Patti Smith

Such a beautiful scene about miscommunication and not understanding each other and having like a different approach to expressing things.

When you work with your mother, as you've done several times, does it make you self-conscious because you know each other so well?

It's not like a professional relationship because you have, you know, the deepest personal relationship anybody has.

Well, first of all, thank you for playing that scene.

I'm just smiling and cracking up over here as I'm listening to it because it is the extraordinary writing of Mike White who, you know, just navigated the complexity of that dynamic, as you mentioned.

And, you know...

In the book, in our conversations, my mom talked about the joy she had remembering the first time we worked together on Wild at Heart, the first film we did together, and we had to do this very emotional scene together.

And she remembered me preparing for the scene at one end of the set and her at the other, both doing our work, both having trained separately as professionals, you know, not engaged in that together.

And then coming together to do this very emotional scene.

And the camera rolls and David Lynch called action and it's very emotional and emotional.

I'm crying in her arms.

And he said, cut.

And mom describes us pulling away and her looking in my eyes and realizing that she knew exactly what

had brought up the emotion in me.

And I looked at her and felt I knew the emotion and the pain she was expressing in the scene.

Both very personal, both never discussed, but we just know each other so well.

And so at that moment, we started laughing hysterically right after this big crying scene.

And mom describes the whole crew looking at us as if we were nuts.

But

It was such a personal, intimate, beautiful thing to share, the kind of knowing and bringing it into this professional space, but also the boundaries of that professional space, that it's sort of this unspoken language.