Name: Noah Wyle's Weird Medical Problem | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2025-04-07T15:01:17.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Noah Wyle's Weird Medical Problem | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-04-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Noah Wyle's Weird Medical Problem | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-04-07. Transcript available.

How you doing?
I'm doing very well.
Good to have you back.
Thank you for being here.
Nice to be here.
So, you must be very, very busy.
You get the film coming out, and you just went back to work on ER.
Did you have any leisure time during the summer?
I did.
I didn't work at all last summer.
Good for you.
We took the time off and traveled around.
We went to Bora Bora.
Really?
Bora Bora, South Pacific.
French Polynesia, yes.
That's all I know.
Is it near Australia?
Is it near Hawaii?
Closer to Tahiti, actually.
Tahiti?
Yeah.
Is it near the Johnson Islands?
You got me there.
I don't know.
I have no idea about that.
And what is it like?
Oh, it's beautiful.
It's beautiful.
I like to snorkel, swim.
Great-looking fish.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's...
I spend a lot of time in hammocks.
You know, it's very relaxing.
Do you yourself snorkel?
Do you scuba dive?
Do you spear feed fish?
I had to stop snorkeling.
I thought...
This is funny, actually.
We were snorkeling.
You get to the kind of place where you get up in the morning,
you literally jump right out of your hotel room,
and you're in the ocean.
Oh, man.
You swim with the most incredible fish.
It's like the East River.
Exactly.
I got a place over there.
Get up first thing in the morning.
Boom.
I'm in the river.
It's nice.
I'm sorry.
That's okay.
That's okay.
It's funnier than my story.
No, no, it's fine.
You're the doctor.
What do I know?
So, anyway, you go out there.
You're swimming.
Yeah, I got out.
I thought I had some water in my ear,
and I couldn't get it out,
so I was jumping up and down
and put my finger in there,
pencils, pens.
It starts to irritate you.
It really drives you crazy
because you can't hear it
out of one side of your head,
and I just thought,
you know, this is crazy.
Of course I'm going to get this out.
Two days later,
I couldn't get it out,
and my girlfriend suggested
I call the Bora Bora doctor.
Oh, man.
Who showed up,
took one look in my ear
and had a turkey baster,
and shot some water in my ear,
and huge chunks of coral
started falling out of my head.
My God.
So, they sell earplugs,
and I highly recommend wearing them
if you go snorkeling.
Wow.
So, this was just like
free, floating coral
that got wet?
Yeah, I got out of the water,
I got excited,
I kicked up some stuff,
and then apparently
just, you know,
fell in my ears.
Now, did the doctor say
that this is common
or unusual?
I was trying to make light
of the whole situation.
He thought it was
a humorless situation.
Hmm.
That's odd, isn't it?
Charged me $150
to turkey baster out of mine.
Stuff out of my ear.
And was this,
I mean,
Bora Bora Thanksgiving?
Is that why he had
the turkey baster with him?
No, this is just
standard medical apparatus.
In Bora Bora.
In the islands.
And it's there in his black bag.
Well, that's odd.
But you're back,
and you're working on ER.
How are things going there now?
Oh, great, great.
We're having so much fun this year.
We're having a lot of fun.
How can you not have a lot of fun?
It's a great,
it's a huge hit.
It's a huge hit.
And it's the greatest group
of people I've ever worked with.
Now, is that true,
or you can't really stand
most of them?
No, it really is true.
Really?
And I've had lousy jobs.
Yeah.
I've had lousy jobs.
In fact,
I just revisited
one of my old workplaces
the other day.
What was that?
When I was 12,
I got a job
in this thrift shop,
junk store
called Junk for Joy in L.A.
And I worked there for two days
and they fired me
because I couldn't...
It's the kind of place
where they take colored clothing
that they buy for a quarter
and dye it black
and sell it for five bucks.
Oh, yeah.
One of them jobs.
You're wearing one tonight, I see.
You got me.
You got me.
Cut it out, put it on.
Look at that.
He's wearing it.
How about that?
Oh, God.
I need to go to the ER.
Am I right, ladies and gentlemen?
So, anyway,
you're just a kid.
You're working in this store.
Just a young pup of a thing.
Yeah.
And they had me take these gloves
that they had just dyed in black
from white
and tie them into bundles.
They said,
we want bundles of six
and we want you to tie them
with this string,
this kind of goose paper string.
Yeah.
And for some reason,
I couldn't do it.
It would cut my finger
or the string would break
and this guy was getting angry
and angry and angrier.
Finally, he just, you know,
he showed me
and he fired me
and I went home
and I was upset
and 12 years later,
I go back in junk for joy
and I think this is going
to be my big moment, right?
I am, Mr. Big Shot.
They're going to know
if they let go.
It's payback time.
I walk in, I say,
hi.
They don't know
who the hell I am.
Oh, no.
I said,
I used to work here
and they said,
oh, really?
I said, yeah,
you actually fired me
after two days
and this woman looks at me
and goes,
you're the kid
that couldn't tie bundles.
Ha!
You see,
it went on your permanent record.
That's right.
Absolutely.
So, if you are watching,
I can tie bundles now.
He's done pretty well.
Now he's tying bundles of cash.
Oh, I like that.
Yeah.
I like that.
Now, talk to me about this.
Is this right?
Do I have this correct?
That there's going to be
a live installment of ER?
That's right.
Our first episode back,
which is...
First episode?
Our first episode on the air
this year will be
September 25th
and we will broadcast it live
to the East Coast.
Why?
Why?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm asking myself that myself.
I mean, aren't you scared?
Yeah.
This was an idea
that George came up with
a couple years ago
and...
George Clooney.
Oh, George Batman Clooney?
George Batman Clooney.
George Batman Clooney.
He thought it...
First of all,
the way we're going to do it
has never been done before
so it will be
television history
but it also was designed
to sort of give us
a boost on the arm.
Monotony can kind of set in,
you know,
in the fourth year
and everybody's pretty comfortable
with who we're playing
and this will be something
that will give us some vitality
for the rest of the year.
What if something goes wacky?
God forbid.
What if something goes wacky?
Well, we've all done plays.
We've all had terrible things happen
in various plays
that we've all done
so hopefully we know how to cover.
Yeah.
But I'm intrigued by this now
so it will...
You would be limited, I guess,
as to the physical scope
of the production, correct?
You would think.
Yeah.
But no.
We're actually going to
use our entire set,
every room.
There'll be, you know,
60-some-odd extras
and 25 speaking parts,
19 trauma cases,
14 cameras.
But how do you make
the transition
from place to place?
The basic premise,
I don't know if I should be able
to give you an away.
Oh, come on.
Nobody's watching.
A documentary film crew
is coming into the emergency room
to shoot a day
in the Life of series.
So the actual cameras
that they're using
will be the television cameras
and there'll be characters
in the story
that we can interact
and move out of the way.
Yeah.
So this is sort of like
faux cinema verite,
if I can invoke
a little French.
Yes.
Trefo.
Trefo.
Well, good luck to you.
Thank you.
That's, that's,
if it were me,
I'd be really thinking,
I wouldn't get any sleep.
Are you sleeping all right
over this?
I haven't slept in days
thinking about this one.
But everybody in New York
has got to watch it
because we get it
on a three-hour tape delay
in L.A.
So only the East Coast
is truly going to be seeing it
as it happens.
It's for you.
I mean,
it's just amazing to me
that now you've got
some other reason
for people to watch.
Like, everybody's
not watching already.
Yeah, right.
So now they're going to have
to, like, import people
from other countries to watch.
It's just,
it's going to be
a huge success.
I hope so.
I hope so.
Let's talk about the film.
Boy, I saw this film
the other day,
The Myth of Fingerprints,
is it?
What is the source
of the title?
What does that mean?
It comes from
a Paul Simon song.
You probably know it, Paul.
Yeah.
And it's sort of
an enigmatic title
for this film,
but roughly it refers
to the fallacy
that if you touch something,
you leave your fingerprint.
But if you revisit
that chair in five years
and touch it again,
it may be the same fingerprint,
but you're not
the same person.
And it's the impressions
that your family
can leave on you
and how they never change.
Boy, you know,
watching this thing,
the story generally
is the family
has come back together
at the family home
in Maine for Thanksgiving.
That's right.
And it couldn't be,
it's just edgy
and sort of you're just like,
oh, when do we get
to go home?
Yeah, it's really,
there's not a lot of,
there's no explosions.
There's no gun battles
and no car chases,
but it's those subtle
little universal family dynamics
that make every Thanksgiving
so worthwhile.
You get to see
Roy Schneider
shoot a frozen turkey.
Yeah, that's true.
There is one gun battle
between Roy
and a frozen turkey.
And you were also
a producer on the film?
I was,
I was an associate producer,
which was sort of
a nominal title.
Yeah, what does that mean?
What do you do?
Well, I'd been,
I'd signed on really early
in the project's development.
I think that that was
their way of saying
thank you for helping
get some of the financing.
But once we got on the set,
it was keep all major
decisions away from Noah.
Nah.
I'm serious.
This kid can't tie bundles.
Watch what you do with him.
You know what they did?
The one decision I got to make
was they let me design
the cast and crew t-shirt.
Come up with the logo for it.
That's something.
Ain't I let it know?
Let's take a look
at a clip here.
Oh, yeah.
It's a very appealing
group of folks in the film.
Terrific cast.
Roy Scheider, Blythe,
Danner, Julianne Moore,
James LeGrow,
Brian Kerwin,
Laurel Holloman.
And this clip,
I think is,
I haven't been home
for three years
and I'm walking
with my brother
played by Michael Vartan
and he's just told me
that he saw my ex-girlfriend
in town
and I haven't seen her
for three years either.
Here we go.
The myth of fingerprints.
Why would you say that?
I haven't seen her
for three years.
I don't know.
I just,
I just thought that
that was maybe
what was making you depressed
and that
I bumped into her
on my way
through town today.
You did?
Yeah.
You did?
What'd she say?
No, no, forget it.
I don't want to know.
How'd you look?
No, I don't want
to know that either.
She just said
she was going to be
home for a while.
Didn't I just say
I didn't want to know?
Sorry.
How did she look?
How did she always look?
Really?
Really.
Really.
The myth of fingerprints.
Noah Wiley.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you very, very much.
Good luck on the big premiere.
Good luck.
Good luck.
Good luck.