Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories, what inspires their creations, what decisions change
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. Here's a quote,
Speaker 1: Who died and made you? Dear Abbey? It was an insult,
Speaker 1: no matter how you spun it, but a particularly fraught
Speaker 1: one for Philip Galanas after the debut of his New
Speaker 1: York Times advice column in two thousand eight. Dear Abbey
Speaker 1: had been his guiding force as a boy, growing up
Speaker 1: with a distant father and mother who refused to accept
Speaker 1: that her son was gay. Dear Abbey left him with
Speaker 1: nothing but answers. Some people might have given up, but Gallanis,
Speaker 1: who had already sailed through Yale, undergrad and law school,
Speaker 1: isn't one of them. He kept writing the column, kept
Speaker 1: answering questions about bullying, ex boyfriends, and sibling rivalry, and
Speaker 1: nine years later, he still is. It's one of many
Speaker 1: endearing qualities. The warm and witty lawyer turned writer possesses
Speaker 1: quiet refusal to be anything but himself. In his weekly
Speaker 1: column Social Cues, he pushes readers to do the same,
Speaker 1: even if that means temporarily suspending the truth. I lie
Speaker 1: like a rug and generally, um, I mean, I would
Speaker 1: never lie, you know, I would never become a fraud.
Speaker 1: I'd never lie and steal to steal from someone, but
Speaker 1: to smooth over something I'd like every single day of
Speaker 1: the week and twice on Sunday, definitely. But when you're
Speaker 1: in a conflict with your significant other, I find I lie.
Speaker 1: Some of the time. I'm lying to just cast a
Speaker 1: spray of ether over the whole room so we can
Speaker 1: all rest. Well, I'm very defensive, so it doesn't really
Speaker 1: even occurred to me. Not occurred doesn't sink in that
Speaker 1: I am wrong sometimes for days or weeks later. But
Speaker 1: you can't have a fight going on with your partner
Speaker 1: for weeks until it actually occurs to you. So I do.
Speaker 1: I get down immediately, and I lie, and then and
Speaker 1: I said, I'm sorry, it's all my fault. And then
Speaker 1: most of the time when he says to me, know,
Speaker 1: that was really shitty what you did, I'll three days later,
Speaker 1: four days later, it well, it will hit me and
Speaker 1: I'll go, you know, yeah, that's right. But growing up
Speaker 1: I think the way that I did. The first impulse
Speaker 1: had to be I was not to blame. You weren't
Speaker 1: I was in my house, it was who was to blame?
Speaker 1: Everybody is running to the to the blameless corner. And
Speaker 1: I don't think my mother ever apologized one single time
Speaker 1: in her life for anything so funny. Never. And when
Speaker 1: I was in therapy, when I started to really you know,
Speaker 1: become an adult in my twenties and thirties, thanks to
Speaker 1: a guy who lives, you know, right around the corner
Speaker 1: from us, and I would go to see him twice
Speaker 1: or three times a week, and he would say, before
Speaker 1: we get anywhere, you've got to get angry with your mother.
Speaker 1: You've got to go tell her, or tell me, or
Speaker 1: tell someone all the things that you've got pent up
Speaker 1: inside of you. And so I did it with him,
Speaker 1: and he said, I think you need to go do
Speaker 1: this one thing with her. And I went to her
Speaker 1: and it was about an episode that happened when I
Speaker 1: was you know, maybe seven or eight or something like that.
Speaker 1: It was when it first started to occur to her
Speaker 1: that she had a gay kid on her hands, and
Speaker 1: she was really, you know, in the what would have
Speaker 1: in the seven early seventies, you wouldn't be thrilled about it.
Speaker 1: But she was gonna always be in my corner. But
Speaker 1: she wasn't happy. So I was like, that clear, how
Speaker 1: did she make by shipping into a shrink? By she
Speaker 1: made that clear to you by saying you need to
Speaker 1: go talk to somebody, right, and by also encouraging. I mean,
Speaker 1: it starts in very subtle ways, like, you know, have
Speaker 1: you ever thought about maybe being the principal when you
Speaker 1: play school as opposed to you know, the home act teacher,
Speaker 1: something like, yeah, pouring tea for everyone exactly. Um, So
Speaker 1: she starts that way, and then it gets to like
Speaker 1: all of a sudden coaching. Yeah that the Teddy Bear
Speaker 1: collection disappears one day because and in its place is
Speaker 1: a bunch of baseball cards and you've never picked up
Speaker 1: a mint in your life. And but so I go
Speaker 1: and say to her, I say to her, I said
Speaker 1: to her this thing. I remember that. I remember really clearly,
Speaker 1: this ugly episode we had on the drive to this train.
Speaker 1: Isn't Vermond the wilds of Vermond? And she, to her credit,
Speaker 1: she's found the one shrink who deals with kids in
Speaker 1: the woods of Vermont. And she says something to me about,
Speaker 1: you know, you could make more of an effort with
Speaker 1: your father, you know, And I said, well, Mom, he
Speaker 1: doesn't really you know. He comes home for dinner and
Speaker 1: then he retreats to his study and that's the end
Speaker 1: of him for the night. I said, he doesn't really
Speaker 1: talk to me either. And I had siblings, two brothers,
Speaker 1: two brothers, both younger. They were one is and with
Speaker 1: both of them he could do more boy type stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was always doing the right thing. So
Speaker 1: he'd come home from his day at work, he'd offered
Speaker 1: to play catch. I didn't really want to play your brother,
Speaker 1: Your brother who was gay, at least he was bodybuilding
Speaker 1: in the gym. At least he was he was trying
Speaker 1: to be. He was trying to be what everybody wanted
Speaker 1: him to be. I was the first one. I was
Speaker 1: definitely trying to be people pleaser. But I invented myself
Speaker 1: before them, they before they came along. So I just
Speaker 1: actually thought that I was supposed to do things I
Speaker 1: like doing. But that's really not true. Willful, right, So
Speaker 1: she so on the way to the strength this day,
Speaker 1: she says to me, the situation with your father is
Speaker 1: totally your fault. I mean, you're the one who's not
Speaker 1: if you're the problem. If you actually engaged this wonderful
Speaker 1: stand up guy, he'd be locked in that study because
Speaker 1: of you. Exactly so years later, I said to her,
Speaker 1: I said to her, I really thought I needed to, like,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to her about that, because not
Speaker 1: because I wanted to blame her. She didn't know what
Speaker 1: was coming down the pike anymore than anyone else did.
Speaker 1: But I I said to her, you know, I just
Speaker 1: I wanted to tell you this story, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to tell you how much this story lives with me
Speaker 1: all the time. And she looked at me and she said,
Speaker 1: you know, what is so wonderful about you, Philip, And
Speaker 1: I knew something really shitty was going to come down play.
Speaker 1: She said, what's wonderful about you is their active imagination.
Speaker 1: I just love it. And so she just denied it,
Speaker 1: shut it down. She couldn't even say I mean, as
Speaker 1: any right thinking adult would say, like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a one car drive. It was just to say wow,
Speaker 1: I don't obviously she wouldn't remember it, but just to say, wow,
Speaker 1: it's so great that you remember that. I'm so sorry
Speaker 1: if that if I made you feel that way. I mean,
Speaker 1: she didn't put the idea that you were asked to do,
Speaker 1: the understanding, the idea that you were asked to do,
Speaker 1: the reaching. I think the only way to survive in
Speaker 1: my family was to triangulate stuff. There's no way that
Speaker 1: my mother or my father was there We're going to
Speaker 1: look at me and go good boy. So the best
Speaker 1: I could do was sort of create a triangle out
Speaker 1: of the two of them and try to play from
Speaker 1: each other, all play them off against each other enough
Speaker 1: to get a little tiny bit of attention that way, like,
Speaker 1: you might be a horrible kid, but at least you're
Speaker 1: not as horrible as this. Or did you feel you
Speaker 1: were a horrible kid? Ahmed? Because in general it worked
Speaker 1: its way to in general, but we had two big
Speaker 1: secrets in the family. One was my mother was clearly saying,
Speaker 1: there's something very wrong with you. I didn't even have
Speaker 1: no the word. I didn't know that the problem with
Speaker 1: me was that it would end up with me being
Speaker 1: attracted to other boys that didn't even I'm seven or eight.
Speaker 1: I didn't even get that, but I knew that was
Speaker 1: a problem. Number one, your sexuality and the problem Number
Speaker 1: two was that we had a father who was going
Speaker 1: through the motions but would then disappear. But we were
Speaker 1: never allowed to let anyone know that our family only
Speaker 1: in private, was any different from anybody else. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there were two big secrets and they were both really
Speaker 1: I mean, now I know we've all got what's so
Speaker 1: great is when you get to a point and you
Speaker 1: realize you had two secrets, and Emily had two secrets,
Speaker 1: and Tom had two secrets, and we all had two
Speaker 1: secrets and or three and we had somehow, Yeah, march
Speaker 1: through the world and diffuse and diffused. Your mother wanted
Speaker 1: you to attempt to reach your father in a way
Speaker 1: that she could not. One Christmas and this was one
Speaker 1: of the things that I once later tried to talk
Speaker 1: to her about too. She said to me, I'm Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1: I knew I was old enough to know that. You know,
Speaker 1: we were pretty pretty well off. So they everything was there,
Speaker 1: was never in We were never wanting for anything, and
Speaker 1: they almost overdid it to overcompensate for all the stuff
Speaker 1: they knew they weren't doing. So I don't know where
Speaker 1: the hell My dad would ask where I'm Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1: At seven o'clock or eight o'clock. My dad is at large,
Speaker 1: and my brothers are getting into bed. And I said
Speaker 1: to my mother, I can help you bring the presents,
Speaker 1: because there were so many presents, lots of presents. And
Speaker 1: she said to me, oh, I didn't. I haven't gotten
Speaker 1: any of the presents yet, and I would have been
Speaker 1: like ten, and she said, I said, well, but mom,
Speaker 1: everything is going to be closed, and tomorrow's Chris and
Speaker 1: tomorrow's Christmas. And I was thinking, actually, and I feel
Speaker 1: like maybe I wasn't always so shitty, because I actually
Speaker 1: think I was thinking of my brothers and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: what what are we going to do? And she said
Speaker 1: I don't know, because I don't have any money either.
Speaker 1: And I ran upstairs and through you know, being a
Speaker 1: shitty kid, through stealing from my father's pants every night,
Speaker 1: you know, and putting things together, maybe had like forty
Speaker 1: dollars or fifty dollars hidden away. And I came down
Speaker 1: and brought it to her, and she thought that that
Speaker 1: was funny and wonderful that I had been generous. But
Speaker 1: she didn't see any of this money I stole from dad.
Speaker 1: Let's use that she didn't see the trauma of how
Speaker 1: scary it was for me to think there wasn't going
Speaker 1: to be any Christmas family there there were tons. When
Speaker 1: did they come in? She she had just lied. She
Speaker 1: thought it was like a funny thing. I mean, my
Speaker 1: mother would treated me like very much like I should
Speaker 1: have been an adult and understood of course they were testing,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't going to involve me in bringing them down.
Speaker 1: It would all happen later when I was in bed too.
Speaker 1: But I had a nervous breakdown and because I thought
Speaker 1: that this would be the year there wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be Christmas and in the Galana's household, and she thought,
Speaker 1: she's I can sort of remember her laughing and and
Speaker 1: and at the time I think I was just profoundly relieved.
Speaker 1: But it's the kind of thing where you can spend,
Speaker 1: you know, months on a story like that. At the shrink,
Speaker 1: you know who was wearing what? Where did I say
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna write a movie. I'm gonna steal that
Speaker 1: from movie? Now? You went to boarding school where I
Speaker 1: went to boarding school at this place called Deerfield Academy.
Speaker 1: But at the time when I went in the in
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties, it was still all boys, so
Speaker 1: it was kind of that for you. No, no, it
Speaker 1: was really they were dumb boys. It's so it's so funny,
Speaker 1: because why would you not make a school coach. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like, if you do make something co ed, the
Speaker 1: first thing you do is you get rid of the
Speaker 1: really bad ones on the bottom, and all the boats
Speaker 1: rise up because all the girls are bright, and then
Speaker 1: you keep the bright boys. But this was a place.
Speaker 1: It was like a nesting pen for like lesser semi
Speaker 1: retarded Rockefellers, and so it was people that they wanted
Speaker 1: out of the house. They were shelving them. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a weird little school. And also what you
Speaker 1: picked this up kind of a weird impulse. If you're
Speaker 1: sending a boy two a school to butch him up
Speaker 1: a little bit and see if there's like a last
Speaker 1: ditch effort to make him straight, why in God's name
Speaker 1: would you choose an all boys school to do it.
Speaker 1: It's a very straights training man is playing. All the
Speaker 1: teachers are claud or not all, but you know a
Speaker 1: good percentage of them in my day where they were
Speaker 1: all you you've read about choked in the Yeah, well
Speaker 1: it was like that. They were, but of course the teachers,
Speaker 1: the closet Kate's teachers, they're never coming after. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would, you know, had elaborate fantasies at fifteen about
Speaker 1: you know, the man who taught English and he was
Speaker 1: like my dream boat. But they would of course be
Speaker 1: after the lacrosse players who didn't have you know, and
Speaker 1: it's a terrible I don't mean to do with years.
Speaker 1: I was about there for four years, and there were
Speaker 1: good things that happened. No, it's to me. It was
Speaker 1: a wonderful place because it took me out of a
Speaker 1: household where I felt ashamed every time I turned around.
Speaker 1: But I what I learned to do there was to
Speaker 1: create a public persona. When I first got there, I thought,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I am going to be toast. These
Speaker 1: guys are gonna beat me up. They're gonna tease the
Speaker 1: hell out of me. It's going to be really tough.
Speaker 1: But very quickly I saw that if I could be eccentric,
Speaker 1: and if I could be funny, and if I could
Speaker 1: be a little funny, and unfortunately the funny that they
Speaker 1: crave in an environment like that is mean funny. So
Speaker 1: I developed not the goodhearted sense of humor. But I
Speaker 1: took a page out of your mother's humor book and
Speaker 1: my mother's humor book, which was a kind of Betty
Speaker 1: Davis meanness. But it I learned how to survive. I
Speaker 1: learned how to It's what I call it's what I
Speaker 1: call my Grandville Thorndyke theory. And I always say that
Speaker 1: you could be amongst the most filthy flea bitten, you know,
Speaker 1: just moronic rattle, and if you can entertain them, you
Speaker 1: buy yourself that they take the noose off your neck. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I met a couple of kids there who really
Speaker 1: became good friends. I mean they were It was the
Speaker 1: first time I really made good friends. And there were
Speaker 1: a couple of teachers there who were really in uraging
Speaker 1: and so yeah, on balance, it was a very positive
Speaker 1: experience for me, mostly because I think my dad's situation
Speaker 1: at home, even though nobody would talk about it, he
Speaker 1: was sort of slowly getting more depressed, and I was
Speaker 1: not forced to worry about that. So you go off
Speaker 1: to go to college from So I go off to
Speaker 1: go to college. I go to Yale. Was that a
Speaker 1: fed company or did you want to go to Yale?
Speaker 1: Other places? You want to. My parents were really really
Speaker 1: interesting that way. My parents didn't care at all. I
Speaker 1: want you to understand the kind of well off they were.
Speaker 1: My parents were well off because my dad's father, who
Speaker 1: was a Greek immigrant who came to this country and no, no, no,
Speaker 1: his job was to go around and take the pennies
Speaker 1: and nickels out of you know, gumball machines and and
Speaker 1: and collect money and collect money and deliver it to somebody.
Speaker 1: And he got where he got by working twenty hours
Speaker 1: a day. And my dad was, you know, largely employed
Speaker 1: by him, and my dad's brother was They built into
Speaker 1: a big company. They built it, they bought real estate
Speaker 1: and then and they were and they were really really
Speaker 1: hard working. The idea that they had a kid who
Speaker 1: wanted to study Emily Dickinson, Yes, I was literature. They
Speaker 1: didn't think that was good. Education was very very highly regarded,
Speaker 1: but they certainly didn't They thought that I was maybe
Speaker 1: taking it a bit far. So when you go to Yale,
Speaker 1: what was Yale? Yale was heaven. If I could send everyone,
Speaker 1: if if I could give everyone the four years go
Speaker 1: to Yale, Yeah, I had the best. I mean, it
Speaker 1: really worked for me. People didn't want me to be
Speaker 1: anything different than I was. I got to stop lying.
Speaker 1: People were like, well, yeah, well of course you're gay.
Speaker 1: It's obvious you're gay. Who cares? Um, it was the
Speaker 1: gay scene like at the Yale then Jodie Foster and me.
Speaker 1: It was like it was around So it was no,
Speaker 1: it was the wonderful It was sort of. It was
Speaker 1: all yeah, it was a great time and the student
Speaker 1: and four years were you there? Um, from nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: one to your five years? Okay, so that period comes
Speaker 1: to an end. And as it comes to an end,
Speaker 1: who are you well at that? What happened that you're
Speaker 1: going to become an attorney? Well, no, no, no, I'm
Speaker 1: so not going to become an attorney. I go and
Speaker 1: take my first job, which is working at the New
Speaker 1: York Times as a copy boy. They have these old
Speaker 1: this is like six or so eight seven. They have
Speaker 1: these fat old men who sit behind desks and they
Speaker 1: rip a piece of paper off and they go international
Speaker 1: and they hand it to me. And my job is
Speaker 1: I walk it to the international desk, and then I
Speaker 1: walk back to the old man and he rips another
Speaker 1: piece off and he goes culture and Hearthur, I'm there
Speaker 1: for like two weeks and I'm going get get me
Speaker 1: out of here. This isn't working. So it did. And
Speaker 1: and I'm also not a journalist really, because they would
Speaker 1: encourage us to go right stories after hours, and lots
Speaker 1: of people would want to go to you know, there'd
Speaker 1: be a shooting and they'd want to figure out who
Speaker 1: did it, or where how it happened, or why I
Speaker 1: came alive at Christmas? Remember in the Metropolitan section there
Speaker 1: used to be this these this little feature called Remember
Speaker 1: the Neediest, and we go. I'd go up to Harm,
Speaker 1: I'd go up to Harlem and I'd sit in the
Speaker 1: room and I think, I want to understand how these
Speaker 1: people got to this place? How do they feel about this?
Speaker 1: And so I was always interested in the personality, the dynamics,
Speaker 1: and like the woman is sitting there, she angry that
Speaker 1: she's you know, she's got this terrible school system for
Speaker 1: her disabled daughter. Is she does she does? She just does?
Speaker 1: She want help? Is is the husband helping? Where is
Speaker 1: the husband? How did all this happen? Those were the
Speaker 1: kind of stories that I liked, And so like within
Speaker 1: a few weeks they sent me up to work for
Speaker 1: Carrie Donovan in the magazine, and I thought that that
Speaker 1: was going to be what I would do, and then
Speaker 1: my dad killed himself. Coming up, Philip Galanis looks back
Speaker 1: on an interview with former President Barack Obama and Emmy
Speaker 1: Award winning actor Brian Cranston. In the literary world, a
Speaker 1: few names hold more weight than The New Yorker's longtime
Speaker 1: editor David Remnick. As a writer, I take too much
Speaker 1: time clearing my throat in the beginning of the piece,
Speaker 1: and I hope I've learned myself to get rid of
Speaker 1: a lot of the crap. But very often my editor,
Speaker 1: Henry Finder, will just very quietly take a pen. He's
Speaker 1: your editor. Oh yeah, that's who edits you. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's great. He's unbelievable. To hear more about David
Speaker 1: Remnick's story, go to Here's the Thing dot org. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Philip Galanus's mom once blamed him for his father's depression,
Speaker 1: but he didn't let that stifle him. After receiving a
Speaker 1: phone call from his uncle that his father had ended
Speaker 1: his life, Philip sprang into action immediately. I came home,
Speaker 1: went back to Vermont. And I'll tell you something that
Speaker 1: I've never said out loud before. I found out the
Speaker 1: morning after I'd had my first one night stand. So
Speaker 1: all through the night, my not my mother, because she
Speaker 1: was so zonked out. My mom was um. Any any
Speaker 1: resentment I have for my mom disappears in a second
Speaker 1: if I think of her walking out that back door
Speaker 1: and having to find her husband having in the yard,
Speaker 1: in the yard, having shot his head off with a rifle,
Speaker 1: and which you all thought was inevitable. You thought you
Speaker 1: thought that was coming anyway, well, or you weren't sure.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone thought it was coming. I think
Speaker 1: everyone thought he's you know, he was the guy who
Speaker 1: did the right thing all that. He went to work
Speaker 1: every day, he came home, he'd throw catch and then
Speaker 1: he should go and he'd sit and he'd watch television.
Speaker 1: He was never treated for his depression formally. He I
Speaker 1: think my mother tried to intervene a few times. But
Speaker 1: this is before no shrinks, No there. He He was
Speaker 1: not a talk therapy person. You have to be a
Speaker 1: you have to be a verbal person. Yeh. And medicine
Speaker 1: back then was rough, and it would you know, it
Speaker 1: would totally wipe you out. So I'm off having my
Speaker 1: first one night stand and my uncle, my mother's brother,
Speaker 1: is trying to reach me, trying to reach me, and
Speaker 1: I four cell phones. This is a way before cell phones.
Speaker 1: This is yeah, so he is everyone's trying to reach me.
Speaker 1: Where is he? Where is he? Where is he? Where
Speaker 1: is he? And I come in to work and I'm
Speaker 1: on the Upper West Side with a person I've just met,
Speaker 1: and it was I thought, Wow, this is so great.
Speaker 1: I mean because the other thing I should say is
Speaker 1: at Yale people we were all we talked about being
Speaker 1: gay a lot, but there wasn't a lot of what
Speaker 1: nobody was doing a lot. So um, I was very
Speaker 1: sexually and experienced. I thought, oh god, this is the
Speaker 1: most miraculous this thing. I'm having sex. It's great. And
Speaker 1: then the next morning I walk into work and I
Speaker 1: see every eye is on me, and I'm thinking, wow,
Speaker 1: can they tell that I've just had sex? And I thought,
Speaker 1: because they're really this, I'm working on and walking on air.
Speaker 1: And what really has happened is my uncle has been
Speaker 1: trying to has been calling every fifteen minutes for the
Speaker 1: last hour looking for me, and So I get to
Speaker 1: my little copyboy station and I am pulled aside by
Speaker 1: a woman called Marie, who is the copyboy dead mother,
Speaker 1: dead mother. She takes me into a room and says,
Speaker 1: I need you to call your uncle and I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you some space. I'm gonna give you my office.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, doesn't this doesn't feel right? But my
Speaker 1: but my impulse went to my mother's dad, and um,
Speaker 1: because because that would have been the end of I mean,
Speaker 1: because she was my jailer. She's my jailer, but she's
Speaker 1: also my savior and everything. And when I reached my
Speaker 1: uncle and he says, your father is dead, and this
Speaker 1: is something I feel terribly guilty about for you know,
Speaker 1: the next ten years, I think, few it wasn't my mother,
Speaker 1: She's okay, And then it sinks in that my father's dead.
Speaker 1: And there he when a present when such a big
Speaker 1: part of your life is really is it is really
Speaker 1: more of an absence than a presence. It was really
Speaker 1: complicated to know what to feel. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: a wonderful man, never did a mean thing. He's a
Speaker 1: decent guy. But I just didn't have any I didn't have,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't. It was like in the chorus line,
Speaker 1: I had to Yeah, It's like nothing. It's like, I'm
Speaker 1: I feel the air, I feel the CRISTI and I
Speaker 1: go to Grand Central. I get on a train. I
Speaker 1: get on a train that's going the wrong way. I
Speaker 1: get on a train that's not going I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: I've taken this train ride a thousand times. My uncle
Speaker 1: lives in Westport. All I had to do it was
Speaker 1: to get from Grand Central to Westport. And for some reason,
Speaker 1: I get on there. I'm so I'm so shaken by
Speaker 1: it that I get online. I don't know I'm going
Speaker 1: to Westchester or something like that. Finally I get there
Speaker 1: and we get to my my uncle picks me up.
Speaker 1: He's my uncle is still alive, and he's in He
Speaker 1: is the loveliest man, my mother's brother. He's an ophthalmology.
Speaker 1: He wasn't homologist and a great, great guy, the first
Speaker 1: sort of gay person. I didn't know because he had
Speaker 1: a tenant, and I was thinking, and now you think, like, well,
Speaker 1: he's a surgeon, why does he need a tenant in
Speaker 1: his house? But that's how it was told to us,
Speaker 1: and so for a very long time he has a
Speaker 1: tenant in his house. Um, and so he drives me
Speaker 1: to Vermont and everyone is administered a valium. I don't
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I guess they thought we all
Speaker 1: needed it. They were like we were just they gave
Speaker 1: us value. For several days, people just kept giving us
Speaker 1: more valum, like that was the thing we needed. But
Speaker 1: and it was then. It was then that I thought
Speaker 1: I need to grow up. I need to become the
Speaker 1: man now. So that's what made me go to Yale
Speaker 1: Law school. I did, I had. I would never have
Speaker 1: gone to law school except for this, because what was
Speaker 1: the feeling to find that boo? Because you're so smart,
Speaker 1: you go, I'm gonna man up here, whether you want
Speaker 1: to do? Why did you be quite going to Yale
Speaker 1: because you were going to have a career that was
Speaker 1: a serious Because I was going to have a career
Speaker 1: that was going to be serious. Did well, Yeah, getting
Speaker 1: into law school was not a problem. Not in Bang.
Speaker 1: You're in Yale Law School and I go, and I
Speaker 1: made a life changing decision based on I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: an actor and I wouldn't bang, and I think him
Speaker 1: an actress. Some were stupid, sort of emotional. I had
Speaker 1: some like little some little thing in the back of
Speaker 1: my head said this was important and this was not important,
Speaker 1: and this would be what a man would do, and
Speaker 1: this would be what a This is responsible, This is responsibility,
Speaker 1: This is what my my dad doing, Doing the right thing,
Speaker 1: doing the right in honor of my dad maybe became
Speaker 1: going to laws. So when you go to law school
Speaker 1: and you're there, are you choking it down that it's tough?
Speaker 1: Or do you fall in love with Can I tell
Speaker 1: you again? I would say I sound like an advertisement
Speaker 1: for Yale, but it was. I've never been in a
Speaker 1: room with so many smart, engaged people and they're only
Speaker 1: talking about things that are interesting, the constitution matter. You're
Speaker 1: talking about things that really matter. It was the first time,
Speaker 1: and this is in the early nineties, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about what we are now dealing with issues that we're
Speaker 1: now dealing with, the warehousing of men of color in
Speaker 1: the prisons instead of I mean, and we're really seriously grappling,
Speaker 1: grappling with this stuff. And I loved it, and then
Speaker 1: I graduated and it is the worst most mind numbing
Speaker 1: work you can being the law. You're practicing law. It's
Speaker 1: a fete company. You're gonna go to some top firm
Speaker 1: they recruited. You can I tell you a smarter person,
Speaker 1: a person who would have considered more, would have been
Speaker 1: less horrorsh than I was. I looked at the firms
Speaker 1: and I said, what, what firm was paying what? So?
Speaker 1: I was interested in the top ten firms who were
Speaker 1: paying the most. Yeah, and I just go and what
Speaker 1: kind of work do they have you doing? Year one?
Speaker 1: In the very beginning, I'm working in mergers and acquisitions,
Speaker 1: and it could not be less. I don't understand anything
Speaker 1: that's going on because I've been talking about the fourteenth
Speaker 1: Amendment for three years and yeah, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden they're saying, take a look at the balance sheet,
Speaker 1: make sure they can really afford this note. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: what note is that I'm looking for? Like the note
Speaker 1: that miss so and so passed to somebody else or
Speaker 1: playing the piano and the note. So quickly, very very quickly,
Speaker 1: I get myself transferred to the entertainment department. Where where
Speaker 1: so I'm thinking, okay, well this breathe. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I've got to work out a royalty. Yeah, I can
Speaker 1: do this. I work with mostly with theater and fine
Speaker 1: arts and music. I don't want to get too greatest
Speaker 1: hits here, but then you wind up working with I'm
Speaker 1: working with amazing clients. I'm working with Stephenson, I'm working
Speaker 1: with Jerry Herman, I'm working with Lincoln Center Theater huge,
Speaker 1: I'm working with Scott rudin Um. I really thought this
Speaker 1: is fantastic. This is about as good as it could get.
Speaker 1: And after two years of it, I'm realizing, Oh, if
Speaker 1: I go look at what Stephen Sondheim's personal assistant is
Speaker 1: doing and I look at what I'm doing, there's really
Speaker 1: not that big a difference being a lawyer unless you're
Speaker 1: doing something that it's very ad hoc. It is very
Speaker 1: ad hoc. And working on the fourteen revival of Company
Speaker 1: by a you know, yeah, the great doing the contracts
Speaker 1: and working out the royalty pools and is Wendy wasser
Speaker 1: Stein going to fly business class or coach. It's not fascinating.
Speaker 1: But I'm getting paid a lot. So I'm going, well,
Speaker 1: I think this is what I want. I want to
Speaker 1: be paid, talking about the constitution anymore small. I want
Speaker 1: to be paid, but it's very small, And so I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: the way I'm gonna the way I'm going to bridge
Speaker 1: this because, um, my parents are also very big or
Speaker 1: my mother at this point is also very big on
Speaker 1: everybody pulls their own weight. You were given a wonderful
Speaker 1: first class education, and now you will pay you'll support yourself,
Speaker 1: go off into the world. Go. So it wasn't like
Speaker 1: I could have had the luxury. I mean, good people,
Speaker 1: truly good, better people than I do, would go work
Speaker 1: for the A C. L U and they would live
Speaker 1: in a land so they'd live in Massapequa and they
Speaker 1: would take the train in and they'd work for dollars
Speaker 1: a year and they do work that they really cared about.
Speaker 1: But I was a little too horsh for that, and
Speaker 1: so I wanted to be in business. I wanted to
Speaker 1: stay working at a firm where I was going to
Speaker 1: get paid. But here's what it was interesting to me
Speaker 1: from the moment I met you. You know, you're like
Speaker 1: cave it. You know, this is really bright and this
Speaker 1: wit and this warmth is everything sewn into that fabric.
Speaker 1: And when I met you, I thought, God, this guy
Speaker 1: is just so fun to talk to you. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's so bright and funny and in statche when are
Speaker 1: you there? Does someone see that in you. Does someone
Speaker 1: tap you on the shoulder and go, you gotta get
Speaker 1: out of here, or do you just do that for yourself?
Speaker 1: Know what happens is I start thinking the way I'm
Speaker 1: going to bridge all this is that I'm going to
Speaker 1: do something creative on my own. So I'm gonna wake up,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna set my alarm at five o'clock every morning,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to start writing a novel. I've got
Speaker 1: a novel to write, and that is going to be
Speaker 1: the thing I really care about. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: go into Paul Weiss or you know whatever league job
Speaker 1: I m m in that's going to pay the bills
Speaker 1: for living on in the apartment that I live in.
Speaker 1: And I do it, and I wait, I mean, because
Speaker 1: the one great quality I think I have his discipline.
Speaker 1: I set that alarm clock and I'm up at five
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning. So for two hours I'd write
Speaker 1: and then I'd go into work. And I published the novel.
Speaker 1: And it is a one failure. It gets. It gets
Speaker 1: really doesn't make you go running back into the arms
Speaker 1: of the offer. You know, it gets great, great reviews
Speaker 1: and Barnes and Noble makes me a discover great new writers,
Speaker 1: and Sunny met Office is like, oh yeah, I'm very
Speaker 1: proud of the book. Everybody's like, this is gonna be
Speaker 1: I mean, you were going to sell this book to
Speaker 1: the movies. We're gonna and absolutely nothing happens. I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's like dropping a feather into a well and waiting
Speaker 1: for the noise. When it in a little and then
Speaker 1: there's there ain't no noise. But all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: out of comes a call from an editor at The
Speaker 1: New York Times who says, please come and write for
Speaker 1: us where they want you to write. Well. At the time,
Speaker 1: I was working for a company that was owned by
Speaker 1: uh Lorne Michaels and Barry Diller and Dick Snyder called
Speaker 1: Golden Books Golden Books Family Entertainment. And the more it failed,
Speaker 1: the higher I rose, because you know, smart people would leave,
Speaker 1: but I kind of thought they were all interesting personalities,
Speaker 1: and I stayed and how there um I was there
Speaker 1: until it failed so badly it went into bankruptcy court,
Speaker 1: and then I negotiated the sale of the thing to
Speaker 1: various enterprises. Uh So, so that's where I am, and
Speaker 1: the New York Times calls, and I thought, well, this
Speaker 1: is really really interesting. First they wanted me to do
Speaker 1: a column, you know, one of those you'd know everything
Speaker 1: about me and my boyfriend and my dog. And it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be about my life, the life of
Speaker 1: you know, a metropolitan gentleman. Yeah, going around to the
Speaker 1: movies and what I saw at the theater, and I thought,
Speaker 1: people will be so fucking like it's like I can
Speaker 1: see that. For three weeks, they said, come in with
Speaker 1: a list, Philip, lightly from now. They said, come with
Speaker 1: a list of twenty five columns that you'll write. And
Speaker 1: I could come in with like three. I had three,
Speaker 1: and I thought, I thought, I know what I need
Speaker 1: to do. I need to switch the pitch on this.
Speaker 1: And I said, you know, I think people would be
Speaker 1: a lot more interested if they could write into me
Speaker 1: for advice. And they said, that is the tackiest idea
Speaker 1: we've ever heard. Thank you very much. You can show
Speaker 1: yourself the door. And then they thought about it some
Speaker 1: and we did it. What was the column call It's
Speaker 1: called Social Cues. It's still runs to this day. It's
Speaker 1: me the founder and I was the founder of it.
Speaker 1: And then that grew into I developed a show at HBO.
Speaker 1: I developed a show. At CBS, we developed shows about
Speaker 1: an advice columnist who's you know, a little got a
Speaker 1: little spring in his little bottle rocket at every single place,
Speaker 1: intend of never it's never seen the light of day
Speaker 1: because it shouldn't, because it's a show about an advice columnist.
Speaker 1: So you're back at the Times and what was the
Speaker 1: gap in between twenty years? Twenty year gap? So how
Speaker 1: was the Times different when you go back? Well, now
Speaker 1: they're all obviously it's different, But what's your description back then?
Speaker 1: Was it was? Yeah? They were they were so grand.
Speaker 1: They were in this big, shabby building and everybody was
Speaker 1: jostling next to each other. They were a little tight
Speaker 1: for space. People were the phone was ringing off the hook.
Speaker 1: Now you go back and it's really I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the it's not the failing New York Times, but it's
Speaker 1: like all media. It's boy, they're sure are some empty
Speaker 1: cautious New York Sure are some empty desks, cautious New
Speaker 1: York Times? And how do we deal with this? But
Speaker 1: I want to interject something that this is so interesting.
Speaker 1: We have Jill Abramson on the show, and she was
Speaker 1: very gracious, and she was of course more um disclosive
Speaker 1: than anybody in that position before. And New York Magazine
Speaker 1: reports that Sulzberger was complaining to people that she talks
Speaker 1: too much to the press, she's too out there in
Speaker 1: that role, and he doesn't like that she's too media centric,
Speaker 1: and he cited her appearance on My show that he
Speaker 1: didn't like that. And I thought to myself, all we
Speaker 1: did was kissed the ass of the Times. I mean,
Speaker 1: I am somebody who I have a very separate relationship,
Speaker 1: but I'm kind of proud of myself that I read
Speaker 1: the Times every day. I'm a big fan of The Times.
Speaker 1: I just don't like when I read my name in
Speaker 1: the Times. Well, it's in big It's a big part
Speaker 1: of the change that we're talking about. In the thirty
Speaker 1: year period. It was before the event of celebrity journalism.
Speaker 1: People there was there was maybe did people magazine maybe
Speaker 1: had just started when we when I was when I
Speaker 1: was first there, and now that is what the news is.
Speaker 1: The news is, you're the news. I mean, it's very hard.
Speaker 1: I admire the guys and women who were up there.
Speaker 1: I mean I personally, by the way, I think Joe
Speaker 1: Abramson was tremendous because she also had a great people sense.
Speaker 1: When I got I started doing this other I used
Speaker 1: the social cues column to sort of segue into the
Speaker 1: table for three column, which you've done with me and um.
Speaker 1: When I would get somebody really amazing, like Ruth Bader
Speaker 1: Ginsburg and Gloria Steinhum, she would send a little note.
Speaker 1: Or when I would get a good get, she would
Speaker 1: say it would it was only a line and she
Speaker 1: but she was the head of this huge thing. But
Speaker 1: she was seeing. It's so important when you're working, when
Speaker 1: you're working at a place like that, to of someone
Speaker 1: say I see you. That's all they have to say,
Speaker 1: I see you, and I like what you're doing. And
Speaker 1: I feel like they're there's under so much siege now
Speaker 1: because reporting couldn't there couldn't be a more important time
Speaker 1: for it. Do you consider yourself political in the work
Speaker 1: you do and the writing you do, in the in
Speaker 1: the interviews you're doing well? Now? It is such a
Speaker 1: it's at such an interesting time because I was getting
Speaker 1: I was getting good gets in the political world. I
Speaker 1: was I got the president, I got the president, I
Speaker 1: got Nancy Pelosi, I got to do Table for three,
Speaker 1: Table for three. Did Obama do it with Obama? Did
Speaker 1: it with Brian Cranston? What was that like? The three
Speaker 1: of them? Well, the three, I mean it was it
Speaker 1: was the reason it happened. I think john was the
Speaker 1: Johnson movie, and I think the Obama press people were
Speaker 1: starting to think about legacy and they were trying to
Speaker 1: create a parallel track and trying to get Obama on
Speaker 1: this show. I Oh, he was fantastic. I mean, we
Speaker 1: talked about you'd love it because we talked about we
Speaker 1: talked about fathers, and we talked about guys who were
Speaker 1: really raised without fathers, who most important role in life
Speaker 1: they felt was being a father. And it was really
Speaker 1: touching and I was really nervous. But but I mean,
Speaker 1: so this column has really gotten some great political figures,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren, Christian Jella Brand. I mean, we've gotten all
Speaker 1: the great ones. That was it ever difficult? Was there
Speaker 1: any friction with anybody? Umble was David Duke? The problem
Speaker 1: is I have not been able to crack Republicans. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're a lawyer from Yale the time the funk? Would
Speaker 1: I want to have lunch with you? So? Did you
Speaker 1: do Trump? Have you interviewed Trump? No? I have not
Speaker 1: interviewed Trump. I was very close. Not I don't want
Speaker 1: to say very close, because I don't know how close
Speaker 1: I was. Really. I was really close to getting Ivanka Trump,
Speaker 1: which I thought would have been very interesting during the
Speaker 1: campaign super woman. But the old has switched so much
Speaker 1: that I mean, and I had never understood how much.
Speaker 1: I mean. I think for you it's very different, But
Speaker 1: for me it wasn't an access game, and my access
Speaker 1: to certain people pipelines has totally dried up. And I
Speaker 1: really wouldn't love nothing. I would love to get Mitch McConnell.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not. I mean, and if you read
Speaker 1: the table for three, you know it's now it's what
Speaker 1: you're saying. You're never in the hot seat. I don't
Speaker 1: want to put him in a gotcha moment. I want
Speaker 1: to think, tell us what you wanted to know, tell
Speaker 1: us how you're thinking about this, so that we can
Speaker 1: understand it better. And since I'm so interested in in
Speaker 1: in the subjects childhoods and what their relationships with their
Speaker 1: parents were, as you are, I think you can do
Speaker 1: it in a in a way you can get with
Speaker 1: political people in a way that Trump's their politics. In
Speaker 1: a recent social Cues column, a reader complained about having
Speaker 1: his table at a restaurant given to a list celebrity.
Speaker 1: In response, Philip Galamis did what he does best, put
Speaker 1: things in perspective through pros take solace in the words
Speaker 1: of Emily Dickinson. He wrote, how dreary to be somebody,
Speaker 1: how public, like a frog to tell one's name the
Speaker 1: Livelong June to an admiring bog, This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to here's the thing.