....if elected, Baldwin would be America's first shapeshift President.
Posted on 03/08/2002 12:28:52 PM PST by ElRushbo
ALEC BALDWIN FOR PRESIDENT? By Bess Rattray Alec Baldwin does not want to be Senator, Governor, or President...Yet. He has Kennedy's charisma, Reagan's hair and the wonky passion of Ralph Nader, but he swears he's not a politician. Bess Rattray surveys the role he was born to play. Stories about movie stars are supposed to open with a meal, over which the actor discloses his or her hard-won sense of satisfaction with the world: Cameron Diaz and a plate of steak frites reach new levels of personal awareness; Brad Pitt, contemplating a mesclun salad with ciabatta croutons, posits that a sense of harmony comes from within. This story opens with Alec Baldwin and a plate of linguine primavera and talk of radioactive seepage. Midway through a long October weekend-scheduled at the frantic pace of a campaigning politician's eleventh-hour barnstorm--Baldwin sits under the bare beams and Arts and Crafts wallpaper of an East Hampton, New York, dining room, wondering if the aging nuclear reactor at Brookhaven National Laboratory is poisoning the children of Long Island. Down Main Street, on a chilly night, the Hamptons International Film Festival is in full swing: There is a hangar-sized white party tent, under which young actresses with absurd hairdos try to catch the eye of someone important; there are klieg lights raking the sky as if a zeppelin attack were imminent; there are camera crews to beam the fiesta into the living rooms of America. But the biggest star in town has other fish to fry. Baldwin's marathon started Wednesday, after he fled the Los Angeles set of Mercury Rising (an action-thriller co-starring Bruce Willis) and hustled to New York for the inauguration of the Cantor film-studies center at NYU, his alma mater. Friday afternoon, he hightailed it out through the Midtown Tunnel, away from Manhattan, to address a press conference for Standing for Truth About Radiation (STAR), a newborn activist group that will--among other somber tasks--test baby teeth donated by local parents for traces of the radioactivity that may or may not be leaking from Brookhaven. Tonight, Friday, he manages to be only half an hour late to host the seventy or so liberal-minded Hamptonites who have paid $500 to dine on stuffed chicken and roasted beets (a vegetarian, Baldwin special-ordered his linguine) with STAR's founders and hear more about the toxic contamination that could be creeping--eastward, ever eastward--under their summerhouses at night. Saturday, it's west again on I-495 for the dedication of a breast-cancer-care pavilion at Stony Brook medical center in the name of his mother, Carol, a seven-year cancer survivor and a public voice for the thousands of Long Island women who make up the shadowy "clusters" of victims that haunt these suburbs. Sunday, all six of the blue-eyed Baldwin kids--Alec, Billy, Stephen, Daniel, Beth, and Jane--and their blue-eyed mom gather again, this time at Massapequa High, for the dedication of a new auditorium in the name of their father, Alexander Rae Baldwin, Jr., who taught social studies there, coached the rifle team and football, and died of lung cancer in 1983. The eldest Baldwin boy has a voice that makes writers go purple with simile: It's like a hand on corduroy. Like ripping velvet. Like smoke, like a hound dog, like gravel under a boot. Tonight, moving slow and easy in a blue suit that's half movie-star casual, half Washington wonk, he turns his voice on the wealthy Democrats and activists and lawyers who have settled into cheery, overstuffed couches after dinner to hear what STAR has to say: "Tritiated, contaminated water--am I wrong?--is moving this-a-way." He glances with a sardonic look from eye to eye. "It's not moving toward Peekskill, for all you people who know [New York Governor] Pataki's farm up there. It's not moving toward Albany...It's moving out here." He holds each of us in a gaze that could be construed as either a merry twinkle or as a look of menace. "Radioactive contamination is on its way here, to the East End of Long Island. What are we going to do about that?" Baldwin's delivery is fierce. Remember the Kodiak bear he wrassled with in The Edge? If Alec met that bear on his way home tonight, he'd take him down in two rounds. Unlike other stars, who somehow seem to shrink when you see them in real life--Madonna, for all her insinuating charisma, turns into a pocket Venus who talks like Ethel Mertz, Robert Redford distressingly morphs into a small man with orange hair--Baldwin is even more formidable in person than onscreen
He's a Clintonite...enough said.....Let's move on.
Shouldn't they rename the movie to WILLY JACK, in that case?
....if elected, Baldwin would be America's first shapeshift President.
Mr. Conductor has lost his clout at the box office.
Mr. Conductor has lost his place in the script.
If dear Alec doesn't want political comments on his website he should stick to his acting and keep his mouth shut about politics!
What a hypocrite!
ALEC BALDWIN FOR PRESIDENT?
By Bess Rattray Alec Baldwin does not want to be Senator, Governor, or President...Yet. He has Kennedy's charisma, Reagan's hair and the wonky passion of Ralph Nader, but he swears he's not a politician. Bess Rattray surveys the role he was born to play. Stories about movie stars are supposed to open with a meal, over which the actor discloses his or her hard-won sense of satisfaction with the world: Cameron Diaz and a plate of steak frites reach new levels of personal awareness; Brad Pitt, contemplating a mesclun salad with ciabatta croutons, posits that a sense of harmony comes from within. This story opens with Alec Baldwin and a plate of linguine primavera and talk of radioactive seepage.
Midway through a long October weekend-scheduled at the frantic pace of a campaigning politician's eleventh-hour barnstorm--Baldwin sits under the bare beams and Arts and Crafts wallpaper of an East Hampton, New York, dining room, wondering if the aging nuclear reactor at Brookhaven National Laboratory is poisoning the children of Long Island. Down Main Street, on a chilly night, the Hamptons International Film Festival is in full swing: There is a hangar-sized white party tent, under which young actresses with absurd hairdos try to catch the eye of someone important; there are klieg lights raking the sky as if a zeppelin attack were imminent; there are camera crews to beam the fiesta into the living rooms of America.
But the biggest star in town has other fish to fry. Baldwin's marathon started Wednesday, after he fled the Los Angeles set of Mercury Rising (an action-thriller co-starring Bruce Willis) and hustled to New York for the inauguration of the Cantor film-studies center at NYU, his alma mater.
Friday afternoon, he hightailed it out through the Midtown Tunnel, away from Manhattan, to address a press conference for Standing for Truth About Radiation (STAR), a newborn activist group that will--among other somber tasks--test baby teeth donated by local parents for traces of the radioactivity that may or may not be leaking from Brookhaven. Tonight, Friday, he manages to be only half an hour late to host the seventy or so liberal-minded Hamptonites who have paid $500 to dine on stuffed chicken and roasted beets (a vegetarian, Baldwin special-ordered his linguine) with STAR's founders and hear more about the toxic contamination that could be creeping--eastward, ever eastward--under their summerhouses at night. Saturday, it's west again on I-495 for the dedication of a breast-cancer-care pavilion at Stony Brook medical center in the name of his mother, Carol, a seven-year cancer survivor and a public voice for the thousands of Long Island women who make up the shadowy "clusters" of victims that haunt these suburbs. Sunday, all six of the blue-eyed Baldwin kids--Alec, Billy, Stephen, Daniel, Beth, and Jane--and their blue-eyed mom gather again, this time at Massapequa High, for the dedication of a new auditorium in the name of their father, Alexander Rae Baldwin, Jr., who taught social studies there, coached the rifle team and football, and died of lung cancer in 1983.
The eldest Baldwin boy has a voice that makes writers go purple with simile: It's like a hand on corduroy. Like ripping velvet. Like smoke, like a hound dog, like gravel under a boot. Tonight, moving slow and easy in a blue suit that's half movie-star casual, half Washington wonk, he turns his voice on the wealthy Democrats and activists and lawyers who have settled into cheery, overstuffed couches after dinner to hear what STAR has to say: "Tritiated, contaminated water--am I wrong?--is moving this-a-way." He glances with a sardonic look from eye to eye. "It's not moving toward Peekskill, for all you people who know [New York Governor] Pataki's farm up there. It's not moving toward Albany...It's moving out here." He holds each of us in a gaze that could be construed as either a merry twinkle or as a look of menace. "Radioactive contamination is on its way here, to the East End of Long Island. What are we going to do about that?" Baldwin's delivery is fierce.
Remember the Kodiak bear he wrassled with in The Edge? If Alec met that bear on his way home tonight, he'd take him down in two rounds. Unlike other stars, who somehow seem to shrink when you see them in real life--Madonna, for all her insinuating charisma, turns into a pocket Venus who talks like Ethel Mertz, Robert Redford distressingly morphs into a small man with orange hair--Baldwin is even more formidable in person than onscreen
thank you thank you very much!
I would be right behind ya...the Carribean sounds good.
No wonder Alec "Bloviator" Baldwin takes Al Gore's loss to President George W. Bush so personally - he, too, is an election sore-loser.
In 1979, when Alec still went by his birth name Alex, the eldest Baldwin brother lost his campaign to be George Washington University's student association president by one vote. After he demanded a recount which only confirmed Baldwin's loss, he dropped out of GW and transferred to New York University.
Baldwin served as head of GW's program board, which arranged for guest speakers and the like. According to GWU's student paper, the GW Hatchet, Baldwin, campaigning for the student association presidency, told voters: "GW suffers from one of the most pitiable public relations operations of any university of America . . . the administration is deliberately striving to keep the student body in the dark as to what they are doing with our money and our education."
The soon-to-be actor's platform didn't jibe with the students, and Baldwin lost the right to an election runoff with Mike Karakostas and Pete Aloe by a margin of one vote.
The young and not yet pudgy Baldwin got his lackey and program board underling, Thomas Blood, to complain to the election board and demand a recount.
The move made Baldwin the butt of jokes. In the March 8, 1979, edition of the GW Hatchet, National Law Center senator Dana Dembrow wrote: "Yes, it is possible for Alex Baldwin to not win a fair election. Alex Baldwin lost not because anyone cheated, but simply because his opponents were the choice of the voters."
"Not everyone in the University is enchanted with Mr. Baldwin's administrative ability as a result of the job that the program board has done during the past two semesters. Some of us, in fact, were quite disappointed.
"No Alex, we didn't vote for you. . . That's right, it was fair and square. It's time to stop complaining and congratulate the victors."
Several weeks after Baldwin's loss - and days after he made his transfer to NYU known - all eyes were again on him. The university heaved a sigh of relief that Baldwin's recount efforts were not successful.
An inquiry was started when the board's funds mysteriously ran dry and GW's student activities office accused it of mismanaging money.
Later, on April Fool's day, the GW Hatchet poked fun at Baldwin in a piece that was written about the investigation.
"Phallix Baldweenie, Bored Chairidiot, commented: 'So what if they found anything? I'll be at NYU before they can indict me!," editors spoofed.
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