Alec Baldwin on the Business of Sentimentality

Alec Baldwin‘s advice to Charlie Sheen is to “take a nap, get a shower and beg for your job back”.  His point is that in Hollywood, a business built on sentimentality, the studio guys always know how to cut through the sentimental and keep it about the numbers.  The show is always bigger than the star – especially when it’s a hit.

You can pretty much take Baldwin’s entire, awesome piece in the Huffington Post and substitute “Wall Street” for “Hollywood” wherever it apears.  Here’s Alec relating a tale of studio avarice in which he walks away from the Jack Ryan franchise in 1991 after being screwed by the system:

A lot changed in my life with that decision. And I do not regret it. The movie and television business are filled with some of the most wonderful and talented people you could ever know. It is also the rock under which you find the biggest, lyingest, thievingest scumbags on Earth. (They tend to be the ones that are not in any craft or union related to actually making a movie.)

There’s a lot of great honesty and perspective where that came from.  All in all, my fave thing I read all weekend.

Source:

Two and a Half Men Is Better Than None (HuffPo)