Speaker 1: Our Way with yours truly Paul Anka and my buddy
Speaker 1: Skip Bronson, is a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, folks, this
Speaker 1: is Paul Anka.
Speaker 2: And my name is Skip Bronson. We've been friends for
Speaker 2: decades and we've decided to let you in on our
Speaker 2: late night phone calls by starting a new podcast and
Speaker 2: welcome to Our Way.
Speaker 1: We'd like you to meet some real good friends of us.
Speaker 2: Your leaders in entertainment and.
Speaker 1: Sports, innovators in business and technology, and even a city
Speaker 1: president or two.
Speaker 2: Join us as we ask the questions they've not been
Speaker 2: asked before, tell it like it is, and even sing
Speaker 2: a song or two.
Speaker 1: This is our podcast and we'll be doing it our way.
Speaker 3: But movie making is often challenging, and the behind the
Speaker 3: scenes with your friends and colleagues is fun. But movie
Speaker 3: making is not always that much fun. It's worked, you know,
Speaker 3: how you try to get you know, whenever coming back.
Speaker 3: You got to get this scene right now, like today,
Speaker 3: and the pressure is very real. I always felt I
Speaker 3: got invited to do SNL the first time, and did
Speaker 3: it several times, and then thirty five I said to myself,
Speaker 3: this is fun. This is where the work itself is fun.
Speaker 1: Hey, Skip, Hey, what's going on. Well, you tell me, man,
Speaker 1: the Masters. I've been in the studio and working on
Speaker 1: the dock and everything. What finally happened there? That was
Speaker 1: an incredible tournament. You know, it's not often not I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say often. It's not always that the number one
Speaker 1: player in the world or even in the field wins
Speaker 1: the tournament. But this time Scottie Scheffler, who is in
Speaker 1: fact the best golfer in the world, ranked number one
Speaker 1: in the world, and he won the Masters. Last year
Speaker 1: John rom won the year before Scottie Scheffler won, so
Speaker 1: this is two out of three years that he's won,
Speaker 1: and he's just a spectacular golfer. But I know what
Speaker 1: you're turned on about, and that's you know, hockey playoffs.
Speaker 4: Oh man, it's the best.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love it, but I can't compete when
Speaker 2: it comes to being a fan.
Speaker 1: You know, It's been the most constant thing in my life.
Speaker 1: Even after the gun in the business and I got busy,
Speaker 1: I would never miss a hockey game. To me, knowing
Speaker 1: because I skated as a kid that I involved with
Speaker 1: the Senators. Those kids are like ballet dancers with those skates,
Speaker 1: and to see where the game is evolved into, you know,
Speaker 1: bigger and faster. It's it's its best when it gets
Speaker 1: to the playoffs and it really shows you what those
Speaker 1: kids are capable of doing. But it gets down to
Speaker 1: the goalies. It's a goalie game at that point. If
Speaker 1: you got the bad goalie, you're not going to win.
Speaker 1: I've been loving it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know you were an owner of the Ottawa Senators,
Speaker 2: but I actually don't even know how or why that happened.
Speaker 2: What was the genesis?
Speaker 1: Well, we wanted a hockey team, and I went to
Speaker 1: Bruce McDonald's a buddy, and you know, he had the
Speaker 1: Kings and he helped me put it together. And the
Speaker 1: group up in Autowa brought me in and I was
Speaker 1: just part of a team of guys that brought it there.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, it hasn't been a great hockey team for
Speaker 1: all these years as well play soccer, but it hasn't
Speaker 1: worked out for the city, you know, except that had
Speaker 1: a better year this year. Yeah, and I've loved it.
Speaker 1: I just loved it. And I think New York's got
Speaker 1: a shot. I love the way New York's playing. I
Speaker 1: like like two great goalies, yeah, Igor and Quick. My
Speaker 1: kids got Ethan's got uh the Stanley Cup game when
Speaker 1: the Kings and New York played. When we went to
Speaker 1: the locker room, Quick gave Ethan the hockey the goalie
Speaker 1: stick from that wind that night. We've got it up
Speaker 1: on the wall.
Speaker 2: Oh that's cool.
Speaker 4: A great goalie.
Speaker 1: You know he's older now, Quick, but he's still he's
Speaker 1: still got his game going. Speaking of game going, how
Speaker 1: about who's coming on here in a few days. Uh,
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 2: Man, Yeah, I know, Alec Baldwin. This is this is
Speaker 2: the Cup. It's amazing that he's actually going to do
Speaker 2: it with all the distractions that he's got from that
Speaker 2: New Mexico situation. But he says he's going to do it,
Speaker 2: and you know when he says he's going to do something,
Speaker 2: he does.
Speaker 4: He's that kind of guy. You know, he's a man's man.
Speaker 1: We all know his m O. But that's who he is.
Speaker 1: I love the guy anytime, and I don't profess to
Speaker 1: no one, but anytime I've been around him. And the
Speaker 1: last time was you know, we did something on the
Speaker 1: Comedy Channel for that roast, and you know they threw
Speaker 1: it at him. With everything else you had to deal
Speaker 1: with they wanted to sing my way with me. It's
Speaker 1: not easy for singers. Littlone a guy that's an actor
Speaker 1: and what have you. And he stepped up and I
Speaker 1: think just about thirty minutes before he little apprehends I
Speaker 1: loved watching my favorite guys.
Speaker 4: No, I can't do this. I can't do this. No
Speaker 4: I can't say this. I can't no, no, no, you do
Speaker 4: the whole thing. I'm not going to go on. Calm down.
Speaker 4: You gotta just think of who you are. You got
Speaker 4: balls of steel.
Speaker 1: We know right you're it man, And I meant it
Speaker 1: because he's in the hell of a guy and he
Speaker 1: came right out. I thought Frank was there. He took
Speaker 1: on that character and he was phrasing it. He did
Speaker 1: a great job. So that was a great moment for me.
Speaker 1: That's the last time that I saw him. And you're
Speaker 1: bringing up this whole situation he's in now, I gotta say,
Speaker 1: very quickly without getting deep, I support the guy.
Speaker 4: I think it's bullshit. I really do.
Speaker 3: It's unfortunate.
Speaker 1: It's unfortunate. It's unfortunate for the other dynamics. But I
Speaker 1: hate to see a guy like this go through that.
Speaker 1: Who shouldn't be going through it. I just leave it.
Speaker 4: I'm just gonna leave it like that.
Speaker 1: And I don't think we're going to even approach it,
Speaker 1: you know, because he's kidding great, great vibe and in.
Speaker 2: But what I will mention is that Edie, who worked
Speaker 2: as the photographer at Saturday Night Live for twenty five years,
Speaker 2: photographed everybody. She said, if she had to single out
Speaker 2: one person who might have been the absolute favorite that
Speaker 2: she's photographed multiple times, of course, who would be Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 2: She's just absolutely crazy about him and his talent. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: this guy can do everything, you know, from very serious
Speaker 2: dramatic acting roles Glen Garrett, Glenn Ross, street Cardy and Desire,
Speaker 2: you know, to comedy to television series with thirty Rock.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's so versatile. I mean he's great.
Speaker 1: He did Stanley Kowalski street car name Desire. I think
Speaker 1: it was Frank Rich the New York Times when he
Speaker 1: wrote this the first time that he doesn't leave one
Speaker 1: longing from Brando. I think that was his code. That's
Speaker 1: pretty heavy, you know, that's Brando and he earned a
Speaker 1: lot of rave reviews.
Speaker 4: But he's a great actor. You know, he really is actor.
Speaker 2: And he's got including by the way, he has a
Speaker 2: very successful podcast. And I don't know where he finds
Speaker 2: the time this man has. I mean, I have to
Speaker 2: take a pause here. Whenever I whenever say this, seven
Speaker 2: children under the age of eleven, I mean, let me
Speaker 2: say that again. Seven children under the age of eleven.
Speaker 2: I mean, you kidding me. You've got six, but they
Speaker 2: weren't all, you know, cramped in like that. But I mean,
Speaker 2: seven under the age of eleven is crazy. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: ask him, you know what I want to ask him.
Speaker 2: I want to ask him if he's done.
Speaker 1: I wonder how he did it. I want to ask
Speaker 1: him how many times he did it? Bless him?
Speaker 2: All Right, I'm gonna run. I gotta get ready for this,
Speaker 2: so I'm gonna take off.
Speaker 4: You have fun.
Speaker 2: I'll talk to you before we go to bed.
Speaker 4: Please, Well, what time you go to bed tonight?
Speaker 2: Ten thirty?
Speaker 1: You don't want to call me too, I know you'll
Speaker 1: call me at two and say good night. I'm most
Speaker 1: calling you at ten thirty.
Speaker 4: Good night.
Speaker 1: Don't you have it any empathy for your dear friend?
Speaker 1: I sitting up and trying to make people happy and writing.
Speaker 2: I'm going to get that AI device to call you a.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great, give me a name. It's still cute. Like
Speaker 1: I set my clock tenth theory, I gotta wake them
Speaker 1: up and think good night. All right, Skip, I look
Speaker 1: forward to it. I think we'll have a good time
Speaker 1: with Alec.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'll be great.
Speaker 1: All right, Skip, We're gonna talk talk to you later.
Speaker 1: Byey bye.
Speaker 4: There's an Alex.
Speaker 1: I see hair. I see hair over there. You can't
Speaker 1: compare the hair Alex.
Speaker 2: The top of we see the top of his head.
Speaker 1: Aleck, I care. I love that here. Hey, Alec, how
Speaker 1: are you doing there?
Speaker 4: You go?
Speaker 3: Hey?
Speaker 1: You ready to do my way again?
Speaker 3: Actually, when I saw myself recorded doing my were with you,
Speaker 3: I'd never been more humiliated in my life.
Speaker 1: You pulled it off.
Speaker 3: Man, I'm never singing my way with a legendary vocalist
Speaker 3: ever again. That was the one. It was a one
Speaker 3: time deal, only one time.
Speaker 1: Well, it was a big one time for me because
Speaker 1: I've done it with Sinatra.
Speaker 3: I'm very grateful to you.
Speaker 1: No, no, I did it with Sinatra and then there
Speaker 1: we were thrown into that. But you know, you had
Speaker 1: a little hesitation, like what thirty minutes before we were
Speaker 1: going to do it, and then you showed the alec balls.
Speaker 1: You just went right into the role. You came in
Speaker 1: and I couldn't fuck the mooove. I thought Frank was
Speaker 1: next to me.
Speaker 3: He had it was like therapy. This is like therapy.
Speaker 1: Where does he bring the energy from to sound like that?
Speaker 3: You were great, but you know something funny, but you'll appreciate.
Speaker 3: I always tell people if I teach acting, or I
Speaker 3: go in and kind of guest to teach. I haven't
Speaker 3: really talked that much lately, but if I went in there,
Speaker 3: I always tell them learn to sing the best of
Speaker 3: your ability. I said, you will cut off so many
Speaker 3: wonderful experiences in this business if you don't allow yourself
Speaker 3: to at least try. You know what I mean? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I agree, don't try to learn how to sing to
Speaker 3: do musicals? And said, well that's all, that's where the
Speaker 3: fun is.
Speaker 1: So that was a stretch for you. I mean, you've
Speaker 1: gone from hey, you're one of our great actors and
Speaker 1: then the comedy with SNL and Rock. Was that really
Speaker 1: a stretch for you to sing that the thing for
Speaker 1: a minute.
Speaker 3: Well, I think because I have a very raspy voice.
Speaker 3: I remember one time I was at a fundraiser and
Speaker 3: the guy who wrote nine Maury Yeston, was there. And
Speaker 3: Maury Yeston was there, Nathan Lane and my Matthew Broderick
Speaker 3: and all these people who sing on Broadway. And Maury
Speaker 3: Yeston said to me, do you sing? I said, no,
Speaker 3: I don't sing. I can't sing. He says, nonsense, mister Ball,
Speaker 3: of course you can sing. And I said, really, why
Speaker 3: do you say that. He goes, he said, I'm going
Speaker 3: to teach you the same thing I talked Dustin Hoffman.
Speaker 3: He said, I want you to sing the Star Spangled
Speaker 3: Banner in the style of Jimmy Duranta, and I said, oh.
Speaker 3: And then he says, I want you to sing God
Speaker 3: Bless America in the style of Louis Armstrong, which are
Speaker 3: very similar. He goes, and I'm singing. He goes, You're
Speaker 3: on key. He said, you can sing when you're pretending
Speaker 3: to be somebody else. That's right, he said, if you
Speaker 3: he said, if you can find your own voice, he says,
Speaker 3: you can sing you're on key. But my voice is
Speaker 3: so shredded I can't sing anyway.
Speaker 1: You know, most singers, most singers aren't great singers al
Speaker 1: you know, even Ray Charles is one of my favorite.
Speaker 1: If you get down to quality of voice, they've all
Speaker 1: got that raspy vibe going, you know most of them,
Speaker 1: and most of them are just like singing from the heart,
Speaker 1: but they're not great singers.
Speaker 3: They smoke.
Speaker 1: They all smoke.
Speaker 3: Listen.
Speaker 1: When I started with the rat Pack in the early sixties,
Speaker 1: I'm this kid just saying, who do I give the
Speaker 1: money back to? You know, it was those guys. It
Speaker 1: was chicks. It was like, I'm living this life out
Speaker 1: of Canada and they're all sitting around starting in the
Speaker 1: afternoon and they're smoking, and they're drinking, and they're trying
Speaker 1: to get me to join the club, and I with
Speaker 1: I got to preserve the business. They all fucking smoked.
Speaker 1: It was unbelievable and it was It was kind of
Speaker 1: the Unfortunately what happened to Sammy was all smoking. The
Speaker 1: Frank you know, he was, and Dean was the one
Speaker 1: guy that fooled everybody. He didn't drink a lot, he
Speaker 1: didn't smoke a lot. But Sammy and Frank, they were
Speaker 1: they were the smokers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but but Dean always had a button his hand
Speaker 3: and the glass in the other hand, so you always
Speaker 3: talk differently. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Oh, we had the apple juice in the other hand,
Speaker 1: is that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I sit off stage and he was the one that
Speaker 1: fooled everybody. He wasn't a big smoker.
Speaker 2: Alec, I've met you before. My wife is none other
Speaker 2: than Edie Baskin loves you. She is so crazy about you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she was a doll. I miss her. She was
Speaker 3: really really those are the old days and when she
Speaker 3: was there, my god, Ei was just a doll. She
Speaker 3: was a doll.
Speaker 2: Thanks, she said, shed make sure you tell Alec he's
Speaker 2: my favorite member of the five timers club, I said,
Speaker 2: except in his case, I think it's seventeen times.
Speaker 3: Your host it right, Yeah, I'm something more than five.
Speaker 3: I know that it's more than five.
Speaker 1: We broke the record, right because he broke didn't he
Speaker 1: break Steve Martin's record?
Speaker 3: I think I have one more than Steve. But you
Speaker 3: know who's county?
Speaker 2: Who's I got to get this out of the way early, though.
Speaker 2: Your impression of Trump is so iconic, so famous on
Speaker 2: the show, and I was talking to Edie about this,
Speaker 2: and Edie was wondering, how did it feel to be
Speaker 2: impersonating somebody who despise that much to just go through
Speaker 2: that process.
Speaker 3: Well, it's funny you say that, because I've come full
Speaker 3: circle where I don't have those feelings. I'm not a
Speaker 3: Trump supporter, but I don't feel I mean, I feel
Speaker 3: like people now who are Democrats or Biden's supporters of
Speaker 3: What's what they needed to start doing now is stop
Speaker 3: talking about Trump and start selling Biden. Get off that pinata.
Speaker 3: It's like a tired thing.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: I did that for four years, but now my attitude
Speaker 3: is like, let's I mean a little but that is fun,
Speaker 3: but you gotta they got to move on and start
Speaker 3: articulating why they want.
Speaker 2: But to vote for not vote against someone else.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, we all know people who don't
Speaker 3: trust Trump or don't prefer Trump. We get it, we
Speaker 3: know how you feel.
Speaker 1: Now what bothers me with it all today is happy
Speaker 1: I'm eighty two years old and I can sit in
Speaker 1: the grandstand and look at it. It's just become so tribals.
Speaker 1: That's the problem for me. It's just become so tribal
Speaker 1: and there's nobody talking and relating.
Speaker 3: It's not helping, that's for sure. It isn't helping.
Speaker 1: Not helping at all Man, I think we're in for
Speaker 1: a few rough years, but we still got the greatest
Speaker 1: country in the world, so we'll pull it together.
Speaker 3: So Paul, I want to know I always ask people.
Speaker 3: I'm going to turn the tables on you, guys and
Speaker 3: ask you a question, which is I always ask people
Speaker 3: in your world, like who's somebody you're standing next to
Speaker 3: in a studio or I'm assuming in a studio and
Speaker 3: you're recording music with somebody and you just were dying
Speaker 3: you thought this is like a dream come true, somebody
Speaker 3: you loved that much. Obviously Frank is one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, I did a duet's album with
Speaker 1: a lot of good people. I think Willie Nelson right
Speaker 1: loved with Willy Ray Charles. I love Ray Charles. I'm
Speaker 1: a huge Ray Charles man. And then I got a
Speaker 1: big kick out of work with Michael Bubley, who I
Speaker 1: kind of found and worked with and watches whole career grow.
Speaker 1: And then there I was watching this guy come into fruition,
Speaker 1: love him and Michael. That was a big proud moment
Speaker 1: for me. The one I haven't been in the studio
Speaker 1: with who I'd like to be it would be sting.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 1: I've been around Elton a lot, but I haven't been
Speaker 1: in a studio with him. But I think Elton is
Speaker 1: the real deal. It's the real deal. Like hey, like
Speaker 1: you're the real deal. You're the real deal. What was
Speaker 1: comedy one of your ambitions when you got into acting,
Speaker 1: because you do so much comedy and a lot of
Speaker 1: guys can't do it, you know, it's tough to switch over.
Speaker 1: Was that part of the menu for you when you started.
Speaker 3: I think that it's about relaxing, really, because in the
Speaker 3: beginning you're not quite sure where you're going to go
Speaker 3: because that's not up to you. And then as you
Speaker 3: start to make films that are more dramas and thrillers
Speaker 3: and things like that and Hunt for Red October these
Speaker 3: kind of you know, war technology films and so forth,
Speaker 3: that's exciting. But movie making is often challenging. And that
Speaker 3: behind the scenes with your friends and colleague is fun.
Speaker 3: But movie making is not always that much fun. It's
Speaker 3: work and you try to get you know, whenever coming back,
Speaker 3: you got to get this scene right now, like today,
Speaker 3: and the pressure is very real. I always felt now
Speaker 3: when I smoked. It was when I was doing film
Speaker 3: after film after film in a row and I was
Speaker 3: just nervous. So all the time I was like Jesus,
Speaker 3: this is hard to really get it right. And when
Speaker 3: I went into that world, I got invited to do
Speaker 3: SNL the first time and did it several times, and
Speaker 3: then thirty Rocks. I said to myself, this is fun.
Speaker 3: This is where the work itself is fun. And I
Speaker 3: enjoyed that. I really couldn't get enough of going there.
Speaker 3: And there were things they had me do on that
Speaker 3: show that no one else would ever invite me to do.
Speaker 3: So I loved it.
Speaker 1: And you know what it was when I started, it's
Speaker 1: so young, and then put a few years under me,
Speaker 1: I found the motivating factor. I wanted to know what
Speaker 1: you thought about it for me in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: because it's it's a bullshit business. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, revenge. Revenge motivated me through so much. How
Speaker 1: do you feel about that?
Speaker 3: Well, I think that might be the word. I don't know,
Speaker 3: but I know for me, it was about having to
Speaker 3: prove yourself no matter what I did, no matter what
Speaker 3: successes I had or didn't didn't have, I never sat
Speaker 3: back and I was satisfied. I thought, I wake up
Speaker 3: the next day I got to prove myself all over again.
Speaker 3: You know, there's an echelon you can get to where
Speaker 3: you're like Cruise and Hanks and these big people Leo,
Speaker 3: where you're every time you step up to bat you're
Speaker 3: gonna get a double at least, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: You're gonna make money for them. Cruise once said to
Speaker 3: me the most amazing thing. He said, so why do
Speaker 3: you work so hard. You're the hardest working person I've
Speaker 3: ever met in my life. And he said, I got
Speaker 3: to give them both their money's worth. I said, what
Speaker 3: do you mean? He said, the studio that's paying me
Speaker 3: and the ticket buyers that are buying tickets to my movies.
Speaker 3: Because I got even both, it goes that's my job.
Speaker 3: And I remember, you know, I'm not in that world
Speaker 3: of monumental success in films and especially making money, you know,
Speaker 3: making a lot of money for the studios, which is
Speaker 3: all they care about now more than ever. But I
Speaker 3: remember just saying to myself, I go back to zero
Speaker 3: every movie I start, I'm back to zero. I got
Speaker 3: to prove myself again.
Speaker 1: But as that change, though, you look at the film
Speaker 1: business today, it's not a business like it was years ago,
Speaker 1: and it's so changed today where there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of money being made outther than just certain films. I notice,
Speaker 1: you know, it's all about now getting an oscar to
Speaker 1: really drive the film home. There seems to be a
Speaker 1: whole change of dynamic in the film business. How are
Speaker 1: you sensing that?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: I think that the awards season is strange because there's
Speaker 3: a kind of a there's a kind of hunting for
Speaker 3: awards that was kind of vulgar. Thirty years ago. You
Speaker 3: wouldn't have done it that way. And I think that
Speaker 3: the industry, although there are years where they can't deny
Speaker 3: someone's the greatness of someone's performance and they give them
Speaker 3: an award, for the most part, the business is straining.
Speaker 3: Maybe not the actress, which is why the SAG Awards
Speaker 3: are so distinctive, But in the oscars, they're always straining
Speaker 3: to give the oscar to somebody they can make money off.
Speaker 3: You know, they might want to give it to Roberto
Speaker 3: Benini again, you know, I mean, he's really They're not
Speaker 3: going to make a lot of movies in this country
Speaker 3: with Roberto Benini. But the biggest stars in the movie business,
Speaker 3: who are real box office stars, they're dying to put
Speaker 3: an oscar in their hands. So when they sell, when
Speaker 3: they sell the film, in the trailer, it says Academy
Speaker 3: Award winner Bobby Block. That's one thing. The second thing
Speaker 3: is that the business, and I think it used to
Speaker 3: be as you know, the men and women typically the
Speaker 3: men who owned the companies, they were the owners of
Speaker 3: the companies themselves, not the management. They installed management out
Speaker 3: in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The owners of the companies were in New York and
Speaker 3: the people that ran the companies for them were in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles. And the ones they hired to run the
Speaker 3: company had some sense that had to make a movie,
Speaker 3: and they were risk takers like Menivoi. I always quote
Speaker 3: and say Menivoy was that guy who'd say, you know,
Speaker 3: they were a small studio, a riot that boyd. We
Speaker 3: might say, I don't know if we're going to lose
Speaker 3: our shirts on this movie, but I'm going to burn
Speaker 3: one on the side of the angels and make a
Speaker 3: great film. And whether we get out money back, I
Speaker 3: don't know. An ego and do you know some really
Speaker 3: tough drama, you know, and they would lose money. But
Speaker 3: Menavoid was the last of that breed. Now that people
Speaker 3: who own the companies have hired people to run the
Speaker 3: companies who tried to wigetize the whole business. They want
Speaker 3: the movie business to be like the potato chip business.
Speaker 3: Everything is the same.
Speaker 2: Paul and I on previous podcasts, you know that we do.
Speaker 2: We talk about all the things we had to do
Speaker 2: before we got to do what we wanted to do.
Speaker 2: You know, we all had those jobs. But when did
Speaker 2: you decide you wanted to be an actor? How'd that
Speaker 2: come about?
Speaker 3: I had a friend of mine, I was visiting a
Speaker 3: friend at NYU. I was in Washington at GW and
Speaker 3: I visited a friend of mine and her roommate was
Speaker 3: in the drama program. TISH was first blooming. You know,
Speaker 3: the Tishes has just given a big bag of money
Speaker 3: to them to build this school. And I went in
Speaker 3: there and she said, you should be an actor. And
Speaker 3: I said, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of
Speaker 3: in my life. And the joke was with my dad.
Speaker 3: I called my mother and father and I said I'm
Speaker 3: going to leave GW and go to NYU for acting.
Speaker 3: And my mother was screaming at the top of her
Speaker 3: lungs over the phone. Are you insane? She was screaming.
Speaker 3: And then I said, but you don't understand. When I
Speaker 3: go back to New York, I can claim all these
Speaker 3: awards and all these tuition stipends, regions, scholarship, all this money.
Speaker 3: I said, it'll be cheaper for me to go to
Speaker 3: NYU than it is GW, even though it's more expensive.
Speaker 3: And my father's on the phone. He goes, okay, let's
Speaker 3: hear him out. Let's hear him out, like anything that
Speaker 3: would lower my father's costs. He was over fair. So
Speaker 3: that's how I went to NYU.
Speaker 2: And then you he would leave Strasbourg, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, Well, I studied at the institute. He died. We
Speaker 3: had a class with him once a month where he
Speaker 3: lectured us, but he died very soon after he was there.
Speaker 3: The one year I was there, he was.
Speaker 2: So because I'm not an actor. When they refer to
Speaker 2: as method acting, like, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: What's the technique?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: What's the technique for that?
Speaker 3: Well? To me, it's like a stream, like an arc,
Speaker 3: which is that years ago in the silent era, you
Speaker 3: had to be beautiful. Then they switched to sound and
Speaker 3: you had to be able to deliver a line. Then
Speaker 3: the war came and the war wanted. They wanted flint
Speaker 3: here people, tougher people, Betty Davis, Joan Crawford, the men
Speaker 3: were tough. And you get into the method acting thing,
Speaker 3: but they don't want you to indicate emotion. They want
Speaker 3: you to really feel that emotion. Think about your dog dead,
Speaker 3: think about your grandma died, and you start sobbing, and
Speaker 3: then actions say the lines while you're genuinely emotionally packed.
Speaker 3: Then we get into the computer age, where the actors
Speaker 3: themselves are not necessarily the fizz and the drinks. They
Speaker 3: invite you into the theater, a famous star has you commit,
Speaker 3: but computers then take over and really to create the
Speaker 3: film experience you're going to have. And now we've arrived
Speaker 3: at the last installment. Now I think is that the
Speaker 3: fittest people are the biggest stars. You gotta be fit.
Speaker 3: They want they want that video. If you roll in
Speaker 3: a truck tire up a hill, they don't necessarily want
Speaker 3: to see you, beside Shakespeare roll that tire up that
Speaker 3: hill and we love.
Speaker 1: Hey, Alice. Do you find the most actors today don't
Speaker 1: bother training anymore? With the way the industry is, I think.
Speaker 3: Fewer of them do I think they trained for luck.
Speaker 3: I think they want to have it on their resume
Speaker 3: that they made an attempt to learn more. And the
Speaker 3: the classic education in theater is about understanding material and
Speaker 3: studying classic plays to show you how to interpret a character.
Speaker 3: And what's great about those classic roles is we know
Speaker 3: the material works. It's you know, time honored and you
Speaker 3: get in there and you learn how to break down
Speaker 3: a character by studying great characters where there's a lot
Speaker 3: of meat there on the bone. And then but I
Speaker 3: think more and more people who are younger today, they
Speaker 3: don't go as long. They don't go to college, or
Speaker 3: they don't go to years of training.
Speaker 2: Your performance in Glengarry Glenn Ross time still, you know,
Speaker 2: being a guy who's been selling his whole life. I've
Speaker 2: always been, you know. I like to say I'm not
Speaker 2: a salesman, I'm a storyteller, but at the core, I'm
Speaker 2: a salesman. That that always be closing that ABC, I mean,
Speaker 2: one of the great scenes that I've ever seen in
Speaker 2: a movie.
Speaker 3: I never wanted to do that that we get in
Speaker 3: there to rehearse that summer we shot it that that
Speaker 3: I think that fall I was in there to rehearse
Speaker 3: like in August. I rehearsed for a couple of days.
Speaker 3: They rehearsed, they had a real rehearsal for a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks, and I went in for a few days
Speaker 3: and I thought, oh God, I hate this because I
Speaker 3: love all of them. I love them, I mean Lemon.
Speaker 3: I practicularly cried when I work with Lemon.
Speaker 2: I can't believe you're saying that was the thing that
Speaker 2: bothered me the most. I felt so badly for Jack
Speaker 2: Lemmon me just.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: I was so I was blown away by your performance,
Speaker 2: but I was really angry with you the way you
Speaker 2: treated him. That was really something.
Speaker 3: Well, people go see the play, and the play has
Speaker 3: revived periodically in New York all the time, and people
Speaker 3: do the play. I've seen many products. I'm Broadway with Glengarry,
Speaker 3: and people see the play and they go, well, where's
Speaker 3: that scene where Alec Baldwin's character reams out these people
Speaker 3: and they have to understand it's not in the play.
Speaker 3: And I called Mammott and I said, why did you
Speaker 3: win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama? He won the Pulitzer
Speaker 3: Prize for that play. And I said, why do you
Speaker 3: feel you need to add this character. He said, I
Speaker 3: don't believe these men are criminals. He said, I needed
Speaker 3: to ratchet up the stakes on them. I want these
Speaker 3: are these men are not criminals. I need to motivate them.
Speaker 3: This guy comes in and threatens them and the only
Speaker 3: way they can get out of it is to commit
Speaker 3: a crime. And so I was like, Wow, that was
Speaker 3: amazing to me that he made that change.
Speaker 2: And I was surprised when I read that. I read
Speaker 2: that you actually prefer to, you know, to perform on
Speaker 2: stage as opposed to television or acting in films. That
Speaker 2: that's your first love is being on stage? Is that correct? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean anything live like SNL. I guessed it on
Speaker 3: Will and Grace a few times. You're live audience. That's
Speaker 3: always fun. You get a lot of energy. I mean,
Speaker 3: Paul can probably tell you better about this that live
Speaker 3: things always gold, magical. Yeah yeah, Well, what's some of
Speaker 3: the places you played? What's a room you go into
Speaker 3: that was always you just felt at home.
Speaker 1: Well, when I started, you know, you're working for the boys,
Speaker 1: and they controlled and that was it. And they controlled
Speaker 1: places like the Coca Cavana, which was fucking worse. There
Speaker 1: was a basement and all the all the mob guys
Speaker 1: were in there and you played to them, and there
Speaker 1: was no stage. The light boots was just a panel
Speaker 1: on the wall. That was a tough room. Then you
Speaker 1: got a little better when you went to the Fountain
Speaker 1: Blue down in Miami. And then the one I loved
Speaker 1: was at the Sands because the boys were there and
Speaker 1: it had that magic going for it, and it was small,
Speaker 1: it was intimate and anything could happen.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: They had the black Book, which was you know, certain
Speaker 1: guys from Saint Louis, Chicago. None of those boys were
Speaker 1: allowed in town, so they're all in a black book.
Speaker 1: But you wanted them to come to town because there
Speaker 1: was a buzz in that little room at the Sands.
Speaker 1: So if you're singing up there and few of them
Speaker 1: snuck in, however, they got them in town. If the
Speaker 1: spotlight went off the stage and hit the front table,
Speaker 1: eight guys went.
Speaker 5: Under the table. They didn't want them to see.
Speaker 1: So the magic in that room although that the side
Speaker 1: dishes on Friday and the wives were on Saturdays, so
Speaker 1: you'd see them with the side dish and then Monday
Speaker 1: you'd see them with the wives. So those were the
Speaker 1: magic rooms for me, and then you evolved into you know,
Speaker 1: when I started traveling around the world into the bigger
Speaker 1: stadiums and doing stuff in Italy and you know, go
Speaker 1: to Israel. All those places have magical kind of historical places.
Speaker 1: But you know, it gets to a point where when
Speaker 1: you got your shit together and you know what you're doing,
Speaker 1: and you only select the places you want to work in,
Speaker 1: you can work in anything. You can work in anywhere.
Speaker 1: And that's where I always achieved where I wanted to
Speaker 1: get to.
Speaker 3: What's that voice? Who's that guy there playing in that
Speaker 3: great scene and that good fellas? What he sings? Pretend
Speaker 3: you don't see her.
Speaker 1: Oh that's Gerry Fail Jerry Vale. We called him Jerry Fail.
Speaker 1: Why always changed everybody's name, Jerry Fayle. I was the kid,
Speaker 1: you know, my robe in the health club was the kid.
Speaker 5: Sammy was Smoky the bear.
Speaker 1: Dean was a veno the ship they went on in
Speaker 1: that that steamer room. But Frank was always changing names,
Speaker 1: and you know, he was very judgment He wasn't judgmental.
Speaker 1: There's certain singers he didn't like, you know, and he
Speaker 1: was very with us. He would bring it out and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to mention any names, but he that
Speaker 1: was Jerry Vale. I was supposed to be in that scene,
Speaker 1: really because I gave I did a Lonely Boy documentary.
Speaker 1: It was the first documentary ever done on a pop idol,
Speaker 1: and nobody knew what the copo looked like, and a
Speaker 1: lot of it was shot at the Copa in the sixties.
Speaker 1: So when Marty started putting good Fellows together, he didn't
Speaker 1: know what the helicopo looked like. And you know, he
Speaker 1: does his research, and you know, nobody like Marty. And
Speaker 1: he called, he said, you have a film. I said yeah,
Speaker 1: he says, can I look at it? So I gave
Speaker 1: it to him. So everything you see in that scene
Speaker 1: was taken from my documentary Lonely Boy, And that was
Speaker 1: the look of the Copa. This basement. It was. I
Speaker 1: was telling the guys the other day, it was you
Speaker 1: don't see or feel what we did back then. And
Speaker 1: I'm not a guy with a rear view mirror. You know,
Speaker 1: I got to move ahead. But you sit there with
Speaker 1: all of these different characters, and one night Sammy was
Speaker 1: singing and we're all sitting on the floor and Sammy's
Speaker 1: on the floor in the band and he starts, sometimes
Speaker 1: I feel like a motherless child. And two tables over,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of noses sitting there. One guy says,
Speaker 1: and you looked like one right now. With that, just
Speaker 1: to show you what you get do today, you heard
Speaker 1: the lights went out. Three big guys came down. Carmine
Speaker 1: sent them down, picked the guy up, took the table out.
Speaker 1: Everything was gone. Within one minute. The lights went back up,
Speaker 1: and Savvy kept singing. Just removed them, removed them.
Speaker 3: You know, my favorite thing was, I mean when I
Speaker 3: like biographies a lot, I try to read a lot
Speaker 3: of biographies. I'm reading Streisand's biography now, which is amazing.
Speaker 3: Her memory for.
Speaker 5: The new book, but the new book, the new one.
Speaker 3: And but one of my favorite was Nick Tashas wrote
Speaker 3: the biography of Dean Martin. And there was a rumor that,
Speaker 3: you know, Spielberg or one of these you know, legendary
Speaker 3: directors were going to cast somebody as Dean, and they
Speaker 3: whether they had the right guy or I don't know.
Speaker 3: But the Nick Tasha's book, first of all, the funniest
Speaker 3: part is how he meets some I think you said noses.
Speaker 3: We'll use that words of noses and he meets some
Speaker 3: of these guys and they'd say, we want to sign
Speaker 3: you and be your representative all up and down the
Speaker 3: Allegheny area. He goes, well, I'm already signed with so
Speaker 3: and so on Cleveland, and they'd say, we'll take care
Speaker 3: of you. Then he meets some guys in Chicago. He says,
Speaker 3: I'm already signed with his we'll take care Then he
Speaker 3: moved to New York. He's gonna go New York, and
Speaker 3: they like, we'll take care of them. But he did
Speaker 3: a thing in the book, if I remember correctly, I
Speaker 3: read the book a while ago. He did a thing
Speaker 3: where he says he's talking to somebody and he puts
Speaker 3: on Crosby, then him on a record. He plays some Crosby,
Speaker 3: he plays some of him, and he plays some Elvis,
Speaker 3: and he goes as some Elvis and he says, we're
Speaker 3: all doing the same thing. We're all doing the same thing.
Speaker 3: It's just an updated version of a crooner, you know,
Speaker 3: of a crooner. And that book was one of the
Speaker 3: greatest books. And it's just amazing that book.
Speaker 1: You know, Dean Dean idolized. He got that whole vibe.
Speaker 1: He told me when we were hanging. He idolized the
Speaker 1: Mills brothers, and he, the lead singer in the Mills
Speaker 1: brother was the one that influenced them. Now they were
Speaker 1: all influenced, and Sinatra more so with Bing Crosby. Crosby
Speaker 1: was the guy for years. Frank idolized them, Dean idolized them,
Speaker 1: and there was always that competitive thing. But being with
Speaker 1: Commerce was in those film industries. They brought them together
Speaker 1: in a lot of projects, a lot of films. But
Speaker 1: Bing was the guy till Frank started to emerge in
Speaker 1: the fifties and surpassed him. But he was the guy
Speaker 1: for Dean. He was the guy for Frank, and that's
Speaker 1: the guy that they wanted to be. But Crosby couldn't
Speaker 1: swing or didn't have the attitude the way Frank did.
Speaker 1: You know, there was nobody with the lyric like Frank.
Speaker 1: He'd go down to the Springs and study a lyric
Speaker 1: for like two weeks and nobody could. He ruined it.
Speaker 1: For everybody that stood in front of a band, you
Speaker 1: were always second to him.
Speaker 3: It's weird how just this morning I was having a
Speaker 3: cup of coffee, I dropped my kids off at school,
Speaker 3: and a couple of the other fathers out there are
Speaker 3: buddies in mine. We all have a cup of coffee
Speaker 3: in the morning. And I said to one, I said,
Speaker 3: there's no human being alive as in another man or
Speaker 3: woman alive. Maybe Ella is close. I said, where Sinatra
Speaker 3: understood the tempo and all the beats of the song
Speaker 3: and the lyrics. No one could ride and shift those
Speaker 3: lyrics in his mind. And I played in the cut
Speaker 3: of I Get a kickout of You off of Sinatra
Speaker 3: in Paris.
Speaker 1: Great album and my favorite album.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite albums I on. I played all
Speaker 3: the time, and there he is, see I Get a
Speaker 3: Kick out of You, and he goes. If I took
Speaker 3: one with it would boil me to riff count four beats.
Speaker 3: He goes leap two. I mean he fractured those lines
Speaker 3: and played with those lines like dice, like there was
Speaker 3: no one who There's people who got close, but never
Speaker 3: as good as well.
Speaker 1: Tip your two albums that he loved. The best live
Speaker 1: album alec he ever made is the one of the sands.
Speaker 3: I got that too. I played that to that.
Speaker 1: That is the best live album with all of us,
Speaker 1: every tech guy. That's the base. And I introduced Frank
Speaker 1: to my guy that found me when I was a
Speaker 1: kid at sixteen, Don Costa and Don than me and
Speaker 1: Don I introduced them. In the sixties, he did an
Speaker 1: album called Sinatra and Strings. Do you know the album? No,
Speaker 1: I beg you get today, get it, And when you're
Speaker 1: under the sheets with your squeeze or anyone you want
Speaker 1: to be with, you put that album on.
Speaker 4: Alex.
Speaker 3: It depends on what day of the week it is.
Speaker 1: Well, you pick your week.
Speaker 3: If it's Monday, it's my wife, Come help yourself.
Speaker 1: You're gonna love that album.
Speaker 3: I'm learning from you. I'm learning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're gonna you're gonna love that album. I'll get it.
Speaker 3: I'll get it today.
Speaker 1: You call me, you tell me what you think it's
Speaker 1: it's it's brilliant.
Speaker 2: So Paul's got six kids, you have seven under the
Speaker 2: age of eleven. I was gonna say to you when
Speaker 2: you said it dropped my kids off at school. That
Speaker 2: takes a bus, right, you got a small bus to
Speaker 2: take your kids.
Speaker 3: Well, in my family now, I'm the only person I
Speaker 3: know who drops four kids off at school in the
Speaker 3: morning and comes home and I still have three kids
Speaker 3: waiting for me when I get home. I have seven.
Speaker 3: I have eight children. I got my oldest daughter who's
Speaker 3: married I always has a baby, and she and her
Speaker 3: boyfriend are living in Oregon. And I met my wife
Speaker 3: and I got remarried and I had seven kids in
Speaker 3: nine years. It's crazy.
Speaker 2: So that begs the question are you done?
Speaker 3: How dare you ask me that question? I'm dumb, I think, well,
Speaker 3: you know, I found that as I got older, work
Speaker 3: became less interesting to me, like a deam interested.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I want to work, and I like to work and
Speaker 3: when I go and do, but they just don't make
Speaker 3: that many films anymore that I think are interesting. And
Speaker 3: plus we're all older, and I've done a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff that i've you know, whatever I've done in the past.
Speaker 3: I try not to be duplicative of that all the time.
Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden I met my wife,
Speaker 3: who I love dearly, And every time the baby would
Speaker 3: get to be two years old, to go, maybe it's
Speaker 3: time for one more baby, one more baby, so we'd
Speaker 3: have we have seven kids.
Speaker 1: How old are you know?
Speaker 3: Sixty six? I was a weeks ago, I was sixty
Speaker 3: I have a one and a half year old baby.
Speaker 1: Babies, you guys, sixty six.
Speaker 3: Now your daughter is married to one of my favorite actors.
Speaker 3: I'm not just saying I love you.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 1: I spoke to him yesterday. Was it in New York?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: Is there for eight months making a film?
Speaker 1: He's making a series with Jude Law.
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Wow, I just spoke to I love Jason. He can
Speaker 3: do anything. He can do anything.
Speaker 1: He's such a good guy.
Speaker 3: You know that Ozaka. I watched that goddamn show till
Speaker 3: I was going to jump off the roof. I couldn't.
Speaker 3: It was so tense, you know, so tense.
Speaker 1: He loves the directing vibe. Now he's just good directing away.
Speaker 2: And thankfully we had an end. So he was our
Speaker 2: first guest on our very first podcast.
Speaker 3: I was the first guest on Inside the Actors Studio.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: Really I did the very first thing. I didn't do
Speaker 3: the first airing, but I was the first person to
Speaker 3: recorded but Jim for only one reason, and that as
Speaker 3: Paul Newman called me another person you can't say no to.
Speaker 3: And Newman called me on the phone and said, hey, Man,
Speaker 3: don't want to interview me first? And he said, I
Speaker 3: can't do it. I got a scheduling confict. He goes,
Speaker 3: do you mind filling in from me. And I said,
Speaker 3: and I wanted to say, are you out of your
Speaker 3: fucking mind that I'm going to fill in for you?
Speaker 3: Nobody can fill in for you. But he said, would
Speaker 3: you do this to me? And I went in and
Speaker 3: I did it. And you know, he's a guy who
Speaker 3: he's gone now for quite a while. I think twenty
Speaker 3: and eighty died, I can't remember. But man, for a
Speaker 3: guy who was as monolithic as he was, I mean,
Speaker 3: I met a lot of people in this business who
Speaker 3: I love and my peers. I respect many of my peers,
Speaker 3: but I only wet my pants when I meet these
Speaker 3: other ones, you know, I mean like Paul and Redford
Speaker 3: and Warren Batty and Dustin Hoffman and.
Speaker 2: On and on.
Speaker 3: I mean I met a lot of people, Bob and
Speaker 3: Al and all those people. Marty I worked with her
Speaker 3: for a little while. And I was in an elevator
Speaker 3: once with Burt Lancaster. I wrote an elevator with him,
Speaker 3: just like six floors in the elevator and I just
Speaker 3: stared at him like he was I couldn't believe I
Speaker 3: was standing next to Bert Lee. And then Michael Douglas
Speaker 3: would come to the US Open and one year he
Speaker 3: brought his father with him, and he knew how much
Speaker 3: I loved his father, and I up and I hugged
Speaker 3: him and I said hi to his wife, and he
Speaker 3: just frowned it with Dad's over there, and I just
Speaker 3: want to see all that. And I sat with with
Speaker 3: Kirk Douglas and I worshiped Kirk. He was cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man. I used to see him when I was
Speaker 1: living with Sammy Kahn, and I come and stay at
Speaker 1: Sammy's and they lived across the street from each other,
Speaker 1: so I'd go hang over there. But he was he
Speaker 1: was just one of those big guys. He filled the room.
Speaker 3: Loved him. Very rare to be that biggest star, be
Speaker 3: that talented of an actor at the same time, very
Speaker 3: Now did you spend much time in New York Hall
Speaker 3: Did you live here much at all?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: I left Canada at fifteen, so it was down in
Speaker 1: New York. You know, that's where it was all happening.
Speaker 1: I can only afford to get to New York, so
Speaker 1: I hit it got lucky at fifteen years old. So
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time in New York till
Speaker 1: I moved west in the seventies, but always returned. You know,
Speaker 1: New York's New York. You're not going to duplicate it,
Speaker 1: I mean for me. And then it became Paris, you know,
Speaker 1: because I got married over there and got the feel
Speaker 1: for it. But New York I love, and I got
Speaker 1: you know, I got my street smarts in New York,
Speaker 1: so I came west.
Speaker 3: Now you're you're several children, Are any of them in
Speaker 3: the bids?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: Well, I got Amanda, who works with Jason. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: she's involved there with Jen two. And I got to
Speaker 1: kids in Europe. One's a lawyer in Geneva. I got
Speaker 1: a young lady that's kind of a writer in London.
Speaker 1: And I got one in Monte Carlo. And then I
Speaker 1: have another daughter here. So the answer is I got
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 3: I love how none of them were in Chicago, Des Moines.
Speaker 3: They my kids are in Monte Carlo.
Speaker 1: They got smart. Well, you know, I was an international creature,
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen, sixteen, seventy and eighteen, I was all
Speaker 1: over the world. I was traveling, I was in communist countries.
Speaker 1: I was an Asian and I took the kids. And
Speaker 1: every time I went to Europe, I took the kids,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, what that balance is that did
Speaker 1: you have to have? You know, But the main thing
Speaker 1: is that family always so I insisted on taking them
Speaker 1: so they got the taste early.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna tell my kids I want one of them
Speaker 3: to become a lawyer and move to Geneva. That idea
Speaker 3: sounds like.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a good idea. If you want to give
Speaker 1: her some money.
Speaker 5: Don't leave it at that.
Speaker 2: Exactly, exactly, exactly, So when you were talking about talking
Speaker 2: about Ella, so in Paul Newman, here's an irony. So
Speaker 2: when Edie and I were first together, we lived in
Speaker 2: Fairfield County and Paul Newman lived close by. We moved
Speaker 2: in two thousand to Beverly Hills. The home that we
Speaker 2: live in was Ela Fitzgerald's house. She lived in the
Speaker 2: house twenty five years. Died in the house directly across
Speaker 2: the street. Literally, if you pull out of our driveway
Speaker 2: and just cross the street, you go into the driveway
Speaker 2: of Paul Newman's house, directly across the street from us.
Speaker 2: But he was gone before we got there.
Speaker 3: You guys were in Connecticut for a while, I remember correct,
Speaker 3: right then you went to l A.
Speaker 2: I grew up in Connecticut, grew up in Hartford, and
Speaker 2: I tried to convince Edie when we were first together.
Speaker 2: I was working at Hartford and Edie was of course
Speaker 2: at the show in New York City, and we decided
Speaker 2: to split the difference wound up on the Westport Fairfield line.
Speaker 2: Die never adjusted to Liviyan Connecticut. That won't shock you.
Speaker 2: That was not her thing.
Speaker 3: Does she like La? You've been there forever now? Does
Speaker 3: she like it there?
Speaker 2: She loves La. But if I said to her today,
Speaker 2: you know, we were talking to Alec and we're talking
Speaker 2: about New York and I was thinking maybe we should
Speaker 2: move back, she would leave today and send for her clothes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, really, Edie, misses. I never was. I mean, I
Speaker 3: loved working in LA. There really is nothing on earth
Speaker 3: as great as working in La. Meeting I would go
Speaker 3: some films I shot on a lot for quite a while,
Speaker 3: we'd be there. One movie we shot there was a
Speaker 3: lot of breaks of the holidays. We started in October
Speaker 3: and finished like in January. And you always know you're
Speaker 3: on a movie, a big movie when the decorations in
Speaker 3: the makeup trailer go from pumpkins to turkeys to Santa Claus.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like We're there for quite a while
Speaker 3: making this. But I love being on the lot. This
Speaker 3: was at Universal. I loved it. But I don't like
Speaker 3: LA because I'm in a car all the time with
Speaker 3: the person I hate the most. You know, I'm driving around.
Speaker 3: I can't stand driving. I can't get any work done.
Speaker 2: But you're so be associated with New York. But with
Speaker 2: everybody that's out there, you know, Jerry Seinfeld, Billy Joel,
Speaker 2: Paul McCartney. I mean, do you hang with do you
Speaker 2: hang with people or most.
Speaker 3: I'd see them from time to time. I used to
Speaker 3: take a yoga class with Lorne, John Eastman, who's Paul's
Speaker 3: brother in law, John Alexander, the painter, Lorne and I
Speaker 3: and with the five of us, and we would take
Speaker 3: a yoga class. We called ourselves the Yoga Boys. And
Speaker 3: the only one who was really adept at yoga was McCartney.
Speaker 3: He would do a handstand or a headstand and lead.
Speaker 3: He had the most live body you've ever seen, and
Speaker 3: he was like in back then. He was in his
Speaker 3: late sixties and he was so fit, and he would
Speaker 3: I mean, one time he does a headstand before he leaves,
Speaker 3: and he gets up and he whispers to me. He goes,
Speaker 3: I'm going to go take my daughter to lunch because
Speaker 3: I'll see you guys later. And I looked up at
Speaker 3: him and after he did the headstand, and I go,
Speaker 3: you're an asshole. And I never thought I'd call one
Speaker 3: of the Beatles an asshole, you know. But he was
Speaker 3: always showing us up with his physical skills. He was
Speaker 3: very thick guy. That crowd is out there, and that
Speaker 3: crowd has all their rhythms and so on. But we're
Speaker 3: actually selling.
Speaker 2: Our house, moving to Vermont, right, Yeah, we.
Speaker 3: Bought a place in Vermont, and I'm trying to get
Speaker 3: everybody to start to acclimate up therapy when you spend
Speaker 3: the predominance of your time out there, and that's the
Speaker 3: time it's the toughest, you know, it's crowded, and I
Speaker 3: go out there. I used to go out there year
Speaker 3: round them. I mean, I loved East Hampton in February.
Speaker 3: I loved it. In the dead of winter. We'd make
Speaker 3: five Marcie Klein, Marci Klein, are you now? Marci Klein
Speaker 3: would have dinner parties at her house. We play scrabble,
Speaker 3: We played all kinds of games, watch movies, watch shitty
Speaker 3: TV shows, eat, make a fire. February and Eastampton is glorious.
Speaker 3: But I think my wife wants a little change of
Speaker 3: scenery now because it's so crowded about that.
Speaker 2: Well, you'll you'll be very familiar with Interstate ninety one
Speaker 2: on your way up.
Speaker 3: From Yeah, I know, I love ver Mount. It's so peaceful.
Speaker 3: We got we got a great deal. We got fifty
Speaker 3: five acres houses built in seventeen ninety two. It's very pretty. Now, Paul,
Speaker 3: where's your getaway like when you're you live in La Now?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been out here. I'm a place called Lake Sherwood,
Speaker 1: which is about thirty minutes outside of the Action. I
Speaker 1: got five acres out here. It's Murdoch built.
Speaker 3: This beautiful is it Malibu?
Speaker 1: It's twenty minutes from Alibau, just over the mountain. It's
Speaker 1: a private community and it's got all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 1: good schools and one have you near the good airport
Speaker 1: that I deleave from. So it's called Lake Sherwood and
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm here. I come home to what
Speaker 1: I call clean sheets. You know, I'm traveling all the time.
Speaker 1: So I just got back from Hawaii. I am going
Speaker 1: down to Asia next week that I'm starting on a
Speaker 1: tour and going to Europe, and so I'm out of
Speaker 1: here about four months of the year, and I'm over
Speaker 1: in New York seeing my kids. You know, keep moving.
Speaker 1: You got to keep moving, alec or they throw dirt
Speaker 1: on you.
Speaker 3: Keep I'm going to keep moving.
Speaker 1: You got to keep moving.
Speaker 2: Alex. He's eighty two years old and he's still touring.
Speaker 2: And I have to say this not to embarrass him,
Speaker 2: but I first saw him perform at the Golden Nugget
Speaker 2: in Las Vegas more than forty years ago, and the
Speaker 2: most recent time I saw him was just a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago when he performed here in La The show
Speaker 2: is as good or better with as much energy or
Speaker 2: more energy.
Speaker 3: I don't doubt it. He's unstoppable.
Speaker 2: The show is phenomenal, and it's just it's remarkable.
Speaker 3: I did the roast and he showed up, and when
Speaker 3: I came out, people applauded. But when he came out
Speaker 3: and sang, they really applauded. That's when you really heard
Speaker 3: the applause.
Speaker 1: I woant to ship my pets if they did.
Speaker 3: My favorite Paul Ank. I mean, other than all the
Speaker 3: beautiful songs and all the great songs you wrote. Of course, everybody.
Speaker 3: When I grew up, we were kids, someone would say
Speaker 3: that Paul Anchor, he wrote the theme song to the
Speaker 3: Tonight Show. And they go and he must get paid
Speaker 3: every night. They he must be worth a billion dollars.
Speaker 3: How much do you think he's worth, fellas at least
Speaker 3: a quarter of a billion. They must have paid him
Speaker 3: for that goddamn song every night on TV, every night.
Speaker 3: And I don't want you answer that question.
Speaker 1: But I'll answer it. I'll answer it. I didn't make
Speaker 1: a billion dollars. Well, you know the story beyond no God, No,
Speaker 1: you know, listen. It was always a challenge for me
Speaker 1: as a young kid. You know, I'm always running into
Speaker 1: a wall. And when you're young there nobody's given you
Speaker 1: really a lot of help. So I had. I gave
Speaker 1: Johnny a job on this TV show I was doing,
Speaker 1: and then I ran into him in New York and
Speaker 1: you know, what are you doing? Johnny said, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to do this TV show for about a year
Speaker 1: or to like and really find something I like. Ha
Speaker 1: ha said what is it? He said, Tonight Show thing?
Speaker 1: And he said, we're changing some stuff and maybe i'd
Speaker 1: like a new theme, and I said, yeah, great. So
Speaker 1: I go in the studio, I think two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty bucks and I put my vision down. Dad at
Speaker 1: that Dada, and I send him the record and he says,
Speaker 1: I love it. We're going to do it. And then
Speaker 1: he calls me back. He says, uh, you know, skithead
Speaker 1: to Skitch. Henderson has been with the show for years.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want some kid coming in here, and I
Speaker 1: can't use it. I said, jeez, Johnny. I said, well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you something. If I give you half
Speaker 1: of the writer's royalty, half of the publishing, I'll give
Speaker 1: you half of everything, and whatever happens, you're going to
Speaker 1: be my partner. I get called the next day, says,
Speaker 1: you know what I think would work this out? He says,
Speaker 1: you got it.
Speaker 3: It's a great song.
Speaker 1: So now it's a silly song like eight seconds, just
Speaker 1: get it. But anyway, what happened was what happened. He
Speaker 1: didn't know he was going to stay on for thirty
Speaker 1: some years. I certainly didn't know. I was just looking
Speaker 1: for another notch in the belt. It went on for
Speaker 1: so many years that these societies BMI and ASKAPT kept
Speaker 1: changing the parameters of payments because it was earning too much,
Speaker 1: so they drop a new one in every year. But
Speaker 1: we earned a lot of money from it. It was unusual
Speaker 1: because it was the most played same and it was
Speaker 1: the longest running show with a guy that knew his shit.
Speaker 1: Johnny was amazing. He was just the best at that.
Speaker 1: He was something to work with.
Speaker 3: Well, when I was a kid, there was no cable.
Speaker 3: There was no When I tell my kids there's no
Speaker 3: cell phones, no cable, no Internet, they look at me like, wow,
Speaker 3: you know, you're such a dinosaur in it, like your
Speaker 3: childhood sounds like you're so impoverished. And I had a
Speaker 3: little Sony TV, a little red plastic small TV you
Speaker 3: plugged it in. It had rabbit ears, no cable back then,
Speaker 3: in the seventies, and I'd put that TV between my
Speaker 3: legs on a pillow and put a blanket over my
Speaker 3: head because my father would come up the driveway and
Speaker 3: see the TV flickering in the window if I didn't
Speaker 3: hide it. And I had a little jack on the
Speaker 3: side where you put one little plug in your ear
Speaker 3: and you could listen to the thing in silence. And
Speaker 3: I would watch the Tonight show Mary Hartman, all these
Speaker 3: crazy shows back then, And there were three songs that
Speaker 3: are the most iconic songs my childhood. One is Syncopated
Speaker 3: Clock that they play for the Late Show in New York.
Speaker 3: That's a famous class that was. That was the song
Speaker 3: to the Late Show on CBS. The other one was
Speaker 3: the Alfred Hitchcock theme song Bump Bump. And the other
Speaker 3: one was the Tonight Show. That song you you, that
Speaker 3: song made you sit up, You're like, Okay, here we go.
Speaker 3: It made you buckle up and go here is this
Speaker 3: Here comes Johnny And it was one of the greatest
Speaker 3: pieces of music and TV history ever.
Speaker 2: So can you talk about for a minute just about
Speaker 2: I mean, I know you're you're about giving back, but
Speaker 2: can you talk about like your advocacy, what what causes
Speaker 2: are important to you right now?
Speaker 3: Most of the stuff I've advocated was for the arts.
Speaker 3: Like for years I was on the board of you know,
Speaker 3: based in theatre in Seck Harbor, a guildhall in East Tampton,
Speaker 3: gave money to my alma mater and NYU the Philharmonica.
Speaker 3: I'm on the board of Carnegie Hall wherever I could
Speaker 3: help in the arts because I was really my foundation
Speaker 3: was geared toward the arts and still is to a degree,
Speaker 3: but I mean some is environmentally related, some health related.
Speaker 3: But you know, my dad was the one who kind
Speaker 3: of put that curse on me. You know my dad
Speaker 3: was My parents got separated right before he died. He
Speaker 3: died in nineteen eighty three. He was only fifty five
Speaker 3: years old. He had a very rabid form of cancer.
Speaker 3: And my dad looked at me one time. I forget
Speaker 3: what it was. He had nothing to do with my
Speaker 3: family or helping my family. There was some context where
Speaker 3: my dad looked at me and said, well, you know,
Speaker 3: God didn't give you this money for you, and he
Speaker 3: just got to stare at me, like you get it.
Speaker 3: He goes, God didn't put this money in your life
Speaker 3: for you. He gave it to you to help other
Speaker 3: people as well. And I'll never forget that. And that
Speaker 3: just changed my whole life. And I started small, but
Speaker 3: then eventually I started my foundation in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: No board, no, I mean of the legally required board
Speaker 3: of two outside family members. But you know, all my
Speaker 3: own cash, all my own tributaries of money like Capital
Speaker 3: One bank, car cards that did for five years, and
Speaker 3: all kinds of stuff like that match game we did
Speaker 3: match game, which was a lot of fun. Actually I
Speaker 3: had a lot of fun doing that, more fun that
Speaker 3: I can admit. That launched me into that world of
Speaker 3: giving money to charities. But I learned a lot, as
Speaker 3: maybe Paul probably knows as well from his career, which
Speaker 3: is these people sat me down at a conference and
Speaker 3: I Credit Sweese and it was a philanthropy conference, and
Speaker 3: they said, we don't want you to give you a
Speaker 3: million bucks, then you go away. I mean, that's nice,
Speaker 3: we'll take it. But what we really wanted, we want
Speaker 3: you to give us fifteen thousand dollars a year for
Speaker 3: every year, like we want to be able to rely
Speaker 3: on your contribution. We want to be able to budget
Speaker 3: and make plans knowing you're going to give us X
Speaker 3: a year for twenty years or twenty five years. And
Speaker 3: I learned a lot about philanthropy from this conference, which
Speaker 3: was held here in New York by Credit Swee, and
Speaker 3: it really changed my thinking because they just want they
Speaker 3: want to be able to make plants. They want reliability.
Speaker 2: Do you ever try to convince other actors to do
Speaker 2: the same, to be involved or you just stay you
Speaker 2: stay in your own garden in that area.
Speaker 3: N see, I wouldn't. I mean to me, I would
Speaker 3: buy tickets and tables, and I wouldn't ask anybody to contribute.
Speaker 3: I'd buy the table. I'd invite you to come. I mean,
Speaker 3: I learned from some of my friends who are wealthier
Speaker 3: than I'll ever be, more money than I'll ever have
Speaker 3: it ever, And I learned from them is the way
Speaker 3: you stay friends with them is you don't ask them
Speaker 3: for money. That's right, So I don't.
Speaker 2: What do you do away from your family? Meaning, do
Speaker 2: you play golf? Do you play tennis? No?
Speaker 3: I played tennisall summer. A little bit you do? Yeah?
Speaker 3: My kids? My kids have. The thing that's happened in
Speaker 3: these last ten years, especially the last three or four years,
Speaker 3: is my kids are used to be being around. Am
Speaker 3: I growing to rely on that? I mean they really
Speaker 3: rely When I'm gone, They're like, you know, they're on
Speaker 3: the face time. If I travel to go away for
Speaker 3: a couple of days to get a paycheck, they were
Speaker 3: on my FaceTime going, you know, where are you? What
Speaker 3: are you doing? You know, they're completely baffled when I
Speaker 3: go away. But I think the thing I like to
Speaker 3: do the most, it honestly, is popular music. Ceased to
Speaker 3: speak to me in the eighties. It was all I
Speaker 3: wasn't young anymore. I was probably in my thirties, mid
Speaker 3: you know, thirty years old, and I'd listened to you know,
Speaker 3: I love you, I love you, I love you. I
Speaker 3: don't love you anymore? How can I stop loving you?
Speaker 3: I still love you? I mean all the music was
Speaker 3: very prayer isle and very much for young people. I
Speaker 3: turned on a classical radio station in La I never
Speaker 3: turned back. I've listened most almost exclusively to jazz and pop,
Speaker 3: you know, vocalists, frank et cetera. But I listened probably
Speaker 3: eighty percent of the music that's downloaded in my phone
Speaker 3: that I listened to every day. It's classical music. And
Speaker 3: I'm on the board of the Philharmonic, and it just
Speaker 3: took over my whole life. I really, really, I've never
Speaker 3: listened to music that there's there's a few things that
Speaker 3: grab a hold of me like that. I like to
Speaker 3: go to the symphony, the theater, and but I will
Speaker 3: usually most movies I stream at home. But classical music
Speaker 3: is such a big part of my life.
Speaker 1: I listened to a lot of it too. It does something,
Speaker 1: it does something so different than everything else that you
Speaker 1: listen to, and it's it's the basis of a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff that you hear today. It's just so soothing.
Speaker 3: Peter Frampton did my podcast and he had a really
Speaker 3: interesting observation. He said, when I get out there, he goes,
Speaker 3: it's all about sounds. He said, it's not just music,
Speaker 3: it sounds. He had that little talk that talk box
Speaker 3: and he played with that and he said, all I'm
Speaker 3: about is making sounds, and that's what music is to me.
Speaker 3: The classical music and what it does to you is
Speaker 3: on the same part. One of my favorite singers, of
Speaker 3: my father's favorite singer was not King Cole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was great, great guy, and.
Speaker 3: I listened to him and this the sound of his
Speaker 3: voice is so soothing. It's like it's like a drug.
Speaker 3: It's like a medication. It just calms you down.
Speaker 1: I used to sit and watch him at the sands
Speaker 1: and he was the smoothest and he was the one
Speaker 1: guy it never wanted to be around Frank or the
Speaker 1: guys as much as they. He wanted to do his
Speaker 1: own thing. He was elegant and he had he always
Speaker 1: smoked his cigarettes, but with the cigarette holder he'd come
Speaker 1: off stage and he had that cigarette holder, and every
Speaker 1: time Frank and the guys wanted him to hang, he wanted.
Speaker 3: Nothing to do with Why do you think that is? Why?
Speaker 1: Well, that's a tough crowd. First of all, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know when you when.
Speaker 5: You you got to think.
Speaker 1: I remember when Johnny got up with him because he
Speaker 1: was scared shitless. He got up there one time at
Speaker 1: the Sands and this first time you saw Johnny kind
Speaker 1: of not comfortable. But you hang with those guys, you
Speaker 1: bring your passport because you never know what city you'll
Speaker 1: be in the next day. Frank just threw those parties
Speaker 1: and that was not that way. He wanted no part
Speaker 1: of that. You're you're you're straight shooter, and you got humor,
Speaker 1: you're a man's man. When you're a man's man around
Speaker 1: Frank and that's all you ever saw. And I'm a
Speaker 1: guy got stories I won't even tell you. But he
Speaker 1: was the guy and the laughs all night. You're up partying.
Speaker 1: That was Frank's thing. So if you're going to hang
Speaker 1: with him, you better be ready. And then they go
Speaker 1: to the set, they start shooting Ocean's eleven. They start
Speaker 1: like at noon all day and then they go back
Speaker 1: on stage to night. So that was not NAT's thing.
Speaker 1: Going back to that, there's no way he was going
Speaker 1: to get involved in any of that. No, no, no way.
Speaker 1: And they could drink.
Speaker 3: I can't even imagine. I can't even admit, are you
Speaker 3: a drinker. I don't discuss this a lot. I discussed
Speaker 3: it every now and that mony. So when it makes sense,
Speaker 3: I'm thirty nine years sober. I got sober February twenty third,
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty five. Wow, Because as I tell people, and
Speaker 3: you'll appreciate this, I was in Los Angeles. I moved
Speaker 3: out there in eighty three, and I had a two
Speaker 3: year daily white hot problem. Every day for two years.
Speaker 3: I think guy snorted a line of cocaine from here
Speaker 3: to Saturn. We did one on the rings of Saturn.
Speaker 3: Then we came home. We took it back home. I mean,
Speaker 3: cocaine was like coffee back and everybody was doing it
Speaker 3: all day.
Speaker 4: Lot.
Speaker 3: I did a lot of coke, and then I and
Speaker 3: then February twenty third, nineteen eighty five, by step, and
Speaker 3: I just because as I stopped doing drugs and my
Speaker 3: drinking increased, which is they tell you that's going to happen,
Speaker 3: and that did happen. I just started drinking. I mean,
Speaker 3: and the thing, I miss his drinking. I don't miss
Speaker 3: Druggs at all, but I do miss drinking. I like
Speaker 3: to drink.
Speaker 1: You know, Frank and those guys, it was all drinking.
Speaker 1: And what the separation that happened with Sammy and Frank
Speaker 1: was Sammy who I've got to tell you it was
Speaker 1: the greatest guy. He was the entertainer and we all
Speaker 1: loved them. There was nobody to like him. But he
Speaker 1: got into coke and that's what separated him and Frank
Speaker 1: for a few years. Frank wanted nothing to do with that.
Speaker 1: I mean, weed was it, but no way is I.
Speaker 3: Think I think it's great. I'm I'm not going to
Speaker 3: say who, but a very famous director. I bumped into
Speaker 3: the other day at an event. He was there, and
Speaker 3: I think he's doing a movie about Sammy. They're doing
Speaker 3: a biography.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've been talking about it, and I know that
Speaker 1: I know Marty's thinking of doing this not the story
Speaker 1: again because they wanted to read. They want to be
Speaker 1: an advisor on it. But I hear that he's really
Speaker 1: seriously looking at it. But hey, whatever he does, Sammy.
Speaker 1: They've been talking about this. They've been talking about Sammy
Speaker 1: for Broadway, and they've been talking about the film, and
Speaker 1: they should because he was the best and you're the best.
Speaker 2: Alec before you run, You've been very generous with your time.
Speaker 2: But because you don't drink, and because you don't do drugs,
Speaker 2: what do you do you meditate? What do you do
Speaker 2: to deal with the pressures of the outside, you know forces?
Speaker 2: What do you do to get away from that drink?
Speaker 3: I drink. I lied, I've been drinking stop since nineteen
Speaker 3: I lie. I tell people I'm sober and I drink
Speaker 3: my balls off. But no, I do miss drinking, I
Speaker 3: must say. But one of the things I like to
Speaker 3: do is because New York is so convenient. People say,
Speaker 3: why do you live in New York? This August I've
Speaker 3: been I've had an address. I've had a home in
Speaker 3: New York for forty five years. I've lived here, and
Speaker 3: I went back and forth to La, you know, all
Speaker 3: the time when I was married to my ex wife
Speaker 3: and everything, and I would always commuting. I went New
Speaker 3: York to LA twenty times a year. But New York
Speaker 3: relaxes me. I walk around and I see aspects of
Speaker 3: it that I've never seen before. I look at a
Speaker 3: building and I'll go, my god, I never noticed that
Speaker 3: about that building. Those doors. You know. New York is
Speaker 3: like a European city. You walk around you and keep
Speaker 3: your eyes open. And I have lunches and coffee and
Speaker 3: my friends, and I'd like to get out of here
Speaker 3: because the city is chaotic. But we live in the village.
Speaker 3: It's a little bit more residential. I love New York.
Speaker 3: I love you know. My friend said, you live in
Speaker 3: New York if you don't go get tickets and go
Speaker 3: see things. I said, this is like opening your Christmas
Speaker 3: presents and playing with the boxes. He said, You've got
Speaker 3: to avail yourself of everything that's there in New York.
Speaker 3: But and I do. I go to the symphony and
Speaker 3: the opera and the ballet all the time, you know,
Speaker 3: pretty regularly. But I do try to meditate. Meditating with
Speaker 3: seven children is like trying to play ping pong on
Speaker 3: the deck of an aircraft. It's a real pain in
Speaker 3: the ass.
Speaker 1: It's a real Hey, Alex, you got to get some minooka, honey.
Speaker 1: You gotta get some lemon and keep it around the
Speaker 1: house because your throat, you can you can do better
Speaker 1: if you get that honey, and you get some of
Speaker 1: that lemon in you and just do it consistently. It's magical.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna sing one day. It might not be to
Speaker 3: the next.
Speaker 1: Life with me.
Speaker 3: You're gonna produce ready, listen. I can't affortunate listen, I
Speaker 3: can't afford you.
Speaker 1: Cost you nothing. Hey, Alec, We're with you, man, We
Speaker 1: love you. This this toot, she'll pass.
Speaker 3: Okay, Thank you, buddy, My love to you too. Thanks
Speaker 3: for having me thoughos. I really loved it.
Speaker 2: It was really enjoying it, so it was so so great,
Speaker 2: really loved it.
Speaker 3: Thanks, thank you. I have a great day, fellows. We'll
Speaker 3: talk to you down the road.
Speaker 1: Our Away with Paul Anka and Skip Bronson is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: The show's executive producer is Jordan Runtog, with supervising producer
Speaker 2: and editor Marcy Depinum.
Speaker 1: It was engineered by Todd Carlin and Graham Gibson, mixed
Speaker 1: and mastered by the wonderful Mary Do.
Speaker 2: If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
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Speaker 1: For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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