Name: Dave's Audience Fish Cleaning Night With Mariel Hemingway | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-09-06T22:05:24.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dave's Audience Fish Cleaning Night With Mariel Hemingway | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-09-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dave's Audience Fish Cleaning Night With Mariel Hemingway | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-09-06. Transcript available.

Ladies and gentlemen, what can I tell you other than yes, tonight is Audience
Fish Cleaning
Night here at NBC.
Yes.
That's right.
Now, a lot of you are probably asking yourselves about this time, what is
Audience Fish Cleaning
Night?
Ladies and gentlemen, it's an annual event held here at NBC, and it's just our
way of
saying thanks for 365 days of loyal viewership for the network.
How does this work?
Well, people in our audience tonight have received these special BYOF
invitation tickets.
The tickets were mailed out a couple of weeks ago, and there are certain rules
on the back.
Let's quickly read the rules on the back.
No more than 12 fish per audience member will be cleaned here tonight.
All fish must be freshly caught and free of genetic abnormalities.
So-called trash fish, such as carp, chub, and gar, will not be accepted.
No betting is permitted at any time.
We had a lot of trouble with this last year.
And finally, all fish entrails become the property of the National Broadcasting
Company and will
not be returned.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you once again, we are only cleaning fish
here tonight.
There will be time for no boning or filleting.
All right?
Also, when these special invitation tickets went out, there was enclosed a memo
which indicated
we will not be able to clean catfish or sturgeon.
These are very difficult fish to clean.
I have been informed by the ushers that some of you tonight in our audience did
bring some
catfish and sturgeon.
I'm going to have to ask you at this time to give them to the ushers as they go
through the
audience with the pails and just relinquish the fish.
If we can...
There they are.
Just pass over.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
We sent out the memos nearly three weeks ago.
Once again, this is all fish that has been brought by our studio audience that
we'll be cleaning
tonight.
All right.
If they've collected the unacceptable fish, we'll give them back to you at the
end of the
show, ladies and gentlemen.
The magic moment is just about here.
Get a good grip on your fish, ladies and gentlemen, because now it's time to
begin audience
fish cleaning night.
Okay, if you're ready to come down here one at a time and have your fish
cleaned, let's
meet the woman who will be conducting the ceremony for us.
Do you have everything you need here?
Yes.
Okay, do you want to work this end or that end?
Right in the middle.
Right in the middle.
Okay, so I'll just go over here.
And your name is?
Mariel Hemingway.
Mariel Hemingway.
And what do you...
And what do you do for a living, Mariel?
I clean fish.
You clean fish.
Okay, great.
All right, let's just get started now.
Bring on the fish and we'll start cleaning them one at a time.
That's right, just...
There's some ugliness taking place up there.
Oh, my.
These...
Yes, come on down, ma'am.
Come on around this way, if you will.
What is your name?
Florence Jeffrey.
Florence, where are you from?
Bound, Brittany, Jersey.
And do you know what kind of fish you have there, Florence?
A sea trout.
A sea trout.
Okay, Florence, this is Mariel.
She'll be cleaning it for you.
And remember, once again, we can't fillet right now.
And we do no boning.
We're just going to clean.
So, Mariel, if you just go ahead and clean the fish.
Now would be a good time to phone the neighbors.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll be on the air cleaning fish until 2 o'clock tonight.
Is it 2 or how late are we on?
2 o'clock.
Till 2 o'clock cleaning fish.
And if you can get a nice, tight shot of that, Hal, I...
Yeah.
Oh, my.
Yes.
Oh.
Wouldn't a tuna melt hit the spot just about now?
Okay.
You do a lot of fish cleaning, Mariel?
Oh, yeah, all the time.
All right.
And now we're a little scaling, so you're getting a little extra there.
Yeah.
Oh.
Oh, watch it.
You nearly hit someone there.
I'm sorry.
That's all right.
This is for all you late-night eaters.
Yep.
Now, that'll be nice when you get it home.
Maybe a little batter and...
It's a ripper.
Uh-huh.
Thank you.
Well, you're not going to take...
That's cool.
That's it.
That's a good one.
Would you like some coleslaw?
Are you not going to take the head and the tail off, or are you just...
Oh, I thought you wanted it.
Oh, yeah.
A lot of people do ask for the head and tail as kind of a souvenir.
Okay.
How much time do we have for this?
About 30 seconds.
Okay, 30 more seconds.
So, come on, put that down here, ma'am.
What is your name?
Lana.
Lana?
And, boy, that's a beauty.
What is this guy?
They told me it was a flounder.
A flounder?
And you said this was a pet?
No, no, you didn't say that.
Okay, there you go.
So, now if she can get that...
Now, the next is a flounder.
Marielle, have you ever cleaned a flounder?
This one's a little more difficult.
Okay, a little more difficult.
All right, so we're going to watch now.
She cleans the flounder.
It's a good eating fish, isn't it?
This is hard.
I don't know.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Look at all these folks lined up with their bright faces and their fish.
I tried this a couple of months ago with Ted Koppel over at Nightline, and it
wasn't nearly
this much fun when they did it over there.
David Brinkley brought in a couple of...
I'm sorry.
No, no, you don't need to apologize.
It's all right.
We're here.
Ooh!
Ooh!
Okay.
Now, that's an ocean fish, isn't it?
It's such a big fish.
It has very little guts.
Yeah, that's right.
There isn't a lot of meat on that fish, actually.
Oh!
Yep.
Yep, yep.
It's too bad we're not in 3D, isn't it?
It would be...
Well, that looks good.
Just put that on a bun, and you're ready.
You're ready to go.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Meryl.
All right, we have to go away for a commercial.
Come on in, sir, and put your fish on the counter, so to speak.
We'll be right back, ladies and gentlemen.
Yes, it's fish cleaning night.
Ladies and gentlemen, I need to make another announcement.
We've been getting some complaints from the NBC News Department.
Please do not put any discarded fish in the evening news studio.
Apparently, according to this, John Chancellor's chair has been ruined.
Please use the disposal facilities right here in our own studio,
and we want to make this an annual event, so let's don't screw it up, okay?
You know, we've had a lot of fun tonight,
and we certainly have cleaned a lot of fish, and that's all well and good,
but I have a simple philosophy.
Clean a man's fish and he eats tonight.
Teach a man to clean a fish, and he eats for the rest of his life.
Now, the audience has seen plenty of old-fashioned cleaning tonight,
but there's a real trick to filleting a fish.
So I brought in a short film that I made over the weekend on this subject,
and you're going to see me.
Paul came out to the house, and we went out and got some pretty good-sized striped
bass.
Let me just now show you via this film the technique to filleting a fish.
This was fun, wasn't it, Paul?
There it is.
We just got it right out of the boat.
You need a really good sharp knife, and you cut forward to the, just behind the
gill,
and then the trick here is to keep it right up next to the bone,
and when you begin to pry it away, this was good eating, wasn't it, Paul?
Mm-mm, Dave.
Yeah.
You want to watch for all the tiny little bones,
and we had plenty of sun that day.
I can tell from my hands.
Now, just cut it back to the tail like that.
There you go.
And there you go, ladies and gentlemen.
That's how you fillet a fish.
That was fun.
I didn't realize you were such a fisherman.
Well, you know, it's just one of the many things that you don't know about.
It was great, wasn't it?
I liked it.
We had a gas there.
Let's have you and me and the whole band will do it.
These guys have been asking me when are they going to take us up to Dave's
house to go fishing,
and I said, you know, it'd be cool, but that's nice.
All right, we'll do that.
Don't you worry.
You mark that on your calendar.