In her new memoir My Mother Was Nuts, actress-comedienne-filmmaker Penny Marshall writes of her remarkable life: Growing up the youngest of three in The Bronx, she had a daughter followed brother Garry into showbiz, got famous as one-half of Laverne & Shirley, got married twice, got divorced twice, opened her home to friends like John Belushi, Carrie Fisher, Steven Spielberg, and Robert De Niro, and became the first female director to break the $100 million mark with 1988's Big, also notching films like Awakenings, A League Of Their Own, Renaissance Man, and The Preacher's Wife along the way.
Ringing Movieline to discuss her baldly honest, often hilarious memoir — which also reveals darker times, recreational drug use, an abortion, an on-set miscarriage — Marshall explained why she set out to write her life story to begin with: "You want to set the record straight on certain things, because there are so many rumors."
Among them: Her dramatic backstage relationship with Laverne & Shirley co-star Cindy Williams and her recent lung cancer and brain tumor diagnosis. "The rags still say 'She’s dying,'" she laughed, emphasizing that her health has improved and she's ready for the next project. "But I dodged a major bullet."
You’ve really lived such a fantastic life.
I’ve really been very lucky and fortunate. And I appreciate that! There comes a time when you give back, you know, so I do a lot of that stuff when I can.
Why was now the right time to write your memoirs?
Well, my brother just finished his second book, and so I figured well, since the rags have me dying every couple of months… [Laughs] That’s not helping me get work! Someone suggested it, and my friend Carrie Fisher’s a writer, so I went, well, I’ll try it.
Did you take to it naturally?
No. I did a lot of stream of consciousness, but I talked into a tape recorder — and it’s hard to understand me, I understand that. I do go off on tangents sometime. But I talked into a tape recorder then had it transcribed.
I have a terrible memory when it comes to recalling my childhood, but you have such vivid memories of your experience growing up in The Bronx, in what seemed like a very special neighborhood that turned out so many talented people.
It was a very working class neighborhood. Everyone worked; my mother was the only woman who worked. Mostly the dads worked, but my mother was a tap dancing teacher. It was a very colorful neighborhood, and it had a good work ethic for some reason — or maybe everyone wanted to get out of there! One or the other.
There was so much of a sense of community, of family, throughout your life — family related by blood, a familial network of friends. It feels so special and rare, the group of people you surrounded yourself with.
Well there’s more to life than show business, you know? Family and friends are part of your life, and sometimes life takes a priority over a job, or a business. And so those that you remain friends with, I think it’s important to fulfill your life. I don’t think just doing a movie fulfills your entire life — it’s important to have people around you that you like, you enjoy, you can do things with.
Looking at your career, it’s so interesting to see how directing kind of just fell into your lap. You had such success in front of the camera, and all of a sudden comes a directing career. And you first learned from Spielberg, of all people!
Well he was always encouraging. He’d come over to the house and see me doing jigsaw puzzles, which I had an addiction to, and he’d say, “That’s editing.” And then he’d see me talk to all these neurotic guys. He’d say [whispering] “That’s directing.” You have to hold their hand, and tell them what to do. I never said I wanted to direct; I had done a couple of Laverne & Shirley’s but everyone did. Cindy [Williams] did! Michael McKean! The script girl! Anyone around! Who wants to direct this week?
You bore witness to so many changes in the industry, on both sides of the camera, over your career. The way television works now compared to how it was made back in the Laverne & Shirley days… there was so much more freedom and looseness then.
Well remember, there were only three channels! Now there are so many channels and so many reality shows that I don’t really watch, because they’re cheap. I don’t mind if there’s a game or a contest; I don’t mind American Idol. I don’t mind The Amazing Race. There’s a contest involved! But just people blabbing and fighting with each other… although Mob Wives did get me. They made me laugh.
But that’s what they do. There are 20 people sitting watching monitors. Why don’t you watch the actors, they’re there! I watch the actors. I use a monitor to fill out a screen, but I’m watching the actor — and I have a strange memory. I’m in a wedding scene, I say “That lady was up here, she can’t be back there.” I have this strange memory, I remember what we shot. Before we hit the clacker, the slate, he said something — we could use it. But times have changed. The economy stinks, the whole world’s gone mad, so it’s a little difficult as far as it was simpler back then. I mean, the writers worked their butts off but any actors, you always wanted better, you know? And I don’t know what they do now. They all watch a monitor.
You’re pretty honest about the role that nepotism played in your career, getting you in the door through your brother Garry. But you also talk about the idea of “giving someone a life” — paying it forward, giving someone new an opportunity to do with what they can. Do you feel like that sentiment still exists in Hollywood today?
No. [Laughs] Everyone needs a life right now! But I think it’s important to give back, to give someone a life. I help take care of this kid, Germain, who’s in a wheelchair. He calls me Mommy Penny, because his mother was not so good. She moved while he was in the hospital because she wouldn’t take care of him. But he’s going to college. He got an apartment. I got him an air conditioner.
May I ask how your health is these days?
My health is fine, not good. I dodged a big bullet, even though the rags still say “She’s dying” and they have the wrong thing wrong with me. But I dodged a major bullet. And I’m the only one who gained 60 lbs. and got hard nails from it!
You’re fortified!
A strange constitution, I have. Maybe because I went through everything. [Laughs]
You really have. And you’re so open in your book about them all: Marriages, divorces, abortion, miscarriage, illness. Yet your spirit seems to be so buoyant throughout.
Whenever anything terrible happens, I stay very calm. I’m a Libra, what can I tell ya? [Laughs] It has to balance out. But if someone’s going crazy, I’m very calm. Or if I’m sick, I’m calm. Nothing hurt me [when first diagnosed with cancer]. I had no idea what they were talking about. So I ordered White Castle.
How important was it for you to talk about these deeply personal events in your book?
Well, you want to set the record straight on certain things, because there are so many rumors. “You and Cindy…” Cindy just called me, she’s coming up tomorrow night!
It will be surprising for Laverne & Shirley fans to learn how strained your relationship became over the seasons.
It was anticlimactic at the end — I was very happy she got married and pregnant and all that, but her husband, I was not a fan of. And now they’re divorced! And as soon as I heard, I called her and said, “What do you need? Do you need a place to stay? Need a place to live?” Because you work with someone for that long, like any family you’re going to have disagreements along the way but still, we were together.
It seems like, of all the famous faces you mention in your book, the only single person who ever had a problem with you was Hunter S. Thompson, who kicked you while on opium at a party.
I didn’t know the man, and he kicked me! I’m not a gonzo journalist. All I know is the guy kicked me!
You also describe the fascinating story of how Robert De Niro almost starred in Big.
Because everyone turned it down! Tom [Hanks] turned it down. So I said, “Let me go a different way. Let me go with a real man — not a boy-man.” Bob’s a behavioral actor; he does behavior very well. I sent it to him and he wanted to do a commercial movie, he’d only done Marty [Scorsese] or Brian De Palma movies. And now he’s in every goddamn comedy, so don’t tell me he’s not funny! I knew he was funny because I knew him for years.
I don’t even know how to imagine Big starring De Niro…
It would have been street kid vs. white establishment, you know? They’ve got to live in an apartment, and he talks on the fire escape with his best friend. That’s not a big change. And I’d pay to see him dance on a piano. So I wasn’t that crazy! Once Bobby said yes, everyone wanted to do it again. Tom wanted to do it again, so I went to him first.
That worked out pretty well.
Tom’s great. I had done a Bosom Buddies so I knew Tom from that. He’d say, “Play yourself.” I don’t know what else to play!
What else did you learn from those times?
Sometimes a release date can kill you, like it did with Renaissance Man. Not that it was the best movie in the world, but put it out during the school year so English teachers will send their kids to see it. It wasn’t a bad movie! It started Mark Wahlberg’s career — he said, “I owe my life to you! I got out of underwear!” I didn’t know the Funky Bunch from a hole in the wall, but I knew him from the billboards because Calvin Klein went to my junior high. So I said, “Get me that kid.” Mark and I are still good friends. He’s a great guy. I tried not to take advantage with the rap. He wrote it, but his character wouldn’t have rapped.
You were also looking at Tupac Shakur for Renaissance Man.
I read Tupac [for the film]! He’s magnetic. He was amazing. And now they’re going to tour all these holograms — life is so weird.
Your favorite film of mine was A League of Their Own.
Thank you — I didn’t know there was this woman’s league, and my feeling was, if I don’t know it somebody else doesn’t know it. And I’m not the dumbest person in the world. I liked the story. I liked that these women had to go and fill in for the men, and they were embarrassed that they were good at things. I was not encouraged to be an athlete, you know? I wanted to be an Olympic runner, but my mother made me tap dance.
I was a tomboy growing up.
Me too!
So A League of Their Own really meant a lot to me. You did a wonderful thing for a whole generation of girls.
Well good, because I believe that girls should partake in sports. There’s nothing wrong with it. I watched the Olympics. I would have loved to have been a runner — not a hurdler! — because I was fast. But it wasn’t encouraged. But even real baseball players have seen A League of Their Own and they don’t bust me on the baseball, because I wouldn’t hire anyone that couldn’t play.
Sean Young and Demi Moore were at different times set to play the leads?
Demi at the beginning, I asked her if she could play and she said yes. We saw her play and she could play, but she was pregnant when we got around to doing it. So she literally got fucked out of the part. [Laughs] The other director wanted Sean Young, while I was off doing Awakenings.
And yet I can’t imagine it any differently.
I swear to God I’ve never started a movie and ended up with the same people there. Not the head-heads, I’m not talking about [Barry Diller] or someone like that, but the head of production. At Fox every week there was a new executive du jour. Mel Brooks used to say, “I can’t have that many lunches!”
What was the trick to navigating all the studio politics?
I was very innocent and naïve. When I doubt, I’d go to the head — I’d go to Diller. Because I knew him and he’d tell me the truth! And after em>Awakenings was theirs and he didn’t have the enthusiasm so I went and took it somewhere else, and when it came out he was very proud of me and sent me on a vacation with my daughter and my niece.
I love that Awakenings, out of all of your films, was the one that really changed things for you.
That, they didn’t expect from me. Jumpin’ Jack Flash, fine. Big, fine. But Awakenings, they went hmmm….
What would you like to be doing next?
I wouldn’t mind doing TV, on camera, and directing TV is good. I don’t do the movies they put money into, but if it’s a movie I love I’ll do it. But television’s faster.
Readers are going to feel like they know you so well, just from reading your book. It’s so open.
I’m an honest person and I say straightforward things.
Do you have a single regret about any choice you made in your life or career?
[Pauses] I regret I got cancer! But that’s from smoking, and that’s what I did in junior high. But when I got pregnant with Tracy it was 1963 — which hopefully it doesn’t go back to — there was, what, go to Juarez, ride a horse [in terms of options for women with unplanned pregnancies]… nothing was legal. I made my bed and I was going to sleep in it, so [first husband] Mickey said, “Let’s get married.” I regretted that I got pregnant but I’m glad that I have a wonderful daughter and three grandchildren.
I hope to have a life even a fraction as fully-lived as yours.
You will. Just go out and live it!
“My Mother Was Nuts” by Penny Marshall is available via Amazon Publishing/New Harvest September 2012. Read an exclusive excerpt here.