Speaker 1: Hi, here's the thing, listeners. I'm not Alec Baldwin. I'm
Speaker 1: in a sale from the Death, Sex and Money podcast.
Speaker 1: Our show is about the things we think about a
Speaker 1: lot and need to talk about more. And I recently
Speaker 1: interviewed Alec on stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
Speaker 1: about all this big stuff money, sex and death. These
Speaker 1: are things he is remarkably honest about in his new
Speaker 1: memoir called Nevertheless. And because you're here's the thing, listener,
Speaker 1: I know you like revealing interviews, so we thought you'd
Speaker 1: like to hear one where instead of asking the questions,
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin is the one answering them. Okay. What I
Speaker 1: wanted to do was run out me first and introduce you.
Speaker 1: I am in control here, okay, and then I would
Speaker 1: run out and you'd introduce me. So I want to
Speaker 1: start with how you start your memoir money. You say
Speaker 1: early on that the reason you wrote this book was
Speaker 1: because you got paid for it, and you say the
Speaker 1: mercenary force is strong in this one. So I want
Speaker 1: to ask you about money. Uh. Is the making of
Speaker 1: money for you? Is the thrill in getting the big
Speaker 1: paycheck and spending it at this point? Or is it
Speaker 1: watching it accumulate to feel safe. You know, I completely
Speaker 1: forgot that this is an episode of death, sex, and money.
Speaker 1: We're taping this for your show. Um, well, it's interesting
Speaker 1: you say that I never really thought about that, because
Speaker 1: I don't. I literally have. Ah, this is gonna sound
Speaker 1: silly and maybe maybe some people are too young here
Speaker 1: to get this analogy. But um, like in Bugs Bunny cartoons,
Speaker 1: Bugs Bunny, sometimes we'll be sleep walking on a construction
Speaker 1: site and he'd be walking along like these girders and
Speaker 1: he's about to walk off the edge, and another girder
Speaker 1: would come into place, and he'd walk on that and
Speaker 1: always be rescued at the last moment. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of my financial planning strategy. Things get really bad and
Speaker 1: then a big girder of money comes in and I
Speaker 1: walk on that for a while. There's these planks of
Speaker 1: money keep coming in to float me to where I'm
Speaker 1: go before I die. But I never really think about that.
Speaker 1: I have as really, I really believe a lot in
Speaker 1: providence financially. Yeah, I don't know. I think moments of
Speaker 1: a financial planner, I think I actually appreciate how honest
Speaker 1: you are about money being part of what motivates you
Speaker 1: because you grew up not with a lot of it,
Speaker 1: So it makes sense that creating a sense of security
Speaker 1: not only for yourself but your for your family is
Speaker 1: something that you've thought about as you've made career choices.
Speaker 1: I think the people who go into business and uh
Speaker 1: succeeding uh being measured at least in one part on
Speaker 1: money and income. Um, people in investment banking obviously, things
Speaker 1: that are all very near and dear to us New Yorkers. Um. Uh.
Speaker 1: The you know, the business simon you you tend not
Speaker 1: to think about that, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: one day you are thinking about that. Because there's tremendous
Speaker 1: opportunities there for people who succeed in film and television.
Speaker 1: But I think that when I got out of my
Speaker 1: house when I was a kid and I went to school,
Speaker 1: I thought, I just want to succeed at whatever I do.
Speaker 1: Like if I went into acting for like a year
Speaker 1: or two and I was still waiting tables, I probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have done it. I wasn't going to walk around
Speaker 1: for like a decade, you know, with a copy of
Speaker 1: Allman Gilead wedged in my pocket and like, you know,
Speaker 1: hanging out dressed in all black clothes at Nick sorely
Speaker 1: Is all night long. You know I wasn't doing that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you actually you you recall a conversation that you
Speaker 1: had with the professor at George Washington when you're at
Speaker 1: that stage of life, You've gone one year to college
Speaker 1: at George Washington, thinking that law and policy is part
Speaker 1: of your future. You transfer, you're thinking about transferring to
Speaker 1: n y U. And he says to you, you're right,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that you're not talking about any dreams you have.
Speaker 1: You're just talking about how you're going to make it.
Speaker 1: That that was what was driving in He was. He
Speaker 1: was a very intense guy, very clever guy, and you know,
Speaker 1: smart guy, I think, very caring of his students. You older.
Speaker 1: You know, I was in my early twenties. He was
Speaker 1: probably close to sixty, but like around my age now
Speaker 1: and um he um. From my own benefit to kind
Speaker 1: of throw a cold glass of water on me, you know,
Speaker 1: to to think about how I was going into this.
Speaker 1: I was giving up going to law school and this
Speaker 1: kind of traditional track I was on to go into
Speaker 1: this more non traditional track and rather late in the game.
Speaker 1: And he was like, well, where's the artistic spirit, you know,
Speaker 1: where's the passion for it from an artistic standpoint? And
Speaker 1: I don't think I had that, really, you don't, No, No,
Speaker 1: I think I think I went to I went to
Speaker 1: n y U for people. Again, these are references. People
Speaker 1: here might be too to get, but I never forget
Speaker 1: the guy that was auditioning me then was a guy,
Speaker 1: uh named Fred Gorelick. And I came in, and of
Speaker 1: course I've later find out I've done unfortunately for poor Fred,
Speaker 1: I probably done the nine hundredth rendition of Long Day's Journey,
Speaker 1: and tonight I've done Edmund from Long Day's Journey. I
Speaker 1: get in and I'll never forget Fred. It was this
Speaker 1: very colorful guy. He looks at me, he goes, you
Speaker 1: remind me of a young aljo Ray? Is that? Because
Speaker 1: my voice is going to rasp me? Did you remind
Speaker 1: me of the very young Aljoe Ray? He said? And
Speaker 1: I thought, my god, is that a compliment? I thought?
Speaker 1: Is that supposed to close the deal? Here? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: I go to the school and uh, I had tremendous
Speaker 1: doubts about that. I really I didn't really think it
Speaker 1: was what I wanted to do. I was gonna try.
Speaker 1: I would never be young enough again to try that.
Speaker 1: So I did it. And then as soon as I
Speaker 1: got out of that first year, I had to go
Speaker 1: another year or one semester was all my credit student transfer.
Speaker 1: But I got work right away, and then I just
Speaker 1: kept working, and the more I would work in the business,
Speaker 1: the more I would um. For simplicity's sake, I'll say,
Speaker 1: get into that, Udhahagan, think about respect for acting, because
Speaker 1: in the beginning, it wasn't that I had a cynicism
Speaker 1: about it or a lack of respect for it. I
Speaker 1: just didn't take it seriously enough. And then after I
Speaker 1: did this soap opera for like two years and absorbed
Speaker 1: all the things from those people about their experiences outside
Speaker 1: of the television show, because all of them were like
Speaker 1: running off to go to the macarter to do King
Speaker 1: John and everything. And I'm doing a soap opera where
Speaker 1: you know, every day we go to work the script unavoidably,
Speaker 1: so it was just treacle every day, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, every day You're like, Greta, I love you, Greta.
Speaker 1: I love you so much, Greta. I wish there was
Speaker 1: enough time and the day to tell you Greta, how
Speaker 1: much I love you, and like the next day, the
Speaker 1: same thing once, one more time to find a point
Speaker 1: on this how much I love you? And it was
Speaker 1: like you just want to go blow your brains out,
Speaker 1: And and all the casts of many of them veteran
Speaker 1: theater actors, they take their break and I see, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? And they go, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go to King John the Macarter, I'm gonna go to
Speaker 1: uh light up the Sky at the paper Mill Playhouse,
Speaker 1: And they're all the Westport Playhouse, and they were all
Speaker 1: really intense theater actors. And by the time I came
Speaker 1: out of that process with them, I had completely changed.
Speaker 1: I think. Really. You write with a lot of fondness
Speaker 1: about David O'Brien, who was your co star on The Doctors,
Speaker 1: and I love these scenes you you recall of running
Speaker 1: around the mid fifties of Manhattan as a young man,
Speaker 1: having from Long Island to then Washington, and then you're
Speaker 1: running around town with this band of gay men, a
Speaker 1: very handsome young man yourself, and then yeah, back then,
Speaker 1: but it made me, it made me kind of wonder
Speaker 1: like you had a lot of different role models for
Speaker 1: masculinity looked like on Long Island in Washington. Then David
Speaker 1: O'Brien becomes this very important role model for you as
Speaker 1: what what a man who's a performer is like? What
Speaker 1: did you learn about masculinity from those guys when you're
Speaker 1: drinking in bars in Manhattan at that stage of your career.
Speaker 1: That's so great. David played my father on the show,
Speaker 1: and I knew he what his nature was the first
Speaker 1: day because the first day I come on, they were
Speaker 1: very merciless there. They want you to know your lines,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to They wanted to do what they
Speaker 1: call live tape, which is don't stop because we don't
Speaker 1: want to do the editing because the editing costs money.
Speaker 1: We want you to play the scene straight through. Don't
Speaker 1: don't cut, try to get through it, try to remember
Speaker 1: your lines, don't know exactly like we're doing it live.
Speaker 1: Even though we weren't live that we could cut. They
Speaker 1: tried to avoid that for cost. And I come in
Speaker 1: my very first day and I don't remember my lines.
Speaker 1: I can't remember any of my lines. I'm terrified. I'm mortified.
Speaker 1: And there was a guy named Don Stewart, and I
Speaker 1: believe I've been told that if you listen to the
Speaker 1: broadcast of the first time I was on the show,
Speaker 1: because we have cute cards back then, actual cute cards
Speaker 1: next to the camera with the sky Don Stewart, you
Speaker 1: can hear in the background Don Stewart tapping my cute
Speaker 1: card where the line is I'm supposed to say, so,
Speaker 1: David O'Brien plays my phone, is like, so, Bill, we
Speaker 1: haven't seen you such a long time. Where have you been?
Speaker 1: And I go, oh, you know, uh, And I go,
Speaker 1: We'll go to the card. And David would save me,
Speaker 1: he'd save my line. I bet you was spending a
Speaker 1: lot of time. But your grandmother's house in Newport, what's
Speaker 1: your new part is? You've been a new part for
Speaker 1: a while. And I see I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I was in Newport. I was. I was working at
Speaker 1: the bank for grand my Grandma's bank. I was Grandma's back,
Speaker 1: you know. And then I realized how caring and how
Speaker 1: kind he was, and I became really good friends with him.
Speaker 1: And he was from an old you know, David was
Speaker 1: in the original company of Boys in the band. He
Speaker 1: was from a pre aids, pre eight s gay culture
Speaker 1: in New York. His his his friends were all, as
Speaker 1: I say in the book, they were executive gay. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were ceo gay. And we go to these restaurants. Uh,
Speaker 1: I go, as I was David's date, and um, he
Speaker 1: taught me many things, but he taught me that I
Speaker 1: think what I don't think he meant to teach me.
Speaker 1: But what I say in the book is that under
Speaker 1: any given circumstances, I could have been gay. I say
Speaker 1: that in the book I was in love with him
Speaker 1: as anybody ever met my life. I never slept with him.
Speaker 1: I never slept with a guy in my life. But
Speaker 1: I look a him and I go, was it? My
Speaker 1: hang up? Like, did I what's the what's the membrane
Speaker 1: you passed through by which one minute you have a
Speaker 1: certain set of values in terms of sexuality, and you
Speaker 1: meet somebody that you care about as much as any
Speaker 1: woman I've ever been with. To my A, well what
Speaker 1: do I do now? You know? I say in the book,
Speaker 1: I took a woman I was dating to his house
Speaker 1: on fire. So she was just velcro to the corner
Speaker 1: and didn't say a word, and he and I were
Speaker 1: like you you you, And she said, they're like eating
Speaker 1: you know, macadamia nuts and doing her nails, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: okay over there, okay, and uh, I mean I loved him.
Speaker 1: I loved him. He was a great guy. And uh
Speaker 1: but he taught me to he taught he was the
Speaker 1: beginning of me learning the one for them, one for
Speaker 1: you school of acting, which has embraced the commercial and
Speaker 1: great embrace those opportunities. But then when you can, you
Speaker 1: run off and do these other things for your soul,
Speaker 1: you know. So you began acting one year at n
Speaker 1: y U one and a half years, as you say,
Speaker 1: you you joined the doctors. You go to Hollywood, quickly
Speaker 1: find success. And during this time of becoming an actor
Speaker 1: with a job, I'm not slanding. You also have a
Speaker 1: cocaine haby it you write with some detail, yes, slip
Speaker 1: my mind. When did you first do cocaine? M h
Speaker 1: is your show Cold Drug stands, Sex and Money. The
Speaker 1: I guess here in New York with the people from
Speaker 1: the soap there was people who were you know, one
Speaker 1: day you're down to the bathroom in a bar in
Speaker 1: New York it's the eighties and you're doing cocaine and
Speaker 1: you're and you're like, oh, that's cool. And then and
Speaker 1: then of course the money thing, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I look at it everything in terms of a value
Speaker 1: of you know, what I could afford, and I didn't
Speaker 1: want to um waste money. I thought, God, I money
Speaker 1: is so elusive in my family and my bloodline. Uh
Speaker 1: that I Uh, I would sit there and somebody would
Speaker 1: I'd say, we know. I mean literally, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: like a Woody Allen character in my own life. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm like in the bathroom, I'm like, I used to
Speaker 1: how much does this stuff? Course, you know you're doing
Speaker 1: the cocaine. How much you look the portions you by,
Speaker 1: which size like a little baggy, and how much is that?
Speaker 1: And the woman's like saying to me, you know, they
Speaker 1: tell you how much it costs, and you're like, oh god, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that. You know that's something it was
Speaker 1: cost prohibitive, And then when you make more money, it's
Speaker 1: not cost prohibits. Thank you. You write about an overdose,
Speaker 1: the cocaine overdose while you were working, you're alone in
Speaker 1: a hotel room, you think you're gonna die. Did you
Speaker 1: stop using cocaine because you were ashamed or because you
Speaker 1: thought you might die? Well? I didn't. I didn't, Uh.
Speaker 1: I stopped. Then in the fall of two nineteen, Uh
Speaker 1: oops typo um the nine four I stopped and then
Speaker 1: uh and then I go and uh do it again.
Speaker 1: And people had said, you know that in these different
Speaker 1: twelve programs, that if you give up one thing, then
Speaker 1: you'll pick up other things. And sure enough of my
Speaker 1: drinking increased, and uh, but not that it was that
Speaker 1: that was too crazy. But I never foreget one time
Speaker 1: I was at my friend's house with my dear friends
Speaker 1: and they're all snorting cocaine and they knew what happened
Speaker 1: to me, how sick I was, and they were all
Speaker 1: talking and it was like one of those E. F.
Speaker 1: Hutton commercials, But like all of a sudden, everybody stops
Speaker 1: talking when the cocaine mirror is in front of me
Speaker 1: because they want to see if this person that's overdosed
Speaker 1: is you're actually gonna So there was going blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. So I didn't go back and do
Speaker 1: that until one more time in the February of five,
Speaker 1: and it just made me sick. It maybe I was
Speaker 1: very sick because I uh, I think, as as often
Speaker 1: the case for many people, success was far more scary
Speaker 1: for me than failure. Failure was what I was accustomed to.
Speaker 1: We're not succeeding was what I mean, growing up under
Speaker 1: very very uh ordinary means and stuff for than going
Speaker 1: to l A and UH and trying to figure that out.
Speaker 1: My dad had died. There was no old Brian there
Speaker 1: for me. I write in the book that one of
Speaker 1: the strongest themes of the book is my need to
Speaker 1: find someone to replace my dad and to mentor me.
Speaker 1: And I did this thing. I mean as loquacious as
Speaker 1: I can be at times. I played this game once
Speaker 1: with two famous men that were two huge executives at
Speaker 1: a studio. And I'm not that smart, but on one occasion,
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm gonna sit and have lunch with him,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to say a word. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read all about them. Was before the internet. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: find out about their careers. And I sat and at
Speaker 1: lunch with one particular guy, and we talked for an
Speaker 1: hour and a half at a restaurant in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 1: And he's spoken an unbroken monologue for an hour and
Speaker 1: a half. We just couldn't believe how much I was
Speaker 1: really acted. It's the best acting I've ever done in
Speaker 1: my life. And then what and then you do what
Speaker 1: after that? Oh? Really? Oh my god? Then you did that?
Speaker 1: Oh my god. And I kind of meant because he
Speaker 1: was a very fascinating guy. And the lunch is over
Speaker 1: and he calls up my agent. He goes, I love him.
Speaker 1: He's fantastic, you know. And I realized getting out there,
Speaker 1: like it's it's like this much about how talented you are,
Speaker 1: and this much about how much they like you. They
Speaker 1: want to like you, and they want to work with
Speaker 1: people they like. So I started to kind of get
Speaker 1: into that idea and then eventually I just checked that
Speaker 1: as I don't care if they like me. Coming up,
Speaker 1: Alec tells me about choosing to be a very public
Speaker 1: celebrity while also being addicted to solitude. You know, Ray
Speaker 1: Charles is blind, but he learned how to play the piano.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people are the Ray Charles of uh, you know, agoraphobia.
Speaker 1: You know, we're being in public. They find a way
Speaker 1: to handle it and deal with it, but doesn't take
Speaker 1: away the fact that they aren't necessarily that comfortable in
Speaker 1: front of people and talking about themselves. So but they
Speaker 1: find a way to get around him. More of my
Speaker 1: conversation with Alec Baldwin about his new memoir Nevertheless coming
Speaker 1: up after the break. I'm in a sale from the Death,
Speaker 1: Sex and Money podcast talking today with Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: host Alec Baldwin. As a college student, Alec transferred from
Speaker 1: George Washington University to go to n y us Tish
Speaker 1: School of the Arts. After a year there, Alec got
Speaker 1: work as an actor and dropped out. But more than
Speaker 1: a decade later, when he was in his late thirties,
Speaker 1: he finished his degree. I read all of the books
Speaker 1: just done Oslavski and Strasburg, and I watched all of
Speaker 1: the films of al Paccino, and I interviewed al for
Speaker 1: nine hours off and on. I mean, I would be
Speaker 1: like literally out, We'll be doing be talking, and we'd
Speaker 1: beginning into this great thing, and he was doing me,
Speaker 1: this big favorite body, letting me interview him. And uh
Speaker 1: like about an hour and a half ago by going
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to the grocery store, Aleck, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm down to the grocery store right now. You wait here,
Speaker 1: I'll be right back an hour and I'm sitting there
Speaker 1: writing and I had two questions and I interviewed Al
Speaker 1: about the applicability of method acting to someone with a
Speaker 1: career in theater and film, and Pacina was the only
Speaker 1: one that really mattered because he kept going back to
Speaker 1: the theater throughout his career and still does. He just
Speaker 1: finished doing a show in l a And I interviewed
Speaker 1: Al and it was just one of the most amazing
Speaker 1: experiences of my life. Do you remember one thing you
Speaker 1: learned from those interviews that sticks with you. Al does
Speaker 1: not like to talk about acting, which was very frustrating.
Speaker 1: We were writing a paper Bad Acting, and uh, we're
Speaker 1: in his house once. I mean, there's so many anecdotes
Speaker 1: about that. But one time I say to him, I
Speaker 1: said to him, I look at the line of people's work, like,
Speaker 1: what's the kind of uh course they're on? And I said, now,
Speaker 1: in this period, right this year, you did the movie
Speaker 1: Author Author with Tuesday Weld, this romantic comedy and in
Speaker 1: the title song of the movie, the lyrics they sing
Speaker 1: are and in the end it's just it's just all
Speaker 1: cookies and milk and a smile. I said. And then
Speaker 1: after that, you do Cruise in the homosexual crime movie
Speaker 1: a detective movie with Billy Fakin, which was this big
Speaker 1: disaster for everybody involved. And I said, you know your
Speaker 1: have your you know your this really violent movie. I said,
Speaker 1: what's that like for you as an actor when you
Speaker 1: pivot between these different things? And he literally sits here
Speaker 1: and goes, that does sound good, though, doesn't it? Alec,
Speaker 1: it's just cookies and milk and a smile. That doesn't
Speaker 1: sound too bad, doesn't And I'm like, yeah, it sounds great.
Speaker 1: But then you go from that you see two people
Speaker 1: like murdering each other in these gay clubs in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: I said, you do a scene with Richard Cox and
Speaker 1: he is going down on you in in uh A
Speaker 1: Riverside Park and I said, you're a method actors, said,
Speaker 1: what's that life? You shooting that scene? He goes, all
Speaker 1: I remember was was cold. It was so cold there.
Speaker 1: We're there in the park and it was so damn
Speaker 1: cold out there. And he would never answer my question
Speaker 1: acting look to reveal to me. I wouldn't answer one question.
Speaker 1: And but then you talked about the theater, and he
Speaker 1: talked about the theater. He would articulate about that quite
Speaker 1: a bit. Oh that's interesting, So I want to ask
Speaker 1: you about acting. It was so damn cold out there.
Speaker 1: I saw all I remember. I am curious because you
Speaker 1: have been both a professional actor and a professional celebrity
Speaker 1: for most of your adult life, and so you have
Speaker 1: been acting in roles and being the persona of Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin when you are preparing, like I was thinking this weekend.
Speaker 1: So last night you're preparing to go on Saturday Night
Speaker 1: Live as Bill O'Reilly and as President Donald Trump, and
Speaker 1: then tonight you're preparing to open up your personal life
Speaker 1: to all of these people who are here tonight. Don't
Speaker 1: you like, is there a similar way that you prepare
Speaker 1: or they totally different? I think it's a um that
Speaker 1: don't be good to answer the questions without the bike,
Speaker 1: but the the I think, uh uh, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you go along and you and you have
Speaker 1: a career, and of course you want a career like
Speaker 1: many people I admire where the only way you could
Speaker 1: access them is to buy a ticket, and they have
Speaker 1: certain things in the business they don't want to do.
Speaker 1: You know, Daniel day Lewis is very elusive and he's
Speaker 1: not doing Jimmy that one, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean you can almost wonder what that conversation is like
Speaker 1: where people are like, you know, so we've got this
Speaker 1: idea with Daniel is going to come on the show,
Speaker 1: right and he and Jim you gonna have like a
Speaker 1: piety contest, okay, and like spending the pie I don't
Speaker 1: is pie everywhere and it's like pie and Snott and pie.
Speaker 1: And you can see Daniel did it was on the
Speaker 1: other end of his public going I don't think so.
Speaker 1: And there's like thing that those people won't do. And
Speaker 1: then that becomes the difference, which is you become someone
Speaker 1: who will do those things where the promotional aspect of
Speaker 1: the film, but the promotional aspect of the film becomes
Speaker 1: you performing in that capacity rather than you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of Nicholson won't do press Pcina when DeNiro
Speaker 1: avoided that a lot uh brand Do you look at
Speaker 1: old shows from him on uh Cavot and he wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna work very hard at all. You know, you can
Speaker 1: see Cavot like writhing in his seat trying to understand
Speaker 1: if if he's making any progress with opening up Brando.
Speaker 1: And then in the modern world, you have this requirement
Speaker 1: to promote the project and they'll come to you with
Speaker 1: a very long list of things for you to do.
Speaker 1: They'll say, we would like you to pick some quotient
Speaker 1: of this list of like and then it's like a
Speaker 1: joke like a Cone Brothers movie. The piece of paper
Speaker 1: like rolls all the way down the hallway and uh,
Speaker 1: it's crazy and uh the and so you do some
Speaker 1: because you want to be viewed as the good partner
Speaker 1: in the business. You are working with them on a
Speaker 1: venture where it's in all of our interests for the
Speaker 1: thing to do well. And we're in a very crowded marketplace.
Speaker 1: So you agree to spit the pie out with Jimmy
Speaker 1: on the show. And I love Jimmy and I love
Speaker 1: doing those things. But that's what happened to me, was
Speaker 1: I kind of with that way where you're doing Letterman
Speaker 1: and you're doing this and and to some degree it's
Speaker 1: possible that from time to time that stuff can eclipse
Speaker 1: the actual work you're doing. It's it's it's it's more. Uh,
Speaker 1: they get more hits and clicks on the internet. I
Speaker 1: mean more people will watch Saturday Night Live that pretty
Speaker 1: much any movie I've ever made in my life, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So it's weird. Does it take
Speaker 1: a similar amount of energy to perform Alec Baldwin as
Speaker 1: it does to perform a role for you. I guess
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that question. Like I mean,
Speaker 1: when you say perform me, I uh, it's it's strange because,
Speaker 1: like you know, you people always have an expectation that
Speaker 1: you're going to contribute something in some way, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love going to the movies. I love
Speaker 1: going to the theater. It's about somebody else and I
Speaker 1: don't have to do any of the talking, you know.
Speaker 1: But the other thing that changes is that your passion
Speaker 1: for some of the work you do begins to change.
Speaker 1: And you still love it, but you love it a
Speaker 1: little less or you love it less often like movie making,
Speaker 1: you know, moviemaking is this incredibly time consuming. Uh you
Speaker 1: know paint when we did thirty rock for six and
Speaker 1: a half years, and there's a velocity to television a
Speaker 1: way of a Tina and I would say, you develop
Speaker 1: a muscle which you begin to kind of appreciate how
Speaker 1: we have to make choices quickly and efficiently. And I
Speaker 1: always tell the same crazy story about like in the movies.
Speaker 1: You'll do a movie sometimes and you can't believe the
Speaker 1: level of indulgence. You know, I always say I did
Speaker 1: this movie one time. And and there's a shot is
Speaker 1: of a is of a a door knob and the
Speaker 1: and the director says, all right now, like in this scene,
Speaker 1: your hand comes into the shots and you reach the
Speaker 1: door knob and you open the door, and inside the bathroom,
Speaker 1: Nicole is Nicole kidman like Nicole is in the shower,
Speaker 1: out of focus in the distance, and action hand comes in.
Speaker 1: Open the door, open and cut all right now this
Speaker 1: time open the door a little less maybe three inches
Speaker 1: spent that it there's three inches four inches maybe somewhere
Speaker 1: in there some range. And then show it to us please,
Speaker 1: and you're run about there. Open the run about there.
Speaker 1: That's great. Take four, Take five, Take six. Finally, okay,
Speaker 1: have your hand come in, have your hand come out.
Speaker 1: You're rethinking the whole thing. Then have your hand coming
Speaker 1: hard to see that ten shoot in your hand. Your
Speaker 1: hands trembling just a bit. There's attention, open little no,
Speaker 1: you change your mind and we're doing this like this
Speaker 1: is like the half a day before lunch, and in
Speaker 1: the movies can be like this. This is very rare
Speaker 1: now because movies are independent. Film have very strictive budgets.
Speaker 1: But I remember I did movies where you know, we
Speaker 1: didn't get a lot done every day, and we shot
Speaker 1: the movie for like four months, five months, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's not all that exciting because most of the day
Speaker 1: is spent like just in an idle gear in your trailer,
Speaker 1: waiting for them to come and go, we're ready for you,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's just uh, I didn't. I After
Speaker 1: a while, I thought, what the funk am I doing
Speaker 1: this year? So you have come back to New York,
Speaker 1: you're working on thirty Rock, you have gone through a
Speaker 1: very public divorce and custody battle, and Vanity Fair describes
Speaker 1: you as the bruised mascot of the male midlife crisis,
Speaker 1: which was well put. I thought, they're very good at that,
Speaker 1: very good at that point in your life. Is that
Speaker 1: how it felt? I think I felt like I was
Speaker 1: just not um uh, I was not finding things I
Speaker 1: wanted to do. Work wise. That was two thousand. I
Speaker 1: got separated and divorced in the early two thousand's and
Speaker 1: when you know, and I go along, and uh, you
Speaker 1: make independent films, and uh um. In the book, I
Speaker 1: take some of those independent films and I write a
Speaker 1: little uh section about when you go into these films,
Speaker 1: why do you do them? There's a reason you do them.
Speaker 1: They might not have the the the the markings to
Speaker 1: be some great film, but you want to go to
Speaker 1: work and this is what you do when you and
Speaker 1: I did have some options that many then, so I
Speaker 1: picked a movie and I say, this is a real opportunity. Here.
Speaker 1: You meet with a director, a writer, director in the
Speaker 1: modern world, and you think that he's a smart guy,
Speaker 1: and you go do I list like twelve films that
Speaker 1: I did that. You know, when you saw the film,
Speaker 1: you wondered what was I thinking when I did that film?
Speaker 1: But you kept working about how when we go into
Speaker 1: nobody sets out to make a mediocre film. You I
Speaker 1: don't really mean that in a heartfelt way. You start
Speaker 1: you you go when you say, let's give this everything
Speaker 1: we have and uh and and and sometimes you're into it,
Speaker 1: like the second week of shooting and you're like, oh god,
Speaker 1: what have I got myself into? You know, and it's
Speaker 1: not going You know, they're not you don't feel that creative.
Speaker 1: When I did the movie The Cooler with Wayne Kramer.
Speaker 1: Wayne was this just really really intoxicating guy. He was
Speaker 1: just so smart and so passionate and so clear, and
Speaker 1: uh he was the captain of the ship, which you
Speaker 1: want with every director, and uh not all movies were
Speaker 1: like that, you know. And uh, um the I come
Speaker 1: to where I'm gonna do TV because I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: you know, the opportunities and home are you know, if
Speaker 1: I do one more movie or I just like, I
Speaker 1: take that back, if I read one more script in
Speaker 1: which you know, uh, Laura Durns my sister, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna put Dad in a home. You know, it's an
Speaker 1: independent comedy. And Lauren and I are like, you know, well,
Speaker 1: first scene is gonna be pulled up at the She
Speaker 1: picks me up at the airport in Buffalo, and we
Speaker 1: haven't seen each other in like nine years, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: you look good. How you been? Next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: we're putting you know, Dad is like Philip Bosco. We're
Speaker 1: putting him in a home somewhere. You know, Lennon carry
Speaker 1: you his dad, We're putting him in a home somewhere.
Speaker 1: And I just kept reading the scripts, going what the
Speaker 1: funk am I gonna do? And um, so I started
Speaker 1: to develop TV and then Lauren flew in the superhero
Speaker 1: he is and UH asked me to do thirty Rock.
Speaker 1: I did the TV show with you, which you started
Speaker 1: in two thousand six, and I You've written a whole
Speaker 1: book about fatherhood and divorce and that time in your
Speaker 1: life and the custody battle. But I want to just
Speaker 1: ask you, at this point in your life, if a
Speaker 1: buddy comes to you and says, I love my kids,
Speaker 1: I think my marriage is breaking up, what's the advice
Speaker 1: that you give him. Well, I try to tell people
Speaker 1: that if they can, I say, find a way that
Speaker 1: you can get into therapy and get into the collaborative divorce,
Speaker 1: you know, the dignified divorce, because you're going to so
Speaker 1: regret if you don't. And the I mean, I'm with
Speaker 1: friends of mine who I'll say to them, you know,
Speaker 1: are you out of this? I mean, this is if
Speaker 1: they're good friends of mine. I don't say that to strangers.
Speaker 1: I'm out in the airport bar going are you ready
Speaker 1: for this to be over now? While Gwen's in the
Speaker 1: ladies room. Her name is Gwen. Am I run? I
Speaker 1: don't know that you're good. I overheard you yelled Gwen
Speaker 1: and uh and no, but I think you know like
Speaker 1: I tell trying to tell my close friends or people
Speaker 1: who want to have that conversation, I'm married again. My
Speaker 1: wife is here, she's somewhere out there in this Uh,
Speaker 1: she's somewhere out there in Brooklyn. And uh. Um And
Speaker 1: everybody uh has their difference of opinion, and everybody has
Speaker 1: their arguments and everybody has this. But to me, marriage
Speaker 1: when you're with the right person, uh, and even that's
Speaker 1: so guarantee. It's a decision. You decide to stay, and
Speaker 1: you decide to try to make it work, and you
Speaker 1: want to kind of feel out of the other person.
Speaker 1: This is the can of worms, by the way, but
Speaker 1: you want to find that if the other person has
Speaker 1: the same kind of attitude of disposability that you have.
Speaker 1: Like I have a friend of mine who was married
Speaker 1: to is where they were together nine years. They were
Speaker 1: married like five years, and she literally woke up one
Speaker 1: day and said, I've made a mistake and I'm leaving,
Speaker 1: like boom Is shot him like in one day. And
Speaker 1: he's overwhelmed with a confusion. And obviously, um, they didn't
Speaker 1: have the same attitude about marriage that he thought they did.
Speaker 1: Has your attitude? How did you say it? The the
Speaker 1: the attitude about disposability. Has that changed for you over
Speaker 1: your adult life and your romantic life when you look back, Well, um,
Speaker 1: I got married. I met my wife five six years ago.
Speaker 1: We got married and very quickly we had three children
Speaker 1: in three years. Did you all hear that? Uh? You know,
Speaker 1: thirty rock was over. I had a lot of time
Speaker 1: in my hands and tell him a lot and uh
Speaker 1: the uh And you know, my wife, I'm very it's
Speaker 1: a lot of luck. And I try to remember in
Speaker 1: our in our lives, like what's my role? Which I
Speaker 1: don't always fulfill my end of the bargain as well
Speaker 1: as I might, But my role is to support her.
Speaker 1: And I kind of accept that I me into in
Speaker 1: order to make things ease. I mean, I love my children.
Speaker 1: I worshiped my children. But as my dad taught me parents,
Speaker 1: who does a contest between two people where the dad
Speaker 1: always wins the bronze medal? And my wife is you
Speaker 1: know the moment my wife walks in the door and
Speaker 1: my kids are like, yeah, that's great, to see you later.
Speaker 1: But but my job is to be there to try
Speaker 1: to help reparent our children together. But she is the
Speaker 1: mom and I'm lucky. That was my point, I'm I got.
Speaker 1: I got very lucky, and luck plays a big partner. Well,
Speaker 1: it's to read back interviews. Before you met your wife.
Speaker 1: You were very open that a dream that you had
Speaker 1: was to to just try to have a family again,
Speaker 1: that you prayed boy did that dream country? How did
Speaker 1: your I mean you are living a full, unmarried life
Speaker 1: in New York City. Star was unhappy. I was unhappy
Speaker 1: that I know you were waiting for the moment I
Speaker 1: was gonna I take Anna sale. My guess is Anna say,
Speaker 1: the host of Death, Sex and Money. How long have
Speaker 1: you been married. I've been married a year and a half.
Speaker 1: And you met your husband and you knew each other.
Speaker 1: How long we got together? In so, we were together
Speaker 1: four years before we got married. You've met him in
Speaker 1: recent years? Oh yeah, yeah, I was. It was my
Speaker 1: second marriage. Wow. Yeah, huh. I learned some things in
Speaker 1: the ensuing years. So that's why I wanted to know
Speaker 1: from you about about Like so you think back on
Speaker 1: that time when you were having success on television. You've
Speaker 1: turned around your career after feeling like things hadn't quite
Speaker 1: worked out with with movies, and then you're a star
Speaker 1: on thirty Rock. This critically acclaimed show. You're winning Emmy's,
Speaker 1: you're winning Golden Globes, and you felt lonely. That's how
Speaker 1: you remember. I went home and had a pint of
Speaker 1: ice cream every night and watched Turner classic movies. It's
Speaker 1: all by myself. I was didn't meet me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've met people, ID aided and I met people. I
Speaker 1: did it. I had a run of time with this
Speaker 1: one or that one, and none of it. I was
Speaker 1: willing to commit, by the way, because I didn't want
Speaker 1: to my older daughter to think I was abandoning her.
Speaker 1: Many people said to me, but they said, you be
Speaker 1: careful that your daughter will view you moving on as
Speaker 1: an abandonment of your daughter. So I kept pushing away
Speaker 1: any formalized commitment with people. And then finally when my
Speaker 1: daughter turned and all kind of came together. My daughter
Speaker 1: was eighteen, actually she was fifteen, uh sixteen, she was
Speaker 1: sixteen when I met my my wife, Hilaria, and all
Speaker 1: of it just developed at the same time, where like
Speaker 1: I met somebody who I thought, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: think it would be a horrible act of self robbery
Speaker 1: if I didn't try to pursue this on some level.
Speaker 1: So you know, we got married. But but before I
Speaker 1: met my wife, and I was I was cutting every ribbon.
Speaker 1: I was going to, like, you want to do the
Speaker 1: auction for the Sheep's Head Babe book of the Month
Speaker 1: club they needed here. I was like, we have five dollars.
Speaker 1: We have five dollars for this frame picture of Jerry
Speaker 1: Lewis five dollars. And I'm like going to every auction.
Speaker 1: I'm going to every event and hosting, and I'm out
Speaker 1: every night because I don't have anybody at home waiting
Speaker 1: for me. And I just kept um keeping busy and
Speaker 1: working and uh. And then I met my wife. And
Speaker 1: now you have the opposite. You're doing a lot of auctioning.
Speaker 1: Before you met your husband, I was out more. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And now I have a small child and I'm home
Speaker 1: a lot. I'm home a lot now. So I'm how
Speaker 1: now you come home you have three little kids? What's
Speaker 1: that like? What was that transition like? Uh, well, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's wild. You know. We had the first kid,
Speaker 1: We had a daughter, Carmen, that was great. We had
Speaker 1: our son that was great. Uh, and and then we
Speaker 1: have a third kid and it's uh, it's you know,
Speaker 1: everything becomes cirked to so late and it was your
Speaker 1: whole house is like, you know, we had a nice apartment.
Speaker 1: And I had a dear friend of mine come overhead
Speaker 1: and seen her in years and she was up from
Speaker 1: Washington and she comes in and said, and you literally
Speaker 1: can't imagine. You're like, uh, you're you're there turning to
Speaker 1: someone and you can't believe you have a life where
Speaker 1: you say this line. You're like, I'm sorry, I don't
Speaker 1: have a really really comfortable place for you to sit down,
Speaker 1: you know, because the kid's toys are everywhere and everything.
Speaker 1: And my friend looked at me, she was, I get it.
Speaker 1: It's a preschool. Your apartment as a preschool. But we
Speaker 1: have three kids, and uh, the great journey is watching them.
Speaker 1: Our daughter, Carmen is she's a talk show host. I
Speaker 1: mean she is really so verbal, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you sit there, you you you're there in that moment
Speaker 1: where you come around the corner in the kitchen and
Speaker 1: she's staring up at the refrigerator like it's the Monolith
Speaker 1: and two thousand one of Space Odyssey, and she sees
Speaker 1: you look at it, and she looks at me and
Speaker 1: she goes, she goes I'm not going to eat the chocolate.
Speaker 1: I'm just protecting the chocolate. She's three and a half.
Speaker 1: You just kind of standing there and go, who are you?
Speaker 1: Where did you come from? That's Alec Baldwin talking with
Speaker 1: me and a sale. You can find more episodes of
Speaker 1: my show, Death, Sex and Money wherever you get your
Speaker 1: podcast iTunes, Spotify, or at Death Sex Money dot Org.
Speaker 1: One more thing, Alec told me his father and grandfather
Speaker 1: were also named Alexander, and they both went by Alet.
Speaker 1: So growing up, the youngest Alexander Baldwin was called Xander.
Speaker 1: Alex told me there are still a few people who
Speaker 1: call him that, especially in his hometown of Massapequa, Long Island.
Speaker 1: This is one guy I grew up with. His name
Speaker 1: is Greg Maun and his mother was this character out
Speaker 1: of a Sidney Kingsley novel. You know. She was just
Speaker 1: this really New York kind of woman with a cigarette
Speaker 1: our mouth. They had a clothes line in the backyard.
Speaker 1: She hanged the laundry of the yard. You know, when
Speaker 1: this is suburban Long Island. I think I went out
Speaker 1: there about six or seven years ago. So we uh
Speaker 1: were driving by and I pull up to the man's house,
Speaker 1: and there's Mrs Mom with a cigarette in her mouth,
Speaker 1: hanging out the laundry to say, nothing's change. Me and
Speaker 1: her sons were all in our fifties and she has
Speaker 1: like a basket of laundry. And I pulled up and
Speaker 1: I go Mrs Moan, and from like sixty yards or
Speaker 1: where you know, sixty ft away she goes, Zen the Baldwin,
Speaker 1: what are you doing here?