I'm Jay Johnson I'm a longtime Letterman staffer I started with Dave at late night
on NBC as an intern then I got hired to staff as a production runner in the production Department
I was a talent researcher and finally I was one of two digital producers with my friend
and co-worker Walter Kim I was a huge fan of Dave before I ever worked there I would stay
up late in college and watch Carson and Dave and sometimes thick of the night but we won't
talk about that there are so many favorite moments on the show but one segment that I
really enjoyed was every year Dave would have a new pick a new catchphrase segment they were all
very silly lines but once you hear some of these they kind of stick in your mind they pouted us
strudel yeah it's funny I hate the itching but I don't mind the swelling I'm a sweet
little cupcake baked by the devil in the summer of 1985 The Today Show decided to
do a live Prime Time broadcast from Rockefeller Plaza Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel were in the
middle of an interview with Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas from Miami Vice
when Dave opened his window pulled out his bullhorn and proceeded to interrupt their show
this Prime Time program was my idea and I'm not wearing pants
I was so excited when I landed a three-month internship so the first thing I ever remember
doing for the show in a production capacity was working on a remote a live remote where Dave was
in the studio talking to people doing their laundry on the upper west side of Manhattan
I'll tell you what I'll give you I'll pay for your wash if you try and oversuds one of the machines
just toss in an entire box of detergent
oh wow
oh now now I understand
over the years I was lucky enough to be on the show dozens of times
and it was very fun I just had a lot of roles as an extra and then
eventually I started getting some parts with some some more dialogue
hello
what
no no
it's somebody honestly somebody looking for somebody named Mitch
is anybody that's true is anybody that that's for me who
hello hey what's up no I can talk go ahead uh-huh yeah yeah
wow poker you want to play poker I'm all for it where is it wait let me write this down hang on
83rd and West End got it uh-huh sure I'm sorry
yeah well it dude it sounds like fun I will see you later all right bye thanks man yeah
I was a huge fan of Chris Elliott and Gerard Mulligan and their comedy bits so I was excited
when they bashed my head in hi I'm a Mac and I'm a PC who's your friend there PC I'm getting
some more RAM so I can run Microsoft's new operating system Vista how's it going there
we should be done in about three hours don't you ever make me look bad in front of Mac again
okay
somebody better switch to senka
what was fun was you know you could come into work on any given day and you'd be cast in peace with
like some of the biggest stars of the day so I remember I worked at a Wendy's with Tim Robbins I
spilled scalding hot McDonald's coffee on Lawrence Fishburne I was Julia Roberts assistant and I got
chased down 53rd Street by Bill Murray you can't make your mind and yeah you say you
want to vote for Clinton no no I'm serious I'm having a political discussion with you hey Jerk
that's the way you have to do it sometimes that's right I remember we once did a piece
called how many guys in bunny suits can we get into a fountain and I was one of several people
that put on these bunny costumes with these super big heads that you could not see out
of they were hard to get on and off Dave sent John Goodman who was a guest on the show that
night to join us and he ended up sitting to my right he was in a very good mood that day and he
was kind of uh not aware of his own body space he would constantly kind of nudge me and hit
me and I had to catch myself several times from falling into the fountain and I thought this is
how I'm going to die pushed into a fountain by John Goodman drowning in a giant bunny
suit if John gets in there will be standing water on Sixth Avenue all the way to the park
there we go oh oh my God this is you know here's a guy who don't care at all I don't care you know
he's gonna get her please John oh
foreign
in 1996 America Online was all the rage hey Dan ready for the game I'm just finishing up here
with my new kayaking friends kayaking friends on your computer yeah I just got America online so
how do you get America Online oh that's easy too you just call their 800 number I gotta check this
out and they had a lot of money to throw around and they wanted exclusive content for their sites
so they made a deal with Dave and the show to have exclusive Late Show content AOL had very archaic
technology at the time there was no streaming video and I remember we tried to put uh Dave works
at Taco Bell as a clip on AOL but the only way to do it was to use just the audio from that piece
and then a series of still images so the result was like the lamest slideshow you've ever seen
let me see if I can repeat that order you ordered something a couple of
things chicken something and a burrito supreme with no meat she's gone already chief
a year after the AOL deal we moved everything over to cbs.com for The Late Show website if
we were not the first we were probably one of the first TV shows to have a regular online
presence that wasn't strictly promotional but was actually content from the show and on top
of that original content Paul and I are very proud we have a new thing it's a uh it's called
a website now what this is this is something that you have to uh take your computer if you
have like a PC or a desktop or a laptop or a computer of any description as you know Paul I
have one of the original univacs at my house and you're going to need a mouse and you're
going to need some a hard to bite Mega discs and hard to fight yeah and some modems and windows
of course and you can dial us up on the uh it's called a website and here's the address www dot
CBS dot dot.com comcom dot www now what we have there is a website and it's full of puzzles and
games and you can play the puzzles and you can play the games and uh tonight Paul and I will
be in the chat room Paul and I will be in the chat room The Late Show chat room from Seven
till well till whenever just question mark yeah we were given a lot of latitude to do what we wanted
creatively and one of the things that we did was to create a daily video series uh with Dave's
cue card boy Tony Mendez who was called the Tony Mendez show and we did dozens if not hundreds of
these and finally one day I think it was Laurie Diamond who was Dave's executive assistant at
the time she was watching some of these online and she thought these are these are funny these
might be worthy of the show so she brought it to Dave's attention and he ended up airing
a couple of them do you do any impersonations you know in from the movies and stuff I've been
here for eight years I do uh Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men can't handle the truth
sounded just like them uh my impression is of Sean Connery saying the word pictures I'm
gonna say a full sentence but pictures is the only word that's truly the impression
someone's been taking pictures
foreign Jenny
love means never having to say you're sorry
I remember two weeks before Dave announced his retirement we had this meeting with Dave and
the producers to discuss whether Dave should be on Twitter and ultimately he decided no he
didn't want to do that he didn't want to have to deal with that and I think in the end it's
probably for the best I don't know how to move it uh that's what that's what he said
what do I want to say to Jimmy Fallon
you say it just one one word I think what do I say dude
there it is look right there
like watching Edison play with the new light bulb yes
what's that ah one of the best things I think we did on the digital side was
when we teamed with CBS radio and Vivo to produce a series of live concert webcasts
called live on Letterman Pearl Jam Taylor Swift Adele Coldplay Peter
Gabriel performed with an entire Orchestra and for the Foo Fighters we built a replica
of the set that the Beatles performed on when they were on The Ed Sullivan Show
hands down my favorite day was when Paul McCartney appeared on the show to perform on the Marquee and
I remember after he arrived that morning he noticed on the hallway was a series of
photographs of The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and he just started went over to the wall
and he just started looking at these photographs and it was just this great surreal moment where
we were watching Paul McCartney looking at photos of himself as a beetle on The Ed Sullivan Show in
the Ed Sullivan Theater we had to climb through a window in a restaurant above the Marquee in order
to get onto the Marquis so I was out there and I remember shooting McCartney coming out
the window and it was just so cool to see this enormous crowd on Broadway from his vantage point
everywhere you must be
when the producers were planning for Dave's final broadcast Walter and I were asked to produce a
piece for the final episode of the show we would follow Dave through a day at work we ended up
shooting Dave uh arriving for work one day Dave had a habit of showing up at work at 6 a.m in
the morning so I remember getting up at like 4 30 that morning coming into the Ed Sullivan Theater
making sure all the gear was ready and that we were outside in time to catch his arrival and
we shot this just two days before the final show was set to air Dave decided that he wanted us to
reshoot his arrival because he didn't like the Hat he was wearing so we went through the whole
motion again we got up early we went in caught him coming to work at 6 00 a.m and there you had
it I also think that enough time has now passed that we can be honest and say that a day in the
life of Dave was not shot in one complete day it was shot over several days that was such a great
experience and it was so fun to do that for Dave's final show to be a part of that piece of History
it was just for me the perfect button on a 29-year career with Dave there's a parade of people coming
and they all say the same thing Dave I know you hate this and they go on to do what he is
something
all right
here's your giant check for 200 damn dollars oh my God real people really
do win twice in The Late Show secret word contest give him a big kiss girls