Name: Staff Favorite Moments: Digital Producer Jay Johnson | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-04-25T14:57:06.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Digital Producer Jay Johnson | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-04-25. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Digital Producer Jay Johnson | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-04-25. Transcript available.

I'm Jay Johnson. I'm a longtime Letterman staffer. I started with Dave at late
night on NBC as an
intern. Then I got hired to staff as a production runner in the production
department. I was a talent
researcher and finally I was one of two digital producers with my friend and co-worker
Walter
Kim. I was a huge fan of Dave before I ever worked there. I would stay up late
in college and watch
Carson and Dave and sometimes Thick of the Night but we won't talk about that.
There are so many
favorite moments on the show but one segment that I really enjoyed was every
year Dave would have a
pick a new catchphrase segment. They were all very silly lines but once you
hear some of these they
kind of stick in your mind. They pelted us with rocks and garbage. Sorry pal,
that ain't strudel.
It's funny. I hate the itching but I don't mind the swelling.
I'm a sweet little cupcake baked by the devil.
In the summer of 1985 the Today Show decided to do a live primetime broadcast
from Rockefeller
Plaza. Jane Pauley and Brian Gumbel were in the middle of an interview with Don
Johnson and
Philip Michael Thomas from Miami Vice when Dave opened his window, pulled out
his bullhorn and
proceeded to interrupt their show. My name is Lawrence Wolfman, the President
of NBC News.
This primetime program was my idea and I'm not wearing pants.
I was so excited when I landed a three month internship. So the first thing I
ever remember doing
for the show in a production capacity was working on a remote, a live remote
where Dave was in the studio
talking to people doing their laundry on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
I'll tell you what, I'll pay for your wash if you try and oversuds one of the
machines.
If you try and what?
Just toss in an entire box of detergent.
Oh my god!
Oh, wow!
Oh, now, now I understand.
Over the years, I was lucky enough to be on the show dozens of times and it was
very
fun. I just had a lot of roles as an extra and then eventually, I started
getting some parts
with some more dialogue.
Hello?
What?
No.
No.
It's-it's somebody, honestly, somebody looking for somebody named Mitch?
I mean, oh my god!
Is anybody, is anybody, is anybody...
Oh, oh, that's, that's for me!
Is anybody, huh?
Dave, that, that's for me!
Who?
Sorry.
Thank you.
Hello?
Hey, what's up?
No, I can talk.
Go ahead.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
Poker?
You want to play poker?
I'm all for it.
Where is it?
Wait.
Let me write this down.
Hang on.
83rd and West End.
Got it.
Uh-huh.
Sure.
Excuse me.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
Well, it-it, dude, it sounds like fun.
I will see you later.
All right.
Bye.
All right. Uh-huh. Sure. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, it, dude, it sounds
like fun. I will see you later. All right. Bye. Thanks, man. Yeah. I was a huge
fan of Chris Elliott and Gerard Mulligan and their comedy bits, so I was
excited when they bashed my head in. Hi, I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC. Who's your
friend there, PC? I'm getting some more RAM.
So I can run Microsoft's new operating system, Vista. How's it going there? We
should be done in about three hours. Don't you ever make me look bad in front
of Mac again. Somebody better switch to Sanka.
What was fun was, you know, you could come into work on any given day and you'd
be cast in peace with, like, some of the biggest stars of the day. So I
remember I worked at a Wendy's with Tim Robbins. I spilled scalding hot
McDonald's coffee on Lawrence Fishburne.
I was Julia Roberts' assistant and I got chased down 53rd Street by Bill Murray.
You can't make up your mind and yet you say you want to vote for Clinton. No,
no, I'm serious. I'm having a political discussion with you. Hey, jerk.
Just the way you have to do it sometimes. That's right.
I remember we once did a piece called, how many guys in bunny suits can we get
into a fountain? And I was one of several people that put on these bunny
costumes with these super big heads that you could not see out of.
They were hard to get on and off. Dave sent John Goodman, who was a guest on
the show that night, to join us.
And he ended up sitting to my right. He was in a very good mood that day. And
he was kind of not aware of his own body space.
He would constantly kind of nudge me and hit me. And I had to catch myself
several times from falling into the fountain.
And I thought, this is how I'm going to die. Pushed into a fountain by John
Goodman, drowning in a giant bunny suit.
If John gets in, there will be standing water on 6th Avenue all the way to the
park.
Here we go. Oh, oh, my God. This is, you know, here's a guy who don't care. Oh,
he just don't care.
You know, no, no, no. He's going to get hurt. No, he's going to get hurt.
Please, John.
Oh.
In 1996, America Online was all the rage.
Hey, Dan. Ready for the game?
I'm just finishing up here with my new kayaking friends.
Kayaking friends on your computer?
Yeah, I just got America Online.
So how do you get America Online?
Oh, that's easy, too. You just call their 800 number.
I got to check this out.
And they had a lot of money to throw around, and they wanted exclusive content
for their site.
So they made a deal with Dave and the show to have exclusive late show content.
AOL had very archaic technology at the time.
There was no streaming video.
And I remember we tried to put Dave works at Taco Bell as a clip on AOL, but
the only way to do it was to use just the audio from that piece and then a
series of still images.
So the result was like the lamest slideshow you've ever seen.
Quit with me.
Let me see if I can repeat that order.
You ordered something, a couple of tacos or something, chicken.
Something and a burrito supreme with no meat.
She's gone already, chief.
A year after the AOL deal, we moved everything over to CBS.com for the late
show website.
If we were not the first, we were probably one of the first TV shows to have a
regular online presence.
That wasn't strictly promotional, but was actually content from the show and on
top of that, original content.
Paul and I are very proud.
We have a new thing.
It's called a website.
Now what this is, this is something that you have to take your computer.
If you have like a PC or a desktop or a laptop or a computer of any description.
As you know, Paul, I have one of the original UNIVACs at my house.
You do, eh?
And you're going to need a mouse and you're going to need some hard to bite
mega discs.
Hard to bite.
Yeah.
And some modems and windows, of course.
And you can dial us up on the, it's called a website.
And here's the address.
Now, what we have there is a website and it's full of puzzles and games.
And you can play the puzzles and you can play the games.
And, uh, tonight, Paul and I will be in the chat room.
Paul and I will be in the chat room, the late show chat room from seven till,
well, till whenever.
Just question marks, yeah.
We were given a lot of latitude to do what we wanted creatively.
And one of the things that we did was to create a daily video series with Dave's
cue card boy,
Tony Mendez.
It was called The Tony Mendez Show.
And we did dozens, if not hundreds, of these.
And finally, one day, I think it was Lori Diamond, who was Dave's executive
assistant at the time.
She was watching some of these online and she thought, these are, these are
funny.
These might be worthy of the show.
So she brought it to Dave's attention and he ended up airing a couple of them.
Do you do any impersonation, you know, from the movies and stuff?
I've been here for eight years.
I do Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men.
You can't handle the truth.
It sounded just like him.
My impression is of Sean Connery saying the word pictures.
I'm going to say a full sentence, but pictures is the only word that's truly
the impression.
Someone's been taking pictures.
I'm sorry, Jenny.
Love means never having to say you're sorry.
I remember two weeks before Dave announced his retirement, we had this meeting
with Dave
and the producers to discuss whether Dave should be on Twitter.
And ultimately, he decided, no, he didn't want to do that.
He didn't want to have to deal with that.
And I think in the end, it's probably for the best.
I don't know how to move it.
That's what he said.
What do I want to say to Jimmy Fallon?
You say just one word, I think.
What do I say?
Dude.
Hey, yeah, there it is.
Look.
Right there.
It's like watching Edison play with a new light bulb.
One of the best things I think we did on the digital side was when we teamed
with CBS Radio
and Vivo to produce a series of live concert webcasts called Live on Letterman.
Pearl Jam, Taylor Swift, Adele, Coldplay.
Peter Gabriel performed with an entire orchestra.
And for the Foo Fighters, we built a replica of the set that the Beatles
performed on
when they were on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Hands down, my favorite day was when Paul McCartney appeared on the show to
perform on the marquee.
And I remember after he arrived that morning, he noticed on the hallway was a
series of photographs
photographs of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.
And he just started, went over to the wall and he just started looking at these
photographs.
And it was just this great surreal moment where we were watching Paul McCartney
looking at
photos of himself as a Beatle on the Ed Sullivan Show in the Ed Sullivan
Theater.
We had to climb through a window in a restaurant above the marquee in order to
get onto the marquee.
So I was out there and I remember shooting McCartney coming out the window and
it was just so cool to see this enormous crowd on Broadway from his vantage
point.
When the producers were planning for Dave's final broadcast, Walter and I were
asked to produce a piece for the final episode of the show.
We would follow Dave through a day at work.
We ended up shooting Dave arriving for work one day.
Dave had a habit of showing up at work at 6 a.m. in the morning.
So I remember getting up at like 4:30 that morning, coming into the Ed Sullivan
Theater, making sure all the gear was ready and that we were outside in time to
catch his arrival.
And we shot this just two days before the final show was set to air.
Dave decided that he wanted us to reshoot his arrival because he didn't like
the hat he was wearing.
So we went through the whole motion again.
We got up early, we went in, caught him coming to work at 6 a.m.
And there you had it.
I also think that enough time has now passed that we can be honest and say that
a day in the life of Dave was not shot in one complete day.
It was shot over several days.
That was such a great experience.
And it was so fun to do that for Dave's final show, to be a part of that piece
of history.
It was just, for me, the perfect button on a 29-year career with Dave.
There's a parade of people coming and they all say the same thing.
Dave, I know you hate this.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
Here's your giant check for 200 damn dollars.
Oh, my God.
No people really do win twice in the Late Show Secret Word Contest.
Give him a big kiss, girls.

Staff Favorite Moments: Digital Producer Jay Johnson | Letterman

I'm Jay Johnson. I'm a longtime Letterman staffer. I started with Dave at late
night on NBC as an
intern. Then I got hired to staff as a production runner in the production
department. I was a talent
researcher and finally I was one of two digital producers with my friend and co-worker
Walter
Kim. I was a huge fan of Dave before I ever worked there. I would stay up late
in college and watch
Carson and Dave and sometimes Thick of the Night but we won't talk about that.
There are so many
favorite moments on the show but one segment that I really enjoyed was every
year Dave would have a
pick a new catchphrase segment. They were all very silly lines but once you
hear some of these they
kind of stick in your mind. They pelted us with rocks and garbage. Sorry pal,
that ain't strudel.
It's funny. I hate the itching but I don't mind the swelling.
I'm a sweet little cupcake baked by the devil.
In the summer of 1985 the Today Show decided to do a live primetime broadcast
from Rockefeller
Plaza. Jane Pauley and Brian Gumbel were in the middle of an interview with Don
Johnson and
Philip Michael Thomas from Miami Vice when Dave opened his window, pulled out
his bullhorn and
proceeded to interrupt their show. My name is Lawrence Wolfman, the President
of NBC News.
This primetime program was my idea and I'm not wearing pants.
I was so excited when I landed a three month internship. So the first thing I
ever remember doing
for the show in a production capacity was working on a remote, a live remote
where Dave was in the studio
talking to people doing their laundry on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
I'll tell you what, I'll pay for your wash if you try and oversuds one of the
machines.
If you try and what?
Just toss in an entire box of detergent.
Oh my god!
Oh, wow!
Oh, now, now I understand.
Over the years, I was lucky enough to be on the show dozens of times and it was
very
fun. I just had a lot of roles as an extra and then eventually, I started
getting some parts
with some more dialogue.
Hello?
What?
No.
No.
It's-it's somebody, honestly, somebody looking for somebody named Mitch?
I mean, oh my god!
Is anybody, is anybody, is anybody...
Oh, oh, that's, that's for me!
Is anybody, huh?
Dave, that, that's for me!
Who?
Sorry.
Thank you.
Hello?
Hey, what's up?
No, I can talk.
Go ahead.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
Poker?
You want to play poker?
I'm all for it.
Where is it?
Wait.
Let me write this down.
Hang on.
83rd and West End.
Got it.
Uh-huh.
Sure.
Excuse me.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
Well, it-it, dude, it sounds like fun.
I will see you later.
All right.
Bye.
All right. Uh-huh. Sure. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, it, dude, it sounds
like fun. I will see you later. All right. Bye. Thanks, man. Yeah. I was a huge
fan of Chris Elliott and Gerard Mulligan and their comedy bits, so I was
excited when they bashed my head in. Hi, I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC. Who's your
friend there, PC? I'm getting some more RAM.
So I can run Microsoft's new operating system, Vista. How's it going there? We
should be done in about three hours. Don't you ever make me look bad in front
of Mac again. Somebody better switch to Sanka.
What was fun was, you know, you could come into work on any given day and you'd
be cast in peace with, like, some of the biggest stars of the day. So I
remember I worked at a Wendy's with Tim Robbins. I spilled scalding hot
McDonald's coffee on Lawrence Fishburne.
I was Julia Roberts' assistant and I got chased down 53rd Street by Bill Murray.
You can't make up your mind and yet you say you want to vote for Clinton. No,
no, I'm serious. I'm having a political discussion with you. Hey, jerk.
Just the way you have to do it sometimes. That's right.
I remember we once did a piece called, how many guys in bunny suits can we get
into a fountain? And I was one of several people that put on these bunny
costumes with these super big heads that you could not see out of.
They were hard to get on and off. Dave sent John Goodman, who was a guest on
the show that night, to join us.
And he ended up sitting to my right. He was in a very good mood that day. And
he was kind of not aware of his own body space.
He would constantly kind of nudge me and hit me. And I had to catch myself
several times from falling into the fountain.
And I thought, this is how I'm going to die. Pushed into a fountain by John
Goodman, drowning in a giant bunny suit.
If John gets in, there will be standing water on 6th Avenue all the way to the
park.
Here we go. Oh, oh, my God. This is, you know, here's a guy who don't care. Oh,
he just don't care.
You know, no, no, no. He's going to get hurt. No, he's going to get hurt.
Please, John.
Oh.
In 1996, America Online was all the rage.
Hey, Dan. Ready for the game?
I'm just finishing up here with my new kayaking friends.
Kayaking friends on your computer?
Yeah, I just got America Online.
So how do you get America Online?
Oh, that's easy, too. You just call their 800 number.
I got to check this out.
And they had a lot of money to throw around, and they wanted exclusive content
for their site.
So they made a deal with Dave and the show to have exclusive late show content.
AOL had very archaic technology at the time.
There was no streaming video.
And I remember we tried to put Dave works at Taco Bell as a clip on AOL, but
the only way to do it was to use just the audio from that piece and then a
series of still images.
So the result was like the lamest slideshow you've ever seen.
Quit with me.
Let me see if I can repeat that order.
You ordered something, a couple of tacos or something, chicken.
Something and a burrito supreme with no meat.
She's gone already, chief.
A year after the AOL deal, we moved everything over to CBS.com for the late
show website.
If we were not the first, we were probably one of the first TV shows to have a
regular online presence.
That wasn't strictly promotional, but was actually content from the show and on
top of that, original content.
Paul and I are very proud.
We have a new thing.
It's called a website.
Now what this is, this is something that you have to take your computer.
If you have like a PC or a desktop or a laptop or a computer of any description.
As you know, Paul, I have one of the original UNIVACs at my house.
You do, eh?
And you're going to need a mouse and you're going to need some hard to bite
mega discs.
Hard to bite.
Yeah.
And some modems and windows, of course.
And you can dial us up on the, it's called a website.
And here's the address.
Now, what we have there is a website and it's full of puzzles and games.
And you can play the puzzles and you can play the games.
And, uh, tonight, Paul and I will be in the chat room.
Paul and I will be in the chat room, the late show chat room from seven till,
well, till whenever.
Just question marks, yeah.
We were given a lot of latitude to do what we wanted creatively.
And one of the things that we did was to create a daily video series with Dave's
cue card boy,
Tony Mendez.
It was called The Tony Mendez Show.
And we did dozens, if not hundreds, of these.
And finally, one day, I think it was Lori Diamond, who was Dave's executive
assistant at the time.
She was watching some of these online and she thought, these are, these are
funny.
These might be worthy of the show.
So she brought it to Dave's attention and he ended up airing a couple of them.
Do you do any impersonation, you know, from the movies and stuff?
I've been here for eight years.
I do Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men.
You can't handle the truth.
It sounded just like him.
My impression is of Sean Connery saying the word pictures.
I'm going to say a full sentence, but pictures is the only word that's truly
the impression.
Someone's been taking pictures.
I'm sorry, Jenny.
Love means never having to say you're sorry.
I remember two weeks before Dave announced his retirement, we had this meeting
with Dave
and the producers to discuss whether Dave should be on Twitter.
And ultimately, he decided, no, he didn't want to do that.
He didn't want to have to deal with that.
And I think in the end, it's probably for the best.
I don't know how to move it.
That's what he said.
What do I want to say to Jimmy Fallon?
You say just one word, I think.
What do I say?
Dude.
Hey, yeah, there it is.
Look.
Right there.
It's like watching Edison play with a new light bulb.
One of the best things I think we did on the digital side was when we teamed
with CBS Radio
and Vivo to produce a series of live concert webcasts called Live on Letterman.
Pearl Jam, Taylor Swift, Adele, Coldplay.
Peter Gabriel performed with an entire orchestra.
And for the Foo Fighters, we built a replica of the set that the Beatles
performed on
when they were on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Hands down, my favorite day was when Paul McCartney appeared on the show to
perform on the marquee.
And I remember after he arrived that morning, he noticed on the hallway was a
series of photographs
photographs of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.
And he just started, went over to the wall and he just started looking at these
photographs.
And it was just this great surreal moment where we were watching Paul McCartney
looking at
photos of himself as a Beatle on the Ed Sullivan Show in the Ed Sullivan
Theater.
We had to climb through a window in a restaurant above the marquee in order to
get onto the marquee.
So I was out there and I remember shooting McCartney coming out the window and
it was just so cool to see this enormous crowd on Broadway from his vantage
point.
When the producers were planning for Dave's final broadcast, Walter and I were
asked to produce a piece for the final episode of the show.
We would follow Dave through a day at work.
We ended up shooting Dave arriving for work one day.
Dave had a habit of showing up at work at 6 a.m. in the morning.
So I remember getting up at like 4:30 that morning, coming into the Ed Sullivan
Theater, making sure all the gear was ready and that we were outside in time to
catch his arrival.
And we shot this just two days before the final show was set to air.
Dave decided that he wanted us to reshoot his arrival because he didn't like
the hat he was wearing.
So we went through the whole motion again.
We got up early, we went in, caught him coming to work at 6 a.m.
And there you had it.
I also think that enough time has now passed that we can be honest and say that
a day in the life of Dave was not shot in one complete day.
It was shot over several days.
That was such a great experience.
And it was so fun to do that for Dave's final show, to be a part of that piece
of history.
It was just, for me, the perfect button on a 29-year career with Dave.
There's a parade of people coming and they all say the same thing.
Dave, I know you hate this.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they go on to do what he does.
And they g