David Letterman and Michael Douglas

Published Dec 23, 2013, 5:00 AM

David Letterman began his Late Night gig as a self-described “gap-toothed, unknown smart ass.” But thirty highly successful years later, Letterman’s comedy formula has evolved: he no longer attends all the meetings or makes all the decisions and stupid pet tricks are a thing of the past. Letterman began his television career as a weatherman, but moved rapidly up to anchorman and talk show host. He left for L.A. and, after only three years on the comedy scene there, he found himself guest-hosting the Tonight Show. He talks to Alec about how a quintuple by-pass and the birth of a child have dramatically shifted Letterman’s priorities.

Michael Douglas has lived in the same apartment overlooking Central Park for decades. Alec joins him there for a compelling conversation about what makes a great director and why playing the villain is so wonderful. Douglas reveals how competition with his father, legendary actor Kirk Douglas, shaped both his career and his life as a parent. He says he’s much more honest with his young daughter than he ever thought he’d be. Douglas explains how his father’s early brush with death, and his own cancer diagnosis affected them each in different ways.

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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing, My chance to talk with artists, writers, policy makers, and performers, to hear their stories. What inspired their creations, what decisions change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. There are perhaps a handful of performers who, through talent and circumstance, transcend the expected limits of their medium. Both of my guests today have done just that. Michael Douglas has played some of the most iconic roles in film over the past thirty years. He's challenged the way we think about power and sex, family and relationships. I don't know what you're up to, but I'm gonna tell you it's going to stop right now now. It's not going to stop. It's going to go on and on until you face up to your responsibility. Responsibility. I'm pregnant. I'm going to have our child, Alex. That's your choice. How it has behing to do with me? And as Douglas has reigned as one of the kings of the movie screen over the past thirty years, my first guest is considered one of the kings of the smaller screen. It's when David Letterman started Late Night. In The New York Times said he was quote more of an acquired taste than most comedians unquote. Now it's time, ladies and gentlemen for a segment of this program. But we like to call stupid pet tricks. We grew up on Johnny, a true gentleman who could deliver a smooth set up and punchline, occasionally helped by a wink. But suddenly, with Late Night, the ultimate punchline was the fact that some gap toothed, unknown smartass even had a show. His pet tricks were stupid on purpose, and so was he. Tune in and you might catch him lowering himself into a water tank wearing a suit made from thirty four hundred alcas El taples. We have the oxygen here, and I have been asked about twelve times by various members of the staff to remind you don't try this at home. I know you have the nine hundred gallon tank. I know you have the oxygen. I know you have the suit of oxy cell sers and a staff of a hundred people. Today, David Letterman is an institution. His show has changed American comedy, and after thirty years, he's changed as well. I do a lot less work than I used to do. I just got to a point where I have no patience for meetings, so I don't go to any meetings. I can't make decisions anymore. I don't like making decisions. You know, we have a dozen producers. They can have the meetings and they can make the decisions, and I'll just come down and somebody tell me what to do and we go. And it was different before. Yeah, I used to be involved in everything big and large. I don't think that was necessarily good, but at the time I thought it was what was required. When you had your own show. You had to had to have everything you know in your view and certainly influence each little choice the guests that are on the show. Do you still help select the guests or someone else takes the people who select them. Occasionally I will think of, Oh, I heard about somebody that did so and so. Could we look into that and this and that? Very little, very little, I mean, these people do that. We've have the good luck of these people who haven't been together for a long, long, long, long time. They all know what the expectation is. Of course, when you're in that situation, the bad version of it is, Oh God, it's the same thing. It's the assembly line. We're just building the same car over and over and over again. You feel that way sometimes Sometimes I'm the biggest defender of that. I'm sixty five. I don't have the energy I had when I was thirty five. There are certain things I like about the show now that I like more than before. As I like talking to people and the opportunity to learn something, or if I have a natural curiosity about somebody, I really look forward to that. If I have something that I know is going to be silly and stupid, and I want my authorship out there on this something silly and stupid, then I get eager about that. But in the old days, we just were going twenty hours a day. We'd be out on the streets, We'd be going to New Jersey, would be up all night shooting, and there would be contests. And I can't do that show anymore. The more successful the show has become, and the more successful you would become, do you find that in terms of programming the show you have to rely more on stars. Is there a kind of person It's it's completely different. In the beginning, when we started the late night show at NBC. We had a liaison between Johnny Carson and ourselves named Dave Tabbot. He had worked at NBC and then had become close with Johnny, and so Johnny hired him, and he was a guy who, honest to God, talked like this. Dave came in to make sure there were no conflicts between our show and the tonight show. He says, for example, let's just say that Bob Hope is arrested for using drugs, and we just all just just like, really, in what universe is that all likelihood? And he says, you can't then do chokes about Bob Hope And I said, okay, all right, We'll got that. We were not allowed to use do a monologue, and we were not allowed to have an orchestra. And we also felt that a way to distinguish ourselves, since Johnny had the big stars that people really wanted, we would then kind of have French people. That's exactly right, and so we sort of mind that vain as much as we could. It was sort of a fortunate coincidence that we were prohibited in that sense, because we weren't really interested in having mainstream people on two. You started in radio. Yeah, my first job was at a radio station. You went to college. You went to Ball State University has studied radio and TV. Why did you study radio and TV academically? Um? You know, I went to Ball State no language requirement and no math requirement. I mean it really saved me because I was academically I was not very good early on. I was very lucky that I knew how to save myself. Sophomore in high school and I had saw end up for a public speaking course and the first day you were supposed to get up and extemporaneously speak for five minutes. You know, everybody's twitchy and sweaty and worried about this, as was I. And then I got up there, the nervousness and the twitchiness and everything dissipated. I loved it, and I thought, oh my god, maybe this is a way I can distinguish myself. And I did you know, but had you been the entertainer as a child in the household, yeah, sure to what except and my parents wouldn't put up with it much. There was a fine line between being oh isn't the amusing and being just and being a wise ass and we don't like that. I can remember my father was big and loud and noisy and always had stuff going on, and my mother completely nondemonstrative. And I can remember every Sunday night after dinner, my dad would make popcorn and we would sit in front of the TV and watch Ed Sullivan. And Ed used to have this habit of, well, come on, now, let's really hear it for him, and my mom used to say, I don't like the way Ed begs the audience for applause. She was a connoisseur of television house and then she was not a connoisseur. She resented the fact that somebody had to be encouraged to support what they had, just that Sullivan was whoring himself. And that's exactly right. That's so you got to ball stating, you get this degree, what do you do after that? Well, through a friend of mine at a the ABC affiliate in Indianapolis where I lived, which was sixty miles away from where I went to school and still is just about sixty miles, I heard that they were auditioning for they wanted a summer announcer. So I went down there an audition. Never having been in a television studio in my life and got the job. I mean it was a fixed fight because I had no business getting the job. I wasn't very good, I didn't know what I was doing, I had no experience, and they gave me the job. And suddenly the bulb that was turned on my sophomore year in high school now is burning white hot because it's are you kid me? I'm nineteen and I'm going to be on TV. I mean, it's preposterous. That was the booth announcer. So I can't believe you said that back when they had booth announcers on That's right, That's what I did. These guys defined my childhood by the way. These were the guys. Uh. The principal responsibility was to keep the program log. There used to be a lot of technical glitches in television. Who had booth announcers who would pick up the slack when something went Wrong's with tape to tape, That's exactly right. A station break was a huge process because you had a control room, you had a director, you had two or three sixteen millimeter projectors, you had a slide chain, and you had the big two and a half inch Ampex tape. Let's say you had four commercials in a station break, then you'd have to roll the tape. Then you'd have to count down and roll the film. Then you'd have to go live to the booth to read copy over a slide, and then back to the film. And it was an enormous thing. Summer job in in nineteen sixties sixty and I was making a hundred fifty bucks a week. I got to be the weekend weather man. I've never done that before. I got to read the news on on the morning kiddie show. None of this would happen today. So I go back to school now to my radio and TV studies, and all of a sudden, it's hey, there's duck Lips. We've seen him on TV, And oh my god, what a progression that was for me. Now that was what year I think I started there in sixty eight and I stayed. And you avoid draft, and you avoid in those days, you get the student deferment. And ball State was prinsipally a teacher's college in those days, and so it wanted teachers. It was chock full of guys who wanted that student deferment, and also the teaching deferment. I was not studying teaching. So the minute I graduated, I was reclassified one A. Went from my pre draft physical in April. They said, okay, we'll call you. And then in the meantime before I was called, Nixon announced the National Lottery. They were going to end the draft. They were trying to step down the Vietnamese War. My birthday was three forty two or something like that, at A three hundred fifty six, So that meant even though I was one A and had my pre induction physical and was ready to go, it was over for me. At the time, I didn't know how lucky I was. I felt guilty because I had friends who had gone, and I had friends who had been in the Marine Corps, and I just felt like, these guys went, why shouldn't I go? And then it dawned on me pretty quickly. I had been among the really, really lucky. Yeah. What was the political landscape like at Ballston when he went there, Well, it was just starting to Uh. I used to make jokes that they would have student protests, but it was to get the cafeteria cooks to wear hairnets. Uh. It was not a hot bed. It was not Madison, Wisconsin. It was Muncie, Indiana, but it was starting and there were sit ins and demonstrations, and you know, Bobby Kennedy had spoken on campus, so it was starting. You mentioned booth announcers, and I remember I did a YouTube search. I wanted to find this guy that was literally the voice of my childhood w R and he come on and say, you know, uh next on Million Dollar Movie Barbara Stan McTell's Gary Cooper where He Can Go and Ball of Fire, and he just had this voice. It was just it just haunted me. Well, that's interesting. You mentioned that guy I had the little kid voice from Indiana. I wasn't that guy, but I still had to do the job. And I can't impress upon you enough how tedious it is to sit there for eight hours watching programming and logging everything that happens. If you lose audio, you have to log that. If you lose video you have to log that. You have to log sign on, sign off, every commercial, every station break. And at first I was scared, silly, but then, like everything else, you get accustomed to it and you become blase, and so I would just start wandering the building. You know, it was so embarrassing. They would will the booth announcer please report to the announced booth, and oh my god, I've missed the so and so. The main announcer was a guy named Rob Stone, tremendous voice and a hopeless alcoholic, I mean a real alcoholic. I go hand in hand, yeah, kind of. Certainly. In those days it was not uncommon. He would come in and he would bring a point with him, and so in the spirit of this, we who were working the sign off shift, we would always send somebody out for beer. Oh my, with this fun. In those days, you would do a five minute new summary before sign off nightcap news, and then you would do the the broadcast statement. You'd read that over the slide of the station, and then they would go to the national anthem with the waving fly. One night, a guy in the props department, so I can reconstruct exactly the station has pictured on the slide. We can make it blow up. So as you're as you're reading the thank you and good night and why not tune in w LW overnight and blah blah this and so until tomorrow, goodnight and good luck. I have the thing. Come on. Oh god, we were proud of ourselves. You know, we really thought we had done something. Geez. Nobody ever said anything. No, it was bizarre. Nobody got fired, nobody asked a question about it. Nobody said anything. But but what's interesting is from school and then doing the job and so forth. In the booth thing the comedy Gland is secreting through the entire time. What are you doing for that? Meaning other than blowing up the studio and in the sign off we're writing or yes. I was looking for any outlet, and it came for me doing the weather. I knew nothing about whether you'd go downstairs and I'd have the ap machine and the map would come over, the national map, and you would go to the big magnetic board in the studio and you put the low system, and you put the high system, and you put the occluded front, and you put the rain showers, and so it told you everything any time, but all that I could monkey with that. I was very happy. I can remember two episodes. One I was had forecast sunny and dryet and we we go off the air and blah blah, and I go outside this this is horrible thundershower. The rain is coming down in sheets and I was just twenty ft away, just oblivious of this, this uh, dangerous yes coming through, this one of these violent Midwestern summer thunderstorms coming through attacking the station. I got to be well known because this Sunday Night show was on after the ABC Sunday Night Movie. That was big programming. We got a bunch of complaints, and this was when people were wearing a bell bottom pants. I don't think he could buy regular pants. Got a lot of calls about he's either not wearing underpants or he needs to wear underpants. That's how I distinguished myself. Do you want to clear that up? Now? Were you wearing underpants? I was wearing DP. It was Indianapolis. We were not talked to go out without our under It's whatever problem was perceived was not mine. I sure you. And then where do you go from there in terms of underpants and well, if you wish. I got tired of sitting in the booth and tired of working weekends. And also they didn't they didn't want me there. They would keep bringing in auditions for my job. That really hurt my feelings. But I couldn't argue with them because I didn't know what I was doing but the cumulative effect of being on TV a lot. There, we get this memo once from the search department, and of all of the people, the the anchor team and whoever else, I had the highest queue rating of anybody there, and it was only by accident. Really, So I started looking for a job. Some people I knew were coming in to start up a talk radio station. So I went to work at the new talk radio station with the format it was News Talks Force w NTS. When I resigned to quit give my notice to the general manage, the guy sad and it chilled me at the time. He said, really, you're leaving this TV station to go work for a brand new radio station. And I said yeah, and he said you will never be heard of again. So I went to the station, worked there for a year, realized that I had to make a move. Nobody would would listen. It was a daytime station. This was tremendous. They had a daytime license, which meant the radio station come on when the sun came up and went off when the sun went down. Literally yeah. And then the winter we were off at three in the afternoon. I had the midday shift and I come in at noon and two hours later I'd be going home. It was it was joy afternoon. And then in the summer. Conversely, you were on the like nine thirty or ten, it was awful. It was Watergate, and and people assume, well, the guy's got a talk show on the radio, but he knows everything there is to know about Watergate, and I knew nothing. I'd have to read endless pages of wire copy. I remember reading it sorry about Gordon Stratching str A C H A N. And his name kept coming up, a special counsel, so and so, Gordon Stratch and adviser of the White House, Gordon Stratch. And finally the phones line up, and I, thank god, did I say yes? He says, it's not Stratching, it's Strang. You're mispronouncing the guy's name. I said, okay, thanks you everything, no click buzz, So there you go. Were you ambitious during this time? Did you have an ambition? Yeah? I wanted to. I really thought, um, I really thought I could write half hours situation comedies. I thought I could. What did you watch? Well? In my childhood it was completely different. It would have been stuff like Saturday Morning nonsense. Then as I grew older, you'd get to Mayberry, the Andy Griffis Show, Ozzie and Harriett Nelson, the Nelson's and that kind of stuff. And then later on and in those days, it was all the Mary Tyler Moore things, the Bob Newhart Show, on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and I really thought, oh, I can write one of those Mary Tyler Moore shows. And it turned out I couldn't. As you know, there's a template for writing those things. They use the template because it's successful. And if you don't know the template and you think you can make a better version of it, it's a very foreign object to them. To you, you think, look, I've improved on the template, but they don't want them. They want something. Yes, that's right. I mean we're talking about Mary Tyler Moore. That's pretty good stuff. Smart and you're in l A at that time. Now I'm still in Indianapolis and I would be sending scripts and looking for an agent. Finally a guy said, yeah, if you come to Los Angeles, he said, I'll be your agent. So with that encouragement, I just left. And I don't know about you, but you know, your friends say, Okay, here you can meet with so and so and and you can meet mel Blank's son, you can meet with him, and and I know this one, and I know that one. And so you go out there with high hopes. I guess it's like the Pioneers and the kind of stoga wagon and they run out of beans. So within the first week you run through all of your appointments and then you've got nothing. Then your Shanghai. That's right on the show there. I'm remember when I went to l A. I did a soap opera at thirty Rock. The show was about to go off the air, and I'll never forget this guy that was the producer. He were in the hallway and they asked me to extend my contract for a few months. And he says that line to me. He says, what do you think you're gonna do? Go out the Hollywood, become a star in the movies. I'm walking down the Hollies going, dude, listen to me, come back here. You you don't walk away from me? And I walk away from the guy and I go to l A. Now, were you ever haunted by that? Did you? Honestly? Did you? Did you? Because of my case? I thought the guy was I said, oh yeah, I haven't considered that. Well, of course you do. You've been an enormously successful man. Did you ever dream you would be as successful as you are? No? Never, No, And I'll tell you the same for you, same for most people in this uh in show business. You're just lucky enough to get to do exactly what you want to do all your life. So that's the success coming up. David Letterman's own personal Cinderella story. I drove in a pickup truck with my wife to l A and three years later I'm sitting next to Johnny Carson. That's not supposed to happen, you know, it's just not supposed to happen, but it did. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. While other comedians struggled to find their way in Hollywood, David Letterman clearly saw the path in front of him. For me, the road map to pursue was handed to you via Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show. They would have comics on. It would be David Brenner and they would say, and there will be appearing at the Comedy Store, that seemed to be that the connection between the Comedy Store and the Tonight Show was pretty close. So even though you mind that facility that particularly, it was the farm system for the Comedy Store, and great guys were coming out and getting on and Steve Landsberg and on and on. I say on and on because I can't remember the name. So I just yeah, even though I wanted to be a writer, because I didn't have the courage to tell my family and friends that what I really want to do is, you know, somehow get famous and beyond TV. So when when I went out there the first monday I was in California when I moved in seventy, I wrote down some stuff and went to the Comedy Store and got on stage. It was it was awful. I've never been in a darkened room with the spotlight and it was just like a train coming at me. So I did my little five minutes from route left and and uh, the owner of the place, yeah, you should come back and do some more. So I thought, are you kidding me? And she's no, you can MC. So I came back and I was the MC fantastic Yeah, Derek. So that was three years later I was on the Tonight Show that worked so much better than it should have. I think it must be harder now, Becau wasn't three years of just working that room and working the mic and working stand up. But it was. I mean it was fun because every night you go there and you were hanging around guys Jay Leno and Robin Williams and George Miller and Tom Reason and anybody now who's you're aware of you would see every night and it was great fun. I mean, my god, it was great fun. Him didn't make any difference what you did during the day. You knew that when it got dark you'd be on Sunset Boulevard. The place would be packed. So you say, yeah, night after night. But still, in all how could that not be fun? So did Carson find you there? Well, they had a guy, you know, they had a team of guys when I was there that would come in uh. And in the meantime I got on this Mary Tyler Moore show UH to write and perform and that was it was me and Michael Keaton, Jim Hampton and Dick Shawn and Susie Kurtz and Uh, Julie con Judy Can Judy con thank you very much. So from that show, uh, they said, oh, well we'll put you on because you're on that show. You can come out and do stand up and then you go sit down and talk to Johnny. And without that, you never know what the formula is. You could be on nine times and never get sit on with Johnny. You could be on for six years and every or you could be bumped forty times and never. But because of this, oh and he's appearing on the so and so show, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, I got to sit down with Johnny and and that was again, that was craziness. That was That was another one of those you know what, Oh yeah, it's such a jolt. The material is so committed. You don't have to think about anything. You just have to start talking and it all comes out. The adrenaline takes days to burn out of you. Holy God, you're sitting next to Johnny Carson. I mean, you just can't believe it. I mean to me, and I think most guys my age who were out there doing that one. The fact that it worked, you know, really, I drove in a pickup truck with my wife to l A and three years later I'm sitting next to Johnny Carson. That's not supposed to happen, you know, it's just not supposed to happen, but it did. Do you think that Carson was someone who do you think he saw himself? And you do you think he saw the midwestern boy? I don't know, Jean, and I don't know. I mean, it was so easy for other people to make that comparison. Uh, and that seemed to be the formula. But I don't. I don't know if he felt that way or not. Um, I don't. I can't answer that. And then what happened after that, Well, your life changed immediately. Suddenly you weren't just a guy who was at the comedy store. You were the guy that had been on with Carson. And then I was on I think two or three more times, and then I started hosting the show. And again that was another you know, you just feel like it's like it's like winning the World Series or your rookie season. What's the gap of time between when you first sat down with him when you started hosting. The first time I was on was November of seventy eight, and I think I hosted. Uh, it was Monday Night, opposite the Academy Awards, so it was the good Spring Yeah, and April I should have in April of March April part yeah, and it was I was just frozen. I was as fro as I can remember Peter Losally coming up to me during the commercial break and he said, got to loosen up. You've got to loosen up. And thanks to that tip, I remember the first night I was saw on the Tonight Show and I'm I'm telling you four guys at the Comedy Store. This was it fighting in competition and backstabbing in bad mouth to get to the Tonight Show. If if you don't do well, you'll never be heard of again. There's there's no such thing as a guy bombings first time on the Tonight Show and then having a delightful career that just doesn't happen. You're gone. So there's a lot of pressure. So I I am getting ready to go out there just behind the curtain. And my manager at the time, Buddy Mora, who was with Jack Rollins and John Charles Joffee. They handled Robin Williams and Woody Allen and Dick Cabint and some other guys. So that was a big deal for me to be with these people. And Buddy and I nice enough guy, but we never I never saw I'd eye on much. And I think a lot of it was my immaturity about show business or just ignorance, not immaturity. I you know, I had no time to be immature. I was ignorant. So we're standing there and Johnny saying, our next guest is a young blah blah blah blah, and Buddy says to me, and Buddy always whispered. Everything was a whisper. And Buddy, he says, Robin got popeye, And I said, what are you talking about? His final words to me is, I'm going on the tonight show from the first time telling me about a booking for one of his other clients, you know. And I just never got over that. You know, you're a lot mellower now than you were. Yes, absolutely, And you'd say that when you did the show, no matter how crazy or how wired you and the whole experience was of the early show, and you said running around and doing all the taking and all the other bits and stuff forth in contests and everything, but I mean, just your own nature seems like there was a kind of an edge to it that that you've lost, but you seem like you really just become like so much more. What's the word charming? Well, I don't know, but I know exactly what you're talking about. And the fact that it's noticeable by others is an indication that maybe I'm on the right track. Because two, to the exclusion of every other thing in my life, it was the success of this show. As a result, I waited to have a child twenty years too long. I just didn't do anything else. It was the show and it had to be the show. And if it wasn't the show, then find out a way to make it the show. And did you come from that world? Like Lauren, for example, says to me, he's he lives a life where his creative was work is playing, Like, we have some interesting jobs. You know, you don't stop working, That's part of it. And uh, that is one of the great residuals of of you know, you're around all these funny people, and you have silly ideas and you have silly conversations a life yourself sick. But for me, it was like, oh my god, if I fail at this, it's all gone away. You know, if you fail at this, you get to get at the end of the line, and the line keeps getting longer, so to the exclusion of other important things, other aspects of life. I pursued the show, and then that changed, finally changed. Did you wanted to change? No. At the time, I didn't. I didn't know there was another way to live your life. I thought you had to keep banging your head and banging your head and banging your head. And I kept saying to myself, this is what they say, It's like pushing a rock up hill. It's like pushing a rock up hill, and one day everything will change, everything will be great, you'll succeed, and everything will well. It never it never quite worked that way for me. I think, well, not too difficult to assume that. This is one of the reasons I had the quin tumble bypass surgery. And then my doctor he said, you know, he says, you don't have to be this way yourself. Yeah, he said, you can, yeah, or you you can. He says, there are they made pharmaceutical advancements here, you can help yourself. And I said, no, no, no, no, I can't because that would ruin this, and that would ruin that, and uh. And then Regina got we were able to get pregnant. I went into this stark, raving anxious depression. Why well, I was fine with it. I thought, if not now when you know, and she had wanted to have kids, like I said, fifteen twenty years earlier, and so I, uh, this is a very complicated, un interesting story, and it has it has to do with having shingles and being on exotic pain medication for the shingles and getting fed up with the exotic pain medication and saying to the pain doctor I'm done. I'm not taking it anymore. And he said, well, you know a lot of those things you can't just I said, forget it. Click and I stopped taking these things, and within a couple of days I just turned into this twitching unit cell altered states. Yeah. It was very odd. Uh. And the guy said, well, you're in an anxious depression and lucid. You know there are things we can do here to help you out. And I said, I'll try anything because I can't go on like this. And so it's a small dose of an s s R. I suddenly I realized I can have myself, my personality of the person that I've known, and then lose what was detracting, what was hurting, what was actually an impediment, groom out the things that you wanted to groom out. Yeah, And when I came to this show business and I was in the law angels sleeping and I was like Gomer Pyle, I mean, I swear to God. I came to work and they said, really, I have trouble that you were really, but I don't mean in terms of of lacking any sophistication. But I'll never forget the first job I got. I go to an audition. I've done that the soap in New York and they paid you, you know, a very small amount of money. And I thought I was Rockefell and they paid you four undred and fifty bucks a day. I was. I was the richest member of my family. My dad was a school teacher with six kids. He didn't make any money. And I go out to l A and I'll never forget when I go to the old Lauramar which is now Sony, and I go to the gate at Lauramar, I say, Alec Baldwin. He's like, you know, uh, here's your map. You're parking and building sixty seven ninth floor slot read twelve and they and they sent me to like, you know, the Ukraine, And I go, now, where's the office I'm going to for the me and he goes right over there, right next to me. So I go, I parked the car trot all the way down, do an audition for the show, nots landing. I get done and I leave the thing and no cell phones. Then this is nine three and so I pull up to a phone booth. I called my agent. It's late in the afternoon. They're still in the office. He goes, how did it go? I go, how did it go? I think it went pretty well? Pretty well, you moron? They want to hire you? And I go, you're kidding me, he goes. He goes, yeah, of course he was. We're making a deal right now, or closing the deal. Why now you're gonna get twenty five for the pilot and twelve five an episode. And I swear to God, coming from my background, I went go, wait, y'all won't pay me dollars for the pilot and twelve hundred and fifty dollars per episode every week? And he's like, no, you morow, they're gonna pay you twenty five thousand for the pilot and twelve thousand, five hundred an episode, and I literally urinated on my trousers. I'm standing at a phone booth on the corner of like you know, Walker and Washington and Culver City, and the guy tells me this, and that's when my life changed for me. It was always you were competing against yourself. We didn't go out and do a lot of reading, you know some sometimes I remember there was a the Jackson five had a summer show, so they would say, we need comics, and so they'd call the comedies door, and you know, if Mitzi liked you'd get to go beyond the Jackson five show. There was plenty of work, and it wasn't I think as in acting as you describe guys elbowing each other out and and higher ups wanting to step on their hands and hurt their feelings. But when you when you've done the show back from the NBC days and now through the many years at CBS, it's a very hermetic situation for you, and nobody bothers you, and there's different questions about your budget, and there's every question, but nobody calls you don't have to deal with them or do you have to fight with the network about things like other shows. To us, never a fight, it's a negotiation. But we don't have the fight. You know. If if we want to do something, we can pretty much do it. And again, what we want to do now is far different level in scopeling we wanted to do when we're because when we came into this show, we just thought, oh, Americas has been waiting for us. We're going to change the face of television for America. And what didn't happen that way? You know, it just didn't happen that way at all. We did a sketch on the old Late Night Show and it was with one of the writers, Tom Gamble, and it was Dale the Icotic Page. We had to set up nine holes of a miniature golf course. He would come in with a NBC page blazer and he would play miniature golf and with each failing attempt on the whole, he would become more and more psychotic. There's your comedy, America. This is what you've been waiting for you, aren't you glad we're here? Bro? I love on your show. I haven't done this in a while. I miss it when because because everything, I guess they can't do this stuff all the time, and maybe this bit is a victim of global warming. But I get there one time and they want me to ride the snowmobile on the roof of the building. Years ago. They're all very droll, you know, and Iff always calls me Alex. I love that you're on the roof and snowing, and we're on the roof of your building at snowing. Like, okay, now, Alex, You're gonna ride the snowmobile around the roof a few times and gonna mean, man, I've never called it to catch you, to keep you from going over the side. Is that all right? I'm like, great, let me go danger. You know it elements. What's a good show for you? Now? Well, it defines a good show for like, you know the I think the last time you were on I say this, of course, you know, suck up good idea. It was a very pleasant, easy give and take an exchange. I love it when a good, smart, funny guy just comes right back at me, you know, in the beginning, when he so mean, why does he mean to everybody? And I never thought I was being mean. I just thought I was, you know, goofing around. Yeah, so when you were coming on and you were going after me, that was delightful. I love that for those segment producers who you work with him. And it took me a while to be able to. I mean I would do the show with you a number of times and the segment producers would they would say that to you. They'd say to you know, no, get it back to it that So many people I think that runs against their nature. Other people are ill equipped to do that. You live a pretty under the radar lifestyle. Do you do that by choice? Well, a very quiet private life. First of all, I don't get invited many places. Secondly, I just would you know, you do the show and all of that comes to you during the day. You know, you have the same people at the gala, of the same people at the opening, the same people benefit will be there with that expression of all that for us. So I don't feel the need to go seek that. And secondly, like so many people, I'm uncomfortable with large groups of strangers. I mean I think people are And what is your downtime like? Now, what do you like to do? Uh? Well, sleep is as a precious commodity. There's virtually no sleep between my eight year old son and my two year old dog and my wife. My wife, honest to god, has not slept eight hours in eight years. I mean she she'll go to bed at midnight, get up at six, so that's six hours. You can do that once or twice, you know, like when you're eighteen and you're in the Marines, I if I have terminals. So when you're not fighting insomnia, what is do you like to travel? Travel? Well, you do things when you have an eight year old, as you know, when you have a child, you do things you never thought you would do, and it's fun. We went to Alaska a few weeks ago because it was my birthday, and I was talking to my son and and I said, well, you know, we're thinking of u about maybe going up to Alaska. This guy tells me there's a place to ski up there. Let's go to Alaska. And so I said, well, you know, we're still thinking about it and still thinking about it. And then I hear from Regina that now Harry is going to school and told everybody that daddy and me and mom we're going to Alaska. And I thought, holy, that's how he gets you're going to Alaska. So a lot of that stuff is kid driven. And you know, I'm all for no tennis, no golf, No no tennis, no golf, no movies. I see plenty of movies all the Oh no, not at home so much. It's all it's all with the kid. Do you find that your son, because this is very common. He pulls you into the world, into his world, and you have to show up at things and show up at places, and everybody treats you very respectfully. People are there as a dad. Yeah. The last time anything untoward happened was a Christmas party. My wife has his friends with a very famous couple, and I have great admiration for the couple. More people should be like these people and and as a result, I'm afraid to be around them us I'm duck lips. Yeah, oh, I make myself look back. I went to a Christmas party and it was so packed that you couldn't move. It was all vertical. Nothing happened horizontally, and as people kind of from their positions about the apartment, spotted me, it was it was as though there was methane gas leaking in the apartment. It was oh no, and it's the holidays, and why is he here? Yeah, true story. People. You people don't love people. People love you. No, no, no, no people people. But the thing is that you you get a lot of that qution on the job, and then when the job's over, you want to go home. That's right, That's exactly right. And and especially now with with the eight year old, because you know, and I feel stupid talking about it because I'm like the billion person who have a child, so I have I have no I have no insights. He might claim he has no insights. But if David Letterman ever writes a book on parenting, it's guaranteed to be a bestseller. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing, Real conversations with artists, writers, policymakers and performers. That's where I find out why people do what they do. It has been such a great rewarding and satisfying experience. I always say that anything Alec Baldwin asked me to do, I do. You've come through. You can listen to other episodes at Here's the Thing dot Org. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing Mr Douglas. Michael Douglas has lived on Central Park West for decades. The son of Kirk Douglas, he's American acting royalty, but he's earned his own place at the round table with powerful performances throughout his career. Gordon Gecko in Wall Street, Dan Gallagher and Fay of Attraction. Then there's Romancing The Stone, Basic Instinct, The Game Traffic and Wonder Boys. He has two Academy Awards, one as an actor, another as a producer, and he's worked with everyone from Oliver Stone to Curtis Hanson, Hello Seven. He worked with the British director Adrian Lyme on Fatal Attraction. He was great and he has a great knack and talent for that. And I remember, you know when Glenn and I when were doing Fatal Attraction and we have the scene in the kitchen the first time when we were kind of going at it, got her up on the kitchen sink, and so he did a take on that and said, well that was that was one of the love That was just great. What could we do? I think? And Glam said, well, maybe I can take the water and I can stick by wet fingers in his mouth lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely? How many of your fingers can be? Could you get all of your fingers into his mouth? Taling exactly? He was great, he was, I love his films and a lot of fun every other day. He said, well you on me? I said, I should get Bill and shape this picture. No, no, no, Eloy a new employa. She look just the way you are in about three weeks. Jeez, Michael, Mike, you look like ross and well, but that's a favor. They love to shoot that down angle, you know, and we all look better with the camera above our eyeline. Don't you drop that camera? Yeah? When you work, Now, what's it been like for you now in terms of you show up and you're pretty fastile at getting there emotionally, in terms of how you want to play it and is it more technical for you? Yeah, Someone early on in my career told me, you know, the camera can always tell when you're lying. Oh. I was like, the camera can tell what I'm lying? Well, I used to method it up. I gotta be truthful. One day I said, wait a minute, I lie every day, I said, but camera, if you're lie, not me. I'm different. I'm talented, right, exactly what's acting about except Lyne. That freed me up a whole lot when I realized that. But the last ten years the business changed dramatically. The technical part is definitely to me now it's all, you know, where's my life, where's the camera? Raise that camera. I used to say, well, we gotta have a clean take when I gotta burn one great connected master. Now I'm like into four pickups of this line, and it's so technical to me now, it's unbelievable. I learned that a lot from actually from Jack Nicholson on Cuckoo's Nest. I was watching you know, the it's editing. You do someone's take after take it, then you go someone look at the dailies and you see how my new the differences are, and then they can judiciously edit. I mean, I was working with some people early on, or I didn't know better, and I was looking at people and I say, my god, when they watched the dailies of this, they're going to really be unhappy because this person is as boring as you could possibly mean. They're not doing anything. And that was my sin was I thought I always had to be acting. And I guess my question is sometimes you go to work and you gotta you know what you want to do. What do you do when you go to a movie and the director has nothing to offer you, He's really just a traffic cop point in the camera. My feeling is with movies. I mean, first of all, if you get a good part and the get go is a great part, you know, And sometimes you get a good part and a lot of a lot of pictures I've done where I'm in every single scene and I'm carrying the plot line, somebody else has got the colorful, good part. But I always think that if you if the pictures cast properly, or if you're cast right, I never expect to hear much from a director. You don't know. The world is so different now. I've got people welcome to me all the time quoting some of the most corrosive lines from Glen Garry Glenn Ross. I think it's good to talk about the kind of funckishness of the sales industry. When I say, you know, coffee is for closers, and you say greed is good. Do you think in our lifetime that that line has changed Greed is good? Where people really believe that's true. Well, the affirmation that I got from that villain, from that community, from that from that community. You know, if I get one more drunken guy from the street, hey man, greed is good. You're the man. You're why I got into this business and everything I go it. Hey, you know that's what I was a villain. What is your relationship to go into the movies? Now? Yeah, I'm really embarrassed to say this, but I'm not a movie goer. I don't see many movies. I waste so much time watching news and sports. I love watching sports because you know, I can't tell you how it's gonna end. My problem with movies. You know, as you get halfway through a movie, and you see I was right. I love making movies, but I'm really bad Alex when it comes to seeing them. When you were younger, did you always since you were headed in this direct in some way? I never. I never thought I was. I mean probably a loud of it was resentment as a young kids, my folks getting divorced and both the me actors. But I never even thought about the doing this at all. And I said I was like a junior in college. He took me into the Vice Chance's office and your college and you're not in a major al right, So I guess you know drama should be easy. You know, I had well parents. I hung around. My mother was in did a lot of theater, and so it hung around there. But it's not something I dreamed about. But the success you have now came in stages. When you were younger and you did your early films, you were the gentle young man. But I wonder in your case because you eventually played a very tough, very powerful actor on film. So do you think when you were younger you pulled your punches because you didn't want to step on what you thought was your dad's territory. You don't want to be compared to him. First of all, you look at his career. He played the sensitive young man for his first six or seven pictures until he had a movie called The Champion. I just think I was just trying to define who I am, because the one problem about being second generation is, you know you half of me is made up with my father's jeans. My mother, Diana, is an actress too, but not as well known. So when you see behavioral or mannerisms that are like your father, I feel like it takes away from your individuality, right, And it's sort of like earlier on, I just was trying to find out who I was, and being a nice guy was a way of pleasing everybody. But the truth be told in a villain is the best way to go. Playing a bad guy better lines, it's more colorful. Audiences vicariously love you because a lot of time is everything that they want to do in real life, but they can't do what you can do in the movies. Contrary, women is taking them so much longer to be comfortable in playing the villains. And I look back to us produced in Cuckoo's Nest and all the actresses that turned down the part of Nurse Ratchet because they didn't want to play a villain. Louise Flesh of us Oscar, Yeah, you know, for playing out well. When I went to Strasbourg the acting school, we did a gender reversed production of Cuckoo's Nest and the girl was McMurphy and all the inmates were females, and I was Nurse Ratchet as a man. That's a great idea. Is your relationship with your dad more father son now? Or is it more two great colleagues? In motion picture history. No, it's more father's son. It's more fun. I mean, he's ninety four years old. I'm just so proud of him. And you know, he wasn't a great dad is in the prime as an actor. He was, like a lot of us, were consumed with his career. For him, it really started when he had his helicopter accident. He was seventy with a friend of helicopter and they hit a aerobatic plane and the when they were taking off, and the people near about plane crashed and died instantly, and he just was black and blue. Started him on this you know, why am I alive and this eighteen year old student pilot and the instructor dead. So he started getting back into his religious reading the town mood, reading the Old Testament, working with a rabbi, and has become a much more spiritual person. I am in so all of him in the third act of his life, what he's accomplished between seventy and ninety four, which is about nine books. Called him last week. The housekeeper said, he's down at the office. What the hell you doing down to the office. You know, he's well, I'm just finishing the editor of my last book. You've got another book, there's yeah, yeah, yeah, what what else? Because well, I got a book on sculptures. He said, well that's that's that's crete. It's really good. I look at him much more um as a father now because I'm you know, much less competitive with him. What did he do to you or not do for you? The positive or the negative that you've passed on to your children. The negative is you got to watch your quick temper. You think you had a temper like your dead No, no, I didn't have people people did. It was the reason why you saw, right, I think I realized now because he's a white Russian Jew, you know, Belarus and all of that, and well that and also he saw how much any Semitism there wasn't the world because people would talk to him as didn't know it was a Jew, how much she should not please come sit down, whether none of those people exactly would see that exactly exactly because he changed his name is not no longer Danielovitch. Not not as bad. I mean, I've I've learned to monitor it, or mean, to be aware of it. You used to have a short handle. I'm a lot better now. Yeah, because I don't care as much. That was there's things that you can control. Is that God grabbed me the serenity to accept the things that cannot change, and the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom and all the difference. It's true. Mine was even worse. It was even more narcissistant. I was just angry because nobody else cared about it whenever it was as much as I did. I wonder what was your relationship like with your mom in terms of your career. What would you and she talk about? Well, my mother's English background, she was not so much the business she's She's very bright and it's probably more politely critical. Mia as an actor, that was that bad, not bad? What did you get from your mother? Your mother is in you diplomacy, the guy that could produce films. I think Jack Lemon said it when we were doing China Syndrome. He said, Michael, he said, it hits you with a thousand and powder puffs. You know, it takes that to produce, to be able to massage people and work with them and get people than confrontational in that way. And I think she has that. I think my father has made it more difficult for himself and his confrontational and this anger you know in his career. The positive side of Kirk is a sense of tenacity and stamina. My son is a cross country runner. Now your son's my ten year old son, Dylan ten years old, he's already starting a track stuff and your older son has had his problems. What's been your relationship with your son's alcoholism and drug addiction? UM? I think there's a certain genetic part, and I think as far as drug addiction, you know, your peer group plays a huge part of that. I'm of the belief that you know, fourteen years old, as a parent, you've lost a lot of your influence other people and by their peer group that triggers and starts it off. And then in my oldest son's case, there was no end until he was incarcerated. UM. I think secrets play a part in this, and the fact that whether it's a bad marital relationship that you're trying to keep from your children and the tension is there and you're not really kind of upfront, I mean this go route. I'm finding myself much more honest with my seven year old daughter than I ever thought I would be. Also, just because of what they have access to. I mean, it's just watching Glee. It was, which is our family night. You know, I don't know why I'm so surprised. I am. I'm looking at it and and they're watching you right or wrong without without any kind of ratings on it. You know, two boys kissing each other and all that, besides the gay actually physically seeing things free for all. So I think in that way not keeping as many secrets. Isn't it funny how people men in particular who have I don't want to put the stellically who have played near the third rail sexually or very sensitive about them when the children are growing up, they're like, no, no, I don't need to watch that. Yeah, I mean your dad has that great line. My son was sent to rehab for sex edition problem. How much did you inherit that? Which is this is what men are supposed to do? Um? Probably probably, I'm sure you know, I mean I'm watching. I mean my father has been very fortunate, second wife and his French and they've been married fifty six years, I think, and has a different had a different attitude earlier on he was a rascal. So you've been sick. What was your relationship to cancer before you had cancer, how was it in your life? Family? Friends? Never really nothing in my my my father remember had a little skin thing. My mother had again a slight skin issue, but no real history and out. I actually was right after I finished The Wall Street Money Never Sleeps. My throat was a little sore, and I thought maybe it was from you know, like from tension, from the part where you haven't placed your voice, where you're swallowing your words and your your speak from the back of your throat. So I saw doctors. I thought it was some sort of sore, and I had antibiotics, this and that, and then you know, I said, it went on for another couple of months. Your your general practitioner then sent you an experts. I go to your nosing throat guy the periodontis and this and that and another round of antibiotics. And then I went away for the summer and I was in Canada, and I called and said, something's going on here. How much time has passed? She first Now we're in August. And I first went to him in January. It was almost more than half a year. Half a year finding an ear nose and throat doctor at the Jewish Hospital in Montreal, Quebec, and he literally opened my mouth and he took a tongue to press it. And I'll never forget that moment when he looked up at me and looked back down, I knew and he said, well, I guess we're gonna have to take a biopsy biopsy of He said, well, there's a polyt here and it was on my tongue. Two days later he called me back in and said, you got cancer. For for head neck cancer, the best place was Sloan Cattering and I went down and within a week and found out that it was stage four, which is the maximum, so seven weeks of radiation and chemo. The reality is, with all the doctors that I could have here in New York, if I had been checked back in January for heading that cancer, this could have all happened a lot early. And the thing with cancers, you want to get it as early as you can. Because I want to mention that I came to this door, to your home here in New York, fully expecting you to look I'm gonna be very honest with you, not as great as you're looking at you look pretty damn good. I really, I got to go to Cross three. You're working your normal stuff. You look fantastic thing. I lost a little bit of way to help out, but you gotta you got a job. I don't know one the one advantage of this is you'm deciding I'm taking the rest of this year easy, enjoying my family and just take her easy. Now you had kids. So you had your son when you were how old? Should I have more kids? Yes. At that very moment, the doorbell rang, I think, I think here's my daughter. Wait a minute, wait a minute, this is Carris. Hello. Harris was coming home from school and she jumped into the chair next to her dad. Has she seen a couple of your films? At least I have hardly any movies that she can see. Julie and I and the other one The Stone. Don't really like my favorite movie about I Love You Well because a long time she didn't really know what I did. You know, she knew mommy because Chicago and all that. Mommy was an actress. The longest time. He didn't know it, said, tonight, my friend said, what did your dad do for a living in I said, he makes pancakes. And they were like, I'm going to go to a house I love. Thank you. Michael Douglas has temporarily turned in his spatula to play the lead role in Behind the Candelabra biopic on Liberace for HBO out in two thousand thirteen. Liberracci was a lovely guy. I mean the truth. I haven't played a lot of nice guys. This is Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is produced by Emily Botine and Kathy Russo, with support from Jim Briggs, ed Herbstman, Melanie Hoops and Monica Hopkins. Thanks to Trey k lu Okowski and Larry Josephson and the Radio Foundation. This is 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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