Andrew McCarthy

Published Nov 5, 2012, 5:00 AM

This week Alec talks with Andrew McCarthy – about making movies, directing, and what it’s like to reinvent oneself as a travel writer. Most people know McCarthy for his roles in "St. Elmo’s Fire" and "Pretty in Pink" – as a member of the “Brat Pack" -- but those movies were only one stop on Andrew McCarthy’s journey.

Almost 20 years ago, McCarthy discovered that traveling the world was the perfect antidote to the fame and exposure that came with his acting career.  He has spent much of the last decade writing about his experiences in distant and exotic lands.  McCarthy talks with Baldwin about his new book, called The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down.

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I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Andrew McCarthy has been on a long journey. At twenty two, he was a rising young movie star with the requisite good looks and talent. You know what love is. Love is an illusion created by lawyer types like yourself to perpetuate another illusion called marriage, to create a reality divorce and the the illusionary for divorce ars. After playing a sullen writer in sat Almo's Fire, he woke up one morning to discover he and his co stars were members of something New York magazine called the Brat Pack of Sucks. It was news to him, and like it or not, from then on he was permanently linked to that cynical symbol of eighties self indulgence. Fortunately for us, this was only one stop on Andrew McCarthy's journey. McCarthy discovered the traveling the world was the perfect antidote to the fame and exposure that came with his acting career. He has spent much of the last decade writing about his experiences in distant and exot lands. He has a book out called The Longest Way Home, One Man's Quest for the Courage to settle down. Many people travel to escape and disconnect, but Andrew McCarthy, who turns fifty later this month, credits his solo adventures with ushering him into adulthood. Well I'm known from my youth. Yeah, no, not your best movies, but I mean you're most well known movies where this spade of movies you did when you were a young, young leading man. What's it like for you to turn fifty? Well, it's on that level. It's a weird thing because though that success in those movies of being a boy, to find my adulthood. So it's a weird thing to outgrow youth. And so if you outgrow the success that came with youth, what do you carry forward? So it's an interesting dilemma or position. So, I mean, on a personal level, it's hard to separate those two things because I'm so much an outgood as you are. Suppose you, but you carry forward in a more sort of current way. But I'm such a result of that kind of early fame. For me, I went and did TV, And for you, I would say that was there for you too. You took this other path. What led you to do that? What led you to do what you're doing now in terms of its relationship to your acting career, it was a total accidental thing. I had no intention of becoming a travel writer or you didn't know not. So this wasn't a case where you were sitting there and as there's been no plan ever at any point. Okay, So when I was a young actor, I stumbled into these movies and suddenly I'm in the brad Pack and suddenly I'm this kind of an actor, which I'm like, well, wait, that's not the kind of actor I wanted to be. But those were the movies I was in suddenly, and so that was my career trajectory, which is interesting because there was no hands on the wheel then. Really, I was just reacting to situations. So when I didn't get well, that was describe how you felt back then. Fame, money, success, movies, which are the most intoxicating of a well, movies are much more intoxicating and much more um like royalty than television is. You know, it's you know, it's it's a movie, and movies people relate to differently when you're in movies than they do when you're on television. There's a certain familiarity on television that people assume, but in movies you're there is an awe that people have. I think it's dissipated now to some degree because everything is so water down and interchangeable. But when we started, particularly you know, you did TV when your career was over, and now that's not the case at all. So describe how you felt when you were I mean, it was a wondrous, wonderful, uh confusing time, I think, But again, I didn't have any real consciousness of like, okay, I just did a movie about a mannequin, Now let me do one about a drug addict. I mean, it was just like that was what came next. I had a certain desperate quality of what you just have to keep going. And and those movies, you have to remember, we're not that successful at the time, and did weren't respected and sort of iconic the where they've become now, only later because I think of the cr and people were able to suddenly take those movies home, whereas a generation before they couldn't. I think that's what made those movies so successful because suddenly young people who were the people who are renting movies when vhs came to the four in the mid eighties, could take us home and watch us ten fifteen times and take ownership in a certain way that was never possible before. So then you're you're locked in that moment in time. Did you feel that those films were a genre of film while you were making them, they were less um substantive, substantive than some other movies. Yeah, I mean, although now you look back and you know they're still you know, if you said, we would have been still talking about Pretty in Pink years later, yeah, compared it's crazy, but they did, you know, they did capture something about They took seriously that dilemma of being very self centered and young. That was wonderfully important. What was the most because you are a very bright guy, and you've always seen like a very bright guy on film and very thoughtful when you go back and you look it from your perspective now you're older, what were the most rewarding parts of your career when you were making films, you know, when you were younger. Well, I worked with Claude Chevroll and a couple of films and France, and that was a real powerful experience. I I well, I'd like to know your opinion, but I haven't worked for him. Any good directors. There are very few good directors, you know, And so that was one he was. He just had a vision. He had his own vision. He wasn't interested in other people's ideas of what his films should be like. He had real passion and vision, and he had a unique point of view on what film was and what his relationship to it was and what he wanted to create on screen and what he wanted me to be doing in his film. He had a real that sort of French or tour kind of this is my film, this is what I want you to do. I'm like, why do you want me to do it that? Because because I prefer And I'm like, okay, you know, And he had such and he had such appreciation for me. I felt quite appreciated by him. So that allowed me to trust him, and he trusted me and enjoyed me. You know, I think a lot of he is afraid of actors, so they don't enjoy them, and they don't enjoy the process you know that doctors go through. So that becomes his adversarial or the best sort of business like relationship. Very tense, yeah, but one of my favorite moments recently was. I went back and I downloaded on my computer the Stanley Kubrick documentary Life and Pictures, and there's this wonderful moment and when Matthew Modine says they're getting to that part of Kubrick's career where he did Full Metal Jacket, and Matthew talks about how you know, he was walking around angsting over what does Stanley want? What does Stanley want? And he said that Kubrick pulled up in a car with people like on the way to the seting goes, what are you doing, Matthew, And he goes, Matthew Modine says, I'm trying to figure out what you want. I can't get a grip on what it is you want. And he said that Stanley him He goes, oh God, no, why don't want you to do that? He goes, It's very simple. I want you to have a good time. I want you to enjoy yourself. But that's giving him such great respect and is doing that on the actors that suddenly the active relaxes, and when an actors relaxed, they can do which is which is an art that I think many directors now a don't have the ability to do and be. I feel almost resentful that they have to do it, Like the biggest directors I've ever worked with, like Mike Nichols, who I had a very small role with, But Nichols was someone who win that brief time I had with him in the movie Working Girl. What I always will love was him taking that moment to go, hey, it's gonna be okay. Just relax. I picked you for a reason, and you're going to do this thing for me, and the great ones and the good ones want to do whatever it takes to open that channel of communication with you so we can get the job done, because we're not gonna get it done if you and I aren't communicating well. They don't need to exert their power and demonstrate that they're in charge in any way. They simply are, and then they want to bring out the best in you for their own purposes. Other than Chibral, who did you like? I like most of them, you know. I like talking Ted Koch. I thought Ted was kind of crazy. We did Weekend of Bernies together. Ted was kind of crazy and screaming in a madman, But I really I got that. I enjoyed that he liked me, you know, so he'd be screaming and then he just turned and wink at me, and I've got you know, I was on the inside then. You know, when you feel like you're inside and a partner to a director, you will do what they want you to do if they make you understand, if they empower you to that, and you know, I feel like you're in the process. You know. I find many directors just stand behind the box because they don't really understand actors. They just want them to get it done so they can move on and get their next shot. And that's just like the hell with you. Go stand on your box. I'll get it. Yeah. Now, what about actors? And you've worked with a gallery of very well known people, and what were some of them that you really it was a joy for you in a positive experience to work alongside them. I really liked working with John Malkovich. Uh. I just did a very small thing with him in a movie called Maholan Falls. But I liked watching the way he worked. He had no ownership of anything. He just did completely different things in each tape. That was fantastic when you do that thing, but it was no good technically, and you did something else the next time, because that's some movies. It doesn't matter, it's the movies. It doesn't matter how Brando esc but he had no But that's what's a wonderful thing about movie acting. Good movie acting, there's no ownership of the moment's passing right by, and you sort of catch it as it's flying past. I mean, that's why I think good movie actors. I like the ones that don't rehearse. I love to hear some theater, but in the movies, I never wanted her. So I want to get right to the point and then okay, yeah, yeah, Now it's roll so that when you jump, there's not look in the eye. It's that discovery on camera. I don't want to be recreating on cameras. I'll tell you that. What's happened to me, and it's only gotten worse as the result of doing this television show is that I become so technical. That's an asset inis certain way. I know lots of actors that are afraid of the technical part of movie making, and I think the more an actor knows about the technical part of movie making them more. But yeah, and when did you start directing ten years ago? And why uh, Because I worked with so many bad ones. I tell you I just became the older an honest answer somewhere. But the older I've gotten more interested I am in the whole story, and the less interested I am in you know how my hair is? You know I'm less. I'm happy to watch someone else do it is my faith theory. Now I am Mike. I'm interested in producing. Like I'll say that. People say, don't you want to beat it? And I go, no, not really, no, See I'm not sure I have no interest in producing. But the I like the director. I like the idea of the whole story and being responsible for that and keeping all that in my head. And I like a great company together. By the way, too cynical actors, one who has no decided to direct, the other desire to douce. I could produce your films. Is it cynical? Is it just? Uh? Season? But yeah, that's the nice word. But I like the idea of directing is being something that I'm doing and applying all the things that I know and have learned. Where is acting? It's still very much me focus, and I the older I get, I find self consciousness still shrouds me at times, and with directing there's none of that. I'm never nervous or anxious when I directing. I never have any kind of a sense of internal sort of doubts and failings. I'm like, well, this is what I have to do. I have to get this shot, have to get that. I have to make sure, you know. So it's it's a skill that I'm applying, and I've worked with a hundred directors, so I know what works what doesn't. I know as an actor, when I'm behaving in a certain way, it usually means this. So when I see an actor behaving that way, I just go and go, oh, he doesn't know his lines. Okay, listen, John, I'm just gonna do the first the first line from the setup, and then suddenly he's charming again, you know, because you know, I have all those active defenses, so I know them when I see them. How are you directing women? That's an art? I think, Well, directing women is a different thing because it's you know, but largely it's flirt and appreciate flirt and appreciate what a sexist thing? Have you to say? Well, any time people is feel um sexually attractive, they relax, and guys too. If I forward with a particular guy and he likes it too, but the other guys that guys, I don't for it with guys. I just sort of guys more than the women. It's less dangerous us a god your hands. But I say that too, but then they laugh, and never lacked when people laugh. If people laugh, they relax and they like you then and then they go, okay. And what you did I try and do is I forget who taught it to me? Is that I remember Robert Redford taught it to me. I did. I worked Sundayance a million years ago, and he noticed detail of behavior right away. And so when I saw that he noticed my detail of behavior, I knew he was paying attention. When I act as director to an actor, I will I will notice their details, and so then they know he's watching, so then they show up. Brando had that great thing, and he used to say, you know, and if I work with a new director the first day, I'll do the real deal and they'll sort of fake it, and if he can't tell the difference, I write the movie off. But I mean that was small on Brando. He said those kind of he was he was a ninja. But he also said that great thing that acting is really just ultimately this childish kind of behavior that, um, you know, I think I have somewhat of an agreement with that to a certain way. There's a certain shame I feel. If I'm directing and I am auditioning a middle aged man and he comes in and reads his scene for me, I just feel so embarrassment for them. I just feel I hate the hat in hand feeling that actors go through. I hate it. I hate being it when I have to do it. I hate that hat in hand feeling, and I hate when people have to do it for me. I just I've recently been doing a lot of press for this book, and so I see a lot of clips of me when I'm very young. They throw them up on the TV, and I see that young, youthful, wide eyed passion for it and loving it and loving it and the acting maybe dubious, but I mean that you couldn't deny or look away from the thrill that I'm getting to do this and we're doing it together and it's so good. And that was what was attractive about what I had to offer when I was a kid. Is your passion for acting less Well, it's waxed and waned over the years, for sure, and I found you know, it's a complicated question for me to answer because if I were as successful as I might have wanted to be as time has gone on, would it have waned? I don't know? Or is it just a mask for disappointment. But on the other hand, um, when you say if you were successful as you wanted, but you were very successful, yes, no, I was very successful in my jilin and then as time has gone on, I've been I haven't gotten the opportunity to do movies and certain things that I would have wanted to do. So then my interest is Wayne. But would it have Wayne had I been doing those? And the question is did you want to? Which came Well, that's all that's a that's a bigger question, you know, and part of part of me did not. You know, you're not doing that because it's a party that didn't want And that's been very uh, that's been something I've been slow to accept, you know. And but it's a good valid point, you know. But again, I was in the theater the other day in Ireland. I was just there and I watched this Tom Murphy play and I'm like, God, I'd like to be playing the part that guy is playing. I haven't felt that in years, and I was thrilled to feel that again, to feel that, like I, he's very good, but I could do that part. And I rarely feel that, you know, to feel that kind of jazz again. Because so my core and at essence and initially what I am and how I locate myself was as an actor who someone you really liked directing? Well, I mean I have only directed up theater stuff. I directed Dana Delaney in a Plan, which I thought she was a delight, you know. She's I like a nimble sort of actor, you know, and I like one that actually is interested in direct Yeah. And when I do TV, I do a lot of that show Gossip Girl, and I particularly like Ed Westwick. I thought he was really interested in input and I would suggest things to him and he would just take that idea and do the idea and then go, oh and then I'll do this, and I that's exactly take what I they offer you and now just make it and bring you know, don't just do what I tell you. Now take it, you know, And then create your own thing with it. And I like that feeling. You just sort of offer a nudgement direction then off they go and they discover it, and you're like, I'm a genius, you know. And I just like working with the crew, particularly too. I like to create more than almost more than any actors working with the crew, because if you can engage a crew, they're suddenly leaning forward and they're coming to me with ideas. It was like the craft service dude suddenly come and go. You know, it's really cool when he does that. I'm like, so a good idea. I'm glad I thought of that. You know, good ideas wherever they come from, you know, absolutely, And that was something chevrole taught me because he would love an idea from anybody, and he co opted and took it as his own. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. I'm talking with actor Andrew McCarthy about what motivated him to leave comfort and safety behind and to chronicle his solo travels in his new memoir The Longest Way Home, One man's quest for the courage to settle down. What's your relationship been to travel since you were young. Did your family travel a lot? Now? We went I grew up in Jersey. We went down the Jersey shore for one week. He structured tax shelters and all sorts of various mysterious things, like a bad capital guy. I think he's fired that um. But we did not travel. Travel came into my life later. But when I discovered travel, it was the same thing that happened to me when I discovered acting. I discovered acting when I was think fifteen. I was in I was the artful dodger in Oliver in high school. And that changed my life in the way that that Tennessee Williams line I misquoting A room that would have always been half in the dark was suddenly in the light. That kind of that was my experience when I first acted, was like, oh my god, there I am wow, and I've it was done. There was never a discussion would I be an actor? There was no thought, there was no nothing that that was what was happening to me. And that's what happened. And I had no idea how it would happen. I just sort of knew that it would happen. And then I'd go to college sort of and then i'd be in the movies, and that's what happened. There was no plan after that, but that's where I got into trouble. But and when I began to travel, it was a similar sensation of not travel for work, which is an entirely different insulated experience of getting picked off going on, and that's never enjoying or experience I always did. I loved being away, you know, in locations and things, but I mean travel to he was not vacation and not to sort of work. Traveled to me is sort of something you go do alone and you go off into the world and you make yourself vulnerable into the world. It's not going to the spot. Well. I the first time I traveled to change my life in the same way that acting did. I walked across the Camino to Santiago in Spain. It's five miles across the north of Spain, and I was like, I'd never hiped that, never backpacked. I read a book about it, and suddenly I went and did it, and something just told me to do that, and so I went and did it, and that changed my life. That sort of I've located with myself. Those three was twenty years ago. Yeah, And so that changed my life doing that, and I felt myself again, if in a full way, in the way that I had stopped, felt less and less in diminishing returns in acting. And what happened to you on that trip, Well, I just sort of had one of those comical classic breakdowns where I had a weeping fit in the field of weed and sort of in the moment of clarity, discovered I was ruled by fear, really, and that fear had been so dominating my life, which was such a is a strange thing for an actor and someone who's very public and all that kind of stuff and that, and so the minute you're aware of something, it begins to change. And so that's that's sorted to change for me. And so I traveled more and between jobs. So if I didn't have a job by say November, you know you're not going to get one before Thanksgiving and Christmas. So those last two months of every year, I would go travel. I'd go down to Southeast Asia, I'd go to Africa, like, buy a ticket into Cape Town and a ticket for two months later. Yourself, did you travel with someone alone? I would always go see that the way you said, oh, no, no, no, no, we'll you no. No. If I travel with you, we're gonna have a nice experience. We're gonna have fun, but we're gonna have our experience of each other and there's a certain safety, you know, illusionary maybe, but we're gonna have a feeling of safety and camaraderie. By design, you do it alone. But the design I did it alone. Yeah, because I think you alone? I do yeah now mostly for almost always for writing assignments. But I rarely get to travel the way I did then because I have kids, and so you can't travel for two months alone. Just wondering how many kids do you have to how old the pen? And six? Do you really traveling? Now? So? So, where where you went across the Camino in Spain twenty years ago? You had a ten year period before you had children. Were you traveling? Was at a very aggressive time you were traveling? Yeah? Very much so? And what are some of the more memorial Pick two, let's say, like the Camino which was followed. I followed a girl down to Singapore. I knew her here and she worked out in Singapore, and she said, don't you come down and you know, visit me in Singapore, and I could read between the lines. So I went down to Singapore for a very nice weekend. And then someone said, while you're going to Singapore, while you're in that part of the world, you want to go to, uh Anchor Watt And I was like, Anchor Wow, what's that's Anchor Wat? Okay? And so I went to Anchor Wat. You know, you hear people talk all the time about, oh, you should have been there twenty years ago. You know, I was at Anchor twenty years ago. Should have been there twenty years ago. Yeah, it was like, so that was a big boutique now for the old and so that's you've been there obviously. Why was that a great trip? I was just one of those things where I just stepped out into the world and the world meets you. You know, you go make yourself vulnerable to the world, and the world sort of receives you. That's my experience. You know, the world is a much safer, more welcoming place than we are led to believe by our politicians. And uh so that has been my that's been my discovery. And I find when you ask for help, I mean, I'm that guy in New York at home where I will never ask for directions. I'm like, don't turn on the GPS. We'll find it. We'll find it. I'm fine, you know. But when I travel, the first thing I do is I go, Hi, can can you help me? And the minute you say can you help me? You are you go, You shrink back to being a right sized you know what I mean. You make yourself vulnerable to the world. And that is a good thing in my opinion, and the more I sort of so it's a weird empowering thing. I I ran from acting because I felt vulnerable, and yet I go out into the world and I feel vulnerable. I opened myself up and feel vulnerable in a more powerful way. You know. That's an authentic sort of vulnerability, in the way that connects me to you, you know, And so that is of interest to me. And so anyway traveled to change my life in that way. So then I vently just started writing about it. When when did that begin? Well? I I tried to keep a journal, and I thought, and I was not good at journaling. Journaling was seemed to me silly and self indulgent, and it was just stupid. I read it and I was embarrassed by my journals. But I met a guy, you know, one time, a kid. I was in hand Or Saigon, and this kid pulled up and wanted to give me ride on his scooter. And so I spent the day with him on the back of the scooter, going around and gave me a tour. And I went back to my hotel and wrote it down, because you know, when you're traveling alone, particularly very untethered, and so writing sort of grounded me in a certain way. I just I didn't know that, but when I did it, I went, I feel better now. And so I wrote the scene of what happened, and it captured my trip in a certain way, and it was very personal to me. And so I did that for like ten years. I would just write the stuff. I'd come home, I throat in a drawer and I'd forget about it and then, you know, continue acting in all this. But when when I traveled, I would write this stuff down of my encounters with people. And I was an actor, so I know scenes. I know dialogue. I know good I've said so much bad dialogue. I know good dialogue when I hear it. So i'd hear a good quote I'd write it down and then eventually I kind of so, but none of the magazines are travel. Stuff I'm reading is capturing the personal experience that I'm having. I could do this. And so I met a name did not know they're writing about places and stuff, and I'm like, that's not what traveler travels and why would you describe their angle? What were they trying? Yeah? In essence, And so I was found travel much more internal, personal, private experience. And you know, I think did a lot of literature from people who books really changed my life. His notion that you know, go go far, go alonge, don't come back for a long time, I found inspiring and absolutely correct. And so that notion I think he said, you know, travel, any kind of good travel erture is ultimately about the traveler and not the destination. And so that's what interested me, and how the universal things that were happening to me when I would talk about the emotional kind of things that were happening to be traveling, when I would communicate that to a person to go, yeah, that's really yeah, I feel that way or and so that is what's of interest. You're trying to find that moment of connection and identification with somebody not talking about a place. And so I started writing for magazines about that. When did that premiere? What was the first one that we four? I wrote my Yeah, like eight years ago, the National Geographic Traveler magazine. Yeah, I met the editor. I knew somebody knew him. I met. I asked to meet him and we met in a bar in the East village and I said, you know, you let me write for your magazine and he said, you're an active dude. I'm like, yeah, but I know how to travel and I know how to tell a story because that's what I do. And nothing I'm reading is capturing the essence of why we travel. Nothing and so nothing that I was reading and so so he said that's a good answer. And uh, after a year or so, he said, this is you know, a while ago, after a year of cajoling and pressuring him, emailing, badgering him, he sent me for a story. I said, look, if it doesn't work, just don't pay me. And he said, yeah, okay, I can do that. So I wrote it. I went to Ireland and I wrote a story and you know, it worked. And don't tell people in the movie business that it doesn't. But again it was the same kind of thing that acting. I want to do this. I don't know why. It just touches something in me. It's I feel like me when I do it. That's what I most like in the world is feeling like myself. So I want to do that, And so it worked out. I did another one. I did another one. Then he was like, I kept bombarding him with you know, pitches and things, and because look here, talk to these other people, go bother them. And so I did that. And I also knew in a way that I didn't when I was acting that I wanted by the time I was sort of outed as being wait, the guy from Pretty in Pink's a travel writer. By the time I was outed for that, I wanted to have written for a lot of good publications, so they I wasn't easily dismissed. Did you find that there was any sense of people, uh, playing that with you? The guy from Pretty in Pink as a travel writer? Not initially because most of it's done by email. I didn't meet many editors and so I'm just writing. And then finally a magazine I wrote for New and they when the magazine came out, they said, we sent Andrew Bratt, Packer, Andrew McCarthy and Ethiopian. He got arrested, read about it in Norman scene. I got arrested writing the story, and so it was a good lead, so I put it in the story, and so then I was suddenly my two worlds collided. But by then I'd written for you know, the New York Times, The Atlantic, the National Geographics. So I had a stable body work under me where I wasn't so quickly dismissed. But yes, to answer your question, I still encounter it all the time, people going thinking I'm some kind of interloper or dilettante. But I think it's interesting as much as anyone I've met in this business. And I've only met you a handful of times. You're someone who whatever people want to say your persona is from those films, You're so different in person from your persona in those funder and where where those where those films are what's the word high concept? I mean all those platforms are very high concept and very amorphous kind of and the characters are everybody's doing anything. Yeah, I mean aspect a personality I said very much suited me, which is why I was successful in them. And yet I mean, would anybody want to be labeled forever? Is what they did when they were twenty one years old and change? It's not that even mind, It's just it catches people unawares. They didn't know they'd locked me in that box. And then I meet them. You're when met in person, you're every inch of person who I would give a contract to write for a magazine and have direct my TV show with my movie. So usually when I meet people, they get over it quickly, and if they don't, it's usually their insecurity and their problem. And I can recognize that very quickly as you you know, you can very And so life is too short and I go elsewhere do you find that this is the role where you're out there and it's a bit of a public thing for you, you know what I mean, you're out there, come one. But I found it. You like this role. It's much less a role than well, that's an interesting about a role. It's not like, well, it's more just me. Um, that's people. I've been doing out a publicity for this book and people say, what's the difference between doing publicity for your book and you know, movie published or junket, I go a movie junket or any kind of movie published her television acting publicity, you're presenting still you're behind it, and you're talking about the role when you're you're a certain you're adopting a certain persona. Whereas it where when you're I'm talking about this book that I'm written, it's much more just like as a friend of mine says, well, you've written a memoir and now your ass is hanging out. I mean it's just me and I'm sort of being the book, which is very open in a certain way. So I find it much more vulnerable. You think yours is hanging out with this book, Yeah, much more so than certainly with acting. Yeah, I mean the book is much more sort of memoir than travel book. It's much more sort of that internal journey that happens when we travel, as opposed to the external. But you don't feel that writer is a role you're playing now, you don't. You don't look at as a role you're playing the role of writer. I found I found writing a relief when I found it because I felt like I was you know what what? So I don't particularly feel like it's a role I feel that certain similarity in acting towards In acting you have a certain skill tool chest, and in writing you have also a certain tool chest um that you need to apply to create what you want to create. And I feel like I have more of a one and acting because I've done it longer. So you know inspirations, you know inspiration and acting happens very rarely. Most of the time you're laying brick. So but the reason I asked this is because when the acting thing, which is also just you know what we ended up doing, when you do that and it works well, it feels a certain way, and then it's a great feeling, and then it was a similar feeling when I write something. I was gonna say sense, and I don't know where that sense is gonna end, and I'm typing and I don't know where the sin is gonna end. There there it is. That's a thrill. So I get when you're now a close up and that moment happens in the coast up between it. So when what I guess what I'm asking is, is this where you are more reliably getting that thrill than you did from acting? Can you count on this more to give you the at least the opportunity for that thrill. Well, I'm getting received at it in uh are quite well, I think, yeah, more so than I am in acting in a certain way. So I'm that's where my jazz is coming from now because I'm getting the opportunity. And it's also something I can create my own opportunity here with the writing because I just do it, and because I've been successful at it, I'm getting more opportunity to do it. Or is acting you know, you're waiting for somebody to give you the chance to do it. But it's also the moment of connection that you have, Like we're having a conversation and suddenly it sparks and we feel connected and ah, and so you have that human instant um for you. Uh do you feel like tomorrow there's a great well maybe I was acting still alive for you so much so. I mean, but like we just said, I I suppose the jazz is coming from writing because that's where the opportunity is coming him. But I in a certain way, the it doesn't matter, they're the same thing because what you're talking about and what I feel I need to sort of I hate the word, but like create every day. It doesn't even have to be good creativity or bad creative. I have to feel in essence. That's how I locate myself by employing creativity in my life. I mean, I don't lay bricks, I don't turn widgets. That's how I That's what I do. That's how who I am. And so that's how I find myself. And so I need to I find If I can do that every day, then I'm I'm in a better mood, you know. And it again, it doesn't have to be good or something anybody sees. But and so writing is one of those things where I can do that, you know, on a regular basis that is cumulative and feel substantive and feels like I've spent my time. Well, So describe for people, if you would, one observation or one instance of where your ass is hanging out in the book. What was something you wanted to deal with in the book and talk about in the book that was important to you to communicate to readers. Well, I mean, I suppose I wanted to just communicate the humanness and like I wasn't writing specifically how this is what I felt and why I you know, I the books that odd paradox. I The books really about trying to come to terms with someone that I loved and to get married by leaving and going as far away from them as I could possibly get. That's what the book of the essence of the book is, how do we find intimacy with people and yet still maintain our own singularity? And have you succeeded to that? Well, you know the day of time. Um, But I mean it's something I hadn't read about, and it's something I hadn't seen people grappling with. And I'm very sort of singular and solitary in a lot of ways, and yet I love now my wife and my kids desperately in a painful way. And how do you reconcile those two things? And I wanted to find an answer for that as much as I could. At least I want to put the question on the table and go, this exists for me, maybe it exists for other people too. Where I hate you, how much I love you? How am I going to reconcile that? With me wanting to? I don't know if it's neat, but it's how much I love you, how much I'm making myself vulnerable to be slammed by you, And yet that's the only game in town. I have to do. Yeah, let you could stab me here and and but that's the only viable game in town. And how does someone who desperately wants to run away deal with that? And knowing that's the only game in town. So so it was just a conflict and sort of push pull that I wanted to wrangle with. And so to to wrangle with that, I had to expose my self and do Dad, what did your wife think about the book? She like that would ended. You know, we got married. I mean, but she knows who I am, and so she knew it. She knew it all before she heard. And you know, when you're writing that great print, well it's different, it's different, and everything is different in print. You know that grain show Dannian line. I'm mis quoting that. Um she said. You know, I write to know what I'm thinking. You know, I've said that I travel to find out what I'm feeling, and I write to figure it out again. But when you, like you said, when you see something in print, it's very different. I write in the book a lot about my relationship with my father, which surprised me I didn't know I was going to be writing about that and then constantly being being a son and being a father, and my relationship with my father was not great or close. He is, yeah, and has it? Is it better? It's which has an amicable distance and affection now that it didn't have. You know, I was afraid of my father very much, and then of three brothers, so there were four boys, and now we have I have great affection for him. We're not particularly close in any way, but and I feel that lack. I feel that that did you say that in the book? Yes? How did he respond to that? I don't know that he's read it, But I found the writing of the book made me feel more affectionate towards my father in a certain way, and that it's in print, and it dissolved a lot of this sort of stress between us on my part. Anyway. Again, I don't know what his reaction is. I find that for me, you know, I have a child, and aside from my specific relationship with her, just parenting in general. The great reality is that you look and see what the boundaries and the nature was of your own relationship with your parents, and therefore you must accept that the same as true in their eyes. But at least now I look at like my mother, I understand her better. You know, it's similar to your dad. I look at my mom and I go, well, she was this way in this way, and she was an animal trainer with four sons and two daughters. I get it. I understand her. I mean I heard someone would say, you know, I was an event in my parents life. I wasn't the event. I don't. Wow, that makes you know? But yes, I have this idea of how I think my son and my relationship is in my daughter. My it is still with my daughter because she's only six, but my son is becoming he's ten now and he's becoming cool. And I went up to his classroom today and he was mortified that I came up to his card dad, what are you doing here? Get out of here? And got a book again. I'm I'm already, I'm something he's embarrassed of already, and I'm like, wow, yeah, that's starting to happen. But interestingly, my son. I always tried to protect my kids from this acting person and people come up to me for an autographer. I have a picture taker, and I would always kind of say, well, I'm with my family, right, I'd rather not if you don't mind. Where's other times I'd be fine too. And this summer we were in Wyoming camping family camping tip. But we're in a diner and I was with my son and the woman comes up to me and the waitress and she says, are you from the mannequin Mike? Yeah? Hi, Hi, And so suddenly it's big news in the diner that they go and weekend at Bernie's, and you know, so there's no where to ron and I. We take our pictures and saw on our autographs and have the chats, and my son is sitting here next to me the whole time. And I turned to him afterward, I said, Sam, how did that? How did that make you feel that you know? And how is that for you? I said, Oh, Dad, I was so proud, and I got tears in my eyes. I realized I've done everything wrong trying to protect my kids from this, because I thought I should be protecting him so he wouldn't resent it or think of something he's different than other kids, or his dad's even weird. But he just saw a certain part of me that I hadn't that I withheld from him that was very important part of me that I shouldn't have been withholding all this not So it's interesting. I mean, you think you're doing all these kind of things and who the hell knows? The last thing I want to ask you is, um, you said it's not it's the journey and not the destination. And would you say that you are I don't. I hate this word, But would you say that you're content and you're happy where you are? Now? Uh? Interesting? I'm you know, the director me is always going what's next? What's next? The shot is good? But what shot am I doing next? So? I I love the travel writing. I enjoyed having to bring this book forth, you know, and creating that that was the next change. But I'm always sort of looking for what's the next sort of challenge to do and what's the next thing to do? I mean content, my content? You know, I don't. I'd be hard pressed to say I've kept them separate, for I think I've had so many disappointments and so much baggage involved with acting, and I know what happens to screenplay so much that I haven't done that at all yet. Um, you know, I'm too protective of my words, you know, in a certain way, to have them just ravaged like that without care. Uhre books, Well, yeah, I have another idea for another book. I have a novel that I've almost finished that there's more I'd like to do, and there there's more i'd like to do acting again, you know. I said that sort of come back into my life in a way of desire again. So but I wouldn't say content, no, but I'm pleased to feel sort of vital in myself in a certain way. Andrew McCarthy. His book is called The Longest Way Home, One Man's Quest for the Courage to settle down. Now next month you can see him in his latest project, a movie called Christmas Dance. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin takes listeners into the lives of artists, policy makers and perfor 
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