A Visit to Barbra's Place

the woman that is Barbara streisand don't tell me. Streisand burst on the scene in nineteen sixty four with Funny Girl on Broadway, right when it felt like the Suburbs and McCarthy is m might go on forever, the Beatles show up on the Ed Sullivan Show, and on Broadway along comes this phenomenon, this totally new, unusually gorgeous, nakedly ambitious Jewish girl from Brooklyn in close, so wildly bright, they blow out your new color TV weather on the

Rose of Ship Affection. She kept her name, she kept her nose, she kept that access it. She could not be more different from what wasp culture told women they should be. New York is just full of unusual and interesting girls who are starting out in show business, but few of them have the style as early as this young lady. She's nineteen years old, her name is Barbara streisand and then she gets on stage. She's grounded, she's powerful, and she's got the greatest voice America has ever heard

water than a mile. Over the following years, we also learn she's a great actress. Here she is trying to win Redford's love in the way we were sure. I make waves. I mean, you have to, and I'll keep making them until your every wonderful thing you should be and will be. You'll never find anyone as good for you as I am. To believe in you as much as I do, I love you as much. Well not why striisand develops a reputation for being difficult and for

being a bit of a recluse. She gets married, divorced, has a kid, but all the while she just keeps getting better and more famous until she's this unique character in American culture, a megastar on her own terms. Since we first met in we become friends. We talked at her home in southern California. By the way, Stella, do me a favor. Take the clock and make sure it works, like because it needs batteries or wounder. Okay, thank you so much. You walk around the house and you have

you just that just goes. How is this not taken care of? You? See? To work for somebody like you or me? You have to understand the artist's temperament. People don't see that the time is wrong. Well, I wasn't going to start with this, but I'll ask you. But I'll ask you because that instinctive I for detail and just thinking all the time about I want this, I want this, I want this. Is that what naturally propelled

you into directing films? Well? That, yes, that And also it was something that happened during the way we were where two scenes were cut out that were intrinsic to the value of the story. And it made me so crazy that they couldn't see that that propelled you into direct and me into it. I couldn't understand it. And it's hard to carrel with a you know, a hit movie. I don't know if it was a hit at the time. Tell you the truth, it's grown to say it was.

Warren Beatty said to me once, is it. Until you take ultimate responsibility and you're willing to direct the movie, you're gonna be constantly frustrated. And he said you must Can said that it was so delicious and it's like, you know, when you finally have the power to control your work, you you get very humble in a sense it's like I wanted to give power away to other

people as well. You know, I would say to my standing, you run that course with the cameraman, this is the shot, but I want you to be able to tell me where to stand. In other words, it's a feeling of such gratitude where you you never have to raise your voice because everybody's finally listening. You don't have to get angry about anything they weren't listening before. Sometimes well, sometimes when I would say things as just an actress, like this is what I'm telling you, this story the way

we were it went on deaf ears. You know, they didn't agree with me whatever, But when you see something so clearly, um, that's wrong to me or what could be right? Or see. I had such a great time directing Ental because I did it in England and in Czechoslovakia. In England they're not afraid of women, powerful women, strong women because they had a queen. They have a queen and at the time they had the Prime Minister who was Margaret Thatcher. So I was shocked at the respect

that I had as a first time director. I couldn't believe it. Um and the crew was so kind and just It was the most wonderful experience, I must say, And even the the Czechoslovakian government was wonderful to me because I needed Jews to be in the synagogue and pray and so for then, you know, was during communist times, and they went to the Jewish community, thank God, and had them come so I didn't have to teach them how to be Jewish. You know, how did some real Jews?

Was an Italians dressed as Jews in New York where they have to say, well, how do you stand in a synagogue and how do you pray? And it was it was wonderful. And also well you know when you have extras in Czechoslovakia, then they didn't give them lunch, so the people would come with like bags of their lunch, which broke my heart. So I would, you know, give

them our food, which we never had vegetables. We had to send to London or France or Italy to get vegetables because you know, their food diet was like hot chalk. I loved it, of course, bread and butter and hot chocolate in the morning with whipped creams and kids. What

was that? Heaven? And I wanted to be thinner, but well, and every day I would not every day, but every few days I would bring in past these, you know, with that delicious dough in the meat inside, and we'd always have the most delicious teas that I'd bring in those cream like doughnuts shaped like a hot dog from Whimpy's and you know, eat this delicious cream with the donuts. Oh my god. It was so good time. And they it was very sweet because the whole crew wrote a letter.

That's one of my prize possessions, I must say, And they wrote this letter to the newspapers and it said that you know, Ms try said something like Ms try sand never raises her voice and has a smile for us every day, and it's like not the stories we've heard about her, and no newspaper would publish it, but it figures it's like Hillary Clinton, as you said, the upside of that experience where the entele was working in a culture where the power of women was just accepted.

And I'm best fall and to say the least about what happened here, not just because this guy won, but I really do think misogyny and well, in four I did get some sort of award from Women in Film directing Yental and a lot of my speech was about women against women, because the reviews of Gente from women

were vicious, you know. In other words, they didn't even talk about this celebration of womanhood, that a woman could not only you know, make dinner and have babies, but she could have an intellect, she could want to study, be something more, do what men do, do what men do? Just equality, you know. So to read a review that said her she wore a design in the New York Times, she wore a designer amica. Now everything, every piece of

clothing in that movie was authentic. That same year there was the film directed by Ingmar Bergmann Fanny and Alexander. They wore the same yamica, but nobody attacked that film.

I love detail, so I would, you know, For years, I would do research about Polish Jews, about these Jews, that Jews everything, the Evil Institute in New York um talking to scholars studying Talmud, just to bring that, because I do believe that when you study like that and do the research, you don't have to act that It's like the camera picks up the truth, even just behind your eyes, in the sound of your voice, whatever it

is mine. You know. I had this wonderful shot, I thought as it cuts from a chicken coop to me sitting behind the bars up separated from the men in the shool, and that shot was attacked by this woman critic, Janet Maslin. Her name was now she could attack my

lip syncer. That's true. I'm a terrible lip sinker. I can't do it because when I did movies like Funny Girl or Hello Dolly, you know, they record the soundtrack three months before you shoot, and I have to be in the moment as an actor, I don't know how I'm going to feel when I actually perform it. So that's why when I did the movie Star Is Born, it's all real, it's all um. I had alic I did not want. I needed to be free, to be in the moment, So we recorded on the spot. What

do you call that live? It was all live. And then what I would do is um, because I had final cut on that movie, I could control those things. UM. We would shoot the close ups first, so where the performance really counted, and then I would just choose it right on the spot, okay, I think, and I would do about one to four takes. You know all these stories about me, like I do millions of takes, most

of them are false. And so let's say I would take take three, you know, and then move the cameras back to do the wider shot that because you didn't have to see me close, you know, not doing the lip sync. Good. I did a documentary film about Can. It's ostensibly about Can and Ryan Gosling. We corner him at at an hotel I think I saw it, this thing called Seduced and abandoned, and we get Gosling at

the Beverly Hills Hotel or the bel Air Hotel. I should say, any long story short is he has this beautiful explication of how agonizing it is to shoot films, and just in that kind of Arthur Murray by numbers way, we have to shoot a match to this and match to this. It can't be fresh and it's painful. No, And that's why I love long takes, because I think I'm from the theater and where you had to do

a whole show, right, So I don't like pieces. I mean, the fun of directing to me is designing the shot, the camera, accommodating the actors. So the actors there's a lot of scenes in entle that you can see like this. They're all in one move practically. In other words, we come in through a door and I'm in the foreground, let's say, But he who's following me, the my lead actor who was Mandy Patinkin at the time, and he still is but um, you know, we see him standing there,

and then he comes forward and I sit down. He becomes he's standing up, but the camera never moved, but you see everything. Then the camera moves as we're together, but it doesn't cut. And then he has you know, when when he leaves me, you see him go out the door. He slams the door and the camera moves in a little bit. As I'm thinking about it, that's the scene. But it's what's fun about that is that we're all on our toes. You can't make a mistake. And most of these shots that I do that there's

no coverage. That the greatest one of the very little coverage the actors played the scene in the frame. Now, now, in the time that you made films, the many years you've made films, successful acting and not directing, successful as a director and producer, and all those things, were there people that you wanted to work with with the people.

You sat there a guy, I'd love to make a film with that person, because you've been in such a privileged place and I had all these people available to Was there a director that you dreamed of working with you didn't get to work with? Well Ing Mark Bergman is a person that contacted me to do a remake of The Merry Widow. And I was so excited, you know, and I came to um Sweden and we embraced and it was this wonderful embrace, you know. I mean he,

I can't explain what that what that's like. It's was just he he sort of understood me, and I understood him without any words. And the first act of that screenplay was fantastic, I mean very body uh kind of shocking. I loved it, you know. So then and when I have letters now, I forget things until I have to go into my archives and look at this stuff letters from him and notes that I wrote back to him talking about this film and what happened the second act?

You know, he says we're going to be collaborators. And the second act was not very good. I thought it was like like jevas Amadeus. I'm sure you're The first act was extraordinary to me in the movie, and the second act was, I don't know, just somehow repetitious. It It didn't go far enough in the story, you know. And that's the way I felt about this. And all of a sudden it was gone. The collaboration was over. We never made the film, and I couldn't quite believe it.

I mean, the fact that I didn't like certain things in the second act did he liked? Well, he never defended it. It was like, you know, I think that's right and so but I would have loved to work with Berto Lucci and Scriss. You know what I did. I realized this now and looking back at my life, I turned down. Alice doesn't live here anymore, and I you know why I turned it down. I didn't at that point. I didn't realize who Marty Scorsese was number one.

Any movie I turned down I regret only because they weren't attached to directors. I was off for Julia and you know there was no director. James part Yeah, and literally in Hellman came to my house and said, how could you have not played me? You're Jewish? I'm Jewish. You should have played me, I said. I was editing A star was born, and so I was in the middle of having to finish that movie. But and I didn't know Fred Zinneman was going to be the director.

I turned down Cabaret because I didn't like the show. I didn't know Bob Fosse was going to be the director. I would have done it just for Bob Fosse. He was attached to Funny Girl before Jerry Robbins. Even I loved him, but he didn't get along with Race Stark. But Alice doesn't live here anymore. It was the part of a if a girl who couldn't sing. She was

like a bar piano player of him. I remember thinking, I don't know if I could do that, because people associate me with being a good singer, and so are they gonna believe me as a singer. And that's why one of the reasons I played a crappy, you know, untalented a singer songwriter in that movie was a flop what was it called? Again? All Night Long? Because it was an interesting challenge, and I never forgot the fact that I should have played Alice doesn't live here anymore.

Isn't that funny? And I played this kind of ditzy person who I was basing it on a friend of mine who actually was so ditzy that she you know, the phrase up the creek. She was leaving my other house that has a stream, that place I lived before in Malibu, and she actually drove up the creek, you know, And so I used her. That's why she was very blond, and I kind of used her as my prototype for that character. But if I had done, Alice doesn't live

here anymore. Everything is meant to be, Isn't What I love is when you talk about your career, you genuinely mentioned these things, and for me, I have to do the gag version of that to I'll be on the set of a film and I'll say, He'll say, to me, when you were a young actor, did you ever do a scene in the movie that was kind of like, go, oh, yeah, I said, I had an amazing scene in The Godfather. I mean I had a scene it was incredible in

The card Father. And you're lying to of course. And when I was the Grandfather was made, I was thirteen years old, and they'll sit there for him and go, how old was he win the god because you're a good actor, so they believe what you're saying, the actor, I'm foolish or whatever. It was something I was going to tell. You know, I turned down a lot of films because I was lazy. I'm basically I'm a dichotomy here, lazy and um, I don't know what the word is,

restless restless? May yeah, like wanting to create a soup about you, it would be called the Lazy and the Restless. I'm joking. Oh no, that's a very good time and the exactly exactly. I love to take a vacation and do nothing. I like to have no appointments. And I think that's a condition in my mind of people who have tremendous not so much financial success, but creative success.

I mean, there's a famous actress who I won't name. Wait, you know what, do you want to take a sip of soup on your Do you want soup to I'll have a soup? I mean we kind of say no. Well, I mean this is a I'm irish. It's bad luck to say no to soup? Is that in Ireland? I just made that up? Oh just put that over here. Oh see, I just brought this table from the back and we need another table maybe over here. Because this

is me so soup. Don't worry about me. I mean, in other words, people know we eat right, so if they hear it's okay, good, good, good good, because I always like to eat. Oh really know you know you won't mm hmmm. That is delicious, isn't it unhealthy? Um? What we're talking about restless and lazy. To be clear, lazy was her word, not mine. I'd never called Barbara streisand lazy. One of the many artists Barbara Streisand has worked with is a legend in his own right. Tony Bennett.

Like Barbara, Tony has a team behind him making sure his brand is as strong as his voice. Leading that team for Tony Bennett is his son Danny. His dad seemed to expect it of him. At the age of twelve. He would come to me and go like, oh, I got this thing, and but the dog, what do you think he didn't delineate? And you know what I mean, you know, it's like I guess you know, at the turn of the century, kids at twelve and thirteen, we're working in the field. My interview with Danny Bennett is

at Here's the Thing, Dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Barbara Streisand had pretty straightforward ambitions when she was starting out. And when I would talk to McCartney about the Beatles, he said to me, is it was hard work. Later on when they gain creative control of their material and it's like anybody, then they take a year to do another album. But in the beginning they really worked like dogs, you know.

And for you, I'm wondering at the beginning when you do Broadway, are you out there and you're just so pumped and excited and you're young, and everyone's glorifying you and loving what you're putting out there, and you really love you said, they're going, I don't want to do this show eight times a week? Like what happened to you in the beginning? Were you excited and game in the In the beginning, I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to prove to my mother that I could be

a success. You know. It comes from that. It's like really deep. It's deep and quiet. It's not loud, by the way, It's not what makes Sammy run it's quiet, it really is um. But again you can feel that passion, you can feel that need to be seen somehow, because I wasn't seen much by my I didn't I lost

my father. How were you? Your dad passed away fifteen months But my mother said that after he died, I would climb up on the window waiting for him to come home, because I used to do that, I guess as a baby, and wait for him and he would come home. And in a sense, I've idolized my father because he was a PhD. He was a teacher, which I so respect teachers, and he wrote poems, and he was artistic, and he was an athlete as well as a a debater, you know, and and he was in

part of French dramatics and English literature. And I didn't read his thesis until many years later because me as an actress when I was sixteen, I was fascinated by Eleanora Dusa and Sarah Bernhardt, wanting to be an actress. And my father's books were tied up in the basement of our Brooklyn apartment, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, all the great novels I read, Uh, what do you call it? Nancy Drew mysteries. I read movie magazines, you know, and dream that someday maybe I could be famous. Do you

have that dream? Then when you're here, I would have my kind of coffee ice cream briers and sit in my bed and dream, go to the movies sometimes on a Saturday afternoon, the Lowise Kings where they had the greatest ice cream, and we also, well, yeah, you're you're you're like me. Somebody'll say what was the best part of the summer. I'd say, what is this restaurant that has the best coffee ice cream with chocolate covered handelnuts?

But watching who in the on screen? If to the extent you want to say, we call somebody watched with Visio, Yeah, that's it. I want to do something like that. Not Doris Day. I mean it was well, I loved Marjorie Morning Star because I knew the summer places in where I was sent to camp in the Catskills, or my mother and stepfather when they came to visit me. I didn't know my mother was married, and I said, I'm going home from here. What do you mean you didn't

know your mother got married? She never told me. So he was a boyfriend for a while. I guess he was around. No, I never met him before, but when I insisted, see, I was as I was a strong kid. So my mother came to visit me with the stranger, and I said, I'm going home. I'm not staying here another day longer, so we have to pack me up. I think I was seven and a half maybe, So for a long time of your youth you were raised by him. He was on the scene when I go home.

Then he's in your life. He's in my life, the stranger. How did he handle you? Didn't like me, he didn't like you. Why it's exactly right. Was the connection with him such as it was, because the connection with your mother also was a bit thinner than you might have liked compared to your feelings for your father. I grew up in a house where my dad was my idol.

I idolized my ad and my mom, my older sister and I we were her lieutenants, chores, chores, and your mom didn't push him or cajole him or try to get him to never your your relationship with your mom was a little less than it was your feeling towards your father, well or you head over heels in love with your mother? No, no, no, no. I I felt that she didn't know me. She didn't know could she. I don't think my mother knows me either, But I've seen now in my life. She couldn't. She wasn't capable.

My mother never said to me, my mother's alive. And I wrote this in my book. She never once said to me, what's it like to be you? When you get up there and do that? And what do you enjoy? But to understand me? And and I'm her son, I'm her oldest son. And where was the conversation about when I go through in my life and my career, My mother never heard nothing about that. My mother's love was shown through food she would bring me when I was

a young actress, you know. And I moved away from home when I was sixteen, from Brooklyn to New York. Got an apartment right next to me. I graduated high school at uh sixteen erasmus. Yeah, I graduated in three and a half years so I could. I doubled my science and math, which I loved. I love those subjects. Were desperate to get out of Brooklyn. I was desperate to be an actress, to get away from real life,

not a singer and actress, an actress, oh yeah. And my my singing was when I was five and six and seven on the stoop in Brooklyn with the girls, you know, singing and harmonizing. That was my singing. But my love was wanting to be an actress. And so that's when I went to the library Street Library and read the plays of these great actresses, you know, and I wanted to be a classical actress. So part of me still feels like a failure, you know. When I wanted to do I wanted to play after I was

well known. I wanted to play the two Cleopatra's, the one uh Caesar and Cleopatra and Anthony and Cleopatrick. Right, so one is a child fourteen years old who I thought it should be Orson Wells or Marlon Brando, fat, you know, and then I would be even little well fed, yes um, and hiding you know from this man, and then play the woman Cleopatra. And the television stations I wanted to do it on TV, they say, well, is it going to be a musical? I mean, you're gonna

add music. It's like they can't see that you could do both I mean, though you have to do the music with the you know, absolutely awful feeling. I wanted to play Romeo and Juliet, and I got to do it finally for Lee Strassburg at the Studio, and it's one of my I can't find the letter that they wrote me too. Well that's a whole long story, but uh, to invite you to join the studio. Yeah. But when I first auditioned for the studio, I was fifteen and I was doing it with another guy who asked me

to just be in it. But they wrote me a letter to say, do your own audition, and then when I did, they found out I was fifteen and they said come back when you're you know, eighteen. It's probably a nice way of saying no, but um. So that's why it was terrible. When I was in on Broadway, I wrote on my play bill, I am not a member of the Actor's Studio, because all the actors who were would say a member of the actors studio, and I was piste off at them, you know, um, but

that was interesting. I did some of my best work then when I was fifteen and six and I played media, you know, and did that great Aria after she killed her kids. And you know, she says a line like you know something about this wound in the middle of myself. What a brilliant line. I mean, I am a woman and I with this wound in the middle of myself. Um. I was good then, And do you see what you're saying? This wound in the middle of myself? At the actor's studio,

you know that was that was for um? Just I did it in class? That scene from media? Where was your class? You know what I would do? Then? I would um I had another name, so I wanted I didn't want to miss anything. So I went to two different acting classes and gave a different name in one, and then I used to to make money. You've got four dollars and five cents. It was to be an usher in the theater. So I would love to go

see the plays. But in a sense, I didn't have enough money to see all the play So I I became an usher in the theater so I could see the play. But meanwhile, I was sixteen seventeen, that kind of age. I knew that I would be famous because I would hide my head so they wouldn't see me at my face showing them to their seats because I thought, you know, when I become famous, they're going to recognize me as the girl who showed them to their seats. So how do you figure that that? That's something I

can't explain you. Really, there's a part of you that knew you would end up doing what you did. And I don't, you know. And my mother didn't believe in me. She's she kept telling me, do what your father did. Become a teacher. You get you know, you get time off, you get vacations, free vacations, summers. Yeah, learn to type. And that's when I let my nails grow along, so I couldn't type. I believe me. I wish I could type. Now I have to dictate everything into it French cooking

with your mother? Did she eventually come around? I mean, how could she not come around with everything you've done. I think I was really just trying to prove to her that I I could be famous. By the way, as soon as I became famous, I didn't like it. I don't like fame. I don't like stardom. I only like the work, the creative work. That's all I like. And you turned at that. So and Lisa didn't fake

it hat, sir, I guess I didn't make it. With no formal voice training and no money to kick start a career, streisand relied on raw talent to build herself up and the wiles of a man who happened to hear her at a small Greenwich village club called the bon Soir. Martyrlickman was a music manager and almost as young and hungry as Barbara herself. He used his slim Rolodex and razors sharp pr instincts to help build Barbara's image into what it is today. Drama don't bring around

a car. I met Marty at the Bonsa when he came one night. I was nineteen, and he saw me as the first act, the opening act, and said, if you ever need me, kid, I was. I was kept over at the Bonsa many times, but then I couldn't get a job. Finally I got a job, and they were paying me something like seventy five dollars a week

or a hundred dollars a hundred dollars a week. But I could eat, you know, so if people wanted me to sit down, I would order a baked potato, you know, sour cream and chives and the butter, but I couldn't make a living. I really needed more. So I called Marty and I said, you know, is there any way you could get me a hundred and fifty dollars a week? Marty told me many years later that he actually paid the dollars because they wouldn't go for the the the rays.

That's why he's such a great person. Invested. He invested in me. Yeah, you've been with him now for how long? It's like, well, we separated for a while for a few years. He didn't get along with. The man in my life at the time was John Peters. I've read this story before, something like that. But then, believe me, we got back as soon as I could. So that period is over fifty years. But if you take out them, what does he do for you now? What does he

provide for you? What does he provide for you? Now? You trust him everything? He reads scripts, you know, and my full on manager. Today is his birthday, by the way, he's eight years old. Happy birthday, Martyr. I was watching these, um you know, not just old Cabot shows where uh famous actors would come on. Is it a spring roll? Is it meet? I think this one is a vegetarian or are you a vegetarian? Well, I don't. I don't need beef. Does there eat the light one? Yeah? I

think it's chicken? Is it not good? I remember I was sitting in your apartment years ago. I've a very hungry one work and Sis Corman was there and you were going to do Princes of Tis, and I came to meet with you. I remember print sometimes and your woman who took care of your apartment, came in and you said, you said, yeah, I'll eat a little something. I could eat a little something. I could eat little something. And she would to bring us some crude to tay,

or crackers or whatever, some spreads. You looked at me and you said, oh god, I gotta you know, I'm gonna get ready to do a movie and I love to eat. And I said to you, I go, if we do this movie together, I'm gonna hire us a chef. I'll pay for it, and this chef will come down and we're gonna eat whatever that we want. That's why I loved you. And you look at you look at were like, wow, we could be I always just forget about,

you know, driving ourselves crazy with all that. Let's go down and make the movie have a good and we feel like eating, we eat, and we don't feel like eating, we don't eat. We don't have to go a great idea. And the new cast what's his name in the nick I'm kidding, yes, because he had to be a white looking Southerner. You know what I mean. You're very New York.

I love that movie, did you now? Watching those old you know, cabots, and on comes Brando and on comes this one and that one from that generation of Bella Fonte when he was young and all that civil rights activism. Were you active then as well? I was supporting Bella Aps for Congress in like nineteen seventy nine, seventy I even supported Mayo Lindsay, who was a Republican, because I liked him. I liked the way he spoke. You know,

I thought he was a leader. He was a leader, and he was fair and he was believed in justice, and I just liked him. He was also adorable looking. Um. So you know, it's like, you know what happened when I sang in Houston, by the way before the storm. I invited the Bushes President H. W. Bush. I mean, um forty one and Barbara Bush to come to my concert. And they came and I gave him socks because I heard he collect socks. And they came backstage and she brought me a pin and I gave her something and

they were just so lovely. You know, he had dignity. He had great dignity, and she was an advocate for women's rights. I like good people. That's why I can't quite understand what's happened to this country. And it all it goes back to women, to women against women. Yesterday I was watching Hillary being interviewed by somebody and the first question was so rude by the woman. Well, how do you know that the Democrat that's even want you around?

When I when she was running, there were three women who interviewed her as well, and they were so the faces scrunched up, you know, on television, going well so are you trustworthy? Are you not trustworthy? I mean, they would like shockingly rude attitudes. And I told her chief of staff, you know, I think you should be interviewed by men. They're going to be nicer to her than the women of white women voted for Donald Trump. Now,

how do you figure that? I saw her on the view this morning, and I think I would have said if he was in my space like that. I don't think you have to call him a creep, but you could say, you know, you're gonna get your own time, They're gonna they're going to ask you a question, and would you like me to stand behind you in the shot?

I don't think so. So if if you don't mind, can you If she did that to him, I used that phrase and appended to a lot of things if she had done that to him, if she had said that about him. So you sing at Clinton's inauguration, you're close to Clinton. The old Clinton years and the nineties they were great, and they were great. They were great. Coming up Barbara Streisand and I go deep into progressive politics and ice cream. This is Alec Baldwin and you're

listening to here is the thing. For Barbara Streisand, of politics has always been a priority. She spoke out in support of Bella Abzug during abs first congressional campaign in and she has remained politically active since. Streisand was a major supporter of Hillary Clinton, even after Clinton voted for the war in Iraq. You have to remember this because I've discussed this with her and m President Clinton. She at the time thought that Bush would keep his word.

Bush and they were supposed to go to the u N. They were supposed to have weapons inspectors um make sure that there was you know, nothing there that that wasn't done. We had weapons inspectors because I used to talk to Scott Ritter, who was a weapons inspector there for seven years, and he said, there are no weapons left and if there were any chemical weapons, they have a shelf life there. They don't work, That's what we saw. But they weren't

even allowed to even complete anything. They certainly never went to the u N. And all of a sudden, you know where there were in a war. Without picking someone in a current menu of candidates, I mean there are two women that come to mind, Kamela Harris here from California, where a lot of people are talking about her and how gleaming she seems right now as a candidate, and of course Elizabeth Warren. But without picking anybody individually, what do you think we need to run in to be Trump?

What kind of person you think is going to take forget about man or woman, is gonna be a person who does water, who says what who says the truth? Truth is everything? I mean, that's what kills me. I love the truth. I love the power of the truth.

You have to believe that person, and you have to believe they stand for what American values are supposed to mean, not like in the new Gingrich way of whatever that is American values, but to be for justice, to be for diversity, to be respectful, to accept change, to accept change. That in New York I'll never forget the Daily News.

I mean, yes, this is a fact. I suppose when the when the census came out in or two thousand, you have ten years of the Daily News put on the cover that white New Yorkers were now the plurality that they were under, that the city had now become fifty one literally black, Asian, Hispanic, and so forth, that white New Yorkers and all five boroughs represented less than And I thought, well, that may be true, but what do you promoting when you write that? And that's going

to happen in this country? White privilege as we understand it, and white people. I'm not saying we're gonna become Rhodesia, but it's I think that people who accept change what choice do you have but to accept change that this world we live in could become more and more diverse, you know, in terms of people's sexual identity and women in power and things like that. And I find that the Democrats, I mean, I'm very critical of them as well. The Democrats will say almost anything to get elected. I

don't think so well. I think the Republicans will say anything together, Like there's a difference for Democrats almost anything. And the Republicans will say the Democrats are too nice, that's what, Yeah, they don't. I always wanted to run because I'm not very nice, and I wanted to be the you'd probably be a hit. Then I wanted to be the more two fisted Democrats. That's what That's what it should be. You have to say it like it

is yourat You have to be tough. That's actually what I said when I first met Obama, I said, we did a fundraiser for him and it raised eleven million dollars that night, and um, I sat with him and I said, are you tough enough? That was my first question to him. Of course I'm tough, you know, but I mean, this is a terrible thing to say, but okay, and I know it can't be done. But when Russia was suspected of invading our democracy, I thought to myself,

why aren't they postponing the election? How do you have an election now when Russia is hacking us? Don't we do it over? Don't we do it over? That's what I thought. And whenever I've said it to anybody, they go, you can't do that. Why not? It is we it is weird, and the result of the election, it is entirely false. But let it stand because to change it would be really the country couldn't happen. No, I mean, look at the difference. I'm going to write an article

actually about this next week about the difference of America. Yeah, the difference in America. What it would be like if Hillary were president. Do you realize that women and girls could hold their head up high? She and Angela Merkel would be running a free world. To see the Woman, you know, Wonder Woman movie, it was fantastic because women were in charge. Women are nurturing, and women can be tough and make decisions that are based on compassion and wisdom.

You know, even in the Jewish religion, women the Orthodox Jewish religion, which I am not. But men have to say certain prayers every day, but women have to say less prayers because they are closer to God, because they are creative. They they birth babies, they feed those babies, they nurtured them after. That makes them different. It does. My wife reminds me of that every day. Actually, well

that's good, different now, but it is true. But I think what we're missing with Trump is compassion, kindness, respect When I when I like, as you said, is that we're missing honestly, and honesty is everything. Could we just be honest, We'll get through everything. We can't understand the news. It was like he was a farce. He was a disrespectful woman. But don't you see stress, stress is causing me to eat, you know more than I I'm gonna

go pull on the side. I'm gonna do something cheese. Yeah, um, it's and it's you know. I found out that when you're stressed, you cortisol levels raising, and cortisol makes you gain weight. Yes, so I was. I was away with some friends for a week. I didn't read a book. I played games, which I played to fall asleep at night because I'm after looking at TV and reading the news, I I can't fall asleep, so I have to play backgammon, you know, and gin so I mean, it was such

an interesting thing for you, who's a eater too. Every day we had bread and butter, you know, every day we ate pasta in Italy. Every day we had desserts with sugar. We gained nothing, maybe two hours. We just let it go, not having a wallow with her. I'll never forget Kathleen Turner and she said this on this show. She was one of my first guests. And I said to you, you were married to your husband Jay, you got divorces and you never got married again. I said,

do you do do you miss that? Do you want to be with somebody? And she said, Alec, I put the key in the door of my apartment, and the thing that makes me most happy as I know that there's nobody on the other side of that door I walk in, I can do whatever I want to do. I don't have to ask anybody's permission. Ba. And she really was happy to be single. And you you don't like to be single, but I was for a long time.

But no, I like looking forward to my husband coming home, and you know, we for him to so we could eat together. Yeah. Absolutely, And he enjoys food too. I mean we just take trips up to Santa barber just to get an ice cream cone from McConnell's, my favorite flavor Brazilian coffee, which they don't sell in points in the market. You have to go there or like now, I can't have it in my freezer because I'll eat

the whole point. I just start with a little and a cone just you know, well it's melting around the edges and I'll just eat that part and just no, it's gone to me. There's that familiar sound. I'll be watching the news and it's like ten o'clock at night. I'd be eating a late night pint of ice cream, and then all of a sudden, I hear that unmistakable sound of the spoon scraping the bottom of the Okay, I go, oh my god, how did that happen? But how come your thin? How did you lose weight? I

started sugar. Sugar was my nemesis. I'm pre diabetic and my numbers were tragic. And they said to me, you're gonna start shooting over and I said, and they said, you're gonna start having to shoot insulin. If you don't get with this, So I still uh do bad things of me now and but nowhere near. I mean, I was somebody that ate I was. I was truly I can say this without without hesitation. I was an ice

cream addict, greaters having greaters ice cream sho. You have to look one day when you're cheating, you have to try mcconnald's. Do you like coffee, It's the greatest coffee. They were so sweet mcconnald's. Because when I did my last movie with Seth Rogan, I had to eat ice cream, so I said, I have to have the ice cream from Santa Barbara. But I had them try something that Will Writes used to do that went out of business. They had chocolate covered chocolate that sounded so Brooklyn. Chocolate

covered chocolate covered almonds in the coffee ice cream. So I asked them to make that flavor. But now people develop nut allergies, so they hardly put nuts. You have allergies? What do we care about allergies that we don't have? No, we do care about them. But now I just read they discovered a drug that will take away nut allergies. Do you ever read the magazine called the Week. I love the Week, and I read an article in there that talked about as a drug now to take away

not allergies. There was something I was going to tell you. Let's stop this for a second. I didn't do. I didn't do anything about climate change. It's so sad, you know. I'll tell you what happened, okay, in nine six that Chernobyl melted down in the Ukraine. This is how I got started with my foundation. That's why I did the One Voice Um concert in my backyard to raise money for Democratic senators and they won five out of the six of them one and the Senate became Democrat. So

we were thrilled, and that money became my foundation. So the first chair I ever gave, you know where the chair is right, designated amount of Mind. Yeah, well, I gave it to study climate change. At that time, it was called global warming. But when I heard these stories about the the earth warming, it frightened me. So that that's why I started my foundation. And now you know, the Department of Energy, the State Department, even the EPA,

the Environmental Protection Agency. This Trump administration don't believe in the science, so they've taken off vital information on their websites. Can you imagine this? You saw that and they strip all that out of their schools. We're not allowed to use the word climate change. They're pretending it doesn't exist. Well, we better go to the moon or figure out where to live, because you can't live like this as the streets I know, but that gives no hope to anybody,

but the streets in Miami. The water is coming up through the sewers. I mean, please, why can't people? That's why people can do something about it, because people in numbers like these marches are very powerful. Right your congressman, Call your congressman right the White House stand outside in the front, you know, march something about doing something about climate change. My last question, you fraging into trouble because I want to take you to dinner and have the McConnell's.

Wait if you want to come back now, I will. And that is when you sing, you know, people will hear your voice and they melts them. It really gets to them. You know, you're the greatest female vocalist of all time. Oh you're so sweet. I don't know other women who I love. I'm not dismissing them, but you're the greatest female vocalist ever. What a compliment. And when you go into the studio, when you go to record, I'm assuming there's a passion, there's a connection as a soul.

I love recording because it's private and there it's just me and the music. You know, I could look like crap. I don't have to dress up. I don't have to put makeup on, and it's just it's just the sound and the musicians, the the the instruments and what I can hear and and say, oh, I could hear a string line here with a sound and I don't read music, but I'll have to go. You know that that note? What is it? I don't know, but it's that chord, that chord, you know. I mean, it's just that's fun.

For me. What I like is the way I record as though I can't. I don't stop at all and do anything. I do the song. I like to sing the whole song because to me, I'm doing a part. I'm doing I'm thinking, I'm doing my work as an actress. And you tell them how you want to sing the song. Yeah, I think for example, like Zenne Bennett, there's that wonderful

moment in Zenne Bennett. When Tony's with those two guys and they play the song is that wonderful moment in the film, And he sings the song and Tony goes, no, I want you to do it slower, slow it down,

do it slower, and they slow it down. He goes, no, slower, I want you to slow it down and do it slower, really slow, and they slay slow and they're looking at each other like I don't think we should play this song, and so it's like, yeah, I really want you to do it slow, like really slow it down, like you know. Is he knows, of course? How he sign with me here right in this room. We did our duet here together, me and Tony right the singing you make you happy

that you can do that? Um, yeah it does. I can hear things that I thought, oh shoot, I should have done that over it's not the right take, I mean whatever, But no, I liked when when we put out a new album in serious radio plays mysel twenty four hours a day and I happened to have the radio on. I think that was good. I want to say I love you, I love you to You're the greatest.

More Live, More Lose the more I love, the more I realized, the less I know, each step I take, not I have a voice, page I turned ivor choice smell. I to travel the rev the more I have to go. What to go? If you come for so? Why settle for just the I can't hear you, Papa, I can see you well, I can't feed. Here's the Thing is produced by Emily Boutine, Adam Tychultz, Kathy Russo, Casey Baber,

Zack mcnee's, Joe clrd Bahon, Belladoni, and Ed Haber. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to hear is the Thing