The Hidden Trove of Musicals by Broadway's Greatest Talents

that I had to meet its subject, Steve Young. Young is the world's foremost collector of recordings of industrial musicals. One model that Steve Young may not be a household name, but his work was certainly in my household. On the David Letterman Show, Young was the brains behind such bits as Todd the Intern and Strong Guy, Fat Guy Genius.

It was at Letterman that he discovered the joys of the industrial described for people what was an industrial An industrial show or industrial musical was a live musical theater production that, in many ways resembled a full fledged Broadway show, privately staged for an audience of salesman or executives within a corporate industry. People. Yes, it might be a show written for Coca Cola bottlers and the entire audience is

Coca Cola bottlers. But then once you're in there, oh my god, it's a dazzling, enormous production with singing and dancing and props, and often a full book and storyline and characters about the business that you were in. I'm a bottler, but believe me, it's no bed of roses. But with all the different sized packages on the market today, they keep me on the hot seat. It's a rough seat. It's a hot seat. Here we sit and daily tangle with problems, really rough to wrangle with, yet we can't

see any other way. With all management decisions, making day to day revisions, it's here you'll find dust each and

every day. Recall it a hot seat. It's as dazzling, enormous production with all the singing and dancing and props, and often a full book and storyline and characters about the business that you were in and how your daily struggles were noble and and the purpose of it was what it was usually to introduce new products and get you excited about them and get you in the would have that engine, that that's going to be a great seller.

And these lyrics about here is the new suspension and here's the fenders do turn up a lot, but it's also about here's the marketing plans, and we're going to have great advertising. And the better versions of these things were just high octane, great songs and great production value. I mean, I'm listening to it decades later. I have no skin in this game. I'm not going to try to sell a tractor. I don't care how good the new engine is really. But I was so drawn to

it because this seems so improbable. How could this have ever existed, how could it have been recorded? And how could I have found it? And then we're down this rabbit hole of improbability on top of improbability. Describe what happened.

So when I first started finding these souvenir record albums, when I was working on Dave's Show, collecting material to put on the Dave's Record Collection segments, just anything that that was your I got assigned to that early on and turned out to be a good match for me. I would go to record stores and try to find something that seemed ridiculous that we could make a joke about. But I found these souvenirs from corporate events, and by the time I've had like six or seven of them,

I thought, is this actually a genre? How can this possibly be? It's weird enough that there's one or two of them, but I keep finding them, not every time, but I keep finding them. And then it's years later now and we've uncovered this enormous stealth part of American history and culture that really was in danger of just getting away from us entirely because it was never something that the public would Is that what you did? You feel some aspect of that? Is there a custodial aspect

of stewardship? You feel, oh, absolutely not that the world will rise or fall on whether we know much about industrial show are not. But then you start meeting the people who wrote them and performed in them, and they had long since resigned themselves to being anonymous in this regard and no one will ever know what this stuff world.

And just the feeling that I could bring them out of that complete darkness and say someone cares about what you did and it was really good and it's worth hearing, even outside of its original context, because you do such great work that it holds up even though it shouldn't hold up because it's about diesel engines, but still it I find it compelling. So I was thrilling for me that I was able to find so many people from this world who expected never to hear from anyone about this.

And then I was the guy calling and saying I'm a big fan of your fluorescent light Fixture show, and they would say, how did you know about that? No should know about that. There was a point which I realized, I'm not interested in this for the show anymore. I'm interested in this for me. And at one point I put together a list of all the albums I had bought with the show's money, and I noted down what the titles were and how much I had paid for them, and I asked the show, I would like to own

these myself. Can I buy them from the show? And they were very kind and they just said, oh, you can keep them. But I felt like that was a turning point at which I realized this was this was my own project. Now what year did all this kind of commence for you? There was a little bit pre Internet when it was just like cold calling record stores, just like, al right, here's one in Boston. I've managed somehow. I had a CD ROM that had like millions of

phone numbers of businesses or something. I don't even remember how I got started, but I would just cold call record stores and you sleep at night, do you're up all night with this stuff? I haven't slept in years, just cold calling places and trying painfully to explain what I was looking for, which was always a very high hill decline because it's just so off the radar of what people have ever heard of. Once in a great

while I would get lucky. But when eBay started. I got on eBay around nineties seven, and it wasn't well categorized at first. It was just like records stuff. Every kind of record, from classical music to the Beatles to everything else where, was all just in one category, and you'd scroll through thousands of listenings and again, once in a while, the needle in a haystack would work, Oh my god, the ed Cell show. But eBay became a

huge source. But I also just worked connections with record dealers that I would meet and say, if you find anything like this, give me a call now, because I want to mention what I've experienced has taken its place and my participation. Okay, when I was in the business in the beginning, I come into New York and I'm doing voiceovers and things and starting out in and it

was the end of that era. And I remember driving around the country hotel you know, welcome phil Co Dealers, you know, and the big sign on the marquee there. But what's replaced that is this thing I do now, which is they've replaced the show with just performances, like musicians come and play. They bring me in to do the tired kind of celebrity Q and A. I still do a few of these a year, but this is

what we placed that organized production. Yeah, I have a DVD I think of like eighty nine and Anheuser Busch convention show. And they got Frank Sinatra, they got lizam Man, Nelly, they got Sammy Davis Jr. And I was watching this thing saying, please start singing about beer distribution, and they never did. They just were doing there. So you could do well in this business. I think you have a

flair for it. But everybody who was doing these shows during what I would call the Golden Age, has remarked on. It was excellent money by the standards of struggling to mid range singer, actor, dancer. You got treated beautifully, oftentimes flown around, put up an excellent hotels, and you worked with terrific people. They hired a list directors and choreographers

and big orchestra. Yeah, these people would shuttle back and forth between Broadway and a lot of performers, doing this as an alternative to waiting tables or driving a cab. It was not what you thought you would be doing necessarily when you decided you wanted to go into show business.

But it was an excellent training ground because you had to be really good at a big set of skills and keep getting better well knowing that it's private, knowing that there's a little likelihood this thing is going to see the light of day. I wonder if there are people who just to grab the money, the short end money where some performers you noticed that we became industrial whoors who showed up again and again. Well, there were

people I'm talking about lower lights, like names. Yeah, there were people who became reliable midrange people, and then once in a while they would vault out of that like how Lindon was doing a lot of this stuff in the sixties. He's on Broadway wins It Tony, and then he's then he's Barney Miller. He has graduated from industrials. But at some point Ford Motor Company decided, you know what, we want how Linden to be the MC for our big introduction show in the early eighties. So he is

lured back. And I don't know whether it was because he had a sort of residual fondness for Oh, I remember the old days. But uh. And Cheetah Rivera when she was starting out, she was doing shows as just a sort of background dance or featured player, and then she got really famous. And then sometimes companies would say, let's let's see if we can dangle enough money in front of a big star to have them come in and be our famous person in our industrial show. So

obviously collecting anything is challenging in New York. Where does Steve keep all this material in his New York home? And I was get a locker somewhere well, luckily for me, living in a modestly sized apartment, I, through accident or subconscious impulse, decided to collect one of the most compact forms of things that you can collect. I have my collection of two hundreds something records and also now stack of films, and then it just fits in a couple

of cabinets. I decided not to collect antique gas pumps, which I think would have been a problem. Yeah, World War to helica ways, those are those are heating up in the marketplace. I can put you in touch with somebody if you want to come. Well, it's funny the collecting thing. I'm I'm in a market. I'm in a flea market in in Paris, and I stumble around this market there and I see a yeager lekutra or they say, let um folding travel alarm clock beautiful with the air

mez case. Which is the which is the this is the this is the the great quest is the in the kuta vein you want the me And I find this thing which is the size of this phone, smaller, folding, travel longer beautiful, and I go, oh my god, this thing is I mean, I don't know what it was. And know you talk about I'm a clock nut. I collect clock so I'm like in I collect weird a little winding clocks and travel alarm clocks, not big, you know, fancy expensive clocks. I should send you a tape of

the West t Clocks show. You should and uh and I start that was the beginning. I picked up that clock clocks are you know I've got clocks? My wife Laria, she literally wild look at me, like, you know, like what's wrong with me? Like what's what's what? What is the manifestation of this mental illness I have with all the clocks everywhere, and I still collect him. I just brought a small little bachelor the other day. But there

you go. There are a million little categories like that with passionate experts, and they lead seemingly normal lives and then they have this little uh side area of their life. My brother, my father, and mother, everybody in my family has gotten very deeply into different collecting. What's the weirdest collection you've come across? You hear about weird little things

like um, miniature ceramic thimbles. Uh, But I can't think that any of this is weird, because if if what I think is interesting is has all the depths that I've found to it, there may well be that for for everything that seems weird to me. Whenever someone's hunting for something. Whenever they're involved in a process, a hobby of vocation, with his hunting involved, as I believe you're thing that's a component of it, they're really hunting for

something else. What are you hunting for? Well, I've read and it does seem true to me that collectors are, in some symbolic way, trying to impose order on a chaotic universe. Even if it's just all right. I can't fix most of it, obviously, But if I take this tiny little corner of human endeavor and say I'm going to get this part straightened away, then I can feel

like I can relax, because not everything is chaos. If we can understand and categorize and absorb what has been done in some tiny sliver, then that will symbolically help me feel like life is not pure chaos. How does the film happen? Bathtubs over Broadway? Bathtubs over Broadway. When I heard the title, I was like, what that? For the life of me, I couldn't even figure it. Can you know me? I could maybe get it? What the hell is that? Well? I think that's good because it

made you curious. Well, the film is wonderful films fantastic. The title's great Bathtubs over Broadways. It says bathtubs over Broadway. Then you show up people like, wait a minute. And then by the end you're convinced, hopefully that we're gonna talk about the end. We're gonna get to that. The end is mesmerized. The end is like you are the Tony Randall of industrials men. You are incredible. So so who approaches who? Who decides this is a film? Did you decide to write it? No, well, I'm I'm not

the writer or director or producer or anything. I'm I'm the guy who you follow. Now we're heading up to Buffalo Grove to track down the elusive Sid Siegel. I had tried to find said many times over the years. I thought I had missed my chance, wrote the immortal lines. My bathroom is a private kind of place, they say,

don't meet your heroes, said. I had written a book a few years ago with a friend of mine on this topic, and we decided, all right, we think this is the time, and we have a great publisher who's going to do a great job with this, and we wrote this book called Everything's Coming Up Profits, which is actually the title of a floor tile companies show h and it kind of tells you the whole story there. It's a Broadway reference, but it's been twisted for some

internal corporate infotainment purposes. So we put out this book. It was late two thousand thirteen. It was well received. It's a beautiful book. We're thrilled with it. A couple of people started approaching me to say, this seems like it could be a good area for a documentary film. And by this point I had been friends with Deva,

the director, Dava wizened as the director that's right. So I asked, Dava, can you tell me if these people who are approaching me seem like they'd be a good match for this, because you're now in the documentary world and I don't know anything about it. And she said, well, if there's going to be a documentary film, I would be interested in in working on it. And I said, oh my goodness, that would be better than I could have hoped for. I didn't even think that would be possible,

but that's that's what we ended up doing. How long did it take to make the movie. It's just about four years, which is not that extreme. I guess in the world of indie, it's a lot of time for film film, you know, but it took a long time to get all the pieces in place and find all the people that we needed to talk to. Do you see any parallel between yourself as an individual and industrial musicals themselves. Yeah, the majority of these shows were never recorded.

I think, even though I have this big stack of them now, it's I would guess probably one percent of what was ever done. Most of it just disappeared into the ether and was gone forever. Working on the Letterman Show, most of what was written never sees the light of day. So you have to keep pushing out new material and hoping inspiration strikes and doing your best. But most of it you have resigned yourself to accepting is not really

going to ever make a mark anywhere. And the people who were doing these industrials really also had to resign themselves to this maybe an astonishingly tuneful, catchy show, and the only people who are ever going to hear it are these three hundred people here at eight in the morning, and then it's going to be gone forever. So I felt empathy for these creators who had to keep working on stuff that they knew was going to be forgotten. Wow, let's go. I'm told you say we're gonna do some songs.

So we have a couple of clips that I edited off of actual may the assumption that the keyboard out there someone I thought you were gonna get the pay No, we don't want that. The first clip will have is from a show called Diesel Dazzle Detroit Diesel Engine Division of General Motors en sixty six, beautifully produced show. The music is by a gentleman who I am friends with and we have collaborated together on music. He's ninety one now, but this is right Hank Babie Hank. He's in Portland, Maine,

and uh, I've become very close to him. He's a great friend and mentor. And just one of the thousands of thrilling aspects of this for me is that I've found people I've really developed a deep connection with. This is a song called One Man Operation, and it's the lament of a woman whose husband is overworked at his diesel engine operation. He did it all alone, keep books and and ten the fool eighteen hours every twenty fool. But now the one man in my life He's no

one man operation anymore anymore. Now he has two mccandis a parts and servicemen, a girl to take the clothes and keep the boor. Now there's a lushness to that. This feels like a list people, and it actually is a very affecting song. Finally things turn around. He hires a new mechanic, he hires aparts and serviceman. Those things shouldn't be in song lyrics, and yet there they are and actually pulling on our heart streng Yes, I'm not a diesel engine salesman, but I feel at lump and

might throat about it. Coming up, Steve Young tells his own story from blue collar New England to Harvard to the top of the comedy writing heat. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. A working class kid from the outskirts of Boston. Steve Young didn't believe at first he could make a living from writing jokes, but he got his big break almost right out of Harvard with a job on the David Letterman Show. You started working with Dave and you showed up there when

you were twenty four. Yes, it's a spring of and you were at the Lampoon. I had been on the Harvard Lampoon that was a few years earlier, kicked around it was a bartender for a while. Conan was the editor in chief of the Lampoon when you showed up there, that's right, was the president of the Harvard Lampoon. And that was a really influential thing for me to encounter because I felt like, for the first time I met somebody who was at a level I had never personally

witnessed before. Just like he walks in a room and oh my god, I don't know how or why, but everything is instantly hilarious. Right he was funny? Oh yes. What was the pipeline between the Lampoon and comedy writing, particularly in New York? You know s and l Laurens a big he minds that quarry if you will, for a writer's Conan and uh uh and beyond into Hollywood. What is it about the lamp when you think that

they've got that pipeline in it to show business? Well, part of it is just once you're there, you become aware that there have been people who have gone before you, and for the first time, maybe in your life, you think, oh, this is something people for a living, because they are hilarious, brilliant, funny people all over the place who maybe never have that revelation of, oh, people do this for a living.

So it was very fortunate that I got that, uh since early on, that people go to Letterman and S n L. And they are comedy writers and it can be your career. Where did you study at Harvard? I was an English major, and I don't really know why now I think I seem to have turned into more of an amateur historian. And you grew up ways outside Pepperrell, Massachusetts. Yes, your dad worked at Logan. Oh my gosh, you have done your work. Yes, aircraft mechanic for USAir or it

was Alleghany at first. He commuted in an hour to Logan Airport. But we were out sort of the border line of suburbia, verging into the countryside. It was you were somebody else. I was reading about what you said. You you didn't quite even know where Harvard was. That is true. I mean it was a different era in

the early DS. I thought I was gonna, Okay, I'm going to apply to some colleges, and I had the vague notion that Harvard was probably in New York City, because that's seemed to be where important people get important things are there. I bet Harvard is there, and I get the application it says Cambridge, Massachusetts. Holy crap, this is in my own state. Yeah. It wasn't a goal. It wasn't like a burning golf. I mean, if you did well enough to get into Harvard, but you weren't

scheming about academia an advancement. No. It was just such a golden naive era when people weren't necessarily groomed from birth for things like that. Not. I mean, there were smart people coming out of Pepper and doing great things, but no one had gone to an Ivy League college for a dozen years or some. Wow. So as a child, what was entertainment for you? What was comedy for you? TV? You're a few years younger than you're born, so you

what was what were you viewing? What were your viewing habits? They were very eclectic. Gilgan's Island reruns and oh it's the late seventies and look it's uh it's Dallas and it's a heart to Heart and things like that. I missed enormous chunks of pop culture that everyone assumes I must know. Like, until I was starting to teach a course at n y U about TV history, I had never seen Mary Tyler Moore. I had never seen Dick

Van Dyke. I was not like a comedy nerd. Now the same thing is true for me, Like I remember, I turned off TV when I went to college. I went to college and seventies six, and prior to that, it was really it was everything dopey and silly and stupid. It was Mr Ed and F. Troop and the Adams Family and Beverly Hill Billies, which I adored at age five, and I imprinted on me a little bit. I still find it maybe a little more amusing than I should, just because I had this bedrock exposure to it and

early age. But I was even in college. No, I think we had a small black and white television. But this image of the eighties and everybody in college watching Letterman, I think there were people that were doing that, but I wasn't watching the Letterman Show. Now, when they hire you, you said you knocked around for a couple of years before when you graduated, when you showed up in New York to the show, Yeah you weren't. You weren't writing

I had a couple writing jobs. I worked on, not necessarily the news out in l A for about six weeks. That was actually my first I stayed on a friend's sofa. Very kind and how did they find you? I didn't have an agent at that point. Who I guess got my packet on someone's desk and they said, ah, yeah, sure, we'll give him a try. And that was great. And I don't think I wanted to live in l A. So it was probably for the best that after six weeks they said, yeah, we're having budget problems. I'm afraid

last hired, first fired. You gotta go. Why didn't you want to live out there? I have always felt I'm just more of an East Coast for and I'd like to go visit l A. But you know, as my friend said, you know New York millionaires and horrors on the same taxi seats all day long, which is it's so democratic. Yeah. I like the feeling of walking down Lexington Avenue or Broadway or whatever, and it doesn't feel like we're all probably scrambling around in the same business.

It's just a thousand different occupations swirling all around you in the city, and you don't have to feel like, oh, the entertainment business is what I need to think about all the time. Once you do something that has any residence in the business and you're considered any kind of a star or whatever pedigree, you're always a star out there. So like I'd be at a table in a restaurant and I'd be with a friend of the they go, oh, wait, there's my friend Jeff. Jeff. Jeff was in that mini

series Leave It All on the Fields. He was very good at that. He was so good, Jeff. And it's like, if you did one job, you know you were you were, you were in the firmament forever out there. That's right, that's your anchor. Now you're you're in the club. But I did a Simpsons episode in the mid nineties and that was fun. Was out there for a few days and and the Simpsons people said, Hey, if you want to move out here, we'd love to have you on

the staff. And it was thought provoking. But I just thought, I don't really think I'm fundamentally wanting to go to l A and do that. Married Yes, what was your um? She had? And I had moved down from Boston, which was a smaller upheaval than going to another world like Los Angeles would have been. But we both have family in the Northeast, and by nineties six we we had our first child, and it felt like The Letterman Show is going to be the good place to stay for

for a long time. How did they find that was early after one of their anniversary shows, like within the space of three weeks, six writers announced that they were leaving the show. Anniversary show I think had been in l a and all the writers had gone out and secretly started to have meetings out there, and they were the opposite of you. Yeah, and they were well they Simpsons. They had been in The Letterman during the glory years,

and they were ready to do something else. So there was suddenly a bunch of slots opening up, and the comedy grapevine around New York was awful of buzz about, Oh, now is the time to send in your stuff to the Letterman Show. And I had a few good samples by this point, and I sent some stuff in and I got a call one day from Steve O'Donnell, who's the head writer. I said, Oh, well, we'd like you to come up and visit, and I'd like to chat with you and maybe we'll have a little talk with Dave.

It was not a done deal, but it felt like, oh my goodness, I've I've crossed some sort of milestone here. And I went up and chatted with a few people on the staff and Mr Letterman and I chatted amiably for a couple of minutes, and then the next day I got the call, oh, well, we'd love to have you come join us if you're interested. I accepted. Now when you tell that story, three things come to mind. One is do they get it wrong? Is their turn over there? Or are they pretty good at discerning? You

get fired for what? Did your your bits are getting on the air. It's it's a very strange subjective thing. There were so many people at that show who were there for a very long time. I think they've liked the sense of a solid core group that all knew what they were doing and we're comfortable with each other.

And so I think the hope is that we build up this long term team of people who believe in the show in the mid fit and there are wonderfully talented comedy geniuses who have been tried out at the Letterman show didn't work out there weren't picked up after twenty six weeks or whatever and went on too huge success on other ventures. So it's not a barometer of whether you're funny or not. It's just such a weird, narrow, arcane window of what you need to hit and if

you can. We have the people already who can do what we do. We need somebody who can enlarge the what the show does a little bit. Yeah, and that that that's a very hard thing to be able to be pretty good at what the show already did, but also have a little extra flare of something the show had not seen before that Dave would respond to and want to do you started there what year? And you

were there for how many years? And then the to the end, Yes, the very last day, and Letterman was on NBC and moved he moved to CBS what year? So you were with him during the transition. Yeah, okay, so this is perfect. So, uh, you know Letterman, who I adore and I love. We ran around the city with cameras and did these stand ups and we're in front of Dad Steaks and we're Alec Baldwin is riding a snowmobile on the roof of the building, that's right.

I remember that it was a legendary one of those great nights where just some spontaneous thing takes off and it's beautiful. So when I meet you in the film, you know you you you are of a type. And all the most like Ninja eighth degree black belt comedy writers that I've met either have or create the They put on the demeanor that you have, which is you can't guess they're either an actuary at an insurance company or they're like one of the funniest people you've ever met.

They keep the soda in the can, you know what I mean. So when I meet you, it might be a might making sense. It's got to go on the page. Yeah, I don't think I come across as at insurance company. Well I dabble in that on the side and it it's more fun than you might think. But I do think that, Okay, yeah, I have this very subdued, dead pan flavor. And then for people who are just meeting me, I may uncork something completely bizarre and they because it

is not playing as stereotypical comedy in the delivery. In my I'm not making wacky faces and gestures and all that. It takes a minute for people to readjust to what am I hearing? Is this person actually having a stroke or did he mean that? Or it's like New Heart, there's the very new hard ass. Did you love New Heart? Because I wasn't a comedy nerd. I knew who he was, but I don't think I ever watched any of those shows.

No comedy albums for you when you were young. I listened to Dr Demento for a while late at night, but I don't think I ever bought any comedy albums or anything like that. Letterman, so he changes over time. Did you see that in the two thousands he had been doing it for so long, he decided, either consciously or not, I just want to not worry as much every day about how the logistics of this are going to work. And we all found ways to make it work like that. For him. Just bring him material, he'll

look at it, he'll pick it. He doesn't have to read scripts in the morning. We'll just give him various completed pieces late. You notice the shift. He seemed to be having more fun in the last few years again, and he realized he was enough he would make it one of those magical nights that you couldn't have planned. But it was brilliant, spontaneous of the guests, he had everything in his pocket, was good to go. Now, what's

the other clip you have? This is from the nineteen seventies seven Massey Ferguson Tractor and Equipment show, which was called World of Winners. This is a rousing, country tinged anthem of excitement about the Massey Ferguson company and what it's like to work for them. And this is called, uh, We're Massey Ferguson. Hit it. When he's work in a field with a record held, he wants to pick it clean and when harvest comes, he's got to have a

dependable machere where number one? Yeah, So stand up round to say it loud for five minutes. I will I will feel the thrill of being on the Massey Ferguson team which is headed for glory. But I just have this image of you and you you have two daughters and your home and your daughters are like your dad, can we talk to you about something? And you're and they're listening to, you know, some jaunty song like that,

like go god, Dad, stop, turn that record off? Dead Well, they didn't necessarily fully understand what I was doing for a long time. And when the book came out a few years ago, and I was on The Letterman Show as a guest, and we were playing some clips, and Dave held up the Bathrooms are Coming record and started we started playing the clip of this beautiful anthem my bathroom.

And my younger daughter's eyes widened because all her life she had heard that song around the house and I'm just singing it or my wife is humming at or whatever. And she said, oh my god, this song that I've heard around our family all my life. That's from one of your weird records. The two enormous pieces suddenly clicked in together for her that had not connected before. Before you go and before you return my jacket, could we hear just a little of the Bathrooms are Coming just

a little? All right, let's just take another listen. Oh my God, really brings back memories, does it, Ladies and gentlemen, The young mc gifted Steve Young. So the movie ends, and I must say that you are a dreadful musical comedy performer in terms of the quality of voice. We share that trade, and yet it doesn't matter. You show up on camera, and we've fallen in love with you by now, this is the genius of the thing. You

have to earn that performance. You can't just have anybody do that, and you do it because we've fallen in love with you in the film. And I haven't been so smitten by a guy in a musical number since I saw Bobby Morse to Brotherhood of Man in the original How to Succeed. You're just there and you're so winning,

you just take over. Whose idea was that? Well? As the movie came together over the last I guess a couple of years, it felt like, I think the director and her co writer and other producers felt like we have spent all this time establishing that musical theater has a certain unique power even if you're not a Broadway

musical fan. We believe we have now made a case for this stuff being able to really reach people like this with the twist not open that you may find you're doing jazz hands when someone says that always oh maybe you start dancing, And when you hear it, seemed like the only card left to play was a all right, we have to step out on that ledge and do it ourselves. Now, I loved it. It was like, it's like you see a movie and the guy and the girl. It's the getting closer they get. By the end of

the movie they have to kiss. This is the guy and the girl kiss at the end of the movie moment for this movie, I don't want you to do any more of them. Well, the finale was movie magic of a magnitude that I never had dreamed of being involved with. It was thrilling on every level. The song, which I co wrote with my dear friend Hank Babe years old. He pulls this this melody out of his subconscious somewhere. In the first time he played it for me over the phone, I realized, I think we have

a hit. This movie Bathtubs over Broadway is it's a fantastic movie because it's it's like any good movie. It's a well made movie. It's well cut, it's it's paced up, it's got all the good things. You know, cinematically wanted a dock and but the topic is just so crazy and the people involved, it's so eclectic. And you're such a wonderful protagonist in the film. You're the perfect protagonist.

You guys did an amazing job. He did a great job. Well, it was the dream of a lifetime to get to be involved with something like this, and Dava and her team took at places I could not myself have even dreamed of. Thanks for doing this with me, It was my extreme pleasure. Thank you. Letterman, writer, collector, and savior of the industrial musical Steve Young. The movie about his project is called Bathtubs Overbroadway. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing, M