Nevertheless
Page 19
The year 2012 ended with the finale of 30 Rock. I crossed into 2013 feeling good about myself, my work, and the future for the first time since 2007 and the voicemail issue. I had crawled out of a well and now wanted to enjoy my life in every simple way. 30 Rock afforded me a lot of creative freedom. I wanted 2013 to be a new year filled with productivity, happiness, and success. And when things didn’t go as planned, I could hear the voice of Joe Zarza saying, “Xander Baldwin . . . you’re gonna learn everything the hard way.”
14
So Long as I Know
When 30 Rock ended in December of 2012, I was about to turn fifty-five years old. The show had provided me with a much-needed stability, not only in terms of work but also in terms of the goodwill that came with it. The consistency of my schedule became more precious to me as I got older. I had made a few movies between 2006 and 2012, while making 30 Rock. Some were worthwhile, like It’s Complicated. Working with Meryl Streep had always seemed like an unattainable wish, almost a dream. When that opportunity came around, I was overjoyed. Meryl is nine years older than me, so when Nancy Meyers offered me the role of Meryl’s ex-husband, I thought about that for a bit. But Nancy pointed out that the leading men in Hollywood have no qualms about casting someone much younger as their love interest. Why should it be any different for the greatest actress of her generation? The notion of age didn’t matter to me. It became clear, and more so once we began shooting, that my character was a man who was once in love with his ex-wife and who discovered that he was still in love with her. My job was to be in love with Meryl. That is not a difficult thing to do.
I made a movie called Lymelife with a wonderful writer-director named Derick Martini. The cast included Jill Hennessy, Cynthia Nixon, and Timothy Hutton, whose career I had long admired in films like Sidney Lumet’s Daniel (see this movie) and The Falcon and the Snowman. The making of the film itself was an ongoing saga, where the cast was told to get ready to go to work, only to have the financing drop out at the last minute. The principal cast, which also included Rory and Kieran Culkin and Emma Roberts, stayed committed to the project through three such rounds of hope and eventual disappointment. When the money finally came through, I realized that this was the direction that much of independent filmmaking was going in. With their dreams of doing the creative work they had set out to do on the line, actors, directors, producers, and writers were calling it a victory simply when the movie got made.
That was no longer enough for me. So much change was brewing in my life. I had dated my share of people since my divorce. I was with one woman in particular for quite some time. But while Ireland was a child, I convinced myself, rightly or not, that remarrying would have sent my daughter a signal that looked like abandonment. With all that had gone on in my relationship with Ireland, all of the unwanted public scrutiny and shame, I was certain that moving on would have only made it worse. When I ultimately told my girlfriend that I couldn’t move forward, that I didn’t want to get married again, she changed, dramatically. The relationship was then overwhelmed by mistrust and friction.
But life only moves forward. And, if we are lucky, someone comes along who reminds us of that. What I wanted in terms of romantic partners, before and after my divorce, always confounded me. A lot of push and pull out of fear, jealousy, and doubt. It’s almost like I needed a sign. Then, on an unusually mild February evening in 2011, my friend Brendan and I were wandering around downtown with no destination in mind. Sarma Melngailis, the now infamous owner of Pure Food and Wine, was a friend of mine, and eventually, I would puzzle over why Brendan and I went into her restaurant, as I wasn’t particularly craving the raw vegan menu. Did God want me to go there, to give me some precious opportunity? Some peace? A cleft in the rock of the world? I don’t know. I do know that on very few occasions in my life I have met a truly extraordinary woman, singular in ways beyond the limitations of attraction, who seemed to have a light shining on her. Typically, there was some wall between her and me. Sometimes that woman was already married to someone else. I would hear God say to me, “Not now. Not this woman. You’re not ready. Besides, I wouldn’t do that to her.” (God laughs.) “Perhaps at some point, when the time is right. I simply want you to see what someone truly special looks like. Not someone without faults or without their own past. But unlike anyone you’ve ever met. Someone who wouldn’t hurt someone out of spite. Someone smart, opinionated, funny, caring, kind, evolved.” The woman I met on Irving Place on February 18 was all of those things and much more. Suddenly, the idea of avoiding commitment, of not moving forward, seemed misguided. A risk-free life is not worth living.
I believe that things change only when we are truly ready for the change. We come to a situation or event that could be a great turning point in our lives having been prepared by both adversity and hope. And then, if you let it, the future just opens like a flower, becoming more beautiful every day. Hilaria and I moved in together in November and things progressed quite quickly after that. We were married on June 30, sixteen months after meeting. In December of 2012, Hilaria told me she was pregnant with our daughter, Carmen, so as we turned out the lights on 30 Rock, an entirely new life was unfolding for me. I had embraced so many different activities and passions throughout my career, springing from not only real beliefs but also boredom and loneliness. I didn’t have a family to come home to, so why not put on a tux, for the third time this week, and raise money for this group or cut this ribbon or perform a reading at this event? Now, my life with Hilaria and Carmen put me on a road that demanded more of my energy, perhaps all of it. The reality that I couldn’t predict, let alone confirm, where I would be in six months became unworkable and foolish. My new family was my commitment, and the primacy of acting was in my rearview mirror.
I probably listen to radio more than any other medium, so I had flirted with doing a radio show for some time. The author Lisa Birnbach was a friend of mine, and after a twenty-minute phone chat with Lisa, I would say to her, “We should be broadcasting these calls.” Lisa possesses a quick wit like Tina, and she could dispense an inexhaustible quantity of it. I approached Scott Greenstein from Sirius to find out what the radio market was like for mere mortals like me who, unlike Howard Stern, could not command tens of millions of dollars. I thought that the hours involved, the New York base, and the relatively simple production demands were what I needed. As not all movie opportunities were going to be as exciting as going to Rome with Woody Allen or as interesting as watching Julianne Moore and Cate Blanchett give Oscar-winning performances, radio seemed a viable option even before I had met Hilaria.
I concocted a half-baked Howard Stern–knockoff show, with Lisa and me as hosts. We would have a cast of a couple of comedians, a culture editor, a news anchor, and various guests. I wanted to bring on a young guy we’d call “The Kid.” We’d give him a credit card and some cash (a radio-level expense account), then turn him loose on Manhattan nightlife. The object was for The Kid to spend the night doing everything that Lisa and I were too old to do. Openings, exhibits, theater, galleries, movies, parties, clubs, clubs, clubs. I batted this idea around with a couple of friends who, as I remember it, looked at me in a way that said, “Why do you want to do radio?”
I got a call from Kathie Russo, a veteran radio producer and the widow of the actor Spalding Gray. Kathie listened to my idea and essentially talked me out of it (too much production work to write a daily show à la Stern) and talked me into a podcast with me at a microphone interviewing people. Lorne Michaels would often say, “It’s like that thing . . .” and then go on to make some comparison, so I considered the title It’s Like That Thing. I settled on Here’s the Thing, which everyone says in conversation. We began in 2011. As far as my distributor, WNYC, was concerned, I would use the enormous Show Business Chums directory that I had in my rolltop desk and call all my pals in Hollywood, New York, and London. We did a few test interviews, some by phone. One such “phoner” was with Wyoming senator Alan Simpson. Being unable to see him i
n person, however, hampered my ability to steer the conversation in any perceptible direction, and Simpson came off like Ross Perot, muttering a lot of non sequitur folksiness. We never did another interview again that wasn’t face-to-face. The first show that we posted online was with Michael Douglas, recorded in his New York home. Douglas is a prince whose career I have long admired, not to mention my worship of his dad. Not a bad start.
Right away, I liked doing the show. People ask me why I do it and the answer is that it’s storytelling in its own right. I want to tell their stories: Peter Frampton, Herb Alpert, Rosie O’Donnell, George Stephanopoulos . . . If, during our talk, my own experiences overlapped theirs, so be it. I also wanted to interview people in the way that I wanted to be interviewed. I wanted a longer format, not like morning talk shows where the guest is on and off in six minutes after a series of prerehearsed exchanges. I wanted spontaneity. I wanted the guests to share what they wanted to share, without feeling pursued or judged. I had sat in interviews with venues like the New York Times where the assumption is always that the Times is doing you a favor. You’re taught to believe that everyone needs the approval of the Times, so you try to win over some smug writer who sits, coiled and unimpressed. Until you don’t. (I thought an effective way the Times could conquer their recent financial troubles would be to charge people a fee to have their name not mentioned in the paper.)
We recorded nearly all of our guests for an hour. Sometimes longer. No one is interested in my guests more than I am. I am, openly, a fan. I could have listened to Thom Yorke all day. We podcasted an interview with Billy Joel that was, I believe, unedited. Just the two of us, bullshitting, for over an hour. I began to think that bullshitting with the likes of Billy Joel was something I could do full-time. The deal with WNYC wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great either. I thought about the straightforwardness of the old Tomorrow show, with Tom Snyder. Perhaps I’d have a “ninja” set, like Charlie Rose, with the perimeter blacked out. No audience. Quiet. Real. Not screaming crowds as if we were on a roller coaster. I pitched the idea to Lorne.
* * *
While I was shooting Rock of Ages in Fort Lauderdale, I was invited to a conference of NBC executives at the Universal theme park in Orlando, Florida. TV executives who are paid a lot of money to run large divisions of broadcast and cable networks have a self-regard normally confined to former presidents. Indeed, their jobs put them in a rarified group. In Orlando, however, it was interesting to watch a gathering of relaxed, confident men talk about the business of television almost entirely devoid of the topic of content. In my brief evening among them, there wasn’t a single question about what I wanted to do or why. The concept that nobody knows anything took on a new meaning. How can you fire an exec over content when the subject never comes up? Executives at this level simply hire people to brief them on the creative worthiness of a project. Many of them didn’t watch or even like TV. Television programming was just a product sold by companies like Comcast, and as with any other network, they couldn’t have cared less what was on TV, to a degree. A time slot was like a piece of real estate. And like retail landlords, they just wanted to collect the highest rent possible.
The proposal was to give me a weekly slot on Friday nights at 12:30. It was explained that every show in the Friday 12:30 slot, on each network, was underperforming in terms of ratings. Once Fallon arrived to replace Leno, and Seth Meyers replaced Jimmy at 12:30, the network would consider giving me a crack at Seth’s Friday slot. Or, if Carson Daly returned for another season of his show Last Call, I might be given Friday nights at 1:30. None of this transpired, of course, because while NBC Entertainment was, understandably, focused on launching Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, I was offered a one-year contract with MSNBC, as a sort of extended pilot series.
Once at MSNBC, I heard some strange and unsettling things about how the place was run. One thing that I think is worth repeating was when a veteran producer, a woman, sat me down to explain how MSNBC actually functioned. I’d been having a tough time communicating to Phil Griffin, the head of MSNBC, and to Jonathan Larsen, the producer Griffin had assigned to my show, about the style of program I had in mind. I didn’t want the usual MSNBC look, with their harsh lighting and dreary design. I thought their sets looked like a Soviet interrogation room and told them so. Larsen had recently been fired from Steve Kornacki’s show, and he told me that Griffin sent him to “babysit” me. The news division had different standards than the entertainment division, Larsen highlighted, suggesting I might invite Kathy Griffin to be my cohost. His lack of enthusiasm for me and the show was front and center. He had a contract with MSNBC and he was simply showing up for work.
In the midst of this less-than-wonderful environment, the female producer said, “Look. The people who work here are career, professional newspeople. There are not a lot of good jobs with network salaries out there anymore. Some of us have kids in private schools. We have retirement and insurance to think about. This is a good job compared to what’s out there. And, remember, no one is watching.” I squinted my “Come again.” She paused for effect. “No one is watching. The ratings are awful. But because of cable carriage fees, we’re still around. We’ve got a good thing here. So . . .” She put her finger over her mouth and shushed me. “Stop complaining.”
One day, Phil Griffin introduced me to Ronan Farrow. It wouldn’t be long before I was wondering how I could get some of what Ronan had, as he managed to remain on the air even as his ratings plummeted to 11,000 viewers among the desired demographic. My show, entitled Up Late with Alec Baldwin, pulled in low ratings in the demo as well, but our numbers were more than ten times Farrow’s, who was given a year to develop on the air. My show was dropped after five episodes. If the ratings were all of it, I’d understand. But they weren’t.
The MSNBC situation was souring, and my simultaneous efforts to make a peaceful home for my wife and new family were consuming me. In August of 2013, my wife had just given birth to our daughter, Carmen. As Hilaria tried to embrace this remarkable time in her life, a period now filled with an intrusiveness she had never experienced, several tabloid reporters and photographers started to collect around our apartment building. In past exchanges with these people, some of them played by the rules, as I see them. Others walked a line between what they argue is journalism and what I label as harassment. When that line is crossed, sometimes I let it go. Sometimes I don’t. I make the call. I remember the curse Joe Zarza put on me, about learning everything the hard way, whenever I think about November 14, the afternoon Harvey Levin, always prompting my own chronic hatred of the tabloid press, came back to pay me a visit.
When I left that terrible voicemail message for my daughter Ireland in 2007, there was no mistaking what was said and who the recipient was. I spent the subsequent months either in a state of suicidal depression or wanting to find Harvey Levin and my ex-wife’s lawyers and beat them to death. Afterward, I was careful to make a vital distinction between an excuse and an explanation in terms of my behavior. There was no excuse for what I did. But my explanation was that I was completely outmaneuvered by my ex-wife in the gamesmanship of divorce custody. Kim’s attorneys were the most contemptible people I had ever met. I suppose I never had a hope of prevailing in any of the rigged contests that California family law insists you participate in if you simply want to see your child. I had wanted to be a father to Ireland. There had never been a complaint, publicly or privately, about my parenting before my divorce. Everyone knew how much I loved Ireland. Ireland knew, too. That essential fact is dismissed in divorce court, allowing the legal fees to flow. Certainly, protecting innocent children from the shrapnel of divorce combat is an important task. But it is not the only task. Fathers’ rights are among the lowest of priorities in these cases, making it easier for judges to take a side and simplify the matter and, thus, move things along. With the voicemail, I provided the court with the tool it needed in order to disassemble that relationship: the incontrovertible proof that I deserved
to lose the custody decision.
* * *
In Westwood, California, in 1983, I pulled up next to a pump at a gas station and got out of my car. Back then, you still had to “pay inside,” and as I walked toward the garage, I heard a man shouting. I turned and saw that a thirty-something white guy was actually shouting at me. A bald and bullet-headed bantam of a guy, a less-interesting-looking Ed Harris, was complaining that I had cut him off at the pump. (Actually, he appeared to be at a different pump and attempted to back into the space I was in line for.) He rushed up to me and was basically spitting as he yelled, now right in my ear. I was, for all intents and purposes, still the Berner High School football team’s Billy Pilgrim when it came to physical confrontation. I entered the store and squared up to the counter, where two short, very powerfully built Iranian guys who ran the place prepared to ring me up. I continued to ignore Typical Southern California White Dude as he said something like, “Why don’t you go back to fucking UCLA, man!” I didn’t actually register that as offensive, but then he put his right hand on my left shoulder and started to spin me around. “You hear me, man?” he shouted. And, in the briefest moment in time, I changed.