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. This hour, we'll
Speaker 1: talk with two actors, one with a legendary film career,
Speaker 1: the other who helped redefine television. Earlier this year, I
Speaker 1: spoke with actor and director Dustin Hoffman as part of
Speaker 1: the Turner Classic Movie Film Festival in Hollywood. At the festival,
Speaker 1: we screen some of the greatest films of all time
Speaker 1: and then discussed them in front of an audience. We
Speaker 1: decided to show this movie about Lenny Bruce at eleven
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning. We're gonna show TUTSI at midnight.
Speaker 1: We thought we mix it up a bit here at
Speaker 1: the Customer. In two thousand fifteen, we selected Lenny, four,
Speaker 1: film in which Hoffman portrays the groundbreaking but troubled commute
Speaker 1: and social critic Lenny Bruce, who had died just eight
Speaker 1: years prior of a drug overdose while battling ongoing obscenity charges. Lenny,
Speaker 1: shot in black and white by director Bob Fossey was
Speaker 1: nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Fossey,
Speaker 1: Best Actress for Valerie Paine, and Best Actor for Dustin Hoffman.
Speaker 1: We're all the same, schluck, and it just cracks me
Speaker 1: up that we try so desperately to be unique when
Speaker 1: we're all the same. Canies and Howard Kennedy Johnson me.
Speaker 1: When you make films like this, I mean you've worked.
Speaker 1: You've made so many great films and work with so
Speaker 1: many great directors. Was Fossey some of them without a goal?
Speaker 1: For you too? To work with Fossey? No, how was
Speaker 1: it to work with Fossey? Tough? Tough? Uh? Bob was
Speaker 1: originally a choreographer, and choreographer don't have dancers coming up
Speaker 1: to them saying, what's my motivation? They dances, do what
Speaker 1: they're told, you know. He tried to be in a
Speaker 1: sense to collaborate, but it was tough for him and
Speaker 1: it was tough for me. We had a tough time.
Speaker 1: Did he like to do a lot of takes? Yes,
Speaker 1: both of us did. The script. I thought it was problematic,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't that anxious to do it. We went
Speaker 1: into rehearsal with the principal actors with the wonderful Valerie
Speaker 1: Paene extraordinary performance and with Valerie myself and you know,
Speaker 1: Jan Minor and I think Stanley Beck were in New
Speaker 1: York in the room and it's going rough the rehearsal,
Speaker 1: and after five days we started Monday. After five days,
Speaker 1: we're rehearsing routines, rehearsing scenes. And on Friday, Bob Fosse says,
Speaker 1: we don't have a movie. We don't have a script.
Speaker 1: See on Monday, rehearse two weeks or three weeks, and
Speaker 1: we thought it was gonna be shelved. When Hallman came
Speaker 1: back Monday and he says, I solved it, and he
Speaker 1: interspersed it. He says, I'm going to intersperse it with
Speaker 1: interviews because he scenes there's no connective tissue to them.
Speaker 1: They don't connect. So Stanley Beck, who was wonderful and
Speaker 1: at my manager, Valerie Pete, thank you. Uh uh. Stanley
Speaker 1: and I were close friends since we were beginning actors. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Valerie Preen and Jan Minor are going I think
Speaker 1: that's all it is, isn't. Those three are going to
Speaker 1: be interviewed throughout the movie, and He'll and I'll have
Speaker 1: an easier time of shooting it. And when when you
Speaker 1: make a film like this or any of the films
Speaker 1: you've made, I should say, do you have any kind
Speaker 1: of unique relationship or a specific relationship with the cinematographer?
Speaker 1: Surtise This film was not manated for six Academy Awards
Speaker 1: and in every one of the major categories you would
Speaker 1: imagine Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay,
Speaker 1: and cinematography for Surtees, who made his reputation shooting a
Speaker 1: lot of Clint Eastwoods films for many, many years. Bob
Speaker 1: Surtees was one of the great cinematographers Robert Surtees, he
Speaker 1: was the cinematographer the graduate Bruce is a son. No,
Speaker 1: we were going with the father and son tense when
Speaker 1: you should have filmed. Do you have a specific relationship
Speaker 1: with cinematographers when you make a film? Or no, No,
Speaker 1: I don't uh. I don't want to know uh where
Speaker 1: the cameras In terms of uh, I do ask about
Speaker 1: lenses sometimes if I want my hands to do something,
Speaker 1: and I say, where are you cutting? Where's your bottom frame?
Speaker 1: Because if if it's here, also I'd have to have
Speaker 1: my hands up here to have it in the shot.
Speaker 1: Other than that, I don't really want to know. It's
Speaker 1: interesting that you say that, Alec, because one of the
Speaker 1: things I objected to with with Bob is that he
Speaker 1: posed me, and when you see it, it's gorgeous. So
Speaker 1: he was right. It was wrong. But you know, i'd
Speaker 1: be up there, and I worked so hard on these routines. Uh,
Speaker 1: I had never seen Lennie Bruce. Bob had never seen
Speaker 1: Lennie Bruce. Mike Nichols, who I talked to before I
Speaker 1: did it, because we'd done the graduate. He and Elaine
Speaker 1: May were acting upstairs on Sunset Boulevard was it called
Speaker 1: a duplex or something nightclub, and Lenny Bruce was downstairs
Speaker 1: and in between their acts they would come downstairs and
Speaker 1: watch Bruce. Because no comedian, they said, would do a
Speaker 1: whole show improvising. You know, sometimes you do two minutes,
Speaker 1: three minutes and the rest is yours is your stuff.
Speaker 1: But Lenny would come out and not know what he
Speaker 1: was going to say. I think the only two comedians
Speaker 1: I know since Lenny that that do that one was
Speaker 1: Robbed Mumbles, Robin Williams, and the other one was a
Speaker 1: wonderful Billy Connolly, and neither of them many times would
Speaker 1: just they would just go uh and that that takes
Speaker 1: a lot. What was the question? Um the sorry, we're
Speaker 1: talking about cinematographers and oh yeah, me and I worked hard.
Speaker 1: I got the thirty three rpm s that Lenny had
Speaker 1: made us what we called him that we didn't call
Speaker 1: him finals and U I'd lay down on the floor
Speaker 1: and I would play. I had three months. I had
Speaker 1: about three months and I did every you know, I
Speaker 1: wrote down longhand every single line he said in all
Speaker 1: the records, and he even the ones he did over,
Speaker 1: he would always deviate and I would write them down.
Speaker 1: And then I would go to Bob Fossie and I'd say, geez,
Speaker 1: I like what he did here because he used these sentences,
Speaker 1: are used that And I was promised, and I think
Speaker 1: that's what I got so upset about that I would
Speaker 1: be able to shoot it. We were going to shoot it,
Speaker 1: and I think that's what Bob wanted. We were going
Speaker 1: to shoot it in different clubs in Florida and with
Speaker 1: live audiences, and that's what I wanted. I want to
Speaker 1: be able to really feel like I'm doing it with
Speaker 1: the real audience. And He'll have whatever three or four
Speaker 1: cameras at once. He agreed, and that's what we were
Speaker 1: supposed to do. And then it's probably money wouldn't allow it.
Speaker 1: So it was quite laborious sometimes to do these routines
Speaker 1: over and over again. And he would tell the camera.
Speaker 1: He would he'd be like, where you are and I'd
Speaker 1: be on the stage. He'd said, okay, now look a
Speaker 1: little bit this way, and I'll look up, now look down. Okay,
Speaker 1: now do the routine from here to here. And you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of broke my heart because I was trying
Speaker 1: to be the guy. You know. The Foster was a great,
Speaker 1: great artist, and uh, it's funny because I just saw
Speaker 1: a him recently with that Alfred Hitchcock directed with Carrie Grant,
Speaker 1: and uh carry Grant said he had never worked with
Speaker 1: Hitchcock again after the first picture because they didn't get
Speaker 1: along because Hitchcock didn't like to collaborate. But then they
Speaker 1: made up and they made more movies. And that Lenny
Speaker 1: Bruce was not someone you had been a fan of
Speaker 1: or had a big awareness of before them where you
Speaker 1: had no no, I just I was in New York.
Speaker 1: I just never saw him. We couldn't have, uh, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean before I was successful, we couldn't afford to
Speaker 1: go to nightclubs, you know they it was expensive. And uh,
Speaker 1: I love the jazz is what's so extorting? It was
Speaker 1: next to jazz never dates. Jazz is the same now
Speaker 1: as it was that. It's god, dude, the score. Oh
Speaker 1: and uh and I had time no I and I
Speaker 1: had never seen him. I had never seen I don't
Speaker 1: think any comedian. I didn't go to nightclubs much. And
Speaker 1: I went out to l A because they said. Someone
Speaker 1: said to me, if you want to know Lenny Bruce, uh,
Speaker 1: you gotta go see Sally mar his mother who was alive.
Speaker 1: And I went. She was very friendly. Uh. She introduced
Speaker 1: me to one of his best friends who used to
Speaker 1: shoot up with and he in turn introduced me to
Speaker 1: friends with Lenny. And I had a tape recorder, you know,
Speaker 1: like a wallet, not a walan is like a pearl
Speaker 1: tape recorder. And I taped everything. And she says, you
Speaker 1: want to go to Vegas because they're all there, all
Speaker 1: his friend Buddy hack It other people. And I said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, yes, And I was taking all these notes.
Speaker 1: It was the best time of research I've ever had.
Speaker 1: They all said the same thing. Uh, except Buddy Hacket. Um. Uh.
Speaker 1: They said, you know, you know Broadway, Danny Rose, I
Speaker 1: think Willia Allen did you. And they used to get
Speaker 1: together to commit Indians, Lenny and these guys when they
Speaker 1: were you know certainly what it was, I don't know,
Speaker 1: cantors or and they said they'd sit around, do what
Speaker 1: they did and bro down, you know, tell jokes, and
Speaker 1: I studly look around. And he was always very quiet.
Speaker 1: And suddenly he's gone because he wasn't shy guy. And
Speaker 1: he's gone, and they look around. I don't know where
Speaker 1: he is. And then they find him in the kitchen
Speaker 1: talking to the people that work in the kitchen to help.
Speaker 1: He loved to just talk to the people and and
Speaker 1: ask questions and find out stuff. I think he originally
Speaker 1: this is the stuff I had heard. Uh. They kind
Speaker 1: of say it in the movie. The musicians were more
Speaker 1: important to him than the audience, because when you do
Speaker 1: show after show after show, he if you noticed the musicians,
Speaker 1: they're always sitting like that, you know, because they rash
Speaker 1: of a fon Monroe and uh and Lenny. Uh. Then
Speaker 1: he felt that if he could crack up the musicians,
Speaker 1: then he was getting somewhere. I think he wanted to
Speaker 1: be in Hollywood. We wanted to be an actor. Also,
Speaker 1: I had heard you shot this movie where we shot
Speaker 1: a lot of it in Florida. The nightclubs, the stage work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one nightclub. Basically, I think the scene and when we
Speaker 1: were sitting next to each other, the scene up there
Speaker 1: where I'm in my raincoat. And yes, when I came
Speaker 1: back after my three months, I had all this stuff
Speaker 1: to give Bob. You gotta put this in, You gotta
Speaker 1: put that in. You gotta put that. And the one
Speaker 1: thing that he kept was that scene. And the reason
Speaker 1: he did is when I was memorizing it wasn't then.
Speaker 1: You know, this is before the kind of media. You know,
Speaker 1: you had cell phones and all the texting. Some guy
Speaker 1: heard I was doing the movie and he had been
Speaker 1: a student somewhere in Chicago, and he sent me found
Speaker 1: out my business address in New York, and he sent
Speaker 1: me a cassette and I played it word for word.
Speaker 1: It's that scene. And I got piste off at Bob
Speaker 1: because when he shot the master from upstairs, right in
Speaker 1: the back, and when I saw it, I said, he
Speaker 1: didn't cut in. You didn't cut in and he says, no,
Speaker 1: So that's eight minutes, you know, being up there just
Speaker 1: in one shot, one shot and again he was he
Speaker 1: was right. Uh, it's nice of you to admit that. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's very generous. I've met a lot of stuff forty
Speaker 1: years later. But but do you think do you think
Speaker 1: in your I mean, obviously you're someone who when you
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't believe anything I read. But I mean,
Speaker 1: but but people really I try to minimize that in
Speaker 1: my life and time. But but the but, but for you,
Speaker 1: obviously you know very fastidious and very very lots of
Speaker 1: questions and lots of seeking and so forth in the
Speaker 1: work you were doing. And what do you think that
Speaker 1: comes from? In terms of all the films you've made
Speaker 1: from Graduate on into Cowboy and everything like that, where
Speaker 1: you just seem so what's the word? I mean, you're
Speaker 1: so Jewish? Is that it? I'll convert If that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Is that simple, I'm gonna convert tomorrow. That's what's gonna
Speaker 1: get me into your statusy it? But the but, but
Speaker 1: but the thing is you you just seem like you
Speaker 1: always have something to prove a lot of people got
Speaker 1: where you got and they did what you did, and
Speaker 1: you scored with these performances and the originality. But then
Speaker 1: you keep going and you still feel like you have
Speaker 1: Did you feel that way? You still have something to
Speaker 1: prove again and again and again. What drove you? I
Speaker 1: guess the same thing that still drives me. Kobe Bryant
Speaker 1: was interviewed recently. It was before he, you know, had
Speaker 1: a step out for the season, because he heard himself.
Speaker 1: I saw the interview and I wrote it down. I
Speaker 1: told my son Jake was basketball, same question. You know,
Speaker 1: all these years of great basketball playing and he still
Speaker 1: spend so much time practicing and playing whatever. Why And
Speaker 1: he said, I guess for the challenge of every day.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful, sons. I have only one slight personal connection
Speaker 1: to Lenny Bruce and that and that was that Marvin
Speaker 1: Worth was a dear friend. He died. Producer. He produced
Speaker 1: this some he produced to Malcolm X with Spike. He
Speaker 1: produced a lot good and he was Bruce's manager. Marvin
Speaker 1: Worthy was from Brooklyn and his wife Joe, and they
Speaker 1: were from Brooklyn. And he had the more the heaviest
Speaker 1: New York accents I've never heard in my life. His
Speaker 1: voice was down. We got a very heavy accent like this.
Speaker 1: And he said to me, I'm gonna revive Letty on Broadway,
Speaker 1: and I want you to do play Letty. I go,
Speaker 1: what and he said, uh, he goes. I got a
Speaker 1: thousand hours of tapes of Lenny. I got thought, Julian Barry,
Speaker 1: We've got so much material and Lannis. He said, there's
Speaker 1: so much stuff we can put in there. I don't
Speaker 1: worry about that. It's all gonna work like a child.
Speaker 1: And I go and he goes in the Dusty equals
Speaker 1: to Dusty. Dusty's not the only one who could play
Speaker 1: that part. By the way, you got the only person
Speaker 1: who coul played up on him. I got huh, Sara.
Speaker 1: And he goes and he goes, He goes, and I go,
Speaker 1: but what about the other thing? He goes, one other thing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what about the other thing? Was one other thing? One
Speaker 1: other thing? One of the thing. I go, I'm not Jewish.
Speaker 1: He said, you're from Long Island, right, I said, yeah.
Speaker 1: He goes, You're You're half way there. The rest of
Speaker 1: them take care of its something like that. And he
Speaker 1: would have been wonderful. But when you did this film,
Speaker 1: how involved in your films? Warn you before then? Later
Speaker 1: in the casting. Oh, I have to tell your gun
Speaker 1: glad you're asked me. Another example of Fosse's genius, uh,
Speaker 1: is that I met Honey Bruce. Uh and uh uh
Speaker 1: which came first? I met? He cast Valerie Pain before
Speaker 1: he met Honey Bruce, and then he met her, and
Speaker 1: then I met her. We you know, not together. And
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe Honey Bruce that Valerie was the reincarnation
Speaker 1: of Honey Bruce. Literally, I mean it could have been
Speaker 1: like mother and daughter. I was and I said, Bob,
Speaker 1: you had to have met the Honey Bruce before you
Speaker 1: cast Valeries as No, it was just this intuition. I
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with any of the casting except
Speaker 1: except Stanley. He was not enough to have Stanley in
Speaker 1: it for my manager and all my films. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the graduate. They've been trying for two years
Speaker 1: to cast it, and Katherine Ross and myself were the
Speaker 1: last two two screen test after two years. And I
Speaker 1: heard that they were sitting in the screen room not
Speaker 1: particularly excited about our screen test, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: either we go with them or we don't do it.
Speaker 1: And it was that kind of a that they said
Speaker 1: that in interviews. I think Larry Terman said that the
Speaker 1: producer and uh Midnight Cowboy. Uh he uh he cast Uh,
Speaker 1: he didn't cast John Voyd. He cast some someone else
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't let him out of his contract. And
Speaker 1: after that happened, I said, please see my friend John Voyd.
Speaker 1: We weren't close friends that we've been off for all
Speaker 1: and he says no. John Sessinger said he read for
Speaker 1: it and he doesn't have that Texas accent. He was
Speaker 1: from Yonkers. I said, yeah, but he's an actor. He
Speaker 1: can get it, you know. And John immediately went down
Speaker 1: to Texas forgot where with the tape recorder and spent
Speaker 1: whatever time and came back and and read for it
Speaker 1: and he got the part. But he was the second choice.
Speaker 1: Kate Jackson was the first choice for Cramer versus Kramer.
Speaker 1: She was in Charlie's Angels and they were saying, oh,
Speaker 1: the film will pay back itself before we started shooting
Speaker 1: because they were so popular. And then the studio wouldn't
Speaker 1: let her out. So I kept telling them about this
Speaker 1: Meryl Streep. I had heard about it, uh, and they
Speaker 1: saw and they saw her. So there's been a few
Speaker 1: I've suggested, I've I've never demanded or you know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think that works actually unless you're directing or producing. Well,
Speaker 1: some people there, some people to have these approvals of
Speaker 1: casting and they and they utilize that in whatever way.
Speaker 1: And those are the people who they just don't get involved.
Speaker 1: They just like they just let it that all take
Speaker 1: care of itself, and that it doesn't really change what
Speaker 1: they do. You know, de Valent Hackman and I knew
Speaker 1: each other from the early days. They're much older and
Speaker 1: and uh, we never worked together. And suddenly I'm doing
Speaker 1: this thing a few years ago. We're shooting in New
Speaker 1: Orleans a runaway jury and I have a I think
Speaker 1: a supporting part, and Gene Hackman has a leading part.
Speaker 1: And the director finds out that we knew each other.
Speaker 1: We went to the past seeing the playhouse together to
Speaker 1: kicked out after three months they're not having any talent
Speaker 1: and uh, oh my god, you guys know each other
Speaker 1: for all those time, dirty years. Yeah, we gotta do
Speaker 1: a scene. So they wrote a scene. It's it's one
Speaker 1: of the last scenes in the movie. Takes place in
Speaker 1: a public bathroom. It's like an eight page dialogue scene.
Speaker 1: And afterwards it was lasting they shot in the movie
Speaker 1: it's over and Jean and I said, let's go out
Speaker 1: and get drunk. And we go to an Italian restaurant
Speaker 1: in New Orleans and we're getting drunk, and Hackman says,
Speaker 1: were you scared? I said, I was so scared. Man,
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm gonna I'm gonna forget my lines. He
Speaker 1: said he felt exactly the same way. You know, because
Speaker 1: you are what you are at the beginning, you don't
Speaker 1: really change. We were unemployee actors for ten years, and
Speaker 1: he said to me, and one of the great things
Speaker 1: ever said, we were this close to each other. He says,
Speaker 1: do you feel the same way I do after you
Speaker 1: finish a movie? And he probably made a hundred twenty movies.
Speaker 1: I said, what do you feel like You'll never work again?
Speaker 1: Of course, every single time. But that's it. My conversation
Speaker 1: with Dustin Hoffman continues after the break. You can hear
Speaker 1: from other actors in the Here's the thing, archives like
Speaker 1: Julianne Moore, who shares her special technique for getting ready
Speaker 1: to play a scene. I'm very chatty. I'd like to
Speaker 1: talk all the way up to action. I do, I do,
Speaker 1: And if you can't talk to me. I'm really disappointed.
Speaker 1: Then I get lonely, and I want to be lonely
Speaker 1: when I'm working. I want to be with my buddy.
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk to me. You talk to me, friend,
Speaker 1: Let's be buddies. Talk to you. What did you do
Speaker 1: this morning? What do you have for dinner last night?
Speaker 1: What are you doing later today? Are you cold? Do
Speaker 1: you like that sweater? Did you like my sweater? What
Speaker 1: are you doing? Action acting? I love it. That's my
Speaker 1: favorite parts. You get this great connection with other human being,
Speaker 1: and then the scene is like, comes alive. Take a
Speaker 1: listen and here's the thing. Dot Org, this is Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. Dustin Hoffman
Speaker 1: has been nominated for the OSCAR for Best Actor seven times.
Speaker 1: He's won the award twice. Actors strive for depth and
Speaker 1: range in their work. Dustin Hoffman makes this appear effortless.
Speaker 1: There's obviously roles you played like Crame versus Cramer and
Speaker 1: all the President's men, and you seem it's I don't
Speaker 1: know what word to use. It seems closer to who
Speaker 1: you are, your voice and your appearance, and you're the
Speaker 1: psychologic stuff that you're paying playing a contemporary character. You're
Speaker 1: not playing somebody with some disability or what have you.
Speaker 1: It's not rain man or someone who's damaged and broken
Speaker 1: like Cowboy and so forth like that. But you've done both.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a theatricality of the roles and a
Speaker 1: vividness to them, and you're not afraid to do that.
Speaker 1: Where does that come from? From being in the theater? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean I where are you from? I told you
Speaker 1: from long for a long island. So how first of all,
Speaker 1: I wish we lived in the same city. How old
Speaker 1: were you when you started studying act? And when they
Speaker 1: sent you out? They sent you out for certain kinds
Speaker 1: of parts, young leading man, the young guys who I
Speaker 1: had a lot or whatever. I'm the short Jew and
Speaker 1: uh still with some acne, and I come to New
Speaker 1: York to study and they always said leading men, young
Speaker 1: leading men, juvenile's character juveniles. That's what I was designed as.
Speaker 1: I couldn't get an agent. And that's just code for Semitic,
Speaker 1: you know, because in those days, the leading man was
Speaker 1: white Anglo Saxon Protestant, and the ethnic person was character
Speaker 1: juvenile or character Janews. It really was that way anyway.
Speaker 1: So I went out a few times. I could, you know,
Speaker 1: go to open auditions, because if you're not equity then
Speaker 1: you can't go to a regular audition, and you can't
Speaker 1: go to a regular audition until you get your equity card,
Speaker 1: and you can't get an equity card until you get
Speaker 1: a job, so you know, catch twenty two. So the
Speaker 1: few times that I could go, it was the character
Speaker 1: juvenile and by Hooker Crook. Uh Nichols casts Katherine Ross
Speaker 1: and I in a graduate and I'd been just starting
Speaker 1: to get somewhere off Broadway doing you know, my own
Speaker 1: style of stuff. Hunchbacked German gay guy with a limp.
Speaker 1: You know, the first thing that I got mentioned for
Speaker 1: in the in the New York Times, and uh Nichols
Speaker 1: had heard about it, and uh and I got to
Speaker 1: you're not kidding. You played a hunchback German homosexual with
Speaker 1: a limb. Ronald Ribbon. What was the production Harry Noon
Speaker 1: and Night. And the other actor was what was his
Speaker 1: Joel Joel Gray? Sorry Joel? Uh, yes, that was accurate.
Speaker 1: So uh he brings me out to test me, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to test. I was doing for the
Speaker 1: first time in my life doing well off Broadway. I
Speaker 1: won an award and I thought, oh, I'll have a career.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll do off Broadway. And you know this
Speaker 1: as well as I do. Uh. You know, if God
Speaker 1: has said, look alec uh, you'll never be in a movie,
Speaker 1: you'll never get leading roles. If you're struggling for years,
Speaker 1: you won't even be on Broadway. I will guarantee you
Speaker 1: a good part off Broadway for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: You'd sign, you would, you know? Uh? And so would
Speaker 1: a hackman who moved furniture and down, you know, six
Speaker 1: flights and do val who worked midnight to eight in
Speaker 1: the post office. And I was doing waiter jobs and
Speaker 1: a little acting teaching if I could. And it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's never changed as actors. Here you know the pain
Speaker 1: of that. Um and uh. Here he is now taking
Speaker 1: me out into l A and testing and can we
Speaker 1: do anything about his nose? I remember, And I mean,
Speaker 1: well the guy is he said, you don't and he
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. I mean, he's the hottest director from
Speaker 1: Neil Simon Broadway and also Virginia Wolf. He did. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was no hotter director at that moment. In time
Speaker 1: he was Spielberg and he said, what do you mean
Speaker 1: you don't want to do this part? I said, I
Speaker 1: read the book of Mr Nichols. Was on the phone. He'said,
Speaker 1: Alam in New York doing a play. I said, Benjamin
Speaker 1: Braddock in the book. He's five ft eleven, blonde hair.
Speaker 1: I says, it's Redford. I said, you don't want me
Speaker 1: and he said no. He says, I I would like
Speaker 1: to test you. He said, you mean he's not Jewish.
Speaker 1: I said, right, it's Benjamin Braddock. And he said something
Speaker 1: I've never forgotten. He says, well, maybe he's Jewish. Inside
Speaker 1: years later he's from Berlin, Mike. He came here in
Speaker 1: the early thirties, and uh, he had his own pain
Speaker 1: because he didn't have a lot of hair. He had
Speaker 1: scarlet fever. And uh he not too long ago, just
Speaker 1: a few years ago. I read in the paper that
Speaker 1: he never understood why he cast me, and then he
Speaker 1: finally did through the analysis or something, and he said,
Speaker 1: because I was like an alter ego of him. He
Speaker 1: felt like he was me in uh, you know, on
Speaker 1: the periphery, you know, out of it, and he was
Speaker 1: casting himself the funny looking guy. Do you know that
Speaker 1: that movie was shot and I went back to New
Speaker 1: York to collect unemployment. It was a lot, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's fifty bucks a week is getting the mostly to
Speaker 1: get and they're cutting the movie again. I read this
Speaker 1: in the newspapers and Lawrence Turman, I think it was
Speaker 1: a New York carrents a producer. They're showing it all
Speaker 1: over the bel Air circuit, every Hills Belair, Brentwood on
Speaker 1: a movie theaters they have in the homes and over
Speaker 1: in a over again Urman said before it opened, and
Speaker 1: over and over again. People in the industry would come
Speaker 1: up to Larry, Why brilliant film you almost had if
Speaker 1: you hadn't a miscast the lead. And that was the perception.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because speaking of that casting thing, he and
Speaker 1: I have had a little There was a whiff of this,
Speaker 1: of this, of my appreciation of his career, and you
Speaker 1: wind him mind. I remember this. I doubt you remember this.
Speaker 1: But I go to the old Westwood Marquis Hotel because
Speaker 1: I get called to go an audition for the movie
Speaker 1: Hero and Stephen Friers is the director, and the phone rings,
Speaker 1: and this is back when I was making films in
Speaker 1: the nineties and everything, and I'm lighting one off the
Speaker 1: other and I'm gonna meet this guy and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm in my car. I'm like, God, masically gonna go
Speaker 1: to the Westwood Marquis, and they just lay out the
Speaker 1: facts are like, you know, snap out of it. You're
Speaker 1: gonna go to the Westwood Marquis. You're gonna be Steen
Speaker 1: Friars and you're gonna have a meeting with Dustin hop
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I love this guy. I want to
Speaker 1: be this movie where this guy and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: like twenty minutes goes by and Stephen Fiers. If you
Speaker 1: know the movie Hero, where someone commits this actor, there's
Speaker 1: a case of mistake in identity, and Andy Garcia played
Speaker 1: the other role, so there has to be this case
Speaker 1: of mistaken identity between the two actors. Stephen fears literally
Speaker 1: twenty minutes in. I mean, my dream is just taking flight,
Speaker 1: my wings. I'm flying over the west Wood Blocky Hotel.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make my first movie with Dustin Effin Hoffman,
Speaker 1: and Stephen Fiers looks at me and goes, you know,
Speaker 1: I just realized that you don't look anything like Dustin
Speaker 1: at all, and it was like there, I'm flying. Also
Speaker 1: he shoots my balloon, my crash onto Westwood Boulevard. I'm
Speaker 1: dead on the highway there. I'll never figure to talk about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not. Our dreams are dreams, how they
Speaker 1: how they escape us. But I'm called the Emma right
Speaker 1: right right. But the when you do, when you show
Speaker 1: up and you work with Lessinger and you do Cowboy,
Speaker 1: do you you come up with all that and you
Speaker 1: show him did he help you? Did you Cowboy? Very briefly,
Speaker 1: he didn't want It's very similar to Freers and you.
Speaker 1: He did not want to see me because he had
Speaker 1: seen a graduate and that's the only thing he'd ever
Speaker 1: seen me in. And he was an artist. He give
Speaker 1: a ship that I was in a big hit and
Speaker 1: suddenly an instant star. He wanted the right person, and
Speaker 1: he refused to see me. And I heard about this,
Speaker 1: and I had read the book. I thought the script
Speaker 1: was okay. It was Waldo Salt. He actually came in
Speaker 1: a room with John Votnit when we did it, and
Speaker 1: he had a wall inside tape recorder. We improvised everything.
Speaker 1: Everything was Lessener was great at that and he would
Speaker 1: go home, Uh, wald as well and write the improvisations
Speaker 1: into the scenes that he had already written. Anyway, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't see me, and I said, please, you know, I
Speaker 1: gotta see him. He's got to see me. And he agreed.
Speaker 1: I know we're running out of time, so I go quick.
Speaker 1: Uh forty second Street. What are they called those things
Speaker 1: where you you go when you put the quarter in?
Speaker 1: I can't remember the automat, thank you, And I said,
Speaker 1: the automat. I'm gonna direct the movie of him playing
Speaker 1: a car. You all heard it, go ahead? And I
Speaker 1: used to go there and we all did you know,
Speaker 1: to three in the morning whatever, uh, and get coffee
Speaker 1: or whatever. And it was all kind of trance people there.
Speaker 1: And I said, I'll meet him in the automat, and
Speaker 1: I want to do it about one or two in
Speaker 1: the morning, because you know, and I'll dress accordingly, which
Speaker 1: is what I did. It kind of like I wore
Speaker 1: in that scene that rain Cole and I didn't shave
Speaker 1: a few days and I greased my hair. I was
Speaker 1: auditioning and I came in and I just said, met
Speaker 1: him there, sat there and he looked at me, and
Speaker 1: he looked at you know, sparsely crowded, you know, people
Speaker 1: around he says. Oh, he says, yes, I think you'll
Speaker 1: do quite well. So the voice and all of it,
Speaker 1: you just throw that out there. You come up with that.
Speaker 1: Oh well, yeah, you keep trying. You mean, my friend
Speaker 1: Will Daniel, My friend Will Daniel, you're too comes. Where
Speaker 1: do you find this? You get desperate? Um, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't. That's my father. I wasn't desperate enough. No,
Speaker 1: And uh, we were rehearsing and then uh, Lesson has
Speaker 1: to shoot some exteriors before we start shooting, uh, principal
Speaker 1: photography because he's got winter and he needed winter. So
Speaker 1: John Voight and I go and he says, you don't
Speaker 1: have to talk. I says, I don't have a character.
Speaker 1: I don't have a voice. I said, I can't. I
Speaker 1: barely have a walk. No, we've had the camera cross
Speaker 1: the street. You guys just gotta walk. We're not starting
Speaker 1: for a month, but we just need the weather, you know,
Speaker 1: the smoke coming up. Whatever was right? Okay? So John
Speaker 1: and I were walking. John Voight and I knew each
Speaker 1: other for years. I was the assistant director, which is
Speaker 1: like you know, sharpening pencils in the off Broadway when
Speaker 1: he was in From the Bridge with Bob du Valle.
Speaker 1: He was brilliant and he was up and coming star,
Speaker 1: and uh, and you know we were competitive. Actors are
Speaker 1: always competitive. And uh, you know, if you're walking down
Speaker 1: the street, you got a script, you have a reading,
Speaker 1: or you did the read, you see another actor coming up,
Speaker 1: You've always put it behind your back, you know. Said
Speaker 1: but no, it's just something, you know, because you don't
Speaker 1: want the competition. Uh. Anyway, so we're across the street
Speaker 1: walking and says after this, I said, yeah, but I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to cough. Were at that point in the movie
Speaker 1: where you know he's got You're gonna find out the
Speaker 1: S T B or whatever. He says, yes, says this, says, already,
Speaker 1: you do some coughing and do something not going, but
Speaker 1: you don't have to talk. Okay, I'm rehearsing out of panic,
Speaker 1: you know, trying on these limps or whatever. And uh,
Speaker 1: I said, it shouldn't be shooting. We got a month ago.
Speaker 1: I haven't found him yet. And suddenly we're walking and
Speaker 1: we paused, and I'm trying a cough and I threw
Speaker 1: up literally on John Voyd's Cowboy boots and afterwards sus
Speaker 1: and just I think we've got it. You did, and
Speaker 1: John because he's an actor and you know we're competitive.
Speaker 1: He Passenger told me later he went up to pless
Speaker 1: and Journey said, John, let me just ask you something.
Speaker 1: Is he going to do that all throughout the Jesus
Speaker 1: because I'm not even in the scene. If he does, well,
Speaker 1: let me just say this because obviously, I mean, I
Speaker 1: got another forty five questions I could ask, but they
Speaker 1: do have a schedule here for the festival. But I
Speaker 1: do want to say. I mean, as as as sadly
Speaker 1: as this sounds on behalf of everybody here, I want
Speaker 1: to say thank you to you because I mean, I really,
Speaker 1: from the bottom of my heart, from the bottom of
Speaker 1: my heart, you are one of the greatest movie actors
Speaker 1: that has ever lived. And this happen really actress ever,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's somebody great ful. Please help me in
Speaker 1: a thanky Dustin everyone. Dustin Hoffman has accrued a lifetime
Speaker 1: of knowledge about acting and the entertainment industry, and despite
Speaker 1: turning seventy eight this summer, he's now embracing a very
Speaker 1: new way to share it. He's teaching an acting class
Speaker 1: online The description reads, quote Dustin teaches you everything he
Speaker 1: wishes someone had taught him unquote. You can sign up
Speaker 1: at master class dot com. Coming up actress Edie Falco
Speaker 1: Sweeney Todd was one of the first things I saw
Speaker 1: where I thought, oh, I got it what. I don't
Speaker 1: know how, but I got it. Oh my god. That
Speaker 1: one show, This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening
Speaker 1: to hear is the thing. Edie Falco played Carmelo soprano
Speaker 1: on the groundbreaking HBO show about an Italian American mob
Speaker 1: family from New Jersey. Falco now has two kids herself,
Speaker 1: but when she was playing Carmela, she was a single
Speaker 1: woman living in New York. In this clip, we hear
Speaker 1: Falco with the late great James Gandolfini, who played her
Speaker 1: husband Tony. You know what I don't understand, Tony. What
Speaker 1: does she have that I don't have. I did not
Speaker 1: carry on an affair with the cousin, and I will
Speaker 1: take a damn polygray effect. I want you to leave
Speaker 1: this house, Tony, please, I want you to leave me alone.
Speaker 1: TV Guide named The Sopranos the best television show in history.
Speaker 1: It's safe to say the role of Carmela made her
Speaker 1: but Edie Falco didn't sense that. At the start, I
Speaker 1: didn't have any sense of the gravity of what we
Speaker 1: were doing, and might might have just been because I
Speaker 1: was dumb. I didn't realize, what, you know, the the
Speaker 1: larger themes at play there. But I just enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: And it was still a novel TV working on something
Speaker 1: that was good, that people enjoyed, that seemed to be
Speaker 1: well received. Yeah, that was the excitement of being on
Speaker 1: something good. Was still very new, and I wonder when
Speaker 1: you did the show, was it fun and pleasant? Was
Speaker 1: it really tough? Was it work? Now? It was fun
Speaker 1: and pleasant because it was There was a lighthearted atmosphere.
Speaker 1: The writing was funny. There was a lot of really
Speaker 1: funny stuff, and it was a lot of these sort
Speaker 1: of goomba guys. It just felt like family to me
Speaker 1: and very easy to be with. Did you participate in
Speaker 1: the writing of the did you just turn that all over?
Speaker 1: You never got involved, not at all. I was not
Speaker 1: at all interested. I had so much trust in certainly
Speaker 1: David Chase, but in all the staff that he carefully chosen,
Speaker 1: hand picked. I felt like they knew what they were doing.
Speaker 1: They had much better overview of what the story was
Speaker 1: about as opposed to what would Carmela do want here?
Speaker 1: You know, I just thought it was a huge relief
Speaker 1: to know that I could just let them do their
Speaker 1: thing and I would do what I was hired to do.
Speaker 1: I felt completely comfortable with that. Did they put things
Speaker 1: about you and the characters? They got me, Tina Fey
Speaker 1: When I did thirty Rock with someone who the moment
Speaker 1: you told a story, it was an embarrassing It was
Speaker 1: in the show. Absolutely. Jim said that all the times,
Speaker 1: like I can't talk to anybody about anything, It's gonna
Speaker 1: be in the next episode. But I didn't notice it
Speaker 1: so much from my life. There was nothing going on
Speaker 1: in my life that was all that interesting, So I
Speaker 1: didn't see a lot of it in the scripts. But
Speaker 1: I know they, like I guess, every show, to some extent,
Speaker 1: they start writing for the actors that have been hired, like, um,
Speaker 1: I eat his character right A tour that who played
Speaker 1: his sister was supposed to be a very different thing.
Speaker 1: It was supposed to be more like the mom sort
Speaker 1: of cold and calculating and unkind. And because I ate
Speaker 1: a Tour was doing it, it's sort of morphed into
Speaker 1: this whole other like Parvody, that phase that she went
Speaker 1: through where she was sort of like an earth child.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I'm sure they were writing based on
Speaker 1: what they perceived me to be, but I was. I
Speaker 1: was not entirely cognizant of myth. Think they hired you
Speaker 1: for that part because you said I read an interview
Speaker 1: where you talked about how you win, and you just
Speaker 1: relaxed and said, Hey, if this happens, it happens, which
Speaker 1: we all go through when you sometimes sit there and go,
Speaker 1: I can't stress about another interview, that's right. What do
Speaker 1: you think they hired you for? I couldn't begin to
Speaker 1: tell you. I think I think probably because of that,
Speaker 1: because I was completely non stressed. It was a script
Speaker 1: that had been bouncing around for a while, but I
Speaker 1: was doing odds at the time, and I was working
Speaker 1: a lot, and I kind of was all caught up
Speaker 1: in that. And it came along and it called Sopranos,
Speaker 1: and I thought it's about singers or something, and it's
Speaker 1: a you know, Italian American American woman wife, and I
Speaker 1: thought that I never get cast as that I know
Speaker 1: who's going to get cast I figured it's you know,
Speaker 1: Annabella Shore or Marissa Tomay or some of these women
Speaker 1: who had played parts that sort of felt similar to that.
Speaker 1: There's no better place to be and when you walk
Speaker 1: into an audition then knowing you're not going to get
Speaker 1: it and not caring, so, uh, you know, I really
Speaker 1: just sort of enjoyed myself and thought, it's just another
Speaker 1: audition and if you're in a good head, you can
Speaker 1: never not learn something from an audition. So I just
Speaker 1: went in and had fun. And you inadvertently you present
Speaker 1: your best self when you're doing that, and I guess,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I was relaxed and I enjoyed myself,
Speaker 1: so I guess that's what they So I don't know.
Speaker 1: And when you got the job, was that something that
Speaker 1: was just floored you? Are you ecstatic about getting the job? Well,
Speaker 1: remember so you just just a pilot you get cast
Speaker 1: for you know, So at that point it was whatever.
Speaker 1: It was two weeks of work, and it was a
Speaker 1: sum of money I had never seen before, which now
Speaker 1: seems not all that shocking, but back in the day
Speaker 1: it meant I could pay off my student loan and
Speaker 1: so I was able to with that one check completely
Speaker 1: pay off my student loan. It was huge. It was
Speaker 1: a huge occurrence. But again two weeks of work and
Speaker 1: then onto the next panic thing, you know, about what
Speaker 1: what to do next. So soon after the pilot was shot,
Speaker 1: I think it was a year you told, so you
Speaker 1: waited a year to be told this was going to
Speaker 1: move forward. And David Chase called me and said, I
Speaker 1: just won't let you know this has been picked up.
Speaker 1: This is after we shot the pilot. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna watch this thing, but I'm proud of what
Speaker 1: we made or whatever. And David was also apparently he
Speaker 1: put his head in his hand and said, oh no
Speaker 1: when he found out it was picked up, because I
Speaker 1: don't think he had intended to have to tell more
Speaker 1: about these people. I think he was trying to get
Speaker 1: a movie made and this was almost like a spec
Speaker 1: script or something, you know. I don't think he had
Speaker 1: anticipated this going on like this, So he was had
Speaker 1: his head in his hands. Jimmy's like, what am I doing?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I can pay my student alone. And
Speaker 1: you know, here at his four thousand years later, and
Speaker 1: uh just goes to show you you wake up every day.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what anything is going to turn into?
Speaker 1: So well, two things that come to mind for me.
Speaker 1: One and I probably told you this before and when
Speaker 1: I would run into you, But one was I never
Speaker 1: watched TV. I just didn't have time. And I hit
Speaker 1: this period toward the last probably four seasons, definitely maybe five.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say obsession, but my fondness for
Speaker 1: you and your character. Remember I watched him go, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I've got to be married to that kind
Speaker 1: of woman through thick and thin and smart choices, and
Speaker 1: she's a good partner. Did you sense that when you
Speaker 1: were doing it? I loved it for that reason because
Speaker 1: it was everything that I was not, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean it was you know, I was a single woman
Speaker 1: living in New York, didn't have kids, and here I
Speaker 1: was ensconced in this life that I saw my grandparents live,
Speaker 1: you know, married with kids, deeply entrenched in a community
Speaker 1: of people. Family gatherings were huge, you know, everything that
Speaker 1: and even with Jim feeling like I was attached to
Speaker 1: a big man who would take care of stuff. It
Speaker 1: was a tremendously um invigorating place to inhabit while I
Speaker 1: was working. It was completely diametrically opposed to what I
Speaker 1: lived when I left the set, And for that reason,
Speaker 1: I absolutely what did you live when you left the set?
Speaker 1: The life of a single actress in Manhattan? You know,
Speaker 1: I had a relatively small apartment, I had my dog,
Speaker 1: I had my dates. But it was not you know
Speaker 1: at all what a lot other women my age, let's say,
Speaker 1: in the Midwest are certainly in my family back a
Speaker 1: number of generations. Primary and I was your boyfriend. It
Speaker 1: was when you dated other guys on the side. Was
Speaker 1: it was? And I was thrilled for it, thrilled for it.
Speaker 1: I loved it. How old were you when you first
Speaker 1: had a sense that you wanted to do that for
Speaker 1: a living? Seriously, do it for a living? Well, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that I could ever do it for a living.
Speaker 1: I think until I was able to do it for
Speaker 1: a living, I thought I would just do it as
Speaker 1: after my waitressing gig. You know, the idea that I
Speaker 1: could support myself with it was sort of preposterous. Um.
Speaker 1: But my mom was an actress. She did stuff at
Speaker 1: arena players in Farmingdale and broad Hollow Theater and Huntington's
Speaker 1: all around Long Island. But she had a job, and
Speaker 1: she would do her plays in the weekends and at night,
Speaker 1: and I sort of thought of your job many different jobs.
Speaker 1: But she was a she was a DJ W g L,
Speaker 1: I was a station on Long Island. She was a copywriter,
Speaker 1: and she did a million different things. She decided she
Speaker 1: wanted a job and she would get it, but then
Speaker 1: at night she'd do her plays. And I thought, that's
Speaker 1: what you do when you want to be an actor.
Speaker 1: I've got an older brother, younger brother, and a younger sister.
Speaker 1: It's four four of us all, and were any of
Speaker 1: them also interested in the theater, not at all, even
Speaker 1: though your mother was an actress and your father was
Speaker 1: a patriot artist and be with musician for when he
Speaker 1: was younger, but then he went on to do sculpture
Speaker 1: and painting. And your parents got divorced from your how old.
Speaker 1: I have no idea, because they got divorced and then
Speaker 1: they remarried each other two other times, so it's a
Speaker 1: very complicated childhood with that. They remarried each other and
Speaker 1: then dovorris and remarried divorce And I don't even know
Speaker 1: if because because I want to make a movie at us,
Speaker 1: I want to play this. They got divorced. When they
Speaker 1: would get divorced, how long were they apart before they
Speaker 1: were united? A matter of months, No longer it was
Speaker 1: for the first time, it was a number of years.
Speaker 1: And you know, they kind of the kids were pitted
Speaker 1: against each other and the right against And then we
Speaker 1: found out the parents were sort of hanging out with
Speaker 1: each other again. It was, you know, horrifying for the
Speaker 1: kids that they would something get together again. Then they
Speaker 1: would have a ceremony, we would witness there. What it was,
Speaker 1: I don't know led to some psychological issues and I'm
Speaker 1: working on as we speak, but we get to that.
Speaker 1: And none of your siblings had the bug, not at all, not,
Speaker 1: I mean did the opposite. And so did this become
Speaker 1: formal for you only when you go to Purchase or
Speaker 1: had you done plays before you went to school? Community
Speaker 1: theater plays nothing too and school plays, you know, but
Speaker 1: nothing very serious. Um. And then I went to Purchase
Speaker 1: first as a liberal arts person, and uh, I saw
Speaker 1: my some actor friends had gone into Purchase in the program,
Speaker 1: and I thought that wanted to be there, and that
Speaker 1: program had grown, Yes, and now it's become this very
Speaker 1: estimable program on the East coast, big time. So I
Speaker 1: auditioned and went the next year as an acting student.
Speaker 1: And did you graduate? Did you finish? I did? I did?
Speaker 1: And then when you finished, what did you do? Well?
Speaker 1: Remember the league auditions? That whole thing. So we had
Speaker 1: the league auditions, and from those auditions, I got a
Speaker 1: part in a movie where I had to be on
Speaker 1: set the day after I graduated, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: what's everybody talking about? This is so easy. I just
Speaker 1: kind of glided my way into this career. I didn't
Speaker 1: do anything for five plus years after that, but did
Speaker 1: a movie called Sweet Lorraine that was done up in
Speaker 1: The Cat's Skills with the guy's name was Steve Gohmer,
Speaker 1: the director. How did that go? It was? Well, it
Speaker 1: was I couldn't believe it was on a movie set,
Speaker 1: you know. It was a huge thing, and I just
Speaker 1: graduated from school and it was crazily exciting. You know
Speaker 1: what the heck were we like eight weeks up in
Speaker 1: the Cats Skills I think it was, and kind of
Speaker 1: fell in love with all the boys in the show.
Speaker 1: You know, it was being a sleep away camp. And
Speaker 1: I remember when my agents said, I hope you're sitting down.
Speaker 1: You booked that movie? And you're gonna get paid more
Speaker 1: money than you have ever seen in your life. They're
Speaker 1: going to pay you two thousand dollars a week, which
Speaker 1: was more money than I had ever seen. And waitressing
Speaker 1: not yet, I uh no, except on Long Island, I
Speaker 1: hadn't really happened. So it was after the movie the waitressing. Yes,
Speaker 1: in to try to keep up weekends the Rainbow Room.
Speaker 1: I was ane, thinking it would be consistent. Yes, but
Speaker 1: now what was the job for you that ended that? Like?
Speaker 1: When did you get a job and then you never
Speaker 1: went back again? You only made a living as an actress.
Speaker 1: I was waitressing at a place called Canyon Road on
Speaker 1: seventy seven, and first it was the last waitressing job
Speaker 1: I had. I worked in with Paul Scholzy, my friend
Speaker 1: who has actually been on a bunch of my shows
Speaker 1: with me, my great actor friend, and he was bartending,
Speaker 1: and I went off to do a thing called Cost
Speaker 1: of Living, a low budget independent thing, and I left
Speaker 1: and I was about to come back to the restaurant job,
Speaker 1: and I just had one of those sort of grace
Speaker 1: moments where I thought, no, I'm not going to come back.
Speaker 1: I don't know how this is going to work. But
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna waitress anymore. I really was one. It
Speaker 1: was a total leap of faith. I just I'm going
Speaker 1: to live in a washing machine box, which see nicked
Speaker 1: out the box preferable to taking another order at that restaurant.
Speaker 1: So I couldn't do it anymore. So yeah, and at
Speaker 1: that I don't know. I guess um oz happened shortly
Speaker 1: after maybe. So what was the experience like working with
Speaker 1: fontana Um? You know Tom right? I I love him.
Speaker 1: He was one of those angel guys, you know. Because
Speaker 1: I had done a movie called Laws of Gravity and
Speaker 1: it got some attention and played the sort of sundance
Speaker 1: and the the festival circuit. Tom saw it and decided
Speaker 1: he wanted to use me for stuff, and so he
Speaker 1: put me in um series called Firehouse about e MT
Speaker 1: workers and fire people or whatever. Then he cast me
Speaker 1: in homicide, or maybe it was the other way around.
Speaker 1: He just we kept putting me and stuff when I
Speaker 1: wasn't really working much. And then he said, I'm doing
Speaker 1: the series about a prison. I have two parts. You
Speaker 1: can play the nun or you can play the correction officer.
Speaker 1: Which part you want to play? So I'll be the
Speaker 1: correction officer and that was you know, and he just
Speaker 1: decided he was going to take care of me, and
Speaker 1: he did, and he did for many years, and just
Speaker 1: you were in his troop. I was in his troop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I was just digital of oz. Gosh, you know,
Speaker 1: I have no idea actually, come to think of it,
Speaker 1: more than a couple. Yeah. It was just so crazy
Speaker 1: grateful for the work. And I remember it was before
Speaker 1: cell phones. Remember Terry Kinney was on the show with me,
Speaker 1: and he was the first person I ever knew who
Speaker 1: had his own phone. I just thought he was the coolest,
Speaker 1: coolest thing going. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It was fun,
Speaker 1: It was really really fun. And it was great to
Speaker 1: have a steady gig. And then after that, what did
Speaker 1: you do? How long between that and the Sopranos? Not
Speaker 1: long I was doing you know, I was doing uh
Speaker 1: that that was during Sopranos. I think that was during
Speaker 1: two seasons of Sopranos. But I was doing ODZ and
Speaker 1: then I was doing Sideman play that I did for
Speaker 1: a very long time. And I was doing Odds at
Speaker 1: night and Sideman during the day, and then Sopranos came
Speaker 1: in and so I was doing there was a period
Speaker 1: of time where I was doing sort of all three
Speaker 1: of them, and I thought because they were so great
Speaker 1: and I couldn't say no to anything. But I was
Speaker 1: very unhappy because I was exhausted and sick most of
Speaker 1: the time, screen me my voice out and it was
Speaker 1: an embarrassment of riches. But I might have done better
Speaker 1: to say no to one of them. But be that
Speaker 1: as it may, it was at a time when I
Speaker 1: couldn't imagine not doing any of those jobs. Hello, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm trying to think of how to say this.
Speaker 1: I'm going to write a book. I'm writing a memoir
Speaker 1: that's coming out in a year. And in the book,
Speaker 1: I've got some interesting things I talked about, and one
Speaker 1: of which was I celebrated my thirtieth anniversary in February
Speaker 1: this year. I went up to Los Angeles, which is
Speaker 1: was the scene of the crime from that, right, Can
Speaker 1: we talk about that? How are you on the record
Speaker 1: about that? I was wondering what that, how that affected
Speaker 1: your career? Well, I got sober twenty three years ago
Speaker 1: and there was really not much of anything going on
Speaker 1: at the time, and I'm grateful for that also because
Speaker 1: you know, the access people have to your life nowadays. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm just glad that none of that was going on.
Speaker 1: Nobody was interested back when I was a mess um,
Speaker 1: so I was able to get kind of squared with
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff before. Yeah, before anything big
Speaker 1: was happening in my life. I was very, very grateful
Speaker 1: for the timing of all that. When you walk into
Speaker 1: a room in a a there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have twenty five years. Yeah that people make
Speaker 1: it that far. Yeah, they might be when they do
Speaker 1: the hand raising thing. I'm in a room the other
Speaker 1: day in l A where there was three people and
Speaker 1: there might have been like six or eight of them
Speaker 1: that had over twenty years. Yeah, right, where the times right,
Speaker 1: there's still a part of your left. I go on
Speaker 1: my anniversary, which was the last week, and just to
Speaker 1: announce it, and now I'm I'm a Buddhist, which is
Speaker 1: where what I what I do now? Yeah, I spend
Speaker 1: a great deal time at the Buddhist Center in New York,
Speaker 1: were has given my life a tremendous amount of when
Speaker 1: when in because you're not the first person I know
Speaker 1: who has supplanted sobriety interest and twelve steps sobriety with
Speaker 1: Buddhism or Buddhists of crossovers. I see a lot of
Speaker 1: people that I know from both places. So I see, yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: Like twenty something years ago, I inadvertently ran into a
Speaker 1: meditation class and it was this teacher, and then I
Speaker 1: kind of wandered away, and then I kind of went
Speaker 1: back and it was the same teacher. I thought I
Speaker 1: was going to some other thing. This happened a number
Speaker 1: of times, and then a good five or six years
Speaker 1: ago I went back again, and here's the same darn
Speaker 1: teacher in a different place. And I've been going consistently
Speaker 1: for I don't know, four or five years as much
Speaker 1: as I can. It feeds me in a huge way.
Speaker 1: So what do you get out of it? Well, it's
Speaker 1: not just sort of mumbo jumbo spiritual kind of it's
Speaker 1: also it's like a science of the mind really that
Speaker 1: was established years ago. And so they've got they've got
Speaker 1: history on their side. And I see the people who
Speaker 1: spend a good deal of time there, and the teacher there.
Speaker 1: They have what I want, you know, the stick with
Speaker 1: the winners thing that I love a But you know,
Speaker 1: there there are a lot of cuckoos in there, and
Speaker 1: you know, and I love them because I understand them.
Speaker 1: But to be in a place where there somebody who
Speaker 1: really has something that I want, it's very meaningful to me,
Speaker 1: but comes harder and harder to find that that's huge
Speaker 1: And and and for you, what I'm wondering, what did
Speaker 1: it give you? What did it help you deal with?
Speaker 1: Or manager? Well, single parenting is not for this faint
Speaker 1: of heart. Uh, shall I say? You know, you live
Speaker 1: for forty years where you're the center of your universe.
Speaker 1: You know, when you want to get a massage, you
Speaker 1: go get one, and as you know that, kids enter
Speaker 1: the picture, and it just turns your whole life. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's nothing recognizable about it. And it was really a
Speaker 1: crash course in in uh, not being the center of
Speaker 1: my universe anymore so, And I didn't always handle it great.
Speaker 1: Spent a fair amount of time just not being okay
Speaker 1: with the fact that I couldn't control my environment. So
Speaker 1: a lot of it is about remaining calm, about being patient,
Speaker 1: about remembering what's important about patients is I think the
Speaker 1: biggest part of it. I am. I have I have
Speaker 1: a short temper that people may not believe, but you know,
Speaker 1: in in my human environment. Yeah, it's not pretty. So
Speaker 1: it has helped me in measure believe with that, Describe
Speaker 1: your son, cute blonde. He's uh, spectacularly amazing kid and
Speaker 1: he's been through a lot, and uh he has some
Speaker 1: learning stuff and uh also a d D a d
Speaker 1: h D and all those acronyms, um, which you know,
Speaker 1: single parenting under the best of circumstances is difficult. But
Speaker 1: when you have a kid who's bouncing off the walls
Speaker 1: and then a kid who's not who's getting beat up
Speaker 1: by the kid who's bounced off the wall, it's complicated
Speaker 1: and it's difficult. Yeah, she's the sort of the survivor, yes, yes, so,
Speaker 1: but you know she's a tough kid. She can take
Speaker 1: care of herself. Let's play sword fights. Yeah no, no,
Speaker 1: you're the sword and he's constantly beaten the crap out
Speaker 1: ever and she's learned to kind of make the make
Speaker 1: the best of it. But the fact that she has
Speaker 1: to what is a drag so um. But you know,
Speaker 1: we all had our stuff growing up in the middle
Speaker 1: child and everybody we all have some order in which
Speaker 1: we were born and the difficulties we had and being
Speaker 1: the first one or the last one or whatever, and
Speaker 1: my kids challenges are not that unusual. But you know,
Speaker 1: I say that my daughter, my older daughter, I said
Speaker 1: to her recently. I said to her, you know, to me,
Speaker 1: a god or the presence of some kind of force
Speaker 1: like that in your life manifests itself in the instincts
Speaker 1: that you have. And I said to her, the minute
Speaker 1: you get into trouble in this life, in my experience,
Speaker 1: is when you stopped listening to your instincts. That's all
Speaker 1: we can do is try to get them to listen
Speaker 1: to that voice in them because in the end, they're
Speaker 1: gonna do what they're gonna do. We can't make them
Speaker 1: do what we want to do. Is painful, it's shocking too.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially in this industry. We have so many
Speaker 1: people running around, you know, telling you how great you are,
Speaker 1: and you know, making sure that every your every need
Speaker 1: is taken care of, and then you go home and
Speaker 1: your kids just couldn't care less what you're asking they do.
Speaker 1: But I think they think everybody's parents have some kind
Speaker 1: of life like this. I don't know, they exceedingly unimpressed,
Speaker 1: but you know, just to hang up the damn coat,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? It just couldn't possibly care
Speaker 1: less the way I want, the how's the look? And
Speaker 1: you know, all that stuff that used to be so
Speaker 1: important that I'm learning slowly to let go of. There's
Speaker 1: a human nous to Eadie Falco's characters, no matter how
Speaker 1: tough their exterior appears. Her women are vulnerable, fallible, and
Speaker 1: we can't get enough of them. You were listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing, produced by Emily Botine and Kathy Russo
Speaker 1: with Melanie Hoops, ed Herbstman, Zach mcnee's, Dan O'Donnell, Christ Ripple,
Speaker 1: Joel Werner, and Mallory Schwartz. This is Alec Baldwin, and
Speaker 1: you were listening to Here's the Thing,