Carla Hacken: I started going to these Mommy and Me classes with Lorraine on Fridays. I would try to go as much I could, but she started it without me. And the women were all sitting around like 2:00 on a Friday complaining about their husbands and how hard their lives were, and these are all stay at home moms, right? And I don't know what the hell Lorraine was saying about me, but go in there I was like an interloper [inaudible 00:00:21] husband this and that when he comes home from work. And then women would glance over at me and I was like, "Oh my god, am I like the husband in the room?"
Carla Hacken: You're listening to the MILF Podcast. This is the show where we talk about motherhood and sexuality with amazing women with fascinating stories to share on the joys of being a MILF. Now here's your host, the MILFiest MILF I know, Jennifer Tracy.
Jennifer Tracy: Hey, guys. Welcome back to the show. This is MILF Podcast, the show where we talk about motherhood, entrepreneurship, sexuality, and everything in between. I am Jennifer Tracy, your host. I'm so excited to announce March MILF Give is an organization called Girl Rising. You can learn more about them at Girlrising.org. You can watch many of the documentary movies that they have made, including the original Girl Rising movie and a bunch of short films. One of the many things I love about this organization is that they really reach people through story, and that for me is such a big part ... I mean, it's the heart of what I do is story. It's why I have the podcast, it's why I'm a writer, it's why I work with writers, because I believe in the power of story, and for me particularly in women's stories and girls stories.
Jennifer Tracy: So this is about getting education to girls all over the world, in parts of the world where female education is not supported at all. Go to their website and check out some of their amazing films. It's really educational and enlightening and you can donate directly to them, or as usual, if you write an iTunes review for MILF Podcast good or bad I will donate $25.00. For any iTunes review made in the month of March I will donate $25.00 to Girl Rising. So, check them out, see what they're about. It's really inspiring and beautiful and I love the work that they're doing, and I wanna think Liz Dennery for bringing this organization to my attention. Liz is my mentor, one of my mentors, yeah. So, that's just been a really exciting discovery to stumble upon this beautiful organization and I wanna get involved with them a lot more in the future.
Jennifer Tracy: That's that, and also just a quick reminder. I wanted to let you guys know we did change our rating in January to Explicit because there's only one of two rating on iTunes. You can either be Explicit or Not Explicit, and so sometimes we have ... me or my guest will drop an F-bomb, or say "shit", or we talk about sex, or we talk about things that are not child ear appropriate. So, I just wanted you guys to have that forewarning. But, some episodes there's nothing, but just so that you're aware.
Jennifer Tracy: And without further ado I am going to introduce today's guest. This is very exciting. So, today's guest came to me through Kimberly Muller who you might remember was a guest a few weeks ago. She is a producer. She has just been a powerhouse woman in Hollywood for many, many years. Carla, Carla Hacken, our guest today, is truly a badass. When I went to her house to interview her, she was so warm and so humble and she blushed when I mentioned her Oscar nomination. And yet, when you go look online at the stuff that she has done, the stuff that she has produced ... And that's not even all of it, by the way, because she was a studio executive for many, many, many, many years and her name wasn't even on a lot of the stuff she was telling me. She's just incredible, such an insightful storyteller, an amazing mom. I loved listening to her story and I can't wait to share it with you guys, so please enjoy my conversation with Carla Hacken. Hi, Carla.
Carla Hacken: Hi.
Jennifer Tracy: Thanks so much for being here.
Carla Hacken: I'm excited to do this.
Jennifer Tracy: So, there's so much to talk about. There's so many places I could begin, but I am going to begin with the beginning. So, where are you from, originally?
Carla Hacken: I am born and raised in Savannah, Georgia, which is really unusual if you know me now because I was raised Jewish in Savannah in the 60s and came from a large, tight knit, southern Jewish family.
Jennifer Tracy: How was that? At that time I would imagine that there weren't many other Jewish families in Savannah, Georgia.
Carla Hacken: Shockingly, in ratio to population there were a lot, but it was still growing up in the south in the 60s. I mean, I was beaten up more than once for being Jewish, and then went to a school that was predominantly black, and I got beat up for being white. There was a kid named Jimmy Walker who basically ripped my clothes off on the playground 'cause he was looking for my horns, 'cause he was told that all Jews had horns.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. And how old were you when that happened?
Carla Hacken: Fourth grade. How old are you in fourth grade? Nine, ten?
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, nine.
Carla Hacken: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. So, that was-
Carla Hacken: I was raised in Savannah, Georgia, but moved here when I was 12.
Jennifer Tracy: Okay. And what was the impetus for the move?
Carla Hacken: My dad's business.
Jennifer Tracy: Okay. How did the change affect you and the family? Were you super stoked once you landed in LA?
Carla Hacken: I was, but it was big. I mean, I have a brother who's two years older than me and a sister who's five years younger. Affected her a little less than my brother, Laurence, and I. I came from a school in Savannah my last year I was there. Was a brand new progressive education school that had 18 kids in it. It was for predominantly creatively gifted children, basically, and I went from that school of 18 kids to [Portola 00:06:28] Junior High School in Tarzana, 3,000 students.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. Big adjustment.
Carla Hacken: But fun. The valley in the 70s.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, I bet. And did you feel like there were more ... once you got adjusted, do you feel like there were more kids like you?
Carla Hacken: Yes.
Jennifer Tracy: Than there had been in Georgia?
Carla Hacken: Yes, completely. I mean, I wanted to be an actress when I was in Savannah. Who wanted to do that in Savannah, Georgia?
Jennifer Tracy: Right. Did you still wanna act when you moved here?
Carla Hacken: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I did for quite a while, actually.
Jennifer Tracy: Did you pursue that as a child?
Carla Hacken: I did.
Jennifer Tracy: You did? Were you a child actor in LA?
Carla Hacken: Not a working one by industry standards, but I did a lot of theater and I actually took theater classes when I was a senior in high school. I went to Pierce College at night so I was getting credits in college when I was in high school, but it was all in theater. And then I started at UCLA in the drama department, and after one quarter I was like, "These people are fucking crazy. Get me out of here."
Jennifer Tracy: You knew better.
Carla Hacken: I gave up immediately. My whole childhood, and then I got to college and I was like, "No."
Jennifer Tracy: And what was it about the people that made you say? Was it one specific thing, or ...
Carla Hacken: I'll back up a little bit. The summer after my junior year in high school I went to work at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut. Friend of the family was on the board and I was very interested in theater. I didn't wanna be an actress on television, I wanted to be in the theater. And so I went and-
Jennifer Tracy: Yes. A real actress.
Carla Hacken: Exactly. So I went to work at that theater basically as a techie building sets all summer and falling in love with the gay male dancers, not knowing they were gay. I mean, I was just so naïve. I was 16 and I was just so naïve. But when I got to UCLA the first quarter I auditioned for a play in the drama department and I didn't get cast, and it was like, "What?" And then I realized I'm just not cut out for this.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. So then what? Did you change your major?
Carla Hacken: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jennifer Tracy: To?
Carla Hacken: English and dramatic creative writing. Then I wanted to be a playwright.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh. And so did you do a lot of playwriting in college?
Carla Hacken: Yes. [crosstalk 00:08:39].
Jennifer Tracy: What was the name of your first play?
Carla Hacken: I don't know if it's my first one, but I tell people this story all the time that I was a creative writing major in the English department, so I was kinda more an English major than I was a writing major in a weird way. But in my senior year of college just to burn off some credits I took playwriting in the theater department, the people I had run away from four years earlier, and there was a playwriting professor there named Gary Gardener. And in fact, I think he was there until he died, which wasn't that long ago.
Carla Hacken: And I wrote a play called Daddy's Little Girl. I have no idea what it was about, I don't know where it is, I just remember that that's what it was called. And we had to read it out loud as part of the finals. And we read it out loud, and he said to me ... Well, before I say what he said, let me just give you a picture. I was newly out of the closet, I was working at Fred Segal on Melrose, I wore cool clothes in gray, and smoked cigarettes, and spoke French, and read existential poetry. And so they read my play and he says, "Have you thought about writing sitcoms?"
Jennifer Tracy: The worst thing [crosstalk 00:09:53] ...
Carla Hacken: The biggest insult in the world. Looking back on it I'm like, "I should have listened to him. I could have written Friends. I could have been ... " But at the time it was the worst insult and I literally never wrote again. I gave it up after that.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. To this day?
Carla Hacken: Well, I mean, gave up pursuing writing as a career.
Jennifer Tracy: Got it. Okay. So then what was the next transition?
Carla Hacken: Really? [inaudible 00:10:19] we're gonna jump ahead now? I've already taken you all the way from childhood to college in five minutes.
Jennifer Tracy: Well, there's so much more. I mean, we-
Carla Hacken: Okay. So, yeah. So, Savannah, California, public school, which was weird for me 'cause we ... I only went to private schools in Savannah because until my parents pulled me out of the one good private school in Savannah 'cause they didn't want us turning into racist bigots and they were tired of answering why I could go to birthday parties at the yacht club. So for one year I went to public school and that was where Jimmy Walker looked for my horns, and then my parents were like, "No."
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. This isn't working either, yeah.
Carla Hacken: Anyways, so I moved to California, I went to public school, we moved a lot. My parents kept moving around. Two years here, two years there, two years there, and then I stayed in LA, which I've told my children was the one great regret of my life, is that I went to college in LA. And I did because I was like, "I'm gonna be in the entertainment business." So stupid because I really wish I had had that experience too. Anyway, so, yes. What did I do right after ...
Jennifer Tracy: So, you gave up writing because ... I love this story. I mean, I totally see all of it and you painted such a perfect picture, as a good writer does, of that disappointment of, like, "Ah, it's gonna be ... " Whatever you thought as this young girl. It's gonna be dark, or it's gonna ... whatever I'm imagining with the picture you painted. And he says to you, "Think about writing sitcoms."
Carla Hacken: Which ... please remember what sitcoms used to be. Oh my god, it was such an insult.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes. So you hung up your playwright cap and you ...
Carla Hacken: I wasn't sure what I wanted to do and I really wasn't sure I wanted to do it, plus I'm a worker. I worked my way through college. My parents had money, but not money, and they ... going back to my grandparents we were all raised with ... my grandfather was an immigrant from Poland and we were all raised with such a strong work ethic. So, I worked all through high school and college. I worked at Fred Segal on Melrose for three of my four years of college.
Carla Hacken: And it wasn't just that I was like, "I don't know if I'm good enough to be a writer," which, by the way, I think I probably was but I just didn't have the confidence to do it. But, also, the idea of being alone with a typewriter not getting a paycheck every week ... And this is a theme that's now happened in my life as a real grown up, like do I take a job or do I pursue my work independently? So, I just quickly was like, "I have to do something."
Carla Hacken: So I had a friend and she wanted to do ... I forgot what she wanted to be, but she worked for a casting director and that seemed really fun and I really liked actors and I thought, "Oh, I'll become a casting director and then I can still have time to write." So, I thought I would get a paycheck and write. So, I worked for this small talent agency for a few months and they were in the process of going under, basically, and I would just answer the phones and fall asleep in my desk.
Carla Hacken: And then when that ended somebody that is a costume designer who I had sort of befriended who used to come into Fred Segal was like, "Hey, do you wanna come work on this movie with us?" These two women who were a couple and they also were costume designers, and I was like, "Oh, that sounds fun." And so I did wardrobe on this movie that shot here, night shoots, and in Hawaii, and that was part of why I took the job and I was like, "This is gonna be great." And little did I know that on the seventh day when everybody else was going to the beach in Hawaii I had to do all the laundry. And then the night shoots almost killed me and I was like, "This sucks. I do not wanna be in production."
Carla Hacken: So these little things that happened in my life that I make this decision, "No, I'm not doing this anymore." Funniest thing is that I love being in production now, but at that point I was like, "No, I'm not doing this." Then I got a job in casting again. I worked for this company I'm not gonna even say 'cause I think they're still around, but they made these cheesy low budget teen kind of movies. I worked on one called Tomboy and when I realized that the callbacks were ... for these movies were for young girls to go in and take their top off for the president of the company I quit. And it's so funny that back then I was like, "This is not right."
Carla Hacken: And then I went to work for a really well known casting director named Lynn Stallmaster. Wait, somewhere in here I'm missing some stuff. I went to work for a producer, Barry Krost, who I'm still friendly with. I worked with him for just a few months and I had to drive him around. I used to drive to his house over on ... up Doheny and the bird streets, and park my car, and then go to his guest house. And then I would wake him up, and then I would have to make him coffee, and then I'd have to get in his Jaguar and drive him to work, and then I would answer his phones and everything, and then I would drive him to Mr. Chow for lunch. And he was such an asshole to me, and he had a car phone, which was a really big deal back then, right?
Jennifer Tracy: Right. With the cord, one of those heavy ones? Yeah.
Carla Hacken: And so while he was at Mr. Chow's I went to the Brighton Coffee Shop. It's still there. But I used to get him back for being an asshole to me. I'd call my friends all over the country from his car phone.
Jennifer Tracy: And you never get caught?
Carla Hacken: No.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, that's great.
Carla Hacken: So I just did all these crazy jobs. Three months, three months, three months, three months. And I was working for Lynn Stallmaster who was a big casting director and this woman, Nicole David, would come in to visit. She was agent but she used to be Lynn's partner. And then one day I was working on a music video and this agent came to the set, this crazy woman. I'm not gonna say her name, she's a very successful agent. And she was like, "I like you. Come work for me." And this was an agency called Triad Artists, which was kind of a hot agency. They eventually got bought by [inaudible 00:16:22].
Carla Hacken: So I was like, "Okay." That sounded fun, working for [inaudible 00:16:25]. I just didn't know what I wanted to do. And I called Nicole, who was one of the partners of that company, and was like ... 'Cause she always liked me. And I was like, "Should I take this job? Should I come work for this woman that works for you?" And she said, "Yes, yes, yes." So the next thing I knew I was working at a big talent agency and ...
Carla Hacken: Okay, so I was basically saying that I loved actors even though I didn't wanna be one anymore. I had lots of actor friends who ... went to work in this talent and I started doing really well even as an assistant. And it was fun back then, super fun. It would take too long for me to tell you the Brad Pitt story, but I've known Brad Pitt since the very beginning.
Jennifer Tracy: You can't tell us one snippet of Brad Pitt story?
Carla Hacken: I'll tell it because he tells it to people if we're ever in the same room. But back then if actors wanted to get signed they would come in and audition for the agents, and some girl came in to audition and her scene partner was Brad Pitt. And we were like, "Forget her. He's amazing. Let's take him." And so we signed him, and I was sort of ... Which if you know me today [inaudible 00:17:28] forget to tell my friends this but I was sort of known as the assistant that when I would call to give the actors their appointments ... because this was before email, right?
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, yes.
Carla Hacken: That I would tell them what they should wear. I was just very specific. And I apparently gave Brad his very first feature audition appointment. Like, "Okay, so you're going in and you're meeting so-and-so [inaudible 00:17:56] this is what you should wear." Okay, cut to many years later. I don't remember this at all. I don't remember this at all. Cut to years later when I had become a full fledged agent and I see him. And he came in for a signing meeting. Baby agent. I was like 26 years old and just started to work there. And the bosses were walking him around the hallways and everyone's names were outside the door. All of a sudden ... And they were like, "Oh, and this is this," and whatever, and all of a sudden [inaudible 00:18:21] "Oh my god, Carla Hacken?" And he stuck his head in my door. And I at this moment was like ... I didn't know he'd even remember me. It was years later. This was after Thelma and Louise and everything.
Jennifer Tracy: Sure. He was already a star, yeah.
Carla Hacken: Totally a star. And then behind him are the bosses of the company looking like, "Oh my god, why didn't you tell us you know him?" And he said, "You know ... " he was like, "It's so good to see you," and he's giving me a hug, and I thought I was getting punked. I literally was like, "Is there a camera hidden? This is so weird." 'Cause I didn't have a relationship with him. And then he proceeds to tell everybody who's now followed into my office that apparently when I gave him this appointment when he called for feedback afterwards I said to him, "Um, hey, Brad, have you thought about taking acting lessons?" And then he says this and the color drains out of my face. Well, I shouldn't say color. It actually turned bright red and I was like ... My new bosses are standing there. I'm like, "Oh my god." And then he said, "No, no, no, no, no. Thank you because I went and took this cold reading class after that and shortly thereafter I got Thelma and Louise." So I was like [inaudible 00:19:28] ...
Jennifer Tracy: You are one of the main reasons that he is a movie star. I love that.
Carla Hacken: No, it's just I'm brutally honest. It's a problem that has followed me in that.
Jennifer Tracy: I love that though, that's great. And that he took it to heart. He was just like, "Sure, why not?"
Carla Hacken: Anyway, so I skipped over. Was at Triad for three years, three and a half years, and it was fun, and I ... they kinda promoted me but didn't really promote me, and during that time there was an agent at ICM who I kept running into all the time 'cause we were both theater nerds. I would run into him in La Jolla, and I'd run into him in the depths of Hollywood, and every actor [inaudible 00:20:05] and whatever, and one day he said to me, like, "You should come work at ICM." And he sat down with me and we talked for a really long time, and then the head of the talent department called me.
Carla Hacken: So at 26 I moved ... which I think I was the youngest agent they had ever hired from the outside, and they made me a full-fledged agent. And, I mean, it was a big deal. I was making $350.00 a week at Triad and they offered me $30,000.00 a year, and a car phone, and an expense account.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, that is a big deal. I mean, still to this day from my understanding. I'm not ... ever worked in that environment, but it's you start in the mailroom when you're like 20.
Carla Hacken: Right. And I never had to do the mailroom, and ...
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, that's amazing.
Carla Hacken: And so again I sort of got off track because this wasn't anything I had set out to do, but I turned out to be good at it. I spoke actor, right? And in fact they handed me Sam Waterston and he ... we only talked on the phone for like six months and he hadn't met me and he just really liked me, and I really liked him. And then when he met me in person he was like, "Good god, you're a child." 'Cause I was 26 but I think I looked 18. It was fun. Within a short period of time I was ... it was just fun. Unlimited expense account. Fly first class to New York, stay at the Regency Hotel, go to the office during the day, have lunch with Sam Colin, who is a legend, at the Russian Tea Room, go to the theater every night, take taxis everywhere. And I was, what? 26, 27, 28 years old.
Jennifer Tracy: That sounds wonderful.
Carla Hacken: So it was fun, and honestly I blinked my eyes and nine years went by.
Jennifer Tracy: So you were there at ICM for nine years.
Carla Hacken: And it's funny, I look back on that section of my life and there's this young manager right now who's like a puppy, follows me around, and she's 30, 31 years old and she reminds of that time and it's like I'm such a different person. I meet people now who knew me back then and they ... I can tell they respond to me in a way they would have back then and I don't relate to it 'cause I'm such a different person. But it was like us girls, we had to put the power suit on and the power bitch on to be taken seriously. By the time I was 30 years old I owned a house, and I drove a Mercedes, and I wore really expensive clothes, and I'm so glad I did it. But I'm just so grateful that I had an epiphany in my early 30s. Early to mid 30s, I guess, mid 30s where I was like, "This isn't the life I wanna lead." And I changed completely. I just totally changed.
Jennifer Tracy: Was there an event for that in ... was there an impetus for that?
Carla Hacken: There was a few things, actually. And I know we're gonna get to motherhood, but I will say that I had ... I really wanted ... I mean, anybody that knows me knows that in my 20s I was like, "I wanna have a baby. I want a baby." And by the time I was 30 I really wanted to have a baby, and somewhere deep down inside I was sort of like, "I know everyone says that you can wait now." You can wait. We're supposed to get our careers first, right? And I was in a relationship with somebody who is now my best friend.
Carla Hacken: But we were together for three and a half, four years, and she was an actress, which she's not anymore. But nine years older than her. And I had people who used to be like, "Why didn't you have a baby then?" I was like, "Because I was dating one." She was such a child, and so high maintenance, and so much like having a child. But when we broke up I was really devastated, and devastated for a while because it was part of this picture I had, which has now happened to me a couple times in life. Again, recently. Four years ago.
Carla Hacken: But you know it's like, "I'm gonna have this by the time I'm 30. I'm gonna have a career, I'm gonna have the house, I'm gonna have the stuff, and then I'm gonna get married and have a baby." I had all the same ideals about family and white picket fences any heterosexual girl ... I mean, I always joked and said the Jew gene trumps the gay gene. And it's like I was still gonna grow up, and get married, and have a baby, and have a nice Jewish family.
Carla Hacken: So, I could not have been more heterosexual in college and this very life changing thing happened to me, which is that I got sober. And I was working at Fred Segal, and everybody was a drug addict. And in fact ... I mean, everybody was a serious drug addict. You could divide Fred Segal up between the uppers and the downers and we all traded. But I was doing so well in college and I was such a nice girl that nobody knew that I had a problem. I mean, my parents to this day I think don't believe that I had a problem 'cause I really masked it so, so well.
Carla Hacken: But I got sober when I was 21 and it was like ... back then, I mean, there were like three of us. It was not cool and hip and there weren't movie stars and rock stars in AA meetings. It just wasn't what it is today. But there was somebody at Fred Segal who I now look back on and I think I was in love with her, but she got me sober. And she was the person that got me there, and I thought she was really cool, and she was the head buyer at Fred Segal and manager and whatever.
Carla Hacken: So, anyway, when I got sober it literally was like somebody took ... whatever. Took the blinders off and I was like, "Oh my god, I'm gay." Actually, the funny thing is now we're talking about this a lot these days. I've been talking to my teenage son about it, this world we're living in now where kids are declaring very young that they're gay, or non-binary, or ... it was not cool to say you were bisexual back then. You had to pick a lane and stay in a lane. If it was okay for me to identify as a bisexual, I absolutely would have and probably still would in a weird way. But back then, I wasn't. It wasn't cool to do that.
Jennifer Tracy: Right. It made people very uncomfortable.
Carla Hacken: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Exactly. They were like, "No, you have to decide." I had a boyfriend for a little while when I was at ICM for three or four months and people would say to me, "You know, it's okay. We know you're gay. You don't have to pretend." And I was like, "I'm not pretending. He's my boyfriend." He's actually the architect of this house.
Jennifer Tracy: Really?
Carla Hacken: Yeah. Anyway, how did I get back on ... stopped writing?
Jennifer Tracy: You were saying you were about to have the epiphany from changing from ICM saying, "I don't want this life anymore," but I'm so glad you went back and told that story about getting sober and-
Carla Hacken: I went through this breakup and shortly thereafter a big client of mine ... I can't decided whether I should say who 'cause there's such a funny story that goes with it. I don't think I will. A big client of mine fired me and went to CAA for no reason. No good reason. It was just because a big agent at CAA whispered in his ear and was like, "We can make you an even bigger star." And then something terrible happened to him. I mean terrible like something really embarrassing happened to him shortly after he fired me, which was so satisfying.
Carla Hacken: But he fired me and I literally was like, "Okay, I don't have the kid and the marriage, and what is this job I'm doing? It's so fucking stupid." I had actors calling me in the middle of the night waking me up wanting to know why their size of their name wasn't bigger on a billboard on Sunset. I had to get on a plane once in an hour's notice and fly to New York to get my drunk client out of her dressing room. I had psychopaths who were stalkers of my clients having my home address and phone number. But more importantly, it was just a cutthroat business and I started to realize that my real talents were not being put to use, which is that I'm a storyteller.
Carla Hacken: And what was interesting is a lot of my actor clients who I was close to were becoming writers and directors and similar. The actors that I ... or producers, or ... and like Peter Berg. I represented the ... I mean, god bless him, he was not a brilliant actor but he was a great writer and it was running around with his one act play as a writing sample that got me to the transition to where I am now, so ... Which I'll talk about in a second. But, yeah, I was like, "I don't know what I'm doing. This isn't what I set out to do." So I have all the trappings of doing well in my 30s and making a good living, but I'm really not happy.
Carla Hacken: And just this weird gratuitous thing happened and I was running around with Pete's play and there was a new division of 20th Century Fox called Fox 2000 and this executive had read the play and he was like, "You know everybody here but I don't know you, so let's have lunch." And we went to lunch and he said to me ... Sorry, I'm getting over laryngitis so I have to clear my throat. But he said to me, "Are you happy being an agent?" And I, without thinking about it, said the most dangerous thing you could say if you're an agent. I said, "No, I hate it." And he said, "Well, you know Laura." Laura Ziskin, who is the woman that started it. He's like, "You know, you should call her 'cause she's looking to hire a senior female executive and she likes to hire outside the box. So you should call your friend Kevin," who also worked there, "And see if you should maybe meet with us."
Carla Hacken: And long story short, Laura offered me a job as the senior vice president of production. And, I mean, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but I was like, "Yes. Bye." I said goodbye to all my clients. And it's funny, Julianna Margulies was one of my clients and I had dinner with her last night and we were laughing 'cause I said that she was the only person out of 42 people I had to call and say that I was leaving she was the only one that had the appropriate response, which was she cried.
Jennifer Tracy: What did everyone else say? They made it about themselves?
Carla Hacken: A lot of them did not. Some of the ones that I adore who I'm still close with did not. There were a lot that did. There was one in particular that was really disappointing 'cause she had been a friend of mine who I helped become a writer. She had been an executive and I represented her as a writer and got her out there in the world, and she was the only who when I called said without missing a beat, "Who's gonna represent me?" So, anyway, yeah, so that started what was the next big chapter of my life, which is what I consider this chapter. I mean, it's been the last 20 something years, but ...
Jennifer Tracy: That's incredible.
Carla Hacken: Of doing something that I loved, and that I'm good at, and did meet somebody that I married and had children with. So, yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: So, when you started as the ... you got hired and you said you didn't have any idea what you were doing. Did you fake it 'til you make it?
Carla Hacken: Laura is no longer with us. [inaudible 00:31:24] know if you know who she is, but she's the woman that started Stand Up To Cancer, and she was just a remarkable woman. I can't talk about her without crying. And we had such a complicated relationship. It was complicated. She terrified me and tortured me and yet I knew she loved me. Anyway, Laura was married to the most amazing man, Alvin Sergeant, really famous screenwriter, and a few years ago I was talking to him and one of Laura's best friends, was a really close friend of mine who passed away a few years ago.
Carla Hacken: So, when I was talking to Alvin I said to him, "You know, when I talk about when Laura hired me, at the time I was like, 'Well, of course she's hiring me. I'm fantastic.'" Looking back on it, I'm like, "What was she fucking thinking?" I was this mouthy talent agent with no training being a studio executive. Had never seen a budget in my life, had never spent more time on a set than cruising through [inaudible 00:32:28] service and hanging out with a movie star. Had no idea what I was doing. What was she thinking? She made me senior vice president of production. What was she thinking? And he was like, "Well, clearly she saw something in you." And she was right. I just needed to ... I needed to fake it 'til I make it. I didn't know what I was doing, but I learned fast.
Carla Hacken: What I did come to realize, which I tell people all the time now, I had kind of a dislike for people that I met that were very film school students with a huge repertoire of knowledge of films, and could quote dialogue and movies from the 40s. That just was not me. I killed too many brain cells with drugs, I think. It just wasn't me, but I am a natural storyteller and can ... I always tell people that I can feel and see structure. I see it. If I read an outline I can ... it's like a visual thing for me. It flattens out right there. I just ... it's a thing and that was just the talent that I had and that got me through learning the ... [inaudible 00:33:45] the mechanics of being a studio executive or producer [crosstalk 00:33:51] the same thing. And then you'd learn, you know?
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah.
Carla Hacken: I was talking to one of my bosses one day, was a chairman at Fox, and we were talking about how arrogant this junior executive was, and when he had his own project for the first time he just thought he knew everything. And the thing that you ... we were discussing how it's sort of the Malcolm Gladwell thing about your gut and it's one of the things I love about my age now is wisdom. You can't buy wisdom, you can't go to school for wisdom. There is nothing that beats experience.
Jennifer Tracy: That's so true.
Carla Hacken: Experience trumps intelligence sometimes. I know some really smart people who don't do a great job at their job because they are in over their head because they think that they're so smart that they can do anything and I ... I gotta say I really value people who have done it way more than people who ... whatever. [inaudible 00:34:56], right?
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah.
Carla Hacken: [inaudible 00:34:57] the pen. But anyway, what I was gonna say is that if you sit in ... It used to be we used to watch the dailies in screening rooms, right? And we would sit and I would have to spend hours a day, especially if I had more than one movie in production, and I'd sit, spend hours a day looking at the footage, and would have to make what they call selects for the marketing department and the chairmen of the studio where I would pick the best take of every setup, and that would take hours, and hours, and hours and I'd sit there with this little dial and speed through and a junior executive next to me marking, and it was so labor intensive.
Carla Hacken: But if you sit in that darkroom and you watch enough footage you develop a gut instinct that you ... like I said, you just can't learn it in school. You develop a gut instinct and it is that same storytelling instinct too, which is like you sit there and you're like, "Oh, I've been here before. We have a pacing problem." I mean, I can feel that in day one. We have a lighting problem, we have a wardrobe problem, we have a sound problem. You do it enough you start to know.
Jennifer Tracy: And how long were you at that company?
Carla Hacken: 15 years. I survived quite a few regime changes and made a lot of movies I'm super proud of, but the business changed a lot by the time I left.
Jennifer Tracy: In what sense?
Carla Hacken: I think we'd have to take the whole hour for me to give you a lecture on how the movie business has changed, but it just got harder and harder to get good movies made. They became so expensive to make and so expensive market that then it became so hard to get ones made that I was used to getting made, and I was very fortunate I got to make good movies. A lot of people don't get to do that. And familiarity breeds contempt. I had worked with a lot of the same people for a long time and it just ... I hit a glass ceiling I was never gonna get through.
Jennifer Tracy: Right. But somewhere in there you met your wife and-
Carla Hacken: Yeah. Even though we never got married I say I was married because whatever. Couldn't get married back then, so registered domestic partners.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, right. How long were you together?
Carla Hacken: 15 years.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, wow. Okay, so at the very beginning, yeah.
Carla Hacken: I think it was ... yeah, 15 by the time she moved out, I guess.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow.
Carla Hacken: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: So you're with your partner, your wife.
Carla Hacken: Right.
Jennifer Tracy: And ...
Carla Hacken: When I met her she lived in New York and she was ... she's also quite a bit younger than me and she was working in the animation business. She was working on Bill Cosby's TV show Little Bill for Nickelodeon and then she got offered a job out here working for a big animation studio which was sort of meant to be. And so she moved out here with a job and moved in with me.
Jennifer Tracy: And then you guys decided to have kids?
Carla Hacken: I started first and I think I was probably 37, 38, something like that. It's funny, nobody ever talks about this. It never occurred to me that I could have a miscarriage. I knew nothing about them. I didn't know how common they were and I came from that generation where we were told, like, "You can wait to have babies." Modern science and modern medicine, you can wait. Women are having babies well into their 40s. So, I got pregnant right away. Two or three tries, I guess. Three tries. And then I guess it was probably pretty soon, like six weeks in or something I had a miscarriage. And then I got pregnant again. Then I kept trying and then I started taking hormones and I ... then I got pregnant again.
Carla Hacken: And it's just so funny, I can't remember all of these things now and she doesn't remember any of it. I've talked to her about it recently, she was like, "God, I don't remember that." I was saying that I had a miscarriage at a Stevie Nicks concert. I mean, at a Fleetwood Mac concert, and she would-
Jennifer Tracy: Oh my god.
Carla Hacken: No, Stevie Nicks. And she was like, "What? I don't remember that at all." I was like, "How do you forget that?" But, yeah, so I had multiple miscarriages, and I had three in-vitros, and it was a real process. I have emotional blackout about a lot of it. I can't quite remember the chronology of it because it was like a marathon and it was like a secret. It's something you just don't talk about and ...
Jennifer Tracy: Right. And you were still working, probably, your ass off at the time so you didn't-
Carla Hacken: [crosstalk 00:39:36]. In fact, I was ... the second miscarriage was the worst because that one I ... it's eight weeks or something like that. No, it's like six weeks I found out that I had twins and that I was going to have a miscarriage, that it wasn't a viable pregnancy and I had to wait to miscarry. And I was supposed to go ... I was in the middle of making the movie Unfaithful, the Adrian Lyne movie.
Jennifer Tracy: One of my favorite movies of all time. I love that movie start to finish. It's such a beautiful film, beautiful story, beautifully told. I love that movie.
Carla Hacken: Thank you. Well, I think that movie is sort of ... was a big part of me deciding to become a producer because that movie didn't have a creative producer on it, just a line producer, and so myself and my boss, Elizabeth, we basically produced the film. And I spent a good part of the movie on set for most of the production end, but I happened to be home ... I guess I was home ... I guess I was there for a little bit and [inaudible 00:40:40] back and I knew I was pregnant and then when I found out that I was gonna miscarry it was supposed to be ... I was supposed to leave the next day for set and I had to call my boss who didn't even know I was going through this. And unbeknownst to me, she was pregnant too and had been going through in-vitro and whatever, so ...
Carla Hacken: And so finally I think the last in-vitro I switched doctors and I was so crazy from hormones. I mean, like road rage beyond control, beyond belief. Lucky for me, there was another womb in the house and it coincided with her really hating her job, and so I was just like, "I can't do this anymore." And I didn't wanna do it to her 'cause it was just hell. Three years. Or, almost three years, something like that. And so then she started trying. We thought she'd get pregnant right away 'cause she was 10 years younger than me, but it took a while. It took a really long time. But, I guess it was about four years door to door from the day I started 'til that we had our first child. Maybe almost five years, I don't [crosstalk 00:41:50].
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. What a journey.
Carla Hacken: What a journey. I just remember the day that we found out [inaudible 00:41:55] we found out it was gonna be a boy. And we hadn't talked about ... she didn't say to me, like, "What do you want?" And she was like, "You wanted a girl, didn't you?" I was like, "Yeah, but at this point if we gave birth to a live puppy I probably would be fine." I was just like, "Please."
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. You've been through so much.
Carla Hacken: So much, yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: So, were you both holding your breath through the pregnancy because of the miscarriages?
Carla Hacken: Not with her because she was younger and we didn't ... Once we got to ... I don't know what it was, 10 weeks [crosstalk 00:42:28] we were like, "Yeah, it's all good." But I do remember, and I tell this story a lot to women that I meet who are really going through it. I do remember ... Or women who stopped and are adopting or their partner, whatever, is ... or they had to use an egg donor, or ... That right after we figured out that Lorraine's ... that it was a viable pregnancy my best friend, Alison, and I went to the desert for a weekend 'cause I was sort of like, "Is this gonna be my last chance to do this for a long time?" And she said to me when we were sitting having lunch the first the day we were there, she said to me, "How are you?" And I said, "Oh my god, I'm really good. I'm so happy."
Carla Hacken: And she said ... looked at me and kinda cocked her head and she's like, "Really, how are you?" And she was the first and only person to know that there had to be something underneath that. And I burst into tears and it was the first time in my life that I realized that you can have two diametrically opposing emotions coexist inside yourself. 'Cause on one hand I could not have been any happier that we were having this baby, and absolutely not for a second thought anything other than this is our child. And on the other hand, I knew that I would never get over the fact that I wasn't able to carry myself. And they ... one had nothing to do with the other.
Jennifer Tracy: That's right, yeah. And they're both equally true at the same time.
Carla Hacken: Exactly. But it ... you know what? Everything happens for a reason and I ... I don't know if she would agree with this, but I sort of feel like Lorraine wouldn't have been able to stay home and be a stay at home mom the way she did if I had given birth and handed the baby over to her. And I feel like I would have had a much harder time going back to work the way I had to work. I mean, if you know anything about the entertainment business. I was working [crosstalk 00:44:26]-
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. You were never home.
Carla Hacken: I was home, but I was just ... the stress was so high and ... Yeah, I was not home.
Jennifer Tracy: Or if you were home you were sleeping because you just worked an 18 hour day.
Carla Hacken: Right. Well, that's when you're in production, but as a studio executive I was just up and out there and just appointment ... meeting, after meeting, after meeting, [inaudible 00:44:45]. So, I think it would have been harder for me. I don't think I would have been able to breastfeed for very long, and it's weird. We fell into very traditional roles. Lorraine was a stay at home mom, breastfed our kids for a really long time, and was a ... she had blissful ... two times. Blissful pregnancies, and was happy being pregnant, and really happy to be home with the kids, and I loved what I was doing, and I went off to work every day and ...
Carla Hacken: On one hand, some of my working mom friends who were heterosexual ... I'm sorry to say it, but you have it easier than I do. So like, "You've got Lorraine at home, I got my husband. He's useless with the child." And I remember a friend of my saying to me that her husband on a Saturday was like ... I was like, "Well, where's your husband?" 'Cause she was exhausted and had two small children ... was like, "He's surfing. It's his new hobby and he leaves early on Saturdays and doesn't come back until two in the afternoon." I was like, "Are you kidding me?" I'm lucky if I get to go out and get a manicure. I'm like, "I have ... Hobby? Who the fuck has a hobby when you're a working mother?"
Jennifer Tracy: Because Lorraine was like, "Great. It's the weekend. You're on."
Carla Hacken: Totally.
Jennifer Tracy: And she would go have her time.
Carla Hacken: Right. Yeah. I don't know a working mom with small children who has a hobby.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, exactly.
Carla Hacken: Are you kidding? They're thrilled if they can get 20 minutes on a treadmill. So, yeah, we sort of ... I was lucky on one hand, but on the other hand I sort of felt like I was in this weird no man's land. I remember when I started going to these Mommy and Me classes with Lorraine on Fridays. I would try to go as much as I could, but she started it without me. And the women were all sitting around, 2:00 on a Friday, complaining about their husbands and how hard their lives were, and these are all stay at home moms, right? And I don't know what the hell Lorraine was saying about me, but when I would go in there I was like an interloper. They would be like, "My husband this and that when he comes home from work." And then women would glance over at me and I was like, "Oh my god, am I like the husband in the room?"
Carla Hacken: So, I wasn't getting the respect of the moms, and the dads ... It's funny, I did get a lot closer to my male friends who are dads because it's like we were all complaining about that thing of, like, you work a full day and then you come home and then somebody's like, "[crosstalk 00:47:19] baby."
Jennifer Tracy: And you have to work some more. Yeah.
Carla Hacken: Exactly. There's the baby. A friend of mine who's a comedy writer, she's so funny, and our kids are the same age except for that her youngest is five months older than mine. So, by the time my little one was about, I don't know, nine months old, so hers was a little over a year she called me on a Saturday and she said, "What are you doing?" She said, "Are you alone?" She said, "Are you home or are you out?" And I was like, "I'm out." And she's like, "Am I on speakerphone?" I said yes. "Are you alone?" And I said yes. She said, "Okay, good. I have an important question for you." She said, "What are you doing right now?" And I said, "Oh, I got out of jail and I'm going to the grocery store, the dry cleaner, and the tailor." And she said, "Ah, that's exactly why I'm calling. What's worse? Your worst day ever at work, or Saturday?" And at that point with a four year old and a six month old, I was like, "Saturday."
Jennifer Tracy: Saturday, hands down. Yeah, going to work is like a break, right?
Carla Hacken: It was.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. So, [crosstalk 00:48:33]-
Carla Hacken: But it's also that horrible thing that it's the thing that I just ... I'm sorry to be sexist about this and I know that there are lots of exceptions to the rule.
Jennifer Tracy: Well, there's a few, maybe. I don't know if there's lots.
Carla Hacken: But I don't have many male friends who have the working guilt that a working mother does, and I don't care if you are a working straight mom who has a dad that stays home or if you have a babysitter, or nanny, or whatever it is. It doesn't matter what your situation is with who's parenting your child when you're not around, it's that it's a different kind of guilt.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. I was just interviewing a writer mom yesterday at her office in Universal. That big tall building, whatever it is. Universal City Plaza. And she has a two year old and a 10 year old and she said it's just agonizing.
Carla Hacken: A two year old to a 10 year old? That's a big spread.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. And her husband is a producer, and she was an actress, now she's a writer. And she said, "He just, he's ... " And they're both so lovely. He's so lovely. He's very active with the kids, but she said he doesn't have that guilt or shame. It's just like, "Oh, they're fine. They're fine." And she said, "I'm just tormented." And I said, "It's just part of the chromosomal makeup of being a woman. I don't know, it's just ... there's no getting away from it."
Carla Hacken: It's true, and I don't think I could have been a full time stay at home mom. Having said that, there's things that happened when I wasn't around that just would kill me. And when Beau, my older son, was ... he was in preschool, so I guess he was probably four. He broke his arm and I was in New York for a while, for a week or something like that. I just remember it was over a weekend and Lorraine called me on a Saturday and she was like, "Hey, he fell off of a slide at the park today and he hit his arm really bad, and ever since we got home ... " This was a Saturday, late afternoon. "Ever since we got home he just seems really out of it, and he looks really pale, and what do I do?" Huh, I wonder if Griffin was even born. He wasn't, so Beau had to be a little over three, so she must have been pregnant.
Carla Hacken: And she's like, "What do you think I should do? Should I take him to the hospital?" And I was like, "Well, why don't you call Dr. Scott," our pediatrician. And so he asked her a whole bunch of questions and he was like, "If he seems okay and he's not crying, doesn't [inaudible 00:51:11] just give him some Tylenol or whatever and see how he is in the morning, and call me." And then on Sunday morning she called me and she said, "He seems fine but it's really swollen."
Carla Hacken: And so I called the doctor again and he's like, "Okay, well you can go into the hospital and everything, but it's Sunday and you're gonna ... you want an orthopedic pediatric doctor and you're gonna be there all day." And he was like, "If you think he's okay, just keep giving him Motrin [inaudible 00:51:45] nothing bad's gonna come of him staying home today, and then I'm gonna make an appointment for you to go see this orthopedic doctor in the morning."
Carla Hacken: And so she took him in on Monday morning and I was in a meeting in New York with 10 people in a conference room and a text comes up and a photo on my screen of him there and it just said, "It's broken," and I burst into tears. I burst into tears in this room and I was just like ... it was the first time I really understood the term ... where the term "heartache" comes from 'cause I literally was like ... physical pain that I wasn't there. Physical pain and I was like ... that was when I knew you'd throw yourself in front of a bus before you let your child be in physical pain. And the guilt that we had gone through the whole weekend. It didn't really make a difference according to the doctor 'cause we had stabilized him. We. I wasn't here. That was it, the fact that I wasn't here was just horrible.
Jennifer Tracy: Agonizing, yeah. And that doesn't go away.
Carla Hacken: I remember on the night of the Walk The Line premier in New York I cried myself to sleep because he had hand-foot-and-mouth disease. It seemed like every time I left town ... I just felt so bad for Lorraine. Every time I left town something bad happened. And he had a crazy high fever, and she hadn't slept in days, and he hadn't slept, and she literally called me and was like, "Can you come home?" And I was like, "I can't tonight. I will come home tomorrow." And I just remember that night crying myself to sleep because it was like, "What am I gonna do? I can't go, I can't [crosstalk 00:53:23]."
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. I mean, even if you had gotten on the plane it would take you eight hours minimum with check in and ... You know.
Carla Hacken: I don't know many men that are like that.
Jennifer Tracy: No. I don't know any. Maybe one or two.
Carla Hacken: I know a couple.
Jennifer Tracy: But even two of my best friends are ... they have three adopted children together. They're married. And they are so great about ... they have a nanny, they send those kids to sleep away camp for eight weeks at a time, they're like, "No prob." Just no big deal.
Carla Hacken: [crosstalk 00:54:01] ...
Jennifer Tracy: It's just a different way of being.
Carla Hacken: We never took a vacation without the kids, ever. It was crazy. I'm not saying that like I'm proud of it, it's just the way we were.
Jennifer Tracy: Right. So, okay, back to the end of the era at the Fox 2000. Was there another epiphany. Was there another moment where you said ...
Carla Hacken: It wasn't an epiphany, it was sort of out of necessity. I just sorta had hit this wall and I got offered a job that I didn't do my homework before I took it. I must have really needed something to crowbar me out of ... I would have just rotted away in the Fox 2000 bungalow 'cause I just didn't make a lot of big changes in my life ever. Nine years at ICM, and I've been in this house for 20 years. And Lorraine, 15 years, and my best friend for 30-something years, and I just was too scared to make a move.
Carla Hacken: I had been offered jobs when the kids were really young and I just didn't think there was a smart move. So, at the point I got offered this job it just seemed like a great idea. It was kind of a safe move, supposedly. It was part of the Fox family, it was a step up, it was being president of production, and I got there and it was a terrible mistake. The first time in my entire career that I was like, "I have made a terrible mistake."
Jennifer Tracy: How soon after did you know that it was ...
Carla Hacken: Six weeks.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, wow.
Carla Hacken: It was the worst 9 or 10 months of my life. I still have PTSD from it. And I like to think of it as it was sort of the beginning of the end of my marriage. It was transformatively terrible. I just didn't realize how protective I was of Fox 2000 and our sweet little bungalow and how much I lived in a little bubble. And I just didn't do my homework about the people I was going to go work for, and ...
Jennifer Tracy: So, was it like ... the way you're describing it I'm imagining an abusive situation.
Carla Hacken: It was like psychological warfare.
Jennifer Tracy: Like swimming with sharks kind of deal?
Carla Hacken: Yes. It was terrible. And I-
Jennifer Tracy: Can I ask if it was men?
Carla Hacken: Yes.
Jennifer Tracy: Sorry. Not to be ... I'm being sexist now, but, I mean, I just assumed.
Carla Hacken: I don't think I should expand on it but to say it's a certain kind of men, plural. And I was in this really fucked up little triangulated relationship thing and I just didn't have any experience with dealing with these kind of [crosstalk 00:56:24].
Jennifer Tracy: Sure.
Carla Hacken: And I made mistakes for sure looking back on it, but having said that there was no ... my emotional makeup is not cut out for those people and it was terrible. And I realized very soon into the job that I was sort of being ... they were trying to haze me into quitting so they wouldn't have to honor my three year contract and literally haze me into quitting. And I was like, "No. That's not happening. Do not fuck with a mother who is the sole provider for her family." That's not happening.
Jennifer Tracy: That's right. Mama bear.
Carla Hacken: It took me away from a fantastic ... I had a great job at Fox and there are a lot of perks that go along with working for a giant corporation like that for that long. I gave up so many stock options, and I really didn't handle my departure great, and I burned a bridge that was important to me, and I just blindly walked into this situation. And so, I got fired 10 months later. Kind of knew I was going to, but it was that thing of me holding on to get fired instead of having to quit. It was just holding on.
Carla Hacken: But I didn't know it was gonna happen when it happened and it blindsided me. I can't even begin to tell you. It blindsided me. But before I'd even walked back to my office they had turned off me emails, and my phones, and everything, and put out something in [inaudible 00:57:53] and it was just ... it was horrible. It was the first time in my entire life that I had been fired and it was also the first time in my life where I realized ... I mean, I was used to being not expendable, ever. You know what I mean? They were really sad when I left [crosstalk 00:58:11] and I was treated at Fox 2000 like I was a very integral part of the system and the success of the division and everything.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. Well, you were.
Carla Hacken: And then, to go someplace where I wasn't valued at all and just unceremoniously kicked to the curb just because of weird personality conflicts, and egos, and insecurities and ...
Jennifer Tracy: Well, it sounds like severe narcissism for [crosstalk 00:58:39] ... Yeah.
Carla Hacken: [crosstalk 00:58:40] I'm not gonna discuss it 'cause there's people that'll listen to this and will know who the people are and I'm just ... I'll just say ... I'll say there's a lot to be said for bad chemistry. So, part of it would just be not a good fit, and then part of it was my own naivete of what I can tolerate, and what I can't tolerate, and what's important to me, and ... But it was terrible and it was bad for me as a parent, it was bad for me as a partner. I wasn't present at all.
Carla Hacken: And so that I wouldn't call an epiphany, I would just say a life changing thing that led me to the path that I'm on now that I've been on for the past ... I forget how many years it is now. Six, I guess. I was like, "Well, what do I do now?" And do I wanna be an executive, do I wanna be a producer, do I wanna be an executive, do I wanna be a producer? And we were very [inaudible 00:59:31] at Fox 2000. Like I said, I was on set for most of Unfaithful and so I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna give it a try."
Carla Hacken: 'Cause there weren't any jobs that I was really interested in, and had enough money in the bank to last for a bit, and settled out with the lovely humans I worked with. So I was like, "Okay, this affords me ... I'm gonna think of it as like a paycheck and I'm gonna amortize it." To see if I was still getting this paycheck how long does this take me to? And I was like, "I'll give myself until then to try this."
Carla Hacken: And I think it was about six months in that Stacy Sneider, who I looked up to, have always looked up to, will always look up to and forever be grateful for for this moment in my career. But we started out at Triad together and at the point that she was an assistant there I was an assistant there, and she had always been somebody I called upon in my career for advice and she just always was the smartest person.
Carla Hacken: And I went to her when I first left this other job and was like, "What do I do?" And she said to me, "There are very few people like us left in the business." And when she said "us" I really was so touched. And she said, "You know, there's just not that many people that know how to identify a good piece of material, a good story, and know how to build that and then make it into something good. It's a skill and there's just not that many people that still ... "
Carla Hacken: The business had changed in a way where what I did, which was reading a lot of books and developing, and spending time developing, and [inaudible 01:01:10] make a movie as good as it could be, it was just not necessarily the most valued thing at that point. I couldn't develop a Marvel comic book if ... or a horror movie. Just not my skill set, right? So she said, "There's not many people like us left in the business so just put your head down and do what it is you do well, and all the writers and directors you know, and read books, and things will fall into place."
Carla Hacken: And she told me that, and so did Peter [inaudible 01:01:42] tell me something very similar, who had been my boss at one point at [Oxen 01:01:46]. So I was like, "Okay, the two smartest people I know. I'm gonna take that advice." And I did that. I just started treating every day I woke up like ...
Carla Hacken: And Lorraine and I [inaudible 01:01:55] fight about it because to her I didn't have a job. And meanwhile, I was waking up and working harder than I did when I had my job so I was like ... everyday I woke up and was like, "Okay, what am I doing today?" I had lists of people I would call, and read, and just meeting after meeting. And six months later I had amassed a little group of projects. And when I first went to see Stacy I think I [inaudible 01:02:18] her office was so shellshocked from what had just happened so I sent her an email six months later and was like, "Okay, I'm on my feet, and I have some stuff, and I'd love to talk to you about it, and ... "
Carla Hacken: So I went and saw her and I kind of said that I was jealous of someone that we both knew who had just made a baby first look deal at a studio and ... but that I felt like it legitimized him in a way that it's just really hard to be on your way without having that stamp of a big company behind you. She's like, "Well, I'll talk to everybody here." And I was like, "Oh, no. I didn't come in here to ask you for a deal. I would never be so presumptuous. I came in to talk about some stuff."
Carla Hacken: And within two seconds, she and I had fallen into, "Have you seen this?" And, "Do you watch this TV show?" And, "Have you read that book?" And then I was driving later that day and she emailed me and was like, "I wanna make a deal with you." And I just remember I was in Culver City picking my kids up, I think, and I almost crashed my car. I was just so happy. So, yeah, that started me on the road that I've been on and I will forever be grateful for her.
Jennifer Tracy: That's so amazing.
Carla Hacken: Yeah. I remember when I moved into my office at Dreamworks and it was a tiny little room and I had brought with me the girl who had been my assistant at the previous job and had gone on to somewhere else because ... and every day she was [inaudible 01:03:47] like, "Can you please [inaudible 01:03:49] somewhere where you can bring me back?" And so I called her and was like, "Come with me." And I had promoted her to be a junior executive, and her name's Bronwyn and I love her. And we were just ... the two of us moved into our little tiny office.
Carla Hacken: And I'll just never forget when I pulled on the Universal lot and into the Dreamworks parking lot and went into my office and I was like, "This is a new chapter and this feels like a really important ... " But more importantly, it felt right. And I felt a little bit like ... you can never look back and be like, "God, I wish I would have taken a different road, or that road sooner, or whatever." But there was a part of me that's like, "Kinda wish I hadn't spent 15 years at the studio." But having said that, it was just better back then than it is now and so there was no reason to leave.
Jennifer Tracy: Right. And so it was shortly after you made that transition that you then were nominated for an Oscar. Am I right? I know you're very humble so you're ... but that's kind of a big deal, Carla. You're blushing.
Carla Hacken: I wouldn't say shortly thereafter. Here's what happened. I was there for a year and I set up a bunch of stuff, and it was going really well. And I hadn't been in production or anything and then they re-upped my deal and right around that time this company, Sidney Kimmel, SKE, came out. This guy, Jim [inaudible 01:05:18], called me and was like, "We have mutual friends, and can we have coffee? And I wanna talk to you about coming and running our company."
Carla Hacken: And I was like, "Well, I'd be happy to sit down with you but you have the wrong girl for the job. I know nothing about the independent film business. I like to spend in pre-production what you spend in an entire movie." I was like, "I'm used to hiring million dollar screenwriters and be the person that wins in a book bidding war because we had the deepest pockets. I don't know how to make independent movies. I know nothing about it, I don't know about [inaudible 01:05:48] presales." And he was like, "No, I know I don't have the wrong person. Just have lunch with me."
Carla Hacken: So we did, and he explained everything to me and ... But what he explained was kind of appealing because it was a hybrid situation where I still have a paycheck, a fraction of what I used to get paid as a studio executive, but it was a paycheck. It was enough to float me but also could be hands-on, and be a producer, and get credit. It's kinda hard when you work on a movie for five years and do all the work and then have my parents, to this day, be like, "What does a studio executive do? Why is your name not on the movie? You said you do the same thing as the producer, but why don't you have your name on the movie?"
Carla Hacken: So it was appealing, this hybrid situation, and I ... So, I didn't wanna make the mistake I had made before. Instead of talking to no one, I went around and talked to everybody and was like, "Should I take this job? Should I take this job? Should I take this job?" And again, Stacy was like ... she was like, "Why wouldn't you? The way the business is going the kind of movies that you like to make are getting made independently now and filmmakers are so fed up with being in development forever or having their lives completely micromanaged when they make a film that it's becoming more appealing for them to make movies independently and whatever.
Carla Hacken: And then I went and saw another friend of mine, Blair, who's an agent, and she said to me ... She was one of the few people that knew that I was having trouble at home and she was like, "How are things going?" And I was like, "Not great." And she was like, "Take the job. You're gonna want the paycheck if you guys split up." And she said, "But more importantly, how much money did you make this year?" I was like, "Nothing." And she said, "How are you gonna feel two years from now if through no fault of your own you've got nothing in production?" 'Cause sometimes that happens as a producer, right? Infantile development takes a while.
Carla Hacken: And she said, "How are you gonna feel two years from now if you still haven't made any money?" She said, "'Cause for all intents and purposes, you're killing it as a producer. But you've been doing this now for over a year and nothing is close to going into production." And I was like, "I think I'd feel terrible." She said, "Take the job." So I took the job and I was there for three years. And unfortunately, the guy that hired me, who I just adore, left the company 10 months after he hired me to retire to become a therapist. And, so angry at him.
Carla Hacken: And it changed the DNA of the company a bit with the new boss, but right at the point that he left when I got to SKE, Hell or High Water, which was called [inaudible 01:08:30] then had ... was packaged. It had a director and [inaudible 01:08:35] make the movie and I just knew it wasn't gonna get made. And I had tried to buy the script in my previous job and my boss, the one that hired me, didn't like it. But I had a relationship with Taylor, the writer, and his agent. And so I got there and I was like, "I'm gonna get this movie made. I don't think it's gonna get made the way it's ... right now, but I'm gonna see it through and if sometime soon it's not coming together I'm gonna make it fall apart and then put it back together." So that's what I did. So, yeah.
Carla Hacken: So, I found the director, David, and I was in post on something that ... I was in the process of building the company and a slate 'cause I had cleaned house and gotten rid of almost everything with the exception of a few things, and unlike being a studio where you have a massive amount of support, I had nobody. [inaudible 01:09:26] junior executive and so I had to do everything myself. And I was in post on one movie and in early prep on something else when [inaudible 01:09:36] was going into production and so I brought my friend Julie Yorn onto the movie to do it with me, and ... So, yeah. So we made the movie and it was my first full producer credit.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. And [whammo 01:09:51], you got an Oscar nom. That's amazing.
Carla Hacken: It was a really amazing run, and it was a hard one. It was one of the hardest movies I've ever done and ... from start to finish.
Jennifer Tracy: What made it so hard, comparatively?
Carla Hacken: It was just [inaudible 01:10:10].
Jennifer Tracy: Enough said. Got it.
Carla Hacken: It was just hard. I don't ... everything. But at the same time, couldn't be more proud of it. Love the movie so much. And I actually am really proud of all the movies I made there. I made five movies in three years and I'm really proud of that, but it was time to leave and I left. [inaudible 01:10:35] and independent business was fun, and exciting, and I learned so much. I know way more about that than any of my friends that have been at a major studio for a long time. And again, the business is now in a massive upheaval. So I'm in the television business now, you know?
Jennifer Tracy: You are? Are you pursuing that?
Carla Hacken: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: What does that look like? I mean, I notice ... I haven't watched much television lately just for no reason, but I've noticed all these streaming services that are getting these huge stars, that are getting these amazing writers, and it's like, "Oh, I never thought I would see the day where George Clooney was producing a TV show, Sandra Bullock was on a ... " I mean ...
Carla Hacken: I have a few projects and one of them is ... got a major movie star attached, and ... Again, the kind of material that I gravitate towards is all going the way of television, and so I made a first look deal in TV recently. And so, yeah, I'm focusing a lot on it. I mean, I'm just doing both now. And now when I look at a piece of material or talk to some talent I'm like ... I don't think of it as film or TV. I think of it as, "Do I love this? If I love it, who else will love it?" And if we figured this out and put it together, what's the best platform for it, period? Not like is it movie or television, it's more like just where is this gonna be most successful? Where can this live and actually survive?
Jennifer Tracy: Find its audience, right.
Carla Hacken: And find its audience.
Jennifer Tracy: So, it just occurred to me. I wanted to ask you this question. Throughout the trajectory of your career in Hollywood how have you seen women's roles in production change? And I'm not talking about actresses, I'm talking about behind the scenes, like producers, writers, creatives.
Carla Hacken: I have one really simple answer. Not much. It's not, "How," it's, "Has it?" Not very much. And that's why there's this giant movement at the moment. When it first started, when the whole ... it's like there's two different things going on. There was the Me Too thing that happened, but then also started this whole other conversation that had already begun to happen about the inequality in Hollywood for everything from executives, writers, producers, directors, and ...
Jennifer Tracy: And actresses too. I don't mean to leave actresses out of it, but I'm just ... Yeah.
Carla Hacken: And actresses too. No, no. Yeah. It just hasn't changed enough. And I recently got a little bit involved in sort off an offshoot of Time's Up that's about mentorship and whatever, and going ... mentoring women and getting them the leg up. And all these people I know that are now making the pledge to 50/50, and it's great. It's really, really great. And I have a studio project right now, and it's a true story, and it's about women, and I'm the producer, and there's a female star, and there'll be a second female star and a really strong female writer who's been around for a long time and seen it all.
Carla Hacken: So, yeah, there's me, there's the writer, there's the star, there's the two women it's based on. And my first conversation with these two agents and the male producer that's been [inaudible 01:14:04] on me to talk about directors, they were all talking over me. I couldn't even get anyone to hear me. They just started pitching all these ideas and it never even occurred to them to be like, "Hey, we should start with a woman director." Never even occurred to them. When I was like, "Huh, wait, hold on." It's really important to us ladies, the three of us, that we start with trying to find a woman director. Don't even wanna entertain any men until we've exhausted this list. They were like, "Oh, yeah."
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, just not conscious.
Carla Hacken: Here's the thing. I'm older than a lot of my counterparts just because I've had two careers, right? So, I think I'd be in a different place if I had been doing this the whole time, but ... So, I have a slightly different perspective, but I think it was Linda [inaudible 01:14:58] wrote an article right when the whole Harvey thing happened and she wrote an article ... I think it was for the New Yorker, I don't know. But she was talking about her generation of women and there were some kick ass women.
Carla Hacken: It was her, and Laura Ziskin, and Dawn Steele, and Lucy Fisher, and just all these ... Paula Weinstein. And these were the women I looked up to. That's how I got the job working for Laura 'cause I would follow these women around and be like, "I wanna be like them." But part of that was we had to act a certain way and also had to accept a certain amount of inequality. But also, the whole Me Too of it all. I mean, I have stories and at the time I wasn't feeling at all like I was being sexually abused or whatever you wanna call it. It was just part of the ... It's what you ...
Jennifer Tracy: Culture, absolutely.
Carla Hacken: Culture, yeah. And so there's that part of it, but then there's the part of it of, like ... somebody asked me a while ago. It was at a party and it was a woman who's a very well known television writer. And she said to me, "What do you think about this whole thing about women, and writers," and whatever. It was just when the conversation just started. And I was like, "Look, I'm as much a part of the problem as anyone because when I was at Fox 2000 when we were trying to put a director on The Devil Wears Prada, we didn't say, like, "You know, this really should have a woman director." We never said that. We just looked at a list of directors and the women who were on the list were just not ... didn't have a body of work as good as the men that were on the list.
Carla Hacken: And we didn't say, like, "Well, the reason they don't have this body of work is because ... and we should really start going out of our way to give these women better material and whatever." It was not part of the dialogue. So, now I'm like ... I'm so thrilled that that's where we are. I mean, I literally am meeting all these fantastic women directors now and women that are becoming directors that were cinematographers, and editors, and especially these women that are younger. They're doing [inaudible 01:17:19] ... in a relationship with somebody that was an editor and is now directing and watch that transition and how it was such a bonus that she was a kick ass woman as opposed to a detriment. So, that's cool.
Jennifer Tracy: That's awesome. That's hopeful.
Carla Hacken: Makes me feel a little old and wish that I could roll black the clock a little bit for myself, but yes.
Jennifer Tracy: That's awesome.
Carla Hacken: So, yeah. I don't know if I can say I've seen it change very much, but I think it's changing now.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. The tides are turning. It's just it's a slow roll. I mean, I could talk to you for at least another hour, but ...
Carla Hacken: [crosstalk 01:17:55] cover everything? No.
Jennifer Tracy: No, no. Of course we didn't, but we covered a lot.
Carla Hacken: Too much.
Jennifer Tracy: No, no, no, no. Definitely not too much.
Carla Hacken: Was I the chattiest of any of the people?
Jennifer Tracy: Not at all.
Carla Hacken: Oh, okay. Good.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, not at all. No, you were perfection. Are you kidding? So, we have come to the time. Don't be nervous. I ask everyone the same questions so there's nothing ... And there's only one weird question, and you don't have to answer everything and ... So, I'm gonna ask you the three questions I ask every guest first, and then we'll go into the lightning round. What do you think about, Carla, when you hear the word MILF?
Carla Hacken: The original acronym? Is that right?
Jennifer Tracy: Yes, yes. Uh-huh.
Carla Hacken: That's what I think about. There's a part of me that's sort of like, "Ugh," and there's a part of me that's like, "Am I one? Is that great?"
Jennifer Tracy: What part of you is like, "Ugh," that just ... that it's an old porn genre?
Carla Hacken: I think when it first started it seemed cool. Like, "Oh, that's great. Moms are sexy." But then I think it took a slightly sleazy connotation at some point, right?
Jennifer Tracy: Right. Well, it started as a porn genre, I'm sure coined by some dude. And then it became part of the vernacular in just pop culture. Yeah, it's interesting because I ... I mean, part of the story is that I started pole dancing when I was 38 and sort of came out of the fog that I'd been in for the first four years of my son's life and I was like, "Oh, I feel sexy," and so I started thinking about that word, and using that word, and then again ... And I may have shared this with you earlier, so I can't remember. But everything I know about being a mom is from women that I have followed, moms that I have followed, and so that's kind of how I came up with this. But it is both for me because it's like I used to think that once I became a mom I wasn't allowed to be sexy, or feel sexy, or be sexual, or ... I don't know why, that's just what I thought, and also, I think maybe what was projected to me from pop culture and things. So, anyway, that's a little backstory to the ...
Carla Hacken: Yes. Okay, good. I like that.
Jennifer Tracy: Okay. What's something you've changed your mind about recently?
Carla Hacken: I don't know. Let me think about it and come back, okay?
Jennifer Tracy: Okay. How do you define success?
Carla Hacken: So differently than I did 20 years ago. My initial answer would just make me feel like a failure 'cause I was gonna say success should be just a feeling of contentment, and peace, and to feel like you're living your authentic life. But I'm so hard on myself that I've been ... I would have to put myself in the unsuccessful category if that was my definition, but I think success is feeling like you know that you're doing the best you can do in whatever it is you're doing. Whether it's in what you do for a living, or as a parent, or as a friend, or ... I mean, I am so hard on myself and so my personal meditation a lot is, "Did I do the best I could?"
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, I love that. I think we could all use that.
Carla Hacken: And I mean, this is gonna sound really corny and I've really thinking about this a lot because my birthday is coming up and I seem to get really sentimental about this very thing around my birthday, which is I think the greatest success of my life is that I have surrounded myself with such amazing, loving friends my whole life. I have such a great deep bench of friendship, and my family. I have a really wonderful family and the thing I'm most proud of in the last few years has been surviving the divorce and being a great mom. And I know I'm a great mom. That's like for me ... I go to bed at night being like, "Ugh, I'm terrible. I'm a shitty producer, I don't work hard enough, I don't exercise enough." I can name 30 things that I beat myself up for, but I rarely go to bed feeling like I'm doing a bad job as a parent. I do think I'm failing in the area of screen control.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, gosh. We could do a whole episode on that.
Carla Hacken: Putting that aside, yeah, that's for me a big thing.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. That's so great. I'm happy for you that you feel that way 'cause I don't always feel that way about ... And it's hard doing it as a single parent, exchanging the kids back and forth and ...
Carla Hacken: Oh my god. I mean, I read you that text. It is so hard. It's been four years and it's not ... it's getting better.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. You get into a rhythm but it's still [crosstalk 01:22:55] ...
Carla Hacken: But then get rhythm gets thrown up every June, whatever the date is.
Jennifer Tracy: Of course. Oh, yeah. Oh, god. Or do you want me to wait 'til the end? Okay. So now we're gonna do the lightning round. Ocean or desert?
Carla Hacken: Ocean.
Jennifer Tracy: Favorite junk food?
Carla Hacken: Fried chicken.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, yum.
Carla Hacken: I make really good fried chicken.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, yum!
Carla Hacken: That's not really even junk food, is it? I guess salt and vinegar chips, how about that?
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, they both ... I mean, together?
Carla Hacken: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: Can we make them right now? That sounds amazing. Movies or Broadway show?
Carla Hacken: Movies.
Jennifer Tracy: Daytime sex or nighttime sex?
Carla Hacken: Nighttime.
Jennifer Tracy: Texting or talking?
Carla Hacken: Talking.
Jennifer Tracy: Cat person or dog person?
Carla Hacken: Dog.
Jennifer Tracy: Have you ever worn a unitard?
Carla Hacken: No.
Jennifer Tracy: Shower or bathtub?
Carla Hacken: Shower.
Jennifer Tracy: Ice cream or chocolate?
Carla Hacken: Chocolate.
Jennifer Tracy: On a scale of 1 to 10, how good are you at ping-pong?
Carla Hacken: Fucking good.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah! Oh my god.
Carla Hacken: Do you see what's outside?
Jennifer Tracy: Fucking good, so you're like an 11.
Carla Hacken: No. I just need more time 'cause I've just taken it up again in the last year or whenever we got that ping-pong table.
Jennifer Tracy: That's so fun. Do you play with your sons?
Carla Hacken: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jennifer Tracy: That's so fun.
Carla Hacken: We have what I call Friday night dance party ping-pong where I take my little speaker outside and we put on the dance party playlist and my older son and I play ping-pong.
Jennifer Tracy: That's amazing. He'll always remember that. What's your biggest pet peeve?
Carla Hacken: Being the brunt of someone's joke. Being the person that gets teased or ... I don't know, I'm just that person, I guess. But I don't know if that's a pet peeve. That might be just a weak spot.
Jennifer Tracy: We can call it a pet peeve.
Carla Hacken: I don't know if I have a pet peeve. Pet peeve. Everything sounds too lofty that comes to mind, so I don't know if I [crosstalk 01:24:58] ...
Jennifer Tracy: I like your answer. We're gonna keep it. If you could push a button and it would make everyone in the world 7% happier but it would also place a worldwide ban on all hairstyling products, would you push it?
Carla Hacken: No.
Jennifer Tracy: Super-
Carla Hacken: 7%? No.
Jennifer Tracy: 7%.
Carla Hacken: I might very reluctantly at 80%, but ...
Jennifer Tracy: There you go. Super power choice: invisibility, ability to fly, or super strength?
Carla Hacken: Super strength.
Jennifer Tracy: Would you rather have six fingers on both hands or a belly button that looks like foreskin?
Carla Hacken: Can I say neither?
Jennifer Tracy: Yes.
Carla Hacken: Absolutely neither.
Jennifer Tracy: What was the name of your first pet?
Carla Hacken: Simon.
Jennifer Tracy: What was the name of the street you grew up on?
Carla Hacken: Johnston Street. It's funny, I got ... my mom sent me a picture of our house today.
Jennifer Tracy: Aww. So, your porn name is Simon Johnston.
Carla Hacken: He sounds like he has a mullet and a big mustache.
Jennifer Tracy: He totally does. And maybe even bell bottoms with sparkles on the bottom. Okay, last time we're gonna see if you want to answer. What's something you've changed your mind about recently? And if not that's okay.
Carla Hacken: I'm in the middle of changing my mind about how I feel about technology at home, and phones, and video games, and ...
Jennifer Tracy: Meaning allowing more of it, or ...
Carla Hacken: No.
Jennifer Tracy: Wanting to have less of it. Yeah.
Carla Hacken: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, it's horrible. My son, this Fortnite thing ...
Carla Hacken: Yeah. I've got one on Fortnite here and the other one on League of Legends in the man cage. Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: It's bad.
Carla Hacken: And I know I'm a terrible mirror for them with my phone in my hand, so ...
Jennifer Tracy: I struggle with this also. And because our businesses are on our phones that's part of the problem, but I know. And I don't have a solution either, but I know I've gotta cut it down because I can see it affecting him emotionally, socially, the anxiety. It's just not healthy and yet I don't know how to put boundaries around it. So if you figure it out, let me know.
Carla Hacken: Neither ... I don't. That's what I'm saying. I'm terrible enforcing the boundaries and it's really hard when they aren't the same in both households.
Jennifer Tracy: That's the thing too. And also it's he looks forward to it. It's like a treat for him. It's like a relaxing treat so I'm like, "It's kinda like taking cookies away."
Carla Hacken: And by the way, it also gives you a little time to catch up on your emails, I know.
Jennifer Tracy: Exactly, exactly.
Carla Hacken: The other night I came out, I got woken up at a quarter to 11 when my 14 year old was over there. My bedroom's way over there and I got woken up because he was like, "Oh my god, yo! Shit. Fuck, dude. No!" And at 10 he told me he was almost done with that game and so I marched out of my room and I slammed the computer shut and went ... In League of Legends if you drop out of the game you get penalized 'cause you screw it up for everybody. And he cried. And we had a whole thing at 11 o'clock at night about why I feel like it's bad for him and how much I've seen it change him and whatever, and he just kept crying until he said to me, "I need scientific evidence."
Carla Hacken: So, I guess what I was gonna say is I was like ... I've changed my mind about the fact that I kept saying, "Well, you know what? My kids are really good kids, they're smart kids, they're ... we travel a lot, and they're interesting, and they're interested. How bad could it be?" And recently I've been like, "I think it's pretty fucking bad and I think I have to do something."
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. I'm with you. My kid, he's addicted.
Carla Hacken: Did you see the 60 Minutes piece?
Jennifer Tracy: No. Is there scientific evidence in that?
Carla Hacken: There's the beginning of scientific evidence about the addiction. You should watch it. It is Anderson Cooper, 60 Minutes, Screen Time. Google, okay?
Jennifer Tracy: Okay. I will.
Carla Hacken: I've now heard twice in the last two days that all of these guys in Silicon Valley ... Do you know about this?
Jennifer Tracy: No.
Carla Hacken: A ton of the most successful people in Silicon Valley are now putting their kids in these special schools. The kids have no technology. So, they know something.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes. And then there's the blue light. I mean, yeah, that's a whole other ...
Carla Hacken: Yeah. Anyway. Okay, that's it. I've changed my mind about how liberal I am with my ... check back with me in a few months.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. Well, and if you get a solution let me know and I'll do the same.
Carla Hacken: I don't have a solution. The solution is being willing to have my kids be mad at me.
Jennifer Tracy: That's the thing, right? That's it. That's the hard one. That's a hard one. Carla, you're amazing.
Carla Hacken: Aww, thank you. This was so fun.
Jennifer Tracy: Thank you so much.
Carla Hacken: This was really, really fun.
Jennifer Tracy: I mean, again, I could sit here for another hour with you.
Carla Hacken: This is a real cure to the Sunday blues.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. Thank you so much.
Jennifer Tracy: Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Carla. I hope you guys really enjoyed it. Tune in next week, I have another amazing MILF for you. And I just love you guys so much. Have a beautiful, beautiful week. Get out there and love yourself.