I’m Over All That Read online

  I’m Over All That

  ALSO BY SHIRLEY MACLAINE

  You Can Get There from Here

  Don’t Fall Off the Mountain

  Dancing in the Light

  Out on a Limb

  It’s All in the Playing

  Going Within

  Dance While You Can

  My Lucky Stars

  The Camino

  Out on a Leash

  Sage-ing While Age-ing

  ATRIA BOOKS

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.­SimonandSchuster.­com

  Copyright © 2011 by Shirley MacLaine

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  First Atria Books hardcover edition April 2011

  ATRIA BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.­simonspeakers.­com.

  Designed by Joseph Rutt/Level C

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  MacLaine, Shirley, 1934–

  I’m over all that: and other confessions / Shirley MacLaine.

  p. cm.

  1. MacLaine, Shirley, 1934– 2. Entertainers—United States—Biography. 3. Spiritualists—United States—Biography. I. Title.

  PN2287.M18A3 2011

  791.43'028'092—dc22

  [B] 2011000705

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0729-1

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0731-4 (ebook)

  For Peter

  CONTENT

  Chapter 1:­ Overture

  Chapter 2:­ I’­m Not Over My Need to Know

  Chapter 3:­ I’­m Over Being Concerned About What I Shouldn’­t Do

  Chapter 4:­ I’­ll Never Get Over Trying to Understand Men and Women (Especially on a Movie Set)

  Chapter 5:­ I’­m Not Over My Wall of Life.­ I’­m Under It.­

  Chapter 6:­ I Am Over Fear Taught in the Name of Religion

  Chapter 7:­ I’­m Over People Who Repeat Themselves (When I Didn’­t Want to Hear What They Said in the First Place)

  Chapter 8:­ I’­ll Never Get Over Trying to Understand the Russian Soul

  Chapter 9:­ I Am (Almost) Over Watching the News

  Chapter 10:­ I Am Over Politics.­ It’­s Jazz.­ And I’­m Over All That Jazz.­

  Chapter 11:­ I Am Over Young People Who Are Rude

  Chapter 12:­ I Will Never Get Over Africa

  Chapter 13:­ I’­m Over Feeling I Need My Family Around Me at Thanksgiving and Christmas

  Chapter 14:­ I’­m Not Over Making Money

  Chapter 15:­ I’­m Over People Who Don’­t Know That We Are All Performing All the Time

  Chapter 16:­ I’­m Not Over Vanity, But I’­m Trying

  Chapter 17:­ I Will Never Get Over Good Lighting

  Chapter 18:­ I’­m Over Antibiotics Unless I’­m Dying

  Chapter 19:­ As a Sometime Asthmatic, I Am Over Deep Breathing

  Chapter 20:­ I Am Over Being Polite to Boring People

  Chapter 21:­ I’­m Over Trusting the FDA

  Chapter 22:­ Ageing in Hollywood­?! Get Over It

  Chapter 23:­ I’­m Over Being Under a Big Corporate Conglomerate’­s Control

  Chapter 24:­ I Am Over Driving at Night Unless It’­s a Really Short Trip

  Chapter 25:­ Get Over Thinking You’­re Just One Person

  Chapter 26:­ I Am Over the Gallows of Fame

  Chapter 27:­ I Am Not Over Good Journalists

  Chapter 28:­ I’­m Not Over Exercise

  Chapter 29:­ Never Get Over Trust

  Chapter 30:­ I’­m Trying to Get Over Anger

  Chapter 31:­ I Will Never Get Over the Thrill of Live Performing

  Chapter 32:­ I Am Trying to Get Over the Feeling That the World Is Falling Apart

  Chapter 33:­ I’­m Not Over Having My Hair Colored

  Chapter 34:­ Sex and I Got Over Each Other

  Chapter 35:­ I’­m Over Being Polite to People with Closed Minds

  Chapter 36:­ I’­m Over Conservatives and Liberals

  Chapter 37:­ I Am Over Getting Over Family

  Chapter 38:­ I Am Over Going to Funerals

  Chapter 39:­ I Can’­t Remember if I’­m Over Memory Loss

  Chapter 40:­ Never Get Over a Dog—­ Get Another One

  Chapter 41:­ I Wonder If I Will Be Over the Drama of 2012

  Chapter 42:­ I Am Not Over Good Vibrations

  Chapter 43:­ I Am Not Over Caring About Time

  Chapter 44:­ Will We Ever Get Over the Akashic Records­?

  Chapter 45:­ I Can’­t Get Over My Frustration at Not Being Able to Open Anything I Buy

  Chapter 46:­ I Don’­t Want to Get Over the World Leaders I Have Met

  Chapter 47:­ Leaders I Will Never Get Over (Personally)

  Chapter 48:­ Does Anyone Get Over Sex and Power­?

  Chapter 49:­ I Am Not Over the Founding Fathers

  Chapter 50:­ It’­s Not Over Yet .­ .­ .­

  Overture

  All life, even the cruelest drama and most absurd comedy, is a form of show business, a kind of performance, and I have been lucky enough to have created the moving picture show of my own life. I have starred in it, produced it, written it, directed it—even financed and distributed it. What’s even better is that I get to rerun it now and then, to see things I might have missed back then. In this third act of my life, much has become clearer. So much is over, and I am over so much.

  I have learned to ease up on worry, scheming for films or roles, planning for better surroundings, and feeling anger at all our leaders who operate politically rather than humanely. Yes, I am over all that. I’m over listening to advertisements, the latest fashions (I never was much for that), events I should attend in order to be seen, red carpet madness. I’m getting more and more free from the expectations of the external world. In fact, the one worry I can’t seem to give up and get over is a lingering fear that being a reclusive, happy, older woman may not be entirely healthy. But who says so? I’m not interested in parties, new outfits (only comfortable ones), being socially acceptable, and whether I’ll be on anyone’s so-called A-list. My goodness, what a way to live!

  I’m not over going to the movies, seeing live theater, hearing symphonies, eating a good dinner (I’m learning to dine out alone), attending a worthy charity event (for half an hour), visiting a sick friend, or taking treats and toys to the animal shelter.

  I am over what other people think (I got over that a long time ago), and trying to persuade them to come around to my point of view about anything.

  One thing will always be a constant with me. I have a guiding sense of curiosity. I will never get over asking Why. This questioning has been with me all my life. It is my sustenance, my inspiration, my joy, and my intellectual food and color. I will never be over my search for the Big Truths. And I’m not the only one. Most people I’ve met around the world believe we are not alone in the universe but will not talk about this openly because they’re terrified of being humiliated publicly for their beliefs. Some scientists, academics, and movers and shakers I’ve met were even reluctant to discuss it privately because of how they might be perceived. (Just another reason I revere the brilliant and fearless Stephen Hawking!)

&n
bsp; Everywhere I’ve traveled in the world I’ve found that people are looking for something to fill the loneliness inside them; they are after what I think of as “The Big Truth.” It doesn’t matter how wealthy or well situated they are; after surface talking, joking, eating, Hollywood gossip, and cultural politeness, the conversation always turns to why are we here, what is the point of life, is God real, are we alone in the universe? That’s because, like me, most people have realized that money isn’t the answer to their emptiness. In fact, it sometimes contributes to it because the management of money (or the fear of not having enough) distracts them from any real examination of what is really bothering them.

  So I’ve concluded that for us to get to the Bigger Truths, there is much for us to get over. I’ve had a good time exploring what I’ve finally gotten over and what I will never get over . . . from the ridiculous to the Big Sublime.

  I’m glad I am in the third act of my life. I have loved my ride and am now appreciating relinquishing the reins and looking back. Sometimes I feel an unbearable ecstasy of loneliness for some of my past, wishing now that I had been so much more present then. Sometimes I feel it all happened to someone else, and I long to get the “me” of it all back. How could I have done so much, been so many places, known so many people—and now it is all past, gone, memories of colorful stories like little movies attached to the celluloid of my brain tissue. Every now and then the little movies turn themselves on, wanting to be rerun. What didn’t I see then? What deeper meaning did I miss? Where are those actors and actresses and politicians from my past now? They are still with me, in all the things they taught me, the memories of the times we shared. Fascinating and talented people, mind-expanding conversations, and curiosity about the future—those are things I will never get over.

  On with the show!

  I’m Not Over My Need to Know

  When I look back on my seventy-six adventure-peppered years of life, I want to celebrate my “still here-ness.” While I am definitely more still now, I do like being here. One of my great passions in life was traveling, which I’m sorry to say is not true anymore. I’m over all that. I like being here where I am. And I like being still.

  The idea of walking through an airport in a state of terror over the idea that the TSAs (“Thugs Standing Around”) won’t let Terry, my terrier dog, on the plane with me is my worst nightmare. What has happened to us? We obediently cower in fear, hardly even made uneasy by the thing that should really scare us: our own acceptance of the foregone conclusion that the possibility of terrorism trumps our freedom to travel.

  I’m over that conclusion. I don’t believe that terrorism is the real reason we have become saluting robots. I believe we have neglected to see that terrorism is just a convenient excuse for those in power to gently instruct us to go quietly into that good night of being compliant and unrevolutionary citizens who willingly become subjugated to authority.

  Tom Paine has always been my idol. He wrote of the common sense of starting a revolution and praised the Age of Reason instead of religion. Of course, he’s buried in a potters’ field somewhere where no one can pay respects. He flew too much in the face of accepted behavior, which didn’t sit well with those whose first priority was political popularity and maintaining the status quo. People like that tend not to be the ones who get the big memorials and shrines dedicated to them.

  The blood of the Founding Fathers runs through my veins because I was born and raised in Virginia, the real birthplace of our American Revolution. It was also the place of metaphysical leadership—the Masonic Order. But there will be time for words like “metaphysics” later. I got over the box-type religious thinking a long time ago too, because I wanted to breathe. That is what freedom is for.

  I find it interesting and more than coincidental that I developed asthma during the “W” administration. I was so frustrated with his idiocy and perpetration of harm that I literally couldn’t breathe. I ended up in the emergency room three times, and each time I felt what it must be like to die of asphyxiation. I felt the land of the free was becoming asphyxiated, too. People were so dumbed-down they didn’t even realize they weren’t in charge of their own lives or thoughts anymore. Whether 9/11 was planned by people other than Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, I don’t know. But it certainly was conducive to the endeavor of dispensing with our individual freedom, which was supposed to be our inalienable right and the defense of which should be the primary reason we would ever go to war in the first place. We were told we should patriotically fight and kill those who would rob us of our freedoms. We didn’t need Osama. We allowed it to happen by not questioning our own elected leaders who said national security should be our highest priority.

  For me, the searching of my bags and the patting down of my body and my dog is unconstitutional. Once, in Los Angeles, a big, fat, slovenly guy made me walk back and forth with Terry (26 pounds) four times through security because my boarding pass was turned the wrong way. I found myself hissing like a cat and hating these authoritarian men who were exercising their power over me, a well-known and (admittedly) privileged woman. I heard he got fired later. Maybe he picked on Rosie O’Donnell.

  Traveling for me is a constant reminder here and abroad that we are becoming afraid of ourselves and our neighbors, because fear is the most powerful weapon of mass destruction. I don’t want to get over my abhorrence of such a condition. But I am over traveling, except when absolutely necessary, or unless a Pleiadean spacecraft offers me a ride to a planet where they claim to have solved such matters.

  I hate that I’m over traveling because of all this security bullying. It was a multilayered experience for me everywhere I went before. I learned so much about myself because when I found myself splashed up against a foreign environment, I was all I had and all I could depend on. I never traveled as a privileged person. I rarely even went first class. I wanted to experience the “real” world away from what had been the elitist world where I’d lived since coming to Hollywood when I was just twenty. If and when people recognized me, I followed the flow where it took me and more often than not, I made new friends.

  Traveling has been my greatest teacher. It has offered me the gift of seeing and experiencing other points of view and other “realities.” Ever since the early days of film, the American movie screen reached around the world and I found that wherever I went, people told me their most private secrets, I assume because I was famous and they somehow felt they knew me. They were flattered that I was interested in them and listened. I quickly learned that my American version of the truth was not necessarily anyone else’s. Not only was truth relative, it was constantly changing.

  I found that life itself was theater. Each culture played its own part. Sometimes the characters in my travels were mean and unethical. Sometimes they were kind and trustworthy. Sometimes events were comical, sometimes dramatic. I had been playing an American woman all my life, so when I traveled I could break out of this typecasting and feel I’d become a member of a new culture. I began to have a more objective view of myself, and my point of view of almost anything became more flexible. By the time I was forty years old, things that previously would have been morally wrong to me were now lessons, not judgments . . . even regarding death.

  I remember riding along a klong (waterway) in Bangkok, Thailand. I could see the activities of the klong dwellers as I glided past on my hired canoe. Suddenly, not more than one hundred feet away, a very young baby leaned over the side of the family canoe and toppled headfirst into the water. I strained my eyes to find him. The parents heard his coughing and gurgling, turned around, but did nothing to rescue their child. He disappeared under the water and drowned. I sat stunned, wanting to go in after the child myself, but my guide stopped me. From the Buddhist point of view, one should never interfere with the karmic will of God. If the parents or anyone else had jumped in to save the child, they would have placed him in a position of obligation for the rest of his life. The child’s life would have belonged to his
rescuer. And this was one fate a Buddhist would never willingly inflict on another.

  To a Buddhist, death is only another form of life anyway. Death is part of the cycles of life. Life and death are not regarded in terms of an individual’s survival or loss. The fate of the drowning child was not to be interfered with. The outcome was accepted as part of God’s will. By the same token, killing is abhorred because the act of killing is interfering with God’s will. There is, to a Buddhist, a profound difference between killing and allowing a death to occur. Fate and destiny are their philosophy and religion. I remember a friend of mine who owned a private plane saying he would never have a Buddhist pilot because that pilot would be too serene in allowing a crash to happen—fate and destiny again.

  A few days after witnessing the death of that child, I went to a Thai boxing match. What distinguishes Thai boxing from any other kind is that kicking anywhere and any way is legal. The boxers wore groin cups in their trunks to protect themselves, but otherwise no form of padding or protection. In a ceremony before the match, the boxers entered the ring and performed prayers and reverence to Buddha. Each boxer prayed for the well-being of his opponent, not himself. A group of musicians began to play as each boxer performed ritualistic dance movements and stylized pantomimes in benevolent reverence for the fate of his opponent. A signal was given, whereupon the boxers proceeded to kick, smash, jab, and pummel their opponent with both fists and feet. No holds were barred. One of the boxers kicked the other in the head and snapped his neck and broke it. The man died right there on the spot.

  I couldn’t believe that this was a popular sport for the peaceful Thai people, but the huge crowd went wild with enthusiasm. Two new boxers entered the ring and performed the ritualistic prayers and bowed to Buddha with mime and ritualistic dancing. The combat began. One sliced the other across the forehead with his elbow, causing blood to pour down his face. The roar of the crowd at the sight of blood was deafening. They shouted their approval above the ear-splitting music that was being played. A doctor was summoned, but the crowd chanted wildly, “Let him fight!” The wounded boxer stamped his foot until the doctor went away. Again the crowd roared its approval. The wounded boxer attacked his opponent, smearing his blood all over them both. His adversary continued kicking the head wound open further and further. Blood was flying everywhere. The crowd was ecstatic. I was stunned and almost apoplectic. The doctor came back and the crowd booed. Two stretchers were ordered since the head wound was completely open now. Both boxers looked more like human protoplasm than men. Finally, the match was stopped, much to the anger of the audience.