I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. This music is from the soundtrack of The Way, a film starring Martin Sheen and my guest today, his son, actor, writer and director Emilio Esteveez. The music plays as father and son hike along the famous pilgrimage route, the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. Emilio himself has come a long way since his days as a movie star in such films as The Breakfast Club, Repo Man, and The Outsiders.
He took a show our detour away from his brat pack career to become one of the most admired and stubbornly anti commercial independent filmmakers in the business today. Estevez's latest film is The Public. It's a fictional standoff between cops and a group of homeless people occupying the Cincinnati Public Library. We discussed the movie at the Bay Street Theater in sag Harbor as part of the two thousand
eighteen Hampton's International Film Festivals Conversations with series. So many things to cover, but one thing that comes to my is, uh, your family, and you're growing up in a family where your dad, of course is this legendary movie star, and he worked on Broadway his career and later in life. I saw him do the Shakespeare with Pacina, with the Republic when they did Julius Caesar in the eighties, and then the you know, then he has a career in television later in his career, which is as as big
as you can get on a huge hit show. When I was wondering growing up in your family, you and your brothers, was did that seem an inevitability or you weren't sure? You know, so much of it was having
access um to seeing how the sausage is made. And you know, I grew up I was five six years old backstage at the Public Theater and watching productions of you know, Shakespeare in the Park where he was playing Romeo, or or the Naked Hamlet, which was Hamlet as happening, not really understanding what it was that my father did, but it seemed fascinating enough to say, you know, what, what is I might want to do that that's interesting
to me. He never pushed or no, in fact, they they stressed that that I should, you know, go on and get a further my education and get a degree in something, and you know, have a have a solid foundation, did you, And I did not. I did not. In fact, they still think I'm in medical school. What's the first thing you do professionally? Well, the first thing I did non professionally was when I was about ten years old.
My folks bought a movie camera, like an eight millimeter camera, and and that was at a point where you know, they came into cartridges and you put the cartridge. It was very easy to load and very easy to shoot. And so I started making home movies when I was when I was ten years old. Um. It wasn't until um, I was in high school that I got involved in the theater department, started acting on stage in school, wrote my own play, uh, performed it, and my father came
to see that play. It was just a public school, to Sana Monica High School, and he after after the show, he said, oh my god. He says, Uh, you got the bug. You got it you and he understood that there was something going on inside of me where I could not not do it. Your mother was an actress as well. No, she was a painter. She she got a scholarship to the New School as a fine artist,
and she um, she met my father Uh. In fact, he was living on a on a couch at a mutual friend of their house and Jim tear off and Jim wanted my dad off of his couch. So he says, hey, I got a great gal for you and uh. So they went out of date. My mother hated him. Uh. And yet three weeks later they were they were living together in New York and um and they've been together ever since. It's fifty seven years. Yeah. Yeah. So the first job for your professional job is at a TV
show or a film. It's a film called Text, so you do text with with Matt. Matt basically the audition process. Um, you know, I've been Yeah, I would. I've been auditioning since I was about sixteen. My friends in high school would drive. I didn't have a car, so they drive me to h to an audition. My first, my first professional audition was for Alan Parker, uh where he was directing a film called The Fame. So I auditioned. I didn't really know what the hell I was doing, but
I started. I didn't get my first job until I was eight teams day I graduated high school. It was an after school special and U and it was you know, you. Back back in the day, you had to have a piece of film. It wasn't you know. I had a couple of monologues. I had a William in Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and I had a Shakespearean monologue. And you go in and you would audition for for
casting directors, but they're like, okay, um. But it wasn't until you had a piece of film that you could show and and and you know, use that to hopefully get help you get jobs. So once I had that thirty minute after school special, it sort of launched me
into getting better auditions for better directors. It really was this suffocating catch twenty two, which is you be in a room and you'd audition and someone would say, man, I think you're fantastic, and the moment someone else hires you, you call me, uh, you know, bring me your film, bring me the clip of you in a movie that someone else puts you in. They all needed for someone else to valid at you. You know. I auditioned initially for Um sixteen Candles, which was John hughes first film,
and so I walked into the audition. It was for the role that was eventually played by an actor called Michael shuffling, and and I prepared for it, and I came in and I killed it. I mean I killed the audition. I thought, man, I've got this hands down. I walked out of the room. I was like, yes, this is mine. Michael chants, who if you remember, was a casting director. Universal walks me out and he says, hey, listen, man, um, you're not gonna get this role. So what do you
mean I I killed? He say no, no no, no, he says, it's not gonna happen. But here's what is gonna happen. He says, you're gonna get in your car and you drive over to Santa Monica Venice area. There's Vicky Thomas is casting this film called Repo. Man, you're gonna go audition for that, and now you've got a better shot at getting that films Like so, I was so angry about not getting sixteen Candles. I drove over to this audition with all of that anger, which I think fueled
me getting the part. This is before Outsiders, just before Outsiders before Okay, So yeah, I remember when you're in those early days of casting. It is so are Like I'll never forget I did a TV show for CBS, and the woman who was the head of talent or I forget her title was Christopher Guest's mother, Jean, who was this very elegant, lovely woman who had this big office and uh TV City in l A. And there was an executive who worked with her on never your
first starting out and you don't know what's what. I mean, I didn't know what's what. You come from a family where you probably have that that advantage over me. And I go there and uh and the pilot we did bombed and we're in a room and they don't worry about it. We're gonna sign you to a holding deal. We're gonna sign you to a network holding deal when we pay you money, not a lot of money, just to not work for anybody else. And you're gonna work for us. And this guy leans in and goes, we
think you're great, man. We're gonna make you the next Bill Bixby. Remember sitting there going, you know, man, I guess they think that's a good thing. I should probably I should probably think that's true. Well, you know, and and and oftentimes as actors, we did criticize why did you make that choice? Why did you do it? Sometimes it doesn't come down to a choice. Sometimes the movie
picks you. You know what. I the day I auditioned for Breakfast Club, I had audition for a Chips episode, I had audition for a Taco Bell commercial, and it was just like they just happened to say yes, right, And and sometimes it is just a matter of that and someone you know casting you in their film, and it's and it's luck, and it's timing and and oftentimes were criticized for why did you make that choice? The
choice wasn't up to us who directed people. Man Alex Cox, he went on and he did in a great picture after that called Side. Nancy describe what the process was like with Coppola. Oh, well, you know, Francis um likes a very long, protracted casting uh sessions, and so he and he likes to sort of create a gladiator mentality. So he had actors from all over town. In fact, I think some of these audition tapes have made the
rounds online. But you've got Dennis Quaid and make You Rourke and and Tom Cruise and everyone in town at the time who could have been right for film. We're all in this pit. And he and Frances saying, now you're gonna play this part, and you're gonna and so you may have just auditioned for a specific role and now you're watching Patrick Swayze do it, or you're watching Rob blow Door Tom Cruise do it, and it's like, oh God, he's so much better than me. I'm never
gonna get this. Uh. And it was and it created a real sense of competition and and it was exhausting. Uh. And then he took I think four or five finalists from the from the l A additions. We all flew to New York and we did the same process at the Brill Building and it was it was exhausting. Um. But ultimately I think that Francis knew who his guys were going to be and and and those were the ones that did flat in New York were the ones that ended up in the Phone. But was he experience
like shooting the Phone? He Um, he was early days, he was. He was involved in um chromic I think it's called chroma key, where you can basically affect the background of a location. You'd stand, we'd stand on an empty set and we would shoot basically the entire film. So it was two weeks for her. So you remember back in the day, it wasn't a question of whether or not you were going to give two weeks. You
gave two weeks of rehearsal. It was you showed up two weeks early for so that was for the two weeks prior to shooting, we had completed top to bottom shooting the entire film. But now you're lucky. If your actors show up the day before you start shooting, you don't seem like you're all in on the movie stardom thing. Well, this, this seems like a piece of you that's uncomfortable. And is that accurate because it seems like you describe that well, you know, it's I never got into this business to
be famous. I got into it to be a working actor. Like my father. He he sort of set the tone. He in fact, when I when I was starting, and says, you know what, no one's gonna remember your name, no one's gonna know your name. Just do work, do work. And he just kept stressing that, and he says, and if you're lucky enough, you'll keep working until you're old. Um. But uh, and so I've been very lucky, and I've made some good choices and I made some bad ones.
But but um, I've never been comfortable with with the autographs and the selfies and now, um, but all the stuff that comes with it, because it felt like it was so far away from the reason we became actors to begin with, that whole thing of like gaming your career. You know. My agents said to me, we're going to send a script over to you, and it's for a movie that was with a big director. It was it's kind of an action film, kind of a very you know, crazy action drama, and it was the most money I
would ever be paid in the movie. And he sends the script over and the messenger comes and I opened the door. When I sit down, I just devour it. I just sit right down and meet it and I call it my agent and I go, you know, got out. I want to love it, man, I want to love it. I really wanted. I mean I never wanted to love a movie more in my life than this movie. I said, but I can't do it. I don't get it. I don't get what they want. I don't want how I
could do that. I mean, maybe they need a different kind of guy. And he goes, do me a favorite. He says, why don't you come over to my office? And he goes, and I want you to read the script again in my office because and we have a light. We have a special light be have in the office. And the light we have projects onto the page the amount of money you're going to get to be in
the movie. Would you do that for me? Would you come over to the office and be the script again with our special light we have here at c A. And I laughed at everything, but I mean, you realize that getting it right, getting it well, I always I kind of gave up. I was like, I don't know what the right answer is here? You know. Uh, Now, as you're going along and making films, you work with Hughes. What was he like to work with? He was very childlike left him. He was very he was very curious
about everything. And that's what made him, I think, such a terrific filmmaker is that he asked questions about you all the time, said, how are you feel? What's going on? You lever r now? And and and you know, look at this old draft of the script and what do you think of you know, I cut this out and
maybe you can figure out how to this work? He was very collaborative and and it takes a lot of confidence, I think, and especially as as I think it was his second time that he had directed at that point with me, and but to have the confidence to trust your actors the way that he did during that experience
was it was a real lesson for me. He's the only person I know who rolled the camera and he write notes on like a que card with a magic marker while we were rolling, right, So you're sitting there and and Elizabeth McGovern would say, asked me, you know, I was supposed to be the sophisticated, rich kid, and I've been all over the world. She's like, well, god,
you must have been everywhere. You've been so many places. Well, you know, tell me about some of the placest band And he would write a city and then he write like a really crude association. He write Berlin lesbians, and he'd hold it up and I go, well, you know, Berlin, you know, just teaming with lesbians and uh, and I'm reading this up the card and he's like, you know, uh. He was crazy. He was really really so much fun music too, and he played music can drive the sound
people nuts. But during during the filming of a scene. We just start some music. Cameron Cameron Crap has a lot of music. Now, at what point that you're doing this because you work with some you know, fantastic directors, does the directing thing begin to dawn on you? Well, you know, I had written I did an adaptation of an ss hit novel and it was perhaps the least successful of the four that were that were turned into films.
It was it was a movie called that was in This is Now, and for a lot of different reasons, picture just didn't work. And so I was very frustrated coming out of that experience. And I was twenty three years old, and I said, that's not gonna happen. Next time. I'm going to direct. And I surrounded myself with with I wrote the script that was terrible, and and I surrounded myself with an amazing group of of technicians. Robert Wise was my executive producer and ended up being a
mentor to me. Michael Cohn, who Spielberg's editor, cut it. Dennis Gastner was our production designer. Um Danny Elfman wrote the score. I mean, I was surrounded and supported by this extraordinary group of people, and I had a terrible script, and I shot it anyway, and I was convinced that no one was going to tell me what to do, and I should have listened to them. Uh, And they should have told me what to do. No, no, no, this is another movie for her call anyway, So you've
got a couple of verse. So anyway, uh And and so I came out of that experience bruised and broken, and I said, well, I'm gonna do it again. And that was another film that I did with with Charlie, which was lighter, and it was mean at work and it was silly, and and my mother pulled me aside, and she's she's sort of been. She's the rock of the family and she's the most practical one in our group. And she just said, you know, you're making movies about
things you don't know anything about. Make films about what you know, and what do you know? You know about family and about people. And so I focus changed. I make folk movies. I believe I make folk movies. And it started with you know, I did this deal with the Devil. I agreed to do a third Mighty Ducks film, which with for Disney in exchange for the funding to
do a pet project of mine. It was a movie called The War at Home where I played a directed and played a character who was suffering from PTSD Vietnam veteran. And so I do a Mighty Ducks and I go off to Texas and I make War at Home and Cathy Bates is in it, and my father plays my father, Kimberly Once. It's a forehander, and it's based on James Duff's play Home Front, which Carol Connor originated the role that that my father played. So I thought, you know, this is I got this in hand. This is four
people in a house. Uh, this is something I know. It's about a dysfunctional family. I know a lot about that, so most of us do. So. Um. The movie was released on four screens and uh, and sort of disappeared and outside of the festival circuit, not many people ever heard of it. But but that experience sort of informed moving where I was going to go, and it was to make movies that that mattered. I didn't care what
the cost was. Uh. Emotionally to me, I knew that there was the road that I was gonna take was going to be very difficult. Um, but I wanted to make films. I wanted to change the direction of my career. There's a lot on this reel that I'm not proud of. I mean, it's just some fun yea. Um but but but at that point when you say you make this decision, is coupled with that decision? Uh, side by side with
it with that decision. Do you think and I'm willing to stop not deciding, but you're willing to stop starring in films as an act of films you don't want to make anymore? Sure? Oh yeah no, And you have to say this is a sacrifice I'm willing to make. I wanted to. I literally want to make a right hand turn. And uh and and I think, you know much the dismay of agents and managers who were making a lot of money off of some of the poorer decisions that I was making. Um, they were you know, uh,
they were not necessarily as supportive as you would have imagined. Right. I love when you do a movie and you know I would make some decisions like I think, yeah, I don't want to take my wife on a vacation to Rome. And so they this all this is all appended to
someone saying come to Rome. And make this movie. And it was a really bad It was such a bad movie, you know, And but of course it all sounds better when the person on the otherment in the phone is Italian, you know, they're they're like, you come and the the the movie is a video game, but the movie and
you are the game master. You're like a floating ahead in the screen, and you were talking to all the people trapped in the maze, and you say to them, you know, you have certainly well proceed to level five, you know, and you are the game master. And I'm like, I'm like, that doesn't sound that bad. I'm taking my wife to Rome for two weeks. I'm like, yeah, we'll do that. And then afterward you're like, oh god, what have I done? And it lives forever, especially at night
when you're girling. A main library is now closing. Please access the building once again? What's going on? Nobody's leaving? Patron just digging in action. What are they protesting? Frison it death? What's it gonna be? Mr Goodson? Either one of us are one of them? Right? That's a clip from the public Amilio esteve As, his latest film starring Taylor Shilling. Michael Kay Williams, and Emilio himself, among many others.
When we come back, Amelio Estevez talks a it about his dad's arrest record, the role of libraries in America, and what I was doing in his dreams. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. The activism at the core of Ameilio Esteve, as his new movie, is rooted in the Sheen families long history of political engagement. The public is a celebration of non violent civil disobedience.
I grew up in a household where that was celebrated. Uh, you know, my father has been arrested sixty eight times for all all civil disobedience, peaceful going against the nuclear proliferation, immigration, and and homelessness. So thank god we've solved all three of those problems. I love that, you know the exact number. I see the household, she house, and he comes out of jail, and everyone's there with a cake with a number on it. Congratulations dad, number, We're proud of you.
Jail on the cake, handcuffs. In the late eighties and the nineties, he would regularly, uh it would end up on the evening news. Sometimes the national news, and he would be carted off to jail and and cuffs, and and he'd be screaming at the top of his lungs, either the Lord's Prayer or the Tagore poem, Let my country Awake. And he looked like a lunatic. And and and I would say, and my my mother would just be shaking her head and and you know, and I
didn't really understand. I understood it fundamentally. I understood what he was doing, but I didn't understand it spiritually. I didn't get it. Um, But I do now. I understand that we have to stand up and we have to embrace what Reinhold neighbor called the sublime madness, and and that is you know you're going to lose, but you but you cannot not do it. Um. It's uh, it's the it's the Jean Paul Start quote. I don't fight fascist because I think I will win. I fight fascist
because they're fascist, but I'm not. You know again that that was at the core of who my father is. And I think that that is informed to circle back around the kinds of films that that I'm interested in making. I'm I'm I'm interested in in in emotional and spiritual transformation. As I said, I'm interested in movies about people. I don't know how to make a movie. And outer space I've never been there, right, and it doesn't particularly interest
in me. We've got a lot to solve on this planet, so let's focus on what It's funny when you said that, your mother said, do movies you know, and I thought, you know, I thought your response would have been something like, you know, well, Kuprick didn't go to outer space, model and Copla never went to Vietnam. Right, I'm sure you could make an argument for all of them. Um, that's
not your filmmaking. You want to do what you know. Yeah, and I also have to work within the parameters of the of the budgets something We're going to get to that. But YouTube movie like Bobby that looks like it's a lot of money, it wasn't familiar. We started that original budget, started it around five five uh, and it had an
enormous cast. It's a big again, and that was sort of one of the challenges, as it was with the public and a less less to a lesser degree, but balancing everybody's schedules because so on Bobby as on this, we've we've you've got Sharon Stone for five days, You've got to me more for six They're supposed to be in the same couple of the same scenes, but they're scheduled on different during different weeks. How do we figure
this out? You've got Bill Macey, You've got Tony Hopkins, you've got Elijah Would, You've got Lindsay Low and you won't come out of a trailer. You've got so you're you're doing this whole, this juggling thing, and you're on a very tight budget. So it's like you're watching the sun go down, the hours take away, and it's like,
how are we going to make this impossible schedule? And and so that is the challenge when you don't have a lot of money and you don't have a lot of time to make it look flawless, to make it look like and make it look like a movie, and make it look like everybody was there at the same time, which I think we accomplished, and we did it again here on the public. But I just I watched myself sort of age right and and not slowly. I just
watched myself get more and more tired. And if you're shooting out of sequence, of course, and you need to be tired at the end of the movie, like we are, like I am in the Public. It's it creates a bit of a problem with each movie you make. Do you do you come out of the movie? I mean I like movies because when you come out of the movie, you've learned so much. Is that the same way it's for you directing? It is? And I think as a director, and if your volts are written the screenplay, you have
to be accountable to every character. And so when an actor comes the night before shooting, it's like, who is this guy and what's he doing? And you know how how did he get here? And what's his relationship to zones? You've got to write backgrounds for a lot of these characters and so um, that's just a whole another layer of work. Uh. And again I've had a lot of years too, in particularly on the Public. I've been working on the from for almost twelve years. It's a fifth
of my life I've devoted to this. So I had a lot of time to think about it. And you know, the the are there films you right or or you develop with other writers their films that you have like pots on the stove that you that you find that you chucked them and you just say, I'm not going to make that. You don't know you never had that experience painful. I did write a sequel to The Way Uh that I tried to convince my father to do,
but you couldn't afford him. I couldn't afford him. And he says, I'm not going there and I'm not doing I'm not I'm too old to walk again. And I said, well, you go be on trains and now. So, yeah, that was that's probably the only one so far that had to get right. Yeah, the public. Nearly everything that's plaguing in this country right now is touched upon in this film, in terms of community, in terms of education, in terms of poverty and homelessness, in terms of identity, spirituality, what
have you. This so much that I think was really really wrong with our country today, beyond what you see on the surface and what's covered by the news, that's that's touched upon in this film. And I was I was wondering, when you write a screenplay like this, do you write a hundred screen and then well, I wrote this coming off of Bobby. I was feeling, and again
the movie is what it is. And but there was a lot of attention around around the film, and we were nominated for a Goal of Globe for Best Picture, we got the SAG nomination, and so there was a lot of energy about what I would be doing next. So the first draft of the Public was a hundred and fifty five pages, and I said, I'm not changing a word, and of course, you know, we ended up with a hundred eight hundred nine page a final draft.
But it was as inflated as as as I could possibly get it, because I thought, there's so many other stories I want to tell, There's so many other characters I want to I want to explore, and so I
just kind of had this enormous canvas. The story was initially formed by a by a piece in the Early Times written by a former librarianship Ward who was retiring, and the thesis of the essay was that libraries have become the facto homeless shelters, librarians have become the facto social workers, and I can't sustain this any longer, and this is an epidemic. And so I was so moved by the piece that I began to do the research
and began to write, began to write the script. Is there ever a thought for you that you're not going to play these roles in the films and you're gonna cast somebody. Did you always say to yourself, I got this, You're going to play that part. I'm looking for the job. Yeah no, no, no, no, I'm just saying because you know, you know, I want you know, I want to work with you again. Yeah you don't you all you all heard it now as good as ink on a page. Now, buddy,
I'm looking I'm looking at you. Know what I mean? Is I directed one movie. It was I hated every minute of it. I did. It was not my thing. I didn't have the pages for it. I just didn't say. You forgot to cover yourself. You know you've covered everybody else. We go into the editing room and I turned to my assistant director, the director assistant, and I go, we have a super tight closive in that shot that who. She looked at the page to go, no, we don't.
And I was like, I with the person who The person whose performance was the most neglective was my own. And I played the lead in the movie. But but, but What was interesting was is that I realized that it is tough. I mean, what a muscle you have to have to star in and to direct a film. You really really have to have a special gift. And
I'm wondering, has it ever been problematic for you? Do you ever think to yourself that you, you know, there's a lot of great You know, Ronnie Howard is a great director, had a huge career as a TV star, and you never see him in his movies. You ever want to go back to directing? Only? Sure? I mean, I think it would depend on the story. And I think if if it just didn't make sense for me to be absolutely I would step back. And you know, in the way I had a very small role and
Bobby had a very limited role. Um, so it was I think, sure, I'm open to that. So the last question I'll ask before we go out into the house here is that you make uh, studio films and big films in your lifetime. You go in and your shoot, and you're an actor, and you you can want it.
At the time that they're finishing that movie, you've shot two or three more movies in that time, you know, and now you are uh, you are prepping the movie, and you are shooting the movie, and you're posting the movie, and you have to raise money for the movie is gonna and then you're gonna sell the movie and market the movie. Take us through that process, just give us a little bit of Well I left this film. I left Los Angeles for Cincinnati, where we shot the film
right after the election. Uh it was I drove out from from Los Angeles, I started the prep and that was November of two thousand sixteen. Uh So, when you commit to making a film, especially independent film, you know you're in it a minimum of two years. The editing process can be again a very long period. I'm a big fan of of test screenings, which you know, of course every studio wants to do, and I'm all for it.
I think that the only way well, I think that the only way to know how your film is playing is to is to take it for a test drive. See how it's it's It's about ten grand to to to run these what we are called n RG National Research Group test screenings, and you have to fill an auditorium three four h people and and the price goes up depending of how big that auditorium iss The theater is so so these these items just start racking up.
And uh. You know, we were fortunate enough to have an Ohio tax credit which came at at a terrific time in the process, so it gave us an influx of cash. Uh, and we were able to get to to continue working on the film. But again, because as you mentioned, this movie deals with so much, it is a it is a big giant adult portion. I wanted
to make sure that we got it right. Um. I took the film down to the a l A conference down in in New Orleans, uh and screened for thousands of of of crazy librarians and uh and and they and they went wild for the film. But again that's a that's a process getting it their three screenings in the middle of a big conference. You commit to doing all of that, You commit to uh an extended period of time where you're gonna think about nothing other than
this film. So you know, next month it will be two years where I have been living, breathing, and and and dreaming about this movie. In fact, you popped up in my dream recently, um, and and it was it was odding an oscar in your dream. You might have been yeah, yeah, yeah, you might don't know. It was a lot darker. You had framed me for some crime. You framed me for some and and it was so obvious that I hadn't donne the crime and admitted this murder.
But and it was you. You were the villain. Yeah, it was odd and and and yes, and yet and yet you were standing there and survived. And I was trying to convince him. I said, please, Alec Baldwin killed him, not me. And and I killed somebody. Yeah, oh no, you killed something and I was but I was the one covered in blood. And h was a very bizarre dream I meant to tell you about. This was the person. I'm not sure, but you framed it on me anywhere
near the Supreme Court. No, I mean, I'm just saying that, you know, okay, I can't see back there. He's got their hand. I'm right on the as right there. I was just wondering if you thought there would ever be a world without libraries, would they ever become absolute? Could you ever imagine that? Do you think they still will
continue to be relevant in the future? Well, are you aware of this piece that Forbes posted online about I don't know about six weeks ago talking about now that now that we have Google and Amazon, the libraries are obsolete. Librarians around the world shouted this piece right off line. Forbes was forced to take it down. So I don't envision a world where, uh, where we don't have libraries.
I think that Tony Marks, who's the president of the New York Public Library System, he was quoted just yesterday in an article where he said libraries are quietly the place where democracy can be saved. And I also just wanted to mention that it's Halloween, and every Halloween I like to break out nightmares. And I watched that piece that you do when you get sucked into the video missions. Yeah, that was one of those ones on the resume that
we talked about earlier. Excuse me, is there a movie that you haven't done yet that you're looking forward to doing that you could share it with this small group small minux film with Alec. There's a there's a script that I've been working on for a while about immigration, and unfortunately it's not a timely issue, so I've had to put that on the back burner. So no I wrote a comedy about immigration, about rediscovering America through the eyes of an immigrant and so that's, um, that's slowly
coming into the front burner. Now are you going to play the lead in that movie too? Are you going to get out of the way people? Is a is a Latina? So I'm probably outside the top of my right Okay over here, Uh, just going back aways. What was it like on the set of The Breakfast Club? And how did the cast get along on the Breakfast Club? We everybody got along really well. Um. You know, I was I was twenty one at the time. I was,
you know, a few years out of high school. Uh. They they put Judd and and Ali and I back into high school. We we started attending classes just to sort of get that high school vibe. And again we could we could be in a school and be anonymous. Um, Anthony, Michael Hall and and Molly. We're still teenagers and still uh you know, still had uh still I think we're still going to school at the time. So uh, but yeah,
we got along. We got along very well. Um. I don't really attend any of the Breakfast Club reunions, and I've been criticized for that. Um and and but in my my castmates are you know, they're they're They've been very vocal and sort of wondering why I never show up, but I don't. How do you feel about doing retrospectives
and doing the doing the I think don't do. To be honest with you, I think that it depends on the nature of the film, you know, Like these people talk about how much the movie means to them at that point in their life. And I hear people all the time talk about Breakfast Club helped me get through
high school, you know. So with that in mind, I think, what could possibly be wrong about going to the retrospective, you know, I mean, really it has great meaning to them, and even though you don't share that, it's a job you did and you play a character. I'll let people come up to me and say, oh I love this or I love that, and I said, they're go, oh, well, thank you and uh, you know, best of luck to
you or whatever. But for you, if they have these retrospects and like, oh my god, let's go, I'll go with you. Let's goast reunion. That's how like a blast? Thank you for being Thank you so much. That was Amelio Estevez. The Public is his latest movie and it's currently on the Festival circuit. I'll let you know when it's out in wide release. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing