Name: Jessica Savitch on Letterman, 1982-83
Uploaded: 2016-06-09T18:27:02.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jessica Savitch on Letterman, 1982-83' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-06-09. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jessica Savitch on Letterman, 1982-83' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-06-09. Transcript available.

Jessica Savitch on Letterman, 1982-83

thank you so much thank you so much tonight of course is our salute to bags wyoming
ladies and
gentlemen if you're just joining us uh jessica savage is currently the anchor
woman on nbc tv's
saturday night news she has covered the senate while a reporter for nbc in washington
and is
currently writing a biography entitled anchorwoman please welcome jessica
savage
hi how are you
all right nice to see you look terrific thank you very much this is my sitting
on an open set outfit
what do you uh what do you mean by that i was going to say that doesn't look
like uh for example uh
irving r levine wouldn't come out here dressed like that no irving would wear
the same thing but
we have a bow tie right here now what does it mean your open set outfit well
this is an open set meaning
that anything goes well no it's that too but you can you can see your legs and
television you're used to
being news just being disembodied head like this see from here to here and uh
so therefore your legs
don't show you can wear whatever you want or sit on your feet or do anything
you want now were this
were this a closed set what would you be wearing i would probably be wearing
jeans or something like
really dressed from here up is that true yeah yeah because the reason is you
want to be comfortable
when you're when you're on television or wherever and you want to be able to to
feel at ease but
unfortunately when nbc news had an open set like this it changed it we had that
for a while at nightly
news so you would have to come fully dressed was that ever a problem yeah i
always came fully dressed
not dressed up wait a minute here that didn't sound proper i came fully dressed
but i wasn't dressed up
i didn't have clothes that match on the bottom they were different color by the
time the suit the top
would be very light and the bottoms would be dark was this ever a problem when
you began doing this it
was uh my first network show here three years ago i really had to decide
because you sat like this
to the side kept your legs together and read the news like this you mean wait a
minute you read your
news over the shoulder well i did because i was afraid to to move to the front
because i had this
habit of sitting on my feet like this or whatever so um i had to think about it
so i asked my mother
what i was going to to wear and she said not slacks that's not good no so she
said you have to wear a
skirt so i wore a skirt and i was so worried that i taped my knees and my
ankles together
so that i really so that i would not let my move my legs and it worked terrifically
till the end of the show when i got up and fell but no you're just you're
kidding about that you
actually i actually fell fortunately we no no no wait a minute you're ahead of
me you actually applied
tape the gaffer tape we use in tv that means anything but broken hearts you
know you got that
double face this is double face this is not it david but that's not it but you
can make it
double face by doing this here you go here you go now it's double face yeah
like that a roll out
of it so that your knees get taped together this got very old very soon so i
started wearing culottes
like this would you be more comfortable if we went ahead and taped you it
depends who did the taping i
guess hey wait a minute also wait a minute i'm not very comfortable anyway i'm
ill at ease oh no you
don't don't say that no i'm sorry no i'm sorry i was really looking forward to
doing the show too
but i'm very ill at ease now would it have anything to do with the duck or the
guy from wyoming or no
that's wyoming isn't as bad as coming from kent square pennsylvania i think it's
smaller but is that
where you're from yeah but that's not it i found the format sheet we all you nbc
doesn't afford two
dressing rooms so we all use the same one just for makeup and taping yeah and
taping and uh here's the
format and it says interview with jessica savage and interview with jessica
savage and then down
get a little down a little further and it says jessica continued or bob the dog
you can't see this
so this means folks if i do well i'll be back for segment three and you'll know
if i don't do well
because bob the dog okay if we have the bob the dog tape loaded up who's bob
the dog bob now i uh you
don't want to hear about this but it was certainly not meant as an affront to
you uh a while back uh the
head writer on this program thought it would be funny to produce some films uh
from a dog's point
of view and and uh there is is mixed opinion as to whether or not this would be
suitable television
for north america and as a result it's kind of an ongoing discussion as to
whether or not that this
will ever see the light of day that's what that meant just in case i don't make
segment three this is
my dog chewy he's a terrific dog and every bit as good as bob that's a handsome
looking dog and not
thank you very nice not unlike bob the dog himself but better than bob the dog
oh not better than bob
the dog wait a minute you uh we're gonna have to go away for a moment and uh jessica
savage and i will
return covered with tape right after this
thank you uh jessica savage of course is here and uh we were talking earlier
about you taping your
legs and i want to one more kind of silly thing out of the way and then we'll
get on to or maybe we
won't we'll see uh now there was this poll apparently that they will call to my
attention earlier this
morning uh some company polled various newscasters around the country and we
all know how painful that can
be uh uh were you asked no no i wasn't asked but they found you to be now what
the the you want me to
say it yeah they found you that you were you were named the sexiest newscaster
on television this was
by my peers so they should have known better now uh now how does that how does
that make you feel
well the first time i saw it i heard about it on a local news station here in
new york and i'm used
to be reading the news and there was a chroma key behind me which is that
picture in the box
and i was the picture instead of the person at the desk so i thought i had died
and nobody notified me
or something you know and uh then when i found out what it was i thought uh
well i i don't know
if it's a compliment or not i mean it's supposed to be a compliment if you're
recognizable dan rather
was the one for for male anchors so you figure he's the dan rather is the sexiest
yeah sexiest male
anchor according to this poll of news people locally where did john chancellor
come in
i don't know yeah i didn't i didn't check it beyond that you're just supposed
to check and
see if your name was mentioned or something now i don't know uh they didn't
mention who was second
and third they just mentioned who got but i think dan rather is a good
journalist roland cronchi was
mentioned as the most trusted and it mentioned some other anchor people the
network all of them were
good good journalists so you figure well that's in addition to the other okay
so that's a lot of places
people would uh think well you can't be the sexiest and also the best
journalist reporting either well
that belongs to the school of thought that says that all people who are blonde
and on television news
are therefore not good journalists the definition of a good journalist being
someone who is not blonde
on television i don't think they're mutually exclusive yeah but now that i know
of a case a city where
i last lived had that problem they had uh cheerleaders doing the news now uh
this this both male and
female it was like barbie and ken bring you the news every night and uh but i
don't agree okay i don't
agree uh y'all they have them now but i have ultimate unending faith in the
television viewing audience
and i think they know when somebody is broadcasting to them in two dimensions
horizontal and vertical and
if you know what you're talking about you come across in a third dimension
people who come off the
cheerleading field or the beauty contest runway do not necessarily bring that
more likely don't to their
jobs and i think there's a difference and a television viewer viscerally knows
that uh i agree by the
way uh and i'm glad you brought that out um now let's talk about um barbara walters
now where was she
the first uh i don't want to refer to as a pioneer that makes it sound like uh
that's what she's called
and she is she is a pioneer sure i mean anybody who goes into uncharted waters
and does something for
the first time is therefore probably eligible be called pioneer or barrier
breaker or whatever so
sure and she opened up the area of of news in general were there not any women
in tv reporting
there were a few when i was growing up there were one or two but that was all
and most of them although
they were good i think didn't get on the air with frequency and didn't get on
the air with the major
story of the day did not have a chance to engender viewer loyalty or prove
themselves or become good
journalists in the eyes of viewers and so therefore their careers didn't last
all that long given the
same opportunities men had they would have lasted barbara walters took her
opportunity was a researcher
and parlayed it into a uh an anchor person now there were there i guess there
would be some who would
argue that while she was an anchor person she was not a successful anchor
person does that mean all
women are well no but what i was going to say was at the time she was coupled
with harry reasoner
who i guess you could say also was not a successful anchor person because that
union uh uh came apart
and they both went their separate ways but he of course is a success and she
certainly is a success
exactly i mean if everybody tells me well barbara walters failed as a prime
time anchor so no other
women can do that that's the every woman theory why is that means because she
didn't someone else can't
besides if we're all gonna fail let's fail like that yeah that's terrific uh
being a good anchor person
doesn't make a good reporter and vice versa they're separate skills what was uh
uh working in washington
like was was that um is that the place to be if you're a news person washington
that in new york if
you're going to cover on network news it's primarily politics that's out of washington
that'd be the
place to be okay i hate to do this we're going to pause here but i want to find
out some more uh
interesting stuff as we say uh i'm the only one who says that by the way more
uh with jessica savage
is here bob the dog is not with us uh we'll reschedule him at a later date uh
anyway when you
were in washington did you go to the press conferences uh and ask questions of
the president's
uh i did the press conferences but i did them from the studio i did the wrap up
afterwards saying in
case you tuned in late with the president said was i don't like the press
conferences have you have
you ever asked a president a question sure i have in other situations and in
impromptu press conferences
but you don't get a lot of these press conferences you really don't because
what happens is everybody
wants to get their question so it doesn't make a difference whether the
president should declare war
what he wants to say he didn't do that by the way did he didn't do that oh good
no he didn't
no he didn't do that okay but maybe we ought to phone the newsroom no i don't
think so uh we
wouldn't want to know i guess uh but what happens is there's no follow-up
questions so somebody can
then ask about grain price supports in the midwest regardless of what he just
said oh i see so you
could ask him anything and then they would move right along uh but do you feel
like a duck standing up
there saying asking the president a question you try not to think about that
you really try to think about the
question you try to ask what that what the person at home would ask if they
were going to the press
conference and you try not to think it's the president if you start thinking
gee it's the
president maybe they're not asking this yeah don't