Justine Bateman - Summer Staff Picks

0:01Speaker 1:This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. It's summer, and that means it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing, where the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in our Summer Staff Picks series. Our last Pick this producer Victoria de Martin, Thanks Alec.

0:22Speaker 2:An episode that caught my attention from our archive was your conversation with Justine Bateman in twenty twenty three. I relate to Justine not only as a fellow filmmaker, but the timing and the topic of this conversation stood out to me. This episode aired after the summer of what is now called the Twin Strikes. In twenty twenty three, both the Screen Actors Guild and the Writer's Guild went on strike and essentially caused Hollywood to shut down. This conversation resonated with me as my own career was directly affected by these strikes, and both Justine and Alec bring a personal element to this conversation as well. Alec approaches it from the point to view of the actors, and Justine more from the perspective of the filmmakers. And even though this was three years ago. The conversation around AI and the entertainment industry remain relevant today. I loved when Alec points out that there is no such thing as a risk free movie business, and when Justine talks about how AI is the polar opposite direction of where she wants to take her work. She says she wants to do something new, and even though AI is a new technology,

1:26Speaker 2:it's trained from our old work, so nothing about it is new. I found this conversation to be very insightful, and I hope you find it as thought provoking as I did.

1:38Speaker 1:On July fourteenth, sag AFTRA, better known as the Screen Actors Guild, joined the picket lines, where members of the Writers' Guild of America have been striking since early May.

1:50Speaker 3:The entire business model has been changed by streaming digital AI. This is a moment of history, that is a moment of truth. If we don't stand toll right now, we are all going to be in trouble. We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines and big business. Who gives more about Wall Street than you and your family.

2:21Speaker 1:That's Actor and Screen Actors Guild President fran Dresher announcing the SAG strike. This action follows contentious negotiations over contracts with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, a collection of film studios, TV networks and streamers like Netflix, Hulu, Paramount, Sony, and Warner Brothers Discovery. The issues in dispute include everything from dwindling payments in the age of streaming to the unsettling reality that artificial intelligence may soon render human writers and actors unnecessary. Many have called this particular moment existential.

3:02Speaker 1:One person who was deeply involved in this issue and has been ringing the alarm for some time as actor, writer, director, and producer Justine Bateman. Bateman is perhaps best known for her work on family Ties and Satisfaction, but she also received her degree in computer science from UCLA in twenty sixteen. As someone involved in so many aspects of filmmaking, I wanted to know if Bateman felt that the guilds were up to the task of ensuring their future amidst the AI proliferation.

3:38Speaker 4:Yes, actually, yeah, and I'll tell you why. So if we go back even further to nineteen eighty, which I think was the last time SAG was on strike. They were asking for a piece of all the unions were a piece of the home video market VCR right tapes. We didn't even have d DVDs yet, And the quote from AMPTP was we don't even know if there's any money in that. Well we saw what happened with that. That became the financial buoy for the entire industry having DVD sales. Then you go to two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight when I was on the SAG board of directors and on the negotiating committee, and they said to all the unions when we were asking for made for new media percentages, residuals, so forth, they said the same thing, Well, we don't even know if there's any money in the Internet. It's so unproven. It's the wild wild West, which is such a tired sort of saying.

4:44Speaker 4:And I think during the WGA strike back then they released Hulu, which was all of these ampt a lot of not all of them, but a lot of these AMPTP companies coming together and creating a video platform. I mean, you know, these companies don't get together to do anything, So they must have been extremely convinced that it was going to be very lucrative and eliminated a lot of the overhead that's necessary for broadcast television and theater release.

5:15Speaker 4:So it's very telling then as far as AI goes that when the WGA asked for protections on that, they didn't even say what they'd said before, which could have been we don't know that there's any money in AI. They just said, we're not talking about it, which says to me they are writing scripts.

5:36Speaker 5:With AI already and have been for a while.

5:39Speaker 1:Of course, I'm a thousand percent convinced that they have that machine churning away. And I always remember when they say, well, we don't know if there's any money in there. We don't really have any money in that that we know of, And what they're saying now was, well, we don't have any money there for you. That's hard to depend that little phrase. Then we don't have any money for you. For the actors we've seen over the last many years. And this is my opinion, it's purely an opinion and an analysis that what you see now is the complete wall to wall wigitizing of the creative industries. Men and women who are captain corporations that want to take all the risk out of movie making and television production, and of course there's no such thing as a risk free movie business. Guessing what an audience might want to watch now they've gotten this down with all their Marvel universe, but guessing what an audience might want to watch eighteen months from now is a lot of luck in some art.

6:40Speaker 1:But these are corporations that want to have the risk free entertainment industry, which is just absurd. You're involved with the union with SAG. When did that begin? And why?

6:52Speaker 5:Well, I'm not.

6:52Speaker 4:I haven't acted for many, many years. It's not a focus of mind. Just been writing, directing and producing. So I'm more involved actually in the WG, WGA and the DGA now like I'm on the Western the Director's Western Council at the DGA, and for a long time just been, you know, a great admirer of the WGA and the DGA and involved in the WA. But of course I have a big love for SAG and because of my relationships with them, they had asked me to come in to their day with the AMPTP in these negotiations, the day that dealt with AI and say a few things, and I you know, you can't talk about what was talked.

7:31Speaker 5:About in there.

7:32Speaker 4:But I will say that Duncan Crabtree Ireland, the national director and the lead negotiator for SAG, has extremely good handle on what needs to happen for actors protection, and not just for protection of actors who are working now and who will work in you know, they have their future work as well, but to protect the actors from the past. And this is true too for the and WGA, And maybe it's something that has to be done through legislation, but to protect it's our responsibility now. Like these these actors and writers and directors in the past, they did work within the unions to establish rules for us so that we could make a living at this and have pensions and healthcare and all of this, and they sacrifice for that.

8:20Speaker 5:And I feel like now.

8:21Speaker 4:It's time for us to in addition to what we need to do to protect members, now, we need to protect their work because now the technology exists to go back and mess around with everything. You know, the technology isn't there exactly to just generate another version of Casablanca, but we're on the precipice of that or going back to say some you know, the mash TV series and making another season out of what was, you know, just feeding in all the seasons and making another season.

8:51Speaker 5:That kind of thing.

8:52Speaker 4:And then there's other things like just doing episodes that are in line with somebody's viewing history and just throwing together something that is an amalgamation, a distilling of an amalgamation.

9:06Speaker 5:Of all of our past work.

9:08Speaker 4:And that's what I find so offensive and heinous. It's not that AI is now generating new stuff, just it's a new technology, and it's generating new stuff on its own. It's doing it only because it's been fed in our old work. That's what I find so horrible about it.

9:30Speaker 1:Do you think that people who have licensed the most handy reference I have, as James Earl Jones licensing his voice to the Star Wars Board of directors there for his voice as Darth Vader to live on beyond his death, is that a betrayal of actors? Is that a betrayal of the union for people to buy into the AI thing? Do you think not?

9:51Speaker 5:In my opinion.

9:52Speaker 4:I mean, if they want to do that, fine, I personally, as a filmmaker, I don't want to have anything to do with it, because it's the polar opposite direction of where I want to go with my work. I want to do something like really really new if I can, you know, stand on the shoulders of all the filmmakers that I love and you know, move the ball down the field. I mean, look, the last ten to fifteen years, with some exceptions, all we've been doing is a regurgitation of the past. I mean, tell me what pop culture is right now. It is the pop culture of the twentieth century period. There's nothing new in the last twenty years, with some exceptions, as far as a genre goes, of music, of movies. I mean, Alec, you can think I could name any decade in the twentieth century and you could tell me something that went on in music, something went on and film, something went on in fine art or dance or whatever, and it's just not happening anymore because tech and I love tech, I have a computer science degree, but it has created this is something you want to avoid in coding, which is an infinite loop. We just

10:59Speaker 4:can't the code can't get out of this loop. It's in what tech has created in pop culture and in the arts is an infinite loop where we just completely we regurgitate regurgitate, regurgitate what's happened before us, and the studio has got on board with that because they're scared financially and trying to you know, just take ips that everybody's familiar with so they can skip the marketing period. They need to get people to understand what their new project is about.

11:31Speaker 5:And now AI is going to automate all of that.

11:34Speaker 1:I mean, I will watch a streaming series, not because I have any desire to watch that show, but I'm just curious what's selling, what are people watching most of the show as I see. The other impact of this, you know, money at all costs money over creativity is the bloating of these episodes. Meaning the show is really six episodes, but they got to do eight because they don't get into profit till after five. There's so much bloating of this stuff content wise to get to their numbers. Now, one thing for our audience, I would like to explain your take maybe on the distinction as to the three unions, the WGA, the DGA, and SAG as to why the pattern seems to be that the DGA settles almost immediately, the DGA settles quickly. And I've had people explain to me their opinion as to why a SAG is kind of down the middle, and the WGA would probably strike you for a year if they could. They're always the slowest to Does that seem like a fair assessment you?

12:34Speaker 4:You know, I haven't been within the negotiating process of DGA or WGA, but I will say this. One way to characterize each one of the unions is to think about their duties on a set. The director is telling everybody this is how it's going to be, and the directors come in, they come in for their prep, and then they do the shoot, and then they have their posts and that's pretty much it.

13:02Speaker 5:The writer has had to work.

13:04Speaker 4:With the studios, sometimes for a long period of time before the director is stepping in, and there's a lot of beating up of the writers by the studios sometimes. In fact, in the streaming world, I know somebody who is a showrunner, and I've heard this from a couple of showrunners. The note they get most frequently is it's not second screen enough, meaning the viewer's laptop or the viewers right, hilarious, Right, the viewer's laptop or the viewer's phone is primary screen. First screen and don't do anything in the show that's going to distract the viewer, because then they might go, oh wait, what just happened and then go turn it off. They want it on all the time, like visual music, as somebody quoted once.

13:51Speaker 5:So you got that.

13:52Speaker 4:And then the actors on a set are pretty much showing up.

13:58Speaker 5:They've prepared their work, but they're like, tell me where.

14:00Speaker 4:To go and where to stand and what to do, and then you know, I'm going to bring some emotion into it. So if you think of it that way, and I don't mean that to be disparaging in any way whatsoever to any of those positions, but then it gives you an inkling as to.

14:16Speaker 5:How the behavior of.

14:19Speaker 4:The negotiating committees is possibly conducted. It's an interesting way to kind of color it.

14:27Speaker 1:I think. Well, someone said to me that the reason that the DGA settles quicker is because they have more overlapping interests with the producers than the other two unions.

14:37Speaker 6:Do.

14:38Speaker 1:I think the guy that's the head of the DGA just announced he said we did better that we've ever done, or he had some very positive comment about what happened. But my point is this, there's three unions, and I don't know why they can't come together and negotiate together and really stick together as one business. I mean, I know that's fanciful. Now. They came to me to run for president of SAG before Fran Ran, and they said, going into this negotiation, we need someone who is as bold, you know, forceful, whatever, because they were saying it's gonna be a tough negotiation. It's gonna be one of the toughest negotiations. And I said, well, I think that the head of SAG should live in La just in the time zone thing. I got seven children. You think I'm gonna be on conference calls till nine or ten o'clock at night in La, I said, I mean, I live in New York and I'm not leaving New York. And after a back and forth with a small handful of people, they got it and they moved on and they got Fran.

15:33Speaker 1:But I was very tempted. But one thing I kept saying to them was I said, what do you think is the likelihood that we can join forces not dilute our independence, our sovereignty, our specific missions. But why can't we negotiate these contracts together? And they just thought that that was a very quixotic idea, that that was just impossible. Do you agree that's impossible?

15:59Speaker 5:No, I mean I am in agreement with you.

16:01Speaker 4:I mean, we're not even competitive with each other, Like the writers are not competing against the directors, are not competing against the actors and so forth for jobs, And yet all the studios are competing with each other, in direct competition with each other. So if they can get together as a group and negotiate against us, then I agree we should be able to, you know, band together and negotiate against them.

16:28Speaker 5:I would hope for that too.

16:29Speaker 4:I don't know all the reasons why it doesn't occur, but I will say that I believe on the AI front, that's a topic that we all have in common, and whatever gains one one union gets will benefit the other. And whatever gains one union makes on the legislative end with the government will be a gain for everyone else in the business.

16:53Speaker 5:But what you said earlier about.

16:55Speaker 4:You know, having their eye firmly on the money, I mean it's always been a co opponent of the business, of course, But when the streamers, these tech companies decided to get into the tech platform business and needed stuff to put on their shelves, and their stuff was our work, which they referred to as content, which I find Chili so dismissive. Yeah, and so offensive and so dismissive and so confused about the work that we do.

17:30Speaker 5:When they came.

17:30Speaker 4:Onto the scene as tech companies, they were seen by Wall Street as tech companies, and they followed the tech company pattern of success quote unquote, which is ramp it up, scale it as much as you can, and then get out sell it for a billion dollars, three billion dollars whatever you can do. Well, now they're not quite doing that, and they've also saturated the market to some extent of you know, how far they can scale. And that's when we had this Netflix correction on Wall Street. That's when, because that was Wall Street going, wait a minute, you guys have fairly saturated the market, at least domestically, and so we can't look at you as a tech company anymore because you're not doing that scaling anymore. So we're just going to look at you as a media company, and a media company has to show profit.

18:25Speaker 1:WGA, DGA and SAG member Justine Bateman, if you want to hear more from Bold female directors working to change their industry. Check out our episode with Sarah Polly.

18:39Speaker 6:I think that I hugely benefited from this very unusual experience I'd had, which is that I'd worked with a few female filmmakers as a young actor, which was a really big deal then, like to have worked with Catherine Bigelow, to have worked with Isabel Quichet, to have these models, and as soon as I expressed the slightest interest in directing, they were just like, Okay, you're a dog with the bone. Don't let the bone go. Everyone's going to try to take away from you. I remember Captain Biglis like this, everyone will try to take the bone away from you. Hold on to the bone.

19:09Speaker 1:To hear more of Talier Schlanger's conversation with Sarah Polly, go to Hear's Thething dot Org. After the break, Justine Bateman shares her vision of the potentially frightening future for actors now that AI is getting stronger every day. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Hear's the Thing. After decades of work in television and film, Justine Bateman pivoted from acting to writing and directing her own films including Violet starring Olivia Munn and Justin Throw. As someone who has worked tirelessly on both sides of the camera, I was curious how she found the business has changed in her life time.

20:01Speaker 5:I'll tell you what's really sad for me.

20:03Speaker 4:So as a filmmaker, I'm taking meetings as a director and a writer with development executives and the development executives that I've met that are some of these studios who you.

20:14Speaker 5:Talk to them?

20:14Speaker 4:And one of the things really telling for me is I ask him what's your favorite film? And sometimes I'll give an answer and I'll go like, ah, this person knows what's going on. And I talk a little bit more with them, and then I just go, hey, what kind of films do you want to make? And they're like, hey, listen, I would love to do And maybe this is blowing smoke up my ass, but I'd love to do this film that you just pitched me. That kind of thing is exactly the type of thing I want to do.

20:38Speaker 4:But I can't because I've been tasked to make six genre films for fill in the blank Streamer And I'm like, oh, that sucks, Like that's what you're.

20:52Speaker 5:Bound to do.

20:53Speaker 4:Now, even though you love film and you sound like a real development executive, they're like, yeah, that's what I have to do. So if you have any action film and you just hear the life coming out of their voice when they say this. So if you have any action films or horror or you know, not there's anything wrong with action or horror and stuff, but that's not what they want to be doing. And those kinds of films are fine, but not when they're ninety percent of what's out there.

21:18Speaker 5:It's ridiculous.

21:19Speaker 1:But you can see also that their judgment cuts both ways, meaning they either try to hedge their bets and bring people in who are not very creative, they're not very innovative, unique, what have you, and they bring them in and we just see the same shit all the time. They give some people all the money in the world and maybe they shouldn't have, and they don't give you know, this is what they hate. This is what they want to take out of the business.

21:45Speaker 4:Talking about Seinfeld and how much money he made because he created this show and stuff, I just want to remind people that first of all, it takes years, years to get a financial success like that. Once you get it, you may not get another one. There are some unicorns out there that have I mean, you look at like Harrison Ford. I mean, I don't know what his compensation was, but the idea that he was in three massive, like massive cultural impact films, that's very unusual. Okay, So it takes years. So if you amortize this money out, Like for me, my film Violet took me a year and a half hustling every single day for a year and a half to get the money together to do that film, and.

22:34Speaker 5:That was a low budget film.

22:37Speaker 4:When you look like what I was paid for it, if I were to like spread that out over all the time it took me to get that film made, it's probably ten cents an hour. And the other thing is when you look at how much money like anybody makes, like off a TV show or something like this, I want to remind everybody how reticent studios and networks are to part with money. And if they are parting with that that much money, then you need to think about how much more money they made off of that show.

23:08Speaker 4:And they're giving Seinfeld a small amount of that, so that's where a lot of the money is going. And then you're talking about actors and paying paying, you know, one big actor and then screwing the rest of the cast, which I think is not right.

23:23Speaker 5:But think about going forward. I mean, a lot of the movie stars now are decidedly older, right, and they all became movie stars pretty much in their twenties. Right.

23:36Speaker 4:What I can't think of a clutch of movie stars that have been created now in their twenties that compares to say, fifty years ago or even thirty years different now.

23:50Speaker 5:So even they were even.

23:53Speaker 4:Kind of winding that down, you know where, pretty soon it's just going to be, like you said.

23:58Speaker 1:The interchangeability is a real goal of theirs. I mean, because once someone said to me once that was really behind AI beyond money was or linked to money, I should say, beyond having to entice a star to do a script. You decide what, you decide the movie you want to do, you cast it, you make it. You just fashion the whole thing like you're baking a cake. And the other thing they said to me was that, you know, the computer doesn't have to go to rehab.

24:25Speaker 1:The computer doesn't lock themselves in their trailer because she broke up with her boyfriend. The computer doesn't punch the director in the face, and some altercation over some you know, perceived indignity. All the behavior that now the studios and networks have found a way to profit from, you know, exposing the wartz and the missteps of stars years ago, what I do mean a million light years ago, the press flax for the studios did everything in their power to keep Llella Parsons and had a Hopper and Walter Winchell and all them. Kind of calm down. The star is gay and he's married, the woman had a baby out of wedlock, she has a black boyfriend. All that crazy crap that they were getting attacked for. He's an alcoholic, he's in rehab or what have you. All the things that they would protect you from, they tried to protect you in order to keep your star gleaming. Now you go to work at Warner Brothers and you walk down one hallway to do a movie, you walk down another hallway to do a TV show, and around the corner is TMZ that they own, who's trying every way they can.

25:35Speaker 1:They're making every effort to destroy your reputation in your career.

25:39Speaker 4:Well, another way that they would destroy it is if sag doesn't get the protections they're seeking. You know, if you or this is something that an actor could do just voluntarily, like you were talking about the actor allowing his voice to be cloned, you could get yourself scanned. Like if anyone's seen this twenty thirteen film called The Congress where Robin Wright plays an actress who's down on her luck, you know, was a big star, and she allows herself to be digitally scanned, and in exchange, she has to promise to never act again because she'll dilute the value of the scan if she herself acts. Oh my god, and then you know, regrets her decision. This is act and you look at that and you go like, oh oppression that is. But that's actually based on a nineteen seventy three book by Stanislaw Lem, And this is I mean, this guy I hadn't read him yet, you know, I mean I read that Philip Dick and Ray Bradbury and all that. But this guy, stanislaw Lem, if anyone wants to read, he's so on it about AI back in the seventies.

26:36Speaker 5:It's amazing.

26:37Speaker 4:But so if you did that right, Let's say somebody had a scan of you, Alec and then your agencies, which, by the way, the talent big talent agencies have divisions at their agencies that are encouraging actors to get scanned, because then, yes, you don't have all those things you said, but you also don't have.

26:54Speaker 5:An actor who's too tired.

26:56Speaker 4:Or has a family obligation, or is already booked. Yeah, so imagine if yeah, and if your agent had a scan of you, he could potentially triple and quadruple book you so that you're doing three or four films at the same time.

27:13Speaker 5:Of course, it's not.

27:13Speaker 1:You, writer director Justine Bateman. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Justine Bateman shares her thoughts on the life cycle of fame. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. The multi hyphenate Justine Bateman recently added author to her resume. In twenty twenty one, she released a book on women and aide called Face One Square Foot of Skin, and before that, in twenty eighteen, she published Fame The hijacking of reality.

28:10Speaker 1:I wanted to know what drew her to explore that complex topic in print.

28:16Speaker 4:Well, when I wrote Fame, which is about the life cycle of fame, and some famous people don't experience this complete life cycle, which is it begins, it grows, it levels off, and it starts to descend and then goes away. So I've experienced that entire life cycle. Somebody like Brad Pitt, you know, he's at the leveling off. Everybody just knows he's famous and will probably never experience the back end like I have and others have. So I thought that was very interesting, and it was very interesting to process the back end of that life cycle. And then I started wondering. I started thinking about that intangible fame thing, like when somebody, if Brad Pitt walks into the room, everything in the room that was happening in that room, all the attitudes of conversations people were having, say in a room in a restaurant, say stops and people sit differently.

29:09Speaker 4:Something wass itself through the room and changes people's behaviors. So that's how that started. And wanted to look at that, and then what it wound up being was a a real look at that life cycle from the inside, my experiences with it, and then my theories and sociological established sociological theories on why people behave the way they do. Two famous people at different points in that life cycle.

29:34Speaker 1:Now with you? With you? Was it something that you you know, you're in the water and the current is pulling you away from a mainstream career. You were obviously one of the stars of a huge hit show. We were actually on the at the Hampton's Film Festival, where I program a summer documentary series. We almost said Michael come and do his doc and he was going to do a Q and A with us, but he pulled out because I guess he hasn't really been feeling that great lately. We were going to do his the Michael j Documentary out there. But in your case, I wonder, when you're famous and you're on a successful show. And I'm not saying this to be kind. That was a funny show. Everybody know that was a really well written and clever show. Did it kind of EBB and you're floating away like the rip currents are pulling you away from groovytown because you didn't care. You didn't you didn't mind that did you put up a fight and you wanted to stay prominent in the business that it didn't work out or you didn't give a shit.

30:29Speaker 5:No, no, it wasn't like that.

30:30Speaker 4:It was more it was more of a kind of a life experience.

30:35Speaker 5:And this is wold to go into in the book. What I talk about in.

30:39Speaker 4:The book is that we all have our reality, right, who were married to or who our parents are, what city we live in, or what gender we are, or what language we speak, what job we have, all these things, what time we are in, right, and if any one of those things were to change, for a lot of people, it can be a traumatic sometimes, right like somebody you love dies or you have to you get relocated your job to another country, so you have to adjust your reality to that, because you have a lot of things attached to these components of our reality, justifiably, and we attach our sometimes our self worth, you know, if it has to do with jobs or something or identity, maybe who we're married to and.

31:26Speaker 5:Things like that.

31:27Speaker 4:So for a very very small amount of people, fame is one of those components. And when it first starts happening, and I know you can relate to this you're like, this is this.

31:37Speaker 5:This weird thing that is happening around me, blah blah blah.

31:39Speaker 4:But then it becomes so constant you're like, Okay, I'm just going to absorb this.

31:45Speaker 5:I'm going to receive this. This is part of who I am now.

31:49Speaker 4:And it's not somebody saying that's right, don't you know who I am? And I'm going to get these tables at these restaurants. It's not that. It's that that is what's happening. You a reservation at a restaurant, you say your name and they go.

32:03Speaker 5:Oh Mi's babeman. Of course, yes, I'm sorry.

32:05Speaker 4:Yeah, I know I said there weren't any tables. But when you're very famous, like people enjoyed your work, there's nothing nefarious about it. People enjoyed your work, and they genuinely want to in their way, if they run a restaurant, whatever it is, they want to sort of give back to you, like, oh I loved your show or your film or your music or whatever, and please come in be mine.

32:27Speaker 5:We'd love to buy you a bottle of wine at dinner. Whatever. It's this nice kind of exchange.

32:32Speaker 4:Okay, Now that happens so consistently that you just accepted as part of your reality. It's just happening all around you all the time. And if that goes on for many many years, like it did for me and for many others, when that starts shifting, it is akin to those big life changes. I said that for you know, any any in anybody's it starts pulling away and anything you have attached to it that you had reasonably attached to it, your identity, yourself worth, all these different things.

33:05Speaker 4:When that starts pulling away, it starts if you I always picture, like you know that film man called Horse.

33:11Speaker 5:You patured Harris up there, and he had those so anybody hasn't seen it. He has to go through.

33:16Speaker 4:This sort of ritual and he there's this big pole in the center of where everybody's standing, and it has ropes attached to the top of it with hooks at the end of it, and he has to hook these into skin on his chest.

33:30Speaker 1:Yeah, into his petrol muscles.

33:32Speaker 5:And pull away from it. Now, So I always picture.

33:35Speaker 1:One of the most grotesque scenes in the movie.

33:37Speaker 5:It really is. So when.

33:41Speaker 4:Aame is moving away from you, if you had anything attached to it, and there's many things that you didn't even realize you attached to it.

33:48Speaker 5:It starts pulling away like that, and it's painful.

33:52Speaker 4:So I in the book is say like I had to recognize what was attached to it, and I had to unhook it before it ripped my chest apart there to speak right.

34:01Speaker 1:My last question for you, I mean, you've had such a varied and fascinating life in terms of being a big TV star and then going through all these different aspects of your life directing and going back to school, writing books and so forth. For you, do you miss acting?

34:22Speaker 5:You know, it's interesting, Alec. It wasn't really up to me.

34:25Speaker 4:Acting was really good to me for a long time, and it really was something it never crossed my mind before it actually occurred. I never grew up thinking I was going to be an actor. I just sort of fell into it and I was gifted at it. It was I fell into my vocation. And then I got to a point where my life just turned a corner. And funny enough, it was the last strike around two thousand and seven.

34:53Speaker 5:And I knew, oh my god, this is what I was born for.

34:56Speaker 4:To the writing, and I'd already been writing scripts, which is like keeping them on my computer, not knowing what to do with them. And I'd wanted to direct since I was nineteen, but the timing never felt right. So I started writing and producing and in the digital space, and I was off to the races. And from that point there was a period where inexplicably for five years, I mean, I understand it, I understood it after, but for five years, I would have all kinds of auditions and I worked all the time up until that point.

35:24Speaker 4:For five years, I did not get one job off an audition, and that was really really confusing, talk about having your reality tossed upside down. But at the same time, I was writing all these proposals and these scripts and everything for brands, and doing all this work in the digital space and speaking on panels and all this, and I knew that the writing and directing that was where I was supposed to go, but I'd always acted, so how could that door have just been slammed shut? And it was very confusing, and it was very upsetting because that kind of, you know, tore my reality a little bit like that.

36:04Speaker 5:But I realized, like that had to happen.

36:07Speaker 4:My life had to do that, or God, your destiny, whatever somebody wants to call it. It had to happen, or I would not have been committed one hundred percent in the direction I had to go, which was writing and directing and producing films, writing books, and you know, going to school and getting computer science degree. I would have just continued to just do, you know, beyond TV shows or whatever it was, because I, at the risk of sounding absolutely arrogant, I was a great actor, and I at that point where I couldn't get a workout of any of those auditions, I was doing the best acting I had ever done, so it wasn't up to me.

36:49Speaker 5:And I love what I'm doing now.

36:52Speaker 4:I mean I feel like everything I've done before my writing and directing and producing career began was four Now.

37:01Speaker 1:Well, I'm not saying this to be kind, but I mean, you're so bright. I wonder if the world of acting today as it exists today would be a complete waste of your resources in your time. But I want to thank you because I've watched you online with this AI thing, and you're a great voice for this. You've got such great experience in the business and with the union and so forth, and I do hope that we have a way to I mean, I don't like these contentious words because people used to talk about breaking unions, but I hope we have an ability to break the producers. They've got to understand that the way this business works, as many people don't realize, is a director makes a movie.

37:41Speaker 1:He might make a movie every year and a half or two years, so we have to have an income that will last the two years. Yes, my great, thanks to you and to you.

37:49Speaker 4:I think you're an incredible artist and have so admired and enjoyed your work. I hope someday that I get to be a direct sure on one of your films.

38:02Speaker 1:I'm available. My very best to you, and thank you, thank you, thank you, My thanks to Justine Bateman. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.