Name: Jason Zinoman Talks about Letterman, April 11, 2017
Uploaded: 2017-04-16T23:19:52.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jason Zinoman Talks about Letterman, April 11, 2017' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-04-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jason Zinoman Talks about Letterman, April 11, 2017' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-04-16. Transcript available.

Jason Zinoman Talks about Letterman, April 11, 2017

He collaborated with a guy named Matt Wickline, who wrote that character, which
always had a pretty formulaic, same beep, beep, beep, which you'll see here.
And the second one is he and Matt Wickline stopped working together, and he
started working with a guy named Adam Resnick, who's a very brilliant comedy
writer, and he did an impression of Marlon Brando.
I was, most impressions of Marlon Brando up until then had been, you know,
Brando in the Streetcar, Brando in the Godfather, and this is kind of late
Brando as a kind of bloated, you know, full of himself fool, and there's one, I'm
hoping it translates, but he has one bit which is sort of like just the pure
silliness of Chris Elliott, where he does what is called the banana dance.
And so I'm thrilled to put the banana dance on a big screen here tonight.
So Cabin Boy, I actually haven't seen in two and a half decades, and it's a
cult film.
I mean, I don't think it's being, I don't think it's safe to say that it isn't
being shown anywhere else in the world right now.
This is, and I'll just say, I have one friend, I don't even know if it was here,
but I was walking around near my house, and an old friend of mine stopped me,
and he said, wow, that's so great that you're showing Cabin Boy.
I love Cabin Boy, it's such a great movie.
And I was like, I'm really happy to hear you say that.
And then his tongue got kind of quiet and editorial, and he said, but isn't it
the worst movie ever made?
And the fact that you can have both those, too, like he saw it and loved it,
and also wondered that, I think speaks to how unique this movie is.
And also, this movie was made by Adam Resnick, who worked with him on The Man
of Dance.
And I think Chris Elliott had an incredibly unique singular sensibility that
was shared a lot with Letterman, but was also distinct from Letterman.
It was another kind of ironic comedy.
And I think that Cabin Boy, I remember, if you plug into it, that it's an
incredible movie.
So, this will be a fun experiment.
Afterwards, I'm going to answer a question or two in the Q&A, and then we're
going to have a party for the book.
And I'll just let you know, I'm going to open bar for an hour with food.
Afterwards, you've got to pay, so hurry up.
Get the free drinks quickly, but then I hope you stay along and celebrate.
Thank you all for coming so much.
I'm going to have it back, Jason Zinamek.
Well, I thoroughly enjoyed that crazy movie.
I think that, I mean, speaking on behalf of Ruth Mencher, I really wanted to do
something in this film for a very long time, to fill in your hearts.
So, what an occasion to do so.
Thank you.
By the way, did you notice the banana dance music was the music for the, when
he was dancing.
So, that was actually, that clip was a good setup for that movie.
So, I think maybe the first question that I'd like to ask you, since this is
part of a sort of small series we're doing on films with other cameos or, you
know, broader appearances by David Letterman, I'm just wondering if you had any
comments to say about, you know, his appearances in film before we talk about
his, for the body of work.
So, nobody should really program at David Letterman film festival.
It's a really bad idea, and I'm sort of proud that I conned you guys into doing
it.
So, he is not a, he, you know, that's not where his pride was, that he didn't,
he is a radio and television performer, and he did not like to act.
And that was true on his television show, too.
He didn't, he played himself, a version of himself, and he played kind of an
authority figure, kind of an eternal authority figure occasionally.
But this is a really unusual movie in that he actually is playing a character,
an old salt, and you see, I mean, he doesn't even, in the credits, his name has
been there.
His name is Earl Hofort, if I'm, or how you pronounce it, who I believe was his
uncle on his mother's side.
And I think it's also the name of the character in Beavis and Butthead that he
has a voice for, who turns out to be, spoiler, Butthead's father.
And so, so he is, I mean, I think he did a couple movies where he played
himself, like Andy Coughlin's movie and Howard Stern's movie.
And then he had this interesting window where in the mid-90s when he went over,
took over to CBS, and I think, you know, was also his height of his fame, when
he did a few cameos here.
Interestingly, he, in the late 80s, he signed a deal with Disney for a lot of
money to make movies.
And I read about this in the book, that he called up George Meyer, who's one of
the first writers for Letterman, a brilliant, one of the greatest comedy
writers of the modern era, who had a huge impact on The Simpsons Day, and had a
huge impact on the early Letterman.
And he wrote a script, which is also kind of a story, legendary script, which
is, he described to me as sort of, Letterman plays as sort of an Austin Powers-like
James Bond figure.
But if there's some kind of, like, meta quality to it, too, that he's, and he,
I mean, I'd love to see the script, but he sent it to Letterman, and, you know,
he didn't, Letterman never went through with it, and he eventually gave him
money back.
So, there was a moment where it seemed like, you know, we have this guy, he's a
big star, what do you do with him, let's make movies.
And then, you know, I think he was never comfortable with that.
But this, he did this, you know, he did this scene, and, you know, famously,
you know, the line, you know, the monkey line, he made, like, all, every big
star in Hollywood say it, the Oscars.
So, yeah, that's the, I mean, I think from the perspective of the show, you
often have, when I'm reporting this book, and I've talked to a lot of writers
from the show, they said it was a challenge to find comedy sketches where we
can work around this fact that Letterman does not want to act.
You compare that to, and I think, you know, it's to his credit, I think he knew
what he, he acted in a Mork and Mindy, which you can see on YouTube, which was,
which is really bad.
And I actually recently met, recently, and I was at a conference last week,
which a guy came up to me, and said that he was a writer for Mork and Mindy at
that time.
And he said, you know, that was the worst Mork and Mindy written script.
You know, like, I mean, Lembert was bad, don't get me wrong, but we gave him a
terrible script to work with.
He played, like, some kind of guru kind of character, but, yeah, anyways, he
knew that wasn't his forte, and he didn't want to do that.
But, but if you compare that now with, like, people like Fallon, who, you know,
finds any excuse he can to act, or Colbert.
I haven't read any interviews with you regarding this book, but I thought maybe
you could talk about your, sort of, personal connection with David Letterman,
because he was such a specter of late night television, that I feel like, if
you look at the landscape now, there really isn't such, there's not a
personality that matches that, I don't think.
I mean, there's sort of, there, you know, some good people, but Letterman was,
you know, a special, kind of, you know, old school, late night host that I feel
like, you know, most of us, we're familiar with him, I remember very fondly.
So, maybe on a personal level, if you could talk about how you first, maybe,
became a fan, and maybe talk about why you wanted to then write the book.
I mean, I, I was a Letterman nut, who used to stay up, you know, late and watch
his shows, and, you know, I think, I was, I was, I knew I loved Letterman
before I thought like a critic or a reporter.
And to some extent, writing the book was an attempt to, kind of, figure out why,
where that came from.
But, I mean, I think one of the interesting things about Letterman is that he
wasn't just an influential comedian, he wasn't just a, he didn't just, you know,
kind of a pioneer talk shows, but there was a whole generation of people who imitated
him, and the way he talked, the, the strange way he, you know, his physicality,
and I was one of those people.
So, like, if some people here who know me for a long time, my friend Vanessa up
here from high school, they can say that in high school, I, my, the intonations
in my, like, how I use sarcasm is completely ripped off from Letterman.
Or, how, you know, my, just the endless amount of things, I, recently, when I
was in high school, I, I ran a, an underground newspaper, which is like a comedic
underground newspaper, and I look back at it, and there's like a top 10 list
that has like the exact, like, number one is not the funny one,
just like a letterman, you know, the, the, number three is the really funny one,
and, uh, so yeah, he was a huge impact on me, and, uh, and, um, you know, that's,
that's, that's, that's sort of the source of why I was interested.
I mean, I, I, the book I wrote before this was about chloroforms, which is the
other thing that I was, I was really fanatical about, so in a weird way, these,
these books are sort of using the tools that I've learned as a critic and
reporter to figure out what, uh, these childhood loves.
Uh, before I turn it over to you guys, uh, I'm just curious, uh, if you'd ever
gone to a taping of the show, um, I, I, I had the privilege of going to one of
his last tapings, like, the last year, and I was just so completely impressed
by the, the slickness of the production,
Right.
but also just how he really cared about the audience, he would ask people
questions, he just felt, you know, kind of engaged in a way that I just, that
you could, you could sense on, you know, on television, but, you know, I don't
know, I'm just, I'm wondering if you,
Was this the last couple of months?
This was, last year.
Last year, yeah, yeah.
So it was, I don't remember the guest, it was, it was unfortunate night when
there were, you know, anybody, nobody to mention that, you know, it was worth
remembering, but, but that said, I just didn't know if you had, you know, seen
the spectacle of the actual taping.
Right, right, I haven't seen one episode, which I read about in the book, um,
which was the summer before, um, I went to college, um, my college started
later than others, and me and a friend of mine, who I think is also here at
Jeff Graham somewhere, uh, and, uh, went to, it was the second week of the new
show, of the CBS show, so it was the biggest event, uh, in pop culture, and, uh,
we went to, uh, New York to see him, and, uh,
and, uh, and it was actually, I mean, it was electric, uh, because, you know,
the late night war was every day in the news, and the battle between Leno and
Letterman was, really meant something, I mean, I, I was, uh, um, you know, if
you were a Leno fan, that said something about you, if you were a Letterman fan,
that said something about you, until a 17 year old, who, you know, a snotty 17
year old, I was really invested in the difference between these two men, and,
uh, so anyways, the, uh, my, my,
story here is that, I went to the show, and I, uh, there was an usher there,
and I went up to the usher, and I said, could I get, um, an autograph, and he
said, if you can get a can of Spam, uh, before the doors open, uh, you know, I'll
get you an autograph, and, you know, Letterman did a lot of jokes about canned
ham, and all this stuff, and so, we had, we had a choice here, because the, the
doors were gonna open soon, and it's not, how easy is it to find a can of Spam
in Times Square, I don't know, but, uh,
So we ran out, and went from bodega to bodega to bodega, no one had Spam, no
one had Spam, no one had Spam, no one had Spam, and we finally found some nutjob
who was selling a can of Spam, and we got to the can of Spam, and we ran back
to the show, and, uh, the doors were open, and people were coming in, and we
just made it, and I handed it off to the usher, we saw the show, and it was, uh,
Siskel and Ebert,
Rob, Rob, Rob, uh, the, uh, I think it was, uh, Robert Plant, um, and, uh, and
it was a much, it was, it was completely different seeing it on, uh, in,