Alec Baldwin - Spotlight INBOUND16

Key Takeaways

I went to George Washington University to go I was in school for did you go to GW you did yeah what year did you graduate what how long ago did you really graduate two years ago did yeah I went to GW uh in the 1970s and um I want I was in a political science program and I wanted to be a lawyer and I wanted to go into politics that's what I wanted to do I was visiting a friend who was at NYU and her roommate was in the drama program and her roommate said oh you'd be a wonderful actor and I thought who gets a degree in theater that's like the most useless stupid degree you could possibly imagine and I said I'm I'm going to get a degree you know in something um you know even if it's history or literature or philosophy where you're going to read a lot of books and so forth and you do read a lot of drama and and uh and theater and plays and things and a theater program but she said to me this is a true story she said to me uh you should go and I thought well I'll never be young enough to do this again and I thought and when I went to school and I was graduating I was supposed to graduate 1980 there was a glut of applicants to go to law school that was when really law school was not viewed as as privileged as it was now and there were a lot of people were going to law school and taking the LSAT so I thought I'll let that wait and I audition for the um uh acting program at NYU and I get in and they give me a full scholarship cuz I was poor they give me a need-based scholarship and I call up my uh my parents and I say I'm going to leave GW and go to NYU and my mother starts screaming on the phone she's apoplectic she's like are you out of your mind and she's screaming and then I tell them that it's going to cost them less money I'm going to get a scholarship that's going to pay for everything and my father's like well let's hear them out now let's just hear them out let him finish and the fact that I got everything paid for my dad was like I think you have some real potential to be an actor so I went to NYU when I was in uh uh New York and it's difficult for people to think about this if you're not really in the business but when I came into New York to go to NYU it was 79 and it was the last gasps of a wave of actors who having some pedigree in the theater was essential so you come into New York and the actors that are um I feel very bad about the people over here especially the people over here they really effed you over over here is they I mean you're like why don't you just go sit in the kitchen and have some make some eggs you're like what are you doing over there um so uh the um like you you're in New York and you see posters and you see things at the public theater and you see things Broadway and Off Broadway with Merill stre and Kevin Klein and Raul Julia and soury Weaver Glenn Close Patty lepone all these people who were these uh uh uh Chris Walkin John kazal all these people Pino people who were these Legends in the movie business who the theater was really their main meet that's what they were very devoted to it they made a lot of their career plans around that and I had a hangover from that like when I was in the business I'd always say well I got to do something in the theater and get back to the theater and um I've tried to do that uh even recently I did a play on uh uh on Long Island in 2015 I was on Broadway 2013 I did a play on Long Island 2010 I was off off Broadway 2006 uh on Broadway 2002 so all along I I keep trying to get back to that because I think it's uh it's a different experience you know because you know when you make a movie and the movie comes out I mean I know this is kind of a tired reference but when you make a movie and the movie comes out you know you go to the theater and you watch it and when you're watching I'm like water skiing out on Long Island I mean it's like it's 18 months later but in the theater you really feel the audience there a profound contact you have with them so I really enjoy that originally the Genesis of that was to conduct interviews with people in the way that I would like to be interviewed we do the long format people sit with me for an hour very for people not that you would consider this that much or not that you would think about this that that much but for people in media and in entertainment and so forth sports music doesn't matter any of the Arts and even politics and and Science and Academia these people come into the Today Show and they're lucky if it's one six-minute segment it's a six-minute segment you're out it's a six minute if you're if you're a superstar you're on Letterman's couch or the couch on a big talk show like Fon for two six-minute segments and then so it's an it's it's a combination obviously of 10 or 12 minutes and the podcast I do we sit for one hour everybody knows it's 1 hour we cut it down to 35 or 40 minutes with our underwriting and the and the and and the and the tracking and announcing that goes in there and you sit with people and you don't push them you don't prod them you don't try to grab something from them and take it from them you wait for them to give it to you and they will give it to you they will tell you who they are David Letterman is somebody who came on my podcast and David Letterman obviously he's interviewing other people and he's been interviewed but he sat with us and you could tell as he was getting close to retirement he had a lot on his mind and 20 minutes into the interview I mean even his staff had their hand over their mouths he talked about how he did his first show and it bombed and he did his second show and it wasn't successful so he knew this last shot he had at that time was his last that that shot he had was his last shot and if it didn't work he was out of he was out of the business on TV so what he did was he goes to work and he does nothing but work and kill himself for 20 years and he turned around he he didn't have a family he didn't have a wife he didn't have kids all he had was was career and he was really depressed and he talked about this overwhelming depression he had he had a bypass and all this stuff and you know he was stressed out I mean all he did was work and he said I just couldn't do it anymore I mean there was an honesty that if I tried to crowd him and kind of get that out of him you let them give it to you and they will give it to you so I really love that component of plus I try to interview people from a very wide swath you know we do stars and celebrities and Kristen uh you know Kristen wig and Chris Rock and people from different entertainment uh uh corners but then we do like Herb Alpert who was a one of the you know famous trumpet player who went on to form A&M records with Jerry Moss his partner one of the biggest producers in the music business in the 60s and 70s and I I spread it out all over the place you go on Twitter and I I I remember when I first started on Twitter I literally it was like Roger eert was somebody who kind of wrote me on Twitter and said you really need to stop what you're doing you need to stop because I thought it was a way to communicate to my audience and bypass the mainstream media rather than me do an interview and they edit it and therefore they tell you who I am I'll tell you who I am and count three I'll never forget I was in Florida shooting a movie 5 years ago or so and I'm there and and I just started Twitter and count to three and I'm like no no no you no and you and you start getting into these rockus ugly debates with people and you're communicating with them because you can't believe the level of Civility and and then it it allows you this is not an excuse but it's an explanation it allows you to get pulled down into that and I'm certainly somebody that does not need more things out there in the media of me uh you can really laugh now if you want to um of me uh uh saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing and um the um but I do on Twitter you do what I did was I kind of stop that now I really I really don't care anymore and I realize you're never going to be able to change what people think of you there's people who they have that the the people who have a negative opinion of you it's like I it's the alternate side of I love you no matter what there's people who say to me I love you no matter what if if there's bad things you did if there's mistakes you made in your life I forgive you and I love you no matter what and then there's just as many people it seems who are like I hate you no matter what I think that you know Warren batty I just shot his movie that's coming out calling called rules don't apply wonderful film you know batty hasn't made a film in many years and batty is this incredibly uh talented man I love Warren he's been a great friend to me over the years and um and when I had this thing with this voicemail with my daughter he called me was at a soccer game with his kids and he called me on the phone he goes you know he said you know I want you he said if they ever recorded things I said to my kids he said I'd be in prison right now and and again it's very important you understand I'm not this is not an excuse there's a big difference between I think an explanation and an excuse because nothing excuses these kinds of things but he said you know the internet is the death of forgetting and sometimes we do need to forget and move on from certain things and my relationship with my daughter is as good as anybody's relationship with their daughter who's 21 years old lives in California with her boyfriend he's a professional Surfer his name is Noah Noah schwitzer I love Noah he's a great guy he's like this little he's like a smaller wiry super ripped super fit and all my daughter does this follow Noah around they go to Cape Town they go to Portugal they go to Hawaii Noah he's like a a professional he like makes a living at this sponsorships and endorsements and so forth and my daughter's going to film school and she takes her camera with her and my she just has made like you know 2500 movies about Noah and surfing you know here's my movie about Noah and um but my relationship with my daughter is is fine and yet there's people as I said in the in the internet world who they can't let it be fine I mean that thing that happened with my daughter that stays with me and reverberates in my life if I criticize Trump and I criticize Trump in in my mind for what I believe is the greater good of the country I have never in my life I think this is a very important distinction to make I have never in my life advocated for any kind of public policy or any kind of advocacy that lined my own Pockets I'm not in Washington lobbying about the Communications bill and fees for cable and so forth things are going to make me richer and so and I only mention that because like if I criticize Trump it's because I I I I don't think it's good for the country you I don't think it's good for the country to say and it doesn't and there's a leadership and there's an inspirational role that I think is lost on the guy who says well that judge can't adj can't adjudicate my case cuz he's Mexican because he's Latino I mean we you want to do you want to send millions of Latin American or or Latino Americans and African-Americans and people of color and people who are not wh and you want to send them out the door every day thinking that they are a step behind everybody else do you want to send them out the door feeling bad you know I don't think so I I don't think so I think you want everybody to feel like we wake up we go out there we give it everything we've got and and we have the support of the government and of the people themselves we want everybody to do well because if you do well my father used to say this what if the cure for cancer is inside the brain right now of some little African-American girl who lives in like Jackson Mississippi there there's information there's inspiration there's destiny that we all have to unlock and we all have to unearth in our lives Liv in our lives together that we have to unearth that no matter what it takes who cares where the cure for cancer comes from and we have to enable those people to try to uh do their best because we benefit from it you know the rising tide kind of thing and um but I think with my daughter I would criticize Trump and they'd say you know you know these are my two favorite ones they'll always say you know actors telling us about public policy you know who needs that go leave a message for your daughter water and when I when the political cycle was going on there would be like thousands of those thousands of those over the last couple months people who really rely on that so in that sense it doesn't go away but you have to uh kind of rise above it I mean I feel like uh um you know Anthony Weiner who uh had all of his horrible reversals I actually had him on my podcast about 3 months ago and I sat him down and I said now this was before he uh blew up again but uh I had him on my podcast and I said uh do you think there's a role for you teaching or speaking or Consulting I said because you're so bright and and in New York for people who know him he was considered a very very capable retail politician when he ran for mayor and he ran for congress he was a really really great great retail politician now since then since he appeared on my show he's had a whole new crop of problems but I I I'm a a believer that uh uh um you know you got to give people a chance and with that in mind I guess we have to give Trump a chance see how I painted myself in that corner I pitched a TV show and I was sent it to these guys and we thought it was a great idea and we pitched it to this company and they were kind of sitting there going well okay because it wasn't really their uh typical menu of this kind of drama we wanted to do the dramas were much more kind of like a lot of cable show show there was a lot of violence and sex all the time and um um these guys they thought about it for like a week or two and in that week or two laoren Michaels came to me and asked me to do 30 Rock which when he said that to me I thought I don't think I want to do a sitcom you know thank you very much all three of you who applauded but um we did we did the show thank you we did the show and uh that was the the greatest experience I've ever had in my life that was the greatest experience I've ever had in my life doing 30 Rock because you know yeah thank you it was amazing I mean I mean you go to work you know um you know the TV business you go to work and you sit there you're at a table read we do a table read every Wednesday during the lunch break so we shoot and then Wednesday we go into a conference room with all these tables arranged and the entire crew assembled in front of us and down the middle of the crew is a pipe is a is a camera that's shooting us beaming us to California for them to see the live feed of us doing the read through for next week's show we do the read through for them and they come up to me before the reow they go okay now just hang on okay really just hang on because we're taking a big swing here and they'd say that to me like every third show we're for they said we're taking a really big swing here I'd be like what now and they'd say you're going to play a gay Mexican soap oper [Music] star and you're going to play both we're going to do the Patty Duke thing split screen you're going to talk to yourself you're going to confront yourself and you're going to play this gay Mexican soap proper store and I was like what the have I cut myself into here and we did and everything we would do uh when it was over I never had more fun in my life I'll never have a better job in my life than that show that was the best job I've ever had ever even though 30 Rock was Network I worked with a group of people of which I think we should have a round of applause I mean Tina Fe is the smartest person in the world you know I mean in terms of TV I just saw her I just saw her and Jeff her husband the other night we were watching the elections at somebody's house at a party and uh you know I just look I just like stare at her for like I have to kind of snap out of I like stare at her for like five minutes and think my God this woman changed my life you know because because of her wit and her intelligence and her humor and um uh you do TV and if you get a chance to work with someone like that what I loved about 30 Rock is it was Network so we had we couldn't go Blue we couldn't be dirty we had to find ways to say those things right up to a certain line and they did sometimes cross that line and the network would say no no no you have to to back off but uh they I think they masterfully kind of slalomed right on that line we're literally like all right we're gonna go see Batman who gives a you know we're GNA go watch Batman we can't think of any other movie we want to see that was in the theater near where we live and we watch Batman and the first and there's like nine trailers that come on the movie and all of them are the most violent things I've ever seen in my life it's guns and people punching each other and just it's a constant ballet of punch punching and guns and weapons and shooting uh and then you watch uh uh trailers for TV and trailers for TV are like everything is sex it's just a constant barrage of sex and you know like every time you watch it's a woman going you called my Lord and you know the woman's like 17 years old or something and she's popping out of some toga or something and the guy's like yes Helena you know I know you're my sister but I've always wanted you always and she's like yes my Lord and she takes off her thing and they have sex on top of the guy that he just killed you know the guy's body's laying there make love to me on the corpse of your father and you're like oh my God I can't believe you know what TV is now and and the only reason I say this because it's because I think it's lazy I think it's lazy I think good writing comes from if it's all going to be violence and sex then it's I mean I love a good let's get it on with your sister on top of the corpse of your father scene I love that I'm not opposed to that but if it's going to be all a steady diet that I mean come on it loses its power it loses its magic thank you if you make Studio films if you make big films the budgets are big the fees are big everybody gets paid a lot of money you got to sell tickets it's got to work you know and all through the 90s when I started start in studio films and some of them made a little bit of money and you know a couple of them made a lot of money not many and then most of them just did what most of them do most films don't succeed it's a very very uh uh um Risky Business and the business has been taken over by more and more risk averse people which is why you see this homogeneity of film products so much which is a lot of Marvel and comics and things like that and uh um and and films where you people are home with a device and they can watch all the content they want streaming at home you can watch everything there's so much to watch what's going to get you to get in a car and go to a theater and watch a movie you want to see something on a big screen that you can't see anywhere else so they have to have effects effects effects and um uh in my lifetime that's a big change and so when I when the movies I make you get to a run of them that don't make money you know you you become the Apple that falls from the movie tree and gets made into the applesauce of independent film making you know you go and you make Independent films where the fees are like you know one fif of what you got paid and you go and make it's another movie where you and your sister are putting dad in a home it's a poignant drama no sets no C you with me with a wool hat on standing outside probably shot up here in Boston in the dead of winter everybody going like this in the scenes standing by some frozen water what are we going to do about Dad I don't know what are we going to do Dad's like you know rolling around in a chair in the house we go back in the house but but my point is that you uh you make Independent films and some of them eventually that business becomes exactly like the studio business except so everybody gets paid less and that is it has its star system it has its uh requirements to Market films when you do an independent film now you spend more time on the festival circuit than it took to shoot the movie your flying around to South by Southwest and Sundance and you're going all over the world trying to sell the movie and get it and get it into distribution and um it's become its own system as well it was supposed to be the answer to a system and now it itself as a system you have a device in your hand as we I mean I'm going to say some pretty tedious little pum here but everybody has a device in their hand and the whole world is in that device and many of the people in this room are going to control what the content or the way that's delivered or going to have some say and what happens in that device and as we saw from the uh uh the election that uh some cable news venues some Broadcast News venues some print journalism what have you some online venues everywhere you look now I there's no one group to single out but everywhere you look the information we got about this election was very very misleading and I'm not saying you need to go out and go into the polling business but what I'm saying is is I think we need and this is a terribly generic thing to say but I think we need smart we need a place to go for smarter better content on the internet there are sites and if you guys can come up with it there are sites that I used to go to and count I don't think I need to name one of them but the sites I used to go to that was smart better content then they got sold to a major corporation and now it's all like you know clicks and and clickbait about the Kardashians and all this vomit that we really don't need anymore you know and and where what we need is people in the internet world and in the world of media to be braver and to be really Brave and and and create sites and create places we can go where also people can feel their voice is put into action in terms of the political Spectrum how can they go and have a uh like I was I was talking to a guy the other day who said when Trump won he said I want to have a site where everything you wanted the government to do that you thought uh Trump promised he would do we track it on a Facebook page or on some kind of a site we create where people can monitor and say I voted for Trump and I thought this was going to happen and we we'll help you track that cause other people will join you in a conversation on that site and say well I happen to work in the state government or I'm somebody who has some official position or non-official position or NGO position who can help tell you what did the government promise you they would do what did the elected officials promise you they would do and we're going to help track for you the progress of your individual issue so people can go to a site and go okay this bill is in this place here's the evaluation of that bill blah blah blah I think that's what we need is for all of you to help with the internet to create the interactivity between government and the citizens that just does not exist in this country right now at all so anyway thank you all very much thank you [Applause]