Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. On July fourteenth, SAG AFTRA,
Speaker 1: better known as the Screen Actors Guild, joined the picket lines,
Speaker 1: where members of the Writers' Guild of America have been
Speaker 1: striking since early May.
Speaker 2: The entire business model has been changed by streaming digital AI.
Speaker 2: This is a moment of history, that is a moment
Speaker 2: of truth. If we don't stand toall right now, we
Speaker 2: are all going to be in trouble. We are all
Speaker 2: going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines
Speaker 2: and big business. Who gives more about Wall Street than
Speaker 2: you and your family.
Speaker 1: That's Actor and Screen Actors Guild President fran Drescher announcing
Speaker 1: the SAG strike. This action follows contentious negotiations over contracts
Speaker 1: with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, a
Speaker 1: collection of film studios, TV networks and streamers like Netflix, Hulu, Paramount, Sony,
Speaker 1: and Warner Brothers Discovery. The issues in dispute include everything
Speaker 1: from dwindling payments in the age of streaming to the
Speaker 1: unsettling reality that artificial intelligence may soon render human writers
Speaker 1: and actors unnecessary. Many have called this particular moment existential.
Speaker 1: One person who is deeply involved in this issue and
Speaker 1: has been ringing the alarm for some time is actor, writer, director,
Speaker 1: and producer Justine Bateman. Bateman is perhaps best known for
Speaker 1: her work on family ties and Satisfaction, but she also
Speaker 1: received her degree in computer science from UCLA in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: As someone involved in so many aspects of filmmaking, I
Speaker 1: wanted to know if Eateman felt that the guilds were
Speaker 1: up to the task of ensuring their future amidst the
Speaker 1: AI proliferation.
Speaker 3: Yes, actually, yeah, And I'll tell you why. So if
Speaker 3: we go back even further to nineteen eighty, which I
Speaker 3: think was the last time SAG was on strike, they
Speaker 3: were asking for a piece of all the unions were
Speaker 3: a piece of the home video market VCR right tapes.
Speaker 3: We didn't even have DVDs yet, and the quote from
Speaker 3: AMPTP was we don't even know if there's any money
Speaker 3: in that. Well we saw what happened with that. That
Speaker 3: became the financial booy for the entire industry having DVD sales.
Speaker 3: Then you go to two thousand and seven, two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight, when I was on the SAG board of
Speaker 3: Directors and on the negotiating committee, and they said to
Speaker 3: all the unions, when we were asking for me made
Speaker 3: for new media percentages, residuals so forth, they said the
Speaker 3: same thing, Well, we don't even know if there's any
Speaker 3: money in the Internet.
Speaker 1: It's so unproven.
Speaker 3: It's the wild wild West, which is such a tired
Speaker 3: sort of saying. And I think during the WGA strike
Speaker 3: back then they released Hulu, which was all of these
Speaker 3: ampt a lot of not all of them, but a
Speaker 3: lot of these AMPTP companies coming together and creating a
Speaker 3: video platform. I mean, you know, these companies don't get
Speaker 3: together to do anything, so they must have been extremely
Speaker 3: convinced that it was going to be very lucrative and
Speaker 3: eliminated a lot of the overhead that's necessary for broadcast
Speaker 3: television and theater release. So it's very telling then as
Speaker 3: far as AI goes, that when the WGA asked for
Speaker 3: protections on that, they didn't even say what they'd said before,
Speaker 3: which could have been we don't know that there's any
Speaker 3: money in AI. They just said, we're not talking about it,
Speaker 3: which says to me they are writing scripts of the
Speaker 3: AI already and have been for a while.
Speaker 1: Of course I'm a thousand percent convinced that they have
Speaker 1: that machine churning away. And I always remember when they say, well,
Speaker 1: we don't know if there's any money in there. We
Speaker 1: don't really have any money in that that we know of.
Speaker 1: And what they're saying now is, well, we don't have
Speaker 1: any money there for you had to depend that little phase,
Speaker 1: then we don't have any money for you. For the
Speaker 1: actors we've seen over the last many years. And this
Speaker 1: is my opinion, it's purely an opinion, an analysis that
Speaker 1: what you see now is the complete wall to wall
Speaker 1: wigitizing of the creative industries. Men and women who are
Speaker 1: captain corporations that want to take all the risk out
Speaker 1: of movie making and television production. And of course there's
Speaker 1: no such thing as a risk free movie business. Guessing
Speaker 1: what an audience might want to watch, and now they've
Speaker 1: gotten this down with all their Marvel universe, but guessing
Speaker 1: what an audience might want to watch eighteen months from
Speaker 1: now is a lot of luck in some art. But
Speaker 1: these are corporations that want to have the risk free
Speaker 1: entertainment industry, which is just absurd. You're involved in with
Speaker 1: the union with SAG when did that begin and why.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not. I haven't acted for many, many years.
Speaker 3: It's not a focus of mine. Just been writing, directing
Speaker 3: and producing. So I'm more involved actually in the WGA,
Speaker 3: WGA and the DGA now like I'm on the Western
Speaker 3: the Director's Western Council at the DGA, and for a
Speaker 3: long time just been, you know, a great admirer of
Speaker 3: the WGA and the DGA and involved in the WA.
Speaker 3: But of course I have a big love for SAG
Speaker 3: and because of my relationships with them, they had asked
Speaker 3: me to come in to their day with the AMPTP
Speaker 3: in these negotiations, the day that dealt with AI and
Speaker 3: say a few things and I you know, you can't
Speaker 3: talk about what was talked about in there, but I
Speaker 3: will say that Duncan Crabtree Ireland, the National Director and
Speaker 3: the lead negotiator for SAG, has extremely good handle on
Speaker 3: what needs to happen for actors protection and not just
Speaker 3: for protection of actors who are working now and who
Speaker 3: will work in you know, they have their future work
Speaker 3: as well, but to protect the actors from the past.
Speaker 3: And this is true too for the DGA and WGA.
Speaker 3: And maybe it's something that has to be done through legislation,
Speaker 3: but to protect it's our responsibility now. Like these, these
Speaker 3: actors and writers and directors in the past, they did
Speaker 3: work within the unions to establish rules for us so
Speaker 3: that we could make a living at this and have
Speaker 3: pensions and healthcare and all of this, and they sacrifice
Speaker 3: for that. And I feel like now it's time for
Speaker 3: us to in addition to what we need to do
Speaker 3: to protect members, now we need to protect their work
Speaker 3: because now the technology exists to go back and mess
Speaker 3: around with everything. You know, the technology isn't there exactly
Speaker 3: to just generate another version of Casablanca, but we're on
Speaker 3: the precipice of that, or going back to say some
Speaker 3: you know, the mash TV series and making another season
Speaker 3: out of what was, you know, just feeding in all
Speaker 3: the seasons and making another season, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And then there's other things like just doing episodes that
Speaker 3: are in line with somebody's viewing history and just throwing
Speaker 3: together something that is an amalgamation, a distilling of an
Speaker 3: amalgamation of all of our past work. And that's what
Speaker 3: I find so offensive and heinous. It's not that AI
Speaker 3: is now generating new stuff, just it's a new technology,
Speaker 3: and it's generating new stuff on its own. It's doing
Speaker 3: it only because it's been fed in our old work.
Speaker 3: That's what I find so horrible about it.
Speaker 1: Do you think that people who have licensed, you know,
Speaker 1: the most handy reference I have as James Earl Jones
Speaker 1: licensing his voice to the Star Wars board of directors
Speaker 1: there for his voice as Darth Vader to live on
Speaker 1: beyond his death. Is that a betrayal of actors? Is
Speaker 1: that a betrayal of the union for people to buy
Speaker 1: into the AI thing? Do you think not?
Speaker 3: In my opinion. I mean, if they want to do that, fine,
Speaker 3: I personally, as a filmmaker, I don't want to have
Speaker 3: anything to do with it because it's the polar opposite
Speaker 3: direction of where I want to go with my work.
Speaker 3: I want to do something like really, really new if
Speaker 3: I can, you know, stand on the shoulders of all
Speaker 3: the filmmakers that I love, and you know, move the
Speaker 3: ball down the field. I mean, look, the last ten
Speaker 3: to fifteen years, with some exceptions, all we've been doing
Speaker 3: is a regurgitation of the past. I mean, tell me
Speaker 3: what pop culture is right now. It is the pop
Speaker 3: culture of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Period.
Speaker 3: There's nothing new in the last twenty years with some
Speaker 3: exccepts as far as a genre goes of music of movies.
Speaker 3: I mean, Alec, you can think I could name any
Speaker 3: decade in the twentieth century and you could tell me
Speaker 3: something that went on in music, something went on and film,
Speaker 3: something went on in fine art or dance or whatever,
Speaker 3: and it's just not happening anymore because tech and I
Speaker 3: love tech, I have a computer science degree, but it
Speaker 3: has created this is something you want to avoid in coding,
Speaker 3: which is an infinite loop. We just can't the code
Speaker 3: can't get out of this loop. It's in what tech
Speaker 3: has created. In pop culture and in the arts is
Speaker 3: an infinite loop where we just completely we regurgitate, regurgitate,
Speaker 3: regurgitate what's happened before us. And the studio has got
Speaker 3: on board with that because they're scared financially and trying
Speaker 3: to you know, just take ips that everybody's familiar with
Speaker 3: so they can skip the marketing period. They need to
Speaker 3: get people to understand what their new.
Speaker 1: Project is about.
Speaker 3: And now AI is going to automate all of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I will watch a streaming series, not because
Speaker 1: I have any desire to watch that show, but I'm
Speaker 1: just curious what's selling? What are people watching most of
Speaker 1: the shows I see. The other impact of this, you know,
Speaker 1: money at all costs money over creativity is the bloating
Speaker 1: of these episodes. Meaning the show is really six episodes,
Speaker 1: but they got to do eight because they don't get
Speaker 1: into profit till after five. There's so much bloating of
Speaker 1: this stuff. Content way was to get to their numbers. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing for our audience, I would like to explain
Speaker 1: your take, maybe on the distinction as to the three unions,
Speaker 1: the WGA, the DGA, and SAG, as to why the
Speaker 1: pattern seems to be that the DGA settles almost immediately,
Speaker 1: the DGA settles quickly, and I've had people explain to
Speaker 1: me their opinion as to why a SAG is kind
Speaker 1: of down the middle, and the WGA would probably strike
Speaker 1: you know, for a year if they could. They're always
Speaker 1: the slowest too. Does that seem like a fair assessment
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 3: You know, I haven't been within the negotiating process of
Speaker 3: DGA or WGA, but I will say this, one way
Speaker 3: to characterize each one of the unions is to think
Speaker 3: about their duties on a set.
Speaker 1: The director is.
Speaker 3: Telling everybody this is how it's going to be, and
Speaker 3: the directors come in, they come in for their prep,
Speaker 3: and then they do the shoot, and then they have
Speaker 3: their post and that's pretty much it. The writer has
Speaker 3: had to work with the studios, sometimes for a long
Speaker 3: period of time before the director is stepping in, and
Speaker 3: there's a lot of beating up of the writers by
Speaker 3: the studios sometimes. In fact, in the streaming world, I
Speaker 3: know somebody who's a showrunner, and I've heard this from
Speaker 3: a couple of showrunners. The note they get most frequently
Speaker 3: is it's not second screen enough, meaning the viewer's laptop
Speaker 3: or the viewers right, hilarious, Right, the viewer's laptop or
Speaker 3: the viewer's phone is primary screen, first screen, and don't
Speaker 3: do anything in the show that's going to distract the
Speaker 3: viewer because then they might go, oh, wait, what just happened,
Speaker 3: and then go turn it off. They want it on
Speaker 3: all the time, like visual music, as somebody quoted once.
Speaker 1: So you got that.
Speaker 3: And then the actors on a set are pretty much
Speaker 3: showing up. They've prepared their work, but they're like tell
Speaker 3: me where to go and where to stand and what
Speaker 3: to do, and then you know, I'm going to bring
Speaker 3: some emotion into it. So if you think of it
Speaker 3: that way, and I don't mean that to be disparaging
Speaker 3: in any way whatsoever to any of those positions, but
Speaker 3: then it gives you an inkling as to how the
Speaker 3: behavior of the negotiating committees is possibly conducted. It's an
Speaker 3: interesting way to kind of color it.
Speaker 1: I think, Well, someone said to me that the that
Speaker 1: the DGA settles quicker is because they have more overlapping
Speaker 1: interests with the producers than the other two unions.
Speaker 4: Do.
Speaker 1: I think the guy that's the head of the DGA
Speaker 1: just announced he said we did better that we've ever done,
Speaker 1: or he had some very positive comment about what happened.
Speaker 1: But my point is this, there's three unions and I
Speaker 1: don't know why they can't come together and negotiate together
Speaker 1: and really stick together as one business. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know that's fanciful. They came to me to run for
Speaker 1: president of SAG before Fran ran and they said, going
Speaker 1: into this negotiation, we need someone who is as bold,
Speaker 1: you know, forceful, whatever, because they were saying this's gonna
Speaker 1: be a tough negotiation. It's gonna be one of the
Speaker 1: toughest negotiations. And I said, well, I think that the
Speaker 1: head of SAG should live in La, just in the
Speaker 1: time zone.
Speaker 2: Thing.
Speaker 1: I got seven children. You think I'm gonna be on
Speaker 1: conference calls till nine or ten o'clock at night in La,
Speaker 1: I said, I mean, I live in New York, and
Speaker 1: I'm not leaving New York. And after a back and
Speaker 1: forth with a small handful of peace, they got it,
Speaker 1: and they moved on and they got frien But I
Speaker 1: was very tempted. But one thing I kept saying to
Speaker 1: them was I said, what do you think is the
Speaker 1: likelihood that we can join forces not dilute our independence,
Speaker 1: our sovereignty, our specific missions. But why can't we negotiate
Speaker 1: these contracts together? And they just thought that that was
Speaker 1: a very quixotic idea, that that was just impossible. Do
Speaker 1: you agree that's impossible?
Speaker 3: No, I mean I am in agreement with you. I mean,
Speaker 3: we're not even competitive with each other, Like the writers
Speaker 3: are not competing against the directors, are not competing against
Speaker 3: the actors and so forth for jobs, And yet all
Speaker 3: the studios are competing with each other, in direct competition
Speaker 3: with each other. So if they can get together as
Speaker 3: a group and negotiate against us, then I agree we
Speaker 3: should be able to band together and negotiate against them.
Speaker 3: I would hope for that too. I don't know all
Speaker 3: the reasons why it doesn't occur, but I will say
Speaker 3: that I believe on the AI front, that's a topic
Speaker 3: that we all have in common, and whatever gains one
Speaker 3: one union gets will benefit the other. And whatever gains
Speaker 3: one union makes on the legislative end with the government
Speaker 3: will be a gain for everyone else in the business.
Speaker 3: But what you said earlier about you know, having their
Speaker 3: eye firmly on the money, I mean it's always been
Speaker 3: a component of the business, of course. But when the streamers,
Speaker 3: these tech companies decided to get into the tech platform
Speaker 3: business and needed stuff to put on their shelves, and
Speaker 3: their stuff was our work, which they refer to as content,
Speaker 3: which I find chili so dismissive. Yeah, and so offensive
Speaker 3: and so dismissive and so confused about the work that
Speaker 3: we do. When they came onto the scene as tech companies,
Speaker 3: they were seen by Wall Street as tech companies, and
Speaker 3: they followed the tech company pattern of success quote unquote,
Speaker 3: which is ramp it up, scale it as much as
Speaker 3: you can, and then get out sell it for a
Speaker 3: billion dollars, three billion dollars whatever you can do. Well,
Speaker 3: now they're not quite doing that, and they've also saturated
Speaker 3: the market to some extent of you know, how far
Speaker 3: they can scale. And that's when we had this Netflix
Speaker 3: correction on Wall Street. That's when, because that was Wall
Speaker 3: Street going as a wait a minute, you guys have
Speaker 3: fairly saturated the market, at least domestically, and so we
Speaker 3: can't look at you as a tech company anymore because
Speaker 3: you're not doing that scaling anymore. So we're just going
Speaker 3: to look at you as a media company, and a
Speaker 3: media company has to show profit.
Speaker 1: WGA, DGA and SAG member Justine Bateman. If you want
Speaker 1: to hear more from bold female directors working to change
Speaker 1: their industry, check out our episode with Sarah Polly.
Speaker 4: I think that I hugely benefited from this very unusual
Speaker 4: experience i'd had, which is that I'd worked with a
Speaker 4: few female filmmakers as a young actor, which was a
Speaker 4: really big deal then, like to have worked with Catherine Bigelow,
Speaker 4: to have worked with Isabel Quichet, to have these models,
Speaker 4: and as soon as I expressed the slightest interest in directing,
Speaker 4: they were just like, Okay, you're a dog with a bone.
Speaker 4: Don't let the bone go. Everyone's going to try to
Speaker 4: take away from me. I remember Katherine Bigelow is like this,
Speaker 4: everyone will try to take the bone away from you.
Speaker 4: Hold on to the bone.
Speaker 1: To hear more of Talier Schlanger's conversation with Sarah Polly,
Speaker 1: go to Here's Thething dot Org. After the break, Justine
Speaker 1: Bateman shares her vision of the potentially frightening future for
Speaker 1: actors now that AI is getting stronger every day. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. After
Speaker 1: decades of work in television and film, Justine Bateman pivoted
Speaker 1: from acting to writing and directing her own films, including Violet,
Speaker 1: starring Olivia Munn and Justin Throw. As someone who has
Speaker 1: worked tirelessly on both sides of the camera, I was
Speaker 1: curious how she found the business has changed in her lifetime.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what's really sad for me. So as
Speaker 3: a filmmaker, I'm taking meetings as a director and a
Speaker 3: writer with development executives and the development executives that I've
Speaker 3: met that are some of these studios who you talked
Speaker 3: to them. And one of the things really telling for
Speaker 3: me is I asked him what's your favorite film? And
Speaker 3: sometimes I'll give an answer and I'll go like, oh,
Speaker 3: this person knows what's going on. I talk a little
Speaker 3: bit more with them, and then I just go, hey,
Speaker 3: what kind of films do you want to make? And
Speaker 3: they're like, hey, listen, I would love to do And
Speaker 3: maybe this is blowing smoke up my ass, but I'd
Speaker 3: love to do this film that you just pitched me.
Speaker 3: That kind of thing is exactly the type of thing
Speaker 3: I want to do. But I can't because I've been
Speaker 3: tasked to make six genre films for fill in the
Speaker 3: blank Streamer and I'm like, oh, that sucks. Like that's
Speaker 3: what you're bound to do now, even though you love
Speaker 3: film and you sound like a real development executive. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what I have to do. So if you have
Speaker 3: any action film and you just hear the life coming
Speaker 3: out of their voice when they say this, So if
Speaker 3: you have any action films or horror or you know,
Speaker 3: not there's anything wrong with action or horror and stuff,
Speaker 3: but like that's not what they want to be doing.
Speaker 3: And those kinds of films are fine, but not when
Speaker 3: they're ninety percent of what's out there. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But you can see also that their judgment cuts both ways,
Speaker 1: meaning they either try to hedge their bets and bring
Speaker 1: people in who are not very creative, very innovative, unique,
Speaker 1: what have you, and they bring them in and we
Speaker 1: we just see the same shit all the time. They
Speaker 1: give some people all the money in the world and
Speaker 1: maybe they shouldn't have and they don't give you know,
Speaker 1: and this is what they hate, this is what they
Speaker 1: want to take out of the business.
Speaker 3: Talking about Seinfeld and how much money he made because
Speaker 3: he created this show and stuff. I just want to
Speaker 3: remind people that, first of all, it takes years, years
Speaker 3: to get a financial success like that, and once you
Speaker 3: get it, you may not.
Speaker 1: Get another one.
Speaker 3: There are some unicorns out there that have I mean,
Speaker 3: you look at like Harrison Ford. I mean, I don't
Speaker 3: know what his compensation was, but the idea that he
Speaker 3: was in three massive like massive cultural impact films, that's
Speaker 3: very unusual. Okay, So it takes years. So if you
Speaker 3: amortize this money out, like for me, my film Violet
Speaker 3: took me a year and a half. Hu every single
Speaker 3: day for a year and a half to get the
Speaker 3: money together to do that film, and that was a
Speaker 3: low budget film. When you look like what I was
Speaker 3: paid for it, if I were to like spread that
Speaker 3: out over all the time it took me to get
Speaker 3: that film made, it's probably ten cents an hour. And
Speaker 3: the other thing is when you look at how much
Speaker 3: money like anybody makes, like off a TV show or
Speaker 3: something like this, I want to remind everybody how reticent
Speaker 3: studios and networks are to part with money. And if
Speaker 3: they're parting with that much money, then you need to
Speaker 3: think about how much more money they made off of
Speaker 3: that show. And they're giving Seinfeld a small amount of that,
Speaker 3: so that's where a lot of the money is going.
Speaker 3: And then you're talking about actors and paying paying you know,
Speaker 3: one big actor and then screwing the rest of the cast,
Speaker 3: which I think is not right. But think about going forward.
Speaker 3: I mean, a lot of the movie stars now are
Speaker 3: decidedly older, right, and they all became movie stars pretty
Speaker 3: much in their twenties, right. What I can't think of
Speaker 3: a clutch of movie stars that have been created now
Speaker 3: in their twenties that compares to say, fifty years ago
Speaker 3: or even thirty years It's different now, so even they
Speaker 3: were even kind of winding that down, you know where
Speaker 3: pretty soon it's just going to be, like you said.
Speaker 1: The interchangeability is a real goal of theirs. I mean
Speaker 1: because once someone said to me once that was really
Speaker 1: behind AI beyond money was or linked to money, I
Speaker 1: should say, beyond having to entice a star to do
Speaker 1: a script. You decide what, you decide the movie you
Speaker 1: want to do, you cast it, you make it. You
Speaker 1: just fashion the whole thing like you're baking a cake.
Speaker 1: And the other thing they said to me was that,
Speaker 1: you know, the computer doesn't have to go to rehab.
Speaker 1: The computer doesn't lock themselves in their trailer because she
Speaker 1: broke up with her boyfriend. The computer doesn't punch the
Speaker 1: director in the face, and some altercation over some perceived indignity,
Speaker 1: all the behavior that now the studios and networks have
Speaker 1: found a way to profit from, you know, exposing the
Speaker 1: wartz and the missteps of stars. Years ago, and I
Speaker 1: do mean a million light years ago, the press flax
Speaker 1: for the studios did everything in their power to keep
Speaker 1: Llela Parsons and had a Hopper and Walter Winchell and
Speaker 1: all them kind of calmed down the star is gay
Speaker 1: and he's married. The woman had a baby out of wedlock,
Speaker 1: she has a black boyfriend. All that crazy crap that
Speaker 1: they were getting attacked for. He's an alcoholic, he's in rehaber,
Speaker 1: what have you. All the things that they would protect
Speaker 1: you from, they tried to protect you in order to
Speaker 1: keep your star gleaming. Now you go to work at
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers and you walk down one hallway to do
Speaker 1: a movie. You walk down another hallway to do a
Speaker 1: TV show, and around the corner is TMZ that they own,
Speaker 1: who's trying every way they can. They're making every effort
Speaker 1: to destroy your reputation in your career.
Speaker 3: Well, another way that they would destroy it is if
Speaker 3: SAG doesn't get the protections they're seeking. You know, if
Speaker 3: you or this is something that an actor could do
Speaker 3: just voluntarily, like you were talking about the actor allowing
Speaker 3: his voice to be cloned, you could get yourself scanned,
Speaker 3: like if anyone's seen this twenty thirteen film called The
Speaker 3: Congress where Robin Wright plays an actress who's down on
Speaker 3: her luck, you know, was a big star, and she
Speaker 3: allows herself to be digitally scanned, and in exchange, she
Speaker 3: has to promise to never act again, because she'll dilute
Speaker 3: the value of the scan if she herself acts. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, and then you know, regrets her decision. This
Speaker 3: is at And you look at that and you go like, oh,
Speaker 3: oppression that is. But that's actually based on a nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy three book by Stanislaw lemb And this is I
Speaker 3: mean this guy. I hadn't read him yet, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean read the Philip Dick and Ray Bradbury and
Speaker 3: all that. But this guy, Stanislaw lem if anyone wants
Speaker 3: to read, he's so on it about AI back in
Speaker 3: the seventies. It's amazing. But so if you did that right,
Speaker 3: Let's say somebody had a scan of you, Alec, and
Speaker 3: then your agencies, which, by the way, the talent big
Speaker 3: talent agencies have divisions at their agencies that are encouraging
Speaker 3: actors to get scanned, because then yes, you don't have
Speaker 3: all those things you said, but you also don't have
Speaker 3: an actor who's too tired or has a family obligation
Speaker 3: or is already booked. Yeah, so imagine yourself if yeah,
Speaker 3: and if your agent had a scan of you, he
Speaker 3: could potentially triple and quadruple book you so that you're
Speaker 3: doing three or four films at the same time. Of
Speaker 3: course it's not you.
Speaker 1: Writer director Justine Bateman. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell
Speaker 1: a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Come back. Justine Bateman shares her thoughts on the life
Speaker 1: cycle of fame. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing, the multi hyphenit. Justine Bateman recently added
Speaker 1: author to her resume. In twenty twenty one, she released
Speaker 1: a book on women and aging called Face One Square
Speaker 1: Foot of Skin, and before that, in twenty eighteen, she
Speaker 1: published Fame, The Hijacking of Reality. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: what drew her to explore that complex topic in print.
Speaker 3: Well, when I wrote Fame, which is about the life
Speaker 3: cycle of fame, and some famous people don't experience this
Speaker 3: complete life cycle, which is it begins, it grows, it
Speaker 3: levels off, and this starts to descend and then goes away.
Speaker 3: So I've experienced that entire life cycle. Somebody like Brad Pitt,
Speaker 3: you know, he's at the leveling off. Everybody just knows
Speaker 3: he's famous and will probably never experience the back end
Speaker 3: like like I have and others have. So I thought
Speaker 3: that was very interesting and it was very interesting to
Speaker 3: process the back end of that life cycle. And then
Speaker 3: I started wondering. I started thinking about that intangible fame
Speaker 3: thing like when somebody if Brad Pitt walks into the room,
Speaker 3: everything in the room, everything that was happening in that room,
Speaker 3: all the attitudes of conversations people were having. Say in
Speaker 3: a room in a restaurant, say stops and people sit differently.
Speaker 3: Something wasts itself through the room and changes people's behaviors.
Speaker 1: So that's how that started.
Speaker 3: I wanted to look at that, and then what it
Speaker 3: wound up being was a real look at that life
Speaker 3: cycle from the inside, my experiences with it, and then
Speaker 3: my theories and sociological established sociological theories on why people
Speaker 3: behave the way they do, two famous people at different
Speaker 3: points in that life cycle.
Speaker 1: Now with you, with you, was it something that you
Speaker 1: you know, you're in the water and the current is
Speaker 1: pulling you away from a mainstream career. You were obviously
Speaker 1: one of the stars of a huge hit show. We
Speaker 1: were actually on the at the Hampton's film festival where
Speaker 1: I program a summer documentary series. We almost said Michael
Speaker 1: come and do his doc and he was going to
Speaker 1: do a Q and A with us, but he pulled
Speaker 1: out because I guess he hasn't really been feeling that
Speaker 1: great lately. We were going to do his the Michael J.
Speaker 1: Fox documentary out there. But in your case, I wonder
Speaker 1: when you're famous and you're on a successful show. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this to be kind. That was a
Speaker 1: funny show. Everybody know that was a really well written
Speaker 1: and clever show. Did it kind of ebb and you're
Speaker 1: floating away like the rip currents are pulling you away
Speaker 1: from groovytown because you didn't care. You didn't you didn't
Speaker 1: mind that you did. You put up a fight and
Speaker 1: you wanted to stay prominent in the business and it
Speaker 1: didn't work out, or you didn't give a shit, no, no,
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 3: It was more it was more of a kind of
Speaker 3: a life experience. And this is what to go into
Speaker 3: in the book. What I talk about in the book
Speaker 3: is that we all have our reality right who we're
Speaker 3: married to, or who our parents are, what city we
Speaker 3: live in, or what gender we are, or what language
Speaker 3: we speak, what job we have, all these things, what
Speaker 3: time we are in, right, And if any one of
Speaker 3: those things were to change. For a lot of people,
Speaker 3: it can be a traumatic sometimes, right, like somebody you
Speaker 3: love dies or you have to you get relocated your
Speaker 3: job to another country, so you have to adjust your
Speaker 3: reality to that, because you have a lot of things
Speaker 3: attached to these components of our reality justifiably, and we
Speaker 3: attach our sometimes our self worth, you know, if it
Speaker 3: has to do with jobs or something, or identity, maybe
Speaker 3: who we're married to and things like that. So for
Speaker 3: a very very small amount of people, fame is one
Speaker 3: of those components. And when it first starts happening, and
Speaker 3: I know you can relate to this, you're like, this
Speaker 3: is this this weird thing that's happening around me, blah
Speaker 3: blah blah. But then it becomes so constant You're like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm just going to absorb this. I'm going to receive this.
Speaker 3: This is part of who I am now. And it's
Speaker 3: not somebody saying that's right, don't you know who I am?
Speaker 3: And I'm going to get these tables at these restaurants.
Speaker 3: It's not that that is what's happening. You make a
Speaker 3: reservation at a restaurant. You say your name and they go, oh,
Speaker 3: miss Babeman. Of course, yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, I know
Speaker 3: I said there weren't any tables. But when you're very famous,
Speaker 3: like people enjoyed your work. There's nothing nefarious about it.
Speaker 3: People enjoyed your work, and they genuinely want to in
Speaker 3: their way, if they run a restaurant, whatever it is,
Speaker 3: they want to sort of give back to you, like, oh,
Speaker 3: I loved your show or your film or your music
Speaker 3: or whatever, and please come in be min. We'd love
Speaker 3: to buy you a bottle of wine.
Speaker 1: Whatever.
Speaker 3: It's this nice kind of exchange. Okay, Now that happens
Speaker 3: so consistently that you just accepted as part of your reality.
Speaker 3: It's just happening all around you all the time. And
Speaker 3: if that goes on for many many years, like it
Speaker 3: did for me and for many others, when that starts shifting,
Speaker 3: it is akin to those big life changes I said
Speaker 3: that for you know, in anybody's it starts pulling away
Speaker 3: and anything you had attached to it, that you had
Speaker 3: reasonably attached to it, your identity, yourself worth, all these
Speaker 3: different things. When that starts pulling away, it starts I
Speaker 3: always picture, like you know that film Man called Horse.
Speaker 1: You patured Harris up.
Speaker 3: There and he had those, so anybody hasn't seen it.
Speaker 3: He has to go through this sort of virtual yeah,
Speaker 3: and he there's this big pole in the center of
Speaker 3: where everybody's standing, and it has ropes attached to the
Speaker 3: top of it with hooks at the end of it,
Speaker 3: and he has to hook these into skin on his chest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, into his pectrol muscles.
Speaker 3: And pull away from it. Now. So I always.
Speaker 1: Picture one of the most grotesque scenes in the movie.
Speaker 3: She really is.
Speaker 1: Can't believe you're referencing, man.
Speaker 3: Aame is moving away from you if you had anything
Speaker 3: attached to it, and there's many things that you didn't
Speaker 3: even realize you attached to it. It starts pulling away
Speaker 3: like that, and it's painful. So I in the book
Speaker 3: is say like I had to recognize what was attached
Speaker 3: to it, and I had to unhook it before it
Speaker 3: ripped my chest apart, so to speak.
Speaker 1: Right, my last question for you, I mean, you've had
Speaker 1: such a varied and fascinating life in terms of being
Speaker 1: a big TV star and then going through all these
Speaker 1: different aspects of your life directing and going back to school,
Speaker 1: writing books and so forth. For you do you miss acting?
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting, Alec. It wasn't really up to me.
Speaker 3: Acting was really good to me for a long time,
Speaker 3: and it really was something It never crossed my mind
Speaker 3: before it actually occurred. I never grew up thinking I
Speaker 3: was going to be an actor. I just sort of
Speaker 3: fell into it, and I was gifted at it. It
Speaker 3: was I fell into my vocation. And then I got
Speaker 3: to a point where my life just turned a corner.
Speaker 3: And funny enough, it was the last strike around two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven, and I knew, oh my god, this
Speaker 3: is what I was born for. To the writing. And
Speaker 3: I'd already been writing scripts but just like keeping them
Speaker 3: on my computer, not knowing what to do with them.
Speaker 3: And I'd wanted to direct since I was nineteen, but
Speaker 3: the timing never felt right. So I started writing and
Speaker 3: producing it and in the digital space, and I was
Speaker 3: off to the races. And from that point there was
Speaker 3: a period where inexplicably for five years, I mean I
Speaker 3: understand it, I understood it after, but for five years
Speaker 3: I would have all kinds of auditions and I worked
Speaker 3: all the time up until that point. For five years,
Speaker 3: I did not get one job off an audition, and
Speaker 3: that was really really confusing, talk about having your reality
Speaker 3: tossed upside down. But at the same time, I was
Speaker 3: writing all these proposals and these scripts and everything for brands,
Speaker 3: and doing all this work in the digital space and
Speaker 3: speaking on panels and all this, and I knew that
Speaker 3: the writing and directing that was where I was supposed
Speaker 3: to go. But I'd always acted, so how could that
Speaker 3: door have just been slammed shut? And it was very confusing,
Speaker 3: and it was very upsetting because that kind of, you know,
Speaker 3: tore my reality a little bit like that. But I realized,
Speaker 3: like that had to happen. My life had to do that,
Speaker 3: or God, your destiny, whatever somebody wants to call it,
Speaker 3: it had to happen, or I would not have been
Speaker 3: committed one hundred percent in the direction I had to go,
Speaker 3: which was writing and directing and producing films, writing books,
Speaker 3: and you know, going to school and getting computer science degree.
Speaker 3: I would have just continued to just do you know,
Speaker 3: beyond TV shows or whatever it was. Because I am,
Speaker 3: at the risk of sounding absolutely arrogant. I was a
Speaker 3: great actor, and I at that point where I couldn't
Speaker 3: get a workout of any of those auditions, I was
Speaker 3: doing the best acting I had ever done, so it
Speaker 3: wasn't up to me. And I love what I'm doing now.
Speaker 3: I mean I feel like everything I've done before my writing, directing,
Speaker 3: and producing career began was prep for now.
Speaker 1: Well. I'm not saying this to be kind, but I mean,
Speaker 1: you're so bright. I wonder if the world of acting
Speaker 1: today as it exists today would be a complete waste
Speaker 1: of your resources in your time. But I want to
Speaker 1: thank you because I've watched you online with this AI thing,
Speaker 1: and you're a great voice for this. You've got such
Speaker 1: great experience in the business and with the union and
Speaker 1: so forth, and I do hope that we have a
Speaker 1: way to I mean, I don't like these contentious words
Speaker 1: because people used to talk about breaking unions, but I
Speaker 1: hope we have an ability to break the producers. They've
Speaker 1: got to understand that the way this business works, as
Speaker 1: many people don't realize, is a director makes a movie.
Speaker 1: He might make a movie every year and a half
Speaker 1: for two years, so we have to have an income
Speaker 1: that the last two years. Yes, my great thanks to
Speaker 1: you and to you.
Speaker 3: I think you're an incredible artist and have so admired
Speaker 3: and enjoyed your work. I hope someday that I get
Speaker 3: to be a director on one of your films.
Speaker 1: I'm available, my very best to you, and thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, My thanks to Justine Bateman. This
Speaker 1: episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Speaker 1: Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Oldwin. Here's the Thing is brought
Speaker 1: to you by iHeart Radio.