Interview: Stacey Souther - Director of VALERIE
Forgive me if you’ve read the next couple of paragraphs, but there’s some necessary repetition from my previous post…
A few days ago, paid subscribers to this newsletter had the opportunity to submit suggestions for folks they’d like me to try and interview in the future, and one of those suggestions was Valerie Perrine. As someone who grew up in the ‘70s, I knew Valerie first and foremost as Miss Tessmacher, Lex Luthor’s right-hand woman in Superman: The Movie, so it’s not like it was a hard sell to convince me to try and reach out to Perrine’s publicist.
As it happens, however, I didn’t even get to that point before stumbling onto the trailer for Valerie, a documentary by Stacey Souther about Perrine, her life and career, and—more recently—her struggles with Parkinson’s Disease. Suddenly I found myself less concerned about talking to Perrine and more interested in discussing this labor of love with Souther, so that’s what I did today…and now you can read the resulting conversation.
After you’re finished reading, if you’d like to check out Valerie, just head over to the film’s official website—https://www.valeriemovie.com/—and click on one of the links to where you can buy or rent it. Additionally, if you’d like to help Valerie Perrine personally, since Parkinson’s has put her in a position where she’s unable to continue acting, Stacey has set up a GoFundMe page.
And with all that said, on with the interview!
Well, in this case, I guess the first question is also the most obvious: how did you and Valerie first cross paths?
Stacey Souther: Good choice of words: we met walking dogs. [Laughs.] We lived in the same neighborhood, and my dog... It was his neighborhood, we'll say. I didn't know who she was - big floppy hat, big sunglasses, that whole thing - and my dog would kind of growl at other dogs. He would never do anything. It was just, like, "Hey, this is my 'hood." So one day I came across her and her dog that she had then, and I said, "If you just let him say, 'Hi,' he'll be fine after that." A quick little "hi," that was it, we went our separate ways.
And then, I don't know, maybe a week and a half later, I'd been on a run, and I bumped into her walking her dog. And we started chatting, and she was, like, "What do you do?" And I'm, like, "I'm an actor! What do you do?" "Well, I'm an actress!" "Oh, that's cool!" And we kind of kept chatting back and forth, and she asked me if I wanted to go on this secret dog hike she would take her dog on. She said, "There's this place that nobody knows about, I take my dog there sometimes, and you can bring your dog." I thought, "All right, that's cool, whatever." And she gave me her email address, and this was before Smartphones or anything, and we keep chatting, and then at the end I'm, like, "I'm sorry, I'm really bad with names, you're gonna have to tell me your name again for your email."
And she goes, "Do you know what IMDb is?" I said, "Of course. I'm an actor!" She goes, "Did you ever see Lenny?" I was, like, "No, I mean, I kind of know what it is, but I never saw it." She goes... [Sighs.] "Did you ever see Superman?" "Yeah, of course!" "I was Miss Tessmacher." "Oh! Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know who you are!" And so after that, I knew who she was, and we just became really close friends after that. She's like my mother. That's the best way to say it. We're like family.
So what was the impetus for the documentary? Aside from the fact that her health was declining, obviously.
Yeah, so the whole documentary thing... I mean, this was before documentaries were what they are now. This was when streaming was barely even a thing. But I kept saying to her, "Somebody should do a documentary on you. You've had this amazing life!" But she just wanted to do a book. She'd been kinda sorta working on a book for a long time, but she just kind of put it on the back burner, so it just wasn't moving forward that well. So what happened was, she was already having some health stuff... She had essential tremors, which is what Katherine Hepburn had, so she had a little bit of a shake thing going on. So she was going to have this brain surgery called DBS - Deep Brain Stimulation - and what they do is, they go in, they put a little electric probe in your brain, and say your right side is the shaky side, so they put it on the left side. Anyway, she was going to have the surgery, and I thought, "This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I need to shoot this." So I literally borrowed a camera from somebody.
Oddly enough, as a side note, it was only maybe four or five months before this that I got thrown into filmmaking. I'd never picked up a camera. It wasn't my thing. And David Arquette and his now-wife Christina... Her mom and her aunt are, like, best friends with Valerie for decades, so we were all friends. And this idea came up, and David's, like, "Oh, Stacey can shoot it!" And I was, like, "Uh, I don't know anything about that." "No, no, I'll even let you borrow my camera!" So I got thrown into shooting something, and I had a knack for it. So to get back to Valerie, when the surgery came up, I thought, "Let me just borrow a camera." And that's kind of what started it. The surgery stuff you see in the film, that's the first stuff I shot. And that was a long explanation. [Laughs.]
But a good one. You obviously talked to a number of people Valerie worked with over the years, both directors and co-stars. Did you have a wish list? Did she suggest people that you should talk to?
Well, as I went through, I kind of made up a list of people. I guess could call it a wish list. And I'd kind of ask her if there was anyone specific. The sad thing is, some of the great directors she'd worked with had already passed away, as had some people from Vegas who would've been good. That's the thing, if you've ever doing a documentary or even a book or anything where you have to do research, if there are any people who are older, get them first! [Laughs.] I mean, I was lucky. Some of the people I got, they passed away not longer after I got them.
Richard Donner, for one.
Yeah, I mean, I got Donner a few years ago, but he's passed away. And Dick Van Pattern... I got him, but I didn't use his footage in the film, but there's archival footage of him. Somebody else who didn't make it into the film once I decided to make it a short was Alex Rocco, if you remember him from The Godfather.
As a matter of fact, I started tentatively working on a book with him.
Oh, I loved Rocco. He was a really sweet guy and a great friend. He gave me this great interview, but when I started putting the film together and we decided to do it as a a short instead, there just wasn't a spot. It was, like, "Oh, I could put that line in there" but then my editor was, like, "Well, yeah, but that's just one little piece of him saying that, and then it's kind of, like, "Oh, who's that guy?" It just felt kind of out of the blue. So I felt bad about not having him in there, and I still kind of kick myself. But he was great. I loved Rocco. But, anyway, that's kind of how it started, and... Oh, yeah, my wish list!
Geez, you know, I got a lot of the people I wanted. Some people that I tried to get but didn't for one reason or another... Dustin Hoffman, I can't even tell you how many different ways I tried to get Hoffman, and I just never heard anything back. Oh, another one of my really great friends who recently passed away, Howard Hesseman, he knew Buck Henry, and Buck knew Dustin, and Howard - who I also interviewed - loved the film and was very supportive, he said, "Let me see if we can get to Dustin that way." So we tried, but the same thing happened: I'd just never hear anything. But it's all right. The film worked out okay without him.
Let's see, who else did I try to get? Peter Bogdanovich was going to do it. I met him at a New Year's Eve party, we're talking about it, and literally as the clock strikes midnight he says, "I'd love to work with you!" I was, like, "This is amazing! Talk about starting off the new year right!" But he was one of those people who I kept having to chase. "Ah, I'm gonna be out of town for two months, get back in touch with me." And I kept trying and trying, and then in the end he said, "You know, I don't really know her, I don't really have anything to say." And I was, like, "Why didn't you say that in the beginning? I wouldn't have kept bugging you!" [Laughs.] So there were a few people like that.
I'm sure Gene Hackman was as elusive for you as he is for everybody nowadays.
Yeah, Hackman... Nobody gets Hackman for anything. [Laughs.] Once he retired, he retired. I tried to get him a couple of different ways, but I didn't. I'm trying to think of who else I didn't get, but I actually got most of the people I wanted. Jeff Bridges was one of those where I got him and I was, like, "That was really kind of easy!" And George Hamilton was easy, because they're still friends. The last movie that she did (Silver Skies), George was in it, so I'd met him through that anyway. So he's great.
Wasn't Rocco in that, too? Am I remembering that right?
Yeah, Rocco was in it! That's how I met Rocco, because he's sort her love interest in it. [Sighs.] Such a sweet guy. I loved that guy. I actually interviewed his wife, Shannon, because she was in The Border with Valerie and Jack Nicholson. Like I said, I got most of the people I wanted. But I'll tell you, the worst part of the whole thing for me? Reaching out and trying to get people. It's one thing if it's a friend. It's easier to get them or at least talk to them. But otherwise you have to go through their P.R. person or their agent, so I'd have to make these calls - "Hi, I'm calling on behalf of Valerie Perrine..." - and a lot of people would be, like, "Who?" And I'd have to explain, "They worked together on this, she played this character..." And some people got back to me very quickly, and some people didn't. I tried to get Steve Martin, because Valerie did a show called Leo & Liz in Beverly Hills with Harvey Korman, and he was one of the producers.
So, yeah, that was...not necessarily the hardest part, I guess, but it was the part I didn't like doing the most, because it was just, like, 'Ugh, I gotta make this call, I gotta make this call..." And then once I'd do it, it was fine, but it was just the anxiety, you know?
I definitely feel your pain on the interview front. I've long felt that it all went downhill once people started having "teams," as in, "Let me reach out to their team and see."
Oh, yeah, totally. Or you have to talk to their "handlers." [Laughs.]
Well, I admire Valerie for her willingness to continue being filmed during the various stages of the disease's progression. It's very brave. Not every actress would be able to do that.
Oh, no, you're 100% right. And we talked about that in the beginning, because I said to her, "You know, I'm going to shoot you now, too. I'm going to show everything. It's like a day in your life, what it's like." And we talked about it, and she was cool with it because she thought... [Hesitates.] You know, what happens when a celebrity or anybody who's well-known, if they get sick or something, they usually kind of just disappear. You just don't hear anything until you hear that they've passed away, and then it's, like, "Oh, well, they'd been battling this thing, but nobody knew." And Valerie agreed to do it because she wanted people to see that they're not alone, and if they're struggling with something - be it Parkinson's or any kind of disease or mental illness, or even if you're just having a bad day - just to see somebody that's going through something like this...
Valerie was a huge movie star, she was one of the most beautiful women in the world, and that's the vision the public has of her in their mind, and to see her struggling with day to day life... She does it with dignity, and she's an inspiration. And that's one thing that a lot of people who've seen it would get back to me and say: "I didn't know you'd show that, I started crying." But they'd also say, "She's so inspiring, I'm going through this thing and it just gave me hope and drive to face it head on and do it as bravely as I can." So that's why she agreed to do it, and she saw the film through all the cuts and saw what was in it, and she was always happy with it. There was never a moment where she said, "Uh, I don't really like seeing the nurse with me," or whatever. She was fine with it.
She's a trailblazer in so many ways. You know, we get into the whole thing with Steambath, where she was the first female to appear topless on American television, and all those things. There's nobody like Valerie, so of course she'd be okay showing this, because it's just part of her life. And if it can help somebody else, that's what she wanted.
How is she doing now?
She's all right. I mean, you know, it's a progressive disease, and Parkinson's... It's no joke, if you've ever been in that world or known anyone who's had it. Because I didn't until her. But it's a bitch of a disease, because it just slowly robs you of who you are. You look at Muhammad Ali, the greatest fighter in history, the fastest and all that, but you see him as time goes on, and he's slowing, and then he can't really talk, and he has the stone face and all that stuff. It's just a horrible thing as it takes things away from anybody, but I think it's harder to see when it's somebody that you've seen in films or TV. Or, like, Linda Ronstadt, who said, "I can't sing anymore," and she had one of the most beautiful voices you've ever heard. It's just a horrible thing.
But Valerie... Well, as you see in the film, she can't walk, and it's harder for her to talk, so that's a little bit of a bummer, because she's known for talking. But overall she's pretty good. She's got a positive attitude. She never complains about anything. I saw her just before I got on to talk to you, depending on the day I might see her four or five times a day, and I'm the last person to see her at night. So I guess I'm the Valerie Perrine authority? [Laughs.]
Well, like I said, I put out an email to my newsletter's paid subscribers and asked them to pitch ideas for future interviews, and she was on the list. And I'm sure the person who pitched her had no idea what she was dealing with, but that's what led me to your documentary, and it's what inspired me to want to talk to you about it and help spread the word about the film and about what she's dealing with.
Oh, yeah, it wasn't something that was really known for a long time, and...we were going to kind of announce it with the documentary. That was going to be kind of your first awareness of what she was going through. But the movie took... Well, I mean, I wasn't in a rush to do it, so it took something like seven years! But it worked in a way that you saw the progression of the disease. At a certain point, though, we just kind of let it out into the world. Back in the day when she'd do some of the autograph shows, she'd go, and she might be going through a little something, so you could kind of tell little things. And she would tell stuff to people. Plus, she'd had the surgery at that point, so she might say, "Oh, I've got Parkinson's, but I had the surgery." But, yeah, she's doing pretty good, all things considered.
Well, be sure she knows that people are still thinking about her and appreciating her work.
I will! And, yeah, that's the thing, that's the reason why I wanted to do this. It's weird, if you're a certain age, you know who she is, but it's either from Slaughterhouse Five or Lenny.
Then you get into another age where you know her from Superman, and that's such a huge phenomenon. I mean, everybody knows Superman! And then some people, you mention the name and they're, like, "I don't know if I know her," but then you show them her picture and they go, "Oh, yeah, I love her!"
So it's not like she was forgotten, but I wanted to honor her legacy and kind of bring her back into the light, just because before she got sick, she'd kind of just work when she wanted to work.
I mean, she was a huge movie star in the '70s, but then she turned down one project in the '80s and...she never regrets anything, but she kind of regrets turning down this one thing. Because she was tired of being a sex symbol, she turned down Body Heat. Which, of course, made Kathleen Turner a star. But also at that time she would go to Europe and live somewhere for a couple of years. She'd do a movie, go live in France or England and do a movie here and there. But you can't really do that when you're in the industry, because somebody new will come up, and then you come back to Hollywood and all of sudden it's "Valerie who?" So I wanted to honor her legacy and this amazing life, because you see the documentary, and people don't know that she was raised in Japan, and...some people know the Vegas stuff, but they don't know all the Vegas stories.
I for one didn't know either of those aspects.
Yeah, and the Vegas stuff has a couple of surprises in it. [Laughs.] The way I always look at it is, people dream of living 5% of the life Valerie's lived. I mean, literally, it's like somebody created that character. There's not people who've lived a life like that. She didn't try to be a movie star. She literally got discovered at a small dinner party...and when I say "small," I'm talking, like, six people. It happened like that. And she was just a natural at acting. She had a gift. But I just wanted to bring her back into people's consciousness and share that Parkinson's thing to give people some hope. That was a big thing. But it was mostly to honor her, just because she means so much to me.
Well, you can tell her that I'm probably the only person in recent years to write an article about George Burns Comedy Week.
Oh, wow!
Yeah, I did a full piece for the A.V. Club about the show, and I talked to Carl Gottlieb, who co-created it with Steve Martin, and we talked about her episode of the show that led to the Leo & Liz series.
It was called "The Couch," wasn't it?
It was!
You know, it's funny, because when I first met her, she'd be like [Offhandedly.] "Oh, you know, I was a movie star." And I'm, like, "Okay, whatever." But then I really got to know her and I saw what her career was, and I was, like, "Oh, she was a movie star! She was a big deal!" Because Superman came out when I was, like, five or something, so I remembered her, but I didn't know her filmography. I mean, even at five, I was still, like, "Hubba, hubba." [Laughs.] I mean, Miss Tessmacher, how many guys our age had her as their first crush? It was, like, "Superman, why aren't you with her?" But once I started going through stuff for her, she had every script she'd ever done, so I found out about "The Couch," which led to Leo & Liz. I want to say that she might've had it on VHS! I mean, come on, Harvey Korman? So, yeah, that's pretty cool that you did a piece about that show.
It was fun. The A.V. Club used to have a feature that focused on short-lived series, and I was that kid who used to buy the TV Guide Fall Preview Issue and try to watch at least one episode of every new show, just to be able to say that I'd seen it. But I really loved that one because of all the familiar faces that popped up in every episode. It was right in my sweet spot as a very nerdy 15-year-old.
Oh, I get it. [Laughs.] And you look back, and you're, like, "Why didn't it work? It was funny!" But it's just one of those things. You never know what was going on with the studio or the network, or maybe it was the scheduling. Oh, and that reminds me: I think it was only a pilot, but Valerie did a thing with Brenda Vaccaro, and Alex Rocco was in it...
It was only a pilot.
Yeah, and it was called Changing Patterns or something?
That's it.
Yeah, I think I've seen the pilot on YouTube.
What's funny is that I actually do a regular feature for my newsletter that's called Pilot Error, where I write about pilots that never made it to series. I haven't spotlighted that one yet, but I know it's from the glory years when CBS would actually have a Summer Playhouse where they'd burn off pilots by showing them in prime-time.
The good old days, right? [Laughs.]
100 percent. Sometimes you'd see one and you'd be, like, "Why did they even try to make this into a series?" But Changing Patterns was actually pretty good.
Yeah, it was! And you also have to remember how, back then, movie stars weren't doing TV. She was a big movie star, and then she just kind of started to do TV and...it was something that people kind of looked down on, you know? It was, like, "Oh, your career is really gone now if you're doing TV." Because if you were lucky, you might go from TV to movies, although it was a hard crossover. With that one, though... I don't know, it's just luck of the draw sometimes.
