Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alec Baldwin here. Before we launch our next
Speaker 1: season of Here's the Thing at iHeartRadio in January, I
Speaker 1: thought I'd play some of my favorite shows from the archives.
Speaker 1: I have attended the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival on
Speaker 1: a few occasions. One of my favorite experiences there was
Speaker 1: my chance to talk with Dustin Hoffman, one of the
Speaker 1: most versatile, talented, and honored actors in movie history. Here's
Speaker 1: my conversation with Dustin Hoffman. A couple of months back,
Speaker 1: I had the great honor of talking with Dustin Hoffman
Speaker 1: as part of the Turner Classic Movie Film Festival in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: At the festival, we screened some of the greatest films
Speaker 1: of all time, and much of Dustin Hoffman's work fits
Speaker 1: that description. We selected Lenny, the nineteen seventy fourth film
Speaker 1: in which Hoffman portrays the groundbreaking but troubled comedian and
Speaker 1: social critic Lenny Bruce, who had died eight years prior
Speaker 1: of a drug overdose while battling ongoing obscenity charges. 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 TCM Festival and Lenny, shot in black and white
Speaker 1: by director Bob Fosse, was nominated for six Oscars, including
Speaker 1: Best Picture, Best Director for Fosse, Best Actress for Valerie
Speaker 1: paren and Best Actor for Dustin Hoffman.
Speaker 2: We're all the same schmuck, and it just cracks me
Speaker 2: up that we try so desperately to be unique when
Speaker 2: we're all the same cat Eisenhoward Kennedy, Johnson me you
Speaker 2: every cat has got that one chickoulely buffed up his hand.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of speechless whenever I see this film. I've
Speaker 1: seen it a lot, which that doesn't come in handy
Speaker 1: when you have to interview somebody after the film to
Speaker 1: be man, dude speechless. But I don't want to. They
Speaker 1: were this too much. But you know, this is a
Speaker 1: movie actor who is unlike any other of the last
Speaker 1: seventy five years. There's a lot of great film stars,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of great actors working especially through
Speaker 1: the sixties and the seventies and the eighties and on
Speaker 1: beyond that, and but few of them took the chances
Speaker 1: to become a different person. So many times in films
Speaker 1: and transform themselves physically, emotionally, psychologically, their voice, you know,
Speaker 1: to inhabit a character. I don't think there's another actor
Speaker 1: alive in the film business in the last several years
Speaker 1: who transformed themselves again and again and then would play
Speaker 1: something very close to themselves, their own speech, their own behavior,
Speaker 1: perhaps their voice in All the President's Men and in
Speaker 1: Kramer versus Kramer. But you know, please, but I just
Speaker 1: want to say that this is a person I've admired
Speaker 1: on the deepest level for a long long time, and
Speaker 1: it's my great pleasure to ask you to join me
Speaker 1: in welcoming Dustin Hoffmann.
Speaker 3: Great your two kinds. Thank you.
Speaker 1: When you make films like this, I mean you've worked
Speaker 1: You've made so many great films, And I worked with
Speaker 1: so many great directors. Was foss some of them? Was
Speaker 1: at a goal for you too, to work with Fosse? No,
Speaker 1: how was it to work with FOSSi tough?
Speaker 3: Tough.
Speaker 4: Bob was originally a choreographer, and choreographers don't have dancers
Speaker 4: coming up to them saying, what's my motivation? They dances
Speaker 4: do what they're told, you know. He tried to be
Speaker 4: in a sense to collaborate, but it was tough for
Speaker 4: him and it was tough for me.
Speaker 3: We had a tough time.
Speaker 1: Did he like to do a lot of takes?
Speaker 3: Yes, both of us did.
Speaker 4: The script I thought was problematic, so I wasn't that
Speaker 4: anxious to do it. We went into rehearsal with the
Speaker 4: principal actors with the wonderful Valerie Parine extraordinary performance and
Speaker 4: was Valerie myself and you know Jan Minor, and I
Speaker 4: think Stanley Beck. We're in New York in a room
Speaker 4: and it's going rough the rehearsal, and after five days
Speaker 4: we started a Monday. After five days, we're rehearsing routines,
Speaker 4: rehearsing scenes, and on Friday, Bob Fossey says, we don't
Speaker 4: have a movie.
Speaker 3: We don't have a script. See on Monday.
Speaker 4: Rehearsed two weeks or three weeks, and we thought it
Speaker 4: was gonna be shelved. When Holman came back Monday and
Speaker 4: he says, I solved it, and he interspersed it. He says,
Speaker 4: I'm going to intersperse it with interviews because these scenes
Speaker 4: there's no connective tissue to them.
Speaker 3: They don't connect. So Stanley Beck, who was wonderful and
Speaker 3: my manager Valerie. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Stanley and I were close friends since we were beginning actors,
Speaker 4: and Valerie Parene and Jan Minor are going.
Speaker 3: I think that's all it is, isn't.
Speaker 4: Those three are going to be interviewed throughout the movie
Speaker 4: and He'll and I'll have an easier time of shooting it.
Speaker 4: By the way, that's Bob Fossey asking the questions.
Speaker 1: When you make a film like this or any of
Speaker 1: the films you've made, I should say, do you have
Speaker 1: any kind of unique relationship or a specific relationship with
Speaker 1: the cinematographer Certise. This film was nominated for six Academy
Speaker 1: Awards and in every one of the major categories you
Speaker 1: would imagine Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress,
Speaker 1: Best Screenplay, and cinematography for Certiz, who made his reputation
Speaker 1: shooting a lot of Clint Eastwood films for many, many years.
Speaker 4: Bob Surtiz was one of the great cinematographers Robert Sertiz.
Speaker 4: He was the cinematographer the graduate. Bruce is a son
Speaker 4: a son, right, Yes, No, you work with.
Speaker 1: The father and son Tess. So when you shoot a film,
Speaker 1: do you have a specific relationship with cinematographers when you
Speaker 1: make a film or.
Speaker 4: No, no, I don't. I don't want to know where
Speaker 4: the camera is. In terms of I do ask about
Speaker 4: lenses sometimes if I want my hands to do something,
Speaker 4: and I say, where are you cutting?
Speaker 3: Where's your bottom frame?
Speaker 4: Because if it's here, also, i'd have to have my
Speaker 4: hands up here to have it in the shot.
Speaker 3: Other than that, I don't really want to know.
Speaker 4: It's interesting that you say that, Alec, because one of
Speaker 4: the things I objected to with Bob is that he
Speaker 4: posed me, and when you see it, it's gorgeous, So
Speaker 4: he was right.
Speaker 1: It was wrong.
Speaker 4: But you know, i'd be up there, and I work
Speaker 4: so hard on these routines. I had never seen Lenny Bruce.
Speaker 4: Bob had never seen Lenny Bruce. Mike Nichols, who I
Speaker 4: talked to before I did it, because he'd done the graduate.
Speaker 4: He and Elaine May were acting upstairs on Sunset Boulevard.
Speaker 3: Was it called the Duplex or.
Speaker 4: Something nightclub, and Lenny Bruce was downstairs, and in between
Speaker 4: their acts they would come downstairs and watch Bruce because
Speaker 4: no comedian, they said, would do a whole show improvising.
Speaker 4: You know, sometimes you do two minutes three minutes and
Speaker 4: the rest is your stuff. But Lenny would come out
Speaker 4: and not know what he was going to say.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: I think the only two comedians I know since Lenny
Speaker 4: that do that one was robbed, one.
Speaker 3: Was robbed and Williams.
Speaker 4: And the other one was wonderful Billy Connolly, and neither
Speaker 4: of them many times would just they would just go uh,
Speaker 4: and that that takes a lot.
Speaker 3: What was the question?
Speaker 1: The sorry, we're talking about the cinematographers and.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so he told me, and I worked hard.
Speaker 4: I got the thirty three RPMs that Lenny had made
Speaker 4: us what we called them then we didn't call them finals,
Speaker 4: and I'd lay down on the floor and I would play.
Speaker 4: I had three months. I had about three months, and
Speaker 4: I did every you know, I wrote down, long hand,
Speaker 4: every single line he said in all the records, and
Speaker 4: he even the ones he did over, he would always
Speaker 4: deviate and I would write them down, and then I
Speaker 4: would go to Bob Fossey and I'd say, geez, I
Speaker 4: liked what he did here because he used these sentences
Speaker 4: or he used that, and I was promised.
Speaker 3: And I think that's what I got so upset about.
Speaker 4: That I would be able to shoot it. We were
Speaker 4: going to shoot it, and I think that's what Bob wanted.
Speaker 4: We were going to shoot it in different clubs in
Speaker 4: Florida and with live audiences, and that's what I wanted.
Speaker 4: I want to be able to really feel like I'm
Speaker 4: doing it with the real audience. And he'll have whatever,
Speaker 4: three or four cameras at once. He agreed, and that's
Speaker 4: what we were supposed to do. And then it's probably
Speaker 4: money wouldn't allow it. So it was quite laborious sometimes
Speaker 4: to do these routines over and over again. And he
Speaker 4: would tilt the camera, he would go He'd be like,
Speaker 4: where you are and I'd be on a stage. He'd say, okay,
Speaker 4: now look a little bit this way, and I look up,
Speaker 4: now look down, Okay, now do the routine from here
Speaker 4: to here. You know, kind of broke my heart because
Speaker 4: I was trying to be the guy.
Speaker 3: You know, Foster was a great, great artist.
Speaker 4: And it's funny because I just saw a film recently
Speaker 4: with that Alfred Hitchcock directed with Carrie Grant, and Carrie
Speaker 4: Grant said he never worked with Hitchcock again after the
Speaker 4: first picture because they didn't get along. Because Hitchcock didn't
Speaker 4: like to collaborate.
Speaker 3: But then they made up and they made more movies.
Speaker 1: But you say that that Lenny Bruce was not someone
Speaker 1: you had been a fan of or had a big
Speaker 1: awareness of before you had no.
Speaker 4: No, I just I was in New York. I just
Speaker 4: never saw him. We couldn't have, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: before I was successful. We couldn't afford to go to nightclubs,
Speaker 4: you know, they it was expensive. And I love the
Speaker 4: jazz is what's so excorting? It was next jazz never dates.
Speaker 4: Jazz is the same now as it was that.
Speaker 3: It gave beautiful.
Speaker 4: Square at oh and I had time. No, I didn't.
Speaker 4: I had never seen him. I had never seen I
Speaker 4: don't think any comedian. I didn't go to nightclubs much.
Speaker 4: And I went out to LA because they sent someone
Speaker 4: said to me, if you want to know Lenny Bruce,
Speaker 4: you got to go see Sally mar his mother, who
Speaker 4: was alive, and I went.
Speaker 3: She was very friendly.
Speaker 4: She introduced me to one of his best friends who
Speaker 4: used to shoot up with and he in turn introduced
Speaker 4: me to friends of Lenny. And I had a tape recorder,
Speaker 4: you know, like a wall, and said, not a wall,
Speaker 4: it's like a pearl tape recorder and I taped everything.
Speaker 4: And she says, you want to go to Vegas because
Speaker 4: they're all there, all his friends, Buddy Hackett, other people,
Speaker 4: And I said, oh my god, yes, And I was
Speaker 4: taking all these notes. It was the best time of
Speaker 4: research I ever had. They all said the same thing,
Speaker 4: except Buddy Hackett. They said, you know, you know Broadway,
Speaker 4: Danny Rose, I think that William Allen, did you know?
Speaker 4: And they used to get together the comedians when he
Speaker 4: and these guys when they were you know certainly what
Speaker 4: it was, I don't know, canters or And they said
Speaker 4: they'd sit around do what they did in broad you know,
Speaker 4: tell jokes. And they said, he look around and then
Speaker 4: he was always very quiet, and suddenly he's gone because
Speaker 4: he was a shy guy parent and he's gone, and
Speaker 4: they look around and know where he is, and then
Speaker 4: they find him in the kitchen talking to the people
Speaker 4: that work in the kitchen to help. He loved to
Speaker 4: just talk to the people and ask questions and find
Speaker 4: out stuff. I think he originally this is the stuff
Speaker 4: I had heard. They kind of say it in the movie.
Speaker 4: The musicians were more important to him than the audience,
Speaker 4: because when you do show after show after show. He
Speaker 4: if you know the musicians, they're always sitting like that,
Speaker 4: you know, because.
Speaker 3: They racing with the most yes.
Speaker 4: Of von Monroe and Uh and Lenny Uh. Lenny felt
Speaker 4: that if he could crack up the musicians, then he
Speaker 4: was getting somewhere.
Speaker 3: I think he wanted to be in Hollywood. We wanted
Speaker 3: to be an actor.
Speaker 4: Also, I had heard you shot this movie where we
Speaker 4: shot a lot of it in Florida.
Speaker 1: The nightclubs, the stage work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one nightclub.
Speaker 4: Basically, I think the scene when we were sitting next
Speaker 4: to each other, the scene up there where I'm in
Speaker 4: my raincoat, and Yes, when I came back after my
Speaker 4: three months, I had all this stuff to give Bob.
Speaker 4: You got to put this in. You got to put
Speaker 4: that in. You gotta put that. And the one thing
Speaker 4: that he kept was that scene. And the reason he
Speaker 4: did is when I was memorizing it was a you know,
Speaker 4: this is before the kind of media.
Speaker 3: You know, you had the cell phones and all that texting.
Speaker 4: Some guy heard I was doing the movie and he
Speaker 4: had been a student somewhere in Chicago, and he sent
Speaker 4: me found out my business address in New York, and
Speaker 4: he sent me a cassette and I played it word
Speaker 4: for word. It's that scene. And I got pissed off
Speaker 4: at Bob because when he shot the Master from upstairs,
Speaker 4: right in the back, and when I saw it, I.
Speaker 3: Said, you didn't cut in. You didn't cut in. He says, no.
Speaker 3: So that's eight minutes, you know, being up there just.
Speaker 4: In one shot, one shot, And again he was right.
Speaker 1: It's nice of you to admit that, Actually, very generous.
Speaker 3: I've met a lot of stuff forty years later.
Speaker 1: But do you think do you think in your I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously you're someone who when you I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: believe anything I read. But I mean, but but you
Speaker 1: know they don't me of all people, I really uh.
Speaker 1: I try to minimize that in my life of like that,
Speaker 1: but but the but but for you, obviously you know,
Speaker 1: very fastidious and very very lots of questions and lots
Speaker 1: of seeking and so forth, and the work you were doing,
Speaker 1: and what do you think that comes from in terms
Speaker 1: of all the films you've made from graduated on into
Speaker 1: Cowboy and everything like that, where you just seem so
Speaker 1: what's the word I mean you're so Jewish?
Speaker 3: Is that it?
Speaker 1: I'll convert If that's is that simple. I'm going to
Speaker 1: convert tomorrow if that's what's going to get me into
Speaker 1: your STATUSY of we're taking a break, so stay with us.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, you just seem like you always
Speaker 1: have something to prove a lot of people got where
Speaker 1: you got, and they did you did, and you scored
Speaker 1: with these performances and as the originality. But then you
Speaker 1: keep going and you still feel like you have Did
Speaker 1: you feel that way? You still have something to prove
Speaker 1: again and again and again? What drove you?
Speaker 4: I guess the same thing that still drives me. Kobe
Speaker 4: Bryant was interviewed recently. It was before he, you know,
Speaker 4: had to step out for the season because he hurt himself.
Speaker 4: I saw the interview and I wrote it down. I
Speaker 4: told my son Jake was basketball same question. You know,
Speaker 4: all these ears of great basketball playing and you still
Speaker 4: spend so much time practicing and playing whatever.
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 4: And he said, I guess for the challenge of every day.
Speaker 3: That's a beautiful sentence.
Speaker 1: I have only one slight personal connection to Lenny Bruce
Speaker 1: and that and that is that Marvel Worth was a
Speaker 1: dear friend. Yes, he died in nineteen ninety eight. He
Speaker 1: produced the stuff he produced to Malcolm X with Spike,
Speaker 1: he produced a lot of gad and he was Bruce's manager.
Speaker 1: And Marvin Worthy was from Brooklyn and his wife Joe
Speaker 1: and they were from Brooklyn. And he had the one
Speaker 1: of the heaviest New York accents I'd.
Speaker 5: Never heard in my life. His voice was down here.
Speaker 5: We had a very heavy accent like this. And he
Speaker 5: said to me, I'm gonna revive Letny on Broadway, and
Speaker 5: I want you to do play Letty. I go, what
Speaker 5: and he said, uh, he goes. I got a thousand
Speaker 5: hours of tapes of Lenny. I got that Julian Barry.
Speaker 5: We got so much material of Lenny's. He says, there's
Speaker 5: so much stuff we can put in there. And I
Speaker 5: don't worry about the it's I'll gonna look like a child.
Speaker 5: And I go and he goes, He's Dusty, he called,
Speaker 5: you're Dusty. Dusty's not the only one who could play
Speaker 5: that part. By the way, he's not the only person
Speaker 5: who could play that part. I'm like, ah, sure, And
Speaker 5: he goes. Then he goes, he goes, and I go,
Speaker 5: but what about the other thing?
Speaker 1: He goes, what other thing? What about the other thing? Yes,
Speaker 1: one other thing?
Speaker 3: What other thing? What of the thing? I go, I'm
Speaker 3: not Jewish.
Speaker 5: He said, you're from Long Island, right, I said, yeah,
Speaker 5: you go, Yeah, you're halfway there.
Speaker 1: The rest of the will take care of himself.
Speaker 3: Oh my bad. He would have been wonderful.
Speaker 1: But when you did this film, how involved in your
Speaker 1: films were you before?
Speaker 5: Then?
Speaker 1: Later in the casting?
Speaker 3: Oh, I have to tell you. I'm glad you asked me.
Speaker 4: It's another example of Fosse's genius is that I met
Speaker 4: Honey Bruce.
Speaker 3: Uh and uh? Which came first? I met?
Speaker 4: He cast Valerie Parene before he met Honey Bruce, and
Speaker 4: then he met her, and then I met her, you know,
Speaker 4: not together. And I couldn't believe Honey Bruce that Valerie
Speaker 4: was the reincarnation of Honey Bruce. Literally, I mean it
Speaker 4: could have been like mother and daughter. I was And
Speaker 4: I said, Bob, you had to have met Honey Drew
Speaker 4: before you cast Vatter. He says, no, it was just
Speaker 4: this intuition. I had nothing to do with any of
Speaker 4: the casting except all your films except Stanley. He was
Speaker 4: nice enough to have Stanley in it for my manager
Speaker 4: and all my films.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the graduate.
Speaker 4: They've been trying for two years to cast it, and
Speaker 4: Katherine Ross and myself were the last two to screen
Speaker 4: test after two years. And I heard that they were
Speaker 4: sitting in the screen room not particularly excited about our
Speaker 4: screen test, and I says, well, either we go with
Speaker 4: them or we don't do it. And it was that
Speaker 4: kind of a that they've said that in interviews. I
Speaker 4: think Larry Turman said that the producer and Midnight Cowboy
Speaker 4: he cast, he didn't cast John Voyd. He cast someone
Speaker 4: else and they wouldn't let him out of his contract.
Speaker 4: And after that happened, I said, please see my friend
Speaker 4: John Voyd. We weren't close friends, but we had been
Speaker 4: off Broadway together.
Speaker 3: And he says no.
Speaker 4: John Sassinger said he read for it and he doesn't
Speaker 4: have that Texas accent. He was from Yonkers. I says, yeah,
Speaker 4: but he's an actor.
Speaker 3: He can get it, you know. And John immediately went down.
Speaker 4: To Texas forgot where with the tape recorder and spent
Speaker 4: whatever time and came back and read for it and
Speaker 4: he got the part. But he was the second choice.
Speaker 4: Kate Jackson was the first choice for Kramer versus Kramer.
Speaker 3: She was in Charlie's.
Speaker 4: Angels, and they were saying, oh, the film will pay
Speaker 4: back itself before we started shooting because they were so popular.
Speaker 3: And then the studio wouldn't let her out.
Speaker 4: So I kept telling them about this Meryl Streep. I
Speaker 4: had heard about it, and they saw and they saw her.
Speaker 4: So there's been a few hours suggested I've.
Speaker 3: I've never demanded or you know, I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't think that works actually, unless you're directing or producing.
Speaker 1: Well, some people that have these approvals of casting and
Speaker 1: they and they utilize that in whatever way. And then
Speaker 1: those are the people who they just don't get involved.
Speaker 1: They just like they just let that all take care
Speaker 1: of itself and it doesn't really change what they do.
Speaker 4: You know, Duval and Hackman and I knew each other
Speaker 4: from the early days.
Speaker 3: They're much older.
Speaker 4: And and we never worked together. And suddenly I'm doing
Speaker 4: this thing. A few years ago. We're shooting in New
Speaker 4: Orleans a runaway jury and I have a I think
Speaker 4: a supporting part, and Gene Hackman has a leading part.
Speaker 4: And the director finds out that we knew each other.
Speaker 4: We went to the passage in a playhouse together to
Speaker 4: got kicked out after three months, they're not having any talent,
Speaker 4: and oh my god, you guys know each other for
Speaker 4: all this time, thirty years. Yeah, we got to do
Speaker 4: a scene. So they wrote a scene. It's one of
Speaker 4: the last scenes in the movie. Takes place in a
Speaker 4: public bathroom. It's like an eight page dialogue scene. And afterwards,
Speaker 4: it was the last thing I shot in the movie.
Speaker 4: It's over, and Jane and I say, let's go out
Speaker 4: and get drunk. And we go to an Italian restaurant
Speaker 4: in New Orleans and we're getting drunk and Hacklan says,
Speaker 4: were you scared? I said, I was so scared, man,
Speaker 4: I thought I'm gonna forget my lines. He said he
Speaker 4: felt exactly the same way. You know, because you are
Speaker 4: what you are at the beginning, you don't really change.
Speaker 4: We were unemployed actors for ten years, and he said
Speaker 4: to me, and one of the great things ever said.
Speaker 3: We were just close to each other.
Speaker 4: He says, do you feel the same way I do
Speaker 4: after you finish a movie? And he probably made one
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty movies. I said, what do you feel
Speaker 4: like he'll never work again? Yeah, of course, every single time.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: After five decades of consistently winning roles every actor dreams of.
Speaker 1: Hoffman's fears of joblessness remain charming. His latest film, The
Speaker 1: Program About Lance Armstrong, will be released later this year.
Speaker 1: Listen to other episodes of Here's the Thing in our archives,
Speaker 1: like my conversation with Dick Cavitt, whose career as an
Speaker 1: iconic talk show host includes a nineteen sixty eight TV
Speaker 1: interview with hot young newcomer Dustin Hoffman, fresh off his
Speaker 1: film The Graduate, the tape of which may or may
Speaker 1: not exist.
Speaker 6: There are several versions of what really happened. I just
Speaker 6: remember being told one day, yeck, they're going to either
Speaker 6: reuse the tapes or erase them or dump them. When
Speaker 6: you say, what tapes that onnes do the ABC Show
Speaker 6: and you can have them if you want to, for
Speaker 6: sixty dollars each. And I thought, well, that's a ludicrous
Speaker 6: amount of money.
Speaker 1: But take a listen at Here's the Thing dot Org.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing Today, recorded live at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood
Speaker 1: as part of the Turner Classic Movie Film Festival. Dustin
Speaker 1: Hoffman has been nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor
Speaker 1: seven times. He's won the award twice. Actors strive for
Speaker 1: depth and range in their work. Hoffman makes this appear effortless.
Speaker 1: There's obviously roles you played like Kramer versus Crimer and
Speaker 1: Old the President's Men, and you seem, I don't know
Speaker 1: what word to use. It seems closer for who you are,
Speaker 1: your voice and your appearance, and you're the psychologic something.
Speaker 1: You're playing a contemporary character. You're not playing somebody with
Speaker 1: some disability or what have you. It's not rain Man
Speaker 1: or someone who damaged and broken like a cowboy and
Speaker 1: so forth like that. But you've done both. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a theatricality to the roles and a vividness to them,
Speaker 1: and you're not afraid to do that. Where does that
Speaker 1: come from? From being in the theater?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean where are you from?
Speaker 1: Lona? I told you I'm from Long Island. I'm from
Speaker 1: fucking long Isle? Fuck is wrong with you? So?
Speaker 3: How long?
Speaker 4: First of all, I wish we lived in the same city.
Speaker 4: How old were you when you started studying at twenty two?
Speaker 4: And when they sent you out? They send you out
Speaker 4: for certain kinds of parts. Young leading men.
Speaker 1: The young guys who cried a lot or whatever.
Speaker 4: I'm the short Jew and still with some acne. And
Speaker 4: I come to New York in nineteen fifty eight to study,
Speaker 4: and I always said leading men, young leading men, juvenile's
Speaker 4: character juveniles, That's what I was designed as.
Speaker 3: I couldn't get an agent.
Speaker 4: And that's just code for Semitic, you know, because in
Speaker 4: those days the leading man was white Anglo Saxon Protestant
Speaker 4: and the ethnic person was a character juvenile or character
Speaker 4: entre nous. It really was that way anyway. So I
Speaker 4: went out a few times I could, you know, go
Speaker 4: to open auditions, because if you're not equity then you
Speaker 4: can't go to a regular audition. And you can't go
Speaker 4: to a regular audition until you get your equity card.
Speaker 4: You can't get an equity card until you get a job,
Speaker 4: so you know, catch twenty two. So the few times
Speaker 4: that I could go, it was the character a juvenile
Speaker 4: and by Hooker Crook Nichols casts castin Ross and I
Speaker 4: in a graduate and i'd been just starting to get
Speaker 4: somewhere off Broadway doing you know, my own style of stuff.
Speaker 4: Hunchback German, gay guy with a limb. You know, the
Speaker 4: first thing that I got mentioned for in the in
Speaker 4: the New York Times, and Nichols had heard about it,
Speaker 4: and uh, and I got.
Speaker 1: This, You're not kidding. You played a hunchback.
Speaker 4: German homosexual with a limp Ronald Ribman.
Speaker 3: What was the production Harry Noon and Night. And the
Speaker 3: other actor was Joel Joel Gray. Joel Gray.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Uh, yes, that was accurate. So he brings me
Speaker 4: out to test me. And I didn't want to test.
Speaker 4: I was doing, for the first time in my life,
Speaker 4: doing well off Broadway.
Speaker 3: I won an.
Speaker 4: Award, and I thought, oh, I'll have a career, you know,
Speaker 4: I'll do off Broadway.
Speaker 3: And you know this as well as I do. Uh.
Speaker 4: You know, if God has said, look Alec, you'll never
Speaker 4: be in the movies, you'll never get leading roles. If
Speaker 4: you're struggling for years, you won't even be on Broadway.
Speaker 4: I will guarantee you a good part off Broadway for
Speaker 4: the rest of your life. You'd sign, you would, maybe,
Speaker 4: you know, And so would a hackman who moved from
Speaker 4: a trip down you know, six flights and Duval who
Speaker 4: worked midnight to eight in the post office. And I
Speaker 4: was doing waiter jobs and a little acting teaching.
Speaker 3: If I could.
Speaker 4: And it's you know, it's never changed. There's actress here,
Speaker 4: you know the pain of that. And here he is
Speaker 4: now taking me out into la and testing and can
Speaker 4: we do anything about his nose? I remember, and I mean,
Speaker 4: well the guy is He said, you don't and he
Speaker 4: couldn't believe it. I mean, he's the hottest director from
Speaker 4: Neil Simon Broadway and also Virginia Wolf.
Speaker 3: He did.
Speaker 4: There was no hot a director at that moment in time.
Speaker 4: He was Spielberg. And he said, what do you mean
Speaker 4: you don't want to do this part? I said, I
Speaker 4: read the book of mister Nichols. It was on the phone.
Speaker 4: He said, il, I'm in New York doing a play.
Speaker 4: I said, Benjamin Braddock in the book. He's five foot eleven,
Speaker 4: blonde hair. I says, it's Redford. I said, you don't
Speaker 4: want me, and he said no. He says, I would
Speaker 4: like to test you. He says, you mean he's not Jewish.
Speaker 4: I says, right, it's Benjamin Braddock. And he said something
Speaker 4: I've never forgotten.
Speaker 3: He says, well, maybe he's Jewish.
Speaker 4: Inside years later he's from Berlin.
Speaker 3: Mike.
Speaker 4: He came here in the early thirties and he had
Speaker 4: his own pain because he didn't have a lot of hair,
Speaker 4: he had scarlet fever. And he not too long ago,
Speaker 4: just a few years ago, I read in the paper
Speaker 4: that he never understood why he cast me, and then
Speaker 4: he finally did through analysis or something, and he said,
Speaker 4: because I was like an alter ego of him. He
Speaker 4: felt like he was me in, you know, on the periphery,
Speaker 4: you know, out of it, and he was casting himself
Speaker 4: the funny looking guy. Do you know that that movie
Speaker 4: was shot and I went back to New York to
Speaker 4: collect unemployment. It was a lot because you know, it
Speaker 4: was fifty bucks a week. It's getting the most he
Speaker 4: could get. And they're cutting the movie again. I read
Speaker 4: this in the newspapers and Lawrence Turman, I think it
Speaker 4: was a New York Times a producer.
Speaker 3: They're showing it all over the bel Air.
Speaker 4: Circuit, every Hills, bell Air, brent On, the movie theaters they.
Speaker 3: Have in the homes, and over and over again, Turman said.
Speaker 4: Before it opened, and over and over again, people in
Speaker 4: the industry would come up to Larry Wait, brilliant film
Speaker 4: you almost had if you hadn't a misca, that's the lead.
Speaker 3: And that was the perception, you know.
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: white of mine. 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 Frears 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 like,
Speaker 1: I'm in my car. I'm like, god, maasin. They're gonna
Speaker 1: go to the Westwood Marquis and they just lay out
Speaker 1: the facts. They're like, you know, snap out of it.
Speaker 1: You're gonna go to the Westwood Marque. You're gonna make
Speaker 1: Stephen Freres and you're gonna have a meeting with Dustin
Speaker 1: Hoff And I'm like, I love this guy.
Speaker 3: I want to leave this moment with this guy.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, like twenty minutes goes by
Speaker 1: and Stephen Frears. If you know the movie Hero, where
Speaker 1: someone commits this actor this case of mistaken identity, and
Speaker 1: Andy Garcia played the other role, so there has to
Speaker 1: be this case of mistaken identity between the two actors.
Speaker 1: Stephen Fier is literally twenty minutes in. I mean, my
Speaker 1: dream is just taking flight, my wings. I'm flying over
Speaker 1: the Westwood Malachis Hotel. I'm going to make my first
Speaker 1: movie with Dustin efen Hoffmann, and Stephen Fierce looks at
Speaker 1: me and goes, you know, I just realized that you
Speaker 1: don't look anything like Dustin at all, and it was like, there,
Speaker 1: I'm flying. Also he shoots my balloon, my crash onto
Speaker 1: Westwood Boulevard and I'm dead on the highway there. I'll
Speaker 1: never figure talk about. Yeah, I'm our dreams, our dreams,
Speaker 1: how they how they escape us?
Speaker 3: But now called the m right right right in west.
Speaker 1: But the exactly when you do when you show up
Speaker 1: and you work with Slushnger and you do Cowboy, do
Speaker 1: you you come up with all that and you show
Speaker 1: him did he help you?
Speaker 3: Did you Cowboy?
Speaker 4: Very briefly, he didn't want It's very similar to Frears
Speaker 4: and You. He did not want to see me because
Speaker 4: he had seen the Graduate and that's the only thing
Speaker 4: he'd ever seen me in and he was an artist.
Speaker 3: Give a shit that I was in a big hit
Speaker 3: and suddenly an instant star.
Speaker 4: He wanted the right person and he refused to see me.
Speaker 4: And I heard about this, and I had read the book.
Speaker 4: I thought the script was okay.
Speaker 3: It was Waldo Salt.
Speaker 4: He actually came in a room with John Voight and
Speaker 4: I when we did it, and he had a wall
Speaker 4: inside tape recorder. We improvised everything everything. This listener was
Speaker 4: great at that, and he would go home waldoswell and
Speaker 4: write the improvisations into the scenes that he'd already written. Anyway,
Speaker 4: he wouldn't see me, and I said, please, you know,
Speaker 4: I gotta see him. He's got to see me. And
Speaker 4: he agreed. I know we have running out of times.
Speaker 3: Go quick, forty second Street.
Speaker 4: What do they call those things where you go when
Speaker 4: you put the quarter in? I can't remember the automat
Speaker 4: the automat thank you, And I says the autumn, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna direct the movie of him playing a car.
Speaker 1: You all heard it, go ahead.
Speaker 4: And I used to go there and we all did
Speaker 4: you know, two three in the morning whatever, uh, and
Speaker 4: get coffee or whatever, and it was all kind of
Speaker 4: trance people there, and I said, I'll meet him in
Speaker 4: the automat and I want to do it about one
Speaker 4: or two in the morning, because you know, and I'll
Speaker 4: dress accordingly, which is what I did it kind of.
Speaker 3: Coat like I wore in that scene at raincoat.
Speaker 4: And I didn't shave a few days and I greased
Speaker 4: my hair. I was auditioning and I came in and
Speaker 4: I just met him there, sat there, and he looked
Speaker 4: at me, and he looked at you know, sparsely crowded,
Speaker 4: you know, people around.
Speaker 3: He says.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: He says, yes, I think you'll do quite well. So
Speaker 3: the voice and.
Speaker 1: All of it, you just throw that out there. You
Speaker 1: come up with that.
Speaker 3: Oh well, yeah, you keep trying.
Speaker 1: I mean, my friend, oh Daniel, my friend, oh Daniel,
Speaker 1: you are two cons. Where do you find this?
Speaker 3: You get desperate? But I didn't. I didn't. I that's
Speaker 3: my bob. I wasn't desperate enough.
Speaker 4: No, no, And uh, we're rehearsing and then a slessenger
Speaker 4: has to shoot some exteriors before we start shooting principal
Speaker 4: photography because he's got winter and he needed winter. So
Speaker 4: John Voight and I go and he says, you don't
Speaker 4: have to talk. I says, I don't have a character.
Speaker 3: I don't have a voice, I said, I can't. I
Speaker 3: barely have a walk.
Speaker 4: No, we'll have the camera cross the street. You guys
Speaker 4: just got a walk. We're not starting for a month,
Speaker 4: but we just need the weather.
Speaker 3: You know, there was smoke coming whatever.
Speaker 4: It was okay, So John Boy and I will walking.
Speaker 4: John Voyd and I knew each other for years. I
Speaker 4: was the assistant director, which is like you know, sharpening
Speaker 4: pencils in off Broadway when he was in View from
Speaker 4: the Bridge with Bob Deval. He was brilliant and he
Speaker 4: was up and coming star and and you know we
Speaker 4: were competitive. The actors are always competitive. And uh, you know,
Speaker 4: if you're walking down the street, you got a script,
Speaker 4: you have a reading, or you did the read, you
Speaker 4: see another actor coming out.
Speaker 3: You've always put it behind your back, you know.
Speaker 4: No, it's just something you know because you don't want
Speaker 4: to the competition anyway. So we're across the street walking
Speaker 4: and says, oh, you have to do I says, yeah,
Speaker 4: but I'm supposed to cough. Were at that point in
Speaker 4: the movie where you know he's got you're gonna find
Speaker 4: out the st B or whatever.
Speaker 3: He says, yes, Sas says.
Speaker 4: Oh, right, you do some coughing, do something not going,
Speaker 4: but you don't have to talk. I said, okay, I'm
Speaker 4: rehearsing out a panic, you know, trying on.
Speaker 3: These these these limps or whatever. And I said, you
Speaker 3: shouldn't be shooting. We got a month to oh, I
Speaker 3: haven't found him yet.
Speaker 4: And suddenly we're walking and we paused, and I'm trying
Speaker 4: to cough and I threw up, literally on John Voyd's
Speaker 4: cowboy boots. And afterwards, susagers, I think we've got it.
Speaker 2: You do.
Speaker 4: And John, because he's an actor and you know, or
Speaker 4: competitive passenger told me later he went up to Clashen Journey.
Speaker 3: He said, John, let me just ask you something. Is
Speaker 3: he going to do that all throughout the whole thing?
Speaker 3: He says, because I'm not even in the scene.
Speaker 1: If he does, well, let me just say this because obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean, I got another forty five questions I could ask,
Speaker 1: but they do have a schedule here for the festival.
Speaker 1: But I do want to say, I mean, as as
Speaker 1: sappy as this sounds, on behalf of everybody here, I
Speaker 1: want to say thank you to you, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I really, from the bottom of my heart, from the
Speaker 1: bottom of my heart. You are one of the greatest
Speaker 1: movie actors that has ever lived. In the hastory is come.
Speaker 1: You are one of the greatest act the actors ever
Speaker 1: and you know so many great folks. Please help me
Speaker 1: in fact that he doesn't happen everywhere. Dustin Hoffmann has
Speaker 1: gained some hard won wisdom during his career, and despite
Speaker 1: turning seventy eight this summer, he's embracing a very new
Speaker 1: way to share it. He's teaching an acting class online.
Speaker 1: The description reads, Dustin teaches you everything he wishes someone
Speaker 1: had taught him. You can sign up at masterclass dot com.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin. Thanks this week to Sean Cameron
Speaker 1: and everyone at Turner Classic Movies. You're listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the thing I'm going Where Sankei shin real Poor Rain.
Speaker 3: Go in well suit, smart blow