Name: An "Ishtar" Segment on Letterman, May 5, 1987
Uploaded: 2020-04-30T20:59:43.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'An "Ishtar" Segment on Letterman, May 5, 1987' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-04-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'An "Ishtar" Segment on Letterman, May 5, 1987' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-04-30. Transcript available.

Thank you very much.
Tomorrow on the program,
actor Tom Poston will be here from the Bob Newhart Show
and Tower of Power Horns.
Tower of Power Horns.
Yes.
With our band.
Unbelievably great.
Pretty exciting.
We're very excited about it.
And also, tomorrow, I'll be telling the Hoover Dam story.
Yes, indeed.
Tell a little.
Just tell a little of the story now.
Well, I can't.
No, I can't.
Because we're running out of time
and we may not even get to the baseball guys.
And then you'd be disappointed.
You'd go home unfulfilled, wouldn't you?
But at least you'll be going home.
So that's tomorrow.
You know, on May 15th,
the long-anticipated and highly controversial motion picture
Ishtar opens across the country.
It's a multi-million-dollar epic
starring Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty
and maybe Sylvester Stallone.
We're not sure.
But we have tried and tried and tried
for a very long time
to get these two gentlemen on our show,
Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty.
But so far, we have been unsuccessful.
Now, if they ever did decide to appear on this program,
we think it might look something like this.
Take a look.
There's what it might look like.
There's Warren Beatty.
And, of course, right next to me is Dustin Hoffman.
Even though we couldn't get these two superstars on the program,
we hated like sin to waste all the hard work and research
that we've done preparing for their possible appearance.
So here tonight to tell us about Ishtar
and Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman,
late-night staff researchers,
Lori Guthrie and Rob Burnett.
Kids, come on out, will you?
Rob?
Nice to see you.
Nice to see you.
Lori, nice to have you here.
Now, what exactly do you guys do to prepare for an interview
when we find out somebody like Dustin Hoffman
or Warren Beatty will be on the show?
Well, we pour over newspaper,
newspapers, magazine articles, books, videotapes,
trying to learn everything possible about the subject.
That's right.
You leave no stone unturned.
No.
For example, tell us what you found out.
And I see you have the Warren Beatty file
and you have the Dustin Hoffman file.
Yeah, give us some interesting facts there
that people probably,
the average motion picture attender, goer, viewer,
would not know about Warren Beatty.
Well, for example,
Warren Beatty was president of his 1955 high school class.
Yeah, didn't know that.
Where did he go to school?
In Virginia.
Virginia.
All right.
Yeah, and a soup spoon he used at the Carnegie Deli
was sold for $15.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Just because a man of his magnitude had used it?
Yeah, sold for $15.
You don't know what kind of soup he was eating?
I'm not sure what kind of soup.
I could get that.
But again, this is the kind of thing
he probably would have told us had he been here.
Right.
All right.
What else?
Well, he turned down no less than 10
college athletic scholarships.
So he was a pretty good athlete.
He was a fine athlete.
Yeah.
10.
No less than 10.
No less than 10.
All right.
What do you, Laurie,
what do you have for us about Dustin Hoffman?
Well, he studied the piano for 10 years.
He turned down Kramer versus Kramer three times.
Gee, I didn't realize that.
So the two of them have something in common.
They'll turn things down over and over and over again.
And he likes the Donahue show,
People's Court,
and programs featuring medical operations.
And what would those programs be
that feature medical operations?
I don't know.
I don't know either.
Yeah, probably so.
All right.
Now, you've certainly done your homework,
and it's a lot of fun chatting about the two gentlemen.
Let's talk about the movie.
Do we have any footage of Ishtar?
Well, no, we don't.
The film hasn't opened yet,
but we do have some footage of Morocco.
Morocco.
Ishtar.
Ishtar was filmed in Morocco,
so we have footage of Morocco.
Mm-hmm.
All right.
Let's take a look.
Oh, there it is.
Where they filmed Ishtar.
Wow.
Babes on a camel.
That's pretty neat.
Now, is that what the movie is going to be like,
what we saw there?
Well, there's really no way to tell.
What we do know is that Morocco's official language is Arabic,
and that most of the people there are Muslim.
Huh.
All right.
Do you have any footage of the two stars, Warren or Dustin?
Well, Warren Beatty's from Richmond, Virginia,
and we have some footage of Richmond.
Okay, good enough.
Let's take a look at the footage of Richmond.
There it is, Warren Beatty's hometown.
Tobacco's a big crop down there.
And there's the tobacco leaves there.
Yeah.
All right, good.
And what about Dustin Hoffman?
Do we have any footage of him?
Well, we found a really fascinating clip.
It's an old educational film made for classroom use.
This is from 1950 or so when Dustin Hoffman was a teenager.
It's a movie called Shy Guy.
Oh, great.
Shy Guy is the film,
and here's Dustin Hoffman as a teenager.
Not here.
I'm different from the guys in this town.
As far as that goes,
everybody's different.
That's what makes people interesting.
Me.
I don't, you know,
that, that, uh,
it looked like it might have been Dick York,
Dick York as a teenager,
not Dustin Hoffman.
Well, yeah,
but Dustin Hoffman was a teenager at the time.
All right.
Okay, I'll give you that one.
Any more clips here?
Uh, well,
we've got one of our office team playing softball.
Oh, great.
Let's take a look at that.
This is our,
the late night staff playing softball.
Oh, there they are.
Great.
Oh, my.
Very nice.
Excellent job.
Well, thank you very much.
You know,
uh,
the movie opens again,
uh,
on May 15th.
It's, uh,
Ishtar,
Warren Beatty,
and, uh,
Dustin Hoffman.
And it was eerie.
It was almost like having those two guys right here tonight.
Thanks for a great job, Rob.
Nice going.
Lori, nice to see you again.
Uh,
we got applause,
but we'll be right back.
Thank you.
Thank you.