Marilu Henner | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Chicago meets Chicago as Billy Corgan sits down with Marilu Henner to unpack her highly superior autobiographical memory (H. S. A. M.) that can turn a Tuesday from 1972 into a living scene and why her story is bigger than a party trick. From her Logan Square roots (beauty shop in the kitchen, dance school in the backyard), the champions who changed her path, Taxi’s 112 episodes, 112 Friday parties, open-door table reads, and Andy Kaufman’s singular orbit. The pair connect feeling to art including the rain-slick Chicago moment that helped spark “1979.” Old Hollywood drifts through, the Andrews Sisters’ precision harmonies and Burt Reynolds’ desert circus in Cannonball Run II before the conversation lands on health, longevity, and service. Subscribe to the Magnificent Others YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BillyCorganTMO?sub_confirmation=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:09Speaker 01

  Took measurements, 300 measurements of my brain and found nine areas 10 times larger than the normal brain.

• 1:14Billy Corgan?

  What's unfortunate is in watching some recent interviews with you, I feel like they're not really getting at your story as much as they're getting at sort of your gift.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  One of the theories I have is always that you don't become a success in this business until someone champions you or falls in love with you. And I don't mean romantic love, just believes in you.

• 1:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  And like Jim Jacobs, he's the one who pushed me in the direction of threes. That though.

• 1:37Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  And 112 parties. We had a taxi party every single Friday. We were the kid, cool kids on the Paramount campus.

• 1:46Billy Corgan?

  You're talking like a rock star. This is how we talk. So here we are.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Here we are.

• 1:53Billy Corgan?

  Both Chicago.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 1:56Billy Corgan?

  In the land of dreams.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  I know you don't get to meet that many Chicago people.

• 1:59Billy Corgan?

  Well, not many people get out of Chicago, but we'll get to that. And there's a reason why most people don't get out of Chicago and we'll get to that too.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  But. Okay.

• 2:07Billy Corgan?

  So April 6, 1952.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:11Billy Corgan?

  Babies born in the year of the dragon are considered to be the luckiest and destined for the most success in life and are ambitious, confident and have a strong sense of justice and fairness.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Well, that describes me to a T.

• 2:23Billy Corgan?

  Does it?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  You know.

• 2:25Billy Corgan?

  I don't know. I'm asking.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny. It's my uncle lived. I lived in Logan Square in Chicago, right on Logan Boulevard, and we had a dancing school in our backyard and a beauty shop in our kitchen. And my uncle was the neighborhood, not only astrologist, but he also taught art at the Catholic Grammar School next door. So we were big on astrology.

• 2:43Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  So I didn't even know about the dragon. I just knew that I was an Aries and all my rising sign and everything else.

• 2:48Billy Corgan?

  Well, I thought it was interesting because like.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 2:51Billy Corgan?

  Because, you know, when you're interviewing somebody that you're familiar with through the public sphere, you have an impression of their public character.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:59Billy Corgan?

  And then in researching you, I thought, well, there's this other person and I'm not saying they're different. There's this. Well, we'll see, but we'll get there. We'll get there. But, um.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  I can't wait. We have so many things to get to.

• 3:12Billy Corgan?

  But in digging around for different information, I saw that and I thought it seemed to me to describe my sense of you as who you really are. Does that make sense? I feel like, and I don't know because I don't know you, but I felt that it's sort of, because your spirit always struck out to me. I've seen you on television. I don't know how many times, but and in movies, but you always stuck out differently than most people.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 3:39Billy Corgan?

  Do you have an impression?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Well. I always had a lot of energy, even as a little girl. And my mother used to say, like, run around the block a couple of times. Get rid of some of that energy. And I was just always the most energetic of the family. So I think maybe that's what.

• 3:56Billy Corgan?

  But I think it's, I don't know. I'm not trying to put something on you. That's why we're here to talk. But like your sense of spirit has seems to run through your whole life in a consistent way. Does that make sense?

• 4:06Speaker 01

  It does. I think you're right. I think.

• 4:08Billy Corgan?

  Is it a sense of self or is it a sense of spirit? Does that make sense?

• 4:12Speaker 01

  It's maybe a sense of both. It's, you know, I think being one of six kids, you look for things that maybe make you a little bit different. And so my sister always says that, you know, there were among the family members, there were 10 confidence coupons. And she said, and you took nine of them.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  And my response to her was, there was a tenth? But I think it wasn't even that. It was like, I always felt like, I don't know. I had something to prove to myself, not even to my parents. I knew I had a lot of energy. I knew I was smart in school. I knew I had this crazy memory from the time I was six. I was, I, there's four girls in my family and two boys growing up. And my sisters are gorgeous. They're all beautiful. And so I always felt like the, you know, the personality kid and the one with the, that I'll figure it out, you know, that kind of thing. And then I chose show business too. So, you know, but I think, I think there was always a strong sense of purpose, maybe more than self or spirit.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  It was a sense of purpose. I always had a purpose.

• 5:23Billy Corgan?

  I had these, you know, these are all kind of ephemeral memories, but I have memories of seeing you on David Letterman.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:29Billy Corgan?

  And whenever you would be on, he was always kind of a bit flirty with the female guests. But with you, it was like, he was almost kind of awestruck by you. He kind of, he seemed to fumble around, around you.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Well, he used to rip up the cards. He's like, well, let's not talk about this, you know? I mean, we, I love Dave. I did his show many, many times and we always had like such a great kind of chemistry, as you said. So, you know, from the first time I, I did it. And he was the host on The Tonight Show. You know, we just, that was it.

• 5:59Billy Corgan?

  So let's jump in here.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:01Billy Corgan?

  Parents Loretta and Joseph? I know you mentioned-

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Polish and Greek. They were both first generation.

• 6:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Well, having grown up in Chicago, you know, back then, very neighborhood.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Very neighborhood.

• 6:13Billy Corgan?

  So, having lived in the Polish neighborhood, and of course in Chicago, we all went to the Greek diners.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Yes, of course.

• 6:20Billy Corgan?

  And there was a strong sense of the Greek community in Chicago, especially Greek town. I'm not trying to be touristy about it, I'm saying is, no, but the fabric of those things are, I think as a Chicagoan, those things are very strong.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Very real and very connected. I mean, my neighborhood was, we were six kids, but we were kind of a mid-sized family.

• 6:38Billy Corgan?

  I was gonna say, that would be a mid-sized family back then.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure, because people had 11, 13, 8, 9, things like that. It was very Polish, very German, probably more Polish and German than Greek. But there were some Greek families. And because we had the dancing school, we were the cultural center of the neighborhood. So, everybody came and hung out at our house.

• 6:59Billy Corgan?

  What did your father do for a living?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  My father was in the automobile business. So, I know you're a big Cubs fan, I've heard you talk about it. And he used to go from, he was kind of a troubleshooter for Chevrolet and for Ford. So, he'd go to different, um, different dealerships, and he was a general manager. He used to go to different dealerships and build them up and then move to the next one. So, he worked at Z Frank, Nicky Chevrolet.

• 7:23Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah, there's still there some of those offices.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  I know. I think Z Frank's still is there, I don't know. Yeah, and so he even had his own places downtown, Henner Ford and Loretta Motors, named after my mother.

• 7:33Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I didn't know that, because I was poking around, I didn't seem to find much information on your father.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. But he was in the automobile business, so he was a real salesman. I mean, like had a real, big personality and very charming.

• 7:46Billy Corgan?

  But mom running the dance school, is that, did she have a background in dance? That she wanted to be a professional, or I don't, there's not much information there?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  She did, she did, she always loved dancing, but she was also a beautician, which is why we had the beauty shop in the kitchen with about 25 women from the neighborhood, used to come over and get their hair done, you know? But you know, Chicago, people are very entrepreneurial.

• 8:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  You know, and so a lot of mothers did other things, but my mother was really involved.

• 8:12Billy Corgan?

  I feel lucky in, in, in trying to get to know you a little bit, because- I remember that world that you grew up in. Does that make sense?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 8:20Billy Corgan?

  I really remember that world. It was very ethnic. It was very prideful. It was very focused on generational advancement.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:28Billy Corgan?

  How do we get away from the old country and become American and?

• 8:32Speaker 01

  I could not believe it when the first time, one of the first times we visited my grandfather and my father started speaking fluent Polish. It was like, what?

• 8:40Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  I didn't even know he could speak that. My mother, both of their mothers died when they were seven and eight. So my father was raised in an orphanage for a while and then his father remarried and he remarried a woman with four kids. So then they were all raised together. My mother's father went through five wives and she was really more raised by her stepmother in a lot of ways, you know? And so, yeah, so they, they got away from the old country in a way that, you know, I mean, it's so funny because my brother went to Methoni, Greece, which is where our people are from. We went there a couple of years ago and took pictures in front of where my grandparents had gotten married. But he went there years ago and brought back the most beautiful pictures, sun-kissed pictures of these beautiful people on the beach and running around and drinking and eating. And I went, wait, let me get this story straight.

• 9:24Billy Corgan?

  Why did we leave?

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Exactly. Why did we leave?

• 9:26Billy Corgan?

  To come to Chicago.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  But they came to Chicago through Ellis Island and then came to Chicago.

• 9:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, so I really resonate with that because that's my family's story, even though obviously it's different families, right?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Were you, what, what's your nationality?

• 9:39Billy Corgan?

  Uh, grandmother was Italian. Grandfather on the mother's side was Gypsy and Belgian, Flemish.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  I won't say that anymore, but yeah.

• 9:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. And then the other side was Irish and, you know, crazy Irish. So, you know, when you deal with that, at that time, it was different.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:59Billy Corgan?

  You know, people talk about these things now as a sort of like a, you know, where's your family from? But back then, the ethnic identity in Chicago, I can't speak for anywhere else in America, but I see, I feel like it was that way in Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:10Billy Corgan?

  Rust belts.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  I think especially, yeah, and the, you know, kind of the, the, um, uh, Great Lakes cities, you know, because that was very strong.

• 10:20Billy Corgan?

  Why the hell would we live in this crazy, horrible, cold place if it wasn't for work and some sense that the family was going to?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Community.

• 10:28Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 10:30Billy Corgan?

  Now, this is my opinion.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Okay. It's your show.

• 10:36Billy Corgan?

  Not yet. Um, I feel like people have gotten kind of lazy with interviewing you because they just want to go into the memory thing. So, um, it's not that I don't want to talk about it because it's certainly fascinating. And maybe for people who wouldn't know, maybe give your sort of

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Thumbnail.

• 10:53Billy Corgan?

  A thumbnail. I'm, I'm sure I'm asking the one of the five questions that people always ask you, but, but it, because it is such a rare thing that you have, you know, and I, I don't want to call it an affliction, but it's interesting.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  No, only for my husbands, which is why I'm on my third and final, I always say, yeah.

• 11:08Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  No, it's a gift. It's really a gift. But what it, it's called HSAM, highly superior autobiographical memory. People used to call it hyperthymesia, but they don't anymore. And, um, because it sounded like a disease. But basically what it is, is that people who have this remember virtually every day of their lives. Most people remember eight to 11 events within any given year. And in order to be considered having HSAM, you have to be tested. And it's discovered that it's between 200 and 365, 366 events within any given year, but minimum 200. And they test you and test you and test you.

• 11:46Billy Corgan?

  And you put yourself through that testing?

• 11:47Speaker 01

  I did. Well, I was on 60 Minutes because my friend Leslie Stahl knew I had this memory and she wanted me to be tested. And I was like, okay. But I loved it. I answered over 500 questions in a day. They wired me, put me through an MRI, saw how the neural pathways fired up, took measurements, 300 measurements of my brain and found nine areas 10 times larger than the normal brain. And basically, the five questions I get asked is always a good for lines, for remembering lines as an actress. And I always say, well, that's two dimensional. I'll read a script and know not only how I relate to the character and how I connect to her from my own life, but also where I was, what the weather was like, what I was wearing, you know, things like that. Um, and people always say, oh, is it a blessing or curse? I would say it's always a blessing, just a curse for my husband. Um,

• 12:33Speaker 01

  which is probably why I'm on my third and final. Uh, they always say, well, what about bad memories? And I would say, well, because memories are tied to adrenaline, you're going to remember the highs and the lows.

• 12:42Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  I'm just able to bring back all those like, middle of the road things, you know? And then they say, how old were you when you discovered it? And I knew from six years old on, I had something very unusual.

• 12:52Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:54Billy Corgan?

  Back to my take.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:56Billy Corgan?

  So I feel like the lazy take is people want you to almost do like parlor tricks.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:00Billy Corgan?

  Like, let me throw it.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  But I want to help other people.

• 13:02Billy Corgan?

  No, I get that. And it's an amazing gift, but I think what's unfortunate is in watching some recent interviews with you, I feel like they're not really getting at your story as much as they're getting at sort of your gift, which is fine.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:16Billy Corgan?

  But your life, I'm shocked, you know, because I've been working in music for over 30 years. You've worked for 50 years straight.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, nonstop.

• 13:27Billy Corgan?

  Nonstop, yeah. So I mean, to me, that's the real accomplishment.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 13:32Billy Corgan?

  God gave you the gift, like God gave me, say, the gift of music. But the real accomplishment is what you've done with it, which is what I'm interested in talking about. So I hope that makes sense.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Sure, thank you.

• 13:43Billy Corgan?

  So using your beautiful memory, take me at least to what teen life was like for you. Were you still in Logan Square in your teens?

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Oh, Logan Square, definitely. Well, as soon as you were 14.

• 13:55Billy Corgan?

  Don't skip past Catholicism because that's.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 13:59Billy Corgan?

  The young Catholic girl here, I need to hear that too.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Well, first of all, you know, in Chicago, you are probably aware of this. The better education was Catholic school.

• 14:09Billy Corgan?

  Absolutely.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and so the public school in our neighborhood, it was just very.

• 14:14Billy Corgan?

  Remember these stories? You know, the kids would complain about being beaten by the nuns.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:19Billy Corgan?

  And then the family would say, yeah, but you got a good education. It was like a Chicago joke, right?

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:25Billy Corgan?

  But the nun hit me with the ruler. Yeah, but you got a good education.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  The nun cracked a bell over my head and caused 11 stitches.

• 14:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Which did happen to one kid, you know, and the nuns were brutal. But my mother not only taught them, gave them stretch classes and she taught the nuns.

• 14:40Billy Corgan?

  What are stretch classes?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  You know, she taught them how to stretch.

• 14:42Billy Corgan?

  Oh, okay.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  You know, so she got to see them without their habits on over at the.

• 14:46Billy Corgan?

  So nuns doing yoga, basically?

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Nuns doing, yeah, the well dance stretches.

• 14:50Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  She also cut their hair. And she also took them bra shopping at Vassarette, which was not far from our house. And on Sundays, my father, when he didn't have to go to work, he would drive the nuns to the different parishes around town. And I'd be the little girl in the car singing my heart out because I had a captive audience. So I'd sing like Julie Andrews or Ethel Merman or somebody like that. And so, you know, we had backstage passes to Catholicism. So we weren't brutalized as much as maybe some of the I do, although my brother Tommy has stories. The story is definitely. But I loved, I loved the neighborhood. I loved the nuns. I used to, you know, take over for the woman who worked at the rectory.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  When she'd go on vacation, I was 14, and filing things or answering the phones. And we were very involved in parish life, you know. So it was a whole thing.

• 15:43Billy Corgan?

  Illustrate that, what that life was like for you. I mean, I'm, I'm asking the same question twice, which is inopportune. But what I'm trying to get at is, you know, what struck me about you and your gift is most of us have a memory that's, you know, it's like, it's like a ghost, you know? And we remember what we want to remember and we selectively kind of edit our stories and we puff them up over time.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Or they become like snowballs.

• 16:10Billy Corgan?

  Sure, but you live with the actual, as much as anybody on the planet, the holographic memory of what it was actually like to stand on that street on that day. It's not a picture postcard, like a Hallmark card. It's, it's actually in your mind.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:25Billy Corgan?

  So is it as romantic, looking back for you, as it is?

• 16:29Speaker 01

  It's probably.

• 16:31Billy Corgan?

  Because obviously I'd ask you to have others perceive memory.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:34Billy Corgan?

  Like, I have a romantic vision of what should, like I said, I was born in 67.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:39Billy Corgan?

  You know, when you're shopping for antiques and you see like the Fermica kitchen? I remember being in the Fermica kitchen. And I know you were in those kitchens too, right? The mid-modern kind of speech. And then in the basements in Chicago, they'd have the old oven from the 30s because you'd cook in the.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Well, we didn't have that. We had a dancing school in our basement.

• 16:57Billy Corgan?

  Right, but you know how a lot of, a lot of families would have the kitchen in the basement in the summer because they had no AC and. But all my memories of those things are very-

• 17:04Speaker 01

  There's a texture and a smell.

• 17:06Billy Corgan?

  As an artist, I like to go back and reclaim those things, but it's always, it's, I always feel like I'm chasing it like it's just out of my reach.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Not the specificity.

• 17:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, so I'm fascinated by your ability to, in, in, in a very real way, actually put yourself back in that moment.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Well.

• 17:24Billy Corgan?

  Like you said, when you said, I remember sitting in the back of the car, singing to the nuns, I mean, you remember sitting in the back of the car.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  And I'm in my little body looking out.

• 17:34Billy Corgan?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  And all the nuns who were sitting there and where they were sitting and the one who had a crush on my dad. So she'd sit in the front seat, you know, and it's like, everything is real and it comes in almost like a photograph that you're developing. So it's like, you either get it right away or it takes time or it's like deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, like the, you know, the specifics of it.

• 17:53Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  You know, and it's like so, it's so rich to be able to do that.

• 18:00Billy Corgan?

  It seems so beautiful to me.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Thank you. Yeah.

• 18:02Billy Corgan?

  Because in song, I'm, I'm trying to stitch together these things into a cohesive message.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 18:08Billy Corgan?

  But it's all-

• 18:09Speaker 01

  I loved your song, nineteen seventy nine.

• 18:11Billy Corgan?

  Oh, thank you.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Because it's like that, and I could tell you the first day I ever heard it was February the eighteenth of nineteen ninety six.

• 18:18Billy Corgan?

  Amazing.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  It was, it was a-

• 18:20Billy Corgan?

  Do you know the story about how I wrote that song?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Well, I looked it up a long time ago.

• 18:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  And it was because you felt like there was a turning point in your life when you were twelve, right?

• 18:29Billy Corgan?

  Right, but there is a memory component to that.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 18:31Billy Corgan?

  So, um, I was writing the song somewhere probably in nineteen ninety four. And, um, for some reason, I remembered this day in my life where I was, I was seventeen or eighteen years old. And I was stuck at a light on North Avenue heading into the city and it was raining. It was one of those dreary Chicago days where it's cold.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:51Billy Corgan?

  And it's just raining.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Gray.

• 18:52Billy Corgan?

  And I'm watching the, the wipers go like this and I'm at a red light and that's the memory I wrote the song from.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 19:00Billy Corgan?

  It was such a specific moment in my life, emotionally, which is what I normally try to recall.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Oh, well, that's, it's such an emotional song.

• 19:07Billy Corgan?

  So you understand.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:08Billy Corgan?

  So, so it was this feeling of I'm leaving one life and I'm going towards this other life. And it's just that sixty seconds of my life, right? I, I felt that. In this like a like a cleaving of energies.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:24Billy Corgan?

  One is receding and one is coming. And I felt, not to make this about me, but I felt my life, there was a life for me that I had to get to.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:33Billy Corgan?

  But nobody believed in that. So as I'm sitting there.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  But you believed it.

• 19:37Billy Corgan?

  I did.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  That's the most important thing.

• 19:38Billy Corgan?

  But but what's interesting, I think, about it from an energetic point of view is is, and I think a lot of people experience this is, you know, you sit with the doubt of that.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 19:48Billy Corgan?

  You know what I mean? It's there's no guarantee.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  But that's good because then you pull that. See, I think one of the great things about having a great memory is that you're open to all of it. You're open to the positive, the negative, the things that you remember that were painful, the things that you remember that were wonderful, the all little middle of the road things. So you let the floodgates open and it's like nothing is wasted. So you didn't waste anything, you know, everything.

• 20:15Billy Corgan?

  But isn't that strange just for me that this in your case, you could recall it because it's in there.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, no, it's in there. It's in everything you've been through is on your emotional hard drive. You just don't have the same.

• 20:26Billy Corgan?

  Recall.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Re- retrieval system.

• 20:29Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I like that. I like that better than I didn't. I don't remember.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Everybody remembers. And when I work with people, they remember more and more. And I have a couple of theories about memory. One of them is that it's like everyone has a primary track on which they've embedded their memories. It's like in the jigsaw puzzle of your life. What are the hard edged pieces by which you can interlock other memories? And so yours is probably music. Probably you'll remember musical thing, maybe.

• 20:56Billy Corgan?

  Since we're having this kind of on a more of a theoretical or scientific end. My memories seem to be holographically connected to emotion.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  The feeling of it, yeah.

• 21:06Billy Corgan?

  The feeling. I'm able to recall feelings in a really intense way. And then the other memory system that I have is I can recall music in a holographic way. So for example, if I'm working on a on a song, I'll say to somebody. There's this one minute on this one record where the guy plays a solo and it's a certain feeling and I want to get that feeling. It's and producers look at me like, I don't know what the hell you're talking about.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Sure, because well, because most people live in think and then other people live in double think and then some people live in triple think, so they pull it in on so many different levels and you're a triple thinker, obviously.

• 21:48Billy Corgan?

  A drape.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:50Billy Corgan?

  I gotta be better, I gotta be better.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  But it's funny, you're saying that about about emotions and about music because I believe that the primary track, but then I also believe that everybody has a dominant sense. Everyone is a sight, sound, touch, taste, or smell person.

• 22:04Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  And you've got like a feeling thing.

• 22:06Billy Corgan?

  What's your dominant sense?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Oh, definitely smell.

• 22:08Billy Corgan?

  Really?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, really strong smell, sense of smell, sense of smell, it drives everybody crazy. Sense of smell and also probably hearing, auditory, I'm very auditory. So I'll like hear something and then I'll just, it gets recorded, but I'm kind of firing. When you have this kind of memory, you kind of fire on also.

• 22:25Billy Corgan?

  That's a lot, that's a lot of information on the hard drive.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:28Billy Corgan?

  Okay. Kingston Mines, who I know from my time in Chicago.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Did you, did you perform there?

• 22:34Billy Corgan?

  Never performed there because in our time in the eighties coming up, it was more of a reggae bar.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 22:40Billy Corgan?

  They had blues.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  A huge place.

• 22:42Billy Corgan?

  But at that point, it was more reggae. So I can't say I've ever been in there because I.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  You didn't go to the Trolley Barn part of it?

• 22:48Billy Corgan?

  No, because to me, the touristy part of Chicago blues and all that, just it always turned me off.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  So where did you hang out? Not on Lincoln Avenue?

• 22:56Billy Corgan?

  We were, we were more by Wrigley Field at the time. Wrigley Field's neighborhood in the eighties was very poor.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:02Billy Corgan?

  So a lot of artists were living there.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  My sister lived on Aldine, but she lived on Aldine and Sheridan. But yeah, the Chicago diner, did you ever go there?

• 23:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, of course.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Okay, Mickey and everybody, yeah.

• 23:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:14Billy Corgan?

  So take me back with your beautiful memory. Nineteen seventy-one, there you are, nineteen?

• 23:18Speaker 01

  I was, had not even turned nineteen.

• 23:20Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was eighteen. When, uh, February fifth, it was Friday. We opened in Greece.

• 23:26Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  What had happened was.

• 23:28Billy Corgan?

  But wait, don't skip past this, because it's the original version of Grease.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Ever.

• 23:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:33Billy Corgan?

  You were in this.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  I was in this thing because.

• 23:34Billy Corgan?

  Marty is your.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  It was my character.

• 23:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Because Jim Jacobs, with whom I had worked with when I was fifteen, and actually came to my sixteenth birthday, so which was a surprise party. The only time, I've been surprised twice in my life, and that was one of them. He came to my surprise party, um, and but we were, we were working together at Hull House. Did you ever go to Hull House in Chicago? That's a real Chicago.

• 23:54Billy Corgan?

  When we were kids, they took us there because the, the great legacy of.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Jane.

• 23:59Billy Corgan?

  Jane Hall. Jane Addams, sorry, yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:02Billy Corgan?

  So, you know, it was like a field trip spot.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Right. So I did a play there that became a big Chicago hit. And a couple, two years later.

• 24:09Billy Corgan?

  What was the play, though?

• 24:09Speaker 01

  It was The Boyfriend.

• 24:10Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  And so then with Bob Sickinger, did you know Bob Sickinger?

• 24:14Billy Corgan?

  This is, is a teen you did this? Or?

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Fifteen.

• 24:16Billy Corgan?

  Okay, wow.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Fifteen years old. And so I was always like doing things with like.

• 24:21Billy Corgan?

  Let me start real quick. How did your parents feel about you going to showbiz?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Well, my family had a dancing school.

• 24:26Billy Corgan?

  But were they behind it? Were they cool? They trust you, you know, because kids going in entertainment, you know, it brings up a lot of fear sometime in the family.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Well, my oldest sister was the lead in all the school plays at Loyola University. She was ten years ahead of me and in school and stuff. And so I was the little girl carrying her script around and I wanted to be an actress. And my father felt like I should use my, you know, I had four scholarships to go to University of Chicago and all this other stuff. So I was like one of those kids. Everybody in my family's very smart. But he got to see me in my senior in high school play, which I thought was going to be like Sweet Charity, or it's going to be this or that. No, it was an original musical written about the woman who founded the Order of Nuns at Madonna High School. And it was called Somebody Somewhere.

• 25:09Billy Corgan?

  Were you a nun?

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Of course, I played a nun.

• 25:12Billy Corgan?

  You must have been a pretty hot nun.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  It was whatever, but.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  My father did get to see it because usually there was a school play that was in the spring.

• 25:20Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  But this one was in December. He went to see it in December. And it was the only time he ever really came to see me in anything. And we had this huge party afterwards in my house. And I saw him in the kitchen, in the dining room. And I said, what are you doing? You don't want to go out to the dance studio and the party? He said, I want to talk to you. He said, your mom really wants you to do this. And I didn't until I saw you in the play tonight. And he said, you should do this. You're really good. And I was like, and I couldn't cry thinking about this because two weeks later he died. And if it had been the senior play in the spring, he never would have seen.

• 25:57Billy Corgan?

  That's so crazy and beautiful.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  I know, I know. So, how did they feel about it? My mother would have been disappointed if I had been a doctor, which might have been my default.

• 26:07Billy Corgan?

  Did you, sorry, it just comes to me now.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  That's okay.

• 26:09Billy Corgan?

  Did your, was your mom a bit of a stage mom or she had let go of that part of it?

• 26:13Speaker 01

  She didn't have to be because we had the dancing school. So she was always teaching everybody how to dance. And as soon as you were 14, in my family, you had to start teaching. So that's how I made money all through high school, either babysitting or teaching dancing. So I helped her run this video.

• 26:29Billy Corgan?

  The dancer's body, right?

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I guess so.

• 26:31Billy Corgan?

  But I mean, dancers have a very specific kind of carriage, right?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Sure, and posture. And posture was always very important to me. And it serves you well if you have good posture. I heard you talking about it earlier.

• 26:41Billy Corgan?

  Terrible posture.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  No, you got to work on, think of it this way. There's this imaginary plumb line down the center of your body. The bigger the front, the bigger the back. So everything, if you have hunched shoulders, you're going to have a pot belly because that's the imaginary plumb line. But just think, ears, ears over shoulders. Think of it as a bowling ball on a stack of plates. And that bowling ball could fall. So, because it's not just this, it's about, it's a lining.

• 27:05Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  We'll do a little demo after we finish.

• 27:07Billy Corgan?

  I thank you. I want my own private lesson because I need help.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Anytime.

• 27:12Billy Corgan?

  Thank you. So you're in this play, which of course is a total classic now.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Oh, it, okay, so Jim calls me. Yeah, great. He calls me, he says, Hannah, I've written the show, it may never get off the ground. I wrote it about the kids I went to high school with. I want you to play one of the girls. You're younger than I am by 10 years, he said, but I think you really have that Chicago thing. And it's called Grease. So we walk into the first rehearsal for it. And there's two stacks of papers. One of them is scenes. And it's like, ah, here's the book report scene, the polio shot scene, the lunchroom scene, the tattoo scene, the rumble scene, the, you know, everything, the pajama party, everything. And then there's a stack of songs. There were 37 songs in the first act alone. But of course, we didn't sing those. But everybody had a song, two songs, whatever. But the very first song that was ever written for Grease was Freddie, My Love.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  And it was my character's song at the pajama party. And so he was like, here, you know, Hannah, sing, this is in your key, it's gonna be a good song for you. So I was the first person to sing it.

• 28:15Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  And then when the show, people from New York saw it, they wanted to take some of us with them and audition. And I was like, I'm not leaving school to do this show, because I didn't think it was gonna be a hit. Did, did you know there was a play, a thing called The Body Politic?

• 28:30Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, okay. So they did Warp. There was a show called Warp, you were a kid. But there was a show called Warp that had just gone to New York.

• 28:39Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  And it died.

• 28:41Billy Corgan?

  So you were.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  So I was like.

• 28:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, because I have that written, why you, why you chose to be in the touring cast instead of the Broadway version.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Well, I could have been in the Broadway version, probably, but I wanted to get a little more school under my belt. But then Jim called me and was like, Hannah, the first National Company rehearsals start tomorrow. I've saved your party for you, but you have to come to New York today. I was like, I'm on my way to the library, I have two papers to, you know, but then I got to the library. And my car was parked in front of the library. So I looked at the library, my car, library car, library car, threw my books in the car, went to O'Hare Field, flew student standby, audition, and I got the part. So I had to call my mom and tell her I'm not, and that I'm gonna do the first National.

• 29:23Billy Corgan?

  Were you in college at this point?

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was in the beginning of my third year. Yeah, I was gonna do school in three years, because I'd played.

• 29:28Billy Corgan?

  What was gonna be your, uh?

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Major?

• 29:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  They didn't have a theater, they had, they didn't really have a theater department that where you could have a major. They had the theater department where you could be in plays, but it was political science.

• 29:41Billy Corgan?

  I was recruited for political science.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  You what?

• 29:44Billy Corgan?

  I was recruited out of high school for political science for some.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  We are like, yeah, connected.

• 29:50Billy Corgan?

  Thank you.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  It's because of your song, I conjured you up.

• 29:54Billy Corgan?

  Maybe, maybe. Maybe.

• 29:59Billy Corgan?

  John Travolta was in the original touring cast with.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  He was, he played Judy, Jeff Conaway, who I, with whom I worked Taxi. Jeff Conaway, I mean, Jerry Zax, big Broadway director, just directed Hugh Jackman in Music Man. And he did, I mean, he's won like seven Tonys. He did Hello Dolly with Bette Midler, who he played Kinnicky. Michael Limbeck, who directed a million Friends episodes, as well as Everybody Loves Raymond.

• 30:27Billy Corgan?

  Kind of a watershed moment and, you know, it's like, a lot of talent in one place at a certain time.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  And Judy Kay, who's won two Tonys, so everybody was there. Johnny was, he played Judy because he was only 18 at the time. Yeah.

• 30:40Billy Corgan?

  Did you know he was going to be a star? Did it occur to you?

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, but when you're in that kind of company and also rehearsing with us for the London Company was Richard Gere, was going to play Danny in the London Company. They were all older than Johnny and I were, but you just felt like, oh, we're all going to be stars. You know, that kind of feeling.

• 30:59Billy Corgan?

  A lot of people turned out to be stars out of that period.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  I know.

• 31:02Billy Corgan?

  It's interesting.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Well, you know why? Because, and I never really said this before.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  We were, we were kids on a white contract. We weren't chorus kids on a pink contract. The kids in Grease, it was the first time you had an entire company of characters on a white principal contract. You know, so it was very.

• 31:24Billy Corgan?

  Guaranteed different rights or pay?

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Different, totally different pay. And it wasn't like you were just lumped together to do, you know, you had a specific character. So you had specific wardrobe and you had a specific look and lines. And, and I think as a result. The people who cast it had to be very careful how they cast. They had to find people who would jump off that stage, not just blend into a chorus.

• 31:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So you you end up touring how long in in Greece?

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Uh, well, I toured six months on the road road, three months in L A, and then I made it back to my hometown. And I was like, oh, you know, in the show, in the theater where I'd seen, you know, Florence Henderson.

• 32:06Billy Corgan?

  Here I am, I've arrived.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  I've arrived, articles and stuff like that. And one weekend, we're switching over theaters. So I go to New York to visit a friend of mine who had done Greece with me. She was playing Frenching now on Broadway at Ellen March. And so she said, oh, I have singing lessons. Meet me at the theater. I walk into the theater and they're auditioning for over here, a new Broadway show to be with the Andrews Sisters. And so I auditioned.

• 32:29Billy Corgan?

  Me to my questions.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  So I I they I walked in and they went, sing a song, and I did. And then they called me a week later in Chicago where I was doing Greece and they said, fly today. So I flew in the morning. I left when my little brother left for school. I came back just as he was coming home from school. Flew, auditioned, came back, did the show that night, Greece in Chicago. And then the next day, the matinee, I could throw dates around like crazy. The next day, the matinee, they told me at the matinee at the intermission that I'd gotten the part and I'd be leaving that weekend.

• 32:59Billy Corgan?

  Intoxicating, no?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  It was incredible. It was incredible. It just.

• 33:04Billy Corgan?

  And you're how old at this one?

• 33:05Speaker 01

  I was, uh, this one, I was twenty.

• 33:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:10Billy Corgan?

  Did you have a sense then like, okay, this is where I'm supposed to be and this is great or? You know what I'm saying? Like.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  This was, yeah, this was felt like it was all part of a plan, part of a process, part of a mission, part of what we were talking about. Earlier.

• 33:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Purpose.

• 33:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  There was like, this was like falling into place the way it should.

• 33:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  You know?

• 33:32Billy Corgan?

  It strikes me as beautiful. That's what I mean. It's like.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 33:36Billy Corgan?

  We could talk about memory all we want, but. That part of your journey is really fascinating to me because

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Well.

• 33:43Billy Corgan?

  You're there, you know.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  And it's happening.

• 33:45Billy Corgan?

  Over there, what's the name of the show?

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Over here.

• 33:47Billy Corgan?

  Over here. Sherman Brothers were writing the music, who of course, everybody knows wrote all these great Disney classics.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Mary Poppins.

• 33:55Billy Corgan?

  Mary Poppins.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  It's a Small World.

• 33:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, there was a picture, Chuck sent me a picture of you and your kids in Disneyland.

• 34:03Billy Corgan?

  Yes, well, when you said, see, we're talking about memory. When you said it's a small world, I remember being stuck on it's a small world by tripping on LSD.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 34:11Billy Corgan?

  And it was stuck in one spot for 45 minutes.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, did it feel like 45 minutes?

• 34:15Billy Corgan?

  It felt like about 450 minutes.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  I know, yeah. I was so not a drug.

• 34:20Billy Corgan?

  You know how as you go through it's a small world, like different vibes. So I was like stuck in like Eskimo land for 45 minutes tripping on LSD.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Oh, my. Did you want to get out and like dance with the characters?

• 34:30Billy Corgan?

  It's one of those, it's one of those kind of weird karmic moments where you're like, this is what I get for taking LSD and I'm going to really lean into it right now.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Oh, well, that's good.

• 34:39Billy Corgan?

  I sort of deserve this.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I mean, I always say, you know, because I work with a lot of people through health, because I've written all these health books and stuff.

• 34:46Billy Corgan?

  Nine books?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Ten. Ten books.

• 34:49Billy Corgan?

  See Wikipedia light.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  See that? Don't follow Wikipedia there. Somebody's got updated.

• 34:53Billy Corgan?

  Tattooed on my chest.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Yes, forget Wikipedia. Yeah, no, 10 books, 10 books. Um, God, that must be the last time it was updated. Anyway, uh, yeah. And so because of it, I'm always helping people with, you know, health and things like that.

• 35:09Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  And so.

• 35:10Billy Corgan?

  So you're in that integrative community and, right?

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Very much so. Yeah.

• 35:15Billy Corgan?

  I gotta know because I, I do love the Andrews Sisters.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Oh, they were a blast.

• 35:20Billy Corgan?

  But you only work with the two.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Two.

• 35:23Billy Corgan?

  Because they had the heat, as we say in wrestling, with Laverne.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  She died.

• 35:28Billy Corgan?

  Oh, she died?

• 35:28Speaker 01

  She had already died.

• 35:29Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I didn't know that part.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  They would have been nice with her. Oh, no, they were fighting the whole time, but they both really liked me. I connected with both of them.

• 35:36Billy Corgan?

  But was Laverne was the?

• 35:38Speaker 01

  The third.

• 35:38Billy Corgan?

  But wasn't she the original lead? Like she was?

• 35:40Speaker 01

  No, no, no, Patty was always the lead. She's the third.

• 35:42Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so I'm getting my Andrews Sisters.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  The third, yeah. Patty's the one that you always see in like all the book privates and the Bing Crosby.

• 35:50Billy Corgan?

  So you worked with Patty then?

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Both of them.

• 35:52Billy Corgan?

  Okay, great, because this is helpful because to me Patty always struck me from a music side. She was the savant of the thing.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  She was. She was unbelievable.

• 35:59Billy Corgan?

  She's like a complete alpha.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  No, I don't even think the others would have been involved in it had it not been for Patty. She was the third.

• 36:06Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I don't know much about their story, but when you listen to their musics, talking about holographic memory, you can just tell she's a savant.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  She's-

• 36:14Billy Corgan?

  The stuff they're doing is so out there.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 36:17Billy Corgan?

  The rhythms and the-

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Everything.

• 36:19Billy Corgan?

  The personality, and she must have rehearsed them to death.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  She was a force of nature.

• 36:25Billy Corgan?

  Did you get to know her?

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Oh, very well, and hung out with her and her husband and went to dinners.

• 36:29Billy Corgan?

  The stories must have been unbelievable.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Well, I'm the third girl in my family, and kind of the noisy sort of pushy one.

• 36:37Billy Corgan?

  So you guys-

• 36:38Speaker 01

  And so she really felt connected to me.

• 36:40Billy Corgan?

  But her stories must have been unbelievable.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Unbelievable, but just about all the experiences and all the singing.

• 36:46Billy Corgan?

  Bing Crosby and all of it.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  I think my favorite part of over here was we'd be taking our, I was Annie Rankin's dressing roommate, and the two of us, it was good, we didn't have solo songs because we just made each other laugh all the time, and we never had any kind of voice, but, you know, from laughing so hard. But we'd be taking off our makeup, listening to the 20 minutes that the Andrews Sisters would do their little medley after the curtain call.

• 37:10Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  And the whole audience stayed, and they just loved them, just loved them. And they'd do everything from Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy to Hold Tight to, you know, just everything, just rum and Coca-Cola.

• 37:21Billy Corgan?

  This is a personal aside, but that's one of the things that drives me crazy about American culture is Andrews Sisters represents like, you know, the apotheosis of accomplishment as sort of a vocal group. But because it's sort of not trendy, they kind of get-

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:35Billy Corgan?

  Kind of pushed aside, and to me as a musician, it's like, they were incredible.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  The harmonies are so tight, and it's got to be, you know, it's because of the being siblings.

• 37:47Billy Corgan?

  Psychic Sisters, well, you see with the Bee Gees and-

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:49Billy Corgan?

  Other Beach Boys, you know, there's something about kin.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:54Billy Corgan?

  See, I have a whole thing here.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  About the, about the Andrews Sisters?

• 37:56Billy Corgan?

  Well, I just think it's fascinating because, you know, and it gets a little bit into when you go into movies, you know, you're at that sort of transitional phase in Hollywood where the old guard was still around.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:08Billy Corgan?

  You know what I mean?

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was unheard of to have a film and television career.

• 38:14Billy Corgan?

  Well, you beat me again in my questions.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Oh, well.

• 38:17Billy Corgan?

  This is your prescience here. Now, because, um- You know, you have enough success as a Broadway star that now you start doing movies. Did somebody at some point call you like, hey, kid, we want you in the pictures? Like, how did that work?

• 38:29Speaker 01

  No, no, you auditioned, you know, I mean, I was doing a lot of commercials. I was doing, you know, and, and the very first thing I auditioned for, the first movie that I did was a film called Between the Lines that Joan Silver was directing.

• 38:42Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  I was so flattered that she thought I could play a stripper because it was like, oh, I went to University of Chicago, I'm forced college, sure, I'll play a bimbo. And I thought, I'm not going to make her a bimbo. So I went and interviewed all these strippers and found out like one of the girls had, had a husband who was there taking notes all the time. Another girl, her mother made the costumes, you know, and they were sometimes girls who were going to college and stuff. So that's what my stripper character as a backstory and as a, you know, and I, and Joan Silver, Jonathan Silver, let me use some of the things that I'd learned as ad-libs.

• 39:17Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  And so she put them in a movie.

• 39:19Billy Corgan?

  So, but, you know,

• 39:20Speaker 01

  That started.

• 39:21Billy Corgan?

  You know, when I look at your, your start in movies, I mean, you're, they've got you, this is my perception on this kind of that path where the like, this person has a big upside in movies. You know, they're grooming you, for lack of a better word. Did you feel that?

• 39:34Speaker 01

  Um.

• 39:35Billy Corgan?

  Or no?

• 39:36Speaker 01

  No, I didn't feel like a studio.

• 39:37Billy Corgan?

  That's what it looks like from out, from the outside.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Really? No, it wasn't like that. I was auditioning and I had an agent who really believed in me. And I got cast in something, I was flown out here for a screen test for the movie Blood Brothers.

• 39:49Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  And Richard wasn't in it, Richard Gere wasn't in it yet, but it was Robert Mulligan, who had already had incredible success with Love with a Perfect Stranger, Love with a Proper Stranger and Inside Daisy Clover and a bunch of other movies. And so he, um, he, I get on the set and they'd sent me through like hair and makeup at Warner Brothers. And it was like, oh, I'm at the studio. This is the studio.

• 40:13Billy Corgan?

  The studio.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  The studio. And for my screen test and I get on stage and he goes, Go to the bathroom and wash all your makeup off. I want you to put your own makeup on. I want you to look like the girl I auditioned. This is not, because the guy was like so old school that I had the red dots here. You know, and I

• 40:31Billy Corgan?

  What are the red dots?

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Oh, they used to do that for the Greeks and in like Shakespeare and, you know, the old theater to make your eyes kind of like pop and stuff like that. But he did, he had red dot. So, um, so anyway, so then, but I, then I screen tested and I got the part. And then Richard's screen test, because the guy I was originally with didn't get the job. But I got it and then Richard gear.

• 40:53Billy Corgan?

  But at this moment, because you know, it's a feeling only a few people on the planet have, right? You're successful in one endeavor, Broadway. You're making this transition to possibly go into film. Right? You're in, you're at Warner Brothers, like, and I've had those meetings where you're like, what am I doing here, right? And here I am, you know?

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:15Billy Corgan?

  Um, did you, do you want a deeper career in films or?

• 41:19Speaker 01

  I wanted anything that was going to get, get me good material. And I didn't have a manager at the time. I got one a little bit later and then he kind of, I don't want to say ruined things for me a little bit. Wouldn't let me do Saturday Night Live, which I'd been asked to do.

• 41:35Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know that.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, which was like, how can I not?

• 41:38Billy Corgan?

  Oh, that's a jaw dropper.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  That was asked a few times, as a matter of fact, when I was on Taxi. And he was like, no, he was grooming me for, you know, a film career. And I was doing films in between taxi things.

• 41:52Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  And especially during Evening Shade, but, and I had already dropped him as a manager. But you know, you get bad advice sometimes early on in your career.

• 42:01Billy Corgan?

  That's kind of what I'm after is, you know, you're on that, because I think it's worth pointing out. There was that thing in, in, I remember it very pointedly in the seventies that people were either TV actors or they were movie actors.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Right, but Johnny Travolta really broke that.

• 42:17Billy Corgan?

  Well, but that was like

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Seventy eight, seventy seven, seventy eight.

• 42:21Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:22Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  That's what we're talking about that time.

• 42:24Billy Corgan?

  Right, but there was still that stigma, right?

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, very few people could do that.

• 42:28Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  You know?

• 42:29Billy Corgan?

  So I'm just asking your perception of like, In your mind, did you want to be, you just want to be an actor that works? Or you want like significant material? Or do you want to be a movie star?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Oh, truthfully, this is the truth gun and it blows your brains out if you don't tell the truth. Truthfully, I thought I would always be in Broadway musicals like that. That was going to be my destiny.

• 42:50Billy Corgan?

  Is that where your heart was? Or that's, that was your destiny? Does that make sense? The difference?

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think that's how I originally, you know, with the dancing school and singing and dancing and the Broadway and all the musicals in Greece and blah, blah, blah. I think that that's where I thought I would always end up. And going to, to Los Angeles was kind of a fluke. How long will I stay? And then I got Taxi and that material was so extraordinary. Plus, my mother was dying in the hospital at the time I was auditioning. So it just became this best of times, worst of times, you know? And so, and you just, I think what happens is as an actor especially, you, you take whatever path is next for you on the game board of life.

• 43:29Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  And Taxi was so extraordinary. How could I ever pass that up? You know?

• 43:36Billy Corgan?

  Okay, but just to hang on the point one more time. So because obviously in, in, in the lens of hindsight, Taxi is one of the greatest television shows of all time. And I watched it at the time. So I remember, I remember looking forward to it. I remember seeing you. I mean, I remember the whole thing, we'll get there in a second, but.

• 43:58Billy Corgan?

  Did you have that pause where it's like, hey, I've done Broadway and you said your heart was in Broadway, but I've done some movies. Did television at that moment feel like maybe I'm going backwards or this might typecast me? Cause that was always the fear, right?

• 44:12Speaker 01

  That was the fear, but I, you know, I, I watched what was happening with John Travolta and we were dating at that time. And my mother was dying and.

• 44:23Billy Corgan?

  That's a pretty intense combination of things.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  It's pretty intense. It was very intense, you know? And so it was.

• 44:32Billy Corgan?

  Were you torn between work and?

• 44:34Speaker 01

  No, because she, no, no, no. I mean, what was funny is that, you know, I was consistently working and then all of a sudden it was like, huh, I'm not getting, I don't have my next job. What's happening? And then next thing I knew, I was in Chicago with my mother. And while I was in Chicago, I read that there was this new series coming up called Taxi. And I remember seeing those words in the Chicago Sun-Times about the Mary Tyler Moore guys are about to do a new show. And there was something about that name that just jumped off the page. And I went, I'm gonna do this.

• 45:04Billy Corgan?

  And how old was your mom when she was?

• 45:05Speaker 01

  She was fifty-eight. I was twenty-five. She was fifty-eight. My father had died when I was seventeen. He was fifty-two of a heart attack. And she just changed like overnight. I saw what stress can do to a body and a psyche and like just losing the love of her life. And, you know, just having to like go to work, not teaching dancing, but working in a bank. And so many things changed for the family.

• 45:32Billy Corgan?

  Broken-hearted thing, you think?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  It was broken-hearted, but it was also, my mom was a survivor, but she wasn't, I think it was just such a shock. And the way my father died was such a shock. I don't know if you want to get into that, but.

• 45:46Billy Corgan?

  Please, yeah.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Well, as I told you, we were this big, very popular family in the neighborhood. And we always had this big Christmas party the Saturday between Christmas and New Year's. And my brother was sixteen. I was seventeen. My brother Tommy was sixteen. My sister was Chris was fifteen. Lauren twelve. My two older sisters were twenty-three and twenty-seven. And Tommy got into some liquor that my father had been given as a present, started mouthing off to one of the guests. My sister, he was in the, my father was like in the house, took him in the house. My sister, next thing I know, my sister ran out to the studio to get my mom. I followed her. And when we came in, my father was on top of my brother, because my brother had like pulled up like this.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  And so he was shaking him. My mother separated them. My father slumped into a chair. And that's how he died. So.

• 46:37Billy Corgan?

  I, I, I think I read that, but hearing it from you, I, I see it.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And my mother and I went in the ambulance with him. And I just thought, there's no way they're gonna save him. So.

• 46:49Billy Corgan?

  Was this like a massive coronary?

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Massive coronary. Fifty-two.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  And it upended our entire life.

• 46:59Billy Corgan?

  I can't imagine.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, and my brother and everything.

• 47:01Billy Corgan?

  All of it.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  All of it.

• 47:02Billy Corgan?

  Is your brother still alive?

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yes, all the siblings are still alive.

• 47:05Billy Corgan?

  How did your brother sort of process all that?

• 47:07Speaker 01

  He's been through a lot and in and out of rehabs and all kinds of stuff.

• 47:12Billy Corgan?

  Well, God bless.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  But he's, I mean, I always joke Tommy isn't, doesn't just have nine lives because he's had so many near. He doesn't just, he's a whole litter of cats with nine lives each. He's got like eighty one. So, yeah.

• 47:26Billy Corgan?

  Well, thank you for sharing that. It's intense.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:31Billy Corgan?

  Every family has its wrinkles, right? It's like.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  And there's a Fredo in every family.

• 47:39Billy Corgan?

  Well said.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 47:40Billy Corgan?

  Okay, Taxi.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:43Billy Corgan?

  It's almost hard to talk about, not because it's, there's so much to talk about that we could just sit here and talk about Taxi.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Forget about it.

• 47:50Billy Corgan?

  For hours.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:52Billy Corgan?

  And so let me see where I want to jump in on that. Here's, here's the thing. So here's the cast. And this isn't everybody, but these are the names that jump out. Judd Hirsch, Jeff Conway. Conway, is it Conway?

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Conway.

• 48:05Billy Corgan?

  Okay. Tony Danza, Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, Andy Kaufman, Rhea Perlman and Carol Kane, who I think I still have a crush on.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  No, she's adorable.

• 48:14Billy Corgan?

  So beautiful.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  So beautiful.

• 48:15Billy Corgan?

  What a cool.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  So good. And they were guest stars, Carol and.

• 48:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, but I remember seeing Carol on there because I had such a crush on her when I was a kid.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sure.

• 48:24Billy Corgan?

  I'm a goth, you know, so she's like a goth goddess. Right? If that makes sense to you. But gosh, where do we even jump in? Like you said, Mary Tyler Moore's people were involved. So you knew it was a, it had an esteem going in.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  I knew and they, we didn't even do a pilot. We knew it was picked up.

• 48:44Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  So if you got the job, you, you were doing thirteen episodes, the original thirteen. And I was, okay.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  I'll back up a story. Well, maybe I won't go into this part of the story. But anyway, I get the job even though I'm totally wrong for the part. They wanted a

• 48:59Billy Corgan?

  Why were you wrong for the part?

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Because they wanted a thirty five year old Italian New Yorker. And they wanted me to have a sixteen year old daughter. And I was twenty five. I turned twenty six right before I got the job.

• 49:09Billy Corgan?

  Was the character had was like a mother of two?

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Mother of two. Well, they made a mother of two. It was supposed to be a sixteen year old daughter.

• 49:15Billy Corgan?

  It was like a divorced mother of two.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  And a divorced mom who had aspirations to work at, who worked in an art gallery and had aspirations to own her own gallery someday. And so she was moonlighting as a cab driver too. And putting, and so that when I was too young. You know, I, one of the theories I have is always that you don't become a success in this business until someone champions you or falls in love with you. And I don't mean romantic love. Just believes in you.

• 49:40Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  And like Jim Jacobs, he's the one who pushed me in the direction of Grease. And Joel Thurm, the casting director of Taxi, he's the one who kept saying, "Trust me, this is the girl. This is Elaine. She can hold her own with Judd Hirst. You believe her as somebody who can like be one of the guys. You believe her aspirations in the art gallery." And everybody else, they were singing, sing, you know, they, he just felt like, no, it's Mary Lou.

• 50:04Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  So he believed in me and my final audition, which was right after my mother died. They paired us up. I wasn't with anybody that ended up getting the part. But because they, they paired me up and I sort of gave a hard time to the guy who was auditioning for Alex, Barry Newman. And it was really kind of funny. I think that's what got me the part. But they liked me. They, they felt like I could hold my own with the guys.

• 50:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, my memory of it is, and you know, because when you deal with cast ensembles, like Cheers is a perfect example. It's like, you know, it was all around the bar and Taxi was all around the garage. My, my thing was the show spun around you in a particular way because it's not that you were the love interest, but you were the hottie that didn't belong there.

• 50:51Billy Corgan?

  But that's my memory of it.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Thank you. Oh, well, but.

• 50:53Billy Corgan?

  No, but I'm saying it gave it gave a certain sort of snap to it.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:58Billy Corgan?

  You know, it animates things, you know, it's I'm not saying it's as simple as sex sells, but it's like. You know.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny. I always felt, you know, with all due respect to the Cheers cast, I always thought the Taxi Cast was a hotter cast. I mean, we have an expression in my family called PF.

• 51:14Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  And it's like BDE, only it's not sizeist and sexist like BDE.

• 51:18Billy Corgan?

  What does PF stand for?

• 51:20Speaker 01

  PF stands for, and it measures the sexual quotient of people or things.

• 51:23Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Man, there was so much PF in that movie last night. God, I went to this new restaurant.

• 51:27Billy Corgan?

  Do the letters PF stand for something?

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, Pussy Factor and Penis Factor. Because, okay, so, yeah.

• 51:33Billy Corgan?

  Now we're back to Chicago.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're back to Chicago. Right there, baby. We are right.

• 51:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I'm with you in Chicago.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so PF, I always felt like the Taxi Cast has had more PF than most other casts. Forget about Cheers.

• 51:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, no, that's what that's what I'm saying.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Except for maybe Friends, but later.

• 51:48Billy Corgan?

  So like, okay, dealing with the sexual dynamics, it's like it made sense that Tony Danz's character would be into you, Jeff Conaway's, you know what I'm saying?

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:57Billy Corgan?

  Having having a woman of your looks somehow it it it balanced something.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, you believe.

• 52:04Billy Corgan?

  You would think on paper, it would be like, let's get the, you know, the soccer mom from Chicago.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:10Billy Corgan?

  Had a rough go and a little rough around the edges, but she's got a heart of gold.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:14Billy Corgan?

  Something about you there kind of classed it up or something.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I didn't realize.

• 52:18Billy Corgan?

  That's just my, now you remember, I'm sitting in a basement.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  I know you're sitting eleven years old or twelve years old.

• 52:22Billy Corgan?

  Basement freezing my saw.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Oh, wait.

• 52:25Billy Corgan?

  Um, but I I did love the show and I I just remember thinking it was so fresh.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  It was different. And you must have loved being the musician that you are nately, the Bob James song.

• 52:37Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I hope I don't shock you. I always found that theme song creepy.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 52:42Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Interesting. Creepy because it went with a.

• 52:46Billy Corgan?

  The way it starts, the flutes and.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Hmm. Cause.

• 52:50Billy Corgan?

  It creeped me out. I don't know why.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  But don't.

• 52:53Billy Corgan?

  And I swear to God, I'm gonna show you.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  I don't remember.

• 52:57Billy Corgan?

  I got a Bob James note because I was gonna tell you that the song creeped me out.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Creeped you out.

• 53:01Billy Corgan?

  So you jumped, you jumped me there on that.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  That's so funny because um, yeah, I mean, I.

• 53:07Billy Corgan?

  But here, wait, we're talking about the theme song, so you know it's a good theme song.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  It's a good theme song.

• 53:12Billy Corgan?

  Because we're talking about it because it's, it registers as a singular moment.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  And it was so different from Shamil, Shamil.

• 53:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  And happy, you know, the happy days and also come and knock on our door. You know, it's so different from all of those other shows.

• 53:26Billy Corgan?

  But every time I hear those.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Dee, dee, dee.

• 53:29Billy Corgan?

  Creeped me out.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe, maybe it, because you knew it was time to go to bed or do your homework.

• 53:33Billy Corgan?

  I was sitting there doing my research on you and I thought,

• 53:37Billy Corgan?

  I remember this song creeping out, so I went and listened to it to see if it's still creep me out, and it does.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  And it does.

• 53:42Billy Corgan?

  So.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  That's so funny. No flutes in your music like that?

• 53:46Billy Corgan?

  Okay, now, I am gonna test your memory here because I think this is valuable. First Taxi, according to my notes, aired September 12th, 1978.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  It was on a Tuesday, right. I was in London with Travolta, opening Grease the night before. So I didn't get to go to, you know.

• 54:04Billy Corgan?

  So you didn't get to sort of celebrate in the American sort of moment?

• 54:07Speaker 01

  No, I didn't, but a couple of days later, and people asked me like, when did you know you were gonna be famous? Or when did, when was the taxi? When did you know Taxi was a hit? Three days later, after Taxi premiered, September the 15th. In fact, I did this on a Sirius not too long ago.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  We were at the Ali Spinks fight. Johnny and I had flown from London to, to New Orleans for the Ali Spinks fight. And all the guys went to this fight. The fight was over very quickly. And then Johnny went back to the hotel. So I hung out with the taxi guys and we're walking down the street. And all of a sudden, people are honking like, hey, Nardo, hey, Louis.

• 54:45Billy Corgan?

  And this is just after the premiere?

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Three days.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  So we thought, oh.

• 54:50Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Lives, our lives have changed.

• 54:52Billy Corgan?

  Hundred and fourteen episodes.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Well, no, it's hundred and twelve.

• 54:55Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  We did a retrospective. Wikipedia. Okay, Quikapedia, they're never right. Wikipedia says a hundred and fourteen, but two of them were like retrospectives. Where somebody says, oh, this is the fake episodes.

• 55:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:08Billy Corgan?

  It's a hundred and twelve episodes.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  And a hundred and twelve parties. We had a taxi party every single Friday. We were the kid, cool kids on the Paramount campus because we had a party every.

• 55:19Billy Corgan?

  You guys just had a blast.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  We had a blast. It was a great time.

• 55:23Billy Corgan?

  This is cocaine LA times.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Well, I was never.

• 55:25Billy Corgan?

  Not you.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Tony used to say, had, he used to say, man, we all have to do drugs to feel like you do naturally. You know, so.

• 55:36Billy Corgan?

  Okay, correct me again.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 55:38Billy Corgan?

  Cause there were, there was different information on this.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 55:40Billy Corgan?

  Show was nominated for thirty one Emmys, but I've seen where it's at thirty four.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Okay, I don't know.

• 55:45Billy Corgan?

  Show won, show won eighteen.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Won a lot.

• 55:48Billy Corgan?

  Uh, won best comedy series three years in a row. And you were nominated for five Golden Globes.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Five, three lane.

• 55:56Billy Corgan?

  Mm hmm.

• 55:58Billy Corgan?

  So.

• 56:00Billy Corgan?

  I always like to focus on this part because.

• 56:05Billy Corgan?

  When you, when you're at the zeitgeist of American culture. And only a few people really experience that.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:12Billy Corgan?

  It's very, very. Different. It's different than anybody can imagine it. Like, there was a point in my life where I don't care, whatever restaurant I walked into, the kids knew me and grandma knew me.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 56:25Billy Corgan?

  So I know you know what that feels like.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yes, and I think. Also, because of that time and the different people I was dating during that time, whether it was Johnny or one of my cast members. You know, there was like that element.

• 56:43Billy Corgan?

  Oh, you had the People Magazine part of it all too?

• 56:45Speaker 01

  People Magazine, Us Magazine, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. So there was that part of it, but, but the work. Was so extraordinary and somebody like Jim Brooks, who is. Of every single human being I've met in show business, he is a true genius. He is the smartest, most extraordinary human being I've ever met in my entire life. And we're still friends to this day. I mean, we are such good friends. He came to all my weddings. I mean, no, he's, he's, he is, he's one of my best, best, best, best friends. And I see him all the time. So because of him, I would say that there was a patina about Taxi.

• 57:22Billy Corgan?

  It's endured, which is, I think, how we know. Where I would argue like a show like MASH, which was huge in its time, it seems to have lost.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Do you think it wasn't?

• 57:32Billy Corgan?

  Some of it shine over time.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe.

• 57:34Billy Corgan?

  You want my opinion on why?

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 57:35Billy Corgan?

  Is that what you're asking?

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm curious.

• 57:37Billy Corgan?

  I think it was too self-indulgent.

• 57:41Billy Corgan?

  There's a lot, I got a lot of lefty tropes in there and a lot of like, big speeches.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 57:46Billy Corgan?

  That just haven't aged very well. But at the time, it felt super important. I love the show.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:53Billy Corgan?

  But you, you couldn't get me to sit down and watch a MASH episode if you paid me. But if you said, hey, let's sit down and watch an old Taxi episode.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  From MASH.

• 58:02Billy Corgan?

  Well, I would say the same thing. But I, I don't.

• 58:06Billy Corgan?

  What's interesting about zeitgeist moments, and we can, because this gets into your memory as well, is there are zeitgeist moments that really endure. And there are other zeitgeist moments that do not endure, and they almost become a reflection of the times more so than, let's call it the greater arc of the human story or something.

• 58:28Billy Corgan?

  Does it make sense?

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:29Billy Corgan?

  It's the difference between a cultural moment, like, why is everybody wearing that bad shoe?

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:35Billy Corgan?

  And you look and go, God, what were we thinking in seventy-four?

• 58:37Speaker 01

  The collective agreement.

• 58:38Billy Corgan?

  Yes, it's a collective agreement, but it's not always right.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:41Billy Corgan?

  And that's, that's borne out by racial politics and horrible things like women not being able to vote, you know? Like, we all look back and go, what were we thinking? It's so silly. But there are other things you go, no, there was a, there was a truthfulness in that that endures. And there's a truthfulness in Taxi that endures.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  I, I think if I had to like pinpoint what it was, I think it was, you got into our personal lives, but what you really got into was that, that kind of collective agreement to create a family outside of your own personal families and.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  The chemistry of the cast really jumped off the screen. The writing was extraordinary.

• 59:23Billy Corgan?

  Did you feel that your personal relationships infused back into the?

• 59:26Speaker 01

  Oh, as an actor, you use everything all the time.

• 59:29Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  I think it made, I mean, plenty of times you can watch Tony Danza. He was really playing cards and I'd have to kick him under the table to say his next line. You know what I mean? Or we'd like hold back on an ad lib because maybe Jeff Conaway would steal our ad lib during the week. So we'd wait until like shooting night. You know, there were so many things. I mean, and we were really playing cards. Even when we were shooting, we were playing cards. So people would, you know.

• 59:56Billy Corgan?

  Take me through like a week on that because I'm fascinated by the sort of the production part of it all like.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 1:00:03Billy Corgan?

  You could do a cold read.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Well, Friday night, we would do the show. So I'll go back to a Friday night and you'd finish the show before you pop the champagne.

• 1:00:13Billy Corgan?

  Have a party.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  The party in the up in the.

• 1:00:15Billy Corgan?

  And this is in front of a live crowd.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Oh, the show was always in front.

• 1:00:18Billy Corgan?

  Did you only film once or did you do the rehearsal?

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  Just once.

• 1:00:21Billy Corgan?

  Okay. Because like, you know, and I said, now they film the rehearsal.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:24Billy Corgan?

  And the live, you know what I mean? But they did that one run through in front of a crowd.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:29Billy Corgan?

  Because even when you're playing as an artist, you know, you play like, just like you would be on TV, you know?

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, Jimmy Burrows was mostly our director, especially the first three and a half years. And so he, you know, was 7:30, we'd have a band playing and then we'd go into, you know, the shooting of it. And then what would happen was we would finish and have the party, but when you took off your costume from the show, there'd be a new script. So you got the script Friday night.

• 1:00:57Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  So now you had the script Friday night and then Monday, we came in at 11 o'clock and did our table read. And usually they would send us off if they, if it needed a lot of work, we wouldn't start putting it on its feet that day. They'd, they'd listen to it and we'd get a new script on Tuesday when we came in. But usually what would happen is there was enough to get us started, but we, the cast would go to Lucy's El Adobe across the street, knock back a few margaritas and chips and salsa and guacamole and then come back in the afternoon and get like part of act one on its feet. And then Tuesday, we'd start right at 10, do a table read of the new changes, get it on its feet. And Tuesday afternoon at 4:30, we would have a run through. Now, a run through in front of the network and the writers.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Now, here's the thing, because the whole thing was that Jim Brooks was running it. Any suggestion was open. You could bring ten of your family members to watch that run through. And he'll say, oh, we need a good line here. Does anybody, what do you think here?

• 1:01:54Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  And people would be totally open. My brother once suggested a line.

• 1:01:58Billy Corgan?

  That's pretty rare.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Very rare. I never had that again. Totally rare.

• 1:02:02Billy Corgan?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  And so then, um, we do the run through and then Wednesday, they'd stay up all night with the extra writers who would come in beside the six of them. And they would have a fresh, hot little.

• 1:02:13Billy Corgan?

  They'd bring in extra writers to like punch up the scripts.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  Tuesday nights. There would be like a, you know, an all nighter kind of thing, depending on where the script was. So then Wednesday, we'd put the new version of the script on his feet, do another four thirty run through. And that was Wednesday. And then Thursday, nine o'clock in the morning, we would start camera blocking. And then Friday, we'd come in at noon and do like a run through with camera blocking. Four thirty, a dress rehearsal to make sure all the wardrobe stuff worked. And then a show starting at seven thirty.

• 1:02:43Billy Corgan?

  And that would go how, like how many times, how many weeks would you do that in a row?

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Three or four in a row and then take a week off. Sometimes we'd do five.

• 1:02:50Billy Corgan?

  That's intense.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was intense, but it was great. We loved it. Everybody loved. And then the cast would get together to watch the show on Tuesdays. The cast would get together to go roller disco, uh, on Monday. The cast would get together on, uh, you know, Saturdays to play softball. So we socialized a lot, a lot, a lot. And we still do, we've done twenty three Zooms since the pandemic started.

• 1:03:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  We just did our twenty third last couple of weeks ago.

• 1:03:16Billy Corgan?

  That's crazy. Um, a lot's been made of obviously Andy Kaufman's time. Um, you know, I work, you know, I own a professional wrestling company, if you don't know that about me. So I hear all the inside stories from wrestling people that work with Andy in Memphis.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  I bet.

• 1:03:32Billy Corgan?

  So I always hear about it from the other side. Um, I know, and again, correct me, but my, my understanding is that he only worked kind of a partial schedule and.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  He did. He.

• 1:03:44Billy Corgan?

  Was that like, was, was that because he was a big star or like?

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  No, I think he didn't want the, he didn't want the responsibility. And because Lotka's character, first of all, he only had seven out of 13. So he didn't have to come to every show anyway. And they would write his dialogue just as what the intention was.

• 1:04:01Billy Corgan?

  And then he.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  And then he'd make up his own language. I always said that Andy made up a country I wanted to visit. Cause it was so original.

• 1:04:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Um, but so he came Tuesday afternoon for the run through. He'd come after lunch and work from like one until the 4:30 run through. And then he came in Friday all day.

• 1:04:17Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  So he only had to do.

• 1:04:18Billy Corgan?

  Did that create any kind of resentment with the cast?

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  You know, first of all, I hated Man on the Moon. I felt like it was, did not do any, any kind of justice whatsoever. I had the funniest thing that ever happened to me on a movie set with Mila Schormann, whom, whose work I love, and I love Jim Carrey. I just think the movie didn't work. But Mila Schormann said to me, and I'm in my original clothes from Taxi. And I'm saying the things that came out of my mouth.

• 1:04:41Billy Corgan?

  Did they actually find your original clothes?

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  I had them.

• 1:04:43Billy Corgan?

  Oh.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he said, he said something about, uh, no, don't do it like that. She wouldn't do that. I went, what do you mean she wouldn't do that? I'm the she.

• 1:04:51Billy Corgan?

  I'm here.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  This is who I am. I thought that was kind of fun. But it just, it seemed like, and after I saw the, uh, after I saw the documentary about Jim and Andy, I realized those were his demons. I felt like Jim never captured the fun, the essence, the friend, the kind of quirky, very appealing side to Andy. I adored Andy. He, he wanted to be a song and dance man, so we were always dancing. I, there's a.

• 1:05:16Billy Corgan?

  He must have loved you were on Broadway.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  He loved, and with the Andrew Sisters. Cause when, we, we had a, a show, um, uh, that was about a, a costume party. And Judd, Tony and Andy all dressed like the Andrew Sisters. So I taught them a little dance together with the music and stuff like that. Yeah.

• 1:05:35Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  He was dear and you never got to see that in the movie.

• 1:05:38Billy Corgan?

  Did you, last question on him, did you, did you have a sense? Cause I saw some stuff where Tony Danza was talking about, didn't really understand what he was after, but now in hindsight, it makes more sense that he was a visionary. But did you have any sense of that at the time?

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, I didn't.

• 1:05:54Billy Corgan?

  Did you think he was an important comedian? I mean, you guys are working at the national level, so obviously he's somebody, but even, even in the professional ranks, people have their opinions.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  Okay. A year and a half before Taxi started, I was still living in New York and I saw him dressed as foreign man, reading from The Great Gatsby at Catch a Rising Star. And I thought, who is this guy? And by chapter two of The Great Gatsby, people are like shooting straws at him, pelting dinner rolls. My boyfriend at the time, he's like, get off the stage and all this other show. And pretty soon, little Andy Kaufman in his little foreign man suit and his little accent with his book turns and just breaks down on stage, just sobs, sobbing, sobbing.

• 1:06:39Billy Corgan?

  Was he really crying or was he?

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  Hush, who knows? But he was convincing enough that you thought like, oh my God, you felt terrible. And then he turns up stage and in one fell swoop rips tape, black tape.

• 1:06:54Billy Corgan?

  He was Elvis. He was a great Elvis.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  He was a great Elvis and there he was. So I already knew Andy Kaufman going in and was a fan. And then when he created this crazy character with the language and well, he was so funny.

• 1:07:05Billy Corgan?

  But did you have a sense, like, you know, every artist in the entertainment game either has a legacy or doesn't and some they endure and they take on a mythological.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:07:16Billy Corgan?

  Like there's a movie about, you know, there's a movie about Andy, right? There's a reason there's a movie about Andy.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:07:21Billy Corgan?

  You know, he becomes fascinating as sort of a, a cultural figure that rises above his moment, like we were talking about zeitgeist times, right?

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:07:28Billy Corgan?

  But did you have a sense that he had the zeitgeist in him at the time or you just?

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  I, I knew, well, I, you know, I knew that he was taking busloads of people out for milk and cookies after a performance and I knew that he was putting people on the Staten Island ferry and taking them across.

• 1:07:45Billy Corgan?

  Right, but in terms of like.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  So it's like, so I felt like, did I think he was gonna die, not then?

• 1:07:49Billy Corgan?

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  But did I think he'd endure?

• 1:07:51Billy Corgan?

  More nuanced question because.

• 1:07:55Billy Corgan?

  Maybe because I'm a student of history, I have very clear memories of people in my generation that were important because I remember thinking to myself, okay, this one, you're gonna want to remember this because there's something about this, even if I don't like it.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:11Billy Corgan?

  It's gonna endure.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  Like, give me an example.

• 1:08:13Billy Corgan?

  Kurt Cobain was from Nirvana.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:16Billy Corgan?

  I saw them play in 1990 or so on their first album.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:22Billy Corgan?

  They were an independent band and you just could tell this guy's got some other gear that is impossible to explain.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:31Billy Corgan?

  You know, the band was good at that point, not great. He was obviously talented, but so were a lot of other people. But I thought, no, this one, there's something. And when you would be around people talking about him, it was like they were talking about the high school quarterback.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:46Billy Corgan?

  They couldn't find enough superlatives to describe this guy in just some band.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  It's so weird because we're talking about two people who died very young, you know, and maybe there's that part of them and what they emit that we.

• 1:09:00Billy Corgan?

  Well, I have a theory on that and I don't know if you would agree with it, which is, I think some people know that they're not destined to be here long, so they have a different incandescence.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:10Billy Corgan?

  They burn a little bit brighter.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Like Alexander Hamilton.

• 1:09:13Billy Corgan?

  Like you and I are gonna be here for a long time. So we're like, we're regulating the flame. We don't want to burn too bright.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  We're Chicago. We got a Chicago burning flame.

• 1:09:22Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so again, maybe sometime you and I, if we do this again, we can, we can go deeper on Taxi because it's.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so great.

• 1:09:31Billy Corgan?

  There's so much there.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  So much, so, so much.

• 1:09:34Billy Corgan?

  So I don't want to jump past it, but I'm really here, we're just talking about you, but obviously it's a huge part of your history.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 1:09:41Billy Corgan?

  So, okay.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  And continues to be.

• 1:09:43Billy Corgan?

  Is it because of the success of Taxi that you start doing movie stuff again? Or do the opportunities change there?

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  Um, yes and no. I mean, I started doing TV movies. It was always, you know, oh, here's a script, here's this, here's that. And so my agents would put me up for things and if I got the job or if I didn't get the job.

• 1:10:00Billy Corgan?

  Did you feel you were being typecast at all or?

• 1:10:04Billy Corgan?

  You know, you know, this town, this town loves a proven winner, you know?

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  Yes. Oh, definitely. No, I call it casting by calendar. Like, who can we get from calendar, the calendar section of the LA Times? You know, that kind of thing. Uh, yeah. And I knew that there were times when I was so disappointed because somebody would write a part for me and then I was like two on the nose. It was like, well, change the character, you know, that happened with like Blake Edwards and he wrote a part for me and and then they said, well, no, she's too, you know, things like that. I mean, I have so many stories.

• 1:10:38Billy Corgan?

  But look at the names you, this is eighty-two. Uh, Vim Venders is one of the great artistic directors.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  Well, actually, it was eighty and eighty-two because there was Hammett. They pulled the plug.

• 1:10:48Billy Corgan?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Hammett started. I met my first soon to be ex-husband, my first husband Frederick Forrest at a screen test.

• 1:10:55Billy Corgan?

  You're talking like a rock star. This is how we talk, right?

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, yeah. So I met him at a screen test.

• 1:11:03Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  And, yeah, and so we ended up, I ended up getting cast. And then we ended up getting, they pulled the plug because the movie was a mess. And then the strike happened and then we got married and the strike ended and I went back to Taxi and thought, who is this guy? You know, I'm kidding. But, um, but then he did another movie. I did Taxi. I did another movie.

• 1:11:27Billy Corgan?

  Because that husband, number one, right?

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  That's husband number one.

• 1:11:30Billy Corgan?

  He was a very successful actor.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  Yes, and in Academy, brilliant.

• 1:11:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  Brilliant, brilliant actor.

• 1:11:35Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I looked him up and I was like, oh, I know this guy. Like, you know, you know, it's like snaps right to you, like.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Well, and he was totally unrecognizable with each of his characters. You know, I mean, he played Dashil Hammett when I met him. Then he gained twenty-five pounds because, uh, he played Hank in, uh, One From The Heart.

• 1:11:53Billy Corgan?

  What was it like being married to another actor?

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  Um, well, with Freddie, it was like being married to like six actors. I mean, I, he also played Lee Harvey Oswald. And one time I, we were having a fight, I went, I expected to end up with John Kennedy. And I ended up with Lee Harvey Oswald, you know? Cause he was so, but he was so, he would, he was an unbelievable actor. He was so into met, he was such a method, method actor. He would write out his entire script in longhand. The entire script. And in between his lines, he would create a whole life of his character. So his script was like this big. Because there was, it was like very Rosamund Gilmour. Cause he wanted to know, even though you never might have seen it. So when he did the movie Tucker, this was after we got divorced.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  When we had, he told Transpo, Transportation, that they were not allowed to drive him faster than 35 miles per hour. Because his character would never have experienced that kind of speed. And that's what happens to his character in the movie. So he didn't want to be driven faster. And then one day he left his script behind and he didn't want the script to be driven faster. And they're like, no, the script.

• 1:13:05Billy Corgan?

  Am I guessing wrong in that this is not a good formula for a successful relationship? This, this level of detail? It's your memory and his level of detail, right?

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  No, but his, his, his just, he, we were very other to each other. But we adored one another and we stayed friends till, he passed away only a year and a half ago. Not even a year and a half ago. Yeah. And we always stayed friends.

• 1:13:26Billy Corgan?

  God bless.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Billy Corgan?

  So you're working with the art director over here and then here comes Burt Reynolds. Which is like, talk about American cultural zeitgeist.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13:38Billy Corgan?

  Like Edwards, like you're right in the middle of the.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  And auditioning, just as Taxi is kind of, you know, waning. I, I literally finished Taxi on a Friday and started Man Who Loved Women on the following Monday.

• 1:13:51Billy Corgan?

  Well, that leads you to, I mean, I just have to go to Cannonball Run. We're, if Taxi is a cultural high point, Cannonball 2 is, I don't know what it is.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Okay, this is what Cannonball 2 is. The first night I worked with Burt Reynolds, he and I instantly had chemistry. We started ad-libbing. We like loved each other, like instantly. He called me that night. He said, I want you to come down to Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater and do their playing our song, because I know you sing and dance. And I'm doing another Cannonball. We're gonna do Cannonball Run movie. But it needs, it needs a script to write. Do you know any good script writers? I was like, oh, Harvey Miller from Taxi. He's really good at that. So I read the script, and it's about Dom DeLuise and Burt. They, an heiress has been shut away in kind of an asylum. And she wants to get away from her family. So they go in, they meet her, they go,

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  and they take her on Cannonball Run, and on the Cannonball Run 2. And I end up with Burt Reynolds. So now, I give it to Harvey, and Harvey, or Burt gives it to Harvey, and he turns it into two would-be actresses dressed as nuns. They ditch a production of Sound of Music.

• 1:15:05Billy Corgan?

  Back to the nuns.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  And now there's two, there's two female characters. So of course Shirley, they got Shirley MacLaine, and she wanted to be with Burt. So she was with Burt, I was with Dom, all because of Harvey's new script, but...

• 1:15:17Billy Corgan?

  I disrespect the Dom, but you deserve better.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  No, but let me tell you something. Well, poor, poor little Dom. I mean, it was 117 degrees in July in Tucson. So Shirley and I had, our makeup call was 2:00 a.m. so we could get makeup on, because the drive out to the desert was, took forever. And we pulled the plug at 1:00. So everybody was hanging out at the, at the, um, in Tucson, the, um, the famous, the Tucson, no, not Tucson, and I'll think of it. Anyway, it's like a great old hotel. And it was Shirley MacLaine, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Joey Bishop.

• 1:15:53Billy Corgan?

  Telly Savalas, Sid Caesar.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  All of them.

• 1:15:56Billy Corgan?

  Tim Conway, Don Knotts.

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:58Billy Corgan?

  Ricardo Montalban, Jim Neighbors, Charles Nelson Riley.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  And we were all at that hotel, and then would like hang out at the pool in the afternoon to cool off. And then all, everybody drinking.

• 1:16:08Billy Corgan?

  Sounds like a Hollywood dream to me.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  It was crazy. Well, here's, I'm a little girl whose mother made her take naps after school, so I could step and watch The Late Show with her. And I had this unbelievably colorful uncle who was, thought he, you know, knew all the movie stars personally.

• 1:16:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  And so, this was like, I can't believe Shirley MacLaine and Dom, you know.

• 1:16:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Burt and all these people, especially with the Rat Pack.

• 1:16:31Billy Corgan?

  I'm fascinated by old Hollywood and that moment right there is pretty much the end of old Hollywood.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:37Billy Corgan?

  You know.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  It was the 23.

• 1:16:38Billy Corgan?

  The end of the Rat Pack kind of together and Frank's in the movie for 60 seconds and all that stuff. Did you have a sense?

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Saturday.

• 1:16:46Billy Corgan?

  Did you, do you have a sense of that time ending?

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  I.

• 1:16:50Billy Corgan?

  You know, Burt and, you know, you know, Dustin Hoffman, there was this whole crowd of actors and stuff that came in late 60s, early 70s, kind of changed the game.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:16:59Billy Corgan?

  Some would say for better, some would say for worse, more independent spirit.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  Right. Less, although Burt sort of kept this old Hollywood.

• 1:17:07Billy Corgan?

  Well, that's what I sort of like about it because you can see he's paying some fealty to the things he loves.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's a, he was, he was, I mean, I felt like, you know, you just go to a party at his house and it was like old Hollywood. You were always, you know, Johnny and I would sometimes.

• 1:17:24Billy Corgan?

  Didn't he date somebody like, like a famous?

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  Well, he was with Dinah Shore for a while.

• 1:17:29Billy Corgan?

  That's it. And I knew, I knew he had some romance with some.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  Older.

• 1:17:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, ingenue of the past.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. Dinah Shore.

• 1:17:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  And she was great. But he was with Lonnie most of the time that I knew him and then, you know, other people. But yeah, but he was, he was always, he loved those Hollywood parties and he was like a kid who loved old Hollywood as well. But, but Cannonball Run 2 was so crazy because it was, you know, 23 honey wagons in a circle for the, the movie and, you know, it was just like, I met so many people on that film.

• 1:18:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's like, you know, it's a mad, mad, mad world.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:18:08Billy Corgan?

  There's like 800 stars and yeah, it reminds me of that.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:12Billy Corgan?

  So not to belabor the point about the movie thing, you know, but, you know, Johnny Dangerously with Mike Keaton, Perfect with John Travolta, L.A. Story with Steve Martin, you've done 68 films.

• 1:18:26Billy Corgan?

  But people, because of Taxi, I think they think of you more as a TV actress.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:31Billy Corgan?

  Do you think that's, how, how, how is, is, again, I'm not trying to put words, but is it like, hey, I worked and, and I, I, I had success in everything, including Broadway. Like, do you look at it that way? Like?

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  Uh, hey, truthfully, right now, people think of you more as a memory. Truth gun, uh, truth gun is that I think it's more the memory thing than anything.

• 1:18:52Billy Corgan?

  That's why I think people interviewing me lately are, they're doing the lazy take. They always go towards the lowest hanging fruit. So right now, the lowest hanging fruit for you is the memory thing because it's fascinating to people. But when I go through your, your actual working life, I mean, like I said, you've worked for 50.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  Fifty some years. Yeah. No.

• 1:19:11Billy Corgan?

  It's very impressive.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Thank you. Fifty two years. I just did three plays, one right after the next. I did Noises Off.

• 1:19:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Again, at Bucks County, uh, Bucks, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and you know, Bucks County Theater, where I'm on the board there because I love that theater. It's like my summer home. I just love it so much. So I did Noises Off and I played the same part that I played in the movie 31 years ago, 32 years ago. And I was like, are you sure? And they were like, can you still fit the costume? And I said, well, yeah.

• 1:19:37Billy Corgan?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  I wore something.

• 1:19:38Billy Corgan?

  I mean, look at me.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  Thank you. I didn't say it like that. Yeah, I did wear a different costume. But, uh, no, I, you know what? After my parents died, I really discovered health. And as a result of discovering health and working, working so hard to make their deaths not in vain, just trying to figure out what is it that killed them? What can I do if I've been dealt this genetic hand and my, my siblings? I mean, I lost, you know, 54 pounds and lowered my cholesterol over a hundred points and have worked really hard. And I saved my third and final husband's life with good health and information. And it's, it's probably of everything that I've done besides having my two sons, which is, there's nothing like being a parent. Probably helping people with their health is probably

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  right up there.

• 1:20:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  You know, so, yeah, so I, I think I, I take all of it in. I take all of it in. And it's also when you sit with somebody, what do they want to talk about? You know, because anybody could say anything and I'll pick up from there.

• 1:20:37Billy Corgan?

  Sure. Um, that's kind of where I wanted to end on the health and wellness because. You know, there's a lot of ghosts in this town. And what I mean by that is you'll see this person who's had their moment. But they can't let it go.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:20:53Billy Corgan?

  You know what I mean? And I feel like somehow you've successfully navigated. And I'm not saying there's not sorrow there at times where.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:21:01Billy Corgan?

  You know? I certainly have dealt with it where they think like, oh, you can't do that anymore. And you think, what are you talking about? I'm still here.

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

  I'm from Chicago, baby.

• 1:21:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, like sometimes I'll tell fans like, you know, I'm still the guy that wrote the song. You know, they'll talk to me as if I, could you talk to the guy who wrote that song?

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:21:17Billy Corgan?

  And I'm like, no, I'm still here, you know?

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:20Billy Corgan?

  Um, so. I'm, I guess I'm asking something that's not really a question more so it's like a, it's like a tone poem of like. How have you put all that together? Because it seems consistent through your whole journey. And again, it's like a spirit question, maybe, but. You know what I mean? Like you're, it's. It's in your work, your spirit, like there's a certain, there's this fresh optimism. Are you, are you optimistic person?

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  Very.

• 1:21:47Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:47Billy Corgan?

  So.

• 1:21:49Billy Corgan?

  The idea that you would then take. Uh, this part of your life and make it more about others is very interesting, right? Because you've had a life where it's been very much about you.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  Yes, but it's for me, I, you know, it's like, I think everybody has a. Filter through which they see their lives. Everyone has kind of a, an essence, essence, and mine has always been family. And I don't know whether it's because I'm the middle child and those film, the family historian and the girl on taxi and this. I've always been that swizzle stick person, that one who like stirs things up or gets people like. You know, the way my family was eating. Before I discovered health and plant based and all the things, no dairy, no gluten, all those.

• 1:22:31Billy Corgan?

  Are you saying the Polish diet is not conducive to a long life?

• 1:22:34Speaker 01

  Forget it. Oh, my gosh. Um. And I think, I, I don't know, I think. I'm somebody who loves to share information. Obviously, I love to talk, obviously. And so if I learn something, I don't want to be the only one who has it. I right away want to share it with people. And so I think because I've been doing the books for a long time, 25 years. So it's, it's, you know, and having kids changes your life so much. And I wanted to, you know, my kids came with me everywhere. We did everything together. And so, you know, I wasn't ever precious about stuff. And so, I don't know. I mean, I, it, I don't feel like everything was focused on me ever. I was, I was always like benign neglect.

• 1:23:18Billy Corgan?

  But isn't that egoism somewhat required in the, in the, in the acting game?

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  It, it is.

• 1:23:24Billy Corgan?

  You gotta have enough of a, because you gotta deal with it.

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  You have to have nine confidence points.

• 1:23:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  But, but I think that, but it's not, I mean, like people who meet my friends, they go, we always thought you'd be the talker, but they're the talker. And I go, no, I'm just the talk show host who asks the question and gets people together.

• 1:23:40Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  You know, so I, I don't know. I never thought that. I think I, I pulled it out when I needed to have the focus on me. I knew how to pull it out. But I was always very good at remembering things to like pull other things in.

• 1:23:55Billy Corgan?

  Last question.

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:23:57Billy Corgan?

  It's not a fair question now.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  Okay. Have any of them been fair?

• 1:24:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it's like.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  No, I love talking to you. Let me just say that. You're a blast.

• 1:24:05Billy Corgan?

  It's like, well, people say to me, I hate to ask you this question. I'm like, well, then don't.

• 1:24:12Billy Corgan?

  Is there, is there a spot of retirement? Or are you just gonna work till you're done?

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  I'm gonna work till.

• 1:24:16Billy Corgan?

  It's the Chicago thing, right? I'm with you. All the way to the end.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  All the way to the end. Why? Why give it up? I mean, I'm constantly reinventing things. You know that I have two documentary filmmakers. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it yet, so I won't say their name. They're gonna start following me around about my memory because they think it's not just about my memory, but the idea that memory is so, it's an exploration of humanity. You know, that's how they're describing it. And so, you know, and I'm doing it.

• 1:24:41Billy Corgan?

  Then you have to work, you see.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, no, but I, I also just sold a movie to Hallmark. I'm in a big Hallmark series and all kinds of stuff. I'm, I'm constantly working. I just did three shows, so. You know, I like to work.

• 1:24:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  And I have the energy for it, so why not?

• 1:24:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, because I think this last point I'm after, you know, there's an obsession with youthfulness and aging. And and obviously, the and you know this from your sort of scientific forays, you know, the anti-aging sort of aspect of science that's coming. That's going to be a huge business. It's already is.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:25:16Billy Corgan?

  A life extension, maybe is a better way to put it. But and maybe this is a question. It's like, to me, long life is is being useful.

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  Very.

• 1:25:28Billy Corgan?

  Looking good is is nice. I'm all about it, right?

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  And it gives you, you know, I always say.

• 1:25:34Billy Corgan?

  Purpose.

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  If you if you wear out your body, where are you going to live? So exactly being able to not wear out your body too much. You can live and maneuver and walk and, you know.

• 1:25:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, so that's the point I'm trying to make is to me, you're a parable for happy life is purposeful life is looking and feeling good. Like, it's that's the loop. Does that does that resonate with you?

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  Well, it it gives you, yes, and it's well, it just gives you the mobility, you know, it gives you the the brain cells. It gives you the life force in you because you're not spending all of your time digesting your food or feeling sorry for yourself or, you know, hiding in your bed, you know.

• 1:26:15Billy Corgan?

  That's what I'm saying. I think it's very admirable in you.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, thank you. Thanks, I, you know, something I couldn't go out like my parents should.

• 1:26:24Billy Corgan?

  Chicago.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Chicago.

• 1:26:25Billy Corgan?

  All right, thank you.

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  You're the best.