TONIGHT
E-mail a friendAnne Heche
airdate November 8, 2007
Currently starring in TV's Men in Trees, Anne Heche began her career as a singer-dancer. After high school, she landed the dual role of good/evil twins in the soap Another World, winning a Daytime Emmy. She moved on to film, with credits that include Donnie Brasco and John Q. Heche earned a Tony nod for her performance in Twentieth Century on Broadway and also wrote and directed a segment of HBO's If These Walls Could Talk 2. Her best-selling autobiographical book, Call Me Crazy, was published in '01.
Anne Heche
Tavis: Anne Heche is an Emmy-winning actress whose film roles include "Donnie Brasco," "Six Days, Seven Nights," And "John Q." Her latest project is the ABC series "Men in Trees," which now airs Friday nights at 8:00 p.m. Here now, a scene from "Men in Trees."
[Clip]
Tavis: Now, I should tell you, full disclosure, since "Men in Trees" came on the air on ABC, I've watched every episode. Not just because I think it's a good show - I do think it's a good show - but also because I wanted to make sure that Anne Heche could make her monthly house payments so that she would not go into foreclosure in this difficult housing market and cause all of our homes in the neighbor to lose our value. Long way of saying Anne Heche and I were neighbors, literally.
Anne Heche: That's really nice that you watch the show. (Laughter)
Tavis: Literally next-door neighbors, and you've moved and I miss you, but I really miss Homer. How is Homer?
Heche: Homer is fantastic, thank you. From what you told me before we started, you're a little bit quieter in the hood.
Tavis: Yeah, well, you know what's funny? Homer was - Homer's Anne's son, a good kid. But I was teasing Anne; I've never seen a kid who loved to swim so late at night. Homer would never get out of the pool. I wanted to yell, "Homer, it's 9:30. Go inside, Homer."
Heche: You could have. Or you could come over and joined us. You were always so elusive. Like, where's Tavis? I heard he moved in next door.
Tavis: I'm traveling all the time. I used to give Homer a hard time. We loved each other. I miss Homer already, and now I'm really catching hell because my next-door neighbors now -
Heche: Five of them.
Tavis: Five Homers.
Heche: Sorry. (Laughter)
Tavis: There are five of them right next door.
Heche: Oh, I'm going to tell Homer how much you miss us.
Tavis: They're good kids. I'm glad he's doing well, though.
Heche: Yeah, he's great, thank you.
Tavis: I want to talk about "Men in Trees" in a second. Is it just me or I don't know how much TV you watch, but I swear, Anne, every time I turn the TV on and I flip channels, "Six Days, Seven Nights" is on somewhere.
Heche: You know what? I've heard that.
Tavis: It's on all the time.
Heche: People come up to me on the set all the time and say, "I just saw another one of your - I just saw that movie I just saw."
Tavis: It's on all the time.
Heche: Yeah. I think maybe they're running it a little bit more now because of my show. So whenever I have something on the air, reruns tend to happen of different things.
Tavis: So tell me about "Men in Trees" and how it's doing.
Heche: It's just great. We're very, very lucky that we even made it to a second season. As you know, so few shows do. And so we're very fortunate and we have moved to Fridays at 8:00, and we were in a 10:00 time slot, so we're very happy. We feel like we've got a lot of support from our studio and network that they put us on at 8:00, and feel like people are really finding the show and falling in love with it.
Tavis: This is the kind of show that's had a lot of critical acclaim, as you well know, and yet these days, to your point about shows making it to a second season, the shows that get that critical acclaim aren't always the once that stick around.
Heche: Yeah.
Tavis: What do you make of that, that a show can be critically acclaimed and still struggle trying to find its audience?
Heche: Well, I think it has to touch a part of someone for some reason. It's either got to get into the minds of people - and I'm talking millions of people - or the hearts of millions of people. You have to have such a force behind you in order to create an audience, so it can't just touch a few people anymore. So it takes a while, and how can you measure what people want in a season? But fortunately, I think "Men in Trees" has touched the hearts of a lot of people.
Tavis: A lot of comparisons in print to - and it's the nature of the business that we're in, people have to always compare things.
Heche: Yes.
Tavis: So I've read a lot of "Northern Exposure," back in the day kind of comparisons.
Heche: Yes.
Tavis: How would you describe the show?
Heche: Well, we should be so lucky. Yeah, it was a very successful show. I think it's wonderful that people compare it, because it was a show that took place in Alaska and kind of the lead character was a fish out of water, and my character is a girl from New York who moves to Elmo, Alaska, this little, tiny town where the ratio of men is 10 to one, women. So I think kind of the comparison kind of ends there, but I think people like to talk about it because people really loved to go and watch "Northern Exposure" and curl up on the couch and sit in front of a fire and watch a show that made them laugh and also moved them. And that is what our show is. It's a beautiful show about relationships and kind of quirky people.
Tavis: How do you find the small screen opportunity, because - I was just looking at the show with James Woods on the other night, and I'm watching all of these movie stars - yourself, James Woods, others included - who have found their way to the small screen. And that's happening, you think, why? How does it work for you?
Heche: Well, the movies that I did a lot were - I did the kind of more independent, character-driven films, whether it was "Wag the Dog" or "Donny Brasco." These were movies about interesting, complex people. And now movies tend to be more about superheroes or things that people can market, and I'm clumping that all together as one, but more often than not, they needed a huge, huge marketing campaign in order to launch a movie.
And so I feel like TV has kind of taken over the independent character-driven film world, and all of the artists are kind of gravitating towards the small screen because they get to make their small movies and get beautiful casts, either from the stage or from film, and deliver an incredible product and have a chance to work on a consistent basis. So it's kind of taken over that business a little bit.
Tavis: As we sit and talk, there are picketers all around this town and certainly all over New York - the writers' strike, as we all know, is underway. Your sense of the strike and more importantly how it's impacting, if at all, your show, "Men in Trees"?
Heche: Well, obviously, I think it's very sad that anyone is in conflict in such an enormous way right now, and at such opposite sides of issues, and that people are losing their jobs is just sad, and I hope it gets settled as soon as possible. We are very fortunate. We were taken off the area five episodes early last year because we were the first show picked up by Warner Bros. and ABC, so we knew that we were coming back this season.
So we not only had five in the can before we started, but they have also written five episodes for it. So we can keep actually -
Tavis: You (unintelligible) right now.
Heche: - keep going, actually, until after Christmas. And I think we're one of the few that are that fortunate to be able to say that, so we'll have new content. I don't know what is going to happen after Christmas, but right now we're not affected, although we all feel the pain. Jenny Bicks, our head writer, is of course picketing, and we feel for them. We want our writers to get everything they deserve. And yet our show, fortunately, continues to shoot.
Tavis: Because you're on a series now, I'm not so sure this question is relevant for now, but in the larger scheme of things, what's your sense as an actress of the kind of material you're seeing these days? The writers are out on strike and there are a lot of folk are siding with the writers - yours truly. You want to see this thing resolved, no question about that.
Heche: Sure.
Tavis: On the other hand, there's a lot of criticism, I think some of it legitimate, about the kind of writing we're getting these days. That it's not as original; some could argue it's not as good. That it's about repetition, that nobody is trying to do the original thing. What's your overall sense - I don't want to put words in your mouth - of the kind of writing that we're seeing in Hollywood - small screen, big screen - just assess for me the kind of writing we're getting these days.
Heche: Oh, well, again, I feel very blessed. I feel I shoot a little movie every week. The writers on my show continue to astound me. I actually just called up to the cast two days ago, because we're a couple of days ahead now, as I said. So I'm reading ahead what these stories are, and I was so moved by one of the scripts that I had to just call and say, "You won't believe it, you won't what's happening."
Because we run around our sets every day, we get a script, and the first person to read it is always walking around going oh, did you read it yet? Did you read it yet? (Laughter) Do you know what happens? We are more involved - we are fans of our writers so much that we get so excited by what's going to come in each week.
That may mean we're in, again, a unique situation, but I feel like TV - these writers, many of them are film writers. They are people who dedicate themselves to their work and their craft. And I'm fortunate enough I'm working on a show where I haven't - if I could do movies like this as consistently as they turn in, I would be doing them.
I imagine other shows feel the same, other actors feel the same. I don't know; I'm kind of in my little pocket up there. But I don't think that Jenny Bicks is the only one who's turning out incredible writing all the time.
Tavis: One of the reasons why we never saw each other when we lived next door, because I'm traveling, speaking, and doing stuff, and you're on location all the time. On location where, exactly?
Heche: I work in Vancouver.
Tavis: In Vancouver, yeah.
Heche: Yeah. Vancouver for Alaska and New York. So we split the city, basically. If (unintelligible) needs to do a New York City story, then we can go downtown in Vancouver and we can also go up the mountains and it looks exactly like Alaska, so.
Tavis: Not a bad life.
Heche: No, it's a beautiful life.
Tavis: This is a long way from a daytime soap opera. Not that there's anything wrong with soap operas, speaking of good writing.
Heche: Yes, yes, that was a little more challenged, yes.
Tavis: I'm always amazed when I see people like you, because there are so many people in the soap opera world - and again, I'm not casting aspersion on that. But to break out of that into film and into primetime TV series, not everybody does that. You've been very fortunate.
Heche: Oh, yes. Well, I think soap operas are just the most incredible training ground. The probably is, you can get kind of stuck in bad habits because you don't have a lot of time to form ideas or concepts. They shoot an hour of television a day, so that's pretty extraordinary that anybody can do that. And you can develop some bad habits along the way, and some bad attitudes.
And my whole thing is, like, keep your attitude open and understand that when you're on the set, you have an opportunity to work. Why don't you test the boundaries and push out, and keep being creative? And I think that kind of saved me of getting sucked into that kind of soap opera drone as an actor, and fortunately, people have continued to hire me, thank goodness.
Tavis: They have indeed. As a matter of fact, they've hired her to do a show called "Men in Trees" that comes on Friday nights at 8:00 on ABC. Anne Heche, nice to see you. Give my best to Homer.
Heche: I sure will; thank you so much for having me.
Tavis: All right. Good to see you. That's our show for tonight.
Back to November 8, 2007