Patti LuPone and Jon Robin Baitz and Stacy Keach

Published Feb 3, 2014, 5:00 AM

Patti LuPone was only four years old when she realized she belonged on stage, and she started by entertaining family members in her Long Island living room. LuPone won her second Tony Award for Evita, which she initially described as merely “noise from Britain.” Although she has enjoyed tremendous, long-term success, she talks candidly to Alec about blows to her career and ego.

Jon Robin Baitz is a playwright who admits that writing plays is tricky. He’s a snob for Broadway, where the cachet and laughs are bigger. But deep down, this award-winning playwright considers it a privilege to be working in American theater at all. Alec speaks to Baitz about his Broadway debut play, Other Desert Cities, that came from a place of despair and loss—and his own personal experience writing for television in Hollywood.

Stacy Keach’s dad was an actor, director and a producer. He had hoped his son would be a lawyer. Keach eventually wore down his parents, abandoned his major of political science and economics to pursue acting. Keach started with Shakespeare, which took him from a festival in Oregon to studying classical theater in England. Today, Keach teaches acting via Skype and his only true regret is not experiencing more of the great outdoors.

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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. When an actor acknowledges the audience, then you can have a moment of ecstasy. For me, writing plays has always been very tricky. I don't know a lot. I don't have a lot to say. I mean, he said, there's only two directions days, a little more or a little less. That was it. Getting started in theater is difficult, Maintaining a career even harder. Becoming a true success is nearly impossible. Each of my guests today have accomplished that feat. All three have contributed work that has profoundly affected audiences and changed the landscape of American theater. I'll speak to a playwright and a veteran actor of stage and screen, but first a powerful performer who's most at home on the Broadway stage age, often in musicals. Last year she appeared on Broadway and David mammts The Anarchist. But she's capable of anything you starting hair, starting now. Every Patty Lapone was in the very first class of the Drama Division at Juilliard. She has twenty six Broadway credits to date and has won two Tony Awards, won for Evita and one for Gypsy. She's worked in film and on television, most notably as the mom on the ABC drama Life Goes On. So, how is your daily just fine? Thank you for asking for fun and excitement than I knew what to do it in yours, I didn't do the aning you what. Lpone's career has not been without its heartbreaks. In nineteen seventies X, she was hired to replace the lead in the musical The Baker's Wife. Who Does he Think he Is? Who could be as handsome? Who could be as smart as he thinks he is? She was on the road for a grueling six months. They're rehearsed every day and performed every night. The reviews were so terrible ushers sent Candy backstage to cheer the actors up. I've always said, it's a fine line between a hit and a flop. And if you don't know what it is, you don't know why it is a hit, and you don't know why it is an you know, if it's really terrible, you know right off the bat, and you're not going to take the job. But if it has the potential to be a hit and ends up being a flop, you can't figure it out, so you do this show and when you come out of that, like, what's the lesson for you? Was there something you said to yourself? Never again am I going to know? I went into a depression for nine months. I was on valium to sleep for the six months, and I went into a valium depression for nine months, gained already pounds, woke up went what the hell just happened? And I couldn't say. You think like you? You care a lot. There's nothing casual about you. There's nothing amateurish about you. You know, you're very serious and you're very dedicated. You're very hard working along with being very talented, and you feel these wounds. Why do you think that is why? Well, our business is subjective. It's all subjective, you know what I mean. You talk to anybody from the baker's wife and they can remember it as if it was yesterday, and there's blood spilled and we became blood a blood family. I just ad to me Jerome, who's in Phantom now and we see each other and that what we recall is that bonding in that horrible experience, and we can talk about it as if it was yesterday. I think it's because you know it happened to us. Of course it happened to the creators, but they're not on stage. We're on stage succeeding or failing in front of an audience. We're on stage being judged by the audience. Were the messengers? Were the ones who take the hit? We take the hit all the time? Were the one This was really abusive? It was just horrible. I woke up one morning and my face was filled with what looked like white heads. The entire face had raised bumps on it. I didn't know what it was. I went to sleep, woke up and the entire face. I maybe it was from the valley. I have no idea what I was. Things were happening to us, physically happening to us. And when does the sun come out for you? When does the sun come out for Patti Lapone? Career wise? I think when I go back to work with David Mammitt, I go back and work with David, I go into and go back David and I did it play in Chicago, and that was that. The after Baker's wife was that, I see, I'm trying to keep I'm trying to keep it straight. What plan does you do with him? First, the very first play I did with him was a thing called All Men or Hors Kevin Klein, Sam Chichific, and I did it at Yale Rep for one night. I said, Hey, Dave, we opened it closed in new Haven. And new Haven used to be one of the circuit. Uh. You know, when you took a show out of town, your first stop was new Haven and it was a big DECI adding factor. So we opened and closed, we bombed in a way. Well, and from there he gave me a play called The Woods. And what happens when you do the Woods, Well, I go back to what I was trained for, and I go back to an honest environment pretty much, and you're back to the circle of trust, having feels right. This is more like it. And it's a risk. It's a big risk. And when every time I work with David, I learned so much as a human being. And I think nineteen late nineteen seventy seventy seven, you had a relationship with him, Yes, well we met him thirty five years Yes, yes, and I will. I will drop everything to do a play by David everything. I don't care how risky it is. I learned so much from David, and I instinctually have the mam At speak. That's something that I know how to do. His his rhythms, um, and I think it's because it's someone said I cut my teeth on David is a vita. The next big thing for you, I'm trying to is the big thing that was nine? But how does that happen? I auditioned Um. Joanna Merlin is how Princess casting director, and of course directed How directed, and so I was brought in for a preliminary audition and then I was told to make myself free, make sure that I made myself free for the final callback. And as I understand it, How wanted to cast actors in the role the roles as opposed to just musical theater people. So I think that's one of the reasons why I got in there, because he knew, they knew I was an actor. In between, there were several plays. There was stage directions by Israel Horovitz, John Glover, Ellen Green and I down at the public while Merril is doing, um, you're doing everything you can to scratch that each of yours and not become a star. Now I get it. No, No, it was it was the it was the available work. We're about to talk about the moment when perhaps one of the greatest musical stars of the last fifty years is born on Broadway. So let's talk about how that the moment this happens, how Prince wants people who can act and sing, and you go to the make yourself available to the final callback and what happened. How do you feel when you're in that room. Well, I was very mad because I was actually shooting one and there was a little issue about yes, about letting me go, and the producer said, if you're not back tomorrow or the next time, you'll never work in Hollywood again. So I left Hollywood with those words ringing in my ear. And I woke up in New York to the nineteen seventy eight blizzard where they're like two ft of snow on the ground. I couldn't get back to l A. No um, Christopher Reef got me on the plane. I only missed three hours of shooting. When they said howd you get here, I said, Superman. I did It's exactly. So I went to the final callback, but I was really mad because I didn't want to do this musical. I didn't like the music. I thought, you didn't like it? What specifically? You're a mark women, what specifically didn't you like? Well, I didn't like I heard the White album the Julie Covington David Essex called Wilkinson very rocky, weird music, but right it rocked out a lot, and I thought, what's the matter a rock I want to be a rocker. It was really really high. Didn't grab me. I mean, I grew up on Rogers and Hammerstein. I grew up on Julie Stein, Mereth Wilson, Stephen Sondheim. This was not a musical to me. This was noise from Britain, you know what I mean? It wasn't. It just didn't it did? So how did you go out there and do it? I went out and and the final audition, I was wet from my knees down. I was wearing sneakers and jeans, not knowing it was going to snow. Who you know, I did so stupid. I didn't look at the weather report. I went out there and I blasted, literally blasted through rainbow high Buenos Aires and don't cry for me, Argentina. And there were tears in my eyes. Apparently and there were there were tears of rage, necessarily not tears of and I left and um, I got I got a call on the set. I made it back and I got a call on the set and in in the makeup trailer, and they said, you've got the part. And I started to cry again because I had promised David that I would reprise The Woods at the Public Theater with Hulu grosspart directing. What I love is that you're going to blow your Hollywood film career to go do a musical you don't even like, and then that when they offer too, you're not sure you're gonna because you gotta go do another little man play well. I had been trained to be an actor, and I thought my responsibility was to act at every possible opportunity, and especially good opportunity, put you know, apply your craft and if it's good material. And I David and I forged a friendship and a bond, and I didn't want to let him down. David and I became really, really good friends. David lived on twenties. He'd come over all the time for breakfast, we'd walk around, we'd do anty. I'm gonna start calling you out by the way because you keep changing the subject. What'd happy with? How? How did the hell get you to do that material? And and it became what it became? Well, No, I knew I had to do it. I cried because I knew that I would have to. I couldn't do the woods and I had to do with the tip because I knew I wanted to work with how and I knew that it would change the course of my career. You knew going in that was going to be a hit. There was so much hype before. Had they done it in London? Yeah? What is it? Big? Hit in London? Huge? And you're in the American cash It was huge in London, so you knew this was a big opportunity and there was hype. You can't believe. That was my first indication that this was going to be a tough experience because it was I went, how am I going to get around the hype? It was the first musical that I was aware of that had so much pre opening the modern way, not even buzz, and it was frightening and I had no vocal time. So now this thing is all hyped up. You've been through everything you've been through, You've had some good times and some tough times, and you've worked hard, god knows four years in the row with Holisman in that company, and you stepped out for the Broadway opening, the opening of Avita. What was that like? How do that evening? I had the flu perfect? Of course you did. It won't be easy. You'll think it's straight when I dry to explain how I fear that I still need your love after all that I've done. And I threw up in the sink before I sank. Don't cry for me, Argentina. I'm sure it was a combination of I got. I got extremely bad notices opening in l a and extremely bad notices opening in San Francisco. And Al came to me and said, we're going to laugh about this in twenty years, Patty. They pulled the entire company together, and he said. There was an article coming out in Susie Nicko Parker's column the next day that I was going to be fired and that Actor's Equity was waiting to clear Elaine Page to take my place, And this was in the newspapers. Yeah, she's the one that originated in London. I'm dealing with all of this press of me being fired and me not being able to sing the part and still going on from my well that was that was opening night, and so so you go out and do the opening of What Happens? Bad reviews again, Actually they weren't bad. They dismissed how and this is this was an innovative This was an innovative concept and innovative production. They dismissed how and they barely touched on Mandy and me. And that's worse when you're ignored. It's one thing if they're passionate and you're back and passionate when you're good, But when you're ignored. And Mandy and I at one point, I think I said you want to go out for a drink? He said yeah. We we were in fifty second I think that's where the the Broadway theaters. And we walked down Eighth Avenue and simultaneously we burst into tears. I mean, we worked hard in those parts and then to be ignored is tough. And then, of course nine months later they give us the Tony's. When you win the Tony did, was it any vindication for you at all? Or was it just a yeah, it's such a relief. It was such a relief because really have you rewied everything away? Cause I was still performing and still scared out of my mind. Every night I envied Mandy because Mandy was just all over the place. He didn't have a problem singing it. So he literally he told me he told me something the other day we were talking about it, Betan. He said, well, How told me to go? He wanted me over there, and I said to how how do I get there? He said, I don't know, just get there. And so that's where he does a jette across the stage. And I went, I would see it every night, going what is Mandy doing that? And it was because How told him to get there and get there and he didn't care. How so Mandy put it in and it became part of his performance and and so. And I suppose in that respect How gives the actor freedom. But I didn't have that freedom because I was so tied up, and then not because I didn't think I could sing it. I wanna be when that thing what I did. If I ever thought, if I hadn't known that, we would stay to aget really And you know when you in a rehearsal period, you know this, you have to do it over and over and over again, so you're not hitting that d in. Screw the middle classes. Once you're not hitting that g in. Screw the middle classes, once you're doing it over and over again. I didn't have vocal technique to know that. I didn't have to hit those notes every day. I didn't have vocal technique. I got it during the run by from a kid the chorus who David Vossberg, I came off stage in. They got him a piano, that put a piano in my dressing room, and he worked with me an hour every single day before the show. He would come to me and um work out of the goodness of his heart. David Vosper David vosperg he's in Ohio, he's a director of opera. But he would um give me a vocal technique. He would warm me up. And the difficult thing was to be to apply what he had just taught me that night. Because I would do one thing right, something else would go disastrously wrong. But at least I was getting a technique to sing that part. He saved my job, and they knew that and they paid him. Now, you say, when you talk about this, you talk about the tension and the anxiety and the fear, and you don't really want to necessarily be doing a videocause you got another David play and this and this and that. When did you start to become fun for you? Oh? Anything goes with a ball because of the material and because of the cast, and and it was hysterical, I mean Jerry's acts. And Jerry did a great job of direct Yes he is. And but however, these were the way musicals used to be written. You'd have a joke coming and then a gorgeous song. The material was so right and so beautiful. If I was in a bad mood, all I had to do was hear that. Okay, I know where I am tonight, just looking at the audience and seeing tears of joy from laughter. The only thing we are as actors are messengers. That's all we are. Correct. We're delivering the playwright's intentions through the concept of the director. And I come on stage. If I feel confident in the role, then I give it away. I give it away anyway. But it's all about them, So I have to go out there and love them, and I do. And I think they see that they can relax with me because they know I'm giving it to them. I'm not. You know, there are some actors that don't want to be on stage that because you just nailed it, Because because Patty the pone to me as a woman who comes out there when the first thing does she stopped here and she's like, you know, how's everybody doing it? It's like a little moment like a nightclub singer, like you know how you all doing tonight without saying how you all doing to it? Like just connect to them and let them feel like there's no place else he'd rather be? Is there than here? Right now? Well, I think our responsibility is to relax them. You've been in an audience. I've been in an audience where we're worried for the performer and then we're not having experience. And if I'm worried for the performer and they and they should be worried for then I'm worried for me because I want to get the f out of there. Yeah. Hello. Our responsibility is a minute we hit the deck, is to relax the audience, and that is what is called command. But the tiger's gone. The voice as soft as I think that you can see when people care and when you an Audiences can see when they don't care because you see, because you see like someone in the years I've bumped into you, run into you, known you, known you better, you seem to care of the exact same amount as you used to. I love what I do, and I love the audience, and I love the fact that I get to do it, and I love I love our craft very very much, and it's it's a noble craft. We have a responsibility to it and to the audience and to the play right into the message I won't ever care less or Moody was gone. When you can see Patty Lapone next in the third season of American Horror Story Coven on f X. In a minute, I'll talk with Tony nominated playwright John Robin Bates, who said about Patty, there's an instrument in her. She's the kind of actor that makes me feel compelled to write. I'm Alec Baldwin, and here's the thing. Take a listen to our archive more in depth than honest conversations with artists, policymakers and performers. I never was comfortable in front of a camera. Really, I never felt I was photogenic. I was never happy with how I looked. I became the issue because it's about a microphone, not about a camera. Here about Billy Joel's insecurities and David Letterman's ambitions. I really thought I could write half hours situation comedies. And here's the thing, Dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to here's the thing. Whatever it is, whatever you do, you're our daughter, and I will love. John Robin Bates's Broadway play Other Desert Cities was nominated for a Tony this year. The play is about family dysfunction and the choices we make. There are consequences to our actions. What does that mean? How could I trust? How could I ever be in your presence? My dear Joe Mantello directed Other Desert Cities. He and Bates were a couple in the nineteen nineties. In the theater world, it's hard to find someone who wouldn't want to work with Robbie. He's complicated and kind. During our conversation, John Robin Bates confessed there's been a dark side to his success on Broadway. I'm ruined. I'm ruined from off Broadway. Now, I I sort of say things like, well, that plays an off Broadway play. It's not a Broadway play making fun of myself. You know, you're in this great, great grand old house. You know that's built for a kind of big experience, and the drama is somehow expanded. Bates is also wary of going back to Hollywood. In two thousand six, he left ABC's Brothers and Sisters, a show he created and executive produced, after the first season. Working in l A was not for him. The guy who really ran the entertainment division kept saying, I I don't understand why anybody watches this show. How she would call me and scream at me. I actually said to me, I don't know who you think you're talking to. And I would, you know, politely hang up and say I'm I'm leaving the conversation now. It took a while for Robbie Bates to recover, but one day, now back on the East Coast, he got the idea for other desert cities. I had forgotten how to write that. This is the thing I think about with other desert cities is it's the play where I learned. I taught myself how to write again. I was sitting at a beach with my notebook and I'm thinking about how to get back into it and what matters to me, and I just sort of self destructed. At Brothers and Sisters. I found myself very much like the character in my play, a writer who is a dangerous creature. And I had a note to myself play about daughter of a famous family who writes a book about her growing up in this family, something like that, the danger of telling the truth that turns out to be a lie. And at that moment, this lady of a certain age walked by me, and she looked to me like um Pat Buckley, the old Diane of New York conservative politics, the wife of Bill Buckley. Bill Buckley, and I had lunch with her once and found her to be charming and engaged. And this woman walked by me on this beach with her hat and in a one piece bathing suit. I immediately felt the mother in that play. And I suddenly remembered old California the way it was when I was a kid, and we were just in the throes of an election at the time, too were about to be and the Republicans of certainly of that period and even more so today, we're very confusing to me because they didn't seem recognizable to me as having a coherent, cohesive coach and argument for their principal positions, which had to be principled in some way. The play just came together in one fell swoop, old California Conservatives, the old Hollywood system, Reagan nights. I even remembered I'd gone to high school with I think, the daughter of John Gavin, and I thought, you know, because I love Touch of Evil, and that I think isn't John Gavin. No, he's not in Touch of Evil. He's in Psycho Case in all these movies. And I thought about he was the ambassador to Mexica. That's right, as is the Stacy Keach character in my play. And I thought about your characters based on John gaff to some extent, they're all these archetypes. At the back of all this, of course, there's also Joe Mentello, who you know, we're no longer a couple, but he's my family, my best friends, and you see, being a couple of one year two thousand and two. So it was a while, and he kept saying to me, with all possible respect, nobody's waiting for the next Robbie Bates play, and you know, these are chilling words because I have so much to say and it's not coming out. My equivalent of that is my agent said to me. He goes, it's not that these people don't want to hire you because they don't like you. He says, they don't want to hire you because they don't think of you at all. Jesus, Well, it's terrible, because the worst thing that can happen to an artist, I'm invisible. I no longer matter for me. Writing plays has always been very tricky. I don't know a lot. I don't have a lot to say. I reached things very slowly, and I I sometimes it seems facile and easy. And to me some of the times that my thoughts and my sort of expressed opinions in place seem hollow or naive, even because I know they're deeper truths always to be found and that I'm But don't you think that seeking them and being aware of that makes you more likely to find it than anybody? You didn't go to college. Did you know why you wanted educating yourself? I wish I had gone to college. It was a depressed and unsettled kid. And why I don't I think I wasn't at peace with probably any element of who I was, whether it was a sort of nascent intellectual or sort of pre expressive homosexual kid, or variously. L A from you were born where in l A and you live there to your old seven then Brazil for three years in Rio, and then South Africa for six and a half years until I was eighteen, and your father was in the condensed milk business. My father worked for a giant multinational carnation milk. Yeah, it was a condensed milk business. So l A, Brazil, South Africa, and then back to LA. When you finally get back to LA. How old are you so? High school's over? I just finished high school. I'd sort of lost time through all the travels high school in South Africa, Like I couldn't get used to things like cricket and corporal punishment, you know, you get cane for like not doing well on a spelling test, literally caned. And I think I was so busy trying to be sly and charming that I forgot how to be me. That I think led me to rebel against learning itself. So I was sort of interested in the few things I was interested in. Literature, history, but I wouldn't apply myself to anything except escape, and part of escape meant not going to college. I was really lonely, and I I kind of became a depressed kid, and that manifests itself. If you can say I think I did you know you were gay? Then yes, I definitely knew that. I knew that add to your depression didn't make you feel more isolated. It wasn't proactive the gay humanity there. Yeah. Well, um, I think my parents, who loved me very much, were distracted by their own terrors. There are certain families that are born in terror and live in terror. Um, conceived in terror? I need you to write a player for me. I want to be called conceived in terror? Happen? Well, No, I mean death of a salesman is is a family that lives in terror. You were how old when you arrived in Durban? Ten? So you were the eight years? Yeah, I was there almost eight years critical time, ten years or so all of your real back half of your childhood, your teenage years especially you are in Durban. Yes, it was seventeen or something when we left, but you had finished the high school program. No, no, I finished it in l a you did. What was that? Like? I, you know, was the only kid I knew who rode their bike to school because everybody else's parents had given them a fiat literally, yeah or something. Who were your friends? Then? Who did you become friends with? Anyone? Oh? Yeah? In fact, Jenny Livingston went on to make Paris Is Burning, great documentary, Tina Landau great theater director. Gina Gershawn my oldest friend from high school. We were in place together in the drama department. So I became friends with and I say this with real respect and love with fellow freaks. How are you feeling about yourself and about life that last year in Beverly Hills? I think I was scared to death still. I mean, it was just a new form of foreignness, but it had the pattern of something very familiar to me. But you know, I remember being taken to a party really early on, and I had developed a kind of weird eye beforehand for art. I thought maybe I was going to be a painter or an artis historian. And I walked into this house and there is a giant David Hackney and next to it is a giant mother. Well, I'm standing in front of this giant painting that's famous that I've looked at in books Thames and Hutson art books. While I was in Durban at the Art Library of the University. I know, the world was just very real and different, and it was easier to like have sex, and it was easier to to function. Were you writing? I guess I was sort of writing, Yeah, what were you writing? I was writing really bad short stories about alienated Paul Bull's kids adrift in foreign countries, which is basically tell you the truth. Still what I'm doing. It just looks slightly the wallpapers prettier. Now, where were you living at that age? I was living um on friends sofas, like the parents of children I went to high school with. I was I was just a freak, you know, and I was at odds with my family at the time, you know, and I had escaped and it was just a nightmare. How do we get from there to fair Country? Gordon Davidson, you know in Pinocchio where he falls in with actors. I'm walking around. I ran into this girl I knew from Ice Cool. She said, what are you doing? And I'm sort of looking for a job. I think I'm starving to death. I'm not sure, she said to me, And I should have known. She said, well, my father just fired me. He needs he needs a new assistant. And I was like, well, what does he do and she said, oh, he's a film producer. Who is the film producer. This is great guy. And he my first day at the office, he says to me, whatever you do, answer the phones, but never pick up the phone. And I was like, I don't even know what that means. And he said, you'll do fine. And he had a gang of cronies, all of whom had contempt for the studio system, had done well, fallen out of favor, usually had destroyed themselves through my favorite thing, their own ambivalence. I found myself at home for the first time in my life when the nest of scorpions, Yes I did, I found myself. I said this, I know, yeah, because nobody is trying to pass. It's a den of thieves, lawyer. It was still the days of speaker phone, and they would have fights. They had a tower on Sunset Boulevard. They had a nest of rooms in a tower and they would be fighting with each other and then they would suddenly be a pause. Someone would say jeez, if you could see what I see right now, that girl walking down sunset. She is so beautiful. The fight was over. Yeah, nothing meant anything of sex. That's one of the masters for a glass of waters. My first few weeks there two what do I know. I would go to the sink, bring a glass of waters, spit it out like practically on me and say this isn't water. And I would say, yes, it's water. What are you talking about? That's water. It's I want affectional water. And the whole time became about professional water. How long did that last? Three or four? Like, uh, four some years? No? No, but it got you when the scorpions that's looking down of the women's asses for four years, and I would copy everything down. And so at the same time I started hanging around with these actors, there was a sort of an equally desperate contingent of avant gardists, odd playwrights living on the fringes of everything. And so I lived between these two worlds, one of which was sort of drunk and druggy, and the other was insane megalet noma. I can't say the word megalomaniacal. Thank you, Megan. I'm here for maniacal. You just think of the words and I'll say that, thank you. I think we're gonna be in each other. I know, it's like Bluetooth up to technology Bluetooth. I had to come up with a play for one of these sort of workshop things that we would put together, and one of these playwrights said to me, so, what's your play, and me bullshitting, I said, yeah, it's called Miss Lansky Zelinski. On the spot, I just came up with the next on those guys. Yeah, I said, yeah, it's called Ky, just based on the guys in the town. So it's just them talking. And I put all my notes together and we did it, and the first one you run. Yeah. Almost thirty years later, Bates continues to draw inspiration from all types of sources. With other desert cities, Bates wrote the part of the family's patriarch with one of his favorite performers in mind, Stacy Keach. I worshiped Stacy. I mean, I work. He is one of the great wild Mustangs of all theater history. He's great and I love him. So, you know, he and Joe didn't know each other, and so they got on the phone before rehearsal, and Stacy says to Chow, you know, I've worked with Robbie before. We worked together before, and I know him well. And do you do you know him? Have you worked with him? And how how well do you know him? Jose? I kind of know him and we lived together for twelve years. But that's Stacy. He's like, oh damn. The great thing about Stacy is he brings centuries of actors honor onto that stage with him. The honor of honoring fellow actors, the honor of listening, the privilege of being an actor, the privilege of being in the theater, not missing a single show in his seventies, the rich worlds of it, The privilege of working in the theater is the thing that has been of everything that's happened to me. Just the great honor of being in the American theater in some capacity is what I'm left with that it's a privilege to be in it. I'm lucky to have found my way back to it. This is Alec Baldwin coming up. I speak with the man who inspired a John Robin Bates. Stacy Keach, an artist who has influenced a generation of actors. The madness liberated me in a way and liberated Yeah, this is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Mark me. I will my hour has almost come when I just sulferis and tormenting flames, must render up myself. Stacy Keach has played such roles as Richard, the third King Lear Hamlet, as well as Hamlet's ghost Falstaff and Willie Lohman. He's also played the President of Deaf Beer in The Simpsons and sergeants Stadanko and Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke The Only Way to Catch a Doper's when you yourself become a smoker. Keach is undoubtedly the only actor in Up in Smoke who has also worked with director John Houston. Keach starred in Houston's film Fat City, But perhaps Keach is best known as the irresistible Fedora wearing detective Mike Hammer. Are you for higher? My money is too dirty? A lesser performer might have found himself with limited offers after what was Keach's longest running job. Not so for the seventy one year old actor. His key to career longevity is simple. He says, quote, you need television and movies to make a living, but you'll be taken more seriously if you are stage worthy. Stage worthy in Chicago and Washington, but especially New York and last year, as playwright John Robin Bates mentioned earlier in Our Show New York, audiences saw him on Broadway in Bates's other desert cities. Well, we all have our ways of coping, and mine is to be overprotectively live. Stacy keaches dedication to his craft is unwavering, but his technique has changed over the years. I think in my early days, I started pretty much as you know, from the outside and tried to get a fix on what the character looked like and then perhaps what he sounded like after that. But it wasn't the best way to start. I mean, I think it's better to start inside and work out if you can't, And in later years I've done that more and more. But I just finished a picture with Alexander Payne called Nebraska, where he called me and he said, you know you, I was playing the bad guy in this uh, and he said, your teeth they're too good. So the whole character became centralized in terms of you know what I was in here, you know, and they say they made these snarly teeth for me, and which it was great, you know, and it sort of gave me a feel and I would look at myself in the mirror and make you know, facial expressions and that sort of gave me the feeling of where this guy was coming from, you know. But it varies. I mean, if you're playing like I was just down in Washington, I'm gonna do fal Staff again next year, and you know, he's just a big, fat, corpulent guy and interested me enough even with all the physical manifestations of that character, that character you you got to go inside. I mean, that's you know. And when I was not enough just to play the the look, No, not at all, not at all. When I first did it was back in the night five years ago. You did what in fal Staff? And what did they put a suit on you? Oh? Huge, just big? You're very lean guy I was, you know, and I had to wear this big fat suite the only Alder designers leather costume for me. And what do they do back then in terms of your face when you're lean whiskers had a week of course, and a bulbous knows what was it about? Way too young? When I played him? I was gonna say, what was it about you that back then, when you were this athletic, lean leading man in the movie business, that you want to put a fat suit on it? Why were you running into Why were you diving into a fat suit? Well, because you know you wanted great parts, It's exactly, and that is one of the probably, I think, of all of Shakespeare's characters. I think it's probably one of the you know that in Hamlin are probably the two greatest, better than Lead, I think. I mean, it's a it's a greater part. It's more. It's there's much more going on with Falstaff, I think. And you're gonna do it again. So you did false stuff the first time, win sixty eight in the park. Oh yeah, it makes me feel very hung years later, years later, you're gonna Staff and I won't have to wear panting this. No, no, I'm tea. Who are you doing it for? Michael conn at the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, d C, d C. Yeah, we're gonna do both parts. We're gonna do part one in part two, one of the great experiences of my life was doing those plays together in the park. We started at ten o'clock at night. We did Part one and then Part two, and as the dawn came up in the the end of the evening was the early morning. It was just when Falstaff was being demposed by Prince Ol played by Sam Waterston. Yeah. Yeah, you grew up where I grew up in southern California, and your dad was in the business. Dad was in the business. What do He was an actor, director, producer. He did a show, a radio show called Tales of the Texas Rangers with Joel McCrae, and that when I was twelve years old. He used to take me down to NBC studios and I would watch these actors do their thing was a live radio broadcast with all the folly and the sound effects and the horses and you know, and that was magic for me. And radio was how I sort of got it in. Yeah, that was his thing. That was his thing. And what did he say to you? What was his uh program with you? So to speak in terms of your career? Did he want you to do this? Absolutely not. He said, no, you know, acting is not something you should do. You want to be. You wanted me to be a lawyer, and he want my brother to be a doctor. He said, you know it's it's to this business is two fraught with wants to do that. Did you think about, well, you know what when I gradually I started acting in high school junior high school, was doing plays, and every time I would get apart in a play, my dad would get very excited. He would get very animated, and he wanted to show me, like, for example, I was doing the stage Manager in our town in high school and he would come in and he was his favorite play, and he showed he said, not when you're when you're describing that, He said, you describe that big butternut tree. You've got to see that tree. And when you're when you're working in the in the drug store and you're getting ice cream out of the out of the ice cream box, you've got to reach your hand weight down and then put it. I mean, he was so animated and he came a specific, very specific and very much alive. So all of his b asked about not do this, You're not gonna do this. You're gonna be a lawyer. But did he live long enough to see you what did he Well, then that was the good part. And then you're a genius. Yeah, well and then and then it was a good thing because it wasn't until I got to Berkeley and I was I started, you know, I was given an edict, You're not going to be in in any place. First year as a freshman, I was studying political science and economics. I mean, that was it. You know, I was gonna I was gonna do the same thing. So at the end of the first year, I got a play finally, and I passed. I got through the first year, and he said, okay, if you want to do a play, you can do a play. So I did a play and and that was it. It was a play called to Learn to Love was written by one of the professors, and it was about these navy guys and it was a big hit on campus. Professor cast me the next semester as to Flores and the Change lea Jacobean play written by Thomas Middleton Middleton and Raleigh, great great piece, sort of a Richard the Third type of character. And I had, you know, success with that, and my my parents came and saw me and they said, well, I guess you know, you may have some talent, so maybe if this is what you want to do, we'll support you. So they came and you had some talent. At least they thought that you're you're onto something. Yeah, and I loved it. I mean, and I couldn't stand economics and put a little science. Man. I was terrible at USC Berkeley. Yeah. I went for a degree in drama. I got a degree in drama English. Yeah. And then what did you do after that? Then I went I went to Yale Drama School for a year. What was the program that was? It? Was it longer than me year? Or you finished? It was? You know? It was a three year program. I only stayed a year. I didn't like it at all. Well, in those days, Constance Welsh was the acting teacher, and she was pretty much the very much old school learning all these fonetic signs and symbols, and I mean, this had nothing to do with what I was interested in. I had done two summers at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival between my junior and senior year. In between my senior year and my first year Yale and play some pretty good part Henry the Fifth and ri Cure Show and Baron sort of I was getting my feet wet with Shakespeare and these big wonderful ships. You're a part of your your childhood and me, why are you so? You're pretty much steeped in shakespeare early stage gear. Why this is just your own passion. Oregon Shakespeare Festival that was responsible for that's went there and you were at home. That's right, That's where it started. That's where it started. And then when I came back East, I was at Yale, and I wasn't crazy about Yale because no more fonetic symbols, right, no more for you know? And Joe after that year where Joe found you, Joe, Joe Papa and well, thanks the Oregan Shakespeare Festival. You were ready, Yeah, I think so. Henry Hughes Saturday he was. He was a drama critic for the Saturady Review. Wrote a nice review of me doing Henry the Fifth. Joe had read that, And when I got to Yale, I called the New York Chase Professional one day audition. He said, come on now. So I went and I met Joe pat And in this smoke field office and here in Manhattan. I sat down and he said, Okay, what are you gonna do it for me. Let's just I'll do a little piece from Henry the Fifth, Upon the King and I started reading. I got three, I got upon the King, let us our lives and that's it. Are you remember of equity? I said, no, you're going to be. You're gonna play Marcellus in my production of Hamlet this summer. Julie Harris is going to be playing Ophelia. Alfred Ryder is going to be playing Hamlet. We'll see you this summer. That was it. I walked down there. I was floating on it. I mean, that was it, you know. And then summer of sixty three, sixty sixty four, and then I went to England after that on a Fulbright scholarship to the London Academy Music and Dramatic Art. Just study for a year. Why did you stop? And now you've got I mean, I wonder if this is the beginning of a pattern where you get the hot hand here and Joe Pap wants you, and then you say, okay, hold on those I gotta go over to London for a year. Well that's it. And he was not happy about that, Joe, and interestingly enough he was also I didn't realize this was just a coincidence. He was on the screening committee for the full Bright guys, and when I came in, he said, what are you here for it? I said, I'm antitioning for you. And he said, don't do upon the King again. I've seen it, you know, do something else. And he was tough, and he was tough, and I did not. I was not given a Fullbright. I was chosen as an alternate. I was really depressed that summer. I got a note from the full Bright commission say, the guy who was supposed to go dropped out, so you're in. So I made it by the skin of your You know why, Lamba were you could have trained for the musical theater. No, no, for classical theater. And you were there for a year? Was there for a year? What did you benefit from that? Well? First of all, the exposure to the English theater in that year was unbelieved and comparable, unbelievable. And I got to see I saw Olivier do not only Othello, I saw him do the Master Builder, saw his production that he directed of the of the of the Crucible. It was. It was an amazing year. Were you ever tempted to stay there, did you feel you belonged there? No Americans doing classical theater still has looked on a little bit of skance by the English. I mean, you know, just like we don't, you know, I don't want them to touch William was exactly. It's the same deal, you know. So you finished there and you came right home. I came back. Then I came to Lincoln Center and I auditioned for Jules Irving and Herbert Blah who were just coming from the Actor's workshop in San Francisco. And they said, you're you know, come on in, you're the you know you're in the company. So I was married at the time. Why did you do that? I know? That was that was And then the longest run you've ever done as an actor on days um about nine months about and that was well no other Desert cities ran for about almost a year. I think that's that's about it for me. I play the role you've been the most connected to. Well. I did Hamlet three times to try to get it right. I never did. I never got why do you say that? Three different productions? What was the first one? Long war theater? Irvin Brown directed it one year. Let me see if I can remember the it was. It had to be seventy. I think it was seventy seventy. Oh, yeah, I was, yeah, I was actually, well, they say Hamlet's thirty, you know, so that was about it was about thirty when I did it. And so you're up in New Haven. I was up in New Haven, and you know, the first time you play that part, I was so intimidated by the fact of all the other actors who played it, and you know, it's intimidating. I mean, you know, and I once I said you were Hamlets, that's right, becomes you're Hamlets. And most of the time I was concerned about getting the lines and getting you know, just getting the moves right, just putting it all together and figuring and then trying to figure it out. That summer, Joe Pappy kind of came and saw it and said, come into the park and we'll do it a different production. And I got it. I got closer to it. I got closer to I felt I never had the perfect show, but I got closer to it. And then that was right after new Haven, right after and then two years later Mark Taper for him in Los Angeles, totally different production, Gordon Davison directing, and I had one night where I got close, where I really got close, and then I don't know what happened something. I think it was in the very last scene. I think the hardest thing about Hamlet is is, you know, is after that amazing duel in the last act, but when he dies, you know, it is not to be called breathing on stage. That's the hardest, one of the hardest things to do, I think in that particular play. I mean, anyway, talk about Houston and was it like, oh god, well, the first I remember the first time I met him, he came to visit me on the set of doc. We were shooting a western in Spain with Fay down away in Harristuland and we were in this script Fat City written it was a very popular book written by Leonard Gardner, but boxing and and he came to see me personally on the set. I mean, to have John Houston visit me on the set of a movie, I mean, it was, you know, and he was very gracious and he just stays high, I've got a part for you, and I think you want to take a look at this. And he treated me as if I was his son right from the word go. I mean he and I just he was so warm, welcome to you. Yeah, it's rare of the business. Oh yeah, but he and he was larger than life. He didn't make any apologies for that. I mean, and and he loved to gamble, loved to gamble, and we wondered what that was about. Well, it's very interesting because we and I love to gamble too, you know, and mean, what's your game? Well, with him it was backgammon. We would play backgammon between scenes on the hundred bucks a game. No, no, no doctor dollar point. Yeah. He just so he disliked it for the for the for the fun. Yeah. But he wasn't a gamble trying to make money. No, not and not with me, no, you know, but but we I would remember we went to we were London together and he would, you know, he let's go to the Castino. He love you know, he got a little gaming. You had a little gaming. Very good. I don't know what is it about a gamble. It's the dust asky thing, I mean, the challenge of I mean they say that people gamble to lose, they don't really gamble to win. How to compensate for the feeling of loss. You know, I think there's something to that. I mean, that was you know anyway. I love the was the lions that went tell me the people gambled to find that if God favors them or not. They want to know, does God favor me today? Well, you know I win, and that that that's my sign that God favorite me. I like that because I still I get on I get on my iPhone and I'll know and I there's a game called be Jeweled. It's a little bit like Angry Birds, right, and I feel like if I can get it right, then God looking good. Yeah, I think, yeah, I love it. I mean, you know, it was like in the movie with you. So what was he like as a director? Was he insightful for you? Did he? Absolutely? He was, Oh yeah, well he's an actor first of course, you know, and he know but he and he always wanted to give you your space. He never I mean, he said, there's only two directions days, a little more or a little less. That was it. He would let us block the scenes. He would he would Susan Terrell and I got lover. We would he would say, go in there and you you stage the scene the way you feel like it should be staged in a domestic seat, at a kitchen or something like that, and we would going there and we would stage the scene. We work out the moves a lot of trust to having his actors tremendous. He come in and look at it and then we move things around a little bit, make a tweak here, tweak there, and that's the way he worked. The thing that really fascinated me about Houston was at the very end of the movie I'll Know your Jet. Bridges and I were sitting in this kid this um cafe and it's the very last thing in the movie, and in the background there were these people sitting at tables, smoke rising, and they were they were gambling, and they were playing cards and they were talking to each other. And he said, all right, I want everybody in the background to just freeze. And you could see the smoke rising up, so you knew it was not freeze frame that was done technically by the editors. It was something that he directed. And I said, John, why did you do that? And he said, because you what you said when Billy Tully looks over there and sees nothing. He said, I just want there to be the feeling that God is intervening here in some way. I said, well, why how did you come up with this idea? And should the devil made me do it? Wherever John Houston is, I want him to know that when the time comes for me and Stacy will be more than ready to join him for backgammon and cigars. I'm Alec Baldwin and Here's the Thing. Take a listen to our archive more in depth conversations with artists, policymakers, and athletes like Dwight Gooden. My mom was very strict, you know, very directly stuff where my dad kind of gave me a pass without things as long as I was playing baseball. Here from Dwight Gooden and NFL quarterback Andrew luck At Here's the Thing dot Org. Here's the Thing is produced by Emily Botine and Kathy Russo with Chris Bannon, Jim Briggs, Ed Herbsman, Melanie Hoops, Monica Hopkins, Trey k Sharon Machihi Luelkowski, and Joshua Gozen. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

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