Justine Bateman - Summer Staff Picks

Our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing continues, as staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives for our Summer Staff Pick series. This week, we revisit Alec’s conversation with Justine Bateman. In 2023, as the writers’ and actors' strike in Hollywood stretched into the fall, many have called this moment “existential.” After negotiations with AMPTP, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, broke down, SAG-AFTRA and WGA members took to picket lines over dwindling wages and the use of artificial intelligence, which may change the entertainment industry forever. Writer, director, and producer Justine Bateman is one guild member warning of A. I.'s potentially devastating influence. Following her roles in Family Ties and Satisfaction, among many others, Bateman transitioned to working behind the scenes as a filmmaker and author. She earned her Computer Science and Digital Media Management degree from UCLA in 2016, which has become all the more relevant facing the rise of A. I. Bateman speaks with Alec Baldwin about the threat A. I. poses to the entire entertainment industry, how the business has changed since she first started in it, and what drives her creative work. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:47Alec Baldwin?

  Three bodies on the ground.

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• 0:51Alec Baldwin?

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• 2:04Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. It's summer, and that means it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing, where the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in our Summer Staff Picks series. Our last pick was producer Victoria DeMartin.

• 2:24Speaker 07

  Thanks, Alec. An episode that caught my attention from our archive was your conversation with Justine Bateman in 2023. I relate to Justine not only as a fellow filmmaker, but the timing and the topic of this conversation stood out to me. This episode aired after the summer of what is now called the twin strikes. In 2023, both the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild went on strike and essentially caused Hollywood to shut down. This conversation resonated with me, as my own career was directly affected by these strikes. And both Justine and Alec bring a personal element to this conversation as well. Alec approaches it from the point of view of the actors, and Justine more from the perspective of the filmmakers.

• 3:08Speaker 07

  And even though this was three years ago, the conversation around AI and the entertainment industry remain relevant today. I loved when Alec points out that there is no such thing as a risk-free movie business, and when Justine talks about how AI is the polar opposite direction of where she wants to take her work. She says she wants to do something new, and even though AI is a new technology, it's trained from our old work, so nothing about it is new. I found this conversation to be very insightful, and I hope you find it as thought-provoking as I did.

• 3:42Alec Baldwin?

  On July 14th, SAG-AFTRA, better known as the Screen Actors Guild, joined the picket lines where members of the Writers Guild of America have been striking since early May.

• 3:53Speaker 06

  The entire business model has been changed by streaming, digital, AI. This is a moment of history that is a moment of truth. If we don't stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble. We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines and big business. Who cares more about Wall Street than you and your family?

• 4:24Alec Baldwin?

  That's actor and Screen Actors Guild president Fran Drescher announcing the SAG strike. This action follows contentious negotiations over contracts with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, a collection of film studios, TV networks, and streamers like Netflix, Hulu, Paramount, Sony, and Warner Brothers Discovery. The issues in dispute include everything from dwindling payments in the age of streaming to the unsettling reality that artificial intelligence may soon render human writers and actors unnecessary. Many have called this particular moment existential.

• 5:06Alec Baldwin?

  One person who is deeply involved in this issue and has been ringing the alarm for some time is actor, writer, director, and producer Justine Bateman. Bateman is perhaps best known for her work on Family Ties and Satisfaction, but she also received her degree in computer science from UCLA in 2016. As someone involved in so many aspects of filmmaking, I wanted to know if Bateman felt that the guilds were up to the task of ensuring their future amidst the AI proliferation.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Yes, actually, yeah. And I'll tell you why. So if we go back even further to 1980, which I think was the last time SAG was on strike, they were asking for a piece of, all the unions were, a piece of the home video market, VCR, right? Tapes. We didn't even have DVDs yet. And the quote from AMPTP was, "We don't even know if there's any money in that." Well, we saw what happened with that. That became the financial buoy for the entire industry, having DVD sales.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Then you go to 2007, 2008, when I was on the SAG Board of Directors and on the negotiating committee, and they said to all the unions, when we were asking for made-for-new media percentages, residuals, so forth, they said the same thing. "Oh, we don't even know if there's any money in the internet. It's so unproven. It's the Wild, Wild West," which is such a tired sort of saying. And I think during the WGA strike back then, they released Hulu, which was all of these AMPT, a lot of, not all of them, but a lot of these AMPTP companies coming together and creating a video platform.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, these companies don't get together to do anything, so they must have been extremely convinced that it was going to be very lucrative and eliminated a lot of the overhead that's necessary for broadcast television and theater release. So it's very telling, then, as far as AI goes, that when the WGA asked for protections on that, they didn't even say what they'd said before, which could have been, "We don't know that there's any money in AI." They just said, "We're not talking about it," which says to me, they are writing scripts with AI already and have been for a while.

• 7:42Alec Baldwin?

  Of course. I'm 1,000% convinced that they have that machine churning away. And I always remember when they say, "Well, we don't know if there's any money in there. We don't really have any money in that that we know of." And what they're saying now is, "Well, we don't have any money there for you."

• 7:59Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 7:59Alec Baldwin?

  We have to append that little phrase, "We don't have any money for you," for the actors. We've seen over the last many years, and this is my opinion, it's purely an opinion and an analysis, that what you see now is the complete wall-to-wall widgetizing of the creative industries. Men and women who are captain corporations that want to take all the risk out of movie making and television production. And of course, there's no such thing as a risk-free movie business. Guessing what an audience might want to watch, now they've gotten this down with all their Marvel Universe, but guessing what an audience might want to watch 18 months from now is a lot of luck and some art.

• 8:43Alec Baldwin?

  But these are corporations that want to have the risk-free entertainment industry, which is just absurd. Your involvement with the union, with SAG, when did that begin and why?

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Well, I'm not, I haven't acted for many, many years, so it's not a focus of mine. Just been writing, directing, and producing, so I'm more involved actually in...

• 9:02Alec Baldwin?

  The WGA?

• 9:04Speaker 02

  WGA and the DGA now, like I'm on the Western, the Directors Western Council at the DGA, and for a long time, just been, you know, a great admirer of the WGA and the DGA and involved in the WGA. But of course, I have a big love for SAG, and because of my relationships with them, they'd asked me to come in to their day with the AMPTP in these negotiations, the day that dealt with AI, and say a few things. And, and I, you know, you can't talk about what was talked about in there, but I will say that Duncan Crabtree Ireland, the national director and the lead negotiator for SAG,

• 9:45Speaker 02

  has extremely good handle on what needs to happen for actors' protection, and not just for protection of actors who are working now and who will work in, you know, have their future work as well, but to protect the actors from the past. And this is true, too, for the DGA and WGA, and maybe it's something that has to be done through legislation, but to protect, it's our responsibility now, like these, these actors and writers and directors in the past, they did work within the unions to establish rules for us so that we could make a living at this and have pensions and healthcare and all of this, and they sacrificed for that. And I feel like now it's time for us to, in addition to what we need to do to protect

• 10:28Speaker 02

  members now, we need to protect their work, because now the technology exists to go back and mess around with everything. You know, the technology isn't there exactly to just generate another version of Casablanca, but we're on the precipice of that, or going back to, say, some, you know, the MASH TV series and making another season out of what was, you know, just feeding in all the seasons and making another season, that kind of thing. And then there's other things, like just doing episodes that are in line with somebody's viewing history and just throwing together something that is an amalgamation, a distilling of and amalgamation of all of our past work. And that's what I find...

• 11:14Speaker 02

  So offensive and heinous. It's not that AI is now generating new stuff. Just it's a new technology and it's generating new stuff on its own. It's doing it only because it's been fed in our old work. That's what I find so horrible about it.

• 11:33Alec Baldwin?

  Do you think that people who have licensed, you know, the most handy reference I have is James Earl Jones licensing his voice to the Star Wars Board of Directors there for his voice as Darth Vader to live on beyond his death. Is that a betrayal of actors? Is that a betrayal of the union for people to buy into the AI thing, do you think?

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Not in my opinion. I mean, if they want to do that, fine. I personally, as a filmmaker, I don't want to have anything to do with it because it's the polar opposite direction of where I want to go with my work. I want to do something like really, really new if I can, you know? Stand on the shoulders of all the filmmakers that I love and, you know, move the ball down the field. I mean, look, the last 10, 15 years, with some exceptions, all we've been doing is a regurgitation of the past. I mean, tell me what pop culture is right now. It is the pop culture of the 20th century, period. There's nothing new in the last 20 years, with some exceptions, as far as a genre goes of music, of movies.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  I mean, Alec, you can think, I could name any decade in the 20th century and you could tell me something that went on in music, something went on in film, something went on in fine art and or dance or whatever. And it's just not happening anymore because tech, and I love tech, I have a computer science degree, but it has created this, there's something you want to avoid in coding, which is an infinite loop. We just can't, the code can't get out of this loop it's in. What tech has created in pop culture and in the arts is an infinite loop where we just completely regurgitate, regurgitate, regurgitate what's happened before us.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  And the studios got on board with that because they're scared financially and trying to, you know, just take IPs that everybody's familiar with so they can skip the marketing period they need to get people to understand what their new project is about. And now AI is going to automate all of that.

• 13:38Alec Baldwin?

  I mean, I will watch a streaming series, not because I have any desire to watch that show, but I'm just curious, what's selling? What are people watching? Most of the shows I see, the other impact of this, you know, money at all costs, money over creativity, is the bloating of these episodes, meaning the show is really six episodes, but they got to do eight because they don't get into profit till after five. There's so much bloating of this stuff content wise to get to their numbers. Now, one thing for our audience, I would like to explain your take maybe on the distinction as to the three unions, the WGA, the DGA and SAG, as to why the pattern seems to be that the DGA settles almost immediately.

• 14:23Alec Baldwin?

  The DGA settles quickly. And I've had people explain to me their opinion as to why. A SAG is kind of down the middle and the WGA would probably strike, you know, for a year if they, if they could. They're always the slowest to, does that seem like a fair assessment to you?

• 14:38Speaker 02

  You know, I haven't been within the negotiating process of DGA or WGA, but I will say this, one way to characterize each one of the unions is to think about their duties on a set. The director is telling everybody, this is how it's going to be. And the directors come in, they come in for their prep and then they do the shoot and then they have their post and that's pretty much it. The writer has had to work with the studio sometimes for a long period of time before the director is stepping in. And there's a lot of beating up of the writers by the studio sometimes.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  In fact, in the streaming world, I know somebody who's a showrunner and the, I've heard this from a couple of showrunners, the note they get most frequently is it's not second screen enough, meaning the viewer's laptop or the viewer's, right, hilarious, right? The viewer's laptop or the viewer's phone is primary screen, first screen, and don't do anything in the show that's going to distract the viewer because then they might go, oh, wait, what just happened? And then go turn it off. They want it on all the time, like visual muzak, as somebody quoted once. So you got that. And then the, the actors on a set are pretty much showing up.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  They've prepared their work, but they're like, tell me where to go and where to stand and, and what to do. And then, you know, I'm going to bring some emotion into it. So if you think of it that way, and, and I don't mean that to be disparaging in any way whatsoever to any of those positions, but then it gives you an inkling as to how the behavior of the negotiating committees is possibly conducted. It's an interesting way to kind of color it, I think.

• 16:31Alec Baldwin?

  Well, someone said to me that the reason that the DGA settles quicker is because they have more overlapping interests with the producers than the other two unions do. I think the guy that's the head of the DGA just announced, he said, we did better than we've ever done, or he had some, you know, very positive comment about what happened. But my point is this, there's three unions and I don't know why they can't come together and negotiate together and really stick together as one business. I mean, I know that's fanciful. You know, they came to me to run for president of SAG before Fran ran.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 17:07Alec Baldwin?

  And they said, going into this negotiation, we need someone who is as bold, you know, forceful, whatever. Because they were saying this can be a tough negotiation, this can be one of the toughest negotiations. And I said, well, I think that the head of SAG should live in LA, just in the time zone. I got seven children. You think I'm going to be on conference calls till nine or 10 o'clock at night in LA? I said, I'm, I live in New York and I'm not leaving New York. And after a back and forth with a small handful of people, they got it and they moved on and they got Fran. But I was very tempted, but one thing I kept saying to them was, I said, what do you think is the likelihood that we can join forces, not dilute our, our independence, our sovereignty,

• 17:49Alec Baldwin?

  our specific missions, but why can't we negotiate these contracts together? And they just thought that that was a very quixotic idea, that that was just impossible. Do you agree? That's impossible?

• 18:02Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I'm in agreement with you. I mean, we're not even competitive with each other. Like the writers are not competing against the directors, are not competing against the actors and so forth for jobs. And yet, all the studios are competing with each other, in direct competition with each other. So if they can get together as a group and negotiate against us, then I agree. We should be able to, you know, band together and negotiate against them. I, I would hope for that, too. I don't know all the reasons why it doesn't occur, but I will say that I believe on the AI front, that's a topic that we all have in common.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  And whatever gains one, one union gets will benefit the other. And whatever gains one union makes on the legislative end with the government will be a gain for everyone else in the business. But what you said earlier about, you know, having their eye firmly on the money, I mean, it's always been a component of the business, of course. But when the streamers, these tech companies decided to get into the tech platform business and needed stuff to put on their shelves, and their stuff was our work, which they refer to as content, which I find

• 19:23Alec Baldwin?

  chilly.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  So dismissive, yeah, and, and so offensive and so dismissive and so confused about the work that we do. When they came onto the scene as tech companies, they were seen by Wall Street as tech companies and they followed the tech company pattern of success, quote unquote, which is ramp it up, scale it as much as you can, and then get out. Sell it for a billion dollars, $3 billion, whatever you can do. Well, now they're not quite doing that. And they've also saturated the market to some extent of, you know, how far they can scale. And that's when we had this Netflix correction on Wall Street.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  That's when, because that was Wall Street going, oh, wait a minute, you guys have fairly saturated the market at least domestically. And so we can't look at you as a tech company anymore because you're not doing that scaling anymore. So we're just going to look at you as a media company. And a media company has to show profit.

• 20:28Alec Baldwin?

  WGA, DGA and SAG member Justine Bateman. If you want to hear more from bold female directors working to change their industry, check out our episode with Sarah Polly.

• 20:42Speaker 07

  I think that I hugely benefited from this very unusual experience I'd had, which is that I'd worked with a few female filmmakers as a young actor, which was a really big deal then, like to have worked with Catherine Bigelow, to have worked with Isabel Coichette, to have these models. And as soon as I expressed the slightest interest in directing, they were just like, okay, you're a dog with a bone, don't let the bone go. Everyone's going to try to take away from you. I remember Catherine Bigelow said this, everyone will try to take the bone away from you, hold on to the bone.

• 21:12Alec Baldwin?

  To hear more of Taller's Slangers Conversation with Sarah Polly, go to hearsthething.org. After the break, Justine Bateman shares her vision of the potentially frightening future for actors now that AI is getting stronger every day.

• 21:36Speaker 06

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  It's a homicide detective down here.

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  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 21:52Alec Baldwin?

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  Ryan Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

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• 23:31Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. After decades of work in television and film, Justine Bateman pivoted from acting to writing and directing her own films, including Violet, starring Olivia Munn and Justin Theroux. As someone who has worked tirelessly on both sides of the camera, I was curious how she found the business has changed in her lifetime.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  I'll tell you what's really sad for me. So as a filmmaker, I'm taking meetings as a director and a writer with development executives. And the development executives that I've met, that are some of these studios, who you talk to them, and one of the things that's really telling for me is, I ask them, what's your favorite film? And sometimes they'll give an answer, and I'll go like, oh, this person knows what's going on. And I talk a little bit more with them, and then I just go, hey, what kind of films do you want to make? And they're like, hey, listen, I would love to do, and maybe this is blowing smoke up my ass, but I'd love to do this film that you just pitched me. That kind of thing is exactly the type of thing I want to do.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  But I can't because I've been tasked to make six genre films for fill-in-the-blank streamer. And I'm like, oh, that sucks. Like, that's what you're bound to do now, even though you love film and you sound like a real development executive? They're like, yeah, that's what I have to do. So if you have any action film, you just hear the life coming out of their voice when they say this. So if you have any action films, or horror, or, you know, not that there's anything wrong with action or horror and stuff, but like, that's not what they want to be doing. And those kinds of films are fine, but not when they're 90% of what's out there. It's ridiculous.

• 25:16Alec Baldwin?

  But you can see also that their judgment cuts both ways, meaning they either try to hedge their bets and bring people in who are not very creative, they're not very innovative, unique, what have you. And they bring them in, and we just see the same shit all the time. They give some people all the money in the world, and maybe they shouldn't have, and they don't give, you know, and this is what they hate. This is what they want to take out of the business.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Talking about Seinfeld and how much money he made because he created this show and stuff, I just want to remind people that, first of all, it takes years, years to get a financial success like that. And once you get it, you may not get another one. There are some unicorns out there that have, I mean, you look at like Harrison Ford, I mean, I don't know what his compensation was, but the idea that he was in three massive, like massive cultural impact films, that's very unusual. Okay, so it takes years. So if you amortize this money out, like for me, my film Violet, took me a year and a

• 26:26Speaker 02

  half hustling every single day for a year and a half to get the money together to do that film, and that was a low-budget film. When you look at like what I was paid for it, if I were to like, spread that out over all the time it took me to get that film made, it's probably 10 cents an hour. And the other thing is when you look at how much money like anybody makes like off a TV show or something like this, I want to remind everybody how reticent studios and networks are to part with money. And if they're parting with that much money, then you need to think about how much more money they made off of that show. And they're giving Seinfeld a small amount of that.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  So that's where a lot of the money is going. And then you're talking about actors and paying, paying, you know, one big actor and then screwing the rest of the cast, which I think is not right. But think about going forward. I mean, a lot of the movie stars now are decidedly older, right? And they all became movie stars pretty much in their twenties, right? What I can't think of a clutch of movie stars that have been created now in their twenties that compares to, say, 50 years ago, or even 30 years ago.

• 27:46Alec Baldwin?

  Very different now.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  So even, they were even kind of winding that down, you know? Where pretty soon it's just going to be, like you said.

• 27:55Alec Baldwin?

  The interchangeability is a real goal of theirs. I mean, because what someone said to me once, that was really behind AI, beyond money, was, or linked to money, I should say, beyond having to entice a star to do a script. You decide what you, you decide the movie you want to do, you cast it, you make it. You just fashion the whole thing like you're baking a cake. And the other thing they said to me was that, you know, the computer doesn't have to go to rehab. The computer doesn't lock themselves in their trailer because she broke up with her boyfriend. The computer doesn't punch the director in the face in some altercation over some, you know, perceived indignity.

• 28:36Alec Baldwin?

  All the behavior that now the studios and networks have found a way to profit from, you know, exposing the warts and the missteps of stars. Years ago, and I do mean a million light years ago, the press flacks for the studios did everything in their power to keep Lwella Parsons and Heta Hopper and Walter Winchell and all them kind of calm down. The star is gay and he's married, the woman had a baby out of wedlock, she has a black boyfriend, all that crazy crap that they were getting attacked for. He's an alcoholic, he's in rehab or what have you. All the things that they would protect you from, they tried to protect you in order to keep your star gleaming.

• 29:20Alec Baldwin?

  Now you go to work at Warner Brothers and you walk down one hallway to do a movie, you walk down another hallway to do a TV show, and around the corner is TMZ that they own, who's trying every way they can, they're making every effort to destroy your reputation and your career.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Well, another way that they would destroy it is if SAG doesn't get the protections they're seeking, you know, if you, and this is something that an actor could do just voluntarily, like you were talking about, the actor allowing his voice to be cloned. You could get yourself scanned, like if anyone's seen this 2013 film called The Congress, where Robin Wright plays an actress who's down on her luck, you know, was a big star, and she allows herself to be digitally scanned. And in exchange, she has to promise to never act again because she'll dilute the value of the scan if she herself acts.

• 30:11Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, my God.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  And then, you know, regrets her decision. This is, and you look at that and you go like, oh, how prescient that is. But that's actually based on a 1973 book by Stanislaw Lem. And this is, I mean, this guy, I hadn't read him yet, you know, I mean, read Philip Dick and Ray Bradbury and all that, but this guy, Stanislaw Lem, if anyone wants to read, he's so on it about AI back in the seventies. It's amazing. But, so if you did that, right, let's say somebody had a scan of you, Alec, and then your agencies, which by the way, the talent, big talent agencies have divisions at their agencies that are encouraging actors to get scanned, because then, yes, you don't have all those things you said, but you also don't have an actor who's too tired, or has a family obligation, or is already booked.

• 30:56Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  So imagine if, yeah, and if, if your agent had a scan of you, he could potentially triple and quadruple book you, so that you're doing three or four films at the same time. Of course, it's not you.

• 31:13Alec Baldwin?

  Writer, director, Justine Bateman. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend. And be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Justine Bateman shares her thoughts on the life cycle of fame.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  911, what's your emergency? Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder wantons. 911 Nashville returns.

• 31:52Speaker 04

  There's a homicide detective down here.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 31:58Alec Baldwin?

  All sins swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 32:01Speaker 04

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 32:02Alec Baldwin?

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  Brian Philippi joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 32:11Speaker 07

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• 33:39Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. The multi hyphenate Justine Bateman recently added author to her resume. In 2021, she released a book on women and aging called Face: One Square Foot of Skin. And before that, in 2018, she published Fame: The Hijacking of Reality. I wanted to know what drew her to explore that complex topic in print.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Well, when I wrote Fame, which is about the life cycle of fame, and some famous people don't experience this complete life cycle, which is it begins, it grows, it levels off, and then starts to descend and then goes away. So I've experienced that entire life cycle. Somebody like Brad Pitt, you know, he's at the leveling off. Everybody just knows he's famous and will probably never experience the backend like, like I have and others have. So I thought that was very interesting and it was very interesting to process the backend of that life cycle. And then I started wondering, I started thinking about that intangible fame thing, like when somebody, if Brad Pitt walks into the room, everything in the room, everything that was happening in that room,

• 34:54Speaker 02

  all the attitudes, the conversations people were having, say, in a room in a restaurant, say, stops and people sit differently. Something wafts itself through the room and changes people's behaviors. So that's how that started. I wanted to look at that. And then what it wound up being was a, a real look at that life cycle from the inside, my experiences with it. And then my theories and sociologic, established sociological theories on why people behave the way they do to famous people at different points in that life cycle.

• 35:26Alec Baldwin?

  Now with you, with you, was it something that you, you know, you're in the water and the current is pulling you away from a mainstream career? You were obviously one of the stars of a huge hit show. We were actually on the, at the Hampton's Film Festival where I programmed a summer documentary series. We almost had Michael come and do his doc. And he was going to do a Q and A with us, but he pulled out because I guess he hasn't really been feeling that great lately. We were going to do his, the Michael J. Fox documentary out there. But in your case, I wonder, when you're famous and you're on a successful show, and I'm not saying this to be kind, that was a funny show. Everybody knew that was a really well-written and clever show. Did it kind of ebb and you're floating away, like the rip currents are pulling you away

• 36:09Alec Baldwin?

  from groovy town because you didn't care? You didn't, you didn't mind that? You did, did you put up a fight and you wanted to stay prominent in the business? And it didn't work out or you didn't give a shit?

• 36:21Speaker 02

  No, no, it wasn't like that. It was more, it was more of a, kind of a life experience. And, and this is what I go into in the book. What I talk about in the book is that we all have our reality, right? Who we're married to, or who our parents are, what city we live in, or what gender we are, or, or what language we speak, what job we have, all these things, what, what, what time we are in, right? And if any one of those things were to change, for a lot of people, it can be traumatic sometimes, right? Like somebody you love dies, or you have to, you get relocated your job to another country.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  So you have to adjust your reality to that because you have a lot of things attached to these components of our reality, justifiably. And we attach our, sometimes our self-worth, you know, if it has to do with jobs or something, or identity, maybe who we're married to and things like that. So for a very, very small amount of people, fame is one of those components. And when it first starts happening, and I know you can relate to this, you're like, oh, this is, this is weird thing is happening around me, blah, blah, blah. But then it becomes so constant. You're like, okay, I'm just going to absorb this. I'm going to receive this. This is part of who I am now. And it's not somebody saying, that's right. Don't you know who I am? And I'm going to get these tables at these restaurants.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  It's not that. It's that that is what's happening. You make a reservation at a restaurant, you say your name and they go, oh, Ms. Bateman, of course, yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, we, I know I said there weren't any tables, but when you're very famous, like people enjoyed your work. There's nothing nefarious about it. People enjoyed your work and they genuinely want to, in their way, if they run a restaurant, whatever it is, they want to sort of give back to you. Like, oh, I loved your show or your film or your music or whatever. And please come in, be my, we'd love to buy you a bottle of wine at dinner, whatever. It's this nice kind of exchange. Okay. Now that happens so consistently that you just accept it as part of your reality. It's just happening all around you all the time.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  And if that goes on for many, many years, like it did for me and for many others, when that starts shifting, it is akin to those big life changes. I said that for, you know, any, in anybody's life, right?

• 38:49Alec Baldwin?

  Very disorienting, yeah.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  It starts pulling away and anything you had attached to it, that you had reasonably attached to it, your identity, your self-worth, all these different things. When that starts pulling away, it starts, if you, I always picture like, you know, that film Man Called Horse, you know, Richard Harris up there? And he had those, so anybody hasn't seen it, he has to go through this sort of ritual.

• 39:10Alec Baldwin?

  The ritual, yeah.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  And he, there's this big pole in the center of where everybody's standing, and it has ropes attached to the top of it with hooks at the end of it. And he has to hook these into skin on his chest.

• 39:23Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, into his pectoral muscles.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  And pull away from it. Now, so I always picture when-

• 39:27Alec Baldwin?

  One of the most grotesque scenes in the movie, actually.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  It really is. So when fame is-

• 39:31Alec Baldwin?

  I can't believe you're referencing Man Called Horse.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Fame is moving away from you. If you had anything attached to it, and there's many things that you didn't even realize you attached to it, it starts pulling away like that and it's painful. So I, in the book, I say like, I had to recognize what was attached to it and I had to unhook it before it ripped my chest apart, so to speak, right?

• 39:54Alec Baldwin?

  My last question for you, I mean, you've had such a varied and fascinating life in terms of being a big TV star and then going through all these different aspects of your life, directing and going back to school, writing books and so forth. For you, do you miss acting?

• 40:14Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting, Alec. It wasn't really up to me. Acting was really good to me for a long time. And it really was something I, I, it never crossed my mind before it actually occurred. I never grew up thinking I was going to be an actor. I just sort of fell into it and I was gifted at it. It was, I fell into my vocation. And then I got to a point where my life just turned a corner. And funny enough, it was, you know, the last WGA strike around 2007. And I knew, oh my God, this is what I was born for, the, to, to the writing. And I'd already been writing scripts, but just like keeping them on my computer, not knowing what to do with them. And I'd wanted to direct since I was 19, but the timing never felt right.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  So I started writing and producing and in the digital space and I was off to the races. And from that point, there was a period where inexplicably, for five years, I mean, I understand it, I understood it after, but for five years, I would have all kinds of auditions and I worked all the time up until that point. For five years, I did not get one job off an audition. And that was really, really confusing. Talk about having your reality tossed upside down. But at the same time, I was writing all these proposals and scripts and everything for brands and doing all this work in the digital space and speaking on panels and all this. And I knew that the writing and directing, that was where I was supposed to go.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  But I'd always acted, so how could that door have just been slammed shut? And, and it was very confusing. And it was very upsetting because that kind of, you know, tore my reality a little bit like that. But I realized like, that had to happen. My life had to do that. Or God, your destiny, whatever somebody wants to call it, it had to happen or I would not have been committed 100% in the direction I had to go, which was writing and directing and producing films, writing books, and, you know, going to school and getting a computer science degree. I would have just continued to just do, you know, be on TV shows or whatever it was.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Because I, at the risk of sounding absolutely arrogant, I was a great actor and I, at that point, when I couldn't get a work off of any of those auditions, I was doing the best acting I'd ever done. So it wasn't up to me and I love what I'm doing now. I mean, I feel like everything I've done before my writing, directing and producing career began was prep for now.

• 42:54Alec Baldwin?

  Well, I'm not saying this to be kind, but I mean, you're so bright. I wonder if the world of acting today, as it exists today, would be a complete waste of your resources and your time. But I want to thank you because I've watched you online with this AI thing and you're a great voice for this. You've got such great experience in the business and with the union and so forth. And I do hope that we have a way to, I mean, I don't like these contentious words because people used to talk about breaking unions, but I hope we have a ability to break the producers. They've got to understand that the way this business works, as many people don't realize is, a director makes a movie. He might make a movie every year and a half or two years. So he has to have an income that'll last him two years.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 43:39Alec Baldwin?

  My great thanks to you.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  And to you. I think you're an incredible artist and have so admired and enjoyed your work. I hope someday that I get to be a director on one of your films.

• 43:54Alec Baldwin?

  I'm available. My very best to you and thank you. Thank you.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 44:05Alec Baldwin?

  My thanks to Justine Bateman. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese, and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

• 44:47Alec Baldwin?

  Okay, laundry stinks, literally. I mean, you could just keep buying new underwear. Not that I've ever done that. Or maybe sort your clothes into piles based on how re-wearable or filthy they are. Or just use Arm & Hammer Deep Clean. It's made for real life stinks and stains.

• 45:05Speaker 07

  So even if you don't do laundry the quote "right way," Deep Clean will knock it out. I mean, it is from the number one liquid detergent brand that tackles more loads than any other. Come clean with Arm & Hammer Deep Clean. Number one claim based on total wash loads sold. This week on Game Recognized Game with Brianna Stewart and me, Miles Turner. We talk with two-time WNBA All-Star and current ESPN analyst, Janae Agbumike, about tearing her Achilles tendon while playing in China and how a deep connection with her sister, Nneka, helped the recovery process. Nneka claims to have felt something while she was sleeping and that's why she was up when I called. And I was like, oh my gosh, Nneka, I'm hurt. And I think this is a problem. Listen to Game Recognized Game with Stewart and Miles on the iHeart Radio app, Apple

• 45:50Speaker 07

  Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 45:54Speaker 07

  What's that? My fresh detector. Uh, your what? There it is. What is it detecting? Fresh produce, fresh meat. Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 46:08Speaker 07

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• 46:21Speaker 00

  Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Iwanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisi DiGiulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.