Jamie Lee Curtis, LETTERS FROM CAMP

[1:39]Zibby Owens: I'm Zibby Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books. This thirty minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, 365 a year for about thirty minutes. I am also the publisher for Zippy Books, which publishes 12 books a year in fiction and memoir. Our books are already out now. You can check it out on zippybooks.com. And we have a magazine called Zippy Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle features. That's at zippymag.com. We have classes at zippyclasses.com. And I recently opened a bookstore in LA called Zibby's Bookshop at 1113 Montana Avenue at 11th Street in Santa Monica. I hope that you are able to enjoy some of our other offerings, but this here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in 2018.

[2:30]Jamie Lee Curtis: And no matter what I do, this is basically my favorite thing. Enjoy. This weekend, we're releasing my episode with Jamie Lee Curtis, who has since won the Academy Award for best supporting actress since I recorded it. I've been a fan of Jamie Lee Curtis forever since like Trading Places days, and I hope all of you are too. I thought it would be fun to rerelease this. And for those of you who missed it, check out all the amazing things she had to say. She was really down to earth and wonderful, and I totally enjoyed it. I was so excited to interview Jamie Lee Curtis. Oh my gosh. She has been one of my favorite actresses for so long from the time of watching her in Trading Places to Freaky Friday. I mean, she is just such a superstar. It's amazing. I also love her children's books. She's written more than a dozen so far, all of which are fantastic. And now she has done an Audible original called Letters from Camp, which is fantastic, and she also is part of the narration of that. She's a beloved American actress and talent from the time she started Halloween, and she's still busy producing so many different things. She's also recently started My Hand in Yours, which we're going to talk about on the podcast, which is a nonprofit that benefits children in the hospital. So listen and enjoy it. Welcome, Jamie. Thank you so much for coming on. I love Don't have time to read books. This is such a treat. Well, apparently you do because there are a lot of books behind you. There are a lot of rainbow organized books behind you. Yes. Well, I try to make time and share what I can read with other people who might not have as much maybe. I understand. I understand. This is how we do it, isn't it? We share with other people. You have contributed so much in so many different areas in the artistic world. And your latest endeavor is Letters From Camp, an Audible original, which came out this summer. So I just wanted to talk a little bit first about that. Tell me how the idea for an Audible original came about and particularly this show. Okay. Well, it's it's funny because it's it's such a wonderful story that the show was born from such a beautiful moment. So I am the proud godmother of three New York raised children. My friend, Lisa Birnbach lives in New York and her three children obviously lived there with her and were educated in New York. And I'm the godmother of all of them. And my middle godchild, Boko, wrote me a letter from camp when she was 12 years old, which she never sent. She wrote it and then put it in her shoebox of cards and then obviously didn't send it. Had my name written on the outside of the envelope. And in November of last year, I got a letter in the mail from Lisa. And inside that letter was the letter from Boco unopened. And I opened it up and it was a letter from a 12 year old saying, Dear Godmother Jamie, I made a mistake. I got into trouble. Blah, blah, blah. I wish you were here because you would know what to do, blah, blah, blah. And I immediately called Boko, who's 26 years old and a comedy writer here in Los Angeles. And I said, Boko, I got your letter from when you were 12. And I said, You know, it's fantastic. And there's a TV show here. So originally we were gonna do it as a TV show. And as we started talking about it, we found out that the Audible idea, doing a podcast, doing a scripted podcast with characters and sound effects, just like old radio plays. They call it TV for your ears. It feels like a TV show, but it's audible. And they bought it and loved it, and we made it this summer during COVID. Everybody was remote. It was written in about a month, and then we performed it, and then it was out August 4. Wow. Crazy. That's the way to do it, right? Well, and it's a new world for me, the Audible world. And Audible as a company has been fantastic as a partner to really understand that there are people who want content, who want things. And this was just a wonderful, it's super funny. They have been fantastic partners Audible in the creation of it and the whole world of Audible. I didn't know about it. And it's just been so fun. And we had such a great cast. It's got songs in it that are like earworms that get in your head and then you can't get it out of your head. And it's just been an absolute joy, kind of crazy experience and super fun. Amazing. I heard that when I was listening to the introductory theme song, I spent many years at Sleep Boy Camp and it just like took me back to all that time on the bus and singing the camp songs and all the rest. Were you a Sleep Boy Camp girl yourself? I was. I am, as you can maybe tell, I like to compartmentalize. I like things to all work well. And for me, trunks at camp were like your own fiefdom. I know some kids hated the idea of a trunk and they had to keep it clean and the thing and everything was all messy. I loved it. I loved that you could roll your t shirts and line them up. I loved the little soap box. Remember it was like a plastic I loved every aspect of camp. I love lanyards. I love the group activities. And so this show just spoke to my heart and made me remember how wonderful that experience is for people. And honestly, if people have the opportunity to go to camp, I think anybody who had that opportunity, obviously not everyone had that opportunity, but the privileged people that were able to go to camp have that nostalgic feeling of creating like a new version of yourself and kind of learning who you are. And I think that's the great benefit of camp. It's so true. I actually, my son is like very into how his room looks and now he's growing up, he's five and he's like, I don't wanna have a step stool as my side table. So literally yesterday I was like, you know what? I think I'm gonna get you like an old fashioned camp trunk and I could put it here and you could store all your little treasures. So anyway, trunks have been on my mind this whole Let me I'm sorry. You just said something about your son is very specific about the way his room looks? Yes. I might ask you to turn over your left shoulder and look at your bookcase. I know. I see where it comes from, but he's my only one of four who actually cares. So there you go. Who knew? The fourth time. Well, Letters From Camp is absolutely fantastic and a total Thank you so much. Fabulous to listen to. But I also wanted to talk about your over a dozen children's books because I've been reading them with my kids. The oldest are 13, and so I've been reading them for years. And I'm so impressed with the output and the content and the cleverness and the way you make different concepts from self esteem to the alphabet to everything and being brave and all of it accessible and fun. So tell me about how you started writing children's books. Well, I thank you, by the way. Thank you. They are my best thing. They will be the best contribution I make to the universe besides raising my kids. Faux shore. I never thought I'd write a book. I barely got out of school. I am a well educated, uneducated woman. Spell so poorly. I count on my fingers. I did not receive schooling at all. So it's a miracle that I survived my youth. I never thought I'd write a book. And my four year old daughter walked into my office one day, apropos of nothing. And I was sitting at a desk and she was down the hall and she came marching into my room. And I remember she stood there and kind of was delicious in her four year oldness. She went, When I was little, I wore diapers, but now I use a potty. And then she marched out of the room and I thought, Oh my goodness, that's amazing. And I wrote down on a piece of paper in front of me, When I was little, a four year old's memoir of her youth. Which just made me laugh because she was talking about when she was little, the way I talk about when I had long hair and wore it in a shag. Or when I wore bell bottoms. Like the good old days that I remember fondly. She was reminiscing about because she had a past, even though I only looked at her having a future, because she was so little. I never thought that she would look back. I only thought she would look forward. And when you have small children, you're only looking forward. School, shoes, clothes, food, school, clothes, shoes, food. I mean, it's the you're only looking forward. Where are they gonna go to grade school, high school, college? And so in the writing of that, I wrote down a list of things that she couldn't do and now she can do. And I found that at the end of the list, I wrote three things, I started to cry and I realized it was a book. And it was the last thing I thought I would do. And all of a sudden I was moved by it. And I realized it was a book about self discovery, about self ownership. And I realized it was a book for children. And I sold it that day. I sent it via fax. Faxes were new then. That's how old I am. And I remember sending it in that curlicue paper to an agent in New York who was my mother in law's best friend. She sent it to Harper Collins, which was actually Harper Rowe back then. And they bought it. Joanna Kotler, who was the head of children's books, bought the book. And that began my career as an author. And I had had a book that my daughter Annie loved, we loved the way parents and children love books called Annie Banani. And it was written by Leah Kamiko and it was illustrated by Laura Cornell. And so I said to Harper Rowe, who had published Annie Bonanny, I would like Laura Cornell to draw the pictures. And she and I have been partners since then for whatever, thirteen, fourteen books. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Last thing in the world I thought I'd do. Last thing in the world. And I don't write them. They come to me. I wait for them and then they pop into my head almost fully formed and I can barely get them down on the paper. That's how fast they come. Wow. And your most recent one, Me, My Selfie and I, that was hilarious. The mom outside, like taking the selfies in the snow and all that. Well, as I get older and the children get older, I'm no longer seeing the world from a young child's perspective. I'm seeing it from our perspective of how we relate to young people and the poison of social media and our self obsession and our self altering nature. And I mean, even here, I'm sitting here and I have a light over here and I have a light over here. Because if I didn't have those lights, it wouldn't be at all good. And so it's not like I will tell the truth on myself. I do it too. But I don't alter photographs, and I don't throw up 100 filters and all of a sudden try to look like I'm not 61 years old. I think it's a poison. And it was my way of talking about it because I knew if I had made it about kids doing it, nobody would have liked it because they would have felt that I was making a social statement about them. And I think they would have been like, yeah, well, F off. You know what I mean? Like, just go away. Whereas by turning it on the mom, making the mom the one who's obsessed by it, who can't stop looking at herself, The constancy of her, the faces we make. It's crazy. But it really was my think piece about self obsession and the opposite of that, which is selflessness, which is what the world needs way more of. And so it was a little bit of a think piece. And speaking of the selflessness, tell me more about my hand in yours, which is your latest endeavor, which as you know, I just got very excited about myself. It's very sweet of you to support it. So I am 61 years old and I am at that point in my life where my motto now is, if not now, when? If not me, who? What am I not doing to create love in the universe? How selfish is my life? And I have always supported Children's Hospital Los Angeles. And for years, if you went through a bad thing or a friend of mine went through a bad thing, I would either buy a little gift and I would send it. I'm a gift giver. I like gifting. And I would write on a card, I'm so sorry to hear about your mother. I hope she recovers. Remember through it all my hand in yours, is what I would say. It was a phrase that I put those four words together to say, I'm not with you. But imagine what it would feel like if you felt my hand in yours. And that's what I want you to feel when I'm not there with you. And I've been saying that for a long time. And I've been collecting small sculptures by this artist named Ann Ricketts, who makes little feet, little tiny, beautiful feet that I love to send people and say, Remember to be where your feet are. Meaning get out of your head and be right where you are in the moment. And so I've been buying and supporting Ann Ricketts for a long time. And I had this thought, what if we made a sculpture of two hands holding? I don't know if you can see it. Let me put some light on it. Oh my, look at me with my lighting skills. And that it could fit in your palm. You could hold it like this and that it would be two hands holding. And I went to Anne and asked her if I could commission her to make them. And I explained to her that I was gonna donate 100% of the sales to Children's Hospital Los Angeles, is an organization I've worked with. And I was gonna call it my hand in yours. And I was gonna create a marketplace for comfort items for people during times of crisis. Now, this was last year when I thought I would start this project. And I thought maybe it would be like an Instagram store or something. I didn't really know. And then the universe changed and COVID hit. And all of a sudden the need for contact with other people, the need to be able to send someone a gift and say, I am with you during this incredibly hard time, presented itself. And so I started a company and I never thought I'd start a company. I underwrote the company so that a 100% of the profits. And that means that Ann Rickards donates all of her time, all of her artistry, all of her sculpting time, all of the preparation. And then they get sent to a foundry where they're produced. And then she makes sure that each one is perfect, polishes each one, bags each one. All of that is done for free so that I can sell them and 100% of that sale goes to Children's Hospital Los Angeles. And so everybody that has participated, Anne Ricketts, my friend, Kathy Waterman has created this fantastic hand charm. I don't know if you can see it, which I will tell you from product testing, I have reached up and grabbed that hand. There's something so tactile about holding this pendant as I go through my day. So Kathy created that, that's on the website. And so I have now expanded the website. There are now medallions that you can buy because obviously I wanted to make sure that there were things with different price points. So the medallion is $12 And for $12 you can have it sent to a loved one with a note from you and the money goes to Children's Hospital. And then the sculptures obviously are more money than pendant, blankets. Soon we're gonna have candles. We're gonna have beautiful objects. It's objects of comfort in times of crisis, 100% goes to Children's Hospital. And all of a sudden I have a store. All of a sudden I have a store. I like shit. I'm doing shipping every day. It's hilarious because I'm not that person, but yet I've become that person. Well, I'll look for you at UPS, you know. You will be receiving it at UPS or USPS. It depends what method you choose Or FedEx. You can choose all of the methodology to getting it to you. You might wanna add some pictures of the scale of it because I was on the website earlier, like show it off. You mean of the pendant? Like just to show Maybe how big or small they I did it in too much of a hurry, but I didn't notice like somebody wearing it or anyway. Yes, I will do so. That's such a good idea. Good. I will get on it. Let me get my people on it. Yeah, you go and you do that. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. 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[22:54]Jamie Lee Curtis: Why did you pick Children's Hospital Los Angeles? Did you a personal connection? Did something happen or did you use it? Or do you just think it's a great thing or what? I have been a supporter of children's hospitals throughout the country for a long time. It started when I was making a movie in Pontiac, Illinois. And there was a charity put on by the town of Pontiac for a young woman named Lori Tull, who was the first successful heart transplant recipient as a child. She was 13 years old and it was experimental surgery. The insurance company was not gonna pay for it. And so the town of Pontiac put on a benefit and the movie I was making, we joined the benefit. And she and I became friends. And when she passed away at 19, I made a big donation to Children's Hospital Pittsburgh, which was a fantastic institution at the front of that type of surgery. Doctor. Starzl, Thomas Starzl was really a pioneer in transplant surgery. And I worked with them for years. And then when I came back home every time, it felt weird that I would go to Pittsburgh and work on behalf of people in Illinois when in fact I live in California and I have one of the greatest institutions in Los Angeles. And so I literally just cold called them one day and said, Look, I'm doing this work for other places. I would like to start to support Children's Hospital Los Angeles. And then it ended up that they were doing bond initiatives to raise money, hospital bonds. And I just became the spokesperson and started doing the commercials for them. And then I've just been involved with them since. They're just a fantastic organization. It's my hometown, born and raised here in the City Of Angels. And it was important to me that I give back to them. So they get all of my support. I can just imagine the person who picked up the phone that day who was like, Yeah, that'll work. We'll take that donation. Sure, get involved. Why not? For anybody watching this, you don't have to do big gestures. Like one of the proudest things that ever happened in my life is that one of my best girlfriends, because of my involvement at Children's Hospital, decided to volunteer as a cuddler. And a cuddler is for all of the premature babies who are in the NICU, who do not have their parents or mother or father or grandparents with them. Volunteers are trained and then vetted. And then you go in and literally sit in a chair and they bring you these babies and you rock them and hold them and sing to them. And one of my best girlfriends made that her commitment to Children's Hospital. No fanfare, no big TV ads, but hours and hours and hours of her day where she would hold these little babies. That's what I'm saying to people watching and listening. We have to do something. We have to. As human beings, we are not here to look at ourselves on our phones. That is not the reason we're here. We're here to manifest our destiny as human beings and create a loving connection in the universe. That's why we're here. That's just why we're here. And so, whatever it is, you can do something. And this is a time in our nation, in the world where we all have to be doing something. I don't care what it is. I mean, look at what Bette Midler has done in New York City. Look at what Bette Midler has done with her parks projects, reclaiming these old, disheveled pieces of property and turned them into local urban gardens and meeting places and transformed the city. That's just one person going, you know what? I'm going to do that. And all the volunteers and all the people that joined her, that's what we can do. And I hope that's what we teach our children to do. Because if we're not teaching them that, it's over. Then it's just anarchy, and then the world will blow up. But I do believe that you can make a huge, huge difference in the lives of other people by suiting up and showing up and trying to help people. So if anybody takes away anything from this besides I do a lot of hand motions, then that would be a good thing. This could actually be part of your my hand and yours, you know? Well, I'm gonna tell you a quick story. I'm literally, I've been texting with the person about the picture on the chain. So let me just finish that. This is what we call multitasking. I love it. I make a suggestion. It gets implemented during the podcast. Like immediately and it should be up on the website before we're done. Oh, okay, hold on. I have to pull this back because all of a sudden everything just went weird, but now I'm back. So this, So here's a funny thing. When I was doing Activia yogurt commercials for a very long time, there were hand gestures that we had to use to demonstrate what the product was helping to achieve. And the first one, and I literally had training to learn how to go like this. Where you go like this. Now it can't be, it's like it's truth in advertising. So it's again, it's not a laxative and it's a probiotic, but it's supposed to help you poop better. And so I had the training where I did this, but then there was all sorts of kerfuffling about, you know, what does this really mean? And so then the new And if you go back and look at those commercials, which I loved doing by the way, and the fun part of it was actually meeting people. But the second wave of the hand gesture was we couldn't do this anymore. So we had to talk about how it made you feel better. And the new gesture was this. It was like, when you take this product, you feel lighter and better. And I had training in that too. And there is a commercial where I'm walking along talking, talking, talking. And then I go like this anyway. Hand gestures. Behind the scenes of the yoga. Who knew? Who knew? My daughter would not forgive me if I didn't ask you at least one question about Freaky Friday, which is like her favorite movie. Were there Yes, ma'am. I just have to ask something. I don't know. I don't even have a question. I guess, how was it filming that movie? And are you gonna be doing any more movies? Or are you now, like, firmly in the children's book Might Come Again? We might do another audible original. What's coming next? That was a lot of questions. That was, like, 25. Yeah. Sorry about that. It's in one. It's alright. I'll watch this. Watch this. Watch this. I'm ready. I'm I'd still make movies. I just had a Halloween movie. I was in the movie Knives Out last year. We have another Halloween movie to shoot. I may go off and make another movie. So yes, I'm in the movie business. I'm in the TV business as I have now a company that is trying to produce our own work. Part of which is the Letters From Camp podcast, which I believe, fingers crossed, that we will make more of. It was always conceived as a three summer show. We wanted to avoid teenagers because young girls are like, yes, we wanna avoid teenagers. So we wanted to set a show in the summer of Mookie Hooper's twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth year. So we're hoping that that happens. And lastly, I loved Freaky Friday. It was a surprise for me. I was in the middle of a book tour. I had a 15 year old daughter of my own and a five year old son. And an actress pulled out of the movie and I stepped on a moving train. Honestly, of in three days, I was now pretending to be 15 and 50 all at the same time. Like it was fantastic. And I think the reason why it's so good and why it was such a pleasure for me is that I had zero time to prepare for it. Zero. On a scale of zero to 100, zero. Like, honestly, three days later I was shooting. And so because of that, I had to just go, Okay, whatever. How old am I? I mean, just like immediately release my ego and just be 15, which I was living with a 15 year old and I knew many 15 year olds. And so it was very easy for me to do. And I think if I'd had a lot of time, I might've gotten very self conscious about it. And in that sense, was the freest I've ever been in my life. Just was like, okay, what am I doing today? Okay. And because of that, I think it was so successful because I was having the time of my life. Amazing. I love that. You can tell. Like joy. It was so fun. It was amazing. And because of that movie, I will actually have put into the world of parenting a phrase that I ad libbed, which is not my skill. I am not an improviser, but I did improvise because I was living with a 15 year old of my own shooting at the Palisades High School. Oh my gosh. My first day of work was at Pally High, very near from where I live. And when the mom drops her daughter off and the daughter gets out of the car and the mom leans out the window and says, Make good choices out loud while all of the kids are around her. It may be my proudest moment. And certainly is going to be my legacy from that movie is make good choices, you know, will outlive me, I think. I think that's a good if I were gonna make a title for this podcast, that would be it. Make good choices. That's like all of what you've talked about, right? In life, in literature, in audibles and everything, giving back. It's all about that. But it's also about life is for living. We are here such a short time and the older yet, the time gets shorter. And it's time to really focus on making your moment count. Whatever it is, be it planting a seed in one of those gardens, be it holding one of those babies at Children's Hospital where nobody is gonna be. It's not a glitzy gig. You're not gonna get a bunch of kudos. You're gonna feel it inside you. And I think the more I'm a public figure, the more I understand that all of the outside attention, and I get a lot of attention, means honestly nothing. That self esteem comes from doing esteemable things. That's the way it happens. You don't get self esteem because you get a million followers on Instagram. You get self esteem because you buy groceries for your elderly neighbor, and you don't even tell them it's you. And you leave them a beautiful planted dahlia on your neighbor's porch without a note. That's how you get self esteem. You get it from doing things for other human beings. And I hope that we can all live that way until we're not here anymore. And so that's actually my raison d'etre, my reason for doing it all. It's all boiled down to that. And I'm really happy to meet you and I hope next time you're in California, you'll let me know and we'll social distance, walk or something. I would love that. Sounds great. Okay, cool. All right. Thank you for having me. Of course. Thanks for joining me. Of course. Thank you. Won't tell your neighbor about the dahlias. You know, I'll it as I'll put it a little secret. Perfect. Thanks everybody. Be well. Bye. Stay safe. Bye.

[34:57]Zibby Owens: Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram ZibbyOwens and momsdonthavetimetoreadbooks. Also, sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com

[35:08]Jamie Lee Curtis: and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.