Name: Bruce McCall's Zany Afternoons | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-05-07T16:32:22.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bruce McCall's Zany Afternoons | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bruce McCall's Zany Afternoons | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-07. Transcript available.

My next guest is a brilliantly funny writer and artist whose work has appeared
in the National Lampoon, Esquire, and The New Yorker.
A collection of his work, Hold Up, has just been published under the title Zany
Afternoons.
Welcome, please, Bruce McCall.
Hi, Bruce. Pleasure to meet you, sir.
Thank you very much for coming by.
First of all, tell us, when someone would purchase this book or when they see
your work, what is the kind of artwork?
What is it done in, what is the...
The artists call it gouache. I call it watercolor.
What is gouache?
It's just a mixture of paint and water applied with a brush.
Over pencil.
Over pencil?
Yeah, they're very detailed, aren't they? Your work is...
Yeah, it's fairly finely done, but a lot of people work that fine besides me.
That's commercial art. That's a form of commercial art where everything has to
be exactly so.
I just took that a step further into satire.
Yeah, and you also write all of the copy that goes along with the book.
Yes, yes.
And do you think of yourself more of an artist or a writer?
A writer.
Similar skills.
A writer who draws.
Editors love a writer who can draw because it solves the assignment problem.
They just buy the whole package.
Yeah.
And is there a theme running through this book?
Nonsense.
Okay.
Now we're getting somewhere.
Let's take a look at some of the work contained herein.
Now, as I understand it, these are the originals, aren't they?
That's the original art, yeah.
So I better not screw this up.
Oh, no.
All right.
Okay.
Is it okay to lift this off?
Why not?
You can see it then.
I guess it would be pointless to get you out here and not even look at the
stuff, wouldn't it?
Okay, Bruce, what are we looking at?
That's wing dining, which is wafting gently over France in the 50s and having
your meal outdoors
while all of France drifts by below.
And you can throw your buns over the side and keep the paperweight on your
papers on your menu.
Now, in the book, you mentioned that Hemingway had a favorite place on the—
Yeah, outboard beyond the prop wash because the propeller can cause a lot of
turbulence and ruin your meal.
So he would dine out there.
Now, this is in addition to nonsense.
This seems to be written from the standpoint of people who had just money to
burn.
Is there any truth to that?
Well, rich people can afford the technology that I show, I think, is the main
reason for that.
There isn't any particular other reasons.
Okay.
That's Jimmy Walker Field in—what used to be Jimmy Walker Field in Central
Park,
where you'd come in along Fifth Avenue and land just in front of the plaza.
It's been torn down since.
This was done at the time, as you can see, when the Empire State Building was
just being built.
Oh, yeah.
Now, this was a particularly scary approach to landing, wasn't it?
It could be frightening, I think, yes.
Yeah, yeah.
You saw people above you as you landed.
Yeah.
That could be frightening.
Now, what kind of aircraft is this?
Is this an actual airplane?
That's a Ford Trimotor, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that was an actual—that was an early workforce.
Oh, yes.
That's not fanciful.
That's—
All right, another scene from days gone by in New York City, I believe.
Right, Bruce?
This is the Age of Elegance.
This is the Fifth Avenue subway.
Which was—
The Ghouls and the Vanderbilts and the Rhinelanders all had their own stops,
and nobody else is
allowed on it, and they serve champagne in the booths and letter-bound novels
for sale.
But it was very elegant.
It's too bad it's gone.
Yeah, it's sad to see that—that way of life, uh—shamed such a thing as a
fan.
Yeah.
All right.
We, uh, got time for one more here?
Okay.
Bless you.
That's all right.
Okay.
This is a—this is a lost pastime from before World War I.
When Franz Josef or—or one of the Austrian nobility would shoot zeppelins—or
dirigibles, as they're sometimes called—it was fairly easy to make a hit, but
took a long time to go down.
And to clean it up was a—and to clean it up was a hell of a mess.
Yeah.
But, uh, easier than—easier than grouse, was that the—
Yes, yes.
They fell very gracefully, very slowly.
Okay.
All right.
We'll, uh—we have to pause here for a commercial.
We'll, uh, continue looking at, uh, some more of, uh, Mr. McCall's work from Zany
Afternoons right after this.
We're looking at some, uh, pictures, uh, from the book Zany Afternoons.
Bruce, what is the—I—this, uh, next few—these next few photos or—drawings
are from, uh—
The 1937 Cairo World's Fair.
Okay, great.
Which was forgotten, unfortunately.
This is the building, uh, put up by the cardboard industry called, uh, It's a
Corrugated World.
It blew away in a gale, and they found it in Tunisia about three years later.
It's all made of cardboard.
But it was quite the talk of the fair there for a while.
Yes.
I remember reading about it.
Yeah.
All right.
Here again from the World's Fair.
This includes the official symbol, which is a pyramidrion, which is made of
bakelite,
a material that you don't find too much anymore.
Uh-huh.
And unfortunately, it swelled during the day and, you know, shrank at night.
And the rings kept slipping off.
The building would actually expand and contract.
Yeah.
And this is, uh, the figure in the foreground is Man the Robot, who was the
official symbol,
uh, uh, of much of the fair.
Yeah.
And in the back there, we see Sillytown.
Sillytown, the amusement park.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
What sort of things took place in Sillytown?
Uh, giraffe rides and—and local things.
Uh-huh.
All right.
And here?
Uh, this is the controversial—this is the musical firing squad from
Afghanistan.
Uh, every hour on the hour, uh, wrote the whole fair.
Uh-huh.
And always to music, huh?
Always to music.
All right.
Afghanistanian folk tunes, mostly.
This is a nice pavilion.
Yeah.
This is the Museum of the Hat.
Um, every time a lady entered, it tipped.
The whole derby on top tipped.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
You like airplanes.
You seem to have a lot of airplanes in your work, also automobiles.
Uh-huh.
Well, I see a lot of them every day.
I see a lot of airplanes.
Uh-huh.
It's easy to draw them.
This is the airport that looks like an airplane, which is unusual.
Uh-huh.
Was this affiliated with the World's Fair, also?
Yes, that's how you got in and out.
Uh-huh.
And it was inaugurating air mail service from the fair to the rest of the world,
but it
costs about $75 per letter to mail a letter.
Uh, so not many people used it.
Now, this again is an actual aircraft, isn't it?
That's an actual aircraft, the Arc-en-Ciel.
That's a French design that never made it off the ground as far as is known.
Uh-huh.
But it's a real plane.
What is the background of the, I mean, how did it come to be a plane?
Uh, about a 21-year-old genius in France in the '30s designed it by public
subscription,
and they finally got a prototype built and set off for Rio and got it about 300
yards down
the runway when it exploded, and that's the sad story of the Arc-en-Ciel.
Yeah.
It's not a joke.
It hurts production when that happens on the first flight or two.
All right.
Again, more from the World's Fair in Cairo.
This is digest-o-rama.
This is a trip through an enlarged human intestine.
All right.
It's an amusement ride.
We'll never forget it.
Amusement.
Yeah.
And folks go there after a big meal?
Yeah.
All right.
Now, this, we're no longer at the fair.
This is, again, just the lousy rich.
This is for folks with money rolling out of their, uh, what do we have?
That's indoor golf.
And the trick was not to hit the constable on the wall and to try and not to,
and as a joke,
try and hit the ball off a suit of armor at the other end, which you can't see
because the place is so big.
Yeah.
All right.
And something else.
This is the biggest thing in the world, isn't it?
The biggest thing in the world.
The biggest thing in all the world.
Yeah.
That's the RMS Tyrannic.
Uh-huh.
You can see this city of New York in the foreground.
It was very large.
Yeah.
It's just plain big.
All right.
If you were in steerage, you had to hurry because you couldn't find your berth
by the time you hit New York.
Usually.
Yeah.
Your, uh, steerage passengers were advised to run, according to the book.
Yes.
That's right.
That's right.
Now, this is, uh, this is a dining room, isn't it?
This is one of the first-class dining rooms.
Yeah.
You can see the tables.
Yeah.
The skylight.
The right crowd and no crowding, they often said.
The right crowd and no crowding.
Yeah.
All right.
Oh, this is great.
Now, this is a car.
That's the 1934, uh, Boltzmobile Airdream sedan, uh, going by a place where
people are out of work.
Uh-huh.
And the headline is, "Brother, can you spare a glance?"
Even if you're out of work, you'd admire those lines.
Okay.
And let's see.
Let me, let me get to this one.
Oh, it's the last one, so we will get to it.
Tell us what we have.
This is a, uh, a postcard from an establishment in Los Angeles, right, Bruce?
It's a Stakodrome, yes.
This is a restaurant where you can sit and watch cars roll around overhead.
In some physical force.
It was noisy, but there was nothing else like it.
Yeah.
Well, that's the important thing, as long as nothing.
And, uh, the little owner says, "Quite some place.
Only one car running the night we were there.
But what a racket."
Very nice.
This Stakodrome.
Wonderful stuff.
Bruce McCall.
Thank you very much, Bruce.
We'll be right back.
Hotel accommodations for most guests of Late Night with David Laderman,
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Thank you.
We're, uh, out of time.
Uh, Jerry Seinfeld, uh, Seinfeld rather, who was supposed to be here tonight.
I'm awfully sorry we ran out of time.
We will see to it that Mr. Seinfeld is back soon.
I want to thank, uh, Bruce McCall for being here, sir.
Thank you.
And also Madeline Kahn, Paul, and, uh, Bill Windle, and the folks in the band.
And what an audience.
We'll see you tomorrow night.
Thank you.
We'll see you tomorrow night.
We'll see you tomorrow night.
We'll see you tomorrow night.