It was like the good old fashioned Late show Days for a Time Tuesday night at the Montalban Theater in Los Angeles.
David Letterman took over the hosting spot Netflix is a joke: This better be funny with David Letterman With special guest John Mulaney. But before welcoming Mulaney into the limelight, the veteran host had one more trick up his sleeve to get the heartthrob out Late show Band leader and good friend Paul Shaffer. The large crowd gave Shaffer a standing ovation when he reached the top of the event.
Letterman, who recently signed on to executive produce Say hello to our good friend Paul Shafferan upcoming feature-length documentary about his old friend, exchanged banter with Shaffer as they have done for years on late-night television. “I got to go to Moonshadows and meet Mel Gibson,” Shaffer joked as he exited the venue, which turned out to be relatively short. Shaffer returned to close the show about 90 minutes later by sitting down at the piano and performing a Frank Sinatra classic called “That’s Life.”
Letterman kicked off the show with a short opening set that played somewhat like “This is Your Life” as the veteran host looked back on the early days, like going back to childhood. Images flashed on the big screen behind him showing a young Letterman in his annual photo and on the basketball and track teams at Broad Ripple High School in Indianapolis, Indiana. He also recapped highlights of his career, such as early radio and television gigs, the time he worked as a weekend weatherman or when he reported live for KTLA at the 1979 Rose Parade.
Letterman played well-received clips from his early television appearances Mork and Mindy and Mary Tyler Moore watch. He also relayed the praise he received early in his time in Los Angeles after appearing at The Comedy Store. “I told a joke and no one laughed,” Letterman recalled. “But I wasn’t discouraged because I was terrified. You can’t be discouraged and petrified at the same time. But when I walked out of the theater, there was a man there in the shadows, a man I knew as Richard Pryor. … He said to me, ‘I really like this joke.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my God, I can go ahead and pay the rent.’ It was a big moment for me.”
Other big moments of the night belonged to Letterman and Mulaney as they sat center stage and shared lively and entertaining stories about life, celebrities, their careers, and their families. Mulaney’s wife, Olivia Munn, was in the audience and he spent a lot of time talking about their two children, a son named Malcolm and daughter Mai, and her Vietnamese-Chinese relatives.
Regarding these relatives, Mulaney got a lot of laughs as he detailed his unique relationship with them. “For the first 39 years of my life, I did not financially support a single Vietnamese citizen. Now, sitting here with you tonight, I have about 10 on the books and two using the Cash App. It’s weird [when people ask]’Oh, what your life is like when you… [doing all these projects]”But most of my day is spent texting elderly Vietnamese about whether they got money or if they need more. If I buy a device and it breaks, I don’t know if you know this, that’s on me.”
However, Mulaney described expanding his life in this way as “one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me.” “My family is very white. There’s no comparison to being Vietnamese. Becoming Chinese-Vietnamese is the smartest thing I’ve ever done. It’s amazing. It’s amazing.”
Letterman asked Mulaney about a host of other remarkable events in his life, such as becoming the first comedian to play Wrigley Field in his hometown of Chicago, accepting an honorary sponsorship from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, taking his son to Graceland, where he also performed, and becoming part-owner of Years, a non-alcoholic beer brand in the Midwest.
Letterman also asked Mulaney about directing the comedy special Robbie Hoffman: Wake up For Netflix. Letterman noted how he watched the special and was curious to know what it was like working with Hacks Rising star. “I got lost in the world of contemporary comedy because I’m fascinated by you and by a handful of other young men and women who I believe have elevated this craft, this art beyond the world’s earliest expectations,” Letterman said in preface to his question.
Mulaney called Hoffman “completely original,” and likened her debut to the late and great Sam Kinison, “someone like, ‘I’ve never heard of a comedian like this. I’ve never seen anyone so bold,” Mulaney said. “When she opened for me in San Diego in an outdoor venue on the water with a lot of couples at the tables, she never adjusted her act to suit anyone.”
Mulaney said he reached out to her because he had a deal to direct and produce the specials for Netflix and offered to direct her. “You say: What is money?” And I say, “I was told you would be empty.” There’s a lot of expense and I’ve got a small budget and they’re going to license it and it’s a really interesting deal, but I’ll be upfront – I don’t take any fees for directing it, but it’s probably going to be net, blank in the thousand.’ “Not much,” she says.
He said they talked about it and she came to the conclusion that it was very good for her but “let’s be clear,” she added: “It’s good for you too because it looks from the street when you do things like this, John, from the street, it looks like you’re plugged in.” Mulaney added that every time we talked about production meetings and such, Hoffman would say, “This is good for you.”
“But I will say her prophecy has come true. I’m seen as cooler. I’m from the street. A lot of people were saying, ‘I see more of the streets now.’ She’s one of those people that makes me excited to do stand-up again.”
The pairing of Mulaney and Letterman was a reunion of sorts as the latter appeared in the live-action series John Mulaney Presents: Everybody in Los Angelesalso for Netflix. Letterman asked Mulaney if he would produce more of the series, which has only run for one season so far.
“We have another season of Netflix. I’m on tour until January 2027. So we’ll see,” Mulaney noted.
The two spent a lot of time talking about Mulaney’s job furthering his career as a writer Saturday Night Live And his last appearance in the Lorne Michaels documentary, Lornefrom Morgan Neville, who also happened to be in the audience at Montalban.
Letterman played the clip from Everyone in Los Angeles Which found Mulaney interviewing Michael Jackson’s Bubbles Chimpanzee. After the viral clip ended, Letterman asked Mulaney if he had seen the new movie about Jackson. Michaelfrom director Antoine Fuqua. “No, I haven’t seen it because it looks like dog shit,” Mulaney said. “I was watching a lot of movies that came out and I thought, ‘Oh, that looks like a stupid dog.’ But oh, he made a lot of money, so I think…but it looks terrible, Dave.
Mulaney asked Letterman if he would see it and he also declined. “I don’t think this program is for me.” Mulaney then added: “I’m not saying this, by the way, in a way, but just aesthetically and as a movie, it looks stupid and bad.”
