demi moore, inside out

Reading Demi Moore’s memoir Inside Out is like having a seat in the room while she is undergoing therapy. And yoga. And flirting with Bruce Willis. And being abused by her parents. And, strangest of all, not spending much time in Hollywood. But you do get a pretty good picture of her home and life in Hailey, Idaho, which she clearly loves, an oasis she has created for her family and herself.

Demi Moore, Inside Out: A Memoir

Inside Out flows, but it is not exactly an easy book to read. Real pain and trauma is spread throughout its pages. Moore had an extremely difficult childhood, raised by parents (mostly her mother) who at best ignored her, at worst practically pimped her out as a young girl. It is amazing to think how far she has come, considering her rough start. Moore is unflinchingly honest in her revelations and discoveries about her family’s and her own weaknesses. She tends to downplay her own achievements, certainly as an actress, so it is hard for the reader who might want to learn some more details behind how she got her role in Ghost as much as how Joel Schumacher helped her kick her booze and cocaine habit during the filming of St. Elmo’s Fire. She was successful at both, and stayed sober for years. Her substance abuse issues would crop up again later in her life, in her 40s, when she was married to Ashton Kutcher, who apparently enabled bad choices and then chose to look away when things got to be too much for her to handle.

Where Moore allows herself to feel proud of herself and crow a bit are when she talks about her love of being pregnant, a mother, and her love for her daughters. She also toots her own horn a little when she discusses her iconic Vanity Fair (August 1991) cover shoot by Annie Liebovitz, taken when she was seven months pregnant. The cover was quite controversial at the time, and paved the way for women to celebrate their “baby bumps” – wearing more form-conscious fashion, something we take for granted now. Moore also was one of the first actresses to earn $10 million for a single film in Hollywood. She starred in numerous blockbusters in the 90s: Ghost, A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal, Disclosure, as well as producing If These Walls Could Talk and the Austin Powers movies.

“Demi’s Birthday Suit” Vanity Fair, August 1992

She appeared nude again for Vanity Fair, photographed by Liebovitz, covered in body paint, a year later. The photo was a testament to bouncing back from pregnancy weight as well as highlighting Moore’s intense workout regimen, which was highlighted throughout her movie career, most notably in G.I. Jane and Striptease. Moore describes herself as an obsessive personality, who has not just battled drugs and an eating disorder, but also working out too much, to the point of making herself ill. It is hard to determine how much Hollywood’s fixation with women’s bodies and her own trauma from childhood sexual abuse played a part in her feelings about herself and her body. But she is not afraid to ask the question or try to find the answer.

What might have been the most gossipy part of the book – her relationships with high-profile men like Emilio Estevez, Bruce Willis, and Ashton Kutcher – are less about fun times than highlighting her or their inability to connect. At the end of Inside Out I don’t feel sorry for Moore, but I do feel empathy. And maybe a little hope, as she continues on her path to self-discovery.

This review first appeared on Cannonball Read 11

9/11: a memory

In the summer of 2001 I moved to Washington, D.C. from New York City. I got a job at the Smithsonian Institution, and an apartment in Adams Morgan. I settled into my new job and life.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was walking out of a doctor's appointment in downtown D.C., on K Street, when I noticed a lot of people standing, looking confused, holding their phones, looking around. As I walked down the street towards the bus stop to head into work I heard snippets of conversation, "Pentagon bombing," "Plane hijacked." What the hell was going on?

Cell phones didn't work. The Metro wasn't running. I walked into the lobby of the Capitol Hilton (there are hotels on almost every corner in D.C.), found a pay phone, and managed to get through to my boss at the Smithsonian. She at first said to go ahead and come on into work, and I wondered how exactly I was going to pull that off, but as we talked she got an email telling her to send all staff home — there had been an "attempt" on the Pentagon. I wished her and everyone down on the National Mall luck and went back out to 16th Street. There was nothing else to do but walk, and I walked home with hundreds of others, also stranded with no public transportation. The tension was palpable — what exactly was going on? There were whispers of New York being hit, too.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, but none of us on our pilgrimage really paid much attention to the weather as we periodically checked our phones — with no results. I reached home just in time to watch the Twin Towers fall on CNN. I spent the rest of the day frantically trying to reach loved ones still in New York, as they also tried to reach me. Phone lines finally began to work around 8 p.m. or so and we began to trade stories and sighs of relief. We were all glued to the tube for days after that, trying to take in the horror. For months after, the scorched walls of the Pentagon could be seen while I was driving in and out of the city. Part of me still can't believe 9/11 happened. I just pray that nothing of this horrible magnitude will ever happen again.

World Trade Center, photograph by Elizabeth Periale, c. 1991

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goodnight, sweet princess ...

I happened to be at the Disney Park that has franchised most of the Star Wars experience last week when I heard about Carrie Fisher's passing. Talk about bittersweet, as we saw posters of Princess Leia, from all of her franchise appearances, around the park. I first saw Star Wars on its first release in 1977, and loved her spunky take on the princess, although I have to admit my young teen eyes and heart were mostly focused on the dreamy Luke Skywalker. But I have enjoyed Carrie Fisher in many other things, so she has never been only Princess Leia to me. When Harry Met Sally, Hannah and Her Sisters, an adaptation of an Agatha Christie mystery, Appointment with Death, come to mind. I also really enjoyed the HBO version of her stage show, Wishful Drinking. I'm not sure when I first realized she was also Debbie Reynolds (and Eddie Fisher)'s daughter, but I remember liking Postcards from the Edge and knowing it was a version of her life.

I decided this week that I wasn't yet ready to let her go and that I needed her voice in my head, and downloaded two of her books, Wishful Drinking, a text version of her one-woman show, and her latest and last book, an autobiography, The Princess Diarist.

Wishful Drinking is a little chaotic, as Fisher jumps back and forth in time, from her childhood to Star Wars stardom, to dependency on drugs and alcohol, to her long romance and brief marriage to Paul Simon, to the choice to use electro-shock therapy to try and tame her bipolar disorder. All through this roller coaster ride she is funny, witty and observant - of herself and the people around her. The reader can get a feel for what it might be like to hang out with Fisher when she is on a roll (which was probably most of the time).

The book does feel like a script for a play, however. A little bare bones. I was hoping it might be fleshed out a bit, with more anecdotes or insights that aren't part of the stage production. But it was a fun, fast read. There was a poignancy too, as it is hard not to wonder if so many of the "solutions" she has chosen over the years to help her cope with her manic depression may have played a role in her death - the aforementioned drugs, alcohol, and electroconvulsive therapy, as well as her recent rapid weight loss, at the behest of the producers of the latest Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens.

The Princess Diarist is a different type of autobiography. Fisher recently found some journals she kept during the making of Star Wars, in 1976. She leads the reader through a nostalgic trip down memory lane to the making of that film and her red-hot romance with one of its costars, Harrison Ford. That, her love affair, is really what the book is all about. But it isn't simply a kiss and tell. I doubt that anything associated with Fisher could ever be termed simple. She lays the groundwork for the newbie: her crazy Hollywood upbringing, her tentative start in show business, and how she was cast in the role as Princess Leia. It's all interesting stuff. And then she gets to England and the set of Star Wars and has a drink at a birthday party for George Lucas and gets to know Harrison ...

She is not mean or too revealing about the man in question, but it is very clear that she was young and in love and this is her first really big romance. With a married man. First she tells the story from her present perspective, of looking back at a long lost love, and then she includes diary entries of a young woman, very much smitten, but also upset with herself (and him, although she won't completely admit it) for their cheatin' hearts.

Her ambivalence about the affair may seem surprising to readers who think about the free-wheeling '70s and Hollywood mores, but one must remember that Carrie Fisher's family was fractured by one of the biggest cheating scandals of the day, when her father Eddie Fisher left her mother Debbie Reynolds for the recently widowed, best friend of the family, Elizabeth Taylor. Fisher never forgets that history for a minute, and it clouds her romance with her costar. Many of the diary entries are poems, and some could have even been turned into songs. The passion of youth is there, but also the love of wordplay. Fisher was a talented writer.

Both books could have, should have, been longer. She definitely leaves us wanting more.