New film features all 4 Baldwin brothers
Long Island acting family Billy, left, Stephen, Alec and Daniel Baldwin appear in a new documentary directed by Daniel that premiered Saturday as part of the Syracuse International Film Festival. Credit: AFP via Getty Images / Valerie Macon
Daniel Baldwin, one of the four Massapequa-raised Baldwin actor brothers, has directed a documentary that marks the first time the quartet has appeared in a film together.
Baldwin's feature, "My Promise to P.J.," debuted Saturday on the Syracuse, New York, PBS station WCNY as part of the 17th annual Syracuse International Film Festival. The movie, which began shooting in mid-2019, chronicles Baldwin, 60, as he vows to keep a promise to a deceased friend with whom he had planned to do the annual Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain.
In the trailer, Daniel Baldwin, who lives in the Syracuse area, says in a voice-over, "I made a promise. It would be dangerous. There would be pain. There would be sacrifice."
Later, seen in an unspecified football stadium, Baldwin explains, "I made a promise to my friend P.J. [Raynor]. I promised him that I would take him to run with the bulls if he got two years sober. And he did that. And then he overdosed and died." Determined to honor his friend, "I'm going to get in shape, I'm going to fly to Spain, I'm going to take his ashes with me. … God as my witness I'm going to do this."
"Sending my journey out tomorrow. I hope it saves lives," the actor wrote on Instagram Friday. "It will brother," commented Stephen Baldwin, 54. "Congratulations and well done God bless."
"Eventually … the laws of codependency take over. And the laws of Al-Anon take over," Alec Baldwin says in the film. "And what you wind up doing is sitting there and going, 'I don't know what else to do.' Then you find the other person's dead."
Patrick Raynor Jr., who was born in Miller Place and raised primarily in Wilmington, North Carolina, was living in Malibu, California, when he died June 28, 2017, at age 38. His parents, Patrick Sr. and Barbara, appear in the documentary, as do Daniel Baldwin's older brother, Emmy Award-winner Alec Baldwin, 62, and his younger brothers, William, 57, and Stephen.
Daniel Baldwin, who has experienced highly public struggles with addiction, exercised at the Syracuse YMCA and lost 55 pounds for the venture, the trailer says.
"The real question is," he says in the trailer's conclusion, "how far does one go to keep a promise?"
