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