Name: Eli Wallach on Letterman, Dec. 28, 1990, & Chris Elliott Profile, 1986
Uploaded: 2018-12-07T04:09:41.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Eli Wallach on Letterman, Dec. 28, 1990, & Chris Elliott Profile, 1986' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-12-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Eli Wallach on Letterman, Dec. 28, 1990, & Chris Elliott Profile, 1986' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-12-07. Transcript available.

I'll see you next time.
And he can currently be seen playing Don Altobella.
Boy, this thing is like the holiday blockbuster in Godfather Part 3.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Eli Wallach.
Eli!
Thank you very much for being here.
Happy holidays.
Thank you.
Happy New Year to you.
Thank you very much.
Would you like a little swami music?
No, no.
I will not predict anything.
Congratulations on the success of this film.
This thing is like the real blockbuster of the season, isn't it?
It's a wonderful, wonderful Shakespearean film.
Yeah.
It really is.
It's like King Lear.
Yeah.
Pacino is wonderful.
Did you have any thoughts about being in this film after this will be the third,
and I guess
this is the trilogy.
This is the end of the trilogy.
Well, he did say to me, you're going to play an old, old, old friend of the
family.
You're a godfather friend.
Right.
I said, if I was such an old, old, old friend of the family, why wasn't I in
Godfather 1
and Godfather 2?
Exactly.
He says, well, you were in Sicily.
Yeah, you were out of town on business.
And in it, I play an 84-year-old man, and they used to put on this heavy rubber
makeup
with chins and so on.
It took an hour to go by car from the studio to the hotel, so instead of that,
I rode the
subway, the metro.
Yeah.
It took 20 minutes.
And the first night after I finished working, I had my makeup on, I'm sitting
in the subway,
and I'm peeling off my...
And I have half my chin up, and I look over, and there's a whole car full of
people staring
at me, and I put it back on, and they applauded.
You know, in New York City, on these subways, you can get a guy to peel your
chin off for you.
That's no lie.
You don't have to do it yourself.
You know, you think about 60 films, and that's like maybe two a year, maybe
more than two
a year.
Anyway, that represents a lot of work.
Sometimes, I do a film at last a day.
I did one of these kung fu films in Israel.
The hero was walking across the desert, and he sees a man in a big kettle.
You know, like they boil the missionaries?
Yeah.
I was the man in the kettle.
And he says, he rushes up and says, can I help you?
Can I help you?
I say, no, no, no.
He said, what are you doing in there?
I said, the thing between my legs has given me so many problems, I'm dissolving
it.
Oh, God.
And he said, are you really?
I said, take a look.
What does it look like?
He said, a raisin.
I said, jump in.
No, no, he said, and ran across the desert.
Well, it's certainly a cute story to end the year on.
But now, let's talk a little bit about your first film.
My first film was...
You probably didn't want to do films for a while, did you?
No, I was a stage actor.
Sure.
I still am.
Yeah.
But the first film was called Baby Doll.
I was playing on Broadway in a play called The Tea House of the August Moon.
I was playing an Oriental.
Now, I went to Mississippi to make a movie playing the Sicilian manager of a
cotton gin.
And Carl Maldon and Carol Baker were in it.
And Carl said, now, look, this is your first movie.
Be careful, because on the screen, you're about 35 feet tall.
So, when you open your mouth, don't open it too much, because they'll see your
inlays and your tonsils.
So, the girl said to me at the top of the stairs, hi-oh, Silver.
And I said, hi-oh.
And the director said, what's the matter with you?
I said, nothing.
I just said, hi-oh.
He said, I don't want the Japanese version.
Is there any truth to that?
You open your mouth and people can see all the way down?
Well, they can.
They can.
So, in a movie I did, The Magnificent Seven, I played a head bandit.
A head bandit.
I decided, you never see what happens to the money.
They're always holding up the bank or holding up the train.
I decided to show what I did with the money.
So, I put in two gold teeth, a red silk shirt, a silver saddle, and a beautiful
hat.
They had a Mexican assistant director who said to me, you have to wear a good
Mexican hat.
So, he took me to Mexico City.
And we were measured.
They measured the tape.
And that's the last I remember, because I got loaded on tequila.
And I woke up the next day, went back to the shop, and they brought out this
hat.
And I swear the hat was five feet around.
Huge.
And I thought, if I ride the horse rapidly, I'll sail through the air.
It just lifts right off.
A lift.
So, he said, no, no, no, wear it.
It's authentic.
And I thought, sure.
If I push the hat back on my head, the screen goes black except for my face.
Oh, yeah.
Beautiful.
Yeah, you framed her, yeah.
So, I showed it to the director.
He said, no, no, no, no, no.
Let's get the scissors, and they cut the hat down to my side.
So, it did nothing happen, but you got drunk.
And you got your head measured.
I did, I did.
You can't argue with that.
Let's talk a little bit later about some films you made with Sergio Leone.
Anything else you want to talk about?
It's your night.
I just, I just, in the green room, I had fun watching you.
I love you upside down.
Oh.
You know how, you know, in Godfather, what I would say,
watch it.
It's a very dangerous situation.
Okay.
We'll do station identification.
We'll come back here with Eli Waller.
You folks at home missed something kind of cute here during the commercial
break.
Eli Waller, 86th, the band.
What was that?
You just gave them the...
They didn't pay protection money.
Oh.
Yeah, ha, ha, ha.
Let's see.
Later on the program, Dr. John, who is out of prison, finally.
No, no, no, no.
He was never in prison.
And also, Charles Brown, who's out of prison.
They're both out, and we've got them here tonight.
That was somebody else.
And Monday on the show, you know, we're not on Saturday.
We're not on Sunday, and we'll be back on Monday.
Now, this is a rerun, and this one, as I recall, this one is a rerun.
This is Arnold Schwarzenegger was out here.
He's always good.
He's likable.
Have you worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger?
No.
He's got another big film.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, he's here.
And we have a guy named Jerry Reiter, who has a swimming pool full of catfish
who die during
the show.
Are you serious?
Yeah, I am serious.
I was here for it.
And they just, we go over to Jerry, and we say, Jerry, how are they doing?
And he says, kind of dead.
That was Jerry, and comedian George Wallace, who was pretty funny.
So that'll be the show right there.
What are we doing now?
Oh, we're still talking to you.
I'm a little confused.
Oh, let's look at these photos.
You were, this, I guess, is the one, the story you were telling us about, right?
Eli, this is the Magnificent Seven?
Yes.
Yeah, there's, we can see your gold teeth.
How old are you here?
Oh, I'd be, say, about 30-something.
And how old were you in your first film?
27, 28.
So you kind of got into films late in life.
Yeah, yeah.
And you were going to be in From Here to Eternity?
Yes, but I chose to do a play instead.
Right.
Any regrets about that?
No, but every time Sinatra sees me, he says,
Hello, you crazy actor.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Because if you had done it, he wouldn't have done it then.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It'd be silly to have you both in it, wouldn't it?
No.
Well, what's-his-name predicted that they both won the World Series.
Yeah, I guess.
And you know, that is how he's known among his family and friends.
What's-his-name?
Il buono, il bruto, il cativo.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's me.
The good, the bad, the ugly.
That's Clint.
Yeah.
Now, in this, you'll notice that I have the gun and I have a lanyard around my
neck.
Mm-hmm.
The director said to me, I don't want you to have a holster.
I said, where do I put the gun?
He said, you wear it around your neck on a lanyard.
I said, and it dangles between my legs, right?
He says, right.
And when you want it, you go like this, and I cut to your hand and it's in your
hand.
Right, right.
I said, show me.
He put the gun on.
He went like this.
It missed.
It hit him here.
And he said, put it in your pocket.
Yeah.
Worried about the raisins again, was he?
Now, how, I always thought that this was a fascinating and a romantic idea, and
it must have been great fun, American actors like yourself and Clint Eastwood
working with the guys like Sergio Leone, and I believe these things were not
shot in Italy necessarily, many of them shot in Mexico.
No, no, in Spain.
Oh, I'm sorry, in Spain.
Now, how did that happen, that a group of American actors and an Italian
director got together and were shooting films in Spain?
Well, because no Italian in Italy would go to see an Italian movie with Italian
actors.
Now, why is that?
Well, because they wanted to see Americans.
There are two of the big stars in Italy.
One is named Carlo Pedasoli.
The other is named Mario Girotti.
They changed their names to Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer.
So, you can't, so he, so he, Bud Spencer?
Bud Spencer.
And Leone, Leone changed his name for his first movie.
Ah, to which?
I, I don't know, maybe Terrence Hill.
Yeah, it doesn't make any difference, but he's now back to Sergio Leone.
Yes, he's gone now.
Yeah, oh, now, were those, were those, it must have been great fun for you to
do those films.
Well, the first time I arrived, we're shooting in the desert, and there's,
there's this horse, and I, it's right after breakfast, and I said, I have to go
to the bathroom.
And they said, Ma, and they pointed to the desert, right?
Yeah.
The horse I got on, and I had a ride toward camera.
The director said, when I go like this, come toward the camera.
So, I go 20 yards, and the horse stops, spreads his legs, throws me off, and
scratches his back in the sand.
I said, I'm not going to do it anymore.
It's dangerous.
The horse doesn't know he's in a movie, you know.
Yeah.
So, I did it again.
He came across, he stopped, spread his legs, threw me off, and I said, I'm not
doing it again.
They said, wait a minute, we'll get the wrangler, who's the boss of the horse.
Takes care of the horse, sure.
He came out in Spanish, he said something to the horse, reached back, and hit
him right in the nose.
Yeah.
And the horse went, and we went right to the camera.
Subtle directing techniques that you only know after you've been in the
business a while.
Can I tell one more?
Oh, sure.
You're so kind.
No, okay.
The first time I worked without a horse and without being a Western, I played a
fascist millionaire
who took a woman away from her husband, a woman and two children.
And I walked into the bedroom, I threw my head on the bed, she spoke no English.
Beautiful actress.
And I said, your head is as noisy as those kids next door.
And I rapped on the wall to tell the children to be quiet.
Then the director said, now you hit her on the head like this.
You run your hand down like this, down like this, down like this, down here,
hold it, and
go like that, then down between her legs.
And she went, and when it was over, I said to her in Italian, I'm sorry, I'm
sorry.
She said, it was nothing.
So that was the answer.
Well, do you have another one?
No.
Congratulations on the success of you and your movie here, Godfather Part 3.
Have a great 1991.
Nice to meet you.
You are well at that, kids.
We'll be right back.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
I'm Eli Wallach with an American profile.
Tonight, Chris Elliott, a television performer, an American institution.
In 1982, Chris begins as a regular player on an obscure late evening
replacement show and
soon carries it, its mediocre host and laughable supporting cast, to the
forefront of the public
consciousness.
He's so popular as an entertainer that few are aware of his contributions in
other fields.
He's the founder of Operation Street Rap, a program in which he speaks candidly
on street
corners to urban youth, giving them the hope and motivation to lead more
productive lives.
And his work in the development of an artificial emergency heart for livestock
win him a high
commendation from the League of Veterinary Medicine.
Still best known for his numerous award-winning appearances on Late Night with
David Letterman,
from the conspiracy guy to the fugitive guy, and now the new regulator guy.
Chris Elliott has gone far beyond his original dream.
He's not only mastered the craft of acting, but also the art of caring.
He's truly a national treasure.
I'm Eli Wallach with an American profile.
Nice, wasn't it, Paul?
Very nice.
It's very nice.

Eli Wallach on Letterman, Dec. 28, 1990, & Chris Elliott Profile, 1986

I'll see you next time.
And he can currently be seen playing Don Altobella.
Boy, this thing is like the holiday blockbuster in Godfather Part 3.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Eli Wallach.
Eli!
Thank you very much for being here.
Happy holidays.
Thank you.
Happy New Year to you.
Thank you very much.
Would you like a little swami music?
No, no.
I will not predict anything.
Congratulations on the success of this film.
This thing is like the real blockbuster of the season, isn't it?
It's a wonderful, wonderful Shakespearean film.
Yeah.
It really is.
It's like King Lear.
Yeah.
Pacino is wonderful.
Did you have any thoughts about being in this film after this will be the third,
and I guess
this is the trilogy.
This is the end of the trilogy.
Well, he did say to me, you're going to play an old, old, old friend of the
family.
You're a godfather friend.
Right.
I said, if I was such an old, old, old friend of the family, why wasn't I in
Godfather 1
and Godfather 2?
Exactly.
He says, well, you were in Sicily.
Yeah, you were out of town on business.
And in it, I play an 84-year-old man, and they used to put on this heavy rubber
makeup
with chins and so on.
It took an hour to go by car from the studio to the hotel, so instead of that,
I rode the
subway, the metro.
Yeah.
It took 20 minutes.
And the first night after I finished working, I had my makeup on, I'm sitting
in the subway,
and I'm peeling off my...
And I have half my chin up, and I look over, and there's a whole car full of
people staring
at me, and I put it back on, and they applauded.
You know, in New York City, on these subways, you can get a guy to peel your
chin off for you.
That's no lie.
You don't have to do it yourself.
You know, you think about 60 films, and that's like maybe two a year, maybe
more than two
a year.
Anyway, that represents a lot of work.
Sometimes, I do a film at last a day.
I did one of these kung fu films in Israel.
The hero was walking across the desert, and he sees a man in a big kettle.
You know, like they boil the missionaries?
Yeah.
I was the man in the kettle.
And he says, he rushes up and says, can I help you?
Can I help you?
I say, no, no, no.
He said, what are you doing in there?
I said, the thing between my legs has given me so many problems, I'm dissolving
it.
Oh, God.
And he said, are you really?
I said, take a look.
What does it look like?
He said, a raisin.
I said, jump in.
No, no, he said, and ran across the desert.
Well, it's certainly a cute story to end the year on.
But now, let's talk a little bit about your first film.
My first film was...
You probably didn't want to do films for a while, did you?
No, I was a stage actor.
Sure.
I still am.
Yeah.
But the first film was called Baby Doll.
I was playing on Broadway in a play called The Tea House of the August Moon.
I was playing an Oriental.
Now, I went to Mississippi to make a movie playing the Sicilian manager of a
cotton gin.
And Carl Maldon and Carol Baker were in it.
And Carl said, now, look, this is your first movie.
Be careful, because on the screen, you're about 35 feet tall.
So, when you open your mouth, don't open it too much, because they'll see your
inlays and your tonsils.
So, the girl said to me at the top of the stairs, hi-oh, Silver.
And I said, hi-oh.
And the director said, what's the matter with you?
I said, nothing.
I just said, hi-oh.
He said, I don't want the Japanese version.
Is there any truth to that?
You open your mouth and people can see all the way down?
Well, they can.
They can.
So, in a movie I did, The Magnificent Seven, I played a head bandit.
A head bandit.
I decided, you never see what happens to the money.
They're always holding up the bank or holding up the train.
I decided to show what I did with the money.
So, I put in two gold teeth, a red silk shirt, a silver saddle, and a beautiful
hat.
They had a Mexican assistant director who said to me, you have to wear a good
Mexican hat.
So, he took me to Mexico City.
And we were measured.
They measured the tape.
And that's the last I remember, because I got loaded on tequila.
And I woke up the next day, went back to the shop, and they brought out this
hat.
And I swear the hat was five feet around.
Huge.
And I thought, if I ride the horse rapidly, I'll sail through the air.
It just lifts right off.
A lift.
So, he said, no, no, no, wear it.
It's authentic.
And I thought, sure.
If I push the hat back on my head, the screen goes black except for my face.
Oh, yeah.
Beautiful.
Yeah, you framed her, yeah.
So, I showed it to the director.
He said, no, no, no, no, no.
Let's get the scissors, and they cut the hat down to my side.
So, it did nothing happen, but you got drunk.
And you got your head measured.
I did, I did.
You can't argue with that.
Let's talk a little bit later about some films you made with Sergio Leone.
Anything else you want to talk about?
It's your night.
I just, I just, in the green room, I had fun watching you.
I love you upside down.
Oh.
You know how, you know, in Godfather, what I would say,
watch it.
It's a very dangerous situation.
Okay.
We'll do station identification.
We'll come back here with Eli Waller.
You folks at home missed something kind of cute here during the commercial
break.
Eli Waller, 86th, the band.
What was that?
You just gave them the...
They didn't pay protection money.
Oh.
Yeah, ha, ha, ha.
Let's see.
Later on the program, Dr. John, who is out of prison, finally.
No, no, no, no.
He was never in prison.
And also, Charles Brown, who's out of prison.
They're both out, and we've got them here tonight.
That was somebody else.
And Monday on the show, you know, we're not on Saturday.
We're not on Sunday, and we'll be back on Monday.
Now, this is a rerun, and this one, as I recall, this one is a rerun.
This is Arnold Schwarzenegger was out here.
He's always good.
He's likable.
Have you worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger?
No.
He's got another big film.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, he's here.
And we have a guy named Jerry Reiter, who has a swimming pool full of catfish
who die during
the show.
Are you serious?
Yeah, I am serious.
I was here for it.
And they just, we go over to Jerry, and we say, Jerry, how are they doing?
And he says, kind of dead.
That was Jerry, and comedian George Wallace, who was pretty funny.
So that'll be the show right there.
What are we doing now?
Oh, we're still talking to you.
I'm a little confused.
Oh, let's look at these photos.
You were, this, I guess, is the one, the story you were telling us about, right?
Eli, this is the Magnificent Seven?
Yes.
Yeah, there's, we can see your gold teeth.
How old are you here?
Oh, I'd be, say, about 30-something.
And how old were you in your first film?
27, 28.
So you kind of got into films late in life.
Yeah, yeah.
And you were going to be in From Here to Eternity?
Yes, but I chose to do a play instead.
Right.
Any regrets about that?
No, but every time Sinatra sees me, he says,
Hello, you crazy actor.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Because if you had done it, he wouldn't have done it then.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It'd be silly to have you both in it, wouldn't it?
No.
Well, what's-his-name predicted that they both won the World Series.
Yeah, I guess.
And you know, that is how he's known among his family and friends.
What's-his-name?
Il buono, il bruto, il cativo.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's me.
The good, the bad, the ugly.
That's Clint.
Yeah.
Now, in this, you'll notice that I have the gun and I have a lanyard around my
neck.
Mm-hmm.
The director said to me, I don't want you to have a holster.
I said, where do I put the gun?
He said, you wear it around your neck on a lanyard.
I said, and it dangles between my legs, right?
He says, right.
And when you want it, you go like this, and I cut to your hand and it's in your
hand.
Right, right.
I said, show me.
He put the gun on.
He went like this.
It missed.
It hit him here.
And he said, put it in your pocket.
Yeah.
Worried about the raisins again, was he?
Now, how, I always thought that this was a fascinating and a romantic idea, and
it must have been great fun, American actors like yourself and Clint Eastwood
working with the guys like Sergio Leone, and I believe these things were not
shot in Italy necessarily, many of them shot in Mexico.
No, no, in Spain.
Oh, I'm sorry, in Spain.
Now, how did that happen, that a group of American actors and an Italian
director got together and were shooting films in Spain?
Well, because no Italian in Italy would go to see an Italian movie with Italian
actors.
Now, why is that?
Well, because they wanted to see Americans.
There are two of the big stars in Italy.
One is named Carlo Pedasoli.
The other is named Mario Girotti.
They changed their names to Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer.
So, you can't, so he, so he, Bud Spencer?
Bud Spencer.
And Leone, Leone changed his name for his first movie.
Ah, to which?
I, I don't know, maybe Terrence Hill.
Yeah, it doesn't make any difference, but he's now back to Sergio Leone.
Yes, he's gone now.
Yeah, oh, now, were those, were those, it must have been great fun for you to
do those films.
Well, the first time I arrived, we're shooting in the desert, and there's,
there's this horse, and I, it's right after breakfast, and I said, I have to go
to the bathroom.
And they said, Ma, and they pointed to the desert, right?
Yeah.
The horse I got on, and I had a ride toward camera.
The director said, when I go like this, come toward the camera.
So, I go 20 yards, and the horse stops, spreads his legs, throws me off, and
scratches his back in the sand.
I said, I'm not going to do it anymore.
It's dangerous.
The horse doesn't know he's in a movie, you know.
Yeah.
So, I did it again.
He came across, he stopped, spread his legs, threw me off, and I said, I'm not
doing it again.
They said, wait a minute, we'll get the wrangler, who's the boss of the horse.
Takes care of the horse, sure.
He came out in Spanish, he said something to the horse, reached back, and hit
him right in the nose.
Yeah.
And the horse went, and we went right to the camera.
Subtle directing techniques that you only know after you've been in the
business a while.
Can I tell one more?
Oh, sure.
You're so kind.
No, okay.
The first time I worked without a horse and without being a Western, I played a
fascist millionaire
who took a woman away from her husband, a woman and two children.
And I walked into the bedroom, I threw my head on the bed, she spoke no English.
Beautiful actress.
And I said, your head is as noisy as those kids next door.
And I rapped on the wall to tell the children to be quiet.
Then the director said, now you hit her on the head like this.
You run your hand down like this, down like this, down like this, down here,
hold it, and
go like that, then down between her legs.
And she went, and when it was over, I said to her in Italian, I'm sorry, I'm
sorry.
She said, it was nothing.
So that was the answer.
Well, do you have another one?
No.
Congratulations on the success of you and your movie here, Godfather Part 3.
Have a great 1991.
Nice to meet you.
You are well at that, kids.
We'll be right back.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
You are well at that, kids.
I'm Eli Wallach with an American profile.
Tonight, Chris Elliott, a television performer, an American institution.
In 1982, Chris begins as a regular player on an obscure late evening
replacement show and
soon carries it, its mediocre host and laughable supporting cast, to the
forefront of the public
consciousness.
He's so popular as an entertainer that few are aware of his contributions in
other fields.
He's the founder of Operation Street Rap, a program in which he speaks candidly
on street
corners to urban youth, giving them the hope and motivation to lead more
producti