Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, 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. I look
Speaker 1: at every movie as a letter to myself, telling me
Speaker 1: something that I need to know about how to live
Speaker 1: my life. And I'm I'm only on some level making
Speaker 1: these movies to say, Judd, pay attention, Judd, live in
Speaker 1: the moment. She's actually my greatest, most clear scene critic,
Speaker 1: because she your most prevalent subject. If you painted her
Speaker 1: more than any other person. Yes, I've painted her in
Speaker 1: in disguised ways, and I've painted her in you know
Speaker 1: ways where you can see it's her. Artists often use
Speaker 1: their childhood and family life for inspiration. Today I talk
Speaker 1: with a painter and a movie director. Both men have
Speaker 1: drawn on their own families to create deeply personal art
Speaker 1: in very different styles. Eric Fischel was described in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties as a painter of the suburbs, but not
Speaker 1: the suburbs you might imagine. In a woman possessed, an
Speaker 1: unconscious female is sprawled out in a driveway surrounded by dogs.
Speaker 1: In Sleepwalker, a young man stands naked in a kittie pool,
Speaker 1: his hands between his legs. There's a lot of nudity
Speaker 1: Inficial's work, and not a lot of smiles. Judd Apataw
Speaker 1: is my first guest. His films include The forty year
Speaker 1: Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Funny People, which feature emotionally
Speaker 1: immature men forced to grow up after confronting sex, responsibility,
Speaker 1: and death. Okay, what kill me? What nobody knows? We
Speaker 1: know each other. You're a stranger. You can get away
Speaker 1: with this. I got a gun in the other room.
Speaker 1: It's untraceable. I'll give you fifty thousand dollars. Don't make
Speaker 1: me suffer. Please kill me, Ira, I'm begging you. Can
Speaker 1: you know it's give me like a night to think
Speaker 1: about it. Of all apataws movies, his most recent This
Speaker 1: is forty, released in December two thousand twelve, maybe his
Speaker 1: most personal. It stars his real wife, Leslie Man, and
Speaker 1: their own children, Maude and Iris, who play her kids
Speaker 1: in the movie. Here, Apataw's comedic point of view collides
Speaker 1: with marriage, work, and family. It sounds horrible, but do
Speaker 1: you ever wonder what it would be? Like if you
Speaker 1: your wife were separated by something bigger, will be death,
Speaker 1: like her death. I have given it a fair amount
Speaker 1: of thought, not any painful way, but just like a
Speaker 1: gentle floating off. It's got to be peaceful. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the mother of your children. And then the
Speaker 1: new wifes would be great. God, I can't wait to
Speaker 1: meet my second wife. I hope she likes me better
Speaker 1: than this one. Judd Apataw began studying the art of
Speaker 1: making people laugh as a kid when he would rush
Speaker 1: home from school to watch TV, sometimes from three thirty
Speaker 1: until after midnight. On the weekend. He'd record Saturday Night
Speaker 1: Live on audio tape and transcribe the show later to
Speaker 1: figure out what made it so funny. In high school,
Speaker 1: he had a radio show in which he interviewed comedians
Speaker 1: to learn as much as he could about their craft.
Speaker 1: I think talk about your type of comedy that you do.
Speaker 1: Comedians such as Gary Shandling, John Candy and Jerry Seinfeld.
Speaker 1: Some people just tell the joke like an observation and
Speaker 1: that's it. When you add a whole new dimension on it, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to see something, you know, and I
Speaker 1: think the next step is to do something with it. Now,
Speaker 1: in his mid forties, Apatow seems to have had his
Speaker 1: hand in nearly every successful comedy of the last seven years.
Speaker 1: He was a producer of Anchorman, super Bad, Bridesmaids, and
Speaker 1: is currently an executive producer of the hit HBO show Girls.
Speaker 1: But John Apatow still craves reassurance. I need constant approval
Speaker 1: of my writing as I'm doing it, So I will
Speaker 1: show people the first scene, the first ten pages people, anybody.
Speaker 1: I will show anybody. I literally will send it to friends.
Speaker 1: You know. Jake Kazan, who directed and produced on Freaks
Speaker 1: and Geeks and Undeclared, is one of the first people
Speaker 1: I show things too. But I'll show it to the
Speaker 1: studio because I don't like that moment when you have
Speaker 1: a finished script and you go, I wonder if they'll
Speaker 1: like it. So if I send them thousands of pages
Speaker 1: over the course of two years, they're so confused that
Speaker 1: there's not a moment of truth, and to bury the
Speaker 1: exactly and when it when it really gets down to it.
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham and I were working on Girls that was
Speaker 1: happening parallel to me making This is forty, so we
Speaker 1: would literally spend two hours breaking girls stories and then
Speaker 1: two hours talked about this is forty and then near
Speaker 1: the end I'll get the courage up to send it
Speaker 1: to like Eric Roth and James L. Brooks and Cameron. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's probably the biggest influence. I think his whole approach
Speaker 1: to stories is just imprinted in my mind from my
Speaker 1: childhood watching Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi. That's how I
Speaker 1: feel like stories work. Normal people with everyday, normal problems,
Speaker 1: trying to get along, trying to make their jobs, in
Speaker 1: their love and their life work. And his work always
Speaker 1: ends us some beautiful grace note which is always hopeful
Speaker 1: yet realistic. And I remember them from when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. How you know? There was a Taxi episode
Speaker 1: where Louis d Pamo was dating a blind woman and
Speaker 1: he was so in love and then she was having
Speaker 1: an operation to get her sight back, and he thought
Speaker 1: she's gonna dump me, you can see, And then of
Speaker 1: course she loves him and thinks he's beautiful, and as
Speaker 1: he walks out of the room, he throws something in
Speaker 1: the garbage and he says, I guess I gotta get
Speaker 1: a real ring. And I love how he would pull
Speaker 1: that off, so he's very helpful. And in the middle
Speaker 1: of this is for you, I emailed James Brooks and
Speaker 1: I said, remind me what the movie is about. Again.
Speaker 1: I forgot, and he sent me a long email saying,
Speaker 1: this is what your movie is about. So you kind
Speaker 1: of I'll let you say this, but it sounds to
Speaker 1: me like you swim in kind of a pool or
Speaker 1: a stream with a lot of people who make films,
Speaker 1: and you're and you're open to their suggestions and you're
Speaker 1: open to their ideas. If you talk to a multitude
Speaker 1: of people for their ideas, which ones do you? I mean,
Speaker 1: in the end, you decide. In the end, you choose.
Speaker 1: I've always had faith in my ability to make that call,
Speaker 1: so I don't mind a lot of feedback. It doesn't
Speaker 1: confuse me if everyone says something different. I mean, I
Speaker 1: come from television and rooms of people arguing about story,
Speaker 1: and my formative years were spent at the Larry Sanders Show,
Speaker 1: where you were a great guest and I one of
Speaker 1: the great early moments in my career was I wrote
Speaker 1: a bunch of those scenes and in the episode You're
Speaker 1: in and just saw it on TV the other day.
Speaker 1: I was home my favorite line, which was when Chandling
Speaker 1: goes to the wings of the stage when I'm on
Speaker 1: the set and I'm not quoting it properly, but rip says,
Speaker 1: what's the matter? He says, I can't help it. I
Speaker 1: keep seeing him having sex with my wife and he says,
Speaker 1: and she's on top, and Rips says, the lazy bastards.
Speaker 1: That's that is. I wrote that joke. I know I
Speaker 1: wrote that joke because I was so proud of that joke.
Speaker 1: And I remember when you came in to the first
Speaker 1: day of shooting and to do the quick rehearsal, and
Speaker 1: Gary was given you ship from the second you walk
Speaker 1: in the doors, like Alex, you need a lozenge, you
Speaker 1: need a lozenge, and you said, all right, that's how
Speaker 1: it's gonna be, Gary, That's how it's gonna be. And
Speaker 1: it's one of the great episodes. So so I think
Speaker 1: that was not your first job though. My first job
Speaker 1: I used to write jokes for comedians. I wrote jokes
Speaker 1: for Rosanne's Nightclub act for one. Why did you did
Speaker 1: you do stand up periodical? I did it for for
Speaker 1: seven years. It's all I wanted to do. But I
Speaker 1: very quickly realized I was better at creating sketches or
Speaker 1: dramatic situations to get my point across, and as a
Speaker 1: straight monologist, I wasn't interesting the way my roommate Adam
Speaker 1: Sandler was or Jim Carrey. Just as a fan, I knew, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not these guys. You really felt that were oh yeah?
Speaker 1: Because and then we were in l A. At the
Speaker 1: time I was in l A. I lived in North
Speaker 1: Hollywood with Sandler and how it was under two years
Speaker 1: and I mean it was the most fun time ever.
Speaker 1: Every time we see each other were like that was
Speaker 1: the best. You know. We were just so into doing
Speaker 1: stand up and back then Sandler wasn't famous, so he
Speaker 1: was really silly all the time and very obnoxious and
Speaker 1: trying to make strangers laugh. He really engaged the world
Speaker 1: for his own amusement, less to protect that he does now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He he just loved, you know, asking pulling people over
Speaker 1: to ask for directions in the car and doing something
Speaker 1: crazy to them. I mean it sounds ridiculous, but he
Speaker 1: was the guy that would fart in the elevator and go, Judd,
Speaker 1: come on, we're in an elevator. Uh. And that disappears
Speaker 1: when you get famous. So you brought up up there,
Speaker 1: you know, well, but you brought this up and I'm
Speaker 1: I can't say I'm glad you did. But in your movie,
Speaker 1: Paul Rudd is in bed with your wife. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: he's in bed with his wife, and to torment her,
Speaker 1: he just rips off a series of well placed like
Speaker 1: he's turning over cards in a game. He's like, he
Speaker 1: rips a couple of parts there. But you that's not
Speaker 1: how you live, right, Well, it's a that's a complicated scene.
Speaker 1: And what's funny about that scene is, uh, they're having
Speaker 1: a very serious conversation about their finances, which are not good,
Speaker 1: and they're watching security camera footage waiting trying to figure
Speaker 1: out who's stealing from them, and they see Megan Fox
Speaker 1: fooling around with someone at work and then Leslie says,
Speaker 1: at least she's getting some. And his reaction, after a
Speaker 1: few moments of feeling attacked is to just fart. It's
Speaker 1: like a monkey. It's kind of like saying, you know,
Speaker 1: screw you. And Rudd did it as an improv. It
Speaker 1: wasn't in the script. Yeah, it wasn't in the script.
Speaker 1: And Leslie knows, okay, if anything happens off page I
Speaker 1: need to go with it, and she's furious and you
Speaker 1: see it in her eyes and she's really genuinely disgusted,
Speaker 1: and you get kind of a real sense of what
Speaker 1: marriage is like. That's how complex marriage is. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: now the other question I have a propos of the
Speaker 1: movie was so I'm thinking, Rudd, it's either the highest
Speaker 1: honor or he's the goat because you're you know, you're
Speaker 1: lying in bed with your wife who has made a
Speaker 1: lot of great films and funny films, and you say, uh,
Speaker 1: what's your nickname for your wife? Can I ask called
Speaker 1: les Is it les Leslie? Well, the funny thing is
Speaker 1: I always call it Leslie And then she's like, Judd,
Speaker 1: my name's Leslie. It's not I literally say her name,
Speaker 1: it's Leslie. Leslie is when I'm in Cambridge now exactly.
Speaker 1: So you're there with her and you say to her,
Speaker 1: I'm just envisioning this scene where you look her and
Speaker 1: you say, baby, who's the guy that you like most
Speaker 1: want to have sex with? It was like, and just
Speaker 1: be honest with me. We've been together while we have
Speaker 1: two kids. You know, it's me. I'm making a film,
Speaker 1: and she says god, Paul Rudd, and I mean that
Speaker 1: you crossed his name off the list. I know he's
Speaker 1: never doing my film. Or is it like you put
Speaker 1: him in or do you say to baby, who's the
Speaker 1: guy that you view as like a brother, Like if
Speaker 1: you had sex scenes with him, this wouldn't mean be
Speaker 1: like like fooling around with your brother, Paul Rudd, that's
Speaker 1: where you go hire him. She's disgusted, uh, and and
Speaker 1: that makes it okay to watch them fool around. I
Speaker 1: I'm always disgusted when she fools around with anyone. I
Speaker 1: remember when we shot the Cable Guy, she kissed Matthew
Speaker 1: Broderick and then when they parted, I saw it in
Speaker 1: the dailies there was like a spit string that connected
Speaker 1: them for like a foot. And and so yes, I'm
Speaker 1: glad that unless they're lying about being disgusted by each other,
Speaker 1: because I may be the fool they are lyned. And
Speaker 1: that's terrible because I know because I've heard before, I've
Speaker 1: had my ex wife has got you know, Russell Crowe
Speaker 1: has got his tongue into her spinal for it, and
Speaker 1: she's like, no, no, it's just nothing, it's nothing. Well,
Speaker 1: the day I had a back surgery for a herniated
Speaker 1: disc back in the year two thousand. Leslie couldn't be
Speaker 1: there because Leslie, Sorry, Leslie, I couldn't be there because
Speaker 1: she was. She was shooting a scene where she was
Speaker 1: making love with Jeff Goldbloom, and you just know he's
Speaker 1: all handsy in between takes the fly. You know he's
Speaker 1: just for pushing buttons and a woman and you don't
Speaker 1: even know we're there exactly now. When you start a
Speaker 1: film like this, is there a fear when you begin?
Speaker 1: Do you think to yourself, Oh God, this is the
Speaker 1: one on all the wheels are going to fall off?
Speaker 1: Like what's your disposition when you start shooting? You know,
Speaker 1: I want to succeed because I just want to be
Speaker 1: allowed to continue making movies. I also have a rebellious streak,
Speaker 1: which is I do have some sense of what makes
Speaker 1: a very commercial movie, and I'm working partially against that.
Speaker 1: Like as the attention span of the audience gets shorter,
Speaker 1: I want to make longer movies to say there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with you that you can't sit for two film.
Speaker 1: I deliberately do it with all of them because I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, this is the only time we're
Speaker 1: going to get with these people? Why do you need
Speaker 1: to rush to get home? And I like movies like
Speaker 1: Jerry McGuire and in terms of endearment and movies that
Speaker 1: were over two hours, it takes an extra twenty minutes
Speaker 1: to explore, you know, more dimensions of people. So and
Speaker 1: said to me, you're basically saying these people are worth
Speaker 1: your time. And sometimes I watched the movie because I
Speaker 1: have to watch it hundreds of times, I think, wow,
Speaker 1: this is long. I'm really putting people through it. So
Speaker 1: on day one, I'm both trying to figure out, like
Speaker 1: marketing wise and concept wise, a way to make it
Speaker 1: sell while thinking I'm sneaking some John Cassavetti's Robert Altman
Speaker 1: aspect into a mainstream comedy. When when when you do
Speaker 1: a home like this as knocked Up begets this film?
Speaker 1: Does this film just right away? Do you start thinking
Speaker 1: of other ideas whether you do them or not? Just absolutely?
Speaker 1: I think that about most of the characters, I especially
Speaker 1: coming from TV. I love that there was Rhoda after
Speaker 1: Mary Tyler Moore or Fraser after Cheers. So anytime a
Speaker 1: character works, I could watch it, you know, I could
Speaker 1: watch uh, either of the leads of super Bad go
Speaker 1: off on their own, Michael Sarah's character or Jonah Hills
Speaker 1: or the cops. Once it exists, I'm kind of more
Speaker 1: depressed that we're not doing more stories. And that's just
Speaker 1: my whole thing. I don't like to let go. So
Speaker 1: if someone said they're gonna make a movie about what
Speaker 1: happened to Albert Brooks's character from Broadcast News, I'd be
Speaker 1: the happiest man in the world. Had you known Brooks,
Speaker 1: had you been acquainted with him and had worked with
Speaker 1: him before, and you did this movie with him. I
Speaker 1: met him in the early nineties when I was working
Speaker 1: at the Lark Sanders Show. I had dinner with him
Speaker 1: a couple of times with Gary, and I was and
Speaker 1: awe to be around him because his Saturday night live
Speaker 1: movies were really big influence on everything we did at
Speaker 1: the Ben Steelers Show. And obviously, you know, defending your
Speaker 1: life in modern romance and real life, you know, was yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the template for a certain type of you. And
Speaker 1: in the same sentence again, I was so excited to
Speaker 1: meet Albert that afterwards I went home and I wrote
Speaker 1: down every joke he said at dinner, like I still
Speaker 1: have like the journal entry where he's making jokes about
Speaker 1: the Menendez case. You don't kill your parents and buy
Speaker 1: a Rolex. You don't do that. So I wrote the
Speaker 1: part just for him, hoping it could be good enough.
Speaker 1: I never want to ask anyone that I look up
Speaker 1: to to be in my movie if I don't think
Speaker 1: it could be as good as their movies. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be their crappy movie. Now when
Speaker 1: with Brooks, when you work with people like that who
Speaker 1: are veteran, if you will are very experienced and have
Speaker 1: a bead tremendous success, what's that experience like for you?
Speaker 1: Was a director? Meaning? Do you do they come in
Speaker 1: and they just start riffing and and are they rewriting
Speaker 1: and improvising and you just let it go? Or do
Speaker 1: you sit there and you do find a way, a
Speaker 1: politic way to sit in My brother, to confine ourselves
Speaker 1: to this what's on the page, not specifically with him,
Speaker 1: but with any of them that come in, Well, I
Speaker 1: precious arre you about what you've written. Well, I'm never
Speaker 1: precious about anything other than my intention. So with Albert,
Speaker 1: obviously I'm terrified because I'm working with someone who's clearly
Speaker 1: more talented than me. So I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to manage my idea for the story and tap
Speaker 1: him for everything that he's worth. So I want him
Speaker 1: writing and thinking and pitching me. I mean, I spent
Speaker 1: a year in a room trying to think of an
Speaker 1: original character that he hadn't done before but that would
Speaker 1: still use, you know, his great comic sensibilities. And then
Speaker 1: I brought him into a rehearsal and we did the
Speaker 1: scene as written, We did ideas that I had, and
Speaker 1: then I just let him play and improvise and pitch
Speaker 1: me things. And obviously, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: if you were to like write down which are those
Speaker 1: lines are Albert's, you know, it becomes the majority, which
Speaker 1: is the intention to give him a space where he's
Speaker 1: comfortable enough to email me at night a better line
Speaker 1: which you would do with the die. Before any scene,
Speaker 1: I get a little email from Albert what if he said,
Speaker 1: did it? And it's always better than my joke in
Speaker 1: a minute, more from Jed Apatow, who's always thinking ahead.
Speaker 1: I have these like age issues. So I my friends
Speaker 1: are all forty five fifty, Okay, what is the movie
Speaker 1: we would make in our fifties and I'll five years ahead,
Speaker 1: begin to start flushing, start planning. I'm an like Baldwin.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. Take a listen to our archive
Speaker 1: more unexpected conversations with artists, policymakers, and producers like Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Lives Lord Michael's. Producing for me, anyway is like
Speaker 1: an invisible art. If you're any good at it, you
Speaker 1: leave no fingerprints and you own way you prove your
Speaker 1: worth is you leave a body of work and people go, oh,
Speaker 1: that accident happened there again, Oh I see. So you know,
Speaker 1: you try and get the best out of people. If
Speaker 1: you look around the room and you're the smartest person
Speaker 1: in the room, then you're in the wrong room. Here
Speaker 1: more from Michael's and those he discovered like Chris rock Aways.
Speaker 1: I haven't been having a poor day since I met
Speaker 1: Laura Michaels and I've never been broke. And here's the thing,
Speaker 1: Dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: here's the thing. When my guest Judd Apatow directed The
Speaker 1: forty year Old Virgin, he collaborated with an actor who
Speaker 1: dances on the fault line between insecure, juvenile and unapologetic adult.
Speaker 1: He was the perfect muse for Apatow's film about a
Speaker 1: middle aged man quest to finally have sex. I want
Speaker 1: to go out with you, guys, Okay, I don't need
Speaker 1: your help. Okay, fine, you don't have to go out
Speaker 1: with us if you don't want. You know what, I
Speaker 1: respect women. I love women. I respect them so much
Speaker 1: that I completely stay away from Okay. I was producing
Speaker 1: on Anchorman, and I hadn't directed a film before, but
Speaker 1: I knew that Steve Carrell was one of the funniest
Speaker 1: people I've ever seen. He was crushing so hard every
Speaker 1: day on the set that all the actors were baffled
Speaker 1: and how how funny he was. And he wasn't someone
Speaker 1: that was in line to be the lead of a movie.
Speaker 1: He was just one of the great, hilarious supporting actor people.
Speaker 1: And I always like, I like those guys to be
Speaker 1: the lead. I always want, you know, I want to
Speaker 1: see yeah, yeah, Well beyond that, I want to see
Speaker 1: George Went. I want to I want to I like
Speaker 1: seeing I like because that's who I feel like. I
Speaker 1: feel like the side guy, and I always want to
Speaker 1: follow them home. And so I said to Steve, do
Speaker 1: you have any ideas for mo vies, because you definitely
Speaker 1: could carry a movie. And he said, there was a
Speaker 1: sketch at Second City we did once that we never
Speaker 1: quite finished, which was about a poker game where they're
Speaker 1: all telling sex stories and it's clear that one guy
Speaker 1: has never had sex, and everything he says, it makes
Speaker 1: no sense. And he's saying, yeah, you know, like when
Speaker 1: it's such a girl's breast, it feels like a bag
Speaker 1: of sand and you go down your pants and there's
Speaker 1: all that baby powder, and and he said, so, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd love to play a forty year old virgin. And
Speaker 1: just because I'm such a nerd and so insecure and
Speaker 1: ashamed of everything in life, I just immediately understood what
Speaker 1: he meant and that you could do something very sweet
Speaker 1: and and riotously funny. So we wrote it together. Now now,
Speaker 1: so when you direct the film, how is the technical
Speaker 1: challenge for you? Or how is the technical aspects of
Speaker 1: it for you? Grown? Because it is filmmaking, and are
Speaker 1: you I like, do Mr and Mrs apple House sit
Speaker 1: in the screening room at nine and watch Citizen Kane
Speaker 1: and look at that there is a man. Look at
Speaker 1: the rack focus? You know, do do you watch scenes
Speaker 1: from films and say, that's what I want. There, It
Speaker 1: is right there, Leslie. That's not me at all, because
Speaker 1: I came from being a stand up comedian. It was
Speaker 1: all dialogue, it wasn't visuals, so I never tuned into that,
Speaker 1: and I have no brain for the technology, so I
Speaker 1: can't remember the lenses and what they do even now,
Speaker 1: Like what do you do? I hire people who are
Speaker 1: really good, like surrender all that to other people. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not a total surrender, because I will show them
Speaker 1: what I like. You know. I always I'm trying to
Speaker 1: model my work after movies like the last detail of
Speaker 1: the how Ashby movie or Coming Home. I like movies
Speaker 1: that feel almost like a documentary. I want you to
Speaker 1: forget I exist, and I'm trying to make it as
Speaker 1: voyeuristic as I can make it. In some ways, it's
Speaker 1: like Larry Sanders. I like that look for comedy. For
Speaker 1: what I do. Your kids are in your movie? You
Speaker 1: put your own chill room in the movie? True, and
Speaker 1: what effect does that happen to? Like do your kids
Speaker 1: now do they close their bedroom board? And they don't?
Speaker 1: They like, don't come in here without a script. We'll
Speaker 1: talk to me there is a little of Daddy. Why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you let me work for anybody else? And because
Speaker 1: I didn't put them in the movie to start a career.
Speaker 1: I just wanted this idea to work, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to capture a real family and have people on screen
Speaker 1: that look like they love each other. Do they want
Speaker 1: to make movies? Well, I was my ten year old.
Speaker 1: She literally will say I don't want to be an actress,
Speaker 1: so she's kind of cool. I think she probably wants
Speaker 1: to write. And then Maud is doing a lot of things.
Speaker 1: She's uh. She interviewed one direction for teen Vogue, and
Speaker 1: her acting is so good here that I am concerned
Speaker 1: that we'll get, you know, the call out of the
Speaker 1: Blue from James Cameron to ask her to ride a
Speaker 1: magical dragon for seven months, and then I have to
Speaker 1: say Mud, no, you actually yeah, you have to you
Speaker 1: have to finish school, and then she'll hate me for
Speaker 1: the rest of her life. I could have been at
Speaker 1: Avatar too, and you ruin it in said you want me,
Speaker 1: you want me to wait until I'm in This is fifty,
Speaker 1: so it's a it's a miscalculation based on my own
Speaker 1: greediness to capture how great they are from my movie
Speaker 1: with no you know, forethought of how it will affect
Speaker 1: their lives. But they did really enjoy making the movie,
Speaker 1: and they fought so much in the movie and in
Speaker 1: life that since the movie they've gotten along great Like
Speaker 1: It's almost like by playing out the drama of the
Speaker 1: ridiculousness of their sibling rivalry screen, they had to think
Speaker 1: through like why are we fighting? What is it about?
Speaker 1: And on some unconscious level they've gone easier on each
Speaker 1: other since we shot. It's so funny because that's the
Speaker 1: old actors tenant that gets passed onto you that every
Speaker 1: role you play, perhaps embedded in that role is an
Speaker 1: opportunity for you to say goodbye to some party or
Speaker 1: sol if you don't like I think that's true. I
Speaker 1: I look at every movie as a letter to myself
Speaker 1: telling me something that I need to know about how
Speaker 1: to live my life. That I'm I'm only on some
Speaker 1: level making these movies to say, Judd, pay attention, Judd,
Speaker 1: live in the moment, because I am, you know, a
Speaker 1: detached writer who who needs to be brought into the moment.
Speaker 1: And a lot the movie when it was finally done,
Speaker 1: what was her comment to you, uh in the beginning,
Speaker 1: she worried if it didn't end happy enough, and now
Speaker 1: she she really loves it. And I kind of like
Speaker 1: that it has that question mark at the end, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard work. It's gonna be hard work,
Speaker 1: but they love each other and it's definitely worth it.
Speaker 1: I think that sometimes she, you know, worries that it
Speaker 1: could go slightly darker by like four percent than it
Speaker 1: needs to, where I like that question mark of you know,
Speaker 1: we're all struggling, but it's okay, that's what life is.
Speaker 1: And still people say I'm resolving it too much, so
Speaker 1: you can never walk that line. Some people want it
Speaker 1: so dark and some people are so pissed. It's not
Speaker 1: all jokes, so you know, I'm always in the middle.
Speaker 1: Writer director Judd Apatow says he's still wonders what's left
Speaker 1: to say. Don't worry, Judd, Turning fifty will give you
Speaker 1: more than enough material for a sequel. My next guest
Speaker 1: is an artist who, like Apataw, explores some of the
Speaker 1: more peculiar sides of what it means to be human.
Speaker 1: But unlike Apataw, his work isn't meant to make you laugh.
Speaker 1: Eric Fishel is known for powerful and provocative paintings, most
Speaker 1: notably Bad Boy. In it, a naked woman lies on
Speaker 1: a bed, a young boy is standing in front of her,
Speaker 1: his hands behind his back, and he seems to have
Speaker 1: taken something from her purse. Official grew up in the
Speaker 1: privileged country club culture of North Shore of Long Island,
Speaker 1: but his mother suffered from depression and alcoholism and committed
Speaker 1: suicide when Fisher was twenty two. After decades of living
Speaker 1: in New York City, he and his wife, painter April Gornick,
Speaker 1: now live full time on eastern Long Island. In his
Speaker 1: recent autobiography, Bad Boy, My Life On and Off the Canvas,
Speaker 1: Official covers his youth the art world, his own struggles
Speaker 1: with depression and substance abuse, and his thoughts about the
Speaker 1: creative process. He was in the first undergraduate class at
Speaker 1: cal Arts, a place that was known for experimentation in
Speaker 1: all forms, orgies, drugs, but most importantly conceptual art. It
Speaker 1: would be some time before official, skill, talent, and voice
Speaker 1: found a home in realism. I started out being trained
Speaker 1: as an abstract painter. You know, if you you were
Speaker 1: going to be a painter, you should be an abstract painter.
Speaker 1: So I tried. What it turned out was that every
Speaker 1: abstract painting I made felt like it was absolutely the
Speaker 1: last painting I could make. Then at some point I
Speaker 1: started to work with figures and with narrative and language
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and it flowed. That's when I
Speaker 1: realized I was now doing the work that I was
Speaker 1: supposed to do, that that I was built for. And
Speaker 1: then it was a matter of getting better at it
Speaker 1: and you know, perfecting it, honing it, etcetera. Was the
Speaker 1: river I thought of you doing something else creatively. Music
Speaker 1: was out of the question because I haven't toned deaf years,
Speaker 1: so and then no way I could do that. I
Speaker 1: was in a a play in eighth grade in which
Speaker 1: it was called It's Cold and Them Lar Hills, and
Speaker 1: I played this hillbilly named Zeke, who didn't speak through
Speaker 1: the entire play, but was on stage the entire time
Speaker 1: until the very end, when I had this like big
Speaker 1: speech where I proclaimed my love for this person who
Speaker 1: didn't know I was even present the girl, and I
Speaker 1: get the girl, But it was like spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time kind of being present and absent at the
Speaker 1: same time. Was actually a profound experience for me. But
Speaker 1: it it didn't lead to me wanting to do with
Speaker 1: the next play or to do that. And I've actually
Speaker 1: become much more of a public person over the years,
Speaker 1: and it was a lot easier for me to in
Speaker 1: private have my thoughts and feelings and and you know,
Speaker 1: sort of express them before anyone ever saw them. And
Speaker 1: so I could actually control the form of expression before
Speaker 1: it entered the world. Yes, exactly. But my sensibility is
Speaker 1: very much I think, consistent with you know, an an
Speaker 1: actor's sensibility and a director's sensibility, and in that sense of,
Speaker 1: you know, understanding what a dramatic moment actually is, where
Speaker 1: where meaning is present. My work is based on or
Speaker 1: that as a source material photographs. I did a project
Speaker 1: once where actually used actors. I was given a house,
Speaker 1: Miss Vandorot house and craigfelt Germany to uh do some
Speaker 1: kind of interaction with the house. I never worked with
Speaker 1: actors before, and so I went to friends who were
Speaker 1: in the business, you know, writers, playwright, screenwriters, whatever, directors
Speaker 1: to give me some ideas that like, how do you
Speaker 1: talk to an actor, what gets them going, etcetera. Because
Speaker 1: I had no clue. The simplest advice came back from
Speaker 1: Mike Nichols, who said, I'll give them problems. They love problems,
Speaker 1: and I said, what the hell is a problem? They said, no,
Speaker 1: you know she wants to borrow five hundred bucks from him,
Speaker 1: but you won't tell him. Why why just give him that,
Speaker 1: You'll see right. I was like, okay, I would give
Speaker 1: him a problem, and I was surprised at how fast
Speaker 1: I could tell that the problem I gave him wasn't
Speaker 1: an good. They couldn't get animated, and they were just
Speaker 1: like it wasn't achieving the desire to felt they were.
Speaker 1: They were just dead. It was like nothing. Their body
Speaker 1: couldn't even move hardly. And at the same time, when
Speaker 1: I gave him something, they could really bite their teeth into.
Speaker 1: For example, I did sleep with you, but you have
Speaker 1: to break up with their boyfriend. The thing is the
Speaker 1: female actress had like zero interest in him, but she
Speaker 1: was very professional, and so we're going to do the
Speaker 1: bedroom stuff and I set up some stuff in there
Speaker 1: and it really wasn't working. It was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: there was something. They were dressed in evening clothes. It
Speaker 1: was late to come home. You know, he's drunk. She's
Speaker 1: hoping that you know, they could have some sex. Maybe
Speaker 1: he's you know what, it can't kind of get it together.
Speaker 1: It was lame. So he gets up and he goes
Speaker 1: off to the bathroom or something like that. And so
Speaker 1: I say to her, look, take off your clothes, get
Speaker 1: in the bed. You're a wild animal. Whatever you do,
Speaker 1: don't let him in the bed. Now, this bed that
Speaker 1: I had chosen was like a modernist bed that had
Speaker 1: this igloe of a mosquito netting over it, so it
Speaker 1: made like a cocoon or something like that. At tent.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, she like curls up into this
Speaker 1: incredible kind of creature and then like pushes herself against
Speaker 1: the end of the wall and and and it's like
Speaker 1: just sitting there waiting, right, and he comes back into
Speaker 1: the room, and now he sees her in the bed.
Speaker 1: She's naked. It's like, oh, we're getting some how, We're
Speaker 1: getting somewhere, right. He takes his bathrobe off and walks
Speaker 1: over to the netting. He starts to lift it up,
Speaker 1: and she comes flying across the bed one leap and
Speaker 1: smashes him in the face. Right, And he's like whoa.
Speaker 1: And then you got a whoa. This could be fun
Speaker 1: and you've got good images. I got great images also
Speaker 1: that Yeah, yeah, they did a whole dance around getting
Speaker 1: in and out of the bed, and when he finally
Speaker 1: got in, she slipped out, and you know it reverse
Speaker 1: the roles and stuff, and that was that. But do
Speaker 1: you find that this carries through insofar as you know
Speaker 1: a painter? And this is my view. This is not
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is a commonly health view, but
Speaker 1: this is my view, and that is the work I do.
Speaker 1: A It requires an audience and also somebody giving you
Speaker 1: a role, right and someone and exactly someone unless you
Speaker 1: were self producing. But for you, my view of it
Speaker 1: as I'd sit there with and look at painters and
Speaker 1: I think, God, how much I envy them that you
Speaker 1: sit in a room and you're totally self generating and
Speaker 1: you do exactly what you want to do, and then
Speaker 1: you send it out into the world and say if
Speaker 1: you like it, great, If you don't, I really don't
Speaker 1: give a shit. You know, it's completely un self conscious
Speaker 1: in that way unless you're doing a commission. And do
Speaker 1: you feel that I don't give a ship as a
Speaker 1: protective a response. I think it's like, God, I hope
Speaker 1: they liked they oh, sure, yeah, but I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't believe any painters sitting there pretending that they only
Speaker 1: do the work for themselves and stuff. They're they're they're
Speaker 1: seeking some kind of resonance, some some response. Yeah, have
Speaker 1: you Have you ever done a painting and you were mistaken,
Speaker 1: meaning you did a painting And I'm being very melodramatic here,
Speaker 1: but you did a painting and you were done, even
Speaker 1: you said, good God, official, you've done it. There it
Speaker 1: is there, you have it. And then and the painting
Speaker 1: did not succeed in one term, and then other times
Speaker 1: you sat there and said the opposite, this is a
Speaker 1: piece of crap in it was one of your most
Speaker 1: successful has that happened, Not in the extreme, But I've
Speaker 1: certainly done paintings that I thought were better than they
Speaker 1: were received. And I've certainly had the experience where I've
Speaker 1: seen paintings that I didn't think were so good when
Speaker 1: I did them and see them ten years later and go,
Speaker 1: you know, that actually isn't that bad. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: But now it with people that you photograph, manipulate, paint,
Speaker 1: whatever verb you want to use for the work you do,
Speaker 1: and the stages of the work you do. How much
Speaker 1: would you say you're a view of people, because I think,
Speaker 1: like most men, we have this in common, which is
Speaker 1: this kind of relationship of your mother. And if you
Speaker 1: have a good relationship with your mother, let's say you
Speaker 1: want to replicate that and have a terrible relationship with
Speaker 1: your mother. You want to find someone is the opposite
Speaker 1: of your mother, or you want to restage the drama
Speaker 1: with your mother. As a therapist, one said to me,
Speaker 1: we want to restage that in our lives, and you
Speaker 1: get all the good lines now. So I think all
Speaker 1: art expression is in some way trying to correct a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. And if you're trying to put some
Speaker 1: clarity to it, some order to it, make it makes sense.
Speaker 1: You know, how would you think that you're you? You're
Speaker 1: very candid about your mother, who was obviously very ill.
Speaker 1: You know, she's a very sick woman, and that plays
Speaker 1: out on her behavior. Um, she wasn't a mean spirited
Speaker 1: wom she was she was just completely control And how
Speaker 1: would you say that? Colored? Because count to three when
Speaker 1: you read the book and your bell bottoms and hate
Speaker 1: Ashbury and you're into a very kind of summer of love.
Speaker 1: Sixty six, I thin, Because when you head out to
Speaker 1: the West Coast and you're in the thick of it,
Speaker 1: how do you think, what did you carry out there
Speaker 1: with you in terms of your idea about women, what
Speaker 1: you wanted or well I had to you know, sort
Speaker 1: of two kinds of relationships with women. One one was
Speaker 1: I was attracted to women that were absolutely bad for me.
Speaker 1: They opened up that void, you know, just emptiness that
Speaker 1: in a way that was like yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was full of passion and it was full of
Speaker 1: you know this, you know, found need and stuff like
Speaker 1: that was very emotional and very short lived. And then
Speaker 1: the other kind of woman was one where you know,
Speaker 1: they were really stable, reliable and reliable, and yeah, I
Speaker 1: married them. You're married to April. I married I was
Speaker 1: married once before and stable and stable enough. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: then yeah, I married April and you know for the
Speaker 1: last thirty some odd years. Yeah. Did your work change
Speaker 1: in sync with your attitude toward love and relationships? It
Speaker 1: did with time. You know, the early relationship with April,
Speaker 1: for example, we were both young artists, really trying to
Speaker 1: find our voices, trying to understand who we were. I
Speaker 1: was dealing with the wounds of the past as opposed
Speaker 1: to the you know, the present with her. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't apparent then other than the stability of our relationship
Speaker 1: gave me the courage to look into these other Well,
Speaker 1: you know, she's incredibly bright, She's somebody that can multitask
Speaker 1: in a in an emotional way. Do you have children?
Speaker 1: Do you think that that was partly because of what
Speaker 1: your childhood? Yeah, I think we're both. April and I
Speaker 1: had a lot very traumatic things that passed that made
Speaker 1: that that seemed dangerous. There there was a point at
Speaker 1: which I felt like I could handle having kids, but
Speaker 1: April wasn't there yet. And the one thing I wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna do was insist that we do it my way
Speaker 1: because I know what that she was only going to
Speaker 1: indulge you so far. Yeah, and and or or it
Speaker 1: was going to break her down in a way that
Speaker 1: I couldn't bear. So, you know, it passed. M hm. Now,
Speaker 1: in the book your Father, he went that route that
Speaker 1: a lot of dads go, which is he just wants
Speaker 1: to give you the safe advice. Yeah, his parental duty
Speaker 1: was to say to you, you know, let's be reasonable now.
Speaker 1: And he told you to go to get a business
Speaker 1: did your father live to see you become a great success?
Speaker 1: He did? Yeah, my my mother didn't. My father did
Speaker 1: He He actually didn't understand what success was in art anyway,
Speaker 1: that he'd kind of given up by then, right, So, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: She would a very very kind of icy relationship with
Speaker 1: it was. It was volatile and complicated. But you know,
Speaker 1: he he really didn't know anything about art, so he
Speaker 1: didn't really know anything about what success in art was.
Speaker 1: And back then, you know, success and fortune were not
Speaker 1: connected to each other in the art world. You you
Speaker 1: could be highly successful, you know, shown in museums around
Speaker 1: the world, and and they'll be doing a teaching job
Speaker 1: or driving a taxi or something to do it. So
Speaker 1: he was perplexed that I would even be in a
Speaker 1: field in which there wasn't a monetary reward necessarily, right.
Speaker 1: But at some point he started to see my name
Speaker 1: in print, and that was something that he understood as success.
Speaker 1: And then he really flipped from from sort of disengagement
Speaker 1: to the proud parent who you know. We we'd go
Speaker 1: into a grocery store and at the checkout, country guard,
Speaker 1: you know who this is my son. This is the
Speaker 1: artist that he take the clipping out of his wallet exactly.
Speaker 1: This is from the New York Times. That's E R
Speaker 1: I see F I s h L. Well, you know
Speaker 1: he uh, he became an artist at the end of
Speaker 1: his life as well. He he discovered collage, and it
Speaker 1: took him a while after he retired to find He
Speaker 1: tried other things, and then all of a sudden he
Speaker 1: found himself like sitting in his office at home cutting
Speaker 1: pictures out and gluing them together. And by the time
Speaker 1: he died, I had realized that he and I could
Speaker 1: never talk to each other. We just kept missing, you know,
Speaker 1: but we understood each other visually, and so he would
Speaker 1: send me his collages and I knew exactly what he
Speaker 1: was thinking about, where he was at, how he was feeling,
Speaker 1: and he showed me that he was had been using
Speaker 1: my paintings to understand what had happened in our lives
Speaker 1: with my mother and the whole family dynamic. So it
Speaker 1: was it was deeply rewarding to me ultimately too. But
Speaker 1: it took me a while to understand that they were
Speaker 1: talked to about your paint and his painting. Well at first,
Speaker 1: I mean he didn't he talked to me about success.
Speaker 1: You know he could see and be enthusiastic for this
Speaker 1: show and that show, etcetera, etcetera. But there was this
Speaker 1: uh thing that happened. There was I think, um, you know,
Speaker 1: really blew my mind, which was that I had done
Speaker 1: a painting called a Woman Possessed. And it was a
Speaker 1: painting of a woman outside the suburban home, drunk, passed
Speaker 1: out in the driveway, surrounded by these dogs that were like,
Speaker 1: you know, beasts from hell were you know, some were
Speaker 1: sniffing her somewhere, growling at at the sun. Who had
Speaker 1: could just come home from school. The school books are
Speaker 1: on the ground, his bicycles flipped over, he hopped off
Speaker 1: his bike. So this boy is trying to pull her
Speaker 1: away from these dogs and her demon dogs. I I
Speaker 1: showed the painting in Toronto and the and the critic
Speaker 1: described it in the most beautiful terms. He understood it
Speaker 1: as as a painting that revealed the profound pain of love,
Speaker 1: of loving someone, right, And he wrote extensively about it.
Speaker 1: And so you know, proud son sends it to my father,
Speaker 1: and unbeknownst to me, my father sends the review of
Speaker 1: off to my siblings, right, and my younger sister Lori
Speaker 1: writes back a letter to him. She's furious, why is
Speaker 1: he trying to make her remember this painful time? You know?
Speaker 1: And he shared these letters to me. I didn't know
Speaker 1: they were having until the whole communication came to me,
Speaker 1: but he shared to me her response and then his
Speaker 1: response to her, in which he revealed that he had
Speaker 1: been actually using my paintings the whole time to understand
Speaker 1: emotionally what had been happening in our lives and stuff,
Speaker 1: and that he was just trying to heal something, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to bring her into it as well, into two,
Speaker 1: into a kind of healing process, and to acknowledge his awareness, yeah,
Speaker 1: which which took me completely by surprise, and that that
Speaker 1: he had been seeing the work as deeply as he had,
Speaker 1: you know, revealed, which is what I intended I hope
Speaker 1: for you, Yeah, exactly. Coming up, Eric Fischel shares his
Speaker 1: thoughts about art, commerce and love. I make a painting
Speaker 1: out of love, and I'm seeking love in return. I
Speaker 1: want that to come back in that way. Right, So
Speaker 1: somebody gives you money, right, on one hand, you think, well,
Speaker 1: that's an expression of love. They want to possess your work,
Speaker 1: so so they're they're expressing in love, but money doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like love because it's a neutral currency. Now I
Speaker 1: have to change that money into something that tells me
Speaker 1: how much love I just got back. This is Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. My guest
Speaker 1: today is Eric Fischel. For years, he and his wife
Speaker 1: worked out of their downtown Manhattan studio. He says the
Speaker 1: city of the nineties was the perfect place to develop
Speaker 1: his craft. However, for official, developing a tolerance for the
Speaker 1: business of art has proven more difficult. I do these
Speaker 1: works on paper that oil on paper, their sketches. They're
Speaker 1: a great pleasure for me to do. Some of them
Speaker 1: lead to painting, some of them don't. But it's it's
Speaker 1: an activity that I do. And uh, there was a
Speaker 1: time when they would be sold, you know, for like
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars, and then you know, ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and I uh, at some point on the secondary market
Speaker 1: they were selling for a hundred thousand dollars. So you
Speaker 1: go back into the studio and you're, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: making my sketches and stuff like that, and I'm looking
Speaker 1: at and thinking, well, why not do a couple more,
Speaker 1: you know, why not? You know, it's like all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, they're starting to turn into currency, you know,
Speaker 1: and which is a totally different sort of way of
Speaker 1: thinking about and how much and how hard is it
Speaker 1: for you to resist? Because I was joking with a
Speaker 1: friend of mine and I said, what it must be
Speaker 1: like in your world where you're completely self determining, where
Speaker 1: you're completely self generating, I get kind of amazed. I
Speaker 1: sit there and say, Eric Fisher is the kind of
Speaker 1: guy where if he and April are like laying there
Speaker 1: in bed on Sunday, I mean, I have a very
Speaker 1: kind of a silly improv comedy view of April Gornick
Speaker 1: and Eric Fisher are lying in bed on a Sunday
Speaker 1: reading the New York Times, and she turns in and goes, Eric,
Speaker 1: I'd so love to go Hella skiing. And You're like, sure, baby,
Speaker 1: let's go Hell. And you go out and you paint
Speaker 1: a painting hell of skiing trip. I mean, like, like,
Speaker 1: you can you can just go do a painting. You're
Speaker 1: Eric ficial and running out the door, whether you like,
Speaker 1: Like how hard this fantasy that when my muse left
Speaker 1: me I would still be able to make product right,
Speaker 1: that I that that I wouldn't be making art anymore,
Speaker 1: but I'd be making things that look like art, and
Speaker 1: that that was okay, right, And so there were times
Speaker 1: in my process where I got stuck. I I the
Speaker 1: inspiration was gone, and I was sure that it now,
Speaker 1: you know, I mused my inspiration and had left right
Speaker 1: a total blockage kind of thing. And what I found,
Speaker 1: to my horror, was that it didn't just leave my head,
Speaker 1: it left my hand, and that I actually couldn't paint anymore.
Speaker 1: I I couldn't draw, I couldn't make something look like something,
Speaker 1: and that was terrifying. Right, That's that's like your worst nightmare.
Speaker 1: And so I have that memory, which keeps it gives
Speaker 1: me somewhat, you know, focused on on staying to true
Speaker 1: to my ultimate goal. So you're there. So what's the
Speaker 1: longest period you went you didn't paint. It's it's not
Speaker 1: so much that I didn't paint. I kept trying like
Speaker 1: a bulldog one and I just keep trying to go
Speaker 1: through it. It's just it's dead, dead, dead. So my
Speaker 1: question for you is do you find that And I've
Speaker 1: seen this with myself and other people, where when the
Speaker 1: muse goes away when you lapse into a period of
Speaker 1: product versus art. When the artist, and that's a very
Speaker 1: real condition, struggles. I found people where it affects them
Speaker 1: in many ways. It affects their appetite, their sexual appetite,
Speaker 1: their physical health, their emotional health, their sleep. I mean,
Speaker 1: it really really really damages them and it hurts them.
Speaker 1: Have you gone through periods of that where you were like, really, really,
Speaker 1: I thought you were losing it? Would you doet out
Speaker 1: of it? I ultimately painted the way out of it?
Speaker 1: But you know, rely relied a lot on April to
Speaker 1: you know, keep me sort of above. So you bring
Speaker 1: me to where? So you bring me to where are
Speaker 1: the One of our last two questions is, let's go
Speaker 1: to Halifax and you meet April And where are you
Speaker 1: at your life when you meet April? And what happened?
Speaker 1: I'm twenty seven years old or something like that. I'm
Speaker 1: teaching at this art school. It actually is a very
Speaker 1: sort of advanced thinking, a place that like cal Arts
Speaker 1: where I went to school, Nova Scotia College of Art
Speaker 1: and Design was also sort of based on the most
Speaker 1: radical art of the moment um anti painting. So they
Speaker 1: hired me as a young, untested teacher, simply because they'd
Speaker 1: fired somebody mid semester, needed someone right away. They could
Speaker 1: care less about painting, so they took a risk on
Speaker 1: this guy based on what my former teacher had recommended.
Speaker 1: I get this job. I'm in Halifax, Nova, Scotia. I
Speaker 1: go up there with my wife at the time, spend
Speaker 1: three months teaching there. She lapsing into a deep depression
Speaker 1: because she she's rootless and being ignored. And I'm following
Speaker 1: you basically and following me, and I'm not sensitive enough
Speaker 1: to it. You know what that sacrifice was. And you know,
Speaker 1: we moved back to Chicago in the summer and I
Speaker 1: get rehired, and she announces she didn't want to go
Speaker 1: back and our marriage is over. And that following year,
Speaker 1: I meet April. I didn't plan on falling in love.
Speaker 1: I just planned on having sex. And shame on you
Speaker 1: error call me shallow. Anyway, one thing led to another,
Speaker 1: and and what it was was I was actually going
Speaker 1: through a very sort of complicated set of emotions for uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I had never mourned the death of my mother.
Speaker 1: I had just broken up with, you know, split with
Speaker 1: my wife kind of thing. I was now falling in
Speaker 1: love not wanting to with April. My work was going
Speaker 1: through a transition where I was giving up the artists.
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to be for the artist
Speaker 1: I ultimately became. And that period of doubt threw me
Speaker 1: into a kind of series of anxiety attacks panic modes
Speaker 1: where I really began to have some serious psychological issues.
Speaker 1: I was dissociating and you know, and ended up on
Speaker 1: you know, any psychotic medicine and stuff like that to
Speaker 1: stabilize me. Meanwhile, I'm teaching. Meanwhile, you're up showing these young,
Speaker 1: impressionable minds the world through your lives. Let me show
Speaker 1: you the world through my clumb up and soaked eyes.
Speaker 1: And I was only a couple of years older than
Speaker 1: them to begin with. Your young teach and I had
Speaker 1: I had never been taught technique. So I'm teaching you
Speaker 1: do Georgie thing like your teacher were doing at cal Arts.
Speaker 1: Was that or that day come and gone that day?
Speaker 1: You know, to some extent, I was definitely going through
Speaker 1: several women in the in the student body, but not
Speaker 1: all at the same moment. But um, it was a sacrifice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a you know, it's a small isolated
Speaker 1: community that winters are harsh up there Skilligan's Island. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when the skipper runs into Ginger and Marianne, we
Speaker 1: can only talk about the weather for so many times
Speaker 1: because then the title charts, So go ahead. So the
Speaker 1: skipper runs into Ginger and marian Yeah, and ultimately ran
Speaker 1: ran into April. And uh, she stuck with me through
Speaker 1: this time, which was really difficult, and in a kind
Speaker 1: of way that you know, I just couldn't imagine there
Speaker 1: being anybody else. She's actually my my greatest, most clear
Speaker 1: scene critic, your most prevalent subject. If you paint her
Speaker 1: her more than any other person. Yes, yeah, I've painted
Speaker 1: her a lot. I've painted her in in disguised ways,
Speaker 1: and I've painted her in ways where you can see
Speaker 1: it's her. Um. So, now you are a very well
Speaker 1: known man. You and your wife are a very admired
Speaker 1: couple in a community that you live in. And I
Speaker 1: want to ask you, uh, you know, a why do
Speaker 1: you live out here? Particularly you could escape, like a
Speaker 1: lot of great artists, finally won't have real anonymity in peace.
Speaker 1: You can go live in Italy or anywhere you want
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah. I think there was a moment a
Speaker 1: while back where I kind of looked around and went, oh,
Speaker 1: my god, you know this is this is where I
Speaker 1: grew up. I'm in a different relationship to it. But
Speaker 1: I but it's definitely, you know, more of a suburban
Speaker 1: than an urban environment and a and a suburban kind
Speaker 1: of rhythm to it. But everybody needs a sense of community,
Speaker 1: needs a sense of place where where they belong. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: I grew up on Long Island. You grew up on
Speaker 1: Long Island. I used to come out here in the summertime.
Speaker 1: It's familiar territory, etcetera. It seems natural in a way
Speaker 1: to want to be here. Ah. So is it safe
Speaker 1: to say, just to conclude this, if you will, that
Speaker 1: the eponymous bad boy of the title still has his doubts,
Speaker 1: still has his anxiety, still has his fears and issues,
Speaker 1: and so he just just learned to handle them differently.
Speaker 1: I think that's true. Yeah, absolutely, they don't go away.
Speaker 1: I thought that the older you got, the easier, at God,
Speaker 1: it turns out the opposite. We just learned how to
Speaker 1: manage it. You just manage it. Yeah, Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: Eric Fischel's work Hangs and Museic ms and galleries around
Speaker 1: the world and on our website Here's the Thing dot org.
Speaker 1: And if you happen to find yourself in New York City,
Speaker 1: you can see his glass mosaic entitled The Garden of
Speaker 1: Circus Delights beneath Madison Square Garden in Penn Station officials
Speaker 1: inspiration for the piece Dante's Inferno Here's the Thing. You
Speaker 1: can hear more in depth conversations in our archive, from
Speaker 1: artists to policymakers to performers like Radioheads frontman Tom Yorke
Speaker 1: on performing. You know, I often asked myself, why the
Speaker 1: hell would you put yourself through this? Because it's very stressful.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of pressure, and for me mentally, I
Speaker 1: just build myself up to it in my head gradually
Speaker 1: and it sounds really precious, but it messes with my head.
Speaker 1: Listen to more at Here's the Thing dot org. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Produced by Emily Boutine and Kathy Russo with Chris Bannon,
Speaker 1: Jim Briggs, ed Herbstman, Melanie Hoops, Monica Hopkins, Trey Ka,
Speaker 1: Sharon Machee, and Lou Okowski. Thanks to Larry Josephson and
Speaker 1: the Radio Foundation,