[Robert Downey Jr., and I are cruising down Hollywood Boulevard in his black Porsche, heading toward the stage door of the Pantages Theatre to pick up Shirley MacLaine for a drive between performances.]

ROBERT: I'm sweating from this steamy shower I took.

GERALD: Good. I thought it was from anxiety. Don't forget to point out anything of personal interest on the way.

ROBERT: Well, the area that does mean something to me is the Beachwood area, which is slightly past the theatre. Maybe we'll drive through after we get going.

GERALD: Beachwood's where you lived while you were struggling, right? What comes to mind when you think about that part of town?

ROBERT: Rent-a-cars, flying back and forth, doing Saturday Night Live, partying - a lot of partying, with everyone and anyone. It was madness. That's what it really was. Pure madness. My relationship with Sarah Jessica Parker stayed, though. She kept me rooted through that whole period. But I consider myself really lucky to have gotten through it with any sort of career and a working respiratory system.

GERALD: Your career has taken such a positive turn recently. What do you owe that to?

ROBERT: You could say certain actions I took on my own behalf. But when you're in the middle of it, it's hard to see that it will ever change. That's when, hopefully, you realize change is the only constant in life. I look at aspects of myself back then and go... "Huh?" Knowing what I know now, I could never find myself in that situation again, unless my goals were specifically to do something that didn't feel right.

GERALD: I forgot to tell you that Shirley is battling a nagging case of bronchitis and is a little nervous about driving in smog for too long. So we'll have to take it easy and play it by ear. She has a show to do at eight.

ROBERT: She did a show this afternoon and she has one at eight? I wasn't aware she did matinees. God, she has amazing energy. I just saw Postcards from the Edge. She's so funny.

GERALD: It was you who suggested Shirley to go with on a "Drive." What pulls you toward her?

ROBERT: I was probably one of the few 19-year-old males who read Out on a Limb when it came out. Not that I'm presupposing what 19-year-olds read, though I imagine it was more along the lines of Stephen King or Franny and Zooey. With Out on a Limb, I respected how someone in a position to have it affect them adversely went ahead and said things that I intuitively suspected to be true. It took courage.

GERALD: What I admire about Shirley MacLaine is that she makes work look like fun. When she writes, it seems effortless. When she acts, it looks like she's having a ball. Everything she does, she makes seem easy. From where did you get your mystical leanings? Your family, or is it just you?

ROBERT: My dad's films have always had spiritual undertones. Greaser's Palace is about Jesus Christ dropping into the Midwest in the late nineteenth century, wearing a zoot suit, and heading for Jerusalem to be an actor-singer-dancer. It's actually a very spiritual movie.

GERALD: What was it like having a filmmaker father for a husband... whoops, there's a Freudian slip!

ROBERT: [laughing]: Weil, when my father and I were remarried....

GERALD: But wasn't it always an economic roller coaster, the way life is for most independent filmmakers?

ROBERT: It was definitely feast or famine, that's for sure. One thing I've learned that I do that's a repetition of my parents' behavior is... well, when there's money, you really make up for the times when there isn't. Wild, unnecessary expenditures. We lived in the Village in a $200-a-month loft and we went shopping at F.A.O Schwarz every day!

[We are now in the heart of the more intense section of Hollywood Boulevard.]

GERALD: How's the movie he directed that you're in?

ROBERT: Pretty good. It's funny. It's about a gay brother and lesbian sister - Eric Idle and Andrea Martin - whose father is dying and says he's going to leave his money to whoever has a kid first. It doesn't deal with homosexuality responsibly, but it's not supposed to. That makes me a little uneasy, but I know that my father is so accepting it's not like he's not aware. I think we'll start doing a lot more work together. He's extremely talented.

GERALD: What's the film called?

ROBERT: Too Much Sun.

GERALD: S-O-N?

ROBERT: [laughing]: No. S-U-N. Too Much Sun.

GERALD: Now, is this the so-called strip that we're on now?

ROBERT: Yup. This is it. The strip. This is Musso and Frank's over there. It's a great restaurant. I used to live in this old hotel at the top of Cherokee. I ate there all the time.

[We arrive at the rear of the Pantages and pull right into an open parking spot.]

ROBERT: [mocking]: God, theatre parking is so convenient!

[A wiry old man comes up to us.]

MAN: These are all monthly spots. You can't park here.

GERALD: We should only be a few minutes.

MAN: Go across the street and put a dime in the meter!!!

ROBERT: Thank you so much. [After a pause:] Remind me to be very careful driving today.

[We get out of the car.]

ROBERT: God, getting out of this car is like getting out of a five-year relationship!

[Robert puts money in the meter. We walk over to the stage entrance and see a substantial crowd waiting for Shirley to come out and sign autographs.]

WOMAN: [yelling to stage-doorperson]: Is Shirley going to come out?!

STAGE-DOORPERSON: I'm not sure!

[We arrive at the desk and state our purpose. After a few minutes we are taken inside and meet up with Shirley MacLaine in her dressing room.]

SHIRLEY: Hi! How are you? Thanks for staying out here an extra week and putting up with our schedules and everything.

[We decide to sit for a bit and have some Chinese food in the dressing room.]

SHIRLEY: I'm working too hard. And I'm fighting bronchitis. And so in the middle of one of my numbers I find that I have a big wad of snot between my nose and my throat and I don't know what to do with it. You can't choreograph a moment to blow your nose.

GERALD: Are there more things that go wrong during a performance than we perceive? It seems to be so smooth.

SHIRLEY: God, yes. Like today... it's the Gray Panthers out there this afternoon... and some lady's hearing aid goes off. It sounds like somebody forgot the kettle. Right in the middle of my Peru story. First I asked, "Who's boiling tea in the balcony?" Then, "Is Saddam Hussein bugging the place?" Finally I had to send somebody up to the balcony because I realized the person with the hearing aid couldn't hear me. Things like that happen all the time.

GERALD: Do you ever reach back for a prop and find it's not there?

SHIRLEY: Sure. Last night a dancer lost an earring, and we had to carefully dance around it on the stage until somebody could kick it off. But this thing of what to do with my snot is really getting me down.

ROBERT: I think you should have a person for that.

SHIRLEY: A snot-wrangler! At least there's one point where I can leave the stage and take care of it.

ROBERT: I was reading something that claimed a cold is a pattern interfering with health. Viruses have their own vitality and we just catch them.

SHIRLEY: We're creating so much with our minds these days. It's amazing. Somebody was pressuring me in a personal situation. I couldn't say, "Don't do this!" to him for certain reasons, and I know that's how I got all backed up and came down with this bronchitis.

GERALD: Physical manifestations mirror emotional disturbances in your life.

SHIRLEY: Absolutely no question. I know these doctors at Johns Hopkins. I've worked with them so much lately because of my mom and dad, and they tell me that they can see a cancer profile. They know right now when a woman walks in, where the cancer probably is! It's mostly breast-cancer people. Any woman working in the stock market better watch out. They get cancer because they can't handle the pressure.

ROBERT: Is cancer some sort of denial of some aspect of yourself?

SHIRLEY: It's a denial of self-esteem. Look at people you know who are suffering from it. A person with heart problems has a problem with the soul. The soul, as the old mystics say, is located in the heart. Leukemia victims have a bloodline problem in the family or family history. I don't want to oversimplify. Nothing is simple. I'm saying it's a contributing factor that needs to be looked at, and if you look at that contributing factor, it can be the thing that tips you back into health. I mean, you never hear of a bronchitis that doesn't affect the vocal cords. I was upset... smothered. And that's what bronchitis is: you can't breathe. But I wouldn't let it touch my vocal cords on some subconscious level because I wanted to work. See how intricate you can get with the disease that you manifest. I'm willing to bet that if I didn't have this particular thing in my personal life bothering me, I wouldn't have gotten it. We're just lurking around waiting to be used.

GERALD: I went to a massage therapist for the first time, and I couldn't believe how powerful it was. At one point he said, "Things are going to start turning around for you now," and they did.

SHIRLEY: You could say that it was the power of suggestion, but we are all creating everything anyway. I see a UFO because I want to see a UFO. I don't because I don't. I get sick because on some level I'm telling myself slow down, smell the roses.

GERALD: You're so incredibly busy right now. Two shows a day sometimes. I saw you on The Tonight Show last night. The books... two new movies. What could slow you down?

SHIRLEY: This frigging traffic! I hate limos in L.A. I drive myself to the show everyday. I don't go out after the show. It's too late after the show to ask people to hold off having dinner. And it takes too long to get to any place where you won't be mugged. So I end up going home and getting a massage.

[Robert pulls out a set of old pictures of Shirley. One shows her jumping on the beach.]

SHIRLEY: Oh, my God, where did you get these?!

GERALD: Now what's the first thing that comes to mind when you see that?

SHIRLEY: I was thinking, "Where is my boxer dog?" And then I saw him. Here he is in the background, see? God, where did you get this, Robert?

ROBERT: A stylist for this shoot I was doing gave them to me.

GERALD: Is this around the time you were doing My Geisha?

SHIRLEY: No, this is much earlier. That's my apartment in Malibu. This is 1955. Before my daughter. My God, I look so... tippled. My face looks like a johnnycake or something. You know I was 20 when these were taken. Twenty years old.

GERALD: You talk in your show about survival in Hollywood. I wanted to ask each of you about that.

ROBERT: It's tough. If I had to answer simply, I'd have to say it's knowing where the dividing line is between your work and your personal life. Knowing the difference.

SHIRLEY: I couldn't agree more.

[Later, talking about Marilyn Monroe.]

ROBERT: You can become a projection of what others believe. She became that archetype of those who couldn't distinguish one from the other.

SHIRLEY: I only met her once. She came to a screening of The Apartment because she knew Jack Lemmon. And I didn't recognize this totally washed-out, no-makeup lady with straggly blond hair looking like something the cat dragged in. She was wearing a mink coat with just a slip on underneath. She was cold and clasping the coat. She looked about 12. She came up after and said she liked the picture, and I had no idea who she was! But this was the real Marilyn. It was frightening.

ROBERT: I can't imagine what it's like for you, Shirley, being the only tangible guru in America for so many people.

SHIRLEY: I'm not comfortable with that. I'm as much a seeker as anybody who thinks that I can teach them. It's just that I can't understand how people, in this terrifying, accelerating millennium, can survive without some sort of spiritual understanding or depth. Even if it is nuts! Some belief you can hang onto.

[We go out to get pictures taken. The photographer, Darryl Estrine, climbs over the top of the car to get a high-angle shot.]

DARRYL: Now, you have to promise not to look up my shorts while I take this shot.

SHIRLEY: [laughing]: No peeking. I promise.

[We climb into the car and hit the road up Beachwood Canyon to the HOLLYWOOD sign.]

GERALD: Your books have had such an impact. Was your writing originally an extension of diaries?

SHIRLEY: You're talking about Don't Fall off the Mountain. I just had all these compulsions to travel all over the world and do these different things. I had these great adventures. I had lived with the Masai in Africa. I had gotten thrown out of Russia. Everywhere I went, a novel happened to me. And I wanted to share it. Bill Lederer, the guy who co-wrote The Ugly American, and I were hanging around together in the Orient. And I said to him... "Bill, I think I might want to write something." I've always felt fortunate to be able to travel - that I could afford the plane tickets and everything. And being famous is such a passport to everybody telling you the truth. But I had never even written a letter in my life to really speak of... and I said, "Bill, how do you do it?" He said, "Write an outline, and I'll give it to Eric Swenson," who is his editor at Norton. And I sat in Malibu for four weeks and hacked out a 750-page outline and gave it to Bill, who said, "This is practically a book already!" I remember Eric coming out of a plane with a bow tie and a wrinkled suit. I mean, here was this literary person. And I'm barely literate. So we went to Malibu and talked, and he told me that he thought there was a book there and asked if I wanted to be a writer. I said, "I don't know. I hear all these great stories I just want to share." And that's how it all started. But now that you've brought this up, I want to ask you about this problem I'm facing. What do you think of this, Mr. Downey... [Robert leans over and starts acting like a bedside doctor]

SHIRLEY: [laughing]: Do you want me to lean back and pretend it's a couch I'm lying on?

ROBERT: Why not?

SHIRLEY: It's about this whole thing of people calling what I write "selfcentered," "self-congratulatory," or "self-aggrandizing." Self, self, self. Well, shit. If you don't know deep down what the self is, how are you ever going to know what anybody else is? Everybody just seems embarrassed about this... search. And yet they all want to do it themselves. And they'll take that posture with me in public, but in private they want to know how to do it. It's like they're afraid to seem sentimental or something. So I think I'm just going to go all out on the attack. When they start criticizing your craft based on your beliefs, that's when I get mad. I'd like a little separation of church and craft here.

ROBERT: What pisses me off is... just to get down to root words here... is where did "self-centered" ever get a negative connotation. Arrogance is one thing. It would be one thing if you were firing production assistants on a whim or something. I mean, what are we supposed to be in order to get the respect of anyone? Self-deprecating? I don't want to get down on Los Angeles, but sometimes it feels like you're not allowed to have an opinion unless it's the one that everyone else has.

[In traffic.]

GERALD: People in this country are nervous about anything that draws attention to the self.

SHIRLEY: But they're not as nervous out there in the country as they are in this city or in New York! People in the country are fine with what I do. Somehow it's the pacesetting, intellectual leadership in the big cities that feels that feelings are silly. Or they are a private affair. And yet these same people are going to A.A. meetings. And that's all about "feelings" and talking about the self. So what's going on here, I want to know.

ROBERT: If people are not ready to deal with all of this, they get hostile. It's easier to stay in familiar territory.

SHIRLEY: Right. Go with the devil you know rather than the devil you don't know. Yet they're the same people who admire risk-taking. But the risk they'll never take is the one in themselves.

GERALD: Why is this getting to you now? The books have been out there for years. What's happening now that's different?

SHIRLEY: Do you know that The New York Times has never reviewed any of my metaphysical books? I guess they don't know who to assign it to! [According to The New York Times Index, the Times reviewed MacLaine's Dancing in the Light and It's All in the Playing.]

GERALD: Don't Fall off the Mountain was reviewed, wasn't it?

SHIRLEY: Yeah, but that's a regular, pragmatic movie-star's memoir. I talk about movies a lot. That's acceptable. This person who goes and has an out-of-body experience in a hut in the Himalayas is not. But I remember my first review by John Leonard in The New York Times... and what he loved most was my mysticism. That's what he called it. I heard a military adviser on television last week - it must have been on David Brinkley or something - saying, "I'm neither an OPTI-mist nor a PESSI-mist, I'm a MYST-ic." I loved it. This guy is going to deploy all these soldiers. It was great.

ROBERT: "Now I want you all to center yourselves while you're cleaning your carbines!"

SHIRLEY: Those soldiers sitting over there in the middle of the desert could use a little meditation technique.

ROBERT: Do you meditate every day?

SHIRLEY: I do it every day while I'm driving. And I've got the bumped-up fenders to prove it. I do it when I'm with a really boring person.

GERALD: In the middle of a conversation?

SHIRLEY: Yeah. I can observe two levels of consciousness simultaneously. I get in real trouble it I can't be alone. I can meditate just reading the newspaper! Or looking out over the ocean.

GERALD: What projects are coming up for you, Shirley? What are you going to do next? [She yawns.]

ROBERT: Big yawn on that one.

SHIRLEY: [laughing]: No. I'm actually going to do the relationship between [English drama critic] Ken Tynan and Louise Brooks. You know he was obsessed with her. He was a great friend of mine.

GERALD: Did you ever meet Louise Brooks?

SHIRLEY: No, he was always trying to get me to go up to Rochester to meet her, but I never did. Ken actually helped discover her again. They had this incredibly interesting relationship which bordered on a love affair, if indeed it wasn't a love affair. His widow, Kathleen Tynan, is a very close friend of mine. She has all the letters between them. So we developed a screenplay about their relationship. We're going to do it in February.

GERALD: She was a severe alcoholic, wasn't she?

SHIRLEY: She was alcoholic, emphysemic. He had emphysema as well. They were both so eloquently involved with self-destruction, and that interests me.

GERALD: It's more about what we were talking about earlier, survival in Hollywood.

SHIRLEY: She dumped all over herself.

GERALD: But her writing was...

SHIRLEY: Superb. And she wrote an autobiography, you know. It was apparently brilliant... and she burned it. She threw it down an incinerator in New York City. Incredible story.

GERALD: Isn't this the area where you used to live, Robert?

ROBERT: Yeah, it is. Up here. You know Beachwood Canyon, don't you?

SHIRLEY: Yeah, sure.

ROBERT: You know where we could go next, if you were game, is up to the top of the hill.

SHIRLEY: Sure. Let's go.

GERALD: We'll get you back in time for the show. What do you do to warm up?

SHIRLEY: I stretch. I have to take care of my knee.

ROBERT: Was it the top part of your right knee that got hurt?

SHIRLEY: Yes.

ROBERT: How about that. Boy, I've really got to be careful. Last night I was jumping over this rail on this flight of stairs I have that leads to my office, and I banged the top of my right knee. And it really hurt. And I thought, "That's where Shirley hurt her knee." It really hurt. See how sympathetic I am?"

GERALD That was an interesting story in your most recent book about how you went home one afternoon and mysteriously started smelling flowers in your house, and then your friend called to say he was "sending" you flowers telepathically.

SHIRLEY: That sort of stuff happens all the time. And if we'd just be more aware of it and acknowledge it, it would happen even more. But we like to think that such a belief is crazy.

ROBERT: Boy. [Pauses.] You know what? In these Seth books that Jane Roberts wrote, this entity Seth talks about speakers who have appeared throughout history. Like with the Indians of North America. It seems to me that the speakers of today are the performers. So maybe we're speakers of today. Like the shamans were in other times.

SHIRLEY: One of the things I had to get straight was that performing and seeking and learning were all the same thing. And that if I separated being other characters from my beliefs, I was making a big mistake. I mean, we're involved with a very metaphysical craft. We create the reality of the characters, right? And if we don't do it well, the picture bombs. If we do it well, the picture's a success. That's all I'm talking about.

ROBERT: You said with Madame Sousatzka that you talked with [director] John Schlesinger about the character's walk and how she talked and that you asked a million questions. Did you do the same with Postcards from the Edge?

SHIRLEY: It came a little easier because she's closer to me. Sousatzka was so much older than me.

GERALD: And you gained weight to play Sousatzka, didn't you?

SHIRLEY: I gained 35 pounds.

ROBERT: My God! Shirley Mac-Niro.

SHIRLEY: I was a blimp.

GERALD: Getting back to mysticism. I was pretty lucky because my grandmother, in the later years of her life, was heavily into mysticism and really went to lengths to make me less afraid of it.

SHIRLEY: I think everybody is a closet mystic. And the biggest skeptic is actually the biggest mystic of them all.

ROBERT: Completely. Especially your... oh, I guess you don't want to talk about your brother.

SHIRLEY: Warren? Oh, please!

ROBERT I know him, you know.

SHIRLEY: [laughing to herself]: In those interviews he was giving, like with Larry King, it kept popping out.

ROBERT: That's what I was going to say! He's like my father that way. People would say to him, "You've made a very spiritual movie," and he would say, "Don't talk about that!" My dad would just say all of that, psychic phenomena and all that, was "personal." Which is how I perceive your brother to be with regard...

SHIRLEY: Have you ever brought this stuff up with Warren?

ROBERT: Boy. I'm sure I have. He said to me jokingly once, when I guess I was talking about all this, "Have you been sleeping with my sister?" [Shirley laughs loudly]

ROBERT: This man behind us seems a little angry because we're going so slow. Let's let him pass. Peace be with you, sir. Anyway, this was five years ago. And I just looked at him and said, "Gosh, I'd really like to." Spend time with her, I meant.

SHIRLEY: I think he... Well, so many of his women friends - because women are more open to this usually - acknowledge it and discuss it, so he can't really deny it totally.

ROBERT: Look at the film he made. Look at Heaven Can Wait.

SHIRLEY: I know. And I told him. I wanted to have this big, wonderful talk and the invisible CLANG came down. He didn't want to discuss it.

[We arrive at the top of the hill. Behind us stretches the enormous HOLLYWOOD sign. In front and below are the Hollywood Hills and the reservoir of blue water. The sun is just starting to set.]

SHIRLEY: [after silently looking for a long time at the HOLLYWOOD sign]: I saw this sign the first time I came to Hollywood. My agent, who's still my agent, brought me to this sign. Should we get out? Or do you want to sit?

ROBERT: I don't know. We could get out and still get you back in time for the show.

SHIRLEY: Let's get out. I want to see this. [Standing beside the car, on the edge of the hill.]

SHIRLEY: Hey, what's that water down there?

ROBERT: That's the reservoir. See, I wanted something panoramic for you.

SHIRLEY: I've never actually seen it from this angle.

ROBERT: We're just slightly above the smog, I think. [Shirley is pensive.] What are you thinking about?

SHIRLEY: I'm actually thinking about how wonderful it would be to work with you, and I'm trying to think of a project we can do. Maybe, like we discussed earlier, an updated version of Harold and Maude.

ROBERT: Sounds great.

[Back in the car, heading down the hill and through the canyon. Music is blaring from the CD player]

ROBERT: Actually, I'd like to do your show tonight.

SHIRLEY: Are you going to stay and see it?

ROBERT: Sure, I could be your back-stage groupie.

SHIRLEY: You know, I really have to admit I'm feeling the smog. I can feel it on my tongue. Now I know why I live in Malibu.

ROBERT: It really is better out...

SHIRLEY: BE CAREFUL, BOBBY!!!

[A car has come suddenly from around a curve, and we stop literally a foot away from what would have been a head-on collision. Both cars stop and horns blare. The man in the other car starts swearing loudly as he drives by. We all sit for a second and catch our breath.]

ROBERT: I had this feeling... when they said I'd be driving and giving an interview. I said, "What?"

GERALD: These people race up these hills.

SHIRLEY: Gerald, you didn't say anything. Were you holding out for the big story?

GERALD: I didn't see anything.

ROBERT: It was very intuitive of you to say something. And you called me Bobby. Now it'll be like Pavlov's dog. When somebody calls me Bobby, I'll immediately slam on the brakes.

SHIRLEY: [laughing]: Well, that's your name from now on. Robert bullshit. It's Bobby.

[A man in front of us stops his car and starts dumping something out the side.]

SHIRLEY: What's he dumping?

GERALD: Looks like ice.

ROBERT: Toxic chemicals. Do you know that song "Traveling Light"? [Finds it on the CD.]

SHIRLEY: No. But I love the way he [Robert] has this all planned out. The view. The music. The sign. You've orchestrated this whole fucking thing. [Listening to the song:] This is such Hollywood music.

[Later, rolling through narrow canyon streets.]

SHIRLEY: But the real genius behind Harold and Maude was Colin Higgins. My best friend. He was the best. Boy, losing someone like that [Higgins died two years ago at the age of 47]... Well, we had so many things we were going to do together. AII metaphysical things. In real comedic terms.

GERALD: He was fairly young when he wrote Harold and Maude.

SHIRLEY: It was his UCLA master's thesis.

GERALD: It's a classic. Ruth Gordon.

SHIRLEY: We'd have to figure out how they meet. Maybe they're both taking a trip and they meet on a boat somewhere. They get off the boat in New Delhi, where they have their experiences. It's really what Bill Murray didn't know how to pull off in The Razor's Edge. He just didn't know how to do it. And maybe you'd go into their minds and experience what each of them meant to each other in another time and place.

ROBERT: I keep thinking that films have to stop dealing with one person's minute-by-minute level of consciousness. Films should skip all over the place.

SHIRLEY: We need to bend the art form. They did a good job in Ghost of showing someone speaking through another person. Coppola and I talked about this a while back. How to do a reincarnation film that doesn't end up looking like a B-movie. He had interesting things to say, actually. Flatliners is an interesting film. It's all about karma. It's really an important movie.

ROBERT: You mean I shouldn't have turned it down?

SHIRLEY: No, you shouldn't have. What role did you turn down? I guess it was the Julia Roberts part. [Laughs.]

[We arrive at the theatre: The photographers are still there waiting.]

ROBERT: God, I can't believe they waited all this time.

SHIRLEY: They're lucky we're back, considering... Now I have to ask myself about that man we almost collided with. Where is he now? Somehow he is ours. We're with him now.

[We climb out of the car and say our good-byes. Just before going in, Shirley turns to our photographer]

SHIRLEY: Oh, and Darryl...

DARRYL: Yes?

SHIRLEY: Next time wear underwear!