Anytime Richard Simmons is on as a guest is my fave…
Sweet Basil
I enjoyed when took the old NBC show on the road to Las Vegas, and each night Dave would come out and they would show a tote board showing the Late Night staff’s mounting total of gambling losses.
Tom Selleck came on the show and did his outboard motor impersonation - sticking his face in a tub of water and blowing bubbles.
I don’t know what you’d call them, but I always loved the little vignettes where he and Paul or he and the Elite Models would go around town and do stupid stuff. The were always set to some comical muzak-y music and they’d be doing really outrageous things. I can remember one where he went out with all these models and they were like stealing car radios and such with the music going “doop dee-doop doop doop, la la lala!” Hilarious!
Oh, and my brother and I would LOVE anything with Biff Henderson, especially “Father Biff” the tough inner city Priest.
More recently, the stagehands reading from an Oprah transcript, and Jewel’s book of “poetry” were a riot.
Sarcasm detector? Oh, THAT’S a real useful invention!
I watched the very first night-time Letterman show, when an apparently-drunk Bill Murray showed Dave his Aerobic workout to Olivia Newton John’s “Physical”.
Anyone remember Brother Theodore? That guy was a hoot.
And the problem with the giant doorknob was, well, it was just too big.
Hate to sound like a “gushing fan” but all those memories are terrific! You can find a classic moment in just about any Letterman show. My favorite was the Letterman film festival when he gave Paul & The Band, Micheal J Fox and Micheal Keaton each about $5000 to make a film. The band’s video for “Dress Cool” was great. Fox’s “Violins In Sport” was hilarious and the last line in Keaton’s documentrary was “Get the hell off the holy compound!” Then Letterman ran his own film! A true classic for the conspiracy minded!
Anyone remember Paul’s song: “It’s a Late Night World”? I guess it’s now the “intellectual property” of NBC so we won’t be seeing it on CBS.
With God as my witness, I thought turkey’s could fly.
FYI - on that “human alka selzer” bit, in rehersal no one had considered all the carbon dioxide that would be coming out of the water and Dave almost passed out !! When they taped the show he was wearing an oxygen mask - can you imagine if he had actually died from that stunt ? yikes that would be a most unique way to go eh ?
That’s for sure… remember when guests used to be afraid to come on his show because he was such a wise ass? He’s tamed down a lot since moving from NBC. His Adidas/jeans days were definitely when he did’t give a shit about NBC anymore.
Extra memory… Watching Sonny & Cher sing “I Got You Babe”, or watching him was his face with “hot-dog water” from a street vendor. Cracks me up and grosses me out just thinking about that one!
Enright3
This is gonna date me as a Young Person…
…A few years ago, Dave had the guy from Hello Deli wired up and told him what to say. He went to an adult movie theater and had the guy say “I need two tickets for the next showing. Yeah. One’s for me. The other’s for my friend, OJ.”
…Also, Dave riding around in a convertible with Zsa Zsa Gabor, going to all of the drive through places in LA, eating burgers. It was pointless and surreal.
Vogue, I’m now officially scared of you. I still want your Giants tickets, though.
~Kyla
“Anger is what makes America great.”
I thought his quintuple bypass was a laugh a minute.
“In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” - Ecclesiastes 1:18
A few years back Martha Stewart was on, and they were making Christmas decorations. Out of stuff he picked up off the street. He made a wreath out of cardboard, with a beer can and some miscellaneous trash on it, and held it up to the camera and said, “It’s a good thing.”
Another time, Dave was getting a mod haircut at some salon from a woman in vinyl pants. He kept saying “Hey, where’d ya get those pants?” and “I wonder where you get rubber pants?” Then at the end of the scene, there was a wide shot of a storefront called Rubber Pants Emporium or something.
He talked about New York City getting the Christmas spirit and went outside to show a body outline with Christmas lights.
The Stupid human Tricks segment where a woman rolled her tongue. When he asked her how she discovered she had this talent and what it was good for, she answered “Well, my boyfriend discovered I had the talent, which gives you an idea of what it’s good for>”
Throwing stuff off the roof.
Ah, yes. My favorite was the bowling bowls into the porcelin bathtub filled with chocolate pudding.
Or whenever he drinks eggnog…funny and disgusting all at once.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge…others just gargle.
I remember when he went over to the new NBC owner GE’s headquarters to offer a bouquet of flowers only to be given the bum’s rush by GE “security” thugs.
I used to watch Dave during the 80’s when I was in college but I haven’t seen it much since then.
The Chris Elliot skits were great. “The Man Under the Seats” - one episode where the studio shakes and rumbles and then Chris pops his head up from trap door in the audience stairs and yells, “Dave, Dave, shaft 9 just collapsed! Do you know where we keep the Nitro?” Or remember the Fugitive Guy and the dangerous one-legged man?
There was also a funny skit once with the viewer mail - somebody wrote in to ask if his leg ever fell asleep during the show - fade to dream sequence - and Dave is picking up and dropping his hand on the desk, interupting the guest speaking and telling his his hand seems to have fallen asleep. Then the guest is pounding Dave’s hand with a coffee cup and Dave is shaking his head,“no, nothing” because it isn’t waking up. Fade to black and they are both wearing welding masks and the guest is blow-torching Dave’s hand and Dave is saying, “Nope. Not a damn thing.” Fade to black and they are out in the parking lot next to a red convertible and the guest is slamming Dave’s hand in the door and Dave is still saying, “Nope. Nothing.” Classic Letterman.
What years did Bob Costas come on afterward with his interview program - was it 1989 and 1990 or did the program run longer than that?
Border collies - how could I forget the time Dave had a shepherd use his border collie to guide sheep from the studio into the NBC elevators, then out onto the sidewalk and finally into a NYC cab.