The Gift of Gab

Sunday Independent JournalTara is that voiceThe Gift of Gab

Makeup artist Chris Scott prepares Tara Fields before a segment

Makeup artist Chris Scott prepares Tara Fields before a segment

‘TV shrink’ dispenses advice on local and national programs

Tara Fields can’t stop the small talk. She’s chatty. She’s talky. She has a million friends and a million stories. She flits from subject to subject, from aside to anecdote, all interspersed with laughs and the occasional “Oy vey!” The focus is everywhere.

And then it narrows to the pinpoint.

The microphone is on.

On this morning, the Mill Valley psychotherapist who calls herself “a TV shrink” is in the KGO radio studios with morning host Ronn Owens. The subject is Mel Gibson’s roadside anti-Semitic outbursts. It’s been the scandal buzz of the celebrity news feed all week and Fields has a lot to say.

She ponders whether the apologies issued through a publicist are sincere. “We can’t tell if he’s remorseful or not.” She questions the source of Gibson’s rage. “Depression is anger turned inward.” She talks to callers. She argues with Owens. She leans into the microphone. She offers hope. “How many people are going into rehab because of Mel Gibson?”

She fills the hour.

And then the microphone turns off, and the focus goes wide again.

Fields doesn’t stop being “Dr. Tara” when she’s not on the air. She just turns down the volume.

The title “TV shrink” is not one that comes up on career aptitude tests. Field is free to mold the definition. She shows up every other week on KRON’s Saturday “Morning Daybreak” show. The spots she tapes with Jack Hanson run on the Comcast “Local Edition” every hour on the cable system’s CNN feed. The week before her hour with Owens, MSNBC sent a limousine to her house to bring her to a taping.

She is a regular on the A&E program “Intervention,” and she taped a segment with Oprah that will air later this month.

She’s busy. She loves it.

She needs it.

Tara Fields regular host

Fields: Passionate about her convictions, from social issues to creating a dog park in Mill Valley

Fields is a contradiction moving at blur speeds. She is an obvious extrovert in the world’s loneliest profession. Therapists don’t talk. They listen. And then they can’t talk about anything they hear. A woman who studied acting with Lee Strasberg painted herself off the stage. A woman endowed with, as media mentor Dr. Dean Edell says, “the gift of gab,” found a career that ensured she had nothing to talk about.

“My husband can’t ever say, ‘Honey, how was your day?’” Fields says. “You can’t talk about it, you really can’t.”

So she found a way to talk.

Fields never really strayed too far from the spotlight. She’d come to California from New York aiming for an acting career. She didn’t want to be discovered, she says. She just wanted to act. But the kind of acting she was talking about and the kind of Hollywood she found were not the match she hoped. She recalls an “existential crisis” in her early 20s that took her out of the business altogether.

And into psychotherapy, first as a patient and later as a therapist. She studied psychology at Antioch University in Los Angeles and did her internship at a Beverly Hills clinic. She got her license. She launched a practice. But she was already craving a stage. She got involved in a pilot for a show on the psychodrama therapeutic technique. She got some radio time. By the time she moved to Mill Valley in the early ’90s – “Life’s too short to live in L.A.” -she was comfortable behind the mike and polished in front of the camera.

When she met Edell, she made him a mentor.

Fields was a natural, Edell says. “There are some people you just see instantly that they’ve got it,” Edell says. “That’s Tara.”

The ability to speak on any topic at any moment and sound intelligent made her a welcome commodity all over the Bay Area. Before long she was doing regular spots on KTVU’s “Mornings On Two” and then rushing across the bay to tape segments for KRON. She had a Saturday night radio show in Santa Rosa and became an afternoon alternative to the much-reviled Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

She didn’t just like the attention. It became a mission.

“It felt like it’s a calling,” she says.

The idea of missions and “a calling” is not a surprise to mystery writer Harley Jane Kozak, who lived upstairs from Fields in a Los Angles duplex. “She’s a person of passionately held convictions,” Kozak says.

Fields grew up marching in civil rights demonstrations with her parents. She doesn’t just want to talk. She wants to speak up. “Any place where somebody needs a voice, Tara is that voice,” Kozak remarks.

Kozak says her longtime friend is the kind of person who makes people stop and listen.

“Where I want to just fade into the woodwork, Tara is out front demanding a better table at restaurant and demanding equal rights for everybody,” Kozak says. “If she had not gone into psychology, she would have made a really great lawyer or politician.”

Not all the causes are earth-shattering social issues. In the ’90s she was part of a Mill Valley crusade to establish dogs and their owners in the town’s Bayfront Park. She’s near militant on the subject of dog rescue, condemning anybody who buys from a breeder when there are so many dogs that need homes.

The passion makes her convincing. It’s not just that Fields can talk on camera, on cue. She is sincere on no shortage of subjects. Ross McGowan, who hosts KTVU’s “Mornings on Two,” praises Field’s ability to come off as a caring human and not some jargon-spouting psychology theorist. “You an always count on her,” McGowan says. “She comes in and she knows the story.”

Watching her shift gears when the mike goes live, it would be easy to doubt that sincerity. When she leans forward in her chair, the posture looks almost too professional.

Comcast’s Hanson has watched that transformation and he’s come to understand Field’s sincerity. “She’s got multiple personalities and I don’t mean that in a negative way,” says Hanson, who hosts “Local Edition” segments in Comcast markets around the Bay Area. “When she comes on, she knows she’s a performer but she’s not a performer who is acting. It’s just a different part of her personality.”

Fields has personality to spare. She’s at the dog park every day, consulting with the canines and their human counterparts (she met her husband there). She goes to Spirit Rock at least once a week – “That’s one of the many communities I’m plugged into,” she says. She has patients most afternoons. She has an agent, and he’s still maneuvering for a “dream TV thing.”

For a woman who entered the world’s loneliest profession, she’s never far from an audience.

The audience is everywhere, as wide as her off-the-air focus. She can talk. And she does.

To anybody who will listen.

Whether the microphone is on.

Or off.

“Frasier” Type Takes Dr. Laura’s KPIX Slot”

Frasier Crane

Kelsey Grammer plays Dr. Frasier Crane on "Frasier."

The final topic on the Dr. Tara Fields show this day: sexless sleep-overs. “This is apparently a trend right now, and it makes a lot of sense to me, says Fields, a Marin County therapist who took over Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s old time slot from noon to 3 p.m. on KPIX-FM (95.7) two weeks ago.

Fields, whose soft and friendly style is in sharp contrast to the opinionated Schlessinger, now on KGO-AM (810), is finding her way. Think Oprah or Phil Donahue.

“Some people like to be told what told do, others want advice,” said KPIX general manger Blaise Howard. “Tara is more liberal, she fits in with the Bay Area lifestyle.”

Two weeks ago she made what she calls a huge commitment when she took the job at KPIX, filling the daily three-hour slot.

“I’ve never signed a contract in my life,” she said. “This is really my first full-time job and I’m taking this very seriously.”

She and Schlessinger do not know each other and Fields does not take the opportunity to bash her rival, who is fast becoming a household name. “My style is not as black and white,” she says. “Laura has an agenda; I treat each person as an individual.

Joseph is on Line 4. He wants to talk about infidelity, an earlier topic this day. Cheating, says Dr. Tara, sounding a little like Dr. Laura, is always wrong. The caller admits he’s cheated on his girlfriend, who knows about his dalliances but doesn’t want to hear the details. Joseph feels vindicated. “I’ve cheated, but not openly,” he says.

“What does that mean? You’ve never cheated in wide-open pastures? Fields replies. “Please don’t tell me you are trying to justify this.”

He interrupts her. “Let me finish,” he snaps. “OK, I’ll shut up,” Fields says. Later, she scolds him, gently as can be. “Joseph, can I talk now? You sound like a smart guy, but you are acting like a jerk.”

Fields press release heralds her as the “Frasier” of the Bay Area. It’s not far from the truth, and she’ll buy it. “But I have a better relationship with my dog and more hair.”

By Sylvia Rubin
Chronicle Staff Writer

A Nutty Nutcracker

Oakland TribuleNutty-NutcrackerBay Area Celebrities

Tara Fields in Nutcracker

Tara Fields, KRON-TV psychotherapist, rehearses at the Paramount Theatre.

Except for his missing ballet slippers, Tony La Russa looks at home on the Oakland Ballet’s Nutcracker set.

His eyes focused on the dancer in front of him, the former A’s manager matches the famous score, looking every bit the part of the toy soldier heading for battle with the Rat King and his legions.

Too bad the dancer in front of him can’t stop giggling long enough to remember her steps. The dancer is none other than Tara Fields, KRON-TV Channel 4’s resident psychotherapist.
Field’s partner in mischief is KMEL-FM (106) radio’s house party DJ Renel, who’s cracking jokes faster than you can say “Merry Christmas.”

In a unique community effort, the local celebrities donned dance slippers Tuesday afternoon at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland to rehearse for their Friday night performance, the ninth annual All-Star Night at the Nutcracker.

Renel, leading the haphazard dance troupe of stars with Field’s at her side, looks out at the audience and poses with a wide smile — promptly stopping the procession.

“Whoops!” she says before she and Fields break out in another round of giggles.
Looking tired, Oakland ballet’s artistic director Ronn Guidi can’t hold back a laugh. Certainly his other dancers wouldn’t get away with such shenanigans, but directing 11 celebrities, including A’s pitcher Todd Van Poppel and KTVU -TV’s Doug Murphy, in “the Nutcracker” ballet, isn’t something Guidi does every day.

It’s more like once a year. Formally called A’s night at the Nutcracker, the event is eagerly anticipated by both the audience and the celebrity participants as a Bay Area holiday tradition. The popular event has sold out every year.

Celebrities slated to perform alongside Oakland ballet company members Friday include KTVU- TV Channel 2’s Dennis Richmond, KPIX-TV channel 5’s Doug Murphy, retired Warrior’s player Nate Thurmond and KRON-TV Channel 4’s Henry Tenenbaum.

Former A's manager Tony La Russa rehearses with Oakland Ballet and other celebrities for the "Nutcracker."

“The biggest thrill for me is getting to be with Tony La Russa, because I am the world’s biggest A’s fan,” Renel, a proud Oakland native, confides backstage.

Though La Russa left in the A’s this year to manage the St. Louis Cardinals, his commitment to the community based festivity hasn’t faded. His daughters, Bianca and Devon, who are both accomplished ballerinas, Bill dance by his side Friday night, with Devon as the lead, Marie. La Russa has let his support to the program by helping organize and participate in the event since 1987.

“Both the Oakland ballet and to the Oakland A’s target the community (in their work), so it’s only fitting that they join forces,” says Kathy Jacobson, former director of media relations for the A’s.

“Athletes work so hard training, both mentally and physically. And it’s the same with the ballet (dancers),” she says. “(The celebrities) were amazed at how hard the dancers worked, and the two groups developed a mutual respect. It has worked out to a wonderful partnership.”

Which is why Fields agreed to participate. She just didn’t count on having such a good time.

“It’s so much more fun than I thought it would be,” Fields says, pulling on her bonbon costume for her next scene.

Van Poppel, who danced in the event two years ago, had one reservation about returning — he didn’t want such a tight costume this year.

“His parents split right up the back last time because he was too big,” Jacobson says of the player, who flew in from Dallas to participate. “So when I asked him to be in it this year, he said, ‘could you please tell them to get bigger pants?’ “.

It’s a motley crew, that’s for sure. Van Poppel marches next to Bay Meadows jockey Luis Juaregui, trying not to trip over the flustered KFRC-AM (610) DJ Cammie Blackstone, who’s unsure if she’s got her steps down correctly.

But the Oakland ballet company is on hand to lend its expertise. The dancers smile with amusement, watching the celebrities stumble through their scenes.

“The dancers have been so wonderful,” Fields says.

“Yeah, but I think there communicated with us,” Renel notes. “They think were big geeks.”

The Buzz 100.7 FM

The Buzz

Dr. Tara Fields brings her entertaining psychotherapeutic know-how to listeners in the Puget Sound region on the area’s FM talk station, The Buzz 100.7 FM.

Fields is young, bright, has a quick wit and is very hip. She is a psychotherapist and her local show takes on issues like finding and keeping a healthy love relationship, parenting, marital issues and balancing careers.

Fields is not afraid to be human, something she sees in common with her “Frasier” TV counterpart. “You see behind the scenes that he cares,” says Fields, “and that he has a good heart. But let’s acknowledge that I have more hair and a better relationship with my dog.”

Fields says she isn’t doing therapy on her show and believes it’s unethical to give listeners snappy answers or glib criticism.

“I give some strong opinions, but the ball is in their court,” Fields says. “My intent with the show is just to get people on the right path, to open up about their problems. There are no quick fixes and I remind my listeners they need to seek help for tougher problems.”

For Lovers Only

Loversonly