The Treat: Spike Feresten

0:00Support comes from SoCalREN, a regional energy network putting Southern California's energy commitment to work through financial incentives, hands-on support, and job training that help communities save energy and lower costs. Learn more at SoCalREN.org. Welcome to The Treat. I'm Elvis Mitchell. Writer-performer Spike Feresten's writing career has ranged from The Simpsons to Jerry Seinfeld's directorial debut on Frosted. He also hosts an impressive podcast on driving and a car. For The Treat, he takes us back to a performer who broke through in what used to be called Late Night. I'm Spike Fursten, and this is The Treat.

0:40And now, a man who shouldn't be up this late, David Letterman!

0:50Probably the show that's had the biggest impact on me is the original Late Night with David Letterman. Welcome to the show. You folks are apparently a bright group, bright enough at least to read the applause sign, and I certainly appreciate that. I'm very excited about this new show. It spun me off into my whole career. It spun me off in a completely different direction. I was going to music school in Boston, Berklee College of Music. I was not doing well there. I had miscalculated that I was the next Bon Jovi or something, the next Jimi Hendrix, actually. And I really was not even Tiny Tim. And so I was getting into trouble in the dorms.

1:35One night I had a little too much to drink and was throwing fluorescent light bulbs off the building and got caught and kicked out of the dorms. And it wasn't long after until I saw David Letterman doing tower drops and dropping things. and I went, my God, that guy's getting paid to do that and it's a network television show. Maybe this is my tribe. Maybe these are my people. This time we'll be using a six-pack of regular beer and a six-pack of light beer and we'll see which of the two falls more quickly.

2:13You know, in that moment, I started watching a lot of that show and I couldn't believe, at the time, there was just no comedy like that on television. There was no guy like David Letterman like that on TV. And he was the voice of college kids everywhere in Boston. And, you know, he was silly. You know, there was all of this dead air in the show where the audience wasn't laughing, but we were laughing at home. And it was really revolutionary as far as entertainment and comedy. And I thought, you know, if I could just get close to this thing, I think this is where I belong. So now that you're well known, is it harder to be funny?

2:54No, it's a little bit different. You know, you go out to a restaurant, you can't eat, you know, and people want your autograph and so forth and it's hard to eat. Am I doing? What's happening?

3:10I swear, Letterman. If it's the last thing I'm going to do, I'm going to make every second. And probably I met a former girlfriend of one of the staffers in Boston at the restaurant where I worked, Legal Seafoods, and she hooked me up with an internship there. And that was the beginning of my career. Here now to close our show is Mr. Steve Fessler, a guy from Brooklyn who for some reason has committed to memory all the dialogue of the two-and-a-half-hour classic B film Bowery at Midnight, starring Bela Lugosi. Right toward the end, they said, do you want to be the receptionist? that started live.

3:46I said, I'd love to do that. And now here I am. Here I am. And it was really that show. Really that show watching it and going, this is a place for me. This is a place for me and my friends.

4:08What a performer, Spike Fairston on David Letterman. The Treat is produced by Rebecca Mooney and mixed by Katie Gilchrist. I'm Elvis Mitchell. It's the treat.

4:21Thank you very much. Thank you.