Does anything of that resonate with you? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Well, it was, uh, it was a commercial venture that George got into because he wanted to stir the pot because the first movie was 18 months old and he was about to start shooting The Empire Strikes Back, and he wanted to keep the flame burning until The Empire was issued.

And back then in the era of the three networks in America, a big variety special would keep the pot simmering.

But he immediately, once he realized what he had done, he distanced himself from it because he had sold CBS an impossible situation.

First of all, a musical special starring the Wookiees, who could not sing or dance or cross the room without tripping on something, and that was number one.

And number two, well, then, then it came and it went.

It got a respectable rating and some people thought it was fun, some people thought it was appalling, and nobody thought that much.

Is it remotely possible to articulate in this very short timeline we have on a podcast, what does Bette Midler mean to you as a queer person?

Yeah

... powerful, uh, CBS lawyer show.

And, uh, it was, it was reality based.

It...

Not, not like Perry Mason.

It wasn't just, you know, concocted Hollywood mysteries.

It was, uh, serious stuff.

[laughs]

it, because

Star Wars, you have to understand, first of all, it was the 70s, and if people tell you they remember the 70s, they weren't there.

Because we were half-baked the whole time that we were doing this stuff.

So when they asked me to do it, I thought, this is probably a death sentence.

But Star Wars, there had been one movie, and it was a year and a half later, and George was about to start shooting The Empire Strikes Back, and he wanted something that would stir the pot while he was waiting for that movie to come out.

And he had a bunch of stories, and he sold CBS a musical special With the last one of his stories and it I don't think he actually ever watched TV George Because he would know that this wouldn't work because he sold them a musical special starring the Wookiees Now the Wookiees cannot speak sing, dance, or cross the room without tripping over themselves.

And they sound, they speak no known language.

But I wonder if you think about what it would have been like to have Paul Lind As a performer without having to kind of I don't know pretend to have a wife and half the episodes, you know

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, uh, so Billy made a joke about him in the monologue, and then when he won, Jack, the first thing he said, which nobody remembers, is, "Billy Crystal, I crap bigger than that." So w- we looked at each other and we said, "Well, the bar has been lowered.

We can now make jokes about..." And then he started doing the one-armed pushups.

And then it was like, you know, Tilly, uh, Tilly bar the door.

I mean, it was like, it was, everything was loose.

And it was brilliant 'cause Whoopi had given him the award.

She'd won the year before, and she's behind him and looking at him in horror as he's doing, like, he's gone off the rails.

Yeah.

[gasps]

She steps off out of a poster.

So we did it.

Uh, we did it on a grant for a theater, and, uh, as a Zoom, and, uh, they liked it and wanted to do a full production, so I had to call Dolly and say, "Uh, can we have the music?" And she said, "I'm your partner now." So, so we did it in five regional theaters.

We did six months in the UK, six months in Australia.

During which time, she said, "I have this other musical I'm writing, which is a biography, and I'm, I'm not gonna renew the rights, uh, for the, your show because I don't wanna have two competing shows using my catalog." And I totally understood, and, but, but here's the very Dolly thing she did.

She waived all of her royalties on our show.

... what is that [laughs] what is that like?

I did, actually.

I was that kind of a critic.

Right.

Her manager, Bud Friedman, who ran the improv, was her manager because she was working down the street in Fiddler on the Roof, getting married every night.

And she would come up to the improv and sing songs and say a few things.

And he booked her at a club in Chicago called Mr. Kelly's, a very famous nightclub in its day.

And he asked me if I would go and review her because I reviewed several of his other clients.

But there was this moment where it wasn't.

Did you go see shows that your dad had money in?

Oh, yeah.

All the David Merrick musicals.

Well, the first show I saw was a musical starring Carol Channing called The Vamp.

And we got friendly as adults and she would keep saying to me, why do you keep on bringing up that turkey? Because it really was.

It was called Delilah.

It was based on a real thing, which was Theda Barra.

When you were a young man, like how did it sit with you?