Article 37336 of alt.fan.letterman: Path: ddsw1!news.kei.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!news.uoregon.edu!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!denton From: denton@u.washington.edu (R. K. Denton) Newsgroups: alt.fan.letterman Subject: TRANSCRIPT: CBS This Morning Letterman Interview Date: 22 Nov 1994 03:03:31 GMT Organization: University of Washington Lines: 155 Message-ID: <3arn23$abh@nntp1.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer11.u.washington.edu CBS This Morning Interview with David Letterman The following was transcribed from an interview that appeared on CBS This Morning on November 21, 1994. It was part 3 of 3. (I didn't even know about the first part, and only saw the second half-way through, so the transcriptions of those don't exist unless someone else typed 'em in.) Harry Smith: Ten minutes before the hour, time for more of our pretty darn interesting talk with David Letterman. Even though he is number one in late night, Dave is a guy with a lot on his mind: life in general, his first CBS prime time special, and -- the competition. [Begin pre-taped interview, part 3 of 3] David Letterman: No, I haven't seen Jay Leno on television in years. Harry Smith: Ever talk to him? DL: Haven't talked to him in years, either. HS: Yeah. DL: And I don't, there's no animosity, you know. I like him; I assume he still likes me. I have no bad feelings about him. He would have no reason to have bad feelings about me. Uh, it's just, you know, he's three-thousand miles away doing what he does, and I'm here in New York doing what I do. HS: You waited a long time to do any jokes about the O.J. Simpson trial. DL: Right. HS: How come? DL: Ah, it's odd, I...I still don't have, uh, any kind of exact formula for that. Ah, I waited, as did everyone else, because it was just, it was stunning, it was horrifying, it was beyond belief. Now, I'm still not completely comfortable with this because sometimes we've made jokes that people say, "Ok, oh we'll let you have that one," and sometimes I've made jokes where people, you can kind of hear the collective inhalation and you realize, well, I'm still not, so uh, I'm, I'm walking kind of an uneasy path with this right now. HS: You're an arbiter of... taste. DL: Well, I don't, I don't, I, I think you've been drinking, Harry. HS: (chuckles) DL: (laughing) You ever have a shot before you go on the air? Kind of loosen you up? I know Paula does. Wooo, look out. HS: What's the cheapest joke you did in the last year? DL: I just did it about Paula. Uh, many, many jokes. I mean, we've, I won't pretend that, uh, here's everybody else, and we're way on top of it. I mean, we'd get right down there. And, uh, we're seduced by a cheap laugh each and every time. And as of the example I mentioned regarding Ted Kennedy. You know, we've done some pretty cheap laughs, pretty cheap jokes, and the same with President Clinton. HS: Any you regret? Any that you drove home and... DL: Oh yeah, yeah. You'd, sometimes you wake up and I remember when I used to drink, you'd, you go to a party on Friday night and about noon on Saturday when you'd come to it's just like, "Oh jeez, did I? Shzz..." Sort of like that, it kind of washes over you in the morning. And there was a, a person, uh...whom we'd fixed as a figure of comedy and just arbitrarily used this person as a punch line in jokes, because it was a common point of American culture. And I heard from that person a couple of times: once via a phone call, once in a letter, uh... asking me, "Please don't do it, I find this terribly humiliating." And, and, and the wo, the person was in tears. And as a result, I, I, I stopped. And you have to, you have to listen to that. I mean, nobody really likes to be made fun of, just arbitrarily. Nobody likes to be made fun of, period. HS: Who? DL: I'm, I'm not going to tell you. HS: Her. DL: You can fight me for it and I won't tell you. Just come on, take your best shot Harry, knock me out. Turn my lights out Harry, and I won't tell you. HS: It's a woman, you said... DL: Yes, it was. I slipped. It was... it was a woman. HS: Lorena Bobbitt. DL: (chuckling) No, it wasn't, no, it was not Lorena Bobbitt. What, you hear from her? You probably did hear from her, didn't you? HS: She called me and wanted your phone number. DL: She called you, yeah... (laughing) Oh that's funny, like you'd have my phone number. HS: What's on the special? DL: Ah, oh! The special. Yeah, it's an interesting little bit of, uh, one of the aspects of this show that we've been very, very proud of are when we, we go out and we shoot videotaped pieces and we put 'em together and we edit them up, uh, into little three and a half minute packets, and we run 'em off on the show. [Clip of Dave out somewhere talking to a kid: Dave: "How fast do you think I can go on the Merritt Parkway at top speed? Kid: "I don't know, like... 80?" Dave: "120."] That'll be the backbone, the structure of the show. We'll have five or six of these, uh, that we think turned out pretty well for us. HS: Dave in the McDonald's. DL: That's right. That's right. Working the drive-through window at McDonald's. [Clip of the McDonald's bit. (Dave's taking drive-through orders over the intercom): Dave: "What can I do for you?" Woman: "Medium Sprite." Dave: "Let me have that order again, please." Woman: "Sprite." Dave: "Medium Sprite." Woman: "That's it." Dave: "That's all?" Woman: "Yes." Dave: "You couldn't've got out of your car for a medium Sprite?"] HS: Any new material in the special? DL: Yep. Some new material. It, it's not going to be great, and there's not going to be much of it, but it'll be new! Heh ha ha ha. [End of interview] Harry Smith: And a programming reminder, you can see David Letterman's Late Show Video Special tonight on CBS. That's 10 Eastern and Pacific, 9 Central time. -------------- R. K. Denton --------------