Name: Brian McConnachie on Letterman, April 21, 1983
Uploaded: 2015-12-16T03:41:10.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Brian McConnachie on Letterman, April 21, 1983' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-12-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Brian McConnachie on Letterman, April 21, 1983' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-12-16. Transcript available.

My next guest has been a writer for the National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live,
and won an Emmy for SCTV.
He is now the founder and editor of a new humor magazine entitled The American
Bystander.
Please welcome a man who has been called the Clark Kent of Comedy, Mr. Brian
McConaughey.
Thank you very much for being here.
You've been called the Clark Kent of Comedy.
I love an enigma, yes.
Why? Explain that.
Dave Thomas called me that.
It's, you don't know what to expect from Clark.
That's true.
And that's nothing else that we, should we move on?
Yes.
All right.
Let's move on.
It's a lovely evening out there.
Yeah, it is. It's a nice night.
Now this is a, this is an impressive piece of work here.
And is it, will it soon be on the stands?
First of all, tell us what it is, I guess.
It is a humor magazine for grown-ups.
Grown-ups and tall children.
Big kids, big triple E size, 44 longs.
Yeah.
It's a, it's a publication for, essentially, it's a gathering of talent.
Working in all forms of the media.
Comic, color comics, short stories, panel cartoons, essays, photo spreads.
It's, it's a showcase for talent.
A funny, funny publication for, okay.
Telling good stories.
And how soon are we to having this on our neighborhood newsstands?
We're hoping for the fall.
Oh, that would be very nice.
Now tell folks what some of the features would be in here, a little, uh,
specifically, if you can, Brian.
Um, it's, uh, there are pieces in there that are perceptions that are in the
common, um, consciousness.
There's a, there's a piece in there about, uh, dictionary art review.
That's, uh, it's those little dictionaries, those little illustrations in
dictionaries that you see all the time.
And it's just, gather them all together.
And you look at them all at once.
The, uh, there's a, somehow dictionaries have a penchant for, uh, medieval
armor, Roman armor.
They're just, it's, um, so there's, um, it's, it's gathering a number of, it's
hard to explain.
Well, I know what you're talking about.
I've seen the, uh, the dictionary art.
It's like, uh, you take Funkin' Wagnalls and you compare their wombats.
Or you compare their, uh, their poodles or their crescent wrenches or whatever,
yeah.
There's a piece in there that, uh, Don Novello did called, uh, Bridges and Grooms.
That's, uh, uh, and it's a picture of, it's pictures of men on their wedding
day.
Uh-huh.
Posing by a bridge.
As it is probably the scariest day in a man's life on his wedding day.
Uh, now, is it, is it coincidence that these guys posed by bridges or, uh, were
they asked?
No, we put them there.
You put them there.
You had to drag them away and put them there.
Yeah.
Uh, tell us about the, uh, Charles Kuralt, uh, idea for the magazine.
A number of up-and-coming things, yeah.
The, um, we're gonna find out, uh, check on the papers one day that Charles Kuralt's
on the road.
Uh, and break into his house.
Mm-hmm.
Go through his, um, go through his icebox, his record collection, his medicine
cabinet.
And you kind of wax poetic about all the fine things he must have.
Yeah.
Other, other, uh, future ideas for the magazine?
My Dinner with Andre the Giant.
My Dinner with Andre the Giant.
It's, um, speaking about, uh, existentialism and, and Crepe Suzette's and Ken
the Buddy Ventura.
Uh, now, um, tell me about writing on SCTV.
What was that, uh, like?
That was real nice.
They were just a lovely bunch of people.
That, um, the first day I walked in there, um, Dave and Rick, I worked in a
piece with them.
Dave Thomas?
And Rick Moranis.
Yes, sir.
And, um, they, uh, Rick had a, had this idea of Miracle on Mean Streets.
You know, combining some nice elements.
And it was the, kind of the Frank Capra feel of the 30s with, uh, Martin Scorsese's,
uh, Mean Streets.
So we had, uh, uh, the, um, De Niro character, who just, he's eating and eating
and eating and putting on weight to become a fatter Santa Claus.
And, um, there's a Jimmy Stewart character who's trying to seek Santa Claus to
keep raising the prices on him.
And it was, um, to the reveal of this Santa Claus with the white mohawk hairdo
at the end.
Never got on, but it was a spirited idea.
Uh, uh, what, what are other things that you've written for shows that, that
didn't get on, that you thought were especially worthy?
Oh, there was a real nice piece for, uh, for Saturday Night that, um, it was a
piece about, um, an unfortunate accident this girl had.
She's a skier.
She loses her sight.
And she has to work her way back and get her courage back and just be able to,
she was going to be a blind skier.
And it was, it really was working, it was working towards that piece of footage
that, um, that's on the, um, uh, ABC World of Sports that one poor skier every
week that goes down and crashes into those.
I had to give that justification, so it was, it was a setup for that.
Yeah, and it did not, it never showed up anywhere.
No, no.
Anything else that, uh, um, comes to mind that you would like to have seen
aired?
Um, I work with a piece with, uh, your Mr. Downey, uh, called the Edith Wharton
story.
It was, uh, an odd title for, for the piece, but it was, uh, it was about the
curative powers of dance employed during the Civil War.
That these, um, that these Southern Bells would sit by the, the, the patients'
beds and, and every so many hours they'd be pulled out of their beds and be
forced to dance, the waltzes and whatnot, the latest dancing cures from Europe.
Um, other pieces that did not get on.
The rest did get on.
Oh, well, that's good.
That's not a bad percentage, two out of, uh, many hundreds.
Uh, and you've also appeared in major motion pictures.
Um, my best work in Caddyshack, yeah.
Yeah.
On, on, on the, on the cutting room floor, unfortunately.
Oh, darn.
But I'm in, um, um, what's it called?
Strange Brew with the McKenzie Brothers again.
Uh-huh.
The, um, I act with Max Van Cheadle.
Max is great.
We just act, the two of us.
That's all you do is act?
We check the, we check the, the length's half off, stand back, we're gonna act.
He acts at me, I act at him.
And this, this is their, uh, the Bob and Doug film, right?
Yeah.
And this is, uh, soon to be released, as they say?
Uh, yes, summer.
I think summer.
Yeah.
All right.
Good luck.
I'm certain.
Uh, uh, good luck with the American Bystander.
Uh, you say, you, you think fall?
Yes.
I am, I am raising cash for it right now.
All right.
And, uh, I signed up, uh, Dr. Ruth.
Right in the back.
I knew she'd want to be a part of this.
She would be.
Uh, she is.
Thank you very much for being here, Brian.
Brian McConaughey, ladies and gentlemen, and the American Bystander.
We'll be right back to answer some more viewer mail.
Thank you.