Name: Martin Scorsese & Slippers on Letterman, 1985-86
Uploaded: 2016-09-05T01:36:08.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Martin Scorsese & Slippers on Letterman, 1985-86' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-09-05. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Martin Scorsese & Slippers on Letterman, 1985-86' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-09-05. Transcript available.

I have, you know, I learned an interesting medical fact, and this is the truth,
and if you think about it, it makes perfect sense, and I didn't know it until
this week.
Every time you sneeze, you swallow your tongue. I didn't realize that.
Isn't that interesting?
It happens so quickly that it's a...
I didn't know that.
Oh, the body's a fascinating thing, Paul.
Not bad.
We, you know, we've been gone two and a half weeks, we've got all kinds of
loose ends, and I want you to help me out on some of this stuff, Paul.
I'm with you.
Okay. We thought it would be a good idea. We were going to have something
called celebrity clothing, and every night at the beginning of one of our
programs, we would have an item of clothing to show you from a celebrity.
We had these people lined up. Gloria Steinem sent us something. Now, this is
like a tie or a blouse or a hat or dress shields or whatever.
Dress shields.
So, Yul Brynner was sending us something, Glenda Jackson, William Hurt, Faye Dunaway.
Martin Scorsese, we contacted his office, and he was kind enough. He said, yeah,
I think it's a wonderful idea. Some night we'd hold up an item of clothing from
Martin Scorsese.
He sent us over a pair of slippers.
Not just any slippers. These were his lucky slippers.
Now, he had worn these through numerous filmings, many of his more famous
motion pictures, and he was really attached to the slippers.
But he said, yes, I think it's such a... He got behind the concept.
Which most of your artistic people snapped right up on.
When they heard the concept, they said, yes, I want to be included in this.
In fact, a lot of people who couldn't be in that video wanted to be involved
here.
So, Martin, his office was kind enough to send us over the slippers, and they
were messengered over by, I'm guessing, a bonded messenger.
Because these were not just nickel-dime slippers that you get at Kmart.
These were top-quality, lucky slippers.
So, they were delivered to the office, and we received them, and then the mix-up
began.
Nobody in the office could figure out exactly why slippers would be arriving.
And as a result, I'll tell you what, Hal, come right in here real close on this.
Martin, your slippers have been lost.
Not only lost, Martin, they were thrown away and incinerated.
So, now we've got that taken care of.
But this is kind of a black eye to start out the celebrity clothing thing on.
All right.
We hear from Martin at all?
Well, no, this is the first he's heard of us.
That's the first he's going to hear of us?
I'm guessing we'll be hearing from him.
Now, here's the other deal.
Also, Martin Scorsese's bedroom slippers.
He sent us some slippers.
To make a long story short, we burned them.
So, last night, it came down to me.
I had to call Martin Scorsese on the phone.
And his staff was, they were terribly frightened that he would be upset about
losing the bedroom slippers.
And it turns out, not only were they his favorite slippers, his lucky bedroom
slippers,
he was planning to give them to the Smithsonian Institute.
Well, he won't have to worry about that now.
It's a pleasure to welcome our next guest back to this program.
Without a doubt, this man is one of the finest filmmakers in the world.
Some of the credits include Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, starring Paul and myself,
of course, the king of comedy, After Hours.
And his latest motion picture is The Color of Money.
Folks, please say hello to director Martin Scorsese.
Let me just briefly here apologize to you.
A couple of years ago, I guess, we threw away a pair of your lucky slippers.
Do you remember that?
Yes.
Were they, in fact, lucky?
Did you use them when you worked?
I don't know if you can call them they were lucky.
They were, I wore those slippers during, not actually during the shooting of
New York, New York,
but during the editing of New York, New York, the editing of Last Waltz,
the editing of Raging Bull, and a few other pictures.
So you did some pretty good work with those slippers.
But they had used themselves up, I think.
And it's the only fitting way for them to go.
Yeah.
Was the way they went.
Yeah, I think they were just incinerated.
We were going to do something.
It was celebrity clothing.
And night after night, we'd have articles of clothing from various celebrities.
And they'd come down and we'd say, Martin Scorsese slippers.
We'd see them.
And somehow they were delivered to the office and they were just,
somebody thought, well, junk mail from Omaha and they were burned.
They were gone, yeah.
My apologies, my apologies.
Well, it's okay.
I'll wear the new ones you gave me.
Oh, we gave you new slippers?
Yes, you did, yes.
Well, that's awfully nice of us.
Oh, yeah, now I remember picking them out.
Yeah.
Yes, David, yes.
Do you have anything that you like to have around you when you do a film like
that?
Do you have something that you do every film, anybody that you use in the cast,
or any procedure that you like to duplicate time after time?
Well, I use my parents in my films.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I keep them in there.
All the way from my student films, actually, using them there.
They've actually been on the screen in the films?
Yes, absolutely.
Would we recognize the scenes?
Well, yes, you would.
The thing about it is that, well, my mother was in Taxi Driver, but we cut her
out of that.
She was Travis's first fair, yes, and we had to lose that, and they were in New
York, New York.
They were in Raging Bull.
My father's actually in Raging Bull in many of the scenes.
Yeah.
And my mother does a very big sequence of scenes in King of Comedy.
She plays Rupert's mother.
Is that right?
But you never see her.
You only hear her.
Yeah.
And she improvises with De Niro.
And they enjoy it, obviously.
They also cook for everybody?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes, that's the main thing.
Yeah.
That's the reason for having them there.
See, they've been retired for like 10 years now, so we get them on the set, and
they cook for everybody.
The pizzas are really the things that do it.
And in the case of Color of Money, Paul Newman and Tom Cruise, Tom would eat a
lot of the pizza, you know.
Yeah.
And Paul, actually, Paul wanted the pizza, but he didn't want the anchovies.
Wow.
I don't know.
I wouldn't have thought Paul would be that way.
No, I know, but he didn't want the anchovies on it, and that was it.
So my mother made it special for him.
Now, Martin, you mentioned the film Color of Money, and I guess we have a clip
here that we're going to take.
We're going to take a look at, and this clip is not only from the film, but
also very special to you for another reason.
Very special because it carries on sort of the tradition of putting my family
in the film.
This is the latest member of my family, and she's in the film.
Okay, so we'll take a look at this one first?
It's one of my favorite scenes, yes.
Okay, and that's all you need to know, and then we'll talk about it with the
director.
All right.
Now, we saw Paul Newman there.
He's coming out of what looked like a casino, or what did you say?
He's going into Atlantic City.
Atlantic City, yeah.
So it's the last third of the film.
About to prepare for the pool tournament.
All right.
And there's actually, if you notice, if you watch carefully and closely, there's
an incredible white dog that walked across the screen.
All right, let's take a look at that again in slow motion this time.
All right, yeah.
There it is, there it is.
You see?
That's it.
Now, that's your dog.
That's my dog, yeah.
What's your dog's name?
Zoe.
Zoe?
Yeah.
And what kind of animal is that?
It's a bichon frisee.
Bichon frisee?
Frisee, yes.
And what does that mean?
Oh, he's here.
Is that right?
Yes.
Oh, yeah, bring him out.
Sure, let's.
Where is Zoe?
Come on out, Zoe.
How are we doing here?
I have to hold her.
Oh, you got to hold her?
Yeah.
All right.
30 seconds?
Oh, boy.
Come on.
Yes, sir.
Good girl.
Good girl.
Good girl.
There she is.
Now, this looks an awful lot like a, oh, it's very timid, isn't it?
Oh, very frank.
I'm sorry.
It's, I'm that way when somebody scratches my face, too.
Yes.
We got to do a commercial here?
Okay.
We'll be right back with Martin and Zoe.
Okay, now, how do you explain to Paul Newman that the purpose of the scene is
to get your
dog on camera?
Well, that was the most important thing.
I mean, the idea, the idea was, I mean, the poise when she walks across the
screen is
the idea.
He didn't mind that?
No, no, he didn't mind it at all.
He didn't mind it at all.
It's a great looking dog.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the film is a blockbuster?
Yeah.
So you might as well say it.
Yeah, sure.
People don't know.
Sure, it's a blockbuster.
Finally, yeah.
Runaway hit of the decade.
Martin Scorsese and his dog, Zoe.
We'll see you folks tomorrow night.
Thank you very much.
Have a good evening.
Thank you.