The Letterman Podcast's Mike Chisholm (Part 1)

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Callaroga Shark Media. Yeah. My
next guest is Mike Chisholm. He hosts

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The Letterman Podcast. Hi, I'm
Johnny Mack with your daily comedy news.

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I hope you caught my little lettermanesque
tribute there. The Letterman Podcast celebrates the

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incredible body of work done by broadcast
legend David Letterman and company. On The

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Letterman Podcast, Mike highlights folks who
worked for Dave or were part of any

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of his show's productions. People had
an accounter with one of his shows,

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or are enthusiasts with relevant discussion points
or memories pertaining to any of Letterman's productions

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or endeavors. I've split this one
up into two parts. We did about

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eighty minutes ross. I'll give you
half today, half tomorrow. Here's my

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interview with Mike Chisholm. I wear
many hats, and when I look at

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my own stuff, For example,
I host a comedy podcast, and as

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I explain, I know a lot
more about comedy than most people, but

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the people that know more about it
know a lot more than I do.

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So I was prepping for this podcast, I was like, all right,

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I know a lot about Letterman.
I'm a big letterman fan. Let me

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check out some episodes of Mike's pod, and then I was like, oh,

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I'm out of my depth here.
I can't talk writers and producers.

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This guy knows his stuff. Props
to you. Where did the podcast come

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from? What gave you the idea? Oh? Man? Okay, So

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there's a whole bunch of ways too
that I can answer this question, because

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the answer, of course, has
a ton of depth to it. You

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know, it all really started.
I mean, my love of Dave has

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gone ever since, you know,
back to my first time. I can

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remember seeing the show. I was
eight nine years old, and I remember

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the show that I saw, and
the idea that adults could act silly was

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so charming to me. I had
always attracted to broadcasters. I love mister

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Rogers. Growing up. I'm a
Canadian, so hawking it in Canada was

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always the thing to me. You
know what. And it wasn't Bob Cole

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and Harry Neil who called the play
by play. It was Dave Hodge.

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It was Ron McClean. I love
Ron McClain. I liked pro wrestling,

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so Vincent man Agrilla Monsoon I loved
broadcasters. It fascinated me And the thing

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about Dave is that he is not
a pure comedian. He's got a razor

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sharp wit, no doubt, He's
a broadcaster. He's a broadcaster in comedy,

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in variety. I don't like using
that word so much, but he's

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He would take all of the chaos
and things going on around him and he

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would almost treat it like he was
a reporter. And I found that very

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charming. When Dave was going to
finish his run on late night television in

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twenty fifteen, I knew I needed
to go to New York and see him

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one more time that night. I
actually and you talk about this level of

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knowledge that I have, Yeah,
I read all the books. I did

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my very best to try and learn
as much as I possibly could about the

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show behind the scenes. But I
had an encounter with Dave right before before

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the show that day April twentieth,
twenty fifteen, where I was part of

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the Q and A that he did
before the show that picked. That moment

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where he was looking back at Paul
and using me. I like to say,

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he used me as a comedy speedbag
was immortalized. It was a picture

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of that moment was taken and put
into the New York Times into the New

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Yorker, and just that moment was
a seminal moment. After that, I

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became friends with some of the people
who worked behind the scenes online. Became

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friends with some of the people who
worked behind the scenes. And there's a

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guy who you could see over my
left. His name is Rich Sheckman.

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That's a picture from his memorial.
Rick Sheckman was a They call him the

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film coordinator, but he essentially was
an executive producer or a producer of Letterman

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for thirty two years. He and
I became a really became very close friends.

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And I said, look, I'm
a huge podcast fan and I've been

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waiting for the Letterman podcast to come
out. I mean, as you know,

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there are these podcasts that do a
deep dive on pretty much any subject

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you could ever want, and folks
who are enthusiast if those subjects can enjoy

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the podcast, become part of a
community, all of that stuff. I

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was waiting for years for a Letterman
podcast to come out. One never did.

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And so I said to Shaky,
I said, look, I want

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to do this. I need a
conciliaria, I need a Tom Hagen.

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Will you be that guy? For
me, he said, Michae, I'll

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be that guy for you. He
set up a couple intros for me,

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and the rest is an ongoing history
that's still being rewritten. So thank you

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for letting me spout off on that
long winded answer. But we could I

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could give an equally long winded answer
with other pieces of information that led to

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this podcast happening, and there's just
a lot there, So thank you for

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that. I was so excited.
I stumbled across the podcast. I had

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Mark Malkoff on from the Carson Podcast
and he's got a new one inside Late

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Night, And when I was doing
that, I stumbled across this and I

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was like, Oh, I didn't
know about this one, And I'm so

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excited because for me, I've got
what up to about one hundred and ten

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episodes or so that I can dive
through now. I had no idea.

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I was psyched. I think episode
one thirty comes out tomorrow. Yeah,

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you know what, I get that
a lot. I didn't know that this

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thing existed. Yeah, you know, my savvy when it comes to getting

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it out there is almost nil.
But I like that. People ask me

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all the time, you know what
happens if Worldwide Pants that's Dave's production company,

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wants to scoop you up or something, and I heartily say, you

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know, if he's the mothership,
I'm just saying, beam me up please.

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I like being indie. It feels
like I'm an indie band, which

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I probably desperately wanted to be a
part of. In the nineties as I

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was growing up, the indie music
sometimes was cooler than the popular music that

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was out there being played on the
radio. And I feel like there's a

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little bit of that vibe with the
show because I am so independent and I

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am I'm not doing anything to market
the thing. I'm just letting it grow

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organically, and it's on YouTube and
Apple and Spotify, and there's an audience,

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a genuine bonafide audience on each one
of those platforms, and it's a

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lot of fun growing this thing and
letting people discover it organically. It also

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takes the pressure off. Doing a
podcast about David Letterman is a pretty high

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wire and there's a lot of people
with a lot of opinions, So being

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indie is fun. I think you're
smart there. Anytime something goes official,

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just top mind, like an unofficial
Star Wars fans podcast is always going to

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be a million times cooler than the
official Star Wars podcast, even if you

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get George Lucas the unofficial one.
If it's a fans podcast, you don't

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have even if there's no pressure from
the official folks, there's still If you're

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doing the official Star Wars podcast,
you're not gonna get on and bash the

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Acolyte. You're just not gonna do
that, whereas you might on the fans

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podcast. So I think you're smart
there. That said, if Dave calls,

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of course you're gonna say, yeah, that's the dream, Oh,

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it is the dream. And and
I like the analogy with the Star Wars.

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Yeah, if it's an official thing, Dave Filone's gonna show up and

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he's gonna have a list of five
six things that he can talk about and

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an entire legion of things that he
can't talk about, whereas if he goes

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on something that's a little bit more
off the beaten trail, and I've had

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that. I'll tell you this with
these staffers, Johnny, Like, seriously,

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some of these staffers, I think
I got them on the show because

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we're unofficial, because they're also got
that sort of punk rock kind of mentality,

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that indie mentality. They dig it, they groove on it. Now

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there are some also, though that's
a double edged sword. There are some

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who are like, so the reverence
that they have for Dave and the company,

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you know, well, it's not
very many, but two or three

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people that said, but if you
were officially, if you were officially affiliated

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with Worldwide Pants, we would come
on. But we can't out of respect

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because of that. I respect that. But for the vast majority of them,

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I think you're exactly right. I
get a much looser conversation with people.

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And the ironic part about what you
say, the unofficial Star Wars fans

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would bash the acolyte. Here's the
thing. The Letterman Podcast is our tagline.

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It's where a celebration of the greatest
body of broadcast work in history,

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that of David Letterman and company.
So we celebrate this stuff that show for

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thirty two years. They were miners. They would go down in the mine.

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They put their little hats on and
they would turn the lights on and

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they would go into the deep dark
recesses of pop culture, of current events,

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and they would mine comedy and sometimes
they would come out with diamonds bigger

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than their head and just amazing stuff. But guess what do they do.

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They just cast that diamond aside and
they keep mining because there's a show the

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next day, and our show is
a celebration. So while you could easily

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go down the path of salaciousness or
gossip or maliciousness or any of that stuff,

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I have chosen that our show will
not focus on that at all.

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If things come up organically, okay, we might toss them around a little

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bit, but that is not the
focus of it. And I think a

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lot of shows that do deep dives
into these topics enjoy going into some of

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the darker recesses of human behavior,
and that's just not something that I'm interested

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in doing. Because there were so
many diamonds. I'd rather focus on the

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diamonds than the coal. I think
you nailed it there. As you were

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speaking, I was thinking. I
talked to Malkoff. Then I had Jason

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Zinnemann on the York from the New
York Times, and we talked about Letterman,

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and not once did I think about
some of the gossipy stuff that Dave

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got trapped up in in the nineties
or Zeros, and I haven't even thought

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about this. When I think of
David Letterman, I'm thinking about throwing stuff

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off a five story tower. And
I think your stick is right. Let's

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remember the good times and to do
an episode on one of those other things.

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Who cares? And I could tell
that's just why would you do that?

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That's not what you do, and
it's we do live in a culture

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where clickbait is key, and if
you can throw some gotcha stuff out there,

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you're gonna get clicks, you're gonna
get views. The good news is

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I'm immune to that. I don't
care about clicks and views. I care

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about putting out a show where I
can have itches that I've had in the

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recesses of my mind for decades,
scratched, and to talk about this stuff

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that I just love so much and
these people that I love so much.

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Gosh, Dave made his producers,
his writers, the crew around him a

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part of the show, and there
was a secret to that. They made

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us all feel like we were part
of a secret club. And as somebody

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who felt like it was in the
club and gets to go and talk to

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the folks who were actually in the
clubhouse, that is a great thing.

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You and you've probably born. I've
worked in an office for a long time.

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Certain that you've had a work environment
where there are people around. Guess

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what, You're going to see every
type of behavior that is a known to

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man if you're in a situation like
that. I've also been part of a

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family for a long time. These
people, a lot of them were together

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for multiple decades, and even the
ones who weren't won three, five,

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ten years together. You get a
group of people who are together like that,

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that are like a family, and
in that work environment, you're going

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to see every behavior known to man. The difference is in the offices that

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I've worked in, that stuff doesn't
get broadcast. You see it, it

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happens, but it doesn't get broadcast
out there. When you're in something public,

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like a show like this, that
stuff gets broadcast. And it's one

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of the unfortunate things about entertainment,
the entertainment business is that sometimes people are

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more interested in that than the actual
product that comes out. I'm just not

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one of those people. Let me
ask you about twelve thirty versus eleven thirty

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versus. Now, this is I've
been struggling with this, especially as I've

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gotten back into Dave, and I
remember back in the eighties staying up till

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one thirty in the morning, four
nights a week. And then my godmother

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got me a VCR in nineteen eighty
five, and then that solved that problem.

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But the amount of times I said, man, if Dave were on

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at eleven thirty, I would watch
this thing every night. Then Dave moves

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to eleven thirty, and I lasted
about a year and a half, and

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then I recently realized I didn't watch
most of the last twenty years. It's

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like Howard Stern to me, like
in that way that I consider myself a

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really big fan. And at some
point the work stopped connecting with me.

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I don't know if it was because
I was in my twenties and you go

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out and you hang out in New
York City and you're dating people and you're

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hanging out and you're not watching TV. But I also come back to the

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twelve thirty. We're all in on
this renegade thing versus eleven thirty. Now

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it's an Armani suit and shoes,
and it's a little more. I always

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called it establishment letterman. And now
we have this third period where again this

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guy that I love puts these things
out on Netflix, and it takes me

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three weeks to get it around to
them. So can you be my therapist

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here? What is wrong with me? Nothing's wrong with you. It's funny

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talking to You'd mentioned Zennman. I've
talked to him, and I've talked to

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Bill Carter about this. Bill Carter, of course wrote The Late Shift and

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The War for Late Night. Zenniman
wrote, let him in the last giant

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of Late Night. Fascinating guy to
talk to you. I'm sure you loved

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talking to him. I love talking
to Jason. Yeah. Just absolutely great,

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great guy, they both are.
I think it's part of it lays

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into where your formative years were.
My formative years when I graduated high school,

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it was nineteen ninety four. Okay, so I watched I was right

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in my formative years, the cement
very wet. Yet there was still a

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measure of somewhat of intelligence and cognition
that was there because it was at that

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time and place when Late Shift happened, when Dave moved, because it was

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a tumultuous move from eleven thirty to
twelve or from twelve thirty to eleven thirty,

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I should say it was a tumultuous
move, and folks who were that

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age, that was my formative years
right there. I was already on team

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Dave and excited about what was happening, really fascinated by it. Dave was

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on the cover of Time magazine,
he was on Rolling Stone multiple times.

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He was the biggest news story in
entertainment around the world. Everybody knew what

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was going on because I was at
that time and place Late Show. For

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me, there was no problem.
I completely understood the fact that Dave needed

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to go to a broader audience.
I knew why I liked Late Night better

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than The Tonight Show. Whereas my
dad was a Johnny Carson guy. I

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knew that I like that show better. I also had this awareness that if

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Dave moved to eleven thirty, he
would have to be more like the Tonight

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Show. In fact, Dave wanted
the Tonight Show. He wanted to do

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that. He wanted to get a
little bit more mainstream, but he couldn't.

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In my mind, there's a guy
by the name of Don Giller.

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If you go to Don Giller's YouTube
channel, he is the ultimate Letterman archivist.

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He has everything that Dave has ever
done, and has put a lot

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of it on very thoughtfully and carefully
put it on YouTube as compilations. And

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I asked Don about this very subject
once because he is Don's an older guy

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now and he has gone through the
eras just like you have, and he

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competed to Mozart. He said,
Okay, look, early Mozart is different

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than later Mozart, but it's still
Mozart all the way. And I feel

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the exact same way about Dave.
To be the therapist here, you don't

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have David Letterman doing My Guest needs
no introduction. My Next Guest needs no

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introduction, which to me is a
phenomenal long form piece. You don't have

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that if you don't have Late Night
with David Letterman where he's throwing stuff off

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the building. When he was hanging
out with Billie Eilish in the last season

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of Late My Next Guest, he's
doing go karts with her. So yes,

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he's sitting down and having the intimate
Tom Snyder and Tom Snyder of course

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a big influence on Dave. He's
having these long form conversations with her where

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he's really getting into and he's talking
with Phineas and he's talking about these things,

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But then there are excerpts, and
the excerpts are he doing go karts

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with her, or with Lizzo.
He's playing the flute with Lizzo, or

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he's going out in Chicago, you
know, for the places that Tina Fey

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went to when she was at Second
City and eating this bad but very good

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food. And you've got these little
things. Those are to me sprinklings of

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Late Night. They're little nods.
They're a little homagous to the stuff he

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would do on Late Night. But
yeah, as he matured and as he

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grew, he knew he was appealing
to a broader audience, and so some

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of the more subversive of some of
the more weird stuff had to go in

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the back. But then you look
at some of the stuff that they did

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on Late Show, like the stuff
they would do with Alan Calter, for

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example, the announcer. You got
Alan Caulter doing a mockup of a one

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in hundred collect commercial and he's sitting
there and then they're combining it with Saving

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Private Ryan, the hot movie at
the time, and he's sitting there doing

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a one in harndred collect commercial with
his guts hanging out of him because He's

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part of a war zone, and
it's what the heck is this? So

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I think a lot of folks who
loved Late Night didn't necessarily look for those

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moments in Late Show where they were
constant nods to the stuff that they would

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do in Late Night. It was
just done in a different way. I

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think the eleven thirty thing is on
point. You'll know this, But for

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younger listeners, there was a really
cool, edgy comedian that was a frequent

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guest on Letterman and would crush and
I will use the word edgy to describe

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Jay Leno. Sure, yeah,
ye, just a great guest. You

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mentioned Tom Snyder. I recently discovered
it. It's some sort of homebrew dock

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on YouTube about the Carson Letterman Snyder
relationship. There. I feel like I

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missed the boat on Tom, and
I want to go back and do a

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deep dive on Tom. But in
that doc there were more clips than I've

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ever seen of the Daytime Show.
I have no knowledge of the Daytime Show

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because I discovered Dave with Late Night
and maybe I saw the Daytime Show once.

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Do you have any command of that
period of it. I'm on a

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mission to learn as much as I
can about the daytime show that I can.

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I know our listeners here can't see
my set, but if you look

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behind me on my set there you'll
see a red folder with an Emmy on

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it. That's actually that's the Emmy. Congratulations, you've been not nominated for

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an Emmy folder That was given out
for the David Letterman Show, The Morning

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Show. And so you've got this
show that showed up on Morning last It

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only lasted a few months in the
morning time. It was ninety minutes long,

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and it was David Letterman doing the
stuff that David Letterman did on late

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night television in the morning, and
it was People were completely puzzled by it.

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And it was canceled unfortunately because of
ratings and stuff, but still nominated

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for Emmy's different, very excellent piece. Now, at that time, the

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Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder. Tom
Dave loved Tom. Tom would host The

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Tomorrow Show. That was the show
that did come on after Carson for a

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long time, and it was a
long form conversation show. We've actually had

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his daughter, Anne Marie Snyder on
our show and we've talked a lot.

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She's busting her butt to get a
documentary made about Tom because he is.

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Many do consider him the greatest long
form conversationalist in broadcast history. A lot

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of people have a lot of reverence
for Tom, including David Letterman, and

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back at that time, there's a
whole bunch of irony that's here. Tom

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Snyder was on The Tomorrow Show.
He and Carson famously did not get along

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very well. And when Carson signed
his I don't know if this is last,

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but one of his last deals,
which gave him a tremendous amount of

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power. Johnny Carson arguably one of
the most powerful men in show business when

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he was at his zenith. One
of the things that he got was a

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lighter schedule, and then he also
had command of the twelve thirty slot afterwards.

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Subsequently, the Tom Snyder Tomorrow Show
was canceled, and Late Night with

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David Letterman slid in because at that
point Dave's Morning Show was canceled. Now

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there's a pulpach ironies here. Dave
was on the Tomorrow Show as a guest.

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Tom loved what Dave was doing in
the morning, all this crazy stuff.

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And then we find ourselves a few
months later, or maybe a year

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later, we find ourselves where Tom's
show is getting canceled and Dave is getting

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put in that slot as the heir
apparent, Carson being one of the producers

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on his show. And there's the
ironic part really heats up later on when

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Dave goes over to CBS gets the
Late Show or Late Show with David Letterman.

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He also he basically took the same
Carson deal and moved it over to

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a new network. So Dave had
a tremendous amount of power at that point,

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including the twelve thirty slot, his
company being able to produce the show

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that comes on after Late Show,
and who do they hire as the first

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host of Late Show but Tom Snyder. And it's a very interesting scenario at

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the time. You can watch the
Larry Sanders Show, and you know,

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with Gary Shanling, which was on
HbA at the time, they wove reality

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into that as well. That show
predicted that Dave would have Tom on as

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the guest after. There's a whole
bunch of rich, beautiful, organic human

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storytelling in the history of these things, and Tom is one of those guys

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where I hope that Annie is successful
in getting this dock out, not just

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out, but like really out there. So a lot of people get to

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see the genius of Tom Snyder.
But Dave is one of those guys.

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If you look at the press conference
of hiring Tom at CBS, Dave said,

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look back in the day and this
is the time without as you mentioned

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without VCRs. About that, Dave
said that he watched probably eighty percent of

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Tom Snyder's show as they were broadcast. Dave is a huge fan of it,

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and I think you're seeing echoes of
Tom Snyder in what Dave is doing

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now as the elder Statesman of broadcasting. He's doing the Tom Snyder thing right

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now. You name check to Larry
Sanders there, I call it showbiz adjacent.

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For thirty plus years, my legacy
career is radio, and I've book

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shows, and I've been a producer
and I've done all that things. I

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don't think civilians realize how accurate the
backstage stuff at Larry Sanders is. There's

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a particular scene I was producing John
Gambling in New York, and I guess

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it's Gane. Grofflow's character goes in
and goes, hey, do you want

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to talk to Barry White? And
he goes why to F what I want

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to talk to Betty White and I'm
like, I've been there with the host

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who's half listening. I'm like,
so, just a fantastic show, Larry

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Sanders is. It's groundbreaking in so
many ways. There are a few shows

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out there where you can look at
shows that are on TV today that are

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effective, and then you can go
back and you can find their ancestors that

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kind of broke the ground for that. Gary Shannling had two amazing shows that

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did just that. Now here's the
thing about Larry Sanders. I was just

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talking with I'm not going to say
who it was, but one of Dave's

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high up writer slash producers, and
we were talking about Larry Sanders. It

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is just a few weeks back.
We were talking about this and he said,

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Okay, here's the thing. Here's
the thing about Sanders. And most

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people, like you say they love
Sanders. Most people who worked for for

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Letterman like it was a big deal. Every I think it was Sunday night

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it would come on. They were
so excited when Larry Sanders would come on.

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But there was one major difference that
this person made and it was I

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think it was I think that this
is a part of Larry Sanders that might

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have had to do with if they
were putting in elements of Jay Leno's Tonight

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Show into the fabric of the show. But they said nobody was afraid of

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Larry. He said, that's the
thing he goes. This is where the

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suspension of disbelief got interrupted for me, was nobody was afraid of Larry.

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They could all go up to him, and they could these real moments like

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you just talked about the host that's
half listening and half not and whatnot.

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Yes, but they weren't terrified of
him. And there were a lot of

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folks who had a deep reverence,
respect, and fear flat out of Dave

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and that wasn't represented in Larry.
However, there are a lot of folks

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who say that was more the atmosphere
of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno,

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that there was a little bit more
casualness there. So that was something that

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was really interesting about that. I
was listening to your interview with Morty Robert

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Morton, and I picked up a
hint of that early on the Oh let

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me go recap the show with Dave? Has this actually gonna go? I

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don't know. I've never heard of
Dave's reputation one way or the other.

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Is there a street rep for that? Was it scary to go talk to

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Dave after a show? The post
mortems of and Dave has gone on record

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about this, and you can read
it in Zinneman's book, you can read

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it in Carter's book. I'm not
throwing any shade here. Dave's attitude towards

358
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himself and his performance. He some
would say he tortured himself because his and

359
00:22:26.599 --> 00:22:30.960
it wasn't about anybody else and screaming
at other people or yelling at other people

360
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or getting upset at other people.
It was himself. He would get upset

361
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at himself. And when a show
wasn't good, and again his version of

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a show that's not good. The
standard is completely different than someone say like

363
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myself or you who are watching thoroughly
entertained by things. And if there was

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a mess up of any sort,
this would celebrate it because that was the

365
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tone of the show. But then
he would go back and lamb based himself.

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And you had people there who were
the support crew watching this guy that

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they love so much torture himself.
The good news is that evolved as well,

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just like Mozart's music evolved, so
too did Dave's attitude towards towards this,

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and over the years he developed an
attitude where, you know what,

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if the show doesn't go, well, there's another show tomorrow night, and

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he would be able to reconcile that
better than he could early on. But

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early on, yes, there was
a lot of times where and the cancelation

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of the morning show I think was
a big part of that. I haven't

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asked him that specifically, That's something
I would love to ask him, but

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I think some of that behavior towards
himself was a flat out was flat out

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fear that they canceled me once they
could cancel me again. We need to

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keep a very high standard, and
I need the standard I need to have

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for myself needs to be the highest
of all. Because I'm the host.

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It also the buck stops with me. I get it back. Early in

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my career, I remember a conversation
I had with my host. We had

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an hour that I didn't like,
and I might have slammed down the headphones

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whatever. I'm not on the air
at this point. I'm on the other

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side of the glass, and she
said to me, all right, relax,

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it's just an hour. And I
go when I stop caring, change

385
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producers, and I totally get the
mentality. Yeah, I feel the same

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way. Believe it or not,
anybody who's ever seen or heard the Letterman

387
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podcast. Believe it or not,
I actually feel the same way. It

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may not look like it when you
look at the product that I put out

389
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there, but I feel the exact
same way. There are times where I

390
00:24:18.519 --> 00:24:22.039
will look back at a segment with
somebody or a line of conversation. A

391
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lot of the time it's missed opportunity. A lot of the time it's like,

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why the heck didn't I ask them
this? Why the heck didn't I

393
00:24:26.599 --> 00:24:30.119
ask them that? Or that could
have gone better, I could have put

394
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a better shine on this person or
that person or whatever. And I'll just

395
00:24:32.880 --> 00:24:36.559
absolutely blast myself. But yet you're
exactly right. It's caring, and I

396
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think there's a certain amount of personal
development that can be added to that emotion.

397
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Like my life motto is, don't
focus on the problem, focus on

398
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the solution. But if I could
focus on the solution quickly as opposed to

399
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lamenting on the problem, I'm going
to be more effective at that. But

400
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yeah, I think the best shows
i've ever watched that I've ever attached myself

401
00:24:52.519 --> 00:24:56.799
to say this with my wife all
the time. My wife is an unbelievable

402
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cook. And one of the reasons
that she such an effective culinary artist is

403
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because she has that intangible ingredient,
and that's love. She puts love into

404
00:25:06.759 --> 00:25:08.960
what she does. And I think
that all of us can look out and

405
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.359
we can see things from an entertainment
perspective that are manufactured, and we can

406
00:25:14.480 --> 00:25:17.720
see things that are produced with love. And you want the produce with love

407
00:25:17.720 --> 00:25:18.799
stuff. That's the stuff that's going
to connect, that's the stuff that's going

408
00:25:18.839 --> 00:25:22.000
to resonate, that's the stuff that's
going to stand the test of time.

409
00:25:22.319 --> 00:25:26.839
During that interview with Morty, I
was quite surprised to learn, I don't

410
00:25:26.839 --> 00:25:30.880
want to step on your story,
how much of he controlled chaos Dave knew

411
00:25:30.920 --> 00:25:36.720
about in advance. That surprised me. Yeah, absolutely, this is something

412
00:25:36.759 --> 00:25:40.480
that if and when I have a
conversation with Dave, I certainly want to

413
00:25:40.519 --> 00:25:45.279
go down that path. Early on
in the show, the head writer Meryl

414
00:25:45.319 --> 00:25:48.480
Marco and this might even this might
have even been knocked off before Late Night

415
00:25:48.559 --> 00:25:52.640
started. I'm not exactly clear.
I get different responses from different people about

416
00:25:52.640 --> 00:25:57.279
this. But one of the things
that Meryl knew about Dave was that he

417
00:25:57.440 --> 00:26:03.200
had this razor sharp wit. That
is just his reactions to things off the

418
00:26:03.279 --> 00:26:07.960
cuff are nothing short of astounding.
He is just a genius when it comes

419
00:26:07.960 --> 00:26:11.920
to responding to things. And he
was like that when he was doing stand

420
00:26:11.000 --> 00:26:15.160
up at the Comedy Store as well. Heckler's would be absolutely sliced and diced,

421
00:26:15.240 --> 00:26:18.680
and he would do it in a
way. I said this on another

422
00:26:18.839 --> 00:26:21.880
interview recently. He was like Muhammad
Ali. He wouldn't use vulgarity, he

423
00:26:21.920 --> 00:26:25.240
wouldn't have to use anything. He
would dance around it and he would His

424
00:26:25.279 --> 00:26:30.279
weapons were vocabulary and wit and cleverness. And he just was tremendous and Dave

425
00:26:30.359 --> 00:26:33.519
still is to this day. The
exchange I had with him in the audience,

426
00:26:33.519 --> 00:26:36.839
I made him laugh, but which
is one of the greatest moments of

427
00:26:36.839 --> 00:26:40.000
my life. But it was only
a second long because a second later he

428
00:26:40.039 --> 00:26:42.559
came back with another thing that made
the audience laugh even more, and that

429
00:26:42.680 --> 00:26:47.839
was Dave's. One of the greatest
attributes that David Letterman has, beside his

430
00:26:47.920 --> 00:26:52.000
broadcast ability, is that razor sharp
wit. So the idea of surprise the

431
00:26:52.079 --> 00:26:56.039
host was something that was let's surprise
the host, let's land, but that

432
00:26:56.119 --> 00:27:00.200
was knocked off very quickly because Dave
does not like surprises. He likes to

433
00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:03.880
know what's coming, and so at
some point early on, a kind of

434
00:27:03.920 --> 00:27:07.119
culture was built where it would look
like it was a surprise, and it

435
00:27:07.160 --> 00:27:10.799
might have been a surprise to the
audience. You think about the Andy Kaufman

436
00:27:11.079 --> 00:27:14.160
Jerry Lawler incident, things like that. There are things that might have been

437
00:27:14.200 --> 00:27:17.359
a surprise to even the crew,
but Dave would be in on it,

438
00:27:17.480 --> 00:27:21.480
and Dave's logic behind it was,
Okay, if I can just show that

439
00:27:21.599 --> 00:27:23.240
same I think this is what it
is, but this is what I want

440
00:27:23.279 --> 00:27:26.839
to ask him about. I believe
his logic was, if I can just

441
00:27:26.960 --> 00:27:32.599
show that razor sharp wit or that
spontaneity, but I know it's coming,

442
00:27:33.039 --> 00:27:34.680
I've got the best of both worlds
because I could put the shine on whatever

443
00:27:34.720 --> 00:27:37.720
I want because I know what's coming. I've got some control there. But

444
00:27:37.799 --> 00:27:41.400
at the same time, I can
still use those abilities to show spontaneity,

445
00:27:41.480 --> 00:27:45.079
and certainly spontaneity was included in the
show. It was a hallmark in my

446
00:27:45.160 --> 00:27:49.119
opinion, but Dave knew what was
going on. For the most part.

447
00:27:49.440 --> 00:27:56.559
I loved in the late night era
the they would experiment a lot or just

448
00:27:56.720 --> 00:28:00.720
totally deconstruct the format. What's popping
in a mind is they did at least

449
00:28:00.720 --> 00:28:03.200
one episode from the back office.
Let's not use the set, Let's give

450
00:28:03.319 --> 00:28:07.319
paul A Cassio keyboard, and let's
just do the show from the back I

451
00:28:07.400 --> 00:28:11.200
love that kind of episode. Yeah, and there's so many examples of it.

452
00:28:11.319 --> 00:28:14.440
They did an episode on a plane
flying from New York to Florida.

453
00:28:14.480 --> 00:28:17.119
They did an episode on the back
of a truck where it was trucks that

454
00:28:17.160 --> 00:28:19.920
were driving on an expressway or a
parkway. They did a show there.

455
00:28:19.960 --> 00:28:23.200
They did a show, but they
would They did that even into the late

456
00:28:23.680 --> 00:28:27.200
show era. They did shows when
they were renovating the set and building the

457
00:28:27.200 --> 00:28:32.119
bridges, putting the bridges in to
the set. There after the initial first

458
00:28:32.480 --> 00:28:34.279
late show set, they did shows
in the lobby for a week. They

459
00:28:34.319 --> 00:28:38.160
would fly in audiences from different cities. They would all sorts of theme shows

460
00:28:38.119 --> 00:28:41.000
that they did it during it was
it Hurricane Sandy. I don't know if

461
00:28:41.039 --> 00:28:45.039
it was Hurricane Sandy, but on
one of the natural disasters that hit nor'easters

462
00:28:45.079 --> 00:28:49.759
that hit New York. They did
shows without an audience, the inventive nature

463
00:28:51.119 --> 00:28:52.000
of and then they would take the
show on the road. Of course,

464
00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:55.680
they'd go to Chicago, they'd go
to la they'd go to San Francisco,

465
00:28:55.920 --> 00:28:57.319
they would go all sorts of places
with the show in London, England,

466
00:28:57.759 --> 00:29:00.799
and so yeah, that was one
of the things, many things that they

467
00:29:00.839 --> 00:29:03.720
would do to, as you said, deconstruct the talk show and do something

468
00:29:03.880 --> 00:29:07.920
similar but different. I think I
don't know that there's an example of a

469
00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:15.119
program that has done that better than
David Letterman's productions. And you see the

470
00:29:15.200 --> 00:29:18.200
influence in those of us who grew
up on it. You know, I'm

471
00:29:18.279 --> 00:29:22.960
just some dopey podcaster now, and
I'll sometimes friend me too. I'll do

472
00:29:22.119 --> 00:29:26.400
the show from I call it a
pool side edition, and the real truth

473
00:29:26.480 --> 00:29:29.240
is it's eighty five and Sonny out
and I don't feel like sitting in the

474
00:29:29.240 --> 00:29:33.160
basement, so I take it out
there. But like the landscapers show up

475
00:29:33.160 --> 00:29:36.799
next door, and I keep going. And it's that Letterman influencing me though,

476
00:29:36.799 --> 00:29:40.039
Oh especially because it's a comedy show. I'm not doing the world news,

477
00:29:40.519 --> 00:29:41.960
but I'm like, oh, I'm
just going to shout over the landscapers

478
00:29:42.000 --> 00:29:45.000
and make a bit out of it. It's so much fun. Yeah,

479
00:29:45.079 --> 00:29:48.799
I love whenever I meet somebody who
has been influenced by Dave that way,

480
00:29:48.799 --> 00:29:53.279
where they want to take something a
little bit askew and put it into the

481
00:29:53.359 --> 00:29:59.480
events of everyday life. I adore
that, and to me, that mischievous

482
00:30:00.119 --> 00:30:03.400
nature of doing something just for the
sake of doing it, really not even

483
00:30:03.440 --> 00:30:08.519
knowing why other than it tickles you
inside. I think if we did that

484
00:30:08.799 --> 00:30:11.599
more as a culture, as a
species, I think we would have a

485
00:30:11.599 --> 00:30:15.079
lot more smiles on our faces.
It's so fun to just to do something

486
00:30:15.119 --> 00:30:18.559
a little bit odd. I do
the same thing like for the first I

487
00:30:18.599 --> 00:30:21.480
don't know how many episodes it was
until it was I said I was gonna

488
00:30:21.480 --> 00:30:25.960
do it until somebody discovered it.
A fan of ours so named Andrew discovered

489
00:30:25.960 --> 00:30:29.160
it. But I have in the
bottom corner it's a zoom. I used

490
00:30:29.559 --> 00:30:32.079
the zoom technology to build the show, and in the bottom corner, says

491
00:30:32.079 --> 00:30:34.559
The Letterman Podcast with Mike Chisholm,
I for almost one hundred episodes, I

492
00:30:34.599 --> 00:30:38.319
misspelled the word podcast and every word
it was every episode. It was misspelled

493
00:30:38.319 --> 00:30:42.000
in different ways, and only twice
did I have somebody catch it beforehand.

494
00:30:42.039 --> 00:30:45.799
But it didn't get caught on camera. Bill Carter caught it. He takes

495
00:30:45.799 --> 00:30:47.680
me spelled podcast wrong, right,
I'm like, oh, I do that

496
00:30:47.799 --> 00:30:51.200
on purpose, but it didn't get
out there. And then this Andrew saw

497
00:30:51.200 --> 00:30:52.039
it and said, hey, he
put it out there. Heyes, everyone

498
00:30:52.079 --> 00:30:56.440
ever noticed that Mike spells podcast wrong. And then at that point I started

499
00:30:56.440 --> 00:30:59.920
spelling it correctly because someone caught it. But and there are a little l

500
00:31:00.359 --> 00:31:03.480
of that sprinkled into the show where
it's just a joke that I find as

501
00:31:03.480 --> 00:31:07.240
a joke and if somebody ever catches
it, great, If not, okay,

502
00:31:07.240 --> 00:31:11.400
that's fine too, That's awesome.
I love it. I was a

503
00:31:11.400 --> 00:31:15.000
program director at a radio station Long
Island. My midday guy ed till he's

504
00:31:15.039 --> 00:31:18.720
on the air one day and he's
taking a phone call and he asked the

505
00:31:18.880 --> 00:31:22.119
caller where they are, and they're
at some diner and he goes, hold

506
00:31:22.160 --> 00:31:25.119
on, I'll be right there,
and he takes a cell phone and he

507
00:31:25.160 --> 00:31:27.000
starts hosting the show from his cell
phone, jumps in the car. He's

508
00:31:27.000 --> 00:31:30.519
on the Southern State park Way.
He's playing it up. Hey, stupid

509
00:31:30.599 --> 00:31:34.720
driver goes to the diner, has
a cheeseburger with the listener, comes back

510
00:31:34.839 --> 00:31:38.279
and finishes the show in the studio, and I thought it was one of

511
00:31:38.359 --> 00:31:42.160
the greatest three hours I'd ever been
involved with. And my boss did not

512
00:31:42.359 --> 00:31:45.319
get it was like he was on
a cell phone and it sounded lousy.

513
00:31:45.359 --> 00:31:48.519
I'm like, that was amazing.
Are you kidding me? Yeah, it's

514
00:31:48.559 --> 00:31:52.160
okay. And I say to the
director, Okay, are you kidding me?

515
00:31:52.440 --> 00:31:55.680
We can have the helicopter guy talking
about traffic, but we can't do

516
00:31:55.720 --> 00:31:57.839
something like it's not like the listener. I think many times the viewer of

517
00:31:57.839 --> 00:32:02.000
the listener is treated like the lowest
common denominator, and I don't like that.

518
00:32:02.079 --> 00:32:05.160
I don't like when audiences do that. I gotta ask you this,

519
00:32:05.599 --> 00:32:08.880
What years were you doing radio in
New York? I started professionally in November

520
00:32:08.960 --> 00:32:14.279
of ninety two at WOR, New
York. I was there until April o

521
00:32:14.400 --> 00:32:15.880
two, had the station on Long
Island for a year and a half.

522
00:32:15.880 --> 00:32:19.319
We ran out of money, and
then I was at Serious for a decade.

523
00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:22.640
Okay, did you ever cross paths
with a guy by the name of

524
00:32:22.680 --> 00:32:27.359
Alex Bennett? I heard your name
check Alex Bennett on the Morty episode.

525
00:32:27.400 --> 00:32:30.240
I Love Alex. Back in the
day, Alex and I used to do

526
00:32:32.039 --> 00:32:37.960
a twenty minute non radio show in
the hallway every day discussing Bush carry somewhere

527
00:32:37.000 --> 00:32:42.720
near the cubicles on the twenty third
floor of Serious No. Thirty six four

528
00:32:42.759 --> 00:32:45.920
Sorry, and we would just talk. But it wasn't the current political discourse

529
00:32:45.960 --> 00:32:49.319
where it's you like the red team
and I like the Blue team, so

530
00:32:49.359 --> 00:32:52.759
you're stupid and they hate you.
The deal you can have meaningful discussions.

531
00:32:52.839 --> 00:32:55.880
And we were friendly and we did
it every day, and we knew we

532
00:32:55.880 --> 00:32:59.359
were going to do it and just
let's get each other's goats. And he

533
00:32:59.559 --> 00:33:02.640
is a great guy. Alex is
a he's been on this show. When

534
00:33:02.680 --> 00:33:06.799
I talk about Rick Shechman earlier,
he was, he is and to this

535
00:33:06.920 --> 00:33:09.359
day, even though Shecky's left us, now Rick Sheckman's best friend, this

536
00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:13.640
show would not exist if it wasn't
for Alex Bennett. And so Alex and

537
00:33:13.680 --> 00:33:16.559
I are friends. And he does
a panel show weekly over Zoom and has

538
00:33:16.839 --> 00:33:20.160
since I believe he started in the
pandemic. You know, he's in his

539
00:33:20.200 --> 00:33:23.119
eighties now, but you can't as
when you're a longtime broadcaster like that,

540
00:33:23.200 --> 00:33:27.319
you can't turn it off. And
so he started and GABNet. He started

541
00:33:27.319 --> 00:33:31.240
building GABNet and does shows he calls
it The Ramble every night, but on

542
00:33:31.359 --> 00:33:36.799
Mondays, every Monday, he does
this show at four o'clock Eastern and he

543
00:33:36.880 --> 00:33:38.759
brings on I don't know seven eight
people who come on, many of the

544
00:33:38.799 --> 00:33:42.319
more fans of his show. I
came on because of Shecky, because I

545
00:33:42.319 --> 00:33:45.039
got to know Shecky, And honestly, I think it was because Shecky was

546
00:33:45.160 --> 00:33:47.000
he was vetting me. He wanted
to make sure I wasn't a crazy Okay,

547
00:33:47.039 --> 00:33:51.200
I'm a crazy person, but I'm
not I'm not a dangerous crazy person.

548
00:33:51.200 --> 00:33:53.359
I've just got I've got the good
crazy. If that's what it is,

549
00:33:53.720 --> 00:33:57.440
that's the thing that makes me dive
deep into the things that I love,

550
00:33:57.759 --> 00:34:01.200
whether it be Letterman or Star Wars
or music or whatever. The things

551
00:34:01.200 --> 00:34:04.599
that I love, I dive into
it. But Checky was betting me,

552
00:34:05.200 --> 00:34:07.200
and so he said, Hey,
why don't you come on this show with

553
00:34:07.240 --> 00:34:09.920
Alex Bennett every Monday? And That's
what I would do. And that was

554
00:34:09.960 --> 00:34:13.239
one of the ways that he and
I got together and got to know each

555
00:34:13.280 --> 00:34:15.960
other, and then as the show
would progress, he and I would then

556
00:34:16.079 --> 00:34:20.719
start connecting via phone calls or video
calls over the Internet. That kind of

557
00:34:20.760 --> 00:34:22.440
a thing outside of the show,
but Alex Bennett, and to this day,

558
00:34:22.519 --> 00:34:27.440
every Monday at four pm Eastern,
I try and get on that show

559
00:34:27.480 --> 00:34:30.960
with Alex. He's just he is
such a great guy, a legend.

560
00:34:30.360 --> 00:34:36.400
And I like to say this,
he paved the road that Howard Stern drove

561
00:34:36.480 --> 00:34:38.519
on. When you look at Alex
back in the eighties when he was let

562
00:34:38.559 --> 00:34:42.519
go at one of his positions at
wm I want to say it's WMC,

563
00:34:42.559 --> 00:34:45.039
but I don't think it's WMCA,
but one of them in New York if

564
00:34:45.039 --> 00:34:47.960
there were two thousand people out there
the next day protesting, and Alex was

565
00:34:47.960 --> 00:34:51.559
that guy, he was the rebel
rouser. He had a little bit of

566
00:34:51.599 --> 00:34:53.320
that. One of the reasons I
think I like Alex so much is because

567
00:34:53.320 --> 00:34:55.679
he's got some of that stuff that
Stern has, that letterman has, that

568
00:34:55.719 --> 00:35:00.880
impish, mischievous behavior and just a
great guy. And I dig that you

569
00:35:00.920 --> 00:35:02.719
and Alex know each other and now
you and I have made that connection.

570
00:35:04.039 --> 00:35:06.760
And folks, by the way,
Johnny had no pre interview here. We

571
00:35:06.800 --> 00:35:09.599
did this organically. We came up
with this revelation together. So it delights

572
00:35:09.599 --> 00:35:14.079
me to know and respect Alex and
love to connect you guys. And it's

573
00:35:14.119 --> 00:35:16.320
random because I, like I said, I discovered the podcast and I'm like,

574
00:35:16.360 --> 00:35:19.960
all right, let me do some
prep here. What five episodes can

575
00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:22.920
I listen today? And I picked
Morty and I heard the random Alex Bennett.

576
00:35:22.000 --> 00:35:24.800
He also had a run in San
Francisco, and he's got a lot

577
00:35:24.840 --> 00:35:30.079
of all the big San Francisco comedians
of that era. Robin Williams for sure

578
00:35:30.159 --> 00:35:37.000
comes to mind, but Alex legendary
radio personality. Letterman reruns late night reruns

579
00:35:37.360 --> 00:35:40.960
I used to they used to mess
around with them. There was the one

580
00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:45.400
that they rotated it three hundred and
sixty degrees just for no reason. I

581
00:35:45.599 --> 00:35:50.719
remember, and I've looked. I
can't prove this in the internet. Maybe

582
00:35:50.760 --> 00:35:55.159
the story or maybe I hallucinated this. I remember tuning in one night and

583
00:35:55.239 --> 00:36:00.199
they had redubbed the entire show with
merv Griffin revoice Dave, and I remember

584
00:36:00.440 --> 00:36:05.679
walking into the middle of it and
being like, what is going on here?

585
00:36:06.360 --> 00:36:07.480
Yeah, we need to this is
a really good one. That we

586
00:36:07.519 --> 00:36:13.239
need to get the official Letterman channel
to put back on there. Good call.

587
00:36:13.000 --> 00:36:15.239
I'm gonna now that this you've said
this, I've got a message to

588
00:36:15.239 --> 00:36:17.199
them and say, hey, here's
a clip that we should throw on.

589
00:36:17.719 --> 00:36:21.840
Letterman reruns are tricky because there's so
many rights issues that are there, and

590
00:36:21.880 --> 00:36:24.679
then Worldwide Pants and Universal have come
to an agreement. So when you watch

591
00:36:24.719 --> 00:36:28.920
Dave's YouTube channel, and by the
way, anybody who fancies themselves as an

592
00:36:29.039 --> 00:36:32.800
enthusiast of David Letterman subscribe to his
YouTube channel, but they're putting clips on

593
00:36:32.960 --> 00:36:36.559
from those eras, and I think
that it would be a very cool thing

594
00:36:36.599 --> 00:36:39.599
to revisit that there was the episode
where the everything was in reverse, the

595
00:36:39.639 --> 00:36:45.239
reverse angle right. Any times that
there was a camera trick of any sort.

596
00:36:45.599 --> 00:36:49.119
You saw this in Stupid Patricks.
One of the things about Stupid Stupid

597
00:36:49.119 --> 00:36:52.400
Patricks at the beginning, or Stupid
Human Tricks, was the advent of slow

598
00:36:52.440 --> 00:36:57.400
motion, and anytime that there would
be something that was added to television,

599
00:36:57.840 --> 00:37:00.079
be it dubbing, be it fans, the camera trick or whatever, they

600
00:37:00.079 --> 00:37:04.480
would mess around with it and it
was so fun to watch them do it

601
00:37:04.519 --> 00:37:07.000
and make fun of it. They
just there isn't a show out there that

602
00:37:07.039 --> 00:37:12.239
I think that poked fun at themselves, at television, at broadcasting, at

603
00:37:12.239 --> 00:37:14.760
culture the way that they did.
One of the things that Dave said to

604
00:37:14.760 --> 00:37:19.559
Tom Snyder early on was that nothing
on television is sacred. And to me,

605
00:37:19.719 --> 00:37:22.639
that's okay. There's a young guy
who's got this morning show that's crazy

606
00:37:22.199 --> 00:37:30.039
giving himself carte blanche to lampoon anything
he wants. I'm super curious today the

607
00:37:30.159 --> 00:37:35.000
Dave that went through led the nation
after nine to eleven in some respects,

608
00:37:35.280 --> 00:37:38.519
the Dave that went away and then
came back from his heart surgery and there

609
00:37:38.599 --> 00:37:43.079
was some really major heartfelt moments.
I'm very curious if the David Letterman of

610
00:37:43.079 --> 00:37:45.519
today would still say that nothing on
television is sacred. That's the question that

611
00:37:45.559 --> 00:37:49.400
I want to ask him. So
are you saying the Mirv thing did happen?

612
00:37:49.400 --> 00:37:52.360
I didn't make that up. I
believe it did. I now that

613
00:37:52.440 --> 00:37:53.840
being said, I don't have it
off the top of my head. I

614
00:37:53.840 --> 00:37:59.000
haven't seen it recently, but that
does make sense. Mirv was Oh my

615
00:37:59.079 --> 00:38:01.800
gosh, was Mirv. Ever there's
a scene with Jeff Altman with Merv Griffin

616
00:38:01.880 --> 00:38:05.639
meowing like a cat that I remember. They used to make fun of IRV

617
00:38:05.679 --> 00:38:07.199
all the time. Paul would every
once in a while throw the name MERV

618
00:38:07.239 --> 00:38:10.199
out there. They used to They
definitely used to make fun of MRVS.

619
00:38:10.239 --> 00:38:15.559
That sounds right to me, but
I will dive onto this immediately after this

620
00:38:15.639 --> 00:38:17.599
episode here and see if that's there. That does sound right, though,

621
00:38:17.719 --> 00:38:22.360
I just can't recall the clip you
mentioned Camera Tricks, and I saw Late

622
00:38:22.440 --> 00:38:25.880
Night many times I've recently been reliving. It was my fifteenth birthday. It

623
00:38:25.880 --> 00:38:30.000
had to be fifteen to get in, and my mother knew somebody at NBC

624
00:38:30.119 --> 00:38:32.440
and I got tickets on my fifteenth
birthday and I went with my friend Sean.

625
00:38:32.840 --> 00:38:37.960
And unless we're conflating different episodes,
we think that was the night Zippy

626
00:38:37.000 --> 00:38:43.119
the Chimp bit Sandra Bernhard and got
cut out. But Zippy the Chimp was

627
00:38:43.920 --> 00:38:45.679
a good example of all right,
let's strap a camera to a chimp and

628
00:38:45.719 --> 00:38:49.880
let him rollerskate around in the studio
and you just you hadn't seen this before,

629
00:38:49.920 --> 00:38:51.920
and it was amazing, was mind
blowing. Oh, you can do

630
00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:55.639
that so much fun the monkey cam. I've talked to Sandra on her show,

631
00:38:57.079 --> 00:38:59.800
and she's aware and she has said, yeah, let's do this.

632
00:39:00.199 --> 00:39:02.119
I haven't jumped back on getting her
on the show. That's a moment I

633
00:39:02.159 --> 00:39:06.199
want to talk to her about.
For sure. You talk about Sandra Bernhard

634
00:39:06.480 --> 00:39:08.719
as a guest. And this is
where a lot of folks who love Late

635
00:39:08.840 --> 00:39:14.920
Night and they call Late Night a
superior show to Late Show, because you'd

636
00:39:14.960 --> 00:39:20.400
have some of these performance artists on
and give them a podium, give them

637
00:39:20.440 --> 00:39:25.280
a platform and a microphone where they
could just go and be as creative as

638
00:39:25.280 --> 00:39:30.679
they want to be, whether it's
singing, whether it's an obscure type of

639
00:39:30.719 --> 00:39:34.199
comedy piece, whether it's a monologue, whether it's whatever. And Sandra,

640
00:39:34.239 --> 00:39:37.800
I think is a phenomenal example of
that. I really like Sandra Bernhardt a

641
00:39:37.840 --> 00:39:40.119
lot. I think she is a
trailblazer in many ways. I think she

642
00:39:40.239 --> 00:39:45.519
gave her Like Vett Midler, I
think did a really good job of breaking

643
00:39:45.559 --> 00:39:50.320
the mold of what women should be
when it comes to a comedian or a

644
00:39:50.360 --> 00:39:54.079
performance artist or whatever. And her
stuff with Dave on Late Night was magic.

645
00:39:54.519 --> 00:39:58.599
It was good on Late Show,
but it trickled off because Late Show

646
00:39:58.639 --> 00:40:01.440
became more it had to be come
more like the Tonight Show. But One

647
00:40:01.440 --> 00:40:07.719
of the casualties of that is you
saw less and less of the performance artists

648
00:40:07.800 --> 00:40:10.960
as opposed to the celebrities plugging a
movie. And he did. Don't get

649
00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:14.880
me wrong, the booking staff and
Dave, they did try and keep that

650
00:40:14.960 --> 00:40:17.159
element in late show. But certainly, if you're going to broaden the appeal

651
00:40:17.159 --> 00:40:21.519
and broaden the audience, some of
these pieces that you're talking about here,

652
00:40:21.800 --> 00:40:24.599
they have to be cut along the
way. All right, more tomorrow with

653
00:40:24.719 --> 00:40:29.199
Mike Chisholm. This helps me accommodate
some travel ahead during the week. Mike

654
00:40:29.360 --> 00:40:32.599
did look into my MERV Griffin thing
and here's what we've learned, and they

655
00:40:32.639 --> 00:40:37.039
did dub an episode. You can
find the episode on YouTube and I've shared

656
00:40:37.039 --> 00:40:39.400
it in the Facebook group Today Daily
Comedy News podcast group. But it's not

657
00:40:39.599 --> 00:40:44.440
nerv. The voice is in Merv's
ballpark like. It sounds more like MERV

658
00:40:44.440 --> 00:40:47.320
Griffin than it sounds like me.
But it's not MERV. But they definitely

659
00:40:47.480 --> 00:40:52.199
did dub an entire episode. I
didn't totally make that up. Some other

660
00:40:52.239 --> 00:40:57.039
things to plug. We've got T
shirts, National Donuts Chain t shirts.

661
00:40:57.079 --> 00:41:00.400
Get one link in the show notes. You can subscribe for free to my

662
00:41:00.440 --> 00:41:04.280
substack. That's where I pontificate about
the media in the written form. Mickdypod

663
00:41:04.440 --> 00:41:07.480
dot substack dot com. Link of
the show notes And if you would like

664
00:41:07.519 --> 00:41:10.960
this thing, ad free calaroga dot
com. Slash plus get this show and

665
00:41:10.960 --> 00:41:14.599
a bunch of others on the network. Four ninety nine a month gets you

666
00:41:14.639 --> 00:41:17.280
the whole shebang. No ads,
all right, More with Mike tomorrow See then.