Name: Danny Aiello Collection on Letterman, 1985-1997
Uploaded: 2019-12-13T20:53:18.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Danny Aiello Collection on Letterman, 1985-1997' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-12-13. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Danny Aiello Collection on Letterman, 1985-1997' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-12-13. Transcript available.

Danny Aiello Collection on Letterman, 1985-1997

Our next guest tonight is a talented actor.
This man has played some pretty rotten roles in his time.
He tossed a kid off a roof in Fort Apache, the Bronx.
And he can currently be seen beating up his wife in the Purple Rose of Cairo.
He is also starring on Broadway in Hurley Burley.
Please welcome Danny Aiello.
Nice to see you, man.
Nice to be here for being here.
Boy, that's...
Now, you have played some nasty guys,
tossing a kid off the roof of the police station in the Bronx or wherever that
was.
That's right.
Now, do you get a reaction to that?
People remember that sort of thing, I would guess?
Yeah, they love it.
I don't know why.
I walk down the street, some young kids,
Puerto Rican kids and black kids in that area.
Now, this is the area, of course, that I happen to be brought up in, Fort
Apache.
Southeast Bronx.
They'll yell, hey, you're the guy that threw the kid off the roof.
Yeah, man, right.
And it sort of...
It wipes me out.
It says something somewhat about our society.
But before we go on, David, I'd like to say something about...
This is my first national television hook-up show, talk show throughout the
country.
And it's wonderful to follow an 89-year-old woman karate expert by the name of
Lucille.
And I was sitting in the green room, and I heard Paul screaming before,
get that damn ham out of here.
Yeah, I know.
You know, Bob Morton caught me in the elevator.
I thought he meant me.
It's true.
Now, come on.
It's true.
Now, this is really your first talk show?
You've never been on a...
Well, not a national one, of course.
We usually like to have folks who start out with Merv Griffin and then work
their way up.
As a matter of fact...
Kind of break them in.
Well, I'll tell you the truth.
I haven't.
This is my first time.
I'm a little nervous, but I think I'll get over it.
Now, your most recent film is Purple Rose of Cairo, and you play a real insufferable
jerk in that one, too.
As a matter of fact, I do, and it's a strange thing, because I'm the type of
person, I think,
that couldn't lay his hand on anyone, certainly not a woman.
I mean, I've never done that in my entire life.
I don't put my hands on my children.
However, I warn them first, if ever I do.
Oh, well, that's very nasty.
It's what I did, of course, in Purple Rose of Cairo.
You're a real nasty guy.
You know what, I'm watching the movie, and I'm thinking to myself,
how could this woman have married this guy in the first place?
I mean, because you were just nonstop annoying.
I wonder that also.
But Woody, you know, he's able to do some marvelous things as a director and
writer,
and he was able to develop that, and it worked.
As a matter of fact, playing that guy was not a very nice thing for me to do.
I mean, no one wants to play a really bad sort of a guy, which everyone sort of
looks down on,
but it was with Woody Allen, after all.
I had the opportunity of being in what I consider a classic film,
and the critics, of course, have bared me out.
I think every actor wants to have an ounce of immortality in his life,
and I think Woody Allen's permitted that.
What was he like to work with him?
We've talked to other people who have worked in films with him,
and they say that they don't really talk to him much,
which I seem, that's hard to believe, if he's directing and he's not talking to
people.
Well, I think he does most of his directing when he casts.
It's very funny.
Woody knows who he's casting.
He knew I was that guy in his mind.
What he does, he's a very simplistic director.
He doesn't like to get necessarily analytical.
He says, Danny, you're analyzing.
Don't do that.
Just, it's there.
You've got to do it.
The most he will give you in the way of direction is,
Danny, be a little happy.
All right.
Danny, be a little less angry.
Yeah.
Or something along those lines.
The kind of guy Woody is, he's a great stickball player.
And did you really play stickball with the guy?
Absolutely.
Really?
We played stickball up in Pyrmont, New York.
I would throw to him, and he'd hit, and he'd throw to me, and I'd hit.
Did you ever see him break a sweat?
As a matter of fact, no.
See, I get the feeling this guy doesn't sweat.
Well, I think he runs a lot.
Now, let me ask you about another scene.
You beat up Paul Newman.
Now, that in Fort Apache, different movie.
Well, that was strange, because we fought for about eight hours in that movie.
We were shooting it up in West End.
But to get the thing.
Yeah, to get it right.
It only lasted about a minute and a half on the screen, as you know.
And it was kind of a heavy fight.
I mean, we were gouging.
Because Paul said to me, how do you want to fight it?
I said, well, whatever you want to do is all right with me.
I said, all right, let's not make it a Hollywood fight.
You know, with pretty punches and so forth and winding up.
So he said, why don't we grapple, rip, gouge, put fingers and noses.
And that's exactly what we did.
We bit each other.
Well, we killed each other for like eight hours.
And suddenly a voice from off the screen yelled out, don't hit him in the face.
It was my wife.
And she wasn't talking about me.
She wasn't talking about me.
I swear this is true.
David, so help me God, this is true.
Now, I guess before you became an actor on a regular basis, you were a union
leader.
You were a powerful man in this country.
Well, I don't know how powerful I was.
I was quite young at the time.
I didn't know what the hell I was doing.
What union was this?
It was the Greyhound Union.
It was the Amalgamated Transit Union.
Were you a driver?
No, I was never a driver.
I was a public address announcer.
But before that, I was a baggage man.
And worked myself up to a point where I ran for shops, do it, then eventually
vice president,
then finally president.
And I won.
I was in that position for approximately 10 years.
What does an announcer do?
I guess we know what they do.
They just call up city.
Well, you know, here's the guy who says...
Can you still do that?
I think I remember somewhat some of the towns.
I'm not sure they'll come out in a proper role.
But I'm the guy whose voice you would hear saying, may I have your attention,
please?
On platform number three, a coach for Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Wheeling,
Columbus, Indianapolis,
Terre Haute, Effingham, St. Louis.
Now loading platform number three.
On platform number two, a coach for Jersey City, Newark, Mount Clare, Denville,
Dover,
Bud Lake, Hackettstown, Stroudsburg, Mount Pocono, Toby Hanna,
Scranton, Wiltsbury, Clark, Summit, Nicholson, Halstead, Great Ben Binghamton,
Hitson, Tawanda, Waverley, Elmira, Corning, Bath, Batavia, Hornell, Mount
Morris, and Buffalo.
That's right.
Danny, thank you very much.
Congratulations.
It's a pleasure being here.
Danny Ayala, folks.
We have to do a commercial.
We'll be right back.
Thank you.
So, he's been showing off all night, hasn't he?
Yeah.
But I noticed for his solo, they had to switch guitars, so I think there's some
kind of a magic guitar he was using.
You think it's so?
And I'm telling you, I really have the blues now.
I'm really very, very, very depressed.
Thank you.
Well, do you need...
And I'm drunk now, too.
I'm really drunk.
I just hope I don't go and do something stupid.
Thank you, Gary, very much.
Our next guest was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the film Moonstruck.
And his latest film is called Once Around.
Ladies and gentlemen, here he is again, a very talented man, Danny Aiello.
Why?
Why does he play that?
It was Do the Right Thing.
Do the Right Thing?
Yeah.
Which was...
No, that was...
The Academy Award nomination was Do the Right Thing, not Moonstruck.
Oh, was it?
Oh, oh.
Oh, but why does Paul play that music?
I have no idea.
That was Papa Just Wants the Best for You.
Oh, that was...
Oh, I see.
That was the answer to Madonna's...
Papa Don't Preview.
You played Madonna's father in the Madonna video.
Yeah, it was about five, six years ago.
Yeah.
Have you seen the new Madonna video?
No, I haven't.
That's the hottest thing going for you.
I can't watch it.
My wife won't let me.
Yeah, she takes her clothes off and everything.
No, it's terrible.
She's naked for the whole thing, is what I hear.
What do you mean, you can't stand it?
I can't handle it.
Have you...
Did you...
When you were in the other video, did you see her naked at all?
No.
Any time during the...
No.
Let's see.
It was our next guest nominated for an Academy Award, so it wasn't Moonstruck.
I want to...
I want to correct this for the next guy.
It was...
It was...
It was...
Do the Right Thing.
Yeah, it was Do the Right Thing.
Yeah, okay.
We'll just make that...
Put it into our files.
Now, we know about your great success as an actor.
Let's talk a little bit about...
I know that you were, for a time in your earlier life,
were maybe out of necessity, I don't want to say the word criminal,
but a guy who occasionally did things, of course, you would never do now.
No, of course not.
I did some bad things in my past.
Okay, bad things.
I was simply doing it to keep a roof over my head.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
Things such as safes, you know.
A lot of people go around thinking, well, a safe, S-A-F-E.
Yeah.
Safe.
Safe.
And people are under the impression I was some sort of safe cracker, which, of
course, I wasn't.
Yeah.
Well, what would you do?
What would your role be in this safe activity?
Well, we'd go into an abandoned building, and hopefully we'll find an old safe
laying around there
that might have some money.
Right.
But I couldn't crack it.
I didn't know how to do it.
So what we'd do is, we'd go in, and we'd lift it up.
If we were on the second floor, we'd throw it out the back window.
And if it opened, we'd go in and check it out.
If not, we'd put it in our car, we went to a junkyard, and we'd hit it with sledgehammers
for about an hour and a half.
So it was the...
You had to be there.
It was the intricate work that you were involved in.
Yeah, it was very intricate.
The precision.
And when you finally ripped one of these safes open, what was the biggest thing
you found
in there?
I think about $12 and a half dollars.
Really?
Yeah, it was a big day.
And then that money or whatever you had was used to buy food, to buy clothing.
Whatever it was, you know, rent.
There were times that we were behind in rent, maybe five or six months, and we
had to earn
money.
So at that time, I was bouncing.
I was doing bouncing jobs at the improvisation of Roseland and things of that
nature.
Now, at the improv, I can't imagine there ever being real trouble for a bouncer.
It's a comedy club, one of the first comedy clubs here in New York.
You're right.
There's comics.
Yeah.
They don't believe in violence, as you well know.
Sure, they get heckled a little bit.
Liberally oriented kinds of guys.
I'm conservative.
But the trouble that we did have, one night there was a performer on stage, and
it was
Cassandra Dan.
She was with High Heeled Women.
I don't know if you know this guy.
Doesn't ring a bell.
She was just getting herself together, and there was a man on the back who was
saying all sorts
of derogatory things.
I told him to shut up.
Yeah.
Was the guy drunk?
Was it labor?
He was drunk.
He weighed about 400 pounds.
He was one of Mayor Lindsay's associates at the time, and I didn't know who he
was.
He said something to her.
I said, shut up.
He said, I said, leave the girl alone.
Right.
He said something about my mother.
And I said, as if I didn't hear it, I said, what did you say?
And he repeated it.
He started to get up, and I hit him on top of his head, and he went through the
table.
Wow.
What did you hit him with on the top of the head?
My fist.
Just boom, right on the top of the head?
Oh, I'm a very heavy hitter.
Yeah, yeah.
And so you'd...
How's it matter?
No, no.
Hey, watch it.
Easy, easy.
Hey, we're just teasing here with you.
I don't hit anymore.
So now, wait a minute, Danny.
You pop this guy right on the top of the skull.
He goes down?
He goes out.
And Bud Friedman, a proprietor of the improv at the time