Name: Denzel Washington Says He Can Beat Sylvester Stallone In A Fight | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-09-12T22:19:27.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Denzel Washington Says He Can Beat Sylvester Stallone In A Fight | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-09-12. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Denzel Washington Says He Can Beat Sylvester Stallone In A Fight | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-09-12. Transcript available.

uh we're very pleased that our first guest is joining us here tonight he is an
academy award
winning big time motion picture star his latest movie entitled the siege opens
on friday ladies
and gentlemen here's denzel washington welcome to the late show thank you sir
nice to meet you
my pleasure how about those yankees how about it man pretty exciting wasn't it
did you go to some of the games i went to the uh first uh world series game
yeah yeah with bruce
bruce willis oh you and bruce willis oh my god now so bruce is like in in the
movie with you the
co-star of the siege now what is that like when you and bruce go to a ball game
at yankee stadium
you know they don't have peanuts in the crackerjacks like they used to they don't
i went i went through
the crackerjack box and couldn't find any then i dropped them it's true now
what is bruce like when
he's out among folks bruce is cool he's regular as regular as he can be you
know with people calling
he's not hooked up right though is he necessarily you mean married or anything
no no no no no no no
no i don't mean that oh i mean just just hooked up just you know hooked up oh
you mean like yeah
in his brain just easy he he sees the world a little differently
don't you think a little bit no he seems normal to me what like what like you
know just kind of
he's a wacky sort of a fellow in a good positive positive good healthy crackerjack
sort of yeah
yeah did you uh did you play sports i noticed you got a baseball hat and a
tennis ball i found this in
in the hallway coming in it's true i saw i walked in the door and this was on
the floor i kept it it's
mine now sure it is some shows give out fruit baskets we you know tennis balls
in the floor and polish
ham i heard yeah oh sure yeah if this goes well you'll get a hand
thank you
you're from just up north of westchester when you're a kid born in uh what town
is mount
vernon mount vernon yeah and and did you know early on i mean uh i i don't know
what it would be like
living that close to new york city and not having it exert a tremendous force a
tremendous pull on you
i lived literally i grew up on the borderline of mount vernon and the bronx
there's a school up
there mount saint michael i grew up right across from mount saint michael
academy in north bronx
did you find early on as a kid you would come into the city did you know early
on it was did you come
in and go to movies and stuff you know a lot of people do that yeah we used to
go to movies on 42nd
street when they were still you know when you could go to the right movies
there and uh you know
sneak on the train and um we used to i remember going to yankee stadium uh to a
football clinic
back when the giants used to play there and i actually am old enough to
remember y.a tittle and
homer jones oh yeah remember that great photo of y.a tittle on his knees
bleeding yeah blood just
gushing off his nose that was and steam coming off that was me that was i was
the reason why yeah and
sam huff sam number 70 right yeah the linebacker yeah those are great days but
did you know uh that
you want to be a movie uh you want to be an actor you want to be a movie star
when when did that sort
of how did that happen i was a junior i went to to college right off the block
fordham university
two years in the bronx we got fordermites in two years up in rose hill two
years at lincoln center
and uh when i transferred to lincoln center i started taking some acting
classes and uh because i was
flunking everything else when you when you take an acting class uh because when
i when i watch you
act it's it's like a one of a handful of people it seems just effortless it
seems very easy you know
other people you can kind of see them oh yeah you're an actor but so when when
a guy like you goes to an
acting class what really can a person like you learn from an acting what what
did they teach you i learned
a lot i mean i studied for about eight years you know off and on at different
times i mean i think it's
important i think a lot of the people that you can see acting one of the
reasons is because they
haven't had any classes right or they have you know it's an easy thing to say i'm
an actor everybody
can say that and everybody's right for one part right but uh your foundation
and your training is
what's going to take you over the long long haul is there something that you
learned in in one day in
one of those classes that uh like on on this movie that was about to open up
that you can reach back
and yeah on or is that stuff just all now because one of the first lessons i
learned and it relates
it anybody can relate to this an acting teacher was saying okay a guy's gonna
walk into the room
to kill you right and the first guy comes in says oh man i'm gonna break your
neck
you know right he says that's one version yeah the other guy walks in you know
you want some uh you
thirsty yeah kind of sure well now you gotta die now you gotta die oh is that
was poison it was poison
i have the worst luck holy crap but just that less is more yeah you know that's
but now when you're
making a movie is that decision left to the actor or to the director that less
is more yeah or do however
you want to approach it like you just demonstrated two ways to do a scene who
makes the final decision
i think ultimately the director i mean you'll you'll do it the way you want but
you know you might be
doing that scene and they they may cut like to the cup you know if you're oh
yeah i see right right
oh you're very good don't worry moving on the cup yeah no you were great then
it was beautiful what you
did you know what i hear a lot around whenever we do our little uh skits and
stuff and we'll videotape
something and uh somebody will say that was perfect that was perfect let's just
try one more
yeah and it makes you think or we've got it now yeah oh we got where we want
play with play with
play with one just have fun just have fun yeah go nuts right uh you're you're
working on a movie where
you play a prize fighter yeah reuben hurricane car oh that's a great story isn't
it well i mean
not not a great story but it's a it's a it's a true story true story yeah yeah
but it's a sad story ultimately it's a it's an uplifting story i mean he's free
now he spent 20
years in a penitentiary for a crime he didn't commit and uh he's he's free now
how old a man is
he 60 i better get it right one i think and he's living i guess out of the
country or he's living
wouldn't you no oh boy i'm gonna pay for that no no yeah he's living in toronto
yeah yeah and where do
you guys spend some time with him obviously yeah in fact he he was here uh up
until yesterday and i
spent some time with him up in toronto good man and you you're playing him in
the film i'm playing him
now have you fought before boxing i've been training for a year i've been in a
gym boxing for over a year
now and uh pretty good so oh you're pretty good i can go a little bit okay i
see you balling that
fist up yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna take a swing at you that's what that's what i'm
gonna do uh but uh uh
now are you in one of these deals where it's like they're really teaching you
to fight or they're just
kind of like i'm i'm sparring uh yeah i'm sparring now if if headgear on yeah
no sure no no absolutely
you don't want to mess up your face uh some nights i do this show with headgear
do you yeah but if
you and sylvester stallone who could you and rocky who would win that if i was
boxing sylvester stallone
no he couldn't beat me exactly
he's a tiny man well not not boxing maybe wrestling maybe maybe if he got a
grip on me
or boxing no i'd knock him out why why no i would i wouldn't why doesn't that
kind of stuff
i would why why don't you i would dave i know you really man i would i knock
him out
uh let's see oh we got all kind of stuff to talk about hang on there enjoy you
enjoy your
complimentary tennis ball yeah didn't you used to like sing bermuda oh man denzel
thank you for
remembering thank you for remembering my hit that's so nice of you paul and his
wife went to vacation
in bermuda and when he came back he had written a song about the experience paul
you want to share
the folks oh i'd be thrilled that crazy vacation kind of place that's it i
remember that it's a nutty
cuckoo kind of place denzel yes it is bermuda bermuda i'm just going to read a
list of these films
because it's very impressive and i'm not reading this to embarrass you but if
you have comments to
make as we go up the list you know feel free to speak right up all right a
soldier story yes 1984.
working with norman jewison again now on reuben hurricane carter okay the
director director uh cry
freedom academy award nomination 1987. first trip to africa glory first
whipping uh won the academy
award for best supporting actor there uh mo better blues spike lee trumpet yeah
drove my wife crazy
playing around the house are you any good nope yeah i wonder i wonder what
spike lee is doing every
night now that there's no basketball where does this guy go now i heard he's
going to hockey games
somehow you just can't imagine spike you know at a hockey game malcolm x
another academy award nomination
much ado about nothing shakes kenneth brana emma thompson yeah philadelphia of
course tom hanks that
was a huge huge movie uh tom hanks a nice guy yeah tom is a very nice uh is
that a piece that he's wearing
you think all right uh pelican brief oh julia roberts man now now i see why he
does wear a piece
kidding uh crimson tide this was a great film uh gene hackman there's a there's
another
devil in a blue dress courage under fire meg ryan oh my goodness uh the
preacher's wife whitney
houston yes sir you were singing in that yes i was yeah bad uh fallen john goodman
john goodman's
was another great guy yeah nice man was and uh he got uh still is yeah yeah he's
still with us yeah
he got game uh basketball last shot at that spike lee very impressive very
impressive body of work
as they say on television shows uh and now you're working on the the boxing
film and you're spending
time with boxers joe frazier and who else you uh i had the good fortune one
night i had michael spinks and
joe frazier in my my room watching tapes asking them their opinion of uh boxing
styles tapes of great
fights tapes of their fights tapes of uh fights of reuben uh tapes of my fights
uh you know uh just you
know getting their opinion and stuff both nice guys yeah joe frazier and muhammad
ali those three
i saw muhammad ali last night how's he doing he's doing well yeah i haven't
seen him in years he was on
on the old show and uh i don't i don't pretend to know him but he just struck
me as a sweet wonderful
decent fellow uh let's take a look at the uh the clip from the siege you just
tell folks what we're
going to look at here uh in this clip um i don't know what happens no really no
no no we're we're
we're moving in uh i play an fbi agents anti-terrorist unit we're moving in on
a man that we think is is
the actual suspect uh turns out he's not but the army comes in and uh ruins our
party and this was
i understand i believe was the the the single biggest film production in the
city of new york ever
no yeah huge shut down the city top to bottom this this movie couldn't have
been the biggest no i think
it was no there was some big scene but it wasn't the biggest no no i think it
was the biggest it's
the biggest are you in this movie no we shut down 42nd street which was
unbelievable i mean we shut
down from like 47th all the way down to times square unbelievable we shut down
the brooklyn bridge is
that fun when you just walk around running the town like that not for the
people that were trying to
get to work that's right yes sir re all right let's take a look here we go uh
this is a couple of
seconds from the film uh the siege denzel washington take a look folks shot
right here in new york city
and to a lot of folks that's just another day in new york city
all the time let's mention the uh the cast in the film it's yourself annette
benning annette
benning a lovely woman a beautiful one yeah and uh bruce willis bruce willis
yep uh tony shalhoub
uh who else ed zwick who i've worked with twice now courage under fire and
glory great director
and uh half of new york city it's going to be a big big film you think huge i
sincerely hope
so it's a very good film and i hope you come back you haven't you haven't been
here in a long time
never you've never been here that's how long it's been i wouldn't come i wouldn't
go by they wouldn't
let me in dave i go man they're having a good time yeah that's right we wouldn't
we and if denzel
washington shows up don't let him in good to see you nice meeting you have a
great time with the film

Denzel Washington Says He Can Beat Sylvester Stallone In A Fight | Letterman

uh we're very pleased that our first guest is joining us here tonight he is an
academy award
winning big time motion picture star his latest movie entitled the siege opens
on friday ladies
and gentlemen here's denzel washington welcome to the late show thank you sir
nice to meet you
my pleasure how about those yankees how about it man pretty exciting wasn't it
did you go to some of the games i went to the uh first uh world series game
yeah yeah with bruce
bruce willis oh you and bruce willis oh my god now so bruce is like in in the
movie with you the
co-star of the siege now what is that like when you and bruce go to a ball game
at yankee stadium
you know they don't have peanuts in the crackerjacks like they used to they don't
i went i went through
the crackerjack box and couldn't find any then i dropped them it's true now
what is bruce like when
he's out among folks bruce is cool he's regular as regular as he can be you
know with people calling
he's not hooked up right though is he necessarily you mean married or anything
no no no no no no no
no i don't mean that oh i mean just just hooked up just you know hooked up oh
you mean like yeah
in his brain just easy he he sees the world a little differently
don't you think a little bit no he seems normal to me what like what like you
know just kind of
he's a wacky sort of a fellow in a good positive positive good healthy crackerjack
sort of yeah
yeah did you uh did you play sports i noticed you got a baseball hat and a
tennis ball i found this in
in the hallway coming in it's true i saw i walked in the door and this was on
the floor i kept it it's
mine now sure it is some shows give out fruit baskets we you know tennis balls
in the floor and polish
ham i heard yeah oh sure yeah if this goes well you'll get a hand
thank you
you're from just up north of westchester when you're a kid born in uh what town
is mount
vernon mount vernon yeah and and did you know early on i mean uh i i don't know
what it would be like
living that close to new york city and not having it exert a tremendous force a
tremendous pull on you
i lived literally i grew up on the borderline of mount vernon and the bronx
there's a school up
there mount saint michael i grew up right across from mount saint michael
academy in north bronx
did you find early on as a kid you would come into the city did you know early
on it was did you come
in and go to movies and stuff you know a lot of people do that yeah we used to
go to movies on 42nd
street when they were still you know when you could go to the right movies
there and uh you know
sneak on the train and um we used to i remember going to yankee stadium uh to a
football clinic
back when the giants used to play there and i actually am old enough to
remember y.a tittle and
homer jones oh yeah remember that great photo of y.a tittle on his knees
bleeding yeah blood just
gushing off his nose that was and steam coming off that was me that was i was
the reason why yeah and
sam huff sam number 70 right yeah the linebacker yeah those are great days but
did you know uh that
you want to be a movie uh you want to be an actor you want to be a movie star
when when did that sort
of how did that happen i was a junior i went to to college right off the block
fordham university
two years in the bronx we got fordermites in two years up in rose hill two
years at lincoln center
and uh when i transferred to lincoln center i started taking some acting
classes and uh because i was
flunking everything else when you when you take an acting class uh because when
i when i watch you
act it's it's like a one of a handful of people it seems just effortless it
seems very easy you know
other people you can kind of see them oh yeah you're an actor but so when when
a guy like you goes to an
acting class what really can a person like you learn from an acting what what
did they teach you i learned
a lot i mean i studied for about eight years you know off and on at different
times i mean i think it's
important i think a lot of the people that you can see acting one of the
reasons is because they
haven't had any classes right or they have you know it's an easy thing to say i'm
an actor everybody
can say that and everybody's right for one part right but uh your foundation
and your training is
what's going to take you over the long long haul is there something that you
learned in in one day in
one of those classes that uh like on on this movie that was about to open up
that you can reach back
and yeah on or is that stuff just all now because one of the first lessons i
learned and it relates
it anybody can relate to this an acting teacher was saying okay a guy's gonna
walk into the room
to kill you right and the first guy comes in says oh man i'm gonna break your
neck
you know right he says that's one version yeah the other guy walks in you know
you want some uh you
thirsty yeah kind of sure well now you gotta die now you gotta die oh is that
was poison it was poison
i have the worst luck holy crap but just that less is more yeah you know that's
but now when you're
making a movie is that decision left to the actor or to the director that less
is more yeah or do however
you want to approach it like you just demonstrated two ways to do a scene who
makes the final decision
i think ultimately the director i mean you'll you'll do it the way you want but
you know you might be
doing that scene and they they may cut like to the cup you know if you're oh
yeah i see right right
oh you're very good don't worry moving on the cup yeah no you were great then
it was beautiful what you
did you know what i hear a lot around whenever we do our little uh skits and
stuff and we'll videotape
something and uh somebody will say that was perfect that was perfect let's just
try one more
yeah and it makes you think or we've got it now yeah oh we got where we want
play with play with
play with one just have fun just have fun yeah go nuts right uh you're you're
working on a movie where
you play a prize fighter yeah reuben hurricane car oh that's a great story isn't
it well i mean
not not a great story but it's a it's a it's a true story true story yeah yeah
but it's a sad story ultimately it's a it's an uplifting story i mean he's free
now he spent 20
years in a penitentiary for a crime he didn't commit and uh he's he's free now
how old a man is
he 60 i better get it right one i think and he's living i guess out of the
country or he's living
wouldn't you no oh boy i'm gonna pay for that no no yeah he's living in toronto
yeah yeah and where do
you guys spend some time with him obviously yeah in fact he he was here uh up
until yesterday and i
spent some time with him up in toronto good man and you you're playing him in
the film i'm playing him
now have you fought before boxing i've been training for a year i've been in a
gym boxing for over a year
now and uh pretty good so oh you're pretty good i can go a little bit okay i
see you balling that
fist up yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna take a swing at you that's what that's what i'm
gonna do uh but uh uh
now are you in one of these deals where it's like they're really teaching you
to fight or they're just
kind of like i'm i'm sparring uh yeah i'm sparring now if if headgear on yeah
no sure no no absolutely
you don't want to mess up your face uh some nights i do this show with headgear
do you yeah but if
you and sylvester stallone who could you and rocky who would win that if i was
boxing sylvester stallone
no he couldn't beat me exactly
he's a tiny man well not not boxing maybe wrestling maybe maybe if he got a
grip on me
or boxing no i'd knock him out why why no i would i wouldn't why doesn't that
kind of stuff
i would why why don't you i would dave i know you really man i would i knock
him out
uh let's see oh we got all kind of stuff to talk about hang on there enjoy you
enjoy your
complimentary tennis ball yeah didn't you used to like sing bermuda oh man denzel
thank you for
remembering thank you for remembering my hit that's so nice of you paul and his
wife went to vacation
in bermuda and when he came back he had written a song about the experience paul
you want to share
the folks oh i'd be thrilled that crazy vacation kind of place that's it i
remember that it's a nutty
cuckoo kind of place denzel yes it is bermuda bermuda i'm just going to read a
list of these films
because it's very impressive and i'm not reading this to embarrass you but if
you have comments to
make as we go up the list you know feel free to speak right up all right a
soldier story yes 1984.
working with norman jewison again now on reuben hurricane carter okay the
director director uh cry
freedom academy award nomination 1987. first trip to africa glory first
whipping uh won the academy
award for best supporting actor there uh mo better blues spike lee trumpet yeah
drove my wife crazy
playing around the house are you any good nope yeah i wonder i wonder what
spike lee is doing every
night now that there's no basketball where does this guy go now i heard he's
going to hockey games
somehow you just can't imagine spike you know at a hockey game malcolm x
another academy award nomination
much ado about nothing shakes kenneth brana emma thompson yeah philadelphia of
course tom hanks that
was a huge huge movie uh tom hanks a nice guy yeah tom is a very nice uh is
that a piece that he's wearing
you think all right uh pelican brief oh julia roberts man now now i see why he
does wear a piece
kidding uh crimson tide this was a great film uh gene hackman there's a there's
another
devil in a blue dress courage under fire meg ryan oh my goodness uh the
preacher's wife whitney
houston yes sir you were singing in that yes i was yeah bad uh fallen john goodman
john goodman's
was another great guy yeah nice man was and uh he got uh still is yeah yeah he's
still with us yeah
he got game uh basketball last shot at that spike lee very impressive very
impressive body of work
as they say on television shows uh and now you're working on the the boxing
film and you're spending
time with boxers joe frazier and who else you uh i had the good fortune one
night i had michael spinks and
joe frazier in my my room watching tapes asking them their opinion of uh boxing
styles tapes of great
fights tapes of their fights tapes of uh fights of reuben uh tapes of my fights
uh you know uh just you
know getting their opinion and stuff both nice guys yeah joe frazier and muhammad
ali those three
i saw muhammad ali last night how's he doing he's doing well yeah i haven't
seen him in years he was on
on the old show and uh i don't i don't pretend to know him but he just struck
me as a sweet wonderful
decent fellow uh let's take a look at the uh the clip from the siege you just
tell folks what we're
going to look at here uh in this clip um i don't know what happens no really no
no no we're we're
we're moving in uh i play an fbi agents anti-terrorist unit we're moving in on
a man that we think is is
the actual suspect uh turns out he's not but the army comes in and uh ruins our
party and this was
i understand i believe was the the the single biggest film production in the
city of new york ever
no yeah huge shut down the city top to bottom this this movie couldn't have
been the biggest no i think
it was no there was some big scene but it wasn't the biggest no no i think it
was the biggest it's
the biggest are you in this movie no we shut down 42nd street which was
unbelievable i mean we shut
down from like 47th all the way down to times square unbelievable we shut down
the brooklyn bridge is
that fun when you just walk around running the town like that not for the
people that were trying to
get to work that's right yes sir re all right let's take a look here we go uh
this is a couple of
seconds from the film uh the siege denzel washington take a look folks shot
right here in new york city
and to a lot of folks that's just another day in new york city
all the time let's mention the uh the cast in the film it's your