As a teenager, I was one of the lucky ones. I never had the need to end an unwanted pregnancy because my family doctor provided me with birth control. I had a freedom that many women still don’t have today. I’m going to keep speaking out for those girls who weren’t so lucky, for my daughters and for other women--if not from the Oval Office, then from a multiplex or website or orangecrate podium near you. Watch me.
NOT LONG AGO I READ FOR A PART WITH A YOUNG director who asked me, “How does it feel to have been in three great American movies?” (The part went to... to be announced.) Yes, that’s me in The Last Picture Show, The Heartbreak Kid, and Taxi Driver. But we are more than the sum of our work, and we’re not only as good as the last thing we did.
I was thinking of these things on a trip to Graceland last year, almost thirty years since my last visit. Weeping behind my sunglasses, I stood at Elvis’ grave in the meditation garden that was his pride and joy. At the time he took me there, I did not understand the symbolism in the lotus flower design of his beautiful stained-glassg to dows. I know that the unfolding petals of the lotus blooming in the mud suggest the expansion of the soul through suffering and adversity. Elvis was on to something but that enlightenment couldn’t save him. I wish he were still alive because I think we would be friends now. One of the realms on the Buddhist wheel of life is that of “hungry ghosts” where beings are tormented by unfulfilled longing and are never satisfied. I think I got stuck in that realm and tried to resolve my anger and pain with men, taking pleasure as if it had no consequence.
With a girlfriend along as moral support, I decided to check out the plot I’d reserved for myself at Memorial Garden Park, on a wide verdant heath near Moma and Da-Dee. (Actually, I bought four plots, not knowing who might want to accompany me to the great beyond,) The very thought of eternal life made us hungry so we sat in the cemetery parking lot, stuffing our faces with fried cat-fish and hush puppies from Captain D’s takeout before venturing into the mortuary office, where it took some time to find me.
“How do you spell your name?” the mortician kept asking, eventually recognizing this as a photo op and requesting that I pose in front of a display of headstones.
“What are all those?” I asked, looking at the slabs of marble, the various tints and typefaces.
“Those are your choices,” he said cheerfully. “Would you like to make some decisions as long as you’re here?” He was enthusiastic about a newly available option: the dearly departed’s face in bas-relief on the marker. “We can go look at Charlie Rich,” he offered and drove us over to the plot. Poor old Charlie looked exactly like Leslie Nielsen, so I declined.
My friend was mortified, considering it weird and macabre to be hanging out at a graveyard on this clement spring day, discussing whether or not I should be embalmed before being cremated--prettified with a final “hair-and-makeup” for the few moments in the coffin before I turn to ash. But I feel peaceful in this place where my aunt Ruby took me to play when I was a little girl. And I am comforted to imagine that someone in the twenty-first century will remember a big, brassy blonde who tried to use humor as the Krazy Glue for life’s necessary reparations, a stranger who will stand with a smile at my final resting place, reading a tombstone that says, “We’ll make this a comedy yet....”
Acknowledgments
FROM CYBILL
I OWE THIS BOOK, AND MUCH MORE, TO THE CREATIVE juices, tender asylum, and occasional galvanizing cattle prod of many people: to my editor, David Hirshey, who never gave up hope that this undertaking was worthwhile; to Roger Director, who first suggested to David, “Cybill Shepherd—now that’s a story”; to Jesse Gerstein, for endless overtime patience; the gang at HarperCollins, for going the extra mile; to Peter Bogdanovich, Herma Bogdanovich, Frances Bruno, James Cass Rogers, Stella Adler, Larry McMurtry, and Orson Welles, for incalculable mentoring; to Glenn Gordon Caron, Jay Daniel, Chuck Lorre, Howard Gould, Bob Myer, Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner, Caryn Mandabach, Bruce Willis, and Christine Baranski, for all the great work we did together; to Jane Howard, Toni Gmuer, Linda Mathes, Martha Maiden, Dr. Ernest Bates, Linda Wallem, Joan Zajac, and James Vierra, for their support; to Henry Lange, Heidi Schaeffer, Wendy Morris, Donald Steele, Walter Teller, and Judy Hofflund, for professional lifelines; to Sid Selvidge and Elizabeth Belz, for Memphis grounding; to Myrtle Boone, for her wisdom, inspiration, mothering and really good fried catfish; to my children, Clementine Shepherd-Ford, Molly Ariel Shepherd-Oppenheim, and Cyrus Zachariah Shepherd-Oppenheim, for enduring with good humor the inevitable, unsolicited limelight that comes wto Daviaving me as a mom; to Jason Martin, for his brilliant assistance; to Stephen Fell, for helping this book get to E-land; to Aimee Lee Ball, for helping me put into words what was in my heart and giving it gravitas. And to my mother and brother William, all love.
Visit Cybill Shepherd’s Official Website at
www.cybill.com
to purchase Cybill’s music, movies, & books,
for cabaret tour dates, fan club information, and exclusive downloads.
Table of Contents
Prologue
One. “Who’s the Fairest of Them All? ”
Two. “Stay Puuuuure Vanilla”
Three. “Going All the Way”
Four. “And the Winner is...”
Five. “Make Sure There’s a Lot of Nudity”
Six. “White Boys Don’t Eat...”
Seven. “I Need a Cybill Shepherd Type”
Eight. “The Cybill Sandwich”
Nine. “TV’s Sexiest Spitfire”
Ten. “I’m Cybill Shepherd, You Know, the Movie star?”
Eleven. “To Be Continued”
Twelve. “We’ll Make This a Comedy Yet...”
Acknowledgments
Cybill Disobedience Page 29