Name: Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Daniel Kellison | Letterman
Uploaded: 2024-01-16T16:03:33.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Daniel Kellison | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-01-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Daniel Kellison | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-01-16. Transcript available.

hi my name is daniel kellison i was at letterman starting at late night from
1988 as a college
intern and i left in 1996 as a segment producer so one of the things about
producing segments for dave
was that it was sort of important that you come up with an intro that was sort
of short and punchy
that was always a great challenge and i loved that part of producing the first
segment i ever
produced there was this kid named william figueroa he had been a chalkboard
when dan quayle had
corrected how he'd spell the word potato and then every show in the world was
trying to get him
booked and it became sort of a competition which i liked i had the idea and
again it wasn't my idea
i'd heard of it before i sent a pizza to the kid's house i had a note saying
hey this is uh we're
friendlies here uh we think this is great and give me a call if you want to do
it and he did it and
as a reward of that i got to produce the segment i knew that the intro was a
big part of it and so
i wrote an intro for dave that said uh two days ago boy oh boy listen to this
an elementary school
student walked up to a chalkboard in his classroom and spelled the word potato
the events which followed
terrified an entire nation the next day in the new york uh daily news or news
day i think it was
had a headline terrifying a nation and they had the whole article about the
thing that segment had gone
so well that they started letting me produce segments on the show and he picks
me so i go out
to the chalkboard and start writing potato p-o-t-a-t-o then when i was walking
back to my chair
he says stop and go back and put the e on potato after that i kind of um went
to get a dictionary
to look it up just in case and i look it up and there it goes potato the way i
spelled it
uh-huh after he left after he left all the reporters came to me uh-huh then i
showed them the book and
it said potato right and they were all laughing
speaking of writing intros for the show l mcpherson who was the top supermodel
all the time this is
probably 1994 was coming on the show i'd come up with an intro for her and i
was kind of half
jokingly but bragging about it all day i was like i came up with a great intro
for l and i went and
told dave about it and dave was like a great great great intro you know folks
for my money our next
guest is one of the loveliest supermodel actresses in the entire world please
welcome the wonder from
down under l mcpherson during the interview she says i really love the wonder
from down under line
did you think of that no i didn't a young man and if he's here i'd like to
bring him out ladies and
gentlemen he's very proud of that a young man who works for us by the name of
daniel kelison daniel
are you here he thought where is he there he is come on up here there he is
right here here's the boy
this is the guy right here he thought of it there she is daniel kelison part of
the fun of human
interest guests were that you never sort of knew where they were going to come
from and you wanted to
come up with ideas that nobody else was going to have one saturday afternoon i
found myself
probably stoned watching wide world of sports i saw the cliff diving from acapulco
and i thought
i wonder whether we could do some cliff diving off of that building on 53rd
street it would cost two
hundred thousand dollars to do it with the pool and all that stuff so morty
said see if you can get a
sponsor i called nike and they said yeah well we'll give you the money for that
if you put a nike swoosh
at the bottom of the pool we're calling everywhere looking for water because
there's a drought in new
york city at the time and we found this place in new jersey that brought up all
the water and they
filled the pool and it was like you know muddy brown water and you couldn't see
the nike logo i was
like oh my god and this poor woman this brave woman she climbs up the ladder
and she told me later
that she had vertigo as she started going up so she did the dive in the flips
but she said it was
the most terrifying thing she'd ever done in her life i remember chris farley
was sort of growing
and becoming a star and he was very nervous about coming on the show but i
remember the first time
chris did a pre-interview though he's like i don't have jokes he goes but when
i first arrived in new
york i took a bus i got to the port authority and these two girls do like do
you like to party
and uh we smoked uh cocaine for about three days straight and he's like i don't
know whether that's
a good story or not i go i don't know about chris we decided okay we'll lean
into the physical stuff
we'd come up with these big entrances for him it made it all the funnier that
when he did these
crazy entrances he'd be running around and he'd sit down and just start talking
and it was like
it was pretty impressive daniel the um friend that works here that you have
more than a friend
he's on the payroll he said that you like physical stuff that was a very
impressive
entrance i think in the 10 years we've been doing this show i've never seen
anything quite like that
want to do what the king wants
probably the most famous segment i'm associated with is drew barrymore what
happened was there
was a place called blue angel in tribeca and it wasn't a strip club it was a
cabaret drew barrymore
is in town and she goes to the blue angel and she got naked on stage and it was
the front page of the
new york post and we had her on the next day and um it was dave's birthday and
i knew drew from
her previous appearance and she's like dan it was so liberating it was the
greatest thing i've ever
done in my life i hope if you feel like giving a little dance to dave it's his
birthday you'd probably
get a kick out of it she goes give me some vampy music from paul but don't tell
you can't tell
anyone at all so i didn't know whether she's gonna do it or not and i went to
morty and he goes well
that's your call and i go it's not my call you're the executive producer it's
your call i figured at
that point like i'd been there long enough and had some success that i figured
like you know if it
goes bad then so be it and uh rest was sort of you know famous moment in the
show's uh annals
would you like me to do a dance for you
do it hi paul okay okay oh my god oh my god oh my god god oh my god god oh my
god oh my god oh
remember the night morley safer was here pulled the same thing yeah that wasn't
the same so in 1994
i would say the biggest star in the world was madonna we kept inviting her on
the show and she kept
saying no finally um i talked to liz rosenberg who repped her and share she
said that madonna was
willing to come on and i did a pre-interview with madonna and i had an idea
which is just basically
we'll put dave on the hot seat we'll show three clips each one will make him
sort of squirm because
you're making jokes about you and she liked that idea so i reassured dave that
i thought we were in
pretty good shape and i go up to her dressing room and i knock on the door and
she's there with this
guy kevin a coin who is her makeup guy and she goes um suck my dick and i'm
like uh what and she and
kevin look at each other like that was some inside joke and they start laughing
i'm like oh boy what's
going on here and she's like well we smoked a little endo before we got here we're
pretty stoned but
immediately i was like oh we're fucked we're fucked here this is gonna be bad
you realize this is being
broadcast don't you yeah wait a minute aren't you gonna smell them
i gave him my underpants and he won't smell
that's not where they go no that's no believe me that's where the underwear
goes that's
don't you want to show everybody the underwear would uh i think people most
everybody has seen
underwear no they haven't seen no they haven't seen mine and mine oh no that's
not true
i would say also in 1994 the biggest movie star in the world was julia roberts
and normally we like
to do pre-interviews just as a safety net she didn't want to do a pre-interview
but she'd do
one with dave so i went to dave and i said the only way she'll do a pre-interview
is with you dave was
like okay i'll do the pre-interview with her and we called julia roberts he
says uh so uh what do you
want to talk about and she goes i don't know what do you want to talk about and
dave sort of flummox
goes i don't know i guess we'll figure it out when you get here that was the
pre-interview she ended
up coming on the show and uh i have like you know five minutes to try to do a
quick interview with
her she was in a movie called i love trouble and she played a professional pickpocket
so i said hey
do you think you could pick my pocket she grabbed me and like kissed me on my
lips and pulled my pot
wallet on my pocket career highlight all right let me take care of i'll take
care of this hand me that
card give me that card i'm being i'm being and then there were guests who were
just difficult guests
i'm thinking back to sean young who was sort of a pretty famous actress at the
time but she was a kook
she loved coming on the show and tap dancing and i think we booked her and i
think dave or someone
was like can we please stop with the tap dancing i do a pre-interview with sean
and uh she's like and
i have a great idea uh tap dancing number at the end and i was like you know
what i'm not sure we're
gonna have the time we want to talk to you about the movie i always do the tap
dancing everyone loves
the tap dancing the best part of this is that at the end of her segment she
whispered into dave's ear
afterwards i said to dave what did sean young say to you after the segment she
said i was a terrible
producer and i should fire you and then this guy's like asked me well did you
say yes and then i hit him and
i said yes you know and it was traumatic basically that's a great story
well that's just perfect now i'm paralyzed thank you i'm paralyzed for life so
one of the challenges of
booking 200 shows a year we would rely on certain standbys be tony randall or
anthony quinn but also we
would go to the news anchors a lot of time and dan rather came on and he talked
about love and train
songs as a kid and i was like do you remember the train songs on the pre-interview
sort of leading
him into this dan rather the time was the most trusted news person in the
united states but he sang
that song on the show and then every time he came on he'd sing another train
song that was sort of like
one of those things again you saw a little thing in a book and you'd grab onto
that and you would produce
these sort of like cool moments in time ding ding
the runaway train ran over the hill and she blew she blew the runaway train ran
over the hill and she
blew she blew the runaway train ran over the hill and the last we heard she was
blowing still
and she blew blue blue blue blue blue yes so one of the great things about
being on the show was being
able to get people on the show that i wanted to see and one of the people that
i loved had been banned
from the show is harvey picar i was able to get him back on the show and that
was really a victory in
many ways because i loved him and i loved our crumb who illustrated a lot of
his stuff you don't have
to apologize because you know like i say i'm i'm here not to talk to you but to
make money and if i could
you know and i i got booked to come on again and i'm making more money and that's
the name of the game
and as a matter of fact i made even more money you'll have to you know let me
just tell you this
i made it because we don't have much time for your oh harvey i'm on the edge of
my seat yeah i see
similarly i would say christman glover was somebody else who was banned from
the show and he had a movie
and i was like can i talk to him pre-interview him and see if he's great and he
came on and then
afterwards he presented dave with this bronze shoe and the reason i have it is
because he gave this to
dave i said to dave hey christman wanted you to have this he bronze the shoe
and david like i don't
want that here it is christian glover's shoe you were gonna you wanted to arm
wrestle me you wanted
to kick me now what was that all about because clearly that you're not the same
guy well yeah i guess
which i guess is too bad for you but uh well well well i i i it's uh i'm just
yeah i'm just i think i
think i you know i just it's it's this this kind of uh thing you know it's this
uh um it it's it's
self-explanatory kind of i mean it's uh uh uh there there it was there it is or
have you ever been
have you ever been put in a headlock real tight and things all of a sudden
things start to get
kind of fuzzy you know so so you want me to explain myself is is what well yeah
i wish we had the time
now so one of the cool things about booking all the comedians and producing all
the comedians was
you got to hear their jokes in advance and but i also had to vet them to make
sure they were okay
for tv gary shandling came on the show he had a joke at the time about oj it
was fresh in everyone's
mind and people were making saying like oh it's not funny to make jokes about
double murders he told
the joke and the audience groaned and dave kind of like shook his head no like
he wasn't into it and
gary was upset with me it was embarrassing but it was also pretty funny at the
time well i live in
you know i live a half mile from oj's house in l.a oh i live you know it's just
a nice throw
and uh i asked your uh talent coordinator whatever his name is if i could do oj
material that's very
nice of you whatever his name is what is his name i have no idea there he is
right there it's daniel
killison take him down daniel take him down
we got a phone call asking whether we wanted to have sean connery on the show
he had prostate
cancer he wanted to show that he was still virile and able to do these sort of
like key man roles
and his publicist said that he wanted to come on riding a bicycle and i was
like he's james bond
he can't come in and riding a bike he's gonna come in on a jetpack we had a
very low budget
in fact we had no budget so we uh put sean connery in this like massive like
harness and then we put
two fire extinguishers and then he made a jetpack entrance and it came down tv
guy called it the
entrance of the year but it was uh pretty ridiculous ladies and gentlemen
please say hello to one of my
my favorite actors sean connery
so
so in may of 1995 we did a week of shows in london and one of the people we
booked one of my acting
idols um peter o'toole so i called him on the phone the way i see it i feel
like you can make one of two
entrances you could come in on a rope like in my favorite year or lawrence of
arabia you come in on a
camel and he goes my dear boy i most certainly will not be coming in on a rope
nor will i be coming in
on a camel and he goes if you find me an arabian racing camel i might consider
coming in on a camel
but you won't find one in all of england i was like that's all i need to hear
and we called everywhere
we could and finally we found one we found arabian racing camel peter o'toole
arrived and i was there to
meet him and when he got out of the car i went like this one ta-da an arabian
racing camel and he
looked at he goes young man that is not an arabian racing camel that is a
common zoo camel no it's
a racing camel he paid like five thousand dollars for this i'll lose my job you
have to make an entrance
he's like i'm not coming in on that thing and they go please i'm begging you
please come in
so he's like okay okay and he agreed to come in on that and it was the greatest
entrance of all time
please folks welcome one of the all-time great actors peter o'toole
please welcome one of the all-time great actors peter o'toole
please welcome one of the all-time great actors peter o'toole
i believe that's called a stupid pet my grandfather was actually on the show
about a year and a half to
two years before i started working there letterman interviewed him and talked
to him as the most
married guest and the oldest guest they'd ever had on the show how many times
have you been married in
your life charles seven seven times now do you remember the names of all your
wives no
what's the shortest time you've been married oh the night
i'm sure you remember the name of your first wife yeah yeah because i painted
adam only 69 years
you

Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Daniel Kellison | Letterman

hi my name is daniel kellison i was at letterman starting at late night from
1988 as a college
intern and i left in 1996 as a segment producer so one of the things about
producing segments for dave
was that it was sort of important that you come up with an intro that was sort
of short and punchy
that was always a great challenge and i loved that part of producing the first
segment i ever
produced there was this kid named william figueroa he had been a chalkboard
when dan quayle had
corrected how he'd spell the word potato and then every show in the world was
trying to get him
booked and it became sort of a competition which i liked i had the idea and
again it wasn't my idea
i'd heard of it before i sent a pizza to the kid's house i had a note saying
hey this is uh we're
friendlies here uh we think this is great and give me a call if you want to do
it and he did it and
as a reward of that i got to produce the segment i knew that the intro was a
big part of it and so
i wrote an intro for dave that said uh two days ago boy oh boy listen to this
an elementary school
student walked up to a chalkboard in his classroom and spelled the word potato
the events which followed
terrified an entire nation the next day in the new york uh daily news or news
day i think it was
had a headline terrifying a nation and they had the whole article about the
thing that segment had gone
so well that they started letting me produce segments on the show and he picks
me so i go out
to the chalkboard and start writing potato p-o-t-a-t-o then when i was walking
back to my chair
he says stop and go back and put the e on potato after that i kind of um went
to get a dictionary
to look it up just in case and i look it up and there it goes potato the way i
spelled it
uh-huh after he left after he left all the reporters came to me uh-huh then i
showed them the book and
it said potato right and they were all laughing
speaking of writing intros for the show l mcpherson who was the top supermodel
all the time this is
probably 1994 was coming on the show i'd come up with an intro for her and i
was kind of half
jokingly but bragging about it all day i was like i came up with a great intro
for l and i went and
told dave about it and dave was like a great great great intro you know folks
for my money our next
guest is one of the loveliest supermodel actresses in the entire world please
welcome the wonder from
down under l mcpherson during the interview she says i really love the wonder
from down under line
did you think of that no i didn't a young man and if he's here i'd like to
bring him out ladies and
gentlemen he's very proud of that a young man who works for us by the name of
daniel kelison daniel
are you here he thought where is he there he is come on up here there he is
right here here's the boy
this is the guy right here he thought of it there she is daniel kelison part of
the fun of human
interest guests were that you never sort of knew where they were going to come
from and you wanted to
come up with ideas that nobody else was going to have one saturday afternoon i
found myself
probably stoned watching wide world of sports i saw the cliff diving from acapulco
and i thought
i wonder whether we could do some cliff diving off of that building on 53rd
street it would cost two
hundred thousand dollars to do it with the pool and all that stuff so morty
said see if you can get a
sponsor i called nike and they said yeah well we'll give you the money for that
if you put a nike swoosh
at the bottom of the pool we're calling everywhere looking for water because
there's a drought in new
york city at the time and we found this place in new jersey that brought up all
the water and they
filled the pool and it was like you know muddy brown water and you couldn't see
the nike logo i was
like oh my god and this poor woman this brave woman she climbs up the ladder
and she told me later
that she had vertigo as she started going up so she did the dive in the flips
but she said it was
the most terrifying thing she'd ever done in her life i remember chris farley
was sort of growing
and becoming a star and he was very nervous about coming on the show but i
remember the first time
chris did a pre-interview though he's like i don't have jokes he goes but when
i first arrived in new
york i took a bus i got to the port authority and these two girls do like do
you like to party
and uh we smoked uh cocaine for about three days straight and he's like i don't
know whether that's
a good story or not i go i don't know about chris we decided okay we'll lean
into the physical stuff
we'd come up with these big entrances for him it made it all the funnier that
when he did these
crazy entrances he'd be running around and he'd sit down and just start talking
and it was like
it was pretty impressive daniel the um friend that works here that you have
more than a friend
he's on the payroll he said that you like physical stuff that was a very
impressive
entrance i think in the 10 years we've been doing this show i've never seen
anything quite like that
want to do what the king wants
probably the most famous segment i'm associated with is drew barrymore what
happened was there
was a place called blue angel in tribeca and it wasn't a strip club it was a
cabaret drew barrymore
is in town and she goes to the blue angel and she got naked on stage and it was
the front page of the
new york post and we had her on the next day and um it was dave's birthday and
i knew drew from
her previous appearance and she's like dan it was so liberating it was the
greatest thing i've ever
done in my life i hope if you feel like giving a little dance to dave it's his
birthday you'd probably
get a kick out of it she goes give me some vampy music from paul but don't tell
you can't tell
anyone at all so i didn't know whether she's gonna do it or not and i went to
morty and he goes well
that's your call and i go it's not my call you're the executive producer it's
your call i figured at
that point like i'd been there long enough and had some success that i figured
like you know if it
goes bad then so be it and uh rest was sort of you know famous moment in the
show's uh annals
would you like me to do a dance for you
do it hi paul okay okay oh my god oh my god oh my god god oh my god god oh my
god oh my god oh
remember the night morley safer was here pulled the same thing yeah that wasn't
the same so in 1994
i would say the biggest star in the world was madonna we kept inviting her on
the show and she kept
saying no finally um i talked to liz rosenberg who repped her and share she
said that madonna was
willing to come on and i did a pre-interview with madonna and i had an idea
which is just basically
we'll put dave on the hot seat we'll show three clips each one will make him
sort of squirm because
you're making jokes about you and she liked that idea so i reassured dave that
i thought we were in
pretty good shape and i go up to her dressing room and i knock on the door and
she's there with this
guy kevin a coin who is her makeup guy and she goes um suck my dick and i'm
like uh what and she and
kevin look at each other like that was some inside joke and they start laughing
i'm like oh boy what's
going on here and she's like well we smoked a little endo before we got here we're
pretty stoned but
immediately i was like oh we're fucked we're fucked here this is gonna be bad
you realize this is being
broadcast don't you yeah wait a minute aren't you gonna smell them
i gave him my underpants and he won't smell
that's not where they go no that's no believe me that's where the underwear
goes that's
don't you want to show everybody the underwear would uh i think people most
everybody has seen
underwear no they haven't seen no they haven't seen mine and mine oh no that's
not true
i would say also in 1994 the biggest movie star in the world was julia roberts
and normally we like
to do pre-interviews just as a safety net she didn't want to do a pre-interview
but she'd do
one with dave so i went to dave and i said the only way she'll do a pre-interview
is with you dave was
like okay i'll do the pre-interview with her and we called julia roberts he
says uh so uh what do you
want to talk about and she goes i don't know what do you want to talk about and
dave sort of flummox
goes i don't know i guess we'll figure it out when you get here that was the
pre-interview she ended
up coming on the show and uh i have like you know five minutes to try to do a
quick interview with
her she was in a movie called i love trouble and she played a professional pickpocket
so i said hey
do you think you could pick my pocket she grabbed me and like kissed me on my
lips and pulled my pot
wallet on my pocket career highlight all right let me take care of i'll take
care of this hand me that
card give me that card i'm being i'm being and then there were guests who were
just difficult guests
i'm thinking back to sean young who was sort of a pretty famous actress at the
time but she was a kook
she loved coming on the show and tap dancing and i think we booked her and i
think dave or someone
was like can we please stop with the tap dancing i do a pre-interview with sean
and uh she's like and
i have a great idea uh tap dancing number at the end and i was like you know
what i'm not sure we're
gonna have the time we want to talk to you about the movie i always do the tap
dancing everyone loves
the tap dancing the best part of this is that at the end of her segment she
whispered into dave's ear
afterwards i said to dave what did sean young say to you after the segment she
said i was a terrible
producer and i should fire you and then this guy's like asked me well did you
say yes and then i hit him and
i said yes you know and it was traumatic basically that's a great story
well that's just perfect now i'm paralyzed thank you i'm paralyzed for life so
one of the challenges of
booking 200 shows a year we would rely on certain standbys be tony randall or
anthony quinn but also we
would go to the news anchors a lot of time and dan rather came on and he talked
about love and train
songs as a kid and i was like do you remember the train songs on the pre-interview
sort of leading
him into this dan rather the time was the most trusted news person in the
united states but he sang
that song on the show and then every time he came on he'd sing another train
song that was sort of like
one of those things again you saw a little thing in a book and you'd grab onto
that and you would produce
these sort of like cool moments in time ding ding
the runaway train ran over the hill and she blew she blew the runaway train ran
over the hill and she
blew she blew the runaway train ran over the hill and the last we heard she was
blowing still
and she blew blue blue blue blue blue yes so one of the great things about
being on the show was being
able to get people on the show that i wanted to see and one of the people that
i loved had been banned
from the show is harvey picar i was able to get him back on the show and that
was really a victory in
many ways because i loved him and i loved our crumb who illustrated a lot of
his stuff you don't have
to apologize because you know like i say i'm i'm here not to talk to you but to
make money and if i could
you know and i i got booked to come on again and i'm making more money and that's
the name of the game
and as a matter of fact i made even more money you'll have to you know let me
just tell you this
i made it because we don't have much time for your oh harvey i'm on the edge of
my seat yeah i see
similarly i would say christman glover was somebody else who was banned from
the show and he had a movie
and i was like can i talk to him pre-interview him and see if he's great and he
came on and then
afterwards he presented dave with this bronze shoe and the reason i have it is
because he gave this to
dave i said to dave hey christman wanted you to have this he bronze the shoe
and david like i don't
want th