OK. Do you take your road trips because you're a little uncomfortable flying after 9/11?

No, I just like to see real people, who don't quack along to the party beat. You'd be surprised how smart Americans are when they're not quacking the party line like little ducks. It's really amazing ...

No matter what your political bent, you listen to somebody say the same old shit all the time, they sound like a blowhard.

Do you worry about sounding that way yourself?

No, never. Because you couldn't pay me to do this if I weren't doing a favor for a friend.

Every time you say that, it sounds disingenuous to me. You get a chance to get your opinion out there.

I don't want my opinion out there.

Why not? Doesn't everyone want their opinion out there?

I tell you what. This would be great for me. If you don't want to publish this article and you just want to mention "Northfork," you would be my friend for life.

I don't believe you. You're clearly excited to talk about this stuff.

No, you're just an intelligent woman and I'm disabusing you of a few notions you have and you're disabusing me of a few notions I have and we're succeeding and we're not.

But you're being generous. I'm not disabusing you of anything.

So I'll make you a deal, OK? If you want to be friends for life, don't mention politics and just write about "Northfork."

Do you feel like you've been discriminated against in Hollywood in any way because of your political views?

By whom?

By anybody.

I can't imagine. Why?

I guess the answer is no.

That would be heinously un-American.

I agree.

Why would I want to work with someone who was that egregious in their behavior. You know what? It's a moot point because if anyone ever chose not to work with me or anyone else because of their politics, I wouldn't want to have anything to do with them anyway.

Rudeness is another issue.

What do you mean?

Like the head of a studio saying "George Bush is a moron." Well, that's just a rude thing to say because it's just categorically not true.

So you would not work with that studio head again.

Well, he's retired. And who knows, maybe he has Alzheimer's or something, God forbid, because to say something that is just that insensitive and then not have anything to back it up.

You're not going to tell me who it was?

No.

What's the next thing coming up for you?

Oh, do you really care?

Geez, you're cynical. You don't trust the press at all.

It's one of these things where there's mass insanity. Like you have to assume that everybody in Germany wasn't a complete and utter sadist, but somehow there became a mass psychosis. There's almost a mass psychosis on both sides of the press these days. It's so rapaciously polarized that it's just unbearable.

I can also see people salivating. I had dinner once with that communist guy Robert Scheer, and he was actually salivating. Christ, this guy. If I were casting a potential presidential assassin, I would just have taken a photograph of him salivating with hatred for George Bush and said to the casting director, "Get me an actor who can play this horrible, hateful, vicious emotion" -- and he's a journalist! A journalist who wishes he had a gun with a telescopic sight, that's what he is. [Robert Scheer denies ever talking to Woods about Bush.]

I'm gonna let you go, but it's been a pleasure.

I'm sure you're just saying that.

You're starting to sound a little paranoid.

You probably don't gamble much, do you.

No, not much.

Well, sheltered life. But I would give you 7 to 1 odds that this is going to be a slash piece, but that's OK. I'm willing to take the heat.

Editor's note: This story has been modified since it was first published.

Recent Stories