Speaker 1: Sing us a song. Steve, all right, let's see mmm,
Speaker 1: how to sell an air conditioner? That's un lesson for today,
Speaker 1: Mrs housewives coming to the door. Let's hear what you're
Speaker 1: gonna say? How to do nice day work? Happen to him? Now?
Speaker 1: It's hot. What you gotta sound? Bye chance, it's air
Speaker 1: conditioning doing pretty well. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening
Speaker 1: to here's the thing. I saw a documentary last year
Speaker 1: called Bathtubs Overbroadway. It's so beguiling, so funny and charming,
Speaker 1: that I had to meet its subject, Steve Young. Young
Speaker 1: is the world's foremost collector of recordings of industrial musicals.
Speaker 1: One model that Steve Young may not be a household name,
Speaker 1: but his work was certainly in my household. On the
Speaker 1: David Letterman Show, Young was the brains behind such bits
Speaker 1: as Todd the Intern and Strong Guy, Fat Guy Genius.
Speaker 1: It was at Letterman that he discovered the joys of
Speaker 1: the industrial described for people what was an industrial An
Speaker 1: industrial show or industrial musical was a live musical theater
Speaker 1: production that, in many ways resembled a full fledged Broadway show,
Speaker 1: privately staged for an audience of salesman or executives within
Speaker 1: a corporate industry. People. Yes, it might be a show
Speaker 1: written for Coca Cola bottlers and the entire audience is
Speaker 1: Coca Cola bottlers. But then once you're in there, oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's a dazzling, enormous production with singing and
Speaker 1: dancing and props, and often a full book and storyline
Speaker 1: and characters about the business that you were in. I'm
Speaker 1: a bottler, but believe me, it's no bed of roses.
Speaker 1: But with all the different sized packages on the market today,
Speaker 1: they keep me on the hot seat. It's a rough seat.
Speaker 1: It's a hot seat. Here we sit and daily tangle
Speaker 1: with problems, really rough to wrangle with, yet we can't
Speaker 1: see any other way. With all management decisions, making day
Speaker 1: to day revisions, it's here you'll find dust each and
Speaker 1: every day. Recall it a hot seat. It's as dazzling,
Speaker 1: enormous production with all the singing and dancing and props,
Speaker 1: and often a full book and storyline and characters about
Speaker 1: the business that you were in and how your daily
Speaker 1: struggles were noble and and the purpose of it was
Speaker 1: what it was usually to introduce new products and get
Speaker 1: you excited about them and get you in the would
Speaker 1: have that engine, that that's going to be a great seller.
Speaker 1: And these lyrics about here is the new suspension and
Speaker 1: here's the fenders do turn up a lot, but it's
Speaker 1: also about here's the marketing plans, and we're going to
Speaker 1: have great advertising. And the better versions of these things
Speaker 1: were just high octane, great songs and great production value.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm listening to it decades later. I have
Speaker 1: no skin in this game. I'm not going to try
Speaker 1: to sell a tractor. I don't care how good the
Speaker 1: new engine is really. But I was so drawn to
Speaker 1: it because this seems so improbable. How could this have
Speaker 1: ever existed, how could it have been recorded? And how
Speaker 1: could I have found it? And then we're down this
Speaker 1: rabbit hole of improbability on top of improbability. Describe what happened.
Speaker 1: So when I first started finding these souvenir record albums,
Speaker 1: when I was working on Dave's Show, collecting material to
Speaker 1: put on the Dave's Record Collection segments, just anything that
Speaker 1: that was your I got assigned to that early on
Speaker 1: and turned out to be a good match for me.
Speaker 1: I would go to record stores and try to find
Speaker 1: something that seemed ridiculous that we could make a joke about.
Speaker 1: But I found these souvenirs from corporate events, and by
Speaker 1: the time I've had like six or seven of them,
Speaker 1: I thought, is this actually a genre? How can this
Speaker 1: possibly be? It's weird enough that there's one or two
Speaker 1: of them, but I keep finding them, not every time,
Speaker 1: but I keep finding them. And then it's years later
Speaker 1: now and we've uncovered this enormous stealth part of American
Speaker 1: history and culture that really was in danger of just
Speaker 1: getting away from us entirely because it was never something
Speaker 1: that the public would Is that what you did? You
Speaker 1: feel some aspect of that? Is there a custodial aspect
Speaker 1: of stewardship? You feel, oh, absolutely not that the world
Speaker 1: will rise or fall on whether we know much about
Speaker 1: industrial show are not. But then you start meeting the
Speaker 1: people who wrote them and performed in them, and they
Speaker 1: had long since resigned themselves to being anonymous in this
Speaker 1: regard and no one will ever know what this stuff world.
Speaker 1: And just the feeling that I could bring them out
Speaker 1: of that complete darkness and say someone cares about what
Speaker 1: you did and it was really good and it's worth hearing,
Speaker 1: even outside of its original context, because you do such
Speaker 1: great work that it holds up even though it shouldn't
Speaker 1: hold up because it's about diesel engines, but still it
Speaker 1: I find it compelling. So I was thrilling for me
Speaker 1: that I was able to find so many people from
Speaker 1: this world who expected never to hear from anyone about this.
Speaker 1: And then I was the guy calling and saying I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan of your fluorescent light Fixture show, and
Speaker 1: they would say, how did you know about that? No
Speaker 1: should know about that. There was a point which I realized,
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in this for the show anymore. I'm
Speaker 1: interested in this for me. And at one point I
Speaker 1: put together a list of all the albums I had
Speaker 1: bought with the show's money, and I noted down what
Speaker 1: the titles were and how much I had paid for them,
Speaker 1: and I asked the show, I would like to own
Speaker 1: these myself. Can I buy them from the show? And
Speaker 1: they were very kind and they just said, oh, you
Speaker 1: can keep them. But I felt like that was a
Speaker 1: turning point at which I realized this was this was
Speaker 1: my own project. Now what year did all this kind
Speaker 1: of commence for you? There was a little bit pre
Speaker 1: Internet when it was just like cold calling record stores,
Speaker 1: just like, al right, here's one in Boston. I've managed somehow.
Speaker 1: I had a CD ROM that had like millions of
Speaker 1: phone numbers of businesses or something. I don't even remember
Speaker 1: how I got started, but I would just cold call
Speaker 1: record stores and you sleep at night, do you're up
Speaker 1: all night with this stuff? I haven't slept in years,
Speaker 1: just cold calling places and trying painfully to explain what
Speaker 1: I was looking for, which was always a very high
Speaker 1: hill decline because it's just so off the radar of
Speaker 1: what people have ever heard of. Once in a great
Speaker 1: while I would get lucky. But when eBay started. I
Speaker 1: got on eBay around nineties seven, and it wasn't well
Speaker 1: categorized at first. It was just like records stuff. Every
Speaker 1: kind of record, from classical music to the Beatles to
Speaker 1: everything else where, was all just in one category, and
Speaker 1: you'd scroll through thousands of listenings and again, once in
Speaker 1: a while, the needle in a haystack would work, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, the ed Cell show. But eBay became a
Speaker 1: huge source. But I also just worked connections with record
Speaker 1: dealers that I would meet and say, if you find
Speaker 1: anything like this, give me a call now, because I
Speaker 1: want to mention what I've experienced has taken its place
Speaker 1: and my participation. Okay, when I was in the business
Speaker 1: in the beginning, I come into New York and I'm
Speaker 1: doing voiceovers and things and starting out in and it
Speaker 1: was the end of that era. And I remember driving
Speaker 1: around the country hotel you know, welcome phil Co Dealers,
Speaker 1: you know, and the big sign on the marquee there.
Speaker 1: But what's replaced that is this thing I do now,
Speaker 1: which is they've replaced the show with just performances, like
Speaker 1: musicians come and play. They bring me in to do
Speaker 1: the tired kind of celebrity Q and A. I still
Speaker 1: do a few of these a year, but this is
Speaker 1: what we placed that organized production. Yeah, I have a
Speaker 1: DVD I think of like eighty nine and Anheuser Busch
Speaker 1: convention show. And they got Frank Sinatra, they got lizam Man, Nelly,
Speaker 1: they got Sammy Davis Jr. And I was watching this
Speaker 1: thing saying, please start singing about beer distribution, and they
Speaker 1: never did. They just were doing there. So you could
Speaker 1: do well in this business. I think you have a
Speaker 1: flair for it. But everybody who was doing these shows
Speaker 1: during what I would call the Golden Age, has remarked on.
Speaker 1: It was excellent money by the standards of struggling to
Speaker 1: mid range singer, actor, dancer. You got treated beautifully, oftentimes
Speaker 1: flown around, put up an excellent hotels, and you worked
Speaker 1: with terrific people. They hired a list directors and choreographers
Speaker 1: and big orchestra. Yeah, these people would shuttle back and
Speaker 1: forth between Broadway and a lot of performers, doing this
Speaker 1: as an alternative to waiting tables or driving a cab.
Speaker 1: It was not what you thought you would be doing
Speaker 1: necessarily when you decided you wanted to go into show business.
Speaker 1: But it was an excellent training ground because you had
Speaker 1: to be really good at a big set of skills
Speaker 1: and keep getting better well knowing that it's private, knowing
Speaker 1: that there's a little likelihood this thing is going to
Speaker 1: see the light of day. I wonder if there are
Speaker 1: people who just to grab the money, the short end
Speaker 1: money where some performers you noticed that we became industrial
Speaker 1: whoors who showed up again and again. Well, there were
Speaker 1: people I'm talking about lower lights, like names. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: were people who became reliable midrange people, and then once
Speaker 1: in a while they would vault out of that like
Speaker 1: how Lindon was doing a lot of this stuff in
Speaker 1: the sixties. He's on Broadway wins It Tony, and then
Speaker 1: he's then he's Barney Miller. He has graduated from industrials.
Speaker 1: But at some point Ford Motor Company decided, you know what,
Speaker 1: we want how Linden to be the MC for our
Speaker 1: big introduction show in the early eighties. So he is
Speaker 1: lured back. And I don't know whether it was because
Speaker 1: he had a sort of residual fondness for Oh, I
Speaker 1: remember the old days. But uh. And Cheetah Rivera when
Speaker 1: she was starting out, she was doing shows as just
Speaker 1: a sort of background dance or featured player, and then
Speaker 1: she got really famous. And then sometimes companies would say,
Speaker 1: let's let's see if we can dangle enough money in
Speaker 1: front of a big star to have them come in
Speaker 1: and be our famous person in our industrial show. So
Speaker 1: obviously collecting anything is challenging in New York. Where does
Speaker 1: Steve keep all this material in his New York home?
Speaker 1: And I was get a locker somewhere well, luckily for me,
Speaker 1: living in a modestly sized apartment, I, through accident or
Speaker 1: subconscious impulse, decided to collect one of the most compact
Speaker 1: forms of things that you can collect. I have my
Speaker 1: collection of two hundreds something records and also now stack
Speaker 1: of films, and then it just fits in a couple
Speaker 1: of cabinets. I decided not to collect antique gas pumps,
Speaker 1: which I think would have been a problem. Yeah, World
Speaker 1: War to helica ways, those are those are heating up
Speaker 1: in the marketplace. I can put you in touch with
Speaker 1: somebody if you want to come. Well, it's funny the
Speaker 1: collecting thing. I'm I'm in a market. I'm in a
Speaker 1: flea market in in Paris, and I stumble around this
Speaker 1: market there and I see a yeager lekutra or they say,
Speaker 1: let um folding travel alarm clock beautiful with the air
Speaker 1: mez case. Which is the which is the this is
Speaker 1: the this is the the great quest is the in
Speaker 1: the kuta vein you want the me And I find
Speaker 1: this thing which is the size of this phone, smaller, folding,
Speaker 1: travel longer beautiful, and I go, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: thing is I mean, I don't know what it was.
Speaker 1: And know you talk about I'm a clock nut. I
Speaker 1: collect clock so I'm like in I collect weird a
Speaker 1: little winding clocks and travel alarm clocks, not big, you know,
Speaker 1: fancy expensive clocks. I should send you a tape of
Speaker 1: the West t Clocks show. You should and uh and
Speaker 1: I start that was the beginning. I picked up that
Speaker 1: clock clocks are you know I've got clocks? My wife Laria,
Speaker 1: she literally wild look at me, like, you know, like
Speaker 1: what's wrong with me? Like what's what's what? What is
Speaker 1: the manifestation of this mental illness I have with all
Speaker 1: the clocks everywhere, and I still collect him. I just
Speaker 1: brought a small little bachelor the other day. But there
Speaker 1: you go. There are a million little categories like that
Speaker 1: with passionate experts, and they lead seemingly normal lives and
Speaker 1: then they have this little uh side area of their life.
Speaker 1: My brother, my father, and mother, everybody in my family
Speaker 1: has gotten very deeply into different collecting. What's the weirdest
Speaker 1: collection you've come across? You hear about weird little things
Speaker 1: like um, miniature ceramic thimbles. Uh, But I can't think
Speaker 1: that any of this is weird, because if if what
Speaker 1: I think is interesting is has all the depths that
Speaker 1: I've found to it, there may well be that for
Speaker 1: for everything that seems weird to me. Whenever someone's hunting
Speaker 1: for something. Whenever they're involved in a process, a hobby
Speaker 1: of vocation, with his hunting involved, as I believe you're
Speaker 1: thing that's a component of it, they're really hunting for
Speaker 1: something else. What are you hunting for? Well, I've read
Speaker 1: and it does seem true to me that collectors are,
Speaker 1: in some symbolic way, trying to impose order on a
Speaker 1: chaotic universe. Even if it's just all right. I can't
Speaker 1: fix most of it, obviously, But if I take this
Speaker 1: tiny little corner of human endeavor and say I'm going
Speaker 1: to get this part straightened away, then I can feel
Speaker 1: like I can relax, because not everything is chaos. If
Speaker 1: we can understand and categorize and absorb what has been
Speaker 1: done in some tiny sliver, then that will symbolically help
Speaker 1: me feel like life is not pure chaos. How does
Speaker 1: the film happen? Bathtubs over Broadway? Bathtubs over Broadway. When
Speaker 1: I heard the title, I was like, what that? For
Speaker 1: the life of me, I couldn't even figure it. Can
Speaker 1: you know me? I could maybe get it? What the
Speaker 1: hell is that? Well? I think that's good because it
Speaker 1: made you curious. Well, the film is wonderful films fantastic.
Speaker 1: The title's great Bathtubs over Broadways. It says bathtubs over Broadway.
Speaker 1: Then you show up people like, wait a minute. And
Speaker 1: then by the end you're convinced, hopefully that we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about the end. We're gonna get to that. The
Speaker 1: end is mesmerized. The end is like you are the
Speaker 1: Tony Randall of industrials men. You are incredible. So so
Speaker 1: who approaches who? Who decides this is a film? Did
Speaker 1: you decide to write it? No, well, I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: the writer or director or producer or anything. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: the guy who you follow. Now we're heading up to
Speaker 1: Buffalo Grove to track down the elusive Sid Siegel. I
Speaker 1: had tried to find said many times over the years.
Speaker 1: I thought I had missed my chance, wrote the immortal lines.
Speaker 1: My bathroom is a private kind of place, they say,
Speaker 1: don't meet your heroes, said. I had written a book
Speaker 1: a few years ago with a friend of mine on
Speaker 1: this topic, and we decided, all right, we think this
Speaker 1: is the time, and we have a great publisher who's
Speaker 1: going to do a great job with this, and we
Speaker 1: wrote this book called Everything's Coming Up Profits, which is
Speaker 1: actually the title of a floor tile companies show h
Speaker 1: and it kind of tells you the whole story there.
Speaker 1: It's a Broadway reference, but it's been twisted for some
Speaker 1: internal corporate infotainment purposes. So we put out this book.
Speaker 1: It was late two thousand thirteen. It was well received.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful book. We're thrilled with it. A couple
Speaker 1: of people started approaching me to say, this seems like
Speaker 1: it could be a good area for a documentary film.
Speaker 1: And by this point I had been friends with Deva,
Speaker 1: the director, Dava wizened as the director that's right. So
Speaker 1: I asked, Dava, can you tell me if these people
Speaker 1: who are approaching me seem like they'd be a good
Speaker 1: match for this, because you're now in the documentary world
Speaker 1: and I don't know anything about it. And she said, well,
Speaker 1: if there's going to be a documentary film, I would
Speaker 1: be interested in in working on it. And I said,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, that would be better than I could
Speaker 1: have hoped for. I didn't even think that would be possible,
Speaker 1: but that's that's what we ended up doing. How long
Speaker 1: did it take to make the movie. It's just about
Speaker 1: four years, which is not that extreme. I guess in
Speaker 1: the world of indie, it's a lot of time for
Speaker 1: film film, you know, but it took a long time
Speaker 1: to get all the pieces in place and find all
Speaker 1: the people that we needed to talk to. Do you
Speaker 1: see any parallel between yourself as an individual and industrial
Speaker 1: musicals themselves. Yeah, the majority of these shows were never recorded.
Speaker 1: I think, even though I have this big stack of
Speaker 1: them now, it's I would guess probably one percent of
Speaker 1: what was ever done. Most of it just disappeared into
Speaker 1: the ether and was gone forever. Working on the Letterman Show,
Speaker 1: most of what was written never sees the light of day.
Speaker 1: So you have to keep pushing out new material and
Speaker 1: hoping inspiration strikes and doing your best. But most of
Speaker 1: it you have resigned yourself to accepting is not really
Speaker 1: going to ever make a mark anywhere. And the people
Speaker 1: who were doing these industrials really also had to resign
Speaker 1: themselves to this maybe an astonishingly tuneful, catchy show, and
Speaker 1: the only people who are ever going to hear it
Speaker 1: are these three hundred people here at eight in the morning,
Speaker 1: and then it's going to be gone forever. So I
Speaker 1: felt empathy for these creators who had to keep working
Speaker 1: on stuff that they knew was going to be forgotten. Wow,
Speaker 1: let's go. I'm told you say we're gonna do some songs.
Speaker 1: So we have a couple of clips that I edited
Speaker 1: off of actual may the assumption that the keyboard out
Speaker 1: there someone I thought you were gonna get the pay No,
Speaker 1: we don't want that. The first clip will have is
Speaker 1: from a show called Diesel Dazzle Detroit Diesel Engine Division
Speaker 1: of General Motors en sixty six, beautifully produced show. The
Speaker 1: music is by a gentleman who I am friends with
Speaker 1: and we have collaborated together on music. He's ninety one now,
Speaker 1: but this is right Hank Babie Hank. He's in Portland, Maine,
Speaker 1: and uh, I've become very close to him. He's a
Speaker 1: great friend and mentor. And just one of the thousands
Speaker 1: of thrilling aspects of this for me is that I've
Speaker 1: found people I've really developed a deep connection with. This
Speaker 1: is a song called One Man Operation, and it's the
Speaker 1: lament of a woman whose husband is overworked at his
Speaker 1: diesel engine operation. He did it all alone, keep books
Speaker 1: and and ten the fool eighteen hours every twenty fool.
Speaker 1: But now the one man in my life He's no
Speaker 1: one man operation anymore anymore. Now he has two mccandis
Speaker 1: a parts and servicemen, a girl to take the clothes
Speaker 1: and keep the boor. Now there's a lushness to that.
Speaker 1: This feels like a list people, and it actually is
Speaker 1: a very affecting song. Finally things turn around. He hires
Speaker 1: a new mechanic, he hires aparts and serviceman. Those things
Speaker 1: shouldn't be in song lyrics, and yet there they are
Speaker 1: and actually pulling on our heart streng Yes, I'm not
Speaker 1: a diesel engine salesman, but I feel at lump and
Speaker 1: might throat about it. Coming up, Steve Young tells his
Speaker 1: own story from blue collar New England to Harvard to
Speaker 1: the top of the comedy writing heat. I'm Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the Thing. A working class
Speaker 1: kid from the outskirts of Boston. Steve Young didn't believe
Speaker 1: at first he could make a living from writing jokes,
Speaker 1: but he got his big break almost right out of
Speaker 1: Harvard with a job on the David Letterman Show. You
Speaker 1: started working with Dave and you showed up there when
Speaker 1: you were twenty four. Yes, it's a spring of and
Speaker 1: you were at the Lampoon. I had been on the
Speaker 1: Harvard Lampoon that was a few years earlier, kicked around
Speaker 1: it was a bartender for a while. Conan was the
Speaker 1: editor in chief of the Lampoon when you showed up there,
Speaker 1: that's right, was the president of the Harvard Lampoon. And
Speaker 1: that was a really influential thing for me to encounter
Speaker 1: because I felt like, for the first time I met
Speaker 1: somebody who was at a level I had never personally
Speaker 1: witnessed before. Just like he walks in a room and
Speaker 1: oh my god, I don't know how or why, but
Speaker 1: everything is instantly hilarious. Right he was funny? Oh yes.
Speaker 1: What was the pipeline between the Lampoon and comedy writing,
Speaker 1: particularly in New York? You know s and l Laurens
Speaker 1: a big he minds that quarry if you will, for
Speaker 1: a writer's Conan and uh uh and beyond into Hollywood.
Speaker 1: What is it about the lamp when you think that
Speaker 1: they've got that pipeline in it to show business? Well,
Speaker 1: part of it is just once you're there, you become
Speaker 1: aware that there have been people who have gone before you,
Speaker 1: and for the first time, maybe in your life, you think, oh,
Speaker 1: this is something people for a living, because they are hilarious, brilliant,
Speaker 1: funny people all over the place who maybe never have
Speaker 1: that revelation of, oh, people do this for a living.
Speaker 1: So it was very fortunate that I got that, uh
Speaker 1: since early on, that people go to Letterman and S
Speaker 1: n L. And they are comedy writers and it can
Speaker 1: be your career. Where did you study at Harvard? I
Speaker 1: was an English major, and I don't really know why
Speaker 1: now I think I seem to have turned into more
Speaker 1: of an amateur historian. And you grew up ways outside Pepperrell, Massachusetts. Yes,
Speaker 1: your dad worked at Logan. Oh my gosh, you have
Speaker 1: done your work. Yes, aircraft mechanic for USAir or it
Speaker 1: was Alleghany at first. He commuted in an hour to
Speaker 1: Logan Airport. But we were out sort of the border
Speaker 1: line of suburbia, verging into the countryside. It was you
Speaker 1: were somebody else. I was reading about what you said.
Speaker 1: You you didn't quite even know where Harvard was. That
Speaker 1: is true. I mean it was a different era in
Speaker 1: the early DS. I thought I was gonna, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: going to apply to some colleges, and I had the
Speaker 1: vague notion that Harvard was probably in New York City,
Speaker 1: because that's seemed to be where important people get important
Speaker 1: things are there. I bet Harvard is there, and I
Speaker 1: get the application it says Cambridge, Massachusetts. Holy crap, this
Speaker 1: is in my own state. Yeah. It wasn't a goal.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a burning golf. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: did well enough to get into Harvard, but you weren't
Speaker 1: scheming about academia an advancement. No. It was just such
Speaker 1: a golden naive era when people weren't necessarily groomed from
Speaker 1: birth for things like that. Not. I mean, there were
Speaker 1: smart people coming out of Pepper and doing great things,
Speaker 1: but no one had gone to an Ivy League college
Speaker 1: for a dozen years or some. Wow. So as a child,
Speaker 1: what was entertainment for you? What was comedy for you? TV?
Speaker 1: You're a few years younger than you're born, so you
Speaker 1: what was what were you viewing? What were your viewing habits?
Speaker 1: They were very eclectic. Gilgan's Island reruns and oh it's
Speaker 1: the late seventies and look it's uh it's Dallas and
Speaker 1: it's a heart to Heart and things like that. I
Speaker 1: missed enormous chunks of pop culture that everyone assumes I
Speaker 1: must know. Like, until I was starting to teach a
Speaker 1: course at n y U about TV history, I had
Speaker 1: never seen Mary Tyler Moore. I had never seen Dick
Speaker 1: Van Dyke. I was not like a comedy nerd. Now
Speaker 1: the same thing is true for me, Like I remember,
Speaker 1: I turned off TV when I went to college. I
Speaker 1: went to college and seventies six, and prior to that,
Speaker 1: it was really it was everything dopey and silly and stupid.
Speaker 1: It was Mr Ed and F. Troop and the Adams
Speaker 1: Family and Beverly Hill Billies, which I adored at age five,
Speaker 1: and I imprinted on me a little bit. I still
Speaker 1: find it maybe a little more amusing than I should,
Speaker 1: just because I had this bedrock exposure to it and
Speaker 1: early age. But I was even in college. No, I
Speaker 1: think we had a small black and white television. But
Speaker 1: this image of the eighties and everybody in college watching Letterman,
Speaker 1: I think there were people that were doing that, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't watching the Letterman Show. Now, when they hire you,
Speaker 1: you said you knocked around for a couple of years
Speaker 1: before when you graduated, when you showed up in New
Speaker 1: York to the show, Yeah you weren't. You weren't writing
Speaker 1: I had a couple writing jobs. I worked on, not
Speaker 1: necessarily the news out in l A for about six weeks.
Speaker 1: That was actually my first I stayed on a friend's sofa.
Speaker 1: Very kind and how did they find you? I didn't
Speaker 1: have an agent at that point. Who I guess got
Speaker 1: my packet on someone's desk and they said, ah, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: we'll give him a try. And that was great. And
Speaker 1: I don't think I wanted to live in l A.
Speaker 1: So it was probably for the best that after six
Speaker 1: weeks they said, yeah, we're having budget problems. I'm afraid
Speaker 1: last hired, first fired. You gotta go. Why didn't you
Speaker 1: want to live out there? I have always felt I'm
Speaker 1: just more of an East Coast for and I'd like
Speaker 1: to go visit l A. But you know, as my
Speaker 1: friend said, you know New York millionaires and horrors on
Speaker 1: the same taxi seats all day long, which is it's
Speaker 1: so democratic. Yeah. I like the feeling of walking down
Speaker 1: Lexington Avenue or Broadway or whatever, and it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like we're all probably scrambling around in the same business.
Speaker 1: It's just a thousand different occupations swirling all around you
Speaker 1: in the city, and you don't have to feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: the entertainment business is what I need to think about
Speaker 1: all the time. Once you do something that has any
Speaker 1: residence in the business and you're considered any kind of
Speaker 1: a star or whatever pedigree, you're always a star out there.
Speaker 1: So like I'd be at a table in a restaurant
Speaker 1: and I'd be with a friend of the they go, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: there's my friend Jeff. Jeff. Jeff was in that mini
Speaker 1: series Leave It All on the Fields. He was very
Speaker 1: good at that. He was so good, Jeff. And it's like,
Speaker 1: if you did one job, you know you were you were,
Speaker 1: you were in the firmament forever out there. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's your anchor. Now you're you're in the club. But
Speaker 1: I did a Simpsons episode in the mid nineties and
Speaker 1: that was fun. Was out there for a few days
Speaker 1: and and the Simpsons people said, Hey, if you want
Speaker 1: to move out here, we'd love to have you on
Speaker 1: the staff. And it was thought provoking. But I just thought,
Speaker 1: I don't really think I'm fundamentally wanting to go to
Speaker 1: l A and do that. Married Yes, what was your um?
Speaker 1: She had? And I had moved down from Boston, which
Speaker 1: was a smaller upheaval than going to another world like
Speaker 1: Los Angeles would have been. But we both have family
Speaker 1: in the Northeast, and by nineties six we we had
Speaker 1: our first child, and it felt like The Letterman Show
Speaker 1: is going to be the good place to stay for
Speaker 1: for a long time. How did they find that was
Speaker 1: early after one of their anniversary shows, like within the
Speaker 1: space of three weeks, six writers announced that they were
Speaker 1: leaving the show. Anniversary show I think had been in
Speaker 1: l a and all the writers had gone out and
Speaker 1: secretly started to have meetings out there, and they were
Speaker 1: the opposite of you. Yeah, and they were well they Simpsons.
Speaker 1: They had been in The Letterman during the glory years,
Speaker 1: and they were ready to do something else. So there
Speaker 1: was suddenly a bunch of slots opening up, and the
Speaker 1: comedy grapevine around New York was awful of buzz about, Oh,
Speaker 1: now is the time to send in your stuff to
Speaker 1: the Letterman Show. And I had a few good samples
Speaker 1: by this point, and I sent some stuff in and
Speaker 1: I got a call one day from Steve O'Donnell, who's
Speaker 1: the head writer. I said, Oh, well, we'd like you
Speaker 1: to come up and visit, and I'd like to chat
Speaker 1: with you and maybe we'll have a little talk with Dave.
Speaker 1: It was not a done deal, but it felt like,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, I've I've crossed some sort of milestone here.
Speaker 1: And I went up and chatted with a few people
Speaker 1: on the staff and Mr Letterman and I chatted amiably
Speaker 1: for a couple of minutes, and then the next day
Speaker 1: I got the call, oh, well, we'd love to have
Speaker 1: you come join us if you're interested. I accepted. Now
Speaker 1: when you tell that story, three things come to mind.
Speaker 1: One is do they get it wrong? Is their turn
Speaker 1: over there? Or are they pretty good at discerning? You
Speaker 1: get fired for what? Did your your bits are getting
Speaker 1: on the air. It's it's a very strange subjective thing.
Speaker 1: There were so many people at that show who were
Speaker 1: there for a very long time. I think they've liked
Speaker 1: the sense of a solid core group that all knew
Speaker 1: what they were doing and we're comfortable with each other.
Speaker 1: And so I think the hope is that we build
Speaker 1: up this long term team of people who believe in
Speaker 1: the show in the mid fit and there are wonderfully
Speaker 1: talented comedy geniuses who have been tried out at the
Speaker 1: Letterman show didn't work out there weren't picked up after
Speaker 1: twenty six weeks or whatever and went on too huge
Speaker 1: success on other ventures. So it's not a barometer of
Speaker 1: whether you're funny or not. It's just such a weird, narrow,
Speaker 1: arcane window of what you need to hit and if
Speaker 1: you can. We have the people already who can do
Speaker 1: what we do. We need somebody who can enlarge the
Speaker 1: what the show does a little bit. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: that that's a very hard thing to be able to
Speaker 1: be pretty good at what the show already did, but
Speaker 1: also have a little extra flare of something the show
Speaker 1: had not seen before that Dave would respond to and
Speaker 1: want to do you started there what year? And you
Speaker 1: were there for how many years? And then the to
Speaker 1: the end, Yes, the very last day, and Letterman was
Speaker 1: on NBC and moved he moved to CBS what year?
Speaker 1: So you were with him during the transition. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so this is perfect. So, uh, you know Letterman, who
Speaker 1: I adore and I love. We ran around the city
Speaker 1: with cameras and did these stand ups and we're in
Speaker 1: front of Dad Steaks and we're Alec Baldwin is riding
Speaker 1: a snowmobile on the roof of the building, that's right.
Speaker 1: I remember that it was a legendary one of those
Speaker 1: great nights where just some spontaneous thing takes off and
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. So when I meet you in the film,
Speaker 1: you know you you you are of a type. And
Speaker 1: all the most like Ninja eighth degree black belt comedy
Speaker 1: writers that I've met either have or create the They
Speaker 1: put on the demeanor that you have, which is you
Speaker 1: can't guess they're either an actuary at an insurance company
Speaker 1: or they're like one of the funniest people you've ever met.
Speaker 1: They keep the soda in the can, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So when I meet you, it might be
Speaker 1: a might making sense. It's got to go on the page. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think I come across as at insurance company.
Speaker 1: Well I dabble in that on the side and it
Speaker 1: it's more fun than you might think. But I do
Speaker 1: think that, Okay, yeah, I have this very subdued, dead
Speaker 1: pan flavor. And then for people who are just meeting me,
Speaker 1: I may uncork something completely bizarre and they because it
Speaker 1: is not playing as stereotypical comedy in the delivery. In
Speaker 1: my I'm not making wacky faces and gestures and all that.
Speaker 1: It takes a minute for people to readjust to what
Speaker 1: am I hearing? Is this person actually having a stroke
Speaker 1: or did he mean that? Or it's like New Heart,
Speaker 1: there's the very new hard ass. Did you love New Heart?
Speaker 1: Because I wasn't a comedy nerd. I knew who he was,
Speaker 1: but I don't think I ever watched any of those shows.
Speaker 1: No comedy albums for you when you were young. I
Speaker 1: listened to Dr Demento for a while late at night,
Speaker 1: but I don't think I ever bought any comedy albums
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Letterman, so he changes over time.
Speaker 1: Did you see that in the two thousands he had
Speaker 1: been doing it for so long, he decided, either consciously
Speaker 1: or not, I just want to not worry as much
Speaker 1: every day about how the logistics of this are going
Speaker 1: to work. And we all found ways to make it
Speaker 1: work like that. For him. Just bring him material, he'll
Speaker 1: look at it, he'll pick it. He doesn't have to
Speaker 1: read scripts in the morning. We'll just give him various
Speaker 1: completed pieces late. You notice the shift. He seemed to
Speaker 1: be having more fun in the last few years again,
Speaker 1: and he realized he was enough he would make it
Speaker 1: one of those magical nights that you couldn't have planned.
Speaker 1: But it was brilliant, spontaneous of the guests, he had
Speaker 1: everything in his pocket, was good to go. Now, what's
Speaker 1: the other clip you have? This is from the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies seven Massey Ferguson Tractor and Equipment show, which was
Speaker 1: called World of Winners. This is a rousing, country tinged
Speaker 1: anthem of excitement about the Massey Ferguson company and what
Speaker 1: it's like to work for them. And this is called, uh,
Speaker 1: We're Massey Ferguson. Hit it. When he's work in a
Speaker 1: field with a record held, he wants to pick it
Speaker 1: clean and when harvest comes, he's got to have a
Speaker 1: dependable machere where number one? Yeah, So stand up round
Speaker 1: to say it loud for five minutes. I will I
Speaker 1: will feel the thrill of being on the Massey Ferguson
Speaker 1: team which is headed for glory. But I just have
Speaker 1: this image of you and you you have two daughters
Speaker 1: and your home and your daughters are like your dad,
Speaker 1: can we talk to you about something? And you're and
Speaker 1: they're listening to, you know, some jaunty song like that,
Speaker 1: like go god, Dad, stop, turn that record off? Dead Well,
Speaker 1: they didn't necessarily fully understand what I was doing for
Speaker 1: a long time. And when the book came out a
Speaker 1: few years ago, and I was on The Letterman Show
Speaker 1: as a guest, and we were playing some clips, and
Speaker 1: Dave held up the Bathrooms are Coming record and started
Speaker 1: we started playing the clip of this beautiful anthem my bathroom.
Speaker 1: And my younger daughter's eyes widened because all her life
Speaker 1: she had heard that song around the house and I'm
Speaker 1: just singing it or my wife is humming at or whatever.
Speaker 1: And she said, oh my god, this song that I've
Speaker 1: heard around our family all my life. That's from one
Speaker 1: of your weird records. The two enormous pieces suddenly clicked
Speaker 1: in together for her that had not connected before. Before
Speaker 1: you go and before you return my jacket, could we
Speaker 1: hear just a little of the Bathrooms are Coming just
Speaker 1: a little? All right, let's just take another listen. Oh
Speaker 1: my God, really brings back memories, does it, Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: The young mc gifted Steve Young. So the movie ends,
Speaker 1: and I must say that you are a dreadful musical
Speaker 1: comedy performer in terms of the quality of voice. We
Speaker 1: share that trade, and yet it doesn't matter. You show
Speaker 1: up on camera, and we've fallen in love with you
Speaker 1: by now, this is the genius of the thing. You
Speaker 1: have to earn that performance. You can't just have anybody
Speaker 1: do that, and you do it because we've fallen in
Speaker 1: love with you in the film. And I haven't been
Speaker 1: so smitten by a guy in a musical number since
Speaker 1: I saw Bobby Morse to Brotherhood of Man in the
Speaker 1: original How to Succeed. You're just there and you're so winning,
Speaker 1: you just take over. Whose idea was that? Well? As
Speaker 1: the movie came together over the last I guess a
Speaker 1: couple of years, it felt like, I think the director
Speaker 1: and her co writer and other producers felt like we
Speaker 1: have spent all this time establishing that musical theater has
Speaker 1: a certain unique power even if you're not a Broadway
Speaker 1: musical fan. We believe we have now made a case
Speaker 1: for this stuff being able to really reach people like
Speaker 1: this with the twist not open that you may find
Speaker 1: you're doing jazz hands when someone says that always oh
Speaker 1: maybe you start dancing, And when you hear it, seemed
Speaker 1: like the only card left to play was a all right,
Speaker 1: we have to step out on that ledge and do
Speaker 1: it ourselves. Now, I loved it. It was like, it's
Speaker 1: like you see a movie and the guy and the girl.
Speaker 1: It's the getting closer they get. By the end of
Speaker 1: the movie they have to kiss. This is the guy
Speaker 1: and the girl kiss at the end of the movie
Speaker 1: moment for this movie, I don't want you to do
Speaker 1: any more of them. Well, the finale was movie magic
Speaker 1: of a magnitude that I never had dreamed of being
Speaker 1: involved with. It was thrilling on every level. The song,
Speaker 1: which I co wrote with my dear friend Hank Babe
Speaker 1: years old. He pulls this this melody out of his
Speaker 1: subconscious somewhere. In the first time he played it for
Speaker 1: me over the phone, I realized, I think we have
Speaker 1: a hit. This movie Bathtubs over Broadway is it's a
Speaker 1: fantastic movie because it's it's like any good movie. It's
Speaker 1: a well made movie. It's well cut, it's it's paced up,
Speaker 1: it's got all the good things. You know, cinematically wanted
Speaker 1: a dock and but the topic is just so crazy
Speaker 1: and the people involved, it's so eclectic. And you're such
Speaker 1: a wonderful protagonist in the film. You're the perfect protagonist.
Speaker 1: You guys did an amazing job. He did a great job. Well,
Speaker 1: it was the dream of a lifetime to get to
Speaker 1: be involved with something like this, and Dava and her
Speaker 1: team took at places I could not myself have even
Speaker 1: dreamed of. Thanks for doing this with me, It was
Speaker 1: my extreme pleasure. Thank you. Letterman, writer, collector, and savior
Speaker 1: of the industrial musical Steve Young. The movie about his
Speaker 1: project is called Bathtubs Overbroadway. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing, M