Note: I started writing this before Dorothy Snarker made Carrie her weekend crush, so I decided to go ahead and finish the post. Great Carrie-loving minds think alike!
I don’t know what it is about Carrie Fisher. Somehow, whenever I see her face, I feel like I’m looking at a long-lost friend. I suppose that’s because I was 6 when I first saw her cinnamon-bun hair. A lot of us feel like we grew up with her — while she was growing up too fast.
I felt that way again this week when I saw Sorority Row, in which Fisher plays a shotgun-wielding sorority house mother. As Carrie’s recent blog post makes clear, she may not be as lithe as she used to be, but she’s way more badass. There’s a great moment in Sorority Row in which a privileged coed has just told Carrie’s character an obvious fib. Carrie expertly pulls back the slide on her sawed-off shotgun (whee!), aims the gun squarely at the girl’s face, and says, flatly, "Lie to me again."
A different shotgun scene
So awesome. I think I found it especially gratifying because when I was a kid, I was always losing the stupidly dainty gun that went with my Princess Leia action figure. That never would have happened if she’d had a shotgun.
Sorority Row is surprisingly entertaining overall (and Rumer Willis can actually act. Who knew?!). I think a series of small parts in horror movies is a great way to enjoy the sunset of one’s film career — just ask Margot Kidder — but of course Carrie’s overall career is far from fading. The day before seeing Sorority Row, I bought my tickets for Wishful Drinking on Broadway. I can’t wait to bask in her bracing wit for a couple of hours.
Carrie’s face often makes me feel like I know her, but her words resonate even more — she says things I wish I’d said. I devoured her books Postcards From the Edge and Surrender the Pink the minute they were published, and though I haven’t read Wishful Drinking yet, I’m sure it too offers droll insights tinged with just enough misery to make you love her company. One of her Postcards observations seems to have become her lifelong motto: "Instant gratification takes too long." You can even get that on a T-shirt.
And wouldn’t Liz Lemon love this Wishful Drinking T-shirt?
And speaking of Postcards From the Edge, I’m still thrilled that Meryl Streep played the Carrie role — even if that later proved to be too much for Carrie to live up to.
Whether she’s squaring off with spoiled sorority girls or offering her observations on her long, strange trip through fame and fortune, Carrie Fisher gets to the heart of things.
I’m so glad she’s still speaking her mind!
One last thing, about that golden bikini: Carrie recently revealed that it was even more revealing than we thought:
… it had the tendency to make my now not-so-private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett … to put it simply and weirdly, [he] could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida.
Oh dear. No wonder that scene has always made me nervous — put the Hoth snowsuit back on, Leia! It makes you look kinda butch.
