Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: My podcast Here's the Thing is moving from public Radio
Speaker 1: w n y C, in particular to I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: so please keep your eyes and ears open for a
Speaker 1: formal announcement as to our exact launch date on My Heart.
Speaker 1: The show will still be called Here's the Thing. For
Speaker 1: our final two programs on w n y C, we've
Speaker 1: cut together a compilation of some of my favorite interviews
Speaker 1: from the past several years. But before we get to that,
Speaker 1: I would like to take a moment to thank Emily
Speaker 1: Boutine and Adam tie Schultz, my producers for the past
Speaker 1: several seasons, as well as everyone at w n y
Speaker 1: C for the opportunity to explore my curiosity with you
Speaker 1: and speak to some of the greatest artists, musicians, actors, writers, thinkers,
Speaker 1: public policymakers, sports figures, you name it. Our roster of
Speaker 1: guests is really quite something, and I encourage you to
Speaker 1: visit our archives and download some of our older shows.
Speaker 1: And of course a special thanks to you the listeners
Speaker 1: for joining me. This has been the experience of a lifetime,
Speaker 1: and thank you. They say that casting is everything, and
Speaker 1: that is no doubt true for an interview show, and
Speaker 1: we've been quite lucky on Here's the Thing, sitting down
Speaker 1: with some rather accomplished guests. My first clip is from
Speaker 1: my interview with the legendary Barbra Streisand who talks here
Speaker 1: about how she wanted control of her films in a
Speaker 1: way that may not have been available to an actress,
Speaker 1: even one of her stature, so she decided to direct.
Speaker 1: It was something that happened during the way we were
Speaker 1: where two scenes were cut out that were intrinsic to
Speaker 1: the value of the story. And it made me so
Speaker 1: crazy that they couldn't see that that that propelled me
Speaker 1: into it. I couldn't understand it. And it's hard to
Speaker 1: quarrel with a you know, a hit movie. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was a hit at the time. Tell
Speaker 1: you the truth, it's grown to me say it was.
Speaker 1: Warren Beatty said to me once, is it. Until you
Speaker 1: take ultimate responsibility and you're willing to direct the movie,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be constantly frustrated. And he said, you must
Speaker 1: consider that if it was so delicious, And it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, when you finally have the power to control
Speaker 1: your work, you you get very humble in a sense,
Speaker 1: it's like I wanted to give power away to other
Speaker 1: people as well. You know, I would say to my standing,
Speaker 1: you run that course with the cameraman, this is the shot,
Speaker 1: but I want you to be able to tell on
Speaker 1: me where to stand. In other words, it's a feeling
Speaker 1: of such gratitude where you you never have to raise
Speaker 1: your voice because everybody's finally listening. You don't have to
Speaker 1: get angry about anything they weren't listening before. Sometimes well,
Speaker 1: sometimes when I would say things as just an actress,
Speaker 1: like this is what I'm telling you, this story the
Speaker 1: way we were it went on deaf ears. You know,
Speaker 1: they didn't agree with me whatever, But when you see
Speaker 1: something so clearly, um, that's wrong to me or what
Speaker 1: could be right? Or see. I had such a great
Speaker 1: time directing Yental because I did it in England and
Speaker 1: in Czechoslovakia. In England they're not afraid of women, powerful women,
Speaker 1: strong women, because they had a queen. They have a
Speaker 1: queen and at the time they had the Prime Minister
Speaker 1: who was Margaret sure So I was shocked at the
Speaker 1: respect that I had as a first time director. I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. Um and the crew was so kind
Speaker 1: and just. It was the most wonderful experience, I must say.
Speaker 1: And even the Czechoslovakian government was wonderful to me because
Speaker 1: I needed Jews to be in the synagogue and pray
Speaker 1: and so for then you know, it was during communist times,
Speaker 1: and they went to the Jewish community, thank God, and
Speaker 1: had them come so I didn't have to teach them
Speaker 1: how to be Jewish, you know, how did some real
Speaker 1: Jews Jews was an Italian dressed as Jews, like in
Speaker 1: New York where they have to say, well how do
Speaker 1: you stand in a synagogue and how do you pray?
Speaker 1: And it was it was wonderful. And also well you
Speaker 1: know when you have extras in Czechoslovakia, then they didn't
Speaker 1: give them lunch. So the people would come with like
Speaker 1: bags of their lunch, which broke my heart. So I would,
Speaker 1: you know, give them our food, which we never had vegetables.
Speaker 1: We had a cent to London or France or Italy
Speaker 1: to get vegetables, because you know, their food diet was
Speaker 1: like hot chalk. I loved it, of course, bread and
Speaker 1: butter and hot chocolate in the morning with whipped creamers,
Speaker 1: and I was on heaven and I wanted to be thinner,
Speaker 1: but well, and every day I would not every day,
Speaker 1: but every few days I would bring in pasties, you know,
Speaker 1: with that delicious dough in the meat inside, and I
Speaker 1: we'd always have the most delicious teas that I'd bring
Speaker 1: in those cream like doughnuts shaped like a hot dog
Speaker 1: from Whimpis and you know, eat this delicious cream with
Speaker 1: the doughnuts. Oh my god, it was so good, and
Speaker 1: they it was very sweet. Because the whole crew wrote
Speaker 1: a letter that's one of my prized possession, I must say.
Speaker 1: And they wrote this letter to the newspapers and it
Speaker 1: said that you know, Ms try said something like Mrs
Speaker 1: try Sand never raises her voice and has a smile
Speaker 1: for us every day. And it's like not the stories
Speaker 1: we've heard about her, and no newspaper would publish it,
Speaker 1: but it figures it's like Hillary Clinton, as you said,
Speaker 1: the upside of that experience where the yentle was working
Speaker 1: in a culture where the power of women was just accepted.
Speaker 1: And I'm crestfall and to say the least about what
Speaker 1: happened here, not just because this guy won, but I
Speaker 1: really do think misogyny and well before I did get
Speaker 1: some sort of Award from Women in film directing yental
Speaker 1: And a lot of my speech was about women against women,
Speaker 1: because the reviews of Yentel from women were vicious, you know,
Speaker 1: in other words, they didn't even talk about this celebration
Speaker 1: of womanhood, that a woman could not only you know,
Speaker 1: make dinner and have babies, but she could have an intellect,
Speaker 1: she could want to study, be something more do do it?
Speaker 1: Men do? Just equality, you know. So to read a
Speaker 1: review that said her she wore a design in the
Speaker 1: New York Times, she wore a designer yamaka. Now everything,
Speaker 1: every piece of clothing in that movie was authentic. That
Speaker 1: same year there was the film directed Buying Mark Bergmann
Speaker 1: Fanny and Alexander. They wore the same yamica, but nobody
Speaker 1: attacked that film. I love detail, so I would, you know,
Speaker 1: for years, I would do research about Polish Jews, about
Speaker 1: these Jews, that Jews everything, the Evil Institute in New
Speaker 1: York um talking to scholars studying Talmud, just to bring that,
Speaker 1: because I do believe that when you study like that
Speaker 1: and do the research, you don't have to act that
Speaker 1: It's like the camera picks up the truth, even just
Speaker 1: behind your eyes. In the sound of your voice, whatever
Speaker 1: it is mine. You know. I had this wonderful shot,
Speaker 1: I thought, as it cuts from a chicken coop to
Speaker 1: me sitting behind the bars up separated from the men
Speaker 1: in the shool. And that shot was attacked by this
Speaker 1: woman critic, Janet Maslin. Her name was now she could
Speaker 1: attack my lips incer. That's true. I'm a terrible lip sinker.
Speaker 1: I can't do it because when I did movies like
Speaker 1: Funny Girl or Hello Dolly, you know, they record the
Speaker 1: soundtrack three months before you shoot, and I have to
Speaker 1: be in the moment as an actor. I don't know
Speaker 1: how I'm going to feel when I actually perform it.
Speaker 1: So that's why when I did the movie Star Is Born,
Speaker 1: it's all real, it's all um I had. I did
Speaker 1: not want. I needed to be free, to be in
Speaker 1: the moment, So we recorded on the spot. What do
Speaker 1: you call that live? It was all live. And then
Speaker 1: what I would do is um because I had final
Speaker 1: cut on that movie, I could control those things. UM.
Speaker 1: We would shoot the close ups first, so where the
Speaker 1: performance really counted, and then I would just choose it
Speaker 1: right on the spot, okay, I think, And I would
Speaker 1: do about one to four takes. You know, all these
Speaker 1: stories about me like I do millions of takes, most
Speaker 1: of them are false. And so let's say I would
Speaker 1: take take three, you know, and then move the cameras
Speaker 1: back to do the wider shot because you didn't have
Speaker 1: to see me close, you know, not doing the lip sync. Good.
Speaker 1: I did a documentary film about can It's ostensibly about
Speaker 1: Ken and Ryan got thing. We corner him at an hotel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I saw it. Jimmy Toback and I did
Speaker 1: this thing called Seduced and Abandoned and we get Gosling
Speaker 1: at the Beverly Hills Hotel or the bel Air Hotel.
Speaker 1: I should say, any long story short is he has
Speaker 1: this beautiful explication of how agonizing it is to shoot films,
Speaker 1: and just in that kind of Arthur Murray by numbers way,
Speaker 1: we have to shoot a match to this and to this.
Speaker 1: It can't be fresh and it's painful. No, And that's
Speaker 1: why I love long takes, because I think I'm from
Speaker 1: the theater and we had to do a whole show, right,
Speaker 1: So I don't like pieces. I mean, you I the
Speaker 1: fun of directing to me is designing the shot, the
Speaker 1: camera accommodating the actors. So the actors. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of scenes in Yentle that you can see like this.
Speaker 1: They're all in one move practically. In other words, we
Speaker 1: come in through a door and I'm in the foreground,
Speaker 1: let's say. But he who's following me, the my leader
Speaker 1: who was Mandy Patinkin at the time, and he still
Speaker 1: is but um, you know, we see him standing there,
Speaker 1: and then he comes forward and I sit down. He
Speaker 1: becomes he's standing up, but the camera never moved, but
Speaker 1: you see everything. Then the camera moves as we're together,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't cut. And then he has you know,
Speaker 1: when when he leaves me, you see him go out
Speaker 1: the door. He slams the door and the camera moves
Speaker 1: in a little bit. As I'm thinking about it, that's
Speaker 1: the scene. But it's what's fun about that is that
Speaker 1: we're all on our toes. You can't make a mistake.
Speaker 1: And most of these shots that I do that there's
Speaker 1: no coverage. That the greatest on the very little coverage
Speaker 1: the actors played the scene in the frame. That's right
Speaker 1: now now, in the time that you made films, the
Speaker 1: many years you've made films, the success for acting and
Speaker 1: not directing, successful as a director and producer and all
Speaker 1: those things. Were there are people that you wanted to
Speaker 1: work with, whether people you sat there as a guy,
Speaker 1: I'd love to make a film with that person because
Speaker 1: you've been in such a privileged place and I had
Speaker 1: all these people available to Was there a director that
Speaker 1: you dreamed of working with you didn't get to work with? Well,
Speaker 1: I Mark Bergman is a person that contacted me to
Speaker 1: do a remake of The Merry Widow and I was
Speaker 1: so excited, you know, and I came to um Sweden
Speaker 1: and we embraced and it was this wonderful embrace, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean he I can't explain what that what that's like.
Speaker 1: It's was just he sort of understood me, and I
Speaker 1: understood him without any words. And the first act of
Speaker 1: that screenplay was fantastic, I mean, very body uh kind
Speaker 1: of shocking. I loved it, you know. So then and
Speaker 1: when I have letters now, I forget things until I
Speaker 1: have to go into my archives and look at this stuff,
Speaker 1: letters from him and notes that I wrote back to
Speaker 1: him talking about this film. What happened the second act?
Speaker 1: You know, he says we're going to be collaborators, and
Speaker 1: the second act was not very good. I thought it
Speaker 1: was like like Jevas Amadeus. I'm sure the first act
Speaker 1: was extraordinary to me in the movie, and the second
Speaker 1: act was I don't know, just somehow repetitious. It It
Speaker 1: didn't go far enough in the story, you know. And
Speaker 1: that's the way I felt about this. And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden it was gone. The collaboration was over. We
Speaker 1: never made the film, and I couldn't quite believe it.
Speaker 1: I mean, the fact that I didn't like certain things
Speaker 1: in the second act did he liked? Well, he never
Speaker 1: defended it. It was like, you know, I think that's
Speaker 1: right and so. But I would have loved to work
Speaker 1: with Berto Lucci and Schris you know what I did.
Speaker 1: I realized this now and looking back at my life.
Speaker 1: I turned down Alice doesn't live here anymore. I turned
Speaker 1: down a lot of films actually because I was lazy.
Speaker 1: I'm basically I'm a dichotomy here, a dichotomy lazy and um,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the word is, restless, restless maybe? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like wanting to create about you, it would be called
Speaker 1: the lazy and the restless. Oh no, that's a very
Speaker 1: good time. Yeah, exactly, exactly I love to take a
Speaker 1: vacation and do nothing. I like to have no appointments.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a condition in my mind of
Speaker 1: people who have tremendous not so much financial success, but
Speaker 1: creative success. I mean, there's a famous actress who I
Speaker 1: won't name you. Wait, you know what? Do you want
Speaker 1: to take a sip of soup on your Do you
Speaker 1: want soup to I'll have a soup. I mean we
Speaker 1: kind of say no. Well, I mean this is a
Speaker 1: I'm irish. It's bad luck to say no to soup?
Speaker 1: Is that in Ireland? I just made that up. Oh
Speaker 1: just put that over here? Oh see, I just brought
Speaker 1: this table from the back and we need another table
Speaker 1: maybe over here because this is me so soup, don't
Speaker 1: I mean? In other words, people know we eat, right,
Speaker 1: so if they hear it's okay, good, good, good good,
Speaker 1: because I always like to eat. Oh really know you
Speaker 1: know you won't mm hmm. That is delicious, isn't it.
Speaker 1: That was my interview with Barbara Streisand sometimes the task
Speaker 1: is to convince some of our iconic guests to sit
Speaker 1: down with me. Other times the task is simply to
Speaker 1: find them. In the case of my next clip. Joe
Speaker 1: Delessandro proved to be more than a little elusive, but
Speaker 1: once we got the star of many of Warhol's early
Speaker 1: films and photography to join us, he was gracious, forthcoming
Speaker 1: and funny, like when he talked here about his early
Speaker 1: days as a male model. The criminal guy who's the
Speaker 1: modeling agency. How did that play out? Well? He introduces
Speaker 1: me to this version at once that does these, uh,
Speaker 1: these photographs, and they said, you know, look, Joe rubbed
Speaker 1: his oil on you. And it starts out real, you know,
Speaker 1: really easy. You know, it's nothing, nothing that's too frightening
Speaker 1: to a person that's you know, being first introduced to it.
Speaker 1: It's just, you know, take your clothes off and stand
Speaker 1: over there and nude. Yeah, and for you, did you
Speaker 1: feel it in that world you want to nose for
Speaker 1: people you could trust and not trust. Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: guy says, oil up and stand over there naked. You
Speaker 1: knew you were cool? Yeah, nothing, nothing was gonna happen there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you find it weird? Yeah? I thought it was
Speaker 1: real weird, But I was gonna get fifty dollars, a
Speaker 1: whole fifty dollars. That was a lot of money back then.
Speaker 1: You know, and I thought, wow, fifty dollars was standing,
Speaker 1: So yeah, Joe making put them up like like you're
Speaker 1: making a muscle Joe, you know. And shortly after that,
Speaker 1: I have a fight with the guy that introduced me
Speaker 1: to this modeling people because he had this scam that
Speaker 1: he wanted to do. He wanted to blackmail somebody. You
Speaker 1: wanted me to do something and I ain't doing that.
Speaker 1: And also it's a stupid ship, you know. So I
Speaker 1: got angry and he got he got violent. He was
Speaker 1: an ex con that was, you know, gonna show his toughness,
Speaker 1: not to me. Anyway. He broke a bottle to come
Speaker 1: at me, and I knocked the bottle out of his
Speaker 1: hand and went on the ground and broke and uh
Speaker 1: he uh he did a little dance with him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He fell on the glass and got all cut up.
Speaker 1: You know. Well actually I threw him on the glass
Speaker 1: and he got all cut up. No, No, he fell
Speaker 1: on the glass. Yeah, and we hold him down. You
Speaker 1: were trying to help him. He tried to press charges
Speaker 1: against you. Yeah, he tried to do all listen on sense. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we went to court and they reached my father and say,
Speaker 1: you know your your son's out here, and oh, you
Speaker 1: need to send them back, you know, put him on
Speaker 1: a plane and I'll send you the money. Where'd you
Speaker 1: live them? And he got to New York. I stayed
Speaker 1: with him for a week and then went out on
Speaker 1: my own again. There was the plan when you were
Speaker 1: back in New York, Well, the modeling thing again? Did
Speaker 1: you think this is good money? I never thought about it,
Speaker 1: about the modeling thing, you know, it wasn't something that
Speaker 1: I knew anybody. I had a couple of friends in
Speaker 1: New York that introduced me to other people. And and
Speaker 1: then one day one of these friends, uh said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I know this person that's uh making these Campbell soup
Speaker 1: can you know makes the Cambell soup? And I was
Speaker 1: thinking we were going to eat some soup, which I
Speaker 1: was all for. You're gonna go to the Campbell soup factory? Yeah, whatever, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: I had no idea where it was. You could take
Speaker 1: a picture of you oiled up, said there's somebody sitting
Speaker 1: behind a camera reading a newspaper, so I couldn't see
Speaker 1: who it was or what it was, you know, but
Speaker 1: they wanted to introduce me that this Campbell soup. Andy
Speaker 1: Warho guy that I had. You know, I didn't know
Speaker 1: who Andy Warho was or you know, before I met them.
Speaker 1: Mine I had married, uh young lady, my first my
Speaker 1: first wife. Ah No, I had to be eighteen then.
Speaker 1: So but it was why did you get married when
Speaker 1: you're right there? Freedom is a premium for you? Why
Speaker 1: did you get married? My father was dating her mother,
Speaker 1: and my father wanted to she got herself pregnant. My
Speaker 1: father said, you know, you should take we should take
Speaker 1: this person and he should own up to his responsibility
Speaker 1: of his kids. Were father. I was also got pregnant
Speaker 1: with somebody else. My father said, we'll take him to court,
Speaker 1: you know. And and I kept telling my father, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't do that, and you shouldn't push you to do that,
Speaker 1: because he's gonna come in with a bunch. This is Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: you know, he can come a bunch of guys saying
Speaker 1: we all slept with her and nothing's going to ever
Speaker 1: come from which one of us is the father. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's back before DNA and all that other ship. Thank
Speaker 1: god for yet. Yeah, anyway, so you decided to marry her.
Speaker 1: I decided to marry her and give the kid my name,
Speaker 1: you know, what kind of work did you do? Then?
Speaker 1: I was a book binder, I went to Actually I
Speaker 1: was assembly line. I didn't do anything except in the city,
Speaker 1: yea Manhattan. Who wouldn't know why that job? Because my
Speaker 1: uncle ran the ran the show was his business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I don't know if it was his business, but
Speaker 1: he ran the shop. So was there a part of
Speaker 1: you when you're in Jersey and your book binding and
Speaker 1: you got a sixteen year old bride has got a kid,
Speaker 1: and we're not quite sure who in the Brooklyn gang
Speaker 1: is really the father? Do you sit there and go
Speaker 1: I missed standing They're oiled up in a room naked
Speaker 1: getting the fifty bucks from these guys. I don't know,
Speaker 1: did you miss that? Yeah? And then you and then
Speaker 1: you go meet the guy who's behind the newspaper, who
Speaker 1: makes the soup, who's gonna make you soup for lunch?
Speaker 1: What happened there? He drops the newspaper. What happens? Obviously
Speaker 1: he became very fond of you, very quickly. Well, it
Speaker 1: wasn't him. It was the guy that was standing to
Speaker 1: the side of the camera and giving all the instructions
Speaker 1: to everybody, And that was Paul Marcy. So He's the
Speaker 1: one that suggested that I'd be in the film because
Speaker 1: he ow, he was this character that asked everything about
Speaker 1: your life and I had told him, you know, in
Speaker 1: junior high had played on the wrestling team. He says, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a good idea. We'll have you do that with Undine.
Speaker 1: You'll you teach him wrestling, so let film that. We'll
Speaker 1: film that. What do you described? Morrissey then Marcy real smart,
Speaker 1: real educated he had. He was a Fordham graduate. He
Speaker 1: was a social worker before in New York City where
Speaker 1: he really saw these uh strange people that he had,
Speaker 1: you know, work with. Uh. So he had plenty of
Speaker 1: great stories and he shot. Uh these films that was shot.
Speaker 1: There were silent films I saw. I watched a couple
Speaker 1: of them. They were pretty good films. Uh you're a
Speaker 1: movie goer them, you're like, yeah, I was. I loved
Speaker 1: the movies. I didn't want to be in them. I
Speaker 1: just liked watching them. But when you watch the movies
Speaker 1: at Morrissey and or warhol Man, they weren't like movies
Speaker 1: you saw in the theater when I yeah, I thought
Speaker 1: they were a joke. I thought that. Well, when we
Speaker 1: were shooting this one thing the soup day they were shifting.
Speaker 1: They asked me to be in the thing, and I
Speaker 1: shot this most scene and they came over to me
Speaker 1: after we were done, and uh, they asked me to
Speaker 1: sign a release. I said, you're not gonna this is
Speaker 1: just for fun. Nobody's gonna ever see this. This is
Speaker 1: it's just I thought, just like a whole movie. I
Speaker 1: didn't think they were gonna, you know, ever show this anywhere,
Speaker 1: and thought it was a joke because what was happening
Speaker 1: there was you know, pretty silly. You know, wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: anything I ever saw in the theater. It was unfamiliar. Yeah, really,
Speaker 1: I signed the release thinking it would never be released.
Speaker 1: And and then later on they called me and asked
Speaker 1: if I would them to photograph me for the advertising
Speaker 1: of this film that they you know, they shot with
Speaker 1: me first before this movie that was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a twenty four hour movie that turned into Loves of Undine.
Speaker 1: They cut it into a smoom. That was your first movie,
Speaker 1: and that was my first movie with him. But before
Speaker 1: that was ever released, they had called me up and
Speaker 1: he did to ask me to be in another movie.
Speaker 1: And then he put Paul on the phone who told me, Yeah, Joe,
Speaker 1: we're going out to Arizona to shoot a Western. Would
Speaker 1: you like to be in the West end? I said, sure,
Speaker 1: that'd be great, but you gotta pay me what I
Speaker 1: would I make at the book binding place, as I
Speaker 1: can't take off. I'm married now, I gotta take care
Speaker 1: of my all his bullshit, Yeah about what I was making.
Speaker 1: They paid you exactly what you made. The probably they
Speaker 1: were cheap. They were always cheap. They didn't want to
Speaker 1: pay somebody too much, and then somebody else asked for
Speaker 1: the same thing. You know, is it amazing you sit
Speaker 1: in a room back in nineteen sixty seven with a
Speaker 1: bunch of people who later on the soup can guy
Speaker 1: would sell his paintings for tens of millions of dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he becomes one of the richest artists in history. Did
Speaker 1: you have an artistic sensibility but you thought that these
Speaker 1: guys were or you? Just as you said, it was
Speaker 1: just unfamiliar and silly. Well in the beginning, and you
Speaker 1: know it all, it wasn't for me and and Andy's art.
Speaker 1: You know, we all participated in making the Andy art.
Speaker 1: They had said, you know, after we had shot the
Speaker 1: Cowboy movie and we came back. I thought that was it.
Speaker 1: Go back to book binding. And you know, I called
Speaker 1: Paul ask him about the Western and he had told
Speaker 1: me that he had a job for me at the
Speaker 1: factory and I said, okay, you know, and he happy
Speaker 1: to give up what I was doing, you know, doing
Speaker 1: something there, and I went down to the factory and
Speaker 1: that was the day. Then Andy was shot when I
Speaker 1: showed up to the factory to work there. Sometimes at
Speaker 1: the onset, I wonder where the conversation might go, and
Speaker 1: by the end I realized I could have talked with
Speaker 1: my guest for hours. Such is the case with Joe Delessandro.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Joe. My next clip is from my interview
Speaker 1: with Elaine Stretch. Elaine had quite a career. Towards the
Speaker 1: end of it, she played my mother, Colleen Donaghye, on
Speaker 1: the television series thirty Rock. When the show was over,
Speaker 1: Elaine announced she was leaving New York and we were
Speaker 1: lucky enough to catch up with her before she relocated
Speaker 1: home to Michigan. And if you know Elaine, it comes
Speaker 1: as no surprise that the interview could just stop at
Speaker 1: any given moment. Where is my black bag? Alec Hunter?
Speaker 1: I need. I need orange juice. Hunter, come in plays?
Speaker 1: Can we send Hunter in here? Plays with the provisions? Hunter.
Speaker 1: Ryan Herdlika, who accompanied Elaine to the studio, came through
Speaker 1: the door juice in hand. I need some orange juice.
Speaker 1: Beanies is kicking up, Hunter, my good man, hunters right
Speaker 1: with the world. Okay, we'll how about a glass. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's a clean water. We'll get him a clean we'll go,
Speaker 1: we'll go get her clean. All right, it's all right
Speaker 1: if you just empty that glass, it's heaven. I need
Speaker 1: some orange juice. You know that I'm diabetic, Yes, of course,
Speaker 1: I mean the world knows by now, the world. It's okay.
Speaker 1: You know what I quoted the other day, the line
Speaker 1: of my father's that really is so naughty and just
Speaker 1: so much fun. Here's looking up your old address. Isn't
Speaker 1: that a great line? And he said it with no
Speaker 1: he used that was it. That's right? All right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna drink this and bring the orangese now so we
Speaker 1: don't have some event here. That's cool. Alright. So now
Speaker 1: that you've had your orange juice and your brain freezes over,
Speaker 1: Kirk Douglas, what was the show? Do you remember now? Woman?
Speaker 1: Bites dog. That orange juice. It's a miracle. Elcksir. I
Speaker 1: want to be a case of that orange juice dog,
Speaker 1: woman bites dog. What do you play in that? If
Speaker 1: you girlfriend? He lived with I didn't even know what
Speaker 1: that phrase meant. You were a floozy? Well no, I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I just but I lived with him and I wasn't
Speaker 1: married to him. I didn't know what that meant. What
Speaker 1: do you remember about Kirk Douglas. Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: loved him. Oh god, I loved him. And what an
Speaker 1: actor he was. And he's one of the few men
Speaker 1: who was as great an actor as he was a star.
Speaker 1: He was a great actor. He was a great actor.
Speaker 1: He was a great actor. I loved him, and he
Speaker 1: loved me. He flipped over me. I've known him for years,
Speaker 1: and he took me halfway away for the weekend, and
Speaker 1: then I discovered that I shouldn't go. He took you
Speaker 1: half way away to Palm Springs, and then I said
Speaker 1: I shouldn't be going. So what did do you hit? Like?
Speaker 1: What helds? I do know? We were halfway to Palm Beach,
Speaker 1: Palm Springs things. So you're driving east. We were driving
Speaker 1: for the weekend and you decided you didn't want to. Well,
Speaker 1: I said, I'm getting nervous, because what do you want
Speaker 1: me to do when we get up here? Oh, Elaine,
Speaker 1: you knew I was a virgin, so he was dealing
Speaker 1: with that. So what was the first leading role you
Speaker 1: had on Broadway? Big roll? Take more horors, you see
Speaker 1: you can remember of the big part, big big part
Speaker 1: I had was Angel and the Wings, which was a review,
Speaker 1: hardest thing in the world to do a review, and
Speaker 1: the kind of review like New Faces, was like Leonard
Speaker 1: Sulman's sketches. And I was the big busted you know,
Speaker 1: girl in the in the bedroom. I was the I
Speaker 1: was the piece on the side. Yeah, where are you?
Speaker 1: Isn't amazing? You were this virginal You went to suck
Speaker 1: or cur and you went to finishing school and I
Speaker 1: played as soon as you're out, God is just tempting you.
Speaker 1: He's taking Marlon Brando on one side of you, and
Speaker 1: Kirk Douglas has reving up the convertible to take you
Speaker 1: to Palm Springs, and you're the fluzi here and you're
Speaker 1: the piece on the side, the bust defend fatalel But
Speaker 1: what I was really doing is learning my lines to
Speaker 1: the play or to the television or to the I
Speaker 1: was really loving acting. I loved it. I loved pretending.
Speaker 1: I just loved it. Was being somebody other than I
Speaker 1: was was my idea of a good time? Was part
Speaker 1: of that process for you? Learning from people you work with,
Speaker 1: it you admire. Did you look at other people and say,
Speaker 1: because I've had that. I mean, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say I had it well like Merman? When you worked
Speaker 1: with Merman? Did you learn from Merman? Did you did
Speaker 1: you know you didn't? I did her part right. I
Speaker 1: did her There's no question, so she would not. Some
Speaker 1: loved her, everybody loved everybody. But I know how to
Speaker 1: do that. And I was so frightened and so terrified,
Speaker 1: and I was so good in it. Did you feel
Speaker 1: that she was of that type where just Mermin as Mermaid,
Speaker 1: she goes out into study. She made, you know, so long.
Speaker 1: She'd say goodbye to me from the wings on my
Speaker 1: opening night and then go sit in the first row.
Speaker 1: She scared me to death when I got to the
Speaker 1: end of call Me Madam, it was mine? You felt
Speaker 1: that way? When do you think you became you? The
Speaker 1: moment I started to rehearse Mermaid's part. I was doing
Speaker 1: the New Mermaid, the New Everything. That's when you became you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So doing the piece doing call Me Madam is when
Speaker 1: you felt things changed for you. You felt you were
Speaker 1: were not necessarily now everything I did, everything I did
Speaker 1: was you know. But when you do a show Elaine
Speaker 1: Stretch at Liberty, when you do a show that is
Speaker 1: a memoir of your career, oh yeah, and it is
Speaker 1: enormously successful, when did you think in your life? When
Speaker 1: did you reach a point in your life that you
Speaker 1: felt you were someone who could write a memoir about
Speaker 1: your life, that you thought it was interesting enough. When
Speaker 1: did you cross the line and say, yeah, I was
Speaker 1: convinced by this producer who said, who saw me perform
Speaker 1: at a Judy Garland special at Carnegie Hall? And what
Speaker 1: I did was tells Judy Garland stories And I told
Speaker 1: her it was a tribute to Judy. She's gone by this, yeah,
Speaker 1: and oh boy, I really did know her very well.
Speaker 1: From where did your first meet her? Party? At a
Speaker 1: party someplace I don't know. And I loved her. So
Speaker 1: when I tried out one of my stories on Judy Garland,
Speaker 1: I mean she tried out one of hers. I said, Judy,
Speaker 1: I've got an idea, and I sincerely did. I said,
Speaker 1: I've got a great idea. Why don't we tour Maime?
Speaker 1: I said to Judy Garan And she says divine. She
Speaker 1: said that sounds great. I said, but here's the good idea, Judy.
Speaker 1: When I do Mame, I go to bed early, and
Speaker 1: when you do me, you go to bed early. And
Speaker 1: then the other one does vera she want a switch
Speaker 1: on and off. Yeah, she bought you. She's listening now
Speaker 1: and she's saying okay, okay, okay, and she's counting up
Speaker 1: the songs. What songs she has? What? And after this
Speaker 1: long pause, she looks at me and says, what about Matene's?
Speaker 1: And I thought it was one of the funniest things
Speaker 1: I've ever heard in my whole life, that Judy Garland
Speaker 1: wanted to know what about Mattenees. That's how she carefully.
Speaker 1: She wanted her her career planned so she could be
Speaker 1: able to get loaded when she wanted to. And you know,
Speaker 1: it was her way of treating a very serious discussion.
Speaker 1: So you did a tribute thing where you told stories
Speaker 1: about her, and that's when someone pitched the idea to
Speaker 1: you of doing a memoir of your career. That's right.
Speaker 1: What vaguely and said, you tell a story to an
Speaker 1: audience the like of which I have never heard. That's true.
Speaker 1: I was that the opening night at the Public, when
Speaker 1: that Liberty opened at the Public, and everyone who was
Speaker 1: had a pulse in New York. Everyone who was alive
Speaker 1: that night came to that opening at the Public. Everybody
Speaker 1: in the theater came. They went crazy, They went crazy.
Speaker 1: It's lovely, God, it's lovely. Success is lovely. It's so hard,
Speaker 1: and it's such hard work, but it's so gratifying. What's
Speaker 1: the hardest thing about it for you? What's been the
Speaker 1: hardest thing? Do you find it hard? To have? The
Speaker 1: fear of what that you won't be able to perform,
Speaker 1: the fear that I'm just going to forget, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to not not so much forget, but it's the fear.
Speaker 1: It's the fear. And that was when I was not
Speaker 1: drinking at all, and I didn't drink anything to get
Speaker 1: my talent on, but all my life I had. Have
Speaker 1: you ever done a show? I'm sure you've done countless shows.
Speaker 1: You ever done a show where you're sitting backstage thinking
Speaker 1: what am I doing here? How did I get myself
Speaker 1: into this? Or? Were you always engaged by what you
Speaker 1: were doing? I was always engaged with always. You never
Speaker 1: took I was leading up to it or coming down,
Speaker 1: you know, I I was trying to get it behind.
Speaker 1: You never regretted doing anything? Never? No, that's incredible. No,
Speaker 1: I never never regretted doing anything on the stage. Never.
Speaker 1: How was that possible because I just one every time
Speaker 1: I walked out there. You know that old expression about
Speaker 1: I own the stage. That was from my interview with
Speaker 1: the incomparable Elaine Stretch. Some of the musicians I've interviewed
Speaker 1: have had tough lives, during which they created some of
Speaker 1: the greatest music the world has ever heard. The next
Speaker 1: clip is from my interview with David Crosby, the self
Speaker 1: described mischievous kid who started singing folk songs at age
Speaker 1: six on his way to his remarkable career. And you
Speaker 1: go to boarding school? I did, Yeah, Kate? What was
Speaker 1: that block? What were you like? Were you always mischievous?
Speaker 1: And it get load of trouble Why I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely true. I got thrown out of almost
Speaker 1: every school I was ever in, including Kate, What was
Speaker 1: music in your life? Then? Music came early, and well, uh,
Speaker 1: my mom sang in choirs. My dad liked music. He
Speaker 1: could play a mantle in. My brother played guitar. We
Speaker 1: used to Here's an interesting thing when when we were
Speaker 1: growing up in the fifties, when TV started to really happen,
Speaker 1: we didn't have a TV, so we sang folk songs
Speaker 1: out of the fireside Book of Folks Songs, and that
Speaker 1: was where it started. Did anybody tell you then you
Speaker 1: could sing that? They say you're a good singer. They
Speaker 1: did notice that I was singing harmony when I was six,
Speaker 1: And huh, what's the first instrument you played? Guitar? My
Speaker 1: brother turned me onto guitar when you were how old?
Speaker 1: I guess maybe can what's the best time you think that.
Speaker 1: My son is two and a half years, so it's
Speaker 1: gonna be three in June. He's obsessed with simulating playing
Speaker 1: the guitar. He actually has a band with my wife.
Speaker 1: He calls her Trista, and he's Mr Pants. Mr Pants.
Speaker 1: He'll turn to my wife a little I've got it
Speaker 1: on video. He'll turn to my wife and Trista, what
Speaker 1: are we gonna play now? He's two and a half.
Speaker 1: Don't let him be a musician. We wanted to. It's
Speaker 1: terrible idea. He'll never have a job. Actually let him.
Speaker 1: Do you think that if you didn't? But when you
Speaker 1: say that, do you think if you hadn't made it
Speaker 1: as big as you made it, you wouldn't have stuck
Speaker 1: with it, or you would have stayed with it because
Speaker 1: you loved it. I would because I love it. I
Speaker 1: love it so much, like I can't tell you I
Speaker 1: love seeing it. I'm good at it. But that's not
Speaker 1: really it. It's there's a joy to singing in and
Speaker 1: of itself, and it's it's an elevating thing. It's totally
Speaker 1: freaking wonderful. It's very tough for me now, man, because
Speaker 1: I'm really old and getting on the road exhausting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it beats the crap out of me. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you'll never get more than four hours sleep in a row.
Speaker 1: And then in the middle of that, you had an
Speaker 1: expansion joint and playing. You're away again and you know,
Speaker 1: and you're eating terrible food and restaurants. When when did
Speaker 1: you when you left home, you didn't go to college. No,
Speaker 1: I went one year and you went to uh City
Speaker 1: College in Santa Barbara, which is now, oddly enough, the
Speaker 1: highest rated city college in the country. It was interesting
Speaker 1: and good, and I had one really good teacher hooked
Speaker 1: me up about some really interesting things about semantics and
Speaker 1: the language. And no, you weren't sending music then, then, no,
Speaker 1: not yet. I was. I was bussing tables at the
Speaker 1: local coffeehouse because as a bus boy they would let
Speaker 1: me sing harmony with the guy who was being paid
Speaker 1: to sing. And what was the first band you were in?
Speaker 1: Less Baxter's Balladeers. Let's Baxter, you know, a band leader guy.
Speaker 1: He had seen the Christie Mittrels, which that guy who
Speaker 1: sparks were he was he had I think he had
Speaker 1: three of them out their bands like that in your
Speaker 1: old name the same you know. It just it was
Speaker 1: a commercial operation and was really lame. But we was
Speaker 1: put food on the table. My brother and I were
Speaker 1: in that. And then I ran into Roger mcgwinn and
Speaker 1: Gean Clark and where a tributor bar it's a tributary
Speaker 1: and they were singing and it was good and these
Speaker 1: songs were you know, James pretty good writer. And so
Speaker 1: when those two haven't they had an act called they
Speaker 1: have an act, we're just playing. They were just in
Speaker 1: the bar. You know, Roger has been a musician for
Speaker 1: a while and successful and played with other bands, Lime Letters,
Speaker 1: Chad Mitchell Three, a bunch of different people, so he
Speaker 1: knew what he was doing when he knew that Jean
Speaker 1: was talented and that this stuff had value because it
Speaker 1: sounded a lot like Beatles songs, and uh, so I
Speaker 1: started singing harmony to them. They said, what's your name?
Speaker 1: And uh that worked out really well. It was a
Speaker 1: good band, simple good. Roger's extremely Good had taken Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan so and turning them into pop records. And you
Speaker 1: covered Tambourine Man. Yeah, that was our first hit. Well,
Speaker 1: what did you learn about bands in your first band?
Speaker 1: What that experienced like? I learned that that I had
Speaker 1: a lot to learn. I was just a young punk
Speaker 1: and I really had no idea how to actually work
Speaker 1: with the people and accomplished the aim that I wanted to.
Speaker 1: I had an experience early on when I was young.
Speaker 1: My mom took me to see a symphony orchestra in
Speaker 1: a park free show there in that way, and they
Speaker 1: tuned up and they got ready, and then he started
Speaker 1: the piece and it was this huge, beautiful wave that
Speaker 1: hit me. I didn't know anything was like that. You know,
Speaker 1: symphony orchestra a hugely powerful thing. And it freaked me out.
Speaker 1: And the thing I've realized even as a kid, the
Speaker 1: power came from they were alding me together. I can't
Speaker 1: believe you just said that. It's the truth, and it
Speaker 1: really and it penetrated. So I've always wanted to be
Speaker 1: in a band always. I love cooperative effort. Competitive effort
Speaker 1: winds up at war, cooperative effort winds up. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: watching Tom Petty's band playing a benefit, and Offend was
Speaker 1: with me. I turned him and I said, do you
Speaker 1: see what I'm seeing? Reference said what? And I said,
Speaker 1: they're all doing the same thing at the same time.
Speaker 1: I said, they're all in service to and feeding. You know,
Speaker 1: in my business, not everybody's doing the same thing that
Speaker 1: they're kind of doing their own thing, kind of jerking
Speaker 1: off in the corner there, you know, Patty's band was
Speaker 1: doing the same thing. Yeah, it was really really, very
Speaker 1: very cool. Do you find in a band does somebody
Speaker 1: always need to be in charge? Does somebody need to
Speaker 1: be the boss? It can go both ways, and the
Speaker 1: birds Roger was definitely the leader of the band, and
Speaker 1: that worked well. Yeah, he knew a lot more than
Speaker 1: we did. And he's also an extremely talented guy and
Speaker 1: a good singer. And uh so it wouldn't you know,
Speaker 1: I challenged it at every turn, but he was the
Speaker 1: leader of the band, uh c s And why none
Speaker 1: of us was willing to admit anybody else was the leader.
Speaker 1: Where it was and probably still is one of the
Speaker 1: most competitive situations in the history. Uh And he goes
Speaker 1: really just that simple, And in spite of all the
Speaker 1: incredible success you've had. I mean, who's when you think
Speaker 1: of people, when you think of men harmonizing in a group,
Speaker 1: the first people that come to mind of the three
Speaker 1: of you, why do you think that that didn't bring
Speaker 1: them any comforts? I don't think that's what they went
Speaker 1: in for. And I don't think they realized exactly how
Speaker 1: good it was. We did really like each other when
Speaker 1: we started, and we were thrilled, you know, by each
Speaker 1: other's songs. So you leave the birds and and and
Speaker 1: and Stills leaves Buffalo Springfield and they bring you with
Speaker 1: them Springfield Sorrow fell Apart Left, which is kind of
Speaker 1: his m O. Uh Stephen was very appealing guitar player
Speaker 1: and singer. I mean, it's really good. Remember how well
Speaker 1: he played acoustic guitar back down beautiful, pretty stunning, And
Speaker 1: so I started hanging out with him, and then Cass
Speaker 1: introduced mut the Ground. But when Nash leaves the Hollies,
Speaker 1: the Hollies are doing very well, aren't they very successful?
Speaker 1: Why does he leave? The Hollies told him you did.
Speaker 1: I went to work, I went to London. I told
Speaker 1: me she quit? And how did you do that? We
Speaker 1: dil you quit? Why? Because he could join us? He
Speaker 1: was at a very crux point with the Hollies. They
Speaker 1: wanted to do an album of Dylan covers. Now there
Speaker 1: are bands that should do Dylan covers and there are
Speaker 1: bands that should not do Dylon covers. That was one
Speaker 1: of the bands that should not do Dealing covers. And
Speaker 1: they were ignoring his songs. He had already written a
Speaker 1: Lady at the Island and they didn't get it, beautiful song.
Speaker 1: He had already been right between the eyes. They didn't
Speaker 1: get it. He he was already outgrowing them. So I
Speaker 1: walked in and I said, hm, hmm, this is pretty ordinary.
Speaker 1: And I was funnier than they were, and I knew
Speaker 1: more than they did, and I did it on purpose,
Speaker 1: and they'll probably never forgive me. But it made a
Speaker 1: great sound. We the three of us, when we heard
Speaker 1: each other saying it was it was spectacular. But bands
Speaker 1: get together and you're in love with each other and
Speaker 1: so wonderful and exciting, and then it devolves and forty
Speaker 1: years later it's turned on a small machine and play
Speaker 1: your heads and you don't even like each other. You
Speaker 1: don't write the same bus, you do not hang out,
Speaker 1: and you are competing with the other guys. So it's
Speaker 1: easier to do the touring and get on stage and
Speaker 1: get that on and get that of what than it
Speaker 1: is to be. You don't go into a studio anymore
Speaker 1: because that's more intimate that died quicker. Yeah, the money
Speaker 1: is so good on the road in a band like that,
Speaker 1: you know that you you won't stay there. It means
Speaker 1: big crowds, big places, big deal you can get. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it got to pomer is no fun? Is it
Speaker 1: about when it starts to crack, when it starts to shift?
Speaker 1: Is it because of songwriting? No one's getting that too.
Speaker 1: Wants to see my songs. I want my songs on
Speaker 1: that album. Who's the decider? Did you guys acquiesced to producers? No? Uh,
Speaker 1: we always produced our records and uh and are we
Speaker 1: had what we call the reality rule. You come into
Speaker 1: the room, you know, just us, nobody else and seeing
Speaker 1: each other song and they either liked it didn't and uh,
Speaker 1: if they liked it, you know, then we start figuring
Speaker 1: out how to sing it. And these are hugely talented guys. Man,
Speaker 1: they came with a lot of stuff. So before it
Speaker 1: was the four of you, the three of you was
Speaker 1: basically pretty good. Yeah, it was okay, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: Neil's nickname is sometimes it's CSN sometimes why you know, uh,
Speaker 1: and when it would be C. S and Y, it
Speaker 1: was a lot bigger that You've got to know that
Speaker 1: that's the reason to see us and has always Neil's decision,
Speaker 1: because if there's twenty thousand people in the stadium, Neil
Speaker 1: put ten of them there. That's the truth. And so
Speaker 1: he's he's the one that's that's said, that's it's done.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to do that anymore. And I don't
Speaker 1: think he needs to to see us someone. I don't
Speaker 1: think you'll ever see it again. When you say he's
Speaker 1: sometimes and he comes and goes. Is that his nature
Speaker 1: in all things? He just has to tough time committing
Speaker 1: to anything. No, he's on his own path and he
Speaker 1: does not relinquish that ever, under any circumstances. And uh,
Speaker 1: he does not want to be dependent on anybody else
Speaker 1: and probably doesn't want to explain the money. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've never asked him, but I know he I think
Speaker 1: you know I had to come to this decision. It's
Speaker 1: a very hard decision, man, This is a very hard
Speaker 1: time for us. I don't know if you know this,
Speaker 1: but streaming pretty much destroyed our earning power. It took half,
Speaker 1: at least half of our earning power away from us
Speaker 1: because they folks, they don't pay us for records anymore.
Speaker 1: And that's really sad. Uh, they got that deal passes
Speaker 1: and they it's sort of this if you worked your
Speaker 1: job and they paid you a nickel for every two weeks.
Speaker 1: It's the proportion is drastically tiny. So with Neil gone
Speaker 1: and cs N still earning but really frozen in place
Speaker 1: and really unpleasant I mean incidents that I will not
Speaker 1: tell you about, but violently bad, carefully chosen more my
Speaker 1: thanks again to David Crosby. We presented several of our
Speaker 1: shows live, and one of my favorites was with director
Speaker 1: William Freakin. Thank you very much, good evening, recorded at
Speaker 1: the Turner Classic Movie Film Festival. Freakin is one of
Speaker 1: the most entertaining storytellers I've ever sat down with. Here
Speaker 1: he is following a screening of The French Connection. We
Speaker 1: then sent it to Jane Fonda, who sent us all
Speaker 1: the same telegram that said, why would I want to
Speaker 1: be in a piece of capitalist rip off bullshit like this?
Speaker 1: Now I've seen her since and she doesn't remember having
Speaker 1: sent that, but I haven't. That was her response, that
Speaker 1: I don't know how she really felt, but that was
Speaker 1: her response. He was honest. Yeah. Meanwhile, Ellen Burston was
Speaker 1: hockeing me all the time. I had seen the Last
Speaker 1: Picture Show, but I didn't know Ellen Burston from Claris Leachman.
Speaker 1: I didn't know which was which. But Ellen said to me,
Speaker 1: do you believe in destiny? Has anyone ever asked you
Speaker 1: that before? Uh? No, Well, she was the only one
Speaker 1: who ever asked me that. And I said, well, I
Speaker 1: guess I believe, And she said, I'm destined to play
Speaker 1: this part. I said, look, with the studio wants Jane
Speaker 1: Fonda and Bancroft or Audrey Hepburn. This was all going on.
Speaker 1: She said, I don't care. I'm destined to play this part.
Speaker 1: And it came about that she was the last person standing,
Speaker 1: and so we cast her against the wishes of the studio.
Speaker 1: They did not They wanted a big star for that um.
Speaker 1: Then we cast Stacy Keach to play Father Carris. He
Speaker 1: was a great is a great actor. He was the
Speaker 1: go to Eugene O'Neill actor on Broadway. And what happened.
Speaker 1: I went to New York and maybe it was that no,
Speaker 1: but no, we cast her. I went to New York
Speaker 1: and I saw the opening night of a play call
Speaker 1: that Championship Season, and it was written by a man
Speaker 1: named Jason Miller. Never heard of him. Uh. I thought
Speaker 1: the play was great. It was it really reeked of
Speaker 1: lapsed Catholicism. It was a play about a group of
Speaker 1: high school guys who won a championship under their coach,
Speaker 1: but cheated to win and they were suffering this guilt
Speaker 1: and the stage was just filled with Catholic guild. I felt. So,
Speaker 1: I I said to my casting director, who was this
Speaker 1: guy that wrote this. I'd love to talk to him,
Speaker 1: just to talk to him. It turned out that he
Speaker 1: had studied for the Priesthood three years at Catholic University
Speaker 1: in Georgetown. He came up to meet me in in
Speaker 1: I was staying at the Sherry Netherlands Hotel and I
Speaker 1: had the flu and I had a lot of pills.
Speaker 1: He thought I was a pill freak, and uh, I
Speaker 1: thought he was a drunk. And he didn't know what
Speaker 1: the hell he was doing up there. And I asked
Speaker 1: him a lot of questions about studying for the Priesthood
Speaker 1: and stuff, and it was a horrible meeting. And I
Speaker 1: went back to Los Angeles and about two weeks later,
Speaker 1: as we're starting to prepare the picture, he called me
Speaker 1: at Warner Brothers and he said, hey, you know that
Speaker 1: that book you were telling me about that You're going
Speaker 1: to film that Exorcist? He said, I said yeah. He said,
Speaker 1: I am that guy. He said, I am that character.
Speaker 1: I said, well, you're not Stacy Keach is that he's
Speaker 1: going to play the part. He said, I'm telling you, man,
Speaker 1: I am this guy. And he said, have you ever
Speaker 1: done anything like a screen test? And I said no,
Speaker 1: I've never shot a screen test. And what's the point.
Speaker 1: I told you, we've cast this. He had never made
Speaker 1: a film, never been in a movie, only play a
Speaker 1: very small acting roles in a road road companies. He
Speaker 1: was delivering milk in Flushing, New York when he wrote
Speaker 1: Championship Season, and so he said, you gotta test me.
Speaker 1: You have to give me a screen test. I said, why,
Speaker 1: what a waste of time? He said, Man, I'm telling
Speaker 1: you so. I had great respect for him as a writer.
Speaker 1: I said, you want to shoot a screen test? Okay,
Speaker 1: you come out here on your own. You get out here.
Speaker 1: It was like, let's say it was a Tuesday. I
Speaker 1: said him, get out here by Thursday, and I'll shoot
Speaker 1: a screen test with you, and i'll take it out
Speaker 1: of the camera and give it to you so you
Speaker 1: can show it to your kids. And uh, he said, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't get out there Thursday. I said, what do
Speaker 1: you mean. He said, I don't fly. He said, I'll
Speaker 1: take the train. I'll be out there in a week,
Speaker 1: all right. So I set up an empty stage with
Speaker 1: a great cinematographer named Bill Freaker, and I had cast
Speaker 1: Burston and I said, look, we're gonna do a test
Speaker 1: to this guy, and let's do the scene where you
Speaker 1: first meet him in a little park in Georgetown and
Speaker 1: you tell him that you think your daughter is possessed.
Speaker 1: And she said, what, why are we doing this? You've
Speaker 1: got a great actor. I said, I don't know why
Speaker 1: we're doing this. And I swear to God, I didn't
Speaker 1: We shoot the test, no sets, just Bill Freaker lighting
Speaker 1: in an empty studio, and they did that scene one take.
Speaker 1: And then I had Ellen Uh interview Jason with the
Speaker 1: camera over her shoulder on him, where she just asked
Speaker 1: him questions about his life, who he was, what his
Speaker 1: background was, his family, everything, And then I shot a
Speaker 1: very tight close up of him saying the Mass, but
Speaker 1: not saying it the way you used to hear it.
Speaker 1: Maybe you still do in church where the priest just
Speaker 1: rattles that off, you know, the name of the Fathers
Speaker 1: a little book. I said, I would say the words
Speaker 1: of the Mass as though you really mean them, and well,
Speaker 1: you mean every word, and and say it, Uh with
Speaker 1: as much conviction as you can, and take your time,
Speaker 1: and I shot that in the close up, and we
Speaker 1: did that and I wasn't sure about anything, but Burston
Speaker 1: came over to me and said, you're not going to
Speaker 1: hire this guy, are you? And I said, well why not?
Speaker 1: She said he can't act. He said he's not an actor,
Speaker 1: he can't act. And she said, when I tell father
Speaker 1: there caress this story about my daughter, I have to
Speaker 1: break down and collapse in his arms, and I need
Speaker 1: a big strong man to do that. It happened that
Speaker 1: she had was going with a big strong man at
Speaker 1: that time who was an actor that she wanted me
Speaker 1: to consider. But uh, she said, this guy is about
Speaker 1: five six. I said, you're probably right. And the next
Speaker 1: morning I saw the dailies and the camera just loved
Speaker 1: this guy. The camera just loved him. He looked great,
Speaker 1: he was real. And I went to Warner Brothers and
Speaker 1: I said, we're gonna pay off Stacy Keach and hire
Speaker 1: this guy. And they said, you're out of your mind.
Speaker 1: What is wrong with you? You're crazy, but you're possessed, Yes,
Speaker 1: something like that. I didn't want to do it, the
Speaker 1: writer didn't want to do it. Uh, nobody wanted to
Speaker 1: do it. But I said, this is what we're gonna do,
Speaker 1: and that's what we did. And he was brilliant, incredible.
Speaker 1: You said that, Nichols said, no twelve year old could
Speaker 1: carry that film. How did you solve that problem? You
Speaker 1: yourself with Linda Blair. H Nichols was wrong because he
Speaker 1: had not met Linda Blair. We we had cat We
Speaker 1: had auditioned several thousand girls. They were put on tape
Speaker 1: from all across the country by casting directors, and I
Speaker 1: must have looked at five hundred of them myself, just
Speaker 1: a minute or two and then out, and it appeared
Speaker 1: that there was nobody who could play this part who
Speaker 1: was twelve years old. And I had reached a point
Speaker 1: where I felt like that we couldn't make the picture.
Speaker 1: You could not find a twelve year old girl who
Speaker 1: a would understand all this stuff or be not be
Speaker 1: scarred by it, maybe for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: And I didn't see that possibility in any of the
Speaker 1: audition tapes. We started to look at sixteen year olds
Speaker 1: who looked younger, and fifteen year olds, and one day
Speaker 1: my assistant in New York said, there's a woman out
Speaker 1: here who has brought her daughter. Her name is Eleanor Blair,
Speaker 1: and she doesn't have an appointment. Would you see her?
Speaker 1: And I said, okay, why not? Because we were striking
Speaker 1: out all over the place. In came this little girl
Speaker 1: with her mother. She was twelve, and I knew immediately
Speaker 1: that she was the girl instantly she sat down. She
Speaker 1: had never acted. She had done those things that you
Speaker 1: see like in the New York Daily News, in these
Speaker 1: newspapers with girls model coats and little dresses or shoes
Speaker 1: or something. She had done that, but no acting. So
Speaker 1: she sat down with her mother and I am she
Speaker 1: was a straight A student in Westport, Connecticut, and she
Speaker 1: was had one blue ribbons showing horses at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 1: But had never acted. But I said to her, Linda,
Speaker 1: do you know anything about this story? Do you know
Speaker 1: anything about the the Exorcist story? And she said, oh yes,
Speaker 1: I read the book as she did. She said yes,
Speaker 1: and I looked at her mother. Mother nodded, and I said,
Speaker 1: what what is it about? And she said, well, it's
Speaker 1: about a little girl who gets possessed by a devil
Speaker 1: and she does a whole bunch of bad things. I said, well,
Speaker 1: like what and she said, well, she hits her mother
Speaker 1: across the face, and she pushes a man out of
Speaker 1: her bedroom window, and she masturbates with a crucifix. And
Speaker 1: I said, uh. I looked at her. Mother was smiling
Speaker 1: and I said, you know what that means. She said
Speaker 1: what I said to to to masturbate? And she said
Speaker 1: it was like jerking off, isn't it? And I said yes.
Speaker 1: Mother was still smiling, and I said to her, have
Speaker 1: you ever done that? Have you ever done what you
Speaker 1: just said? She said, sure, haven't you? And so I
Speaker 1: hired her. My thanks again to William Friedkin. I think
Speaker 1: you can understand why that's one of my favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Tune in next time for part two of my farewell
Speaker 1: compilation show. Again, my thanks to Barbara Streisan, Joe Delessandro,
Speaker 1: Elaine Stretch, David Crosby and William Friedkin join us next time.
Speaker 1: Thank you,