January 2, 2024 • 38 mins
As we prepare to launch our fourth season at iHeartRadio, we’re revisiting some of host Alec Baldwin’s favorite episodes from the archives. In this episode, Alec speaks with actor Dustin Hoffman. “The Graduate,” “Midnight Cowboy,” and “Lenny” were just the beginning of Dustin Hoffman's legendary Hollywood career. Over the last five decades, he's stretched and contorted himself into dozens of defining roles, earning recognition as one of the most talented actors in cinema history. In this 2015 conversation, Hoffman tells Alec that he savors each new opportunity like it's the first, and recalls his salad days when he was mis-cast, underestimated, and, on at least one notable occasion, sick on a co-star's shoe.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, it's Alec Baldwin here. Before we launch our next
season of Here's the Thing at iHeartRadio in January, I
thought I'd play some of my favorite shows from the archives.
I have attended the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival on
a few occasions. One of my favorite experiences there was
my chance to talk with Dustin Hoffman, one of the
(00:24):
most versatile, talented, and honored actors in movie history. Here's
my conversation with Dustin Hoffman. A couple of months back,
I had the great honor of talking with Dustin Hoffman
as part of the Turner Classic Movie Film Festival in Hollywood.
At the festival, we screened some of the greatest films
of all time, and much of Dustin Hoffman's work fits
(00:47):
that description. We selected Lenny, the nineteen seventy fourth film
in which Hoffman portrays the groundbreaking but troubled comedian and
social critic Lenny Bruce, who had died eight years prior
of a drug overdose while battling ongoing obscenity charges. We
decided to show this movie about Lenny Bruce at eleven
(01:07):
thirty in the morning. We're gonna show TUTSI at midnight
we thought we mix it up a bit here at
the TCM Festival and Lenny, shot in black and white
by director Bob Fosse, was nominated for six Oscars, including
Best Picture, Best Director for Fosse, Best Actress for Valerie
paren and Best Actor for Dustin Hoffman.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
We're all the same schmuck, and it just cracks me
up that we try so desperately to be unique when
we're all the same cat Eisenhoward Kennedy, Johnson me you
every cat has got that one chickoulely buffed up his hand.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I'm kind of speechless whenever I see this film. I've
seen it a lot, which that doesn't come in handy
when you have to interview somebody after the film to
be man, dude speechless. But I don't want to. They
were this too much. But you know, this is a
movie actor who is unlike any other of the last
seventy five years. There's a lot of great film stars,
and there's a lot of great actors working especially through
(02:11):
the sixties and the seventies and the eighties and on
beyond that, and but few of them took the chances
to become a different person. So many times in films
and transform themselves physically, emotionally, psychologically, their voice, you know,
to inhabit a character. I don't think there's another actor
alive in the film business in the last several years
(02:35):
who transformed themselves again and again and then would play
something very close to themselves, their own speech, their own behavior,
perhaps their voice in All the President's Men and in
Kramer versus Kramer. But you know, please, but I just
want to say that this is a person I've admired
(02:57):
on the deepest level for a long long time, and
it's my great pleasure to ask you to join me
in welcoming Dustin Hoffmann.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Great your two kinds. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
When you make films like this, I mean you've worked
You've made so many great films, And I worked with
so many great directors. Was foss some of them? Was
at a goal for you too, to work with Fosse? No,
how was it to work with FOSSi tough?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Tough.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Bob was originally a choreographer, and choreographers don't have dancers
coming up to them saying, what's my motivation? They dances
do what they're told, you know. He tried to be
in a sense to collaborate, but it was tough for
him and it was tough for me.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
We had a tough time.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Did he like to do a lot of takes?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yes, both of us did.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
The script I thought was problematic, so I wasn't that
anxious to do it. We went into rehearsal with the
principal actors with the wonderful Valerie Parine extraordinary performance and
(04:47):
was Valerie myself and you know Jan Minor, and I
think Stanley Beck. We're in New York in a room
and it's going rough the rehearsal, and after five days
we started a Monday. After five days, we're rehearsing routines,
rehearsing scenes, and on Friday, Bob Fossey says, we don't
have a movie.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
We don't have a script. See on Monday.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Rehearsed two weeks or three weeks, and we thought it
was gonna be shelved. When Holman came back Monday and
he says, I solved it, and he interspersed it. He says,
I'm going to intersperse it with interviews because these scenes
there's no connective tissue to them.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
They don't connect. So Stanley Beck, who was wonderful and
my manager Valerie. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Stanley and I were close friends since we were beginning actors,
and Valerie Parene and Jan Minor are going.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
I think that's all it is, isn't.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Those three are going to be interviewed throughout the movie
and He'll and I'll have an easier time of shooting it.
By the way, that's Bob Fossey asking the questions.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
When you make a film like this or any of
the films you've made, I should say, do you have
any kind of unique relationship or a specific relationship with
the cinematographer Certise. This film was nominated for six Academy
Awards and in every one of the major categories you
would imagine Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress,
Best Screenplay, and cinematography for Certiz, who made his reputation
(06:23):
shooting a lot of Clint Eastwood films for many, many years.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Bob Surtiz was one of the great cinematographers Robert Sertiz.
He was the cinematographer the graduate. Bruce is a son
a son, right, Yes, No, you work with.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
The father and son Tess. So when you shoot a film,
do you have a specific relationship with cinematographers when you
make a film or.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
No, no, I don't. I don't want to know where
the camera is. In terms of I do ask about
lenses sometimes if I want my hands to do something,
and I say, where are you cutting?
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Where's your bottom frame?
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Because if it's here, also, i'd have to have my
hands up here to have it in the shot.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Other than that, I don't really want to know.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
It's interesting that you say that, Alec, because one of
the things I objected to with Bob is that he
posed me, and when you see it, it's gorgeous, So
he was right.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
It was wrong.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
But you know, i'd be up there, and I work
so hard on these routines. I had never seen Lenny Bruce.
Bob had never seen Lenny Bruce. Mike Nichols, who I
talked to before I did it, because he'd done the graduate.
He and Elaine May were acting upstairs on Sunset Boulevard.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Was it called the Duplex or.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Something nightclub, and Lenny Bruce was downstairs, and in between
their acts they would come downstairs and watch Bruce because
no comedian, they said, would do a whole show improvising.
You know, sometimes you do two minutes three minutes and
the rest is your stuff. But Lenny would come out
and not know what he was going to say.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
I think the only two comedians I know since Lenny
that do that one was robbed, one.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Was robbed and Williams.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
And the other one was wonderful Billy Connolly, and neither
of them many times would just they would just go uh,
and that that takes a lot.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
What was the question?
Speaker 1 (08:35):
The sorry, we're talking about the cinematographers and.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Oh yeah, so he told me, and I worked hard.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
I got the thirty three RPMs that Lenny had made
us what we called them then we didn't call them finals,
and I'd lay down on the floor and I would play.
I had three months. I had about three months, and
I did every you know, I wrote down, long hand,
every single line he said in all the records, and
(09:03):
he even the ones he did over, he would always
deviate and I would write them down, and then I
would go to Bob Fossey and I'd say, geez, I
liked what he did here because he used these sentences
or he used that, and I was promised.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
And I think that's what I got so upset about.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
That I would be able to shoot it. We were
going to shoot it, and I think that's what Bob wanted.
We were going to shoot it in different clubs in
Florida and with live audiences, and that's what I wanted.
I want to be able to really feel like I'm
doing it with the real audience. And he'll have whatever,
three or four cameras at once. He agreed, and that's
what we were supposed to do. And then it's probably
(09:41):
money wouldn't allow it. So it was quite laborious sometimes
to do these routines over and over again. And he
would tilt the camera, he would go He'd be like,
where you are and I'd be on a stage. He'd say, okay,
now look a little bit this way, and I look up,
now look down, Okay, now do the routine from here
to here. You know, kind of broke my heart because
(10:01):
I was trying to be the guy.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
You know, Foster was a great, great artist.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
And it's funny because I just saw a film recently
with that Alfred Hitchcock directed with Carrie Grant, and Carrie
Grant said he never worked with Hitchcock again after the
first picture because they didn't get along. Because Hitchcock didn't
like to collaborate.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
But then they made up and they made more movies.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
But you say that that Lenny Bruce was not someone
you had been a fan of or had a big
awareness of before you had no.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
No, I just I was in New York. I just
never saw him. We couldn't have, you know, I mean,
before I was successful. We couldn't afford to go to nightclubs,
you know, they it was expensive. And I love the
jazz is what's so excorting? It was next jazz never dates.
(11:03):
Jazz is the same now as it was that.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
It gave beautiful.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
Square at oh and I had time. No, I didn't.
I had never seen him. I had never seen I
don't think any comedian. I didn't go to nightclubs much.
And I went out to LA because they sent someone
said to me, if you want to know Lenny Bruce,
you got to go see Sally mar his mother, who
was alive, and I went.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
She was very friendly.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
She introduced me to one of his best friends who
used to shoot up with and he in turn introduced
me to friends of Lenny. And I had a tape recorder,
you know, like a wall, and said, not a wall,
it's like a pearl tape recorder and I taped everything.
And she says, you want to go to Vegas because
they're all there, all his friends, Buddy Hackett, other people,
(11:52):
And I said, oh my god, yes, And I was
taking all these notes. It was the best time of
research I ever had. They all said the same thing,
except Buddy Hackett. They said, you know, you know Broadway,
Danny Rose, I think that William Allen, did you know?
And they used to get together the comedians when he
(12:14):
and these guys when they were you know certainly what
it was, I don't know, canters or And they said
they'd sit around do what they did in broad you know,
tell jokes. And they said, he look around and then
he was always very quiet, and suddenly he's gone because
he was a shy guy parent and he's gone, and
they look around and know where he is, and then
(12:35):
they find him in the kitchen talking to the people
that work in the kitchen to help. He loved to
just talk to the people and ask questions and find
out stuff. I think he originally this is the stuff
I had heard. They kind of say it in the movie.
The musicians were more important to him than the audience,
(12:56):
because when you do show after show after show. He
if you know the musicians, they're always sitting like that,
you know, because.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
They racing with the most yes.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
Of von Monroe and Uh and Lenny Uh. Lenny felt
that if he could crack up the musicians, then he
was getting somewhere.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
I think he wanted to be in Hollywood. We wanted
to be an actor.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Also, I had heard you shot this movie where we
shot a lot of it in Florida.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
The nightclubs, the stage work.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Yeah, one nightclub.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Basically, I think the scene when we were sitting next
to each other, the scene up there where I'm in
my raincoat, and Yes, when I came back after my
three months, I had all this stuff to give Bob.
You got to put this in. You got to put
that in. You gotta put that. And the one thing
(13:48):
that he kept was that scene. And the reason he
did is when I was memorizing it was a you know,
this is before the kind of media.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
You know, you had the cell phones and all that texting.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
Some guy heard I was doing the movie and he
had been a student somewhere in Chicago, and he sent
me found out my business address in New York, and
he sent me a cassette and I played it word
for word. It's that scene. And I got pissed off
(14:23):
at Bob because when he shot the Master from upstairs,
right in the back, and when I saw it, I.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Said, you didn't cut in. You didn't cut in. He says, no.
So that's eight minutes, you know, being up there just.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
In one shot, one shot, And again he was right.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
It's nice of you to admit that, Actually, very generous.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I've met a lot of stuff forty years later.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
But do you think do you think in your I mean,
obviously you're someone who when you I mean, I don't
believe anything I read. But I mean, but but you
know they don't me of all people, I really uh.
I try to minimize that in my life of like that,
but but the but but for you, obviously you know,
very fastidious and very very lots of questions and lots
(15:15):
of seeking and so forth, and the work you were doing,
and what do you think that comes from in terms
of all the films you've made from graduated on into
Cowboy and everything like that, where you just seem so
what's the word I mean you're so Jewish?
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Is that it?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I'll convert If that's is that simple. I'm going to
convert tomorrow if that's what's going to get me into
your STATUSY of we're taking a break, so stay with us.
But the thing is, you just seem like you always
have something to prove a lot of people got where
you got, and they did you did, and you scored
(16:01):
with these performances and as the originality. But then you
keep going and you still feel like you have Did
you feel that way? You still have something to prove
again and again and again? What drove you?
Speaker 4 (16:12):
I guess the same thing that still drives me. Kobe
Bryant was interviewed recently. It was before he, you know,
had to step out for the season because he hurt himself.
I saw the interview and I wrote it down. I
told my son Jake was basketball same question. You know,
(16:32):
all these ears of great basketball playing and you still
spend so much time practicing and playing whatever.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Why?
Speaker 4 (16:42):
And he said, I guess for the challenge of every day.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
That's a beautiful sentence.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I have only one slight personal connection to Lenny Bruce
and that and that is that Marvel Worth was a
dear friend. Yes, he died in nineteen ninety eight. He
produced the stuff he produced to Malcolm X with Spike,
he produced a lot of gad and he was Bruce's manager.
And Marvin Worthy was from Brooklyn and his wife Joe
and they were from Brooklyn. And he had the one
of the heaviest New York accents I'd.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
Never heard in my life. His voice was down here.
We had a very heavy accent like this. And he
said to me, I'm gonna revive Letny on Broadway, and
I want you to do play Letty. I go, what
and he said, uh, he goes. I got a thousand
hours of tapes of Lenny. I got that Julian Barry.
We got so much material of Lenny's. He says, there's
so much stuff we can put in there. And I
don't worry about the it's I'll gonna look like a child.
(17:37):
And I go and he goes, He's Dusty, he called,
you're Dusty. Dusty's not the only one who could play
that part. By the way, he's not the only person
who could play that part. I'm like, ah, sure, And
he goes. Then he goes, he goes, and I go,
but what about the other thing?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
He goes, what other thing? What about the other thing? Yes,
one other thing?
Speaker 3 (17:53):
What other thing? What of the thing? I go, I'm
not Jewish.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
He said, you're from Long Island, right, I said, yeah,
you go, Yeah, you're halfway there.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
The rest of the will take care of himself.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Oh my bad. He would have been wonderful.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
But when you did this film, how involved in your
films were you before?
Speaker 5 (18:17):
Then?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Later in the casting?
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Oh, I have to tell you. I'm glad you asked me.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
It's another example of Fosse's genius is that I met
Honey Bruce.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Uh and uh? Which came first? I met?
Speaker 4 (18:38):
He cast Valerie Parene before he met Honey Bruce, and
then he met her, and then I met her, you know,
not together. And I couldn't believe Honey Bruce that Valerie
was the reincarnation of Honey Bruce. Literally, I mean it
could have been like mother and daughter. I was And
(19:00):
I said, Bob, you had to have met Honey Drew
before you cast Vatter. He says, no, it was just
this intuition. I had nothing to do with any of
the casting except all your films except Stanley. He was
nice enough to have Stanley in it for my manager
and all my films.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yeah, I mean the graduate.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
They've been trying for two years to cast it, and
Katherine Ross and myself were the last two to screen
test after two years. And I heard that they were
sitting in the screen room not particularly excited about our
screen test, and I says, well, either we go with
them or we don't do it. And it was that
(19:46):
kind of a that they've said that in interviews. I
think Larry Turman said that the producer and Midnight Cowboy
he cast, he didn't cast John Voyd. He cast someone
else and they wouldn't let him out of his contract.
(20:08):
And after that happened, I said, please see my friend
John Voyd. We weren't close friends, but we had been
off Broadway together.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
And he says no.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
John Sassinger said he read for it and he doesn't
have that Texas accent. He was from Yonkers. I says, yeah,
but he's an actor.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
He can get it, you know. And John immediately went down.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
To Texas forgot where with the tape recorder and spent
whatever time and came back and read for it and
he got the part. But he was the second choice.
Kate Jackson was the first choice for Kramer versus Kramer.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
She was in Charlie's.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Angels, and they were saying, oh, the film will pay
back itself before we started shooting because they were so popular.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
And then the studio wouldn't let her out.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
So I kept telling them about this Meryl Streep. I
had heard about it, and they saw and they saw her.
So there's been a few hours suggested I've.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I've never demanded or you know, I don't.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
I don't think that works actually, unless you're directing or producing.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Well, some people that have these approvals of casting and
they and they utilize that in whatever way. And then
those are the people who they just don't get involved.
They just like they just let that all take care
of itself and it doesn't really change what they do.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
You know, Duval and Hackman and I knew each other
from the early days.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
They're much older.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
And and we never worked together. And suddenly I'm doing
this thing. A few years ago. We're shooting in New
Orleans a runaway jury and I have a I think
a supporting part, and Gene Hackman has a leading part.
And the director finds out that we knew each other.
(21:51):
We went to the passage in a playhouse together to
got kicked out after three months, they're not having any talent,
and oh my god, you guys know each other for
all this time, thirty years. Yeah, we got to do
a scene. So they wrote a scene. It's one of
the last scenes in the movie. Takes place in a
public bathroom. It's like an eight page dialogue scene. And afterwards,
(22:13):
it was the last thing I shot in the movie.
It's over, and Jane and I say, let's go out
and get drunk. And we go to an Italian restaurant
in New Orleans and we're getting drunk and Hacklan says,
were you scared? I said, I was so scared, man,
I thought I'm gonna forget my lines. He said he
felt exactly the same way. You know, because you are
(22:33):
what you are at the beginning, you don't really change.
We were unemployed actors for ten years, and he said
to me, and one of the great things ever said.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
We were just close to each other.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
He says, do you feel the same way I do
after you finish a movie? And he probably made one
hundred and twenty movies. I said, what do you feel
like he'll never work again? Yeah, of course, every single time.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
After five decades of consistently winning roles every actor dreams of.
Hoffman's fears of joblessness remain charming. His latest film, The
Program About Lance Armstrong, will be released later this year.
Listen to other episodes of Here's the Thing in our archives,
like my conversation with Dick Cavitt, whose career as an
(23:25):
iconic talk show host includes a nineteen sixty eight TV
interview with hot young newcomer Dustin Hoffman, fresh off his
film The Graduate, the tape of which may or may
not exist.
Speaker 6 (23:38):
There are several versions of what really happened. I just
remember being told one day, yeck, they're going to either
reuse the tapes or erase them or dump them. When
you say, what tapes that onnes do the ABC Show
and you can have them if you want to, for
(23:58):
sixty dollars each. And I thought, well, that's a ludicrous
amount of money.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
But take a listen at Here's the Thing dot Org.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing Today, recorded live at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood
as part of the Turner Classic Movie Film Festival. Dustin
(24:27):
Hoffman has been nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor
seven times. He's won the award twice. Actors strive for
depth and range in their work. Hoffman makes this appear effortless.
There's obviously roles you played like Kramer versus Crimer and
Old the President's Men, and you seem, I don't know
(24:48):
what word to use. It seems closer for who you are,
your voice and your appearance, and you're the psychologic something.
You're playing a contemporary character. You're not playing somebody with
some disability or what have you. It's not rain Man
or someone who damaged and broken like a cowboy and
so forth like that. But you've done both. There's a
there's a theatricality to the roles and a vividness to them,
and you're not afraid to do that. Where does that
(25:10):
come from? From being in the theater?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah? I mean where are you from?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Lona? I told you I'm from Long Island. I'm from
fucking long Isle? Fuck is wrong with you? So?
Speaker 3 (25:28):
How long?
Speaker 4 (25:31):
First of all, I wish we lived in the same city.
How old were you when you started studying at twenty two?
And when they sent you out? They send you out
for certain kinds of parts. Young leading men.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
The young guys who cried a lot or whatever.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
I'm the short Jew and still with some acne. And
I come to New York in nineteen fifty eight to study,
and I always said leading men, young leading men, juvenile's
character juveniles, That's what I was designed as.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
I couldn't get an agent.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
And that's just code for Semitic, you know, because in
those days the leading man was white Anglo Saxon Protestant
and the ethnic person was a character juvenile or character
entre nous. It really was that way anyway. So I
went out a few times I could, you know, go
(26:28):
to open auditions, because if you're not equity then you
can't go to a regular audition. And you can't go
to a regular audition until you get your equity card.
You can't get an equity card until you get a job,
so you know, catch twenty two. So the few times
that I could go, it was the character a juvenile
and by Hooker Crook Nichols casts castin Ross and I
(26:54):
in a graduate and i'd been just starting to get
somewhere off Broadway doing you know, my own style of stuff.
Hunchback German, gay guy with a limb. You know, the
first thing that I got mentioned for in the in
the New York Times, and Nichols had heard about it,
(27:16):
and uh, and I got.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
This, You're not kidding. You played a hunchback.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
German homosexual with a limp Ronald Ribman.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
What was the production Harry Noon and Night. And the
other actor was Joel Joel Gray. Joel Gray.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Sorry, Uh, yes, that was accurate. So he brings me
out to test me. And I didn't want to test.
I was doing, for the first time in my life,
doing well off Broadway.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I won an.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Award, and I thought, oh, I'll have a career, you know,
I'll do off Broadway.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
And you know this as well as I do. Uh.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
You know, if God has said, look Alec, you'll never
be in the movies, you'll never get leading roles. If
you're struggling for years, you won't even be on Broadway.
I will guarantee you a good part off Broadway for
the rest of your life. You'd sign, you would, maybe,
you know, And so would a hackman who moved from
(28:18):
a trip down you know, six flights and Duval who
worked midnight to eight in the post office. And I
was doing waiter jobs and a little acting teaching.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
If I could.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
And it's you know, it's never changed. There's actress here,
you know the pain of that. And here he is
now taking me out into la and testing and can
we do anything about his nose? I remember, and I mean,
well the guy is He said, you don't and he
couldn't believe it. I mean, he's the hottest director from
(28:49):
Neil Simon Broadway and also Virginia Wolf.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
He did.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
There was no hot a director at that moment in time.
He was Spielberg. And he said, what do you mean
you don't want to do this part? I said, I
read the book of mister Nichols. It was on the phone.
He said, il, I'm in New York doing a play.
I said, Benjamin Braddock in the book. He's five foot eleven,
blonde hair. I says, it's Redford. I said, you don't
want me, and he said no. He says, I would
(29:19):
like to test you. He says, you mean he's not Jewish.
I says, right, it's Benjamin Braddock. And he said something
I've never forgotten.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
He says, well, maybe he's Jewish.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
Inside years later he's from Berlin.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Mike.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
He came here in the early thirties and he had
his own pain because he didn't have a lot of hair,
he had scarlet fever. And he not too long ago,
just a few years ago, I read in the paper
that he never understood why he cast me, and then
he finally did through analysis or something, and he said,
(29:59):
because I was like an alter ego of him. He
felt like he was me in, you know, on the periphery,
you know, out of it, and he was casting himself
the funny looking guy. Do you know that that movie
was shot and I went back to New York to
(30:19):
collect unemployment. It was a lot because you know, it
was fifty bucks a week. It's getting the most he
could get. And they're cutting the movie again. I read
this in the newspapers and Lawrence Turman, I think it
was a New York Times a producer.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
They're showing it all over the bel Air.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
Circuit, every Hills, bell Air, brent On, the movie theaters they.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Have in the homes, and over and over again, Turman said.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Before it opened, and over and over again, people in
the industry would come up to Larry Wait, brilliant film
you almost had if you hadn't a misca, that's the lead.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
And that was the perception, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
It's interesting because speaking of that casting thing, he and
I have had a little there was a whiff of this,
of this, of my appreciation of his career, and you
white of mine. I remember this. I doubt you remember this.
But I go to the old Westwood Marquis Hotel because
I get called to go an audition for the movie
Hero and Stephen Frears is the director, and the phone rings,
(31:28):
and this is back when I was making films in
the nineties and everything. And I'm lighting one off the
other and I'm gonna meet this guy, and I'm like,
I'm in my car. I'm like, god, maasin. They're gonna
go to the Westwood Marquis and they just lay out
the facts. They're like, you know, snap out of it.
You're gonna go to the Westwood Marque. You're gonna make
Stephen Freres and you're gonna have a meeting with Dustin
Hoff And I'm like, I love this guy.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
I want to leave this moment with this guy.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
And all of a sudden, like twenty minutes goes by
and Stephen Frears. If you know the movie Hero, where
someone commits this actor this case of mistaken identity, and
Andy Garcia played the other role, so there has to
be this case of mistaken identity between the two actors.
Stephen Fier is literally twenty minutes in. I mean, my
dream is just taking flight, my wings. I'm flying over
the Westwood Malachis Hotel. I'm going to make my first
(32:14):
movie with Dustin efen Hoffmann, and Stephen Fierce looks at
me and goes, you know, I just realized that you
don't look anything like Dustin at all, and it was like, there,
I'm flying. Also he shoots my balloon, my crash onto
Westwood Boulevard and I'm dead on the highway there. I'll
(32:36):
never figure talk about. Yeah, I'm our dreams, our dreams,
how they how they escape us?
Speaker 3 (32:42):
But now called the m right right right in west.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
But the exactly when you do when you show up
and you work with Slushnger and you do Cowboy, do
you you come up with all that and you show
him did he help you?
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Did you Cowboy?
Speaker 4 (32:56):
Very briefly, he didn't want It's very similar to Frears
and You. He did not want to see me because
he had seen the Graduate and that's the only thing
he'd ever seen me in and he was an artist.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Give a shit that I was in a big hit
and suddenly an instant star.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
He wanted the right person and he refused to see me.
And I heard about this, and I had read the book.
I thought the script was okay.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
It was Waldo Salt.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
He actually came in a room with John Voight and
I when we did it, and he had a wall
inside tape recorder. We improvised everything everything. This listener was
great at that, and he would go home waldoswell and
write the improvisations into the scenes that he'd already written. Anyway,
he wouldn't see me, and I said, please, you know,
(33:44):
I gotta see him. He's got to see me. And
he agreed. I know we have running out of times.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Go quick, forty second Street.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
What do they call those things where you go when
you put the quarter in? I can't remember the automat
the automat thank you, And I says the autumn, I'm
gonna direct the movie of him playing a car.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
You all heard it, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
And I used to go there and we all did
you know, two three in the morning whatever, uh, and
get coffee or whatever, and it was all kind of
trance people there, and I said, I'll meet him in
the automat and I want to do it about one
or two in the morning, because you know, and I'll
dress accordingly, which is what I did it kind of.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Coat like I wore in that scene at raincoat.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
And I didn't shave a few days and I greased
my hair. I was auditioning and I came in and
I just met him there, sat there, and he looked
at me, and he looked at you know, sparsely crowded,
you know, people around.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
He says.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
He says, yes, I think you'll do quite well. So
the voice and.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
All of it, you just throw that out there. You
come up with that.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Oh well, yeah, you keep trying.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
I mean, my friend, oh Daniel, my friend, oh Daniel,
you are two cons. Where do you find this?
Speaker 3 (35:05):
You get desperate? But I didn't. I didn't. I that's
my bob. I wasn't desperate enough.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
No, no, And uh, we're rehearsing and then a slessenger
has to shoot some exteriors before we start shooting principal
photography because he's got winter and he needed winter. So
John Voight and I go and he says, you don't
have to talk. I says, I don't have a character.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
I don't have a voice, I said, I can't. I
barely have a walk.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
No, we'll have the camera cross the street. You guys
just got a walk. We're not starting for a month,
but we just need the weather.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
You know, there was smoke coming whatever.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
It was okay, So John Boy and I will walking.
John Voyd and I knew each other for years. I
was the assistant director, which is like you know, sharpening
pencils in off Broadway when he was in View from
the Bridge with Bob Deval. He was brilliant and he
was up and coming star and and you know we
(36:02):
were competitive. The actors are always competitive. And uh, you know,
if you're walking down the street, you got a script,
you have a reading, or you did the read, you
see another actor coming out.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
You've always put it behind your back, you know.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
No, it's just something you know because you don't want
to the competition anyway. So we're across the street walking
and says, oh, you have to do I says, yeah,
but I'm supposed to cough. Were at that point in
the movie where you know he's got you're gonna find
out the st B or whatever.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
He says, yes, Sas says.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
Oh, right, you do some coughing, do something not going,
but you don't have to talk. I said, okay, I'm
rehearsing out a panic, you know, trying on.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
These these these limps or whatever. And I said, you
shouldn't be shooting. We got a month to oh, I
haven't found him yet.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
And suddenly we're walking and we paused, and I'm trying
to cough and I threw up, literally on John Voyd's
cowboy boots. And afterwards, susagers, I think we've got it.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
You do.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
And John, because he's an actor and you know, or
competitive passenger told me later he went up to Clashen Journey.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
He said, John, let me just ask you something. Is
he going to do that all throughout the whole thing?
He says, because I'm not even in the scene.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
If he does, well, let me just say this because obviously,
I mean, I got another forty five questions I could ask,
but they do have a schedule here for the festival.
But I do want to say, I mean, as as
sappy as this sounds, on behalf of everybody here, I
want to say thank you to you, because I mean,
I really, from the bottom of my heart, from the
(37:45):
bottom of my heart. You are one of the greatest
movie actors that has ever lived. In the hastory is come.
You are one of the greatest act the actors ever
and you know so many great folks. Please help me
in fact that he doesn't happen everywhere. Dustin Hoffmann has
gained some hard won wisdom during his career, and despite
(38:08):
turning seventy eight this summer, he's embracing a very new
way to share it. He's teaching an acting class online.
The description reads, Dustin teaches you everything he wishes someone
had taught him. You can sign up at masterclass dot com.
This is Alec Baldwin. Thanks this week to Sean Cameron
(38:29):
and everyone at Turner Classic Movies. You're listening to Here's
the thing I'm going Where Sankei shin real Poor Rain.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Go in well suit, smart blow
Hey, it's Alec Baldwin here. Before we launch our next
season of Here's the Thing at iHeartRadio in January, I
thought I'd play some of my favorite shows from the archives.
I have attended the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival on
a few occasions. One of my favorite experiences there was
my chance to talk with Dustin Hoffman, one of the
(00:24):
most versatile, talented, and honored actors in movie history. Here's
my conversation with Dustin Hoffman. A couple of months back,
I had the great honor of talking with Dustin Hoffman
as part of the Turner Classic Movie Film Festival in Hollywood.
At the festival, we screened some of the greatest films
of all time, and much of Dustin Hoffman's work fits
(00:47):
that description. We selected Lenny, the nineteen seventy fourth film
in which Hoffman portrays the groundbreaking but troubled comedian and
social critic Lenny Bruce, who had died eight years prior
of a drug overdose while battling ongoing obscenity charges. We
decided to show this movie about Lenny Bruce at eleven
(01:07):
thirty in the morning. We're gonna show TUTSI at midnight
we thought we mix it up a bit here at
the TCM Festival and Lenny, shot in black and white
by director Bob Fosse, was nominated for six Oscars, including
Best Picture, Best Director for Fosse, Best Actress for Valerie
paren and Best Actor for Dustin Hoffman.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
We're all the same schmuck, and it just cracks me
up that we try so desperately to be unique when
we're all the same cat Eisenhoward Kennedy, Johnson me you
every cat has got that one chickoulely buffed up his hand.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I'm kind of speechless whenever I see this film. I've
seen it a lot, which that doesn't come in handy
when you have to interview somebody after the film to
be man, dude speechless. But I don't want to. They
were this too much. But you know, this is a
movie actor who is unlike any other of the last
seventy five years. There's a lot of great film stars,
and there's a lot of great actors working especially through
(02:11):
the sixties and the seventies and the eighties and on
beyond that, and but few of them took the chances
to become a different person. So many times in films
and transform themselves physically, emotionally, psychologically, their voice, you know,
to inhabit a character. I don't think there's another actor
alive in the film business in the last several years
(02:35):
who transformed themselves again and again and then would play
something very close to themselves, their own speech, their own behavior,
perhaps their voice in All the President's Men and in
Kramer versus Kramer. But you know, please, but I just
want to say that this is a person I've admired
(02:57):
on the deepest level for a long long time, and
it's my great pleasure to ask you to join me
in welcoming Dustin Hoffmann.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Great your two kinds. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
When you make films like this, I mean you've worked
You've made so many great films, And I worked with
so many great directors. Was foss some of them? Was
at a goal for you too, to work with Fosse? No,
how was it to work with FOSSi tough?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Tough.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Bob was originally a choreographer, and choreographers don't have dancers
coming up to them saying, what's my motivation? They dances
do what they're told, you know. He tried to be
in a sense to collaborate, but it was tough for
him and it was tough for me.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
We had a tough time.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Did he like to do a lot of takes?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yes, both of us did.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
The script I thought was problematic, so I wasn't that
anxious to do it. We went into rehearsal with the
principal actors with the wonderful Valerie Parine extraordinary performance and
(04:47):
was Valerie myself and you know Jan Minor, and I
think Stanley Beck. We're in New York in a room
and it's going rough the rehearsal, and after five days
we started a Monday. After five days, we're rehearsing routines,
rehearsing scenes, and on Friday, Bob Fossey says, we don't
have a movie.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
We don't have a script. See on Monday.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Rehearsed two weeks or three weeks, and we thought it
was gonna be shelved. When Holman came back Monday and
he says, I solved it, and he interspersed it. He says,
I'm going to intersperse it with interviews because these scenes
there's no connective tissue to them.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
They don't connect. So Stanley Beck, who was wonderful and
my manager Valerie. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Stanley and I were close friends since we were beginning actors,
and Valerie Parene and Jan Minor are going.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
I think that's all it is, isn't.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Those three are going to be interviewed throughout the movie
and He'll and I'll have an easier time of shooting it.
By the way, that's Bob Fossey asking the questions.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
When you make a film like this or any of
the films you've made, I should say, do you have
any kind of unique relationship or a specific relationship with
the cinematographer Certise. This film was nominated for six Academy
Awards and in every one of the major categories you
would imagine Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress,
Best Screenplay, and cinematography for Certiz, who made his reputation
(06:23):
shooting a lot of Clint Eastwood films for many, many years.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Bob Surtiz was one of the great cinematographers Robert Sertiz.
He was the cinematographer the graduate. Bruce is a son
a son, right, Yes, No, you work with.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
The father and son Tess. So when you shoot a film,
do you have a specific relationship with cinematographers when you
make a film or.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
No, no, I don't. I don't want to know where
the camera is. In terms of I do ask about
lenses sometimes if I want my hands to do something,
and I say, where are you cutting?
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Where's your bottom frame?
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Because if it's here, also, i'd have to have my
hands up here to have it in the shot.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Other than that, I don't really want to know.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
It's interesting that you say that, Alec, because one of
the things I objected to with Bob is that he
posed me, and when you see it, it's gorgeous, So
he was right.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
It was wrong.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
But you know, i'd be up there, and I work
so hard on these routines. I had never seen Lenny Bruce.
Bob had never seen Lenny Bruce. Mike Nichols, who I
talked to before I did it, because he'd done the graduate.
He and Elaine May were acting upstairs on Sunset Boulevard.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Was it called the Duplex or.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Something nightclub, and Lenny Bruce was downstairs, and in between
their acts they would come downstairs and watch Bruce because
no comedian, they said, would do a whole show improvising.
You know, sometimes you do two minutes three minutes and
the rest is your stuff. But Lenny would come out
and not know what he was going to say.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
I think the only two comedians I know since Lenny
that do that one was robbed, one.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Was robbed and Williams.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
And the other one was wonderful Billy Connolly, and neither
of them many times would just they would just go uh,
and that that takes a lot.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
What was the question?
Speaker 1 (08:35):
The sorry, we're talking about the cinematographers and.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Oh yeah, so he told me, and I worked hard.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
I got the thirty three RPMs that Lenny had made
us what we called them then we didn't call them finals,
and I'd lay down on the floor and I would play.
I had three months. I had about three months, and
I did every you know, I wrote down, long hand,
every single line he said in all the records, and
(09:03):
he even the ones he did over, he would always
deviate and I would write them down, and then I
would go to Bob Fossey and I'd say, geez, I
liked what he did here because he used these sentences
or he used that, and I was promised.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
And I think that's what I got so upset about.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
That I would be able to shoot it. We were
going to shoot it, and I think that's what Bob wanted.
We were going to shoot it in different clubs in
Florida and with live audiences, and that's what I wanted.
I want to be able to really feel like I'm
doing it with the real audience. And he'll have whatever,
three or four cameras at once. He agreed, and that's
what we were supposed to do. And then it's probably
(09:41):
money wouldn't allow it. So it was quite laborious sometimes
to do these routines over and over again. And he
would tilt the camera, he would go He'd be like,
where you are and I'd be on a stage. He'd say, okay,
now look a little bit this way, and I look up,
now look down, Okay, now do the routine from here
to here. You know, kind of broke my heart because
(10:01):
I was trying to be the guy.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
You know, Foster was a great, great artist.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
And it's funny because I just saw a film recently
with that Alfred Hitchcock directed with Carrie Grant, and Carrie
Grant said he never worked with Hitchcock again after the
first picture because they didn't get along. Because Hitchcock didn't
like to collaborate.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
But then they made up and they made more movies.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
But you say that that Lenny Bruce was not someone
you had been a fan of or had a big
awareness of before you had no.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
No, I just I was in New York. I just
never saw him. We couldn't have, you know, I mean,
before I was successful. We couldn't afford to go to nightclubs,
you know, they it was expensive. And I love the
jazz is what's so excorting? It was next jazz never dates.
(11:03):
Jazz is the same now as it was that.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
It gave beautiful.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
Square at oh and I had time. No, I didn't.
I had never seen him. I had never seen I
don't think any comedian. I didn't go to nightclubs much.
And I went out to LA because they sent someone
said to me, if you want to know Lenny Bruce,
you got to go see Sally mar his mother, who
was alive, and I went.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
She was very friendly.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
She introduced me to one of his best friends who
used to shoot up with and he in turn introduced
me to friends of Lenny. And I had a tape recorder,
you know, like a wall, and said, not a wall,
it's like a pearl tape recorder and I taped everything.
And she says, you want to go to Vegas because
they're all there, all his friends, Buddy Hackett, other people,
(11:52):
And I said, oh my god, yes, And I was
taking all these notes. It was the best time of
research I ever had. They all said the same thing,
except Buddy Hackett. They said, you know, you know Broadway,
Danny Rose, I think that William Allen, did you know?
And they used to get together the comedians when he
(12:14):
and these guys when they were you know certainly what
it was, I don't know, canters or And they said
they'd sit around do what they did in broad you know,
tell jokes. And they said, he look around and then
he was always very quiet, and suddenly he's gone because
he was a shy guy parent and he's gone, and
they look around and know where he is, and then
(12:35):
they find him in the kitchen talking to the people
that work in the kitchen to help. He loved to
just talk to the people and ask questions and find
out stuff. I think he originally this is the stuff
I had heard. They kind of say it in the movie.
The musicians were more important to him than the audience,
(12:56):
because when you do show after show after show. He
if you know the musicians, they're always sitting like that,
you know, because.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
They racing with the most yes.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
Of von Monroe and Uh and Lenny Uh. Lenny felt
that if he could crack up the musicians, then he
was getting somewhere.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
I think he wanted to be in Hollywood. We wanted
to be an actor.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Also, I had heard you shot this movie where we
shot a lot of it in Florida.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
The nightclubs, the stage work.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Yeah, one nightclub.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Basically, I think the scene when we were sitting next
to each other, the scene up there where I'm in
my raincoat, and Yes, when I came back after my
three months, I had all this stuff to give Bob.
You got to put this in. You got to put
that in. You gotta put that. And the one thing
(13:48):
that he kept was that scene. And the reason he
did is when I was memorizing it was a you know,
this is before the kind of media.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
You know, you had the cell phones and all that texting.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
Some guy heard I was doing the movie and he
had been a student somewhere in Chicago, and he sent
me found out my business address in New York, and
he sent me a cassette and I played it word
for word. It's that scene. And I got pissed off
(14:23):
at Bob because when he shot the Master from upstairs,
right in the back, and when I saw it, I.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Said, you didn't cut in. You didn't cut in. He says, no.
So that's eight minutes, you know, being up there just.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
In one shot, one shot, And again he was right.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
It's nice of you to admit that, Actually, very generous.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I've met a lot of stuff forty years later.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
But do you think do you think in your I mean,
obviously you're someone who when you I mean, I don't
believe anything I read. But I mean, but but you
know they don't me of all people, I really uh.
I try to minimize that in my life of like that,
but but the but but for you, obviously you know,
very fastidious and very very lots of questions and lots
(15:15):
of seeking and so forth, and the work you were doing,
and what do you think that comes from in terms
of all the films you've made from graduated on into
Cowboy and everything like that, where you just seem so
what's the word I mean you're so Jewish?
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Is that it?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I'll convert If that's is that simple. I'm going to
convert tomorrow if that's what's going to get me into
your STATUSY of we're taking a break, so stay with us.
But the thing is, you just seem like you always
have something to prove a lot of people got where
you got, and they did you did, and you scored
(16:01):
with these performances and as the originality. But then you
keep going and you still feel like you have Did
you feel that way? You still have something to prove
again and again and again? What drove you?
Speaker 4 (16:12):
I guess the same thing that still drives me. Kobe
Bryant was interviewed recently. It was before he, you know,
had to step out for the season because he hurt himself.
I saw the interview and I wrote it down. I
told my son Jake was basketball same question. You know,
(16:32):
all these ears of great basketball playing and you still
spend so much time practicing and playing whatever.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Why?
Speaker 4 (16:42):
And he said, I guess for the challenge of every day.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
That's a beautiful sentence.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I have only one slight personal connection to Lenny Bruce
and that and that is that Marvel Worth was a
dear friend. Yes, he died in nineteen ninety eight. He
produced the stuff he produced to Malcolm X with Spike,
he produced a lot of gad and he was Bruce's manager.
And Marvin Worthy was from Brooklyn and his wife Joe
and they were from Brooklyn. And he had the one
of the heaviest New York accents I'd.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
Never heard in my life. His voice was down here.
We had a very heavy accent like this. And he
said to me, I'm gonna revive Letny on Broadway, and
I want you to do play Letty. I go, what
and he said, uh, he goes. I got a thousand
hours of tapes of Lenny. I got that Julian Barry.
We got so much material of Lenny's. He says, there's
so much stuff we can put in there. And I
don't worry about the it's I'll gonna look like a child.
(17:37):
And I go and he goes, He's Dusty, he called,
you're Dusty. Dusty's not the only one who could play
that part. By the way, he's not the only person
who could play that part. I'm like, ah, sure, And
he goes. Then he goes, he goes, and I go,
but what about the other thing?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
He goes, what other thing? What about the other thing? Yes,
one other thing?
Speaker 3 (17:53):
What other thing? What of the thing? I go, I'm
not Jewish.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
He said, you're from Long Island, right, I said, yeah,
you go, Yeah, you're halfway there.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
The rest of the will take care of himself.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Oh my bad. He would have been wonderful.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
But when you did this film, how involved in your
films were you before?
Speaker 5 (18:17):
Then?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Later in the casting?
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Oh, I have to tell you. I'm glad you asked me.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
It's another example of Fosse's genius is that I met
Honey Bruce.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Uh and uh? Which came first? I met?
Speaker 4 (18:38):
He cast Valerie Parene before he met Honey Bruce, and
then he met her, and then I met her, you know,
not together. And I couldn't believe Honey Bruce that Valerie
was the reincarnation of Honey Bruce. Literally, I mean it
could have been like mother and daughter. I was And
(19:00):
I said, Bob, you had to have met Honey Drew
before you cast Vatter. He says, no, it was just
this intuition. I had nothing to do with any of
the casting except all your films except Stanley. He was
nice enough to have Stanley in it for my manager
and all my films.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yeah, I mean the graduate.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
They've been trying for two years to cast it, and
Katherine Ross and myself were the last two to screen
test after two years. And I heard that they were
sitting in the screen room not particularly excited about our
screen test, and I says, well, either we go with
them or we don't do it. And it was that
(19:46):
kind of a that they've said that in interviews. I
think Larry Turman said that the producer and Midnight Cowboy
he cast, he didn't cast John Voyd. He cast someone
else and they wouldn't let him out of his contract.
(20:08):
And after that happened, I said, please see my friend
John Voyd. We weren't close friends, but we had been
off Broadway together.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
And he says no.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
John Sassinger said he read for it and he doesn't
have that Texas accent. He was from Yonkers. I says, yeah,
but he's an actor.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
He can get it, you know. And John immediately went down.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
To Texas forgot where with the tape recorder and spent
whatever time and came back and read for it and
he got the part. But he was the second choice.
Kate Jackson was the first choice for Kramer versus Kramer.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
She was in Charlie's.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Angels, and they were saying, oh, the film will pay
back itself before we started shooting because they were so popular.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
And then the studio wouldn't let her out.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
So I kept telling them about this Meryl Streep. I
had heard about it, and they saw and they saw her.
So there's been a few hours suggested I've.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I've never demanded or you know, I don't.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
I don't think that works actually, unless you're directing or producing.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Well, some people that have these approvals of casting and
they and they utilize that in whatever way. And then
those are the people who they just don't get involved.
They just like they just let that all take care
of itself and it doesn't really change what they do.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
You know, Duval and Hackman and I knew each other
from the early days.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
They're much older.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
And and we never worked together. And suddenly I'm doing
this thing. A few years ago. We're shooting in New
Orleans a runaway jury and I have a I think
a supporting part, and Gene Hackman has a leading part.
And the director finds out that we knew each other.
(21:51):
We went to the passage in a playhouse together to
got kicked out after three months, they're not having any talent,
and oh my god, you guys know each other for
all this time, thirty years. Yeah, we got to do
a scene. So they wrote a scene. It's one of
the last scenes in the movie. Takes place in a
public bathroom. It's like an eight page dialogue scene. And afterwards,
(22:13):
it was the last thing I shot in the movie.
It's over, and Jane and I say, let's go out
and get drunk. And we go to an Italian restaurant
in New Orleans and we're getting drunk and Hacklan says,
were you scared? I said, I was so scared, man,
I thought I'm gonna forget my lines. He said he
felt exactly the same way. You know, because you are
(22:33):
what you are at the beginning, you don't really change.
We were unemployed actors for ten years, and he said
to me, and one of the great things ever said.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
We were just close to each other.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
He says, do you feel the same way I do
after you finish a movie? And he probably made one
hundred and twenty movies. I said, what do you feel
like he'll never work again? Yeah, of course, every single time.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
After five decades of consistently winning roles every actor dreams of.
Hoffman's fears of joblessness remain charming. His latest film, The
Program About Lance Armstrong, will be released later this year.
Listen to other episodes of Here's the Thing in our archives,
like my conversation with Dick Cavitt, whose career as an
(23:25):
iconic talk show host includes a nineteen sixty eight TV
interview with hot young newcomer Dustin Hoffman, fresh off his
film The Graduate, the tape of which may or may
not exist.
Speaker 6 (23:38):
There are several versions of what really happened. I just
remember being told one day, yeck, they're going to either
reuse the tapes or erase them or dump them. When
you say, what tapes that onnes do the ABC Show
and you can have them if you want to, for
(23:58):
sixty dollars each. And I thought, well, that's a ludicrous
amount of money.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
But take a listen at Here's the Thing dot Org.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing Today, recorded live at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood
as part of the Turner Classic Movie Film Festival. Dustin
(24:27):
Hoffman has been nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor
seven times. He's won the award twice. Actors strive for
depth and range in their work. Hoffman makes this appear effortless.
There's obviously roles you played like Kramer versus Crimer and
Old the President's Men, and you seem, I don't know
(24:48):
what word to use. It seems closer for who you are,
your voice and your appearance, and you're the psychologic something.
You're playing a contemporary character. You're not playing somebody with
some disability or what have you. It's not rain Man
or someone who damaged and broken like a cowboy and
so forth like that. But you've done both. There's a
there's a theatricality to the roles and a vividness to them,
and you're not afraid to do that. Where does that
(25:10):
come from? From being in the theater?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah? I mean where are you from?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Lona? I told you I'm from Long Island. I'm from
fucking long Isle? Fuck is wrong with you? So?
Speaker 3 (25:28):
How long?
Speaker 4 (25:31):
First of all, I wish we lived in the same city.
How old were you when you started studying at twenty two?
And when they sent you out? They send you out
for certain kinds of parts. Young leading men.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
The young guys who cried a lot or whatever.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
I'm the short Jew and still with some acne. And
I come to New York in nineteen fifty eight to study,
and I always said leading men, young leading men, juvenile's
character juveniles, That's what I was designed as.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
I couldn't get an agent.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
And that's just code for Semitic, you know, because in
those days the leading man was white Anglo Saxon Protestant
and the ethnic person was a character juvenile or character
entre nous. It really was that way anyway. So I
went out a few times I could, you know, go
(26:28):
to open auditions, because if you're not equity then you
can't go to a regular audition. And you can't go
to a regular audition until you get your equity card.
You can't get an equity card until you get a job,
so you know, catch twenty two. So the few times
that I could go, it was the character a juvenile
and by Hooker Crook Nichols casts castin Ross and I
(26:54):
in a graduate and i'd been just starting to get
somewhere off Broadway doing you know, my own style of stuff.
Hunchback German, gay guy with a limb. You know, the
first thing that I got mentioned for in the in
the New York Times, and Nichols had heard about it,
(27:16):
and uh, and I got.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
This, You're not kidding. You played a hunchback.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
German homosexual with a limp Ronald Ribman.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
What was the production Harry Noon and Night. And the
other actor was Joel Joel Gray. Joel Gray.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Sorry, Uh, yes, that was accurate. So he brings me
out to test me. And I didn't want to test.
I was doing, for the first time in my life,
doing well off Broadway.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I won an.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Award, and I thought, oh, I'll have a career, you know,
I'll do off Broadway.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
And you know this as well as I do. Uh.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
You know, if God has said, look Alec, you'll never
be in the movies, you'll never get leading roles. If
you're struggling for years, you won't even be on Broadway.
I will guarantee you a good part off Broadway for
the rest of your life. You'd sign, you would, maybe,
you know, And so would a hackman who moved from
(28:18):
a trip down you know, six flights and Duval who
worked midnight to eight in the post office. And I
was doing waiter jobs and a little acting teaching.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
If I could.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
And it's you know, it's never changed. There's actress here,
you know the pain of that. And here he is
now taking me out into la and testing and can
we do anything about his nose? I remember, and I mean,
well the guy is He said, you don't and he
couldn't believe it. I mean, he's the hottest director from
(28:49):
Neil Simon Broadway and also Virginia Wolf.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
He did.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
There was no hot a director at that moment in time.
He was Spielberg. And he said, what do you mean
you don't want to do this part? I said, I
read the book of mister Nichols. It was on the phone.
He said, il, I'm in New York doing a play.
I said, Benjamin Braddock in the book. He's five foot eleven,
blonde hair. I says, it's Redford. I said, you don't
want me, and he said no. He says, I would
(29:19):
like to test you. He says, you mean he's not Jewish.
I says, right, it's Benjamin Braddock. And he said something
I've never forgotten.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
He says, well, maybe he's Jewish.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
Inside years later he's from Berlin.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Mike.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
He came here in the early thirties and he had
his own pain because he didn't have a lot of hair,
he had scarlet fever. And he not too long ago,
just a few years ago, I read in the paper
that he never understood why he cast me, and then
he finally did through analysis or something, and he said,
(29:59):
because I was like an alter ego of him. He
felt like he was me in, you know, on the periphery,
you know, out of it, and he was casting himself
the funny looking guy. Do you know that that movie
was shot and I went back to New York to
(30:19):
collect unemployment. It was a lot because you know, it
was fifty bucks a week. It's getting the most he
could get. And they're cutting the movie again. I read
this in the newspapers and Lawrence Turman, I think it
was a New York Times a producer.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
They're showing it all over the bel Air.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
Circuit, every Hills, bell Air, brent On, the movie theaters they.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Have in the homes, and over and over again, Turman said.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Before it opened, and over and over again, people in
the industry would come up to Larry Wait, brilliant film
you almost had if you hadn't a misca, that's the lead.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
And that was the perception, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
It's interesting because speaking of that casting thing, he and
I have had a little there was a whiff of this,
of this, of my appreciation of his career, and you
white of mine. I remember this. I doubt you remember this.
But I go to the old Westwood Marquis Hotel because
I get called to go an audition for the movie
Hero and Stephen Frears is the director, and the phone rings,
(31:28):
and this is back when I was making films in
the nineties and everything. And I'm lighting one off the
other and I'm gonna meet this guy, and I'm like,
I'm in my car. I'm like, god, maasin. They're gonna
go to the Westwood Marquis and they just lay out
the facts. They're like, you know, snap out of it.
You're gonna go to the Westwood Marque. You're gonna make
Stephen Freres and you're gonna have a meeting with Dustin
Hoff And I'm like, I love this guy.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
I want to leave this moment with this guy.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
And all of a sudden, like twenty minutes goes by
and Stephen Frears. If you know the movie Hero, where
someone commits this actor this case of mistaken identity, and
Andy Garcia played the other role, so there has to
be this case of mistaken identity between the two actors.
Stephen Fier is literally twenty minutes in. I mean, my
dream is just taking flight, my wings. I'm flying over
the Westwood Malachis Hotel. I'm going to make my first
(32:14):
movie with Dustin efen Hoffmann, and Stephen Fierce looks at
me and goes, you know, I just realized that you
don't look anything like Dustin at all, and it was like, there,
I'm flying. Also he shoots my balloon, my crash onto
Westwood Boulevard and I'm dead on the highway there. I'll
(32:36):
never figure talk about. Yeah, I'm our dreams, our dreams,
how they how they escape us?
Speaker 3 (32:42):
But now called the m right right right in west.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
But the exactly when you do when you show up
and you work with Slushnger and you do Cowboy, do
you you come up with all that and you show
him did he help you?
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Did you Cowboy?
Speaker 4 (32:56):
Very briefly, he didn't want It's very similar to Frears
and You. He did not want to see me because
he had seen the Graduate and that's the only thing
he'd ever seen me in and he was an artist.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Give a shit that I was in a big hit
and suddenly an instant star.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
He wanted the right person and he refused to see me.
And I heard about this, and I had read the book.
I thought the script was okay.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
It was Waldo Salt.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
He actually came in a room with John Voight and
I when we did it, and he had a wall
inside tape recorder. We improvised everything everything. This listener was
great at that, and he would go home waldoswell and
write the improvisations into the scenes that he'd already written. Anyway,
he wouldn't see me, and I said, please, you know,
(33:44):
I gotta see him. He's got to see me. And
he agreed. I know we have running out of times.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Go quick, forty second Street.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
What do they call those things where you go when
you put the quarter in? I can't remember the automat
the automat thank you, And I says the autumn, I'm
gonna direct the movie of him playing a car.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
You all heard it, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
And I used to go there and we all did
you know, two three in the morning whatever, uh, and
get coffee or whatever, and it was all kind of
trance people there, and I said, I'll meet him in
the automat and I want to do it about one
or two in the morning, because you know, and I'll
dress accordingly, which is what I did it kind of.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Coat like I wore in that scene at raincoat.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
And I didn't shave a few days and I greased
my hair. I was auditioning and I came in and
I just met him there, sat there, and he looked
at me, and he looked at you know, sparsely crowded,
you know, people around.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
He says.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
He says, yes, I think you'll do quite well. So
the voice and.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
All of it, you just throw that out there. You
come up with that.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Oh well, yeah, you keep trying.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
I mean, my friend, oh Daniel, my friend, oh Daniel,
you are two cons. Where do you find this?
Speaker 3 (35:05):
You get desperate? But I didn't. I didn't. I that's
my bob. I wasn't desperate enough.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
No, no, And uh, we're rehearsing and then a slessenger
has to shoot some exteriors before we start shooting principal
photography because he's got winter and he needed winter. So
John Voight and I go and he says, you don't
have to talk. I says, I don't have a character.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
I don't have a voice, I said, I can't. I
barely have a walk.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
No, we'll have the camera cross the street. You guys
just got a walk. We're not starting for a month,
but we just need the weather.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
You know, there was smoke coming whatever.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
It was okay, So John Boy and I will walking.
John Voyd and I knew each other for years. I
was the assistant director, which is like you know, sharpening
pencils in off Broadway when he was in View from
the Bridge with Bob Deval. He was brilliant and he
was up and coming star and and you know we
(36:02):
were competitive. The actors are always competitive. And uh, you know,
if you're walking down the street, you got a script,
you have a reading, or you did the read, you
see another actor coming out.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
You've always put it behind your back, you know.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
No, it's just something you know because you don't want
to the competition anyway. So we're across the street walking
and says, oh, you have to do I says, yeah,
but I'm supposed to cough. Were at that point in
the movie where you know he's got you're gonna find
out the st B or whatever.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
He says, yes, Sas says.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
Oh, right, you do some coughing, do something not going,
but you don't have to talk. I said, okay, I'm
rehearsing out a panic, you know, trying on.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
These these these limps or whatever. And I said, you
shouldn't be shooting. We got a month to oh, I
haven't found him yet.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
And suddenly we're walking and we paused, and I'm trying
to cough and I threw up, literally on John Voyd's
cowboy boots. And afterwards, susagers, I think we've got it.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
You do.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
And John, because he's an actor and you know, or
competitive passenger told me later he went up to Clashen Journey.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
He said, John, let me just ask you something. Is
he going to do that all throughout the whole thing?
He says, because I'm not even in the scene.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
If he does, well, let me just say this because obviously,
I mean, I got another forty five questions I could ask,
but they do have a schedule here for the festival.
But I do want to say, I mean, as as
sappy as this sounds, on behalf of everybody here, I
want to say thank you to you, because I mean,
I really, from the bottom of my heart, from the
(37:45):
bottom of my heart. You are one of the greatest
movie actors that has ever lived. In the hastory is come.
You are one of the greatest act the actors ever
and you know so many great folks. Please help me
in fact that he doesn't happen everywhere. Dustin Hoffmann has
gained some hard won wisdom during his career, and despite
(38:08):
turning seventy eight this summer, he's embracing a very new
way to share it. He's teaching an acting class online.
The description reads, Dustin teaches you everything he wishes someone
had taught him. You can sign up at masterclass dot com.
This is Alec Baldwin. Thanks this week to Sean Cameron
(38:29):
and everyone at Turner Classic Movies. You're listening to Here's
the thing I'm going Where Sankei shin real Poor Rain.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Go in well suit, smart blow
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