Finding Peace After Family Dysfunction, Abuse, and the Absence of a Legendary Filmmaker Father

This is the Humancraft Podcast, and I'm your host, Beth Huddleston. My guest today is Nicca Ray. Nicca is the author of Ray by Ray, a daughter's take on the legend of Nicholas Ray, which is a blend of memoir and biography about her famous father and the impact of his absence in her life. She is also the author of poetry collections titled Backseat Baby, Curve, and Go Go Go Girl.

Her second memoir, Love and Cigarettes, is coming soon, and her play Cry of the Butterfly will be performed in New York City in the fall of 2025. In our interview, Nika and I discussed the impact of addiction and sexual abuse in her life and family, The ways in which her legendary filmmaker father's absence affected her life and how she ultimately found healing, peace, and connection. 

Nicca, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited. Yeah, it's really good to have you here. I read your memoir. It's called Ray on Ray. And this is a memoir about your life, but really also about your parents. And both of your parents from reading your book were kind of larger than life characters in Hollywood.

And so that's just kind of a whole different vantage point that you have. Your father, Nicholas Ray was a director, you know, he directed Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean and all these other Humphrey Bogart movies and all these things. And so he's got this like big, you know, personhood in Hollywood and your mom, she was always working in Hollywood, dancer and actress and all this.

So that's the background of it. But then in the midst of that, you're navigating your own life as a child. And really with an absent father who's a larger than life character. So that's where I want to dive in first, with your father and his absence in your life. Because I think that having an absent father would be really a big presence in its own way because you're always thinking, Oh, maybe he'd understand me better if he were here. Or, you know, my, my mom doesn't, you know, if it's, if it's a father, my mom doesn't understand me. And, you know, that kind of thing, or imagining what life would be like with them.

And so it's, even though they're not there, there's a whole thing that's created. In your case, you also had a father who you would hear about his movies, you would hear about what he was up to and hear people talking about him, but you didn't get to see him very often. So tell me about that. Tell me about you know, any part of that, having an absent father, and then also having your dad be this big personality in Hollywood and having him be absent.

Well, I always felt that I should be with my father, from a very young age. Um, my parents separated when I was two and a half and I didn't see him again until I was 12. And, my mom and I had a really hard time in our relationship  when I was a baby, I had nannies that took care of me and my mom was, you know, she had her issues and she wasn't present.

So when  my mom left Spain and went to Los Angeles. And when my sister and I joined my mom in Los Angeles and she picked us up at the airport, I didn't know who she was. So I was two and a half years old and I didn't know who my mother was. And that sort of set the tone for our relationship and, and I believe set me up to idolize my father, you know, uh, because of course I'm his namesake.

So I always dreamed that I belonged with him and, his absence, His absence was a, a big part of my growing up and, and because I, I knew he was in Europe, I didn't know anything about his career. I didn't know that his career had taken a dive, but I knew he was in Europe. So I told myself he was in Europe making movies and I built this glamorous life for him while I watched my mom struggle.

And I saw her frustrations and felt her frustrations of being a single mom who wasn't getting child support. And the pressures that she had, she left Hollywood and got a job in an office so that she would be able to support my sister and I and provide a home for us. And she should have never left dance, so her frustrations made me really uncomfortable.

And I just envisioned my father as being this God, you know, he wouldn't get frustrated. He would give me what I wanted. He would have time to listen to me, read my stories. He would be everything that my mother was not, and you know, another thing about having an absentee father is you can look at your mother, like I could look at my mother and go, Oh, I don't look like my mother, you know?

But my mom didn't even keep pictures of my father around the house. So like I could, I could go to a bookstore and find a picture of my father, but like, what did I look like? Who did I look like? I didn't look like my mother or or my sister, at least I didn't think I did, you know, when I was a kid. So it was always like looking in the mirror and wondering who I am.

And of course I must, I must look like my father.  Everything about me must be my father, that's how I grew up, that's how I dealt with his absence, you know. Do you remember as a child, you know, I, totally understand what you're saying and I can imagine a lot of people probably can share that experience when they have an absentee parent.

But, do you remember, was there ever any like, blame that you put on him for not being there when you were growing up? Or did you? Oh no, I didn't. Everything was my mother's fault. called my poor mother,  she would, Oh, she would get so mad at me. You know, she would get, she was so mad at, at him. She would, she used to always say, there he goes.

He's going around galavanting in his silk shirts while I'm slaving away, you should think about that for a minute. It's like, no, I really did not come to terms with the negative side, the real negative side of how I felt about his absence  until I was writing Ray by Ray, you know,  📍 until I gathered all the information and could not deny, things anymore because everything was right out there.

In front of me like he was not there. He was purposefully not there, you know Yeah, and that's the thing there's so much in your book and you actually did really research it and go in and interview people and learned about both of your parents lives and Learned about the whole story behind your father and his absence and what he was up to and Reading your book, there was such a feeling of chaos.

I had a feeling of chaos. I mean, not when your mother tried to settle down and, you know, before she married your stepfather and she was just, wow, I mean, good for her. Like when she didn't have money any, anymore and she was, trying to survive with you and your sister. But then with your stepfather and with your dad's life, there's a lot, there was a lot of chaos.

There was a lot going on there. And so that there's that feeling. Throughout your book of a, of a chaotic environment, I mean, your father was really, really an addict. And I mean, he was really deep into addiction. It sounds like for most of, or all of his adult life until the very end.

So that was a, a key piece to his behavior and his absence and all of that. So when you took a look at that, what did you see about that, about the chaos with his life, about his addiction? In looking back at that when you wrote the book, how did you see all of that in terms of him and his absence and how he behaved?

It was easier to look at his addiction. Before I was born in the years before I was born. And you know, he was doing cocaine in the 1930s when he was involved in the theater in the Lower East Side and he was notorious for carrying outaround,a Briefcase of pharmaceuticals.

You know, he had mental illness and it wasn't being treated and they were just giving him all kinds of, they didn't know what they were doing and they were giving him all kinds of drugs and then, and he was always drinking. You know, he was, It's like, my mom said when she married my dad, she didn't know what vodka smelled like.

She thought that his odor was a perfume, not the vodka, you know, coming out of his pores, so he was, he was a bad alcoholic, like his father had been, and he suffered, um, his niece who became a clinical, psychiatrist believed that both my father's father and my father,  suffered from bipolar and,  so when I was learning about that, and like I said, before I was born,  I looked at his his life with some empathy because I have my own history of addiction.

And I honestly, at times was in awe of what he could accomplish with all these issues that he was dealing with, and in 1960, he was prescribed methamphetamine to treat his depression and his alcoholism. And that's when he became addicted to speed and he was doing that throughout the sixties and then in the early seventies, he was a mess with the cocaine. I also was told he was doing heroin. There were people who thought that he was doing heroin in the 1950s when he was on the set of when to cross the Everglades, which is one of the movies he directed and then was fired from towards the end of his career. But what was hard, what was hard was finding out where he was in 1970, 71, 72, 73, when my mother was married to my stepfather, because I needed, I needed my father to come home and rescue me, and when in my research, I tracked his whereabouts and I discovered that he was like doing all kinds of drugs with these young students. And he at one point was staying in Hollywood, a car drive away from where we were living, and he was doing drugs, he was doing drugs. Putting together this movie that he made with his students and they were drinking a lot and doing a lot of drugs and that was really hard.

That's when it really hit home that my father didn't come home because he rather do drugs and drink than be a parent. You know, It didn't have anything to do with making movies, and that,

That was a real blow, and his life, his life was certainly chaotic. He didn't remain friends with his peers from Hollywood. The only person who stayed in his life was John Houseman who had produced his first movie and had kind of groomed him to be a director, taking him under his wing in the late thirties, early forties before he directed.

You know, he lost everything. Like when I started to look at him as an addict and to have been a victim of his addiction, you know, it was enlightening. It was like, it kind of brought him, it kind of brought him down to earth. Like he was no longer a God and he was a human being with this affliction.

And there were moments during the research when I felt it, like I would have felt it when I was a child, if I hadn't been in denial, you know what I mean? Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's worth, I mean, it's worth saying that now this is a guy, your dad who had made, I mean, I don't, I don't know, at least 20 movies probably.

Right. And, and I mean, he, he was a talented guy. And so when, by the time that you were growing up, he was, he was moving into that, you know, that dive, but he had been a functional addict. We could say, I guess it's one way to say it for years where he was, he was actually like, The guy in Hollywood and like he was still making making movies and he was the go to guy and all of this So so it's like then then it's like I felt that so much reading your book it's like you see when he was a young guy like you said and he was He was doing, you know, like they were doing these sort of  theater for a cause and like all of this and he was obviously just motivated and optimistic and excited about all of that.

And then you see he's got all this talent and he, he goes into movies and he's living the life and then it's just such a, such a showcase of what addiction can do to a person and their talents and their personality and it, it was, it was really sad, but it's insightful. And so I, I think that is a big, a big thing in your book is, is the sadness and the tragedy of, of what addiction did to someone like that.

Right. I mean, he had so much and it's. It's like, what a fall,  you know, I mean, and, and you're right, he, he directed, I mean, he directed Rebel Without a Cause, he directed In a Lonely Place, he directed masterpieces that hold up to this day that, that attract audience, theater's filled to bursting. People, you know, just recently I introduced his film, Johnny Guitar at a screening here in New York and it was packed.

The theater was packed, same when I introduced In a Lonely Place, the theater was packed with young people, not just old people, but young people, people in their 20s that are curious about Nicholas Ray and that he made an impact on people's lives. And he's, 

in my humble opinion, one of the greatest directors of the 20th century, And I believe there are other people who, who believe the same. He was definitely an important piece of the film industry of the 20th century. And the movie he was making with his students is a mess and you can see addiction all over it.

It doesn't make any sense. And the only people he could get to work on a film with him were these students when he was teaching people, I think, try and make that movie into something bigger and better and, oh, so avant garde and underground. But if you compare, if you look at who, who Nicholas Ray was in 1952, let's say, 1953, And then 20 years later, in 1973, and what he's doing, it's like, his brain is just scrambled.

Like, he put himself on the screen. You, you can watch his movies and get a sense of who this man was. So he put himself in this movie that he made in the early seventies. And I keep bringing that movie up because that's the movie that's like, when I watched that movie,  I see the man who couldn't show up to be a father and he was really scrambled.

So that addiction. Addiction took, my mom used to call him a shell when he came back home in, I think it was 1973 when I was 12, when he came back into our lives. My mom used to always say he was a shell of himself, and that's, I felt that it was palpable, the sadness with that, because you did such a good job, I think, of really portraying how vibrant he was at one time, you know, through interviews and through, through other research you did that he really was a, like, I, I call him a larger than life character. I mean, he really was. And then, yeah, you see the way that he self destructed and, and that, that is just really a huge tragedy for you,  for your family, for everyone around him.

And I think it's like that, that chaos that seemed to follow him around. He did, you know, leave the family situation when you were young and stopped contributing any money. And so your mom was doing her best to hold everything together. And then she ultimately got remarried to your stepfather, who was really, really a bad, a bad character.

And this is kind of just a theme in your book is, is that there wasn't, there weren't a lot of boundaries in your family, in your extended family it's just was not, it was passed down. It was a, a situation that already was there. It wasn't like your parents were creating this out of thin air. I mean, it was something that they grew up with as well.

So, but there were not a lot of boundaries and, and then on top of that, she didn't pick a very, she, she unfortunately picked a not, not great guy. And then he had a son who did uh, um, sexually abuse you. And this is something we've, I've talked about with a couple other guests, and I think it's an important issue because you had to suffer from that for quite an extended period of time, not to mention a very unstable, abusive stepfather but the sexual abuse is something that seems like it, it has such a profound, um, profound effect on, on people that I, I just don't know if, you know, others always understand how life altering that can really be and, and not to say that people can't heal.

And do, you know, and move past it and all that, which people do all the time, but, but just that the effects of that, if you could speak a little bit to that, I want to make sure we address it. Okay. Well, thank you so much for wanting to address it. I think it's really important to talk about because people get really uncomfortable talking about it.

And so it's swept under the rug and so it kind of keeps the secret.  Because a large, you know, a large part of the sexual abuse is the secret that we have to keep.  In my case, my stepbrother threatened to hurt me if I said anything. You know, it went on for three years, on a practically day to day basis.  I was eight years old there, there are, books that suggest you, because you lose yourself when, when the abuse starts, you lose your personhood, right?

But when you're eight years old, how much of a personhood do you have? You haven't fully developed yet, you know, like I was, I wrote a poem about it, I remember that I liked hopscotch,  you know, who, who was I before the abuse occurred? I liked to laugh a lot. I like to play hopscotch.

I like to draw. Uh, I became very sad.  I started overeating. I, was sexualized at such a young age that it influenced the way that I conducted myself as a teenager. I was,  very promiscuous. I didn't know how to say no. I didn't know that I had a right to say no until I was 26 years old and in therapy and I was in a, in a relationship with a man who I didn't want to be with.

And I would, I kept saying, he's too this or he's too that. And after months of saying stuff like that, my therapist said, are you sexually attracted to him? And I'm like, no. And she said, well, you don't have to be with him. And I'm like, I don't because he was sexually attracted to me.

And what was really interesting was that in the course of our relationship, I couldn't say it's over. But my body closed up,  the effects that the sexual abuse had on me, were so deep. So the way that I would be in relationships. You know, I have been in a relationship with my partner for 34 years, and I feel like that's, that's a miracle, but like the relationships before him were relationships where I was totally sexualized, you know, I chose men who weren't interested in anything I had to say.  It was just like, I looked really pretty and that's, that's what my value was. And so like at first,  our sexual lives were real vibrant, but as soon as I would get to know someone, I would shut down and then there's the, the whole aspect of the trauma. 

 I,   myself  go  

 I've been in treatment for PTSD, so I'm learning what the effects of the abuse had on me. I don't feel that I'm a victim of the abuse anymore, but it took a long time and it took a lot of therapy to be able to move past it. Take responsibility for my actions. I couldn't do anything.

I can't do anything about what was done to me. It's done. It's over. I can't do anything to the perpetrator, but I can I can learn to live my life differently than I did when I was a teenager and my young twenties and it's a continual thing. I mean, there's like body image stuff, I mean, all the stuff that, that comes from something that was done to you, The self loathing, the feeling dirty, feeling different and,  having to contend with that when you're a little girl and you don't have the language and your parents aren't doing anything to stop it. And I believe like, it was pretty clear to me, as early as my mid twenties that I believed my mother had probably been a v  ictim of sexual abuse. And so that's why she couldn't see what was happening to me because if she saw what was happening to me, then she would have to deal with what happened to her. And sure enough, when I wrote Ray by Ray and I interviewed her, I learned, yes, she was a victim of sexual abuse.

Yes. Her father totally sexualized her and was inappropriate with her. So then it, it made sense and, and I could. Like, I was angry at my mom for many years because why didn't she see? I mean, my stepbrother would fondle me in the backseat of my mother's car when we were driving to the beach. He would put a towel over me.

My mom was right there, right there. Why didn't she see, you know, and I was, I, I was so angry at her for so long. And when I started to get to know her and her story, that anger started to dissipate. Even like going into my stepbrother's brain and his father used to beat him, you know, so his father would beat him and he would come to me and in his way, beat me  It was like this trickle down effect you mentioned that in your book you mentioned there was like a Some part of you that did sympathize with your stepbrother because he was being abused by your stepfather and  it's so complicated then too It's it's like there's these complicated layers because you're being abused by this guy who you also have sympathy for in a different way and I feel like that probably adds to the messiness of your feelings and the complications Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, I just think about some of the boyfriends I had when I was young and it's like, Oh my God, it made perfect sense that the kind of person that I would end up with, you know, it's like very messy, very messy too, and ew. But, we should say that you did. You said you did go down a road of promiscuity and you also had addiction issues, early on, early on,  during the sexual abuse, after the sexual abuse, but you did become sober when you were 20 years old, which especially in your family, reading the book and hearing how rampant it was around you.

Everywhere and in Hollywood in general, it sounds like but you  did somehow, you know by yourself You stopped  even though you talk about a boyfriend you are with who I think was addicted to heroin and you still stayed sober and got out of that relationship. So I think that's pretty amazing and it has to have, well, first of all, it takes a lot of strength, a lot of discipline, a lot of you know, wherewithal, but also has to have completely changed the trajectory of your life and what it could have been.

Oh my gosh, getting sober and meeting other sober women who, guided me along. What a, you know, what a gift to have been exposed and then to accept. That in my life,  I had a half brother who when I was 19 was sober and he brought me into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and, that was in 1980, there weren't a lot of young people and he brought me to a young people's meeting and everyone was old, older than me. and I didn't. I, it took me a year from that point to get sober. But  I met women who took me under their wing and were these powers of example of how to put together a life, how to build a foundation.

And so at 20. I started to build a foundation for which I could grow from and, a lot of, a lot of the teachings were about taking responsibility for my actions, and it was really important for me.

To look at my behavior and see what I could change in my behavior. Like for instance, the promiscuity, you know, I,  I didn't have to go and cheat on a boyfriend, I stayed with the boyfriend. I was going to be a good girl and it wasn't fully fleshed out.

But in my mind I was going to be a good girl and I was going to be this good girlfriend. It just turned out that the boyfriend, you know, was starting his heroin addiction. You know, choices. I didn't know, I didn't know any different, things were better because I remembered what I did the night before and I knew who was sleeping in my bed, 

so that was like, that was great.  It was a lot different. I don't even know if I answered the question. Yeah, you did. You did. And, and so another thing I want to jump to is, your dad, he did get sober for some period of time, but he ended up getting cancer.

And I, I don't think he had a ton of time, you know, honestly, in his,  his adulthood then, sober, but at the end of very, very tail end of his life, he was, he did come to your house to, to visit you and your mother one time. And he left you a letter.  That he slid under your door, I think, because it was like, you were kind of, at that time, you were kind of like, I don't want to deal with this guy.

He had, let's be clear and put it in context. He had shown up a few other times, very strung out or, with cocaine he, he was, he was, uh, not, pleasant to be around the other time. So, this time he slid this letter under your door and it, you know, I'm going to have you talk about that because tell me, just kind of briefly give a summary of what he said and then let's, let's talk about what that meant to you then and what it means to you now.

Okay. In the letter he wrote, some of what he said was like, I'll be the angriest of the angry, the loneliest of the lonely, the saddest of the sad. And he writes about maybe if he had He had gone to someone and talked to someone and let someone know what he was feeling. He wouldn't have been so alone in the first place.  And that to me is like the whole theme of the letter. That's the meat of the letter. That's the part of the letter that I really attached to because he was, he got it. He knew exactly what was going on with me, only spending an hour with me at dinner, a dinner that I refused to talk to him or eat, and, he wrote that I had a voice that could make rivers run and that I just needed to work on it.

I had wanted to be an actress when I was a kid when I was 13, 14. I don't know if he knew it or if my mom told him, but I had been in school plays and stuff and my mom was always against my sister and I having anything to do with Hollywood, but she would, you know, Always talk about her own movies.

And  she started dancing professionally when she was 14 and 15, and she wouldn't let me go and find an agent or help me or anything. But she let me start waiting on tables when I was 14 but, my father's letter

just really hit home.  I remember reading it and it being too much and I'm 99 percent sure I went out and got loaded. But I carried that letter around me everywhere I went from every punk rock crash pad. That letter went with me and I never lost it. I kept it close to my chest and I remember, moments when I was really  deep into my addiction, taking that letter and reading it, I was the angriest of the angry, the loneliest of the lonely, and just like, where are you daddy?

Where was he to talk to? There was no one for me to talk to when I was 15 and a half, and he left me that letter. There's no one for me to talk to. I couldn't talk to my mom about that stuff. And here was this man who, who was. kind of available, but no, it was a letter he left under the door. And so how was I supposed to talk to him?

And then he's, and then he's gone. He's gone. He's gone. And then, you know, a year and a half later he died. Yeah. And, you know, I hear when you're talking about it, I can just hear. That again, like the loss and the importance that that had for you for him to really say anything of substance to you to make, you know, to, to really like reach out to connect in any way.

 I remember in your book and upon his death, a couple times you mentioned, you're just like, the one thing that you wanted was to have him get the chance to know you, to know who you were and to know you.

And I guess I'm connecting it with that because it's like, then he's gone, then he was gone for good. He'd passed away and now that's never going to happen. But it sounds like at least that one letter was like a sense that he saw you in that moment and he, and he felt something that you are going through and he did have some sort of knowing about you.

And so that is that importance on that letter to me listening to you is that, yeah, in that moment you felt like he was seeing you. Oh yeah. Like, like we were, we could have had a conversation. He did see me, he saw me better than anyone saw me at that time, you know, and that was a gift that my father had.

He could really key into people and read them really quickly. That's what made one of the things that made him a really good director. He just saw people. Wim Wenders would say that my dad had an eagle's eye and I think that's, that's pretty true. I, um, feel like the conversations that I didn't get to have with my dad, I got to have while I was working on Ray by Ray. Whether they're in the book or not. Especially  when I went to the Warner Brothers archive at USC and they, they brought out all these boxes, mainly from Ephemera from Rebel Without a Cause. And it was like,  I was sitting in a family, in the family attic, you know, it's like my family never had a house or an attic with old papers and family heirlooms and stuff like that, but this was my equivalent, like kind of having a conversation in that room in the library at USC, you know, Oh my God, these letters between my father and Jack Warner, I'm getting to read.

 I didn't get to have a conversation with my dad about that time, in real life between me and him, but here I am with him, with his past. So I kind of created this way for me to have this conversation with him that I'd always wanted to have all my life,

That comes across in the book and, and it, you really do develop it, develop who he was, develop who your mom was. 

And I think that's what a lot of what we talk about in this podcast is like, you know, people have their own reasons why they inflict harm on on their children or on other people and it's not it's not necessarily out of some sort of evil intent or I think you just really did a good job of making them well rounded and showing who That they, they made mistakes and they weren't perfect in any way.

And nobody is, but, but that they also were just normal people doing their best. And I think you say in the book, engaging with, trying to be a part of society and the community and create things and contribute and all that. What would you say to that? Just sort of the idea of looking back on them now as just these whole beings with good things and bad things. Well, like we said in the very beginning, human beings aren't black and white. And my parents were very colorful. And I'm really thankful for that today.

They both led these spectacular lives. And, were a part of

Hollywood history, they were very engaged, like you said, my father, my father in the political theater in the early 1930s.  Instead of going to Broadway, he became involved in what was called the leftist theater called the theater of action. But at that time, there was a faction of theater people who created anti broadway theater. They were, their intent was to become the voice of the people and to provide theater for people who could afford it. They would take the theater out onto the streets because Broadway was so expensive. The common person, average person couldn't afford Broadway much like it is today. So my dad was, You know, at the pulse of, of, it was the depression and, and people were starving and there was all this stuff going on.

And and he was at the pulse of that. And then he worked with Alan Lomax. And,  did this radio show with Alan Lomax called Back Where I Come From, which featured Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, and it was the first radio show to bring black and white people on stage together.

And as, because of that, they couldn't get funding, but it was for CBS radio, but my dad was right there, you know, and he used to go driving across country with a big tape recorder and record stories of very poor people living in most rural parts of America. And he'd get their stories and turn those stories into plays.

And that was for the WPA. He was working for the WPA.  So he brought all this experience to his movies, you know? And my mom, my mom was taking dance lessons in Detroit when she was seven years old, her older brother was a genius. He was, He graduated Berkeley when he was 15 and became the youngest person to become a professor at Princeton University, and lived and worked there for his entire life.

But so her brother introduced her to back where I come from, so they were at the pulse too, as little kids, they were out. You know, their parents didn't make sure that they were home at a certain time. These kids were allowed to take a bus from, from the suburbs of Detroit into the city to take dance lessons.

And then when my mom was a dancer, she was dancing with Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby but she was really in love with other dancers. And she'd call, she'd call themselves gypsies. And then when she was older, she was very involved in anti war demonstrations, the anti Vietnam war and, and housing, finding housing for Black Panthers and helping women get abortion, Standing up for women's rights, she was very politically active in,  like in the 1960s and stuff.

So they were, they were on the pulse of things and they did do things for their community. They weren't just, they weren't just, excuse my language, but they weren't just fucked up parents. You know

my mom would never agree to being an intellectual, because she never felt, she never graduated high school because she was dancing. So she always had the doubt that she was as smart as her brother, but she was just as smart as her brother, only in a different way, not in an academic way. And she was an intellectual, you know, she, she just loved to get down at the dinner table and have those Conversations about the politics at the time and what was happening in the community.

And, and, my dad.  He might've been a drug addict and stuff, but he wasn't just a drug addict, you know,  you know.

And he kept trying.  I mean, There was like a, I think a couple projects that he worked on and it was scrambled and you said it had addiction all over it, but he still couldn't stop trying to make movies right till the end, even though he was not the same guy, he was still trying to make movies.

Yeah. And that's the beauty of lightning over water, there he was making a movie and he was sick as a dog. So sick, you know, but he had to, it was more important to him to make this movie than it was to see his children, to see his daughters. And you know, when I was younger, that really hurt.

But when I got to know him and his work and his life, of course. Of course he ended his life like that. There was no other way for him to end his life. He was a filmmaker. I had interviewed this woman, Janine Basinger. She's a, film person and teaches film or taught film. And she used to say, filmmakers like my dad would eat film.

They would actually eat film. The film, you know, if they could, yeah, it's just like a part of his being. Yeah. It seemed like, and your mom also, she was a performer, she was a dancer, she was comfortable being the center of attention and carrying on, and performing in front of people and those sorts of things.

And at the end of her life, she was still doing that. You mentioned in the book, they kind of both showed, you A way to go out that was like, More, you know, it's more joyful and more peaceful than a lot of people think of it. Instead of being fear ridden, they were still living, to the best of their ability, living the way that they wanted to live.

Absolutely. Like my mom, I remember one day, my mom, I  took care of her. She retired to Arizona and I went out to Arizona and we were with a group of friends, of her friends, and she said, she announced that Everyone, I just want to let you know about this journey that I'm on. I'm dying. 

So let's all go on this journey with her, and, and she was the star the week before she died. She got, uh, we went to, We got Manny Petties and she got gold glitter. Gold glitter nails and toenails and, you know, go mom, go, like so fantastic,  you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these were the last days she knew that, you know, but, yeah, gold glitter that I'll never forget that. And, I think that's a great power of example. Both my parents. How they, In a sense, welcome death rather than fear it, rather than push it away. You know, here I am, this is who I am right now. Yeah. Yeah. That was something nice to read about especially after reading the book about their characters and all of their, their antics and what they would get up to.

And then you're just like, yeah, I mean, this feels right. It feels like they did it right. You know? So yeah, that was, that was nice. Well, I've kept you an hour now. So let me ask you, is there anything else that you want to make sure that we talk about? I do have another memoir coming out and it's called Love and Cigarettes and it's a mother daughter story.

So I go more into my mother and I'm really excited about that. And it's just been really great talking to you. And, Oh, you too. No, you do. Thank you so much. And that's, that's nice to hear that you're going to have a new memoir and a mother daughter one. That sounds really, yeah, that sounds really nice.

Yeah. Yeah. And I've written a play that's going to be produced in New York City and it's memoir esque, it's autobiographical, it's about my mom and dad and my sister and me and what happens, what it is like for children of celebrity, how do they find their own gold star, but it's also you know, about my mom is sick mentally and physically and she's starting to transition into the next life and Nick comes and sort of becomes her guide. 

And so we see the whole family dynamic   through this. And so I'm, I'm really excited about that, you know, I think that sounds really cool. Yeah. It's called cry of the butterfly and that'll be coming in New York. So yeah, it's just really good. I, I'm so grateful to you for bringing up and allowing me to talk about the sexual abuse.

Because there is healing from it and I think it's really important for men and women who are suffering from it and are in the depths of the despair of it, that there is a way out and we don't have to be victims of it for our whole life. And there are, there are tools out there for those of us who have experienced that kind of trauma to um, live in the light.

We can, we can get out of that darkness and live in the light. And there's, there are answers out there. There's help out there. And I just, I just really feel for people who, Maybe even haven't told anybody, you know, exactly. Yep. Yeah, and real quick if you don't mind just one more question about that I want to make sure we cover it Is just in terms of even if just very briefly if you can just talk about some of the tools that have helped you step out of some of the the more acute pain from the sexual abuse Oh, definitely.

I mean, I started therapy when I was in my mid twenties, and,  Just being able to scream it out, was really helpful in the beginning.  I've done things like write letters from me now to the little girl then, and then from the little girl to the big girl now, I've written to the perpetrator.

 There was this book that I read in the very beginning of my healing called Betrayal of Innocence. There are some really, really great books out there that are really helpful. And through those books, I learned. I learned some tools, uh, I went to cognitive behavior therapy and started tools like, like for instance, when I have a night terror and I wake up and I have to say okay. I am in my apartment. I'm an adult. There's no one here who's going to hurt me. And I repeat that and I look at my surroundings and my surroundings are different.

 I live with a lovely man and I, and we've created this beautiful home, so I can look at that and go, no one's, no one's here. No one's going to hurt me. And so that little trick has been really helpful because I don't carry the night terror with me into the day. Whereas before I learned that little trick I would just be carrying around this despair. There's so many little, little tools like that. Like, where are my feet? Look at ground. Let's get grounded. I exercise. I do. I, I like doing weights. They ground me, and help me from disassociating because I'll still disassociate. I lived my life disassociated. So in cognitive behavior therapy, I learned to identify when I was disassociating, so like if I catch myself kind of separating my head from my body, I am be like, okay, where are my feet?

Where are my feet? I'm here. It's that same thing. I'm here right now. Take a deep breath. Uh, coloring. You know, the adult coloring books. Really, really help a lot. I have, like, I have this stone. It's says serenity on it and I hold it. And that, that'll ground me because I think like a lot of the way that I carry it now is in the disassociation.

I might not even know that I'm being triggered or something. But I don't think people, I don't have to plan for my escape anymore. I lived like always knowing my escape route out on the streets just always. And I don't do that anymore. And that's, that's really nice. And I think it's all like a culmination of therapy and reading and trying out the suggestions, you know, people suggest or some book I read might suggest I do something and, and I try it and see what works.

Yeah. I think that all of that stuff is really good and you know, just giving ideas, giving Things that might resonate with people because they might try any of these things also Or maybe didn't didn't think to So yeah I really appreciate you talking about that and you know talking about the effects and talking about your healing because I I do think that's an important thing To talk about because I think a lot of people, you know, like you said earlier it is secretive by nature it's set up to be that way and, and a lot of people don't talk about it cause it's, you know,  it's just not a comfortable topic for a lot of people but it does happen.

So I appreciate that. And I, I just appreciate so much your time today and talking, talking through all of these issues thank you so much Thank you so much for reaching out to me and, and having this conversation. It's been really wonderful.