I have gratuitously included this video of one of the funniest Saturday Night Live sketches of all time as a cheap way of segueing into this link to the profile of Alec Baldwin by Ian Parker in this week’s New Yorker.
It’s a long piece, but I really enjoyed it. You can see that Baldwin is a really intelligent guy but is plagued by the actor’s curse of complete narcissism and heightened self-absorption. It’s a volatile combination and worked against him for a long time. Now, though, as he stars in “30 Rock”, it not only works to his advantage, it may be that it has given him the role that he will be best remembered for. And he knows that. But, as his brother Billy says, he always has “something to fucking whine about”. Most actors are either sufficiently unaware of their own vanity or fully aware and simply don’t give a shit enough about it to behave any differently. Baldwin seems to play with it like watercolors. Worth reading.
Or, you can just watch the clip and laugh yer ass off, totally your choice.
