Name: Countdown to the Final Late Show, May 17-21, 2015
Uploaded: 2017-12-28T16:49:32.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Countdown to the Final Late Show, May 17-21, 2015' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-12-28. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Countdown to the Final Late Show, May 17-21, 2015' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-12-28. Transcript available.

Countdown to the Final Late Show, May 17-21, 2015

Ladies and gentlemen, here's tonight's Top Ten List.
It was probably the most vivid year of my life.
Coming up.
And I'm grateful that you're sharing.
Well, thank you very much.
Jane and Dave, together again.
Our first guest has been the very first guest on every first television program
we've ever done.
Bill Murray.
Bill!
It's Sunday morning on CBS, and here again is Charles Osgood.
Are you all right?
I went to the other place.
God, is it dead over there?
Nearly 22 years after Bill Murray's memorable entrance as David Letterman's
first guest on The Late Show here on CBS,
Dave is counting down to his last broadcast this Wednesday night.
Visiting Dave this past week at the Ed Sullivan Theater was another Hoosier who
worked with Dave way back home in Indiana, our own Jane Pauley.
Dave Letterman.
Nice to see you.
In his final days in the Ed Sullivan Theater, David Letterman is reminiscing.
When they were finishing it up, there was a garbage can here.
And I was up in the balcony, and I had a football with me, and I said, let me
see if I can drop the football into the trash can from up there.
One shot, bang, zoom.
And I thought, this is a sign of something.
So, do we have the thing here?
Let's try it again.
Do you mind, Jane?
Oh, I'm game.
It seems like you and your boys don't have anything planned.
Oh.
Well, we had some plans, but we can change them.
Well, we can do anything you want.
We have to go up here.
Somebody stay down here.
Jane Pauley, ladies and gentlemen.
We were off and running.
Are those properly inflated?
Along the catwalk and into the balcony.
You're not going to let me play?
That was so close.
Why did I have to say anything?
Okay.
Ooh!
That scared me.
Was that closer than...
Yeah.
I think so.
Than Mr. Letterman?
Sure.
Oh, I'm choking.
There's no follow-through.
It took 10 tries.
Yes!
Woo!
Thank you very much.
Yep.
Woo!
I'm sorry.
Was that too much?
That's all I wanted to know.
That was perfect.
And what does it mean?
I don't know.
I'm just happy I was able to do it.
Yeah, and you were.
Yeah.
That means you can't leave.
Okay, no, no.
We have to leave.
And leaving, he is.
With an astonishing lineup of guests
in his final weeks on the air.
I'll sit here.
This is really a nervous place to sit.
I have been honored to be among the 18,000 guests.
Do you remember?
Yep.
No, seriously.
Do you remember stuff?
Do you remember people?
You know, I don't remember things we've done on the show.
And here lately, we've been showing video of things we've done on the show.
I have no memory of it.
No memory of it.
And when I get home, Regina will say, well, who was on the show?
And then it's like, yeah, who was?
I don't know, was it, it might have been Reese Witherspoon, but then again,
might have been
Regis Philbin.
I don't, I'm just not sure.
Would you like to hear what we'd sound like had we been inhaling helium?
I sometimes appeared on Letterman's show in the early days.
Jane's been stricken with some nasty throat fiber.
It's your show, Dave.
Yes, it's...
Once, he thought it would be fun to make our voices sound like we'd inhaled
helium.
I wasn't so sure.
It's possible that this could be used against you one day.
Well, I want to apologize about the helium thing.
What?
Mm-hmm.
See, I don't remember.
You were on helium?
If we spoke, our voices sounded like...
We were on helium.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I wouldn't say a word.
You did whatever you could to make me...
Right.
But see, you behaved the way humans are expected to behave.
My behavior was aberrant.
So I owe you an apology.
No, you...
There's often something apologetic about David Letterman, which goes way back,
as we do,
having both grown up in Indianapolis.
I recalled an appearance we made together in the 70s.
You told the high school kids about your feelings about your success.
You said, it's like robbing 7-Elevens.
The money's good, but you know you're going to get caught.
Yeah, I hope I said that.
In those days, I was, probably not you, waiting to be tapped on the shoulder.
Okay, the real guy's here.
You can go home now.
That's what I was always motivated by, that fear, the fear of failure.
And then I have to, oh, darn.
And then, you know, I wasn't chosen again, so I go back home.
In high school, Letterman was not a candidate for most likely to succeed.
But that's where he found his calling.
What did you want to be?
I knew exactly what I wanted to be.
My sophomore year in high school, they offered a speech class, public speaking
class.
So I signed right up.
First day of class, everybody has to stand up and give an impromptu speech
about themselves.
And I got up when it was my turn, and I gave the speech.
It had to be like two minutes or something.
And I sat down, and I said, wow, that was easy to myself.
And I had never said that about any other class in my academic career prior or
after.
I couldn't do it in algebra.
I couldn't do it in English.
I couldn't do it in history.
I couldn't do it anywhere.
A metal shop, maybe.
After college at Ball State, Letterman became a local jack of all TV trades.
I started when I was 20 years old in Indianapolis.
I remember you.
The weather and the weekend movies, you were hysterical.
No, maybe not.
Hysterical.
Yeah.
And I think you'll see that once again, we've fallen to the prey of political
dirty dealings.
The higher-ups have removed the border between Indiana and Ohio, making it one
giant state.
Personally, I'm against it.
Boy, oh boy, America.
One of the most important decisions he ever made was to get serious about
comedy and move to Los Angeles.
David Letterman.
David Letterman.
Within a few years, he landed an appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny
Carson that would change his life.
It's white, hot adrenaline.
That's all it is.
And then you go and you sit down and you talk to Johnny, and it's like you're
sitting on the knee of the Lincoln Memorial, and Lincoln is talking to you.
You know, it's like, holy God, it's the guy on the $5 bill is talking to me.
I have a feeling from your shot on this show tonight, you're going to be
working a lot outside the Comedy Star.
Thank you.
Really, I hope you come back with us.
I'd love to.
More appearances on The Tonight Show led to a morning show.
At 11 a.m., because it was bizarrely a daytime version of what you do now, my
office would be filled with people watching.
It was brilliant.
It wasn't brilliant, Jane.
It was, but it was just like standing on an overpass looking at a chain
reaction collision, you know, that goes, okay, nine cars, ten cars.
Oh, look, it's a hundred cars.
It couldn't have been more poisonous.
They had to get away from it.
The show lasted just four months.
I really thought, that's it.
You get one shot, and away you go.
Though Letterman was a ratings disaster in daytime, NBC gave him a shot at late
night.
I started off, for God's sakes, at 1230, following Johnny Carson.
So that was a pretty safe place for a kid who didn't know what he was doing.
And that's what the network said.
Find some kid who doesn't know what he's doing.
The only one in America.
Oh, that would be, here he is from Indianapolis, Dave Letterman.
No.
That's no, that's exactly all they did.
And they continued to give you paychecks.
Right.
To do this for them.
Yes.
But it was all different.
I couldn't get a show now.
For years, Letterman was the heir apparent to his idol, Johnny Carson.
But when Carson retired in 1992, the chair went to Jay Leno instead.
There were rumors in the paper you were going to firebomb NBC.
You were going to do all these things.
Well, I hate waiting in lines, but I'd do it.
Letterman, deeply and publicly wounded, moved to CBS.
I was disappointed, but it, to my way of thinking, it was not bitter.
And then this morning, I wake up, and next to me in bed is the head of a peacock.
So, I don't know.
He turned the late show into a comedic laboratory.
Where the hell are the singing cats?
This, this is, this is not cats.
This is my, my TV show.
I'm in the wrong theater.
Wow.
There were the top ten lists.
Number eight.
I still wear those underpants from Risky Business.
Yeah.
But television's most reliably irreverent personality is feeling kind of
nostalgic these days.
When I'm down here, during band numbers or during commercial breaks,
I will go to various places and, and try to memorize what it looks like and how
I feel
and look at the audience and, and get the scale of things because, uh, even
though I've done it for so long,
I, I don't ever want to be without a fairly accurate, fairly vivid impression
of this experience.
Goodbye.
By any measure, David Letterman took his craft
to new heights, his comic genius recognized by everyone, except himself.
I had this conversation as recently as last evening with my wife.
And, uh, she will go to this strategy to pep me up.
What does she say?
She says, everything's fine and, uh, you've, you've accomplished some things
and you should be proud of that.
And, uh, I don't believe her.
And so, we, you know, we have to be separated.
We go, we go to, we go to neutral corners.
Life can be hard work for you.
Well, for anybody, for God's sakes, isn't it, really?
I mean, jumpin' crap, it's, uh, well, there's Sunday morning.
Charles Osgood.
They're grown-ups.
I'll be right back with a little more jumpin' crap.
He's right.
We'll have more of our interview coming up.
Would you like me to do a dance for you?
What?
Hi, Paul.
Oh, give me some glue.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Oh, how are you?
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year to you.
Uh, I'm Alfred Cronkite.
Mr. What can I do for you?
David.
David, you're a, you're a, really a dear old friend.
Mm-hmm. Thank you.
So, could I suggest, tonight you're interviewing Hillary Clinton, the first
lady of our nation.
That's right.
Try not to be a jackass, will you?
Despite legendary anchorman Walter Cronkite's warning, David Letterman's time
in the late-night spotlight has had its share of good times and bad times, some
of his own creation.
Here's more of his interview with Jane Pauley.
You've talked about alcoholism?
Yeah.
Oh, man.
Is that for real?
Oh, man.
I mean, you're not talking just about, I drink a lot, I drank a lot, but you
were or are an alcoholic?
I guess you're always an alcoholic, yeah.
When did it start?
Well, I started drinking when I was about 11.
Really?
Yeah.
It was that old thing where my dad used to like scotch and soda.
He said, here, here, Dave, you want to try one?
And I tried one, and I just thought, this is fantastic.
And I just kept drinking.
It was delightful.
I just, I loved everything about it.
It kind of explained your grades.
Yeah, perhaps.
But then in high school, it was part of the culture.
And in college, it was mandatory.
And then when you get out of college, people start to taper off.
And I was surprised.
I would look around, and I thought, where are all my drunk buddies?
And I drank right through until I was 34, and I had the show at NBC, and I just
said to myself, you're a fool.
You're a dumb fool.
You can't do this.
You know, they just don't give these shows to everybody.
You have one, and you drink yourself into trouble.
You're done, pal.
And I just quit.
Never, never took another drink.
Really?
Yep.
Well, congratulations.
Thank you.
That's huge.
Yeah, it was huge.
Because I'd be dead.
I'd just be dead.
Remarkable candor for a man so famously private.
The Letterman's personal life has sometimes become conspicuously public.
I have had sex with women who work for me on this show.
In 2009, he admitted to having liaisons with staffers after a CBS News producer
tried to extort money from him.
My wife, Regina, she has been horribly hurt by my behavior.
Letterman delivered an on-air apology.
The revelation came just months after his marriage to longtime girlfriend,
Regina Lasko.
Let me tell you, folks, I got my work cut out for me.
Wait till you hear what happened to me.
But David Letterman has been no stranger to headlines.
While I was gone, I had quintuple bypass surgery on my heart.
Oh!
Plus, I got a haircut.
Yeah.
I don't know anybody who