Stacy Keach

Published May 27, 2013, 4:00 AM

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. Ask actor Stacy Keaches loyal fans why they love him, and they'll point to a dozen different roles. He's played Richard the Third, King, Lear Hamlet, Falstaff, and Willie Lohman The Trouble Is banda people don't seem to take to me. Keach has played captains and kings, pugilists and pub crawlers. But before you typecast him as strictly drama, note Stacy Keach's role as Sergeantstadanko in Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke, or as the president of Duff Beer in The Simpsons. Take a hike, duff Man, You're a disgrace to the Unitard And I know I'll never forget his cameo on thirty Rock for its couchtown commercials. When did we get so soft? You know what this country used to say? It on logs, girders, poles, being comfortable. That's not what America is all about. The Great thestcun Keach literally spit into the camera for me. It was one of the show's funniest bits. Ever. Keach is perhaps best known as the irresistible, hotheaded, fedora wearing detective my camera, are you for higher? My money is too dirty? Client unlesser 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 stageworthy, stage worthy in Chicago and Washington, but especially New York. New York audiences saw Keach most recently on Broadway in John Robin Bates's play Other Desert Cities. Two generations of a southern California family gather at Christmas and find themselves reliving a painful family secret. Keach played the conservative patriarch, and for him it was familiar territory. My dad and my mom and dad were very conservative, and every Easter, every Christmas we would take trips to Palm Springs, the Shadow Mountain Country Club in Palm Desert, where they had water slides, the very first water slub. We spent a lot of time down there with a lot of conservative people in our business, you know, Republican you know, so that was that was an environment that I was very familiar. What's it like for you now to work with younger actors who are very much of today. Do you find that the good ones operate the same way or are they different? They're different, They're very different way. Well, for example, we had Justin Kirk came in for Tom Tommy Sadowski to play Trip the young you know, and he's an actor that is you wow, you know, I mean every moment is something different where I mean, there's no consistency in terms. The only thing that was consistent was inconsistency. You never knew what it was going to come, you know. I kind of like that. I don't mind it. I mean, you know, I mean, as a younger actor, I probably would have gone nuts. I wouldn't have been able to deal with that because you know pattern, Well that's right, but I like I like that, I like spot many and I like flexibility, and I think that you know that as you've also learned how to handle it, well, that's it. Keeach's philosophy about acting 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 mainly it's looked I think you know that that was when I you know, and I 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 bad guy in this, uh and he said, your teeth are too good. So the whole character became centralized in terms of you know, what I was in here. You know, they 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 false Staff again next year. And uh, you know, he's just a big, fat, corpulent guy and interesting me enough, even with all the physical manifestations of that character. That character 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 Kaintive years ago. You did what Falstaff And what did they 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 Aldridge designers leather costume for me. And what did they do back then in terms of your face when you're lean? Whiskers had a week of course and a bulbous knows And I was shooting a picture in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, into the Road with the James Earl Jones and Harris Jule And I was shooting during the day and had to go on stage in the park at night. So I'd get in a car at five o'clock in the afternoon. We'd drive down the tocnic and and I'd be making up in the car in the front seat as we You were shooting a movie with Harris Elan and James W. Jones in the Berkshires and you would drive down to Central Park to do eight shows. Well, to do with the five shows out of the weekend. Well, I guess so, yeah, it was they didn't do. But nevertheless, it was an experience. I mean, you know, to be making up in the car and looking you know, and Busters would come up beside me maybe you know, looking at look at with this crazy guy doing there. But it was an experience. But anyway, I went and saw orson Wells two Chimes at Midnight one he did in that film. I thought it was a great performance. He personalized that guy so much. It was like it wasn't he wasn't. He didn't put any spin on it at all. He was just talking right from his heart. I mean it was right, you know, he was really centered on that guy. And I thought to myself, that's the key. I mean, you've got to find the equivalent of that for you when you when you get in there and when you get inside the fat suit, You're gonna have to find the personalization of that. You know, 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, 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 it one of great parts, because I 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 fall Staff. And and you're gonna do it again. So you did fal stuff the first time, Win sixty eight in the park. Oh yeah, it makes me feel very young forty five years later, forty five years later, you're gonna play stuff and I won't have to wear panting this No, I'm what are you doing it for? Michael conn at the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, 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 and we did 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 deposed by until played by Sam Waterston. Yeah, what what's the role that you've played U film or television or stage? That was an extraordinarily difficult, if not even painful. And I don't mean the the the events around the show. I don't know, you know, the producer was a bastard. I mean the playing the part itself was extraordinary. Scottish play, the Scottish playing. Where did you do that? I did that in washing as well? Yeah? How long ago? That was about twelve years ago. How old are you now? Seven? I'll be seventy two in June. So you did it when you were sixty years old? You play something like that? Yeah? I used to say that. You know, you work your butt off playing that part. And the woman gets all the glory, you know, and she takes all the thunder, you know it. But it's a it's an amazing play. I mean, it's a very it's a beautifully written play, and it's very poetic, and it's very got some wonderful ideas in it. But the guy is not sympathetic. There's just you know, you just have to give, you have to give, You have to give up trying to make people feel sorry. For you. That's a very good point you make, because that's probably a flaw that I've had in a lot of what I've done. We all just tried to make him sympathetic. We all we want, you know, we want. When I didn't, I think it works better and other roles I played, when I just gave up on that just yeah, you know, so that was a tough role for you. What it was well because you know, again, trying to make him sympathetic, wrong, bad choice, you know, And I stole a bit from Olivier when you know, when the ghost appears, he jumped on the banquet table and he was, you know, he was he jumped on top of the table with all that, And I thought, well that's yeah, ms well and then yeah, so that's it worked. That worked, and from that point on, you know, once I sort of felt like I was, you know, I was. The madness liberated me in a way, It liberated Yeah, then it more on glued. You are the choices complying at of you something like I'm vending machines sometimes in that state, that's right. Yeah, you grew up where I grew up in southern California, and your dad was in the business. Dad was in the business. 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. Worked in radio. Yeah, that was that was his thing. He was also an actor. He played small parts. He remember used to come home after doing a guest shot on Tales on the Lone Ranger or who was the Dragonnett Gets Smart was a show that he did. And was your mom in the business. No, but she when she was at Northwest and that's where she met my dad, and they weren't Northwestern together, and she was an actress at that time, but she never pursued it. What did he say to you? What was his uh program with you so to stick 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 you want my brother to be a doctor. He said, you know it's it's to this business. The two fraught with want to do that? Did you think about, well, you know what when I graduate, 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 me. 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. He came specific, very specific, and very much alive. So all of his b ass about not do this, You're not going to do this. You're gonna be a lawyer, you know what you think? Because he wasn't as successful that as he wanted to be that. He wanted you more to be a success, because that's very cold. That's that's what I experienced with my dad. My dad mad had no money. He was a school teacher. He was constantly under the gun and about money. It was tormented him. And I think when he looked at me, he was like, it's less about what you want to be that it is about being successful at something. I think that, Well, our dad did he drive you in that direction? Absolutely? So when you wound up, 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 then then it was a good thing because it wasn't until I got to Berkeley and I was started. You know, I was given an edict, You're not going to be in any place first year as a freshman. You I was studying political science and economics. I mean, that was it. You know, I was going to I was going to do the same thing, you know. And that was you know, and and there, and they don't think you're worthy in your first year. They want you to wait, that's right. So at the end of the first year I got to 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 League Jack Oby in 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, you had some talents. 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 terristed at USC Berkeley, Berkeley up in Berkeley. Yeah, and you finished, she went all four years that. I went for a degree in drama. I got a degree in drama English. Yeah, and then what did you do after that? And then I went, I went to Yale Drama School for a year. What was the program that was it? Was it longer than a year or you finished the 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 very much old school. They didn't know in those days whether they were training people for the academic theater or for the professional theater, to be teachers or to be professional and big distinction, big distinction. And it was, you know, learning all these fonetic signs and symbols, and I mean, this had nothing to do with what I was interested in. And I had just I had done two summers at the Oregon Shakes Peare 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 Rick Cut Show and Barn and sort of I was getting my feet wet with Shakespeare and these big wonderful Shakespeare a part of your your childhood. And you give me, why are you so? You're pretty much steeped in Shakespeare early stage cere Why this is just your own passion. Oregon Shakespeare Festival that was responsible for you that you 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 phonetic symbols, right, no more for you know. And Joe after that year where Joe found you, Joe, Joe Papa and I'm well, thanks the Organ Shakespeare Festival. You were ready, Yeah, I think so. Henry Hughes Saturday. He was. He was a drama critic for the Saturday 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 Schase Profestival one day audition. He said, come on down. So I went and I met Joe pap 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? I said, to do a little piece from Henry the Fifth upon the 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, we'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 out there. I was floating on it. I mean, that was it, you know. And then summer of sixty three, sixty sixty four, and that summer moved to New York. Yeah, And for that summer I did, yeah, And then I went to England after that on a Fulbright scholarship to the London Academy Music and Dramatic Art to study for a year. Well 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? And 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 Fullbright. I was chosen as an alternate. I was really depressed lambda that summer. I got a note from the Fullbright commission saying, the guy who was supposed to go dropped out, So you're in. So I made it by the skin of your said, you know why, Lamba, were you going to change for the musical theater? No? No classical theater? And you were there for a year? Was every 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 crew sabll It was. It was an amazing here. 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 with Williams. I 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 where when I had been, when I had been as a student at Berken, I knew all those actors and I'd got and see a lot of their shows. And a lot of those actors were also at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This huddle, Robert Phelan, Dan Sullivan, it was now, of course one of our best directors. Um this was the company. So I went and I auditioned. 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 But we moved to New York and uh and I spent that first year Danton's death, the country Wife, the condemned Avoutona by Jean Paul Sartre and the Caucasian chalk circle, not which you would call a banner, you know, commercial season and they and they just gotten murdered. These guys, they just got well because they came in thinking they were going to change the New York Theater. Wrong. Who Who was your first wife? Her name is Katherine Baker and she was where did you meet her at the airport while you were going from one location? Not white but anyway, but she she was my college sweetheart. She was your college sweetheart. And I'm gonna ask you this as we go down the road here for each of your wife, what are you talking about? What do you think she loved about you? Oh? God? Did she love that life you were living? And she loved your passion and your commitment to acting? I have no idea. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know. I know, God, But did you feel at that time that you had an intensity about you as an actor that was very, very attractive to other people? Did you feel that, you don't know, I wasn't you were not? Were you saying you weren't a ladies man? Well? I was, and I wasn't. I mean, I you know, definitely, you know, I definitely I love that. I love some that I was, and I wasn't. What does that mean? Well, I love the lady. I've always have. I loved ladies, you know. But but there's a misogynistic element in my character that I think I have to you know, do trust trust I? Yeah? No. If I love somebody and you know I'm trusting, I'm in the same school. It's hard me to trust people. It's hard hard. So these guys from San Francisco come and they're going to change the New York Theater and they kind of flopped them. What happens. And then I went back to my roots at Yale, Nicholas Zacharopolis in Williamstown, and he said, come on up to Williamstown and be with me for the summer, you know, And that was it. I mean, I love doing that. I went up there and he had a great, great summer. And one of my fellow students at Yale had this play that he had a very good friend of his at Berkeley had written. Barbara Carson was her name, and the play was called mcbird and play about Lyndon Johnson as the Scottish guy, and it was suggesting that he was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy the play says that, Yeah, that's what it was, and it was a great cast. Bill Devane played Bobby Kennedy, Um Paul Heck played JFK. And it was it was wonderful we did at the village gate. We thought we were gonna get shut down. We thought the government was going to come in and say we were seditious sixties six. Johnson's in the height of his Absolutely, we're gonna shut get shut down. We thought it was the FBI is coming, the ashows are in the FBI. Nothing, nothing, It's a hit. It's a big hit. Yeah, And that's what really got me going. What did you think about the the contact? Because I'm a bit of an assassination a buffed myself, and this is the fiftieth anniversary. This notf I know, and this year is the fiftieth anniversary Ben's assassination, which I still don't think we know the truth about. What did you think about when you did the play? Was it well, I wasn't data, not really, you know, no, but but the suggestion that he was somehow involved or knew what was going on, it was very palap He didn't mind that it happened. No, the audience believed it. I mean they actually when put it this way, they don't know if they believed it was true, but they certainly accepted the premise that it was worth dramat it was something there and that that ran for How long it ran for a couple of years. I I stayed in it for about nine months. And that's the longest run you've ever done as an actor on stage, um about nine months, but that was no other Desert Cities ran for about almost a year. I think that's that's running for me. Stacy keaches runs are sometimes limited by his desire to be near his family. He and his wife, Malgosa, a native of Poland, lived in a suburb of Warsaw for several years when their children were teenagers. Stacy says he commuted from Warsaw to wherever there was work. When he was doing the TV show Prison Break, he was lucky there was a direct flight between Warsaw and Chicago coming up. Stacy Keach talks about working with director John Houston. I said, well, why why did you do How did you come up with this idea? And he said, the devil made me do it. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. Many people don't understand how an actor can perform in the same play night after night for months. The truth is it never gets boring. It's like skiing a black diamond run for me to go all the way down and not fall, and I fall every night. Yeah, one show I did recently, a few years back, I did give myself a diploma for having a perfect show. I said every word as you because you and I both know that when you get to that level where you're at, you know when you don't say the words right. Oh yeah, if you know the play backwards and forwards, you know every queue, you might not say it that way. Here. So I came off stage and I and I said to myself, I was the stage managers were there and everybody on the prop people and I came off stage and I said, well, there you have it. And I said, there it is the perfect show. I said, every line as written the way I wanted to say it and with the feeling I wanted, And I just really really skied the run right to the bottom. That's happened to me once in my career, and every other time I missed a little. I didn't. I didn't. I wasn't connected to the speech. Well, I know, I know exactly what you're saying. I when I the role, you've been the most connected to Well, I did hample it three times try to get it right. I never did. I never got that. Three different productions. What was the first one in Long Wharf Theater. Arvin Brown directed it one year. Let me see if I can remember the it was. It had to be seventy. It had to be somewhere in the I think it was seventy seventy. Oh yeah, I was, yeah, I was actually, well they say Hamlet's thirty, you know, so it 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 that played it, and you know, it's intimidating. I mean, you know, and I and but you're once I said you were Hamlets, that's right, becomes you're Hamlets. And most of the time I was concerned about getting the lions right and getting you know, just getting the moves right, just getting it, just putting it all together and figuring then trying to figure it out, which is what I you know, I did. And then the next year, I mean that that summer, Joe Pappy kind of came and saw it and he said, come into the park and we'll do it. A different production, totally different production, different director, which was very hard for me to give up. Barton Brown and Jared Freeman, who had worked without MiG bird Uh was asked to director, were you happy with the new cast? What was a fantastic cast? I mean it was James Earl Jones. Well, and it was yeah, and and and I got it. I got closer to it, I got closer to I felt, you know, 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 Harris Shulen playing Claudius Um 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 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, but that was your final one. Yeah, yeah, No, the perfect show is elusive. It's the fact that you found. I think one night I was doing death Trap. I remember who'd you do with? Uh? You know the other the actors that I worked with, I can't remember their names. This is terrible, terrible. Darren I remembered his name is the first name was Darren. They weren't people. Oh yeah, But I mean I love that play, do you know? I mean I I saw Brian Bedford doing at the Kennedy Center when I was in college. Bifflefone wanted to do Death Traps. Great, it's a great summer stock play. So I love Shaffer. Yeah, yeah, I did. It was yeah, it was It wasn't. It wasn't Tony SHAFFERD was Ira leven Right. I did a Tony SHAPPERD play with Sluice. The only Yeah, that's very similar. Who did you do that with Maxwell cough good for years? He's a buddy of mine. Yeah, you mean we're going to be Juliet Mills, we'll be together tomorrow night. We became very dear friends on SLUS and I love him. Yeah. And Juliet is the godmother of my daughter Carolina. How many kids do you have too? And you have two girls? Boy and g So your son is how old? Twenty four? And he's a student at n y U studying corporate communications and international business. His mom his wife number? What four? Your current wife? Yeah? So you're current children by any children? You did it? You had him that? Oh my god, you got the marriage right and then had the family. That's right, all you clever best? So three marriages? What were the longest of the other three? Two years? So the longest? Yeah? Two years? Yeah, that is that's right, long to the other three. OK, let's let's really round it off your it was two and a half years. You think you're tough to be married to? I? Do you do? I know? I am because do you think it's your work? Though? Do you think your dedication to this? I had a woman say to me once, a very famous woman that her husband was a famous actor and he did a television series. This is many years ago. And she said to me he'd go to work and he was a father on the show, as she said, and he gave everything he had on cameras he said. He came home, he had nothing for his own children. He came home, locked himself in his room, had a drink in his hand, had the TV on. He just he was just like we said, he was just emptied out. I said, what changed when you met wife and m before? Well, I only mentioned these things, not not to be uh, you know, prying. I'm just saying, for a man of passion, when you get it right, what was the difference? What happened? What changed? Somebody who understood me, I think really understood gave you your space, gave me my space. You be who you are absolutely, which is a nut job really and that's critical and yeah but I mean face well no, but yeah, but you and I are. You know, we our lives are very active. I mean we we we spent a lot of time doing things that are not family related necessary. You know, what's something you think you missed other than parents who other than maybe more time with your family, other than making having the opportunity at least to make a better goal of it with your previous wives, because I'm divorced as well, all that kind of stuff. What's something you think that you would love to have done with your life that you missed because of this world? Because I have an answer for myself, But what's your I would have been more of an adventurer, more of an explorer, more of an outdoors kind of guy. I would have, you know, taken expedition doing yes, yes, yes, I agree, I agree. I didn't do it. Mine was education. I would have gone back to school. And so now I sit back and I go I was like whenever I speak at schools, I say to people because I'm teaching that, and then my this this spring, I say, how many people here are graduating? Uh now? And you know, maybe like a quarter of them raise their hands. In this lecture I gave to about a hundred kids, and I said, how many of you? So the rest of you are how many of your juniors? So another quarter of the race. So the rest of them, half the kids were sophomores and freshmen in the acting program. I said, do yourself a favor. I said, this is the only time of your life you can read, and really you're you're here to read, I said, take take lit courses, take history courses, read, read, read, because you're gonna miss it. I miss it. I'm teaching acting this year. Where I teach you? I teach a George Mason University via Skype. Wow, how does that go? I teach? Well, it's wonderful because I'm teaching kids how to audition, basically, both using material from the theater and from television and movie scripts. The cameras right there. They have to get up in front of a camera, just like they're doing an audition. So they do a scene for me. I give him a critique. They go back and they work on it for a week. They come back in the show it to me again. I can and I can teach this course from Poland, from Los Angeles, from New York. Have you taught acting before? Yes? Where when I went back to Yale as a actor performer, well, an actor teacher? Um, so many years ago? When when right after mcbird, I mean when Brucetine first came into Yale, I taught. I taught to Yale for a year while I was a member of the company, and I thought, master classes here and there. Do you like teaching? I love it? You do? I do? And I and I my kids. One of the things that they read, they have to read. They have to read four four plays and write a report. They had quizzes on, you know, not just the things that they read in terms of literature or dramaturgy. And I've discovered an acting book that I just think it's fantastic called The Actors Target, The Actor and the Target by Declan Donovan. It's a He's an English guy. It's a fabulous books well because it sort of reinterprets the whole notion of action NG and it takes Stanislovsky's ideas. He has his own set of terms, his own terminology, which is refreshing in a way because it's not the same old stuff that we've been hearing for years and years. But I think reading is critical. And I know when I first got there, I was told by the university you don't have to you know, you don't have to assign things for them to read. You can just have them read the material that they're working on in terms of the scenes that they're presenting. And I said, no, no, no, I we're in. In the course of my career, were into a lot of guys who are illiterate, and it's not good. I think the more you know in terms of the more references, Yeah, it's like a scale. There's only so many notes, you know when you play them in different combinations. Maybe what what musical instrument do you play? You never played one? Which your musical? I wish I could sing, but I can't sing to save my life. You can't know. I you know, I taught you know again, I have a pretty good year and I'm musical. I do play and the piano. Yeah, yeah, but I I grew up that way. Yeah, okay, yeah, I grew up. Yeah. And who was responsible for that? Your mom or your dad? My mom? Basically primarily, yeah, you're gonna practice or you're not going to take the car out. You know that, you know, one of those things friends threats, And we tried to do that with our kids. Didn't work, and the screaming and yelling, and we gave in, and I'm sorry I did. I think you know that's where we are now. We don't want to do the heavy lifting. I know our parents were willing to be unpopular. Our parents were what I call the Captain Bligh School. Yeah that's good. I've got a job to do here. Yeah, I gotta get this bread fruit back to England. And I don't care whether you like it or not. Now our parents are all like, oh please, don't you give me that way? Are you mad at me? That's right? We just kids asses all day. I know it's terrible at the end of the world. Actually, well, I hope not so you. So you were saying about teaching, though, that do you do. What I found is that when I teach, I don't say this, but I think it's it may or may not be implied when I'm doing this, is that I can't make you a good actor. You know, I can make you a better actor maybe than when you came in. If you have some ability, I can begin to point the way toward you what you might develop. But um, but you either got or you don't. I really believe that I do too, and a lot of people don't. I didn't want to hear that. Well, I know, and in a degree granting academic program, you'll see that a lot of people have the grades to go to the fine institution and they're not necessarily the best actors. And I'll say to them, the people I've worked with, I'll say, well, why don't we tear out a couple of seats here on the side of Elijah, and let's have you give me a class of twenty people or two dozen people. Let's have three or four kids who, with their cumb and their academic credentials, were okay, they were good. They weren't complete bust. But you brought them in here not just for their benefit, but for the benefit of the other kids in the class, who can see what good acting is in that in that kind of embryonic phase, I find teaching a thing it's tough. For that reason, it is tough. And you you really nailed what I was. I've got twenty kids, and maybe have those twenty kids four. You know, that's what I's It's about the number I get. And Keach is indeed a good judge of talent. Henry Winkler was a student of his when he taught at Yale, and Keith said it was clear he would do something special. That was over forty five years ago. This is a man with stories and he's finally put them down on paper. Stacy Keach has a memoir coming out this fall. All in All, an Actor's life on and off stage, will be published by Globe Peaquat Press. It's an ordeal. I mean to write a memoir and you're gonna be doing this one of these days. Why did you do it? Well, I'm at that age, you know, I feel like, you know, I better get it down now or the truth, you know, as I saw, Yeah, yeah, get it down now. And because you know, you know, you know, times to running out due, and so I wanted to And I have a lot of stories to tell, and I worked with a lot of great people, include John Houston, and and talk about Houston. What 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 Western in Spain with Faye Dunaway in Harris Juland and we were in this script Fat City written and was a very popular book written by Leonard Gardner about boxing, and and he came to see me personally on the set. I mean to have John Houston visit me on the set of the 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, and I just he was so warm welcomed you. Yeah, it's rare the business. Oh yeah. But he and and he had no pretenses about I mean, he was larger than life. He he and he didn't he didn't make any apologies for that. I mean, and and and he was extraordinary, extraordinary human being. He loved to gamble, loved to gamble, and we wonder what that was about. Well, it's very interesting because we and I loved to gamble too, you know. And I mean, what's your game? Well, with him, it was backgammon. We would played 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 went to the cann Film Best for years, you know, a year later and also we were in London together and he would you know, he let's go to the casino. He love you know, he a little gaming yet a little gaming very good. Yeah, and and he loved it. I think 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 or at least, you know, to experience what it's like to feel what you know, how 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 that was the alliance and went told 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, if I win, and that's that's my sign that God favored me. I like that because I still I get on I get on my iPhone and I'll you 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 Yeah, I think there's Yeah. I love it. I mean, you know, it was Alec in the movie with you, So what was he like as a director, was he insightful for you? Did he help? Absolutely? It was oh yeah, well he's an actor first, of course, you know, and he you know, but he and he always wanted to of 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 never told me that, you don't try to I mean, well, yes he did once in a while, but I mean, but 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 were going there and we would stage the scene, we work out the moves. A lot of trust to having his act tremendous, tremendous, you know, but he was right, you come in and look at it, and then we moved things around a little bit and make a tweak here, tweak there. And Conrad Hall it was the cameraman would come in and work when I got left him and uh, and that's the way he worked. And then the thing that really fascinated me about Houston was at the very end of the movie, I'll know, for the jet Bridges and I were sitting in this kid in this um cafe and it's the very last scene 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 that they were talking to each other. And he said, all right, I want everybody in the background to just freeze. Just don't do anything. 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 when 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 why did you do that? How did you come up with this idea? And he said, the devil made me do it. Okay, I mean I was just you know, off the wall kind of you know, coming, but he was he really was his health then was he pretty loocid? Then he wasn't really very sick. Then no, he wasn't. He was pretty together, but he's you changed smoke money Crystal number ones. Yeah, I mean there was always a box of cigars under his head and the black Gama said, in the other hand, I don't know wherever John Houston is. I want him to know that when the time comes for me and Stacy will be more than ready for backgammon and cigars with him. Let me just say as we finished here that you know, I wrote the forward to your book because you occupy a very unique place. You know, what stands out to me is that you're so comfortable on stage and that transmit there is a telepathic signal you kind of send to the audience. I wrote the story. I said, you know, you enthraw people, and you and you inspire people whatever, but you welcome them at the same time, because when someone's on stage and they're uncomfortable, you feel it. And you are someone who your commitment. Forget about your talent, because you are a immeasurably talented man. But the companion with that is is how committed you are. When you go and do something, you give it everything you have and you are a great inspiration to me. When I saw you do other desert cities. I sent there like I looked at my friend and go, look at that son of a bitch. Look how fucking fantastic he looks up that no place elseed rather and you had the audience right here. Thank you. You're a treasure. Thanks for doing this with me. I loved it. Thank you. Man. 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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