Alec Baldwin - Spotlight INBOUND16

I went to George Washington University to go. I was in school for. Do you go to gw? You did? Yeah. What year did you graduate? How long ago did you really graduate? Two years ago? Yeah. I went to GW in the 1970s and I was in a political science program. And I wanted to be a lawyer and I wanted to go into politics. That's what I wanted to do. I was visiting a friend who was at NYU and her roommate was in the drama program. And her roommate said, oh, you'd be a wonderful actor. And I thought, who gets a degree in theater? That's like the most useless stupid degree you could possibly imagine. And I said, I'm gonna get a degree, you know, in something, you know, even if it's history or literature or philosophy, where you're gonna read a lot of books and so forth. And you do read a lot of drama and theater and plays and things in a theater program. But she said to me, this is a true story. She said to me, you should go. And I thought, well, I'll never be young enough to do this again. And I thought. And when I went to school and I was graduating, I was supposed to graduate in 1980, there was a glut of applicants to go to law school. That was when really law school was not viewed as privileged as it was now. And there were a lot of people were going to law school and taking the lsat. So I thought, I'll let that wait. And I auditioned for the acting program at nyu and I get in and they give me a full scholarship because I was poor. They gave me a need based scholarship. And I call up my parents and I say, I'm going to leave GW and go to nyu. And my mother starts screaming on the phone. She's apoplectic. She's like, are you out of your mind? And she's screaming. And then I tell them that it's good to cost him less money. I'm going to get a scholarship that's going to pay for everything. And my father's like, well, let's hear him out now. Let's just hear him out. Let him finish. And the fact that I got everything paid for, my dad was like, I think that you have some real potential to be an actor. So I went to NYU when I was in New York. It's difficult for people to think about this if you're not really in the business. But when I came into New York to go to NYU, it was 79. And it was the last gasps of a wave of actors who Having some pedigree in the theater was essential. So you come into New York and the actors that are. I feel very bad about the people over here, especially the people over here. They really effed you over over here, didn't they? I mean, you're like, why don't you just go sit in the kitchen and have some. Make some eggs? You're like, what are you doing over there? So the, like, you're in New York and you see posters and you see things at the Public Theater and you see things Broadway and Off Broadway and with Meryl Streep and Kevin Klein and Raul Julia and Sigourney Weaver, Glenn Close, Patti LuPone, all these people who were these. Chris Walken, John Cazale, all these people, Pacino people who were these legends in the movie business who. The theater was really their main meat. That's what they were very devoted to it. They made a lot of their career plans around that. And I had a hangover from that. Like, when I was in the business, I'd always say, well, I got to do something in the theater and get back to the theater. And I've tried to do that even recently. I did a play on Long island in 2015. I was on Broadway. 2013. I did a play on Long Island. 2010. I was off Broadway. 2006. On Broadway 2002. So all along I keep trying to get back to that because I think it's a different experience. Because when you make a movie and the movie comes out. I know this is kind of a tired reference, but when you make a movie and the movie comes out, you go to the theater and you watch it. And when you're watching it, I'm like water skiing out on Long Island. I mean, it's like it's 18 months later. But in the theater, you really feel the audience. There's a profound contact you have with them. So I really enjoy that. Originally, the genesis of that was to conduct interviews with people in the way that I would like to be interviewed. We do the long format. People sit with me for an hour. For people. Not that you would consider this that much or not that you would think about this that much, but for people in media and in entertainment and so forth, sports, music, it doesn't matter. Any of the arts and even politics and science and academia, these people come into the Today show and they're lucky. If it's one six minute segment, it's a six minute segment, you're out. It's a six minute. If you're a superstar, you're on Letterman's couch or the couch on a big talk show like Fallon for two six minute session segments. And then so it's a combination obviously of 10 or 12 minutes and the podcast I do, we sit for one hour. Everybody knows it's one hour. We cut it down to 35 or 40 minutes with our underwriting and the tracking and announcing that goes in there. And you sit with people and you don't push them, you don't prod them, and you don't try to grab something from them and take it from them. You wait for them to give it to you and they will give it to you. They will tell you who they are. David Letterman is somebody who came on my podcast. And David Letterman, obviously he's interviewing other people and he's been interviewed, but he sat with us and you could tell as he was getting close to retirement, he had a lot on his mind. And 20 minutes into the interview, I mean, even his staff had their hand over their mouths. He talked about how he did his first show and it bombed. And he did his second show and it wasn't successful. So he knew this last shot he had at that time was his last. That shot he had was his last shot. And if it didn't work, he was out of the business on tv. So what he did was he goes to work and he does nothing but work and kill himself for 20 years. And he turned around. He didn't have a family, he didn't have a wife, he didn't have kids. All he had was career. And he was really depressed. And he talked about this overwhelming depression he had. He had a bypass and all this stuff. And he was stressed out. All he did was work. And he said, I just couldn't do it anymore. I mean, there was an honesty that if I tried to crowd him and kind of get that out of him, you let them give it to you and they will give it to you. So I really love that component of. Plus, I try to interview people from a very wide swath. You know, we do stars and celebrities and Kristen, you know, Kristen Wiig and Chris Rock and people from different entertainment corners. But then we do like Herb Alpert, who was a famous trumpet player who went on to form A and M Records with Jerry Moss, his partner, one of the biggest producers in the music business in the 60s and 70s. And I spread it out all over the place. You go on Twitter. And I remember when I first started on Twitter, I literally, it was like Roger Ebert was somebody who kind of wrote me on Twitter and said, you really need to stop what you're doing. You need to stop. Because I thought it was a way to communicate to my audience and bypass the mainstream media rather than me do an interview and they edit it, and therefore they tell you who I am. I'll tell you who I am and count to three. I'll never forget, I was in Florida shooting a movie five years ago or so, and I'm there, and I just started Twitter and count to three. And I'm like, no, no, no. Fuck you. No. And you. And you start getting into these raucous, ugly debates with people, and you're communicating with them because you can't believe the level of civility. And then it allows you. This is not an excuse, but it's an explanation. It allows you to get pulled down into that. And I'm certainly somebody that does not need more things out there in the media of me. You can really laugh now if you want to. Of me saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing. And the. But I do on Twitter. You do. What I did was. I kind of stopped that. Now I really. I really don't care anymore. And I realize you're never going to be able to change what people think of you. There's people who. They have that. The people who have a negative opinion of you. It's like it's the alternate side of I love you no matter what. There's people who say to me, I love you no matter what. If there's bad things you did, if there's mistakes you made in your life, I forgive you and I love you no matter what. And then there's just as many people, it seems, who are like, I hate you no matter what. I think that, you know, Warren Beatty, I just shot his movie that's coming out called Rules Don't Apply. Wonderful film. You know, Beatty hasn't made a film in many years, and Beatty is this incredibly talented man. I love Warren. He's been a great friend to me over the years. And. And when I had this thing with this voicemail with my daughter, he called me. He was at a soccer game with his kids, and he called me on the phone. He goes, you know, he said, you know, I want you. He said, if they ever recorded things I said to my kids, he said, I'd be in prison right now. And. And again, it's very important you understand, I'm not. This is not an excuse. There's a big difference between, I think, an explanation and an excuse, because nothing excuses these kinds of things. But he said, you know, the Internet is the death of forgetting. And sometimes we do need to forget and move on from certain things. And my relationship with my daughter is as good as anybody's relationship with their daughter, who's 21 years old, lives in California with her boyfriend. He's a professional surfer. His name is Noah, Noah Schweitzer. I love Noah. He's a great guy. He's like this little. He's like a smaller, wiry, super ripped, super fit. And all my daughter does is follow Noah around. They go to Cape Town, they go to Portugal, they go to Hawaii. No, he's like a professional. He, like, makes a living at the sponsorships and endorsements and so forth. And my daughter's going to film school, and she takes her camera with her, and she just has made, like, you know, 2500 movies about Noah and surfing. You know, here's my movie about Noah. But my relationship with my daughter is fine. And yet there's people, as I said, in the Internet world who they can't let it be fine. I mean, that thing that happened with my daughter, that stays with me and reverberates in my life. If I criticize Trump, and I criticize Trump in my mind for what I believe is the greater good of the country, I have never in my life, I think this is a very important distinction to make. I have never in my life advocated for any kind of public policy or any kind of advocacy that lined my own pockets. I'm not in Washington lobbying about the communications bill and fees for cable and so forth, things that are going to make me richer. And so. And I only mention that because, like, if I criticize Trump, it's because I don't think it's good for the country. You know, I don't think it's good for the country to say. And it doesn't. And there's a leadership and there's an inspirational role that I think is lost on the guy who says, well, that judge can't adjudicate my case because he's Mexican, because he's Latino. I mean, do you want to send millions of Latin American or Latino Americans and African Americans and people of color and people who are not white? Do you want to send them out the door every day thinking that they are a step behind everybody else? Do you want to send them out the door feeling bad? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think you want everybody to feel like we wake up, we go out there, we give it everything we've got. And we have the support of the government and of the people themselves. We want everybody to do well. Because if you do well, my father used to say this. What if the cure for cancer is inside the brain right now of some little African American girl who lives in, like, Jackson, Mississippi? There's information, there's inspiration, there's destiny that we all have to unlock and we all have to unearth in our lives, in our lives together, that we have to unearth that no matter what it takes. Who cares where the cure for cancer comes from? And we have to enable those people to try to do their best because we benefit from it. You know, the rising tide kind of thing. But I think with my daughter, I would criticize Trump, and they'd say, you know, you know, these are my two favorite ones. They'll always say, you know, actors telling us about public policy, you know, who needs that? Go leave a message for your daughter. When the political cycle was going on, there would be like, thousands of those, thousands of those over the last couple months, people who really rely on that. So in that sense, it doesn't go away, but you have to kind of rise above it. I mean, I feel like, you know, Anthony Weiner, who had all of his horrible reversals, I actually had him on my podcast about three months ago, and I sat him down and I said, now, this was before he blew up again, but I had him on my podcast, and I said, do you think there's a role for you at teaching or speaking or consulting? I said, because you're so bright. And in New York, for people who know him, he was considered a very, very capable retail politician. When he ran for mayor and he ran for Congress, he was a really, really great, great retail politician. Now, since then, since he appeared on my show, he's had a whole new crop of problems. But I'm a believer that, you know, you got to give people a chance. And with that in mind, I guess we have to give Trump a chance. See how I painted myself in that corner? I pitched a TV show, and I was sending it to these guys, and we thought it was a great idea, and we pitched it to this company, and they were kind of sitting there going, well, okay, because it wasn't really their typical menu of this kind of drama we wanted to do. Their dramas were much more kind of like a lot of cable shows. There was a lot of violence and sex all the time. And these guys, they thought about it for, like, a week or two. And in that week or two, Lorne Michaels came to me and Asked me to do 30 Rock, which when he said that to me, I thought, I don't think I want to do a sitcom. You know. Thank you very much, all three of you who applauded. But we did. We did the show. Thank you. We did the show. And that was the greatest experience I've ever had in my life. That was the greatest experience I've ever had in my life doing 30 Rock because, you know. Yeah, thank you. It was amazing. I mean, you go to work, you know. You know the TV business, you go to work and you sit there, you're at a table read. We do a table read every Wednesday during the lunch break. So we shoot, and then Wednesday we go into a conference room with all these tables arranged and the entire crew assembled in front of us. And down the middle of the crew is a pipe is a camera that's shooting us, beaming us to California for them to see the live feed of us doing the read through for next week's show. And we do the read through for them. And they come up to me before the read through. They go, okay, now just hang on. Okay, really, just hang on. Because we're taking a big swing here. And they'd say that to me, like, every third show or fourth show, they say, we're taking a really big swing here. I'd be like, what now? And they'd say, you're gonna play a gay Mexican soap opera star, and you're gonna play both. We're gonna do the Patty Duke thing, split screen, where you're gonna talk to yourself, you're gonna confront yourself, and you're gonna play this gay Mexican soap opera star. And I was like, what the fuck have I got myself into here? And we did. And everything we would do when it was over, I never had more fun in my life. I'll never have a better job in my life than that show. That was the best job I've ever had, ever. Even though 30 Rock was network, I worked with a group of people of which I think we should have a round of applause. I mean, Tina Fey is the smartest person in the world, you know, in terms of tv. I just saw her. I just saw her and Jeff, her husband, the other night. We were watching the elections at somebody's house at a party. And, you know, I just look. I just, like, stare at her for, like. I have to kind of snap out of it. I, like, stare at her for, like, five minutes and think, my God, this woman changed my life, you know, because she. Because of her wit and her intelligence. And her humor. And you do tv and if you get a chance to work with someone like that. What I loved about 30 Rock is it was network. So we had. We couldn't go blue. We couldn't be dirty. We had to find ways to say those things right up to a certain line. And they did sometimes cross that line, and the network would say, no, no, no, you have to back off. But they. I think they masterfully kind of slalomed right on that line. We're literally like, all right, we're gonna go see Batman. Who gives a shit? You know, we're gonna watch Batman. We can't think of any other movie we want to see that was in the theater near where we live. And we watched Batman, and the first. And there's, like, nine trailers that come on the movie. And all of them are the most violent things I've ever seen in my life. It's guns and people punching each other, and just. It's a constant ballet of punching and guns and weapons and shooting. And then you watch trailers for tv, and trailers for TV are like, everything is sex. It's just a constant barrage of sex. You know, like every time you watch, it's a woman going, you cold, my Lord? And, you know, the woman's like 17 years old or something, and she's popping out of some toga or something, and the guy's like, yes, Helena. Yeah, I know you're my sister, but I've always wanted you, always. She's like, yes, my Lord. And she takes off her thing, and they have sex on top of the guy that he just killed. You know, the guy's body's laying there. Make love to me on the corpse of your father. And you're like, oh, my God, I can't believe, you know, what TV is now. And the only reason I say this because it's. Because I think it's lazy. I think it's lazy. I think good writing comes from. It was all gonna be violence and sex. Then it's. I mean, I love a good let's get it on with your sister on top of the corpse of your father scene. I love that. I'm not opposed to that. But if it's gonna be all a steady diet, I mean, come on. It loses its power. It loses its magic. Thank you. If you make studio films, you make big films. The budgets are big, the fees are big. Everybody gets paid a lot of money. You got to sell tickets. It's got to work, you know? And all through the 90s, when I starred in studio films, and some of them made a little bit of money and, you know, a couple of them made a lot of money, not many. And then most of them just did what most of them do. Most films don't succeed. It's a very, very risky business. And the business has been taken over by more and more risk averse people, which is why you see this homogeneity of film products so much, which is a lot of Marvel and comics and things like that, and films where people are home with a device and they can watch all the content they want streaming at home. You can watch everything. There's so much to watch. What's going to get you to get in a car and go to a theater and watch a movie? You want to see something on a big screen that you can't see anywhere else. So they have to have effects, effects, effects. And in my lifetime, that's a big change. And so when I, when the movies I make, you get to a run of them that don't make money. You know, you, you become the apple that falls from the movie tree and gets made into the applesauce of independent filmmaking. You know, you go and you make independent films where the fees are like, you know, one fifth of what you got paid, and you go and make another. It's another movie where you and your sister are putting dad in a home. It's a poignant drama, no sets, no code, with me with a wool hat on, standing outside. Probably shot up here in Boston in the dead of winter, everybody going like in the scenes, standing by some frozen water. What are we gonna do about Dad? I don't know. What are we gonna do? Dad's like, you know, rolling around in a chair in the house. We go back in the house. But my point is that you make independent films and some of them, eventually that business becomes exactly like the studio business, except so everybody gets paid less. And that is. It has its star system, it has its requirements to market films. When you do an independent film now, you spend more time on the festival circuit than it took to shoot the movie. You're flying around to south by Southwest and Sundance and you're going all over the world trying to sell the movie and get it and get it into distribution. And it's become its own system as well. It was supposed to be the answer to a system, and now it itself is a system. You have a device in your hand as we, I mean, I'm going to say some pretty tedious little pablum here, but everybody has a device in their hand and the whole world is in that device. And, and many of the people in this room are going to control what the content or the way that's delivered are going to have some say in what happens in that device. And as we saw from the election, that some cable news venues, some broadcast news venues, some print journalism, what have you, some online venues, everywhere you look now, I mean, there's no one group to single out, but everywhere you look. The information we got about this election was very, very misleading. And I'm not saying you need to go out and go into the polling business, but what I'm saying is I think we need, and this is a terribly generic thing to say, but I think we need smart. We need a place to go for smarter, better content on the Internet. There are sites, and if you guys can come up with it, there are sites that I used to go to, and I don't think I need to name one of them, but the sites I used to go to, that was smart, better content, then they got sold to a major corporation, and now it's all like, you know, clicks and clickbait about the Kardashians and all this vomit that we really don't need anymore, you know, and where. What we need is people in the Internet world and in the world of media to be braver, to be really brave and create sites and create places we can go where also people can feel their voice is put into action in terms of the political spectrum. How can they go and have a. Like, I was talking to a guy the other day who said, when Trump won, he said, I want to have a site where everything you wanted the government to do that you thought Trump promised he would do. We track it on a Facebook page or on some kind of a site we create where people can monitor and say, I voted for Trump and I thought this was going to happen, and we'll help you track that. Cause other people will join you in a conversation on that site and say, well, I happen to work in the state government, or I'm somebody who has some official position or non official position or NGO position who can help tell you, what did the government promise you they would do? What did the elected officials promise you they would do? And we're gonna help track for you the progress of your individual issue. So people can go to a site and go, okay, this bill is in this place. Here's the evaluation of that bill, blah, blah, blah. I think that's what we need, is for all of you to help with the Internet to create the interactivity between government and the citizens that just does not exist in this country right now at all. So, anyway, thank you all very much. Thank you.