Steve O’Donnell Part 1

so okay you know um talking about that um it makes me immediately think about norm macdonald because you know dave walking off the set and and he had a certain way of pulling his jacket off and we're talking about him taking his tie off um and and and and you know just that that that energy that was there and i don't even want to call it anger frustration and cantankerousness it was a little bit of all of that um the idea of him you know when norm imitated him on snl um you know people can say whatever they want to say about the imitation but the one thing that i loved was when the sketch ended it was many times going to commercial that's how they had their natural out and norm would get up and he would force his jacket off the same way that dave would and and uh the love that norm had for dave i thought was just um exquisite i'm a huge fan of the love that he had for dave yes and it's and it shows itself in the in the observed details even if they appear to be not complementary it's the way like i always thought paul shaffer was the most interesting combination of funny jokes about the ridiculous phony baloney-ness of show business but you could tell he also loved it there was some kind of embrace at the same time there was a a head shaking eye rolling isn't this absurd yeah norm a very big fan of gigs he he always he kept telling me i don't know why they think i can do impressions i don't do impressions but he did do a couple impressions pretty well um somebody would just do around the around the netflix office he would do clint eastwood that he would do uh he could do something oh he loved doing william f buckley which he weirdly shifted into once during during them an interview with jane fonda where weirdly bizarrely they touched on the fact that they both sort of have entertained the philosophical proposition of jesus christ as a important person in their life and for some reason norm who was sincere but he started talking in a william f buckley voice and referring to jesus as the pale nazarene oh my god well you could tell jane fonda was sort of stunned but as the interview progressed you could tell that they were getting to to like each other more and more and more and more and it ended with a a quite genuine uh embrace that that uh that's one thing about like an hour-long interview is that you can you can cover so much more ground and clear up so many more things than you can in a three-minute panel followed by a four-minute panel well we'll get to that i mean i love that dave's doing long-form now but i'll tell you that episode um with jane uh uh you could what you just said to me confirmed what me the viewer the very alert uh viewer that was you know the recorder in my mind was really going on that because to me i was fascinated by that uh that choice of guest and and and to me it felt like it wasn't contrived that at the beginning of the uh exchange jane was like nor not knowing what to make a norm and almost like throwing him into the one category and by the end whether it was uh just let's play along with this or it was genuine borderline flirtation at the end of that yes quite right it was he wasn't to use the hollywood uh phrase it was a journey it was a little odyssey a little a transition but again norm could be quite mysterious even to people that knew him for decades and decades and that was some of the the charm um but also just a uh uh uh an appreciator of letterman and the letterman opus as well and and i mean i've i've referred to this a few times we're gonna get to late night of course um uh you know and talk about some of the things that were i guess i'm obligated to talk about the top 10 list i have a couple of ways i think i can access you uh and your uh amazing information inside your cranial home in ways that maybe haven't been asked in the past um i want to do that but but but uh first let's say this the last six weeks of the late show as far as i'm concerned is the greatest six weeks of any television show in any run of history uh it was the coda and the sum up of of of an amazing uh career and body of work johnny when he left had his bet midler moment that moment i see that moment more than any other moment um when when people are doing johnny career retrospectives and they get close to the end the bette midler moment there were two as far as i'm concerned that dave had number one was adam sandler singing that song um which was tremendous and and you know i'd much rather that for dave than than pick whoever other than maybe darlene love uh you know that was that was amazing but then the other one was norm's last stand-up set which i for me when you look at clean stand-up sets on a talk show might be the greatest set ever and and and uh i remember when when norm was on on jerry's show um they got in the car and uh maybe they're at the maybe they're at the table yeah maybe they're at the diner already and jerry said oh it looked like you worked pretty hard on that last ten minute set you did on letterman and norm was like you're goddamn right i did and you could tell um the legend is that he was in this in the in the theater all day preparing for that last um that last little run i've heard a couple other little inside stories um did you and norm talk about that before he went off or was that you did yes though i had though i had nothing to do with his stand-up performance so i admired the fact that he chose to quote a stand-up joke from letterman that he so loved i thought that was a unique bit in fact i should point out now you say the six greatest weeks in television i was not there i had nothing to do with it thank you uh no in fact uh on your podcast you uh there's a lot of people that i don't know because they they came after 1996 or so but um i knew norm like letterman was full of contrasts and paradoxes and contradictions and one was this superficial seeming casualness you know that he wore sweatpants and and the same hoodie you know all the time but when he had to prepare something or think about something or lay something out or do a stand-up because i did see him do stand up live a number of times and i was always struck how he knew what he was doing and he had plotted it all out and he did it the way he wanted so he was super uh a hard worker and devoted to his uh art and craft in that way making it look like though he was making it up as he went along like that's the thing like it was so like it came full circle well isn't that isn't that the whole isn't that the whole uh uh trick of stand up like oh on my way to the club tonight i passed it you know like come on they're magicians um i can't let something you said go uh without a retort and it's it's because yeah okay you weren't there the last six weeks i get it i wish i was just kidding you i just wasn't no i had nothing i yeah except for okay um that's like saying the guy who built the bottom four rows of the pyramid had nothing to do with the tip of the pyramid at the very top i mean i mean i can't i can't i can't let that pitch go by without at least saying that to to and the bottom of the pyramid um is the thing the base of what it is that you guys did you guys changed broadcasting forever you busted the fourth wall you did all these amazing things hey listen i'm gonna do my very best not to compliment you um however you're doing a terrible job i'm yeah i'm i was gonna say i'm i'm i'm eating it right now um no i do appreciate it i do appreciate it but again there are so many people uh uh i felt like i was like so fortunate to have followed and and been around on a daily basis meryl marco who really was the uh she she was the uh she was the uh egyptian overseer at the base of the pyramids and jim downey and well actually all the writers i i i just thought everyone in in your 20s you know you think that was some golden age but i've been on other writing staffs and they're all interesting and fun in their different way but the the letterman group still seems to me to be a special golden group that was really trying to make each other laugh and do unusual things not for any credit or groundbreaking thing but just because they could and no one was bothering us too much from the network or anything so um yes we all uh stand on the shoulders of giants so that we can see that those last four weeks six weeks of the show i did um i did get to come back and and send in monologue jokes during the last year of the uh letterman show but i did not take part in the tail end i have a odd um career history i came not in the very beginning of the show but three months in yeah and then stayed for 13 years and then went back and forth for a little while and then was gone for 20.

yeah and then um sent in a bunch of jokes during the last during the last year i love that and i and that that's something i want to ask about first off did you get a 75 check for the ones that made air i think i was on a weekly stipend oh good but it was weird after being you know a staff writer in the office 12 hours a day and then head writer there constantly uh to be they still use the term faxer you're a fax yeah even though the fax machine had been outmoded 20 years earlier um uh yeah i still got there were things i would donate for free and it's true for other other writers and stuff too but they they've always been more than more than uh uh conscientious about compensation letterman in particular there were things i just said oh dave this is a favor but something would always show up a couple of weeks later and i'd go oh i talked to mary barkley's assistant you didn't have to do that i feel like i got enough just from just from dave and merrill hiring me that made a huge difference in my life and was again you've heard this from others you'll hear it from me i would have done it for nothing i would have paid them i probably couldn't have done it for more than a week or so but you're talking you're you're talking to the right guy about uh doing something for nothing and happily doing it like literally you you met my wife earlier before uh before we started here i mean i i thank goodness i've got her support because i want to pour everything i have into this i'm not looking for anything except for to be a torchbearer for you know my i had a moment where my daughter-in-law uh she mentioned something a piece of comedy that was borrowed from dave that you guys originated uh in current life and i'm like stop and i sat her down in front of youtube i'm like look what they were doing in the early 80s um i want to be a torchbearer for this happily to do it for free you mentioned dave's generosity i've heard so many from so many people um and and i gotta be careful how i say this because so many people about behind the scenes dave's generosity in all sorts of different arenas and that's all i'm gonna say because they've also said by the way don't go too far down that path because he did it for the right reason he did not do it for recognition he did not he he brought in that that midwestern like you said earlier that midwestern idea of fairness and what he thinks is fair and and yeah he's that guy yes though again i i may have used the terms uh uh complicated and uh paradoxes and the contradictions with norman donald that would apply with dave too because he had he had a a fussy and demanding and uh compestuous side but there was always a kind of idealism and uh uh and certainly in my dealings a straightness i thought so uh uh yeah one of the greatest good privileges and breaks and pleasures in my life was working on that show um getting to know dave and merrill foremost and uh uh and then just as good all the other writers and all the other staffers too you've had uh a number of people on that have done all kinds of different things from reception to uh to technical things and that's sort of great yeah i know those people i really came to love them i really really came to love them uh i have i know how we're gonna finish this episode we're gonna talk about your um how you have treated others and your your relationship towards others and things but i'll i'll give a little bit of a preview while asking a question that hopefully will provide some insight when you hear about saturday night live um and and some of the other places that where the writer's room um and and i've heard it a little bit about the different incarnations of dave's show as well where the writers room can actually be a bit of a shark tank and there's competition and there's all sorts of things like that at the beginning you had the orphans from lauren's snl a lot of them there you know young people uh you talk about merrell if you're a white whale for this show she is the beautiful dolphin uh that i would love to have on um i'm a little dizzy from the images it's christian anderson meets herman melville or something oh let's hey take my money i'm in for that the the um the competitiveness well first of all there weren't that many writing veterans on the show uh tom gamel and max pross had worked briefly at saturday night live and but they may have been the only ones that had any real tv credentials i'd never done any television at all i had done i'd written greeting cards i've written i'd written a couple dozen newspaper and magazine articles which i included in my submission and meryl just said oh we never read those but um they took a lot of chances they they they turned down professionals you know people that's had sent in you know had great portfolios they worked on morgan mindy you know whatever but they wanted people that didn't know the rules and and and just wanted to sort of please themselves and it wasn't because they meant to be trailblazers they just wanted to this was the sort of stuff that made them laugh they wanted people that did things that were a little bit queer a little bit conceptual a little bit askew and um this is where dave and merrill had slightly different aesthetics but they they combined very well they each appreciated the absurd yeah uh dave a little more on the verbal side uh merrell a little more on the visual and the and the juxtaposition side the surreal side and that that was a great combination if you get some people that are that can write the comedy the the uh andy breckman i'm thinking of that first group of writers who i'm still friends with we just took a wonderful trip to iceland and it was great to see all the volcanoes and glaciers and stuff but mostly i was laughing at andy breckman and tom gammel and sandy gillis they're still the funniest people in the world um this delights everybody by the way the fact that that it was like we talk about being a family uh especially at the end because we've had some folks from late show more recently than than late night i love hearing that there's different generations in the family and different uh you know cousin groups of if you want to call it that uh that are still together still doing that that is that is delightful that you are all linked up still yes i think there's a kind of closeness at its worst there's a the closeness of the the foxhole in the front line you know somebody's yes yeah just because you've been through some some hell together but there's also a kind of the most beautiful of which which is you know what the person is capable of at their best you've seen them at at tougher and weaker moments and still have fondness for them and uh yeah that's a kind of basis for lifelong friendship they don't it's not always that way also you have probably gotten the drift and maybe this is only from super old-timers like myself it's now 40 years since i took the job um that that as the show got bigger and bigger and bigger and more successful and more successful of course it it grew a little less personal on the on the office front you know everything was it's too simple to say it grew more corporate and more gigantic but it definitely was a much larger uh organization that had its own uh you know inertias and and and bureaucracies and so on it was a little simpler in the beginning and for some reason we could be a little lighter on our feet in that smaller studio with a smaller staff but of course a an entertainer wants to reach their the most people they can and uh letterman certainly succeeded in that way and many others as well well i i mean you think about it the uh the vantage from the bottom of the period pyramid if we're using that analogy for this episode uh you know is very different from the top of the the pyramid or even the mid side part of the pyramid may i just interrupt you yes of course i don't know if the name don giller is going to appear anywhere in this interview but he would be able to find at a moment's notice uh the evening when we actually built the pyramid of comedy on the show do you remember this program biff henderson comes out dressed as you know tahoe tap or two done comment or something and he lays down the bricks of comedy five four three i guess it was the the the viewer male night so letter number one was the first stage let her know all right you get it you yes well of course donald have that uh uh in your in your computer in about 90 seconds oh yeah he's amazing and uh we're so grateful for any contact that we have with him along the way um now okay so okay i was going to say something about the vantage point and all that maybe i'll come back to it maybe i won't i love business jazz here as far as i'm concerned uh this goes back to there's a viewer mail segment uh a good friend of mine jay ryan um who's got the late night playset over in california he's actually got uh uh dave's former desk from late show he's got the stolen microphone i don't know if you were there for the stolen microphone uh no tell me about this oh i do know there was a from the cbs show you're talking about i know that i know they tossed a lot of crap very heartlessly into big dumpsters and many of the even late late show staffers uh you know did what they could to save some remnants of cinnamon but the cbs people not colbert i don't think but the cbs management they were they were heartless bastards beyond beyond well some of us in the lettering community call it d-day dumpster day um but yeah i actually have one of the bridges uh the smaller bridges that's going to be part of the new studio as we build this and and actually jay ryan the guy was talking about is archiving where a lot of these pieces are um and and uh is is is doing a fine job at that but no when he stole the microphone it was a prank-ish impish 18-year-old uh thing that he did and he took dave's microphone the one that followed it was originally alan parr um and then it had had been put on to dave's desk uh at late night and and and and they stole it from nbc and took it to cbs and and used it uh there's a whole saga behind it you weren't there over it in in for that i don't think uh no though i do remember at one point at nbc he had three microphones three functioning microphones uh at his desk he liked to cover the bases to make sure that also he did he did appreciate the the sort of retro look of some of them you know that looked like they were from the arthur godfrey fiber mcgee and molly kind of area absolutely i'll tell you this i've been on the late night playset i'll send you the links and everything after after the show here but i've been on the late night place that as a guest and walking in and seeing that desk first off it's dave's first late show desk which for me that's my high school years i loved the transition over i loved him becoming again vantage points from the pyramid i loved as he was becoming powerful dave and where he was bigger than the guest who was beside him and and i love the whole thing of course the man of affairs oh you know the big the big man behind the desk um and and so he's got that desk the very first one the one bill murray wrote dave on um and so there is like energy that comes off that but the microphone i mean sitting down beside it and i oh my god you talk about an artifact that is priceless uh in its history i'll hook it up he's just in to luca lake so so you know if if ever you know of people like i think about jimmy kimmel uh you know we talked about his love for dave just sitting there and seeing that microphone and being in its presence i feel the energy from it uh or i have a severe mental illness that needs to get checked out and and so i'm not sure which is the case i like it the idea of the former uh but that's not what we're talking about here jay ryan i think these things can all be true at the same time oh i love that idea it could be a happy melange of mental illness and passionate devotion and uh artistic uh adherence and worship i told you tandy he just he just said it that it's yeah anyway um that's good this is good this will be this will help out for some domestic issues at home um by the way like having gotten to know uh hundreds of comedy writers over the decades many of whom were male increasingly female yes it's pertinent as you shout to your spouse that many of them it's an ongoing struggle with all the crap they want to hold on to with the wife because you know like why do you need all these star wars collectibles on the mantelpiece and why you know because comedy writers are mostly big immature babies they eat they eat junk food and they're less and less as time goes by they've grown more attractive more diverse and better balanced and something's lost but something's gained as well good lord steve it's like you just like you just read my diary um jane ryan i got to go back to jay ryan because we're going yes the late night playset i'll send you all the information on that but that's not what i'm talking about here jay ryan asked me uh one of his very very favorite segments of all time um on the show maybe one day you and him can can talk about this on the playset because he runs a talk show out of out of his place it's it's amazing called cards and games like it's like a kramer with the merv griffin set well you know that that that joke has been made many times except for the fact that when you see it that's my line of work repeating jokes yes um but when you see it it's like the love and meticulous so so when jay was actually on an episode of our show um he was the kathleen anchors tribute show and this is what i want to do i want one for larry i want one i want one for all of these people i've got larry bud mellman i think you might even be the guy for to help tribute larry bud melvin but but kathleen anchors um had connection with jay when he was 16 years old he ran a talk show out of his high school auditorium and and um she gave him so much of her time and we just had an episode where where you know if there's anyone to to to uh tribute kathleen it's jay and that's exactly what he did well well i would i would take part in that in an instant she was so wonderful in a million ways even the most work a day things i learned words from her like i remember doing a quick drawing for some pre-tape where i go i want one of them fancy plates that are like a couple of tears and those little tiny cakes on and she went oh yes petals what she went oh yes peter fours that's what they're called dia and metaphor is not paramours uh well i like the syllable words that's uh with the ivy league education um she was so great by the way the set uh she did beautiful things well and she did practical things well so so so great um on the last day of the nbc set yes the one where your friend got the got the desk yeah she said steven anything from the set you might like and in fact there was only one thing that i really wanted because even then i was aware of how many bricks and and boxes and things you could have in your home but there was a couple of completely pointless books and objects on the bookshelves behind dave and one of them was this like 1922 odd volume of an encyclopedia that was like volume b just and there was one color plate in the middle of the book with a bunch of uh um nature pictures from nature and the title of it was plants that were unknown to your grandmother and i just thought what a weird category hey leave my grandmother out of it you don't know what no there was some kind of you know like luther burbank hybrids you know the the the the the you know weird berries and stuff that there had been developed it knott's berry farm or something oh this sensibility okay so okay here's where we go i got i gotta stay on this particular one because i told you i would ask you about it segment you were involved on screen um and and let's just any memories i'm just going to set it up by giving you one little clue uh steve o'donnell i believe dressed as a police officer saying uh please sir step away from the desk and uh the desk being hauled away because of parking tickets does that ring a bell well i was a cop about 50 times in fact again near the end of the nbc run susan hum the wonderful costume it just trying to get her as well he's trying to get her on the show as well gave me my own policeman's uniform that had my name o'donnell oh my god yes randy cohen used to complain that i i never cast him as a cop and i he he he was right that i was probably stereotyping by using an irish face um though randy did get to play a lot of scientists and lawyers and experts yeah but did he yeah the all the staff was used at different times from obviously the stagehands and the technical crew and so on but right down to the pas and sometimes there was some judicious uh uh you know uh is it barrel rolling back scratching gerrymandering sure you know like somebody some pa who was just about forced to move back to iowa because they couldn't pay the rent so we'd cast it in a couple of bits over a two week period and they would earn enough with the under five two hundred dollars here six hundred dollars there you know i love hearing that thank you for saying that that is a really nice little piece something much more uh moving and uh and i don't think i've ever seen it mentioned even though i'm not i haven't exhaustedly uh read letterman but paul schaefer you know they would play music in and out of the breaks uh uh bumper music and um when some uh uh musician was in a tough spot or kneaded dough he would play their music i can think of many examples but the one that comes to my mind was uh sly you know from sly in the face family stone yes and he which is great music to play anyway sure paul would go out of his way just to sort of like you know without you know in a legitimate way help out a fellow professional and an artist you know and love hearing that yeah that was sort of that was a great thing all unsung and all unacknowledged um another ship in the night that you passed along the way is a guy by the name of eddie brill i'm not sure if you know who eddie is uh eddie yes he did warm up for a while we didn't we didn't overlap very much yeah yes but when he was doing warm-up uh this is when you know of course we're now in the uh in the sullivan theater with the pomp and circumstance of everything and it's a rock concert it's literally a rock concert the warm-up many times sly in the family stone dance to the music paul that was a mainstay that would be played all the time i mean what way to get the energy of the crowd up with that song with that band i mean my god uh there were things they did uh green onions i just go oh man or magic carpet ride yes or what was the vanilla fudge song uh uh boy they did some things that were just lighter shade of pale justify just to hear again too i'm so curmudgeonly that i preferred all the old ways back in the simple farm homestead but it got very exciting as as paul's band got bigger and bigger with the horn section and everything and they were wonderful but i liked that tight little four member you know when they were like a garage band yeah they just boom boom boom um really that was that was to me perfection and as you've heard from many other people part of that was dictated by carson productions when the show started up yeah that they thought they didn't want a big orchestra to compete with doc severson they didn't want a long monologue to complete with uh johnny's monologue you've heard all this you can go to the books yeah and yes and we have um so as a writer you know been given the choice between a great wide pasture uh where anything is the limit uh versus uh a shoot where you are given parameters and it's now okay okay tough guy write your way out of this what would you prefer oh well i if i understand you properly i'm going to in a mealy-mouthed fashion say both i love sometimes getting parameters because you could show off like oh you need it to be this and this you can't go here sometimes you'd be um it'd be interesting i'll only cite an example from the kimmel show because it was quite an egregious horrible week the first few years of the show he would have a a celebrity co-host for a whole week yes it could be mike tyson you know something like that well one week oh my gosh you're going to have to help me with the day how could i possibly have forgotten the name of the monica lewinsky oh boy oh wow wow a comedy writer if you're getting that name is very interesting yeah i know it'd be like forgetting i i've fallen and i can't get up or yeah where's the beef exactly all those cliches but um she co-hosted for a week but here was our parameter we could not mention bill clinton and any of that stuff can you imagine a morgan what a great challenge so how do we what anyway i wrote a piece which according to monica and her mother who was very present for all the tapings they thought was the best they thought it was the best comedy piece that anyone ever wrote for it but what it was it was the last day of her co-hosting never a mention of clinton and uh kimmel says okay we've had fun with our co-host monica linski but now it really we're going to throw open the audience to questions and we're just no holds barred anything anybody wants go when of course we had three staffers planted in three places and the first one says wait wait i did something i got to know because i don't think we've heard enough about this but what are your plans for the future and she said well i'm going to design handbags and uh i've already got several out there and they're going to be available if you know nordstrom or something and the audience is going well they and then kimmel says okay very good anyone else and then there's a very fervent waving hand woman who goes up and goes okay look come on that's all well and good uh what about what about what about like scars and things like that might you consider designing some of those and mother would go like yeah yeah yeah i think i might do that and then finally uh uh i think mike white i think was the name of the a black guy with a very vigorous style weighs a seven goes what is this come on what's all this talking about stuff come on now you got to tell us what we really want to know which is what about accessories what about like lipstick containers and what about coin purses and uh at that point the audience got that had but it was a parameter that you would just go that's a terrible parameter but if you can work with it of course it's nice to have a a wide range like go do anything you want but it's sort of like a an artist you know you could say paint whatever you want but it's sometimes fun to say i want you to paint uh paint something that has to do with uh uh an animal and a machine go you know and like oh they would like the challenge you know like oh i'll wait do you see what i can do you'll like this um so i there you may have had a much more simple and uh and reasonable premise in the question which is would i have liked a sort of small cultish college fan base show as opposed to a nationwide spectacular hit like it was ed sullivan uh sunday night itself um yeah i kind of in a uh not uh liberated and and smart way like the cult part more than the gigantic part but that's partly why i wasn't there for the second half of the of the wonderful uh letterman late night late show uh career and history uh i i fit more with the nbc show than the cbs show though i came and went at cbs a couple of times as well all right i'm talking too much you're not you're not um there's a couple writers um jim mulholland and mike i forget his his name but they both wrote for carson and and and i i kind of see you having sort of a parallel to that in the sense of you were there early on you know they were there with johnny doing their thing with johnny and dave of course you know if there's anybody who continued the legacy of johnny carson it's i i the way i refer to it we go back to the godfather as many men do um you know you got don vito and you got michael uh and i mean you know it's not a matter of who's better or whatever but it's who do you like more and who has the older ways versus the new ways i look at davis michael and and um you know i think about the idea that michael had a lot of dads things that followed him along into his run uh if you want to call it a run and and and you know i think about jim and mike coming over as writers from carson to help with monologue jokes and and things like that um you kind of did the same mary is it barry and mulholland mike barry michael berry uh yeah and those were names you heard all the time they weren't around the office that much they were not again in that factor stage but they were they were uh solid uh contributors for decades yeah yes barry and mulholland after johnny and and i think about you at the end uh you know being a factor um and and and it's kind of almost the same thing the the holdover that was the entire still a part of things that was entirely a whim of dave in fact many of my jobs have been at the whim of others i think kimmel hired me because i had worked at letterman so he just wanted someone around i think somebody hired kellison he just liked i'm going to collect people people who were lettermen and of course we had some some experience i guess that might have been pertinent to his uh enterprise but uh uh but but but writing for dave in that last year that was his idea and again i'm never sure whether that's because he likes me or he's tired of everyone else absolutely but if ever whenever um i have a conversation with dave i'm already kind of crafting how we're going to do it i promise i'm not going to compliment him at all you're not getting that treatment i'm sorry um but uh you know one of the things i want to ask you about is nostalgia because i think that he has a i've said this to another guest i think he has a very interesting uh viewpoint on the word and what nostalgia actually is um and and and the idea for him to me from everything that i've read and people i've talked to the idea of bringing you in in the last year uh to do whatever uh you can contribute a little bit contribute a lot whatever that is to me that would fit in with what dave's definition of nostalgia is which might be a different than the general populace well i i i i should rightly point out i didn't do that much it was a little salt and pepper here and there i will say that that um letterman does not seem a nostalgic person to me at all not sentimental exactly in that way but he had certain appreciations and one thing that did kind of blossom late uh in the conversations we've had in the last year or two yes uh is he thinks about the first year or two of the show that a lot of it was just we got to get through it we got to get the show done but now he thinks back and thinks about some of the things we we did there that were a little bit more weird and a little bit more strange and you know presented more of a kind of you know peculiar tableau and he looks back and goes oh i kind of appreciate those more now than i did at the time so sometimes it's like you know looking back at your childhood or your adolescence or whatever so to that extent i have seen a note of uh nostalgia and occasionally if he was thinking about indiana or you know how about the comedy story yeah uh yes and uh mitzi and her monkey fur jacket and stuff like that but it was rarely it wasn't usually nostalgic it was more just him recalling the absurdity and the insanity of it all um but uh he has definitely grown reflective uh i'll have to watch more of the the the uh the netflix shows both of them yeah and uh savor him in new settings because he he's he's both the same and kind of mellowed at the same at the same time so well that's evolution right um hey listen we're about kind of if there's a halfway point to the show this could be it um it might not be uh hopefully you know thank you for giving as much of your time as you have uh can i do a really quick commercial and can you be part of that commercial uh awesome there's nothing better than having a spokesperson who doesn't know they're a spokesperson and is doing it uh for the money that we're we're paying currently uh there's nothing better than that folks hey listen have you uh have you ever uh had a late show with david letterman piece of merchandise and it goes away like maybe this coffee mug and suddenly it's broken have you ever uh had a hat that has seen better days uh and wanted to replace it or even uh one of these lovely late show with david letterman t-shirts did you know that there's only one place oh yes i mean i mean my goodness um i certainly have did you know that there's only one place in the world uh that i know of that you can get officially licensed david letterman merchandise i do know where that is do you where is it it's steve o'donnell where is that place it's rupert's hello deli right in the heart of midtown your check is in the mail sir uh no absolutely the hello deli nestled within the the beautiful womb of the ed sullivan theater but facing outward still thank goodness uh is the hello deli go there if you live in new york or visiting new york go see rupert i maintain that on average there is no person that takes more pictures with people than rupert g and he's happy to do it he is one of the kindest human beings you will ever meet if you want any merchandise go to hello delhi hello dashdeli.com and uh rupert will hand pack this so i believe with future technology you might even be able to get dna of rupert off whatever he sends you and uh save that dna so later on you can clone him and have your own i don't think that's a selling point but oh shoot okay no business don't do that cloning thing never mind but do buy the merchandising things that's the dna on the clothing i mean we just got done with the money oh god that's a callback i will say i don't have a late night mug or a late night hat what i do have is a lot of the t-shirts for interesting reasons you would come in and be raining and you'd be soaking wet i would just go to laurie diamond's dust and go laurie can i get a t-shirt and i'd put on a t-shirt and eventually i'd have like 40 of them at home and it would be crazy we laurie is another another dream guest of course and and we've got people who want me to ask her about her uh her dancing ability apparently laurie diamond is one of the most phenomenal dancers you've ever see they danced at the uh stork club for a while i believe a lot of the staffers had odd uh previous careers um i had written greeting cards and in my last week at the green card job the executive in charge came and brought me into his office and shut the door and said uh steve i know you have your heart set on going to new york and seeking your fortune but i think if you stay here and keep going the way you're going you could be the next bob hammerquist and yes i had no idea who that was it turns out he was like the top greeting card writer the legend in the greeting card ignored and then of course foolishly told the story to dave a year or two into our relationship friendship co-worker status well of course he loved the name hammerquist to begin with he liked words that way yeah but whenever i would disappoint him or fall short that would be often he would go well you're no hammerquist see but come on we would both laugh this is why we do the show i love that uh okay cards okay i gotta i got a segue for that uh do you remember the first time you met shecky oh yeah i'm sure it was the first day of my first morning on the job may i attempt to recall a different memory oh did i meet him before i started working there that doesn't well likely this seems like it could be a a potential bone of contention and uh no uh there's nothing that a podcast loves more than that um no i i'm gonna ask the question oh we just had a power outage here thank goodness we're on a laptop can you still hear me