Name: Chris Elliott on Later with Bob Costas, December 23, 1991
Uploaded: 2017-09-07T16:05:24.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Chris Elliott on Later with Bob Costas, December 23, 1991' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-09-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Chris Elliott on Later with Bob Costas, December 23, 1991' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-09-07. Transcript available.

Chris Elliott on Later with Bob Costas, December 23, 1991

Thanks for staying up later. After a couple of years, Chris Elliott has found
it within himself to come back.
He is, of course, Chris Peterson, the 31-year-old paperboy on Fox TV's Get a
Life, one-time regular on the Letterman program.
Now, I understand it was traumatic the last time you were here because you were
with your dad, Bob Elliott,
one half of the legendary Bob and Ray radio team, and you were touring to
promote your book, Daddy's Boy,
and, you know, that was a gut-wrenching experience for you.
Well, it was. It practically tore my relationship apart with my father and
almost killed him, I think.
It was a horrible, grueling two weeks, and we started it off right here.
You know, it shook me, and I wasn't even directly involved, but just reading it,
to see how your life had been blighted by the tyrannical rule of this oppressive
parent.
That's right. Well, the whole point, you know, was for me to finally get all
that out in a book,
and my dad was writing every other chapter. He sort of rebutted what I said,
and I found out after we had finished the book that he hadn't read any of my
chapters at all.
So the book has kind of a surreal feel to it.
You know, for those who didn't see that show or have blocked it from their
memory as a way to cope,
I didn't realize just how obese you were as a teenager.
I was about 350 pounds, and I sat in bed all day.
I ate about six pounds of bacon for breakfast, a couple of loaves of bread, a
couple of dozen eggs.
Yeah.
My best friend in life was Dick Gregory.
Oh, he saved so many.
Yeah.
He's selflessly come to the aid of so many people, and he gives them those
liquid potions,
and then they just shrink.
Yeah, and he has that whole deal-a-meal thing.
Is that... maybe not.
I don't know.
The other trauma that stands out, and really it's cruel of me to bring this
back,
and we'll move on after this, but the birthday party where Charles Kuralt and
Andy Rooney wrestled shirtless.
That was my sixth birthday party, Bob, and it was a traumatic birthday party.
I was not allowed to invite any of my own friends.
Instead, my dad invited all of his friends.
And so there was Charles Kuralt, there was Andy Rooney,
and as you said, part of the entertainment was they took off their shirts and
wrestled each other.
For a six-year-old kid, come on.
That's a little... that goes over the line.
You know, and you have to spend a whole life climbing out from that sort of
emotional ditch
that an unfeeling parent dumps you in.
I really don't think I have yet.
I really don't think I have.
No, it's tough.
It's definitely tough.
But I'm getting on with things now.
Yeah, I'm a survivor.
That's what I like to call myself.
People magazine cover coming up?
Yeah, I think so.
Either that or Overweight Men magazine.
That'll probably be me.
Tell me about how you started out on The Letterman Show.
How did you hook up with him?
I actually... there's a neat story, and it's a true story.
When Dave had his morning show here, I was a tour guide at Rockefeller Center,
and part of my duties was I was responsible for selling tickets to the
observation deck.
And Dave's show had been canceled, and he came up to the observation deck, I
think, with his mother.
And because I thought it was his mother, I sold him the kiddie fare ticket to
the observation deck.
And he thought that was funny.
And that's the cool part of the story.
The uncool part of the story is that...
Because then, again, he remembered me when I came and applied for a job at late
night.
The uncool part of the story is that I acted like a complete jerk with him.
I immediately told him who my dad was.
I blurted that out right away.
My dad's Bob of Bob and Ray, if that helps me at all, in your eyes.
And he said, oh, I'm a big fan of Bob and Ray.
I'd love to get him on The Tonight Show sometime when I host it.
And for some reason, I said, oh, my dad doesn't do The Tonight Show unless
Johnny Carson hosts.
And he was like, oh, yeah, all right.
And he kind of walked away.
So you ingratiated yourself from the outset.
We can see it was all downhill from there.
It was pretty much all downhill.
But then I applied.
Actually, Lou Del Prette, who's on your show right here, introduced me to the
producer of Late Night.
And I came to Late Night to be a graphics coordinator to sort of get the photos
for the funny photo pieces and so forth from UPI and AP.
And when I applied for the job, I found out that job was taken by somebody else.
And I had already quit my job at PBS.
So I almost didn't take the job at Late Night.
I remember leaving this building in tears, walking through the lobby in tears.
And it was actually my dad and my mom that talked me into taking the job,
basically because they wanted me out of the house.
I can't let this reference slide.
You quit your job at PBS?
Yeah.
Were you the writer for the McNeil Lyra report?
What?
Oh, I was praying you were going to let that slide.
No, that's where I knew Lou from.
I worked at a show called Inside Story, believe it or not, with Hotting Carter.
He had a little variety show with a bunch of dancers and jugglers and things
like that.
No, it's some show that assessed the presses, how the press responded to news
stories in the past week.
And it was very dry and very dull.
Hotting.
But I liked Hotting quite a bit.
But, you know, I met some people through there that worked here at NBC.
So, when was the first time you got on camera on The Letterman Show?
Actually, the first week of the shows, Dave had me come out and there was a
piece we did.
It was on urban disguises, ways to disguise yourself in the city so you wouldn't
be mugged or so far or you could go about your business.
And I came out dressed entirely as garbage, which might be apropos right now.
But you couldn't see my face at all.
And for some reason, when the show was played back that nice night, the whole
eastern seaboard, that part of the show was blacked out.
The feed was blacked out for about five minutes.
So, the next night he had me come on in the garbage suit, but this time you
could see my face.
And I remember he asked me, you know, what my friends in the audience had
thought of my performance the night before.
And I said that they had told me it was the funniest thing they had seen in
North America.
And that got a big laugh.
And it made Dave laugh.
And I remember thinking, oh, okay, all I got to do is make this guy laugh.
And then I can come back on the show.
And so that's what I did.
I always just tried to make Dave laugh.
And if I could make Dave laugh, I knew I would be able to be on the show the
following week.
Which character of all the ones you did, the panicky guy, regulator guy, there
was a takeoff on the David Jansen, there was a fugitive guy, there was the guy
under the seats that was driving Dave nuts.
What's the one that people reacted to the most?
Well, the guy under the seats, for sure.
It was the most surreal and the most abrasive of the characters.
Again, the whole idea was me, Chris Elliott, normal staff member, trying
desperately to break into television.
And the way I did it was I came up with this plan to come up from underneath
the seats as a little character, whether it was a Russian Cossack or a snowman
or whatever it was that I came up as.
You know what I really liked about this one, Chris?
Usually you just come up and say hello or hi or interrupt or something.
But this time, you really got to do some acting.
I mean, you came up and you said, my name is Laloc, king of the mole people,
and I think that really took guts.
Guts?
Yeah, guts.
Just what the hell do you know about guts, Mr. Keycard reader?
I'd come up, do a little scene with Dave, and then as I went down, would go
back down under the seats, Dave would usually say something that would make me
really mad and make me snap, and I would become somewhat psychotic with him.
I don't want to get involved in another one of these.
You know something, mister?
One of these days, I'm going to have to turn you inside out.
Oh, what a beautiful sight that will be.
But until that day, I'll be right here, making your life a living hell.
Watching you, watching everything you do, whether it's giving Larry Bud Millman
a star in the Walk of Hollywood or whatever the hell that was, I'll be watching
you.
I see you.
I see you, Dave.
People seem to respond quite a bit to that.
The one that I thought was really off the board was Marlon Brando.
Yeah, I enjoyed doing him, I think, probably the most, because it was the
easiest to do.
But the whole concept with Marlon Brando was, it just grew out of me up in the
office, pretending to be Marlon, walking around the office, bugging the PAs,
screwing up the copying machine, busting the coffee maker, and so forth.
And it started making people laugh in the office, but it also was really bugging
people in the office.
And eventually, Adam Resnick, who's a co-creator on Get a Life, actually, who
used to write at Late Night, and myself, just found a way to work it onto the
show where Marlon just sort of walked onto Late Night a la Bob Hope and then
bugged Dave in the same way I was bugging the PAs upstairs.
Oh, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, and may I be so bold as to
interrupt your little Late Night with Larry King live, which I was watching in
the green room.
It's very funny.
Now, this evening, ladies and gentlemen, the fellas, Ringo and the fellas and I,
have put together a little something.
It's called my famous banana dance.
And it's something that I perform on my island regularly, and I perfected some
years back.
And before we perform it, I'd just like to say, before we do it, that we hope
we do not offend.
All right, now, just one moment.
Let me prepare for it.
Let me throw out the bananas here.
I'm going to put them right here.
All right, fellas, you ready?
Okay, on you.
Go ahead, Ringo.
Hit it.
Here we go.
All right.
There we go.
Bananas.
There we go.
Bananas.
And we sort of concocted this image of Brando that he was just kind of nuts,
you know, because people hadn't seen him for a while.
And then, it's funny, because like a year after I stopped doing him, he started
to make a comeback, and we started seeing him talking to Connie Chung and so
forth.
And I realized we weren't that far off the mark.
There we go.
Bananas.
There we go, boys.
Bananas.
Bananas.
All right, that's it.
Thank you, Paul.
I love you.
All right.
When you see the ratings each week for Get a Life, which is a network
television show, but it's a low-rated show, you have to say, thank heavens for
Fox.
Because there's no way this number sustains in prime time on one of the former
big three, right?
Yeah.
I mean, it makes, you say, thank heavens, you also, it also gets you a little,
you know, rowled that, you know, you're in that time slot.
We're in a, we're in kind of a dismal time slot right now.
We're on 930s on Saturdays, which is hard, you know, for people that were fans
of the show last season to stay home on Saturday nights.
And, you know, Saturday night, even in my family, we don't, we don't go out on
Saturday night, but it's kind of an event night.
Yeah.
You know, you sort of watch a movie or rent a movie or do something.
They're actually moving us on the 29th of this month, they're moving us to
Sundays as well, so we'll see what happens.
But, yeah, I don't know, I mean, you're right, the ratings, you know, on any
other network, it, it, it, uh, they wouldn't survive.
But the other, on the other hand, on any other network, I never would have
gotten the show on the air in, in the form that it's on.
And I think the show's great, and, and, you know, it has a, it has a, a
hardcore following that, that enjoys it quite a bit.
See, I see this as a really difficult choice on a Sunday night for somebody who
can't decide whether to watch Murder, She Wrote, or your show.
Well, we're not going after the Murder, She Wrote crowd.
My point, exactly.
Jeez.
I mean, when you say you've got a hardcore audience, that's the whole idea.
I mean, this is, that's 