Name: Staff Favorite Moments: Writer Tom Ruprecht | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-01-10T15:52:37.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Writer Tom Ruprecht | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-01-10. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Writer Tom Ruprecht | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-01-10. Transcript available.

whoa what an ending hi i'm tom ruprecht i used to do research on the guests and
then i was a writer
from 1998 to 2010 the glory years okay so this this was a top 10 joke from when
i was in high
school i wasn't at the show but i just i specifically remember this joke and i
don't
know why it tickled me but this is like one of the things that really made me
want to work there
from the home office in milwaukee ladies and gentlemen top 10 reasons to
continue
the top 10 lists just a little longer and number one we scared of the goof a
man
in my opinion the best writer ever for letterman was uh steve o'donnell uh he
just had incredible
ideas and wonderful wordplay and so here's a piece that steve wrote that i
thought was really good
you know it's uh sad when your child comes down with the flu but why not put
that steamy forehead
to work it's a fact
a a feverish youngster can keep your dinner rolls toasty warm
do you uh do you have a you have a touch of the flu there no diphtheria i'm so
sorry to hear that
why don't you let you run along he has a diphtheria
diphtheria i always really like as a viewer i loved uh chris elliott there was
a guy morton
downey jr who was just this crazed local tv host and uh chris elliott was
always very funny when he
imitated him joining me at home base tonight oh you're gonna love this guy
right over here we got
the vice president of the east coast chapter for people for pornography right
over here he's also
the publisher of screw magazine say hello to david latimer
got to tell you it doesn't sound like a fan club showed up pal i think if you're
going to do this
uh running character week after week you should you should get some real guests
in here instead of
pretending i'm somebody else well let me tell you something pal the only thing
i got to do is die and
pay taxes and give the wife one of these ba-boom every now and then
well well i'm sure she looks forward to that
now you're checking me out no i'm not checking you out
huh yeah you like what you know i don't like what i see huh
you break it you bought it honey all purchases final chris is there a gas leak
in your neighborhood or something
there was a um writer named jerry mulligan he was like a great great great
grandfather to me
one day i i was uh in early by the way dave i was in early every day uh but it
was just jerry and i in the office
because it was very early and jerry decided to make some coffee but he forgot
to put the coffee pot down
and so what ended up happening is the coffee came out and went all over the
kitchen area
and so i walk into the kitchen and jerry is on his hands and knees cleaning up
this horrible mess
in the kitchenette and he's embarrassed but he looked at me and and he said you
know thankfully
it's just you and i here and no one has to know what a fool i've made of myself
well later that day we needed just like a quick 30 second piece uh with a voiceover
of the audience
shot and i had nothing else on me so i wrote this now it's time for today's
late show trivia question
which long time late show staffer forgot to place a coffee pot in the coffee
machine this morning
and flooded the 14th floor kitchenette with coffee did you get it it was none
other than writer gerard
mulligan nice going gerard as soon as it aired i hear jerry in the office next
to him i go what and
then i hear those big feet lumbering down the hall and he came in so angry and
i said jerry you have to
believe me i have no idea how that ended up on the air sorry jerry i remember
one day i was going to
the edit room and i was passing by sue hum who was the costume designer's
office and she was on the phone
with somebody and i overheard her saying i don't know what to do dave has
rejected all of the socks
and it hit me that we all had different job titles at that place but all we all
had the same job we
were just trying to please dave and so it always meant a lot when i wrote
something that he he really
liked and here was a top 10 joke that i wrote and he so loved it that he like
kind of made it a catchphrase
for a few weeks and that like was the best currency going there the category
tonight uh top 10 lizzie
grubman complaints about jail number two 240 women sharing three showers what
is this vassar
what is this vassar that's my new catchphrase as you know maybe you don't know
this i'm working
on some catchphrases that i will drop into the show to make things more
entertaining uh one i've
stolen from my friend george miller in my pants ladies and gentlemen
periodically when you least expect it i will drop in in my pants that's a great
one and now uh we came
up across another one uh last night i like it pretty well and we'll just see
how it goes what is this
vassar yeah don't make any sense don't make any sense now yeah but it makes
more sense now than
it did last night actually well that's the way it goes it's growing on people
and tomorrow kids all
across the country will be saying what is this vassar in my pants as far as
being a writer at the show
i can't you know speak highly enough about alan calter because like our show
you know intentionally had
kind of a amateur hour quality to it but often as a writer you know you you
didn't really have many
people who could really make things come alive alan coulter he could he would
make things so much
more funny here's something i i wrote for alan that i really like i was reading
about they had like a
flight from miami to cancun everybody on the airplane was naked it was it was
like a spring
great deal and all dude hey dave from miami to cancun hey dave get on you take
your clothes
dave what did you say nude flights yeah hot damn
what is this this is living i originally wanted to go to cancun but the flights
were all booked
so i figured what the heck go to detroit see my girlfriend's family
oh man is that ugly that's just about as lovely a thing as i've ever seen
i did a bunch of the remotes so biff and i would go all over the world shooting
various pieces i'm
going to show you one joke that i really like from one of the the remotes we
did this was where
we paid a visit to people who were having laser eye surgery done
damn you got one crazy-ass eyeball
before i was a writer i used to work in the research department which was you
know i would
read about the guests and try to find interesting things for dave to ask them
but also because it
was pre-internet the whole staff would just use me to ask any question they had
they viewed me just
kind of as like the librarian albeit a sexy librarian so one day i got a call
from dave's assistant and
dave was thinking of buying a house in montana but he was a little concerned
about if he bought
a house in this area would he be attacked by a bear and so they asked can you
find out
i called the hardware store in the town and i realized you know i'm gonna sound
like a you know
an east coast jerk you know but i said you know hey i'm thinking about a place
you know i'm worried
about bears you know will bears eat me and you know the guy starts laughing
puts the phone hey charlie
this guy this wimp is scared about bears you know they're all everyone at the
hardware stars a big
laugh at my expense and i hung up the phone and i called dave's assistant i
said tell him to buy the
house it's fine there's no bears he won't get eaten by a bear and then he did
it's a 4 59 because i know
this because i look at the little digital readout on the clock it's 4 59 a.m
and i hear a noise and i
think to myself probably the wind and in montana that's always a pretty good
bet yeah so finally that
the noise becomes so cacophonous there is so much noise coming out of the
kitchen even if it's people
making me breakfast they're doing a horrible job right and i opened the door
and they're standing
in my kitchen is the largest bear i've ever seen in my entire life get out he
had trashed the kitchen
i mean he pulled the refrigerator out of the thing he had pulled open the
bottom drawers and just twisted
them like like little gum wrappers okay he had he ate half a chocolate cake he
ate a dozen bananas
yeah he ate two oranges he ate a peach he chewed up the peach and spit the
peach pit out into the dog's bowl
okay he he ate he ate a jar of frosting he had two pouches of beef jerky
he slid open the drawers and got out some candles okay you know for ambiance
well he's
here he is finally thank god after five and a half hours heading for the hills
dave i'm sorry you almost got eaten by a bear
okay the thing i wrote that kind of had the longest life was great moments in
presidential speeches
this was during george w bush's presidency that the only thing we have to fear
is
fear itself ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for
your country
my lawyer is a latino
that's right so there was one in particular that stood out because there was a
kid who got to be on
stage uh during bush's speech but you know the kid was like 12 years old and
like anyone he's bored
during you know a presidential speech during the entire time he kept yawning
and trying to slap
himself away need to maintain spending discipline in our nation's capital
i've had planned to protect small business owners and employees from
i actually did vote for the 87 billion with all your heart
state house members all the local officials the high sheriff is with us today
you're worried about the quality of the education
in which you live
we stand for the fair treatment of faith-based groups
who receive federal support for their work
this will not happen on my watch
so now that actually got attention and the next day i'm at my desk and i have cnn
on and they
they show a clip all right i had a good giggle before the break that um video
from david letterman
um we're being told by the white house that the kid as funny as he was was
edited into that video
right okay so now this this kind of gets your nose out of joint she says as
funny as it was we're being
told being told we're being told by the white house that's the key phrase we're
being told by the white
house that the kid was not there and we edited the kid in well that of course
is absolutely not the
case the kid was right there we didn't somehow work some kind of uh animatronic
robotic magic and
now shortly thereafter that statement was amended to this
okay we're told that that kid was there at that event but not necessarily
standing behind the
president so you can put it all together so so i'm i'm all worked up about this
and and then
uh later we are told now that the the white house didn't call cnn that that was
the development
the other day the next day i'm told oh no the white house did contact cnn there's
a huge conspiracy
developing and they were contacted by the white house they were trying to shut
cnn up because they
didn't want to make these people look ridiculous because they were big
republican fundraisers and you
know i'm going to disappear mysteriously in about eight months they'll find my
body in the trunk of a rental car
and this is a landmark day whether you understand any of this or not today is a
landmark day
because for the first time in 25 years of network television broadcasting the
first time
ever since i've been doing this someone has apologized to me it has never
happened before
turns out due to a what we might say a misunderstanding among the folks who are
usually so fantastic behind
me here in the newsroom turns out that was not true the white house turns out i
guess never did call
it's about the tape the letterman show if you've been watching at night
strongly denies it was fake
boy do they strongly deny that and uh we've been looking for our tapes and
apparently we now
see no evidence that it was faked so dave we apologize for the error i hope
that makes things
good with us if you need me to come up and do a stupid human trick or a stupid
pet trick i have that too
so hopefully we're just okay so no the white house and cnn were lying your boy
tommy all good i was a real kid
really yawns so i also got to appear in a bunch of bits so here's one i did and
i was playing an
audience member but obviously i was someone who worked on the show and so i had
to be in a specific
seat and dave was going to come in and pick me and so it it so happened that i
was sitting in between
a man and his wife and so the guy said to me before the show starts hey can we
just switch seats so i can
sit next to my wife but like i couldn't say yes because i had to be sitting in
this specific seat but i also
couldn't tell him why because i couldn't say hey date's coming yeah so i just
went uh no i'm just
going to keep the seat if that's okay and the guy said fine i'll give you 50 to
switch seats and i said
no he went you know you're an asshole i come back i sit down in the seat
thinking all will be forgiven
now that he knows and the guy was now even madder at me because he thought he
would have been the one
on tv what's your name uh scott scott where are you from uh chicago chicago as
she came in for
the show congratulations on the big bulls victory and do you care about the
whitewater investigation
of course not yeah i know now uh scott this is a little something and i hope
you're a good sport
you look like you're probably a good sport are you a good sport you like to
have fun don't you
enjoy yourself you look like you look like a good time is always following you
around yes okay
scott this is a little something we like to do whenever uh summer time you know
it warms up and we get
a shower tomorrow i believe is the first day of summer you know and this is a
little something we
do and i hope you enjoyed you up for a little of fun i would love it okay hold
scott's purse if
you don't mind all right here we go scott watch it easy i'm going to just take
scott right outside
come on scott right over here right over here right this way scott we'll be
back i'll be with scott
oh my god where are you oh how are you we'll put you right over here scott okay
how are things in chicago you having a nice drink yeah all right right here biff
just about there scott
okay that's good maybe just a little there you go okay all right thank you
thank you taxi
okay let's just go right by if you can okay got it
so this morning i was going through appearances i did on the show to try to see
if there was anything
worthwhile and when it ended my daughter uh sally who was sitting next to me
said you know dad you're
actually underrated which made me wonder what have you heard about me what
reviews have you heard about me

Staff Favorite Moments: Writer Tom Ruprecht | Letterman

whoa what an ending hi i'm tom ruprecht i used to do research on the guests and
then i was a writer
from 1998 to 2010 the glory years okay so this this was a top 10 joke from when
i was in high
school i wasn't at the show but i just i specifically remember this joke and i
don't
know why it tickled me but this is like one of the things that really made me
want to work there
from the home office in milwaukee ladies and gentlemen top 10 reasons to
continue
the top 10 lists just a little longer and number one we scared of the goof a
man
in my opinion the best writer ever for letterman was uh steve o'donnell uh he
just had incredible
ideas and wonderful wordplay and so here's a piece that steve wrote that i
thought was really good
you know it's uh sad when your child comes down with the flu but why not put
that steamy forehead
to work it's a fact
a a feverish youngster can keep your dinner rolls toasty warm
do you uh do you have a you have a touch of the flu there no diphtheria i'm so
sorry to hear that
why don't you let you run along he has a diphtheria
diphtheria i always really like as a viewer i loved uh chris elliott there was
a guy morton
downey jr who was just this crazed local tv host and uh chris elliott was
always very funny when he
imitated him joining me at home base tonight oh you're gonna love this guy
right over here we got
the vice president of the east coast chapter for people for pornography right
over here he's also
the publisher of screw magazine say hello to david latimer
got to tell you it doesn't sound like a fan club showed up pal i think if you're
going to do this
uh running character week after week you should you should get some real guests
in here instead of
pretending i'm somebody else well let me tell you something pal the only thing
i got to do is die and
pay taxes and give the wife one of these ba-boom every now and then
well well i'm sure she looks forward to that
now you're checking me out no i'm not checking you out
huh yeah you like what you know i don't like what i see huh
you break it you bought it honey all purchases final chris is there a gas leak
in your neighborhood or something
there was a um writer named jerry mulligan he was like a great great great
grandfather to me
one day i i was uh in early by the way dave i was in early every day uh but it
was just jerry and i in the office
because it was very early and jerry decided to make some coffee but he forgot
to put the coffee pot down
and so what ended up happening is the coffee came out and went all over the
kitchen area
and so i walk into the kitchen and jerry is on his hands and knees cleaning up
this horrible mess
in the kitchenette and he's embarrassed but he looked at me and and he said you
know thankfully
it's just you and i here and no one has to know what a fool i've made of myself
well later that day we needed just like a quick 30 second piece uh with a voiceover
of the audience
shot and i had nothing else on me so i wrote this now it's time for today's
late show trivia question
which long time late show staffer forgot to place a coffee pot in the coffee
machine this morning
and flooded the 14th floor kitchenette with coffee did you get it it was none
other than writer gerard
mulligan nice going gerard as soon as it aired i hear jerry in the office next
to him i go what and
then i hear those big feet lumbering down the hall and he came in so angry and
i said jerry you have to
believe me i have no idea how that ended up on the air sorry jerry i remember
one day i was going to
the edit room and i was passing by sue hum who was the costume designer's
office and she was on the phone
with somebody and i overheard her saying i don't know what to do dave has
rejected all of the socks
and it hit me that we all had different job titles at that place but all we all
had the same job we
were just trying to please dave and so it always meant a lot when i wrote
something that he he really
liked and here was a top 10 joke that i wrote and he so loved it that he like
kind of made it a catchphrase
for a few weeks and that like was the best currency going there the category
tonight uh top 10 lizzie
grubman complaints about jail number two 240 women sharing three showers what
is this vassar
what is this vassar that's my new catchphrase as you know maybe you don't know
this i'm working
on some catchphrases that i will drop into the show to make things more
entertaining uh one i've
stolen from my friend george miller in my pants ladies and gentlemen
periodically when you least expect it i will drop in in my pants that's a great
one and now uh we came
up across another one uh last night i like it pretty well and we'll just see
how it goes what is this
vassar yeah don't make any sense don't make any sense now yeah but it makes
more sense now than
it did last night actually well that's the way it goes it's growing on people
and tomorrow kids all
across the country will be saying what is this vassar in my pants as far as
being a writer at the show
i can't you know speak highly enough about alan calter because like our show
you know intentionally had
kind of a amateur hour quality to it but often as a writer you know you you
didn't really have many
people who could really make things come alive alan coulter he could he would
make things so much
more funny here's something i i wrote for alan that i really like i was reading
about they had like a
flight from miami to cancun everybody on the airplane was naked it was it was
like a spring
great deal and all dude hey dave from miami to cancun hey dave get on you take
your clothes
dave what did you say nude flights yeah hot damn
what is this this is living i originally wanted to go to cancun but the flights
were all booked
so i figured what the heck go to detroit see my girlfriend's family
oh man is that ugly that's just about as lovely a thing as i've ever seen
i did a bunch of the remotes so biff and i would go all over the world shooting
various pieces i'm
going to show you one joke that i really like from one of the the remotes we
did this was where
we paid a visit to people who were having laser eye surgery done
damn you got one crazy-ass eyeball
before i was a writer i used to work in the research department which was you
know i would
read about the guests and try to find interesting things for dave to ask them
but also because it
was pre-internet the whole staff would just use me to ask any question they had
they viewed me just
kind of as like the librarian albeit a sexy librarian so one day i got a call
from dave's assistant and
dave was thinking of buying a house in montana but he was a little concerned
about if he bought
a house in this area would he be attacked by a bear and so they asked can you
find out
i called the hardware store in the town and i realized you know i'm gonna sound
like a you know
an east coast jerk you know but i said you know hey i'm thinking about a place
you know i'm worried
about bears you know will bears eat me and you know the guy starts laughing
puts the phone hey charlie
this guy this wimp is scared about bears you know they're all everyone at the
hardware stars a big
laugh at my expense and i hung up the phone and i called dave's assistant i
said tell him to buy the
house it's fine there's no bears he won't get eaten by a bear and then he did
it's a 4 59 because i know
this because i look at the little digital readout on the clock it's 4 59 a.m
and i hear a noise and i
think to myself probably the wind and in montana that's always a pretty good
bet yeah so finally that
the noise becomes so cacophonous there is so much noise coming out of the
kitchen even if it's people
making me breakfast they're doing a horrible job right and i opened the door
and they're standing
in my kitchen is the largest bear i've ever seen in my entire life get out he
had trashed the kitchen
i mean he pulled the refrigerator out of the thing he had pulled open the
bottom drawers and just twisted
them like like little gum wrappers okay he had he ate half a chocolate cake he
ate a dozen bananas
yeah he ate two oranges he ate a peach he chewed up the peach and spit the
peach pit out into the dog's bowl
okay he he ate he ate a jar of frosting he had two pouches of beef jerky
he slid open the drawers and got out some candles okay you know for ambiance
well he's
here he is finally thank god after five and a half hours heading for the hills
dave i'm sorry you almost got eaten by a bear
okay the thing i wrote that kind of had the longest life was great moments in
presidential speeches
this was during george w bush's presidency that the only thing we have to fear
is
fear itself ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for
your country
my lawyer is a latino
that's right so there was one in particular that stood out because there was a
kid who got to be on
stage uh during bush's speech but you know the kid was like 12 years old and
like anyone he's bored
during you know a presidential speech during the entire time he kept yawning
and trying to slap
himself away need to maintain spending discipline in our nation's capital
i've had planned to protect small business owners and employees from
i actually did vote for the 87 billion with all your heart
state house members all the local officials the high sheriff is with us today
you're worried about the quality of the education
in which you live
we stand for the fair treatment of faith-based groups
who receive federal support for their work
this will not happen on my watch
so now that actually got attention and the next day i'm at my desk and i have cnn
on and they
they show a clip all right i had a good giggle before the break that um video
from david letterman
um we're being told by the white house that the kid as funny as he was was
edited into that video
right okay so now this this kind of gets your nose out of joint she says as
funny as it was we're being
told being told we're being told by the white house that's the key phrase we're
being told by the white
house that the kid was not there and we edited the kid in well that of course
is absolutely not the
case the kid was right there we didn't somehow work some kind of uh animatronic
robotic magic and
now shortly thereafter that statement was amended to this
okay we're told that that kid was there at that event but not necessarily
standing behind the
president so you can put it all together so so i'm i'm all worked up about this
and and then
uh later we are told now that the the white house didn't call cnn that that was
the development
the other day the next day i'm told oh no the white house did contact cnn there's
a huge conspiracy
developing and they were contacted by the white house they were trying to shut
cnn up because they
didn't want to make these people look ridiculous because they were big
republican fundraisers and you
know i'm going to disappear mysteriously in about eight months they'll find my
body in the trunk of a rental car
and this is a landmark day whether you understand any of this or not today is a
landmark day
because for the first time in 25 years of network television broadcasting the
first time
ever since i've been doing this someone has apologized to me it has never
happened before
turns out due to a what we might say a misunderstanding among the folks who are
usually so fantastic behind
me here in the newsroom turns out that was not true the white house turns out i
guess never did call
it's about the tape the letterman show if you've been watching at night
strongly denies it was fake
boy do they strongly deny that and uh we've been looking for our tapes and
apparently we now
see no evidence that it was faked so dave we apologize for the error i hope
that makes things
good with us if you need me to come up and do a stupid human trick or a stupid
pet trick i have that too
so hopefully we're just okay so no the white house and cnn were lying your boy
tommy all good i was a real kid
really yawns so i also got t