Seduced and Abandoned

- Other than sing in a Broadway musical,

I have done everything, for better or worse.

I started in little movies, big movies.

I starred in daytime soaps, I did nighttime soaps,

I did miniseries.

I did Broadway, off-Broadway, radio.

And you come back to movies

because when you get it right,

it does stand alone.

I have this belief that I've never gotten this right.

I either felt that I was a useful pawn

to a director who was a skilled director.

To Mike Nichols, I just was a spatula he used

to flip an omelet with.

I wasn't the omelet.

I wasn't the spinach or the olives in the omelet,

I was just some salt you might have sprinkled on it.

Or the directors were outright obstructions

to getting anything done.

They were just hideously unqualified.

When you try to ignore the director on the film

and pretend he doesn't exist,

or try to kind of sidestep in every way,

that's like trying to sidestep the birth canal

when you're coming out of your mother,

you know what I mean?

It's like, how the fuck do you do that?

Great films with great directors,

that's the pinnacle.

When I got a phone call from my agent,

and I was in the Tet Offensive of my divorce,

it was probably the worst time of my life.

And my phone rang, and my agent said to me,

he goes, "How's it going?"

I said, "It's terrible."

I said, "This is just a horribly contentious and ugly day."

And he said to me, "Well, whatever you do," he said,

"you go upstairs into that conference room,"

we were doing depositions.

And he said, "You tell those people that from now on,

"they have to address you as Juan Tripp."

And this was his signal to me

that Scorsese had asked me

to do this smaller role in the film.

- I mean, I wish you were up there with me, Juan,

it was, it was exhilarating.

Be that as it may,

you still have to answer for The Spruce Goose.

It's called the Hercules!

And it will fly, God dammit!

I certainly hope so.

The American people deserve something for their $13 million.

See, people think,

they think that this is about money,

and they think that this is about fame,

and they think this is about ego.

And when Scorsese called me and asked me,

I can't tell you what it meant to me.

- I want to ask everyone in this movie,

are you ready to die?

Because if you're not ready to die,

you're not ready to live.

And I am ready to die.

I've been ready to die since I was 19

when I flipped out on LSD for eight days.

Making movies is the oxygen of my being.

It gives structure to the chaos of my life.

- Why do I want to make a film with you?

- I'm sure people have asked you that question.

- How could she turn on me like that?

I thought she liked me.

- Can we just try to keep our pants buttoned

and get out of this town in one piece?

- I'm ready. - Well, stay ready.

And stay by yourself in your room.

- And what am I gonna do for fun?

- Why don't you learn your lines?

I know my lines.

You do?

- I just don't know what order they come in.

I trust you.

But in the past, I trusted people

who I should not have trusted,

like the guy that's the dog wrangler over there.

I should not have trusted him.

You should fucking whack him right now.

- What fascinates me about what we're going to be up to,

and what excites me so much is that on the one hand,

we're doing what I regard as not a documentary,

not a fictional film,

but an uncategorizable movie

called "Seduced and Abandoned,"

about our journey to Cannes

to celebrate film, and filmmaking,

and filmmakers, and the festival that honors them.

And with the intention of raising the money

to finance this intimate movie we're talking about

against a big political backdrop

without being absurdly grandiose about it,

our version of "Last Tango in Paris,"

last tango in Tikrit, for short.

- Please give a warm welcome to writer-director James Toback

and a man who needs no introduction, actor Alec Baldwin.

Give me the scissors.

What?

Gimme the fingernail scissors.

- But what do you see in Last Tango that resonates for you

that you want to try to mine again

in a film potentially we would do?

Ideally it would be our analogous attempt to erase

the line between role player and role

to create something bold and dark from you for you.

- I want you to put your fingers up my ass.

What?

- Put your fingers up my ass, are you deaf?

Go on.

I'm gonna get a pig and I'm gonna have the pig fuck you.

And I want to pig to vomit in your face

and I want you to swallow the vomit.

You gonna do that for me?

Yeah.

- Huh? - Yeah.

- I want the pig to die while you're fucking,

and then you have to go behind him,

I want you to smell the dying farts of the pig.

Are you gonna do all of that for me?

Yes and more than that.

And worse than before.

- Clearly here, what Brando did was become Brando

when he was doing those scenes.

One of the master strokes in the history of directors

directing actors was Bertolucci getting this out of Brando.

- You have pointed the way better than anyone,

which is to create a character

which is this close to myself.

And whether you have the framework of a script,

it's improvisatory in one way,

but what has to happen is it's this battery.

And you have to have that other woman.

And as I said to you,

I can put my finger on why, but to some extent,

what's wonderful is I can't put my finger on why

we have the right woman.

Once I met you, I said to him,

there's nobody else we want to do this with.

- My experience with Jim was just, it was exploration.

There weren't limitations.

It was about finding things, on the day even.

- But here's my question, it's gonna be difficult

to get 20, $25 million in Cannes for this movie.

- Especially without us bringing down.

That's right, exactly.

So what... - It is?

What?

You didn't tell me that.

- I just wished to fuck were coming with us, I really do.

I mean, what fun that would be apart from everything else.

But we will be faithful to you in trying to cast the movie

and raise money with the absolute given that either

it's you or it's no movie.

We will not give in when somebody says,

you have a movie, as long as you use.

Oh my God,

Claudia Cardinale and Marcello Mastroianni.

So how does it feel to be an hour away

from losing your Cannes film festival virginity?

I'm already excited about losing

my French Riviera virginity.

You've been all over the world

and you've never been to the Riviera?

Never.

And now that I see it, I may never leave.

What would you say distinguishes Cannes

from the other hundred or so film festivals

around the world?

Two things, first, it's history.

Not just in years, but in the range of who's come

with movies they've made over the last six decades.

Practically everyone from practically everywhere,

Hitchcock, Bardot, Welles, Cocteau, Moreau, Kiarostami,

Groucho Marx, Gregory Peck, Wong Kar-Wai, Gary Cooper,

Beatty, Mizoguchi, Loren, Mickey Rourke.

And second?

- The fact that it's a market for buying and selling

and for finding financing, as we're gonna do,

as well as a celebration of film as art.

Sort of like a split personality festival,

like the split personality movie we're making about it

even as we speak.

We've set some meetings with all

the major foreign sales guys over the next week,

as well as with several billionaires,

at least one of whom I'm assuming will beg us

to allow him to give us his cash.

On his knees, I hope.

But first, we're gonna see Bertolucci,

then we go to the opening ceremony and we've got a slew

of other luminaries we'll be seeing mixed in

with our quest for cash.

- First of all, Natalie, Bernardo's assistant,