A hilarious celebration of lifelong female friendship

Pat Mitchell: So I was thinking
about female friendship a lot,

and by the way, these two women
I'm very honored to say

have been my friends
for a very long time, too.

Jane Fonda: Yes we have.

PM: And one of the things
that I read about female friendship

is something that Cervantes said, he said:

"You can tell a lot about someone,"

in this case a woman,

"by the company that she keeps."

So let's start with --

(Laughter)

JF: We're in big trouble.

(Laughter)

Lily Tomlin: Hand me one of those waters,

I'm extremely dry.

(Laughter)

JF: You're taking up our time.

We have a very limited --

LT: Just being with her
sucks the life out of me.

(Laughter)

JF: You ain't seen nothing yet.

Anyway -- sorry.

PM: So tell me, what do you
look for in a friend?

LT: I look for someone who has
a sense of fun,

who's audacious,

who's forthcoming, who has politics,

who has even a small scrap
of passion for the planet,

someone who's decent,
has a sense of justice,

and who thinks I'm worthwhile.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

JF: You know I was thinking this morning,

I don't even know what I would do
without my women friends.

I have my friends, therefore I am.

LT: (Laughter)

JF: No, it's true.

I exist because I have my women friends.

They --

You're one of them.

I don't know about you.

But anyway --

(Laughter)

You know, they make me stronger,
they make me smarter,

they make me braver.

They tap me on the shoulder when I might
be in need of course-correcting.

And most of them are
a good deal younger than me, too.

LT: Thank you.

(Laughter)

JF: No I do, I include you in that,

because listen, you know --

it's nice to have somebody still around
to play with and learn from

when you're getting toward the end.

LT: I'm glad, I'm glad you --

JF: I'm approaching --
I'll be there sooner than you.

LT: No I'm glad to have you
parallel aging alongside me.

(Laughter)

JF: I'm showing you the way.

(Laughter)

LT: No, you are and you have.

PM: Well as we grow older,

and as we go through different kinds
of life's journeys,

what do you do to keep
your friendships vital and alive?

LT: Well you have to use a lot of --

JF: She doesn't invite me over much,
I'll tell you that.

LT: I have to use a lot of social media --

you be quiet now.

(Laughter)

And so --

(Laughter)

And I go through --
I look through my emails,

I look through my emails,
I look through my texts

to find my friends, so I can answer them
as quickly as possible,

because I know they need my counsel.

(Laughter)

They need my support,

because most of my friends are writers,
or activists or actors,

and you're all three,

and a long string
of other descriptive phrases,

and I want to get to you
as soon as possible,

I want you to know that I'm there for you.

JF: Do you do emojis?

LT: Oh ...

JF: No?

LT: It's embarrassing.

JF: I'm really into emojis.

LT: No I spell out my --

I spell out my words of happiness
and congratulations,

and sadness.

JF: You spell it right out --

LT: I spell out every letter.

(Laughter)

JF: Such a purist.

You know,

as I've gotten older, I've understood more
the importance of friendship.

So, I really make an effort
to reach out and make play dates --

not let too much time go by.

I read a lot so,

as Lily knows all too well,

my books that I like,
I send to my friends.

LT: When you knew we would be here today

you sent me a lot of books about women,
female friendships,

and I was so surprised to see
how many books,

how much research
has been done recently --

JF: And were you grateful?

LT: I was grateful.

(Laughter)

LT: And --

JF: And --

LT: Wait, no, it's really important
because this is another example

of how women are overlooked,
put aside, marginalized,

there's been very little
research done on us,

even though we volunteered lots of times.

JF: That's for sure.

(Laughter)

LT: No-- this is really exciting,

and you all will be interested in this,

the Harvard Medical School Study has shown

that women who have
close female friendships

are less likely to develop impairments --

physical impairments as they age,

and they are likely to seem to be living
much more vital, exciting --

JF: and longer --

LT: and joyful lives.

JF: We life five years longer than men.

LT: I think I'd trade the years for joy.

(Laughter)

LT: And, but the most important part
is they found --

the results were so exciting
and so conclusive --

the researchers found

that not having close female friends
is detrimental to your health,

as much as smoking or being overweight.

JF: Well -- and there's
something else, too --

LT: I've said my part, so ...

(Laughter)

JF: Okay, well listen to my part,
because there's an additional thing.

Because they only --

for years, decades --

they only researched men when they
were trying to understand stress,

only very recently have they researched
what happens to women when we're stressed,

and it turns out that
when we're stressed --women,

our bodies get flooded by oxytocin.

Which is a feel-good, calming,
stress reducing hormone.

Which also is increased
when we're with our women friends.

And I do think that's one reason
why we live longer.

And I feel so bad for men
because they don't have that.

Testosterone in men diminishes
the effects of oxytocin.

LT: Well when you and I
and Dolly made "9 to 5" --

JF: Oh --

LT: We laughed, we did,
we laughed so much,

we found we had so much in common.

And we're so different.

Here she is like Hollywood royalty,

I'm like a tough kid from Detroit,

she's a southern kid
from a poor town in Tennessee,

and we found we were so in sync as women,

and we must have--

we laughed until we must have added
at least a decade onto our lifespans.

JF: I think -- we sure
crossed our legs a lot.

(Laughter)

JF: If you know what I mean.

LT: I think we all know what you mean.

PM: You're adding
decades to our lives right now.

So among the books that Jane
sent us both to read on female friendship,

was one by a woman we admire greatly,
Sister Joan Chittister,

who said about female friendship

that women friends
are not just a social act,

they're a spiritual act.

Do you think of your friends as spiritual?

Do they add something
spiritual to you life?

LT: Spiritual -- I absolutely think that.

Because --especially people
you've known a long time --

people you've spent time with,

I can see the spiritual essence
inside them,

the tenderness, the vulnerability.

There's actually kind of a love,
an element of love in the relationship.

I just see deeply into your soul.

PM: Do you think that, Jane?

LT: But I have special powers.

JF: Well there's all kinds of friends.

There's you know, business friends,
and party friends,

I got a lot of those.

But the oxytocin producing friendships,

they have -- they feel spiritual
because it's a heart opening, right?

You know, we go deep.

And I find that I shed tears a lot
with my intimate friends.

Not because I'm sad but because
I'm so touched and inspired by them.

LT: And you know one of you's
going to go soon.

(Laughter)

PM: Well two of us are sitting here, Lily,
which one are you talking about?