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.

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, 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 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.

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.

Now, it's time, ladies and gentlemen, for a segment of this program that we like to call stupid petricks.

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 lowering himself into a water tank wearing a suit made from three thousan four hundred Alka Seltzer templates.

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.

I know you have the nine hundred gallon tank, I know you have the oxygen.

I know you have the suit of oxa Seltzer and a staff of one hundred people.

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.

Here's a little something the boys that Late Night R and D have been fooling around with.

We call it sky bowling.

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.

I do a lot less work than I used to do.

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.

And it was different before.

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.

The guests that are on the show.

Do you still help select the guests throw or someone else takes care?

Yeah, people who select them.

Occasionally I will think of, Oh, I heard about somebody that did so and so.

Could we look into that and this and that?

Very little, very little, I mean, these other people do that.

We've have the good luck of these people havn't been together for a long, long, long long time.

They all know what the expectation is.

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, 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 going to New Jersey, we'd be up all night shooting, and there would be contests, And I can't do that show anymore.

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.

Is there a kind of person It's completely different.

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.

Who, honest to God, talked like this.

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?

And he says you can't then do jokes about Bob Hope.

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.

Wanted, we would then kind of have fringe people.

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, 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.

Point and putting it on.

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.

Well, why did you study radio on TV?

Academically?

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.

I don't think that science probably back then.

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.

I was very.

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, and I thought, oh my god, maybe this is a way I can distinguish myself and I did you know.

But had you been the entertainer as a child in.

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.

I can remember my father was big and.

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.

And Ed used to have this habit of walk, come on, now, let's really hear it for him.

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.

Notion she was a connoisseur of television hose and then Eric.

No, she was not a connoisseur.

She resented the fact that somebody had to be encouraged to support.

What they had just said, that Sullivan was houring himself.

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?

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 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.

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.

These were the guys the principal responsibility was to keep the program log.

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.

That's exactly right.

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 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.

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.

We've seen him on TV.

And oh my god, what a progression that was for me.

Now that was what year.

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 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 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.

Course.

What was the political landscape like at ball Stay when you went through, Well, it was just starting too.

I used to make jokes that they'd have student protests, but it was to get the cafeteria cooks to wear hairnets.

But it was.

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.

It wasn't quite lit up the way it might have been in other regions.

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.

Ball of Fire?

And he just said this voice it was.

It just haunted me.

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.

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, 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, we'd be drinking beer.

Oh my, was this fun.

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.

We can make it blow up.

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.

Jeez.

Nobody ever said anything.

No, it was bizarre.

Nobody got fired.

Nobody asked a question about it.

You know.

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.

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.

Yeah, what are you doing for that?

Meaning other than blowing up the studio and the sign off writing.

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 I was very happy.

I can remember two episodes.

One I was.

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.

Dangerous monsoon.

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 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?

DearS?

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.

And then where do you go from there in terms of underpants?

And well, if you wish.

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, 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 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, which meant the radio station come on when the sun came up and went off when the sun went down.

Literally.

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 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 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.

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?

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 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 we're talking about Mary Tyler Moore.

That's pretty good stuff.

Sure, smart And you're in LA at that time.

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.

You go out there with high hopes.

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.

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 the movies.

I'm walking down the hallie, dude.

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?

Did you?

Did you?

Because in my case, I thought the guy was.

I said, oh yeah, I haven't considered that.

Of course you do.

Did you ever think you were going to be?

I mean, I don't want to get you know, crass about it, but you live a very very good life.

You've been an enormously successful man.

Did you ever dream you would be as successful as you are?

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.

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.

You to theirport.

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?

Can we get a bill?

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.

I mean, oh, that's lovely.

Were you Were you doing stand up ever in Indiana?

No, never did it.

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 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.

So even though I mind that facility, that particular face.

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.

I say on and on because I can't remember the name.

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.

Had to go.

It was it was awful.

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.

Yeah, you should come back and do some more.

So I thought, are you kidding men?

She said, no, you can MC So I came back and I was the mc fantas.

Yeah, yeah, Derek great.

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.

It wasn't three years of just working that room and working the mic and working stand up.

Yeah, but it was.

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.

The place would be packed.

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.

No, it was gang then biker barrio.

Oh okay, is that all right?

Yeah, Lowriders, Yeah okay.

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, So you say, yeah, night after night.

But still in all how could that not be fun?

So did Carson find you there?

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.

Judy Khn, Judy Cohn, thank you very much.

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 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 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 to happen, but it did.

Now do you think that Carson was someone who do you think he saw himself?

And you?

Do you think he saw the midwestern boy?

I don't know, Jean and you, I don't know.

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.

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.

What's the gap of time between when you first sat down with him when you started hosting.

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.

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 for that tip Page forty.

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.

This was it.

The Tonight Show.

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.

You're gone.

So there's a lot of pressure.

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 on much.

And I think a lot of it was my immaturity about show business, or just ignorance.

Not immaturity.

I had no time to be immature.

I was ignorant.

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.

One of his other clients, you know.

And I just never got over that.

This is Alec Boordman, and I'm talking with David Letterman more in a minute.

You know, you're a lot mellower now than you were.

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.

But I mean, just your own nature.

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?

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 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.

And did you come from that world?

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.

Part of it.

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 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, 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.

Uh.

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.

I went into this stark, raving anxious depression when she got pregnant.

Yeah, why well I was fine with it.

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, 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.

Yeah, it was very odd.

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 was actually an impediment, groom.

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 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 building sixty seven, ninth floor, slot red twelve.

And they sent me to like, you know, the Ukraine.

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.

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.

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, five hundred episode.

And I literally urinated in my trousers.

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.

Changed for me.

It was always you were competing against yourself.

We didn't go out and do a lot of reading.

You know.

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 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.

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.

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, 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 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?

Breath?

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.

Like, Okay, not Alex.

You're gonna ride a snowmobile around the roof a few times.

I'm gonna be man, I never can it and catch you to keep you from going over the side.

Is that all right?

All right?

Alex.

Yeah, I'm like, great, let me go.

I have danger.

You know, I love it.

Elements.

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 that way myself.

But I've really grown fond.

Of the theater.

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, 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.

Now, what's a good show for you?

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.

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.

Yeah.

So when you were coming on and you were going after me, ah, that was delightful.

I love that.

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.

They'd say to you know, no, give it back to me.

Yeah, he loves that.

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, 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.

So that was good.

You live a pretty under the radar lifestyle.

Do you do that by choice?

Well, a very quiet private life.

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.

Will be share with that expression of all that for you.

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?

What do you like to do?

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.

I'm doing that from insomnia.

I have terminals.

That's it.

Now, explain to me when you were in the audience back at six A and you raise your hand and had a question.

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.

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 to come on.

Let have been to do that thing and ask but do you remember what the bit was?

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.

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?

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.

There, and he said, oh, let's go to Alaska.

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.

That hey, daddy and me and mom are going to Alaska.

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.

Do you find that your son.

This is very common.

He pulls you into the world, into his world, and.

You have to show up at things right and show up at places, and everybody treats you very respectfully.

People are there as a dad.

Yeah.

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 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, and it's the holidays, and why is he?

No?

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.

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.

So I have I have no I have no insights.

He might claim he has no insights.

But if David Letterman ever writes a book on parenting, it's guaranteed to be a bestseller.

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?

Now?

Where would a person hear this?

If a person wanted to hear this.

This might be a good time to tell you that you can hear other conversations at Here's the Thing dot Org.

I'm Alec Baldwin.

Here's the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.