hi I'm Rodney Rothman I was a staff writer at Late Show with David Letterman from 1995 to 1998 and
the head writer from 1998 to 2000. fun fact I was turned down by the Lettermen internship program uh
two months before I was hired as a staff writer if you were a fan of Comedy it wasn't just Dave
there were comedy writing legends that were in the room with you people like Steve O'Donnell Gerard
Mulligan you were like the new drummer and Judas Priest you know and you were and you were playing
for your for your like favorite childhood band I'll tell you something really weird when you
become a comedy writer you pitch jokes and people go like this if you're lucky they go like this
that's funny that was weird to get used to like oh we don't laugh we don't laugh when
we say things are funny uh because we're thinking mathematically on like nine levels the big piece
that I would point to my first year there Chris Farley was going to be on the show a
segment producer Daniel kellison of head writer Donna Carey they came and they asked uh me and
another writer named Steve Cheryl to come up with ideas for entrances one of the pitches we
came up with was Chris Farley comes running into the theater he goes running up to an
audience member he picks the audience member up he carries them out of the theater onto 53rd Street
then you cut to a pre-tape where he's carrying a dummy he throws the dummy in a dumpster they
said we are approving the throw the guy in the dumpster idea you are going to be the guy that
gets thrown in the dumpster we're not using a dummy it's just going to be one live shot
if you look at the tape my head comes very very close to just smacking into a door post
like straight to the hospital please welcome back the programmer old friend Chris Farley
foreign
David Letterman you were one of the shows one of the things at the center of Pop Culture the sky
was kind of the limit we would do really weird things with celebrities we did a live satellite
hookup to the Beverly Hilton I believe where Walter Matthau would get his weekly haircut
Walter Matthau legendary amazing actor we just turned on a camera while Walter Matthau got his
hair cut and the pre-show meeting with Dave when Dave when we go over what the show was you know it
would just be like and we gotta live we're gonna have a live hook up to Walter Matthau getting his
hair cut the whole time and he was like is there anything else to it than that and I was like nope
nope we've prepared nothing what kind of a Tipper is Walter well he's a big Tipper yeah like what
are we talking about a C note each time well he gives me a C note but I have to give him change
the boy's got an act now Louis this is the hotel that's owned by Merv Griffin is that
correct that is correct yes uh do you see Merv in there very often well he comes in
uh for lunch but he doesn't get his haircut Harry he's uh uh he has his own Barber yeah
I understand I know what you're saying Louie uh now I'm I'm told that Merv Griffin is mad
at me because I uh mistakenly mentioned that he might have passed away but he's he's not
but you know let me tell you something uh Merv Griffin gave me my start in
television many many years ago and of course I was just kind of
joking around and when you see him uh tell him I'm sorry I said he was dead
okay I remember sitting in a meeting and someone just idly said did you ever hear the story about
Art Garfunkel he had Mono when he was a kid he spent a year at home and he passed the time by
shooting free throws outside his apartment and we said that doesn't sound like it could be
real there's only one way to find out there all night long Art Garfunkel shooting free throws
take a look see how he does
all right you know there's a gentleman that works on our staff who looks a little bit like
you he's our technical maintenance supervisor Gary Mintz and if if you don't mind he's just
going to come in and shoot buckets with you do you mind I I don't mind Dave all right thank
you very much by the way nice going Gary step in there and let's see if this likeness how are you
I see it Terry we would get this weekly list of here are the celebrities that are in town that
are available that are up for doing comedy and I remember this one week Lou Ross is available and
I remember sitting in the room with the writers we do anything with Lou Rawls and then Jerry
Mulligan said out loud well it's better to have Lou Rawls and not need him than need Lou Rawls
and not have him and then we were all silent for a while like it was so profound and then we were
just kind of like I let's just do that in the end I don't believe we needed him all right every uh
Wednesday night uh this summer we'll be having excuse me Dave yes Alan what can I do for you I
have something new for summer uh-huh and what is that all summer long in the Green Room Lou Rawls
wow so Alan why do we have why do we have Lou Rawl
sitting in the Green Room why you ask hey say it with me folks because it's
better to have Lou rolls and not need him and to nilu Rose and not have him
some of my favorite Letterman pieces that I worked on were pieces that grew over time
they became something else we just thought it would be a good idea to have teenagers practice
parallel parking and as often the case someone emerged from it this kid named Paul fiori this
is a 92 Thunderbird huh how many miles you got on it uh uh 59 one seven three
uh maybe not math
we decided to kind of adopt him and his effort to get his driver's license and then we broadcast
his driving test live on the show again at Great expense there was a helicopter we made animations
we treated it like it was the Olympics get the get the stern thrusters ready we're coming ashore
foreign
Division and motor vehicle I'm happy to announce you passed your test pass the test and here is
the governor of the great state of New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman I got a little something
for you that you've uh a little something for you here that you've earned congratulations well
done after all this I don't know how you passed it another piece that I I really liked how it sort of
went off the rails we wanted to do a live hookup live satellite hookup to a baggage claim uh in
Dallas I remember getting a call 10 minutes before the show was to film saying we're getting kicked
out of the airport we were looking in phone books and we just decided to look up luggage
stores like what's the closest luggage store and the clock is ticking you know they got set
up within seconds before the satellite hookup and we were in a random luggage store and the
piece turned out great where exactly are you what part of Dallas are you located it's called Preston
Center area it's Northwest Highway and Preston Road Kathy Kathy right behind you is go ahead
all right it's start time if you if you press the silent alarm
uh-huh could you ask that gentleman if if he's going to clean his nails to go in the back room
if you're looking for travel tips way to make your travel easier take a look at Al
the luggage Salesman take a look at the length of Al's tie you see
now he did that Al did that for a reason yeah when you're oh you're got a lot of
bags and you're traveling you're running through the airport you put one bag and
one hand one in the left hand and then you tie one to your through the tie so
you can actually hook one up and then race now at a good one salesman of the month
the town of Kankakee Illinois had been named the worst place to live in the United States how do
we at least help this town get out of the cellar and we really talked about it like it was it was
like comedy writers but then for a little bit you're like kind of Civic planners and you're
really trying to think about it someone had the idea that maybe if we gave them a gazebo that
would be enough to just get them out of that bottom rum a gazebo was purchased in a Home
Depot and then we gave the Gazebo to the mayor of Kankakee who I think was grateful but was also
kind of like thanks we were left feeling like we hadn't done enough there was more discussion
in the room about what we could do and we went through a lot of ideas in the end we decided that
the best thing we could do is give them another gazebo and the thinking was if we give them two
gazebos that make and promote themselves as Kankakee the home of the twin gazebos and I
gotta tell you they have never appeared again on the Bottom Rung of the worst places to live so it
does feel good when you can do good now has any anything changed since we gave you that beautiful
gazebo oh absolutely it's changed the Gazebo is beautiful and we really appreciated being
berated in the places rated Almanac to be like Seattle sure now listen uh all right now
there's no need to get pissy here Mr Mayor you know we've been thinking about this a lot Mr Mayor
and we thought well you know maybe we didn't do any favors by giving you the Gazebo because what
you really need is some sort of tourist hook something that will boost tourism and we got
to think about it and a gazebo I don't know you know we racked our brains what can you do with a
gazebo here's what we decided to do you have the one gazebo we have something else Mr Mayor hang
on are you in a hotel there or something I'm in the house I'm all right all right well sit down
get a hold of yourself okay in addition to the Gazebo we have something else Alan tell them
what we're giving them Dave we're giving them another gazebo uh difficult to the first gazebo
and traffic from asperance this gazebo will make America sit up and say holy crap it's just like
the other one back to you Dave and there you go okay okay now I know you're ahead of me on this
do you see what we're driving at yes you now have two gazebos here is your tourism hook Alan tell
them about the sign it's a sign proclaiming Kankakee as the home of the twin gazebo
OTS
already saying holy crap you often got to work with Heroes of yours you sometimes ended up in
situations where you had to give performance notes to Meryl Streep say when you were like
23 which is weird we went to this top 10 list it was top 10 things that sound creepy when said by
John Malkovich and we did a fast rehearsal and I'm going to be honest it was a little flat how
do I convey to John Malkovich in a nice way what we need here and what I said to him was it's great
it's so funny it's great do you think we could try it again and you could do it a little more
like you and to his credit John Malkovich was like yeah
if you win said by John Malkovich number ten
does this look infected to you
number nine I put my jammies on all by myself Mommy
number eight you mean I get all these great Funk Classics on just one compact disc
right that's exactly what we mean one of the pieces that I was most proud of we
would invent fake pieces of entertainment we would put them on the show and we would
never tell the audience that they were fake we did a fake musical called homecoming it
was a really long song where everybody talked about a guy named Jimmy who was
coming home and then at the end of it Jimmy came home I mean it was a terrible idea for
musical I mean when you'd make something and you don't tell the audience it's a joke and
then the audience doesn't realize it's a joke it's very it's very Zen it's very debatable
whether you've made comedy but it was weird when the audience filed out afterwards and you
listened to them talking and they were like that musical kind of sucked Jamie's coming
home jimmies are coming home I'm gonna make him a new pair
ing Jimmy's coming home I'm gonna give him a piece of my mind
Kimmy's coming home I'm gonna give him a discount on Rhymes Ryan's here get your ride
foreign
the very next day we heard that um The Tonight Show with Jay Leno had called
up the biggest musical Booker in New York live it they had not been offered homecoming before
um we were offered homecoming maybe I thought we had a good relationship you're supposed to
tell us about these things now turn on my TV homecomings on Letterman I've never even heard
of it they were so pissed that was great we did one on one small step we did a thump type group
called Noise Boys and then the culmination of everything was We Invented this fake boy
band called freshstep there were some proper soon-to-be stars that were in freshstep you
know we had Matthew Morrison might have been his first job he went on to Glee we created this boy
band we wrote songs for them there was always something weird about them like they used the
name of their band Fresh Step 45 times within one song we did a song called uh don't talk to
the hand uh talk to the heart and that was from a movie we made up starring Sarah Michelle Geller
James Vander Beek we just announced all this stuff on our show like it was real which I don't know if
that's actionable or is protected by parody laws we always said think were protected by priority
laws that's what we would just say when we did things that are probably illegal and shortly
after we were called by MTV MTV wanted to put fresh stuff on total request live I'm joined Now
by one of the newest Sky groups to hit the scene ladies and gentlemen how about around Applause for
a fresh steps you got to understand that fresh steps all about diversification you know so we
try to get something real cool together for everybody out there so you know we got Brad
He's my man from Minnesota we got my cousin BJ here from Tallahassee you know three of us are
from Orlando you know we used to work at Universal Studios and stuff we just kind of got together you
know figured hey man this is easy we could do this that's right pretty soon many many many many tens
of thousands of people around the world started to believe that freshstep was a real group and we
started to get a lot of emails like thousands of emails we got asked to tour southeast Asia and I
have to be honest I really wanted to do it I was actually mentally in a place where I was like I
would like time off from being head writer of David Letterman so I can go manage this
fresh depth thing is blowing up I got as into that stuff as I got into anything we
ever did our next guests are a popular new group whose song is on the soundtrack for
this upcoming movie right here talk today and here they are please welcome back fresh steps
when fresh comes to shove got it going on like my main man above
got me a freaking precious
to my
heart thank you boys
thank you nice job
you know a short list of people who yelled at me Geraldo yelled at me
um he told me I just didn't get it we just weren't tapped into the
stuff that Geraldo was tapped into on a comedy level I know everything