February 3, 2020 • 52 mins
This week, in honor of the upcoming Academy awards, Here's the Thing brings you a collection of conversations with Oscar-winners -- including one new interview coming Friday with the creative team of 2020 Best Documentary-nominee For Sama. We begin, however, with a reprise of one of the HTT team's all-time favorite episodes, in which Alec enjoys a little miso soup at the home of Barbra Streisand in Malibu. Streisand has won two Oscars: first in 1969 for her turn as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, and then again in 1977 for her Best Original Song “Evergreen” from A Star Is Born.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
In recognition of the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony, we offer
you a special week of conversations from our archives with
guests who have actually won an Oscar and one guest
who was a current Oscar nominee. We begin with Barbara
(00:21):
streisand Don't tell Me not to Live just sitting cut up.
There really are no words to describe the talent, the career,
the woman that is Barbara streisand Don't streisand first on
(00:43):
the scene in nineteen sixty four with Funny Girl on Broadway,
Right when it felt like the suburbs and McCarthy ism
might go on forever, the Beatles show up on the
Ed Sullivan Show, and on Broadway along comes this phenomenon,
this totally new, unusual, gorgeous, nakedly ambitious Jewish girl from
Brooklyn in close, so wildly bright they blow out your
(01:07):
new color TV affection. She kept her name, she kept
her nose, she kept that accent. She could not be
more different from what wasp culture told women they should be.
New York is just full of unusual and interesting girls.
(01:27):
Who was starting out in the show business, but few
of them have the style as early as this young lady.
She's nineteen years old. Her name is Barbara Streisand and
then she gets on stage. She's grounded, she's powerful, and
she's got the greatest voice America has ever heard than
(01:53):
a male. Over the following years, we also learned she's
a great dress Here she is trying to win Redford's
love in the way we were sure. I make waves.
I mean, you have to, and I'll keep making them
until your every wonderful thing you should be and will be.
You'll never find anyone as good for you as I am.
To believe in you as much as I do, I
(02:14):
love you as much. Well not why Streisand develops a
reputation for being difficult and for being a bit of
a recluse. She gets married, divorced, has a kid, but
all the while she just keeps getting better and more famous,
until she's this unique character in American culture, a megastar
(02:36):
on her own terms. Since we first met in ninet,
we become friends. We talked at her home in southern California.
By the way, still to do me a favor, take
the clock and make sure it works like it needs
batteries or wounder. Okay, thank you so much. You walk
(03:02):
around the house and you have you just that just goes.
How is this not taken care of? You? See, to
work for somebody like you or me, you have to
understand the artist's temperament. People don't see that. The time
is wrong. I wasn't going to start with this, but
I'll ask you. But I'll ask you because that instinctive
(03:27):
I for detail and just thinking all the time about
I want this, I want this, I want this. Is
that what naturally propelled you into directing films? Yes? That,
and also it was something that happened during the way
we were where two scenes were cut out that were
intrinsic to the value of the story. And it made
(03:50):
me so crazy that they couldn't see that that propelled
you went to that propelled me into it. I couldn't
understand it. And it's hard to call all with a
you know, a hit movie. I don't know if it
was a hit at the time. Tell you the truth,
it's grown to me. It was Warren Beatty said to me, once,
(04:11):
is it until you take ultimate responsibility and you're willing
to direct the movie you're gonna be constantly frustrated. And
he said, you must consider that if it was so delicious.
And it's like, you know, when you finally have the
power to control your work, you you get very humble
(04:31):
in a sense. It's like I wanted to give power
away to other people as well. You know, I would say,
to my standing, you run that course with the cameraman,
this is the shot, but I want you to be
able to tell me where to stand. In other words,
it's a feeling of such gratitude where you you never
(04:53):
have to raise your voice because everybody's finally listening. You
don't have to get angry about anything they weren't listening before.
Sometimes well sometimes when I would say things as just
an actress, like this is what I'm telling you, this
story the way we were, it went um on deaf ears.
(05:14):
You know, they didn't agree with me whatever. But when
you see something so clearly, um, that's wrong to me
or what could be right? Or see I had such
a great time directing Yental because I did it in
England and in Czechoslovakia. In England, they're not afraid of women,
(05:36):
powerful women, strong women because they had a queen. They
have a queen and at the time they had the
Prime Minister who was Margaret Thatcher. So I was shocked
at the respect that I had as a first time director.
I couldn't believe it. Um and the crew was so
(05:58):
kind and just. It was the most wonderful experience, I
must say. And even the Czechoslovakian government was wonderful to
me because I needed Jews to be in the synagogue
and pray and so for then, you know, it was
during communist times, and they went to the Jewish community,
(06:21):
thank God, and had them come so I didn't have
to teach them how to be Jewish, you know, how
to Jews. Jews was an Italian dresses Jews in New
York where they have to say, well, how do you
stand in a synagogue and how do you pray? And
it was it was wonderful. And also well you know,
when you have extras in Czechoslovakia, then they didn't give
(06:45):
them lunch, so that the people would come with like
bags of their lunch, which broke my heart. So I would,
you know, give them our food, which we never had vegetables.
We had a cent to London or France or it
to get vegetables. Because you know, their food diet was
like hot trunk. I loved it, of course, bread and
(07:06):
butter and hot chocolate in the morning with whipped creamers.
I was one heaven and I wanted to be thinner
but well, and every day I would not every day,
but every few days I would bring in past these,
you know, with that delicious dough in the meat inside.
And we'd always have the most delicious teas that I'd
bring in those cream like doughnuts shaped like a hot
(07:30):
dog from Whimpys, and you know, eat this delicious cream
with the doughnuts. Oh my god, it was so good,
and they it was very sweet. Because the whole crew
wrote a letter that's one of my prized possessions, I
must say. And they wrote this letter to the newspapers
(07:50):
and it said that you know, Ms try said something
like Ms try Sand never raises her voice and has
a smile for us every day, and it's like not
the stories we've heard about her, and no newspaper would
publish it, but it figures it's like Hillary Clinton, as
you said, the upside of that experience where the Yente
(08:13):
was working in a culture where the power of women
was just accepted and I'm crestfall and to say the
least about what happened here, not just because this guy won,
but I really do think misogyny and well, in four
I did get some sort of award from women in
film directing Yental, and a lot of my speech was
(08:35):
about women against women, because the reviews of Yente from
women were vicious, you know, in other words, they didn't
even talk about this celebration of womanhood, that a woman
could not only you know, make dinner and have babies,
(08:58):
but she could have an select she could want to study,
be something more. What do it men do? Just equality?
You know. So to read a review that said her
she wore a design in the New York Times, she
wore a designer yamaka. Now everything, every piece of clothing
(09:20):
in that movie was authentic. That same year there was
the film directed by Ingmar Bergmann Fanny and Alexander. They
wore the same yamica, but nobody attacked that film. I
love detail, so I would, you know, for years, I
would do research about Polish Jews, about these Jews that
Jews everything, the Evil Institute in New York um talking
(09:46):
to scholars studying Talmud, just to bring that because I
do believe that when you study like that and do
the research, you don't have to act that It's like
the camera picks up the truth, even just behind your eyes,
in the sound of your voice, whatever it is mine.
(10:07):
You know. I had this wonderful shot, I thought, as
it cuts from a chicken coop to me sitting behind
the bars up separated from the men in the shool,
and that shot was attacked by this woman critic, Janet Maslin.
Her name was now she could attack my lip sincer.
That's true. I'm a terrible lip sinker. I can't do
(10:30):
it because when I did movies like Funny Girl or
Hello Dolly, you know, they record the soundtrack three months
before you shoot, and I have to be in the
moment as an actor. I don't know how I'm going
to feel when I actually perform it. So that's why
when I did the movie Star Is Born, It's all real,
it's all um, I had a relic I did not want.
(10:53):
I needed to be free, to be in the moment,
so we recorded on the spot. What do you call
that live? It is all live? And then what I
would do is um. Because I had final cut on
that movie, I could control those things. Um, we would
shoot the close ups first, so where the performance really counted,
(11:15):
and then I would just choose it right on the spot, okay,
I think, And I would do about one to four takes.
You know, all these stories about me like I do
millions of takes, most of them are false. And so
let's say I would take take three, you know, and
then move the cameras back to do the wider shot
because you didn't have to see me close, you know,
(11:37):
not doing the lip sync. Good. I did a documentary
film about Can. It's ostensibly about Can and Ryan Gosling.
We corner him at at an hotel. I think I
saw it. Jimmy Toback and I did this thing called
Seduced and Abandoned, and we get Gosling at the Beverly
Hills Hotel or the bel Air Hotel. I should say,
(11:57):
any long story short, as he has this beautiful explication
of how agonizing it is to shoot films, and just
in that kind of Arthur Murray by numbers way, we
have to shoot a match to this, to this. It
can't be fresh and it's painful. And that's why I
love long takes, because I think I'm from the theater
and we had to do a whole show, right, So
I don't like pieces. I mean, you I the fun
(12:20):
of directing to me is designing the shot, the camera
accommodating the actors. So the actors. There's a lot of
scenes in Gentle that you can see like this. They're
all in one move practically. In other words, we come
in through a door and I'm in the foreground, let's say,
(12:41):
But he who's following me, the my lead actor who
was Mandy Pattinken at a time, and he still is
but um, you know, we see him standing there, and
then he comes forward and I sit down. He becomes
he's standing up with the camera never moved, but you
see everything. Then the camera moves as we're together, but
(13:05):
it doesn't cut. And then he has you know, when
when he leaves me, you see him go out the door.
He slams the door and the camera moves in a
little bit. As I'm thinking about it, that's the scene.
But it's what's fun about that is that we're all
on our toes. You can't make a mistake. And most
(13:26):
of these shots that I do that there's no coverage.
That the greatest one of the very little coverage the
actors played the scene in the frame. That's right now now,
in the time that you made films, the many years
you've made films, successful acting and not directing, successful as
(13:48):
a director and producer, and all those things. Where there
are people that you wanted to work with, whether people
you sat there, guy, I'd love to make a film
with that person because you've been in such a privileged
place and had these people available to Was there a
director that you dreamed of working with you didn't get
to work with. Well Ing Ma Bergman is a person
that contacted me to do a remake of The Merry Widow.
(14:11):
And I was so excited, you know, and I came
to um Sweden and we embraced and it was this
wonderful embrace, you know. I mean he, I can't explain
what that what that's like. It's was just he he
sort of understood me, and I understood him without any words.
(14:37):
And the first act of that screenplay was fantastic, I mean,
very body uh kind of shocking. I loved it, you know.
So then and when I have letters now, I forget
things until I have to go into my archives and
look at this stuff. Letters from him and notes that
(14:57):
I wrote back to him talking about this film and
what happened the second act. You know, he says we're
going to be collaborators, and the second act was not
very good. I thought it was like like Jevas Amadeus.
(15:19):
I'm sure the first act was extraordinary to me in
the movie, and the second act was, I don't know,
just somehow repetitious. It It didn't go far enough in
the story, you know. And that's the way I felt
about this. And all of a sudden it was gone.
(15:40):
The collaboration was over. We never made the film, and
I couldn't quite believe it. I mean, the fact that
I didn't like certain things in the second act did
he liked? Well, he never defended it. It was like,
you know, I think that's right and so but I
(16:01):
would have loved to work with Berto Lucci. And you
know what I did. I realized this now and looking
back at my life, I turned down Alice doesn't live
here anymore. I turned down a lot of films actually
because I was lazy. I'm basically I'm a dichotomy here,
a dichotomy lazy and um, I don't know what the
(16:26):
word is, restless, restless maybe, yeah, like wanting to create
about you. It would be called the lazy and the restless.
Oh no, that's a very good time, exactly exactly. I
love to take a vacation and do nothing. I like
(16:49):
to have no appointments. And I think that's a condition
in my mind of people who have tremendous not so
much financial success, but create of success. I mean there's
a famous actress who I won't name you. Wait, you
know what do you want to take a sip of
soup on your Do you want soup to I'll have
(17:09):
a soup. I mean we kind of say no. Well,
I mean this is a I'm irish. It's bad luck
to say no to soup? Is that in Ireland? I
just made that up? Oh just put that over here.
Oh see, I just brought this table from the back
and we need another table maybe over here because this
is me, so soup, don't rebout me. I'm great. I mean,
(17:31):
in other words, people know we eat, right, so if
they hear it's okay, good good, good good, because I
always like to eat. Oh really know you know you
won't mm hmm. That is delicious, isn't it unhealthy? Um?
What were we talking about restless and lazy. When I
(17:53):
would talk to McCartney about the Beatles, he said to me,
is it was hard work. Later on when they gain
creative control of their material and it's like anybody, then
they take a year to do another album. But in
the beginning they really worked like dogs, you know. And
for you, I'm wondering in the beginning when you do Broadway,
are you out there and you're just so pumped and
(18:15):
excited and you're young, and everyone's glorifying you and loving
what you're putting out there, and you really love you said,
they're going, I don't want to do this show eight
times a week, like what happened to you in the beginning,
where you excited and game in the In the beginning,
I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to prove to
my mother that I could be a success. You know.
It comes from that. It's like really deep. It's deep
(18:38):
and quiet. It's not loud, by the way. It's not
what makes Sammy run. It's quiet. It really is um.
But again, you can feel that passion, you can feel
that need to be seen somehow. Because I wasn't seen
much by my I didn't I love my father. How
(19:01):
your dad passed away fifteen months but my mother said
that after he died, I would climb up on the
window waiting for him to come home, because I used
to do that, I guess as a baby, and wait
for him and he would come home. And in a sense,
I've idolized my father because he was a PhD. He
(19:24):
was a teacher, which I so respect teachers, and he
wrote poems, and he was artistic, and he was an
athlete as well as a debater, you know, and he
was in part of French dramatics and English literature. And
(19:44):
I didn't read his thesis until many years later because
as an actress when I was sixteen, I was fascinated
by Eleanora Dusa and Sarah Bernhardt, wanting to be an actress,
and my father's book bos were tied up in the
basement of our Brooklyn apartment, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, all
(20:06):
the great novels. I read, uh, what do you call it?
Nancy Drew Mysteries. I read movie magazines, you know, and
dream that someday maybe I could be famous. Did you
have that dream? Then? When you were here, I would
have my pint of coffee ice cream, briers and sit
(20:28):
in my bed and dream, go to the movies sometimes
on a Saturday afternoon. The Lowise Kings. We had the
greatest ice cream, and we also well, yeah, you're you're,
you're like me. Somebody'll say, what was the best part
of the summer, I'd say, what is this restaurant that
has the best coffee ice cream with chocolate covered handelnuts?
(20:49):
Watching who in the on screen? If to the extent
you want to say, or we call somebody you watched
with Visio, Yeah, that's it. I want to do something
like that. Not dar Day. I mean, really it was well.
I loved Marjorie Morning Star because I knew the summer
places in where I was sent to camp in the Catskills,
(21:12):
or my mother and stepfather when they came to visit me.
I didn't know my mother was married, and I said,
I'm going home from here. What do you mean you
didn't know your mother got married. She never told me
because he was a boyfriend for a while, I guess
he was around. No, I never met him before, but
when I insisted, see I was as I was a
(21:34):
strong kid. So my mother came to visit me with
the stranger, and I said, I'm going home. I'm not
staying here another day longer, so we have to pack
me up. I think I was seven and a half maybe,
so for a long time of your youth you were
raised by him. He was on the scene when homes
in your life, he's in my life, the stranger. How
(21:57):
did he handle you? Didn't like me, he didn't like you. Why,
it's exactly right. Was the connection with him such as
it was, because the connection with your mother also was
a bit thinner than you might have liked compared to
your feelings for your father. I grew up in a
house where my dad was my idol. I idolized my
(22:20):
dad and my mom. My older sister and I, we
were her lieutenants, chores, chores, And your mom didn't push
him or cajole him, or try to get him to
never your Your relationship with your mom was a little
less than it wasn't your feeling towards your father well,
or your head over heels in love with your mother? No, no, no, no.
(22:41):
I I felt that she didn't know me, She didn't
know could she. I don't think my mother knows me either,
But I've seen now in my life. She couldn't she
wasn't capable. My mother never said to me, my mother's alive.
And I wrote this in my book. She never once
to me, what's it like to be you? When you
(23:02):
get up there and do that? What do you enjoy it?
To understand me? And I'm her son and her oldest son.
And where was the conversation about when I go through
in my life and my career. My mother never nothing
about that. My mother's love was shown through food she
would bring me when I was a young actress, you know.
(23:23):
And I moved away from home when I was sixteen,
from Brooklyn to New York. Got an apartment right next
to me. I graduated high school at uh sixteen erasmus, Yeah,
I graduated in three and a half years so I could.
(23:43):
I doubled my science and math, which I loved. I
love those subjects. You were desperate to get out of Brooklyn.
I was desperate to be an actress, to get away
from real life. Not a singer and actress, an actress,
Oh yeah. And my my singing was when I was
five and six and seven on the stoop in Brooklyn
(24:03):
with the girls, you know, singing and harmonizing that was
my singing, but my love was wanting to be an actress.
And so that's when I went to the library Street
Library and read the plays of these great actresses, you know,
and I wanted to be a classical actress. So part
of me still feels like a failure. You know. When
(24:24):
I wanted to do I wanted to play after I
was well known. I wanted to play the two Cleopatra's,
the one uh Caesar and Cleopatra and Anthony and Cleopatrick. Right,
so one is a child fourteen years old who I
thought it should be Orson Wells or Marlon Brando, fat,
(24:47):
you know, and then I would be even little well
fed um and hiding, you know from this man, and
then play the woman Cleopatra. And the television stations I
wanted to do it on TV, they said, well, is
it going to be a musical. I mean, you're gonna
add music. It's like they can't see that you could
(25:11):
do both. I mean, though you have to do the
music with the you know, absolutely awful feeling. I wanted
to play Romeo and Juliet and I got to do
it finally for Lee Strassburg at the studio, and it's
one of my I can't find the letter that they
(25:31):
wrote me too. Well, that's a whole long story, but uh,
to invite you to join the studio. Yeah. But when
I first auditioned for the studio, I was fifteen and
I was doing it with another guy who asked me
to just be in it. But they wrote me a
letter to say, do your own audition, And then when
I did, they found out I was fifteen and they
(25:51):
said come back when you're you know, eighteen. It's probably
a nice way of saying no, but um. So that's
why it was terrible. When I was in on Broadway,
I wrote on my play bill, I am not a
member of the Actor's Studio, because all the actors who
were would say a member of the actors Studio, and
(26:12):
I was piste off at them, you know, um, but
that was interesting. I did some of my best work
then when I was fifteen and sixteen, I played media,
you know, and did that great Aria after she killed
her kids, and you know, she says a line like,
you know something about this wound in the middle of myself.
(26:34):
What a brilliant line. I mean, I am a woman
and I with this wound in the middle of myself. Um,
I was good. Then do you see you're saying this
wound in the middle of myself at the actor's studio?
You know that was that was for um? Just I
did it in class? That scene from media? Where was
(26:54):
your class? You know what I would do? Then I
would Um I had another name, so I wanted I
didn't want to miss anything, So I went to two
different acting classes and gave a different name in one,
and then I used to to make money. You've got
four dollars and five cents. It was to be an
usher in the theater. So I would love to go
(27:16):
see the plays. But in a sense, I didn't have
enough money to see all the play. So I I
became an usher in the theater so I could see
the play. But meanwhile, I was sixteen seventeen, that kind
of age. I knew that I would be famous because
I would hide my head so they wouldn't see me
(27:37):
my face showing them to their seats, because I thought,
you know, when I become famous, they're going to recognize
me as the girl to showed them to their seats.
So how do you figure that that? That's something I
can't explain you. Really, there's a part of you that
knew you would end up doing what you did. And
I don't you know. And my mother didn't believe in me.
(27:58):
She's she kept telling me what your father did. Become
a teacher. You get you know, you get time off,
you get vacations, free vacations, summer's yeah, learn to type.
And that's when I let my nails grow along so
I couldn't type. I believe me. I wish I could type.
Now I have to dictate everything into all those things, French, typing,
(28:20):
cooking with with your mother. Did she eventually come around?
I mean, how could she not come around with everything
you've done. I think I was really just trying to
prove to her that I I could be famous. By
the way, as soon as I became famous, I didn't
like it. I don't like fame. I don't like stardom.
(28:43):
I only like the work, the creative work, that's all
I like. No shore pep that's streisand singing Lasha kio
(29:04):
pianga normally more of the domain of the world's great
opera singers like Renee Fleming, good yeah cool. Fleming told
(29:26):
me that she tried and struck out on two other
genres before she landed on opera. Had I grown up
in New York City, the singer songwriter thing might have opened.
Doors might have opened. I mean, I sang on television
in high school winning some talent show playing a song
that I wrote. Then I tried to pursue jazz then,
and that didn't work. Despite the fact that Eastman had
(29:48):
a phenomenal jazz department, I just couldn't get in. She's
about to mix it up again. Her Broadway debut is
set for next spring in a revival of Carousel. Take
a listen to the rest of Rene Fleming story on
Here's the Thing Dot Org. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
(30:14):
listening to Here's the Thing. With no formal voice training
and no money to kick start a career, Streisand relied
on raw talent to build herself up and the wiles
of a man who happened to hear her at a
small Greenwich village club called the Bon Soir. Martyrlickman was
a music manager and almost as young and hungry as
(30:35):
Barbara herself. He used his slim Rolodex and razors sharp
pr instincts to help build Barbara's image into what it
is today. I met Marty at the Bons when he
came one night. I was nineteen, and he saw me
as the first act, the opening act, and said, if
you ever need me, kid, I was. I was kept
(30:56):
over at the bonsa many times, but then I couldn't
get a job. Finally I got a job and they
were paying me something like seventy dollars a week or
a hundred dollars. A hundred dollars a week. But I
could eat, you know, so if people wanted me to
sit down, I would order a baked potato, sour cream
(31:17):
and chives and butter. So but I couldn't make a living.
I really needed more. So I called Marty and I said,
you know, is there any way you could get me
a hundred and fifty dollars a week. Marty told me
many years later that he actually paid the fifty dollars
because they wouldn't go for the the raise. That's why
(31:41):
he's such a great person. He invested in me. Yeah,
you've been with him now for how long? And it's like, well,
we separated for a while. For a few years. He
didn't get along with. The man in my life at
the time was John Peters. I've read the story before
or something like that. But then, believe me, we got
(32:02):
back as soon as I could. So that period is
over fifty years. But if you take out that, what
does he do for you now? What does he provide you?
And what does he provide for you? Now? You trust
him everything? He reads scripts, you know, and my full
on manager. Today is his birthday, by the ways, eight
years old, Happy birthday, Martyr. I was watching these um
(32:26):
you know, not just old cabot shows where um famous
actors would come on. Is it a spring roll? Is
it meat? I think this one is a vegetarian? Or
are you a vegetarian? I don't I don't need beef.
Does there eat the light one? Yeah? I think it's chicken?
(32:47):
Is it Isn't that good? I remember I was sitting
in your apartment years ago. I was a very hungry
one work and just Corman was there and you were
going to do Prince of Tie. I came to meet
with you. I remember the print sometimes and you're woman
who took care of your apartment came in and you said,
(33:08):
you said, yeah, I'll eat a little something. I could
eat a little something. I could eat a little something.
And she would to bring us some cruder tay or
crackers or whatever some spreads. You looked at me and
you said, oh god, I kind of you know. I'm
gonna get ready to do a movie and I love
to eat. And I said to you, I go, if
we do this movie together, I'm gonna hire us a chef.
I'll pay for it, and this chef will come down
and we're gonna eat whatever the fun we wanted. That's
(33:30):
why I loved you. And you look at you look
were like, wow, we could be away just forget about,
you know, driving ourselves crazy with all the let's go
down and make the movie. You haven't good. If we
feel like eating, we eat, and we don't feel like eating,
we don't eat. We have to go. And then you
cast what's his name in the nick I'm kidding, yes,
because he had to be a white looking Southerner. You
(33:53):
know what I mean. You're in New York. I love
that movie, did now watching those old you know cavots,
and on comes Brando and on comes this one and
that one from that generation of Bella Fonte when he
was young and all that civil rights activism. Were you
active then as well? I was supporting Bella apps for
Congress in like nineteen seventy nine, seventy I even supported
(34:17):
Mayo Lindsay, who was a Republican, because I liked him.
I liked the way he spoke, you know, I thought
he was a leader. He was a leader, and he
was fair and he was believed in justice, and I
just liked him. He was also adorable looking. Um So,
you know, it's like, you know what happened when I
(34:38):
sang in Houston, by the way, before the storm. I
invited the Bushes President H. W. Bush, I mean, Umte
and Barbara Bush to come to my concert. And they
came and I gave him socks because I heard he
(34:58):
collect socks. And came backstage and she brought me a
pin and I gave her something. And they were just
so lovely. Even now. I wrote them to see if
they were okay. How's their house? And they said, we're fine,
we're in Maine and this and that, you know. In
other words, you know, he had dignity, He had great dignity,
(35:19):
and she was an advocate for women's rights. I like
good people. That's why I can't quite understand what's happened
to this country. And it all it goes back to
women to women against women. Yesterday I was watching Hillary
being interviewed by somebody and the first question was so
(35:40):
rude by the woman, Well, how do you know that
the Democrats even want you around? When I when she
was running, there were three women who interviewed her as well,
and they were so the faces scrunched up, you know,
on television, going well, so are you trustworthy? Are you
(36:02):
not trustworthy? I mean, they would like shockingly rude attitudes.
And I told her chief of staff, you know, I
think you should be interviewed by men. They're going to
be nicer to her than the women of white women
voted for Donald Trump. Now, how do you figure that?
(36:25):
I saw her on the view this morning, and I
think I would have said if he was in my
space like that, I don't think you have to call
him a creep, but you could say, you know, you're
going to get your own time, They're gonna they're going
to ask you a question, and would you like me
to stand behind you in the shot? I don't think so,
So if you don't mind, can you do that? If
(36:48):
she did that to him, I used that phrase and
appended to a lot of things. If she had done
that to him, if she had said that about him.
So you sing at Clinton's inauguration, you're close to Clinton.
The old Clinton years and the nineties they were and
they were great. And I have my criticisms of Clinton.
I have my criticisms of him and his policy. What
did you criticize about his poeticist peace is a quaint idea?
(37:11):
Now you never hear these people running for office talk
about peace and a policy and a strategy to get
us to peace. We were in a state of perpetual war.
We spend trillions of dollars and I may trillions with
a tea that we don't have, that we don't I mean,
I am, I am. I make it very simple for myself.
I read. I have a copy. I carry it around
(37:32):
in a folder of my favorite writings that I have,
And one of them is Eisenhower's Farewell Addressed and the
cointing the phase of the Military Industrial Couple complex. Send
it to me. But he says, you know, every missile
that is fired, we lose this, and every bomb that
we dropped we cost us this. And he refers to
this world in arms, Eisenhower's and Eisenhower the last man
(37:54):
to be elected president by acclamation, a man who did
not want the job, and everyone around him said, you
won World War two, you got to run for this job.
You gotta do this. And Eisenhower, the hood ornament of
the American military machine, walks out the door and says,
watch out for these people. He wanted the military, military
industrial military industrial complex. And he basically say, they make
(38:17):
money from war. They have too much power. And we've
lived and it keeps getting progressively worse and worse and
worse where And I don't think Clinton was Hillary Clinton
voted for the war in Iraq. It was the one
thing that really upset that. That was almost a deal
breaker from me, almost. But you have to remember this
because I've discussed this with her and President Clinton. She
(38:41):
at the time thought that Bush would keep his word.
Bush and they were supposed to go to the u N.
They were supposed to have weapons inspectors um make sure
that there was you know, nothing there that that wasn't done.
We had weapons inspectors because I used to talk to
Scott Ritter, who was a weapons inspector there for seven years,
(39:04):
and he said, there are no weapons left and if
there were any chemical weapons, they have a shelf life there.
They don't work, that's what we saw. But they weren't
even allowed to even complete anything. They certainly never went
to the U, to the U N. And all of
a sudden, you know there were in the war. Without
(39:26):
picking someone in a current menu of candidates, what do
you think we need to run in to beat Trump?
What kind of person think is going to take? Forget
about man or woman? Is gonna be a person who
does water, who says what, who says the truth, truth
(39:47):
is everything. I mean, that's what kills me. I love
the truth. I love the power of the truth. You
have to believe that person, and you have to believe
they stand for what American values are supposed to mean,
not like in the new Gingrich way of whatever that
is American values, but to be for justice, to be
(40:09):
for diversity, to be respectful, to accept change, to accept change.
That in New York, I'll never forget the Daily News.
I mean, yes, this is a fact. I suppose when
the when the census came out in or two thousand,
you have ten years of the Daily News put on
the cover that white New Yorkers were now the plurality
(40:32):
that they were under, that the city had now become
fifty one literally Black, Asian, Hispanic, and so forth, that
white New Yorkers and all five boroughs represented less than
and I thought, well, that may be true, but what
are you promoting when you write that? And that's going
(40:52):
to happen in this country? White privilege as we understand it,
and white people. I'm not saying we're gonna become Rhodesia,
but it's I think that people who accept change, what
choice do you have but to accept change, that this
world we live in is gonna become more and more
diverse in terms of people's sexual identity and women in
power and things like that. And I find that the Democrats,
(41:15):
I mean, I'm very critical of them as well. The
Democrats will say almost anything to get elected. I don't
think so well. I think the Republicans will say anything together,
Like there's a difference for Democrats almost anything, and the
Republicans will say the Democrats are too nice. That's what
I've signed, Yeah, they don't. I always wanted to run
because I'm not very nice, and I wanted to be
(41:36):
the you'd probably be a hit. I wanted to be
the more two fistic Democrats. That's what that's what it
should be. You have to say it like it israt
You have to be tough. That's actually what I said
when I first met Obama. I said, we did a
fundraiser for him and it raised eleven million dollars that night,
and um, I sat with him for and I said,
(42:00):
are you tough enough? That was my first question to him.
Of course I'm tough, you know, But I mean, this
is a terrible thing to say. But okay, and I
know it can't be done. But when Russia was suspected
of invading our democracy, I thought to myself, why aren't
(42:20):
they postponing the election? How do you have an election
now when Russia is hacking us? Do it over? Don't
we do it over? That's what I thought. And whenever
I've said it to anybody, they go, you can't do that.
Why not? It is weird and the result of the
(42:44):
election it is entirely false. But let it stand, because
to change the country couldn't happen. No, I mean, look
at the difference. I'm going to write an article actually
about this next week about the difference in America. Yeah,
the difference in America. What it would be like if
hill we were president, Do you realize that women and
girls could hold their head up high? She and Angela
(43:07):
Merkel would be running the free world to see the Woman.
You know, Wonder Woman movie. It was fantastic because women
were in charge. Women are nurturing, and women can be
tough and make decisions that are based on compassion and wisdom.
(43:30):
You know, even in the Jewish religion, women the Orthodox
Jewish religion, which I am not, but men have to
say certain prayers every day, but women have to say
less prayers because they are closer to God, because they
are creative. They they birth babies, they feed those babies,
they nurtured them. After it does my wife reminds me
(43:52):
of that every day. Actually, well that's good, different remember now,
but it is true. But I think what we're missing
with Trump is compassion, kindness, respect. What I like that
you said is that we're missing honestly and honesty is everything.
Could we just be honest, We'll get through everything. We
(44:13):
can't understand the news It was like he was a farce.
He was a disrespectful woman. But don't you see stress,
Stress is causing me to eat you know more than
I I'm on the side get hot I'm something grilled cheese. Yeah, um,
(44:36):
it's and it's you know, I found out that when
you're stressed, you cortisol levels raising, and cortisol makes you
gain weight. Yes, so I was. I was away with
some friends for a week. I didn't read a book.
I played games, which I played to fall asleep at
night because after looking at TV and reading the news,
(44:59):
I I can't all asleep, so I have to play backgammon.
You know, I'm gin so. I mean, it was such
an interesting thing for you, who's an eater too. Every
day we had bread and butter, you know, every day
we ate pasta in Italy. Every day we had desserts
(45:19):
with sugar. We gained nothing maybe two hours. We just
let it go, not having to wallow with her. I'll
never forget Kathleen Turner. She said this on this show.
She was one of my first guests. And I said
to you, you were married your husband Jay, you got
divorces and you never got married again. I said, do
you do do you miss that? Do you want to
(45:40):
be with somebody? And she said, alec, I put the
key in the door of my apartment, and the thing
that makes me most happy as I know that there's
nobody on the other side of that door I walk in,
I can do whatever I want to do. I don't
have to ask anybody's permission. And she really was happy
to be single, and you you don't like to be single,
(46:02):
but I was for a long time. But no, I
like looking forward to my husband coming home and you know,
waiting for him to so we could eat together. Yeah. Absolutely,
and he enjoys food too. I mean, we just take
trips up to Santa Barbara just to get an ice
cream cone from McConnell's, my favorite flavor of Brazilian coffee,
(46:23):
which they don't sell in points in the market. You
have to go there or like now, I can't have
it in my freezer because I'll eat the whole pint.
I just start with a little and a cone just
you know, well it's melting around the edges and I'll
just eat that part and just no, it's gone to me.
There's that familiar sound. I'll be watching the news and
(46:43):
it's like ten o'clock and night I'd be eating a
late night pint of ice cream, and then all of
a sudden, I hear that unmistakable sound of the spoon
scraping the bottom of the I go, oh my god,
how did that happen? But how come your thin? How
did you lose weight? I started sugar. Sugar was my nemesis.
I'm pre diabetic and my numbers were tragic. And they
said to me, you're gonna start shooting over and they
(47:07):
said you're gonna start having to shoot insulin if you
don't get with us. So I still, uh, do bad
things of you now and nowhere near. I mean, I
was somebody that ate. I was. I was truly. I
can say this without without hesitation. I was an ice
cream addict, Greaters having Greater's ice cream. You have to
(47:27):
look one day, when you're cheating, you have to try McConnell's.
Do you like coffee, Okay, that's the greatest coffee. They
were so sweet mcconnald's. Because when I did my last
movie with Seth Rogan, I had to eat ice cream.
So I said, I have to have the ice cream
from Santa Barbara. But I had them try something that
(47:50):
Will Writes used to do that went out of business.
They had chocolate covered chocolate that sounded so Brooklyn. Chocolate
covered chocolate covered almonds in the coffee ice cream, so
I asked them to make that flavor. But now people
develop nut allergies, so they hardly put nuts. You have
nut allergies, What do we care about people without allergies?
(48:13):
And we don't have No, we do care about them.
But now I just read they discovered a drug that
will take away nut allergies. Do you ever read the
magazine called The Week? I love The Week, and I
read an article in there that talked about as a
drug now to take away not allergies. My last question,
you're fagging into trouble because I want to take you
(48:34):
to dinner and have the McConnell's wait if you want
to come back now, I will. And that is when
you sing, you know, people will hear your voice and
they melts them. It really gets to them. You know,
you're the greatest female vocalist of all time. Oh you're
so sweet. I don't know other women who I love.
(48:56):
I'm not dismissing them, but you're the greatest female vocalist ever.
What a compliment. And when you go into the studio,
when you go to record, I'm assuming there's a passion,
there's a connection as a soul. I love recording because
it's private and there it's just me and the music.
(49:16):
You know, I could look like crap. I don't have
to dress up. I don't have to put makeup on.
And it's just it's just the sound and the musicians,
the the the instruments and what I can hear and
and say, oh, I could hear a string line here
with a sound. And I don't read music, but I'll
have to go. You know, it's that that note. What
(49:39):
is it? I don't know, but it's that chord, that chord,
you know. I mean, it's just that's fun for me.
Does that singing make you happy that you can do that? Um? Yeah,
it does. I can hear things that I thought, oh shoot,
I should have done that over it's not the right take.
(50:01):
I mean whatever, but no. I I liked when when
we put out a new album and serious radio plays
my songs twenty four hours a day, and I happened
to have the radio on. I think that was good,
very sweet. Imagine. I want to say, I love you.
I love you too. You're the greatest, You're the greatest.
(50:25):
More live more. The more I learned, the more I
really like it, The less I know each step I
take pop, I have a voice, page, I turned, I tice,
(50:49):
I travel, leave the more to give, you can fle
So why settle fun? Just stoppa s. I can't hear you, Papa,
(51:27):
I can see you, Pa. I can't feed you. This
(52:00):
is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing,
h
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
In recognition of the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony, we offer
you a special week of conversations from our archives with
guests who have actually won an Oscar and one guest
who was a current Oscar nominee. We begin with Barbara
(00:21):
streisand Don't tell Me not to Live just sitting cut up.
There really are no words to describe the talent, the career,
the woman that is Barbara streisand Don't streisand first on
(00:43):
the scene in nineteen sixty four with Funny Girl on Broadway,
Right when it felt like the suburbs and McCarthy ism
might go on forever, the Beatles show up on the
Ed Sullivan Show, and on Broadway along comes this phenomenon,
this totally new, unusual, gorgeous, nakedly ambitious Jewish girl from
Brooklyn in close, so wildly bright they blow out your
(01:07):
new color TV affection. She kept her name, she kept
her nose, she kept that accent. She could not be
more different from what wasp culture told women they should be.
New York is just full of unusual and interesting girls.
(01:27):
Who was starting out in the show business, but few
of them have the style as early as this young lady.
She's nineteen years old. Her name is Barbara Streisand and
then she gets on stage. She's grounded, she's powerful, and
she's got the greatest voice America has ever heard than
(01:53):
a male. Over the following years, we also learned she's
a great dress Here she is trying to win Redford's
love in the way we were sure. I make waves.
I mean, you have to, and I'll keep making them
until your every wonderful thing you should be and will be.
You'll never find anyone as good for you as I am.
To believe in you as much as I do, I
(02:14):
love you as much. Well not why Streisand develops a
reputation for being difficult and for being a bit of
a recluse. She gets married, divorced, has a kid, but
all the while she just keeps getting better and more famous,
until she's this unique character in American culture, a megastar
(02:36):
on her own terms. Since we first met in ninet,
we become friends. We talked at her home in southern California.
By the way, still to do me a favor, take
the clock and make sure it works like it needs
batteries or wounder. Okay, thank you so much. You walk
(03:02):
around the house and you have you just that just goes.
How is this not taken care of? You? See, to
work for somebody like you or me, you have to
understand the artist's temperament. People don't see that. The time
is wrong. I wasn't going to start with this, but
I'll ask you. But I'll ask you because that instinctive
(03:27):
I for detail and just thinking all the time about
I want this, I want this, I want this. Is
that what naturally propelled you into directing films? Yes? That,
and also it was something that happened during the way
we were where two scenes were cut out that were
intrinsic to the value of the story. And it made
(03:50):
me so crazy that they couldn't see that that propelled
you went to that propelled me into it. I couldn't
understand it. And it's hard to call all with a
you know, a hit movie. I don't know if it
was a hit at the time. Tell you the truth,
it's grown to me. It was Warren Beatty said to me, once,
(04:11):
is it until you take ultimate responsibility and you're willing
to direct the movie you're gonna be constantly frustrated. And
he said, you must consider that if it was so delicious.
And it's like, you know, when you finally have the
power to control your work, you you get very humble
(04:31):
in a sense. It's like I wanted to give power
away to other people as well. You know, I would say,
to my standing, you run that course with the cameraman,
this is the shot, but I want you to be
able to tell me where to stand. In other words,
it's a feeling of such gratitude where you you never
(04:53):
have to raise your voice because everybody's finally listening. You
don't have to get angry about anything they weren't listening before.
Sometimes well sometimes when I would say things as just
an actress, like this is what I'm telling you, this
story the way we were, it went um on deaf ears.
(05:14):
You know, they didn't agree with me whatever. But when
you see something so clearly, um, that's wrong to me
or what could be right? Or see I had such
a great time directing Yental because I did it in
England and in Czechoslovakia. In England, they're not afraid of women,
(05:36):
powerful women, strong women because they had a queen. They
have a queen and at the time they had the
Prime Minister who was Margaret Thatcher. So I was shocked
at the respect that I had as a first time director.
I couldn't believe it. Um and the crew was so
(05:58):
kind and just. It was the most wonderful experience, I
must say. And even the Czechoslovakian government was wonderful to
me because I needed Jews to be in the synagogue
and pray and so for then, you know, it was
during communist times, and they went to the Jewish community,
(06:21):
thank God, and had them come so I didn't have
to teach them how to be Jewish, you know, how
to Jews. Jews was an Italian dresses Jews in New
York where they have to say, well, how do you
stand in a synagogue and how do you pray? And
it was it was wonderful. And also well you know,
when you have extras in Czechoslovakia, then they didn't give
(06:45):
them lunch, so that the people would come with like
bags of their lunch, which broke my heart. So I would,
you know, give them our food, which we never had vegetables.
We had a cent to London or France or it
to get vegetables. Because you know, their food diet was
like hot trunk. I loved it, of course, bread and
(07:06):
butter and hot chocolate in the morning with whipped creamers.
I was one heaven and I wanted to be thinner
but well, and every day I would not every day,
but every few days I would bring in past these,
you know, with that delicious dough in the meat inside.
And we'd always have the most delicious teas that I'd
bring in those cream like doughnuts shaped like a hot
(07:30):
dog from Whimpys, and you know, eat this delicious cream
with the doughnuts. Oh my god, it was so good,
and they it was very sweet. Because the whole crew
wrote a letter that's one of my prized possessions, I
must say. And they wrote this letter to the newspapers
(07:50):
and it said that you know, Ms try said something
like Ms try Sand never raises her voice and has
a smile for us every day, and it's like not
the stories we've heard about her, and no newspaper would
publish it, but it figures it's like Hillary Clinton, as
you said, the upside of that experience where the Yente
(08:13):
was working in a culture where the power of women
was just accepted and I'm crestfall and to say the
least about what happened here, not just because this guy won,
but I really do think misogyny and well, in four
I did get some sort of award from women in
film directing Yental, and a lot of my speech was
(08:35):
about women against women, because the reviews of Yente from
women were vicious, you know, in other words, they didn't
even talk about this celebration of womanhood, that a woman
could not only you know, make dinner and have babies,
(08:58):
but she could have an select she could want to study,
be something more. What do it men do? Just equality?
You know. So to read a review that said her
she wore a design in the New York Times, she
wore a designer yamaka. Now everything, every piece of clothing
(09:20):
in that movie was authentic. That same year there was
the film directed by Ingmar Bergmann Fanny and Alexander. They
wore the same yamica, but nobody attacked that film. I
love detail, so I would, you know, for years, I
would do research about Polish Jews, about these Jews that
Jews everything, the Evil Institute in New York um talking
(09:46):
to scholars studying Talmud, just to bring that because I
do believe that when you study like that and do
the research, you don't have to act that It's like
the camera picks up the truth, even just behind your eyes,
in the sound of your voice, whatever it is mine.
(10:07):
You know. I had this wonderful shot, I thought, as
it cuts from a chicken coop to me sitting behind
the bars up separated from the men in the shool,
and that shot was attacked by this woman critic, Janet Maslin.
Her name was now she could attack my lip sincer.
That's true. I'm a terrible lip sinker. I can't do
(10:30):
it because when I did movies like Funny Girl or
Hello Dolly, you know, they record the soundtrack three months
before you shoot, and I have to be in the
moment as an actor. I don't know how I'm going
to feel when I actually perform it. So that's why
when I did the movie Star Is Born, It's all real,
it's all um, I had a relic I did not want.
(10:53):
I needed to be free, to be in the moment,
so we recorded on the spot. What do you call
that live? It is all live? And then what I
would do is um. Because I had final cut on
that movie, I could control those things. Um, we would
shoot the close ups first, so where the performance really counted,
(11:15):
and then I would just choose it right on the spot, okay,
I think, And I would do about one to four takes.
You know, all these stories about me like I do
millions of takes, most of them are false. And so
let's say I would take take three, you know, and
then move the cameras back to do the wider shot
because you didn't have to see me close, you know,
(11:37):
not doing the lip sync. Good. I did a documentary
film about Can. It's ostensibly about Can and Ryan Gosling.
We corner him at at an hotel. I think I
saw it. Jimmy Toback and I did this thing called
Seduced and Abandoned, and we get Gosling at the Beverly
Hills Hotel or the bel Air Hotel. I should say,
(11:57):
any long story short, as he has this beautiful explication
of how agonizing it is to shoot films, and just
in that kind of Arthur Murray by numbers way, we
have to shoot a match to this, to this. It
can't be fresh and it's painful. And that's why I
love long takes, because I think I'm from the theater
and we had to do a whole show, right, So
I don't like pieces. I mean, you I the fun
(12:20):
of directing to me is designing the shot, the camera
accommodating the actors. So the actors. There's a lot of
scenes in Gentle that you can see like this. They're
all in one move practically. In other words, we come
in through a door and I'm in the foreground, let's say,
(12:41):
But he who's following me, the my lead actor who
was Mandy Pattinken at a time, and he still is
but um, you know, we see him standing there, and
then he comes forward and I sit down. He becomes
he's standing up with the camera never moved, but you
see everything. Then the camera moves as we're together, but
(13:05):
it doesn't cut. And then he has you know, when
when he leaves me, you see him go out the door.
He slams the door and the camera moves in a
little bit. As I'm thinking about it, that's the scene.
But it's what's fun about that is that we're all
on our toes. You can't make a mistake. And most
(13:26):
of these shots that I do that there's no coverage.
That the greatest one of the very little coverage the
actors played the scene in the frame. That's right now now,
in the time that you made films, the many years
you've made films, successful acting and not directing, successful as
(13:48):
a director and producer, and all those things. Where there
are people that you wanted to work with, whether people
you sat there, guy, I'd love to make a film
with that person because you've been in such a privileged
place and had these people available to Was there a
director that you dreamed of working with you didn't get
to work with. Well Ing Ma Bergman is a person
that contacted me to do a remake of The Merry Widow.
(14:11):
And I was so excited, you know, and I came
to um Sweden and we embraced and it was this
wonderful embrace, you know. I mean he, I can't explain
what that what that's like. It's was just he he
sort of understood me, and I understood him without any words.
(14:37):
And the first act of that screenplay was fantastic, I mean,
very body uh kind of shocking. I loved it, you know.
So then and when I have letters now, I forget
things until I have to go into my archives and
look at this stuff. Letters from him and notes that
(14:57):
I wrote back to him talking about this film and
what happened the second act. You know, he says we're
going to be collaborators, and the second act was not
very good. I thought it was like like Jevas Amadeus.
(15:19):
I'm sure the first act was extraordinary to me in
the movie, and the second act was, I don't know,
just somehow repetitious. It It didn't go far enough in
the story, you know. And that's the way I felt
about this. And all of a sudden it was gone.
(15:40):
The collaboration was over. We never made the film, and
I couldn't quite believe it. I mean, the fact that
I didn't like certain things in the second act did
he liked? Well, he never defended it. It was like,
you know, I think that's right and so but I
(16:01):
would have loved to work with Berto Lucci. And you
know what I did. I realized this now and looking
back at my life, I turned down Alice doesn't live
here anymore. I turned down a lot of films actually
because I was lazy. I'm basically I'm a dichotomy here,
a dichotomy lazy and um, I don't know what the
(16:26):
word is, restless, restless maybe, yeah, like wanting to create
about you. It would be called the lazy and the restless.
Oh no, that's a very good time, exactly exactly. I
love to take a vacation and do nothing. I like
(16:49):
to have no appointments. And I think that's a condition
in my mind of people who have tremendous not so
much financial success, but create of success. I mean there's
a famous actress who I won't name you. Wait, you
know what do you want to take a sip of
soup on your Do you want soup to I'll have
(17:09):
a soup. I mean we kind of say no. Well,
I mean this is a I'm irish. It's bad luck
to say no to soup? Is that in Ireland? I
just made that up? Oh just put that over here.
Oh see, I just brought this table from the back
and we need another table maybe over here because this
is me, so soup, don't rebout me. I'm great. I mean,
(17:31):
in other words, people know we eat, right, so if
they hear it's okay, good good, good good, because I
always like to eat. Oh really know you know you
won't mm hmm. That is delicious, isn't it unhealthy? Um?
What were we talking about restless and lazy. When I
(17:53):
would talk to McCartney about the Beatles, he said to me,
is it was hard work. Later on when they gain
creative control of their material and it's like anybody, then
they take a year to do another album. But in
the beginning they really worked like dogs, you know. And
for you, I'm wondering in the beginning when you do Broadway,
are you out there and you're just so pumped and
(18:15):
excited and you're young, and everyone's glorifying you and loving
what you're putting out there, and you really love you said,
they're going, I don't want to do this show eight
times a week, like what happened to you in the beginning,
where you excited and game in the In the beginning,
I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to prove to
my mother that I could be a success. You know.
It comes from that. It's like really deep. It's deep
(18:38):
and quiet. It's not loud, by the way. It's not
what makes Sammy run. It's quiet. It really is um.
But again, you can feel that passion, you can feel
that need to be seen somehow. Because I wasn't seen
much by my I didn't I love my father. How
(19:01):
your dad passed away fifteen months but my mother said
that after he died, I would climb up on the
window waiting for him to come home, because I used
to do that, I guess as a baby, and wait
for him and he would come home. And in a sense,
I've idolized my father because he was a PhD. He
(19:24):
was a teacher, which I so respect teachers, and he
wrote poems, and he was artistic, and he was an
athlete as well as a debater, you know, and he
was in part of French dramatics and English literature. And
(19:44):
I didn't read his thesis until many years later because
as an actress when I was sixteen, I was fascinated
by Eleanora Dusa and Sarah Bernhardt, wanting to be an actress,
and my father's book bos were tied up in the
basement of our Brooklyn apartment, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, all
(20:06):
the great novels. I read, uh, what do you call it?
Nancy Drew Mysteries. I read movie magazines, you know, and
dream that someday maybe I could be famous. Did you
have that dream? Then? When you were here, I would
have my pint of coffee ice cream, briers and sit
(20:28):
in my bed and dream, go to the movies sometimes
on a Saturday afternoon. The Lowise Kings. We had the
greatest ice cream, and we also well, yeah, you're you're,
you're like me. Somebody'll say, what was the best part
of the summer, I'd say, what is this restaurant that
has the best coffee ice cream with chocolate covered handelnuts?
(20:49):
Watching who in the on screen? If to the extent
you want to say, or we call somebody you watched
with Visio, Yeah, that's it. I want to do something
like that. Not dar Day. I mean, really it was well.
I loved Marjorie Morning Star because I knew the summer
places in where I was sent to camp in the Catskills,
(21:12):
or my mother and stepfather when they came to visit me.
I didn't know my mother was married, and I said,
I'm going home from here. What do you mean you
didn't know your mother got married. She never told me
because he was a boyfriend for a while, I guess
he was around. No, I never met him before, but
when I insisted, see I was as I was a
(21:34):
strong kid. So my mother came to visit me with
the stranger, and I said, I'm going home. I'm not
staying here another day longer, so we have to pack
me up. I think I was seven and a half maybe,
so for a long time of your youth you were
raised by him. He was on the scene when homes
in your life, he's in my life, the stranger. How
(21:57):
did he handle you? Didn't like me, he didn't like you. Why,
it's exactly right. Was the connection with him such as
it was, because the connection with your mother also was
a bit thinner than you might have liked compared to
your feelings for your father. I grew up in a
house where my dad was my idol. I idolized my
(22:20):
dad and my mom. My older sister and I, we
were her lieutenants, chores, chores, And your mom didn't push
him or cajole him, or try to get him to
never your Your relationship with your mom was a little
less than it wasn't your feeling towards your father well,
or your head over heels in love with your mother? No, no, no, no.
(22:41):
I I felt that she didn't know me, She didn't
know could she. I don't think my mother knows me either,
But I've seen now in my life. She couldn't she
wasn't capable. My mother never said to me, my mother's alive.
And I wrote this in my book. She never once
to me, what's it like to be you? When you
(23:02):
get up there and do that? What do you enjoy it?
To understand me? And I'm her son and her oldest son.
And where was the conversation about when I go through
in my life and my career. My mother never nothing
about that. My mother's love was shown through food she
would bring me when I was a young actress, you know.
(23:23):
And I moved away from home when I was sixteen,
from Brooklyn to New York. Got an apartment right next
to me. I graduated high school at uh sixteen erasmus, Yeah,
I graduated in three and a half years so I could.
(23:43):
I doubled my science and math, which I loved. I
love those subjects. You were desperate to get out of Brooklyn.
I was desperate to be an actress, to get away
from real life. Not a singer and actress, an actress,
Oh yeah. And my my singing was when I was
five and six and seven on the stoop in Brooklyn
(24:03):
with the girls, you know, singing and harmonizing that was
my singing, but my love was wanting to be an actress.
And so that's when I went to the library Street
Library and read the plays of these great actresses, you know,
and I wanted to be a classical actress. So part
of me still feels like a failure. You know. When
(24:24):
I wanted to do I wanted to play after I
was well known. I wanted to play the two Cleopatra's,
the one uh Caesar and Cleopatra and Anthony and Cleopatrick. Right,
so one is a child fourteen years old who I
thought it should be Orson Wells or Marlon Brando, fat,
(24:47):
you know, and then I would be even little well
fed um and hiding, you know from this man, and
then play the woman Cleopatra. And the television stations I
wanted to do it on TV, they said, well, is
it going to be a musical. I mean, you're gonna
add music. It's like they can't see that you could
(25:11):
do both. I mean, though you have to do the
music with the you know, absolutely awful feeling. I wanted
to play Romeo and Juliet and I got to do
it finally for Lee Strassburg at the studio, and it's
one of my I can't find the letter that they
(25:31):
wrote me too. Well, that's a whole long story, but uh,
to invite you to join the studio. Yeah. But when
I first auditioned for the studio, I was fifteen and
I was doing it with another guy who asked me
to just be in it. But they wrote me a
letter to say, do your own audition, And then when
I did, they found out I was fifteen and they
(25:51):
said come back when you're you know, eighteen. It's probably
a nice way of saying no, but um. So that's
why it was terrible. When I was in on Broadway,
I wrote on my play bill, I am not a
member of the Actor's Studio, because all the actors who
were would say a member of the actors Studio, and
(26:12):
I was piste off at them, you know, um, but
that was interesting. I did some of my best work
then when I was fifteen and sixteen, I played media,
you know, and did that great Aria after she killed
her kids, and you know, she says a line like,
you know something about this wound in the middle of myself.
(26:34):
What a brilliant line. I mean, I am a woman
and I with this wound in the middle of myself. Um,
I was good. Then do you see you're saying this
wound in the middle of myself at the actor's studio?
You know that was that was for um? Just I
did it in class? That scene from media? Where was
(26:54):
your class? You know what I would do? Then I
would Um I had another name, so I wanted I
didn't want to miss anything, So I went to two
different acting classes and gave a different name in one,
and then I used to to make money. You've got
four dollars and five cents. It was to be an
usher in the theater. So I would love to go
(27:16):
see the plays. But in a sense, I didn't have
enough money to see all the play. So I I
became an usher in the theater so I could see
the play. But meanwhile, I was sixteen seventeen, that kind
of age. I knew that I would be famous because
I would hide my head so they wouldn't see me
(27:37):
my face showing them to their seats, because I thought,
you know, when I become famous, they're going to recognize
me as the girl to showed them to their seats.
So how do you figure that that? That's something I
can't explain you. Really, there's a part of you that
knew you would end up doing what you did. And
I don't you know. And my mother didn't believe in me.
(27:58):
She's she kept telling me what your father did. Become
a teacher. You get you know, you get time off,
you get vacations, free vacations, summer's yeah, learn to type.
And that's when I let my nails grow along so
I couldn't type. I believe me. I wish I could type.
Now I have to dictate everything into all those things, French, typing,
(28:20):
cooking with with your mother. Did she eventually come around?
I mean, how could she not come around with everything
you've done. I think I was really just trying to
prove to her that I I could be famous. By
the way, as soon as I became famous, I didn't
like it. I don't like fame. I don't like stardom.
(28:43):
I only like the work, the creative work, that's all
I like. No shore pep that's streisand singing Lasha kio
(29:04):
pianga normally more of the domain of the world's great
opera singers like Renee Fleming, good yeah cool. Fleming told
(29:26):
me that she tried and struck out on two other
genres before she landed on opera. Had I grown up
in New York City, the singer songwriter thing might have opened.
Doors might have opened. I mean, I sang on television
in high school winning some talent show playing a song
that I wrote. Then I tried to pursue jazz then,
and that didn't work. Despite the fact that Eastman had
(29:48):
a phenomenal jazz department, I just couldn't get in. She's
about to mix it up again. Her Broadway debut is
set for next spring in a revival of Carousel. Take
a listen to the rest of Rene Fleming story on
Here's the Thing Dot Org. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
(30:14):
listening to Here's the Thing. With no formal voice training
and no money to kick start a career, Streisand relied
on raw talent to build herself up and the wiles
of a man who happened to hear her at a
small Greenwich village club called the Bon Soir. Martyrlickman was
a music manager and almost as young and hungry as
(30:35):
Barbara herself. He used his slim Rolodex and razors sharp
pr instincts to help build Barbara's image into what it
is today. I met Marty at the Bons when he
came one night. I was nineteen, and he saw me
as the first act, the opening act, and said, if
you ever need me, kid, I was. I was kept
(30:56):
over at the bonsa many times, but then I couldn't
get a job. Finally I got a job and they
were paying me something like seventy dollars a week or
a hundred dollars. A hundred dollars a week. But I
could eat, you know, so if people wanted me to
sit down, I would order a baked potato, sour cream
(31:17):
and chives and butter. So but I couldn't make a living.
I really needed more. So I called Marty and I said,
you know, is there any way you could get me
a hundred and fifty dollars a week. Marty told me
many years later that he actually paid the fifty dollars
because they wouldn't go for the the raise. That's why
(31:41):
he's such a great person. He invested in me. Yeah,
you've been with him now for how long? And it's like, well,
we separated for a while. For a few years. He
didn't get along with. The man in my life at
the time was John Peters. I've read the story before
or something like that. But then, believe me, we got
(32:02):
back as soon as I could. So that period is
over fifty years. But if you take out that, what
does he do for you now? What does he provide you?
And what does he provide for you? Now? You trust
him everything? He reads scripts, you know, and my full
on manager. Today is his birthday, by the ways, eight
years old, Happy birthday, Martyr. I was watching these um
(32:26):
you know, not just old cabot shows where um famous
actors would come on. Is it a spring roll? Is
it meat? I think this one is a vegetarian? Or
are you a vegetarian? I don't I don't need beef.
Does there eat the light one? Yeah? I think it's chicken?
(32:47):
Is it Isn't that good? I remember I was sitting
in your apartment years ago. I was a very hungry
one work and just Corman was there and you were
going to do Prince of Tie. I came to meet
with you. I remember the print sometimes and you're woman
who took care of your apartment came in and you said,
(33:08):
you said, yeah, I'll eat a little something. I could
eat a little something. I could eat a little something.
And she would to bring us some cruder tay or
crackers or whatever some spreads. You looked at me and
you said, oh god, I kind of you know. I'm
gonna get ready to do a movie and I love
to eat. And I said to you, I go, if
we do this movie together, I'm gonna hire us a chef.
I'll pay for it, and this chef will come down
and we're gonna eat whatever the fun we wanted. That's
(33:30):
why I loved you. And you look at you look
were like, wow, we could be away just forget about,
you know, driving ourselves crazy with all the let's go
down and make the movie. You haven't good. If we
feel like eating, we eat, and we don't feel like eating,
we don't eat. We have to go. And then you
cast what's his name in the nick I'm kidding, yes,
because he had to be a white looking Southerner. You
(33:53):
know what I mean. You're in New York. I love
that movie, did now watching those old you know cavots,
and on comes Brando and on comes this one and
that one from that generation of Bella Fonte when he
was young and all that civil rights activism. Were you
active then as well? I was supporting Bella apps for
Congress in like nineteen seventy nine, seventy I even supported
(34:17):
Mayo Lindsay, who was a Republican, because I liked him.
I liked the way he spoke, you know, I thought
he was a leader. He was a leader, and he
was fair and he was believed in justice, and I
just liked him. He was also adorable looking. Um So,
you know, it's like, you know what happened when I
(34:38):
sang in Houston, by the way, before the storm. I
invited the Bushes President H. W. Bush, I mean, Umte
and Barbara Bush to come to my concert. And they
came and I gave him socks because I heard he
(34:58):
collect socks. And came backstage and she brought me a
pin and I gave her something. And they were just
so lovely. Even now. I wrote them to see if
they were okay. How's their house? And they said, we're fine,
we're in Maine and this and that, you know. In
other words, you know, he had dignity, He had great dignity,
(35:19):
and she was an advocate for women's rights. I like
good people. That's why I can't quite understand what's happened
to this country. And it all it goes back to
women to women against women. Yesterday I was watching Hillary
being interviewed by somebody and the first question was so
(35:40):
rude by the woman, Well, how do you know that
the Democrats even want you around? When I when she
was running, there were three women who interviewed her as well,
and they were so the faces scrunched up, you know,
on television, going well, so are you trustworthy? Are you
(36:02):
not trustworthy? I mean, they would like shockingly rude attitudes.
And I told her chief of staff, you know, I
think you should be interviewed by men. They're going to
be nicer to her than the women of white women
voted for Donald Trump. Now, how do you figure that?
(36:25):
I saw her on the view this morning, and I
think I would have said if he was in my
space like that, I don't think you have to call
him a creep, but you could say, you know, you're
going to get your own time, They're gonna they're going
to ask you a question, and would you like me
to stand behind you in the shot? I don't think so,
So if you don't mind, can you do that? If
(36:48):
she did that to him, I used that phrase and
appended to a lot of things. If she had done
that to him, if she had said that about him.
So you sing at Clinton's inauguration, you're close to Clinton.
The old Clinton years and the nineties they were and
they were great. And I have my criticisms of Clinton.
I have my criticisms of him and his policy. What
did you criticize about his poeticist peace is a quaint idea?
(37:11):
Now you never hear these people running for office talk
about peace and a policy and a strategy to get
us to peace. We were in a state of perpetual war.
We spend trillions of dollars and I may trillions with
a tea that we don't have, that we don't I mean,
I am, I am. I make it very simple for myself.
I read. I have a copy. I carry it around
(37:32):
in a folder of my favorite writings that I have,
And one of them is Eisenhower's Farewell Addressed and the
cointing the phase of the Military Industrial Couple complex. Send
it to me. But he says, you know, every missile
that is fired, we lose this, and every bomb that
we dropped we cost us this. And he refers to
this world in arms, Eisenhower's and Eisenhower the last man
(37:54):
to be elected president by acclamation, a man who did
not want the job, and everyone around him said, you
won World War two, you got to run for this job.
You gotta do this. And Eisenhower, the hood ornament of
the American military machine, walks out the door and says,
watch out for these people. He wanted the military, military
industrial military industrial complex. And he basically say, they make
(38:17):
money from war. They have too much power. And we've
lived and it keeps getting progressively worse and worse and
worse where And I don't think Clinton was Hillary Clinton
voted for the war in Iraq. It was the one
thing that really upset that. That was almost a deal
breaker from me, almost. But you have to remember this
because I've discussed this with her and President Clinton. She
(38:41):
at the time thought that Bush would keep his word.
Bush and they were supposed to go to the u N.
They were supposed to have weapons inspectors um make sure
that there was you know, nothing there that that wasn't done.
We had weapons inspectors because I used to talk to
Scott Ritter, who was a weapons inspector there for seven years,
(39:04):
and he said, there are no weapons left and if
there were any chemical weapons, they have a shelf life there.
They don't work, that's what we saw. But they weren't
even allowed to even complete anything. They certainly never went
to the U, to the U N. And all of
a sudden, you know there were in the war. Without
(39:26):
picking someone in a current menu of candidates, what do
you think we need to run in to beat Trump?
What kind of person think is going to take? Forget
about man or woman? Is gonna be a person who
does water, who says what, who says the truth, truth
(39:47):
is everything. I mean, that's what kills me. I love
the truth. I love the power of the truth. You
have to believe that person, and you have to believe
they stand for what American values are supposed to mean,
not like in the new Gingrich way of whatever that
is American values, but to be for justice, to be
(40:09):
for diversity, to be respectful, to accept change, to accept change.
That in New York, I'll never forget the Daily News.
I mean, yes, this is a fact. I suppose when
the when the census came out in or two thousand,
you have ten years of the Daily News put on
the cover that white New Yorkers were now the plurality
(40:32):
that they were under, that the city had now become
fifty one literally Black, Asian, Hispanic, and so forth, that
white New Yorkers and all five boroughs represented less than
and I thought, well, that may be true, but what
are you promoting when you write that? And that's going
(40:52):
to happen in this country? White privilege as we understand it,
and white people. I'm not saying we're gonna become Rhodesia,
but it's I think that people who accept change, what
choice do you have but to accept change, that this
world we live in is gonna become more and more
diverse in terms of people's sexual identity and women in
power and things like that. And I find that the Democrats,
(41:15):
I mean, I'm very critical of them as well. The
Democrats will say almost anything to get elected. I don't
think so well. I think the Republicans will say anything together,
Like there's a difference for Democrats almost anything, and the
Republicans will say the Democrats are too nice. That's what
I've signed, Yeah, they don't. I always wanted to run
because I'm not very nice, and I wanted to be
(41:36):
the you'd probably be a hit. I wanted to be
the more two fistic Democrats. That's what that's what it
should be. You have to say it like it israt
You have to be tough. That's actually what I said
when I first met Obama. I said, we did a
fundraiser for him and it raised eleven million dollars that night,
and um, I sat with him for and I said,
(42:00):
are you tough enough? That was my first question to him.
Of course I'm tough, you know, But I mean, this
is a terrible thing to say. But okay, and I
know it can't be done. But when Russia was suspected
of invading our democracy, I thought to myself, why aren't
(42:20):
they postponing the election? How do you have an election
now when Russia is hacking us? Do it over? Don't
we do it over? That's what I thought. And whenever
I've said it to anybody, they go, you can't do that.
Why not? It is weird and the result of the
(42:44):
election it is entirely false. But let it stand, because
to change the country couldn't happen. No, I mean, look
at the difference. I'm going to write an article actually
about this next week about the difference in America. Yeah,
the difference in America. What it would be like if
hill we were president, Do you realize that women and
girls could hold their head up high? She and Angela
(43:07):
Merkel would be running the free world to see the Woman.
You know, Wonder Woman movie. It was fantastic because women
were in charge. Women are nurturing, and women can be
tough and make decisions that are based on compassion and wisdom.
(43:30):
You know, even in the Jewish religion, women the Orthodox
Jewish religion, which I am not, but men have to
say certain prayers every day, but women have to say
less prayers because they are closer to God, because they
are creative. They they birth babies, they feed those babies,
they nurtured them. After it does my wife reminds me
(43:52):
of that every day. Actually, well that's good, different remember now,
but it is true. But I think what we're missing
with Trump is compassion, kindness, respect. What I like that
you said is that we're missing honestly and honesty is everything.
Could we just be honest, We'll get through everything. We
(44:13):
can't understand the news It was like he was a farce.
He was a disrespectful woman. But don't you see stress,
Stress is causing me to eat you know more than
I I'm on the side get hot I'm something grilled cheese. Yeah, um,
(44:36):
it's and it's you know, I found out that when
you're stressed, you cortisol levels raising, and cortisol makes you
gain weight. Yes, so I was. I was away with
some friends for a week. I didn't read a book.
I played games, which I played to fall asleep at
night because after looking at TV and reading the news,
(44:59):
I I can't all asleep, so I have to play backgammon.
You know, I'm gin so. I mean, it was such
an interesting thing for you, who's an eater too. Every
day we had bread and butter, you know, every day
we ate pasta in Italy. Every day we had desserts
(45:19):
with sugar. We gained nothing maybe two hours. We just
let it go, not having to wallow with her. I'll
never forget Kathleen Turner. She said this on this show.
She was one of my first guests. And I said
to you, you were married your husband Jay, you got
divorces and you never got married again. I said, do
you do do you miss that? Do you want to
(45:40):
be with somebody? And she said, alec, I put the
key in the door of my apartment, and the thing
that makes me most happy as I know that there's
nobody on the other side of that door I walk in,
I can do whatever I want to do. I don't
have to ask anybody's permission. And she really was happy
to be single, and you you don't like to be single,
(46:02):
but I was for a long time. But no, I
like looking forward to my husband coming home and you know,
waiting for him to so we could eat together. Yeah. Absolutely,
and he enjoys food too. I mean, we just take
trips up to Santa Barbara just to get an ice
cream cone from McConnell's, my favorite flavor of Brazilian coffee,
(46:23):
which they don't sell in points in the market. You
have to go there or like now, I can't have
it in my freezer because I'll eat the whole pint.
I just start with a little and a cone just
you know, well it's melting around the edges and I'll
just eat that part and just no, it's gone to me.
There's that familiar sound. I'll be watching the news and
(46:43):
it's like ten o'clock and night I'd be eating a
late night pint of ice cream, and then all of
a sudden, I hear that unmistakable sound of the spoon
scraping the bottom of the I go, oh my god,
how did that happen? But how come your thin? How
did you lose weight? I started sugar. Sugar was my nemesis.
I'm pre diabetic and my numbers were tragic. And they
said to me, you're gonna start shooting over and they
(47:07):
said you're gonna start having to shoot insulin if you
don't get with us. So I still, uh, do bad
things of you now and nowhere near. I mean, I
was somebody that ate. I was. I was truly. I
can say this without without hesitation. I was an ice
cream addict, Greaters having Greater's ice cream. You have to
(47:27):
look one day, when you're cheating, you have to try McConnell's.
Do you like coffee, Okay, that's the greatest coffee. They
were so sweet mcconnald's. Because when I did my last
movie with Seth Rogan, I had to eat ice cream.
So I said, I have to have the ice cream
from Santa Barbara. But I had them try something that
(47:50):
Will Writes used to do that went out of business.
They had chocolate covered chocolate that sounded so Brooklyn. Chocolate
covered chocolate covered almonds in the coffee ice cream, so
I asked them to make that flavor. But now people
develop nut allergies, so they hardly put nuts. You have
nut allergies, What do we care about people without allergies?
(48:13):
And we don't have No, we do care about them.
But now I just read they discovered a drug that
will take away nut allergies. Do you ever read the
magazine called The Week? I love The Week, and I
read an article in there that talked about as a
drug now to take away not allergies. My last question,
you're fagging into trouble because I want to take you
(48:34):
to dinner and have the McConnell's wait if you want
to come back now, I will. And that is when
you sing, you know, people will hear your voice and
they melts them. It really gets to them. You know,
you're the greatest female vocalist of all time. Oh you're
so sweet. I don't know other women who I love.
(48:56):
I'm not dismissing them, but you're the greatest female vocalist ever.
What a compliment. And when you go into the studio,
when you go to record, I'm assuming there's a passion,
there's a connection as a soul. I love recording because
it's private and there it's just me and the music.
(49:16):
You know, I could look like crap. I don't have
to dress up. I don't have to put makeup on.
And it's just it's just the sound and the musicians,
the the the instruments and what I can hear and
and say, oh, I could hear a string line here
with a sound. And I don't read music, but I'll
have to go. You know, it's that that note. What
(49:39):
is it? I don't know, but it's that chord, that chord,
you know. I mean, it's just that's fun for me.
Does that singing make you happy that you can do that? Um? Yeah,
it does. I can hear things that I thought, oh shoot,
I should have done that over it's not the right take.
(50:01):
I mean whatever, but no. I I liked when when
we put out a new album and serious radio plays
my songs twenty four hours a day, and I happened
to have the radio on. I think that was good,
very sweet. Imagine. I want to say, I love you.
I love you too. You're the greatest, You're the greatest.
(50:25):
More live more. The more I learned, the more I
really like it, The less I know each step I
take pop, I have a voice, page, I turned, I tice,
(50:49):
I travel, leave the more to give, you can fle
So why settle fun? Just stoppa s. I can't hear you, Papa,
(51:27):
I can see you, Pa. I can't feed you. This
(52:00):
is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing,
h
Host
Alec Baldwin
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