Name: Staff Favorite Moments: Writers Eric And Justin Stangel | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-01-24T16:02:39.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Writers Eric And Justin Stangel | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-01-24. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Writers Eric And Justin Stangel | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-01-24. Transcript available.

hi i'm eric stengel i'm justin stengel and we were with late show with david
letterman for 17 years
as writers producers head writers executive producers and all of that and we're
honored
to be here today and you know what else is especially nice is that this is the
first time
that justin and i have been together since the show went off the air people don't
like me when
we came in as writers one of the first things that we were responsible for was
shooting with
dave on fridays so that's when we would shoot remotes we were responsible for
telling dave
what was funny and what he should do which makes no sense and should not have
happened because he's
the guy right but one of the pieces that we enjoyed shooting was with rupert g
and uh we didn't create
this piece i think john beckerman did and we we just shot some of these which
was fun with rupert
and dave again would say you know really funny silly stupid things but there
was always the the hint of
these people have no idea that this crazy man yelling at them is is wired for
television they're
gonna beat them up there was one that i was just thinking about today which it
wasn't the greatest
piece that we did but it was like if you think about what we were throwing out
there it was kind of
bizarre it was halloween and had rupert a an adult by himself in costume go
door to door and trick-or-treat
in the afternoon there's a lot wrong with that you can't do it anymore no i
mean that was a wild wild
west back then hi how are you how are you happy halloween happy halloween a
trick-or-treat trick-or-treat
i'm a security guard i'm a security guard what do you think what do you think i
made it myself yeah i
made it myself is the badge let me ask you a question trick-or-treating so
early is the badge
to be like to get it out of the way so i can have a drink i'd like to get it
out of the way so i can
have a drink bring on the snacks so so bring on the snacks here we go here we
go i'll just do some
deep knee bends while i wait i'll just do some deep knee bends while i wait
here we go i'm sheriff bob
i'm sheriff bob happy halloween happy halloween happy halloween happy halloween
to you
happy trick-or-treat happy trick-or-treat happy goblin day happy goblin day
happy goblin day to you
happy ghostly happy ghostly happy ghostly day happy ghostly day to you happy
pumpkin day
there was one time that we're doing a special top 10 list and we were doing it
with henry kissinger
and he was going to read real excuse notes from elementary school kids it was
right before the
show and as usual like we're going to go over everything one more time and i
went to the green
room with henry kissinger and it was just me and henry kissinger and i'm saying
to him like you know
six and four have switched and now your cue is this or whatever it was and he
stops and he says you have
a very difficult job and i froze like he was the secretary of state of the
united states of america
and he told me that i had a difficult job number four scott didn't practice
last night
because he lost his tooth in the mouthpiece of his trumpet
and number three diane was late on wednesday
she fell asleep on the bus and was taken back to the bus yard
i hate it when that happens used to happen to me every damn day number two cody
was absent yesterday
because we were at disco bowling until 2 a.m
well as long as it's a good excuse we don't have a problem
and the number one favorite elementary school excuse note
tommy wasn't in school yesterday because he thought it was saturday
so one of the things that we would do is we would travel for the show to shoot
remotes and in 1998 we
went with dave's mom to nagano japan to shoot segments for the winter olympics
dave would call
and check in on her and how you doing we would just hear dorothy's side and she'd
be like hi david
yes uh no yes i'm here with no the stangles are here with me yes justin is here
no david i won't say
that to him no david i won't say that to him that's rude no david i won't tell
him to get in
the cab and go home we got back and dave called everyone together and thanked
everybody for their
hard work and he uh gave everybody a gift and it was a white box there's a box
and everybody opened
the box and inside there's a gold medal which is awesome real plus an actual
bar of gold as a thank
you and so one by one people are opening theirs and bar gold and then i opened
mine i had a silver bar
and uh so i'm like okay and i'm kind of waiting for another box to come out no
box came out uh so i
got a silver medal a week later yeah siskel and ebert were on and i get a call
gene siskel wants to
see you in his dressing room i'm like okay like why me and i go down there and
he's like i need a few
jokes i'm like okay so i wrote a page of jokes and i ran back down i gave it to
him he's like oh this
is good this is good i don't like this this is good it's like this is great
thank you he's like can
i pay you or something like no no please it's my pleasure he goes here and he
gives me the white box
the same white box that dave gave all of us and everything so i opened it and
it was another silver
medal it was another silver bar and uh good joke it was a really good joke a
really good joke and then
a few days later we were all on vacation and uh i was uh on a plane and the stewardess
comes over and
says sir i have something for you and i'm like what and she gives me the white
box that opened it was a
gold medal it was a joke that lasted like three weeks and it paid off on an
airplane on my way to
like the bahamas which was uh which was pretty strong so one of the other
things that we did was
we would shoot pieces with biff henderson we'd go to uh some of the smallest
towns in america and that
was always fun because these were towns that had like a hundred people and it
was always great to see
what their life was like the only thing that was consistent uh every place uh biff
went they would
ask somebody there hey are you a fan of david letterman and there'd always be
some old guys like i
don't like david letterman and that made dave laugh every single time he'd be
like wait a minute play
that again it was usually a lady who would say well i don't care for him and dave
loved that and
it made the piece every single time the very first time that we shot one of
those pieces the rv
people wanted to do something with us so they gave us like the top of the line
brand new winnebago to use in our piece
and i swear to god within 15 minutes we crashed the side of it while turkey
turkey we somehow weaseled a
free brand new 250 000 winnebago loaded i'm talking queen size bed large shower
refrigerator freezer
dishwasher microwave two couches kitchen table washer dryer cd player two large
screen televisions and a vcr
first thing we did was put a nice big dent in the side thank goodness you're a
millionaire dave but
you got one big ass lawsuit ahead of you during the chaos of the day other
things would come up that
would grab your attention and you'd have to divert your attention to that and i
remember that there was
one day that we were all getting ready for the show jude brennan had a piece of
paper that she wanted to read
to the producers and she told dave that he was uh that he had won uh the
prestigious often blotted award
uh we received the call today ladies and gentlemen you are looking at this year's
winner uh best tv
personality non-sweet and here is the uh often blotted itself it's beautiful
yeah beautiful is that lovely
very nice
some assembly required okay well it came
they don't give those things to hey
and dave was excited oh my god he won an optimal i won an option but did you
guys hear i want an
option we heard talking about so so he was like okay he said to us i'm gonna
need a speech thank you
speech and the only information we had was previous winner was uh dallas star
larry hagman that's right
how the hell are we gonna how do we even like where do you start so we went to
work on on the thank
you speech we gave it to dave he's you know he usually does his take on things
and adds funny things
here and there he looked at it he's like okay put it on cards that was it it's
the only thing we wrote
in 17 years actually in my entire in our entire tv career any job we've ever
worked on where it's like
nope no no it's perfect let's do it the best thing we ever wrote dear good
people of sweden
i'm sorry i can't be with you tonight but i don't live in your country
thank you for honoring me with this award for male tv personality non-swedish
i can't tell you how many times i have been to the home of 1983 winner larry
hagman
pointed to his mandolin said someday i hope to receive my very own often blotted
well that day is today thank you and god bless the swedes
and now all right in order to in order to get the award they wanted a picture
taken of me so john is
is john here john mr filo just take a listen just take a second
thank you very much
and i know paul i gotta i got a little of this in rehearsal and i know you were
sweet enough to
prepare a little something special tonight i have yeah yeah take it away here's
paul schaefer thank
you i'm thrilled about this and and i hope i get it right
anton anytime sweden knows that which they speak about
abba grows on you without a doubt oh yeah you can shine win the prize even
though you're not as sweet
no doubt about it you're awesome blotters made tv personality not sweet this
male tv personality
not sweet in 2010 the super bowl was going to air on cbs they told us that we
would have a 10 second promo
during super bowl which is amazing this was when jay leno and conan were
fighting it would be great if like
the big reveal is that dave super bowl party is dave jay and conan and they
didn't want any part of
that so somebody had the great idea of getting dave oprah and jay together as
the big surprise
one condition for everybody was is it's kept a secret nobody would know about
it yeah so a small group
of people at late show knew about it not everybody did the people that were
constructing the set didn't
know um we really had to keep it tight oprah arrives in a hoodie and they sneaked
her in and nobody knew it
was oprah and then jay leno arrived in disguise apparently which i guess is not
wearing denim or
something we're standing on the set just waiting for this thing uh to come
together and at some point
jay leno comes up and he's just standing there one of the stagehands who didn't
know what we were doing
he had a look of shock that jay leno was right there on on the set and he got
my attention he had a
deep smoker's voice and he said eric and i was like yeah you want me to do
something about this
and i was like no no we invited him it's okay like he's our guest today he's
like okay all right
you change your mind you let me know i thought jay leno somehow snuck in to our
studio to steal the
late show's secrets right he's like the hamburglar this is the worst super bowl
party ever now dave be
nice he's just saying that because i'm here all right so let's talk about lyle
the intern lyle the
intern was a brilliant character that was played by the brilliant jimmy simpson
and it was a lot of
fun to write jimmy's a great actor we had seen him on it's always sunny in philadelphia
where he played
a super creepy character that wore a robe all the time and drank milk and warm
milk yeah and he was
doing a show a broadway show in new york city and we reached out to see if he
wanted to do something
on the show and he said yes he wasn't very as creepy at the start he was just
like kind of like
an odd guy a weird guy not intimidated by dave it was a weird power structure
because dave would be
talking and then lyle would come out and interrupt the show and just hang out
and take the higher
power listen any of you girls out there feeling the lyle vibe right about now
you want to meet for a
drinky drink you just show up at the theater here tonight what was that last
little thing there i said
if you want to meet for a drinky drink you just show up here at the theater
tonight
make it around 10-ish 10-ish good oh yeah and bring an easy friend for dingus
over here
after the first one dave loved it and and he's like you know let's let's do as
much lyle as we can
and the more we would uh kind of add to the character the more jimmy brought to
the table
like to the like all that stuff was him it wasn't us yeah chunk wow
what this is that's extra creepy yeah yeah for some reason he really liked paul
yeah lyle was a huge
fan of paul and we didn't write that that was all jimmy i know where you live
beyond
thanks lyle lyle the intern
wow see he seems like he likes you do you guys get along i me yeah
well that's america's perception i see and then sometimes we get a call uh from
kathy maverick
caucus cbs called you can't say yam bag i'm like why what's a yam bag and they're
like uh well you
know what it's supposed to be i'm like a bag of yams yeah there's nothing wrong
with that and she
i'll call him back and then she's like okay they're fine with it max don't want
to squeeze
your yam bags or nothing school of life yam bag school of life we have to say
fracking yeah uh
instead of the f word and cbs said you can't say fracking and i'm like why can't
you say fracking
they said uh because the audience knows what you're implying and i'm like well
that doesn't make any
sense like that doesn't make any sense at all so with yam bag was fine uh but
but fracking was an
issue it was like all right fine we'll get rid of the fracking you don't think
i do anything around
this dump but i do things i do terrible awful terrible things who kills the
rats in the theater me yeah
when the stage hands spit in your coffee who tries to clean some of it out me
who shaves you down nice and smooth like a baby this guy now again lyle that
never happened i shut your
mouth hole you don't appreciate me david you don't appreciate me but you should
because i am the best
intern that has ever lived i take care of your wants and your needs and your
cares
but if you prick me david do i not bleed
so please just please watch your mouth ass bag
it's all yours paul there's also times where celebrity moments would kind of
remind you of just
how silly everything was like we'd be rushing to get the show done and we're in
the hallway rewriting
and like our justin and i arguing like what's the right line to put in what do
we do here how are we
going to get this done i remember this one time we're like it was we were
really getting worked up
and then all of a sudden the elevator door outside of the dressing room opened
up and there was gavin
mcleod dressed as captain steubing and he was he waved at us and everything was
fine everything's fine
after that it doesn't matter everything was fine wow this is very uh
therapeutic

Staff Favorite Moments: Writers Eric And Justin Stangel | Letterman

hi i'm eric stengel i'm justin stengel and we were with late show with david
letterman for 17 years
as writers producers head writers executive producers and all of that and we're
honored
to be here today and you know what else is especially nice is that this is the
first time
that justin and i have been together since the show went off the air people don't
like me when
we came in as writers one of the first things that we were responsible for was
shooting with
dave on fridays so that's when we would shoot remotes we were responsible for
telling dave
what was funny and what he should do which makes no sense and should not have
happened because he's
the guy right but one of the pieces that we enjoyed shooting was with rupert g
and uh we didn't create
this piece i think john beckerman did and we we just shot some of these which
was fun with rupert
and dave again would say you know really funny silly stupid things but there
was always the the hint of
these people have no idea that this crazy man yelling at them is is wired for
television they're
gonna beat them up there was one that i was just thinking about today which it
wasn't the greatest
piece that we did but it was like if you think about what we were throwing out
there it was kind of
bizarre it was halloween and had rupert a an adult by himself in costume go
door to door and trick-or-treat
in the afternoon there's a lot wrong with that you can't do it anymore no i
mean that was a wild wild
west back then hi how are you how are you happy halloween happy halloween a
trick-or-treat trick-or-treat
i'm a security guard i'm a security guard what do you think what do you think i
made it myself yeah i
made it myself is the badge let me ask you a question trick-or-treating so
early is the badge
to be like to get it out of the way so i can have a drink i'd like to get it
out of the way so i can
have a drink bring on the snacks so so bring on the snacks here we go here we
go i'll just do some
deep knee bends while i wait i'll just do some deep knee bends while i wait
here we go i'm sheriff bob
i'm sheriff bob happy halloween happy halloween happy halloween happy halloween
to you
happy trick-or-treat happy trick-or-treat happy goblin day happy goblin day
happy goblin day to you
happy ghostly happy ghostly happy ghostly day happy ghostly day to you happy
pumpkin day
there was one time that we're doing a special top 10 list and we were doing it
with henry kissinger
and he was going to read real excuse notes from elementary school kids it was
right before the
show and as usual like we're going to go over everything one more time and i
went to the green
room with henry kissinger and it was just me and henry kissinger and i'm saying
to him like you know
six and four have switched and now your cue is this or whatever it was and he
stops and he says you have
a very difficult job and i froze like he was the secretary of state of the
united states of america
and he told me that i had a difficult job number four scott didn't practice
last night
because he lost his tooth in the mouthpiece of his trumpet
and number three diane was late on wednesday
she fell asleep on the bus and was taken back to the bus yard
i hate it when that happens used to happen to me every damn day number two cody
was absent yesterday
because we were at disco bowling until 2 a.m
well as long as it's a good excuse we don't have a problem
and the number one favorite elementary school excuse note
tommy wasn't in school yesterday because he thought it was saturday
so one of the things that we would do is we would travel for the show to shoot
remotes and in 1998 we
went with dave's mom to nagano japan to shoot segments for the winter olympics
dave would call
and check in on her and how you doing we would just hear dorothy's side and she'd
be like hi david
yes uh no yes i'm here with no the stangles are here with me yes justin is here
no david i won't say
that to him no david i won't say that to him that's rude no david i won't tell
him to get in
the cab and go home we got back and dave called everyone together and thanked
everybody for their
hard work and he uh gave everybody a gift and it was a white box there's a box
and everybody opened
the box and inside there's a gold medal which is awesome real plus an actual
bar of gold as a thank
you and so one by one people are opening theirs and bar gold and then i opened
mine i had a silver bar
and uh so i'm like okay and i'm kind of waiting for another box to come out no
box came out uh so i
got a silver medal a week later yeah siskel and ebert were on and i get a call
gene siskel wants to
see you in his dressing room i'm like okay like why me and i go down there and
he's like i need a few
jokes i'm like okay so i wrote a page of jokes and i ran back down i gave it to
him he's like oh this
is good this is good i don't like this this is good it's like this is great
thank you he's like can
i pay you or something like no no please it's my pleasure he goes here and he
gives me the white box
the same white box that dave gave all of us and everything so i opened it and
it was another silver
medal it was another silver bar and uh good joke it was a really good joke a
really good joke and then
a few days later we were all on vacation and uh i was uh on a plane and the stewardess
comes over and
says sir i have something for you and i'm like what and she gives me the white
box that opened it was a
gold medal it was a joke that lasted like three weeks and it paid off on an
airplane on my way to
like the bahamas which was uh which was pretty strong so one of the other
things that we did was
we would shoot pieces with biff henderson we'd go to uh some of the smallest
towns in america and that
was always fun because these were towns that had like a hundred people and it
was always great to see
what their life was like the only thing that was consistent uh every place uh biff
went they would
ask somebody there hey are you a fan of david letterman and there'd always be
some old guys like i
don't like david letterman and that made dave laugh every single time he'd be
like wait a minute play
that again it was usually a lady who would say well i don't care for him and dave
loved that and
it made the piece every single time the very first time that we shot one of
those pieces the rv
people wanted to do something with us so they gave us like the top of the line
brand new winnebago to use in our piece
and i swear to god within 15 minutes we crashed the side of it while turkey
turkey we somehow weaseled a
free brand new 250 000 winnebago loaded i'm talking queen size bed large shower
refrigerator freezer
dishwasher microwave two couches kitchen table washer dryer cd player two large
screen televisions and a vcr
first thing we did was put a nice big dent in the side thank goodness you're a
millionaire dave but
you got one big ass lawsuit ahead of you during the chaos of the day other
things would come up that
would grab your attention and you'd have to divert your attention to that and i
remember that there was
one day that we were all getting ready for the show jude brennan had a piece of
paper that she wanted to read
to the producers and she told dave that he was uh that he had won uh the
prestigious often blotted award
uh we received the call today ladies and gentlemen you are looking at this year's
winner uh best tv
personality non-sweet and here is the uh often blotted itself it's beautiful
yeah beautiful is that lovely
very nice
some assembly required okay well it came
they don't give those things to hey
and dave was excited oh my god he won an optimal i won an option but did you
guys hear i want an
option we heard talking about so so he was like okay he said to us i'm gonna
need a speech thank you
speech and the only information we had was previous winner was uh dallas star
larry hagman that's right
how the hell are we gonna how do we even like where do you start so we went to
work on on the thank
you speech we gave it to dave he's you know he usually does his take on things
and adds funny things
here and there he looked at it he's like okay put it on cards that was it it's
the only thing we wrote
in 17 years actually in my entire in our entire tv career any job we've ever
worked on where it's like
nope no no it's perfect let's do it the best thing we ever wrote dear good
people of sweden
i'm sorry i can't be with you tonight but i don't live in your country
thank you for honoring me with this award for male tv personality non-swedish
i can't tell you how many times i have been to the home of 1983 winner larry
hagman
pointed to his mandolin said someday i hope to receive my very own often blotted
well that day is today thank you and god bless the swedes
and now all right in order to in order to get the award they wanted a picture
taken of me so john is
is john here john mr filo just take a listen just take a second
thank you very much
and i know paul i gotta i got a little of this in rehearsal and i know you were
sweet enough to
prepare a little something special tonight i have yeah yeah take it away here's
paul schaefer thank
you i'm thrilled about this and and i hope i get it right
anton anytime sweden knows that which they speak about
abba grows on you without a doubt oh yeah you can shine win the prize even
though you're not as sweet
no doubt about it you're awesome blotters made tv personality not sweet this
male tv personality
not sweet in 2010 the super bowl was going to air on cbs they told us that we
would have a 10 second promo
during super bowl which is amazing this was when jay leno and conan were
fighting it would be great if like
the big reveal is that dave super bowl party is dave jay and conan and they
didn't want any part of
that so somebody had the great idea of getting dave oprah and jay together as
the big surprise
one condition for everybody was is it's kept a secret nobody would know about
it yeah so a small group
of people at late show knew about it not everybody did the people that were
constructing the set didn't
know um we really had to keep it tight oprah arrives in a hoodie and they sneaked
her in and nobody knew it
was oprah and then jay leno arrived in disguise apparently which i guess is not
wearing denim or
something we're standing on the set just waiting for this thing uh to come
together and at some point
jay leno comes up and he's just standing there one of the stagehands who didn't
know what we were doing
he had a look of shock that jay leno was right there on on the set and he got
my attention he had a
deep smoker's voice and he said eric and i was like yeah you want me to do
something about this
and i was like no no we invited him it's okay like he's our guest today he's
like okay all right
you change your mind you let me know i thought jay leno somehow snuck in to our
studio to steal the
late show's secrets right he's like the hamburglar this is the worst super bowl
party ever now dave be
nice he's just saying that because i'm here all right so let's talk about lyle
the intern lyle the
intern was a brilliant character that was played by the brilliant jimmy simpson
and it was a lot of
fun to write jimmy's a great actor we had seen him on it's always sunny in philadelphia
where he played
a super creepy character that wore a robe all the time and drank milk and warm
milk yeah and he was
doing a show a broadway show in new york city and we reached out to see if he
wanted to do something
on the show and he said yes he wasn't very as creepy at the start he was just
like kind of like
an odd guy a weird guy not intimidated by dave it was a weird power structure
because dave would be
talking and then lyle would come out and interrupt the show and just hang out
and take the higher
power listen any of you girls out there feeling the lyle vibe right about now
you want to meet for a
drinky drink you just show up at the theater here tonight what was that last
little thing there i said
if you want to meet for a drinky 