Donick Cary Sings Like A Canary Is The Title Of This Episode Because It Rhymes

yeah I'm Paul schaer I'm will Lee and you are watching the Letterman podcast welcome once again to the Letterman podcast my name is Mike Chisum okay we got Don at Cary I'm very very excited to have donic on here today uh writer he was an intern writer go to the Letterman Channel um and watch donck car's uh staff favorite moments very very good stuff uh some of those we touch on in this episode but then a whole bunch more um and I mean we really only scratched the surface uh today with donic thank goodness it was a great experience and he's going to come back uh we're going to talk um about a whole bunch of things we didn't talk about today but we did talk about it donic was um it's cool because he was a writer that came in as somebody who worshiped the show um and and was there from for the end of the late night era into Late Show era uh was the head writer with John Beckman we had John on a couple months back and uh and and and so it's neat um hearing the book ends of some of these different stories that johon talked about as well it's it's it's very cool talking about that uh moved over to The Simpsons has done a whole bunch of other stuff stuff I really wish we would have gotten to more of because he's got this crazy career like 30 years in Show Business and uh and has seen a whole bunch of changes but really was there for a lot of just amazing formative Letterman uh stuff and uh it was just an honor to have him on uh today uh the Letterman podcast is happy to present donic Carrie donic I am so excited to have you on here now to tell some Tales out of school really quick you don't know that I'm going to say this uh that guy right there Rick sheckman who was my my guy he was the guy that kind of gave me the I don't know if it was permission or whatnot to do this and when we talked early your name was on uh very very very early as the the the high uh one of the guests that he thought I would love to have a conversation with he thought you and I would get along really really well because I got my podcasting chops if I have any hosting my men's mental Wellness podcast my wife is building a men's mental Wellness uh app and uh she thinks that's her life calling she wants to change the world and your name came up because you have uh a project that's really really close to your heart and and shecky thought that you and I would connect on that level before we get going into you and Letterman and the transfer from late night to late show and then The Simpsons and all the other stuff you've done can we open with that because I think it's really special uh absolutely and and it's funny because there's potentially two things you're referring to I assume I assume it's one shecky mentioned it first of all thanks for having me and um and big love to shecky wherever you are in in the uh film archives in the sky uh we hope it's good and and Jerry Foley as well uh who we lost recently as well um all just some of the best people in in show business so on the same day a year apart isn't that crazy there's something there's something going on there's something I I have to believe it's uh it's uh there's a there's a bigger purpose for all of that I don't know what but but um we send love to those guys and their families um and um yeah shecky so there's a couple things in the mental health space for me you know um I grew up on Nantucket Island um which is a very sort of it's a weird place to grow up because there's incredible wealth disparity there's a summertime full of very wealthy people and there's a winter time with working class year round um people who are trapped on an island for nine months where the fog rolls in and everything shuts down and you're like if you want to go crazy this is the place to do it it's like it's like The Shining you know it just get weirder and weirder and uh the harbor freezes and flights stop going and you're like what oh god um the serious side of that you know there's a lot of alcohol and drug use and a lot of teen suicide and and um um we kind of navigated that growing up and there are a few things that for me you know really saved my life and and they were mostly comedy and music you know um uh I would say because it's on topic for us you know like I had a TV that I literally found at the no you know what I didn't find it at the dump we had a dump where you could go pick up but that wasn't where I got I got it at the thrift store for $5 it was a big old TV with the antenna ears and I would wrestle those in and get Letterman the Letterman show at at 12:30 at night and stay up in my room and watch it on this fuzzy box you know and and there were the there was like these Transmissions that there's a bigger world out there um with people like brother Theodore and PeeWee Herman and Bill Murray and and amazing band stopping in just like a place for weirdos you know and that was I was watching all the NBC shows and the Morning Show as well um the other thing that really got me through it was music you know and and a lot of these bands comedians would end up on Letterman so you're like oh they're kind of part of the club or something Dave has like given them given them the approval but that was like anyone from you know Blondie and dvo to the Grateful Dead and Johnny Cash and you're like okay okay they're part of the thing with PeeWee Herman and and uh chrisen Glover and whatever um so uh the quick story for this thing that I think Shey was referring to is about uh 15 years ago I started a music charity for my high school after there had been a number of teen suicides um and we were kind of going what what what got us through this and we were playing we we kept going back to music and sharing cassettes and and uh I asked the music teacher what was going on he said I got 10 kids who want to play guitar and no guitars and it was one of those lightning bolts it was like we'll get let's get guitars that's so easy I don't know about the bigger mental health thing but I do know music can can really help you and so I start I set up a 501c3 that funded the net high school programs but it's quickly spread to a bunch of after school programs there we started doing uh shows in the backyard which you can kind of see out here uh to raise money here in LA and over the 15 years we've had everyone from uh rancid to English Beat to the specials to Childish Gambino X fishbone you know uh Patton Oswald comedy kumale like um and and I in a way I guess now that we're talking about it in this context like it's my own partly my own little talk show is like I'll interview people and we'll do auctions and we'll show clips and we'll bring bands out and it's a big celebration of of music all of that goes into kids music programs which have now spread across the country we have programs on the Navajo reservation Pine Ridge reservation um in Chattanooga and Appalachia in Cuba and Haiti and Aboriginal Australia so love it love that we get to share music music has always been a big part of of mental health for me along with comedy those things seem to ride hand inand um what what's it called how do people look for it sure let's plug it sorry uh it's called musac musac Uh and it's mus.

org you could check it out um we post about it you can come to the shows you just buy tickets and um you can donate you can whatever it's it's really it's really a blast I think a lot of the artists who come and play have found a way there there's this sort of um what is the word it's like a it's it's just like a good cycle you get it you're like oh we get to play and have fun and this goes to kidss who get to play and have fun and then sometimes the kids bands come and open for the bands you know and it's like everybody's passing it on so it's awesome it's awesome those are experiences they will remember the rest of their life um in in in a time and place when our culture our North American culture because I'm Canadian and but it's happening up here as well where where the Arts are just being um marginalized minim minimized uh squeezed out in so many ways uh what you're doing is literally being um a light a beacon in the darkness and and and it's incredible that you're doing that um you know I I'm a financial planner by trade but a broadcaster you know I didn't I didn't have that moment where I gave myself permission like Dave to drive to from Indiana to to to California to take his shot and go for the dream I'm going for the dream right now and it's giving me fulfillment my wife in her men's mental Wellness app uh you know as before they even started with the app and whatnot they started looking at pain points in a lot of particularly middle-aged men and there's a lot of guys who are in middle-age that just connected the dots that Society told them to they got the education the job they bought the house they got the wife and the kids but they still never went and did that introspective work yeah uh and and and and it you don't have to be playing for 30,000 people but if you've got music inside you you get yourself a guitar you learn 20 chords and you start exercising it you start getting these things out and and and it takes the pressure out of the balloon um the fact that we have a society right now where kids are are not encouraged nearly as much as say we were growing up to to to develop these gifts or or find these passions and do it the fact that you're a flag bearer for that I think is incredible donik thank you for doing that that's oh yeah awesome thanks for for kicking off with it we we love it it's it's so fun it it only I mean it's it feels like a ridiculous luxury that I I've stumbled into being able to do this and be a part of it and the amazing people who help and the kids who who uh you know when we get videos of them playing Ramone songs or whatever it's just makes me happy so like there's no downside um uh it's good work and and other thing look this is a weird one because I it may it doesn't really feel like part of the the Letterman universe but it's definitely part of the mental health universe but um I I made a movie based on this is this ties into Letterman a little bit AB y you know we used to do a thing on the Letterman show called staff stories you know and it was basically like you you'd sit down with Dave at lunch around a table and people would it would be a topic or whatever it's like um you know uh beckerman's Pizza story is a good example of that right his story here I'll give you one too CU I I was in one that got cut because it was too it was too much of a summer spring break party movie which was like the drinking and the partying for Dave was a little bit like well let's keep it you know whatever yeah um we did one that was um High School teachers and we all brought in high school teachers and now I was a painting ass in high school I was a classic student a letterman candidate from from the get-go Class Clown uh I screwed around I could not make sense of uh algebra except like if people were laughing in the classroom I was like we don't have to deal with algebra and and this feels good and but that was my mental health you know was just like I I I was I was kind of likening it to the first drug I ever discovered was like laughter I make people laugh that that is making making me feel good so own natural dopamine that's the best drug there is it is it really is um and uh I told a story about uh one night out on Nantucket it was a half day at school and we went to there was somebody uh there was a summer girl that's what we you know whatever who who was visiting and it was um and so she was staying at her parents house and they weren't there so they had she had like keys to the mansion uh and and kind of we found out about like party at this house so we all went out this house and at noon because we got out of school at noon and we made Margaritas for the first time figured out how to make them in a blender drank tequila all afternoon this is sophomore year in high school so what whatever y um and probably around seven or8 o'clock you know things are getting pretty wild it's pretty messy you know it's it's it's getting a little and we realized we're out of booze we got to go try to buy booze at a liquor store on the island which also is like they all know us like it's hard to like fake anything but we realized that they had keys to the car the summer car that was stored in the garage we're right there we're like let's go we're going to town we're going to go buy boots so I knew how to drive didn't have a license yet none of us had licenses we're too young and we're we've had a lot of tequila yep we get get in the car and we're trying to take back road so we're down on a dirt road out near the beach trying to wind her way past the airport into a liquor store and the car dies and we realize oh there's no gas in it they they basically drained it for the winter and now we're just in the middle of nowhere but there's a house right there you know and it's a it's a school day it's a school night I don't know what how we got away with any of this but they all everybody agreed like you look the oldest go up and just ask if they have gas and then we can get out it then we can get the booze that we go back to um and I went up and knocked at the door and all I I could see all my friends in the car like looking out the window watching and our gym teacher Mr Webb came to the door and was like donic and I was like oh [ __ ] and clearly we were all drunk and smelling like and there's a car and I turn around like oh my God what are we going to do and all the doors open and everyone ran into the woods and just like I was like that is the that is the dumbest thing like obviously so I just said nothing um all good uh thank you and I I walked away and left and we left the car there it got towed back to the house at some point um but the next day of course we were at school and had gym class and Mr Webb kind of like looked at us like I no one was hurt I don't think I have to say anything I'm gonna let this go years later I'm at Letterman and make it a staff store we fly Mr web in we tell the story at with Dave at the table um and uh Dave was kind of like let's not let's not do that one but anyway that's a long way of saying well hold on hold on hold on you are one or two little tweaks away from having the plot to almost every 80s Summers movie Summer movie that we grew up with uh that was that was yes growing up on net was was the fun part of it was you reenacted essentially every Summer movie including at one point you know I love show business I wanted my my earliest memories are first I want to be Charlie Chaplain and then I was like oh I want to be John balushi those were like the careers I thought that's how you picked the careers like I want to be thaty um and and there was no you know there was theater on N but there was you know like these little small theaters my parents were were in that but um um let me know if the dog barking is a problem no never a problem always a good thing the mail is arriving which is about five minutes of chaos over by the door so we'll see I hear nothing we're good okay um so uh uh we did have one movie one that movie One Crazy Summer came and shot on N Tucket and it was like oh my God Hollywood's here we had like one of the worst summer you know party movies but we We snuck in the back and were in a as extras in a scene that was cut so there's two stories where I was cut from things yeah um but the the boy do I wish that stuff could get released by the way I wish that they could go into the archives and and and and find some of these things and I don't know what the legalities are of this thing like I don't I don't understand I've learned a lot about the different unions and and how how how certain things are a prop versus uh you know different different departments have to do different things when you have old footage like that can can Walter and Company at the at the Letterman YouTube channel can they release that or when in doing so they find they say they find that particular one that we were just talking about that was cut do they now have to go and and and and pay you and pay Mr Webb if he's still around and and do all that or is there are they allowed to throw that stuff out there I think that that is probably we signed a release that they own the footage at when they shot it and they could I the bigger question would be would that have been saved in any way because yeah you know those those remote pieces we'd edit edit edit get it in a thing put it on the show I think the thing that ended up on the show is probably the only thing that exists and is in the archives where's the raw footage and you know there's it'd be amaz Miracle but and amazing would be like you know the stuff we did with rert with the earpiece where he'd go out in in the city is we shot hours and hours of that stuff and made you know it was it was in the era where we realized like oh instead of one three minute piece we could actually make three three minute pieces and run this through the show which was which was genius but that was still only about eight minutes of footage from two hours of of you know a lot of garbage but there was still probably a half hour of really good stuff too you know um so yeah I don't know if any of that exists and um that you know there was so much great stuff in rehearsal too I don't know if we ever roll tape on that you know Dave doing his prank phone calls during rehearsal and for the mic test and stuff anyway Shey had a bunch of those and he he he had I think it was an hour's worth of those I some of them have come out like a couple of them have been released but I think they're sitting on a whole pile of them they can release every once in a while and I mean they're just absolutely hysterical like it's just absolutely hysterical and that was the thing that I think I loved and I want to get into this with you you're so fascinating to me because like I look at a guy like rowski okay so rowski worshiped the show in college and then got a chance to be like that kind of that third wave of of of writers you're a guy who got to come in you worshiped the show came in uh got to be on a wave and then you went and did what one of the first waves of writers did you went to The Simpsons afterwards and you became like another wave of Letterman writers on The Simpsons that fascinates me that you're this kind of Second Generation guy or third generation guy in a couple different ways um I want to know the progression that brought you from Nantucket to Letterman because it seems to me like a lot of the people that were brought in were people from the Midwest they weren't necessarily New Yorkers or whatever obviously the Harvard guys but I want to know the process of you getting from Nantucket to late night with David Letterman if that's okay yeah so so it's it's really just like um it's it's a miracle honestly is it is uh it is one of these things that like I as Young Writers always ask you know you sit down and talk about like how do you get into whatever it's like you look for those you know part of it is hard work part of it is being good part of it is that you the DNA is right and you can do this thing or lines up with right show but part of it is luck and timing and when you see those little cracks open is running through them as fast as you can so what happened for me one of the one of the many um summertime Spring Break movie type uh jobs I had in the 80s on anet was running the box office at my dad's theater he had a uh something called actor's theater and I would deliver flowers all day which was this great job where everyone loved you and you you'd go to celebrity houses and uh Yachts but you'd also visit all the stores so everyone loved you you're coming around with the flowers and you know people give you sandwiches and whatever so I had a very like working the thing you know like um like uh what was the oh Ferris bu's day off it was kind of like like every day I was like ah what are we working oh great you got sandwiches today oh here's some flow why we got some extras anyway that was fun then I roll into the theater I put on a a tie in a jacket uh but I always would have shorts because I'd sit behind the thing so I wouldn't have to it was half dressed up and um um and manag the money for about an hour and a half and then the show would start and I could go out and and I I'd either use the tie to sneak into some party downtown or you know sometimes you could sneak into a bar because you looked a little anyway beside the point yeah one of my jobs I had this beat up old Buick Catalina that I had traded for a bag I won't say what the bag was filled with uh with with someone who was working at the theater and so it was like at best the car was worth 50 bucks you know and uh it didn't have any brakes it was massive and N it's a very small cobblestone streets very quaint so this car would kind of Rumble through these tiny streets and I would have to Coast to stops and hope there were like nothing you know it wouldn't whatever y um one of my jobs was bringing some of the to the theater when I would go down there and at some point my dad had booked a troop of a dance troop from New York and they were in for two weeks and I drove them down every week and about halfway through the run so I was very precocious I'm in my tie this is very like Rushmore you know kind of like like um reference talk to them like they were adults and be like you know the bar you should go to and they're like What's this 16y old kid know about like where we should go Etc but um I just assumed I knew everything i' I I would me what you need I'll make sure you have it whatever um one of them one day mentioned she's like oh my God my husband would think you're hilarious uh you got to meet him and I was like okay whatever um and then about four days later this guy Steve O'Donnell came to visit Nantucket Island and they he was at my house and I didn't know who that was yet I came in and um my dad was like you got to meet Steve he does something you love you you enjoy every single night and I was like what are you talking talking about I was like who is he Paul Schaefer and and he's like no he's the head writer of Letterman and I like it's the first time I was thrown and I couldn't I didn't know what to say and I was like and I was really embarrassed and like God Dad what's going you know like um but but he they they his wife Brooke his wife at the time was like you know they have internships you should go be an intern there Steve shouldn't he and Steve's like I don't know uh sure he's a nice kid uh but I was 16 I'm too young for an internship but in my mind there was one of these things of like you can have an you can go work at Letterman like I'm there light moment yep um so I that actually was the the uh but you have to be in college and I was like I got to get into college that was like why I applied and got into Boston University I went to Boston University for two years still with this thing of like you could be an intern and after two years I had actually run out of money and was going to have to take a year off to to earn money and go back to school uh anyway and I was like I'm applying you know I'm going to send out uh you know applications I sent out one the summer went by uh and very late in the summer for the fall internship I was like oh my God I I I don't know I don't know they called and were like oh we actually had one of the slots just reopened can you come in and I had been doing an internship in Washington at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts that summer wow I jumped on a train and the next day was at Rockefeller Center went in for my interview um same probably the same tie and jacket that i' had been wearing at the theater three years earlier and um met Kathy M uh uh maverakis Michael at the time and she was very nice here's how the interns work she's like well we have one more spot and we didn't quite figure it out somebody just bailed out it's with Ed Hall who does graphics and I was like sounds great I don't know whatever whatever job I'll take it and I went and met with Ed and uh he was like yeah you seem like a nice guy you know it starts in a couple weeks I was like I'm here so um we we scrambled very quickly uh and uh again my dad came through with um he had a friend from Carnegie melon that he went with you know 20 years before who had been who is a working birthday clown in Manhattan and this this guy had lived it at 45th and 9th all through the 70s very Taxi Driver era you know 45th and nth wow yeah okay y middle of Hell's Kitchen yeah um he was like I still have an apartment there but he live now lives Uptown with his girlfriend and he's like but it's empty it's very cheap Donna can stay there I just have all my clown stuff there so he has to like you know be respectful or whatever so I moved into this clown apartment it was $325 a month he gave me a few free months up front to like get in the door you know like to get there my God his his his act was that his name was Professor Putter and he do you remember the movie um capturing the Freedman yes um so silly Billy who's in that movie at the time was the number one birthday clown and I I didn't know anything about birthday clowning in New York of course um but Professor putter would come get his mail at this apartment he had all his like his his um his gimmick was that he was a inventor who made wacky invention so there was like a butterfly machine with a thing and a like just stuff around so this was also this was a great find because it allowed me to live in New York for very cheaply and for nothing at Letterman um it he would come in and complain about Silly Billy getting all the good gigs which funny and then later I saw capturing the fredman I was like oh no that was the guy um uh but uh the the funny part of that was I was I you know I worked at this place it was the creepiest place to bring a date home of course as you can yeah clown there's shag carpeting mirrors over the the bunk bed thing very small and a lot of clown stuff um and I remember a couple times so the nice thing about being Ed Hall's in intern was Ed was very like help anyone I only need we need Graphics like a couple times a week you got to go over to the AP pick up photos run down visit Bob PUK and Bill Shortridge uh you know get the stuff bring it up so the rest of the time I was sort of the the roaming intern that people could just send out for whatever and a couple things happened there the writers would often the writer assistant regelski would often be like get over here help us get this thing or whatever but sometimes the writers would call my apartment and what would be the the more fortifying part of this is that Professor Putter's um business phone was there so the answering we go Boop uh boop be leave a message at the Boop I mean the beep oh my gosh there's convention going insane here uh leave a message beep and then here this is Matt wickline what the [ __ ] was that like we look we need you to go pick up five whatevers uh great joke there on the answering machine later and I was like oh no like these guys like I'm trying to be a birthday clown or something um that was mortifying but but fine survived it all um and uh I was gonna tell something else about so so yeah the fun part was like the first person I would work with so Ed Hall was like a chain smoker and we had a tiny office we'd sit in there and I'd file all the pictures and then and then go you know um go out and do errands for everyone from uh Lor Leonard and and and was next door and mine smithberg and I'd help out the researchers I'd help the writers um and um did Mr did Professor putter ever get booked on the show he was never on the show that's a lost opportunity right there right there right there looking backwards I know I was trying to be like you know there there's there's a part of this business that's like look for the lucky moments and run to them and then the other part is like when you get in the room just be cool ah yes yes like so I was very aware that at Letterman there was a there was a lot there was this Vibe I learned this actually on the first day from a from a Canadian intern who I was with I won't name names he was he was he was uh my first friend intern there we went out to um we had Stakes the first night in Time Square uh to celebrate but he his mistake I think on that first day or or within the first week he went down onto the set and went up right up to Dave and you've probably heard this story because you're you're deep at this but was sta donnald uh tells it the best but he asked Dave who is the giant hot dog in his in his K bequa uh and and uh Dave was like wait who who the hell is this guy because at the time we were doing a thing where Matt wickline was a giant hot hot dog running around on a crime scen spree so um I could tell and quickly this intern was removed from being able to go to the uh the rehearsals and I was like oh you you gotta just play it cool so I was terrified to ever mention uh Professor putter or get friends jobs or that my mother was in town or anything I was just like play it cool the other part I always recommend Young Young Writers is there was this other job that had to happen every day Dave Dave um whatever I don't think this is like uh uh top secret information but Dave liked to eat fresh pineapple every day yeah and so that was a big part of it and somebody had to go find this fresh pineapple and I was there basically I was intern for one intern cycle yep and then I was like I'll do another one and I just stayed for another one because I was like I'm not leaving unless you kick me out of here or you get yeah you're not leaving you're you're waiting until you get a job yeah and and whatever I'm hanging out so um I was always like I'll get the pineapple and and you're out in the middle of February in like a you know a blizzard or whatever and going to Deli and trying to find who's got fresh pineapple in the middle of the winter no one um but if you come back with a non-fresh pineapple in my mind I was like the show's not happening I got to deliver so you know you just you you whatever the job is you go for it and do it I uh I got a lot of pineapples that year and then as it as it wound down like Ed and I got to be very good friends I um his wife um was uh Liza Hall who I got to know very well also um was working for steu Smiley over at HBO just down the street um and occasionally i' I'd pick up something from Liza and bring it dead or vice versa they had been pages together years before um and they they became sort of like my my uh protectorates within you know as I was I was whatever s eight uh 19 years old and in New York and I could always go to them for like how do you use a how do you get to the airport or whatever you know I didn't know um and Liza was like hey we might have a job for you here as the internship winds down and then it didn't quite happen and I went back to nck and was like now I didn't earn any money I got to go back to college yeah took four jobs on nck started working Y and two weeks after the Summer started Liza call and was like Hey HBO's going to start something called the comedy channel um you know I work for this guy too smiley he's the lead executive on it and we got to hire people we don't have anybody it's just the two of us and so they hired me as the second assistant there I broke out the jacket and the tie again and and went and had a corporate job um there and and that was a place where um it does quickly come back to Letterman but yeah yeah yeah we launched a com we we launched a channel um brought Bill Shortridge over from from um from Letterman I don't think there were any other Letterman writers or anything there but um it was this great opportunity because suddenly we were doing a whole network and they just needed material and I was I was like I got material what about this what about that I learned a lot of stuff I was able to put together a packet I I did sketches you know so I was able to come back to Steve O'Donnell who I didn't really work with that much when I was an intern but I was able to come back to him and go hey I'm you know remember me from Nantucket and also being an intered there I've been working hard hear some stuff and it was about two years after I had been an intern that that he called and was like hey we got a spot for you and I was like woohoo a writing salary and then he was like well writer's assistant I was like oh okay but cool um so got back in the door still at NBC and was was thrilled okay so uh a couple things first off you mentioned odonnell a couple times we got to mention him uh because humans on the planet who who who genuinely uh want to give people a hand up and at the same time time will entertain the snot out of them while they do it uh Steve O'Donnell is a very special human being I I I I'm so grateful to call him a friend and and uh um just a guy that will literally he wants to help everybody that he comes into contact with if he's just one of the most helpful people on the planet and yet at the same time I mean a genius effort effortlessly genius and and um uh as a 16-year-old you must have just been dumbstruck meeting him you actually got a chance to work in the trenches with Steve oon let's talk about him just for a second here oh yeah I mean look Steve is Steve is the is the uh you know whatever the lucky thing that happened in my life is he he he's he's somebody who says yes he goes places he travels like if it had been any other headwriter he probably wouldn't have come out to Nantucket to visit his wife he would have been I'm busy we're running a show um so that that that's all uh incredible he's one of the sweetest humans on the planet as you said he's one of the most hardworking people he also as you said effortlessly or he makes it seem effortlessly uh genius comedy mind you know um and um and and not in a condescending you know he has very high expect you know I was hired by him as a writer's assistant he had he had these are the this is what we're looking for we got to get the jokes up here we needed to be good but pushing you lovingly to be the best version of of a writer you could be and the best version of the show that there could be you know um with all the constraints of Doing Network show every every day and and you know what guests are booked and what moods are in the building and whatever it's like it's the hardest job in show bus I've been doing this 30 years now I'm like that headwriter job is the hardest job in Show Business I kind of knew it working for him and then I really knew it by the time I was headr I was like oh my god um I have never I've run shows I've made movies I've made cartoons I've like done other live things um nothing is as hard as that that as that gig I'm really glad that you made that uh that comparison and that contrast that thank you for for doing that because it it shows scope uh you know that we could do an entire Subs series about the the headwriter part portion of this and and and the grueling um you know job that that that that entails um the creative in you so obviously you were the class clown in that sense you love laughing and all that growing up or whatever when did the light bulb moment hit that you actually thought that you had a shot at being a creative in the business were you still the intern at the time was it the time moving over to uh to the comedy channel that where where where you said okay no I can make a decision I'm gonna do this I'm not just gonna be a behind the scenes guy I want to be a creative at this I um you know I uh I made I made um like sketches and talk shows and videos like we had we had a uh video camera in the library you could rent out and I took it out as much as possible in shot sketches and you know from early Age and and was always writing scripts and always making stuff it was just like what I I study I loved comedy I didn't know I was studying it I just consuming it but like as soon as you learned about Steve Martin I was like what else can I get more more more feed me what is Monty Python oh my God there's all and we didn't have you know you had to work for that stuff you had to like wait a week for PBS to broadcast other Monty Python so you would like find a weird article or a book or you know at the library that mentioned them and slowly or records at the at the thrift store you'd find a Monty Python album and then listen to it a thousand times Robin Williams and Richard prior and you know whatever whatever you could get your hands on um so I YouTube there was no YouTube there was no even the video stores had nothing like that like one of the benefits of being Canadian is that uh you know Kids in the Hall and SV were syndicated you could see them like they would run repeats all the time of these things uh you know I have American friends who are like oh my gosh you're so lucky that you got to see these things multiple times and then of course the VCR helped with that but but yeah it was a different time again like being a researcher same thing we had researchers on the show same thing it was a completely different time and if you wanted to go deep into those things you had to put out an effort to go deep you had to tape trade tapes you had to you know put a lot of a lot of uh thought and and and like you say luck into into seeing some of these things so you could engross yourself in it it's funny it reminds me of like one of the things I would do while I was in New York we'd had we had a lunch break somewhere like we'd have an hour in the middle of the day sometimes and the Museum of broadcasting was just up the street they had archives with every Letterman show every Monty Python every I Love Lucy whatever and you just go deep dive stuff you know and and sit in there with headphones and be like um okay so this is Steve Martin's first appearance on a talk show or whatever um so anyway um where were we heading we were heading no no no that was when you made the decision so so so it wasn't like yeah it wasn't lightning flash to me was you know I was in the graphics Department um but observing Al show and working with everybody and I loved that and I was like if I'm a graphics guy here if if Ed wants to retire I would take this job in a second this is like I'm in the room I'm in the room you know and then but I really you know like you'd walk by The Writer's room and kind of Hope they'd ask like come in here and take notes or whatever um as an intern I'd look in there and they were Fu excuse me can I use the of course would be like they were [ __ ] it looked like they were around all day and I was like that's what I'm good at and some of it goes on the air and I was like I can do that um so I I I studied how you professionally [ __ ] around and and you know and and uh turn it into real stuff that could be put on TV the show was built for that you know like the the the funniest things were things that seemed like they came out of you know what if we put a camera on a monkey what if we had a guy living under the stairs like that were just like Goofy and weird and funny and kind of smart but really stupid you know like love that love that they just made you laugh out loud so I I you know I think you know when I saw I saw like people in the writer room kicking a c like a cantaloupe across the room and all laughing and I'm going that's a real job that people are paid for I'm I'm so I'm just you know turning everything all my energy towards that uh luckily Professor putter had a typewriter in his in his um in his apartment and I would like try to type jokes and write sketches and uh you know just be prepared so that when if someone asked I was ready to go you know that's fantastic and it's and it's advice for life that that all of us need to continually take you know if if there's something if you're not happy where you are make the preparation uh to do whatever it takes that would make you happy and and and then you are prepared for if a door does suddenly start to slide by you and you see that it's a crack open you can kick it open and you can go there I think that's a yeah I actually found I was looking around for anything that might be of interest um the um when I was a so I got in as as the writer's assistant and one of the first you you were encouraged like submit jokes for top 10 you know like rate as much as you can like see if you can find a spot here and one of the first weeks I was there we had to come up with a Christmas card and every year there was a funny Christmas card now this is not a for all the writers not they're like oh we got to do another Christmas card some of them had been there five years and had written a thou you write a thousand you know 100 ideas for Christmas cards every year so they're in like all right what's my 500th idea for a Christmas card and I was like oh my God there's a chance to get the Christmas card and um that first year I got the Christmas card this was the this was the idea it was a fake NBC News um press pass y that said like season greetings on the back and now go to interesting P places meet famous people and enjoy the free buffets um and uh yeah that was the card I was like I came up with the card I was so excited uh but that felt like okay maybe I can do this maybe I I get the voice of the show it's certainly I've been studying it for the last you know eight years or whatever so uh I'm super curious about you get the call you're now coming in as the r assistant who's the uh who's on Deck who are the guys that are or guys and gals perhaps uh that were in the room at that point um that you're now this wide-eyed uh you know writer's assistant at this point here moving on to the next phase wanting to be a writer who are the people that are in the room at that point yeah so you got some some of the old old guard Jerry Mulligan Steve O'Donald a writer you know is oh he's the headwriter at the time um Steve Young is there uh John Beckerman had just started I think I can't remember if John started no John started a year later when I was promoted to writer we kind of started at the same time writers but I had been there a little longer um Spike there Spike was there yes Spike was there we were very uh very close he was like uh Paul Sims was there um see there there's a guy who I want to who I want to pick the brain of U you know of the Larry Sanders stuff too right like oh man that's a I mean PA Paul's elusive good luck but U yeah oh I know I know fun to sit down with him he's he's he's a very funny man um he was definitely like heading towards Larry Sanders during the time I was there but but we you know we like late night video games and you know uh had some musical crossover stuff that we love you guys play oh I mean he was he was playing um what what would we he was up like until four you could drop by his apartment anytime and he was up until 4:00 A.M every night playing video games and then he would come in and have his hood over his eyes and just be like kind of resting in the morning and like was it like Sega Genesis or was it like amga computer type stuff you remember the like Sega like first um which became a thing you know like he he by the time I was well by the time I were CBS I had a Sega Genesis in there with Madden on it and um we got pretty addicted we had like I think that's one of like where Rob Bernett and I really got competitive we're like we had we had to win the Madden games and um it would it was a problem because often it was like we're gonna start taping at it's 5:15 and the show starts at 15 minutes but we're in the fourth quarter like and we squeeze these games in it was uh high pressure high pressure added to high pressure um but yeah let's see who else was there at the time um you know it's it's funny because I get a little blurry with like who was there when I was intern you know as an intern it was like Fred Graver and Joe topplin and and Matt wicklin was there and um those guys had mostly moved on but um you know I think I think Steve Young you've met a number of times was a a great role model to go like H Steve just works hard and is funny every day uh bike was incredibly funny and and a little wild we had a lot of fun adventures together um yeah so so so got in there and and there were also you know people like Spike who were up for like you know I'm thinking about this idea or I had an idea and I could go to him and go like let's write it up you know and it was like this sort of in we need collaboration it was a collaboration yeah yeah so that's the thing I love about and and it's so funny the time you came in donic it's like as Letterman was essentially at his you know the Ascension had happened already he was the hot uh the the it Factor was was it's Zenith at this point here and Carson's you know The Changing of the Guard is happening as you're kind of jumping into the machine here that's all happening like you would have been there when Carson came on and announced to everybody that what he announced at the upfronts right you were you were there at the time uh do you remember the do you remember the mood of the room or the like the staff at that point it's like holy [ __ ] Johnny Carson's retiring what's gonna happen like do you remember yeah there there's a there's a lot of drama a lot of excitement a lot of like uh you know I think we were pretty arrogant about like yeah but it's the writers who really matter in this whole thing you know like we so so you know we we'll decide if we're gonna like take that gig or whatever you know like well let's see what Dave does we always saw Dave as as a writer first and that he was like the comedy mattered most more than the guests or whatever but I think for him it all mattered the same but in our minds you know it was like um but yeah I we we definitely like we were there at night every night uh having take out food and and we' we'd break and watch The Simpsons on Thursday nights but we were also there kind of watching what meetings were happening in Dave's office at at 8:00 pm 900 P pm and uh who was coming and going and what's being announced and we'd be you know like I think there's that late shift story about Jay Leno being in a closet listening or whatever is like we were essentially doing that to every meeting like the whole writer room was like kind of listenting through the walls of like huh I wonder what that lawyer is up to or that head of NBC just came down to visit him or whatever you know um but yeah that was all really exciting I think um we all had chips on our shoulder that we thought and knew what we were doing was the best thing in the world and you know whatever decisions these pin heads upstairs are going to make or are you know they'll be lucky to have us or whatever so um yeah there's a lot of swagger around all that but uh it was fun and and and great timing you know like there was a transition I had been the writer assistant for a year and then there's a transition with Rob Bernett taking over as headwriter and he was like donic you're contributing a lot of material I'll give you a shot you know you still got to prove it because I you didn't work for me I didn't hire you you know and we got to hire writers to go to CBS or whatever and you know it was great I just started Spending All Day writing I didn't have to open viewer mail letters anymore or whatever you know and and um and so Rob really opened the door to go like just bring it on Bring In you know as much as you can there was a you took okay no you say this part but remember remind me to come back to viewer mail you say this part and then we'll come back to viewer mail sure there was a there was a um really nice moment after you know it was clear we were heading to CBS and and starting to renovate you know get the Ed Sullivan Theater and this plan where we had a whole window at NBC I'm sure people have talked about this where it was like Dave was like let's just try stuff which had been there had been a lot of years where it was not let's just try stuff it was like we have to do the best new reinvention of the talk show every night it's hard to do every night you know um and sometimes go down and Flame and sometimes you come up with something amazing you know that was a great bar to aim for but also could be crushing um and uh so there was this suddenly like whatever let's try stuff and like an example of of stuff you know I wrote a thing called uh PE late late late night PE boy and it was just like in turn to me one day was like oh he looks like a pee let's put him in a pee costume and then and I wrote this thing up and and they're like great and it didn't make any sense but it made sense for whatever reason and the kid would run through the audience and throw frozen peas and frantic music would play and it was like great and then it was kind of like all right let's keep that we'll take it to CBS then the next night let's do something else and and we were kind of like stockpiling the good stuff to to sneak out of NBC you know and take over to okay I wanted I've wanted to talk about this this exact subject for a long time another subject too is the fact that Lena was actually your lead in uh at NBC in for a time there was a there was a period where Lena was the lead we we've hardly ever talked about that and we've hardly ever talked about this subject we will come back to viewer mail in a second but I really want to jump on this because you said it uh I've heard this a lot that you guys were stockpiling ideas and things that you were going to do to launch the 11:30 show on CBS and and the things that you wanted to have at that point as writers are you changing any sensibility whatsoever are you taking things that would have been small and making them bigger are you uh like what was the what was the sensibility of something that we're going to run on NBC just to try something versus no you know what this is something that we want to maybe kind of keep in the vault for the reinvention or for the evolution um you know some of it it's it's so much there's so much of like throw it out in front of and see if it works and you just don't know so there's part of it is that where you can't over calculate too much you got to see if it's funny and if audience likes it there was definitely awareness that we were we were probably absurd for absurd was probably like a late later night thing but weirdly like something like peab boy which to me would fit in that space was like oh we're taking that with us yeah because it was big and energetic and could fill a lot a bigger space too theat yeah like that kid could run through and throw peas through a big at franic music so it's like the energy was up so that kind of fit the other thing of mine that we weirdly like rebooted and took there I did a thing this is like the most obscure thing I don't think anyone ever remember it is but but it was called like it was it might have been viewer mail I was like what are you most excited about Dave he's like well my upcoming show Lenny I think it was called Lenny cubed and it was Dave Paul and Anton in a new NBC sitcom on Thursday night funny time is what I I had written in it's like funny time is Thursdays at at NBC and it was just about like what if three lenni all live together three guys named Lenny all in an apartment that's crazy and it was the dumb not really any joke but we took it we were like that was great Lov I think Rob just tickled whatever he liked it so we redid it at CBS as Benny's like there Benny cubed and I was like well we avoided any um gonna say you're ging him a little gut shot to the the I do remember that one playing huge at NBC in late late night and then at at CBS being like ah the audience kind of going like where's the energy and the craziness so there was definitely a difference um um you know I think we wanted to go at we wanted to go to CBS with as much you know as much uh uh uh try to like um ammunition as poss you burning stuff all day every day um so and we knew we had I think it was 13 weeks of downtime between the two shows so we actually for the first time had a little time to stockpile stuff shoot remotes edit stuff um and build build a Armory of Comedy um and uh you know I I I I you know it was definitely with an awareness that it was going to be different and bigger um it didn't really become clear until we were in that space shooting shows that like oh we gota we can't get away with a small subtle thing anymore and and I you know I was involved in a couple of these conversations like I remember the first one where we had to really take it seriously is we one of the crutches we got to this is a Time capsule at this point but but you know we we had worked our way up to saying ass on this on the show and say like big ass beer and ass and falling on your ass and whatever and it became a little bit of a crutch because the audience if Dave said ass in any context whatever the joke was in a top 10 if he just said number four ass like didn't have to even relate the audience would like cheer like he was a genius like we were the funniest so it became this weird crutch where it just like and we had a very ser conversation I can't remember if I was head writer yet or if Rob was but I was we were in the room with Dave so it was probably Rob maybe Beckerman and me and talking and going like I don't know what we're gonna do we can't we got to stop saying ass for a while we got to retire ass like like really you know we had enough occasionally there would be a very serious you know assessment of something yeah and ask was one of them we were like we're we're getting lazy we're just saying ass like that's not we're not doing a good good comedy if that's all we're doing doing um and I remember we retired it for a while I remember it was like you're writing your top 10 and like oh I got a perfect ass joke but I can't I can't write it we're we're not doing that right now so I can't just as an aside I I uh have looked I can't believe that there was never a time where where where where there was a a commercially available big ass ham t-shirt like to me that's the perfect concert tea that's the perfect that that is that is it I can't believe that that never never happened um merchandising but anyway the goad all again all hail Steve O'Donnell that was his his uh genius all of that was his genius uh he brought it back I think he was in New Orleans we had a break and he came back from New Orleans inspired with this new idea and suddenly it was like big ass ham big ass beer big ass or maybe big ass Beer's a real thing that spun off from it but yeah yeah yeah there we were lazy with marketing there were so many things that could have been like you know now oh yeah but again part of the reason why the show was so cool though is because you didn't do that as well like that that's the other the other side of that coin was kind of like you said I mean so many people who worked for the show in every incarnation of the show uh were were massive massive Fanboys of the show but would play it cool like you said it was that it was that attitude that you had to have that um you know you don't you don't you don't bring attention to the fact that you're cool and I think I think part of of of what we're talking about here are missed opportunities quote unquote were were the things that actually gave the show uh the personality the Sensibility that it had was was you didn't you left some things on the table because you could and and that that kind of built the Mystique of it yep yep yeah you're un un um un unmoved by celebrity on it's it's all like okay we're here we're here to kind of point out how absurd all this is you know yeah yeah um so I want to go back just for a moment uh there was a time where and we don't talk about this enough on this show there was a time where Jay Lena was your lead in where where he got The Tonight Show and now you guys knew you were moving on to Ovitz was doing his thing with Dave and all that stuff you knew other pastures were coming uh but that was the case was that ever a thing was that ever something anybody ever talked about where Jay saying stay too for Dave or whatever stay tuned for late night um was that ever a thing where it was it was weird to have Leno as your lead in it's interesting uh I mean we certainly watched we would stay we would stay and watch and and and sort of uh you know uh uh gripe about how in our opinion at the time the Jay Leto show was very lazy and and not up to the standards of the kind of Comedy we were trying to like deliver every night so there was that but then there was the Chevy CH show which was like oh my God you know like we watched every episode of that we couldn't believe what was happening you know and it was sort of this um this wonderful treat of like oh we're going to work late but you know at the end of it we get to watch chvy Chas see what kind of train wreck they put together tonight um so there was a lot of like I I I don't want to say hate watching but there was a lot of like uh you know uh it made us feel better about like when we failed like things went off the rails for us or whatever at a night um I will share quickly just a couple things from the writers room at that time uh there was something wonderful called um oh my God what was it called oh yeah tub of tea so here here's what happened is on I think it was Thursdays it might have been Wednesdays every Wednesday we get a bunch of Chinese food and it all it come to the room there be you know massive the Chinese restaurant must have thought it was a banquet for 30 people so they these plastic bowls filled with scalding hot tea for 30 so there'd be 30 tubs of tea on the table and we started something called um it was this game it was this game show that we had within the writers room called tub of tea and the point of it was uh you'd start a timer and then everyone would shout tub of te and then you'd take the lid off and the scalding hot tea see who could finish it first and everyone's like a it's just screaming and burning their mouth and um I remember steveo being very good at it actually he was able to to scarf down te faster thanone and there'd be like everyone threw in a couple bucks so it'd be like you win $18 or something for burning your throat and esophagus and everything and winning tub of tea so that that that was what was happening while we were waiting for Leno to go on at 11:30 so okay a couple things from the room everyone's pretty pretty um uh pissed off by the time they're watching Leno because they're they're have third degree burns in their mouth um the other one the this is um probably grosser but I out of that be became a fantasy game show that was called bag of piss and I'm sorry but it was it was the premise of the show which probably we only we're now a few years away from being on the Fox network was there was a giant bag of piss hung in the middle of the studio and then celebrities would come out and sit under it and be grilled by a host someone like Rob low or whatever who would Grill them when they got something wrong that the audience would judge and then go if they all shouted at the same time bag oh pissed they' unleash the bag of piss it would drop on the on the celebrity and uh yeah so so like the adult version of you can't do that on television or or whatever with the gr slime Nickelodeon version of yes if the Slime was was pissed there you go anyway sorry um no no and I I want to go back to viewer mail here for a second because uh was that was that a Gateway for you like did you get to a place you knew the voice of the show obviously um from all the different ways from as a viewer from working for it whatever you're going through the mail yeah and um are you like do they just kind of like they're all black and white except for this one that's in color I know this is going to be a bit for the show and you're kind of that filter are you the guy like like like did you know the sensibility of what would be a good letter for on the air that would make a a premise for uh for some comedy gold yeah there there were there I mean it was a little bit of an art form and it was a little bit of exhausting because you don't know what you're going to open I mean there were there were you'd open an envelope and outw ooze you know like some kind of Goo that somebody thought Dave would want and you're like I don't know what this is is this melted wax or what I you know so it was a it was a job full of landmines and you're just like cutting open things there'd be people would send full portraits that they had painted of Dave or or you know pictures of themselves in bondage gear were like show show this to Dave he'll love it or whatever and you're like uh yeah you're filtering out a lot of garbage but also a lot of hilarious stuff we had at one point a wall of of of fan art of Dave that was great I'm so sad that we didn't I think Spike and I really took to that and are are I'm sad now that I didn't keep more of that stuff because it was pretty amazing um and then um and then yeah you would find you'd put together these packets for the writers make Xerox copies of them of like here's 20 letters you'd keep the original copies of them in case they got chosen as part of the mail um and you know depending on the writers like some writers would get frustrated this is when I was writer assistant but like some writers would get frustrated that they couldn't think of any jokes with the packet I like we need more letters where you know so you're you were kind of in this thing like I got find more letters and and um there were plenty plenty to go through there were a lot that kind of lead to the same kind of payoff of like sure what faor Dave's favorite thing this week or whatever and you're like well that's too lazy you gotta have some other twist to it um but you also didn't know what a writer would jump off from so you wanted to give plenty of you know choices and uh and stuff and who know you some of the best viewer mail responses came from the worst letters and some of the best letters led to nothing you know so who knows um without getting into any ever any scary letters um you know there's definitely like stalker Vibes yeah you know within the you know there are things of like oh this person you know and I was a kid I was there from I was the my time I worked there was 19 to 26 years old so I was still like figure I didn't know what bipolar was you know but like you're reading this stuff and you're like uh this is hilarious ious but maybe this is sad maybe this is you know and some of the best comedy is at at the edges of this stuff and being able to see the world through different things but sometimes you're seeing it from a different planet and maybe you know so you were filtering out like you didn't want to encourage crazy um too much but you also like some of the best stuff we did was with real people and finding you know a way to include them in the show and celebrate the weirdness you know so it was there was a fine line and and and that stuff was all you know wonderful and weird to explore but yeah you'd see You'd occasionally have things there's like a lot of nudity in there and a lot of like um there were no I didn't see I don't think I saw any threats really like yeah the way it's actually much scarier now that every day if you're doing a show there's a bunch of great tweets and there's a bunch of like oh somebody wants to murder me tweets and and you know um we were aware you know there was we were aware of the the the that had fans who believed he spoke to them through the TV and had were having private conversations with him that he didn't he wasn't actually a part of so you know you're C you're cautious of that stuff and yeah you're you're cognizant of it but you're looking for the obviously looking for the good stuff uh the first thing you ever got on the air top 10 is that it seems to be the consensus of everybody um the first thing I got on the air actually was not a top 10 it was a um it this was this thing like as the writer's assistant you saw things like the Christmas card and you saw how fatigued the writing staff was about it you're like I'm gonna go all in on this um there was a there was a desk piece in act four um it was act four at NBC and then act five at CBS I can't remember at uh but anyways act four where you always had to have a piece ready to go Midway through the show in case unless and then if the guest went long that piece would be cut so you know sometimes they mattered and sometimes they were kind of filler that you had standing by and this was definitely filler that was standing by um and had been around for a couple you know like it it ended up being around for a couple weeks but it it um no one was very excited about it and I could see on this as I went around because the writer's assistant would go around and hand out the assignments and go like we need this piece that that Steve's looking for blah blah blah blah blah and you could tell from their face they're like H okay fine and then I'd be like hey here's an opportunity I could go write a bunch of these um so the piece was I forget exactly what it was called but it was for Midway through the show and it was like how celebrities or how this Heatwave in New York is affecting celebrities something like that Y and it was just going to be pictures of celebrities and then a joke prints out so it essentially a top 10 but it was it was a bigger than a top 10 because it had pictures you know um and I wrote it I wrote a bunch and and when the piece was rehearsed and taken to set I had like four or five of the 10 that were went to rehearsal and then four or five of the eight that were chosen for the piece and I was like I crushed this I'm I'm like winning this thing right and they were jokes like you know I wrote I you know I knew what the show what was getting on at the time and stuff too and it was like you know now I now they seem a little hacky but like Richard Simmons is wearing even shorter shorts you know that's how how it was affecting him and I think one of the jokes was like um something about the Hulk I can't even remember but it was like the Hulk is the the I I don't even remember the joke but anyway one of those jokes was number one in the piece we got to or or I had like one and three and then four you know whatever and the piece got on and Dave started it and it had it had sat for a few days and he finally did it he was like all right I guess we're doing this tonight he was not happy about it you could tell he did the first one and it was a joke I wrote Like Richard Simmons shorter shorts okay no laughter he kind of crumpled it up and threw it through the window is like let's try another one it wasn't my joke and by the third one so this is my second joke on there I guess something that was like green Hulk less rolls for big green guys or something I can't remember the exactly and he was like we're not doing this anymore I turned threw it through the window and uh I was like I'm on the air baby this is um but that the parents call the parents that that was the first joke on I actually have here one of those um blue cards I have a I'll I'll share some stuff from this photo album at some point but I love this stuff yeah show and one of my favorite things on this thing when I was headwriter you know Dave has his blue cards he throw so that was my first joke in the air towards towards the end of my headwriter job I knew I I couldn't do it anymore I was like I'm I'm burning out I got to move on and before I went to the S Simpsons one night he called me over to the desk he was so mad but the music's playing and and it's free you're freezing and the music's really loud during the commercial break so you can't really hear and he's like where this piece it was a similar situation as this for piece I had on and he I was like what what do you want and he's like I couldn't hear him he's like and so he wrote on a card I got I have I have the one blue card from the desk he just wrote no more no more so that that's my one big momenta from the show we're just not doing that anymore whatever it was um you know so those that's the that was sort of the beginning and a good book ends for me was those blue cards um I like I like that you had the forethought to take that blue card to know that that would be important with p with the benefit of hindsight and perspective and all those things because I can only imagine uh what it would be like to be in the hurricane at that point we're going to get there um one of the things that people have talked about is is is Dave um you know you see you see this perspective perhaps more than anybody because you came in fresh seeing Dave still as a writer then moving over to Late Show as things changed and and that's where um the distance kind of started was it there or was it NBC where that distance started to be kind of uh created and and and the uh the culture of the writer room the culture of the show changed was that did you watch that literally happen I I um I think there was always some of it you know um I think in retrospect you know I think it's hard for Dave to be close to people you know and and and it's it's hard for him to feel at ease and funny and good at at at stuff if there's people he he's got to get to know you yeah and so as we you know as the turnover for writers was faster and as we were doing you know um and there were a lot of new faces it was harder for Dave to feel comfortable with more and more writers you know so you know I had been around I was lucky I got to be in in in around Dave he when I was with him we had laughs and talked about stuff that we like you know and and so he was comfortable with me you know and there are writers who he'd be comfortable with and so you'd get more responsibility the more you know he was comfortable and eventually like oh yeah Donna could be headwriter because I I'm comfortable you know with that guy um the distance was like he was also busier there more demands doing that show for him I think as far as the talent level was higher the the amount of network meeting and greeting and stuff he had to do so there's less of like you know um noodling with jokes that he had time for now I think it was it wasn't until after I had left being head writer that there was there was sort of um you know a little bit more of like Dave doesn't have to be involved in every single joke so I was I was still in the in a in the storm of trying to make that happen every day and letting Dave get his his sort of like um take on everything you know It ultimately has to go through go go through him anyway um but it was increasingly hard for everybody um because the time the time constraints you know and then that adds to the pressure the mood if you don't have time to really look at something then it's agit it's irritating that we don't have time and so everything started to you know compound a little bit that way um which was fine but it just made it harder uh I think my Dave my Dave tricks were there there there's I guess a couple things that are funish share um you know there was there was a clock on you know at at I think it was like 505 Dave goes in and gets ready for the show and you had to have everything approved by then and um often the top 10 was still being tweaked up right up until around then and so sometimes You' be like oh we still don't have a number three or a five or Dave was like hey bring back a couple more and let's take a look at this and then you're like at five o'clock you're trying to get in the Green Room he's getting makeup and he's about to you know whatever um but the song that would play is is um Radar Love by golden earring at that and I don't know if he still likes that song or whatever but that was his like get psyched for the show song and as soon as you heard are they Canadian by the way they might be golden might be oh man I don't even know Radar Love is Big up here and a lot of bands have cover have covered it it wouldn't be surprising to me if if Golden Earring was that's a song it was it was a funny and a bit obscure song even at that point um you know like we were having the Foo Fighters on and it was still like time showtime got to play that Golden Earring um but as soon as you heard that beginning um I was like ah [ __ ] we're screwed we don't have a number four I'm gonna have to pick something if it doesn't go over well it's on me you know um so I still have PTSD about that song every once in a while it'll come on the radio and you're like oh it's so it's showtime um but uh the Dave the Dave trick I had two two um if you could make Dave laugh you could usually get get uh stuff approved and I think the first time I really remember making him laugh was as headwriter was um you would always go up to wait there's usually people waiting to get in and see him and stuff so sometimes he'd be like wait Peter lall would be there to talk about something about the thing Morty was there to talk about whatever you know like um maybe some from the edit had brought up a some video so there sometimes you're in line with 20 you know five people or whatever yep um and one day I walked up and no one was in the the little waiting area except Dave and he was s he was sitting on the desk I don't know what had happened but everyone else had gone away to get something and Dave was out there and I walked in and was kind of startled but um said what I normally would say is like so you're waiting you you're waiting for Dave too you gotta and and uh he was like huh and then he cracked up and was like ha oh great what do you what do you need and then I pitched something he like great let's do it and I was like oh damn if you can make this guy laugh you can get something approved to put on the show um but otherwise it's like you're kind of in this like make me laugh situation um we had a lot of laughs over the years the other trick was always there was I feel like maybe beus and bad was on every day but but there was one day was maybe there was a new one or whatever I feel like it was Wednesdays and you knew that like probably maybe it was the one night Dave was available to watch beis bad but I if you could kind of work in that like oh did you see be is in buad last night he'd start telling you about the episode he'd be cracking up he'd be doing the voices and he' be like great yeah so you part of the assignment of being headwriter was to make sure to watch that episode because you had to catch it on TV at 8:00 or 10 o'clock whatever it was so that you could be you could go back and forth with d you're in on it yeah how good the episode was or whatever so anyway those are the tricks that's I don't know I don't know if he still loves the show but that's that's um you know good advice well so I want to know what head writer would did to the creative in you did it because I mean at the end of the day you're this guy that has all these Concepts these ideas you know the voice of the show and then suddenly you've got to take that knowledge of the show and whatnot and kind of turn off the creative side of you um was that difficult yeah it's funny because it was always it was always called headwriter and then I realized later when I did other shows like oh you're show running you're running you're running the the show you know that it's really complicated and there's a whole bunch of departments that depend on you having the information of what's needed to to make this thing happen and it's it's not so much that you you don't I would say the hardest part of it is that you just don't have time to think about the comedy the way you did when you had all day to sit in a room and think of bits yeah and no time to push the cantaloupe around yeah exactly and and it's like you're um you're also now wearing five hats of like every time you sit down to think of idea like oh but then wardrobe is going to need this and oh my God you know like we have getting a horse in here I know how hard that is or the budget for this is that or you know last time Morty was was kind of like quickly about us BL you know using blah blah blah um I know Dave hates this because he rejected that joke and this other thing and you're kind of managing all of these things so the perfect comedy didn't have to do with what's the funniest thing or the the freshest thing which always was the job as a writer and it was like what's the thing we can get on tonight given the situation you know um and and and and be the best version of this show that we can do actually pull off given knowing what everybody in this building is up against today yeah and and you got to watch that that those extra filters be added to the to dilute uh you know the everything's being thrown into the machine well you you're during your tenure there you saw three or four extra filters get added um and and and and it did get more complex it just did it it just it went from simple uh in many respects to a lot more complex um did you enjoy did you go on a lot of remotes yeah yeah love love remotes you love remotes okay a little bit some of the remotes you went on yeah so so some of the funnest thing you know one of our jobs by the time we were at CBS was like how do we keep Dave let Dave be funny Dave um when he's now so familiar and people are just like yo Letterman top 10 like everywhere you went so that was like one of the I think probably the thing that Becker and I thought about the most together or or you know at that time was just like how do we disguise this so Dave can just be like the way he would do a prank phone call no one would know it's Dave and now he can just do whatever he wants so coming up with the rert and not that I came up with it exactly but like no rert headphone and then being like all right now we're sitting in a car with Dave just throwing out jokes he can say whatever he wants because rert is what people are seeing um driving you know the Taco Bells and the you know doing the drive-throughs was another way that it's like just Dave on a microphone they don't know who what what idiot they're dealing with he can still be an idiot you know um uh and and and then finding proxies too where it's like can we we sending sah Jula mujar sending Dave's mom somewhere and then making sure that those people were capturing the essence of how the show would interact with people you know by proxy um so all of those you know all of those experiments and that was really like kind of in in retrospect to me like experiments in reality TV you know we like what's it like to make someone random a star what's it like to to to put comic um you know devices on them like like as like the way the osbornes would do later is like oh this is a sitcom let's just shoot that you know it's like what if what if these guys were travel hosts but they they don't know what they're doing you know um I loved one of my favorite remotes was um I'd have to watch it I haven't watched it in forever but was like part of um you know part of part of the partly because we knew Dave would hate it so it was like threading this needle but was like he had lunch with Dave lookalikes and and this was like a piece I put together and begged for and then found the right moment where he agreed to do it and we had five guys who looked like him come in some of them like played birthday parties and some were just like hey look at my friend he looks like Dave and sent in a picture to viewer mail you know yeah so he had this is the most uncomfortable thing for Dave like he he's like he he each of them had some character istic that that was accentuated you know like it they had a gap in their teeth but it was huge you know or whatever so it was like oh they look just like Dave but they didn't quite you know they look like a ridiculous version of Dave um and then he had to sit and talk with them and all of them had stories about the burden Andor Joy of having his likeness on them um and it was It was kind of wonderful and weird and and watching Dave be up for it but also squirm a little bit of how uncomfortable he was like that was one of my favorite things to to put together okay I want to go back cuz I I I think that there'll be some edification here I remember when that episode came out and and and I loved it so much because there had been an episode of I think it was Oprah it might have been like a Sally Jesse Raphael but I'm pretty sure it was Oprah where she had like five people on who looked like celebrities one of them was Jerry Seinfeld I remember that one very specifically and and within a couple of weeks it felt like um you guys did your take on this on this premise and it was it was fantastic because it was given that Letterman spin to it and I just remember as a viewer absolutely like being floored and loving that segment like amazing yeah I I don't remember the Oprah one at all but but definitely you know the area of celebrity lookalikes was a little bit of a corny yes like and it was always like what do we do with it what's our take how do we like how are we okay with this or whatever you know like and and and yeah it became kind of clear and then one of them one of the guys we looked so much like him in the worst way or something that we were like we we came up with the idea of bringing him back and this is like I don't know he lived in Montana or something so we have to fly the guy in but one one night we did an act four and I wonder if this ever aired because that Dave Dave at that point was like oh God the guy's back like this is uncomfortable but we we did an act four where we came out of commercial break and had removed Dave and put the lookalike in his seat where he just said all right coming up on the rest of the show is this and uh my guests tomorrow are this and uh we'll be right back after that and then we went to the next commercial back in and we're like didn't ever mention it that that there was like a we gotta find that okay yeah I'm not sure that Don when you watch we gotta we got to figure that out we got to find that that is really really great oh let's beg Walter for that absolutely that is okay that's a great moment um by the way thank you for reminding me of of Great Moments I've okay there's there I'm like a dog on a bone when it comes to certain things that I've heard of so one time rert and I are talking and we're just going back and forth and he's telling me about this time in LA and he's telling about this time in LA where the the Vans were stopped he in the second van of course and they were stopped in in ordinate amount of time um and and they were there was chatter going back and forth and it was chatter whether they were going to send rert out and I don't know who was all in the Vans I think Walter was in one of them and it was because Leno was over there and it was like are we gonna send rert over to bother Jay Leno or not um to me if if you look at the the potential of a Wayback machine that is probably one of the greatest moments that could have happened that never happened uh because you guys would have had the last laugh you guys would have been able to have rert on the couch talk about it afterwards even though it was on both shows were you in the van for that do you remember that moment at all that sounds right I uh you know we had this magical thing happen where we were shooting a piece that I had come up with a premise um and we had done it a couple times in the show that was Dave thinks the show's over and then he leaves in the middle of the show and then Paul has to go get him find the first time we did it it was he was at the penguin cage at Central Park Zoo and it was just like oh that was a weird version and then we started doing it more and more and more with like bigger and bigger things so when we did the LA shows we were driving all over and we were on the Radford lot here which was Roseanne Larry Sanders Seinfeld like everything was shot there and I know we did rosan so so Dave is missing and Paul goes to get them and so we were recording Paul running across the sets of other shows and having quick interactions and we had approved a thing with Seinfeld so we were there to shoot that but while we were there we were looking around and there were a bunch of other people around were like oh let's see if Roseanne would do one and they were like sure and they were all shooting their show and they let us have Paul run to excuse me excuse me I can't remember I think there might have been a Larry Sanders there was oh yeah there was Larry Sanders was definitely one of them so so that was happening and so in my fuzzy memory that same van of people also was like shooting rert remotes and the and the um Florence Henderson remote was during that that time um yeah we had just an incredible week of shooting every day was some other bizarre thing and yes I I uh seeing Leno um and and having the like oh we should [ __ ] with him impulse but also Dave ultimately being so classy about all of that stuff you know you know and just like that's we're going to rise up love that we don't mess with that stuff and I mean that was a big lesson for me always in ch Biz stuff you know like certainly there's things where you're like someone stole a joke or that show or I developed it or you know and it's just like rise above uh you just let it go do your thing he had a Dave had a great talk show career despite Jay Leno doesn't matter he doesn't have to be mad about Leno anymore you know what I mean um my experience with that was you know we were we had this this um part of our Letterman DNA was like hate the other guy and we have to win the late night talk shows and yeah you know the media fed that and so a lot of it came down on like oh jve is Jay just sniveling and just like he says whatever they want now the other thing that happened to me was just as I was head writer Hugh Grant went on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the ratings shifted over to the T show so there was a little bit of like a lot of the discussions first discussions I had with Dave as head writer were like why our ratings down what can we do what's wrong with us why aren't we as funny as we were a month ago and I was like I was like because Jay had a Hugh Grant on who went to a prostitute how do we get someone who went to our prostitute like it wasn't really about Dave or the comedy or the the music or the guests it was nothing there was it was out of our control which was also very very tough for all of us you know like you you want to be able to so I was trying to hate Leno and then also Leno booked this guy and talked about ah and that made my job so much harder anyway Flash Forward a couple years I was at at The Simpsons and I wrote an episode um where I was it it's not K crusty gets canceled it was um crusty K crusty St tries out insult comedy basically is like his his act is old and he's trying out insult comedy this where he like started becoming George Carlin no that was the one where he became George Carlin yeah oh was it that was oh I love that one that's a fantastic classic Simpsons episode that was one of yours that's fantastic yeah and as part of it we had we wanted a host for this Comedy Festival that that he's going to go on and and try you know try to be more authentic and tell real jokes and David kind of tentatively through channels agreed to do it and I I don't know how I mean this is like I don't know if this is a big deal or not a big deal so so uh in the cone of of uh Letterman silence or whatever yeah um but like Jay it looked like d j Dave was gonna do it and we had had written the show a version for Dave and then he he um at the last minute couldn't do it for whatever reason I don't know and you know the Simpsons usually take it takes nine months to animate it so it's usually done way ahead of time and then yep we were like oh my God it's not Dave who are we gonna get and Gary Shandling was stepping in but then Gary couldn't do it because he was like doing a tour of Japan or something crazy and so it wasn't gonna be him we like what about sein you know we started to panic and I don't remember how close it was to air but it was like 30 days to air which at The Simpsons is like five minutes to Showtime um we were like we got to call Leno and I was like no no no I can't we can't do that that's gonna crush me and they're like donic we gotta call Leno sorry dude and Mike Scully who was running it called Leno like whatever got through and the answer had I I remember this being on speaker but he explained the bit I was and and then Jay was like sure sure yeah I can I can do how about tomorrow and I was like ah he's so easy to work with and I went Over The Tonight Show and I watched the show and I waited for him and then he he's like hey nice to meet you oh you work with Dave I love Dave like he was just so nice about everything he recorded as you want any more jokes did I sign anything I mean it was like easy it's okay but um I had to I had to I had to appreciate uh Jay it was it was a tough turning point in my career I was like he came through he did the episode he was funny I gotta give him credit he's Massachusetts kids like kid like me well and and and and the the perspective of of it's It's fascinating talking to some of you guys uh because there are some that are still staunch like like like hardcore like like like some that are just 100% still uh entrenched in that in that in that opinion and then some of course you know have gone over and spent years working for The Tonight Show you've got the ex exact opposite uh as well you know uh yeah you look at a guy like Ed Hall uh and and and and and and it's it's it's fascinating talking to some of the people that are in the middle uh some of the people that have kind of changed the opinion as time has gone by and kind of the perspective of of hindsight zooming out a little bit on things uh does help a lot it's really um it was such a fascinating time in in in entertainment history at that time again kids today don't realize I mean we got a taste of it in 2010 again you know when with the rise of Team Coco and all of that so we did get a tease of it in the modern age but people just don't realize that this was the top story in entertainment in all of entertainment at that point look we we when we the night we launched on on CBS the amount of press coverage there and and you know I I threw out a joke that got on we were like we had Paul Newman we didn't know is we weren't sure what he was gonna stand up and say and I threw out where the hell are the singing cats that's yours that's your like yes let's use that and we did it and the next day it's like where the hell is headline and I'm like oh my God anything we say is like s you know us today like Paul Newman blah blah blah like everything was under that kind of scrutiny and and also by the way USA Today Was in every you know hotel and everywhere at the time too which is which is um interesting anyway let me get I'm in Colona British Columbia Canada and every morning on on on on on the lizard radio station 104.7 David Letterman's top 10 list from the night before amazing like like it was everywhere so we can't we can't uh miss talking about dick man also just because our Canadian superhero thank you I we get a lot of folks who have had encounters with dick assmen before he passed away we get a lot a lot of people telling dick ass men stories here well that was that was that was a I I was a big part of making that happen that was certainly like um you know like you're always looking for Comic gold that that is also just fun and fills hours of airtime you know and it was kind of just a dumb ad well you've heard the story you know what it is but but um I ran with it I was like let's get Joe namoth let's shoot a commercial like um I you know we shot that thing with Joe namoth when I was at The Simpsons like we gotta get Joe namoth we brought him back and did he was in an episode I did too because I was like Joe namoth the probably the most underrated funniest uh guest star you could have on anything um but yeah we we we pushed for getting dick assman to drive across country all that um hey let me share a couple things I just I I'm I'm looking at a um random photo album here this was like the first viewer mail letter I wrote was um Dave was like what's the best thing you've done with potatoes lately and he's like actually I discovered something this afternoon he puts a bunch of um mashed potatoes head on his head goes down to NBC payroll and collects Phil donah who's paycheck so that was a um that was a bit so the first real work I did with Dave was having him put mashed potatoes in his hair which was which was could go in any direction I wasn't sure um here's a here's a good one this is um this is me and Spike with Orville Redenbacher and his grandson Gary oh my gosh we we played it cool and didn't bug anyone unless it was someone amazing like orille reder yep um here's two other odd ones this is um Jack Rollins last day it says so that is we had Spike and I had this um monkey mask um there was something called Bad Monkey who would sometimes invade the office so bad monkey got on Jack's desk in his last day before before Jack came into the office that was his kickoff and then list that to Hillary Rollins we've got a connection to Hillary Rollins through the show we'll send that to her she'll okay that's aweet that was our tribute to Jack who we all um you know revered and admired and couldn't believe had done Woody we're like he did Woody Allen now he's here and you know we'd i' have a wonderful conversation of Jack in the hallway once a once a day or a week whenever he'd come in with his cigar and doing his thing and yeah You' just ask him about one piece pie of Showbiz history it' rattle off the most amazing Stories um here's one other one this is like another piece that didn't ever make the light of day I don't think this was a view viewer mail letter I wrote where when Catwoman came out and so we had Larry Bud Melman as Catwoman um I I think the bit was that he had auditioned but he kept screwing it up because he had his nails were too long and I think the bit was he stabbed himself and then blood was shooting out all over the thing and he's like I'm Catwoman I'm Catwoman uh help me um so that's what that was okay uh I need you if if you wouldn't mind uh and I'll say here please take a a photo of that and text it to me I think we just found the thumbnail for today's episode okay that is incredible uh oh that's that's just precious um yeah yeah yeah I let to see if there's any I'll give you um see if there's one more orille Redenbacher there's a there's an icon from the again this is one of those things where you know folks who like to look back and and thank goodness we're in this culture that does like to look back uh and and and and Time Capsule things Orville Redenbacher that that is a that's an institution in the 80s right there here here's a couple like examples of your mail that like for some reason I hung on to I'm not even sure why this was um like this this was oops these all fell out now but this is junk like junk mail that for some reason ended up in our inbox it was from a a solicitation from who's who in Black America to Garrett Morris uh for SNL Legend Garrett Morris it was in came to our mailbox I like that's incredible I don't know why I can't I have that um this is like a classic this is like a classic like what what what Vier mail would be full of um this picture is I don't know why I kept that one but this is um somebody called Miami Mike I don't know if he's still alive or his kids are out there but he would what the heck stick glasses to his face and was like I want to be on the show you know so you'd be weeding through that kind of stuff um all the time here's my stupid human trick and it's just so off filter but hilarious in its own regard yes oh that is that is fantastic here here's one from uh just for fun if anyone cares that's like the offices at Sullivan when they were stripped down yeah and we did a little visit over there there's Beckerman and Spike and who else is there uh Steve Young wow looks like somebody's wearing a pair of Jordan Fives there they're glowing those shoes whatever they are yes um okay okay I'll give you one more take talking about some of them being uh sketchy that's like a Rodney Dangerfield guy half naked I get no respect like an impersonator I'm I'm not sure Doug Dangerfield is what he's called there well Doug you got respect today sir um that's just a t that's a small taste of some of this stuff you know I uh it's it's so big I'm glad we've gotten to know each other these these First episodes are fantastic because we get to know each other the next time please come back on the show what do you got there what is that the legend this was some photo shoot like that we needed him for a for a graphic so I ended up with seven photos of Pete fatovic when I had Morty when we had Morty on the show one of the things I like to do sometimes is is just uh uh throw a name out there and give me a sentence or two and and I had 10 of them for Morty and Pete padovich was on that list um you know again we could do this for hours donic and and just please come back the idea of having you and Beckman on would be fantastic at the same time I love that um but I do want to talk about this because you again another unique standpoint the thing about Letterman that I love so much early Letterman is that it was laced with old Showbiz but also with like the new Cutting Edge or whatever you want to call it for lack of a better term um and then the weird or whatnot but the the reverence for certain things in old show biz Jack Rollins being of them how gurnie being another one um you know and and some of these did you did you see any of that did you have any of that reverence like like do you have any good Peter Lali stories or anything like that where where where some of these old school guys who would pass their wisdom on similar to what you're doing now you're passing on wisdom to people that are coming up now with these little uh tidbits that you're throwing out there uh was there any of that that you that that impacted you I mean you could feel it all around you you're in 30 Rock you know there's the Nightly News downstairs there's SNL upstairs like there's all the The Morning Show You Know The Today Show there's this there's these institutions you know that are that you feel like oh you're part of but you also feel like part of your job at least in the wave I was in was I'm supposed to be taking what Dave taught me and and thumb my nose at this stuff and make fun of it and how how bloated and ridiculous a lot of this is and for me as a as a teenager watching The Tonight Show to me was so like just like oh my God what are they doing this is so boring now a lot of the writers who I was working with loved that and revered that um I understood the different I like that this is an institution and there was respect and certainly meeting Johnny Carson and everything you're like Legend I I you know incredible um we had a funny thing at a staff party uh Emmy Awards you know they'd fly the whole staff out and we'd be in LA and we'd have this one big dinner and Johnny showed up one time and bought the dinner and just happened to be passing through he didn't stay he just walked in and was like heading to Dave's table but saw me and I don't know why he thought he knew me I think he thought like I was Kevin meanie or somebody like I think he thought I was a a comedian or something he was like Hey so before he went to Dave he came over to me I stood up he shook my hand I was like this guy and then he and maybe he doing a joke I don't know but everyone was like holy [ __ ] you know Johnny anyway it was like the weirdest and that was I was think I was still a The Writer's assistant you like I just uh anyway um but yeah I I think I think um I think it was an interesting mix of like you know love the love the ceremony and the big bigness and the respect of all this and certainly take Dave's cue about like but also we're here to make fun of it and and that's what I did in high school and that's what that's why I was hired here and and and also I mean that sort of guide guided me also through through my career with with projects too you know it's like where where can we Simpsons clearly was made to make fun of you know this era of American excess and and moment in American history um you know I did Little Bush during the George George Bush Administration because I like this is ridiculous what are we gonna do you know like there there could never be a presidency as crazy as this um so so um you know and then the universe rolls up its sleeves and says oh you just you wait let's see what we can do you haven't met Junior yet never mind everything else right but that's um but that is that is uh you know part of the part of the job of Comedy is to is to deflate stuff help us like laugh at ourselves you know and and and bring us equalize us a little bit so we listen to each other ultimately you know yeah I uh I want to I want to be okay so I've got a million more questions for you um and I want to be honoring of everything I want to be honoring of of of especially your time more than anything um so let's just say that some of these questions are going to be for part two whenever we decide to do part two um but at the same time I also want to ask you what you're doing right now donic like what are some things that you're working on now sure um it is a very very weird time in Hollywood right now I'm actually flying up to Toronto uh on Tuesday to shoot the cold open for a documentary I made called Hail to the bread sticks which is a an exploration of my favorite football team of all time the Washington football team which eventually changed her name but when I was when my son who's 15 now when he was eight we're in our game room full of full of memorability and stuff and he was like hey is this racist and I was like and I and I started to say a bunch of stuff that like the team has said for years of like it it's not we're honoring natives they don't care D and I was looking at my a he's he was essentially asking what is racism what is the nature of racism how what and um you know you try to teach your kidss stuff rather than like just feed them whatever you've heard and so I asked him really what he was looking for and he was like he came up with this idea he was like you know who you should ask is we should ask real Native Americans and I was like he said the RW which part of the movie is exploring what that means and stuff anyway this was before the culture wars blew up any conversations about Confederate statues and stuff so we started an exploration of like how do you how do you actually talk about this stuff that is sometimes difficult that you're defensive about like I certainly don't want to root for a football team that oppresses other people but is that really happening is that crazy I don't want to overcorrect um so we sort of went into this with humor and and and and uh humanity and some light-heartedness but met 200 plus Native Americans and got a really interesting perspective on not just football teams and mascots but invisibility and representation and history that you know and don't know and um we're we're finishing up so we're coming up to Toronto to shoot a cold open with Graham Graham green uh next week so that's one thing um fantastic where do you have Distribution on that do you know where it's gonna be available yet okay yeah no idea if anyone knows how how to distribute that or if Canada brought CBC wants a piece of it please call me uh we have no idea how to how to um get this out in this market right now it is madness out there um but we do want to get the word out I think all you know part of it was we had fun we learned a lot and the people who were involved we ended up hiring a lot of Native Americans have producers making shorts with them like they they we want them to be heard that was sort of the point of this is like let's get the word out you know um and we did do we actually edited edited in Canada and uh interviewed a lot of people with Canadian um indigenist backgrounds and stuff so anyway have you heard of super Channel up here no I don't know anything so something to think Weir this is weird I might have a guy I might okay so so please remind me I think I got a guy okay um and um you know I have a I have a pilot at Netflix an animated pilot called about it's called Last Wish it's about a genie Um Zack alphanx is doing the voice uh it's fun um we'll see you know we're we're we're fingers crossed we can navigate the system and get it on um and uh um we're we're sort of and then another pilot at I have a thing at that looks like it's going to be at Fox but the deal is taking forever to close and and Etc and we're shooting part two to Loop way back to the beginning with mental health and this documentary we never mentioned have a good trip ah thank you yep it's so good it's so good Adventures at psychedelics which really came out of Staff stories was like oh if you sit down and talk to a bunch of people then you can do reenactments of the stories and I thought hey this is a pretty funny area no one talks about their psychedelic experiences in public but I could really bring those to life with animation and reenactments like we used to do with the you know uh staff stories y um and um I started interviewing celebrities we put on Netflix it's great so we're working on shooting a part two for that and we're not sure that it would end up at Netflix or not we almost think it'd be more valuable maybe for us to take to direct to Consumer but that's another like in a in a world where show business is is morphing and changing we're up for partners if people want to come in and help us make that um we've done about 30 interviews with with um people we feel like the the next chapter you know the first movie was really about like how psychics got so stigma ized why after school specials were you know adding to this hysteria and the drug war but you know comedy and and using celebrity stories but hinting at there might be more here the second movie is let's use celebrity stories and comedy to talk about the next 50 years the last 50 years were this what are we going to do how do they help mental health how can they be used for PTSD how can they fight addiction and and be used in treatments for stuff what are what are good versions of going to a shaman and what are versions that are either like ridiculous or you're going to hurt yourself a scam yeah yeah yeah or a scam or like what what kind of ketamine should you be ordering over the Internet should you you know so we're we're having fun with actual information and and have also now met in the in the couple years since we met uh did the movie everyone from maps and and uh you know lots of veterans have have used psilocybin and and and you know incredible transformative stories but also mistakes that people have made and um so we're working on a mo we're working on part two which would be kind of that of like let's let's dig into it um that's amazing and and and uh you're you're you're making the world a better place uh and doing it in in a way that makes people laugh which is which is super super cool um I can't wait till the next time you come back on because I have so many more things I want to ask you uh donic thank you so much for your contribution to again this is our show our show it's the great we we're a celebration of the greatest body of broadcast work in history that of David Letterman company you are uh an integral part of the company uh in a very integral part of when the company existed and so thank you very much for your contribution and thanks for giving me some of your time today Don to be on the podcast this has been so much fun for me thanks for lifting up this stuff and keeping it alive we we we had so much fun making the show it's it's super super fun to relive some of that and um and and always strive to the level of Excellence that I think the show represents you know absolutely uh I'm going to do a really quick outro and then we'll say a goodbye privately if that's okay with you sounds good awesome okay so uh holy smokes that's again this is why we do the show I say it every single time it's it's it's it's uncovering these Little Gems these little nuggets these little stories um you know the stories behind what we got to see but also reexamining some of these amazing jewels that were mined uh that had looked at for a second thrown aside and they continued to mine um that's why we do this show uh we have one sponsor one sponsor only at the Letterman podcast that is hello- deli.com Rupert may not own the deli anymore but guess what there's one place that you can get official light show with David Letterman merchandise it was gifted to Rupert G when Dave retired the show how cool is that go to hellodd deli.com say something nice to rer get yourself a hat get yourself a mug get yourself a l CH with David Letterman t-shirt and uh yeah let's continue to celebrate this thing that we love so much this has been another episode of the Letterman podcast with Mike Chisum coincidentally I am Mike Chisum thank you and good night overcoat and