hi I'm Eric Stangel I'm Justin Stangel and we were with Late Show with David Letterman
for 17 years as writers producers head writers executive producers and all of that and we're
honored to be here today and you know what else is especially nice is that this is the
first time that Justin and I have been together since the show went off the air people don't
like me when we came in as writers one of the first things that we were responsible
for was shooting with Dave on Fridays so that's when we would shoot remotes we were responsible
for telling Dave what was funny and what he should do which makes no sense and should
not have happened because he's the guy right but one of the pieces that we enjoyed shooting
was with Rupert G and uh we didn't create this piece I think John Beckerman did and
we we just shot some of these which was fun with Rupert and David again would say you
know really funny silly stupid things but there was always the the hint of these people
have no idea that this crazy man yelling at them is is wired for television Vision they're
going to beat him up there was one that I was just thinking about today which it wasn't
the greatest piece that we did but it was like if you think about what we were throwing
out there it was kind of bizarre it was Halloween and had Rupert a an adult by himself in costume
go door to door and trick-or-treat in the afternoon there's a lot wrong with that you
can't do it anymore no I mean they were that was a wild wild west back then Hi how are
you how are you Happy Halloween happy Halloween uh trick or treat trick or treat I'm a security
guard I'm a security guard what do you think what do you think I made it myself yeah I
made it myself is the badge let me ask you a question so early we like to get it out
of the way so I can have a drink I like to get it out of the way so I can have a drink
bring on the snacks so so bring on the snacks here we go here we go I'll just do some deep
knee bends while I wait I'm sure I'm Sheriff
thank you
happy Halloween happy Halloween happy Halloween [Music] happy Goblin day [Applause] to you
happy ghost today happy ghost today
to you happy pumpkin day foreign
there was one time that we were doing a special top 10 list and we were doing it with Henry
Kissinger and he was going to read real excuse notes from elementary school kids it was right
before the show and as usual like we're going to go over everything one more time and I
went to The Green Room with Henry Kissinger and it was just me and Henry Kissinger and
I'm saying to him like you know six and four have switched and now your cue is this or
whatever it was and he stops and he says you have a very difficult job and I froze like
he was the Secretary of State of the United States of America and he told me that I had
a difficult job number four Scott didn't practice last night because he lost his tooth in the
mouthpiece of his trumpet
and number three number three Diane was laid on Wednesday she fell asleep on the bus and
was taken back to the backyard
I hate it when that happened it used to happen to me every damn day number two Cody was absent
yesterday because we were at disco bowling until 2 A.M
well as long as it's a good excuse we don't have a problem and the number one favorite
Elementary School excuse note Tommy wasn't in school yesterday because he thought it
was Saturday so one of the things that we would do is we would travel for the show to
shoot remotes and in 1998 we went with Dave's mom to Nagano Japan to shoot segments for
the Winter Olympics Dave would call and check in on her and how you doing we would just
hear Dorothy's side and she'd be like hi David yes uh no yes I'm here with no the stangles
are here with me yes Justin is here no David I won't say that to him no David I won't say
that to him that's rude no David I won't tell him to get in the cab and go home we got back
and Dave called everyone together and thanked everybody for their hard work and he uh gave
everybody a gift and it was a white box there's a box and everybody opened the box and inside
there was a gold medal which is awesome real plus an actual bar of gold as a thank you
and so one by one people are opening theirs and bar gold and then I opened mine I had
a silver bar and uh so I'm like okay and I'm kind of waiting for another box to come out
no box came out uh so I got a silver medal a week later yeah Cisco and Ebert were on
and I got a call Gene Siskel wants to see you in his dressing room I'm like okay like
why me and I go down there and he's like I need a few jokes I'm like okay so I wrote
a page of jokes and I ran back down and I gave it to him he's like oh this is good this
is good I don't like this this is good it's like this is great thank you he's like can
I pay you or something like no no please it's my pleasure it goes here and he gives me the
white box the same white box that Dave gave all of us and everything so I opened it and
it was another silver medal
really good joke and then a few days later we were all on vacation and uh I was uh on
a plane and the stewardess comes over and says sir I have something for you and I'm
like what she gives me the white box and I opened it was a gold medal it was a joke that
lasted like three weeks and it paid off on an airplane my way to like the Bahamas which
was uh which was pretty strong so one of the other things that we did was we would shoot
pieces with Biff Henderson would go to uh some of the smallest towns in America and
that was always fun because these were towns that had like a hundred people and it was
always great to see what their life was like the only thing that was consistent uh every
place uh Biff went they would ask somebody that hey are you a fan of David Letterman
and there'd always be some old guys like I don't like David Letterman and that made Dave
laugh every single time he'd be like wait a minute play that again it was usually a
lady who would say well I don't care for them I love that and it made the piece every single
time yeah the very first time that we shot one of those pieces the RV people wanted to
do something with us so they gave us like the top of the line brand new Winnebago to
use in our piece and I swear to God within 15 minutes we crashed the side of it well
I took the turkey we somehow weasel a free brand new 250 000 Winnebago loaded I'm talking
queen size bed large shower refrigerator freezer dishwasher microwave two couches kitchen table
washer dryer CD player two large screen televisions and a VCR first thing we did was put a nice
big dent in the side
but we got one big ass lawsuit ahead of you during the chaos of the day other things would
come up that would grab your attention and you'd have to divert your attention to that
and I remember that there was one day that we were all getting ready for the show Jude
Brennan had a piece of paper that she wanted to read to the producers and she told Dave
that he was uh that he had won uh the prestigious often blotted award uh we received the call
today and ladies and gentlemen you are looking at this year's winner uh best TV personality
non-sweet oh my God [Applause] itself it's beautiful yeah it's beautiful lovely very
nice
foreign
[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]
so so he was like okay he said to us I'm going to need a speech thank you speech and the
only information we had was previous winner was uh Dallas star Larry Hagman that's right
I forgot what the hell are we gonna how do we even like where do you start so we went
to work on on the thank you speech we gave it to Dave he's you know he usually does his
take on things and adds funny things here and there he looked at it he's like okay put
it on cards that was it it's the only thing we wrote in 17 years actually in my entire
in our entire TV career any job we've ever worked on where it's like nope no no it's
perfect let's do it the best thing we ever wrote dear good people of Sweden foreign I'm
sorry I can't be with you tonight but I don't live in your country
thank you for honoring me with this award for male TV personality non-swedish
I can't tell you how many times I have been to the home of 1983 winner Larry Hagman pointed
to his mandolin said someday I hope to receive my very own oftenblotted foreign well that
day is today thank you and God bless the swedes [Applause] [Music]
and now all right in order to in order to get the award they wanted a picture taken
of me so John is is John here John Mr Philo just take a listen just take a second
[Applause] thank you very much and [Music] I know Paul I gotta I got a little of this
in rehearsal and I know you were sweet enough to prepare a little something special tonight
take it away here's Paul Schaefer thank you I'm fedition forget it right Anton anytime
sweet and nose that which they speak about [Applause] [Music] Abba grows on you without
a doubt oh yeah you can shine [Applause] [Music] personality
[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] in 2010 the Super Bowl was going to air on
CBS they told us that we would have a 10 second promo during Super Bowl which is amazing this
was when Jay Leno and Conan were fighting it would be great if like the big reveal is
that Dave's Super Bowl party is Dave J and Conan and they didn't want any part of that
so somebody had the great idea of getting Dave Oprah and Jay together as the big surprise
the one condition for everybody was is it's kept a secret nobody would know about it yeah
so a small group of people at Late Show knew about it not everybody did the people that
were constructing the set didn't know um we really had to keep it tight Oprah arrives
in a hoodie and they sneaked her in and nobody knew it was Oprah and then Jay Leno arrived
in Disguise apparently which I guess is not wearing denim or something we're standing
on the set just waiting for this thing uh to come together and at some point Jay Leno
comes up and he's just standing there one of the stage hands who didn't know what we
were doing he had a look of shock that Jay Leno was right there on on the set and he
got my attention he had a deep Smoker's voice and he said Eric and I was like yeah you want
me to do something about this and I was like no no we invited him it's okay like he's our
guest today he's like okay all right you changed your mind you let me know I thought Jay Leno
somehow snuck in to our studio to steal the Late Show Secrets it's like the Hamburglar
this is the worst Super Bowl party ever now Dave be nice he's just saying that because
I'm here because I'm here
so let's talk about Lyle the intern Lyle the intern was a brilliant character that was
played by the brilliant Jimmy Simpson and it was a lot of fun to write Jimmy's a great
actor we had seen him on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia where he played a super creepy
character that wore a robe all the time and drank milk and warm milk yeah and he was doing
a show a Broadway show in New York City and we reached out to see if he wanted to do something
on the show and he said yes he wasn't very as creepy at the start he was just like kind
of like an odd guy a weird guy not intimidated by Dave it was a weird power structure because
Dave would be talking and then Lyle would come out and interrupt the show and just hang
out and take the higher power listen any of you girls out there feeling the Lyle Vibe
right about now you want to meet for a drink he drank you just show up at the theater here
tonight what was that last little thing there I said if you want to meet for a drink he
drank you just show up here at the theater tonight oh okay make it around 10-ish 10-ish
good oh yeah and bring an easy friend for dingus over here you know what I'm saying
Paul after the first one Dave loved it and and he's like you know let's let's do as much
Lyle as we can and the more we would uh kind of add to the character the more Jimmy brought
to the table like like all that stuff was him it wasn't us yeah yeah
[Applause] [Laughter]
that's extra creepy yeah for some reason he really liked Paul yeah Lyle was a huge fan
of Paul and we didn't write that that was all Jimmy I know where you live beyond
thanks Lyle while the intern
wow
see he seems like he likes you guys get along I me yeah well that's America's perception
and then sometimes we get a call uh from Kathy Mavericks CBS called you can't say yambag
I'm like why what's a yam bag and they're like uh well you know what it's supposed to
be I'm like a bag of yams yeah there's nothing wrong with that and I'll call him back and
then she's like okay they're fine with it I still want to squeeze your yam bags or nothing
School of Life handbag School of Life we had to say fracking yeah instead of the f word
and CBS said you can't say fracking and I'm like why can't you say fracking they said
uh because the audience knows what you're implying and like well that doesn't make any
sense like that doesn't make any sense at all so when yambag was fine uh but but fracking
was an issue it was like all right fine we could get rid of the fracking you don't think
I do anything around this dump but I do things I do terrible awful Terrible Things who kills
the rats in theater me yeah when the stagehand spit in your coffee who tries to clean some
of it out me who shaves you down nice and smooth like a baby
now again Lyle that never happened I shut your mouth hole
you don't appreciate me David you don't appreciate me but you should because I am the best intern
that has ever lived I take care of your wants and your needs and your cares but if you prick
me David do I not bleed
so please just please watch your mouth ass bag
it's all yours Paul
there's also times where celebrity moments would kind of remind you of just how silly
everything was like we'd be rushing to get the show done and we're in the hallway rewriting
and like our just and I arguing like what's the right line to put in what do we do here
how are we going to get this done I remember this one time where like it was we were really
getting worked up and then all of a sudden the elevator door outside of the dressing
room opened up and there was Gavin MacLeod dressed as Captain stubing and he was he waved
at us hello and everything was fine everything's fine after that it doesn't matter everything
was fine wow this is very uh therapeutic [Music]
foreign