A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

HE WAS LEAN AND INTENSE, AND HAD CHEST HAIR IN WHICH ONE COULD LOSE A TELEPHONE: Go -- right now -- and read Ian Parker's profile of Alec Baldwin in the new New Yorker. Some highlights:

• Baldwin really wanted Russell Crowe’s role in The Insider.
• “Baldwin had a precise, self-contained style: his performances suggested that although he might accept an audience’s attention, he cared little for its approval. Even in Beetlejuice, some inner killjoy seemed to pull against the innocent, newlywed scampering required of Baldwin’s character. This was the last time a director asked Baldwin to play a blameless square — a Darrin Stephens — and one can survey Baldwin’s twenty-odd-year film career without finding a fully persuasive rendering of happiness.”
• Baldwin on his post-Hunt for Red October choices: “After that, I did Glengarry Glen Ross, where I only had a very small role, regardless of how appreciative people are of it. Then I did Prelude to a Kiss [] and that was a bomb. In 1992, I did Malice, with Nicole Kidman. And that movie was a very cookie-cutter thriller. It did pretty well. In ‘93, I did the remake of The Getaway, with my wife. That was a bomb. I did The Shadow. That was a bomb. In ‘94, I did Heaven’s Prisoners. That was a bomb. In ‘95, I did The Juror. That was a bomb. In ‘96, I did The Edge and Ghosts of Mississippi. And that’s when you hear the sound of the wheels of the train screeching to a halt. The Edge and Ghosts of Mississippi were my last shots at the arcade, so to speak. Both movies were out in ‘97. They bombed.”
• And on his ... appeal: “He bought a coffee at Starbucks, where a young woman said something nice about '30 Rock'. ‘I do feel I’m entering that Clinton phase,’ he said after we left. ‘I’m fifty. There are women who’ll go up to a young movie star and they’ll look at him, like, There are certain things I really want to do with you, and it’s pretty plain to anyone why I’d want to do them with you. And then there are people who look at me now, at my age, and they’ll look at me and the look is I can’t explain why, because it’s kind of strange . . . It confounds and perplexes even them. In spite of the fact that you don’t look like a young leading man anymore, I’d quite like to throw you down on this blanket right now. A bit of that.”

e.t.a. Sepinwall locates a representative Baldwin chest hair photo. Here's another. "Devon, I'm straighter than you are gay, and I leave particles of guys like you in my wind. I'm not afraid of you."