The Don Giller Celebration Compilation Part One

hi my name is Don Giller you may know me as Mason from the TV series the lives of Lauren Green you're watching a very special episode of the Letterman podcast a look back at 100 wonderful years 100 wonderful worldwide pants proudly presents late night with David letman worldwide pants the most trusted name in pants and entertainment and pants all right Fred's here uh Fred this is the first time that we're meeting I shot a separ interrup I want interrupt and begin right away I really applaud your courage at ripping the lid off the steaming Cesspool that was late night with David Letterman it takes a lot of courage to dig in and find out what the truth was so let's talk now let's get it out and let's Let The Healing be begin you can look up answers to the surface questions I mean we we we we talked a bit about yes you know about what what the show is all about and it's like well look Conan wrote a great piece Bill Simmons wrote a great piece y you know go read those you know and all that so I'm I'm I'm very happy for I'm sure it's clear just for the opportunity to mention some of the the more unsung people to to share things that went on behind the cameras and and what it was actually like not everyone is interested in this stuff but the to the people who are it's like being a Beatles fan no no detail is too small The Tomorrow Show you were you were a part of that it's why letman hired me honestly I mean I was offered in 1980 Letterman got his Morning Show yeah uh I was working on The Tomorrow Show and we never looked at Letterman as a threat particularly because you know we thought all right he'd do okay in the morning who knew actually we didn't think that but he could have but we never thought that he would be taking over our time slot right so so Jack Rollins who was the legendary manager and was Letterman's manager and executive producer with Letterman of all the shows yeah he was with Woody Allen for all of Woody's movies Jack was a legend he managed Harry bellafante you know he was he discovered Nichols in may he was he was quite the guy you know by the time we worked with him he was in his I'd say 70s to late 80s early 90s yeah that know so he was he he kind of lost a little of the uh of the zip but but he was a wise great guy to have on your side yeah um I'm thinking what was the point of the story where was I well you're late the morning show but then also yeah yeah so I had an office at NBC and Stu Smiley who was my college roommate and best friend also worked for Rollins and was the point person for Letterman as his manager and he was my college roommate so they used to come up to my office to watch the closed circuit feed of the rehearsals yeah and I would say oh they're doing this all wrong oh they doing this wrong and this is when Bob Stewart was the producer who was the producer of The Pyramid he was a game show who let him entrusted because led him and felt comfortable with him when he always did the pyramid as a guest so I would say oh this is you know talk show oneone they're doing the wrong thing they're just [ __ ] they got to do it this way they gota that way and Jack would always agree with me so when they when they got rid of Bob Stewart early in the Run they offered me the the producers job of the morning show right and I had a meeting with Brandon tarov or was it Silverman wonder I don't even remember who it was and Nancy Geller was in in late night programming or daytime programming uh and they offered me the job to produce it at the time I was dating a woman who was a talent Booker on the show and when I mentioned it to her she flipped out she said I can't work for you blah blah blah blah blah and then I told Snyder I was offered the job he goes you're going to become the next producer of this show you don't have you don't have to take that job so I passed on a job and they gave to Barry sand wow yeah yeah that doesn't get see that narrative doesn't come out there enough either no nobody knows that that's that's that's a that's a a different different time so interesting so then when when he started the Late Night show let him and called me I was working at Good Morning America at the time as a uh a writer and an associate producer and he called me and he said I can't offer you the the job to run the show anymore because bar Sanders with us but you know you could be the number two and produce segments and all that so I said yeah sure and then 14 years later so one thing comes to mind what I I must take credit for um when they were on in the morning I I didn't um wasn't on the morning show with Dave lman as he used to like to refer to you know I could get up that early but couldn't get up that early y however they had a beautiful theme written by Michael McDonald y um and they he made a recording of it I think I don't think he's saying any lyrics but he was just kind of huming along with that vo's voice of his and they used to play that at the beginning and then segue into live band when they would come out and hopefully you don't you know you don't hear the I don't think you did you hear the transition yeah they kind of assumed I would do the same thing you know you'll record your theme of course and we'll play it and then you know segue to live when day and I said I doesn't make sense I said it just came off Saturday Night Live the whole thing was you know the band playing it live and getting the audience action live so I talked him into letting me do it that way and of course it was you know it set us up there there was a there's a wonderful guy named Hal gurnie who was the director of late night in the few first few years of Late Show I had a conversation with him three days ago oh oh oh he's then you know he's he's he's the best he's he's another delightful person absolutely so he was also the director when Dave had his Morning Show before late night and he was telling me once that like in the one of the first shows they did um there was um a a musician I want to say Judy Collins could be wrong but Judy Collins she came on and she was she was singing and she starts to sing and the mic isn't working and so she's she sings her first line and nothing's coming out and Dave's kind of looking around and Judy's looking around and Hal just got on the PA and went uh Judy hold on for a sec your mic's not working just give us a second give us a second we'll get it right and you know okay Judy you can start singing and then she does her song and Hal said after the show Dave like rushed back to him and was not mad but just the opposite was like that's what I want the show to be it felt real and again it's it's stripping away that artifice of TV and showing you like what's going on behind the scene not everything's perfect you know that yes we we were showing warts and all of of what it is to do a TV show like at 12:30 it was just this weird odd thing you felt like different energy that hour absolutely U I think Dave used to joke that it it was only watched by prison prisoners and shuin um but you know it just it did feel like you were just stumbled upon this kind of Public Access show that no one else knew about yeah the studio was sort of like purposely you know not very ornate I used to love when he came through the when he was introduced and he came through you saw the exit sign like it just looked like they put a desk in some um audience chairs just in the middle of this abandoned office building almost industrial like yeah yeah yeah absolutely soble do indust double doors that yeah absolutely and also you know I just it very much spoke to me uh comedically um not that I knew what irony was or this and that it was just so different from Carson you know and as a young guy that really appealed to me so I was I was hooked very very young and that just keep grow that just kept growing as I got older there was no internet there was no show like this show maybe Satur Saturday Night Live obviously in the 70s and the 80s did have that kind of like secret Club there was something dangerous and weird happening late at night aside from that the TV landscape in the 1980s was very um there was a lot of artifice there was a lot of phoniness yeah there was a lot of just sort of uh homogenized uh ridiculous prepackaged plastic feeling televion y so the feeling at 12:30 at night to turn on NBC and see this like secret weird TV Clubhouse uh that that was the Late Night show and just see this bizarre deconstruction of a talk show it was like it was commenting on itself in real time it had this self-analytical postmodern Detachment it was talking about being a show while also being a show it was very writer forward that show yes it was it made you know that jokes were written Dave would comment about the material if he didn't like something he would make a joke about about the written material but he would also bring out writers bring out Chris Elliott bring out Jerry Mulligan writers would come out and be in bits and and the idea that this show was written by people I mean that's why this book existed I was just blabbering on about L letter in the book is a tribute to the written material of that show it's not Dave fanbook it is a writer fan book yep and uh that's that was unique about that show it was very writer Centric writer forward Dave Dave himself is such a good writer if you if you look at Dave's standup before the show and and his involvement with the writing through the show he is he's a word Smith he he is brilliant with a turn of phrase he cares about the specificity of word choice he's always been a writer he's a writer he has a writer brain and uh he always you always felt that on his show including during that writer strike and I remember having this feeling of solidarity towards TV writers at age 13 because Dave was talking about it how would I have ever known anything about that at 13 years old but but but for Dave talking about that so I was I think that just indicates Dave's reverence for writers the pencil that went through the uh window in behind Dave and had a gra a glass crashing effect that's that's you you that was you right it was you know the it's it was a viewer mail joke that was that came along pretty early it wasn't honest to God it was not one of my better jokes that I'm most proud of as a joke but basically somebody wrote a question and said is the glass in your window real and in the windows and you know on your set and the Joker was was originally I wanted him to sort of just so early we didn't know what how the letters were going to be handled right so I wanted to crumple up the letter and throw it through the window which seemed like more of a joke than just him throwing something at the window right but it did you know didn't work like that so he threw the pencil in the window and it got a mild response from the audience not a huge pretty much what I would have expected but he did it like three more times that night four more times the next night and for the next 30 Years so when I say when people say that's one of my bigger contributions it's like I wrote funnier stuff you know it's like it's just you just never know what's you never know what's gonna catch but he enjoyed Carl tan and I discovered tman and I discovered cal um we had made a short film uh at NYU car was at NYU I had graduated W uh Madison uh at that point and he was still there and we had written a short film called King of the Z's which is a parody documentary I hate the term mockumentary uh parody documentary about the world's cheapest movie studio of the 40s and 50s and we what we did was we made you know all the live the new interview interview footage we made in in color we also created all the black and white bad movies that they made yeah uh Cal Calbert had actually auditioned for a piece a film that we made a little earlier that that that with Carl which with which also featured Carl as a performer and he didn't there wasn't really a part for him in that but I remember Carl and I basically looking at this guy and saying we could use him forever so the original idea for king of the dises was mine and I remember thinking well what kind of actors would you have had at the studio that cheap and you know Cal came to mine immediately sure so he so he was in he was in my my mind from day one with this when we made the film we he's in every single clip from the from the movies from vbci we also eventually I'm I'm skipping over the story but eventually we would go on the show pretending to be historical experts on Letterman and run run clips from the vespi films that VPI being the name of the studio yeah um so so we made the film the film had a certain amount of success it played at at Sundance not Sundance uh Telly sorry I don't want to blame Sundance for this it played a tellure ride and it had a certain amount of success at tell ride it got on it got an agent that we got an agent for the film it went on to Showtime which in those days was only on the west side of New York so I never saw it I was I live on the east side we had HBO you couldn't get both HBO you couldn't get both HBO and Showtime in those days so uh I heard it was on and it was they picked it up for a second year ran for two years and then a a man named mustu Smiley who worked for the r and jafi office saw the picture and reached out to us and he just he didn't know particularly what what he wanted to do with us what we want to do he just thought the film was funny and it says there anything he said in conversations there's anything really interesting well to that might be interesting to you connected with you know that you want to do and well rollinson jofy represented David Letterman David had done the morning show I had become a huge fan of the morning show we were it was literally about four months or three months before the night the nighttime show was about to go on and I said I don't know if this possible do you think there's a possibility of having our material seen by David Letterman and he said well let me see so he he got the film to David and meril Marco and they we interviewed with them uh I gave what I can guarantee was the worst single interview in the history of all time and I know that for a fact because sometime later after we got the job Merl told me it was the worst interview anybody ever gave um but they but they they thought my my partner Carl was okay so they decided to take a chance on us anyway right for which for which I'm grateful nevertheless they did give us a chance and you know they said during that first meeting we're looking for a little guy like the guy on your movie for our show and I said well you know you're looking for him that's the guy you're looking for so the very first thing on the very first show which was Merl's idea which was to use the opening from the movie Frankenstein the original movie Frankenstein open with a warning to audiences that you know to be prepared for something different and she just thought that'd be a great War thing to start off the show because in the best fashion of the show at its best nobody understood what it was about so uh you know it just was sort of there and Calvary was sort of there and over time Merl gave him the name Larry Bud Melman and that's stuck and over the course of time he became what he became and I always remember many many years later not many years later but when he passed away yeah the year he passed away uh I remember watching the Emy Awards and they did the in memoriams and I can't remember who else was in that but I do I do remember Tom Snyder was in it that year I think and some you know other really legendary names yeah then here comes calber up on the thing and I'm think I turned to my wife and I said I've led a very unusual life to go to a reading and have those voiceover artists saying your lines I mean it's like the first time 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 your your job yeah so Letterman did some monologue jokes i' had included a couple pages of monologue jokes in my package and he did something 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 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 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 uh a dreary recap of a of a 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 were these sticky yes um that just said Marl 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 Merill and and she seemed quite astonished and then said Don oh Don which was one of the pet names or Coden 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 Merl wanted to see me and I decided to ASO the return phone call and just come directly and of course letter said ISU ISU did you hear that Merl we got a real riter here we're going to 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 but I did get a call the next day from some NBC lawyer who who who said uh you'll get a thousand dollar a week and at that point I felt like holy that would like yeah it was like you are going to live in a castle made out of ice cream and you will ride in a car shaped like a swan and you know um no it was quite quite fantastic but that was that was again the just the the the dizzy 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 gonna find out what a fraud I am but um it actually took them 10 or 12 years to find out what a fraud I was luckily I had enough momentum going there to to uh to to get along so Class 8 at Harvard got on the Lampoon uh uh and you know I just loved it it was all I cared about at Harvard uh the I got on and and other guys on the staff was uh Tom gaml who I thought was uh Letterman Ryder of course yep Etc who I just thought was the funniest guy I ever met unless it was Andy Borowitz over there you know writes for the New Yorker or or maybe it was Mike Reese uh who who was uh in my dorm you know all these guys are are uh you know good friends to this day which is probably the main thing you know just just to get a bunch of lifelong friends but I just it was it was a gang of people who were um just very committed for good or ill to exploring a comedic premise just just all the way to the end and and uh just laughing was very important to them and um I I it I didn't love it in any pre-professional way it it was just uh uh I I was just very happy to hang out there and and laugh and and and try to make them laugh and uh you know Conan got on uh that that would have been your your last year of Harvard Conan shows up yeah that's right yeah that's abely right and also my my uh last year of harbard the Letterman show goes on Saturday Night Live I think was very much a oh okay this this uh is satirical about early TV and just the sense of oh okay this is more made by people closer closer to my age you could just sort of sense it and uh you know Jim Downey uh was such the Trailblazer in terms of um you know oh you you could make a living doing this guys like Howard Stern and Jerry Seinfeld have talked about how uh important Mad Magazine was to them yes that uh oh adults can be silly yes you don't necessarily have to grow up uh Downey working at Saturday Night Live and then uh my second semester senior year Letterman came on and right away like like so many people roughly my age was like yep yep you know this this is another one we've been waiting for this and we can talk about what it was about the show but uh then uh Tom Tom gaml and Max pross get hired on it guys who I'd met and only known but bonded with I didn't uh go to Harvard with any plan and I I did not know the Lampoon existed I wow yeah uh went to a comp meeting and uh right away like as I've said you know fell in love with it and and didn't care about anything else uh many many projects are are snake bit I I I think that's how Jim Downey uh described the new show yeah which uh will always be uh my favorite show because it's siphoned off many of the alleged original Letterman writers and and opened up those those precious slots and I I was lucky enough to get one I was a writer obviously for not for about a year before I was headwriter and even then the headwriter promotion I think was out of desperation because uh uh uh most of the staff uh at that point left to go to either Saturday Night Live or to another Lorden Michael show you know all about this so there was a little bit of like we'll we'll will'll promote the uh you know the the Corporal to be uh to be uh you know lead the group it was Steve who brought you in do you remember anything about about the interview with Steve uh well well I knew Steve just a little well from being on the Lampoon uh I was on those guys uh radar as is Maybe somebody with with potential and uh Downey had told me that he wanted me you know at a certain point uh but um yeah it was just so I I I sent in a packet and uh uh just got the call out of the blue from Steve we really liked your latest packet can you come in and talk and you know just just the uh that was the the greatest uh break I ever got oh by the way did you play softball at Harvard soft no I played baseball in I played baseball in high school okay because because I was also told on the on the Letterman softball team uh you were a ringer uh level quality player I I played baseball in high school and uh my when I moved to New York City after graduation I got a job at the baseball desk at the Associated Press I was a clerk took them which was across the street from uh the it was in Rockefeller Plaza across the street from 30 Rock and uh when uh Steve oon gave me the call and I went in and at a certain point Dave came in I think just to make sure he could tolerate me and I was telling him yeah I work at the baseball desk and uh but uh if I get this job uh I'll I'll I'll quit and Dave said well hope we can expect the same loyalty Dave was a baseball fan I I knew a lot and so you know if people say what was your relationship about like with Dave very cordial and in all honesty we we talked a lot about BAS you know that's awesome he's is he a Reds fan he was yeah yeah and I and I remember one time I oh so when you were growing up I guess like Joey Jay was on the pitching St yeah you know that that that that kind of thing uh was got some cred with him well it was good I I the I I got through a very enjoyable baseball season 1983 and uh uh football season was starting up and uh it would have been become quickly clear to the guys at the associate press that I knew very little about football much more can only fudge your way through so much yeah exactly and and uh so uh the Letterman offer came along uh it was very well timed uh it would have been welcome at any time but one more reason so my first uh my first day on the job was uh uh Halloween of 1983 we were doing this show and and so a lot of that was the organization of just having uh uh either either Steve or or Gerard was the headwriter for a little bit or Merill was the you know we had a board and the board had two weeks worth of cards on it and we knew those cards needed to be filled and the way those cards worked um even even the pace of coming to work we came to work people who are writing monologue jokes got there early maybe 8:30 9 o'clock in the morning and maybe they've already started at home I know for a while I was writing monologue jokes and so I start at home and then come in around 8 8:30 tough to get a joke on the air at that point because at that point it's opening remarks and there's what three maybe maybe three yep yep yep um and uh everybody else showed up around 10: right and you stayed from like 10: to 7 10 to 8 if you had something on that you needed to work on so it was Bankers hours right right there's this PE those guys upstairs at SNL you know on Tuesday and Wednesday night they didn't go home yeah right but Dave had this kind of like look we have to just keep doing this we're we're running a a marathon not a Sprint and and so so a so there's that and then there's the cards right there's the board we know there's like a cold maybe there's a cold opening yeah there's opening remarks there's an Act One Piece there's a guest there's an Act five piece maybe there's something at the end and you got to fix you know and there's originally there's four shows a night right yeah so a week about four shows a night Jesus um and so you just always kept your eye on it and and you knew um I think I think you know for I would say everyone on the writing staff and this is kind of true on writing staff period successful television writing staff everybody was kind of a self-starter so they were like it wasn't you know it wasn't uh a tooth and nail competition but there was competition oh for sure you wanted to make sure that you were earning your keep right well were you on the 13 week deal where your your thing was every 13 weeks you were it's funny after after 13 weeks actually this is a better story so after 13 weeks I went to the then the executive producer Barry sand yeah and I said um yeah I don't know nobody's called me anything actually it was 10 weeks because they needed to give me a three- week oh just in case yeah and I said okay and he's like never come back here you're I I'll find you if it's not working it won't be on a 10-week cycle and I will find you okay that's but the best story about that is um uh first week I'm in there and we're writing and and my my partner Kevin Curran who we'll talk about in a second and I uh came in with a stack of stuff um including the morning show which which was the show that got nominated that we wrote that got nominated for Emy right so we came in with a stack of stuff we were ready um and after the end of the first week uh I walked into Merrill's office and I said Gee you know am I doing okay he say all right by the way question Kevin a question Kevin would never ask anybody right he was like but but I you're early 20s at this point right yeah yeah yeah and so um Merl just goes here's what you're doing fine here's what you need to know I don't know if you've heard this story already the name of this show is Dave's attitude problem and every night people tune in to go what the [ __ ] is bugging Dave what's bothering Dave yeah and and she goes you you you're you're pretty good you're pretty good it kind of like what bothers you bothers Dave we went out and I let's see Kevin Kar had gone out was doing Married with Children and uh I guess Gavin palone the agent I guess was his agent he says who else who else is there at Letterman that I might contact he mentioned me Kevin and I had written a lot of stuff together he could just make leaps across time time for uh you know with crazy references and he and I in the last couple of seasons on the show of I was at Letterman we wrote quite a bit of stuff together and we worked on some shows you know we did hard ball together for that matter but uh I had had an idea for uh maybe we'll do like the late night chess set you know because there was a civil war chess set you know where AB Lincoln is the king you know oh my God take my money I'd buy that I would buy that in a second well I wish I'd grabbed it because so I I sort of thinking like late night chess set you know with like Dave and Terry gar and you know and all the people on the show again it was it was Naval gazing but it seemed promising you know and uh and who would they oppose and Kevin says you know Hitler's Nazi Germany so it was Kevin who would who would come in it's like okay that's it you know so the the peace exists there somewhere and it was it was it was it was pretty funny but he would make those links we and it was invaluable for things like top 10 links he would pitch things where it's just like holy cow where did that where did you come up with that where come from that so and yeah and of course he you know uh he and Sandy Frank couple of couple of dear friends uh no longer with us that that I'm awfully happy to remember I think Paul schaer was now I'm remembering it he says at the start he goes like I'm Paul schaer you know me you know me is a lover of beauty but I'm also a great judge of beauty so that's an example of I remember a Paul kind of going like you you you come up with that and I go yes I did again right this could go wrong yeah stupid petrix it can go wrong right uh and and and a lot of it yeah yeah I there was one I want to talk for a second about my my my friend Kevin C um uh so Kevin I met Kevin when we were both at the National Lampoon yeah and uh we hit it off immediately um uh Kevin was just brilliant and unique and weird and every you know the great majority of writing teams uh have two people who one of whom is the Workhorse and one of whom is the show Pony and I was the Workhorse I was the guy getting in at 10:00 in the morning you I'm going to type this out yeah and Kevin would walk in and this is what the show Pony does and just go no it's this oh wow and you go [ __ ] so here's my favorite story about that um and it goes back to hey this might go wrong but it's going to be genuine so there was a viewer mail question and there was an ERA in hum viewer mail where it stopped being how can I get tickets to the show and got it into like oh I'm going to write a viewer mail that gets on the air yeah and was what do and if I remember correctly it was what do Bert Reynolds Sally Fields and I can't remember what the third person was but it was somebody like and I'm carbon dating this joke Morgan Fairchild what do they what do B Reynolds Morgan Fairchild and Sally Field have in common that was the that was the viewer mail and so I'm in there trying to come up with different Alternatives and Kevin goes well they all get their nutrition from a salt lck so we hand it in and Dave approves it and they do a card with the three faces and then you pull a plastic little overlay and then these cartoon tongues come out and there's a salt lick and and so Dave does it and it just there's just a stunned silence Awesome from the audience they really don't know why this has been done and Dave starts just cackling and Paul's laughing and it's just this is so surreal and then he just moves on to the next and he's just like okay and we just move on to the next thing and to me a that was Kevin just just Kevin was capable of that in in ways that were just amazing um and and and B that that that was part of the thing it's like oh let's you know you get you have the Randy Cohen things with the 360 degre show or monkey and it's like yeah this is a recipe for this just going wrong that's why we're going to do it yeah you when I became the the producer of the show let him and said to me called me into his office and he goes Morty you could say no to this he said there are times when I'm out there and it's very lonely he goes you know I'll look over to Paul and he's writing some music doing his job and I need somebody to to help me you know if if a joke fails I'm out there you know on my own do you mind if I talk to you do you mind if I bring you into the to the proceedings I said hey if it's going to make you more comfortable and it's going to help jokes by all means and that's when he started talking to me on the air yeah but it was very it was very considered and he asked me if I mind it and I didn't care I was a ham to begin with so I I liked it um so that's kind of how that that started and I think it was the same with Hal you know I think he over the years over it wasn't even years with an S I mean it came very quickly that he he understood Hal's vision and understand understood that Hal shared his vision yeah and gave him free reign like you said to do anything I couldn't really enjoy it like the real fans enjoyed it you know every night I would go back into a dressing room and get the [ __ ] kicked out of me you know actually not and I I I I'll just spell a a myth there yep I used to be the guy as I'm sure Rob Bernett was after me and I as I'm sure Barry sand was before me yep they used to have to knock on the door after a show after a good show it was always easier after a shitty show was was hellish I would be the first to knock on the door go into Letterman's dressing room while he was undressing taking his eye off taking his shirt off uh and he never and and and we'd go up to the office and the staff would stand outside he hated my jokes he hated the the my guest he hated the interview I did he never did that he was never the kind of guy that would place blame on anybody else he was so self-critical yeah that that he just beat himself up he wasn't ragging on anybody else he wasn't re he would be yelling at times but he was yelling about himself you're doing so many shows you're doing 200 shows a year yeah you know everyone just it's like we got to buckle down and work together because we're just trying to put on the best show we can given the you know limited amount of time we have to produce them you know um fantastic or even just seeing Jerry Mulligan you know just being near Jerry it was one of those things you're just like oh this is like we would be in the room the writer's room having a meeting and sometimes Jerry would be going down to rehearsal because he had he was G to be on the show that night and he would just walk in and he' just yell like uh I don't know something about the movies and he'd walk out and it would just everyone would laugh and it would just be you know one of those moments you're just like that's Jerry Mulligan you know what I mean and you're just it was just so cool to sort of be around all these these people all the time let me see I almost always wrote jokes I wrote jokes and answers to uh uh viewer mail letters and I guess one of my favorite viewer mail letters I forget maybe it wasn't even that but it was an intro and Dave introduced me and I came out in a Batman suit and uh I started and they said so what's new J said oh well we got a new we have a nice labrador black lab now in the family and I had some pictures I took out and showed them the pictures of uh a a black lab romping in the leaves out in the backyard because and you're the Adam West Batman that's who you were you were the was Batman it was it was fantastic y I didn't have a six-pack plastic six-pack like cloney whatever and I just I'm rambling on about the dog and what he likes to eat and how the kids love him and he's great with the kids he goes uh why are you why are you dress like Batman oh that yeah I was I was very upset when I found out about the cast some of the casting of the new movie um they've got Jack nichas as the Joker now he's a great golfer but it makes no sense I mean is this this is his first acting job I think isn't it I mean I think I'm surprised there hasn't been more backlash about that you know and well it's actually Jack Nicholson oh okay yeah that that makes a lot more sense because he's you know anyway and here's a little footnote she result little footnote no problem a little footnote uh no pun intended there had been something happening on stage right before that yeah where a lot of glass got smashed yeah and I was wearing I was wearing like a onesie with no shoes and so I I did that whole thing with bleeding feet and then uh Bruce Willis took it made a hit movie out of it called die hard and yeah I know you know I didn't see your name in the credits there another robber I got nothing I got nothing uh let me see things I like things I like I remember this was just this was just an uh ad lib sort of there was I think it was dynasty was on maybe she was in some special but Joan Collins was in the news and Dave said something it was her birthday yep and she was probably turning 50 and so I I said Dave said you know congratulations happy birthday to Joan Collins who uh who today turns is now 70 years old okay so anyway her people give me the phone where's the phone so anyway so in in makeup I was talking to about I said why don't you say this he goes okay so he went out and uh said by the way I have a I want to have a an apology yesterday uh I said that Joan Collins was 70 years old Miss Collins it turns out is 70 years young and it did not it did not appease it did it did not appease her people oh there was one of the there was something I wanted to mention when we were talking about the uh the pre- interviewing people and stuff yes yes sir I'm trying to maintain this random nature of the broadcast and uh out one time I got a call somebody said Wolford Bromley would like to do the show so you give him a call so I gave him a call and uh Mr B yeah okay what do you want uh well uh I was wondering if you did the show uh what would you like to talk about he goes how the hell do I know what I want to talk about Tuesday next week 530 p.m do you know what the hell you want to talk about next Tuesday 5:30 p.m and it's like oh okay well so long that was that hung up it turns out he thought I was I was a logistics guy who was gonna like book his airplane flight and book book his and book his hotel room I guess the pitches were very strange somebody once pitched uh the lead singer of uh oh Goodbye Stranger super tram yeah said well okay it would be a good as a guest not as a musical guest and he said okay well uh what would he talk about angles angles we need angles he goes well uh this is interesting he lives in Los Angeles and he rides a bike who that gives us something there a that's two segments yeah I know really tell us about La now tell us about the bike yeah the pictures were the pictures you would get from people were just like you know they would love this guy Dave would love this guy showing absolutely no idea of Dave sensibility yeah you know it's like the kind of jokes people would submit in the packet trying to get out to get a job like about Dolly Parton's chest and stuff like that sure Sandy Sandy Frank uh was a a lovely guy uh and just an extremely smart guy uh you know like gone to Harvard Law School become a lawyer was you know decided this is no fun you know and and um uh so he he uh uh TR he wrote a lot of smart stuff and a fond behind the scenes memory I have of him is somebody had gotten on uh gotten into the building some some some young guy and plastered our our bathroom up on the 14th floor with his resume just sort of like hey he really love to come work for the show it's some some guy making an honest effort yeah you know to thinking I'll do something wacky and it's a wacky show and that'll get me you know and all that okay no no no problem you showed initiative but and in his resume at the bottom there it says you know special skills where it says things like typing and Sandy had handwritten in among this guy poor guy's special skills as uh badly miscalculating the sensibilities of prospective employers yep thanks for the chance to remember another very dear funny smart guy my favorite one about like what's bothering Dave yeah um there are two of them one we show up and we had something all written and scripted and the script was kind of like a decision tree we'll go into that later you know if this happen say this right um this is the Choose Your Own Adventure portion folks right there Choose Your Own Adventure and I and I had written two Choose Your Own Adventure books so we're all good with that delighted me about that but yes please continue so Dave couldn't go because he had he had a a toothache and uh I was able to find him a dentist um and we went to the dentist so what's bothering Dave his tooth is bothering him he went to the dentist um the two three jokes that I remember right off the top of my head by the way not scripted at all they were just like let's get the camera and we'll go and I'm like okay so first one um he's got a cigar in his mouth and uh puts it out in the uh sink you know in the washing spit sink um second asks if he can put some rubber gloves on too I remember that and then there's Hal's shot and Hal Master people haven't talked about the the second funniest person on this on the staff is Hal and um he said Dave let's just get a cutaway so here's your legs on the on the uh Lounge on the on the seat here with the dentist if you could just raise them up and lower them a couple of times which is just what everybody does when they're hurting right and we just kept cutting back there's the sound of the drill so so that was great um there was that one and then there was one where um uh he um had a really bad cold yeah and we decided to go see an ear nose and throat guy yeah um and I had called a doctor that I knew a friend of mine who was a friend of mine at the time again a doctor Lon who by the way was on the team Dr Lou oh my gosh Dr Lou so I knew I I was one who introduced David Dr Lou my wife and I and and so we go and and we there's an ear nose and throat guy who looks like he's walked out of you know a production of our town yeah and and and he he's saying well let's just spray this uh thing up in here to to you know see what's going on yep and I've got by the way shecky footage of like a little people in a in a cave right um and and and you probably know Shey the phrase Shey footage right so absolutely so then Dave grabs the nozzle and goes let me just spray it around here um unbeknownst to Dave the solution is like 40% cocaine um it was just weird it was and Lou told me like a week later he said geez I didn't know how to tell you this um and I don't know if I even told Dave oh you were just spraying cocaine around the room I really enjoyed doing viewer mail because yeah when people said oh are those letters real and it's like yeah absolutely they are and thank goodness because you didn't you know you weren't facing a blank page y you you'd uh well you just read a letter and and uh I remember on a there was a 60 minutes where Leslie stall I think asked Jerry Seinfeld where do you get the ideas for Seinfeld and Jerry said you think I know where ideas come from and I'm going to now tell that to the world so of course there's you know ultimately something mysterious about it all but yes something like you were male it it was uh a great relief to you read things and and just every now and then something would spark and of course well that's that's how flunky the clown came about was was uh I think the letter was something like Dear Dave or flunky who actually reads these letters like you know I I suppose you know was like flunk yeah maybe that's a clown name and and you know did it and and uh uh played okay and at the end of it Dave said something like well thanks for bringing laughter into the world and I just sort of ad libed uh yeah right you know without looking up and that got a better laugh and so okay we had a repeatable character that uh you know it's nice to have something that that uh devoted fans of the show do remember and actually when I went to The Simpsons uh and U met Matt graining you know my my first day of work there uh uh after you know minute or two he a light bulb went on and he said hey you're flunky he just recognized the voice and and uh yeah I got the same thing from Paton Oswalt one time so there you go the idea that you two shared an office together like right there it's like oh my gosh how did that work like like what was it was there a collaboration was it you two would be on your little Corners writing something and then you'd share with each other or how did that work there was originally no ation because I mostly did monologue stuff and Jeff did more sketch stuff uh one thing we we both enjoyed was music and we would play music a lot and there was one you want to get really obscure there was one song we used to play like two or three times in a row and it was the Bodin you know the have you heard of the Bodin it's a band very very big with very few people and there was one of their songs that we played b d a ANS and uh there's a song There was called uh can't remember it the last one on their one of their albums but we used to play it over and over we play the Ed record The Edmond fitzgeral sometimes too just for the I guess for the narrative I I uh I had written a cold opening that involved it that's why we were listening to it is that what it was yeah yeah yeah yeah but but it well just real quickly it was uh there was a guest who kept getting bumped and uh uh there was a cold opening where Dave was talking to Paul and well he assured the guests he wouldn't be bumped this time and then he's chatting with Paul and uh Dave's and the wreck of The Edmond Fitzgerald comes up and Dave saidyou know I think I know all the lyrics to that and he started saying them and time crept by and the guests look worried you know but no we didn't collaborate much be as as Jerry said be we' we'd uh show up and chat a little bit and then uh Jerry would have to write monologue drugs right so he would he would signal that he had to get to work by putting on headphones and uh listening to cting crows or the bodans or or whatever and and uh that it just always impressed me that Jerry and Larry Jacobson would both turn out a couple of doz monolog jokes every day that's uh speaking of guests getting bumped when I briefly I told this last time that I briefly had to work as a segment producer halftime and writing monologue the other half and uh the first guest I ever had to bump was Jerry Seinfeld which I mean unimaginable these days I know and he was a little upset obviously and he just said that would never happen this would never happen on Carson and he was on Carson the next week guess what happened no he didn't he was fine he went on he was very funny but anyway the only guess was waiting for it used to get me okay I mean another and uh in the just just in the office between the two of us uh he he would Jerry's phone would ring he'd answer it and he'd he say oh hi sweetheart is Suzanne who's my wife and by the way that every time the other thing that's interesting is that um Dave always remembered pitches even if they'd been rejected oh that's so so for the first couple of years I was there I suggested hey why doesn't Dave rent a convertible and drive through a car wash holy crap and and so Dave turned it down and then after the writer strike yeah I remember he mentioned it to Steve like maybe we should do that now yeah and I was shocked that he had like remembered it um there was a fatal flaw in that remote so so here's the Fatal flaw we go to Avis we rent a car Dave drives the car to Queens we go to a car wash Dave stays inside the car with Carl the cameraman and goes through the car wash y completely miked up and everything y um drives back to return the car the car by the way there's two inches of water inside of the car yeah yeah the Fatal flaw is that Dave is wearing dry clothes when he returns the car and the reason that is is that um uh the chem whatever [ __ ] chemicals exist in car wash water um were horribly uncomfortable for Dave and he was just like I got to get out of these clothes I can't wear these um and and and we all rode back and I tried I said come on put him back on no no it wasn't gonna happen I think he did develop a a slight rash like over the weekend I felt terrible who the person I really felt terrible for was Carl Carl was covered in plastic tarp with the camera having to ride through the car wash this is going to also dovetail to your musical prowess as well particip okay participate in quotes uh yeah okay there was one uh I actually I wrote this one with Joe top one but uh he he uh it was Dave thinking you know boy What would life be like without TV gee I wonder you know and and uh and then we were dancing around him and singing this you know song Jo and I WR just you know life without TV it wouldn't be nice no cagne and Lacy no Miami Vice and you know and we're we're dancing around Dave and he's you know you know his his his participation was to scream and it was a night and Paul wakes him up and he goes like Oh my God I dreamed I was hosting the enies and it was a nightmare but a little behind the scenes is uh you know like when I uh I likeed music I like musicals I I was in them in high school and and uh I uh so when we were doing that uh bit that bit in rehearsal Dave said to me uh and or maybe it was we did another one election day Dave's election day you know where I'm out there know straw Boer Election Day election day the Day punch line on that one was great too right and and um when we were doing those I do remember Dave said to me uh you like this don't you you like singing in you know like he caught me you like singing and dancing around and and I admitted uh I I guess I mind it less than the next guy I aded that no here's the funny thing is is a I would have a little bit of uh an occasional running gag with Dave of I'd pitch something that he wouldn't do in a million years and uh I'd say uh you know I was thinking they maybe uh uh start the show with a song you come out you know we and uh you go uh feeling good crowd looks great Magic's on its way you know and you know I've written a song magic magic is on its way and Dave no great great uh you know let's let's see the charts you know I I've heard you talk about the the flatulence thing yeah malov and I are delighted to this day about that and and I had dinner last night of all with Doug Herzog do you know Doug I had I had dinner with Doug Herzog and Kevin K who was our qard guy no kidding and Lee kernis who's a manager who's a good friend of mine and we had dinner and we were just telling stories like this you know about Wendell and Kevin and I used to be in the pit where the camera was camera 2 would be back in this little carved out area of the audience this is Studio 6A yep and the pit would you know you had a big camera and a big cameraman you had Wendell me Kevin with the Q cards and usually the segment producer who had the segment that we were we were shooting yeah and it was very tight quarters it was you were right on top of people and all of a sudden you'd hear and you'd go Bill and it would stink and you were literally two and a half feet away from the audience and he all heard it the audience heard it all and we'd crack up yeah we laugh Kevin K who has like this cackle like a girl's laugh it was and we would just crack up and let him would always look around the camera to the side and go everything okay there don't worry go you sure everything's okay back there and it became a running joke and we told Letterman what was going on and it disgusted him how can do that in front of the audience God what are we gonna do about this guy so another chit on Wendell's record you know it was but Letterman just didn't you know Letterman was was interesting because and it wasn't about control it was about he just had such a brilliant mind mind that he wanted to know how to get into everything and how to get out of everything right and and that's all he cared about you know people would say you know we used to give him the the interviews and it would have the question and the answers right oh wow okay so he knew all the answers so and the reason he wanted to know the answers was he didn't want to step on their their punch lines you know hopefully all the stories ended with something funny they were good stories with the payoff with a punch line so he knew what the punchline was but he knew to lay back at that time when they were delivering the punchline he never stepped on a punchline he never stepped on a joke because he knew what was was about to happen and he was great at reacting and generally they delivered it in in in a in a funny way so he was genuinely laughing even though he knew what was coming yeah but he it wasn't about control it was about you know respect for the guest and letting them come out with with the punch line that they had prepared you know he knew what everything everything Andy calman did on that show he knew and Andy calman was smart enough to to tell because you know something he knew that Letterman would time it perfectly and would lay back when he had to and would not interrupt him when he wanted to have an argument and was screaming at Jerry Lawler yeah you know so it it was all very carefully executed on Dave's SP he was great at it uh can you talk about Andy and Jerry that night a little bit did you know no no good I did not know and Jerry Mulligan who was a segment producer that he did not know yeah we were all surprised but Letterman and Merill I don't know I don't think Merill was there at the time but Letterman and Merill had the idea to put Andy on the show because they knew him they knew him from the comedy clubs in La yeah and they trusted him Andy had terrific comedic instincts he was he was brilliant and Letterman trusted him like he trusted nobody else so he knew that Andy knew once again how to get into it how to get out of it yes Andy was Andy was brilliant at it so Letterman gave him that full trust yeah and Andy always pulled it off beautifully but Andy would come in for a week and sit in my office and and plot these these bits yes he would just work out every beat and he would cast he once came on and said he's adopting kids from from the inner city you know so he came in and he did auditions he had all these you know these African-American kids these Puerto Rican kids and he was doing auditions with them and he was just brilliant the big story with Andy that I have and I became very good friends with him I used to have breakfast with him and lunch with him I mean I knew his brother I knew his sister I knew his parents parents I I mean I got very close with Andy close enough that he comes up to my office one day and and I don't think he was booked on the show and he just comes up and he goes Morty he goes my father made me do a will I said oh well you you're successful you should you have money you should have a will he goes I have to get three witnesses to me signing the will so he asked me he asked our talent Booker Sandra ferton and Barry sand was the producer of the show at the time he asked the three of us to witness his signing of his will I of course said Andy let's do this on the show I go let's not do this now and he wasn't sick it was you know he was doing well I said how great would it be if it's Letterman and Biff and whoever else signing the signing the will he goes oh that's a great idea let me ask my father he calls his father and the father says Andy it's something very serious I I don't think you should make light of it and do it on the show so Andy always listened to his father he trusted his father he was a very bright guy he was an attorney I think so we did it in private cut to when Andy passed away uh I get a call from the the attorney and we had to put the willing to probate so we knew that he had passed away and it wasn't a fake you and I went to the funeral and it was very sad it was it was a funny day I used to be friendly with Carol Kane so Carol and I I went to the funeral together and it was in Westchester and they gave crazy directions we we didn't know where the [ __ ] we were going and Carol and I are driving through the cemetery we were at the wrong Cemetery there were like a bunch of like a cluster of these cemeteries then we finally get to the right cemetery and we get there late and it was it was like a movie Carol and I and we were laughing and it was like Andy did this Andy Andy did this on purpose you know he was he was something he was something else because I want to talk about Calbert a little bit I mean Steve Weiner again writer he's the guy he and uh and Carl discovered Calbert and that you know uh so we've talked we're gonna do a Calbert Tri Calbert tribute episode at some point um it was the uh was the cross americ no panamerican the Pan-American Journey coward tar Pan-American Goodwill tour Goodwill tour yes yes yes yes yes so and you're you're actually on tour with Calver the uh the backstory was that I was a writer assistant then uh Steve came in to tell the writers uh Dave loves this idea who wants to go and uh all the writers were like I'm married uh I have kids I have a family uh this is a indeterminate trip uh so no one volunteered and I after the meeting just uh closed up and I went to my office and went wait a second I'm not married yeah I can go I can I can do this so I I volunteered and Steve was like oh yeah that'd be great so the problem with it was that it would uh no camera crew could go because that would be too expensive because it would have to be a nebit camera crew okay and that would have been hugely expensive to pay their room rate and all that every night and as much as their day rate and all that so all we had was that uh Panasonic video phone that's interlace scanned a black and white picture uh very grainy yeah that and Dave even said on the show one time you could just be backstage and so uh we yeah we were on the road for six weeks you guys were on the road for six full weeks for that yeah one of the weeks was a dark week too so the the we aside from uh they called it off when we got to Guatemala City uh Calbert would fluctuate between uh being miserable and being happy and and by that time I think we we were calling it off I we had run out of vehicles the RV we left in we had to leave at Laredo Texas at the border because we weren't insured to take it into Mexico so we rented a 16 passenger van in Laredo and whoever that was we rented it from wouldn't let us take it further than montere which was about 60 miles south right the border and then we rented a Ford Taurus and we could only take that to the Guatemala border because we weren't insured to take it into Guatemala and then we took a um it's called a chicken bus uh uh they're they're basically school buses okay so it's converted school bus it's like you see in the movies yeah exactly that and yeah and there were chickens in cages on the bus uh uh just being transported uh uh and it was a five hour bus ride because they stopped in every small town from the border to uh uh Guatemala City and at that point we how what am I going to rent in guat City to keep going down to tiego um so they called it off and uh they flew Cal home and me and the driver who was a friend of mine uh uh who was a mechanic that I they brought on just in case there was car trouble sure uh uh we collected all the vehicles and made it we made it it took us six weeks to get to gu Guatemala City and uh we made it back in 18 hours because I we flew we dropped the rental car off at an airport in South uh Mexico we flew to uh uh montere to pick up the van drove the van got the RV and just we uh uh alternated every two hours sleeping and driving to get to get back it was that that was an adventure just getting uh everything collect it and returned and but uh I'm blown away by this so that entire trip that entire bit that went on and on and on and always had had little remotes and updates and all that three of you total and it was over six weeks it it was four of us uh Calbert had a friend Frank okay uh traveling with him and uh but Frank left uh I think when we got to New Orleans he had a family thing he had to deal with so then it was just the three of us into the last couple weeks that's a okay so so a lot of downtime I mean you got times where okay yeah you're recording you're doing these things um the downtime must have been like was it boring did you guys like get to know each other like completely like you knew each other's Secrets by the end of this did you hate each other by the end of it like what a crazy there was some tension between calber and I yeah that started like on the first trip we were the first call in we were in Lexington and we buted heads a little a little bit because he it was a it was a college campus yeah everybody recognized him and he was giving away all the t-shirts and we only had a limited supply of Late Late Night t-shirts right and I said no no more and he got mad at me and he called his agent and his agent called Morty and Morty called me and he said you gotta treat Calbert like a star and I like but I I I need the t-shirts like I don't know how long I'm going to be on the road yeah and it was it was something silly like that but you know I accommodated him I tried to uh I I don't think I was ever mean I think we were both a little frustrated yeah because uh it the traveling wasn't hard but it was mapping everything out where do we get to next uh no GPS back then no I we had all the maps um and I we did have a one of the original mobile phones in in a a Tache case that was like a bag phone yeah yeah it was big brick uh the I don't have it was it was quiet and Calver you know kept to himself uh the he enjoyed the scenery while we were driving yeah and we did you know the the week that they were down we were in wco which is on the I guess that's the Pacific Ocean it's a Beach Community and uh there we stayed at a hotel it was a Sheran that had hadn't really opened yet so yeah uh the uh the accommodations weren't spectacular and uh we were at the beach and we looked across the cove and I was like what's that place over there and it was a Club Med so we we drove over to Club Med and I had the MX C the show and said can we stay here for three days and uh so we had fun at Club Med for three days enjoyed that yeah he he had a fun there um but he he took a spill and broke his glasses and I was like at that point I sort of was like I'm responsible for this human being I gotta probably taking better care of him but uh I kept him alive for six weeks the fact that when I first came on uh like no one people didn't get VCRs till 85 86 and that sort of thing and I was just I was constantly astonished that that everyone saw these things uh let me I'll share one uh let's see did something where uh uh somebody uh wrote a bit where they compared the top of Dave's head said it looked like he had a hamster up there and Paul schaer laughed and you know said like called him hamster head okay like that weekend we go out for the emys and we happen to win that year and we're making the rounds of the press it's it's all very exciting and people out across the street on the other side of the saw horses uh you know Letterman walks by and someone calls out you know hamster head and that those sort of thing Jerry Mulligan and I uh talked at colleges uh for a while and and um uh they did a little lecture circuit a dozen colleges and uh you bring up anything you people would ask you know say like well there's the time crisen Glover came on the show of course D the karate kick at Dave's head and just the whole audience there'd be that oh yeah oh yeah y saw it saw it and it's all very flattering but it's also like that was on at 1:15 in the morning yeah what were you all doing on don't you people have jobs well not college students but uh I'm just amazed how many people uh saw this stuff yeah we did uh just one more along those lines we did a top 10 I think it was Top 10 home run calls uh new home run calls and number that's a great preise touch them all and stuff like that before world and the number one was uh the only one was Elvis's left the building ah there you go perfect it was the 1987 World Series and Ken herbeck uh uh hits a Grand Slam in that World Series and they're panning the crowd and someone holds up uh and someone is holding up a sign saying Elvis has left the building and you you just uh you you can't believe the the the stuff got out there and had that much impact and well my goodness multiply that by 10 with the Simpsons did you know it was time to stop being a writer and to move into other elements of of of broadcasting or uh was the pressure there where you needed to get out uh there wasn't a pressure to get out out okay they've really really appreciated people who were still there yeah um and what there was was about what about the six or seventh year right we went to LA yeah and we did a week of shows in La yeah and we had no idea up until then how popular the show was again that gopher thing yeah and and suddenly we're driving into the parking lot at NBC and we're using Johnny Carson Studios and there's it's it's it's 8:30 in the morning and there's lines down the block to get into our show and people like what to get your show not Johnny's show your show so so yeah there was that there was then agents start to Circle and start to tell you about the opportunities that are out there yes and they were good opportunities absolutely and that coincided I think with uh there's just a day you show up and you drop you know you keep using the Gopher metaphor I used to use the metaphor just like the bucket in the well and you you dro the bucket in and it just went clunk oh and you realized you know it really we there for and this happens over days the agent thing happened over years where suddenly people are like wait you know I think the first the first migration was was The Simpsons right and I know my friend Kevin right he's like I'm going to go work on this actually he went to work on Married with Children but it's that fox explosion but I've talking to Jeff Martin and I'm like really Jeff it's a cartoon how long's that Gonna Last there was all that stuff kind of came together and then for me um I met Norman leer um uh through his through actually through his daughter Kate and and um he was thinking oh I want to go back into television he had a couple of ideas literally for late night television and uh offered me a deal like come to La spend a couple of years with me yeah it's like [ __ ] Norman leer being at the level that you were did you know that you were on the cusp of something and part of something that was uh changing things I didn't realize it was yeah yes I did but you know then again I and and I know Dave always gives credit I always give credit you know Lauren Michaels made it all possible for us not directly I mean he he was a fan and and we all obviously knew him and liked him but you know he paved the groundwork for for that type of Television he really did and he gave us license to do you know his his show and what he created gave us license to do what we we did you know he was the first to to hire the Harvard guys yeah and we just we just latched on to that and brought you know Merl brought all the Harvard guys in yeah and it was a it was a great move they were they were fantastic thing when I was very young at like a writer skilled East function in New York I think we cross paths and I was like this skinny 23y old guy or something and I was like it's a pleasure to meet you Mr out on him I mean the cool thing was I always loved and and never ceased being Starstruck by these writers like Jerry Mulligan and Steve Young that straddled both shows and so when I 22-year-old Craig Thomas shows up to Late Show with David lutterman yep as having been a super fan of the old late night show like Steve Young there was this top 10 list that I will just quote the wording of this one top 10 joke because I discovered at some point when I was at lead show that Steve Young had written it remember all the old top 10 books that are behind you as we speak I'm looking at your mantle I'm looking literally at okay wait this was the other one I was paging through ah there we go match we have a match I was I was getting in the mood to talk to you by looking at these books yeah I remember just funny how some of these little bits of wording again these messages in a bottle that find people it's not even the greatest top 10 list of all time but it was this top it was like from the 80s top 10 Mrs Paul pet peeves Mrs Paul the Frozen Frozen fish stick company top 10 Mrs Paul pet peeves some random you know Tuesday night in 1989 this a or whatever God knows when and it was just a bunch of like pet peeves that would be true of someone manufacturing frozen fish sticks and one of them was this line that somehow I discovered that Steve Young wrote that was the flat accusing stare of a Dying Cod and it C pardon me getting over a little cold here accusing the flat accusing stare of a Dying Cod that's poetry yep that is poetry that's Emily Dickinson could have written that top 10 item it conjures up this incredibly uh evocative image of Mrs Paul watching a fish die that she's gonna chop up and turn into fish sticks and it's watching her with this flat accusing stare judging her as it dies and that's one of Mrs Paul's Pet Peeves apparently and I don't know how it ACC I probably just quoted that as like because I always wanted the top 10 lists to be more like that more like Timeless like forget about the topical like could could that was if I had a pet peeve about Le show it's like I wish more of the top 10 list could have dabbled in those colors you know that that artistic palette some of them still did on Late Show sometimes you would do an abstract list or sneak in a weird joke like that but they were a little more topical right it was the 1130 show now you were serving up the news of the day a little bit I missed I I I always loved that when you could just write something as poetic as that um so yeah that's just to say like every now and again while working with some of these guys you'd quote the flat accusing stare of a Dying Cod and Steve Young would go I wrote that Jesus Christ you know what that meant I remember that I can quote you that for btim from 10 years ago 15 whatever and uh so yeah I got it was nice to work with a couple of those guys and get to like send them those appreciations because again back in the day they weren't getting to hear from fans as much they weren't getting to hear people quote their joke they're in vacuum some of that you meet people along the way and you start realizing oh people like the show but it was different it was harder to get the sense of like fandoms right like this is why like ComiCon became a thing this is why the internet this is why fandoms on the internet and now people can have more of a sense of people responding to it that's good and bad because you also get plenty of hate and tell you you you this this was terrible this used to be bad but there's the upside of realizing like some of these weird things you craft and you you you you pour yourself into in some weird way I mean you that's what I love the Artistry put into something as dumb as that Mrs Paul's Pet Peeves joke the level of artistry put into something that incredibly stupid that's that's the dream for me so uh yeah getting getting to overlap with some of those guys and getting to work with Chris Elliott I mean these I I always remain a little star struck by the by the the people that I was watching when I was a teenager safe to say as you were getting your start as you were brought into the fold uh Steve O'Donnell was a an immeasurable Force to do with that yeah he was the headwriter who hired me in 1990 I had known of him before that I think when I was about to get out of college in 1987 I actually called the show and how I even got a phone number I don't know I I must have had some uh uh transient whiff of ambition briefly in my life and then I got him on the phone in a weekday afternoon which is nonsensical right there because it was like being on the high speed speed treadmill of oh my God we have to tape the show in an hour and somehow he got on the phone and had an amiable conversation with me and uh I think I referenced that in the uh remarks I make he did introducing him at the writer Guild Awards but yes uh beloved and respected but many people are respected without being beloved Steve was both because he was a real nice person who uh just related to people and wanted to meet them and and find out about them and if he saw a glimmer of something that entertained him he he was happy to uh try to help it find its home and with with me and many other writers of that era he saw something that he thought be cultivated and we were often given a little while to find our sealegs at the show later on it was much more if you're not getting good stuff on the air in the first six weeks or something we're going to move you on out and try somebody else I was allowed to find my uh find my way and uh it to my mind and generously it took many years I don't think I was really really good at that job until quite late in my tenure there and even then that's like a major league batting average is like oh you're hitting over 300 that's that's good I mean if you pitched 10 ideas and three of them were pretty good and worth trying that would be that would be a good average there as well so anyway Steve O'Donnell i' I've told this story elsewhere I don't know who's heard it but my very first day at the Letterman Show April 30th 1990 he met me at some elevator bank and in 30 Rock and I'm looking around oh my God I'm in the big leagues it so exciting and brought me upstairs and said uh we got to find you an office and on the 14th floor of the certain part of NBC there were numerous empty offices several writers had skedaddled for the West Coast after the 8th anniversary show that winter okay show had been in LA and people had been having meetings and suddenly had new jobs offered to them and was big turn over on the staff so I was part of the new generation coming in that involved Paul Sims Spike fiston wow Steve O'Donnell said let's get you an office how about this one and I said uh sure and uh I don't think did we even have computers yet maybe we did they had just started getting computers instead of typewriters but what was unusual about this office was there were boxes of record albums on the floor and I said oh what's all this with the records he said well previous writ in this office was in charge of bit a bit called Dave's record collection and with these weird record albums hey maybe you could be the new Dave's record collection guy and I said sure I guess okay and good place to start okay so he's giving you something on your first day right he's sort of he thought that I might have a good sensibility for that but really within the first 20 minutes of me arriving at 30 Rock the the first Domino had been hit in a long chain which would result in books documentaries lectures public appearances this whole Twisted miniature Empire which grew out of that DAV R galski uh he was he was talking at one point about well the guys I'd been there with had all left uh Chris Elliott and Adam Resnik had left for uh to do get a life and uh Matt wickline Sandy Frank were doing in Lon color and Kevin Kern had left to do Married with Children and he and I'm waiting to hear my name and uh he goes who else was there and I'm waiting waiting still waiting so still waiting yeah we like to think we're memorable but uh I guess not and just talking about the and uh I I just listened to Steve Young's this morning and and I I've I've met him in passing once or twice and uh certainly he has great reputation and I knew Steve O'Donnell who who I keep in touch with uh and have lunch with often uh I knew he thought very highly of it but I felt like that was the first extended visit I'd had with Steve and uh he he said um when he first came into lman which is two months after I left Steve said well let's get you an office and he said here's one and there was a box of Records couple of boxes of Records there and he and oh well the guy who was here before uh uh did Dave's record collection maybe you do it now and I'm going that was me that was my office Steve O'Donnell recognized that I had some core sensibility that was a good match for the show okay so he said I'm gonna put uh I'm GNA put some chips down on this guy I think things should work out if he if he immerses himself in the show more he'll be very good and reliable I had watched the show actually very little and I may be an extreme example of what I think is true of some of the earlier generation Letterman creative people they were not necessarily enamored of television and did not absorb it like a sponge and worship it I had seen the show I don't know probably a handful of times uh the first time I ever saw it I was flabbergasted was early 1983 and I was up late with some friends I saw this show I'd never seen before never heard of before and I ended up on the floor curled up in a fetal position laughing so hard I could barely breathe and yet I did not from that moment say this is my life's Destiny I must find these people in work with them no concept of that I didn't know TV shows had staffs really yes there's names going by at the end but I didn't mentally that and I also didn't even think I've got to find a way to stay up late every night now and watch it I don't years went by in the mid 80s and high school and college where I really ignored the show completely and so it sort of doesn't make sense that I ended up there but it also makes complete sense because the early people like Steve O'Donnell and Dave himself I think had an interest but a skepticism for television they were not hypnotized by the Glamour and everything they just thought well this is this strange part of our life lives which we will acknowledge and we will also saiz and keep at an arms length sort of emotionally and I was so I came into the Letterman show not knowing a lot I think when I started I oh oh I better I better cram and like I watched it every night for two weeks before I started so I kind of here I go I can do this but there was so much that I didn't know that I didn't know like maybe the average viewer wouldn't even know this either but meetings people would talk about oh should we have Calvert do this what if calt does that and I finally said excuse me who is calt come on you don't know everybody knows a well Larry Bud Melman that's what people on the other side of the TV know him as I don't know how many people knew him as Calvin so I actually didn't feel too bad there was there was no internet Message Board where people were talking about behind the scenes of all this but uh you'd have a good idea and someone said oh we did that in February of ' 89 or and fair amount of instances like that where somebody would have a good joke the craziest version of that I ever had which also was encouraging in a way it was the new books segment at NBC yeah and just like make up fake books that the props Department would put together and uh I proposed one was the New York York City White Pages arranged by height rather than alphabetical order okay and I handed that in on my page of however many and Steve O'Donnell called me down to his office and said I see you had this and I said yeah and he went over to a file cabinet and rummaged and he found one of the other writers like three years earlier had written the same joke and had had it had not gotten on so there was no way I was drafting off of somebody else's ideas just that I bizarrely arrived at exactly the same conceptual bit of nonsense and even then I don't think it got on but it told me and probably Steve O'Donnell yes this is the right sort of person here for this place but so what happened was that um I didn't get a job offer and there were no job openings there at all Y and the one opening that happened was a talent researcher job that was not an entry-level job most of the entry-level jobs were sort of answering telephones and so forth um and and I'd been removed from phones um I wasn't allowed to answer the phones as an intern and so uh I had made a joke I guess do you know shaky Richard sheckman who's a friend of mine now very well so anyway uh he had a phone call one day and they asked he was in and I said uh I'll sha and he didn't like that and uh so I was uh sort of like removed from phones I you complain I love Shing now we're great friends but at the time like there was like people did not like interns to begin with and as I said a lot of people acttiv like that belong there right and I tried not to do that but I I sort of had that moment of uh weakness and um anyway I was removed so the research position was um was coveted it was everyone sort of saw that it was an entry level to producing and um it was a big deal and there were I think Morty told me later like over 100 submissions to be a research um a researcher and um so that Friday this is before the internet and everything they told you who we're going to have to do a profile on and we all had to do profiles over the weekend and get them in and um the profile that they gave us was Sammy Davis Jr so I like beine to the New York Public Library got out his three autobiographies yep which were I don't know you know yes I can they're all like 800 Pages it was ridiculous and so uh got them all went home and just started devouring them in the course of reading those um he mentioned being the uh the best man at Linda lel's wedding who was you know the big porn actress of the time um and so I uh remembered hearing that she had her own autobiography and I was like I wonder whether Sam's in this and I went to like in the West Village where I live there was sort of a wicin witchcraft um gay woman's store yep and I went in and got her uh her autography was there and I read it and the stuff in it was um really disturbing about Sam Davis Jr and uh and and Hugh Hefner and all these other people and uh I sort of so I was like well how do I present this in here uh so that because Letterman you know he likes the humor to be above the belt sure so I sort of I sort of said well I'm putting this in as background this is stuff I discovered and research and I did it sort of as delicately as I could and um and I I kind of had a feeling that I would be the only one who had that information yeah knew Morty Morty would also like it probably so at the end of the the process Morty told me you know he's like of all the submissions yours was the best um but there's a guy at the Today Show who's been trying to get this job for five years and and I'm you know we feel like we should give it to him y I was you know devastated by that and sort of went home and and um and this has sort of been something I've tried to do my entire career which is sort of advocate for myself I guess a little bit absolutely I wrote a letter I you know I wrote a letter to Morty and I I sort of said to him I go you know which would you rather have um you know an old tired researcher who's been doing it for years and never got ahead or somebody who's Young and Hungry who's gonna you know bust his ass for you and and I'll kill myself for this job and you know anything I can do you know I I I really want this job right and it was a Hail Mary and uh Morty called me yeah cuz my internship ended and I went back to bartending so Morty called me you know 1:30 in the afternoon and I'd been bartending that night till 5 o'clock in the morning New York Bar St open till 4: and he woke me up at 1:30 in the afternoon and he's like am I waking you up and I go yeah you are who is this kind of thing and uh like well I was going to offer you a job but now I don't think I want to and I was like no please I want the job and he he like what you why are you still asleep I like I'm still bartending and uh so he offered me the job and I got the job because of my uh Lord Sammy Davis Junior profile this was this was this was the days before the internet yeah um it was also the day this is something you would take for granted now because everything's on YouTube but back then there was no YouTube and like one of the Charming things on like our show was it was a place to occasionally see during a guest interview like someone's like first appearance on TV like you know like you know you know such and such you know so and so before they were famous maybe they were on The Dating Game or something like that and so one of the jobs of of the research was to try to dig up all that old footage which back then was really hard because the all these all this footage was just kept in warehouses of various production companies and so you would have to like see like okay 20th Century Fox owns the dating game and you would have to find the air date and then call somebody and and then just like try to convince them to go to the warehouse and get the C out cut the clip and sent it to you and it was like a very arduous process and um and that yeah that that was it was a lot of legwork like like trying to track down that kind of stuff and now it's just yeah it's all on YouTube and and but and also it was it was research because there was no internet you were just kind of like you weren't just researching the guests you were also just sort of like the librarian for everyone at the show just everyone at the show at the show who had questions that to they could answer on the internet they would just call you with just random random you know stuff and like I remember once Dave was thinking about getting a place in Montana which he's been very very happily you know and yeah uh and I remember his assistant called me and because I was in research I was the guy to ask she asked like will Bears be a problem in this part of Montana and I was like geez I don't know and so I was like what am I supposed to do and so like you know she named the town and and I called I called the hardware store in the town and like as as I'm talking to them I'm knowing what the answer is going to be I said like hey I'm thinking of buying a place in Montana did I'm just worried you know our bear is a thing you know and as I'm saying it I know that I come across like this jerk jerk New York jerk and like and sure enough the the guy in the hardware store is like you know hey Harvey this is a guy for you know and they're all laughing at me and like oh you scared to bears and everything and so then I get off the phone and I call Dave's assistant he's fine buy the house there's no bears Dave buys the the house and then I don't know a few months later he's in the house he walks into his kitchen and there's a freaking bear in his kitchen exactly little did he know I felt kind of bad about that oh well I guess I wasn't very good at research I think is what we're all getting at I got promoted so let's see um I was a researcher and I used to provide all the sort of segment material to the producers and that was uh you know mostly Frank Anon and then um uh and then I was also booking I started booking some of the human interest guests and then some of the athletes um and then I booked a human interest guest and it was s it was a big coup and uh from that they um and I wrote an intro the intros are such an important part for Dave I wrote an intro that um ended up being I think the front page of New York Newsday the next day holy smokes and uh and they let me start producing some segments from there so wow um so what happened was there was a kid and and and again it's such a cool story I think is that um uh remember when and I don't know what what year this was 91 one maybe or 90 or 89 something Dan Quail was the vice president y uh where were maybe they were running for 1990 maybe it's ' 89 something like that okay and and uh he went to this chalkboard and and wrote the word potato his kid will pigoo did and he wrote it correctly it's a kid you know and and then Dan qu said no no no and walk up and wrote an e at the end of potato and it was a you know a national Scandal now this kid um uh Willi Figaroa he ended up um everybody wanted to book him you know that was sort of the big booking the big coup and the we were going against St show and Good Morning America and uh I had um you know I used a tack that I didn't EV but it was sort of like I'd heard Legends of before which is we we delivered a pizza to his house and uh and in the pizza I put a note saying hey uh you know I'm a nice guy if you want to talk about this we'd love to have you on kind of thing and he agreed to do it and because I got him as the booking they let me write the segment um and so I wrote the segment for William Figaroa and I wrote you know yesterday uh what did I write so yesterday um our next guest walked up to chalk board the events that follow terrifi an entire nation and and and um and so the cover of the news day was terrifying a nation it was a picture of quail and the kid from uh you know the thing but from that and that went really well they ended up letting me produce more and more segments and that's where proba I got my foot in the door of the producer there you know it was so um unnatural that I was there it was not such a it was so not part of the plan and I wasn't a Harvard guy and I got into NYU into the general study program which was sort of the remedial part of NYU uh because my high school counselor knew somebody who worked there pretty much I got turned down from every College I applied to and and and honestly that I could um Prosper at a place like that was beyond comprehension so that I took every opportunity I had to heart um and and and did everything I could to succeed and but I also ended up being that ended up ort of being my the Peter principal my my calling was interviewing people and and and helping them come and tell stories in sort of an organic way that were funny and made them look good and made our hosts look good and um that was uh really I found that that was a skills that I had so um and and and part of it I think part of it really was born from the fact that I I've never been um uncomfortable talking to anybody be presidents or Pavarotti or you know anybody I've never been nervous about it it's just not in my thing and Letterman was amongst those and I think a lot of people were really nervous talking to Dave yeah and working with Dave and um and anxious about whether he liked something or not which we all wanted his approval but I don't think that I ever felt um uncomfortable and I think that that he I think the reason why I was able to prosper there with him is that that I to some extent is that that it was easy to talk you know I never asked anything of the guy that was one thing you know and I just was happy I was so happy to be there so you know um and I think I also made things the things that I worked on you know went well and he trusted me you know and and so that was sort of how that worked also I think I decided to get serious about guitar lessons around 2004 and wow started picking up some fingerpicking chops and thought Oh I I love this I seem to have a uh an affinity for this and so I had several years of lessons so I was getting pretty good and I was composing instrumental pieces but I for a long time felt like there's that realm of creativity and then there's the world of words and ideas that's the day job and I very cautiously thought what would happen if I made a VIN diagram that overlapped these two circles and I think the the earliest was it was close to the uh the Thanksgiving song somewhere around 2013 or so uh there had been a couple odd outliers very early back in the 90s you may recall the piece we did on NBC and CBS the strong guy the fat guy the genius absolutely you did you compose that the theme song I worked up with Rob Bernett and then we sort of gave a demo to Paul Schaefer and the band and they as they always did just took your little nervous sounding sweaty scraps of whatever and turned it into a magnificent slugfest of music so that was kind of like a western sort of a Kind had a raide feel to it yeah yes Rawhide that's exactly the word yes yeah I think they all these guys uh and Felicia ladies had such a wide range of references like you could just throw out something like they were working it up in rehearsal and and uh Paul said to will I try try more like a a rawhide so oh and did you enjoy my Pula for impression oh I've got Bruce Springsteen showing up you know Project X I think it was called or or uh you know you guys you guys kept it under wraps pretty good um the rehearsal footage is out there as well uh I love that so do you guys you rehearsed that one night and then it was the night of the show and that was it like that's the uh I'm trying to remember what that is oh I'm sorry the very last night of I was in Japan you were in Japan you weren't there that night okay let me tell you my whole story about that yeah there was a sub for me that night Francisco centenno is the base player's name that did did that night but the thing that happened was you know I I I always got these calls to come do other things and I turn most everything down but this was a really cool Japan like a week or two in Japan and sha as I said before was is was one of those rare guys who knew that you had to go out and do this other stuff to come back in and be fully you you know in for his band right so I needed to go out and do that Japan charge the batteries recharge the batteries yeah he knew how important that was to me but I also knew that there was this was during the last Letterman show and and the the way Dave was getting kicked off the network to me was was really not cool and so for that reason reason and also for for the reason that I actually checked in with Dave to say hey Dave listen um I got this offer to do this and I know it's the last show you know what do you thinking he he said well I'm not going to really make a big deal out of it anyway because he was also pretty sour about the whole thing right but of course when the time came to do the last show he was going to go out with a more of a splash than he told me that he was going to so I missed out on a pretty great night that night and not knowing that I was going to be missing out on that but I found out later oh man they got spring for the last show had I known okay yeah there's there's a little bit of uh you know Monday M Monday morning quarterbacking there uh had you known would you have changed your like you know charging up the batteries are important I'm sure you were doing something awesome uh had you known would you have altered things to be part of that well it wouldn't it wouldn't have been because it was D Bruce Springsteen or any other particular person it would have have been because Dave had more of a uh I don't want to say emotional attachment to that moment but but he he was going to do it with more Panache than than than I had thought if if I had known that of you know that would have put way more importance on it so yeah you know I would have opted probably just to hang around and do it and I think you're you're sort of getting into what I think is is almost like the essence of the show which you know not that there was a mission statement but I think were there to be one when Dave started was taking the artifice out of show business and you know our our skits aren't going to be performed by these you know like you know these fake actors it's gonna be the guy who's the stage hand and you know showing humans the way they really are um and so yeah that that that was the philosopy of the show it's just kind of like just capturing regular regular thing or people behaving normally you're always looking for a moment that breaks through the can nature of broadcasting could this and now you go back to actually um Merill so so Merill and I bonded on who's William Wegman William Wegman with the famous dog pictures um very early on in the 70s experimented with video um and some of his video experiments I saw I saw them at the Museum of at the Art Institute in Chicago at a display and there were things like you have to realize it's like so this is very early video like home video so it's black and white it's grainy here here's the camera and will the camera is tight on like all your saying is this it's William wigman's naked uh torso yep and he's got a can of deodorant and he's spraying the deodorant onto his arm pit and talking about how much he likes this deodorant for until the can runs out so the stuff is running down his torso and falling up and it's looking disgusting yeah and he's just talking in this I this is so great it gives me you know and it uses all the cliches 24hour coverage right um so he had that and then he did a really interesting thing with one of his dogs he put a dog biscuit in a glass jar um and the audience again people like in a museum just watching on little benches horrified oh my God because the the dog's gonna break the jar the dog's gonna you know and it was that right and she and I talked a lot about that about just how hard it was to to create something on television that didn't feel like it was prepared yeah something real Could Happen