“I want my damn star.”

This is how Harvey Fierstein greets me. He’s calling from a private number, from his home in Connecticut. No hello. No hey, how are you? No it’s me, Harvey.

I want my damn star.

And he says it in that voice—you know the voice—and it compels me to promise that I will sneak into our New York office, after hours, to amend the review.

But what should I tell my boss if I get caught?

Fierstein suggests tugging the heartstrings: “Come on! He’s dyslexic, and he typed 400 freaking pages. Give him a goddamn star.”

Now Kirkus may not have starred I Was Better Last Night (Knopf, March 1), the debut memoir by iconic playwright, actor, and gay rights activist Harvey Fierstein, but I’m going to go ahead and star this interview. It was one of the funniest, most memorable conversations I’ve had in 16 years of journalism (much of it, regrettably, unprintable).

Stars aside, it’s worth noting that Kirkus’ review of I Was Better Last Night is a rave by any other measure: “Hilarious,” our reviewer wrote. “Insightful, unflinching.” “A poignant, clever, and entertaining look at an impressive, unique career.”

“I’ve tried very hard not to lie,” says Fierstein, who offers readers an emotional journey through his gender-nonconforming childhood in 1950s Bensonhurst, Brooklyn; experimentation with art, drugs, the Gallery Players, and Andy Warhol’s crew in the ’60s; the gay rights movement of the ’70s; the devastation wrought by AIDS in the ’80s and beyond; and the creation and manifestation of five decades’ worth of unforgettable performances and plays (Torch Song Trilogy, La Cage aux Folles, Newsies, Kinky Boots; Hairspray, Fiddler on the Roof, Mrs. Doubtfire). Dedicated “to the radical fairies who flew before me,” I Was Better Last Night is imbued with a palpable love.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Harvey Fierstein: They let you read the book?

Kirkus Reviews: Indeed, they did. And my experience was akin to how you describe audiences’ reactions to your plays when the going’s good: I laughed, I cried—

Oh good.

—and when I say cried, I mean it. Early on, you mention an important childhood friend—Michael—and how the friendship was lost to “emotional and deeply disturbing events.” That’s pretty much all you say up front—the whole time I’m reading the book, I want to know what happened—and then you hit me with the explanation in the antepenultimate chapter: BAM. And it just cracked me open. Bravo!

Thank you. I mean, I’m thrilled because—I had only two disagreements with my editor. My editor is just wonderful, Peter Gethers, I don’t know if you know him. He did those two big Sondheim volumes, the lyrics and all that. I figured, if he can do that, then he can do me. Heterosexual, too! And I figured that would be a good thing for my writing. He did ask me to move that chapter up in the book to where it happened [chronologically], and I said no, that’s the whole purpose of it, is that it belongs there. And I’m so glad that that’s the way it reads.

I love the advice Shirley MacLaine gave you about writing a memoir: “Just tell the truth as you remember it. Time has a way of editing out what isn’t important anymore.” What do you admire about her storytelling?

I love the straightforwardness of it. She almost talks as if you knew the story already. It’s like she’s so familiar with you. And I know that from writing dialogue, how to be present, and so I wanted to feel like, if the audience even knew who I was at all they would actually be hearing it in my voice as if I was telling it to them. Because that’s a feeling that you have when you read Shirley’s stuff.

Well, you did it, baby. You’re coming through loud and clear. So do you call this an autobiography or a memoir? And is the distinction important or nah?

I don’t know. You know, you would know so much better than I. I asked my editor right at the beginning. I said, “Am I writing a memoir or an autobiography?” And he said, “Well, an autobiography has everything in it. A memoir has, like, stories.” And I said, “I’m very old. I can’t put everything in here. I would get bored, and the audience would, too. So let’s call it a memoir.”

Hey, listen, I got an early copy of this book, and on the back of it, it says a lot of these stories you’ve never told to people in your family, in your circle.

Yeah, that’s true. It’s funny, my brother has two sons who are both adults now. One is getting married in April, the other one has two kids. And he wanted to give them this version of the book, and I said, “It’s so much better to just let them have the book when it comes out, and there’s no pressure, because there’s a lot of people reading it then.” And he said,” I don’t understand.” And I said, “Because—how are they going to deal with my suicide attempt?” They don’t know anything about that shit. These are my nephews, these are people who don’t really look at me as a writer or an actor. They look at you as Uncle Harvey, you know? They don’t know that stuff. There was stuff about—now that I say it, I’m not even sure my brother knew all the details about that. And certainly, they know my lovers, but they don’t know the details about what went wrong here or there. I’ve never been secretive about who I was sleeping with, but they don’t know every detail. There’s a lot of stuff there of why you did what you did. So yeah. Maybe 12 friends have read the book—that’s it.

You tried very hard not to lie in writing this book, you mentioned earlier. Did you have any other guidelines like that?

I tried very hard to be kind. It’s easy to be vicious when you’re finally having your say. And that’s not [me]. Even writing Arthur Laurents, who I guess is the meanest guy in the book—you can’t write about Arthur and not be mean—I mean, even he knew that. And he would be the first one to yell at me if I cleaned him up, if I made him into something he wasn’t. But what I tried to do—because I’ve never done this before—is just sit down and tell you the story as I remember it. You know, like Shirley says: Let your memory edit it. You go ahead and write it and trust that it’ll be the right story to tell right now.

Editor at large Megan Labrise is the host of the Fully Booked podcast.