Name: Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Barbara Sheehan | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-02-28T16:37:15.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Barbara Sheehan | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-02-28. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Barbara Sheehan | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-02-28. Transcript available.

Hi, I'm Barbara Sheehan. I worked at Late Night and Late Show from 1983 to 1996.
I started out in unit managers and ended up in production.
So the writers always wanted staff to do stuff on the show.
It was easier and I didn't want to do stuff because I'm not very good at it.
But I finally agreed and did something called Fight Corner.
It was written by Adam Resnick.
I mean, he put me in it because he thought it would be funny because I'm so
awkward and uncomfortable.
And I did it for the money.
Hi, I'm Late Night Production Assistant Barbara Sheehan and welcome to Barbara
Sheehan's Fight Corner.
My guest tonight is the one, the only, big George Foreman.
George, let's get right to the point. Congratulations. It looked to me like Kootenay
was punched goofy.
I just did what I had to do, Barbara.
That aside, have you seen Steel Magnolias yet?
Yes, and if Shirley MacLaine doesn't win an Oscar, I'll never go to the movies
again.
You heard it here first, folks. Well, that about wraps it up.
Thanks for joining us and stay tuned for Late Night with Letterman.
Nice job. I saw that. That was great. Nice going.
Why don't you go get some more makeup?
So the segments that are the most memorable to me are the really old ones
when the guests on the show were, say, a little more esoteric.
So one of the guests that I liked was this musicologist.
He had a little cassette recorder and apparently a little dance.
And he was told beforehand to not do any of that.
And of course, he comes on and he does all of it.
And Dave got kind of angry.
And just the angrier he got, the funnier it got to me.
I just was hysterical.
And I'm a great fan of yours.
Thank you very much.
And your mum. I appreciate it. Thank you, Wick.
Yeah, mum.
What was that exactly?
This is my fly whisk.
A fly whisk?
Yeah. I have a native dance to perform for you.
All right. Well, let's save the dance.
Let's save the dance.
Let's hear the music and then we'll talk about the dance.
All right, a minute.
Let's...
Well, I guess that's it, isn't it?
I don't...
I'm not sure what we would do after that.
Is there anything else we ought to know about this work?
Or anything else we should know about your medication?
This was one of the older guests.
And my memory is a guy with like a baby carriage with a chicken and a pig.
At one point during his act, Barbara Gaines was like, her observation was, that
pig loves that guy.
And I'm like, oh, I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm not sure what you want
to know about this.
And I'm like, oh, I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm not sure what's going
on, but I'm not sure what's going on.
Well, I didn't remember this, but somebody jogged my memory that there was a
Barbara Sheehan week where it was a week of repeats of shows that I had
appeared on.
Hi, I'm late night production assistant Barbara Sheehan, and the rerun you're
about to see is hosted by the sweetest, funniest, most intelligent man I have
ever had the pleasure of knowing.
Okay, that's great.
Now this time, read it like you really mean it.
That would make me ill.
Hi, I'm Dave Letterman, and this young woman here is Barbara Sheehan, a
production assistant here on the program.
And we're calling this Monday through Friday Barbara Sheehan Week because she's
going to appear in every single rerun that we put on the air.
Now, Barbara, this really wasn't your idea, but you're certainly happy to help
out, aren't you?
I'd rather be dead.
Ladies and gentlemen, Barbara, you don't sing, and you don't dance, and you don't
really do any acting or anything.
And what kind of a television entertainer are you then?
I don't know, kind of like you.
Hi, I'm Biff Henderson.
And I'm late night production assistant Barbara Sheehan, and this is the Biff
and Barbara show.
What are we going to do on the show tonight, Barbara?
Introduce a rerun of Late Night with David Letterman.
So our show just presents reruns of his show?
That's right.
Damn, this is not going to last a week.
Paul Penelino, who was our PA at the moment, played Betty Davis.
And in the bit, Dave was supposed to wrestle Betty Davis.
He was wrestling with Paul, and Dave gets into it to the point where the dress
goes all the way up,
and Betty slash Paul's, like, you know, exposed to the studio.
Dear Dave, why is it you wear wrestling shoes?
I think you should wear some baseball or bowling shoes or maybe some fishing
boots sometime.
Your bud, Ted Johnson, Chico, California.
Well, Ted, to tell you the truth, the reason that I wear these wrestling shoes
is just because they're comfortable.
And there was this one time they actually came in pretty handy one night.
Hal, do we have that file tape ready to go?
Yeah, here you go.
Okay, watch this, and I think it's self-explanatory, Ted.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's a real pleasure to introduce a true living legend
and one of Hollywood's all-time best.
We're thrilled she's here tonight, Miss Betty Davis.
Okay, great.
Betty, I got a great idea.
What do you say, get a mat out here, and we'll do some wrestling,
and I'll try and take you down two or three falls.
Collegiate rules, okay?
Well, all right.
I'll let you do that.
Okay.
And wrestle.
Thanks, Betty.
I enjoyed that.
Apparently, I was in a lot of other pieces that I don't quite remember.
Dear Dave, I saw the show recently on which Charles Grodin appeared.
He was a pompous little jerk.
And you were right.
He does whine.
If I were you, I would have leaned over during a commercial break and given him
a sharp rap on the head.
When I got the letter, we decided to give it a try, and I used it a couple of
nights ago
when the lovely actress Molly Ringwald was on her show.
Hal, roll the videotape of that, will you?
So, do you like doing movies all the time?
Must be kind of tiring, right?
Are those your own shoes?
So, which do you prefer, those crinkle cuts or the really big steak fries?
Dammit, Molly, you're going to have to talk.
I can't do this by myself.
But I do remember one time dressing as a duck, and I thought, well, at least no
one will know it's me.
We walked across the studio.
I heard Paul Schaefer yell out, hey, it's Barbara Sheehan in a duck costume.
This comes to us from Randy Schnibby Kupsh, from Two Rivers, Wisconsin.
You know, I don't have a joke here.
I just love saying Randy Schnibby Kupsh.
Okay, another story I remember at the theater.
I ran downstairs by the music room.
I think I was going to use the bathroom down there.
And there was some, I thought it was a woman in there with her head thrown and
like brushing her long blonde hair.
And I'm thinking, you know, I got to use the bathroom here, like wrap it up.
And then finally when she threw her head back, it was Greg Allman.
So Calvert de Forest, who was Larry Bud Melman, so he had problems reading cue
cards.
So when we did the shows in L.A., it was a much bigger auditorium.
The cue cards were much further away.
They tried to make them really big.
He can't read it.
So he just stopped in the middle of whatever he's doing.
But he goes, forget it.
Stay tuned for NBC's.
Oh, the thing's on the way.
Stay tuned for NBC's.
Oh, God.
I've lost it.
Watched it.
They got it.
So one of Chris's bits was he would do Marlon Brando, and he'd come out and say,
you know, what tree do I look at?
So we're sitting backstage one show, and he's doing his Marlon Brando, and Jim
Belushi was one of the guests.
So he comes out backstage waiting to go on, and he looks at me and Barbara, and
he says, that's a terrible Brando impression.
And we looked at him like, he's not really doing impressions, you know, it's
just a bit.
No, seriously, two things bother me.
Why does Ringo have to butt in every five seconds?
And also, what does Wendell do in the grand scheme of things, besides annoy the
out of the audience?
I don't see.
But with that aside, I will leave.
Okay.
Now, before I go, I would like to give the audience here a salad.
Oh, that's very nice of you.
Which I have made myself.
Now, this is a salad which I made on the island, and there are some herbs and
some oils in here, which I have brought from the island.
It is rather smelly, because I think the herbs may have gone bad.
I see.
Well, maybe then Marlin people shouldn't really eat that, do you suppose?
Well, it's not going to hurt them.
Uh-huh.
There's no meat in it.
Uh-huh.
There's no cheese to speak of.
Uh-huh.
I'll tell you what I'll do.
Please, whatever you do, if you're going to eat it, don't put croutons in it.
I beg you, on my hands and knees like a dog, don't put croutons in it.
There was a bit where Jerry Mulligan and Chris Elliott were doing something
like they were in the play Women's Chants, which was on Broadway.
So, they had these black leotards with the rolls of toilet paper, and the
commercials for this play were on constantly at that time.
After the show, one of the talent coordinators comes in and is like, how did
you guys come up with that?
That's so original.
They were like, it's a play on Broadway.
How do you not know that?
You're a talent booker.
Well, you go ahead and introduce the rest of the troupe here.
Sure.
Why don't I?
Right behind me over here, this is Klaus.
Klaus.
Over here.
And this is Helmut.
Helmut.
Nice to see you.
Helmut.
And the fat one over here is Ingrid.
Okay.
Ingrid and I are dating.
All right.
Well, it's certainly nice to meet all of you.
And folks, go ahead and take the headgear off and make yourselves...
Nein, nein.
Ni so schnell.
Vi habinti ni.
What does that mean?
What did you say to them?
I said, not so fast, idiots.
This is television.
You could be recognized and identified.
It's a visa thing.
You understand.
Visa thing.
Sure.
Yeah.
The name, Moominchance.
No, no.
It's Moominchance.
Moominchance.
Moominchance.
Moominchance.
Moomin...
Moominchance.
Forget it.
You don't understand.
Exactly what does that mean?
It's actually an onomatopoeia.
It's the sound your nose makes when you sneeze.
No, it's not.
No, I...
You're a big jerk.
Oh.
Hey, you might be right.
It doesn't sound like Moominchance at all.
All right.
Now, Chris, where did you learn how to do this Moominchance?
Well, we've all had extensive LeCocq training,
if that's what you're talking about.
And LeCocq, what is that?
Believe me, you don't want to know.
Okay.
So the cooking segments, you know,
when people do cooking segments,
they're not really going to be able to do their cooking segment
because that's just how it goes.
Dave's not really...
He doesn't care about the cooking segment.
One of the guests was Martin Scorsese's mother,
who is this very cute, little, tiny Italian lady.
And she made this amazing pizza.
Do you enjoy being in the films?
Well, I have to be in the films.
Otherwise, he threatens me.
Threatens?
All right, I put some sauce around.
Did you make the sauce yourself?
Mucha shade.
Oh, yeah.
Don't want to get on the...
Smear it around.
Smear it around?
Nice.
Not too much.
Don't make it too much.
It gets too heavy.
All right.
That's it.
Robert De Niro comes over and eats this pizza?
And Robert De Niro loves it.
He says,
I make the best pizza in the whole world.
What sort of table manners does Robert De Niro have?
Does he eat in his T-shirt?
No.
He comes dressed up in clothes.
What's the matter with you?
I don't know what's the matter with me.
We had this stingray in the studio from the Museum of Natural History.
And at the end of the week for the farewell, I was the stingray's voice.
I remember recording it and thinking, this is terrible.
They're never going to...
I stink at this.
You know, and I had to do it again.
And again, I thought they hate it.
But, you know, apparently they used it.
It's time for us to bid farewell to a lovely rare item we've had from the New
York Museum of Natural History.
It's time to say goodbye to the rough-tail, what do you call it, the rough-tail,
rough-tail stingray.
So I understand that there are a few words of farewell, and it's going to be
another exciting magic moment in television.
The stingray saying goodbye.
Has a week gone by already?
Yes, it certainly has.
I, the largest female rough-tailed stingray ever caught by an amateur fisherman,
must now return to the museum.
But shed no tears for me.
My life has been a full one.
I am proud of my many offspring, some of whom I have cannibalized.
And I am honored to have shared a stage with Alba Ballard and her costumed parrots.
But my greatest thrill is knowing that you like me.
You actually like me.
Thank you.
Okay, bye-bye.
Thank you so much.
It's been a great week.
Another memory, Shecky was cast in it.
So he comes down to rehearsal, and he sits at the desk next to Dave, and he's
supposed to light a cigarette.
And he cannot, I don't even know how to begin to describe him trying to light
the cigarette.
I mean, I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.
I've seen toddlers smoking cigarettes.

Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Barbara Sheehan | Letterman

Hi, I'm Barbara Sheehan. I worked at Late Night and Late Show from 1983 to 1996.
I started out in unit managers and ended up in production.
So the writers always wanted staff to do stuff on the show.
It was easier and I didn't want to do stuff because I'm not very good at it.
But I finally agreed and did something called Fight Corner.
It was written by Adam Resnick.
I mean, he put me in it because he thought it would be funny because I'm so
awkward and uncomfortable.
And I did it for the money.
Hi, I'm Late Night Production Assistant Barbara Sheehan and welcome to Barbara
Sheehan's Fight Corner.
My guest tonight is the one, the only, big George Foreman.
George, let's get right to the point. Congratulations. It looked to me like Kootenay
was punched goofy.
I just did what I had to do, Barbara.
That aside, have you seen Steel Magnolias yet?
Yes, and if Shirley MacLaine doesn't win an Oscar, I'll never go to the movies
again.
You heard it here first, folks. Well, that about wraps it up.
Thanks for joining us and stay tuned for Late Night with Letterman.
Nice job. I saw that. That was great. Nice going.
Why don't you go get some more makeup?
So the segments that are the most memorable to me are the really old ones
when the guests on the show were, say, a little more esoteric.
So one of the guests that I liked was this musicologist.
He had a little cassette recorder and apparently a little dance.
And he was told beforehand to not do any of that.
And of course, he comes on and he does all of it.
And Dave got kind of angry.
And just the angrier he got, the funnier it got to me.
I just was hysterical.
And I'm a great fan of yours.
Thank you very much.
And your mum. I appreciate it. Thank you, Wick.
Yeah, mum.
What was that exactly?
This is my fly whisk.
A fly whisk?
Yeah. I have a native dance to perform for you.
All right. Well, let's save the dance.
Let's save the dance.
Let's hear the music and then we'll talk about the dance.
All right, a minute.
Let's...
Well, I guess that's it, isn't it?
I don't...
I'm not sure what we would do after that.
Is there anything else we ought to know about this work?
Or anything else we should know about your medication?
This was one of the older guests.
And my memory is a guy with like a baby carriage with a chicken and a pig.
At one point during his act, Barbara Gaines was like, her observation was, that
pig loves that guy.
And I'm like, oh, I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm not sure what you want
to know about this.
And I'm like, oh, I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm not sure what's going
on, but I'm not sure what's going on.
Well, I didn't remember this, but somebody jogged my memory that there was a
Barbara Sheehan week where it was a week of repeats of shows that I had
appeared on.
Hi, I'm late night production assistant Barbara Sheehan, and the rerun you're
about to see is hosted by the sweetest, funniest, most intelligent man I have
ever had the pleasure of knowing.
Okay, that's great.
Now this time, read it like you really mean it.
That would make me ill.
Hi, I'm Dave Letterman, and this young woman here is Barbara Sheehan, a
production assistant here on the program.
And we're calling this Monday through Friday Barbara Sheehan Week because she's
going to appear in every single rerun that we put on the air.
Now, Barbara, this really wasn't your idea, but you're certainly happy to help
out, aren't you?
I'd rather be dead.
Ladies and gentlemen, Barbara, you don't sing, and you don't dance, and you don't
really do any acting or anything.
And what kind of a television entertainer are you then?
I don't know, kind of like you.
Hi, I'm Biff Henderson.
And I'm late night production assistant Barbara Sheehan, and this is the Biff
and Barbara show.
What are we going to do on the show tonight, Barbara?
Introduce a rerun of Late Night with David Letterman.
So our show just presents reruns of his show?
That's right.
Damn, this is not going to last a week.
Paul Penelino, who was our PA at the moment, played Betty Davis.
And in the bit, Dave was supposed to wrestle Betty Davis.
He was wrestling with Paul, and Dave gets into it to the point where the dress
goes all the way up,
and Betty slash Paul's, like, you know, exposed to the studio.
Dear Dave, why is it you wear wrestling shoes?
I think you should wear some baseball or bowling shoes or maybe some fishing
boots sometime.
Your bud, Ted Johnson, Chico, California.
Well, Ted, to tell you the truth, the reason that I wear these wrestling shoes
is just because they're comfortable.
And there was this one time they actually came in pretty handy one night.
Hal, do we have that file tape ready to go?
Yeah, here you go.
Okay, watch this, and I think it's self-explanatory, Ted.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's a real pleasure to introduce a true living legend
and one of Hollywood's all-time best.
We're thrilled she's here tonight, Miss Betty Davis.
Okay, great.
Betty, I got a great idea.
What do you say, get a mat out here, and we'll do some wrestling,
and I'll try and take you down two or three falls.
Collegiate rules, okay?
Well, all right.
I'll let you do that.
Okay.
And wrestle.
Thanks, Betty.
I enjoyed that.
Apparently, I was in a lot of other pieces that I don't quite remember.
Dear Dave, I saw the show recently on which Charles Grodin appeared.
He was a pompous little jerk.
And you were right.
He does whine.
If I were you, I would have leaned over during a commercial break and given him
a sharp rap on the head.
When I got the letter, we decided to give it a try, and I used it a couple of
nights ago
when the lovely actress Molly Ringwald was on her show.
Hal, roll the videotape of that, will you?
So, do you like doing movies all the time?
Must be kind of tiring, right?
Are those your own shoes?
So, which do you prefer, those crinkle cuts or the really big steak fries?
Dammit, Molly, you're going to have to talk.
I can't do this by myself.
But I do remember one time dressing as a duck, and I thought, well, at least no
one will know it's me.
We walked across the studio.
I heard Paul Schaefer yell out, hey, it's Barbara Sheehan in a duck costume.
This comes to us from Randy Schnibby Kupsh, from Two Rivers, Wisconsin.
You know, I don't have a joke here.
I just love saying Randy Schnibby Kupsh.
Okay, another story I remember at the theater.
I ran downstairs by the music room.
I think I was going to use the bathroom down there.
And there was some, I thought it was a woman in there with her head thrown and
like brushing her long blonde hair.
And I'm thinking, you know, I got to use the bathroom here, like wrap it up.
And then finally when she threw her head back, it was Greg Allman.
So Calvert de Forest, who was Larry Bud Melman, so he had problems reading cue
cards.
So when we did the shows in L.A., it was a much bigger auditorium.
The cue cards were much further away.
They tried to make them really big.
He can't read it.
So he just stopped in the middle of whatever he's doing.
But he goes, forget it.
Stay tuned for NBC's.
Oh, the thing's on the way.
Stay tuned for NBC's.
Oh, God.
I've lost it.
Watched it.
They got it.
So one of Chris's bits was he would do Marlon Brando, and he'd come out and say,
you know, what tree do I look at?
So we're sitting backstage one show, and he's doing his Marlon Brando, and Jim
Belushi was one of the guests.
So he comes out backstage waiting to go on, and he looks at me and Barbara, and
he says, that's a terrible Brando impression.
And we looked at him like, he's not really doing impressions, you know, it's
just a bit.
No, seriously, two things bother me.
Why does Ringo have to butt in every five seconds?
And also, what does Wendell do in the grand scheme of things, besides annoy the
out of the audience?
I don't see.
But with that aside, I will leave.
Okay.
Now, before I go, I would like to give the audience here a salad.
Oh, that's very nice of you.
Which I have made myself.
Now, this is a salad which I made on the island, and there are some herbs and
some oils in here, which I have brought from the island.
It is rather smelly, because I think the herbs may have gone bad.
I see.
Well, maybe then Marlin people shouldn't really eat that, do you suppose?
Well, it's not going to hurt them.
Uh-huh.
There's no meat in it.
Uh-huh.
There's no cheese to speak of.
Uh-huh.
I'll tell you what I'll do.
Please, whatever you do, if you're going to eat it, don't put croutons in it.
I beg you, on my hands and knees like a dog, don't put croutons in it.
There was a bit where Jerry Mulligan and Chris Elliott were doing something
like they were in the play Women's Chants, which was on Broadway.
So, they had these black leotards with the rolls of toilet paper, and the
commercials for this play were on constantly at that time.
After the show, one of the talent coordinators comes in and is like, how did
you guys come up with that?
That's so original.
They were like, it's a play on Broadway.
How do you not know that?
You're a talent booker.
Well, you go ahead and introduce the rest of the troupe here.
Sure.
Why don't I?
Right behind me over here, this is Klaus.
Klaus.
Over here.
And this is Helmut.
Helmut.
Nice to see you.
Helmut.
And the fat one over here is Ingrid.
Okay.
Ingrid and I are dating.
All right.
Well, it's certainly nice to meet all of you.
And folks, go ahead and take the headgear off and make yourselves...
Nein, nein.
Ni so schnell.
Vi habinti ni.
What does that mean?
What did you say to them?
I said, not so fast, idiots.
This is television.
You could be recognized and identified.
It's a visa thing.
You understand.
Visa thing.
Sure.
Yeah.
The name, Moominchance.
No, no.
It's Moominchance.
Moominchance.
Moominchance.
Moominchance.
Moomin...
Moominchance.
Forget it.
You don't understand.
Exactly what does that mean?
It's actually an onomatopoeia.
It's the sound your nose makes when you sneeze.
No, it's not.
No, I...
You're a big jerk.
Oh.
Hey, you might be right.
It doesn't sound like Moominchance at all.
All right.
Now, Chris, where did you learn how to do this Moominchance?
Well, we've all had extensive LeCocq training,
if that's what you're talking about.
And LeCocq, what is that?
Believe me, you don't want to know.
Okay.
So the cooking segments, you know,
when people do cooking segments,
they're not really going to be able to do their cooking segment
because that's just how it goes.
Dave's not really...
He doesn't care about the cooking segment.
One of the guests was Martin Scorsese's mother,
who is this very cute, little, tiny Italian lady.
And she made this amazing pizza.
Do you enjoy being in the films?
Well, I have to be in the films.
Otherwise, he threatens me.
Threatens?
All right, I put some sauce around.
Did you make the sauce yourself?
Mucha shade.
Oh, yeah.
Don't want to get on the...
Smear it around.
Smear it around?
Nice.
Not too much.
Don't make it too much.
It gets too heavy.
All right.
That's it.
Robert De Niro comes over and eats this pizza?
And Robert De Niro loves it.
He says,
I make the best pizza in the whole world.
What sort of table manners does Robert De Niro have?
Does he eat in his T-shirt?
No.
He comes dressed up in clothes.
What's the matter with you?
I don't know what's the matter with me.
We had this stingray in the studio from the Museum of Natural History.
And at the end of the week for the farewell, I was the stingray's voice.
I remember recording it and thinking, this is terrible.
They're never going to...
I stink at this.
You know, and I had to do it again.
And again, I thought they hate it.
But, you know, apparently they used it.
It's time for us to bid farewell to a lovely rare item we've had from the New
York Museum of Natural History.
It's time to say goodbye to the rough-tail, what do you call it, the rough-tail,
rough-tail stingray.
So I understand that there are a few words of farewell, and it's going to be
another exciting magic moment in television.
The stingray saying goodbye.
Has a week gone by already?
Yes, it certainly has.
I, the la