Name: Siskel & Ebert Collection on Letterman, Part 5 of 6: 1995-96
Uploaded: 2019-07-23T21:25:21.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Siskel & Ebert Collection on Letterman, Part 5 of 6: 1995-96' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-07-23. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Siskel & Ebert Collection on Letterman, Part 5 of 6: 1995-96' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-07-23. Transcript available.

Siskel & Ebert Collection on Letterman, Part 5 of 6: 1995-96

Our first guests are approaching their 20th year together.
They're here tonight with their annual Oscar Roundup.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome America's Sweethearts, Siskel and Ebert.
Somebody in the audience gave me a shirt from his brother.
That's mine.
I'll take that if you don't mind.
Yes.
Thank you very much.
But it was nice of you to press it for us.
Oh, I see.
Oh.
I already got a pretty good zinger.
You guys have been together for 20 years.
Isn't that amazing?
Yeah.
How did you get together?
Have we covered that before?
How did you begin as a team together?
Let's see.
No.
Wouldn't that be something if we had that?
Yeah, wouldn't it?
Chicago newspapers, competing newspapers, Sun-Times Tribune.
Right.
They decided to have a weekly review of the arts, start with movies.
They put us together, and they haven't been able to separate us.
Now, this has been a very, very profitable thing, not only for those people.
Tremendously profitable.
It turns you guys into multimillionaires.
That's correct.
You guys are very, very wealthy.
Yeah.
A pittance compared to you.
How do you get along with the people that you work with?
Does the staff have a favorite of the two?
Yes, I'm the favorite.
Yes, the staff really spends most of its time complaining to me about Gene.
Yeah.
What kind of things do they complain about?
They don't want to talk to you about you, that's for sure.
Ooh.
Yeah.
Yeah, sure.
I only go to the office one day a week.
He's in there every day.
And on that day, we have to have the staff drug tested.
You know why?
They all complain.
No, they all complain they're seeing double.
Oh, please.
Let's get to the big Academy Award nominations came out on Tuesday.
And I know you guys are upset about, in the category of Best Documentary,
Hoop Dreams was overlooked.
Yes, this was a real, real surprising development
because this movie is clearly the Best Documentary of the Year
and the Best Documentary in America in a long time.
You know what I was thinking about, I watched this film
and it took them like four or five years
they followed these kids from high school to college.
Roger said it was a surprise, but it actually isn't a surprise.
Not a surprise to you.
The documentary branch consistently rejects the film
that has reached an audience or reached critical approval.
They seem to be envious of the success of pictures that achieve that
and they penalize them and they promote lesser pictures.
Is that right?
And, for example, The Thin Blue Line, Roger and Me, Showa.
28 Up.
These are the pictures that have documentaries
and they nominate some good films, but not at this level.
Another one that they didn't nominate and one you'd like is Crumb
about the underground cartoonist Robert Crumb.
Oh, yeah.
And it's coming up in April.
Twisted, brave movie-making.
They can't reward it.
One good thing that has happened this year
because of the outcry all over the country about Hoop Dreams
is that Arthur Hiller, the president of the Academy,
has promised an investigation and some kind of reform
of the procedure by which the documentaries are nominated
because it really is stinking.
It's compelling to watch.
It's a great story.
It's a great story.
Yes, it is.
And I guess we know how those kids turned out.
One of them is still, I believe, at Marquette.
That's correct.
And another one is still in Arkansas.
Right, and the update on the one that Marquette is having his second child
already,
and he says he'll never leave and forget his neighborhood in Chicago,
the Cabrini Green Housing Project.
Now, you know, it's interesting to me that these guys had that camera crew
in their lives for like five or six years,
and how, to what extent was that a factor?
I think they got so accustomed to the camera crew
that they forgot about it, according to the people who made the film.
And they were there day after day, early in the morning.
At 6 o'clock in the morning, these kids are taking the train out to the suburbs
to this school where they were part of the basketball program.
And if you look at this film, you realize a fiction film could never be this
amazing
because a writer wouldn't have the nerve to put in the amazing things
that really do happen in these lives.
Well, I hope heads roll.
I really do.
Well, let's have a write-in vote for Hoop Dreams.
Okay, let's get back into the more commercial mainstream motion pictures.
Best picture, Forrest Gump, Four Weddings and a Funeral,
a Pulp Fiction, a quiz show, The Shawshank Redemption.
Probably be Gump as the winner.
Yeah, Gump Mania.
Don't you find that...
Yes, the audience...
I feel the audience is in the thrills of Gump Mania here.
There may be a real strong movement for Pulp Fiction.
I hope so.
I hope so.
It's a better film, but the audience is older that votes.
That's right.
The average age is probably 55.
And generally speaking, what the Academy tries to do is vote for a film
that makes it seem as if they make these nice little films all year long.
Noble, noble.
But generally, the Academy is what?
Is older people?
Yes, older people.
Older than you, older than the three of us, all of us.
Wow, really?
Wow, that's old.
And a lot of politics involved, is what you're saying as well.
If they have a picture with a star coming up in a couple of months,
why wouldn't they want to see an Oscar winner featuring the next movie?
All right, best actor, Morgan Freeman, Tom Hanks, Nigel Hawthorne, Paul Newman,
John Travolta.
Hanks or Newman?
Yeah.
Big battle.
That's the most interesting race of the years.
Tom Hanks won last year, so what's your chance of winning this year?
He's already got one.
Very small.
Nobody has done that since Spencer Tracy in 1937 and 1938.
What about Sally Fields?
Didn't she win two years in a row?
No.
She's not going to win this year.
She wasn't even nominated.
I think the category is Best Actor.
Yes, that went into my thinking.
No, it'd be nice.
I like Tom Hanks really well.
Morgan Freeman, he was in the great end.
You also like Newman.
Who are you going to be winning for?
Well, it would be nice to support him.
Are you going to the awards this year?
No, I can't make it.
I'm busy that night.
And John Travolta.
We have to do a commercial hand.
Are you going to have Mujibar and Sarah Jewell?
Yes.
Yes, you took the words right out of my mouth.
Are they going to read the Academy rules?
We have to pause here.
Are you going to have Larry Bud Melman get his Oscar?
Yes.
That, too.
We'll be right back with Siskel and Eber.
Hey.
How do you do?
Bonk, Siskel and Eber here.
Gerald Crowe.
Oh, my man.
Chico Shimone.
Now, so do you want to continue?
Let's just go down here.
We had Best Actors.
Best Actors, Jodie Foster, Jessica Lange, Miranda Richardson.
Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon.
Good performance.
Jodie Foster might be the dark horse in that category.
It could be Jodie Foster, who looks like the favorite, but it might be.
She was Nell, you know.
Jodie Foster, she was Nell.
She was Nell, yes.
It was an astonishing performance.
Jodie Foster is Nell, but it might be Jessica Lange.
Jessica Lange, Blue Sky, a picture that's three years old.
Yeah, it was one of those that wasn't released and then it wasn't released.
If people see it, they might like the performance.
That's right.
And I'll look at it now because she was nominated.
Yeah.
What do you guys do that night?
Is that like a huge night for you guys?
I'm backstage with my trusty computer writing a story about what happens.
So you're right there on location.
In fact, I'm on television before interviewing everybody who goes in.
I hope I can get an exclusive with you, Dave.
I'm usually backstage trying to give.
I'll be very busy.
I'll have my hands full that night.
Mujibar and Sergio, maybe they would stop off?
Excellent idea.
A few words to the folks at home?
Good.
You know, Johnny Carson told me in a break one time the reason why he didn't
stop doing
the Oscar cast.
It's because the network and the Academy would interfere with his sense of
humor.
You're going to push them aside, aren't you, Dave?
I am begging someone to interfere with my sense of humor.
I have been asking.
It's a cry for help.
I've been asking for it for years and years.
Now, what do we have here, this garment bag behind the chair?
A big announcement tonight.
I'm not running for president.
Roger isn't running for president.
But a big announcement nonetheless.
I am going to allow someone in America to buy at auction, June 28th, here in
New York
at Christie's, the John Travolta suit.
His career has come back.
Why not give someone else a ride on the suit?
I cannot believe this.
Why?
The Saturday Night Fever suit, one of the greatest icons in movie history.
We come on to talk about the Oscars and you're trying to peddle your suit on
television.
How is it that you have the suit yourself?
How crass can you get?
What are you trying to do?
Jack up the auction price or what?
That was a good idea.
You bought this originally at an auction.
I did.
I bought it at an auction, sold it at an auction.
Yeah.
How much did you spend for it?
$2,000.
$2,000.
And now, what do you think this will go for?
Jack Fonda had been $1,900.
$1,900.
And I bought it.
Yeah.
And so what will it go for now?
This is not the original suit, Dave.
No, this is the original suit.
No, it isn't.
He took it to the tailor shop and had the crotch taken.
Thank you very much.
I'm getting ready.
You know what?
Roger has the overall that Haystack's Calhoun, the 600-pound wrestler, used to
wear.
He had the seat let out.
You know, Dave, how much?
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
Oh, my.
Look, it's inscribed, Dave.
That's right.
It says to Gene.
So here's to a classic, your friend, John Travolta.
So now, what do you think that will bring?
Gene, could you pass those over to Dave, please?
Oh, boy.
What was that?
I have no idea.
These are the socks that he wore with the suit.
No, that's not true.
That's right.
Yes.
That's not true.
And what do you think that will, how much do you think that will get at what
you saw?
Christie's is estimating this the same as they're also auctioning the Ten
Commandments tablets.
The sacred and the profane.
The Ten Commandments tablets?
Yes.
This is America.
This is the home shopping country.
So somebody could start their own religion now.
They've got all the equipment.
They're ready to go.
I think it's the same religion.
It's already been established.
Yes, I know.
That was one of the founding blocks.
But a different version.
You got it.
And how much is that going to go for, for the fourth time?
It'll be in the six figures, sir.
It will not.
David, I will bet you dinner anywhere in any city in America.
So you think that that'll bring about $100,000 or so?
At least.
No, absolutely not.
Clearly not.
I would be surprised if somebody pays more than $10,000 for that.
Thanks.
What are they going to do with it?
What real value does it have, actually?
Now you're cooking.
This is a movie icon.
This is a movie icon.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, you guys are sick.
You know that they paid $60,000 10 years ago for the sled in Citizen Kane.
Citizen Kane, he doesn't want this.
Saturday Night Fever are not the same, exactly.
That's right.
Same.
Citizen Kane is a much better movie.
I agree.
Today, Citizen Kane, the sled would bring a million dollars.
Somebody bought the Vivian Leigh's Oscar for Gone with the Wind.
They all look the same.
You've got to get up and close and look at the plaque for almost $600,000.
You know, at this rate, you want to sell yours today.
That was Gone with the Wind.
I'd be surprised if you'd get 10 out of that.
Seriously.
Would you give me nine right now?
No, I don't.
I mean, honestly.
Okay, so everything's set.
Everything's good with you guys.
Good luck with the big sale.
I'll see you out there on March.
When the hell is it?
The 25th.
Don't forget.
No, it's the 27th.
27th.
Roger likes to get there a little early.
The front of Roger gets there on the 25th.
The rest of Roger gets there on the 27th.
Thank you, Gene.
Thank you very much, Roger.
Nice to 