Steve O’Donnell Part 2

let me just get comfortable huh okay so we just went through um a miniature i don't know what you want to call it but uh uh yeah i mean we went through a power outage here where eighteen thousand homes suddenly went without power um and i uh immediately started of course thinking of myself um and not you know the potential traffic accidents of traffic lights being out and all of the other ice cream trucks uh not well i guess ice cream trucks would be okay um but now hey candy let's make sure in the new studio we got a generator all right okay so we're gonna do that um you have built extremely not at all i got to eat lunch and believe it or not a repairman came and went during that to blackout and repaired my garbage disposal which he told me to use more often we once did an entire show at kimmel with uh when there was a blackout in la there was just enough auxiliary power or independent generator to run two cameras but the lights were all like coleman lanterns and things like that yeah i thought there would have been more attention to that show uh than than there was but a lot of stuff kimmel didn't get credit for in the first few years that he deserves some hats off well that uh that that certainly can be said for for you guys too as you're finding your voice in developing your audience i mean i i love i love that kimmel has um creatively and and wisely bringing you on board to help with things like this you know i think about the early shows of late night the plane show uh the show that turned upside down along the way the the little one-offs that you guys did and and uh the idea the power going out saying okay well can we still uh yeah let's do this this is gold let's go ahead and do this um that's something that i i would think is still ingrained in you yes well again many of those premise shows and by the way it used to be a very tough sell to sell a theme show to letterman you know they could go circus night no we're not doing circus night you know or christmas in july well maybe you know he just always felt quite wisely that once you've got the the premise and it's not going well and then you're stuck with it for an hour you know sure but um many of the effects were just like writers sitting dully in an edit room and noticing that you could flip an image or rotate an image they were completely conventional things but there was always the idea very big in the letterman uh uh you know vision of making a mountain out of a mole hill take something small and make it very very big absolutely reverse image television well the things i love about that and maybe we can get into a little bit of um uh your role as the as the writer okay i want to talk about head writer versus not head writers you hear that term all the time it does you know it does vary from from place to place and even within the uh letterman show i think there have been head writers that didn't do that much writing i think the first couple head writers at letterman were real writers i always taught myself more as like a sergeant major or a squad leader right but always writing because you not only did we need it but you needed every every word visual syllable you could get yes but also it was just you were it was solidarity um yeah um i was a writer obviously for not for about a year before i was head writing and even then the head writer promotion i think was out of desperation because uh uh most of the staff at that point left to go to either saturday night live or to another lord michael show you know all about this sure so there was a little bit of like we'll we'll we'll promote the uh you know the the corporal to be uh to be uh you know lead the group um but it it worked out i think i i had just enough flexibility to work with dave and also with the writers and back and forth um my job was partly to distill and edit so that it wasn't just you know seven writers yelling things at dave and him making decisions i would kind of go through and uh and there were certainly negotiations within negotiations writers would go i wanna pitch the big red wig one more time and i thought okay i'll pitch the big red wig we'll see what happens i like the job and over the years there would be you know whenever the contracts would be come up again they'd go do you want a car service and i go no that seems like more of a headache than a help how about a producer title and i was green enough i went like no i i hate most of the producers i do um i like being a writer like a head writer what could be a better title than that shout out to barry and morty now i'm forgetting about that no totally kidding i do have fondness for both and over the years have come to be i think a good friend with morty who uh uh is is again the the characters they're all so distinct i think when when the hand of god intervened to cut off your podcast you were about to speak about shecky there's a third character whose name now is enshrined in most other late night shows because whenever somebody says go to some old clip they'll go go to a shecky clip i'm not even sure they know that it originated with rick sheckman they just think oh that sounds old-fashioned like you know like loyal morty morty yeah all you need is a dino and sometimes there has been a dino dino stamitopoulos i know worked for a while we're going to get we're going to get to those i think it's all those three of those names actually in uh in a very beautiful speech you gave and that's how we're going to finish the show uh you know not to not to uh tell tales out of school but was this the one at bunker hill wouldn't that be great if we had that one yeah oh my god now we'd be cooking with oil if we had that one uh shecky let's talk about shacky because um you know we have talked a little bit about some folks who are behind the scenes that have been uh encouraging me um and i and i again am convinced it's not a practical joke uh and and shecky is one of those guys and so um whenever i have uh uh a guest on and and he's here's a guy that uh i go to for uh for some sage sage-like advice he and i both connect on many levels um and uh this is one of the guys um so i asked him i said do you remember the first time you met steve and and it wasn't the first day of uh of of your or his first day on on late night um yes that would have been my guess but uh but but only knowing shecky and his hobbies and interests and inclinations i'm going to wonder i had two jobs immediately before letterman one was at the museum of broadcasting which seems like a very shucky place to go to and the other was in the nbc tape library and i wonder if it was in either of those capacities that i might have met mr shipman so which one was it where uh if he wanted a piece of footage or the sum up of a show he would go and talk to somebody they would give him a card that would sum up what happened on that show jack benny or something it could have been either one there you go there you go probably the nbc tape library though because that was the job which actually made a difference in my well i don't know if it made a difference but it did figure in the day that i was hired because the tape library was in 30 rock where 1410 west the the letterman offices were and i came back from some dreary recap of a of a some prime time you know harper valley pta show or something and there was just a post-it note if you remember post-it notes they would be sticky yes um that just said meryl marco phoned can you come over to her office she wants to talk with you and i just ran from the 24th floor down to the 14th floor and presented myself to merrell and she seemed quite astonished and then said don o'donne which was one of the pet names or code names or nicknames for letterman he came into the office and said how did you get over here so fast and i said i work in the building and i got the note that mary wanted to see me and i decided to issue the returned phone call and just come directly and of course letterman said issue did you hear that meryl we got a real writer here we're gonna get our money's worth and then i went back to my office but i wasn't sure i got the job i never said we'll see you next week you know i but i did get a call the next day from some nbc lawyer who who who said uh you'll get a thousand dollars a week and at that point i felt like holy that would like it was like you are going to live in a castle made out of ice cream yeah and you will ride in a car shaped like a swan and you know um you know it was quite quite fantastic but that was that was again the just the the dizzying secondaries the main thing was how wonderful that they liked my submission and my drawings enough to hire me that part was wonderful and then there was the terror of now i must do this every day and they're going to find out what a fraud i am but um it actually took them 10 or 12 years to find out what a fraud is luckily i had enough momentum going there to to uh to to get along i wasn't going to bring up the mental health thing uh at all here in this particular podcast uh but i'm going to now because uh you know i saved that i normally say that for altman um but i'm gonna i'm gonna bring it up now because um there's a group around locally uh that's a little bit excited about what's happening here uh with the letterman podcast just it's it's kind of a curious thing that a guy from western canada is undertaking this thing and it's actually starting to do some things and the the documentary is called the unlikely host of the letterman podcast now um you bring up yeah yeah so that's that's happening it looks like um oh that's fantastic but it is an observation please do please do it it is a little bit about personal styles in a way you have an opposite style from letterman or at least a highly contrasting style one of the things that attracted me right away i mean you both seem intelligent and he seemed very smart but also very you know skeptical and and and kind of holding back and kind of stance like not sure how legitimate television was and that was extremely attractive to me and fascinating you are very dale carnegie kind of upbeat you know uh uh uh a hooray live every moment without a doubt both of which people are legitimate approaches to the universe but i find it marvelous that they could um harmoniously uh sound without being identical uh well here's a here's a a an analogy that that might not ring true for everybody that's below that's above my age group but there's a there was a hip-hop group in the late 80s and early 90s that i'm a big fan of from new york called public enemy there and and they had two members they had chuck d and flava flav and and and uh both were essential essential parts of the act chuck d of course the serious wordsmith who uh activist who seriously um was very serious at the task at hand uh including entertainment being one of those tasks and then you had flava flav who was the band's favorite biggest cheerleader had to know everything but at the same time the completely uh juxtaposed uh if that's if that's used correctly here um but but the documentary is it's about imposter syndrome it literally is what you're talking about you talk about the the 12 years of them waiting for you to feel like oh god they've discovered me now i'm okay that's actually what the documentary is about and and it took me um i had the opposite moment that that dave or or or i don't know what your moment is i'd love to hear your moment dave uh truncates his experience into a moment in a communications class in high school where he didn't know what he was gonna do see student and then suddenly they're like okay communications class stand up uh talk about yourself for three minutes oh i can i can do that i didn't have that moment until i built a a you know a family in in a modest financial firm um but good with dealing people with people i didn't have that moment going oh this is what i want to do i didn't have that moment until i was in my 40s and i'm 46 now and so the documentary is actually going to be about imposter syndrome and it's hopefully going to be one that inspires folks and trust me everybody i'm segueing right back into steve o'donnell here uh and i'm gonna maybe embarrass him a little bit unfortunately uh i don't want to do that already embarrassed okay here we go um but it's gonna be about hey go chase it go after it don't don't the person who's there already guess what they're just as qualified as you are maybe just more experienced or have a little bit more knowledge but you go go whatever you want to do go do it because it's it's it's uh we got one life and and and um let the uh that little voice that's saying that you're not the one uh beat the crap out of that voice because i can tell you right now steve if it does if this is number 16 17 18 whatever it is um if if it ends tomorrow if i get a cease and desist letter from worldwide pants and they're like uh you know what we're gonna make your life really tough if you keep doing the show i've already won and that's gonna be the crux of the documentary everything else is cake and i hope that there's a bakery's worth coming but it's all there already now that's being said i want to talk about inspiration and and and how um if you want this was going to be my intro everybody um just so you're aware we introduced we started the podcast on purpose the way we did we did not intend for the power outage uh other forces uh gleefully helped us out with that normally i do an introduction where i where i basically edify the guests to the point where they want to go under the table because i'm so grateful and so impressed with who they are um here's here's what i was gonna say for for for steve um if you now again don't do this now that would be ridiculous because it would mean you have to stop the podcast now and we don't want that so before you do this finish the podcast um then like the podcast then share the podcast with every person you know especially people you don't like because that'll be a little gift for you um and uh and uh uh get that all done once you're done doing that jump on to the youtubes okay there's a lot of moments that stevo donna wrote and whatnot early on that are on uh the official channel and on in um on giller's channel but there's something else i want you to see first i want you to go to the place where steve gives the acceptance speech for the herb sergeant award um it is one of the most like i used to fancy myself as a fairly decent public speaker that would even attempt to put the word clever into my uh accolades of how i would describe myself and then i watched this speech steve young brought him up um david letterman sent in a video clip all um to congratulate and celebrate steve o'donnell's accomplishments and yeah i'm not going to interrupt me right now because i'm going to finish it um steve uh clever and entertaining then steve shows up and gives in my opinion the greatest acceptance speech of ever ever told because of entertainment factor insights uh delight and also i don't think he ever actually accepted the award because he then went and made the award about all these other amazing people that he has worked with all of which and kellison alluded to this in his episode all of which would consider steve uh i sit at the mount of the master person who inspired them and and and and yet steve goes up there to accept this i don't know if there's a higher award in comedy there aren't many uh as a for writing and accepts this award and makes it about everybody else and how many people out there steve did you help them get over the imposter syndrome um you know place that we get to mentally um that was going to be my intro for you right there uh now you're still here so thank you well thank you i mean that is uh beyond extravagant to the uh uh lavish and uh first of all there's many much better speeches there's one that same evening about 40 minutes later john waters was given an award by the writers guild and his speech is the best it's fantastic the second thing is i'm not but really a speech maker and with every sort of problem you have i always think what how can i uh i thought the easiest thing to do was deflect attention you know just also there were so many great writers you know and some that were just i could have gone on for great length about any individual one of them chris elliot i could have given a two-hour seminar on um but also just writers in general i think i might have mentioned in the speech they're the best and the worst and comedy writers in particular and also just that i've had that i've worked with former male strippers and with uh uh you know former cops and you know former lawyers you know that have gone into comedy writing it's just it's inspiring it's uh it's it's interesting and also people that have really paid dues at every step of the way there are people and um i'm sort of in between this way there are harvard lampoon people and i was such a one and that was a privilege and a help but i had a half a decade go by before i had a television job there are other people that step right into things and then there's people like rodney dangerfield or i have a couple of other friends who who started writing in midlife and um have made a go away oh i want you on the uh on the sort of sweetness of letterman yes and um and also how darn quick and clever he is after 20 years i didn't really see him or speak too much at all there was a long gap between like mid 90s and 2015.

it's like two weeks or so before his very last telecast of late show and i had just called up and said could i just come up and say hello um and thank you and stuff like that and his assistant said yes and i came up we sat there for like two hours but the little little a little funny moment that pertains to your documentary whoops it's right there funny moment yeah that perch to your documentaries when i hadn't laid eyes on letterman in two decades he comes out and i go uh hi dave you know i don't really there's not really a very good reason for me being here and he said come to that stephen i don't have one either and um we laughed over it you know it's kind of uh my justified humility and his kind of uh uh uh higher contrast humility but it was fun and we had a very nice conversation and um i will also say that that uh a certain amount of of self-doubt and self-examination is probably good because i think you've got to keep checking yourself but there is there you also have to keep your eye on what you're good at and what is your the thing you do probably you know better in your own way than anyone else and when the letterman show was starting up i had that feeling about that like i could do this and if if if they don't see that i can just write for them then they're crazy but turns out they weren't crazy or they were crazy in some other way but they did they did see that the acropolis i mean i it was a thing i wanted to do more than anything else in my life you have high school guidance counselors maybe you get into this kind of thing absolutely find that thing you love and go do it i was never quite sure what it was i liked cartooning i liked writing i liked history i liked music yeah but most of the job decisions i made were like sort of 75 like yeah i guess so but the letterman job was something i wanted 100 there's a commonality with everybody like i think about how many of people uh that i've already talked to you know uh kellison and tommy ruprecht being the the two that come to mind immediately oh two good guys absolutely came up through the intern program and and i think about guys later on like brian tedda who came along became interns and got careers out of it literally chasing their dream job by coming in there to do the thing for free as an intern at first for the love of the game not for any other reason other than a reckless abandon not necessarily leading to a career but oh my god i can i want to intern for letterman more than anything i will pay to do that job you know i'll bartend at night to do that job i will do whatever it takes and and um how do you not love uh enthusiasm like that where people are willing to just go reckless abandon and then it turns into the career brian teda you know he's the ep on on the view now um you know you think about you know kellison and all the things that he has done the fun things that he's done um and and tommy as well tommy's doing things as well you know the experiences he's gotten i i love that and it inspires me and i think that other people out there should look at that example with humility of course and and and an openness to learning um and and and to be uh to sit at the foot of these people who have been there beforehand and actually take the advice or the opportunity kellison talked about how he does this for his people now you basically threw out the idea of hey come see me if you wanna if you wanna look at something or or grow or whatever it is come see me and and and i'm here for you and he said two people took you up on that and and he was one of them and and i just i love that you're that guy and especially in an industry where many times the writers or the head writers or things like that can be stereotyped as closed or or not that person you it seems have made a career of being that person for people is that something where did you get that from where did you get the idea of wanting to uh to lend a hand to those coming up well i i don't know about the lending the hand in there i i think i may be not so scary seeming or forbidding so i am the ninth of i am the ninth of ten kids i uh with an identical twin so there was a certain amount of social brokerage that i was kind of used to from the get-go and also a big irish family a certain amount of verbal a banter that was helpful and uh a sense of humor um uh i but also i did you know i spent several years as a freelance writer mailing articles and cartoons to a million places getting rejection rejection rejection you know what it's like to be discouraged and even there's some writers i'm friends with now who go oh yeah you called me up when you read my letterman submission you didn't give me a job but you told me you really liked a couple of things in it so they they they say it to me to kind of like thanks for nothing pal but what they really mean is that they didn't feel like it fell into a abyss and was never heard from again yeah and i know that that's a little encouragement here and there is is what it's all about and and i think comedy writing as well as regular writing but maybe comedy writing first and foremost you need some confidence boosts now and then you need a community and a sounding board and uh and uh even if it's not an audience exactly a sort of kindred group where where you can feel some support you go well i'm not such a jerk though at the same time you're also listening to them going oops i'm glad they would never dowdy and merrill and and max and tom max tom gamble and xbox these were all people like you wanted to work up to their level and they would never work with a cliche or toss out a simple reference that would have easily passed muster at most other shows they wanted to do something that was not like anything else and not out of vanity but out of like out of idealism this is how the way they wanted it well how they wanted to do what they wanted to do so um it's sort of going in all directions helping others the way you were helped and uh and and understanding that to bring out the best in people they just need a little a little sense that there's some appreciation and uh yeah yeah appreciation better than than uh than money in many many many many cases absolutely well yeah um now now i think everything at its highest level is philosophy and and this is where it shows that you are um a master of your craft because you know you you can go into the comedy writing of things and and talking about what makes the joke work it doesn't but then you just so eloquently went into the philosophy of being a comedy writer and i just appreciate that very much oh my god well i'm enough of a comedy writer to know that when people start talking about the philosophy of comedy rating most people like decide to check out at that point like oh no i mean a freud troy wrote about comedy and it's the deadliest thing in the world almost every essay you read about why we laugh but i think it's something you have a sense of or or or you don't but i appreciate all your all your kind words thank you for saying that um we're gonna get close to bringing it home here i think you've been gracious with your time and dealing with the power outage and all that um i've got two quick things i want to go into uh well actually it's yeah uh the simpsons you you wrote one of my very favorite episodes of all time um where where everyone goes and joins a cult oh yes the joyous sect the joy of uh yes it's often it's often confused with several superior episodes there's one about a secret society the stone stone cutters which is kind of like the masons way way better i love that episode as well yeah the the uh yeah i was i was that a little like my seinfeld scripts that was based oh wait no well i did have to rewrite it massively because between my first draft and my second draft the heavens gate cult all committed suicide yes and by it's sad that it would be such a cliche that i could anticipate it handily in my first draft but i had them with the purple robes and the waiting for the saucer in the whole way and so that was weird to have um to have events intercede i've always thought there was something funny about lima beans so i got to get lima beans in there and um yeah i have a handful of lines uh lisa's saying dad you are so suggestible and homer saying i am so suggestible um yeah but there too i was i was a mere passing uh the blip on that uh on that show's history but that was a big that was a big that was a big fun experience for me to go to a reading and have those voiceover artists saying your lines i mean it's like the first time letterman did one of my monologue jokes it was several days before i started working on the show because i was from the square old world where you had to give two weeks notice before you left yeah so letterman did some monologue jokes i'd included a couple pages of monologue jokes in my package and he did some and that feeling of hearing what you wrote being said by someone that you thought the world of that was that was something that you you uh that i hope everyone who aspires to do it gets that pleasure because it is as gratifying and satisfying and and thrilling as anything i can imagine well almost anything yeah i i right there that was like the moment i made dave laugh um that was a little blip moment for me as a as an enthusiast working for him and actually having him appreciate knowing that you got the voice right and and hearing the delivery done right uh i can imagine that there might have been times where there might have been miscommunications with certain writers in the delivery but of whatever whether it was dave's or another piece of material by someone else but that that when it when it rings true i can only imagine the harmony for the soul that that would be for a writer it must be there's no there's no feeling like it it's a unique feeling i i would think i will mention in a sort of back down to earth way that i have several dozen notes from dave scribbled on the actual typewritten pages of jokes where he did a joke and it did not go well or there was some unforeseen turn of events like i remember he did a joke of mine one night about karen carpenter and the next day she was dead and he circled the joke and said i hope you're happy like i how did i i didn't um anyway in the right atmosphere a failure can be as funny as a success and that's definitely something we took to heart at all of the various letterman incarnations yeah they talk about how the show one of the short hands about late night is that they celebrate failure i i think that's a little bit too harsh of a of a critique i think they celebrated real life is what it was whereas johnny was show business yeah the veneer the shiny veneer of everything and they opened a window to it i think you guys celebrated real life in the deconstruction the deconstruction of the talk show i i get that and i that rings true for me the celebrating failure part um and talking about the idea of abandoning that when moving over to late show i don't necessarily that doesn't ring as true for me to me it was it was more like regular life and okay yeah we gotta get a little bit more like johnny now um but but still celebrating regular life of course was your the hallmark um can i okay so uh uh uh i can't wait to have somebody to do a bit of a tribute on larrybuddmellman so i want to go to um ask mr melman was ask mr mellman something that you worked on very much uh i created some versions of it like the ask the big man where we built the gigantic uh body for him uh i think that was merrell kind of you know just to ask mr mellman and and we also the idea of writing answers to be given back we we would experiment with even writing lines for audience members yes you know they would tell their brush with greatness story and then there would be a writer's enhancement that would would follow it absolutely there was some part of it and if you worked on the show you you you might sense sometimes they ask mr mellman pieces and the audience pieces were to buy us a day because we needed time to finish something in the edit room or production piece i won't say they were easy they took plenty of effort and death and sweat and worry were always with the flop sweats but um usually when we saw an audience piece or a ask mr melamed or ask whoever um we knew we were we were buying a day or so right um which you still tried to make it as silly and and bright as you could but uh uh uh oh the the uh the failure it's not so much celebrating failure but failure being as good in its way as success i'll say i did a piece on the bonnie hunt show in which it was like it was going to be good no matter what happened it was magic mondays where we would have a kid come on every monday and do a magic trick perfect yeah we i went and looked at professional kid music magicians who were way too good yeah they were just way too good so then we just decided have the cameraman or the sound man or the prop person bring their kid on we'll give them a trick they'll sort of learn it and then they'll do it in front of the camera but it was it was ideal because if it worked it was great and if it didn't work it was even better because it was so adorable you know so that's what you want to do you want to find something where you can get it coming and going let's do a quick shout out to madeline smithberg right now oh yeah because there's a gal who you talk about what you just spoke about uh boy did she encompass in the folks that she would find to bring on late night who basically exemplified everything you're just talking about right now the discovery she made in what they call the the human interest area which doesn't begin to explain how quirky and spectacular those things could be and she uh continued well into the internet era but her original research for years she was just combing through small town papers and uh yeah and obscure magazines and word of mouth wonderful also just one of those things was she was on the right wavelength you know you would sometimes see talent bookers come and go who'd worked on the today show or they'd worked on good morning america or something and all they knew was who's on people magazine kind of thing but she really got what the sense of humor was with the show and was in a merrell marco uh you know george meyer jim downey kind of way a one of the flag carriers or standard bearers or uh the banner waivers how else could i put this of the late night absolutely and shout out to madeline right now with everything everything she's going through and love and yes so much love to you madeleine from us here uh all of us here right now with everything you're going through um uh i i goddamn i didn't get the gym down okay so here's the thing steve after um a a a a normal or a um a reasonable amount of time and uh making sure no lawyers have to get involved on anything and that uh you know we're okay to pop our heads out of the foxhole would you please come back on this show and we can talk about things like jim downing oh yes well yes and i would also recommend so many other people just in the melbourne area you should have steve weiner and carl team who who discovered him and used him in a student film and that was a big big big step you have already off camera um and now now that it's on camera you have to be held to it no i'm just kidding uh you have said you've you've basically opened the door to introductions and things like that i it could not be more appreciated um you know thank you for that those are yes i would love to have them on i definitely want to attribute uh some of the folks that uh can't uh you know relive the memories anymore because they're not here anymore and and of course uh mr deforest or larry putbelman i mean yes we have to do that uh next time you come on we can talk about jim downey um and and and that i i have uh uh tremendous reputational respect for him as well uh up right up there with you you of course a nose ahead because um you know he went back to snl and did his thing you stayed and and so many things you came up with there are so many things i could ask you about we're gonna go to the top ten um i'm gonna try and make it different than any other time that you've talked about the top 10 list i'm going to truncate people will say hey where did you get the idea for the top 10 list and many times it's the same response well it was an easy thing it created itself this is a mocking of of media pieces at the time i was a canadian i have a different uh a totally different uh theory conspiracy theory about the top 10 list i don't believe had anything to do with these this other crap about magazines putting out 10 lists i believe that this is uh um a government conspiracy that you guys were going to switch over to the metric system and they were using you as a um as a delivery method to switch things over to the metric system and that's where the top wait aren't we already in a base 10 number system i don't know i'm a canadian you tell me the ground uh i think it was just a a handy framework in which you could do 10 jokes and and because you could pretend it was existing in some independent framework and you weren't really responsible for the success or failure people often ask about the origin of it and it is one of those things where there's about six people that get uh hats off for it for for this in a single afternoon from from downey himself who did a very similar spirited thing on the new show um kevin curran who wrote the very first one uh top 10 things that almost rhymed the peas randy cohen made the the the plain suggestion that we do them and uh robert morton did the same i was very keen on it as well but i think it's one of those things we're always looking for repeatables you know which was something you could do over and over again you know street footage or or crazy new prop product items or something and um but when the the top 10 list when we were joking over it the idea of whose idea it was it's kind of like a bunch of people on a desert island and a crate full of food washes up on shore whose idea is it to eat the food you know so the top 10 lists kind of just just sprang from from various mothers and fathers okay and um speaking of mothers and fathers in the top 10 list these uh when i was a child two uh things that ended up being in my stocking at christmas the stocking of course the device at 6 30 in the morning to allow the parents to sleep in until about eight in the morning if possible if done correctly uh of course putting a book inside the stocking helped prolong that time before the kids would go and jump on top of mom and dad's stomachs while they were in mid-sleep um these are two items that appeared in my stockings both of them of course by david letterman and steve o'donnell uh and very very good and and all the writers and all right i know what it says my dad's bowling team in there yeah and i put together the uh the photos and also the introductions if you i think in the second volume two is that roman volume this is the roman numeral ii yes i think there's a photograph of my dad's bowling team somewhere in the middle there really uh um the clifford t bell biography they completely disembodied and not associated with anything else biography of clifford bell and uh there's that looks like that looks like this guy right here i think we're i think we're looking up in the top corner here one more one more page the bowling team it's a bowling team it's like six guys in bowling uniforms come on canada bowls or do they call it kegling the bodyguards try the page before no but we need to we need to make that happen though we definitely need to turn it into that oh man you can tell there's no pre-interview here the memphis spell embroidery that's it right there yep there it is yep that's my dad's bowling team oh my god look at that immortal the one that looks sort of like me is my dad immortalized and under some canadian kids christmas tree uh you know in the stocking um now there's a phenomenal even today i look at this and i re it's just it holds up and that's the thing about what you guys did um it holds up it stands the test of time even through the political correctness uh times that we have here yes some things are a little bit um don't translate as well but oh my god does this stuff ever translate i got to ask you about one of the four words in this book and then we can go home one of the acknowledgements in the book uh because we also need somebody to do shaqi won't come on and do it um but we need to have someone tribute jack rollins as well and so let's talk about jack rollins first oh yes he was quite a wonderful man quite unlike anyone else a sweet character from another era who was just the greatest who would also he was full of malapropisms and so on it was just the most wonderful thing talk about a friend of writers he really liked writers in comics and was very encouraging to them and also just one of these old-time guys who loved going to the track you know harness racing the ponies thoroughbreds whatever he was he was from that old school you know in a great lovable way again we go with the godfather characters in the godfather and and the characteristics of now obviously you guys weren't organized crime that has been proven uh but but at the same time the characters that you all were uh you know that's where i use that i use that all the time that analogy uh jack rollins of course a character uh by reputation only from me by anecdote from you uh that definitely has uh that character uh that you all had in his own unique way i love that um the last acknowledgement uh and a special thanks to mr rollins for letting us use all the old lumber behind his garage oh yes well yes i was thinking of mr greathouse who i grew up on west 95th street in cleveland he used to let us use the old lumber behind us yeah there were a lot of little toss-off slices this was your joke that was your joke yes that was my question and that was the one that i'm not it though sure who knows well all right well is that is that our good night's is that our farewells if um is there anything else is there anything else you wanted to say actually the only other thing that i was going to say is did you want to say anything about your brother before i uh oh yes uh by the way another uh to mention don giller again yes sir my twin brother appeared on the letterman show a couple of times when we whenever we needed like an identical twin switcheroo gag and in the last weeks of the show i was i kept had been been making a pest to myself can i get a copy i i don't have almost i have almost no copies of anything i ever wrote on the show but now i can find them somewhere if i have to and if i could remember vaguely the title and roughly the year but um there was a piece where mark and i emerged from a cloning booth each clutching a 20 bill to give back to dave there was a bit where we were separated at birth and i'm trying to find my twin brother in the audience anyway it was very very fun to see my twin i asked don giller if he could find those for me he had him posted in about 10 minutes online yes again to talk about letterman's generosity he gave my brother mark a nice blurb on his first book my brother mark was an author and a playwright eventually he got a tony award for um for the book of the musical hairspray and um if you're old enough you'll understand i had this joke about now you know which twin has the tony and um uh yes he was and he was it was enough of a kind of a family organization that he could drop by the office and come and go and people people uh got a kick out and like oh hey mark how's everything going it was very weird at kimmel where uh which was in california and martin remained in new york so i was working at kimmel two or three years before mark came to visit and at that point the rest of the staff had gotten to know me very well so when this doppelganger shows up who looks very much like me they all ood and odd like he was the first white man on new guinea you know they just stopped patting his head shout out to the swiss family robinson on that by the way yes yes um anyway yes my twin uh uh a hilarious writer he did several stretches at saturday night live but he did not like all the collaborations and compromises of television he liked writing essays writing articles writing plays writing novels and he wrote many many many of each of those things and was very good-looking um thank you for talking about him and and i uh i didn't prep you for that either not that i prepped you for really any of this um but i i wanted to i did i knew something was coming with shecky i knew that that was okay yeah that was a little bit um beautiful that you talked about him again and talking about him in your speech uh we lost him in 2012 yes so it's been a decade yeah um good to talk about him right now and think about him right now thank you for thank you for opening yourself up to talking about uh him and everything and and yeah we're gonna go home now um you've already we've got it on uh on uh digital zeros and one videotape that uh that you are gonna be coming back and i appreciate that my favorite type um i can't thank you enough and uh i'm not gonna embarrass you anymore i promise uh thank you so much for doing this um the hand up thing that you did for daniel kellison and all these other people you've you've done it for me already um and and uh i i can't thank you enough for this and again um like i alluded to in one of the emails uh that i sent um it was during a time in my life where the pathways of my brain were forming and being created uh i thank you and i blame you uh for how they have turned out and um because you and and the clever words uh whether it was the words that mr mellman spoke or or the zany things and concepts that happened uh shaped me into the odd human that i am right now and i say that with every bit of sincerity and gratitude sir thank you so much steve the windmills of your mind well let's go chase them no it's just my pleasure well we we we share we share a pleasure and they and they and a joy in the letterman the project and i understand it so anyway thank you for having me it was fun to uh to to talk with you all right well let's yeah thank you for saying hello now i'll start reaching for the right button almost almost you just gotta sit through one last little thing and that's me saying that is another episode there it is right there we're going to do the outro with him on here um yeah y'all know i think you all know i think it translates well uh what a kick this was i hope that this was a kick for you all as well as we build this community uh that passes the torch of that again the cliche it's becoming cliche because i say it so often the greatest body of broadcasting work in history um and and there is one of the architects of it right there steve o'donnell who has helped so many and ourselves included when it comes to being entertained through our lives that is another episode of the letterman podcast uh with mike chisholm coincidentally i am mike chisholm thank you very much uh for being a part of this until the next time that we talk thank you and good night overcoat and underpants