This episode of our podcast contains quite a bit of adult language from Bet Midler.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Yes, officer, I know what I did, and I know why that man pressed charges. Oh, my God. I can't

believe I made. In the new film, Coastal Elites, Bent Midler plays a New Yorker of a certain type.

A retired teacher who lives on the Upper West Side, reads the New York Times with Talmudic

attention, and is driven insane by Donald Trump.

So much so that one day she picks a fight in a coffee shop with a guy who's wearing a red MAGA hat.

I snapped. I lost it. I went full on worldwide wrestling, Federation Navy SEAL, Jason Bourne, go ahead. I grab that hat. I'm going to throw it on the

problem, and he grabs my arm, and he's twisting it. He says, that's my hat, bitch. I said, not today,

asshole. And I yank my arm away, but I keep that and I run. That's Bet Midler performing in Paul Rudnick's

coastal elites. In real life, Midler herself has gotten into some Trump-related trouble.

After we spoke, she tweeted some ill-advised comments about Melania Trump's accent, which she later

apologized for. Paul Rudnick wrote coastal elites as a series of monologues to be performed on

stage, but with the pandemic, it was reconceived as a film for HBO.

I talked recently with Paul Rudnick and Bet Midler.

Bet, I spent, I don't mind telling you, a small fortune, but never regretted it, to sit in the

second row to watch you do Hello Dolly.

I have always been a woman who arranges things for the pleasure and the profit it derives.

I have always been a woman who arranges things like furniture, daffodils, and lives.

And one of the things I was thinking about after those performances is the tremendous energy

you must get from the audience, that it goes back and forth.

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