New York‘s Alec Baldwin sat down to say goodbye to a fallen co-star, and by the time he finished talking, the internet had counted exactly how little of it was about the man who died.
The 68-year-old actor posted a video tribute to his Instagram on Monday for Sam Neill, his co-star in 1990’s The Hunt for Red October, who died earlier that day at 78. The problem, according to critics, is the math. In a clip running 2 minutes and 47 seconds, Baldwin mentions Neill only in roughly the first ten seconds and the final five. “I just wanted to come on here quickly and say, how stricken I was to learn of the death of Sam Neill,” Baldwin began, before pivoting to how the film was “probably my first big movie in terms of having a, a decent-sized role.“
The stretch in between covered a lot of ground, almost none of it Neill. Baldwin reminisced about meeting author Tom Clancy, praised director John McTiernan, told a story about a castmate smoking a cigarette in a Russian accent, worked in a James Earl Jones impression, and named 14 other castmates from the film, including Sean Connery, Tim Curry, James Earl Jones, Courtney B. Vance, and Stellan Skarsgard.
Neill’s name finally returned at the very end. “Anyway, oh my God. My God. Sam Neill. My love to his family, My love to his family,” Baldwin concluded.
The tribute landed as Hollywood mourned one of its most beloved figures. Neill, best known as Dr. Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park franchise, died in a Sydney hospital on Monday, July 13. His family called the loss “sudden and unexpected” and noted he had remained cancer-free after his years-long battle with blood cancer. Steven Spielberg, Laura Dern, and dozens of other stars shared tributes focused squarely on Neill himself.
That contrast is exactly what set the internet off.
Fans Torn Over Baldwin’s Rambling Farewell
The reaction on Reddit was swift and brutal, with critics circling the same detail: the eulogy barely contained the person being eulogized. “This is a man who is thinking about his own eventual death because of the death of a colleague, instead of eulogizing the colleague at all,” one user wrote, while another put it flatly: “The narcissism is insane.” A third turned the name-dropping into a punchline: “So many name drops it’s like a slow, meandering version of We Didn’t Start The Fire.“
Not everyone piled on. “He’s just vibing with memories, sometimes old people ramble haha, I think this sounds kinda normal for someone getting up there in age,” one defender argued, and others echoed that grief rarely comes out polished.
Baldwin has not responded to the criticism, and the video remains up on his page. Somewhere in those 2 minutes and 47 seconds, there was a goodbye. The internet is still looking for it.
