Here’s what I learned today. 10,000+ words is a lot to proofread. Followers of my ‘stack know I miss a typo every time as it is!
On today’s Daily Comedy News Podcast, I have an hour long interview with Mark Malkoff who hosts Inside Late Night, a new podcast. Mark used to host The Carson Podcast which is how I came to know his work.
Below the embeds, is a transcript-ish of Part One of the interview. The entire audio is up right now if you’d like to hear it, and I believe that’s the best way to consume it.
If you prefer reading, I will post the second half next Saturday.
As for “transcript-ish” - the transcript was created by AI, so there’s that to begin with. I took a few phrases out here and there for clarity, and I guess it’s possible that the transcript is wrong in spots. That’s why we have the audio!
Anyway, I REALLY enjoyed this one.
John: You don't seem old enough to be a Carson fan. I won't ask you how old you are, but I'll go first. I'm 54, and Carson was the thing I watched as I killed time until Letterman came on. As time went on, I got more into Johnny, and we can talk about that.
But why are you such a Carson fan?
Mark: I was a fan of the genre, but definitely Carson was this guy that just fascinated me in terms of his longevity, in terms of his likeability that he could talk to the a listers like Audrey Hepburn. And even though he got very nervous with her and Jimmy Stewart and hope, and then be talking to kids and then he's with animals and then civilians…A lot of them out of their hometown and never been on an airplane. And just, he was able just to be likable and make people feel comfortable. And I think that's why his success was. He just played to middle America, played to the cities. In terms of a host, in terms of his skill set as a listener, I don't think anybody has come remotely close.
There's a lot of great hosts and things, but I was just always fascinated by him. And then I would hear that he was this other guy. And I just, as growing up as a kid, I just was really fascinated by what he might've been off camera versus on camera, and then I would watch it as a kid with, let me, I don't know, six, seven with my dad.
And he would tell me these interviews were actually scripted a little bit and that baffled me. I just couldn't believe it. I thought this was all just, them talking back and forth. Famous people are always witty. And I just was wondering, how do you get a job like that to be the (pre-interviewer)
Just all these things, what went on behind the show, and I've always just been into him. But I think his stuff, a lot of it still holds up. He's been off the air, what, now 32 years.
John: It's crazy that it's 32 years. I have upstairs I stole the title from it was the TV guide cover. I have a VHS that I labeled Johnny's last jam, which was what the TV guide is.
I've got Johnny's last show and Jay's first show with the purple set. I don't know. I'm going to do it, but it's upstairs.
Mark: Yeah. The purple set with all the curtains opening in the montage. And that was live. Jay did the first two weeks live, which was. Pretty unheard of for late night. It still is. But yeah, that was an interesting transition to say the least,
John: That whole weird move of not acknowledging that somebody else hosted the show last week.
Mark: Yeah, it stemmed from Helen Kushnick, who was Jay's producer. It was a very unhealthy relationship. And he basically deferred to her, and she, I don't want to say she was a bully to him, but it just was not a healthy relationship, and Jay's a very nice man, and she was doing all these things behind the scenes that Jay supposedly didn't know about.
And I probably, I believe it's that it's true (that) the things was, is that, Bob Wright at NBC, the president, (said) I want Jay to thank Johnny and have Kushnick (say) absolutely not.
John: Yeah, and especially Jay had been doing Mondays, so it's not somebody dropped in out of space and started hosting the Tonight Show. There was planned continuity there.
Mark: Carson was baffled by the whole thing, just because, Leno would have never been able to do the permanent guest host if it wasn't for Carson.
They were always on good terms. Definitely Johnny privately wanted Dave to take over the Tonight Show, but in terms of Carson Productions, Johnny on the show, Jay was guest hosting for scale. He was getting paid as less as you (could) possibly, and Leno was so smart about it, beacuse Leno knew that he is club dates.
He could play Vegas and all these places and make so much more money. And just thinking I got all these behind me, these guest hosts, which I think he (hosted) like 200 or more times, that he would have a better running to get the tonight show. Everything was very calculated with him.
And it just got to the point where there was just so much stuff with Helen and the way that some of the people at the tonight show and Including Branford Marsalis denies it, but he said some stuff about Doc and the band apparently on the today show about not being hip and they were going to bring this back.
So Doc and the band were very upset with that. And it just kept, it kept escalating, but yeah, (Bill) Carter covered it, but Helen planted a false story in the New York Post about NBC wanting Johnny out. And Johnny knew right away it was Helen. I didn't know it was. Proven it was Helen and there was just all this stuff that was completely unnecessary behind the scenes
John: It's crazy that it's 30 years already.
We're three or four hosts later depending on how you want to count.
As I was thinking this morning getting ready to speak with you I was doing some self analysis, and if you had asked me when I woke up over breakfast, I would have said yeah, i'm a huge late night fan. I definitely talk about it all the time on the podcast And then I realized I really haven't watched it regularly since maybe year two of CBS Letterman.
So I'm exposing myself here that, that's a good 27, eight years ago, but yet I love the genre. I just, maybe it's just times change. So I was a huge Letterman fan
Boy if Dave ever moved from 1230 to 1130 and I didn't have to stay up to 1 30 in the morning to watch him I would watch this thing every night and I did that for a year or two and then I don't know if I hit my mid 20s or what happened I just fell out of the habit but I do love it.
Mark: I think Dave definitely on CBS was appointment television for a generation. The NBC show still holds up. It was just a brilliantly conceived show and to do something that had never really been done and influenced so many comedy I think for the first maybe two or three years Dave was putting in maximum effort and then he just pulled back and it was just so obvious I know he was tired.
He was exhausted. I get that and the show just changed and it was not the same thing. And then over time, Dave developed more to be known as an interviewer and just having people on he never would have had on like maybe political people and, putting his political opinion in a little bit and it just completely became this other thing.
But Dave was such an amazing broadcaster that people just followed him no matter what he did. But yeah, once the show shifted. And he stopped going to rehearsal. And even before that, he stopped doing pre tapes. it just became a different thing. And I knew he couldn't do remotes anymore cause he was too famous, but it's just, it was just a different show.
And I still think he was probably the funniest person behind the desk. I think Carson was the best overall host, but in terms of funny and stuff, I would say Dave's NBC show in yeah, maybe the first few years of CBS.
John: Yeah, Dave had the 12 30 vibe of no one's watching I can make something out of nothing. Once Conan found his fastball (he) sort of picked up that torch, but to me, I always thought of it as the guy at 12 30 was wearing sneakers and the guy at 11 30 had on an Armani suit and just that alone was just different.
Mark: Yeah, to play at 1130, there's definitely changes that have been need to be made, but I think any of the shows that people started at 1230 and then went down at 1130 I prefer the 1230 looseness and I get the prestige of going to 1130 and playing to a mass audience, but the necessary changes just.
At least to some, but to me, people that grew up or that watched the 1230, it just was, it was not the same. And I really do think that in terms of what the best work that they did when they were looser, they didn't have to worry as much about making the changes, the 1230 shows were the best.
John: Let's talk about the new podcast.
Where did it come from? How did you hook up with Bill and the site? The site is Latenighter, which is fantastic. It's already one of my key resources.
When I listened to the Carson podcast, I thought, Oh, this guy's just a big Carson fan. And now I'm sensing, are you industry or you seem to know people a little bit more than maybe I thought?
Mark: I worked in TV at day jobs for a bunch of years, and I've just been around people that I've been able to have some private conversations with that trusted me. And I definitely, when I'm, Talking to Robert, who I've known since I was 17, during the whole Carson podcast, Robert was very nice to do my last episode and bring Dana Carvey in.
I just wanted to talk about Carson because he wrote the Johnny Carson sketches on SNL that Johnny did not like and talk about some other things about Carson with Smigel, but I've known him since I was 17. I know more about SNL than I did it, of Carson.
And so it was one of those things where I had a lot of information. I had a day job at Letterman too. So I always wanted to talk to people about the other shows and maybe broadens. I knew I had this knowledge and I definitely had questions that I just, I really wanted to be answered. So I thought this was a good fit.
Jed, who runs Latenighter was a fan of the Carson Podcast. And he said, if you ever want to do something. Let me know. We had a couple conversations and it made sense. You have Bill Carter's editor at large and I there's just, there are a lot of people I wanted to talk to the host.
Burt Sugarman from Midnight Special is the guest next week. So we're. Going different, time periods. Sugarman’s Midnight Special was 72 to I think 81. And he was the creator and, producer of Burt Sugar Mint's Midnight Special, which every rock act you can imagine and not country.
Everyone from Johnny Cash to Led Zeppelin to Kiss to David Bowie. And just going back every Friday. Midnight special and to just talk about the evolution of late night and Johnny Carson was very influential on Midnight Special. Sugarman and Carson were next door neighbors in Bel Air, so there's a lot of Carson that goes with it.
So yeah, it was that was fun. So we're just going to go around the genre and see who we can talk to.
John: I love that you're going that deep with it. That's cool. I remember that show. That's awesome.
Mark: Yeah, it's his YouTube channels amazing. he's an amazing businessman, he owns it, which, Carson didn't get ownership till 1980 of his Tonight show, but Sugarman in 72 or whatever, NBC didn't believe in it and basically had to, bought airtime on NBC, and NBC said, fine if you pay for everything.
So he owned it, He has everything. And, yeah, the channel is just phenomenal. People like Linda Ronstadt, she went on Carson, I think 68 or 69 and would not do Johnny show, because the audio, a lot of, acts, did not want to do Johnny show, because TV was perceived as a lot of times the audio people and stuff just were not able to adjust to rock and different sounds and stuff.
So Neil Diamond didn't do Carson show. Or any show, including Midnight Special. And they try to get him until Johnny's last year. His diamond had a bad experience with it. So Carson would have to go across the hall, to watch Linda Ronstadt on Midnight Special because he was such a fan. He'd go over to visit Richard Pryor when he was hosting.
So he would definitely go over, but there were certain acts like Linda Ronstadt. He wasn't able to get it until 84, 86. And yeah, the Tonight Show, the Carson audio people stayed up till the middle of the night, the night before, just making sure the audio was good. And then, Ronstadt was Ronstadt was so happy and ended up doing Carson's show like, I think, five more times after that.
John: Are you finding this podcast easier to book? Cause I'm imagining, say we wanted to book, I don't know, Branford Marsalis. There's a road to get to Branford Marsalis. But if you want to book somebody from the back offices from Carson circa 1976, that seems to me like it would be a lot harder. I'd rather try and book Branford than a random civilian 40 years later. ,
Mark: I'm going wide. I just asked somebody who worked at the Tonight Show in New York, if cause I wasn't aware of them if they would do it, but yeah, going to a Branford, even though I'd be very surprised if he said yes, he publicly said bad stuff about Jay Leno.
It's, you never know people are going to say yes or no, but yeah, definitely. To talk to some of those types is definitely easier to get to. Some of the people I had to track down took me forever. Months.
Sometimes the kind of the behind the scenes people I was just so obsessed with the New York Tonight Show era from 62 to 72, it was worth it. And I was just, people like Jason Bateman that were kids on the show. Now we're in like their 50s. So it was just so many of the people that I wanted to get were just they were passing away and it just got, it got very hard to book guests at the end.
Just because the pool of people that were still around was tiny. And this is definitely a lot easier so far in terms of the booking, but I think it really comes down to so many people, I got a lot of big guests on Carson and people have been very nice on this as for Carson, and I did not know this, it never occurred to me is that it was one of the best times in their lives, generally for a lot of these people, and they've never gotten to talk about it at length, certainly.
I always equate it to somebody that had the best college experience, but they never get to talk about it. No one really cares, but they suddenly have this audience of somebody that knows all these things about them when they were on Carson and things. And people said yes to me that I just, I never would have, Expected in a million years, and hopefully this is the same, talking about your first time on Letterman and just, Dave meant a lot to a lot of the guests and so forth.
And so we'll see what happens. I just hope that people will trust me to come on and my whole goal is just to present to my audience things that they probably do not know things that the guests have never talked about. The stories that are maybe they're rarely talked about buried, but just with Carson and everything.
I didn't ask Rachel Dratch how she came up with Debbie Downer because she's talked about that on Saturday Night Live so many times in interviews. It's so (easy to) Google , and I don't want to be that guy. There's no reason for me to ask some of those questions that they've answered a million times. So we're just trying to go in deeper and yeah, so far it's been fun and guests have been very generous with their time and with just sharing their stories,
John: You gave me flashbacks when you mentioned New York era Carson tonight show and how so many of the archives are gone.
I worked at WOR radio (in the) late nineties. We found an entire room, probably the size of my office, of just stacked reel to reel tapes. I was tasked with throwing them out. And I'm going through these tapes and, I'm twenty something years old.
What am I going to do with all these tapes? And it's alright, Viking 6 launch, toss, random LBJ - Toss. JFK something, let's try and keep that. I dubbed everything down to mini disc back in the day.
When they did their 100th anniversary, I lent them a dub of my archives. So I was happy that happened properly. But my larger point here is here in the digital age, I wonder how much stuff disappears. Somebody like Mark Main has almost definitely every episode on a hard drive or some technology somewhere, but so especially celebrity shows working with podcast companies that are really radio companies.
I wonder how many of these shows are just going to vanish because nobody bothers to back it up or somebody stops paying for hosting and all these things are just going to go away. I really worry.
Mark: Yeah, I Hopefully now people are a little bit better about it But certainly Johnny was furious when he found out NBC erased everything luckily there are I'd say from 62 to 72, there’s probably I don't know, maybe at least a couple dozen, if not more, shows that exist. There's absolutely kinescopes dating back to Johnny's first month on the air. I've seen them. it is pretty wild to watch. I don't think anybody's ever seen these clips and things, but you have people like, Bob Newhart guest hosting 64.
There's definitely some of the guest hosts. And just random kinescopes, it was such a shame that they erased the most pivotal things, it seems every year, and I could be off on this, that somebody comes up with something and find something, people did have them in attics and stuff and whenever they're able to find something, it's like a treasure quest to find some of these clips, the Carson people were so desperate to get clips, because they went to Burbank in 72, they moved and had an anniversary show where they couldn't really do anything because all the clips were gone.
Johnny in his brilliance requested the Ed Ames thing. So he had that and they had a few things, but they were actually taking ads in newspapers that Tonight Show people around, at least in LA, probably around the country, asking people if they had clips from New York, if they happened to tape them themselves privately, if they could send them into the show for the anniversary shows.
More with Mark next week, or just listen to the podcast today!