with Gerard Mulligan

okay your recent story yeah i love tom dreason man so in the morning show i came to new york from l.a i grew up in the east coast but i went the west coast for various reasons i came back i was living in a hotel in times square seriously where there would be two or three gunshots a week yeah that's the old time square people can't remember the old time square no the 70s and you know then they disney fighters but at any rate i didn't i didn't know anybody so i was staying in my office at 30 rock most weekends and stuff and uh one saturday the phone rang which was very unusual and i picked it up and he said the voice said hi dave there i said no no i'm the only one on the officer he goes this is tom driessen uh i'm out here in vegas opening for frank and i wanted to you know that's fine tom but you know i just answered the phone tom you know whatever no he was he's one of the best guests ever you know he really is a great guest oh yeah well when guys like him or mr miller um oh man i wish i could have met george miller uh roger miller was fantastic yeah we did we did a bunch of remotes in the for the morning show using my my sad little apartment on east 23rd street in manhattan that was your apartment that was my apartment and uh george george miller who was very very funny and devastating when he died just devastating yeah and i had to put together a bunch of clips of him on the show and jeez it was one of those things where it was bittersweet you know because you enjoyed it again and he knew it was in that you know it was cancer and it was it was progressive and it's not like he's hit by a truck so you know you sort of you sort of know what's going to happen and yet when it does happen it's it's very very sad and uh very talented guy with absolutely unique persona i mean his comic persona was just like sort of like a guy you just woke up and yes so you know but anyway he always made people laugh always made dave laugh which is yeah very important well you know and and it's funny we talk about driessen as a guest and and some of these things with george the guys who had the past with dave um just had a different it was a different vibe when they would come on the show absolutely you know and and i think about like even uh tim thommerson uh you know the tales from the old west at the end um after your after your time i guess so so when you left an o4 we're going to jump around a little bit jerry i appreciate that uh by the way we just kind of jumped into this gerard mulligan uh legend legend when it comes to uh dave and company uh really at the end of the day when it comes to dave and company other than merrell i mean i don't know you almost even proceed meryl because you started writing tonight's show guest appearance monologue stuff for dave i mean right very very very beginning meryl was also meryl was dating dave at the time which sure how i got in touch with him and uh yeah there aren't too many people uh there was a whole there were two or three staff members who came over from bob stewart you know barb stuart was a producer of the morning show yeah dave had done stories and stuff game shows of his like hundred thousand dollar pyramid right so he wanted a producer who wouldn't interfere with the comedy and try to you know dumb it down or whatever yeah who just get the checks out on time make sure the studio is heated all that stuff so several people came over from that group including two who went barbara gaines was on from the very first day to the very last day on the show barbara yourself and dave is what i what what i have is i don't know if there's anybody else brennan yeah jude brennan who went on and off she went worked on that oxygen network for a while came back yeah yeah and then biff i haven't seen her in a while i saw i saw gaines a couple of weeks ago and i had a barbecue how suburban is that i got my my boho street cred but anyway tommy grouprec who is a great writer friend of mine uh him on the show as well tommy's amazing he is funny did he ever did he tell you the matthew ryan story no let's do it probably didn't but at any rate i used to love to find a musician and convince the talent and dave to put him on the show and i hear this great debut album by a guy named matthew ryan from pittsburgh and we got him on the show well he was on a few times long story short sure in the final days of wage show when i was no longer there they were looking for people who had been on the show early on and want to bring them back so there's a couple of people like that so i got an email from matthew ryan saying uh you know the letterman people just contacted me and they said i'm being considered for one of the final spots on the show which i would thank you so much i'm sure it was you that did it i said no actually it was tommy ruprecht who was also a big fan he said okay well give me his email and i'll thank him i gave me the email and uh a couple of days later i get uh that wasn't tommy ruprec's email that was an old guy named tom ruprecht in florida who did wish me well i hope that i hope that i got the gig so you know that's all's well that ends well you know who did wish me well yeah i thought that was a nice touch that wasn't a young man i hope you do get the gig um when you retired quote unquote in oh four and i i gotta ask you about this i think we're past the statue of statute of limitations here um the the the the word on the street is that you retired uh due to completely political reasons it was a to do with a pension and if you didn't retire the pension wasn't going to kick in or something like that i don't know if that's true or not is that is that that false that's that's uh yeah i just had no i want to spend time with my kids i wanted to go to you know graduations and stuff and yeah the writers guild had a great pension maybe where that originated from was they did make a change where if you were 59 you could retire at full pension okay giving younger writers a chance to break in right and it's a great pension so i took it and uh started with we started traveling and i didn't travel much and we finally traveled running around different places in other parts of the world beside the united states canada went to montreal yeah i was hoping to see the expos turned out they'd left several years before but i don't really don't really pay attention and no it's nothing political nothing nothing like that at all i sort of regret it there was an item and then i don't have it i should have prepared there was an item in the uh inquirer when a little gossip called michael starr i think saying something like mulligan was retiring because he's fed up or something and as he left david whispered to him you better not go work for leno something he got my name wrong david never said that to me there were several other just factual factual stuff that wasn't even wrong i don't think he even got a source that lied to him i think he just made it up yeah seriously because david didn't say much at all have a cat one of the cats good maybe come in so if there's a cameo by a cat i'm sure that's fine no that's bonus material for uh everybody who's watching um uh no i i i'm really curious because i mean it was like you were part of this freight train that started with the excitement of a fresh-faced dream come true moment of of of a guy who would turn out to be you know uh what who many call myself included the greatest broadcaster uh in history um starting out with a dream come true moment guest hosting the tonight show oh my god uh uh getting a an experimental morning show cancelled but then you know carson and company believing and the people behind the scenes okay so let's move this thing to late night and and and the freight train that it became at one point this guy is the most talked about man in america when it comes to broadcasting and entertainment um and then and then in oh four you know you leave so so the freight train that you were a part of and then leaving that must have been really really jarring uh i mean it's great to see the family and all that stuff great on paper to say yeah i got more time now but that must have been really uh jarring yeah yeah you know i retired on a daily basis i wasn't coming in the office anymore i did make appearances like once or twice a month for the next 10 years yes just to give the light belie to the term retirement and i would just sit here and wait for the big black car to show up in new jersey go through the lincoln tunnel you know and uh i'd we'd rehearse i'd go in uh carnegie deli and get get a sandwich come back do the show i go to the writer's dinner you know the writers get catered dinners every night after the show where they talk over the show etcetera and uh they finally set a price limit because people are getting a little bit crazy but we'll be sitting we're usually dying during the show and we watched the show and it was very entertaining one nightmare scenario would be though david would read the top ten he wouldn't get much of a reaction and they'll be able to go three two one the phone rings dave wants a new top 10.

we're gonna we're gonna hold the audience okay so we've got topics topics topics we've already been through submitted you know dozens literally dozens maybe 100 topics picked one done maybe 200 300 takes on jokes we got it down to 10 and it didn't play well dave just didn't like it had a second but whatever and we'd have to do it and that was like you have a restless audience many of whom have to go to the bathroom have to go to dinner yeah and waiting say waiting we're gonna wait we'll wait wait wait and we shoot the top ten and that was a nightmare in the middle of your dinner to get a phone call it's like being a a fireman and getting hearing the bell ring in the middle the uh how many times do you think that that happened oh oh probably 20 maybe i mean it wasn't a daily occurrence usually the the the list was so vetted yeah oh yeah the other thing that happened like that was what was much more exciting was a story breaks at 4 30. you know we shoot at 5 30.

and david i didn't realize this david always shot at 5 30. the clock in the controller was at 5 30 0 0.

yeah other people like conan conan i'm gonna bet one of the best there is sure 540 545 yep you know david i can't remember the time when we held uh they held the show uh i can't i think we ever and that was just part of the routine because you know a lot of a lot of athletes have superstitions and a lot of a lot of uh entertainers have superstitions and i think it's because it all seems so perilous it all seems so maybe transitory you know it seems like i was hit by lightning and it's wearing off what happens if i lose the lightning altogether i lose the spark and i think the rituals like you know hey hail uh well eight bogs when he was with the red sox had a thing with certain pieces of fried chicken you know you go and stand on third base for a while and all that stuff and you can see why that is it's just like i don't know why i thought of this joke and what if i stop thinking of jokes you know or what if i just look at the the yankees they had a such a powerhouse lineup this year guys are hitting 210 and you know darren judge is striking out are not your bases it's sort of like it can be very ephemeral yeah there are cases i don't know if you follow american baseball pittsburgh pirates this guy named steve blass who was an unhittable pitcher and done hitler pitcher lost it almost overnight yeah just couldn't throw put over the plate or check knob block played for the yankees yeah you got what's called the ips like in belf he could no longer throw to first base yeah he would feel really well and he would throw it 10 feet over the first and it just happens and i think they're afraid that that's going to happen to them you know so you go through it you go through rituals i have no idea how that conversation started no no and it's it's great uh i've got a couple questions uh that i want to pick up off the ground from that that have come from that um you know the idea of starting it like we i've heard i've talked to people um maybe even on the show a little bit here i think most of them have been have been off camera but but talk to people where he talks about the q a you know i had this really amazing moment at the q a with dave about a month before he retired um and the q a was really really special well the q a evolved over time and and and and how dave's interest in the q a and how he would be talking to people in the audience and whatnot and sometimes could let it slide a little bit longer but there are stories where he would be like mid-sentence with somebody during the q a and it's 5 30.

okay we're stuck and you're kicking in paul we're going and it was it was it was tight like a drum and also the idea that they it was live to tape but the excitement of feeling like it was live you know like how how the band would play during the commercials it wasn't an intro outro uh type type of thing oh we're back now you know play the third three or four seconds that's gonna lead in like it's been that the audience has heard the song the whole time no you guys went and two minute commercials the band playing the entire time keeping the energy up it was uh uh now that being said it's great what a great presentation but also if you're five nights a week or four nights a week uh and a couple times on on on thursday um if you're doing that kind of energy like you're playing like you're live uh that is a tremendous amount of of energy to expedite out of you and it takes a lot out of you um did you have some re-entry issues when uh when you know i i know i love that you stayed around for the next 10 years but did you have some re-entry issues when when you didn't have to go to the office every day no it was so great you know just hanging around the house no that was more of a problem for my family yeah but no i didn't yeah no not at all i i relaxed i was semi retired for years before i actually left in fact i would often leave very you know sometimes i'd have to leave before the show was over and there was one time i'd get the bus from the port authority bus terminal uh the crime center of manhattan uh to go to my home in new jersey for very whatever maybe had an appointment i remember one time i was walking down 53rd street alongside of the there i forgot we were doing a live camera on 53rd street that day i heard catching the bus yeah i'm catching the bus that was it that was fine i mean fine well that leads me that's some found comedy right there um you know talking about the uh being back in the in the writers room and suddenly that call shows up oh [ __ ] okay he needs another top 10 list we're holding the audience oh my gosh and just what we're talking about here uh really shows the gravity of what an interruption that would be like the idea that you know i i saw the show a couple times live of course and and you didn't even know when there was a screw-up you know uh something would happen and dave would bottle a word or two again okay yeah no no we'll just take it we'll keep going kate and then he would just start back up again and you'd have to be really on point to catch it even because it just rolled it was you know and so yeah getting that call we're holding the audience oh [ __ ] that is a disruption um did you guys have some evergreen top 10 lists sitting there waiting like some backup ones or or was it no we had to at the moment we we had a lot of non-topical ones but we never really banked them and i don't remember i think david wanted something fresh all the time yeah i remember one by the way this is not exactly off topic we had a writer's meeting and i don't remember which one of us rob burnett or my all right uh came up with an idea the idea and maybe it's one of those things that you know people don't realize how collaborative it is somebody might start something though the reference is wrong it's not danny devito it should be this oh yeah that makes the joke yeah the reference yep okay and it was how about this for a top 10 topic next week ways the world would be different if everybody were named bob i think it might have been different reference might have been you know joe or whatever and rob and i were both tickled by the idea the head writer at the time whoever it was wasn't that tickled rob and i both separately on the weekend came up with lists just out of curiosity and you know there's stuff like the name of his bar uh name is ba bond you know or every every bob bob and bob in the world was going to do that sure we actually got a good list out of her to play pretty well but anyway take my money um i'm going to see bob bond on friday um you know i i uh i'm so grateful that you are are taking time to do this here i want to talk about dave on the tonight show back in the day um if if if there's any memories of that did you you didn't write for his first tonight show did you no not at all that was all his stand up i mean merrell might have kicked his ass sorry sorry the first time he gets hosted sorry that's what we're talking about oh yeah i did oh yeah i did yeah that's interesting because theresa and i going back to the beginning of this conversation because theresa was with him and that night after he hosted his very first guest spot on the tonight show he went immediately to the comedy store where the strike was going on and picked up a picket sign and started picketing so that night is is a night that you know there's there's some some famousness to it and there's also some infamous infamy to it yeah um what a big night for a guy like that to come in and guest host for the very first time do you have any memories of that night uh i mean what was the sensibility i i didn't write for his first but i don't know if you remember but i don't know this ever happened before he uh got the guest host offer after his first appearance yeah he came over to the couch which is the beginning of the all the greats have come out of the couch at the first after their first appearance and if you just sort of stand if johnny just sat there and waved like oh man i didn't get to sit on the couch at any rate uh no i don't remember too much about those days i just remember i was in new york for most of them yeah and uh he would i would fax them no i didn't even fax them i think i probably even mailed them the jokes machine i know and you know i would they would they would send me something and uh i remember one night he said i think he was doing monday nights when johnny was off for a while yeah and so i turned on and at 11 30 to see what jokes if any he'd chosen it wasn't on it was a rerun of johnny what the hell was it was there an accident but what happened and you know what there had been a fire in the studio in burbank and they just haven't been in rear i thought you know at any rate that's that story has no ending but there was a fire in the studio well it kind of does the very last morning show there was a fire on the set as well i mean it seems like fire might follow you guys a little bit that was that was so that was one of those merrell ideas like let's have a wedding reception or a 50th anniversary on the show or whatever you know just like some of them worked out great some of them i think randy cohen had the idea of the 360 show yeah but just like a lot of people got dizzy one another one we did a show we did an all spanish show but i think with subtitles and apparently a lot of the more conservative viewers in florida were very upset were very upset now they're real they're taking and another time we did i think it was a 360 show some woman wrote and said my grandmother called me and she said she thought she was going insane because the image on the show the show kept turning turning turning you know some work some don't oh man it was so good like the experimental nature uh it's just something that isn't allowed to be done these days on especially on network tv i mean there's stuff on the internet and whatnot and and there's some interesting stuff that i find netflix is coming out with that uh it's it's you you could classify it as experimental but i i feel like um you guys were so ahead of the curve when it came to uh being a little bit askew a little bit out there um and and it seems like you were one of the people right at the very beginning that had that same odd sensibility that merrill and and and dave both had um were there ever times where something was a little too weird uh i imagine there must have been times there must have been pitches for shows that that that just didn't get green lit was there anything that you wish you would have done i mostly wrote jokes through the morning show uh the one who the person who was besides merrell who came up with the oddest ideas i thought was george meyer george meyer was just just brilliant he wanted saturday night live and the simpsons and but uh i'm trying to think of some ideas i just he did i think i think i think his idea was the uh the giant doorknob and it was just a giant door it was just and i guess you had a fake ad it's just much bigger than a doorknob should be it's just a giant doorknob and then and i somebody found uh the the world's largest vase yeah it was in uh somewhere in the in the midwest and so we had it on the show for a week and i think jim downey did the voice over i don't know who wrote it for the last appearance of the giant face it was a center stage they pulled the curtain back not a pedestal with security guards on either side and and the jim died and further jim john has a great voice he does a lot of voiceovers on snl still does and it was farewell but farewell audience my week here has been very memorable i hope i have helped you achieve the dream of rowing and then they closed the curtains and it was over but that was just something i don't think you would see anywhere else the giant face that was just crazy i i i love that and and the attention to detail that you guys did i mean we're jumping around like crazy here which i'm totally cool to do i'm totally cool to do yeah like i think about some of the [ __ ] you did with chris elliott that was all christmas stuff and he is just he's so out there i mean the marlon brando stuff where the hell did that come from i mean jesus christ seriously he said that was so nuts that he had been holding a whole bunch of bananas and making up stuff and saying where's the tree where's the tree why don't the tree i mean jeez god yeah that was just nuts that was really nice i remember one one of the things we did was uh he came up the idea of making fun of dog the bounty hunter yeah and we do we did that and we went to a place uh danbury connecticut which is like 40 miles from here from manhattan and we're in a uh uh out front of a supermarket in a shopping mall and just relaxing between takes just meeting against the wall and i guess somebody called the cops and said there's some really weird looking people outside this uh shoprite and danbury you better get over there so the cops went over there and all those you have where's your permanent all this stuff and i think jerry foley just said well you want to call the mayor because the mayor just told us we were cool we can shoot anywhere in the city we want but please go ahead and we did we were fine we were fine danbury that's uh that's that that was where dave was living at the time was it not no he lives in new canaan oh new canaan okay yeah which is a much more upscale place and also he was always on the what's called the merritt parkway which is uh runs parallel to the turnpike but it's like more scenic and all he would be doing beyond the speed limit and you could always tell because he was he would often say something on the show he would just say like oh by the way i just want to thank the connecticut state troopers for their attention to detail what the hell was he talking about and i had no idea because we didn't ever talk about contract status or the show status anything right there was there was a period when he was obsessed with warren littlefield the nbc exec is that the nbc days or this is after the fact oh no this is the nbc days yep yeah and he would say uh he would put up he'll put up his uh his head shot warren littlefield and he was oh what he's going in he's going into a programming trance and they would you know they do uh knew the wavy stuff out of a goose and and oh he's coming up with a new idea folks oh this is going to be good it was like oh it's a talking it's a talking monkey i know he's a very successful producer i've always seen shows on all kinds of warren littlefield there's another guy with another littlefield name he's probably his son i don't know i don't follow the trades today's truth i really don't well i i i love oh god i love doing this with you and just just going back and forth with this i want to go back to the the the remotes for a second here because um it's it's hard to wrap your head around the idea okay so you're one of the core writers for the show for a long time and then suddenly you and chris elliot are on the set of of of of a parody of dangerous liaison where you're all dressed up in the british uh uh you know uh outfits and and doing your thing and and and kathleen anchor shows up and all that so so when when that stuff is happening um like is that shot around the the same time that the work day is happening is that shot on weekends is that sean you know okay no we never shot and uh except for the first couple years we never shot on fridays we did two shows on thursdays yeah and so friday we'll use a remote date stuff like the uh dangerous liaisons or we did a thing about john adams adams chronicles was on pbs here in the states and uh that was the same deal we do it in the during rehearsal time and we have to really be efficient you know because as we do a dress rehearsal usually just i know actually i don't think we ever did the dress rehearsals at any rate well it showed sir it certainly showed thank you so much you know it was fun i tell you a funny story has nothing to do with the show with chris yeah i haven't i don't see christmas i'm basically a hermit i'm beyond i'm very i'm not anti-social i'm just non-social but i i have a shack up in rhode island where i grew up and i would go there once in a while and we would stop by chris's place in connecticut once in a while we stopped by one night and everybody was excited because abby's first appearance was going to be on snl that night yeah absolutely yeah everyone was very excited and uh another time we went out to dinner and we were sitting in that and a woman an old woman made her 60s comes in holding a baby and obviously the grandmother and painting the baby come on and she comes over and then we're all going what a cute little baby and uh paula paula uh chris's wife says aren't you the governor i said yeah well it was the governor of connecticut it was jody it was jody rowell well this is this is obviously the place to be in southern connecticut yes but at any rate yeah that's nothing to do nothing to do with anything astute observation on the part of chris elliott um well you know what and chris is obviously a a dream guest for the show here uh you know for for many many many reasons um but i gotta tell you uh as a canadian uh it was particularly uh delightful to see shit's creek become something you know yeah before the first time he talked about it people were like what the heck you know dave gave him a spot on the show like gave him some panel on it and talking about [ __ ] streak and it was huge well in canada it was huge right away and then and then watching the groundswell of it blow up down south um it was so wonderful for me as a fan of everything that you guys did as an enthusiast of everything you guys did to watch chris be part of something at this stage of his career that went as big as it did i i was so happy for him oh my god i remember the there was a one of those remote emmys because of the kovid yes covered whenever you guys want everything yes greek won everything it was just insane it was just another way it was another one my best supporting actor best supporting actress that was fine though i mean funny is funny sometimes it's too advanced or too crazy for people and sometimes it walks that fine line which i find that gene levy and and uh catherine are really good at seeing all the christopher guest stuff yeah right on the line yeah you go a little bit this way with like best in show or waiting for government if you go a little bit too far it's just oh that's just not that's insane come on he's right on the line right on the line it's so good and yeah i always found the chris guest stuff um you know i think about mighty wind uh you know the folk singers like i i just um i find that that that that has the same sensibility that much of the letterman stuff uh has and and and and yeah y'all seem like you're you're you're a family like i go sctv and letterman and and all that it all just feels very very very cohesive it feels like you're all from the same world i'm canadian a lot of canadians yeah really true i mean sc tv kids in the hall how about kids in the home we got to do something to keep warm up here jerry we might as well try and make each other laugh i know no it is interesting that some you know from great musicians neil young and joni ritchell yeah one of my favorites blue rodeo that nobody seems already oh my god that's crazy you just mentioned blue rodeo on here that's fantastic yeah they're great we had i got i used to suggest a lot of stuff for the load-in music for the show yeah and uh we had at least one blue rodeo thing that i got on which was uh florida yeah i remember land of endless more malls i thought for the longest time it was land of endless mauve the color i thought i've been to florida i didn't notice that color particularly it was endless malls of course that's a great song this is my favorite song blue rodeo is phenomenal and they were one of those bands like again you know smaller cities in canada we saw them show up and and play to 150 rooms all the time that's great yeah that's a great feeling then you feel a little bit like oh come on they're mine no you can't have them now no come on where were you where were you 10 years ago and they needed their rent you know but oh my god jerry it's like you're a professional uh and and segway right back into the letterman stuff just like a like a david letterman letterman lane change on the parkway um you know because you saw that you saw people who like when late night was was was really at its most experimental you saw it essentially like a cult and and and the people who would show up uh would send mail in all of that early adopters of of the interesting and the askew of what you presented um and then um like an indie band that that signs with a big label um you watch it blow up and and you watch dave become the mega star right in front of you when that was happening um when you're going from the experimental stuff uh the shows the 360 shows and the the shows on the airplane that kind of stuff and suddenly the ground swell is happening and and and for a while and no offense to johnny carson whatsoever i mean the reverence i feel for johnny i wish like the reason i'm doing this show one of the reasons is because i don't want to happen to you guys what's happened to johnny i cannot believe that my 25 year old kids don't know who johnny carson is um you know the and and so so when i say this next statement i'm disclaiming it because of the reverence i do feel for johnny um as well but but at the end of the day the late 80s you guys were the hottest late night show out there you were you know even when arsenio showed up you guys were the coolest show and and you got to see that transition from the indy to the stadiums um did it change the staff very much did you guys know or were you in a bubble while all of that was happening no we noticed you know the articles and dave on the cover of rolling stone and stuff like that which wasn't happening when we were just more the morning show which was pretty much ignored although we started meryl had the idea of small town news but i sort of had to i had to get tons of these small town papers and i remember one this really tickled me where it was review of the the morning's show in a small town in like iowa illinois which was very odd and the headline and the headline i still remember the david letterman show is like garbage it stinks it's like oh well thanks for clarifying i thought maybe it was picked up once a week by the municipal oh you mean it's still that's the point of the analogy thank you so much sir it stinks oh it is amazing i mean some people would act actively offended by it that writer is still around by the way they're actively uh writing comments on youtube and hopefully they find hopefully they find our show soon and uh that would be it is funny how people just really enjoy doing that you know they enjoy [ __ ] on things absolutely yeah i mean i remember uh there was a really negative article in tv guide maybe for the morning show about maybe in the early days of the late night and i just remember dave saying i wish people realize how much how hard this [ __ ] is to do you know i mean you know and it really is and david especially you know he if you saw the volumes of material that he he went through every day every day for the joke for the opening monologue he had a monologue rehearsal he'd go through many many many jokes and he would pick 12 maybe and then cut that down sometimes before air the top 10 list just the topics alone was overwhelming then it has viewer mail you get a viewer mail packet every day of the where some intern has decided this might yield the best response until they pack a lot you can write stuff to that then you're gonna have to get produced it is a lot of work you know and i remember david this is no secret when the morning show was canceled he really thought that was it yeah he said you know they don't give somebody a network show that bombs right away and then give him another one you know yeah well and we had jeff all been on and he talked about that sorry i didn't mean to cut you off no that's fine i had nothing to say okay you know editing i did i used to edit one show a week uh the second show uh i would take on on thursdays we did two shows thursdays was a hell day for me because i would be writing i would often appear on one of the two shows and then after the first show i would go down and edit that show for uh broadcast that night and the second show they would they could edit at the leisure on friday so anyway uh that was that was hell night going down there and sometimes it was very hard to get a nice you know a nice clean edit yeah and uh one of the things i had to sit through was i get in early on thursdays and i would make the coffee and the it was pre-current it was an old-fashioned one sure and one time i as anyone would i forgot to put the pot under the water thing so it went all over the kitchen in the writer's kitchen we've all done that sure uh so of course i had to go into the edit they had to be on the show that night and i had to make sure that it was done correctly dave talking about it at great length he i was anonymous so he just says what writer i love code i love blind items like that like what writer six foot four 240 pound writer blah blah blah you know any rate enough about me by the way before i forget i don't know if any of your people have brought props uh this is a prize prop from the morning show one of merrell's ideas for a product oh can i go big on this huh you do whatever you want uh oh my god ricky's cow pace i don't know are you saying that backwards no i see it i well talk again and we see it front words absolutely that is why i'm seeing it i'm saying it's a winky's cow paste it's a product for cut to paste cows at any rate um okay oh god so again so many questions so many places i can go do you did you keep very much from any of the shows like like that's great that's amazing that you have that that's unbelievable is there anything else that you have let me see i'm looking around this jill leaderman who was uh the uh writers i know what her title was right she was more than writer's assistant she was probably producer she went to l.a one time la tripp and brought this back this hollywood hat which i wore just randomly whenever i made appearances i mean that on the show yeah absolutely now this is this is one of my proudest achievements uh we had giuliani on the show yep before he before he turned to the dark before he became darth vader yeah yeah yeah that guy took an interesting evolution yeah and you know after 9 11 we were at sea do we go back on is it going to look uh crass to go back too soon uh too late and then giuliani came out and said i want new yorkers to to go back to the david lies i want to go shopping go to the theater go to work go to the office you can't live in fear yes sir dave that's it we're going back so we went back and a little bit after a little i forget how long after that when he was still not crazy uh we had giuliani on and we need we wanted a comedy thing for him because we got you know sometimes we do so we want to get a new slogan for me for new york like i love new york it's played out where we want to get a new one from new york so we i see i just i was doing a lot of other things i just suggested as a joke i'm thinking you'd never pick it we can kick your city's ass and that would be that was and of course the audience picked it and giuliani picked giuliani liked it of course sure oh yeah yeah the next day the front page of the new york daily news was this oh that's red and then i'm walking down broadway on the way to the theater and i go by the tourist place and i see that pin which of course i wear to all occasions like graduations and baptisms i'm trying to think about anything else i i have stuff around that's what you guys did though like and and i think it's it's so you know 911 of course uh you know oh absolute um that moment where dave came and literally led the nation and and again i i just and it was from you know we had tommy on here and he talked about it and and we've talked about that we're going to talk about it a lot throughout the uh uh the the lifespan of this show which hopefully goes far beyond today um and and we're going to talk a lot about that just the idea i'm and i said this to you i'm a canadian living on the west coast of canada okay and and i was waiting for that moment i was waiting for dave i was waiting for that leadership um because we were we were in disarray and it it's crazy in the in the fact that that that this broadcaster and again that's why we he's not an entertainer not a community he's a broadcaster um every bit for me i'm a gen x kid uh my walter cronkite he is uh i i'm not gonna trust just the most trusted news man out there i'm not gonna trust pro car rather i need a little bit of cynicism i need a little bit of commentary i need a little bit of distrust um into everything and that's what dave kind of brought to the table obviously by that point he had evolved to the point where he um was more powerful in that sense um you know because at that time in the late show and they're really i don't know if there was one other person who could lead not just the nation but nations whoever was on the other side of that camera um i talked to tommy about uh and i want to ask you about this you were still there i mean you guys were going to work you were still writing jokes every day is there a period in time where more jokes were written that were never told i mean as i remember we had a lot of meetings about this obviously yeah uh what are we gonna have we're gonna have music and they decided on i think nancy griffith good night new york and from that point on the opening announce it was from the greatest new york the greatest city in the world it used to be new york the home of more rats and nothing cynical anymore for a while it's great to see anymore because we took a gut punch we just took a gut punch absolutely great pleasure and yeah and we had we don't have the jokes had to be kind of generic and observational kind of stuff and a lot of it we did old stuff we did old as i remember like old remotes and stuff just to fill in because they were kind of not going to trigger any any members but i'm telling you it was heartbreaking i used to walk up to the border over the port authority bus terminal there were literally thousands of faces on walls people have you seen this person harper just heartbreak yeah dave handled so well the only time i've ever gone up to the office after the show and said that was a great show you were great and he really was i mean that opening at home base even better every now and then absolutely no perfect it was no perfect there's there's there's no better way to describe it every year uh at 9 11 i watch that show i've got it sitting on my computer every year now that's how i remember because i i can remember going back and it is fascinating i don't know if you've watched the whole show um you know with any degree of of of recency but no no no no i can't watch it no i can't i understand um if you get back to that place where you can watching the interview with dan rather uh is fascinating because he talks about things like and i think about i think about the us leaving afghanistan last year and and he talked about in that interview you know uh they're testing us right now will will america have the stomach for this and and the questions that the conversation that they had to me it's nothing short of fascinating um you know and and i think maybe the only joke uh dave said you know thank god regis is here so we have something to laugh about yeah that's true love that love that joke love that line um yeah it's it's it's that's that's how i i can go right back to that moment sitting on my couch watching it uh it was on the dvr but but no i watched that that sucker uh i watched the east coast feed uh you know so so so it was not uh you know your time so i got it a few hours earlier and and it you guys helped lead people back from um one of the greatest um oh don giller has a word for this it's not a tragedy it's a uh well it's it's this word it's it's escaping me right now it's an attack it's an outrage absolutely absolutely and i know and uh it was strange it was very it was a very strange and terrible period and uh people really stepped up and uh dave that and now you know i'm sure you know there's a play on broadway it's been running forever called come from away about how kind canadians were oh so yeah the flight that was diverted up to uh newfoundland i guess capricorn yeah yeah i don't know that's what that's what that's what dawn can call it yeah absolutely yeah absolutely innocent people you know well i live in a town that's maybe uh 10 miles from midtown manhattan yeah we had new jersey had a lot of casualties i mean every every single school in this area one or two parents that perished it's gone yeah like that boom i know and how do you explain that to it how do you explain that to your kids it's just like well they don't like us because women go to school and they wear shirt they don't cover their faces yeah i don't know yeah it's and i think about the parallels of of the the late night show what you guys are are meant to do and what you actually do when world events like this happen um and and back then you know you right now anytime any sort of event happens uh the late night shows seem to politicize it uh or or or come from a certain um slant or whatever you guys and going back to you know when johnny hosted the tonight show and and these world events happened um and and you know he would change up the format and and and talk about some of these things um you know in a in a different light and it and it's so interesting how you know you guys at that point we're trying to stay as independent as possible yet at the same time have commentary and and try and find ways to entertain people uh during times like that i mean that's got to be the hardest time to write for that show that there is i would oh yeah oh that's absolutely absolutely and uh it's hard to know exactly what point you gradually can go back to making fun of topical events and things like that and yet it's a very it's it's intuitive i guess and you hope you get it right and you're not alone i mean there's a whole bunch of people thinking about this with you and you know uh knowing the sensibility of the show and knowing uh what what the nation is sort of all feeling at once yeah and you know you go by that that's all you can do i ask uh this is a this is a believe it or not everybody we can segue here we can do it this is big time this is a big time program we can do it i had tommy ruprecht on uh a while back and he and we talked about this um and and i i had asked him one of the things that he was proud of that he uh that that he contributed to the show that he was a big part of so this is that's the question for you there's where your brain can start spinning while i kind of finish it off one of the things that he said was great moments in presidential speeches which was the the beautiful uh george bush uh you know compilations where it was just so perfectly edited it showed a couple speeches from the past and then something george bush was doing and and he talked about actually the first time after 9 11 that he was allowed to do another one where he was allowed to make fun of george uh president bush i should say um you know i forget what he did he walked into a wall or did something and okay fine you can go ahead and do that the that segment um on the on the on the channel now walter and company they have a nice beautiful uh great moments in presidential history so people can go back and they can watch that we're gonna talk about some of your highlights as well from being on the show because there's a lot of stuff out there that people can now go back and revisit and and enjoy what are some of the things that i mean it's a long career so things that come to mind first hopefully we get you on here again we can talk about some of the deeper cuts but what are some of the things that made the show either late night or uh late show that that you were kind of the the captain of and and got on there and and uh turned out the way that you wanted them to let me see i almost always wrote jokes i wrote jokes and answers to uh viewer mail letters and i guess one of my favorite viewer mail letters i forget maybe it wasn't even that but it was an intro and dave introduced me and i came out in a batman suit and uh i started and they said so what's new jerry i said oh well we got a new we have a nice labrador black lab now in the family and i had some pictures i took out and showed him the pictures of uh a black lab romping in the leaves out in the backyard and you're the adam west batman that's who you were you were there oh yeah it wasn't that man it was it was fantastic yep it didn't have a six-pack plastic six-pack like cody whatever and i just go rambling on about the dog and what he likes to eat and how the kids love him and he's great with the kids he goes uh why are you why are you dressed like batman oh that yeah i was i was very upset when i found out about the cat some of the casting of the new movie um they've got jack nicholas as the joker now he's a great golfer but it makes no sense i mean this is this is his first acting job i think isn't it i mean i think i'm surprised there hasn't been more backlash about that you know and you know well it's actually jack nicholson oh okay yeah that makes a lot more sense you know anyway and here's a little footnote she resolved a little footnote no problem a little footnote uh no pun intended there'd been something happening on stage right before that yeah where a lot of glass got smashed yeah and i was wearing i was wearing like a onesie with no shoes and so i i did that whole thing with bleeding feet and then uh bruce willis took it and made a hit movie out of it called die hard and yeah i know i didn't see your name in the credits there another robber nothing i got nothing uh let me see things i like things i remember this was just this is just an uh ad-lib sort of there was i think it was dynasty was on it maybe she was in some special but joan collins was in the news and dave said something it was her birthday yep and she was probably turning 50.

and so i uh i said dave said you know congratulations happy birthday to joan collins who uh who today turns is now 70 years old okay so anyway her people give me the phone where's the phone so anyway so in makeup i was talking about i said why don't you say this he goes okay so he went out and uh said by the way i want to have a an apology yesterday uh i said that joan collins was 70 years old miss collins it turns out he's 70 years younger yeah well it killed with a 46 year old guy uh 30 years later or however long it is right now in this room so that that holds up like a [ __ ] uh that's a great that's that i love that whole what you just said there because i you know i mean okay here's a list of the people that you have quote unquote portrayed uh and it's by no means complete uh you have come out on stage uh being billed as paris hilton hillary clinton michael jackson pete rose real a man who can clone people uh regis karl rove peyton manning uh batman um and many many many many many others and there's so many moments that you could talk about being in front of the camera but i just love that what are you proud of jerry oh it's this moment where i went to dave and makeup and gave them this throwaway line and and and i just this is the part this is the reason why we do this show it's it's not about dave it's about dave and company equally in fact even more so because dave will of course never come on this show uh it's it's more about what you guys did in all to support him he was the figurehead he was the head he is the most talented broadcaster in history there's no question but behind him was this amazing family who's many of which stayed together decades um and some came and went and came and went on to to amazing careers because of being part of that family and and it's those moments that i feel um are are the most endearing and the and the ones that we want to dig for because at the end of the day you know i had one little encounter with dave at a q and a where i was a brat and it's i made him laugh and it's one of the most great it's one of the greatest moments of my life i made david letterman [ __ ] laugh i couldn't believe it and you had those little moments very small group of people that could have moments like what you just described and you are one of those people that had them as your daily life yeah you know one thing i like to do in the monologue i would hand in like seven i would hit i was working part for a while there for reasons too complicated political to go into our talent department was depleted by one person okay and it may have had something to do with alcohol i don't know go on uh and i was filling in halftime talent halftime uh writing okay so i would hand in a bunch of jokes in the morning but and if any any news a bunch of jokes in the afternoon then i would research uh the guest i had that afternoon or pre-interview somebody whatever and i used to put in like really filthy jokes that dave would never do you know obvious just to make him laugh and i mean one of them was that's now this this just in from the american medical association beware of any doctor who takes your temperature with his dick and okay okay fine fine and then i'm standing i'm standing over by the blue door during the monologue and dave goes uh oh by the way this in from the american medical association now uh beware of any doctor who tries to take your temperature with his finger freud would say displacement upwards but yeah that's true it's really it's true i did a lot i did a lot of stuff like that oh i just remember queen elizabeth queen elizabeth was in l.a and i forget why who why why at any rate she was and she was in a hot she was in a uh a jacuzzi with a bunch of people and uh now she was in a pool with a bunch of people and someone broke wind and the queen said okay who's the [ __ ] evinrude he didn't and every fisherman in america would have done this we didn't uh he didn't even make a tailwind version of that well yeah oh i love uh that's that's very very cool the the idea that you guys would try and break dave or or or give him a little bit of joy in his day because you know as the narrative says sometimes he might have been a stressful guy um yeah you know just because somebody is famous and rich you know it doesn't mean he's not insecure it really doesn't mean everybody's insecure everybody's insecure about different things but you know you've had one you've had your your first uh boat shot out from under you yeah why would you think that anyone would build you another expensive boat you know and they did and fred silverman gave him a shot at the uh again and uh he's ever grateful to him and some people are very support some of the executives are very supportive some of them uh not some of the sensors were much more uh on the case than others like i i just got a message from i guess zoom i don't know what it means uh i remember we had connie chong on the show yeah he dave loved connie chung we even there's a plane if you remember the plane yeah anyway the uh so we said do you have any we've been doing a lot of human tricks do there's anything you can do that most people can't do and she said i can crack walnuts with my bare hands okay i can see that so we did that rehearsal she said that and uh i got a call i guess i was handling her i got a call from standards and practices uh can she really do that i said she says so he says well we're gonna have to see her do it before we put another job i know so anyway it turns out with the trick is you get two walnuts and you line them in one hand just perfectly so yeah and you squeeze the the the seams are against the seams and they crack open it's a leverage it's a leverage trick more than more than a string absolutely okay yeah yeah and we had it we had a great we had a great sensor jay i can't remember his last name but barry urbane knew exactly what we're doing again and you just come to you if you're doing dealing with a comedian that day so any problems with sky you say no you would be honest with him because he trusted you and usually worked out fine you know on the other hand sometimes he would have a day off and there was a woman in the standards of practices who i swear was just like margaret dumont in all the croucho marx movies that she just fortunately you could sort of just wing fast ones right by her you know yeah if it's too smart if it's too smart for her then she did it and she didn't know certain sexual terms and you know it was just couldn't even get the bat around on some of them yeah so but anyway i did that for a couple years and it was interesting to get a view of that side of the show because talent you know the comedy is 20 20 minutes of the show the town is the other 24 minutes and uh i remember the weirdest part was pre-interviewing people to find out if they had anecdotes that could carry the 10-minute segment and you were a miner you were looking for stuff that could absolutely you know and that's the highest level competition has never been more fierce you guys are literally building a franchise that's going to take down or compete with the tonight show which has never been done you want when the talent shows up you want to make sure that you're hitting home runs absolutely yeah absolutely we actually had some guests i guess it was matt leblanc from friends yep or i'm sorry in canadian leblanc and he was he was a he was i don't want the police and uh he was a guest on our show in the first segment yeah and he as soon as it was over he rushed off saying he said what's going on oh how am i doing conan right now so we didn't know so he he was at uh i guess we were in we might have been at cbs at that point yeah yeah he really went across town yeah to uh it was just like ten minute walk and he might have a car and i guess he did kona that night but it was it was it wasn't so bad because we intruded from time slots but be sure not to do that you know oh yeah well i mean there's there's uh you know i mean carter's books did you ever read bill carter's books did you did you kind of read the stuff that was going on around well i did i did read it and i wrote the elevator with him a few times but he never interviewed me which i i took very personally hold on i like we're trying to get carter on the show i take that personally like to me you're one of those guys that should be interviewed seriously i had no uh inside knowledge i never talked to that kind of stuff about that kind of stuff today uh i do remember the one detail from the book that struck me and it and it didn't seem to bother anybody was jay hiding out in the closet listening to the conversation it's like seriously yeah seriously that's you're okay with that uh okay another thing while i'm still thinking of it yes please desolatory is that the word for things when you jump around whatever it is now yeah we were during a break we had george w bush on during a break and during a break camera's still rolling because you know who knows what's gonna happen maria pope was a segment producer on that i guess and she's been talking to him meeting on farm he takes off his glasses i hope you can see this yeah uh he takes off his glasses takes his maria's pashmina shawl and does didn't even look at her didn't even look at her and then pushed the shell back and puts his glasses back on and it's like i thought this is going to be on the news this is the most arrogant you know entitled rich boy behavior ever recorded on film this was pre-trump so you know what the hell nothing i mean i think you sent it out to you know people uh outlets and nothing ever happened hold on a second i gotta call tommy tommy you missed a moment there was a moment where great moments in presidential you you should have put yeah that is that is uh well he didn't say it he didn't say a word so theoretically it falls outside the parameters of tommy's mandate oh right okay of course he wrote a book he wrote a book about bush in fact tommy did yeah how did that not come up uh while he was on okay you got to get him on to plug the book he's very modest and he also forgets he probably doesn't remember he did it uh he is very much a lot of you guys by the way are very modest just so you know and and i think it comes from the host down i mean it's it's so funny how so many of you seem to have this very similar disposition in many ways um you know you're all very um um protective of each other uh of of of you know it's very much like a family you know we'll be fighting whatever but don't you dare yeah come in here and try and that's pretty true well you're so vulnerable when you're putting stuff out yeah basically to be judged especially you hand it in to somebody the head writer or dave and sure yes no yeah and the rejection rate is brutal as it has to be yes he's looking at 120 150 jokes not only you three or four other people on staff the faxlers as we call them uh the two who by the way created the first bad boys movie i don't know if anyone knows this uh and ninjas who rushed for johnny carson by the way as well mulholland and barry yeah yeah and he's not going to do 120 jokes you know even if they're everyone is fantastic so he might bank one you know he might bank one or two although one of my favorite memories is i love tony mendez he's he passed away a couple years ago and uh he he would uh if he liked the joke and dave bumped it then he would always say dave you're being very precipitous and they would reconsider let me tell you a very funny tony mendez story please this this might be a little inside but what the hell uh i go to dave's office one day he said guess who just called me i said i have no idea it goes uh vice president al gore so really yeah yeah he said dave how many times about on the show i said well you know a few times mr vice president he said okay i'd like you to do me a favor i'm teaching a class at columbia and i'd like you to uh come and talk to answer questions from the students they said yeah sure so he talked about a thought about it and he called he called al gore back and said uh can i bring some of my people with me and i'll go say sure he said and uh i'm thinking about bringing tony mendez who my cue card guy uh and he's he's a cuban exile he was he's a refugee his family fight cuba and he would like to come in full battle fatigues like fidel castro is that a and he problem yeah you probably shouldn't do that dave yeah that's okay so anyway we went and did it it was fine you went and did it not with well we went we were up there with dave oh not with the fatigue a couple of who else uh staff members maybe mary barclay maybe joanna remember but anyway i do remember this what about one of uh one of al gore's staff members was with us and it was al and dave broke it all way up ahead and he turns to us and says from this point on i think we should probably refer to our bosses by code names and then he said my boss's code name is and it was something like gargantuars who knows something silly and i thought we're on a goddamn ivy league campus in new york city why why would i didn't think i didn't say i just said no that's all right code names what is playing so many games anyway that's not why you're called oh there was one other there was something i wanted to mention when you're talking about the uh the uh pre-interviewing people and stuff yes yes sir i'm trying to maintain this random nature of the broadcast and uh outside one time i got a call somebody said wilfred brimley would like to do the show so you give them a call so i gave him a call and uh mr brown yeah okay what do you want uh well i was wondering if you did the show uh what would you like to talk about you go how the hell do i know i want to talk about it tuesday next week 5 30 p.m do you know what the hell you want to talk about next tuesday at 5 30 p.m and it's like oh okay well so long that was i hung up it turns out he thought i was i was a logistics guy who was going to like book his airplane flight and book his and book his hotel room i guess anyway that was my experience okay but when you think about wilford brimley and for those who are a little bit you you picture this cowboy looking kind of curmudgeon with the mustache with the gray hair and the and the glasses and and the curmudgeon very definition i mean if you look in the dictionary you might see a picture of wilford brimley what the hell do you think i'm going to talk i know that was a very yeah that was very strange the pictures were very strange somebody once pitched uh the lead singer of uh oh goodbye stranger super [ __ ] yeah i said well okay it would be a good as a guest not a musical guest and i said okay well uh what would he talk about angles angles we need angles he goes well uh this is interesting he lives in los angeles and he rides a bike whoa that gives us some visit that's two segments tell us about la now tell us about the bike yeah the pitches were the pictures you would get from people were just like you know david loves this guy dave would love this guy showing absolutely no idea of dave's sensibility yeah you know it's like the kind of jokes people would submit in the packet trying to get out to get a job like about dolly parton's chest and stuff sure although to be fair i once didn't write a joke about that and dave did it they would do this thing sometimes you would have a marathon he would say like four three o'clock i want to do nothing but heat jokes because it's really hot there's nothing but heat jokes so every all the writers would kick in and i remember i'm not proud of this but he did it it's so hot uh mickey rooney is dating dolly parton just for the shade in his life that's a great joke that's a jackie jack hey folks come on you know tip your waitress let's go that's a great joke well especially dolly parton jokes were back in the day i mean they were the that was that was the thing to joke about it was it was every bit as uh you know joking about her as you would the president like it was it was very very very common but that's a very clever take she's a great she was a great guest although she did refuse to kiss me once we were doing a thing in the we were doing the thing a bumper going to commercial it was coming back me and and valley part and sitting together chatting in the green room yeah and i think foley or somebody said why don't you kiss he goes i'm sorry that's the greatest rejection ever that's all right that's good it's not all right not all right as it turns out i'm a human being damn it um i i've got a couple more that i want to throw at you um actually you know what uh darren cox who by the way not an adult film actor uh darren cox's real name uh darren uh who was the first guest on our show and and he's got his own uh the irritable dad syndrome podcast and and whatnot uh big big big enthusiast uh like i am of everything you guys did actually his ex-girlfriend had um when i told him that that that uh i'm gonna be talking to you he got all really excited um and then and then i reminded him who you were no no i'm just kidding he uh he he really i'm just but um that's right i use that for zoom close with the kids oh it's perfect um and thank you for bringing it here this is great yeah he he said oh you got to ask him about uh i got a question so i got a question from darren here for you but he opened it up by saying his ex-girlfriend got a letter written uh read and the in viewer mail and the result of that letter was you coming out dressed as a cicada and and so he and then he mentioned three or four other things that you came out dressed up as and whatnot so his question was this was there ever anything where they got you to the to the one yard line you're dressed up the the makeup the whole nine yards you got your lines but it was either too weird or too over the line or it got cut but there you are standing there in a shrek uniform or did that ever happen no it never did i mean because it we could we could you know it's like farmers using every part of the pig you know you can't throw any you really can't throw anything away by the way just side note yes sir cicadas around a 16 a 17-year life cycle they come back in some parts of new jersey i've been in my in-laws house you step on them there are so many but at any rate yep sorry peter if that's a problem but anyway uh okay so i did it like 87 or whatever last time we were here yeah and then after i retired they came back 17 years later sue hum remembered the costume we still had the costume sue hum is so good at this kind of stuff we still have the cost i came back and did it again 17 years later oh that's in the green room like an idiot as a giant cicada and i forget who the other guests were but it was very awkward making conversation as a cicada really anyway darren is going to be tickled pink that you uh brought that back sue hum actually she and i are just connecting right now she's on my uh again one of the dream lists on the dream list of guests i cannot wait to talk to her from everything from either o'donnell's police uniforms that you got to keep one to you know these things here to the suit stave i cannot wait to talk to sue um and and also a lot of on-screen appearances um for you i don't know if there's a writer who's appeared on screen more than you throughout the run i i can't imagine that there is um were you just was it just oh yeah we'll put jerry in that like was it just kind of shorthand oh yeah we'll get jerry to do that or was some of that stuff that you because you talk about how you just not just how you wrote jokes and that was the thing that you mostly did did you ever write yourself any of these segments or was that always another writer that did that no i wrote the batman one all the okay almost all the viewer mail stuff was uh tommy rupert or lee ellenberg okay and i remember there was one i still haven't forgiven the lead for this there was one where i was like an al-qaeda guy i was being set up backstage like a zoo basically a zoom call electro i went to grad school it wasn't called that then didn't have zoom but anyway so i'm back there and i'm supposed to say dave is saying well how can you say you're innocent they found all this explosives in your apartment whatever and i i had to say something like oh so if uh so a half a ton of tri-tetra hydro flat i i did it i finally nailed it you know in rehearsal and i kept saying it over and over again and just before i went on first of all tommy rupak would usually come up and go scottish boy or macbeth which is bad luck for actors to hear big bats before they were going around and then leigh ellenberg said during rehearsal you're gonna blow it you are so gonna blow it and i did it i did it perfectly over and over and over again and it comes out it goes on and they said what about this they go yeah i have a half a ton of hydra homeless hun i was going to say goddamn ellenberg but i can't really say that anyway and by the way this is a little footnote there's nothing to do with anything but you guys did the first dick joke about darren cox name i was in san francisco when uh nixon was one of the nixons trisha nixon married ed cox yep and a lot of the gay performers were making jokes about that absolutely oh no darren darren's going to be delighted when he hears this i'm not even going to let him know i'm just going to make sure he watches and and he'll be delighted by this um a couple other things i want to bring up before because i'm going to be is i want to be as as uh well you know i do i i want to pretend that i care about your time really at the end of the day i would sit here and do this all day uh this is so much fun for me and and i'm having a blast talking to you this is an honor me too oh thank you i appreciate hearing that um oh [ __ ] we gotta do a commercial okay uh and there's nothing uh better that we've got one sponsor on this show um and there's nothing better than when i uh suddenly bring an unwitting guest into a commercial uh the uh letterman podcast we have one sponsor the letterman broadcast is brought to you by the hello deli rupert g and the hello deli it is not a joke uh he is the only sponsor of this show if you are in the new york area and you need a good place to eat well first off uh you know go to the hello deli nestled within the womb of the ed sullivan theater um but more so if you have ever looked for late show with david letterman merchandise like this mug or t-shirts or even pictures of rupert because you love rupert so much because he was on screen almost as many times as jerry mulligan um go to hello deli.com and you can get late show with david letterman merchandise still and uh if you ask him very nicely rupert takes these things and he packs them lovingly uh himself uh him or may but usually it's him and if you ask him really nicely he might actually add onions to your to your order of t-shirts or coffee mugs so um the hello deli we thank you very much for everything that you guys do for us and uh yeah there you go that stuff he did when dave was in his ear going into mcdonald's just the best the best it was perfect comedy they wouldn't do on any other show yeah absolutely imagine any other show doing that did you ever write on any of those uh remotes or segments or were you basically the stuff that happened in-house you know basically i was yeah i didn't do any of the rupert stuff i don't know who wrote the quote you know a lot of that stuff is dave on the spur of the moment saying ask him ask him if he can remember you know and that was on the spur of the moon we did a lot of stuff this is mostly the morning show i think yeah where dave would shoot a remote on the streets of new york when he could still do that without getting a crowd and then you have a few minutes left over crew time and how gurney was there i think how gurney come up with this idea mr curious well you go up to people and say excuse me sir what's in the bag and someone would be like uh well because they may have had contraband in the bag or whatever they may have been not wanting to be and they have to sign a release yep so if there's you know they're not going to sign the release what's the point just move on yep but yeah we did a lot of those and those were just pure dave just like what's the bag okay yeah we're gonna do with that you know you like that okay dave has really good working audiences you know he did that he used to host at the uh at the comedy store and he was really really good at that really good at that well again go back to the fact that um you know when he talks about stand-up he goes i knew i'd have to do it like it's a discipline like i've done stand up a handful of times in the last year since covet has stopped because i i understand the idea of wanting to take the skill and put it under your belt it's a discipline that you're learning but at the end of the day what would i rather see yeah i'd rather see dave do a couple jokes here and there and then bring somebody out and then do the follow-up after that like he is a he is a natural broadcaster that's his that's a big deal uh did it take you a long time to to get his voice no it did because we're kind of we're kind of similar and you find out after you submit a few jokes that are just off the radar for him he's not going to do that joke and i mean i knew pretty much from seeing him i saw him perform long before i wrote for him you know i know he's not going to do this kind of joke he's going to do a lot of just really subtle kind of sarcasm like i remember he would just he said something like well i see where mcdonald's is going to start offering breakfast well that's a dream come true it's all attitude or used to do a thing he used to do a thing well you know there's some pet food pet food that advertises not a speck of cereal my dog drinks out of the toilet he doesn't care about a speck in the door the speck of cereal in his food yeah he'll be okay with the cheerio yeah stuff like that that was it the attitude yeah and i think that that's one of the things that uh it's really hard it's really easy to take you know and i don't want to talk you know too much about leno but but but leno was a joke uh teller that you could take some of those jokes and very easily relay them around the office the next day dave i don't know how many times when i was growing up that i would try and take a moment that was hysterical in my head and my heart and try and translate it to my mother to my friends at school to whoever and it just would not work because dave is is is is so invaluable in how he presented that material and how it would be a home run but it just you couldn't replicate it no no absolutely attitude is everything and then it's like you see in in sitcoms you see this too but you get to know the characters so well that when a certain thing happens all the comedy is from the the action you know has to happen yes i mean a classic one archie bunker yep uh you know sammy davis jr shows up at the house even if you know you know about that or the seinfeld thing when somebody you know oh this this is going to play really well with jerry you know he's really going to love this kind of thing tonight and that's that's what you don't get as a stand-up too much because people you have to establish a person if you're just starting out yeah you don't have a persona yet people don't know you yet jack benny i mean think about jack benny's persona was so strong one of his funniest jokes on the radio he didn't say a thing when he's a a bad guy comes up to him and says your money or your life and there's a long pause he goes your money or your life the jackpot is i'm thinking i'm thinking meaningless unless you've heard you know the reputation that jack who apparently your private wife is a very generous person ironically but at any rate um were you around when the end of the late show uh happened for the for the run um and they brought back steve o'donnell uh a little bit for the end of the run no i went to the uh the wrap party afterwards yeah i think did i go to the taping uh uh i don't think i know i went to the party the party was at the museum of modern art pretty classy i've heard a lot about this party yeah yeah i didn't we just went you know yeah my wife's not a showbiz type the only time she was really impressed was at a christmas party when she actually saw david hasselhoff live oh there we go and i gotta admit i get it he didn't do much for me but there sometimes you do see a person and i remember in the green room just kirk douglas for some reason all eyes on craig douglas if you didn't know who he was if this was your first experience there was something about him bob dylan same way i hope you're doing on the show my idol my favorite musician of all time and the first time he was on the show very rehearsal uh he's sitting at home base just relaxing and i go to i said dave do you want to meet dave wanted me bob before the show because he usually didn't like to do that he liked to be fresh he said yeah i would so he came out and he did this and they said dave sits in the other guest chair they're talking and i told him this so he said uh i understand your son's here with you because he brought jesse with him and jesse you know i'm not lying jesse is standing about two feet away and dylan goes yeah he's he's somewhere man i don't know he's somewhere i don't know what that meant i know if he didn't want to he wanted to keep jesse out of the i don't know what it was i have no idea what he did that was bob dylan wow um you're talking about people who uh the charisma that they have whatever it is whatever that it factor is it just emulates and they can just stand there that's funny that you mentioned david hasselhoff as being one of the people he is an extreme i've heard people who have met him before extremely impressive and just you walk in and like you say all eyes are on that on that person um another guy who is definitely like that and dave's idol of course is johnny carson i can't i can't let this go without asking um you know i think about the night that johnny came over and announced on your show yeah he was leaving and people didn't even understand really he came right from the up fronts and and announced it to the world uh were you on the stage when that happened um do you have any other encounters with johnny along the way uh i think i was probably in the uh probably we used to hang out in the makeup room which in retrospect is just insane because we watch people getting their makeup which most women guests especially don't want to see but at any rate i mean i would say hi to johnny when you be on the show but here's a story johnny carson story we used to go out to the emmys when we got nominated for emmys the whole they were very generous on the show where nbc staff yeah anybody basically wanted to come would come yeah so dave would host to dinner the night before there's some nice restaurant in l.a so one night the staff dinner was at granita which was a wolfgang puck place in malibu very nice upscale restaurant and there were maybe i don't know 40 people there unless he had reservations 40 people and johnny carson who lived nearby had no idea we were there came in and just oh he came over and dave asked him to sit and join him so we joined him go ahead like four days later johnny gets a call from his accountant and says did you spend thirty thousand dollars at granita on a saturday night no i had uh dave at the table and the two other three other people at the table well apparently he had his entire staff there and they were under the waiter was on the understanding you wanted to pick up the tap the entire room now it was very sweet of him he didn't he didn't contest it or anything but anyway i'm not sure that's a drop in the bucket to johnny but you know sure but uh a delightful story and and i mean i've heard it told a few different places peter sally told that uh uh his rendition of that story um on on the tribute show um that i guess you would have been gone by the tribute show yeah because you left to know four right johnny passed an o5 yes uh that's true peter was sally was great peter was that very interesting guy very interesting guy very nice guy very very nice guy uh perfect perfect a perfect person for dave to deal with because he could you know very comforting presence and knowledgeable been around forever yeah not a pushover by any stretch of the imagination but kindness being the the paramount uh yeah yeah absolutely absolutely um i i am so grateful for this oh i'm going to throw i'm going to throw a real curveball into this um were you around the night that dave's microphone got stolen do you remember that no you remember that wrong you don't remember that at all okay uh the only one thing i do remember along that line was dave was after the monologue gave us at home base one night yep and somebody came out from the blue doors with a suitcase yeah a briefcase and sat down yeah and we stopped this who knew what he was they stopped the show with security marty wall the big security guy comes over and escorts him out he was just a really crazy guy didn't have any mal intentions but really yeah there wasn't a bit it was it was a guy who came through the blue doors and sat down yeah yeah oh my gosh and did i don't know unless he looked like he looked like he was as unimpressive working as an nbc executive so i'm guessing that's how they get i'm guessing how that's how they get through there you know um i asked if you kept up with the show after you left obviously you would make appearances and things like that um have you watched any of dave's stuff post retirement have you watched my next guest or any of that stuff oh yeah i watched my next guest sure and me too very glad mary barclay is producing that's a producer credit which is good so might be up for an emmy here oh i sure hope so i i i love watching um the evolution of of dave it's interesting hosting this show uh one of the things i wasn't prepared for is how that there are a lot of enthusiasts who really have cemented themselves in certain parts of dave's uh eras um and and you know you know loved late night didn't like late show don't like my next guest at all or or some who are exactly the opposite sure you know i like my next guest a lot now because dave's actually being a little bit more vulnerable and it's longer and all this sort of stuff um you know i just love the entire evolution and i love watching it that way one of the things i love watching are uh you know don giller's uh compilations unbelievable oh they're so good they're so good and and i hope that um you know there are ways that we can incorporate this style back into um you know the new all the stuff that walter and company are doing phenomenal stuff phenomenal stuff but how they show the evolution you know his his talk show one where it shows dave doing talk show hosts from the very beginning right till the end and you can watch oh yeah oh i tell you how i met the dons yeah i was walking walking on 53rd street toward hello deli probably which is by the way a place you really should visit if you're in new york i totally agree i didn't know it is those guys are great including oh yeah they're fantastic a guy can look to me i had no idea who it was it has a vhs tape he said this is the tape of dave appearing on tom snyder's show you're in the third row second from the aisle by the way i'm don giller but people call me the dots yeah the mind uh encyclopedia uh is just is is is that he that that man has is is so impressive and he uh he has extended um so much grace to us and and he fact checks us and and oh he's amazing he's amazing so happy yeah my daughter was i mean this happens all the time my daughter was with her boyfriend and she told him about how she'd appeared on the show yeah and everybody was the cutest girl ever but at any rate so he hadn't seen it i couldn't find the vcr so i just i texted the dons and five minutes later he said here's the link it's crazy how quick he is at that um and and these these compilations that he would put up uh were so you know like my wife is one of the best cooks in the world i always say she cooks with love and you can feel it you can you can just you know and and and don would put these up with so much love and care you know and he would you know they'd have a very very minimalist in the sense of what would be in between each clip but then a clip of stuff that didn't make the air would be there it'd be like a b side that you don't expect any no no proper circumstance no fanfare if you're watching you're paying attention you see something it's oh my gosh look at this little moment that's in there as well and he just peppers these compilations with that i love the evolution um like i said that talk show one is really good because you see a young dave uh where interviewing wasn't his uh you know his paramount skill and then you go to the end of that compilation or maybe part two or three or four or five and you see that he is a superior interviewer now um you know you mentioned tom snyder that's where my next guest kind of is now you know with with some video flourishes here and there but dave's doing long form and i love it so much one of the ways that i uh i like to end these episodes is by asking uh folks like yourself if there were three people you would like to see dave interview on the next season of my next guest uh you know pop culture all that stuff who cares about any of that throw all that out there if there's three people that you would like to see dave do a long four co forum conversation with who would they be wow uh i think elvis costello just because he's great he's a great guest great interview great somebody maybe some writer that well i don't know if thomas burger's even still alive but i remember turning dave onto thomas berger who who wrote a lot of great novels very very funny guy yeah if he's alive well i guess that does not be alive these things no we do these dead or alive actually yeah yeah we've had we've had folks and uh steve allen because steve allen was often cited as one of the forefathers of the kind of stuff dave's doing ernie kovacs also but i remember you're watching the westinghouse show westinghouse steve allen show all the time he would do stuff at the farmers market in la they would have they would close off the street they would have weird kind of stuff that was very very prescient in terms of what dave was going to be doing you know 30 40 years later and i remember when steve allen was on the show walking around before the show and you know getting ready to go to makeup and he's got a he's recording he's going idea for a song and he said he's talking to the thing and i remember talking to jack parr they go i think this is when i talked to him might have been an article i was talking to jack parker pre-interview when he was on his front porch in connecticut he's going to see a drinking gin and tonic it's nice yeah i mentioned steve allen and something like that how about the fact that he's such a big prolific songwriter and he said yeah he says he's written 3 000 songs name two i know anyway on that bitter note no it's uh it's all it's all amazing um and and i i did my very very best uh to avoid talking about andy kaufman because i andy cough i love andy kaufman so much but you've talked about him a lot uh you know i've talked about him a lot i have not talked about the general law because i didn't know it i don't think dave knew it maybe he did maybe didn't i don't know all i know is knowing having lived in the south for many years if you tell a real tough guy if you whisper in his ear you're an [ __ ] things will ensue sure and i think that's what happened i think he just knew how to trigger him i don't think they had to rehearse it i mean i think it would have uh he would have been more prepared to fall down and stuff and i don't know i just don't think he did i think he knew the trigger yeah he pulled the trigger and my favorite part is two things marty wall the big beefy security guy hustling over and dave saying something like well i i think you can say some of those words on tv well i don't think you i don't think you can say all those words on tv by the way here's a footnote please dave uh andy kaufman once declared himself in l.a it's a bit he did at the comedy store i guess regularly the intergen intergender wrestling champion yes sir one of the women he wrestled once was meryl marco good night didn't know that i know it's true oh my god you just i'm so grateful you just told me that i i haven't i i i well we can talk about this maybe out here i have i have a history in the professional wrestling business a little bit not as a wrestler uh but i have been invited behind the curtain and and i do have a bit of an inroad into jimmy hart and to jerry and his colleagues his cousin jerry lawler both of which who spent time so much time with andy i've actually i hired jimmy hart once and i mean he he he told me over at dinner he spent three hours talking telling me andy calvin's stories about he they would go to graceland all the time because when when andy and jerry were feuding back in the south the good guys and the bad guys weren't supposed to talk to each other at all so jimmy would be jimmy would be the the go-between um and and so anyway they went when they would do it they would go to graceland and they would do all these things um and and i know i pride myself on knowing a lot of stuff i had not heard that merrill was one of the the people that that andy wrestled that's that you just blew me away with that are you still in contact with meryl at all oh yeah by social media we text back and forth once in a while we i'm not in touch with anybody really too often i seriously play social media kobe just knocked me out of the ball game and i didn't have it i just didn't want to get it i have a footnote by the way i have a i have a niece i love who's an attorney and also works in the caa's uh mixed martial arts division okay and represents a lot of a lot of people though yep that's it that's that's a great footnote no that's phenomenal i've got my granddaughter in mma right now as well and uh that's that's that's fantastic jerry i i i'm so grateful that um that uh some of the people that we know married us together here in this connection i'm really grateful for this um please come back like sooner than later i i i would love i'm so grateful that you have taken time to to do this i believe i don't know why it is dude seriously i don't know why i have this compulsion to be a torchbearer um it literally was my daughter-in-law sitting down and it might have actually been rupert's thing uh where she was telling me a sketch that ellen did and it was i think it might have been even rupert's rupert's um you know hidden hidden mic uh you know sketch uh that they used to do and and she basically said oh ellen is so cutting edge and she's doing all this and i'm like no and i sat her down and i made her watch so much of the stuff that you guys did um because again you you you shattered uh the fourth wall you made us all part of it and i think that maybe my response to wanting to be a person that that that helps make it so it people don't forget um and and and the the fact that i get a chance to talk to you about this and i'm inelegant in talking about it again this is the first time i've gotten nervous uh during this whole thing is i'm actually nervous talking to you because i just have so much reverence for everything that you guys did you were there from the very beginning jerry from the bottom of my heart thank you very much the pathways in my brain are the way they are because of you guys and and uh no no no apologize yeah no no no need to apologize i wear that as a badge of honor um you were part of something really really special jerry and i just got to tell you uh myself and and the emerging audience uh you know the few dozen of us um for this show we we uh we really really are grateful for everything that you guys did thank you so much thank you so much i'm very excited to even get the invitation and i will be back if if no if no libel litigation ensues from this performance hey we're fine on our end as long as you're okay on your end okay okay sir thank you jerry i appreciate it so much i'm gonna do a quick outro here and then we can go from there um they go really really really quick and uh this one even went into overtime um gerard mulligan so happy to have had him on here uh you know what i'm gonna say this the one time until i don't have to say it anymore if you like the letterman podcast please like it share it subscribe to it hell even if you don't like it please do the same thing because the faster that happens uh and the audience kind of shows up and does what it's gonna do uh i don't have to say that anymore but we do really appreciate it right now where people do that um we just want to uh preserve and and and revisit so much of this stuff that was just done one night genius we laughed and it got kind of thrown away because they had another show uh it's really important i think that we pick up some of the stuff that got thrown away and talk about it again because it was so first-rate high-quality stuff uh his name is gerard mulligan my name is mike chisholm this has been another episode of the letterman podcast thank you and good night