Welcome to the sag-aftra foundations conversations podcast the sag-aftra foundation believes the contributions made to our culture by Performing Arts are not only valuable but also essential and so we provide free programming and services like this podcast to support them. If you'd like to learn more about this egg after Foundation or access the full library of our conversations or make a donation to support this podcast, please visit sag-aftra dot Foundation. That's www.ssa.gov GAF tra. Asian also subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter Instagram and Facebook at sag-aftra found. Thanks and enjoy the conversation. Alan Rick is if they do that when you're done, that's not our I'm trying to think if there's a medium a creative medium you haven't worked in from theater to film from Primetime television to PBS from published author to podcasting. I guess the only thing left off from your resume is video. Ames and I'm kind of hoping maybe you can figure out a way that you can make West Wing come alive and take us into an alternate universe. I've been around so long. I've seen the death of burlesque Vaudeville movies television, and now I'm working on getting rid of podcast. Let's go back. Let's go back to the beginning post burlesque and I'm wondering did you have the energy the Zeal the Curiosity at the start of your acting career that you've had over the last few decades? Oh sure. You got to have energy and you and Zeal and you got to be willing to stick to it in spite of all the evidence against you're That the evidence being the nobody will give you a job. You know, I mean that almost everybody I know goes to that you look what I just did. The end the end the only person I know it didn't go through that as Meryl Streep. She got out of acting school and went right to work and I don't know anybody else who did that. Well, you got out of Fordham in 1956 and even at Fordham, you said you got some work on Broadway as an understudy. It was partly through the help of my father. I think I was an understudy to Don Murray in a play called The Hot Corner that Samm Levine was in same with him was a great actor who had been in Guys and Dolls. He was extraordinary watch guys and Doug's my father Boos play playing the sky Masterson and I watched from the wings and Sam every night would say the same lines standing in the same place. But he do them so differently that the laughs would come in different places from a Broadway house. These lamps are usually in boom. Boom. Right? Well, you know where they're going to come. Mmm. I was astonished to watch him from the I learned more about acting watching from the wings. Then I did any other way and just didn't really answer your question. Of course, you did just a few years out of Fordham you get a job on the Phil Silvers show in 58 what was it like in these early days of Television for an actor? What was it like? Yeah, what was it? Like what like what it is now that that Phil Silvers? I had he knew my family because he had carried me on stage in Burlesque when I was six months old. My father was a singer and and straight man in Burlesque. He would as the singer he would sing while the chorus girls paraded in the opening number. And so his official position was known as the tit singer. I don't mean to offend anybody the actual name given to the job. My father had see this is an educational experience how much to learn from this and so I would watch burlesque when the wings and they were watching the comics and And the chorus girls in the strippers. It was in education education watching the scriptures. They were a little standoffish, but the chorus girls were very motherly to me and I really enjoyed being with them. Mmm, but years later when Phil hired me to be a to play the really big kind of important part in that episode. I had never been on television in that way before it with that big a part and I hadn't been hadn't had enacted in front of a camera much. I had mostly acted on the stage and I didn't know you were supposed to know your lines before going in. I actually didn't know that I was on the stage. My the way I learned my lines was rehearsing them. I was quick I I have the script in my hand play the same two or three times in rehearsal. I could put the script down and do it. That wasn't going to work on the Phil Silvers show cause the first thing they said was okay. We're ready for your scene and was a telephone scene where I'm I got all the lines for a page. And I hadn't learned it. I forget what happened. No, I didn't get fired because the show is just you can still see it on YouTube, but it was really embarrassing when I realize I was supposed to understand but you know what, I've always had the problem that I can't learn lines off a piece of paper. It's very hard for me. Mhm. I have to do it. I have to hear you. Say it. So over the years I finally developed the iPhone method which is which is I record the scene reading all the parts. So and so I know which is my part. I read my part in the normal voice, but I read the other parts in the cartoon voice. Why are you holding that gun? I'm holding the gun because it was all so don't do that. That's it. but that way I do it and I play it I stop the machine when it's stopped the phone when it's time to say my line and I say it and then I play it again and then I find out whether or not I'm right or wrong and it corrects me. So that's a good method me because I need to hear I need to play it. I don't learn the words. I learned what's under the words. Mmm-hmm. And then makes me say the words and the other person makes me say the words including if I'm on the telephone what I mean, I hear what the other person is saying to me or if I'm in a monologue I hear what the train of thought is and why the Next sentence comes out of my mouth because something has happened in my head or if I'm talking to the audience. I'm really trying to see if they're getting what I'm saying. So to me, it's all told dialogue. Mmm-hmm. You were fortunate you went from Phil Silvers to a couple of other East Coast TV series and then Broadway your first Broadway production was called only in America, which was a year after Phil Silvers, but your first really big one was pearly Aureus in 1962. We have a lot of people who remember the past in this audience is a wonderful show. I see Davis wrote it and starred in it with Ruby Dee and it was really very sad for me because it was a breakthrough kind of thing. It was a farcical deconstruction of stereotypes racial stereotypes. That's how he meant it that's how audience is accepted it and 10 or 20 years later. The movement decided that it was retrograde and put it down. They took the stereotypes without any irony. I was really sorry to see that because he had made a real contribution and he's he was such a dedicated person with his heart and soul to equality and justice. So that's my feeling about that shifting gears who was next on Broadway with The Owl and the Pussycat it will their bunch of places where I was in would small parts of big Parts. But the Almond boys again was a big change was Diana Sands and me she and I had worked in and improvising company together. Paul cells was no well Paul. I worked with Paul after I did a season. summer season in Hyannis Port Where we did a version of compass which was all improvised we had for the first hour sketches. We had created in rehearsal that started from improvisation and it got refined. The second hour was after I ended the First Act asking the audience for headlines or words things. That would be the subject of sketches in the second hour. The second hour was all spot improvisation, but it was guts improve. Using you just went out on stage and tried to be funny no matter what you came up with. You don't know where it came from but was there was no discipline to it. And then the nevertheless with Diana was in that and some Reni Santoni. honey Shepherd wonderful people And about a year later Paul asked me if I wanted to be part of a workshop on the stage at Second City, but not doing Second City stuff. We were doing theater games which had been invented by his mother decades earlier Viola spolin and that's really the most It's the most effective kind of improvisation that I've ever encountered because it's a very strict it's very disciplined. You learn something very basic at the very beginning of theater games where by the way being funny is not the objective and you're discouraged from joke making but the basic thing you learned is to connect with the other player and that's why I think it's the best training for acting. because if you don't have that connection with the other person It's a fraudulent encounter. You're pretending to encounter the other person. And there's something even at an unconscious level. I think that shows like pretense. I don't think it's true that it's like children saying let's let's pretend we're kings and queens. Let's let's it's not pretending it's it's an active imagination. That's Mutual that you enter it into it to get you into into her together. And you agree on the circumstances? So as a result to skip ahead I've always been interested in science. And when I did this science program on public television for 11 years, I realized that it was working that the conversations I had with the scientists were working because we had the same contact that you get when you when you work in an improvisation that's of the kind that Viola would work on so I realized when we were doing the show that I was helping them by connecting with them helping them to tell their story to a human not to go into a mini lecture that was full of. words that were difficult to understand Concepts that were difficult So I thought what if we could train them to make that kind of contact so they could not just make it with another person but make it with a whole audience whether the audience was there or reading a book they wrote. What are they thinking while you talk to them? What's going on in the other person in other words empathy. So that's when I helped start the all the center for communicating science, which is at Stony Brook University and we trained starting with improvisation exercises and then moving on to other exercises. We've trained over 15,000 scientists and doctors in 10 years and it all it all came out of your training with Paul sale. And so forth. Yeah that it turns out in my opinion. It's not just the best basis for acting that kind of improvising. Yeah. It's the best basis for human interaction lawyers benefit from it. I on my podcast. I talked to a hostage negotiator. Who would work for two years sometimes to get a hostage released and he would do it by thinking about what that hostage-taker was going through what the hostage-taker believed in and he would let him know he understood he didn't agree or disagree. He just let him know he understood what was going on in the person's mind and he get the hostage released and he said these same techniques can be used in a marriage. He said that and I think it's true do the SAG audience have to worry now that these fifteen thousand scientists are going to be joining to you know, what's so funny. I was asked to go to the Lynn Fontanne house where they do program every year to work with standard 20 actors from theaters around the country very experienced actors, and I was asked to come spend a week or 10 days and I Do anything I wanted I could work and you know various people have done Shakespeare musical theater, and I said hmm, because I value spontaneity so much. I wanted to spend the week on spontaneity and the way we'd be doing that would be improvising for the whole week. The actors were not necessarily unafraid. In fact be when we started. They said they said we better we better than the scientists. And one woman who had my heart briefly went out there. She had 30 years experience. Hmm. Sorry, she had 30 years experience on the stage. She was so afraid of improvising. She was planning to Stage a fake heart attack and she made the most progress because she wanted to work on a scene. She had brought a copy of during March the visit. So they she and another actor read the scene where she meets up with this guy who's has seduced her and abandoned her in the past. And now she's come back as a rich woman to the town and wants Justice and she's got anger as steaming anger toward him and even toward the baby that came out of their relationship so they read the scene and they were very good was the first reading but it was in there experienced actors. It was a really good reading. Then I asked them to go back and play a scene to improvise a scene. That's not in the play. That was the moment in the woods. When he actually let her know he wasn't going to marry her and he was dumping her. So at first they did what most of us do they were standing there making up dialogue and it was a little boring. But the way you get out of that in these exercises is to use the place. To act on the environment and let that become part of it and then you forget about what you're saying and real stuff comes out of you. and at one point when I said start using the environment use the place. And she said to him don't you want to marry me and he said oh, look, it's raining in the rain. Just hit you right there in the nose. She was devastated. And then as soon as they finished that we went back and they read the scene again, it was fantastic the anger. She had toward him came from her guts because she had she had not just imagined being rejected by him. She had just lived through it. and even her anger at the baby that they had which is hard to draw up without a lot of thinking about a lot of effort for most people boy that just burst out over was great. I'm wondering I'm going to shift gears. I haven't let you ask many questions. I'm stuck. You seem like a very nice person. Thank you. Given the extraordinary results that improv has brought you. I'm wondering did this influence you once you became a screenwriter once you started writing for Mash in 1973. Did you utilize any of this kind of chemistry that comes out of improv? Well, I think all my life since I since I started thinking about improbable all my professional life, I've tried to use The relating that I learned from the ability to relate. and that to me is I think it's the major part of the acting experience. So I'd I have always used it. In writing. I think I think one of the things about how improv can help writing and it's not the only way but either way that seems important to me is when you get in touch with the ability. To contact another person you get more empathic you understand characters at a deeper level. So that affects the writing it also puts you in touch with your own unconscious a little more and as things are poking their way to the top you can pull them out with associations. I think it's associative thinking is probably how the original stuff comes to the surface. There was I once read a story and I haven't been able to track it down. It was supposed to be an account of something Freud had written. That was a myth about a goat goat herder who kept his goats in a cave with a big rock blocking the entrance to the cave and when he let them out in the morning he let the weak ones out first. The the sick ones the ones that were not useful to him as much as the others in case there was somebody out there throwing rocks at them and the brutally valuable ones came out last and the image is the the the meaning of the myth is. Don't knock your early ideas. They had the weak ones are coming out but they're leading through an associative process to the ones behind them. Don't give up because you get a lousy idea. The first ones are supposed to be lousy. Your first draft is supposed to stink, but it leads to the second one and some of the elements that brought forth. The first one are pulling up the ones behind them and eventually you'll get the golden the Golden ones and Have patience and don't don't editorialize while you're still creating. You got to break it into two things. Once once it all comes out and gets on paper and you should attack it objectively, but first, it should be very subjective. I never been able to track that down. I don't know if Freud ever wrote about that or not. Maybe I made it up. It's part of the creative process. You join Mash in 1972 And A year later began writing scripts. I think the first script I wrote was at the end of the first year. I may be long. Okay, I think so was this a natural transition? Well, I would want I'd wanted to be a writer from the time. I was eight years old, and it was only later in life when I was nine. I wanted to be an actor and I wrote I rhyme. Made of I would shoot little movies on a wind-up Bell & Howell camera, and I'm I wrote a newspaper or magazine kind of thing that I published on a mimeograph machine and delivered on a horse in the canyon where we lived seriously. Yeah, seriously when time I was stuffing leaning over from the top of my horse stuffing of the magazine into a mailbox and the guy said, oh, I like that paper I said, Oh, thanks you what do you mean? Thanks. Did you say well I write it as you write it I was about 11. She's I like that so you can't judge things according to people's age. You began writing and then by the way, the reason you liked it so much was I stole a lot of the material that I put in? I think I was too young to know about copyright from writing you then went to directing episodes of mash often the ones that you had written yet. Can you talk about this through line? How did directing add to your ability to understand that? I was over from the time I was a kid. I was interested in telling a story visually and I was I was very lucky that they trusted me with directing the first show, but the first show was real test it involved a picnic with about 80 people and I covered it with seven cameras. And that's for your first day of directing job. That's kind of a lot to yes take on and it went okay and that night. I was catching a plane back to spend the weekend with my family in New Jersey and I remember skipping down the sidewalk saying I can do it I can do it. Did that spur greater interest in may be concentrating on directing or it was always going to be a triple threat when it came to you writing. It's it really you know, it you're right it to the triple threat. There is when you write the wrong word know it know, it's true. When you write direct and act in the same piece. There are 3 ways they can kill you. And it's not that easy to do. I don't think I did my best and neither do any of those categories while I was trying to do them all at the same time. Well, I think we could dispute that especially once you get to your feature film career beginning in 1979 with the seduction of Joe Tynan you wrote you I didn't directed know what's his name. I forget his name right now. But Gary schatzberg. Thank you. Jerry schatzberg. Thank you. The Four Seasons the Four Seasons, I would that I was very proud of thank you. Thank you talk a little about being a triple threat. Well one thing that's hard to do is to be objective about your own performance. So I would when I was on when I was in the scene, especially a closer by shoot more takes of that and try to give myself more options in the editing room and that led to the crew saying look a little narcissistic is it was only to give myself options? I swear to God you believe you believe me, don't you? Did this multiple take continue in your subsequent films or did the first film teach you how to nobody grow? And I finally learned to do a when I remember one time in an early movie. I was in that we're the director didn't want me to look at the rushes and I thought it was so important to see the rushes to find out what I was doing wrong and fix it, which is probably the worst thing you can do because then the Movie is all about you trying not to do things rather than giving an open honest fresh performance. So one time I even snuck into the projection booth through the attic so I could watch the Russian and I wasn't very good in that picture either, but then I realized that it's really like improv you do it and it disappears Into The Ether. And you don't have to worry about it. It's either good or it's not good if it's happening while you do it. That's what matters. But to get into a situation where you're telling yourself what to do because you saw something you didn't like before all backwards for me. Anyway, I don't look at it. How about writing for yourself in the sense that you're writing with your characteristics in mind? I don't do that. I don't think I've ever done that I write for the character and I try to try to make it a character that's in my range. Put as interesting I could make but I don't always understand what I'm writing one time. I was writing the character that I was going to play in Four Seasons and I was struggling to find out who he was and I had written a couple of scenes that seem to make an impression on me and I was taking a shower and thinking about it, you know in the shower you get deep thoughts, you know. And I stepped out of the shower and I said to my wife Arlene, I finally figured out who this guy is. It's my father and she said you're kidding right? I said know what she said. It's you which kind of took me down a peg because he wasn't that admirable the person, you know, he's the buttinsky thought he knew everything. the bitch After the Four Seasons, this was followed a few years later with sweet Liberty. Right? Did you sense something different doing a second film as a triple threat from your first an interesting Leon that movie I was very interested in preparing every shot. I'm storyboarded the whole thing. Went out with the photographer and figured out what lens would use in every scene. Where the track would go when I would get on the set in the morning at eight o'clock. The track would already be down because everybody knew what to do. Then when I got to the last picture I directed. I improvised the directing part a little more. I didn't plan the shots like that. It didn't have a storyboard. I get in the set and I think let's see. Where should we put the camera and as soon as I did that the crew didn't think I know anything and it didn't go well, so they prefer a well everybody prefers that you know what you're doing. I think I prefer to one of your greatest comic roles was in Woody Allen's crimes and misdemeanors. Hollywood vase director Lester, could you talk about what Woody Allen was like as a director and what you learned working with him would he doesn't like to talk to people I think or at least when I worked with me didn't and that extended all the way to actors you and I have talked more now than I did with him in three movies. And so there was not much conversation. I came into the first scene. And it was in a real apartment and it was already lit and other actors were sitting in the their places. I don't know why they called me so late, but I walk in and what he said, hi I said hi. He said why don't you sit over there and about halfway through the scene whenever you feel like it go from sitting next to her to sitting next to her. Okay. Are we ready? She was my sister and she was my mistress and I hadn't even been introduced to them. So I think part of his then I figured out what how to work it and I got very improvisational. Well, what else something I really loved about working with him was that he really valued improvisation and they didn't mind I would improvise my way through a whole seem once in a while. He'd say try to include that line I have in there because I use it later in the script. And I that was really fun for me. But with no directing per se other than know his way at that time was if he didn't like the way he only did two or three takes if he didn't like the way it went he would call you back a month later and you do it again. And if he didn't like that, you might get called back a third time and then you'd be fired after the first day. I wouldn't have minded being fired. But then and the by the second day I caught on and I really loved working. I love the experience and I loved that movie. I think it's one of our best moves. Absolutely and this same experience happened on the second and then her third film with with him was a musical. Yeah. That was when I wish I had done more of those they were real. Was really entertaining. What was it like doing a musical Woody Allen film? He wanted you to sing his badly as you could he had the idea that the people should sound like normal people. In fact, one of the actresses in the movie said I can't sing at all. I can't do it. So he got somebody to live to sing for her that she would lip-sync he got a high school girl who had never sung before so he was kind of determined not to have great thing. He told the leading actress who was a great singers. don't try try not to sing. So well. Fortunately, I didn't need to be advised to do that in the 90s. You took another New Direction and you became host of PBS's Scientific American Frontiers. Was this something that came out of the blue or were you curious? Like I thought it came out of the blue. I think that they sent me a letter that sort of that. They must have sent to other people and they might have sent it to me because I had played a doctor on television so had something vaguely to do with science. I don't know if they realized I had such a great interest in science. I should have known because the letter was addressed in dear occupant just kidding, but I like that joke. But I'm I said that I that I hoped that they would let me interview the scientists and not just come on camera to introduce the show and then read it narration because if I could interview them then I could spend the day with them and really learn about their work which we did and it was a great education for me. And I mean in many ways you returned to Broadway in the 90s for Did Neil Simon's Jake's women had Broadway changed since your early days in the 60s there or my my guess it had but I would don't know. How do you know I did you keep track of that? No, I just don't have an answer to that. Yeah, okay, you've done work with Neil Simon a couple to tell ya the movie that he wrote and California Suite has it and what was it like working with him the on Broadway? It was so tuned into the audience reaction. It was startling. He had he had tried to show out in La Jolla or someplace like that in Southern California and didn't like the way it went and fired everybody and closed the show then started a new production that I was in and we tried it out one night in front of an invited audience to the night before we're going to go to New York. And start working on it there and it didn't get many labs and he said to me well, I guess I'm going to have to close this and I said kneel look you're funny. I'm funny. We're going to give laughs when we have a real audience. This is an invited audience is the first time we faced them. Let's let's have faith in ourselves. And a way didn't get great reviews, but it ran a season and we got away with it. You've created iconic roles on television first in mash and then in 2004 you went to the West Wing. Can you talk about what it was like working on this pivotal dream fantasy series. I felt I learned a lot about politics from reading the script because they were written by people with a lot of experience in politics real. Running campaigns and being in the staff of the senate or the house. And it was very interesting to me to see the discussions that were go on. Before a statement was released and every word would be vetted because it would reflect how it connected to the constituency in that kind of thing to each word that could appeal to a different constituents. It was very interesting to me sounds like an alternate universe now. You're well, yeah, we don't get that impression now. Yeah, but working on the series did it reflect differently than Mash in terms of how TV was made about 20 years later or no, they were both shot with one camera and The same kind of schedule and I didn't I didn't see any job. I'm not aware of any changes. I'm disappointing it with then now, it's nice to hear. There's some continuity somewhere. Well, maybe I'm just not noticing it you making me scared. You did series parts and lots of shows 30 Rock the big see The Blacklist and a program. I don't know how many people have seen but I thought you delivered one of your most remarkable performance is in Horace and Pete. I love that show. That is so good. He's a remarkable writer Louis CK and we did it like a play. It was it was a little like the old us steel hour in the 50s several cameras, and we were her stood like a play and shot it like a play We he wanted to try and I think he did. Put up on the Internet the whole uncut version of what we did all the way through. I don't think he caught it or he might have made a few small edits, but it had the energy of a live performance because of that. Your most recent work is the remarkable marriage story Noah baumbach, and I wonder if you could talk about your work on this film where you play one of the few decent lawyers in the film. Well, he's decent and he showed decent you see he has a Shabby office. I love this movie and I'm very very proud to be in it because it's it's so remarkable. It not only is a movie about people but it's a movie about it's a movie that takes a risk. That you wouldn't expect it somebody to take in the in a commercial environment. It's about divorce which turns people off. I wrote a movie about a divorce and one of the one of the audience surveys had someone saying I didn't go see it because I figured if Alan Alda did a movie about divorce it would be painful and I didn't want the pain, you know, because I wouldn't just treat it like a like a joke, I would Didn't try it again. Anyway get into this reality of it and know it does that. But what's amazing to me about what he's able to do know about Buck the director, right or what? He's amazing what I find amazing that he that he can do is tell a love story. That continues right straight through the divorce, even though they have heartbreaking fights. You can see that these are fights between two people who deeply loved each other and it's very much like I don't mean to drag this in by the heels, but it's very much like what we talked about on my podcast which is relating and communicating. The idea that in a marriage you have to you have to communicate really well to keep going through a marriage especially with the introduction of children and professional concerns. And when you start to think about a divorce it it's often because communication is broken down. Then you find out that during the divorce. You have to communicate better than you ever did earlier in the marriage. And if you don't it's going to be a lot of pain for everybody involved. And Noah shows that and it's it's it's an emotional work out. I think and like a work out at a gym. It can be it can do you good? It might not feel great while you're going through it. But to stir up those emotions to have the empathy for the people who are going through it as a valuable experience. Plus he's able to find out what's funny about these things. Sometimes it's funny and painful at the same time. So I'm I love this movie and and it also gives me a chance to talk about My podcast let's talk about your podcast. I love this podcast I have. Which is called clear and Vivid it's called clear and Vivid and the idea is that I've now had 70 conversations with people like Yo, Yo Ma and Madeleine Albright and Michael J fox and Sarah Silverman Sarah Silverman had one of the most extraordinary stories to tell and all these stories are about relating to other people. And communicating what goes in to communicate and over and over again, you hear very much like what we were talking about before being aware of what's happening in the other person. Not what you want them to get from you but what they're able to get from you. Where are they? Who are they? What are they going through? What can I say that speaks to that? Otherwise, I'm just spraying stuff all over you it's not getting in. Syria silver and story was amazing and it's just one example of many she was looking at her Twitter feed and somebody had tweeted a one-word insult or even like the worst insult. You can give to a woman. So instead of blocking him or doing a tirade, she looked up his profile and found out he was suffering from back pain. And she wrote him on Twitter. I messaged him and said I'm in pain in my back to I know what that's like. And sometimes I think anger comes out of pain and I think that's why you were angry toward me. Why don't you try to speak from a place of love and he wrote back and said I have no place of love that was ripped out of me by a man who abused me when I was a child. She then found a place where he could get therapy for free. He went to the therapy changed his life there now best friends on the Internet. Is that amazing? Wow, but there's stories of how diplomats were able how George Mitchell was able to stop the violence in Ireland. by bringing people together He said we're going to have dinner every night for the next week during the day. We can talk business and yell at each other at night. You can't say anything having to do with business. None of these negotiations at night will going to talk to each other about our childhoods are families our pets the things we care about in life. That's all we're going to talk about. They talk civilly to each other each day. It was harder to yell at this other person who New was just like you. Stories like that over and over again. I'm I learned a lot talking to these people and we use the same techniques I was talking with you about before I don't go in with a list of questions. Nothing personal by the way, most interviews involve a list of questions. But yeah. That sometimes not in our case, but it sometimes leads to not really hearing the answer to the question because you know, you have this next question to get to we were as if you ask about what you're actually curious about and hear the answer and want the person to tell you more about that or remind you of something in your own life. And you say it's like that. Is that like that for you where you start to share a conversation and you have Communication partner that such a different experience and that's what I try to do on the show. And I see people opening up. And it's very it's very enlightening when they do because these are people with enormous experience. And Yo-Yo Ma then can talk about how he relates to the other players when he's playing with other musicians how he relates to the audience how he deals with his nervousness about an audience and it has to do with relating. He said he used to be very nervous when he was younger coming out to do a concert and then he realized that if he looked at it this way, he wouldn't be nervous. He now comes out and thinks I've invited these people to my party. And I'm going to serve them food and drink and music. And we're all going to have a good time together all of a sudden they become real people. They're not this. this monster in the dark nothing personal looking back you would work with some of the greatest directors in the world Scorsese. You worked with him on The Aviator. You got an Oscar nomination for your role there. You've worked with Mike you work with Mike Nichols. You have worked with Noah baumbach. I'm wondering if you've worked with Woody Allen. I'm wondering if you can I was the best. You left that Spielberg and we're going him to there. It was I've been so lucky there's and I would watch them carefully every minute to try to learn from them and and they like to talk they like to explain somebody once told me you met Charlie Chaplin 20 or 30 years after he had made movies and he said he loved to explain the fight scene that he did that took six weeks to stage and he'd explained it Moment by moment shot by shot and that's what I I find often great directors love to do they you ask them a question about a particular scene or shot. How did you get that? They like to pass it on it's very nice. I got that with Scorsese and with Spielberg enjoyed that we're with an audience of actors who hopefully will also work with great directors. I wonder if you could share your Insight about some kind of common thread of what great directors do with actors that might be different than not so great directors. No, I can't I'd say the reason I can't is that every director I've worked with has been different. I think directing style may stem from a personal style of living the way they organize their lives on the shed good to get through a harrowing series of tasks and 200 people lining up to ask you questions all day long. You got to have a style of working that suits you. I'm guessing and some Woody doesn't load least when I worked with him didn't like to talk. Other Marty Scorsese loves to talk Spielberg. He'd same thing. He enjoyed very much enjoyed talking about things but how they offer you suggestions about how you're acting is different for everybody. And I think it's the only advice I could possibly give I think is too. Reverse the process we've been talking about in terms of communication. To receive a communication. You have to go through a similar process of listening well. Trying to read the other person not only what they're saying, but what's under what they're saying an employer tries to communicate with an employee? The employee has to go to the same effort to get good leadership out of the employer. You can't just take it at face value say well, you didn't tell me that. You know, you got to be a team and both people can benefit from trying to be a team and I think the actor the same thing. If you have only one way of working and the director doesn't fit into that it's going to be unfortunate. I think we have to be flexible. It's easier for me to say because I seem to be icing. I feel like I invented different method every time I do a different part really and that method is coming though from a base of listening and empathy. I guess. I don't know I make it up as I go along. Okay, let me turn to our audience who had written some questions. Let's see, you've played a lot of political roles in your career. How do you approach them? And do you have any thoughts this is to incendiary about our current political climate. No, I was a political activist when I when I was much younger 45 or 50 years ago and I worked very hard to try to get the Equal Rights Amendment ratified by publicly identified as a feminist and worked hard for for the cause of gender equality and I felt after the Equal Rights Amendment failed failed to be ratified. That it was time for me to concentrate. On what I know how to do best which is acting right? And now teach communication and help help run an organization that is spreading these ideas around the world. I don't know and and particularly the communication of science. I don't want to politicize science. Or politicize my work by talking in public about current politics. I have my own ideas. But I don't want to I don't want to use any platform I have for that. I want to I have a longer range plan to help communication improve which I hope will help. Or political interactions improve here's a speculative question. What role or roles would you love to play that you haven't had a chance to yet? And Frank, okay. The the thing is I really do regard my whole life and so-called career as an improv. All I've ever done is take what comes my way and try to make the most of it. I haven't hankered after playing anything. There's no King Lear in the future. I don't really like King Lear. I love Shakespeare and I love I'm a he's a star. Ingenious, but I never understood King Lear. I'd be happy to talk to somebody who has played it can explain it to me, but he seems like a dope to me. Okay. Is that going to be the headline of this thing? All this says you hear a dope dear William you blew it. Yeah, okay as actors. We have dream jobs where cast and crew get along like a loving family and Nightmare jobs where it is a constant Clash of egos without naming names. How did you handle the difficult jobs? Well, I miss something in the beginning. Well, when the Middle with the basic thing is how do you handle a set where it is not working? Well. Oh, well, there's tension. Yeah a lack of communication. Yeah, the ideal thing would be to communicate better and that get pissed. I'm going to try that next. Okay, your dad was a Burly Q. That's what it says a Burly Q performer and you used to travel with him what Memories do you have of those comics and strippers? We've heard about the strippers and did your dad ever let you do any burlesque bits with him. Well, they carried me on stage when I was 6 months old and tell me they tell me that there was a bell on the high chair. They put me in and they kept ringing the bell right on top of all their punch. I had early training and stealing the scene but Yeah, the chorus girls were very sweet to me. They took me up to the dressing room and we sort of their mascot and they would comb my hair and Pat my cheek and then they'd say Okay, Allie, we're going to change our clothes now turn your back and I turn around with my face against the wall with my nose in their costumes and I could smell the perfume and the sweat on the costume and behind me. I could hear them putting on their silk costumes. And they thought it didn't mean anything to me. I get excited just thinking about it now. This kind of done yet. I was going to ask but you kind of answered it looking back on your long career. Is there a favorite role and I guess being yeah. No, I don't think there is that favorite moments things that come back to me from time to time that I relish one you'd never think of there was there were two guys from Britain who did a play called the play what I wrote? And every night in the second act they had an actor or some some somebody well-known come in to do the second act with them and you had to learn a song and a dance. And you had to learn a lot of dialogue. You were real part of the second act and I love doing it. And at one point I was playing. Count toddler own who had been imprisoned in a French prison and to escape he had to put on a hoop skirt. So I put on the hoop skirt and I'm singing and dancing in my hoop skirt and I trip on the skirt and fall down. One of the memorable moments in my life. It's so important. They don't teach you in acting school. Don't trip on the hoop skirt, but I never went to acting school. So I wouldn't have known anyway, but they're a little moments like that I think of and I think that you know, sometimes people say who's your favorite actor and I don't think of a favorite actor. I think of moments that I've seen that I admired and can you share some of them with us? I once saw I was at a dinner honoring Anthony Hopkins. And it was entry there was a real love his work and almost every single clip going back to when he was a young actor was authentic and invested. And I that's the closest I came because every one of those almost every one of those clips was a memorable moment where he really connected. Then there's that moment in the back of the car when Brando shakes his head and says no, we don't forget what he said could have been a contender. No, not at all. It seemed that scene, but he did a guy takes a gun out Rod Steiger ta takes a gun out and he says no no, no and I always admired that then I heard later. I don't know if it's true. He was thinking don't act like that. You got to make the make use of whatever you got. I'm trying to recall the film but there was a moment. It was aftermash where you kind of shifted gears and started playing darker roles even villainous roles. Was this a conscious decision to try you're the only countries part of what you're describing is that when I did them a new life, I deliberately wrote the character much more rough-hewn than that part side recently played because Of what you're talking about, but the fact is I've played flawed people most of the time including Hawkeye Hawkeye was a flawed character. It could be that I In in my real life. I created a stereotype when I would be interviewed on television that slopped over into my artistic life. I'm not sure. I mean it may be something in favor of the point of view of some actors who don't like to show up as themselves and only like to show up as one character or another. But did you know more and more will you talk about changes in the business? It wasn't considered part of your job. When I started making movies that you would go on the road for a month promoting it you might be asked to do an interview, but it wasn't now it's in your contract. and I understand that but it's all but it's a little bit connected to the idea that I always regretted it when Two or three decades ago. They started referring to movies as product. It's not a product at its best. It's a work of art and I also have another reaction to I say I'd say this gently because I'm not trying to criticize anybody but it's common for now the public to talk about actors practicing their craft. You can do acting as a craft. You can also do it as an art you can try to be an artist. To me a craft is painting flowers on a dish and there's nothing wrong with that. But there's a difference between that and trying to be like Rembrandt and put character into a face. That's different. And if you aspired to that it's different from being a craft. What we were we talking about before I got onto the I feel that the time we've spent together has been a true education in terms of how to approach the art of acting and I would say the art of communicating and I think I speak for everyone in thanking you for sharing such important life lessons with us. Oh my god look, Hello. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the SEC after foundations conversations podcast. If you appreciated what you heard, please support us with a review or donation and reach out to us on Twitter Instagram and Facebook ad seg after found we'd love to hear from you.
A Q&A with Alan Alda on November 19, 2019. Moderated by Brian Rose. Alan Alda is indelibly linked to his eleven seasons as Dr. Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H, which debuted in 1972. His work on the comedic drama set in the Korean War made him the only person to win acting, directing and writing Emmys® for the same series. M*A*S*H became a ratings juggernaut, and remains popular with old and new audiences on streaming services and DVD. In addition to his starring role, Alda directed and co-wrote its feature-length final episode in 1983, “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen.” That episode still ranks in the top ten list of most-watched programs in the U.S., bested only by Super Bowls; when it originally aired, over 70 percent of all televisions in the country tuned in. In 2004, Alda joined the sixth season of the Peabody Award winning The West Wing as Senator Arnold Vinick. He received an Emmy® for his performance in that role, which he portrayed throughout the critically acclaimed show’s finale twenty-eight episodes later. In all, he has received 7 EMMY awards. Alda made his first major foray into nonfiction between those two series. He was invited to take over as the host of Scientific American Frontiers in 1993 and continued with what became Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers until the PBS show ended in 2005. Alda broke the mold by actively helping scientists communicate their work to viewers on a personal level, chipping away at the jargon and specialized knowledge until he – and therefore the viewer – could understand. Throughout his television career Alda has also been in demand for guest roles, starting with a role on The Phil Silvers Show in 1958 and continuing to the present day in shows including ER, 30 Rock, The Blacklist (for which Alda received an Emmy® nomination), The Big C, Horace and Pete, The Good Fight and, most recently, Ray Donovan. Alda has won a total of seven Emmy awards—including an International Emmy in 2012—and has been nominated 34 times. In January 2019, he was honored with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. Alda landed his first movie role in 1963’s Gone Are the Days!, which starred the legendary Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. He went on to show his range in dozens of additional movies, including his Oscar® nominated role as Senator Ralph Owen Brewster in 2004’s The Aviator. Among Alda’s many other films are Bridge of Spies (2015), The Longest Ride (2015), Wanderlust (2012), Tower Heist (2011), Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Neil Simon’s California Suite (1978), Same Time, Next Year (1978), The Mephisto Waltz (1971) and Paper Lion (1968). He also starred in and wrote The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979), and starred in, wrote and directed A New Life (1988), Sweet Liberty (1986) and The Four Seasons (1981). Alda plays attorney Bert Spitz in Noah Baumbach’s 2019 film Marriage Story, which is currently in theaters, and will stream on Netflix in December. Alda began his acting career on stage in improvisational theater and the Cleveland Play House acting company, but was soon working on Broadway. In 1962 he was in Purlie Victorious as Charley Cotchipee (a role he reprised in the movie version, Gone Are the Days!). By 1964 he was starring as F. Sherman (Felix, the “Owl”) in The Owl and The Pussycat. Two years later, his tripartite role performance earned a Tony® nomination as Best Actor in a Musical for the Mike Nichols-directed The Apple Tree. Two additional Tony® nominations followed, one for the title role in Jake’s Women and the other for playing Shelly Levene in Glengarry Glen Ross. Alda most recently was seen on stage starring in the 2014 revival of Love Letters opposite Candice Bergen. 