March 4, 2021 • 40 mins
Before Jack Donaghy, before Jack Ryan and SNL, Alec Baldwin was studying to be a lawyer and interning on Capitol Hill. This episode, Alec sits down with Bob to share why he changed course, and how he made it as an actor. From nights working as a busboy at Studio 54, to his Emmy-award-winning performance in 30 Rock, Alec shares behind-the-scenes stories, including: how Soap Operas informed his work ethic, what he's learned from Lorne Michaels, and why he chooses projects based on his collaborators. Plus, Alec reveals one of the early inspirations for his podcast (spoiler: it's Howard Stern!)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of My
Heart Radio. Dustin Hoffman himself once said to me, he said, Alec,
we're all in line when it comes to getting our
hands on a good script. He said, we're all in line, Alec,
he said, some of us are just in a shorter line. Hi.
(00:25):
I'm Bob Pittman, and welcome to this episode of Math
and Magic Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. Today, we
have a guest who embodies the magic creativity. He's covered
the spectrum of acting, theater, TV movies in both the
commercial and critically acclaimed, and he's had huge successes in
comedy and drama. He's an active participant in the world,
(00:46):
and he was very early with his own podcast. He
did podcasts before podcasting was cool. He's Alec Baldwin. Ali
grew up on the south shore of Long Island, under
the shadow of Manhattan. He had early aspirations to be
a law here, but as he switched to acting, he
paid the dues with all kinds of jobs, from waiting
tables to being a lifeguard, and he was even a
(01:07):
bus boy at the legendary Studio fifty four. He's hosted
Saturday Night live more than anyone else and swept every
word possible with his role on thirty Rock. There is
so much to explore today. Welcome Ali, Thank you, Bob.
Good to talk to you. It's great to talk to you.
And here we are on the magic of audio. Before
we dig in today, I want to get you in
(01:28):
sixty seconds. You ready to go? Yes, sir? Do you
prefer early morning or late night? Late night, New York
City or Long Island, Long Island, New Yorker, California, New York?
Instagram or Twitter, Instagram, film or TV film? George Washington
University or New York University, n y You Jack Ryan
(01:52):
or Jack Donneghie, Jack Donneghee, uh Tennessee Williams or Eugene
O'Neill and the c Williams. Class sickle or classic rock, classical,
sweet or salty, salty cats or dogs Dogs Coffee is
for closers or ABC Always be closing, Always be closing, ABC,
(02:14):
Always be closing. It's about to get harder. Smartest person
you know, Bob Pittman, the head of My Heart Radio,
childhood hero Joe Namath, favorite play you've acted in, speet
car named Desire, Political hero John F. Kennedy. First job
I cut grass I was I was a lawn jockey
(02:35):
with a landscape company. Favorite director, Oh that's a good question, Uh, Scorsese,
favorite composer, Maller, Gustav Mahler, favorite sport, football, favorite movie theater,
snack the popcorn with the raisin NEETs in the popcorn.
Guilty pleasure, sleeping in. I got remarried and I have
(02:58):
five of the kids, so sleeping in. That's a healthy
pleasure around what's something you can't live without? It my wife?
And what would you be doing if you weren't an actor.
I'd probably be a lawyer. I think that's where I
was headed before I went to acting school. Okay, let's
get going. Let's jump in creative range. I want to
start with that. You know what sort of set you
(03:19):
apart from people is is that incredible range you have?
How did you get that range and the opportunity to
use it? Well, I think a lot of people have
this in common, which is it's not like it's a
plan you set out to execute. You know you you
you have a plan, and it doesn't always go according
to the plan. So you wind up being faced with
(03:41):
the choices you have and for me, those choices were
often very disparate choices. And then when thirty Rock came around,
that was the chance to jump in with some people
who I was very intimidated by them. You know, it's
one thing to save funny lines, it's another thing to
write it. And Tina and Robert, Carla and those people
they were you know, I got into that show and
(04:04):
just trying to fit in and watch them and try
to you know, serve the material as best I could.
But I found that everywhere I go, the rule is
always if the choices a B or C, and I
walk around going a B or CE, what's it gonna
be a B or C? And the answer, more often
than not is D. It's something completely not on the map.
(04:28):
And I've wound up going off and doing you know,
plays and TV shows and movies and things that I
never imagined I would do. I've talked to a lot
of people, and there's sort of this idea that that
great ideas and opportunities sort of hit you on the
head like a meteor. The best ideas are the best
opportunities were totally unforeseen, unexpected, And it sounds like that's
(04:49):
that's worked for you as well, well, you know, Lauren
Michaels came to me to do thirty Rock and this
is the best example. And I thought, oh god, I
don't want to do a sitcom. I don't want to
be I don't want to be a regular on a sitcom.
But when Lawrence said, did you want to sign a contract?
And I did the pilot and by the time we
were done touring the pilot, I said to myself, this
is fun. I mean it was. It was a lot
(05:10):
of fun to do the show. Like when you do
a drama, when you do a film, you're they're focused
and it's very intense and you're thinking, how can we
get the most out of this day? How can we
get the most out of shooting these scenes today because
we're not going to come back, you know, presumably where
we rarely come back. And shooting a comedy was I mean,
(05:30):
I cried laughing every day. They were the funniest people
I've ever met in my life. When you started out,
did you think you were going to one place? And
if so, what was that place? Was a comedy drama?
I think most people who started out as actors, you
look at a career, I think the most gleaming example
is Nicholson, where you do all these disparate roles, and
(05:53):
you play these very different roles, and you do all
these films where you have a great part. I mean,
who other than maybe Spencer, Tracy or Bogart has had
as many great films and his acting is what made
them great. And Nicholson kind of stands alone, you know,
in the modern world, Pacino, de Niro, Warren Beatty, Newman, Redford,
(06:17):
all that crowd, Dustin Hoffman. But Nicholson has played so
many disparate roles. Hoffman too, I mean very ranging, you know,
Ratso Rizzo and Kramer versus Kramer and Lenny Bruce and everything.
And that's I think what people want is to play
a lot of different roles and different types of people
and create different characters. And uh, that's difficult to access
(06:41):
that material. You know. The search, the hunt for good
scripts is something that plagues everybody. Dustin Hoffman himself once
said to me. It was very funny, he said. He
once said to me years ago, he said, Alec, we're
all in line when it comes to getting our hands
on a good script. He said, We're all in line. Alec,
he said of us are just in a shorter line.
(07:03):
So you you've done theater too, and which one theater,
movies TV, what do you find the most rewarding, most challenging,
and the most fulfilling for you? Well, with the film,
there's an opportunity that if the film succeeds, and that
I don't mean necessarily commercially or critically, it can be
(07:24):
either one or both. You know, when I go do
a blatantly commercial project like Mission Impossible, I've gone and
done a couple of those, and you realize, you know,
this is the apex, this is the pinnacle of big
ticket studio movie making. And these guys just you know,
they just tear it up, you know, and no one
works harder than Tom. He's just the most hard working guy,
(07:45):
and you're thrilled to be in their company and make
that kind of movie. Then you turn around and you
go make another movie, and the the entire budget for
that movie is the budget for Ice on Tom's movie,
You know what I mean. It's like you do the
giant film with a big budget and then you go
to a film like really really tiny, but you're still
(08:06):
in there really trying to hone it and get and
if the film works. You know, if you do a
little film and it gets some traction and people think
it's worthy the content, that's thrilling it. The theater is
a place you go where there's risk, but just less risk.
You know, if you go to a revival of Tennessee Williams,
(08:29):
you sit there and say, well, we know the material works.
You know, it's not like a movie where if the
movie flops, that's painful and there's a lot of money
at stake. But in the theater it's much more like music.
You know, all of us are like a band, were
there together to serve this piece, and we're there to
support this piece, the writing, and you want to meet
(08:52):
the challenge. Like when I did street Car, we were like,
oh my god, this is like we're never going to
have an opportunity like this in our lives again. This
is it. We're going to be doing this play and
no one's going to do it again for seven or
eight or ten years or more. And that's thrilling. It's
such an honor whenever I do a play. I'm not
gonna say I like plays better, but the play experience
(09:13):
can be sometimes be a more pure experience in terms
of acting by the way I saw you at that
and it was a powerful performance and one of those
things that has stayed with me all these years. So
if you were enjoying it half as much as I was,
it was it was pretty powerful. Let's go back in
time some for some context on you. You were born
in the late fifties, grew up in the sixties and
(09:34):
seventies in sort of middle class Long Island. Tell me
about those times in that place. Can you paint the
picture for everybody. My childhood was very modest. You know.
My dad was a teacher, He had six kids, He
had no money. Everything in his life was about not
having enough money, and he was just all him and
my mother did was complaining about you know. So when
(09:56):
I walked out the door and I was a kid,
I remember kind of sitting there and say, whatever you do,
don't end up like your dad. I have to make
a living. And it almost didn't matter. There was a
part of me I thought, I'll sell insurance. I mean,
I just don't want to be stressed out like my
poor dad. Because my dad was a great guy and
he was just stressed. He died young. He was only
fifty five when he died. But at the same time,
(10:19):
I'm not going to deny the fact that in many
ways I was as happy or happier than than I
am now, you know, because it was so simple. You know,
we go out the door and throw snowballs at each
other and make a snowman and go sledding, and we
go play baseball in the summer, we play football in
the fall, we go to the pool at the local park.
We and of course, as you can appreciate, it wasn't
(10:41):
the days of the helicopter parents. You know, I get
on a bicycle, I get on a Schwinn Stingray bicycle
and ride into the bowels of my neighborhood and south Shore,
massive people along. My parents wouldn't see me for four
or five hours. They had no idea where I was,
nor were they looking for They were my parents, They
had no idea. They took my word for it. You know,
(11:03):
I was gone all day. I mean not that I
was running, uh still somewhere making moonshine. I wasn't counterfeiting money.
I wasn't doing anything illegal. But when we would take off,
there were no cell phones and FaceTime, and you know,
you came home and you came home at the requested hour,
or my father would be very grim. But in a
(11:23):
lot of ways, I mean, life, Listen, you are a
media mogul. You know, you're a guy who has been
on top of this business for so long now, which
doesn't even seem real. You know, going back to MTV
and I'm through a O L and your whole thing,
and you've seen the changes in all of its technology.
I mean, I'd love to hear your opinion of that
it's technology. Well, you know, we also had TV back
(11:45):
then was sort of a forced common experience that we
could go to school the next day and everybody was
talking about the same show they had seen the same thing.
And by the way, we only had one TV in
the house. We had the family TV, so my different
tacks brook have in Mississippi even smaller, and we would, uh,
we don't watch TV together, and it became a sort
(12:07):
of a force to bring things together. And uh, I
think you know your exactly the fireplace. Yeah, I'm not
sure whether it's good or bad, but it's certainly different today.
And we don't have any unifying experience. We don't have
anything driving homogeneity, which you know, we saw the awful
side of often, but we also there was a good
side to it, which was it did sort of bring
(12:29):
people together as one civilization, and I do think we
missed some of that. I think an interesting thing is
in terms of the news. You know, the news, it
was something that you had an appointment with the TV set.
My dad would come home from work and he would
lie on a couch and he would read the New
York Times. My father taught economics in American government in
a public high school, and he was very politically engaged,
(12:52):
and he would come home and it would be John
Chancellor or Huntley Brinkley or croc Kite. Then rather you
sat down in front of the TV. Nancy Dickerson and
I remember all these names, Robert Trout. You watched all
these old time veterans of the news, and the news
came and you devoured it because it was no twenty
four hour news cycle. Nobody had a phone in their
(13:14):
hand where there were alerts on your phone. There was
a morning newspaper and an evening newspaper, and there was
radio and the TV at the specified times. And then
the news went away and your relationship with the world
went away. Yeah, which you're exactly right. So let's go
on to that period. What values do you think you
have today that came out of that experience and those times?
(13:39):
You know, I got remarried. My wife and I are
together now. Yesterday was the ten year anniversary of when
I met my wife. I met my wife February two
thousand eleven, congratulating together for ten years, thank you. And
we had five kids in seven years. I got a
seven year old, of five year old, of four year old,
a two year old, and a five bold. We have
(14:01):
a lot of kids here, and uh, the joke is
people will come over and they'll sit down and we'll see,
be careful, there might be a baby under that cushion.
And you never know. In this house. There's babies everywhere.
And what it's done for me at my age, because
I'm about to turn sixty three years old, is it's
made me go back into my own childhood and realize
(14:23):
that this is a gift I've been given and that
my family and my kids are really all that matters
to me. And the COVID. Even though the COVID has
been so debilitating, it has inhibited the way we normally
interact in terms of acting, but other than that, uh,
the effects of the COVID. I look at this time
and I think I'll never have this time again. I'll
(14:44):
never have this time again where I'm home with my
kids every day. They don't go to school. They rely
on their mother and I to help them negotiate the
kind of peculiarity of this time in our lives. And
all they want is to be together. That's all they
want is your attention and you to listen to whatever
they say about school. And my daughter will turn to
(15:06):
me and say, did you realize that Saturday is not
the only planet that has rings on it? And I'll go, no,
I didn't know that. And she's lecturing me about the
solar system and she's seven years old. And that's it.
I mean, this time, this it's almost like a little
house on the prairie. I mean, something very simple and
pure with them is really the only thing I care
(15:26):
about anymore in my life, truly. That's It's a beautiful story.
We'll be right back with more math and Magic after
this quick break. Welcome back to Math and Magic. That's
you more from my conversation with Alec Baldwin. Let me
(15:46):
jump a little bit. Let's go to your conversion. It's
you had something sort of like Paul's conversion on the
Road to Damascus. When you went from this George Washington
University guy studying political science, expecting to be a lawyer.
You had had I think interned in your congressman's office,
you had in turned in a law firm, to suddenly
(16:09):
you decide you're going to be an actor, and you
go to n y U and you have these jobs
that you would think beginning actors have. You're a waiter,
you were a chaperone or a tour bus company. You
were a lifeguard. You're a bus boy at Studio fifty four.
I was, where did that conversion come from? Well, that's funny.
(16:31):
I'm at g W, and I loved it there in
g W, back in nine was beginning to mold itself
into what it is now, and it was a different
Washington and more sleepy Washington. We're always reminded of Kennedy's
admonition that Washington was the city of northern hospitality and
southern efficiency, and that was surely true when I was there.
(16:54):
I worked as an intern on Capitol Hill and a
guy there, he was an a turn and I said, now,
you're on the staff of this congressman. And I'm sure
it's not paying you a lot of money. He said, no,
it's not. I said, what gives with that? He said, well,
everyone's getting a law degree now just to have it
as another arrow in their quivered. And me said, it's
(17:14):
really tough for the competition is tough to get in.
The competition is really tough to get a job when
you get out. He said, I'm on the staff as
a legislator. They with a law degree making sixty five
dollars a year back then, which was decent money in
the seventies. And I thought to myself, I'm not going
to go to law school, which was my plan. I said,
I'm gonna take a year off. I'm gonna try this
other thing and see how I like it, because it
(17:36):
seems stupid and silly and far fetched and very kind
of dream like. And I went to n y U audition,
got in. They gave me a scholarship, you know, a
need based scholarship, but they paid for everything to go
because it was it was expensive for my family. And
I went there and as soon as I finished my
first year, I got a job, and I got another
job and I just I just kept working. I kept
(17:58):
go go go, went out to l A, got jobs
at nighttime TV, and it just kept going. Even though
I wasn't necessarily that sure of my feelings about acting
in the life of an actor. But over the course
of the first couple of years I did it, I
fell in love with acting. When you started in your career,
did you know the kind of work you wanted to do?
(18:20):
You and I wanted to fly airplanes as a kid,
and when I got old enough to get my license
at sixteen, I was fifteen, told my parents I want
to take flying lessons get my license. They said, well,
you better get a job. And the only job I
could get in the small town of Mississippi was as
a radio announcer. And I had really no interest in radio.
It was just a job. But like you, I completely
(18:43):
fell in love with it and uh and that took
me on this wonderful career. And by the time I
was twenty years old, I was at the NBC station
in Chicago. They let me actually program the station in
addition to being on the air. When then they sent
me to New York to w NBC when I was
twenty three, so it was this great career, but it was,
as you say, completely driven by sort of the unexpected,
(19:06):
and I completely fell in love with it, completely out
of pattern. I didn't want to be a lawyer. I
always wanted to be a doctor. Uh And somehow that
just fell by the wayside and uh and this took over.
The world has changed. So they asked you about and
you know, sort of soaps is sort of an interesting
place to get started. If you'd said where Alec Baldwin began,
I wouldn't say in the soaps. But what did you
(19:26):
What did that teach you about acting? Um, that's a
good question. It teaches you two things that I remember vividly,
which is about professionalism. That you come to work and
it was like a Swiss watch. You know. They were
you were in there at seven o'clock in the morning
and we rehearse and you go to make up, and
they were like, we gotta shoot this episode, you know,
(19:47):
twenty two pages of daytime drama today. We've got to
get this done today. And they would bring actors in there,
some of them young people who would stay up all
night and party. They had money in their pocket and
they were gone within like a couple of months, like you,
you had to show up and be reliable. We all
have a job here to do. Your part of a
collaboration of people. All of them have a job, and
you have your job to do, and if you don't
(20:10):
do it, if you screw up, you're going to affect
everybody else. And it made me realize you gotta show up,
you gotta know your lines. And then the second stage
of that was the tendency to want to down grade
or to look askance at the material. Daytime writers had
very stressful lives because coming up with something worthwhile every
(20:30):
day was tough. And someone took me aside and they said,
you can't let that affect you. You've got to go
to the opposite way. You have to find a way
to make it work, because you're gonna find when you
leave this job that if you only show up for work,
if you only go to work and make films and
television shows and do theater, whatever you do, and you
(20:51):
only do you know the greatest you know, Steve Zalien
script and Spielberg as you're you know, all this fan
to see of like the Kreme de la Kreme. You know,
Tony Kushner is writing and Soderberg is directing or whatever.
That doesn't happen very often. You know, you you have
a piece of material in front of you, and it's
(21:13):
your job to try to mind it for as much
value as you can. And one of the proving grounds
for me was a soap because the material sometimes was dreadful.
I mean, it was really horrible, and you had to
find a way to try to make it work. And
sometimes you succeeded and sometimes you didn't, but you had
to make that effort. And I thought that that was very,
(21:34):
very helpful for me in terms of my work ethic.
You know, early in your career you were New York.
You just sent in l A. And I know you
go back and forth. Let's go back to sort of
the eighties and in too today. How do those two
cities differ in the creative process and what creativity means
in l A and what it means in New York?
(21:56):
And have you seen to change over time? Well, I'm
sad to see that l A has been somewhat decimated,
not because of the COVID but because of this tax
breaks and different entities poaching if you will, with their
tax structure. But I remember, even though I wasn't a
fan of living in l A. I'd love to go
out there and shoot for a month or two and
(22:19):
then come home because I wanted to live in New York.
And the reason I wanted to live in New York
because New York is like a mountain range. And when
you're at a dinner party or you're in an event
in New York, it's people who are at the top
of many different businesses. You're there with people in banking
and real estate and art collecting and literature and journalism
and music. I mean, you name the theater, political figures, academics,
(22:43):
you name it. I mean show business has a place
of equivalence in a range of mountains in New York.
And when you go to Los Angeles, one mountain dwarfs
all the other mountains. And when you go there, it's
all about show business. It's like a city for the winners.
And if you're a winner, if you go out there
and you win an Emmy, and you and you, and
(23:04):
you walk into the restaurant and you'd walk in there
and they're like, oh, right this way, Mr Bold, don't
be here please, and can we what can we bring
a bottle of champagne to your table to celebrate your
your winnings, and blah blah blah, you thought to yourself.
I used to turn to my friends and go, let's
enjoy the fellows because it ends tomorrow morning. It's over.
But it's funny how I don't want to live in
(23:27):
l A. But I love shooting in l A. And
I was always disappointed when we wouldn't work out there
because the best people are in l A. I always
tell the same story. I say, when you go to
the set of a movie somewhere and they'll say, the
prop guy wants to come into your trailer and show
you some wrist watches for your character. He wants you
to choose a wrist watch for your character. And the
(23:48):
guy comes into your trailer. It's you know, you're in
rehearsals for fittings for the movie and the guy shows
you like fifty watches and you go, okay, what about
that that little brightling there or whatever. And then you
go to l A and they go, the prop guy
would like you to look at some watches for the show,
and he bring you in six cases with four hundred watches.
(24:11):
You know, everybody in Hollywood, it's Hollywood, you know, and
everybody there is at the top of the game. When
you're on a set in a studio, you know, when
you're shooting. I think the last studio film my shot
was a long time ago. But I never forget when
I did Cat in the Hat with Mike Myers, which
was a silly movie, but we were on the lot
at Universal for five months and they shot this thing forever,
(24:32):
and I'll never forget. The crew was the greatest crew,
and I thought to myself, I'm never going to have
it this good again, because we're on the lot the
whole time. He almost shot the whole movie on the lot,
And they're just something about being on a sound stage
in l A and those crews out there. There's just
nothing like it in the world. Nothing. And I'm sad
that I don't really work out there as much as
I used to. A lot of great old ghosts on
(24:54):
the sound stages too. Oh yeah, oh god. You so,
you know. In the early nineties, I think it was
you made your first appearance as the guest host on
Saturday Night Live, and all these years later, I think
you hold the record for hosting the most Saturday Night Live.
You were talking about Lauren Michael's earlier on Dirty Rock.
What is it about Lauren Michaels, what's the magic? Lauren
(25:17):
is smart in a way. He knows when to say yes,
when to say no, how to say yes, how to
say no, how to keep people engaged with him. And
you you find yourself in a place where you trust
that this is a guy who you know he has
(25:38):
your interest at heart. Now granted it's in his interests
as well, but he's doing things that if he believes
in you, will benefit you career wise. Lauren is someone
who he's wise, He's very wise, and he keeps you
focused on having the preferred attitude. Like I always tell
the same story. The first year we went to the
(25:59):
m we didn't win. Actually I think we want ensemble cast,
and then we lost to Modern Family or whatever. But
but we we go to the Emmy's the second year
and we win everything and we're we're heading to the
Valet parking and we went to the Governor's Ball for
the TV Academy. This is for the Emmy, is not
the Oscars. And we go to the Governor's Ball and
(26:20):
as we go to the valley, I go God, I said,
you know last year when we lost, we were like
in and atty here really quickly, you know. We well,
we went to the restaurant, had dinner and had a
lot of fun. I said, this year, we won, so
we had to go to the Governor's ball and take
pictures with all these people. I mean like we were
taking pictures for like an hour and a half and
we had to go table to table and get introduced
(26:41):
to this guy and this guy and this person take pictures.
I said, this is really like exhausting and what a
pain in the ass. And we're standing at the Valley
parking and Lauren takes his Emmy and he holds it
up to me and he goes. But winning is better, right,
Lauren is the one who helps you maintained perspective in
a business that it's very easy to lose perspective. So
(27:05):
so Saturday Night Live, I love it. Saturday Night Live
got started about the same time my career at NBC started.
A guy named Herb Schlausser was the president of NBC
then and was really the champion of of Lauren. He
was my mentor there and uh, and I remember I
was programming in Chicago and he came out and talked
to me about Saturday Night Live, among other things. How
(27:27):
on earth do they keep that creativity going for this
many years? Well, I think that the biggest and this
is my opinion. I mean I've never heard anybody say this,
but the biggest I think challenge for them, The biggest
frontier was the digital frontier to take what was a
diminishing network broadcast audience and to get that content and
(27:49):
to get some form of that content in clips and
snippets and scenes and sketches, I mean any way you
can on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, you name it, to get
it out there and to get the NBC content and
the SNL content. I mean, you know, there were numbers
for the show that we're very, very you know, good
(28:10):
numbers for them over the years, and now the show
does numbers that are just ridiculous. They're live on both
coasts now, so they do the eleven thirty feet at
night live at eight thirty on the West coast and
they're live across the country. They don't have it to
You're not watching a taped feet in l A anymore.
And then they're all over the internet in the ensuing
(28:31):
you know, Plus seven schedule and their numbers are equal
to network prime time numbers. They're competing with prime time
shows in terms of their numbers, which is just if
you told me that fifteen years ago, I would have
met everything I had against that. And this is again
Lauren adapting. Lauren is always adapted in terms of the comedians,
(28:52):
where they come from, who they are, the talent, music.
You know, the joke was with Lauren his daughter. So
the the joke was who's the musical act? How do
they determine who the musical act is on Saturday Night Live?
And when his daughter was young, they said, who's ever
in Sophie's iPod? Lauren would take the information wherever he
(29:14):
could get it. Who knows what's new, fresh happening, who's
a young actor? But in the end, when this is
the thing I among the things I love about Lauren
the most, Lauren decides Lauren garners all this information about
potential hosts, music sketches, material, who we make fun of,
(29:35):
who we don't make fun of, how much we make
fun of them. That the actual molding of a show
that goes from eleven thirty at night till one o'clock
in the morning and gets progressively I don't want to
say adult, but a little bit more sophisticated, shall we say?
As the night goes on. I've done sketches for Lauren
where he'd sit there and say, that's a twelve thirty sketch.
We put that towards the end of the show because
(29:56):
it's a little more riskay, or it's a little more
kind of crispy in that way. And Lauren's mastery of
all the things that are in that world, I mean
every element of it. You'll say to Lauren. You watch
Lauren give notes. I meant of the notes he gives
during the notes between shows. We do the dress in
the air, you do a full dress at eight o'clock,
you do the air show at and in between an
(30:18):
abundance of his notes or camera notes go tighter here,
Why is that light? Put another light on him? Why
is that daktrob that color blue? He's producing a TV
show where his eye it's like he's making a movie.
Lauren is just he's probably one of the smartest people
I've ever met in my life period, and he's certainly
one of the three or four smartest people I've ever
(30:39):
met in the business because of his his adaptability he's
so adaptable. Well, he stands alone in the industry. I
don't think there's anybody quite like Lauren. No, there wasn't.
You talked about scripts, and it's so everybody's in that
line to get a script. Some have the shorter lines.
How do you pick what you're gonna do? What's your process?
(31:02):
When I was young, I worked all the time. When
I was young, it was like chain smoking. I just
lit one off the other. And then as I got older,
I got more discerning in that way. And now as
I'm at the age of that now, you know, I
think it's the same muscle. You sit there and go,
I want to go to work, But when you get older,
you think, what is not duplicative of stuff I've already done.
Because a lot of people want me to come in
(31:23):
and play some glengary type of guy that straightens everybody out,
and there's a kind of a ferocity to that character,
and that gets to be kind of boring for me.
But I think when I work now, it's about the people.
So you'll say to me, here's a guy that wants
to work with you with the project, and you think,
in most cases you know who it is and you'll
sit there and go, oh my god, I'm dying to
(31:44):
work with him. Like I never work in the summer.
Here's a good example. I never work in the summer.
I take all of July and August off, except except
if it's Marty Scorsese, and so Marty calls me and says,
would you come and do The Departed? Were up in
Massachusetts and we're gonna shoot in August them like you
got it. You know, there's people who when they when
they there's people who when they call you, you just say,
(32:05):
when's my fitting, let's go. You know, you're just dying
to be around them. You're just dying to be around them,
even if the part you're playing is not that significant,
even if the film by no means pivots on anything
you're doing. It's just such a joy to be around them.
Bob de Niro asked me to do The Good Shepherd,
and just to be on the set with Bob. It
(32:29):
was just mind blowing. It was just mind blowing. You know.
I've had a few experiences like that when we did
Glen Garry and them. Around these actors that are these
actors I worshiped. It's who you work with so let's
let's jump the podcast. You're considered a podcast pioneer. Here's
the thing with Alec Baldwin. What caught your attention with podcasting?
(32:49):
How did you get there so early? What grabbed you?
I had wanted to stay home. I didn't want to
travel anymore. I wanted to work from New York, and
I had pitched the TV show Talk Show. That was
a disaster. I think we aired four or five shows,
and of the five shows we aired, four of them
were against Sunday night football, against the hottest games of
(33:11):
the season. I mean, I think I think the entire
audience from my show could fit in one elevator at
sax S Fithaven, you know what I mean. It was
like forget it. So when I started thinking of the
idea of radio and podcast, I had different ideas, you know,
like a Howard Stern type of bullpen with a cast
(33:32):
of characters. And then the people I was working with
finally said to me, listen, let's just try this at first,
just you talking to people, and we did that for
w N my C. It's not really an interview because
it's a conversation. You know. Terry Gross keeps it all
about her guest, and that's her show, and I love
that show and I'm very admiring of her, but that's
an interview show, and I thought to myself, that wasn't
(33:57):
interesting to me. So if I bring on people, you
know that our actors and performers, and talk to them
about either something we have in common, you know, their
peers of mine, or there's somebody like Debbie Reynolds did
my show and my god, I mean just I mean,
I could have talked to her for six hours about
her career and uh, I mean, they're just so admiring
(34:18):
of them and engaged by them. We've done pretty well
and now we're on iHeart. As you know, we moved
from public radio to My Heart and I'm very glad
for that. The podcast to me, are always divided into
two groups. Ones I like and once I love. I mean,
I I like them all. I mean, there isn't one
show we did that I regret it ever. But then
we have people come on and it's just Billy Joel's handlers.
(34:42):
If you will said, now, whatever you do, don't ask
Billy to play. Don't ask him to play. Whatever you do,
don't ask him to play. Now, I know Billy personally
and I called him on the phone and I said,
thanks so much for coming to do this with us.
We're very excited. I can't thank you, and if I'm
really looking forward to to doing this with you. And
he said, you're gonna have a piano m And I
(35:04):
said what he said, You're gonna have a piano. I said,
we were told that it was forbidden for us to
ask you to play. He goes, oh, that's ridiculous, come on,
come on, and we go into a studio in my
scene at the sound stage where they record music, and
there was a piano, and oh my god. I think
he's the one show we did where we didn't edit
the show. It was one hour and five minutes or
(35:25):
whatever it is uncut. We just played it from start
to finish. Because he's so seamless about his knowledge of
music and what influenced him musically. It was just absolutely
What are the most thrilling ones we ever did creatively?
What is podcast offer you that you can't get in
any other form? Well? I think that like music. I
(35:48):
mean I always say that music has a significance in
people's lives that theater and film and TV don't have.
Because you can consume it anywhere. You can be in
the shower, you can be in the gym, you can
be in the are And podcasts offer that podcast is
the I mean, this is why I love radio. Audio
is something that you can indulge just about any time,
(36:08):
the same as music almost is that idea of its
um availability, you can you can consume it anywhere. And
I love that. And I listened to a lot of
Part'm addicted to this American life and for years, and
I listened to a bunch of podcasts. So as we
wind down, you've had a front row seat in the
entertainment business for decades. So I want you to think
(36:30):
just a second and give a shout out to two
people we always in the show this way because it's
called math and magic. Who's the let's talk about the mathematician.
Who's the best business person you've met you can think
of an entertainment or media And who's the most creative
the magic? Well, I would say that I love this question.
(36:50):
By the way, Well, one person who I don't know, well,
i've met him many times and I don't know well,
but someone who and I'm sure you can appreciate this
in your career. The person who I've always heard consistently
is the guy with the Midas touch. Everything he touches
turns to profit or is successful is Geffen. Geffen is
(37:11):
someone who I always hear these really really like he
just has some mystical ability in terms of his investment
strategies and his businesses, and he's been this preposterously successful
guy for a very very long time. Then I guess,
in terms of the magic and the creativity, the person
who always amazes me the most in terms of the
(37:34):
range of his work. Now, of course he has every
advantage that other people don't have because he's so successful commercially,
and he's so on top of his game. He knows
what he's doing. As Spielberg, I would say Spielberg is
the person who And that's a tough question to answer
because I've got many people, you know, Fincher and Soderberg
(37:55):
and Marty and Di Palma and Coppola and you know,
I mean, it's an endless there's so many hundreds of
directors and you know, and and foreign directors and so forth,
European directors. It's tough to pick one. So I'm really
only picking one among many because I admire many of
them to the same level. But there's something about Spielberg
to me that is just uncanny. I mean that just
(38:17):
the range. I mean things from AI and Jurassic Park
to Jaws and munich Et and Lincoln and Amistad, and
I mean just the range of his I mean even
the things that Spielberg has done that have not been
as successful creatively and commercially as his more towering achievements
like Jurassic and Jaws, and even the ones that didn't
(38:39):
do as well overall, there's still better than most other
people's movies. I mean, Spielberg to me just is on
an island of his own. He's on a planet of
his own in terms of talent. A congratulations on everything.
Thanks for taking the time today, and by the way,
thanks for joining the Heart family with with your podcast.
Always from Bob and I, my friends and I who
(39:01):
were in this club. We all salute each other and
we all left about this. I still have an a
O L mail account Bob me too. Here are a
few things I learned from my conversation with Alec. One
understand what your job is and how to have value
to it. But I only got his big break and soaps.
He learned you have to know your lines, but you
(39:23):
also have to work to sell them. To embrace the
opportunities that surprise you, and Alex's experience. When you think
you're choosing between A, B and C, the actual will
probably be D. Three. Whether it's a costar or a
co worker. Never underestimate how your collaborators can help you grow.
(39:44):
These days, Alex chooses his projects based on who he'll
be working with. The Next time you're searching for a
new partner or collaborator, ask yourself, will this person challenge me?
Will they help me grow? Four? And in these difficult times,
take some comfort and the simple things. During COVID, Alec
has found balanced by spending time outdoors, going on hikes
(40:06):
and playing in the snow with his family. Thanks for listening.
I'm Bob Pittman. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so
much for listening to Math and Magic, a production of
I Heart Radio. This show is hosted by Bob Pittman.
Special thanks to Sue Schillinger for booking and wrangling our
wonderful talent, which is no small feat. Nikki Eatore for
pulling research bill plaques, and Michael Asar for their recording help,
(40:30):
our editor Ryan Murdoch and of course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel,
Noel Mango, and everyone who helped bring this show to
your ears. Until next time,
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of My
Heart Radio. Dustin Hoffman himself once said to me, he said, Alec,
we're all in line when it comes to getting our
hands on a good script. He said, we're all in line, Alec,
he said, some of us are just in a shorter line. Hi.
(00:25):
I'm Bob Pittman, and welcome to this episode of Math
and Magic Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. Today, we
have a guest who embodies the magic creativity. He's covered
the spectrum of acting, theater, TV movies in both the
commercial and critically acclaimed, and he's had huge successes in
comedy and drama. He's an active participant in the world,
(00:46):
and he was very early with his own podcast. He
did podcasts before podcasting was cool. He's Alec Baldwin. Ali
grew up on the south shore of Long Island, under
the shadow of Manhattan. He had early aspirations to be
a law here, but as he switched to acting, he
paid the dues with all kinds of jobs, from waiting
tables to being a lifeguard, and he was even a
(01:07):
bus boy at the legendary Studio fifty four. He's hosted
Saturday Night live more than anyone else and swept every
word possible with his role on thirty Rock. There is
so much to explore today. Welcome Ali, Thank you, Bob.
Good to talk to you. It's great to talk to you.
And here we are on the magic of audio. Before
we dig in today, I want to get you in
(01:28):
sixty seconds. You ready to go? Yes, sir? Do you
prefer early morning or late night? Late night, New York
City or Long Island, Long Island, New Yorker, California, New York?
Instagram or Twitter, Instagram, film or TV film? George Washington
University or New York University, n y You Jack Ryan
(01:52):
or Jack Donneghie, Jack Donneghee, uh Tennessee Williams or Eugene
O'Neill and the c Williams. Class sickle or classic rock, classical,
sweet or salty, salty cats or dogs Dogs Coffee is
for closers or ABC Always be closing, Always be closing, ABC,
(02:14):
Always be closing. It's about to get harder. Smartest person
you know, Bob Pittman, the head of My Heart Radio,
childhood hero Joe Namath, favorite play you've acted in, speet
car named Desire, Political hero John F. Kennedy. First job
I cut grass I was I was a lawn jockey
(02:35):
with a landscape company. Favorite director, Oh that's a good question, Uh, Scorsese,
favorite composer, Maller, Gustav Mahler, favorite sport, football, favorite movie theater,
snack the popcorn with the raisin NEETs in the popcorn.
Guilty pleasure, sleeping in. I got remarried and I have
(02:58):
five of the kids, so sleeping in. That's a healthy
pleasure around what's something you can't live without? It my wife?
And what would you be doing if you weren't an actor.
I'd probably be a lawyer. I think that's where I
was headed before I went to acting school. Okay, let's
get going. Let's jump in creative range. I want to
start with that. You know what sort of set you
(03:19):
apart from people is is that incredible range you have?
How did you get that range and the opportunity to
use it? Well, I think a lot of people have
this in common, which is it's not like it's a
plan you set out to execute. You know you you
you have a plan, and it doesn't always go according
to the plan. So you wind up being faced with
(03:41):
the choices you have and for me, those choices were
often very disparate choices. And then when thirty Rock came around,
that was the chance to jump in with some people
who I was very intimidated by them. You know, it's
one thing to save funny lines, it's another thing to
write it. And Tina and Robert, Carla and those people
they were you know, I got into that show and
(04:04):
just trying to fit in and watch them and try
to you know, serve the material as best I could.
But I found that everywhere I go, the rule is
always if the choices a B or C, and I
walk around going a B or CE, what's it gonna
be a B or C? And the answer, more often
than not is D. It's something completely not on the map.
(04:28):
And I've wound up going off and doing you know,
plays and TV shows and movies and things that I
never imagined I would do. I've talked to a lot
of people, and there's sort of this idea that that
great ideas and opportunities sort of hit you on the
head like a meteor. The best ideas are the best
opportunities were totally unforeseen, unexpected, And it sounds like that's
(04:49):
that's worked for you as well, well, you know, Lauren
Michaels came to me to do thirty Rock and this
is the best example. And I thought, oh god, I
don't want to do a sitcom. I don't want to
be I don't want to be a regular on a sitcom.
But when Lawrence said, did you want to sign a contract?
And I did the pilot and by the time we
were done touring the pilot, I said to myself, this
is fun. I mean it was. It was a lot
(05:10):
of fun to do the show. Like when you do
a drama, when you do a film, you're they're focused
and it's very intense and you're thinking, how can we
get the most out of this day? How can we
get the most out of shooting these scenes today because
we're not going to come back, you know, presumably where
we rarely come back. And shooting a comedy was I mean,
(05:30):
I cried laughing every day. They were the funniest people
I've ever met in my life. When you started out,
did you think you were going to one place? And
if so, what was that place? Was a comedy drama?
I think most people who started out as actors, you
look at a career, I think the most gleaming example
is Nicholson, where you do all these disparate roles, and
(05:53):
you play these very different roles, and you do all
these films where you have a great part. I mean,
who other than maybe Spencer, Tracy or Bogart has had
as many great films and his acting is what made
them great. And Nicholson kind of stands alone, you know,
in the modern world, Pacino, de Niro, Warren Beatty, Newman, Redford,
(06:17):
all that crowd, Dustin Hoffman. But Nicholson has played so
many disparate roles. Hoffman too, I mean very ranging, you know,
Ratso Rizzo and Kramer versus Kramer and Lenny Bruce and everything.
And that's I think what people want is to play
a lot of different roles and different types of people
and create different characters. And uh, that's difficult to access
(06:41):
that material. You know. The search, the hunt for good
scripts is something that plagues everybody. Dustin Hoffman himself once
said to me. It was very funny, he said. He
once said to me years ago, he said, Alec, we're
all in line when it comes to getting our hands
on a good script. He said, We're all in line. Alec,
he said of us are just in a shorter line.
(07:03):
So you you've done theater too, and which one theater,
movies TV, what do you find the most rewarding, most challenging,
and the most fulfilling for you? Well, with the film,
there's an opportunity that if the film succeeds, and that
I don't mean necessarily commercially or critically, it can be
(07:24):
either one or both. You know, when I go do
a blatantly commercial project like Mission Impossible, I've gone and
done a couple of those, and you realize, you know,
this is the apex, this is the pinnacle of big
ticket studio movie making. And these guys just you know,
they just tear it up, you know, and no one
works harder than Tom. He's just the most hard working guy,
(07:45):
and you're thrilled to be in their company and make
that kind of movie. Then you turn around and you
go make another movie, and the the entire budget for
that movie is the budget for Ice on Tom's movie,
You know what I mean. It's like you do the
giant film with a big budget and then you go
to a film like really really tiny, but you're still
(08:06):
in there really trying to hone it and get and
if the film works. You know, if you do a
little film and it gets some traction and people think
it's worthy the content, that's thrilling it. The theater is
a place you go where there's risk, but just less risk.
You know, if you go to a revival of Tennessee Williams,
(08:29):
you sit there and say, well, we know the material works.
You know, it's not like a movie where if the
movie flops, that's painful and there's a lot of money
at stake. But in the theater it's much more like music.
You know, all of us are like a band, were
there together to serve this piece, and we're there to
support this piece, the writing, and you want to meet
(08:52):
the challenge. Like when I did street Car, we were like,
oh my god, this is like we're never going to
have an opportunity like this in our lives again. This
is it. We're going to be doing this play and
no one's going to do it again for seven or
eight or ten years or more. And that's thrilling. It's
such an honor whenever I do a play. I'm not
gonna say I like plays better, but the play experience
(09:13):
can be sometimes be a more pure experience in terms
of acting by the way I saw you at that
and it was a powerful performance and one of those
things that has stayed with me all these years. So
if you were enjoying it half as much as I was,
it was it was pretty powerful. Let's go back in
time some for some context on you. You were born
in the late fifties, grew up in the sixties and
(09:34):
seventies in sort of middle class Long Island. Tell me
about those times in that place. Can you paint the
picture for everybody. My childhood was very modest. You know.
My dad was a teacher, He had six kids, He
had no money. Everything in his life was about not
having enough money, and he was just all him and
my mother did was complaining about you know. So when
(09:56):
I walked out the door and I was a kid,
I remember kind of sitting there and say, whatever you do,
don't end up like your dad. I have to make
a living. And it almost didn't matter. There was a
part of me I thought, I'll sell insurance. I mean,
I just don't want to be stressed out like my
poor dad. Because my dad was a great guy and
he was just stressed. He died young. He was only
fifty five when he died. But at the same time,
(10:19):
I'm not going to deny the fact that in many
ways I was as happy or happier than than I
am now, you know, because it was so simple. You know,
we go out the door and throw snowballs at each
other and make a snowman and go sledding, and we
go play baseball in the summer, we play football in
the fall, we go to the pool at the local park.
We and of course, as you can appreciate, it wasn't
(10:41):
the days of the helicopter parents. You know, I get
on a bicycle, I get on a Schwinn Stingray bicycle
and ride into the bowels of my neighborhood and south Shore,
massive people along. My parents wouldn't see me for four
or five hours. They had no idea where I was,
nor were they looking for They were my parents, They
had no idea. They took my word for it. You know,
(11:03):
I was gone all day. I mean not that I
was running, uh still somewhere making moonshine. I wasn't counterfeiting money.
I wasn't doing anything illegal. But when we would take off,
there were no cell phones and FaceTime, and you know,
you came home and you came home at the requested hour,
or my father would be very grim. But in a
(11:23):
lot of ways, I mean, life, Listen, you are a
media mogul. You know, you're a guy who has been
on top of this business for so long now, which
doesn't even seem real. You know, going back to MTV
and I'm through a O L and your whole thing,
and you've seen the changes in all of its technology.
I mean, I'd love to hear your opinion of that
it's technology. Well, you know, we also had TV back
(11:45):
then was sort of a forced common experience that we
could go to school the next day and everybody was
talking about the same show they had seen the same thing.
And by the way, we only had one TV in
the house. We had the family TV, so my different
tacks brook have in Mississippi even smaller, and we would, uh,
we don't watch TV together, and it became a sort
(12:07):
of a force to bring things together. And uh, I
think you know your exactly the fireplace. Yeah, I'm not
sure whether it's good or bad, but it's certainly different today.
And we don't have any unifying experience. We don't have
anything driving homogeneity, which you know, we saw the awful
side of often, but we also there was a good
side to it, which was it did sort of bring
(12:29):
people together as one civilization, and I do think we
missed some of that. I think an interesting thing is
in terms of the news. You know, the news, it
was something that you had an appointment with the TV set.
My dad would come home from work and he would
lie on a couch and he would read the New
York Times. My father taught economics in American government in
a public high school, and he was very politically engaged,
(12:52):
and he would come home and it would be John
Chancellor or Huntley Brinkley or croc Kite. Then rather you
sat down in front of the TV. Nancy Dickerson and
I remember all these names, Robert Trout. You watched all
these old time veterans of the news, and the news
came and you devoured it because it was no twenty
four hour news cycle. Nobody had a phone in their
(13:14):
hand where there were alerts on your phone. There was
a morning newspaper and an evening newspaper, and there was
radio and the TV at the specified times. And then
the news went away and your relationship with the world
went away. Yeah, which you're exactly right. So let's go
on to that period. What values do you think you
have today that came out of that experience and those times?
(13:39):
You know, I got remarried. My wife and I are
together now. Yesterday was the ten year anniversary of when
I met my wife. I met my wife February two
thousand eleven, congratulating together for ten years, thank you. And
we had five kids in seven years. I got a
seven year old, of five year old, of four year old,
a two year old, and a five bold. We have
(14:01):
a lot of kids here, and uh, the joke is
people will come over and they'll sit down and we'll see,
be careful, there might be a baby under that cushion.
And you never know. In this house. There's babies everywhere.
And what it's done for me at my age, because
I'm about to turn sixty three years old, is it's
made me go back into my own childhood and realize
(14:23):
that this is a gift I've been given and that
my family and my kids are really all that matters
to me. And the COVID. Even though the COVID has
been so debilitating, it has inhibited the way we normally
interact in terms of acting, but other than that, uh,
the effects of the COVID. I look at this time
and I think I'll never have this time again. I'll
(14:44):
never have this time again where I'm home with my
kids every day. They don't go to school. They rely
on their mother and I to help them negotiate the
kind of peculiarity of this time in our lives. And
all they want is to be together. That's all they
want is your attention and you to listen to whatever
they say about school. And my daughter will turn to
(15:06):
me and say, did you realize that Saturday is not
the only planet that has rings on it? And I'll go, no,
I didn't know that. And she's lecturing me about the
solar system and she's seven years old. And that's it.
I mean, this time, this it's almost like a little
house on the prairie. I mean, something very simple and
pure with them is really the only thing I care
(15:26):
about anymore in my life, truly. That's It's a beautiful story.
We'll be right back with more math and Magic after
this quick break. Welcome back to Math and Magic. That's
you more from my conversation with Alec Baldwin. Let me
(15:46):
jump a little bit. Let's go to your conversion. It's
you had something sort of like Paul's conversion on the
Road to Damascus. When you went from this George Washington
University guy studying political science, expecting to be a lawyer.
You had had I think interned in your congressman's office,
you had in turned in a law firm, to suddenly
(16:09):
you decide you're going to be an actor, and you
go to n y U and you have these jobs
that you would think beginning actors have. You're a waiter,
you were a chaperone or a tour bus company. You
were a lifeguard. You're a bus boy at Studio fifty four.
I was, where did that conversion come from? Well, that's funny.
(16:31):
I'm at g W, and I loved it there in
g W, back in nine was beginning to mold itself
into what it is now, and it was a different
Washington and more sleepy Washington. We're always reminded of Kennedy's
admonition that Washington was the city of northern hospitality and
southern efficiency, and that was surely true when I was there.
(16:54):
I worked as an intern on Capitol Hill and a
guy there, he was an a turn and I said, now,
you're on the staff of this congressman. And I'm sure
it's not paying you a lot of money. He said, no,
it's not. I said, what gives with that? He said, well,
everyone's getting a law degree now just to have it
as another arrow in their quivered. And me said, it's
(17:14):
really tough for the competition is tough to get in.
The competition is really tough to get a job when
you get out. He said, I'm on the staff as
a legislator. They with a law degree making sixty five
dollars a year back then, which was decent money in
the seventies. And I thought to myself, I'm not going
to go to law school, which was my plan. I said,
I'm gonna take a year off. I'm gonna try this
other thing and see how I like it, because it
(17:36):
seems stupid and silly and far fetched and very kind
of dream like. And I went to n y U audition,
got in. They gave me a scholarship, you know, a
need based scholarship, but they paid for everything to go
because it was it was expensive for my family. And
I went there and as soon as I finished my
first year, I got a job, and I got another
job and I just I just kept working. I kept
(17:58):
go go go, went out to l A, got jobs
at nighttime TV, and it just kept going. Even though
I wasn't necessarily that sure of my feelings about acting
in the life of an actor. But over the course
of the first couple of years I did it, I
fell in love with acting. When you started in your career,
did you know the kind of work you wanted to do?
(18:20):
You and I wanted to fly airplanes as a kid,
and when I got old enough to get my license
at sixteen, I was fifteen, told my parents I want
to take flying lessons get my license. They said, well,
you better get a job. And the only job I
could get in the small town of Mississippi was as
a radio announcer. And I had really no interest in radio.
It was just a job. But like you, I completely
(18:43):
fell in love with it and uh and that took
me on this wonderful career. And by the time I
was twenty years old, I was at the NBC station
in Chicago. They let me actually program the station in
addition to being on the air. When then they sent
me to New York to w NBC when I was
twenty three, so it was this great career, but it was,
as you say, completely driven by sort of the unexpected,
(19:06):
and I completely fell in love with it, completely out
of pattern. I didn't want to be a lawyer. I
always wanted to be a doctor. Uh And somehow that
just fell by the wayside and uh and this took over.
The world has changed. So they asked you about and
you know, sort of soaps is sort of an interesting
place to get started. If you'd said where Alec Baldwin began,
I wouldn't say in the soaps. But what did you
(19:26):
What did that teach you about acting? Um, that's a
good question. It teaches you two things that I remember vividly,
which is about professionalism. That you come to work and
it was like a Swiss watch. You know. They were
you were in there at seven o'clock in the morning
and we rehearse and you go to make up, and
they were like, we gotta shoot this episode, you know,
(19:47):
twenty two pages of daytime drama today. We've got to
get this done today. And they would bring actors in there,
some of them young people who would stay up all
night and party. They had money in their pocket and
they were gone within like a couple of months, like you,
you had to show up and be reliable. We all
have a job here to do. Your part of a
collaboration of people. All of them have a job, and
you have your job to do, and if you don't
(20:10):
do it, if you screw up, you're going to affect
everybody else. And it made me realize you gotta show up,
you gotta know your lines. And then the second stage
of that was the tendency to want to down grade
or to look askance at the material. Daytime writers had
very stressful lives because coming up with something worthwhile every
(20:30):
day was tough. And someone took me aside and they said,
you can't let that affect you. You've got to go
to the opposite way. You have to find a way
to make it work, because you're gonna find when you
leave this job that if you only show up for work,
if you only go to work and make films and
television shows and do theater, whatever you do, and you
(20:51):
only do you know the greatest you know, Steve Zalien
script and Spielberg as you're you know, all this fan
to see of like the Kreme de la Kreme. You know,
Tony Kushner is writing and Soderberg is directing or whatever.
That doesn't happen very often. You know, you you have
a piece of material in front of you, and it's
(21:13):
your job to try to mind it for as much
value as you can. And one of the proving grounds
for me was a soap because the material sometimes was dreadful.
I mean, it was really horrible, and you had to
find a way to try to make it work. And
sometimes you succeeded and sometimes you didn't, but you had
to make that effort. And I thought that that was very,
(21:34):
very helpful for me in terms of my work ethic.
You know, early in your career you were New York.
You just sent in l A. And I know you
go back and forth. Let's go back to sort of
the eighties and in too today. How do those two
cities differ in the creative process and what creativity means
in l A and what it means in New York?
(21:56):
And have you seen to change over time? Well, I'm
sad to see that l A has been somewhat decimated,
not because of the COVID but because of this tax
breaks and different entities poaching if you will, with their
tax structure. But I remember, even though I wasn't a
fan of living in l A. I'd love to go
out there and shoot for a month or two and
(22:19):
then come home because I wanted to live in New York.
And the reason I wanted to live in New York
because New York is like a mountain range. And when
you're at a dinner party or you're in an event
in New York, it's people who are at the top
of many different businesses. You're there with people in banking
and real estate and art collecting and literature and journalism
and music. I mean, you name the theater, political figures, academics,
(22:43):
you name it. I mean show business has a place
of equivalence in a range of mountains in New York.
And when you go to Los Angeles, one mountain dwarfs
all the other mountains. And when you go there, it's
all about show business. It's like a city for the winners.
And if you're a winner, if you go out there
and you win an Emmy, and you and you, and
(23:04):
you walk into the restaurant and you'd walk in there
and they're like, oh, right this way, Mr Bold, don't
be here please, and can we what can we bring
a bottle of champagne to your table to celebrate your
your winnings, and blah blah blah, you thought to yourself.
I used to turn to my friends and go, let's
enjoy the fellows because it ends tomorrow morning. It's over.
But it's funny how I don't want to live in
(23:27):
l A. But I love shooting in l A. And
I was always disappointed when we wouldn't work out there
because the best people are in l A. I always
tell the same story. I say, when you go to
the set of a movie somewhere and they'll say, the
prop guy wants to come into your trailer and show
you some wrist watches for your character. He wants you
to choose a wrist watch for your character. And the
(23:48):
guy comes into your trailer. It's you know, you're in
rehearsals for fittings for the movie and the guy shows
you like fifty watches and you go, okay, what about
that that little brightling there or whatever. And then you
go to l A and they go, the prop guy
would like you to look at some watches for the show,
and he bring you in six cases with four hundred watches.
(24:11):
You know, everybody in Hollywood, it's Hollywood, you know, and
everybody there is at the top of the game. When
you're on a set in a studio, you know, when
you're shooting. I think the last studio film my shot
was a long time ago. But I never forget when
I did Cat in the Hat with Mike Myers, which
was a silly movie, but we were on the lot
at Universal for five months and they shot this thing forever,
(24:32):
and I'll never forget. The crew was the greatest crew,
and I thought to myself, I'm never going to have
it this good again, because we're on the lot the
whole time. He almost shot the whole movie on the lot,
And they're just something about being on a sound stage
in l A and those crews out there. There's just
nothing like it in the world. Nothing. And I'm sad
that I don't really work out there as much as
I used to. A lot of great old ghosts on
(24:54):
the sound stages too. Oh yeah, oh god. You so,
you know. In the early nineties, I think it was
you made your first appearance as the guest host on
Saturday Night Live, and all these years later, I think
you hold the record for hosting the most Saturday Night Live.
You were talking about Lauren Michael's earlier on Dirty Rock.
What is it about Lauren Michaels, what's the magic? Lauren
(25:17):
is smart in a way. He knows when to say yes,
when to say no, how to say yes, how to
say no, how to keep people engaged with him. And
you you find yourself in a place where you trust
that this is a guy who you know he has
(25:38):
your interest at heart. Now granted it's in his interests
as well, but he's doing things that if he believes
in you, will benefit you career wise. Lauren is someone
who he's wise, He's very wise, and he keeps you
focused on having the preferred attitude. Like I always tell
the same story. The first year we went to the
(25:59):
m we didn't win. Actually I think we want ensemble cast,
and then we lost to Modern Family or whatever. But
but we we go to the Emmy's the second year
and we win everything and we're we're heading to the
Valet parking and we went to the Governor's Ball for
the TV Academy. This is for the Emmy, is not
the Oscars. And we go to the Governor's Ball and
(26:20):
as we go to the valley, I go God, I said,
you know last year when we lost, we were like
in and atty here really quickly, you know. We well,
we went to the restaurant, had dinner and had a
lot of fun. I said, this year, we won, so
we had to go to the Governor's ball and take
pictures with all these people. I mean like we were
taking pictures for like an hour and a half and
we had to go table to table and get introduced
(26:41):
to this guy and this guy and this person take pictures.
I said, this is really like exhausting and what a
pain in the ass. And we're standing at the Valley
parking and Lauren takes his Emmy and he holds it
up to me and he goes. But winning is better, right,
Lauren is the one who helps you maintained perspective in
a business that it's very easy to lose perspective. So
(27:05):
so Saturday Night Live, I love it. Saturday Night Live
got started about the same time my career at NBC started.
A guy named Herb Schlausser was the president of NBC
then and was really the champion of of Lauren. He
was my mentor there and uh, and I remember I
was programming in Chicago and he came out and talked
to me about Saturday Night Live, among other things. How
(27:27):
on earth do they keep that creativity going for this
many years? Well, I think that the biggest and this
is my opinion. I mean I've never heard anybody say this,
but the biggest I think challenge for them, The biggest
frontier was the digital frontier to take what was a
diminishing network broadcast audience and to get that content and
(27:49):
to get some form of that content in clips and
snippets and scenes and sketches, I mean any way you
can on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, you name it, to get
it out there and to get the NBC content and
the SNL content. I mean, you know, there were numbers
for the show that we're very, very you know, good
(28:10):
numbers for them over the years, and now the show
does numbers that are just ridiculous. They're live on both
coasts now, so they do the eleven thirty feet at
night live at eight thirty on the West coast and
they're live across the country. They don't have it to
You're not watching a taped feet in l A anymore.
And then they're all over the internet in the ensuing
(28:31):
you know, Plus seven schedule and their numbers are equal
to network prime time numbers. They're competing with prime time
shows in terms of their numbers, which is just if
you told me that fifteen years ago, I would have
met everything I had against that. And this is again
Lauren adapting. Lauren is always adapted in terms of the comedians,
(28:52):
where they come from, who they are, the talent, music.
You know, the joke was with Lauren his daughter. So
the the joke was who's the musical act? How do
they determine who the musical act is on Saturday Night Live?
And when his daughter was young, they said, who's ever
in Sophie's iPod? Lauren would take the information wherever he
(29:14):
could get it. Who knows what's new, fresh happening, who's
a young actor? But in the end, when this is
the thing I among the things I love about Lauren
the most, Lauren decides Lauren garners all this information about
potential hosts, music sketches, material, who we make fun of,
(29:35):
who we don't make fun of, how much we make
fun of them. That the actual molding of a show
that goes from eleven thirty at night till one o'clock
in the morning and gets progressively I don't want to
say adult, but a little bit more sophisticated, shall we say?
As the night goes on. I've done sketches for Lauren
where he'd sit there and say, that's a twelve thirty sketch.
We put that towards the end of the show because
(29:56):
it's a little more riskay, or it's a little more
kind of crispy in that way. And Lauren's mastery of
all the things that are in that world, I mean
every element of it. You'll say to Lauren. You watch
Lauren give notes. I meant of the notes he gives
during the notes between shows. We do the dress in
the air, you do a full dress at eight o'clock,
you do the air show at and in between an
(30:18):
abundance of his notes or camera notes go tighter here,
Why is that light? Put another light on him? Why
is that daktrob that color blue? He's producing a TV
show where his eye it's like he's making a movie.
Lauren is just he's probably one of the smartest people
I've ever met in my life period, and he's certainly
one of the three or four smartest people I've ever
(30:39):
met in the business because of his his adaptability he's
so adaptable. Well, he stands alone in the industry. I
don't think there's anybody quite like Lauren. No, there wasn't.
You talked about scripts, and it's so everybody's in that
line to get a script. Some have the shorter lines.
How do you pick what you're gonna do? What's your process?
(31:02):
When I was young, I worked all the time. When
I was young, it was like chain smoking. I just
lit one off the other. And then as I got older,
I got more discerning in that way. And now as
I'm at the age of that now, you know, I
think it's the same muscle. You sit there and go,
I want to go to work, But when you get older,
you think, what is not duplicative of stuff I've already done.
Because a lot of people want me to come in
(31:23):
and play some glengary type of guy that straightens everybody out,
and there's a kind of a ferocity to that character,
and that gets to be kind of boring for me.
But I think when I work now, it's about the people.
So you'll say to me, here's a guy that wants
to work with you with the project, and you think,
in most cases you know who it is and you'll
sit there and go, oh my god, I'm dying to
(31:44):
work with him. Like I never work in the summer.
Here's a good example. I never work in the summer.
I take all of July and August off, except except
if it's Marty Scorsese, and so Marty calls me and says,
would you come and do The Departed? Were up in
Massachusetts and we're gonna shoot in August them like you
got it. You know, there's people who when they when
they there's people who when they call you, you just say,
(32:05):
when's my fitting, let's go. You know, you're just dying
to be around them. You're just dying to be around them,
even if the part you're playing is not that significant,
even if the film by no means pivots on anything
you're doing. It's just such a joy to be around them.
Bob de Niro asked me to do The Good Shepherd,
and just to be on the set with Bob. It
(32:29):
was just mind blowing. It was just mind blowing. You know.
I've had a few experiences like that when we did
Glen Garry and them. Around these actors that are these
actors I worshiped. It's who you work with so let's
let's jump the podcast. You're considered a podcast pioneer. Here's
the thing with Alec Baldwin. What caught your attention with podcasting?
(32:49):
How did you get there so early? What grabbed you?
I had wanted to stay home. I didn't want to
travel anymore. I wanted to work from New York, and
I had pitched the TV show Talk Show. That was
a disaster. I think we aired four or five shows,
and of the five shows we aired, four of them
were against Sunday night football, against the hottest games of
(33:11):
the season. I mean, I think I think the entire
audience from my show could fit in one elevator at
sax S Fithaven, you know what I mean. It was
like forget it. So when I started thinking of the
idea of radio and podcast, I had different ideas, you know,
like a Howard Stern type of bullpen with a cast
(33:32):
of characters. And then the people I was working with
finally said to me, listen, let's just try this at first,
just you talking to people, and we did that for
w N my C. It's not really an interview because
it's a conversation. You know. Terry Gross keeps it all
about her guest, and that's her show, and I love
that show and I'm very admiring of her, but that's
an interview show, and I thought to myself, that wasn't
(33:57):
interesting to me. So if I bring on people, you
know that our actors and performers, and talk to them
about either something we have in common, you know, their
peers of mine, or there's somebody like Debbie Reynolds did
my show and my god, I mean just I mean,
I could have talked to her for six hours about
her career and uh, I mean, they're just so admiring
(34:18):
of them and engaged by them. We've done pretty well
and now we're on iHeart. As you know, we moved
from public radio to My Heart and I'm very glad
for that. The podcast to me, are always divided into
two groups. Ones I like and once I love. I mean,
I I like them all. I mean, there isn't one
show we did that I regret it ever. But then
we have people come on and it's just Billy Joel's handlers.
(34:42):
If you will said, now, whatever you do, don't ask
Billy to play. Don't ask him to play. Whatever you do,
don't ask him to play. Now, I know Billy personally
and I called him on the phone and I said,
thanks so much for coming to do this with us.
We're very excited. I can't thank you, and if I'm
really looking forward to to doing this with you. And
he said, you're gonna have a piano m And I
(35:04):
said what he said, You're gonna have a piano. I said,
we were told that it was forbidden for us to
ask you to play. He goes, oh, that's ridiculous, come on,
come on, and we go into a studio in my
scene at the sound stage where they record music, and
there was a piano, and oh my god. I think
he's the one show we did where we didn't edit
the show. It was one hour and five minutes or
(35:25):
whatever it is uncut. We just played it from start
to finish. Because he's so seamless about his knowledge of
music and what influenced him musically. It was just absolutely
What are the most thrilling ones we ever did creatively?
What is podcast offer you that you can't get in
any other form? Well? I think that like music. I
(35:48):
mean I always say that music has a significance in
people's lives that theater and film and TV don't have.
Because you can consume it anywhere. You can be in
the shower, you can be in the gym, you can
be in the are And podcasts offer that podcast is
the I mean, this is why I love radio. Audio
is something that you can indulge just about any time,
(36:08):
the same as music almost is that idea of its
um availability, you can you can consume it anywhere. And
I love that. And I listened to a lot of
Part'm addicted to this American life and for years, and
I listened to a bunch of podcasts. So as we
wind down, you've had a front row seat in the
entertainment business for decades. So I want you to think
(36:30):
just a second and give a shout out to two
people we always in the show this way because it's
called math and magic. Who's the let's talk about the mathematician.
Who's the best business person you've met you can think
of an entertainment or media And who's the most creative
the magic? Well, I would say that I love this question.
(36:50):
By the way, Well, one person who I don't know, well,
i've met him many times and I don't know well,
but someone who and I'm sure you can appreciate this
in your career. The person who I've always heard consistently
is the guy with the Midas touch. Everything he touches
turns to profit or is successful is Geffen. Geffen is
(37:11):
someone who I always hear these really really like he
just has some mystical ability in terms of his investment
strategies and his businesses, and he's been this preposterously successful
guy for a very very long time. Then I guess,
in terms of the magic and the creativity, the person
who always amazes me the most in terms of the
(37:34):
range of his work. Now, of course he has every
advantage that other people don't have because he's so successful commercially,
and he's so on top of his game. He knows
what he's doing. As Spielberg, I would say Spielberg is
the person who And that's a tough question to answer
because I've got many people, you know, Fincher and Soderberg
(37:55):
and Marty and Di Palma and Coppola and you know,
I mean, it's an endless there's so many hundreds of
directors and you know, and and foreign directors and so forth,
European directors. It's tough to pick one. So I'm really
only picking one among many because I admire many of
them to the same level. But there's something about Spielberg
to me that is just uncanny. I mean that just
(38:17):
the range. I mean things from AI and Jurassic Park
to Jaws and munich Et and Lincoln and Amistad, and
I mean just the range of his I mean even
the things that Spielberg has done that have not been
as successful creatively and commercially as his more towering achievements
like Jurassic and Jaws, and even the ones that didn't
(38:39):
do as well overall, there's still better than most other
people's movies. I mean, Spielberg to me just is on
an island of his own. He's on a planet of
his own in terms of talent. A congratulations on everything.
Thanks for taking the time today, and by the way,
thanks for joining the Heart family with with your podcast.
Always from Bob and I, my friends and I who
(39:01):
were in this club. We all salute each other and
we all left about this. I still have an a
O L mail account Bob me too. Here are a
few things I learned from my conversation with Alec. One
understand what your job is and how to have value
to it. But I only got his big break and soaps.
He learned you have to know your lines, but you
(39:23):
also have to work to sell them. To embrace the
opportunities that surprise you, and Alex's experience. When you think
you're choosing between A, B and C, the actual will
probably be D. Three. Whether it's a costar or a
co worker. Never underestimate how your collaborators can help you grow.
(39:44):
These days, Alex chooses his projects based on who he'll
be working with. The Next time you're searching for a
new partner or collaborator, ask yourself, will this person challenge me?
Will they help me grow? Four? And in these difficult times,
take some comfort and the simple things. During COVID, Alec
has found balanced by spending time outdoors, going on hikes
(40:06):
and playing in the snow with his family. Thanks for listening.
I'm Bob Pittman. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so
much for listening to Math and Magic, a production of
I Heart Radio. This show is hosted by Bob Pittman.
Special thanks to Sue Schillinger for booking and wrangling our
wonderful talent, which is no small feat. Nikki Eatore for
pulling research bill plaques, and Michael Asar for their recording help,
(40:30):
our editor Ryan Murdoch and of course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel,
Noel Mango, and everyone who helped bring this show to
your ears. Until next time,
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