Rebecca Miller Reads from The Private Lives of Pippa Lee | Big Think

Rebecca Miller Reads from The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

New videos DAILY

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rebecca Miller reads a passage from The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rebecca Miller:

Rebecca Miller is an American author, film director, screenwriter and actress, most known for her films Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (winner of the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award), The Ballad of Jack and Rose and Angela, all of which she wrote and directed. She is the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and Austrian photographer Inge Morath. She studied art at Yale University and initially pursued an acting career, landing parts in the TV-movie The Murder of Mary Phagan (starring Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, and William H. Macy; 1988) and the feature films Regarding Henry (starring Harrison Ford and Annette Bening; 1991), and Consenting Adults (opposite Kevin Kline and Kevin Spacey; 1992). Miller is married to actor Daniel Day-Lewis and and has two sons, Ronan and Cashel.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

Topic: Rebecca Miller reads from the Private Lives of Pippa Lee

Rebecca Miller: Okay. So Pippa is having lunch with her friend Moira [Dallas]. Moira is a friend of hers and her husband Herb’s. Herb is Pippa’s husband. Pippa is 50, her husband Herb is 80 and they’ve recently moved to Marigold Village Retirement Community at Herb’s urging. And they’re meeting at at a, Moira and Pippa are meeting for lunch at a restaurant in the little town near Marigold Village. And Moira is younger, she’s about 35 and she’s been going out, living with a writer friend of Pippa and Herb’s for quite a long time. And Herb’s a sort of legendary publisher. So, here’s Moira and Pippa’s lunch. Moira was late. Pippa leaned back in the aqua leatherette banquette and scrutinized the small oil paintings that were hung at regular intervals on the walls of the restaurant. They were all dutifully painted humorless landscapes. She thought about her old artist friend, Jim. How he would’ve looked up at them, his head slightly bowed, he would’ve nodded slowly. “Oh, yes,” he would’ve said, smiling grimly. She wondered if Jim was still alive. Moira appeared out of breath, kissed Pippa, strands of black hair escaping from her ponytail. She smelled pleasantly of milk. “I’m so sorry, I’m late. I was writing and I looked at the clock and…” “Don’t worry,” said Pippa. “I was just relaxing, enjoying the art. That’s a great buckle,” she said, fingering at sheriff star, a silver sheriff star below Moira’s bellybutton. “Thanks,” said Moira, covering it with her hand and sliding into the opposite bench, her large suede handbag clutched to her side. An effeminate waiter appeared. “Oh, hi. Can I please have ahmm… an ice tea, the one with a melon in it?” Moira said to him with involuntary flirtatiousness. Then she looked back at Pippa, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear girlishly, and smiled, a dimple indenting her left cheek. “No wonder she’d been her father’s favorite of seven kids,” Pippa thought, she must have been a magical child with that heart-shaped face, those enormous Indian orphan eyes, and that imagination, and her messy, breathless, self-obsessed way. Moira was adorable. There was no getting around it. You could think her sincerity was ridiculous. You could lampoon her overblown sexuality, her exaggerated appreciation of life. But, finally, you just had to throw up your hands and love the absolute purity of her confusion. Disarming, that was the word for Moira. “You look so beautiful,” Moira said scrutinizing Pippa’s face. “What are you doing different?” “It’s the indolence,” said Pippa, “I wish I could be peaceful and good like you.” “Good? You seem so beatific.” Pippa laughed, “If only you knew.” “Knew what?” “Oh, variety of things. I’m like one of those used cars that have been in a terrible accident. They look perfectly fine on the outside but the axel is bent.” Moira smiled, puzzled, “You were so mysterious about the past.” “You think?” “You never say anything about your life before.” “There are things that happened that I don’t dwell on,” said Pippa. “What? Like what happened to Herb’s first wife?” “Second.” “Second. He said she was already crazy.”

Read the full transcript at