Name: Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Brian Teta | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-12-06T16:02:09.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Brian Teta | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-12-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Brian Teta | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-12-06. Transcript available.

Hi, my name is Brian Teta. I worked at The Late Show for 11 years. I interned
in 1997 as Paul
Schaefer's music intern. I came back in 2004 and I was a talent coordinator, a
segment producer,
a producer, and a supervising producer. When I first started at the show, the
idea of booking
the Super Bowl winning quarterback was a huge deal. So my first year there, I
spent more time
booking the winning quarterback of the Super Bowl. And in 2004, that was Tom
Brady. After I
had a couple of lucky years, they started running promos and saying, tune in
Monday for the winning
quarterback from the Super Bowl. And I didn't have it booked. Every time it was
kind of like a white
knuckle affair. I'd have him on a plane. They never got there on time. One time
I remember we kept holding
the show and he was killing time by throwing passes to staff members. At one
point, Biff caught a pass
but fell off the side of the stage. Here now is the replay of Biff going down
and going down hard.
Let's take a look at this. Oh, pretty ball. There's Biff. Great catch.
There he goes.
Apparently he's all right, though. Oh, buddy.
One year, Jimmy Fallon was doing his show live from the Super Bowl and the Giants
were in the Super Bowl. They were playing the Patriots. So, of course,
everybody wanted to have Eli Manning on the show the next day.
And it seemed kind of touch and go whether it was going to happen. Amazingly,
the Giants come back, win the Super Bowl and I run onto the field and I find
Eli and I go up to him and I hold my cell phone up to my ear and I pretend that
it's Dave on the phone.
And I say, Eli, hey, it's Brian from Letterman. I've got Dave on the phone. He
wants to know you're in tomorrow, right? And he just gave me a big thumbs up
and said I'll see you there.
So I was a stupid pet tricks coordinator. It was my first job at the show. This
was in a time before YouTube. You would travel the country and you would hold
auditions. Usually that involved me going to like a casino or a car dealership.
You'd do about five or six auditions, 600 people, to hope to find one great
trick.
The best trick I ever found was a lovely woman who had a dog that could say, I
love you.
into like a casino or a car dealership,
you'd do about five or six auditions, 600 people,
to hope to find one great trick.
The best trick I ever found was a lovely woman
who had a dog that could say, "I love you."
- All right, Odie will say, "I love you."
- Odie, I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
Odie, I love you.
- So Donald Trump was somebody that we had on the show
pretty often, but by the time I was working there,
he was always kind of our last resort guest.
This time we had him on, it was very important to him.
No matter what question we asked him,
he wanted to make sure that we talked about his ties
at the end.
But he was talking about how he was worried about China.
China was the scourge of the world
and everything was a problem.
And then either, I can't remember who it was,
but somebody backstage noticed that the ties
that he was plugging were made in China.
So we managed to get word to Dave.
He asked him, and you can hear me in the clip
yelling in the background, "China, they're made in China!"
- The ties? Where are the ties made?
- They have to work, too.
- These are beautiful ties.
- They are great ties.
- The ties are made in where, China?
- China.
- The ties are made in China.
I occasionally made appearances on the show like most of the staff.
Early on, I had kind of one move where I would look nervous and run away.
Apparently, I was faster than I look, and people enjoyed that.
We did a bit where I would come out in costume, and Dave would just say, "I don't
know what
this is, but we're not doing it."
So I came out as Captain America, Donald Trump, an Easter egg.
And then on the last day, I came out dressed as Queen Elizabeth.
Dave just couldn't bear how ridiculous I looked and kind of went off script.
Brian, you look terrible.
Say hello to your wife.
Just go ahead.
Say hello to your wife.
- Hi, honey.
- How long have you been married?
- Seven years.
- Seven years.
- Having a baby.
- Oh, and you're having a baby?
Good.
Well, say hello to your yet-to-be-born son or daughter.
Hi.
Hi, it's me, Daddy.
I don't know what this is, but I don't want to do it, so thanks.
- At some point when I was producing Cher, the writers decided to put me into
the bit
where I was Cher's biggest fan.
Cher decided to play along, and because she knew me a little, she was game.
So when the moment happened and Cher walked out, instead of walking to the desk,
she walked out to the audience, and much to my surprise, planted a kiss on me
in the middle
of the audience.
- My father married up to Cher, the king.
My father married up to Cher, the king.
My mother's people were a shining red.
The Indians said that I was proud by the law.
The white man always called me in this hall.
Half-free.
- This was, I guess, a success, because then they continued the bit, and then I
became
Betty White's biggest fan.
All right.
All right.
Stop that.
Get him out of here.
That's it.
Break it up.
Go.
Beat it.
Thanks, Betty.
To the love of God.
Get in on this, for God's sake.
One of the great pleasures of being a segment producer at Letterman was I got
to work with
Regis Philbin.
And I was producing the segment when he was retiring from live with Regis and
Kelly Lee.
The idea was that we would give him sort of a rascal scooter, teasing him about
being in retirement.
Dave liked the idea of a scooter, but he wanted to get him actually a really
nice Vespa.
And then Dave had the idea that we should have Regis ride off at the end of the
show.
Regis had never ridden the scooter before.
It soon became apparent to me that this was a horrible idea, but we were
counting down to
being back on live.
And then seconds later, Regis went down.
It was not good.
He was okay, but for a moment, I was concerned that on the eve of his big
retirement episode
that we had killed Regis.
I'm on it.
I'm ready to go.
First time.
For the love of God, be careful.
Thank you.
Godspeed.
Regis Philbin.
There he goes.
I made it.
I'm fine.
Oh my God.
That's a struggle.
Yeah.
No, I'm fine.
Thank you for my birthday present.
Oh my God.
This is God Almighty.
It's all right.
It's all right.
We got one show left and we kill him.
It's all right.
Yeah, I feel sick about this whole mess.
One of my deep fears is that Dave decided to quit the show after I made him do
this segment.
Sylvester Stallone was on.
He was on to promote the Rocky musical.
And in my research on the Rocky musical, I saw that the characters live on the
show, just
like Rocky did in the movie, would drink raw eggs.
And so on my pre-interview with Sylvester Stallone, I said to him, would you do
it on the
show?
And he goes, I'll do it if Dave does it.
So I went to Dave and Dave said, absolutely not.
Under no circumstances am I eating raw eggs.
And the show starts and we don't know what's going to happen.
And immediately, Dave calls for the eggs.
How many do you have to eat?
Well, let me see.
One.
Go!
You did it!
Stop it!
Stop it!
One of the coolest things about working at the show was we had the ability to
shut down
53rd Street.
You know, we decided to shoot Ben Stiller out of a cannon.
I was hoping it, oh, this doesn't, oh, there he goes.
Oh, oh, what's the season?
Oh my gosh.
Wow!
We had the globe of death on the street.
We had Serena Williams come out and break the front window of the Hello Deli,
which was amazing.
One day we went a little too far and we had X Games superstar Travis Pastrana
on the show.
They ordered too much dirt for 53rd Street.
And the weight of the dirt apparently created severe structural problems that I
believe destroyed 53rd Street for years to come.
And he's going to jump over that and, you know, you're not supposed to do this
to a city street.
Woohoo!
There we go.
Got a little bit of that.
So Julia Roberts was one of those guests that I always got very nervous to
produce because she had such a long history with Dave.
I was talking to her and she mentioned kind of offhand that she was annoyed at
Dave because after years and years of him sending her flowers on her birthday,
this year he had forgotten.
And I said, oh, well, maybe there's something we can do that.
And she said, no, I don't want you to tell him.
I'm going to keep it to myself and maybe I'll bring it up and maybe I won't.
So I immediately went to Dave and told him, hey, Julia Roberts seems a little
upset because you didn't send flowers on her birthday.
Dave kind of laughed to himself and said, okay, we're going to take care of
that.
Here is something that maybe you don't know about David Letterman.
He has not forgotten my birthday with a bouquet of flowers in 15 years.
Until this year.
Please do not fire your secretary.
No.
It's the holiday season.
No, no.
I was busy.
I got a lot of things going on.
Prepping for Harry's 10th birthday.
I'm sorry.
Double digits is a big deal.
All right.
Bring in the flowers.
Shut up.
Bring in the flowers.
Shut up.
Come on.
If she's going to whine about it, bring in the flowers.
Happy birthday.
Thanks, Pat.
Thank you very much.
Happy birthday.
I feel like, like, uh, Miss America.
Well, you've, you, you know, come on.
You are Miss America.
Now, tell me.
Okay.
Why did anybody tell you that you forgot my birthday?
Because I just mentioned it as a joke earlier.
And somebody told you because this wasn't in the hallway.
No, no, no.
Let me just say something.
I, I, I'm very sorry about this.
Because in, in show business, in all honesty, there are very few people I care
about.
You, you would be one of the people I truly care about and for.
Bring in the flowers.
Bring in the flowers.
Bring in the flowers.
Bring in the flowers.
Bring them all in, for God's sake.
Thank you, boys.
Just put them anywhere around us.
That's great.
Good.
Thanks, Gene.
Nice job.
Oh, my.
When I was a kid, the one thing in the world I, I would have loved more than
anything else
was to spend the day with Indiana Jones and Han Solo.
Harrison Ford was everything to me.
And then I became a talk show producer and I realized how challenging Harrison
Ford could be.
He's still the coolest guy in the world, but he's not what you would call an
anecdotal person.
So I would be on the phone with him for a really long time.
We'd be going through my research packet.
I'd be asking him for stories and really not getting anywhere and starting to
panic.
He was on for Cowboys and Aliens.
So I said, you know what?
We're going to get a horse out there and you and Dave can ride the horse down
53rd Street.
And he liked that.
He said, that's great.
I like riding horses.
The one thing you have to promise me is I can't just see the horse for the
first time
before I get on it.
Absolutely not a problem.
So he goes down and we're prepping and the horse is late.
Finally, the horse shows up right at the last minute.
Harrison walks out and I said, Harrison, I'm sorry, you got to get on the horse.
We got to do it right now.
And then I was lucky enough to get the Harrison Ford finger pointed in my face.
And then he got on the horse and it was great.
And it was a great segment.
Good luck.
Here we go.
All right, here we go.
In the end of the show, as things were kind of winding down, all the big stars
came on and
they all wanted to have a moment.
George Clooney came on and he said, I have this idea.
Middle of our interview, I want to pull out a pair of handcuffs and throw them
on Dave.
And tell him, you know, he's not going anywhere.
Let me see this.
Let me see that just for a second here.
Wait a minute.
What is -- no, no, okay.
Oh.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No.
No.
No.
He is gone.
You're not going anywhere, David Leder.
I need to talk to my lawyer.
That's right.
You have the right to remain silent.
You're not going anywhere, David Leder.
Now, George, is this something left over from the Bachelor days?
Then he sat through an entire interview with Tom Waits, with George Clooney,
sitting off
to the side.
Then on the break, Dave said that, you know, he didn't want to just come up
with a key.
He wanted someone to cut the handcuffs, but they were surprisingly sturdy.
These big, burly stagehands were trying to do it, and nobody could cut the
handcuffs.
Dave didn't want to hear that.
In fact, he said, I want Paul to cut the handcuffs.
Paul comes out with the bolt cutters.
I guess it's like when, you know, a car falls on your child and you get superhuman
strength.
Giant men could not do this.
Paul Schaefer snapped it in one shot.
Oh, here we go!
Here we go!
We're free!
Tina Fey was another one of the very last guests on the show.
She had called with an idea and said, I need you to trust me on this, but I'm
going to take my dress off,
and underneath it, I'm going to have a special message for Dave.
This kind of goes against every instinct you have as a producer.
You like to know everything that's going to happen, but at the end of the day,
you trust Tina Fey.
The best thing about it was she made a vow on that show that this was the last
time she was ever going to wear a dress on a late night talk show.
And she has kept that up.
I watch every time she's on, every single time, slacks.
Pantsuit.
No dress.
This is my last time wearing a fancy dress on a talk show and conforming to
gender norms out of respect for you.
My gift, too, is I want to give you the dress.
You can keep it.
I don't know if you can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
Yeah, you can hold me there.
This is it.
You know, this is --
Oh, my God.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
Yeah.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
Yeah.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
You can hold me there.
Oh, my God.
You can hold me there.
I don't know what to say.
The last time that Regis was on the show, I went to his dressing room to go
over what
he was going to talk about in his segment.
When the dressing room door opened, he was naked from the waist down.
It was awful.
It was awful.

Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Brian Teta | Letterman

Hi, my name is Brian Teta. I worked at The Late Show for 11 years. I interned
in 1997 as Paul
Schaefer's music intern. I came back in 2004 and I was a talent coordinator, a
segment producer,
a producer, and a supervising producer. When I first started at the show, the
idea of booking
the Super Bowl winning quarterback was a huge deal. So my first year there, I
spent more time
booking the winning quarterback of the Super Bowl. And in 2004, that was Tom
Brady. After I
had a couple of lucky years, they started running promos and saying, tune in
Monday for the winning
quarterback from the Super Bowl. And I didn't have it booked. Every time it was
kind of like a white
knuckle affair. I'd have him on a plane. They never got there on time. One time
I remember we kept holding
the show and he was killing time by throwing passes to staff members. At one
point, Biff caught a pass
but fell off the side of the stage. Here now is the replay of Biff going down
and going down hard.
Let's take a look at this. Oh, pretty ball. There's Biff. Great catch.
There he goes.
Apparently he's all right, though. Oh, buddy.
One year, Jimmy Fallon was doing his show live from the Super Bowl and the Giants
were in the Super Bowl. They were playing the Patriots. So, of course,
everybody wanted to have Eli Manning on the show the next day.
And it seemed kind of touch and go whether it was going to happen. Amazingly,
the Giants come back, win the Super Bowl and I run onto the field and I find
Eli and I go up to him and I hold my cell phone up to my ear and I pretend that
it's Dave on the phone.
And I say, Eli, hey, it's Brian from Letterman. I've got Dave on the phone. He
wants to know you're in tomorrow, right? And he just gave me a big thumbs up
and said I'll see you there.
So I was a stupid pet tricks coordinator. It was my first job at the show. This
was in a time before YouTube. You would travel the country and you would hold
auditions. Usually that involved me going to like a casino or a car dealership.
You'd do about five or six auditions, 600 people, to hope to find one great
trick.
The best trick I ever found was a lovely woman who had a dog that could say, I
love you.
into like a casino or a car dealership,
you'd do about five or six auditions, 600 people,
to hope to find one great trick.
The best trick I ever found was a lovely woman
who had a dog that could say, "I love you."
- All right, Odie will say, "I love you."
- Odie, I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
Odie, I love you.
- So Donald Trump was somebody that we had on the show
pretty often, but by the time I was working there,
he was always kind of our last resort guest.
This time we had him on, it was very important to him.
No matter what question we asked him,
he wanted to make sure that we talked about his ties
at the end.
But he was talking about how he was worried about China.
China was the scourge of the world
and everything was a problem.
And then either, I can't remember who it was,
but somebody backstage noticed that the ties
that he was plugging were made in China.
So we managed to get word to Dave.
He asked him, and you can hear me in the clip
yelling in the background, "China, they're made in China!"
- The ties? Where are the ties made?
- They have to work, too.
- These are beautiful ties.
- They are great ties.
- The ties are made in where, China?
- China.
- The ties are made in China.
I occasionally made appearances on the show like most of the staff.
Early on, I had kind of one move where I would look nervous and run away.
Apparently, I was faster than I look, and people enjoyed that.
We did a bit where I would come out in costume, and Dave would just say, "I don't
know what
this is, but we're not doing it."
So I came out as Captain America, Donald Trump, an Easter egg.
And then on the last day, I came out dressed as Queen Elizabeth.
Dave just couldn't bear how ridiculous I looked and kind of went off script.
Brian, you look terrible.
Say hello to your wife.
Just go ahead.
Say hello to your wife.
- Hi, honey.
- How long have you been married?
- Seven years.
- Seven years.
- Having a baby.
- Oh, and you're having a baby?
Good.
Well, say hello to your yet-to-be-born son or daughter.
Hi.
Hi, it's me, Daddy.
I don't know what this is, but I don't want to do it, so thanks.
- At some point when I was producing Cher, the writers decided to put me into
the bit
where I was Cher's biggest fan.
Cher decided to play along, and because she knew me a little, she was game.
So when the moment happened and Cher walked out, instead of walking to the desk,
she walked out to the audience, and much to my surprise, planted a kiss on me
in the middle
of the audience.
- My father married up to Cher, the king.
My father married up to Cher, the king.
My mother's people were a shining red.
The Indians said that I was proud by the law.
The white man always called me in this hall.
Half-free.
- This was, I guess, a success, because then they continued the bit, and then I
became
Betty White's biggest fan.
All right.
All right.
Stop that.
Get him out of here.
That's it.
Break it up.
Go.
Beat it.
Thanks, Betty.
To the love of God.
Get in on this, for God's sake.
One of the great pleasures of being a segment producer at Letterman was I got
to work with
Regis Philbin.
And I was producing the segment when he was retiring from live with Regis and
Kelly Lee.
The idea was that we would give him sort of a rascal scooter, teasing him about
being in retirement.
Dave liked the idea of a scooter, but he wanted to get him actually a really
nice Vespa.
And then Dave had the idea that we should have Regis ride off at the end of the
show.
Regis had never ridden the scooter before.
It soon became apparent to me that this was a horrible idea, but we were
counting down to
being back on live.
And then seconds later, Regis went down.
It was not good.
He was okay, but for a moment, I was concerned that on the eve of his big
retirement episode
that we had killed Regis.
I'm on it.
I'm ready to go.
First time.
For the love of God, be careful.
Thank you.
Godspeed.
Regis Philbin.
There he goes.
I made it.
I'm fine.
Oh my God.
That's a struggle.
Yeah.
No, I'm fine.
Thank you for my birthday present.
Oh my God.
This is God Almighty.
It's all right.
It's all right.
We got one show left and we kill him.
It's all right.
Yeah, I feel sick about this whole mess.
One of my deep fears is that Dave decided to quit the show after I made him do
this segment.
Sylvester Stallone was on.
He was on to promote the Rocky musical.
And in my research on the Rocky musical, I saw that the characters live on the
show, just
like Rocky did in the movie, would drink raw eggs.
And so on my pre-interview with Sylvester Stallone, I said to him, would you do
it on the
show?
And he goes, I'll do it if Dave does it.
So I went to Dave and Dave said, absolutely not.
Under no circumstances am I eating raw eggs.
And the show starts and we don't know what's going to happen.
And immediately, Dave calls for the eggs.
How many do you have to eat?
Well, let me see.
One.
Go!
You did it!
Stop it!
Stop it!
One of the coolest things about working at the show was we had the ability to
shut down
53rd Street.
You know, we decided to shoot Ben Stiller out of a cannon.
I was hoping it, oh, this doesn't, oh, there he goes.
Oh, oh, what's the season?
Oh my gosh.
Wow!
We had the globe of death on the street.
We had Serena Williams come out and break the front window of the Hello Deli,
which was amazing.
One day we went a little too far and we had X Games superstar Travis Pastrana
on the show.
They ordered too much dirt for 53rd Street.
And the weight of the dirt apparently created severe structural problems that I
believe destroyed 53rd Street for years to come.
And he's going to jump over that and, you know, you're not supposed to do this
to a city street.
Woohoo!
There we go.
Got a little bit of that.
So Julia Roberts was one of those guests that I always got very nervous to
produce because she had such a long history with Dave.
I was talking to her and she mentioned kind of offhand that she was annoyed at
Dave because after years and years of him sending her flowers on her birthday,
this year he had forgotten.
And I said, oh, well, maybe there's something we can do that.
And she said, no, I don't want you to tell him.
I'm going to keep it to myself and maybe I'll bring it up and maybe I won't.
So I immediately went to Dave and told him, hey, Julia Roberts seems a little
upset because you didn't send flowers on her birthday.
Dave kind of laughed to himself and said, okay, we're going to take care of
that.
Here is something that maybe you don't know about David Letterman.
He has not forgotten my birthday with a bouquet of flowers in 15 years.
Until this year.
Please do not fire your secretary.
No.
It's the holiday season.
No, no.
I was busy.
I got a lot of things going on.
Prepping for Harry's 10th birthday.
I'm sorry.
Double digits is a big deal.
All right.
Bring in the flowers.
Shut up.
Bring in the flowers.
Shut up.
Come on.
If she's going to whine about it, bring in the flowers.
Happy birthday.
Thanks, Pat.
Thank you very much.
Happy birthday.
I feel like, like, uh, Miss America.
Well, you've, you, you know, come on.
You are Miss America.
Now, tell me.
Okay.
Why did anybody tell you that you forgot my birthday?
Because I just mentioned it as a joke earlier.
And somebody told you because this wasn't in the hallway.
No, no, no.
Let me just say something.
I, I, I'm very sorry about this.
Because in, in show business, in all honesty, there are very few people I care
about.
You, you would be one of the people I truly care about and for.
Bring in the flowers.
Bring in the flowers.
Bring in the flowers.
Bring in the flowers.
Bring them all in, for God's sake.
Thank you, boys.
Just put them anywhere around us.
That's great.
Good.
Thanks, Gene.
Nice job.
Oh, my.
When I was a kid, the one thing in the world I, I would have loved more than
anything else
was to spend the day with Indiana Jones and Han Solo.
Harrison Ford was everything to me.
And then I became a talk show producer and I realized how challenging Harrison
Ford could be.
He's still the coolest guy in the world, but he's not what you would call an
anecdotal person.
So I would be on the phone with him for a really long time.
We'd be going through my research packet.
I'd be asking him for stories and really not getting anywhere and starting to
panic.
He was on for Cowboys and Aliens.
So I said, you know what?
We're going to get a horse out there and you and Dave can ride the horse down
53rd Street.
And he liked that.
He said, that's great.
I like riding horses.
The one thing you have to promise me is I can't just see the horse for the
first time
before I get on it.
Absolutely not a problem.
So he goes down and we're prepping and the horse is late.
Finally, the horse shows up right at the last minute.
Harrison walks out and I said, Harrison, I'm sorry, you got to get on the horse.
We got to do it right now.
And then I was lucky enough to get the Harrison Ford finger pointed in my face.
And then he got on the horse and it was great.
And it was a great segment.
Good luck.
Here we go.
All right, here we go.
In the end of the show, as things were kind of winding down, all the big stars
came on and
they all wanted to have a moment.
George Clooney came on and he said, I have this idea.
Middle of our interview, I want to pull out a pair of handcuffs and throw them
on Dave.
And tell him, you know, he's not going anywhere.
Let me see this.
Let me see that just for a second here.
Wait a minute.
What is -- no, no, okay.
Oh.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No.
No.
No.
He is gone.
You're not going anywhere, David Leder.
I need to talk to my lawyer.
That's right.
You have the right to remain silent.
You're not going anywhere, David Leder.
Now, George, is this something left over from the Bachelor days?
Then he sat through an entire