Shirley Maclaine and David Letterman faced the end of evening interview: "He's a fool"
The host would not stop asking the actor to believe in reincarnation.
Although an acclaimed Oscar -winning actor, Shirley Maclaine is also known for her belief in reincarnation - a subject she has written in several successful books . Unfortunately, her sincere spiritual beliefs also made her a target for japes by actors and talks of talk show, and never more sadly than in an appearance of 1988 Late night with David Letterman . His tense meeting with David Letterman led to a war of words in the press which lasted several years. Read the rest to find out more about this unexpected quarrel.
Read this then: Tom Hanks's quarrel with this star is "painful", said friend .
Letterman hunted Maclaine on past lives.
Maclaine appeared In the show of the late evening in October 1988 to promote his film Madame Sousatzka . At his dismay, Letterman was more interested in discussing the famous interest of the star for the regression of past life, according to a Vintage article in Deeret News .
The jokes have started even before Maclaine goes on stage, with the host noting: "Although it is her first appearance in our show, she insists that she was already here." After a few moments to speak with the actor of his film, Letterman started to say: "Can you watch me and see if I had other lives?"
"You have big troubles David," Riposta Maclaine, already visibly bored by the management of the interview, telling him that he had, "a lot of karma to have fun."
Letterman was not discouraged and continued to make jokes about the alleged lives of Maclaine - as a monk, an Atlantic resident and a dancer in a harem - while his guest tried to close it. "It's just something I think is true," she said, adding that she had spent time in Asian countries where belief in reincarnation is more common.
"Maybe Dear was right."
Things went quickly when the program came back from a commercial break, with Letterman Aiguille Maclaine for having told her that she did not want to talk about her past lives. She didn't have anything.
"I have already said that I don't think we can enter it and that you continue to harass," replied Maclaine. "Maybe Pamper Was right, perhaps you are an [explanive], "she added, referring to the infamous appearance of the 1986 series of the Oscar-winning star, during which she lobed the insult of seven letters To the host when asked why she was so reluctant to be interviewed.
Obviously exasperated with Maclaine, Letterman asked: "Are you really upset or do you pretend to be upset?"
"Can't you make a difference?" Maclaine replied.
In a moment that took the interview from simply memorable to downright bizarre, Maclaine then proposed to give Letterman a "meditation" and carried out her hair and to start examining her head. In response, Letterman suddenly put an end to the interview ("Do you want to look at this? We are short of time.") And we tried low excuses before cutting advertising again. After the break, Maclaine had disappeared from the scene.
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Maclaine discussed the debacle on Entertainment tonight .
A few days later, Maclaine approached the clumsy appearance on Entertainment tonight . "[Letterman] had jokes that I think he was going to attach to each past life or something like that, but I take it much more respectfully than that, and I was not about to make a joke of Nickel on what took me a year to write, "she said. "He wouldn't get out."
Entertainment tonight accommodate Mary Hart said Maclaine had "no animosity towards [letterman]" but said that a future appearance in her show seemed "doubtful". Indeed, the actor would never appear on Late at night .
Letterman admitted that he loved him when the guests become fiery.
Letterman offered his own reflections on the incident in a 1989 to interview Later with Bob Costas . The host and the actor admitted that even if he was a little bored when his guests become combative, he always prefers a Maclaine fiery report.
"It was a bit disturbing," he told Costas. "At the time, it was my perception that it was difficult. On the other hand, after looking at it again, it seems that an argument could be advanced that I simply did not use the Judgment suitable for dealing with her. But at the time I wanted to crush her. "
Letterman blamed the bad vibrations of the interview on the fact that Maclaine refused to lead a "pre-interview" with his staff before leaving for the air. "Usually, guests will speak to our talents and we will organize a plan, nothing more than four or five areas of things they want to talk about," said Letterman. "It is not scripted, it's just to help them and to help me. Shirley was too busy to do it, even if she claimed to have done it in a previous life." AE0FCC31AE342FD3A1346EBB1F342FCB
Without this interview, said Letterman, his team prepared questions focused on "a large part of his life, which is this thing in past life, and we thought it was fairly fair". So when it turned out that she did not want to discuss it all, the host was a little stunned.
"At that time, you want to reach and say," Why didn't you answer the phone at the hotel this afternoon? We could have talked about everything you wanted to talk about "" he added.
Both had trouble letting the incident go.
Although contemporary reports have indicated that Maclaine left Late at night Without resentment, neither the host nor the actor could let the incident go so easily. Letterman has made it a bit of it (something he has often done with his guests ), which refers to the combative interview or mocking Maclaine several times in future shows, including in a list of the best 10 in April 1989, twice while responding to the mail of viewers in 1990 and 1992, and Still in 2011.
Maclaine, meanwhile, had hardwords for Letterman's attitude towards her after asking Lake Ricki , his co-star in the 1996 film Mrs Winterbourne , if she thought Maclaine was "crazy".
"It says more about David than I do," said Maclaine (said ( cited in The Tampa Bay Times ). "He is such a negative and so caustic man", adding that his beliefs "are all concerned with old questions ... Why are we here? Where do we come from? ... All that seems so serious that I know that He needs a little comic relief, but that does not mean that I am crazy to want to try to find the answers. "
Maclaine told Oprah that she was good to be the target of the joke - as long as it's funny.
Decades later, in an interview with Oprah Winfrey , Maclaine has thought about her famous Pop culture personality as the lady who believes in reincarnation, telling the host that she has never really had a problem to be the butt of the late evening actors . "I never felt particularly criticized," said Maclaine. "It was my truth, my experience."
In fact, Maclaine welcomed attention. "All that concerned me is that if they made jokes about me, that they were funny," said Maclaine. "I can't stand a joke that is not funny. So when when Jay Leno Or Johnny Carson … The writers would call me and said they are going to make Shirley MacLaine jokes; I would help them write them. I love all these jokes because, you know, frankly, to be a kind of joke alive? When you get there, I must say that life itself is an experience out of the body. ""
