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THE TV WATCH
The New York Times
April 28, 2007

Under Fire, an Actor Lashes Back With a Plan


Alec Baldwin went on “The View” this week to discuss the ranting
voice-mail message he left for his 11-year-old daughter.

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

The fate of “30 Rock” looks dire. Alec Baldwin said on “The View” yesterday that he wanted to quit that NBC sitcom to write a book about “parental alienation.”

For the good of viewers — and readers — Mr. Baldwin must not leave the show.

His performance yesterday suggests that he may need some persuading to stay with the sitcom, in which he is brilliant, and away from talk show couches, where he is anything but.

It’s certainly in the best interest of the child. As bad as all the publicity over her father’s ranting voice-mail message must be for 11-year-old Ireland, she will have to live it all over again if her father quits show business. The book reviews — let alone the stand-up comedy routines — would surely inflict even more emotional damage.

Mr. Baldwin told Barbara Walters and Rosie O’Donnell that he wanted to devote his life to exposing the injustices perpetrated on divorced dads, and that he hoped to publish a book this fall on divorce litigation. Mr. Baldwin’s long-winded, self-obsessed soliloquy on his usurped rights as a father and the fiendish acts of his ex-wife, Kim Basinger, was so impassioned that Ms. Walters had to remind him that his first concern should be his relationship with Ireland. (When he mentioned his daughter, it was to make a point about her mother’s perfidy.)

He was looking to persuade but was mostly painful to watch — a little like Captain Queeg melting down on the witness stand in “The Caine Mutiny.”

And Mr. Baldwin added more fuel to his pyre by lashing out at the celebrity gossip industry, including the journalist who first distributed the phone message, whom he did not identify by name. “Everybody who works in tabloid media are people who are filled with self-hatred and shame,” he said. “And the way that they manage those feelings is that they destroy the lives of other people and reveal your secrets.”

He has a reason to feel ill-used by the press, of course. His hectoring message and the words he used — “thoughtless little pig” — unleashed an almost Don Imus-size national debate over his behavior. Some people want Mr. Baldwin in irons; others wonder how and why on earth his phone message for Ireland found its way to the public. Mr. Baldwin began his interview by saying, “I got a huge bouquet of flowers from Don Imus.”

Ms. Walters looked startled. “Did you really?” she asked. He said he was joking.

If NBC has to gin up an intemperate fathers’ solidarity drive to keep him on the show, so be it. After yesterday’s appearance, Mr. Baldwin may require something along the lines of the scene in “Spartacus,” when the Roman commander demands to know which of a horde of rebel slaves is their leader, and one, two and then all of the slaves step forward, saying, “I am Spartacus.” Perhaps all parents could call their children’s cellphones and simultaneously holler something mean and borderline abusive.

Mr. Baldwin’s defense was unfortunate, and so was his timing. This is not a good moment for middle-aged actors to act out. Richard Gere is a wanted man in India after showering the Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty with kisses at an AIDS awareness rally in New Delhi; Indians frown on public displays of affection. Hugh Grant was arrested in London for throwing a tub of baked beans at a photographer.

Mr. Baldwin, who is known in The New York Post as “the Bloviator,” is not as winning in speeches and on talk shows as Mr. Gere or Mr. Grant.

But Mr. Baldwin’s career matters more, and not just because he neither publicly offended cultural sensibilities (this time) nor physically injured anyone (this time). He is a gifted actor who at the moment is peerlessly funny as Jack Donaghy, a silky-smooth, loony NBC executive in charge of a sketch comedy show.

The show was created by the former “Saturday Night Live” head writer and star Tina Fey, who also plays the fictional show’s head writer, Liz Lemon. The writing is sharp and funny, and so is the cast. But Mr. Baldwin steals every scene and has turned “30 Rock” into one of the best comedies on television. In Thursday’s season finale, which included his fiancée, Phoebe (Emily Mortimer), an art dealer who says she suffers from avian bone syndrome and cannot be touched, Jack is so stressed that he has a mild heart attack.

On his hospital bed he tells Liz that in a near-death moment, he saw his life flash before his eyes.

“In all the time I’ve been on this earth, I have only one regret,” Jack tells her. “I should have worked more.”

So should Mr. Baldwin. He should stop discussing his custody battle in public and get back to work on “30 Rock.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/ar...on/28watc.html