Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: The genius who shot the dark, evocative interiors of The
Speaker 1: Cone Brothers Blood Simple also created the city scape of
Speaker 1: Big and the intimacy of When Harry Met Sally. That
Speaker 1: cinematographer is Barry Sonnenfeld, who, as if to show off,
Speaker 1: followed up When Harry Met Sally with genre defining images
Speaker 1: of terror and claustrophobia in Misery. Then that same cinematographer
Speaker 1: left cinematography and became one of the most successful directors
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. The year after Misery, Sonnenfeld's directorial debut, The
Speaker 1: Adams Family, was released, two huge box office success. Sonnenfeld
Speaker 1: went on to direct the brilliant mob comedy Get Shorty,
Speaker 1: The Men in Black Trilogy, and Some Wonderful TV. His
Speaker 1: triumph in two different jobs on set is rare in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider how very different the roles of
Speaker 1: director and cinematographer are supposed to be. I called myself
Speaker 1: not a cinematographer, not a DP. I called myself the
Speaker 1: friend of the director. So I would just as easily
Speaker 1: talk to a director about an actor's energy. You know how,
Speaker 1: after lunch they're always uh the first takes are always
Speaker 1: too slow because everyone's eating lunch and all that. Or
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, I would think about how
Speaker 1: it was going to edit. So I was never just
Speaker 1: a cameraman. And some people really like that. Who's an example.
Speaker 1: Who's an example of one that did like that? Okay,
Speaker 1: Danny de Vito, the Coen Brothers, not Penny Marshall? Uh?
Speaker 1: Rob did? Rob Reiner? Did? I heard you wouldn interview? Said?
Speaker 1: Penny said she was. She wanted to fire you. But
Speaker 1: so who was it that said don't fire you? Danny? Yeah? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The second week of I'm Big every morning, Penny started
Speaker 1: today with a dozen white castles and a carton and
Speaker 1: Marlborough cigarettes. And so the second Monday of shooting, she
Speaker 1: came up to me at seven am with the white
Speaker 1: castle in her mouth and said, I tried to fire you,
Speaker 1: but they wouldn't let me. I said, who wouldn't let you, Penny?
Speaker 1: They wouldn't let me. She says, I called Danny because
Speaker 1: she was friends with Danny through uh what's his name,
Speaker 1: Jim Brooks, you know that that group. And she said,
Speaker 1: I asked Danny if you were good, and uh, he
Speaker 1: said you are, but I don't think so. So that
Speaker 1: was how we got God. Yes, she really didn't like
Speaker 1: she was vigorously honest, Penny. She was very honest, but
Speaker 1: she she hit her honesty in mumbling. She was a
Speaker 1: genius in mumbling, so that if you wanted to hear
Speaker 1: what she said, you did. But if you didn't want
Speaker 1: to hear, you could pretend you just didn't hear her,
Speaker 1: which is what four year old children do you do?
Speaker 1: Bloods Simple is that the brothers first movie, the first
Speaker 1: did you know run away? That they had the recipe? Yes,
Speaker 1: but don't forget. It was my first day on the
Speaker 1: feature film set. Also, I had never shot anything before.
Speaker 1: Why did they hire you? Okay? Joel and I were
Speaker 1: at the same party. It was a party that was
Speaker 1: specifically people from Dairy Anne, Connecticut. All their parents owned
Speaker 1: coal mines in Pennsylvania and islands in the Caribbean. And
Speaker 1: there were two Jews at the party, Me and Joel.
Speaker 1: We didn't know each other at film school or anything
Speaker 1: like that, and we kind of smelled each other across
Speaker 1: the room and we started to talk. And Joel and Ethan,
Speaker 1: his brother, had written the script for Blood Simple, and
Speaker 1: they were going to shoot a trailer as if it
Speaker 1: were a finished movie and then show it to dentists
Speaker 1: and doctors and investment clubs, because if you see a trailer,
Speaker 1: you can say, yeah, that looks like a real movie.
Speaker 1: So also they were going to shoot a trailer and
Speaker 1: then use a trailer to raise money. And I said,
Speaker 1: I own a camera, and Joel said, you're hired. So
Speaker 1: I shot their trailer. Before there was video, there was
Speaker 1: sixteen millimeter, which was the cheaper way to go and
Speaker 1: set a thirty five. And when I got out of
Speaker 1: graduate film school, I figured if I bought a used
Speaker 1: sixteen millimeter camera, I could call myself a cameraman without
Speaker 1: being a dilettante, because I actually had a camera. You know,
Speaker 1: the Vietnam cameras is sixteen millimeter cameras that looked like
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse with the big around cylinder. So I owned
Speaker 1: used one of those, and so Joel and Ethan and
Speaker 1: I spent the year raising the money for Blood Simple,
Speaker 1: and then we went down to Austin and shot it.
Speaker 1: And the first day on the set was the first
Speaker 1: day Joel Ethan or I had ever been on a
Speaker 1: movie set. But you would go into film school with
Speaker 1: an eye to spending three years without having to be
Speaker 1: in the job market. I had no interested in film.
Speaker 1: I just thought if I was in graduate school, I
Speaker 1: didn't have to look for a job killing time. I
Speaker 1: really wanted to be a still photographer. But but but
Speaker 1: I'm want to get back to this thing about the Collins.
Speaker 1: So so it's the first day on the set for
Speaker 1: all three of you. You're down there in Austin. When
Speaker 1: you went into that process the first time and he
Speaker 1: came out the other end, what changed for you because
Speaker 1: you kept going, yes, I must say everything changed. You
Speaker 1: have to Blood Simple. Uh. It got great reviews, critical
Speaker 1: cult hit. Uh Rea Pearlman, Danny's wife went into labor
Speaker 1: while watching Blood Simple. Danny told me years later, and
Speaker 1: suddenly I was a real cameraman. In fact, Janet Maslin,
Speaker 1: who wrote the review in The New York Times, said
Speaker 1: that the Cohen brothers were going to be huge successes,
Speaker 1: and she particularly the whole last paragraph is about my
Speaker 1: cinematography and it mentions me by name, and it was shocking.
Speaker 1: It was just phenomenal, as because Raising Arizona when that
Speaker 1: came out. This is back in the days when I
Speaker 1: used to read Sine asked magazine and Premier, which was
Speaker 1: kind of fair with the people magazine of the movie business.
Speaker 1: They talked about blankie cam. Yes, there was a blank acam.
Speaker 1: There was a shaky cam. The blank acam was me
Speaker 1: laying on a blanket holding a camera as I was
Speaker 1: directed to the dog that's right chasing them. That's bike
Speaker 1: Acamville was laying on the blanket being pulled towards, hurtling
Speaker 1: towards the victim that's right in the scene. And you
Speaker 1: are the POV of the dom the POV you know,
Speaker 1: Spinney cam with the camera. Yes, yeah, when Nick cages
Speaker 1: sort of, we put Nick on this device and put
Speaker 1: mounted the camera to his back and spun him around,
Speaker 1: him around. Uh. Shaky cam is camera mounted on a
Speaker 1: two by twelve with me at one end, in Joel
Speaker 1: Cohen on the other end, and us running. Because it's
Speaker 1: so long two by twelve, we could run up to
Speaker 1: and then lift the board up over a fountain, a car,
Speaker 1: up a ladder, through a window into Florence. Arizona's a math.
Speaker 1: So we did all these. His idea of both Sam
Speaker 1: Raimie's idea. Sam Raimie used to shaking camel lot on
Speaker 1: his first Evil Dead, and Joel was the assistant editor
Speaker 1: on Evil Dead. But you know what, I always say
Speaker 1: that right now, we could have shot Raising Arizona with
Speaker 1: modern equipment for ten times a budget and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: look any different, right, not as good to tell you
Speaker 1: the truth. Necessity, the mother is a mother. Um, when
Speaker 1: you're on the set with these people, how much do
Speaker 1: they know about lenses shooting do they? And which do
Speaker 1: you prefer? The knowledgeable director in terms of cinema or
Speaker 1: someone who to students you would say, what do you
Speaker 1: want to do? You want someone who has strong opinions
Speaker 1: because then you know that they know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: You don't want someone who says, do whatever you want
Speaker 1: you really do. Penny truly didn't know lenses. So I
Speaker 1: would say, you know, we'll start on the rug and
Speaker 1: Tom's feet will come in and we'll boom back, and
Speaker 1: then we'll discover that he's no longer a boy. Great,
Speaker 1: and then we I line up the shot, show Penny
Speaker 1: the shot and she goes, I see his feet, but
Speaker 1: where's his head? I said, well, you know, we'll reveal
Speaker 1: what She would say, well, yeah, but I want to
Speaker 1: see his feet and his head and you go right,
Speaker 1: but then you're wide because if you're seeing his feet
Speaker 1: and his head, he's six ft tall. And she'd go,
Speaker 1: I don't understand what you're doing, but would let me
Speaker 1: do it? And it was. It was a nightmare, really was,
Speaker 1: and I didn't enjoy the experience, even though I got
Speaker 1: to put the camera wherever I wanted. Was hit, huge hit,
Speaker 1: and it was the fourth movie after you know, it
Speaker 1: was eighteen again with Judge Reinhold. There was oh god,
Speaker 1: there were a series of movies about body switching comedies
Speaker 1: that came out right before us, and we were the
Speaker 1: fourth one. And we assume the movie was going to
Speaker 1: be uncuttable because it was. It was really hard. He
Speaker 1: was great, and we really enjoyed working together. I think
Speaker 1: it got a little bit um tends at the very
Speaker 1: end of misery. I'll tell you why. Rob was always
Speaker 1: saying I should direct, and I kept saying I had
Speaker 1: no interest in directing, but I really you know, Kathy
Speaker 1: Bates and I loved each other. Every every morning we
Speaker 1: would meet and she would say, hey, son, and felt
Speaker 1: f you, and I'd go, f you, Kathy, And you know,
Speaker 1: it was that kind of relationship when and we both
Speaker 1: and everyone hated Jimmy con Rob and I hated Jimmy
Speaker 1: so much that when one day Jimmy said, Hey, Rob,
Speaker 1: how far do you want me to crawl? And Rob
Speaker 1: said to me back, how far should he crawl? And
Speaker 1: I literally spit on the floor and I said to
Speaker 1: their and Rob said, crawled to the loogie Jimmy, Yes,
Speaker 1: curl to the lugi Jimmy so uh so. And then
Speaker 1: at the very end the last two weeks of Miseries,
Speaker 1: when when I told Rob I might become a director,
Speaker 1: I think the last two weeks, suddenly my friend of
Speaker 1: the director thing became a oh, Barry thinks he's a
Speaker 1: director thing. It was it was Barry's changed. And at
Speaker 1: the end of Misery we didn't talk to each other
Speaker 1: for a couple of years. And then Sweetie and I
Speaker 1: were Mr Chows in Beverly Hills name dropping thing, and
Speaker 1: um I saw Robin Michelle eating a couple of tables away,
Speaker 1: and I went up and I said, Hey, should we
Speaker 1: be friends again? And Rob said absolutely, and just like that,
Speaker 1: and Sweetie was nervous, what's going to happen? I said,
Speaker 1: but you know what? Yeah, And it was like that
Speaker 1: who are actors you worked with? Who when you were
Speaker 1: shooting with him as a director or DP that you went,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what a great opportunity. This is Kathy Bates,
Speaker 1: Kathy Bates and Misery. In fact, Kathy was my idea.
Speaker 1: Rob wanted Bette Midler for the role and I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, maybe, but you should see Kathy. I
Speaker 1: had seen her in Night Mother on Broadway and she
Speaker 1: was extraordinary and Rob hired her. So Cathy was. Kathy
Speaker 1: was one of those actors that until the take, no
Speaker 1: matter how if she was supposed to cry or be furious,
Speaker 1: would just joke around. There was no method acting, there
Speaker 1: was nothing. We just goof around and then it would
Speaker 1: be action. Turn it on and then turn it on.
Speaker 1: And here Shirley McClain was like that, but I don't
Speaker 1: mean playful and silly. But Meryl was somebody that access
Speaker 1: is what she wants to access very handily for the
Speaker 1: most part. So Kathy was great. Um when as a DP,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's interesting because as a d P,
Speaker 1: I never really got actors and I never really understood
Speaker 1: what they needed. And I always felt they were a
Speaker 1: little bit of the enemy because they would rehearse looking
Speaker 1: this way, so you'd light with the key light being,
Speaker 1: you know, to the left, and then they would come
Speaker 1: in and shoot it and they would do something totally different.
Speaker 1: So I remember one night on when Harry met Sally,
Speaker 1: we had a very long walk and talk on West Broadway.
Speaker 1: It was probably a hundred yards, and we laid track
Speaker 1: because I never liked steadicam endless track. We had a
Speaker 1: two and ten ft lighting condor, really huge set up,
Speaker 1: and it was Bruno, Carrie, Billy and Meg and it's
Speaker 1: a four shot with no coverage. And during the rehearsals
Speaker 1: they didn't know their lines, so they're talking slowly and
Speaker 1: but now they go to hair and makeup, they've learned
Speaker 1: their lines, and now they're racing through it and they're
Speaker 1: going eighty feet past where I'm lit. And I remember
Speaker 1: going to Rob and I said, hey, Rob, you know
Speaker 1: they're they've got a up here and hit their mark.
Speaker 1: And Rob would try to get Meg to hit her
Speaker 1: mark and it never worked, and I realized, here's what
Speaker 1: to do. So instead of saying to Meg, can you
Speaker 1: really hit that mark? I said, hey, Meg, stop wherever
Speaker 1: you want. If you happen to stop here, your lit beautifully,
Speaker 1: and then she would stop there every time, so I
Speaker 1: had to make it give her reason why she wanted
Speaker 1: to stop there, as opposed to why I needed her
Speaker 1: to say. That's incredibly significant to me because I always
Speaker 1: prided myself what I called my triangulation with the camera.
Speaker 1: The joke version is I put my hands on the
Speaker 1: shoulders of the guy and be like, now, Bob, listen
Speaker 1: to me, and I jerked him out of my lights
Speaker 1: right right, Bob, You've got to listen to me. You've
Speaker 1: gotta understand, and you might him over, you know whatever
Speaker 1: I would do to a comedy to get the shot
Speaker 1: that's right. At what point do you begin to really
Speaker 1: burn with the passion if you will to direct? I
Speaker 1: had no passion to direct. I was in l A
Speaker 1: finishing the color timing on Misery, which ended up being
Speaker 1: the last movie. No, no, I'm sorry. The last two
Speaker 1: weeks of shooting, I remember now and Sweedie and I
Speaker 1: were at the Four Seasons Hotel on Doheny watching the
Speaker 1: Indianapolis five in bed and the phone rang and the
Speaker 1: front dusk said, Scott Ruden has just dropped off a
Speaker 1: script for you. He wants you to read. Read it.
Speaker 1: And meet him at in two hours. That hugoes, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you ever eat. Of course, to Hugo
Speaker 1: all the time in West Hollywood, the pasta with the
Speaker 1: scrambled eggs. So and there was this nose saying, read this,
Speaker 1: I want you to direct it. It was Adams family.
Speaker 1: That's right, I read it. It wasn't very good. I
Speaker 1: said to Sweetie, this isn't good. She says, you'll make
Speaker 1: it better. Scott will make it better. I had known
Speaker 1: Scott a little bit, and this is why he wanted
Speaker 1: me to direct it. He went to Terry Gilliam and
Speaker 1: Tim Burton and they both passed on Adam's family. Scott
Speaker 1: told me at lunch he would rather have of visual stylist.
Speaker 1: And he was ahead of Paramount Productions when I shot
Speaker 1: Big and and Raising Arizona, so he knew I could
Speaker 1: could shoot and had a very specific point of view,
Speaker 1: like you were saying that the camera can be sort
Speaker 1: of a character in the show, you know. So he said,
Speaker 1: all the good directors passed, so I figured I'd give
Speaker 1: you a chance. But which is all? That's right. I've
Speaker 1: been there before now. I directed one movie. I hated
Speaker 1: every minute of it. I hated it. Here's what I did.
Speaker 1: I looked at and you you mentioned him earlier, but
Speaker 1: I looked at what Jan da Bant did. Gordon Willis
Speaker 1: shot a movie called Windows, Bill Freaker shot Legend of
Speaker 1: the Lone Ranger. These are all famous dps. John Alonzo
Speaker 1: who had shut Chinatown, and Farewell, My Lovely Great Cameraman
Speaker 1: shot f M. None of them directed a second movie.
Speaker 1: And the reason was they all moved up their camera
Speaker 1: operator d P, which means they didn't want to give
Speaker 1: up the camera, right, So by just not hiring a
Speaker 1: good cameraman, they would still be in charge of the camera.
Speaker 1: They didn't do for a d d P what a
Speaker 1: director had done for that. That's right, that's right. So
Speaker 1: what I did is I said, I need the greatest
Speaker 1: cameraman I can find, so I'll never say, shouldn't at
Speaker 1: ten k go over there? So I hired a really great,
Speaker 1: cranky guy named Owen Roisman, who shot you know, um
Speaker 1: oh Tutsi and millions of many, many great films. And
Speaker 1: I said to and I said, look, I'll never get
Speaker 1: involved in your lighting. I just want you to agree
Speaker 1: to a couple of things. One is I want Angelica Euston,
Speaker 1: who played more Tisha, to have her own motivated light.
Speaker 1: I don't care if she's standing right by the window,
Speaker 1: that's not where the light should come from. She's in
Speaker 1: another zip code. She should look like a herral. So
Speaker 1: Owen loved the idea, and I said, and I would
Speaker 1: like to design the shots because I know how I'm
Speaker 1: going to edit it. And he said, makes it easier
Speaker 1: for me. So to this day, from Adam's family, through
Speaker 1: a series of unfortunate events, whenever I say cut, check
Speaker 1: the gate, even though there's no longer a gate to
Speaker 1: check the cameras has enhanced me the viewfinder and I
Speaker 1: line up the next shot. The thing is, when you're there,
Speaker 1: you're first film with Ruden, when you're in pre production
Speaker 1: making the film, does he defer to you when you
Speaker 1: wanted Raoul Julia, and you wanted this one and this
Speaker 1: one and this one. Okay, so we agreed on Raoul
Speaker 1: and Angelica. We totally disagreed on Wednesday. I really wanted
Speaker 1: Christina Ricci and he wanted this other girl who had
Speaker 1: hyper thyroid eyes that looked more like raw Julia. And
Speaker 1: luckily David Reuben, who is a casting agent, agreed with me.
Speaker 1: But here's how I doubt it. Ruden Ruden. I love
Speaker 1: Here's my quote about Ruden. I love him and I
Speaker 1: wish he were dead. Um uh, you know Nick and
Speaker 1: tonys in him. Of course. I saw Robert Benton eating
Speaker 1: dinner with his wife Sally, and I knew that he
Speaker 1: was flying the next day with Scott Ruden to London
Speaker 1: for Nobody's school. And I went up to Benton. I
Speaker 1: had never met him before. They were both at Nick
Speaker 1: and we were finishing dinner at nick Cantons. They were
Speaker 1: studying a great guy, lovely, and I went up to
Speaker 1: him and I said, excuse me, you don't know me.
Speaker 1: My name is Barry's son and fell I just wanted
Speaker 1: you to know that I know you're flying to London
Speaker 1: tomorrow with Scott Ruten. I just wanted to tell you that,
Speaker 1: even though you're brilliant director Places in the Heart, Cramer
Speaker 1: Versus Cramer, all these movies, I so want your plane
Speaker 1: to go down in a flaming wreck where you survived,
Speaker 1: but Scott Rutten dies. And literally he looked at me
Speaker 1: and said, sit down, young man, and what's you're sweetie?
Speaker 1: Oh welcome, And we became friends for decades, so Ruden
Speaker 1: was Ruten was very difficult, very brilliant. He really didn't
Speaker 1: care about the lodgect. He didn't understand shooting visually. I
Speaker 1: remember there was a setup that I wanted to play
Speaker 1: in a Master because sometimes if you look at screwball
Speaker 1: comedies like His Girl Friday Sturgis comedy plays in the Master, right,
Speaker 1: you see action and reaction in the same shot. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: let me have to hear her throw in a magazine.
Speaker 1: My favorite line in the Marks Brothers movie when Crouse
Speaker 1: she gets thrown into a bathroom. But in any case,
Speaker 1: um so I set up the shot and it only
Speaker 1: worked without inserts or close ups, because like Charles Adams's cartoons,
Speaker 1: you want the audience to find a joke, right. You
Speaker 1: don't want to say, here's the punch line in a
Speaker 1: close up, and Ruden insisted I cover it. I said, okay, well,
Speaker 1: let me get the master perfect so I don't have
Speaker 1: to have the coverage. And I got it perfect, and
Speaker 1: then I moved in for a close up and he said,
Speaker 1: what are you doing. I said, well, you want me
Speaker 1: to cover it? He said, no, it's perfect. So he
Speaker 1: just has to be proved to show him, And the
Speaker 1: secret to working with Ruden is to out juvenile him.
Speaker 1: So when we had a fight in pre production, I
Speaker 1: would remove all of his couches cushions and build a
Speaker 1: fort and crawl into the fort, close the last pillow
Speaker 1: and yell, I can't hear you. I'm in the fort.
Speaker 1: And what was great about Scott is he totally accepted
Speaker 1: the sanctity of the fort. He would never pick up
Speaker 1: a pillow and say, schmuck, there is no fort. He screamed,
Speaker 1: get out of the fort. But he would never just
Speaker 1: pick up. He respected the fort. And eventually you say,
Speaker 1: all right, fine, just get out. We'll talk about it.
Speaker 1: I just worshiped Raoul. I mean, was he everything that
Speaker 1: I thought he was? Yes? He was. He loved being alive,
Speaker 1: he loved himself, he loved acting, he loved women. I
Speaker 1: remember asking him we were having dinner one night, uh
Speaker 1: in l A, and I said, would you ever direct?
Speaker 1: And he said, why would I want to direct? I'm
Speaker 1: gonna act and he meant it. And I remember on
Speaker 1: Adam's Family Values, this is scene where Raoul is really
Speaker 1: angry and he's throwing darts and lurches holding the dartboard
Speaker 1: and moving it around because Raoul is so angry he's missed.
Speaker 1: You know, he's not throwing it right, So Lurch is
Speaker 1: like holding it up and he keeps getting bull's eyes
Speaker 1: but it's knocking off of walls and we we rehearse it,
Speaker 1: and Raoul said, very let me ask you a question.
Speaker 1: You know, Gomez is a perfect marksman. Even if he's angry,
Speaker 1: he would hit or drunk, he would hit a bull's
Speaker 1: eye every time. He wouldn't bang off from walls and lambs,
Speaker 1: and Lurch wouldn't have to. This is Gomez. Gomez doesn't
Speaker 1: need that. And I go, well, here's the thing, Raoul,
Speaker 1: and he said, right, the thing is, it's not funny,
Speaker 1: so let's keep going. So he wanted me to know
Speaker 1: that what we were doing was wrong, and that he
Speaker 1: was so smart he knew it was wrong, but then
Speaker 1: he was okay with it. So he was fantastic. When
Speaker 1: I see that film Joan Cusack, I mean, who in
Speaker 1: the world is funnier than Joan Cusack. No, nobody, And
Speaker 1: I said to John, because Joan has an amazingly hideous laugh.
Speaker 1: It's like a cackle. And I said to her, and
Speaker 1: she was single at the time. I said, someday someone
Speaker 1: is going to fall in love with you because of
Speaker 1: that laugh, and once they marry you, they're going to
Speaker 1: hate you because of that laugh. She was so game
Speaker 1: and so winning, and her whole Malibu Barbie speeches brilliant.
Speaker 1: And my favorite moment is, Uh, Joan blows up her
Speaker 1: house to kill faster, and there's a close up of
Speaker 1: her sort of weeping, and without any cut, she goes
Speaker 1: from weeping to my favorite scene, which says, off, sir,
Speaker 1: my husband was in the house. That's right, and she
Speaker 1: does the laugh. Then she comes out of the car. Help.
Speaker 1: I of that movie. I love I love, love love
Speaker 1: that movie. Another Hollywood double threat is the man Stanley Kubrick,
Speaker 1: persuaded to leave a promising acting career and work behind
Speaker 1: the scenes instead Leon the Tally as a favor to
Speaker 1: Kubrick after his star turn in Barry Linden. The Tally
Speaker 1: was doing some casting work and locations scouting for The Shining.
Speaker 1: The master director was pleased. Towards the very end, just
Speaker 1: before we came home, he rang me and uh, and
Speaker 1: he said, what are you planning on doing after you
Speaker 1: finished here? And I said I don't know. He said, okay,
Speaker 1: then you're coming to London, now, is it? I mean
Speaker 1: suddenly I I'd got a job. You can get a
Speaker 1: link to my full interview with Leon the Tally and
Speaker 1: the man who made the documentary about him by texting
Speaker 1: the Tally that's v I T A L I to
Speaker 1: seven zero one zero one. Barry Sonnenfeld gets personal coming up.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. Now
Speaker 1: back to my conversation with director Barry Sonnenfeld. You're a
Speaker 1: funny guy, and I'm wondering when you did which I
Speaker 1: actually liked to meet, even though there were some mixed
Speaker 1: reviews and you had mixed success with Wild Wild West.
Speaker 1: I liked Wild Wild West. I know I did. I
Speaker 1: mean when I movie came out of watching and I go,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of good things in this movie. What
Speaker 1: was it like for you working with His Royal Highness
Speaker 1: Kevin Klein. Here's the challenge with Kevin. You need one
Speaker 1: straight man and one funny man. You need Gracie Allen
Speaker 1: and George Burns. You don't want to Gracey Allen's so
Speaker 1: Will Smith. Will was very much on board with that theory.
Speaker 1: One straight man, one funny man and Kevin refused to
Speaker 1: not be the funny guy. Will was supposed to be
Speaker 1: the funny guy. Kevin was supposed to be the artemists,
Speaker 1: the straight, straight ahead guy. So because Will knows the
Speaker 1: way I like to work so well, after a week,
Speaker 1: Will came up to me and said, hey, bas He
Speaker 1: called me, bas Um, I think I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to be the straight man and I said, I think
Speaker 1: you are too. So that was one challenge. The other
Speaker 1: challenge was that we had Kenneth Brana playing loveless. The
Speaker 1: challenges that Kevin Klein and Kenneth Bruna both think they're
Speaker 1: the greatest living Shakespearean actor. Therefore one of them they
Speaker 1: have Shakespeare offs. They Kevin would literally come onto this
Speaker 1: set saying a rose by any other, pardon me, though,
Speaker 1: bleeding piece of earth, that I am meek and gentle
Speaker 1: with these butchers. That would be Kevin. That would be Kevin.
Speaker 1: So is a real challenge. There are things about that
Speaker 1: movie I really like, but it was it was hard
Speaker 1: because Kevin was difficult and Kevin felt he was slumming.
Speaker 1: Kevin really didn't want to be there. He didn't want
Speaker 1: to be in a comedy. That kind of comedy he's
Speaker 1: a really great actor, and he's a really funny act.
Speaker 1: Was he enthusiastic about the film in the beginning and
Speaker 1: then he found that it was something else? Or no,
Speaker 1: I think it was a paycheck. It was a paycheck.
Speaker 1: It was and it was a big paycheck. And it
Speaker 1: maybe the first time we ever and probably the last
Speaker 1: time he ever got some sliver of gross. So they
Speaker 1: thought that was going to like move him off. Um,
Speaker 1: you and I have a profound thing in common. You
Speaker 1: may not find it that profound, but I do, which
Speaker 1: is that my grandfather who had no money but was
Speaker 1: a philadelist and a new mismatist of a very you know,
Speaker 1: certain level. He didn't have any money, but he would
Speaker 1: find liberties and mercury duns and put him in the books.
Speaker 1: And I had a big box, a couple of boxes
Speaker 1: of these coins that my mother then sold and she
Speaker 1: goes and she sells these things. And it was one
Speaker 1: of the most painful moments of my life when my dad,
Speaker 1: who his father had given me boxes the first date covers.
Speaker 1: My grandfather traveled around because of what he wound up doing,
Speaker 1: was he wound up being a consultant, a legal consultant,
Speaker 1: to race tracks. He gave me a box of these
Speaker 1: first date covers, but boxes of them. There were, there
Speaker 1: were hundreds of them, and he collected these coins and
Speaker 1: my mother sold all the coins. And then my dad
Speaker 1: turned to me one day, I'll never forget with my dad.
Speaker 1: He wanted to see I can't. I can't to this day,
Speaker 1: I can't understand what he wanted to put me through
Speaker 1: because it was a test to see what. I throw
Speaker 1: my mother under the bus and they were estranged at
Speaker 1: that point. And my father looked me and goes, that
Speaker 1: box with all those coins that my father gave you,
Speaker 1: that's still upstairs in your closet, isn't it. And like
Speaker 1: a movie, like a horror movie, like a Hitchcock movie.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, yeah, it's all there. Uh last
Speaker 1: night looked it's all there. And he just stared at
Speaker 1: me like, she got you too, She got you too.
Speaker 1: You're lying to me, and I know what she's been doing.
Speaker 1: And your parents sold your coin collection, right, my I
Speaker 1: and you remember the coin collections, those books with that
Speaker 1: semi circles so that the queen could Yeah, exactly, So
Speaker 1: I had twenty two silver dollars they roll from the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. Each one was worth between twenty five and
Speaker 1: fifty bucks. We had no electricity, so Dad took my
Speaker 1: twenty two silver dollars, went to con Ed and used
Speaker 1: them as dollars to get our electricity back on. But
Speaker 1: of course it was always hey, where are my silver dollars?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think Raphael must have stolen them.
Speaker 1: Raphael was my neighbor one flight below, my best friend
Speaker 1: growing up, so there was a lot of weird stuff
Speaker 1: like the same with me with my sister said I
Speaker 1: want to borrow the ring that grandpa gave you I
Speaker 1: was a teenager. I said, what do you mean. She
Speaker 1: goes that gold signet ring that said HE or I
Speaker 1: be not worth very much money, and she goes, I
Speaker 1: want to wear it to my prom I said, you
Speaker 1: want to wear my ring that she's is? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's a very beautiful ring. It's Grandpa's initials two
Speaker 1: and I want to wear it. She comes back from
Speaker 1: the from the prominx that she said, I lost a ring. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: But your family life is complicated. Everyone's family's life is complicated.
Speaker 1: I don't think you know my my theory, and my
Speaker 1: wife hates me for saying this is that no one
Speaker 1: asks to be born, and it's you'll never do a
Speaker 1: good enough job as a parent, no matter how hard
Speaker 1: you try. I'm okay, but I'm not great. My parents
Speaker 1: were kind of lousy. They were good people, but terrible parents.
Speaker 1: But uh so, I had my issues. You know, my
Speaker 1: both my parents who are narcissistic. My father had a
Speaker 1: lot of affairs. My mother was deeply depressed, would constantly
Speaker 1: threaten suicide. You know, she's how many siblings you have?
Speaker 1: Only child, Jewish? Only child? Not good? You know. The
Speaker 1: title of the book Barry Senterfeld, Call Your Mother, is
Speaker 1: based on the fact that I was at a Madison
Speaker 1: Square garden at the first Peace concert. It was two
Speaker 1: twenty in the morning. Jimmie Hendrix is warming up for
Speaker 1: the second time, and over the p A system, as
Speaker 1: Jimmy is about to start playing, comes the announcement Barry Son,
Speaker 1: if I'll call your mother. And being the garden, you know,
Speaker 1: they're very good at chanting. And I was in the
Speaker 1: upper deck, you know, the blue seats. See here, Bady bad.
Speaker 1: How old were you seventeen? I was a senior at
Speaker 1: music in around high school and it was to twenty
Speaker 1: in morning and that Washington Heights, and so I immediately
Speaker 1: stand up, so everyone knows it's me. And I'm now
Speaker 1: weeping because I know my father is dead, and that
Speaker 1: means I'm going to be living with my mother for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life because she can't function. Um,
Speaker 1: So I get to the pay phone. I put in
Speaker 1: the dime. I called Watsworth eighth. My mother is crying
Speaker 1: because she thinks I'm dead because it's too twenty and
Speaker 1: I promised i'd be home by two. Hi, Mom, who died?
Speaker 1: I thought you died? Well, did they tell you the
Speaker 1: concert was still going on? Yes, but they couldn't confirm
Speaker 1: you were there in the garden, in the garden of
Speaker 1: six your people. But my mother had this amazing strength
Speaker 1: through weakness ability. I mean the fact that someone could
Speaker 1: reach anyone at the garden and then convinced him that
Speaker 1: it was so important they had to page me while
Speaker 1: Jimmy Hendrix is about to play. That's pretty amazing. My
Speaker 1: version of that quickly is that there was a neighbor
Speaker 1: of ours. She was getting a degree in something and
Speaker 1: she administered i Q test the children in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: She went to my mother, she said your son tested
Speaker 1: at a genius level and for his age. I'm seven
Speaker 1: years old, so what does that mean? I'm a genius.
Speaker 1: I can pick out the not the yellow tennis ball
Speaker 1: from the white tennis But later on I'm playing baseball.
Speaker 1: This was the being of my existence. My O c
Speaker 1: D two men on basse and the guy hits the
Speaker 1: ball and I wake up when the ball goes flack
Speaker 1: on the ground right next to me. And the guy
Speaker 1: gets inside the park home run and they and they
Speaker 1: take the lead, and I go trotting into the dugout
Speaker 1: and the coach looks at me and goes, good job, Baldwin.
Speaker 1: And my mother was in the leechers, and of course
Speaker 1: she said, don't talk to him like that. He's a genius.
Speaker 1: And the coach was like, oh, he's a genius. Or
Speaker 1: here's my i Q story. My mother was a teacher.
Speaker 1: She didn't want to lie about my i Q. So
Speaker 1: she got an i Q test a week early, brought
Speaker 1: it home, had Chuck Levy, who was a math expert
Speaker 1: in this party, go over the test with me so
Speaker 1: I could score a high mark so she could say
Speaker 1: I was a genius without lying. So she cheatedn't actually
Speaker 1: just got the i Q test a week early. And
Speaker 1: by the way, given that I had the i Q
Speaker 1: test a week early, it's not that great a number.
Speaker 1: But but wait, do you have O C D also?
Speaker 1: I have? Uh. Yeah, I'm someone who had times when
Speaker 1: I'm stressed. You know, I always remember, like one critical
Speaker 1: example in my my my wife Laria is always on
Speaker 1: me about this is I'm the kind of person who,
Speaker 1: like we'd be in the hallway getting ready to go
Speaker 1: downstairs and the cars waiting to go to the airport,
Speaker 1: and I'm rearranging the coins on the table in the
Speaker 1: entry hall table making sure they're all neat in an order.
Speaker 1: I'm always straightened. And it comes from and all of
Speaker 1: that comes from coming from an unbelievably messy home in
Speaker 1: my child In my book my memoir, I said, if
Speaker 1: you came to my house when I was a child,
Speaker 1: and you walked into the house, you would have thought
Speaker 1: that the people were running an illegal laundrymat in the house,
Speaker 1: because they were wicker and plastic baskets and laundry just
Speaker 1: tumbling out of all them. Because my mother could never
Speaker 1: keep up with all the laundry of having six kids
Speaker 1: and no help. The house was in disarray all the time,
Speaker 1: and that damaged me. And like, I'm obsessed with neatness
Speaker 1: and cleanliness and I want my house clean and I
Speaker 1: have to have everything in order. There's another three words
Speaker 1: for why you might have O c D ahead unconscious
Speaker 1: and our assistic rage. So you know that also brings
Speaker 1: on O c D sciatica back pain. I'd rather not
Speaker 1: get into CM of c M because because I'd rather
Speaker 1: people read it in the book. I mean, there's there's
Speaker 1: some tales in the book that are but what I
Speaker 1: will say is, whatever the difficulties you had in your childhood,
Speaker 1: and I encourage people to be because you go into
Speaker 1: some pretty tough details about what happened to you. Are
Speaker 1: that uncommon person who you let it roll off your back?
Speaker 1: And like, what am I going to do about it?
Speaker 1: Am I gonna let that ruin my life? You know?
Speaker 1: Do you find that that's a part of your nature
Speaker 1: that you walk away from difficulty pretty easily. I don't
Speaker 1: walk away from difficulty easily. I ruminate, I relive stuff
Speaker 1: until recently. Uh that you know, what we're telling you
Speaker 1: about is sort of my parents let a my mother's
Speaker 1: cousin who is a child molest to live with us
Speaker 1: for a bunch of years knowing he was a child molester,
Speaker 1: which is kind of horrific, But in that particular case,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'm a little screwed up because of it.
Speaker 1: But it's happened, it's gone, it's past, and I've moved on.
Speaker 1: And you know I I think that life is surreal,
Speaker 1: and I have a very quirky attitude towards life. I
Speaker 1: try to find comedy wherever I can, surrealness wherever I can.
Speaker 1: I will say that because of my weird parents and
Speaker 1: all the threats of suicide, and all the times we
Speaker 1: didn't have electricity or rent money or louse the butcher money,
Speaker 1: I'm a control freak. I get to the airport when
Speaker 1: you were saying that the car is waiting for you
Speaker 1: and you're rearranging. That made me so uncomfortable because I
Speaker 1: know I would have already been at the airport four
Speaker 1: hours while you were still arranging. Dime. I need to
Speaker 1: get to the airport four or five hours early. I
Speaker 1: say to my wife, look, take a different car. We'll
Speaker 1: pay for new cars, but I just need to do this,
Speaker 1: and so she'll say, all right, I'll do it. Because
Speaker 1: you're either reading your iPad at home or at the
Speaker 1: United Lounge. But if you're at at the airport, you're
Speaker 1: not worried about you know, uh, three flat tires and
Speaker 1: traffic on the l I E and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: What are you working on now? Yeah? I loved I
Speaker 1: did three years of a series of Unfortunate Events for
Speaker 1: Netflix in Vancouver and it was the best experience of
Speaker 1: my life. And I'm about to do something with your
Speaker 1: good friend Lauren Michaels. Uh. He has his six part
Speaker 1: series that's a musical for Apple and it looks like
Speaker 1: I'll be directing those six episodes. So musical, musical, original material,
Speaker 1: original material by this guy, Sinkle Paul, who has written
Speaker 1: only million dollar animated movies every you know, uh, the
Speaker 1: min Minions and Despicable Me and all the Secret Story
Speaker 1: of Pets, all these movies. So um, this will be
Speaker 1: like something really different from me. So we'll see um.
Speaker 1: In your wife's career in the not for profit world,
Speaker 1: she's listing on her the letter heads as Susan Ringo. Yes,
Speaker 1: who gave her the name Sweetie? I did? I just
Speaker 1: started to call her sweetie and uh, and I would
Speaker 1: refer to her as Sweetie, and so grips and electrics
Speaker 1: would say how Sweetie, and how Sweetie's uterus. She had
Speaker 1: problems with stuff like that. And I was a very
Speaker 1: unusual cameraman in that it was all about me. It
Speaker 1: wasn't about the director, it wasn't about the actors on
Speaker 1: the call sheet. The longer I was with without Sweetie,
Speaker 1: when I was like in l a shooting, throw Mama
Speaker 1: from the trained. The longer I was without her, the
Speaker 1: crew would know I would be in a bad mood.
Speaker 1: And when they heard that Sweetie was coming in a week,
Speaker 1: there would be a picture of a car with Sweetie's head,
Speaker 1: and the coo sheet every day had a map of
Speaker 1: the United States and where Sweetie was driving from New
Speaker 1: York because they were just knowing that as soon as
Speaker 1: Sweetie arrived would be better. So that's who I am.
Speaker 1: I'm an only child of Jewish persuasion. That was Barry Sonnenfeld.
Speaker 1: His new memoir, in which he tells stories from his
Speaker 1: most famous sets and explores his very messed up childhood,
Speaker 1: is Barry Sonnenfeld, Call your mother available Now. I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and this is here's the thing. Who don't make
Speaker 1: a