Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, writers, policy makers, and performers,
Speaker 1: to hear their stories. What inspired their creations, what decisions
Speaker 1: change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. There are
Speaker 1: perhaps a handful of performers who, through talent and circumstance,
Speaker 1: transcend the expected limits of their medium. Both of my
Speaker 1: guests today have done just that. Michael Douglas has played
Speaker 1: some of the most iconic roles in film over the
Speaker 1: past thirty years. He's challenged the way we think about
Speaker 1: power and sex, family and relationships. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you're up to, but I'm gonna tell you it's going
Speaker 1: to stop right now now. It's not going to stop.
Speaker 1: It's going to go on and on until you face
Speaker 1: up to your responsibility. Responsibility. I'm pregnant. I'm going to
Speaker 1: have our child, Alex. That's your choice. How it has
Speaker 1: behing to do with me? And as Douglas has reigned
Speaker 1: as one of the kings of the movie screen over
Speaker 1: the past thirty years, my first guest is considered one
Speaker 1: of the kings of the smaller screen. It's when David
Speaker 1: Letterman started Late Night. In The New York Times said
Speaker 1: he was quote more of an acquired taste than most
Speaker 1: comedians unquote. Now it's time, ladies and gentlemen for a
Speaker 1: segment of this program. But we like to call stupid
Speaker 1: pet tricks. We grew up on Johnny, a true gentleman
Speaker 1: who could deliver a smooth set up and punchline, occasionally
Speaker 1: helped by a wink. But suddenly, with Late Night, the
Speaker 1: ultimate punchline was the fact that some gap toothed, unknown
Speaker 1: smartass even had a show. His pet tricks were stupid
Speaker 1: on purpose, and so was he. Tune in and you
Speaker 1: might catch him lowering himself into a water tank wearing
Speaker 1: a suit made from thirty four hundred alcas El taples.
Speaker 1: We have the oxygen here, and I have been asked
Speaker 1: about twelve times by various members of the staff to
Speaker 1: remind you don't try this at home. I know you
Speaker 1: have the nine hundred gallon tank. I know you have
Speaker 1: the oxygen. I know you have the suit of oxy
Speaker 1: cell sers and a staff of a hundred people. Today,
Speaker 1: David Letterman is an institution. His show has changed American comedy,
Speaker 1: and after thirty years, he's changed as well. I do
Speaker 1: a lot less work than I used to do. I
Speaker 1: just got to a point where I have no patience
Speaker 1: for meetings, so I don't go to any meetings. I
Speaker 1: can't make decisions anymore. I don't like making decisions. You know,
Speaker 1: we have a dozen producers. They can have the meetings
Speaker 1: and they can make the decisions, and I'll just come
Speaker 1: down and somebody tell me what to do and we go.
Speaker 1: And it was different before. Yeah, I used to be
Speaker 1: involved in everything big and large. I don't think that
Speaker 1: was necessarily good, but at the time I thought it
Speaker 1: was what was required. When you had your own show.
Speaker 1: You had to had to have everything you know in
Speaker 1: your view and certainly influence each little choice the guests
Speaker 1: that are on the show. Do you still help select
Speaker 1: the guests or someone else takes the people who select them.
Speaker 1: Occasionally I will think of, Oh, I heard about somebody
Speaker 1: that did so and so. Could we look into that
Speaker 1: and this and that? Very little, very little, I mean,
Speaker 1: these people do that. We've have the good luck of
Speaker 1: these people who haven't been together for a long, long, long,
Speaker 1: long time. They all know what the expectation is. Of course,
Speaker 1: when you're in that situation, the bad version of it is,
Speaker 1: Oh God, it's the same thing. It's the assembly line.
Speaker 1: We're just building the same car over and over and
Speaker 1: over again. You feel that way sometimes Sometimes I'm the
Speaker 1: biggest defender of that. I'm sixty five. I don't have
Speaker 1: the energy I had when I was thirty five. There
Speaker 1: are certain things I like about the show now that
Speaker 1: I like more than before. As I like talking to
Speaker 1: people and the opportunity to learn something, or if I
Speaker 1: have a natural curiosity about somebody, I really look forward
Speaker 1: to that. If I have something that I know is
Speaker 1: going to be silly and stupid, and I want my
Speaker 1: authorship out there on this something silly and stupid, then
Speaker 1: I get eager about that. But in the old days,
Speaker 1: we just were going twenty hours a day. We'd be
Speaker 1: out on the streets, We'd be going to New Jersey,
Speaker 1: would be up all night shooting, and there would be contests.
Speaker 1: And I can't do that show anymore. The more successful
Speaker 1: the show has become, and the more successful you would become,
Speaker 1: do you find that in terms of programming the show
Speaker 1: you have to rely more on stars. Is there a
Speaker 1: kind of person It's it's completely different. In the beginning,
Speaker 1: when we started the late night show at NBC. We
Speaker 1: had a liaison between Johnny Carson and ourselves named Dave Tabbot.
Speaker 1: He had worked at NBC and then had become close
Speaker 1: with Johnny, and so Johnny hired him, and he was
Speaker 1: a guy who, honest to God, talked like this. Dave
Speaker 1: came in to make sure there were no conflicts between
Speaker 1: our show and the tonight show. He says, for example,
Speaker 1: let's just say that Bob Hope is arrested for using drugs,
Speaker 1: and we just all just just like, really, in what
Speaker 1: universe is that all likelihood? And he says, you can't
Speaker 1: then do chokes about Bob Hope And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, We'll got that. We were not allowed to
Speaker 1: use do a monologue, and we were not allowed to
Speaker 1: have an orchestra. And we also felt that a way
Speaker 1: to distinguish ourselves, since Johnny had the big stars that
Speaker 1: people really wanted, we would then kind of have French people.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, and so we sort of mind that
Speaker 1: vain as much as we could. It was sort of
Speaker 1: a fortunate coincidence that we were prohibited in that sense,
Speaker 1: because we weren't really interested in having mainstream people on two.
Speaker 1: You started in radio. Yeah, my first job was at
Speaker 1: a radio station. You went to college. You went to
Speaker 1: Ball State University has studied radio and TV. Why did
Speaker 1: you study radio and TV academically? Um? You know, I
Speaker 1: went to Ball State no language requirement and no math requirement.
Speaker 1: I mean it really saved me because I was academically
Speaker 1: I was not very good early on. I was very
Speaker 1: lucky that I knew how to save myself. Sophomore in
Speaker 1: high school and I had saw end up for a
Speaker 1: public speaking course and the first day you were supposed
Speaker 1: to get up and extemporaneously speak for five minutes. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody's twitchy and sweaty and worried about this, as was I.
Speaker 1: And then I got up there, the nervousness and the
Speaker 1: twitchiness and everything dissipated. I loved it, and I thought,
Speaker 1: oh my god, maybe this is a way I can
Speaker 1: distinguish myself. And I did you know, but had you
Speaker 1: been the entertainer as a child in the household, yeah,
Speaker 1: sure to what except and my parents wouldn't put up
Speaker 1: with it much. There was a fine line between being
Speaker 1: oh isn't the amusing and being just and being a
Speaker 1: wise ass and we don't like that. I can remember
Speaker 1: my father was big and loud and noisy and always
Speaker 1: had stuff going on, and my mother completely nondemonstrative. And
Speaker 1: I can remember every Sunday night after dinner, my dad
Speaker 1: would make popcorn and we would sit in front of
Speaker 1: the TV and watch Ed Sullivan. And Ed used to
Speaker 1: have this habit of, well, come on, now, let's really
Speaker 1: hear it for him, and my mom used to say,
Speaker 1: I don't like the way Ed begs the audience for applause.
Speaker 1: She was a connoisseur of television house and then she
Speaker 1: was not a connoisseur. She resented the fact that somebody
Speaker 1: had to be encouraged to support what they had, just
Speaker 1: that Sullivan was whoring himself. And that's exactly right. That's
Speaker 1: so you got to ball stating, you get this degree,
Speaker 1: what do you do after that? Well, through a friend
Speaker 1: of mine at a the ABC affiliate in Indianapolis where
Speaker 1: I lived, which was sixty miles away from where I
Speaker 1: went to school and still is just about sixty miles,
Speaker 1: I heard that they were auditioning for they wanted a
Speaker 1: summer announcer. So I went down there an audition. Never
Speaker 1: having been in a television studio in my life and
Speaker 1: got the job. I mean it was a fixed fight
Speaker 1: because I had no business getting the job. I wasn't
Speaker 1: very good, I didn't know what I was doing, I
Speaker 1: had no experience, and they gave me the job. And
Speaker 1: suddenly the bulb that was turned on my sophomore year
Speaker 1: in high school now is burning white hot because it's
Speaker 1: are you kid me? I'm nineteen and I'm going to
Speaker 1: be on TV. I mean, it's preposterous. That was the
Speaker 1: booth announcer. So I can't believe you said that back
Speaker 1: when they had booth announcers on That's right, That's what
Speaker 1: I did. These guys defined my childhood by the way.
Speaker 1: These were the guys. Uh. The principal responsibility was to
Speaker 1: keep the program log. There used to be a lot
Speaker 1: of technical glitches in television. Who had booth announcers who
Speaker 1: would pick up the slack when something went Wrong's with
Speaker 1: tape to tape, That's exactly right. A station break was
Speaker 1: a huge process because you had a control room, you
Speaker 1: had a director, you had two or three sixteen millimeter projectors,
Speaker 1: you had a slide chain, and you had the big
Speaker 1: two and a half inch Ampex tape. Let's say you
Speaker 1: had four commercials in a station break, then you'd have
Speaker 1: to roll the tape. Then you'd have to count down
Speaker 1: and roll the film. Then you'd have to go live
Speaker 1: to the booth to read copy over a slide, and
Speaker 1: then back to the film. And it was an enormous thing.
Speaker 1: Summer job in in nineteen sixties sixty and I was
Speaker 1: making a hundred fifty bucks a week. I got to
Speaker 1: be the weekend weather man. I've never done that before.
Speaker 1: I got to read the news on on the morning
Speaker 1: kiddie show. None of this would happen today. So I
Speaker 1: go back to school now to my radio and TV studies,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, it's hey, there's duck Lips.
Speaker 1: We've seen him on TV, And oh my god, what
Speaker 1: a progression that was for me. Now that was what
Speaker 1: year I think I started there in sixty eight and
Speaker 1: I stayed. And you avoid draft, and you avoid in
Speaker 1: those days, you get the student deferment. And ball State
Speaker 1: was prinsipally a teacher's college in those days, and so
Speaker 1: it wanted teachers. It was chock full of guys who
Speaker 1: wanted that student deferment, and also the teaching deferment. I
Speaker 1: was not studying teaching. So the minute I graduated, I
Speaker 1: was reclassified one A. Went from my pre draft physical
Speaker 1: in April. They said, okay, we'll call you. And then
Speaker 1: in the meantime before I was called, Nixon announced the
Speaker 1: National Lottery. They were going to end the draft. They
Speaker 1: were trying to step down the Vietnamese War. My birthday
Speaker 1: was three forty two or something like that, at A
Speaker 1: three hundred fifty six, So that meant even though I
Speaker 1: was one A and had my pre induction physical and
Speaker 1: was ready to go, it was over for me. At
Speaker 1: the time, I didn't know how lucky I was. I
Speaker 1: felt guilty because I had friends who had gone, and
Speaker 1: I had friends who had been in the Marine Corps,
Speaker 1: and I just felt like, these guys went, why shouldn't
Speaker 1: I go? And then it dawned on me pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: I had been among the really, really lucky. Yeah. What
Speaker 1: was the political landscape like at Ballston when he went there, Well,
Speaker 1: it was just starting to Uh. I used to make
Speaker 1: jokes that they would have student protests, but it was
Speaker 1: to get the cafeteria cooks to wear hairnets. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was not a hot bed. It was not Madison, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: It was Muncie, Indiana, but it was starting and there
Speaker 1: were sit ins and demonstrations, and you know, Bobby Kennedy
Speaker 1: had spoken on campus, so it was starting. You mentioned
Speaker 1: booth announcers, and I remember I did a YouTube search.
Speaker 1: I wanted to find this guy that was literally the
Speaker 1: voice of my childhood w R and he come on
Speaker 1: and say, you know, uh next on Million Dollar Movie
Speaker 1: Barbara Stan McTell's Gary Cooper where He Can Go and
Speaker 1: Ball of Fire, and he just had this voice. It
Speaker 1: was just it just haunted me. Well, that's interesting. You
Speaker 1: mentioned that guy I had the little kid voice from Indiana.
Speaker 1: I wasn't that guy, but I still had to do
Speaker 1: the job. And I can't impress upon you enough how
Speaker 1: tedious it is to sit there for eight hours watching
Speaker 1: programming and logging everything that happens. If you lose audio,
Speaker 1: you have to log that. If you lose video you
Speaker 1: have to log that. You have to log sign on,
Speaker 1: sign off, every commercial, every station break. And at first
Speaker 1: I was scared, silly, but then, like everything else, you
Speaker 1: get accustomed to it and you become blase, and so
Speaker 1: I would just start wandering the building. You know, it
Speaker 1: was so embarrassing. They would will the booth announcer please
Speaker 1: report to the announced booth, and oh my god, I've
Speaker 1: missed the so and so. The main announcer was a
Speaker 1: guy named Rob Stone, tremendous voice and a hopeless alcoholic,
Speaker 1: I mean a real alcoholic. I go hand in hand, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of. Certainly. In those days it was not uncommon.
Speaker 1: He would come in and he would bring a point
Speaker 1: with him, and so in the spirit of this, we
Speaker 1: who were working the sign off shift, we would always
Speaker 1: send somebody out for beer. Oh my, with this fun.
Speaker 1: In those days, you would do a five minute new
Speaker 1: summary before sign off nightcap news, and then you would
Speaker 1: do the the broadcast statement. You'd read that over the
Speaker 1: slide of the station, and then they would go to
Speaker 1: the national anthem with the waving fly. One night, a
Speaker 1: guy in the props department, so I can reconstruct exactly
Speaker 1: the station has pictured on the slide. We can make
Speaker 1: it blow up. So as you're as you're reading the
Speaker 1: thank you and good night and why not tune in
Speaker 1: w LW overnight and blah blah this and so until tomorrow,
Speaker 1: goodnight and good luck. I have the thing. Come on.
Speaker 1: Oh god, we were proud of ourselves. You know, we
Speaker 1: really thought we had done something. Geez. Nobody ever said anything. No,
Speaker 1: it was bizarre. Nobody got fired, nobody asked a question
Speaker 1: about it. Nobody said anything. But but what's interesting is
Speaker 1: from school and then doing the job and so forth.
Speaker 1: In the booth thing the comedy Gland is secreting through
Speaker 1: the entire time. What are you doing for that? Meaning
Speaker 1: other than blowing up the studio and in the sign
Speaker 1: off we're writing or yes. I was looking for any outlet,
Speaker 1: and it came for me doing the weather. I knew
Speaker 1: nothing about whether you'd go downstairs and I'd have the
Speaker 1: ap machine and the map would come over, the national map,
Speaker 1: and you would go to the big magnetic board in
Speaker 1: the studio and you put the low system, and you
Speaker 1: put the high system, and you put the occluded front,
Speaker 1: and you put the rain showers, and so it told
Speaker 1: you everything any time, but all that I could monkey
Speaker 1: with that. I was very happy. I can remember two episodes.
Speaker 1: One I was had forecast sunny and dryet and we
Speaker 1: we go off the air and blah blah, and I
Speaker 1: go outside this this is horrible thundershower. The rain is
Speaker 1: coming down in sheets and I was just twenty ft away,
Speaker 1: just oblivious of this, this uh, dangerous yes coming through,
Speaker 1: this one of these violent Midwestern summer thunderstorms coming through
Speaker 1: attacking the station. I got to be well known because
Speaker 1: this Sunday Night show was on after the ABC Sunday
Speaker 1: Night Movie. That was big programming. We got a bunch
Speaker 1: of complaints, and this was when people were wearing a
Speaker 1: bell bottom pants. I don't think he could buy regular pants.
Speaker 1: Got a lot of calls about he's either not wearing
Speaker 1: underpants or he needs to wear underpants. That's how I
Speaker 1: distinguished myself. Do you want to clear that up? Now?
Speaker 1: Were you wearing underpants? I was wearing DP. It was Indianapolis.
Speaker 1: We were not talked to go out without our under
Speaker 1: It's whatever problem was perceived was not mine. I sure you.
Speaker 1: And then where do you go from there in terms
Speaker 1: of underpants and well, if you wish. I got tired
Speaker 1: of sitting in the booth and tired of working weekends.
Speaker 1: And also they didn't they didn't want me there. They
Speaker 1: would keep bringing in auditions for my job. That really
Speaker 1: hurt my feelings. But I couldn't argue with them because
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was doing but the cumulative
Speaker 1: effect of being on TV a lot. There, we get
Speaker 1: this memo once from the search department, and of all
Speaker 1: of the people, the the anchor team and whoever else,
Speaker 1: I had the highest queue rating of anybody there, and
Speaker 1: it was only by accident. Really, So I started looking
Speaker 1: for a job. Some people I knew were coming in
Speaker 1: to start up a talk radio station. So I went
Speaker 1: to work at the new talk radio station with the
Speaker 1: format it was News Talks Force w NTS. When I
Speaker 1: resigned to quit give my notice to the general manage,
Speaker 1: the guy sad and it chilled me at the time.
Speaker 1: He said, really, you're leaving this TV station to go
Speaker 1: work for a brand new radio station. And I said yeah,
Speaker 1: and he said you will never be heard of again.
Speaker 1: So I went to the station, worked there for a year,
Speaker 1: realized that I had to make a move. Nobody would
Speaker 1: would listen. It was a daytime station. This was tremendous.
Speaker 1: They had a daytime license, which meant the radio station
Speaker 1: come on when the sun came up and went off
Speaker 1: when the sun went down. Literally yeah. And then the
Speaker 1: winter we were off at three in the afternoon. I
Speaker 1: had the midday shift and I come in at noon
Speaker 1: and two hours later I'd be going home. It was
Speaker 1: it was joy afternoon. And then in the summer. Conversely,
Speaker 1: you were on the like nine thirty or ten, it
Speaker 1: was awful. It was Watergate, and and people assume, well,
Speaker 1: the guy's got a talk show on the radio, but
Speaker 1: he knows everything there is to know about Watergate, and
Speaker 1: I knew nothing. I'd have to read endless pages of
Speaker 1: wire copy. I remember reading it sorry about Gordon Stratching
Speaker 1: str A C H A N. And his name kept
Speaker 1: coming up, a special counsel, so and so, Gordon Stratch
Speaker 1: and adviser of the White House, Gordon Stratch. And finally
Speaker 1: the phones line up, and I, thank god, did I
Speaker 1: say yes? He says, it's not Stratching, it's Strang. You're
Speaker 1: mispronouncing the guy's name. I said, okay, thanks you everything,
Speaker 1: no click buzz, So there you go. Were you ambitious
Speaker 1: during this time? Did you have an ambition? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: wanted to. I really thought, um, I really thought I
Speaker 1: could write half hours situation comedies. I thought I could.
Speaker 1: What did you watch? Well? In my childhood it was
Speaker 1: completely different. It would have been stuff like Saturday Morning nonsense.
Speaker 1: Then as I grew older, you'd get to Mayberry, the
Speaker 1: Andy Griffis Show, Ozzie and Harriett Nelson, the Nelson's and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And then later on and in
Speaker 1: those days, it was all the Mary Tyler Moore things,
Speaker 1: the Bob Newhart Show, on the Mary Tyler Moore Show,
Speaker 1: and I really thought, oh, I can write one of
Speaker 1: those Mary Tyler Moore shows. And it turned out I couldn't.
Speaker 1: As you know, there's a template for writing those things.
Speaker 1: They use the template because it's successful. And if you
Speaker 1: don't know the template and you think you can make
Speaker 1: a better version of it, it's a very foreign object
Speaker 1: to them. To you, you think, look, I've improved on
Speaker 1: the template, but they don't want them. They want something. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean we're talking about Mary Tyler Moore.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good stuff. Smart and you're in l A
Speaker 1: at that time. Now I'm still in Indianapolis and I
Speaker 1: would be sending scripts and looking for an agent. Finally
Speaker 1: a guy said, yeah, if you come to Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: he said, I'll be your agent. So with that encouragement,
Speaker 1: I just left. And I don't know about you, but
Speaker 1: you know, your friends say, Okay, here you can meet
Speaker 1: with so and so and and you can meet mel
Speaker 1: Blank's son, you can meet with him, and and I
Speaker 1: know this one, and I know that one. And so
Speaker 1: you go out there with high hopes. I guess it's
Speaker 1: like the Pioneers and the kind of stoga wagon and
Speaker 1: they run out of beans. So within the first week
Speaker 1: you run through all of your appointments and then you've
Speaker 1: got nothing. Then your Shanghai. That's right on the show there.
Speaker 1: I'm remember when I went to l A. I did
Speaker 1: a soap opera at thirty Rock. The show was about
Speaker 1: to go off the air, and I'll never forget this
Speaker 1: guy that was the producer. He were in the hallway
Speaker 1: and they asked me to extend my contract for a
Speaker 1: few months. And he says that line to me. He says,
Speaker 1: what do you think you're gonna do? Go out the Hollywood,
Speaker 1: become a star in the movies. I'm walking down the
Speaker 1: Hollies going, dude, listen to me, come back here. You
Speaker 1: you don't walk away from me? And I walk away
Speaker 1: from the guy and I go to l A. Now,
Speaker 1: were you ever haunted by that? Did you? Honestly? Did you?
Speaker 1: Did you? Because of my case? I thought the guy
Speaker 1: was I said, oh yeah, I haven't considered that. Well,
Speaker 1: of course you do. You've been an enormously successful man.
Speaker 1: Did you ever dream you would be as successful as
Speaker 1: you are? No? Never, No, And I'll tell you the
Speaker 1: same for you, same for most people in this uh
Speaker 1: in show business. You're just lucky enough to get to
Speaker 1: do exactly what you want to do all your life.
Speaker 1: So that's the success coming up. David Letterman's own personal
Speaker 1: Cinderella story. I drove in a pickup truck with my
Speaker 1: wife to l A and three years later I'm sitting
Speaker 1: next to Johnny Carson. That's not supposed to happen, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just not supposed to happen, but it did. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: While other comedians struggled to find their way in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: David Letterman clearly saw the path in front of him.
Speaker 1: For me, the road map to pursue was handed to
Speaker 1: you via Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show. They would
Speaker 1: have comics on. It would be David Brenner and they
Speaker 1: would say, and there will be appearing at the Comedy Store,
Speaker 1: that seemed to be that the connection between the Comedy
Speaker 1: Store and the Tonight Show was pretty close. So even
Speaker 1: though you mind that facility that particularly, it was the
Speaker 1: farm system for the Comedy Store, and great guys were
Speaker 1: coming out and getting on and Steve Landsberg and on
Speaker 1: and on. I say on and on because I can't
Speaker 1: remember the name. So I just yeah, even though I
Speaker 1: wanted to be a writer, because I didn't have the
Speaker 1: courage to tell my family and friends that what I
Speaker 1: really want to do is, you know, somehow get famous
Speaker 1: and beyond TV. So when when I went out there
Speaker 1: the first monday I was in California when I moved
Speaker 1: in seventy, I wrote down some stuff and went to
Speaker 1: the Comedy Store and got on stage. It was it
Speaker 1: was awful. I've never been in a darkened room with
Speaker 1: the spotlight and it was just like a train coming
Speaker 1: at me. So I did my little five minutes from
Speaker 1: route left and and uh, the owner of the place, yeah,
Speaker 1: you should come back and do some more. So I thought,
Speaker 1: are you kidding me? And she's no, you can MC.
Speaker 1: So I came back and I was the MC fantastic Yeah, Derek.
Speaker 1: So that was three years later I was on the
Speaker 1: Tonight Show that worked so much better than it should have.
Speaker 1: I think it must be harder now, Becau wasn't three
Speaker 1: years of just working that room and working the mic
Speaker 1: and working stand up. But it was. I mean it
Speaker 1: was fun because every night you go there and you
Speaker 1: were hanging around guys Jay Leno and Robin Williams and
Speaker 1: George Miller and Tom Reason and anybody now who's you're
Speaker 1: aware of you would see every night and it was
Speaker 1: great fun. I mean, my god, it was great fun.
Speaker 1: Him didn't make any difference what you did during the day.
Speaker 1: You knew that when it got dark you'd be on
Speaker 1: Sunset Boulevard. The place would be packed. So you say, yeah,
Speaker 1: night after night. But still, in all how could that
Speaker 1: not be fun? So did Carson find you there? Well,
Speaker 1: they had a guy, you know, they had a team
Speaker 1: of guys when I was there that would come in uh.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime I got on this Mary Tyler
Speaker 1: Moore show UH to write and perform and that was
Speaker 1: it was me and Michael Keaton, Jim Hampton and Dick
Speaker 1: Shawn and Susie Kurtz and Uh, Julie con Judy Can
Speaker 1: Judy con thank you very much. So from that show, uh,
Speaker 1: they said, oh, well we'll put you on because you're
Speaker 1: on that show. You can come out and do stand
Speaker 1: up and then you go sit down and talk to Johnny.
Speaker 1: And without that, you never know what the formula is.
Speaker 1: You could be on nine times and never get sit
Speaker 1: on with Johnny. You could be on for six years
Speaker 1: and every or you could be bumped forty times and never.
Speaker 1: But because of this, oh and he's appearing on the
Speaker 1: so and so show, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, I
Speaker 1: got to sit down with Johnny and and that was again,
Speaker 1: that was craziness. That was That was another one of
Speaker 1: those you know what, Oh yeah, it's such a jolt.
Speaker 1: The material is so committed. You don't have to think
Speaker 1: about anything. You just have to start talking and it
Speaker 1: all comes out. The adrenaline takes days to burn out
Speaker 1: of you. Holy God, you're sitting next to Johnny Carson.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just can't believe it. I mean to me,
Speaker 1: and I think most guys my age who were out
Speaker 1: there doing that one. The fact that it worked, you know, really,
Speaker 1: I drove in a pickup truck with my wife to
Speaker 1: l A and three years later I'm sitting next to
Speaker 1: Johnny Carson. That's not supposed to happen, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just not supposed to happen, but it did. Do you
Speaker 1: think that Carson was someone who do you think he
Speaker 1: saw himself? And you do you think he saw the
Speaker 1: midwestern boy? I don't know, Jean, and I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was so easy for other people to
Speaker 1: make that comparison. Uh, and that seemed to be the formula.
Speaker 1: But I don't. I don't know if he felt that
Speaker 1: way or not. Um, I don't. I can't answer that.
Speaker 1: And then what happened after that, Well, your life changed immediately.
Speaker 1: Suddenly you weren't just a guy who was at the
Speaker 1: comedy store. You were the guy that had been on
Speaker 1: with Carson. And then I was on I think two
Speaker 1: or three more times, and then I started hosting the show.
Speaker 1: And again that was another you know, you just feel
Speaker 1: like it's like it's like winning the World Series or
Speaker 1: your rookie season. What's the gap of time between when
Speaker 1: you first sat down with him when you started hosting.
Speaker 1: The first time I was on was November of seventy eight,
Speaker 1: and I think I hosted. Uh, it was Monday Night,
Speaker 1: opposite the Academy Awards, so it was the good Spring Yeah,
Speaker 1: and April I should have in April of March April
Speaker 1: part yeah, and it was I was just frozen. I
Speaker 1: was as fro as I can remember Peter Losally coming
Speaker 1: up to me during the commercial break and he said,
Speaker 1: got to loosen up. You've got to loosen up. And
Speaker 1: thanks to that tip, I remember the first night I
Speaker 1: was saw on the Tonight Show and I'm I'm telling
Speaker 1: you four guys at the Comedy Store. This was it
Speaker 1: fighting in competition and backstabbing in bad mouth to get
Speaker 1: to the Tonight Show. If if you don't do well,
Speaker 1: you'll never be heard of again. There's there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as a guy bombings first time on the Tonight
Speaker 1: Show and then having a delightful career that just doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: You're gone. So there's a lot of pressure. So I
Speaker 1: I am getting ready to go out there just behind
Speaker 1: the curtain. And my manager at the time, Buddy Mora,
Speaker 1: who was with Jack Rollins and John Charles Joffee. They
Speaker 1: handled Robin Williams and Woody Allen and Dick Cabint and
Speaker 1: some other guys. So that was a big deal for
Speaker 1: me to be with these people. And Buddy and I
Speaker 1: nice enough guy, but we never I never saw I'd
Speaker 1: eye on much. And I think a lot of it
Speaker 1: was my immaturity about show business or just ignorance, not immaturity.
Speaker 1: I you know, I had no time to be immature.
Speaker 1: I was ignorant. So we're standing there and Johnny saying,
Speaker 1: our next guest is a young blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and Buddy says to me, and Buddy always whispered. Everything
Speaker 1: was a whisper. And Buddy, he says, Robin got popeye,
Speaker 1: And I said, what are you talking about? His final
Speaker 1: words to me is, I'm going on the tonight show
Speaker 1: from the first time telling me about a booking for
Speaker 1: one of his other clients, you know. And I just
Speaker 1: never got over that. You know, you're a lot mellower
Speaker 1: now than you were. Yes, absolutely, And you'd say that
Speaker 1: when you did the show, no matter how crazy or
Speaker 1: how wired you and the whole experience was of the
Speaker 1: early show, and you said running around and doing all
Speaker 1: the taking and all the other bits and stuff forth
Speaker 1: in contests and everything, but I mean, just your own
Speaker 1: nature seems like there was a kind of an edge
Speaker 1: to it that that you've lost, but you seem like
Speaker 1: you really just become like so much more. What's the
Speaker 1: word charming? Well, I don't know, but I know exactly
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. And the fact that it's noticeable
Speaker 1: by others is an indication that maybe I'm on the
Speaker 1: right track. Because two, to the exclusion of every other
Speaker 1: thing in my life, it was the success of this show.
Speaker 1: As a result, I waited to have a child twenty
Speaker 1: years too long. I just didn't do anything else. It
Speaker 1: was the show and it had to be the show.
Speaker 1: And if it wasn't the show, then find out a
Speaker 1: way to make it the show. And did you come
Speaker 1: from that world? Like Lauren, for example, says to me,
Speaker 1: he's he lives a life where his creative was work
Speaker 1: is playing, Like, we have some interesting jobs. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't stop working, That's part of it. And uh,
Speaker 1: that is one of the great residuals of of you know,
Speaker 1: you're around all these funny people, and you have silly
Speaker 1: ideas and you have silly conversations a life yourself sick.
Speaker 1: But for me, it was like, oh my god, if
Speaker 1: I fail at this, it's all gone away. You know,
Speaker 1: if you fail at this, you get to get at
Speaker 1: the end of the line, and the line keeps getting longer,
Speaker 1: so to the exclusion of other important things, other aspects
Speaker 1: of life. I pursued the show, and then that changed,
Speaker 1: finally changed. Did you wanted to change? No. At the time,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't know there was another way to
Speaker 1: live your life. I thought you had to keep banging
Speaker 1: your head and banging your head and banging your head.
Speaker 1: And I kept saying to myself, this is what they say,
Speaker 1: It's like pushing a rock up hill. It's like pushing
Speaker 1: a rock up hill, and one day everything will change,
Speaker 1: everything will be great, you'll succeed, and everything will well.
Speaker 1: It never it never quite worked that way for me.
Speaker 1: I think, well, not too difficult to assume that. This
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons I had the quin tumble
Speaker 1: bypass surgery. And then my doctor he said, you know,
Speaker 1: he says, you don't have to be this way yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, you can, yeah, or you you can. He says,
Speaker 1: there are they made pharmaceutical advancements here, you can help yourself.
Speaker 1: And I said, no, no, no, no, I can't because
Speaker 1: that would ruin this, and that would ruin that, and uh.
Speaker 1: And then Regina got we were able to get pregnant.
Speaker 1: I went into this stark, raving anxious depression. Why well,
Speaker 1: I was fine with it. I thought, if not now
Speaker 1: when you know, and she had wanted to have kids,
Speaker 1: like I said, fifteen twenty years earlier, and so I, uh,
Speaker 1: this is a very complicated, un interesting story, and it
Speaker 1: has it has to do with having shingles and being
Speaker 1: on exotic pain medication for the shingles and getting fed
Speaker 1: up with the exotic pain medication and saying to the
Speaker 1: pain doctor I'm done. I'm not taking it anymore. And
Speaker 1: he said, well, you know a lot of those things
Speaker 1: you can't just I said, forget it. Click and I
Speaker 1: stopped taking these things, and within a couple of days
Speaker 1: I just turned into this twitching unit cell altered states. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was very odd. Uh. And the guy said, well,
Speaker 1: you're in an anxious depression and lucid. You know there
Speaker 1: are things we can do here to help you out.
Speaker 1: And I said, I'll try anything because I can't go
Speaker 1: on like this. And so it's a small dose of
Speaker 1: an s s R. I suddenly I realized I can
Speaker 1: have myself, my personality of the person that I've known,
Speaker 1: and then lose what was detracting, what was hurting, what
Speaker 1: was actually an impediment, groom out the things that you
Speaker 1: wanted to groom out. Yeah, And when I came to
Speaker 1: this show business and I was in the law angels
Speaker 1: sleeping and I was like Gomer Pyle, I mean, I
Speaker 1: swear to God. I came to work and they said, really,
Speaker 1: I have trouble that you were really, but I don't
Speaker 1: mean in terms of of lacking any sophistication. But I'll
Speaker 1: never forget the first job I got. I go to
Speaker 1: an audition. I've done that the soap in New York
Speaker 1: and they paid you, you know, a very small amount
Speaker 1: of money. And I thought I was Rockefell and they
Speaker 1: paid you four undred and fifty bucks a day. I was.
Speaker 1: I was the richest member of my family. My dad
Speaker 1: was a school teacher with six kids. He didn't make
Speaker 1: any money. And I go out to l A and
Speaker 1: I'll never forget when I go to the old Lauramar
Speaker 1: which is now Sony, and I go to the gate
Speaker 1: at Lauramar, I say, Alec Baldwin. He's like, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: here's your map. You're parking and building sixty seven ninth
Speaker 1: floor slot read twelve and they and they sent me
Speaker 1: to like, you know, the Ukraine, And I go, now,
Speaker 1: where's the office I'm going to for the me and
Speaker 1: he goes right over there, right next to me. So
Speaker 1: I go, I parked the car trot all the way down,
Speaker 1: do an audition for the show, nots landing. I get
Speaker 1: done and I leave the thing and no cell phones.
Speaker 1: Then this is nine three and so I pull up
Speaker 1: to a phone booth. I called my agent. It's late
Speaker 1: in the afternoon. They're still in the office. He goes,
Speaker 1: how did it go? I go, how did it go?
Speaker 1: I think it went pretty well? Pretty well, you moron?
Speaker 1: They want to hire you? And I go, you're kidding me,
Speaker 1: he goes. He goes, yeah, of course he was. We're
Speaker 1: making a deal right now, or closing the deal. Why
Speaker 1: now you're gonna get twenty five for the pilot and
Speaker 1: twelve five an episode. And I swear to God, coming
Speaker 1: from my background, I went go, wait, y'all won't pay
Speaker 1: me dollars for the pilot and twelve hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: dollars per episode every week? And he's like, no, you morow,
Speaker 1: they're gonna pay you twenty five thousand for the pilot
Speaker 1: and twelve thousand, five hundred an episode, and I literally
Speaker 1: urinated on my trousers. I'm standing at a phone booth
Speaker 1: on the corner of like you know, Walker and Washington
Speaker 1: and Culver City, and the guy tells me this, and
Speaker 1: that's when my life changed for me. It was always
Speaker 1: you were competing against yourself. We didn't go out and
Speaker 1: do a lot of reading, you know some sometimes I
Speaker 1: remember there was a the Jackson five had a summer show,
Speaker 1: so they would say, we need comics, and so they'd
Speaker 1: call the comedies door, and you know, if Mitzi liked
Speaker 1: you'd get to go beyond the Jackson five show. There
Speaker 1: was plenty of work, and it wasn't I think as
Speaker 1: in acting as you describe guys elbowing each other out
Speaker 1: and and higher ups wanting to step on their hands
Speaker 1: and hurt their feelings. But when you when you've done
Speaker 1: the show back from the NBC days and now through
Speaker 1: the many years at CBS, it's a very hermetic situation
Speaker 1: for you, and nobody bothers you, and there's different questions
Speaker 1: about your budget, and there's every question, but nobody calls
Speaker 1: you don't have to deal with them or do you
Speaker 1: have to fight with the network about things like other shows.
Speaker 1: To us, never a fight, it's a negotiation. But we
Speaker 1: don't have the fight. You know. If if we want
Speaker 1: to do something, we can pretty much do it. And again,
Speaker 1: what we want to do now is far different level
Speaker 1: in scopeling we wanted to do when we're because when
Speaker 1: we came into this show, we just thought, oh, Americas
Speaker 1: has been waiting for us. We're going to change the
Speaker 1: face of television for America. And what didn't happen that way?
Speaker 1: You know, it just didn't happen that way at all.
Speaker 1: We did a sketch on the old Late Night Show
Speaker 1: and it was with one of the writers, Tom Gamble,
Speaker 1: and it was Dale the Icotic Page. We had to
Speaker 1: set up nine holes of a miniature golf course. He
Speaker 1: would come in with a NBC page blazer and he
Speaker 1: would play miniature golf and with each failing attempt on
Speaker 1: the whole, he would become more and more psychotic. There's
Speaker 1: your comedy, America. This is what you've been waiting for you,
Speaker 1: aren't you glad we're here? Bro? I love on your show.
Speaker 1: I haven't done this in a while. I miss it
Speaker 1: when because because everything, I guess they can't do this
Speaker 1: stuff all the time, and maybe this bit is a
Speaker 1: victim of global warming. But I get there one time
Speaker 1: and they want me to ride the snowmobile on the
Speaker 1: roof of the building. Years ago. They're all very droll,
Speaker 1: you know, and Iff always calls me Alex. I love
Speaker 1: that you're on the roof and snowing, and we're on
Speaker 1: the roof of your building at snowing. Like, okay, now, Alex,
Speaker 1: You're gonna ride the snowmobile around the roof a few
Speaker 1: times and gonna mean, man, I've never called it to
Speaker 1: catch you, to keep you from going over the side.
Speaker 1: Is that all right? I'm like, great, let me go danger.
Speaker 1: You know it elements. What's a good show for you? Now? Well,
Speaker 1: it defines a good show for like, you know the
Speaker 1: I think the last time you were on I say this,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, suck up good idea. It was
Speaker 1: a very pleasant, easy give and take an exchange. I
Speaker 1: love it when a good, smart, funny guy just comes
Speaker 1: right back at me, you know, in the beginning, when
Speaker 1: he so mean, why does he mean to everybody? And
Speaker 1: I never thought I was being mean. I just thought
Speaker 1: I was, you know, goofing around. Yeah, so when you
Speaker 1: were coming on and you were going after me, that
Speaker 1: was delightful. I love that for those segment producers who
Speaker 1: you work with him. And it took me a while
Speaker 1: to be able to. I mean I would do the
Speaker 1: show with you a number of times and the segment
Speaker 1: producers would they would say that to you. They'd say
Speaker 1: to you know, no, get it back to it that
Speaker 1: So many people I think that runs against their nature.
Speaker 1: Other people are ill equipped to do that. You live
Speaker 1: a pretty under the radar lifestyle. Do you do that
Speaker 1: by choice? Well, a very quiet private life. First of all,
Speaker 1: I don't get invited many places. Secondly, I just would
Speaker 1: you know, you do the show and all of that
Speaker 1: comes to you during the day. You know, you have
Speaker 1: the same people at the gala, of the same people
Speaker 1: at the opening, the same people benefit will be there
Speaker 1: with that expression of all that for us. So I
Speaker 1: don't feel the need to go seek that. And secondly,
Speaker 1: like so many people, I'm uncomfortable with large groups of strangers.
Speaker 1: I mean I think people are And what is your
Speaker 1: downtime like? Now, what do you like to do? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: sleep is as a precious commodity. There's virtually no sleep
Speaker 1: between my eight year old son and my two year
Speaker 1: old dog and my wife. My wife, honest to god,
Speaker 1: has not slept eight hours in eight years. I mean
Speaker 1: she she'll go to bed at midnight, get up at six,
Speaker 1: so that's six hours. You can do that once or twice,
Speaker 1: you know, like when you're eighteen and you're in the Marines,
Speaker 1: I if I have terminals. So when you're not fighting insomnia,
Speaker 1: what is do you like to travel? Travel? Well, you
Speaker 1: do things when you have an eight year old, as
Speaker 1: you know, when you have a child, you do things
Speaker 1: you never thought you would do, and it's fun. We
Speaker 1: went to Alaska a few weeks ago because it was
Speaker 1: my birthday, and I was talking to my son and
Speaker 1: and I said, well, you know, we're thinking of u
Speaker 1: about maybe going up to Alaska. This guy tells me
Speaker 1: there's a place to ski up there. Let's go to Alaska.
Speaker 1: And so I said, well, you know, we're still thinking
Speaker 1: about it and still thinking about it. And then I
Speaker 1: hear from Regina that now Harry is going to school
Speaker 1: and told everybody that daddy and me and mom we're
Speaker 1: going to Alaska. And I thought, holy, that's how he
Speaker 1: gets you're going to Alaska. So a lot of that
Speaker 1: stuff is kid driven. And you know, I'm all for
Speaker 1: no tennis, no golf, No no tennis, no golf, no movies.
Speaker 1: I see plenty of movies all the Oh no, not
Speaker 1: at home so much. It's all it's all with the kid.
Speaker 1: Do you find that your son, because this is very common.
Speaker 1: He pulls you into the world, into his world, and
Speaker 1: you have to show up at things and show up
Speaker 1: at places, and everybody treats you very respectfully. People are
Speaker 1: there as a dad. Yeah. The last time anything untoward
Speaker 1: happened was a Christmas party. My wife has his friends
Speaker 1: with a very famous couple, and I have great admiration
Speaker 1: for the couple. More people should be like these people
Speaker 1: and and as a result, I'm afraid to be around
Speaker 1: them us I'm duck lips. Yeah, oh, I make myself
Speaker 1: look back. I went to a Christmas party and it
Speaker 1: was so packed that you couldn't move. It was all vertical.
Speaker 1: Nothing happened horizontally, and as people kind of from their
Speaker 1: positions about the apartment, spotted me, it was it was
Speaker 1: as though there was methane gas leaking in the apartment.
Speaker 1: It was oh no, and it's the holidays, and why
Speaker 1: is he here? Yeah, true story. People. You people don't
Speaker 1: love people. People love you. No, no, no, no people people.
Speaker 1: But the thing is that you you get a lot
Speaker 1: of that qution on the job, and then when the
Speaker 1: job's over, you want to go home. That's right, That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. And and especially now with with the eight
Speaker 1: year old, because you know, and I feel stupid talking
Speaker 1: about it because I'm like the billion person who have
Speaker 1: a child, so I have I have no I have
Speaker 1: no insights. He might claim he has no insights. But
Speaker 1: if David Letterman ever writes a book on parenting, it's
Speaker 1: guaranteed to be a bestseller. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing, Real conversations with artists, writers,
Speaker 1: policymakers and performers. That's where I find out why people
Speaker 1: do what they do. It has been such a great
Speaker 1: rewarding and satisfying experience. I always say that anything Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin asked me to do, I do. You've come through.
Speaker 1: You can listen to other episodes at Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: dot Org. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing Mr Douglas. Michael Douglas has lived on Central Park
Speaker 1: West for decades. The son of Kirk Douglas, he's American
Speaker 1: acting royalty, but he's earned his own place at the
Speaker 1: round table with powerful performances throughout his career. Gordon Gecko
Speaker 1: in Wall Street, Dan Gallagher and Fay of Attraction. Then
Speaker 1: there's Romancing The Stone, Basic Instinct, The Game Traffic and
Speaker 1: Wonder Boys. He has two Academy Awards, one as an actor,
Speaker 1: another as a producer, and he's worked with everyone from
Speaker 1: Oliver Stone to Curtis Hanson, Hello Seven. He worked with
Speaker 1: the British director Adrian Lyme on Fatal Attraction. He was
Speaker 1: great and he has a great knack and talent for that.
Speaker 1: And I remember, you know when Glenn and I when
Speaker 1: were doing Fatal Attraction and we have the scene in
Speaker 1: the kitchen the first time when we were kind of
Speaker 1: going at it, got her up on the kitchen sink,
Speaker 1: and so he did a take on that and said,
Speaker 1: well that was that was one of the love That
Speaker 1: was just great. What could we do? I think? And
Speaker 1: Glam said, well, maybe I can take the water and
Speaker 1: I can stick by wet fingers in his mouth lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely?
Speaker 1: How many of your fingers can be? Could you get
Speaker 1: all of your fingers into his mouth? Taling exactly? He
Speaker 1: was great, he was, I love his films and a
Speaker 1: lot of fun every other day. He said, well you
Speaker 1: on me? I said, I should get Bill and shape
Speaker 1: this picture. No, no, no, Eloy a new employa. She
Speaker 1: look just the way you are in about three weeks. Jeez, Michael, Mike,
Speaker 1: you look like ross and well, but that's a favor.
Speaker 1: They love to shoot that down angle, you know, and
Speaker 1: we all look better with the camera above our eyeline.
Speaker 1: Don't you drop that camera? Yeah? When you work, Now,
Speaker 1: what's it been like for you now in terms of
Speaker 1: you show up and you're pretty fastile at getting there emotionally,
Speaker 1: in terms of how you want to play it and
Speaker 1: is it more technical for you? Yeah, Someone early on
Speaker 1: in my career told me, you know, the camera can
Speaker 1: always tell when you're lying. Oh. I was like, the
Speaker 1: camera can tell what I'm lying? Well, I used to
Speaker 1: method it up. I gotta be truthful. One day I said,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I lie every day, I said, but camera,
Speaker 1: if you're lie, not me. I'm different. I'm talented, right,
Speaker 1: exactly what's acting about except Lyne. That freed me up
Speaker 1: a whole lot when I realized that. But the last
Speaker 1: ten years the business changed dramatically. The technical part is
Speaker 1: definitely to me now it's all, you know, where's my life,
Speaker 1: where's the camera? Raise that camera. I used to say, well,
Speaker 1: we gotta have a clean take when I gotta burn
Speaker 1: one great connected master. Now I'm like into four pickups
Speaker 1: of this line, and it's so technical to me now,
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable. I learned that a lot from actually from
Speaker 1: Jack Nicholson on Cuckoo's Nest. I was watching you know,
Speaker 1: the it's editing. You do someone's take after take it,
Speaker 1: then you go someone look at the dailies and you
Speaker 1: see how my new the differences are, and then they
Speaker 1: can judiciously edit. I mean, I was working with some
Speaker 1: people early on, or I didn't know better, and I
Speaker 1: was looking at people and I say, my god, when
Speaker 1: they watched the dailies of this, they're going to really
Speaker 1: be unhappy because this person is as boring as you
Speaker 1: could possibly mean. They're not doing anything. And that was
Speaker 1: my sin was I thought I always had to be acting.
Speaker 1: And I guess my question is sometimes you go to
Speaker 1: work and you gotta you know what you want to do.
Speaker 1: What do you do when you go to a movie
Speaker 1: and the director has nothing to offer you, He's really
Speaker 1: just a traffic cop point in the camera. My feeling
Speaker 1: is with movies. I mean, first of all, if you
Speaker 1: get a good part and the get go is a
Speaker 1: great part, you know, And sometimes you get a good
Speaker 1: part and a lot of a lot of pictures I've
Speaker 1: done where I'm in every single scene and I'm carrying
Speaker 1: the plot line, somebody else has got the colorful, good part.
Speaker 1: But I always think that if you if the pictures
Speaker 1: cast properly, or if you're cast right, I never expect
Speaker 1: to hear much from a director. You don't know. The
Speaker 1: world is so different now. I've got people welcome to
Speaker 1: me all the time quoting some of the most corrosive
Speaker 1: lines from Glen Garry Glenn Ross. I think it's good
Speaker 1: to talk about the kind of funckishness of the sales industry.
Speaker 1: When I say, you know, coffee is for closers, and
Speaker 1: you say greed is good. Do you think in our
Speaker 1: lifetime that that line has changed Greed is good? Where
Speaker 1: people really believe that's true. Well, the affirmation that I
Speaker 1: got from that villain, from that community, from that from
Speaker 1: that community. You know, if I get one more drunken
Speaker 1: guy from the street, hey man, greed is good. You're
Speaker 1: the man. You're why I got into this business and
Speaker 1: everything I go it. Hey, you know that's what I
Speaker 1: was a villain. What is your relationship to go into
Speaker 1: the movies? Now? Yeah, I'm really embarrassed to say this,
Speaker 1: but I'm not a movie goer. I don't see many movies.
Speaker 1: I waste so much time watching news and sports. I
Speaker 1: love watching sports because you know, I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how it's gonna end. My problem with movies. You know,
Speaker 1: as you get halfway through a movie, and you see
Speaker 1: I was right. I love making movies, but I'm really
Speaker 1: bad Alex when it comes to seeing them. When you
Speaker 1: were younger, did you always since you were headed in
Speaker 1: this direct in some way? I never. I never thought
Speaker 1: I was. I mean probably a loud of it was
Speaker 1: resentment as a young kids, my folks getting divorced and
Speaker 1: both the me actors. But I never even thought about
Speaker 1: the doing this at all. And I said I was
Speaker 1: like a junior in college. He took me into the
Speaker 1: Vice Chance's office and your college and you're not in
Speaker 1: a major al right, So I guess you know drama
Speaker 1: should be easy. You know, I had well parents. I
Speaker 1: hung around. My mother was in did a lot of theater,
Speaker 1: and so it hung around there. But it's not something
Speaker 1: I dreamed about. But the success you have now came
Speaker 1: in stages. When you were younger and you did your
Speaker 1: early films, you were the gentle young man. But I
Speaker 1: wonder in your case because you eventually played a very tough,
Speaker 1: very powerful actor on film. So do you think when
Speaker 1: you were younger you pulled your punches because you didn't
Speaker 1: want to step on what you thought was your dad's territory.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be compared to him. First of all,
Speaker 1: you look at his career. He played the sensitive young
Speaker 1: man for his first six or seven pictures until he
Speaker 1: had a movie called The Champion. I just think I
Speaker 1: was just trying to define who I am, because the
Speaker 1: one problem about being second generation is, you know you
Speaker 1: half of me is made up with my father's jeans.
Speaker 1: My mother, Diana, is an actress too, but not as
Speaker 1: well known. So when you see behavioral or mannerisms that
Speaker 1: are like your father, I feel like it takes away
Speaker 1: from your individuality, right, And it's sort of like earlier on,
Speaker 1: I just was trying to find out who I was,
Speaker 1: and being a nice guy was a way of pleasing everybody.
Speaker 1: But the truth be told in a villain is the
Speaker 1: best way to go. Playing a bad guy better lines,
Speaker 1: it's more colorful. Audiences vicariously love you because a lot
Speaker 1: of time is everything that they want to do in
Speaker 1: real life, but they can't do what you can do
Speaker 1: in the movies. Contrary, women is taking them so much
Speaker 1: longer to be comfortable in playing the villains. And I
Speaker 1: look back to us produced in Cuckoo's Nest and all
Speaker 1: the actresses that turned down the part of Nurse Ratchet
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to play a villain. Louise Flesh
Speaker 1: of us Oscar, Yeah, you know, for playing out well.
Speaker 1: When I went to Strasbourg the acting school, we did
Speaker 1: a gender reversed production of Cuckoo's Nest and the girl
Speaker 1: was McMurphy and all the inmates were females, and I
Speaker 1: was Nurse Ratchet as a man. That's a great idea.
Speaker 1: Is your relationship with your dad more father son now?
Speaker 1: Or is it more two great colleagues? In motion picture history. No,
Speaker 1: it's more father's son. It's more fun. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: ninety four years old. I'm just so proud of him.
Speaker 1: And you know, he wasn't a great dad is in
Speaker 1: the prime as an actor. He was, like a lot
Speaker 1: of us, were consumed with his career. For him, it
Speaker 1: really started when he had his helicopter accident. He was
Speaker 1: seventy with a friend of helicopter and they hit a
Speaker 1: aerobatic plane and the when they were taking off, and
Speaker 1: the people near about plane crashed and died instantly, and
Speaker 1: he just was black and blue. Started him on this
Speaker 1: you know, why am I alive and this eighteen year
Speaker 1: old student pilot and the instructor dead. So he started
Speaker 1: getting back into his religious reading the town mood, reading
Speaker 1: the Old Testament, working with a rabbi, and has become
Speaker 1: a much more spiritual person. I am in so all
Speaker 1: of him in the third act of his life, what
Speaker 1: he's accomplished between seventy and ninety four, which is about
Speaker 1: nine books. Called him last week. The housekeeper said, he's
Speaker 1: down at the office. What the hell you doing down
Speaker 1: to the office. You know, he's well, I'm just finishing
Speaker 1: the editor of my last book. You've got another book,
Speaker 1: there's yeah, yeah, yeah, what what else? Because well, I
Speaker 1: got a book on sculptures. He said, well that's that's
Speaker 1: that's crete. It's really good. I look at him much
Speaker 1: more um as a father now because I'm you know,
Speaker 1: much less competitive with him. What did he do to
Speaker 1: you or not do for you? The positive or the
Speaker 1: negative that you've passed on to your children. The negative
Speaker 1: is you got to watch your quick temper. You think
Speaker 1: you had a temper like your dead No, no, I
Speaker 1: didn't have people people did. It was the reason why
Speaker 1: you saw, right, I think I realized now because he's
Speaker 1: a white Russian Jew, you know, Belarus and all of that,
Speaker 1: and well that and also he saw how much any
Speaker 1: Semitism there wasn't the world because people would talk to
Speaker 1: him as didn't know it was a Jew, how much
Speaker 1: she should not please come sit down, whether none of
Speaker 1: those people exactly would see that exactly exactly because he
Speaker 1: changed his name is not no longer Danielovitch. Not not
Speaker 1: as bad. I mean, I've I've learned to monitor it,
Speaker 1: or mean, to be aware of it. You used to
Speaker 1: have a short handle. I'm a lot better now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I don't care as much. That was there's things
Speaker 1: that you can control. Is that God grabbed me the
Speaker 1: serenity to accept the things that cannot change, and the
Speaker 1: courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom
Speaker 1: and all the difference. It's true. Mine was even worse.
Speaker 1: It was even more narcissistant. I was just angry because
Speaker 1: nobody else cared about it whenever it was as much
Speaker 1: as I did. I wonder what was your relationship like
Speaker 1: with your mom in terms of your career. What would
Speaker 1: you and she talk about? Well, my mother's English background,
Speaker 1: she was not so much the business she's She's very
Speaker 1: bright and it's probably more politely critical. Mia as an actor,
Speaker 1: that was that bad, not bad? What did you get
Speaker 1: from your mother? Your mother is in you diplomacy, the
Speaker 1: guy that could produce films. I think Jack Lemon said
Speaker 1: it when we were doing China Syndrome. He said, Michael,
Speaker 1: he said, it hits you with a thousand and powder puffs.
Speaker 1: You know, it takes that to produce, to be able
Speaker 1: to massage people and work with them and get people
Speaker 1: than confrontational in that way. And I think she has that.
Speaker 1: I think my father has made it more difficult for
Speaker 1: himself and his confrontational and this anger you know in
Speaker 1: his career. The positive side of Kirk is a sense
Speaker 1: of tenacity and stamina. My son is a cross country runner.
Speaker 1: Now your son's my ten year old son, Dylan ten
Speaker 1: years old, he's already starting a track stuff and your
Speaker 1: older son has had his problems. What's been your relationship
Speaker 1: with your son's alcoholism and drug addiction? UM? I think
Speaker 1: there's a certain genetic part, and I think as far
Speaker 1: as drug addiction, you know, your peer group plays a
Speaker 1: huge part of that. I'm of the belief that you know,
Speaker 1: fourteen years old, as a parent, you've lost a lot
Speaker 1: of your influence other people and by their peer group
Speaker 1: that triggers and starts it off. And then in my
Speaker 1: oldest son's case, there was no end until he was incarcerated. UM.
Speaker 1: I think secrets play a part in this, and the
Speaker 1: fact that whether it's a bad marital relationship that you're
Speaker 1: trying to keep from your children and the tension is
Speaker 1: there and you're not really kind of upfront, I mean
Speaker 1: this go route. I'm finding myself much more honest with
Speaker 1: my seven year old daughter than I ever thought I
Speaker 1: would be. Also, just because of what they have access to.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just watching Glee. It was, which is
Speaker 1: our family night. You know, I don't know why I'm
Speaker 1: so surprised. I am. I'm looking at it and and
Speaker 1: they're watching you right or wrong without without any kind
Speaker 1: of ratings on it. You know, two boys kissing each
Speaker 1: other and all that, besides the gay actually physically seeing
Speaker 1: things free for all. So I think in that way
Speaker 1: not keeping as many secrets. Isn't it funny how people
Speaker 1: men in particular who have I don't want to put
Speaker 1: the stellically who have played near the third rail sexually
Speaker 1: or very sensitive about them when the children are growing up,
Speaker 1: they're like, no, no, I don't need to watch that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean your dad has that great line. My son
Speaker 1: was sent to rehab for sex edition problem. How much
Speaker 1: did you inherit that? Which is this is what men
Speaker 1: are supposed to do? Um? Probably probably, I'm sure you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm watching. I mean my father has been
Speaker 1: very fortunate, second wife and his French and they've been
Speaker 1: married fifty six years, I think, and has a different
Speaker 1: had a different attitude earlier on he was a rascal.
Speaker 1: So you've been sick. What was your relationship to cancer
Speaker 1: before you had cancer, how was it in your life? Family? Friends?
Speaker 1: Never really nothing in my my my father remember had
Speaker 1: a little skin thing. My mother had again a slight
Speaker 1: skin issue, but no real history and out. I actually
Speaker 1: was right after I finished The Wall Street Money Never Sleeps.
Speaker 1: My throat was a little sore, and I thought maybe
Speaker 1: it was from you know, like from tension, from the
Speaker 1: part where you haven't placed your voice, where you're swallowing
Speaker 1: your words and your your speak from the back of
Speaker 1: your throat. So I saw doctors. I thought it was
Speaker 1: some sort of sore, and I had antibiotics, this and that,
Speaker 1: and then you know, I said, it went on for
Speaker 1: another couple of months. Your your general practitioner then sent
Speaker 1: you an experts. I go to your nosing throat guy
Speaker 1: the periodontis and this and that and another round of antibiotics.
Speaker 1: And then I went away for the summer and I
Speaker 1: was in Canada, and I called and said, something's going
Speaker 1: on here. How much time has passed? She first Now
Speaker 1: we're in August. And I first went to him in January.
Speaker 1: It was almost more than half a year. Half a
Speaker 1: year finding an ear nose and throat doctor at the
Speaker 1: Jewish Hospital in Montreal, Quebec, and he literally opened my
Speaker 1: mouth and he took a tongue to press it. And
Speaker 1: I'll never forget that moment when he looked up at
Speaker 1: me and looked back down, I knew and he said, well,
Speaker 1: I guess we're gonna have to take a biopsy biopsy
Speaker 1: of He said, well, there's a polyt here and it
Speaker 1: was on my tongue. Two days later he called me
Speaker 1: back in and said, you got cancer. For for head
Speaker 1: neck cancer, the best place was Sloan Cattering and I
Speaker 1: went down and within a week and found out that
Speaker 1: it was stage four, which is the maximum, so seven
Speaker 1: weeks of radiation and chemo. The reality is, with all
Speaker 1: the doctors that I could have here in New York,
Speaker 1: if I had been checked back in January for heading
Speaker 1: that cancer, this could have all happened a lot early.
Speaker 1: And the thing with cancers, you want to get it
Speaker 1: as early as you can. Because I want to mention
Speaker 1: that I came to this door, to your home here
Speaker 1: in New York, fully expecting you to look I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be very honest with you, not as great as you're
Speaker 1: looking at you look pretty damn good. I really, I
Speaker 1: got to go to Cross three. You're working your normal stuff.
Speaker 1: You look fantastic thing. I lost a little bit of
Speaker 1: way to help out, but you gotta you got a job.
Speaker 1: I don't know one the one advantage of this is
Speaker 1: you'm deciding I'm taking the rest of this year easy,
Speaker 1: enjoying my family and just take her easy. Now you
Speaker 1: had kids. So you had your son when you were
Speaker 1: how old? Should I have more kids? Yes. At that
Speaker 1: very moment, the doorbell rang, I think, I think here's
Speaker 1: my daughter. Wait a minute, wait a minute, this is Carris. Hello.
Speaker 1: Harris was coming home from school and she jumped into
Speaker 1: the chair next to her dad. Has she seen a
Speaker 1: couple of your films? At least I have hardly any
Speaker 1: movies that she can see. Julie and I and the
Speaker 1: other one The Stone. Don't really like my favorite movie
Speaker 1: about I Love You Well because a long time she
Speaker 1: didn't really know what I did. You know, she knew
Speaker 1: mommy because Chicago and all that. Mommy was an actress.
Speaker 1: The longest time. He didn't know it, said, tonight, my
Speaker 1: friend said, what did your dad do for a living
Speaker 1: in I said, he makes pancakes. And they were like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to a house I love. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Michael Douglas has temporarily turned in his spatula to play
Speaker 1: the lead role in Behind the Candelabra biopic on Liberace
Speaker 1: for HBO out in two thousand thirteen. Liberracci was a
Speaker 1: lovely guy. I mean the truth. I haven't played a
Speaker 1: lot of nice guys. This is Alec Baldwin. Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing is produced by Emily Botine and Kathy Russo, with
Speaker 1: support from Jim Briggs, ed Herbstman, Melanie Hoops and Monica Hopkins.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Trey k lu Okowski and Larry Josephson and
Speaker 1: the Radio Foundation. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing.