Cher on Kitsch

(tones) (rewinding tape) (tape button pressed) (slow music) - When did you become Cher, Cher?

Are you legally Cher, one word?

- Oh, yeah.

I've been Cher for a long time.

- You sign your checks Cher and stuff like that?

- Yeah, all my papers, my passport, my driver's license.

I never really felt my maiden name.

I never really felt any last name ever in my life.

I was always just Cher.

So I just went and petitioned the court.

What you have to prove is that you are absolutely recognizable to everyone by that one name.

(upbeat music) - I want to ask you a little bit about diva concert here.

Are you comfortable with the phrase diva as applied to you?

You think it's right?

- I don't think it's anything.

I think it's something that is a commercial word that people ... - The old meaning has sort of connotations of temperamental and difficult and egotistical.

- Well one out of three.

(Benjamin chuckles) - Which one is wrong?

- The first two.

- So egotistical?

- Absolutely because I spend so much time having to think about myself and so I'm really self-centered which doesn't make me completely oblivious to things that are happening around me.

It just makes me more conscious of myself than is healthy and that I would like to be.

But that's just the way it is.

I don't read music.

I just hear it, but I'm better with lyrics and I have kind of a photographic memory because of it.

I can read something and pretty much get the feeling of it the first time.

It just takes me a little bit longer.

I'm pretty intelligent but I'm really dyslexic and so school was almost an impossibility for me.

- You have such a icon status in the public mind.

People don't think of Cher as a mom, generally.

What kind of mom are you, were you?

- A working mom at best is not very good.

I mean I love my kids, but I could've been a lot better mom.

I think I was kind of strict and dragged them with me and had great times and bad times.

And I'm a cookie-decorating mom.

I don't bake them.

I decorate them, you know.

(Benjamin chuckles) - Okay.

It's not necessary to smash your children's personalities.

They're respectful.

They know what's right and wrong.

How they live after that is their choice, and I don't have a lot of vested interest in making them kowtow to some strange whims that I have.

- You're very popular apparently in gay circles, - Yeah.

- And, I guess, I don't know if there's a camp element to it or not.

- I don't believe it is.

I think that my gay following is really respectful and if it verges into being camp, camp is a very specifically gay thing.

That doesn't bother me at all, because I know that my gay followers really care about me, really love me, have loved me through thick and thin, and a lot of times have loved me more through thin because that's the way gay men are.

They understand not being part of the whole.

- It's a strange thing with your career.

It sort of goes all over the place.

One minute you're incredibly cool, then you're not so cool and then you're not so cool that you're cool again.

Do you just ride this wave?

- I don't know how to do it.

I just ride it.

- Does it get to you?

- Yeah.

It's fun when it's happening you know.

It's not that I don't take it seriously, it's just that I know what it is.

It doesn't mean because it's happening now that it's going to happen forever.

But it doesn't mean that it's not either, so I don't predict this kind of [Bleep] you know.

I could walk out of here tomorrow and get hit by a truck.

It's just been my life.

It's always been my life.

I don't know that this life makes me happy but it's the life that I love.

- Can you imagine what the alternate universe would have been had you not gone this way, if you had not met Sonny in that coffee shop and not become famous?

- Yeah I know but you know what we were walking towards that coffee shop since the day we were both born.

- Destiny?

- Yeah.

- Do you believe in destiny?

- Yeah, I believe in everything.

(Benjamin chuckles) - [Benjamin] Would you have been happy if you had not been famous?

- No.

(slow music) - I've Got You Babe is obviously, that must be packed with all sorts of mixed emotions for you, huh?

- Not really anything mixed.

No, it was just like the beginning, and it was, we were living that song.

Sonny wrote that song for me.

It was about our life.

Since Sonny's death it's a lot more bittersweet, you know, but the truth is, even though Sonny's dead, I don't think of him as dead.

I feel somehow closer to him now than I've felt in a really long time.

We had the just strangest relationship.

I mean, he had me in court trying to prove I was an unfit mother, and on the day he lost the case 'cause it was really ridiculous, we walked out and he grabbed me and kissed me on the lips, and I was really angry with him, you know?

And then we ended up being hysterical laughing.

We were so much like kids.

You know, we'd spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it was like a joke.

It was always like a game with us.

It was always like a game.

I never could explain it to myself.

I just accepted however it went.

(tape rewinding) Subtitles by the Amara.org community