Name: Harvey Pekar Refuses To Answer Dave's Questions | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2025-05-12T15:01:10.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Harvey Pekar Refuses To Answer Dave's Questions | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-05-12. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Harvey Pekar Refuses To Answer Dave's Questions | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-05-12. Transcript available.

Nice to have you here. Please have a seat.
I'll see you off to your usual slow start, man.
Well, Harvey, we wanted to get you out as soon as we could to kind of salvage
the night for us.
Yeah, yeah. Well, you weren't too long.
Did you get my...
Yeah, I got your questions here.
No, no, but did you get my letter? I sent you...
Yeah, I got your letter, David.
Harvey wrote a piece for the Cleveland plane dealer, what, a couple of months
ago?
It was very touching, man. I appreciate that very much.
As a matter of fact...
I enjoyed the piece.
It's funny you should mention it. Thank you.
It's funny you should mention it because that touched me and I'm keeping your
letter as a memento.
But I made a...
This is not rehearsed. This just felt right, man.
I made a...
Well, you have the copy of the letter.
I made a copy of the letter here for you with your spelling errors corrected,
David.
And I'm 98.
98 on the letter. Well, that's very nice.
Harvey is greeting my personal correspondence. I appreciate that.
You know, and that's pretty good for a guy who went to Ball State, which is a
party school, right?
No, it's not a party school. It's a fine state institution.
Harvey, what are you doing with your eyebrows?
Look, man.
You got a little something going there.
I'm from Cleveland.
A little Zero Mostel or something there, aren't you?
I look a little disheveled because, you know, I had to do this gig on one day's
notice.
Yeah, and I appreciate you coming in on a short notice.
Now, do you have...
So, you know, like, I don't want to, you know, screw these questions.
I got these questions.
Half these questions I don't want to answer.
And the other hand, you know, like, and the other half, I told them I want to
talk about them,
and I don't want to talk about them.
It's because, you know, like, when I want to talk about those guys will stop me.
They're afraid.
So, you know.
Okay.
Are Lieber and Stoller ready?
Because we can...
How many hits do you have, Harvey?
Why do you care how many hits do I have?
Well, what do you want to talk about?
How's your book?
Now, this is your second book, right?
Your second anthology?
It's doing all right.
Yeah.
Did the first one do pretty well?
No, it didn't do.
It didn't.
Why do you think I'd be out?
I'm trying to hype this first book and the second book.
Let me hype it, man.
You can't sell nothing.
What is the price of the first book?
How much does it go for?
$6.95.
Seven bucks.
It's a pretty good deal.
It's a good deal.
It's a good deal.
Let me tell you, folks.
I came all the way from Cleveland up here.
On one day's notice, you would have dead air without me.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Let's let them vote.
Which would you rather have had?
I don't know.
Anyway, if I could get half of them to buy the book, I'd do good.
All right, this is $6.95 and $7.95.
Now, this is good stuff, folks.
Yeah.
Now, I, you know, like...
It's entertaining reading.
I think it's fun.
It's more than that.
It's deep, man.
It's deep, yeah.
It's deep.
Now, look at here.
I got...
This is...
You know, this isn't the superhero crap.
This is the good stuff.
This is about life, yeah.
I've been praised by the New York Times here in the back.
Yeah.
Los Angeles Herald Examiner.
Harvey, why don't you make yourself a superhero, like you're talking about?
Because I can sort of...
I have something in common with them, but, you know, man, I'm, you know, you...
What did you call me, man?
Like, I don't know, something like, you know, the ideal of, you know, like
American youth or
something.
Uh-huh.
I can see that.
Uh-huh.
Anyways, like, these books, and I just want some kind of war.
It's hard, man.
From the, uh, before Columbus Foundation.
They probably won't give it to me now I'm on this show.
Uh-huh.
I got that, and, uh, you know, I, you know, this book here, I come out here too
early.
The book's not on this, you know, in the stores.
And I know that this audience, they're probably not great readers, you know
what I mean?
They want to thrill a minute, you know, laugh a minute.
All right, Harvey, let's put it back.
Wait a minute, what do you mean, Harvey?
Oh, okay.
So buy this stuff.
You understand?
And if the guy don't have it, ask him to get it, and go in it and get it, you
know,
like, a couple weeks later, you know, ask him if he got it in.
Uh-huh.
Put it in positive on it.
You know, I...
Follow it up.
Harvey, I think people will buy now because they'll remember your pleasing
personality.
Yeah, well, that's all right.
You gotta do something, David.
They'll say to themselves, my, what a nice young man Harvey was, and I'd be
happy.
I'd be proud to purchase one of his books.
Yeah, right.
Give me those back.
They're not yours.
They're mine.
Well, you'll get them back after the show.
I'm not stealing them from you.
Put stuff on the side.
Well, to clear, because you have other things to present.
Would you feel more comfortable, Harvey, if these were over there?
Yeah, give me that.
All right, there you are.
What a story.
All right.
Now, we have to do a commercial, Harvey.
All right.
Just relax.
Get a hold of yourself.
We'll be right back here with...
I'll tell you about my trick at this time.
You know, it's interesting to me that you write the comic books, but you don't
actually
do the illustrations.
You hire very well-known comic book illustrators to do that, don't you?
They're not all well-known.
You know, there's a couple of them that are well-known.
What, R. Crumb?
Yeah, he's well-known.
He's pretty well-known, sure.
Yeah, he's well-known.
Does he work on this one?
Yeah, he worked on it.
Yeah.
No, well, I think that's interesting.
That's a nice approach.
Don't you think that's interesting?
Yeah, it's a nice, interesting approach.
But do you find, Harvey, that people are less than satisfied when they discover
that you're
not actually drawing the photos, the drawings, rather?
Do you want to talk about my trip to British Columbia or anything, David?
Well, no, we can talk about your trip to British Columbia, but I just was
wondering what the
reaction was when they say, oh, I guess Harvey doesn't draw those.
Oh, nobody cares.
But as a, wouldn't you feel better about selling the book if you were doing all
the work yourself?
If you were actually doing the drawings?
Like many cartoonists write and draw their own strips, don't they?
Yeah.
So what?
Well, I'm just saying, wouldn't things be, wouldn't that give you more peace of
mind
if you were, if you were doing both of them?
Wouldn't it be a little easier to look at yourself in the mirror when you got
up in the morning,
Harvey?
Oh, man.
No, I don't care.
You don't care?
That doesn't bother you?
No, it doesn't bother me.
All right.
Why would it?
How about this guy?
What do you think of this guy?
Sexiest Man Alive.
Sexiest Man Alive.
I don't know nothing about him, man.
Sexiest Man Alive?
Are you kidding me?
1987?
Eh, get that out of my face.
I don't care about him.
All right, now let's talk about your trip to the Great Northwest.
Yeah, I went up to British Columbia.
Oh, that's beautiful up there.
Vancouver?
I went up, no, Victoria.
Victoria.
I went up there to lecture at a college up there.
It's an island, Victoria.
Yeah, it's an island.
No, Vancouver's the island.
Victoria's the capital of British Columbia.
I went up there to lecture at a college up there.
But isn't Victoria one of the islands out in the, uh...
Vancouver's the island, and Vancouver's the city that's on the mainland.
You got that?
Right, but then Victoria would, Victoria would be the island if Vancouver were
on the mainland.
I don't know what you're talking about.
You don't know what you're talking about either.
Anyways, I went out there, and I had a nice time.
You look like a lot of guys you see sleeping on buses.
I'm sorry.
It's all right, man.
I had to do the show on one day's night.
I realize I look a little disheveled.
No, you look fine, Harvey.
I don't look too good.
Tonight, I don't look too good myself.
You don't look too good.
I saw you with that L.A. Dodgers, that yuppie thing you had on.
It was not.
It was a gift from the manager of the Dodgers.
Yes.
Yeah.
Anyways.
Man.
So you're out there.
You go out there to lecture.
You messed up my game plan.
I'm sorry.
You're out there to lecture.
Yeah, I'm out there to lecture.
I had a nice time, and I, uh, you know, me and my wife went out there.
Joyce?
Yeah, my wife, Joyce, and it was very nice, and they...
She's a nice woman.
I've met her.
Yeah, she's very nice.
You never met my wife.
What are you lying about?
Oh, that's right.
I forgot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No.
No, Harvey, I never did meet your wife.
Yeah, right.
Anyways, uh, they had a benefit dance for me.
A benefit dance?
Yeah, it was nice.
Now, did you dance, Harvey?
This was before I went there, man.
Oh, I see.
They had a benefit dance, but the band was the Rod Ponds.
The Rod Ponds?
Yeah, it came to a guy in a dream, I mean.
Oh, God.
All right.
Yeah.
Benefit dance to raise money for?
For me.
I see.
I got $15, man.
What's going on?
Yeah, and you blew it all on clothes.
So, anyways, you know what I'm...
I'm sorry.
It's all right, Dave.
Have a good time.
I know.
We're doing what we can.
It's your world.
I'm just living in it.
Yeah, I know.
Now, did you find...
I find that that part of the country is...
It's a beautiful country.
...majestic.
Yeah.
It's a beautiful country.
Yeah.
It puts me in mind the days when I was running around the country wild and free
with a couple
of other big buddies of mine before they became big celebrities and media stars
like me.
Robert Redford and Tom Brokaw.
You spent time with Robert Redford and Tom Brokaw?
We were great friends together.
We had a good time together.
We were clean living guys.
Was this college or something?
You went to college together?
No, we were just trying to struggling guys out in Hollywood and the West out
there.
And we were trying to, you know, we were trying to make it, man, you know, and
we liked
to go out there and whitewater raft and rock climb and stuff like that.
And we had a good time.
You do a lot of rock climbing to this day?
We do a lot of that stuff and there were a lot of guys who wanted to hang in
there with
us, you know, hang out with us and stuff.
You know, like Burt Reynolds always wanted to.
Oh, is that right?
But we wouldn't let him in the group.
Why not?
Because he wasn't clean cut enough for us, you know.
He's got a nasty mustache, so we don't know.
Yeah.
What did you say to Burt?
We told him, cut it off, you know, man, and come back.
We'll check you out, you know.
Okay.
He's doing all right now.
No, he's doing all right now and we're all doing all right now.
But I see that, yeah, right.
I see Tom is...
Tom is the anchor of the Nightly News here at NBC.
Very good.
Very nice man.
Well respected.
Do you like Tom?
Yeah, I like Tom.
I see he's a little disturbed now, you know.
Is he disturbed?
He's got this conflict interest thing that he's talking about with GE owning,
you know, NBC
and all that, you know, and being the third biggest defense contractor.
Yeah.
It's rough, man, you know.
So that will make his job more difficult to be a reporter of what's going on in
the
world?
Well, you might have the conflict of interest, you know.
Yeah.
And all that.
How are you doing with Robert Wright?
Yeah.
Is he doing okay?
I think so, yeah.
Is there stuff, you know, about all dead silence, man?
I had this whole thing I was going to do.
Sorry, Harvey.
Don't be too bad.
Don't be too hard on yourself.
You'll get used to the dead silence.
Yeah.
All right, guys.
You sure do.
I will.
Yeah.
Well, listen, Harvey, thank you for coming out from Cleveland.
It was good to see you again.
Yeah.
And as always, give my best to the folks back there in Cleveland.
Yeah.
All right?
Harvey Pekar, ladies and gentlemen.
We'll be right back.
Thank you.
Thank you.