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Brother Theodore, one of David Letterman’s all-time most memorable guests, lectures us on ‘Foodism’
01.18.2019
01:07 pm
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“My name, as you may have guessed, is Theodore. I come from a strange stock. The members of my family were mostly epileptics, vegetarians, stutterers, triplets, nail biters. But we’ve always been happy.”—Brother Theodore

I’m not sure this story qualifies as an actual anecdote or just a meandering way of introducing an amazing collection of YouTube clips, but here goes nuthin’...

As a lad growing up in Wheeling, WV in the 1970s, at approximately the age of twelve, I decided that I was no longer going to eat the food I was being served by my parents. In a home where greasy pan-fried hamburgers (or “Steakums”) were the typical main course and Kraft macaroni and cheese substituted for the “vegetable group,” I simply wanted to eat healthier. My parents were not very happy about this this demand—for that is what it was—and it seemed really insulting to them, but what could they do? The severity of my new diet must have really taken them by surprise. I became, pretty much a Fruitatarian, or a raw foodist, years before this was common. What influenced my twelve-year-old mind to do something like this was an obscure book I found in the local library with the distinctly unappetizing title, Mucusless Diet Healing System by Dr. Arnold Ehret.
 

 
I won’t go into the details of the diet, which extols the value of avoiding “mucus” and “pus” in your food—sounds like an admirable goal, right?—but suffice to say that while Dr. Ehret’s work still has many followers—he’s thought of as the founder of Naturopathy—many diet experts consider him a total quack. But I am not here to debate the merits of his ideas, pro or con, merely to offer some brief context before I send you off to read this short essay, The Definitive Cure of Chronic Constipation.

Okay? You got that? At the very least skim it. The language he uses is quite distinctive isn’t it? The total disgust he expresses about the workings of the digestive system is almost Nietzschean in its peculiar character. This absolutist tone must’ve contributed greatly to my pre-teen interest in the diet.
 

 
Now flash-forward to the late 1990s, New York City. I had become friends with the then 91-year-old Theodore Gottlieb, better-known as the infamous dark comedian Brother Theodore, a big influence on monologists Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch and Spalding Gray, who had been performing his totally insane one-man show at the tiny 13th Street Theater in Greenwich Village for ages and was a frequent guest on David Letterman’s late night talkshow during the 1980s. Theodore, or rather his persona, was once described as “Boris Karloff, surrealist Salvador Dalí, Nijinsky and Red Skelton…simultaneously.” That’s not far off the mark.

At his age, it was not much of an exaggeration to say that Theodore had “been around forever.” He was delivering lines like “The only thing that keeps me alive is the hope of dying young” long before I was born. What was a great gag when he was, say, 50 years old, and then to STILL be delivering a line like that at the age of 93, as he did on my UK television series, Disinformation, well that, shall we say existential tension is what made his nonagenarian performances so incredibly spell-binding.
 
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His show was in the form of a stern lecture. It was nearly impossible to tell if this was an act you were seeing or if he was utterly batshit crazy, a berserk “genius” impervious to laughter as long as an audience bought tickets. The props were a chair, a table, a chalk board and a styrofoam cup. There was a single spotlight. If you were anywhere near the stage in that little theater he could totally scare the shit out of you. Of course, whenever I brought friends, I took them right down the front!

It was an act, I can assure you. Theodore in real life was a mellow old bohemian guy who lived several lives in his 94 years. He’d been in Dachau, for instance. His mother, stepfather and sister were killed, but Theodore’s release was secured by none other than Albert Einstein—his mother’s adulterous lover!—who paid his way to America after the war. He’d also been on Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and most famously on Late Night with David Letterman (Theodore, along with Harvey Pekar, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and Captain Beefheart, was one of the most memorable and emblematic oddball Letterman guests of his early era).  He was in The Burbs playing Tom Hanks’ great uncle and was the voice of “Gollum” in The Hobbit cartoon. He had a cameo in Orson Welles’ The Stranger. He was even in a porno movie, an X-rated parody of Jaws called Gums (Theo plays the boat captain, in a thankfully non-balling role. The former concentration camp prisoner is also seen, rather inexplicably, wearing a Nazi SS uniform for most of the film). In his nineties he was dating a woman in her mid-forties. He rode a bike around New York City until he was well into his eighties. Theodore was an old Beatnik, that’s the way I saw him. I think that’s largely the way he saw himself.
 

 
And talk about a weird way to make a living! He really wasn’t anything like his crazed monk act in real life, though. And let me tell you, when you are in your thirties and have a friend who is in their nineties… you learn things about life. Not all of them good, either. 94 years is a long time to live. Too long, if you ask me. I’m quite sure he felt that way, too.

Theodore apparently had great difficulty memorizing lines, even his own material and so he only really ever did two major monologues—he’d switch off between them when he felt like it—for over 40 years. One was called “Foodism”—we’ll get to this one in a minute—and the other was called “Quadrupidism” where he’d extol the virtues of human beings getting down on all fours (everything went to hell when our ancestors stood up according to his theories).
 
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One day I was visiting Theodore at his apartment and I was looking at his sparse book shelf. On it sat The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Baudelaire’s Les Fleur du Mal, an Edgar Allan Poe anthology, The Portable Nietzsche, some Saint Augustine, and… ta da… The Mucusless Diet Healing System by Dr. Arnold Ehret. I remarked to him that I myself was a pre-teen adherent to Arnold Ehret’s unconventional ideas about diet and he replied that it was the inspiration for his “Foodism” monologue.  “I merely exaggerated his writings. Just slightly. That was all it took!”

My jaw hit the ground. He’d managed to craft one of the most brilliant comic monologues of all time based on Ehret’s zany diet-sprach. I was awestruck at how amazing this revelation really was. I mean… how creative!!!

You read that essay about constipation, right? Promise me? Now go watch this extended excerpt from the “Foodism” lecture performed on Late Night with David Letterman in the mid-80s.
 

 
After the jump, every single Brother Theodore appearance on ‘Late Night With David Letterman!

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.18.2019
01:07 pm
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Of broken teeth & David ‘Boo-wie’: Iggy Pop’s endearing first Letterman appearance, 1982
03.31.2017
11:09 am
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I’m very terrified of this country, the USA…some of the values are so foul and so wicked… It’s very wicked the way people are restrained, and I’m in favor of something else.

—Iggy Pop predicting our current reality in his 1982 book I Need More: The Stooges and Other Stories

I make no apologies for looking for any opportunity to write about Iggy Pop. He is as close to a god walking among us and the only deity I’d be likely to bow down to if the situation ever presented itself. Today’s deep-dive into Iggy’s illustrious past involves his very first appearance on Late Night with David Letterman in December of 1982.

Iggy had just penned his book I Need More: The Stooges and Other Stories and was on the show to promote the book as well as his latest album, Zombie Birdhouse. After being introduced by Dave, Iggy jangles out onto the stage wearing bright red boots, turquoise blue eyeshadow, fierce black cat eyeliner, and blush. He spazzes brilliantly through the frenetic single “Eat or be Eaten” and then heads to the couch for the interview segment with Dave. And that’s when we get to the really good stuff.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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03.31.2017
11:09 am
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That time Chris Elliott took a huge crap on artsy mime troupe Mummenschanz on ‘Letterman,’ 1986
07.03.2015
10:13 am
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In his long career as a giant smartass pretending to be a know-it-all idiot, Chris Elliott has pissed off many, many people, including directors Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, and Jonathan Demme. His autobio The Guy Under the Sheets relates those tales in detail, and is well worth the time, but I was bummed that the book contained only a passing (and utterly bullshitfull) mention of one of my favorites of the many stunts he pulled on Late Night with David Letterman in the ‘80s—the time he gigantically took the piss out of the justly venerated Swiss mime troupe Mummenschanz.

Mummenschanz have been around for over four decades—I drove six hours to catch a show on their 40th anniversary tour in 2012, totally worth it as it was founding member Bernie Schürch’s final tour. Their performances conceal the artists’ identities, as they revolve largely around heavy costumery and mask play, sometimes downright pugilistic mask play, actually. A old post by my DM colleague Amber Frost does them justice, and I’d encourage you to have a look at it. (And I had to chuckle when I saw a commenter on that post had mentioned and posted the video I embedded below. Who says you should never read the comments?) They came to attention in the US during the ‘70s with appearances on TV variety shows, including a career-making guest spot on The Muppet Show, and their popularity grew to the point that they could enjoy a Broadway run from 1977-1980.

But it was during a later Broadway run, at the Helen Hayes theater in 1986, that Chris Elliott had his fun with them.

Now, I’m sure there was no mean intent in this jab, but it’s pretty audacious to make such a complete buffoonery of such wonderful and broadly-appealing artists with a golden international reputation. On Sep 30, 1986, David Letterman, brandishing a copy of Mummenschanz’s then-new book, introduced the troupe. In no time flat, it was clear that something was amiss, as the spotlight illuminated only a cheap costume-shop hot dog suit. Then came a fork and a spoon, not even really dancing, just sort of jogging in place and waving their arms like idiot children. Then out came a final dancer—later revealed as Elliott—in a mask of toilet paper rolls, which was a direct shot, as Mummenschanz actually used toilet paper roll masks. The audience is silent save for a few titters as it dawned on them that they’d been had. Someone started shouting “MORE, MORE” at the end—obviously that guy got it—and if a 2008 Rolling Stone article is to be believed, that guy was Screw magazine’s Al Goldstien. If you’re salty with me for spoiling, don’t be, the GOOD stuff is in the interview segment. Enjoy.
 

 
34 episodes of Elliott’s amazing and preposterous Adult Swim series Eagleheart recently turned up for streaming on HuluPlus. If you’re a fan of Elliott’s and a Hulu subscriber, I’d vigorously encourage you to dive straight on into that ASAP.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Before there was Blue Man Group, there was Mummenschanz
Chris Elliott’s ‘Action Family’ is a brilliant, must-see genre mashup

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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07.03.2015
10:13 am
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Chews your idols: Celebrities upstaged by a wad of gum
06.23.2015
11:16 pm
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“Celebrigum” brainchild, Steve Young—pictured here with The Gum
 
In August of 2010, a strange website called CelebriGum appeared on the Internet, without fanfare, conducting some sort of Dadaist examination of America’s unwavering worship of fame and celebrity. For three years straight, CelebriGum presented a barrage of images of famous celebrities who, without their knowledge, were photographed from a second story office window with a piece of old hardened gum on the window ledge that was always in the frame. CelebriGum featured a revolving door of celebrities of all kinds, but The Gum remained constant and unchanging. Celebrities were made to share photographic space with a piece of inanimate matter that eventually came to be as beloved, to some fans, as the celebrities themselves.

CelebriGum was the brainchild of Steve Young, who (up until May 20th of this year) was a 25 year veteran writer for David Letterman. But Young, a Harvard graduate who cut his comedy teeth writing for the Harvard Lampoon, has been involved in much more than just writing jokes for late night television. He has written for The Simpsons, most notably the season eight masterpiece entitled Hurricane Neddy.

In 2000, he won an Annie Award for his screenplay adaptation of the animated holiday special Olive the Other Reindeer. And he’s recently written what many consider to be the definitive history of the industrial musical in the remarkably strange and informative book Everything’s Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals.

Given his background in creating and disseminating the odd and hilarious, a peculiar sociological project like CelebriGum was certainly not outside the realm of possible weirdness for Young. And as a writer for The Late Show, he could choose from an endless supply of celebrities as they were arriving at or leaving the Ed Sullivan Theater. He would linger at the second floor window and wait for the opportunity to snap perfect photos of some of the most famous people in the world—alongside an old piece of gum.

Needless to say, it wasn’t long before Young’s photos, which would always be presented on the website with some sort of witty caption or deep observation, began to acquire a fan-base. More precisely, The Gum began to acquire a fan base. True fans of The Gum understood what Young was up to with his surreal goofiness, and they looked forward to each new installment to see who was the latest celebrity being made to look ridiculous from above. CelebriGum was, as David Letterman described it, “a perfectly silly, genius idea.”
 

David Letterman and The Gum
 
CelebriGum ran for three years before Young voluntarily pulled the plug on the project—but during that time, he actually got to hold a New York Times reviewed gallery exhibition of his CelebriGum photos.

We were fortunate enough to pin Steve Young down for a few questions about the CelebriGum experience:

How long had you been taking photos of celebrities from your office window before you realized that those A-listers were being upstaged by a piece of old gum that was clearly visible in each photograph? What kind of an epiphany did you have at that moment?

Steve Young: It was actually the other way around. I noticed the gum first, somewhere around the beginning of 2010. I looked at it every day as I hung out by a window in the hall near Dave Letterman’s dressing room, and thought “maybe I can do a photo project of the gum enduring all sorts of weather until someday presumably it falls off.” I took a few photos, but it wasn’t really very interesting.  Then one day, the Eureka moment: I realized that celebrities were getting out of limos and SUV’s on the street below. I could get both at the same time.  CelebriGum was born: “Different day, different celebrity, same gum.” I launched the CelebriGum.com site in August of 2010.
 

“The Gum” itself, in a rare close-up.
 
Your photographs possess a keen sense of the absurd. Can you elaborate on any techniques you may have used to enhance the CelebriGum experience? Or did you find that the element of total randomness, as opposed to any staging or manipulation, produced the most striking images?

SY: There was a certain element of “the broken clock that’s right twice a day.” I found that after the initial conceptual notion of celebrity plus old gum had settled in, I was searching for ways to get pictures that were visually interesting within the very limiting framework I’d chosen. Sometimes it was just snapping a lot of pictures and later noticing the telling detail that made one particular shot a winner. Sometimes it was new conditions, like snow or a blinding onslaught of paparazzi flashes at night. Sometimes it was the lucky composition of a guest coming in on a gray day with an orange traffic cone providing the one vivid flash of color in the picture. And sometimes it was a magical moment of a star interacting with a crowd, or a star trudging along the sidewalk seemingly alone. But plenty of the photos aren’t very interesting. I only presented a very small percentage of what I shot.

I didn’t do much manipulation. Once in a while I did some overtly clumsy photo doctoring in the service of a joke, but mostly it was cropping and adjusting levels to get the picture I wanted.

Were cell phone cameras used for the majority of these photos? At some point there’s an upgrade in the quality of the photos. Can you tell us about your gear?

SY: At first I was just using the very modest camera in a circa 2007 Motorola flip phone. That was okay for the first few months, but I realized that I’d need something more sophisticated if I was going to continue when the days got shorter and it got dark in late afternoon. I bought a used Canon point and shoot camera on eBay to use as my CelebriGum camera. That did pretty well for a while, though night-time photos were still a challenge. I eventually bought a Sony RX100, which is an outstanding camera that can still fit in a pocket, not just for CelebriGum but for my other photography as well. And during the last winter of CelebriGum I bought a little light that I used to illuminate the gum on the ledge. It may be a cool photo of Mick Jagger down on the street, but if you can’t see the gum, it ain’t a CelebriGum photo.
 

Mick Jagger and The Gum
 
Your photos seem symbolic of something much deeper than the simple juxtaposition of famous people with a piece of old gum as a goof. CelebriGum seemed to be providing a winking commentary on the inherent ridiculousness associated with fame, and the possible dangers posed to those who seek it—a hammering home of the notion that fame and celebrity will eventually chew you up and spit you out. The poignant undercurrent running through the entire CelebriGum narrative is that fame is ephemeral and fleeting. Some of your images actually evoke a feeling of profound sadness. Was any of that intentional?

SY: That was always there, though I didn’t want to be heavy-handed about it. Ideally, the better pictures worked because they were weird and visually striking, and for each post I always tried to have a humorous riff inspired by the photos. But from the beginning, I thought that the juxtaposition of celebrity and old discarded gum had that potential built-in commentary. Just as you say; fame chews you up and spits you out when your flavor has been extracted. Looking back at the run of photos now, there are many instances in which a temporarily well-known person has fallen off the radar. In at least a couple cases, celebrities in the pictures have died.  Everything is temporary, even the excitement and glamour of an A-list star. Someday all that will remain of each of us is a wad of inert matter. But in the meantime, ooh, look, Tom Hanks!  Tom!  Tom!  Over here!
 

Tom Hanks and The Gum
 
How much of CelebriGum’s popularity do you think was based on the American fascination with celebrity schadenfreude? Do you think that the idea that famous celebrity millionaires were being taken down a notch and unknowingly made to look kind of silly by The Gum’s stoic presence in every shot was an element of CelebriGum’s success?

SY: From the aerial view, I got an interesting perspective on celebrity culture. It certainly doesn’t seem like much fun to be a celebrity. Sure, you get to ride in a luxury SUV, and an assistant carries your bottle of water, but parts of your life are dehumanizing, and not just because you’re being photographed with old gum. In many pictures, there’s a crush of paparazzi photographers waiting for the star to step out of their vehicle, and they’re not there because they care about Celebrity X, most likely, but because they need to make a buck. Nothing wrong with making a buck, but it just illustrates the cynicism of the machinery of fame. And if it’s someone who’s not a very big name, and the weather’s nasty, then there may be nobody jostling to get their photo, and that’s depressing in a different way. Then there are the fans. There were often many real fans excited to see a star and get a picture and maybe an autograph. But there was sometimes a creepy feral mob mentality to it. Dozens or hundreds of people screaming, supplicating, and if you didn’t feed the crowd and give them what they want and just dashed inside because you were late, “Boo!  You suck!” Meanwhile, twenty feet up, the gum serenely surveys the madness, unchanging. Yes, there are many wonderful entertainers and athletes and even politicians whose efforts enrich the world, but some days they would probably prefer to be the gum, literally and figuratively above it all. 

The element of the gum also was the great equalizer. Celebrity, assistant, security guard, photographer, fan, bike messenger, pedestrian: all equal in the presence of The Gum. Okay, the celebrity is special in one regard: they have to be there to provide the celebri- half of the equation. But I ended up regarding stars mainly as props for my photography.

After CelebriGum became more well-known, were you ever aware of any celebrities who arrived at the show hoping or expecting to be photographed from above with “The Gum?”

SY: There were a few celebrities who were aware of it, but it was generally after the fact. I’d give them a shout-out on Twitter, “Hey, look, you’re on CelebriGum!” and a few responded and were charmed. Alec Baldwin requested a copy of one of the photos. The only celebrity who ever looked up and acknowledged the camera was Jamie Oliver. He passed me as he came down the stairs from his dressing room after his appearance, and I said “Hi!  I’d like to take your picture from this window with this old gum once you’ve gotten down to the street! Could you look up and say hello?” He did look up but didn’t go so far as to wave. I’m sure it all seemed very odd.
 

Jamie Oliver and The Gum
 
Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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06.23.2015
11:16 pm
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That time all those Avengers appeared on ‘Late Night with David Letterman’
05.20.2015
12:51 pm
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It’ll be hard for me to imagine life without David Letterman on the tube. He’s been on late night TV since 1982, and as someone who was a tween during that era I’ve been watching him since probably 1984 or so. In high school he was one of my main heroes, and a lot of what I think I know or appreciate about comedy can be traced back to obsessive late night viewings of Brother Theodore, Pee-wee Herman, Marv Albert, Chris Elliott, Harvey Pekar, Biff Henderson, et al. on the kooky public/secret clubhouse he had going on NBC for quite a while there. At the risk of editorializing, I have found Dave’s CBS show far less essential, to the point that I don’t even really care that much that he’s retiring; the turning point in that process may actually have been the institutionalization of the top ten list, which started out as just another random segment, just like viewer mail. The problem besetting his show post-1988, say, is the same syndrome that has happened to the rest of the late night talk spectrum, which is that watching ultra-prepped actors winkingly play beer pong with Jimmy Fallon (or whomever) has basically no relation to the truly unscripted, fairly snide, and attitudinally aggressive antics that used to occur around 1 a.m. most weeknights during the 1980s.

After Late Night with David Letterman had been around a year or two, a lot of savvier people began referencing it. It felt during this time like renegade entertainment, an unusual commodity that was obscurely about the entertainment industry if not quite of it, and therefore it became a kind of a trope, if you could work “David Letterman” into your story you added a slight buzz of disposable knowingness, much like referencing some of the guests he had on (Pee-wee etc.). In effect, Letterman became a kind of punchline for the smarter set. The idea of John McEnroe or Charlie Brown or Tootsie or Hulk Hogan visiting Letterman’s NBC was a joke in and of itself.

Case in point, issue 239 of the Avengers from Marvel, the January 1984 issue, which trumpeted on its cover, “THE AVENGERS ON LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN!” See? It was mildly ridiculous, as everything that appeared on Late Night was mildly ridiculous.

In the issue, aspiring actor Simon Williams (a.k.a. Wonder Man) gets booked on Late Night, whose producers request a larger cast of Avengers to appear. A few of the reserve Avengers join Wonder Man on the show, not knowing that serial pest Fabian Stankowicz seeks to sabotage their appearance by planting various booby-traps around the set. Eventually Letterman konks Stankowicz on the head with a giant doorknob.

Here are a few images from the issue—if you click on them, you’ll get to see a slightly larger version.
 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.20.2015
12:51 pm
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Merrill Markoe: Unsung heroine of ‘Late Night with David Letterman’
05.12.2015
01:35 pm
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With the imminent retirement of the great David Letterman nigh upon us Dangerous Minds pal Mike Sacks, author of And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers and Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today’s Top Comedy Writers, the two best books ever published on the creative process of writing comedy, has generously allowed us to publish his extended interview with Late Night‘s original head writer, Merrill Markoe.

It was the Emmy award-winning Markoe, arguably as much as Letterman himself, who set the silly, ironic, smart and absurd tone of the show. This in-depth exploration of what made Late Night such amazing and precedent-shattering television during her tenure is an absolute pleasure to read.

Born in New York and raised in New Jersey, Miami, and the San Francisco Bay area, Merrill Markoe spent her youth reading Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker, as well as watching W.C. Fields for his “bizarre word choices.” She attended Berkeley and, after receiving a Master’s in Arts in 1973, she tried teaching art at the University of Southern California for a year but found herself restless. Instead, she audited a few scriptwriting and filmmaking classes and, in 1977, landed a writing job for The New Laugh-In, sans Rowan and Martin. The show, to the surprise of nobody, was a disaster, even with (or because of) cast members such as Robin Williams and former child evangelist Marjoe Gortner. (Not familiar with him? Rent the 1972 documentary Marjoe—please.)

When TV proved frustrating, Markoe tried her luck on the stand-up circuit in Los Angeles, mostly at The Comedy Store and the Improv, where she became friends with such promising (if still unknown) comics as Andy Kaufman and David Letterman. After a few wildly successful appearances on The Tonight Show, Letterman was given his own daytime talk show on NBC in 1980, and he brought in Markoe (whom he’d been dating since 1978) as his head writer. The show didn’t last long, partly because Letterman and Markoe’s humor didn’t translate to an early-morning crowd, and partly because they nearly burned the studio down (more on that later). Within four months, the show was canceled.

But, in 1982, NBC gave Letterman another chance, and, more important, a better time slot. Late Night with David Letterman—which came on just after The Tonight Show, hosted by Letterman’s idol, Johnny Carson—was a perfect fit, and, thanks largely to Markoe’s indispensable collaboration, it became a unique and inimitable comic creation.

Six years later, in 1988, Markoe abruptly left the show. As she’s written on her website, she’d “plumbed the depths of [her] ability to invent off-beat, comedic ideas for acerbic witty white male hosts in suits.”

Markoe moved back west, to Los Angeles, where she had little problem finding work. She wrote for TV shows as diverse as Newhart (1988), Moonlighting (1989) and Sex and the City (1999), and appeared as a writer/reporter on HBO’s Not Necessarily the News (1990) and Michael Moore’s political-satire TV Nation (1994). She also discovered a writing life outside of TV, contributing comedic essays and columns for Esquire, Glamour, People, Rolling Stone, Time, U.S. News & World Report, as well as The New York Times and the Huffington Post. She probably made the biggest impact, however, with her humor books, which have included such critical and fan favorites as What the Dogs Have Taught Me (1992), How to Be Hap-Hap-Happy Like Me! (1994), Merrill Markoe’s Guide to Love (1997), It’s My F—-ing Birthday (2002), The Psycho Ex Game (2004), Walking in Circles Before Lying Down (2006), Nose Down, Eyes Up (2008), Cool, Calm & Contentious: Essays (2011).


Mike Sacks: You once described yourself as “one of those 1960s art-student types.” Were you in any way a radical?

Merrill Markoe: I was certainly against the war in Vietnam. And I attended a Black Panther rally once—by myself, I might add. I was one of the few white people there. What I was doing there I cannot exactly explain, except that I attended almost every event that was within walking distance at the time. But, me being me, I always left early. I left every important cultural event of the sixties and seventies early. Name any one. Altamont? I left before the killing. I felt compelled to attend these events, but I never really liked big, angry crowds, or drugs, or the smell of patchouli. By the way, everything smelled like patchouli back then! Even sweaty, knife-wielding bikers who drank Ripple.

One of the few events I did not attend was Woodstock. I wouldn’t have enjoyed being a part of that big, happy, muddy, mellow community. I probably would have been standing off on the sidelines somewhere, in my beloved paint-splattered clothes, complaining about the weather and the sound system, and making snide remarks about all the embarrassing free-form naked dancing. Talk about a place that probably reeked of patchouli. No question I would have definitely left early.
 

 
So it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that you felt like an outsider in the sixties?

I’m very consistent; I’ve felt like an outsider every single decade. Some of it is because I struggle to control my tendency toward contrarianism. If I know there is something I am supposed to be doing or saying or wearing, I feel compelled to resist—particularly with creative endeavors, like writing. If I see an obvious punch line or plotline driving toward me, I can’t help but make a sharp left turn into the unexpected. I don’t like to replicate what I’ve seen done before—I don’t like to give people what they expect. I think it’s my job to come up with a surprising angle or to add some personal twist.

You first met David Letterman when you were doing stand-up in Los Angeles in the late seventies. Would you say that one of his strengths as a stand-up, even at the beginning of his career, was the degree to which the audience felt a strong rapport with him—that they always felt they were in on the joke?

Yes, correct. He was always a crowd pleaser. Plus, he always had Johnny Carson in mind as his model. Dave always knew how to connect with an audience, even from the very beginning.

Both you and Letterman started in the trenches of showbiz. Can you tell me about the first TV show you worked on together?

Dave and I worked on a 1978 CBS variety show called Mary, starring Mary Tyler Moore and featuring Michael Keaton. I don’t know if it qualifies as the “trenches” of show business, but I do know it was canceled after three or four episodes, even though 60 Minutes was the lead-in and Mary Tyler Moore was America’s sweetheart. The show was an uncomfortable combination of old showbiz style variety, mixed with a miscalculated attempt to include some of that wacky, absurdist comic sensibility that the kids liked so much from that new program Saturday Night Live.

For example, the Mary show did a parody of the Village People song “Macho Man” that had Dave and Michael Keaton dressed in L.L.Bean catalog outfits, in a setting that was made to look like a scene from Deliverance. I forget where the comedy was supposed to be in all this. I do know the powers-that-be didn’t realize that “Macho Man” was a gay anthem. I also remember vividly that Dave was in real agony about this bit of levity.

What was the second TV show you both worked on?

Leave It to Dave. It was a 1978 pilot for Dave’s own talk show, which never actually made it to air.

From what I’ve read, this is a notorious show. The set resembled a pyramid, and Letterman sat on a throne.

Because this was at the very beginning of Dave’s talk show career, he was sort of afraid to assert his point of view. There were people he hired and put in charge who supposedly knew all about the right way to execute a talk show. Unfortunately, one of their goofy ideas was to have a pyramid-shape on the set that contained built-in benches covered with shag carpeting for Dave and his guests to sit on. No boring old-school desk and chairs for us! Better to look like the interviews were taking places at a “carpeteria” trade show at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas.

The set was not even the worst idea that came down that particular pike. I remember that one of Dave’s managers wanted the guests to make their entrances by sliding down a chute and then landing on a sea of throw pillows. But even more vivid, is the memory of how little blood there was in Dave’s face when he was presenting the news to me. Somehow we succeeded in getting that idea shit-canned.

How did your next project, The David Letterman Show, come about? This morning show, a precursor to Late Night, was on NBC for only a short period in the summer and fall of 1980, but it became very influential with comedians and humor writers.

Around this time, Dave began appearing on The Tonight Show, and I was helping him come up with comedy material for those appearances.

Do you remember any of the jokes you wrote for him?

Here’s one: “The commercial for Alpo dog food boasts that Alpo is superior because it contains ‘All beef and not a speck of cereal.’ My dog spends his days going through the garbage and drinking out of the toilet. Something tells me he might not mind a speck of cereal.”

So Dave was getting a very good response from his Tonight Show appearances, and it didn’t take long for NBC to offer him his own morning talk show. Ninety minutes a day. Live. At 10:00 A.M. This prospect seemed less appealing to me than it did to Dave, but by now I was in over my head with regard to both of Freud’s two big areas: work and love. So, I just kept playing along.
 

 

Steve O’Donnell—a longtime writer for Letterman—once described the show’s staff as those who really liked television but also kind of hated television. Was this true for you?

Yes, absolutely. I was particularly sick of seeing everyone on television doing that bigger-than-life, fraudulent, full of shit television persona—which was mainly how the shows all worked then. I welcomed the idea of a host being caught having real reactions to odd situations.

A lot of the segments on the morning show later showed up on Late Night. Can you tell me how “Stupid Pet Tricks” began? Was it meant to be a one-time deal only?

One immediate task—when we were determining how to construct a daily format—was to create segments that could be repeated. Since there was a horizon of future shows spreading out in front of us that seemed to stretch into infinity, it seemed to call for free-form thinking. Dave and I had two dogs and we wanted to do something with animals besides just having the guy from the zoo bring on the pygmy marmosets. I remembered how in college my friends and I would be hanging around in the evenings, talking and drinking. One form of constant entertainment was to put socks on this one dog. Everyone I knew did some version of a silly thing like that with their pets, so we ran an ad to see if we could pull a segment together like that.

When it succeeded, we mutated that idea into “Stupid Human Tricks.” We also considered “Stupid Baby Tricks,” but pulled the plug because—based on what we were seeing in the other two categories—we were afraid it would encourage child endangerment.

Were you responsible for “Viewer Mail”?

More or less. When we started “Viewer Mail” on the morning show, originally the idea was meant as a kind of parody of something 60 Minutes was doing, where they’d show a mailbox and a magnified fragment of a letter. Their letters always commented on something of importance: “Regarding your piece on nuclear disarmament, I just wanted to say …”

I thought it would be funny to show the mail we were receiving, which was mostly pages full of scrawled non sequiturs from deranged people. By the time the show re-appeared at night, this had evolved into little sketches that played off the content.

Do any other particular moments stand out from the morning show?

It was pretty much nonstop bizarre particular moments. One highlight was when we decided to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of a couple from Long Island named Sam and Betty Kotinoff. We selected them from a group of people who wrote in and volunteered. Our plan was to show snippets of this big party throughout the regular broadcast, and we would check in with them to see how everything was going.

For music, we hired the Harve Mann Trio, a wedding band dressed in tuxes. We also hired a very flamboyant decorator and party planner to do the catering. He not only brought in ice sculptures, but he also staged a lovely finale, where synthetic rose petals would float down from the ceiling while all the revelers held sparklers and swayed in contented delight. So it came to pass that as Dave signed off, the rose petals floated down and met the sparklers and created a number of small fires. As the credits rolled, the show ended with the Kotinoff family stomping out flames, as stage hands rushed in with fire extinguishers. Wafting from behind the clouds of smoke was Harve Mann still singing his closing song, “Can’t Smile Without You.”

Dave and I were really mortified until we saw the tapes. Then we couldn’t stop laughing.

What did you hope to achieve with this morning show? Did you feel that it was time for a talk show that reflected your own sensibility?

Yeah, both Dave and I felt that way. But Dave had more respect and passion for the history of TV talk shows than I did. Besides his love for The Tonight Show, Dave’s favorite role model was always the old Steve Allen Westinghouse Show [1962-1964], which had elements of stunts, character pieces, and audience interaction. I liked some of Steve Allen’s work as well, such as when he would jump into a vat of Jell-O, or had himself covered with tea bags so he could be dunked up and down inside a giant aquarium by a crane to make an enormous container of tea.

But to be honest, I never much liked The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Dave used to say that Johnny Carson seemed like the hip uncle whom he wanted to please. But to me, that show was a place where they never booked any smart women. I couldn’t help but view it through the prism of my U.C. Berkeley Art School experiences, which boiled down to a simple “fuck that plastic showbiz shit.”

What smart women in particular were missing from The Tonight Show?

Any smart women, of any stripe. Writers, reporters, producers, filmmakers, artists, scientists, eccentrics. No comediennes ever appeared on that show besides Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller. Certainly none of the comediennes my own age appeared on the show.

On The Tonight Show, women were either amazingly glamorous actresses or they were booked to create cleavage-related humor and flirt with Johnny. I guess there must have been exceptions I am not remembering—the opera singer Beverly Sills, for example, or Carol Burnett.

But, as a whole, there never seemed to be any cerebrally oriented female content. I thought of it as one more example of the old showbiz sensibility that I was so sick of. Johnny reminded me of Hef in Playboy After Dark. Dave could look at Johnny and see a guy with whom he could joke and communicate. I would only see the kind of guy who would want no part of me and my kind.

More Merrill Markoe after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.12.2015
01:35 pm
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‘The Riddlers’: Watch David Letterman host 1977 game show pilot
04.30.2015
11:01 am
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Dave on The Tonight Show
David Letterman on ‘The Tonight Show,’ c. 1978

As everyone knows, David Letterman is retiring. On May 20th, after 33 years on late night TV, Dave will host his the final Late Show with David Letterman on CBS. When its previous incarnation, Late Night with David Letterman, debuted on February 1st, 1982, on NBC, it may have seemed to some viewers that he appeared out of thin air, but Dave had already worked a number of jobs in the entertainment industry, including stints as a TV weatherman; a joke writer for Good Times star Jimmie “J.J.” (“Dyn-O-Mite!”) Walker; and as a cast member on Mary Tyler Moore’s short-lived comedy-variety series, Mary. After several high profile appearances on The Tonight Show, NBC gave him his own morning talk show in 1980. Though The David Letterman Show crashed and burned that same year, the network gave Dave another chance, and, thus, Late Night was born.
 
Dave on Mork & Mindy
Looking sharp on ‘Mork & Mindy’,1979

Letterman also appeared on a few game shows in the 1970s, including one called The Riddlers, which he hosted. In 1977, a pilot episode was produced, but the networks passed on it, so the show went unaired. The pilot did eventually see the light of day, though, when it appeared on the Game Show Network’s Halloween special in 2000.
 
The Riddlers
 
The celebrity panelists assembled for The Riddlers all made the rounds back in the day and will be recognizable to anyone who digs ‘70s game shows (including Michael McKean, then known as one-half of Lenny & Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley). On this episode of The Riddlers (they’re all pretending like it’s not the first), the familiar are facing off against a group of unknown dance instructors…Huh? Don’t ask me. I can tell you that the show revolves around riddles (duh), which alternate between clever and Match Game-style bawdiness.

As for Letterman, this is the Dave we would come to know and love—repeatedly insulting the panelists, and biting the hand that feeds (right out of the gate, he makes fun of the game show format), inducing quite a few laugh-out-loud laughs with his now-patented dry wit and heavy-on-the-sarcastic tone. The celebs ain’t half-bad either (unsurprisingly, McKean is the funniest), and neither is The Riddlers, but it’s just as well it didn’t get picked up. Dave just might have become the next Wink Martindale, and the world would have been deprived of “Stupid Pet Tricks” and Larry “Bud” Melman. I shudder to think.

For our purposes, there’s no need to explain the rules of The Riddlers, so if you really want an outline before you watch the thing, go here. Otherwise, follow along at home and enjoy this rarely seen side trip on David Letterman’s road to a career in what he has mockingly called “show bidness.”

Late Night-era
 

 
Be sure to check out WFMU’s excellent—and thorough—2010 blog post on Dave’s pre-Late Night years.

Posted by Bart Bealmear
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04.30.2015
11:01 am
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Hitler’s home movies, starring Mel Brooks (with a young David Letterman), 1978
11.17.2014
01:37 pm
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It’s well known that Mel Brooks has something of a Hitler obsession. His first directorial feature was The Producers, which centered around an irresistible ditty called “Springtime for Hitler.” In Blazing Saddles, set in the Wild West several decades before Hitler’s rise to power, Brooks managed to smuggle in the Nazis indirectly, via Lili von Shtupp, a Marlene Dietrich parody played by Madeline Kahn, as well as the Germanic baddies that show up to be part of Hedley Lamarr’s army of mercenaries. In 1983 Brooks remade the 1942 Ernst Lubitsch classic To Be or Not to Be, which revolved around actors pretending to be high-echelon Nazis, including a musical number in which Brooks’ Fredrick Bronski (dressed as Hitler) sings “A Little Peace,” a merry song of his own composition about invading every country in Europe.

The recent American Masters documentary on Brooks, Make A Noise, actually dedicates a section to Brooks’ recurring interest in Hitler and even bothers to ask Brooks if he can remember the first time he ever became aware of Hitler, a query Brooks describes as “crazy.”
 

David Letterman and Alan Oppenheimer as Dan Cochran and Miles Rathbourne
 
Brooks even played Hitler himself once, in a parody of 60 Minutes-style TV news magazines called Peeping Times, which ran on NBC on January 25, 1978. Four years before getting his own talk show on the same network, David Letterman played “Dan Cochran,” one of the show’s anchors. One of the segments purports to show recently unearthed footage of Hitler and Eva Braun in the mid-1930s. You can even hear Alan Oppenheimer’s Miles Rathbourne snort in voiceover, “He looks like Mel Brooks.” Naturally, Brooks plays Hitler for maximum silliness, dancing a little jig, getting spoon-fed by Eva like a small child, and complaining that the cameraman (Rudolf Hess) isn’t shooting the footage properly. Note that the fellow who cues up the footage is played by a young James Cromwell.
 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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11.17.2014
01:37 pm
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The backstory of Letterman legend Larry ‘Bud’ Melman


 
Have you ever wondered where David Letterman found Larry “Bud” Melman? Of course you have. Find out the answer in this exclusive excerpt from Brian Abrams’ newly-released Amazon Kindle Single AND NOW…An Oral History of “Late Night with David Letterman,” 1982-1993.

At a time when cable TV was nonexistent and Saturday Night Live’s talent and ratings simultaneously took a nosedive, David Letterman’s 12:30 a.m. talk show transformed comedy forever with its ironic obsessions and enabled a generation of writers to flourish. AND NOW…An Oral History of “Late Night with David Letterman,” 1982-1993is comprised of dozens of original interviews with those who worked and guested during Letterman’s NBC stint— beginning with an odd precursor in a problematic 10 a.m. slot, moving to the launch of the iconic Late Night with then-head writer (and then-girlfriend) Merrill Markoe, and ending with his final days at 30 Rock before heading west for CBS’s Ed Sullivan Theater…seven blocks away.

BARRY SAND Executive producer, The David Letterman Show (1980), SCTV (1980-81), Late Night with David Letterman (1982-87): We wanted to get guests that nobody ever thought of — not heavy billboard people. It was the strange guy, the guy who inflated his lawn chair that took off and flew over an airport. Those were the memorable characters.

ANDY BRECKMAN Writer, Late Night (1982-83), Saturday Night Live (1983-87); creator, Monk (2002-09): Stephen Winer and his partner, Karl, had a great influence on the show. They found Calvert DeForest [a k a Larry “Bud” Melman].

SANDRA FURTON Talent coordinator, Late Night (1982-89): Larry “Bud” Melman was an anomaly. He was a really genuinely great guy, who became like a mascot to the show. He was a very sweet person. I guess his naturalness in flubbing things up made it work.

KARL TIEDEMANN Writer, Late Night (1982-83) Consistently poor acting combined with an offbeat look. It didn’t occur to me years later, but do you know the name Maurice Gosfield? He was very much a Melman/DeForest type, and he became a kind of — before the term was used — cult figure. And he apparently had difficulty memorizing lines and getting out dialogue. That rang a bell with me.

STEPHEN WINER Writer, Late Night (1982-83): When Karl was at NYU, he was making a short film, “Life of the Party,” like an old Hal Roach two-reel comedy. When we were doing this thing, Calvert DeForest came at an open audition. There was nothing for him in the movie except background, but there was something about him that made us believe we could use this guy forever. We later made a film called “King of the ‘Z’s,” a parody documentary about the world’s cheapest movie studio of the ’40s and ’50s. The entire time we were writing it, Calvert’s face was always in my mind.

KARL TIEDEMANN: My then-partner and I always had a taste for the offbeat. We loved, as many people do, the whole Mystery Science Theater 3000 thing — just healthy badness. Mediocrity is very common. Really consistent incompetence, that’s a lot more rare. DeForest was worse than mediocrity, but he was a pleasant and amenable fellow.

STEPHEN WINER: When we had the job interview with Dave and Merrill, they were very complimentary of the film. During the course of that meeting, Merrill said, “We’re looking for somebody like that little guy in your movie for the show.” And I said, “That’s the guy you’re looking for. Trust me.” Calvert was in the very first episode. He cold-opened the show as Frankenstein, which was Merrill’s idea. It just took off. And I remember saying to Dave, “Wouldn’t it be funny if Calvert became a big star after this?” And Dave said, “Heh, heh. Sure.”

BARRY SAND: Some of the greatest shows that we ever had were with Larry “Bud” Melman, who always made mistakes. That was part of the fun. “What could go wrong?” And hopefully it would go wrong. You were always rooting for a good wrong thing to happen. Audiences love that. The non-predictability of the show, the imperfection of the show, was part of its charm.

This is an excerpt from Brian Abrams’ Amazon Kindle Single AND NOW…An Oral History of “Late Night with David Letterman,” 1982-1993.

Below, Larry “The Big Man” Melman in a typically insane 1980s Letterman appearance:

 
Thank you Jeff Newelt of New York City!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.09.2014
08:59 pm
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Real Wild Child: Iggy Pop’s electrifying 1980s appearances on ‘Late Night with David Letterman’
09.15.2014
11:07 am
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Iggy Pop
 
“I like to mix the dirt with the music.” Iggy Pop on Late Night with David Letterman, 1988

Iggy Pop appeared on NBC’s Late Night with David Letterman three times in the 1980s, and they were all memorable TV events. Iggy is, of course, as only Iggy can be, giving uninhibited performances in which he dances wildly and alternates between turning his back on the audience and confronting them. These were totally thrilling talk show segments and worth staying up (or setting your VCR) for back in the day. The Ig was also a charming and quotable interviewee; he and Dave, on the surface, seem to be hugely mismatched individuals, but they have a surprisingly great rapport, likely finding an unsaid common ground in the their shared midwestern sensibilities.

Iggy continued to pop up on Late Night and has been seen frequently on the subsequent Late Show with David Letterman over the years. You can’t beat these 1980s appearances, but he’s always waaaay more entertaining than the average boob tube talk show guest. This is, after all, Iggy Fucking Pop!

“Eat or Be Eaten,” December 8th, 1982 (unfortunately, the interview portion isn’t online):
 

 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Bart Bealmear
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09.15.2014
11:07 am
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Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Flaming Lips Band bring dada to David Letterman last night
10.03.2013
02:31 am
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Yoko Ono and Wayne Coyne
 
Someday far into the future, the next generation of Dangerous Minds will link to this video, and the hardy contributor on duty then will write something along the lines of, “THIS WAS INSANE. Legendary tee-vee talkmeister David Letterman had Yoko Ono on and she was wearing a snappy fedora and to a funky groove she howled into a microphone about ‘stopping the wars’ and ‘stopping the violence’ and FUCKING WAYNE COYNE was sitting Indian style next to her with a megaphone—this was YEARS before he ascended from the material plane into heaven during Super Bowl LXIV…”

Well, we say why wait? This crazy shit went down last night on The Late Show with David Letterman and you should watch it with the sound turned up!
 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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10.03.2013
02:31 am
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A young Dr. Venture crashes ‘Late Night with David Letterman,’ 1983
08.23.2013
10:12 am
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In 1983 James Urbaniak was 19 years old and attending community college and living in Marlboro, New Jersey, in Monmouth County. Like a lot of smart younger males at that time, he absolutely worshiped David Letterman, whose Late Night talk show had debuted the previous year. In February of that year he secured a ticket to attend a taping of the show; he was really excited about it.

During the monologue Letterman attempted to tell a joke he had tried and failed to tell in the previous night’s monologue, and ended up flubbing it a second time. When Letterman commented that he had screwed it up two nights in a row, the future Dr. Venture cried out, “Can I try it?”—and Letterman, making a snap decision he’d be far less likely to make on his CBS show, The Late Show, agreed. “Jim” Urbaniak bounded down from the audience, and the rest is history—really, really inconsequential history.

Here’s a cute animated video from Vulture/UCB Comedy in which Urbaniak tells the story:
 

 
I fully endorse all of Urbaniak’s musings about the chintziness of the Late Night aesthetic and the much less unbuttoned comedy found on Letterman’s CBS show. According to Splitsider, the guests that night were “Andy Kaufman and wrestler Freddie Blassie; Alba Ballard and her costumed birds; and Marv Albert and his sports bloopers.” That might be a little bit of an in-joke; that’s pretty much a concocted ideal memory of what every show was like.

As it happens, I also attended a taping of Late Night with David Letterman, and I was also 19 when I did so. The year was 1989, and the guests were Bob Hope, Melanie Mayron and Robyn Hitchcock. I restrained myself from attempting to hijack monologue duties, however.

This is probably as good a place as any to inform you about his new podcast Getting On with James Urbaniak.

Here’s the actual clip of Urbaniak telling the monologue joke on Late Night in 1983:
 

 
Via Splitsider

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
David Letterman checking out Cher’s bum (1987)

Posted by Martin Schneider
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08.23.2013
10:12 am
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The real reason Harmony Korine was banned from Letterman…

image
 
Last night on The Late Show with David Letterman, actor James Franco was promoting the new Spring Breakers film directed by Harmony Korine and he mentioned that the controversial director was banned from the show, prompting Letterman to bluntly explain why:

“I went upstairs [to the green room] to greet Meryl Streep,” recounted Letterman. “I looked around and found your friend, Harmony, going through her purse.”

Well then! Franco insists that Korine is “a very sane guy now” and on his say-so, Letterman has rescinded the ban.
 

 
Via Vulture

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.26.2013
04:55 pm
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David Letterman’s secret past as a Hobbit
09.12.2011
05:12 am
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Long before he became a multi-millionaire talk show host, David Letterman was a Hobbit.

A surly drunk Hobbit.

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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09.12.2011
05:12 am
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David Letterman checking out Cher’s bum (1987)
11.12.2010
01:19 pm
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image
 
And Sonny Bono doesn’t notice a thing!

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.12.2010
01:19 pm
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