“From the arctic tree line...”

It is Episode 6,025

May 15, 2015

“And now . . . the hairdresser of Seville . . . David Letterman.” As Dave runs across the stage, viewers see he is not alone. He is, in fact, still handcuffed to George Clooney. Clooney, disheveled with his tie undone, has to run across the stage and make his way to center stage attached to Dave. They receive a standing ovation. “It was a weird night,” Dave deadpans. Paul is called over with giant bolt cutters. He tries to free them. It doesn’t work. “Don’t hurt the movie star,” calls out Dave. Clooney says, “Captain Hook is my next role.” Backstage Brian Teta, the mastermind behind this carryover from yesterday, is sweating. They were unable to test this. He has no idea if Paul will be able to free them or not.

Photo courtesy of Brian Teta.

Brian Teta: It was Barbara or I who said we should carry it over into the next show. The big discussion was how we were gonna cut the handcuffs. The idea was they would walk out after the monologue, but how do you end the bit? So we came up with the idea that we would have bolt cutters and Paul would come and cut the chains. Then George would walk off. We realized we didn’t have anything backstage that we were able to cut the chains with. We tried a couple of different ones on test handcuffs and we couldn’t cut the chain. Dave refused to accept that we could not figure this out. He said, “Just do it. We will have Paul do it.” We had giant burly stagehands backstage with all their strength trying to cut these things, and they would not cut. There was no delaying the show because we couldn’t cut the chains. They do the run, they walk out. Paul brings out these heavy bolt cutters and the first two times they couldn’t do it, and my heart stopped. I think it was like when a mother gets super strength when their child is trapped under a car. Paul shattered the handcuffs on the third try and it worked perfectly. I don’t think I breathed for about an hour and half because I didn’t think we were gonna be able to do this. “Don’t hurt the movie star” was a legitimate concern. I kept thinking, “God help me if I take off George Clooney’s fingers.” 

Barbara Gaines: I couldn’t decide if he should still be handcuffed or not. Brian and I discussed it. We weren’t sure if it was too much or not, but we did it anyway. It kind of worked. I liked it, but it could have gone either way.

Bill Scheft: Dave didn’t come out and do the Q&A with the handcuffs on. They took them off and then put them back on. That would have been way too distracting for the warm-up. I don’t think they were told they were gonna come out cuffed together. It kind of doesn’t matter, because it is George Clooney.

Freed, Clooney walks off and Dave performs the monologue. He says, “As you grow older you have to keep an open mind. Ten years ago if someone would have said, ‘Would you like to spend the night handcuffed to George Clooney?’ I would have said, ‘No.’ Now everything is different.” Dave’s retirement joke is, “People ask, will I get bored in retirement? Hell, I only have to fill an extra hour.” 

The Top Ten List is “Thoughts Going Through Dave’s Mind While Presenting the Top Ten List.” Number one? Johnny never had to do this shit. The best-of montage is a collection of fun things Dave and the crew did outside of the studio: dropping things off the roof, stunts on 53rd Street, Dave riding a motorcycle around the block—the kind of fun moments that could be found only on the Late Show.

Brian Teta: Having 53rd Street to play with was such an amazing resource. It’s incredible to think about it now, but we could close down a block in New York City on pretty much just a whim and launch someone from a cannon or set up a batting cage or a football field. We’d shatter the window of the Hello Deli with a Serena Williams-served tennis ball. Just about anything we could come up with, that team could execute in almost no time at all.

Jeremy Weiner: Dropping stuff off the roof was one of the weirdest assignments we would get as writers. “We need stuff to drop off the roof, but it can’t be food.” It was interesting to see what the writers would come up with, be it pinball machines or drum sets. One year we had a Dave mannequin laying on the sidewalk and we dropped a safe off the roof and it split the mannequin in half at the base of Dave’s tie. It was a perfect shot. 

Bill Scheft: For me, the funniest moment on that show was Alan Kalter’s line in Act 5, the long break where we do the audience pan. Ninety percent of these Alan utterances were written by Steve Young. No one has been through more sensibility changes in the show’s comedy than Steve, and nobody could have adjusted and thrived more consistently. He wrote this line for Alan: “Hey, does anybody know how to delete the complete browsing history for a CBS-owned computer?” Deeply perfect.

Steve Young: I would write all the weird lines that Alan Kalter would say going out of the acts into commercial. That was an area of the show that I particularly liked, because it was one of the last areas where a pure sensibility could exist, because it didn’t rise or fall on audience reaction. Dave was willing to be more experimental with it. 

The first guest is Oprah Winfrey. Paul plays a song he wrote, “It Ain’t Oprah Till It’s Oprah,” for her walk-on music. Paul used to play this song when Dave was trying to convince Oprah to guest on his show back in the days when she wouldn’t. Oprah and Dave have had a rocky television relationship over the years. That was all patched up in 2005. 

They discuss selfies and Oprah’s college fund for girls. Oprah asks Dave if he has started to clean out his office. He says he is only taking one personal item with him. “When we came over here from NBC, they had refurbished the theater and the office building that comes with the theater. They gave me a lovely, enormous office.”

He goes on to explain how he needed a stopper for the sink drain for when he shaved. He says, “They got a rubber stopper on a chain and the chain was too long to fit the sink, so they had tied it into multiple knots to fit into the hole into the sink. So the only thing I am taking is the rubber stopper and the chain.” Oprah is baffled by this. She asks, “That’s the only thing you are taking?” Dave simply says, “Yep.”

Bill Scheft: I have a picture of Oprah walking over to hug me like I was a long-lost uncle, because I spent the day with her when she interviewed Dave at Ball State. I was very happy that they came to an understanding about each other. It was a misunderstanding that got righted.

The second guest is Norm Macdonald. His first appearance was on May 9,1990. Dave introduces him with, “Our next guest made his stand-up debut with us twenty-five years ago this week.” Norm Macdonald walks out and performs what just might be the best stand-up routine in Late Show history. Don’t believe me? Believe everyone who worked there. Without exception every single person I interviewed pointed to this appearance as his or her favorite in the last six weeks. Besides having killer jokes, it hit the perfect emotion. What could be better for the final stand-up set performed on Late Show With David Letterman?

He begins with a line that shows he has been writing up to the last moment. He says, “I don’t want to brag, but me and Oprah are making the same money tonight.” He does one killer bit after another. He talks about photos on our phones, LSD flashbacks, and how the news tries to scare us. The best bit is about Germany and how it took on the world in a war . . . twice. 

Each joke builds on the previous one as he nails every setup and punchline. At the height, he turns our attention back to the true moment at hand: “Listen, folks, this will be my last time on the David Letterman show, I understand. We all know that David Letterman was the greatest talk show host who ever lived.” The audience explodes with applause. “I remember Dave differently, because the first time I saw him I was thirteen years old . . . ” At this point, Norm Macdonald has to stop speaking because emotion is winning the battle within him. He shoots out a fake laugh as he tries not to break down in tears. It takes him a few seconds (a lifetime in the middle of a stand-up set) to compose himself.

He continues, “I was living in Toronto, Canada, and I went to a talk show they had there, and David Letterman was the stand-up comedian on the show. I loved stand-up and David Letterman did this joke.” He asks if the audience wants to hear it. Applause. He tries to compose himself again. He proceeds to tell Dave’s early joke about a garbage truck and how it says, “Please do not follow the garbage truck too closely.” He delivers Dave’s punchline, “Another of life’s simple pleasures ruined by a meddling bureaucracy. Remember the old days when dad would pile the kids in the station wagon and we’d all go out and follow a garbage truck?” 

Norm swings his arms back and forth, clapping his hands, trying to get through his final thought. “I know that Mr. Letterman is not for the mawkish, and he has no truck for the sentimental, but if something is true it is not sentimental, and I say in truth, I love you.”

Dave is flabbergasted as he gets up from his desk to join Norm at the epicenter of where comedy lived for the past twenty-two years. Norm can no longer hold his emotions in. Jerry Foley wisely cuts to the back of the theater, bringing into view the studio audience, now standing to applaud Norm’s declaration. Dave is unsure how to explain this, “Norm?” he asks in wonder. “Very funny. Thanks for everything,” Dave says as he puts his hand on Norm’s shoulder. Norm is trying hard to not break down, but that ship has sailed. He just paid the ultimate tribute to his hero. He was funny, truthful, and real. This is the pinnacle of the final six weeks with the right sentiment at the right time. I am not alone in this thought.

Brian Teta: Norm is probably my favorite segment of the entire run. It was so real. Dave seemed genuinely moved. He had such respect for Norm. I love that he was one of the last stand-ups. These spots on the show were pretty coveted at the end. The fact that Norm was allotted one of them tells you what Dave thought of him. It was probably the most emotional of all the appearances at the end.

Bill Scheft: I have known Norm a long time. He is weird, crazy, and brilliant and he is not emotional. That was quite magical and right up there for me. I can’t think of anything ahead of that.

Mike Buczkiewicz: Norm said, “Can I do stand-up?” We said, “Yeah.” When I met up with him in the green room, he turns around and has a notebook of ideas that he was writing in on the way to the theater because he kept trying to make it better. You look at these notes and you could tell he had been working on them for three months. It was incredible to see how much work he put into his craft. He had cocktail napkins, notes, and full notebooks. It comes out as clear as day, what it meant for him to be there. It affected everybody immensely. I would be hard-pressed to find a guest that it meant more to than Norm.

Bill Scheft: I saw him backstage at 1:30, five and a half hours before he would go on. You show up that early, it’s either going to go incredibly well or horribly wrong. But Norm had something in his pocket, something to go out on: an old bit of Dave’s he heard him do years ago. Know this about comics: they love nothing more than another comic doing a piece of their act to them. It was utterly simple, utterly ingenious—just like Norm’s act.

Lee Ellenberg: Like everybody, it is hard not to think of Norm Macdonald. It was such a killer stand-up set, and then to end it on such a truly touching, emotional note. It was really wonderful and a great moment from the show. I will always remember that. “Germany went to war with the world” is one of the funniest lines. Then again they decided to go to war with THE WORLD. I am not a stand-up. To me it’s a different skill set, but what is fascinating about that joke is we have all heard the phrase “world war” countless times through our lives. He seized upon it and turned it into one of the funniest stand-up jokes I have ever heard. That was astounding.

Jerry Foley: I really hadn’t spent a lot of time with Norm over the years. He came to the theater that day way earlier than most guests. It was so sweet, and you just wanted to do everything you could for Norm because he was nervous. He wasn’t sure where he was gonna go with his material. 

Bill Scheft: Dave is a walking contradiction. Stuff means a lot to him, and then you tell him what he means to other people and he is the first person to say that is crazy. I would tell him how much it meant for comics to come on his show and how similar it was for comics coming up to go on Carson. He would not hear it. But then someone like Norm is reduced to tears. That gets his attention. Things meant a lot to him, but he couldn’t understand what he meant to other people.

Jerry Foley: Norm was stressing himself about the best way to do it and not make Dave uncomfortable and get the point across how important Dave was to Norm’s career. Norm just wanted to be around the studio as much as he could, to capture as much in his mind’s eye as he could. He was there all day. He wouldn’t tell us what he had in mind. I took it upon myself to get a sense of what he was gonna say, because you want a fighting chance to capture it all and do it justice. After talking to Norm quite a bit that day, he slowly shared with me what he was thinking and what he was gonna say. It turned out to be one of the most genuine moments in the whole run of the show.

Sheila Rogers: Norm is normally a lead guest. He said, “I will be after Oprah.” I talked to Norm’s manager, Marc Gurvitz, about him being on the show. Marc came back saying Norm wanted to do stand-up. It was Norm’s idea. That was one of the best spots.

Joe Grossman: It has become one of the most memorable moments in the final stretch. Someone who was always seen as cynical and detached becomes emotional because you know he had so much admiration for Dave. He, like many of us working there, felt like Dave played a huge part in our lives even before we worked at the show. That is what made us gravitate toward Dave. So to see someone appear on the show to feel that connection with Dave, that was a highlight.

Jeremy Weiner: The Norm stand-up was such a special thing. It was my favorite. It was such a tight, well-conceived set. He sort of it built in a perfect way. It was fun to see someone so expertly pull that off.

Kathy Mavrikakis: I think Norm Macdonald was the most memorable. His emotional ending was moving to me, and I ran back stage immediately and said, “That was amazing.” That is my favorite of the whole last six weeks. 

Lee Ellenberg: Even Norm’s phrasing, I remember he said, “I know Mr. Letterman has no truck for sentimentality.” You don’t hear that phrase often, “no truck.” Clearly he gave it some thought as to what he wanted to say, and then you get this completely unguarded moment. It’s not like he said, “Thank you.” He said, “I love you.”

Jerry Foley: I’ve seen performers break down. Then they do it two more times in rehearsal. Not this time. That was as honest as it could get.

Barbara Gaines: I mean, he cried at the end. Dave looked a little startled, like, “Norm, get a hold of yourself.” I think it was very touching. Dave is honestly fond of him in a big way. It was such a great idea for Norm to be our last stand-up comedian. 

Worldwide Pants Tag: “The pants people.”