 This is a great show because it's two amazing comedy writers and they both come from opposite ends of the spectrum. I'm going to give these guys a proper introduction. To my left, or radio right, is Andy Breckman. And I wanted to put them on with Steve Young because they are two very amazing men, two great comedy writers, both of whom are legends, both of whom work for Letterman. Let me introduce... Legends is a funny word. That's an elastic word. Andy Breckman created Monk, the hit television show. He just won a Writers Guild Award. He has written on Saturday Night Live. He has written for Letterman. He was there at the beginning and he's written movies starring Meg Ryan and Walter Mathow. You are an actual movie writer. I've been very lucky. Some movies with Steve Martin and you've written on the Academy Awards. I'm just going to keep going. I've had some movies made that I wish were it made. That's true too. Steve Young, you weren't there at the beginning. Oh no, I was just a tiny boy when the Letterman show was launching. Steve Young, Harvard Lampoon, didn't even go to Harvard. That's how amazing he is. They just put him on the magazine? Simpsons. I think you were... I'm going to say without you and you'll say no, but I would say... Well, that's not fair to certain people. I would say you... David Letterman, if you think David Letterman is funny, which we all do, then Steve Young is funnier. I would assume that if you asked David Letterman, who's funnier, you or Steve Young, he would say Steve Young. Well, because you would have painted him into a corner and that would be the only gracious thing for him to say. I think we must realistically say that Mr. Letterman has realms and reaches that very few mortals have and I'm not one of them. And he's certainly, if such a thing as possible, he's actually gotten more interesting, David Letterman. He is finding a way to his next chapter and it's even more fascinating. Both of you men teach comedy at NYU. In fact, our paths literally crossed last week. One of the relatively few times when it's okay to say literally. Yes, it actually happened. Steve's class had just ended and mine was just about to start and we met briefly in the lobby. Hey, you're that guy. Yeah, you're that guy. Here we go. Well, did you go to the dinners? I know Letterman had these big dinners during the wrap up to the show. Didn't you guys meet at a steakhouse? Were you at the Friars Club thing? I was at the Friars Club thing and then I think David's referring to a dinner. Steve was not there. It was a dinner that we arranged the original writers and Mr. Letterman. Yeah, they didn't want me because I was only a tiny boy. We all, I don't know if Steve had a chance. It's very interesting. I was glad I went to that dinner, that smaller private dinner with Letterman because I wanted to say thanks really. Letterman, you had the Simpsons and you had a pedigree that I didn't have, but Merrill Marko and Letterman gave me my first job in the business. My first break and you always remember the people that took a chance on you. We just had Merrill Marko on the show. Yes, she was on. I would listen to it because, again, if you're funny, she is funnier now than she's ever been in her life. Well, I owe her, she obviously predated Steve, I think, at the show, but I owe her. You predated Merrill Marko. No, predated, I'm sorry, but I owe her. That's a good rumor to start though. I owe her my career. I owe her everything. What happened? She, I was, it's not a great story, but if that's, if you want to... That's what this shows. Lay it on us, yes. That's what this shows. Even if I, even if I consciously stop and embellish it to, to the end of the great, it won't be a great story. But I was, I was... Just use the word sex dungeon and it'll be fine. I was, I was performing. I was doing some performing. Got an agent. This is, and I applied to Saturday Night Live. I wrote some sketches. Saturday Night Live was turning over after the glory years, after the first five, first five years. Lorne Michaels left, I'm sure you, you're aware, and all the cool kids left the show. And so there were some slots open in Saturday Night Live. And I applied, I wrote some sketches, four or five sketches, and had my agent submit them. And they were, Saturday Night, the show passed. Then I got a very sweet letter from Ann Beats, who, I don't know if you know Ann Beats. She took the time to write a very nice rejection letter. And then I went on with my life. At that time, it meant working at a video store on Eighth Street. That was my life, if you call it a life. And, but I'd be... May I interrupt? Yes, sir. What was even... Steve, you had your hand up? Yes. This is a six-part question. You know what I love? You know what I love in politics when they, when, when there's a press conference and a reporter says, I have a question and a follow-up question. They announced beforehand that they're not going to be satisfied with the answer. They're going to have, they're definitely know they have a follow-up. Well, let's just not answer the first one, go right to the follow-up. Yeah, exactly. Curious, what video format around 1980, because I don't think VHS had even taken on it. You're exactly right. The first, the first video stores were at Photomat, by the way, the first video rentals. No one remembers this. But I, I was in one of the very first video rental stores, 1980. What was Photomat? Photomat was where you went to get photos developed before the instant cameras. There used to be these things called daguerreotypes. Exactly. The video, the video revolution was so new that I was working at a video store. There were only like 12 titles. Nine of them were porn. But the video revolution was so new that we had a woman come in the store, rent a videotape and then take it home and then call us from home and say, now where in the TV does it go? She didn't even know who she needed. That's how new it was. Anyway, I hope that wasn't porn. She doesn't know where that goes. I was very anxious to see this film, sir. I need to have this right up in the next few minutes. Yes. So anyway, I'm at the video store. Unbeknownst to me, my agent took the rejected SNL sketches, my four or five sketches that SNL passed and got them somehow to Maramarko, who was assembling a writing staff for the late, the first late night staff. Letterman, you might remember, was being sort of kept on hold by NBC. His morning show had failed or had ended, I'm sorry. And he was on hold for a year. They were looking to do something with him and they gave him this slot and they were looking to put it. So I got this call. Literally, it's like a bad old Hollywood story from the video store. My then girlfriend, soon to be wife, soon to be ex-wife, called and said, David Letterman is looking for you. Wow. And he's only in town for a day. Wow. And he's up at the Plaza Hotel. Wow. And they meet you right now if you can get up there and he's leaving tomorrow. So I went racing up and was very excited, but I was, I think, thankfully, had no time to prep or get nervous or think about it. I just got on the subway and left and it was one of those, Kevin, watch the register. I got to go jumpstart my career. And then I went uptown and there's Letterman on a couch and a t-shirt and jeans. He was the most casual guy ever, you know, and very, at least when I knew him, very accessible. Steve might have a different, Steve might have met a different Letterman. He was not accessible. Yeah, exactly. He was always in a tux by the way. And I had the guts. I don't know how, there was a coffee table in front of him. He was lying on the couch. There was a coffee table with some spare change on the table. And I don't know where I got the guts, but I came into the suite and sat down and there was a spare change. And I actually had the guts to say, can I have this? And I collected the change and actually put it in my pocket. And then there might be a lesson here. Did he laugh? Yeah, he did. I made him laugh. And there might be a lesson here and then I'll shut up and you can go on the real show. But the lesson, Merrill described the show that she wanted to do. She already had the vision of it in her mind. And I think the DNA didn't really change for 30 years in some ways. It obviously mutated, but she had the vision of what she wanted to do, including death pieces and then remotes and the monologue and the attitude. She had it all. She would actually quote certain jokes that she said captured the essence of it, like David Letterman's joke, McDonald's is now serving breakfast. Now that's the dream come true. That's the perfect letter. So she described the show and my sketches didn't really fit the format, but she liked the sketches. But she said, come up with your own ideas and pitches based on what I just described to you and send them to me. This is a lesson maybe if there are any young writers out there or would-be writers out there. I think it's important not to keep them waiting. I don't know if you guys agree. I ran home. I knew they were leaving for LA the next morning. And I ran home and pulled in all nighter and wrote up three or four pages that night just based on what, you know, I was all fired up and adrenaline was popping. And I got it at dawn. I got it to back to the Plaza Hotel for their flight back to LA. So I'm so grateful that number one, I was able to stay up all night, which I'm so grateful to myself that I had the wherewithal to not keep them waiting. And I think that's, you know, if you have a good meeting and people are waiting on material, it's probably a good tip to get it to them as quick as you can. This is very exciting for me because you two, and I don't want to get into Sammy Davis territory, but does anybody have any meth? No, I don't want to get into Sammy Davis territory because... Junior or senior? Junior. The two of you share a lot of, you share a resume, but you also, when you walk into a room, everybody's glad to see you. There's this, you walk in and... Because Steve owes them money. Because they know he's got a pocket full of change now. Exactly. No, it's just when you walk in, when the comedy, you're just, and you're team players and you're looking at, you're thinking about the show. And I love giving hand jobs. I don't want to say that. Steve Young, so how did you get your first job? What was your first job? My first TV job was not necessarily the news, the HBO show out in Los Angeles. And that was, I'd gotten out of college a couple of years before and knew I wanted to do this as a career, but there was not an immediate success at that. I did luckily have an agent, some junior level guy at William Morris who had come to the Harvard Lampoon and said, oh, we'd like to find some promising young comedy writers. And I said, William Morris, why is the cigarette company looking good? So I had no idea. But I wrote a cheers spec script and printed it out on my pin feed, early generation Macintosh printer. And I'm sure it was fine for a 21-year-old or whatever. For a while, I was bartending in Boston and just kind of scratching around trying to figure it out. Was there any business in Boston for a bartender? I can't imagine anybody drinking in Boston. Yeah, it's a very teetotal-ish sort of town. So you went to work for, not necessarily, there was Pat Lee, John Moffitt, Rich Hall, who was on the show last month. He had largely cycled out. He went to Letterman probably, right? He had been there. Did Rich write on Letterman? He did the morning show. Yeah. I find that often in my career, I arrive someplace just as the golden age has ended. In the case of not necessarily the news, the generation of performers that everyone knew and loved, mostly had left. Conan had been a writer there like a year before and was gone now, although I found his cartoons, scraps of paper with his drawings on them in the desk I was using. Did you keep them? No, no. I didn't have the foresight. Also, my pockets were very full at the time. I did find that it was a fine place to work, but I was only there six weeks. I had been the sort of last hired, first fired at their first whiff of budget trouble. But I got a couple things on the show and actually got a writer's guild award out of that. Great. That was nice. And then I was in New York working on the comedy channel before it was Comedy Central. They were starting up in the fall of 89 and really didn't know what they were doing at that point. It was a lot of let's take old movies from the vault, cut five minute funny scenes out of them, just show the isolated scenes and have sort of VJs introducing each thing and doing pattern and little comedy bits between each thing. And so I was on one of those shows for a while. And so tell me how, very quickly, let's get to how you ended up becoming the legendary, I don't want to go ahead. How did you get on Letterman? What happened? That was early 1990. And the show I think had just had its eighth anniversary. And I believe it was out in LA and a lot of years. Yeah. This was 82 to 90 by this point. And a lot of writers went out to LA in addition to doing their work at the show that week, went on a lot of meetings. And in the coming month or so, about five or six of the old line guys said, oh, by the way, we're leaving. Is that why Dave went to LA to get rid of everybody? I don't know if he's that strategic a thinker about getting rid of writers. I think he has other ways of doing that. But suddenly there was the sense that there were a lot of openings in the comedy Grapevine in New York, which I was tangentially plugged into. It was full of people saying, oh, you've got to get your sample in over at Letterman because all the writers are leaving and this is a great time. And now why did he require urine? Most people need. Can you back up? What was that? You mean the job interviews? No, the sample that they required was urine. Yeah, it doesn't have to be your own. Oh, okay. Go on. New York in 1990, you could get it on any street corner. You could write either 20 monologue jokes or you have vial of urine. And the vial, a lot of people overlook that. It has to be a nice vial. It has to be glass. You can't come in there with some cheap styrene. And they don't return the vial. I think they're just in it for the vials. I was unusual, I've been told. I got the cap back. Reading the tea leaves there. But Steve, I know, you leapfrogged over the Simpsons. Oh, the Simpsons was later and I wrote one episode. It was a freelance thing. I was never on the staff there. Well, you know, I'm sorry, being a freelancer on the Simpsons is a huge honor. That's not done a lot. Yeah, and I don't think they do freelance episodes anymore. I think after a couple years or so, when I did it in 96, I think they didn't do it too much. The Writer's Guild, for a while, required staff to hire freelancers. But this was before the Simpsons was a Guild show. Oh, no, I didn't. Oh, okay. So it doesn't apply. But luckily my agent at the time was clever and said, let's get you this Simpsons gig as if it were a Guild show. And so you're going to get residuals for your episode. Wow. None of the other writers were doing that. Wow. Yeah, I still get an $11 check once in a while. Was that the same young William Morris agent that found you years earlier? I think by that time, I had moved on as writers occasionally. So you get to Letterman. I get to Letterman and it was great. I was going to the big leagues from the comedy channel up to the big 30 Rock legendary show and I got there and there were a few old line writers left. Steve O'Donnell was the head writer who hired me and was this wonderful talent and a great friend to this day. And you had Randy Cohen and you had Adam Resnick still there and Jerry Mulligan, of course. And the old timers were shaking their heads sadly by, oh, things are so degraded now. It used to be good in the old days. Now we sit in this room all evening and think of things that we can't get on the air and it's just so debased compared to the glory days. Was the top 10 list had that time to do? That was a staple. Yeah, that had been on for a few years by then. So that was an anchor point every day. You knew there'd be that. But just the quest for new ideas that Dave would get behind and actually do as was the case from the very beginning. Yeah, very frustrating. Always a struggle. But that was a sort of quiet period and you felt like, wow, the show is reaching the end of history and we had 25 years to go. Yeah. That sums up life itself too, doesn't it? Yes, I have 25 years to go. Yes, exactly. Where does it end? It feels like the end. It feels like the end and it doesn't end. It's like a Samuel Beckett. Steve Young, you wrote on Letterman for 25 years? 25 years. Wow. Spring of 90 to the last day, spring of 2015. In the bunker. Yeah, I liked, I mean, there were different up and down periods. Some periods I recall less fondly than others. But the last few years at the show, I mean, it was limited what Dave wanted to do. He didn't do remotes anymore. He didn't want to do complicated things that required extensive rehearsal and all that. But within those parameters, we were still doing things that we all really enjoyed and that would, on a good day, really tickle Dave because he'd been doing the show for so long. He probably had had more comedy come across his radar than almost anyone alive. And it was hard to get something that really made his eyelids open up and go, whoa, this is something we've never thought of before. This is a different land that's just opened up. And some days you could do that just in a line or a 30 second bit or something and just feel like, okay, 25 years on. No, it's not over. We're still mining good quality ore here. Andy Breckman, you worked at 30 Rock. I don't mean, I don't want to violate your privacy, but you had like one of those amazing deals with Saturday Night Live where you could just come in. I was at Saturday Night Live when they were sort of in transition, maybe struggling a little in the early, let me say, I did Letterman for a couple of years and then Saturday Night Live. So the mid-80s, I did three years there full-time. And then I don't think they do this anymore, just as Steve's experienced at The Simpsons. They brought me in for the next five or six or seven seasons. I was brought in as a guest writer four or five weeks, four or five shows a season. And you kicked ass. Well, it's easy as a guest writer because you can make it look easy because you have all year to think of five. The challenge is thinking of 22 ideas every week. But all I had to do was think of five half decent ideas. So yeah, I always came in with something, but I was trying to get a movie career going. What's interesting, yeah, and you did. What's interesting about the two of you is Steve is of the regimentation of Harvard, Work Hard, Play Hard. Harvard, Play Hard. And, you know, Letterman. And Andy, both of you came from it from two different, you entered comedy. You mean I don't work hard. You make it look a lot easier because I don't work hard. But now did you go to college? I did not go to college. I came in through a different door. I was performing as a, I went to BU for a semester, but I wanted to... And you dropped out of college. I dropped out of college to see if I could make a living performing. I thought I was, at the time, I thought I was Randy Newman or Louden Wayne. I don't know if you know that reference, but doing comedic music and songwriting and nobody, none of my so cold friends would tell me I had the courtesy to tell me I didn't have the talent to do it. So I tried it and the problem was I didn't fail. I didn't succeed. Obviously I didn't, you know, I'm not a household name. Obviously I didn't succeed, but I didn't fail. I kept getting work enough to keep going. The carrot was just dangling and years went by the way years do. And I was in my mid-20s and... Is this where we get to have the sex dungeon reference? Yeah, I made a living. Let's just say that. So I made, I was doing well enough to keep going. And then thankfully, thankfully, I stumbled backwards into sketch writing and found, before Letterman, I had another credit on a kid's show, but thankfully I realized I could do something else because that's a tough life. Have I ever seen you stumped? I don't think there's ever been an idea presented to Andy Breckman that you couldn't solve. I don't honestly know what that means. No, seriously, a movie idea. I've pitched you crazy movie ideas and within five minutes. My favorite thing to do is to break stories and to work on, in broad strokes, work on ideas. And that's my favorite thing to do. My least favorite thing, like a lot of writers, is writing. That's hard. But I do love the bantering and the kicking ideas around. And my favorite place to be in the world is a good writer's room. I don't know if Steve agrees, but... I loved the Letterman writer's room. I felt like this is where I'm becoming the fully realized version of myself. I definitely agree. It's my favorite place to be and I'm working to get another show going, not to get a show on the air really or to write, which is going to be hard. But I just want to get a writer's room again. I just love being with the Harvard boys, love them. My favorite words in the English language are when the head writer says, I have to shut the door. But it's getting so... Because he's going to tell a joke? Or the room has just gotten... Yeah, we used to get, okay, close the door. We're going to talk about this in terms that we don't want the rest of the world to hear. Are there women in the room at Letterman? Intermittently and usually, yes. I mean, that was always, I think increasingly over the years, a project that all these shows have grappled with because, yeah, we wanted to be a place that people don't feel excluded from and all that. Did it damper some of the jokes that you were throwing around? Very little, very little. You're talking about jokes that weren't for the show? Yes, of course. Well, that's 99% of the jokes are. The shockingly... Not even that it's graphic or crude, just like the conceptually horrifying sometimes was the direction we'd go. In my experience, and I think Dave you'd agree, the fun is being with funny people and poking at it, poking at them and poking them until you can get them to laugh. That often meant crossing some boundaries. But just getting people your respect to crack up was the goal for me. They're not getting material on the air, but just making them laugh. Andy has this gift of pretending not to understand the assignment and playing dumb. One of the most, you know, Brian Reich? Brian Rich, I always mispronounce his name, it's Brian Rich. Very funny guy. You were probably in college with him, right? I think he was a little younger. And just a frighteningly brilliant guy. He invented the masturbating bear on Conan. Now, yes, but I think it's worth pointing out bears had been masturbating for millennia before this Conan business ever happened. But not while wearing a diaper. And Pimp Bot. And Pimp Bot. I'm Conan. Oh, you never saw Pimp Bot? It's amazing. Anyway, so Brian's like this frighteningly brilliantly funny guy and we were traveling somewhere and Andy and Brian were in the back seat. Okay. And it was dumb and retarded. It was it was the most fascinating conversation for four hours. It's very easy for me to play dumb. The two of them just trying in a conversation is he is bringing it down. I mean, not dirty example. If you can if you can make Brian laugh, that's made my day. That's that if you can break him, that's because he's as smart and funny as anyone. But just you guys, I can't articulate it. But they would start a conversation that would go on for an hour. And the premise would be wrong. It would be based on some wrong fact. And then they would pursue it down. It was it was fat. It was anyway. Yeah, Betsy Borns has a is a great comedy writer and writes about comedy. And she has a new podcast. Going back to women, the first writing job I had was on Roseanne and she hired women. And my recollection of the female writers on Roseanne, where they were as filthy, if not filthier than the guys, I mean, they would, I don't want to mention any names, but there were female writers who were doing Lucian Ethel, you know, with the candy, pretending to be blowing guys, you know. So the idea that women can't be as horrible in a room as a guy is. No, I wouldn't say that belief holds any water. But I do think that there are cultural influences that begin when you're a child. And if you're a girl, you may be influenced and socialized to think you're supposed to be the quieter one and boys are the boisterous, noisy attention getting ones. And then this is hard to overcome later. If you think, well, I'm a funny person, but I'm not used to thinking that I'm the the one who's going to get up and get the attention. And maybe writing is a little different than performing in that. But I will tell you that in the later years of Letterman, I was looking at the writing submissions coming in. And even after we told agents, we are always very interested in seeing promising women writers. We don't want you to hold back on this. It was 25 to one men to women submitting to the Letterman show. And maybe by that point, we weren't the hottest show. Maybe there were other shows that the most talented women thought this is where I'm aiming for. So maybe that's not a real sample. But that has always stuck out to me as an example of the underlying social, cultural, blah, blah, blah, hyphenated things that are going on. What I would do if I had a particularly raunchy joke in a room, and there was a woman in the room, is I would spell it. You didn't know that women can spell? What? They can spell. Holy moly. There's a real flaw in my plan. Happiest day at FLAW in my plan. Well, first of all, again, as with the bear, I'm going to point out, not all women can spell. So you may have been fine. Yeah, that's right. Well, yeah. We're looking for very funny, very illiterate women. Yeah. The women went out and created Broad City and Amy Schumer and Sarah. So, you know, right? And girls and all that kind of stuff. They probably... Well, they probably had a male producer helping. To help them with the spelling. I think if I were a woman... Those shows are so good, you've got to believe. It's funny that the Letterman show, Dave will say this, was created by, you know, Meryl Marko. Pretty much created the format. Many of his long-term producers were women, and there were very talented women coming in and out over the years. I was doing somebody's radio show the other day, and there were... It was me, the hosts, and three other women. And then Rich Voss came in, the great comedian, Rich Voss, and the male energy took over. And we were... All three of us have daughters, and, you know, we look over and we see the women, and there is a male energy that is... Trying to impress them? Well, and it dominates... It's not necessarily more powerful. It's just louder. And there's a female energy. There are two different energies. This confirms my theory that men want to get laid. I've been saying that for years. And you've just confirmed it. So that we were shown... Men are anxious to impress women. Yeah, it's... Well, look, I can't sink a three-point basket. I can't hit a curveball. This is all I can do to, you know, to get women to... What about your comedy songs? Believe me, that doesn't work either. You've got to believe me. I tested that for 10 years. Have you ever laughed a woman into bed? Well, I don't have an option. I don't know what else I... What else do I have going for me? How does a comedy writer... Except now I could go up to a woman, you know, and say, I make a very handsome living. As a comedy writer, what do you do? You meet a woman, you hand some jokes to a funny guy... I don't know. Do you guys agree that... I know you're single now. I don't know if you're dating. I don't know what Steve's situation is. But a woman who laughs is a gift from God. You know, just a real laughter. And I love... You know, both my... I've been married twice. And both my wives were very generous with their laughter. And that's just the juice. That's the energy that keeps me going every day. But is that... I wouldn't know what to do with a tough room at home. That would be hell on earth. Tell what your daughter used to say. This is a tough room just sitting at the kitchen table. Tell what your daughter used to do. Oh, yes. I... My daughter... At the kid... At the dinner table. If dad, if I told a joke, or tried to be funny, and it didn't work. If the joke wasn't funny, my daughter Rachel would start crying, playfully crying and saying, we're going to starve. That was her thing. Around the house. I'm not going to ask you personal questions, but let's just say, Steve, young, you've had children. That's right. I live in a dwelling. What's it like? Is it wonderful? It's not bad. Let me keep you out of the elements. I haven't met your kids. Andy Breckman's kids were raised... are being raised exactly how my kids were raised. Actually, better because... I don't know. Better. They are constantly pitching. You walk into the house. They're two beautiful kids. These are from the new marriage. From Beth. Well, it's funny you say that. As we're sitting here in New York on the Lower East Side, my son, Evan, my 10-year-old son. Who I have a feud with. Who you're having a celebrity feud with, my 10-year-old son. Good luck on that feud, by the way. He wouldn't do a roast battle with me. I wanted to do a roast battle. I have to pick him up. I have to leave it a few minutes to pick him up. He's had comedy class. Really? He's doing stand-up comedy at the Gotham Comedy Club. He comes out and does like every... At the end of every semester, they come out and do five minutes. You've got to come to see it. Oh, my God. But his last comedy routine was he came and said, you know, every comedian needs a hook, needs a gimmick. I'm the comic without a phone. And he did a whole five minutes on how he doesn't have a phone. Very funny kid. And he doesn't have a phone because you're not funny and you're starving? Because he's 10. I don't know. When did your kids get phones? He's 10. So, wait a second. Don't you think this would have been fun? There was a bet of Andy, by the way, hosts for WFMU. I have a show not unlike this. And Steve Young should come on your show. He's always welcome. He has the most amazing show. You would have so much fun. I would go with you just to watch you go beyond his show. But Steve was telling us about his dwelling. No, I want to hang on for one second. So, they were doing a benefit for WFMU, which is the greatest radio station. I'm familiar with it. I know Erwin Chewson. Yes, he's by Leedon actually on Wednesdays. And there are two great radio stations in America, KPFK in Los Angeles, where my radio show is, and WFMU. And it's just a beautiful building. So, they were doing a benefit at Monty Hall. That's the name of it. Oh, yes. I've been there. I've done a show in this. Oh, great. Oh, yes. By the way, I did your show. In Jersey City, it's now become a real hot venue. Yeah. You can get over there on the path train. Yes. The number of people who heard me on your show. Well. So, anyway, they're doing a benefit for WFMU. It was a talent show. And I said, why don't Evan, your 10-year-old son, and I do a roast battle? He doesn't know you. And I would kick his ass. That's just wrong. No, it isn't. It's hysterical. All right. Well, let me ask Steve Young. Let me ask Judge Young. I'm going to have to thread this needle very carefully. Exactly. The idea would be a roast battle. Right. And they introduced me as a guy who's written on roasts. He's written for Trimfiancel Comic Dog, and he's going to go up against Evan, this 10-year-old. And everybody automatically assumes that Evan is going to kick my ass. Well, but he does it. The point, the problem is he doesn't, David, God bless you. I love you. But he doesn't know you very well. You're not, I mean, you've been to the house a few times. But you're, I mean, to say to Evan, you're going to go on stage in this man. This middle-aged man is going to ridicule you. It's just a tough sell to a 10-year-old. Why? But no, but for the funny. But for the funny. Okay, maybe. But he doesn't know you. All right. What did he say to you? He doesn't love you. Most. I don't even know. I didn't even. I don't know. You didn't pitch it. It used to be that your average 10-year-old knew all the Feldman references. Now I don't know if they do. No, no, no. I don't. Yeah. It's getting tougher and tougher to get him into your van, isn't it, Dave? I don't know. I just, I just... Comedy van. Hey, kids, come in the van and we'll work on a routine. I wanted to do a double with my son. They call them doubles. And back in Vaudeville. And I wanted to come out there and humiliate my son. And we used to do it at parties when we were... It would be so much fun to have a father-son comedy team. I don't know. Has it ever... Is it unprecedented? Yes. Father-son comedy team? Yeah, and we would do... I mean, you've seen siblings, of course. We would do it when we had parties. My son and I would come out and I would really, you know, the comedy team, I don't want to mention the name, but I'd come out and everybody would automatically assume that he was going to make fun of me. And I just humiliated. I would pretend to read his report card just tell him what I caught... Tell people what I caught him doing. What I would do is I'd have ever come out and every time I moved, he would flinch. Like he's scared of me. They will, I will, I will sit... Once a year, they deign to invite me to their beautiful van. They'll always invite me. And the kids, when I walk in, they immediately start pitching me show ideas, jokes, and it's... You're all very show-busy people. This stuff doesn't happen at my house. Really? Yeah. Are your kids... Have your kids gone into show business? No. That's a badge of honor for you. My older daughter is about to go to grad school to get a master's in social work. Fine healthy sense of humor. But not seeming to be inclined... I'm sure she's getting it in what? Social work. She wants to become a clinical therapist. Certainly a very healthy and robust sense of humor. But doesn't seem to think that she needs to be creating it. So that's fine. The younger daughter is in college now and I don't know what she'll end up towards. She also is a very funny person, but she doesn't seem like she has a great drive to be brought into the world. Well, that means you raise them well. That means they're happy. That means they're well adjusted and they don't have that void in their life. One of my favorite quotes in the world is, happy people do not make history. Wow. History is being made by people that are driven. But I'm curious, and maybe before you go, if you could comment on this, there's this perception... Maybe we even talked about this last time I was here, that comedy writers have to be bitter and neurotic in order to have this comedy engine fired up to deal with their issues through comedy. And I always felt growing up that I'm not really that way. I just like really weird, silly, funny, smart stuff. And I'm, I think, fairly well adjusted most of the time. I don't know. I don't know where it starts. I don't know. Like, I look at... I have five kids. I have three from a previous administration as a Korean and then two from Beth. And four of the five are not interested at all in show business or entertaining people or getting on stage. But my fifth at my youngest, Evan, it is important to him. It's how he looks at the world and he filters everything through comedy. And so I don't know if it's genetic. I mean, I don't know if I raised him differently. So if I have another half dozen kids, I might get one. Yeah, I don't know if you want one, but I don't know if it's the lucky one or the unlucky one. But that's, you know, his identity is kind of built around being funny and he loves making kids in the class laugh and he will come home sometimes from school and say, I got off a great singer. Got off a great singer today and that's who he is, just like you and I do. Is he at that point of trying to impress girls with this? Yeah, exactly. That's who he is. I mean, that's who we are. Do you give note? I got into trouble. I would note my kids. Oh, you would do a little polish? I did. I was like, I would correct them. Yeah, yeah. Like it was like it was math. But that can be fine if they see that you're not trying to diminish them, but actually trying to help them. Have you done that? Well, no, no one brings me comedy. No, I'm talking about during, in a conversation with my kids. I've never tried to help your kids with comedy. They will make a joke. And I will, when they were younger, and I would correct their witticisms. And they actually didn't complain to their credit. No, sometimes. There were so many more horrible things that I was doing. Sometimes around the dinner table, somebody will try a humorous remark and I'll say, or this. And I'll have the hopefully slightly punchier version. They all go, oh, of course. Well, there you go. I think I know how they feel here. You're funnier than me right here. When your kids make you laugh. That's the greatest. It's the greatest. It's the greatest. But is it intentional? Because I found that most of the hilarious stuff I think that has ever happened in human history has been done by little kids who don't know what they're doing. But I think they try to make you laugh. And then if I really laugh and it's a genuine moment, it's not unlike, I think maybe you and I shared, if you can get Letterman to crack up. You know, if you can make that Letterman laugh, that was something you savored those moments. And they didn't happen every day, at least not for me. And it's probably the same for kids making their dad laugh. I'm always amazed when my kids can do things comedically that I can't do. Like at a laugh. Like I can't do sarcasm. You're not sarcastic. Steve Young, obviously. I think it's in there somewhere. I have this, and maybe this is a little different than the male comedy paradigm of being super loud and energetic. I usually find that I do well with the calm deadpan, just slip the shiv into your ribcage sort of thing. I've never been it. That's not in my DNA. It's not in my DNA either. I can't do it. I remember when we moved into our house, one of my daughters, 10 years old, we had gotten sconces. And I never thought. Oh my God, he's finally telling the sconce story. I've been asking for this for I don't know how long. That's basically what my daughter said. That's exactly, my wife and I was like nine in the morning. We were both leaving for work. And we couldn't believe we had a living room with sconces and go. Oh no, no, no. I want to hear the end of the sconce story. No, no, no. I'm so sorry that was. So you have to go? I do. I have tickets for Guardians of the Galaxy. And I have to get back to New Jersey. Okay. Will Evan come in here? You should have the children of your guest as a sort of a little group. Have you done that on your show? No, it's a great idea. The children of the funniest friends you have, bring their kids in. And just treat them like adults. Well, you'd get great stories. It certainly would be uninhibited. Would it be fun to do this show with kids? No? Yes. Yeah, but it's a tough. Okay, I'll have to drive Evan down here to do it. It's a tough neighborhood. Would Evan, you know what I saw up front? Just call him on his phone. Thank you, Andy. Oh, hey, no, thanks very much. Steve, good to see you again. We're going to be right back. Andy Brackman, how do people reach you? How do they listen to the. Dear God, how do they reach you? WFMU. Oh, they can. WFMU on Wednesday, Wednesday evenings. Okay. And it's a great show. Well, that means a lot. Hey, and it meant a lot to be asked here. Steve, God bless you and your work. Okay, we'll be right back. Okay.