Out There, In Here (w/ Alec Baldwin)
Literally! With Rob Lowe- 1,273 views
- 17 Sep 2020
In which Rob and actor/writer/producer Alec Baldwin discuss tension on the set of Glengarry Glen Ross, a voicemail from George C Scott, the projects that got away, and their political ambitions (or lack thereof). Plus: we learn what was always on page 73.
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Do you remember that sandwich? Oh, yeah, I remember everything. I'm Dan Pashman from The SPORCK Fool podcast. We're celebrating our 10th anniversary by sharing our listeners all time favorite episodes, each with a brand new update, including the story of our search for a beloved sandwich shop in Syria. What made it special? Is it still there? Are the owners alive or dead? We'll take you from Aleppo to Austria, from Detroit to New York to Istanbul, all in search of a sandwich.
The sportcoat.
Subscribe now, wherever you listen. There he is. Oh, no, you, you, oh, you I'm like one of those actors that wants to be last to the set, so I needed to make sure, you know, you had arrived.
I heard that about you. I heard this like banging on the trailer and God knows what you were doing in the trailer. You know what I was doing. I think the world knows what you're doing, but I think that ship has sailed.
Yeah, that ship is. Welcome to literally with me, Rob Lowe. I'm so excited about this particular podcast, my guest is someone I've known forever and ever and ever. We were competitors. We were peers. I've learned a ton from him. He's a master of drama and comedy, a great raconteur as a wonderful family, cares about the country deeply. I just want one of my people that whenever I see in a room, just I just light up and I'm so glad to be around him.
We have Alec Baldwin. My first memory of you and us having a relationship was and this would be surprising to you. It was the 80s and I had passed out on the beach and I woke up and it was you sort of nudging me to wake up. And we had a nice little talk. I don't know why you we were out in Broad Beach in Malibu, Zoomer. Right. Were you living there?
We had a great talk and it was like a summer. Did you have a house? I don't remember the auspices because frankly, I don't remember much.
I was shooting a movie. I recall I was shooting a movie for quite a while back in the days when we used to shoot a movie for like three or four months, 12 or 15 weeks. I was shooting the hunt for Red October and I was staying in Beachwood Canyon to be near Paramount because I would just drive down the road and I was right there on Melrose at Paramount. So I rented a house near the studio. And on the weekends I wanted to get as far from Hollywood in that that area as I could.
So I drove, you know, kind of very dedicatedly. I drove out to Zouma. I used to meet al Qaeda. Yes. You were with al Qaeda.
That's at our condo there up on near Zoomer. Yeah, I went to Zouma, like every weekend was.
So that was such a great time. Ali was there. Amelio was there really. We'd all play beach volleyball. And it was it was it was right. It was right towards the end of my drinking career. It was. And I was just kind of trying to figure it out. I remember that. And you had great advice to me, has always been where do you live?
And on the beach. No, I live in Montecito. So I to remember the buildings up there. I used to see Belial.
I love him so much, you know, I mean that I'm a fifth ball. How many Baldwins are there officially or even unofficially?
Well, there are four of my brothers and I are four in my family than all of us. I have three sons. I got remarried and I've had three boys in a row. We had a girl and three boys in a row. I tell people the quarantining that I said they ask what it's like out here. We're in East Hampton at our house locked down.
And I said, It's like The Shining meets the Little Rascals here every day just over the Catal and the Little Rascals go running down the hallway with an axe in their hand and then that's it cut.
So I, I say the same. It's the exact quote I've been using. It's like the shining the better weather because I'm in Montecito. How many kids do you have.
I just have two and they're grown now.
There are my, my oldest son is. Yeah. Two boys and they're like men ones you know, just passed the bar exam and. No, yes. We're going to grad. Where did he go. He did Duke undergrad. Wow. And and then Loyola Law School here in L.A. and he was just on the job hunt when all the coronaviruses hit. So he's stressing about not having a job. What kind of what kind of law does he want to practice?
Entertainment law. OK, but really what he wants to do is use it the law degree as a tool to do something more entrepreneurial and not do. He doesn't want to be a traditional lawyer. He wants to use it as a springboard into something else, which and you raised a little more complicated. So my other son went to Stanford and then one in his summers. I know I married a smart woman. So, yeah, they got all her research genetics.
Yeah. And and then on in his summers, he would intern for Ryan Murphy and Ryan offered him a job when he was done. And at that we as kismet would have it. I started a show with Ryan. And so now he's right. And long story short, he's on the writing staff of nine one one Lone Star and wrote Episode six last year that we did. And, you know, he's a he's a show creator. Writer.
Sometimes actors do this thing.
Now, where do they live or did they come home? The quarantine? Oh, they're back here for quarantine. They're here. They're here. They came back, came Mexico to see them. It's been so great. It's been. But I'm like you.
I know you love your your your brood. You're all over them. I'm the same. You know, I'm I'm very involved and always have been and always, you know, they're you know, I try to strike that balance of, you know, your kids shouldn't be your best friends because they need a father more than they need a best friend. They've got plenty of best friends. But that said, they're my best friends. That makes sense. We really do have a tough task as fathers trying to walk that line.
I know. What do you and your beautiful, amazing wife, I have not yet met, but the reviews are in and they're stunning. Do you do you guys agree on parenting like parenting stuff? Because Sheryl and I think the one of the reasons we've been married so long is that. We always agree 100 percent when it comes to discipline, big decisions, whether it's, you know, how structured to be not so that always we're just always on the same page.
And there was no way of knowing that, by the way, when I married her. But I. I see. Dick, that's a good point. You can't predict what kind of mom they'll be, right? Well, you get a woman when you get a woman and you have kids. I mean, we had four kids in four and a half years and my wife is pregnant again.
I just don't I mean, yeah, you need to put it away. You need to you need to, like, stop.
But in all seriousness, I mean, I hit the jackpot as far as that concerned because I wound up having a lot of kids with a woman who is a great mom. But we do not always agree. I mean, my wife prevails, if you will, but we don't always agree because, I mean, I'm I'm so much older than my wife. I mean, my God, it's also true, right? It wasn't to marry a much younger woman.
I met a woman I fell in love with and she was a very unique person. And I so I got married and we had all these kids. And listen, I come from a from a time my dad was a tough guy, you know, when he would just look at you with that look, you know, and you thought you were like, oh, God, please don't hit me up, you know?
You know, we were terrified, terrified that he was a really tough guy and with me. I mean, my wife lectures me more than my children and my wife is like, don't look at them like that. I like the look is not good. She's always lecturing me. Don't glare at them. That's not helpful. And she wants to talk them through. One kid smashes the other kid in the face with a toy. And my wife was like, no, what are you feeling that you wanted to hit him?
What is what are you going through? And I'm like, it's a generational gap we have here. Rob Lowe. It's a generational gap.
But yes, that sounds amazing, though. I could have used more of that, too, because my wife and I are the same age. And so all of the stuff we're learning now later in life, like those kind of talk about your feelings. We didn't really have so much of that. I mean, we talk about your feelings.
My father, you know, could you imagine saying, I think to my father, like, could you have to say talk about your feelings to my father?
My father would be like, you know, bang, you know, there's your feelings might like, how's that feel? How are you feeling now? What kind of feelings you have? Both. But your wife, who I met obviously eons ago, did she go back to work eventually? You know, so so this is a good it's a good little story.
So my wife, Cheryl, was one of the top makeup artists in Hollywood and specialized, I would like to say, and handsome men. And one of her clients was Al Pacino. And Mr. Alec Baldwin went on on Glengarry she was on that movie and she had other really good actors, me, Kiefer Sutherland. And I took her off the market. Yeah. So then she started a jewelry company, Shirlow Designs, and she's crushing it and she's great.
I remember vividly the other thing I remember about many of our times together. I was came to visit for two days on Glengarry. You guys were shooting in Queens and it was it happened to be the two days you worked. And I got to watch. You do always be closing.
I'm just getting my favorite story was your wife was in the room. I don't know if she remembers this. I doubt she does. But I'm in the room and it's me and spacy. And somebody else and your wife was there, and we're reading an article in the paper about a show, some kind of a play, and Kevin was saying how, oh yeah, I'd like to go see that show. And that sounds like a really smart or clever show.
It was something I don't remember the details in Arcon walked in and we've been doing the scene. You know, we had rehearsed in the summer that we went to shoot the scene and it was not a lot of fun. It wasn't happening. Costello meets Frankenstein out there. Every day was really very tense. And Arcon comes walking into the makeup room. And I said, you know, this play. I said, this sounds exactly like the kind of piece you would do.
I mean, the kind of play you would do when you were, you know, doing a lot of theater. And he literally snapped. And he literally erupted in me and he said this very kind of haiku like phrase, he literally said, he said, my God, out there in here.
And then he walked out, my God, out there in here and he stormed out. And we all looked at each other like, wow, like obviously he was like carrying with him all the Maoists of doing the scene. I said horrible things to them. And when I did the off camera for them, I said things that were ten times worse. And then eventually there's a knock at my door. I guess it was Stiner or one of them where they had real dressing rooms.
You know, you weren't in a trailer outside and they knocked on the door and I opened the door and it's him and he said, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, he does it is just it is so awful out there is so awful. Oh my God, you're so fucking horrible. It's hard now. It's like I get it. I'm so sorry. God, like, he really freaked me. And your wife was like sitting there like, you know, like cleaning some brushes, going, oh, oh.
Oh yes. This when I came to visit, you can cut the tension with a knife.
I mean, I remember I remember all those guys were not happy campers, yeah, they wanted to punch Ed Harris, wanted to punch me right in the face, but Harrison predicted that, OK, so I'm not crazy because I remember Ed Harris being fucking livid.
Live it, but you know as well as I do that like you look at text in a piece that you do, and I remember people would write scripts and they'd send in material. And I turned to the director or especially we'd take care of it before. And I'd say, well, you know, the problem with the speech is I don't think that that person would talk to me that way. They're not playing any stakes. You don't walk in and just unzip your fly and pistola everybody's shoes and try to bully people around like that.
I said that's not life. People try to, you know, maybe we'll get there. Right, right, right. The only reason that in Glengarry had worked was because these guys were all desperate, because as everybody knows, who knows the play which won the Pulitzer Prize, that role that I played is not in the play. And when I spoke to Mamet on the phone at the beginning of that whole process, I said. You know, I figured that you'd won the Pulitzer Prize.
I would have figured the play was in pretty good shape. You know, you really have to change anything to shoot the movie. He said, well, no, no.
He said there's a gap I felt, which was that these men who were not criminals, they're not criminals, they have no criminal nature. They're just ordinary men. And they're going to commit a crime. Some of them are going to commit a crime. And I need something to ratchet up the tension on them, to turn them into criminals. And he said in your character is going to come in and set the stage for that and put this undue pressure on them.
And I was like, OK, so we went and did that. And it was three days of meetings, really. You know, those guys did not want to have coffee with me. I remember sitting on an apple box in the shadows watching it. And you should know my son Johnny, the writer slash actor, he watches that speech on his iPhone, probably.
Once or twice a month wrote a thesis on it. Oh, my God can quote it.
He'll look at me on any given day and hit me with, like, a deep dive moment from it.
Hit me that similary when it's like Miller, you know, the condition of the American man, the breadwinner. You got to go out there. You've got to make money and you measure yourself by your paycheck. And you know that, that this is the Miller DNA seeping into Mamet's oeuvre, you know, in the Mamet's cadences and so forth. But I always tell the same tired story, which is Jamie Foley. I had a tough time being mean to those guys.
Here were guys who I loved. How was it in the scene? Obviously wasn't there. But Lemon, who I worshiped and and Ed and Spacey and Arkin and and Jamie Foley, the director, said, you remember that scene in Patton where he slaps the guy across the head in the tent? Sure. And because he loves the guy's got shell shock. And, you know, it's like you call yourself a soldier. He said the same thing here.
He said it's you call yourself a salesman. He said, you're going to crack these guys across the face not because you're mean, it's for their own good. These guys are so shell shocked. They're complacent. They don't realize how much trouble you've come in here to just go bang and to give them a nice cold bucket of water in the face for their own good. You're not doing it for any other reason, but to help them. And the minute he said that to me, all the blood went like running into my balls.
You know, I just got up and I went. I was like, oh, you know, I'm out there.
I was like, let's do it. You know, let's do a prior to that, I was very uptight. Let me ask you something among several that I'm assuming maybe West is one of them. What's been the some of the toughest part you played acting wise. What were some of the ones that were hard for you?
I the ones that are heart are also the ones that are so fun, it's like it's kind of like in in Behind the Candelabra, I knew I was coming into a movie where, like, fucking those guys are teasing the fuck off. Right? Just teeing off. I love that movie.
It's such a isn't it fun. It's such a fun movie. And so I was like, OK, I'm competitive. I know you're competitive. Ensembles are the greatest. I love doing ensembles because of the fraternity and the teamwork and the discipline of playing. Your piece and letting others play their piece and knowing when to go low, where they go high and all of the stuff that we celebrate from from doing ensemble work, but on the other side of it is like you don't want to get blown off the fucking screen either.
Oh, so tough tightrope to walk. Right. So I knew I was coming into I mean, Jesus Christ, Michael Douglas, one of my favorite movie star actors, and I and that's what he is. He's a movie star actor. Like his dad. Yeah, like his dad and and Matt, who has every club in the bag and he just can play anything. Yeah, but that's one where I go, OK, so what can I do?
And I there was nothing about the character really written in terms of how he looked or whatever. And I and I just knew that I had to do something to plant my flag. So I called Steven Soderbergh and said, you know how? What's the bandwidth here like, you know, like how how big a swing would you tolerate? And he was like a swing away, I'll never forget, he said, swing away, and I was like, great.
So I showed up with that look. And they liked it scored, you scored. I'm going to go back and watch that movie, not a lot of movies these days. I'll watch again, but I'm going to watch that again. You know, Michael's dad obviously just died, and he's my neighbor.
He was my neighbor. I used to see him. I used to see him all the time in Montecito up until the very end.
The most elegant, nicest man.
You know, like you said, you know, I'm going to write Michael a card. Just got I knew where he lived, but I don't want to write him at home. And I called his office to get the best address to write it because, you know, I run into them every now and then. And one time was at the U.S. Open. And Michael was funny because Michael knows I love him and I admire him very deeply. And and he was there with his wife and his father was sitting nearby.
And Michael kind of joked like like I was being insincere, that I was hugging him. He looked at me. He goes, Dad's over there. Like, I only want to talk. So went Dad's over there. So I walked over and sat down with his father for just like ten minutes. And, you know, this is a guy who I don't need to go into the whole list of films, but my God, what a great I mean, there's movie stars and then there's movie stars who are great stars and they're at the top of that world.
And they were great actors, just great actors, you know, and he was a great actor, is a great actor. And Michael is a great actor, too. I think Michael's a great actor. And I say that because there's like all the little films of, you know what I think he's great in is in Fatal Attraction. He's great in that movie because he's and he's weak and he's a victim and he's unsympathetic. And yet he still pulls you in, you know, with his acting.
And that's that's a great performance. I love that. I was also on the set of Wall Street because I was shooting a movie called Masquerade in the Hamptons. So Masquerade was ahead of its time. I really like the movie came out. It bombed as far as my movies were want to do at a certain point in the 80s.
And the writer said, fuck this, I'm not going to write movies anymore. I have an idea for a TV show I'm going to do in TV. Nobody wanted to do TV.
That man's name was Dick Wolf and he wrote his show Law and Order. So I figure I'm responsible for Dick Wolf making literally two billion dollars. And I know something. He owes you something. A little piece. I tanked it so he can go do that. But let me ask you this. You what's up? What's a part that you what's a script you have that you've had in your pocket and maybe you're too old now because. Well, because I know myself, I've got like three or four words.
I'm too old now. But once when you always wanted to do that, you didn't that you couldn't get off the ground. Name one boy.
Well, there's one actually wrote and my dear recently passed away, beloved buddy Bill Paxton.
The actor Bill Paxon, who I love, we loved, gave it to James Cameron to read post Titanic, write it right as Jim had one Titanic and is a guy.
But you got to read this. Got Rob Lowe wrote a script, but I think you're going to love it.
And James Cameron read it and indeed loved it and wanted to make it. And I was going to direct at that time. And long story short, I got The West Wing a month later. And I have been on television every season since nineteen ninety nine. Well, now how many seasons did you do West Wing?
I did for the Aaron Sorkin and I did Four Seasons together. And then we were gone. And then they did four or five. They did another three.
I believe that you weren't there. Yeah. But you wanted to be there when Sorkin was there. When the show. When Sorkin left. John. I think John Wells did. Wells Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Now you did. Oh of course. OK, so the first time I ever was aware of Sorkin was a part I wanted that you got, you bastard. And the Nicole Kidman movie and the movie Mouse that Sorkin wrote. Yeah, yeah.
He wrote that right. The only reason they hired me and not you because they couldn't afford you that was Rob Reiner told me they couldn't give them enough money if they had a no and a no. And they said, that's it. We don't have a fucking penny more than that. No, because I saw the list on his desk in the main and the little notes next to the names. And there was your name toward the top. And, you know, they couldn't afford you.
I mean, what I would have done that movie, God damn it, I would have done it for nothing. That's how I.
I remember that. That was your other great speech that the the Dr. God speech would have am God.
My favorite movie was the production staff would sit in the production office and I came in there to pick up something. I had to sign a piece of paper. Isn't it funny how we remember all these weird little moments of the movie? Yeah, and I come into the production office. We were at layered, we were at the old layer layer that God, nobody calls that whole thing. Yeah, I remember it was called layered when I shot Beetlejuice there.
Then we did this thing and we're doing the movie now is at the old Culver Studios and I walk into the production office. They said, oh, you got to come pick up a document or sign. And a bunch of these production interns were there, gathered around a phone and they were playing the voicemail. Of George C. Scott calling to say he wasn't coming in at the call time. And literally, they would look at me, they put their hand over their mouth goes and they press on the voicemail.
And you could literally hear his voice go, George Scott calling.
I'm told I've got a pick up time of 6:00 a.m. Would you please tell Mr. Becker I haven't been in a car at six a.m. for 40 years. I don't intend to change that now. George Scott, I'll be in the car at eight o'clock and he hangs up, oh, George, I should say that I should have recorded that. Oh, so you could use it yourself, that would have been my I would have cut it up into my outgoing message, but I'm sure in that way that you must feel the same way.
I mean, the people we got to work with. Oh, my God.
I remember. How about this? So I did a movie called Square Dance. It's another one. I really am proud of that people don't really know. And it was like a real character part. It was right after sort of scene, almost fire about last night, the sort of when the male ingenue era. And it was Jason Robards who I adored and Jane Alexander and our new discovery, Winona Ryder and who then left. I said, What are you doing after I'm doing this thing called Beetlejuice?
I was like, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.
What? That sounds awful. And the rest is history. She was great. She was great. Even then, movie Beetlejuice was like I was like, what are we doing here? Well, first of all, what what were you wearing? That outfit is really beyond belief.
Had I known I was going to be wearing the same thing. I remember going into Tim Burton's office. I've told this many times and Tim Burton was an illustrator. He would be drawing sketches on pets and he'd be drawing like chaar boy. He'd be drawing the characters that were in the film and he'd be sketching on a pad and he really wouldn't even look at you. And I'd say, you know, Tim, everyone's got a thing they're doing, like Glen Shattuck's and and Catherine O'Hara, Jeffrey Jones, Jean Keaton obviously has got all cylinders clicking here.
I said, I feel like I don't really have much to play. I said I want to become I want to do like a Bob Cummings impersonation. I want you to swear that I'm a gay man who's married to a woman like we're antique collectors. I want to say all my lines like this and be very kind of like plummy. I'm very Connecticut and very like antique collector and I want to do something to play. And he's like looking down and he's like sketching.
And he just his eyes come up for a moment and he goes. No, don't do that. And then he went back to drawing this is the only direction he gave me the whole fucking and he said, you know, don't do that. And I killed my idea of my Robert Cummings impersonation. And I remember walking through that movie going, what am I got? Nothing. I got nothing. You talked about that line about giving and taking, you know what I mean?
Yeah, that is. And, you know, I love you. I'm your biggest fan fucking ever. That's a tough one because those people were teasing. Like I said, they were teeing off and you and you had the bad flannel fucking shirt. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, what do you do? What do you do? A prison sentence in a.
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Well, like everything else in these challenging times, it's very hard for business owners to find the people they need to hire. And it's harder, even more so for people who are looking for jobs to find the right jobs. But there is an answer and that answer is a zip. Recruiter Monica Starks needed to hire a pivotal role for her construction company, G. S group, and she was having a really tough time finding that person. And, you know, online there's so many candidates.
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I'm going to fire my agents. Based on this, I'm going to go and the recruiter right now so I can stop doing a podcast, I'm kidding. I love doing this podcast. I do this podcast for free. Really, truly.
I would see for yourself as a recruiter makes hiring faster and easier right now for free. That's right. Free as a recruiter dot com slash rob. That's a recruiter dotcom slash Rob Orombi as a recruiter, dot com slash Rob. Now, let's talk about politics. I have a very oh, my God, I will have a very unique perspective about you and I mean this. I hope you know that I'm being sincere when I say this. And you're one of the few people I know who not that I had an expectation that you would do this, but there's a certain kind of amalgam that people have to have in order, in my mind, to succeed at that.
Not only does the charm and a kind of a, you know, kind of a winning, you know, forget about looks. You don't have to be a matinee idol to do this, but there has to be kind of something engaging in something magnetic about them, which you obviously have that in spades.
And there also has to be, as you said, a give and take. There's a kind of a, you know, Strausberg, Stanislavski, they always said we're never 100 percent the character. We're always at a set of knobs and dials and switches, adjusting what we're doing and watching what we're doing to make sure it's going off the way that we conceived it should be. And I think that there's nothing more so like that than politics for you to measure your performance.
You're playing a role and you're trying to seduce people within a certain kind of a prism. And I've always felt that was something that was yours for the taking. Did you ever, ever contemplate running or. No seriously and vice and vice versa with you. But I mean, I guess did say, yeah, I know. OK, so here's the thing. The answer is yes. Very much so, and one of the few and although we started the interview saying my wife and I agree on everything, she always just pissed all over that idea.
She hated the idea more than life itself, which made me rethink it. And then politics changed and. And that's really what. What did it is politics change in so many ways and very few of it good, you know, and the people that I was always drawn to, the consensus builders and the people who could reach across the aisle and the stories of like Tip O'Neill and Reagan battling and cursing each other and then going having a whiskey and cutting a deal in the cloak rooms like that just doesn't exist anymore.
And and then the notion because I watched Arnold Schwarzenegger go through it with with when he was governor, I've been friendly with him for a long time. And I mean, he's not I mean, he's a Republican in name only, really.
I mean, he's you know, he has some. But in watching that process, it really bummed me out. It really, really did. And I feel bad about it because I go, that's what you don't want. You don't want people who have an affinity to to go into that arena, no longer wanting to go into that arena. But that's sort of. What about you?
You were I know. I feel you were right there. Well, I think it's always interesting what you just alluded to. It's always interesting when you have people who there's some sacrifice involved in them doing this in terms of public service, like the man and woman. I always say the same thing, which is the man or woman who seeks public office as a means of completing themselves. There's something missing in them. There's some aspiration they have. Politics is another link in a chain of these kind of meritorious claims they have you get good grades in school and you do the study and they get into Harvard and they get into Harvard Law and you make the law review when you get into the top firm and they're used to climbing this merit based thing they're doing.
And this is the next brass ring for them for sure. And the under no circumstances do they lay there. I always have the same kind of corny image. Under no circumstances do they lay in bed at night and their wife, they're tossing and turning and their wife says, honey, what's the matter, Bob? And he's like, well, I can't sleep because I, I just can't I just can't stand the fact that we don't have enough money for the National Endowment for the Arts.
It doesn't seem it just doesn't. And you realize that none of them today that that applies none none of them are losing sleep over anything other than their political power and their fundraising. And for you and I, we grew up when there were men and some women, there were less women, you know, 20 years ago. Twenty five years ago, where there's a real sacrifice. These are people who could be captains of industry and lining their pockets.
And there's a lot of other more lucrative things they could be running. And instead, they stopped and they got off that train to come and help their country in the way they can, you know, and I always admired that and I always thought about doing that. And four years and my wife, you and I have that in common. My wife said she would divorce me if I ran for office, so. What would you have run for, the governor of New York, the governor of New York?
I only say that because to be an executive, to go to Washington and to commute to Washington as a member of Congress, which I would never do that or as a senator, that's. Well, that's onerous for me now with my kids, I mean, my whole life now is about jobs. I take jobs I don't take. There's things I do to make a living now that I never dreamed. You know, the people from ABC came to me to do match game that the game show, they said, you know, going to pay you X.
They paid me an exorbitant amount of money and we put it all on my foundation and gave it to charity because I'm always looking for sources of income that are non-traditional sources of income. For me, I do X and I make a living doing X, and then the rest of it is like money that you find in the sofa, you know, I'm going to go give it away. Right. So I do match game and they come to me after the first year and they said, well, the numbers weren't bad.
They think they were really pretty good. We were surprised. Would you do it again? And my wife was like pregnant with our second or third child. My wife was like, of course, Will. It's like, yes, she's like, I'll be there tomorrow. He'll do 80 episodes. Oh, I had the same with the Comedy Central. Came and said they wanted to roast what you got. That's the thing we have in common. I think you might have been the roast right after me.
And well, first off, my wife was like, you're not doing it. Yeah. So what do we mean? I'm not dishes. She's first of all. I can't have you don't want to be the butt of the joke across the country, I said, honey, that ship has sailed, right? And then she says, well, are they even going to pay you? And I said, Yeah, and I told her how much it was.
She's, Oh, you have to do it. Right, right, right, right, right. And just like that. So. So I loved it, by the way.
I absolutely had the time of my life.
I hated it because the own everybody was given some advice. Actually, I did two roasts. Casey Patterson, who's a wonderful producer, asked me to do one for Spike TV. And that was a great honor. And that's a little bit more this is your life. And DeNiro came. Clinton came and I was like in tears. I was so touched. And of all the people that came out there, all of them had been kind of coached to take the edge off a little bit, you know, not go too far.
And the only one who said and some of them, like my wife, would say to the writers, well, I don't want to necessarily say that they had their own filter to protect me. The only one who said verbatim everything she was asked to say was my daughter, Ireland. You could tell she just she just loved kicking my teeth out on national television.
She loved every moment of them. When we come back and do the roast that was for Spike, then Comedy Central, I did because we they gave me a million bucks for my charity and I took half of that that they matched. They coughed up a half a million for Tony Bennett's school. We gave money to Exploring the Arts, which is Tony's charity. We gave them a million bucks. And my other half million I threw in my foundation and gave it away to other people.
So in that way that I'm always looking for these silly gigs to do for charity, I think the only thing that's left is for me to do the weather on Good Morning America Now or some fucking thing. I don't know, but you'd be so good.
I think that would be great. I would like to I would like to see that you want to think that every morning you got me do the weather, don't you? I do. I don't.
Let me ask you some cheesy questions here. We got some cheesy Rob Lowe questions.
But you've commandeered you've come I know it's you. I know what you're doing. You're going to tell us what's going to happen. You don't invite me. I have my own podcast. You don't invite me on. You know, I'm going to wrestle the microphone from you, Rob, you idiot.
You knew this was going to hit you, you idiot. In here. Out there. Exactly. It's perfect in here. Out there. Oh, my God.
Now, here we go. I oppose this. You the way they said to the to the North Vietnamese captives when the soldiers got off the plane in America, the newscaster was very kind. He said, other than your wives and children, he didn't want to embarrass them. He said, other than your wives and children, what's the thing you missed most in captivity? Now I'm going to say the same thing to other than your wife. Yes. And your wife.
And this has nothing to do with looks or sexuality just in terms of that magical that is secure. That happens when you're one of the great leading men in modern history. Who's the woman you kissed that you just felt it right down to your toes? Who what actress did you kiss him when it was over? You were like, wow. I didn't expect that at all. Oh, well, that the added I didn't expect that at all. That's interesting because I did this, it would be two people actually probably and not big names particularly, but I did a movie with Curtis Hanson.
Did you work with Curtis? And my ex-wife did an L.A. Confidential. That's right. I knew there was some connection there. What did you do with Curtis? Bad influence. You know, David kept script me, James Spader and the Lisa Zane, the actress. That was one. And I remember Curtis saying, why don't you guys kiss now and get it over with? Like like we're just like like at the craft service table. And we had a kissing scene to do and he was like holding a Cinnabon, whatever it was like.
You know, I think you should kiss now. By the way, that was also in the era where Curtis Hanson also said. To these to two beautiful background artists who I was supposed to have a scene in bed with later that day naked. This is in the script, this is not something I want to do necessarily, oh, dead, but I'm just saying I was just part of the job you ordered. I was ordered to do it.
I was under strict orders from the studio. Curtis said, why don't you guys take this bottle of champagne and go to your trailer? And sort of get relaxed, get acquainted. I had a director say that if he was, I was going to do a movie, which was a complete crazy when I was much younger, a complete crazy. I mean, I could say it because I think he's dead now. Phil Kaufman. Oh, wow.
I actually do the movie Henry and June and. Oh, wow. And my mother had breast cancer. My mother got very sick. Nineteen, 1991. And he wanted me to go to Paris with Uma and I forget the actress's name, the plate Anaïs Nin and Uma played his wife June and I gone to the Henry Miller Museum and in Carmel or Big Sur to research. And basically I said in the in the films I saw of Miller, I said the vocal coach.
Did he speak that way when he was even younger? Because he had a very raspy voice, very heavy New York accent. Amila, who had a very heavy New York accent and talk like this, he was from Brooklyn. He had a very raspy voice. They want me to do this movie. And I couldn't go. And they got Fred Ward did it.
And because I think of Fred Ward, I think of the wonderful young Alec Baldwin, I go right to Fred Ward.
Those guys had their relationship from the from the right stuff, from the right stuff. And so he goes and does that. But but he said he wanted me to come over to Europe and with Uma and the woman, I forget her name and he want us just to hang out and live the life for like a month of the characters.
And I was like, you know, wow, you know, I really am a good person if I'm giving up on that to go take care of my mother, who was very sick. But I'll never forget I did a sex scene. And who is the other woman, Lisa's name and who's the other one? Of all things, I did masquerade with, like Kim Cattrell at her height of young gorgeousness, I mean the height and and she was amazing and she rang your belly.
And this is and this was in the era where, like you were there were no what do they call Modeste? Fucking whatever codpieces and stuff, I mean that in the 80s, nobody did that, nobody did it. You're just naked. I did a movie once with Deborah Maloney, who married Jimmy Ferritin there. She was a beautiful woman on soaps. And then she did movies and she was Jimmy Farat Tinos wife. Her name is Deborah Fantino.
But I knew her when she. Oh, oh yeah. She's famous fame. Oh, she has a beautiful brunette. And I did this movie, the movie Mallis and I have a scene where I'm having sex with the woman in the bedroom and she's in bed, Nicole with Bill Pullman and she's supposed to hear us having sex is supposed to kind of agitator that I'm having sex, I'm their border, I'm their guest in their house. And I brought in a woman to have sex with me.
And we start to do the scene and it's very chaste. And I'm a little cautious and we're all naked. And I know Debra a little bit. And, you know, it's like it's not you know, we're not we're not adult film stars here who know how to just get by to it. And Harold Becker, who, oddly enough, also had a very raspy voice in the New York accent, he comes off, he says, Alec, Alec, Alec, she has to hear you and the other room while you're doing this, you've got the big fucking hot head through the headboard.
He said, you've got to give this everything you've got. And she and I look at each other. We were like, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. And then we just, you know, we just simulated our way through some. I went into a blackout, I don't remember, is it like the stuff that we have and I how we do it, the things you don't do anymore, you don't do anything?
Here's my favorite. Whenever I got a script, I would always I'd read the first two or three pages, but then I would jump to page and always page seventy three. Do you know why? What was always, always on page seventy three. What is that. That was where inevitably they wanted me nude. Yeah. I feel sorry for you, Rob. I feel so sorry for you, so sad, and I mean, your life's been so it's been really stressful, hasn't it?
You know, to be you have all those pressures on you and the whole page. Seventy three thing. It's sad.
I feel bad.
So glad we have this chat because I wanted to remind myself of just how hard you've had it, you know, page 73, page seventy three.
And we'll be right back after this. Hey, everybody, Conan O'Brien here to let you know about Team Koko's virtual comedy show hosted by my good friend, the very funny comedian Moses Storm. Moses Storeman friend streams every other Thursday on Team Koko's YouTube twitch and Facebook pages. Past guests have been Chris Read, Joakim Booster, Rachel Bloom, bestselling Kal Penn, Ron Finches, Angela Johnston and so many more. It's really a fantastic comedy show, Jampacked, featuring some of my favorite people, and I'd like you to check it out.
If you get a chance. Follow Team Coco live on Instagram for the latest show dates and guest lineups. Hello there, I'm Rory Scovel, I'm a comedian, I'm an actor, but most importantly, I'm a dad.
And I'll tell you what, as a father, it is my sworn duty to tell you about my new show with Team Coco called Dads, the podcast.
On each episode, me and my co-host, Ruthie Wyatt, are joined by a hilarious guest to talk about the mysteries of fatherhood and parenting, people like David Cross, Conan O'Brien, Sabrina Gelis and Roy Wood Jr..
Even if you're not a dad or a parent, I think you're really going to like this show. So please check us out. Find Dads the podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Don't miss it. Hit me once, give me a burning question. Jesus, I have so many burning questions. Do you. Do you have a a Jack Donaghy line that you love? Because I do. I have I have my favorite line that you've said in that. Do you have one that you loved more than any of the 30 Rock? This is a 30 Rock line. Obviously, the line is tough.
I mean, we had a lot of good lines. I always remember when we would escort Carrie Fisher, played a writer who was an old school writer who was trying to emphasize everything she said was to emphasize the heyday of the auteur writer. And when the writers were important. And I look at her and I said, well, thank you so much for coming to see me. It was such a pleasure to see you. And I really look forward to working with you.
And really, let's get together again soon. Thank you so much. And escort her out the door. And I smile and I turned. And as we close the door, I turn the TV, I go, don't ever make me talk to a woman that age again.
My favorite. But my other favorite line was we're standing on the balcony. I have a glass of wine and we're looking out over the city of New York out of my special balcony and is behind me complaining about how she works to our. And she says, you know, I'm getting older and all I do is work and I haven't met anybody and your time is ticking. Whatever her dialogue was and she says, you know, pretty soon no one's going to want to even see me naked.
And I said, I kind of like just smirked. And I said, oh, please. I said, you make enough money. You pay people to look at you naked, Fabrazyme. You pay people, you're naked. I like when Tina came into your office really early on and you were in a tuxedo. Yes. And and she said she said, oh, do you have somewhere to go?
And you said, no, it's after five o'clock. What am I, a farmer? It's after 6:00. What am I after? What am I, a farmer? How much more how much is it. OK, that's that was the next on board. Yeah, that's more. That's for sure. Right. Oh yeah. That's more, you know. You know I it's funny, I've done a bunch of these podcasts and Lorne comes up in every single podcast.
Yeah.
Because I think and it's and Sorkin is the same way people who've worked with Aaron like he just occupy, he occupies a space in your brain forever. They have to be these sort of legendary but also really a centric and quotable.
That's the thing that Sorkin was going to do. And NBC was going to do a live version of a few good men. And they wanted me to play the Nicholson role. And they were going to get two young people to play, you know, two young stars, whether they were in the NBC wheelhouse or not, to play the crew's role in the Dimmy role. And Sorkin was going to update is going to do some slight modifications. This is what he told me over lunch.
We had lunch in with with Craig Zadan. The late Craig Zaytoun was, of course, who I wouldn't give me Footloose. I never forgave him. I blew my knee out on stage.
Twenty fourth Footloose audition did a nice slide into Herb Ross's lap.
They took me out on a stretcher. Well, because, you know, was on page 73 of that script, don't you. Oh, I did. Anyway, so so Craig Zadan, the late president who I loved him and Neil Meron, I loved chatting to them. And they they Craig was producing they were going to do a few good men for NBC and the whole thing fell apart. But I was very excited by the chance of working with him again.
Well, I'll tell you, after the West Wing, you know, it was not a great ending for any of us, my exit from the show. But I loved Erin so much and inherence very much like the withholding father. So you want his approval and and I will I will suffer any bad behavior from anyone if they're a genius. Unfortunately, like, I just like if you're going to write me good shit, I don't. I just you're in forever.
So we had a rapprochement.
And we did a few good men in the West End together, Aaron and I, he rewrote it because it was during the Guantanamo Bay prisoner issue. And as you know, that play takes place in Guantanamo Bay. Yes. So we spent six months, six months in London. And I play Cafi. And I have to tell you, it was the highlight of my life that. What year was that? I want to say it was it was 2007.
That's the last play you did? Yeah. Did I mean, we did two hundred and sixty performances. Wow. You lived in London. Lived in London. It was theater. The Haymarket. Oh my God. How lovely. Who else was in the cast with you. They were all English English folk. Good answer. Good answer. Because they really were all, you know, English folk. You know, they were English people. They were actors, you know, from from England, you know.
Well, the one the person you would probably know is that was John Barrowman, who is in Mister Who Doctor Who. And he played the Kevin Bacon part. Here's what's interesting, because you've done a ton of theatre. I remember in rehearsal and we're just well, this is right before opening night and there's no opening night there. There is an opening there that on opening night, every critic comes on opening night on Broadway. They can come any time to previews.
Yes. You don't know when they're there. Opening night in England is for real. Opening night for the. Which is well, which it adds a tremendous amount of pressure. And I chose that night to go up. There was a moment we had never really worked in rehearsal and it worked opening night and it crushed. And I took my eye off the ball for a minute. And the next thing I knew, I was doing a cross-examination and I looked in the other actors eyes were huge.
And I thought, well, that's that's an interesting choice. I haven't seen it before. And I realized I had jumped two and a half pages and that the two and a half pages is all straight story details. So. I realized what I'd done, and this is, you know, years of doing what we do, you finally this is why we do what we do for so long as you know what to do. And I thought I got to figure this out, but if I commit to thinking, no one will be the fucking wiser.
So I walked away from the from the witness stand.
It took the slowest, longest, most deliberate walk right down center and looked out at the audience for as long as I possibly could, so long that it couldn't have been a mistake. Figured it out, went back and did it. No one said a fucking thing. We got great reviews and Sorkin didn't even know because he drunk's. Well, he had gone out to smoke. He had gone you're gone downstage for like a ten minute take. Nobody noticed he he he had gone out to to have to have a smoke, but he's you would crush in that house anyway.
The the English audiences are so much different than American. They listen, they you can hear them listening. Yeah. And they don't crinkle their crinkly cracklings or eat or drink. Not once did a little religion. Not yet. Not once did a phone go off. Not once. Not once did anybody sleep or talk. Not once but on the other side of it. Two hundred and sixty performances we probably got. Eight standing ovations. If we had done that show on Broadway, we would have we would have multiple standing ovations multiple times.
I did the every show I did. Lyle Kessler's play Orphans was the last thing I did on Broadway in 2013 and a play I loved. And we had a very disastrous wrong, you know, child above came and got fired and all this craziness. And it was really debilitating. But but I will never forget how I mean, maybe Broadway is a little flabby that way. But we got a standing ovation every night, every every night, every now.
And listen, this is taking nothing away from your acting, which is tremendous.
But I have seen Broadway audiences applaud scenery changes, if I remember.
Now, here's my last question for you, because I'm going to go take my kids to the horse farm next door. Here we go. Ready?
I look, not only not only has he taken over the show, you're now taking it upon yourself to wrap the show up. I'm going to we're going to wrap now wrap Shropshire. I'm more aware out there in here. Men are in the mind now. Guy going like this, they're going like like the old TV studios. You mean like the old days? Exactly. So your greatest starstruck moment, a person you worked with, the person you thought you were like, oh, my God, who I got?
You got a very capable team. Well, no Storchak moment.
I think the two one is going to my my seventh grade.
In 10th grade to 10th grade crushes house in Beverly Hills to watch my after school special. Which is going to be on the air, she's the most beautiful girl in the school. I used that as a as an excuse to power me to go and ask her out. She was punching way above my league and she said, come to my house, my my dad's house. I'm going to be there over the weekend. And he's an actor and we'll watch it together.
And I drove to Beverly Hills. It was the first time I'd ever seen a mansion. And I got out and I knocked on the door and Cary Grant opened the door.
In a white bathrobe, white terrycloth bathrobe, and was like, Jennifer's waiting for you in my bedroom.
I thought we all watched together.
I got I will watch the world, watched my after school special school boy father in Cary Grant bedroom with Kerry and his daughter Jennifer. And when when it was over, he said to you, remind me of a young Warren Beatty. And I was thrilled that then meeting Warren at three, then meeting Warren, which. This is for another podcast, but I discovered at the end of my girlfriend would go up there, I'm going to tell the story, fuck it.
So my girlfriend would go up there every now and then to watch movies and lie by the pool. I was young and stupid enough to not care about that. And I would. I lived in Malibu.
I didn't want to leave the beach. I certainly didn't want to go into the valley even to see Warren Beatty. But my girlfriend would. So finally, there's a night where we're driving around because no one's around and wants us to come up and watch a movie, and I was like, I always loved Warren Beatty. He was my hero. And the pardon was a little nervous probably to go up, but I did. And so he answers the door and this amazing Mulholland mansion, there's not a stitch of furniture except the Oscar for Reds, which is on the mantel.
And this is he's just he said, I'm so sorry. I just I haven't there's no furniture. There's no furniture, because I, I was on a project and it just it took years. I'm thinking, oh, you mean the project. You just won the Oscar for like two weeks ago. I've heard of it.
So we go downstairs and watch a Burt Reynolds double feature. We watched Stick and something else.
And I remember Warren wanted me to sit next to him and he he would be watching the TV, watching, going, oh, interesting. Yeah. Oh, that's. Oh, oh, look at that. Yeah.
And and I said, what is that.
Because oh he's he's using a lot of long lenses and I remember going how does he know. How can he tell by looking at the screen what this man is a genius.
And then at a certain point he said to my screen and he left to get ice cream and the girls left. And again, I'm dumb and young and stupid.
And I stayed down in the theater and I'm waiting and waiting and my girlfriend's not coming back and I'm waiting and waiting. And the engineer he was with, I believe, was Jens Smithers from Cincinnati.
And they're not coming back. And finally, I go up to the kitchen and they're all eating ice cream and it gets very quiet.
I know they've been talking about me clearly and is like, yeah, you know, you remind me so much of of of me and your girlfriend, who at the time was Melissa Gilbert reminds me of Natalie. And I thought, oh, there it is. That's the panty dropper line that he uses on every young actress. You remind me of Natalie. It's fucking over at that point. You're invisible over. It's over. So and he goes and, you know, it's really what's really funny is, like you, I was a nobody and Natalie was a big star like Melissa.
And years later, of course, I became a big star. And this is even just very shortly after before Natalie's death, I ran into her at an event. I said, I just have to ask you, we're both old and it doesn't matter anymore. But this weekends when used to go to Frank Sinatra's house.
And used to lie by the pool. What's really going on and you know, Rob, she looked at me and she said, Warren, what do you think was going on? We were fucking. And. I instantly did the math and I knew exactly what was going on and that that from that moment on has been the ultimate meet your Idol story and that unbelievable in a world when I when you meet so many people and the one that stands out was, you know, Norby Walters, you for playing this card game, Norby Walters card.
Of course I do. Of course, just as the card game. And I used to go to the card game many years ago when I was single, after I got divorced, my first wife, I'm out there. I have nothing but time on my hands. I go to Norby Walters to play cards and it's always like that group of people. It's, you know, Harvey Korman and and all these guys. And Burt Reynolds shows up on the.
Oh, wow. And all these guys. But my favorite was this guy shows up in a white jumpsuit. He's in a white he's very trim, very fit. He's in a white jumpsuit. Apparently he was. And it was it was a degenerate gambler. He loved gambling. And he sits there, doesn't say a word the entire time.
It's Don Adams. No, Don Adams is there in a white cream colored jumpsuit, very trim and manicured and perfect. It doesn't say a word. And everyone's playing cards and everyone's waiting for that moment to arise. And I decide to seize the moment and we're all laying there, our cars.
We're turning over our cards. And I turn off my cards and I go, I have a pair of sevens and everybody burst out laughing except him. And then finally he looks because. Very good, very good. I like the timing and there's a guy who like, you know, like nobody made him laugh. He never, never laughed. My other favorite moment was when I did the movie The Cooler, I got a phone call from Jerry Lewis.
Oh, no way. Jerry Lewis called me on my phone through my office at the time. He said, Let me tell you something. I know these people. I know these people. And you were fucking fantastic. I know these fucking people. I grew up with these fucking people in Vegas. Let me tell you, that's a great movie.
And I'll end with this email. There was a moment in time where you and Billy were going to do. The fighting Fitzgeralds, the fuck of that is the same as some of them brothers or something, the Sullivan brothers, and I think there was some I got it in my head that I was going to be the fifth. There's one there's one too many Sullivans. And not enough bald ones. And that I was I was in because I'm an honorary fanda already, Peter made me an honorary fanda because I reminded him of his dad, one of the great compliments.
I'm still an honorary Baldwin.
Well, you're half bald when you're the bald one who we have the same father. But your mother is Eva Marie Saint. I've decided that that makes sense. I'll take it.
Your mother's and Margaret. OK, yes.
Fucking age, that is. I love that out there. In here.
My God. Was amazing. Love you. Thank you.
My love to you to have your wife child. I will for sure. I will. Bye bye. Thanks. Bye.
Wow. I had so much fun. I could have talked to Alec for another ten years. His impersonations. Oh my God. They're insane. I mean, listen, what other podcast are you going to get? A George Scott impersonation? And by the way, that's my favorite son, George C. Scott. George Scott, that's say, you know, it's all on the up and up. Oh, man, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.
I am. I am beaming from ear to ear. That was amazing. Well, I will see you all on the next podcast. Thanks for listening to literally with Rob Lowe. You have been listening to literally with Rob Lowe, produced and engineered by me, Devon Toribiong, executive produced by Rob Lowe for low profile Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Colin Anderson and Chris Bandhan at Stitcher. The supervising producer is Aaron Blair's talent producer, Jennifer Sampas.
Please write and review the show on Apple podcast and remember to subscribe on Apple podcast, Stitcher or wherever you get your pockets. I'm so glad to have Atkins' joining us as partners on the show, I've been working with Atkins' now for a couple of years. I've been eating the Atkins way for many, many years, probably starting in my mid 30s when I looked at a photo of myself in US magazine is not a good day. It was they did one of those like where they put the, like, telestrator on you.
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