Jerry Seinfeld

Published Oct 14, 2013, 4:00 AM

This week Alec sits down with comedian Jerry Seinfeld who debuted on HBO in 1981, the same year he first appeared on Johnny Carson. Jerry Seinfeld was 27 years old.

Seinfeld's material stood out. It wasn't about his upbringing or personal relationships. It was about our universal experience of small things. Eight years after his HBO debut, he and Larry David created a weekly series that changed both their lives. After Seinfeld ran for nine seasons, Seinfeld went back to stand-up, and to his audience. As he explains to Alec, Seinfeld feels uniquely connected to his fans: “You have this relationship with the audience that is private between you and them. Critics want to write, people want to talk. We have our own thing that nobody can break … once you build that it can't be broken by outside forces.”

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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Well you please welcome Jerry Steinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld debuted on HBO in It was the same year he first appeared on Johnny Carson. He was twenty seven years old. Nice to be here tonight, A pleasure to be here tonight. Seinfeld's material stood out. It wasn't about his upbringing or personal relationships. It was about our universal experience of everyday things. For John has have got to be the world's funniest clothes? Who designed them to look that way? Like a little tiny suit? Notice little collar button down and a breast pocket. There's a useful item. Is anybody using the breast pocket a John's? Seinfeld asked questions we wished we'd thought of, then he'd answer them with a casual priss vision that seemed to spin comedy out of nothing. In eight years after his HBO debut, he and Larry David created a weekly series that would change both their lives. This is the show, and we're not going to change it. Right, how about this? I managed a Circus Seinfeld brand for nine seasons on NBC. It was a critical and popular success. The show about nothing, as it's been described, challenged some long established laws of mainstream television comedy. It was brilliantly unsentimental. The characters rarely exhibited emotions other than exasperation what was going on and on set, the writers held strongly to a principle they dubbed no hugging, no learning. The seventies six million viewers who watched the series finale waited to see what would happen next to the performers they've grown to love, and even though conventional wisdom predicted spinoffs and sequels, Jerry Seinfeld went back to stand up and it wasn't easy. All of the stuff I've never said before anyone. So this hoppen has developed to as you say, it's quite painful. He's done a few other projects as well. The latest on the internet is a show called Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, which combines some of his favorite things, driving while talking to his friends and drinking coffee. It's funny that you picked at Jaguar, because I have a secret love of Jaguars, but I'm not a car person and I don't believe in spending money on cars. And no offense. Jerry Seinfeld has it figured out. He isn't destroying himself trying to prove something. He isn't tortured by the challenges of his art. He keeps things simple and clear. Take his regular morning routine. When he wakes up. If my wife is up, I like that because I do not like cat pulling around. I want to get up. Let's go, baby. So the first thing I want, yeah, I want, I want sports radio on. And I and I washed, and I run the faucets and I start splashing my face with water like Mace in the hustler like Mace and the how was gonna see more? Like Joan Crawford before she goes in the studio to see Gleeson And the hustler goes into the bathroom splashes his face with water to revive for the next round. I took that. I said, that's great. I'm gonna do that. That's how you face life. Water the water, if I splash water. What if you go on stage? Is that what you do? Do you? After I come off? You come off? When I come off. The hardest thing when you come off is to return to your actual person out. You've blown your personality up to this. You know, joker Jack Nicholson face. And when you come off stage, I gotta go back to me and I need a minute. People try and talk to me when I come off. I can't talk to him. I got I gotta splash some water. I gotta yeah, I got beautiful towels. Give me. That's how I like to start the morning. Shades up radio, sports radio one splashing yes, and then and then what do you have for breakfast? What's breakfast? Oatmeal, hunting and cinnamon. So there's a kind of a military theme. There's a kind of a military base theme. You at home doesn't resemble a military base. I'm not funny. People die, people gonna get hurt. Yeah, you want me on that stage? You need me on that stage. Is that how you feel? No? No, you don't know what word do you just use to describe what you do? What word do you use? What describes what you do? Well, there's a term for it. I don't need to describe it with another called stand up comedy. Because you call yourself a comic. You don't call yourself an actor. No, I'm not an actor. You're not an actor. I have acted. Have you ever considered doing anything dramatic? Why to what end? Okay, it's just a waste of time. Yes, So when when you saw someone like I mean the most you know, blaring example is when Jerry Lewis does King of Comedy and crushes it. When Jerry Lewis comes in there and plays that kind of just arid, I mean, it was so remarkable his performance, it was breathtaking. He was breath. You don't remember the movie, yea, I thought he was breath And you don't see yourself doing that kind of in the hands of someone like that. Of course you do something like that, but that's what I'm saying. But that's his movie. Are you grading me? Am? I am? I not getting it right here. I'm just I'm just I'm just riffing with you, and I'm just saying that, um what I do is um um the only thing that makes sense to me. But I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm saying that there are people that come out on film, you know, comics, stand up comics clubs, performing, maybe they go into sitcoms with the shows or just be b joke, be b joke, they tell jokes, and then they go into the movie business. And there's some sense that there's going to be and again not just stand up people, but the improvisatory groups. You know, if they come from UCB or Groundlings Corral is a good example, and they come on. And there was an amount of acting that's required when you did your TV show, there was some acting that was required. So but you don't but you gotta act the whole show. But but some saying, so you don't call yourself an actor that you just say I'm a comic. If I'm on the show acting, then i'm acting. I'm I'm a comedian. Okay, I'm a stand up comedian. That's what I call myself. But I can act. I just see the need for it. I don't think the world needs me to do that. This is Paul Rudd. What do you need me for? You got you got a guy for that. We got a guy for that who can do Can he do what I'm doing? Can he step into my shoes? Now? There's many people that can do that thing and I and I wish them all the luck and success. But my thing only I can do my own head. My thing is too just you know, you probably splashed a lot of water in your face. Is shoot, you're splashing an inordinate amount of really brisk water. It's almost always three splashes. I'm trying. I'm feeling eight or nine splashes. We went on this morning because you're loaded for bear. We're like in a deposition here. I love talking with you. You know that. I love talking with you. Okay, so um? Who makes it in comedy? Who are the ones that make it? And it's a change in your lifetime? What does it take? Who's in show business? Let's answer that question, because I have I'll tell you who's in show business. You know it's in show business? Like who wants to be more than anyone else? Those are the people that are in it, the people that just go I want to be in it. I'm going to be in it. Do I have the skill set? Do I have a talent? I have something to offer? We'll find out or not. But it doesn't I may not. I take on that with between Paccino. I said to him, what do you do when you do a movie and the other person isn't that good? Like you're doing a scene, and I said, you go up to the director and give them notes, say tell them this other And said, no, I never do that. I never do that. No, no, no, I said, I said, what do you do? I? I said, what do you do when the people that you're working with they just I mean, you're so talented, and it's like tennis and you and you're and you're hitting the ball with some and they're not that talented. And he said, Alec, Alec. All of us in the business are talented. Everybody's talented. Some of us are just more talented than others. But everybody in the room when you're working, they've got some kind of talent. Like you'd say, he has a talented for storytelling. He had a talent for this. But you are saying that people who determination is a big part of it. I'm saying it's most of the people we see in in the arts are there not because they had the most to offer, but because they wanted to be there the most. You believe. So when you're in clubs in your early years and you'd see people who were working, did you have did you not? Not that you cared about this or you were focused on this, but would you Sometimes because my friends who were in clubs and who were comics, there was a lot of evaluating of each other in the competition. It was very competitive, and would you look at people and say, I think he's got it or she's got and they're gonna make it and they don't or this one doesn't. And and a big part of your saying it is just the drive as they want it. They're a dog on a bone. You see a lot of that, don't you think? I think so? Well? In the in the movie business, you can see people who they put it before everything else, you know, I mean they're not what business? What what field of endeavor has the highest bullshit factor? Right? In your opinion? Um, because you've been in a number of different branches. Now, well, I think, well, obviously a government is I think entertainment. Did you enjoy the Anthony Weiner Show this season or not? The show put on for us when when that was going on? Did you were you disgusted? Were you going? I love this? I I loved it because to me it was the visible man. Let's take off the face of the clock and watch the gears and that's what that was. This is you know, we're talking about people our ownership show business because they want to be he wants to have he just wants it, wants and most of most of them have all the guyses and veils and and you know police, well, they pretend that what you just hit on a very important point, which is that they pretend to some degree that it's selfless. That also, yeah, that that they don't crave power. But the other thing about Weener that I found unusual. I mean, listen, this is I'm not going to say anything. I don't think I'm capable of saying anything that hasn't been said before. But the idea that you want to take pictures of your genitalia and send it to women that you barely know. I wonder if there's an unconscious part of him that's like, I'm gonna send pictures of my genitalia to a couple of women who I don't even know that well, and let's see what happens. Let's let's roll the dice here. I'm putting all my chips on black. I'm all in. I got another pile, and I'm all in on sending this chicken picture of my you know what, of my personality. I don't have that desire, right, I'm not exacts. It's easier to understand than his get off was. Ding. He looks at the phone. Ding, let's it just press send. Where where's the thrill? Everybody has a has some component of them for what I call negative excitement, like what's your thing you want to do that that you indulge some weakness of yours? You know what I mean? Some people have food issues, they have drinking. Mine would be yours. Uh, I don't think I mean beyond tomato sauce. Maybe. I mean, yeah, that's not that you are. And for people who don't know you, see, this is the thing that in all honesty, I always when I think about you, the list of things I think about is is how not just professional and committed in all those other kind of lame were you know, lazier words, but how you know, just just focused and hard working. You are Like a lot of people look at you and view you as someone who is but let's be very candid. I mean you're someone people, but people view you as someone who is this incredibly gifted person. I love this show, right, and no you are. But the point is that you like you don't work. It's like you do things like like you going on on a trip to go do some gigs. It's kind of a thing. You're probably just doing a favor for someone that's more you. I don't think that's the general perception. I think that's you. I think you're amn to me or what you think. Yeah, I think that's your sense I'm projecting. Yeah, I think you're projecting. But you know that that's not me. No, no, not at all. You know that I love to work. You've incredibly so, but but not um, I'm not driven by anything very healthy healthy. I'm not driving by anything unwholesome. But you're healthier. But you are healthier than anybody else I've ever met in your profession. Everybody else I've met in your profession, it was you could do Saturday Night Live and be roaming the hallways of that building. Yeah, for over the course of you know, it's really more like four days, not a full week, and you're around them other people. I did a sitcom with other people. I've been around a lot of people who make their living in comedy. I made films with them, and some of them you'd be around them. You know, within ten minutes you understood what was really their deepest problem that they hadn't resolved. Some of them took a question a few days. You don't have any problems. No, I don't, but I do relate very deeply to to all of those people. Describe. In fact, I was watching the Emmys. Is the only part of the Emmys that I like when they do the Comedy Writing Award and each Comedy writing staff puts up funny pictures, and then when the the actual staff comes up on the stage and you see these gnome like cretans just kind of all misshapen, and and I go, this is me, this is who I am. This is that's my group people. Yeah, but you don't. Yeah, do you see that in me? Okay, well then you've learned something here today. What did I learn? You learned that despite maybe I am healthy and somewhat functional, but I can I see myself as one of those guys that that that that group of Colbert Report writers that are just it looks like we would never let them speak to Colbert must Now those that's where I want to hang out with those guys. You do, Yeah, like Barry, Yeah, yeah, you're more comfortable with the berries of that. I'm only comfortable only with those people, really. Yeah, describe Barry, you have a special relation. Harry Martyr is my very special friend. Barry is the author of the Letters from a Nut Book under the nom de plume ted L Nancy, and he is UM. He's also fascinating compilation of function and dysfunction, which any interesting person is. UM. He's a guy Who's what I love about Barries. I can call him right now it's eleven thirty that he will just say hello. He's always there, always at home. He's got a red couch. His living room looks like a murder scene. This, you know, uh, very scary looking stains on a white rug. He lives into Lucca Lake to Luca Lake, and we talk every day, usually an hour on a good day, two hours. And UM were talking yesterday about chantics, the quit smoking drug commercial where they list the side effects, and one of the ones that people have experienced with chantics is weird dreams. And now we're trying to figure out, well, what's a weird dream? And do they have a hotline that you can call up? Say, Bob, I got a guy here's you know, woke up. He dreamt he had orangutank feet. Is that weird? And he goes, no, I've had that one, you know, that's that's weird. Who who doesn't have weird dreams. There's no dream. It's not weird exactly. It's to be done to. I had a dream last night. It's funny to say that because I don't dream. Do you dream? Or you a dreamer? Everyone dreams. I don't remember my dreams very rarely. You're a good sleeper, Yeah, the super healthy man that you are, that man the water, the revel e, the up in the morning. I don't want a cat pour around. That man sleeps well. He sleeps well. Yeah, because I I have and you lay down in yours to people have nothing to keep me up? Is that what kop up? That? I don't think I do bad things to people. You know, in the Jewish religion, we have a day to day of atonement. It's your own kipper. When you think of the things that you did during the year. Uh, and you repent. So when you say so for you, that's a very short it's almost like a moment. Yeah, exactly. You walk down the street, you kind of looked down at the crack of the cyber food and counter three and go, okay, I'm done. I don't you thought I did. I did snap at that woman when she spilled the coffee on my I would never do that. You would never do that. No, I would never snap at somebody, never, never, never. I wish I could say the same thing. I have snapped at some people in my life. But a certain breed of people, people I thought were nothing, gets to me more upset than than you paying attention to those. Yeah, I don't like that. I do have because you're one of the great entertainers that I try to glorify and call it like I have like a Swayne syndrome. I gotta put that cape on, I gotta get the door, and I gotta straighten these people out. In my mind, that light is flashing. Commissioner Gordon is flashing that light, and I gotta go downstairs, get in the car, go out the tunnel, and Robin and I have to go beat the living ship out of as many photographers as we possibly can. You talk to him for an hour or two hours? Is it? Is it a therapy for you? Yes? Because yes, because we don't talk about anything important, no agenda, and we could just go on'm bored of this and then it just and then just change yourself. You don't even say I'm bored of this. I'll just change the subject. You just are on the same frequency, the two of you. Yeah, we love the sipping coffee and allowedly you know on the phone that you know this this sound. Yes, I like to tighten my too. I do type. Do you get back to Barry? Because I have a friend like that. My friend an adopts no. But I find that we all have to have a person who is that kind of a soul mate. You can really talk. And it's interesting that it's a guy like my wife. Now it's very close to that. I mean I can tell her anything. I can say anything. I can say anything and she'll look at me and she and there will be some judgment. Because all women want to fix the man. Therewith. I want to think that they have some that they're they have some kind of supervisory function in our lives. I've learned to have my wife take my inventory, tell me what's really going on, show me what I'm missing about myself, see what you're not seeing is. And now what I do is I sit there and I go, first of all, I go like this, and then's just say, are you listening to me? I'm like, yes, I'm every word. I agree with you. You're totally right. I do do that. It's wrong, it's wrong, and I really need to thank you. I need to look at that more closely, Like if you're bringing that, I call Ronnie, who's my Barry. There's none of that, there's no there's no judgment, there's no supervisory function. Is that the way it is with Barry Um? If I ask for it, I will often I will ask him, uh, the most challenging questions of life to me? Had he work related? Work related? Personal? You know, you know, almost every call we have it's why are we what are we doing? Why are we here? Why are we even alive? And he's give me an answer. He'll give me an answer. What does he say? Why are we alive? According to Barry Um, he would probably say, um, to sit on the stained sofa into Luca Lake and think the great thoughts. Yeah, that's right, to laugh, to have fun, to enjoy ourselves, Yeah, to enjoy ourselves happy. Now he gives you professional feedback? Is there someone when you were coming up? They gave you a professional feedback? You were completely self determining? Yes, Why do you think that is? You never turned to people? Not that I'm saying this is good or bad. You never turned to somebody's like, how do you think I'm doing? No, Look, my mother is an orphan. My father left the house probably eleven years old to work on the street and make a living on the Lower East Side. You know, they got married in their forties. They had no concept of what a family should even be. And all I craved was the same fierce independence that they had in their lives. Instructible, indestructible, self contained, self reliant people. This is not great going into a marriage, may I say? You know? And I was that guy saying, well, I gotta go now, I gotta go to work. And you don't think that this might be a problem for a person that's not used to being around that. So it took me a long time to learn that. You know that you have to be understand because to me, to me, this life, my life, what I would call my life in comedy, is a life of sacrifice that I am only too happy to make. All my relationships I got married at forty five. All my relationships were as disposable as a dixie cup. Excuse me? With women you made, Yes, I gotta work, you've gone. But well if you don't, if you don't want you know, well, if you if you're gonna be on the road that much, we can't be together. Goodbye, goodbye. This is this my I have had a sense of mission. You were like Lee Strasburg in The Godfather Part two. Yes, when he says, if I come back here, I have a partner. I know I have a partner. If it's not, i'll know, I don't, I'll know, I don't what he said, I'm going in the other room. It's the last time a really out of shape man took his shirt off in a movie and it wasn't bad. Hair on the top of the shoulders, a little little little like a little tumbleweeds of hair. Yeah, did you know him? Did you know when I studied acting at this school on fift Street, When I went and why you I went to Strasburg. They assigned you to the studio. You went to Adler Strasberg's up. I went to Strasburg, and I had wonderful teachers, Marsha how Freckt and Jeffrey horn Is a wonderful too, beautiful people. But you know the method of Strasburg was very uh severe. Did it work for you? One of the well it opened up your eyes to the idea of whatever word you want to use. I'm never going to use the right word for everyone. To mind your past and mind your emotional fabric to get where you want to go. Whereas Strasburg and Stanislavski, both people don't necessarily stumble across this fine print and all these writings of their where what Stanislavski and Strasburg both said is that the method, so to speak, is something that you apply only if the inspiration fails you. You don't you don't need to go off into a room and twist yourself into some kind of psychological pretzel to do this work. If you can just say the words and you're there, you feel connected to the character in and of yourself. Do you do you have a desire as an actor to be one of those guys, one of those I'm gonna take my rib cage and separated. When I was younger, I did you did when I was younger, I did did you feel you there was there was there a role where you felt you got close? Tonight, when I did street Car named Desire on Broadway and Amy Madigan, I would scream Stella, stella for her to come downstairs and Amy would come in. The minute I would touch Amy, I'd burst into tears. And remember I didn't I loved Amy more than any woman I ever loved, you know, at that moment, I mean and it was real, right, I was in love with Amy. Do you think I'm capable of that kind of work? I think you are. It would be a tremendous mistake your car, it would be a huge would be one of the poorest choices probably in show business history, for you to go and to say, you want to know, what do you want to do? A street car on um. I was in an acting class with a guy did have me play Brick. But that's kind of know how tin roof He because I was able to handle the light comedy so easily. He said, you, I need to challenge you more. So he had me. Then he said, I want you to study the role of Brick. Wasn't that the name of the character, And yeah, Maggie and Brick. Yeah. Well that's when I left that. There's a girl I could you'll you'll appreciate this because you're from Long Island. And I met this woman, uh many years later, and even she laughed about it. So I can say this, remember Pergament's hardware storm. Okay, I went to I went to college. I went to g W for three years and I went and I took my last year there, my junior year before I climbed over the wall there and went to end. While you to study acting, I took acting for non drama majors. It was a gut course you take at GW. I took acting for non drama majors. And everyone in the class this was one of the things that gave me the the impetus to be an actor because everyone in the class was so horrible and I could, I could. I squeaked by like I wasn't that bad. I was okay in terms of performing. And the teacher said to me, I want you to do a scene from Canta huntin roof of Maggie Brick scene. And your partner is Debbie Pergament, who was the daughter and then I don't want to call her the heir to the Pergaman fortune, but let's just say that for our comedy purposes, Debbie Pergaman and literally she was this lovely girl, adorable, gorgeous, really cute as the day is long. But she was from you know, like rosalind or somewhere. So when she would say she was the only person who made brick a bicyllabic where she was like a brick brick, I am like a cat's on a Hudson roof here, I am so upset. Debbie Pergmant was with my partner in a scene study class and it was it was eye opening. So where do we want to go now? Your your career now? Um you you you're seeing another corridor for yourself. Is something you want to explore, something you have to offer or be honest with me. Are you just tired and you just don't want to travel and shlap and deal with these idiots you want to know? The truth is I want to be more like you, really, because you are either re happy, Like I look at you when I see to myself, everything is always like why aren't you doing what other people do? What? Meaning? Like the first thing people would say in the business, I mean even outside the business, if they have some savvy about it, what they say, did Jerry want to ramp up a production company and just print TV shows? I mean, how many sitcoms could you have launched with the infra mater of your name, forget it, forget it. You could have your own channel, the Jerry Channel. But I didn't take that bait. Why because I know what it is. I know what it is. That's why you can't pull that over on me. What what is? I've sat in all the chairs, I've been in all the rooms. I know what it is. Look Alec you you've you've been there right, Yes, you can't trick me into thinking thinking what that's good? That's why, because don't. Most of it is not native work and not reaching an audience. You want to be on the water. How do you want to be on the water. You want to be on a yacht. You want to be on a surfboard. I want to be on a surfboard. I don't want to deal with the yacht. That's a yacht. And you just also some people want a yacht to say, to see my yacht, And you just didn't want people do you, And you also didn't want to ultimately wind up putting your name as is often the case. Look at which if you're the goose that lays the golden egg, you're the successful person and it all emanates you're the godhead if you will comedy wise, and you go launch all these other shows, and all those other shows they aren't maybe as good, And how much of your well, why doesn't he want to do it? How much would have to even for much for you to be in there, for ones of you just to put whatever it is, yeah, whatever it is. Let me tell you why my TV series in the nineties was so good besides an inordinate amount of just pure good fortune. And most TV series, fifty percent of the time is spent working on the show, fifty percent of the time is spent dealing with personality, political, and hierarchical issues of making something. We spent our time writing me and Larry the door was closed, some somebody calls. We're not taking the call. We're gonna We're gonna make this seem funny. That's why the show was good. I didn't want to go from that two. Um you know some some H. G. Wells contraption machine you know of of trying to control the weather. That's what That's what these these deals are. That's what making a movie is. What's a movie. It's this giant machine, is this giant ship, and everybody gets on it and they shove off and nobody knows where it's going, and the captain is doing where's the captain's he's getting high and and and and you know, and sleeping with the first mate. Period. Yeah, so it's too much time and energy spent. That is not the juice. The really good stuff is a great line. So when when you go out a stand up comedian, I can control that. So when you go out on stage now, so for now, for you, other than whatever other things you're involved with, writing or comedians and cars with coffee and so forth, you go out on stage, you perform live. How many shows you do on average? Would you say, I'm not sure. It varies, but you're on the road how many? How many shows a year? Um? Maybe seventy so so you do seventy five appearances a year. And is it just very simply a case where you walk out there, that exchange of energy between you and them. They want what you've got, you want what they've got. You're at home, you feel comfortable, you're happy. It's a it's a it's it's a very fulfilling, uh unsolvable puzzle that is endlessly um it just because it goes right to your soul. Does every night need to be different if you can make it, so do you try to make it different that there's nothing I can do about that. It's gonna be different. It's gonna be different. But if I can get him right where I want them and and get myself where I want myself, and the thing just explodes, well, you know, it's fun. That's life. People who perform live. I'll never forget. There was an article like an Esquire magazine or somewhere, and they did an article about Wayne Newton and they took it was about Vegas, and I think it was about Wayne Newton, and I love this article. And they weren't mean towards him, were diminishing him, and they were saying how they thought it was uncanny how the guy went to the show in Vegas with a stopwatch and Newton came out and he did the same thing every show, the same exact thing, the same exact beats. It was just it was just he just cloned one show after that and he would come out, but he would create the dynamic tension that this show was different, and he come out on stage and people will be screaming, and the women are throwing their panties and they're throwing their hotel room keys, had him his crowd, and then he sit there and he'd say, um, um, you know, we gotta we gotta wrap this up. But you know I love you people. I'm gonna do someth I'm gonna sing a song I never sing anymore. And the song he just sang, like you know, ninety minutes ago, I singing number for you guys, I've never sing anymore. I never would never break this one out anymore. And he just re created the same, uh you know, mock freshness of the whole thing, which many performers. I assume they do that. Yeah, he used to say, tell him locked the doors. They don't want me to go long. But but this audience, I don't remember. I don't. I'm gonna do something for you never I'm breaking the rules. Yeah, and of course you wouldn't right on the button. You performed in Vegas all the time. So they throw the hotel room key. How desperate is this entertainer, by the way, to just pick up d and go I'm heading over there. I'm going over there, which one of you was d Oh you, I'm sorry, let me give you your key back. I'm sorry. I don't want that Kike coming up. More from Jerry Seinfeld. He's got so many years of stand up under his belt. When he travels as he does most weekends, every move is planned. It is organized with military precision, not an ounce of fat. It's found on the day. It's three guys, three suits, three garment bags. We're in, we're out, and we have a great time. We worked very hard. It's zero dark thirty. It is you get the lot and go. I thinker put the dead bodies. It's a beautiful thing. This is what I was given from the TV series that I could live like this now on my own terms. That that's what we're looking for on my own terms terms. Right, God, that's such a foreign concept to me. Yes, the lack of an actor is anything bust acting, but right, but this is where we're moving now with Alec God. Yeah, oh my god, on my own terms. More wisdom from Jerry Seinfeld in a moment. This is Alec Baldwin, this is alc Old one. When Jerry Seinfeld was ten years old, he started feverishly studying the techniques of stand up comedians on TV, devouring it everything. That's like, just like my daughter does Now, my daughters totally got whatever that gene I had, She's got it. She can do any voice, accent, takes lines. Her brother said to her, this one she's wearing glass. She has glasses. Her brother said, he said, are those are those real glasses? She looked at him, She said, what do you think that's she's twelve, she's already she's not ready to go play iron Rand at the local library and the fake glasses. But um, okay, so my house, um, I assume my my childhood was My relationship to my parents was you do what you gotta do. I'll do what I gotta do, and I'm just living here untill I can figure something else out. That was my house, and to me, that was great. We've talked about this. You and I was very independent. My father never hugged me, never told me he loved me, never threw me a ball. No problem. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. He's You're good. You do whatever you some time together, right? Who was the guy who blew the horn in the in the when the tower and the tower fell over? Remember at the beginning of each show, I forget what was it? Was it Larry? It was another No, Larry Storch was a garn he was. There was another enter, Captain Parmenter. He wasn't really funny. But there was another guy, another Larry, who was at the top of the time the tower would fall over. I mean he was that very kind of vanilla looking. Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't Larry Wilcox went on to do chips. No, No, it was another Larry anyway. But yeah, I was Abbert and Costello was. I really became obsessed with them because of the precision word play they were. See, that's where they went beyond there was there was Laurel and Hardy and then Martin Lewis, but Aben and Costello had this precision. I mean, who's on first is a piece of It's like that that museum in Spain, you know, the what you know? No, the other one that what's his name? Did that? Yeah? Whose real name is Goldberg by the way, yes it is, he changed it in college, Frank Frank, Yeah, the what's the name of that museum in northern Bill Yeah, anyway, that's what Who's on first? This it's like, what a construction, what a brilliant piece of construction. So and when I heard things like that. Um, I just would get very excited that you could do things like that with words and ideas and attitudes and and have laughs. You know, I have laughs. I remember when I was a kid and my dad would go to work and my brothers and sisters would go to school, and my mom was lonely. M I probably missed school like thirty or forty days a year. You did, and it was a game. I was totally full of ship. I said to my mom, I don't feel good. Remember like, all right, you get in there and go to the breakfast table and pretend you're going to school until your father and then when he's gone, you can go back upstairs. And I would go and lie on the couch and they would show the same movie five days in a row, so the housewives who could only catch a piece of it here and a piece so they show Inherit the Wind, And by Friday I was laying in bed. I missed school for three days and Friday Spencer Tracy would say, this man wants to be afforded the same rights as a sponge. He wishes to think, and I my lip sync the words. I knew that I'm like the door, I became a complete movie. So that's where it began. And then when we got into the Aaron Spelling years, I abandoned, never watched TV again. No Charloie's Angels And now what do you watch? Uh? Now, come into your house. It's ten forty five at night. Everyone's the wife, kids, babies of sleep. I'm reading, you're reading, I'm reading on the internet. I read, I read up, I read a book, or I read The New Yorker. To get me a sleep, reading we get fall asleep. But when I watched TV, God, when I NFL, I watched Makeup hooements for NFL sixty minutes. I watched MSNBC, I watched h I've watched snippets of these shows, you know, like Breaking Bad and these contemporary you know, these jokes. I don't have time. I don't have time. I don't I don't understand either, And I don't know where are they finding the time? Did you download House to Cards now? Eight hours? It's the first episode. Yeah, I can't do What are they doing? What kind of how long are their days? Well? I always would get that. I would always be flattered for a moment. There was always a double beat there. When someone would walk up to me with Lauren and they woke up, they'd say. Lauren would say, you know Dave here, Dave Swanson from you know, from Comcast, and I'd go high, nice to meet you. And he turned to Lauren and go, god, you guys, I gotta tell you my son broke his leg skiing and he was in bed. He was in traction. And we watched seasons two and three of thirty Rock and I thought I'd smile, and then I thought, well, that's how you get to watch season's two and three three. You gotta go and break your leg skiing. You gotta go wrap yourself around a tree. Then you can layd and binge view all this. I don't understand how people are fitting this into their day. So there's not even one show that's your I really love Madmen because that was my dream growing up on Long Island was to get us Sampson I briefcase going along Island Railroad. I was going to go in the city and I was gonna work at a big ad agency and right funny ads. That was my first dream. That was because end up comedy that I was seeing on the Sullivan Show. That was too far out. That was these are some genius alien people. I could never be one of those. I'm not gonna get that. But maybe I could be a copywriter or or something in the ad game. I love advertising. I like I like man I love Manhattan. You remember growing up in Massapeko, Manhattan was was oz. It was the Emerald City. Tell people when we were kids, there was no Bergen County correspondent. The Martians could have landed out in in in in in Hempstead. No one cared that the Martians did land in because they knew there were no cameras out there. When you grew up in art generation, it was like the mayor announced today of the subway. Today, the cops shot on the I n D. The prepetated this, the bank robbery, this, and it was all Manhattan, Manhattan, the Garden today, the heavyweight show. Everything was Manhattan, not even the other outer boroughs. Right. And when you lived at when you lived where we lived, that was Saskatchewan to the lead. Remember Alan Burke did Jeverse Allen Burke. Yes, And they would come up and they never correctly estimated the average height of New York of the podium was always way too high, Mr Bike, I just came in from Mars where the taxi and limousine commission there. They would be right back to some New York issue. So Madman, that is my family said, when did you cross over and decide I could do the other thing? Um? It was beginning in college, Queen's College. What did you study there? Theater, communications, film, all that stuff. I was, I was circling the field, you know, going how do I how could I? I wonder if I could? You know? Did you decide? Then Andy Kaufman happened. There's this guy in New York who goes up on stage and he plays the bongos and starts weeping. He's crazy to So we all ran in to see Andy Kaufman at the improv. And as soon as I walked in that room and I saw what was going on in there, I gotta get in on this. Yeah, I want to be one of these. And when you got up there and finally through whatever apprenticeship you had, and when you got up there and you did that, was here a moment where like some guy comes up to you. I don't mean to be too Broadway Danny Roses, Yes, there was did some guy walcome to and kid, call me you got yes, there was you know who that guy was, Jackie Mason. Jackie Mason alec I was doing comedy about three weeks. Three weeks and I mean stumbling nobody three weeks. I'm nineteen years old, twenty years old of going up on stage. But it wasn't even a stage. There was a restaurant where they take a table out and they would take one of the lights, the lamp, and they would take the shade off it. That was the show. He was in the audience people right, was one of these cabaret things West forty four Ster was called the Golden Lion Pub. He crooks his finger and he says, come over here. He takes me over to the bar. He says, you have it. He says, you are going to be so big. He says, it makes me sick to even think of it, how successful you're gonna be. And I was just starting wow. And that, I mean, that was that was it, because he was, like, you know, he was very big comedians, still one of my favorites, great comedian. But to have a guy like that come up to you as a kid, I had that. That's still you know when I talked to you about I went in the improv and I saw all these guys and I thought, I want to be one of these guys. That's still how I feel now. Was there a moment when for me one of the real pure joys of this business are the people I've gotten to me and I don't want to, you know, go on and on on. But were there people who came to you that were like these godlike figures to you? Were you just admired them from your world? They came up to you and said, hey man, they went to you said it could be it could be Carson across the room out Jack Rollins, who I looked up because I saw your movie, which I loved, Blue Jasmine great, and I see, like Jack Rollins in the credit, I look, he's still alive. His daughter was a waitress at a comedy club on the Upper East Side, and she brought him in to see me and Larry Miller and Jimmy Broken, and he watched the three of us, and then he sat and talked with us afterwards, and he was very encouraging, very flattering. That was really big because we were in about a year at that point. We didn't know there was no business to get into. Even if we could do this didn't even exist. There was no place to work as a stand up comic in seven didn't even exist. It happened in the eighties. Once they were all these guys around. Then these clubs started opening around the country. What about someone else, someone beyond year old man have exist. In the credits of a Woody Allen movie, who was some iconic gave stand up figure. I saw Richard Pryor and in those days, um he would come into the clubs and we say something to George Carlin. No, never said anything to me, but just to meet those people. Was there one at some point who other than Mason said you've got it? Was? No, no, no. If you don't need that any any self respecting professional comedian, you don't need that. You don't need anyone or anything. You are built for brutality. You have this relationship with the audience that is private between you and them. You critics want to write, people want to talk. We we have our own thing that nobody, nobody can break that. Once you build that, it can't be broken by outside forces. This is the difference between being a comedian that has his own thing and everybody else in the entertainment field who needs to cooperate to survive. The comedian that you know, what do I care what somebody writes about my show? What do I care? So even doing the series, and even knowing I had these other avenues, I could pursue that that's so pure and so perfect and so good. It's not easy. It is a rigorous life to maintain that. You know, I don't I don't hang out on stage. You've seen the show. I don't hang out. I'm I'm I'm up here to work. I'm gonna work for you because I respect this relationship and I want to keep it. I want to keep it because once you have that, you can do what you want. Jerry Seinfeld has meditated for over four decades and it shows. He says, it makes stress float away. I wanted to find out more about Jerry and meditation, so I called him transcendental meditation. That that's what I do t M. And how long have you been doing that? Since? Um seventy two? So so when did that come into your life? You like saw a billboard when you were at LA station at Oswego State University, where I was seriously rolled because I couldn't take senior year anymore. So I left high school six months early and got into college and left in the middle of senior year. Now I know you didn't do that because you were handsome and the girls were hanging off of you, and senior year was fantastic for you. That's what I know. It was a vending machine of women. Was well, it wasn't like that for me, buddy boy, Alright, So I thought, I got to get out of here and start a new life with people that don't know me. So I went to Oswego and while I was there, and I remember, this is a still in the flora and fauna of sixties experimentalism, so transcendental meditation. Somebody told me about it. I don't remember or who, and I thought, well, let me see what that's about. And I went to the thing and I learned the technique. It cleared up my acne immediately. I had this great energy and focus, and I've been doing it the rest of my life. So you sound when you say you learned the technique and clear up your acne and your energy and focus, it sounds like you ultimately had the sex that had been evading you. Up till then before you went to Laswego. What was it? Correct? So the TM was really a pathway to two sex? Correct? How can I do it? Like? What? Like? Where do you do it? You can? You do it anywhere? You do it anywhere. I'm going to get you doing it now. I want to I want more energy, more focused on my acting to clear up. Well, you don't need you can't have more energy. You can't even dispose of the energy that you have. It's true, but it's toxic energy. It's more like a chernobyl than it is kind of This is a nice energy, really nice. Here's how I'll describe it to you. You know, have three times a year you wake up and you go, boy, that was a really good sleep. Yes, imagine feeling like that every day. Oh my god, that's what it is. Meditation. I gotta try that. 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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