AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi Jessica Lange, it's such an honor. I'm a little nervous, apologies because I adore you, like I love, I'm super nervous. I'm super nervous. I love you! [Laughter]

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ALISA ROSENTHAL: What’s going on. You’re listening to Chicago Humanities Tapes, the audio arm of Chicago Humanities, the live festival bringing you the best in arts, culture, politics, science… and the other humanities for over thirty years. I’m Alisa Rosenthal - and I really love today’s chat. I know you will too. It’s with none other than the actress and goddess herself Jessica Lange, joined by Chicago theater critic Chris Jones to chat about her stunning black and white street photography - and he couldn’t let her get away without diving into some of her iconic roles in Tootsie, Cape Fear, American Horror Story, among others. I’m always fascinated by people who can effortlessly exist in two spaces at the same time - why can’t you be an Oscar-winning actress and also a thoughtful, moving photographer? If you like your high brow discussions of French philosophy with a dash of low brow ‘70s-era New York celebrity gossip, this conversation is for you. Make sure to click the link in the description to the show notes for more info on her work and some of the photos she mentions. Head over to chicagohumanities.org where you can also find a full transcript and links to our previous episodes. While there, take your shoes off, get comfy, you can also check out our full calendar of upcoming events - you can still nab tickets to your favorite speakers at our Spring festival which runs through June 11th, 2023. Alright friends, without further ado, La Lange.

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[Audience applause]

CHRIS JONES: Hi, everybody. How lucky am I tonight? This is. This is kind of a fabulous opportunity. Miss Lange. How are you? Welcome to Chicago.

JESSICA LANGE: Thank you very much.

CHRIS JONES: This is so exciting. Your interest in photography seems to have begun when your then husband, Sam Shepard, the late Sam Shepard, who I've been thinking about because I actually did a program with Sam Shepard at this very festival a number of years ago. But somewhere in the 1990s, he gives you a camera, a Leica N6, I think it is?

JESSICA LANGE: M6.

CHRIS JONES: M6. And all of a sudden this sparks this very long career now in photography, you've had, and I guess I'd like to ask what was it about a Leica M6 that—cause you think of a camera as just a camera, and yet, are they really that cool that you were able to do that?

JESSICA LANGE: My interest in photography, um. Actually, it actually pre—

CHRIS JONES: Predated the.

JESSICA LANGE: Gift.

CHRIS JONES: Yeah.

JESSICA LANGE: Um, from Sam. Um, when I was, uh. When I was at the University of Minnesota as, uh, as a freshman, I met a group of photographers and quit school and went off to live in Europe with them while they were making a film on, uh.

CHRIS JONES: And there was.

JESSICA LANGE: It was much more interesting, let me tell you.

CHRIS JONES: There were some hot guys in my class.

JESSICA LANGE: Yeah, there really were. And we traveled to southern Spain and we - So that was my first interest in photography, but it was more just as an observer. And then we all moved back to New York City and became involved with Robert Frank and Danny Lyon and some of the seminal photographers of that era. So I knew always about the power of photography. Then a couple decades later, I started collecting and I surrounded myself with great photographers' work. And so that when Sam gave me the camera—and to address the Leica M6 mystique: it is the finest. I mean, it is one of the finest, maybe the finest camera, I think. Yeah. I had this amazing, you know, gift. And I thought, well, I have to do something with this.

CHRIS JONES: So he just showed up with it one day.

JESSICA LANGE: Yeah. Well, he knew I was, you know, because I had talked a lot about photography and I had started collecting photography. And, um, so when the, when, when I got the camera, I thought, well, all right, now I have to do this seriously. So I built a darkroom and started processing my own film and printing and taking the camera with me everywhere I went. And that became that was the beginning.

CHRIS JONES: So for the first many decades of your career, you were more photographed than photographing.

JESSICA LANGE: Certainly.

CHRIS JONES: So I always think of and obviously you were very—well, were—are a very, very famous person and generally speaking, most famous people dislike being photographed. It's invasive to them. And I'm guessing it was invasive to you, especially at certain periods when you were up for two Academy Awards in the same year and all the rest of it. Did you learn anything from being photographed in terms of becoming a photographer?

JESSICA LANGE: I remember Mary Ellen Mark, a great photographer, who looked at my work one time and said, I would describe your approach as a fly on a wall. I never like to intrude on the moment, the person, the situation, so I would try to be as anonymous as possible. When I was when I was on the street taking photographs or whatever, which is the opposite of what a paparazzi does, who's like in your face in the most intrusive, personal way possible. So, and I think in some strange way, the the photography was a wonderful counterpoint to acting, in that, you know, an actor is like constantly surrounded by people. Your work is dependent on crews and other actors. Director. I mean, there's—it's not a private it's not like being a writer or being a painter. You don't have control over time and space and all of that. You're, you're really involved in a communal effort. What I found with photography was it was just the most personal and intimate and private thing. And I love that about it because like I said, it was, it was, it was the absolute counterpoint kind of to to my life as an actor. And I could just wander around by myself, almost like in a state, you know, a meditative state, and just do it privately. I found that I, I really actually needed that at some point in my life.

CHRIS JONES: But I mean, didn't some of the people you were photographing suddenly look at you and go, "oh, wait a minute, this is Jessica Lange ?"

JESSICA LANGE: I honestly don't think they did. I just. No. I mean, people were—like with this last project, a lot of the people I was photographing were people who were the only other people out on the street. Many of them were homeless people.

CHRIS JONES: This is during the pandemic.

JESSICA LANGE: Yeah. It was a unique experience. And I would never I would never point my camera at somebody unless. I didn't want them to know that I was there or that I was photographing them. So there was no direct contact. But at a certain point, when I was doing my previous book, Highway 61, I loved the idea of the direct contact in that thing of. The kind of call and response in a way. Yeah. And that transcends time so that you look at a photograph decades later and that person is like—you feel connected to them because they're looking directly at you. But I never did that without first getting their permission and saying, especially like with with the homeless people on the street, because it's such, it's, it's such a fraught situation. And I never wanted them to think that I was there just kind of. Do you know, recording their situation. So I would always talk to them and I would always ask, Would it be all right if I photographed you? Would it be alright if I took your picture? And no one ever said no. So.

CHRIS JONES: Really?

JESSICA LANGE: Yeah, it was. I really felt, you know, fortunate and gifted that I, you know, had that opportunity.

CHRIS JONES: I had this this revelation once; I was in a Broadway theater, and I was I was in the men's room, and I realized that I was peeing next to Billy Crystal, in fact. And I remember and and I remember that his eyes were focused on, you know, his own business. And I remember thinking to myself that this is the price of celebrity a bit that you don't, most, even celebrities who are very, very nice to people often have so much interaction with people that they don't seek out more of it from the general public. So in other words, they go through life trying to contain on some levels interaction. I don't mean that to be critical. I mean just to survive and to not get caught up with too many people, with all these things they want to tell you and all scripts they want to give you and all the rest of it. What you've been doing is the sort of the opposite of that, where you've been going up to strangers essentially, and saying, May I take a photograph? It's a strange juxtaposition in your life, it seems. So you must want to seek out more human contact on some level.

JESSICA LANGE: Yes. And definitely that was the case when during the pandemic, because when the lockdown happened, and it happened so dramatically and so abruptly, New York just kind of emptied out.

CHRIS JONES: Yeah.

JESSICA LANGE: Anybody who could leave left if they had, you know, the opportunity, the choice, the ability to. And what was left was a New York that I hadn't seen for decades and decades and decades. It was a whole different kind of energy suddenly on the streets. And it really was about survival. It was about absence and it was about loneliness. And when I would encounter these people. I mean, it was it was an exchange that was very heartfelt on both of our parts, because sometimes they would be the only people I would speak to during the course of the day except, you know, on the telephone or whatever. But. Most of my friends were gone. My family wasn't there. Everything had shut down. So it wasn't even like you were having, you know, a casual exchange with a waiter or a cab driver or anything. And also the fact that normally in New York when you're moving around the city and I'm sure it's the same here everybody is with a purpose and nobody and everybody is distracted in a way, you know, they're either looking at their phone or they're thinking about where they're going or they're in conversation with somebody. So there isn't the opportunity to just slow way down and observe who's around you and who who is, like, available. But during that time, which was this extraordinary kind of moment, in, in the city, you had all the time in the world because there was nothing to do and you weren't going anywhere and there were no appointments and you had no destination, which was part of this practice of dérive. So when I would like. When I would see somebody and make eye contact with them, I could tell that their impulse was the same as mine, which was to have some kind of connection. And oftentimes I would stop and we would talk for half an hour, 45 minutes, maybe more. And, you know, it was it was a unique experience. And I really thought of it as a gift.

CHRIS JONES: I mean, you wouldn't have been able to do that 30 years - Would you have wanted to do that in the nineties? Or is this something that you are happier doing now than you would have been?

JESSICA LANGE: I probably would, am happier doing it now because I mean I have found with age that my life empties out somewhat. You know, my children are grown now. My husband is gone. You know, the career is like, somehow.

CHRIS JONES: It's not so bad.

JESSICA LANGE: In kind of a stall. [Laughter]. No, I mean, you know, you just don't have the opportunity to work as much as you used to so, I think of it more as a gift because it's allowed me to do things that I wouldn't normally do or have time to do or interest in.

CHRIS JONES: So obviously this is not—you've done many many books of photography: 50 Photographs, In Mexico, Unseen, and then the Highway 61 piece you just mentioned, going back, I think, to 2008. So there's a many, many of these collections of photographs. But this new one then.

JESSICA LANGE: Dérive.

CHRIS JONES: Dérive. So what you do is you have no purpose, but you still have the Leica, presumably, the same Leica? [Laughter]

JESSICA LANGE: Well, okay, so. So the way it started was. I was in New York. It was the fall. And mentioned to my son, I don't know what am I going to do? You know? I mean, I had gone to my cabin, which I always do in northern Minnesota for the summer and come back. And then the idea of being in New York—and the streets were empty. There was very little traffic. Pedestrians had disappeared. And I said to my son, I don't know what I'm going to do here through the fall and winter and spring. I mean, it's going to. And he said "Do you know there's practice of dérive, the theory of dérive," which I had never heard of, and it—based on the work of this mid-century French philosopher Guy Debord. Basically what he's saying is that, you leave your house with no purpose in mind. I guess the closest translation to "dérive" would be "to drift." And with no expectations, you let go of all your usual reasons for going out and going and moving about. And you just allow yourself to be drawn—and he says usually in an urban terrain—by the attractions and the encounters that you have there. So I started doing that several times a week for like—I gave myself six months. And I would walk out the front door and just randomly decide, do I go right? Do I go left? Do I go uptown? Do I go downtown? Do I go east? Do I go west? With no, no preconceived idea of what I was going to do that day. And you just kind of start to wander and you're just wandering. Kind of being drawn by like, Oh, I've never seen that before. And you start down that block. And I found some days I'd walk as many as ten miles.

CHRIS JONES: Oh, wow. Ten miles. That's a lot.

JESSICA LANGE: That is a lot. Yes. And I did that for a few days. And then I thought, you know what, I'm going to start carrying my camera with me because I really want to have some—it was never with a purpose in mind. It wasn't like, I want to do a book about this or I want to. It was really just as a visual diary because what I was seeing was so fascinating in this rather unnatural way. So I started walking around with the camera and, and again, it wasn't like, for instance, when I shot Highway 61, I was deliberately going out looking for photographs because I had this this theme in mind.

CHRIS JONES: Highway 61, remind me where that is. That goes from...?

JESSICA LANGE: It goes from the Canadian border in northern Minnesota.

CHRIS JONES: Right.

JESSICA LANGE: And ends in New Orleans.

CHRIS JONES: And you went the entire.

JESSICA LANGE: Oh, many times. Yeah. Many times. That's always interested me a lot and Highway 61. I mean I'm sure like if you drove Route 66, I mean, it's it's a historic highway, not just because of Dylan. But, you know, I mean.

CHRIS JONES: Well, what was the source of your fascination with New Orleans?

JESSICA LANGE: I've always loved New Orleans. I always loved New Orleans. And then we filmed there for two seasons of American Horror Story. And I decided finally that it was some place that I wanted to live. So I stayed. I was there for about five years and then like everything else in my life, one day I woke up and I thought, What the fuck am I doing? [Laughter] And sold the house and left. So.

CHRIS JONES: You're not really one for sitting in Beverly Hills and collecting awards. And I mean, you could be doing that.

JESSICA LANGE: I wouldn't mind collecting awards. [Laughter] I'm not going to sit. Not going to sit in Beverly Hills, though.

CHRIS JONES: You have remained tethered more than most of your peers to the Midwest. Right? I mean, that's—

JESSICA LANGE: Yeah. I mean, I've, I've always kept a cabin up in northern Minnesota.

CHRIS JONES: This is a plush cabin or it's a rough and rustic? It's a Hollywood cabin or it's a real cabin?

JESSICA LANGE: It's definitely not a Hollywood cabin, but it's also not—you know, I don't have to go out and pump water.

CHRIS JONES: I would hope not. I would hope not. I would hope not.

JESSICA LANGE: Um, in northern Minnesota, because, you know, that's where I'm from. Uh, I would go to these places that I would remember or, you know, that I felt a connection to. Or when I would shoot down in Mexico, it was always. With the purpose of finding a photograph, you know, of like wandering with your camera and trying to find something, having the patience to it, to find to find the photograph. With dérive, it wasn't that. It was really. I wasn't thinking in terms of, oh, that's an interesting photograph. I was thinking in terms of, I just want a record of this time. And not necessarily thinking, is this a good photograph? Is this a, you know, vital photograph, whatever. It was just as a kind of visual diary of this extraordinary and unnatural time in New York City.

CHRIS JONES: And you don't crop your photo. You don't run something through some digital magic afterwards. You just simply. The photo is the photo. Is that right?

JESSICA LANGE: Yeah. I've always—because, because one of my favorite photographers, and I don't mean this to sound like, you know, pompous, is Cartier-Bresson. He always—he always included the negative line in his prints so that you knew he was printing full frame. He was never cropping.

CHRIS JONES: Hmm.

JESSICA LANGE: And that was just a conceit. A conceit that I tried to imitate.

CHRIS JONES: So it's a sort of for you, it's a legitimate. It's the honest, full—

JESSICA LANGE: Yeah.

CHRIS JONES: —picture, sort of thing.

JESSICA LANGE: Yeah. It's what you saw, what the camera recorded. What you saw through the, through the viewfinder.

CHRIS JONES: So what's—how do you do it? Like, what's your advice? What makes—you walk out there with your camera. Your Leica camera. And you have, um—what makes a good shot? How do you—what do you do?

JESSICA LANGE: Well, I mean, I think that's you know, I look at like the great photographers and I, I'm, believe me, that I'm not in any way. Consider myself in that. I mean, I don't. So anyhow, that goes without—

CHRIS JONES: So stipulated. So, I mean, you're pretty good. So.

JESSICA LANGE: But what I, what I notice when I look at their photographs is that—and you can see, you can tell when something happens in an instant and when they have like composed it, in other words. Like with Cartier-Bresson, you know, there's a moment that famous photograph of the man, you know, jumping the puddle. Well, I mean, the fact that he was there at that moment, camera ready, and caught him kind of mid-flight is just a miracle. This is what I think it has in common with acting, is that it forces you to be present, that you absolutely have to be present in the moment. To know what the truth is and to be available to it. So in that way, the disciplines have been beneficial because they've they've made me practice that.

CHRIS JONES: I always think of acting as—that actors are not so much playing characters as playing characters in motion that we're always, always—everything's moving in the world. And great actors like yourself are often have a kind of a kinetic quality where you're just constantly—many of your famous characters, some of which I was watching today, are always in constant motion. And yet here you are with an art form that's about capturing stillness, really. I think actors probably have a deeper understanding of human emotion than regular people.

JESSICA LANGE: You do?

CHRIS JONES: I do. [Laughter] Don't you? I mean, they're more empathetic, generally. They understand cause that's what they do.

JESSICA LANGE: Well, yeah. You get to make believe a lot. [Laughter] You get to—I mean, that is one of the things you can explore, like, you know, the worst of human nature and the, you know, the most difficult wells of emotion. And and then. Go home at night and hold your kids and watch TV. I think I think one of the reasons actually I was drawn to acting is because it does allow you to to explore things that hopefully you can avoid in real life. I mean, the characters that I've always been drawn to, like Frances Farm or Blanche Dubois or Mary Tyrone, I mean, I wouldn't want any of their lives, um, but to pretend to actually, you know, delve into that and fall down those wells has been—I mean, it's been a wonderful gift.

CHRIS JONES: I always think one of—you know, your work in Tootsie was, I mean, one of your great performances and yet you were sort of the only person in that film who was not funny. I mean, you were you were— [Laughter].

JESSICA LANGE: I'm never funny. I'm never funny.

CHRIS JONES: I was thinking, how did that work out like that? I mean, that's a sort of—

JESSICA LANGE: I know.

CHRIS JONES: It's a really—it's a, it's an enigma, that role in that movie.

JESSICA LANGE: Yeah, I have no idea. I mean, because I had just finished shooting Frances, which just about killed me.

CHRIS JONES: Yeah, I'm sure.

JESSICA LANGE: And I'd worked with the great Kim Stanley, and she gave me this advice when we finished shooting, she said, "do a comedy next." And I thought, Oh. Jesus. I'm not interested in comedy. First of all, I can't do comedy because I'm not funny. So, I mean, why would I do that? And then Sydney Pollack just started pursuing me about that part. And finally I, you know, flashed back on Kim's advice. And I thought, All right. So that's how that all came about. But no, I'm not funny in it. And everybody else is incredibly funny.

CHRIS JONES: Yeah, but the presence of you not being funny is what makes that movie work. Really.

JESSICA LANGE: I was sitting with my two granddaughters when they were really young, and I was—we were watching TV and I was going through the channels and there was Tootsie. And I thought, I'm not going to say anything to them. [Laughter] And we're watching it and we're watching it. And I'm waiting for them to say, "ma'am, that's you." And, you know, because, I mean, I, I was at my prime, I looked great. And finally, after watching it for quite a while, I said to the kids, I said "That's me." [Laughter] And it was a scene with me and Dustin. Dustin's in drag and that horrible wig and that crazy—I mean, like the voice and everything. And they looked at it and they turned to me and they said, "Which one?" [Laughter]

CHRIS JONES: You are pretty funny. That's pretty funny. That is pretty funny. That's very good. Very dry delivery.

JESSICA LANGE: That put me in my place.

CHRIS JONES: Yeah. [Laughter] Well, what I thought we'd do for a minute is let's look at the latest collection, the Dérive. That are in this -

JESSICA LANGE: Oh yeah.

CHRIS JONES: Shall we do that? 2020, is it? 21.

JESSICA LANGE: Well, I gave myself six months -

CHRIS JONES: Ok.

JESSICA LANGE: - to do this practice. And in a sense, it's kind of like a walking meditation because, you know, you're just being drawn by things. And Debord also talks about Psychogeography. About how certain, like, areas, certain zones have an energy and a kind of a magnetic pull or repel, I guess, the same way. And it was interesting because I would find that like, you know, my emotional response to certain neighborhoods and places I hadn't walked ever in, all the decades that I've lived in New York, would affect me emotionally. Like sometimes I'd be like, just like, Oh, I got to get out of here. Or sometimes I would just be suddenly, like, filled with this kind of, I don't know. It was almost like a joy just being here in this area. Because like I said, I wasn't interested in in doing a book or anything like that. I just wanted a diary, a visual diary of what the city looked and felt like at this time. So I gave myself six months to do these walks, these random wanderings, and in the beginning I didn't carry my camera. Then I started to. So all of the photographs in this book, and I think there are 49 of them are just moments that I captured as I was walking by. Nothing was—nothing was set up, nothing was anticipated. So that's the practice.

CHRIS JONES: It's interesting, you know, these photographs of the city and Sam Shepard, who you were married to, I always think of as sort of the the poet of wide open spaces in many ways. He was a sort of a—that, you know, for openness and, um, it's, it's funny to think—imagine the two of you together. It must have been interesting.

JESSICA LANGE: [Laughs] Yeah. I mean, our histories were—we came from such different places. I mean, he was from like, you know, Duarte, California and the desert and, you know, Central Valley. And I was from the woods of Minnesota. I mean, I do know that he, he, he was never terribly comfortable in the deep woods. So. [Laughs] Not having an eye on the horizon. Yeah.

CHRIS JONES: I remember when he came here, he drove. He didn't fly. He drove. I mean, he would drive everywhere, right?

JESSICA LANGE: He drove everywhere. Mm hmm.

CHRIS JONES: Do you learn a lot from—I mean, you work with some great movie directors and I think I read somewhere that you would, you know, when you worked with Fosse that you—I think you said once you learned precision from him because he was such a precise artist. And then all these other directors, it must have—as an actor and as a photographer, the influence of those directors, which really were the greats of the 20th century and Hollywood, must have rubbed off on you. I'm just curious about some of the directors that you work with.

JESSICA LANGE: Well, yeah. I mean, I feel really lucky because, you know, I can count—I mean, directors like Fosse and Bob Rafelson. You know, Sydney Pollack, Tony Richardson and Scorsese. I mean, I had the chance—Costa-Gavras. I mean, just the best directors of that time when movies—I mean, the best films, I think. I was lucky because, I mean, I came in right during the height of that kind of auteur movement in Hollywood. The studios were gone, basically, that whole studio way of approaching film-making. And now you had these artists who were making the best work of their lives. And I mean, I was so lucky because that doesn't really exist now. And I remember Sydney Pollack saying to me at one time, you know, the kind of films that we've made our our lives doing, that's going to be over because the middle ground is about to be absorbed by. And that was at the beginning of what they used to call the big tentpole movies. And, you know, the sequels and the, um...

CHRIS JONES: The franchises.

JESSICA LANGE: The franchises and all of that. And when you think of it, yeah, I mean, I just did a film in Ireland. We were making a film of Long Day's Journey Into Night with the amazing cast and a great adaptation of, to me, The Greatest American Play. But I had so much trouble with the financing and it wasn't an expensive film to make. I mean, we were all working for nothing. It wasn't like there were salaries to be paid, but it just spoke to how difficult it is to make those kind of films nowadays. Whereas, you know, in their seventies, the eighties, I mean, Fosse could make a film like All That Jazz or Sydney could do Tootsie and you know, they had enough money in the budget and it was well done and people weren't scrimping and saving and, and they knew it was going to have a run in a theater. It wasn't going to go to fucking streaming and like all this bullshit. Um [Laughter] I mean...yeah, I don't like streaming.

CHRIS JONES: I've got to ask you, you know, that, that one year when you were up for—was it best leading actress and best supporting actress on the same Academy Awards, which probably many people in this room remember that ceremony. I do. And I remember that. What was that like?

JESSICA LANGE: I don't know. I mean, I. Yeah, it was, uh, it was good! I mean i t was the first time I'd really been recognized for my work as an actor, you know, with Frances and Tootsie. So, I mean, I was thrilled.

CHRIS JONES: Was there a period of time when roles were coming at you so fast that you ended up not doing things that you wish you'd done?

JESSICA LANGE: Yeah, a couple, but not many. But I could name like maybe three or two or three. I won't mention them because the actresses that played them were wonderful and why do that?

CHRIS JONES: Yeah.

JESSICA LANGE: But there were some I'm sorry I missed. However, my bigger regret is all the shit that I did. I would say—and I haven't done that many films. I've done like Ωmaybe 30 some films, 35 and I mean over a 45 year period of time.

CHRIS JONES: So were you just not good at recognizing shit when it came your way? Is that the—

JESSICA LANGE: Yeah, I think partly, you know, because an actor—I mean, you know, you hadn't worked for a year or something and you're thinking, god I should really—I should—I better work. So you take something that you don't necessarily like or you're hopeful that you can—there's always that thing, you know, I think I can make something of this. I think I can make this work. But I would say over like of those 30 some films I've made, maybe a third of them have been good films. And the rest are just, I don't know, for one reason or another, pure shite. [Laughter]

CHRIS JONES: And the couple that you—what were the couple that you love the most?

JESSICA LANGE: Oh, boy. Hmm. Well, I mean, all the—the early ones. Frances. Tootsie. Um. Sweet dreams. Uh. Music Box. Um. Yeah. Cape Fear. God, I can't even remember any of my films, um. But and then in, like, later, I found the most rewarding work was in television when I did Grey Gardens. Um. Even, you know, the—about Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Um. I mean, those—in later years, those were the most rewarding. Yeah. Even some of the characters that I did in American Horror Story, I really. Yeah.

CHRIS JONES: And that's a whole—that's a whole new generation of fans, isn't that.

JESSICA LANGE: Yeah. Yeah. I'm amazed. Yeah.

CHRIS JONES: Where will you take your camera next to?

JESSICA LANGE: Um, I have no idea. None. I have no project in mind.

CHRIS JONES: All right, all right. If you have questions for Miss Lange. Now. Now is the now is the glorious moment.

AUDIENCE 1: Hi. My name is Chase, and I was curious as to how your practice of dérive has evolved since finishing that six month photography period. And if you still practice and also, like, how maybe lessons you've learned during that have informed your life since.

JESSICA LANGE: Um. Well, yeah, I, I don't practice it regularly now because I haven't been in the city that much. But for instance, today, because I flew in to Chicago last night and then didn't have to be here until this evening, I did start walking and—

CHRIS JONES: Oh, wow. Where did you go? You went—

JESSICA LANGE: I walked for about five miles today and ended up going all the way down to the river, following the river, then going—I saw a sign that said Navy Yard, near...?

CHRIS JONES: Navy Pier?

JESSICA LANGE: Navy Pier. Yeah. So I wandered out there and then came back and. Yeah, so I still, I still love to wander that, you know, it's that great Kierkegaard quote: "above all, do not lose your desire to walk." So I think of that all the time.

CHRIS JONES: I think about 400 people are going to beginning tomorrow morning, going to leave their homes, and go walk. [Laughter]

JESSICA LANGE: Well read, read Guy Debord and his theory of dérive. It might inspire you to wander aimlessly, I don’t know.

AUDIENCE 2: Just quickly, before I ask my question, I have to tell you, I've loved you forever. Since I was a teenager. When I sat through Sweet Dreams twice in the theater and I was hooked forever. I love you so much. And it's been a joy to share with my daughter, like watching AHS. But anyway, what gave you the courage when you were very young to just take off and go on these adventures? I have to tell you, as a mother, I feel guilty because my daughter wanted to do that. She didn't want to go to college. And I said, "you've got to go to college. You've got to go to college." And, really, but I so admire people like you and Bob Dylan—dare I say it—who just like, take off and go. And because you have to do it when you're young. What gave you that courage to do that?

CHRIS JONES: That's a great question. It's a great question.

JESSICA LANGE: I don't know what it was, but I—I just knew running off to Europe with this group of guys was going to be a lot more interesting than the University of Minnesota. But, no, I. I don't know. I've you know, it's. I always think of, like, the, you know, the the last couple of lines of, of James Joyce, you know, the Ulysses and that thing of: "and I said, yes, yes, yes." And I think, yeah, that's what we have to do. Because, I mean, now that I'm this age, I think, oh my God, if I hadn't said yes to everything that came my way, um. Yeah. My life would have—I would have never gone, like, the direction I did and be kind of swept away and taken places and done things. And I'm so grateful that I did. That I didn't hesitate. Even, yeah. When maybe I should have. But I didn't.

AUDIENCE 3: Hi, Ms. Lange. My name is Jamie. Long time fan. Really appreciate you being here. And thank you for sharing another form of your art with us tonight. Um, my question is, do you find that your work in front of the camera has influenced what draws you in as subject matter or as composition for your photography?

JESSICA LANGE: Well. You know I've—beside being, like, having the opportunity to work with such great directors, I've also worked with really great cinematographers. And I—and it hasn't been like a conscious kind of, you know, learning experience. But I think having done films for as long as I have. I, I began to understand the power, the emotional power of the frame and the lighting. I know just having shot Long Day's Journey Into Night, you know, that thing of, of, of, I mean, they talk about the fog all the time and, and you get a sense of the light in the fog and the weather and everything affecting the emotional lives of these characters. The people.

CHRIS JONES: Do you ever walk behind the camera and look and see what the cinematographer was doing and seeing?

JESSICA LANGE: Yes. Back when, when we didn't have playback—which really dates me—but you would actually step behind camera, maybe even look through the lens to see how it's framed. And now, of course, nobody. I remember working with Tony Richardson, the great English director, and he would have—this was the time where, like, the director was like standing right next to the camera and he was watching you like this. You know, he wasn't in like video land over there. And there was a great synergy. There was a great exchange of energy knowing that, like, not only the camera was watching you, but the director was an extension of it. And there was. I just found that. I don't know, very exciting in a way. Now, of course, that they're looking at, you know, playback and designing the shots and everything from what they see on playback. But in the beginning, yeah, the only way you would know, you would step back behind the camera and ask the cinematographer if you could see what his frame was or whatever. Um. But yes, I mean. I love doing that. And I love that thing of the camera and the cinematographer and the director all like kind of right there with you. You know, there was a great exchange of energy. There was, like, alchemy in a way. It, like, created something.

CHRIS JONES: It's another way that personal connection has gone the way of the, you know. And now it's all. Yeah. Yeah.

AUDIENCE 4: Hi, Miss Lange. Thank you so much for coming to Chicago and making our night. Um, seriously. But I—Feud was my favorite mini series of all time. And I—you embodied Crawford like no other. And I really wanted to get your feeling: what do you think of the woman? Was she a villain or a Hollywood victim? Can you please answer that for me and my friends? Thank you so much. I have to know. [Laughter]

CHRIS JONES: That's great. That's great.

JESSICA LANGE: You know, it's interesting because I, I, I mean, I grew up on old movies, so I watched a lot of it. And Crawford was never somebody that I was really drawn to as an actor. I mean. But when I when Ryan called me about doing this, I thought, Joan Crawford, I don't know anything about her. I mean, I haven't even really, you know. I've been a fan all these years, so I started. Looking into her life and really learning about her and watching her film. And then I was just in awe of her. I mean, I thought: this woman. First of all, she was one of the all time great survivors. She was powerful. She had a life force One of the things that I loved, and I'd study it over and over and over again, even though I didn't have any scenes like this in the in the film, obviously, because this was when she was, like, just up from Texas in her early twenties, maybe late teens. But to watch her dance was something I mean, the abandon and the sensuality and the, I mean, just kind of just in-your-face type of, I mean, energy and sexuality that she had. I thought, God damn, this woman is—she is unique. And I actually just fell in love with her doing that. [Laughter] So, no, I didn't see her as a victim. I mean, all women were victims of Hollywood during that period. But she had such power and such personal strength. I think she was just extraordinary and also talent. She was really a talented actress.

AUDIENCE 5: Hi, do you mind sharing some of your favorite experiences when you were a roommate with Grace Jones and Jerry Hall?

CHRIS JONES: I was going to ask. That's a great question. I was—I was just wondering that myself.

JESSICA LANGE: Okay. I just—this is—we need a disclaimer here because this—

CHRIS JONES: We're off the record.

JESSICA LANGE: This myth has like been—I don't know where this started. Grace and I were great friends. I loved Grace. We, like, spent a lot of time together. We had a lot of fun.

CHRIS JONES: This is in Paris. Paris. Paris.

JESSICA LANGE: This was in Paris. We had a lot of fun together. We were great pals. We hung out. Jerry Hall was never—I don't know how that got started.

CHRIS JONES: Never what? What, what do you mean?

JESSICA LANGE: I—well, I mean, I met her briefly through a mutual friend, this wonderful artist by the name of Antonio. And um...but I never hung out with her, and I never got to know her. So that myth that Jerry Hall and Grace Jones and I were, like, living together in Paris or something. It's not true.

CHRIS JONES: But the Grace Jones part.

JESSICA LANGE: The Grace Jones part is absolutely true. The Jerry Hall part, Mrs. Murdock, is not true.

AUDIENCE 6: Hi, Miss Lange. When I was nine years old, which was in 1977, 45 years ago, I saw a little movie called King Kong. And it was the first time I had been in a theater. And it began my kind of lifelong love of movies. And I wonder if you talk a little bit about that film and that performance and parlaying that into the great dramatic career you had after that.

CHRIS JONES: This is your first film?

JESSICA LANGE: It was my first film. It was my first actual audition. I had been living in Paris with Grace Jones, and at some point I had been there studying mime with the great old master Étienne Decroux. And after a couple of years living in Paris and I thought, now what? I can't make a - you know, I can't make money as a mime. [Laughter] What do you. And I have to. I mean, it wasn't like... I mean, I had to get a job. So I thought, well, I'd better get back to New York. So I finally left Paris, sadly, and moved back to New York City. I was working as a waitress at the Lion's Head down in the village. And somebody—and I was, I was taking acting classes because I thought, okay, well, okay, I can mime. Maybe I should try acting. So I was taking acting classes in New York City and I was also—I went to see a modeling agent thinking, I don't know, maybe I could make some money modeling. I never did, by the way. But, um...but she said, "Are you interested in acting?" And I said, Yeah. And she said, "well, we have—we got a call looking for, you know, young models to go out and audition for a film. Would you want to do that?" I thought, well, sure, I'll take a break from my waitressing job [unintelligible]. And so that's how it happened. And they flew me out to Los Angeles. I went to MGM, which was like kind of this fantasy come true. My favorite studio all the time I was growing up, I mean, watching MGM movies and and so got to Los Angeles, went to MGM to do this audition. And they were absolutely not interested in me whatsoever. At all. At all. I weighed about £20 less than I do right now. I'd been living in Paris, going to the disco with Grace every night. And I had shaved my eyebrows and I had a blond afro like Dietrich in blond Venus. So I walked in and everybody else in the audition room or these, like, real California babes. I mean, yeah, tits and ass and, and just... and I thought, oh, well, I this has been a mistake. And they thought, this is a mistake and that's how it— but they, they, the agent called and said—because they were just going to send me home. The agent called and said, okay, you've flown her out there, at least put her on film. Let her just read or something. So, you know, they gave me the pages, the sides, and I did this scene. Nobody was around. Not the director, not the producer. Not the casting director. No. I think the second A.D. was, like, said "roll." And but then, you know, he must have called somebody because then the A.D. came and then pretty soon the director showed up and they said, Can you stay a little while long? And that's how it happened, you know. Then the producer, Dino De Laurentiis, came and watched. And by the time I left Los Angeles, they had offered me this part. And I thought, wow. This is crazy. I'm working as a waitress in New York at the Lion's Head, living in a fifth floor walkup. I'd never have enough money even for the subway. And now I'm going to be in, like what at the time was one of the most expensive films ever made. And that's. It wasn't how I imagined starting at all. I really had this fantasy about, Oh, I'll do off Broadway, and then maybe I'll get a Broadway part, then maybe I can audition for film. You know, I had this whole scenario and...but it started this way.

CHRIS JONES: And then your life changed instantly.

JESSICA LANGE: Instantly. Yeah, but what, what it felt like was that my life was interrupted.

CHRIS JONES: What do you mean?

JESSICA LANGE: That I was living this really interesting life. And then suddenly. I'm making a movie. It wasn't. Yeah, it. I know that sounds odd, but it felt like. This had interrupted my life somehow.

CHRIS JONES: Well, now you've got it back.

JESSICA LANGE: Yeah. Doing nothing. [Laughter]

AUDIENCE 7: Hi Jessica Lange. My name is Shawn. It's such an honor. I'm a little nervous. Apologies. Because I adore you. Like, I absolutely adore you. But I was wondering if you could expand upon. There's loneliness and absence of something that you've mentioned a lot this evening. And it's also something that I feel like—a lot of roles that you take on have a lot of emptiness and loneliness and absence to them. And I wondered how that related to the photography and also if you could expand on that as well as your time as a mime. Whenever you talked about being a fly on the wall and going off and photographing, and I was wondering about if you thought about how all this things correlated and if you could expand on that. I would appreciate it. Again, I love you. I'm sorry. I'm super nervous. I love you.

JESSICA LANGE: Well, the loneliness is something I feel like I've lived with my whole life. Even as a child, I felt that kind of loneliness. And during different times in my life, it has been—it's been alleviated somewhat. You know, like when my children were young and, you know, family. And then other times where it's been just overwhelming. And I think that the the loneliness has informed—obviously, you know, the parts that I am drawn to. It also always I think informs my photography. And I again, I feel like—now I've just spent two and a half months in Ireland. And. Being out in the country there and being in the city and being around people, I didn't feel the loneliness there. But there is something, I think, in this country that that feeds loneliness and isolation and separateness and. In that sense of absence. And what—to me, it's like what has gone missing. So all those things. And like I said, to varying degrees, I've lived with that my whole life, even as a child. And I've never been able to escape that. So I'm drawn to those. I'm drawn to those char— for instance, Mary Tyrone, I actually went through the play once and counted how many times she says "alone" or "lonely" or "lonesome." So when I play that, I don't have to imagine it. I mean, it's—it's like a fulfillment in a way, as odd as that sounds.

CHRIS JONES: So this whole evening has been a bit like going out for dinner with Jessica Lange and having a drink with Jessica Lange. And I hope you're buoyed by the the really palpable affection that I can feel really, really in this room for you and your work. And it's just a real honor to have had this evening with you. Ladies and gentlemen, Jessica Lange.

[Audience applause]

[“We Got a Listen” theme music plays]

ALISA ROSENTHAL: That was Jessica Lange with Chris Jones at the Chicago Humanities Fall Festival at Francis W. Parker School in 2022. Chicago Humanities Tapes is produced and hosted by me, Alisa Rosenthal, with help from the awesome team over at Chicago Humanities. Shout out to the wonderful staff who are programming these live events and making them sound fantastic. For more than 30 years, Chicago Humanities has created experiences through culture, creativity, and connection. Check out chicagohumanities.org for more information on becoming a member so you’ll be the first to know about upcoming events and other insider perks. We’ll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode for you. But in the meantime, stay human.

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