Wishful Drinking (2010) – “George Lucas ruined my life. And I mean that in the nicest way.”
Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show, an autobiographical monologue with video clips and visual aids, is a savagely satirical look back at her life and legacy growing up as the daughter of show-business royalty Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher.
She rattles through their soap opera lives of multiple marriages and divorces as a preamble to her own tabloid-fodder life. She revisits Star Wars and the fame it brought, her addictions and public rehab, her marriage to Paul Simon (who wrote her a song or two) and many failed relationships with self-lacerating humor and plenty of comic asides to her live audience. She strolls through the distorted family album with a composure and a humor only possible from someone who believes that comedy is tragedy plus distance, and she’s distanced herself enough to head back in. Plus the writer in her has a way of turning puns into a double-edged razor. This isn’t documentary, mind you, but theater by way of stand-up comedy and comic monologue, wrapped up in pop-culture satire.
Watch it on HBO Now, HBO Go, and HBO On Demand.
Also on DVD, with an interview with Debbie Reynolds, and on SVOD through Amazon Video
Wishful Drinking [DVD]
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The DVD features a 54-minute interview with Debbie Reynolds best viewed after the show. Not because of spoilers, mind you, simply to come at it with Carrie’s perspective.
