Name: Staff Favorite Moments: Writer Joe Grossman | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-02-14T16:05:42.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Writer Joe Grossman | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-02-14. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Writer Joe Grossman | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-02-14. Transcript available.

I'm Joe Grossman, I was a writer for The Late Show with David Letterman from
2004 to 2015.
So the show started in 1982 and unfortunately I missed the first probably seven
or eight
years of it because I was a child.
I do have an earliest memory of watching Dave.
They were doing the show from Las Vegas that week and they were doing a Chiron
quiz where
they kind of shoot random footage of scenes around town and then come up with
funny explanations
for what you're seeing in the footage.
And there was one joke that has stuck with me for about 35 years now.
This scene shows a the magnificent spectacle at Caesars Palace, b a tourist
asking advice,
c a penis on network television, right there it is.
And I remember as an 11 or 12 year old child, I wasn't amused and I wasn't
offended.
I just found it very disconcerting.
It's like, what is this I'm watching?
Why are they saying these things?
Why is that on TV?
And then the monologue jokes did not make sense to a child or again, to many
adults.
Kind of a crazy thing happened.
I do this about once a month.
Me and my volunteer fireman buddies get together.
They come over to the place and it happened again last night.
We got really, really drunk and tried to flush a ham down the toilet.
And I don't know, at the time it was really quite funny.
You know, I've been a comedy writer now for almost 20 years and if you're
trying to diagram a joke the way you would diagram a sentence, it's hard to
make that joke really hold together technically.
It was baffling, it was confounding and it was also riveting.
And that's what I remember from those earliest memories.
One of the things I looked forward to especially was, you know, Johnny Carson
ends and then starts off with that intro, that opening sequence that they did.
And then you fly into the city and then you're flying through all these
abandoned places with maybe just like one or two lingering people.
The shot where they fly into the apartment and there was usually a dog lying in
the dog bed.
But they also shot an alternate version where the dog was not in the dog bed.
And I would always be upset when the dog was not in the dog bed.
It's like, what happened to the dog?
Is the dog okay?
I know there was a dog there.
I saw it last night.
One of my favorite moments as a viewer before I got to the show, it was just an
example of how Dave could sometimes be funnier than any material the writers
could ever provide him with.
Dave was talking about the standards and practices at CBS and when you could or
could not show a middle finger on television.
From the standards and practices department telling me specifically, you cannot
give the finger on television.
Cannot do that.
And so that means they have to edit it somehow.
And I'm thinking, well, but what if it was like this?
Does it because, you know, the case could be made.
Oh, look, it's here we go.
There.
But then if you do that.
Okay.
So we're assuming that this configuration of a human hand is acceptable.
What about that?
What about that?
Are we all right there?
There.
Okay.
Well, no, well, no.
I started writing for the show in 2004 and a couple of years later, the other
writers started writing me into little bits on the show, which, you know, I
never wrote myself into the show.
I'm uncomfortable with any attention at all on me.
Of course, this being the Letterman Show, that's something they gravitated
toward.
Oh, here's someone who doesn't belong on camera, let's put them on camera.
When they're putting you on the show, they're often going to ask you to do
things that might undermine your dignity.
I have two very young children, they know I work in television, and someday I
will have to explain to them why daddy drank so much urine on television.
Charlie Sheen agreed to take a drug test to prove that he's fit to go back to
work.
Here now with the results of the test is vice president of a company called Narcotech
Testing Labs, Dr. Gil Vernon.
What kind of test did Charlie Sheen take for your company?
It was a urine test.
Urine test?
Did you find any controlled substances, any illegal drugs in the urine sample?
Let me check.
Okay.
Tastes like John Cryer's urine.
"Are you sure?"
Hold on.
"It's definitely Cryer."
Part of the reason I was put on the show was because I'm good at maintaining no
expression because I have very few human emotions.
The one time that I really had a hard time not breaking was when I was playing
Ox, the Wilderness Expert.
And what do you have in the canteen?
It's urine.
It's urine.
Yeah.
And who's, it's none of my business, but whose urine is that?
It's Herbie Hancock's.
It's Herbie Hancock's.
It's Herbie Hancock's.
The first time I ever had to shoot a pre-taped comedy piece with Dave was, the
first time that I really had a hard time not breaking was when I was playing Ox,
the Wilderness Expert.
And what do you have in the canteen?
What do you have in the canteen?
Is that, in fact, urine?
It's urine.
Yeah.
And who's, it's none of my business, but whose urine is that?
It's Herbie Hancock's.
The first time I ever had to shoot a pre-taped comedy piece with Dave was a
little stressful for me.
They're all setting up in there waiting for Dave to show up and making sure the
cameras and lighting and everything is set up.
And I'm just sitting there thinking, "Don't screw this up.
Don't embarrass yourself in front of Dave."
So finally, Dave walks into the room and he says, "Beautiful weather we're
having today, right?"
I'm thinking, "Was he talking to me?
Was he not talking to me?
He couldn't be talking to me because he doesn't know me.
He was probably talking to someone else.
There's a lot of people in the room."
I'm going over and over this in my mind over thinking of this.
Meanwhile, the seconds are ticking by.
No one has said anything.
So after a few seconds, Dave says, "All right.
I guess I'll just go fuck myself."
I think so.
Jerry, I can't see the box.
Jerry, your box is up.
I'm in the jacket room.
Probably the piece I did the most often on the show, even more than drinking
urine, was a bit where I come out as the lazy idiot writer who is reading jokes
from a little notebook, where I'm so lazy and stupid that I've just taken one
reference and changed the name to another reference.
Without changing the rest of the joke.
Conan O'Brien's chin is so big, it was just hired as the new spokesman for
Jenny Craig.
Conan O'Brien owns so many cars, every Valentine's Day, he sends a floral
arrangement to his mechanic.
Conan O'Brien's voice is so high-pitched, doctors use it to dissolve kidney
stones.
Now, Joe.
I know what that is.
Those are just jokes about Jay that you put Conan's name in.
Now, do you have a joke about Conan or not?
Okay.
I got one.
Okay.
All right.
Joe Grossman.
Conan O'Brien is so old, every night when he finishes taping CBS's Late Show,
his staff wraps him in mummy bandages and puts him in a sarcophagus.
There were a couple times where I would be in the green room pitching comedy
ideas, one time to the Foo Fighters.
What about one of you appearing as Foo Ferrigno?
Foo Gossip Junior?
Foo Diamond Foo Lips?
Hang on a second, Joe.
Don't you have any ideas that aren't just terrible puns using the word "foo"?
Hold on.
Got one.
Would you be willing to box a Kanga Foo?
And one time to the Wu-Tang Clan.
In my archive of things that I kept from the show, I have a script of the Wu-Tang
Clan script.
Before we'd sent it to them, before we'd sent it to Dave, someone wrote at the
top of the script,
"Not approved by Dave, not approved by Wu-Tang Clan."
It was just so strange to see those two things there.
Like, okay, Dave's not on board yet, Wu-Tang is not on board yet, but we're
hoping for the green light from both of them.
You have a beverage called Wu-Tang Tang.
What's that, like the powdered orange drink, right?
Yeah.
It's the official beverage of the hip-hop space program.
Yeah, that's the one right there.
That's great.
Go with that one.
Write that one down.
Do that one.
All right, Joe.
There you go.
The one that stands out most to me, after I was done with my little bit, I walk
off stage,
and waiting in the wings there is tonight's first guest, Harrison Ford.
He looks at me and says, "That was really funny."
And then he says, "Can I borrow that notebook?"
And Harrison Ford walks out to Dave for his interview, carrying my little
notebook,
and for the first 10 seconds or so of the interview, he's doing an impression
of me.
What a thrill.
Always nice to see you.
You're a good-looking guy, and great to have you here.
And thank you very much.
Yes.
So you're saying if the camera had not been there, Harrison, you wouldn't have
signed those
autographs?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what he's saying.
One piece I wrote that probably no one else remembers, I think it was 2013,
there was a big scandal
going on up in Canada with the then mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, who was caught
on video
smoking crack.
So we did a lot of material about that for probably a month.
One day he had to testify in front of the Toronto City Council about what had
happened, and the
councilwoman asks Mayor Ford, "Have you in the past 30 days used any illegal
drugs?"
And then they cut to Rob Ford, and he sits there for a good 20 seconds of pure
silence.
Nothing.
And then finally says, "Yes, I have."
So I had this idea to have that clip reenacted by animals.
Tonight on Animals Reenact the News, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford testifies before
the city council.
One of the challenges of writing for Dave is, you're not always looking for the
funniest
joke or the best joke.
You're just looking for the joke that hits his very strange target of interest.
And it's hard to predict.
One time I remember him genuinely laughing at something I wrote.
It was a fun fact.
You know, he used to do these fun facts every Friday night.
He read this one fun fact that I wrote, and then he just sat there for like 10
seconds
afterward just kind of laughing at it.
Not a huge laugh, but like genuinely laughing at it.
And I remember, it was probably the first time I saw Dave truly, genuinely,
obviously,
clearly enjoying something I wrote.
In 1961, NASA studied the viability of having Jackie Gleason punch astronauts
to the moon.
Oh, golly.
And there was one other fun fact I wrote that it's the only time I actually got
written confirmation
that Dave liked something I wrote.
It was also a fun fact, and we got a memo back from the head writers saying,
Dave really liked this fun fact.
If you all can think of more like this, that would be great.
If you see the glass as half full, you're an optimist.
If you see it through lenses you prescribe for yourself, you're an optometrist.
I think it was 2014, there was a big fuss going on in the NBA.
It was the previous year we'd had retiring NBA commissioner David Stern on the
show to do a top 10 list.
So I thought, oh, what if we have, you know, here to comment on this NBA
controversy tonight,
we have former NBA commissioner David Stern.
And we can just recycle the footage of David Stern walking out on stage,
so it looks like he's here on stage.
But they say, okay, yeah, Dave's on board, but we need one more thing.
We need, when Dave says goodbye, we need to see David Stern exit the stage.
And I said, well, that's a problem because when we shot the top 10 a year ago,
we didn't get his exit on video.
And I was told, we need his exit.
Okay, you hang up the phone, and you go to the editor and say, we need an exit.
Bear with me.
Can we just take his entrance and play it in reverse?
And then you cut to Dave, and he is sitting there genuinely laughing at how
stupid his show has become.
First of all, you must be stunned and appalled by what's been going on out
there,
in California.
But tell me something.
Give us a little insight.
You were commissioner of this league, and you took it from one level to a huge
global commercial entity.
In all those 30 years, tell us what you learned about the culture of basketball
in America.
Moistened needle before inserting.
Thank you very much for dropping by.
David Stern, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much for dropping by.
David Stern, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much for dropping by.
David Stern, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much for dropping by.
David Stern, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much for dropping by.
David Stern, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much for dropping by.
David Stern, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much for dropping by.
David Stern, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much for dropping by.
David Stern, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much for dropping by.
David Stern, ladies and gentlemen.
David Stern, ladies and gentlemen.
Is it me or did he walk out backwards?
I think he backed out, yeah.
You might have backed out.
Something I enjoyed doing, it was called CBS Affiliate of the Night, where I
would just
look at what the local affiliates, the local CBS affiliates around the country
were saying
about Dave on their newscasts because, you know, at 11:34 p.m. they'd say, oh,
coming up next
is the light show.
And sometimes they do a little small talk, a little banter, oh, who's on Dave
tonight?
And every now and then, they might say something that was less than flattering
to Dave.
When you have a television network, what that is, it's a family.
And we here in New York and the folks at CBS in California, we are like the
parents of the family.
And making up the children of the family and perhaps aunts and uncles as well,
siblings too,
would be all of the CBS affiliates all across the North America.
Now, by way of introducing this next segment, it's called CBS Affiliate of the
Night.
Take a look.
Conan has been offered $30 million to walk away from his NBC contract.
Team Conan.
I do.
I'm team Conan.
Conan.
I do like Jay Leno as well, but Conan's just hilarious.
We're team Letterman, though.
We are.
Actually, yeah, well, I won't say anything.
The one thing that I was involved in, I wouldn't say responsible for, but
involved in, that got
on the show more frequently, more just sheer bulk, was the sneezing monkey.
And I remember Dave a couple of times had to explain that this is not something
we found someplace else.
We're not digging up footage from a zoo somewhere.
This is something that happened in our building under our supervision.
And it's the kind of thing you can't write.
You can't write, let's make a monkey sneeze.
You'll get in a lot of trouble for that.
I think it was Thanksgiving 2008.
And during the lunch, we would shoot some little comedy bits about silly things
that happened during the lunch.
You know, this staffer brought his wife to the show.
And this staffer brought his kids.
And oh, this writer here, he brought his pet monkey.
Joe Grossman brought his monkey.
And then after we were done, suddenly the monkey sneezes.
And I remember asking, was the camera rolling for that?
Did we get that on video?
And yeah, the camera's rolling.
We called the headwriters and said, we just got video of a monkey sneezing.
Wait a minute.
I think maybe we have a special holiday treat.
I don't know.
I didn't clear this with the producers.
I'm not sure.
I think maybe we have a special holiday treat.
And if we do, here's what it's going to be.
A sneezing monkey.
Huh?
Please stay in your seats.
Let me just check.
Do we have a sneezing monkey ready to go?
Okay.
Take a look and enjoy.
My gift to you for the holidays.
And I remember one piece I wrote.
I don't remember what the piece was because it didn't air.
But they showed it to Dave in the dressing room.
And after the show, the headwriters told me what Dave said about the piece.
I have it written down here.
I have to refer to my notes.
Dave described watching this piece that I'd written as, he said it was like
watching a
2x4 falling off a pickup truck in front of you and crashing through your
windshield.
So, that piece did not air that night.
But, yeah.
I'll see you later.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.

Staff Favorite Moments: Writer Joe Grossman | Letterman

I'm Joe Grossman, I was a writer for The Late Show with David Letterman from
2004 to 2015.
So the show started in 1982 and unfortunately I missed the first probably seven
or eight
years of it because I was a child.
I do have an earliest memory of watching Dave.
They were doing the show from Las Vegas that week and they were doing a Chiron
quiz where
they kind of shoot random footage of scenes around town and then come up with
funny explanations
for what you're seeing in the footage.
And there was one joke that has stuck with me for about 35 years now.
This scene shows a the magnificent spectacle at Caesars Palace, b a tourist
asking advice,
c a penis on network television, right there it is.
And I remember as an 11 or 12 year old child, I wasn't amused and I wasn't
offended.
I just found it very disconcerting.
It's like, what is this I'm watching?
Why are they saying these things?
Why is that on TV?
And then the monologue jokes did not make sense to a child or again, to many
adults.
Kind of a crazy thing happened.
I do this about once a month.
Me and my volunteer fireman buddies get together.
They come over to the place and it happened again last night.
We got really, really drunk and tried to flush a ham down the toilet.
And I don't know, at the time it was really quite funny.
You know, I've been a comedy writer now for almost 20 years and if you're
trying to diagram a joke the way you would diagram a sentence, it's hard to
make that joke really hold together technically.
It was baffling, it was confounding and it was also riveting.
And that's what I remember from those earliest memories.
One of the things I looked forward to especially was, you know, Johnny Carson
ends and then starts off with that intro, that opening sequence that they did.
And then you fly into the city and then you're flying through all these
abandoned places with maybe just like one or two lingering people.
The shot where they fly into the apartment and there was usually a dog lying in
the dog bed.
But they also shot an alternate version where the dog was not in the dog bed.
And I would always be upset when the dog was not in the dog bed.
It's like, what happened to the dog?
Is the dog okay?
I know there was a dog there.
I saw it last night.
One of my favorite moments as a viewer before I got to the show, it was just an
example of how Dave could sometimes be funnier than any material the writers
could ever provide him with.
Dave was talking about the standards and practices at CBS and when you could or
could not show a middle finger on television.
From the standards and practices department telling me specifically, you cannot
give the finger on television.
Cannot do that.
And so that means they have to edit it somehow.
And I'm thinking, well, but what if it was like this?
Does it because, you know, the case could be made.
Oh, look, it's here we go.
There.
But then if you do that.
Okay.
So we're assuming that this configuration of a human hand is acceptable.
What about that?
What about that?
Are we all right there?
There.
Okay.
Well, no, well, no.
I started writing for the show in 2004 and a couple of years later, the other
writers started writing me into little bits on the show, which, you know, I
never wrote myself into the show.
I'm uncomfortable with any attention at all on me.
Of course, this being the Letterman Show, that's something they gravitated
toward.
Oh, here's someone who doesn't belong on camera, let's put them on camera.
When they're putting you on the show, they're often going to ask you to do
things that might undermine your dignity.
I have two very young children, they know I work in television, and someday I
will have to explain to them why daddy drank so much urine on television.
Charlie Sheen agreed to take a drug test to prove that he's fit to go back to
work.
Here now with the results of the test is vice president of a company called Narcotech
Testing Labs, Dr. Gil Vernon.
What kind of test did Charlie Sheen take for your company?
It was a urine test.
Urine test?
Did you find any controlled substances, any illegal drugs in the urine sample?
Let me check.
Okay.
Tastes like John Cryer's urine.
"Are you sure?"
Hold on.
"It's definitely Cryer."
Part of the reason I was put on the show was because I'm good at maintaining no
expression because I have very few human emotions.
The one time that I really had a hard time not breaking was when I was playing
Ox, the Wilderness Expert.
And what do you have in the canteen?
It's urine.
It's urine.
Yeah.
And who's, it's none of my business, but whose urine is that?
It's Herbie Hancock's.
It's Herbie Hancock's.
It's Herbie Hancock's.
The first time I ever had to shoot a pre-taped comedy piece with Dave was, the
first time that I really had a hard time not breaking was when I was playing Ox,
the Wilderness Expert.
And what do you have in the canteen?
What do you have in the canteen?
Is that, in fact, urine?
It's urine.
Yeah.
And who's, it's none of my business, but whose urine is that?
It's Herbie Hancock's.
The first time I ever had to shoot a pre-taped comedy piece with Dave was a
little stressful for me.
They're all setting up in there waiting for Dave to show up and making sure the
cameras and lighting and everything is set up.
And I'm just sitting there thinking, "Don't screw this up.
Don't embarrass yourself in front of Dave."
So finally, Dave walks into the room and he says, "Beautiful weather we're
having today, right?"
I'm thinking, "Was he talking to me?
Was he not talking to me?
He couldn't be talking to me because he doesn't know me.
He was probably talking to someone else.
There's a lot of people in the room."
I'm going over and over this in my mind over thinking of this.
Meanwhile, the seconds are ticking by.
No one has said anything.
So after a few seconds, Dave says, "All right.
I guess I'll just go fuck myself."
I think so.
Jerry, I can't see the box.
Jerry, your box is up.
I'm in the jacket room.
Probably the piece I did the most often on the show, even more than drinking
urine, was a bit where I come out as the lazy idiot writer who is reading jokes
from a little notebook, where I'm so lazy and stupid that I've just taken one
reference and changed the name to another reference.
Without changing the rest of the joke.
Conan O'Brien's chin is so big, it was just hired as the new spokesman for
Jenny Craig.
Conan O'Brien owns so many cars, every Valentine's Day, he sends a floral
arrangement to his mechanic.
Conan O'Brien's voice is so high-pitched, doctors use it to dissolve kidney
stones.
Now, Joe.
I know what that is.
Those are just jokes about Jay that you put Conan's name in.
Now, do you have a joke about Conan or not?
Okay.
I got one.
Okay.
All right.
Joe Grossman.
Conan O'Brien is so old, every night when he finishes taping CBS's Late Show,
his staff wraps him in mummy bandages and puts him in a sarcophagus.
There were a couple times where I would be in the green room pitching comedy
ideas, one time to the Foo Fighters.
What about one of you appearing as Foo Ferrigno?
Foo Gossip Junior?
Foo Diamond Foo Lips?
Hang on a second, Joe.
Don't you have any ideas that aren't just terrible puns using the word "foo"?
Hold on.
Got one.
Would you be willing to box a Kanga Foo?
And one time to the Wu-Tang Clan.
In my archive of things that I kept from the show, I have a script of the Wu-Tang
Clan script.
Before we'd sent it to them, before we'd sent it to Dave, someone wrote at the
top of the script,
"Not approved by Dave, not approved by Wu-Tang Clan."
It was just so strange to see those two things there.
Like, okay, Dave's not on board yet, Wu-Tang is not on board yet, but we're
hoping for the green light from both of them.
You have a beverage called Wu-Tang Tang.
What's that, like the powdered orange drink, right?
Yeah.
It's the official beverage of the hip-hop space program.
Yeah, that's the one right there.
That's great.
Go with that one.
Write that one down.
Do that one.
All right, Joe.
There you go.
The one that stands out most to me, after I was done with my little bit, I walk
off stage,
and waiting in the wings there is tonight's first guest, Harrison Ford.
He looks at me and says, "That was really funny."
And then he says, "Can I borrow that notebook?"
And Harrison Ford walks out to Dave for his interview, carrying my little
notebook,
and for the first 10 seconds or so of the interview, he's doing an impression
of me.
What a thrill.
Always nice to see you.
You're a good-looking guy, and great to have you here.
And thank you very much.
Yes.
So you're saying if the camera had not been there, Harrison, you wouldn't have
signed those
autographs?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what he's saying.
One piece I wrote that probably no one else remembers, I think it was 2013,
there was a big scandal
going on up in Canada with the then mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, who was caught
on video
smoking crack.
So we did a lot of material about that for probably a month.
One day he had to testify in front of the Toronto City Council about what had
happened, and the
councilwoman asks Mayor Ford, "Have you in the past 30 days used any illegal
drugs?"
And then they cut to Rob Ford, and he sits there for a good 20 seconds of pure
silence.
Nothing.
And then finally says, "Yes, I have."
So I had this idea to have that clip reenacted by animals.
Tonight on Animals Reenact the News, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford testifies before
the city council.
One of the challenges of writing for Dave is, you're not always looking for the
funniest
joke or the best joke.
You're just looking for the joke that hits his very strange target of interest.
And it's hard to predict.
One time I remember him genuinely laughing at something I wrote.
It was a fun fact.
You know, he used to do these fun facts every Friday night.
He read this one fun fact that I wrote, and then he just sat there for like 10
seconds
afterward just kind of laughing at it.
Not a huge laugh, but like genuinely laughing at it.
And I remember, it was probably the first time I saw Dave truly, genuinely,
obviously,
clearly enjoying something I wrote.
In 1961, NASA studied the viability of having Jackie Gleason punch astronauts
to the moon.
Oh, golly.
And there was one other fun fact I wrote that it's the only time I actually got
written confirmation
that Dave liked something I wrote.
It was also a fun fact, and we got a memo back from the head writers saying,
Dave really liked this fun fact.
If you all can think of more like this, that would be great.
If you see the glass as half full, you're an optimist.
If you see it through lenses you prescribe for yourself, you're an optometrist.
I think it was 2014, there was a big fuss going on in the NBA.
It was the previous year we'd had retiring NBA commissioner David Stern on the
show to do a top 10 list.
So I thought, oh, what if we have, you know, here to comment on this NBA
controversy tonight,
we have former NBA commissioner David Stern.
And we can just recycle the footage of David Stern walking out on stage,
so it looks like he's here on stage.
But they say, okay, yeah, Dave's on board, but we need one more thing.
We need, when Dave says goodbye, we need to see David Stern exit the stage.
And I said, well, that's a problem because when we shot the top 10 a year ago,
we didn't get his exit on video.
And I was told, we need his exit.
Okay, you hang up the phone, and you go to the editor and say, we need an exit.
Bear with me.
Can we just take his entrance and play it in reverse?
And then you cut to Dave, and he is sitting there genuinely laughing at how
stupid his show has become.
First of all, you must be stunned and appalled by what's been going on out
there,
in California.
But tell me something.
Give us a little insight.
You were commissioner of this league, and you took it from one level to a huge
global commercial entity.
In all those 30 years, tell us what you learned about the culture of basketball
in America.
Moistened needle before inserting.
Thank you very much for