Get Out! GAY Magazine – Issue 391 –October 31, 2018

Illeana Douglas is a renaissance woman.
Her distinguished career includes theater,
standup comedy, movies (including several
Martin Scorsese films), TV, writing, music and
producing. She exemplifies an artist who
never stops creating and generating her own
projects.
Douglas will receive the Pioneer in Comedy
Award at the first-annual Palm Springs
International Comedy Festival Awards,
coming November 16 to 18 in Downtown
Palm Springs. She can currently be seen in
the show “Funny Ladies” on Turner Classic
Movies, where she’s joined by comedy legend
Carol Burnett, to present a roundup of great
comedic actresses.
Modesty aside, how would you describe
yourself?
I’ve always said art is where you make it. I
see the world as an artist. I try to live my life
as an artist would, finding beauty in nature.
Compositions excite me. I love to people
watch. It’s important to engage in the world,
otherwise your outlook becomes static. I want
to express the human condition with laughter
and with pathos. Please don’t call me quirky.
You are a renaissance woman: you act,
write, direct, produce, host a podcast and
much more. How do you juggle all of it?
I’m happiest when I am working. I’m here to
learn, so I work hard at getting better at my
craft: being a better interviewer, preserving
film histories, telling women’s stories as a
writer/director. In my downtime I love to
cook, and as most people know I am pretty
dedicated to my dance classes.
“Entertainment Weekly” named your
memoir, “I Blame Dennis Hopper: Stories
from A Life Lived In and Out of the
Movies” as “one of the best books of
2016.” How does it feel to be praised for
your writing after having won numerous
acting awards?
My grandfather, Melvyn Douglas, always
wanted me to be a writer. After reading
some stories I had written, he gave me a few
books for inspiration. One of my favorites was
Dorothy Parker. That led me down the path
of really wanting to be a writer. What I tried
to do was not so much “write,” but just tell
good stories. That’s what a writer/director
does, anyway. I love acting, and I want to
continue acting! My grandfather won his first
Oscar at age 63, his second Oscar at 80! I’m a
character actress, so there will always be time
for me to pursue great acting roles, but my
role as a writer is obviously more personal.
Your follow up memoir, “This Never
Happened: Outrageous Stories from a
Life Lived In and Out of the Movies,” will
be out in November 2019. Can you share
some details, preview or teaser?
There were a couple stories that did not make
the first book. They were slightly creepy, or
verging on black humor, and I didn’t feel
they fit in the narrative, so we pulled them
out. This led me to thinking—because I
always liked stories about the dark nature of
suburbia, like Cheever, or the dark humor of
Evelyn Waugh or Dorothy Parker, that maybe
the second book could be all outrageous
things that ever happened to me with a
decidedly wicked comic edge.