Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: If you watched the NBC Nightly News with anchor Brian
Speaker 1: Williams during Hurricane Katrina, you saw a newsman both composed
Speaker 1: and compassionate. People are dying inside the city of New
Speaker 1: Orleans today and that city has descended further into chaos tonight.
Speaker 1: It was his first year on the job, and Williams
Speaker 1: was the only network news anchor to report on Katrina
Speaker 1: and its impact from inside the super Dome. The Brian
Speaker 1: family was sitting in the stands with thousands of others,
Speaker 1: sound asleep when the noise started. It sounded like a
Speaker 1: New York City subway train. Others said they thought it
Speaker 1: was thunder or someone hammering, and in a way it was.
Speaker 1: It was Katrina hammering away at the roof trying to
Speaker 1: get in. NBC Nightly News has more viewers than any
Speaker 1: other news program in the country, and average of ten
Speaker 1: million people tune in every day to watch Brian Williams
Speaker 1: and his team report on the day's top stories. Williams
Speaker 1: has to be ready for anything. His briefcase always holds
Speaker 1: a laptop, a passport, and a flashlight because he can't
Speaker 1: predict when or where he'll be called upon to follow
Speaker 1: a story. On the evening of August thirty one, he
Speaker 1: was in the hospital as a visitor. I lost a
Speaker 1: very good friend to Agent Orange related cancer. I was
Speaker 1: in the hospital room with him. It was a Saturday night.
Speaker 1: I had just done weekend nightly news. My pager in
Speaker 1: those days went off, Diana carr accident Paris. I called
Speaker 1: the office. They said, you'd better get in here. And
Speaker 1: I had no idea that I would be announcing to
Speaker 1: what was then. I mean, they plugged us into cable
Speaker 1: all over Europe. I have people wherever I go to
Speaker 1: this day say I was with you the one an
Speaker 1: a dte Yes. So I was what's that like for
Speaker 1: someone in your position where you have that kind of
Speaker 1: experience like Crown Kite with JFK and you've got the
Speaker 1: breaking story that goes all the way around the world
Speaker 1: and it's you. I'm a very emotional guy, and I
Speaker 1: often get a catch in my voice. I'm a very
Speaker 1: patriotic guy. I kind of have a little schmaltz in me,
Speaker 1: I guess, And so when I announced that I have
Speaker 1: to kind of get ready and dig my heel into
Speaker 1: my ankle under the desk and try to be tough.
Speaker 1: My director, longtime director Brett Holey of Nightly News, often
Speaker 1: knows to go to voiceover. He he will take a
Speaker 1: picture rather than showing me on camera when I'm in
Speaker 1: a sad place. The night of Newtown, I found it
Speaker 1: highly difficult to get through the broadcast nine eleven. My
Speaker 1: country had been shaken. So I have the same emotions
Speaker 1: as everybody else, and there's no time to practice. You're
Speaker 1: going to say you're making up the verbage as you go. Obviously,
Speaker 1: when you do that job, I'm assuming you've got to
Speaker 1: have people around you you trust. You know, there's people
Speaker 1: who have done that job and have not succeeded, And
Speaker 1: I wonder is that they don't succeed because they don't
Speaker 1: have the right team with them. Well, the first thing
Speaker 1: I did was get the blessing of Tom Brokaw, and
Speaker 1: this has been extraordinary in a business where bodies are
Speaker 1: stacked out back normally and you pass all the dead
Speaker 1: would be future anchors in the hallway of a network.
Speaker 1: I had a situation with a guy who went out
Speaker 1: and got me. We had a meeting one night in
Speaker 1: a New York Hotel. I was on local news in
Speaker 1: New York and Tom said that he was nearing the
Speaker 1: age when he had to think about who was going
Speaker 1: to take over and what I consider it. Why do
Speaker 1: you think he said that, I don't know. I went
Speaker 1: around the corner, and in those days we use those
Speaker 1: massive toaster oven sized motor Rola cell phones. I called
Speaker 1: my wife and I said, either I'm getting played or
Speaker 1: Tom Brokaw wants me to in line to take over
Speaker 1: for him. I don't know. There are dozens of perfectly
Speaker 1: or better qualified people in this world. I am probably
Speaker 1: the most unremarkable holder of my job ever, and certainly
Speaker 1: educationally the least prepared. So uh, I just shows ratings
Speaker 1: have been very strong during the time you've done it.
Speaker 1: I try to make it personal. It's taken me a
Speaker 1: long time. I kept Tom's staff. I inherited the number
Speaker 1: one newscast in America. They were doing nothing wrong and
Speaker 1: everything right. So if you worked for Tom, you worked
Speaker 1: for me. I brought no one in. I was his
Speaker 1: understudy for eight years, a terrific position. I learned from
Speaker 1: the master. Everything I enjoy in life today is attributable
Speaker 1: to the fact that he made sure I was where
Speaker 1: I needed to be at every given time. When it
Speaker 1: was time to become chief White House correspondent, he said,
Speaker 1: go south, young man, and on and on and on
Speaker 1: with the years were your chief White House course? What
Speaker 1: was that? The shank of the Clinton administration, the very middle,
Speaker 1: including the mid term, the Gingish ascension. That's right, I
Speaker 1: was on the flight that did in New Gingrich. He
Speaker 1: complained that he didn't have a meeting with Bill Clinton.
Speaker 1: Were coming home from the Rabine funeral. I chose to
Speaker 1: stay up all night, and I saw the President come
Speaker 1: into the conference room directly in front of my seat.
Speaker 1: I saw a meeting per se take place. It was
Speaker 1: an extraordinary airplane flight. I will occasionally do weird things
Speaker 1: like decide everyone else in the press corps is asleep,
Speaker 1: why don't I be the one to stay up all
Speaker 1: night and see what I can see? Because I'll never
Speaker 1: be on a flight like this again. But what was
Speaker 1: your take on Clinton? Uh? Wide ranging, insatiable. Uh A
Speaker 1: a very disciplined man with an obvious and palpable lack
Speaker 1: of mental discipline. In other areas, It's an honor to
Speaker 1: cover any presidency. To fly on that plane. Did he
Speaker 1: deal with the press. Uh. He knew that I was
Speaker 1: a fellow night owl and some of the best conversations
Speaker 1: I had. He would walk around the aircraft people were
Speaker 1: zunked coming back from you know, Kiev on an overnight flight.
Speaker 1: He would see what movies were playing in which cabins,
Speaker 1: and these presidents when you cover them into this day
Speaker 1: and my job, there are off the record opportunities lunches,
Speaker 1: dinners that you have so they can explain themselves more
Speaker 1: easily to you. You can get in their head a
Speaker 1: little bit. Never to offer advice, obviously, just to listen.
Speaker 1: Both sides democratic, absolutely, And so when you leave in
Speaker 1: where do you go? I go to found a new
Speaker 1: network in Secaucus, New Jersey called MSNBC. A couple of
Speaker 1: days into that effort, a flight crashed in the Atlantic
Speaker 1: off East Moriwitch's Long Island, t w A. Three nights
Speaker 1: into the birth of this network, we are handed a
Speaker 1: huge breaking news story. Our graphics department was off the clock,
Speaker 1: and I had someone go out and get a Rand
Speaker 1: McNally road atlas out of their trunk, and I had
Speaker 1: to hold up a map of Long Island and point
Speaker 1: with my finger to where the jet had gone in
Speaker 1: the water again. With the absent of any graphics, all
Speaker 1: we have to go on is a a rather crude
Speaker 1: uh Rand McNally map showing New York's Long Island uh.
Speaker 1: When asked to report on his own life, Williams describes
Speaker 1: his early years as a grindingly middle class upbringing. I
Speaker 1: did not know vegetables came fresh. I thought they were
Speaker 1: frozen bricks in the field. Salad was one eighth of
Speaker 1: a head of iceberg let us sliced with a steak knife,
Speaker 1: with a spoonful dollop of mayonnaise on the top. My
Speaker 1: mother's ghoulash was one can spaghettios and one quarter pound
Speaker 1: ground beef. We had spam. We had what everybody else had.
Speaker 1: You grew up in New Jersey. Right was in Ridgewood,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. Born in Ridgewood, New Jersey. We moved for
Speaker 1: the first eight or nine years of my life to Elmira,
Speaker 1: New York, and then most of my life was spent
Speaker 1: in Middletown, New Jersey, on the Jersey Shore, which your
Speaker 1: dad in the television business. My dad uh former manager
Speaker 1: of John Wannamaker department store in Philly. He took a
Speaker 1: job with Corning Glass and Corning, New York. We lived
Speaker 1: in adjacent Elmira. Got fired with a slew of executives
Speaker 1: in a purge of Corning, and then really bounced from
Speaker 1: job to job. Had a tough time heart attack at
Speaker 1: fifty that sent us back to the Jersey Shore where
Speaker 1: he could at least find work in New York City.
Speaker 1: But we had some rough financial times after that. And
Speaker 1: when you were growing up, what was the your relationship
Speaker 1: to the news and to media where you a news
Speaker 1: junkie when you were a kid. Dinner could not start
Speaker 1: in our household until Walter Cronkite said, that's the way
Speaker 1: it is. We watched it as a communal event. My
Speaker 1: father would bring home from the train the Jersey Shoreline.
Speaker 1: Obviously at times, the Post, the Daily News. He had
Speaker 1: women's wear daily because he worked in the trade. There
Speaker 1: was just stuff around. I started reading the New York
Speaker 1: Times when I got my working papers at the age
Speaker 1: of fourteen and haven't stopped. And when you went to school,
Speaker 1: you went to school was in an eye toured going
Speaker 1: into broadcasting and going into journalism. I didn't think it
Speaker 1: was attainable. I had May she Rest in peace, A
Speaker 1: and a bulliant Irish Catholic mother who was the corpse
Speaker 1: at every funeral and the bride at every wedding and
Speaker 1: was a an amateur little theater actress, always believed in
Speaker 1: her baby boy, Brian. I remember when Channel four in
Speaker 1: New York hired some new reporters. I remember it distinctly,
Speaker 1: was living in New Jersey. And she pointed to the
Speaker 1: set at one of them, still in the business. By
Speaker 1: the way, I'm not gonna say, and said, you can
Speaker 1: do better than you know. I see, okay, I just
Speaker 1: know you can do better than him. Chuck won't mind
Speaker 1: if you say that. We're here with Alec Baldwin. And
Speaker 1: she said that she believed that, and I think that
Speaker 1: stayed with me, and against all odds, I pursued this
Speaker 1: in just crazy dream that I couldn't share with anybody
Speaker 1: because it was outlandish. I mean, I'm a volunteer fireman
Speaker 1: in Jersey. I can't sit around with those guys saying, fellas,
Speaker 1: here's what you don't know about me in the future,
Speaker 1: here's what I intend to do. It just wouldn't have
Speaker 1: made any sense. None of this makes any sense. How
Speaker 1: does it begin. I went to a Catholic high school.
Speaker 1: I went to the local community college. I was a towny.
Speaker 1: I had applied for a civil service job as the
Speaker 1: nighttime Mammath County Police fire dispatcher out of Freehold. But
Speaker 1: my life took a turn. A buddy of mine took
Speaker 1: me to Washington, d c. Tony Loveglia. Everybody has a
Speaker 1: Tony Loveglia. My buddy Tony said, I'm seeing a girl
Speaker 1: down there. She goes to Catholic University. I'll fill my
Speaker 1: van with beverages, will play loud music, come with me
Speaker 1: for the weekend. And I Washington opened my eyes to prosperous,
Speaker 1: earnest young people in khakis and blazers, walking swiftly with
Speaker 1: places to go, and discussing government. Absolutely earnest at the
Speaker 1: way Greg and Carter put it in the old spy
Speaker 1: magazine May at Rest in Peace, earnest former student council
Speaker 1: president's driving Honda accords. That was his way of summing
Speaker 1: up Washington. And I was intoxicated by it. What was
Speaker 1: the first, first first job you had? Uh? Well, fast forward.
Speaker 1: I'm at Catholic University, having transferred my meager credits. Guy
Speaker 1: named Rocco comes into our dorm and says does anybody
Speaker 1: want my internship in the White House. I raised my
Speaker 1: hand because I had a blue blazer from my job
Speaker 1: at Sears in Middletown, New Jersey. I interviewed for it
Speaker 1: and got it. Jimmy Carter was president. Obviously it was
Speaker 1: a non political position. I made copies, I got shirts
Speaker 1: at the cleaners. I I made coffee, but I also
Speaker 1: wrote constituent letters, and I I got into it. I
Speaker 1: got a job as a clerk typist at the broadcasting Lobby,
Speaker 1: the n a B National Association of Broadcasters. I confide
Speaker 1: my secret in my boss that someday I had been
Speaker 1: my editorial page editor of my high school paper. I
Speaker 1: had worked on my uh community college paper. After all,
Speaker 1: someday my hope was to try television journalism. He said, well,
Speaker 1: there's a guy coming into town. Bill Bankston runs k
Speaker 1: o A, MTV and Pittsburgh without the h Kansas. It's
Speaker 1: the hundred and twenty first television market in the country.
Speaker 1: He runs a small shop. It's in the middle of
Speaker 1: a field, but he just might if you take him
Speaker 1: to dinner. I took him to the restaurants sevent nine
Speaker 1: in Georgetown. I had no I have no business buying dinner.
Speaker 1: I had no money. He said, you have to pay
Speaker 1: your way to come out and let us look at
Speaker 1: you on camera. I had a Dodge Dart. I put
Speaker 1: all my belongings in the back seat. I brought my
Speaker 1: dog Charlie out there. They thought I was crazy. She
Speaker 1: believed in my ability. But this move to the middle
Speaker 1: of the country, leaving all I knew and what was
Speaker 1: the station was like going in the Marine Corps ko
Speaker 1: A m TV. And I went back there and revisited
Speaker 1: the place when the tornadoes hit Choplin. And good evening
Speaker 1: from Joplin, Missouri. And this is of course now more
Speaker 1: than any community anywhere should ever be forced to endure.
Speaker 1: In just the space of the last hour, we have
Speaker 1: been through where where you want it hit. I was
Speaker 1: with my two kids in the house. How is it
Speaker 1: You're alive? Faith in God? He's the only way. Oh
Speaker 1: my god? How many people made it in here? How
Speaker 1: did you hear? Abody on this block is okay? What
Speaker 1: do you do tomorrow? Row on the next day, figure
Speaker 1: it out when it comes, I guess. And can you
Speaker 1: believe Mother Nature are doing this right now? It's hard
Speaker 1: to believe she hitting middle or drop that was the
Speaker 1: adjoining town where my efficiency apartment was. Not to brag,
Speaker 1: you know, I was. I was a working poor I'm
Speaker 1: on television in this market in Kansas, going home and
Speaker 1: making an art form of slicing. And if you've ever
Speaker 1: done this, you know, you take one can of spam,
Speaker 1: if you fry an egg in that pan, you can
Speaker 1: make a spam steak in a frying pan, and you
Speaker 1: can get four or five slices out of one can
Speaker 1: of spam. With some toast. It's a meal at night.
Speaker 1: You can also, as my friends and I would do
Speaker 1: back then when we were we were working actors and
Speaker 1: I was doing a soap opera. There was a moment
Speaker 1: when my friend leaned over and took an egg out
Speaker 1: of the refrigerator and dropped it into some noodle ramen
Speaker 1: and showed us that you could put an egg in
Speaker 1: ramen and have egg drop ramen. And when we made
Speaker 1: egg dropped rama for the first time, it was like,
Speaker 1: don't don't bump, bump, bump. We went insane to this day.
Speaker 1: I like ramin, I do. I like ramin. Is too
Speaker 1: much sodium and pronational hot dogs and spaghettios. My big
Speaker 1: three who would the because I was in you were there,
Speaker 1: you left Washington? What year? Oh, I guess this is
Speaker 1: what were you in? D eighty one? So Carter's out,
Speaker 1: Carter's out. I'm working at but you were there when
Speaker 1: when Carter was there? What year to the end of Carter? Yes,
Speaker 1: last year, very end. So it's eighty the election. He's
Speaker 1: losing Iron Hostage, Internship over Goodnight everybody? And who were
Speaker 1: the big three on the networks then? Rather, well, this
Speaker 1: would have been rather I guess Brokaw or Chancellor and
Speaker 1: either some combination of Jennings, Max Robinson, Dean Reynolds not
Speaker 1: Dean Reynolds CNN. Yet that was kind of dawning in
Speaker 1: eighty Yes, well that was was that Iron Hostage? No,
Speaker 1: I guess that was dawning in eight? That was dawning
Speaker 1: in eight. Were you watching those show as pretty regularly
Speaker 1: as well? A preference? But you're CBS man up in
Speaker 1: a CBS household kite people approximately our age. You can
Speaker 1: say what household were you and people will answer it
Speaker 1: that way. With a network. Yeah, there's a style to
Speaker 1: that job that's changed. That old Voice of God school,
Speaker 1: you know, Crown, Kite and chance There was very humbly
Speaker 1: in Brinkley. You went to them because they had something
Speaker 1: you wanted. And I venture to say that that guy
Speaker 1: who had that kind of imperious, snooty voice of God
Speaker 1: kind of demeanor on the air, those guys their days
Speaker 1: are gone well and now the people are authoritative. I mean,
Speaker 1: what I'm leading up to is the reason you work
Speaker 1: and the reason you've been successful is you are commanding,
Speaker 1: and you're bright, and you're all the things you need
Speaker 1: to be and you're not pompous. I have no right
Speaker 1: to be. But but but what I'm saying is I
Speaker 1: think that people's attitude towards the news has changed. Where
Speaker 1: there's a kind there's a style of anchor of the
Speaker 1: evening news that those days are over. Now you have
Speaker 1: to be more accessible, you have to be more accessible.
Speaker 1: But you should know, we still select our lead story
Speaker 1: and our story order like it was the old days,
Speaker 1: because we have to. That's our process. And uh, the
Speaker 1: night we happened to be sitting here having this conversation
Speaker 1: in New York, we always say, like SNL, like any
Speaker 1: other live show, we don't go on the air because
Speaker 1: it's ready. We go on the air because it's time
Speaker 1: to go on the air tonight. I was writing one
Speaker 1: section ahead of where I was. I was writing lead
Speaker 1: ins for the second segment while we were in the
Speaker 1: first segment in real time on the air, so we
Speaker 1: would go into a reporter piece and I'm on the keyboard,
Speaker 1: sitting on the set because I got behind because of
Speaker 1: some Rock Center business I had to attend to. I
Speaker 1: don't like it, but I'm wired for it. It's what
Speaker 1: I do. And if I don't write those words, form
Speaker 1: those words, edit those words, it won't sound like me.
Speaker 1: I won't own it. There won't be trans mauretcy, there
Speaker 1: won't be familiarity, and it's insincere. When does the day
Speaker 1: begin to write that day's show writing, I knuckle, I
Speaker 1: really buckle down. At around five I start writing and
Speaker 1: I write from the bottom up. Usually I write the
Speaker 1: that is NBC Nightly News for this Wednesday night. I
Speaker 1: write that first, and the last thing I write before
Speaker 1: I go out is the first thing I say, good evening,
Speaker 1: uh and uh. So it's freshest in my mind. I
Speaker 1: have to I have to stick that. I have to
Speaker 1: nail that. It should be a very fresh and genuine thoughts,
Speaker 1: so genuine that the teleprompter can be a guide. If
Speaker 1: other words occur to me on the fly, I'll do that.
Speaker 1: I'm not wedded to the words I have just written
Speaker 1: on that electronic screen. The people you work with, you
Speaker 1: have the license to do whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1: You write it, yes, but I'm the managing editor of it.
Speaker 1: But I also work with great professional adults who have
Speaker 1: license ability and often call me out. I don't think
Speaker 1: you got the tone right on this page. I I don't.
Speaker 1: I I read your rightem on the video that was
Speaker 1: produced by the North Korean government. I think we're missing
Speaker 1: something here. And they do that all the time we
Speaker 1: were collaboratively. These are all really good friends of mine.
Speaker 1: I love the whole room full of them. We've been
Speaker 1: a battle together, so we're really close. And it's a
Speaker 1: very funny. You should hear our newsroom in the hour
Speaker 1: before air stuff flies across the room. It's wild and
Speaker 1: it's just the way I like it. Now. I want
Speaker 1: to go back and you're at MSNBC. How long does
Speaker 1: that last? Six years commuting to cau Caucus, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and what was in the dart No, by then I
Speaker 1: could afford a chevallet. Yeah, Um, this was a Hearts
Speaker 1: Mountain warehouse. It is today the home of MLB Network
Speaker 1: for baseball fans. So six years commuting to Caucus, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I screwed up my time line I left. I was
Speaker 1: still in Kansas when we left off. I ran out
Speaker 1: of money. I drove on a space saver hard rubber
Speaker 1: spare on my dodged art for eight months. They recommend
Speaker 1: never going over fifty and just using it for a
Speaker 1: few days. I shredded that puppy, and I drove back
Speaker 1: to Washington, where I knew I could find work again.
Speaker 1: I bought a copy of the Washington Post again, I
Speaker 1: circled a classified ad Chiron operator ten PM newscast w
Speaker 1: t t G, the Metromedia owned now Fox Channel five.
Speaker 1: I walked in the door, asked the first woman I found,
Speaker 1: uh is the news director in and can I see him?
Speaker 1: And she said, you're meeting with her right now, late
Speaker 1: great woman named Betty Endicott. She hired me to type
Speaker 1: in the letters on the screen. She did this ed
Speaker 1: asner thing with me. I would go into her office
Speaker 1: as her lowly typer of letters on the screen, and
Speaker 1: I'd watched the newscast with her every night and we
Speaker 1: hit it off, and she said to me, didn't you
Speaker 1: do on air work in Kansas? Do you have any tapes?
Speaker 1: And I said, Betty, those have been taken to a
Speaker 1: licensed landfill facility long ago, and she I did find one.
Speaker 1: She put me on the air in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: On a whim the last gut call in television. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was on the ten o'clock news. Months later, she says,
Speaker 1: I'm hiring a young woman to be an executive producer.
Speaker 1: I think you're gonna like her. And we've been married
Speaker 1: for twenty six years. Yeah, Jane's daddard love at First
Speaker 1: Sight control room. Hearts flying little guys with arrows. I
Speaker 1: went into my friend Bernie's office and said that afternoon,
Speaker 1: I'm done off the market. It's a matter of Oh
Speaker 1: my god, the FBI what the earpiece called f B.
Speaker 1: I was close. Yeah, I have listened to a woman's
Speaker 1: voice in her ear Oh wow. And now my little,
Speaker 1: our little girl, who's twenty four, one of our two children.
Speaker 1: I think we had just have the two. I'd see
Speaker 1: her on David Letterman's chair next to Dave, and I
Speaker 1: see my wife at around the same age we met,
Speaker 1: and it just blows your mind and hard. We're going
Speaker 1: to get your daughter. But anyway, I'm on Channel five
Speaker 1: ten o'clock news, and it was a great job. And
Speaker 1: sooner or later it's like triple a ball. Your your
Speaker 1: pitch improves. Scouts come around. I got hired by CBS
Speaker 1: for their stations division. We went to Philadelphia. Jane got
Speaker 1: a job at the local PBS station, and Jane, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we got married while living in Philadelphia. I worked at
Speaker 1: the CBS station in Philadelphia. I was called up to
Speaker 1: CBS in New York and I did five years at
Speaker 1: Channel two w CBS. I was the noon anchor again
Speaker 1: you'll forgive me bragging with Carol Martin, and for a
Speaker 1: while I was the chief correspondent at eleven o'clock. I
Speaker 1: covered the Dinkins years and the Cotch years on the
Speaker 1: streets of this city. That was a real experience, real experience.
Speaker 1: What do you think about politicians and how they've changed
Speaker 1: in their relationship to the media. You hear people always
Speaker 1: complaining about, you know, you know, the the press to
Speaker 1: cozy relationship with political leaders and so forth. What's your
Speaker 1: take on that. I was never a big socializer. I've
Speaker 1: come to know, no like have a meal or two
Speaker 1: with one or two politicians. For you. Um, I'm always
Speaker 1: wary of the third rail of coziness. It's much tougher
Speaker 1: to take a swing at a friend as it is
Speaker 1: a political figure whose name you know, you know. One
Speaker 1: of the most eye opening experiences in life was sitting
Speaker 1: down with President George W. Bush over lunch at the
Speaker 1: White House. These presidents, it it turns out, are all
Speaker 1: quality hangs. They're all really good people. They're all extraordinary
Speaker 1: people who have the ego to stand in from of
Speaker 1: a mirror at some point in their life and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you I want you to run the free world. You've
Speaker 1: got it. You're gonna do this job. That's it. That's
Speaker 1: unbelievable in some of the cases, is literally unbelievable. I
Speaker 1: mean in a world of anchors and actors that you
Speaker 1: and I know, we know egos, we know narcissism when
Speaker 1: we see it, and that requires a lot. And it's
Speaker 1: been fascinating. I love American history. It's been a fascinating
Speaker 1: ride to have met every one of them. Going back
Speaker 1: to I don't know Reagan, I became pen pals with
Speaker 1: Jerry Ford during his retirement I've gotten to know Nancy
Speaker 1: Reagan in the last five years. Something. If you told
Speaker 1: my mom that her little baby boy, Brian would some
Speaker 1: day get to know or shake hands with any of
Speaker 1: these people. There was a time when I walked through
Speaker 1: the Northwest Gate as a White House intern, having no
Speaker 1: business there, and then later as a chief White House
Speaker 1: correspondent walking through that Northwest Gate every day, and it's
Speaker 1: been an incredible life. Coming up in a minute, Brian
Speaker 1: Williams talks about his daughter Alison's current success on the
Speaker 1: hit show Girls, his love of Nascar actually anything going
Speaker 1: around a circle fast, and his surprisingly difficult decision to
Speaker 1: host Saturday Night Live. Lauren gave me a great locker
Speaker 1: room speech between dress rehearsal and the live show. Mr Williams,
Speaker 1: I think you said you went to a Catholic high
Speaker 1: school that correct. Did you have a talent night with say,
Speaker 1: the parish priest wearing a coconut bra, just making a
Speaker 1: fool of himself wearing a coconut bra? I said, well,
Speaker 1: we didn't have an actual coconut bra like Bloody Mary
Speaker 1: and South Pacific, but we had a night like that. Yes, Lauren,
Speaker 1: I need you to be that priest. I need you
Speaker 1: to show these people you're willing to make a fool
Speaker 1: out of yourself and be a good sport. This is
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing Today
Speaker 1: with Brian Williams. Although loud personalities with extreme views gobble
Speaker 1: up more airtime, television news is an industry that still
Speaker 1: rewards unbiased, thoughtful and direct reporting. My work has been
Speaker 1: so cleansed as I see it, as I've tried of
Speaker 1: political opinions over twenty seven years. How do you do it? Uh?
Speaker 1: Do you have political opinions? I sometimes don't know. I
Speaker 1: have the same disappointments in my patriotism as a great
Speaker 1: man once said, I yield to no one. I love
Speaker 1: this country, I love the American idea. I have profound
Speaker 1: disappointments in in my country. I feel we ought to
Speaker 1: be in space. I feel the dismantling of the Man
Speaker 1: space program. Why should we be in space because it
Speaker 1: meant so much to us? You mean just symbolically, No, technologically,
Speaker 1: there were more advance you know. I sometimes think Postwar America,
Speaker 1: post Vietnam America has kind of become exhausted. I have
Speaker 1: another theory that the growth of self. All things self
Speaker 1: has taken away our spirit of community. We can do
Speaker 1: this cohesion american ness. When an average American citizen has followers,
Speaker 1: I know you have your own history with social media.
Speaker 1: You take a citizen who works in a restaurant, they
Speaker 1: now have the preoccupation of followers. There is now someone
Speaker 1: who cares. And this applies to all of us about
Speaker 1: our random thoughts, utterances, and that is a growth of
Speaker 1: self that we haven't cataloged yet. We haven't gotten our
Speaker 1: arms around it. The celebration of what you mean. Go
Speaker 1: back in the black and white movies you love from
Speaker 1: the forties fifties. Listen to the language. Listen to how
Speaker 1: first person is never used. And now it's how we lead,
Speaker 1: how we beget every sentence we have. We have individual
Speaker 1: press conferences all day long. We've changed. I tell you
Speaker 1: what I'm up to, yes, and then when I pause,
Speaker 1: you tell me what you're up to. All of our
Speaker 1: media begins with a letter I, which is why I
Speaker 1: kind of like to use the letter I. I kind
Speaker 1: of like my job. I get to do that part
Speaker 1: of my media life. Old school. No one needs another
Speaker 1: blowhard yelling Adam. No one gives a rats petuity about
Speaker 1: my opinion in so that's nice that I don't have
Speaker 1: to share it. I'd have to form one first on
Speaker 1: half of these issues and people, and I can try
Speaker 1: to call it down the middle and try to be
Speaker 1: fair about it and do adjust the facts with a
Speaker 1: little fun around the margins. But why do you think?
Speaker 1: Why do you think you were different? And so far
Speaker 1: as when I would watch Rather, I could sense very
Speaker 1: much that Rather had his opinions, and I think it
Speaker 1: sends very much that could sense very much the Rather
Speaker 1: was was straining mightily to contain those opinions in the framework.
Speaker 1: Broke caw as well does Brian Williams lay in bed
Speaker 1: at night with his wife and that's when those opinions
Speaker 1: come flying out. Your feelings about or do you you
Speaker 1: keep all of that private? Or if you found and
Speaker 1: you because you because you don't exude that at all
Speaker 1: on the air. Well, I mean, I've been married for
Speaker 1: twenty six years. Jane and I talk about the people
Speaker 1: we can't stand either on television in Washington. What frustrates us?
Speaker 1: Uh daughter's boyfriend? Yeah, sure, yeah, we like the guy.
Speaker 1: He's a good guy. Yeah, But is it something you
Speaker 1: consciously have worked to do your predecessors Chronkite probably know,
Speaker 1: and I know we don't need always go Conkite Cronkite,
Speaker 1: but but he's got But many people in your business
Speaker 1: you could feel little belches and little fissures of their
Speaker 1: opinions coming through, or a sense of that, And with
Speaker 1: you there's none. Is it something you consciously have tried
Speaker 1: to comb out of your delivery? Yes, I try to
Speaker 1: keep it down the middle. I just don't think anyone
Speaker 1: needs that from me a broadcast. You think there's a
Speaker 1: shortage of opinionated media out there these days, and I
Speaker 1: think people are longing to hear what makes your program
Speaker 1: so successful. That's why I watch it. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't want anything on it is give me. I want
Speaker 1: the news now. I have this populist streak. And you know,
Speaker 1: tonight we had an item that I ended up killing
Speaker 1: for Time about Australian schools banning birthday cakes with candles
Speaker 1: because of the blowing of germs over the surface of
Speaker 1: the cake, and they're recommending parents bring only a single cupcake.
Speaker 1: And I said at our editorial meeting this afternoon, well,
Speaker 1: the world had a good run. You know, we're done.
Speaker 1: We're over. We're done. Just put a candle on us,
Speaker 1: because we're over. When that kind of stuff happens, I
Speaker 1: go ahead and I usually we have a portion of
Speaker 1: the broadcast where I can I can have more liberties.
Speaker 1: You know, I do a little I borrow from Seth
Speaker 1: Myers a little bit, a little bit, a little bit
Speaker 1: right there in the middle of NBC Nightly damn News
Speaker 1: in a studio famous for the young actor who acted
Speaker 1: in the Doctor's soap office in the studio where we
Speaker 1: do nightly news and Young Alec three's and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a night about a year ago, I said that they
Speaker 1: had a problem in a school cafeteria in Lexington, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: Uh something, somebody was stealing food. They set up a webcam.
Speaker 1: The good news is they caught an adult male squirrel
Speaker 1: living in the school kitchen. The bad news is those
Speaker 1: weren't raisins in the rice pudding. Um, and whoever got it,
Speaker 1: got it, whoever didn't. We went by quick. We had
Speaker 1: a moment of fun. It's a serious world. It's a
Speaker 1: crushing worm someday. Good night, everybody, take care of your
Speaker 1: Bartenderson waitress now, you know, you know when you do
Speaker 1: that do you sometimes sit there and say, when Leno's done,
Speaker 1: I want that job. No, I'm at I'm a dilettante.
Speaker 1: I get it out of my system. I call these offices, yeah,
Speaker 1: I call them the extracurriculars. I have managed it and
Speaker 1: me alone. I've never been asked to appear on one
Speaker 1: of these other shows I have done. I think eighteen
Speaker 1: David Letterman John Stewart has had me on a slew
Speaker 1: of times. We have a blast and what it has done,
Speaker 1: it has not been a concerted effort. There's no white
Speaker 1: board with a strategy. I turn more down than I accept.
Speaker 1: Jimmy Fallon has been very kind to me. The roots
Speaker 1: have been very kind to me. Um In the construct
Speaker 1: of a twenty two minute newscast, especially in the post
Speaker 1: nine eleven, very serious era, you would never know who
Speaker 1: I was. My daughter will tell you if the guy
Speaker 1: who anchors nightly news is no one she knows at all.
Speaker 1: And when Lauren in Oh seven invited me to do SNL,
Speaker 1: I did this talmudic six month, I just it would
Speaker 1: crushed me. This decision. I worried that I was gonna
Speaker 1: flush twenty five years of all I knew credibility down
Speaker 1: the toilet and I finally I had never met Chevy Chase,
Speaker 1: and he was in the hallway, along with the cursory
Speaker 1: to lamas a show girl and whatever is in the
Speaker 1: hallway upstairs at SNL, I was headed to my final
Speaker 1: meeting with Lauren. I had pulled everyone in my life
Speaker 1: should I host Saturday Night Live? And it was a
Speaker 1: It was a resounding yes. Everyone was a cautious yes.
Speaker 1: And I asked Chevy after I shook my hand and
Speaker 1: introduced myself. His answer was fascinating. He said, I watched
Speaker 1: Dan Rather for twenty years, and the day he retired,
Speaker 1: I was no closer to knowing who he was than
Speaker 1: he was the day he started. I think you should
Speaker 1: do it, And so Chevy, in a way he does
Speaker 1: not yet know, decided that. And that was a big
Speaker 1: That was a big damn to break in my life.
Speaker 1: The courage that required that is not my trade. I
Speaker 1: don't know what you do for a living, and I
Speaker 1: don't know how you do it for a living. I
Speaker 1: sit home and I want you with my family, with
Speaker 1: Martin Short doing, Tony Bennett and his unknown little brother,
Speaker 1: honest to God, being constipated like sitting on a bag
Speaker 1: of tangerines. Come on, he is he Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: it's it's that's very kind of you to say. But
Speaker 1: the the the I think what you since from what
Speaker 1: you've been doing is is it is just how much
Speaker 1: fun it is. You know, so much of this it's
Speaker 1: not fun. It's not it's not horrible. I mean like
Speaker 1: when I would make movies, movie making, when you when
Speaker 1: you would do look if you're gonna do Lincoln, when
Speaker 1: you're going to have and I was offered, you were
Speaker 1: offered Lincoln. Everyone knows business, Tony Kushner and Spielberg and
Speaker 1: Daniel day Lewis, and you were at the apex of
Speaker 1: the whole game and everything comes together to feed virtuosic
Speaker 1: acting great. I mean I I did not have those
Speaker 1: kinds of experiences. So it's funny how your broadcasting career
Speaker 1: is not that different from my filmmaking career, where there
Speaker 1: was another thing I had to go do to go
Speaker 1: have fun. But think of what it's like. I get
Speaker 1: to walk in as the closer. I get to work
Speaker 1: with people for whom it's their life's work and be
Speaker 1: Joe talk show, comedy dilettante. I get to work with
Speaker 1: the cast of Saturday Night. I get to sit next
Speaker 1: to David Letterman and engage him and make Jon Stewart
Speaker 1: laugh or die trying. It doesn't matter how you get there.
Speaker 1: It matters what you did and what you leave. But
Speaker 1: it's like walking into the middle of the best school
Speaker 1: assembly ever, the creative kids. And it's fun for me.
Speaker 1: But it's dilettanti is um, it's uh, it's just another
Speaker 1: side of me and the viewers. This is an important point.
Speaker 1: They know, they know the difference. We had some harrumpas executives.
Speaker 1: We had some executives who got all sweaty. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: will we How will they know that they separate? Well,
Speaker 1: guess what they know access Hollywood from Nightly News, the
Speaker 1: show that comes on after us. They make that clean break,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna know if I'm not behind the set
Speaker 1: on nightly News, if I'm coming out from behind Dave's curtain,
Speaker 1: or dressed as a farmer on SNL, or dressed as
Speaker 1: a lottery winner. Um, they're gonna understand that's the other Brian, Oh,
Speaker 1: that guy who does the news. They don't have to
Speaker 1: like it. Uh, they can watch Diane or Scott Pelley. Uh,
Speaker 1: they can watch Justin Bieber host SNL. But it's um,
Speaker 1: I get an enormous kick out of it. People have
Speaker 1: very very kind of now when you do those things
Speaker 1: what you call the extracurriculus, and you do have a
Speaker 1: very important job in media. Whose idea was rock Center?
Speaker 1: And why did you put that on your shoulders? It
Speaker 1: was the idea of Steve Burke, our new CEO came
Speaker 1: in when Comcast bought the majority share of NBC. He Uh,
Speaker 1: the first meeting he had with me said I think
Speaker 1: you're underutilized. That was a very flattering quote, but that
Speaker 1: was the quote. And so was he trying to take
Speaker 1: in your mind? Was he trying to take some of
Speaker 1: the charm what you invest in other things you're doing.
Speaker 1: Did you want to make this the extracurricular Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think he wanted to get in some more of my interests,
Speaker 1: not not the kind of take my wife, please, but
Speaker 1: do try prime time, try longer form, cross talk with
Speaker 1: some of the correspondence, just back from the stories, do
Speaker 1: something else. The viewership has been fluctua waiting. We've been
Speaker 1: bounced around for five time slots were now Friday's at
Speaker 1: ten PM and towards once a week to stay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and an hour of television is some weeks an absolute
Speaker 1: second job. And what's been the biggest lesson for you
Speaker 1: about doing Rock Center? Ah, that prime time is different.
Speaker 1: It's not for the faint of heart. A lot of
Speaker 1: very good people have died trying a lot of gallant
Speaker 1: projects have died trying. And you have to find a
Speaker 1: way of doing very good television news pieces, interesting television
Speaker 1: news pieces without giving in to an entertainment format. You
Speaker 1: could easily say it's Friday night at ten o'clock. You know,
Speaker 1: people are, they're tired from the week. Give them a break.
Speaker 1: Do poppies? Do starlets? Do starlets who have had bad
Speaker 1: photo exposures on red carpets? And we're not going to
Speaker 1: do that because we you know, we'll keep doing what
Speaker 1: we do and hopefully it will find an audience. Look,
Speaker 1: I did six years at MSNBC when I could have
Speaker 1: walked down any major city street and got just talking loudly,
Speaker 1: had a larger audience. In the early days, we were
Speaker 1: literally in like something like twenty cable homes. That didn't
Speaker 1: matter to me. I was doing something. I was writing
Speaker 1: an hour long primetime newscast every night. I was getting better,
Speaker 1: you know, in the in the words of John Cougar Mellencamp,
Speaker 1: we were young and we were improving. What do you
Speaker 1: think about the media online? I mean, I'm assuming you
Speaker 1: have your menu of what you know? You read the Times,
Speaker 1: and do you read everything online? Or you a paper person?
Speaker 1: I read a lot. I saw Tina Brown recently admit
Speaker 1: read online online or coy I wake up. I have
Speaker 1: a paper copy of the New York Post. I'll admit it.
Speaker 1: Paper copy of the New York Times, which I I
Speaker 1: do the New York thing. I stick sections in my
Speaker 1: briefcase and they attract silverfish over the last couple of years. No,
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, but I get to them when I can.
Speaker 1: And uh, I read. I'm always aware of what's on
Speaker 1: the Times website. You read the Post? Why do you
Speaker 1: read the Post? I read the Post, the daily News.
Speaker 1: I've been you just read all the New York papers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a habit. Yeah, you'd be you'd beat the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Eagle if it was still coming out. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know I I I read page six like everybody,
Speaker 1: and like everybody who doesn't admit reading page six, and
Speaker 1: I read the sports section. If it's around, I don't
Speaker 1: necessarily go get it. Yeah, but do you have any
Speaker 1: history with the New York Post? With none, I've been
Speaker 1: I've been really lucky. I've laid low. You know. I
Speaker 1: like reading the New York Tabs sports section after the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl and you know, wondering who post has a
Speaker 1: great sports section? Yeah, who was going to hit Jim
Speaker 1: Nance over the head first. It's just I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's part of living here. But I'm always aware of
Speaker 1: what's on the Time's website, dirty guilty, huffing the posts. Yes,
Speaker 1: not as much as I used to that. I don't
Speaker 1: click through. I get angry at the headlines. I get
Speaker 1: I wonder what she's done there. I mean, obviously she's
Speaker 1: passed it. Yeah, I just I didn't. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to see the uh, you know, pictures of and we're
Speaker 1: gonna get to this later. It could be your daughter
Speaker 1: next where it's like Silobe. Everything is like a shot
Speaker 1: of Kate Hudson, this one, that one popping out of
Speaker 1: their dress, wardrobe malfunction, my pleasure, Bryant um. But but
Speaker 1: the uh, well, let's get to that subject, which is um,
Speaker 1: your daughter is gorgeous, thank you, and she's talented. I
Speaker 1: say thank you like and she's gorgeous than you, and
Speaker 1: she's talented, thank you. She's a great and but at
Speaker 1: the same time, at the same time, she's a young
Speaker 1: woman who is speaking to on that show. I mean
Speaker 1: that's not just the purpose of the show is to
Speaker 1: be entertaining and funny, but they do speak in a
Speaker 1: language that is the contemporary young woman. Do you sometimes
Speaker 1: watch that show with your wife and like you grab
Speaker 1: each other by the forum and go, oh my god,
Speaker 1: don't we watched the whole bunch of us? Uh? Do
Speaker 1: you have an HBO is sometimes nice enough to share
Speaker 1: a cluster of the next episodes, And when her brother's
Speaker 1: home from college, we watch the thing is she came
Speaker 1: out of the womb doing there's no she just we
Speaker 1: always yeah, she's my mom long enough to see this.
Speaker 1: But she's my mom, so uh. And she's also my wife,
Speaker 1: and she's she's so many things. She's also a kid
Speaker 1: who flew through Yale. She's a kid as good at improv,
Speaker 1: can do an improv musical. If you yell out one word,
Speaker 1: she'll compose it, sing it, write the plot as she
Speaker 1: performs while you watch. I thought her first talent that
Speaker 1: the public saw was gonna be singing. She has a
Speaker 1: voice like a bird, like an angel, and so she's
Speaker 1: she having a good time. She's having a blast. And
Speaker 1: she's been given this material by Lena, by Jenny Connor
Speaker 1: and Judd, but mostly Lena's vision. And the people who
Speaker 1: come up to me now and say, I'm a Marnie,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm such a Arnie And I love watching Allison
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's overwhelming. What does she does? She?
Speaker 1: I mean that that show obviously won't last forever. I mean,
Speaker 1: what does she want to do? Is she gonna go
Speaker 1: out there La, She's gonna make films, She's gonna think
Speaker 1: she would love of future in feature films. But recognizes
Speaker 1: this for everything. It is a fantastic platform. As my people,
Speaker 1: the Irish Catholics say, I'm felling all the time. I
Speaker 1: was doing a film once and Rob Briner, although this
Speaker 1: doesn't relate to TV as much, but there's a there's
Speaker 1: a a comparison to be made. And Rob Briner said
Speaker 1: to me, he said, I had to do a speech,
Speaker 1: a very long courtroom of speech. And this movie goes
Speaker 1: to Mississippi that I did with him about the Med
Speaker 1: Grevers murder trial, and in his inimitable New York accident,
Speaker 1: he said, do you mind doing it again? I want
Speaker 1: to go again. I know it's a long speech, it's
Speaker 1: like three pages long, but I want to put a
Speaker 1: camera in the back of the court whom and shoot
Speaker 1: you doing the speech again. Just one take will just burn,
Speaker 1: you know, one take, maybe two. It's been a long day.
Speaker 1: We've covered it from every angle. We'll just do one more.
Speaker 1: I go, I don't mind, I said, it would be
Speaker 1: Greating goes. Yeah, I understand how you feeling. How you feel,
Speaker 1: he said, You've got a good piece of material. You
Speaker 1: want to do it, You do it all day. You
Speaker 1: don't care, he said, because you know your next movie,
Speaker 1: you're you're gonna have one line all day, and the
Speaker 1: line's gonna be get down, Everyone, get down as you're
Speaker 1: firing the gun in the parking structure. And the same
Speaker 1: is true in that comparison and contrast between film and television,
Speaker 1: which is you want to go into film, if you
Speaker 1: want to go into film, and you want to make movies,
Speaker 1: but they're not all Spielberg and Lincoln and Tony Kushner,
Speaker 1: what about you? Do you I'm addicted to kind of
Speaker 1: projecting my own psychological machinations on other people. And I
Speaker 1: look at you and I think you're gonna do this
Speaker 1: job until you're dead. Is it is like it is
Speaker 1: indefinite to you when you just do it indefinitely. You're young.
Speaker 1: I'm fifty th and younger. Thank you. Like you, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to take care of myself. Um, I'll be doing something.
Speaker 1: I do have a deal with my wife that when
Speaker 1: it's time, she's going to tap on her right forearm
Speaker 1: as a baseball manager would asking for someone from the bullpen,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna go, and I'm gonna go and kind
Speaker 1: of not come back and leave it walk away. You know,
Speaker 1: there is such a thing. It's as staying too long
Speaker 1: at the fair. And um, I can also be happy
Speaker 1: editing a town blog somewhere, as long as I'm around
Speaker 1: things that are happening, reading news on the web, able
Speaker 1: to write something. The siren in the back of my
Speaker 1: head is we have a little place on the Jersey shore.
Speaker 1: And it's all I ever really wanted from a life
Speaker 1: that's been beyond a dream sequence in a movie was
Speaker 1: to go back and plant a flag in the sand
Speaker 1: of the Jersey shore. And that's kind of where I
Speaker 1: see happy days, you know, when you have a happy
Speaker 1: place to go and a and a nice loving situation
Speaker 1: at home and now a daughter to watch. And my
Speaker 1: son's gonna come rocketing out of college. He's looking forward.
Speaker 1: What's doing. He wants to do sports journalism on television.
Speaker 1: And he's really good, and he's got a He's a
Speaker 1: great kid with a ton of personality. You know, sometimes
Speaker 1: I say, could you guys have chosen like insurance or something,
Speaker 1: could you get your own line of work? But you know,
Speaker 1: Alison could not have done anything. Well, she's a fine human.
Speaker 1: Your son, he's going to be finished when Douglas Williams,
Speaker 1: the male heir to the Williams fortune, is finished. In
Speaker 1: late May. He just came home from college for a week,
Speaker 1: did his first round a job, interviews, entry level stuff,
Speaker 1: looking for night shifts, day shifts, writing for breasts, shooting
Speaker 1: his own stuff. That's our poor children, because my wife's
Speaker 1: trajectory is a like mine. They've had this work ethic
Speaker 1: speech like one of your films. Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: know their life, am I not me too? So they're
Speaker 1: just doomed, I said, I said, my daughter, my ex
Speaker 1: wife and I. I mean, we laid it on him
Speaker 1: and you you I would out Tom Joad, Tom Joad,
Speaker 1: we're talking about it. I'm like, do you understand what
Speaker 1: life was like for me when I was your age
Speaker 1: growing up in massive Piqua. My mother made me wash
Speaker 1: my own football uniform. Well, a lot of it is
Speaker 1: just cultural and how much things have changed and how
Speaker 1: much kids know. I was in adulthood before I knew
Speaker 1: what the Ivy League was, before I knew what a
Speaker 1: prep school was. Again, before I knew there were fresh vegetables.
Speaker 1: It's just it's it was my worldview. I was working.
Speaker 1: I thought I was always just going to be working.
Speaker 1: I've always worked. I've always had as many jobs as
Speaker 1: I could have. And that's what you do. You work,
Speaker 1: you die, And if you're really lucky to spend some
Speaker 1: summers on the Jersey Shore, your wife's going to be
Speaker 1: the one that's gonna tap. Yeah, Well, I think we'll know.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of living. I and we
Speaker 1: want to do a lot of places we want to go.
Speaker 1: Do you and she liked to do? Were your European
Speaker 1: travelers travels of any kind. That sounds very Parillo have
Speaker 1: your bags out at nine am now, But my parents
Speaker 1: used to go on Perillo tours. Just not our cup
Speaker 1: of team. Um no, we just I mean like we
Speaker 1: went out to Utah for four days and just sat
Speaker 1: there and just did nothing. Because it's the anchor of
Speaker 1: the NBC Nightly News and your view, you view European
Speaker 1: travelers kind of snobbish. No, no, no, we never have
Speaker 1: the time. You have time, but would you would you
Speaker 1: like to have time? Yes, we'd love to have time,
Speaker 1: and that's part of our figuring. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot I want to do. I want to take an
Speaker 1: insanely fast car across the Bonneville Salt Flats before I
Speaker 1: Don't you do love this Nascar thing? Oh yeah, why
Speaker 1: I just I've My dad took me to the Shaman
Speaker 1: County speed Drone in in Horseheads, New York when I
Speaker 1: was a little kid Moriday night races to watch the
Speaker 1: Bodine Brothers race. I'll watch anything go around on a
Speaker 1: circle too. Fan. What's the name of the place near
Speaker 1: aal Myra, Chamun County speed Rome? It was called I
Speaker 1: think it's now just the fair ground, is it an
Speaker 1: amazing that. The thing I'm going to take away in
Speaker 1: this interview, I when I look at you, you you
Speaker 1: have You're a very very very important person to me.
Speaker 1: Be a news jucky. You're you know, it's like pitching
Speaker 1: for the Yankees. I'm not chattered. I'm just sitting there thinking.
Speaker 1: Brian Williams, the anchor of the NBC Nightly News, when
Speaker 1: his wife indicates it it's time to retire. They're not
Speaker 1: going to Rome, They're not going to Madrid. They're going
Speaker 1: to the Chimunk County Motor Speedway. Yeah, oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: all we have time for Tonight. I recommend Walled Township
Speaker 1: Speedway on the Jersey Shore for a great Friday night.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take your word for it. One third of
Speaker 1: a mile paved oval, great action under the lights. I'm
Speaker 1: telling you for your admission charge, there's no more a
Speaker 1: great night of energy. You know what I want to
Speaker 1: do one day? I'm gonna say this right now. Will
Speaker 1: you come with me? If I thought I was going
Speaker 1: to have dinner with you and your wife, I would
Speaker 1: have thought the Four Seasons restaurant, and we go see
Speaker 1: something at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I get an
Speaker 1: suv with a bunch of bodyguards. We go out to Bam.
Speaker 1: But no, we're going to the what the Wall trip?
Speaker 1: What's it called? Right? First of all, you'll get an suv,
Speaker 1: I drive a Chevy Yukon and you'll have dinner, maybe
Speaker 1: on our deck in Jersey, or we'll take you to
Speaker 1: a favorite place. But then we'll cap off the evening.
Speaker 1: Around dusk they start the first heat races and then
Speaker 1: the main races. After dark, we'll go to the Wall
Speaker 1: Township Speedway Route thirty four. This is family racing. I
Speaker 1: raised my kids going to small tracks, saying never criticize
Speaker 1: a driver because there's a very good chance their parents,
Speaker 1: a family member, a friend is sitting in front of
Speaker 1: us or behind us at a small track. It's absolutely heaven.
Speaker 1: You really haven't lost touch with your roots, have you? Well, no,
Speaker 1: it's my kid from Ridgewood is for me. I completely
Speaker 1: sold out. My idea this summer is to be on
Speaker 1: a boat and try to find, like, have a meal
Speaker 1: with Plimpton or someone I wanted to do with some
Speaker 1: kind of the Other thing that's changed in the time
Speaker 1: you and I have been in the game is haters.
Speaker 1: The rise of haters being as close as a send button.
Speaker 1: Comments on the Internet are the cheapest currency there is.
Speaker 1: The most hurtful thing is someone thinking you're a fake
Speaker 1: populist when you're a rich guy. And at route, I'm
Speaker 1: a populist who's had to fake being a rich guy
Speaker 1: who has I'm surrounded by fancy people and people wanting
Speaker 1: to sell me very nice clothing and all that. But
Speaker 1: I you know, this week I got a phone call
Speaker 1: from a guy who was my lieutenant at the Old
Speaker 1: Village Fire Company in Middletown. Firehouse needs a new generator.
Speaker 1: We're wondering if you donate one post Sandy. And I
Speaker 1: say to Mike Lee, like, twenty years haven't passed. You
Speaker 1: can't get that money out of the township still as
Speaker 1: we used to go door to door and solicit money
Speaker 1: for our our engine company. And he said, no, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Can you believe it? And you know, I'm so happy
Speaker 1: to be able to donate a jenny to my old
Speaker 1: fire But I can go back like that much easier
Speaker 1: than I can walk into certain social circles here in
Speaker 1: New York or any fancy I've never I feel the
Speaker 1: same way I've I think one thing that you and
Speaker 1: I haven't come and that is it's a decision you make.
Speaker 1: It's it's like, literally to me, it's always the same image.
Speaker 1: And then as I'm in a ski shoot, I'm in
Speaker 1: the shoot of a ski run, of a black diamond
Speaker 1: ski run, of a very very tough ski run, and
Speaker 1: I say to myself, there's only one way down, and
Speaker 1: I get a sense that you're the same way, which
Speaker 1: is that we you know, we as much as we're like,
Speaker 1: pinch me, pinch me, pinch me. One of the ways
Speaker 1: we succeeded was we just jumped out of the plane
Speaker 1: and we pulled the ripcord and we just took it
Speaker 1: one step at a time, and we turn around the
Speaker 1: next you know. Yeah, there's I got this syndrome, I guess,
Speaker 1: I do say to myself and to others, Yes, I can.
Speaker 1: I've got this. And I don't know where that unbridled
Speaker 1: confidence came from. And I've done some ridiculously stupid things
Speaker 1: under that banner, like being in a helicopter. I have
Speaker 1: no business being in in Iraq with rounds coming into
Speaker 1: the airframe. But I don't think you would die briefly. Sure,
Speaker 1: there have been probably hand, But can you tell yourself
Speaker 1: that's the job? Oh? Absolutely, you have still job and
Speaker 1: not go and sense and cover and feel these dual
Speaker 1: wars that we have asked these millions of terrific Americans
Speaker 1: to go fight and they've raised their ends and volunteered
Speaker 1: for the honor of it would be uh malprac this.
Speaker 1: But on an average night, when the red light comes on,
Speaker 1: two things happen. Our announcer is Michael Douglas. You know
Speaker 1: this is NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. And I
Speaker 1: hear that, and a part of me every night of
Speaker 1: my life says, wow, that's funny. This podcast is anchored
Speaker 1: by someone with my name, because they sure as hell
Speaker 1: and the light comes on, I'm on, and then the
Speaker 1: I've got this gene kicks in, host of the NBC
Speaker 1: Nightly News and Rock Center. You know where to find
Speaker 1: Brian Williams on the weekend. So I'm gonna come see
Speaker 1: the speed right, I would love it. I will host
Speaker 1: you Township Speedway Route thirty four in Wall Township, New
Speaker 1: Jersey off the Garden State Parkway. How do we sign
Speaker 1: up again? I hope to see you right back here
Speaker 1: tomorrow night. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing