Alec Baldwin says the documentary he's making with filmmaker James Toback, Seduced and Abandoned, continues to take shape. I spoke to Baldwin briefly at the reception that Hamptons International Film Festival Chairman Stuart Suna threw at his East Hampton home on Saturday afternoon. There, the actor — who arrived at the party gallantly carrying his new bride Hilaria Thomas's high-heeled party shoes — explained that interviews he and Toback conducted with venerable filmmakers Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Roman Polanski and Bernardo Bertolucci will comprise the core of the project. "They are the pillars of the film," said Baldwin, who described Seduced and Abandoned as a "meta" documentary about filmmakers who venture to the carnival-like South of France festival to raise funds for their latest projects.
The "meta" aspect of the film stems from Baldwin and Toback's plans to appear in Seduced and Abandoned as themselves as they attempt to scare up funds for a small movie they may or may not make. Baldwin also said that the incorporation of the Cannes festival footage the men shot on Croisette in May will depend what falls under the "fair use" doctrine of U.S. copyright law. He also confirmed that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein will not appear in Seduced and Abandoned. Weinstein drew Baldwin's ire when he declined to be interviewed for the film at Cannes, although the two men made peace a few days later.
In May, Toback told Deadline, “We will talk to every billionaire financier in Cannes, to a few directors and movie stars to get a sense of where film is today and how it is changing as a business, and the whole evolution of Cannes from a pure festival to this bizarre mix of wildly diverse elements. It still clings to the pure notion of film, with all sorts of other ramifications from financial to maritime implications that make it so complex.”
Baldwin let drop another nugget of interesting information later that night at a Q&A he conducted with actor Richard Gere at Guild Hall in East Hampton. There, the 30 Rock star said that he might be teaching at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he is an alumni, in the spring. Although it's a fair assumption that Baldwin will be teaching some form of acting class, he did not elaborate upon his comment. I've put in a call to his spokesman and to NYU and will update accordingly.
Also in attendance at the chairman's reception in East Hampton were Gere, Sting, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Adam Driver and Dree Hemingway.
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