Name: Tom Stoppard Learned Everything From Mike Nichols | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2025-11-29T23:10:04.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Stoppard Learned Everything From Mike Nichols | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-29. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Stoppard Learned Everything From Mike Nichols | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-29. Transcript available.

well well well where where shall we begin this first of all welcome to the uh
the united states
welcome to new york city i appreciate you coming over from from your home
country and uh what what
what are television shows like there television shows like this talk shows i
know you've done a
lot of those well they've had a tendency which is quite distressing to evolve
into showcases for
stand-up comics so i don't do them much nowadays because one feels unless one
is getting a lot of
laughs every moment one isn't doing the talk show it's a terrible feeling that
you'll see mother
theresa come on when they shall tell jokes in fact they they this this one is
really a tough one i
i felt terrible out there everybody was falling about they said you follow you're
following a woman
with crabs i think we've all made that mistake a time or two haven't we oh shut
up um are you do you
consider yourself to be uh you you're very prolific as a writer i i can't
imagine sitting down in my
life and turning out one play uh but because of that or maybe just by
personality are are you a private
person i try to be in fact um i i do go out of the house sometimes but i have a
sort of catastrophic
tendency to um to make mayhem of my social life i i have a missing lobe and i
can't recognize famous
people and sometimes members of my own family and um i have a long history of
social gaffe which i'm
trying to elevate into a social mannerism of a more endearing nature well that's
good to be turning
negative into a positive sure i once had a a a sort of vivacious conversation
for 10 minutes with
rudolph narev under the impression that he was my french translator i mean i've
been told to show up in
the manager's office and at in the interval i'd meet my french translator and
there was this foreign
looking guy and he said i love your show and i sort of pumped him by the hand
and told him how
difficult my show would be to translate into french and we got a little bit
hunted and i could i still
thinking this is great you know i've got a french translator who looks like rudolph
narev and at that
moment a little man with a gal was in his mouth started coming into vision and
i realized that done it
again he was the translator but i mean it's funny because people for a fleeting
moment must just
think you a loon they do when you're behaving that way they do yeah yes they
invite me onto their
shows probably well i appreciate it i guess um now now the the movie uh rosencrantz
and gildenstern
did i get those names right yes uh are dead this is this the first film you've
directed it is yes is
the first piece of directing you've done anywhere pretty much i did a play of
mine once at the national
theater in london and uh did you find this a daunting challenge did you enjoy
it was i was supposed to
find it daunting people could ask me if i was okay as though i were to be ill
with anxiety in fact i
i was determined to enjoy it and i did i i've been around um directors working
on my plays a whole lot
um now does that make them nervous does it make you nervous because you've
essentially turned the work
over to a whole different shift of guys i like being behind somebody and i like
to think that i was
learning something in fact um i i i say you know just um not stretching the
truth too much that i
that i've learned everything from mike nichols i was um he did one of my plays
once and on the
very first morning he gallantly turned to me and said tom would you like to say
something about your
play and i said i don't know really the only thing i feel absolutely sure of is
that the first
scene ought to be done very very slowly with you know no rush and he said
absolutely or very very
fast and that's how he did it and it was better so right in front of you he
contradicts yeah and then
that shut me up for about three weeks and then we were in the theater and we
were on the stage and
the stage manager came in and he had a chair in each hand he said mike which
chair mike said that one
and i thought well i'll never learn to do this two chairs and i asked him he
said it's okay i didn't
know either the thing is not to hesitate makes no difference that you have to
make that decision
the important lesson for directing i have have you uh in your experience uh uh
uh turned over a play to
a group of people who were going to produce it and and witnessed it being mangled
i would i would
think not probably oh yes really i mean you know if one is unwary enough to
visit the event yes
occasionally um i'll tell you in all seriousness what i like to see is a
production which is nothing
like the first one what tends to happen a little too often is that people see
the first one and if it
if it worked out well they try to do that again and and that's always a slight
disappointment
but real disappointments array and i'm philosophical about them there was a
production of this play this
rosenkrantz in in paris very early on and i went to a run through and and after
about two hours we
were approaching the first intermission the whole thing was supposed to take
about you know an hour
and three quarters and i said maybe maybe a little quicker and they said no no
it's very serious
and they had very tony high-class people in it and it was kind of like the only
time i've seen it
boring yeah um what were they doing to kill that much time on stage they were
treating it with a
sort of reverential respect in fact it's a play and uh touchwood a film which
is which has as its
center a comedy double act and it's supposed to have that metabolism yeah we
were looking at the the
the film this afternoon it has a great look to it and and also and not that i
know much about directing
but you would never guess that this is the first film uh directing of of
anybody i mean it just looks
terrific like like being back in london isn't it what is that is that the jerry
and the pacemaker
peter and gordon peter and gordon about what year 66 something like that yeah
something like yeah
sounds terrific del shannon yeah um tom the uh the film i guess opens here in
new york and then other
parts of the country soon friday uh here and shortly afterwards in los angeles
and then seattle chicago
good for you good for you pleasure meeting you thank you very much for being
here uh we have to leave
now tomorrow uh we will have oh of course how could i forget this chris jensen
and robert wall good night