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 inspires their creations, what decisions
Speaker 1: change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. Joe Delessandro,
Speaker 1: you might not be able to place the name, but
Speaker 1: if you google it, and if you're of a certain age,
Speaker 1: you'll recognize some of the most iconic images of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Take the cover of the Rolling Stones album
Speaker 1: Sticky Fingers. You know the one I mean? Joe says,
Speaker 1: it's a close up of him or a certain part
Speaker 1: of him in jeans. Delessandro also starred in many of
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol's films. In Flesh, he played a male hustler
Speaker 1: who Lou Reed later immortalized in his song take a
Speaker 1: Walk on the wild Side singing Little Joe never once
Speaker 1: gave it away. With his street mentality and pin up
Speaker 1: boy looks, Delessandro quickly found both a gay and straight following.
Speaker 1: As a young man. He hadn't set his sights on
Speaker 1: being an erotic art film icon. He had much more
Speaker 1: humble aspirations. My dream was to own a pizza shop,
Speaker 1: and and make pizzas. And that's what I started doing
Speaker 1: when I was like fourteen, and I worked at a
Speaker 1: pizza shop where This was in Queens Queen's right on
Speaker 1: Union Turnpike in Floral Park area, so it was a
Speaker 1: nice neighborhood. It was Lorenzo's pizza and I learned how
Speaker 1: to cook not just pizza, but in these big pizza ovens,
Speaker 1: and learned how to take those pants and make steaks
Speaker 1: and make all sorts of food. Who taught you to cook?
Speaker 1: This Italian? His name was, There was Lorenzo, and there
Speaker 1: was seventeen, no seventeen something like that. I can't remember.
Speaker 1: A long time ago. Was just a youngster. And when
Speaker 1: you were working with Lorenzo and Sabatino in Floral Park,
Speaker 1: what happened? What? What? What? What detoured your pizza career?
Speaker 1: My juvenile delinquency? I uh, it was a little crooked
Speaker 1: and went off doing some bad things and I got
Speaker 1: myself sent away to h to a place school. School.
Speaker 1: You had to learn how to chop down trees. And
Speaker 1: I used to think those trees grew that way. I
Speaker 1: didn't know you had to prune them to make them.
Speaker 1: And I do it. You know, trees just grew with
Speaker 1: no branches at the bottom, but now you have to cross.
Speaker 1: So they set you up there to prune, prune trees
Speaker 1: and and make the forest look lovely. No. No, when
Speaker 1: you when you were a kid, it was tough. You
Speaker 1: you had a tough childhood, bouncing back and forth your father. Well,
Speaker 1: I had made a promise to my father if he'd
Speaker 1: finally take me home to state lived with him, that
Speaker 1: i'd behave because I grew up been uh, forced to
Speaker 1: care well, basically only two families, but the first family
Speaker 1: was the The major part of my childhood was with
Speaker 1: that family. Had a good experience with them. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just at a certain age you just want to be
Speaker 1: with you know, when you see your father once a month,
Speaker 1: and each each month you you go back to the
Speaker 1: to the other home, you just feel, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I felt as a child that you know, this is
Speaker 1: not where I need to be. I need Yeah. And
Speaker 1: that tide of calling somebody who wasn't my mommy mommy,
Speaker 1: or or daddy that weren't my father. Were they kind
Speaker 1: to you? Those two people they said they they had
Speaker 1: their own two children. Uh, the first one was I
Speaker 1: was brought to be display mate in the second one
Speaker 1: was a miracle baby, and so, uh we they used
Speaker 1: to tell me that, you know that we would treat
Speaker 1: it just like their own. You know that there was
Speaker 1: they showed no partiality between us, but there was there
Speaker 1: was a great great amount of difference in the way
Speaker 1: that I grew up there, and there was a little partiality. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like all of her twist. Well, I was told,
Speaker 1: you know, the story is when I was a baby,
Speaker 1: how I came to be at that home. The people
Speaker 1: that wanted to take children would come to this window
Speaker 1: and look in on the kids and select from the window,
Speaker 1: like a puppy in the window. And they told me that.
Speaker 1: I went to the window and said, will you be
Speaker 1: my mommy? Yeah, And I kind of think that my
Speaker 1: kind of attitude. It was that there was a heavy
Speaker 1: set woman and I must have thought that meant food
Speaker 1: and she's eating. Well, yeah, take me with you. Why
Speaker 1: about what you're You've been the puppy in the window
Speaker 1: that's been selected by people your whole life, haven't it again?
Speaker 1: And that's how it stayed. I never understood the looked
Speaker 1: thing because I didn't see it. Uh, But people took
Speaker 1: some nice pictures of me over the years, and that's
Speaker 1: not who fell. Yeah, that's not who I saw. I
Speaker 1: saw something completely different. When you decided you wanted to
Speaker 1: go with your dad, where was your mom? She was
Speaker 1: out of the picture. Yeah, she was completely out of
Speaker 1: the picture. And what'd your dad do for a living?
Speaker 1: He's an electronic engineer, worked in Sperry Ran it was
Speaker 1: was he working on the island or in the city
Speaker 1: in Minneola that's Long Islands, Nassau County. We moved from
Speaker 1: Brooklyn to Babylon when I was in the third grade
Speaker 1: or second grade. Was it weird to be on the
Speaker 1: island coming from the city, Well, it was weird of
Speaker 1: moving back to the city, well Brooklyn. When we lived
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, you know, that was a different different things
Speaker 1: because I was going to Catholic school there and when
Speaker 1: we moved out to Long Island, I was going to
Speaker 1: a public school. And I didn't get hit anymore for
Speaker 1: not grossing my hands the right way, you know. So,
Speaker 1: so what were the circumstances on which the guy shot
Speaker 1: you and thought you had a piece on you? What happened?
Speaker 1: I was in a stolen vehicle and I you stole
Speaker 1: the vehicle. Yeah, so you were moving up in the
Speaker 1: world in that Crook department was It wasn't like I
Speaker 1: was selling cars areny It was just me enjoy riding
Speaker 1: mostly and selling nice tires and bucket seats, and it
Speaker 1: was a hobby. It wasn't a career. If the stuff
Speaker 1: came off the car, I tried to sell it. But
Speaker 1: you know, the people were older than me that we're
Speaker 1: buying this ship, and they just usually took advantage of that.
Speaker 1: And if they were mean, they were just taken and
Speaker 1: not pay me. And another pattern in your life. You're
Speaker 1: doing all the work and you're not getting paid. And
Speaker 1: then so the guy would think I shot you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's going through a tunnel and didn't pay the toll.
Speaker 1: At one end, when I came out at the other,
Speaker 1: they had a blocked the street with officers standing with
Speaker 1: their guns pointed. So at one hand went down to
Speaker 1: open the door, and when I came back up to
Speaker 1: put them up, they thought. They said, we thought you
Speaker 1: were coming up with a gun, and how old are you?
Speaker 1: Then that's fifteen. You're fifteen years old getting shot with NYPD. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my god, it doesn't matter what I did. It was
Speaker 1: juvenile delinquency, and so it was basically, you know, me
Speaker 1: making the decision on what place I was going to
Speaker 1: go to. You know, they gave me a choice of
Speaker 1: different places, and they showed me the brochures and camp
Speaker 1: casts looked like a really lovely place. Where was that upstate? Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the cats and near the Cats Skills. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't it wasn't a bad place, but it was not
Speaker 1: a fresh place that an inter city kid could get
Speaker 1: around in very well. You know, how long were you there?
Speaker 1: I think I was there maybe four months, and then
Speaker 1: what happened? I decided I didn't like that place, so
Speaker 1: they took off. How hard was that to do? Difficult
Speaker 1: at all. It's for somebody that knew how to live
Speaker 1: in the woods and camp and stuff like that, which
Speaker 1: I kind of knew who who talked. I went camping
Speaker 1: with friends when I lived in Long Island. We went out.
Speaker 1: We had a state park near us with a lake
Speaker 1: and everything, and it was kind of nice. You pick
Speaker 1: up things you can use that are useful. You learn
Speaker 1: how to camp in the woods, just in case you
Speaker 1: need to escape from a juvenile detention centering. You don't
Speaker 1: know that what's down the road. You know, it was
Speaker 1: just you having fun. When you went out and stayed
Speaker 1: out overnight. It wasn't it wasn't any planned camping trip.
Speaker 1: We didn't have tents or anything like that. We just
Speaker 1: went out and stayed out all night. So when you
Speaker 1: get out of the space you were escape, you're on
Speaker 1: the lamb, so to speak from the pass. How long
Speaker 1: you doing that? How does that last? Who finds you? Well,
Speaker 1: I decided that I was gonna go to California and
Speaker 1: uh and so I did one more small thing, barred money,
Speaker 1: basically without them knowing about it. And I went out
Speaker 1: to California with this money, doing a bus trip, and
Speaker 1: I took a friend with me. So I borrowed this
Speaker 1: money kind of permanently. And it was enough to go
Speaker 1: to California and buy a pair of cowboy boots and
Speaker 1: Texas and have to sell them back to the guy.
Speaker 1: How old were you when you arrived in California? So
Speaker 1: you're still fifteen years old. You're really packing a lot
Speaker 1: of excitement into this year. It was a good year.
Speaker 1: That's a whole chapter in your book right there. And
Speaker 1: you arrived That's when I started my mind in Korea. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to get to that, because no, now your
Speaker 1: dad is still in New York. Do you stay in
Speaker 1: touch with him or you lose contact with him while
Speaker 1: you're spread your wings out? And we didn't stay in
Speaker 1: contact you And where'd you go? What town? Eventually I
Speaker 1: wound up in l A. I had done to Texas
Speaker 1: and to Mexico. I went, and I uh then came
Speaker 1: back out of Mexico and back to Texas and he hitched.
Speaker 1: The ride was real kind of I was lucky with hitching,
Speaker 1: you know. I got it ride all the way up
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles to the train station where I got
Speaker 1: left off in l A. And made contact with what
Speaker 1: a nice guy who took me back to his place,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's foster care all over here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he lived in Watts and it was I got
Speaker 1: there and I, you know, i'd heard this was the
Speaker 1: slum area or the bad area. And I get there
Speaker 1: and I see these apartments with swimming pools and stuff.
Speaker 1: I say, you got a swimming pool? I said, how
Speaker 1: could you say this is the slum area? You out
Speaker 1: of your mind? This is this is incredible. So when
Speaker 1: they found this modeling job for me to do, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, I do that. It makes some money. When
Speaker 1: did it hit you as it does? Like these little
Speaker 1: girls go to pageants, you know, they're they're like the
Speaker 1: John Benet Ramsay thing where and they realize the power
Speaker 1: they have. And when did you realize you had that
Speaker 1: power over people? Where they just they just like to
Speaker 1: look at you and they didn't want to stop looking
Speaker 1: at you all day long? Well, when did that hit you? Hin?
Speaker 1: Of I am knew that people treated me nice because
Speaker 1: of the way I look just for showing up. Did
Speaker 1: you did you had a few people like that in
Speaker 1: New York that also when I went back there and
Speaker 1: just we're happened? Had me come to dinner because I
Speaker 1: looked nice? I was a decoration. And then when you
Speaker 1: were in l A. Did you go with an agency
Speaker 1: and somebody repped you this criminal type guy? This was
Speaker 1: not any this was you know, Oh you're so strong,
Speaker 1: who you should do this? This muscle modeling? You know,
Speaker 1: we'll show your muscles and everything. Did you work out
Speaker 1: a lot? No? I never worked out. You never worked
Speaker 1: out your whole life ever? Oh come on, never, are
Speaker 1: you kidding me? My god? It's like you would drop
Speaker 1: down a tree, you know, a lot of trees, so
Speaker 1: you you but with like your physical culture, if you will,
Speaker 1: you were in a runner or a surfer or a
Speaker 1: ball player or like what you did nothing to stay
Speaker 1: in tree whatever worked out. I mean, your your tree
Speaker 1: shopping career is behind you now and you're you know
Speaker 1: when I was, when I was really young, I wanted
Speaker 1: to play football, so I had a lot of potatists
Speaker 1: so I could gain some weight. And you never gained
Speaker 1: a pound. And you know, I I think I've lost
Speaker 1: about an inch and a half since I've gotten older.
Speaker 1: I've gotten shorter, and I keep getting shorter. It seems
Speaker 1: like my wife tells and tells, me, well, you're very
Speaker 1: you know, you're tall. Uh. And I used to always
Speaker 1: a quite uh a person's age with their height. I
Speaker 1: used to think, oh, that's an adult because they're they're tall.
Speaker 1: And I think of myself as a kid because I'm
Speaker 1: so short. Anyway, the criminal guy who's the modeling agency,
Speaker 1: how did that play out? Well, he introduces me to
Speaker 1: this person that wants to that does these uh these photographs,
Speaker 1: and they said, you know, look, Joe rubbed this oil
Speaker 1: on you. And it starts out real, you know, really easy,
Speaker 1: you know, it's nothing, nothing that's too frightening to a
Speaker 1: person that's you know, being first introduced to it. It's just,
Speaker 1: you know, take your clothes off and stand over there
Speaker 1: and nude. Yeah, and for you did you feel that
Speaker 1: in that world you want to nose for people you
Speaker 1: could trust and not trust. Yeah, So the guy says,
Speaker 1: oil up and stand over there naked. You knew you
Speaker 1: were cool. Nothing was gonna happen there. Yeah. Did you
Speaker 1: find it weird? Yeah? I thought it was real weird.
Speaker 1: But I was gonna get fifty dollars, a whole fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: That was a lot of money back then, you know,
Speaker 1: and I thought, wow, fifty dollars was standing So yeah,
Speaker 1: Joe making put job up like like you're making a
Speaker 1: muscle Joe, you know. And shortly after that, I have
Speaker 1: a fight with the guy that introduced me to this
Speaker 1: modeling people because he had this scam that he wanted
Speaker 1: to do. He wanted to blackmail somebody. You wanted me
Speaker 1: to do something and doing that and also it's a
Speaker 1: stupid ship, you know. So I got angry and he
Speaker 1: got he got violent. He was an ex coun that was,
Speaker 1: you know, gonna show his toughness, not to me anyway.
Speaker 1: He broke a bottle to come at me, and I
Speaker 1: knocked the bottle out of his hand and went on
Speaker 1: the ground and broke and uh he uh. He did
Speaker 1: a little dance with him. Yeah. He fell on the
Speaker 1: glass and got all cut up. You know. Well actually
Speaker 1: I threw him on the glass and he got all
Speaker 1: cut up. No, No, he fell on the glass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and were holding him down. You were trying to help him.
Speaker 1: He tried to press charges against you. Yeah, he tried
Speaker 1: to do a listen on since. Anyway, we went to
Speaker 1: court and they reached you, my father and say, you
Speaker 1: know your your sons out here, and oh you need
Speaker 1: to send them back, you know, put him on a
Speaker 1: plane and I'll send you the money. Where'd you live them?
Speaker 1: When he got to New York, I stayed with him
Speaker 1: for a week and then went out on my own again.
Speaker 1: It was the plan when you were back in New York. Well,
Speaker 1: the modeling thing again, did you think this is good money?
Speaker 1: I never thought about it, about the modeling thing, you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't something that I knew anybody. I had a
Speaker 1: couple of friends in New York that introduced me to
Speaker 1: other people. And and then one day one of these friends,
Speaker 1: uh said, Hey, I know this person that's uh making
Speaker 1: these Campbell soup can you know, makes the candle soup?
Speaker 1: And I was thinking we were going to eat some soup,
Speaker 1: which I was all for. You're gonna go to the
Speaker 1: Campbell soup factory? Yeah, whatever, Pennsylvania. I had no idea
Speaker 1: where it was. You could take a picture of you
Speaker 1: oiled up, said there's somebody sitting behind a camera reading
Speaker 1: a newspaper, so I couldn't see who it was or
Speaker 1: what it was, you know, but they wanted to introduce
Speaker 1: me that this Campbell soup Andy Warhole guy that I had.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't know who Andy Warho was or
Speaker 1: you know, before I met them. Mine I had married
Speaker 1: young lady, my first my first wife. Ah no, I
Speaker 1: had to be eighteen then. So but it was why
Speaker 1: did you get married when you're right there was a
Speaker 1: premium for you. Why did you get married? My father
Speaker 1: was dating her mother, and my father wanted to she
Speaker 1: got herself pregnant. My father said, you know, you should
Speaker 1: take we should take this person, and he should own
Speaker 1: up to his responsibility of his kids were the father
Speaker 1: I was also got pregnant with somebody else. My father said,
Speaker 1: we'll take him to court, you know, And and I
Speaker 1: kept telling my father, you shouldn't do that, and you
Speaker 1: shouldn't push her to do that, because he's gonna come
Speaker 1: in with a bunch. This is Brooklyn, you know, and
Speaker 1: he can come a bunch of guys saying we all
Speaker 1: slept with her and nothing's going to ever come from
Speaker 1: which one of us as the father. Yeah, that's back
Speaker 1: before DNA and all that other ship. Thank god for DNA. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: so you decided to marry her. I decided to marry
Speaker 1: her and give the kid my name. You know what
Speaker 1: kind of work did you do that? I was a
Speaker 1: book binder, went to Actually I was assembly line and
Speaker 1: didn't do anything except in the city, Ye, Manhattan. Who
Speaker 1: know why that job? Because my uncle ran the ran
Speaker 1: the show was his business. Yeah, well I don't know
Speaker 1: if it was his business, but he ran the shop.
Speaker 1: So was there a part of you when you're in
Speaker 1: Jersey and your book binding? And he got a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old bride has got a kid, and we're not
Speaker 1: quite sure who in the Brooklyn gang is really the father.
Speaker 1: Do you sit there and go I missed standing they're
Speaker 1: oiled up in a room naked getting the fifty bucks
Speaker 1: from these guys. I don't know, did you miss that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then you and then you go meet the guy
Speaker 1: who's behind the newspaper, who makes the soup, who's gonna
Speaker 1: make you soup for lunch? What happened there? He drops
Speaker 1: the newspaper. What happens? Obviously he became very fond of you,
Speaker 1: very quickly. Well, it wasn't him. It was the guy
Speaker 1: that was standing to decide of the camera and giving
Speaker 1: all the instructions to everybody. That was Paul Morrissy. So
Speaker 1: he's the one that suggested that I'd be in the film,
Speaker 1: because you know, he was this character that asked everything
Speaker 1: about your life, and I had told him, you know,
Speaker 1: and junior high had played on the wrestling team. He says, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a good idea. We'll have you do that with Undine.
Speaker 1: You'll you'll teach him wrestling. So let's film that. We'll
Speaker 1: film that. What do you describe Morrissey? Then Marcy real smart,
Speaker 1: real educated, he had He was a Fordham graduate. He
Speaker 1: was a social worker before in New York City where
Speaker 1: he really saw these uh strange people that he had,
Speaker 1: you know, work with. Uh. So he had plenty of
Speaker 1: great stories and he he shot these films that was shot.
Speaker 1: There were silent films I saw. I watched a couple
Speaker 1: of them. They were pretty good films. Your movie goer them,
Speaker 1: you're luck, Yeah, oh I was. I loved the movies.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be in them. I just liked
Speaker 1: watching them. But when you watch the movies at Morrissey
Speaker 1: and or a warhol Man, they weren't like movies you
Speaker 1: saw in the theater. When I yeah, I thought they
Speaker 1: were a joke. I thought that. Well, when we were
Speaker 1: shooting this one thing the soup day they were shifting,
Speaker 1: they asked me to be in the thing and I
Speaker 1: shot this most scene and they came over to me
Speaker 1: after we were done, and uh they asked me to
Speaker 1: sign a release. I said, you're not gonna this is
Speaker 1: just for fun. Nobody's gonna ever see this. This is
Speaker 1: it's just I thought, just like a whole movie. I
Speaker 1: didn't think they were gonna, you know, ever show this anywhere.
Speaker 1: And thought it was a joke because what was happening
Speaker 1: there was you know, pretty silly, you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: you know, anything I ever saw in the theater. It
Speaker 1: was unfamiliar. Yeah. Really, I signed the release thinking it
Speaker 1: would never be released. And and then later on they
Speaker 1: called me and uh, if I would them to photograph
Speaker 1: me for the advertising of this film that they you know,
Speaker 1: they shot with me first, before this movie that was
Speaker 1: supposed to be a twenty four hour movie that turned
Speaker 1: into Loves of Undine. They cut it into a smooth
Speaker 1: that was your first movie, and that was my first
Speaker 1: movie with him. But before that was ever released, they
Speaker 1: had called me up and he did to ask me
Speaker 1: to be in another movie. And then he put Paul
Speaker 1: on the phone, Who's told me, Yeah, Joe, we're going
Speaker 1: out to Arizona to shoot a western. Would you like
Speaker 1: to be in the West end? I said, sure, that'd
Speaker 1: be great, but you gotta pay me what I would
Speaker 1: I make at the book binding place, because I can't
Speaker 1: take off. I'm married now. I got to take care
Speaker 1: of my all this bullshit, Yeah about what I was making?
Speaker 1: Paid you exactly what you made? Probably they would. They
Speaker 1: were always cheap. They didn't want to pay somebody too much.
Speaker 1: And then somebody else asked for the same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: isn't amazing you sit in a room back in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven with a bunch of people who later on
Speaker 1: the soup Can guy would sell his paintings for tens
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars. Yeah, he becomes one of the
Speaker 1: richest artists in history. Did you have an artistic sensibility
Speaker 1: but you thought that these guys were or you just
Speaker 1: as you said, it was just unfamiliar and silly. Well
Speaker 1: in the beginning, and you know it all it wasn't
Speaker 1: for me and and and He's art. You know, we
Speaker 1: all participated in making the Andy art. They had said,
Speaker 1: you know, after we had shot the Cowboy movie and
Speaker 1: we came back, I thought that was it. Go back
Speaker 1: to book binding. And you know I called Paul asking
Speaker 1: about the Western and uh. He had told me that
Speaker 1: he had a job for me at the factory. And
Speaker 1: he said, okay, you know, be happy to give up
Speaker 1: what I was doing, you know, do something there. And
Speaker 1: I went down to the factory and that was the
Speaker 1: day then, and he was shot when I showed up
Speaker 1: to the factory to work there. Coming up more on
Speaker 1: Joe Delessandro's relationship with Andy Warhol and why he eventually
Speaker 1: stopped working with him, Explore the Here's the Thing Archives.
Speaker 1: I talked to Eric Scheiner, director of the Andy Warhol Museum,
Speaker 1: on how the shooting affected Andy and his work. It
Speaker 1: was a huge wake up call and he really did
Speaker 1: start to think about business in a much more serious way. Mortality, immortality.
Speaker 1: Take a listen that Here's the Thing Dot Org. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: The Pole Morrissey Trilogy has made up of three films, Flesh, Trash,
Speaker 1: and Heat, directed by Morrissey and produced by Andy Warhol.
Speaker 1: They depict the semi side of the late sixties and
Speaker 1: early seventies. My guest today, Joe Delessandro, start in all
Speaker 1: of them. Today Joe lives in Los Angeles with his
Speaker 1: wife Kim, and manages an apartment building. Back then, Joe
Speaker 1: was quick to anger, but also had a Devil may
Speaker 1: care attitude. He needed someone to look out for him.
Speaker 1: Paul took on that role. Me and Paul were real
Speaker 1: close and and Paul became like my mentor. He was
Speaker 1: well educated, and he he knew the movie industry. He
Speaker 1: knew the movies and the actors and the and the directors,
Speaker 1: and he knew all about the business. And and you know,
Speaker 1: there was a big part of the making of these
Speaker 1: silly little films that was business. They were you know,
Speaker 1: there were all these uh the films that we had
Speaker 1: to ship off to universities because we had a They
Speaker 1: had a big following throughout the world. The films themselves,
Speaker 1: I guess they were thought of as you know art
Speaker 1: or the introduction of uh of underground filmmaking to the people.
Speaker 1: You know, they they had that kind of thing. I
Speaker 1: would think over in Paris and in France and Italy
Speaker 1: where they made these kind of film one type of things,
Speaker 1: and they made these uh I haven't God type movies.
Speaker 1: And Paul would say, you know, whenever I had something
Speaker 1: against the movies, he would say, you know, these movies
Speaker 1: will one day be in the museums, so don't be
Speaker 1: upset with this scene. You know, they're they're not They're
Speaker 1: not the same as something you know, sleazy or anything
Speaker 1: like that. This is this is art, you know, And
Speaker 1: he would you and you needed to be sold on
Speaker 1: that again and again. Yeah, he would do it for
Speaker 1: every time he would ask me to of a piece
Speaker 1: of clothing in the film. Was he after you? No, No,
Speaker 1: Paul is strictly an a sexual type guy. I never
Speaker 1: knew him to have never read anybody. I mean, not
Speaker 1: that that matters, but I mean I'm just curious because
Speaker 1: the people that came on to me, you know, over
Speaker 1: the years, I would imagine it was a nonstopping it was.
Speaker 1: It was not not he was never one of them.
Speaker 1: But when you're there in that world, I mean, where's
Speaker 1: the love in your life when you're working with them?
Speaker 1: Was it just the love of being counted as one
Speaker 1: of them? Is an important part of this family? Could
Speaker 1: you fall in love with people that you met? Did
Speaker 1: you fall in love with men and women that you met?
Speaker 1: Or like, where where do you become emotionally mature during
Speaker 1: this because I would imagine you must have had hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of opportunity. Imagine every woman in Hollywood came
Speaker 1: in there and said, here's my phone number. They at
Speaker 1: least want to have dinner with you. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: kind of nice. Whatever, could you fall in love them? No?
Speaker 1: What happened was they take like, no, no, they take
Speaker 1: they take me to the parties and the dinner parties.
Speaker 1: They would be drinking going on, and of course I'd
Speaker 1: want to drink and Paul would later on tell me
Speaker 1: that he noticed that I drank, you know, too much,
Speaker 1: and I didn't stop. He was your coach, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he said, uh when I when we go out to
Speaker 1: these events, you can't drink, you drink. I can't have
Speaker 1: your puffy tomorrow. He didn't care about puffy. But he
Speaker 1: would also try to control what I ate ship you know,
Speaker 1: I said, but Paul, you eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to eat the crap that you eat.
Speaker 1: You know. He had a lot of instructions for me
Speaker 1: to be a better person. He he was a little
Speaker 1: pig million in the relations He would he would upset me,
Speaker 1: and then when I get upset and want to knock
Speaker 1: his teeth out, he would, uh, yeah, pretty much, I
Speaker 1: would every everything with Morrisey. Sounds like it was an
Speaker 1: effect for filmmaking pretty much. He would make me upset
Speaker 1: to just make me get past that where I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: He was always afraid I was going to hit a
Speaker 1: reporter or something like that. So he did this stuff
Speaker 1: to push my buttons, and he would run and hide
Speaker 1: behind the door, and I would crash through the door
Speaker 1: and you'd go behind another one, and I get to
Speaker 1: that one, and by the time I got to the
Speaker 1: second door, I realized that, you know, I have to
Speaker 1: fix these fucking doors. You know, so this is not
Speaker 1: a not a smart thing to do. Better to just talk.
Speaker 1: And so I calmed down and say, okay, I understand, now,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about this. He was like a manager. Yeah,
Speaker 1: mainly I worked for them. I did these after when
Speaker 1: Andy got shot. Paul decided that we had all this
Speaker 1: row stock of film there and that we were going
Speaker 1: to go out and and he was gonna do a
Speaker 1: film without Andy there, you know, which Morrissey made many
Speaker 1: films and right, yeah, and he would come and visit,
Speaker 1: but he isn't you know, he was busy doing lithos. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's are At some point, you're not just in the
Speaker 1: family there with Paul and Andy and the photography and
Speaker 1: the films. You become a celebrity in your own right,
Speaker 1: and your photographed for Rolling Stone, and you're photographed by Scuboolo.
Speaker 1: And when you step outside that home and other people
Speaker 1: want to kind of get into the whole iconography business
Speaker 1: with you and photograph you. Were you just as comfortable
Speaker 1: with them? Did you feel as protected as you with them.
Speaker 1: Whenever I do these shoots with School or any of
Speaker 1: the other people, Paul was there or Andy was there,
Speaker 1: they were doing a shoot too. It wasn't I went
Speaker 1: down there on my own, you know. I was introduced
Speaker 1: to these people and then it was everywhere. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a session that was connected with the the
Speaker 1: Andy Woho films, so they were either they were doing
Speaker 1: a story on Andy promote their product. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: just happened to be a pretty boy that they did
Speaker 1: a couple of extra shots with, you know, because I
Speaker 1: photographed well, I don't know, uh, you photographed very well.
Speaker 1: Your photographed quite well. Well pulled back then he used
Speaker 1: to he used to get photographed to and he he
Speaker 1: had this his one side that he would always do.
Speaker 1: And he said, that's just the only side I can
Speaker 1: be photographed by, you know, Okay, Paul. Yeah, Now, now
Speaker 1: what about what about drugs and alcohol in your life? Then? None? None? Well,
Speaker 1: I see, you know, if I couldn't drink socially with
Speaker 1: these people out there, because Paul said I drank too much,
Speaker 1: I wasn't a person that was going to go home
Speaker 1: and drink by myself and or in my house. I
Speaker 1: was never a guy that you know, came back after
Speaker 1: work and and said again, I gotta have a drink
Speaker 1: or or you know, got off from the job for
Speaker 1: the weekend and said let me get a six pack
Speaker 1: or a twelve pack. You know, I didn't do that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that kind of drinking. So when I when
Speaker 1: I got done with my Warhole days, uh, and we
Speaker 1: did our last two films together here it's got to
Speaker 1: be seventies seventy one. That was I guess the end.
Speaker 1: You know, at the end, I didn't want to work
Speaker 1: with them anymore because now I came to understand that,
Speaker 1: you know, I did these movies with them, and they
Speaker 1: were getting a lot of play, and people were recognizing
Speaker 1: Paul always as my men to told me, you can't
Speaker 1: fall into this thing with the reporters of you know,
Speaker 1: what they say good about you, because then you gotta
Speaker 1: believe what they say bad about you, and you don't
Speaker 1: want to be in the Mickey Mouse Club. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I didn't go around and saying I'm a superstar. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't believe in any of that. It was all nonsense.
Speaker 1: Still to me, Uh, it was fun doing the movies
Speaker 1: and we had a good time with it, and Paul
Speaker 1: would push me, you know, to do you know a
Speaker 1: little more than I would want to do felt comfortable with.
Speaker 1: And I tried to get comfortable with it all because,
Speaker 1: you know, he said it was necessary for the film
Speaker 1: and telling the story. And a lot of the stories
Speaker 1: that we were told were you know, things that I
Speaker 1: shared about my life, you know, from the hustling with Flesh,
Speaker 1: you know, you know what do you mean? You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: you were how much I participated in in the story
Speaker 1: with with you know, making other films. Well, the thing is,
Speaker 1: I told, you know, Paul was interested in knowing all
Speaker 1: about me, So I told him parts of my life,
Speaker 1: you know, um in a kind of way. But no,
Speaker 1: not the kind that you know everybody says, not the
Speaker 1: kind of portrayed in in the movie. I knew when
Speaker 1: people you know were interested in me, and and and
Speaker 1: I get people to do more for me if I
Speaker 1: just you know, show up and yeah, leading them on
Speaker 1: to believing there was setting down the road. And uh,
Speaker 1: of course, and you said I gotta go make a
Speaker 1: phone call. You were going, yeah, pretty much. But that
Speaker 1: whole thing, you know, got me in trouble a couple
Speaker 1: of times, you know. So it was and stuff that
Speaker 1: I felt comfortable with. So I was real happy when
Speaker 1: I admit the whole people who was on my own?
Speaker 1: What's the first movie you make? It's a thing over
Speaker 1: in Puerto Rico. We shoot called The Gardener. Paul wanted
Speaker 1: me to do a real movie. Uh, work with a
Speaker 1: real crew and and you know, so that I would
Speaker 1: know the difference between you know who that guy named
Speaker 1: Jim Kay. I'm pretty sure that's his name, Jim ka Um.
Speaker 1: What kind of part of your part? Well? I played
Speaker 1: the gardener, the lead role, and there was the actress
Speaker 1: was the girl who was in the guests Who's Coming
Speaker 1: to Dinner Partier's wife. Yeah, she was, Uh, she makes
Speaker 1: a lot of films, but she was in this and uh,
Speaker 1: I was this gardener that basically controlled the plants and
Speaker 1: I turned into a tree at the end. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: familiar territory. Yeah, and it was you know, it was
Speaker 1: a fun film to make. What was it like for
Speaker 1: you to make a film like you show up on
Speaker 1: a set and they go, we gotta shoot five or
Speaker 1: six pages today It's just everything that we did always
Speaker 1: felt felt so natural to me, you know, it was
Speaker 1: really easy came to me. It wasn't something that I
Speaker 1: felt I had to be taught, you know. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: we we shot this film down on Puerto Rico. I
Speaker 1: think it took a month. But what I came to
Speaker 1: understand is I got I think I got paid thirty thousand,
Speaker 1: eight or twenty nine thousand dollars for this film. Now
Speaker 1: I'd never been paid you're a b yeah from from Andy,
Speaker 1: never made nothing moving Paris. Now now I made these
Speaker 1: att this money, and I just felt like, did that
Speaker 1: make you more funk? You to Andy and those guys
Speaker 1: pretty much, because the next thing I had to do
Speaker 1: after I did this film, When I finished this film
Speaker 1: and I had my wife with me, I had my
Speaker 1: mother in law, the first wife. This is my second wife. Okay,
Speaker 1: we skipped over the fun Where did you meet her
Speaker 1: in New York? And man and while you were in
Speaker 1: the warhole and you fell in love with her? Well,
Speaker 1: it was one of those things Paul said, you got
Speaker 1: to do the right thing. She was Mommy, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: your old school, he's a shop. Marry the girl. You're
Speaker 1: like out of a Springsteen song. And she knew I
Speaker 1: was going through this thing with my first wife, where
Speaker 1: I was trying to, you know, get a certain amount
Speaker 1: of visitation with my son. And so she she knew
Speaker 1: I didn't want to go out and have any more
Speaker 1: you know kids, because I already had you know, a
Speaker 1: tough situation yeah going on. And she said it was
Speaker 1: an accident, but it just seemed like it was too
Speaker 1: contrived to be an accident. You know, I want to
Speaker 1: you know, she she would come and stay with me
Speaker 1: and go out and buy you know, curtains for the
Speaker 1: windows and stuff, and you know, making an eyelid, which
Speaker 1: I didn't give a shit about, but you know, she
Speaker 1: was making my little apartment there into a home. How
Speaker 1: did Surge gains profid Remember now, now I'm living in Italy.
Speaker 1: I've been making movies for a while. I made three
Speaker 1: films a year for close to ten years over there.
Speaker 1: I went over there and made the Frankenstein and Dracula
Speaker 1: and and the last two films I made with Woho
Speaker 1: because after I finished The Gardener, I had these two
Speaker 1: films signed to do with the Paul over In. What
Speaker 1: they did is they made a contract up with Ponti
Speaker 1: to have these films made. Car Yeah, in Andy Brownsburg,
Speaker 1: they were the producers, and they wanted Andy to be
Speaker 1: you know, his name to be connected to the films,
Speaker 1: and Paul as the director, and they wanted me to
Speaker 1: be there and the star. Uh that's how it read,
Speaker 1: because you know, they saw that we had made these
Speaker 1: other films, the trilogy had been made, and they were
Speaker 1: doing really well. I mean, people aren't stupid me with
Speaker 1: Me and Paul were going over to Europe for a
Speaker 1: while now every year to sell one of these films.
Speaker 1: And what they would do is they would sell flesh
Speaker 1: and they would package with that movie bike Boy, and
Speaker 1: I Amn, so Andy would sell these other films, you know,
Speaker 1: with my one movie that they wanted package. Yeah, package deal.
Speaker 1: So they always said that, you know, the film that
Speaker 1: they really promoted when it was opening over there was
Speaker 1: the film that I was in. They weren't promoting in
Speaker 1: the same the same way Bike Boy or I am in,
Speaker 1: you know, and I just kind of felt like, you know,
Speaker 1: Paul had made this deal with me that I would
Speaker 1: get a percentage of of the producers of their share,
Speaker 1: Andy and Paul's share, two and a half percent from
Speaker 1: Paul and to an half percent from Andy, which later
Speaker 1: on when Paul was given all the films that became
Speaker 1: five percent I was supposed to get from Paul and
Speaker 1: over the years, I you know, I never saw any
Speaker 1: of it. Who's the best director you ever worked? I
Speaker 1: mean I always say the best, but who's one that
Speaker 1: you sat there and go, man, I really dig do
Speaker 1: with us. I like shooting scenes with the sky or
Speaker 1: this woman surge again, which describe that God. Well, there
Speaker 1: was a small role that Gerard the Padre played in
Speaker 1: the film. He was doing a Mocko Ferrari film in
Speaker 1: Italy and he would fight up from Italy to be
Speaker 1: in this Uh this is your tim would surge. And
Speaker 1: we were all drinkers back then. We drink all day
Speaker 1: and Searche was a big drinker. But it didn't interfere
Speaker 1: with our work. Uh. We all worked real hard. I
Speaker 1: would always ask, you know, search if he wanted me
Speaker 1: to do some of the lines in French, and he
Speaker 1: would say no, no, no, no, no, Joe. When you
Speaker 1: when you try to speak French, your whole face contorts.
Speaker 1: I don't want that. Yeah, yeah, just do English. And
Speaker 1: uh so this was a real treat to be working
Speaker 1: in a film where my my, my co star Jane
Speaker 1: is uh, married to my director and they have a
Speaker 1: beautiful marriage. And and I and I gotta pretend that
Speaker 1: this is my you know, that I'm attracted and this
Speaker 1: is my lover. It's supposed to be a real sexy movie,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that way. It's kind of real bizarre.
Speaker 1: If you liked the film when it came out, yeah,
Speaker 1: I liked what I did. Yeah, Yeah, What was happening
Speaker 1: to your own sexuality when you were doing these films
Speaker 1: by that time? I I just I just thought I
Speaker 1: was marvelous. You know, here's how I heres how I
Speaker 1: rate my sexuality. You know, my me and my brother
Speaker 1: lived together and we had we had beds that was
Speaker 1: side by side. And one day my brother is having
Speaker 1: sex while I'm in the upper bed pretending to be asleep,
Speaker 1: and he's going on for on none and about forty
Speaker 1: five fifty minutes later he finishes up. So the next
Speaker 1: morning when we really get up and they go, you know, Bobby,
Speaker 1: you're doing it. If it if it takes more than
Speaker 1: fifteen seconds, you're doing it a little wrong. Because I
Speaker 1: was the fifteen second man. And I came to find
Speaker 1: out many years later that my brother was doing all
Speaker 1: my early girlfriend to see you in you know, when
Speaker 1: he said you were the wrong tella song. He said,
Speaker 1: you know my brother maybe then, the one that's got
Speaker 1: the career in the movies that you're trying to to
Speaker 1: be with. But we can put his poster on the
Speaker 1: wall while you bang me, if that's what you prefer
Speaker 1: now now and at the same time, because this is
Speaker 1: a weird, non secret, but I've always this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff is always so weird to me because I mean
Speaker 1: I love music, and I even love, you know, the
Speaker 1: rock and roll music of my generation. You know, uh,
Speaker 1: when I was young. I don't listen to much popular
Speaker 1: music now actually kind of puts me off. But but
Speaker 1: so watch you on the cover of Sticky Fingers. They say,
Speaker 1: is that correct? That is you? So wasn't it funny
Speaker 1: to me? I mean, this is a this is an
Speaker 1: admittedly really dumb thing to say, but I can't help it.
Speaker 1: You got the most famous crotch shot in history and
Speaker 1: cultural history. Did they give you any money for that? No,
Speaker 1: it had nothing to do with me. Then. What it
Speaker 1: was was Andy was asked to give it, but it
Speaker 1: didn't hadn't from Andy. Yeah, and and he just you know,
Speaker 1: gave him a bunch of them, and they selected the
Speaker 1: one that I recognize as my belt and my you know,
Speaker 1: your personality. It is me, and and yeah that rolling
Speaker 1: Stone finally admits that it's me. So that's kind of cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he took I don't know a hundred years,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad we could set the recursitor on National
Speaker 1: Public Radio. That's your uh, that's your Florida peninsula down. Now.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that, um uh, how did coppel
Speaker 1: to find you? We'll see that said. That's you know,
Speaker 1: back when I had done this trilogy with Paul Um,
Speaker 1: people were interested in working with me, you know, and
Speaker 1: they thought he's pretty interesting character. Let's see, let's see
Speaker 1: what he can do. But and he would say to people,
Speaker 1: you know, I think he does drugs. And Paul would
Speaker 1: tell people that would ask about me, I don't think
Speaker 1: he can do a script. I don't think he can.
Speaker 1: And I thought, how fucking insane this is. You know,
Speaker 1: these are the people that are you know, supposed to
Speaker 1: be in my corner, and they're not saying anything wonderful
Speaker 1: about me. They're saying a bunch of crap, you know.
Speaker 1: So this is this is basically before we went off
Speaker 1: to Italy to do the film. So when that came
Speaker 1: back to me, I said, you know, these people aren't
Speaker 1: in my corner. I don't I don't want to do
Speaker 1: any more work with them. I'm through. But Cobra came
Speaker 1: around when he was getting ready to do The Godfather
Speaker 1: for the first time. You know, Uh, there was mentioned,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we should see this new underground person.
Speaker 1: But like I said, you know, nobody wanted to get
Speaker 1: involved with somebody who has no you know, no training
Speaker 1: or anything like that. And it's it's told by the
Speaker 1: person that's made the films with him that they don't
Speaker 1: believe that he could do a script. So when we
Speaker 1: went to do Frankenstein and Dracula, when I finally agree
Speaker 1: that you know, yeah, I'll do these things if you
Speaker 1: you pay me right and give me that percentage that
Speaker 1: I asked for. And there must be any line that
Speaker 1: I say in your film has to be written for me.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do one bit of improvisation, you know.
Speaker 1: And it all has to be written of scripted, yea
Speaker 1: scripted and given to me. And so every day they
Speaker 1: wrote my role, uh, and pretty much everybody that was
Speaker 1: in the film there, their stuff was written, you know, Um,
Speaker 1: because a couple of the swings around later for you
Speaker 1: to do Cotton Club. Yeah, it was just the kind
Speaker 1: of afterthought, let's put you know, let's meet I think
Speaker 1: Fred Rouse, who was you know, his producer. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: they called me and just meet with me, and and
Speaker 1: he said, when have you read it? A couple of
Speaker 1: lines first, you know, And I didn't even meet Frances
Speaker 1: that they or he might have been there. Now you
Speaker 1: go on and you make other films, and you do TV,
Speaker 1: and you're working with Richard Pryor, and you're working with
Speaker 1: uh yeah, Solderberg. You know, Bruce Willis had done a
Speaker 1: die Hard and I hoped, you know, yeah, I get
Speaker 1: to work with Blake Edwards and Richard Sunset bruns It
Speaker 1: and Jim Ghanner and and I thought, there's gotta be
Speaker 1: a success, you know because all that you know, all
Speaker 1: it takes is you're hitting in a in a film
Speaker 1: that's a success. And then you just keep moving on
Speaker 1: to those type of holmes. You know, they don't they
Speaker 1: don't make you, you know, it helps go beg for
Speaker 1: the Pennies anyway, never turned out for me, you know.
Speaker 1: Now recently, um, you got this Teddy Award from in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine for LGBT. Is that something that's a
Speaker 1: cause that's important to you? Nothing's ever important to me.
Speaker 1: It's just why do you think they chose you? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I never figured. I guess because I have
Speaker 1: a body of work that you know, they see that
Speaker 1: sexual liberation and I've done a lot of things and
Speaker 1: I was one of the first, you know, I was
Speaker 1: there before a lot of toll that. Uh. And you
Speaker 1: know the fact that me and Kim, we we get
Speaker 1: ourselves involved. You know, maybe I don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of money, but we get ourselves involved with taking care
Speaker 1: of the homes right now. Um, you know we do.
Speaker 1: We do all of this with my with my fans
Speaker 1: participating in it too. And but Kim is the one
Speaker 1: that does the going out in the street and interacting
Speaker 1: with them. She's pretty tough. Yeah, yeah, I can't tell her.
Speaker 1: It can be dangerous, but she does some crazy. She's
Speaker 1: a good partner. Yeah, she's mean. She's mean in fact,
Speaker 1: the way the reason I chose her in my life,
Speaker 1: we we used to go to this program together and
Speaker 1: she walked into the meeting and she had these lips
Speaker 1: that went all the way down here touch in and
Speaker 1: I said, nobody can be that angry. She just can't
Speaker 1: be that angry. And I said, but she's the girl
Speaker 1: for me, and we me the angriest girl in the
Speaker 1: sp Where are your sons now? H Ones in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: and doing um the Brooklyn one. H. I think he's
Speaker 1: got an army for a family. Uh, Mikey, he's um.
Speaker 1: He's always done hard labor. He's he's a tough man.
Speaker 1: And and your other son, uh, Joe Jr. Please tell
Speaker 1: me he has a pizza place, but he has a
Speaker 1: lovely home in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. Did she shake your head Jack, Pennsylvania? Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's shaking, yes, Okay, yeah, Pennsylvania. Has a house and
Speaker 1: he's he's separated from his wife, and he has a
Speaker 1: son from the marriage that he's kept and he's raised.
Speaker 1: My hat's off to him because he's done something that
Speaker 1: his own father was incapable of doing, and he's doing
Speaker 1: a real good job of it. You know, have you
Speaker 1: found love in your life? Ah mm hmm as much
Speaker 1: as you can love the The angriest woman the meeting
Speaker 1: with the mouth turned down. You know, she's been so
Speaker 1: long in my life. Then, you know, I've always loved
Speaker 1: and cared about her, you know, but she can be
Speaker 1: He's so mean. I mean this morning she was ready
Speaker 1: to kill me again. She she came in to do
Speaker 1: the paper work for me because I had to. I
Speaker 1: had to take a bath and a shave for this.
Speaker 1: Uh sitting down even though there's no camera here's uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I had to shave or get
Speaker 1: cleaned up. Could have came in her dirty good you
Speaker 1: look pretty good anyway. So I got ready for this
Speaker 1: and and she did my paper work this morning and
Speaker 1: got mad because it didn't you know, there was money missing.
Speaker 1: And you know, you are this icon. I mean you
Speaker 1: are like you are a piece of art. You are
Speaker 1: a work of art, and you and and and all
Speaker 1: these people made money off you, and you're this work
Speaker 1: of art and you're like, you're like this male sexual ideal,
Speaker 1: beyond James Dean, beyond Brad Pitt, beyond any of these
Speaker 1: but all the the god thing. But you're the greatest
Speaker 1: guy that ever lived because you chopped the trees down
Speaker 1: at the fucking detention center and then escaped and lived
Speaker 1: in the woods. That's the guy in that picture. Did that.
Speaker 1: You are such a strange bird. You're a really odd bird.
Speaker 1: And I'm so grateful for you for doing the show.
Speaker 1: I'm very very grateful for for doing this man, Thank
Speaker 1: you for taking the time. Director John Waters says Joe
Speaker 1: Delessandro quote forever changed male sexuality in cinema unquote knowing Delessandro,
Speaker 1: he didn't have to try that hard to do it.
Speaker 1: After I talked with Joe in Los Angeles, I called
Speaker 1: him up. He wanted to talk more about his relationship
Speaker 1: with the LGBT community, and your relationship with that community
Speaker 1: began where and how? I mean, I mean, the obvious
Speaker 1: question is are you l g B or T well,
Speaker 1: And I'm not any of those things. I don't think. No, Uh,
Speaker 1: you're a little Joe. I'm a little Joe basically. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm a kind of blank canvas, which you know, at
Speaker 1: least all my fans and people to project their fantasies
Speaker 1: and desires on, you know. Like I had had a
Speaker 1: friend here that I watched TV with, you know, on
Speaker 1: a regular basis, you know, on the the Game of Thrones,
Speaker 1: we were involved in watching that series, and he would
Speaker 1: come over on a Sunday night he's a gay friend
Speaker 1: for you know, many years. And and then one day, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, about six months ago, he decided that
Speaker 1: I shouldn't be married to my wife, that I'm that
Speaker 1: I'm gay, and that that we should live together. The
Speaker 1: other thing is, you know, I've never made any kind
Speaker 1: of declaration. Yeah, that he that I'm open for or
Speaker 1: looking for a relationship with somebody other than my wife.
Speaker 1: And uh, well, I must say my brief encounter watching
Speaker 1: TV into let's move in together is like so weird. Well,
Speaker 1: my my, I must say, my brief encounter with your
Speaker 1: wife leads me to think that when he says you
Speaker 1: should leave your wife and go living with him and
Speaker 1: go marry him, that Kim might say, he's all yours.
Speaker 1: You can have him. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, I gotta I
Speaker 1: gotta take the mail from the mail and hold on
Speaker 1: one second. We can't. You can't stage that. That's perfect, Joe,
Speaker 1: It's okay, while you just grabbed the mail, could you
Speaker 1: hold on a second. I gotta go walk my dog.
Speaker 1: Can you hold on? Well, I mean, obviously you've had
Speaker 1: a sensitivity and you've had an openness to this from
Speaker 1: day one when you first started working with all those
Speaker 1: guys that are Arcy and and Andy and people you've
Speaker 1: made films worth because that was a very kind of
Speaker 1: sexually uh open minded crowd. And are there any groups
Speaker 1: in particular that you have you know, when I was
Speaker 1: when I was a real young kid, when I was
Speaker 1: doing the car eating stuff and part of myself as
Speaker 1: a tough guy, I would have wound up in prison
Speaker 1: or or you know, for the rest of my life,
Speaker 1: probably because I would have wound up killing somebody because
Speaker 1: I was just so violent. And when I met the
Speaker 1: wall people they brought me, you know, and a few
Speaker 1: gay friends, they calmed me down. They made me realize
Speaker 1: that I didn't have to beat people up when I
Speaker 1: saw them all the time, you know, I didn't have
Speaker 1: to go off on something that somebody says to me.
Speaker 1: And it took a little while, but you know it,
Speaker 1: finally I finally understood it. Are there any organizations in
Speaker 1: particular that you've worked with closely or that you well
Speaker 1: for many years? I was involved with a from many
Speaker 1: many years. What about LGBT groups have you been involved
Speaker 1: with glad or I don't. I don't go out there
Speaker 1: anything to do with sexuality. I don't you know right
Speaker 1: now there's nothing sexual about me, you know, so I
Speaker 1: don't have a problem with my sexuality. You know, you
Speaker 1: get to a certain age, you know. I always used
Speaker 1: to think when I was a younger man and I
Speaker 1: couldn't get the thought of sex out of my head,
Speaker 1: that that would never that obsession would never go away.
Speaker 1: And uh, we used to have a meeting with my
Speaker 1: sponsor once a week and we had a one of
Speaker 1: our members he didn't have that obsession of mine, and
Speaker 1: the other members that will come into the meeting, we
Speaker 1: all we all kind of wondered why, why, why, And
Speaker 1: then we come to find out, of course that he's
Speaker 1: HIV positive and that's pretty much why he was able
Speaker 1: to give it up. But I never thought the obsessive,
Speaker 1: you know, obsessiveness about sex would ever go away. And
Speaker 1: when it when one day it did, I was just
Speaker 1: you know, so happy, you know that my mind didn't
Speaker 1: have to have to think about sex, you know, every
Speaker 1: fifteen or thirty seconds. So that was you know, gave
Speaker 1: freed me up for cartoons. You know, it kind of
Speaker 1: bores bores me when I when I see because you know,
Speaker 1: I did all the sexual things in the in the
Speaker 1: films and stuff. So when I see other people doing it,
Speaker 1: it's nothing that turns me on in anyway. So you know,
Speaker 1: I'd rather watch something else. I wouldn't rather watch the
Speaker 1: cowboy on a horse, or or the spaceman flying with
Speaker 1: his space shoes or something, you know, something that's total fantasy.
Speaker 1: You know, you are someone who just is such a
Speaker 1: striking presence. You know, your physical power, your masculinity, your
Speaker 1: good looks and if of thing. And when you look back,
Speaker 1: do you like that guy? Do you look at that
Speaker 1: guy and go, yeah, he was. I don't see the
Speaker 1: guy as me. That's what's so cool about it. When
Speaker 1: I see that guy that that could be. You know,
Speaker 1: I think the guy that I see is very cool,
Speaker 1: but I don't see it as me. The way I
Speaker 1: live my life and everything, I never actually talked about uh,
Speaker 1: acting or films with anybody here where you know, now
Speaker 1: reside and and do my little life thing here. Uh
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, it's cool that I had a
Speaker 1: chance to do do film and and I love I
Speaker 1: love working at it. It's a real fun thing. But
Speaker 1: the guy that is in front of the camera is
Speaker 1: not the same guy that I walk around with every
Speaker 1: day he's somebody else. I don't know how I how
Speaker 1: I do it, it's just um. Then the person that
Speaker 1: photographed me either has a different eye than I do,
Speaker 1: because when I look in the mirror, I don't see
Speaker 1: that same person. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening
Speaker 1: to here's the thing O