Rising from his humble origins in a working-class New Jersey neighborhood, self-described "pussycat" DeVito took on the persona of a mean, wise-cracking grouch and rode it to the pinnacle of Hollywood success. This could well be his best year yet: he plays The Penguin in Batman Returns, stars in Jack the Bear, and co-stars with pal Jack Nicholson in Hoffa, which he also directs.
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It seems that everything's Jack for Danny DeVito these days. This summer, he's following in the footsteps of his old pal Jack Nicholson as the villain in Batman Returns, playing The Penguin; next, he turns up as a family man in Jack the Bear; currently, DeVito is directing Nicholson, as well as co-starring with him, in their long-planned movie bio Hoffa.
The five-foot-tall DeVito earned his reputation-and an Emmy-as the meanest, nastiest, most hotheaded and funniest jerk ever to appear on TV when he played Louie De Palma, the boss dispatcher on the five-year hit series "Taxi." When the show was abruptly cancelled DeVito didn't let it slow him down.
In 1983 he appeared as Shirley MacLaine's love interest in Terms of Endearment, and the following year he starred with his friend Michael Douglas, and Kathleen Turner in the block-bluster Romancing the Stone. A year later came the sequel, The Jewel of the Nile, and then, in 1986, he broke up moviegoers as he tried to get rid of his wife, played by Bette Midler, in Ruthless People. DeVito bounced back from Brian De Palma's bomb Wise Guys with Barry Levinson's Tin Men, then made his feature directorial debut with the successful Throw Momma From the Train, a black comedy which paired him with Billy Crystal. Next came Twins, in which DeVito played Arnold Schwarzenegger's twin brother.
When he was asked to play Michael Douglas's divorce lawyer in The War of the Roses, DeVito agreed on one condition: that he be allowed to direct the very black comedy. Thus, he, Douglas and Turner were reunited for their third film, a critical and box-office success. Last year's Other People's Money may have missed the mark, but few stars have had a run of box-office hits as successful as DeVito's. And 1992 looks like it may be his biggest year yet. After finishing Hoffa, DeVito will act in and possibly direct Low Fives, the inaugural feature from Jersey Films, a company he formed last year with producer Michael Shamberg.
Danny DeVito was raised in the streets of Asbury Park, where he learned how to hustle in his father's local pool hall and how to dodge punishment at the Catholic private school his parents sent him to in order to keep him out of trouble. He worked as a hairdresser in his sister's beauty salon before deciding to enroll in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. After appearing in short-lived off-off-Broadway plays, he set out for Hollywood, where he wound up working as a janitor and a parking lot attendant for 18 months before he decided to return, defeated, to New York. It was there that he was cast in a revival of the play One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which led to his being cast in the movie. The friendship he developed with Jack Nicholson led to his roles in two other Nicholson films, Goin' South and Terms of Endearment.
While acting in a play, DeVito met Rhea Perlman, who went on to co-star as a kind of female version of Louie De Palma in the hugely successful TV series "Cheers." Within two weeks of their meeting, they moved in together--and 11 years later, they married. They now have two daughters and a son.
LAWRENCE GROBEL: Why don't we start with the movie that everyone is curious about, Batman Returns. Do you have the same kind of deal for playing The Penguin that Jack Nicholson had for playing The Joker in the original Batman?
DANNY DEVITO: I don't know what his deal was. We never talk about money, Jack and I.
Q: He reportedly made over $60 million.
A: Really? Jesus! That's a lot of money. What a lucky guy.
Q: Did Nicholson give you any advice about doing The Penguin?
A: He told me I was going to regret the makeup. He said it was going to be, like, hours in the chair. But I brought my videodiscs and I set up a TV in there and watched everything through the mirror. I couldn't watch foreign films, though, because the titles were backward.
Q: How long did it take each day to get made up?
A: It took a few hours. But I enjoyed every second of it--and sometimes regretted taking it off. I love Penguin.
Q: Did you have any reservations about following Nicholson's Joker?
A: No, Joker is so different a character. I wish I was in the first Batman, so then maybe Jack could have been in the second one.
Q: How did your involvement come about?
A: There had been a lot of rumors in the newspapers right after the first Batman came out that I was going to play The Penguin. I reacted to it like, "I'm really not interested." But when the time came to have a meeting with Tim Burton, I found out what he wanted to do, and it was so different than anything I had imagined, I got hooked by what he had in mind.
Q: Like?
A: I grew up with The Penguin in the Batman comics, and also the TV show with Burgess Meredith. Tim was talking about The Penguin of Batman Returns having a duality of character. Burton saw Penguin as someone who's been dealt a hand, a certain set of circumstances he was forced to live with all his life, and because of these events, he's been pushed into the darker regions. But his intellect and his will to live in another realm kind of clash--his circumstances are dark, serious and heartfelt in the underground, but he desires the above world. So I thought that it was a really great take on Penguin. There was no way for me not to do the movie, because it was doing something I'd never, ever done before. I've never played any character like this. This is something that comes along once in a lifetime. It's a magnificent opportunity to explore not only what is going on in this man's mind and the complex mental avenues that he travels, but physically, too. A very big part of what makes Oswald Cobblepot who he is his physical character and his persona.
Q: Oswald Cobblepot?
A: That's The Penguin's real name.
Q: Was the set refrigerated? And did you work with real penguins?
A: Yeah, we had hundreds of penguins, and they needed it cold. Also, it's a winter movie and Tim wanted the breath coming from our mouths.
Q: Did you come to feel about the penguins the way W.C. Fields did about working with children and small dogs?
A: No, I loved the penguins. They were my babies.
Q: Did you have any scenes with Michelle Pfeiffer?
A: [cackles] Oh, yeah. I enjoyed working with her, and with Michael [Keaton]. Michael and I had done one movie together years ago, Johnny Dangerously, so I've known him for a long time.
Q: Are you on-screen as much as Nicholson was as The Joker?
A: I don't remember how much he was on-screen, but I don't think you'll forget that I was there [laughs].
Q: And will Penguin be the character you'll be remembered for most?
A: Either that, or I'll know the reason why [laughs]. I think it's going to be a brilliant film that will shock and delight everybody.
Q: Last Batman Returns question: Do you have a piece of the merchandising as well as a percentage of the picture?
A: I haven't any idea. I don't worry about deals, or anything like that.
Q: Let's talk about your next film, Jack the Bear. Do you know what the expression "Jack the bear" means?
A: "Everything is cool." It's from the jazz era: everything is "Jack the Bear." I didn't know this until I was talking to Clint Eastwood, who's a big jazz guy, and he told me. It really makes sense because there is a certain task that my character in that film has, and that is to keep light and not deal with those emotional things that could be overwhelming. His wife's been killed in a car crash and he's got two boys he loves dearly. It turns out that maybe it's not the best thing to do--maybe you should explore those feelings, and get them out.
Q: You play basically a nice guy in Jack the Bear, which is a departure for you, isn't it? I'll mention some of the characters you've played, and you fill in what comes to mind. Martini in Cuckoo's Nest.
A: Sensitive, wacko.
Q: Sam Stone in Ruthless People.
A: Greedy, lustful, sicko.
Q: Vincent in Twins.
A: Greedy, lustful, sicko.
Q: Harry in Wise Guys.
A: Greedy, lustful, sicko.
Q: Tilley in Tin Men.
A: [laughing now] Greedy, lustful, sicko.
Q: And Gavin from War of the Roses?
A: A lawyer, need I say more? Jack the Bear is a whole different thing--although there are some very sick and fun things that I do. Jack has a late-night TV show and introduces horror films. A creature-feature show called "Midnight Shriek." And he comes out as this character called Al Gory. Every night he puts in these teeth, he's got hot, white makeup, and he's introducing Boris Karloff in The Mummy and Lon Chaney as The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Q: Sounds like you get to play out a split personality.
A: Metaphorically, we all have demons inside of us and this character has them really deep inside. He also has the demon that is on the surface, and doing this horror show allows him to vent that.
Q: How about you? Do you repress your own demons?
A: I do have my share of demons, baggage that I carry around with me. We all carry around demons from our childhood or adulthood, or early adulthood or late adulthood. I usually let them out. I'm very vocal. People know how I feel right away about something, like it or not.
Q: The two adjectives most often written about you as a director are "tough" and "demanding." Is that your demons coming out?
A: I don't know. I know what I want. It's not a simple thing making films.
Q: What other words would you use to describe yourself as a director?
A: [big devilish smile] "Gentle." "Understanding."
Q: What do you like best about directing?
A: It's a way to communicate and visualize everything inside of you. You control the picture, you get to work with all these talented people. It's a great thing to be a director and say, "I don't like that couch," and it's gone before you turn around. Or the colors of the wall. Or, "When I was dreaming last night I saw the fence was 15 feet higher than it is now. Let's do it, okay?"
Q: So you like the power. What are the negatives?
A: Where do you want to start? Finding good material is a problem. Deals, budgets, all that stuff. One day on War of the Roses we were setting up this scene and I started feeling really weird, like, "My God, I'm dying." I said to my assistant, "Take me to the hospital, I'm having a heart attack." I didn't tell anybody, got in the car and started going off the lot while the scene was being set up. Michael Douglas was in his trailer, nobody knew what's going on, and I'm leaving the lot. I got my doctor on the phone and said, "I'm pulling out right now, meet me at the hospital, I think I'm dying." He said, "Danny, how many cups of coffee did you have today?" "I had three double espressos," I said. He said, "Turn around and go lay down. You're nuts." So there is that fear that you have when you are shooting. It's really crazy. You are sometimes so crazy. I don't know how to sit down.
Q: Do you still drink double espressos before you work?
A: No, I drink cappuccinos. But I haven't had coffee now for a couple of months.
Q: What does Danny DeVito, the actor, think of Danny DeVito, the director?
A: He can't direct traffic, for crying out loud!
Q: Does anybody on the set ever give you advice when you're directing?
A: Not if they're smart.
Q: Did you ever think, when you were a kid, hustling pool, that you'd one day be in the position you're in today?
A: I always thought when I was a kid, "I think I might be able to do that." I loved the experience of the cinema. It got dark, and you lived other lives. It was wonderful. I went every Saturday and Sunday, rain or shine.
Q: You were pretty much a street kid from Jersey. Did you do a lot of hanging out and practical jokes?
A: There were a lot of characters in my life in Asbury Park. We were always cutting up.
Q: It wasn't all clowning though. Didn't you lose some friends to heroin overdoses?
A: A couple, yeah.
Q: Were hard drugs ever a danger for you?
A: No, I never considered it. I thought too much of myself to ever do anything like that.
Q: Did you also have fear instilled in you by the nuns who taught you?
A: That was in grammar school, from kindergarten to eighth grade. Immaculate Heart Sisters. They were very strict. Most of them were from Brooklyn--they were tough nuns.
Q: Did they ever slap you when you got out of place?
A: Oh yeah, you got smacked all the time. We used to cut our hair real short, crew cuts, when we'd go to school, because they couldn't pull your hair back.
Q: Didn't your mother want you to be a priest?
A: Every Italian mother wants their kid to be a priest.
Q: Was sex something you learned about early?
A: When you're hanging out in the pool hall, you talk about nineball and doing it. That was like the main topic of conversation.
Q: And when did you do it?
A: When did it happen, you mean? My early teens.
Q: Do you remember who it was with?
A: I remember her name but I'm not about to tell you. Men don't want to say the name of the girl, come on.
Q: How good a pool player were you as a kid?
A: I could run 60, 70 balls when I was 16. Now I can't see, so I can't play.
Q: What's wrong with your eyes?
A: [looking at my glasses] What's wrong with yours? I've got these five-and-ten-cent magnifying glasses, otherwise I can't read.
Q: You and your sister were hairdressers. When you decided to give up the beauty business, did you talk to your dad about what you wanted to try next?
A: Yeah, I said, "You know, this is not working out, I'm gonna go to New York and become an actor." He said, "Great, go, shoot your best shot."
Q: Your dad died about nine years ago. Do you think of him often?
A: I loved him very much and I miss him. I'm sad that he didn't get to see my children.
Q: But he did get to see your success. What did he think of it?
A: He loved it. He got to see "Taxi" and all that. And he came out to California then. Our first house was being remodeled so we rented a house up in Benedict Canyon. He was thrilled. He came from the streets. And here he was sitting out on the lawn of this house with this beautiful view over the mountains. He'd get up very early in the morning, sit out there with a cigarette.
Q: Well, that couldn't have been more different than when you first came out to Hollywood. Wasn't that when you hoped to audition for In Cold Blood?
A: Yeah. I read it in installments in The New Yorker and I said, "I gotta go meet [director] Richard Brooks." When I arrived in California, the part was already cast with Robert Blake. Now I didn't know anything about Hollywood: My image of Hollywood was Beach Blanket Bingo, a lotta dames in bikinis and pool parties. And the Hell's Angels movies that Jack Nicholson was in. So, I got off the plane and got on a bus and I went downtown, 'cause I figured this is where they make movies. It was desolate. I mean, downtown L.A. any night is like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I asked some security guard, "Where do they make movies out here?" He said, "That way," and pointed to Hollywood. So I got another bus and I went to Hollywood and stayed for a year and a half. I couldn't get arrested.
Q: Did you call your friend Michael Douglas?
A: Yeah. I talked to him and he said, "Come on up." He was going to college in Santa Barbara. I said, "Okay, I'll take a bus." Did you ever take a bus to Santa Barbara? My God, it stops every 14 feet. It took me three days to get there.
Q: Your friendship with Douglas began in 1966, didn't it?
A: I went up to the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theater Center [in Waterford, Connecticut] to do this play and he was out there working on the amphitheater, digging with some others. I thought, these guys must be the actors, they're digging. So I went over there to see what was going on and somebody suggested a beer run. Michael had a motorcycle and I said I'll come and carry it. We went and that was it, we became very good friends.
Q: When you went out to see him in Santa Barbara, wasn't he living in some kind of commune?
A: He was living with a bunch of people on a mountain. It wasn't like the streets of New York, I'll tell you that. You couldn't swim in their pool because they hadn't cleaned it in I don't know how many months. There was moss growing up from the bottom. However, they did dive in every once in a while, which I didn't do.
Q: Because of the moss...or because of the nudity?
A: Yeah, they went bare. They wouldn't swim with a bathing suit on, God forbid. I mean, please. This was like, very, very enlightening for me. Any place you went with Michael you took your clothes off and you swam. It was the big thing in the '60s.
Q: Did you ever overcome your shyness?
A: One time, we went to a friend's house and I was feeling pretty good. We all took our clothes off and we were swimming. There were a bunch of people there. I looked over and there was a scuba tank. I had never done this before, right? So I took the scuba tank and they showed me how to work it and I strapped it on and dove into the pool and lay there looking at everybody swim. I was down there for quite a while. It was a great, great experience.
Q: A far cry from where you came from, where, as you once said, "you never saw anybody naked unless you put your eye to a knothole of the girl's locker."
A: Well, certainly at the Monte Carlo Pool Hall in Asbury Park you didn't swim naked.
Q: So after 18 months in L.A., you returned to New York. And soon after, you're onstage and Rhea Perlman catches you and, what? Falls in love?
A: It was in 1970, when I was doing The Shrinking Bride in the Mercury Theater. Rhea was in the audience and I was spittin' on swans, playing a demented stable boy. We had coffee after at The Cookery and listened to Alberta Hunter and that was it.
Q: She moved in with you two weeks later?
A: Two weeks later, yeah. But she lived in Brooklyn, understand? So I didn't know whether she was movin' in because I had the apartment in Manhattan or what. But we worked it out.
Q: Only took 11 years.
A: We took our time gettin' married. It's like Guys and Dolls.
Q: Why did you decide to get married?
A: We wanted to have a family and kids, so we decided it would be a good idea.
Q: How hard was it for you when "Taxi" was cancelled? The way your career has since blossomed, is it still a bitter memory that the series ended, or are you happy?
A: No, I miss everybody very much. I feel empty in that area. You're with people for five years and you have very close relationships with them and then somebody has the ability to cut them off... We had a good group of people, that's what you miss.
Q: Didn't you once play a dog named Andy in a play with Judd Hirsch?
A: Yeah, it was written by Rosalyn Drexler at the Theatre of Living Arts. I played Andy, who was a dog, smoked a cigar, a very tough dog. Judd played this weird pill-pushing doctor and when he'd leave, Judd's wife and I would carry on. I was a very horny dog. It was a musical, if you can imagine that. I had a couple of good songs, and then a large plastic penis came out onstage in the last act. It was interesting, but it didn't get to Broadway.
Q: Who were some of your childhood idols?
A: Cagney, Robinson, Bogie, all those guys.
Q: And today? Do you have a favorite performer?
A: Bruce Springsteen is my favorite performer.
Q: Since you're both out of Asbury Park, I should have guessed that. Who are the directors who have had the most influence on you?
A: Let's look at the films I'm transferring from laserdisc to 8mm--laserdiscs are great, but I have a desire to get everything smaller. Orson Welles, Francois Truffaut, Fritz Lang, Hitchcock, Kubrick, De Sica, Fellini, Pontecorvo, Kurosawa, Renoir, Cocteau, parts of Spielberg.
Q: What about comedians?
A: I really like Robin Williams. And Billy Crystal, I love the characters he does. Albert Brooks is one of the funniest people on earth. I don't see Albert do the stuff I see Robin or Billy do, but Albert Brooks, I can't be in a room with the guy, he's just too funny. He kills me, I don't wanna be around the guy.
Q: That's obviously not the case with Michael Douglas or Kathleen Turner, whom you've been around for three successful pictures. Did you suspect from the outset that the first, Romancing the Stone, would take off the way it did?
A: We were pleasantly surprised that the reaction was so big. When we watched the movie for the first time at a screening in New York, Kathleen was sitting in front of me and in the middle of the movie I leaned up to her and I said, "Sequel."
Q: And that sequel, The Jewel of the Nile, took you to Morocco. You brought Rhea and your children--was that a nightmare?
A: Ever been to Morocco? It's rough, man. Fez is the kind of place where you want to go buy a rug and then get the hell out. You don't want to, like, hang out with a two-year-old and an infant.
Q: If it ever becomes a trilogy, would you want to direct it?
A: Oh I'd direct it, sure. Just so that I can continue to torture Michael. I've never got him back from when he hung me on a 60-foot crane upside down at the beach in Malibu. He told me we were shooting a poster for Romancing the Stone, and it turned out to be for "Hollywood Bloopers and Practical Jokes." So I still owe him for that one. Just because I greased him down and hung him 30 feet in the air on a chandelier in War of the Roses and then turned to the crew and said, "That's it, half-hour lunch," that doesn't pay him back for that!
Q: Assuming Douglas knows you want to torture him, will he listen to you?
A: If I'm the director? I get to say when we do things. Isn't that the way it works?
Q: Let's talk about the movie you're directing now, Hoffa. This one seems to be a departure from the tragicomedies you seem to lean towards.
A: I guess you might say it's less like The War of the Roses or anything else I've ever done. Although I thought Roses was serious.
Q: Did you always have Jack Nicholson in mind to play Jimmy Hoffa?
A: Yeah, from the very beginning.
Q: Hoffa was a controversial figure. What's your take on him?
A: I have a very high opinion of the man. I think he was a hero.
Q: Most people consider him a gangster.
A: Depends on your definition of a gangster.
Q: He wasn't exactly an admirable figure, Danny.
A: In other words, you believed the press. See, here's the thing. If you just look at Hoffa: His father died of black lung and his mother brought in the washing. He and his brother helped deliver the washing and he got involved in the union when he was a young man trying to make a better wage for the working man. And from that beginning, until the time he disappeared, that was the only thing he had on his mind. He was trying to do better for his family, as we all do. We want our kids to eat and go to college and have a good, enjoyable life, we want to find a woman that we love and can share things with. In his case he found a woman who was on the picket line and they shared a certain dream. And he cared about putting food on the table for not only his family but for the 1.7 million people that were in the union. I'm dealing with a man with more passion for his work than any man I've ever met or heard about.
Q: You're also dealing with a man who has been linked to organized crime, who was considered to have siphoned off union funds for his own use. I mean, when you read about Hoffa, it wasn't that guy you just described.
A: When I grew up hearing about Hoffa, you just heard little sound bites: some battle going on with Kennedy; he's involved with the mob. I didn't have any relatives who were Teamsters, but later, when I started getting interested in this, and spoke to a lot of people who were Teamsters at the time, they only have the highest regard for Jimmy Hoffa.
Q: What do you think happened to Hoffa?
A: He was killed. They've never seen him, never heard from him again. I guess it was pretty obvious what was going on. Hoffa was becoming very, very powerful, on the verge of controlling a bank in every major city in the country. He could pick up the phone and shut down New York. There are a lot of people who felt that being at the negotiation table with a guy with that much power wasn't a good thing. So the way you do that is you try to own the other side. But I don't think he could be bought, so they had to get rid of him.
Q: So if Hoffa's a good guy, that makes Robert Kennedy, then the Attorney General, a bad guy for going after him?
A: Bobby Kennedy was doing what he had to do. He was doing his job. We go right through that era in the film.
Q: Sounds like a controversial picture.
A: [smiles] It might be.
Q: And who do you play?
A: His right-hand man, his friend. I think people are hep that I want to be in all my films, that I want to direct and act. There's a great character here, Bobby Ciaro, who is with Hoffa from the very beginning all the way to the end. I had to sleep with the director's wife to get this part!
Q: In American Film it was postulated that the key to your comedy is your size, which enables you to simultaneously repulse and amuse an audience.
A: Thank you very much.
Q: What would you say is the key to your comedy?
A: The key to my comedy? I think it was the day I was driving through the Holland Tunnel and I saw Woody Allen with a moose on his hood coming back from a hunting trip.
Q: How many readers out there do you think will know that's a reference to one of Woody's classic routines?
A: He's a guy I forgot to mention earlier. Boy, I like him. Very much. Hi Woody, how you doing? So, is Mia pregnant?
Q: I don't know.
A: Well, congratulations if she is.
Q: How fond a memory was it seeing the births of your children?
A: It was very thrilling to be there when Lucy and Gracie and Jake were born. Rhea did all the work, but I helped in spirit. I'm very jealous that I can't do it myself.
Q: When you and Rhea first came out to California you fell in love with a '64 Dodge Dart. Do you still have it?
A: That was after Cuckoo's Nest. There were a few years where there was not much happening until "Taxi." We borrowed $400 from Rhea's mom because we saw this Dodge Dart in The Recycler. It was a great deal, 1964 Dodge Dart Slant-Six convertible, top worked, no heater. We still have it. We fixed it up a little, reupholstered, new top, new mechanisms, new hydraulics. We would never, ever part with D'Artagnan.
Q: So, the guy who destroyed a car in Tin Men is actually someone who names his car and falls in love with it. When you read a script like Tin Men or Ruthless People, can you sense immediately that it's going to make a good movie?
A: You feel, "Wow, this is hysterical, this is funny," and you want to be a part of that. You don't know whether it's gonna be a hit or make money.
Q: There's a scene involving a blow job in Ruthless People where you get to deliver one of the all-time one-liners: "I love wrong numbers."
A: It was one of those things in the script that you can't wait to do it. I think it got one of the longest laughs in movie history, it went on and on and on. They made a test of the movie and Jerry Zucker called me and he had a tape recorder and he said, "Listen to this," and he played the scene he recorded of the test audience, and you heard the scream, you heard my voice--"I love wrong numbers"--and then the laugh on the tape went on forever. It's one of those classic lines.
Q: What has happened to the company you and Rhea formed? Weren't you supposed to be looking for projects for the both of you to do?
A: We're still looking. Got a couple of things in development. She's busy, she's doing her 10th year at "Cheers." And, you know, there are three children.
Q: The two of you have been involved in the child-care crusade, haven't you?
A: Child care's a big thing in our house. Our country's so backward in terms of that. These latchkey kids are probably taking your hubcaps right now, or worse. We've really fallen way behind.
Q: You've appeared before the California Legislature. Did it do any good?
A: No, I don't believe so. It's frustrating. We're talking about the future of the country and the world. People protect unborn fetuses more than they protect people who are born. We have people who are on the bandwagon about this big debate over whether people should have abortions or not. Take it easy, you know? You are pissing up a rope because you've got hundreds of thousands of kids with no care out there that are already born. Let's put our energy into that. I mean, I love these high-horse people who are way, way, way over childbearing years, really safe, right? Most of them with vasectomies, hysterectomies, or they can't produce kids, going wild about some woman having control over her own body. They are incensed about the fact that some woman maybe doesn't want to have a baby. They should take their energy and their money-- because a lot of them are very, very wealthy people, politically powerful people--and put it where we need it.
Q: Well, I can see why Rhea has said you have a tough streak in you.
A: I don't think so. I'm a pussycat.
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Lawrence Grobel interviewed Bette Midler for our December issue.