"Leave It To Beaver" reference in "Licorice Pizza"

Cafe Society
1

In the 2021 comedy Licorice Pizza (set in 1973), teen actor Gary Valentine makes an off-color joke during a TV interview:

Host: How are things going for you, Gary?
Gary: Last week I did three beavers.
Host: You mean Leave It To Beaver?
Gary: Three beavers.

So the host apparently thinks Gary meant "I made guest appearances on three episodes of Leave It To Beaver, when Gary actually meant “I had sex with three women.” But Leave It To Beaver ended in 1963 (not counting the 80s revival series), so why would the host think Gary was appearing in new episodes ten years later?

2

I suspect the host wasn’t all that up to date, or he just might have been kinda dumb.

Or maybe the screenwriter was, I dunno.

3

I don’t recall the movie but a TV host wasn’t going to say “You had sex with 3 women” during an interview in 1973.

4

I haven’t seen the movie, but maybe the interviewer thought he meant he watched reruns of three episodes.

If not that, then maybe the screenwriter was just reaching way too far to make a joke.

5

The easiest explanation is the host was confused because what could Gary have meant.
Second easiest…host was trying to cover for a crude joke.
Longshot explanation is… tv host is dumb.

6

Speaking of dumb hosts and LitB, I remember watching Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow show and he had Jerry Mathers and Ken Osmond on. Snyder started a question to Osmond by referring to him playing the Beaver’s brother.

Whaaat? How did he not know who Eddie Haskell was? Why wasn’t he better prepped if he had no clue about the show?

So a talk show host in the 70s not having a clue about LitB is completely possible.

7

I remember that too! Once he was straightened out, Snyder referred to Eddie as “Beaver’s arch enemy.”

8

They called him “The Beaver Cleaver”

9

Gary Valentine is based on Gary Goetzman who was a child actor in the early 1960s. Perhaps the (probably made up) Beaver gag was related by him to his friend Paul Thomas Anderson.

10

Tom Snyder also had the singer Meat Loaf on his show once and kept calling him Meatball, so there’s that.

11

I think he was frequently stoned on that show. And by frequently I mean on every show.

12

Man, that has to be it! As a kid, I always thought he was weird, but for some reason, it never occurred to me that anyone on TV could be stoned (except for SNL cast members).

13

I used to watch Tom Snyder every now and then. And now, thinking about it, I’m pretty sure that if I had been in his place, I would have taken every opportunity to be stoned out of my gourd.

ETA: I’m not saying that like it’s a bad thing.

14

I liked Tom Snyder, after I got used to him. He had his own way. He was the first person I heard use the phrase “FY money”.

15

Letterman took over Snyder’s slot in '82 and always felt bad about it since he thought so much of the guy. When Dave went to CBS he got choose who followed and he picked Tom.

There’s an episode of The Larry Sanders Show where Dave and Larry (Garry Shandling) get into a thing where Dave tricks Larry into picking Snyder to go into the post Larry 12:30 slot. This was a year before Dave picked Snyder.