Remembering Carrie Fisher

I came across this video totally by accident last week.  I wasn't looking for something with Carrie Fisher since she was in the hospital in critical condition.  I wasn't looking for something with Carrie Fisher in it, period.  I didn't even plan the watch the whole thing.  As great as the video was, which got me to keep watching until I saw the whole thing, I wasn't planning to post it here.  But with the news yesterday that Carrie Fisher passed away, I thought I should post it.  It was too fitting not to.

I generally watch the Graham Norton Show on BBC America, and this past Saturday she was one of the guests, the reason she was in England, to promote her new book, before flying back when she had her heart attack.  But I wasn't looking for a video clip to post -- I hadn't found that particular episode all that interesting and even fast-forwarded through a bit until I finally turned it off .

I can't even tell you right now how I came across it.  I was doing some normal browsing on YouTube, when I saw a video that had both Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds together, on Oprah Winfrey's show in 2011.  I was intrigued to see them together, since I never had.  But I didn't want to watch the whole thing -- I'm not big on "celebrity scandals," and get zero scheunenfreude pleasure from other people's troubles.  If there's a scandal story on TV, I generally will click away.  If there's a headline online, I'll click to something else.  If I'm driving on the freeway and traffic slows down for an accident, I turn my head away and don't gawk when passing the cause.  So, I really didn't intend to watch.

As I said, I just wanted to see a few minutes of Carrie Fisher and her mother together.  I thought that might be nice.

As it happened, the two didn't come onstage together.  Oprah had Fisher on first.  But I didn't know how long that would be, maybe just a brief who minutes for all I knew.  So, I watched.  And it was fascinating -- open, funny, thoughtful, no self-pity.  And it went on for a while until finally Debbie Reynolds made her appearance.  And that, too, was thoughtful, open, funny, and no self-pity and even little sense of scandal...even when talking about scandals.  And we still hadn't gotten yet to all that much with mother and daughter.  And when we did, it was touching, lively, funny, wistful and mature.  

And by that point, I figured out that it was a pretty fine broadcast -- along with interesting "coming up later" promos spaced throughout.  Most especially the last one...which was pure fun, and particularly moving to watch again, but this time after the loss:  mother and daughter singing together on stage for the first time ever.  And they were both of them wonderful.

And so I watched the whole thing.

If you want to watch it all, too, here it is.  If you just want to see the singing, jump to three seconds before the 40-minute mark.
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