Camera Night on Letterman, March 1, 1988
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- The show with thirteen cameras. With guests Tom Brokaw, Belinda Carlisle, and Calvert DeForest as Larry Bud Melman as Roy Orbison as Kenny the Gardener. With a rare full music close. In stereo.
This show was repeated on August 29, 1988, the day after the Emmy Awards, which had nominated the show for Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Program. Likely chosen to re-air to celebrate its hopeful win, but it ended up losing to Irving Berlin's 100th Birthday Celebration.
This upload is a edited compilation from three sources.
The full Kenny the Gardener collection can be found here: • The Kenny the Gardener...
This episode shows how great Hal Gurnee was as a director. Overseeing 13 cameras and calling the shots (with some brilliant moments) could not have been easy.
Plus, I must add that he's hilarious!
"Hal, I'm contracting vertigo"
"...hold onto the desk"
not too take anything from Hal.. but their was no coordination with the 13 cameras -- which is the joke, the ridiculousness of having 13 cameras..
I started watching Dave at the age of 11 so it would of been about a year after this episode! I loved Dave! Nobody at my school would watch him but me lol. Thanks for the memories of Dave Don! I miss the old school television days and that generation!
I was born March 1st, 1988. This is the best thing I've seen all week.
28 days from my 18th birthday
I turned 18 on the 10th
Happy belated birthday 🎂
I much preferred this format. Small, intimate audience, small band, everything was friendly and slightly unprofessional but a LOT more fun than the big circus they had at CBS.
Mr. Big shot wanted to be on at 11:30
Obviously a smaller budget too.
I enjoyed the simpler days.
Dave's announcer Bill Wendel had a lifetime contract as did other "lifers" such as Don Pardo and Fred Facey.
You got that right. In the early days, Dave seemed like a special treat that only a few people knew about.
I'm a retired technical director, and this had to be a nightmare for the crew. There had to be quite a bit of re-wiring and patching, for not only the cameras, but the control room, too. Cameras need to be synced and phased, so you can switch between them without a glitch or roll (or green video). The cameras require control heads with operators to shade and adjust as needed. Then the intercom system, getting all the camera operators to communicate with each other and Hal in the control room would also be a headache. When I did remotes, intercoms were always a problem. It's like building a control room for a day, then it has to be put back and undone, afterward.
I'm sure it was a challenge, but NBC NY had a pretty robust routing system. That made it a lot easier to do one-time-only random bits without rewiring everything... inserting that random shot of Brokaw in his studio at the end of this episode, or another show where they replaced all of the normal control room monitor shots with "a bunch of fat guys eating eggs" for a viewer mail letter.
I find it more remarkable that NBC had so many cameras just lying around to grab for something like this. Even on a normal show, if you watch segments where Dave goes backstage or into the hallway, there always seems to be a pedestal camera sitting around unused.
Word
I'm only in the first 9 minutes, and I'm like, rolling around with laughter. This is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. The studio is just full of cameras. There's like, 13 cameras. They don't even fit in the studio. My lands, I'm giggling non-stop. The fire-log-holder story, the camera behind him...I'm losing it.
floofytown strange. I felt this camera trip went over like a log of shit but i see your point.
When it cuts to the shot of Dave at his desk with a matrix-style array of cameras surrounding him - very funny
Fascinating to watch the Brokaw interview and realize that the Berlin Wall would come down the following year and the Soviet Union would be no more in less than four years.
I love Late Nite with Letterman. My favorite talk show of all time. Great 4 piece rock band with Anton, Will, Sid and Paul. The crew and staff who had to be camera ready and great writers!
Great post! I never saw this episode. It's like visiting old friends! 😊👍 The show was at its top form here!
I can't believe people STILL think March 1, 1988 was just another Tuesday night.
The cancellation of the Fiero. Very sad day
i turned 18
@@michaelfairchild8867 i did too.we grew up in the best decade of it all.
Don... as a Dave Letterman fan from his early days in my hometown of Indianapolis, I want to thank you for this outstanding archive of Letterman material. I get countless hours of pleasure from it. I am especially a fan of the NBC era. You are to be commended for your editing and hard work in compiling this archive. You apparently even have access to old network raw copies judging from extra promos and no censoring on some of the tapes. Kudos to you!
Thanks!!
@@dongiller I second this. Your work has been invaluable to fans!
Camera #13: The first Selfie Stick.
Looks like it was the camera that was the "Thrill Cam" months before.
Also we didn't need to see that...😬
This episode is a hoot. awesome upload. love classic Dave.
Man, part of me wishes I had been around to watch LNwDL when it was on the air. But I'm still grateful to be around today where I can see it all on TH-cam! Appreciate your uploads sir.
Delightful silliness. Thanks for uploading this, Don. :)
Dave almost predicted the future of how concerts are supposed to be shot nowadays with Belinda being the performer of the day.
Thank you so much for posting this. So Hilarious
There's something extra funny to me about the black and white camera. Something tells me they dug out an old B&W camera that had been sitting in the 30 Rock storage closet for 15-20 years.
Same cameras that filmed the Beatles.
@@BIgBass255The Beatles appeared on CBS, not NBC.
If you look really closely, you can see that the “black and white” camera is the same as all the other studio cameras. They just turned down the chroma on that one camera as a joke.
Paul missed an opportunity to do "13 Cameras" to the tune of "16 Candles"
So much Dave!! Thanks again, Don!!!
Enjoyed seeing what the studio looks like. Always wondered. Thanks for posting this. 🤔👍👍
Perhaps one of the last of Letterman's experimental formats. But this is a gem.
He did do the commercial-free episode about eight years later.
This is the best episode of anything ever, and the reason is
thanks don!
Great example of camera work, scene selection and cutting! Looks like one of the cams was a GoPro prototype on a stick. They must have raided the camera closet for this show.
I lived with Fred and Kermit on Yucca St. at Highland Ave. in Hollywood,CA when this aired. I was 22.
The very beginning.. you're flying a plane directly into the towers... Still sad and eerie
For those who were wondering, Belinda, in fact, did not win the Grammy that year (for best female pop vocal performance). The winner was Whitney Houston. Belinda did look great in her strapless dress, though.
she is absolutely gorgeous.
Geez, Dave went to the future and stole Headlines from Jay and called it Dumb Ads and Small Town News. Unbelievable...
"One day, all shows will look like this." - Nostradamus, I think
"When the FOX network finally goes out of business...."
How times have changed!
Camera #13 was the original GoPro!
33:37 - "Don't do that. Don't do that."
33:39 - Larry's hand riding up and down the guitar neck in pretty much the worst air guitar sequence ever filmed. This alone would be funny enough. Dave catches something else altogether dirtier in the execution, though. "...Don't do that." I've been laughing for five minutes.
i remember this show.
FOX used more than 70 cameras for Super Bowl 51, but 63% of the time, they used the close-up cam that followed Tom Brady.
Out of the 11 minutes of gameplay?! Wow.
"Fire Log Holder" is now the name of my band.
“Inches from the Pizza” 😅
worth checking out, to see a breathtakingly beautiful, and polished Belinda Carlisle, the most beautiful redhead ever...
I enjoyed that. She was great to watch
Miss Kitty?
I remember watching this one. I can't remember I VHS'd it or if I stayed up to watch it (was this a Friday night?), but I remember telling someone abot it a few days later, and mentioning the thing of the camera going between Dave's legs, and then when I mentioned Belinda Carlisle, he asked if they did the same thing during HER performance, and of course they didn't.
For me the damndest thing about these shows is that they make me feel
nostalgic for a year/decade that seemed lousy at the time and looks even
lousier to me now.
Dave was a bright light in the midst of it.
I remember David Letterman on NBC (daytime) as a Weatherman..... A very L O N G time ago. I was sick and stayed home from school....
He was never an NBC weatherman. Local Indianapolis only.
Selfie sticks have improved over the years
A rare Jeff Samaha sighting at 34:55. He was the other main stage manager besides Biff during the NBC run, but got almost zero on-camera time.
True, he was never in any comedy bits, but he was frequently seen on camera.
Brilliant
It is interesting to say the least . It has some awkwardness to it . Worthy of the experiment. Also seems like an idea out of a lack of anything else ,speculation on my part .
$90,000 a camera!!!!!!!! WOW!
Rhyan Coleman It’s still about the same for a studio camera these days.
Wrong about Fox, correct about GE...31 years later!
This is when TV was at it’s best
4:55 We're still waiting...
What’s the song the band plays after they show off all 13 cameras? They used it a ton after Top 10 Lists, too.
The title escapes me at the moment, but it's James Brown.
Nine NBC Vice Presidents?
That’s like clowns getting out of a Volkswagen in the circus.
Lol!!
The intro reminded me of the opening credits for the Naked Gun movie.
14:31 ... Valley of the Dolls in OKC, OK. Been there many times back in the day.
do u have 'parents night" ?? feb of 86....one of my fave shows
Uploaded here on January 28, 2016 -- th-cam.com/video/wi4VawQ-CuE/w-d-xo.html
Another great upload. Thank's Don! Do you have a Richard Lewis compilation?
Not yet. There were 47 Late Night appearances, and I'm missing the first (hope to fill that in soon). It'll be take a lot of time. Is there really a demand for Richard Lewis?
Well at least from me there is. LOL!
Jane Pauley compilation?
Fun show
I wonder how it would be with HD cameras?
Hilarious how Dave was annoyed by the way "Kenny the Gardener" was stroking his guitar.
Damn i loved Letterman's ending theme more on NBC then CBS had more thwang !!
The opening theme was better, too.
This many cameras, looks like Zeppelin at Knebworth!
Fire codes? What fire codea? :)
I want Paul's synth!
Kenny the gardener ? and Belinda Carlisle, I get weak!
There’s a complete compilation of Kenny the Gardener elsewhere on this channel.
Isn't that Al Camoin from SNL?
Al's not in this. He retired in '86. I believe the guy on the mini-crane is John Pinto, the man who replaced Al at SNL. A whole lot of cameramen worked on both Letterman and SNL at different times, including Peter, Eric, Carl, Barry, and Bailey.
It's March 1st but how is Dave talking about the Olympics before the summer?
Back then (1988) they had the Summer and Winter Games in the same year. Calgary 1988.
Yeah, this show is literally the day after the closing ceremonies of the 1988 winter olympics. This was the 2nd to last year of Summer and Winter being in the same year.
And 1988 would be the first year that NBC would air the Summer Olympics. It wasn't until 2002 that NBC got the Olympic contract to air both the Summer and Winter Games.
0:48 iPad existing in 1988 confirmed
2:50 Announcer Bill Wendell
We have 13 cameras! Oh My God!!!!!!!!!!!!
So we start off by apparently passing through the World Trade Center. What innocent times.
I miss the GoGos & Belinda Carlisle
0:01 - This opening titles always gives me the creeps looking at it for obvious reasons. So uncomfortable for the first ten seconds or so.
All I could think of when they took the camera through that high interior floor of the WTC was all the people that died there, and how they might’ve died. So very sad. One minute they’re sitting there working, starting just another work day, and the next minute they’re all dying, screaming, crying, trying to call loved ones in a fiery blaze hot enough to melt steel.
WATCHED 3/19/21
I read your comment on 1/1/23.
Kenny the Gardner does look a lot like Roy Orbison
"Kenny" (Calvert) was 15 years older than Roy.
The big blues ones look like RCA TK-47's with plumbicons.
Sorry for the premature post, now watching the clip and at 12:30 Dave states the obvious to anyone that worked in oldschool TV broadcast production, will watch the rest of the clip but I don't think he'll call out the Vinten pneumatic pedestals by name, you had to fill them to a specific PSI with an air compressor to counter balance the weight of camera (200lbs with lens), but they were so smooth for any type of moves.
It's quite amazing to see in just 30 years the technological advances, yet the quality is subjective...
In 1980-something I remember seeing how stunning a properly adjusted CRT monitor looked at only 646x480 pixels (3-wire analog component, no digital compression schemes at that time). TH-cam videos look like crap compared to the mid 80's video that I mention above, despite claiming to be so much higher in resolution.
On the computer side my SGI reality engine workstation had 10 Gigaflops of performance in the 90's (size of a small fridge at $250, 000) and now a $150 Oculus Go has 500 Gigaflops in a chip the size of my thumbnail. I wonder what the next 30 years will hold...
Don, thank you so, so much for somehow grabbing old tapes, digitizing them and uploading. It's amazing that the multi-billion dollar corporation(s) that own NBC and CBS have such little interest in archiving the content that you have archived and presented in such a cohesive format for fans.
@@inversemedia I was born in 95 and grew up using LCDs, but I know what you mean about how stunning 480i can look on a calibrated CRT monitor. Those displays are the absolute best way to play retro games.
One day I hope to get a Sony BVM 20L5
Yep.
I was going back through old clips to try to determine when the show switched from TK-44s to 47s.
In around 1984, an audience member got to use a TK-44.
The show seemed to "brighten up" sometime in '85 with some set changes and noticably sharper and brighter video. You can see the 44s had a lot more and longer lasting red-streaking, especially on Paul's shiny gooseneck mic stand. Later shows, possibly with the 47s, seemed to have just a short lasting minor red flare on very shiny objects.
All these jokes about GE rings differently now
I love this concept, but that Larry "Bud" Melman segment was hard to watch.
As were most LBM segments.
34:40--I Get Weak
Duct tape sighted 4:45
I think Belinda was getting into the multi cam deal 37:20
Should have skipped 13 and called it 14.