AUSXIP Lucy Lawless Files - Flawless Print - Lucy Articles
Interview with Lucy Lawless
Harrison on the Edge
18 September 2005
Transcript
Transcribed by MaryD
AUSXIP LUCY LAWLESSClick here to download audio file:
Harrison on the Edge - Audio File - wma format - 5 mb
Harrison on the Edge - Audio File - mp3 format - 5 mbHarrison: Speaking of whom, Xena Warrior Princess, Whoowhoo! boy is she a little bit whizzed at Mr. Bush. You think I'm kidding?
Lucy: Hi this is Lucy Lawless, Xena Warrior Princess Dykon and I'm a Harrison Hell Raiser.
Harrison: Harrison Hell Raiser!
[commercial over]
Harrison: With the recent indignity suffered by so many in New Orleans, thousands of people stranded and so many dying. So many screaming out for help, there was one well known person who happened to get the last flight out. None other than Xena, the Warrior Princess and what she saw was not the make believe of Hollywood, was not the make believe of scriptwriting but the reality of people struggling for their survival. Lucy Lawless welcome to Harrison on the Edge of AM 1150.
Lucy: Hi
Harrison: You were just filming Vampire Bats in New Orleans last week...
Lucy: I don't like to segue from indignities to vampire bats
Harrison: [laughs along with Lucy]
Lucy: What made you think of that, friend?
Harrison: [chuckles]
Lucy: Yeah vampire bats! In New Orleans. It was unfortunate timing but uh.I so love that town, so love those people. I'm so heartbroken for them. And now..um..we're so focused on what can we do to help them.
Harrison: That seems to be the universal thinking at the moment this point
Lucy: yeah
Harrison: You got out just before when the city was still intact. You know it was the Big Easy, it was an amazing place.
Lucy: yeah
Harrison: I supposed for someone who's just left, to see it in just a different light, a week later, a week and a half later, it has to have more impact than for the rest of us seeing it on television. Just suddenly this way.
Lucy: You know um..alot of my horror is, comes from projection, from my own small experience of fleeing and we were the last rats off the ship. We were amongst the last people to get out safely. I can only imagine, that some people were stuck. We afraid we were going to be stuck in the floodplains in our car for the hurricane. I can only imagine that some people were. And for three days I was grinding my teeth and I realized and if that was my amount of trauma for somebody who had gotten out, how exponential it must be for every hour where by the people stayed. How deep their trauma and shock must be. So there is going to be a lot of therapy and allot of healing going on.
Harrison: Yeah, for a long time. It was interesting we were talking a minute ago about in the British press "The Guardian" the headline today was "America The Country That Leaves Their Dead On the Streets". Which is an extraordinary statement for kiss ass British and it's a real testament to the political mechanisms in this country which could have absolutely and unequivocally responded in appropriate measure of time. And I would give you this example I used to live in Florida and we had lots of hurricanes and within a day or two we had National Guardsmen and they were airlifting and dropping rubber rafts so people didn't have to stand in water. And of course the Governor of that state is President's brother. So there is a lot of really obvious stuff going on and it does make it more painful, I suppose, when you know the tragedy is as needless as it is.
Lucy: Uh, yeah, it's an enormous disgrace. Um, I mean there is a lot of things wrong there. For 30 years they have been predicting this. And um..regarding the response, I think it is, um, entirely commensurate with the way you can characterize this presidency.
Harrison: Actress Lucy Lawless, known as Xena, the warrior princess, is here with us on Harrison on the Edge on LA's progressive voice on AM 1150
Lucy: You know what was kind of upsetting is that everything is likened to a gun. Is it true that he said 'this disaster is worse than any gun we could have produced'? Or any weapon we could have produced.
Bush Sound clip: When it comes to a major catastrophe, wmd attack...or another major storm...
Lucy: How do you leap, everything is compared to weaponry. There's no sense of empathy there. I don't know about him but I just know that it smacks of pride, ego and greed. These people have just fallen by the wayside because they don't contribute in the way that Bush would like them to, maybe.
Harrison: That was the same moment where he also pointed out that he remembers New Orleans fondly because he got drunk there so many times.
Bush audio clip: I believe the great city of New Orleans will rise again. And be a greater city of New Orleans. I believe the town where I used to come from, Houston, Texas, to enjoy myself, occasionally too much, will be that very same town.
Harrison: Again as people are being hauled away on stretchers, he is recalling the good old days when he was getting hammered.
Bush audio clip: Very boring people, doesn't like to drink, doesn't like to smoke. Only in America could a guy like him find work
Lucy: I am so perplexed by this stuff because along the way someone said that a nation gets the leadership it deserves. I think [bleep] he's just crazy. So I'm totally raging...everything. On with the cleanup, eh?
Bush audio clip:...Trent Lott has lost his entire house, it's going to be a fantastic house. I'm going to be looking forward to sitting on the porch.
Lucy: He's looking forward to getting hammered on Trent Lott's veranda, I hear, so that's something to look forward to, isn't it.
Harrison: [chuckles] Well yes I guess it is
Lucy: I'm tremendously, tremendously sorry for all my friends. They are enormously grateful to have gotten away with their lives. They really got it into perspective.
Harrison: We're talking to actress Luly Lawless
Lucy: Luly Lawless?
Harrison: Did I just say Luly?
Lucy: Yeah 'cause you're my friend. My friends call me Luly.
Harrison: Nice to be on that boat! You know her from her starring role as the fearless Xena, Warrior Princess which thrilled audiences for 6 years and will of course continue for many decades to come no doubt. Additional television credits include appearances on the X-Files, Bernie Mac, Two and A Half Men, Less Than Perfect, Just Shoot Me. On the big screen we have seen her in the memorable roles in Eurotrip, Spiderman and Boogeyman, and she's next going to be seen in the Darkroom. She's just got back from New Orleans and we were talking a minute ago about Vampire Bats. Speaking of which Dick Cheney, having just appeared on the Gulf Coast like a great vulture. Hanging on carrion for the feeding. This guy is so absolutely classic of this administration.
Lucy: [chuckles]
Harrison: He goes over there and what happens?
Lucy: He's been invisible for a long time, where has he been? Is he having a heart attack? Or what's up with that?
Harrison: Allegedly he was not feeling well, he was out in his happy vacation land of Wyoming, keeping his feet up and eating buffalo or something, you know. Interesting enough he goes to Biloxi and what does he do there? His former company Halliburton and it's subsidiary Brown & Root receive a $16 million contract to start cleaning up the mess.
[sounds of a cash register]
Harrison: As a matter of fact much like Iraq where his former company of which he still draws $160,000 a year.
Lucy: Are they in Iraq now?
Harrison: Now guess who's in charge of cleaning up New Orleans and making lots of money?
Lucy: Wow, nobody is making provisions for anyone but their families, you know what I mean?
Harrison: You know a lot of progressives assume somehow simply these mountebanks are simply operating out of lack of information. Gee if only they knew that there was global warming. If only they knew..
Lucy: The levies could fail...
Harrison: Could have failed as Bush sat on NBC network sitting right there on camera saying 'we had no idea that the levies were going to break.."
Bush audio clip: No one anticipated the breech of the levies.
Lucy: Did you see the Spiegel Online, the German
Harrison: Der Spiegel?
Lucy: Der Spiegel
Harrison: Yeah
Lucy: Der Spiegel Online, that Bush had taken away 44% of the budget for flood control over the last few years?
Harrison: Yes.
Lucy: Of course they had no idea otherwise they wouldn't have done that.
Harrison: That's the point I'm getting at. They just didn't have the information.
Lucy: Cutting them slack all the time?
Harrison: It was so apologetic, ABC a couple of days ago, did a full report on well, they did their best. Then you had Poppy Bush and Mommy Bush or whatever they call Babs Senior, the one with the grey wig on, the one that looks like George Washington with the big pearls. She's on there, and Poppy Bush is saying 'no one's really interviewed all these people on the roofs in New Orleans, I mean they are really not that upset..."
Bush Snr: If you're sitting on a roof and you have no way to get off, you're not sure if your life is going to be saved, you're going to lash out. But I haven't heard the individuals sitting on the roofs being interviewed and saying that so and so is to blame.
Harrison: No one's really interviewed them yet. Unbelievable! Then she's the one that said this..
Mrs. Bush: For many people in the arena here were underprivileged anyway so this is working very well for them.
Lucy: The apples don't fall far from the tree.
Harrison: New Zealand actress Lucy Lawless here on Harrison on the Edge on AM1150. You know her as Xena, the warrior princess, and for 6 years she was doing that and has been on the X-Files, Bernie Mac. Big screen Spiderman, Boogeyman and has just returned from New Orleans after shooting the movie about Vampires and was on the last plane out and was a witness to much of the horrors going on.
Lucy: You know the best thing to come out, the only good thing that can come out of this, is this is our wake up call to consciousness, man, you gotta be awake for what's coming. Consciousness is going to stop us all being lazy, intellectually, emotionally, in our relationships with our neighbors. Also politically, socially, stopping lazy, let's stop anaesthetizing ourselves with BeniFer or Michael Jackson or Nancy Grace in my case..
Harrison: [chuckles] At least you admit it, that's step 1
Lucy: Yeah man, recognize your own sh*t. I think that's really important. We can't fix anything while all this disinformation, all the nonsense about 'let's not point the finger' moment...BS! Man, you're going to use your anger to springboard you into action. THERE'S NO HOPE WITHOUT ACTION. So get off our arses and start making a difference in our own lives and everyone else.