Name: Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Madeleine Smithberg | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-10-04T23:32:03.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Madeleine Smithberg | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-04. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Producer Madeleine Smithberg | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-04. Transcript available.

Hi, my name is Madeline Smithberg, and I worked at Late Night with David Letterman
from 1986
to 1992, the six most intense years of my life, which I look back on with such
fondness.
My job was to find human interest guests. There was no internet, so I read 35
local
papers a day, and I made friends with every single producer or features
reporter on every
single local news program in America. And when things would come into the show
that no one
knew where to send them to, they came to me. I'm going to start with K-Mar the
Magician
Cremates Dave. K-Mar the Magician was the worst magician that has ever done
magic in public.
He was so bad and so consistently bad that it was hilarious. It was pure comedy.
So K-Mar
has a trick. And the idea was K-Mar would put this can over Dave's head and
then light it
on fire and flames would come up and then he'd take it off and Dave would be
fine.
During the rehearsal, my boss, who was our executive producer, Robert Morton,
he pulled K-Mar aside
and goes, "You got to do better. You got to do better. This is pathetic. It's
not impressive."
So on the actual show, K-Mar puts in like three times as much lighter fluid and
five times as much
flash paper as he had in rehearsal. I really thought that while this was going
on, that I was going to
be responsible for the disfigurement of our host.
Now we're going to put this on top of your head and don't move. It's a little
heavy.
That's okay? All right. Now bring the other piece. No.
I have to be sure that it goes right in your head. Put the other one on top.
Just like that. Yeah. David, do not move. It's very dangerous.
I smell gas came around. Watch. Now. Fire.
You need a light? Fire.
Watch it, David. David, don't move, please.
We have the fire department. Ladies and gentlemen, what left over David Edelman?
Let's put the fire off.
No. My God.
David, say that, please. Ladies and gentlemen, what's left of David?
David. David. Okay, David, hold it there. Hold it there. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh my God,
David Edelman!
David Edelman. Okay, let's take it out. Let's go. Oh my God. Oh my God!
What a pitch. You're too tall, David.
You're not coming back, all right? No. You're because I'm in there. One, I can't
breathe. Two,
I smell fumes. I hear you jerking around here with a can. They love you. Look
at this. They love you.
Come on. You're not coming back. Come on.
And K-Mar was banned from the show forever, which actually ended up being about
five weeks,
because five weeks later, we had somebody fall out and we needed a guest. So K-Mar
came back.
I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm the co-creator of The Daily
Show. I'm very proud of that
accomplishment. And sort of when you look at my life, like, that's a good thing.
I could probably go
lay down. I ran it for seven years. My proudest accomplishment of my career was
Border Collie's
Herding Sheep in Radio City Music Hall for the 10th Anniversary Special. The 10th
Anniversary Special was
a very big deal. Everyone got really stressed out. Everything was going fine
until this moron
from the ASPCA showed up. Now, I love animals more than anybody else, but this
guy was a ball breaker.
He was measuring the pen that the sheep were in. He didn't like the way they
were situated because
there was light in their eyes. This guy is expecting this checker cab, which is
the big taxis that we used
to have in New York, to make sure it's okay for the sheep. Meanwhile, I'm
getting calls over my headset, like,
get, we got to move on. We have to move on. And I knew that I was slowing down
rehearsal for everybody.
I looked at the man from the ASPCA and I said, "What are you worried about?"
And he said,
"I'm worried about stress to the sheep." And my head started spinning and I
lost it. And I started
yelling at him. I said, "Stress to the sheep!" They didn't have to write an
intro on a 15-foot cue card.
They weren't up till 1:00 in the morning for the past three months choosing
clips.
"Stress to the sheep!" And it was actually the most absurd moment of my life.
For my money, a 10th anniversary just would not be complete without Radio City
Music Hall, of course,
a lobby full of sheep and a handful of border collies. So folks, here now is
Tom Wilson and her old friends,
Molly, Ben and Roy.
"Yeah!"
"The sheep are on their way to LaGuardia."
One of my favorite parts of my job was I got to produce Jack Hanna from the
Columbus Zoo. Jack
Hanna is a brilliant performer because he's really not as dumb as he made
himself look on camera, but he
found a character for himself that really worked great with Dave. Jack Hanna
has brought this beaver.
He goes to pick it up to hold it for camera. We go to commercial break, and
once we are in commercial
break, we see that Jack's hand is bleeding. Like, really bleeding. And he takes
off the glove,
and the beaver has bitten pretty much through his entire hand. Now, if this
happened to me,
I would go home. But Jack Hanna, the pro that he was, just got bandaged up.
They put the glove back
on, and he went out and he did the second segment. All right, we'll be right
back, folks.
So, most of the guests that I booked came from the United States, but one came
all the way to
Rockefeller Center from London. And his name was Captain Morris Seddon. I think
he was a duke or
something, and he lived in a castle, an actual castle, like Downton Abbey
Castle. Apparently,
it was very cold. And Captain Seddon couldn't really afford to heat the place.
So, he had used his
ingenuity to overcome this problem and invented something that he called electrically
heated clothing.
Now, what could possibly be wrong with that? When Dave put his hand into the
electrically heated glove,
he got a really, really bad mixture of a shock and a burn. Now, this has a very
practical application.
In cold weather, you can use this to warm yourself. Indeed. We have a pair of
heated gloves,
and they've been running for the last few minutes, and we've got a thermometer
in here.
So, they're toasty warm. Would you like, David, to feel this glove?
Would I? Just put a hand in. Put your left hand.
Left hand in. Oh, okay. I should really have shown you.
How long has this been on? Oh, about the last five or ten minutes, I suppose.
Just slip that on. Well. Ah! There! Ah! Ah! Gee!
No, I hit a wire! I hit a wire! I'm awfully sorry. I'll tell you what has
happened here.
These things, you see, are intended for use in cold surroundings. Well, yeah.
And here we are indoors in warm surroundings. I don't think the damn thing is
grounded.
No, no, no, no. You, you... Has this thing been UL approved?
What? You have not had a shock, and you cannot get a shock.
But I did. I actually got burned. There's like sliding my hands into a toaster.
May I explain to you? If we zoom in on that thermometer,
and you will see that you have 60 degrees centigrade very nearly, which is hellish
hot.
Which is like 120 Fahrenheit. It's, uh...
About 120 Fahrenheit. It's more. It's 135 Fahrenheit.
Letterman's staff had a lot of very driven and athletic type people on it, and
a lot of my fellow
staff members decided to run the New York City Marathon. And I decided to go
and cheer them on.
Here comes Lori Diamond. And I run out, probably wasn't the best idea, into the
marathon.
And I give her a banana, and I give her a hug. And then I run away.
So the next day, Dave is showing the clips of all of our staff members.
And here's Rose, my assistant. Look at that.
And then nearly knocked to the ground by a husky idler. There we...
Passing out bananas. Uh, anyway.
Now, I'm in the green room, and I think, "Husky idler." And I've been at the
show now long enough to feel
comfortable that I just thought I was gonna tell Dave that I had a problem with
the way that he had
described me. Oh, I'm sorry it was a joke, Madeleine. I didn't even know it was
you. Was it you,
Madeleine? No, no. Husky idler, meaning in the most positive sense, husky.
No. No, like, like, no, no. Like, like, no, I didn't mean that. It's just a
figure of feet.
No. No, I know it was, I chose the wrong words. I think it was the, the lens on
the camera did.
I'm sorry. It was, you're not, Madeleine, now don't cry. We have a show to do.
Just leave the room, please.
I thought Madeleine had gone home. I meant, I meant, I, I'm, the emphasis
should have been more on
idle than husky. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. You're not, she's not husky. Just
tell her she's not husky.
Okay. All right. You know, when they write my obituary for the New York Times,
it will be,
you know, she co-created the Daily Show, ran it for its first seven years. Oh,
and was known as the husky idler.
So I produced what were called the demos. It was essentially providing the raw
materials for Dave's
genius. What was happening was always real unrehearsed and in the moment. And a
lot of times
things went horribly wrong, which turned out to be amazing television. I found
this act. It was a woman
having a tea party with a Reese's monkey and a baboon. And immediately that
monkey takes one look at David
Letterman doesn't like him and starts just hissing. He's gnashing his teeth and
he looks like he's going
to lunge. And Dave Letterman, who always has control of the show at every
moment, loses control of his own
show and is visibly terrified. It has become one of the most memorable clips on
the show. And when we put it
on the sixth anniversary show, which we did in the studio, there was a review
of the show in the New
York Daily News that said, "The monkey in the dress attacking David Letterman
was by far the best
three minutes of the 90-minute show." And I felt very proud of that.
Get your chair down.
Get your chair down.
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
Well, as you can see, stand in front of me right here.
All right.
Offer your hand to Sandy.
Oh!
Offer your hand to the lady like a gentleman.
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
She's...
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
She's...
Oh!
You're a big man.
It's a little monkey.
She's gonna...
She won't hurt you.
She's gonna leap at me and pull a vein out of my neck and kill me.
Nope.
Sandy, pick it up.
Be nice.
Oh!
Yeah.
All right.
Forget it.
Okay.
Maybe you'll get some.
Maybe you won't.
Oh!
Jeez!
Three.
Four.
Oh!
Oh!
Okay.
Very in the bogey.
All right.
Thank you.
That's good enough.
You know, it's all my fault.
I'm just a little jumpy today.
I'm sorry.
Thank you.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you.
That's good enough.
You know, it's all my fault.
I'm just a little jumpy today.
I'm sorry.