Page 46 - The Costco Connection - October 2018

Clockwise from top left: Sally
Field with her mom, Margaret
“Baa” Mahoney; on the slide
with her brother, Rick Field,
and younger half sister, Princess
Mahoney, and mother; in the
recording studio for The Flying
Nun; her mother and stepdad,
Jock Mahoney.

CC: It’s interesting that you didn’t turn to
writing coaches.
SF: Halfway through, I reached out to a free-
lance editor. She read those [ rst] ˆ‰Š pages
and gave me the rst real feedback. It was
really hard, tough-love lessons.
I had to use what I know as an actor to
relate to how you incorporate information. Lots
of times you’ll come in with what you think is
the right interpretation of a performance … and
the director gives you notes. You have to recog-
nize that something needs to be xed. COSTCO
I was reading [reviews, magazine articles CONNECTION
and journal entries] I had never read before. In Pieces
I was trying to nd things I didn’t know the (Item #1274491)
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SALLY FIELD applies, because I know from my years in warehouses.
answer to, so to me the whole thing had to
is available now
read like a mystery. That’s how acting also
in most Costco
acting that you can’t play the end of the scene
at the beginning. You can’t know the resolve.
CC: In this era of social media, it’s rare to read
a memoir where so much is new to the reader,
so it’s easy to imagine you questioning whether
or not to publish this.
I felt it in myself when I spoke to all of SF: When I began writing this, the MeToo
them: It was a connection from me to them, movement wasn’t here. But even more than
from them to me. Now I knew I had to nd that, it really is about growing up in a male-
a way to begin to write this. I never had any dominated society in a male-dominated busi-
[formal] education. I thought I’d better nd ness, and in a male-dominated household.
somebody to be on my team. CONTINUED ON PAGE 45
I looked up some of the writers that I
most admire, whether it was Jane Smiley or
Elizabeth Strout [or] Frank McCourt, and
they happened to be represented by the same
person, Molly Friedrich. (For more on the
relationship between Field and Friedrich, see
the sidebar, “The pieces come together.”)

OCTOBER 2018 Costco Connection 43

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