Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions change
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work Today to New
Speaker 1: York City Icons, a hotelier and the brains behind Studio
Speaker 1: fifty four, Ian Schrager and Sarah Jessica Parker, actress and
Speaker 1: purveyor of all things fabulous Sunday nights. In the late
Speaker 1: nineties and early two thousand's, this sound could be heard
Speaker 1: in homes all over the country. Over six television seasons
Speaker 1: and two feature films, Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha navigated
Speaker 1: the complexities of single life in New York City. When
Speaker 1: HBO's Sex in the City wrapped in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: it left millions of empty Cosmopolitan glasses in its wake
Speaker 1: and changed the conversation at brunch forever Do we want
Speaker 1: another round? What do you think? It also made stars
Speaker 1: of all four of its actresses, most notably the show's
Speaker 1: narrator and my first guest to this hour, Sarah Jessica Parker.
Speaker 1: I am someone who is looking for Love, before Carrie
Speaker 1: Bradshaw transformed Parker into a celebrity fashion icon television producer.
Speaker 1: Sarah Jessica Parker was a working actress and work was
Speaker 1: actually an escape for her. She was one of eight
Speaker 1: siblings growing up. You know, it was insane in our
Speaker 1: homes and your childhood. You started working very young, you
Speaker 1: were your child. You're eight, and what do you remember
Speaker 1: about your childhood. I'm not certain how we sort of
Speaker 1: recreate how we felt about our childhood, because I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't to sort of fix the things that were painful,
Speaker 1: or change the disappointments to triumphs or the struggles to ease.
Speaker 1: I remember everything about my childhood, and I think the
Speaker 1: memories are vivid because it was a very vivid life.
Speaker 1: It was a colorful, energetic, unpredictable, exciting, scary, sad, ebulent life.
Speaker 1: And um, I think I benefited from that in countless ways,
Speaker 1: far more than I would have if it had been easy.
Speaker 1: I think I loved working because it allowed me something
Speaker 1: of my own time, to myself, something that I felt
Speaker 1: was mine. Were your siblings performers, any of them? My
Speaker 1: brother Toby was an actor, UM, and was started working
Speaker 1: before me, and then we eventually worked together a number
Speaker 1: of times. And I think he would also say that
Speaker 1: he loved this independence from his siblings money. Knowing that
Speaker 1: we had this, we were creating like a past. Remember
Speaker 1: your past book at the bank, You and I have it, okay.
Speaker 1: So all of those were wonderful. Going home was a
Speaker 1: little dreary after a day of independence. But I think
Speaker 1: about days that I didn't want to be in my home,
Speaker 1: and I think about days that I got to be
Speaker 1: out working as an actor, that you know, getting through
Speaker 1: the days that that I found not always super pleasant. Um,
Speaker 1: I earned those days away. I earned the five dollars
Speaker 1: they gave me from my dinner money or this opportunity
Speaker 1: to pretend to be somebody else. So I liked the
Speaker 1: balance of the suffering and the reward. Is that crazy? No? No,
Speaker 1: I think that I remember when when I worked and
Speaker 1: I got a job, and I remember I just felt strange.
Speaker 1: I mean they I did a television soap opera in
Speaker 1: New York. There was the lowest rated soap opera which
Speaker 1: I did the Doctors before they were canceled. Were you
Speaker 1: a doctor? No? I was the bastard son. I was
Speaker 1: a swindling son of a doctor, the scion, and I
Speaker 1: get this job they pay you for I was twenty
Speaker 1: and I get the job and they pay me the
Speaker 1: minimum and I get a check for whatever, like stars.
Speaker 1: The first year, I remember sitting there thinking I make
Speaker 1: more money than my dad. We've been teaching for twenty
Speaker 1: eight years at a public school. And I felt funny.
Speaker 1: I felt weird, like people will always sometimes smack you
Speaker 1: or swat you and say, what do you know? You're
Speaker 1: out of touch because you old you. People are so overpaid.
Speaker 1: And there's a part of me sits here and go, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it is kind of crazy, but but I
Speaker 1: have to ask you a question. Wait, let me just
Speaker 1: go back, because I think it is curious when you're
Speaker 1: criticized or or there's a conversation around sort of that
Speaker 1: you might be out of touch or you're not you know,
Speaker 1: you don't recognize what it means to work hard. On
Speaker 1: one hand, you can say it is true, um, lots
Speaker 1: of people make absurd amounts of money and none of
Speaker 1: it's just none of it makes sense and none of
Speaker 1: it's fair and it's but I think the accusation of
Speaker 1: your being out of touch or you're not aware of
Speaker 1: what it means to work hard. That's the part of
Speaker 1: that kind of charge that I am most frustrated by,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people I know who work in entertainment, theater,
Speaker 1: show business didn't come from anything and simply worked incredibly hard.
Speaker 1: And we're willing to work hard and earn nothing, and
Speaker 1: every now and then a job comes along that does
Speaker 1: pay and that you know, that's wonderful, and almost everybody
Speaker 1: I know is thrilled and appreciative. So the idea that
Speaker 1: you know, we're sort of blithely going through life, you know,
Speaker 1: not aware of um out of whack it is and
Speaker 1: how lucky we are to to and then and the
Speaker 1: other part of that I find is that other people
Speaker 1: have jobs where there's a meritorious system of a sentencing.
Speaker 1: You go to high school, you do well, you get
Speaker 1: the good s, A t s, you get the gp A,
Speaker 1: you get the right scores, you go to Harvard, and
Speaker 1: in our business you can be great and do great work.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean anything. The mean you're gonna move up.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the most successful people are not the most talented
Speaker 1: people in terms of the kind of complexity they're acting.
Speaker 1: If you will, yeah, and I think I'm predictable nature,
Speaker 1: I mean, and it's it's impossible, you know, to compare
Speaker 1: career trajectories and paths and choices. But there are things
Speaker 1: that are you know, obviously very unstable about making these
Speaker 1: life choices. And and most people, you know, really everybody
Speaker 1: I admire basically has not really you know, hit the
Speaker 1: pay dirt the way that I think they should have.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I'm particularly sensitive to the idea
Speaker 1: that I that I'm not aware of what it means
Speaker 1: to work hard, and that I'm not aware of the
Speaker 1: imbalance of you know, the sort of It's not you know,
Speaker 1: for me, what is interesting is you and men. Eventually
Speaker 1: you become very famous. It's you, it's Mary Tyler Moore,
Speaker 1: it's Gene Stapleton. You become one of the most prominent
Speaker 1: women in the history of television. Before Sex in the City.
Speaker 1: When someone hired you, what were they hiring you for? Well,
Speaker 1: they were usually hiring me to play uh. For a while,
Speaker 1: I was the cerebral best friend of the pretty lead girl.
Speaker 1: Subversive or UH could be a clever person, witty, um,
Speaker 1: maybe bitter, uh, you know, funny, buoyant, um wise, cracking,
Speaker 1: but not overly confident. Those were the roles, never the lead,
Speaker 1: you know, foot loose. I was the spirited best friend
Speaker 1: of Lorie Singer. She was the beautiful, withholding, I don't know,
Speaker 1: desirable lead. And but what once again I will say
Speaker 1: and I couldn't mean this, And it's not that I'm
Speaker 1: looking back on it fondly and kind of creating affection
Speaker 1: for a time or a place. I really I thought
Speaker 1: I had it all. I would work in the theater
Speaker 1: all the time. I would play these smaller parts in movies.
Speaker 1: I would do television shows. Um. I assumed that the
Speaker 1: leads were really only made for a particular type of
Speaker 1: girl and then woman, and I understood that I just
Speaker 1: wasn't going to ever be that person. And I talked
Speaker 1: myself into believing that the roles that I got to
Speaker 1: play were more complex people. They were more nuanced, they
Speaker 1: were more interesting. Sometimes that was the case, not always.
Speaker 1: But the opportunity to work, to move from job to
Speaker 1: job was the best because I was constantly figuring out
Speaker 1: new relationships, new people. How did they work, How do
Speaker 1: I work? What do I want to do? Like they do?
Speaker 1: What I mean? You make a lot of films. I
Speaker 1: remember that, but all the people those days of like
Speaker 1: running to a pay phone, checking your voicemail, I mean sorry,
Speaker 1: checking your answering machine. It was like you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of calls. It's a lot of calls.
Speaker 1: You have thirty nine messaging messages, just the potential of
Speaker 1: that next job. And then what happened? And then, um,
Speaker 1: Kevin Euvane, my agent of or thirty years now, rang
Speaker 1: me and said, there's this pilot script a guy named
Speaker 1: Darren Starred. You know who, Darren Starr. As I said, yes,
Speaker 1: I know, certainly do Melrose Place, UM, Beverly Hills nine
Speaker 1: two one oh. He he said he's written this pilot.
Speaker 1: He says he's written it with you in mind. So
Speaker 1: Starr told you Vane, he wrote this with you in mind. Correct.
Speaker 1: Kevin Euvane told me that that's what Darren Starr had
Speaker 1: had shared with him. What I read the script, Um,
Speaker 1: I read the script right away. I was really kind
Speaker 1: of confounded by the idea that I was a voice
Speaker 1: that would have come to mind because she was so
Speaker 1: this part of Carrie Bradshaw was so like anything I'd
Speaker 1: ever played before. Um, I would say maybe a year
Speaker 1: and a half two years prior to the script, and
Speaker 1: so I met with Darren. He said to me, you know,
Speaker 1: I would love for you to consider this. We met
Speaker 1: at eat on the Upper east Side, which I thought
Speaker 1: was kind of a fancy place. It's expensive, you know,
Speaker 1: the menu is pretty deer like everything on the menu,
Speaker 1: and uh, I said, you know, I don't feel comfortable
Speaker 1: doing nudity. I don't. I think we can be more
Speaker 1: thoughtful about this language. She's a writer. Does she have
Speaker 1: to use the F for it? Isn't she more thoughtful about?
Speaker 1: You know? He kept just saying to everything, every possible
Speaker 1: obstacle I can throw it his way to talk him
Speaker 1: out of hiring me. He had a relatively great convincing
Speaker 1: and have you been successful at talking people out of
Speaker 1: hiring you previously? I think I'd given people lots of
Speaker 1: other ideas, like don't you think Patty Clarkson the same one.
Speaker 1: I'm always offering up Patty Clarkson because I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but I always have these actors in my
Speaker 1: head that I think are more deserving or better, frank
Speaker 1: simply better. I always I always think that. And I
Speaker 1: always think that there were like four or five other
Speaker 1: three named actresses that either they may be meant to
Speaker 1: go to first and that when I showed up there,
Speaker 1: like we didn't mean that, we meant Mary Louise Parker.
Speaker 1: But anyway, he was very convincing and um and really,
Speaker 1: uh just so tenation. He just never let the idea go.
Speaker 1: And and I said, oh, and by the way, between
Speaker 1: you and me and I'm actually getting married, I think
Speaker 1: next week. It was, I think I'm getting married next
Speaker 1: week on my night off. He got the day off
Speaker 1: and we're gonna get married. So I don't want to
Speaker 1: start shooting until after we get married. And he said,
Speaker 1: that's fine, we'll figure it out. We'll push it a
Speaker 1: few days. And so I went and did this pilot
Speaker 1: and um, you know you ready to do a TV show? No?
Speaker 1: And to be honest, at the time, HBO is a
Speaker 1: very different network. It was a place that was a
Speaker 1: primarily male dominated um uh net work. It was there
Speaker 1: was heavy on the sports and boxing. There were a
Speaker 1: few scripted shows dream on, Um a football show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um there was a football show about a football team.
Speaker 1: You know, it was skewed towards the male audience that
Speaker 1: existed for the for their sports, their great special sports events,
Speaker 1: and so I thought, you know, I'll do this pilot
Speaker 1: and I loved I thought the script was spectacled, and
Speaker 1: actually I gave it to Matthew and my oldest brother Pippin,
Speaker 1: and they both read it and said, without a doubt,
Speaker 1: you should do this. So I did the pilot, went
Speaker 1: on with my life and one day I was walking
Speaker 1: down the street and I ran into Merrill poster and
Speaker 1: she said to me, I think I was on my
Speaker 1: way to see a play and she said, oh, I
Speaker 1: I saw your television show. And I said her, what
Speaker 1: what television show? And she said did you do a
Speaker 1: pilot called Sexton City. I was like and I literally said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's right, I did, and she said it's good and
Speaker 1: I said it is. I haven't seen it and she said,
Speaker 1: oh no, I just thought I think it's really good.
Speaker 1: I said, okay. So after Merril post the pilot, what
Speaker 1: happens next? I think eventually I saw it or was
Speaker 1: forced to see it, and um, there was this discussion
Speaker 1: of it, you know, going to series. And I then
Speaker 1: tried to get out of it, called a meeting and
Speaker 1: said to them, gentlemen, you have to help me get
Speaker 1: out of this. I don't want to do a television series.
Speaker 1: I've rethought this. I would like to offer myself up
Speaker 1: to HBO basically free. I will work for them for
Speaker 1: the next four years. I'll do any television movie they want.
Speaker 1: But I just don't think I want to be caught
Speaker 1: up and tied down in intelligence series. This is after
Speaker 1: you've seen the pilot. After i'd see the pilot. I
Speaker 1: might not have seen the pilot yet, and I just
Speaker 1: sort of rethought my future and panicked, And eventually they
Speaker 1: producer ended up coming on the show who I did
Speaker 1: a movie with, Miami Rhapsody. They said to me, look,
Speaker 1: this is We'll tell you about this kind of home.
Speaker 1: HBO is a place where it doesn't feel good after
Speaker 1: season when we don't do season two, don't worry about that.
Speaker 1: Just let's try that hostage. I went to the set
Speaker 1: on the first day and I never looked back, and
Speaker 1: every day I got in the shower to go to work,
Speaker 1: I was I was gobsmacked by the idea that I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be anywhere else. There wasn't a day
Speaker 1: that I spent on that set that I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be there. When I think of that show, because
Speaker 1: it was a lot of practical locations, and when you
Speaker 1: guys were on the streets a lot, you weren't on
Speaker 1: the stage much. We weren't, And I always think of
Speaker 1: you like four chicks in a trailer changing your clothes
Speaker 1: and outside of you you here. Yeah, yeah, he loved it.
Speaker 1: I loved it. I loved the work. I love the people,
Speaker 1: I love the storytelling, I love the character I loved it.
Speaker 1: When did you know you guys had gotten it? Though? Well,
Speaker 1: I felt at the end of the first season, Um,
Speaker 1: we produced the whole first season without being on the air.
Speaker 1: We went on the air, I think while we were
Speaker 1: already into our second season shooting, and even though there
Speaker 1: wasn't a terribly large audience at that time, I just
Speaker 1: felt that the stories we were telling, we're successful. And
Speaker 1: I think it became really necessary for us as we
Speaker 1: started to face a second and possibly third season that
Speaker 1: it had to get You couldn't hang your hat on
Speaker 1: being titillating. You couldn't hang your hat on, you know,
Speaker 1: nor did we want to on the story of clothes
Speaker 1: and carry in the story that told. But rather she
Speaker 1: had to start revealing why she was floundering, Why why
Speaker 1: was she a mess? And Michael just had some innate,
Speaker 1: sort of preternatural instinct about Carry Bradshaw and how to
Speaker 1: tell her story, and he was superior. I think Michael
Speaker 1: was you know, grew up with a lot of bunch
Speaker 1: of sisters, a lot of important women in his life.
Speaker 1: He is deeply curious about women's stories. He can write women.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really make any sense, although there have been
Speaker 1: some great, great screenwriters who have written I mean, we
Speaker 1: know them, but he just was very, very First of all,
Speaker 1: he loved Carrie Bradshaw. He loved telling her story and
Speaker 1: was as invested in it as I was. And I
Speaker 1: think that's why we were such great partners and producing partners,
Speaker 1: because we were both bitter enders. We will work until
Speaker 1: we were bloody and bloody crossing the finish line. We
Speaker 1: cared about it being as perfect as possible. But he
Speaker 1: loved that girl and he loved those stories. And I
Speaker 1: think when you were that interested and curious about when
Speaker 1: you're a writer like that, it just makes the writing
Speaker 1: that much richer. So King's the head writer, and he's
Speaker 1: a guy with an eye and an ear towards women's stories.
Speaker 1: Was the writing staff a lot of women or was
Speaker 1: mostly women. The top of each season, they would meet
Speaker 1: in a writing room Los Angeles, where a lot of
Speaker 1: them lived at Michael Patrick's you know, home base was
Speaker 1: when he wasn't you know, shooting our show, and every
Speaker 1: now and then a fellow would come along and he
Speaker 1: would sit in the writing room. I think at the top,
Speaker 1: you know, when they're breaking story and just um kind
Speaker 1: of give a perspective that was important for people to
Speaker 1: be familiar with because there was such a strong female sensibility,
Speaker 1: and a couple of scripts were written by men. We
Speaker 1: had one young man for a while, but they weren't
Speaker 1: as consistent year to year as as our women were.
Speaker 1: At what point was the teeny staff too very tiny
Speaker 1: relative for television, considered quite small? Yeah, you know, at
Speaker 1: some point the show becomes this huge hit, And at
Speaker 1: what point in the process did they start to turn
Speaker 1: to you and say, well, now you're a producer, Well,
Speaker 1: now we're going to factor in your inborn When I
Speaker 1: first met with Darren, he said to me, why don't
Speaker 1: you be a consulting producer on the show or consultant,
Speaker 1: And I said, you know, he said it would be
Speaker 1: good for you. You could learn about television, you could
Speaker 1: learn about producing television. So I said, well, who would
Speaker 1: say no to an opportunity to learn? And so I
Speaker 1: was very devoted to that idea. And second season they said,
Speaker 1: do you want to start producing? And I did, and
Speaker 1: I I said yes if they continued to let me learn,
Speaker 1: and that sort of the understanding was that I kind
Speaker 1: of laid out was up. I would only contribute if
Speaker 1: and when I thought I had something valuable to say. Really,
Speaker 1: it was an opportunity for me to now sit and
Speaker 1: be more part of the conversation and learn about producing.
Speaker 1: And I just did and loved it and loved it.
Speaker 1: And one aspect of that that I comes to mind
Speaker 1: for me, is it in your career prior to this,
Speaker 1: number one on the call sheet is a guy and
Speaker 1: you're the girl. So Nick Cage approves you, and Bruce No,
Speaker 1: I was hired before Nick. What I mean? But for
Speaker 1: many times in your career you're the girl, and now
Speaker 1: you're number one of the call sheet and you get
Speaker 1: to decide who the men are that are coming in
Speaker 1: the door. How did that work with you? You know?
Speaker 1: I mean you have like kind of um tastes and
Speaker 1: you react in ways that you didn't even know you
Speaker 1: would I would have no feelings about certain names, and
Speaker 1: and Michael would have feelings. And that was, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes hard because he would write it so he imagined things,
Speaker 1: and so I couldn't argue with what what he saw
Speaker 1: in his head. My problem was that I knew what
Speaker 1: I was going to have to do on screen with them,
Speaker 1: and I think there's something very interesting about that which
Speaker 1: is hard to explain to people. But you and I
Speaker 1: can get into it now. So you know, when they've
Speaker 1: given you somebody to play opposite, and everybody wanted them
Speaker 1: but you because what and what you know, I would
Speaker 1: allow it under dress when someone's holding me down and saying,
Speaker 1: you have to trust me, you have to trust me.
Speaker 1: I know you haven't seen this out of this person.
Speaker 1: I think he or she can do is perfect for
Speaker 1: this part of your boyfriend. So what I think it's
Speaker 1: hard to explain to these people, right the Senate that
Speaker 1: believes in their choice, is that you know what they
Speaker 1: won't bring, and you know what you will then have
Speaker 1: to do is tell the story for two people on camera.
Speaker 1: And I think what's really really dangerous about that is
Speaker 1: you end up projecting onto the other person what you
Speaker 1: wish they were bringing into the scene. And what I
Speaker 1: think happens is you become a bad actor. You overacting.
Speaker 1: You try to create chemistry and romance and love and
Speaker 1: you imbue the scene with everything, and you can't because
Speaker 1: when you feel it, even if you're not in love
Speaker 1: with this person. I've worked with countless actors who I'm
Speaker 1: not in love with them. I really mean it. But
Speaker 1: I love working with them and I can. I don't
Speaker 1: care what they look like, smell like, where they come from,
Speaker 1: who they are, how tall, how short, if they're smart
Speaker 1: and interesting and talented. I do not the greatest act
Speaker 1: it's but then this is the weird part, right, This
Speaker 1: is the fork in the road, is that I don't
Speaker 1: need to I don't even care if I don't want
Speaker 1: to have sex with them. You just want to feel
Speaker 1: some friction, some kind of exciting sword player love, some
Speaker 1: capturing of something I did street carent Name Desire with
Speaker 1: Amy Madigan and Amy Madigan's real Antiochley flinty cow girl.
Speaker 1: Usually this really kind of tough little girl. And I
Speaker 1: loved Amy every night. I was in love with her,
Speaker 1: and I've got to have that some feeling. It's just
Speaker 1: so wonderful, to have that, and when you don't, it's
Speaker 1: it's a kind of hard work. What would you do?
Speaker 1: I would be you know, it would be very hard
Speaker 1: and earn your money that week. I guess, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know. I think it would be hard,
Speaker 1: and it would be a different kind of hard work.
Speaker 1: Like I would work so hard on that show. I
Speaker 1: worked hours. I would do a hundred hundred ten hour weeks.
Speaker 1: I didn't care this kind of hard work shows. It
Speaker 1: made me a bad actor because I would try to
Speaker 1: keep it alive and around for both parties. And I
Speaker 1: think it makes you over animated, surface and fake and
Speaker 1: it's just awful, and it would upset me and it
Speaker 1: would make me pouty. It's really bizarrely hard. It was
Speaker 1: not hard for Sarah Jessica Parker to work with Chris Noah,
Speaker 1: who played Mr. Big on Sex in the City. She'll
Speaker 1: talk about their collaboration in a moment. I would never
Speaker 1: have predicted that we would have become that close. Take
Speaker 1: a listen to our archives if you want to hear
Speaker 1: other conversations with longtime New Yorkers, like the late Elaine
Speaker 1: Stretch about a month ago, I really said, I want
Speaker 1: out of here. I want out of New York. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't live in New York anymore. It's not for me anymore.
Speaker 1: It's too fast for me. Or no, it's not too fast.
Speaker 1: And I changed my mind about that. It's not this,
Speaker 1: it's not that, it's just not for me. Take a
Speaker 1: listen at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Sex in
Speaker 1: the City centered around the girls, but it was Carrie
Speaker 1: Bradshaw's love life that was the main focus, and it
Speaker 1: was her on again, off again relationship with Mr Big
Speaker 1: that fans could not get enough of. Have you got
Speaker 1: a smoke? I quit? Oh? We always used to share
Speaker 1: a cigarette together. We did a lot of things that
Speaker 1: were bad for me together. Chris not played Big, and
Speaker 1: he was there from the very first episode. I knew
Speaker 1: Chris and uh so we did this table read and
Speaker 1: I knew. After the table read, I thought, Wow, this
Speaker 1: could be good, This carry Big thing could be really good.
Speaker 1: And my greatest concern was that I was going to
Speaker 1: appear like a twinkie, that he was so earthbound and
Speaker 1: so so masculine, so virile and um kind of truculent
Speaker 1: and that I was going to my voice would somehow
Speaker 1: go up, you know, two octaves higher. And um, but
Speaker 1: I loved the story. I said, oh this is good.
Speaker 1: The last you know, these last three four lines of
Speaker 1: the script were perfect. And um, but he but he
Speaker 1: is a so so special and we'll get back to
Speaker 1: the girls in a second, or the women, I should say,
Speaker 1: But since we got on to Chris, you know, the
Speaker 1: thing that surprised me most about Chris was, um, how
Speaker 1: I would never have predicted that we would have become
Speaker 1: that close, that he and I would have become so
Speaker 1: reliant upon one another, that it would be my job
Speaker 1: to take care of him on more than you know,
Speaker 1: four or five, six dozen occasions, that I was really
Speaker 1: responsible for keeping him happy, that I could negotiate his
Speaker 1: worst moments and and bring him out of them. That
Speaker 1: that was that he was my charge in some way.
Speaker 1: I love fellow actor and always and wouldn't have wanted
Speaker 1: to see anybody else do it play it, um and
Speaker 1: all these people we meet and you can have love
Speaker 1: with them. And Tony Hopkins, I did a movie. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you, like every day I was around
Speaker 1: and I was like Oh my god, I want to
Speaker 1: enjoy every minute this. So I mean he's I won't
Speaker 1: be doing this forever, you know. And it's funny because
Speaker 1: you just can't maintain those relationships. It's such a lesson
Speaker 1: to learn when you're first starting out and you're on
Speaker 1: a movie set and it's all done and everybody goes home,
Speaker 1: and you think, these are the people I'm going to
Speaker 1: know for the rest of my life, and you know,
Speaker 1: write long letters and longhand and and page after page
Speaker 1: of you know, the documentation of your day and friendships
Speaker 1: and yeah, the lake house would be nice and um.
Speaker 1: But the truth is someone said, if you leave and
Speaker 1: you stay in touch with one person from a job,
Speaker 1: that's like a miracle. You know, people just go on
Speaker 1: and um. So these relationships are are funny and very unusual,
Speaker 1: and therefore I think more special because they are this
Speaker 1: kind of um finite little and how we have to
Speaker 1: pick up where we left off. I'd be in an
Speaker 1: award show and I'd see someone go, oh my god, Cynthia,
Speaker 1: hug Cynthia, kiss Cynthia. My daughter would say, when was
Speaker 1: the last time you saw I go, I don't know,
Speaker 1: three years ago. You got to just pick up right
Speaker 1: where you left, the gypsy kind of transient thing. I
Speaker 1: call them the girls because I once to joke with
Speaker 1: Christen that the four of you were like the Beatles. Actually,
Speaker 1: any quartet I compared to the Beatles. You all had
Speaker 1: distinct personalities and distinct idiosyncrasies, and even the imperfections were
Speaker 1: kind of perfect too, because we were all really different
Speaker 1: and and we had to figure it out and create
Speaker 1: friendships on screen, you know, kind of prematurely before it
Speaker 1: meant anything in our real lives. You know how you
Speaker 1: kind of go backwards. You know, there's a whole history
Speaker 1: that brought these women together, and we eventually caught up
Speaker 1: with our characters. Basically, Um, we were together for ten
Speaker 1: eleven years telling these stories, and you know, by the end,
Speaker 1: the kind of feelings that we had for one another,
Speaker 1: we're like what we were doing on screen. It was
Speaker 1: very weird, and it took a long time to figure
Speaker 1: out who we are with one another. But I remember
Speaker 1: sitting in Morocco for the last movie. We all had trailers,
Speaker 1: but we preferred to share a hotel room, and I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is um, this is the best it could be.
Speaker 1: Kim might be lying down for a minute, or Cynthia's
Speaker 1: lying down and I'm reading a book or eating some
Speaker 1: some eating something more likely and not, and we're all
Speaker 1: just in a room, completely comfortable, the very thing you
Speaker 1: hope for in romance. You're like, I just want to
Speaker 1: get to that time with this fellow where I can
Speaker 1: eat in front of him, or where I can just
Speaker 1: read a book and I don't I'm not worried about
Speaker 1: entertaining him or And that's where we were as women
Speaker 1: and friends and fellow actors, and a lot had been
Speaker 1: written that was untrue and it had been painful for
Speaker 1: all of us, and we've been all through it. We
Speaker 1: had traveled to this other side together and without trying
Speaker 1: that hard, because you can't really try that hard in
Speaker 1: real relations, Like you can't focus it that way, you
Speaker 1: can't be that result oriented because there are people, they're human.
Speaker 1: You know, what are you gonna do? You can't force it.
Speaker 1: But I really thought at that moment, Wow, like if
Speaker 1: this is it, this is the best, this is the best,
Speaker 1: and honest and just wave it's I always tell people
Speaker 1: it's like that moment in West Side Story when he
Speaker 1: says to her at the dance he says, you're not lying,
Speaker 1: are you? And she said, I have not yet learned
Speaker 1: to lie about such things. Oh yeah, and it has
Speaker 1: to be those people. Yeah, you know, I have a
Speaker 1: very strange metaphysical feeling about those. Like McCartney said to
Speaker 1: me about the Beatles, he said, everyone was pressuring them
Speaker 1: to hire the guy that was the best drummer in London.
Speaker 1: And the guy came and played a few tracks for them,
Speaker 1: and they didn't really like him very much. And Ringo
Speaker 1: Star was off fulfillming other commitments he had to other
Speaker 1: bands and he was associated with, and he came back
Speaker 1: to record with them, and they all said, it's got
Speaker 1: to be him, or we're not doing it anymore. It
Speaker 1: has to be us four now for you. Well, the
Speaker 1: fifth Beatle for you guys, was the designer who was UM. Well,
Speaker 1: there was a toss up. Was it was it the
Speaker 1: City of New York or was it Pat Field? The
Speaker 1: clothes were such a huge Yeah, the clothes were Was
Speaker 1: that presented to you you upfront that she was going to
Speaker 1: become this style master. Actually we brought her in after
Speaker 1: the pilot because she had designed Um. She had designed
Speaker 1: Miami Rapsody, a movie I shot with David Frankel that
Speaker 1: he wrote and directed in Miami. We knew we were
Speaker 1: going to um rehire the costume design, and he said
Speaker 1: Pat Field, and I was like, of course, it's Pat
Speaker 1: of course. And I had loved working with her, like
Speaker 1: fallen in love she had. Remember when I went to
Speaker 1: n y U. She had a very very idiosyncratic boutique
Speaker 1: on eight Street which was still open, and I did
Speaker 1: had many meetings with her there. And only later, well
Speaker 1: into this life of the series or even the movie,
Speaker 1: did did she have to leave that It was the
Speaker 1: landlord forced her out after all those years, I think
Speaker 1: thirty some years. There she with you, all the seasons
Speaker 1: of the show, all the seasons and the movies. And
Speaker 1: at what point does it come to you? Do you
Speaker 1: become We're really kind of getting further and further untethered
Speaker 1: from the mothership here of fashion, because obviously wore a
Speaker 1: lot of very stylized clothing. Well, she she would have
Speaker 1: always told the story the same way, no matter what
Speaker 1: I think, the only difference being that in the very
Speaker 1: beginning we couldn't get our hands on anything. Nobody wanted
Speaker 1: to give us a thing, nobody, And we had a
Speaker 1: teeny teeny teeny. We talk about in Emick. We had
Speaker 1: a tiny, tiny budget for the whole per episode, and
Speaker 1: so that's why I wore so many thrift clothes from
Speaker 1: thrift stops, and that was the only way to fulfill,
Speaker 1: you know, something unique. So so she was very clever.
Speaker 1: Thrift stores by necessity, thrift stores by necessity. We went
Speaker 1: to some rental houses in Miami, in New York, she
Speaker 1: had apartment in Miami, she had resources in Miami and
Speaker 1: frankly all over and we just pulled and pulled and pulled.
Speaker 1: And it was about I think towards the end of
Speaker 1: the second or even the beginning of third season, I
Speaker 1: can't remember which. Someone will correct me that it was
Speaker 1: Fendi that loaned us a baguette, and that was like
Speaker 1: the gateway. That was, you know, the floodwaters. Everything shifted.
Speaker 1: We were able to get our hands on pieces that
Speaker 1: could help us tell the story maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: more clearly. That so the woman who starred in the
Speaker 1: show that had a that wore thrift store closed because
Speaker 1: you had a thrift store budget for the show. As
Speaker 1: soon as Sex in the City really started to conquetize
Speaker 1: in the culture, and Maureen Dowdalls. Do you have people
Speaker 1: coming to you going, we're gonna do this and this
Speaker 1: and this and this. How are we going to monetize
Speaker 1: or did all of it come to you slowly? I
Speaker 1: think the world was really different than so all of
Speaker 1: that didn't really exist in the same way. I wanted
Speaker 1: to do a fragrance and that it was that that
Speaker 1: was mine. I long dreamed of doing a fragrance for
Speaker 1: lots of reasons. I won't warri your listeners with so
Speaker 1: I actually eventually had the courage to say this to somebody.
Speaker 1: But this was in the days before actors were doing it.
Speaker 1: There was one. There was the great Elizabeth Taylor signature
Speaker 1: Fragrance White Diamonds, and really wasn't And Jennifer Lopez had
Speaker 1: very been really smart about business and fragrance business in particular.
Speaker 1: But all of that stuff, anything that came to me
Speaker 1: because of the show, I was super vigilant about not
Speaker 1: doing what was easy just because it was lucrative. I
Speaker 1: mean that's always a great challenge. Yeah, not be ingredient.
Speaker 1: What is the real connection to it? And I would
Speaker 1: have had them name a donut after me, a Duncan
Speaker 1: Donuts if they would have written me a seven figure
Speaker 1: I'm not like you. You have a lot of integrity
Speaker 1: and sex. And the Carrie Bradshaw is this iconic figure me.
Speaker 1: I would have let them name like a tie with
Speaker 1: whales on it after me at Brooks Brothers. Well, that
Speaker 1: would have been actually really cute. Actually that's a word
Speaker 1: for it. That's a connection that isn't so ridiculous. Actually
Speaker 1: I was ready to cash in. I was ready, let's
Speaker 1: let's have a Jack Donaghee. I wasn't right, okay, but
Speaker 1: but you've remember thirty Rock came after. But the time
Speaker 1: thirty Rock was on the air and the time you're
Speaker 1: talking about people presenting you with crazy opportunities, the world
Speaker 1: had shifted. When Garnier came to me Tina's now that
Speaker 1: spokes first and four and said to me, we want
Speaker 1: you to do hair care commercials. I was like and
Speaker 1: and actually this actor who I adored and admired and
Speaker 1: thought like hung the moon and I will not say
Speaker 1: his name, Sad just said to me, well, you know
Speaker 1: you're being really smart. At least you're not doing hair
Speaker 1: care commercials. And then they came to me with this
Speaker 1: crazy offer and I said no, immediately, No, because this
Speaker 1: actor I admired said to me, well, at least you're
Speaker 1: not well version an American version of Colin Firth. Let's
Speaker 1: put it that way. And then I said to Kenny Lonergan,
Speaker 1: who's my husband's best friend, I said, you know the
Speaker 1: top of this? An ex actor said no, he said
Speaker 1: are you? Are you? And I was like, is it
Speaker 1: too late to collect? I not? Wasn't practiced that. Do
Speaker 1: you actually pick up the phone and say I've been thinking?
Speaker 1: So I called Richard love It and I said I've
Speaker 1: made this. I think this grave error and he said,
Speaker 1: oh was interesting? Is it interesting how you go from
Speaker 1: talking people out of hiring you talking them back into
Speaker 1: high You come full circle? Sarah Jessica Parker fill circle?
Speaker 1: Is you calling up the fructist people saying I fructiasted
Speaker 1: up here? Yeah? Exactly. Anyway, they were nice and um
Speaker 1: forgiving and but I want to talk to you about
Speaker 1: um Is it kind of not ruined? But does it
Speaker 1: affect you? Does it? Because I think it does? It
Speaker 1: can't Does it affect you in terms of um acting
Speaker 1: and acts? To be married to? Who you're married to,
Speaker 1: who's so talented and so polished and so smart, and
Speaker 1: so elegant, and do you sit there sometimes and go
Speaker 1: I always have an image of you, like lying and
Speaker 1: there with your husband's very romantic Woody Allen movie images.
Speaker 1: You're in bed and you have especially squeezed grapefruit juice
Speaker 1: in the times who squeezed it? And your son, of course,
Speaker 1: his parents are start the paper ironed gers butler, of
Speaker 1: course by a butler named James, Wilkie James, that juice
Speaker 1: isn't gonna walk over here by itself, son, And you're
Speaker 1: in bed, and the sun brings you the tray to
Speaker 1: keep start trotting, as they say, and he brings you
Speaker 1: the juice, and you're sitting there and your husband and
Speaker 1: you were just giving each other notes about scripts, and
Speaker 1: don't you don't want to work with it? Who do
Speaker 1: they want you to work with? No? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: you really can. I mean, I'm so flatter, do you you?
Speaker 1: I actually picture that in other people's lives, and perhaps
Speaker 1: even yours, but including yours, would be a physical class
Speaker 1: of some sort of yeah. Um no, I mean we
Speaker 1: don't have that kind of leisure time. And no, none
Speaker 1: of that has ever happened, although I will say there
Speaker 1: was a time before we had children. Do you remember
Speaker 1: that where we would sleep? I mean, do you remember
Speaker 1: not being in bed with us? But do you remember
Speaker 1: that time before you had children where you were I'm
Speaker 1: trying to envision being in bed with you? Go, go go.
Speaker 1: You woke up like eleven, You're like crack of twelve.
Speaker 1: It's eleven and eight and um. Then you would get
Speaker 1: the paper and you would sit with someone you liked
Speaker 1: or loved hopefully, and you would read and you talk
Speaker 1: about coffee and put another log on the fire, Go
Speaker 1: to cinema the village and watch a movie. Yeah, go
Speaker 1: to you know, film forum, or go to Chinatown on Sunday's. Um,
Speaker 1: you know all of that. I'm so glad we did that, though,
Speaker 1: you know, as much as I think, wow, that was
Speaker 1: sometimes I miss it a lot. At least you did it.
Speaker 1: You did it. One thing I always never ceased to
Speaker 1: amaze me was that in my single days, when I
Speaker 1: was married, got divorced, I was single for several years,
Speaker 1: and whenever I would date women, regardless of whether they
Speaker 1: had law degrees, they worked in biotech, whatever they were doing,
Speaker 1: we would talk about their television viewing and they would say, well,
Speaker 1: I don't watch television, don't real enough time to telesion.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you can disconnecting my cable. Well,
Speaker 1: I watched Sex in the City. That's storytelling, that's the writing,
Speaker 1: that's the stories we got to tell. We were just
Speaker 1: the repository. We were the lucky enough series. Again. Um,
Speaker 1: I used to say never. Now I think would they
Speaker 1: let me do six or eight episodes if I could
Speaker 1: do it the way I like to do things, which
Speaker 1: is splitting the atoms the bitter ender and still be
Speaker 1: a good parent and wife. Yeah, I think I would.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just about timing and choices. Now that
Speaker 1: I have kids, that's the thing. But it's you know,
Speaker 1: like Strasburg says in The Godfather, this is the life
Speaker 1: that we've chosen. It's a dream. Really. Sarah Jessica Parker.
Speaker 1: Coming up, I talk with another legendary New Yorker whose
Speaker 1: job makes dreams come true for others. He opened Studio
Speaker 1: fifty four in the late nineties seventies and many boutique
Speaker 1: hotels and condominiums since then. The nightclub does. Your primary
Speaker 1: goal is to look after people, make sure people have fun,
Speaker 1: elevate the experience, make them comfortable, same going all tops,
Speaker 1: same going, you know, and so there is a common
Speaker 1: denominated there were differences in it, you know, like the
Speaker 1: people that work in the nightclub business. Most of the
Speaker 1: time they look like vampires in the day. Ian Schraeger
Speaker 1: describes his years in the nightclub business. Next, you're listening
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing. This is Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing. Come with me as I
Speaker 1: take you back to the nineteen seventies. The Vietnam War
Speaker 1: was over, the AIDS epidemic had not yet begun, and
Speaker 1: one night club will forever symbolize the glamor and debauchery
Speaker 1: of the time. If you managed to get through the
Speaker 1: doors of Studio fifty four, you'd find yourself among the
Speaker 1: biggest stars of the day. Warhole, Liza Minnelli, Calvin Klein, Share,
Speaker 1: Mick Jagger. The midtown Manhattan hotspot was the epicenter of
Speaker 1: sexual experimentation, drug culture, and yes, true disco fever. Ian
Speaker 1: Schraeger opened the studio nine seven. He had started out
Speaker 1: as a lawyer, but that didn't last long. I got
Speaker 1: bored by it, so I wanted to nightclub business. I
Speaker 1: read an interview where you said you were driving by
Speaker 1: and you saw people lined up out in front of
Speaker 1: a club, and you thought, that looks like a good
Speaker 1: business to me. Yeah. I mean, do you remember what
Speaker 1: club le j Dan where it was one? It was
Speaker 1: on forty third Street between um sixth Avenue and Broadway.
Speaker 1: At that time, the whole social millennium was being set
Speaker 1: by gay clubs, not blacks, the way it is now
Speaker 1: and the way it was before then. But then it
Speaker 1: was gay because everything was just emerging sexually, and if
Speaker 1: you had a successful gay club, you were trying to
Speaker 1: keep all the straight people out because once the straight
Speaker 1: people came to gay people left. And that was one
Speaker 1: of the first clubs that I call a fusion club
Speaker 1: that they're really It was gay, and it had that
Speaker 1: kind of sexual electricity in the air that gay clubs at.
Speaker 1: But there was a lot of straight people there and
Speaker 1: and there were people waiting in lines, and all these
Speaker 1: straight people were being insulted and tried to be turned
Speaker 1: away because everybody just wanted to get in there. That
Speaker 1: was a business I wanted to get into because you
Speaker 1: were giving nothing, offering nothing, and people are paying to
Speaker 1: get in now. For people my generation, when I say
Speaker 1: your name, all you have to do is say uh
Speaker 1: Ian and Steve, and people will know who the Steve
Speaker 1: is for for those who don't know in our listening audience,
Speaker 1: Steve Rebel, who was your the late Steve Rebel? Who
Speaker 1: was your partner? How did you hook up with him?
Speaker 1: And how did you meet him? We both worn in
Speaker 1: Brooklyn and different they were Jason neighborhood, but you know,
Speaker 1: different school districts. We didn't know each other. Middle class Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: You know, his his dad was a mailman, his mother
Speaker 1: was a teacher. We went up to school. He was
Speaker 1: a few years older than I. He was up in Syracuse,
Speaker 1: and we just became fast friends from from when we
Speaker 1: when we met. You know, I left after four years.
Speaker 1: He stayed on because it was the Vietnam War. Everybody
Speaker 1: was trying to stay in school. And and when he
Speaker 1: ultimately came back to New York, you know, we stayed
Speaker 1: friends obviously, and and and I represented him. He went
Speaker 1: into the state business taching, like for five dollars you
Speaker 1: could have all the steak and beer you wanted. And
Speaker 1: he went into the restaurant own. Yeah, what was it
Speaker 1: called steakloft stick. It's like unsuccessful undercap for people who
Speaker 1: want to go have steake and soho saft and so uh.
Speaker 1: And I represented him, keeping the credits off his back
Speaker 1: because it was on the capitalized And then it was
Speaker 1: during that time that I saw like the nightclub thing
Speaker 1: was just emerging. When it was kind of shifting away
Speaker 1: from you know, going into a nightclub and trying to
Speaker 1: meet people and meet girls and it was pick up
Speaker 1: places and things like that. It was kind of evolving
Speaker 1: into it like a gay club kind of scene where
Speaker 1: it was serious, sweaty dancing, you know, and and and
Speaker 1: that's the kind of club that I liked. What was
Speaker 1: the other places that were the top clubs? Then you
Speaker 1: guys opened Palladium a couple of years later, and that
Speaker 1: on fourteen Street when we opened up, when we when
Speaker 1: we had Studio fifty four, there was a kind of uh,
Speaker 1: there was a place called Zeno with a knockoff. Knockoff
Speaker 1: was where you went because you couldn't get into the
Speaker 1: studio exactly you said it. Yeah, but but there was
Speaker 1: some some great, great, great great gay places. Flamingo, very creative,
Speaker 1: twelve West. Uh. This is a cliche obviously, but when
Speaker 1: the early eighties roll around, did aids kill that culture today.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it didn't kill it, but it change things
Speaker 1: because all of a sudden, before age, there wasn't anything
Speaker 1: you couldn't do at night and went up there. It
Speaker 1: was carefree, It was different things. Things, things were different.
Speaker 1: But but I think the nightclub business got killed not
Speaker 1: because of age, but but but because I think government
Speaker 1: when they started to regulate it, it became so expensive
Speaker 1: to do a nightclub to comply with all that. What
Speaker 1: you said that we're a nightclub. To open it up,
Speaker 1: of course to you, tens of thousands of dollars, now
Speaker 1: somebody a million because of why because if it was
Speaker 1: because of exists and things like that. So all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, young people didn't franchise. I did my personal
Speaker 1: club for twenty seven dollars. You know, you didn't have
Speaker 1: to know anything, You didn't have to have a lot
Speaker 1: of money. It was like you roll up the carpet,
Speaker 1: you put on a record player when you have a
Speaker 1: nightclub and did that stopped? That kind of raw energy stopped.
Speaker 1: That happened in rock and roll, and it happened with
Speaker 1: technology too, when appleca invented in the garage and so
Speaker 1: it changed. The business evolved and so young people can't
Speaker 1: do it anymore. And that's why now in the nightclub business,
Speaker 1: nobody owns anything anymore. They have promoters going around from
Speaker 1: clubs to clubs because it's just too expensive. When you
Speaker 1: and Rubel decided to go into business, what did you
Speaker 1: think he brought to the table and what did he
Speaker 1: think you broke to the Was it kind of in
Speaker 1: front of the house, back of the house battery? No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that simple. It's just like with a husband
Speaker 1: and a wife, nobody really knows what goes on except
Speaker 1: the husband and a wife. With partners, you're not going
Speaker 1: to say a fifty percent with someone that's not making
Speaker 1: a fifty percent constitution. You know. They weren't mutual exclusive
Speaker 1: fears of influence. I mean, he was more of the
Speaker 1: people person and I was more of the creative person.
Speaker 1: You know. But but like, for instance, I might be
Speaker 1: in the nightclub and I would see Steve go get
Speaker 1: friendly with Austin over there, you know, And if I
Speaker 1: was wanting to do something, I would go to Steve
Speaker 1: and he'd be like my instant one man sample serve
Speaker 1: act that he had had good instincts and and and
Speaker 1: it's just so funny that the vision of responsibility happened naturally.
Speaker 1: You know. We we had a we had a first
Speaker 1: nightclub was in Queens, which was about six months before
Speaker 1: studio and got killed by Son of Sam. I remember
Speaker 1: the first night we opened, Steve went to hang out
Speaker 1: with the kids at the bar and Queen's and I
Speaker 1: went up into the d J booth the play with
Speaker 1: the lights. It just kind of happened. And that club
Speaker 1: was called What Enchanted Garden, and then that died after
Speaker 1: the Son of Sam shops. It was hard to get
Speaker 1: people to come in to a nightclub when someone was
Speaker 1: out there killing it on the streets in parked cars. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: when you open up the studio and you were you
Speaker 1: married at the time, when you come to your first wife,
Speaker 1: how soon after studio now for quite a while, so
Speaker 1: you could live that for none of different. Boy, But
Speaker 1: you were letting somebody down, crawling in the door at
Speaker 1: eight o'clock in the morning, so it was long night's view.
Speaker 1: You were in it. You weren't somebody who was turned
Speaker 1: into somebody and blowing them a kissing Sam, I'm going
Speaker 1: home and you were in bed by one o'clock. No,
Speaker 1: but Steve used to say he stayed too long and
Speaker 1: I left too early. You know what would really happen
Speaker 1: is I stay two one, two o'clock till the night
Speaker 1: to thirty, sometimes until the night turned the corner and
Speaker 1: I knew it was stable, and then I would grab
Speaker 1: somebody and go home. Now back stairs, Now, back then,
Speaker 1: is it safe to say? Another risk of businesses back
Speaker 1: then with the credit cards were not that big back
Speaker 1: in the late It's a cash business. And ultimately that
Speaker 1: was part of the problem, was that it was a
Speaker 1: cash We didn't have any money. You know, there was
Speaker 1: a movie once was to Good, The Brents Robbery, and
Speaker 1: after they robbed the truck and they were in the room,
Speaker 1: they're throwing the money up in the air. Was one
Speaker 1: of the scenes in the movie touched the way it
Speaker 1: was with Steve and I. We didn't have any money.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden we were the toast the town
Speaker 1: and all this money was coming in and it was
Speaker 1: it was, you know, like you couldn't believe it, right,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. We went in and we we weren't motivated
Speaker 1: by the money. It was just the kind of byproduct
Speaker 1: to kind and I'm trying, I'm trying to be generous
Speaker 1: here insofar as that when you get yourself into trouble
Speaker 1: with taxes and so forth and eventually led to some
Speaker 1: tough consequences. Was it did you find that there was
Speaker 1: more difficult back in the day when things weren't computerized
Speaker 1: and things weren't credit cards and you have to handle
Speaker 1: that much cash. We were the gang that couldn't shoot straight.
Speaker 1: You know, we were just it was kind of very
Speaker 1: spontaneous and impulsive. It was like a kind of silly,
Speaker 1: stupid thing. Everybody in the whole world knew what was
Speaker 1: going on, and you weren't the only ones. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know this has been brought up to you added
Speaker 1: infinitum about going to prison. You're you're there for thirteen months,
Speaker 1: and where did you go? We were in the mcc
Speaker 1: here for six months, and then we were in Montgomery,
Speaker 1: Alabama for six months. So you say, we who's we
Speaker 1: Steve and I so you get to see him pretty regularly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was that like? Oh, it's the worst. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, we were the only one that was guilty.
Speaker 1: Nobody else and jail was guilty. Uh, it was. It
Speaker 1: was terrible. I mean, you know, like even I mean
Speaker 1: if I would take you and put you in the
Speaker 1: grandest suite in the grandest hotel for a year and
Speaker 1: let you have room service, it's still gonna hate it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just you you arrived, you are robbed of
Speaker 1: your discretion as a human being a terrible What got
Speaker 1: you through that? I mean, you're young, so you're still
Speaker 1: pretty tough. But what did you keep telling yourself to
Speaker 1: keep yourself together? You know? Uh, we would read a
Speaker 1: lot and dream a lot. It was a very very
Speaker 1: tough thing. Being with Steve made it a little bit easier,
Speaker 1: you know, someone who could understand. Yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: someone I mean when you're in there with a lot
Speaker 1: of psychopaths, and and and it's just it's just kind
Speaker 1: of difficult. Life cheap, and you know, and and and
Speaker 1: it was just a very difficult thing. And you know,
Speaker 1: you you try and not let them rob you of
Speaker 1: your enthusiasm for life and your verb for life. You know,
Speaker 1: you know when you succeeded at that, So by the
Speaker 1: time you're ready to get out of there, by the
Speaker 1: time were you both released at the same time, And
Speaker 1: when at the same time we released the same time,
Speaker 1: we went to a halfway house here and I think
Speaker 1: it was in on seventy something and on the website,
Speaker 1: and you were there for how long? Three months? And
Speaker 1: then you're free, right, And when you were even then
Speaker 1: very tentative and very you know, very tentative, couldn't even
Speaker 1: open a bank account. It was kind of re entry
Speaker 1: and it's tough. So three months you're done with the
Speaker 1: halfway house. So what does the team of Schraeger and Rebel,
Speaker 1: what's the first thing that comes to hotel hotel? Why?
Speaker 1: You know, when we were in jail, first of all,
Speaker 1: I was reading all these great books, you know, you
Speaker 1: know David Applestram, you know, the best and the brightest,
Speaker 1: and you know, and and which was a kind of
Speaker 1: study of the rise of the media empire, and and
Speaker 1: and in there there's a lot of those guys had
Speaker 1: interludes in their life the war, and and and after
Speaker 1: those interlude they all did game changing switches in their lives,
Speaker 1: and one open to different directions. Well, you know, the
Speaker 1: Bill Pilly decided to do do CBS after the war, and
Speaker 1: the New York Times up the anti and so are intoludlespost.
Speaker 1: But but that's when when Harry Helmsley and and and
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. The newspapers were playing up this big rivalry. Uh,
Speaker 1: Harry Helmsley was doing a hotel and fifty one to
Speaker 1: Madison that was called the Palace, and Donald was doing
Speaker 1: the one on on Street and they were playing up
Speaker 1: the rivalry and that kind of rivalry, and the papers
Speaker 1: sucked me in, boy, and I said, well, we can
Speaker 1: do a better hotel than than both of them. And
Speaker 1: when you say better hotel, weren't you're actually doing just
Speaker 1: a completely different hotel. They're doing big, are they? Is
Speaker 1: it safe to say they're still doing the old style?
Speaker 1: And you wanted to do what we liked. We went
Speaker 1: to a hotel that was that that that it wasn't
Speaker 1: rocket science, was just what kind of hold we did
Speaker 1: a club we liked, and and and and we want
Speaker 1: to do a hotel that manifested who we were all
Speaker 1: popular culture and not my parents, but but but but
Speaker 1: what we liked. So no rules start from scratch. And
Speaker 1: the Morgan was the first hotel and that was on
Speaker 1: what street A thirty eight and Madison and so when
Speaker 1: and why that property good story. When we sold Studio
Speaker 1: fifty four, we took back promisory notes. You know, it
Speaker 1: took a very meager down payment and promissory notes, and
Speaker 1: we were helping the person run the clubs. We get
Speaker 1: a promisory notes paid well, he couldn't pay the promisory notes.
Speaker 1: So when he couldn't pay the promisory notes, we traded
Speaker 1: his promisory note for his interest in at which happened
Speaker 1: to be Morgan's. And so it was. It was a
Speaker 1: hotel before. It wasn't like a private mansion or something before.
Speaker 1: What had it been before? It was hotel? It was
Speaker 1: a dump. It was called executive hotel, and it was
Speaker 1: a dumpy hotel looming house, you know, you know, in
Speaker 1: a kind of very many floors, uh fourteen. And you
Speaker 1: took it over. You just hand gratted the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I read, did the whole thing. We we we We
Speaker 1: didn't bang on the walls because once you start doing
Speaker 1: that in an old building, you can't have a definitive budget.
Speaker 1: So you know, the rooms are very small. So we
Speaker 1: took the rooms the way we found them, and we
Speaker 1: try to have good design, come up with solutions, and
Speaker 1: we did a lot a lot of tricks. You know.
Speaker 1: We made the furniture, always scaled the furniture down ten
Speaker 1: percent to make the room feel bigger and etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And it was a natural hit. Light to a studio
Speaker 1: was a natural hit. It just it resonated with people
Speaker 1: to day one and we were Now, So after you
Speaker 1: do the Morgan, do you find now that people are
Speaker 1: taking you seriously because they are trying to squeeze you
Speaker 1: when they're intersonly just just recently, you know when when
Speaker 1: W came out. Up until then, it was still thought
Speaker 1: of that only people who wear black and live in
Speaker 1: Soho come to my hotels. It wasn't until W came out,
Speaker 1: you know, whenever that was it was a while ago
Speaker 1: that it gave real credibility. Hey, this is a real idea.
Speaker 1: Now there isn't a hotel company in the world that
Speaker 1: doesn't want to do a boutique hotel. And it's the
Speaker 1: fastest growing segment. There are thousands and thousands of versions
Speaker 1: all over. But it was treated with absolute skepticism and
Speaker 1: dismissively by by because you know why, they couldn't he
Speaker 1: couldn't put it in the box. They couldn't understand what
Speaker 1: it was. Uh So, do you find that the major
Speaker 1: hotel companies not only want you because you're doing additions
Speaker 1: now is that with Marriott and that you're partnering with
Speaker 1: Marriott to do this addition series. It's it's a style
Speaker 1: of hotel you're gonna do with them. Do you find
Speaker 1: out with that that you wouldn't call that a bouktique hotel?
Speaker 1: I would? You? Would? You know? Like to me, I
Speaker 1: you know, because it's so over you. Steve is the
Speaker 1: one that came up with the name boutique. By the way,
Speaker 1: because we were in New York. The fashion business is
Speaker 1: probably a central most important business here and uh, and
Speaker 1: when he was trying to explain to people what we
Speaker 1: were trying to do, he said, look, all the other
Speaker 1: hotels are like the Popping Scores. They try and be
Speaker 1: all things to all people. That's kind of generic. We
Speaker 1: have a specific thing to say, were very specific of
Speaker 1: a specific attitude, will like a boutique. And that was
Speaker 1: the invention and the use of that name, which we've
Speaker 1: lost ownership of. It become part of the English language.
Speaker 1: But Steve really was the first one to use that
Speaker 1: when he tried to when when we were promoting Morgans
Speaker 1: and we're trying to explain to people what we were
Speaker 1: trying to do. Were you closer through bell. Yes, where
Speaker 1: were you when he died? By his bed? You were
Speaker 1: so you were still that close right to the end.
Speaker 1: You were best friends with him, and you were there
Speaker 1: he We took him to the hospital. We watched the
Speaker 1: monitor numbers sink. He died in nineteen nine. Who's been
Speaker 1: your mentor or who's been your trusted advisor for the
Speaker 1: last five years? You know, by myself now, you don't
Speaker 1: have my wife, you know, and have some good friends,
Speaker 1: but you know that it's it's a it's a lost
Speaker 1: when you're by yourself. You know, it's good to have
Speaker 1: somebody to bounce things off of. It. It keeps the
Speaker 1: moral compistrated. It almost operates like a conscience. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's tough. You know, I'm by myself now, don't
Speaker 1: You don't have a partner. Who's you someone you consulted?
Speaker 1: You don't have friends that I asked questions, but no
Speaker 1: one replaced rebel. No, you never have a friend or
Speaker 1: a bottle like that. Lucky to have that, Ian Schraeger,
Speaker 1: And at least for now, he hasn't returned to his
Speaker 1: own geographical roots. You know, I came from Brooklyn. My
Speaker 1: my dream was to come and be in Manhattan. Now
Speaker 1: everybody to Manhattan, and everybody's dream is to go back
Speaker 1: to Brooklyn. Did you did you repredict that was possible? Dad?
Speaker 1: I had no idea, You had no idea? And did you?
Speaker 1: Did you? I mean, I hate to see use this
Speaker 1: kind of slang with did you get it on that?
Speaker 1: Did you? Did you head out to Brooklyn Queen's in
Speaker 1: a timely way to develop? Did you develop? I totally
Speaker 1: missed it because I thought I left. I had never
Speaker 1: gone back, but I I But you know, it's so
Speaker 1: funny the way these things happened every generation. That's what
Speaker 1: happened to Brooklyn hundred fifty years ago, and well women
Speaker 1: started to go to go over there. You got two
Speaker 1: crowded here, what's two expensive? People went to Brooklyn's happening
Speaker 1: again and for now without Ian Schrager's imprint. We'll see
Speaker 1: how long that lasts. This is Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to here's the thing you unt