I'm Steve Young I was a writer for Late Night with David Letterman and Late Show with David
Letterman started in 1990 went to the end in 2015 and as you'd expect in 25 years yes there
were a few highlights and uh a lot of memories and Vivid stories so I started with the Late
Night show in Spring of 1990. head writer Steve O'Donnell saw something in me that he thought he
could mold in a useful way and in the long term I guess he was proven correct but I really had not
watched the show religiously I had to ask a lot of embarrassing questions early on in meetings like
who is this Calvert that everyone's talking about turns out well Calvert De Forest known to the
world at the time as Larry Bud Melman but once in a while early on I did breakthrough with something
that was at least deemed producible and uh one early one that I do remember and I haven't seen it
in a thousand years so it may lie there with no uh entertainment value at all now but I do remember
liking the idea and it amazingly was produced very well okay welcome back to the show coming
up in this half hour after uh Paul did you miss something there did I how it seems like there's
something good Dave Hal isn't there usually some kind of Applause or something when we come out
of one of these commercial deals like that yeah I'm not sure they have Applause usually there are
Plaza could you is there something wrong with the Applause sign Hal let's check all right check and
see because normally we come out of there oh see look hostile silence that would that's the problem
right there explain it Hal you've gotta you've got the Applause sign set on the wrong place yeah see
what else you have up there okay yeah let's see what this is this is oh gears no no no no that's
let's check another selection there Hal o cheers yeah switch it there we go
I'm shooting snow okay no no let's keep going Hal let's just keep keep going no
one piece which actually straddled the NBC show over to CBS which I was uh
very proud of it was called the strong guy the fat guy the genius I at one point in the room I
guess pitched uh a bit where Dave walks around with a bodybuilder and asks people do you have
anything for the strong guy to break and Rob Burnett the head writer at the time said hmm
there's something appealing about that let me go in and talk to Mr Letterman about that and
see what he thinks and he went away and we all waited to see what would happen and he came back
in a while he said well this is interesting I think you're going to like this it's now going
to be do you have something for the strong guy to break do you have something for the fat guy
to eat do you have a question for the genius and we all went oh can you break that clock
do you have something for the effect I'd eat I had a lettuce
if you got the best animal trainers in the world together
could you train a camel to ski I think the key thing would be to get the camo out of the desert
into some place where there's snow but once that's done I imagine it can be done it could be done
at some point I think Dave saw some early
cuts of it and said you know what we need in this piece is a theme song Rob and I kind of
sat down and put something together and hummed a few bits and of course the way Paul and the band
would take these initial scraps of something and turn it into something magnificent within
like what seemed like the blink of an eye was always so impressive so suddenly we had not
only this piece but we had it the strong guy fat guy genius song which I still occasionally have
running through my head is just one of those perfect storms or everything lined up let's go
a strong guy the fat guy the genius God gave them each a special gift at Birth
either to solve it that's the reason they were put up on this Earth
fairly early in the CBS run we did a week of shows in London and one idea that came up
somebody is wearing a suit covered with bird seed and goes out to Trafalgar Square where there are
literally hundreds or thousands of pigeons the head writer at the time said uh well hey any of
you uh writers want to be in the bird seed suit and maybe have a lot of pigeons on you and just
everybody recoiled in horror and I said I'll do it I don't care how bad could it be so suhum costume
designer puts together this suit she glues rice cakes all over a suit jacket and also a helmet
puts peanut butter on the rice cakes and then slathers bird seed on the peanut butter so
suddenly you're this walking mass of well bird seed but also a few other components
there he is coming out of the underground he has the protective goggles on and there the
can you possibly can you possibly imagine a more pleasant way to spend the day I I think
not I co-authored a book which came out in 2013 called everything's coming up Prophets The Golden
Age of industrial musicals and this grew out of a bit on the Letterman show I had run the
record collection bit for many years and I started finding in the course of gathering material for
that these strange corporate souvenir albums from sales meetings and conventions that were musicals
Dave uh I think he was always very supportive of staffers who had interesting outside projects
going he said oh yes we should have Steve on the show the cherry on top of this whole thing aside
from increased Book Sales which were substantial cbs's local affiliate in New York every uh evening
they would prepare a little tease in in their own newscast and about what's coming up on the
Lettermen show during the the 11 pm newscast before the show that I was going to be on and
coming up we've got of course David Letterman and Dave's guest tonight our Hall of Fame quarterback
Steve Young And there's footage of me walking out and waving at the beginning of my guest
segment after a commercial break they came back and sort of red-faced um just to clarify um not
the quarterback on the Letterman show tonight it's a different guy with the same name My Hope
Is that the other Steve Young even now sometimes gets inquiries about did you write a book about
weird records did you were you on a documentary then after the news on The Late Show Dave's got
a Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young and music from light denim now just to clarify Hall of Fame
quarterback Steve Young will not be on The Late Show right it's another guy with the same name
thanks so much for joining us tonight The Late Show is next Dave's guests are Steve Young the
writer and music from light Denver I had an idea one day I think it was on uh July 11th the date
7 11 and I said oh what if we have a guy come out and pretend he's the CEO of 7-Eleven and he's got
some grandiose plan for a big promo if you walk into 7-Eleven and say Dave Letterman sent you
you get a free slurpee or whatever so we we did that and I think it caused a minor uproar in the
7-Eleven Corporation we did many installments with this guide I think my favorite one in early 2013
2012 had ended without the Mayan apocalypse taking place so I said how about Jim Keys is
now uh the head of public relations for the Mayans did the world end no were the Mayans embarrassed
absolutely I'm here to admit that mistakes were made and that several high-ranking Mayans have
been fired or reassigned but we know that's not good enough for you folks you were misled
disappointed and inconvenienced that's why we're making the following offer if within the past
1200 years you purchased one of the defective Mayan calendars simply return it to the place of
purchase for a full refund plus a free 2013 Mayan Joker day calendar you'll love it it's a real hoop
the Mayans are committed to making this right and regaining your trust thanks and Happy New Year
very late in the game I was starting to get more interested in writing songs I
had this idea for a song about the history of the Super Bowl
and the song was right at my wheelhouse of stupid and sort of clever but so just jammed together
stupid cleverness that maybe it would work the lyrics of the song were just the recitation of
Roman numerals so it was I I I I I I all the way up to 48 and I think when we did it people
in the audience once they realized the premise of it were oh no he's not gonna and then like
by the time he was in the 20s and he was actually pulling it off it was an incredible high wire Act
of Rhythm and phrasing and pacing and by the time the audience realized he's actually gonna
Land This Plane they were like oh my God this and and he got all the way up to 48 and it was
a Delirious moment we don't know what we just saw but somehow it worked you know the first
Super Bowl was played on January 15 1967 and we've come a long way since then hit it Paul
the next game V i v i i v i i i i x and x you see x i x i i x i i i x i b and then x v
the XVI x v i i x v i i i x i x and x x count on with me x x i x x i i x x v x
x v i x x v i i x x v i i x x i x x x x it's easy x x x i x x x i i x x i i x x
x i v x x x v x x x v i x x x v i i x x x v i i i x x x i x XL obviously XL i x
l i i x l i i i x l i b and XLV o x l v i x l b i i x l b i i and that's the history
so fairly late in my tenure in the late Show's history I was getting more interested in writing
songs I very cautiously decided to see could I combine that sphere music with my quote-unquote
day job of weird clever funny verbal whatever at one of the very first times I tried that was uh
for Thanksgiving we had some Montage of what the staff does on Thanksgiving when we're all together
for the show and having dinner together and I had written a song about uh the unpleasant uh
details of turkeys being slaughtered and butchered and prepared for consumption this is Steve Young
then the next step after the slaughter loosen the feathers in boiling water singing a song about
turkey farming writers were sometimes put into pieces over the years and I was not a trained
actor but I looked good in a lab coat but those were mostly pre-tapes the the more on the edge
stuff was if you were going to do a live thing and there was a a live bit but it involved a guy named
cliff Wentworth had written into the show with some question and Dave said well Cliff Wentworth
what is it and some guy in the audience would stand up and say well I'm Cliff Wentworth and
then another guy would stand up like three people would all stand up and claim to be Cliff Wentworth
for some reason I had some neurological uh little twist that made me have trouble remembering or
saying the name Cliff Wentworth anytime I tried it in rehearsal it kept coming out as
Clint Wentworth somebody uh who I will not name at the end of rehearsal said now don't actually say
Clint during the show okay I stood up and said my name is Clint Wentworth I think on the tape
you might be able to see the moment of panic in my eyes when I realize what I've just done
uh Dear Dave I recently received confirmation of tickets to the taping of your show on Friday
March 1st 1991. that's today that's this very damn day you may not readily realize
the significance of this but I am a Bonafide GE light bulb salesman I have attached my
business card as quasi-proof of this fact well there it is right there regards Cliff
Wentworth Memphis Tennessee this uh this ought to be pretty interesting is there in
fact a cliff Wentworth in the audience a Mr Cliff Wentworth there we go my name is Clint Wentworth
my name is Cliff Wentworth only one of these three gentlemen is the real Cliff Wentworth GE
light bulb salesman is it number one no that's number two or number three
all right let's go into the control room now to uh Pete fatovich our uh
tell us who who is the actual Cliff Wentworth Pete oh gives a rat's ass
that's that's what I call comedy that's fine we had we had two cliff wentworths and coincidentally
enough oddly enough one Clint Wentworth isn't that strange if we can find two guys named cliff
Wentworth and yet another guy named Clinton there are ideas that you pitch that are just number 38
out of 100 ideas and you don't know why this one gets chosen in particular the premise was there's
trouble during the taping and that the camera shot starts bucking wildly and you see the cameraman
trying to hold on to this camera which runs away under its own power bursts out the studio 6A doors
at NBC and makes a run for it somehow the sentient camera they've enjoyed that he referred to it as
our little student film and uh also Michael Penn a fine musician and a great singer will be out here
with uh music from his new album on Monday man I wish that would stop making me a little queasy
um Okay Kevin Klein will what is that what is going on there is that is that the camera is
that is everyone all right oh my God the camera's going nuts run for your lives everyone oh my God
foreign
debate basically
foreign
you hate to see that happen especially at the holiday time
different head writers would come and go and and people would uh clean out the remnants of what
the old head writer had been accumulating off to the side and I found a page of my own ideas
and I started reading oh my God this is great I don't remember this at all but these ideas
all seem like exactly like ideas I would like I like this and I don't know what they were but
just that sensation of myself but not me had done something which I completely recognized as valid
to my voice and yet I had zero memory of it these are terrific who wrote this this is wonderful
foreign