Pod Insights Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin From the Archives: Jon Robin Baitz About this episode 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.
Originally aired June 4th, 2012.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:50 Alec Baldwin? This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio.
1:55 Speaker 07 Whatever it is, whatever you do, you're our daughter, and I will love you.
2:02 Alec Baldwin? John Robin Bates has a new play on Broadway. Recently nominated for a Tony, Other Desert Cities is about family dysfunction and the choices we make.
2:13 Speaker 07 There are consequences to our actions. What does that mean? How could I trust you?
2:23 Speaker 07 How could I ever be in your presence, my dear?
2:26 Alec Baldwin? Robbie, as he's known to many, pursued similar themes in the drama he created and executive-produced for ABC, Brothers and Sisters. Robbie's strengths as a playwright are magnified by the talent he surrounds himself with. Dan Sullivan directed Substance of Fire in 1992. Joe Mantello directed Other Desert Cities. Robbie Bates often writes for specific actors he admires, like Stacy Keach and Ron Rifkin, who have worked on several of Robbie's stage and screen projects. In the theater world, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who wouldn't want to work with Robbie. He comes across as kind, human, and humble.
3:10 Alec Baldwin? During our conversation, he confessed there's been a dark side to his success on Broadway. He's been spoiled. John Robin Bates can barely think about going back to the smaller theaters.
3:20 Speaker 07 I'm ruined. I'm ruined from Off-Broadway. Now, I sort of say things like, "Well, that play's an Off-Broadway play. It's not a Broadway play." Making fun of myself. The difference is, you're in this great, great, grand old house that's built for a kind of big experience, and the drama is somehow expanded. I mean, I've listened. I never knew the difference. So I was always...
3:46 Alec Baldwin? And when you're there, you feel there's just a different tapestry there when you're in a Broadway house? That lends itself to the kind of the import of the project?
3:53 Speaker 07 There's a lot of different things going on. The audience has bought into an experience for which they've usually sadly paid more money. And so it changes the dynamic. It changes... There's more ornamentation around it in some way. The laughs change, which is odd. The laughs are sort of bigger and more expensive in some way.
4:18 Alec Baldwin? So what was the arc of Other Desert Cities before you went to Broadway? It began where?
4:22 Speaker 07 In the Mitzi New House, which is the beautiful jewel theater in the basement of Lincoln Center.
4:28 Alec Baldwin? How many seats?
4:29 Speaker 07 $299, I think.
4:30 Alec Baldwin? Small.
4:31 Speaker 07 Small, intimate, and in fact, even claustrophobic. What happened was Joe Mantello, who directed it, immediately had a sense of having to build space around things and that, once it moved in the transfer. I actually believe the play got better in its move. It just all came together in some way. I did a little work on the play and...
4:56 Alec Baldwin? For example, what work did you do?
4:58 Speaker 07 I worked a little bit on the ending of the play, the last few minutes of the play.
5:03 Alec Baldwin? But it went so well off-Broadway and Lincoln Center. When you do that kind of thing, what is it that propels you to do that?
5:10 Speaker 07 It's just the knowledge that there's more to mine from it. And mostly it was, you know, Joe's great sort of probing sense of, I think there's a deeper truth there, I think we've glossed over something or skipped over something.
5:25 Alec Baldwin? You have a success now on Broadway that if I'm, I could be mistaken, but it's been a while since you had it to this level. This is like Substance of Fire again, you know, where you had great, great notices and people who said wonderful things about your career and your future. That was 20 years ago.
5:41 Speaker 07 I know.
5:42 Alec Baldwin? When you look back on some of your plays, would you change them?
5:44 Speaker 07 I can't. I just have to keep moving forward. I can't do it. I know that people do, but, you know, I can't fight old wars. I would find it disablingly backwards-looking for myself to go back. I think some of my plays have been less successful to me than others. And to me, it's all been about the process of getting to the next play or getting to the next day. This play, though, at the core of it, it comes out of trying to understand the ways
6:26 Speaker 07 in which people collapse, even though the subject is not necessarily depression.
6:32 Alec Baldwin? I want to take two plays, Substance of Fire, Sullivan directed, and now you're on Broadway and had been at the Mid Sea with Other Desert Cities, and Joe directed. Compare and contrast Sullivan with Joe, in terms of their directing techniques.
6:48 Speaker 07 They're very similar. They are meticulous, meticulous miniaturists with big expansive visions of what logic and a world are comprised of. They're both indefatigable. They never give up. They live and breathe it. Their approaches are very different. Dan has a kind of, almost holistic, view of the logic of a play. And Joe, because, I don't know, maybe because he was an actor for a long time, even though
7:29 Speaker 07 Dan had been an actor, Joe looks for a different kind of character logic. He's always asking, and what happens next, dramaturgically? He's very much about the engine and the motor. And Dan is, well, he's also, actually, he's actually all, they're so similar that it's only a matter of their temperaments that are different.
7:54 Alec Baldwin? How are they different?
7:55 Speaker 07 Dan is...
7:57 Alec Baldwin? Like a priest.
7:58 Speaker 07 Yeah, he's more Jesuitical.
8:01 Alec Baldwin? And Mantello was what? To the extent that you want to say.
8:06 Speaker 07 He's passionately, passionately dedicated to leaving no stone unturned. And I think one of the reasons he went back to acting this last year, did The Normal Heart on Broadway, and I think it's because he had to re-experience the sort of dynamic of what it means to be an actor, to get under the skin of the experience and find out what kind of communicator he is with actors by acting again. Dan has a kind of remove about him, and Joe tends to delve...
8:47 Speaker 07 Sort of with sword kind of play.
8:52 Alec Baldwin? More visceral.
8:53 Speaker 07 Play, yeah. What they both have in common is real rigor about their work ethic and their intellectual understanding of a subject, of a world.
9:09 Alec Baldwin? Sometimes, although it's not always useful, I divide directors between directors that you want to please because you want them to like you and directors that you want to please because you don't want them to hate you. And I don't think I need to tell you which one would be which in this case, you know, because Joe seems so intense, just seems so smoldering all the time.
9:31 Speaker 07 Well, he.
9:31 Alec Baldwin? Is he?
9:32 Speaker 07 No, he wants you to show him. He doesn't want to have to tell you what to do. He wants you to bring something amazing to the table every day. It's why one loves, for instance, our mutual friend Nathan.
9:47 Alec Baldwin? Right.
9:48 Speaker 07 Nathan Lane, because every day he brings something new, what they call a money player.
9:55 Alec Baldwin? Many people, I think, don't understand, and this is not always the case, that the theatrical experience, movies are very, very different. When you work with a director in the theater, a lot of them don't tell you this or that, they edit.
10:10 Alec Baldwin? You know, the most famous example, who I love, is Joey Tillinger, who Tillinger basically says nothing for the three weeks, and then in the last week, he selects.
10:20 Speaker 07 Mm-hmm.
10:21 Alec Baldwin? My recollection of Joey was, it was three weeks of me doing something, and I'd say, what do you think? And he'd say, what do you think, baby? Do you think it works?
10:28 Speaker 07 I just, I can't do it that way. I see it as all about stripping away and finding the kind of improvisatory freedom that's locked in the text. And that involves a combination of savviness and analysis and getting off book really fast and being able to move around really fast. And then. Setting up.
10:58 Alec Baldwin? Joe, I'm told is a stickler for that. Get off book.
11:00 Speaker 07 Well, you can't.
11:02 Alec Baldwin? Because nothing really happens until you do.
11:03 Speaker 07 Yeah, it's difficult.
11:06 Alec Baldwin? Well, especially in a world now where, as I recall, you used to have five weeks of rehearsal for a straight play. We've gone to a four-week rehearsal. Four weeks. That goes by like you sneeze.
11:18 Speaker 07 I like shorter rehearsals. With Bob Falls, another great director, I did Three Hotels this last summer at Williamstown with Maureen Tierney and Stephen Weber, and they had two and a half weeks. Everything is dangerous, two and a half weeks.
11:35 Alec Baldwin? Tell me about when a play like Substance of Fire, how did that come to you?
11:41 Speaker 07 You know, it's interesting. That play and this play share something in common. They came out of despair. They both came out of trying to write myself out of a kind of real sense of despondency and loss.
11:58 Alec Baldwin? And to the extent you want to talk about it, what was the despondency back in 91?
12:02 Speaker 07 I had been working on a play for a long time that was, eventually became a play called A Fair Country, but at the time it was called Dutch Landscape. And I worked on it, impossible play to do when you're young about growing up. Did it at the Taper in Los Angeles. And I lost the play. I actually lost it, you know, in rehearsal and development through nobody's fault, you know, certainly not Gordon Davidson's who directed it. If anybody was at fault, if you can even use that word, because it's theater, it was me. I was just in despair over, how did I let this happen to me? I used to work at Book Soup in Hollywood.
12:49 Speaker 07 And I borrowed the office above Book Soup to try and figure out, you know, I was no longer working there. So I was sitting up in this office above the store and I was surrounded by books and I thought, oh yeah, I've read all of you. I've read you, you, you, you, you, you, you. And none of you did me any good whatsoever. I don't know how to fight. First line of substantive fire is, look at all these books. The play is about learning how to fight and articulating the things you need, articulating the ways in which you have to express yourself in order to somehow achieve a kind of victory that goes beyond words.
13:31 Alec Baldwin? What's Isaac's victory?
13:33 Speaker 07 Isaac doesn't really have a victory in an odd kind of way. He goes down with his own ship, but he's unyielding. And I think I tried to learn how to be unyielding in writing that play. It didn't do me much good.
13:48 Alec Baldwin? Why?
13:49 Speaker 07 Well, because life is life and plays are plays and you can't actually learn that much by writing them. You have to live.
13:58 Alec Baldwin? Do you find that in the ensuing years, you wind up going up against things that just crush you?
14:04 Speaker 07 Totally.
14:05 Alec Baldwin? So, right, they crush you. And you realize that, I'm not going to compare battles with television networks with going through the Holocaust, but on the other hand, the Isaac character, there are some people who, they are just incapable of the happiness that leads to real intimacy because there's something that they just cannot get over.
14:23 Speaker 07 I think it's very true. Totally true, that character. And in his case, he has very little choice. He's locked in battle with this melancholia that won't lift.
14:36 Alec Baldwin? Right. Which I think people don't have a real, honest understanding about. They don't know what it's like to be betrayed on like the ninth level, you know, something really hideous.
14:46 Speaker 07 I think despair is, the dimensions of one's despair are so difficult to quantify, so difficult to paint, so difficult to expose. And it's such a huge subject. Certainly, Other Desert Cities is steeped in despair. You know, you say, talk about network battles, but...
15:11 Speaker 07 I had, I sort of, you know, was ejected from my one adventure in television up to that point. I was creating Brothers and Sisters and it was a very unhappy, very difficult experience for me. And again, at the end of that thing, I sort of, I came back east, you know, after having been west for a little bit.
15:32 Alec Baldwin? And what was the first thing you wrote after that?
15:34 Speaker 07 Well, there are three plays in my drawer because I, I had forgotten how to write. 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 because I was so used to writing to please people.
15:52 Alec Baldwin? What happened with ABC?
15:55 Speaker 07 Well, first of all, networks being what they are, the people who commissioned the piece and who are invested in putting it on the air, end up leaving.
16:05 Alec Baldwin? Sure.
16:06 Speaker 07 And so you're left with a kind of, in a kind of-
16:09 Alec Baldwin? Stepparents.
16:10 Speaker 07 And not necessarily particularly-
16:14 Alec Baldwin? Caring, supportive stepparents.
16:17 Speaker 07 Slightly bewildered. I mean, the guy who really ran the entertainment division kept saying, "I don't understand why anybody watches this show."
16:27 Alec Baldwin? It's painful.
16:28 Speaker 07 And I would say the same thing, except for different reasons. I mean, it was really, it was bizarre.
16:33 Alec Baldwin? But how soon did you-
16:35 Speaker 07 He would call me and scream at me. I actually said to him, "I don't know who you think you're talking to."
16:40 Alec Baldwin? Yeah.
16:41 Speaker 07 And I would, you know, politely hang up and say, "I'm, I'm leaving the conversation now." At one point, I said to them, "Don't you feel like there's something wrong? I mean, look at this amazing cast. Sally Field, Calista Flockhart, Rachel Griffith, Ron Rifkin, Patty Weddick, on and on and on."
17:02 Speaker 07 Don't you think there should be some higher intention, some integrity, maybe some, I don't know, do you want, do you want to try and get an Emmy or something? I didn't even know how to speak their language, but I thought Emmy would be something that they would recognize. And a literal quote from the head of the studio was, "No, I don't need awards. The ratings are good enough for me."
17:24 Alec Baldwin? This happens in the first season?
17:27 Speaker 07 Yeah.
17:28 Alec Baldwin? The first season?
17:29 Speaker 07 Yeah.
17:30 Alec Baldwin? And you are gone after how many seasons? After the first season?
17:32 Speaker 07 Oh, yeah.
17:33 Alec Baldwin? So was, so all this takes place in one television season?
17:36 Speaker 07 Yes.
17:37 Alec Baldwin? One nine-month period?
17:38 Speaker 07 Yes. You know, someone comes in to sort of manage the show, and they're beholden to the network and the studio, as they should be, and I'm beholden to an aesthetic. And I'm an idiot for being beholden to an aesthetic. But, you know, people love the show. It went on for another four seasons after that.
17:59 Alec Baldwin? And you maintained some participation in the show, yes?
18:01 Speaker 07 No, no, no.
18:02 Alec Baldwin? How was that possible? You created the show. You were the creator of the show, correct?
18:06 Speaker 07 There was a writer's strike, and there was a force majeure clause. Force majeure being act of God. The studio network could use that clause to nullify any contract they had with anybody they liked. I had been very vocal during that strike about what I considered at the time the very unhealthy dynamic between the producers and the Writers Guild. And I wrote about this way too much.
18:37 Alec Baldwin? What was, what was the name of those blogs you wrote on Huffington Post?
18:41 Speaker 07 Leaving L.A.
18:42 Alec Baldwin? Leaving, yeah.
18:43 Speaker 07 A lot of them were very insanely painful and actually lead to, again, other desert cities. The girl in the play can't stop writing about things that affected other people.
18:54 Alec Baldwin? Right.
18:55 Speaker 07 And...
18:56 Alec Baldwin? She wants some truth.
18:57 Speaker 07 Yeah, and then she's left with the debris. So it all came out of, you know, I pick up the phone one day, and I see that, you know, people's deals are being canceled. But there are people who haven't made anything. And I, suddenly, I'm, I was gone. And I, even before that, wasn't sure to what extent I was ever going to go back. I knew I would have some involvement, but then I had none whatsoever.
19:24 Alec Baldwin? But for me, what's curious, and again, you don't have to answer this question. I'm just curious, which is, as the creator of a television show, there is typically a windfall for that person as the creator of that show. If that was taken away from you through some contractual sleight of hand, where did all that go? All went to the network? They took it all for themselves?
19:42 Speaker 07 I can't speak to that. I'm just not going to talk about that.
19:45 Alec Baldwin? Okay, okay. I don't.
19:47 Speaker 07 But I am going to say that I think it was the best thing that ever happened to me because it would have been dirty money.
19:54 Alec Baldwin? Right.
19:55 Speaker 07 I think it would have destroyed me in some way to have no pride in the thing that made me wealthy would have made me terribly uncomfortable. And I would have felt that I'd betrayed whatever promise or potential I'd set up for myself as a writer, that if I was going to survive at it, it couldn't be compromised.
20:22 Alec Baldwin? This is Alec Baldwin, and I'm talking with playwright John Robin Bates. More in a minute. We're taking a break. Stay with us.
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21:47 Speaker 01 Hey, it's Nile Rodgers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel. That last year, finishing that record was the hardest experience of my life. To find your creativity and to believe in yourself, because somewhere in the midst of it, I stopped believing that my voice mattered and that I could find it again. That's a challenge.
22:23 Alec Baldwin? I was not feeling very confident creatively, only, again, defiant in my belief that what this is about is express something honest, say something honest.
22:41 Speaker 01 Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
22:51 Alec Baldwin? This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. The idea for John Robin Bates's new play, Other Desert Cities, came to him when he was back on the East Coast.
23:02 Speaker 07 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 had written about personal events that implicated other people in some way that I hadn't taken into account the consequences. And I found myself very much like the character in my play, played by Beth Marvel and Rachel Griffith at various points, a writer who is a dangerous creature. And I had a note to myself.
23:46 Speaker 07 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 Pat Buckley, the old Doian of New York conservative politics, the wife of--
24:17 Alec Baldwin? Bill Buckley.
24:18 Speaker 07 Bill Buckley. And I'd 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, or about to be. And the Republicans of, certainly of that period, and even more so today, were very confusing to me because they didn't seem recognizable to me as having a coherent, cohesive,
24:58 Speaker 07 cogent argument for their principled positions, which had to be principled in some way. The play just came together in one fell swoop. Old California, conservatives--
25:10 Alec Baldwin? Reaganites.
25:11 Speaker 07 The old Hollywood system, Reaganites. I even remembered I'd gone to high school with, I think, the daughter of John Gavin. And I thought, you know, and because I love Touch of Evil and I think, isn't John Gavin? No, he's not in Touch of Evil.
25:24 Alec Baldwin? He's a psycho.
25:25 Speaker 07 He's in all these movies and I thought about--
25:27 Alec Baldwin? He was the ambassador to Mexico.
25:29 Speaker 07 That's right, as is the Stacy Keach character in my play. And I thought about--
25:34 Alec Baldwin? Your character's based on John Gavin.
25:39 Speaker 07 To some extent. There are all these archetypes in it.
25:41 Alec Baldwin? I love it.
25:42 Speaker 07 At the back of all this, of course, there's also Joe Mantello, who, you know, we're no longer a couple, but he's my family, my best friend.
25:51 Alec Baldwin? And you cease being a couple what year?
25:53 Speaker 07 Two thousand and two?
25:55 Alec Baldwin? So it was a while.
25:56 Speaker 07 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.
26:09 Alec Baldwin? 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.
26:20 Speaker 07 Jesus.
26:20 Alec Baldwin? I thought, wow.
26:21 Speaker 07 Well, it's terrible because the worst thing that can happen to an artist, I'm invisible.
26:26 Alec Baldwin? True.
26:26 Speaker 07 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 reach things very slowly and I, I sometimes it seems facile and easy and to me, sometimes my thoughts and my sort of expressed opinions in plays seem hollow or naive even.
26:52 Alec Baldwin? Why?
26:53 Speaker 07 Because I know there are deeper truths always to be found and that I'm...
26:58 Alec Baldwin? But don't you think that seeking them and being aware of that makes you more likely to find it than anybody else? You didn't go to college, did you?
27:04 Speaker 07 No.
27:05 Alec Baldwin? Why? You wound up educating yourself.
27:08 Speaker 07 I wish I'd gone to college.
27:09 Alec Baldwin? Why didn't you?
27:11 Speaker 07 I was a depressed and unsettled kid and...
27:14 Alec Baldwin? Why?
27:15 Speaker 07 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...
27:32 Alec Baldwin? You grew up where?
27:33 Speaker 07 Varyingly, LA.
27:36 Alec Baldwin? You were born where?
27:37 Speaker 07 In LA.
27:38 Alec Baldwin? And you lived there till you were how old?
27:39 Speaker 07 Seven, then Brazil for three years in Rio, and then South Africa for six and a half years till I was eighteen.
27:48 Alec Baldwin? And your father was in the condensed milk business?
27:50 Speaker 07 My father worked for a giant multinational, Carnation Milk, yeah. It was a condensed milk business.
27:57 Alec Baldwin? So LA, Brazil, South Africa?
28:00 Speaker 07 And then back to LA.
28:01 Alec Baldwin? And when you finally get back to LA, how old are you?
28:03 Speaker 07 Eighteen.
28:04 Alec Baldwin? So high school's over?
28:05 Speaker 07 I just finished high school. I'd sort of lost time through all the travel.
28:08 Alec Baldwin? What was high school in South Africa like?
28:11 Speaker 07 I couldn't get used to things like cricket and corporal punishment. You know, you get caned 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.
28:53 Alec Baldwin? How did that manifest itself, if you can say?
28:58 Speaker 07 I, I think I-
28:59 Alec Baldwin? Did you know you were gay then?
29:02 Speaker 07 Yes, I definitely knew that. I knew-
29:04 Alec Baldwin? Did that add to your depression? Did it make you feel more isolated in that environment you live in? Because it wasn't proactive, the gay community there.
29:11 Speaker 07 In 1973?
29:15 Alec Baldwin? Talk about getting caned.
29:16 Speaker 07 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.
29:34 Alec Baldwin? Conceived in terror. I need you to write a play for me. I want it to be called "Conceived in Terror." There you go, ahead.
29:41 Speaker 07 Well, no, I mean, Death of a Salesman is, is a family that lives in terror.
29:46 Alec Baldwin? You were how old when you arrived in Durban?
29:48 Speaker 07 Ten.
29:49 Alec Baldwin? So you were there eight years.
29:51 Speaker 07 Yeah, I was there almost eight years.
29:53 Alec Baldwin? Critical time, 10 years. So all of your real back half of your childhood, your teenage years especially, you are in Durban.
30:00 Speaker 07 Guess I was 17 or something when we left.
30:02 Alec Baldwin? But you had finished the high school program?
30:04 Speaker 07 No, no, I finished it in L.A.
30:05 Alec Baldwin? You did? Where?
30:06 Speaker 07 Beverly Hills High School. Yeah, 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.
30:16 Alec Baldwin? Literally?
30:17 Speaker 07 Yeah, or something.
30:19 Alec Baldwin? Who were your friends then? Who did you become friends with, anyone?
30:22 Speaker 07 Oh, yeah. In fact, Jenny Livingston went on to make Paris is Burning, great documentary. Tina Landau, a great theater director. Gina Gershon, my oldest friend from high school. We were in plays together in the drama department. So I became friends with, and I say this with real respect and love, with fellow freaks.
30:43 Speaker 05 We're taking a break, so stay with us.
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32:07 Speaker 01 Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by my friend, John Ledge. What still makes you just sit down at the piano? If you sat down at 9 a.m. and then at noon, you had a full song that you recorded and put in your voice recorder or you recorded at your studio. You just created something brand new that didn't exist when you woke up. What a beautiful feeling it is. I'm always excited to write something new.
32:49 Speaker 01 I've been writing for Broadway, which has been a new challenge with new collaborators and these amazing performers who are triple threats, who can sing and dance and act and do all these amazing things. And I want to keep feeling that. And so that means not resting on my laurels, going out there and continuing to create something new.
33:07 Speaker 02 Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
33:17 Alec Baldwin? How were you feeling about yourself and about life that last year in Beverly Hills?
33:21 Speaker 07 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 artist or anything. And I walk into this house and there is a giant David Hockney. And next to it is a giant Motherwell. I'm standing in front of this giant painting that's famous, that I've looked at in books, Thames and Hudson art books, while I was in Durban at the art library of the university.
34:03 Speaker 07 I don't know, the world was just very real and different and it was easier to like have sex and it was easier to to function.
34:12 Alec Baldwin? Were you writing?
34:14 Speaker 07 I guess I was sort of writing, yeah.
34:16 Alec Baldwin? What were you writing?
34:19 Speaker 07 I was writing really bad short stories about alienated Paul Bowles kids adrift in foreign countries, which is basically, to tell you the truth, still what I'm doing. It just looks slightly, the wallpaper's prettier now.
34:37 Alec Baldwin? Where were you living at that age?
34:39 Speaker 07 I was living, um. On friends sofas, like the parents of children I went to high school with.
34:46 Alec Baldwin? You were the beloved house guest.
34:48 Speaker 07 I was, I was just this 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.
34:58 Alec Baldwin? How do we get from there to fair country Gordon Davidson?
35:04 Speaker 07 You know, in Pinocchio where he falls in with actors? I'm walking around, I ran into this girl I knew from high school. 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 a new assistant.
35:29 Speaker 07 He needs a new assistant. And I was like, well, what does he do? And she said, oh, he's a film producer.
35:35 Alec Baldwin? Who was the film producer?
35:37 Speaker 07 This great guy and he.
35:42 Alec Baldwin? Was he a working producer? I'm only asking for a name to make it easy.
35:44 Speaker 07 So I thought. 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 and had worked around the edges of it or in it, 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.
36:22 Alec Baldwin? With a nest of scorpions?
36:24 Speaker 07 Yes, I did. I found myself, I said, this I know. Yeah, because nobody is trying to pass. It's a den of thieves.
36:32 Alec Baldwin? We're hitting the ball here.
36:33 Speaker 07 It was still the days of speakerphone 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 there would suddenly be a pause. Someone would say, geez, if you could see what I see right now, that girl walking down Sunset, she is so beautiful. The fight was over.
36:58 Speaker 07 Nothing meant anything.
36:59 Alec Baldwin? An archaic of sex.
37:00 Speaker 07 That's right. One of them asked for a glass of water, this was my first few weeks there. 1982, what do I know? He would go to the sink, bring a glass of water, 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." He'd say, "I want professional water." And the whole time became about professional water.
37:26 Alec Baldwin? How long did that last?
37:29 Speaker 07 Two, three, four, five. Like, four some years?
37:33 Alec Baldwin? No!
37:34 Speaker 07 No, but it got-
37:35 Alec Baldwin? You were in the scorpion's nest, looking down at the women's asses for four years?
37:39 Speaker 07 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-gardist, odd playwrights out there in L.A., living on the fringes of everything. And so, I lived between these two worlds, one of which was sort of drunk and druggie, and the other was insane megalomaniac-- I can't say the word.
38:12 Alec Baldwin? Megalomaniacal.
38:14 Speaker 07 Thank you.
38:15 Alec Baldwin? That's what I'm here for.
38:16 Speaker 07 Megalomaniacal.
38:17 Alec Baldwin? You just think of the words and I'll say them.
38:18 Speaker 07 Thank you.
38:19 Alec Baldwin? We're gonna beam each other. Go ahead.
38:21 Speaker 07 I know, it's like Bluetooth without the technology.
38:24 Alec Baldwin? Bluetooth me. Go ahead.
38:25 Speaker 07 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, which is something I just did, I said, "Yeah, it's called Mislansky-Zalinski." On the spot, I just came up with the name.
38:42 Alec Baldwin? Based on those guys?
38:43 Speaker 07 Yeah. I said, "Yeah, it's called Mislansky-Zalinski."
38:45 Alec Baldwin? You based it on the guys in the tower?
38:46 Speaker 07 It's just them talking. And I put all my notes together, and we did it.
38:52 Alec Baldwin? That was the first one you wrote?
38:54 Speaker 07 Yeah.
38:55 Alec Baldwin? Now, you're on Broadway. The show's a big success, people have said wonderful things about the show. I worship Stacy. I mean, I worship Stacy.
39:05 Speaker 07 He is-
39:06 Alec Baldwin? He's one of the great wild mustangs of all theater history. And in this piece, it is that Reagan crowd, it is that Bush crowd, it is that blue-blood Republican crowd, conservative crowd.
39:20 Speaker 07 Stacy captures that completely. I wrote the part for him.
39:23 Alec Baldwin? He does. You wrote the part for him?
39:24 Speaker 07 Oh, yeah. I knew that there was nobody- Who could capture that better, ever? We'd worked together before. He'd done Ten Unknowns at the Taper. And it was a revelation.
39:36 Alec Baldwin? Because the character has to have a dignity as well.
39:38 Speaker 07 Yeah.
39:38 Alec Baldwin? Stacy brings in a guy where you sit there and go, "I get it. I would have followed him. I wanted him around."
39:44 Speaker 07 He's great. And I love him so much. You know, he and Joe didn't know each other. And so they got on the phone before rehearsal. And Stacy says to Joe, "You know, I've worked with Robbie before. We've worked together before. And I know him well. And do you know him? Have you worked with him? And how well do you know him?" And Joe says, "I kind of know him. And we lived together for 12 years."
40:15 Speaker 07 But that Stacy.
40:16 Alec Baldwin? I kind of know him.
40:17 Speaker 07 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 70s. The rituals 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. And it's a privilege to be in it.
41:02 Speaker 07 I'm lucky to have found my way back to it.
41:05 Alec Baldwin? What's institutionalized in working in a theater is a hunt for truth.
41:09 Speaker 07 Totally.
41:10 Alec Baldwin? That doesn't exist in the movie business and the television business.
41:12 Speaker 07 No.
41:13 Alec Baldwin? Do you know what you're doing next? Are you on to something now that you're writing?
41:16 Speaker 07 Who knows? I can't tell yet.
41:18 Alec Baldwin? You can't?
41:19 Speaker 07 I just can't tell.
41:20 Alec Baldwin? You're scribbling.
41:21 Speaker 07 Yeah.
41:22 Alec Baldwin? You're scribbling.
41:22 Speaker 07 I'm supposed to be doing things. I'm a mess at all times.
41:33 Alec Baldwin? John Robin Bates says he feels like more of a grown up as of late. When he started out in L.A., he was couch surfing at the homes of his friend's parents. Things are different now.
41:45 Speaker 07 I have a home. I grow stuff. I'm responsible to people.
41:50 Alec Baldwin? You have a dog?
41:51 Speaker 07 I have a dog. He has three legs.
41:53 Alec Baldwin? What's the dog's name?
41:53 Speaker 07 Trip.
41:54 Alec Baldwin? Trip?
41:55 Speaker 07 Yeah, he has three legs. He's a great dog.
42:01 Alec Baldwin? I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
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