She hit the screen in Star Wars and suddenly, for me, it was okay to be a tough, strong, smart young girl. I’m forever grateful.
Carrie Fisher, the iconic actress who portrayed Princess Leia in the Star Wars series, died Tuesday following a massive heart attack last week. She was 60.
“It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55 this morning,” Simon Halls, a spokesperson for Fisher’s family, said in a statement to People.
Fisher suffered a heart attack last week aboard a Los Angeles-bound flight 15 minutes prior to landing. A medic onboard performed CPR on the actress until paramedics arrived to take the actress to UCLA Medical Center, where she was placed on a ventilator.
====================
The daughter of screen legend Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher, the actress made her Broadway debut as a teenager in Irene, which starred her mother. After making her big screen debut in 1975’s Shampoo and briefly enrolling in London’s Central School of Speech and Drama and then St. Lawrence College, Fisher dropped out, at the age of 19, after landing the role of Princess Leia in George Lucas’ 1977 space epic Star Wars.
“She has no friends, no family; her planet was blown up in seconds – along with her hairdresser – so all she has is a cause,” Fisher told Rolling Stone in 1983 of the role. “From the first film [A New Hope], she was just a soldier, front line and center. The only way they knew to make the character strong was to make her angry. In Return of the Jedi, she gets to be more feminine, more supportive, more affectionate. But let’s not forget that these movies are basically boys’ fantasies. So the other way they made her more female in this one was to have her take off her clothes.”
“Lucas always had to remind me to ‘Stand up! Be a princess!’ And I would act like a Jewish princess and lean forward, slouching, chewing… (more here)
No words….
PaulWartenberg2016
Over on the TV Tropes page I wrote part of this bit on the Awesome page for Star Wars:
Chris
She survived Darth Vader and the Blues Brothers, but even she couldn’t survive 2016.
Skippy-san
This just sucks. She dies while President Elect Shitgibbon continues to live and breathe. There is no justice in the world.
PaulWartenberg2016
I saw her speak at the Tampa Bay Comic Con about two years ago. Had my nephews along with me, it was their first comic con.
Chris
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Yeah, I liked her from the start for that reason. And while there was some, I thought she had far less badass decay than Natalie Portman in the prequels. Even the slave bikini outfit she was put in in the third movie is tempered by the fact that she uses it to strangle the guy who put her in it.
laura
This damn year.
Betty Cracker
This one feels personal. Damn this wretched year!
Rest in peace, Ms. Fisher — a funny, smart, brave woman who was an inspiration for so many.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
Goddamn it.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
She managed to surmount Lucas’ idiotic Princess Leia-in-a-bikini character with dignity. But where she really shone was as a terrifically talented and funny writer. If you haven’t read any of her stuff, go out and do so now.
Larkspur
I was so hoping she’d make it through. She had so much left to do and say. I have a friend who had a massive cardiac arrest at age 60. We very nearly lost him, but he survived – with major brain damage. None of us really gets a choice in these things, so we have to play the hand we’re dealt. My condolences to her family; I’m glad they were with her during her last moments of consciousness.
piratedan
fuck this year… seriously… claimed too many people who made a difference in our lives and then this election. It’s like I just want to sit in a room and listen to music and give everyone and everything the finger in a selfish pity party of loss.
rikyrah
Listening to the Star Wars soundtrack ???
Ceci n est pas mon nym
OMG, I’m off the “automated moderation” list AND I can edit my comments! Be still my heart!
mai naem mobile
2016 suckity sucks. I feel sorry for Debbie Reynolds – parent should never have to mourn a child . RIP Carrie Fisher.
Larkspur
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: OMG, honey, you made me cringe and laugh. I feel ashamed. Carrie would have laughed.
HeleninEire
“Postcards from the Edge” was good. But “Surrender the Pink” was better. Go read it. Even if only for the title.
dmsilev
I hope to hell that this past year is the worst year I ever have to live through.
And if any malignant genie or whatever happens to be reading this, no the above doesn’t mean that I want to die anytime soon.
Chris
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Somebody on the Star Wars fan forum I’m on was posting pictures the other days of pages from her “Empire Strikes Back” script. People remember Harrison Ford for editing and rewriting his character’s lines to make him better, but Carrie Fisher did exactly the same thing, it turns out. Though nothing as iconic as “I know.”
Soprano2
OK, 2016 NOW OFFICIALLY SUCKS BALLS!! I honestly think it’s trying to see how many people it can drive completely around the bend! You’d think Trump would be the breaking point, and he almost was, but this does it for me. She was my first movie icon hero – a woman who was in an action movie and stood up for herself, rather than being the little woman waiting for the big man to rescue her. RIP, Carrie, at least you won’t have to live through the horror of the Trump presidency.
Brachiator
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Credit the imagination of George Lucas, who was here channeling the plucky female warrior of Akira Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress.”
In the Japanse film, Misa Uehara played Princess Yuki.
A fun, brief comparison clip
Elizabelle
Carrie makes me laugh.
mm
I received an autographed picture of her when I was a child after writing her a fan letter. It was one of my most prized possessions.
manyakitty
This sucks out loud. No justice in who gets to escape the oncoming madness. No justice at all. Damn.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
“My idols are dead and my enemies are in power.”
First a big component to the soundtrack of my life, George Michael’s solo work, then a magical performance that helped make a movie a focal point of my life (Empire Strikes Back). It’s hard at a time like this to think this way but this quote by Vin Scully helps:
“Don’t be sad that it’s over. Smile because it happened.”
Major Major Major Major
Damn. RIP.
@Larkspur: Slate recently published a whole week of Stevie Wonder tributes because, well, one never knows. I kind of think people should start doing that.
chopper
god fucking dammit, 2016.
Ksmiami
Fuck shit dammit crap Dickfuck. Can someone please blast 2016 into an asteroid field? fuckity fuck
amygdala
When the updates started getting terse to nonexistent the past day or so, I started fearing the worst. Ugh, this execrable, atrocious year. That disturbance in The Force is for you, Princess Leia, General Organa, and the inimitable Carrie Fisher. Thank you for being your badass, writerly, funny, and very real self.
catclub
@piratedan: An interesting counterpoint to this is that we are safer than ever, crime is down for the past 25 years to almost 50 year lows, yet fearfulness and anxiety are up. The entire world population is better off now than ever before, but also the people who profit off of fear are more effective than ever.
TaMara (HFG)
@Brachiator: This is true, but it was also true that off screen, Carrie did not disappoint and you knew that as tough, strong and smart Leia was, Carrie was more so.
mai naem mobile
@Major Major Major Major: just shush. Dont even put any ideas out there.
Major Major Major Major
@mai naem mobile: celebration of life! Opposite!
Adam L Silverman
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN9xsFUsPqM
Felonius Monk
I loved her role in “The Blues Brothers” as the Mystery Woman who tries to take out Jake with the hand-held rocket launcher and the “Tunnel Scene“.
RIP, Ms. Fisher.
Elizabelle
@amygdala: I think she was done for when she was taken off that airplane. Never any report of consciousness or response.
Very sad. Too young.
Chat Noir
I love Postcards from the Edge: “Instant gratification takes too long.”
Also, her one woman show “Wishful Drinking” was very funny. Peace to you, Carrie.
Mustang Bobby
Death, take a holiday. Please, I’m begging you.
Mary G
I don’t know who started this meme, but I loved it:
Carrie was just as badass IRL. RIP.
This fucking year.
hovercraft
RIP Carrie Fisher, you were an original.
@Major Major Major Major:
on’tday aysay anyone’sway amenay. At this point we don’t know who has acquired lamh36’s ability to put the hex on famous people.
Mnemosyne
@PaulWartenberg2016:
As someone who was a young girl when the movie came out (I saw it in first run at age 8), that was an astounding moment. Like, Wait a minute, princesses can be action heroes, too?
And the world was never the same. Especially when, in the sequel, the sarcastic action princess got to walk away with the most awesome guy.
Larkspur
@Major Major Major Major: If we do it around our favorite peoples’ birthdays, we could unlink it from grief.
Elizabelle
From an LA Times story:
MomSense
I still remember seeing A New Hope when it first hit the movie theaters and being blown away by Carrie Fisher’s Leia. Finally a woman action hero that allowed a little girl to see herself as the kickass leader and not the usual helpless victim. It always seemed to me that Carrie Fisher was just bursting with energy, emotion, and intelligence like she literally possessed too much for her physical body to contain. There has been a great disturbance in the Force. We lost an intelligent, beautiful, and formidable woman. RIP Carrie Fisher. I think we all will need to channel General Leia, kickass leader of the resistance for what we face now.
philpm
I think “you miserable slug” describes this year very well.
Mnemosyne
Also, since BellaQ isn’t here to say it, I loved that, once Fisher was properly diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she was very open about her struggles with it. I think doing that helped lessen the stigma of a diagnosis.
And she made a good living as a woman script doctor in Hollywood, which is not an easy thing to do.
Betty Cracker
I’ve been a Carrie Fisher fan for years, but she really impressed me anew over the last couple of years after “The Force Awakens” came out. She was hilariously trashing body-shamers on Twitter (I hope they feel ashamed now, though I doubt that type of asshole has the capacity for it), cracking self-deprecating jokes and singing the praises of her beloved French bulldog, Gary.
I remember reading a long piece in some mag, maybe Rolling Stone, after the movie came out. The reporter interviewed Mark Hamill first, and when he (the reporter) was leaving Hamill’s house, Hamill asked if he was interviewing Fisher the next day. Upon hearing the affirmative, Hamill said something like, “Great! You’ll have the time of your life!”
And it was true. The next day, the reporter was talking to Fisher about the original Star Wars, and she gave a hilarious account of her time on that set. She made the reporter say the line, “Governor Tarkin, I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board,” and the reporter said he realized it was the greatest moment of his life, fulfilling Hamill’s prophesy.
Mary G
Also, too her dog’s Twitter @Gary_The Dog is great
In the top one, he’s looking out the window waiting for her to come back. ?
Major Major Major Major
@Larkspur: Good idea.
Anybody remember Fisher on 30 Rock? She was hilarious.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: It’s great when someone is more than their screen image.
She was even better in real life.
amygdala
@Elizabelle: It’s pretty typical to wait 72 hours to see if there’s improvement, because the available outcome studies use that interval. “Stable” isn’t as reassuring as it might seem in that situation.
Fair Economist
Just when you think 2016 can’t possibly get worse, it does. Right after George Michael dies on Christmas.
Elizabelle
@Mary G: We are all going to have to be badass. And snarky, to get through 2017 and beyond.
#badasslikecarriefisher
Bobby D
I recall a spread in Architectural Digest (iirc) on her Beverly Hills home. An old, eccelctic rambler, w/ a shabby chic kind of décor. About the polar opposite of Rod Stewart’s place in the Hills (also in a AD spread a decade or so ago), which was all Louis XVI style gold furniture and shiny stuff everywhere. The accompanying interview was nice, and the last several years I really appreciated her willingness to speak out candidly about her psychological difficulties.
geg6
Goddamn it to hell. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck. I adored her, especially her writing and all around bad assedness. Fuck!!!!!!!!!
Saw Rogue One yesterday and she looked ethereal. I should have known when that thought went through my head.
Chris
@Mary G:
I had an argument about this on IMDB where someone was arguing that Leia was the worst character out of the Big Three because she doesn’t have much character development. My counterpoint was that it’s true as far as it goes, but that the reason for that is that it took Han and Luke three movies to get to the level that she was already at from the beginning.
I don’t think the franchise ever realized what a kickass character they had in her. She never got as much to do in the old expanded universe as she deserved, and now I guess she’ll never get to in the sequels, either.
Another Scott
RIP Carrie. :-(
ObOpenThread: Speaking of crushing your enemies… Driftglass wins today simply for the title. But the whole thing is worth reading, as always.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
I forgot that Fisher had briefly been married to singer Paul Simon.
But I really like this, from the Rolling Stone article.
I hope she was surrounded by loved ones at the end.
Emma
I. Can’t. Even. Dammit.
randy khan
@amygdala:
My bleak assessment was that each day that went by without hearing that she was recovering just decreased the chances that she’d make it through. Publicists are very eager to spread good news, so if there’d been any at all we’d have heard about it.
Such a pity.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
“Never go with a hippie to a second location!”
And I think Fisher appreciated that Tina Fey loved her as a writer, not just an actress.
Yarrow
She’s great in “Catastrophe,” which is available on Amazon Prime. She plays a supporting character and isn’t in every episode, but she’s a delight when she does show up. I read that she was filming Season 3 of “Catastrophe” in London and the flight she was on was coming from there when she had the heart attack. I look forward to seeing her in Season 3, but it will be oh so bittersweet.
Brachiator
@Chris:
I like this bit from one of the Rolling Stone interviews:
hovercraft
January 2, 2017 Issue
Michelle Obama and Us
The tenure of a First Lady who leaves the White House as one of the most popular political figures in recent memory.
he reason why I said yes was because I am tired of being afraid,” Michelle Obama told a crowd in Council Bluffs, Iowa, during the State Fair, in August of 2007, explaining why she had signed on to a long-shot campaign to elect her husband, Barack Obama, President of the United States. She stood in a middle-school gym, surrounded by a mostly white audience that was only beginning to know her husband and had an even vaguer idea of who she was. The stage was a small, low platform, but Obama, dressed in black pants and T-shirt, with her hair pulled back in a bun, occupied it like a dancer, punctuating her seven-minute address with appealing turns and pauses, as her listeners responded. The decision to run, she said, had not been an easy one, particularly with two young daughters, and as she and her husband discussed it with others she had noticed a common theme. “They were afraid,” she said. There was “fear that we might lose. Fear that he might get hurt. Fear that this would be ugly. Fear that it would hurt our family.”
Nine years later, Michelle Obama ends her time as First Lady as one of the most popular political figures in recent memory. So it’s worth looking back on those fears, both to take the measure of her accomplishments and as a reminder of a certain national capacity for blindness. In a recent interview with Vogue, she said that, as a teen-ager on the South Side of Chicago, she had been told at school that she wasn’t “Princeton material.” During that first campaign, Obama, a graduate of Princeton and of Harvard Law, heard that she was not First Lady material. She was “angry,” “abrasive,” “nontraditional,” too big, too black, not someone Americans were “ready” for—not a lady, like Cindy McCain, the wife of her husband’s eventual Republican rival. When, in February of 2008, in a rare misstep, Obama said that her husband’s success in the early primaries had meant that “for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country, because it feels like hope is really making a comeback,” Mrs. McCain let it be known that she would never say such a thing. Following an event at which Michelle joked about Barack’s breakfast-making skills, Maureen Dowd wrote, in the Times, “Many people I talked to afterward found Michelle wondrous. But others worried that her chiding was emasculating.”
Sometimes, the message came in the form of a hint, but often it came in an outright slur. Future scholars of American conspiracy theories may be puzzled by the bizarre case of the “Whitey tape.” In the spring of 2008, there were widespread, and false, rumors of a video in which Michelle, furious (or whining, or scheming, or smug), used that word to incite a black audience and promised racial revenge. Referring to the tape, the Republican operative Roger Stone told Fox News, “I believe a network has it.” Stone later became an adviser to Donald Trump. While the birther movement, which Trump championed, painted Barack Obama as foreign, there was an effort to confine Michelle to a very American place: the ghetto.
There were echoes of that assumption even when the intent was to praise her. “Michelle Obama is by now so well assimilated that she can wear a dress and pearls that are photocopies of the clothes and jewels worn by Jackie Kennedy—and pull it off with grace and panache,” Newsweek observed in March, 2008, as if being a facsimile would, for someone like Obama, be the pinnacle of success. After eight years in which she has been acclaimed as an author of style, that sounds absurd……
Her success in the White House has had as much to do with her comfort with herself as with what might be her central precept: never believe that there is a room you have no right to walk into. It’s a message that she has delivered in speeches at historically black colleges and in her mentorship of girls. It has also come across in her work, with Jill Biden, to support military families. As the stages got bigger, Obama’s oratory became more dominant and yet, at the same time, more intimate. In one of her enduring speeches, given at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, she revisited her fears that the Presidency would change her husband. What she had realized, she said, was that power doesn’t change who you are—“it reveals who you are.”……..
Her iconoclasm gains strength from its fusion with irreproachability. She has been cheerfully scrupulous about White House traditions and rituals, including such niceties as designing what will be known as the Obama China. The trim color is Kailua Blue, an homage to the waters off Honolulu, where her husband grew up. She brought out the new china for tea with Melania Trump, two days after the election. “Melania liked Mrs. O a lot!” President-elect Trump tweeted afterward. Indeed, Melania, in her Convention speech, had photocopied Michelle.
In Council Bluffs, Obama said, “I don’t want my girls to live in a country, in a world based on fear.” At the time, Malia was nine; Sasha was six. Obama was still imagining what the future held for her daughters, and for the daughters of all Americans, when she said, in a speech in October, that Trump’s comments about women had “shaken me to my core.” She became one of Hillary Clinton’s most tireless advocates in the final weeks of the campaign. Given the outcome, there may be something melancholy about the echoes of the Iowa speech in the pleas she made to voters, urging them not to give in to the fears that Trump’s candidacy thrived on. Perhaps they did. But no one should doubt that Michelle Obama’s courage has left an indelible mark. Her time as First Lady changed this country and clarified its vision. And she has been one of the revelations. ♦
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@geg6:
That wasn’t her. It was CG. Everyone in the theater where I saw it applauded anyway, because hey, Princess freakin’ Leia. And rightfully so.
lamh36
i’m glad you didn’t post a pic of her in the Leia bikini…yes at iconic but Carrie Fisher was more than that bikini!
that’s why i love this twitter thread
Anne Thériault @anne_theriault
Everyone is sharing pictures of Fisher when she was young, but let me show you the Leia that was the most important to me: General Organa
tobie
I may be one of the few Americans never to have seen a single Star Wars movies but I know a little bit about Carrie Fisher via Paul Simon, and this news makes me very sad. RIP, Carrie.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
Yeah, I’m a little annoyed at all of the Facebook dudes posting that picture. I know it was a pivotal moment in their development, but give it a rest, fellas.
And you know Fisher would be shaking her head and saying, “These fucking guys.”
WaterGirl
@hovercraft: I read that article and it felt really choppy to me, with no flow or organization, as if it were the product of a bad cut-and-paste. Is this typical of the writing at the New Yorker?
ruemara
I’m so hurt by this year. She taught me women are most definitely heroes. I never wanted to be rescued or to be the girlfriend of the hero. I wanted the male heroes to be my sidekick. Everyone always said I was jezebel spirit and needed to be kept in check. I could tell some stories about the demon chasing services I was forced to attend. But Princess Leia was up there for me, like Lieutenant Uhura, showing me that being in charge and capable wasn’t anything wrong.
Toss in Richard Adams dying and it’s a heartbreaking day.
Mnemosyne
Weird thought I just had — Daisy Ridley (the star of “The Force Awakens”) must be really devastated today. From all of the stories that came out about the production, it sounded like Fisher really took Ridley under her wing and mentored her through the whole process of starring in a “Star Wars” movie.
And there will probably be a lot more stories like that coming out about how Fisher mentored people in less public ways, because that just seems to have been the kind of person she was, especially with younger women.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chris: I am not surprised, just about every actor who worked with Lucas said he had no intrest in the actual humans on the screen.
Anyway, pure genis would have been to put Han Solo in the slave costume. Solo was the one Jabbah had the beef with, not Leia.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: Probably. I’m so sorry I never got to meet her. Hamill I got to meet after his performance in “The Jerk” way back when. And since he lived in the city, I knew one of his neighbors, so I knew he was awesome.
Elizabelle
I think for me, Prince’s untimely death was the worst blow. And Carrie Fisher left too early, too, and in full possession of her faculties.
Both still had good work ahead of them.
And David Bowie made the best of the time he had left to him. Creative high, to leave this plane of existence.
The Oscars and Grammy “in memorium” tributes (do the Grammys do them?) will be cutting to close to home.
Larkspur
@Major Major Major Major: For example, writer Sarah Vowell’s birthday is today, Denzel Washington’s Birthday is tomorrow, and Jennifer Ehle’s birthday is Thursday.
Vowell is pretty darn funny and insightful, I fell in love with Denzel in Mississippi Masala, and I fell in love with Jennifer in Pride and Prejudice , plus she was heroic in Contagion, and goddamnit, they are all still here and are going to be here celebrating their damn birthdays. And I have some DVDs that need re-watching.
And George Takei’s birthday is April 20 and he will be here for us to celebrate and give him his 80 birthday spankings and to officially take that date back from stupid Hitler, who remains so dead that even the worms threw up after chewing on his stupid remains.
Well, it’s an idea, yeah?
karen marie
@Yarrow: I’ve been watching the BBC series “Cold Feet” (highly recommended) but thanks for the heads up on “Catastrophe.” It’s been on my list. Had no idea Fisher was in it.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
G is currently obsessed with a British comedy panel show called “8 Out Of 10 Cats Do Countdown.” Fisher was one of the guests for their Christmas special, so one of her last televised actions was to (playfully) flip off a male panelist who made a joke about the gold bikini.
I have a feeling that she would feel that was a pretty good self-written epitaph.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: I just told someone I plan to strangle the patriarchy in my metal bikini as General Organa would have wanted and I think I shall go cry in the bathroom again.
Mnemosyne
@Larkspur:
Can we just have Takei check himself into the hospital for 24-hour monitoring until, say, January 15th?
I don’t think January 1st will be good enough — for my year from hell of 2012, my father didn’t die until January 3, 2013 (because he was just that stubborn and he wasn’t going to let some goddamned year dictate to him). Takei needs to be there at least a couple of weeks past 1/1 just to be sure.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
I thought all the other deaths this year had made me numb. Turns out, nope. ?
rikyrah
@Elizabelle:
To this day, it still seems the most unreal.
After all..he was Prince…
Cacti
Damn it.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: My 2016 year from hell started in December of last year. It’s been ongoing and relentless since then. I guess it can start early and finish late.
Yarrow
@karen marie: I didn’t have any idea she was in it either. Just started watching it for some reason – I think I’d heard some good things about it. So when she showed up I was really surprised. The female lead in the show posted on her Twitter feed a picture of her with Carrie Fisher just a day or two before Fisher had the heart attack. I think that’s where I saw they were filming Season 3.
Larkspur
@Mnemosyne: I would happily volunteer to provide 24 hour protection to Mr. Takei until whatever date you feel like, but he needs to be not in the hospital (infections happen there) and enjoying the New Year with his husband. I am perfectly willing to shield him from asteroid strikes and untimely shit. PS I am not a crank, I would really do this for Mr. Takei.
ruemara
Bowie shouldn’t end. Prince shouldn’t end. I’m still not over Jim Henson dying. The saying is “All Good Things Come To An End”, but the truth is, good people do end. We have to, to make room for more. But, the good things done can live as long as they are remembered, loved and treasured. We all step closer to the veil each day. We just get to choose how we walk towards it.
Gelfling 545
@Mnemosyne:
And they weren’t required to live happily ever after. They just lived – messy, complicated, useful lives. i appreciated that touch.
Larkspur
@ruemara: Yes, yes, yes. This is why John Glenn’s death made me remember and honor his memory, but it was a graceful, timely departure, a good death.
rikyrah
The way things come full circle.
I mourn Carrie Fisher.
Just called Peanut’s Grandmother and told her to tell Peanut that ‘ Chanel #3’s mother has died.’
Her connection to Carrie Fisher is through her daughter, Billie Lourd, who is in Scream Queens.
EBT
@Mnemosyne: George seems like he takes excellent care of himself, and avoided the heavy drug use some other stars indulged in. Betty however I am worried for.
Tazj
@lamh36: Thanks, that’s a great twitter thread.
She was brilliant and funny woman who surely helped many people when she discussed her own struggles with mental illness.
A Ghost to Most
Damn, this one really hurts.
Of all the people and things we’ve lost this year, I think I’ll miss the truth the most.
CaseyL
I’m gutted, and I’m not sure why – maybe a combination of Carrie being my age, and being in a movie that had such a huge effect on me. But I’m sitting at my desk, at work, crying.
I also have a weird feeling that people are getting out while the getting is good.
Elizabelle
@Tazj: And George Michael suffered with depression, for many years.
Which can be burnished into art.
(I actually never followed GMichael much. I’d be more devastated if it was — no!! Not going to even say a name in this cursed year!
Thank Dog for video and being able to catch up on the talented Mr. Michael at leisure.)
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Who knew.
Thanks, rikyrah.
Is Peanut back to health? And, roughly, how old is she?
Oatler.
RIP . I’ll always treasure her line reading in Shampoo from 1975: “Wanna fuck?”
Anonymous patient
@Chris:
How awesome is that!
And in the bottom picture, she looks really happy and at home in herself, so good to see her like that. If you have to go early, it isn’t as bad if you can be happy!
opiejeanne
@Elizabelle:
I remember her saying “her record collection” in one interview.
rikyrah
@Elizabelle:
Peanut’s fever broke yesterday, and she’s now out and about with her Grandma. She’s 8.
Mel
Had a friend who worked as an assistant at a couple of big talent management agencies in LA in the 80s. She said that Carrie Fisher was one of the very few celebs who always remembered all the assistants’ names, and was always friendly, gracious, and truly decent to everyone on staff.
Mnemosyne
@Larkspur:
We need a fully equipped ambulance and EMTs on standby with a one-minute response time. That’s the only thing that would make me feel secure.
And no flying until mid-January.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for noting out how much good Carrie Fisher did for millions by coming out as someone who lives with bipolar, and knowing I’d have done it.
My comic writing today; an email to Mr. Q:
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: I guessed she was about a 4th grader. A plucky, smart little 4th grader.
Glad to hear that Ms. Peanut is on the mend. Being sick around Christmas — not good.
Mnemosyne
@Gelfling 545:
Messy and complicated, yes, but the characters still loved each other despite all of their problems. That wonderful, rueful smile on General Organa’s face when Solo shows up and shoots her that crooked grin that you know she’s seen a million times before but they both know she still can’t resist even 30 years later.
Yutsano
@CaseyL: I’m at work literally trying to keep it together. It still isn’t sinking in and might not for a couple days.
@Mnemosyne: 2016 better not even LOOK at June Foray or Olivia DeHaviland!!
geg6
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA:
I realize it was CGI, but it was her in CGI. And she did look luminous. I’m sure that was what they were going for but it really struck me in the heart at the moment.
ruckus
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
” Smile because it happened.”
Much better than being bitter or very sad.
Woodrowfan
And as bad as 2016 has been, 2017 will be WORSE.
trollhattan
Sigh. We emerged from this morning’s matinee of “Rogue One” to the news. I’m just depressed.
Mnemosyne
Some really nice tweets from her friends and family.
john fremont
@rikyrah: Him and Maurice White from Earth Wind and Fire hit me in the gut. White lived a very healthy lifestyle and during the 70’s demanded musicians auditioning for EWF do as well
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
They’re going to have to expand the allotted broadcast time. Tributes are bound to take up a good half-hour, even if they scroll through at a pretty fast clip.
Mnemosyne
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
From Vice.com, a brief story about Fisher’s mental health advocacy. She did a lot of good during her brief time with us.
ruemara
just as a point of order, Moff Tarkin & Leia Organa had body actors with a combination of prosthetic & facially mapped VFX. They weren’t just CGI. It’s brilliant work that had me walking out the theatre going, “Every actor for major franchises will have to consider rights in perpetuity of their estate for their performances, right now.” How it was done. A smart actor would scan themselves in full on the reg as well as prepare a voice library archive for themselves.
LongHairedWeirdo
I read one story told about her that made me sad… how hard it was for her to find a man who wasn’t so enamored of being able to have sex with “Princess Leia” that she could have a comfortable relationship. I’m sure that faded, but still… damn.
Sometimes, actors and actresses pay a higher price than we realize to provide our entertainment.
Rest well, Ms. Fisher. You made a lot of people happy, and may well have formed (or helped form) the basis of “The Self Rescuing Princess” meme.
bjacques
Heh. I always loved her in the Blues Brothers movie.
Theodore Wirth
RIP Carrie Fisher. However since I was never a Star Wars fanatic, Fisher’s death seems like business as usual and nothing to rend garments over. Like I said, RIP.
Mnemosyne
Heh. The nerds at Whedonesque couldn’t resist some posthumous ‘shipping:
Timurid
@Another Scott:
I LOL’ed.
Geeno
I think Death is trying to work up the nerve to go after Betty White.
I will be the saddest of pandas if that happens.