my name is jerry foley and in the spring of 1995 i succeeded Hal Gurnee as the director of late show
prior to that i was the show's technical director for five years you do the math on this it's 25
years of late night television working for david letterman so one of my responsibilities would be
to cue people on and off during a comedy segment or a talk segment and on this particular day
we had the actor anne heish talking to dave and backstage was a guy named richard hatch
who was one of the original contestants on survivor and he was distinguished by his desire
to walk around naked so the writers had the idea that during the anne hey segment we would send out
a naked man to interrupt her so we're learning and how is alec baldwin is he holy cow holy cow
get him out of here
excuse me sir i thought we were on a proper
show here for goodness sakes alive i didn't know you did that kind of here's your popsicle
in the stunt category is felipe petit the wire walker who most people know from walking
in between the two towers of the world trade center felipe had the idea of walking on a cable
across broadway which is as good as it sounds the city of new york was not high on the idea of a guy
walking across broadway on a cable because if he fell on the street it wouldn't be good for tourism
and they insisted on an airbag felipe didn't want the airbag and as a director i didn't want the
airbag either because what fun is that if there's no suggestion of danger so there was a big blowout
meeting with the city and the authority figured the commissioner said no walk without an airbag
and at that moment where it got really tense she had to take a call and left the room and when
she left the room felipe leaned over to me and said give them zbeg it will do nothing if i fall
great
so
hey
so one of the great things that dave was able to do is find ordinary everyday characters and turn
them into celebrities or recurring characters on our show and two of my favorite people are
pat farmer and kenny sheehan who are actual broadway stage hands and two of our writers
carter bayes and craig thomas at the time figured out that you could get written transcripts
of the oprah winfrey show and what's really interesting is when you take the written word
and have it read by two broadway stage hands well then it takes on an entirely different life
woohoo we've been in a tizzy around here preparing for our special guest
the queen of good things is here please welcome martha stewart thank you oprah
martha i understand you have two charming new centerpiece ideas that are easy
and inexpensive all you need is an old sugar ball or a french jelly jar
brilliant
take something like a gardenia just put it in water it's so easy
i'm having a martha moment now when it comes to appreciating the good things in life
nothing lifts your spirits more than your cuddly companions
my pets are fluffy furry and lovable that's beautiful martin
if you'd like to order a written transcript and kenny read open transcripts write to us
at 1697 broadway new york new york 10019
and be sure to look for pk the pattern kenny magazine on newsstands everywhere in
1994 johnny mosley won the gold medal in men's moguls and he was nicknamed by david letterman
johnny big air mosley and we set up a ski jump on 53rd street with an airbag full of
soap suds and johnny mosley went down this ski jump into the airbag and it was a lot of fun
a couple of years later we tried the same idea with a snowboarder named tara dekidis but it had
a different result i was watching them set up this ski jump for terry taketas and it dawned on me
that some of the people involved were a little sketchy and i got particularly concerned later
in the day when i realized that instead of snow they were just going to run a hose down this ski
ramp and make it ice now this i believe is the one where you had the problem are you ready for this
you've seen nothing of this then right no just some still photographs
yeah okay i kind of hit the cameraman yeah you were not aware of the fact
that when i saw something going wrong i ran out there and tried to catch you
that was me what happened rory oh i don't want to talk about it
okay so here we go now this is your second attempt and the tricky we're doing is a what
a backside 360. backside 360. all right here we go let's watch this who is that guy
oh my god you see that looks very very bad very bad do you use any of that come back
yeah i remember that yeah
the work day could be stressful sometimes and i think all of us in the american workforce would
have a fantasy about bitching out our boss and on occasion dave would encourage this for comedy
we had a series of people who would tell dave what they really think one of them was our scenic
designer kathleen anchors and here tonight with a fresh batch of hilarious new library books is our
very own and beloved peggy the foul-mouthed cbs librarian hi peggy how are you off you illiterate
faced bastard it's very nice to see you too peggy thank you for the books
shove the damn books up your
peggy the cbs librarian
and then there was an actor named jody ebert who we refer to as the [ __ ] you guy hey
i'm sorry yes sir i want to play
well i'm we're out of time out of time
you're out of time i drove all the way here from philadelphia i paid a hundred dollars
to park my car i stood in that line for two hours and now you tell me you're out of time
so maybe my favorite would be our cue card person tony mendez who would work himself up into a real
frenzy and let dave have it and he used a word that we all loved mama racho
what day what what is it tony mendez our cue card boy ladies and gentlemen yes tony thank you
i um thank you very much i'm sorry i don't want to interrupt but did you see morning joe today oh the
morning joe show on the morning joe program yes ben affleck was on ben affleck was on yeah and he
had very nice things to say about me tony mendez i see what you're doing that's very cute but
we all know that he's talking about the character in the movie argo whose
name coincidentally is the same as yours it's not you there's no way
even if you took a hot iron and poked it up his nose there is no way ben affleck would
be talking about you on anywhere i'm sorry but it's no it was me no it was me no it was me no
why can't you play along okay that's the end of the monologue i'm getting out of here
so one of the best parts of the job was being fanboy getting to meet people you never ever
thought in your lifetime you'd get to meet and in this case paul mccartney he was returning
to the ed sullivan theater and somehow it involved that paul mccartney was going to be
playing live on the marquee of the ed sullivan theater but what normally would have been sound
check and the camera rehearsal was compromised because the police department didn't want crowds
forming too soon and getting too big and they insisted on a black curtain to be in front of
paul mccartney before he could rehearse and at the end of the sound check we got word that the city
was shutting us down which was pretty deflating considering how far we got and it turned out that
there was a police official whose father was on the original detail of the beatles appearing in
1964 and wanted a picture with paul mccartney and magically once that picture was approved the
curtain came down and we got to do paul mccartney on the marquis of the ed sullivan theater
thank you very much beautiful thank you so much paul paul mccartney ladies and gentlemen
thank you gentlemen great job thank you very much and don't forget and close pizza by god
uh that's it we gotta go craig ferguson is next thanks for watching good night everybody
you