Name: David Letterman on Later with Bob Costas, January 12, 1989, Unedited
Uploaded: 2017-03-06T01:58:36.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'David Letterman on Later with Bob Costas, January 12, 1989, Unedited' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-03-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'David Letterman on Later with Bob Costas, January 12, 1989, Unedited' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-03-06. Transcript available.

David Letterman on Later with Bob Costas, January 12, 1989, Unedited

Were they in Chicago?
They played the Pistons in Detroit.
It was close.
It was within the league.
It was in the same conference, I think.
It was an Eastern Conference matchup, Dave.
Yeah, you tell me whatever you want to do.
Thank you very much.
Do what, sir? The promo?
Promos that air on his own show.
I'll be staying up later with a lot of coffee.
All right, we're doing some promos.
Okay, very quiet, please.
In five, four, three, two.
All right, here's good news.
Like you haven't seen enough of me already,
I'll be staying up later with Bob Costas.
What's more, Dave?
Please clear the set.
Well, that guy sounds cranky.
In five, four, three, two.
All right, here's a good idea.
I'll be staying up later with Bob Costas
like you haven't seen enough of me already tonight.
Okay, one, four, three, two.
See you later.
All right, Edward.
No photographers.
You said no goddamn photographers.
Clear the set.
Oh, it's not really a photographer.
It's Al.
So did you go out with Ina instead after you?
Yes.
All right.
You said no.
You said no goddamn photographers.
Clear the set.
All right.
Oh, it's not really a photographer.
It's Al.
So did you go out with Ina instead after you?
Yeah.
No.
All right, Edward.
No photographers.
You said no goddamn photographers.
Clear the set.
All right.
Oh, it's not really a photographer.
It's Al.
So did you go out with Ina instead after the show last night?
Did I?
Yikes.
A nice overbite that Ina had.
I didn't notice that.
A little overbite.
I thought I had a very pleasant presence and nice legs.
A good sport.
Yeah, you know something's gone hideously wrong when you have to refer to
someone as geez,
thanks for being such a good sport.
You know there's been mayhem.
No, you know something's hideously wrong when the guest list for a show is me
first and then
was not was.
Yeah.
That's a little weak.
Ten seconds.
Whoa, wait a minute.
Ten seconds.
You can't take me by surprise.
Jesus Christ.
I hate this.
Yeah, no you don't.
I do.
I'm nervous as hell.
Yeah, you are.
Okay, no more pixies.
All right.
No more pixies.
Boy, oh boy.
Check the crew list.
Ten seconds.
Two.
Ten seconds.
And five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
Oh, God.
Thanks for staying up later.
I'm Bob Costas.
Hi, Bob.
You're pretty nervous, right?
This is unpleasant for me.
Not because it's you.
It's just unpleasant for me.
As are most aspects of my life.
Just generally speaking, you're a depressed and confused man.
Yeah.
No, I wouldn't say depressed.
I just think some people are born to not be as happy as other people.
And, you know, like up with people, those are really happy people.
I am not that happy.
New Christie minstrels.
Yeah.
Sort of sister groups.
Yeah, right.
What's the happiest you ever are?
That will happen when the tape stops rolling for this show.
Well, let's see if we can speed it up.
We can play it at a different speed and just get him the hell out of here in
five or six minutes.
It has nothing to do with you, by the way.
Yes, it does.
I'm taking personal offense.
No, it has nothing to do with you because I've liked you for a long time.
I don't know why, but I'm just a little jumpy.
Just a little jumpy today.
Is there anything we can do to calm you down?
Yeah.
Oh, of course there is, but perhaps we should keep moving.
I think we probably should.
Does your mom still feel that what you do is just a few notches above carnival
worker?
Mom thinks I am with the circus.
Mom has not seen the show, which is fine with me.
Mom has a normal American life and doesn't stay up until 12:30, or in this case
even an hour later.
So, you know, she calls from time to time to see how the receipts are doing and
wants to know if we still work under the big top, you know.
And so it's a little charade we both play.
And once the circus gets in a guy's blood, it's not coming out.
Oh yeah, sawdust in the veins.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's more like the good kind of cholesterol, so you don't really have to
worry about it.
Yeah.
When you were a kid, what did your mom and dad want you to be?
Out of the house, mostly.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It was never discussed.
We never had career day at the Letterman house.
And I think, I don't know.
I just, it was never discussed.
I had a lot of trouble in high school, and at one point they wanted to put me
into a vocational training high school downtown where I would have been beaten
up on a regular basis.
And it was just never discussed.
And then by the time I decided to move to California, my father had passed away,
so there was one less person to break the news to.
Yeah.
So he missed something awful.
So your parents provided a lot of guidance then in their own subtle way.
I had a great life.
I can't complain.
I think that my nurturing years were as good as anybody's.
But it's just that we did not begin a day with, well, what are you going to
make of yourself?
You know, that never came around.
What kind of kid were you in high school?
I was a young black boy.
Oddly enough.
Yeah.
And sociologically speaking, it's still baffling people.
I was, you know, like I am now, except my clothes were not as expensive.
And this is really a pricey ensemble.
I like this.
These are clothes that I like.
You never wear glasses on the air, but I never see you off the air without
glasses.
Yeah, no, it's a conceit to vanity.
I just, I don't know.
I'm more comfortable with them, but I've gotten into the habit of not wearing
them, so on the show I don't wear them.
I just feel like one of these days I'll just start wearing them because I would
really rather wear glasses.
I think almost everyone looks better in glasses.
Pretty much.
Yeah.
So when you're in high school, right?
Yeah.
How do you think the other kids regarded you?
Everybody thinks that a guy who grows up to be a comedian was the class clown.
Right.
Not necessarily so though, right?
I don't think so.
I know the class clown in my class.
I graduated from Broad Ripple High School in 1965.
I always like to mention that I graduated.
As opposed to the equivalency diploma.
That's right.
But the class clown for us was a guy named Jerry Levy.
Very, very funny, very demonstrative, very peculiar kid.
And he and I would sit next to one another in almost every class because of the
L.E. in both of our names.
Alphabetical order, Bob.
Right.
And Jerry is the kind of guy who would do everything that you think of when you
hear George Carlin describing the class clown.
That was Jerry.
You know, he would set his shoes on fire.
He would make odd kind of bad digestive noises and was largely considered a loon.
And then it was my goal or job in high school to help Jerry get through with
his tests.
He would copy all of my tests and he would copy all of my homework and stuff.
But he truly was the class clown.
But essentially I would have a great idea and I would pass it on to Jerry.
It would be something like, Jerry, pretend you're sick.
You know, and then Jerry would work on that.
Stick his finger down his throat, actually get sick.
And I don't know what became of him, but he was a great source of entertainment
for all of us.
How many of the kids you went to school with have written to you, called you,
tried to rekindle friendships?
None.
Really? Is that true?
Can you blame them?
What are we dealing with here?
To tell you the truth, my sister still lives on Long Island where I went to
high school.
Right.
And she's always telling me about someone she bumps into at the bakery shop.
Right.
And the guy says, I loved your brother.
Right.
And I remember the guy and he beat me up three or four times.
Yeah.
He hated me.
Yeah.
I hear from people periodically and sometimes they will stop in New York if
they're here
on business or traveling through or a matter of extradition or whatever.
And it's always fun, but it's always, I'm a little nervous about it, as you can
imagine,
after not having seen some of these people for 10, 15, 20 years.
But I don't get a steady stream of, do you remember me?
I'm the fat guy who used to sit next to you and Jerry Levy.
I don't get a lot of that.
When you were growing up.
I'd like to keep it that way.
Not after tonight.
When you were growing up in Indianapolis, did you want to be a comic or just
somebody on
TV?
Just somebody on TV.
Just somebody on TV.
And that's what I am.
Like a carpet salesman.
I'm just somebody on TV.
I was always fascinated by the notion of radio and television.
And in those days, it was a mystery how you got from being a guy, a man, or a
woman,
to being a man or a woman on TV.
How did you do that?
And not many people did it.
And now, of course, it's the easiest thing in the world.
I mean, everybody knows how to get on TV.
And, well, look at the Channel 7 Eyewitness News team.
There, I rest my case.
Anybody can get on TV.
Sam Champion doing the weather.
This means a lot, by the way, to people in Des Moines.
No, it doesn't need to mean anything to the people in Des Moines.
All they need to know is there is a guy here in New York City who is the best-looking
male
human on the planet named Sam Champion doing the weather.
There's a guy on Channel 2 doing the sports named Rock Rote.
There you go.
There you go.
Exactly.
And, you know, you look back at guys like, oh, Edward R. Murrow.
You know, that's not exactly Sam Champion.
You know, Billy Excitement with the news.
So, I think it's gone downhill.
I forgot the question.
So did I.
You started out, speaking of being on a news team, you were a weatherman, right?
Right.
I was the second-string weatherman on a news team.
I did the weekend weather.
So, a heartbeat away from being the regular weatherman.
That's right.
And, boy, we had some scares.
And, yeah.
And that's what I did.
I got to learn all about TV actually working at a TV station in Indianapolis.
I started working there when I was, like, 20.
When I was in college, I had the summer job as the relief announcer.
And then, gradually, they could not control this.
People would have to go on vacation, and I'd be penciled in to do, like, the
weather or the morning news or any number of things.
And I was able to, I held that job for, like, five or six years and learned
virtually everything.
And, as you know, once you learn about television, I mean, it doesn't really
change at any level.
The money, if you're doing it properly, the money gets a little bigger.
But the techniques and so forth are pretty much rudimentary.
And it was great.
It was great fun for me.
Did you take the meteorological aspects of the job seriously?
Well, you know, no, I didn't.
But in Indiana and most places around the country, there is a segment of the
population who do take them seriously.
And I used to, to me, the windchill factor was, who cares?
It's either 40 degrees or it's not 40 degrees.
Yeah.
Don't tell me it's 40 degrees, but the windchill means it's 80 below.
You know, I don't know what that means.
It's not really 80 below.
The windchill factor is just something that they invented.
So guys like Sam Champion could have a career.
And then one day I got a call from somebody who was in, in charge of warehousing
soft drinks.
And on the strength of my forecast, he had decided, had decided to turn off the
heater in the warehouse.
And, and lost like 400 billion gallons of Diet Pepsi or something.
Because it froze and exploded and killed some people.
Oh God.
And, and, and on that note, we're more than certain that you'll be staying up
later.
And we go to the little montage of your career.
Oh God.
Well, that covered the youthful years.
I feel as if I've done a great historical service.
Just go straight through, don't stop for any more commercials.
Okay.
Okay.
That's a bad sign.
What's that?
The producer has to come up and suggest something.
Pump, try, try and pump some life into this, Bob.
Do we do anything?
You've seen, you've seen, you've seen Freddie come up and things are going
particularly well.
Yeah.
Doing that?
All right.
All right.
Do we have any stuff of, is there any stuff existing of you doing the weather?
Uh, there might be somewhere.
I, I have a cassette that 