Interview Quotes

Opera and Therapy

"Just skip therapy for a year and just go to opera class instead."

— SPEAKER_01 • 00:06:09

"I really hadn't understood how much we hold in our bodies and how much through a lifetime we carry and it changes and how much it affects our sound."

— SPEAKER_01 • 00:31:01

"I think it was my softness that I somehow along my life felt that I either wasn't safe or wasn't heard in my softer self."

— SPEAKER_01 • 00:41:51

"I would say this to anybody who thinks this somehow is about opera and therefore it's not something you'll understand because you weren't raised with opera. I wasn't raised with opera and felt that I would have to get this education because I wasn't sophisticated."

— SPEAKER_01 • 01:13:13

"I found that it was so... It's so deep in the human experience and it's so for everyone."

— SPEAKER_01 • 01:16:48

Work Ethic and Discipline

"I'm a worker. I'm here to work."

— SPEAKER_01 • 01:39:18

"As a creative, you want to always be growing. I'm always putting myself in a situation where I'm not the smartest person in the room or I don't understand what's happening is the way that so much creativity and so much human growth comes from being completely uncomfortable but working very hard."

— SPEAKER_01 • 01:44:34

"I was working to help my mom pay bills when I was about 14. So I think that I probably have a strange sense of that I can't or I shouldn't or I don't know who I am when I'm not working."

— SPEAKER_01 • 01:51:56

Maria Callas's Stoicism and Isolation

"I'm not moved by self-pity. I find it, it doesn't, I don't have an emotional reaction to it in the same way that when I see a human being doing their best to hold their head up and to get on, I find that very moving. And there's the type of people I tend to like. And I recognize that in her."

— SPEAKER_01 • 00:16:40

"I would see interviews, some horrible things are said to her, right? Horrible questions, rude things. Even people throw things at her, right? And you see her having to hold her nerve and hold herself together and not break apart."

— SPEAKER_01 • 00:22:11

"One thing you don't know and a lot of people don't know is I'm nearsighted. So I have like this slight, slight understanding, only that I think it puts you in a place where you're a little more isolated because you're not sure of the person's expression across the room. You're not sure of the world around you in the same way that somebody who can see perfectly can."

— SPEAKER_01 • 01:58:42

"It also really made me very sad for her because I realized when she was a little girl going to the conservatory and her mother put so much pressure on her, right? She had to be great. She had to become this opera singer. She had to be."

— SPEAKER_01 • 02:03:04

"She had to memorize the music so perfectly because she couldn't rely on the conductor. She had to memorize everything. She had to, she just had to be that, work that much harder."

— SPEAKER_01 • 02:08:38

Visual and Emotional Connections

"I think the images before would have been her on stage, her in the red dress when she's just so still and all you're looking at is this stillness. I don't think I've seen anything like that. That's so extraordinary."

— SPEAKER_01 • 02:25:30

"I think we talked about seeing her with Onassis where she seemed free. She seemed like a girl. She seemed like a woman and thinking it must have been so nice for her to have a time in her life where she felt the wind in her hair literally and she just felt silly and free and not always under pressure to show, to work and work and work and just be alive and have sex and be in love."

— SPEAKER_01 • 02:33:17

"There was something about her and her dogs and there's images of her doing where she's in her fur she's got her crazy her bolero hat her giant glasses her poodles and she's walking the streets of Paris and I remember thinking God, do I miss a wonderful eccentric artist. We don't see a lot these days."

— SPEAKER_01 • 02:38:52

Comparisons and Unexpected Similarities

"I remember just thinking often I was so fortunate I had my children because I think without my children she and I are very very similar and the thing we talked about once in that wanting to be a girl which is maybe sharing too much but I think there's that when you feel that you've had to be responsible for a lot when you're young you actually want to be able to just be like I think she just wanted to be Maria like I just want to be Angie."

— SPEAKER_01 • 02:52:34

Love, Family, and Judgment

"I don't know if she ever felt love like real deep I mean Bruna and Ferruccio I think they were loving friends but they were also employed by her and we know that her family took money from her sued her threatened her we know the men in her life took advantage of her so I don't know if she ever experienced anybody just loving her for her."

— SPEAKER_01 • 03:00:47

"And I have been criticized by certain people media whatever that say that this movie is too reverential towards Maria and I'm like yeah it is which also tells you what they want is maybe more gossip more judgment because it is not a perfect portrait of a perfect person by any means."

— SPEAKER_01 • 03:07:19

"And I think that's what cheapened who she was when she was alive you know with those people and those reporters or those that that shows you could have had all these things from her they could have had all these conversations with her but then they choose to talk about certain things or see certain aspects of her like in those final interviews you could ask that woman anything they could have had any kind of conversation but they chose to just have the lowest comment and you know it's a waste."

— SPEAKER_01 • 03:17:15

An Invitation to Maria Callas

"I think I would just tell her I would tell her that I'd come to really like her as a person and really care about her and then I'd ask her to you know go hang out with me for the night and stay up all night and be girls and just relax and be silly and yeah I think we would have I think we would have been good for each other."

— SPEAKER_01 • 03:27:03