Revealing Barry Sonnenfeld

in Hollywood. The year after Misery, Sonnenfeld's directorial debut, The Adams Family, was released, two huge box office success. Sonnenfeld went on to direct the brilliant mob comedy Get Shorty, The Men in Black Trilogy, and Some Wonderful TV. His triumph in two different jobs on set is rare in Hollywood, especially when you consider how very different the roles of director and cinematographer are supposed to be. I called myself not a cinematographer, not a DP. I called myself the

friend of the director. So I would just as easily talk to a director about an actor's energy. You know how, after lunch they're always uh the first takes are always too slow because everyone's eating lunch and all that. Or I would say, you know, I would think about how it was going to edit. So I was never just a cameraman. And some people really like that. Who's an example. Who's an example of one that did like that? Okay, Danny de Vito, the Coen Brothers, not Penny Marshall? Uh?

Rob did? Rob Reiner? Did? I heard you wouldn interview? Said? Penny said she was. She wanted to fire you. But so who was it that said don't fire you? Danny? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. The second week of I'm Big every morning, Penny started today with a dozen white castles and a carton and Marlborough cigarettes. And so the second Monday of shooting, she came up to me at seven am with the white castle in her mouth and said, I tried to fire you,

but they wouldn't let me. I said, who wouldn't let you, Penny? They wouldn't let me. She says, I called Danny because she was friends with Danny through uh what's his name, Jim Brooks, you know that that group. And she said, I asked Danny if you were good, and uh, he said you are, but I don't think so. So that was how we got God. Yes, she really didn't like she was vigorously honest, Penny. She was very honest, but

she she hit her honesty in mumbling. She was a genius in mumbling, so that if you wanted to hear what she said, you did. But if you didn't want to hear, you could pretend you just didn't hear her, which is what four year old children do you do? Bloods Simple is that the brothers first movie, the first did you know run away? That they had the recipe? Yes, but don't forget. It was my first day on the feature film set. Also, I had never shot anything before.

Why did they hire you? Okay? Joel and I were at the same party. It was a party that was specifically people from Dairy Anne, Connecticut. All their parents owned coal mines in Pennsylvania and islands in the Caribbean. And there were two Jews at the party, Me and Joel. We didn't know each other at film school or anything like that, and we kind of smelled each other across

the room and we started to talk. And Joel and Ethan, his brother, had written the script for Blood Simple, and they were going to shoot a trailer as if it were a finished movie and then show it to dentists and doctors and investment clubs, because if you see a trailer, you can say, yeah, that looks like a real movie. So also they were going to shoot a trailer and then use a trailer to raise money. And I said, I own a camera, and Joel said, you're hired. So

I shot their trailer. Before there was video, there was sixteen millimeter, which was the cheaper way to go and set a thirty five. And when I got out of graduate film school, I figured if I bought a used sixteen millimeter camera, I could call myself a cameraman without being a dilettante, because I actually had a camera. You know, the Vietnam cameras is sixteen millimeter cameras that looked like

Mickey Mouse with the big around cylinder. So I owned used one of those, and so Joel and Ethan and I spent the year raising the money for Blood Simple, and then we went down to Austin and shot it. And the first day on the set was the first day Joel Ethan or I had ever been on a movie set. But you would go into film school with an eye to spending three years without having to be in the job market. I had no interested in film. I just thought if I was in graduate school, I

didn't have to look for a job killing time. I really wanted to be a still photographer. But but but I'm want to get back to this thing about the Collins. So so it's the first day on the set for all three of you. You're down there in Austin. When you went into that process the first time and he came out the other end, what changed for you because you kept going, yes, I must say everything changed. You have to Blood Simple. Uh. It got great reviews, critical

cult hit. Uh Rea Pearlman, Danny's wife went into labor while watching Blood Simple. Danny told me years later, and suddenly I was a real cameraman. In fact, Janet Maslin, who wrote the review in The New York Times, said that the Cohen brothers were going to be huge successes, and she particularly the whole last paragraph is about my cinematography and it mentions me by name, and it was shocking. It was just phenomenal, as because Raising Arizona when that

came out. This is back in the days when I used to read Sine asked magazine and Premier, which was kind of fair with the people magazine of the movie business. They talked about blankie cam. Yes, there was a blank acam. There was a shaky cam. The blank acam was me laying on a blanket holding a camera as I was directed to the dog that's right chasing them. That's bike Acamville was laying on the blanket being pulled towards, hurtling

towards the victim that's right in the scene. And you are the POV of the dom the POV you know, Spinney cam with the camera. Yes, yeah, when Nick cages sort of, we put Nick on this device and put mounted the camera to his back and spun him around, him around. Uh. Shaky cam is camera mounted on a two by twelve with me at one end, in Joel Cohen on the other end, and us running. Because it's so long two by twelve, we could run up to and then lift the board up over a fountain, a car,

up a ladder, through a window into Florence. Arizona's a math. So we did all these. His idea of both Sam Raimie's idea. Sam Raimie used to shaking camel lot on his first Evil Dead, and Joel was the assistant editor on Evil Dead. But you know what, I always say that right now, we could have shot Raising Arizona with modern equipment for ten times a budget and it wouldn't look any different, right, not as good to tell you

the truth. Necessity, the mother is a mother. Um, when you're on the set with these people, how much do they know about lenses shooting do they? And which do you prefer? The knowledgeable director in terms of cinema or someone who to students you would say, what do you want to do? You want someone who has strong opinions because then you know that they know what they're doing. You don't want someone who says, do whatever you want

you really do. Penny truly didn't know lenses. So I would say, you know, we'll start on the rug and Tom's feet will come in and we'll boom back, and then we'll discover that he's no longer a boy. Great, and then we I line up the shot, show Penny the shot and she goes, I see his feet, but where's his head? I said, well, you know, we'll reveal what She would say, well, yeah, but I want to see his feet and his head and you go right, but then you're wide because if you're seeing his feet

and his head, he's six ft tall. And she'd go, I don't understand what you're doing, but would let me do it? And it was. It was a nightmare, really was, and I didn't enjoy the experience, even though I got to put the camera wherever I wanted. Was hit, huge hit, and it was the fourth movie after you know, it was eighteen again with Judge Reinhold. There was oh god, there were a series of movies about body switching comedies that came out right before us, and we were the

fourth one. And we assume the movie was going to be uncuttable because it was. It was really hard. He was great, and we really enjoyed working together. I think it got a little bit um tends at the very end of misery. I'll tell you why. Rob was always saying I should direct, and I kept saying I had no interest in directing, but I really you know, Kathy

Bates and I loved each other. Every every morning we would meet and she would say, hey, son, and felt f you, and I'd go, f you, Kathy, And you know, it was that kind of relationship when and we both and everyone hated Jimmy con Rob and I hated Jimmy so much that when one day Jimmy said, Hey, Rob, how far do you want me to crawl? And Rob said to me back, how far should he crawl? And I literally spit on the floor and I said to their and Rob said, crawled to the loogie Jimmy, Yes,

curl to the lugi Jimmy so uh so. And then at the very end the last two weeks of Miseries, when when I told Rob I might become a director, I think the last two weeks, suddenly my friend of the director thing became a oh, Barry thinks he's a director thing. It was it was Barry's changed. And at the end of Misery we didn't talk to each other

for a couple of years. And then Sweetie and I were Mr Chows in Beverly Hills name dropping thing, and um I saw Robin Michelle eating a couple of tables away, and I went up and I said, Hey, should we be friends again? And Rob said absolutely, and just like that, and Sweetie was nervous, what's going to happen? I said, but you know what? Yeah, And it was like that who are actors you worked with? Who when you were shooting with him as a director or DP that you went,

oh my god, what a great opportunity. This is Kathy Bates, Kathy Bates and Misery. In fact, Kathy was my idea. Rob wanted Bette Midler for the role and I said, you know what, maybe, but you should see Kathy. I had seen her in Night Mother on Broadway and she was extraordinary and Rob hired her. So Cathy was. Kathy was one of those actors that until the take, no matter how if she was supposed to cry or be furious, would just joke around. There was no method acting, there

was nothing. We just goof around and then it would be action. Turn it on and then turn it on. And here Shirley McClain was like that, but I don't mean playful and silly. But Meryl was somebody that access is what she wants to access very handily for the most part. So Kathy was great. Um when as a DP, you know, it's it's interesting because as a d P, I never really got actors and I never really understood

what they needed. And I always felt they were a little bit of the enemy because they would rehearse looking this way, so you'd light with the key light being, you know, to the left, and then they would come in and shoot it and they would do something totally different. So I remember one night on when Harry met Sally, we had a very long walk and talk on West Broadway. It was probably a hundred yards, and we laid track

because I never liked steadicam endless track. We had a two and ten ft lighting condor, really huge set up, and it was Bruno, Carrie, Billy and Meg and it's a four shot with no coverage. And during the rehearsals they didn't know their lines, so they're talking slowly and but now they go to hair and makeup, they've learned their lines, and now they're racing through it and they're

going eighty feet past where I'm lit. And I remember going to Rob and I said, hey, Rob, you know they're they've got a up here and hit their mark. And Rob would try to get Meg to hit her mark and it never worked, and I realized, here's what to do. So instead of saying to Meg, can you really hit that mark? I said, hey, Meg, stop wherever

you want. If you happen to stop here, your lit beautifully, and then she would stop there every time, so I had to make it give her reason why she wanted to stop there, as opposed to why I needed her to say. That's incredibly significant to me because I always prided myself what I called my triangulation with the camera. The joke version is I put my hands on the shoulders of the guy and be like, now, Bob, listen to me, and I jerked him out of my lights

right right, Bob, You've got to listen to me. You've gotta understand, and you might him over, you know whatever I would do to a comedy to get the shot that's right. At what point do you begin to really burn with the passion if you will to direct? I had no passion to direct. I was in l A finishing the color timing on Misery, which ended up being

the last movie. No, no, I'm sorry. The last two weeks of shooting, I remember now and Sweedie and I were at the Four Seasons Hotel on Doheny watching the Indianapolis five in bed and the phone rang and the front dusk said, Scott Ruden has just dropped off a script for you. He wants you to read. Read it. And meet him at in two hours. That hugoes, I don't know if you ever eat. Of course, to Hugo all the time in West Hollywood, the pasta with the

scrambled eggs. So and there was this nose saying, read this, I want you to direct it. It was Adams family. That's right, I read it. It wasn't very good. I said to Sweetie, this isn't good. She says, you'll make it better. Scott will make it better. I had known Scott a little bit, and this is why he wanted me to direct it. He went to Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton and they both passed on Adam's family. Scott told me at lunch he would rather have of visual stylist.

And he was ahead of Paramount Productions when I shot Big and and Raising Arizona, so he knew I could could shoot and had a very specific point of view, like you were saying that the camera can be sort of a character in the show, you know. So he said, all the good directors passed, so I figured I'd give you a chance. But which is all? That's right. I've been there before now. I directed one movie. I hated every minute of it. I hated it. Here's what I did.

I looked at and you you mentioned him earlier, but I looked at what Jan da Bant did. Gordon Willis shot a movie called Windows, Bill Freaker shot Legend of the Lone Ranger. These are all famous dps. John Alonzo who had shut Chinatown, and Farewell, My Lovely Great Cameraman shot f M. None of them directed a second movie.

And the reason was they all moved up their camera operator d P, which means they didn't want to give up the camera, right, So by just not hiring a good cameraman, they would still be in charge of the camera. They didn't do for a d d P what a director had done for that. That's right, that's right. So what I did is I said, I need the greatest cameraman I can find, so I'll never say, shouldn't at ten k go over there? So I hired a really great, cranky guy named Owen Roisman, who shot you know, um

oh Tutsi and millions of many, many great films. And I said to and I said, look, I'll never get involved in your lighting. I just want you to agree to a couple of things. One is I want Angelica Euston, who played more Tisha, to have her own motivated light. I don't care if she's standing right by the window, that's not where the light should come from. She's in

another zip code. She should look like a herral. So Owen loved the idea, and I said, and I would like to design the shots because I know how I'm going to edit it. And he said, makes it easier for me. So to this day, from Adam's family, through a series of unfortunate events, whenever I say cut, check the gate, even though there's no longer a gate to check the cameras has enhanced me the viewfinder and I

line up the next shot. The thing is, when you're there, you're first film with Ruden, when you're in pre production making the film, does he defer to you when you wanted Raoul Julia, and you wanted this one and this one and this one. Okay, so we agreed on Raoul and Angelica. We totally disagreed on Wednesday. I really wanted Christina Ricci and he wanted this other girl who had hyper thyroid eyes that looked more like raw Julia. And luckily David Reuben, who is a casting agent, agreed with me.

But here's how I doubt it. Ruden Ruden. I love Here's my quote about Ruden. I love him and I wish he were dead. Um uh, you know Nick and tonys in him. Of course. I saw Robert Benton eating dinner with his wife Sally, and I knew that he was flying the next day with Scott Ruden to London for Nobody's school. And I went up to Benton. I had never met him before. They were both at Nick

and we were finishing dinner at nick Cantons. They were studying a great guy, lovely, and I went up to him and I said, excuse me, you don't know me. My name is Barry's son and fell I just wanted you to know that I know you're flying to London tomorrow with Scott Ruten. I just wanted to tell you that, even though you're brilliant director Places in the Heart, Cramer Versus Cramer, all these movies, I so want your plane to go down in a flaming wreck where you survived,

but Scott Rutten dies. And literally he looked at me and said, sit down, young man, and what's you're sweetie? Oh welcome, And we became friends for decades, so Ruden was Ruten was very difficult, very brilliant. He really didn't care about the lodgect. He didn't understand shooting visually. I remember there was a setup that I wanted to play in a Master because sometimes if you look at screwball comedies like His Girl Friday Sturgis comedy plays in the Master, right,

you see action and reaction in the same shot. Right, yeah, let me have to hear her throw in a magazine. My favorite line in the Marks Brothers movie when Crouse she gets thrown into a bathroom. But in any case, um so I set up the shot and it only worked without inserts or close ups, because like Charles Adams's cartoons, you want the audience to find a joke, right. You don't want to say, here's the punch line in a

close up, and Ruden insisted I cover it. I said, okay, well, let me get the master perfect so I don't have to have the coverage. And I got it perfect, and then I moved in for a close up and he said, what are you doing. I said, well, you want me to cover it? He said, no, it's perfect. So he just has to be proved to show him, And the secret to working with Ruden is to out juvenile him.

So when we had a fight in pre production, I would remove all of his couches cushions and build a fort and crawl into the fort, close the last pillow and yell, I can't hear you. I'm in the fort. And what was great about Scott is he totally accepted the sanctity of the fort. He would never pick up a pillow and say, schmuck, there is no fort. He screamed, get out of the fort. But he would never just pick up. He respected the fort. And eventually you say,

all right, fine, just get out. We'll talk about it. I just worshiped Raoul. I mean, was he everything that I thought he was? Yes? He was. He loved being alive, he loved himself, he loved acting, he loved women. I remember asking him we were having dinner one night, uh in l A, and I said, would you ever direct? And he said, why would I want to direct? I'm

gonna act and he meant it. And I remember on Adam's Family Values, this is scene where Raoul is really angry and he's throwing darts and lurches holding the dartboard and moving it around because Raoul is so angry he's missed. You know, he's not throwing it right, So Lurch is like holding it up and he keeps getting bull's eyes but it's knocking off of walls and we we rehearse it, and Raoul said, very let me ask you a question.

You know, Gomez is a perfect marksman. Even if he's angry, he would hit or drunk, he would hit a bull's eye every time. He wouldn't bang off from walls and lambs, and Lurch wouldn't have to. This is Gomez. Gomez doesn't need that. And I go, well, here's the thing, Raoul, and he said, right, the thing is, it's not funny, so let's keep going. So he wanted me to know that what we were doing was wrong, and that he was so smart he knew it was wrong, but then

he was okay with it. So he was fantastic. When I see that film Joan Cusack, I mean, who in the world is funnier than Joan Cusack. No, nobody, And I said to John, because Joan has an amazingly hideous laugh. It's like a cackle. And I said to her, and she was single at the time. I said, someday someone is going to fall in love with you because of that laugh, and once they marry you, they're going to

hate you because of that laugh. She was so game and so winning, and her whole Malibu Barbie speeches brilliant. And my favorite moment is, Uh, Joan blows up her house to kill faster, and there's a close up of her sort of weeping, and without any cut, she goes from weeping to my favorite scene, which says, off, sir, my husband was in the house. That's right, and she does the laugh. Then she comes out of the car. Help. I of that movie. I love I love, love love

that movie. Another Hollywood double threat is the man Stanley Kubrick, persuaded to leave a promising acting career and work behind the scenes instead Leon the Tally as a favor to Kubrick after his star turn in Barry Linden. The Tally was doing some casting work and locations scouting for The Shining. The master director was pleased. Towards the very end, just before we came home, he rang me and uh, and he said, what are you planning on doing after you

finished here? And I said I don't know. He said, okay, then you're coming to London, now, is it? I mean suddenly I I'd got a job. You can get a link to my full interview with Leon the Tally and the man who made the documentary about him by texting the Tally that's v I T A L I to seven zero one zero one. Barry Sonnenfeld gets personal coming up. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. Now

back to my conversation with director Barry Sonnenfeld. You're a funny guy, and I'm wondering when you did which I actually liked to meet, even though there were some mixed reviews and you had mixed success with Wild Wild West. I liked Wild Wild West. I know I did. I mean when I movie came out of watching and I go, there's a lot of good things in this movie. What was it like for you working with His Royal Highness Kevin Klein. Here's the challenge with Kevin. You need one

straight man and one funny man. You need Gracie Allen and George Burns. You don't want to Gracey Allen's so Will Smith. Will was very much on board with that theory. One straight man, one funny man and Kevin refused to not be the funny guy. Will was supposed to be the funny guy. Kevin was supposed to be the artemists,

the straight, straight ahead guy. So because Will knows the way I like to work so well, after a week, Will came up to me and said, hey, bas He called me, bas Um, I think I'm going to have to be the straight man and I said, I think you are too. So that was one challenge. The other challenge was that we had Kenneth Brana playing loveless. The challenges that Kevin Klein and Kenneth Bruna both think they're the greatest living Shakespearean actor. Therefore one of them they

have Shakespeare offs. They Kevin would literally come onto this set saying a rose by any other, pardon me, though, bleeding piece of earth, that I am meek and gentle with these butchers. That would be Kevin. That would be Kevin. So is a real challenge. There are things about that movie I really like, but it was it was hard because Kevin was difficult and Kevin felt he was slumming. Kevin really didn't want to be there. He didn't want

to be in a comedy. That kind of comedy he's a really great actor, and he's a really funny act. Was he enthusiastic about the film in the beginning and then he found that it was something else? Or no, I think it was a paycheck. It was a paycheck. It was and it was a big paycheck. And it maybe the first time we ever and probably the last time he ever got some sliver of gross. So they thought that was going to like move him off. Um,

you and I have a profound thing in common. You may not find it that profound, but I do, which is that my grandfather who had no money but was a philadelist and a new mismatist of a very you know, certain level. He didn't have any money, but he would find liberties and mercury duns and put him in the books. And I had a big box, a couple of boxes of these coins that my mother then sold and she

goes and she sells these things. And it was one of the most painful moments of my life when my dad, who his father had given me boxes the first date covers. My grandfather traveled around because of what he wound up doing, was he wound up being a consultant, a legal consultant, to race tracks. He gave me a box of these first date covers, but boxes of them. There were, there were hundreds of them, and he collected these coins and

my mother sold all the coins. And then my dad turned to me one day, I'll never forget with my dad. He wanted to see I can't. I can't to this day, I can't understand what he wanted to put me through because it was a test to see what. I throw my mother under the bus and they were estranged at that point. And my father looked me and goes, that box with all those coins that my father gave you,

that's still upstairs in your closet, isn't it. And like a movie, like a horror movie, like a Hitchcock movie. I was like, yeah, yeah, it's all there. Uh last night looked it's all there. And he just stared at me like, she got you too, She got you too. You're lying to me, and I know what she's been doing.

And your parents sold your coin collection, right, my I and you remember the coin collections, those books with that semi circles so that the queen could Yeah, exactly, So I had twenty two silver dollars they roll from the eighteen hundreds. Each one was worth between twenty five and fifty bucks. We had no electricity, so Dad took my twenty two silver dollars, went to con Ed and used them as dollars to get our electricity back on. But of course it was always hey, where are my silver dollars?

I don't know. I think Raphael must have stolen them. Raphael was my neighbor one flight below, my best friend growing up, so there was a lot of weird stuff like the same with me with my sister said I want to borrow the ring that grandpa gave you I was a teenager. I said, what do you mean. She goes that gold signet ring that said HE or I be not worth very much money, and she goes, I want to wear it to my prom I said, you want to wear my ring that she's is? Yeah, I

think it's a very beautiful ring. It's Grandpa's initials two and I want to wear it. She comes back from the from the prominx that she said, I lost a ring. Yeah, right, But your family life is complicated. Everyone's family's life is complicated. I don't think you know my my theory, and my wife hates me for saying this is that no one asks to be born, and it's you'll never do a good enough job as a parent, no matter how hard you try. I'm okay, but I'm not great. My parents

were kind of lousy. They were good people, but terrible parents. But uh so, I had my issues. You know, my both my parents who are narcissistic. My father had a lot of affairs. My mother was deeply depressed, would constantly threaten suicide. You know, she's how many siblings you have? Only child, Jewish? Only child? Not good? You know. The title of the book Barry Senterfeld, Call Your Mother, is based on the fact that I was at a Madison Square garden at the first Peace concert. It was two

twenty in the morning. Jimmie Hendrix is warming up for the second time, and over the p A system, as Jimmy is about to start playing, comes the announcement Barry Son, if I'll call your mother. And being the garden, you know, they're very good at chanting. And I was in the upper deck, you know, the blue seats. See here, Bady bad. How old were you seventeen? I was a senior at music in around high school and it was to twenty in morning and that Washington Heights, and so I immediately

stand up, so everyone knows it's me. And I'm now weeping because I know my father is dead, and that means I'm going to be living with my mother for the rest of my life because she can't function. Um, So I get to the pay phone. I put in the dime. I called Watsworth eighth. My mother is crying because she thinks I'm dead because it's too twenty and I promised i'd be home by two. Hi, Mom, who died? I thought you died? Well, did they tell you the

concert was still going on? Yes, but they couldn't confirm you were there in the garden, in the garden of six your people. But my mother had this amazing strength through weakness ability. I mean the fact that someone could reach anyone at the garden and then convinced him that it was so important they had to page me while Jimmy Hendrix is about to play. That's pretty amazing. My version of that quickly is that there was a neighbor

of ours. She was getting a degree in something and she administered i Q test the children in the neighborhood. She went to my mother, she said your son tested at a genius level and for his age. I'm seven years old, so what does that mean? I'm a genius. I can pick out the not the yellow tennis ball from the white tennis But later on I'm playing baseball. This was the being of my existence. My O c D two men on basse and the guy hits the ball and I wake up when the ball goes flack

on the ground right next to me. And the guy gets inside the park home run and they and they take the lead, and I go trotting into the dugout and the coach looks at me and goes, good job, Baldwin. And my mother was in the leechers, and of course she said, don't talk to him like that. He's a genius. And the coach was like, oh, he's a genius. Or here's my i Q story. My mother was a teacher.

She didn't want to lie about my i Q. So she got an i Q test a week early, brought it home, had Chuck Levy, who was a math expert in this party, go over the test with me so I could score a high mark so she could say I was a genius without lying. So she cheatedn't actually just got the i Q test a week early. And by the way, given that I had the i Q test a week early, it's not that great a number. But but wait, do you have O C D also? I have? Uh. Yeah, I'm someone who had times when

I'm stressed. You know, I always remember, like one critical example in my my my wife Laria is always on me about this is I'm the kind of person who, like we'd be in the hallway getting ready to go downstairs and the cars waiting to go to the airport, and I'm rearranging the coins on the table in the entry hall table making sure they're all neat in an order.

I'm always straightened. And it comes from and all of that comes from coming from an unbelievably messy home in my child In my book my memoir, I said, if you came to my house when I was a child, and you walked into the house, you would have thought that the people were running an illegal laundrymat in the house, because they were wicker and plastic baskets and laundry just tumbling out of all them. Because my mother could never keep up with all the laundry of having six kids

and no help. The house was in disarray all the time, and that damaged me. And like, I'm obsessed with neatness and cleanliness and I want my house clean and I have to have everything in order. There's another three words for why you might have O c D ahead unconscious and our assistic rage. So you know that also brings on O c D sciatica back pain. I'd rather not get into CM of c M because because I'd rather

people read it in the book. I mean, there's there's some tales in the book that are but what I will say is, whatever the difficulties you had in your childhood, and I encourage people to be because you go into some pretty tough details about what happened to you. Are that uncommon person who you let it roll off your back? And like, what am I going to do about it? Am I gonna let that ruin my life? You know? Do you find that that's a part of your nature

that you walk away from difficulty pretty easily. I don't walk away from difficulty easily. I ruminate, I relive stuff until recently. Uh that you know, what we're telling you about is sort of my parents let a my mother's cousin who is a child molest to live with us for a bunch of years knowing he was a child molester, which is kind of horrific, But in that particular case, I'm sure I'm a little screwed up because of it. But it's happened, it's gone, it's past, and I've moved on.

And you know I I think that life is surreal, and I have a very quirky attitude towards life. I try to find comedy wherever I can, surrealness wherever I can. I will say that because of my weird parents and all the threats of suicide, and all the times we didn't have electricity or rent money or louse the butcher money, I'm a control freak. I get to the airport when you were saying that the car is waiting for you

and you're rearranging. That made me so uncomfortable because I know I would have already been at the airport four hours while you were still arranging. Dime. I need to get to the airport four or five hours early. I say to my wife, look, take a different car. We'll pay for new cars, but I just need to do this, and so she'll say, all right, I'll do it. Because you're either reading your iPad at home or at the

United Lounge. But if you're at at the airport, you're not worried about you know, uh, three flat tires and traffic on the l I E and all that stuff. What are you working on now? Yeah? I loved I did three years of a series of Unfortunate Events for Netflix in Vancouver and it was the best experience of my life. And I'm about to do something with your good friend Lauren Michaels. Uh. He has his six part series that's a musical for Apple and it looks like

I'll be directing those six episodes. So musical, musical, original material, original material by this guy, Sinkle Paul, who has written only million dollar animated movies every you know, uh, the min Minions and Despicable Me and all the Secret Story of Pets, all these movies. So um, this will be like something really different from me. So we'll see um. In your wife's career in the not for profit world, she's listing on her the letter heads as Susan Ringo. Yes,

who gave her the name Sweetie? I did? I just started to call her sweetie and uh, and I would refer to her as Sweetie, and so grips and electrics would say how Sweetie, and how Sweetie's uterus. She had problems with stuff like that. And I was a very unusual cameraman in that it was all about me. It wasn't about the director, it wasn't about the actors on the call sheet. The longer I was with without Sweetie, when I was like in l a shooting, throw Mama

from the trained. The longer I was without her, the crew would know I would be in a bad mood. And when they heard that Sweetie was coming in a week, there would be a picture of a car with Sweetie's head, and the coo sheet every day had a map of the United States and where Sweetie was driving from New York because they were just knowing that as soon as Sweetie arrived would be better. So that's who I am. I'm an only child of Jewish persuasion. That was Barry Sonnenfeld.

His new memoir, in which he tells stories from his most famous sets and explores his very messed up childhood, is Barry Sonnenfeld, Call your mother available Now. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. Who don't make a