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The Shark Deck. It’s jokes Ober. Hi, I’m Hunny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. Joketober something we used to do with the satellite radio place. Maybe I’ll bring it back.
I’m the one that came up with it. Not there was that hard to come up with it, Do you don’t? I don’t want to make it at like I’m Einstein or the Beatles here that it just went October. David Letterman could have been in the movie Airplane, except for the part about his audition and they didn’t pick them. But theoretically David Letterman could have been an Airplane.
There’s a new book it’s called Surely You Can’t Be Serious. The True History of Airplane by David Zucker, Jim Abraham’s and Jerry Zucker aka za Z. The comedy trio that made Airplane and some other movies of that genre. David Letterman did a screen test for the role of Ted Striker. Letterman tells the story.
I get out there and they had set up a cockpit for the aircraft with chairs. I had a chair and there was another chair where the copilo would be. We did the scene once and then they came in and gave me some notes. Then we did it maybe two more times, and I kept saying, all along, I can’t act, I can’t act.
And then one of them came to me after the audition and said, you’re right, yo…
The new books out October third, counts on my finger, so that’s Tuesday, right. The book has interviews from the cast, including Robert Hayes and Julie Haggerty, as well as more casting dirt Sigourney Weaver maybe could have been in the movie. Letterman said they were really nice to consider me for a film because I could see where people would think, Oh, we have a thing where we’re opening in Alphabeta supermarket. Can you come out and talk to the bag boys? That made sense, but a movie, and the guy who produced it was Howard Kotch, who had a legitimate movie career in big time credits.
He was somebody I was even aware of, so I thought, geez, he’s not gonna want anything to do with me. I liked those guys, and when I saw the movie, it was just delightful, and I was delighted to see it knowing that I didn’t have to look at myself, because that would have ruined it. If not the whole movie, it certainly would have ruined it for me. David Letterman eventually hosted Late Night with David Letterman before leaving to go to CBS. He was replaced as the host of Late Night with David Letterman by Conan O’Brien, and that in the business is what we call a segue.
Conan O’Brien spoke to Kara Swisher about political humor, something Conan doesn’t do, and Conan said, for me, it was always what serves the comedy and what’s funny to me. The truest, most visceral comedy, to me is always going to be Warner Brothers cartoons that were made in the forties and fifties. That’s the stuff I grew up on that was shown in reruns. I liked it that kind of comedy. I was never as comfortable with comedy where I needed to make a point about something.
And then the conversation talked to goofing on Trump. Conan said, years and years and years ago, in another lifetime, I worked on the Lampoon back in college, and what we always knew is that you can do a parody of sports Illustrated would do parody magazines. You can do a parody of Newsweek magazine. I wrote a parody of George Will where he’s defending the feudal system. It was like, you can parody things that you can parody people.
Magazine is about its superficiality and it’s put Brookshields on the cover holding a fish. You can parody those things. But you can’t parody the National Inquirer because the National Inquirer can’t be parodied if you go and buy a real National Inquirer. It says Elvis cited an UFO. He has tentacles for ORMs.
Ghost Baby turns in a vampire and attacks Michael Jackson’s ghost. There’s no way to parody that. You can’t parody something that already has that crazy, irregular shape. It’s not possible. So I thought, when Trump came along, what a lot of people after virtue is?
Doesn’t he suck? I hate that guy. Kara Swisher asked Conan to Brian about Greg Gutfeld, and Conan said, I haven’t seen it. I drove a bus for twenty eight years and I retired from the bus company. I don’t ride the bus much anymore.
I’ll walk rather than get on the bus. So I don’t watch a lot of things. I see things here and there, but I don’t really know Gutfeld. And that’s not me being a knee jerk. Fucks, I’m not gonna watch that, man.
It’s more like, I honestly am not aware of what’s happening, so I don’t know. I think the beer question is the future of late night because we all know that time itself is becoming irrelevant. I think we’re probably gonna have to part company with the term late night at a certain point. And I’m not just saying that because I’m no longer part of it. I hate when people say, well, I’ve loved football now, so no, it’s irrelevant.
No, that’s a jerk move. I don’t believe that. I just believe it was changing when I was there, and it’s going to continue to change. I believe that talented people have something, a funny style or a way of connecting with people continue to flourish. It’s just that the medium will change around them, so it might not be called late night.
For example, I have more young people come up to me, and all they want to talk to me about is the podcast I’ve run in and people of their earbuds in and they’ll tap me on the shoulder and go, I’m listening to you now. Well, late Night is back, baby. All the major shows did not waste any time, John Oliver back tonight. The Daily Show will come back on October sixteenth with guest hosts Colbert Fallon, Kimmel and Seth Myers. All back to Morrow Night.
And reminder, there’s no more twelve thirty late late show on CBS. They gave up on that. At some point at midnight will show up Macpacker Keegan Michael Key has a new book, The History of Sketch Comedy, A Journey through the Art and craft of Humor. In the book, Keegan remembers the impact that SNL had on him and on his dad. Key writes, the first time I remember hearing my father laugh was in the living room of my childhood home.
My father watched the TV screen and on in Glee, and he was chuckling. My man was chuckling. My father, who was six foot four, two seventy and an otherwise very stoic man, was losing his dim mind. What was happening. Turns out one of the greatest comedic talents of all time was on TV?
Who was it? Who was it? Who was it? Eddie Murphy? Eddie Murphy was doing the sketch with Stevie Wonder.
In the sketch, Murphy plays an executive auditioning talent to play Stevie Wonder impersonators, one of whom is the real Wonder, that ultimately leads Eddie Murphy to do his own Stevie Wonder impression. Key writes, and then get this. Eddie starts singing like he’s going to sing better than Stevie Wonder, and he does. What the heck? My little mind was blown.
There’s a new PSA out the headline Comedians Aren’t Just Joking and a chilling new PSA by Sandy Hook Promise from the press release. As the US surpasses two hundred and forty school shootings this year, Sandy Hook Promise launched just Joking, a public service announcement to underscore how important it is to take threats of gun violence seriously. Now I started to pull a clip from this and it’s just not gonna work in terms of this podcast. I’m going somewhere with this. There’s comedians involved here.
Let me just tell you the PSA features a lineup of comedians including Billy Eichner, want A Sikes, Markert, Choe, j Farrow, Roywood, Junior Keitelan Riley, David Cross, Eliza Lessenger, and Rachel Bloom. So I could pull the clip and you would hear the comedians say things like it just this is just Awgward. There is nobody to get into said this Why I didn’t pull the clips, but comedians saying things like I’m going to shoot to school right, so, like that’s not funny and without the visual I don’t think it would have worked. In the PSA, audience members assumed the comedians are performing regular stand up routines. Yets just shot it like a lot of these look like they were shot during the actual specials the comedians were doing.
Audience members assumed the comedians are performing regular stand up routines and just joking. It’s later revealed that what the audience thought were punchlines were actually all real threats made by school shooters across the country. The chilling realization of the comedians were not just joking wakes viewers up to the importance of taking all threats seriously and taking action when there were warning signs of violence. Tom Sagora I spoke to Las Vegas, a magazine, and he’s working on a new Hour and said, the fun part of building a new hour is the stage where you’re really excited about new stuff and you’ve let the old stuff go. I have erot seen where I look at a special coming out as like a finale of the material I just accepted.
Sometimes you get at about and go, oh no, I have to do a new hour, and you start to feel that before you’re working on it. But the funny thing is once you’re doing it, it switches from anxiety to excitement. New stuff is always the most exciting thing, and you can’t manufacture the pressure. Ask any comedian. There’s no feeling like new stuff and nothing like being in that creative space.
And sometimes it’s hard when you’re out there on the road and you’re doing your hour and you’re bored of it. You’re actually bored, but you at the same time struggle to cook something new up. When you’re in a situation that I’m talking about, you have no other choice, and it’s a good place to be. I’m really excited about a new project I’m working on it. It’s called Ghost Scary Stories Today.
It’s October. Now, we’re doing thirty one ghost stories in thirty one days. If you want to check that out. Ghost Scary Stories Today, wherever you get your podcasts. Pop Sugar spoke to Hennah Burner, who said comedy is a great way to talk about taboo topics such as mental health, the wage gap, or fording without making people uncomfortable.
Hearing people laugh at something I’m embarrassed by or insecure about makes me feel less alone. Pete Corielli talked about how he met Sebastian Maniscalco. He was on Brian Kilmead show on Fox. Let’s listen. Oh yeah, I met him on tour in Toronto.
We were both on tour together and we met. We met at the airport briefly, and then coming down to do the first show, you’re getting a van to go to it, and there’s a few other comics from like Australian Canada, and we didn’t know anything and she’s bashed, has a little hanger and with a shirt and I’m gonna back in the van and I go, I know it, and he goes what I told my wife on the phone. I bet he carries his shirt that he performed, and he goes, I sweat all right, whatever you canna eye in it? When we get that too, and then we hit it off. That’s how guys hit it off, Yeah, ripping each other.
Cole Hilton ells right for The New Yorker and was impressed by Michelle Butto’s show full heart, tight jeans, Hilton Right says, but sometimes rambled seeing what would stick? I thought of her, Pierre Tiffany Hannish, They’re about the same age, and how how does she stand up as a display of sensibility, how she wears her loneliness like foundation under her rouge. Watching Handish perform, you have the sense that you’re seeing a little girl has been broken by love time and again, but nose there’s some good stuff on the other side of that heartbreak. By contrast, Butt kicks life’s broken pieces to the curb and encourages folks, especially women, not to settle. At one point during her set, she asked female audience members if they were in relationships and if they were in unsatisfactory relationships.
When a woman told her she was seeing a guy who was dating without intention but so once silent, then she told the woman to get out, open your heart and legs to love. You never know what’s gonna happen. The Milwaukee Comedy Festival kicks off tonight with the official kickoff with Kelly Ryan Tomorrow, The Roast of Milwaukee on the third day, Dandy Comedy Show, the fourth cast Comedy on the fifth Todd Berry, who right now has the number one comedy special of the year according to Johnny mack mke comedyfest dot com. If you want to check out more about that and that is your comedy news for today. If you like the show, tell a friend about it.
Maybe they’d like it too. And you can all follow the show for free on Apple Podcasts or Spotify where every Gate shows see here tomorrow