Name: Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Josh Weintraub | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-12-05T16:22:41.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Josh Weintraub | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-12-05. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Josh Weintraub | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-12-05. Transcript available.

I'm Josh Weintraub. I was an intern at Late Night with David Letterman in 1993,
and then I worked
at Late Show with David Letterman from 1996 to 2002 as a talent researcher and
then segment
producer. It's almost impossible to convey how much I loved Late Night. It was
a show that I
think shaped my sense of humor. The first thing I ever remember seeing Dave do
was a remote where
he was at an inventor's convention. One of the inventors that he spoke to was a
guy who had
invented a device that I think go inside a coffin and prevent somebody from
being accidentally
buried alive. When Dave was talking to him, the guy revealed that he himself
had been
accidentally buried alive multiple times. I thought this was one of the
weirdest and funniest
things I'd ever seen. Told me to tell you that he was buried alive three times.
I can understand
being buried alive once. Sure, everybody's going to make a mistake. Or even
twice. Somebody's
looking the other way, they close the lid. Three times? How has it happened to
him three
times? Just to run a bad luck, then? Just to run a bad luck. Early on in late
night,
he did a bit where Dave just drove around through a McDonald's drive-through
over and over again.
And then he just started driving the people there crazy.
Ever seen anybody killed in there at McDonald's? No. Like has the shake machine
ever gone nuts and
killed a guy? There you go. Do you have a family? Yes, one son. Yeah? How old
is he? He's four. What's his name?
Herman. Herman? Herman McDonald. Herman McDonald. Yes, he was born in the
restaurant in 1985. He was born in the restaurant? I gave birth to him in the
bathroom. No kidding. You mean they wouldn't even let you off to go home to
have the babies?
What kind of fish sandwich, please? What kind of fish is this? Is this the East
River trout? All right, Lucille, we'll see you. Bye-bye. You boys want some
fish? Filet-o-fish? You sure? There you go.
You boys seem kind of dim-witted to me. Then again, I'm the one who's circling
McDonald's.
I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, you know, by no means a cow town, but I
didn't have a lot of
exposure to sort of semi-countercultural things that were happening in New York.
And there were,
these kinds of people were booked on late night. It wasn't all big stars.
Brother Theodore,
and he would come in and sit down with Dave and just be ranting and angry about
all kinds of things.
With every failure, my reputation grows. One of these days, you'll see my
picture on every postage stamp.
One of these days, I'll feudalize the world.
Is that a band lawn shirt?
As an intern on the show, you just do whatever odd jobs need to be done. I was
given an envelope
and told to run an errand. I needed to go to a music store, pick something up
and bring it back
before music rehearsal. I arrive at this music store and I hand the guy the
envelope and he opens it up
and he looks at it. It was a check. And then he takes out this giant guitar
case. And it's this
absolutely beautiful acoustic guitar. The most beautiful acoustic guitar I'd
ever seen. It looked like a
work of art. So I was kind of running down the street, holding this giant
guitar case, like a,
you know, holding it like a baby and dodging cabs and people and trying not to
bump into anybody and
really trying to take care of this beautiful pristine instrument. I get to the
studio and I hand it off
and I'm like, okay, at least I did that. Well, of course that night, it turns
out Pete Townsend from
The Who was going to be the musical guest. At the end of the performance, Pete
Townsend does what Pete
Townsend does. And he picks up this beautiful guitar that I've carried like a
baby and he smashes into the amplifier.
Let's do something for the world. Let's do something good
for those kids, for charity, for everything. Let's do something really fun.
Not infrequently, staff members of the show would be used to perform in bits.
One year,
a bunch of us were rounded up to participate in a bit that was the running of
the cabs. And that was
another bit that I think was played over and over again long after I even left
New York.
And finally, our viewers in Spain will appreciate this. It's an event that's
often seen here in New
York City, the running of the cabs. Let's take a look at this. There they go.
Wow. Wow.
Sometimes we would do a bit called roll call or something and Dave would take
out a list and kind
of just check to make sure everybody was here. And I remember I had to be the
page who always
interrupts Dave. Hey, the guy who died in the audience five years ago, is he
still here?
The, uh, the CBS page. Here, Dave. Here, Dave. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
Hold it. Hold it.
I'm not finished. Uh, Rich, the CBS page who always interrupts me. Right here,
Dave. Okay, good.
At the time, there was some kind of MTV show where they allowed fans, uh, to
meet their idols of some
kind. And so I was cast in a bit to play a big fan who is getting to meet his
idol.
I'm standing right outside his dressing room. Thank you, MTV. This is, this is
amazing. This is so cool.
Here we go.
Hi. Nice to see you.
You look so different in real life. You know, you know, so do you a little bit.
Yeah. First of all, what's it like being married to Connie Chung?
What do you mean? Connie Chung, your wife? I'm not Maury Povich.
Can I change my guy?
Late 90s, early 2000s in New York, the Yankees were on a tear, winning a lot of
championships.
Some of the players just became kind of folk heroes. And one of them was a guy
named Orlando
El Duque Hernandez. We booked him to do a comedy bit where it was as if
somebody had won a contest to
get hit in the head by a pitch from El Duque. I was cast to be that person. Now,
the actual hitting
in the head was done with a dummy. But in order to set it up properly, I had to
go stand at a brick
wall while the actual El Duque threw a series of pitches very close to my head,
terrifying me each
time. He seemed to enjoy it more and more with each pitch. Let's go right out
now, live to 53rd Street
and say hello to the contest winner from Staten Island, New York, Alec Friedman.
Alec, where are you, buddy?
There he is. Okay, boys, take it away.
In the research office, not only did we research the guests, but we were sort
of the information
center. And this was pre-widespread internet. So information just wasn't Google-able.
I'm not
sure Google even existed really at the time. And one of the things that we were
counted upon to do
every year on that Thanksgiving show was to generate a list of different kinds
of pies. Because Dave would
do a bit where he would use an intuitive power to guess what kinds of pies his
mom had baked for
Thanksgiving that year. The researchers would gather together and pull out cookbooks
and just generate
a very long list of pies that Dave could then work from. But I remember we
would have a series of berry
pies. And then Dave would always say, you know, huckleberry, raspberry,
blueberry, Halleberry.
Now I'm going to try to psychically divine the kind of pie, the flavor of pie.
I'll put myself into
a small slight trance. Please, while I'm under, do not approach the desk. All
right, I have it.
The first pie, pumpkin. No pumpkin. Oh, come on, it is too. Rhubarb, pecan,
cherry, apple, peach, gooseberry,
blueberry, sugar cream, key lime, gumbo, raspberry, chocolate, mince, meat,
coconut, butterscotch,
pecan, chocolate chiffon pie with graham cracker crust. You've got it. Yeah!
One of the things that Dave's shows had kind of innovated was showing a guest
in a very old clip of
work, like an old commercial they had done or something they had done when they
were first starting out that
people hadn't seen. And in the pre-YouTube era, that stuff wasn't widely seen.
I remember one of the
people that we found out had been a kid actor was Mike Myers. Somehow I ended
up tracking down a clip
of him from a Canadian sitcom called The King of Kensington. I feel as if we
used it in almost every
subsequent Mike Myers appearance for quite a while. And we actually added to it.
We would find more clips
of Mike and we would kind of build them into a sequence. Mike Myers in Canada
as a kid. Ma's on to
something big, Larry. She just cracked the great raffle caper. Phony tickets.
You should have
heard the sales pitch. Only clips talk like that. Are these fake? Shove off,
fat boy.
Special delivery for John Lennon.
I was a huge Michael J. Fox fan. I was always excited to get to research him
and be involved
with a segment he was doing. One time I somehow got a notion about some work he
had done in Canada
that wasn't well known, maybe for a local station or a small independent
production company or something.
And there was a clip and a moment in it where young Michael is either asking to
be adopted by somebody,
or is expressing joy at having been adopted. Here we go. Michael J. Fox at the
age of 15 acting.
I'm so frightened. How are they treating you, the Peppermans?
Oh, they're okay. Whoa.
Miss Peppermint has to go for another operation. And they might send me back to
the home in Kelowna.
You wouldn't want to see that, would you? No way.
Okay. How'd you like to come and live here with me, Harley?
Wow. What do you mean you?
Could I?
Oh, stop it now.
Richard Simmons was a frequent guest on the show. Barbara Streisand, somebody
that he was crazy about,
had recently married James Brolin. One of the things that we did for the
segment was we mocked up a
photograph of their wedding photo, but put Richard in his face in as the bride.
After the show,
Richard had really gotten a kick out of it. So he asked if he could get a copy
of the photo. I went and
I got the picture and I brought it up to the dressing room and he said, "What's
your name?" And I said,
"Josh?" And then he said, "Has anybody told you they loved you today?" And I
said, "No." And he said, "Well,
I love you." That doesn't happen at a lot of jobs that I haven't really heard
from him since.
No. Barbara Streisand, a woman that I know you dated for a long time,
is now married to Mr. AMCO Transmission James Brolin. I was there. I know all
about it.
You were not there. I was there. You were not there.
How could you have been there? There's some sort of court order. No.
It's a phony picture. I was there. You were not there.
That's the second time you have doubted me.
So when I was segment producing, one of the guests I got to segment produce was
Jimmy Kimmel.
And I got a phone call at my desk. Jimmy was outside on 53rd street where the
audience
was lined up handing money, cash, to people in the audience. He had this idea
that he was going to
give everybody in the audience a dollar or five dollars or something for giving
him an impromptu
standing ovation when he was introduced. And he thought it'd be really funny as
a surprise to Dave.
And I had to explain to him that Dave was not keen on surprises and please,
please, please don't do
this. It didn't happen on the air. The segment went great. Many, many years
later, when I interviewed
for a job on Jimmy's show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, I reminded him that we had worked
together and
even years later, he remembered that I had ruined what he thought would have
been a fantastic bit,
but he hired me anyway. So when Kathie Lee Gifford was leaving the Regis and
Kathie Lee
show after many years, she came on our show as one of her last appearances. And
I had an idea that
as a sort of retirement gift, that we should give her a jet ski. Dave presented
her with the jet ski
as a surprise on the air. And it was only later that I learned that Kathie Lee
wanted to keep the jet ski.
And not only that, but she wanted the show to ship the jet ski to her vacation
home in the Florida Keys, which cost the show many, many thousands of dollars.
One time I was in a viewer mail bit where I was portraying somebody who had
written Dave a
letter. And the joke in the letter was, "Is that your final answer?" which was
the catchphrase from
"Who wants to be a millionaire?" which had been popular for a while.
Letter number two. "Dear Dave,
uh, is that your final answer?" This is from Casey Gish, Chestertown, Maryland.
Well, this is pretty funny, Casey. Way to go. Uh, you're only about...
You're only about 10 months late there with your little, uh, millionaire joke.
Is this your final answer? And, uh, here, Casey, take a look now. This is a
sneak preview
of, uh, Casey Gish's upcoming letters to the CBS mailbag. Watch.
Dear Dave, where's the beef? Dear Dave, I've fallen and I can't get up.
Dear Dave, show me the money.
Dear Dave, I just realized it's 2030 and I haven't aged or changed my clothes
in 30 years.
What's happening to me? Dear Dave, I now see that I am doomed to watch passively
as friends and lovers
grow old and die while I remain, cursed with eternal youth, praying for the
sweet release of death which
never comes. P.S. What's up?
You have a gun and you have to shoot either David Levin or Jimmy.
You know what I would do, Walter? I would have to turn that gun on myself.
No, I would have to shoot Jimmy because if I killed Dave, it would kill Jimmy.

Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Josh Weintraub | Letterman

I'm Josh Weintraub. I was an intern at Late Night with David Letterman in 1993,
and then I worked
at Late Show with David Letterman from 1996 to 2002 as a talent researcher and
then segment
producer. It's almost impossible to convey how much I loved Late Night. It was
a show that I
think shaped my sense of humor. The first thing I ever remember seeing Dave do
was a remote where
he was at an inventor's convention. One of the inventors that he spoke to was a
guy who had
invented a device that I think go inside a coffin and prevent somebody from
being accidentally
buried alive. When Dave was talking to him, the guy revealed that he himself
had been
accidentally buried alive multiple times. I thought this was one of the
weirdest and funniest
things I'd ever seen. Told me to tell you that he was buried alive three times.
I can understand
being buried alive once. Sure, everybody's going to make a mistake. Or even
twice. Somebody's
looking the other way, they close the lid. Three times? How has it happened to
him three
times? Just to run a bad luck, then? Just to run a bad luck. Early on in late
night,
he did a bit where Dave just drove around through a McDonald's drive-through
over and over again.
And then he just started driving the people there crazy.
Ever seen anybody killed in there at McDonald's? No. Like has the shake machine
ever gone nuts and
killed a guy? There you go. Do you have a family? Yes, one son. Yeah? How old
is he? He's four. What's his name?
Herman. Herman? Herman McDonald. Herman McDonald. Yes, he was born in the
restaurant in 1985. He was born in the restaurant? I gave birth to him in the
bathroom. No kidding. You mean they wouldn't even let you off to go home to
have the babies?
What kind of fish sandwich, please? What kind of fish is this? Is this the East
River trout? All right, Lucille, we'll see you. Bye-bye. You boys want some
fish? Filet-o-fish? You sure? There you go.
You boys seem kind of dim-witted to me. Then again, I'm the one who's circling
McDonald's.
I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, you know, by no means a cow town, but I
didn't have a lot of
exposure to sort of semi-countercultural things that were happening in New York.
And there were,
these kinds of people were booked on late night. It wasn't all big stars.
Brother Theodore,
and he would come in and sit down with Dave and just be ranting and angry about
all kinds of things.
With every failure, my reputation grows. One of these days, you'll see my
picture on every postage stamp.
One of these days, I'll feudalize the world.
Is that a band lawn shirt?
As an intern on the show, you just do whatever odd jobs need to be done. I was
given an envelope
and told to run an errand. I needed to go to a music store, pick something up
and bring it back
before music rehearsal. I arrive at this music store and I hand the guy the
envelope and he opens it up
and he looks at it. It was a check. And then he takes out this giant guitar
case. And it's this
absolutely beautiful acoustic guitar. The most beautiful acoustic guitar I'd
ever seen. It looked like a
work of art. So I was kind of running down the street, holding this giant
guitar case, like a,
you know, holding it like a baby and dodging cabs and people and trying not to
bump into anybody and
really trying to take care of this beautiful pristine instrument. I get to the
studio and I hand it off
and I'm like, okay, at least I did that. Well, of course that night, it turns
out Pete Townsend from
The Who was going to be the musical guest. At the end of the performance, Pete
Townsend does what Pete
Townsend does. And he picks up this beautiful guitar that I've carried like a
baby and he smashes into the amplifier.
Let's do something for the world. Let's do something good
for those kids, for charity, for everything. Let's do something really fun.
Not infrequently, staff members of the show would be used to perform in bits.
One year,
a bunch of us were rounded up to participate in a bit that was the running of
the cabs. And that was
another bit that I think was played over and over again long after I even left
New York.
And finally, our viewers in Spain will appreciate this. It's an event that's
often seen here in New
York City, the running of the cabs. Let's take a look at this. There they go.
Wow. Wow.
Sometimes we would do a bit called roll call or something and Dave would take
out a list and kind
of just check to make sure everybody was here. And I remember I had to be the
page who always
interrupts Dave. Hey, the guy who died in the audience five years ago, is he
still here?
The, uh, the CBS page. Here, Dave. Here, Dave. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
Hold it. Hold it.
I'm not finished. Uh, Rich, the CBS page who always interrupts me. Right here,
Dave. Okay, good.
At the time, there was some kind of MTV show where they allowed fans, uh, to
meet their idols of some
kind. And so I was cast in a bit to play a big fan who is getting to meet his
idol.
I'm standing right outside his dressing room. Thank you, MTV. This is, this is
amazing. This is so cool.
Here we go.
Hi. Nice to see you.
You look so different in real life. You know, you know, so do you a little bit.
Yeah. First of all, what's it like being married to Connie Chung?
What do you mean? Connie Chung, your wife? I'm not Maury Povich.
Can I change my guy?
Late 90s, early 2000s in New York, the Yankees were on a tear, winning a lot of
championships.
Some of the players just became kind of folk heroes. And one of them was a guy
named Orlando
El Duque Hernandez. We booked him to do a comedy bit where it was as if
somebody had won a contest to
get hit in the head by a pitch from El Duque. I was cast to be that person. Now,
the actual hitting
in the head was done with a dummy. But in order to set it up properly, I had to
go stand at a brick
wall while the actual El Duque threw a series of pitches very close to my head,
terrifying me each
time. He seemed to enjoy it more and more with each pitch. Let's go right out
now, live to 53rd Street
and say hello to the contest winner from Staten Island, New York, Alec Friedman.
Alec, where are you, buddy?
There he is. Okay, boys, take it away.
In the research office, not only did we research the guests, but we were sort
of the information
center. And this was pre-widespread internet. So information just wasn't Google-able.
I'm not
sure Google even existed really at the time. And one of the things that we were
counted upon to do
every year on that Thanksgiving show was to generate a list of different kinds
of pies. Because Dave would
do a bit where he would use an intuitive power to guess what kinds of pies his
mom had baked for
Thanksgiving that year. The researchers would gather together and pull out cookbooks
and just generate
a very long list of pies that Dave could then work from. But I remember we
would have a series of berry
pies. And then Dave would always say, you know, huckleberry, raspberry,
blueberry, Halleberry.
Now I'm going to try to psychically divine the kind of pie, the flavor of pie.
I'll put myself into
a small slight trance. Please, while I'm under, do not approach the desk. All
right, I have it.
The first pie, pumpkin. No pumpkin. Oh, come on, it is too. Rhubarb, pecan,
cherry, apple, peach, gooseberry,
blueberry, sugar cream, key lime, gumbo, raspberry, chocolate, mince, meat,
coconut, butterscotch,
pecan, chocolate chiffon pie with graham cracker crust. You've got it. Yeah!
One of the things that Dave's shows had kind of innovated was showing a guest
in a very old clip of
work, like an old commercial they had done or something they had done when they
were first starting out that
people hadn't seen. And in the pre-YouTube era, that stuff wasn't widely seen.
I remember one of the
people that we found out had been a kid actor was Mike Myers. Somehow I ended
up tracking down a clip
of him from a Canadian sitcom called The King of Kensington. I feel as if we
used it in almost every
subsequent Mike Myers appearance for quite a while. And we actually added to it.
We would find more clips
of Mike and we would kind of build them into a sequence. Mike Myers in Canada
as a kid. Ma's on to
something big, Larry. She just cracked the great raffle caper. Phony tickets.
You should have
heard the sales pitch. Only clips talk like that. Are these fake? Shove off,
fat boy.
Special delivery for John Lennon.
I was a huge Michael J. Fox fan. I was always excited to get to research him
and be involved
with a segment he was doing. One time I somehow got a notion about some work he
had done in Canada
that wasn't well known, maybe for a local station or a small independent
production company or something.
And there was a clip and a moment in it where young Michael is either asking to
be adopted by somebody,
or is expressing joy at having been adopted. Here we go. Michael J. Fox at the
age of 15 acting.
I'm so frightened. How are they treating you, the Peppermans?
Oh, they're okay. Whoa.
Miss Peppermint has to go for another operation. And they might send me back to
the home in Kelowna.
You wouldn't want to see that, would you? No way.
Okay. How'd you like to come and live here with me, Harley?
Wow. What do you mean you?
Could I?
Oh, stop it now.
Richard Simmons was a frequent guest on the show. Barbara Streisand, somebody
that he was crazy about,
had recently married James Brolin. One of the things that we did for the
segment was we mocked up a
photograph of their wedding photo, but put Richard in his face in as the bride.
After the show,
Richard had really gotten a kick out of it. So he asked if he could get a copy
of the photo. I went and
I got the picture and I brought it up to the dressing room and he said, "What's
your name?" And I said,
"Josh?" And then he said, "Has anybody told you they loved you today?" And I
said, "No." And he said, "Well,
I love you." That doesn't happen at a lot of jobs that I haven't really heard
from him since.
No. Barbara Streisand, a woman that I know you dated for a long time,
is now married to Mr. AMCO Transmission James Brolin. I was there. I know all
about it.
You were not there. I was there. You were not there.
How could you have been there? There's some sort of court order. No.
It's a phony picture. I was there. You were not there.
That's the second time you have doubted me.
So when I was segment producing, one of the guests I got to segment produce was
Jimmy Kimmel.
And I got a phone call at my desk. Jimmy was outside on 53rd street where the
audience
was lined up handing money, cash, to people in the audience. He had this idea
that he was going to
give everybody in the audience a dollar or five dollars or something for giving
him an impromptu
standing ovation when he was introduced. And he thought it'd be really funny as
a surprise to Dave.
And I had to explain to him that Dave was not keen on surprises and please,
please, please don't do
this. It didn't happen on the air. The segment went great. Many, many years
later, when I interviewed
for a job on Jimmy's show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, I reminded him that we had worked
together and
even years later, he remembered that I had ruined what he thought would have
been a fantastic bit,
but he hired me anyway. So when Kathie Lee Gifford was leaving the Regis and
Kathie Lee
show after many years, she came on our show as one of her last appearances. And
I had an idea that
as a sort of retirement gift, that we should give her a jet ski. Dave presented
her with the jet ski
as a surprise on the air. And it was only later that I learned that Kathie Lee
wanted to keep the jet ski.
And not only that, but she wanted the show to ship the jet ski to her vacation
home in the Florida Keys, which cost the show many, many thousands of dollars.
One time I was in a viewer mail bit where I was portraying somebody who had
written Dave a
letter. And the joke in the letter was, "Is that your final answer?" which was
the catchphrase from
"Who wants to be a millionaire?" which had been popular for a while