I had two chances to fail [working for Disney]. The first one, they said was "too juvenile." The second one was,they give you general areas to work in. They said, "Set 'My Fair Lady' in ancient Egypt."I came up with this idea about an Egyptian princess, and I gave her, as a sidekick, a little scarab. I had a telephone meeting with the executive "handling" me, and he said, "I looked over the notes. Very cute. But lose the beetle.Beetles don't talk." Well, how do you answer that? I said, "Excuse me just a moment, I've got a teacup calling me on the other line."

The story of Judith. But one of the reasons I'm doing it is because the roles I've been writing for myself over the past few years have gotten older and older. And I thought, You know, before it's too late, I want to play a sexy, tough young gal again. And I always wanted to do a Biblical epic. So, I'll play a beautiful young widow who saves her people from the Assyrians.

Joan Rivers is a very wise lady. We're good friends, and I find her very much an inspiration as to how to conduct your life, and how to remain very youthful, with ambitions and dreams. Anyway, she always says that she says "yes" to everything, because you never know which thing will click, or be thrilling.

At fifteen, it [ "Follies"] didn't have any kind of resonance with me, this show about regret and middle age.

I took many notes, more than usual before I sat down and wrote Act One, Scene One. I had perhaps eighty pages of notes. . . . I was so prepared that the script seemed inevitable. It was almost all there. I could almost collate it from my notes. The story line, the rather tenuous plot we have, seemed to work out itself. It was a very helpful way to write, and it wasn't so scary. I wasn't starting with a completely blank page.

I had two chances to fail [working for Disney]. The first one, they said was "too juvenile." The second one was,they give you general areas to work in. They said, "Set 'My Fair Lady' in ancient Egypt."I came up with this idea about an Egyptian princess, and I gave her, as a sidekick, a little scarab. I had a telephone meeting with the executive "handling" me, and he said, "I looked over the notes. Very cute. But lose the beetle.Beetles don't talk." Well, how do you answer that? I said, "Excuse me just a moment, I've got a teacup calling me on the other line."

I saw "Follies" again at thirty, and you know, I had this great appreciation for [Stephen] Sondheim's brilliance, his lyrics.