Other segments from the episode on July 19, 2024
Transcript
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. Today we're remembering Shelley Duvall, the actress and TV producer who died last Thursday at age 75. We'll listen back to a conversation between her and Terry Gross from 1992, and we'll begin with this appreciation.
Shelley Duvall was a student at a junior college in Houston when Robert Altman came to town scouting locations and casting extras for his 1970 movie "Brewster McCloud." The film starred Bud Cort - later of "Harold And Maude" - as a young loner who lives secretly in a small room in the bowels of the Houston Astrodome. When Altman met Shelley Duvall, he gave her a small supporting role in the movie as an Astrodome tour guide who tries to seduce the innocent Brewster.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BREWSTER MCCLOUD")
SHELLEY DUVALL: (As Suzanne Davis) Why don't you come sit over here with me?
BUD CORT: (As Brewster McCloud) No, I got to be going now, I think.
DUVALL: (As Suzanne Davis) Brewster, here I am sitting over here on the couch and inviting you to do, well, who knows what? And you just sit there and say, oh, no, I've got to go home. Oh.
BIANCULLI: From that small beginning, Shelley Duvall quickly became one of the director's favorites, appearing in six more of his movies in increasingly larger and more complex roles. In the 1970s alone, she was in Altman's "McCabe And Mrs. Miller," "Thieves Like Us," "Nashville," "Buffalo Bill And The Indians" and "3 Women." For that drama, which also co-starred Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule, Shelley Duvall won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Her most famous role of all, though, came when she worked for a different director, Stanley Kubrick, for his 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's "The Shining." Jack Nicholson starred as Jack Torrance, a writer who accepted the job as winter caretaker for a secluded hotel, living there alone with his wife, Wendy, and their young son, Danny. The story has supernatural overtones, but at the core, "The Shining" is a horror story about child and spousal abuse.
Wendy, played by Shelley Duvall, discovers that their son has been injured and suspects her husband of hurting Danny. Carrying a baseball bat, she goes down to the room where Jack has been working on his novel. She learns - to her horror - that every page of paper in his manuscript is filled with the same phrase - all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. And he enters. She's holding the bat, but he's the one who's menacing and scaring her almost to death.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE SHINING")
JACK NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) I think you have some very definite ideas about what should be done with Danny, and I'd like to know what they are.
DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) Well, I think maybe he should be taken to a doctor.
NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) You think maybe he should be taken to a doctor?
DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) Yes.
NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) When do you think maybe he should be taken to a doctor?
DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) As soon as possible.
NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) As soon as possible.
DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) Jack, please.
NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) You believe his health might be at stake.
DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) Yes.
NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) You are concerned about him.
DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) Yes.
NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) And are you concerned about me?
DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) Of course I am.
NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) Of course you are.
BIANCULLI: That same year, in 1980, Shelley Duvall costarred in a movie that couldn't have been more different - a comedy musical based on cartoon characters. Back with director Robert Altman again, she starred opposite Robin Williams in "Popeye." He played Popeye, and she played his squeaky-voiced girlfriend, Olive Oyl. The music and lyrics were by Harry Nilsson, and both the songs and her singing were as playfully strange as the movie itself.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "POPEYE")
DUVALL: (As Olive Oyl, singing) And all at once, I knew - I knew at once - I knew he needed me. Until the day I die, I wonder why I knew he needed me.
BIANCULLI: Shelley Duvall also appeared in such movies as "Annie Hall" and "Time Bandits." But to me, her most impressive achievement of all was as a TV producer. After creating her own company, Think Entertainment, she produced and hosted a series of anthology shows for children - "Tall Tales And Fables" (ph), "Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories" and her first and finest series, which ran on Showtime cable from 1982 to 1987. "Faerie Tale Theatre" showcased lots of her actor and filmmaker friends. She appeared in a few, but hosted them all, starting with this one.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FAERIE TALE THEATRE")
DUVALL: Hello. I'm Shelley Duvall. Welcome to "Faerie Tale Theatre." For centuries, storytellers have spun their tales of magic and enchantment for the young at heart. Some of your favorite actors, writers and directors have come together to bring these classic tales to your home. Some are funny. Some are scary and some romantic. So sit back, relax and enjoy tonight's tale about a princess who finds happiness by keeping her promise to a frog, "The Frog Prince."
BIANCULLI: For that very first "Faerie Tale Theatre," she got her "Popeye" co-star, Robin Williams, to play the Frog Prince, with Teri Garr as the princess. Shelley Duvall would star in such stories as "Rapunzel" and "Rumpelstiltskin." But most of the time, she gave the juicy roles to others and got everyone to play in her sandbox, from Vincent Price and Mick Jagger to Susan Sarandon and Jennifer Beals. Paul Reubens played Pinocchio. Liza Minnelli starred in "The Princess And The Pea." And in the best of them all, "The Three Little Pigs," the pig with the brick house was played by Billy Crystal. And the wolf who tried to blow his house down was Jeff Goldblum.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FAERIE TALE THEATRE")
JEFF GOLDBLUM: (As Buck Wolf) OK, pigs. Look, no more Mr. Nice guy. You either open up now - and I mean now - or I'll huff, and I'll puff - maybe I'll huff again, but I'm going to blow this house in.
BILLY CRYSTAL: (As Larry) Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.
GOLDBLUM: (Buck Wolf) You keep saying that. What do you mean - chinny chin chin? What does it mean?
CRYSTAL: (As Larry) It means no.
GOLDBLUM: (As Buck Wolf) You asked for it, pal.
BIANCULLI: Great stuff. And the costume, set design and direction were as clever as the performances. Shelley Duvall was a pioneer as a TV producer. And she spoke to Terry Gross in 1992, when Duvall was introducing her then-new animated series, "Bedtime Stories" for Showtime. Terry asked Shelley Duvall how she convinced cable executives to give her a series when she had no experience as a producer.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
DUVALL: Luckily, I - you know, I was kind of well-known already as an actress. And I had done "The Shining." And I was filming "Popeye," and I had brought along a book of antique illustrated fairy tales with me - "Grimms' Fairy Tales" - to the location, which was on the island of Malta. And I figured I would definitely have time to read a book. I didn't have time to read the whole book of fairy tales, but I was reading "The Frog Prince" one day and thought that Robin Williams would just make a great frog. He was playing Popeye to my Olive Oyl. And I talked to Robin about it, and he said, oh, I'd love that. That'd be great. I'd love to play the frog. And so I introduced him to my friend Eric Idle, who's one of the Monty Pythons. And, boy, that was a match made in heaven.
So I made out a list of - you know, my wish list of different fairy tales and the cast of actors that I would like to have in them. And I put lots of my antique illustrated books into two big cloth bags. And I went walking in the door of Showtime and said, here's what I want to do. And they said yes (laughter). It was amazing to me, too. I mean, boy, they're trusting Olive Oyl as a producer?
TERRY GROSS: (Laughter).
DUVALL: I thought, boy, that's risky. And I'd never produced anything before, but I did have contacts with a lot of celebrities, luckily. And that was as a result of my acting career.
GROSS: You haven't been making movies lately. Do you think that most casting directors assume that you're not available? And would that assumption be accurate?
DUVALL: Well, I think so, too. But you can put the word out right here and right now, I tell you, because I would love to. I mean, gosh, I go to the movie theater all the time, and I see all these good roles. And every time I see one, I think, ooh, I would have loved to have played that role.
GROSS: (Laughter).
DUVALL: But, you know, no matter how good somebody was in the role. But being a producer, I guess you get a view of the bigger picture. And I love the fact that I can produce and still sleep in my own bed in my own home at night, you know, that I don't - "The Shining," for instance, was a year and one month of filming in London. So - and then "Popeye" six months later was six months of filming on the island of Malta in the middle of the Mediterranean. So after those two movies back-to-back, I felt like, gosh, if I could only have a house.
GROSS: (Laughter).
DUVALL: Because I grew up in Texas, and I have this great desire to have - put down roots, you know?
GROSS: Could you tell us...
DUVALL: And I have a lot of animals. I have 70 birds and 11 dogs and two cats and several lizards. And I feel...
GROSS: 70 birds?
DUVALL: Yep, 70 - 7, 0 - and many of them are parrots. But listen, everything in my life - I draw from everything in my life. So I've, for instance, written a feature story about some of my birds, some of my parrots, which I have in development now.
GROSS: I have to stop you here. Do your parrots all say things? Do they all say different things?
DUVALL: Oh, yes, absolutely. My parrots talk all the time. It's very noisy at my house.
GROSS: What do they say?
DUVALL: Particularly in the morning and in the evening. All right. I have a parrot named Humpty, who's an Amazon - yellow-naped Amazon. And he is hilarious. He's like the Robin Williams of parrots. I mean, he'll hang upside down from one leg. You know, you think he's going to fall, and you run over there to catch him, and he goes - you know, he'll be calling out, help, help, you know?
GROSS: (Laughter).
DUVALL: And you get there and he goes, ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, and, you know, being the acrobat that he is, flips himself back upright and, you know, no problem at all. It was no emergency, but he just wanted your attention. They all love songs. And they're all memorizing songs like "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" - that's a very popular tune at my house...
GROSS: (Laughter).
DUVALL: ...And whistling things like the beginning of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow." So they can whistle that one very good. They don't know the lyrics yet. But some songs they sing the lyrics, and some they don't. But I've - I'm on the telephone at home so much. I work a lot out of home on the computer, the fax and the phone. And they hear me on the phone all the time. So Humpty also says - I taught him this routine, too, 'cause it was just too funny to pass up. He goes, telephone, telephone. Hello? Oh, hi. How are you? Uh-huh, uh-huh. Oh, fantastic. OK, bye-bye. He does that whole routine. It's hilarious. And I also taught him - two or three of the birds know this one. They know, how does a big dog go? Then he'll go, woof. That's how a big dog goes. And then, how does a kitty go? And he goes, meow.
GROSS: What a house you must have.
DUVALL: I've go to write some articles for Bird Talk Magazine one of these days.
GROSS: Yeah. Let me change the subject and get into how you first started to act, which wasn't by design (laughter). Would you tell the story of how you were first cast in your first movie, "Brewster McCloud," directed by Robert Altman.
DUVALL: Sure. Well, it all started with art, I guess. And my boyfriend at the time - I was 20 years old. I had just dropped out of junior college. I decided to take a six-month rest from my science endeavors because I didn't like vivisection. And I was taking a break, and I gave a party for my boyfriend, who's an artist. And I was showing his paintings to just some friends of ours. And there were only about 20 people there. I mean, quite often, we would give larger parties. And his parents' friends would come to our parties, and we and our friends would go to their parties. So it wasn't unusual one night when three men walked in whom I didn't know.
And one of them said - after they saw the paintings and heard my spiel, they said, we have some patrons of the arts for friends. How would you like to bring the paintings up, say, Wednesday at 1 o'clock? I said, well, Bernard has to go back to art college outside of Dallas, so he won't be able to come, but, OK, I'll do it. And I brought the paintings up Wednesday at 1 o'clock. My mom dropped me off. And I went through the whole speech about, you know, what the artist was thinking. And there were a lot of patronly looking gentlemen sitting in a semicircle. And I figured, well, they must be legitimate art collectors. And instead of saying - at the end of my speech, instead of saying we want this one and this one and this one, they said, quote-unquote, how would you like to be in a movie? And I thought, uh-oh (ph) - oh, no, porno.
GROSS: (Laughter).
DUVALL: So I started packing up. I was scared to death. I thought, oh, my gosh, my mother's going to kill me. My father is going to kill me. I'm really scared. So I started packing up and I was rushing toward the door with the paintings. And I had one hand on the doorknob and the other one with the portfolio under my arm. And they said, well, wait a minute. This is for real. This is for MGM, you know, the lion that roars. And this is Robert Altman, who just did the movie called "M*A*S*H," which opens today. Would you like 10 free tickets? And they said - I took the tickets, by the way. And they said, well, wait a minute, just give us a telephone number where we can reach you and let us take a polaroid picture. So the polaroid is, of course, with me with one hand on the doorknob ready to leave. And I wish I still had that picture. And the telephone number I decided to give them just in case was my father's office phone number. Now, my dad's a criminal lawyer.
GROSS: (Laughter).
DUVALL: I figure if they can get past my dad, they must be legitimate.
GROSS: So when you started acting, was this something that you secretly always wanted to do but never thought that you could? Or was it something that you couldn't care less about?
DUVALL: No, I looked at movies...
GROSS: Yeah.
DUVALL: I looked at movies as paintings, you know? They were beautiful, and I didn't think I was an artist. I mean, I didn't know. Actually, I didn't think this was a career until after I had finished my third film, which was also for Robert Altman. Altogether, I've done seven films with Robert Altman, and the last of which being "Popeye," which was an unlikely choice for him. But...
GROSS: The third film that you mentioned was "Thieves Like Us," right?
DUVALL: "Thieves Like Us."
BIANCULLI: Shelley Duvall speaking to Terry Gross in 1992 - more after a break. This is FRESH AIR. *****
This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1992 interview with actress and producer Shelley Duvall. She died last Thursday of complications from diabetes at age 75.
GROSS: One of your best-known movies, "The Shining," was directed by Stanley Kubrick who, I think, in some ways, is probably opposite in style to Robert Altman in the sense that every shot is really well planned in advance and...
DUVALL: Oh, yes.
GROSS: ...You know, carefully storyboarded. Everything's, like, very meticulously planned. With Altman, I know there's a lot of spontaneity and improvisation.
DUVALL: Oh, he - Robert Altman's famous for his wonderful first takes. You know, many, many, many shots in his films are first takes and one-and-only takes.
GROSS: And with Kubrick?
DUVALL: And with Kubrick, I don't think anything's printed before the 35th take.
GROSS: (Laughter).
DUVALL: And that's after about 50 videotaped rehearsals with playback. So it was a very, very difficult experience for me to change over to that style.
Plus the nature of the role was that I had to be very upset the - for most of the film. For - so for nine months out of that one year and one month of shooting, I had to be crying and hysterical and hyperventilating, and that's physically almost impossible to do. I did do it. I don't think that I could ever do it again.
I had to cry. He expected full tears on first rehearsal. And I kept trying to explain to him, Stanley, you don't understand. I'm losing all my water weight here. I mean, more water weight than I have to give - and, you know, you just - it really wouldn't be that way in real life.
GROSS: What did you do to get the tears flowing? I mean, it's one thing to once a night onstage...
DUVALL: Well, I had...
GROSS: ...Have to cry or - yeah.
DUVALL: Oh, I'm sorry. I have a favorite classical piece of music that I listen to to cry, and it's a beautiful, beautiful piece by Sir Thomas Tallis. It's called "The Lark Ascending." And he's an English composer. And it's performed by St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Marriner. And if you have that in your collection, you could play it. It's absolutely gorgeous.
And I listened to that. And when that violin would hit that - those higher notes, it worked every time, except for a few times when I just literally dried up. I was so exhausted.
But I - that was a very difficult film for me. I mean, Jack and I both got kind of ill when - from the smoke that they were using. They were using church incense to smoke up the room, you know, the big - the grand room where Jack chases me around with the...
GROSS: The knife?
DUVALL: ...Bat. Well, with a base - well, I hit him - it culminates in me hitting him with a baseball bat. It's the grand room with a grand piano in it and - where all Jack - all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy - that scene...
GROSS: Oh, yeah. I love that scene.
DUVALL: ...Which was on the call sheet for three weeks. We shot that for three weeks. It was all done with a steady cam, all in one shot. And that was a very, very difficult time. But we both got bronchitis from that.
GROSS: Now, I believe that you turned down Robert Altman once for a wedding that - you turned down a role in the film.
DUVALL: Yes, I did. I had plans, and I had rented a house, and it would have meant losing - you know, losing my summer and losing the plans that I had made and losing the money that I'd put up on the house. So I figured - better not. You know, you can't lose your perspective on life there, you know, that - I won't do anything for a job.
BIANCULLI: Shelley Duvall speaking to Terry Gross in 1992 - the actress and producer, who starred in many Robert Altman films and "The Shining" and produced "Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theater" died last Thursday at age 75.
After a break, we'll remember Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive grandmotherly German Jewish sex therapist who became a media star. She died last week at age 96. Also, critic-at-large John Powers reviews the new movie "Twisters," and I review the new Apple TV+ nonfiction food series "Omnivore." I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Now we'd like to remember Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the four-foot-seven, grandmotherly German Jewish psychologist who became an unlikely sex therapist on radio and TV. She died last week at the age of 96. Her matter-of-fact sex advice, along with her funny, lively personality, made her a national media celebrity. Here she is appearing on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" in 1996 giving him some romantic advice.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN")
RUTH WESTHEIMER: So what it means, a good relationship - it does mean laughter.
CONAN O'BRIEN: Yes.
WESTHEIMER: And in bed, you probably...
O'BRIEN: I get a lot of laughter in bed.
(LAUGHTER)
O'BRIEN: No problem there.
WESTHEIMER: I would think that you might be very good in bed because...
O'BRIEN: Yeah.
WESTHEIMER: You know a little bit...
O'BRIEN: Keep talking about this, about how I would be good in bed.
(LAUGHTER)
WESTHEIMER: You might because you know how to make conversation. You know how to look into her eyes. Look at you. Look at you.
O'BRIEN: Yes, yes.
WESTHEIMER: You know how to promise her, maybe, an engagement ring, something like that.
(LAUGHTER)
O'BRIEN: You lost me there.
(LAUGHTER)
O'BRIEN: But it's all about - you're right. So much of it - you know, guys get hung up on their body and stuff like that. But what you're saying is that, that doesn't matter, right?
WESTHEIMER: What I'm saying now...
O'BRIEN: Thank God for that.
(LAUGHTER)
BIANCULLI: Dr. Ruth's media career was launched in 1980 with a 15-minute, after-midnight Sunday segment on WYNY in New York City. That led to TV shows, sex guidebooks, speaking engagements and appearances in commercials, advertisements, even in film. Terry spoke with Dr. Ruth in 1996. Dr. Ruth had just written a book about the changing family. Her own family was exterminated in the Holocaust. She grew up in Frankfurt, Germany, and was 10 when her synagogue was destroyed in 1938 during what became known as Kristallnacht. Shortly thereafter, her parents sent her out of the country to safety.
WESTHEIMER: I was an only child. At the age of 10, my mother and grandmother, because my father had already been taken by the Nazis to a labor camp, put me on a train to Switzerland. And I thought this would be, and they thought it would be, for six months. And out of the six months, the whole Kindertransport, the entire group of children who left Germany, stayed in Switzerland for six years. And it became - it wasn't a children's home anymore. It became an orphanage. So for me, the word family has a tremendous amount of emotions attached to it. I know what it means to live without a family.
TERRY GROSS: I'd like to hear a little bit more about your family. After your mother put you on the train to Switzerland to get out of Nazi Germany, did she and your grandmother try to flee also?
WESTHEIMER: It was too late already. It's a very good question, Terry. I was told I did not want to leave. I was an only child, rather spoiled - 13 dolls - and I did not want to leave. I was told that if I am not leaving, my father could not return from labor camp. So I had no choice.
GROSS: You write that in the orphanage in Switzerland, that the message was drummed into all of you never complain - you're lucky to be alive. Do you think that was a healthy attitude to have?
WESTHEIMER: Today, from my vantage point of being an educator, today, I would question that very much. However, my philosophy of life came from my early socialization, that was such a good one. The first 10 years of my life were in an orthodox Jewish home, and in that way, I could survive. But if you ask me, was that pedagogically sound, to tell children who have lost everything, who didn't have in that children's home - never had money to even buy a bar of chocolate, even though we were in Switzerland, the country of chocolates. If you say to me that to then say to children, you have to be grateful because you have a roof over your head and you are being fed, it's a big problem. That would actually - that could be the subject of another book of mine.
GROSS: What's the problem?
WESTHEIMER: The problem is that the educators were not educators. The people who were placed in charge of us were themselves refugees, themselves sent out, pushed out of Nazi Germany, with all the anxieties, with all the uncertainties that that implies. So these were people who didn't know any better. I don't waste my time hating because they did not know any better. And again here, fortunately, there were a few adults - one Swiss woman that is popping up, popping in my mind, Helen Halmisser (ph), not Jewish, who was instrumental in giving us some friendship. There were other adults. And then mainly, there were the children themselves who gave comfort to each other.
GROSS: Now, your mother was actually pregnant with you before she and your father married.
WESTHEIMER: Yes.
GROSS: Was that considered shameful?
WESTHEIMER: Terrible.
GROSS: Did they consider that shameful?
WESTHEIMER: Absolutely. But you know what?
GROSS: What?
WESTHEIMER: That's why I wrote it in my autobiography. Somebody who read the draft said, why are you writing that your mother was pregnant with you then your father married her, that you were pregnant with your daughter before you married her father?
GROSS: I was going to bring that up in a second (laughter).
WESTHEIMER: I know. I know you already, Terry, so let me just tell you. And my answer to Ben Yagoda, my co-author now and my co-author on the autography, was I'm not a saint. I want to show that what I talk about is some of the issues that I have experienced, and I want to show things happen in life.
GROSS: Let me ask you how you found out about your mother being pregnant before marriage. Did she tell you that?
WESTHEIMER: (Laughter) No, she never would have told me ever, ever. And I was 10 years old. I once looked at some documents after the war, many years later, when I started to do my master thesis. And lo and behold, I saw the marriage date, and I know when I was born. I said, aha, they loved each other. And they loved each other so well that here I am. And then they got married.
In Frankfurt of those years, that was considered - it is not like today in even our country and in other countries. In the Frankfurt, in an Orthodox Jewish family of those days, that was considered a very big problem.
GROSS: Did this seem really out of character to you, when you found out that your mother had actually had sexual relations with your father before marriage?
WESTHEIMER: On the one hand, yes, and on the other hand, my father was a very good-looking man. So that's all I can say about that. He was not only spirited and very intelligent.
And he - I also know that my grandmother who lived with us - my mother's father - who had a tremendous influence on me because she was a very smart, devoutly religious woman - I know that she was not happy about that because I do remember some fights.
But in the days, I didn't know why there were fights. My mother was working in the household of her mother-in-law. So it wasn't just that he brought her home for one night (laughter).
GROSS: Right. Your mother worked as the house cleaner in your father's house.
WESTHEIMER: The housemaid. Absolutely.
GROSS: Right.
WESTHEIMER: Absolutely.
GROSS: I could see the potential...
WESTHEIMER: Interesting. And...
GROSS: ...For scandal here.
WESTHEIMER: And then I became a housemaid in Switzerland. I have an official diploma of a housemaid.
GROSS: Which you used, actually, when you first moved to America.
WESTHEIMER: A dollar an hour, and I supported my little girl. But now, Terry, right away, we have to say - I am married now for 35 years with the same man, and I have two children, and Terry, I have two grandchildren. Nobody in the whole wide world has grandchildren like mine.
GROSS: I've heard that before (laughter).
WESTHEIMER: Nobody, Terry - a 6-year-old grandson and a 3-months-old granddaughter. And I have to say something to you, seriously speaking. When I look at these grandchildren - and I see them every single week - I say, Hitler and the Nazis did not want me to have grandchildren, and look at this triumph.
GROSS: People are always asking, why is it that people who aren't married - who aren't ready to have children would risk having sexual relations without using birth control? I want to find out why you did that. You were pregnant before you were married. You hadn't intended on becoming pregnant. I assume you knew about birth control.
WESTHEIMER: That's not true.
GROSS: But...
WESTHEIMER: I was a little stupid by...
GROSS: (Laughter).
WESTHEIMER: ...Hoping that I wouldn't get pregnant. But basically, I already knew that I would marry the father of my daughter, even so afterwards, we separated. And I deep down said, Oh my gosh, I'm 29 years old. I'm only 4 foot 7. Maybe I will never have a child. So deep down, I do remember that I - (laughter) I wanted that pregnancy.
GROSS: (Laughter).
WESTHEIMER: So I - there is no question that I already knew this man is going to be the father of my daughter. I'm going to marry him. I did not know that once she was a year old, we would separate. That, I did not know. I thought, like everybody thinks, this is going to work out. But you see, somehow, things in life do work out because when I remarried, my husband adopted Miriam. I made sure that she always knew that she was adopted.
GROSS: Can I ask you how you learned the facts of life...
WESTHEIMER: Yes.
GROSS: ...Growing up in a home for children during World War II in Switzerland?
WESTHEIMER: Now, I knew already the facts of life because my parents had a book by Van de Velde, "The Ideal Marriage." I remember exactly what it looked like. And it was hidden. And I was very short. I was even shorter than now. But I do remember that I took a chair. I climbed up. I knew in that bookcase where that book was, and that's where I read. I thought, oh, my gosh, look where babies come from (laughter).
GROSS: Were you shocked? Was it upsetting to you to find that out?
WESTHEIMER: Yes. And then it was a girlfriend who taught me about menstruation, in the bushes. An older girl, also in Frankfurt - before I went to Switzerland, my mother and grandmother said, we have to tell you some things before you go. I said, don't talk to me. I know it all (laughter). I didn't know it all, but that's what I thought, I knew it all.
GROSS: From what you had learned about sexuality when you were young, what were your expectations? I mean, did you think that it was going to be something that was, like, extraordinary, something that was going to be frightening?
WESTHEIMER: I fortunately already in Switzerland had that boyfriend, and we discovered wonderfully early in life about - not about sexual intercourse, but about kissing and hugging and necking and touching. So I knew there is a - there are some good things coming. I didn't know I would be Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the sex therapist. But I knew that there were some good things in store.
GROSS: Well, Dr. Ruth, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.
WESTHEIMER: Thank you, Terry. Thank you very much.
BIANCULLI: Dr. Ruth Westheimer, recorded in 1996 - she died last week at the age of 96. Coming up, critic-at-large John Powers reviews the new summer blockbuster "Twisters." This is FRESH AIR.
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. Apple TV+'s newest nonfiction series is an eight-part food series called "Omnivore." Hosted by celebrity chef Rene Redzepi of the internationally renowned restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, it's not about competitions or specific recipes. Instead, "Omnivore" is about the history and cultural impact of eight specific ingredients, each given its own program, from tuna and pigs to coffee and salt.
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RENE REDZEPI: This is the story of everyday items that have changed the world in ways most of us have never considered. Add them all up, and you get a recipe for humanity.
BIANCULLI: Every episode of "Omnivore" focuses on a specific food ingredient, from spices to meats. But there's an additional ingredient that runs through all eight episodes. The secret ingredient is passion, and "Omnivore" is bursting with it. "Omnivore" is co-created by Rene Redzepi, who appears on camera and narrates. That was his voice you heard in the opening. His main collaborator is Matt Goulding, whose last food series was with Anthony Bourdain.
Goulding writes most episodes, while his chef host tells stories, loves putting things in a wider perspective and asks a lot of questions, not only to his fellow chefs and food enthusiasts, but directly to viewers, as in this show on chiles, which covers everything from the mild peppers used to make paprika to the nastiest ones at the fiery end of the Scoville scale, which measures the heat of a particular pepper.
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REDZEPI: What's the spiciest thing you've ever eaten? Take a moment to think about this. Do you remember how you felt, the detonation of your nervous system, how the pain broke across your body, the throbbing burn in your mouth as if you swallowed a firecracker? Will I ever be the same, you begin to wonder.
BIANCULLI: You know those scenes on the scripted Hulu series "The Bear," when Carmy and the other chefs obsess over ingredients, draw sketches of imagined dishes and savor each step in the cooking process. The cooks in "Omnivore" from all over the world do that, too, and a lot more. Their interest doesn't begin once the ingredients show up at the restaurant. They're fascinated not only by the quality of the items they use, but by the labor it takes to produce and distribute them, and where they come from and why.
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REDZEPI: When I first stat out as a cook, salt was just salt. It was the same fine table salt that any restaurant had. Only when I start really traveling and exploring the world I realize there's more to salt than just salt.
BIANCULLI: Chef Rene is so into it, he talks about salt caverns the way Werner Herzog discusses cave paintings. Sounds like him, too.
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REDZEPI: Skimmed from mountain ponds, carved from caverns, boiled from the ocean, dynamited from mines - pink mountain, black volcanic, blue crystal. Of all the salt rested from the earth, few have the quality or the cache of the salt skimmed from the tidal pools of France's western coastline - fleur de sel.
BIANCULLI: Each episode makes you appreciate things in a new way. Halfway through the episode on coffee, after seeing how much love and care went into the harvesting, drying and sorting of quality coffee beans in a Rwanda co-op, I stopped to brew a fresh cup and taste my Rwandan coffee - really taste it - for the first time. The episode on bananas covered not only imperialism and past and present banana blight, but also how one man and one company popularized the banana in post-war America and beyond.
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REDZEPI: Minor Keith's business, the United Fruit Company, flooded the market with newspaper ads, radio jingles, even a book called "The Food Value Of Banana." New recipes were invented. Pamphlets were handed out in classrooms, touting their nutritional benefits. They turned to doctors, celebrities and, of course, a little anthropomorphized banana to get the message out.
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PATTI CLAYTON: (As Chiquita Banana, singing) I'm Chiquita Banana, and I've come to say bananas have to ripen in a certain way.
REDZEPI: The result - bananas went from an obscure jungle fruit to one of the most popular items in the Western pantry in a matter of a few years.
BIANCULLI: Even in the episode on pigs, "Omnivore" goes in unexpected directions, like the treasured Iberian black-footed pigs of central Spain. We meet an Iberian pork ambassador who travels the globe and a village pig caretaker and a highly specialized carver.
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REDZEPI: An American butcher might divide a pig into 12 pieces - a Chinese butcher, maybe 18. In Spain, a real butcher breaks down a pig into 32 pieces - a mixture of prized specialty cuts sold fresh and upwards of a dozen different pieces that will be salted and cured to stretch through the seasons. It's an ancient craft that conveys both respect and necessity, born out of a 2,000-year-old tradition of turning a single animal into a year's worth of eating.
BIANCULLI: The way "Omnivore" tells this story, you care deeply about the pig, which is revered by the locals. But you care about the pig caretaker and the butcher as well. The pig sustains the people, and the people revere it for its sacrifice and give it the best life they can. You have to live life is the moral we're given, and that moral pertains to the pig and the villagers. It also goes for the coffee growers of Rwanda who fought their way back from genocide and for the tuna harvesters of southern Spain, who continue to use ancient techniques to provide for some of the most demanding sushi chefs in the world. They're all devoted to what they do and extremely skilled and overwhelmingly passionate. In "Omnivore," and maybe in life itself, passion turns out to be the most essential ingredient of all.
Coming up, we remember Dr. Ruth, the diminutive grandmotherly German Jewish sex therapist who became a media star. This is FRESH AIR.
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. The new movie "Twisters" stars Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones as two intrepid storm chasers who compete with each other to find the biggest tornadoes. The movie is directed by Lee Isaac Chung, whose previous film, "Minari," was nominated for the Academy Award for best picture. Our critic-at-large, John Powers, says "Twisters" is a pleasurable summer blockbuster, with all the virtues and limitations that phrase suggests.
JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: I spent my boyhood in small Iowa towns. One afternoon, my mother and I were on the back steps, gazing down across the highway at cornfields that seemed to go on forever. Suddenly, the air got eerily still. Look, Mom said. A couple of miles away, a funnel cloud eased itself down and began winding across the countryside, luckily in the other direction. I sat there awed and transfixed and have loved watching tornadoes ever since. I'm clearly not alone, which is why we have "Twisters," an entertaining new summer blockbuster inspired by the 1996 summer blockbuster "Twister," which introduced airborne cows into the cinematic lexicon.
Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, who made "Minari," "Twisters" isn't a sequel proper, but its story beats mirror the original formula, which embeds an old-fashioned romantic comedy inside a modern effects-happy action movie. Whooshing with sucked-up bodies and tumbling semis, it's about love and loss among the brave souls who spend their lives chasing tornadoes.
English actress Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Kate Carter, a one-time storm chaser who's become a New York meteorologist after a tragic encounter with a tornado. Five years later, she's lured back to her native Oklahoma by her old comrade Javi, a thankless role nicely played by Anthony Ramos. Javi has come across equipment to get better data on tornadoes, and he needs her to join his high-powered team. You see, Kate has an almost magical nose for where the big ones will strike. Reluctantly, she agrees - for one week.
In Oklahoma, Kate discovers that they are rival storm chasers. The main one is Tyler Owens - that's Glen Powell from "Hit Man" - a cocky, muscled-up YouTube star who shoots fireworks into funnel clouds, sells T-shirts saying, not my first tornado, and leads a motley crew of hell-raisers. Kate thinks he's a hustling hot dog. Tyler thinks she's a fetchingly out-of-place New Yorker. Even before their meet-cute, we know they're made for each other. They're bound by a shared obsession with tornadoes. Here, driving off to find one, Javi asks what's happening up ahead. Kate and Tyler explain.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "TWISTERS")
ANTHONY RAMOS: (As Javi) What do you see?
DAISY EDGAR-JONES: (As Kate Carter) It already has a nice structure. Moisture levels are just right and lots of cape.
RAMOS: (As Javi) What else are you seeing?
EDGAR-JONES: (As Kate Carter) Flow is clean, pulling tons of warm, moist air from the south.
GLEN POWELL: (As Tyler Owens) And when that warm air and moisture bust through the cap, it explodes in the atmosphere, creating an anvil. The vertical wind shear begins to rotate the updraft, forming them as a cyclone.
EDGAR-JONES: (As Kate Carter) And here's the mystery.
POWELL: (As Tyler Owens) We don't know how a tornado forms. We see the hook on the radar, but...
EDGAR-JONES: (As Kate Carter) What are all the invisible factors coming together? Every little detail that...
DAISY EDGAR-JONES AND GLEN POWELL: (As Kate Carter and Tyler Owens) Has to be perfect.
POWELL: (As Tyler Owens) And it's a mix of what we know and everything we can't understand. It's part science, part religion.
POWERS: Now, Chung is the latest indie director to move straight from small, personal films to big-budget extravaganzas. In truth, the fit isn't perfect. Although the action scenes are reasonably exciting, I kept wishing Chung had a better pop sense, especially in his handling of space. His camera is often too close to the characters' faces. And while the movie does offer immersively granular views of debris swirling in a vortex, it never achieves the thrilling sense of a tornado's power and scale that comes from keeping our visual distance.
"Twisters" updates the original by making its heroine - not its hero - the center of gravity. But alas, the script doesn't let Kate be a whole lot of fun. Although Edgar-Jones is a good actress - she was terrific on the TV series "Normal People" - she lacks the big-screen electricity of an Emma Stone or Jennifer Lawrence. She's a bit overmatched by Powell, a confident actor who seems to think that there's an Academy Award for smugness. That's not a swipe, at least not completely. Carrying himself like a movie star in a world of extras, he boasts the energy and charisma to make the love story work.
As for the storms themselves, "Twisters" shows the shattering damage caused by tornadoes, and it tweaks the greedy entrepreneurs who swoop in to buy cheap property from the desperate victims. Yet fearing controversy, it never so much as mentions climate change. Chung has said that this is because he doesn't want to, quote, "preach." He only wants to show our world. But in our world, meteorologists like Tyler and Kate talk about and believe in climate change.
Then again, it's the nature of summer blockbusters not to fret over much about reality. To jack up the suspense, "Twisters" gives us an imaginary Oklahoma, whose citizens are so dim that even though they live smack-dab in Tornado Alley, are bombarded by newscasts, warning of biblically large tornadoes, see nearby towns get pulverized and find themselves buffeted by winds as they stand in the street, they still need Tyler and Kate to tell them to take shelter. Such cluelessness helps make "Twisters" an exciting movie. But if I was a Sooner, I might be tempted to sue.
BIANCULLI: John Powers reviewed the new film "Twisters." On Monday's show, our postponed interview with David Leitch about performing and directing dangerous and wild movie stunts. He was a stunt double for Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Keanu Reeves. Leitch produced and directed the new action-comedy film "The Fall Guy," starring Ryan Gosling as a stuntman who has to perform stunts in his real life in order to save his life. I hope you can join us.
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BIANCULLI: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Diana Martinez (ph). For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.