From Intern to Page
Like any entertainment venue, The Last Show made a habit of exploiting this
concept of free labor called interns.
The interns would gain hands on TV experience by doing all the crap work
no one getting paid wants to do. Some
perks were that the interns could roam around the studio with a bit more
freedom than the pages. They also got to
shift through a box and help themselves to some free promotional items. The perk of being a page was you actually
got paid for all the work you did. If
there was an intern who was particularly liked by the staff they would give him
a job as a page.
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| Close enough |
The
pages who were previously interns were their own little clique. They bonded by interning together and also
dealing with the same people running the intern program. From the stories they told the folks running
the intern program were some characters.
Since it’s all hearsay I won’t include the stories. Another perk the interns got was getting the
rundown of the who’s who at The Late Show.
They were able to become chummy with the head writer and lucky enough to
apply and submit writing samples. If he
liked what they submitted they would be allowed to submit monologue jokes on a
freelance bases. If their jokes were
picked they’d get a check for $75. For a
writer, the opportunity to have your work assessed by a “professional” is
intriguing.
I can't find a photo that fits the topic so just watch this music video of Jessie's Girl by Rick Springfield.
Ben
Schwartz made a website called www.rejectedjokes.com out of his joke
submissions that never made it on Letterman.
The website assisted in increasing his social media popularity and then
overall acting demand.
I
asked a few pages who the magical man was that could possibly let me submit
monologue jokes. The pages would always
reply the magical man wasn’t accepting any more applications for freelance joke
writers. This would have been believable
is it wasn’t for the fact that every other new page talked about the monologue
jokes they were submitting. All I wanted to do was meet the guy and see for
myself. I wasn’t looking for them to
give me a professional reference on my writing ability. What would be the harm
in pointing the man out to me or heaven forbid introduce us. Well it turns out that the more submissions
for jokes there are the less chance that a freelance writer’s joke will get
picked. None of the freelancers wanted
extra competition for their submissions.
I guess I should feel complimented that they believed I was funny enough
to get accepted as a freelance writer. [NOTE
TO SELF: INSERT SOME FUNNY ONE LINER ABOUT PENIS SIZE OR SOMETHING]. My other idea was to wander the halls of the
office asking everyone if they were writers for the show and how could I become
one too. Sadly doing stuff like that in
an office tends to get people in trouble.
I
was hoping to wave down the warm-up guy Eddie Brill in the hopes that he might
point me in the right direction but I could never find the guy when he wasn’t
ass over backwards busy. The warm-up guy
was the guy who would tell a few jokes before The Late Show started to get the
audience relaxed and ready for some hour of wacky fun times. So after all the dots are sat upfront and the
2s are tossed in the balcony Eddie Brill would come out and do a little standup
bit. He did the same exact standup
routine every night. It was perfect B
comedy material that got the same range of chuckles every time. It was super redundant for the people working
in the studio but we weren’t there to be entertained, the audience was, we were
there to work.
Brill
was also the guy that gave money to any audience member wearing a Late Show
t-shirt. During the warm-up Letterman
would come on stage and do some quick banter with the audience. If he noticed an audience member wearing a
Late Show shirt, he’d call them out on it and highlight how overpriced the
shirts were at the CBS store. He’d
instruct Brill to pay the fan for the clothing.
Brill would reach onto his pocket and pull out a $100 for the
person. It was the page’s job to make
sure anyone wearing Late Show paraphernalia was 2ed and sent to the
balcony. People could easily slip by in
the winter when they were wearing coats.
He must have given out about $300-$400 when I worked there. I hope Brill
remembered to expense those cash giveaways.
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| Why are we always told when Sue Simmons takes a vacation? Who's sitting around wondering why the local news anchor isn't on the show one night? We get our weather from meteorologist. They're dude's that study meteors, what do they know about the weather? He did the same routine EVERY DAMN NIGHT! |
Another
classic staple of the warm-up was a video showing highlights of Letterman’s
best moments. For any of you who saw the
final show it looks like they reused that warm-up video when Letterman cut to
his best moments throughout the years.
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| How many times did they dig this Taco Bell clip out of the closet over the years? |
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