’s not the fat,” Fisher says. “I’m overcome by my relationship with my father and how sad it is. But also how loving it is. When I watched that at [the New York Film Festival screening] I had to leave then. I was crying.”
She pauses for a moment and adds, “I’m glad it’s in it except for how it looks. I’m very vain and I’m trying to get rid of that with Botox.”
And then without a beat to make sure you understand, “I’m kidding.”
“It’s just that we’re a good family” Fisher continues. “We’re a really odd family, but we’re sort of emotionally connected in a way that’s positive and we care about each other. And I’m very open about my mental illness and that’s usually a positive thing and the thing with my father, I don’t know what to even say about that yet. I really thought it was entertaining and moving funny enough.”
“We did give them a lot of access and there were some great reviews that said, ‘sometimes it’s uncomfortable,’” And in only the way Fisher can deadpan, she adds, “And also they said that both she and I looked tired.”
We both laugh. There is truth in Fisher’s self-deprecating moments, of course. And she knows the negatives of this industry backwards and forwards.
“We are all vain. It’s silly and we live in LA where we say ‘What are you doing?’ instead of ‘How are you?’ How are you has to do more with your emotional world and ‘What are you doing?’ has to do with your physical status. That’s where we live. You know what you have to say when you see people? ‘You look fantastic.’ That’s all they are thinking about.”
And then I turned the recorder off. The interview was conducted just a few days after one of the presidential debates and we talked about that for a moment. And Fisher somehow comforts me and makes me laugh again when she didn’t have to.
She was charming, forthright and, most importantly, herself. Considering the many lifetimes she lived over six decades you can’t ask for much more.
