Name: Staff Favorite Moments: Merrill Markoe On Classic Remotes, Getting Censored, Dog Poetry | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-09-13T15:38:32.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Merrill Markoe On Classic Remotes, Getting Censored, Dog Poetry | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-09-13. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Merrill Markoe On Classic Remotes, Getting Censored, Dog Poetry | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-09-13. Transcript available.

Hello, I'm Meryl Marko, and I was the head writer on Late Night with David
Letterman,
which was the NBC iteration of The Letterman Show when it started in 1982.
We had a four-month pilot, which was the live morning show, so we had a lot of
ideas for
the way the show was going to go right off the bat.
So as the head writer, I was also in charge of remotes, which we did every week,
and I
needed to find places all around the city of New York where we would take the
camera.
One way that I did that was I actually sat and read the Manhattan Yellow Pages.
For people who don't know what the Manhattan Yellow Pages are, there used to be
a thing
called a phone book, and it was the internet, basically.
It had everything in the city of New York listed in the Manhattan Yellow Pages,
so I would go
through and just circle things that I'd never seen on TV before, and then I
would drag Dave
and the cameras there on Fridays.
What we looked for were repeat segments that we could do over and over again,
or interesting
people, or just commentary that we could make about the city of New York.
In the last several years, much has been said and written about Alan Alda, the
TV star and
the film star, the motion picture director, writer, humanitarian, champion of
minority causes,
but surprisingly enough, we know very little about Alan Alda, a guy who likes
Chinese food.
That's why we're here at the Hunan Park restaurant.
What kind of food does he enjoy?
He likes string beans, and he likes cold noodles with sesame sauce, fried
dumplings.
Most food we have, he likes it very much.
Well, it's no secret that the newest pastime sweeping this country in 1982 is
somebody names
a celebrity, somebody else tries to guess what kind of business machine or typewriter
he or she uses.
Walter Cronkite, I'm just guessing here, a manual?
I would assume so, I'm not really familiar with his particular machine.
Okay, this is Melba Moore, and I guess from this photograph, it looks like she's
just ready
to type right there, huh?
Yeah, she does.
Celebrities and their dry cleaning, special problems, how do they handle it?
That's why we're here at the DuPont Dry Cleaners.
Now, this was a pretty exciting, Paul Newman.
That, he don't come in here, but the two ladies that are with him do.
Janet and Louise Arders.
Yeah, and they appeared in a film with him, and they bring in quite a bit of
cleaning also.
There are celebrity restaurants in town, like the burger joint.
What about Donnie Most?
What can you tell me about his burger order?
Remember what he had?
I don't remember the names.
Okay.
You know Mason Reese, though.
He still comes in, right?
I told you, I don't remember the names.
Frederick Seldman, better known as the Mattress King.
Is there a Mattress Queen?
Yes, there is.
There are also two princes.
Lumber Boys, very popular Saturday morning kids program.
Uh, Henry, you're one of the Lumber Boys.
What's the funniest thing that's happened to you since you've been with the
company?
Last week, my boss used that high load to take off some particle board off that
same identical truck,
and the particle board came off into the street.
My boss went up in the air and came down.
Is he still alive?
Yeah, he's still alive.
He had a little hemorrhoid problem, but he made it all right.
And, uh, so you're proud to be one of these, uh, Lumber Boys?
No comment.
Okay, Richard, uh, tell us about this one.
The fabulous suction will lift bowling ball.
There it is. Pick it up.
Pick it up.
Yeah, that's pretty impressive.
Excuse me, sir, uh, are you here to see the world's largest humidor?
The world's largest what?
World's largest humidor.
Have you ever seen the world's largest humidor?
No, I haven't.
Any interest in that?
None whatsoever.
Happy's parking lot.
The happiest parking lot in town.
You Happy?
No, I'm Eddie.
If you're, uh, Eddie and this is Happy's parking lot, where is Happy?
Happy's about six feet under.
He died about ten years ago.
The name of the store is Just Bulbs, and that's exactly what we sell.
Just Bulbs.
Okay, so besides Bulbs, what do you have here?
Nothing.
How about Shades?
Could you get Shades here?
No, we are Just Bulbs.
If you want Shades, maybe go a place called Just Shades.
We sell nothing but now.
What, uh, what is the name of the store?
Just Shades.
Just Shades.
And, uh, what, what can you get in here?
What can you get in here?
All the Shades.
That's why we, that's why our name is Just Shades.
But seriously, what, what can you get besides Shades here?
So I got completely geared around seeing all of New York as a potential talk
show segment.
One thing that was taking place on local news when the show started was an
ongoing, um, expose
about corruption, um, called Shame of the City.
And so we did a parody of that.
Some of it was just stuff that I saw on the way to work, and we, we, uh, we fit
it into that format.
Not everyone survives in this urban battlefield we call New York City.
This combination cityscape and war zone.
The crowded landscape has claimed another gentle victim.
Yes, say goodbye to the once plentiful majestic pine tree.
I'm here at 52nd and Park, once a thickly wooded forest right here in Manhattan.
Now, everywhere are the dead trees cut down in their prime, victim of some
mysterious blight.
Was it pollution?
Maybe overcrowding?
Perhaps forced out by too many delicatessens?
No one seems to know what's killing our trees.
There are no simple answers.
Only simple questions.
And simple people like myself to ask them.
It's truly the shame of the city.
New York City, center of culture, of wealth, of power, and victim of one of the
highest crime rates in the history of mankind.
A crime rate that continues to climb and shows no sign of stopping.
And you have to ask yourself, is it really any wonder when you take a look at
the police department?
A population of 10 million and this is the police department?
It's shocking, horrifying, tragic, and yet nothing is being done about it.
Excuse me, sir.
Do you work here?
Yes, I do.
Are you the only one who works here?
Yes, I am.
Unbelievable, yet it's truly, truly, the shame of the city.
I used to really look forward to when there were conventions coming into New
York City.
For instance, there was the fancy food convention and then there was a repeat
inventor's convention.
My very favorite of all of the things that was ever in a convention was this
guy who invented something called the casket alarm.
Life detector to avoid being embalmed or buried alive.
Could you ask Roberto, does this happen a lot?
Yes, he told me to tell you that he was buried alive three times and he got a
little worried about it.
So now he developed this idea and it has proved to be of great interest to a
lot of people.
After the third time that you were buried alive, it must have got to be
annoying, huh?
Not just annoying. It's the most terrible feeling that you might experience.
It might start carrying a card with you that just says, "I'd kind of like
another opinion."
One final question. I can understand being buried alive once, you know, sure,
everybody's going to make a mistake.
Or even twice, you know, somebody's looking the other way, they close the lid.
But three times. How has it happened to him three times?
This is something that he can't explain.
Just a run of bad luck then.
Just a run of bad luck.
Congratulations on the invention and better luck to you.
Thank you.
Another thing that was fun for me when the show first started is we tried out a
lot of conceptual stuff, which I really enjoy.
This was a segment which we did on the very first show and then we did a whole
bunch of them with different occupations.
We're calling it limited perspective and I got the idea from listening to my
relatives review movies, which is that, you know, one of them who was a plumber
would say, "Well, you know, yeah, I liked E.T., but God, the plumbing in the
second act was horrible."
We started bringing on people with a real specific point of view to review
movies.
This was, the first one was a dentist reviewing the movie Reds.
Tonight, I'd like you to meet a dentist from here in New York City, Dr. Norman
Hoffman.
Dr. Hoffman has been practicing dentistry since 1946.
We asked Dr. Hoffman to attend Warren Beatty's new movie Reds and let us know
how it looked from the dentist point of view.
How about Diane Keaton?
This woman has a high lip line and she's showing a lot of teeth and gingiva.
Her two front central teeth are slightly elongated.
It pretty much ruined the film for you?
And it went all the way through to, I think the final one we did was a martial
arts expert reviewing Gandhi.
First of all, Bill, did you enjoy the film?
Well, I enjoyed it very much.
How about from the point of view of a self-defense instructor?
Well, from a point of view from self-defense instructor, I thought it was, I
didn't like it at all.
I thought there was a lot more that he could have done.
Could have broken a few arms, cracked a few heads.
Okay.
Okay.
Let's take a look at some still photographs from the production.
First of all, Gandhi himself could not really be described as a heavyweight,
could he?
Oh, no.
He was a big man in a little body.
Uh-huh.
One of the things that he had in his favor was that he could have used the
weight of the opponent and used the weight advantage, so it's really not a
disadvantage to be small.
And also being a pacifist, he had the element of surprise on his side, didn't
he?
Yes, he did.
He sure he did.
Okay.
Now, one of the most dramatic scenes, I guess, in the movie is it takes place
on a sidewalk in South Africa, a confrontation between Gandhi and some other
gentleman.
Yes.
Well, I'd like to demonstrate a move which he could have done.
Okay.
All right.
Hey, Gandhi.
Get off the sidewalk.
Well, there's room in the world, my friend, for both of us.
I said, get off the sidewalk.
I said, there's room in the world for both of us.
Okay.
And I said, get off the sidewalk.
Well, that was fun.
I'm fine.
I'll be, I'll just, I'll be fine.
Thank you very much.
Well, thank you very much for that insightful review, Bill.
Thank you.
You certainly enjoyed that.
Perhaps they can use that for the sequel.
Another segment that I still think of sort of fondly was a weird idea that I
had called test the censors.
Because we were always in trouble with the censors for doing a little too much
of one thing or another.
We had a rule book we had to go by that said you couldn't do this, this, this
and such.
I mean, obviously you couldn't show bare breasts and stuff like that.
And by the way, I can't get over the show Euphoria where it's like Dickapalooza.
There's penises in every frame of Euphoria, but they wouldn't let us say the
word orgasm in this segment.
My idea was to just do a bunch of things for the studio audience that broke
every rule in the rule book that the censors were working by.
And then just let the censors censor it and then just put it on the air so you
could see what the censors took out of things.
Now our next category is one we call plugs and slanders.
Paul, what did you have for lunch today?
Well, I had some chicken and a lot.
I had a big one.
And I had a big one.
And Paul, what about the big one?
Well, that was a disappointment.
It was like lead.
It was oily.
It was full of carcinogens.
This brings us now to our next test category, graphic sexual material.
What life forms can be shown mating on television?
Our first clip involves one celled sex between a paramecium and itself.
This is one celled sex.
We'll see if we can get one celled sex.
We'll see if we can't get by with this.
There it is.
Okay.
Next, we have bunny and the bedroom slipper.
Another segment that we did in an ongoing way that I used to enjoy writing was
called etiquette segments.
And we did a lot of those.
Everything you could ever think of that you ever did in the course of the day,
we eventually made into an etiquette segment.
It started with something called elevator etiquette.
And I think it ended with one called lifeboat etiquette.
One of my favorites of them was called job interview etiquette, which I have a
little guest appearance in at the front of it.
What really endeared me to it is Calvert de Forest, or Larry Bud Millman, as
you may remember him,
really went the distance and committed at the end when he was required to sing
and dance.
Now then, why did you leave your last job?
The earliest Arab civilization emerged at the end of the second millennium in
the watered highlands of Yemen.
Rule number two, listen carefully to the questions and answer only the question
you were asked.
Thank you. We'll give you a call.
Did I say the second millennium? I meant the third millennium.
Thank you very much.
Rule number six.
Oh, excuse me.
Rule number...
Rule number six.
What an ugly family.
Is that your family?
Is that your wife?
She must be very rich.
Don't insult the interviewer's family.
Don't insult the interviewer's family.
Thank you. We'll keep your resume on file, and if there are any openings, we'll
certainly let you know.
Don't give me that. You can't brush me off that easy.
Rule number seven. Don't touch the interviewer.
Especially if you're this guy.
I'm sorry that I touched you, but you have to understand, to fill your new
position, you'll never find a better man.
And finally, rule number eight. Break into song only as a last resort.
I used to work in Michigan at an automotive plant. I thought I could live on
the salary, but now I find I can.
But never under any circumstances, dance.
I'll really make you cry.
And if you don't, I'll just stay here and dance and dance and dance and dance
and dance.
We're going to pause. We'll be right back after this commercial message.
I'd like to make a note of the fact that this is the last wardrobe change I'll
be doing, so enjoy it.
The last segment I'm going to show is called Dog Poetry, and it was my dog Stan
reciting a poem that I wrote for him called Summer.
And here's what's weird, is we were, at the time, this was 1982, we were
perhaps the beginning of dog videos.
Because there wasn't anybody else on television with access to cameras and
editing equipment and an obsession with dogs.
It didn't exist. There weren't cell phones. People didn't have home editing bays
on their desktops.
So, we were making them before people were making them. And now, the rest is
history.
When the thing was first assembled, the host of the show was less than
enthusiastic about it, and didn't really want to air it.
So, I slipped it into the show under a segment called, "Things You Will Never
See On The Show."
And it played really well, and then the host started to like it better.
Let me read you a letter we received recently from Monroe, Michigan.
Dear Dave, we've all heard of your dog, Bob, and of course we've all seen his
terribly creative films, but what about your other dog?
What's his name? Well, his name is Stan. Thanks for asking.
Has he made any films we might have seen? And it comes to us from Diane and
Jessica Martin from Monroe, Michigan.
Now, this is what we prepared, took a look at, and decided, "No, we're not
going to show it," but tonight, we're going to show it to you.
Um, no, Stan hasn't made any films. Stan's specialty is poetry.
Let's take a look now at some fine dog poetry.
Let's take a look at some fine dog poetry.
Let's take a look at some fine dog poetry.
Let's take a look at some fine dog poetry.
Let's take a look at some fine dog poetry.
Let's take a look at some fine dog poetry.
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Staff Favorite Moments: Merrill Markoe On Classic Remotes, Getting Censored, Dog Poetry | Letterman

Hello, I'm Meryl Marko, and I was the head writer on Late Night with David
Letterman,
which was the NBC iteration of The Letterman Show when it started in 1982.
We had a four-month pilot, which was the live morning show, so we had a lot of
ideas for
the way the show was going to go right off the bat.
So as the head writer, I was also in charge of remotes, which we did every week,
and I
needed to find places all around the city of New York where we would take the
camera.
One way that I did that was I actually sat and read the Manhattan Yellow Pages.
For people who don't know what the Manhattan Yellow Pages are, there used to be
a thing
called a phone book, and it was the internet, basically.
It had everything in the city of New York listed in the Manhattan Yellow Pages,
so I would go
through and just circle things that I'd never seen on TV before, and then I
would drag Dave
and the cameras there on Fridays.
What we looked for were repeat segments that we could do over and over again,
or interesting
people, or just commentary that we could make about the city of New York.
In the last several years, much has been said and written about Alan Alda, the
TV star and
the film star, the motion picture director, writer, humanitarian, champion of
minority causes,
but surprisingly enough, we know very little about Alan Alda, a guy who likes
Chinese food.
That's why we're here at the Hunan Park restaurant.
What kind of food does he enjoy?
He likes string beans, and he likes cold noodles with sesame sauce, fried
dumplings.
Most food we have, he likes it very much.
Well, it's no secret that the newest pastime sweeping this country in 1982 is
somebody names
a celebrity, somebody else tries to guess what kind of business machine or typewriter
he or she uses.
Walter Cronkite, I'm just guessing here, a manual?
I would assume so, I'm not really familiar with his particular machine.
Okay, this is Melba Moore, and I guess from this photograph, it looks like she's
just ready
to type right there, huh?
Yeah, she does.
Celebrities and their dry cleaning, special problems, how do they handle it?
That's why we're here at the DuPont Dry Cleaners.
Now, this was a pretty exciting, Paul Newman.
That, he don't come in here, but the two ladies that are with him do.
Janet and Louise Arders.
Yeah, and they appeared in a film with him, and they bring in quite a bit of
cleaning also.
There are celebrity restaurants in town, like the burger joint.
What about Donnie Most?
What can you tell me about his burger order?
Remember what he had?
I don't remember the names.
Okay.
You know Mason Reese, though.
He still comes in, right?
I told you, I don't remember the names.
Frederick Seldman, better known as the Mattress King.
Is there a Mattress Queen?
Yes, there is.
There are also two princes.
Lumber Boys, very popular Saturday morning kids program.
Uh, Henry, you're one of the Lumber Boys.
What's the funniest thing that's happened to you since you've been with the
company?
Last week, my boss used that high load to take off some particle board off that
same identical truck,
and the particle board came off into the street.
My boss went up in the air and came down.
Is he still alive?
Yeah, he's still alive.
He had a little hemorrhoid problem, but he made it all right.
And, uh, so you're proud to be one of these, uh, Lumber Boys?
No comment.
Okay, Richard, uh, tell us about this one.
The fabulous suction will lift bowling ball.
There it is. Pick it up.
Pick it up.
Yeah, that's pretty impressive.
Excuse me, sir, uh, are you here to see the world's largest humidor?
The world's largest what?
World's largest humidor.
Have you ever seen the world's largest humidor?
No, I haven't.
Any interest in that?
None whatsoever.
Happy's parking lot.
The happiest parking lot in town.
You Happy?
No, I'm Eddie.
If you're, uh, Eddie and this is Happy's parking lot, where is Happy?
Happy's about six feet under.
He died about ten years ago.
The name of the store is Just Bulbs, and that's exactly what we sell.
Just Bulbs.
Okay, so besides Bulbs, what do you have here?
Nothing.
How about Shades?
Could you get Shades here?
No, we are Just Bulbs.
If you want Shades, maybe go a place called Just Shades.
We sell nothing but now.
What, uh, what is the name of the store?
Just Shades.
Just Shades.
And, uh, what, what can you get in here?
What can you get in here?
All the Shades.
That's why we, that's why our name is Just Shades.
But seriously, what, what can you get besides Shades here?
So I got completely geared around seeing all of New York as a potential talk
show segment.
One thing that was taking place on local news when the show started was an
ongoing, um, expose
about corruption, um, called Shame of the City.
And so we did a parody of that.
Some of it was just stuff that I saw on the way to work, and we, we, uh, we fit
it into that format.
Not everyone survives in this urban battlefield we call New York City.
This combination cityscape and war zone.
The crowded landscape has claimed another gentle victim.
Yes, say goodbye to the once plentiful majestic pine tree.
I'm here at 52nd and Park, once a thickly wooded forest right here in Manhattan.
Now, everywhere are the dead trees cut down in their prime, victim of some
mysterious blight.
Was it pollution?
Maybe overcrowding?
Perhaps forced out by too many delicatessens?
No one seems to know what's killing our trees.
There are no simple answers.
Only simple questions.
And simple people like myself to ask them.
It's truly the shame of the city.
New York City, center of culture, of wealth, of power, and victim of one of the
highest crime rates in the history of mankind.
A crime rate that continues to climb and shows no sign of stopping.
And you have to ask yourself, is it really any wonder when you take a look at
the police department?
A population of 10 million and this is the police department?
It's shocking, horrifying, tragic, and yet nothing is being done about it.
Excuse me, sir.
Do you work here?
Yes, I do.
Are you the only one who works here?
Yes, I am.
Unbelievable, yet it's truly, truly, the shame of the city.
I used to really look forward to when there were conventions coming into New
York City.
For instance, there was the fancy food convention and then there was a repeat
inventor's convention.
My very favorite of all of the things that was ever in a convention was this
guy who invented something called the casket alarm.
Life detector to avoid being embalmed or buried alive.
Could you ask Roberto, does this happen a lot?
Yes, he told me to tell you that he was buried alive three times and he got a
little worried about it.
So now he developed this idea and it has proved to be of great interest to a
lot of people.
After the third time that you were buried alive, it must have got to be
annoying, huh?
Not just annoying. It's the most terrible feeling that you might experience.
It might start carrying a card with you that just says, "I'd kind of like
another opinion."
One final question. I can understand being buried alive once, you know, sure,
everybody's going to make a mistake.
Or even twice, you know, somebody's looking the other way, they close the lid.
But three times. How has it happened to him three times?
This is something that he can't explain.
Just a run of bad luck then.
Just a run of bad luck.
Congratulations on the invention and better luck to you.
Thank you.
Another thing that was fun for me when the show first started is we tried out a
lot of conceptual stuff, which I really enjoy.
This was a segment which we did on the very first show and then we did a whole
bunch of them with different occupations.
We're calling it limited perspective and I got the idea from listening to my
relatives review movies, which is that, you know, one of them who was a plumber
would say, "Well, you know, yeah, I liked E.T., but God, the plumbing in the
second act was horrible."
We started bringing on people with a real specific point of view to review
movies.
This was, the first one was a dentist reviewing the movie Reds.
Tonight, I'd like you to meet a dentist from here in New York City, Dr. Norman
Hoffman.
Dr. Hoffman has been practicing dentistry since 1946.
We asked Dr. Hoffman to attend Warren Beatty's new movie Reds and let us know
how it looked from the dentist point of view.
How about Diane Keaton?
This woman has a high lip line and she's showing a lot of teeth and gingiva.
Her two front central teeth are slightly elongated.
It pretty much ruined the film for you?
And it went all the way through to, I think the final one we did was a martial
arts expert reviewing Gandhi.
First of all, Bill, did you enjoy the film?
Well, I enjoyed it very much.
How about from the point of view of a self-defense instructor?
Well, from a point of view from self-defense instructor, I thought it was, I
didn't like it at all.
I thought there was a lot more that he could have done.
Could have broken a few arms, cracked a few heads.
Okay.
Okay.
Let's take a look at some still photographs from the production.
First of all, Gandhi himself could not really be described as a heavyweight,
could he?
Oh, no.
He was a big man in a little body.
Uh-huh.
One of the things that he had in his favor was that he could have used the
weight of the opponent and used the weight advantage, so it's really not a
disadvantage to be small.
And also being a pacifist, he had the element of surprise on his side, didn't
he?
Yes, he did.
He sure he did.
Okay.
Now, one of the most dramatic scenes, I guess, in the movie is it takes place
on a sidewalk in South Africa, a confrontation between Gandhi and some other
gentleman.
Yes.
Well, I'd like to demonstrate a move which he could have done.
Okay.
All right.
Hey, Gandhi.
Get off the sidewalk.
Well, there's room in the world, my friend, for both of us.
I said, get off the sidewalk.
I said, there's room in the world for both of us.
Okay.
And I said, get off the sidewalk.
Well, that was fun.
I'm fine.
I'll be, I'll just, I'll be fine.
Thank you very much.
Well, thank you very much for that insightful review, Bill.
Thank you.
You certainly enjoyed that.
Perhaps they can use that for the sequel.
Another segment that I still think of sort of fondly was a weird idea that I
had called test the censors.
Because we were always in trouble with the censors for doing a little too much
of one thing or another.
We had a rule book we had to go by that said you couldn't do this, this, this
and such.
I mean, obviously you couldn't show bare breasts and stuff like that.
And by the way, I can't get over the show Euphoria where it's like Dickapalooza.
There's penises in every frame of Euphoria, but they wouldn't let us say the
word orgasm in this segment.
My idea was to just do a bunch of things for the studio audience that broke
every rule in the rule book that the censors were working by.
And then just let the censors censor it and then just put it on the air so you
could see what the censors took out of things.
Now our next category is one we call plugs and slanders.
Paul, what did you have for lunch today?
Well, I had some chicken and a lot.
I had a big one.
And I had a big one.
And Paul, what about the big one?
Well, that was a disappointment.
It was like lead.
It was oily.
It was full of carcinogens.
This brings us now to our next test category, graphic sexual material.
What life forms can be shown mating on television?
Our first clip involves one celled sex between a paramecium and itself.
This is one celled sex.
We'll see if we can get one celled sex.
We'll see if we can't get by with this.
There it is.
Okay.
Next, we have bunny and the bedroom slipper.
Another segment that we did in an ongoing way that I used to enjoy writing was
called etiquette segments.
And we did a lot of those.
Everything you could ever think of that you ever did in the course of the day,
we eventually made into an etiquette segment.
It started with something called elevator etiquette.
And I think it ended with one called lifeboat etique