August 26, 2025 • 44 mins
Our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing continues, as staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives for our Summer Staff Pick series. This week, we revisit Alec’s conversation with David Letterman, who began his Late Night gig as a self-described “gap-toothed, unknown smart ass.” Three decades later, Letterman reflects on how his comedy evolved, why he no longer makes every decision behind the scenes, and life after “stupid pet tricks.” He shares with Alec his path from weatherman to talk show host to guest-host of The Tonight Show—and how both a quintuple bypass and the birth of his son shifted his priorities.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. It's summer and that means
it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing, where
the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in
our Summer Staff Picks series. Next up is our producer
Kathy Russo.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Thanks Alec. Before Stephen Colbert, there was David Lehnerman. For
thirty three years, David hosted a late night TV talk show.
He is the longest serving late show host in TV history.
David is my pick because back in the day, when
I could stay up late at night watching TV, I
thought he was the best host. I loved his dry,
(00:45):
sarcastic sense of humor and how he paid attention to
the details. He was engaging, funny and original. When David
came on Here's a Thing, I met him in the
lobby of the building we recorded in that day, the
elevator happened to break down. David said, no problem, if
we have to take the stairs. He wasn't upset and
(01:05):
started asking me questions about myself. For a brief moment,
I felt like a guest on the David Letterman Show
as he followed me up five flights of stairs. Enjoy
the conversation with my two favorite host.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
When David Letterman started Late Night in nineteen eighty two,
the New York Times said he was quote more of
an acquired taste than most comedians on a quote.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Now, it's time, ladies and gentlemen, for a segment of
this program that we like to call stupid petricks.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
We grew up on Johnny, a true gentleman who could
deliver a smooth setup and punchline, occasionally helped by a wink.
But suddenly with Late Night, the ultimate punchline was the
fact that some gap toothed, unknown smart ass even had
a show. His pet tricks were stupid on purpose, and
so was he. Tune in and you might catch him
(02:00):
lowering himself into a water tank wearing a suit made
from three thousan four hundred Alka Seltzer templates.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
We have the oxygen here, and I have been asked
about twelve times by various members of the staff to
remind you don't try this at home.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
I know you have the nine hundred gallon tank, I
know you have the oxygen.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
I know you have the suit of oxa Seltzer and
a staff of one hundred people.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Who Dave seized every opportunity to remind us that his
big network show was a ridiculous waste of time. But
if you were in on the joke, and a lot
of people were, it was also a stroke of genius.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Here's a little something the boys that Late Night R
and D have been fooling around with.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
We call it sky bowling.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Today, David Letterman is an institution and has forever changed
American comedy. Before Letterman, the extended drum roll was sincere.
After Letterman, it would never be without at least a
hint of irony. His show changed America, and after thirty years,
Dave's changed as well.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
I do a lot less work than I used to do.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I just got to a point where I have no
patience for meetings, so I don't go to any meetings.
I can't make decisions anymore. I don't like making decisions.
You know, we have a dozen producers. They can have
the meetings and they can make the decisions, and I'll
just come down and somebody tell me what to do
and we go.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
And it was different before.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah, I used to be involved in everything big and large.
I don't think that was necessarily good, But at the
time I thought it was what was required when you
had your own show. You had to had to have
everything you know in your view and certainly influence each
little choice.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
The guests that are on the show. Do you still
help select the guests throw or someone else takes care?
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Yeah, people who select them.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Occasionally I will think of, Oh, I heard about somebody
that did so and so.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Could we look into that and this and that? Very little,
very little, I mean, these other people do that.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
We've have the good luck of these people havn't been
together for a long, long, long long time.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
They all know what the expectation is.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Of course, when you're in that situation, the bad version
of it is, oh God, it's the same thing. It's
the assembly line. We're just building the same car over
and over and over again. You feel that way sometimes
Sometimes I'm the biggest defender of that. I'm sixty five.
I don't have the energy I had when I was
thirty five. There are certain things I like about the
show now that I like more than before, such as
I like talking to people and the opportunity to learn something,
(04:20):
or if I have a natural curiosity about somebody, I
really look forward to that. Or if I have something
that I know is going to be silly and stupid
and I want my authorship out there on this something
silly and stupid, then I get eager about that. But
in the old days, we just were going twenty hours
a day. We'd be out on the streets, we'd be
(04:41):
going to New Jersey, we'd be up all night shooting,
and there would be contests, And I can't do that
show anymore.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
The more successful the show has become, and the more
successful you would become, do you find that in terms
of programming the show you have to rely more on stars.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Is there a kind of person It's completely different.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
In the beginning the Late Night Show at NBC, we
had a liaison between Johnny Carson and ourselves named Dave Tabbott.
He had worked at NBC and then had become close
with Johnny, and so Johnny hired him, and he was
a guy.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Who, honest to God, talked like this.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Dave came in to make sure there were no conflicts
between our show and the tonight show. He says, for example,
let's just say that Bob Hope is arrested for using
drugs and we just all just like, really, in what
universe is that a likelihood?
Speaker 4 (05:35):
And he says you can't then do jokes about Bob Hope.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
I said, okay, all right, we get that we were
not allowed to use to a monologue and we were
not allowed to have an orchestra, and we also felt
that a way to distinguish ourselves, since Johnny had the
big stars that people really.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Wanted, we would then kind of have fringe people.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
That's exactly right, and so we we sort of mined
that veins, which as we could. It was sort of
a fortunate coincidence that we were prohibited in that sense
because we weren't really interested in having mainstream people on two. Again,
I don't know how effective it was, and in terms
of programming, I don't know if people noticed the difference
and appreciated it or just thought, oh, they can't get
very good guests. And now it's completely different. It's you know,
(06:18):
Broadway cavalcade of stars, and that's fine. I have no
problem with that. We're always fighting the Internet, and they
seem to be winning in terms of the small guests,
the kid that swims out into the East River and
saves a cat, or but We're always so far downstream
from that story by the time it's all over the
internet that there's no.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Point and putting it on.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
You started in radio, Yeah, my first job was at
a radio station. You went to college, You went to
Ball State University. I studied a radio on TV.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Well, why did you study radio on TV? Academically?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
You know, I went to Ball State in those days,
graduated with I think it's a bachelor of a Bachelor
of Arts or a Bachelor of Science.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
I don't think that science probably back then.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
But yeah, no language requirement and no math requirement. I
mean it really saved me because I was academically, I
was not very good early on.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
I was very.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Lucky that I knew how to save myself. A sophomore
year in high school and I had signed up for
a public speaking course and the first day you were
supposed to get up and extemporaneously speak for five minutes.
You know, everybody's twitchy and sweaty and worried about this,
as was I. And then I got up there, the
nervousness and the twitchiness and everything dissipated. I loved it,
(07:31):
and I thought, oh my god, maybe this is a
way I can distinguish myself and I did you know.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
But had you been the entertainer as a child in.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
The household, Yeah, sure to what extent, And then my
parents wouldn't put up with it much. There was a
fine line between being always in the amusing and being
just a and being a wise ass, and we don't
like that.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
I can remember my father was big and.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Loud and noisy and always had stuff going on, and
my mother completely non demonstrated. And I can remember every
Sunday night after dinner, my dad would make popcorn and
we would sit in front of the TV and watch
Ed Sullivan.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
And Ed used to have this habit of walk, come on, now,
let's really hear it for him.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
And my mom used to say, I don't like the
way Ed begs the audience for applause. So she was
just completely stand offish by the.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Notion she was a connoisseur of television hose and then Eric.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
No, she was not a connoisseur. She resented the fact
that somebody had to be encouraged to support.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
What they had just said, that Sullivan was houring himself.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
That's exactly right, exactly, So you go to ball stadiing
and you get this degree batcher of whatever, we don't
know you, and what do you do after that?
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well, through a friend of mine at the ABC affiliate
in Indianapolis where I lived, which was sixty miles away
from where I went to school and still is just
about sixty miles, I heard that they were auditioning for
They wanted a summer announcer. So I went down there
an audition, never having been in a television studio in
my life life, and got the job. I mean it
(09:03):
was a fixed fight because I had no business getting
the job. I wasn't very good, I didn't know what
I was doing, I had no experience, and they gave
me the job. And suddenly the bulb that was turned
on my sophomore year in high school now is burning
white hot because it's are you kid me? I'm nineteen
and I'm going to be on TV? I mean, it's preposterous.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
What kind of job did you? I was the booth announcer,
So I can't believe you said that back when they
had booth announcers on CHEE. That's right, That's what I did.
These guys defined my childhood by the way.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
These were the guys the principal responsibility was to keep
the program log.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
There used to be a lot of technical glitches in television. Yeah,
who had booth announcers who would pick up the slack
when something went wrong with tape the tape.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
A station break was a huge process because you had
a control room, you had a director, you had two
or three sixteen millimeter projectors, you had a slide chain,
and you had the big two and a half inch
Ampex tape. Let's say you had four commercials in a
station break, then you'd have to roll the tape. Then
you'd have to count down and roll the film. Then
you'd have to go live to the booth to read
(10:05):
copy over a slide and went back to the film.
And it was an enormous thing. Periodically, the FCC would
come in and check your log. So it was a
big deal. At a summer job in nineteen sixty sixty eight,
I was making one hundred and fifty bucks a week.
I got to be the weekend weather man. I'd never
done that before. I got to read the news on
the morning kiddie show. And none of this would happen today.
(10:28):
You know, people are qualified to do that job now
much earlier than I. It certainly was, you know, like
this was Ryan Seacrest. University put him in any job
when he was nine or ten. He could have done
a better job than I'm doing now. But for me,
it was like, holy cow. So I go back to
school now, to my radio on TV studies, and all
of a sudden it's hey, there's Ducklips.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
We've seen him on TV. And oh my god, what
a progression that was for me. Now that was what year.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I think I started there in sixty eight, and I say,
the war is going huh yeah, And you avoid drafts
and you avoid all in those days, you get the
student deferment. And Ballsy was principally a teacher's college in
those days, and so it wanted teachers. It was chock
full of guys who wanted that student deferment and also
the teaching deferment. I was not studying teaching. So the
(11:20):
minute I graduated, I was reclassified one A. Went for
my pre draft physical in April. They said, okay, we'll
call you. And then in the meantime before I was called,
Nixon announced the National Lottery. They were going to end
the draft. They were trying to step down the Vietnamese War.
My birthday was three hundred and forty two or something
like that, at A three hundred and fifty six, So
(11:42):
that meant even though I was one A and had
my pre induction physical and was ready to go, it
was over for me. At the time, I didn't know
how lucky I was. I felt guilty because I had
friends who had gone, and I had friends who had
been in the Marine Corps, and I just felt like, well,
why meet these guys went, Why shouldn't I go? And
then it dawned on me pretty quickly. I had been
among the really really lucky.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Course. What was the political landscape like at ball Stay
when you went through, Well, it was just starting too.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I used to make jokes that they'd have student protests,
but it was to get the cafeteria cooks to wear hairnets.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
But it was.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
It was creeping in. It was not a hotbed. It
was not Madison, Wisconsin. It was Muncie, Indiana. But it
was starting and there were sit ins and demonstrations, and
you know, Bobby Kennedy had spoken on campus, So it
was starting, but I wouldn't say it was.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
It wasn't quite lit up the way it might have
been in other regions.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
More after the break, you mentioned booth announcers, and I
remember I did a YouTube search. I wanted to find
this guy that was literally the voice of my childhood
w R. And he come on and say, you know,
next one million dollar movie, Barbara stan mctells Gary Cooper
where he can go in.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Ball of Fire? And he just said this voice it was.
It just haunted me.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Well, that's interesting you mentioned that guy I had the
little kid voice from Indiana. I wasn't that guy, but
I still had to do the job. And I can't
impress upon you enough how tedious it is to sit
there for eight hours watching programming and logging everything that happens.
If you lose audio, you have to log that. If
you lose video, you have to log that. You have
to log sign on, sign off, every commercial, every station break.
(13:20):
And at first I was scared, silly, but then, like
everything else, you get accustomed to it and you become blase.
And so I would just start wandering the building. You know,
it was so embarrassing. They would will a booth announcer,
please report to the announced booth. Oh my god, I've
missed the so and so the main announcer was a
guy named Rob Stone. Tremendous voice and a hopeless alcoholic,
(13:41):
I mean, a real alcoholic. I go hand in hand,
don't they, Yeah, kind of certainly. In those days it
was not uncommon. He would come in and he would
bring a pint with him, and so in the spirit
of this, we who were working the sign off shift,
we would always send somebody out for beer. And we
would be at the station late at night signing off,
and my off and the director and whomever else was there,
(14:02):
we'd be drinking beer.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Oh my, was this fun.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
In those days you would do a five minute new
summary before sign off night cap news, and then you
would do the broadcast statement. You'd read that over the
slide of the station, and then they would go to
the national anthem with the waving Club. One night, a
guy in the props department said, I can reconstruct exactly
the station is pictured on the slide.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
We can make it blow up.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
So as you're as you're reading the I thank you
and good night, and why not tune in WLW overnight
and blah blah this and so until tomorrow, good night
and good luck. I have the thing blow And so
we did Oh god. We were proud of ourselves, you know,
we really thought we had done something.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Jeez.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Nobody ever said anything. No, it was bizarre. Nobody got fired.
Nobody asked a question about it.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
It was this cult of four or five guys who
had pulled this off, and we just thought, well, this
is one it was fun, but two you wanted but no,
nobody nobody said anything.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
But but what's interesting is from school and then doing
the job and so forth, and the booth thing the
comedy Gland is secreting through the entire time.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Yeah, what are you doing for that?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Meaning other than blowing up the studio and the sign
off writing.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yes, I was looking for any outlet, and it came
for me doing the weather. I knew nothing about weather.
And you'd go downstairs and they'd have the ap machine
and the map would come over, the national map, and
you would go to the big magnetic board in the
studio and you put the low system, and you put
the high system, and you put the occluded front, and
you put the rain showers, and so it told you
everything anytime at all that I could monkey with at
(15:34):
I was very happy.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
I can remember two episodes. One I was.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Had forecast sonny and dry, and we go off the
air and blah blah, and I go outside this this
is horrible thundershower. The rain is coming down in sheets.
And I was just twenty feet away, just oblivious of this.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Dangerous monsoon.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Yes, coming through, one of these violent Midwestern summer thunderstorms
coming through, attacking the station. I got to be well
known because this Sunday Night show was on after the
ABC Sunday Night Movie, and in those days, that was
big programming. Yeah, we got a bunch of complaints. And
this was when people were wearing bell bottom pants. I
(16:14):
don't think you could buy regular pants. Got a lot
of calls about he's either not wearing underpants or he
needs to wear underpants. That's how I distinguished myself. Do
you want to clear that up now? Were you wearing underpants?
Speaker 4 (16:26):
DearS?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
I was wearing underpants. It was Indianapolis. We're not talked
to go out without our under Americans. It's whatever problem
was perceived was not mine, I assure you.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
And then where do you go from there in terms
of underpants? And well, if you wish.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
I got tired of sitting in the booth and tired
of working weekends, and also they didn't want me there.
They would keep bringing in auditions for my job. That
really hurt my feelings. But I couldn't argue with him
because I didn't know what I was doing. But the
accumulative effect of being on TV a lot there, We'll
get this memo once from the research department, and of
all of the people, the anchor team and whomever else,
(17:02):
I had the highest Q rating of anybody there, and
it was only by accident, really, So I started looking
for a job, couldn't get hired out of the market.
Some people I knew were coming in to start up
a talk radio station, so I went to work at
the new talk radio station in the format it was
news Talksports WNTS. When I resigned to quit give my
(17:23):
notice to the general manager. The guy sad and it
chilled me at the time. He said, really, you're leaving
this TV station to go work for a brand new
radio station And I said yeah, and he said you
will never be heard of again. So I went to
the station, worked there for a year, realized that I
had to make a move. Nobody would listen. It was
a daytime station. This was tremendous. They had a daytime license,
(17:44):
which meant the radio station come on when the sun
came up and went off when the sun went down.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Literally.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah, And in the winter we were off at three
forty five in the afternoon. I had the mid day shift.
I'd come in at noon and two hours later I'd
be going home. It was joy afternoon, Yes, what was
signing off? And then in the summer, conversely, you were
on the like nine thirty or ten. It was awful.
It was a watergate and people assumed, well, the guy's
got a talk show on the radio. I'll bet he
(18:12):
knows everything there is to know about Watergate. And I
knew nothing, and people wouldn't call in, and I'd have
to read endless pages of wire copy. I remember reading
it a sorry about Gordon stratchin str a c ch an.
His name kept coming up, a special Council, so and so,
Gordon Stratchen, advisor of the White House, Gordon Stratchen. Finally
the phones lighted up and I, thank god, did I
(18:33):
say yes? He says, it's not Stratching, it's Strawn. You're
mispronouncing the guy's name. I said, okay, thanks you havnyanks
no click buzz so there you go.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Were you ambitious during this time? Did you have an ambition? Yeah?
I wanted to. I really thought. I really thought I
could write half hours situation comedies. I thought I could.
What did you watch? Well?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
In my childhood it was completely different. It would have
been stuff like Saturday Morning Nonsense. Then as I grew older,
you'd get to Mayberry, the Andy Griffith Show, Ozzy and
Harriet Nelson, the Nelson's and that kind of stuff. And
then later on in those days, it was all the
Mary Tyler Moore things, the Bob Newhart Show, on the
Mary Tyler Moore Show. And I really thought, oh, I
can write one of those Mary Tyler Moore shows, And
(19:15):
it turned out I couldn't. As you know, there's a
template for writing those things. They use the template because
it's successful. And if you don't know the template and
you think you can make a better version of it,
it's a very foreign object to them. To you, you think, look,
I've improved on the template, but they don't want that.
They want something to work. Yes, that's right. I mean
(19:36):
we're talking about Mary Tyler Moore. That's pretty good stuff.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Sure, smart And you're in LA at that time.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
No, still in Indianapolis, and I would be sending scripts
and looking for an agent. Finally a guy said, yeah,
if you come to Los Angeles, he said, I'll be
your agent. So with that encouragement, I just left. And
I don't know about you, but you know your friends say, okay,
here you can meet with so and so, and you
can meet mel Blank's son, you can meet with him,
and I this one and I know that one, and so.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
You go out there with high hopes.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
I guess it was like the Pioneers and the kind
of Stoga wagon and they run out of beans. You know,
they're in Salt Lake and they got nothing to neat.
So within the first week you run through all of
your appointments and then you got nothing.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Then you're a shanghaied. That's right, You're just you're just
on the shoals there in LA. I remember when I
went to LA. I did a soap opera at thirty Rock.
The show was about to go off the air, and
I'll never forget this guy that was the producer. You
were in the hallway and they asked me to extend
my contract for a few months, and he says that
line to me. He says, what do you think you're
gonna do? Go out to Hollywood become a star in
(20:36):
the movies. I'm walking down the hallie, dude.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Listen to me, come back here. You you don't walk
away from me and I walk away from the guy
and I go to La. Now were you ever haunted
by that? Did you? Honestly?
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Did you?
Speaker 4 (20:48):
Did you?
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Because in my case, I thought the guy was. I said,
oh yeah, I haven't considered that.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Of course you do. Did you ever think you were
going to be?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I mean, I don't want to get you know, crass
about it, but you live a very very good life.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
You've been an enormously successful man. Did you ever dream
you would be as successful as you are?
Speaker 3 (21:07):
No? Never, No, And I'll tell you the same for you,
same for most people in this uh in show business.
You're just lucky enough to get to do exactly what
you want to do all your life. So that's the success,
you know.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
I always thought there was some commission that was going
to come to my door of my apartment I was
living in West Hollywood, and they were not or they're
going to where the Motion Picture Acting Commission. And we've
got the reports, say mister balbmon, we're going to take.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
You to theirport.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
By the way, I think you're not going to get
into I know the origin of this is is your
personal fear. But I think that commission is not a
bad idea and long overdue, honest to God. Can we
get that up and on its feet?
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Can we get a bill?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
I remember there was a guy, a writer for the
Old Tonight Show, somebody coin his His listing in the
white pages was say it's Marty Cohen. It was not
Marty Cohen, Marty Cohen, president of show Business.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
I mean, oh, that's lovely. Were you Were you doing
stand up ever in Indiana? No, never did it.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
In fact, one of the things that I didn't like
doing was when I was at the radio station. Part
of the deal was we just sold a thing to
Kroger grocery stores. But part of the deal is we
want you to go out there and m see the
so and so on so, and I hated it, and
I finally told the guy, said I can't do this.
So one of my big built in fears was getting
up in front of people that I didn't know on
trying to hold their attention. Let alone be funny, but
(22:25):
for me. The road map to pursue was handed to
you via Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show. They would
have comics on. It would be David Brenner and they
would say, and there'll be appearing at the Comedy Store.
It seemed to be that the connection between the Comedy
Store and the Tonight Show was pretty close.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
So even though I mind that facility, that particular face.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah, it was the farm system for the Comedy Store,
and great guys were coming out and getting on and
Steve Landsberg and on and on.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
I say on and on because I can't remember the name.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
So I just yeah, even though I wanted to be
a writer, because I didn't have the courage to tell
my family and friends that what I really want to
do is, you know, somehow get famous and be on TV.
So when I went out there the first monday I
was in California when I moved in seventy five, I
wrote down some stuff and went to the Comedy Store
and got on stage.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Had to go. It was it was awful.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
I'd never been in a darkened room of the spotlight
and it was just like a train coming at me.
So I did my little five minutes from wrote left,
and then the owner of the place.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
Yeah, you should come back and do some more.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
So I thought, are you kidding men? She said, no,
you can MC So I came back and I was
the mc fantas.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Yeah, yeah, Derek great.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
So that was nineteen seventy five, nineteen seventy eight. Three
years later I was on the Tonight Show. That worked
so much better than it should have. I think it
must be harder now too.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
It wasn't three years of just working that room and
working the mic and working stand up.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
Yeah, but it was.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I mean it was fun because every night you go
there and you were hanging around guys Jay Leno and
Robin Williams and George Miller and Tom Dreesen and Jeff
Altman and anybody now who is you're aware of you
would see every night and it was great fun. I mean,
my god, it was great fun. Didn't make any difference
what you did during the day. You knew that when
it got dark you'd be on Sunset Boulevard.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
The place would be packed.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
And in those days, the only room she had was
this tiny, little original room and it was next door
to Art Labelle's. He would have a fifties dance party
in the next room on the weekends, and you would
get a lot of gang guys going to art Labelle's
fifties guys.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
No, it was gang then biker barrio. Oh okay, is
that all right? Yeah, Lowriders, Yeah okay.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
And one night a friend of mine, Johnny Dark, is
on stage and a guy comes up and he's got
a gun and he's standing next to Johnny while Johnny's
doing his little singing impressions of whomever, and he had
to quietly, you know, talk his way out of the
guy using the gun. And it was exciting, souse. I mean,
Richard Pryor would come in, and Freddie Prinz would come in,
(25:11):
So you say, yeah, night after night.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
But still in all how could that not be fun?
So did Carson find you there?
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Well, they had a guy, you know, they had a
team of guys when I was there that would come
in and in the meantime I got on this Mary
Tyler Moore show to write and perform, and oh that
was it was me and Michael Keaton, Jim Hampton and
Dick Sean and Swuusy Kurtz and Julie Khan.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Judy Khn, Judy Cohn, thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
So from that show, they said, oh, well we'll put
you on because you're on that show. You can come
out and do stand up and then you go sit
down and talk to Johnny. And without that, you never
know what the formula is. You could be on nine
times and never get to sit down with Johnny. You
could be on for six years and ever, or you
could be bumped forty times. But because of this, oh
(25:59):
and he's a hearing on the so and so show
to Mary Tyler Moore show, I got to sit down
with Johnny and that was again, that was craziness. That
was That was another one of those you know what,
Oh yeah, it's such a jolt. The material is so committed.
You don't have to think about anything. You just have
to start talking and it all comes out. The adrenaline
(26:20):
takes days to burn out of you. Holy God, you're
sitting next to Johnny Carson. I mean, you just can't
believe it. I mean to me, and I think most
guys my age who were out there doing that one.
The fact that it worked. You know, really, I drove
in a pickup truck with my wife to La and
three years later, I'm sitting next to Johnny Carson. That's
not supposed to happen, you know, it's just not supposed
(26:41):
to happen, but it did.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Now do you think that Carson was someone who do
you think he saw himself?
Speaker 4 (26:46):
And you? Do you think he saw the midwestern boy?
I don't know, Jean and you, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
I mean, it was so easy for other people to
make that comparison, and that seemed to be the formula.
But I don't know if he felt that way or not.
I don't I can't answer that. And then what happened
after that, Well, your life changed immediately. Suddenly you weren't
just a guy who was at the comedy store. You
were the guy that had been on with the Carson.
(27:11):
And then I was on I think two or three
more times, and then I started hosting the show, and
again that was another you know, you just feel like
it's like it's like winning the World Series or your
rookie season.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
What's the gap of time between when you first sat
down with him when you started hosting.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
The first time I was on was November of seventy eight,
and I think I hosted it was Monday night opposite
the Academy Awards so.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
It was the good Spring. Yeah, in April, April, March April,
y know, things to Do party, Yeah, and it was
I was just frozen. I was just frozen. I can
remember Peter le Sally coming up to me during the
commercial break and he said, you've got to loosen up.
You've got to loosen up, and they get that. Thanks
(27:54):
for that tip Page forty.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
I remember the first night I was on the Tonight
Show and I I'm telling you, for guys at the
Comedy Store, this was it. This was like people lining
up to squeeze through a funnel, you know.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
This was it. The Tonight Show.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Fighting and competition and backstabbing and bad mouth to get
to the Tonight Show is going to make or break you.
If if you don't do well, you'll never be heard
of again. There's no such thing as a guy bombing
his first time on the Tonight Show and then having
a delightful career that just doesn't happen.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
You're gone. So there's a lot of pressure.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
So I'm getting ready to go out there just behind
the curtain. And my manager at the time, Buddy Moore,
who was with Jack Rollins and John Charles Joffey. They
handled Robin Williams and Woody Allen and Dick Cabot and
some other guys. So that was a big deal for
me to be with these people. And Buddy and I
nice enough guy, but we never never saw eyed eye
(28:47):
on much. And I think a lot of it was
my immaturity about show business, or just ignorance.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
Not immaturity. I had no time to be immature. I
was ignorant.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
So we're standing there and Johnny saying our next he
asked as a young blah blah blah blah, and Buddy
says to me, and Buddy always whispered. Everything was a whisperer, Buddy,
he says. Robin got popeye, and I said, what are
you talking about? His final words to me is, I'm
going to let the night show for the first time
telling me about a booking for.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
One of his other clients, you know. And I just
never got over that.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
This is Alec Boordman, and I'm talking with David Letterman
more in a minute.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
You know, you're a lot mellower now than you were.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yes, absolutely, And you'd say that when you did the show,
no matter how crazy or how wired you and the
whole experience was of the early show and you said
running around doing all the taking and all the other
bits and so forth, and contests and everything.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
But I mean, just your own nature.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Seems like there was a kind of a an edge
to it that you've lost. But you seem like you
really just become like so much more. What's the word charming?
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Well, I don't know by the rule, but I know
exactly what you're talking about, And the fact that it's
noticeable by others is an indication that maybe I'm on
the right track because, to the exclusion of every other
thing in my life, it was the success of this show.
As a result, I waited to have a child twenty
years too long. I just didn't do anything else. It
(30:29):
was the show and it had to be the show.
And if it wasn't the show, then find out a
way to make it the show.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
And did you come from that world?
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Like Lauren, for example, says to me he lives a
life where his creator was work is play, Like we
have this interesting jobs, you know, you don't stop working
to so that's.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Part of it.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
And that is one of the great residuals of you know,
you're around all these funny people and you have silly ideas,
and you have silly conversations in life yourself sick. But
for me, it was like, oh my god, you know,
if I fail at this, it's all gone away. You know,
if you fail at this, you get to get at
the end of the line, and the line keeps getting longer,
so to the exclusion of other important things, other aspects
(31:06):
of life. I pursued the show. Then that changed, finally changed.
Did you want it to change? No, at the time,
I didn't. I didn't know there was another way to
live your life. I thought you had to keep banging
your head and banging your head and banging your head.
And I kept saying to myself, this is what they say.
It's like pushing a rock up hill. It's like pushing
a rock up hill, and one day everything will change,
(31:27):
everything will be great, you'll succeed, and everything will well.
It never it never quite worked that way for me.
I think, well, not too difficult to assume that this
is one of the reasons I had the quintuple bypass surgery.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
And then my doctor he said, you know, he says,
you don't have to be this way flogging yourself. Yeah,
he said, you can delegate yeah, or you can. He says,
there are they've made pharmaceutical advancements. Here, you can help yourself.
And I said, no, no, no, no, I can't because
that would ruin this and that would ruin that. And
and then Regina got we were able to get pregnant.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
I went into this stark, raving anxious depression when she
got pregnant. Yeah, why well I was fine with it.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
I thought, if not now when you know, and she
had wanted to have kids, like I said, fifteen twenty
years earlier. And so this is a very complicated, uninteresting story,
and it has it has to do with being on
the shingle, having shingles, and being on exotic pain medication
for the shingles, and getting fed up with the exotic
pain medication and saying to the pain doctor I'm done,
(32:33):
I'm not taking it anymore. And he said, well, you know,
a lot of those things you can't just I said,
forget it. Click and I stopped taking these things, and
within a couple of days I just turned into this
twitching Unicell altered states.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
Yeah, it was very odd.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
And the guy said, well, you're in an anxious depression
and lucid you know, there are things we can do
here to help you out, and I said, I'll try
anything because I can't go on like this. And so
it was a small dose of an SSRI. Suddenly I realized,
I can have myself, my personality, the person that I've known,
and then lose what was detracting, what was hurting, what
(33:13):
was actually an impediment, groom.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Out the things that you wanted to groom out. And
when I came to the show business, and I was
in Los Angeles sleeping, and I was like Gomer Pyle,
I mean, I swear to God, I came to work
in this. I really I have trouble that you were
no really, but I don't mean in terms of lacking
any sophistication. But they would give me. I'll never forget
the first job I got. I go to an audition.
I'd done that the soap in New York. And they
(33:37):
paid you, you know, a very small amount of money,
and I thought I was Rockefeller. They paid you four
hundred and fifty bucks a day. I was the richest
member of my family. My dad was a school teacher
with six kids. He didn't make any money. And I
go out to LA and I'll never forget. But I
go to the old Lauramar, which is now Sony and
I go to the gate at Lauramar. I say, Alec Baldwin.
He's like, you know, here's your map. You're parking and
(33:59):
building sixty seven, ninth floor, slot red twelve.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
And they sent me to like, you know, the Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
I gotta go all the way and I go, Now,
where's the office I'm going to for the meeting? He
goes right over there, right next to me. So I go,
I park the car, trot all the way down, do
an audition for the show. Not's landing. I get done
and I leave the thing and no cell phones. Then
this is nineteen eighty three, and so I pull up
to a phone booth. I call my agent. It's late
in the afternoon. They're still in the office.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
He goes, how did it go? I go, how did
it go? I think it went pretty well, pretty well,
you moron. They want to hire you, And I.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Go, you're kidding me, he goes, He goes, yeah, of course,
He goes, we're making a deal right now. We're closing
the deal right now. You're gonna get twenty five for
the pilot and twelve five an episode, and I swear
to God, coming from my background, I went go, wait,
y'all won't pay me twenty five one hundred dollars for
the pilot and twelve hundred and fifty dollars per episode
every week. And he's like, no, you Maron, They're gonna
pay you twenty five thousand for the pilot and twelve thousand,
(34:57):
five hundred episode.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
And I literally urinated in my trousers.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
And I'm standing in a phone booth on the corner
of like, you know, Walker and Washington in Culver City,
and the guy tells me this, and that's when my life.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Changed for me.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
It was always you were competing against yourself. We didn't
go out and do a lot of reading.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
You know.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Sometimes I remember there was a the Jackson five had
a summer show, so they would say, we need comics,
and so they'd call the comedy store, and you know,
if Mitzie liked, you'd get to go beyond the Jackson
five show. So it was never so much of one
guy over another. Or there would be shows like the
Midnight Special or Don Kershner's Rock Concert that they would
(35:34):
routinely use comics. So there was plenty of work and
it wasn't I think as in acting as you describe
guys elbowing each other out and higher ups wanting to
step on their hands and hurt their feelings.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
But when you've done the show back from the NBC
days and now through the many years at CBS, it's
a very hermetic situation for you, and nobody bothers you,
and there's ever questions about your budget, and there's every question,
but nobody calls you. You't have to deal with that,
or do you have to fight with the network about
things like other shows too.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Well, never a fight. It's a negotiation. But we don't
have the fight. You know, if we want to do something,
we can pretty much do it. And again, what we
want to do now is far different level in scope
than we wanted to do when we're because when we
came into this show, myself and Marilyn, the writers, we
just thought, oh, America has been waiting for us. We're
going to change the face of television for America. And boy,
(36:24):
it didn't happen that way, you know, it just didn't
happen that way at all. We did a sketch on
the old Late Night Show and it was with one
of the writers Tom Gamble and it was Dale the
Psychotic page. We had to set up nine holes of
a miniature golf course. He would come in with an
NBC page blazer and he would play miniature golf, and
(36:45):
with each failing attempt on the whole, he would become
more and more psychotic. There's your comedy, America. This is
what you've been waiting for. Yeah, aren't you glad we're here?
Speaker 4 (36:53):
Breath?
Speaker 1 (36:55):
I love on your show. I haven't done this in
a while. I miss it because everything. I guess they
can't do this stuff all the time, and maybe this
bit is a victim of global warming. But I get
there one time and they want me to ride the
snowmobile on the roof of the building years ago. Yeah,
they're all very droll, you know. And Biff always calls
me Alex. I love that you're on the roof and snowing,
and we're on the roof of your building at snow
I'm best.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
Like, Okay, not Alex.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
You're gonna ride a snowmobile around the roof a few times.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
I'm gonna be man, I never can it and catch
you to keep you from going over the side. Is
that all right?
Speaker 3 (37:26):
All right?
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Alex.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Yeah, I'm like, great, let me go. I have danger.
You know, I love it. Elements.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Well, I was thinking about a year ago I was
looking around the ed Solovo Theater. What a tremendous stroke
of luck that was. I used to love working in
the studio, and I remember one day running into Lord Michaels.
He said to me, how long did it take you
to get used to doing a TV show in a theater?
And I knew exactly what he was saying, because to him,
TV comes out of a studio. And I always felt
(37:55):
that way myself. But I've really grown fond.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Of the theater.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
It's CBS the Theater for reasons like that and many more.
It's comfortable, it's fun, it's smells of decades and decades
and decades of show business there. There's tunnels and alleys
and rats. But it's fantastic. I mean, it's just so
versatile and so great. And also the way Hal set
it up in the beginning, it's fairly intimate. I mean,
(38:20):
you can have a pretty reasonable conversation there in this
five hundred seat room, and so I think it works
fine as a TV studio.
Speaker 4 (38:27):
Now, what's a good show for you?
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Now, well, it defines a good show for well, you know,
I think the last time you were on, I say this,
of course it, you know, suck up.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
It was a very pleasant, easy give and take in exchange.
I love it when a good, smart, funny guy just
comes right back at me, you know, in the beginning,
when he's so mean, why is he mean to everybody?
And I never thought I was being mean. I just
thought I was, you know, goofing around.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
So when you were coming on and you were going
after me, ah, that was delightful.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
For those segment producers who you work with, I mean,
it took me a while to be able to. I
mean I would do the show with you a number
of times, and the segment producers would they would say
that to you.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
They'd say to you know, no, give it back to me. Yeah,
he loves that.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Give it back to so many people, I think that
runs against their nature. Other people are ill equipped to
do that. But there are a few like yourself, And
to me, that's you know. We heading him on a
couple of weeks ago, Sean Hayes, and I hadn't seen
him in years. He had been across the street during
here we go high hoe promises or whatever that show was, Promises, promises,
(39:32):
and the kid comes out and god, he was funny.
I mean just from the jump he was funny, and
I just thought, this is fantastic, This is just great.
You know, if you can't be entertained by your own show,
you got the wrong you know, you get the wrong
part of the channel.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
So that was good.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
You live a pretty under the radar lifestyle. Do you
do that by choice? Well, a very quiet private life.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
First of all, I don't get invited many places. Secondly,
I just you know, you do the show and all
of that comes to you during the day. You know,
you have the same people at the gala, the same
people at the opening, the same people of benefit.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
Will be share with that expression of all that for you.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
So I don't feel the need to go seek that.
And secondly, like so many people, I'm uncomfortable with large
groups of strangers. I mean I think people are And
what is your downtime like? Now?
Speaker 4 (40:21):
What do you like to do?
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Well, sleep is a precious commodity. There's virtually no sleep
between my eight year old son and my two year
old dog and my wife. My wife, honest to god,
has not slept eight hours in eight years. I mean
she'll go to bed at midnight, get up at six,
so that's six hours. You can do that once or twice,
you know, like when you're eighteen and you're in the Marines.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
I'm doing that from insomnia. I have terminals. That's it.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Now, explain to me when you were in the audience
back at six A and you raise your hand and
had a question.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
What was that and how did that happen? When you
did the NBC show. Yeah, there was a woman and
she was a writer and she was.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
An associate producer on our show. She was friends with
Ackroyd and Blue She and all that original Saturday Night
Live crowd. And this woman's name was surely something and
she was a show. She's going to reach out to
us now when she hears this podcast. We have to
broadcast this section of it so we can get a
hold of her. And she was the one that came
to me and through some connection said they want you
(41:20):
to come on. Let have been to do that thing
and ask but do you remember what the bit was?
Speaker 3 (41:23):
I have no idea, but you were objecting to something.
Something had rubbed you the wrong way and was register
or complaint. That was a complaint about you and your
your taste.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
That's exactly right. Yeah, that was tremendous. That was just great.
So when you're not fighting insomnia, what is do you
like to travel? Oh? Travel?
Speaker 3 (41:41):
You do things when you have an eight year old,
as you know, when you have a child, you do
things you never thought you would do, and it's fun.
We went to Alaska a few weeks ago because it
was my birthday, and I was talking to my son
and I said, well, you know, we're thinking about maybe
going up to Alaska. This guy tells me there's a
place to ski up.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
There, and he said, oh, let's go to Alaska.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
And so I said, well, you know, we're still thinking
about it and still thinking about it. And then I
hear from Regina that now Harry has gone to school
and told everybody.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
That hey, daddy and me and mom are going to Alaska.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
And I thought, holy crap, we're going to Alaska. So
a lot of that stuff is kid driven. And you know,
I'm all for no tennis, no golf, No no tennis,
no golf, no movies. I see plenty of movies, see
all the Oh no, not at home so much it's
it's all with the kid.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
Do you find that your son. This is very common.
He pulls you into the world, into his world, and.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
You have to show up at things right and show
up at places, and everybody treats you very respectfully.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
People are there as a dad. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
The last time anything untoward happened was a Christmas party.
My wife has his friends with a very famous couple,
and I have great admiration for the couple their family.
Just I think more people should be like these people.
I just and and as a result, I'm afraid to
be around them because you know, I'm I'm ducklips and
they yeah, oh, I make myself look bad. Went to
(43:04):
a Christmas party and it was so packed that you
couldn't move. It was all vertical. Nothing happened horizontally, and
as people kind of from their positions about the apartment
spotted me, it was it was as though there was
methane gas leaking in the apartment. It was, oh no,
(43:26):
and it's the holidays, and why is he?
Speaker 2 (43:29):
No?
Speaker 4 (43:30):
Yeah, no, come on, true story. People love you. People
don't love people love you. People love you? Yeah no, no, no,
no people people. But the thing is is that that you.
You get a lot of that quotion on the job,
and then when the job's over, you want to go home.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
That's right, That's exactly right, And especially now with with
the eight year old, because you know, and I feel
stupid talking about it because I'm like the fortieth billionth
person to have a child.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
So I have I have no I have no insights.
He might claim he has no insights.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
But if David Letterman ever writes a book on parenting,
it's guaranteed to be a bestseller.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
I want to thank you for doing this. Are we done?
I don't want to be done. Isn't it time to
be done? We're done?
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Now?
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Where would a person hear this? If a person wanted
to hear this.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
This might be a good time to tell you that
you can hear other conversations at Here's the Thing dot Org.
Speaker 4 (44:22):
I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you
by iHeart Radio.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. It's summer and that means
it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing, where
the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in
our Summer Staff Picks series. Next up is our producer
Kathy Russo.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Thanks Alec. Before Stephen Colbert, there was David Lehnerman. For
thirty three years, David hosted a late night TV talk show.
He is the longest serving late show host in TV history.
David is my pick because back in the day, when
I could stay up late at night watching TV, I
thought he was the best host. I loved his dry,
(00:45):
sarcastic sense of humor and how he paid attention to
the details. He was engaging, funny and original. When David
came on Here's a Thing, I met him in the
lobby of the building we recorded in that day, the
elevator happened to break down. David said, no problem, if
we have to take the stairs. He wasn't upset and
(01:05):
started asking me questions about myself. For a brief moment,
I felt like a guest on the David Letterman Show
as he followed me up five flights of stairs. Enjoy
the conversation with my two favorite host.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
When David Letterman started Late Night in nineteen eighty two,
the New York Times said he was quote more of
an acquired taste than most comedians on a quote.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Now, it's time, ladies and gentlemen, for a segment of
this program that we like to call stupid petricks.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
We grew up on Johnny, a true gentleman who could
deliver a smooth setup and punchline, occasionally helped by a wink.
But suddenly with Late Night, the ultimate punchline was the
fact that some gap toothed, unknown smart ass even had
a show. His pet tricks were stupid on purpose, and
so was he. Tune in and you might catch him
(02:00):
lowering himself into a water tank wearing a suit made
from three thousan four hundred Alka Seltzer templates.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
We have the oxygen here, and I have been asked
about twelve times by various members of the staff to
remind you don't try this at home.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
I know you have the nine hundred gallon tank, I
know you have the oxygen.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
I know you have the suit of oxa Seltzer and
a staff of one hundred people.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Who Dave seized every opportunity to remind us that his
big network show was a ridiculous waste of time. But
if you were in on the joke, and a lot
of people were, it was also a stroke of genius.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Here's a little something the boys that Late Night R
and D have been fooling around with.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
We call it sky bowling.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Today, David Letterman is an institution and has forever changed
American comedy. Before Letterman, the extended drum roll was sincere.
After Letterman, it would never be without at least a
hint of irony. His show changed America, and after thirty years,
Dave's changed as well.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
I do a lot less work than I used to do.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I just got to a point where I have no
patience for meetings, so I don't go to any meetings.
I can't make decisions anymore. I don't like making decisions.
You know, we have a dozen producers. They can have
the meetings and they can make the decisions, and I'll
just come down and somebody tell me what to do
and we go.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
And it was different before.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah, I used to be involved in everything big and large.
I don't think that was necessarily good, But at the
time I thought it was what was required when you
had your own show. You had to had to have
everything you know in your view and certainly influence each
little choice.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
The guests that are on the show. Do you still
help select the guests throw or someone else takes care?
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Yeah, people who select them.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Occasionally I will think of, Oh, I heard about somebody
that did so and so.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Could we look into that and this and that? Very little,
very little, I mean, these other people do that.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
We've have the good luck of these people havn't been
together for a long, long, long long time.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
They all know what the expectation is.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Of course, when you're in that situation, the bad version
of it is, oh God, it's the same thing. It's
the assembly line. We're just building the same car over
and over and over again. You feel that way sometimes
Sometimes I'm the biggest defender of that. I'm sixty five.
I don't have the energy I had when I was
thirty five. There are certain things I like about the
show now that I like more than before, such as
I like talking to people and the opportunity to learn something,
(04:20):
or if I have a natural curiosity about somebody, I
really look forward to that. Or if I have something
that I know is going to be silly and stupid
and I want my authorship out there on this something
silly and stupid, then I get eager about that. But
in the old days, we just were going twenty hours
a day. We'd be out on the streets, we'd be
(04:41):
going to New Jersey, we'd be up all night shooting,
and there would be contests, And I can't do that
show anymore.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
The more successful the show has become, and the more
successful you would become, do you find that in terms
of programming the show you have to rely more on stars.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Is there a kind of person It's completely different.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
In the beginning the Late Night Show at NBC, we
had a liaison between Johnny Carson and ourselves named Dave Tabbott.
He had worked at NBC and then had become close
with Johnny, and so Johnny hired him, and he was
a guy.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Who, honest to God, talked like this.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Dave came in to make sure there were no conflicts
between our show and the tonight show. He says, for example,
let's just say that Bob Hope is arrested for using
drugs and we just all just like, really, in what
universe is that a likelihood?
Speaker 4 (05:35):
And he says you can't then do jokes about Bob Hope.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
I said, okay, all right, we get that we were
not allowed to use to a monologue and we were
not allowed to have an orchestra, and we also felt
that a way to distinguish ourselves, since Johnny had the
big stars that people really.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Wanted, we would then kind of have fringe people.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
That's exactly right, and so we we sort of mined
that veins, which as we could. It was sort of
a fortunate coincidence that we were prohibited in that sense
because we weren't really interested in having mainstream people on two. Again,
I don't know how effective it was, and in terms
of programming, I don't know if people noticed the difference
and appreciated it or just thought, oh, they can't get
very good guests. And now it's completely different. It's you know,
(06:18):
Broadway cavalcade of stars, and that's fine. I have no
problem with that. We're always fighting the Internet, and they
seem to be winning in terms of the small guests,
the kid that swims out into the East River and
saves a cat, or but We're always so far downstream
from that story by the time it's all over the
internet that there's no.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Point and putting it on.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
You started in radio, Yeah, my first job was at
a radio station. You went to college, You went to
Ball State University. I studied a radio on TV.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Well, why did you study radio on TV? Academically?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
You know, I went to Ball State in those days,
graduated with I think it's a bachelor of a Bachelor
of Arts or a Bachelor of Science.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
I don't think that science probably back then.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
But yeah, no language requirement and no math requirement. I
mean it really saved me because I was academically, I
was not very good early on.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
I was very.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Lucky that I knew how to save myself. A sophomore
year in high school and I had signed up for
a public speaking course and the first day you were
supposed to get up and extemporaneously speak for five minutes.
You know, everybody's twitchy and sweaty and worried about this,
as was I. And then I got up there, the
nervousness and the twitchiness and everything dissipated. I loved it,
(07:31):
and I thought, oh my god, maybe this is a
way I can distinguish myself and I did you know.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
But had you been the entertainer as a child in.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
The household, Yeah, sure to what extent, And then my
parents wouldn't put up with it much. There was a
fine line between being always in the amusing and being
just a and being a wise ass, and we don't
like that.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
I can remember my father was big and.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Loud and noisy and always had stuff going on, and
my mother completely non demonstrated. And I can remember every
Sunday night after dinner, my dad would make popcorn and
we would sit in front of the TV and watch
Ed Sullivan.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
And Ed used to have this habit of walk, come on, now,
let's really hear it for him.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
And my mom used to say, I don't like the
way Ed begs the audience for applause. So she was
just completely stand offish by the.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Notion she was a connoisseur of television hose and then Eric.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
No, she was not a connoisseur. She resented the fact
that somebody had to be encouraged to support.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
What they had just said, that Sullivan was houring himself.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
That's exactly right, exactly, So you go to ball stadiing
and you get this degree batcher of whatever, we don't
know you, and what do you do after that?
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well, through a friend of mine at the ABC affiliate
in Indianapolis where I lived, which was sixty miles away
from where I went to school and still is just
about sixty miles, I heard that they were auditioning for
They wanted a summer announcer. So I went down there
an audition, never having been in a television studio in
my life life, and got the job. I mean it
(09:03):
was a fixed fight because I had no business getting
the job. I wasn't very good, I didn't know what
I was doing, I had no experience, and they gave
me the job. And suddenly the bulb that was turned
on my sophomore year in high school now is burning
white hot because it's are you kid me? I'm nineteen
and I'm going to be on TV? I mean, it's preposterous.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
What kind of job did you? I was the booth announcer,
So I can't believe you said that back when they
had booth announcers on CHEE. That's right, That's what I did.
These guys defined my childhood by the way.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
These were the guys the principal responsibility was to keep
the program log.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
There used to be a lot of technical glitches in television. Yeah,
who had booth announcers who would pick up the slack
when something went wrong with tape the tape.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
A station break was a huge process because you had
a control room, you had a director, you had two
or three sixteen millimeter projectors, you had a slide chain,
and you had the big two and a half inch
Ampex tape. Let's say you had four commercials in a
station break, then you'd have to roll the tape. Then
you'd have to count down and roll the film. Then
you'd have to go live to the booth to read
(10:05):
copy over a slide and went back to the film.
And it was an enormous thing. Periodically, the FCC would
come in and check your log. So it was a
big deal. At a summer job in nineteen sixty sixty eight,
I was making one hundred and fifty bucks a week.
I got to be the weekend weather man. I'd never
done that before. I got to read the news on
the morning kiddie show. And none of this would happen today.
(10:28):
You know, people are qualified to do that job now
much earlier than I. It certainly was, you know, like
this was Ryan Seacrest. University put him in any job
when he was nine or ten. He could have done
a better job than I'm doing now. But for me,
it was like, holy cow. So I go back to
school now, to my radio on TV studies, and all
of a sudden it's hey, there's Ducklips.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
We've seen him on TV. And oh my god, what
a progression that was for me. Now that was what year.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I think I started there in sixty eight, and I say,
the war is going huh yeah, And you avoid drafts
and you avoid all in those days, you get the
student deferment. And Ballsy was principally a teacher's college in
those days, and so it wanted teachers. It was chock
full of guys who wanted that student deferment and also
the teaching deferment. I was not studying teaching. So the
(11:20):
minute I graduated, I was reclassified one A. Went for
my pre draft physical in April. They said, okay, we'll
call you. And then in the meantime before I was called,
Nixon announced the National Lottery. They were going to end
the draft. They were trying to step down the Vietnamese War.
My birthday was three hundred and forty two or something
like that, at A three hundred and fifty six, So
(11:42):
that meant even though I was one A and had
my pre induction physical and was ready to go, it
was over for me. At the time, I didn't know
how lucky I was. I felt guilty because I had
friends who had gone, and I had friends who had
been in the Marine Corps, and I just felt like, well,
why meet these guys went, Why shouldn't I go? And
then it dawned on me pretty quickly. I had been
among the really really lucky.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Course. What was the political landscape like at ball Stay
when you went through, Well, it was just starting too.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I used to make jokes that they'd have student protests,
but it was to get the cafeteria cooks to wear hairnets.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
But it was.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
It was creeping in. It was not a hotbed. It
was not Madison, Wisconsin. It was Muncie, Indiana. But it
was starting and there were sit ins and demonstrations, and
you know, Bobby Kennedy had spoken on campus, So it
was starting, but I wouldn't say it was.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
It wasn't quite lit up the way it might have
been in other regions.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
More after the break, you mentioned booth announcers, and I
remember I did a YouTube search. I wanted to find
this guy that was literally the voice of my childhood
w R. And he come on and say, you know,
next one million dollar movie, Barbara stan mctells Gary Cooper
where he can go in.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Ball of Fire? And he just said this voice it was.
It just haunted me.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Well, that's interesting you mentioned that guy I had the
little kid voice from Indiana. I wasn't that guy, but
I still had to do the job. And I can't
impress upon you enough how tedious it is to sit
there for eight hours watching programming and logging everything that happens.
If you lose audio, you have to log that. If
you lose video, you have to log that. You have
to log sign on, sign off, every commercial, every station break.
(13:20):
And at first I was scared, silly, but then, like
everything else, you get accustomed to it and you become blase.
And so I would just start wandering the building. You know,
it was so embarrassing. They would will a booth announcer,
please report to the announced booth. Oh my god, I've
missed the so and so the main announcer was a
guy named Rob Stone. Tremendous voice and a hopeless alcoholic,
(13:41):
I mean, a real alcoholic. I go hand in hand,
don't they, Yeah, kind of certainly. In those days it
was not uncommon. He would come in and he would
bring a pint with him, and so in the spirit
of this, we who were working the sign off shift,
we would always send somebody out for beer. And we
would be at the station late at night signing off,
and my off and the director and whomever else was there,
(14:02):
we'd be drinking beer.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Oh my, was this fun.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
In those days you would do a five minute new
summary before sign off night cap news, and then you
would do the broadcast statement. You'd read that over the
slide of the station, and then they would go to
the national anthem with the waving Club. One night, a
guy in the props department said, I can reconstruct exactly
the station is pictured on the slide.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
We can make it blow up.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
So as you're as you're reading the I thank you
and good night, and why not tune in WLW overnight
and blah blah this and so until tomorrow, good night
and good luck. I have the thing blow And so
we did Oh god. We were proud of ourselves, you know,
we really thought we had done something.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Jeez.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Nobody ever said anything. No, it was bizarre. Nobody got fired.
Nobody asked a question about it.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
It was this cult of four or five guys who
had pulled this off, and we just thought, well, this
is one it was fun, but two you wanted but no,
nobody nobody said anything.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
But but what's interesting is from school and then doing
the job and so forth, and the booth thing the
comedy Gland is secreting through the entire time.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Yeah, what are you doing for that?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Meaning other than blowing up the studio and the sign
off writing.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yes, I was looking for any outlet, and it came
for me doing the weather. I knew nothing about weather.
And you'd go downstairs and they'd have the ap machine
and the map would come over, the national map, and
you would go to the big magnetic board in the
studio and you put the low system, and you put
the high system, and you put the occluded front, and
you put the rain showers, and so it told you
everything anytime at all that I could monkey with at
(15:34):
I was very happy.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
I can remember two episodes. One I was.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Had forecast sonny and dry, and we go off the
air and blah blah, and I go outside this this
is horrible thundershower. The rain is coming down in sheets.
And I was just twenty feet away, just oblivious of this.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Dangerous monsoon.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Yes, coming through, one of these violent Midwestern summer thunderstorms
coming through, attacking the station. I got to be well
known because this Sunday Night show was on after the
ABC Sunday Night Movie, and in those days, that was
big programming. Yeah, we got a bunch of complaints. And
this was when people were wearing bell bottom pants. I
(16:14):
don't think you could buy regular pants. Got a lot
of calls about he's either not wearing underpants or he
needs to wear underpants. That's how I distinguished myself. Do
you want to clear that up now? Were you wearing underpants?
Speaker 4 (16:26):
DearS?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
I was wearing underpants. It was Indianapolis. We're not talked
to go out without our under Americans. It's whatever problem
was perceived was not mine, I assure you.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
And then where do you go from there in terms
of underpants? And well, if you wish.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
I got tired of sitting in the booth and tired
of working weekends, and also they didn't want me there.
They would keep bringing in auditions for my job. That
really hurt my feelings. But I couldn't argue with him
because I didn't know what I was doing. But the
accumulative effect of being on TV a lot there, We'll
get this memo once from the research department, and of
all of the people, the anchor team and whomever else,
(17:02):
I had the highest Q rating of anybody there, and
it was only by accident, really, So I started looking
for a job, couldn't get hired out of the market.
Some people I knew were coming in to start up
a talk radio station, so I went to work at
the new talk radio station in the format it was
news Talksports WNTS. When I resigned to quit give my
(17:23):
notice to the general manager. The guy sad and it
chilled me at the time. He said, really, you're leaving
this TV station to go work for a brand new
radio station And I said yeah, and he said you
will never be heard of again. So I went to
the station, worked there for a year, realized that I
had to make a move. Nobody would listen. It was
a daytime station. This was tremendous. They had a daytime license,
(17:44):
which meant the radio station come on when the sun
came up and went off when the sun went down.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Literally.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah, And in the winter we were off at three
forty five in the afternoon. I had the mid day shift.
I'd come in at noon and two hours later I'd
be going home. It was joy afternoon, Yes, what was
signing off? And then in the summer, conversely, you were
on the like nine thirty or ten. It was awful.
It was a watergate and people assumed, well, the guy's
got a talk show on the radio. I'll bet he
(18:12):
knows everything there is to know about Watergate. And I
knew nothing, and people wouldn't call in, and I'd have
to read endless pages of wire copy. I remember reading
it a sorry about Gordon stratchin str a c ch an.
His name kept coming up, a special Council, so and so,
Gordon Stratchen, advisor of the White House, Gordon Stratchen. Finally
the phones lighted up and I, thank god, did I
(18:33):
say yes? He says, it's not Stratching, it's Strawn. You're
mispronouncing the guy's name. I said, okay, thanks you havnyanks
no click buzz so there you go.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Were you ambitious during this time? Did you have an ambition? Yeah?
I wanted to. I really thought. I really thought I
could write half hours situation comedies. I thought I could.
What did you watch? Well?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
In my childhood it was completely different. It would have
been stuff like Saturday Morning Nonsense. Then as I grew older,
you'd get to Mayberry, the Andy Griffith Show, Ozzy and
Harriet Nelson, the Nelson's and that kind of stuff. And
then later on in those days, it was all the
Mary Tyler Moore things, the Bob Newhart Show, on the
Mary Tyler Moore Show. And I really thought, oh, I
can write one of those Mary Tyler Moore shows, And
(19:15):
it turned out I couldn't. As you know, there's a
template for writing those things. They use the template because
it's successful. And if you don't know the template and
you think you can make a better version of it,
it's a very foreign object to them. To you, you think, look,
I've improved on the template, but they don't want that.
They want something to work. Yes, that's right. I mean
(19:36):
we're talking about Mary Tyler Moore. That's pretty good stuff.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Sure, smart And you're in LA at that time.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
No, still in Indianapolis, and I would be sending scripts
and looking for an agent. Finally a guy said, yeah,
if you come to Los Angeles, he said, I'll be
your agent. So with that encouragement, I just left. And
I don't know about you, but you know your friends say, okay,
here you can meet with so and so, and you
can meet mel Blank's son, you can meet with him,
and I this one and I know that one, and so.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
You go out there with high hopes.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
I guess it was like the Pioneers and the kind
of Stoga wagon and they run out of beans. You know,
they're in Salt Lake and they got nothing to neat.
So within the first week you run through all of
your appointments and then you got nothing.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Then you're a shanghaied. That's right, You're just you're just
on the shoals there in LA. I remember when I
went to LA. I did a soap opera at thirty Rock.
The show was about to go off the air, and
I'll never forget this guy that was the producer. You
were in the hallway and they asked me to extend
my contract for a few months, and he says that
line to me. He says, what do you think you're
gonna do? Go out to Hollywood become a star in
(20:36):
the movies. I'm walking down the hallie, dude.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Listen to me, come back here. You you don't walk
away from me and I walk away from the guy
and I go to La. Now were you ever haunted
by that? Did you? Honestly?
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Did you?
Speaker 4 (20:48):
Did you?
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Because in my case, I thought the guy was. I said,
oh yeah, I haven't considered that.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Of course you do. Did you ever think you were
going to be?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I mean, I don't want to get you know, crass
about it, but you live a very very good life.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
You've been an enormously successful man. Did you ever dream
you would be as successful as you are?
Speaker 3 (21:07):
No? Never, No, And I'll tell you the same for you,
same for most people in this uh in show business.
You're just lucky enough to get to do exactly what
you want to do all your life. So that's the success,
you know.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
I always thought there was some commission that was going
to come to my door of my apartment I was
living in West Hollywood, and they were not or they're
going to where the Motion Picture Acting Commission. And we've
got the reports, say mister balbmon, we're going to take.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
You to theirport.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
By the way, I think you're not going to get
into I know the origin of this is is your
personal fear. But I think that commission is not a
bad idea and long overdue, honest to God. Can we
get that up and on its feet?
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Can we get a bill?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
I remember there was a guy, a writer for the
Old Tonight Show, somebody coin his His listing in the
white pages was say it's Marty Cohen. It was not
Marty Cohen, Marty Cohen, president of show Business.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
I mean, oh, that's lovely. Were you Were you doing
stand up ever in Indiana? No, never did it.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
In fact, one of the things that I didn't like
doing was when I was at the radio station. Part
of the deal was we just sold a thing to
Kroger grocery stores. But part of the deal is we
want you to go out there and m see the
so and so on so, and I hated it, and
I finally told the guy, said I can't do this.
So one of my big built in fears was getting
up in front of people that I didn't know on
trying to hold their attention. Let alone be funny, but
(22:25):
for me. The road map to pursue was handed to
you via Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show. They would
have comics on. It would be David Brenner and they
would say, and there'll be appearing at the Comedy Store.
It seemed to be that the connection between the Comedy
Store and the Tonight Show was pretty close.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
So even though I mind that facility, that particular face.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah, it was the farm system for the Comedy Store,
and great guys were coming out and getting on and
Steve Landsberg and on and on.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
I say on and on because I can't remember the name.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
So I just yeah, even though I wanted to be
a writer, because I didn't have the courage to tell
my family and friends that what I really want to
do is, you know, somehow get famous and be on TV.
So when I went out there the first monday I
was in California when I moved in seventy five, I
wrote down some stuff and went to the Comedy Store
and got on stage.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Had to go. It was it was awful.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
I'd never been in a darkened room of the spotlight
and it was just like a train coming at me.
So I did my little five minutes from wrote left,
and then the owner of the place.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
Yeah, you should come back and do some more.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
So I thought, are you kidding men? She said, no,
you can MC So I came back and I was
the mc fantas.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Yeah, yeah, Derek great.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
So that was nineteen seventy five, nineteen seventy eight. Three
years later I was on the Tonight Show. That worked
so much better than it should have. I think it
must be harder now too.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
It wasn't three years of just working that room and
working the mic and working stand up.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
Yeah, but it was.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I mean it was fun because every night you go
there and you were hanging around guys Jay Leno and
Robin Williams and George Miller and Tom Dreesen and Jeff
Altman and anybody now who is you're aware of you
would see every night and it was great fun. I mean,
my god, it was great fun. Didn't make any difference
what you did during the day. You knew that when
it got dark you'd be on Sunset Boulevard.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
The place would be packed.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
And in those days, the only room she had was
this tiny, little original room and it was next door
to Art Labelle's. He would have a fifties dance party
in the next room on the weekends, and you would
get a lot of gang guys going to art Labelle's
fifties guys.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
No, it was gang then biker barrio. Oh okay, is
that all right? Yeah, Lowriders, Yeah okay.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
And one night a friend of mine, Johnny Dark, is
on stage and a guy comes up and he's got
a gun and he's standing next to Johnny while Johnny's
doing his little singing impressions of whomever, and he had
to quietly, you know, talk his way out of the
guy using the gun. And it was exciting, souse. I mean,
Richard Pryor would come in, and Freddie Prinz would come in,
(25:11):
So you say, yeah, night after night.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
But still in all how could that not be fun?
So did Carson find you there?
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Well, they had a guy, you know, they had a
team of guys when I was there that would come
in and in the meantime I got on this Mary
Tyler Moore show to write and perform, and oh that
was it was me and Michael Keaton, Jim Hampton and
Dick Sean and Swuusy Kurtz and Julie Khan.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Judy Khn, Judy Cohn, thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
So from that show, they said, oh, well we'll put
you on because you're on that show. You can come
out and do stand up and then you go sit
down and talk to Johnny. And without that, you never
know what the formula is. You could be on nine
times and never get to sit down with Johnny. You
could be on for six years and ever, or you
could be bumped forty times. But because of this, oh
(25:59):
and he's a hearing on the so and so show
to Mary Tyler Moore show, I got to sit down
with Johnny and that was again, that was craziness. That
was That was another one of those you know what,
Oh yeah, it's such a jolt. The material is so committed.
You don't have to think about anything. You just have
to start talking and it all comes out. The adrenaline
(26:20):
takes days to burn out of you. Holy God, you're
sitting next to Johnny Carson. I mean, you just can't
believe it. I mean to me, and I think most
guys my age who were out there doing that one.
The fact that it worked. You know, really, I drove
in a pickup truck with my wife to La and
three years later, I'm sitting next to Johnny Carson. That's
not supposed to happen, you know, it's just not supposed
(26:41):
to happen, but it did.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Now do you think that Carson was someone who do
you think he saw himself?
Speaker 4 (26:46):
And you? Do you think he saw the midwestern boy?
I don't know, Jean and you, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
I mean, it was so easy for other people to
make that comparison, and that seemed to be the formula.
But I don't know if he felt that way or not.
I don't I can't answer that. And then what happened
after that, Well, your life changed immediately. Suddenly you weren't
just a guy who was at the comedy store. You
were the guy that had been on with the Carson.
(27:11):
And then I was on I think two or three
more times, and then I started hosting the show, and
again that was another you know, you just feel like
it's like it's like winning the World Series or your
rookie season.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
What's the gap of time between when you first sat
down with him when you started hosting.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
The first time I was on was November of seventy eight,
and I think I hosted it was Monday night opposite
the Academy Awards so.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
It was the good Spring. Yeah, in April, April, March April,
y know, things to Do party, Yeah, and it was
I was just frozen. I was just frozen. I can
remember Peter le Sally coming up to me during the
commercial break and he said, you've got to loosen up.
You've got to loosen up, and they get that. Thanks
(27:54):
for that tip Page forty.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
I remember the first night I was on the Tonight
Show and I I'm telling you, for guys at the
Comedy Store, this was it. This was like people lining
up to squeeze through a funnel, you know.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
This was it. The Tonight Show.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Fighting and competition and backstabbing and bad mouth to get
to the Tonight Show is going to make or break you.
If if you don't do well, you'll never be heard
of again. There's no such thing as a guy bombing
his first time on the Tonight Show and then having
a delightful career that just doesn't happen.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
You're gone. So there's a lot of pressure.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
So I'm getting ready to go out there just behind
the curtain. And my manager at the time, Buddy Moore,
who was with Jack Rollins and John Charles Joffey. They
handled Robin Williams and Woody Allen and Dick Cabot and
some other guys. So that was a big deal for
me to be with these people. And Buddy and I
nice enough guy, but we never never saw eyed eye
(28:47):
on much. And I think a lot of it was
my immaturity about show business, or just ignorance.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
Not immaturity. I had no time to be immature. I
was ignorant.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
So we're standing there and Johnny saying our next he
asked as a young blah blah blah blah, and Buddy
says to me, and Buddy always whispered. Everything was a whisperer, Buddy,
he says. Robin got popeye, and I said, what are
you talking about? His final words to me is, I'm
going to let the night show for the first time
telling me about a booking for.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
One of his other clients, you know. And I just
never got over that.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
This is Alec Boordman, and I'm talking with David Letterman
more in a minute.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
You know, you're a lot mellower now than you were.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yes, absolutely, And you'd say that when you did the show,
no matter how crazy or how wired you and the
whole experience was of the early show and you said
running around doing all the taking and all the other
bits and so forth, and contests and everything.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
But I mean, just your own nature.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Seems like there was a kind of a an edge
to it that you've lost. But you seem like you
really just become like so much more. What's the word charming?
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Well, I don't know by the rule, but I know
exactly what you're talking about, And the fact that it's
noticeable by others is an indication that maybe I'm on
the right track because, to the exclusion of every other
thing in my life, it was the success of this show.
As a result, I waited to have a child twenty
years too long. I just didn't do anything else. It
(30:29):
was the show and it had to be the show.
And if it wasn't the show, then find out a
way to make it the show.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
And did you come from that world?
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Like Lauren, for example, says to me he lives a
life where his creator was work is play, Like we
have this interesting jobs, you know, you don't stop working
to so that's.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Part of it.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
And that is one of the great residuals of you know,
you're around all these funny people and you have silly ideas,
and you have silly conversations in life yourself sick. But
for me, it was like, oh my god, you know,
if I fail at this, it's all gone away. You know,
if you fail at this, you get to get at
the end of the line, and the line keeps getting longer,
so to the exclusion of other important things, other aspects
(31:06):
of life. I pursued the show. Then that changed, finally changed.
Did you want it to change? No, at the time,
I didn't. I didn't know there was another way to
live your life. I thought you had to keep banging
your head and banging your head and banging your head.
And I kept saying to myself, this is what they say.
It's like pushing a rock up hill. It's like pushing
a rock up hill, and one day everything will change,
(31:27):
everything will be great, you'll succeed, and everything will well.
It never it never quite worked that way for me.
I think, well, not too difficult to assume that this
is one of the reasons I had the quintuple bypass surgery.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
And then my doctor he said, you know, he says,
you don't have to be this way flogging yourself. Yeah,
he said, you can delegate yeah, or you can. He says,
there are they've made pharmaceutical advancements. Here, you can help yourself.
And I said, no, no, no, no, I can't because
that would ruin this and that would ruin that. And
and then Regina got we were able to get pregnant.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
I went into this stark, raving anxious depression when she
got pregnant. Yeah, why well I was fine with it.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
I thought, if not now when you know, and she
had wanted to have kids, like I said, fifteen twenty
years earlier. And so this is a very complicated, uninteresting story,
and it has it has to do with being on
the shingle, having shingles, and being on exotic pain medication
for the shingles, and getting fed up with the exotic
pain medication and saying to the pain doctor I'm done,
(32:33):
I'm not taking it anymore. And he said, well, you know,
a lot of those things you can't just I said,
forget it. Click and I stopped taking these things, and
within a couple of days I just turned into this
twitching Unicell altered states.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
Yeah, it was very odd.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
And the guy said, well, you're in an anxious depression
and lucid you know, there are things we can do
here to help you out, and I said, I'll try
anything because I can't go on like this. And so
it was a small dose of an SSRI. Suddenly I realized,
I can have myself, my personality, the person that I've known,
and then lose what was detracting, what was hurting, what
(33:13):
was actually an impediment, groom.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Out the things that you wanted to groom out. And
when I came to the show business, and I was
in Los Angeles sleeping, and I was like Gomer Pyle,
I mean, I swear to God, I came to work
in this. I really I have trouble that you were
no really, but I don't mean in terms of lacking
any sophistication. But they would give me. I'll never forget
the first job I got. I go to an audition.
I'd done that the soap in New York. And they
(33:37):
paid you, you know, a very small amount of money,
and I thought I was Rockefeller. They paid you four
hundred and fifty bucks a day. I was the richest
member of my family. My dad was a school teacher
with six kids. He didn't make any money. And I
go out to LA and I'll never forget. But I
go to the old Lauramar, which is now Sony and
I go to the gate at Lauramar. I say, Alec Baldwin.
He's like, you know, here's your map. You're parking and
(33:59):
building sixty seven, ninth floor, slot red twelve.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
And they sent me to like, you know, the Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
I gotta go all the way and I go, Now,
where's the office I'm going to for the meeting? He
goes right over there, right next to me. So I go,
I park the car, trot all the way down, do
an audition for the show. Not's landing. I get done
and I leave the thing and no cell phones. Then
this is nineteen eighty three, and so I pull up
to a phone booth. I call my agent. It's late
in the afternoon. They're still in the office.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
He goes, how did it go? I go, how did
it go? I think it went pretty well, pretty well,
you moron. They want to hire you, And I.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Go, you're kidding me, he goes, He goes, yeah, of course,
He goes, we're making a deal right now. We're closing
the deal right now. You're gonna get twenty five for
the pilot and twelve five an episode, and I swear
to God, coming from my background, I went go, wait,
y'all won't pay me twenty five one hundred dollars for
the pilot and twelve hundred and fifty dollars per episode
every week. And he's like, no, you Maron, They're gonna
pay you twenty five thousand for the pilot and twelve thousand,
(34:57):
five hundred episode.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
And I literally urinated in my trousers.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
And I'm standing in a phone booth on the corner
of like, you know, Walker and Washington in Culver City,
and the guy tells me this, and that's when my life.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Changed for me.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
It was always you were competing against yourself. We didn't
go out and do a lot of reading.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
You know.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Sometimes I remember there was a the Jackson five had
a summer show, so they would say, we need comics,
and so they'd call the comedy store, and you know,
if Mitzie liked, you'd get to go beyond the Jackson
five show. So it was never so much of one
guy over another. Or there would be shows like the
Midnight Special or Don Kershner's Rock Concert that they would
(35:34):
routinely use comics. So there was plenty of work and
it wasn't I think as in acting as you describe
guys elbowing each other out and higher ups wanting to
step on their hands and hurt their feelings.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
But when you've done the show back from the NBC
days and now through the many years at CBS, it's
a very hermetic situation for you, and nobody bothers you,
and there's ever questions about your budget, and there's every question,
but nobody calls you. You't have to deal with that,
or do you have to fight with the network about
things like other shows too.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Well, never a fight. It's a negotiation. But we don't
have the fight. You know, if we want to do something,
we can pretty much do it. And again, what we
want to do now is far different level in scope
than we wanted to do when we're because when we
came into this show, myself and Marilyn, the writers, we
just thought, oh, America has been waiting for us. We're
going to change the face of television for America. And boy,
(36:24):
it didn't happen that way, you know, it just didn't
happen that way at all. We did a sketch on
the old Late Night Show and it was with one
of the writers Tom Gamble and it was Dale the
Psychotic page. We had to set up nine holes of
a miniature golf course. He would come in with an
NBC page blazer and he would play miniature golf, and
(36:45):
with each failing attempt on the whole, he would become
more and more psychotic. There's your comedy, America. This is
what you've been waiting for. Yeah, aren't you glad we're here?
Speaker 4 (36:53):
Breath?
Speaker 1 (36:55):
I love on your show. I haven't done this in
a while. I miss it because everything. I guess they
can't do this stuff all the time, and maybe this
bit is a victim of global warming. But I get
there one time and they want me to ride the
snowmobile on the roof of the building years ago. Yeah,
they're all very droll, you know. And Biff always calls
me Alex. I love that you're on the roof and snowing,
and we're on the roof of your building at snow
I'm best.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
Like, Okay, not Alex.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
You're gonna ride a snowmobile around the roof a few times.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
I'm gonna be man, I never can it and catch
you to keep you from going over the side. Is
that all right?
Speaker 3 (37:26):
All right?
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Alex.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Yeah, I'm like, great, let me go. I have danger.
You know, I love it. Elements.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Well, I was thinking about a year ago I was
looking around the ed Solovo Theater. What a tremendous stroke
of luck that was. I used to love working in
the studio, and I remember one day running into Lord Michaels.
He said to me, how long did it take you
to get used to doing a TV show in a theater?
And I knew exactly what he was saying, because to him,
TV comes out of a studio. And I always felt
(37:55):
that way myself. But I've really grown fond.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Of the theater.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
It's CBS the Theater for reasons like that and many more.
It's comfortable, it's fun, it's smells of decades and decades
and decades of show business there. There's tunnels and alleys
and rats. But it's fantastic. I mean, it's just so
versatile and so great. And also the way Hal set
it up in the beginning, it's fairly intimate. I mean,
(38:20):
you can have a pretty reasonable conversation there in this
five hundred seat room, and so I think it works
fine as a TV studio.
Speaker 4 (38:27):
Now, what's a good show for you?
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Now, well, it defines a good show for well, you know,
I think the last time you were on, I say this,
of course it, you know, suck up.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
It was a very pleasant, easy give and take in exchange.
I love it when a good, smart, funny guy just
comes right back at me, you know, in the beginning,
when he's so mean, why is he mean to everybody?
And I never thought I was being mean. I just
thought I was, you know, goofing around.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
So when you were coming on and you were going
after me, ah, that was delightful.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
For those segment producers who you work with, I mean,
it took me a while to be able to. I
mean I would do the show with you a number
of times, and the segment producers would they would say
that to you.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
They'd say to you know, no, give it back to me. Yeah,
he loves that.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Give it back to so many people, I think that
runs against their nature. Other people are ill equipped to
do that. But there are a few like yourself, And
to me, that's you know. We heading him on a
couple of weeks ago, Sean Hayes, and I hadn't seen
him in years. He had been across the street during
here we go high hoe promises or whatever that show was, Promises, promises,
(39:32):
and the kid comes out and god, he was funny.
I mean just from the jump he was funny, and
I just thought, this is fantastic, This is just great.
You know, if you can't be entertained by your own show,
you got the wrong you know, you get the wrong
part of the channel.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
So that was good.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
You live a pretty under the radar lifestyle. Do you
do that by choice? Well, a very quiet private life.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
First of all, I don't get invited many places. Secondly,
I just you know, you do the show and all
of that comes to you during the day. You know,
you have the same people at the gala, the same
people at the opening, the same people of benefit.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
Will be share with that expression of all that for you.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
So I don't feel the need to go seek that.
And secondly, like so many people, I'm uncomfortable with large
groups of strangers. I mean I think people are And
what is your downtime like? Now?
Speaker 4 (40:21):
What do you like to do?
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Well, sleep is a precious commodity. There's virtually no sleep
between my eight year old son and my two year
old dog and my wife. My wife, honest to god,
has not slept eight hours in eight years. I mean
she'll go to bed at midnight, get up at six,
so that's six hours. You can do that once or twice,
you know, like when you're eighteen and you're in the Marines.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
I'm doing that from insomnia. I have terminals. That's it.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Now, explain to me when you were in the audience
back at six A and you raise your hand and
had a question.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
What was that and how did that happen? When you
did the NBC show. Yeah, there was a woman and
she was a writer and she was.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
An associate producer on our show. She was friends with
Ackroyd and Blue She and all that original Saturday Night
Live crowd. And this woman's name was surely something and
she was a show. She's going to reach out to
us now when she hears this podcast. We have to
broadcast this section of it so we can get a
hold of her. And she was the one that came
to me and through some connection said they want you
(41:20):
to come on. Let have been to do that thing
and ask but do you remember what the bit was?
Speaker 3 (41:23):
I have no idea, but you were objecting to something.
Something had rubbed you the wrong way and was register
or complaint. That was a complaint about you and your
your taste.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
That's exactly right. Yeah, that was tremendous. That was just great.
So when you're not fighting insomnia, what is do you
like to travel? Oh? Travel?
Speaker 3 (41:41):
You do things when you have an eight year old,
as you know, when you have a child, you do
things you never thought you would do, and it's fun.
We went to Alaska a few weeks ago because it
was my birthday, and I was talking to my son
and I said, well, you know, we're thinking about maybe
going up to Alaska. This guy tells me there's a
place to ski up.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
There, and he said, oh, let's go to Alaska.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
And so I said, well, you know, we're still thinking
about it and still thinking about it. And then I
hear from Regina that now Harry has gone to school
and told everybody.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
That hey, daddy and me and mom are going to Alaska.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
And I thought, holy crap, we're going to Alaska. So
a lot of that stuff is kid driven. And you know,
I'm all for no tennis, no golf, No no tennis,
no golf, no movies. I see plenty of movies, see
all the Oh no, not at home so much it's
it's all with the kid.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
Do you find that your son. This is very common.
He pulls you into the world, into his world, and.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
You have to show up at things right and show
up at places, and everybody treats you very respectfully.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
People are there as a dad. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
The last time anything untoward happened was a Christmas party.
My wife has his friends with a very famous couple,
and I have great admiration for the couple their family.
Just I think more people should be like these people.
I just and and as a result, I'm afraid to
be around them because you know, I'm I'm ducklips and
they yeah, oh, I make myself look bad. Went to
(43:04):
a Christmas party and it was so packed that you
couldn't move. It was all vertical. Nothing happened horizontally, and
as people kind of from their positions about the apartment
spotted me, it was it was as though there was
methane gas leaking in the apartment. It was, oh no,
(43:26):
and it's the holidays, and why is he?
Speaker 2 (43:29):
No?
Speaker 4 (43:30):
Yeah, no, come on, true story. People love you. People
don't love people love you. People love you? Yeah no, no, no,
no people people. But the thing is is that that you.
You get a lot of that quotion on the job,
and then when the job's over, you want to go home.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
That's right, That's exactly right, And especially now with with
the eight year old, because you know, and I feel
stupid talking about it because I'm like the fortieth billionth
person to have a child.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
So I have I have no I have no insights.
He might claim he has no insights.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
But if David Letterman ever writes a book on parenting,
it's guaranteed to be a bestseller.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
I want to thank you for doing this. Are we done?
I don't want to be done. Isn't it time to
be done? We're done?
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Now?
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Where would a person hear this? If a person wanted
to hear this.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
This might be a good time to tell you that
you can hear other conversations at Here's the Thing dot Org.
Speaker 4 (44:22):
I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you
by iHeart Radio.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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