Momma Mia

So a friend of mine calls me on Sunday and says she has two free tickets to the Smart Talk Women's Lecture Series on Monday night and wanted to see if I'd like to go - Mia Farrow was the guest speaker.

I am not a Mia Farrow fan. That's not to say I dislike her - my feelings toward her are more along the lines of indifference. What little I know about her could be summed up in two sentences. She's a 1960s era, crazy flower-child actress who at one point starred in Rosemary's Baby and adopted a whole truck load of kids and was romantically linked to Woody Allen until he started playing "Daddy Dearest," the big pervert, and she kicked him out. Okay - that was really one, long, run-on sentence and not two - so sue me.

I told my friend I would go with her but I was secretly harboring three concerns of the type of evening we were setting ourselves up for:

1. Oprah-fication - meaning a lot of false spirituality, self actualization, and psychobabble mumbo jumbo for the "more money than sense" crowd (not really my bag of tricks).

2.I am woman hear me roar - let's get together and verbally castrate men...(definitely not my bag of tricks)

3. The political ambush - let's get together under the guise of "talking as women" only to have it turn into a political, agenda-driven, Wellstone-esque pep rally (10 minutes and I'm out there - 20 if I think it might make for good blog material)

I am happy to report the evening did not fall into any of the above three categories. Mia Farrow was for the most part intelligent and articulate (a few moments of flakiness when she went off script). She talked about her life and the many ups and downs and detours she took. She was very funny and included several tidbits about the many famous people she met along the way. I think my favorite story was about her riding in an elevator with Salvador Dali.

She talked about faith, love and loss, and overcoming pain and disappointment, but mostly she talked about her children and how much she loves and cares for every single one of them. She even talked about Woody Allen, the big pervert, and revealed that while she doesn't wish bad things would happen to him she does take a little pleasure in the fact his movies are not doing as well as they used to. I can't say as I blame her.

If I were to sum up my impression of Mia Farrow I would say I had this unmistakeable feeling of watching a "little girl lost." She still exudes a child like innocence and displays mannerisms more akin to a woman in her 20s than a "mature woman." I chalk it up to her own loss of innocence from when she suffered from polio as a child.

So overall it was a nice evening and it made for some good conversation for my friend and I during the ride home. I'm not sure I would have gone had the tickets not been free but I am happy I went.

Picture from www.civiccenter.org