Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff - Eric Drysdale

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Eric Drysdale joins Mark to discuss writing for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.  Check out: https://edrysdale.com/ Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drysdaledoesit/

Hi, I am Mark Malkoff. Welcome to Inside Late Night, presented by Latenighter.com. Today, Emmy Award winning comedy writer, The Daily Show, the Colbert Report. Eric Drysdale joins us and be sure to also go to YouTube to the Late Nighter YouTube channel where you can watch this entire conversation. Now, it's time to go inside late night. Eric Drysdale, nice to see you. Good to see you again, Mark.

We have known each other for a long, long time. time. I can't believe it's been, it'll be 20 years in the fall since we both. You figured that out. I did just because that's when we started Colbert, right? That was, it was in October of 2005, yeah. I'll never forget going in there because I think people forget initially, I mean, you had a sweet gig because you're leaving the Daily Show with all your Emmys and, you know, your back is scrunched over because you have so many Emmys and you're coming over to Colbert. And initially, Doug, Herzog and everyone over there gives us I think it was 40 episodes

and possibly there was talk if it went well to extend it but there were people in comedy, really smart people that were convinced that a show could not sustain in character. Well, we were scared. We were scared. It had never been done for somebody in character to sustain

one of those things. When you say that you were scared because you were in this inner circle with Alison Silverman with Stephen Colbert and with a few other or people. But when you say you were scared, are you talking like months leading up? Are you talking just like the test shows? Um, so the whole thing happened very fast. I mean, the, and, uh, to put to the other people in the room, it was, uh, Mike Brum, Tom Purcell, um, Rob Dubbin and Loracraft and

Peter Gwynn. Those were the people in there. And Rich Dom. Glenn, did you say Glenn Eichler? Glenn Eichler. Yeah. Sorry, I did not see Glenn Eichler. So I think those were the people that were there at the very, very beginning. And, you know, it was a bold move. Like, nobody had done a character for a half an hour every night. And, yeah, it was daunting. It was daunting. How do it?

I mean, one of the first things that we talked about all the time in the very early days was, what can we do to get Stephen off the camera, like, and do things that don't involve him? Like one of the ideas was we would do field pieces where he was doing a voiceover, but you didn't see his face. Because we just thought people would get sick of seeing his face. Little did we know that we like we managed to put something together where and he's so good that yeah, you do want to watch him for 22 minutes at a time. And that's when they brought you in initially to play Bobby the stage manager. We had a stage manager, Mark McKenna, but we had you as the fictional stage manager Bobby. And it was a really, there was some really fun banter back in.

but it was it was one of those things can is it is it going to work with stephen just driving this thing himself yeah i mean that's how i got that's how i got to be bobby the stage managers that in those early i mean it was only i think it was only five or six weeks we had before like from the time the room started until the first show was on and um we would do these kind of run-throughs of the show with the whole staff in there and um i was the only one that had come directly from The Daily Show to Colbert. Allison had worked with him before, but had gone to Conan in the meantime. So I was just the guy that Stephen turned to in one of those meetings, and he just kind of

improvised, Bobby, what do you think of that? And like, it became part of the show. Again, just because we were so afraid of having, it wasn't because I was so great, it was because we were afraid of having Stephen on camera 22 minutes at a time that we had that we had to do something else very quickly we did four test shows one part of one test show aired which was Jeff Daniels plug in squid on the whale um we did four of them and I think it was after the very first test show Ben Carlin in the Monday meeting um morning meeting or it might have been executive producer Ben Carlin yeah Carlin was just telling everyone you really be

present and watch what's going on because for a show to be this good so soon is extremely rare and I think after like the first test show it was usually most of that stuff is completely unerable and there were test shows that we could have put on that night and they would have done well and it was one of those things that normally those things take a year sometimes several to like organically become something and it was I really appreciate now looking back that Ben could tell what was going on and had that wisdom, and he was absolutely right. Well, it did get better. It did get better. And the character came in focus and the show came in focus. But I, yeah, it came out pretty hot out of the gate. Yeah, we did the four test shows.

And then I remember, and I think I said this when I had David Cross on, and he doesn't remember doing this. But the reveal, do you remember what the reveal is that we got renewed? Stephen called us all into the studio and we're all. sitting there and he is like and you know it's going well with the with all these shows but we were getting some of the elements late and and we have this voiceover that we have to um just play it play the voice over that we just recorded it was david cross because he was a character and he basically and again i can't believe that the colbert report got renewed for an entire year and that was the voice yeah i don't remember that that was the reveal and all of us oh man just to have

employment for another year and to actually work on something that we were also proud of I mean, it was extraordinary. It was exciting. It was really exciting. Yeah. What was it like then going from the Daily Show and working with John to essentially becoming a sketch writer more or less? I mean, it was great.

I mean, I think one of the reasons I was brought to make that transition is because not unique among the staff, but like, I really crave silliness. And I think that Stephen's character. and the way that show was structured, even though we didn't know how it was going to be structured. It just kind of begged for a little more silliness just because the character itself was so harsh. And I think, you know, I love working at the daily show.

I love the grind of it and the excitement of having newsbreak in the morning and then hearing an audience laugh in the, you know, a couple hours later. Like, it was all very, very exciting. But, you know, the chance to create something new, the chance to create something new with Stephen Colbert and the chance to flex those new muscles and especially the chance to be sillier, those all really appealed to me and paid off right away.

Also, the ridiculousness. I remember sometimes in the morning meeting, we'd be like, let's get a celebrity for a bit. I remember, for example, I believe you working with Stephen Van Zay, from Springsteen's band, and he comes in. He did a cameo. It was a scripted beat. And my favorite part was, it was like, Stephen asked him, I believe, what happens when one of you gets sick? And it was like, we all have a list of, like, who our buddy emergency contact is, and we all, like, go down. But my point is, is they would sometimes just throw a writer, something like you, with, with somebody

like this. And it would just be, you know, it was just so different from what you had done previously. and you just never knew what was going to go on on a given day, which was opposed to the Daily Show, which was a run completely different. Yeah, I don't even remember that. I mean, I remember that Stephen Van Zant was there, but I have no recollection of whether I wrote something with him

or did I appear on screen with him? I think you might have, or you worked with him on the bit because I remember being there. I mean, the one I do remember is I got to appear on, I appeared on screen with Rick O'Kasik from the cars. because we did this whole thing where Stephen had adopted a bird, had adopted an eagle, and we were tracking the eagle, and the eagle went missing, and so he dispatched me and Rick O'Kasik to go find the bird, stuff like that.

He was so much fun. I remember, and then we had his picture on the set from the General Hospital, and we brought in a lot of people just at two bits. I remember Karim Abdul-Jabbar, I believe Frank Lasser wrote a piece. But it was one of those things where I talked to, and I'll tell you afterwards, who it was. I talked to one of the people, one of the writers, and I was there when this happened when Will Smith was

on our show, and he could not have been nicer. He was, you know, really playful with the audience. He was in the back tapping on people's shoulders of the audience, and they were like, who, like beforehand and stuff before he came out, and people were like, what was, and it was just him, and he was just, but he, this was during

the, when the rewrites were going on. So I guess I'm going to give it, it could be a couple people, that he, when he arrived, he's like, where's Stephen, and we're like, oh, he's in this room. And it's a small backstage area and he just barges in. He's like, none of this is funny. None of this is funny. Everything you're doing is.

And it was so funny. But the person that was in the room, I mentioned this to, no recollection. It's just, I think for some people, like yourself that was working one-on-one, you just forget these things. Well, also, the pace was insane. The pace was insane. You would be, you know, you're working on jokes for a hundred different things from the time you get in at 8 in the morning maybe to, when you leave at 536, 7, 8, you know, it just was nonstop. It was absolutely punishing.

And I don't remember, there's so much this a blur to me. Do you remember, were you present when you played a musical instrument with Willie Nelson on stage? I am, because it's one of the greatest moments of my life and one of my greatest regrets. Because, yeah, he was on the show, I guess, in 2012. And Stephen... They had already worked together on the Christmas special a couple years earlier, and Stephen asked Willie Nelson if he would sing on the road again. And they had Richard Holbrook. He was then the – he had been some state department – something.

I'm sorry, I'm blanking. As I said, it was all a blur. Anyway, so the idea was for them all three to sing on the road again together. and Willie Nelson said, I guess this was at a rehearsal. And really Nelson said, well, I usually have a second guitar for on the road again. And Stephen pointed at me and said he plays guitar. And I don't really, I mean, I play guitar okay. I've seen you play.

You do a good job. I've seen you. But I mean, it's Willie Nelson. Right, right, right. And so, of course, I said yes. Like, I'm not going to say no to that, even though I was absolutely terrified. And then in the time between the rehearsal and, like, I think we had like a second rehearsal just to go over the song. And in between that and the show, I got, you know, the incredible, you know, once-in-a-lifetime imitation to go on Willie Nelson's bus and smoke pot with him.

But I knew that I had to perform, like, and I was underconfident in my guitar abilities. Willie Nelson just invited me to smoke pot But I went out to the bus and I politely declined Which is one of the great regrets of my life But I did get to play on the road again On air with Willie Nelson I was 10 feet away And I played a bum note

And you know, whatever I couldn't tell but it was great The one thing about the daily show That I always found interesting with Colbert Is normally if there was somebody that we wanted to meet That was a guest on the show We could go back and talk to Emily, Lazar, Amy Schwartz, and it usually wasn't a problem. But I remember you backstage with Neil Young, just kind of hanging out, and you had your

back when people had CDs, and he has a Sharpie, and he signed your CD. First of all, do you remember that with Neil Young? Who else did you get to meet like that? And what was that like? You know, it's funny, because I look back, I have like a whole, a little stack of CDs that I got signed by people. And I look back on it, and I was like, you know what, that shouldn't have been allowed. We shouldn't have been allowed to go and bother the guests. I'm glad we were in some ways.

What was nice about the Colbert Report and the Daily Show to a less sense, but it was such a hip show at the time. Like, it was a show that smart, interesting people liked. And so in a lot of cases, they were excited. to meet a writer for the show. So that worked out in my favor. And I was a big, I mean, I'm a big rock and roll fan more than anything. Like, I'm a bigger rock and roll fan maybe than I am a comedy fan.

So, yeah, there were a couple occasions where I felt like, I'm going to bother this guy and get an autograph and tell him how much he means to me. And Neil Young was one of them. Dolly Parton was one of them. Chrissy Hind was one of them. I remember you personally knew Leslie Feist. When Feist was on, you could went backstage. Yeah, her producer, Jason Beck and myself, I called him Jason Beck.

He goes by Chili Gonzalez. We're friends for a while. And so I had a connection to her. Yeah, she was great on the Christmas special that we did. I was going to go back to Neil Young. It's one of those things just so for people, listen, it's like, I was actually outside when Neil Young arrived with his with his entourage. And it wasn't, you know, a lot of people. It's probably maybe like, I don't know, like maybe

seven or eight people. And he showed up early and the studio doors were not open. And it took like a minute for to get him in. And at this point, the professional autograph collectors basically were ruining it for everybody. So out on the street, you know, he wasn't signing autographs. And then he comes in with us and we have stuff right in front of him. And he was so gracious and nice. But he did seem excited and happy to be there. I just remember that very well.

On a couple, on one occasion only that this happened, but when we had moved to the late show with Stephen Colbert, there was one, this has happened a couple times, I don't know who else, but the one artist who was like, she was booked on the show

and she wanted to meet the writers, and that was Carly Simon. Carly Simon, like made a special trip up because she respected what we did and like took a picture with all the writers. It was so exciting. I always, you know, think about her as being so shy in that she would not not do that. I thought, I give, that's amazing. I love hearing that. Another guy, I wasn't there for it, but another guy who like came early and kind of like wanted to see how the, how the whole thing ran was Val Kilmer. He famously showed up super early and was just like wandering around the offices for

hours. Yeah, it's interesting with certain the people that would come over. And there were people that just were so happy to be there, like George Lucas, like, you're just like, we would just couldn't believe that he agreed to do it and nobody knew about it. I wrote that bit, the bit that he came on to do a critique of, well, he wasn't there just to do it, but we, he did a critique of, the episode of Tech Janssen, which was this animated space opera that we did with Stephen. And yeah, he liked the thing that I did, the space thing I did. That was super exciting. He was a really nice, ordinary guy.

I remember him showing up with cowboy boots and jeans. And somebody's like, when is he going to change into what he's wearing on air? Didn't happen. It's one of those things. How did you get pulled in to work with Robert Smigel on one of the Saturday Night Live TV Fun Houses? I know that you got credited. I remember when it aired, was it was it the Darlene Love piece? It was a darling love, Christmas time for the Jews.

It's one of my most favorite, favorite credits. And I think, you know, I've always been, again, I love rock music more than I love. I'm not very good of playing it or anything, but I know all about it. And I'm heavily super into the girl group sound. And I think somehow he found out that I knew a lot about it and was very passionate about it. And so I never got called for anything else for TV Funhouse. But I think, you know, Julie Klauser or Scott Jacobson, who are also credited on that, may have pulled me in on that basis because I knew that I was a girl group freak.

That was fun. No, it was such a good piece. And it was so exciting. And then a couple of years later, Darlene Love was on the rapport. And I got to talk to her and tell her that I had a writing credit on it. And she was so excited and loves the piece and gets lots of compliments on it. Still, I mean, still in 2015 or whatever that was.

That's fantastic. Now, she was so good. What was it like to go from The Daily Show and the Colbert Report? to doing Night of Too Many Stars with Robert Smigel, which is this benefit for autism that ran on Comedy Central sometimes, but all these big stars, but Smigel is such, just my favorite comedy writer by far, and he's a genius, but he's intense with his rewrites,

and I talk to people that worked on this benefit, and it's like, Robert, it's 3 a.m., can we please go home? Is that, was that your experience? Like, did you work really late up? Because his whole philosophy is like, it's like you can always make the thing better. And I mean, that's, it works for him, but it's not everybody's process. I mean, it was really exciting.

There's all, like, I did four, three or four of them. And, um, first of all, it's exciting because, you know, the lists of special guests is incredible. It's like, you know, now you get to write, you get to write bits for Ben Stiller, Tina Faye, uh, Chris Rock, Stephen Wright, Joan Rivers, blah, blah, blah, it just goes on and on and on. and I've done a couple live shows with him too and you know there's a there's a sense of chaos and intensity that that gives way to a kind of zen

and I remember the first time I did a night of too many stars with him it was I don't even think it was a televised one I think it was just the first one and it was at Roseland Ballroom. And I remember there were a bunch of us working on the show, but all the writers were off doing their thing. Robert was unattainable. It was like 15 minutes till showtime. And somebody figured out that I was the only person in the room

who knew all the changes in the script, what all the latest changes were in the script. And I had never been a showrunner. I had never been anything other than a writer. And I never had aspirations to be anything than a writer. And there was this terrifying moment where the entire staff of the show has, like, somebody figured out that I had all the changes, gathered the entire staff around the show of the show around me. And I was going through page by page with all eyes on me saying, oh, my God.

So this is, and it is, is he still. saying that line, no, that line's been cut. And it was the most terrifying, one of the most terrifying moments of my career, just because I don't, I don't like being in charge. And I made it through, and the show went off pretty much without a hitch. But it's that kind of, and as terrifying as it was, I wouldn't trade it for anything. It's like that excitement of like, there's that, there's that excitement of like doing a show, every night for sure like are we going to make it is everything going to make it on time how much

can we squeeze in uh but when you're doing it these one these one night things with all of these these big egos of these stars um and have it to put together and it's got to go on a certain time and there's union guys and they're the rental of the place and people serving dinner um it's a high wire act and there's as terrifying as it is i there's nobody i would rather do it with than smigel robert's the best and i mean he his friends are so loyal like sandler and people that would come in and not only donate their time but money quietly i mean sandler i mean unbelievable what that man has done for autism he's also a great model of a true collaborator um he one of the things about him always thinking that he can get a better joke or do

better is that it doesn't matter where it comes from he'll he literally just We just throw jokes into a huge pile, and he picks out the best one, as close to the showtime as he possibly can am. And it's a real collaboration every time working with him. And that's another great lesson that I learned from him. I wanted to ask because technically it is late night, because it happened at midnight leading up to midnight. I did want to ask about the couple of the years from,

I guess that was 2014 to 2016, that you did the CNN New Year's live with Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper. Oh, yeah. What was that like? So were you writing for both of them? Did you write for Kathy Griffin? What was that whole process like? I didn't really write for either of them.

Basically, I mean, it was a great job. It was so much fun. I hate New Year's Eve. I've never been to, I had never been and would never go to Times Square for New Year's Eve, had it not been a paid gig. But it was one of the best. I mean, I worked for great bosses, but John and Stephen mostly. But Kathy was amazing and it was a great gig.

Basically, the gig involved hanging out with Kathy Griffin for a week, following her around New York City to all of her appointments, writing down everything she says on cards, and then going out, getting a police escort to the middle of Times Square on New Year's Eve, and then just handing the cards with the things she said all week to her over the course of night while Debbie Harry drops by and Miley Cyrus drops by and it was just so much fun.

It's great that you got to do it for so long. When you got to The Daily Show, John Stewart was the host and this was January of 2000 before the show really found its voice. Very interesting to me because I read an interview that you did and you were saying when you first get hired,

they're doing a story about a guy with the longest fingernails in the world those are the type of things that they were doing on the daily show and within you know less than a year a couple months it turns into this whole thing what was that evolution like um it was a little it was difficult it was more difficult for for people who had been there for the Craig years

because they they were used to writing in a certain style and um we're used to you know having stories like the guy with the longest fingernails as part of the mix you know John had to fight hard to make the voice

of the show his voice and some of the writers from the Craig Gears definitely resisted that and I was hired by John not that like my loyalty to him was like the thing that made me click with him

like I think that we had similar takes on things and I had stuff that I was angry about that, I mean, in the world that we were writing about, in the news, and it synced up pretty well. But I was decided to dig into things that were more challenging once the, you know, the big thing that kind of pushed us in that direction was the 2000 recount in Florida. and it was really meaty. It was meaty stuff and it was geeky and, you know, in the weeds about how ballots were designed and how ballots were counted. And it required a little more research and attention to detail than these kind of one-off silly stories that had built the show to that point.

I was excited to do it. It was really. really exciting to be a part of what was it like then going from the colbert report to the late show with stephen because i couldn't tell i can't tell you how many people were telling me that is he going to be is he funny i don't know what he's like wouldn't he himself i'm like i think he was as funny as himself as he with the character i mean the guy um just i knew it was going to work it was just a matter of if they gave him enough time to figure it out because those things take time

and that first year was rocky. People forget last place and just, I mean, there's the rumor that him and James Gordon were going to switch positions. I have to say, having worked with Stephen for 15 years up until that point, I mean, I was really excited to go to

the late show and to CBS. I am a variety fan. As I mentioned earlier, like, I have affinity for the silly. And again, I thought that we could do more of that on a network show that wasn't explicitly tied into politics. It was just a very hard first year. I think there was a lot of pressure on Stephen that I didn't know about, that the staff didn't know about, just, you know, whatever. Like, I've never had to deal with a gigantic corporation like CBS. I can't imagine

and what kinds of stress that would put someone under. 1130, always not as fun as 1230 or, you know, Comedy Central versus a network show, just the pressure and the stakes are so high. But it is quite amazing. And John Stewart was an accredited EP, and it would have been easy for him just to collect the check and not really show up and do much. But he was there. Oh, he was there in the beginning.

What were some of John Stewart's notes early on? You know, I don't remember anything specifically. I do remember on one or two occasions him addressing the writers, especially the new ones, the newer ones, who had had less experience. With stuff that I sort of already knew about the way the process works, but he was very encouraging to the writing staff in the times that he did come by specifically to kind of guide us

I don't remember the specifics of like how much politics are we going to do what are we going to do but he definitely was there and gave a lot of guidance yeah it's one of those things I remember people telling me that he was dropping by

and was hands on and just such a smart guy what were the highlights of working on with Sam Bay on full front until our initial showrunner, Joe Miller, was just so passionate and sort of was the conscience of the show and really brought the writers into really a discussion about what we were doing rather than just say, okay, go write this, go right this, and go write this. And everything, partly because we had a week to think about every show, but also partly

because it's who Sam was and who Joe was. I think the amount of thought and care that went into that show was remarkable. Yeah, I mean, definitely, Sam B. One of the fun, so funny. I always loved, well, she was always super nice and met her a couple times, but. Yeah, and I always had a lovely time working with her on The Daily Show, and I remember watching her audition. I watched her audition on closed caption TV

on the closed circuit TV. And I thought, wow, she's doing a great Stephen Colbert impression. It works. Who were some of the other auditions that you remember people that maybe are famous that did not get it or were people that just crushed it? Who were some of the people that stayed out? I don't know if I remember any.

It was a long time ago. Do you remember some that I don't? I never worked at the Daily Show, so I don't remember. I remember the auditions of people that did get hired. Sure. I mean, yeah, there was amazing talent over there. So you came to the city and you were doing stand-up. Before that, you were in Boston, you were in Montreal for a year, and you would do stand-up sporadically.

And I know you would take a break. You took a year or so off here and there. But in the late 90s, when you were doing the alternative scene, At a place like Luna Lounge, can you set this scene? It's unbelievable the amount of talent that people that were not famous or people that, you know, you might see on Conan as the second or third guest. But now that are like comedy, royalty and sell out arenas and theaters all over the place. But can you set the scene?

Yeah, it's so funny for the longest time, as soon as I heard about it, my only goal in comedy, this is in the late 90s, like 97, 98. My goal in comedy was just make it to the stage at Luna Lounge. That's all I wanted. Just do comedy, figure something out to get to the stage at Luna Lounge. And the thing about the stage at the Luna Lounge was that it was, there was this big rift between alternative comedy and, like, club comedy at the time. And they never mixed. But at Luna Lounge, it was the one place where you could go and the people who were club comics could mix with the people who were.

doing the downtown surf reality collective unconscious weird stuff and so that was a goal to get on that show because then you could get seen by you know there were people from the you know comedy central who would go to that show and yeah and Chris Rock would come come by or something like that so that was the goal that was all I ever wanted to do and then finally I think like in 99 I finally did get on that stage, you know, doing something or another a few times. And, you know, it was there that I met like Andy Blitz. Mark Maren was doing it quite often. Janine Garofalo.

Zach Elefanakis was getting up and he couldn't even get booked on a late night show at this point. Exactly. And I was see in him. It was unbelievable. When Sarah Silverman was in town and David Cross, they would go up. David Cross, John Glazer, John Benjamin. But it was one of those things, Jeff Singer and Naomi Steinberg were the gatekeepers

and people would have their VHS tapes and, you know, trying to get booked on that show. And then Louis saw you at Luna and that got you booked on a show at UCB and that got you the Comedy Central half hour. Wow, you know everything. I try. You did your, it was a, what was it called back? Premium Blend, right? Yeah, I had a bit on Pre-Meanymed.

blend and that was partially thanks to Louis had seen me do a bit and booked me on his he had like a regular variety show at the UCB theater some comedy central person saw it and I got to be on premium blend and I taped the show in

I did a character bit and I taped the show in August of 99 and it was on TV January 3rd 2000 and in the period between that In November, I got hired on the Daily Show and started at the Daily Show on the 20th of January, 2000. Because they had heard of you and they wanted you.

And at the same time, you have some comedy people, managers, I don't know if they're agents that are, this is a very unique position because it is so hard. You know, a lot of comedy people stand up and writers like, I need representation. Some people that want you and you just say no to them. And one of them, and at this point, you've not booked anything. zero other than when you were in Canada when you were 19 and you wrote for a you did some sketch comedy yeah you've done your research yeah I wrote for a sketch comedy show when I was 19 and then you had like a 10 year gap or whatever in between that so you have that which nobody knows about so I know that there was a manager there was an agent that wanted you like Eric let's

I want you to submit to the man show and what did you tell them I said I don't remember my exact words but I said I don't want to write for the man show I don't think I'd be good at it I I don't think that, and I think that a manager who knows who I am and knows what I want to want to do with my career wouldn't submit me for The Man Show. And you didn't want to move to L.A., but the point is, is 99.9% of people, even if it wasn't their thing, would be like, I am going to be writing. You know, I've been, I've been very lucky that, and maybe it was a naive move to not do that. but I've been very lucky to do almost entirely things that I believe in and think are good.

So, I mean, that's a great career. I don't know. I know very few other people who could say that. I mean, my career may be over. I hope not. But I hope I get to continue to do this. But, yeah, I feel very lucky that everything I've done is something that I can point to and say, wow, I can't believe we got to do that and that's great and people watched it and people liked

it. So you were in Vancouver at Community College and you, a bunch of your friends and you've done videos and comedy videos, see an ad in the newspaper for younger people. This is what you had to do and they're looking for teens to do sketch comedy. So this is so opposite of what today's youth would be like, which is you said, you know, I don't want to be on camera. You and your friends, we don't want to be on camera we only want to write which is that complete opposite now usually from what would happen and I mean it's it's one of the reasons like I did stand-up I mean and in this I tell the story

a lot that like almost the most frequent comment that I would get after my stand-up sets I would get off the stage and the guy at the club would say you're a really good writer not your really great stand-up not like you killed them It's like, you're really good writer. And that's sort of all I wanted out of stand-up. I just wanted people to know that I was a writer.

And so I stopped as soon as I possibly could. I didn't, I don't enjoy doing stand-up, and I was happy to stop doing it. I would see you do your songs. You did a song about Rod Stewart, I remember that. I'm not going to say if it was yay or nay, Rod Stewart. It was nay, Rod Stewart. It was. Yes, that was it.

It was an anti-Rod Stewart kind of. I remember one of the lyrics. was you even give Billy Joel credibility. That was one of the lyrics I remember you doing. I'm not a snob like that anymore. That's a younger me speaking. It was a long, this was decades ago. This was, oh my goodness.

I love Billy Joel. I still don't love Vard Stewart so much. Yeah. But I wouldn't write a song about how much I dislike him at this point. I was going to say, so you're 19 with your friends in Vancouver and you show up to this sketch audition for teens and you're like, we don't want to be on camera. we have sketches that we wrote. And they hired us, which is crazy.

At 19, so you're fully supporting yourself at 19 for seven months or whatever it is a year. I don't know. And you get to write sketch comedy. Yeah, it was pretty exciting. And her, she wasn't the head writer, but she was a consultant on the show. It was Valerie Bromfield, who had been Dan Aykroyd's sketch partner in Chicago and had been on the very first episode of Saturday Night Live. had written on a couple of seasons of SCTV as well.

So that was super exciting. We really looked up to her and it was like, tell us what to do next, Valerie. That's very cool. Yeah, it was so cool. When you were at The Daily Show, John Stewart, you were there for many years. What was your favorite day other than when you were hired?

What stands out? I think winning the first Emmy, We weren't actually even in L.A. at the Emmy ceremony because it was right after the Iraq war started in 2003. We were in this kind of gross bar up on 54th Street. And it was just, it was nice to all be together and then see, oh, actually, this is making an impact somewhere beyond the walls of this building. And it was just so fun and so exciting. and it was kind of the first time that I wasn't scared about my life and my job. And yeah, it was a very exciting thing to be a part of.

Yeah, and then they just kept rolling in. It's unbelievable that you've worked on so many shows with longevity. I wanted to talk about some of your other projects with 3D photography and the Viewmaster. Can you talk about some of those? Yeah, well, there are two different things. One is a couple years ago in 2010, I published. my own viewmaster reel. It's a spoof of like the $6 million dollar man viewmaster set from the 1970s.

And I've always had an interest in 3D photography. And because I'm a comedian, I figured I would put them together. And I spent an enormous amount of money self-publishing and shooting these comedic viewmaster reels that come with like a funny story booklet. And some great people in it, Andre Vermeulen, and Christian Finnegan and Amber Nelson, Gary Doran, Anthony Adamaniak is in it. And, yeah, and I just, you know, put them out into the world, and the world is not really wanting a comedic viewmaster reel that is a spoof of 70s TV shows. You got a really nice write-up in the New York.

Times. I did get a nice right up in the New York Times. Not for that specifically, but for some other 3D stuff. The other thing that I was mentioning is that I have a large collection of 3D slides from the 1950s. And those I've been collecting for about 40 years, 30 years. I'm sorry, 30 years. And I have these little salons where I bring them to your home or to an event venue. And we pass around slides from the 1950s that amateurs took in full color. in 3D. It's an amazing forgotten technology and it sort of blows people's minds. So I continue to do it. You're teaching, correct, at a college or you were teaching at a college? Yeah, I did on my first semester. I taught late night in sketch comedy at NYU Dramatic Writing graduate program, which was a lot of fun. These were like mid-20s, I guess, early 20s. What shows do people that age watch typically? Because a lot of times they're not really watching the same 11. 1330 shows anymore. Yeah, I was surprised that, I mean, I guess that it's a self-selecting group because this is the course that they were taking.

But, you know, a lot of them watched regularly Colbert, S&L, Kimmel, late night shows. Yeah, I mean, I asked at the very first thing, like, is this even something you guys do? And sure enough, everybody, everybody watches something. They probably don't watch it at 1130 at night on. CBS, but they watch it. Yeah, it's such, it's so different in terms of how people are, are able to, to watch it. I mean, Jimmy Kimmel's whole argument is never in the history of the medium.

More people eyeballs on late night with YouTube. I mean, if you look at some of those, the videos and just all the metrics, whether that's true, I don't know. But, yeah, it's amazing, though, your longevity that you've been able to sustain so many years on so many shows. But thank you so much for being a guest. And yeah, just the fact that you and Willie and Allison, I'm glad that you have on your Instagram.

What is your Instagram? I saw you have a photo of you and Willie. At Drysdale does it. All one word. Drysdale does it. Very, very cool. Eric Drysdale, thanks for doing this. It's really good to see you again.

Really great to see you, Mark. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode. On Apple Podcasts, please rate it and leave a review. Be sure to go to late-nighter.com for all your late-night TV news, and you can find my podcast at late-nighter.com forward slash podcasts. Have a wonderful week, and I'll see you next Tuesday.