Name: Kevin Spacey on Letterman, June 22, 1990
Uploaded: 2018-01-23T20:26:47.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Kevin Spacey on Letterman, June 22, 1990' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-01-23. Transcript available. Kevin Spacey's first Late Night appearance.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Kevin Spacey on Letterman, June 22, 1990' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-01-23. Transcript available. Kevin Spacey's first Late Night appearance.

Okay, welcome back to the program, ladies and gentlemen.
Yeah, Morty said he couldn't play softball tonight because he was afraid it
might rain.
Really?
Yeah, that's what he said.
Where do you, um...
It's like the most beautiful day of the spring, and Morty's worried about a
little rain.
Tell me this, where do you guys play?
Oh, we have a suite at the plaza.
Ah.
Our next guest made his mark really, really as a really, really bad person in
the blockbuster
hit series, Wise Guy, and he recently played Jim Baker in a movie right here on
NBC.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Kevin Spacey.
Kevin, are you there?
Come on out here.
Nice, very nice to do it.
Now tell me a little bit about this Wise Guy.
How long were you on the show?
They do a series of arcs, and I did nine...
Series of arcs?
Arcs.
Arcs?
Not an arc, but they do a storyline of like 11 episodes or 9 episodes or 7
episodes of
each storyline, and I was in one that lasted 9, and then they killed me.
And you're saying, the word you're saying is spelled how?
A-R-C.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
I've not heard that term applied to...
Well, it's...
I think they actually invented it.
It was a new thing.
And it's...
You were the villain, and what made you so bad?
What did you do?
Aside from shooting drugs up between my toes, I was having a kind of suggestive
relationship
with my sister.
Oh, God.
See, why did I ask this?
I just should have...
With the spelling bee, I was doing much better.
And so now you're done with that, right?
I'm done with that.
They killed me.
Oh, okay.
God.
I'm sorry.
That's all right.
So how is your summer going?
Everything all right?
My summer's going great.
Yeah, what are you doing?
Riding my bike around the city.
Yeah, you live in town here?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, going to the Mandela ticker tape parade.
Right.
Was that the absolute vodka truck he was in?
No, I don't think...
I don't know.
I don't think so.
I was...
Probably not.
I was too far away, I guess.
In some kind of security vehicle.
I can see how you might be mistaken.
Yeah.
No.
No, basically, I'm just...
I'm walking my dog around the park.
What kind of dog do you have?
I have a black Labrador.
Yeah.
Those are great dogs.
They are.
He's a great dog.
Very enthusiastic.
He's an enthusiastic dog.
He's inspired many moments that...
Well, one...
Well, he...
This doesn't exactly involve him, but I invited a...
Well, it does in a way.
No, it does in a way.
You know, those...
They keep coming up with new dog biscuits.
Yeah.
And they came up with one recently that was like a Mexican-style mesquite-flavor
yuppie dog biscuit.
And I invited a bunch of people over to watch the Academy Awards, and we had
like a little food, you know, table that we set up.
A little buffet.
Snacks, treats, sure.
And a friend of mine came over early, and we thought, wouldn't it be fun?
Because this package is a little unusual.
It's not a normal dog package.
It sort of has a dog and a Mexican hat.
It's a little...
It's a little strange.
Yeah.
So we put it out, and we thought, wouldn't it be interesting to see if anybody
actually, you know...
Sampled the...
Sampled the dog biscuit.
But I thought if anybody even smelled it...
They would know immediately.
They all...
They smell like liver or something.
Well, if your tomatoes got hard, this is what it would have been like.
Yeah.
You know, I mean...
Ugly.
Awful.
And about halfway through the Academy Awards, I laughed at something that Rob Lowe
did.
And then...
And then I turned, and I looked at her, and this girl who I had just met, it
was a girlfriend
of a friend of mine.
She had her hand in the box, and I thought, well, now she'll smell it, and it
won't...
Right.
And it won't...
But she ate it.
Ooh, man.
Wow.
And I couldn't bring myself to say anything, because she seemed to be enjoying
it, so...
So it was still in the dog biscuit container.
If you'd read it, it said, dog biscuit.
If you smelled it, you would have thought you were at a pound.
I mean...
I would have thought that the poodle and the sombrero would have been a tip,
too, as you
said.
She was nibbling.
Yeah.
They broke up after that.
Good for them.
Something about fleas.
Did you, when you first started out, do you have trouble?
I guess actors always have trouble getting parts, good parts that they really
want.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, we'll do just about anything to get noticed when we're first starting
out.
There was something that I did that when I was at Juilliard, I came to New York
ten years
ago to go to school, and I was in my second year at school, and I was getting
kind of anxious
to work professionally, and so I started doing what actors do.
I wrote letters to casting directors and invited them to the play.
And you want to try to appear not so serious.
You know, you want to, I have a sense of humor.
And so at the end of what was sort of a typical letter, I said, P.S., if you
don't come and
see the play, I'm going to try to kill the president.
Ah.
Well...
A little kicker there.
A little, yeah, a little...
Well, the casting director I sent this to, either we didn't have the same sense
of humor,
or she was a Republican, because she turned it over to the secret service.
To the FBI, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And so one night I was getting dressed, you know, to do the show, and the head
of the department's
secretary came down and she said, Kevin, Mr. Langham would like to see you
right away.
And he was a very conservative British director.
And when I went upstairs, he was sort of half in and half out of his door, and
he said,
Kevin, there are two gentlemen here, I'd like to speak with you.
So I went in and immediately knew who these guys were, because they don't wear
subtle,
you know, they have antenna, you know, satellite dishes coming out of their
head.
Did you, for a second, did you think it might be connected to that dog biscuit
prank?
They had Mexican hats on, too.
That could have been the...
So the first thing they did was they frisked me.
Oh, man.
And Michael said, well, I'll just be leaving you all alone, man.
And I'm telling you, I spent an hour and a half with these guys who were very
serious guys.
Yeah.
These, like, no sense of humor, these guys.
Well, you, I think you can understand that.
Well, yeah.
I mean, it was a joke.
Well, I know, but...
They had, uh, I understood.
I understood.
And, uh, they sort of, you know, kept asking me lots of questions.
And then I heard my heart pound and saw Rikers like this when he turned to his
partner and
said, you want to read him his rights.
Oh, my God.
It actually got that far.
Got that far.
So what had you told these guys before that?
Well, I was trying to explain it was a joke, you know, when it was...
I mean, but, you know, remember, I was there with sort of a half a beard on and
makeup
and a fat pad, so I looked like an assassin.
I mean, they weren't taking me seriously.
And I was trying to explain it, you know, in a sort of, this was a joke and,
you know,
don't take it seriously, but they did for a while.
And then they called the U.S. District Attorney and it was cleared and it was
okay, except
they had to go investigate anyone who knew about this.
And I had been living with this girl and I had typed the letter on her typewriter.
And so they went to interview her at, like, Friday, on a 9 o'clock on Friday
morning and
she was so nervous about them coming to interview that she'd gotten up at, like,
7 in the morning
and cleaned everything in the house, anything that looked suspect, marijuana
poppy seeds up off the floor.
I mean, everything.
And she took one last look at the room when the doorbell rang just to make sure
that everything was okay.
And she screamed because on the coffee table was the People magazine with Jodie
Foster on the cover.
She threw it out the window.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, man.
That's a little peculiar.
It was odd.
Now, do you think that periodically they're going to pull your card up out of
the file again
and come back and visit you?
I hope not.
No, I think this is the kind of thing that'll stay with you, though.
It stays with you.
Yeah, yeah.
Don't screw anything up.
Yeah.
Let's see.
And what are you doing this summer?
Did we mention that?
I'm just hanging out.
Oh, good.
Good.
Well, nice to see you.
Thank you very much for dropping by.
Pleasure meeting you.
Kevin Spacey, ladies and gentlemen.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.