MARY: Political correctness is with us all the time. We dance through it skillfully saying, for example, Asian, not Oriental the way we used to. And saying African American, not black anymore. Personally, I love Black. It is stunning and strong and it’s got jazz in it. A lot of the expressions you hear in rap music are politically incorrect for me, a white woman, to use now. I hear there is a book to take to China to know what is politically correct to say there. I am for recognizing cultures — not creating America’s approved language! It drives me mad that we can’t say what comes naturally from all of our cultures — not with meanness — but with humor and understanding. And respect. It just drives me mad that we can’t just say what we think all the time.
MARLO: I totally disagree. Totally disagree.
LILY: It’s part of being civilized.
MARLO: Why would you want to offend anyone? Don’t tell me that you should have the right to say everything you want, because I don’t think you should.
MARY: I don’t think you should have the right to be insulting. But why should being insulting have narrowed down what we can say, and what we can talk about?
MARLO: Because it hurts people’s feelings; that’s why.
LILY: And words have a tremendous power. “PC” now means a computer to most people. But in the early days of the women’s movement, PC came about because of salutations — Mrs., Miss, you know. Everything that was denoted by that word. “Girls,” “Oh, you girls,” so on. All that diminished women …
MARY: Oh, ladies, I really don’t think that diminishes women.
LILY: … at that time, when there was no consciousness about it.
MARY: But, I mean, that’s ridiculous.
LILY: No, but Mary, when there’s no consciousness about it —
MARY: But you’re going to end up not having any words!
LILY: Well, I’d like to know what words you want to use.
MARY: Well, I’m going to make a list.
LILY: I hate ugly words that are meant to be diminishing to people. I don’t even like people to call someone an asshole. This is a body part — everybody has this body part, and when you diminish or denigrate this body part, you’re denigrating a part of —
MARLO: I agree.
MARY: An asshole. There are some things that are really bad mannered and I think discussing body parts is a bad mannered thing. But there are a lot of things that are not.
LILY: My mother — this is my mother: If I’d go do a show near her family in Kentucky she’d say, “Now don’t use any of those body parts.”
MARLO: The other dirty word is “liberal.” You can’t be called a liberal anymore.
MARY: Society now has actually accepted a tremendous narrowing down of its language,
MARLO: Thank God.
LILY: What language are you talking about?
MARY: I am going to make up a list for you.
LILY: OK. OK.
MARLO: I think it’s a … it’s a civilized way to live, to treat people well and not use words —
MARY: I’m not talking about, you know, treating people badly. I’m talking about the fact that it’s become ridiculous, in that so many words that are perfectly normal, average words have suddenly taken on a meaning that doesn’t exist.
JOAN: One night I was at a dinner and somebody made an anti-Semitic remark and I just sort of sat there and froze. And then I did the only thing that I could do, which was I started talking about my father, and name dropping. Like a tank. I didn’t stop with the famous names.
MARLO: Jewish names?
JOAN: No, just famous names. And I name dropped and name dropped and I got the guy’s attention and he said to me, “Oh, who is your father?” And I said, “Oh, he was a producer.” And he said, “What was his name?” And I said, “Jew.” And when everyone was choking and hyperventilating, I said it again, but this time I said “Jules.”
LILY: I was at a dinner party with a very big television producer, huge. And the couple that had this little dinner party was in the business, too. They were both writers. They had la 16-year-old daughter. A very pretty, very voluptuous, beautiful little nymphet. And the producer looked at the picture and he said, “This is my next wife,” in a lewd kind of way. And the parents just — they kind of laughed it off. Then right on the heels of that he told that awful joke about “when is a woman like a dolphin?” So crass you can’t believe it and I said: “Why would you tell a joke like that? Why would you talk about their daughter and then tell a joke like that to us?”
MARLO: I can remember, so many times, being in rooms with all men and being just humiliated by what they said about women, because I was a female producer when I was 22 years old and I would be at the networks and go to these dinners and things. And they would say things about women, body parts included. And I could not believe — as if I was, you know, going to find that funny.
JOAN: Marlo, you were a producer at 22?
MARLO: I was.
LILY: Well, she was a huge star. She had like one of the very first television shows, “That Girl.”
MARLO: Yeah. I’d thought of it and I sold it and I produced it. And the point is, I would sit in those meetings with all the guys from Grey Advertising and the guys from ABC, and all these men from Clairol and Bristol Meyers and all the people that I worked with. I was the only woman in the room for such a long time. And I —
MARY: So was I. But they never, ever — I think the theater and the movie business tends to bring that out, don’t you? More than —
MARLO: Well, also, I think if you’re a pretty young actress it gets them all excited. I’ll never forget, Gloria Steinem and I went to a meeting with this agent. He invited us to a meeting. He wanted me to play Gloria in that movie that they made many years later, a TV movie about her being a bunny. We were in the meeting, and that was the first time I met Gloria. It was way, way early ’60s. And he started talking to us about it and and at one point he said, “God, this is such an exciting meeting; I want to fuck both of you.” Honest to God, I thought we were going to faint. It was the most horrible moment.
MARY: Ladies. Ladies. Honest to God, you have to give these … you’ve got to give some men a break. I want to tell you: nobody at Procter & Gamble ever said anything like that, ever.
MARLO: I didn’t work with Procter & Gamble. The good part about the meeting was that Gloria and I met and became fast friends. But we walked out of the meeting and thought, “Oh, my God!” I was already a star on “That Girl.” Gloria was already Gloria Steinem. We weren’t even some little dopey girls, and he shouldn’t have even said it to them. But imagine what he would have said to them!
JOAN: That poor guy. He was so retarded. For him this was the biggest compliment.
MARLO: I guess what I’m trying to say is that, thank God for political correctness. You can’t say those kinds of things anymore.
MARY: I think I just grew up with a much more innocent group of people, because I never heard anybody ever talk like that to women, or with children around, or —
JOAN: Maybe they were just scared to do that around you.
MARLO: They do that. To actresses they do. To pretty little actresses they do.
MARY: I think that in the movie business, and the theater, you would get more of that than you would —
MARLO: Well, if you read the sexual harassment suits that are going on every single day, they’re not in the theater. They’re everywhere.
MARY: Well, they certainly weren’t where I was because I never heard any of that.
MARLO: Well, you’re lucky.
JOAN: Lily. You must have had stories like that, no?
LILY: Oh, sure. I went, one time, to — I’m not going to mention the producer’s name. I was totally unknown, just a kid coming and going to auditions in New York. And he said, “I’m going to bring you to the West Coast, and test you for this part.” And he said, “And if that doesn’t work out you can always keep house for me.”
MARLO: Oh, God.
LILY: Or something really stupid. And, of course the most I could come up with was, “I don’t think so.”
MARLO: Gloria and didn’t know what to say. What do you say to something so blatant?
LILY: And then if you get too riled up, it’s “Hey, dear, don’t you have any sense of humor?”
MARLO: Oh, exactly. “That’s the problem with you women. You don’t have a sense of humor.”
LILY: “Aren’t you a good sport?”
JOAN: But what this comes down to, today, is that the men are more careful. So that when you arrive from a trip, and you’re waiting at the carousel in the terminal building and your big suitcase comes around, and you can’t get it off the carousel, and there’s not a single American man who’s going to step forward, and yank it off.
LILY: I get quite a bit of nice help from nice, muscular guys at the airport, Joan.
MARY: If you just turn to the guy next to you and say, “Would you help me?” they will.
MARLO: I always say, “Could you help me? I can’t lift that thing.”
LILY: I think they’re proud to help, you know, because they are bigger and they can pull a big suitcase.
MARY: That’s the big thing they have. They’re bigger.
LILY: Mary, I agree with you. We certainly don’t need to berate men and give them a hard time. They are human beings.
JOAN: They’re a little retarded. Oh. Sorry. Challenged. Challenged.
MARLO: I’m married to a terrific guy who goes out of his way not to do things like that.
LILY: You married Phil. We all said, “Oh, God, that’s the guy we want to marry.” And then you up and married him.
MARLO: And that’s why I married him. He asked one time, “Why don’t you want to be married?” And I said, “One of the reasons I don’t want to ever get married is because courteousness flies out the window. And I really like it.” I noticed how, when I was single and the guys I worked with were married, they paid way more attention to me. They’d put my coat on while their wife stood there trying to find her sleeve. They’d light my cigarette while the woman was trying to find, you know, a match underneath the table somewhere. I thought: I’m never getting married. I’ve got to keep these guys on their toes.
But then when I met Phil he was a very courteous gentleman. And I love him for that. I like it when he’s courteous to other women as well as to me. I really appreciate that about him. I mean, if we have a woman who comes to our apartment for dinner or something, and she’s alone, he goes downstairs and makes sure she gets a taxi. I like that in him. And I … you know, so I don’t down all men at all. I mean, I’m a woman who’s had many, many good, loving relationships. But there are a lot of guys that … a lot who take advantage of women that they don’t know. And take some of the women that they love for granted. And I don’t like it. And I think somehow political correctness has given some kind of a … what’s the word? A definition, some boundaries, to how we behave with each other. And I’m all for boundaries.
LILY: But it also … it does raise consciousness and it begins to make people reflect on the … even if it’s not totally conscious. There’s something … something filters through and the result is the good things that you’re talking about.
JOAN: Well, that’s better than going to a dinner in Paris where both the wife and the husband try and jump you.
MARLO: Oh, God. You’re just a sexy girl.
JOAN: No, no, no. It’s just the French.