Name: Marilu Henner Doesn't Want To Talk About Andy Kaufman | Letterman
Uploaded: 2024-04-23T22:00:34.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Marilu Henner Doesn't Want To Talk About Andy Kaufman | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-23. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Marilu Henner Doesn't Want To Talk About Andy Kaufman | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-23. Transcript available.

My next guest is a very talented actress. Her movie credits include Blood
Brothers, Between the Lines, and the soon-to-be-released Hammett.
She's best known, however, as Elaine Nardo on the NBC series Taxi. Welcome,
please, Mary Lou Henner.
Hi. Nice to see you again. How are you?
You look great.
Thank you.
Very nice of you to be here. You look terrific.
Thank you. It's so festive around here tonight.
The night before Thanksgiving and everything.
I think the audience is excited about your appearance, and I know I am. I know
the band is.
Now, in the past week, we've had yourself, Carol Kane, and Andy Kaufman.
That's right.
All people from your show.
That's right, and last night you had Grant Tinker, and he even mentioned the
show.
That's right, yeah.
So it's a...
Do you know Grant Tinker?
I've met him.
Yeah.
I don't know him personally or anything.
No, neither do I.
Well, yeah, I guess I do. I do know him personally.
Does he make you nervous?
Yeah, a little bit.
Yeah, it makes me nervous, yeah.
But he's very, very nice.
How are these other people to work with, Carol Kane and Mr. Kaufman?
Well, you can't really ask me that question using both of their names in the
same sentence.
Do you know what I mean?
I mean, Andy is one story, and Carol's lovely to work with.
Actually, Andy and I have a lot in common, you know, and Carol's wonderful.
She's been a great asset to the show, too, because it's helped my character
become more specific, and her character more specific, and she's a lot of fun.
Now, what do you and Andy have a lot in common?
Well, we both love this one Japanese macrobiotic restaurant together, Anaka.
Now, what does that mean, macro, is that what you said, macrobiotic?
Macrobiotic.
Now, what exactly does that mean?
No, no, no, no, macrobiotic just means that, you know, on the yin-yang scale of
life and food and everything else.
Folks, take out your yin-yang scales.
All right, just very briefly, yin is sweet and yang is salty, and, you know,
people after a salty meal always want something sweet, and so when you deal in
macrobiotics, you're dealing with food that's not so salty and not so sweet,
but sort of in the middle, like brown rice and vegetables and sea vegetables
and fish and things like that.
Oh.
Okay.
Okay, I just, I don't know the meaning of the word.
Well, anyway, there's this wonderful restaurant in Los Angeles, and Andy goes
to it, and I go to it, and so we now have something to talk about.
Now, the implication here is that he's tough to get along with, but he's not.
He's a very nice person, isn't he?
No, and let's not talk about it.
Okay.
How about it?
Let's talk about something else.
All right, now, uh, um.
Come on, we must have something else in common.
Oh, we got plenty.
Look at this.
We got all kinds of stuff.
Cheats and cheats and notes.
We have reams of data here.
You know what?
You have a clip, right?
We do.
Yes, you do.
We have a clip of an upcoming episode of Taxi.
And you know why this clip, this, well, this episode was so special?
It's because Danny DeVito directed it, and it was his first Taxi episode ever
directed
by one of our cast members, which is great, you know?
And what was fun for me in it is that I got to do a musical number that was
choreographed
by Debbie Allen, which is also very special.
And I started it with, uh, this episode with Mark Blankfield, you know, from
Fridays.
This is an all-star cast here, you know?
And also, I have an affair with a monk.
So I figure that's pretty good, isn't it?
Do you think one day Andy will get to direct an episode?
Oh, I hope so.
You want to look at this now?
Yes.
Oh, well, let me just tell you something very briefly about it.
Oh, no, sure.
Tell us what we're going to do.
No, no, no, because you're not going to understand it, right?
No.
Okay, what happens is there's a monk from Latkan Simka's country who comes, he's
been a monk
for 20 years.
Every 10 years, he gets a week off to do whatever he wants.
So, so we, um, that's enough.
Okay, and that's what we'll see here, and it will be on...
It's on the week after Thanksgiving.
The week after Thanksgiving.
Yes.
So, uh, take a look.
Use your, uh, TVs at home.
The monitors will work very well.
Alex, I love Zivka, too.
Why are you laughing?
I love Zivka.
I mean, the sound of it.
You can't possibly be serious.
I love Zivka.
It's like saying, I love Bamba.
I love Cheetah.
Doesn't he have a last name?
Zabaloplop.
Zivka Zabaloplop?
What does his last name matter?
I'm telling you, this is the fullest relationship I've had in a long time.
Fullest relationship?
Oh, come on, Elaine.
You may not have thought of this, but...
In a full relationship, physical compatibility is very important.
So?
So he's been celibate for ten years.
So?
So, he may find it difficult to be with a woman.
No problem.
No problem.
Mary Lou Henner and I will return.
We have to pause for a commercial.
We'll be right back.
Hi there.
Mary Lou Henner and I are here, and we just looked at the taxi, which will be
on in a couple
of weeks.
Now, tell me about this trip around the world.
Oh, I have a trip around the world that really changed my life or just verified
all the wonderful
things I've ever believed about life.
Because I spent a month in Italy, for one thing, and it was great.
And what I was saying before about yin-yang, not to bring up nutrition again,
but you know
how yin-yang is like the two extremes of life and something in the middle?
Well, I've always been kind of this person who has sort of been in the middle.
I grew up in the middle of the country, and I was the middle child.
And I sort of had this ability to do both, you know, to be from one extreme to
the other.
And my trip around the world was like that because I started out at the Cannes
Film Festival
opening up Hammett, which is, I mean, if you know anything about the Cannes
Film Festival,
it's a lot of paparazzi, and it's a lot of questions and press conferences and
stuff,
and it's real show business, you know?
And from there, I went to Italy where I lived with a family and slept on the
living room floor
of a housing project in Naples.
Now, how does that happen exactly?
At what point does the travel agent say, and you'll be sleeping on the floor
when you get
to Naples?
How does that?
Oh, you know, you just have to leave yourself open to these experiences.
Now, I traveled with a girlfriend of mine who knew this family.
Oh, I see.
So we drove from Genoa down to Naples, and then from Naples to Rome, I was on a
train
and struck up a conversation with the baggage man on the train, and we became
sort of friends,
and an hour into our trip, there was a revolution in, no, no, no, this was
fantastic.
And, no, there was a revolution.
People had strewn their bodies across the railroad tracks because they wanted
an express stop
instead of a local stop.
The Italians, they're great.
You know, they're so full of life and everything.
So we sat in between stations in this little mountain village for, like, three
and a half
hours, and this man and I became friends, and he took me home to meet his wife
and his parents
and his children and his, you know, not his children, but his relatives and
everything
else, and I ended up in the mountains with them for ten days.
So it was just, you know, leaving yourself open to life.
Now, let me ask you this.
Say you were taking the train from L.A. to San Diego.
It would be a little different.
Yeah.
A little different, I think, so.
Say somebody can't, you met somebody from Italy.
Would you invite them into your home for ten days?
If, you know, if you have good, yes, I probably would at this point.
But I think if you have good instincts and you can pick up certain things about
people,
I think that, you know, you know when to trust people.
Do you speak Italian?
I do a little bit now.
I know all the important ones.
Well, one of my favorite experiences.
Also, don't forget, I work with Danny DeVito and Tony Danza, so I learned the
real important
ones a while ago.
I just, it's hard for me to imagine this guy explaining to his wife, who spends
most of
her time up in the mountains, what your role will be there for the next week
and a half,
right?
You know?
Well, no, well, she didn't speak any English.
Of course not, sure.
No, she's not.
It wasn't like that.
No, I know.
How old a man was he, though, just for the heck of it?
28.
No, it wasn't like that.
Well, that's an odd experience, unusual.
Very unusual.
Yeah, but special.
Then where else did you go?
I went to Bangkok, and I went to Hong Kong, I went to Munich.
Not in that order.
It's a little strange.
No, I went literally around the world for like nine weeks.
It's pretty exciting stuff.
Very exciting.
Very, very nice.
And I'll tell you something.
The thing that I noticed the most is that people really don't need language to
be able to communicate,
you know?
I mean, I played a lot of charades as a kid, so it helped, because I was able
to point
to things and act out a lot of things.
But I learned so much, because you can pick up senses from people without
having to know
what they're talking about.
And you could sense that this man wanted you to come home with him.
You know, you're turning this...
No, no, I don't mean...
I've had an experience like E.T. and Elliot.
That's what this experience was like.
E.T. and Elliot.
E.T. and Elliot.
No, God.
Yeah.
You're terrible.
No, I hope you have a nice...
You always do this to me, right?
Have a nice holiday.
Yes, okay.
The gentleman up there won a turkey earlier.
Did you see that?
George Simon.
Oh, congratulations.
Yes, is George still there with the...
Hi, George.
We got to go away, but we'll be right back.
Hotel accommodations for most guests of Late Night with David Letterman
furnished by Berkshire Place, a Dunphy classic hotel,
in exchange for this announcement.
For reservations at Dunphy Hotels in the U.S. and Europe,
call toll-free 800-228-2121.
Thank you very much, Mary Lou, for being here.
Nice to see you.
And again, have a good holiday.
I want to...
Richard Morris, who was supposed to be with us tonight,
will be here on Monday.
We're sorry we ran out of time.
I would like to thank Albert Brooks.
And of course, the...
Excuse me.
The Peace Through Dramatization players,
our announcer Bill Wendell, Paul,
and the gentleman in the band.
Thank you very much.
Have a nice holiday.
Monday, or I'm sorry, tomorrow night,
Carole King and Richard Lewis will be here.
Have a good holiday.
Goodbye.