Name: David Letterman on Speaking of Everything, February 21, 1988
Uploaded: 2017-03-04T03:31:46.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'David Letterman on Speaking of Everything, February 21, 1988' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-03-04. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'David Letterman on Speaking of Everything, February 21, 1988' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-03-04. Transcript available.

David Letterman on Speaking of Everything, February 21, 1988

This is Howard Cosell. My guests are David Letterman, the king of late-night
television,
and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Jimmy Breslin, and together we'll be
speaking of everything.
Hello again, everyone. I'm Howard Cosell. Welcome to Speaking of Everything.
My guests tonight are the king of late-night television, the elusive Hoosier,
who has brought Indiana into a national prominence that it never remotely
enjoyed,
and the board of Queens, New York, author, playwright, columnist, Pulitzer
Prize winner, Jimmy Breslin.
And we begin with David. Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me, Howard. And let me just say here at the very beginning,
you're goofy.
If I'm not, you've got a scoop. I'll say that.
At the same time, I wonder if you can realize what a thrill, what an exhilaration
it is for me to be in your presence.
Oh, stop. Please, just stop.
Listen, I've been very worried about you.
From what standpoint?
Well, now that Hulk Hogan has lost his title.
In my hometown, oddly enough.
Irony of ironies.
That's right.
Now, how has that affected your relationship, which was growing, though
privately kept, with Hulk's lady?
Hulk's wife, as I understand it, she had photographic evidence to substantiate
that.
The woman came up to me in one of the vast, wide, clean, brightly lighted
supermarket aisles of the A&P in New Canaan, Connecticut,
and announced to me and to everyone else there that she, in fact, was married
to Hulk Hogan,
the kind of thing I'm not sure you would announce anywhere, and was a perfectly
reasonable woman.
So right there, I was suspicious that she even knew the guy.
I've got to tell you, you throw lines away so remarkably well.
But I remember when you threw away a line, that really troubled you later.
It involved the major league pitcher, Terry Foster.
Do you remember?
Sure, a couple of years ago when he was pitching for the Atlanta Braves.
And I think he was a late relief pitcher, not a stopper in those days.
You called him a tub of goo.
Fat tub of goo, yeah.
And it was just an honest observation because I was watching the Braves game
coming up off the WTBS, whatever that hookup is,
and listening to the guys doing the play-by-play.
And he was coming in from the bullpen in the late-ending situation,
and they ran down all of his statistics, told us what kind of year he was
having,
on and on and on, way more information about Terry Foster than anybody would
ever want or need.
But they failed to call attention to what I thought was supremely obvious,
that the man was enormous.
He was huge, and his baseball shirt was just stretched to capacity.
And I thought, I'm sorry, is this an old-timers?
Is this a father-and-son game?
I wasn't sure.
And nonetheless, there was Terry, as Dizzy Dean used to say, going through his
preliminary warm-up pitches.
And I said, no, how can this man, in that kind of condition, he must have been
close to 300 pounds,
be playing at the highest level of his sport?
Why did you so regret later, having said it?
I just thought that the choice of words, fat tub of goo, was very unflattering,
and probably more mean-spirited, completely mean-spirited,
when in fact it was not meant in that spirit.
It was more of a spirit of, can a guy that size really be playing baseball?
Well, that was the spirit that it was meant in.
And I think the particular phrasing, it sort of made me wince as I drove home.
And then later I found out that he, in fact, had reacted angrily to that.
But then his wife apparently had calmed him down by saying, well, he's right.
Does this happen to you often?
It probably happens, yeah, it does happen.
As you know, when you're doing a show that's essentially ad-lib and non-scripted,
you say things that come to mind that may have not been the best pre-thought-of
images
to be fallen out of your mouth.
I'll say a couple here tonight, Howard.
That's fine with me, you know that.
I've done a lot of shows with you.
And one of the things I want to talk to you about, seriously,
I thought I might have to carry you here.
You're a very private man, you don't do this very often, and I understand that.
And what about the shyness that's within you?
This is a serious question.
Well, it's, I don't know, it's in the beginning when the show first went on the
air,
and when you start a career in show business,
everything is new and exciting and bright and fun to experience and experiment
with.
And so you go through that phase, and you realize that 90% of what constitutes
show business
is probably not worth anybody's time.
And then you get your own show, which I was very lucky to have, been selected
to do,
and continue to be very lucky.
And then you have to do a lot of interviews and so forth because you want
people to watch your product.
And under those circumstances, the combination of the two,
I found that I was tiring pretty quickly of the central topic, which was me.
And I also would see other people in television and films and so forth on
interview shows talking about themselves,
and it just would curl my hair.
I would think, oh, good heavens.
You know, I would rather hear from somebody who was working a line in Detroit
or Carrie and Hod in Brooklyn building an apartment building
than listen to Linda Evans' wine about what time she had to get up and go to
work in the morning, you know.
So I felt like if I'm responding that way to these people, I guess people are
probably responding that way to me.
There's one.
I'll get a call from a fellow named Richard Cohen about her throwing away a
line about Linda Evans.
But I didn't call her a fat tub of goo.
No, not Linda.
She's got no business in the starting rotation.
She could be a reliever, but certainly not starting.
Whatever you say.
Yeah.
How do you characterize yourself?
And these are serious questions, but you can well handle them.
Do you characterize yourself as a talk show host or as a comedian, a stand-up
comedian?
Well, I've done both.
I have done some stand-up comedy, and I realized from that experience that that's
not really what I am.
Because if you're doing stand-up comedy, you've got to be willing to do it
under any circumstance, 365 days a year and sometimes more.
And you may have to do it the rest of your life.
And I've done enough of it to know that I'm not that kind of person.
So I guess I am maybe more accurately described as a person who hosts a
television show, not a pure talk show host.
You know who has great respect for you?
He's really a good friend of yours.
And you know this.
It's Jay Leno.
Oh, yeah.
And he called you an anti-hero and called your brand of comedy anti-comedy.
Do you see yourself in accord with that kind of thing?
Well, I'm flattered to be considered by Jay as a friend of his.
And we are in the same peer group.
And I don't know that I would agree with the anti-hero or anti-comedy.
Although on any given night it might be tough to prove.
But I think what he's trying to say is that we're looking to tread on tradition.
Or not tread on tradition.
To go against tradition.
You know, I marvel at your sweater.
I never thought I'd see it again.
Don't start with that, Howard.
Because there's some things about you that I'm marveling at right now myself.
Why not?
David Letterman, of course.
And we'll be back with David in just a moment.
David Letterman and I welcome you back.
And, David, let's begin with this one.
All right.
Does television, in your view, take itself too seriously?
Well, what aspect of life doesn't take itself too seriously?
And certainly television is right in there.
Yeah, I think so.
You really go at your company, General Electric, again and again and again.
Yeah, well, they're boneheads, by and large, these guys.
How do you get away with that and why are they boneheads?
Well, you know how I can get away with it.
It's because the people at General Electric go to lunch.
And lunch, of course, a euphemism.
And as a result of the medication they consume at lunch,
they're never up at 12.30 to see the show.
So I can pretty well...
I can't say or do anything I want.
And in that condition, they can't possibly operate their recording devices.
Now, one thing I love about you,
although that's not happened to me when I guest on your show,
is the way you put down people.
I can't put you down, Howard.
You could if you wanted.
Yeah, I know, but it would be...
It would be your last hurrah.
It would be like sparring with Mike Tyson.
No, I don't want to try that.
That kid is so...
He's awesomely strong.
Yeah, yeah.
And you do love sports, don't you?
Well, sure.
Who doesn't like sports?
You know, I...
Yeah, I enjoy sports.
Yeah.
What do you enjoy most?
You name it.
I enjoy it.
And I find my interests changing a little as I grow older.
But, you know, baseball certainly has been a big love of mine for years.
They grew up with the Cincinnati Reds.
Not actually grew up with them.
It's not like they're with...
Well, it was you who got Eric Davis the $899,000.
That's right.
Everybody knows that.
You negotiated behind the scenes.
Yeah, that's true.
I did.
I got...
I was able to slide that by Marge.
Now they've moved back to Planned City,
which was, as you remember, you called my attention to it,
Gabe Paul's very first training camp in 1929.
Absolutely, yeah.
Your knowledgeability in the sports area is absolutely amazing.
Well, thank you, Howard.
You know, you've been quoted as saying,
we go serious for a moment now, and I'm quoting,
if the person seems defenseless,
you have no business getting in there and hurting their feelings.
Sure.
But if the person seems to be an incorrigible showbiz buffoon,
I think they're a fair target.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
I think anybody in show business who comes away from our nightly telecast
with their feelings hurt does not accurately understand their place in the
world.
I mean, if you're in show business, you have to understand that it's a show,
and the only time I ever get upset is when we have a guest who is in show
business
making huge sums of money on a weekly television show or making films,
and they don't regard 1230 to 130 our time period as an extension of show
business.
And they come in and they just kind of loaf through it.
That angers me a little bit because it's still a television show,
and anybody with any sense should be on their best behavior and have done a
little preparation.
But we're not going to turn the show into a Hall of Fame situation
where we're paying homage to their latest TV movie.
You ever sit back and wonder how all of this was put together, how it's all
worked for you,
how important you've become in the late-night arena,
and how many people are so devoted to you?
I was just looking at a beautiful lighter.
What is this, Howard? Tiffany's?
That's lovely.
Next time around, take this one.
When you do me a favor, you can use it.
Oh, this is nice.
And this, by the way, is plastic.
That's very nice.
I don't know.
You know, if you think about it,
anybody in any phase of life can sit down at any point in their adult existence
and put together a list of people who have helped them.
And some nights on my drive home to Connecticut,
I'll try and remember all of those people.
And literally, the list would fill up.
Who's helped you?
Who's inspired you?
As an immediate reminder of the late Andy Kovacs.
Yeah, absolutely.
He would be on the list.
People from my hometown would be on the list.
Steve Allen?
Steve Allen, absolutely.
The guy who gave me my first television job back in Indianapolis.
For no reason, he gave me the job.
I was 19 and a college student at Ball State University,
and I went to the audition so unconfident and so sure
that I would not get the job
that I didn't even, I had a full beard at the time
and didn't even shave for the TV audition.
And yet, still in all, the guy hired me.
And if I had not gotten a position at that point of my life in television,
I don't know that I would have,
you know, without that reinforcement,
I don't know that I would have had the confidence to continue.
His name is Tom Bass.
And I have 