• 2 months ago
Interview with Jane Seymour Fonda; actress and activist.
Jane Fonda's work spans several genres and over six decades of film and television.


Produced by Who What Wear
Transcript
00:00So, hi, I'm Jane Fonda, and I've been asked to very briefly talk about the role of activism
00:06in my life.
00:07It has helped me focus, and be a better actor, and be a better person, and be a happier person.
00:14So I invite you to join me.
00:21Right, this is kind of funny.
00:27I had just finished making Clute, and I was traveling around the country speaking on campuses
00:34where I would be paid $2,000 a speech, and all the money was going to fund the Winter
00:39Soldier Investigation, which was members of the American Armed Forces, all branches, came
00:45together in Detroit, Michigan to discuss what they had seen and done in Vietnam, and a documentary
00:52was made.
00:53Before I started making Clute, I became friends with a fashion designer who had a factory
01:00of knitwear in San Francisco named Alvin Duskin, and he gave me a lot of free clothes, and
01:05this coat, even though it's not knit, it was leather, but this was one of them, and so
01:11that's what I had on.
01:12It's fortuitous that I was wearing a very fashionable, long, suede coat.
01:17When I was arrested, the arresting officer told me, as he was holding me in his office,
01:23that he was arresting me under orders from the White House.
01:26That would be Richard Nixon.
01:29I had flown in from my first speech in Windsor, Canada, into Cleveland, where I was stopped
01:35at customs, and all of my notes, my address books, everything were taken.
01:40I had a lot of vitamins in little plastic bags, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and they
01:47accused me of smuggling drugs.
01:50Right after this picture was taken, see, I have double-jointed hands, I slipped my
01:54hands out of the handcuffs and threw a fist.
01:58This was the early 70s, so I still had that iconic haircut.
02:02It was the wonderful Paul McGregor in Greenwich Village who gave me this haircut.
02:07I had been making a film in France with Jean-Luc Godard, and I went to Italy for a manifestation.
02:18That meant a political rally on behalf of women's rights in Italy.
02:22And I had my well-worn knitwear that Alvin Duskin gave me.
02:27He gave me a whole lot of clothes, and they were really my wardrobe for years.
02:31I see a little shredding at the cuffs.
02:33I wore them a lot.
02:34Oh, yes, well, this is a day when it was National Secretary's Day, and so I went out in support
02:43of women office workers and talked a little bit about them and the struggles that they had.
02:49I was in the middle of making a film that I produced called 9 to 5.
02:54I'm wearing the wig from that movie.
02:57The struggles that women office workers have today is even more difficult and more challenging.
03:02It's not just sexual abuse.
03:04The spying by employers is worse because they are given computers and cell phones, and so
03:11the bosses know everything of how long they take toilet breaks.
03:16They experience wage theft.
03:19It's really, really bad.
03:21In other words, the fight continues.
03:24That's Marlo Thomas.
03:25That's Whoopi Goldberg, Bella Abzug, me, Morgan Fairchild, Ellie Smeal, Glenn Close.
03:33This was a national march for freedom of choice for women.
03:40It was a huge march in Washington, D.C.
03:43It was a very important time.
03:45It makes me sad to look at this that we lost Bella Abzug because she was such a force to
03:52be reckoned with.
03:54This was around 1989.
03:58White clothing, we associate with the suffragette movement, and so we all wore white.
04:04Again, this is a movement that continues today, the right of women to control their bodies,
04:10because if women control their bodies, they control their lives, and we still live in
04:15a patriarchal society that doesn't want women to control their lives.
04:22This is now.
04:24This is now.
04:25I was in Big Sur with my friends Catherine Keener and Rosanna Arquette, and I was reading
04:30about Greta Thunberg, the Swedish student who began the Friday student school strike
04:37that became a global movement.
04:38Inspired by Greta, I decided to move to Washington, D.C. and hold what we're calling Fire Drill
04:44Fridays.
04:45You see, Greta said, we have to behave like we're in a crisis.
04:50We have to behave like our house is on fire, because it is.
04:54So Fire Drill Friday.
04:56And every Friday, we have a rally that focuses on a specific topic.
05:01Oceans, women, war and military, forests, human rights, migration, and how they are
05:09affected by climate change.
05:11We have expert scientists, people who are the most affected from frontline communities,
05:17and celebrity friends come and join me.
05:20And after the rally, we engage in civil disobedience, which means risking getting arrested.
05:26So I'm being arrested, note the white plastic handcuffs, whereas the arrest photo back in
05:321970 were metal handcuffs.
05:35These are white plastic and they hurt more.
05:38These rallies aren't in order to get arrested.
05:42They are to try to raise the sense of urgency around this looming disaster of climate crisis.
05:51For 40 years, we've marched, we've rallied, we've written, we've petitioned.
05:55We haven't succeeded in getting enough people and enough elected officials to really deal
06:01with this like the crisis it is.
06:03And so we have increased our activism to include civil disobedience, which is an extremely
06:10honorable thing to do, to commit nonviolent civil disobedience for an important cause
06:18like the potential destruction of human civilization.
06:22No kidding.
06:23So when we started meeting about these fire drill Fridays, we decided that we should try
06:28to wear something red every Friday, and I didn't have anything red.
06:32So I found this coat, I don't even know who designed it, on sale.
06:37This is the last item of clothing that I will buy.
06:40So much of our identity, especially in this country, is about shopping, buying things.
06:46See, I grew up, I was born in 1937, and for the first decades of my life, we weren't so
06:52focused on shopping.
06:55Consumerism wasn't a big thing.
06:57Plastics didn't exist, nor did television, by the way.
07:02And I'm grateful that I lived at a time when we did just fine, thank you, without television,
07:07without consumerism, and without plastic.
07:10Trying to minimize consumerism, I have to walk the talk.
07:16It's not easy.
07:17I had to do an interview in the upstairs floor of Saks the other day, and as I'm walking
07:22through Saks, you know, I'm going, oh, look at the, oh, no, I can't.
07:26You know, oh, what, no, well, no, I can't.
07:28It's hard.
07:29So I can't shop anymore, but that's okay, because I have other things to do.