Not One of the Boys by Brenda Feigen

Author:Brenda Feigen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

At dinner with Orion’s Mike Medavoy and his then wife, Patricia, during the pre-production phase of my movie

By now the 1988 Orion Christmas party was upon us, and Medavoy introduced me to his very pretty wife, Patricia, saying that he thought we would hit it off. Patricia apparently had recently “produced” the Democratic National Convention, so we shared an interest in politics, and we established that we both played tennis. She invited me to their house on Coldwater to play the following Sunday. That was to be the first of many social Sundays with Patricia and Mike.

To Patricia I confided my feelings about having been forbidden to visit Coronado. She told me that it was horrendous, that Mike had never mentioned anything about it to her. But she also said that she thought it was important that I do everything I could to ensure that the movie get made, because if I ticked off the director and he walked, that would be the end of it, she was sure. I had already decided to trust Patricia’s political instincts. Out of the ashes of the Gary Hart presidential campaign, she had begun Show Coalition, a group that attracted major politicians and other dignitaries to Hollywood. I joined and soon after found myself at a small lunch honoring Madeleine Albright, whose knowledge of world affairs impressed me immediately.

Out in the real feminist world, there were actions happening. The next big one was planned for 1989: a march on Washington for choice. We would protest any further laws reducing a woman’s right to choose, which had been rampant when it came to federal employees (over which Congress had jurisdiction) and women receiving Medicaid. Patricia and I decided to go together, although we were part of the much larger group organized by the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee (HWPC) and several other pro-choice groups. We held placards and wore white with the traditional yellow and purple banners across our fronts. It was a heady experience because so many thousands of women showed up from all over the country, some by train, bus and car; others, like us, by plane. The unpleasant part was marching through clusters of anti-choice moralists who held jars with fetuses in them. When they tried to gather on the steps of the Supreme Court, the police moved them away. Determined to avoid fistfights, they also tried to get us to march somewhere besides where the anti-choice people had positioned themselves. It all worked out, and I found myself on the lawn in front of the Capitol, chatting with my old friend Judy Collins right before she sang, in her amazing voice, “Amazing Grace.”

A very similar experience would repeat itself—for choice—three years later, when I ventured back to Washington with another new friend, actress Meredith Baxter. The only difference was that on the second trip, Meredith and I—together with her family—got separated from the HWPC crowd, as did lots of other marchers. Despite the logistical problems causing our Los Angeles group to

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