Happy 35th Anniversary, “Postcards from the Edge”

Since we live in a culture excited to celebrate 20th, 25th, 30th, etc. anniversaries of pretty much everything, here’s one I may be the only person to be aware of. August 5th is the 35th anniversary of the publication of Carrie Fisher’s first novel, Postcards from the Edge.

In January of 1981, I was in L.A. doing a profile of Albert Brooks, in connection with his second film, Modern Romance. I was interviewing Albert’s co-writer, Monica Johnson, one night when she got a call from Penny Marshall — Monica was then working on Laverne & Shirley — to come over to her house to solve some episode-related problem. I drove her to Encino and there, sitting in Penny’s living room, was Carrie Fisher.

While Penny and Monica addressed the script issue, Carrie and I talked for about two hours. She’d just finished filming a terrible movie called Under the Rainbow, co-starring Chevy Chase, and she delighted me by making savage fun of him. But Carrie didn’t just talk (though she did, a lot, about so many things); she also listened, truly interested and happily engaged in the conversation. This was clearly someone in love with words, as am I, and we came out of that encounter friends for life.

I was still living in New York, where Carrie had an apartment, so we would get together whenever we were both in the same city…