Alec Baldwin Gives Up in Essay Because He's So Done With Everything

Credit: New York Magazine

In his brand new essay for New York Magazine, Alec Baldwin announces, "I Give Up" and claims that he's moving on from public life altogether.

We sense a Green Acres style sitcom in the works! Goodbye public life!

In the 5,000 word essay, Baldwin tackles the controversy in which he used homophobic slurs against a reporter who claimed his wife tweeted during James Gandolfini's funeral and against a camera man, all of which resulted in the cancellation of his MSNBC late night talk show.

Also that time he butted heads in public repeatedly with Shia LaBeouf over their Broadway play Orphans before he had moved on to plagiarizing things for funsies.

You can check out the full tl;dr article over at Vulture, but we've rounded up the best parts for you below if that's way too daunting. Because Monday.

To sum things up, basically it's super hard being Alec Baldwin.

On 2013 being the worst ever: "I've read where a number of people have felt that 2013 was a sh---y year. For me, it was actually a great year, because my wife and I had a baby. But, yeah, everything else was pretty awful. And I find myself bitter, defensive, and more misanthropic than I care to admit."

On calling a reporter "a toxic little queen": "I ended up attacking a reporter who wrote in the Daily Mail online that my wife was tweeting from Jimmy's funeral. He was wrong—in fact, at a later time, she had retweeted items whose original time code matched the time of the funeral. In my rage, however, I called him a "toxic little queen," and, thus, Anderson Cooper, the self-appointed Jack Valenti of gay media culture, suggested I should be "vilified," in his words. I didn't feel bad about the incident ... At the time, I didn't view 'toxic little queen' as a homophobic statement. I didn't realize how those words could give offense, and I'm sorry for that."

On being done with public life: "It's good-bye to public life in the way that you try to communicate with an audience playfully like we're friends, beyond the work you are actually paid for. Letterman. Saturday Night Live. That kind of thing. I want to go make a movie and be very present for that and give it everything I have, and after we're done, then the rest of the time is mine. I started out as an actor, where you seek to understand yourself using the words of great writers and collaborating with other creative people. Then I slid into show business, where you seek only an audience's approval, whether you deserve it or not. I think I want to go back to being an actor now."

On getting even more homophobic at a photographer: "What happened is, a TMZ videographer ambushed me as I was putting my family in a car, and I chased him down the block and said, "Cocksucking motherf--ker" or whatever (when I have some volatile interaction with these people, I don't pull out a pen and take notes on what I said). I knew that guy. This was a guy who is on a bike usually, and when we get in a car, he follows us. Very aggressive. The same guy who followed my wife on a bicycle, and when she slipped and fell trying to dodge him and hurt her leg, he laughed at her and said, "See what I made you do?" At my wife. How would that make you feel?

...

But—I'm sorry, I can't let go of this—do people really, really believe that, when I shouted at that guy, I called him a "faggot" on-camera? Do you honestly believe I would give someone like TMZ's Harvey Levin, of all people, another club to beat me with?"

On his continued Harvey Levin ranting: "Harvey Levin exists in his own universe. He's this kind of cretinous barnacle on the press. Levin told the world that that muffled sound on the video—Levin wanted everyone to know he knows what it is. You don't know, and I don't know, but Levin knows, and he tells the world that it's "faggot."

I get angry, and I've said all sorts of things in anger, but I'd never use that word.

...

In the recent video, you see me completely riled up and going after this guy and you hear me saying "cocksucker" and then some bisyllabic word that sounds like "faggot"—but wasn't. Still, it doesn't matter. glaad comes after me and Anderson Cooper comes after me and Andrew Sullivan comes after me, all maintaining that I'm a hateful homophobe. All based on what Harvey Levin told them."

On the media in general: "Now I loathe and despise the media in a way I did not think possible. I used to engage with the media knowing that some of it would be adversarial, but now it's superfluous at best and toxic at its worst. If MSNBC went off the air tomorrow, what difference would it make? If the Huffington Post went out of business tomorrow, what difference would it make? Arianna Huffington accomplished what she wanted to accomplish. She created this wonderful thing. And what have they done with that? They want clicks, I get it. They've gotta have clicks for their advertisers, so they're going to need as much Kim Kardashian and wardrobe malfunctions as possible."

On not being a homophobe: "Am I a homophobe? Look, I work in show business. I am awash in gay people, as colleagues and as friends. I'm doing Rock of Ages one day, making out with Russell Brand. Soon after that, I’m advocating with Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Cynthia Nixon for marriage equality. I'm officiating at a gay friend's wedding. I'm not a homophobic person at all. But this is how the world now sees me."

On working with Shia LaBeouf: "I'd heard from other people that he was potentially very difficult to work with, but I always ignore that because people say the same thing about me. When he showed up, he seemed like a lot of young actors today—scattered, as he was coming from making six movies in a row or whatever.

There was friction between us from the beginning. LaBeouf seems to carry with him, to put it mildly, a jailhouse mentality wherever he goes. When he came to rehearsal, he was told it was important to memorize his lines. He took that to heart and learned all his lines in advance, even emailing me videos in which he read aloud his lines from the entire play. To prove he had put in the time. (What else do you do in jail?) I, however, do not learn my lines in advance. So he began to sulk because he felt we were slowing him down. You could tell right away he loves to argue. And one day he attacked me in front of everyone. He said, "You're slowing me down, and you don't know your lines. And if you don't say your lines, I'm just going to keep saying my lines."

We all sat, frozen. I snorted a bit, and, turning to him in front of the whole cast, I asked, "If I don't say my words fast enough, you're going to just say your next line?" I said. "You realize the lines are written in a certain order?" He just glared at me."

On being so totally done with everything: "There's a way I could have done things differently. I know that. If I offended anyone along the way, I do apologize. But the solution for me now is: I've lived this for 30 years, I'm done with it."