Alec Baldwin - Spotlight INBOUND16

I went to George Washington University to go with for judo GW you did yeah what year did you graduate how long ago did you really graduate two years ago yeah I went to GW in the 1970s and I went I was in a political science program and I wanted to be a lawyer and I wanted to go into politics that's what I wanted to do I was visiting a friend who was at NYU and her roommate was in the drama program and her roommate said oh you'd be a wonderful actor and I thought who gets a degree in theater that's like the most useless stupid degree you could possibly imagine and I said I'm gonna get a degree and you know when something you know even if it's history or literature or philosophy where you're gonna beat a lot of books and so forth and you do read a lot of drama and in theater and plays and things in a theater program but she said to me this is a true story she said to me you should go and I thought well I'll never be young enough to do this again and I thought and when I went to school when I was graduating or supposed to graduate in 1980 there was a glut of applicants to go to law school that was when really law school was not viewed as as privileged as it was now and there were a lot of people were going to law school and taking the L SAT so I thought I'll let that wait and the audition for the acting program at NYU and I get in and they give me a full scholarship because I was poor they gave me a need-based scholarship and I call up my my parents and I say I'm gonna leave GW and go to NYU and my mother starts screaming on the phone she's apoplectic she said are you out of your mind and she's screaming and then I tell them that it's gonna cost them less money I'm gonna get a scholarship who's gonna pay for everything and my father's like well it's you're about now let's just hear him out let him finish and the fact that I've got everything paid for my dad was like I think that you have some real potential to be an actor so I went to NYU when I was in New York it's difficult for people to think about this if you're not really in the business but when I came into New York to go to NYU it was 79 and it was the last gasps of a wave of actors who having some pedigree in the theater was essential so you come into New York and the actors that are I feel very bad about the people over here especially the people over here they really effed you over over here didn't them your liking why don't you just go sit in the kitchen and have some make some eggs you're like what are you doing over there so uh the like you you're in New York and you see posters and you see things that the Public Theater and you see things Broadway an off-broadway with Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline and Raul Julia and Sigourney Weaver Glenn Close Patti LuPone and all these people who were these Chris Walken John Cazale all these people Pacino people who were these legends in the movie business who the theater was really their main meet that's what they were very devoted to it and it made a lot of their career plans around that and I had a hangover from that like when I was in the business I'd always say well I got to do something in the theater and get back to the theater and I've tried to do that even recently I did a play on on Long Island in 2015 I was on Broadway 2013 that had a play on Long Island 2010 I was off probably 2006 on Broadway 2002 so all along I keep trying to get back to that because I think it's a 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 waterskiing out of Long Island I mean it's like eight it's eighteen months later but in the theater you really feel the audience is 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 enough that you would think about this that much but for people in media and in entertainment so for sports music doesn't matter any of the arts and even politics and science and academia these people come into the Today Show and they're lucky of it's one six minute segment it's a six minute segment you're out it's a six minute if you if you're a superstar you're on Letterman's couch or the couch on a big talk show like Fallon four to six minute segments and then so it's a combination obviously of ten or twelve minutes and the podcast I do we sit for one hour everybody knows it's one hour we cut it down to two thirty-five or forty minutes with our underwriting and them 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 we sat with us and you could tell as he was getting close to retirement he had a lot on his mind and twenty minutes into the interview I mean even his staff had their hand over their mouth he talked about how he did his first show and it bombed and he did a 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 it 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 twenty years and he turned around he didn't have a family he didn't have a wife he didn't have kids all he had was career and he was really depressed and he talked about this overwhelming depression he had he had a bypass and all this stuff and you know he was just stressed out I mean all he did was work and he said I just couldn't do it anymore I mean it 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 that I really loved that component of pus I try to interview people from a very wide swath you know we do stars and celebrities and Christian you know Kristen Wigg and Chris Rock and people from different entertainment corners but then we do like herb Alpert's who was a famous trumpet player who went on to form AM records with Jerry Moss his partner one of the biggest producers of the music business in the 60s and 70s and I spread it out all over the place you go on Twitter and I remember when I first started on Twitter I literally it was like Roger Ebert was somebody who kind of wrote me on Twitter and said you really need to stop what you're doing did you stop because I thought it was a way to communicate to my audience and bypass the mainstream media rather than me do an interview and they edit it and therefore they tell you who I am I'll tell you who I am and count to three I'll never forget I was in Florida shooting a movie five years ago or so and I'm there and I started Twitter and count to three and I'm like man and I'll you know and you and you start getting in these raucous ugly debates with people and they're communicating with them because you can't believe the level of civility and then it allows you this is not an excuse but it's an explanation it allows you to get pulled down into that and I'm certainly somebody that does not need more things out there in the media of me you can really laugh now if you want to of me saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing and the but I do on Twitter you do what I did was I kind of stopped that now I really I really don't care anymore and I realize you're never gonna be able to change what people think of you there's people who they have that the people who have a negative opinion of you it's like is the alternate side if I love you no matter what there's people who say to me I love you no matter what if there's bad things you did if there's mistakes you made in your life I forgive you when I love you no matter what and then there's just as many people it seems who are like I hate you no matter what I think that you know Warren Beatty I just shot his movie that's coming out calling cold rules don't apply wonderful film you know Beatty hasn't made a film in many years and Beatty is this incredibly talented man I love Warren he's been a great friend to me over the years and and when I had this thing with his voicemail with my daughter he called me he was at a soccer game with his kids and he called me on the phone he goes to you and 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 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 a my relationship with my daughter is as good as anybody's relationship with their daughter who's 21 years old lives in California with her boyfriend he's a professional surfer his name is Noah Noah Schweitzer I love know why he's a great guy he's like this little he's like a smaller wiry super ripped super fit and all she's my daughter does this follow no around they go to Cape Town they go to Portugal they go to Hawaii know what he's like a prefect 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 she's just as made like you know twenty five hundred movies about Noah and surfing you know here's my movie about Noah and 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 my mind for what I believe is the greater good of the country I have never in my life I think this is a very important distinction to make I have never in my life advocated for any kind of public policy or any kind of advocacy that lined my own pockets I'm not in Washington lobbying about the communications bill and fees for cable and so forth things that going to make me richer and so and I only mentioned that because like if I criticized Trump it's because I I don't think it's good for the country you know I don't think it's good for the country to say and it doesn't and there's a leadership and there's an inspirational role that I think is lost on the guy who says well that judge can't adjudicate can't adjudicate my case cuz he's Mexican cuz he's Latino I mean you want to do you want to send millions of Latin American or Latino Americans and African Americans and people of color and people of war not white but you want to send them out the door every day thinking that there 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 don't think so I think you wanted everybody to feel like we we go out there we give it everything we've got and we have the support of the government and of the people themselves we want everybody to do well because if you do well my father used to say this what if the cure for cancer is inside the brain right now of some little african-american girl who lives in like Jackson Mississippi there there's information there's inspiration this destiny that we all have to unlock and we all have to unearth in our lives in our lives together that we have to unearth that no matter what it takes who cares where the cure for cancer comes from and we have to enable those people to try to do their best because we benefit from it you know the rising tide kind of thing and but I think with my daughter I would criticize trump and they'd say you know you know these are my two favorite ones they'll always say you know actors telling us about public policy you know who needs that go leave a message for your daughter when like when the political cycle was going on there would be like thousands of those thousands of those over the last couple of months people who really rely on that so in that sense it doesn't go away but you have to kind of rise above it I mean I feel like you know Anthony Weiner who had all of his horrible reversals I actually had him on my podcasts about three months ago and I sat him down and I said now this was before he blew up again but I had him on my podcast and I said do you think there's a role for you a teaching or speaking or consulting us because you're so bright and in New York for people who know him he was considered a very very capable retail politician when he ran for mayor and he ran for Congress he was a really really great great retail politician now since then since he appeared on my show he's had a whole new crop of problems but I'm a believer that you know you got to give people a chance and with that in mind I guess we have to give a trumpet check 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 typical menu of this kind of drama we wanted to do the dramas were much more kind of like a lot of cable shows there was a lot of violence and sex all the time and these guys they thought about it for like a week or two and in that week or two Lorne Michaels came to me and asked me to do 30 rock which when he said that to me I thought I don't think I want to do a sitcom you know thank you very much all three of you who applauded but we did do we did the show thank you we did the show and that was the greatest experience I've ever had in my life that was the greatest experience I've ever had in my life doing 30 rock because you know yeah thank you it was amazing I mean I mean you go to work you know you you know the TV business should go to working to 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 arranging the entire crew assembled in front of us and down the middle of the crew is a pipe as a as a camera that's shooting us beaming us to California for them to see the live feed of us doing their B through for next week's show and we do the read-through for them and they come up to me before the we throw 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 Forster they say we're taking a really big swinger I'd be like what now and they'd say you're gonna play a game exa console' popper star and you're gonna play both we're gonna do the Patty Duke thing split scream you're gonna talk to yourself you're gonna confront yourself and you're gonna play this gay Mexican soap opera star and I was like what the have I got myself into here and we did and everything we would do when it was over I never had more fun in my life I'll never have a better job in my life than that show that was the best job I've ever had ever even though 30 rock was Network I worked with a group of people of which I think we should have a round of applause I mean Tina Fey's the smartest person in the world in terms of TV I just saw her I just saw her in Jeff her husband the other night we were watching the elections at somebody's house at a party and you know I said 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 cause she because of her wit and her intelligence and her humor and you do TV and if you get a chance to work with someone like that what I loved about 30 rock was it was Network so we had we couldn't go blue we couldn't be dirty we had to find ways to say those things right up to a certain line and they did sometimes cross that line and the network would say no no no you have to back off but they wink they masterfully kind of slalom right on that line we're literally like all right we're gonna go see Batman who gives a I'm gonna watch Batman mm-hmm we can't think of any other movie we want to see that was in the theater near where we live and we watched Batman and the first and there's like nine trailers that come on the movie and all of them are the most violent things I've ever seen in my life it's guns and people punching each other and just it's a constant ballet of punching and guns and weapons and shooting and then you watch trailers for TV and trailers for TV or 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 guys 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 guys bodies laying there make love to me on the corpse of your father and you're like oh my god I can't believe you know what TV is now and the only reason I say this because it's because I think it's lazy I think it's lazy I think good writing comes from it's all gonna be violence and sex then it's I mean I love a good let's get it on with your sister on top of the corpse of your father scene I love that I'm not opposed to that but if it's gonna be all a steady diet of that I mean come on it loses its power loses its magic thank you if you make the studio films we make big films the budgets are big the fees are big everybody gets paid a lot of money you got to sell tickets this kind of work you know and all through the 90s when I started studio films and some of them made a little bit of money and you know a couple of them made a lot of money not many and then most of them just did what most of them do most films don't succeed it's a very very risky business and the business has been taken over by more and more risk-averse people which is why you see this homogeneity of film products so much which is a lot of Marvel and comics and things like that and and films were 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 gonna 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 would have to have effects effects effects and in my lifetime that's a big change and so when I when the movies I make you get to a run of them that don't make money you know you you become the Apple that falls from the movie tree and gets made into the applesauce of independent filmmaking you know you go and you make independent films where the fees are like you know one-fifth of what you got paid and you go and make it's another movie where you and your sister are putting dad in a home it's a poignant drama no sets no call you go with me with a wool hat on standing outside probably shot up here in Boston in the dead of winter everybody going like in the scenes standing by some frozen water what are we gonna do about dad I don't know what are we gonna do dad's like you know rolling around in a chair in the house we go back in the house but but my point is is that you you make independent films and some of them eventually that business becomes exactly like the studio business except so everybody gets paid less and that is it has its star system it has its requirements to market films when you do an independent film now you spend more time on the festival circuit that it took to shoot the movie you're flying around to South by Southwest and Sundance and you're going all over the world trying to sell the movie and get it and get it into distribution and it's become its own system as well it was supposed to be the answer to a system and now it itself as a system ice in your hand as we I mean I'm gonna say some pretty tedious little pablum here but everybody has a device in the head and the whole world is in that device and many of the people in this room are gonna control what the content or the way that's delivered we're gonna have some say and what happens in that device and as we saw from the the election that some cable news venues some broadcasters venues some print journalism but having some online venues everywhere you look now but me 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 board 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 didn't 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 Cali I don't think I need to name one of them but 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 cliques and clickbait about the Kardashians and all this vomit that we don't really don't need anymore you know and and we're 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 we're also people can feel their voice is put into action in terms of the political spectrum how can they go and have a like I was I was talking about guy the other day who said when Trump won he said I want to have a site where everything you wanted the government to do that you thought Trump promised he would do we track it on a Facebook page or on some kind of a site we create where people can monitor and say I voted for Trump and I thought this was gonna happen and we'll help you track that cause other people will join you in a conversation on that side seating will 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 we're gonna help attract 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] you

Channel: HubSpot Marketing

Views: 12,128

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Id: m01_mZ2XTY0

Length: 22min 58sec (1378 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 23 2016