Name: Staff Favorite Moments: Writer Gerard Mulligan | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-06-07T15:14:58.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Writer Gerard Mulligan | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Writer Gerard Mulligan | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-07. Transcript available.

hi i'm gerard jerry mulligan i wrote on the morning show i wrote on late night
and i wrote
on late show and in 2004 i was tired of writing britney spears top tens and
caring about stuff i
didn't care about i decided to retire to my lovely estate here in suburban new
jersey
highfield manor we have a large staff we have many animals many outbuildings it's
quite a
luxurious place and i want to thank my television family for making it possible
here are some of my
favorite moments from the show that i enjoyed working on and watching for so
many years this
clip is one of my appearances on the morning show which again was live so no
room for error although
god knows we made a lot of them this was about either a day or a week before
the final show october
of 1980 and it was the very first uh incarnation of uh halloween costumes which
became a regular
feature on both the later shows and you'll see that because of my ineptness as
an actor it's hard
to tell who exactly i'm representing with my costume and finally uh a little
tip it seems like in every
neighborhood there's always a kid who just doesn't seem to outgrow halloween he
comes back year after year
after year here he is
there you are thank you
i'd like to thank our models this morning from the hunter college elementary
school except for the big
dumb kid he uh you may have trouble recognizing that costume it was tweety bird
and despite the many
notes from director hal gurney when i came through the door i did not face
forward i looked like a
somebody in a giant yellow nightie or onesie or something and i'm sorry i still
regret it i still think
about it you know i wasn't just a writer on the show for a while for reasons
that frankly in learning
your business i became a segment producer which meant that i would handle one
or two segments per
show i would interview the guests before the show i would prepare a list of
questions for dave to ask
the guest sometimes the guests didn't show and sometimes they gave us advance
warning and sometimes
they didn't uh now this is interesting i'm going to explain something here to
you folks my next guest
played drums and sang with the legendary rock group the band
he then went on to a career in films receiving great acclaim for his portrayal
of loretta lynn's
father and coal miner's daughter not only that he's not here tonight has not
arrived uh he for some
reason or another he we believe that he is in transit and perhaps will be here
uh so in the meantime
until mr levon helm possibly arrives we thought we'd let you meet the gentleman
who was responsible for
this booking on our program uh talent coordinator and segment producer mr gerard
mulligan ladies
and gentlemen what other things would we have heard from levon had he been i
think he had some great
stories i think we booked this guy because we knew he had anecdotes you know
kind of a natural
storyteller natural storyteller not not good with time but real good with with
the anecdotes what now
let me ask you this what what do we know of levon's relationship with bob dylan
now it's real curious
i was going to ask him about that because as you as you as you know he backed
he backed dylan
at his famous forest hills appearance in 65 when dylan went electric which all
the fans know and then
dylan made a world tour and he took all the band with him except levon helm we
don't know if levon
levon went back to arkansas right yeah we don't know if he didn't want to tour
with dylan or what
the deal was because later he he did play behind together yeah it would have
been great why don't you run
down you know one of the segments that i produce in my brief stint as a segment
producer involved
andy kaufman and jerry lawler people keep asking me did you know was it pre-planned
i swear on my dog's
life it was not planned andy kaufman was so committed to stuff i think he
really took the risk of severe
injury to get a moment that would stand out and stand out it did i could have
sued you i could have
sued you for everything you're worth well no i didn't because that's i'm not
that kind of a guy
yeah yeah you know what uh what kind of a guy are you
i'll just be over here we're going to pause here for station identification get
the hoses
but you you know speaking of andy kaufman he was a genius he was hilarious and
he was totally totally
committed on the morning show he was booked he showed up on a certain date a
mess his hair was filthy his face
was filthy he was just a mess he said that ever since taxi had been cancelled
he'd been having hard
times he'd been sleeping in doorways overnight and he wanted to come on the
show and talk about it so as
he explained it to me and merrill what his plan was was to come out on the show
explain to david he was on
very hard times the show was over he would probably never get another sitcom he
wasn't getting any gigs
there was only one solution and at that point he was going to pull out a gun
and shoot himself in
the head merrill and i looked at each other and thought well sure that's a good
idea how about
other ideas andy any other ideas and we had a compromise this is the compromise
that we came
up with rather than having andy pretend to kill himself on national television
um so anyway i quit the
show and my wife uh at that time i was wrestling women on saturday night live i
got a lot of hate mail and
uh no producer would hire me after that so one day i was at my manager's office
trying to get a
engagement for a dinner theater in wisconsin and i got a call from my wife's
lawyer she wanted a divorce
and she got a divorce she got the kids the house she got all my money oh not
all my money but some
anyway she got everything i moved to new york and now that's what i'm doing now
living in new york and i'd
um i i don't really have anything um so anyway um if anybody could i i know
this sounds like a cliche but
if you could earn you extra money that you have i would appreciate it
all right there we go um always a pleasure to have
always a pleasure to have the young talent on the show
you know when you do five shows a week you need a lot of comedy we got our
inspiration from many
places the next uh little ongoing bit was inspired by something my mother used
to say all the time
she would say gerard why don't you take an umbrella i said well i don't look
like it's going to rain i
don't think i need an umbrella well gerard it's better to have an umbrella and
not need it
then need an umbrella and not have it all right every uh wednesday night uh
this summer we'll be
having excuse me dave yes alan what can i do for it i have something new for
summer uh huh oh what is that
wow wow so alan why do we have why do we have lou rawls sitting in the green
room why you ask hey say it
with me folks because it's better to have lou rawls and not need him
than to need lou rawls and not have him
you know things didn't always go smoothly for staff members here at the late
show and late night
here's an example of one thing that uh it went pretty seriously awry letter
number four dear dave
boy you really blew it i was in your studio audience when you had audience
brush with greatness
because i was only a lonely standby uh i did not get a chance to volunteer my
story i sat on the lap of
luciano pavaratti yeah it's like being in a state park
now i think that's pretty good not everyone could even find his lap at any rate
i'm disappointed i didn't
get to tell my story and missed out on my chance to win a facial blotter and i
thought you should
be aware of what you missed this is from a faithful late night insomniac elizabeth
field
new york g elizabeth you know you're absolutely right i guess we did blow it
that would have been
a great story to hear on the show and uh i'd like to get to the bottom of this
so henry henry
do you mind coming out here for just a minute please now yes mr little yes henry
uh how long
have you been picking out the audience participants for brush with greatness 29
years mr little and
yes now i have only one year to go for my pension yeah less than a year to go
well henry how how
is it that with all of that experience nearly 30 years uh you didn't pick the
woman in the audience
who sat on luciano pavarati's lap uh for brush with greatness oh i'm so sorry
oh i i remember that day
i left the clinic and i was mugged they they took my coat and my eyeglasses so
when i faced the audience
i couldn't read the writings of the questionnaires very well yeah so uh i was
shivering so much and
i couldn't write anything down either yeah well i'm sorry i'm sorry about i'm
so sorry yeah i'm so
sorry yeah well you're fired that's quite a feeling to get booed on your own
show so what about my
pension well henry what about the lady who sat on pavarati's lap
haha just get your stuff together and get a cab will you
oh my poor henry well oh all right you give him a job you know when you work in
network television
even on a show like late night or late show you used to face a phenomenon
called sweeps
where three times a year nielsen and company take a measurement of how many
people are actually
watching you go to production at any rate this was a very early attempt to uh
do something exciting
during sweeps week are you aware this is an important ratings period that's
right so what big
deal this is this is our ratings month you're right well this is you know that
i am second to no one in
my in my extreme love for arnie barnes but i gotta say that it seems to me we
should be doing some big
gimmicky things some real big audience grabbing things for paul ratings gimmicks
audience grabbers
paul i'm telling you that is unfair to the fine group of folks who watch this
show night in and
night out that we would do something loaded with gimmicks or special effects to
attract ratings i'm
telling you paul what we need to do is the best damn show we can mr letterman i'm
sorry to interrupt
it's it's my wife i think she's in labor oh my god oh my god how how far apart
are the contractions
they're less than a minute apart oh my god a minute apart oh stay right there
let's get her to the
hospital no no there's no time for that paul we'll deliver the baby right here
in the studio
boil some water boil some water okay okay okay all right hang on all right all
right real hard now
all right oh oh my goodness there we go oh oh my goodness there we go
congratulations we're gonna call him dave we're gonna call him dave that's
great good luck to you
thank you so much thank you thank you very much ladies and gentlemen thank you
so much
oh it's magic it's a magic night isn't it paul
a woman up there just gave birth to about a 10-month-old baby
wearing a diaper but you know you know the staff used to get one week a year
off for vacation
and sometimes we came back and used our experiences as fodder for the show uh
gerard mulligan nice to
see you've been with us for a while quite a while gerard is one of our writers
how did you spend your
a week off well i stayed home in new jersey and on monday of that week i went
to the brownie
investiture of my daughter katherine oh that must have been very nice it was
terrific very exciting
for you very proud of her yeah she was very proud good it worked out great how
old is your daughter
she's six years old and was this like the thrill of her life well so far yeah i
mean i'm hoping
okay well that's not the things you have to start somewhere sure i understand
that yeah and uh this
is where she gets her brownie uniform officially gets it so it's a big day for
her yeah in fact
i brought her along tonight in the brownie uniforms you get a look at what it
would be great
she's here ladies and gentlemen gerard mulligan's daughter katherine
hi katherine how are you nice to see you thank you very much does dad say nice
things about me at the
house yeah all right all right so we have some photos here i'll hold these up
and you just tell us what
we're looking at all right this is a gerard spend his vacation now this is kathy
right before she made
beautiful young girl thank you made right before she made her brownie vow all
right this is katherine
actually actually making the brownie vow taking the brownie brownie else looks
like she might actually
be singing the brownie i think she did it yesterday okay all right and what
else what is this is a proud
dad and daughter this is kind of strange
you have a long difficult life ahead of you some of my favorite moments on the
show with my friend chris
elliott this is my very last appearance with chris and my last appearance on
the show because
you know dave got fired and the show was over he sounds like he needs oxygen or
something
oxygen plenty of oxygen i'm fine there's no oxygen all right all right well
there's only one thing i
can do and that's uh mouth to mouth well he's still not fine no he don't i
really don't i really don't
oh shush you're fine let me just show you how this is done nobody wants this oh
come on we're not
infantile children here i'm fine don't okay now get off that guy what has to be
done let me show you
get off that guy another way to do this is you pinch something i don't know
right i don't know if it's
his nose or his ass i'm not going to do that yeah no and then then when you're
ready you just go right in
for the love of god oh he's fine get off him
all right stop it he's oh
there you go you feel better jerry no
a couple of weeks after this aired i was out of benefit on long island and uh i
ran into my brother-in-law
hank who was a big suffolk county uh cop brass and he said to me hey jerry i
saw you kissing chris on tv
i had to point out that i was kissed by chris i did not kiss chris not that it
would make any
difference you know i'm one of the people most responsible for the popularity
of the
dance craze the macarena after i did it on the show it seemed like everybody
was doing it
well like most fads people got sick and tired of it including the host of
the show been history right there everybody it's macarena time
love it
come on hurry up it's only an hour show here we go right through here keep
going
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.

Staff Favorite Moments: Writer Gerard Mulligan | Letterman

hi i'm gerard jerry mulligan i wrote on the morning show i wrote on late night
and i wrote
on late show and in 2004 i was tired of writing britney spears top tens and
caring about stuff i
didn't care about i decided to retire to my lovely estate here in suburban new
jersey
highfield manor we have a large staff we have many animals many outbuildings it's
quite a
luxurious place and i want to thank my television family for making it possible
here are some of my
favorite moments from the show that i enjoyed working on and watching for so
many years this
clip is one of my appearances on the morning show which again was live so no
room for error although
god knows we made a lot of them this was about either a day or a week before
the final show october
of 1980 and it was the very first uh incarnation of uh halloween costumes which
became a regular
feature on both the later shows and you'll see that because of my ineptness as
an actor it's hard
to tell who exactly i'm representing with my costume and finally uh a little
tip it seems like in every
neighborhood there's always a kid who just doesn't seem to outgrow halloween he
comes back year after year
after year here he is
there you are thank you
i'd like to thank our models this morning from the hunter college elementary
school except for the big
dumb kid he uh you may have trouble recognizing that costume it was tweety bird
and despite the many
notes from director hal gurney when i came through the door i did not face
forward i looked like a
somebody in a giant yellow nightie or onesie or something and i'm sorry i still
regret it i still think
about it you know i wasn't just a writer on the show for a while for reasons
that frankly in learning
your business i became a segment producer which meant that i would handle one
or two segments per
show i would interview the guests before the show i would prepare a list of
questions for dave to ask
the guest sometimes the guests didn't show and sometimes they gave us advance
warning and sometimes
they didn't uh now this is interesting i'm going to explain something here to
you folks my next guest
played drums and sang with the legendary rock group the band
he then went on to a career in films receiving great acclaim for his portrayal
of loretta lynn's
father and coal miner's daughter not only that he's not here tonight has not
arrived uh he for some
reason or another he we believe that he is in transit and perhaps will be here
uh so in the meantime
until mr levon helm possibly arrives we thought we'd let you meet the gentleman
who was responsible for
this booking on our program uh talent coordinator and segment producer mr gerard
mulligan ladies
and gentlemen what other things would we have heard from levon had he been i
think he had some great
stories i think we booked this guy because we knew he had anecdotes you know
kind of a natural
storyteller natural storyteller not not good with time but real good with with
the anecdotes what now
let me ask you this what what do we know of levon's relationship with bob dylan
now it's real curious
i was going to ask him about that because as you as you as you know he backed
he backed dylan
at his famous forest hills appearance in 65 when dylan went electric which all
the fans know and then
dylan made a world tour and he took all the band with him except levon helm we
don't know if levon
levon went back to arkansas right yeah we don't know if he didn't want to tour
with dylan or what
the deal was because later he he did play behind together yeah it would have
been great why don't you run
down you know one of the segments that i produce in my brief stint as a segment
producer involved
andy kaufman and jerry lawler people keep asking me did you know was it pre-planned
i swear on my dog's
life it was not planned andy kaufman was so committed to stuff i think he
really took the risk of severe
injury to get a moment that would stand out and stand out it did i could have
sued you i could have
sued you for everything you're worth well no i didn't because that's i'm not
that kind of a guy
yeah yeah you know what uh what kind of a guy are you
i'll just be over here we're going to pause here for station identification get
the hoses
but you you know speaking of andy kaufman he was a genius he was hilarious and
he was totally totally
committed on the morning show he was booked he showed up on a certain date a
mess his hair was filthy his face
was filthy he was just a mess he said that ever since taxi had been cancelled
he'd been having hard
times he'd been sleeping in doorways overnight and he wanted to come on the
show and talk about it so as
he explained it to me and merrill what his plan was was to come out on the show
explain to david he was on
very hard times the show was over he would probably never get another sitcom he
wasn't getting any gigs
there was only one solution and at that point he was going to pull out a gun
and shoot himself in
the head merrill and i looked at each other and thought well sure that's a good
idea how about
other ideas andy any other ideas and we had a compromise this is the compromise
that we came
up with rather than having andy pretend to kill himself on national television
um so anyway i quit the
show and my wife uh at that time i was wrestling women on saturday night live i
got a lot of hate mail and
uh no producer would hire me after that so one day i was at my manager's office
trying to get a
engagement for a dinner theater in wisconsin and i got a call from my wife's
lawyer she wanted a divorce
and she got a divorce she got the kids the house she got all my money oh not
all my money but some
anyway she got everything i moved to new york and now that's what i'm doing now
living in new york and i'd
um i i don't really have anything um so anyway um if anybody could i i know
this sounds like a cliche but
if you could earn you extra money that you have i would appreciate it
all right there we go um always a pleasure to have
always a pleasure to have the young talent on the show
you know when you do five shows a week you need a lot of comedy we got our
inspiration from many
places the next uh little ongoing bit was inspired by something my mother used
to say all the time
she would say gerard why don't you take an umbrella i said well i don't look
like it's going to rain i
don't think i need an umbrella well gerard it's better to have an umbrella and
not need it
then need an umbrella and not have it all right every uh wednesday night uh
this summer we'll be
having excuse me dave yes alan what can i do for it i have something new for
summer uh huh oh what is that
wow wow so alan why do we have why do we have lou rawls sitting in the green
room why you ask hey say it
with me folks because it's better to have lou rawls and not need him
than to need lou rawls and not have him
you know things didn't always go smoothly for staff members here at the late
show and late night
here's an example of one thing that uh it went pretty seriously awry letter
number four dear dave
boy you really blew it i was in your studio audience when you had audience
brush with greatness
because i was only a lonely standby uh i did not get a chance to volunteer my
story i sat on the lap of
luciano pavaratti yeah it's like being in a state park
now i think that's pretty good not everyone could even find his lap at any rate
i'm disappointed i didn't
get to tell my story and missed out on my chance to win a facial blotter and i
thought you should
be aware of what you missed this is from a faithful late night insomniac elizabeth
field
new york g elizabeth you know you're absolutely right i guess we did blow it
that would have been
a great story to hear on the show and uh i'd like to get to the bottom of this
so henry henry
do you mind coming out here for just a minute please now yes mr little yes henry
uh how long
have you been picking out the audience participants for brush with greatness 29
years mr little and
yes now i have only one year to go for my pension yeah less than a year to go
well henry how how
is it that with all of that experience nearly 30 years uh you didn't pick the
woman in the audience
who sat on luciano pavarati's lap uh for brush with greatness oh i'm so sorry
oh i i remember that day
i left the clinic and i was mugged they they took my coat and my eyeglasses so
when i faced the audience
i couldn't read the writings of the questionnaires very well yeah so uh i was
shivering so much and
i couldn't write anything down either yeah well i'm sorry i'm sorry about i'm
so sorry yeah i'm so
sorry yeah well you're fired that's quite a feeling to get booed on your own
show so what about my
pension well henry what about the lady who sat on pavarati's lap
haha just get your stuff together and get a cab will you
oh my poor henry well oh all right you give him a job you know when you work in
network television
even on a show like late night or late show you used to face a phenomenon
called sweeps
where three times a year nielsen and company take a measurement of how many
people are actually
watching you go to production at any rate this was a very early attempt to uh
do something exciting
during sweeps week are you aware this is an important ratings period that's
right so what big
deal this is this is our ratings month you're right well this is you know that
i am second to no one in
my in my extreme love for arnie barnes but i gotta say that it seems to me we
should be doing some big
gimmicky things some real big audience grabbing things for paul ratings gimmicks
audience grabbers
paul i'm telling you that is unfair to the fine group of folks who watch this
show night in and
night out that we would do something loaded with gimmicks or special effects to
attract ratings i'm
telling you paul what we need to do is the best damn show we can mr letterman i'm
sorry to interrupt
it's it's my wife i think she's in labor oh my god oh my god how how far apart
are the contractions
they're less than a minute apart oh my god a minute apart oh stay right there
let's get her to the
hospital no no there's no time for that paul we'll deliver the baby right here
in the studio
boil some water boil some water okay okay okay all right hang on all right all
right real hard now
all right oh oh my goodness there we go oh oh my goodness there we go
congratulations we're gonna call him dave we're gonna call him dave that's
great good luck to you
thank you so much thank you thank you very much ladies and gentlemen thank you
so much
oh it's magic it's a magic night isn't it paul
a woman up there just gave birth to about a 10-month-old baby
wearing a diaper but you know you know the staff used to get one week a year
off for vacation
and sometimes we came back and used our experiences as fodder for the show uh
gerard mulligan nice to
see you've been with us for a while quite a while gerard is one of our writers
how did you spend your
a week off well i stayed home in new jersey and on monday of that week i went
to the brownie
investiture of my daughter katherine oh that must have been very nice it was
terrific very exciting
for you very proud of her yeah she was very proud good it worked out great how
old is your daughter
she's six years old and was this like the thrill of her life well so far yeah i
mean i'm hoping
okay well that's not the things you have to start somewhere sure i understand
that yeah and uh this
is where she gets her brownie uniform officially gets it so it's a big day for
her yeah in fact
i brought her along tonight in the brownie uniforms you get a look at what it
would be great
she's here ladies and gentlemen gerard mulligan's daughter katherine
hi katherine how are you nice to see you thank you very much does dad say nice
things about me at the
house yeah all right all right so we have some photos here i'll hold these up
and you just tell us what
we're looking at all right this is a gerard spend his vacation now this is kathy
right before she made
beautiful