This article was originally published at Shondaland.com
The legend of stage and screen talks with Shondaland about his poignant new memoir.
ou’d know Harvey Fierstein’s distinctive voice anywhere — it’s the stuff of legends, after all. Gifted with twice the vocal cords most of us have, Fierstein has never thought twice about using them, literally or metaphorically. As an actor and writer, he used that voice to bring drag to community-theater productions in the ’70s. He led by example in fighting for LGBTQIA+ rights before and during the AIDS crisis. All he touches turns to Tony: He’s written and/or starred in award-winning Broadway musicals, among them Torch Song Trilogy, La Cage aux Folles, Hairspray, Kinky Boots, Newsies, and Fiddler on the Roof. And his roles on TV and in films like Torch Song Trilogy, Hairspray Live!, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Independence Day helped cement his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
As such, legend is as legend does. Having been there and done that, Fierstein is now telling us all about it in his candid, poignant, hilarious new memoir, I Was Better Last Night. With each turn of the page, you can practically hear him talking you through his epic journey from his childhood in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to his beginnings with Andy Warhol and his ilk in experimental theater, to off-Broadway, Broadway, and then Hollywood. His vivid recounting of all the goings-on will simultaneously move you to tears and crack you up in public.
I Was Better Last Night: A Memoir
Credit: Penguin Random House
During Covid, Fierstein, an avid quiltmaker, was, as he tells Shondaland, all “quilted out” when he decided it was as good a time as any to write his life story. “I thought, ‘What am I going to do now?’” Fierstein recalls. “My agent suggested that I write a memoir, so I sat down and wrote the beginning of the first chapter about being in second grade and wanting to play an evil witch. I sent it to my friend Philomena, and she sent back the photo of me dressed as the evil witch. I realized that I hit something because that memory was strong for her as well.”
Dear friends like Philomena are deeply important to Fierstein and often revered as marquee players in his memoir. “There’s a place for our childhood friends in our adult lives,” Fierstein says. “I believe that we never really grow up. I think we’re all 4 years old, and we just learn how to cover it. We have better words and more knowledge, but we’re still that curious person. I make an effort to find people that were important to me. When they disappear, I’ve realized it was because they were there because of the magic I gave them. That always breaks my heart.”
Harvey Feirstein (top middle) with the cast of Freaky Pussy.
Penguin Random House
Believe it or not, the exercise of writing prose was initially a little daunting to the prolific playwright, who is more accustomed to writing for stage and screen. “I don’t write prose. I’ve written op-eds, but I’m so dyslexic,” Fierstein explains. “When you write plays, you try not to be the voice in the room; the one thing you don’t want to do is write in your own voice. You want the character’s opinion. You sit down with the ideas for the characters, and as many characters as there are, you split your head up into as many parts as need be. It can get a little crazy! Memoir writing is more like writing a monologue for myself.”
I couldn’t help but ask about Fierstein’s writing rituals. Does he write every day? Did he keep a journal? “Absolutely not. You keep a diary when you’re miserable. Somewhere, I have squirreled away the misery of being me,” he cracks. “It was no help at all. I don’t think of myself as a writer-actor-quiltmaker. I’m a person who does all those things, but none of them define me in my mind. I mean, I don’t act every day! Well, maybe just to get the dogs to eat their dinner.”
To kick-start the memoir, Fierstein reached out to another legend — none other than Shirley MacLaine — for advice. “She’s written so many memoirs — who better to get advice from? She said, allow your memory to guide you. Don’t push to remember stuff; let it organically come. Your memory will be the best editor. I knew there would be short chapters. That’s also the way I read, so that was the form it would take. For everything else, I just relied on her advice of letting my memory be my guide,” Fierstein says.
Fierstein in drag with Paul Joynt in Torch Song Trilogy
Penguin Random House
The process of assembling one’s life story can, however, excavate painful memories archived in the annals of the brain. For Fierstein, one of the final chapters of I Was Better Last Night, “Coming Out: A True Story,” required revisiting a difficult truth about coming out to his mother that lay dormant until he put it on the page. “Everyone involved in it is dead, and their bad behavior would’ve died with them,” he explains. “It was important to share because, to some, it might seem my coming out was easy. I was so young, and my mom, publicly, was so accepting, but I thought it was time to tell the truth about all that.” His editor thought this chapter’s natural place was earlier in the text, but Fierstein had strong thoughts about the rightful place of this important revelation. “I felt it belongs where it is emotionally. The chapter begins with a conversation I had with my brother, and it came up exactly the way it came up while watching Torch Song Trilogy after so many years, which made me have to confess and make me deal with it in myself. The harder part once I wrote that was figuring out how to finish the book. I realized I still had Bella Bella and Torch Song Trilogy on Broadway, so I figured I’d leave you with a few laughs.”
Doing something with your heart and your mind and putting art out into the world isn’t self-indulgent. It’s important. It has to be done.
He was also surprised at how recording parts of his audiobook could evoke unexpected feelings of grief. “I got through all of it until the section where I talk about heterosexuals in the AIDS crisis,” Fierstein says. “That was the hardest. There are a couple of sentences where I say how they let us die. That just killed me. I had to get up and go for a walk. I typed the words knowing they were true but didn’t feel them until that moment.”
In the end, Fierstein didn’t find the process of writing a memoir much different from writing a play, as both are solitary pursuits. “There may be all kinds of other stuff around it, but when it comes to writing, it’s always you alone,” he says. “Writing is between the writer and the pen. There’s no real difference. It’s masturbation!” When I jokingly retort how what we do as writers can sometimes seem self-indulgent in the grand scheme of things, Fierstein counters: “Doing something with your heart and your mind and putting art out into the world isn’t self-indulgent. It’s important. It has to be done.”
I ask if, looking back on his life from where he stands now, and considering all that he’s seen as a human being, artist, and LGBTQIA+ activist, he’s disappointed with how far we have left to go with respect to equality today. “I remember one gay Pride parade day, arriving in Central Park and seeing a big group of marriage-equality activists having phony weddings,” Fierstein says. “I thought, ‘What the f--k is wrong with you people? We have so much to do, and you want to have a wedding?’ But they were all kids, and this was important to them,” he explains. “I thought: ‘You’re an old fart, and this is not your revolution alone.’ So, I joined the marriage-equality movement, and f--k if they weren’t right. Back then, heteros were scared they were going to raise their kids to be homos. People were scared a gay waiter would spit in their food and give them AIDS. They didn’t understand what we were going through. But gay marriage, they understood. You want the protections of marriage — anyone who’s been divorced understands that. Who gets what when you break up, they could understand. Are we going in the direction I would be going in? No, but there’s no such thing as going backward. There’s no again — there’s only the future.”