0:02

This is Alec Baldwin and you're

0:04

listening to Here's the Thing from

0:06

My Heart Radio. On

0:08

July fourteenth, SAG AFTRA,

0:11

better known as the Screen Actors Guild, joined

0:13

the picket lines, where members of the Writers'

0:16

Guild of America have been striking

0:18

since early May.

0:20

The entire business model has

0:22

been changed by streaming

0:25

digital AI.

0:28

This is a moment of history, that

0:31

is a moment of truth. If

0:33

we don't stand toall right now,

0:36

we are all going to be in trouble. We

0:39

are all going to be in jeopardy

0:41

of being replaced by machines and

0:44

big business. Who gives more

0:46

about Wall Street than you and your family.

0:51

That's Actor and Screen Actors Guild President

0:54

fran Drescher announcing the SAG

0:56

strike. This action follows

0:58

contentious negotiations over

1:01

contracts with the Alliance of Motion Picture

1:03

and Television Producers, a collection

1:06

of film studios, TV networks

1:08

and streamers like Netflix, Hulu,

1:11

Paramount, Sony, and Warner

1:13

Brothers Discovery. The issues

1:15

in dispute include everything

1:17

from dwindling payments in the age of streaming

1:20

to the unsettling reality that artificial

1:23

intelligence may soon render human writers

1:25

and actors unnecessary.

1:28

Many have called this particular moment

1:31

existential. One person

1:33

who is deeply involved in this issue

1:36

and has been ringing the alarm for some time

1:38

is actor, writer, director, and producer

1:41

Justine Bateman. Bateman

1:43

is perhaps best known for her work on

1:46

family ties and Satisfaction,

1:49

but she also received her degree in

1:51

computer science from UCLA in

1:53

twenty sixteen. As someone

1:56

involved in so many aspects of filmmaking,

1:58

I wanted to know if Eateman felt that the

2:01

guilds were up to the task of

2:03

ensuring their future amidst

2:05

the AI proliferation.

2:08

Yes, actually, yeah, And I'll

2:10

tell you why. So if we go back

2:12

even further to nineteen eighty,

2:15

which I think was the last time

2:17

SAG was on strike, they were asking

2:19

for a piece of all the unions

2:22

were a piece of the

2:24

home video market VCR

2:27

right tapes. We didn't

2:29

even have DVDs yet, and

2:32

the quote from AMPTP was

2:36

we don't even know if there's any money in that. Well

2:39

we saw what happened with that. That became

2:42

the financial booy

2:44

for the entire industry

2:47

having DVD sales. Then you go

2:49

to two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, when I

2:51

was on the SAG board of Directors and on the

2:53

negotiating committee, and they

2:56

said to all the unions, when

2:59

we were asking for me made for new media

3:01

percentages, residuals so forth,

3:04

they said the same thing, Well,

3:06

we don't even know if there's any money in the Internet.

3:09

It's so unproven.

3:10

It's the wild wild West, which is such a tired

3:13

sort of saying. And I

3:15

think during the WGA strike

3:18

back then they released Hulu,

3:20

which was all of these

3:22

ampt a lot of not all of them,

3:24

but a lot of these AMPTP companies coming

3:26

together and creating a

3:29

video platform. I mean,

3:31

you know, these companies don't get together to do anything,

3:34

so they must have been extremely convinced

3:36

that it was going to be very lucrative and

3:38

eliminated a lot of the overhead

3:41

that's necessary for broadcast television

3:44

and theater release. So it's

3:46

very telling then as far as AI

3:48

goes, that when the

3:51

WGA asked for protections

3:54

on that, they didn't even say what

3:56

they'd said before, which could have been we

3:58

don't know that there's any money in AI. They

4:01

just said, we're not talking about it, which

4:03

says to me they are writing

4:06

scripts of the AI already and have been for

4:08

a while.

4:09

Of course I'm a thousand percent convinced

4:11

that they have that machine churning

4:13

away. And I always remember when

4:15

they say, well, we don't know if there's any money in there.

4:18

We don't really have any money in that that we know of.

4:21

And what they're saying now is, well, we don't have any money

4:23

there for you had

4:26

to depend that little phase, then we

4:28

don't have any money for you. For the

4:30

actors we've seen over the last

4:32

many years. And this is my opinion,

4:34

it's purely an opinion, an analysis

4:37

that what you see now is the complete wall

4:39

to wall wigitizing of

4:42

the creative industries. Men

4:44

and women who are captain

4:47

corporations that want

4:49

to take all the risk

4:52

out of movie making and television production.

4:55

And of course there's no such thing as a

4:57

risk free movie business. Guessing

5:00

what an audience might want to watch, and now they've gotten

5:02

this down with all their Marvel universe, but guessing

5:05

what an audience might want to watch eighteen months

5:07

from now is a lot of luck in

5:09

some art. But these are corporations

5:11

that want to have the risk free entertainment

5:14

industry, which is just absurd. You're

5:17

involved in with the union with SAG

5:19

when did that begin and why.

5:21

Well, I'm not. I haven't acted for many, many years.

5:24

It's not a focus of mine. Just been writing,

5:26

directing and producing. So I'm more involved

5:28

actually in the WGA, WGA

5:31

and the DGA now like I'm on the Western the

5:33

Director's Western Council at

5:36

the DGA, and for

5:38

a long time just been, you know, a

5:40

great admirer of the WGA and the DGA

5:43

and involved in the WA. But of course

5:45

I have a big love for SAG

5:47

and because of my relationships with

5:49

them, they had asked me to come in to

5:51

their day with the AMPTP in

5:54

these negotiations, the day that dealt

5:56

with AI and say a few things

5:58

and I you know, you can't

6:00

talk about what was talked about in there, but I

6:03

will say that Duncan

6:06

Crabtree Ireland, the National

6:08

Director and the lead negotiator

6:11

for SAG, has extremely

6:13

good handle on what

6:16

needs to happen for actors protection

6:18

and not just for protection of actors

6:21

who are working now and who will work

6:23

in you know, they have their future work as

6:25

well, but to protect the actors from the

6:27

past. And this is true too for

6:29

the DGA and WGA. And maybe

6:31

it's something that has to be done through legislation, but

6:34

to protect it's our responsibility

6:36

now. Like these, these actors and writers and directors

6:39

in the past, they did

6:41

work within the unions to establish

6:44

rules for us so that we could

6:46

make a living at this and have pensions and healthcare

6:48

and all of this, and they sacrifice for that. And

6:51

I feel like now it's time for us to in

6:53

addition to what we need to do to protect members,

6:55

now we need to protect their work

6:58

because now the technology exists to go

7:00

back and mess around with everything. You

7:02

know, the technology isn't there exactly to

7:05

just generate another version of

7:07

Casablanca, but we're on the precipice

7:10

of that, or going back to say some

7:13

you know, the mash TV series and making

7:15

another season out of

7:17

what was, you know, just feeding in

7:19

all the seasons and making another season, that

7:21

kind of thing. And then there's other things like just

7:23

doing episodes that are

7:26

in line with somebody's viewing history

7:29

and just throwing together

7:32

something that is an amalgamation,

7:34

a distilling of an amalgamation of

7:37

all of our past work. And that's

7:39

what I find so

7:42

offensive and heinous. It's

7:44

not that AI is now generating

7:46

new stuff, just it's a new technology,

7:49

and it's generating new stuff on its own.

7:52

It's doing it only because

7:54

it's been fed in our old work.

7:57

That's what I find so horrible

7:59

about it.

8:00

Do you think that people who have

8:02

licensed, you know, the most handy

8:04

reference I have as James Earl Jones licensing

8:07

his voice to the Star Wars board

8:10

of directors there for his voice as

8:12

Darth Vader to live on beyond his death.

8:15

Is that a betrayal of actors? Is that a

8:17

betrayal of the union for people to buy into

8:19

the AI thing? Do you think not?

8:21

In my opinion. I mean, if they want to do that,

8:24

fine, I personally, as a filmmaker,

8:26

I don't want to have anything to do with it because it's the

8:29

polar opposite direction of where

8:31

I want to go with my work. I want to

8:33

do something like really, really

8:35

new if I can, you know, stand

8:38

on the shoulders of all the filmmakers

8:40

that I love, and you

8:42

know, move the ball down the field. I

8:44

mean, look, the last ten to fifteen years,

8:47

with some exceptions, all we've been doing

8:49

is a regurgitation of the past. I mean, tell

8:51

me what pop culture is right now. It

8:54

is the pop culture of the twentieth century.

8:56

Period.

8:57

There's nothing new in the last twenty years

8:59

with some exccepts as far as a genre

9:01

goes of music of movies. I

9:04

mean, Alec, you can think I could name

9:06

any decade in the twentieth

9:08

century and you could tell me something

9:11

that went on in music, something went on and film,

9:13

something went on in fine art

9:16

or dance or whatever, and it's just

9:18

not happening anymore because tech

9:20

and I love tech, I have a computer science degree,

9:23

but it has created this

9:25

is something you want to avoid in coding, which

9:27

is an infinite loop. We just can't

9:29

the code can't get out of this

9:31

loop. It's in what tech has

9:33

created. In pop culture

9:36

and in the arts is an infinite loop

9:38

where we just completely we regurgitate,

9:41

regurgitate, regurgitate what's

9:43

happened before us. And the studio

9:45

has got on board with that because they're

9:48

scared financially and trying to you

9:51

know, just take ips that everybody's

9:53

familiar with so they can skip the marketing

9:56

period. They need to get people to

9:58

understand what their new.

9:59

Project is about.

10:01

And now AI is going to automate all

10:03

of that.

10:04

I mean, I will watch a streaming series,

10:07

not because I have any desire to

10:09

watch that show, but I'm just curious what's

10:11

selling? What are people watching most

10:14

of the shows I see. The other impact

10:17

of this, you know, money at all

10:19

costs money over creativity is

10:22

the bloating of these episodes. Meaning

10:24

the show is really six episodes,

10:27

but they got to do eight because they don't get into profit

10:29

till after five. There's so much bloating

10:31

of this stuff. Content way was to get to their

10:34

numbers. Now, one thing

10:36

for our audience, I would like to explain

10:39

your take, maybe on the distinction

10:41

as to the three unions, the WGA, the

10:44

DGA, and SAG, as to why

10:46

the pattern seems to be that the DGA settles

10:48

almost immediately, the DGA settles

10:50

quickly, and I've had people explain to me their

10:53

opinion as to why a SAG

10:55

is kind of down the middle, and the WGA would probably

10:57

strike you know, for a year if

10:59

they could. They're always the slowest too.

11:02

Does that seem like a fair assessment to you?

11:04

You know, I haven't been within

11:07

the negotiating process of DGA

11:09

or WGA, but I

11:11

will say this, one way to characterize

11:14

each one of the unions is

11:17

to think about their duties on

11:19

a set.

11:20

The director is.

11:21

Telling everybody this is how it's going to be,

11:24

and the directors come in, they come in for their

11:26

prep, and then they do the shoot,

11:28

and then they have their post and

11:31

that's pretty much it. The writer has

11:33

had to work with the studios, sometimes

11:36

for a long period of time before the director

11:38

is stepping in, and there's a lot

11:40

of beating up of

11:43

the writers by the studios sometimes.

11:45

In fact, in the streaming

11:47

world, I know somebody who's a showrunner,

11:50

and I've heard this from a couple of

11:52

showrunners. The note they get most frequently

11:54

is it's not second screen enough,

11:57

meaning the viewer's laptop

12:00

or the viewers right, hilarious, Right, the viewer's

12:02

laptop or the viewer's phone is

12:05

primary screen, first screen,

12:08

and don't do anything in the show that's

12:10

going to distract the viewer because

12:13

then they might go, oh, wait, what just happened,

12:15

and then go turn it off. They want it on all

12:17

the time, like visual music, as

12:19

somebody quoted once.

12:21

So you got that.

12:22

And then the actors

12:24

on a set are pretty much

12:27

showing up. They've prepared their work,

12:29

but they're like tell me where to go and where to stand

12:32

and what to do, and then you know, I'm going

12:34

to bring some emotion into it. So

12:36

if you think of it that way, and I

12:38

don't mean that to be disparaging in any way

12:40

whatsoever to any of those positions,

12:43

but then it gives you an inkling as to

12:46

how the behavior

12:49

of the negotiating committees

12:52

is possibly conducted. It's

12:54

an interesting way to kind of color

12:57

it.

12:57

I think, Well, someone said to me that

12:59

the that the DGA settles

13:01

quicker is because they have more

13:04

overlapping interests with the producers

13:06

than the other two unions.

13:07

Do.

13:08

I think the guy that's the head of the DGA just

13:10

announced he said we did better that we've

13:12

ever done, or he had some very positive

13:14

comment about what happened. But my point

13:17

is this, there's three unions and

13:20

I don't know why they can't come

13:22

together and negotiate together and

13:24

really stick together as one business.

13:27

I mean, I know that's fanciful. They

13:29

came to me to run for president of SAG before

13:31

Fran ran and

13:33

they said, going into this negotiation, we need someone

13:36

who is as bold,

13:38

you know, forceful, whatever, because

13:40

they were saying this's gonna be a tough negotiation. It's gonna

13:42

be one of the toughest negotiations. And I said,

13:44

well, I think that the head of SAG

13:47

should live in La, just in

13:49

the time zone.

13:49

Thing.

13:49

I got seven children. You think I'm gonna be on conference

13:52

calls till nine or ten o'clock at night in La, I

13:54

said, I mean, I live in New York, and I'm not leaving New

13:57

York. And after a back and forth with a small

13:59

handful of peace, they got it, and they moved on

14:01

and they got frien But I

14:03

was very tempted. But one thing I

14:05

kept saying to them was I said, what do you

14:07

think is the likelihood that we can

14:09

join forces not dilute

14:12

our independence, our

14:15

sovereignty, our specific missions.

14:18

But why can't we negotiate these contracts

14:20

together? And they just thought that that was

14:23

a very quixotic idea,

14:25

that that was just impossible. Do you agree that's

14:27

impossible?

14:29

No, I mean I am in agreement

14:31

with you. I mean, we're not even competitive

14:34

with each other, Like the writers are

14:36

not competing against the directors, are

14:38

not competing against the actors

14:40

and so forth for jobs, And

14:42

yet all the studios are

14:45

competing with each other, in direct competition

14:48

with each other. So if they can get together as

14:50

a group and negotiate against us, then

14:53

I agree we should be able to

14:56

band together and negotiate against them.

14:58

I would hope for that too. I don't know all

15:00

the reasons why it doesn't occur, but

15:04

I will say that I believe on

15:06

the AI front, that's a topic

15:08

that we all have in common, and

15:11

whatever gains one one union

15:13

gets will benefit the other. And whatever gains

15:15

one union makes on the legislative

15:18

end with the government will be

15:20

a gain for everyone else in the business.

15:23

But what you said earlier about

15:25

you know, having their eye firmly on the

15:27

money, I mean it's always been a component

15:30

of the business, of course. But when

15:33

the streamers, these tech

15:35

companies decided to

15:38

get into the tech platform

15:41

business and needed stuff to

15:43

put on their shelves, and their stuff

15:45

was our work, which they refer to as

15:47

content, which I find chili

15:51

so dismissive. Yeah, and so

15:53

offensive and so dismissive and so

15:56

confused about the

15:58

work that we do. When they

16:00

came onto the scene as tech

16:02

companies, they were seen by Wall

16:04

Street as tech companies, and

16:07

they followed the tech company pattern

16:09

of success quote unquote, which is

16:12

ramp it up, scale it as much as

16:14

you can, and then get out sell

16:16

it for a billion dollars, three billion

16:19

dollars whatever you can do. Well, now

16:21

they're not quite doing that, and

16:23

they've also saturated the market

16:26

to some extent of you know,

16:28

how far they can scale. And that's

16:30

when we had this Netflix correction on

16:33

Wall Street. That's when, because

16:35

that was Wall Street going as a wait

16:38

a minute, you guys have fairly saturated the market,

16:40

at least domestically, and

16:43

so we can't look at you as a tech company anymore

16:45

because you're not doing that scaling anymore. So

16:47

we're just going to look at you as a media company, and

16:50

a media company has to show profit.

16:55

WGA, DGA and

16:57

SAG member Justine Bateman.

17:00

If you want to hear more from bold female

17:03

directors working to change their industry,

17:05

check out our episode with Sarah Polly.

17:08

I think that I hugely benefited from

17:11

this very unusual experience

17:13

i'd had, which is that I'd worked with a few female

17:15

filmmakers as a young actor, which was a really

17:18

big deal then, like to have worked with Catherine

17:20

Bigelow, to have worked with Isabel Quichet, to

17:22

have these models, and as soon

17:24

as I expressed the slightest interest in directing,

17:27

they were just like, Okay, you're

17:29

a dog with a bone. Don't let the bone

17:32

go. Everyone's going to try to take away from me. I remember

17:34

Katherine Bigelow is like this, everyone will try to take the

17:36

bone away from you. Hold on to the bone.

17:39

To hear more of Talier Schlanger's conversation

17:42

with Sarah Polly, go to Here's

17:44

Thething dot Org. After

17:47

the break, Justine Bateman shares

17:49

her vision of the potentially frightening

17:51

future for actors now that AI

17:54

is getting stronger every day.

18:04

I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening

18:06

to Here's the Thing. After

18:09

decades of work in television and

18:11

film, Justine Bateman pivoted

18:13

from acting to writing and directing her

18:15

own films, including Violet,

18:18

starring Olivia Munn and Justin

18:20

Throw. As someone who

18:22

has worked tirelessly on both sides

18:25

of the camera, I was curious how

18:27

she found the business has changed in

18:29

her lifetime.

18:31

I'll tell you what's really sad for me. So as

18:33

a filmmaker, I'm taking meetings as a

18:35

director and a writer with development executives

18:38

and the development executives that I've met

18:41

that are some of these studios who

18:44

you talked to them. And one of the things really telling for me

18:46

is I asked him what's your favorite film? And

18:48

sometimes I'll give an answer and I'll go like, oh,

18:50

this person knows what's going on. I

18:52

talk a little bit more with them, and then I just go, hey,

18:55

what kind of films do you want to make? And they're

18:57

like, hey, listen, I would

18:59

love to do And maybe this is blowing smoke

19:01

up my ass, but I'd love to do this film

19:04

that you just pitched me. That kind

19:06

of thing is exactly the type of thing I want to do.

19:08

But I can't because I've

19:11

been tasked to make six

19:14

genre films for fill in the blank

19:16

Streamer and

19:18

I'm like, oh, that sucks.

19:21

Like that's what you're bound to do

19:23

now, even though you love film and you

19:25

sound like a real development executive.

19:27

They're like, yeah, that's what I have

19:29

to do. So if you have any action

19:32

film and you just hear the life coming

19:34

out of their voice when they say this, So if

19:36

you have any action films or horror

19:38

or you know, not there's anything wrong with action

19:40

or horror and stuff, but like that's not what they want to be

19:42

doing. And those kinds of films are fine,

19:45

but not when they're ninety percent of what's

19:47

out there. It's ridiculous.

19:49

But you can see also that their judgment

19:52

cuts both ways, meaning they either try

19:55

to hedge their bets and bring people in who

19:57

are not very creative,

20:00

very innovative, unique, what have you,

20:02

and they bring them in and we we just see the same

20:05

shit all the time. They give some people

20:07

all the money in the world and maybe they shouldn't

20:09

have and they don't give you know, and

20:11

this is what they hate, this is what they want to take

20:13

out of the business.

20:14

Talking about Seinfeld and how much

20:17

money he made because he created this show

20:19

and stuff. I just want to remind people

20:21

that, first of all, it

20:23

takes years, years

20:26

to get a financial success like

20:28

that, and once you get

20:30

it, you may not.

20:31

Get another one.

20:33

There are some unicorns out there

20:35

that have I mean, you look at like Harrison

20:38

Ford. I mean, I don't know what his compensation

20:40

was, but the idea that he was in three

20:44

massive like massive cultural

20:47

impact films, that's

20:51

very unusual. Okay, So it takes years.

20:53

So if you amortize this money

20:55

out, like for me, my film Violet

20:58

took me a year and a half. Hu every

21:01

single day for a year and a half to

21:03

get the money together to do that film, and that was a

21:05

low budget film. When

21:07

you look like what I was paid for it, if I

21:09

were to like spread that out over all

21:11

the time it took me to get that film made,

21:14

it's probably ten cents an hour. And

21:16

the other thing is when you look at

21:19

how much money like anybody makes, like off a TV

21:21

show or something like this, I want

21:23

to remind everybody how reticent

21:26

studios and networks are to part with money.

21:28

And if they're parting with that much money, then

21:31

you need to think about

21:33

how much more money

21:36

they made off of that show. And

21:38

they're giving Seinfeld a small amount

21:41

of that, so that's where a

21:43

lot of the money is going. And then you're

21:45

talking about actors and paying paying

21:48

you know, one big actor and then screwing

21:51

the rest of the cast, which I think is not right. But

21:53

think about going forward. I mean,

21:56

a lot of the movie stars now are

21:59

decidedly older, right, and

22:01

they all became movie stars pretty

22:03

much in their twenties, right. What

22:06

I can't think of a

22:09

clutch of movie stars that have been

22:11

created now in their twenties that

22:15

compares to say, fifty

22:17

years ago or even thirty years

22:19

It's different now, so even

22:22

they were even kind of winding

22:25

that down, you know where pretty soon it's

22:27

just going to be, like you said.

22:28

The interchangeability is a real goal of

22:30

theirs. I mean because once someone said to me once that

22:33

was really behind AI beyond

22:36

money was or linked to money,

22:38

I should say, beyond having

22:40

to entice a star to do a script. You

22:43

decide what, you decide the movie you want to

22:45

do, you cast it, you make it. You just fashion

22:48

the whole thing like you're baking a cake. And

22:50

the other thing they said to me was that, you know,

22:52

the computer doesn't have to go to rehab. The

22:55

computer doesn't lock themselves in their trailer because

22:58

she broke up with her boyfriend. The

23:00

computer doesn't punch

23:03

the director in the face, and some altercation

23:05

over some perceived indignity,

23:09

all the behavior that now the studios

23:11

and networks have found a way to profit

23:14

from, you know, exposing

23:16

the wartz and the missteps

23:18

of stars. Years ago, and I do mean

23:21

a million light years ago, the press

23:23

flax for the studios did everything

23:26

in their power to keep Llela Parsons

23:28

and had a Hopper and Walter

23:30

Winchell and all them kind of calmed down the

23:33

star is gay and he's married. The

23:35

woman had a baby out of wedlock,

23:38

she has a black boyfriend. All

23:40

that crazy crap that they

23:42

were getting attacked for. He's an alcoholic,

23:44

he's in rehaber, what have you. All

23:46

the things that they would protect you from,

23:48

they tried to protect you in

23:51

order to keep your star gleaming. Now

23:53

you go to work at Warner Brothers and you walk down

23:55

one hallway to do a movie. You walk

23:58

down another hallway to do a TV show, and

24:00

around the corner is TMZ that they

24:02

own, who's trying every way

24:04

they can. They're making every effort to destroy

24:07

your reputation in your career.

24:09

Well, another way that they would destroy it

24:11

is if SAG doesn't get the

24:13

protections they're seeking. You know, if

24:15

you or this is something that an actor

24:17

could do just voluntarily, like

24:20

you were talking about the actor allowing

24:22

his voice to be cloned, you

24:24

could get yourself scanned, like if anyone's seen

24:26

this twenty thirteen film called

24:28

The Congress where Robin

24:30

Wright plays an actress who's down on her luck,

24:33

you know, was a big star, and she allows

24:35

herself to be digitally scanned, and

24:38

in exchange, she has to promise to never act

24:40

again, because she'll dilute the value of the

24:42

scan if she herself acts. Oh my

24:44

god, and then you know, regrets her decision.

24:47

This is at And you look at that and you go like, oh, oppression that

24:49

is. But that's actually based on a nineteen seventy

24:51

three book by Stanislaw lemb And

24:54

this is I mean this guy. I hadn't

24:56

read him yet, you know, I mean read the Philip

24:58

Dick and Ray Bradbury and all that. But this guy,

25:00

Stanislaw lem if anyone wants to read, he's

25:03

so on it about AI back in the

25:05

seventies. It's amazing. But

25:07

so if you did that right, Let's say somebody had

25:09

a scan of you, Alec, and then your

25:12

agencies, which, by the way, the talent

25:14

big talent agencies have divisions

25:17

at their agencies that are encouraging

25:19

actors to get scanned, because then yes,

25:22

you don't have all those things you said, but you also don't

25:24

have an actor who's too tired or

25:26

has a family obligation or is

25:28

already booked. Yeah, so imagine

25:30

yourself if yeah, and if your

25:33

agent had a scan of you, he

25:35

could potentially triple

25:37

and quadruple book you so

25:40

that you're doing three or four films at the same

25:42

time. Of course it's not you.

25:45

Writer director Justine Bateman.

25:48

If you're enjoying this conversation, tell

25:50

a friend and be sure to follow

25:53

Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app,

25:55

Spotify or wherever

25:58

you get your podcasts. Come

26:00

back. Justine Bateman shares her thoughts

26:03

on the life cycle of fame.

26:17

I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's

26:19

the Thing, the multi hyphenit.

26:22

Justine Bateman recently added

26:24

author to her resume. In

26:26

twenty twenty one, she released a book

26:28

on women and aging called Face

26:32

One Square Foot of Skin, and

26:34

before that, in twenty eighteen, she

26:36

published Fame, The Hijacking

26:39

of Reality. I wanted to know

26:41

what drew her to explore that

26:43

complex topic in print.

26:46

Well, when I wrote Fame, which

26:48

is about the life cycle of fame,

26:51

and some famous people don't experience this complete

26:53

life cycle, which is it begins,

26:55

it grows, it levels off, and

26:58

this starts to descend and then goes away.

27:00

So I've experienced that entire life cycle. Somebody

27:02

like Brad Pitt, you know, he's at the leveling

27:05

off. Everybody just knows he's famous and

27:07

will probably never experience the back end like

27:09

like I have and others have. So

27:11

I thought that was very interesting and it was very

27:14

interesting to process the

27:16

back end of that life cycle.

27:19

And then I started wondering. I started

27:21

thinking about that intangible

27:24

fame thing like when somebody if

27:27

Brad Pitt walks into the room, everything

27:29

in the room, everything that was happening in that

27:31

room, all the attitudes of conversations

27:33

people were having. Say in a room in a restaurant,

27:35

say stops and people

27:38

sit differently. Something wasts

27:41

itself through the room and changes

27:43

people's behaviors.

27:45

So that's how that started.

27:46

I wanted to look at that, and then what it wound up being was

27:48

a real look at

27:50

that life cycle from the inside,

27:52

my experiences with it, and then my

27:55

theories and sociological established sociological

27:57

theories on why people behave the way they do,

28:00

two famous people at different

28:02

points in that life cycle.

28:04

Now with you, with you, was it

28:06

something that you you know, you're

28:08

in the water and the current is pulling you away

28:11

from a mainstream career. You were

28:13

obviously one of the stars of a huge hit show.

28:15

We were actually on the at the Hampton's film festival

28:18

where I program a summer documentary

28:20

series. We almost said Michael come and do his doc

28:23

and he was going to do a Q and A with us, but he pulled

28:25

out because I guess he hasn't really been feeling that great lately.

28:28

We were going to do his the Michael J. Fox

28:30

documentary out there. But in your

28:32

case, I wonder when you're famous

28:34

and you're on a successful show. And I'm not saying

28:36

this to be kind. That was a funny show. Everybody know that was

28:38

a really well written and clever

28:40

show. Did it kind of ebb

28:43

and you're floating away like

28:45

the rip currents are pulling you away from groovytown

28:49

because you didn't care. You didn't you

28:51

didn't mind that you did. You put up a

28:53

fight and you wanted to stay prominent

28:56

in the business and it didn't work out, or you didn't give a shit,

28:59

no, no, something like that.

29:00

It was more it was more

29:02

of a kind of a life experience.

29:05

And this is what to go into in the book.

29:08

What I talk about in the book is that we

29:10

all have our reality right who

29:12

we're married to, or who our parents

29:15

are, what city we live in, or what

29:17

gender we are, or what

29:20

language we speak, what job we have, all

29:22

these things, what time

29:24

we are in, right, And if

29:26

any one of those things were to change.

29:30

For a lot of people, it can

29:33

be a traumatic sometimes, right, like

29:35

somebody you love dies or you have to

29:37

you get relocated your job to another

29:40

country, so you have to adjust

29:42

your reality to that, because you have a lot of things

29:44

attached to these

29:46

components of our reality justifiably,

29:49

and we attach our sometimes our self

29:51

worth, you know, if it has to do with jobs or something,

29:53

or identity, maybe who we're married

29:56

to and things like that. So for a very very

29:58

small amount of people, fame

30:01

is one of those components. And when it first starts

30:03

happening, and I know you can relate to this, you're

30:06

like, this is this this weird thing that's happening around

30:08

me, blah blah blah. But then it becomes so constant

30:11

You're like, Okay, I'm just going

30:13

to absorb this. I'm going

30:15

to receive this. This is part

30:17

of who I am now. And it's not

30:19

somebody saying that's right,

30:22

don't you know who I am? And I'm going to get

30:24

these tables at these restaurants. It's

30:26

not that that is what's

30:28

happening. You make a reservation

30:30

at a restaurant. You say your name and they go,

30:33

oh, miss Babeman. Of course, yes,

30:35

I'm sorry. Yeah, I know I said

30:37

there weren't any tables. But when you're very

30:39

famous, like people enjoyed your work.

30:42

There's nothing nefarious about it. People enjoyed

30:44

your work, and they genuinely want to in

30:46

their way, if they run a restaurant, whatever

30:48

it is, they want to sort of give back

30:51

to you, like, oh, I loved your show

30:53

or your film or your music or whatever,

30:55

and please come in be min. We'd

30:58

love to buy you a bottle of wine.

31:00

Whatever.

31:00

It's this nice kind of exchange. Okay,

31:02

Now that happens so consistently

31:05

that you just accepted as part of your reality.

31:08

It's just happening all around you all

31:11

the time. And if that goes on for many many

31:13

years, like it did for me and

31:15

for many others, when that starts

31:17

shifting, it is akin

31:20

to those big life changes

31:22

I said that for you know, in

31:25

anybody's it

31:28

starts pulling away and anything you had

31:30

attached to it, that you had reasonably

31:32

attached to it, your identity, yourself worth, all

31:34

these different things. When that starts pulling away,

31:37

it starts I always

31:39

picture, like you know that film Man called Horse.

31:41

You patured Harris up.

31:42

There and he had those, so anybody

31:45

hasn't seen it. He has to go through this sort of virtual

31:47

yeah, and he there's this

31:50

big pole in the center of where everybody's

31:52

standing, and it has ropes attached

31:54

to the top of it with hooks at the end of

31:56

it, and he has to hook these into skin

31:59

on his chest.

32:00

Yeah, into his pectrol muscles.

32:02

And pull away from it. Now. So I always.

32:04

Picture one of the most grotesque scenes in the movie.

32:07

She really is.

32:08

Can't believe you're referencing, man.

32:11

Aame is moving away from you if

32:14

you had anything attached to it, and there's many

32:16

things that you didn't even realize you attached

32:18

to it. It starts pulling away like

32:20

that, and it's painful. So I

32:23

in the book is say like I had to recognize

32:25

what was attached to it, and I had to unhook

32:27

it before it ripped my chest

32:29

apart, so to speak.

32:30

Right, my last question for you,

32:33

I mean, you've had such a varied

32:35

and fascinating life

32:38

in terms of being a big TV star

32:41

and then going through all these

32:43

different aspects of your life directing

32:45

and going back to school, writing

32:47

books and so forth. For you

32:50

do you miss acting?

32:52

You know, it's interesting, Alec. It wasn't really up

32:54

to me. Acting was really

32:56

good to me for a long time, and it

32:59

really was something It

33:01

never crossed my mind before

33:04

it actually occurred. I never grew up

33:07

thinking I was going to be an actor. I just sort

33:09

of fell into it, and I was gifted at

33:11

it. It was I fell into my vocation.

33:13

And then I got to a point where my life

33:16

just turned a corner. And

33:18

funny enough, it was the last strike

33:21

around two thousand and seven, and

33:24

I knew, oh my god, this is what I was born for.

33:26

To the writing. And I'd already been

33:28

writing scripts but just like keeping them on my computer,

33:31

not knowing what to do with them. And I'd wanted to direct since

33:33

I was nineteen, but the timing never felt

33:35

right. So I started writing

33:37

and producing it and in the digital space, and

33:40

I was off to the races. And from that

33:42

point there was a period where inexplicably

33:46

for five years, I mean I understand it, I

33:48

understood it after, but for five years

33:50

I would have all kinds of auditions and I worked all

33:52

the time up until that point. For five

33:55

years, I did not get one job

33:57

off an audition, and that

34:00

was really really confusing,

34:02

talk about having your reality tossed upside

34:04

down. But at the same time, I

34:07

was writing all these proposals and these scripts

34:09

and everything for brands, and doing all

34:11

this work in the digital space and speaking on panels

34:13

and all this, and I knew that the

34:15

writing and directing that was where I was supposed

34:17

to go. But I'd always acted, so how

34:19

could that door have just been slammed

34:21

shut?

34:23

And it was very

34:25

confusing, and it was very

34:28

upsetting because that kind of, you

34:30

know, tore my reality a little

34:33

bit like that. But I realized, like

34:35

that had to happen. My

34:38

life had to do that, or

34:41

God, your destiny, whatever somebody wants to call

34:43

it, it had to happen, or I would

34:45

not have been committed one hundred

34:47

percent in the direction I had to go, which

34:50

was writing and directing and producing films,

34:53

writing books, and you know, going

34:55

to school and getting computer science degree. I would

34:57

have just continued to just do you

34:59

know, beyond TV shows or whatever it

35:01

was. Because I am,

35:04

at the risk of sounding absolutely arrogant. I

35:06

was a great actor, and I at that

35:09

point where I couldn't get a workout

35:11

of any of those auditions, I was

35:13

doing the best acting I had ever done,

35:16

so it wasn't up to me.

35:19

And I love what I'm

35:21

doing now. I mean I feel like everything I've done

35:24

before my writing, directing,

35:26

and producing career began was

35:29

prep for now.

35:31

Well. I'm not saying this to be kind, but I mean,

35:33

you're so bright. I wonder

35:35

if the world of acting today as it exists

35:38

today would be a complete waste

35:40

of your resources in your time. But I

35:43

want to thank you because I've watched you

35:46

online with this AI thing, and you're

35:48

a great voice for this. You've got

35:50

such great experience in the business and with

35:52

the union and so forth, and I do

35:54

hope that we have a way to

35:57

I mean, I don't like these contentious words because people

35:59

used to talk about breaking unions, but I

36:01

hope we have an ability to break the producers.

36:04

They've got to understand that the way this

36:06

business works, as many people don't realize,

36:08

is a director makes a movie. He

36:11

might make a movie every year and a half for two years, so we have

36:13

to have an income that the last two years. Yes,

36:16

my great thanks to you and to you.

36:18

I think you're an incredible artist

36:21

and have so admired

36:24

and enjoyed your work. I hope

36:26

someday that I get to be

36:29

a director on one of your

36:31

films.

36:31

I'm available, my very

36:34

best to you, and thank you, thank you, thank

36:37

you, My

36:42

thanks to Justine Bateman. This

36:45

episode was recorded at CDM

36:47

Studios in New York City. We're

36:50

produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice,

36:52

and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer

36:54

is Frank Imperial. Our social

36:57

media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm

36:59

Alec Oldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you

37:01

by iHeart Radio.