I've always been a HUGE Liza Minelli fan...I even saw VICTOR/VICTORIA a second time just to see Liza on the Broadway stage.

It was a complete train wreck, but it was a FUN train wreck!

She has an oddly mesmerizing personality.

Now, freshly off a LARRY KING interview in which by all accounts she appeared completely unhinged, here's a GREAT interview with Liza by Gia Kourlas of TIME OUT NEW YORK: And Liza sounds completely cool:

TONY: That's because you don't take yourself so seriously.

LM: No, I don't! I can't stand anybody who does. They drive me apeshit. It's show business. We're not curing cancer. And yet sometimes, you have to come at it seriously to get what you want, like in "It Was a Good Time." What a piece! And that's Fred Ebb. He chose all the songs, and that piece was a hard sale with Fosse. At first, Fred asked Marvin to orchestrate the nursery rhymes within "It Was a Good Time" as nursery rhymes. Fosse says, "I'd like to see what you're working on." So we come in and Marvin sits down; it's 5pm, and the dancers have gone home and I am determined to do this right, and I do it great, I think. All the emotion is there. We finish and Bob says [Unenthusiastically], "What?" I went, "What?" Fred said, "Excuse me?" Fosse said, "I find this predictable -- I know exactly where it's going, I know what she's going to do and I don't know why everybody is so excited." I saw Freddy start to well up. Here's where my job came in. I said, "All right, what don't you like about it? How can we make it work? What's predictable? What do you mean?" [Martin and Fred] were over there, having had the wind punched out of them. He said, "I know where you're going." I said, "Well, what if you didn't? What if the music is unpredictable, and I'm telling you what I feel on the inside?" He said, "Well, what do you mean?" I said, "Marvin, play this like Stravinsky!" And finally Fosse said, "I still don't know." I said, "I do. I'll make it work for you." He said, "Well, I don't know..." and I looked at him and I saw that smile and I thought, He knows exactly what he's doing and I'm going to have to work my ass off and he is going to challenge me on this until it's perfect. It was like in Cabaret. We needed a song, and I sang "Maybe This Time" for him; he went, "I don't know." [She laughs] I said, "Bobby! What don't you know?" He said, "It's kind of the martyr." I said, "Not if you smile when you sing it! If you're happy when you're singing it, it's a whole different thing! It's not predictable if you're not predictable, right?" He said, "Show me."

I'll tell you one story because you'll understand it. We are at show time. It is 8pm. I'm standing onstage with the white suit and the hat on, and it's the last minute and people are yelling backstage and Fred Ebb comes in across the stage. I said, "Freddy, tell me the story of 'It Was a Good Time.' We used to work this way: What's the story, what's the progression, who is the woman? And he said, "I can't." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Somebody just gave me a Valium and I gotta sit down." [Shrieks] He was nervous and stoned! And Fosse comes across the stage from the other direction. I say, "Bobby, tell me the story of 'It Was a Good Time' -- just center me." He said, "All right. It's about a woman who has a daughter and it's about a marriage..." And I noticed that he was welling up and getting really upset. He's going through a divorce with Gwen [Verdon]. And there's [their daughter] Nicole! So I said, "Never mind!" [Laughs] When it comes down to the second, you're on your own broom.

But I had such wonderful support from them. They were so nervous. You know what I knew in that moment? That what I did was all the wonderful things they had thought of. At the last minute, it was put in my hands. I am the worker. The dancer. The intention. I really do feel that Fred Ebb invented Liza with a "Z." He really did.

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