David Letterman - Summer Staff Picks

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. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:34Speaker 02

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• 1:37Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart 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.

• 1:59Speaker 05

  Thanks, Alec. Before Stephen Colbert, there was David Letterman. For 33 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 the 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.

• 2:44Speaker 05

  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 hosts.

• 2:57Alec Baldwin?

  When David Letterman started "Late Night" in 1982, "The New York Times" said he was, quote, "more of an acquired taste than most comedians," unquote.

• 3:07Speaker 06

  Now it's time, ladies and gentlemen, for a segment of this program that we like to call "Stupid Pet Tricks."

• 3:14Alec Baldwin?

  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 smartass 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 3,400 Alka-Seltzer tablets.

• 3:43Speaker 06

  And we have the oxygen here, and I have been asked about 12 times by various members of the staff to remind you, "Don't try this at home."

• 3:52Speaker 07

  I know you have the 900 gallon tank. I know you have the oxygen. I know you have the suit of oxcelcer. And a staff of 100 people. Go!

• 4:03Alec Baldwin?

  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.

• 4:16Speaker 07

  Here's a little something the boys at late night R and D have been fooling around with. We call it sky bowling.

• 4:20Alec Baldwin?

  Today, David Letterman is an institution and has forever changed American comedy. Before Letterman, the extended drumroll was sincere. After Letterman, it would never be without at least a hint of irony. His show changed America. And after 30 years, Dave's changed as well.

• 4:40Speaker 07

  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...

• 4:57Alec Baldwin?

  But it was different before.

• 4:58Speaker 07

  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 have everything, you know, in your view and certainly influence each little choice.

• 5:13Alec Baldwin?

  The guests that are on the show, do you still help select the guests or someone else takes the...

• 5:17Speaker 07

  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.

• 5:24Alec Baldwin?

  Other people do that?

• 5:25Speaker 07

  We have the good luck of these people having 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.

• 5:42Alec Baldwin?

  You feel that way sometimes?

• 5:43Speaker 07

  Sometimes. I'm the biggest offender of that. I'm 65. I don't have the energy I had when I was 35. There are certain things I like about the show now that I like more than before.

• 5:53Alec Baldwin?

  Such as?

• 5:54Speaker 07

  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 gonna 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 20 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.

• 6:23Alec Baldwin?

  The more successful the show has become, and the more successful you have become, do you find that in terms of programming the show, you have to rely more on stars? Is there a kind of person?

• 6:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's completely different. In the beginning, when we started the late night show at NBC, we had a liaison between Johnny Carson and ourselves named Dave Tavitt. 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." And I said, "Okay, all right, we'll get that."

• 7:16Speaker 07

  We were not allowed to do 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-

• 7:31Alec Baldwin?

  Fringe people.

• 7:32Speaker 07

  That's exactly right. And so we sort of mined that vein as much 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, too. Again, I don't know how effective it was 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-

• 7:55Alec Baldwin?

  Stars.

• 7:56Speaker 07

  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.

• 8:02Alec Baldwin?

  In terms of what?

• 8:03Speaker 07

  In terms of the small guest, the kid that swims out into the East River and saves a cat. But we're always so far downstream from that story by the time it's all over the internet that there's no point in putting it on.

• 8:15Alec Baldwin?

  You started in radio?

• 8:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, my first job was at a radio station.

• 8:20Alec Baldwin?

  You went to college?

• 8:21Speaker 07

  Went to Allstate University, yeah, studied radio and TV. Why did you study radio and TV? Academically, you know, I went to Ball State in those days, graduated with a, I think it's a Bachelor of, would it be Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science? I'd say Bachelor of Science probably back then, but who knows? Yeah, no language requirement and no math requirement. I'm in. 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. I was a sophomore here 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.

• 9:02Speaker 07

  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 your household? 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, oh, isn't he amusing and being just a wise- And being erotic, yeah. 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-demonstrative. 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, oh, come on now, let's really hear it for him.

• 9:47Speaker 07

  And my mom used to say, I don't like the way Ed begs the audience for applause. So she was just completely standoffish by the notion. She was a connoisseur of television hosts. And then ergo. No, she was not a connoisseur. She resented the fact that somebody had to be encouraged to support what they had just done. That Sullivan was whoring himself on network television. That's exactly right, that's exactly right. The great Ed Sullivan. So you go to Ball State and you get this degree, Bachelor of whatever, we don't know yet. And what do you do after that? Well, through a friend of mine at the ABC affiliate in Indianapolis, where I lived, which was 60 miles away from where I went to school, and still is just about 60 miles, I heard that they were auditioning for, they wanted a summer announcer.

• 10:32Speaker 07

  So I went down there and auditioned, never having been in a television studio in my 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 kidding me? I'm 19 and I'm gonna be on TV. I mean, it's preposterous.

• 10:59Alec Baldwin?

  And what kind of job did you have?

• 11:00Speaker 07

  I was the booth announcer.

• 11:02Alec Baldwin?

  So I can't believe you said that. Back when they had booth announcers on television.

• 11:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's right. That's what I did.

• 11:06Alec Baldwin?

  These guys defined my childhood, by the way.

• 11:08Speaker 07

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

• 11:13Alec Baldwin?

  There used to be a lot of technical glitches in television back then.

• 11:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 11:17Alec Baldwin?

  You had booth announcers who would pick up the slack when something went wrong.

• 11:19Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 11:20Alec Baldwin?

  With tape to tape.

• 11:20Speaker 07

  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 16-millimeter projectors, you had a slide chain, and you had the big two-and-a-half-inch Ampeks 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 then 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. In a summer job in 1960, 68, I was making 150 bucks a week. I got to be the weekend weatherman. I'd never done that before. I got to read the news on the morning kiddie show. And none of this would happen today.

• 12:04Speaker 07

  You know, people are qualified to do that job now much earlier than I certainly was. You know, like, this was Ryan Seacrest University. Put him in any job when he was nine or 10, 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 and TV studies, and all of a sudden, it's, hey, there's Duck Lips. We've seen him on TV. And, oh my God, what a progression that was for me.

• 12:31Alec Baldwin?

  Now, that was what year?

• 12:33Speaker 07

  I think I started there in 68 and I stayed there.

• 12:36Alec Baldwin?

  So the war is going on.

• 12:37Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 12:38Alec Baldwin?

  And you avoid drafts and you avoid all that.

• 12:40Speaker 07

  In those days, you get the student deferment.

• 12:42Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 12:43Speaker 07

  And Ball State was principally a teachers' college in those days. And so it was.

• 12:47Alec Baldwin?

  They wanted teachers.

• 12:48Speaker 07

  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 1A. Went for my pre-draft physical in April. They said, OK, 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 342 or something like that, and a 356. So that meant even though I was 1A 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 me?

• 13:32Speaker 07

  These guys went, why shouldn't I go? And then it dawned on me pretty quickly, I had been among the really, really lucky.

• 13:39Alec Baldwin?

  Of course.

• 13:40Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 13:40Alec Baldwin?

  What was the political landscape like at Ball State when you went through the war?

• 13:43Speaker 07

  Well, it was just starting to, 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 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 wasn't quite lit up the way it might have been in other regions.

• 14:37Speaker 02

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• 15:03Speaker 08

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• 15:23Speaker 09

  I love the 60s. I feel really jealous that I wasn't alive for it. I'd be interested, like, knowing what that was like and seeing the way culture and art has progressed today. How do you find it?

• 15:32Speaker 08

  Wait a minute. I'm new.

• 15:33Speaker 09

  I'm sorry. I have so many questions. Sorry.

• 15:36Speaker 08

  You're not nervous, are you?

• 15:37Speaker 09

  I am nervous.

• 15:38Speaker 08

  You are?

• 15:38Speaker 09

  I am. I feel like insecure about my experience. I know I shouldn't, but, you know, I'm 20. I haven't really lived my life yet. And then sitting in front of somebody that has lived an enormous life is intimidating. And sometimes I feel like talking about myself is just not as interesting. So that's why I feel a bit nervous. I'll try and ignore it, though.

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• 16:39Alec Baldwin?

  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 O R. And he'd come on and say, you know, uh, "Next on Million Dollar Movie. Barbara Stanhope tells Gary Cooper where he can go in Ball of Fire." And he just had this voice, it was just, it just haunted me.

• 16:59Speaker 07

  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 blasé. And so I would just start wandering the building. You know, it was so embarrassing. They would, "Will the booth announcer please report to the announced booth?" Now, 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.

• 17:43Speaker 07

  I mean, a real alcoholic.

• 17:45Alec Baldwin?

  They go hand in hand, don't they?

• 17:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, kinda. 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 myself 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 news summary before sign off. Nightcap 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 flag. One night, a guy in the props department said, "I can reconstruct exactly the station as pictured on the slide. We can make it blow up."

• 18:31Speaker 07

  So as you're, as you're reading the "thank you and goodnight" and "why not tune in WLW overnight" and blah, blah, this, and so, "Until tomorrow, goodnight and good luck." Have the thing blow up.

• 18:41Alec Baldwin?

  Kaboom.

• 18:42Speaker 07

  And so we did. Oh God, we were proud of ourselves. You know, we really thought we had done something. Geez, nobody ever said anything.

• 18:48Alec Baldwin?

  No?

• 18:48Speaker 07

  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.

• 19:01Alec Baldwin?

  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.

• 19:10Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 19:10Alec Baldwin?

  What are you doing for that? Meaning, other than blowing up the studio and the sign-off? Are you writing?

• 19:15Speaker 07

  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. Any time at all that I could monkey with that, I was very happy. I can remember two episodes, one, I was, uh... Had forecast sunny and dry, and we'd go off the air and blah blah. And I'd go outside, this, this is a horrible thunder shower. The rain is coming down in sheets, and I was just twenty feet away, just oblivious of this, this, uh, dangerous...

• 19:56Alec Baldwin?

  Monsoon.

• 19:56Speaker 07

  Yes, coming through, this, one of these violent Midwestern summer thunderstorms coming 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.

• 20:10Alec Baldwin?

  Big show.

• 20:10Speaker 07

  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.

• 20:25Alec Baldwin?

  Do you want to clear that up now? Were you wearing underpants?

• 20:28Speaker 07

  Of course I was wearing underpants. It was Indianapolis. We're not taught to go out without our underpants.

• 20:32Alec Baldwin?

  We're Americans.

• 20:33Speaker 07

  Whatever problem was perceived was not mine, I assure you.

• 20:36Alec Baldwin?

  Right, right. And then where do you go from there?

• 20:39Speaker 07

  In terms of underpants? Well, if you wish. I got tired of sitting in the booth and tired of working weekends. And also, they didn't, 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 them because I didn't know what I was doing. But the cumulative effect of being on TV a lot there, we got 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. What was the format? It was News Talk 4, it's W N T S.

• 21:23Speaker 07

  When I resigned to quit, give my notice to the general manager, the guy said, 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 winter, we were off at 3:45 in the afternoon. And I had the midday shift, and I'd come in at noon, and two hours later, I'd be going home. Enjoy your afternoon before signing off. And then in the summer, conversely, you were on to like 9:30 or 10:00.

• 22:07Speaker 07

  It was awful. It was 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 a story about Gordon Strachan, S T R A C H A N. His name kept coming up, a special counsel, so-and-so Gordon Strachan, advisor to the White House Gordon Strachan. Finally, the phones light up, and I said, "Thank God." And I say, "Yes." And he says, "It's not Strachan, it's Strawn. You're mispronouncing the guy's name." I said, "Okay, thanks. Do you have a question?" Thanks. Click buzz, so there you go.

• 22:44Alec Baldwin?

  Were you ambitious during this time? Did you have an ambition?

• 22:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, I wanted to, I really thought, I really thought I could write half-hours, situation comedies. I thought I could do it.

• 22:54Alec Baldwin?

  What did you watch?

• 22:55Speaker 07

  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 Mayberry, the Andy Griffith Show, Ozzy and Harriet Nelson, The Nelsens, and that kind of stuff. And then later on, in those days, it was all the Mary Tyler Moore things, the Bob Newhart Show and 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 that works.

• 23:36Alec Baldwin?

  They're like Detroit.

• 23:37Speaker 07

  Yes, that's right. I mean, we're talking about Mary Tyler Moore, that's pretty good stuff.

• 23:41Alec Baldwin?

  Sure, smart. And you were in L.A. at that time?

• 23:43Speaker 07

  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 Blanc's son, you can meet with him, and I know this one, and I know that one. And so you go out there with high hopes. I guess it's like the pioneers in the Conestoga wagon, and they run out of beans, you know, they're in Salt Lake, and they got nothing to eat. So within the first week, you run through all of your appointments, and then you got nothing.

• 24:17Alec Baldwin?

  Then you're a shanghaide.

• 24:18Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 24:19Alec Baldwin?

  You're just on the shoals there, in L.A. I remember when I went to L.A., 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. We 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 hallway, he's doing, do listen to me! Come back here, yo!

• 24:44Speaker 11

  You don't walk away from me!

• 24:45Alec Baldwin?

  And I walk away from the guy and I go to LA.

• 24:47Speaker 07

  Now, were you ever haunted by that? Honestly, because in my case, I thought the guy was, I said, "Oh yeah, I haven't considered that."

• 24:56Alec Baldwin?

  Of course you do. Who, who, did you ever think you were gonna 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?

• 25:09Speaker 07

  No.

• 25:10Alec Baldwin?

  Never?

• 25:11Speaker 07

  No. And I'll tell you the same for you, same for most people in this, 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.

• 25:20Alec Baldwin?

  You know, I always thought there was some commission that was gonna come to my door of my apartment I was living in in West Hollywood, and they were knocking, "We're the Motion Picture Acting Commission."

• 25:29Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 25:30Alec Baldwin?

  And we've got the reports here, Mr. Bowden, we're gonna take you to the airport right away and send you back to New York.

• 25:33Speaker 07

  I think, you know, 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?

• 25:44Alec Baldwin?

  Can we get a bill?

• 25:45Speaker 07

  I remember there was a, a guy, a writer for the old Tonight Show, somebody Cohen. His, his listing in the White Pages was, say it's Marty Cohen, no, it's not Marty Cohen, Marty Cohen, President of Show Business. I thought, "Oh, that's lovely."

• 26:01Alec Baldwin?

  So were you, were you doing stand-up ever in Indiana?

• 26:04Speaker 07

  Uh, no, never did. In fact, one of the things that I didn't like doing was, uh, when I was at the radio station, part of the deal was, "Oh, we just sold a thing to Kroger grocery stores, but part of the deal is we want you to go out there and emcee the so and so and so." And I hated it. And I finally told the guy, I 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 and trying to, you know, hold their attention, let alone be funny. But for me, the, the roadmap to pursue was handed to you via Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show. They would have comics on, it would be David Brenner, and, uh, they would say, "Oh, and they'll be appearing at the Comedy Store." And it seemed to be that the connection between the Comedy Store and the Tonight Show was pretty close.

• 26:46Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 26:47Speaker 07

  So, even though I-

• 26:48Alec Baldwin?

  He mined that facility, that particular facility.

• 26:49Speaker 07

  Yeah. It was the, uh, the farm system for the Comedy Store. And great guys were coming out and getting on, and Steve Landisberg, and on and on. I say on and on because I can't remember the name, so I just.

• 27:00Alec Baldwin?

  It works.

• 27:01Speaker 07

  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.

• 27:19Alec Baldwin?

  How'd it go?

• 27:20Speaker 07

  It was awful. I'd never been in a darkened room with a spotlight and it was just like a train coming at me. So I did my little five minutes from rote left and then the owner of the place, "Oh, you should come back and do some more." So I thought, "Are you kidding me?" And she said, "No, you can emcee." So I came back and I was the emcee.

• 27:41Alec Baldwin?

  You're fantastic, Derek. You're great.

• 27:46Speaker 07

  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 to get.

• 27:57Alec Baldwin?

  And was it three years of just working that room and working the mic and working stand-up?

• 28:01Speaker 07

  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 Dreeson and Jeff Altman and anybody now who's 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.

• 28:41Alec Baldwin?

  Mob guys?

• 28:42Speaker 07

  No.

• 28:43Alec Baldwin?

  Okay. What was gang then?

• 28:45Speaker 07

  Biker gang?

• 28:46Alec Baldwin?

  Barrio. Oh, okay.

• 28:48Speaker 07

  Is that all right? Yeah, low riders. Yeah. Okay. And one night, a friend of mine, Johnny Dark, is onstage 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 stuff and Richard Pryor would come in and Freddie Prinze would come in. So you say, yeah, night after night, but still and 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? To write and perform. And that was, it was me and Michael Keaton, Jim Hampton,

• 29:33Speaker 07

  and Dick Sean, and Swoosie Kurtz, and Julie Khan. Judy Khan? Judy Khan, 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. Right. You could be on for six years and never, or you could be bumped forty times and never, but because of this, oh, and he's appearing on the so-and-so show, the 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. How did you feel? Well, you know what it is. Because you idolized him. Oh, yeah. It's such a jolt. The material is so committed. You don't have to think

• 30:18Speaker 07

  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 are 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 in you? Do you think he saw the Midwestern? Boy, I don't know. Gene in 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, I don't know if he felt that way or not.

• 31:02Speaker 07

  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 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, your rookie season. What's the gap of time between when you first sat down with him, when you started hosting? Uh, the first time I was on was November of seventy-eight, and I think I hosted, uh, it was Monday night, opposite the Academy Awards. So it was the spring, right. Yeah, in April, sort of in April, March, April, yeah. Johnny had other things to do. He was having a big Oscar party. Yeah. Turn the lights out, kid. And it was, uh, I was just frozen, I was just frozen.

• 31:47Speaker 07

  I can remember Peter LaSalle coming up to me during the commercial break, and he said, "You've got to loosen up, you've got to loosen up." That helps, too, doesn't it? They get that in a manual. Thanks for that tip. Yeah, page forty-nine. I remember the first night I was on The Tonight Show, and I'm, 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-mouthing to get to The Tonight Show. It's gonna make or break ya. If, if you don't do well, you'll never be heard of again. There's, 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.

• 32:27Speaker 07

  So I, I'm getting ready to go out there, just behind the curtain, and my manager at the time, Buddy Mora, who was with Jack Rollins and, uh, Charles Joffe. They handled Robin Williams and Woody Allen and Dick Cavett 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 eye to eye on much. And, and I think a lot of it was my immaturity about show business, or just ignorance, not immaturity. I, you know, I had no time to be immature, I was just ignorant. So we're standing there, and Johnny's saying, "Our next guest is a young blah blah blah blah." And Buddy says to me, and Buddy always whispered, everything was a whisper, but Buddy, he says, "Robin got Popeye."

• 33:12Speaker 07

  And I said, "What are you talking about?" His final words to me, as I'm going on The Tonight Show for the first time, telling me about a booking for one of his other clients. And I just never got over that.

• 33:29Alec Baldwin?

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

• 33:37Speaker 02

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• 34:19Speaker 02

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• 34:28Speaker 08

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• 34:46Speaker 12

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• 35:08Speaker 08

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• 35:56Alec Baldwin?

  You're a lot mellower now than you were.

• 35:58Speaker 07

  Yes, absolutely.

• 35:59Alec Baldwin?

  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 and doing all the taping 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 an edge to it, not that you've lost, but you seem like you've really just become like so much more, what's the word, charming.

• 36:21Speaker 07

  Well, I don't know about charming. 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 20 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.

• 36:47Alec Baldwin?

  And did you come from that world, like Lorne, for example, says to me, he lives a life where his credo is, work is play. Like, we have just interesting jobs, you know, you don't stop working.

• 36:56Speaker 07

  Well, 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, you laugh yourself sick. But for me, it was like, oh my god, you know, if I fail at this, it's all going away. You know, if you fail at this, you gotta 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.

• 37:24Alec Baldwin?

  Did you want it to change?

• 37:25Speaker 07

  No, at the time, 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 uphill, it's like pushing a rock uphill. And one day, everything will change, everything will be great, you'll succeed and everything will... Well, 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. And then my doctor, he said, you know, he says, you don't have to be this way.

• 37:57Alec Baldwin?

  Flogging yourself.

• 37:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, he said, you can...

• 38:00Alec Baldwin?

  Delegate.

• 38:01Speaker 07

  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 then Regina got, we were able to get pregnant. I went into this stark, raving, anxious depression.

• 38:20Alec Baldwin?

  When she got pregnant?

• 38:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 38:21Alec Baldwin?

  Why?

• 38:22Speaker 07

  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, I, uh, this is a very complicated, uh, uninteresting story.

• 38:33Alec Baldwin?

  No, it's okay.

• 38:34Speaker 07

  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...

• 38:58Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, altered states.

• 38:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, it was very odd. Uh, and the guy said, "Well, you're in an anxious depression." And Lou said, "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.

• 39:28Alec Baldwin?

  Groom out the things that you wanted to groom out.

• 39:30Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 39:31Alec Baldwin?

  And when I came to this show business, and I was in Los Angeles living, and I was like Gomer Pyle. I mean, I swear to God, I, I came to work and they said...

• 39:38Speaker 07

  Really, I, I have trouble that you were Gomer.

• 39:40Alec Baldwin?

  No, but, no, I don't mean in terms of, of, 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 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, I was the richest member of my family. My dad was a schoolteacher with six kids, he didn't make any money. And I go out to LA, and I, I'll never forget, when I go to the old Lorimar, which is now Sony, and I go to the gate at Lorimar. I say Alec Baldwin, and he's like, you know, "Uh, here's your map. You're parking in building sixty-seven, ninth floor, slot red twelve." And they, and they send me to like, you know, the Ukraine. I gotta go all the way, and, and I go, "Now, where's the office I'm going to for the meeting?"

• 40:24Alec Baldwin?

  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 Knots Landing. I get done, and I leave the thing, and no cell phones then. This is 1983. 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 wanna hire you!" And I go, "You're kidding me." He goes, "Of course. We're making a deal right now. We're closing the deal right now. You're gonna get $25 for the pilot, and $12.5 an episode." And I swear to God, coming from my background, I went, "Golly, y'all gonna pay me $2,500 for the pilot? And $1,250 per episode every week?" And he's like, "No, you moron! They're gonna pay you $25,000 for the pilot,

• 41:09Alec Baldwin?

  and $12,500 an episode." And I literally urinated in my trousers. And I'm standing at a phone booth on the corner of, like, you know, Walker and Washington and Culver City, and the guy tells me this, and that's when my life changed.

• 41:21Speaker 07

  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 5 had a summer show. So they would say, "We need comics," and so they'd call the Comedy Store, and, you know, "If Mitzi liked you, you'd get to go be on the Jackson 5 show." So it was never so much of one guy over another. Or there would be shows like The Midnight Special or Don Kirschner'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.

• 41:58Alec Baldwin?

  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 never questions about your budget, and there's never questions about, nobody calls you, you don't have to deal with that? Or do you have to fight with the network about things like other shows?

• 42:14Speaker 07

  Well, it's never a fight. It's a negotiation, but we don't have the fight, you know. If we wanna do something, we can pretty much do it. And, again, what we wanna do now is far different level and scope than we wanted to do when we were, because when we came into this show, myself and Marilyn, the writers, we just thought, "Oh, America has been waiting for us. We're gonna 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.

• 42:57Speaker 07

  And with each failing attempt on the hole, he would become more and more psychotic. There's your comedy, America. This is what you've been waiting for. Aren't you glad we're here?

• 43:06Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, they hold their 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.

• 43:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:19Alec Baldwin?

  They're all very droll, you know, and Biff always calls me Alex. I love that. You're on the roof and it's snowing, and we're on the roof of your building and it's snowing, and Biff's like, "Okay, now Alex, you're gonna ride the snowmobile around the roof a few times, and there're gonna be men on every corner to catch you to keep you from going over the side. Is that all right? All right, Alex?"

• 43:40Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 43:41Alec Baldwin?

  I'm like, "Great, let me go." Danger, you know, I love it, the elements.

• 43:45Speaker 07

  Well, I was thinking about a year ago, I was looking around the Ed Sullivan Theater, what a tremendous stroke of luck that was. I used to love working in the studio, and I remember one day running into Lorne 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 at CBS, the Ed Sullivan Theater, for reasons like that and many more. It's comfortable, it's fun, it smells of decades and decades and decades of show business. There's tunnels and alleys and rats, but it's fantastic. I mean, it's just so versatile

• 44:29Speaker 07

  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 500-seat Room, and so I think it works fine as a TV studio now.

• 44:41Alec Baldwin?

  What's a good show for you now?

• 44:43Speaker 07

  Uh, well.

• 44:43Alec Baldwin?

  What defines a good show for you?

• 44:45Speaker 07

  Well, like, you know, I think the last time you were on, I say this, of course, to, you know, suck up.

• 44:50Alec Baldwin?

  Good idea.

• 44:50Speaker 07

  It was a very pleasant, easy give and take and exchange. I love it when a good, smart, funny guy just comes right back at me. You know, in the beginning, when we're, "Oh, 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.

• 45:07Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 45:08Speaker 07

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

• 45:12Alec Baldwin?

  But 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, they would say that to you. They'd say to you, "No, no, give it back to him. Yeah, he loves that. Give it back to him."

• 45:23Speaker 07

  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 had a guy on a couple of weeks ago, Sean Hayes. And I hadn't seen him in years. He'd been across the street doing, uh, Here We Go, Hi-Ho Promises, or whatever that show was.

• 45:44Alec Baldwin?

  Promises, Promises.

• 45:45Speaker 07

  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 got the wrong part of the channel, so that was good.

• 46:01Alec Baldwin?

  You live a pretty under-the-radar lifestyle. Do you do that by choice? You live a very quiet, private life.

• 46:08Speaker 07

  First of all, I don't get invited many places. Secondly, I just would, 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 at the benefit will be there.

• 46:22Alec Baldwin?

  Share with that expression of all that for you.

• 46:23Speaker 07

  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.

• 46:32Alec Baldwin?

  And what is your downtime like now? What do you like to do?

• 46:35Speaker 07

  Uh, 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.

• 46:47Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 46:47Speaker 07

  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 18 and you're in the Marines.

• 46:53Alec Baldwin?

  I'm dying from insomnia. I have, I have a terminal insomnia.

• 46:56Speaker 07

  That's it. Now, explain to me, when you were in the audience back at 6:00 A. and you raised your hand and had a question, what was that? And how did that happen?

• 47:07Alec Baldwin?

  When you did the NBC show?

• 47:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 47:09Alec Baldwin?

  There was a woman, and she was a writer, and she was an associate producer on our show. She was friends with Ackroyd and Belushi and all that original Saturday Night Live crowd. And this woman's name was Shirley something. And she was, she's gonna reach out to us now when she hears this podcast. We have to broadcast this section of it, so we can get ahold of her. And she was the one that came to me, and through some connection, said, "They want you to come on Letterman and do that thing and ask the question."

• 47:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, but do you remember what the bit was?

• 47:36Alec Baldwin?

  I have no idea.

• 47:37Speaker 07

  But you were objecting to something. Something had rubbed you the wrong way.

• 47:42Alec Baldwin?

  Yes. I would register a complaint.

• 47:43Speaker 07

  Yes, that's right.

• 47:44Alec Baldwin?

  I want to complain about you and your taste.

• 47:47Speaker 07

  That's exactly right. Yeah, that was tremendous. That was just great.

• 47:51Alec Baldwin?

  So when you're not fighting insomnia, what is, do you like to travel?

• 47:53Speaker 07

  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. 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's gone to school and told everybody that, "Hey, Daddy, me and Mom are going to Alaska." And I thought, "Holy crap."

• 48:26Alec Baldwin?

  See, that's how we get you.

• 48:27Speaker 07

  "We're going to Alaska." So a lot of that stuff is kid-driven, and, you know, I'm all for it.

• 48:32Alec Baldwin?

  No tennis, no golf.

• 48:34Speaker 07

  No, no tennis, no golf.

• 48:35Alec Baldwin?

  No movies?

• 48:36Speaker 07

  I see plenty of movies.

• 48:38Alec Baldwin?

  At home?

• 48:39Speaker 07

  Oh, no, not at home so much. It's all with the kid.

• 48:42Alec Baldwin?

  Do you find that your son, because this is very common, he pulls you into the world, into his world?

• 48:47Speaker 07

  Right.

• 48:47Alec Baldwin?

  And you have to show up at things?

• 48:48Speaker 07

  Right.

• 48:48Alec Baldwin?

  And show up at places?

• 48:49Speaker 07

  Right.

• 48:49Alec Baldwin?

  And everybody treats you very respectfully.

• 48:51Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 48:51Alec Baldwin?

  They don't bother you.

• 48:52Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 48:52Alec Baldwin?

  You're there as a dad.

• 48:53Speaker 07

  Yeah. The last time anything untoward happened was a Christmas party. My wife has, is 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 as a result, I'm afraid to be around them, because, you know, I'm duck lips.

• 49:13Alec Baldwin?

  That'd make you look bad.

• 49:14Speaker 07

  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?

• 49:42Alec Baldwin?

  No.

• 49:43Speaker 07

  Yeah?

• 49:43Alec Baldwin?

  No, come on.

• 49:44Speaker 07

  True story.

• 49:45Alec Baldwin?

  People love you.

• 49:46Speaker 07

  People don't love me.

• 49:46Alec Baldwin?

  People love you.

• 49:47Speaker 07

  People love you.

• 49:48Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, no, no, no, no. People, people. But the thing is, is that you, you get a lot of that quotient on the job. And then when the job's over, you want to go home, be with your family.

• 49:57Speaker 07

  That's right. That's exactly right. And, 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.

• 50:14Alec Baldwin?

  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.

• 50:24Speaker 07

  Are we done? I don't want to be done. Is it time to be done?

• 50:26Alec Baldwin?

  No, we're done.

• 50:26Speaker 07

  Now, where would a person hear this? If a person wanted to hear this?

• 50:29Alec Baldwin?

  This might be a good time to tell you that you can hear other conversations at here's the thing.org. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

• 50:48Speaker 13

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