WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1014 - Jane Fonda

Episode Date: April 29, 2019

Jane Fonda is still acting and is still an activist, two constants in her entire adult life. But as she tells Marc, Jane spent a lot of her life thinking she was a worthless person. Carrying the twin burdens of her mother’s suicide and a strained relationship with her father, Jane talks about why she gravitated throughout her life toward strong men, how she struggled with her own compulsive behavior, and what finally happened to convince her that she was worth it. Jane and Marc also talk about the real reason she started making workout videos, what current issues she believes need our urgent attention, and why she feels like she has a real handle on acting for the first time in her life as part of Grace and Frankie. This episode is sponsored by Ramy on Hulu, SiriusXM, and Leesa. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing with cannabis legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category.

legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! store and a cast creative all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fucksters what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast how does it sound i've got the new mixer i got my old mixer crapped out

i've had that mixer forever 10 years on that thing i don't know what to do with that i'm thinking about creating some sort of art piece i'm thinking about mounting the old mixer on a board Mounting the old mixer on a board with the original master locks from the old garage and maybe a picture. I'm going to create my own little small curated exhibit representing the origin and history of this show. And that would be that mixer and the locks on the garage and a picture. That would be the whole exhibit. Uh, I can't, I, you know, it'd be easy to tour with. Um, I I'll write a nice information card for the exhibit and well, maybe I'll, maybe I can put some photos. There was a bunch of photos done of the old garage before I, uh, I got out of there. So we tour with it and I'll write one note card.

I'm not going to, I know what it feels like to go to a museum, have to do a lot of reading before the exhibit, the information that sets it up historically. I'll keep it real brief, one paragraph. There was a garage. A lot of people came to it. We talked to them in there. It was filled with clutter.

It got dusty sometimes. The president was here. This was the lock on the door, the two locks. This was the original mixer that everybody who came into that garage spoke through. Enjoy the show. So Jane Fonda is here today, and that was daunting for me. It wasn't daunting. I mean, it's always daunting when I talk to somebody who's had a tremendous and full career. I mean, Jane Fonda was a movie star by the time I was born, really. And you kind of forget, maybe you don't, maybe you're not like me, or maybe you don't put it into context, just what a fucking great actress she is. Just what a fucking great actress she is. I mean, I went back and watched movies that I'd never seen before from the 60s. And just like astounding. I don't know when the last time you watched They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

I don't know when the last time you watched that was. But what a weird, insanely good movie. I actually talked to the producer of this movie of They Shoot Horses, Don't They? On Thursday, Erwin Winkler is going to be here, another guy that's had this 50-year career. And it's just a little intense. I've got an hour or so. Jane had other things to do, but I went back. I watched Coming Home. I watched They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

But I watched Clute, which I'd never seen before. Maybe I saw it when I was a kid. And I'm an Alan Jay Pakula fan. I believe he did the Parallax View and he did All the President's Men early on. But Clute, the way it's shot, the way it builds Donald Sutherland, Jane Fonda, just her acting is fucking astounding. And it's so beautiful. her acting is fucking astounding and it's so beautiful the the the print and the time it was made it was like must have been 19 I don't know I could probably find out exactly 1971 so it's one of those great early 70s movies but I could not believe you know what you know what I was

witnessing in terms of you know what Jane Fonda was putting out there. It was a real honor to talk to her. I'll talk to you about her a little more in a minute, but I'll get you up to speed. Honestly, I ran out of cashews, and I might have eaten all of them. I mean, on the planet. I'm not sure there are any cashews left, and if there are, don't tell me. Maybe it's better off I don't know

that there are more cashews because enough already. I think I'm getting doughy from the nuts. Yeah, doughy from the nuts is what I said. And I think that that's a t-shirt. No, doughy from the nuts. What does that mean? It's very specific. It can only mean one thing when you think about it, but as a phrase, it travels. I think there's a poetry to it. But if you go to wtfpod.com, you can get on the mailing list. I do put some effort into creating a newsletter for you people every week. So if you want to get that, you can. You can also see my upcoming tour dates, which are still happening. Everything is still moving forward. I have not shifted out of my tour. It's all happening. I believe tickets are selling good. I'm going to be in Madison,

Wisconsin, May 23rd through, geez, the 25th. I'm going to be in Vermont. That's sold out June 6th through 8th. I'm going to be in St. Louis most likely June 13th through 15th. I don't got a lot of people in St. Louis and I know that. Raleigh, North Carolina, August 1st through August 3rd. Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon on August 9th is sold out. We added a second show on August 10th. Still tickets for that. Majestic Theater in Dallas, August 22nd. Paramount Theater in Austin, August 23rd. Wortham Center in Houston, August 24th. Vogue Theater in Vancouver, September 6th. Moore Theater in Seattle, September 7th. The Vic in Chicago, September 20th. Masonic Temple in Detroit, September 21. Pantages, Minneapolis, september 22nd where i

taped my last special the miriam theater in philly october 10th the kennedy center in dc october 11th the schubert in boston massachusetts october 12th for two shows and a special taping the james k polk in nashville on the oct October 18th. That's the October 18th. Yeah, I did say that. The Tabernacle in Atlanta on October 19th. The Masonic in October 26th in San Francisco. And then I will retire. There is a Toronto date coming.

I can't announce it yet. The tickets aren't on sale because it's in collusion. Is that it? Is that the hot word? I'm colluding with Toronto with a festival in order to do the show. So I don't have the date on that yet. A little update about my state of mind. A little better.

I'm stubborn, folks. I'm a stubborn old man. And I've had enough of it in a lot of ways. A lot of it is really just that simple. It's just stubbornness. Like, why don't I meditate? I don't know, because it's silly. People are now getting on me about the definition of mindful.

Why am I not really activating mindfulness? I don't know, because it's sort of like trendy. Why am I not? Yeah, I definitely definitely exercise i eat pretty well cashews man so many fucking cashews now i got a bag of fucking almonds down there i'm buying dates because i'm making my own almond milk i put the dates in and then i eat 90 of them i'll buy a box of dates you know from trader joe's and i'm i don't know who i think i'm fooling i'll be like i'm not really eating these why are they gone in days? Why am I doughy from nuts and dates? Yeah. Why? But yeah, I started

therapy the other day. We're going to do some EMDR therapy. Again, that's a thing where it kind of like scrambles your brain a little bit so you can get right in there to the amygdala. How do you say it? The amygdala, the diglidoo, the diglidoo, amygduglidoo in the brain. And it gets right in between your trauma and your behavior, and it kind of scrambles it up a little bit and kind of pulls the link out, something like that. But you've got to hold sensors, and they buzz, and you buzz and you're like come on man what was i born yesterday huh where was this

10 years ago what is this with the buzzers what am i dumb is this a what am i is this a scientology stress test where are we at with this come on are these cans these are just cans hooked to wires but it uh apparently has been quite successful with the post-traumatic stress and whatnot so i'm i'm doing a little of that we'll see how it goes some part of me just doesn't believe i deserve to be doing well i don't deserve to succeed some part of me where can i can we can we shift the uh can we blur the link between that belief and the reality? Or just like, can we just excise that particular piece of malignant perception, self-perception? Can we mindfully rip that out of my fucking brain, people? Can we do that?

Not complaining. The world is ending. You know, we're doing all right. Some of us fucking anti- anti-semites man seriously stay strong jews jesus christ this president has really opened a portal to hell and we're living in it but you know i'm gonna try to, going to try to meditate a little bit, going to do the EMDR, going to reconfigure my brain and do the best I can.

That's the thing. When you get overwhelmed, what can you do? I can eat a lot of cashews, apparently. Comedy's been all right. I was at the comedy store all weekend tightening up some things. I go on the road,

I do the hour and a half, hour 45s. I go to the comedy store, I do the 15 minutes, you know, and I try to tighten up some things. It's weird, man. It's weird what I do. Sometimes someone will give me some advice, maybe kind of reconfigure a joke a little bit. Neil Brennan. Neil Brennan is always reliable for the tight joke advice. Comes up to me. He's like, why don't you try it like this? And I'm like, yeah, my first thing. Here's the thing about me in general is that my first reaction,

and I know you might not know this about me, but generally if somebody suggests something, my innate immediate reaction is like, I don't know. No. No. Why? No. But deeper, I'm sort of like, really? You think that would make it better? But I still like, why does it take me two fucking steps to just go like, okay, I will embrace that idea and see if it works for me. As opposed to like, wrong. Who are you? What? Stop it. But yeah, it's kind kind of fun like now that i'm sort of see my hour of material

evolving and coming together to kind of like you know tighten it up and think through some things try some new stuff take some new risks my brain's been kind of fucked up all week and i read this i read a book man devastating book that's not out yet maybe i should talk to her eve ensler the uh she wrote the vagina monologues and several other books has written a book called the apology which will be out i think it'll be out next month i got some sort of uh press And wow, just fucking devastating, deep, horrible, painful, cathartic investigation of the most of the worst type of toxic masculinity on a personal level. Her father. And I don't want to go into it because maybe maybe I'll talk to her. want to go into it because maybe maybe i'll i'll talk to her but uh what a what a that that's a brave book that's a courageous undertaking how she structured this book as a posthumous almost stream of consciousness apology from her father that abused her in every way and he's writing from limbo um and it's like the sort of investigation and process of true evil with applied empathy without apologizing or without letting anybody off the hook was just devastating and haunting.

And it was one of the most powerful things I've read. So maybe I'll talk to her if I can do that. It's a little, sometimes it's hard, man. Jane Fonda was not hard. Jane Fonda is one of the great actors, actresses, I say actor in a general sense, of all time. And oddly, she's about my mom's age and she's built like my mom. So there was this, I had this, when she came to the house, I had this immediate kind of, she, she actually walks like my mother and they're, they kind of look a little similar. And it was just, I had this very

strange innate connection just around her physicality and the way she moved was like my mom. around her physicality and the way she moved was like my mom. But I was really honored to talk to her. I mean, you'll see. You'll see. Oh, man. I hope that there's no more Cashews. I really do. I really do. Now, okay. So let's enter this Jane Fonda thing. As I said, it was a little daunting because of the arc of her career, because of the time we had together. But it was a real honor talking to her. All five seasons of Jane's series with Lily Tomlin, Grace, and Frankie are now streaming on Netflix. They've been renewed for a sixth season.

So catch up on those early seasons now if you want. Also, go look at some of her early films. I mean, just go watch. Yeah, a lot of like Coming Home, Clute, China Syndrome was a big one on Golden Palm with her father. Like she just just great. So this is me talking to Jane Fonda. on. and we deliver those too, along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

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I guess you're not going to wear headphones. You got TV to do, right? The Bailey Center. That's a live thing. Yeah. Yeah, and it's a panel. Yeah. For Grace and Frankie.

Right. Yeah. So that's so like, have you stayed in touch with Lily Tomlin like for, since forever? Have you guys always been friends? We became friends in 1979. Oh, yeah. When I was developing 9 to 5. Right. And you stayed friends.

And we've stayed friends, yeah. We support each other's issues and. Yeah. And you stayed friends. And we've stayed friends. Yeah. We support each other's issues. Yeah. And do you socialize? I always wonder that because I was, you know, I watched the documentary about you. It's like it's hard to, you know, to sort of wrap my brain around, you know, Jane Fonda as a cultural momentum figure, you know. Me too. Because, you know, you want to have a conversation, but know? Me too.

Because, you know, you want to have a conversation, but there's so much. No, Lily and I, we socialize mindlessly. Right. Like I finally, in my dotage now, I have a house for just me. And there is somebody who takes care of the house and cooks. Yeah.

So I can have dinner parties. Right. So, for example, I think the last time Lily and her partner Jane came over, it was a dinner for Judy Chicago.

Oh, yeah. Who they also had met years and years ago. Sure. So, you know, that's a fun kind of gathering. Yeah. You know,

or the theater critic Hilton Owls from The New Yorker, he came, Jane and Lily came over to dinner. So I have them come over. They never invite me to their house. The last time I was in their house was my, see, my dog was about five months old. She's now 14. Yeah. So that's a long time ago. And then, you know, I spent a lot of time, in fact, the last two years in Michigan working on one fair wage for restaurant workers. Yeah. Tip workers don't get a minimum wage. They earn a lot less and then they're expected to live on tips. Right.

So we're with an organization called Restaurant Opportunity Centers. We've been working all over the country to change that and have one fair wage. One reason to do that is because in the seven states that have one fair wage, sexual harassment is cut in half. And so Lily gives me my street cred because she comes from Detroit and she was a waitress there. And so I dragged her to Michigan for weeks at a time. Yeah. So when you say you do that, what exactly when you go to do that work?

What do we do? Well, is it the same as organizing? It's organizing. Yeah. I'm on the board of Restaurant Opportunity Centers. So when Lily comes, we travel around the state yeah and we raise money in each place yeah grand rapids kalamazoo lansing whatever and and in people's homes sure you know you just go you just show up yeah we just go we show up jane bond is in my house and lily tomlin you know

grace and a lot of support for grace and frankie i tell you what it's a lot easier to do this when you have a hit series yeah yeah then we do media yeah we do radio we do sinclair is really where we do television to talk about it was a ballot initiative you go on sinclair yeah yeah yeah because they're i think aren't they kind of the bad guys? Well, here's the thing. The local people, you know, the versions of you in Kalamazoo or Grand Rapids who are, you know, journalists for, television journalists for Sinclair, they're not rabid ideologues. Yeah. But sometimes they get, you know, demands from on high to say certain things.

Yeah. But, because I asked them about it, you know, but our experience with it has been okay. Now, if we can go back to like the, I was just kind of looking at the overview of what you achieved. And then I watched a documentary and then for some reason, you know, I realized I'd never seen They Shoot Horses, don't they? Oh, that's a good one, yeah. Yeah, right? Yeah. And it seems that culturally, politically, culturally,

and within the movie business that your life is signposts of how all of it's evolved. Of the zeitgeist, yeah. Right. I mean, you were in Kapaloo, and five years later, the entire industry changed, right? I mean, then all of a sudden you're shooting movies with, you know, with Ashby and with Pollock and stuff. And then, like, on top of that, you know, in the documentary, you talk about how you realized your own authenticity so late in life. Now, when you look back on it, because now as an activist, like you're doing this thing with the restaurant workers, but you'll apply your energy to any cause that you believe in, however is necessary.

So when you think about what compelled you initially, was it when you, because you're very self-aware and you've obviously done a lot. It's the Vietnam War. Right. But like, you know, but do you find when you think about the pushback on the generation your father came from that was also emotional? Yeah. That your father represented something of an old guard and that tension was created with your activism? One of the sad things about that period, and it wasn't just the Vietnam War, it was the whole counterculture thing,

was what happened within individual families all across the country. Sure, yeah, right. Everywhere. Yeah. And the Vietnam War only exacerbated that. And I understood that my dad was very opposed to the war. But his way of expressing it was to campaign for Lyndon Johnson. Yeah, right.

And, you know, guys that he would campaign, the guys, they were always guys, and white guys. And then, of course, the war never ended that way. But it was a generational thing coupled with the problem, just talking about him in relation to the Vietnam War, just talking about him in relation to the Vietnam War, the war that he fought and the wars that he understood were wars where you knew who was an enemy combatant. They were in uniforms and there were battlefronts. Yeah, lines drawn. Lines drawn.

Suddenly there's a war where the woman bringing you laundry could very well have a hand grenade. And, you know, a war where the basic people are against you. Yeah. That's a whole different thing. And it was very hard for him to wrap his head around that. Yeah. So it caused friction between us, but I never really got mad at him.

You know, I remember in 70, I went to, I think it was 70, I went to visit Angela Davis. She was in prison here in California. And when I got back, he said to me, if I find out that you're a communist, I'm going to turn you in. And that, you know, that, I've never been ideological. I wasn't a communist, but I loved Angela Davis. But he was very confused. You know, he just, and he worried about me. He lived through the McCarthy era.

Yeah, right. And so he was worried that I was going to get hurt. So he had a fundamental belief just by nature in the way he was brought up in the system itself. Yeah, he was a moderate Democrat. Yeah. Felt very passionately about things. I mean, you know, he would go out.

He campaigned for a year for Stevenson. I think what really related to me and what moved me was the emotional result of being brought up by narcissistic parents. And parents with mental problems. Because I have it. You do. I do, yeah. because I have it. You do personally. I do, yeah.

And what I identified with was that strange kind of missing chunk of self that you have to somehow put together over time. You have to become your own parent. Yeah, and the parent you put in place initially is never that great. Like I read this thing, you know, like the reaction, the thing that blew my mind, I read this thing, you know, like the reaction, the thing that blew my mind, I read this thing by Robert Firestone, a psychologist. He said that if your parents, if you're not getting what you need from your parents, when

you're young, you automatically assume it's your fault. Right? So the parent you put in place to replace them is the one that's going, you're terrible. You're a piece of shit. And that's what drives you. Yeah. Now, did you find that for yourself yeah yeah did you i thought that i was a worthless human being and it was very interesting how i dealt

with it yeah i was ashamed of myself yeah i wasn't proud of the life that I was living. So I thought, if I pretend to be generous, maybe eventually I will become generous. If I pretend to have a spine, maybe I will become brave. I mean, and you become what you do in a way. I fake it till you make it. Yeah, for sure. And you just knew that instinctively.

I just, I thought, I don't know what else to do. I just, I don't like myself, so I'm going to pretend to be a better person. And I started to become a better person. And that began then to conflict with the life that I was living. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So, you know, all along the way you have choices.

Well, do I continue living the life I'm living or do I try to proceed with trying to get better and be better? Right. And I chose the latter. Yeah, but it took a while, right? Yeah, 60 years, 70 years. No, it does. It takes a long time.

I mean, you're always essentially the same person. Right. That's why writing my memoir was such an important thing. And really, the documentary was just a filmed version of my memoir. You know, when you write a memoir, if you really dig down and really take the time, you realize, you know, it's kind of what T.S. Eliot said in the quartet poem. I'm paraphrasing. You spend your life exploring, and at the end of all the exploration, you circle back where you started and know it for the first time. And what I realized at the age of 63, 4, 5, and writing my memoir

is that I had started out decent and brave. Yeah, because you were on your own in a way. Yeah, and then for girls, you know, the problems start at puberty where you just want to fit in and be skinny and all those kind of things. But basically, I was working my way around to come back to where I started, only with more knowledge and stuff. And acceptance of your past self. Yeah, you have to forgive.

Yeah. You have to forgive everybody, including yourself. Yeah. Yeah, that's hard, isn't it? It's essential, but yeah, it is hard. It is hard, and you can't do it until you really examine, you know, what I'm one of those typical liberals. I always, you know, the perpetrator, but look what was done to him. Right, right, right.

You know, so I always tend to want to forgive. Yeah. Acting as if because when you have parents that aren't fundamentally nurturing, that there's a lack of the inability to receive or give love in second nature. You do have to try until it sticks, right? Yeah. half you start to count halves when you get older like you do when you're young um is uh the one thing that i could never totally fix yeah is my ability to be in a relationship yeah with the opposite sex you know i that's the one area i mean i've i've kind of healed in in a lot of different ways but I'm just not good in relationships. Where does it, like, I find that I hit a wall where I can't get over it.

Like, what is it? Because, I mean, you've been, I guess, in the memoir and the documentary, you did find yourself living in relationship to a lot of different men. A lot of very, very strong men. Yeah. And who do you think that started with after your father? Was it Strausberg? No, it was Vadim.

Oh, yeah. Well, the marriages. But like, I mean, it seemed like Lee Strausberg was a pretty important force in your life. Oh, not really. No? No. Did he teach you how to act, though?

Not really. No? It just came- teach you how to act, though? Not really. No? It just came... I was too fucked up to learn anything. At that time? I mean, what he did for me was he said, you have talent. Yeah. And that was it.

And then it all happened way too quick. Yeah. Because I never really learned how to work. Right. I've only started never really learned how to work. Right. I've only started learning lately. How to work? How to do the work. What were you doing before?

Trying. Yeah. And sometimes it worked really well. When you accept to become another person. Yeah. There are levels that you can stop at right i didn't always know how to go really deep i didn't know the questions to ask the tools he did not lee didn't teach me what i needed to know there yeah you know in a way way, I wish that I'd studied in England and in a different kind of training

in a way. But, you know, for the movies where I really did do well, you know, coming home, because I had spent three years talking to the people whose lives had been impacted by the war, the wives of soldiers who went away, one person, and came back quite different. You know, there was the wife that said, you know, I talked to him and I feel like my voice goes down into an empty barrel and just echoes. There's nobody there.

Yeah. You know, I knew that story. Yeah. And so that's what allowed me to play that character the way I did Clute. Clute was like, they shoot horses, don't they? I just went, I just said, fuck it, I'm going to, I'm just going to go and go as deep as I can. and go as deep as I can and take the things that I know to be true about myself and apply them to this character, and it worked. I really kind of entered those people. So that was a darkness.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And they shoot horses, too. Yeah. But, you know, that's just not always the case yeah but now you know now i'm i'm i have a coach yeah who's basically teaching me how to do the work right and so what that i'm 80 so you know who cares but also it's never too late you've taken those risks though you've gone that deep with yourself so you know you have that ability to do that right

right so it's accessible it's not a threat anymore i imagine early on it must have been frightening on some level no no no it would have been frightening for my dad that's why he hated so much that i went to acting class with lee you know just like you know acting class church therapy all those things hated them hated really yeah because it required you to look into yourself. And for, it's not my dad's fault. It was the way he was raised and it was a certain generation of men, especially from the Midwest. It was weakness.

It showed weakness. Oh, right, right. Crutches. Yeah, yeah. They're all crutches. Yeah. And I never was that way. It's just that I never had, there were just certain roles that allowed me to do that and beckoned me in ways that, you know.

It's so amazing to watch you in anything because, you know, it's like in They Shoot Horses, there was a lot of actors that were doing great work at that time, but the difference between something like some of the more Hollywood movies of an earlier time that really didn't offer you a window or a portal to go that deep. Now, all of a sudden, the sort of art of it breaks open. And like it was it's so visceral and so like immediately moving. Well, you know, I was basically a very unhappy person who happened to have done Barbarella right before.

That was the film I did prior to They Shoot Horses, don't they? And so people sort of thought of me as that person. But, you know, They Shoot Horses, I was coming more back to myself. Right, right. You know, I was kind of a dark person. I've actually overcome that. Yeah, it seems good. It seems like it.

But, you know, it wasn't difficult for me to do it and like okay so like getting back to the the these men and being in relation to men and what you learned and where it stops i mean i just i was trained from the get-go to give it up yeah for men you know just to give over and i just can't hold my own i just can't yeah i i you know now i know that and so i'm not going to be in a relationship again because i don't want to give myself over right because the yeah like the the boundaries i lose myself right right yeah my boundaries are so i'm a colander yeah when i'm in a relationship with you know, a full sexual relationship with a man. Yeah.

You know, it's weird when that happens because, like, you know, it can go on for years, right? And then all of a sudden you look at yourself and you're like, when you get a year away from it, you're like, what the fuck was that? Well, you know, somebody asked me the other day, you know, how do you know it's not working? And I said, well, when the time starts to come it's usually about four years from the end when i start to fantasize their death and that's the truth uh-huh well it's best it's better you're fantasizing theirs and after three marriages i really there's a pattern here uh-huh and you're not fantasizing your own which is better no no i mean i still live yeah and then i get to do what i want to do that and that's the

that is the core of the of your feminism really you're not fantasizing that you're the victim right they're the ones that gotta go yeah so what did you like i imagine looking back on it like with vadim and uh with hayden and with and with Turner, that there were definitely lessons learned that made you a stronger person, right? Yeah. And not just by tolerating them, but by what they had to offer. Oh, listen, I do not regret those three marriages. Yeah. They were utterly fascinating men, and I learned a huge amount from all of them.

How's your French still? I'm fluent. Still? Yeah. And I'm, and interestingly enough, I'm always, I, the wife after me, Vadim's wife after me, we're like this. We are so close. Oh really?

Oh yeah. We just spent a week together in Lyon, a film festival. We're very, very close. Tom's wife after me, Barbara. Yeah. We're so close. Interesting. I see her all the time.

Really? And we love each other, yeah. How did those relationships evolve? They all had good taste, women. And I don't know. I mean, they're interesting women. Yeah. And it's just like, did they reach out to you?

How does a relationship like that happen? Like, can we go over our experience? Just, it's too personal. I don't want to talk about it. But Barbara and I just found a kinship. We have a lot of things in common. And then there's the son. Tom and Barbara had a son.

And Tom was always worried that this son wouldn't know exactly where he fit in. So I feel a real responsibility to keep a family unit together, including Barbara and Liam. That's nice. Liam is the age of my grandson. Yeah. But that's okay. Yeah. He's my 45-year-old son's brother, but he's the age of my grandson.

I mean, it's interesting, but these are the families of today, right? Sure, sure. And you can – I just sort of know instinctively that when the end comes, and it's not that far off. No. You know, it could be 20 years, but maybe not. Right. But that when the end comes, I'm going to want to know that I kept us all together.

And when did that impulse start? When I saw my father die. Oh, yeah. It was when I saw my father die. Oh, yeah. And I knew that he was full of regrets, that he wasn't able to do the forgiving, to do the facing up and the apologizing and the listening and the things that need to be said before it's too late when you can no longer talk. Yeah. And it's always the things you don't do that you regret at the end i just know that and um you know so i'm fortunate enough to

not be afraid of dying i'm really afraid of dying with regrets so i've you know the big epiphany for me when i hit 60 and knew that it was probably my last act yeah and the importance of last act that I had to, I've got to spend this remaining time figuring out what my regrets would be. You can't be 81 and say, oh my God, I better start getting my life together. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, I can't make my life longer, but I can make it wider and deeper, and I have to start doing that now, I said at 60.

At 60. Yes. And I deliberately did. that now, I said at 60. At 60. Yes. And I deliberately did. That's why I wrote my memoir. Yeah. And in terms of looking back on those struggles, there was the codependency, right, and the pressure of show business, and when did the eating disorder start? Start?

Yeah. Oh, my God. 14 in boarding school, all girls boarding school yeah um my best friend had been doing it and told me about it and i swear i thought only that the two of us were the only people besides the romans right because when we studied roman history we discovered that the romans used to do that binge and purge was it was for body image reasons? It was. Totally. I didn't realize, of course, that a lot of people with body images don't resort to that.

Right. That it's, I think that it, you see, we're like chalices, all of us. Right. And that chalice in the center of us, at our chi, you know, our solar plexus, needs to be full, ideally full of spirit, of at-oneness with others and with everything, with love and compassion and forgiveness and a sense of authenticity.

That's what we're supposed to be filled with. If we're empty, we're going to fill it with, depending on who we are, booze, drugs, sex, workaholism, food, whatever. And mine was empty. And I was filling it with food. And I only was able to stop when I began to fill it with authenticity. Yeah. And so that was a long time. Yeah?

What age did you really start to kick it? I went cold turkey, and I wasn't authentic yet, but I was dying. And so I just went cold turkey at about 45. It took a long time. And it's impossible to have a true relationship if you are an addict of any kind you can't until ever or no you can't as long as you are an active addict right you can't have a real relationship not a real one right not an authentic relationship right and um why do you think that is because you can never show up totally because you have this addiction yeah that always becomes

the most important thing yeah and essentially you have to hide the addiction so you're also lying and being inauthentic right and uh but i stopped before i started the workout well that that was the other thing that i didn't realize because i didn't know the nuances of your life, that, you know, having been through protesting the Vietnam War and the other activism you were doing, which took insane courage and you took a lot of hits for it. And it seems like the next or even the third generation of the people that were originally tearing you down are now still doing it. You're still an example of some kind to that ilk. And I didn't realize that when you were married to Hayden, that the workout video was actually to fund activism. It was to fund the campaign for economic democracy.

When the war ended, we began to focus on the economy, which this is, I'm talking in the late 70s, because I actually, it didn't become famous until the 80s, but I actually started the workout around 78. And that was when it was becoming increasingly apparent, the corporate takeover of everything. Yeah, sure. And so that's what we wanted to take on, you know, the notion of economic democracy. And it was a statewide effort. Yeah.

And California is a big state and there was a recession. Yeah. And I didn't know what to do because I was the main fundraiser. And I read that, remember Lyndon LaRouche? Sure. The guy that paid people to hold terrible signs up at the airport? Yeah. The LaRouches.

They're not around really anymore. There's something worse here now. He funded the whole operation from a business, his computer business. Yeah. And I thought, I got to start a business. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

And it turned out to be the workout. But you know what I thought was amazing about that moment is that, you know, moving from, you know, the other type of activism you were doing and then trying to fund this is that the direct personal engagement of, I think, primarily women with the empowerment that was available through just that workout video, which it's easy to make fun of or trivialize on some level. But you felt it immediately that there were women that needed that connection to take hold of their lives. Yeah, it's very interesting because Tom did not like the workout, even though it funded the organization. He did not like it. He felt it was a vanity project. Was that the beginning of the end of that?

It was the beginning of the end of our marriage in a way. That's what I mean, yeah. Just the things I was doing were things that didn't feel comfortable for him. But before I actually opened the workout, I was teaching it in places. Like when I was in St. George, Utah, making electric horsemen. And every night after we worked, people would come and I would teach the workout. And they would come from miles away. Yeah.

And they were not all women, but mostly women, but also members of the crew. Right. And they would come up to me after a few weeks and say, I don't have to take sleeping pills anymore. Uh-huh. I don't have to take insulin anymore. Uh-huh. Stuff like that.

And then I would start getting letters once it became, you know, I put out the videos and the records. And, you know, one woman said to me, I was able to stand up to my boss for the first time today. Right. And then I began to realize, oh, I knew that this was much more than just being thin. But you didn't know it initially. Well, I knew how it made me feel. Sure. But it never, I wasn't, I didn't think this is going to empower women when I started. Right.

I was just, I was, I, the guy, you remember Delancey Street? Well, Delancey Street still exists. John Mayer, who started Delancey Street, was a close friend of mine in Tom's. And we told him, I said, I'm trying to start a business to run the campaign for economic democracy. And he said, never go into a business you don't understand. Well, that seriously narrowed my options because exercise was really the only business i understood and i had been exercising forever and so i that's what i did uh-huh and and look what happened it's amazing because i mean i didn't realize that i mean you really made exercise videos for decades

yeah and they kept getting it 23 of them yeah and and you you sort of uh like without knowing it started that business for everybody. It started the video business. That's why I'm the only non-engineer, non-scientist in the Video Hall of Fame. Yeah. And I thought, like, the other thing that I thought was interesting is that when you were making these movies with these guys, you know, in the 70s and the late 60s, which were, you know, socially relevant movies meant to have a message or meant to, you know, push the envelope either artistically or otherwise, philosophically, some politically, that they were kind of, some of them were kind of out there.

And what I thought was interesting in terms of your evolution as a producer was that you were able to come back and create narrative film that was appealing to regular people that didn't require some sort of deeper understanding of art that still had a powerful social message. And how conscious were you of that transition? Well, I was very conscious that if I'm going to make a movie about soldiers that have fought in Vietnam, there has to be, it has to be something that someone would want to see even if they didn't agree with the war was wrong. Okay, right.

So a sexy, sexy love story. Yeah. And at the time, that love scene was probably the sexiest love scene that had ever been shot. Right. If we're going to make a movie about this is coming home that's coming home if we're going to make a movie about nuclear energy it's got to be a thriller right if i'm going to make a movie i you know my one of my close friends was organizing women office workers karen nussbaum. And, you know, I decided I wanted to make a movie about it, that it would have to be

a comedy. Right. Yeah, right. You know, you always have to cloak it in a style that's going to be appealing to people, even if they don't care about the issues. Were you frustrated with some of the movies that were made, you know, in the 70s that were more oblique? Such as?

If Arthur Penn does, you know, Little Big Man that were more oblique such as if Arthur Penn does you know Little Big Man as a response to Vietnam on some level as a metaphor that you know the move away from you know metaphors that are confusing to like this is what's happening seem to be like a decisive thing does that make sense or it does make sense but I frankly had never thought about it I don't know I don't know because there there was like, you know, the people that you work with, is it Pat Pakula? Is that how you say his name? And Ashby and even like people like, you know, Joseph Lozzi,

who I didn't realize that you worked with. He was a big activist and like, you know, paid the price for it. But, you know, these guys were, you know, big intellectual artistic dudes. And I think Ashby made very accessible movies, though. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But it seemed like they were artists that, like, for a lot of reasons were, you know, sometimes, you know, consumed with the art of film to some degree without, you know,

wanting to get everybody on board. Right. And, you know, there was everybody on board. Right. And, you know, there was a certain friction. Yeah. There was a lot of friction between me and Losey. Yeah. Because he was a lefty, but he was not a feminist. And it's a feminist movie.

And Dauphine Searig and myself really objected to his rewrite of the script and had a lot of friction. Fighting? Fighting with him, yeah. It was not a good experience. And with Ashby, how much input did you have in that, in coming home? Well, I had a lot. I mean, the concept was my idea.

Okay, yeah. Because of what I'd heard Ron Kovic say at a rally. He said, I may have lost my mind. I may have lost my body, but I've gained my mind. Does it surprise you now, the direction? Because I don't know people personally, and I build a relationship with you people from your roles. Does it surprise you that John Voight has gone so far the other direction? It does. Because he wasn't. Not at all. No. He was one of Tom's and my biggest supporters.

And, you know, he would rally his Hollywood friends to come and see Tom's slideshows. He was my closest friend in Hollywood. And I don't know why this has happened. Have you talked to him? About, oh, maybe in 2006 was the last time that I really, he called me on the phone. Yeah. Started talking about the war in totally terms that I just couldn't relate to. And he wouldn't stop.

And I hung up. Oh, wow. It makes me so sad. It's very strange because the phenomenon of that now, like realizing, you know, somebody who's done enough self-examination and fought the fights that you have, it has to be surprising as it is to me, just how malleable people's minds are, you know, when they need closure or when they're afraid or when they're angry. And like, it seems that a lot of what's happening today with a good chunk of the population is irreparable in terms of their point of view.

It's not irreparable and it's not a good chunk. Yeah. I think it's, there is a chunk and it's not a big chunk that is irreparable, I think. But there is another influx piece of the puzzle. Mm-hmm. That's a piece that interests me a lot. Which is? The middle America, the scared, the feeling forgotten and unseen working class that used to have unions kind of helping to define their perspective

on things and don't anymore, who voted for Obama and then Trump, I think we cannot leave that fuzzy gray area out. I don't know if we can win, we. I don't know if we can win, we. I don't know if democracy can win without them. But even if we can, morally, I don't think that we can forget about those people. Sure. Because the truth is that the direction that they've moved in is not in their interest,

so we have to do everything we can to help them understand that their interests don't lie there. Their interests also don't lie with the neoliberals. And that's why we have to be sure that the person who runs our country next is not a neoliberal. Not just not a Republican Trump type person, but not a neoliberal, not just not a Republican Trump type person, but not a neoliberal, someone who really cares about these people and cares about the value of work, not just Silicon Valley work, but labor. Yeah, sure. Labor.

Yeah. We can create jobs for everybody. Sure. yeah we can create jobs for everybody sure but you have to be committed to it and and and and i get into a lot of arguments with my liberal friends progressive friends because they say no we have to spend all our time with the low-hanging fruit the natural base of the democratic party women and people of color yeah we can't be spending time and money going after people who voted for Trump. Right. And I don't agree with that.

Yeah. Yeah, it's heartbreaking the kind of lines that are drawn now. And the people that I've talked to who lived through Nixon, I mean, there's two kinds that say like, well, you know, it was worse then, but it doesn't seem like it.

No, it's not worse. And I'll tell you what gets left out of this until very, very like last week. Yeah. Here's why it's, well, there's never been an existential threat to our democracy like there is right now because of the nature of Donald Trump as a human being and who he has surrounded himself with. But the bigger existential threat that would exist, you know, even without Donald Trump, is climate. We've never had a ticking time bomb overarching every single thing that we do. That's never existed before. It didn't exist during the Nixon time.

And that's a reality. It is. And, you know, so people can poo poo the green the green new deal. But but something like that has to happen. Yeah. I mean, at the core of what you're talking about in being a full stomach person and being somebody who has love and empathy and all that is that, way that hopelessness has somehow turned to nihilism in the hearts of people that have given up any sort of future in a way, and they just want to burn it all down. Now, there are Christian fanatics who are ready for the big burn. For the end days.

Right. No, I once had a boyfriend that was so unhappy and messed up and wounded that he liked war. Right. Because he didn't feel alone. I mean, that is a reality. But, you know, I have spent time. I have canvassed in San Diego. I have canvassed in the Central Valley, in Bakersfield, and talked to

people who were Trump supporters. And I have friends that have done that. And they can be made to think differently. Yeah, if you talk to them as people, like one-on-one. Nobody has been talking to them. But the politicians that talk to them and the human beings and the canvassers who talk to them without sunglasses on, looking them in the eye and saying, what matters to you and why? Right. Okay, what are we going to do about it? Yeah. And you don't ever criticize Trump and you don't ever criticize Fox News. You simply tell them something they don't know.

Yeah. No, that's, yeah. And they can hear it and it goes in. And then you stay in touch. Yeah. And you explain, this is really hard now. And the only way we're going to do it is strength in numbers. And guess what?

Your neighbor gets it. And I've signed up 15 people right in this neighborhood yeah and we're gonna stay in touch with you yeah and you do that and we do yeah so how do you like it's how have you for all this time been able to step you know to kind of make choose how you you know how do you balance the you know the acting and you know the activism and the family? Well, my family's grown up. And my grandkids are growing up.

I had your brother on the show. I'm not very good at balancing. I was not a very good parent because I didn't know how to balance well enough, although my kids are just fine. But now there's just me. Yeah. And I work to earn money to do the stuff

because I'm going to be dead soon, but I've learned a lot. I've learned so much from Tom Hayden about the importance of talking to people and work on the ground. So I look for the organizations that have the best track record of doing on-the-ground work, front-door conversations. Yeah. And in terms of like, you know, the art, like, because you still love to act, you know?

I'm having a blast with Grace and Frankie. love to act you know i'm having a blast with grace and frankie because that seems to be like also the interesting thing is that aside from you know you know major activism that got you into you know the the crosshairs of nixon in a very personal way and you know in dealing with that pressure that when you show up on screen i mean i can tell and unless i'm stupid you you it's you love doing that i do and you know you like on on some other level as a person not along you know along with Tom Hayden but you work with you know Pollock twice you work with Otto Preminger you work with Ashby work with all these men Fred Zinnemann Fred Zinnemann even like George Cukor was it yeah and he was like he he was an old studio guy right so you actually saw

those guys try to adapt to the new thing. Now, like when you look back on all that experience and your nature of boundary, did you find most of those to be learning experiences with these directors? Yeah. Yeah. No, I feel really lucky that I had all those experiences. They were great directors. Pollock seemed like an amazing guy to me.

He was. He was an amazing guy. Zinnemann, what a brilliant director. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I mean, that's what's so fun about acting. Yeah. Every single, these, each individual of these, they're all guys. Yeah.

But if they were women, it would be the same thing. They all call upon different muscles in your psyche as an actor. Yeah. So, you know, you're, it's just a challenge to kind of create that marriage between you and the guy but you see because it's a limited there's a limited time frame yeah then the whole dynamic is very different than it is in a marriage sure or an affair right you're this is going to be over in six months yeah right yeah by by necessity or nowadays a month a month right they shoot out quick right yeah and and how is your relationship with robert redford

i admire him very very much i think what he has done with sundance is just is just extraordinary uh-huh okay yeah and uh like what what about people like um donald sutherland oh god i haven't seen him. Oh, really? I mean, I'd love to work with him again. I haven't seen him in years. Yeah. In years.

It's so weird. For some reason, like with your generation of actors, I just assumed everyone sort of hung out together. No. You don't. It's a business. No, Lily and I hang out together. Yeah. And my co-stars from book club, Candy Bergen, Diane Keaton, and Mary Steenburgen and I.

I talked to Mary. I love her. I love that woman. Oh, my God. She's just magic. Yeah. I just love her deeply. Very full stomach in terms of the love and the spirituality.

Yes. She is the real deal. Yeah. I had no idea. I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to make that movie and get to know her. In terms of Hollywood and in terms of this dynamic and feminism and patriarchy and having been in the business as long as you've been, what is your feelings about – obviously, the Me Too movement is necessary, but where do you find yourself in that discussion? In the Me Too, Time's Up discussion? Well, my activism in that regard goes toward the farm workers, the domestic workers, and the restaurant workers. And I've been to Washington to lobby with them on things like doing, and in Sacramento,

doing away with statute of limitations, doing away with forced arbitration. Not doing away with arbitration, but make it a choice. But then there's the financial stuff doing you know overtime and and equal pay and things like that because when you know the fact that restaurant workers in seven states including california get one fair wage whatever other workers are getting minimum wage that's what they get plus tips they keep their tips in those seven states, sexual harassment is cut in half, which shows that there's a relationship between what a woman earns and how a man treats her.

Yeah. And so, you know, the people that are the worst treated are the farm workers, domestic workers, and restaurant workers. Sure. The women. And so that's where I put my time. Yeah. Well, what about show business?

I mean, you've been in it long enough.'ve been with around enough of these type of uh of powerful men well i mean other people are doing that yeah and and i never had any experiences probably because my father was henry fonda right or maybe i don't know i wasn't sexy enough or something but i never had i don't know if you go there i never had that yeah experience I had your brother over here. Do you talk to him? We email a lot. Yeah. He's an interesting guy.

And you guys, do you find when you think about yourself and about what you both grew up with, that how you both handled it, it's interesting that when I talk to him, he spends a lot of time trying to wrap his brain around his trauma. And, and, and, you know, and it's an active fight for him, you know, even at this age. Do you, do you, do you find it interesting, the way you both handled it, in the sense that you handled it very differently? Do you help each other at all? Do you lean on each other at all? Not as much as we should. Yeah. We have handled it differently.

Yeah. See, I think I've always felt that the child that is the same gender as the parent has a harder time. I think my father was harder on my brother than he was on me. And I think Peter suffered a lot. He suffered a lot. And I'm just not sure that he's gotten the kind of help that I have. Right.

Because it seems like that your pursuit of social justice and your pursuit of authenticity you know was you know of primary importance you know to to sort of resolve you know your stuff right and i'm not a pothead and yeah i don't do drugs yeah yeah don't go for that relief i go i use pot to go to sleep yeah does it work it work? And it turns out Peter does too. It does work. Yeah. And it's a whole lot better for you than Valium or Ambien or that other stuff. Yeah.

I found it very touching in the doc that the two things, you going back to visit Ted Turner. We're very close. Yeah. It's a very sweet thing. I stayed close to my three husbands. I was with Tom when he died. I saw Vadim in the hospital before he died. Yeah.

That's amazing. Well, you have to, I think, there's about two years where, if you're smart, you write all the hate. You write the letters. Yeah. but you don't send them. So you get it out. And starting at about four or five years, you begin to realize, I was equally at fault, or almost as equally, or I made a mistake and the guy's really sick. That wasn't the case with me. And then you think, there were reasons that I loved him.

And so I have to stick with those. And then if you've had children with them, I was always afraid that if I didn't invite the ex-husbands to spend Christmas with me, that my kids would choose to go with him and not me. So Vadim would come to Christmas with me and Tom. Yeah. And Tom would come to events with Ted. Yeah. And, you know, and Vadim met Ted. And I just brought them all along. They're really kind of so different in terms of. And so alike.

Oh, really? Yeah. I thought they were so different. None of these guys are like my dad at all. Yeah. Whoops. Yeah. No, see like my dad at all. Whoops. No, see, here's the thing. They're all addicts.

So, of course, they're perfect for me. If you're an addict, you don't want to, you know, I'm sure that the perfect man for me has come along and looked me in the eye and said, come on, show up, Fonda. Yeah, yeah. And I ran away scared. Yeah. So I picked instead three absolutely riveting, fascinating, brilliant men, none of whom were able to say, come on, Fonda, show up. Right. Well, because they were like, how were they addicts?

They were workaholics? Drinking. Yeah. Drugs. Uh-huh. Drinking inolics? Drinking. Yeah. Drugs. Uh-huh. Drinking in most cases, yeah. Yeah. And it seemed like it's very clear how Hayden had an influence on you in terms of the things

you learned to move your own agenda forward. What was it that you really gleaned from Ted as a person? Oh, my God. Ted is a genius. He really is. Very wounded genius, but a genius. You know, I'm micro. Yeah, yeah.

And he's macro. Yeah, yeah. And he's macro. And for me to experience that and learn from him the macro realities was just invaluable. Also, extremely practical. You know, he was once the greatest sailor in the world. He won the America's Cup, and this was before computers. This is when you did it with your own brain and brawn.

And to be a great sailor, you have to be the kind of person who forgets nothing. You can't be 50 miles out at sea and think, oh shit, I forgot the the you know what i mean yeah so he was very meticulous he paid a lot of attention to detail and he was always on time and i learned the value i'm kind of that way anyway but i really learned the value of that. He brought me so much. One of the things that he brought me, because he had been so abused as a child by his father.

I mean, just terrible. Yeah. At the age when the boy is most vulnerable at five and stuff, he needed me. Yeah. He needed me, and he wasn't afraid to let me know. And I was the one who was grounded. I could bring him stability. That was new for me.

Yeah, yeah. And it gave me tremendous confidence, and it sort of fleshed out that part of me that was responsible for bringing stability. And being able to nurture a bit. Yeah. I think he learned, even though I was not a good parent, but he learned. I had a lot of step-parents, so I knew how to be a step-parent. And I think he watched me with his children and I think he learned to be a parent. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, and he's a good parent. And the other thing that I thought

was amazing was when you went to visit your mother's grave. It took you a long time to be able to do that. And were you able to forgive yourself and forgive her? Oh, I forgave her. When I was writing my memoirs, I found out things about her childhood that allowed me. It was like, oh, my God. I always knew that something terrible had happened to her because she was not normal.

But I just didn't know what it was. And when I found out, I was able to totally forgive her. Yeah. And I became the mother. I just wanted to hold her. You know, she was dead. She killed herself when she was 42. I wanted to just hold her in my arms and rock her and cradle her.

Yeah. And I was able to forgive everything. But I wanted to go to her grave with Peter, my brother. And it just didn't work out. So for the benefit of the documentary, I went on my own. Has he been? No. But we'll probably go together.

Oh, that's nice. Now, you talk about spirituality, and we can kind of move towards the end here. Your father was an atheist? Well, his parents were Christian science, and I think that that embedded itself somewhere in his DNA, but he called himself an agnostic and criticized me whenever I would go to church. Oh, yeah.

So he was really kind of... Yeah. And now you seem to be a very spiritually driven person. I am. And what form is it? I study the Bible. I study the life of Christ. I read the Gnostic Gospels.

Uh-huh. I have actually enrolled in the Interdenominational Seminary in Atlanta. Yeah. I was the only white person there. It's where black ministers are trained. Yeah. And I believe in historical Christ. Yeah.

And historical Buddha. Yeah. And historical Allah. Uh-huh. And I think these were real people who were tuned in. Yeah. I think there were women as well. I think Mary was his favorite disciple.

And if you read the Gnostic Gospels, that's proven true. So I think there were some women that were tuned in too. And when I say tuned in, I mean they understood that we're made of the molecules of stars, that we are part of everything. Yeah. That there is something greater than us. Yeah.

And that we must be humble before that. Right. And that we must, with every ounce of our being, try to aspire to goodness and greatness, that we have to try to make our lives, for me, it's something that would have made Jesus proud. Because of my culture, Jesus is the person that I identify with and relate to. I have studied Buddhism as well, and I meditate.

But Jesus is my guy, and I often think, what would Jesus do? Sure. But there's a whole lot that's in there that I don't, you know, I think the Bible is a metaphor. Sure. A very beautiful metaphor. And it's okay not to have boundaries with Jesus. Yeah. I just find it utterly fascinating. If only I could go back to that time.

I would love to experience that. That, you know, when, you know, Jesus had women performing the Eucharist. Women more than anybody supported Jesus. He loved women. He supported women. He was a feminist. Charismatic fella. He had charisma like all those guys did. Yeah. And the women just got forgot along the way, but there were women like that too, I think. of came together for me around the same time when I stopped being a food addict and when I got filled up in my solar plexus was this understanding of

being part of something greater than myself. I didn't need to binge anymore. And it just, it changed me. It did. And that's when I suddenly, you know, I've known so many alcoholics. Jason Robards, for example. I'll never forget. We made a movie called Comes a Horseman Together. And he was sober by then. And he told me about hitting bottom.

And he told me about a higher power. And I remember thinking, what a lot of BS. Higher power, come on. I was talking like my father. You know what I mean? It's like... Suddenly I realized,

oh my God, that's what that means. My solar plexus have been filled with spirit. Yeah. That chakra, the middle chakra. Yeah. I got it the middle chakra. Yeah. I got it. Oh, wow.

And I know why it's so hard for so many people, especially guys, because to receive that, you have to humble yourself profoundly. Yeah. It's very hard for a lot of people to do that. Sure. They want control I mean that's what eating disorder is all about and addiction is all about

alcoholism yeah and so you know that's I don't talk about my feelings about Jesus and about all of this very much because it was very hard when I lived in Georgia because if I don't if I don't hew to the every word is

true and all of that, you'd be cast out. People would get very, very upset. But you have a personal relationship and a personal understanding and that's what's important. Yeah. And you're doing great work

for all of the things you do and uh you know showing up in north dakota was amazing see when you have yeah when you're full with that yes you can go forth in the world yeah and nothing can hurt you nothing can hurt you right that's that's beautiful. It is. It is. I feel very, very blessed. And I feel very honored that you talked to me today. I feel honored that you asked. And I'm thrilled

with the success of Grace and Frankie. And if you want to tell Lily to come over, I'm more than happy to have her. Great. I'm about to go see her. Okay.

Well, really, thank you so much Jane it's a pleasure wow what a treat really I really love talking to her I did that was Jane Fonda and all five seasons of Jane's series with Lily Tomlin, Grace and Frankie are now streaming on Netflix. They've been renewed for another season. But you can catch up on the early ones now. Now I'm going to mindfully play some guitar at a lower volume. Less distorted, but still with the bounce. Still with the Echoplex pedal.

I'm using the Gold Top for those of you who ask questions. The Les Paul Deluxe through the Echoplex through the 1957 Fender Deluxe Amp. That's been completely cleaned up. That was just information for guitar nerds. Thank you. Thank you. Boomer lives! With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category,

and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Ontario Cannabis Store, and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead

courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to kids night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 PM in rock city at Toronto rock.com.