Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. It's summer and that means
Speaker 1: it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing, where
Speaker 1: the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in
Speaker 1: our Summer Staff Picks series. Next up is our producer
Speaker 1: Kathy Russo.
Speaker 2: Thanks Alec. Before Stephen Colbert, there was David Lehnerman. For
Speaker 2: thirty three years, David hosted a late night TV talk show.
Speaker 2: He is the longest serving late show host in TV history.
Speaker 2: David is my pick because back in the day, when
Speaker 2: I could stay up late at night watching TV, I
Speaker 2: thought he was the best host. I loved his dry,
Speaker 2: sarcastic sense of humor and how he paid attention to
Speaker 2: the details. He was engaging, funny and original. When David
Speaker 2: came on Here's a Thing, I met him in the
Speaker 2: lobby of the building we recorded in that day, the
Speaker 2: elevator happened to break down. David said, no problem, if
Speaker 2: we have to take the stairs. He wasn't upset and
Speaker 2: started asking me questions about myself. For a brief moment,
Speaker 2: I felt like a guest on the David Letterman Show
Speaker 2: as he followed me up five flights of stairs. Enjoy
Speaker 2: the conversation with my two favorite host.
Speaker 1: When David Letterman started Late Night in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: the New York Times said he was quote more of
Speaker 1: an acquired taste than most comedians on a quote.
Speaker 3: Now, it's time, ladies and gentlemen, for a segment of
Speaker 3: this program that we like to call stupid petricks.
Speaker 1: We grew up on Johnny, a true gentleman who could
Speaker 1: deliver a smooth setup and punchline, occasionally helped by a wink.
Speaker 1: But suddenly with Late Night, the ultimate punchline was the
Speaker 1: fact that some gap toothed, unknown smart ass even had
Speaker 1: a show. His pet tricks were stupid on purpose, and
Speaker 1: so was he. Tune in and you might catch him
Speaker 1: lowering himself into a water tank wearing a suit made
Speaker 1: from three thousan four hundred Alka Seltzer templates.
Speaker 3: We have the oxygen here, and I have been asked
Speaker 3: about twelve times by various members of the staff to
Speaker 3: remind you don't try this at home.
Speaker 4: I know you have the nine hundred gallon tank, I
Speaker 4: know you have the oxygen.
Speaker 3: I know you have the suit of oxa Seltzer and
Speaker 3: a staff of one hundred people.
Speaker 1: Who Dave seized every opportunity to remind us that his
Speaker 1: big network show was a ridiculous waste of time. But
Speaker 1: if you were in on the joke, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people were, it was also a stroke of genius.
Speaker 3: Here's a little something the boys that Late Night R
Speaker 3: and D have been fooling around with.
Speaker 4: We call it sky bowling.
Speaker 1: Today, David Letterman is an institution and has forever changed
Speaker 1: American comedy. Before Letterman, the extended drum roll was sincere.
Speaker 1: After Letterman, it would never be without at least a
Speaker 1: hint of irony. His show changed America, and after thirty years,
Speaker 1: Dave's changed as well.
Speaker 4: I do a lot less work than I used to do.
Speaker 3: I just got to a point where I have no
Speaker 3: patience for meetings, so I don't go to any meetings.
Speaker 3: I can't make decisions anymore. I don't like making decisions.
Speaker 3: You know, we have a dozen producers. They can have
Speaker 3: the meetings and they can make the decisions, and I'll
Speaker 3: just come down and somebody tell me what to do
Speaker 3: and we go.
Speaker 4: And it was different before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I used to be involved in everything big and large.
Speaker 3: I don't think that was necessarily good, But at the
Speaker 3: time I thought it was what was required when you
Speaker 3: had your own show. You had to had to have
Speaker 3: everything you know in your view and certainly influence each
Speaker 3: little choice.
Speaker 1: The guests that are on the show. Do you still
Speaker 1: help select the guests throw or someone else takes care?
Speaker 4: Yeah, people who select them.
Speaker 3: Occasionally I will think of, Oh, I heard about somebody
Speaker 3: that did so and so.
Speaker 4: Could we look into that and this and that? Very little,
Speaker 4: very little, I mean, these other people do that.
Speaker 3: We've have the good luck of these people havn't been
Speaker 3: together for a long, long, long long time.
Speaker 4: They all know what the expectation is.
Speaker 3: Of course, when you're in that situation, the bad version
Speaker 3: of it is, oh God, it's the same thing. It's
Speaker 3: the assembly line. We're just building the same car over
Speaker 3: and over and over again. You feel that way sometimes
Speaker 3: Sometimes I'm the biggest defender of that. I'm sixty five.
Speaker 3: I don't have the energy I had when I was
Speaker 3: thirty five. There are certain things I like about the
Speaker 3: show now that I like more than before, such as
Speaker 3: I like talking to people and the opportunity to learn something,
Speaker 3: or if I have a natural curiosity about somebody, I
Speaker 3: really look forward to that. Or if I have something
Speaker 3: that I know is going to be silly and stupid
Speaker 3: and I want my authorship out there on this something
Speaker 3: silly and stupid, then I get eager about that. But
Speaker 3: in the old days, we just were going twenty hours
Speaker 3: a day. We'd be out on the streets, we'd be
Speaker 3: going to New Jersey, we'd be up all night shooting,
Speaker 3: and there would be contests, And I can't do that
Speaker 3: show anymore.
Speaker 1: The more successful the show has become, and the more
Speaker 1: successful you would become, do you find that in terms
Speaker 1: of programming the show you have to rely more on stars.
Speaker 4: Is there a kind of person It's completely different.
Speaker 3: In the beginning the Late Night Show at NBC, we
Speaker 3: had a liaison between Johnny Carson and ourselves named Dave Tabbott.
Speaker 3: He had worked at NBC and then had become close
Speaker 3: with Johnny, and so Johnny hired him, and he was
Speaker 3: a guy.
Speaker 4: Who, honest to God, talked like this.
Speaker 3: Dave came in to make sure there were no conflicts
Speaker 3: between our show and the tonight show. He says, for example,
Speaker 3: let's just say that Bob Hope is arrested for using
Speaker 3: drugs and we just all just like, really, in what
Speaker 3: universe is that a likelihood?
Speaker 4: And he says you can't then do jokes about Bob Hope.
Speaker 3: I said, okay, all right, we get that we were
Speaker 3: not allowed to use to a monologue and we were
Speaker 3: not allowed to have an orchestra, and we also felt
Speaker 3: that a way to distinguish ourselves, since Johnny had the
Speaker 3: big stars that people really.
Speaker 4: Wanted, we would then kind of have fringe people.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right, and so we we sort of mined
Speaker 3: that veins, which as we could. It was sort of
Speaker 3: a fortunate coincidence that we were prohibited in that sense
Speaker 3: because we weren't really interested in having mainstream people on two. Again,
Speaker 3: I don't know how effective it was, and in terms
Speaker 3: of programming, I don't know if people noticed the difference
Speaker 3: and appreciated it or just thought, oh, they can't get
Speaker 3: very good guests. And now it's completely different. It's you know,
Speaker 3: Broadway cavalcade of stars, and that's fine. I have no
Speaker 3: problem with that. We're always fighting the Internet, and they
Speaker 3: seem to be winning in terms of the small guests,
Speaker 3: the kid that swims out into the East River and
Speaker 3: saves a cat, or but We're always so far downstream
Speaker 3: from that story by the time it's all over the
Speaker 3: internet that there's no.
Speaker 4: Point and putting it on.
Speaker 3: You started in radio, Yeah, my first job was at
Speaker 3: a radio station. You went to college, You went to
Speaker 3: Ball State University. I studied a radio on TV.
Speaker 4: Well, why did you study radio on TV? Academically?
Speaker 3: You know, I went to Ball State in those days,
Speaker 3: graduated with I think it's a bachelor of a Bachelor
Speaker 3: of Arts or a Bachelor of Science.
Speaker 4: I don't think that science probably back then.
Speaker 3: But yeah, no language requirement and no math requirement. I
Speaker 3: mean it really saved me because I was academically, I
Speaker 3: was not very good early on.
Speaker 4: I was very.
Speaker 3: Lucky that I knew how to save myself. A sophomore
Speaker 3: year in high school and I had signed up for
Speaker 3: a public speaking course and the first day you were
Speaker 3: supposed to get up and extemporaneously speak for five minutes.
Speaker 3: You know, everybody's twitchy and sweaty and worried about this,
Speaker 3: as was I. And then I got up there, the
Speaker 3: nervousness and the twitchiness and everything dissipated. I loved it,
Speaker 3: and I thought, oh my god, maybe this is a
Speaker 3: way I can distinguish myself and I did you know.
Speaker 4: But had you been the entertainer as a child in.
Speaker 3: The household, Yeah, sure to what extent, And then my
Speaker 3: parents wouldn't put up with it much. There was a
Speaker 3: fine line between being always in the amusing and being
Speaker 3: just a and being a wise ass, and we don't
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 4: I can remember my father was big and.
Speaker 3: Loud and noisy and always had stuff going on, and
Speaker 3: my mother completely non demonstrated. And I can remember every
Speaker 3: Sunday night after dinner, my dad would make popcorn and
Speaker 3: we would sit in front of the TV and watch
Speaker 3: Ed Sullivan.
Speaker 4: And Ed used to have this habit of walk, come on, now,
Speaker 4: let's really hear it for him.
Speaker 3: And my mom used to say, I don't like the
Speaker 3: way Ed begs the audience for applause. So she was
Speaker 3: just completely stand offish by the.
Speaker 4: Notion she was a connoisseur of television hose and then Eric.
Speaker 3: No, she was not a connoisseur. She resented the fact
Speaker 3: that somebody had to be encouraged to support.
Speaker 4: What they had just said, that Sullivan was houring himself.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, exactly, So you go to ball stadiing
Speaker 1: and you get this degree batcher of whatever, we don't
Speaker 1: know you, and what do you do after that?
Speaker 3: Well, through a friend of mine at the ABC affiliate
Speaker 3: in Indianapolis where I lived, which was sixty miles away
Speaker 3: from where I went to school and still is just
Speaker 3: about sixty miles, I heard that they were auditioning for
Speaker 3: They wanted a summer announcer. So I went down there
Speaker 3: an audition, never having been in a television studio in
Speaker 3: my life life, and got the job. I mean it
Speaker 3: was a fixed fight because I had no business getting
Speaker 3: the job. I wasn't very good, I didn't know what
Speaker 3: I was doing, I had no experience, and they gave
Speaker 3: me the job. And suddenly the bulb that was turned
Speaker 3: on my sophomore year in high school now is burning
Speaker 3: white hot because it's are you kid me? I'm nineteen
Speaker 3: and I'm going to be on TV? I mean, it's preposterous.
Speaker 4: What kind of job did you? I was the booth announcer,
Speaker 4: So I can't believe you said that back when they
Speaker 4: had booth announcers on CHEE. That's right, That's what I did.
Speaker 4: These guys defined my childhood by the way.
Speaker 3: These were the guys the principal responsibility was to keep
Speaker 3: the program log.
Speaker 1: There used to be a lot of technical glitches in television. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who had booth announcers who would pick up the slack
Speaker 1: when something went wrong with tape the tape.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right.
Speaker 3: A station break was a huge process because you had
Speaker 3: a control room, you had a director, you had two
Speaker 3: or three sixteen millimeter projectors, you had a slide chain,
Speaker 3: and you had the big two and a half inch
Speaker 3: Ampex tape. Let's say you had four commercials in a
Speaker 3: station break, then you'd have to roll the tape. Then
Speaker 3: you'd have to count down and roll the film. Then
Speaker 3: you'd have to go live to the booth to read
Speaker 3: copy over a slide and went back to the film.
Speaker 3: And it was an enormous thing. Periodically, the FCC would
Speaker 3: come in and check your log. So it was a
Speaker 3: big deal. At a summer job in nineteen sixty sixty eight,
Speaker 3: I was making one hundred and fifty bucks a week.
Speaker 3: I got to be the weekend weather man. I'd never
Speaker 3: done that before. I got to read the news on
Speaker 3: the morning kiddie show. And none of this would happen today.
Speaker 3: You know, people are qualified to do that job now
Speaker 3: much earlier than I. It certainly was, you know, like
Speaker 3: this was Ryan Seacrest. University put him in any job
Speaker 3: when he was nine or ten. He could have done
Speaker 3: a better job than I'm doing now. But for me,
Speaker 3: it was like, holy cow. So I go back to
Speaker 3: school now, to my radio on TV studies, and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden it's hey, there's Ducklips.
Speaker 4: We've seen him on TV. And oh my god, what
Speaker 4: a progression that was for me. Now that was what year.
Speaker 3: I think I started there in sixty eight, and I say,
Speaker 3: the war is going huh yeah, And you avoid drafts
Speaker 3: and you avoid all in those days, you get the
Speaker 3: student deferment. And Ballsy was principally a teacher's college in
Speaker 3: those days, and so it wanted teachers. It was chock
Speaker 3: full of guys who wanted that student deferment and also
Speaker 3: the teaching deferment. I was not studying teaching. So the
Speaker 3: minute I graduated, I was reclassified one A. Went for
Speaker 3: my pre draft physical in April. They said, okay, we'll
Speaker 3: call you. And then in the meantime before I was called,
Speaker 3: Nixon announced the National Lottery. They were going to end
Speaker 3: the draft. They were trying to step down the Vietnamese War.
Speaker 3: My birthday was three hundred and forty two or something
Speaker 3: like that, at A three hundred and fifty six, So
Speaker 3: that meant even though I was one A and had
Speaker 3: my pre induction physical and was ready to go, it
Speaker 3: was over for me. At the time, I didn't know
Speaker 3: how lucky I was. I felt guilty because I had
Speaker 3: friends who had gone, and I had friends who had
Speaker 3: been in the Marine Corps, and I just felt like, well,
Speaker 3: why meet these guys went, Why shouldn't I go? And
Speaker 3: then it dawned on me pretty quickly. I had been
Speaker 3: among the really really lucky.
Speaker 4: Course. What was the political landscape like at ball Stay
Speaker 4: when you went through, Well, it was just starting too.
Speaker 3: I used to make jokes that they'd have student protests,
Speaker 3: but it was to get the cafeteria cooks to wear hairnets.
Speaker 4: But it was.
Speaker 3: It was creeping in. It was not a hotbed. It
Speaker 3: was not Madison, Wisconsin. It was Muncie, Indiana. But it
Speaker 3: was starting and there were sit ins and demonstrations, and
Speaker 3: you know, Bobby Kennedy had spoken on campus, So it
Speaker 3: was starting, but I wouldn't say it was.
Speaker 4: It wasn't quite lit up the way it might have
Speaker 4: been in other regions.
Speaker 1: More after the break, you mentioned booth announcers, and I
Speaker 1: remember I did a YouTube search. I wanted to find
Speaker 1: this guy that was literally the voice of my childhood
Speaker 1: w R. And he come on and say, you know,
Speaker 1: next one million dollar movie, Barbara stan mctells Gary Cooper
Speaker 1: where he can go in.
Speaker 4: Ball of Fire? And he just said this voice it was.
Speaker 4: It just haunted me.
Speaker 3: Well, that's interesting you mentioned that guy I had the
Speaker 3: little kid voice from Indiana. I wasn't that guy, but
Speaker 3: I still had to do the job. And I can't
Speaker 3: impress upon you enough how tedious it is to sit
Speaker 3: there for eight hours watching programming and logging everything that happens.
Speaker 3: If you lose audio, you have to log that. If
Speaker 3: you lose video, you have to log that. You have
Speaker 3: to log sign on, sign off, every commercial, every station break.
Speaker 3: And at first I was scared, silly, but then, like
Speaker 3: everything else, you get accustomed to it and you become blase.
Speaker 3: And so I would just start wandering the building. You know,
Speaker 3: it was so embarrassing. They would will a booth announcer,
Speaker 3: please report to the announced booth. Oh my god, I've
Speaker 3: missed the so and so the main announcer was a
Speaker 3: guy named Rob Stone. Tremendous voice and a hopeless alcoholic,
Speaker 3: I mean, a real alcoholic. I go hand in hand,
Speaker 3: don't they, Yeah, kind of certainly. In those days it
Speaker 3: was not uncommon. He would come in and he would
Speaker 3: bring a pint with him, and so in the spirit
Speaker 3: of this, we who were working the sign off shift,
Speaker 3: we would always send somebody out for beer. And we
Speaker 3: would be at the station late at night signing off,
Speaker 3: and my off and the director and whomever else was there,
Speaker 3: we'd be drinking beer.
Speaker 4: Oh my, was this fun.
Speaker 3: In those days you would do a five minute new
Speaker 3: summary before sign off night cap news, and then you
Speaker 3: would do the broadcast statement. You'd read that over the
Speaker 3: slide of the station, and then they would go to
Speaker 3: the national anthem with the waving Club. One night, a
Speaker 3: guy in the props department said, I can reconstruct exactly
Speaker 3: the station is pictured on the slide.
Speaker 4: We can make it blow up.
Speaker 3: So as you're as you're reading the I thank you
Speaker 3: and good night, and why not tune in WLW overnight
Speaker 3: and blah blah this and so until tomorrow, good night
Speaker 3: and good luck. I have the thing blow And so
Speaker 3: we did Oh god. We were proud of ourselves, you know,
Speaker 3: we really thought we had done something.
Speaker 4: Jeez.
Speaker 3: Nobody ever said anything. No, it was bizarre. Nobody got fired.
Speaker 3: Nobody asked a question about it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It was this cult of four or five guys who
Speaker 3: had pulled this off, and we just thought, well, this
Speaker 3: is one it was fun, but two you wanted but no,
Speaker 3: nobody nobody said anything.
Speaker 1: But but what's interesting is from school and then doing
Speaker 1: the job and so forth, and the booth thing the
Speaker 1: comedy Gland is secreting through the entire time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what are you doing for that?
Speaker 1: Meaning other than blowing up the studio and the sign
Speaker 1: off writing.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was looking for any outlet, and it came
Speaker 3: for me doing the weather. I knew nothing about weather.
Speaker 3: And you'd go downstairs and they'd have the ap machine
Speaker 3: and the map would come over, the national map, and
Speaker 3: you would go to the big magnetic board in the
Speaker 3: studio and you put the low system, and you put
Speaker 3: the high system, and you put the occluded front, and
Speaker 3: you put the rain showers, and so it told you
Speaker 3: everything anytime at all that I could monkey with at
Speaker 3: I was very happy.
Speaker 4: I can remember two episodes. One I was.
Speaker 3: Had forecast sonny and dry, and we go off the
Speaker 3: air and blah blah, and I go outside this this
Speaker 3: is horrible thundershower. The rain is coming down in sheets.
Speaker 3: And I was just twenty feet away, just oblivious of this.
Speaker 4: Dangerous monsoon.
Speaker 3: Yes, coming through, one of these violent Midwestern summer thunderstorms
Speaker 3: coming through, attacking the station. I got to be well
Speaker 3: known because this Sunday Night show was on after the
Speaker 3: ABC Sunday Night Movie, and in those days, that was
Speaker 3: big programming. Yeah, we got a bunch of complaints. And
Speaker 3: this was when people were wearing bell bottom pants. I
Speaker 3: don't think you could buy regular pants. Got a lot
Speaker 3: of calls about he's either not wearing underpants or he
Speaker 3: needs to wear underpants. That's how I distinguished myself. Do
Speaker 3: you want to clear that up now? Were you wearing underpants?
Speaker 4: DearS?
Speaker 3: I was wearing underpants. It was Indianapolis. We're not talked
Speaker 3: to go out without our under Americans. It's whatever problem
Speaker 3: was perceived was not mine, I assure you.
Speaker 4: And then where do you go from there in terms
Speaker 4: of underpants? And well, if you wish.
Speaker 3: I got tired of sitting in the booth and tired
Speaker 3: of working weekends, and also they didn't want me there.
Speaker 3: They would keep bringing in auditions for my job. That
Speaker 3: really hurt my feelings. But I couldn't argue with him
Speaker 3: because I didn't know what I was doing. But the
Speaker 3: accumulative effect of being on TV a lot there, We'll
Speaker 3: get this memo once from the research department, and of
Speaker 3: all of the people, the anchor team and whomever else,
Speaker 3: I had the highest Q rating of anybody there, and
Speaker 3: it was only by accident, really, So I started looking
Speaker 3: for a job, couldn't get hired out of the market.
Speaker 3: Some people I knew were coming in to start up
Speaker 3: a talk radio station, so I went to work at
Speaker 3: the new talk radio station in the format it was
Speaker 3: news Talksports WNTS. When I resigned to quit give my
Speaker 3: notice to the general manager. The guy sad and it
Speaker 3: chilled me at the time. He said, really, you're leaving
Speaker 3: this TV station to go work for a brand new
Speaker 3: radio station And I said yeah, and he said you
Speaker 3: will never be heard of again. So I went to
Speaker 3: the station, worked there for a year, realized that I
Speaker 3: had to make a move. Nobody would listen. It was
Speaker 3: a daytime station. This was tremendous. They had a daytime license,
Speaker 3: which meant the radio station come on when the sun
Speaker 3: came up and went off when the sun went down.
Speaker 4: Literally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And in the winter we were off at three
Speaker 3: forty five in the afternoon. I had the mid day shift.
Speaker 3: I'd come in at noon and two hours later I'd
Speaker 3: be going home. It was joy afternoon, Yes, what was
Speaker 3: signing off? And then in the summer, conversely, you were
Speaker 3: on the like nine thirty or ten. It was awful.
Speaker 3: It was a watergate and people assumed, well, the guy's
Speaker 3: got a talk show on the radio. I'll bet he
Speaker 3: knows everything there is to know about Watergate. And I
Speaker 3: knew nothing, and people wouldn't call in, and I'd have
Speaker 3: to read endless pages of wire copy. I remember reading
Speaker 3: it a sorry about Gordon stratchin str a c ch an.
Speaker 3: His name kept coming up, a special Council, so and so,
Speaker 3: Gordon Stratchen, advisor of the White House, Gordon Stratchen. Finally
Speaker 3: the phones lighted up and I, thank god, did I
Speaker 3: say yes? He says, it's not Stratching, it's Strawn. You're
Speaker 3: mispronouncing the guy's name. I said, okay, thanks you havnyanks
Speaker 3: no click buzz so there you go.
Speaker 4: Were you ambitious during this time? Did you have an ambition? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I wanted to. I really thought. I really thought I
Speaker 4: could write half hours situation comedies. I thought I could.
Speaker 4: What did you watch? Well?
Speaker 3: In my childhood it was completely different. It would have
Speaker 3: been stuff like Saturday Morning Nonsense. Then as I grew older,
Speaker 3: you'd get to Mayberry, the Andy Griffith Show, Ozzy and
Speaker 3: Harriet Nelson, the Nelson's and that kind of stuff. And
Speaker 3: then later on in those days, it was all the
Speaker 3: Mary Tyler Moore things, the Bob Newhart Show, on the
Speaker 3: Mary Tyler Moore Show. And I really thought, oh, I
Speaker 3: can write one of those Mary Tyler Moore shows, And
Speaker 3: it turned out I couldn't. As you know, there's a
Speaker 3: template for writing those things. They use the template because
Speaker 3: it's successful. And if you don't know the template and
Speaker 3: you think you can make a better version of it,
Speaker 3: it's a very foreign object to them. To you, you think, look,
Speaker 3: I've improved on the template, but they don't want that.
Speaker 3: They want something to work. Yes, that's right. I mean
Speaker 3: we're talking about Mary Tyler Moore. That's pretty good stuff.
Speaker 4: Sure, smart And you're in LA at that time.
Speaker 3: No, still in Indianapolis, and I would be sending scripts
Speaker 3: and looking for an agent. Finally a guy said, yeah,
Speaker 3: if you come to Los Angeles, he said, I'll be
Speaker 3: your agent. So with that encouragement, I just left. And
Speaker 3: I don't know about you, but you know your friends say, okay,
Speaker 3: here you can meet with so and so, and you
Speaker 3: can meet mel Blank's son, you can meet with him,
Speaker 3: and I this one and I know that one, and so.
Speaker 4: You go out there with high hopes.
Speaker 3: I guess it was like the Pioneers and the kind
Speaker 3: of Stoga wagon and they run out of beans. You know,
Speaker 3: they're in Salt Lake and they got nothing to neat.
Speaker 3: So within the first week you run through all of
Speaker 3: your appointments and then you got nothing.
Speaker 1: Then you're a shanghaied. That's right, You're just you're just
Speaker 1: on the shoals there in LA. I remember when I
Speaker 1: went to LA. I did a soap opera at thirty Rock.
Speaker 1: The show was about to go off the air, and
Speaker 1: I'll never forget this guy that was the producer. You
Speaker 1: were in the hallway and they asked me to extend
Speaker 1: my contract for a few months, and he says that
Speaker 1: line to me. He says, what do you think you're
Speaker 1: gonna do? Go out to Hollywood become a star in
Speaker 1: the movies. I'm walking down the hallie, dude.
Speaker 4: Listen to me, come back here. You you don't walk
Speaker 4: away from me and I walk away from the guy
Speaker 4: and I go to La. Now were you ever haunted
Speaker 4: by that? Did you? Honestly?
Speaker 3: Did you?
Speaker 4: Did you?
Speaker 3: Because in my case, I thought the guy was. I said,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, I haven't considered that.
Speaker 4: Of course you do. Did you ever think you were
Speaker 4: going to be?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to get you know, crass
Speaker 1: about it, but you live a very very good life.
Speaker 4: You've been an enormously successful man. Did you ever dream
Speaker 4: you would be as successful as you are?
Speaker 3: No? Never, No, And I'll tell you the same for you,
Speaker 3: same for most people in this uh in show business.
Speaker 3: You're just lucky enough to get to do exactly what
Speaker 3: you want to do all your life. So that's the success,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: I always thought there was some commission that was going
Speaker 1: to come to my door of my apartment I was
Speaker 1: living in West Hollywood, and they were not or they're
Speaker 1: going to where the Motion Picture Acting Commission. And we've
Speaker 1: got the reports, say mister balbmon, we're going to take.
Speaker 4: You to theirport.
Speaker 3: By the way, I think you're not going to get
Speaker 3: into I know the origin of this is is your
Speaker 3: personal fear. But I think that commission is not a
Speaker 3: bad idea and long overdue, honest to God. Can we
Speaker 3: get that up and on its feet?
Speaker 4: Can we get a bill?
Speaker 3: I remember there was a guy, a writer for the
Speaker 3: Old Tonight Show, somebody coin his His listing in the
Speaker 3: white pages was say it's Marty Cohen. It was not
Speaker 3: Marty Cohen, Marty Cohen, president of show Business.
Speaker 4: I mean, oh, that's lovely. Were you Were you doing
Speaker 4: stand up ever in Indiana? No, never did it.
Speaker 3: In fact, one of the things that I didn't like
Speaker 3: doing was when I was at the radio station. Part
Speaker 3: of the deal was we just sold a thing to
Speaker 3: Kroger grocery stores. But part of the deal is we
Speaker 3: want you to go out there and m see the
Speaker 3: so and so on so, and I hated it, and
Speaker 3: I finally told the guy, said I can't do this.
Speaker 3: So one of my big built in fears was getting
Speaker 3: up in front of people that I didn't know on
Speaker 3: trying to hold their attention. Let alone be funny, but
Speaker 3: for me. The road map to pursue was handed to
Speaker 3: you via Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show. They would
Speaker 3: have comics on. It would be David Brenner and they
Speaker 3: would say, and there'll be appearing at the Comedy Store.
Speaker 3: It seemed to be that the connection between the Comedy
Speaker 3: Store and the Tonight Show was pretty close.
Speaker 4: So even though I mind that facility, that particular face.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was the farm system for the Comedy Store,
Speaker 3: and great guys were coming out and getting on and
Speaker 3: Steve Landsberg and on and on.
Speaker 4: I say on and on because I can't remember the name.
Speaker 3: So I just yeah, even though I wanted to be
Speaker 3: a writer, because I didn't have the courage to tell
Speaker 3: my family and friends that what I really want to
Speaker 3: do is, you know, somehow get famous and be on TV.
Speaker 3: So when I went out there the first monday I
Speaker 3: was in California when I moved in seventy five, I
Speaker 3: wrote down some stuff and went to the Comedy Store
Speaker 3: and got on stage.
Speaker 4: Had to go. It was it was awful.
Speaker 3: I'd never been in a darkened room of the spotlight
Speaker 3: and it was just like a train coming at me.
Speaker 3: So I did my little five minutes from wrote left,
Speaker 3: and then the owner of the place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you should come back and do some more.
Speaker 3: So I thought, are you kidding men? She said, no,
Speaker 3: you can MC So I came back and I was
Speaker 3: the mc fantas.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Derek great.
Speaker 3: So that was nineteen seventy five, nineteen seventy eight. Three
Speaker 3: years later I was on the Tonight Show. That worked
Speaker 3: so much better than it should have. I think it
Speaker 3: must be harder now too.
Speaker 1: It wasn't three years of just working that room and
Speaker 1: working the mic and working stand up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it was.
Speaker 3: I mean it was fun because every night you go
Speaker 3: there and you were hanging around guys Jay Leno and
Speaker 3: Robin Williams and George Miller and Tom Dreesen and Jeff
Speaker 3: Altman and anybody now who is you're aware of you
Speaker 3: would see every night and it was great fun. I mean,
Speaker 3: my god, it was great fun. Didn't make any difference
Speaker 3: what you did during the day. You knew that when
Speaker 3: it got dark you'd be on Sunset Boulevard.
Speaker 4: The place would be packed.
Speaker 3: And in those days, the only room she had was
Speaker 3: this tiny, little original room and it was next door
Speaker 3: to Art Labelle's. He would have a fifties dance party
Speaker 3: in the next room on the weekends, and you would
Speaker 3: get a lot of gang guys going to art Labelle's
Speaker 3: fifties guys.
Speaker 4: No, it was gang then biker barrio. Oh okay, is
Speaker 4: that all right? Yeah, Lowriders, Yeah okay.
Speaker 3: And one night a friend of mine, Johnny Dark, is
Speaker 3: on stage and a guy comes up and he's got
Speaker 3: a gun and he's standing next to Johnny while Johnny's
Speaker 3: doing his little singing impressions of whomever, and he had
Speaker 3: to quietly, you know, talk his way out of the
Speaker 3: guy using the gun. And it was exciting, souse. I mean,
Speaker 3: Richard Pryor would come in, and Freddie Prinz would come in,
Speaker 3: So you say, yeah, night after night.
Speaker 4: But still in all how could that not be fun?
Speaker 4: So did Carson find you there?
Speaker 3: Well, they had a guy, you know, they had a
Speaker 3: team of guys when I was there that would come
Speaker 3: in and in the meantime I got on this Mary
Speaker 3: Tyler Moore show to write and perform, and oh that
Speaker 3: was it was me and Michael Keaton, Jim Hampton and
Speaker 3: Dick Sean and Swuusy Kurtz and Julie Khan.
Speaker 4: Judy Khn, Judy Cohn, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: So from that show, they said, oh, well we'll put
Speaker 3: you on because you're on that show. You can come
Speaker 3: out and do stand up and then you go sit
Speaker 3: down and talk to Johnny. And without that, you never
Speaker 3: know what the formula is. You could be on nine
Speaker 3: times and never get to sit down with Johnny. You
Speaker 3: could be on for six years and ever, or you
Speaker 3: could be bumped forty times. But because of this, oh
Speaker 3: and he's a hearing on the so and so show
Speaker 3: to Mary Tyler Moore show, I got to sit down
Speaker 3: with Johnny and that was again, that was craziness. That
Speaker 3: was That was another one of those you know what,
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's such a jolt. The material is so committed.
Speaker 3: You don't have to think about anything. You just have
Speaker 3: to start talking and it all comes out. The adrenaline
Speaker 3: takes days to burn out of you. Holy God, you're
Speaker 3: sitting next to Johnny Carson. I mean, you just can't
Speaker 3: believe it. I mean to me, and I think most
Speaker 3: guys my age who were out there doing that one.
Speaker 3: The fact that it worked. You know, really, I drove
Speaker 3: in a pickup truck with my wife to La and
Speaker 3: three years later, I'm sitting next to Johnny Carson. That's
Speaker 3: not supposed to happen, you know, it's just not supposed
Speaker 3: to happen, but it did.
Speaker 1: Now do you think that Carson was someone who do
Speaker 1: you think he saw himself?
Speaker 4: And you? Do you think he saw the midwestern boy?
Speaker 4: I don't know, Jean and you, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was so easy for other people to
Speaker 3: make that comparison, and that seemed to be the formula.
Speaker 3: But I don't know if he felt that way or not.
Speaker 3: I don't I can't answer that. And then what happened
Speaker 3: after that, Well, your life changed immediately. Suddenly you weren't
Speaker 3: just a guy who was at the comedy store. You
Speaker 3: were the guy that had been on with the Carson.
Speaker 3: And then I was on I think two or three
Speaker 3: more times, and then I started hosting the show, and
Speaker 3: again that was another you know, you just feel like
Speaker 3: it's like it's like winning the World Series or your
Speaker 3: rookie season.
Speaker 1: What's the gap of time between when you first sat
Speaker 1: down with him when you started hosting.
Speaker 3: The first time I was on was November of seventy eight,
Speaker 3: and I think I hosted it was Monday night opposite
Speaker 3: the Academy Awards so.
Speaker 4: It was the good Spring. Yeah, in April, April, March April,
Speaker 4: y know, things to Do party, Yeah, and it was
Speaker 4: I was just frozen. I was just frozen. I can
Speaker 4: remember Peter le Sally coming up to me during the
Speaker 4: commercial break and he said, you've got to loosen up.
Speaker 4: You've got to loosen up, and they get that. Thanks
Speaker 4: for that tip Page forty.
Speaker 3: I remember the first night I was on the Tonight
Speaker 3: Show and I I'm telling you, for guys at the
Speaker 3: Comedy Store, this was it. This was like people lining
Speaker 3: up to squeeze through a funnel, you know.
Speaker 4: This was it. The Tonight Show.
Speaker 3: Fighting and competition and backstabbing and bad mouth to get
Speaker 3: to the Tonight Show is going to make or break you.
Speaker 3: If if you don't do well, you'll never be heard
Speaker 3: of again. There's no such thing as a guy bombing
Speaker 3: his first time on the Tonight Show and then having
Speaker 3: a delightful career that just doesn't happen.
Speaker 4: You're gone. So there's a lot of pressure.
Speaker 3: So I'm getting ready to go out there just behind
Speaker 3: the curtain. And my manager at the time, Buddy Moore,
Speaker 3: who was with Jack Rollins and John Charles Joffey. They
Speaker 3: handled Robin Williams and Woody Allen and Dick Cabot and
Speaker 3: some other guys. So that was a big deal for
Speaker 3: me to be with these people. And Buddy and I
Speaker 3: nice enough guy, but we never never saw eyed eye
Speaker 3: on much. And I think a lot of it was
Speaker 3: my immaturity about show business, or just ignorance.
Speaker 4: Not immaturity. I had no time to be immature. I
Speaker 4: was ignorant.
Speaker 3: So we're standing there and Johnny saying our next he
Speaker 3: asked as a young blah blah blah blah, and Buddy
Speaker 3: says to me, and Buddy always whispered. Everything was a whisperer, Buddy,
Speaker 3: he says. Robin got popeye, and I said, what are
Speaker 3: you talking about? His final words to me is, I'm
Speaker 3: going to let the night show for the first time
Speaker 3: telling me about a booking for.
Speaker 4: One of his other clients, you know. And I just
Speaker 4: never got over that.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Boordman, and I'm talking with David Letterman
Speaker 1: more in a minute.
Speaker 4: You know, you're a lot mellower now than you were.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, And you'd say that when you did the show,
Speaker 1: no matter how crazy or how wired you and the
Speaker 1: whole experience was of the early show and you said
Speaker 1: running around doing all the taking and all the other
Speaker 1: bits and so forth, and contests and everything.
Speaker 4: But I mean, just your own nature.
Speaker 1: Seems like there was a kind of a an edge
Speaker 1: to it that you've lost. But you seem like you
Speaker 1: really just become like so much more. What's the word charming?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know by the rule, but I know
Speaker 3: exactly what you're talking about, And the fact that it's
Speaker 3: noticeable by others is an indication that maybe I'm on
Speaker 3: the right track because, to the exclusion of every other
Speaker 3: thing in my life, it was the success of this show.
Speaker 3: As a result, I waited to have a child twenty
Speaker 3: years too long. I just didn't do anything else. It
Speaker 3: was the show and it had to be the show.
Speaker 3: And if it wasn't the show, then find out a
Speaker 3: way to make it the show.
Speaker 4: And did you come from that world?
Speaker 1: Like Lauren, for example, says to me he lives a
Speaker 1: life where his creator was work is play, Like we
Speaker 1: have this interesting jobs, you know, you don't stop working
Speaker 1: to so that's.
Speaker 4: Part of it.
Speaker 3: And that is one of the great residuals of you know,
Speaker 3: you're around all these funny people and you have silly ideas,
Speaker 3: and you have silly conversations in life yourself sick. But
Speaker 3: for me, it was like, oh my god, you know,
Speaker 3: if I fail at this, it's all gone away. You know,
Speaker 3: if you fail at this, you get to get at
Speaker 3: the end of the line, and the line keeps getting longer,
Speaker 3: so to the exclusion of other important things, other aspects
Speaker 3: of life. I pursued the show. Then that changed, finally changed.
Speaker 3: Did you want it to change? No, at the time,
Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't know there was another way to
Speaker 3: live your life. I thought you had to keep banging
Speaker 3: your head and banging your head and banging your head.
Speaker 3: And I kept saying to myself, this is what they say.
Speaker 3: It's like pushing a rock up hill. It's like pushing
Speaker 3: a rock up hill, and one day everything will change,
Speaker 3: everything will be great, you'll succeed, and everything will well.
Speaker 3: It never it never quite worked that way for me.
Speaker 3: I think, well, not too difficult to assume that this
Speaker 3: is one of the reasons I had the quintuple bypass surgery.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then my doctor he said, you know, he says,
Speaker 3: you don't have to be this way flogging yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he said, you can delegate yeah, or you can. He says,
Speaker 3: there are they've made pharmaceutical advancements. Here, you can help yourself.
Speaker 3: And I said, no, no, no, no, I can't because
Speaker 3: that would ruin this and that would ruin that. And
Speaker 3: and then Regina got we were able to get pregnant.
Speaker 4: I went into this stark, raving anxious depression when she
Speaker 4: got pregnant. Yeah, why well I was fine with it.
Speaker 3: I thought, if not now when you know, and she
Speaker 3: had wanted to have kids, like I said, fifteen twenty
Speaker 3: years earlier. And so this is a very complicated, uninteresting story,
Speaker 3: and it has it has to do with being on
Speaker 3: the shingle, having shingles, and being on exotic pain medication
Speaker 3: for the shingles, and getting fed up with the exotic
Speaker 3: pain medication and saying to the pain doctor I'm done,
Speaker 3: I'm not taking it anymore. And he said, well, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of those things you can't just I said,
Speaker 3: forget it. Click and I stopped taking these things, and
Speaker 3: within a couple of days I just turned into this
Speaker 3: twitching Unicell altered states.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was very odd.
Speaker 3: And the guy said, well, you're in an anxious depression
Speaker 3: and lucid you know, there are things we can do
Speaker 3: here to help you out, and I said, I'll try
Speaker 3: anything because I can't go on like this. And so
Speaker 3: it was a small dose of an SSRI. Suddenly I realized,
Speaker 3: I can have myself, my personality, the person that I've known,
Speaker 3: and then lose what was detracting, what was hurting, what
Speaker 3: was actually an impediment, groom.
Speaker 1: Out the things that you wanted to groom out. And
Speaker 1: when I came to the show business, and I was
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles sleeping, and I was like Gomer Pyle,
Speaker 1: I mean, I swear to God, I came to work
Speaker 1: in this. I really I have trouble that you were
Speaker 1: no really, but I don't mean in terms of lacking
Speaker 1: any sophistication. But they would give me. I'll never forget
Speaker 1: the first job I got. I go to an audition.
Speaker 1: I'd done that the soap in New York. And they
Speaker 1: paid you, you know, a very small amount of money,
Speaker 1: and I thought I was Rockefeller. They paid you four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty bucks a day. I was the richest
Speaker 1: member of my family. My dad was a school teacher
Speaker 1: with six kids. He didn't make any money. And I
Speaker 1: go out to LA and I'll never forget. But I
Speaker 1: go to the old Lauramar, which is now Sony and
Speaker 1: I go to the gate at Lauramar. I say, Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, here's your map. You're parking and
Speaker 1: building sixty seven, ninth floor, slot red twelve.
Speaker 4: And they sent me to like, you know, the Ukraine.
Speaker 1: I gotta go all the way and I go, Now,
Speaker 1: where's the office I'm going to for the meeting? He
Speaker 1: goes right over there, right next to me. So I go,
Speaker 1: I park the car, trot all the way down, do
Speaker 1: an audition for the show. Not's landing. I get done
Speaker 1: and I leave the thing and no cell phones. Then
Speaker 1: this is nineteen eighty three, and so I pull up
Speaker 1: to a phone booth. I call my agent. It's late
Speaker 1: in the afternoon. They're still in the office.
Speaker 4: He goes, how did it go? I go, how did
Speaker 4: it go? I think it went pretty well, pretty well,
Speaker 4: you moron. They want to hire you, And I.
Speaker 1: Go, you're kidding me, he goes, He goes, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: He goes, we're making a deal right now. We're closing
Speaker 1: the deal right now. You're gonna get twenty five for
Speaker 1: the pilot and twelve five an episode, and I swear
Speaker 1: to God, coming from my background, I went go, wait,
Speaker 1: y'all won't pay me twenty five one hundred dollars for
Speaker 1: the pilot and twelve hundred and fifty dollars per episode
Speaker 1: every week. And he's like, no, you Maron, They're gonna
Speaker 1: pay you twenty five thousand for the pilot and twelve thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred episode.
Speaker 4: And I literally urinated in my trousers.
Speaker 1: And I'm standing in a phone booth on the corner
Speaker 1: of like, you know, Walker and Washington in Culver City,
Speaker 1: and the guy tells me this, and that's when my life.
Speaker 4: Changed for me.
Speaker 3: It was always you were competing against yourself. We didn't
Speaker 3: go out and do a lot of reading.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I remember there was a the Jackson five had
Speaker 3: a summer show, so they would say, we need comics,
Speaker 3: and so they'd call the comedy store, and you know,
Speaker 3: if Mitzie liked, you'd get to go beyond the Jackson
Speaker 3: five show. So it was never so much of one
Speaker 3: guy over another. Or there would be shows like the
Speaker 3: Midnight Special or Don Kershner's Rock Concert that they would
Speaker 3: routinely use comics. So there was plenty of work and
Speaker 3: it wasn't I think as in acting as you describe
Speaker 3: guys elbowing each other out and higher ups wanting to
Speaker 3: step on their hands and hurt their feelings.
Speaker 1: But when you've done the show back from the NBC
Speaker 1: days and now through the many years at CBS, it's
Speaker 1: a very hermetic situation for you, and nobody bothers you,
Speaker 1: and there's ever questions about your budget, and there's every question,
Speaker 1: but nobody calls you. You't have to deal with that,
Speaker 1: or do you have to fight with the network about
Speaker 1: things like other shows too.
Speaker 3: Well, never a fight. It's a negotiation. But we don't
Speaker 3: have the fight. You know, if we want to do something,
Speaker 3: we can pretty much do it. And again, what we
Speaker 3: want to do now is far different level in scope
Speaker 3: than we wanted to do when we're because when we
Speaker 3: came into this show, myself and Marilyn, the writers, we
Speaker 3: just thought, oh, America has been waiting for us. We're
Speaker 3: going to change the face of television for America. And boy,
Speaker 3: it didn't happen that way, you know, it just didn't
Speaker 3: happen that way at all. We did a sketch on
Speaker 3: the old Late Night Show and it was with one
Speaker 3: of the writers Tom Gamble and it was Dale the
Speaker 3: Psychotic page. We had to set up nine holes of
Speaker 3: a miniature golf course. He would come in with an
Speaker 3: NBC page blazer and he would play miniature golf, and
Speaker 3: with each failing attempt on the whole, he would become
Speaker 3: more and more psychotic. There's your comedy, America. This is
Speaker 3: what you've been waiting for. Yeah, aren't you glad we're here?
Speaker 4: Breath?
Speaker 1: I love on your show. I haven't done this in
Speaker 1: a while. I miss it because everything. I guess they
Speaker 1: can't do this stuff all the time, and maybe this
Speaker 1: bit is a victim of global warming. But I get
Speaker 1: there one time and they want me to ride the
Speaker 1: snowmobile on the roof of the building years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're all very droll, you know. And Biff always calls
Speaker 1: me Alex. I love that you're on the roof and snowing,
Speaker 1: and we're on the roof of your building at snow
Speaker 1: I'm best.
Speaker 4: Like, Okay, not Alex.
Speaker 1: You're gonna ride a snowmobile around the roof a few times.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna be man, I never can it and catch
Speaker 4: you to keep you from going over the side. Is
Speaker 4: that all right?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: Alex.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm like, great, let me go. I have danger.
Speaker 4: You know, I love it. Elements.
Speaker 3: Well, I was thinking about a year ago I was
Speaker 3: looking around the ed Solovo Theater. What a tremendous stroke
Speaker 3: of luck that was. I used to love working in
Speaker 3: the studio, and I remember one day running into Lord Michaels.
Speaker 3: He said to me, how long did it take you
Speaker 3: to get used to doing a TV show in a theater?
Speaker 3: And I knew exactly what he was saying, because to him,
Speaker 3: TV comes out of a studio. And I always felt
Speaker 3: that way myself. But I've really grown fond.
Speaker 4: Of the theater.
Speaker 3: It's CBS the Theater for reasons like that and many more.
Speaker 3: It's comfortable, it's fun, it's smells of decades and decades
Speaker 3: and decades of show business there. There's tunnels and alleys
Speaker 3: and rats. But it's fantastic. I mean, it's just so
Speaker 3: versatile and so great. And also the way Hal set
Speaker 3: it up in the beginning, it's fairly intimate. I mean,
Speaker 3: you can have a pretty reasonable conversation there in this
Speaker 3: five hundred seat room, and so I think it works
Speaker 3: fine as a TV studio.
Speaker 4: Now, what's a good show for you?
Speaker 1: Now, well, it defines a good show for well, you know,
Speaker 1: I think the last time you were on, I say this,
Speaker 1: of course it, you know, suck up.
Speaker 3: It was a very pleasant, easy give and take in exchange.
Speaker 3: I love it when a good, smart, funny guy just
Speaker 3: comes right back at me, you know, in the beginning,
Speaker 3: when he's so mean, why is he mean to everybody?
Speaker 3: And I never thought I was being mean. I just
Speaker 3: thought I was, you know, goofing around.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So when you were coming on and you were going
Speaker 3: after me, ah, that was delightful.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 1: For those segment producers who you work with, I mean,
Speaker 1: it took me a while to be able to. I
Speaker 1: mean I would do the show with you a number
Speaker 1: of times, and the segment producers would they would say
Speaker 1: that to you.
Speaker 4: They'd say to you know, no, give it back to me. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he loves that.
Speaker 3: Give it back to so many people, I think that
Speaker 3: runs against their nature. Other people are ill equipped to
Speaker 3: do that. But there are a few like yourself, And
Speaker 3: to me, that's you know. We heading him on a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks ago, Sean Hayes, and I hadn't seen
Speaker 3: him in years. He had been across the street during
Speaker 3: here we go high hoe promises or whatever that show was, Promises, promises,
Speaker 3: and the kid comes out and god, he was funny.
Speaker 3: I mean just from the jump he was funny, and
Speaker 3: I just thought, this is fantastic, This is just great.
Speaker 3: You know, if you can't be entertained by your own show,
Speaker 3: you got the wrong you know, you get the wrong
Speaker 3: part of the channel.
Speaker 4: So that was good.
Speaker 1: You live a pretty under the radar lifestyle. Do you
Speaker 1: do that by choice? Well, a very quiet private life.
Speaker 3: First of all, I don't get invited many places. Secondly,
Speaker 3: I just you know, you do the show and all
Speaker 3: of that comes to you during the day. You know,
Speaker 3: you have the same people at the gala, the same
Speaker 3: people at the opening, the same people of benefit.
Speaker 4: Will be share with that expression of all that for you.
Speaker 3: So I don't feel the need to go seek that.
Speaker 3: And secondly, like so many people, I'm uncomfortable with large
Speaker 3: groups of strangers. I mean I think people are And
Speaker 3: what is your downtime like? Now?
Speaker 4: What do you like to do?
Speaker 3: Well, sleep is a precious commodity. There's virtually no sleep
Speaker 3: between my eight year old son and my two year
Speaker 3: old dog and my wife. My wife, honest to god,
Speaker 3: has not slept eight hours in eight years. I mean
Speaker 3: she'll go to bed at midnight, get up at six,
Speaker 3: so that's six hours. You can do that once or twice,
Speaker 3: you know, like when you're eighteen and you're in the Marines.
Speaker 4: I'm doing that from insomnia. I have terminals. That's it.
Speaker 3: Now, explain to me when you were in the audience
Speaker 3: back at six A and you raise your hand and
Speaker 3: had a question.
Speaker 4: What was that and how did that happen? When you
Speaker 4: did the NBC show. Yeah, there was a woman and
Speaker 4: she was a writer and she was.
Speaker 1: An associate producer on our show. She was friends with
Speaker 1: Ackroyd and Blue She and all that original Saturday Night
Speaker 1: Live crowd. And this woman's name was surely something and
Speaker 1: she was a show. She's going to reach out to
Speaker 1: us now when she hears this podcast. We have to
Speaker 1: broadcast this section of it so we can get a
Speaker 1: hold of her. And she was the one that came
Speaker 1: to me and through some connection said they want you
Speaker 1: to come on. Let have been to do that thing
Speaker 1: and ask but do you remember what the bit was?
Speaker 3: I have no idea, but you were objecting to something.
Speaker 3: Something had rubbed you the wrong way and was register
Speaker 3: or complaint. That was a complaint about you and your
Speaker 3: your taste.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right. Yeah, that was tremendous. That was just great.
Speaker 4: So when you're not fighting insomnia, what is do you
Speaker 4: like to travel? Oh? Travel?
Speaker 3: You do things when you have an eight year old,
Speaker 3: as you know, when you have a child, you do
Speaker 3: things you never thought you would do, and it's fun.
Speaker 3: We went to Alaska a few weeks ago because it
Speaker 3: was my birthday, and I was talking to my son
Speaker 3: and I said, well, you know, we're thinking about maybe
Speaker 3: going up to Alaska. This guy tells me there's a
Speaker 3: place to ski up.
Speaker 4: There, and he said, oh, let's go to Alaska.
Speaker 3: And so I said, well, you know, we're still thinking
Speaker 3: about it and still thinking about it. And then I
Speaker 3: hear from Regina that now Harry has gone to school
Speaker 3: and told everybody.
Speaker 4: That hey, daddy and me and mom are going to Alaska.
Speaker 3: And I thought, holy crap, we're going to Alaska. So
Speaker 3: a lot of that stuff is kid driven. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm all for no tennis, no golf, No no tennis,
Speaker 3: no golf, no movies. I see plenty of movies, see
Speaker 3: all the Oh no, not at home so much it's
Speaker 3: it's all with the kid.
Speaker 4: Do you find that your son. This is very common.
Speaker 4: He pulls you into the world, into his world, and.
Speaker 1: You have to show up at things right and show
Speaker 1: up at places, and everybody treats you very respectfully.
Speaker 4: People are there as a dad. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The last time anything untoward happened was a Christmas party.
Speaker 3: My wife has his friends with a very famous couple,
Speaker 3: and I have great admiration for the couple their family.
Speaker 3: Just I think more people should be like these people.
Speaker 3: I just and and as a result, I'm afraid to
Speaker 3: be around them because you know, I'm I'm ducklips and
Speaker 3: they yeah, oh, I make myself look bad. Went to
Speaker 3: a Christmas party and it was so packed that you
Speaker 3: couldn't move. It was all vertical. Nothing happened horizontally, and
Speaker 3: as people kind of from their positions about the apartment
Speaker 3: spotted me, it was it was as though there was
Speaker 3: methane gas leaking in the apartment. It was, oh no,
Speaker 3: and it's the holidays, and why is he?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, come on, true story. People love you. People
Speaker 4: don't love people love you. People love you? Yeah no, no, no,
Speaker 4: no people people. But the thing is is that that you.
Speaker 4: You get a lot of that quotion on the job,
Speaker 4: and then when the job's over, you want to go home.
Speaker 3: That's right, That's exactly right, And especially now with with
Speaker 3: the eight year old, because you know, and I feel
Speaker 3: stupid talking about it because I'm like the fortieth billionth
Speaker 3: person to have a child.
Speaker 4: So I have I have no I have no insights.
Speaker 4: He might claim he has no insights.
Speaker 1: But if David Letterman ever writes a book on parenting,
Speaker 1: it's guaranteed to be a bestseller.
Speaker 4: I want to thank you for doing this. Are we done?
Speaker 4: I don't want to be done. Isn't it time to
Speaker 4: be done? We're done?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 4: Where would a person hear this? If a person wanted
Speaker 4: to hear this.
Speaker 1: This might be a good time to tell you that
Speaker 1: you can hear other conversations at Here's the Thing dot Org.
Speaker 4: I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you
Speaker 4: by iHeart Radio.