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[0:00] Jess Rothschild: This is Finding Fire Island, a special episode featuring a one-on-one conversation with the one and only Robin Byrd. If you lived in New York in the 80s or 90s, you know Robin was the queen of late night cable, producing and starring in the live Robin Byrd show, a slice of old New York where it felt like anything could happen. But Robin's story doesn't end in Manhattan. For more than 50 years, she's been part of the fabric of Fire Island. She first discovered Cherry Grove and the Pines back in the 1970s and has lived in the Pines since 1992. Today, she's still one of Fire Island's most beloved personalities, hosting her weekly tea dances in both communities, really keeping that old school Fire Island spirit alive. Her brand new documentary, Bang My Box, The Robin Byrd Story, is now airing on HBO. Please enjoy my intimate conversation with the legendary Robin Byrd, and I'll see you next week as we continue the Finding Fire Island docuseries.

[1:12] Jess Rothschild: Hi Robin Byrd.

[1:13] Robin Byrd: Hello Jess, how are you?

[1:15] Jess Rothschild: I'm good. I just got over doing a tea dance on the rooftop yesterday, which I saw you there. It's a little tiring, you know, the day after because I give out a million percent of my energy.

[1:29] Jess Rothschild: Let's talk about the tea dances. So although you live, you live oceanfront in the Fire Island Pines, you do your tea dances in Cherry Grove.

[1:36] Robin Byrd: I do my tea dances in Cherry Grove, and this year, 2026, we decided the sip and twirl wanted me to host, it's called Disco Deck for two hours, and it's on Sundays. So it's a couple in the Grove, one for the Cherry Grove Arts Project, and it's on the deck, it's on the roof, it's on the roof of the community house, which quite frankly, do you agree? I think that's the best view of the sunset.

[2:11] Jess Rothschild: It's the only view of the sunset. It's amazing. And that's like the best of the community house, which is a theater, and it's the oldest gay theater, I think, in the country or even in the world.

[2:27] Robin Byrd: Do you know the story behind that community house theater?

[2:30] Jess Rothschild: Not a hundred percent. Do you?

[2:32] Robin Byrd: Yeah. So in 1948, it was an old barn that they floated across the bay. And that is what made Cherry Grove gay, because suddenly, through the underground Broadway community, the dressers, the word of mouth, so like that's how Rose Levine heard about it, and like Pansy, and then they started coming and started, they're all homegrown, local community theater, and that's what started.

[2:58] Jess Rothschild: That's amazing. That's like the seeds, and they've grown up to be the trees.

[3:02] Robin Byrd: Yeah.

[3:03] Jess Rothschild: Yeah. Wait, so Robin, what year did you start doing, hosting your tea dances?

[3:09] Robin Byrd: Fourteen years ago, I hosted at the Pavilion Deck, and the owners at that time would bring in different DJs every week. So I would be on the deck on Fridays and Saturdays from six to 10 p.m. on the Pavilion Deck. I level with the ferry, and every time the ferry would come in on a Friday or Saturday night, I would go, hello, and greet everybody with that energy, and it would start their weekend off well. They even had a drink called the Dirty Bird, which was Prosecco, St. Germain, and a little dash of grenadine just for the color, for like an off-pink, and that was only $5, and then you had one of those or two of those, if I had two of those, it got, you know, it was very lightheaded and up, and that was when back in the day, so it must have been around 2009 maybe, or even before then, because I stopped drinking after I had had breast cancer, and my surgeon said no more alcohol.

[4:27] Jess Rothschild: So your documentary is premiering on HBO.

[4:30] Robin Byrd: Yes, on Tuesday.

[4:31] Jess Rothschild: On Tuesday.

[4:32] Robin Byrd: June 30th, I can't wait.

[4:34] Jess Rothschild: I have so many questions about this documentary. I think it is, it's a love letter, I think to two things. It's a love letter to you, your relationship with your husband, Shelly.

[4:45] Robin Byrd: Yes.

[4:46] Jess Rothschild: And I also view it as a love letter to Fire Island.

[4:49] Robin Byrd: And to my viewers.

[4:51] Jess Rothschild: And of course, the viewers, but the way Fire Island is showcased in the doc is absolutely beautiful. I love how the invasion basically are kind of the closing frames of it. Was that last year or the year before?

[5:05] Robin Byrd: Right, it was the year before because last year, it was basically Trist who had taken over the invasion and the pink carpet and things like that. Yeah, it was the year before.

[5:19] Jess Rothschild: How long did you shoot on Fire Island versus, I know there are the scenes with you in the Archivist in Brooklyn, and then of course, you in Central Park, roughly over how much time because there's some scenes in the winter.

[5:30] Robin Byrd: About two and a half years. They started when I was 69.

[5:37] Jess Rothschild: Yeah, it opens, yes, it opens on your 69th birthday, your 68th or 69th birthday, and then it ends.

[5:43] Robin Byrd: On my 70th.

[5:44] Jess Rothschild: On your 70th.

[5:45] Robin Byrd: Yes, yes. And now I'm 71 in 2026. Time flies.

[5:52] Jess Rothschild: And so you met Shelly on Fire Island, which community, which area of Fire Island was that in?

[5:59] Robin Byrd: West of Ocean Beach.

[6:02] Jess Rothschild: So how did you wind up living in the Fire Island Pines? Like, I want to hear your pines and Cherry Grove origin story.

[6:10] Robin Byrd: Cherry Grove has always been home for me. I fell in love with the pines just because I love the houses. I had done a movie somewhere in the pines for a director called Chuck Vincent. I can't remember the name of the movie, but I do remember we were here in the pines. It's different because the Grove is quaint and small and salt shacks and the pines is grandioso and mega mansions.

[6:40] Jess Rothschild: So you came first in the 80s? Is that when you first started?

[6:44] Robin Byrd: I started living in the pines in the 80s. Yeah, but I used to come to the pines all the time. When Shelly and I and my girlfriend, Kathy McGill, we would get on our bicycles from Ocean Bay Park and drive through Point of Woods, which you're not allowed to do that, but we did anyway. And we go through the sunken forest and have sex in the forest, the three of us, and then continue on to the Blue Whale and get our little blue tongue, which I don't know if they do that anymore.

[7:17] Jess Rothschild: They don't.

[7:19] Robin Byrd: And that was when John White owned it. And then we would go and stop off at the Ice Palace when Johnny Poole was working the pool bar. And then we'd make it back after drinking and then go back to the sunken forest again and go through Sailor's Haven sunken forest and have sex again in the sunken forest and then continue back on the west end of Fire Island.

[7:46] Jess Rothschild: What do you think is the biggest change from your early days to today? What surprises you?

[7:54] Robin Byrd: Yeah, what surprises you about the culture in a way that it's either evolved or the people have changed?

[8:01] Robin Byrd: You know, I don't think much has changed. The Grove has become more women as opposed to more theater, the way it used to be back in the 70s and 80s. The Pines has gotten another generation now where I was in the movie, the rom-com Fire Island, Bowen Yang and Margaret Cho.

[8:26] Jess Rothschild: You were on the little boat.

[8:27] Robin Byrd: I'm on the water taxi and going, can we go to Cherry Grove now?

[8:32] Jess Rothschild: How was it? How was it filming that scene?

[8:34] Robin Byrd: Fun, fun. I know Margaret and I got to know Bowen. I'm very flattered and happy that they asked me. The clientele of Fire Island now is that generation, the young ones. They're all coming and they see, oh, we can have Fire Island this way. And so all the elders in the Pines have moved to the Grove where they're more acceptable in age.

[9:05] Robin Byrd: But you know, I have to tell you, I have met so many longtime community members here in the Pines and the older community, meaning like the longtime members who've been here since the 70s, like me, that community is strong. And you know what I noticed? I never need to go to low tea ever again. My favorite tea is up at the Sip and Twirl. That's the best energy. The music is so much better. You can hear the music and the people who are hanging out at that bar and out on the deck. Those are the real Pines people.

[9:34] Jess Rothschild: Right. I remember when Sip and Twirl, before it was Sip and Twirl, when it was Cruise Quarters. Talk to me about Cruise Quarters.

[9:44] Robin Byrd: It was fun. It was fun. We could see the sunset. It was a different layout. It was all inclusive. It wasn't like the bar separate from a glass and a door that you got, you know, because there's a separation between the dance floor and the people who are sitting at the bar to sit. Yeah, I was a blue whale girl, but that was before they started packing them in like sardines. I used to go and be on the dance floor and use my flags.

[10:14] Jess Rothschild: Talk about your flagging for people who don't know what that means. So when Robin hosts the tea dance, she's flagging as the, you know, like Greg Scarnucci. He's a DJ. So describe what the, we'll have the visual, but I want to hear what in your words, like what you're doing.

[10:38] Robin Byrd: I am doing figure eights with weighted flags in an upward motion. That's all. But to me, they're like extensions of my arms, like wings. And you really get a heavy aerobic, high intensity workout where your heart rate, you have to stop because your heart rate can go up to a hundred. Mine has gone up to a hundred eighty and it's a little too much. Yeah. I'm like, well, I got to stop now.

[11:15] Jess Rothschild: What am one of my favorite things in Bag My Boxer documentary on HBO is because there's so much footage from the show that obviously came from you, your archives, and it shows you like teaching women how to weightlift. Like, like, Oh yeah, my modern woman show. You're doing like squats and you have like, you're doing like chest flies. I thought that was so funny that you were doing that on cable. I mean, cable access to me, like I'm from Long Island, so I had access to all that stuff. And I grew up watching. I used to run my show Modern Woman on Riverhead Cable back in the day. I used to drive it out there and, and made a deal with Riverhead Cable that I could do it on their access channel because back in the day, women weren't lifting weights.

Brian Moss from Better Bodies developed a gym just for women to bodybuild on 21st Street, 12 West 21st Street, between fifth and sixth. It was called Better Bodies. And because of me, he decided to open up a gym just for women for bodybuilding because it wasn't friendly at that time. I used to go to the Y on 63rd Street on the West Side. And I would go to the weight room and these old queens would be very, you know, like, what's she doing here until one day, this man was bench pressing something more than he could handle. And I saw that and I went over there and, and I made him work out harder. And I go, come on, you pussy. Lift that up, do another set, you know, and, and I gained

[13:04] Robin Byrd: Respect because of that. But back in the day, gay men were the old queens were into the women haters club. And what was she doing in this gym? And women were intimidated about that. So this was before even I was the East Coast first bodybuilding show on TV for women, modern woman. And that was prior to the Robin Byrd show, I would have it on from 11:30 to 12. And then what you saw in the movie was incorporate, I incorporated the modern woman with the Robin Byrd show. What people don't know is Robin produced, directed and booked every episode, did camera, did the editing, picked up the guests, chauffeured them around, made sure of security to make sure they were at the studio. Where were you?

110 East 23rd Street, between Park and Lex. And it was live on Wednesday live in the same building that the Harvey Milk School was on 12. And we were on the second third floor. And for people who don't remember, cable access was really the precursor to YouTube live streaming or live streaming on Instagram, like wouldn't you say cable programming was created, the cable itself was created for security reasons. Because if in case there was an emergency in the in New York City, they wouldn't have to go through over the air, they could go underground. That was the purpose of cable. And because they went underground and used the city streets, then they had to accommodate for public use as well. But my channel that I was on was least access.

It's like real estate. I was making shows and I wanted to accumulate more time because the more time I had, the more viewers I would catch at different times. And I got a little too big, but more subscribers subscribe to the cable company because of my show. They weren't subscribing because they wanted to see CNN. They wanted to see the Robin Byrd show. So they subscribe to Manhattan. It was Sterling Cable, then Manhattan Cable, then Time Warner Cable, they changed hands. Now it's now it's Spectrum, Charter Spectrum Cable. And I'm still on in reruns every night at 10 PM and 5 AM in the morning on channel 1820. All the way at the end of the dial. What I thought was so funny, eventually Saturday Night Live parodies the Robin Byrd, Sherry Oteri plays you in a Robin Byrd show sketch.

She did me three times. She was so good. She really she nailed it. She took your crochet bikini and filled it with like fake, you know, to make them look boobie because she wasn't gonna. Right. I thought that was amazing. I bring up the Sherry Oteri Saturday Night Live parody because they interview Sherry Oteri in the doc. And she references a story where you said to her, Sherry, ask me anything. What do you want to know? And she says, did you ever think about improving the production quality? Because the show was on for 25 years. It ran from what eight we ran from when to when 77 live live and ran live from 77 to 98. So she says, if we're over 25 years, certainly we can, you know, improve production quality.

And to that you say, nobody wants high quality porn. Nope. Can you talk a little bit more about how did the sort of low fi, low budge, little bit of like a film? It reminded me almost like remember when Barbara Walters was on The View, there'd almost be like Vaseline on the lens. They have lenses for the cameras. They do have screw in lenses for the camera, low contrast, high contrast. I made it dreamy for everybody because I wanted to turn you on and tuck you in at night. I didn't want you to see serious, hard, bright things. We wanted to dim the lights a little, but we wanted to see what was on the camera and you know, you need it. But we use photographic lights rather than television lights.

We didn't use the studio lights that they had there. I brought my own lights in. I brought my own lights in. I brought my own mic in. I brought my own crew in. The crew that we had at the studio, one of the technical directors became homophobic when I started having men on. So he left. I got rid of him. Homophobic how? Like what did he say? He didn't like seeing the men and I said, it's not your business to see it or anything. Your job is to be the technical director to make sure that the cameras are white balanced and that the wipes were there and the commercials get put in or whatever, the breaks were made, but he was homophobic. Maybe he was afraid of his own sexuality. Now, I think it won't be any surprise to my audience that my favorite guest of all time on the Robin Byrd show is Sandra Bernhardt.

Now for the past several years that I've seen Sandra's Christmas show at Joe's Pub, you have a cameo in the show. You're sitting in the back of Joe's Pub and Sandy makes you part of the show, Robin Byrd, and you're shouting out and you met because when she was doing Without You I'm Nothing off Broadway in 88, she came on the show to promote. So how did you first, how did you? It's funny. She called into the show and that's how I got to meet her. She called into the show. I said, well, I'll come see your show if you come do mine. But she started as a caller. Yes. What would she do? She called in. She just called in at one time and she said, I want to invite you. I love you and blah, blah, blah.

And I want to invite you down to my show. And I'm like, okay, I'll come to see your show. And then when I went to see your show, I said, okay, now you have to do my show. I want you to be on. And since she had did The King of Comedy, she had a strip scene, I remember in that. And I'm like, well, you can come and strip on my show. And she did. And it was amazing. She did two or three appearances on my show. One, she stripped. And twice, she actually was co-hosting. The footage of her, I think like that's my favorite, like look of her, like with like the 80s hair. And she's wearing like denim shorts. It was the late 80s. I love it. It was the late 80s. It was the look. Listen, when I used to come to Fire Island, I used to wear Timberlands and cut off shorts and wife beater t-shirts.

You know, you're wearing one now. Okay, what's hilarious. And also I wore boots here. I love those boots. Thank you. But literally, what you just described is like my personal look. It's a great look. That was my look to back in the day. You know, now, not much different. My look has always been t-shirt and jeans. Have there been celebrities who you've run into who have admitted to you that they used to watch aside from like the Sandra Bernhards, like people Manolo Joe, everybody. I was the entertainer's entertainer, Liza Minnelli, Alan Cumming. Liza, what did she say to you? She lived in my neighborhood. And we used to run into each other at the end of the show, my show on Wednesday night, she'd be shopping at Food Emporium at like two three in the morning because Food Emporium used to be 24 hours when they were around.

I'm such a big fan of yours. And I was like, I'm such a big fan of yours. You know, we did that. So in a complete twist of reality, Sarah Jessica Parker is a producer on this. Somehow her production company is involved. And Sarah Jessica Parker said the Robin Byrd show helped in part pave the way for Sex and the City. Right? How did you react when you found out Sarah Jessica Parker is going to be attached? I didn't I couldn't believe it because 30 years ago or more, she was at Iridium, this jazz club promoting some one of these movies before Sex and the City. But it sort of I guess had a sex in New York type of theme. So the publicist for that movie had called me to get six or eight guys in speedos or g strings and jock straps to walk around Iridium.

And I said, Sure, we did. And we walked by the table where she was sitting. And out of the corner of my ears, I heard, What is she doing here with them? And I just turned and I said, It's a movie that has something to do with sex. And they asked me to bring the boys. And I always thought that she hated me for my little wisecrack that I snorted out. And so when I heard it was Jessica Parker, and I was I actually said, Oh, don't tell her it's me. Maybe she doesn't remember. So we're on the red carpet at the premiere for the Tribeca Film Festival. And we're hugging. And I whispered in her ear while we're hugging. I don't know if you remember, but I always thought for 30 years, you hated me. Because I came up with some wisecrack because of something that you had said.

And she said, No, no, no. But it was like a full circle here in my mind, I created something. And how ironic that 30 or 40 years later, here we are. And she's producing my film. And she's such a big fan. And she gave me such kudos without knowing that I paved the way for Sex and the City for her. I was so flattered and so humbled by that because of the fact that here I thought in my mind, she hated me. And she's producing my film. It was a full circle of synergy and meant to be things.

[25:00] Robin Byrd: Your persona on the show, which I think is pretty much you in real life, like just some I am the same in real life as I am on the show. Paul Rudnick, the great screenwriter, he was actually in the first season of Finding Fire Island. He's an unbelievable pontificator, one of the greats. Paul Rudnick said, The only person who can be compared to Robin Byrd, the closest comp, is Mr. Rogers. Meets Janice Joplin. But do you see the Mr. Rogers comparison? I do. It's before your time, but there used to be Sherry Lewis and Wonderama. Was Sherry Lewis with a lamb chop? Yes. Lamb chop. I think I was a kid. She used to have this mirror and hold up the mirror. And I always say, Oh, I see so and so, and I see this one. Yeah, I guess I was raised with them. And it was embedded. I was raised with television. Television was my babysitter.

[25:30] Jess Rothschild: And you're a born and bred New Yorker.

[25:32] Robin Byrd: Yes.

[25:32] Jess Rothschild: Where is your childhood home?

[25:35] Robin Byrd: First Avenue in the 50s.

[25:38] Jess Rothschild: You went to like elementary school and high school.

[25:41] Robin Byrd: I ran away from home when I was 13. So I got beaten up after school, and I didn't want to go back ever again.

[25:48] Jess Rothschild: Where did you run away to?

[25:50] Robin Byrd: My girlfriend's house. Well, first I ran away to Central Park and hung out there.

[25:56] Jess Rothschild: And then you moved in with your girlfriend. And when we say girlfriend, you had like a relationship, like a girl.

[25:59] Robin Byrd: We were close. We experimented sexually together. Yeah. I mean, she wasn't.

[26:08] Robin Byrd: My wife, but you do say that part of what made you fall in love with Shelly was obviously like his warmth. He was the woman I always wanted to marry because he was such a sensitive human being. He still is. You eventually get your GED and all of that. But what were where were you hanging out like in the 70s? 70s? I started hanging out here in Fire Island. I discovered clubbing and orgies and Fire Island. What did Fire Island provide you that you didn't that you couldn't find in the city? No cars, fresh air. But you could have had an orgy in Manhattan. Yeah, but this was different. This was different. We bounced everywhere. Parties there used to be black and white parties themed where everybody has to wear black and white together.

Oh, well, that's what the Pines was built on were those costume parties. Were you at the red party? There was the red party, the pink party, pink party, pink party when they had the pink umbrellas on the beach all that all through. Yeah. Yeah, there used to be the white party where we used to invade the grove. The Pines used to invade the grove years ago on the white party. And what happened? It got lost in translation. Nobody did it anymore. But did they was so the idea was like you walked on the beach and you went up to the ice palace? You got on a boat and you got and you all just invaded the like the how the grove invades the Pines. It would be pretty much I think in August where we used to have the white party and we would invade the grove.

And you say that for the first maybe 10 years, you really didn't make any money. No off of the show. But the money did come with the 900 lines with the with the 800 numbers and the 970 numbers. Talk about it's interesting because I there's there's an episode of the second season of Finding Fire Island that it's called Sex Before the Internet. And we literally trace how the technology evolved, like how people would meet each other. And this was both straight and gay people. But talk about your 800 and the 900 lines. How did you work them specifically? And you wound up making a small fortune off of when the phone company would bill them on your phone bill. That's when we made the money. Phone company would do the actual transferring of the lines to whoever was forwarded to it.

I made enough money to buy my house or at least get a loan to buy my house. But talk about how you actually incorporated the lines into your show. Like you had a you had a number just for men, right? I had gay advertisers and they wanted well, I had my own line beef and Mary and and BYRD and 970 bird. And so what would happen? I call you would call up and that phone call, depending on the selection that you would make, would go to an actor or actress performing the fantasy that you wanted, like phone sex. It was phone sex. Yeah, because I believe that you couldn't get AIDS from phone sex. I was that service workers respite at the end of the day to come home and say, hey, if you don't have a loved one, you always have me Robin Bird.

And I mean it. I really did mean it. I mean it now, because a lot of people are lonely. A lot of people that's I mean, to this day, I'd still have 800 hot bird. I have all these numbers that are 800 numbers that people are still calling because we all need somebody to lean on to talk to. And if it's anonymous, it's even better for the person on the other end that's making that call. So maybe they don't want to come out of the closet. Maybe they don't want people to know that they think this way. We still live in a society that the shadows are still there. Now, it's a very curious timing of your success because people, at least in my generation, really need to understand that the Stonewall Uprising happens in 1969.

The very first pride we're literally recording this on Pride Sunday. The very first pride happens in June of 1970. Prior to that, being gay was essentially illegal. If you were found out, you could lose your job. People live double lives. It was a very, very challenging in the closet existence. After Stonewall and the very first pride, there is the greatest shift in gay culture. Suddenly, it is a free-for-all, green light to be gay and live your life out loud. That exists for about a decade, 10 years of freedom. And then 1981, it all comes to a halt. Now, what's interesting is your show premieres in that decade. Totally. Your show rides along the wave of the gay liberation movement and then comes up against the AIDS epidemic.

You then turn the message of your show and you turn the education of your show into safe sex. Right. Don't stop having sex. Just start having safe sex. Use a condom. Use a dental dam. Why was this so important to you personally? I've lost so many people to AIDS, whether it be because of sex or however it was spread. I didn't want people to stop having sex. I certainly didn't want to stop having sex. And I felt that the adult industry had some sort of platform to set an example that if they showed condom use in films, that it could catch on and that didn't last very long. I know that they used to give out that GMHC used to drop off condoms at the pantry. Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Show World, Show Palace, all the clubs, all the bars, everywhere you went, GMHC had the packets.

Your house here, what is the history of your house? Who owned it prior to you? Some straight messy family. Breeders. They had children. The person who built that house, Arthur Erickson, built a lot of downtown Toronto. And he was a gay man. And his lover was Francisco. And he was an interior designer. I mean, what a great marriage together of an architect and an interior designer. Did Arthur Erickson ever live in the house? Oh, yeah. He had major. In fact, back in the day, Horace Gifford and him, Arthur Erickson competed for parties back in the day. I don't know, but I've been told by family members of Arthur Erickson. And Horace Gifford made maybe 16 or 18 houses. Arthur Erickson just made one.

And that was his love shack. So, he could be openly gay with his lover. What are some of the grand parties that house has seen? I was told by Randy from the village people, the cowboy. He told me, coming from Randy Jones, it's true that he was at a party for some record label. And down came Grace Jones with a helicopter being lifted down through the roof that opens up. My roof. Grace Jones lands on your house. In the pool. But they have my roof in my house was a retractable roof. I got rid of that so that wouldn't leak. But supposedly there was some big record producing party there. Was Roberta Flack at that performance, too? I don't know. We'd have to call Randy Jones to find out. Let's get him on the line.

No, no, no. We could. But no, no, no. To me, that's like the major thing about my house. But they call it Lincoln Center because it looks like Lincoln Center. It was the first McMansion to be built here. And what year did you buy it? 92 in September. And I guess back then it wasn't a complete fortune to buy. It was it was I needed I needed a jumbo loan to buy it. I took a 30 year jumbo loan and we paid for it in 15 years because I was afraid it was going to be taken away. How often do you go back to the city? Now that I'm retired, once a month, once a month for the mail. Of course, for this movie, the movie, I've been back and forth. It premiered at Tribeca. You were part of the Provincetown Film Festival.

Had you been to Provincetown before? Never. What'd you make of it? I thought of it as a happy, gay, friendly, land of yes, ocean beach. But it was quaint. It was very nice. It's a bitch to get to. I took a Nacella, then a high speed ferry. And for a high speed ferry to be an hour and 40 minutes when I could just hop on this ferry and be from Seville to the pines or the grove in 20 minutes. It wasn't too high speed for me. I love how I feel like the movie deliberately doesn't have sit down interviews. Like so many people are interviewed for it. Michael Musto, Sandra Bernhard, a lot of other writers. I don't know how those interviews were conducted because it just says voice of Sandra Bernhard.

They set they also set up a phone line. I love that because it's an exact mirror of the Robin Bird show where people would call in and you just would hear the voice. And I loved how they featured the people who I think they solicited through Instagram and then you'd like either leave a voice note or the number. And these are real fans of yours, just like, you know, a little one minute snippet, then they go into the movie. I loved that. Is there anything about your legacy that you feel has been overlooked? That I was the pioneer that took the arrows for the settlers to get the land. My generation and before my generation fought for the freedoms that are handed down now, freedom of expression and freedom of thought.

Any final thoughts? Anything I didn't ask that you want to say? This has been so fun and lovely. I do have merch. And it's available the Robin Bird on Instagram. And you can link the bird store. A lot of people are buying trucker hats and t shirts and towels 970 bird mugs. You're a delight. You're adorable. Okay, final, truly final question. I know that you rejected if you produce, you know, people who had approached you for the doc because you didn't like their energy. And then finally, these people who had the right energy, right? How's my energy? Your energy is excellent. When I when you came up to me yesterday at tea dance, you go, Hi, this is me. And I'm like, Oh, you're a cute little packet. Cute little package. I'll take it. Thank you so much, sweetie.

[38:49] Finding Fire Island is created, executive produced and narrated by Jess Rothschild, co produced with the Pines Historical Society. Sound Design by Caitlin White, video editing by Evelyn Darr. Special thanks to the Pines Foundation and Sage USA.