Tag: debbie reynolds

There’s so much to say about Carrie Fisher, and so much out there that I can’t claim for this to be anywhere near comprehensive. But here are a few of my favorite tributes:

The Establishment’s Anne Theriault: General Leia Organa Is The Hero We Need Right Now

Like Fisher, Leia earned every tiny ounce of respect that came her way. She was given the title of princess because of who her parents were, but she earned the rank of general through hard and often miserable work. We love the mythos that heroes get where they are because they are special or chosen, and the people we hold up as icons reflect that. But the rebel army isn’t made up of Jedis—for the most part it’s just ordinary people united to fight for the same cause. And Leia, in spite of having once been royalty and maybe having some ability with the Force, is mostly as ordinary as any other soldier; she rose through the ranks not by manipulating the Force but by learning leadership skills and military tactics.

Simply put: Leia got to where she was by showing up and quietly learning to do the work.

The Guardian’s Merope Mills: My time with Carrie Fisher, a hurricane of energy, charisma and foul language

[The Force Awakens] had just been released, and Carrie had quickly become everyone’s favourite part of the promotional tour. She shot down anyone who asked about her weight loss for the role and had recently asked, via Twitter, for everyone to stop debating whether or not she had aged well – as it hurt “all three of my feelings”.

Like everything Carrie said or did, that tweet revealed a truth – she told me she hated the way she looked in that film and suddenly, unexpectedly, she was in tears.

Minutes later she was in high spirits, plotting to tweet an old photo she had unearthed from the first set of Star Wars in which she was cupping C-3PO’s balls. “This is going to get me in trouble with the people at Disney,” she said, while I held the pic steady and she snapped, “but I don’t care.”

Former assistant Byron Lane:

Most of my time with her involved me staring at her, wide-eyed and in blissful shock that one person could live a life so fully. We rode dog sleds in Canada, swam hot springs in Japan, pet koalas in Australia. That’s how she lived. Extraordinary. Brilliant. Hilarious.

The Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri: So long, Princess, and thanks

You could always tell there was a real human being in there beneath the silly space hair — one with a sharp wit and an observer’s eye. She did not take fame seriously, and through her writings demystified it, often hilariously. She shared too, with warmth and courage, her experiences of loss and mental illness. Her life was an open book, and it was fantastically well-written.

Jenny Lawson: Stay afraid. But do it anyway.

When I’m on book tour I spend a lot of time with drivers who take me from airports to bookstores to hotels to new cities. They usually work for the book companies and they see all sorts of interesting people in their work so I always ask them, “Who is the best person you’ve ever driven?” and “Who is the worst?” I always promise not to share the worst but frankly there should be an entire book written by drivers who have seen entirely too much of the worst of people (because it is fascinating) but my favorite stories are always the ones about the best people. I’ve probably asked over 100 drivers who their favorite person they spent time with was and so far only a single person has been mentioned more than once…Carrie Fisher.

John Scalzi for The Los Angeles Times on Carrie Fisher as a writer: Witty and vulnerable, she took us to the edge of our comfort zone:

“I feel I’m very sane about how crazy I am,” Fisher wrote in “Wishful Drinking,” directly after describing “being invited” to go to a mental hospital. That was part of the charm of her writing: it would take you places you might not have wanted to go, and kept up a stream of chatter to help you remain, if not comfortable, at least comforted. Your friend Carrie Fisher was with you, even as she was observing herself.

And yes, those much-vaunted edits to The Empire Strikes Back floating around are indeed director Irvin Kershner’s, not Carrie’s. But that doesn’t distract from her own accomplishments, which /Film’s Peter Sciretta has documented.

There’s plenty more on our Tumblr, but this may be my favorites – and takes I think Carrie herself would have approved of: