She spends much of the first half of the performance talking about her childhood, born in Burbank 'to simple folk. She is a terrific raconteur, her lickety-split timing pushing her already pointed lines to their comedic limit. Her performance style is laid-back and conversational she sips iced tea, interacts with the audience, comments on the clips that occasionally run behind her. Padding around her 'living room' set, comfortably dressed and frequently barefoot (the Studio 54 performance we saw went a step further, and found her clad in pajamas), Wishful Drinking is basically an hour or so of Fisher telling funny stories. But once she gets going, the performance is a treat-a charming and frequently hilarious showcase for the writer/actor's razor-sharp wit. Fisher's timing is a little off in the opening minutes-initially, her delivery isn't as smooth and at-ease as during the Broadway run, though she may have been a bit out of practice (or thrown by the cameras).

Instead, it was taped during a later, one weekend run in summer 2010 in South Orange, New Jersey. They did not do that during the Broadway run in late 2009, which is unfortunate, since one of the night's biggest laughs was provided by Fisher's bemusement at playing in a space that was once the high-flying, notorious Studio 54 ('I think we should only play at theaters where I used to get high'). They do that skillfully and unobtrusively.

To put across the brilliance of Wishful Drinking, all Bailey and Barbato really needed to do was put Fisher on stage, and turn on the cameras. Fisher's one-woman show, which has played around the world and on Broadway, does not require a great deal of explanation or contextualization she does all of that perfectly well, thank you very much. The film version of the stage adaptation of Fisher's 2008 autobiography Wishful Drinking comes via the auspices of HBO Documentary Films, and is helmed by esteemed nonfiction filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (the team behind The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Inside Deep Throat), but don't be mistaken aside from some fleeting archival footage and film clips-many of which were already incorporated into the stage production via rear production-it is basically a straight performance film. and that is just completely unacceptable.' 'If my life wasn't funny, it would be true.

Wishful drinking movie