Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Well you please welcome Jerry Steinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld debuted on
Speaker 1: HBO in It was the same year he first appeared
Speaker 1: on Johnny Carson. He was twenty seven years old. Nice
Speaker 1: to be here tonight, A pleasure to be here tonight.
Speaker 1: Seinfeld's material stood out. It wasn't about his upbringing or
Speaker 1: personal relationships. It was about our universal experience of everyday things.
Speaker 1: For John has have got to be the world's funniest clothes?
Speaker 1: Who designed them to look that way? Like a little
Speaker 1: tiny suit? Notice little collar button down and a breast pocket.
Speaker 1: There's a useful item. Is anybody using the breast pocket
Speaker 1: a John's? Seinfeld asked questions we wished we'd thought of,
Speaker 1: then he'd answer them with a casual priss vision that
Speaker 1: seemed to spin comedy out of nothing. In eight years
Speaker 1: after his HBO debut, he and Larry David created a
Speaker 1: weekly series that would change both their lives. This is
Speaker 1: the show, and we're not going to change it. Right,
Speaker 1: how about this? I managed a Circus Seinfeld brand for
Speaker 1: nine seasons on NBC. It was a critical and popular success.
Speaker 1: The show about nothing, as it's been described, challenged some
Speaker 1: long established laws of mainstream television comedy. It was brilliantly unsentimental.
Speaker 1: The characters rarely exhibited emotions other than exasperation what was
Speaker 1: going on and on set, the writers held strongly to
Speaker 1: a principle they dubbed no hugging, no learning. The seventies
Speaker 1: six million viewers who watched the series finale waited to
Speaker 1: see what would happen next to the performers they've grown
Speaker 1: to love, and even though conventional wisdom predicted spinoffs and sequels,
Speaker 1: Jerry Seinfeld went back to stand up and it wasn't easy.
Speaker 1: All of the stuff I've never said before anyone. So
Speaker 1: this hoppen has developed to as you say, it's quite painful.
Speaker 1: He's done a few other projects as well. The latest
Speaker 1: on the internet is a show called Comedians in Cars
Speaker 1: Getting Coffee, which combines some of his favorite things, driving
Speaker 1: while talking to his friends and drinking coffee. It's funny
Speaker 1: that you picked at Jaguar, because I have a secret
Speaker 1: love of Jaguars, but I'm not a car person and
Speaker 1: I don't believe in spending money on cars. And no offense.
Speaker 1: Jerry Seinfeld has it figured out. He isn't destroying himself
Speaker 1: trying to prove something. He isn't tortured by the challenges
Speaker 1: of his art. He keeps things simple and clear. Take
Speaker 1: his regular morning routine. When he wakes up. If my
Speaker 1: wife is up, I like that because I do not
Speaker 1: like cat pulling around. I want to get up. Let's go, baby.
Speaker 1: So the first thing I want, yeah, I want, I
Speaker 1: want sports radio on. And I and I washed, and
Speaker 1: I run the faucets and I start splashing my face
Speaker 1: with water like Mace in the hustler like Mace and
Speaker 1: the how was gonna see more? Like Joan Crawford before
Speaker 1: she goes in the studio to see Gleeson And the
Speaker 1: hustler goes into the bathroom splashes his face with water
Speaker 1: to revive for the next round. I took that. I said,
Speaker 1: that's great. I'm gonna do that. That's how you face life.
Speaker 1: Water the water, if I splash water. What if you
Speaker 1: go on stage? Is that what you do? Do you?
Speaker 1: After I come off? You come off? When I come off.
Speaker 1: The hardest thing when you come off is to return
Speaker 1: to your actual person out. You've blown your personality up
Speaker 1: to this. You know, joker Jack Nicholson face. And when
Speaker 1: you come off stage, I gotta go back to me
Speaker 1: and I need a minute. People try and talk to
Speaker 1: me when I come off. I can't talk to him.
Speaker 1: I got I gotta splash some water. I gotta yeah,
Speaker 1: I got beautiful towels. Give me. That's how I like
Speaker 1: to start the morning. Shades up radio, sports radio one
Speaker 1: splashing yes, and then and then what do you have
Speaker 1: for breakfast? What's breakfast? Oatmeal, hunting and cinnamon. So there's
Speaker 1: a kind of a military theme. There's a kind of
Speaker 1: a military base theme. You at home doesn't resemble a
Speaker 1: military base. I'm not funny. People die, people gonna get hurt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want me on that stage? You need me on
Speaker 1: that stage. Is that how you feel? No? No, you
Speaker 1: don't know what word do you just use to describe
Speaker 1: what you do? What word do you use? What describes
Speaker 1: what you do? Well, there's a term for it. I
Speaker 1: don't need to describe it with another called stand up comedy.
Speaker 1: Because you call yourself a comic. You don't call yourself
Speaker 1: an actor. No, I'm not an actor. You're not an actor.
Speaker 1: I have acted. Have you ever considered doing anything dramatic?
Speaker 1: Why to what end? Okay, it's just a waste of time. Yes,
Speaker 1: So when when you saw someone like I mean the
Speaker 1: most you know, blaring example is when Jerry Lewis does
Speaker 1: King of Comedy and crushes it. When Jerry Lewis comes
Speaker 1: in there and plays that kind of just arid, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was so remarkable his performance, it was breathtaking. He
Speaker 1: was breath. You don't remember the movie, yea, I thought
Speaker 1: he was breath And you don't see yourself doing that
Speaker 1: kind of in the hands of someone like that. Of
Speaker 1: course you do something like that, but that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But that's his movie. Are you grading me? Am? I am?
Speaker 1: I not getting it right here. I'm just I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm just riffing with you, and I'm just saying that,
Speaker 1: um what I do is um um the only thing
Speaker 1: that makes sense to me. But I'm not disagreeing with you.
Speaker 1: I'm saying that there are people that come out on film,
Speaker 1: you know, comics, stand up comics clubs, performing, maybe they
Speaker 1: go into sitcoms with the shows or just be b joke,
Speaker 1: be b joke, they tell jokes, and then they go
Speaker 1: into the movie business. And there's some sense that there's
Speaker 1: going to be and again not just stand up people,
Speaker 1: but the improvisatory groups. You know, if they come from
Speaker 1: UCB or Groundlings Corral is a good example, and they
Speaker 1: come on. And there was an amount of acting that's
Speaker 1: required when you did your TV show, there was some
Speaker 1: acting that was required. So but you don't but you
Speaker 1: gotta act the whole show. But but some saying, so
Speaker 1: you don't call yourself an actor that you just say
Speaker 1: I'm a comic. If I'm on the show acting, then
Speaker 1: i'm acting. I'm I'm a comedian. Okay, I'm a stand
Speaker 1: up comedian. That's what I call myself. But I can act.
Speaker 1: I just see the need for it. I don't think
Speaker 1: the world needs me to do that. This is Paul Rudd.
Speaker 1: What do you need me for? You got you got
Speaker 1: a guy for that. We got a guy for that
Speaker 1: who can do Can he do what I'm doing? Can
Speaker 1: he step into my shoes? Now? There's many people that
Speaker 1: can do that thing and I and I wish them
Speaker 1: all the luck and success. But my thing only I
Speaker 1: can do my own head. My thing is too just
Speaker 1: you know, you probably splashed a lot of water in
Speaker 1: your face. Is shoot, you're splashing an inordinate amount of
Speaker 1: really brisk water. It's almost always three splashes. I'm trying.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling eight or nine splashes. We went on this
Speaker 1: morning because you're loaded for bear. We're like in a
Speaker 1: deposition here. I love talking with you. You know that.
Speaker 1: I love talking with you. Okay, so um? Who makes
Speaker 1: it in comedy? Who are the ones that make it?
Speaker 1: And it's a change in your lifetime? What does it take?
Speaker 1: Who's in show business? Let's answer that question, because I
Speaker 1: have I'll tell you who's in show business. You know
Speaker 1: it's in show business? Like who wants to be more
Speaker 1: than anyone else? Those are the people that are in it,
Speaker 1: the people that just go I want to be in it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be in it. Do I have the
Speaker 1: skill set? Do I have a talent? I have something
Speaker 1: to offer? We'll find out or not. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: I may not. I take on that with between Paccino.
Speaker 1: I said to him, what do you do when you
Speaker 1: do a movie and the other person isn't that good?
Speaker 1: Like you're doing a scene, and I said, you go
Speaker 1: up to the director and give them notes, say tell
Speaker 1: them this other And said, no, I never do that.
Speaker 1: I never do that. No, no, no, I said, I said,
Speaker 1: what do you do? I? I said, what do you
Speaker 1: do when the people that you're working with they just
Speaker 1: I mean, you're so talented, and it's like tennis and
Speaker 1: you and you're and you're hitting the ball with some
Speaker 1: and they're not that talented. And he said, Alec, Alec.
Speaker 1: All of us in the business are talented. Everybody's talented.
Speaker 1: Some of us are just more talented than others. But
Speaker 1: everybody in the room when you're working, they've got some
Speaker 1: kind of talent. Like you'd say, he has a talented
Speaker 1: for storytelling. He had a talent for this. But you
Speaker 1: are saying that people who determination is a big part
Speaker 1: of it. I'm saying it's most of the people we
Speaker 1: see in in the arts are there not because they
Speaker 1: had the most to offer, but because they wanted to
Speaker 1: be there the most. You believe. So when you're in
Speaker 1: clubs in your early years and you'd see people who
Speaker 1: were working, did you have did you not? Not that
Speaker 1: you cared about this or you were focused on this,
Speaker 1: but would you Sometimes because my friends who were in
Speaker 1: clubs and who were comics, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: evaluating of each other in the competition. It was very competitive,
Speaker 1: and would you look at people and say, I think
Speaker 1: he's got it or she's got and they're gonna make
Speaker 1: it and they don't or this one doesn't. And and
Speaker 1: a big part of your saying it is just the
Speaker 1: drive as they want it. They're a dog on a bone.
Speaker 1: You see a lot of that, don't you think? I
Speaker 1: think so? Well? In the in the movie business, you
Speaker 1: can see people who they put it before everything else,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean they're not what business? What what
Speaker 1: field of endeavor has the highest bullshit factor? Right? In
Speaker 1: your opinion? Um, because you've been in a number of
Speaker 1: different branches. Now, well, I think, well, obviously a government
Speaker 1: is I think entertainment. Did you enjoy the Anthony Weiner
Speaker 1: Show this season or not? The show put on for
Speaker 1: us when when that was going on? Did you were
Speaker 1: you disgusted? Were you going? I love this? I I
Speaker 1: loved it because to me it was the visible man.
Speaker 1: Let's take off the face of the clock and watch
Speaker 1: the gears and that's what that was. This is you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about people our ownership show business because they
Speaker 1: want to be he wants to have he just wants it,
Speaker 1: wants and most of most of them have all the
Speaker 1: guyses and veils and and you know police, well, they
Speaker 1: pretend that what you just hit on a very important point,
Speaker 1: which is that they pretend to some degree that it's selfless.
Speaker 1: That also, yeah, that that they don't crave power. But
Speaker 1: the other thing about Weener that I found unusual. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: this is I'm not going to say anything. I don't
Speaker 1: think I'm capable of saying anything that hasn't been said before.
Speaker 1: But the idea that you want to take pictures of
Speaker 1: your genitalia and send it to women that you barely know.
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's an unconscious part of him that's like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna send pictures of my genitalia to a couple
Speaker 1: of women who I don't even know that well, and
Speaker 1: let's see what happens. Let's let's roll the dice here.
Speaker 1: I'm putting all my chips on black. I'm all in.
Speaker 1: I got another pile, and I'm all in on sending
Speaker 1: this chicken picture of my you know what, of my personality.
Speaker 1: I don't have that desire, right, I'm not exacts. It's
Speaker 1: easier to understand than his get off was. Ding. He
Speaker 1: looks at the phone. Ding, let's it just press send.
Speaker 1: Where where's the thrill? Everybody has a has some component
Speaker 1: of them for what I call negative excitement, like what's
Speaker 1: your thing you want to do that that you indulge
Speaker 1: some weakness of yours? You know what I mean? Some
Speaker 1: people have food issues, they have drinking. Mine would be yours. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't think I mean beyond tomato sauce. Maybe. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not that you are. And for people who don't
Speaker 1: know you, see, this is the thing that in all honesty,
Speaker 1: I always when I think about you, the list of
Speaker 1: things I think about is is how not just professional
Speaker 1: and committed in all those other kind of lame were
Speaker 1: you know, lazier words, but how you know, just just
Speaker 1: focused and hard working. You are Like a lot of
Speaker 1: people look at you and view you as someone who
Speaker 1: is but let's be very candid. I mean you're someone people,
Speaker 1: but people view you as someone who is this incredibly
Speaker 1: gifted person. I love this show, right, and no you are.
Speaker 1: But the point is that you like you don't work.
Speaker 1: It's like you do things like like you going on
Speaker 1: on a trip to go do some gigs. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a thing. You're probably just doing a favor for
Speaker 1: someone that's more you. I don't think that's the general perception.
Speaker 1: I think that's you. I think you're amn to me
Speaker 1: or what you think. Yeah, I think that's your sense
Speaker 1: I'm projecting. Yeah, I think you're projecting. But you know
Speaker 1: that that's not me. No, no, not at all. You
Speaker 1: know that I love to work. You've incredibly so, but
Speaker 1: but not um, I'm not driven by anything very healthy healthy.
Speaker 1: I'm not driving by anything unwholesome. But you're healthier. But
Speaker 1: you are healthier than anybody else I've ever met in
Speaker 1: your profession. Everybody else I've met in your profession, it
Speaker 1: was you could do Saturday Night Live and be roaming
Speaker 1: the hallways of that building. Yeah, for over the course
Speaker 1: of you know, it's really more like four days, not
Speaker 1: a full week, and you're around them other people. I
Speaker 1: did a sitcom with other people. I've been around a
Speaker 1: lot of people who make their living in comedy. I
Speaker 1: made films with them, and some of them you'd be
Speaker 1: around them. You know, within ten minutes you understood what
Speaker 1: was really their deepest problem that they hadn't resolved. Some
Speaker 1: of them took a question a few days. You don't
Speaker 1: have any problems. No, I don't, but I do relate
Speaker 1: very deeply to to all of those people. Describe. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was watching the Emmys. Is the only part of
Speaker 1: the Emmys that I like when they do the Comedy
Speaker 1: Writing Award and each Comedy writing staff puts up funny pictures,
Speaker 1: and then when the the actual staff comes up on
Speaker 1: the stage and you see these gnome like cretans just
Speaker 1: kind of all misshapen, and and I go, this is me,
Speaker 1: this is who I am. This is that's my group people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you don't. Yeah, do you see that in me? Okay,
Speaker 1: well then you've learned something here today. What did I learn?
Speaker 1: You learned that despite maybe I am healthy and somewhat functional,
Speaker 1: but I can I see myself as one of those
Speaker 1: guys that that that that group of Colbert Report writers
Speaker 1: that are just it looks like we would never let
Speaker 1: them speak to Colbert must Now those that's where I
Speaker 1: want to hang out with those guys. You do, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Barry, Yeah, yeah, you're more comfortable with the berries
Speaker 1: of that. I'm only comfortable only with those people, really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: describe Barry, you have a special relation. Harry Martyr is
Speaker 1: my very special friend. Barry is the author of the
Speaker 1: Letters from a Nut Book under the nom de plume
Speaker 1: ted L Nancy, and he is UM. He's also fascinating
Speaker 1: compilation of function and dysfunction, which any interesting person is. UM.
Speaker 1: He's a guy Who's what I love about Barries. I
Speaker 1: can call him right now it's eleven thirty that he
Speaker 1: will just say hello. He's always there, always at home.
Speaker 1: He's got a red couch. His living room looks like
Speaker 1: a murder scene. This, you know, uh, very scary looking
Speaker 1: stains on a white rug. He lives into Lucca Lake
Speaker 1: to Luca Lake, and we talk every day, usually an
Speaker 1: hour on a good day, two hours. And UM were
Speaker 1: talking yesterday about chantics, the quit smoking drug commercial where
Speaker 1: they list the side effects, and one of the ones
Speaker 1: that people have experienced with chantics is weird dreams. And
Speaker 1: now we're trying to figure out, well, what's a weird dream?
Speaker 1: And do they have a hotline that you can call up? Say, Bob,
Speaker 1: I got a guy here's you know, woke up. He
Speaker 1: dreamt he had orangutank feet. Is that weird? And he goes, no,
Speaker 1: I've had that one, you know, that's that's weird. Who
Speaker 1: who doesn't have weird dreams. There's no dream. It's not
Speaker 1: weird exactly. It's to be done to. I had a
Speaker 1: dream last night. It's funny to say that because I
Speaker 1: don't dream. Do you dream? Or you a dreamer? Everyone dreams.
Speaker 1: I don't remember my dreams very rarely. You're a good sleeper, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the super healthy man that you are, that man the water,
Speaker 1: the revel e, the up in the morning. I don't
Speaker 1: want a cat pour around. That man sleeps well. He
Speaker 1: sleeps well. Yeah, because I I have and you lay
Speaker 1: down in yours to people have nothing to keep me up?
Speaker 1: Is that what kop up? That? I don't think I
Speaker 1: do bad things to people. You know, in the Jewish religion,
Speaker 1: we have a day to day of atonement. It's your
Speaker 1: own kipper. When you think of the things that you
Speaker 1: did during the year. Uh, and you repent. So when
Speaker 1: you say so for you, that's a very short it's
Speaker 1: almost like a moment. Yeah, exactly. You walk down the street,
Speaker 1: you kind of looked down at the crack of the
Speaker 1: cyber food and counter three and go, okay, I'm done.
Speaker 1: I don't you thought I did. I did snap at
Speaker 1: that woman when she spilled the coffee on my I
Speaker 1: would never do that. You would never do that. No,
Speaker 1: I would never snap at somebody, never, never, never. I
Speaker 1: wish I could say the same thing. I have snapped
Speaker 1: at some people in my life. But a certain breed
Speaker 1: of people, people I thought were nothing, gets to me
Speaker 1: more upset than than you paying attention to those. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't like that. I do have because you're one
Speaker 1: of the great entertainers that I try to glorify and
Speaker 1: call it like I have like a Swayne syndrome. I
Speaker 1: gotta put that cape on, I gotta get the door,
Speaker 1: and I gotta straighten these people out. In my mind,
Speaker 1: that light is flashing. Commissioner Gordon is flashing that light,
Speaker 1: and I gotta go downstairs, get in the car, go
Speaker 1: out the tunnel, and Robin and I have to go
Speaker 1: beat the living ship out of as many photographers as
Speaker 1: we possibly can. You talk to him for an hour
Speaker 1: or two hours? Is it? Is it a therapy for you? Yes?
Speaker 1: Because yes, because we don't talk about anything important, no agenda,
Speaker 1: and we could just go on'm bored of this and
Speaker 1: then it just and then just change yourself. You don't
Speaker 1: even say I'm bored of this. I'll just change the subject.
Speaker 1: You just are on the same frequency, the two of you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we love the sipping coffee and allowedly you know on
Speaker 1: the phone that you know this this sound. Yes, I
Speaker 1: like to tighten my too. I do type. Do you
Speaker 1: get back to Barry? Because I have a friend like that.
Speaker 1: My friend an adopts no. But I find that we
Speaker 1: all have to have a person who is that kind
Speaker 1: of a soul mate. You can really talk. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting that it's a guy like my wife. Now it's
Speaker 1: very close to that. I mean I can tell her anything.
Speaker 1: I can say anything. I can say anything and she'll
Speaker 1: look at me and she and there will be some judgment.
Speaker 1: Because all women want to fix the man. Therewith. I
Speaker 1: want to think that they have some that they're they
Speaker 1: have some kind of supervisory function in our lives. I've
Speaker 1: learned to have my wife take my inventory, tell me
Speaker 1: what's really going on, show me what I'm missing about myself,
Speaker 1: see what you're not seeing is. And now what I
Speaker 1: do is I sit there and I go, first of all,
Speaker 1: I go like this, and then's just say, are you
Speaker 1: listening to me? I'm like, yes, I'm every word. I
Speaker 1: agree with you. You're totally right. I do do that.
Speaker 1: It's wrong, it's wrong, and I really need to thank you.
Speaker 1: I need to look at that more closely, Like if
Speaker 1: you're bringing that, I call Ronnie, who's my Barry. There's
Speaker 1: none of that, there's no there's no judgment, there's no
Speaker 1: supervisory function. Is that the way it is with Barry Um?
Speaker 1: If I ask for it, I will often I will
Speaker 1: ask him, uh, the most challenging questions of life to me?
Speaker 1: Had he work related? Work related? Personal? You know, you know,
Speaker 1: almost every call we have it's why are we what
Speaker 1: are we doing? Why are we here? Why are we
Speaker 1: even alive? And he's give me an answer. He'll give
Speaker 1: me an answer. What does he say? Why are we alive?
Speaker 1: According to Barry Um, he would probably say, um, to
Speaker 1: sit on the stained sofa into Luca Lake and think
Speaker 1: the great thoughts. Yeah, that's right, to laugh, to have fun,
Speaker 1: to enjoy ourselves, Yeah, to enjoy ourselves happy. Now he
Speaker 1: gives you professional feedback? Is there someone when you were
Speaker 1: coming up? They gave you a professional feedback? You were
Speaker 1: completely self determining? Yes, Why do you think that is?
Speaker 1: You never turned to people? Not that I'm saying this
Speaker 1: is good or bad. You never turned to somebody's like,
Speaker 1: how do you think I'm doing? No, Look, my mother
Speaker 1: is an orphan. My father left the house probably eleven
Speaker 1: years old to work on the street and make a
Speaker 1: living on the Lower East Side. You know, they got
Speaker 1: married in their forties. They had no concept of what
Speaker 1: a family should even be. And all I craved was
Speaker 1: the same fierce independence that they had in their lives. Instructible, indestructible,
Speaker 1: self contained, self reliant people. This is not great going
Speaker 1: into a marriage, may I say? You know? And I
Speaker 1: was that guy saying, well, I gotta go now, I
Speaker 1: gotta go to work. And you don't think that this
Speaker 1: might be a problem for a person that's not used
Speaker 1: to being around that. So it took me a long
Speaker 1: time to learn that. You know that you have to
Speaker 1: be understand because to me, to me, this life, my life,
Speaker 1: what I would call my life in comedy, is a
Speaker 1: life of sacrifice that I am only too happy to make.
Speaker 1: All my relationships I got married at forty five. All
Speaker 1: my relationships were as disposable as a dixie cup. Excuse me?
Speaker 1: With women you made, Yes, I gotta work, you've gone.
Speaker 1: But well if you don't, if you don't want you know, well,
Speaker 1: if you if you're gonna be on the road that much,
Speaker 1: we can't be together. Goodbye, goodbye. This is this my
Speaker 1: I have had a sense of mission. You were like
Speaker 1: Lee Strasburg in The Godfather Part two. Yes, when he says,
Speaker 1: if I come back here, I have a partner. I
Speaker 1: know I have a partner. If it's not, i'll know,
Speaker 1: I don't, I'll know, I don't what he said, I'm
Speaker 1: going in the other room. It's the last time a
Speaker 1: really out of shape man took his shirt off in
Speaker 1: a movie and it wasn't bad. Hair on the top
Speaker 1: of the shoulders, a little little little like a little
Speaker 1: tumbleweeds of hair. Yeah, did you know him? Did you
Speaker 1: know when I studied acting at this school on fift Street,
Speaker 1: When I went and why you I went to Strasburg.
Speaker 1: They assigned you to the studio. You went to Adler
Speaker 1: Strasberg's up. I went to Strasburg, and I had wonderful teachers,
Speaker 1: Marsha how Freckt and Jeffrey horn Is a wonderful too,
Speaker 1: beautiful people. But you know the method of Strasburg was
Speaker 1: very uh severe. Did it work for you? One of
Speaker 1: the well it opened up your eyes to the idea
Speaker 1: of whatever word you want to use. I'm never going
Speaker 1: to use the right word for everyone. To mind your
Speaker 1: past and mind your emotional fabric to get where you
Speaker 1: want to go. Whereas Strasburg and Stanislavski, both people don't
Speaker 1: necessarily stumble across this fine print and all these writings
Speaker 1: of their where what Stanislavski and Strasburg both said is
Speaker 1: that the method, so to speak, is something that you
Speaker 1: apply only if the inspiration fails you. You don't you
Speaker 1: don't need to go off into a room and twist
Speaker 1: yourself into some kind of psychological pretzel to do this work.
Speaker 1: If you can just say the words and you're there,
Speaker 1: you feel connected to the character in and of yourself.
Speaker 1: Do you do you have a desire as an actor
Speaker 1: to be one of those guys, one of those I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take my rib cage and separated. When I was younger,
Speaker 1: I did you did when I was younger, I did
Speaker 1: did you feel you there was there was there a
Speaker 1: role where you felt you got close? Tonight, when I
Speaker 1: did street Car named Desire on Broadway and Amy Madigan,
Speaker 1: I would scream Stella, stella for her to come downstairs
Speaker 1: and Amy would come in. The minute I would touch Amy,
Speaker 1: I'd burst into tears. And remember I didn't I loved
Speaker 1: Amy more than any woman I ever loved, you know,
Speaker 1: at that moment, I mean and it was real, right,
Speaker 1: I was in love with Amy. Do you think I'm
Speaker 1: capable of that kind of work? I think you are.
Speaker 1: It would be a tremendous mistake your car, it would
Speaker 1: be a huge would be one of the poorest choices
Speaker 1: probably in show business history, for you to go and
Speaker 1: to say, you want to know, what do you want
Speaker 1: to do? A street car on um. I was in
Speaker 1: an acting class with a guy did have me play Brick.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of know how tin roof He because
Speaker 1: I was able to handle the light comedy so easily.
Speaker 1: He said, you, I need to challenge you more. So
Speaker 1: he had me. Then he said, I want you to
Speaker 1: study the role of Brick. Wasn't that the name of
Speaker 1: the character, And yeah, Maggie and Brick. Yeah. Well that's
Speaker 1: when I left that. There's a girl I could you'll
Speaker 1: you'll appreciate this because you're from Long Island. And I
Speaker 1: met this woman, uh many years later, and even she
Speaker 1: laughed about it. So I can say this, remember Pergament's
Speaker 1: hardware storm. Okay, I went to I went to college.
Speaker 1: I went to g W for three years and I
Speaker 1: went and I took my last year there, my junior
Speaker 1: year before I climbed over the wall there and went
Speaker 1: to end. While you to study acting, I took acting
Speaker 1: for non drama majors. It was a gut course you
Speaker 1: take at GW. I took acting for non drama majors.
Speaker 1: And everyone in the class this was one of the
Speaker 1: things that gave me the the impetus to be an
Speaker 1: actor because everyone in the class was so horrible and
Speaker 1: I could, I could. I squeaked by like I wasn't
Speaker 1: that bad. I was okay in terms of performing. And
Speaker 1: the teacher said to me, I want you to do
Speaker 1: a scene from Canta huntin roof of Maggie Brick scene.
Speaker 1: And your partner is Debbie Pergament, who was the daughter
Speaker 1: and then I don't want to call her the heir
Speaker 1: to the Pergaman fortune, but let's just say that for
Speaker 1: our comedy purposes, Debbie Pergaman and literally she was this
Speaker 1: lovely girl, adorable, gorgeous, really cute as the day is long.
Speaker 1: But she was from you know, like rosalind or somewhere.
Speaker 1: So when she would say she was the only person
Speaker 1: who made brick a bicyllabic where she was like a
Speaker 1: brick brick, I am like a cat's on a Hudson
Speaker 1: roof here, I am so upset. Debbie Pergmant was with
Speaker 1: my partner in a scene study class and it was
Speaker 1: it was eye opening. So where do we want to
Speaker 1: go now? Your your career now? Um you you you're
Speaker 1: seeing another corridor for yourself. Is something you want to explore,
Speaker 1: something you have to offer or be honest with me.
Speaker 1: Are you just tired and you just don't want to
Speaker 1: travel and shlap and deal with these idiots you want
Speaker 1: to know? The truth is I want to be more
Speaker 1: like you, really, because you are either re happy, Like
Speaker 1: I look at you when I see to myself, everything
Speaker 1: is always like why aren't you doing what other people do? What? Meaning?
Speaker 1: Like the first thing people would say in the business,
Speaker 1: I mean even outside the business, if they have some
Speaker 1: savvy about it, what they say, did Jerry want to
Speaker 1: ramp up a production company and just print TV shows?
Speaker 1: I mean, how many sitcoms could you have launched with
Speaker 1: the infra mater of your name, forget it, forget it.
Speaker 1: You could have your own channel, the Jerry Channel. But
Speaker 1: I didn't take that bait. Why because I know what
Speaker 1: it is. I know what it is. That's why you
Speaker 1: can't pull that over on me. What what is? I've
Speaker 1: sat in all the chairs, I've been in all the rooms.
Speaker 1: I know what it is. Look Alec you you've you've
Speaker 1: been there right, Yes, you can't trick me into thinking
Speaker 1: thinking what that's good? That's why, because don't. Most of
Speaker 1: it is not native work and not reaching an audience.
Speaker 1: You want to be on the water. How do you
Speaker 1: want to be on the water. You want to be
Speaker 1: on a yacht. You want to be on a surfboard.
Speaker 1: I want to be on a surfboard. I don't want
Speaker 1: to deal with the yacht. That's a yacht. And you
Speaker 1: just also some people want a yacht to say, to
Speaker 1: see my yacht, And you just didn't want people do you,
Speaker 1: And you also didn't want to ultimately wind up putting
Speaker 1: your name as is often the case. Look at which
Speaker 1: if you're the goose that lays the golden egg, you're
Speaker 1: the successful person and it all emanates you're the godhead
Speaker 1: if you will comedy wise, and you go launch all
Speaker 1: these other shows, and all those other shows they aren't
Speaker 1: maybe as good, And how much of your well, why
Speaker 1: doesn't he want to do it? How much would have
Speaker 1: to even for much for you to be in there,
Speaker 1: for ones of you just to put whatever it is, yeah,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Let me tell you why my TV
Speaker 1: series in the nineties was so good besides an inordinate
Speaker 1: amount of just pure good fortune. And most TV series,
Speaker 1: fifty percent of the time is spent working on the show,
Speaker 1: fifty percent of the time is spent dealing with personality, political,
Speaker 1: and hierarchical issues of making something. We spent our time
Speaker 1: writing me and Larry the door was closed, some somebody calls.
Speaker 1: We're not taking the call. We're gonna We're gonna make
Speaker 1: this seem funny. That's why the show was good. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to go from that two. Um you know
Speaker 1: some some H. G. Wells contraption machine you know of
Speaker 1: of trying to control the weather. That's what That's what
Speaker 1: these these deals are. That's what making a movie is.
Speaker 1: What's a movie. It's this giant machine, is this giant ship,
Speaker 1: and everybody gets on it and they shove off and
Speaker 1: nobody knows where it's going, and the captain is doing
Speaker 1: where's the captain's he's getting high and and and and
Speaker 1: you know, and sleeping with the first mate. Period. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's too much time and energy spent. That is
Speaker 1: not the juice. The really good stuff is a great line.
Speaker 1: So when when you go out a stand up comedian,
Speaker 1: I can control that. So when you go out on
Speaker 1: stage now, so for now, for you, other than whatever
Speaker 1: other things you're involved with, writing or comedians and cars
Speaker 1: with coffee and so forth, you go out on stage,
Speaker 1: you perform live. How many shows you do on average?
Speaker 1: Would you say, I'm not sure. It varies, but you're
Speaker 1: on the road how many? How many shows a year? Um?
Speaker 1: Maybe seventy so so you do seventy five appearances a year.
Speaker 1: And is it just very simply a case where you
Speaker 1: walk out there, that exchange of energy between you and them.
Speaker 1: They want what you've got, you want what they've got.
Speaker 1: You're at home, you feel comfortable, you're happy. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's a very fulfilling, uh unsolvable puzzle
Speaker 1: that is endlessly um it just because it goes right
Speaker 1: to your soul. Does every night need to be different
Speaker 1: if you can make it, so do you try to
Speaker 1: make it different that there's nothing I can do about that.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be different. It's gonna be different. But if
Speaker 1: I can get him right where I want them and
Speaker 1: and get myself where I want myself, and the thing
Speaker 1: just explodes, well, you know, it's fun. That's life. People
Speaker 1: who perform live. I'll never forget. There was an article
Speaker 1: like an Esquire magazine or somewhere, and they did an
Speaker 1: article about Wayne Newton and they took it was about Vegas,
Speaker 1: and I think it was about Wayne Newton, and I
Speaker 1: love this article. And they weren't mean towards him, were
Speaker 1: diminishing him, and they were saying how they thought it
Speaker 1: was uncanny how the guy went to the show in
Speaker 1: Vegas with a stopwatch and Newton came out and he
Speaker 1: did the same thing every show, the same exact thing,
Speaker 1: the same exact beats. It was just it was just
Speaker 1: he just cloned one show after that and he would
Speaker 1: come out, but he would create the dynamic tension that
Speaker 1: this show was different, and he come out on stage
Speaker 1: and people will be screaming, and the women are throwing
Speaker 1: their panties and they're throwing their hotel room keys, had
Speaker 1: him his crowd, and then he sit there and he'd say, um, um,
Speaker 1: you know, we gotta we gotta wrap this up. But
Speaker 1: you know I love you people. I'm gonna do someth
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sing a song I never sing anymore. And
Speaker 1: the song he just sang, like you know, ninety minutes ago,
Speaker 1: I singing number for you guys, I've never sing anymore.
Speaker 1: I never would never break this one out anymore. And
Speaker 1: he just re created the same, uh you know, mock
Speaker 1: freshness of the whole thing, which many performers. I assume
Speaker 1: they do that. Yeah, he used to say, tell him
Speaker 1: locked the doors. They don't want me to go long.
Speaker 1: But but this audience, I don't remember. I don't. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do something for you never I'm breaking the rules. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course you wouldn't right on the button. You
Speaker 1: performed in Vegas all the time. So they throw the
Speaker 1: hotel room key. How desperate is this entertainer, by the way,
Speaker 1: to just pick up d and go I'm heading over there.
Speaker 1: I'm going over there, which one of you was d
Speaker 1: Oh you, I'm sorry, let me give you your key back.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I don't want that Kike coming up. More
Speaker 1: from Jerry Seinfeld. He's got so many years of stand
Speaker 1: up under his belt. When he travels as he does
Speaker 1: most weekends, every move is planned. It is organized with
Speaker 1: military precision, not an ounce of fat. It's found on
Speaker 1: the day. It's three guys, three suits, three garment bags.
Speaker 1: We're in, we're out, and we have a great time.
Speaker 1: We worked very hard. It's zero dark thirty. It is
Speaker 1: you get the lot and go. I thinker put the
Speaker 1: dead bodies. It's a beautiful thing. This is what I
Speaker 1: was given from the TV series that I could live
Speaker 1: like this now on my own terms. That that's what
Speaker 1: we're looking for on my own terms terms. Right, God,
Speaker 1: that's such a foreign concept to me. Yes, the lack
Speaker 1: of an actor is anything bust acting, but right, but
Speaker 1: this is where we're moving now with Alec God. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh my god, on my own terms. More wisdom from
Speaker 1: Jerry Seinfeld in a moment. This is Alec Baldwin, this
Speaker 1: is alc Old one. When Jerry Seinfeld was ten years old,
Speaker 1: he started feverishly studying the techniques of stand up comedians
Speaker 1: on TV, devouring it everything. That's like, just like my
Speaker 1: daughter does Now, my daughters totally got whatever that gene
Speaker 1: I had, She's got it. She can do any voice, accent,
Speaker 1: takes lines. Her brother said to her, this one she's
Speaker 1: wearing glass. She has glasses. Her brother said, he said,
Speaker 1: are those are those real glasses? She looked at him,
Speaker 1: She said, what do you think that's she's twelve, she's
Speaker 1: already she's not ready to go play iron Rand at
Speaker 1: the local library and the fake glasses. But um, okay,
Speaker 1: so my house, um, I assume my my childhood was
Speaker 1: My relationship to my parents was you do what you
Speaker 1: gotta do. I'll do what I gotta do, and I'm
Speaker 1: just living here untill I can figure something else out.
Speaker 1: That was my house, and to me, that was great.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this. You and I was very independent.
Speaker 1: My father never hugged me, never told me he loved me,
Speaker 1: never threw me a ball. No problem. I'm good. I'm good.
Speaker 1: I'm good. He's You're good. You do whatever you some
Speaker 1: time together, right? Who was the guy who blew the
Speaker 1: horn in the in the when the tower and the
Speaker 1: tower fell over? Remember at the beginning of each show,
Speaker 1: I forget what was it? Was it Larry? It was
Speaker 1: another No, Larry Storch was a garn he was. There
Speaker 1: was another enter, Captain Parmenter. He wasn't really funny. But
Speaker 1: there was another guy, another Larry, who was at the
Speaker 1: top of the time the tower would fall over. I
Speaker 1: mean he was that very kind of vanilla looking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It wasn't Larry Wilcox went on to do chips. No, No,
Speaker 1: it was another Larry anyway. But yeah, I was Abbert
Speaker 1: and Costello was. I really became obsessed with them because
Speaker 1: of the precision word play they were. See, that's where
Speaker 1: they went beyond there was there was Laurel and Hardy
Speaker 1: and then Martin Lewis, but Aben and Costello had this precision.
Speaker 1: I mean, who's on first is a piece of It's
Speaker 1: like that that museum in Spain, you know, the what
Speaker 1: you know? No, the other one that what's his name?
Speaker 1: Did that? Yeah? Whose real name is Goldberg by the way,
Speaker 1: yes it is, he changed it in college, Frank Frank, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the what's the name of that museum in northern Bill Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's what Who's on first? This it's like, what a construction,
Speaker 1: what a brilliant piece of construction. So and when I
Speaker 1: heard things like that. Um, I just would get very
Speaker 1: excited that you could do things like that with words
Speaker 1: and ideas and attitudes and and have laughs. You know,
Speaker 1: I have laughs. I remember when I was a kid
Speaker 1: and my dad would go to work and my brothers
Speaker 1: and sisters would go to school, and my mom was lonely.
Speaker 1: M I probably missed school like thirty or forty days
Speaker 1: a year. You did, and it was a game. I
Speaker 1: was totally full of ship. I said to my mom,
Speaker 1: I don't feel good. Remember like, all right, you get
Speaker 1: in there and go to the breakfast table and pretend
Speaker 1: you're going to school until your father and then when
Speaker 1: he's gone, you can go back upstairs. And I would
Speaker 1: go and lie on the couch and they would show
Speaker 1: the same movie five days in a row, so the
Speaker 1: housewives who could only catch a piece of it here
Speaker 1: and a piece so they show Inherit the Wind, And
Speaker 1: by Friday I was laying in bed. I missed school
Speaker 1: for three days and Friday Spencer Tracy would say, this
Speaker 1: man wants to be afforded the same rights as a sponge.
Speaker 1: He wishes to think, and I my lip sync the words.
Speaker 1: I knew that I'm like the door, I became a
Speaker 1: complete movie. So that's where it began. And then when
Speaker 1: we got into the Aaron Spelling years, I abandoned, never
Speaker 1: watched TV again. No Charloie's Angels And now what do
Speaker 1: you watch? Uh? Now, come into your house. It's ten
Speaker 1: forty five at night. Everyone's the wife, kids, babies of sleep.
Speaker 1: I'm reading, you're reading, I'm reading on the internet. I read,
Speaker 1: I read up, I read a book, or I read
Speaker 1: The New Yorker. To get me a sleep, reading we
Speaker 1: get fall asleep. But when I watched TV, God, when
Speaker 1: I NFL, I watched Makeup hooements for NFL sixty minutes.
Speaker 1: I watched MSNBC, I watched h I've watched snippets of
Speaker 1: these shows, you know, like Breaking Bad and these contemporary
Speaker 1: you know, these jokes. I don't have time. I don't
Speaker 1: have time. I don't I don't understand either, And I
Speaker 1: don't know where are they finding the time? Did you
Speaker 1: download House to Cards now? Eight hours? It's the first episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't do What are they doing? What kind of
Speaker 1: how long are their days? Well? I always would get that.
Speaker 1: I would always be flattered for a moment. There was
Speaker 1: always a double beat there. When someone would walk up
Speaker 1: to me with Lauren and they woke up, they'd say.
Speaker 1: Lauren would say, you know Dave here, Dave Swanson from
Speaker 1: you know, from Comcast, and I'd go high, nice to
Speaker 1: meet you. And he turned to Lauren and go, god,
Speaker 1: you guys, I gotta tell you my son broke his
Speaker 1: leg skiing and he was in bed. He was in traction.
Speaker 1: And we watched seasons two and three of thirty Rock
Speaker 1: and I thought I'd smile, and then I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's how you get to watch season's two and three three.
Speaker 1: You gotta go and break your leg skiing. You gotta
Speaker 1: go wrap yourself around a tree. Then you can layd
Speaker 1: and binge view all this. I don't understand how people
Speaker 1: are fitting this into their day. So there's not even
Speaker 1: one show that's your I really love Madmen because that
Speaker 1: was my dream growing up on Long Island was to
Speaker 1: get us Sampson I briefcase going along Island Railroad. I
Speaker 1: was going to go in the city and I was
Speaker 1: gonna work at a big ad agency and right funny ads.
Speaker 1: That was my first dream. That was because end up
Speaker 1: comedy that I was seeing on the Sullivan Show. That
Speaker 1: was too far out. That was these are some genius
Speaker 1: alien people. I could never be one of those. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna get that. But maybe I could be a
Speaker 1: copywriter or or something in the ad game. I love advertising.
Speaker 1: I like I like man I love Manhattan. You remember
Speaker 1: growing up in Massapeko, Manhattan was was oz. It was
Speaker 1: the Emerald City. Tell people when we were kids, there
Speaker 1: was no Bergen County correspondent. The Martians could have landed
Speaker 1: out in in in in in Hempstead. No one cared
Speaker 1: that the Martians did land in because they knew there
Speaker 1: were no cameras out there. When you grew up in
Speaker 1: art generation, it was like the mayor announced today of
Speaker 1: the subway. Today, the cops shot on the I n D.
Speaker 1: The prepetated this, the bank robbery, this, and it was
Speaker 1: all Manhattan, Manhattan, the Garden today, the heavyweight show. Everything
Speaker 1: was Manhattan, not even the other outer boroughs. Right. And
Speaker 1: when you lived at when you lived where we lived,
Speaker 1: that was Saskatchewan to the lead. Remember Alan Burke did
Speaker 1: Jeverse Allen Burke. Yes, And they would come up and
Speaker 1: they never correctly estimated the average height of New York
Speaker 1: of the podium was always way too high, Mr Bike,
Speaker 1: I just came in from Mars where the taxi and
Speaker 1: limousine commission there. They would be right back to some
Speaker 1: New York issue. So Madman, that is my family said,
Speaker 1: when did you cross over and decide I could do
Speaker 1: the other thing? Um? It was beginning in college, Queen's College.
Speaker 1: What did you study there? Theater, communications, film, all that stuff.
Speaker 1: I was, I was circling the field, you know, going
Speaker 1: how do I how could I? I wonder if I could?
Speaker 1: You know? Did you decide? Then Andy Kaufman happened. There's
Speaker 1: this guy in New York who goes up on stage
Speaker 1: and he plays the bongos and starts weeping. He's crazy
Speaker 1: to So we all ran in to see Andy Kaufman
Speaker 1: at the improv. And as soon as I walked in
Speaker 1: that room and I saw what was going on in there,
Speaker 1: I gotta get in on this. Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: be one of these. And when you got up there
Speaker 1: and finally through whatever apprenticeship you had, and when you
Speaker 1: got up there and you did that, was here a
Speaker 1: moment where like some guy comes up to you. I
Speaker 1: don't mean to be too Broadway Danny Roses, Yes, there
Speaker 1: was did some guy walcome to and kid, call me
Speaker 1: you got yes, there was you know who that guy was,
Speaker 1: Jackie Mason. Jackie Mason alec I was doing comedy about
Speaker 1: three weeks. Three weeks and I mean stumbling nobody three weeks.
Speaker 1: I'm nineteen years old, twenty years old of going up
Speaker 1: on stage. But it wasn't even a stage. There was
Speaker 1: a restaurant where they take a table out and they
Speaker 1: would take one of the lights, the lamp, and they
Speaker 1: would take the shade off it. That was the show.
Speaker 1: He was in the audience people right, was one of
Speaker 1: these cabaret things West forty four Ster was called the
Speaker 1: Golden Lion Pub. He crooks his finger and he says,
Speaker 1: come over here. He takes me over to the bar.
Speaker 1: He says, you have it. He says, you are going
Speaker 1: to be so big. He says, it makes me sick
Speaker 1: to even think of it, how successful you're gonna be.
Speaker 1: And I was just starting wow. And that, I mean,
Speaker 1: that was that was it, because he was, like, you know,
Speaker 1: he was very big comedians, still one of my favorites,
Speaker 1: great comedian. But to have a guy like that come
Speaker 1: up to you as a kid, I had that. That's
Speaker 1: still you know when I talked to you about I
Speaker 1: went in the improv and I saw all these guys
Speaker 1: and I thought, I want to be one of these guys.
Speaker 1: That's still how I feel now. Was there a moment
Speaker 1: when for me one of the real pure joys of
Speaker 1: this business are the people I've gotten to me and
Speaker 1: I don't want to, you know, go on and on on.
Speaker 1: But were there people who came to you that were
Speaker 1: like these godlike figures to you? Were you just admired
Speaker 1: them from your world? They came up to you and said,
Speaker 1: hey man, they went to you said it could be
Speaker 1: it could be Carson across the room out Jack Rollins,
Speaker 1: who I looked up because I saw your movie, which
Speaker 1: I loved, Blue Jasmine great, and I see, like Jack
Speaker 1: Rollins in the credit, I look, he's still alive. His
Speaker 1: daughter was a waitress at a comedy club on the
Speaker 1: Upper East Side, and she brought him in to see
Speaker 1: me and Larry Miller and Jimmy Broken, and he watched
Speaker 1: the three of us, and then he sat and talked
Speaker 1: with us afterwards, and he was very encouraging, very flattering.
Speaker 1: That was really big because we were in about a
Speaker 1: year at that point. We didn't know there was no
Speaker 1: business to get into. Even if we could do this
Speaker 1: didn't even exist. There was no place to work as
Speaker 1: a stand up comic in seven didn't even exist. It
Speaker 1: happened in the eighties. Once they were all these guys around.
Speaker 1: Then these clubs started opening around the country. What about
Speaker 1: someone else, someone beyond year old man have exist. In
Speaker 1: the credits of a Woody Allen movie, who was some
Speaker 1: iconic gave stand up figure. I saw Richard Pryor and
Speaker 1: in those days, um he would come into the clubs
Speaker 1: and we say something to George Carlin. No, never said
Speaker 1: anything to me, but just to meet those people. Was
Speaker 1: there one at some point who other than Mason said
Speaker 1: you've got it? Was? No, no, no. If you don't
Speaker 1: need that any any self respecting professional comedian, you don't
Speaker 1: need that. You don't need anyone or anything. You are
Speaker 1: built for brutality. You have this relationship with the audience
Speaker 1: that is private between you and them. You critics want
Speaker 1: to write, people want to talk. We we have our
Speaker 1: own thing that nobody, nobody can break that. Once you
Speaker 1: build that, it can't be broken by outside forces. This
Speaker 1: is the difference between being a comedian that has his
Speaker 1: own thing and everybody else in the entertainment field who
Speaker 1: needs to cooperate to survive. The comedian that you know,
Speaker 1: what do I care what somebody writes about my show?
Speaker 1: What do I care? So even doing the series, and
Speaker 1: even knowing I had these other avenues, I could pursue
Speaker 1: that that's so pure and so perfect and so good.
Speaker 1: It's not easy. It is a rigorous life to maintain that.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't I don't hang out on stage.
Speaker 1: You've seen the show. I don't hang out. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm up here to work. I'm gonna work for you
Speaker 1: because I respect this relationship and I want to keep it.
Speaker 1: I want to keep it because once you have that,
Speaker 1: you can do what you want. Jerry Seinfeld has meditated
Speaker 1: for over four decades and it shows. He says, it
Speaker 1: makes stress float away. I wanted to find out more
Speaker 1: about Jerry and meditation, so I called him transcendental meditation.
Speaker 1: That that's what I do t M. And how long
Speaker 1: have you been doing that? Since? Um seventy two? So
Speaker 1: so when did that come into your life? You like
Speaker 1: saw a billboard when you were at LA station at
Speaker 1: Oswego State University, where I was seriously rolled because I
Speaker 1: couldn't take senior year anymore. So I left high school
Speaker 1: six months early and got into college and left in
Speaker 1: the middle of senior year. Now I know you didn't
Speaker 1: do that because you were handsome and the girls were
Speaker 1: hanging off of you, and senior year was fantastic for you.
Speaker 1: That's what I know. It was a vending machine of women.
Speaker 1: Was well, it wasn't like that for me, buddy boy, Alright,
Speaker 1: So I thought, I got to get out of here
Speaker 1: and start a new life with people that don't know me.
Speaker 1: So I went to Oswego and while I was there,
Speaker 1: and I remember, this is a still in the flora
Speaker 1: and fauna of sixties experimentalism, so transcendental meditation. Somebody told
Speaker 1: me about it. I don't remember or who, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: let me see what that's about. And I went to
Speaker 1: the thing and I learned the technique. It cleared up
Speaker 1: my acne immediately. I had this great energy and focus,
Speaker 1: and I've been doing it the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: So you sound when you say you learned the technique
Speaker 1: and clear up your acne and your energy and focus,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you ultimately had the sex that had
Speaker 1: been evading you. Up till then before you went to Laswego.
Speaker 1: What was it? Correct? So the TM was really a
Speaker 1: pathway to two sex? Correct? How can I do it? Like? What? Like?
Speaker 1: Where do you do it? You can? You do it anywhere?
Speaker 1: You do it anywhere. I'm going to get you doing
Speaker 1: it now. I want to I want more energy, more
Speaker 1: focused on my acting to clear up. Well, you don't
Speaker 1: need you can't have more energy. You can't even dispose
Speaker 1: of the energy that you have. It's true, but it's
Speaker 1: toxic energy. It's more like a chernobyl than it is
Speaker 1: kind of This is a nice energy, really nice. Here's
Speaker 1: how I'll describe it to you. You know, have three
Speaker 1: times a year you wake up and you go, boy,
Speaker 1: that was a really good sleep. Yes, imagine feeling like
Speaker 1: that every day. Oh my god, that's what it is. Meditation.
Speaker 1: I gotta try that. This is Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to here's the thing.