Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories. What inspired their creations, what decisions changed
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. Both of my
Speaker 1: guests today are pioneers. In nineteen seventy three, Erica John's
Speaker 1: frank treatment of women's sexual desires in her novel Theory
Speaker 1: of Flying was as controversial as it was revolutionary. Two
Speaker 1: years later, in nineteen seventy five, Lauren Michaels created Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Live, a television show that was and still is
Speaker 1: the biggest influence on American comedy today. Here it is,
Speaker 1: as you can see verifiably, it is a check made
Speaker 1: out to you the Beatles for three thousand dollars. All
Speaker 1: you have to do is sing three Beatle tunes She
Speaker 1: loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. That's a thousand dollars right there.
Speaker 1: Lauren Michaels has launched the careers of John Blue, She
Speaker 1: Dan Ackroyd, Gilda Radner, and Bill Murray. Then there's Chris Farley,
Speaker 1: Will Farrell, Tina Fey, Kristin Wigg and Chris Rock Always
Speaker 1: I haven't been you, havn't been poor day since I
Speaker 1: met Lauren Michaels, and I never been broke since I met.
Speaker 1: Both on television and in film, Michael's is the kingmaker
Speaker 1: of comic actors. He's also a rare producer and that
Speaker 1: he's truly involved in all aspects of production. Yet he
Speaker 1: says when he does his job right, he leaves no
Speaker 1: fingerprints behind Lauren. Michael's life in comedy began in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties when he worked at the Canadian Broadcasting
Speaker 1: Corporation in Toronto, alongside his writing and performing partner Heart Pomerats.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't television. Lord Michaels started out in radio.
Speaker 1: There's a show called five Nights a week at this time,
Speaker 1: and we did political satire every week. We thought we
Speaker 1: were potentially bringing down the government, and the fact that
Speaker 1: no one was listening didn't occur to us for at
Speaker 1: least the first year. But we loved doing it. It
Speaker 1: was just a chance to write and perform every week. Now,
Speaker 1: where did that begin though? For you? Did you go
Speaker 1: to school for that or did you? No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: I went when I graduated from University of Toronto, I
Speaker 1: had taken nothing that was of any drama theater. I'd
Speaker 1: worked in the theater there, but it was more. There
Speaker 1: was a review that University College u S Follies, which
Speaker 1: was a satirical review music and comedy, and I co
Speaker 1: wrote that and directed it. So so from the beginning,
Speaker 1: I mean, even before you go into CBC radio and
Speaker 1: before Hart pomerants there, even in college what you characterize
Speaker 1: a satiric review comedy review, that was your Bailey Wick
Speaker 1: from the beginning. I think it was what was in
Speaker 1: the air at the time. It was just the beginning
Speaker 1: of the questioning of authority, which was the year I
Speaker 1: didn't four. We were no longer talking about World War Two,
Speaker 1: the first part of my childhood. That's all anyone talked
Speaker 1: about it. It was pretty much the gloom of that
Speaker 1: hung over most of the fifties. Sur Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: we television came into our lives and and everything changed.
Speaker 1: So with a CBC how long are the radio years?
Speaker 1: The radio years think three years? And then we began
Speaker 1: writing for comedians Woody Allen and John Rivers and a
Speaker 1: little bit Dick Cabot. How do you get into that door?
Speaker 1: Heart Heart did that. He was very good at approaching people.
Speaker 1: We would come down to New York to write for
Speaker 1: people and Wood he who was incredibly generous and encouraging,
Speaker 1: and we had no impact at all on his career,
Speaker 1: but he was very helpful. Then we got hired on
Speaker 1: a television show in night as writers called The Beautiful
Speaker 1: Phillis Dealers Show and which was a variety show at
Speaker 1: him See in Burbank. And then from there, when that
Speaker 1: was canceled, we were hired on lap In, which was
Speaker 1: in its first season for George for George Slaughter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was the dynamic when you go to Los Angeles
Speaker 1: in the late sixties and you're writing for network television.
Speaker 1: Did you feel like that was It wasn't at all.
Speaker 1: The romantic idea of what I thought behind show business
Speaker 1: would be well on lap In. The writers would write
Speaker 1: and then it would be edited by a head writer,
Speaker 1: and then we did not go to the read through.
Speaker 1: We were at at a motel in Burbank, uh and
Speaker 1: we would all have lunch together and that was fun
Speaker 1: and didn't even have to have offices. No, we had offices,
Speaker 1: but they were in a motel, which was you know,
Speaker 1: it was the boom period of Burbank and so it
Speaker 1: was the number one show and on one level it
Speaker 1: was like the greatest credit you could have, and it
Speaker 1: certainly did wonders for you know, like self image and career,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't fun. You'd write, you know, monologues for
Speaker 1: Dan and Dick, who were really nice to us. Did
Speaker 1: you get to go to the tapings of the show.
Speaker 1: We'd go to the studio if they were doing the monologues,
Speaker 1: and they would read it from the cards. They would
Speaker 1: see it for the first They were some of the
Speaker 1: most famous card readers, remember that also just they would
Speaker 1: just see it for the first time on the cart.
Speaker 1: They did not want their work in any way interfere
Speaker 1: with their life. And we worked there for a year
Speaker 1: and then I got a call from the head of
Speaker 1: the CBC asking what it would take to bring us
Speaker 1: back to do shows. We're still hard on television. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's where I learned how to do television. Why
Speaker 1: do you say that, because I spent a huge chunk
Speaker 1: of my twenties, you know, in an editing room. We
Speaker 1: would shoot in the studio, we'd be in front of
Speaker 1: an audience and then what were you doing? It was
Speaker 1: called the heart and Louren terrific Hour and the Stars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there was you know, one ensemble and a musical guest.
Speaker 1: James Taylor was on one. Cat Stevens Birth the idea
Speaker 1: for the other show that you eventually wound up doing.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether you know. There was a real
Speaker 1: form then called Variety, and it was comedy variety and
Speaker 1: it had you know, music and comedy, and we would
Speaker 1: perform in front of an audience, but mostly it was
Speaker 1: built in the editing room. And the way that laughed
Speaker 1: in was I remember that we came out of the
Speaker 1: first show with like sixteen hours worth of tape and
Speaker 1: I met with the editor. He said, why don't we
Speaker 1: just watch it? So we watched the first four hours.
Speaker 1: We were discussing a sketch. He said, I think in
Speaker 1: that piece we could pull out that part. And I
Speaker 1: was still thinking script. I wasn't in any way thinking visually,
Speaker 1: and he said, no, your arm there is is by
Speaker 1: your temple and then you put it down. He was
Speaker 1: looking for continuity. He was an editor. He actually saw it.
Speaker 1: I said, how did you do that? And he said,
Speaker 1: I can teach your eye to see and he did.
Speaker 1: I learned how things are put together, and how what
Speaker 1: to look for in composition and how to make something work,
Speaker 1: and the role that sound played because it's all radio
Speaker 1: with pictures. Nobody cared about sound then when we first
Speaker 1: did SNL the first five years, it was a boom.
Speaker 1: When you see Elvis Son, ed Sullivan, him and the
Speaker 1: Jordan Eires, it's just a boom. They got what they got.
Speaker 1: We have better sound on this interview than I had
Speaker 1: in the first twenty years of my career. And what
Speaker 1: I realized then about myself is that I'm much more
Speaker 1: interested in the production that I am in performing. What
Speaker 1: changed for you? I saw it in the editing room
Speaker 1: one night. I looked at myself before a take. I
Speaker 1: see my eyes checking the lighting, seeing where the cameras
Speaker 1: are in terms of their angles, and you're seeing a
Speaker 1: guy who all his instincts are technical and director and
Speaker 1: just kind of look. Yeah, I'm seeing a guy who's preoccupied.
Speaker 1: And then the slate happens and then there's this smiling
Speaker 1: artificial Yeah, snapped artificial. I'm sure I was sincere. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, speaking for myself as all artificial, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: We had the same experience when I was on stage.
Speaker 1: When I was at University of Toronto in the theater there,
Speaker 1: I was in the middle of a scene with an
Speaker 1: actor and it was exciting to be on stage and
Speaker 1: all that. But I looked in his eyes and I realized, Oh,
Speaker 1: he's actually that guy. You know. I knew he had
Speaker 1: to my lines with some charm, but he actually had
Speaker 1: become more character. Yeah, which I thought, Oh, I see,
Speaker 1: that's what actors are. They actually can do that, you know.
Speaker 1: Whereas I was Yes, for me, it was like it
Speaker 1: was fun to be in shows and I've done them
Speaker 1: at summer camp, and I've done them in high school
Speaker 1: and and uh, but you had a pure instinct at
Speaker 1: that time, but you just said there's this other thing
Speaker 1: I'd rather be doing that. I was more and you
Speaker 1: walked away. So so you So you ended that situation there. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: in Canada there was still a kind of national self loading,
Speaker 1: best expressed by the then head of the CBC. We
Speaker 1: were slow in getting our start dates for production for
Speaker 1: the next season, and I had been offered by Sandy
Speaker 1: Warnick and Burney Brulstein, who I had met when I
Speaker 1: was working in California, agent and manager respectively. They said,
Speaker 1: you want to come back and work on a Burnston
Speaker 1: Shreiver summer show for like, Yeah, they were and they
Speaker 1: were funny and it was like smart shows. In ten weeks,
Speaker 1: I went to the the head of the department at
Speaker 1: the CBC and I said, I have this other offer,
Speaker 1: but I will stay here. At the time, I was
Speaker 1: caught up in the idea that I would be of
Speaker 1: the first generation of Canadian artists who would be able
Speaker 1: to stay in Canada. And why is that? Why did
Speaker 1: you feel that because everyone had always left and the
Speaker 1: moment that you left in Canada, people started to treat
Speaker 1: you differently, And I thought, well, that's idiotic. We should
Speaker 1: be We're involved enough, we should be able to stay
Speaker 1: here and work here. They had the CBC that I
Speaker 1: was working for, said, I said, I had this offer
Speaker 1: and it's just for you know, ten weeks. He said, well,
Speaker 1: if you're that good, why are you here? And I thought,
Speaker 1: I want to be here that you know, And then
Speaker 1: I realized you could never fight against yeah. And also
Speaker 1: I realized is van Gogh a Dutch painter. He really
Speaker 1: painted in France, And I thought, oh, I see, so
Speaker 1: nationalism isn't the best way to you know, you go
Speaker 1: where the work is. So I went out and I
Speaker 1: did that, and then I came back. Even as we're
Speaker 1: talking about Canada, your accent just came back. You just
Speaker 1: said I went out. Yeah, I realized I'd come to
Speaker 1: the end of that period and I moved back to
Speaker 1: California nineteen seventy two, and I lived at the Chateau
Speaker 1: Marmont until I moved here, which is seventy five. I
Speaker 1: had my thirtieth birthday in the lobby the Chateau Marmont,
Speaker 1: which hadn't had a party then, I believe since Dorry
Speaker 1: lived there. Yeah. So um, you have a real fondness
Speaker 1: from Los Angeles. Yeah, I love you have a Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have a very very warm spot for Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and you who are for London order. Yes. The nice
Speaker 1: part about being Canadian is you don't have to make
Speaker 1: that decision. You know, you're in California and it's there's
Speaker 1: grass in February and the sun is shining. You know,
Speaker 1: this is fantastic. But if you're from New York, then
Speaker 1: l A becomes like, well know, you know, it becomes
Speaker 1: that it's a lot of people get an entire career. Well,
Speaker 1: I think different. That's true, and I've been very guilty
Speaker 1: of that myself. The thing about Los Angeles, if you
Speaker 1: do it in your twenties, you can find and understand sepulvida,
Speaker 1: which is if you grew up in a city with
Speaker 1: a grid, you're going, well, so what do you mean
Speaker 1: this crosses Wilshire And then if you're on that set
Speaker 1: off Robertson and you think you're up exactly, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: But when you're in your twenties, you're going to a
Speaker 1: lot of parties where you're just following somebody or somebody
Speaker 1: gives you directions. And this is at a time it's
Speaker 1: hard to recall, but it's pre GPS. No. No one
Speaker 1: wants to learn where they're going now. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: had a very happy time there and I worked for
Speaker 1: Lily Tomlin and I wrote on her show, which was
Speaker 1: like ten or twelve weeks, and at the end of
Speaker 1: it it was time to go back to Canada and
Speaker 1: I realized I wasn't visa wise, I wasn't going back. No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that. It was that the CBC wanted me
Speaker 1: to do something, but they want to be back six
Speaker 1: months in advance of that. Naggie I'm gonna be the
Speaker 1: normal leader of Canada or no, not even normally. I
Speaker 1: think it was just that you would be able to
Speaker 1: work there. But here's what I realized, without Malcolm Gladibell,
Speaker 1: who's also a Canadian articulating it, because we didn't have
Speaker 1: the benefit of that, then it's the ten thousand hours
Speaker 1: in doing twelve shows in ten weeks. Working at that pace,
Speaker 1: you get better. In Canada, working on a show every
Speaker 1: four months or five months, you overthink everything. There's so
Speaker 1: much at stake, and there was something about working at
Speaker 1: that pace and working in a system that was really
Speaker 1: clear cut, like if the numbers were there and you
Speaker 1: had ratings, then you were hit, and they weren't there,
Speaker 1: then you were a PLoP. And at that point in
Speaker 1: my life I kind of needed clarity of which is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I'm drawn to comedy, because you're
Speaker 1: trying really hard to make people laugh. If they don't laugh,
Speaker 1: it's really it doesn't work. So I do. Lily Thomas
Speaker 1: show gets nominated for an Emmy. It was a pilot
Speaker 1: special four series and I am co producing with Jane Wagner.
Speaker 1: We spent forever on it and then at the end
Speaker 1: it didn't get picked up. But Dick Eversoul, who was
Speaker 1: the new newly appointed head of late night, had come
Speaker 1: from ABC Sports and had meant Herbschlosser on a plane
Speaker 1: and by the time they landed he was the director
Speaker 1: of late night Television and he had this idea of
Speaker 1: doing many pilots in late night, using late night to
Speaker 1: be a testing ground for prime time. I agreed to
Speaker 1: do one for Dick. And I was, as I said,
Speaker 1: living at the Marmont and I came home one night
Speaker 1: two o'clock in the morning, which was not unusual for me,
Speaker 1: and uh, there was a message from Dick. Could you
Speaker 1: be at the poll Lounge at seven o'clock in the
Speaker 1: morning for breakfast? No better for me then than it
Speaker 1: is now. And I went, um, okay, what's it about it?
Speaker 1: And he said they decided to do one show as
Speaker 1: opposed to twenty pilots, and yours is one of the
Speaker 1: ones that there, and they all want to meet you.
Speaker 1: So I came and it was Dick and the head
Speaker 1: of programming, the head of research, and the head of talent.
Speaker 1: I could kind of tell that they were like tribal
Speaker 1: elders in a way. They were just sort of looking
Speaker 1: at me like is he all right? You know? It
Speaker 1: was just basically an approval process. But I seem normal enough,
Speaker 1: and was I, you know, trouble I had long That's
Speaker 1: the interesting because because that's was ever thus in the
Speaker 1: business where I mean, talent is not the only coin
Speaker 1: of the realm. They want to realize can we hand
Speaker 1: you a lot of money? And will it does seem
Speaker 1: like a plaque or whatever? And I and I was
Speaker 1: just turned thirty, but I did have credits and I
Speaker 1: hadn't been nominated for stuff. And Dick called me and
Speaker 1: he said it went well, and then they wanted me
Speaker 1: to fly to New York and to how do you
Speaker 1: feel about that? I was excited by it. But Herb Schlauser,
Speaker 1: who had a very romantic notion of production in New York,
Speaker 1: I thought it should be live. Well, I've never done
Speaker 1: live except for radio. And I said, was everybody else
Speaker 1: in the processing? Was he the lone voice? He was
Speaker 1: the lone voice. He decided that it should be an
Speaker 1: eight age because eight h was the big NBC studio
Speaker 1: and it was lying vacant, and all of the production
Speaker 1: moved to l A. All variety was in l All
Speaker 1: of that crap music hall, all of those variety series
Speaker 1: which were done in New York in this building was
Speaker 1: all in everything as yeah, exactly for me, Live meant
Speaker 1: this no pilot, having done three pilots that everybody thought
Speaker 1: were great. But then somewhere in the process of making
Speaker 1: a pilot all your most conservative instincts come out and
Speaker 1: you find yourself doing the thing that you think is
Speaker 1: going to be It's like a college essay. Is what
Speaker 1: you really think or feel, it's what you think we'll
Speaker 1: get you in or get you on the air. So
Speaker 1: the idea that I could do a show in which
Speaker 1: the audience would see it at the same time as
Speaker 1: the network was trily and also I was at a
Speaker 1: point in my career where I really thought I had
Speaker 1: nothing to lose, so I was gonna take one more
Speaker 1: shot at television. I was gonna see if I could
Speaker 1: do it the way I wanted to do it, and
Speaker 1: I pretty much did. The very first broadcast of the
Speaker 1: show Live was when October. October oct n is the
Speaker 1: first broadcast of the show, and was the structure virtually
Speaker 1: the same it is now. Yeah, that part was all
Speaker 1: the same, although I think for the first show we
Speaker 1: did address rehearsal with the audience on Friday night, just
Speaker 1: so that we'd have an extra one because we've never
Speaker 1: actually done anything. The crew was like an original old
Speaker 1: New York crew. They were all mildly overweight. They had donuts.
Speaker 1: We had crewe Detey because we were from California. Jet yeah,
Speaker 1: and until we saw the move the cameras around in
Speaker 1: the way that they could because they knew that that world.
Speaker 1: I once did a show at CBS in their big
Speaker 1: studio and they have no tradition of this over at CBS,
Speaker 1: and I realized when I had taken the tour that
Speaker 1: all the cameras had stools beside them. It was only
Speaker 1: later when I realized the show was a complete mess. Right,
Speaker 1: They haven't moved cameras there, They just sort of aimed
Speaker 1: it at Cronkite for the last forty years. They set
Speaker 1: up their camera and then they sit on their stool.
Speaker 1: The eight ah crew that crane flew around the studio.
Speaker 1: They learned that we knew what we were doing in
Speaker 1: terms of the content, and this is gonna be interesting
Speaker 1: for them as well. Wasn't a desk and was coming
Speaker 1: back to New York. There's a wonderful story. When Eugene Lee,
Speaker 1: who's the designer I hired, who had just done Candide
Speaker 1: on Broadway, we did the very first set, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was like a two thousand dollars set. I
Speaker 1: couldn't get approval, like they wouldn't authorize the budget for it.
Speaker 1: I went up to Herb Schlaster's office. I just assumed,
Speaker 1: being Canadian, that I was just supposed to do the
Speaker 1: right thing and make a show that he would be
Speaker 1: proud of since he had authorized it. So we took
Speaker 1: it to his office. It was a little model and
Speaker 1: I don't think you've ever seen a model, and suddenly
Speaker 1: we're moving little cameras around and all that, and he said, well,
Speaker 1: what's the problem. I said, well, they it's expensive, and they,
Speaker 1: oh fine, And we got the approval and it was
Speaker 1: very paternal in the best sense of it. But Eugene
Speaker 1: had a very clear sense of what he wanted. We
Speaker 1: were showing New York City as it then was, which
Speaker 1: was kind of in decay and crumbleds So when Herb
Speaker 1: came down to the studio the first time to see
Speaker 1: it and looked at the cracked paint, you know, the
Speaker 1: thing which was where all the money was, of course,
Speaker 1: in terms of getting that exactly right. He said, I can't.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, you know, I don't know what
Speaker 1: I was thinking that. I just thought the shop did this,
Speaker 1: you know, because he just said it was a really
Speaker 1: bad and yeah, no, it was just that nobody knew
Speaker 1: whether production could gear up again in New York, and
Speaker 1: of course it did and still does. So when you
Speaker 1: do the show October eleven, the first show is broadcast
Speaker 1: live in years and when it's over, describe how you
Speaker 1: feel after the very first show. I was the same
Speaker 1: way then that I am now. I only see the mistakes,
Speaker 1: and I tend to wear that up until about the
Speaker 1: second drink at the party. Even last week's show. It
Speaker 1: takes me really through midway through Sunday. You just take
Speaker 1: me a couple of days. I can get over it
Speaker 1: now in a day. Because you're always hoping that everything's
Speaker 1: gonna work the way you were hoping it was gonna work.
Speaker 1: You know, you see of something, Yeah, and you see
Speaker 1: somebody enters, you know, on the left foot instead of
Speaker 1: the right foot, or the camera cut is late, or
Speaker 1: that Q gets screwed up, or that or somebody stuff
Speaker 1: right before the slate was not looking at things. Yeah. Never,
Speaker 1: he's still here. He's not going to coming up. Lauren
Speaker 1: Michael's learns to fire people. I had to accept that
Speaker 1: some people were not going to make it and that
Speaker 1: I had better deal with that when it happened, as
Speaker 1: opposed to just pretending painful but unavoidable yes. And so
Speaker 1: I learned how to be a boss. This is Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. This is
Speaker 1: here's the thing. I'm Alec Baldwin back with Lauren Michael's
Speaker 1: in his corner office at Rockefeller Center, seventeen floors above
Speaker 1: the ice skating rink. He moved into this office when
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live mirrored in n and most of the
Speaker 1: furniture is exactly most of their exactly the same. The
Speaker 1: joke is we hope that the people who run the
Speaker 1: network never really find out that where your this office is,
Speaker 1: and how could you have it here? You know this desk.
Speaker 1: We didn't have budget for that, so we there was
Speaker 1: a maintenance guy here who said, well, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of furniture you know that's in storage, So we said,
Speaker 1: can we see it? So it was all the stuff
Speaker 1: in the thirties and forties, and this box of batons
Speaker 1: for Toscanini to the then head of programming, and in
Speaker 1: the desk was a couple of copies of like the
Speaker 1: Racing Form and Jelu Sill and Maylox, and I thought,
Speaker 1: what am I getting myself into? It was so it
Speaker 1: was the reverse of kind of holistic view of California
Speaker 1: which I'd come here with you. Now you look at
Speaker 1: the board for those people who don't know, the arc
Speaker 1: of the whole season is on this infamous but corkboard
Speaker 1: on the wall, and they are the dates of each broadcast,
Speaker 1: the names of the confirmed hosts, some prospective hosts, and
Speaker 1: the musical guests and so forth, and the names of
Speaker 1: the people are still not all of them, but many
Speaker 1: of them. The biggest names in the business. The biggest
Speaker 1: names in the business are coming here thirty something years
Speaker 1: later to host the show. Ben Stiller and Melissa McCarthy
Speaker 1: won the Emmy Award, and Katie Perry is coming, and
Speaker 1: Jimmy Fallon, who's obviously double dipping on your payroll, Jonah Hill.
Speaker 1: I mean, the people that are the biggest names in
Speaker 1: the business are still coming here to host the show.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that that stayed that way? What? Well,
Speaker 1: I think, first of all, the best part is host.
Speaker 1: You get the best parts in most scenes, and we
Speaker 1: work really really hard tonight because it's Tuesday. I will
Speaker 1: leave here probably around three. I used to do what
Speaker 1: the younger ones do, which was pretty much go through
Speaker 1: the night. But I don't anymore, you know. And and
Speaker 1: I say it with Smigle until three in the morning
Speaker 1: exactly with those and I go right, okay, and I
Speaker 1: look at you good. They're like yeah, I'm like, I'm good.
Speaker 1: And that's the commitment to it being the best it
Speaker 1: possibly can be. But I think also to inject my
Speaker 1: own perspective, having done it many times, many many times,
Speaker 1: many many times too many times past year, there is
Speaker 1: that's out there people. People do feel them well, but
Speaker 1: it was just tweeting. This reekplaces a live component that
Speaker 1: is missing in most people's careers. They don't do theater
Speaker 1: a lot of them. This is a chance for them
Speaker 1: to have a kind of a it's it's much more
Speaker 1: loose and kind of deconstructed, and it can get a
Speaker 1: little sloppy if they're not like spot On and it
Speaker 1: doesn't have that, it doesn't have the kind of the
Speaker 1: gleaming perfection of movie making. And also Seth Meyers Norm
Speaker 1: McDonald was at the show on Saturday, was and so
Speaker 1: we were sitting at the party and and Seth pointed
Speaker 1: out that Norman had given an interview somewhere recently where
Speaker 1: he's talking about the show, and he said, in what
Speaker 1: I thought was a nice way, it's now the only
Speaker 1: place left where you can be bad. You know, there's
Speaker 1: no lap track when something doesn't work, it's such a
Speaker 1: clear silence. And whereas you walk out of a situation
Speaker 1: comedy in front of a live audience, they're already cheering.
Speaker 1: You know, even the theater. The theater people stand the
Speaker 1: audience thinks they're supposed to do with standing incovation, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for a stand up comic talent like Norm, I think
Speaker 1: one thing he might be reacting to is it gives people,
Speaker 1: the hosts, whether they are comic performance or not, it
Speaker 1: gives them the recreation of like a club being at
Speaker 1: a club, and it's stripped down so that it's only
Speaker 1: at the end talent writing into the lens. There's no spectacle.
Speaker 1: We don't have, you know, much of a wide shot.
Speaker 1: You're watching pure performance and for people to be able
Speaker 1: to soar like that, and when you see it happen,
Speaker 1: it is always amazing, you know, amazing to be standing
Speaker 1: there being me having seen it as many times I have,
Speaker 1: and the fact that every week we don't know how
Speaker 1: it's going to turn out, and the fact that I
Speaker 1: am still as scared as I am every dress rehearsal.
Speaker 1: And honestly, I don't mean like we'll be drummed out
Speaker 1: of the business. I just mean that it is part
Speaker 1: of the process that people have to be bad before
Speaker 1: they can be good. When we have a great dress rehearsal,
Speaker 1: when the audience is way too hot, invariably something gets
Speaker 1: lost on air when you come and do the show. Um,
Speaker 1: I've never felt more violated. I've come on here, you know,
Speaker 1: seemingly weeks after I got divorced, and Bill Clinton a
Speaker 1: k a. Darryl Hammond is working out telling me to
Speaker 1: put my oars in the water and set sailf of
Speaker 1: the island of Ponani with him. Yes, and yeah, So
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering, I mean, do you do you find
Speaker 1: that that's a big part of their creative successes there
Speaker 1: as you're complete, Yeah, I think there's something. They expect
Speaker 1: us to be honest, They expected us to say what
Speaker 1: what's actually happening? There's very little protection. Have you always
Speaker 1: been this year? Reverence your whole life? So this was
Speaker 1: really just meant to bit what's the first movie you made? Post?
Speaker 1: I guess Wayne's World? You know wasn't the first? Sorry,
Speaker 1: three amigos. I wrote with Randy Newman and Steve Martin.
Speaker 1: I have a copy of your IMDb if you'd like
Speaker 1: to consult at thee No, no, but I uh that
Speaker 1: you wrote. Yes. We'd go to Steve's house every day,
Speaker 1: Randy and I. We'd meet for lunch, talk it down,
Speaker 1: and then we'd spend the afternoon writing and it was
Speaker 1: very happy time for me. And what about after that?
Speaker 1: Was the next time a minute. Then I came back
Speaker 1: to the show I had left s in and then
Speaker 1: Brandon was threatening to cancel it and he called me,
Speaker 1: how many years were you gone? Five years? You were
Speaker 1: gone for five years. I left with the original group,
Speaker 1: designers and musicians, the cast, the writers. Listen. In the
Speaker 1: first five years, I didn't fire one person. So when
Speaker 1: I came back I was sort of more psychologically built
Speaker 1: for that that it wasn't family in that sense that
Speaker 1: the what William Seawan once called my pseudo egalitarianism was
Speaker 1: not healthy. I had to accept that some people were
Speaker 1: not going to make it and that I had better
Speaker 1: deal with that when it happened, as opposed to just
Speaker 1: pretending paid yes. And so I learned how to be
Speaker 1: a boss, which I I think I'd learned how to
Speaker 1: how to lead on some level, but I never learned
Speaker 1: how to be a boss. And I think when I
Speaker 1: came back, um where you know, less of a peer
Speaker 1: and more of a boss. Yes, And at some point
Speaker 1: are you tempted to stop again and just go make films?
Speaker 1: It is what I do. It's the thing that but
Speaker 1: it also became and I don't mean to be, you know,
Speaker 1: glib about it, but it also became like the aircraft
Speaker 1: carrier that you launched many planes off. This is a
Speaker 1: power bay for you as an entertainment producer. Question. Wayne's
Speaker 1: World was the first of those. With Wayne's World, I
Speaker 1: think what I wanted to prove was that I could
Speaker 1: do a movie in the same way that sort of
Speaker 1: the Marx Brothers used to do their movies. They tour
Speaker 1: them first, so they knew where all the laughs were
Speaker 1: and then they could go film them quickly to test. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no one believes that we do what we do here
Speaker 1: in six days because there's not much of an approval process.
Speaker 1: It just heads to eleven thirty, whereas in l that
Speaker 1: was my experience when I first did the show. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so much money and habitat for humanity building a
Speaker 1: house exactly. But the movie business because it's way better
Speaker 1: run as his prime time television. Every paragraph is scrutinized
Speaker 1: and reviewed. And I say it every week. We don't
Speaker 1: go on because we're ready. We go on because it's
Speaker 1: and that's just it's somehow focuses people, and I trust
Speaker 1: that process. And so with Wayne's World, I think we
Speaker 1: had I can't remember how many days when it was
Speaker 1: like twenty seven or something like that. But towards the
Speaker 1: end there was a plot with a father son which
Speaker 1: Roblo was to be the son, and I was hoping
Speaker 1: for Dennis Hopper to be the father. And as we
Speaker 1: got close to shooting, which we were like three weeks away,
Speaker 1: we went, oh, so we just made it one person.
Speaker 1: We just made it Rob. You could make that kind
Speaker 1: of decision quickly. The pace of ESNL was like, think
Speaker 1: of it, do it, and then think of something else.
Speaker 1: Tina's is the same thing about thirty rock television conditions,
Speaker 1: those muscles where you have to make fast decision, and
Speaker 1: that puts the creative people in charge. I did a
Speaker 1: movie with Mick Jagger based on a book we both
Speaker 1: liked called Enigma, which is about code breaking in World
Speaker 1: War Two, and michaelapp had directed it and it was
Speaker 1: an independent film. It took us six years to get
Speaker 1: it made, which was longer in World War Two, and
Speaker 1: I and I realized worked on pretty hard. But when
Speaker 1: I finally saw it, because there was German money in
Speaker 1: it and there was I think Japanese. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: the start of the movie, at the premiere, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden there's like all these names are there
Speaker 1: as producers, you know, and I go, well, hey, excuse me.
Speaker 1: I was like, And then I realized, in movies, the
Speaker 1: person who does what I do isn't at the center.
Speaker 1: Right here I am, and that's fulfilling. In movies. What
Speaker 1: I like doing is the script, which I get obsessive
Speaker 1: about a yeah, and then casting and then editing, and
Speaker 1: then how to present it to the public. In the
Speaker 1: sense of marketing. Now you have this great success in
Speaker 1: you have the great success in late night television, and
Speaker 1: then you have success in prime time television. You produce
Speaker 1: TV shows, particularly now that I've done how and you
Speaker 1: have great success in film. But you never worked in
Speaker 1: cable and with your career, I mean you never worked
Speaker 1: with I did with Kids in the Hall and I
Speaker 1: did with now with Fred in portlanda which is on
Speaker 1: I f C. Do you feel that you haven't been
Speaker 1: as aggressive and cable as you might have been. I
Speaker 1: think that at the end of the day, you know
Speaker 1: they're more comfortable with network because I've grown to prefer
Speaker 1: network because you've got to walk that tight up and
Speaker 1: you can't just go blue. With me, there's no creativity
Speaker 1: without boundaries. If you're going to write a sonnet, it's
Speaker 1: fourteen lines, so it's solving the problem within the container.
Speaker 1: And I think for me, commercial television and those boundaries,
Speaker 1: I like it. I like that you can't use a
Speaker 1: certain language. I like that you have to be bright
Speaker 1: enough to figure out how to get your ideas across
Speaker 1: in that amount of time, with intelligence being the thing
Speaker 1: that you're you hope is showing, not officially but you
Speaker 1: wanted to be Oh, that was kind of bright. We
Speaker 1: have really good writers here. I think I can safely
Speaker 1: say that a lot of people in comedy did their
Speaker 1: best work here, even though there might be more successful
Speaker 1: in the things they did, Apple more commercially successful. And also,
Speaker 1: I really believe that if you're going to stay chap,
Speaker 1: you have to take fights. And that means there's always
Speaker 1: young people, there's always people who are hungrier and more
Speaker 1: ambitious coming in, and you're working with people at the
Speaker 1: point of their career when nothing matters but the work,
Speaker 1: how they live, how they perceived. Most of the people
Speaker 1: arrive here, their office is nicer than their apartment, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of what it's always been. And people
Speaker 1: just completely devote themselves to the show. And I think
Speaker 1: you can't do that past a certain age. You know,
Speaker 1: you have become someone who when you genuinely talk to
Speaker 1: people about what a producer does in a constructive sense
Speaker 1: and you're not trying to be have a kind of
Speaker 1: pejorative about, you know, meddlesome and kind of attention seeking
Speaker 1: and credit seeking producers, you have become, you know, like
Speaker 1: one of the most important producers in the history of television,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that comes from in the history
Speaker 1: of the world, in all other universes and all other galaxies. Yeah, wherever,
Speaker 1: wherever product is consumed around the capsy. But you have
Speaker 1: become uh, you just ruined my whole I was trying
Speaker 1: to be so heartfelt here, but you know it's okay,
Speaker 1: you're not um well, but you have become someone who
Speaker 1: embodies to me what a great producer really really is,
Speaker 1: and that is someone who you know everyone's job and
Speaker 1: you know when what they're doing, even in the smallest detail,
Speaker 1: when it's working and when it's not working. I think
Speaker 1: that what I liked, and maybe it's growing up in Canada.
Speaker 1: But the actor manager, you know, I know with Shakespeare
Speaker 1: not to put myself in the same category. That's really
Speaker 1: for others to do. But the I know that he
Speaker 1: had to have a guy like Farley and Blushi that
Speaker 1: the audience loved, and Falstaff ends up in play that
Speaker 1: really did it doesn't, but you know he was brought
Speaker 1: back by popular demand. And I think that when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with actors and writing and costume people and an
Speaker 1: audience and how you're going to get people into the globe, theater.
Speaker 1: It's not much different. And the fact that there's the
Speaker 1: greatest poetry probably ever written in the English language is
Speaker 1: also in there. That wasn't what he was advertising. Producing
Speaker 1: for me anyway, is like an invisible art. If you're
Speaker 1: any good at it, you leave no fingerprints. The writer
Speaker 1: wrote it, you always say that was so and so script,
Speaker 1: the director directed it. The star had the idea in
Speaker 1: high school. And that's kind of what it is. And
Speaker 1: the only way you prove your worth is you leave
Speaker 1: a body of work and people go, oh, that accident
Speaker 1: happened there again that oh, I see. So you know,
Speaker 1: you try and get the best out of people. If
Speaker 1: you look around the room and you're the smartest person
Speaker 1: in the room, then you're in the wrong room. You know,
Speaker 1: you want to get the most talented people you can
Speaker 1: find and then UMU the best of them. But you
Speaker 1: also have, if I may say so, a kind of
Speaker 1: Darwinnian approach to this. In the years I've been here,
Speaker 1: where you're not someone who's sitting down. I mean you've
Speaker 1: had close personal relationships and you've developed lifelong or career
Speaker 1: long friendships with some of the most important people you've
Speaker 1: worked with. But as a rule. I don't see you
Speaker 1: sitting down like a father figure to the people here.
Speaker 1: You tend to let them slug it out and let
Speaker 1: the cream rise to the top. Correct somebody's in trouble.
Speaker 1: But talking about in the creative process, I think that
Speaker 1: you kind of guide it, you don't make it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the only way you can manage creative people's very loose reigns.
Speaker 1: I think if you're all over everything between us in there,
Speaker 1: you know what that meeting was like, and it's just
Speaker 1: there's no more appeal, then this is what we're doing,
Speaker 1: this is how we're doing it, and and everyone falls
Speaker 1: into place. But up to that point, it's kind of fractious,
Speaker 1: and everybody's got an opinion and nobody likes anybody else's work.
Speaker 1: The idea that it's a variety show. By that, I
Speaker 1: mean that there's a variety of styles and tastes, that
Speaker 1: there's the lowest comedy and and the brightest comedy, and
Speaker 1: that they all coexist. Or that this group doesn't like
Speaker 1: that musical act and that group thinks that the joke's
Speaker 1: on updated they don't agree with the politics of it.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the community of it, and that's Lord Michaels.
Speaker 1: He says he picked up his value system at summer camp.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make fair. What is never a fair thing?
Speaker 1: He said? Show business we were a community. It was
Speaker 1: just set up. What was a value system? Do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? It was not driven by economics.
Speaker 1: It was driven by if it's successful, will be more
Speaker 1: than enough money. Uh. Are you're saying you're disappointed in
Speaker 1: how you've done No, I'm saying I would do it
Speaker 1: exactly the same way. Now. Yeah, I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: this is here's the thing in depth conversations with artists, writers,
Speaker 1: policymakers and performers. Well, I have a half a bagel
Speaker 1: in the morning with cheese. That's sort of my standard breakfast,
Speaker 1: and my wife gets on me for that. You can
Speaker 1: listen to past episodes and here's the thing. Dot Org.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Divorce is terrible. Divorce is difficult. It's a chaos. We
Speaker 1: have no rules for it. It's so incredibly painful. I
Speaker 1: think about the impact of worse on children a lot
Speaker 1: because I'm divorced and have a daughter. Erica Young knows
Speaker 1: a lot about divorce. She's been married four times. Divorce
Speaker 1: was the hardest thing I ever went through. I have
Speaker 1: a friend who said to me once when he was
Speaker 1: getting divorced from his wife, who could believe that after
Speaker 1: we were in the delivering room together, after I watched
Speaker 1: that baby come out, who could believe we'd ever be
Speaker 1: a part? Both Erica and her daughter, Molly young Fast
Speaker 1: are writers. Erica is best known for her nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three book Fear of Flying, which ushered in the second
Speaker 1: wave of feminism. Molly, a mother of three kids herself,
Speaker 1: published her second novel, The Social Climber's Handbook last year.
Speaker 1: What did you learn about marriage from your parents? Mom?
Speaker 1: Can I answer that question honestly? Honestly is the only way? Well?
Speaker 1: I would say, have you seen Kramer versus Kramer? That
Speaker 1: was my general impression of marriage from my upbringing. But
Speaker 1: you know, my mom had some good, useful suggestions, but
Speaker 1: ultimately I sort of had to find my own way,
Speaker 1: though she did eventually marry a really great guy and
Speaker 1: they've been married for twenty one years. And he's a
Speaker 1: divorce lawyer. He's a practicing divorce Yeah, he is. And
Speaker 1: Molly used to say, when I married him and then
Speaker 1: she married the one you can never divorce the divorce.
Speaker 1: Is he a good guy. He's a really good guy.
Speaker 1: He's a totally menchi person and I like him better
Speaker 1: than when I married him. What was it like for
Speaker 1: you to deal with your parents divorce? Your parents divorce
Speaker 1: as an only child? Who did you talk to? Who
Speaker 1: did you do? Obese nanny from Trumbull, Connecticut And she
Speaker 1: was my confidence, like crumpets, those tasty cake ring everything. Um,
Speaker 1: I think I mean Cramer Versus Kramer was a great
Speaker 1: movie because that was my story and it was a
Speaker 1: lot of kids. It was just a really gruesome seventies
Speaker 1: divorce and that's what they had during that time. Divorce
Speaker 1: wasn't set up the way it is now now. If
Speaker 1: you have a divorce, there's no way that a mother
Speaker 1: is going to lose custody. Certain things are known. Back then,
Speaker 1: it was a totally unknown world of divorce. Let me
Speaker 1: just I don't want to get carried away by divorce
Speaker 1: being different in different decades, because I'm not sure that's true.
Speaker 1: I think it may look that way to you, Molly,
Speaker 1: but I think divorce is a catastrophic event for children
Speaker 1: for women from men. It's very, very difficult to go through.
Speaker 1: It is traumatic. When you come to the other side
Speaker 1: of it, you say, I will never do that again,
Speaker 1: which is why I was single for nearly a decade
Speaker 1: between Molly's dad and Ken, because I wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure I would never make them. But after you have
Speaker 1: three divorces, Yeah, you were divorced. What made you believe
Speaker 1: success was a waiting you with your current husband? What
Speaker 1: gave you the We stamped on our wedding invitation a
Speaker 1: triumph of hope over experience, which came as the result
Speaker 1: of what how did you triumph? Ken had been married
Speaker 1: three times. I had been married three times. We were
Speaker 1: very cautious about tying the non you were not that
Speaker 1: cautious because you've only been together for three months. When
Speaker 1: you go, that's right? Am I right? Is she right?
Speaker 1: We married after we knew each other three months. But
Speaker 1: this isn't an amazing and it's been most successful with him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there are certain things about me and Ken. We
Speaker 1: grew up in similar circumstances. Our parents were Depression era people.
Speaker 1: We knew that you couldn't be married and fool around.
Speaker 1: You couldn't be married. Secrets to their marriage. They have
Speaker 1: different bathrooms, right, They each of their own bath critical,
Speaker 1: and they're tired. They're too tired to to do new
Speaker 1: curtains and bookshelves. The reason why we got married rather
Speaker 1: than lived together was because he said to me, if
Speaker 1: we just lived together, one day, we'll have a fight
Speaker 1: and you'll say I'm leaving or I will. We have
Speaker 1: a bad record. If we get married, we know we're
Speaker 1: going to make it work. Marvin Worth, Marvin Great Marvin Worth.
Speaker 1: He was Lenny Bruce's manager, then went on to become
Speaker 1: a famous movie producer. Produced Malcolm X, the movie with
Speaker 1: Spike Lee. Famous movie producer. He was from Brooklyn. He
Speaker 1: had the heaviest New York accent of any man I've
Speaker 1: ever heard of my life. And I said to him,
Speaker 1: how did you and Joan do it? How have you
Speaker 1: and John been married for for forty years? Like it
Speaker 1: was you don't fight? And he said to me, uh do,
Speaker 1: Joan and I fight? We fight every day. We fight
Speaker 1: all day. What we do is fight, he said, But
Speaker 1: then we after we're done fighting. I say, Joan, I'm
Speaker 1: not going anywhere, and you're not going anywhere, So what
Speaker 1: are we gonna do about this problem. I'm not going anywhere.
Speaker 1: That's what Ken and I wanted, Like leaving is not
Speaker 1: an option. And actually this is very funny because he
Speaker 1: says I'm not going anywhere, just what Rvin said, and
Speaker 1: I say I couldn't stand anywhere else. And part of
Speaker 1: it is we really make each other laugh all the time.
Speaker 1: When we have a disagreement. We always get it out there.
Speaker 1: We don't hold it in. Now that I have kids,
Speaker 1: I feel like what they don't tell you about marriage
Speaker 1: is that marriage is incredibly hard work. Molly got married
Speaker 1: at but Molly's whole childhood and upbringing had been different
Speaker 1: from mine. I married my first lover, my college sweetheart.
Speaker 1: I had no experience with anybody else when I married him.
Speaker 1: That was very much my generation. Molly sewed her wild
Speaker 1: oats during college, and when she met Matt, she knew
Speaker 1: this was the man she wanted to be with. It
Speaker 1: was a totally different pattern. But I think how much
Speaker 1: wild else did? So what did you travel with the stones?
Speaker 1: I think I um, I really grew up because I
Speaker 1: got sober when I was nineteen, So I went to
Speaker 1: rehab when I was a teenager, so that I was
Speaker 1: until I went to we have very crazy. But then
Speaker 1: once that happened, I then started to focus on, you know,
Speaker 1: what was important. So by the time I got married,
Speaker 1: I was already, you know, sober a long time. My
Speaker 1: grandmother was very bohemian, and my mother was very bohemian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they all my grandparents had open marriages. I also
Speaker 1: wanted a bourgeois life, Like I didn't want to be bohemian.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be single and have a boyfriend
Speaker 1: who had a motorcycle and cowboy boots. None of that
Speaker 1: appealed to me. What effect, if any, did it have
Speaker 1: on you that your mother was viewed as and I'll
Speaker 1: let you put in the words, you know, your mother's
Speaker 1: expertise and female sexuality. What impact did that have on
Speaker 1: you when you were growing up? Um? I think more
Speaker 1: having a mother who was very successful in working a
Speaker 1: lot at more of an effect on growing because she
Speaker 1: just traveled a lot and worked a lot and felt
Speaker 1: very stressed a lot. I think that had more of
Speaker 1: an effect on me. Then. I didn't particularly know what
Speaker 1: she did until when I was in sixth grade. I
Speaker 1: went to this very progressive school and a little boy
Speaker 1: was like your mom writes dirty books. I went to
Speaker 1: science teacher and I was like, he's not allowed to
Speaker 1: say that to me, and she was like, but she does.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh my god, she does. But
Speaker 1: the fact that we grew up in a townhouse with
Speaker 1: a hot pink door and then it was purpose, it
Speaker 1: was right. We had paintings of naked lesbians having sex
Speaker 1: on the walls. Yes, why because no they're not famous.
Speaker 1: Ladder Sladder. I have a schlatterer, but I keep it
Speaker 1: under my bed. When I want to get things going,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to pick it up. Would
Speaker 1: you like to? Relating to the erotic art I had
Speaker 1: lived in house guests. They had lived with Shirley McClain.
Speaker 1: Sureley finally threw the map. They were about a hundred
Speaker 1: years old at that point when Shirley threw them out.
Speaker 1: They came to live with me and they gave me
Speaker 1: erotic artists. Thank you can't imagine the Slatter sisters. They
Speaker 1: were really old fashioned bohemians like Henry Miller. In the sixties.
Speaker 1: They had lived in Paris on the Boulevard Reastpy and
Speaker 1: had orgies that was all over. In the seventies they
Speaker 1: went to India with Shirley and wrote about past life
Speaker 1: regression in the eighties. They got into antioxidants before anybody
Speaker 1: knew about it. They were at the head of every curve.
Speaker 1: They were not just about and they invented the iPad.
Speaker 1: They did not I admire them because they were true
Speaker 1: bohemian to me. If they ever, don't comment on this
Speaker 1: sho until she finishes. Describe your relationship with your mother,
Speaker 1: Donick pleasant. She's very supportive, are you talking about She's
Speaker 1: very supportive and she talking about you like she's your
Speaker 1: husband's ex. Pleasant, Judy and I have a very pleasant relationship, affable, Charving. No,
Speaker 1: my mother has always been phenomenal with me, so supportive.
Speaker 1: I don't give her things to read because she says
Speaker 1: to me, she calls me if it says, how much
Speaker 1: of a genius are you? She's very supportive. How would
Speaker 1: you describe your relationship with Molly? I absolutely adore her
Speaker 1: beyond that though, beyond that, I think she's I think
Speaker 1: she's smart, I think she's funny. I think she has
Speaker 1: incredibly good judgment. I've watched her grow and emotionally, and
Speaker 1: she has bearded some dragons that were very hard. What
Speaker 1: do you disagree about everything, everything, something, Give me something primary,
Speaker 1: what's consistent? I think of her? It is very reactionary liberal,
Speaker 1: and I'm much more conservative in certain ways politically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you think that some of your conservatism stems from
Speaker 1: your reaction to her? The kind of sexual drum she
Speaker 1: was beating throughout her I take it was con I
Speaker 1: was not beating a sexual drum. What were you doing.
Speaker 1: I was trying to write honestly about the way and
Speaker 1: a young woman thinks and feels. And because our society
Speaker 1: is so curiously puritanic, people took that honest book, which
Speaker 1: got inside a women's fantasy life, her marrital life and
Speaker 1: so and they took it as a horny book. And
Speaker 1: I am truly disappointed that the closest person in the
Speaker 1: world to me has bought into that view. But okay,
Speaker 1: she doesn't have to be my literary critic. She's my daughter,
Speaker 1: and I love her, and she can do no wrong.
Speaker 1: I hope that someday she will read my work and
Speaker 1: see that that was not what I was doing. Daughters
Speaker 1: do torture you in a way that I mean that
Speaker 1: sons are not capable of, in my opinion, But I
Speaker 1: also think that my mom's legacy to me was a
Speaker 1: up being honest and how important it is to be honest.
Speaker 1: And I do really hate you know, that kind of
Speaker 1: pretension or falseness, and that is something that really has
Speaker 1: been your legacy. Um, this is obviously an important subject
Speaker 1: for me because I have a daughter, and that is
Speaker 1: What do you think of the state of female sexuality
Speaker 1: in the culture today. I think they're overwhelmed with a
Speaker 1: false image of sexuality before specific before they're emotionally ready
Speaker 1: to deal with it. I think they use their manipulation
Speaker 1: of boy's sexuality as a power trip to get even
Speaker 1: with men for the other power men have. But I
Speaker 1: think to be a young woman today of the of
Speaker 1: your daughter's age is a very sticky wicket, and I
Speaker 1: think that you really need a parent who can guide you.
Speaker 1: How would they guide them to tell them that what
Speaker 1: they see around them in the media is not true,
Speaker 1: because I try to do that. If I were dealing
Speaker 1: with your daughter, I would try to reassure her that
Speaker 1: this is a very confusing time of life. I don't
Speaker 1: and that what she sees around her as incredibly confusing.
Speaker 1: Most of the women, the young women are as confused
Speaker 1: as she and are showing off by pretending to not
Speaker 1: be confused, and I would try to convey to her
Speaker 1: how difficult adolescence is, how many messages are coming at
Speaker 1: her at once, and how hard it is to make
Speaker 1: sense of it. That's what I would do. I plan
Speaker 1: to do that with my granddaughter, who I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: say something cynical to me. But I also think some
Speaker 1: of it is you, just as you can't hear that
Speaker 1: kind of thing from a parent at I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: there are some kids who can. I never could, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely sure. I had a beloved child psychiatrist
Speaker 1: growing up who I really liked a lot, and I
Speaker 1: think maybe that's possible, or teacher or school, so maybe
Speaker 1: the parent can't really say those things. I think it's right,
Speaker 1: and I also think we don't automatically know how to be.
Speaker 1: I think it's primarily different from when you wrote your
Speaker 1: earlier books. What's changed for when the media is more
Speaker 1: all pervasive and the image of women is even more
Speaker 1: confusing than it's ever been. I believe that's true. On
Speaker 1: the one hand, you're supposed to look like a fashion
Speaker 1: model retouched, and on the other hand, you're supposed to
Speaker 1: claim to a sophistication you don't and cannot have at
Speaker 1: that age. And I think that women who are fourteen
Speaker 1: fifteen are in the most difficult position they have ever
Speaker 1: been in modern society. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I agree, I think there's a lot of sexuality.
Speaker 1: I think it's not explained to young girls in a
Speaker 1: way very confusing, Molly. But I think that's a legacy
Speaker 1: of the feminist movement. I mean, we said we want
Speaker 1: a legacy on the feminist movement. It is the legacy.
Speaker 1: And here I really feel fierce. It is the legacy
Speaker 1: of a distortion of women's desire for equal rights. Equal
Speaker 1: rights are not platforms, shooting and naked clothes equal right.
Speaker 1: But you can't blow up an atom bomb and then
Speaker 1: choose how it's going to go. But we we did
Speaker 1: not blow up that atom bomb. The media took our
Speaker 1: legitimate desire for equality and turned it into garbage. But
Speaker 1: they turned it into what the people wanted. First of all,
Speaker 1: I don't think they wouldn't exist. It wouldn't exist people want.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment after a word from
Speaker 1: our sponsored Victoria's secret. I disagree think, first of all,
Speaker 1: this is what the people want. People buy Britney Specs
Speaker 1: because no, no, no, no, did he. This is what
Speaker 1: I disagree. I blame the media, and I blame the
Speaker 1: entertainment industry, and I blame that whole matrix for all
Speaker 1: of it. I think of the most absurd person from
Speaker 1: the past, if you took content loss and put him
Speaker 1: on Glee, he'd become a gay icon today, content Flass.
Speaker 1: I think it's brilliant. If the Internet had existed when
Speaker 1: content Flass was here, everybody would be worshiping Canton Flows.
Speaker 1: You can't and it has nothing to do with you.
Speaker 1: You can't control what people are going to But this
Speaker 1: is what people want, this is what is thrust upon them,
Speaker 1: and it has nothing to do with First of all,
Speaker 1: you are the media, and you are the media, and
Speaker 1: I am in some effect of the media, So I
Speaker 1: disagree with you. I mean, I take a paycheck from
Speaker 1: media companies to do what they pay me to do,
Speaker 1: but I'm not responsible for everything else they do. Let's
Speaker 1: just say this. You take the top women in entertainment,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna be generous. I'll say half one half
Speaker 1: of them really have talent. Mariah Carey really can sing.
Speaker 1: Beyonce Knowles really can sing. But then there's the other half.
Speaker 1: They have no talent. It's all electronic, le enhanced. It's
Speaker 1: all about many people who are talentless. But I think
Speaker 1: the interpretation of of our of sexuality and our culture
Speaker 1: is so twisted. Sexuality is and lubricant is true intimacy
Speaker 1: with another person that sometimes results and genitals getting together
Speaker 1: and sometimes does not. Why are you so cynical? Why
Speaker 1: are you so cynical that awful? You're the one saying
Speaker 1: lubricants and dolls. I don't even think that's sex. I
Speaker 1: think that if you have real intimacy with somebody, he
Speaker 1: can touch you here and you get excited. He can
Speaker 1: touch you on your neck, he can hold your hand
Speaker 1: in the movies later on. I'll show you the spot
Speaker 1: I touch. It never fails. People have no idea what
Speaker 1: sexuality really is. I can talk with you about for
Speaker 1: a couple more hours. Let's do it next time. Erica
Speaker 1: Jong and Molly young Fast. They say they've toyed with
Speaker 1: the idea of writing something together many times, but both
Speaker 1: agree they never ever will. It would be just the
Speaker 1: end of our relationship. Here's the thing is produced by
Speaker 1: Emily Boutine and Cathy Russo, with support from Jim Briggs,
Speaker 1: ed Herbstman, Melanie Hoops and Monica Hopkins. Thanks to Trey
Speaker 1: Ka and Lou Okowski. This is Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to here's the Thing.