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Jeff Goldblum
The Late Show

October 7th 1998

David Letterman Interviewing Jeff Goldblum

NOTE: Dave had gotten a lot of complaints from animal rights groups for throwing a weasel in a bucket of water the night before. This will show up in Jeff’s interview.

LETTERMAN: Our first guest has starred in three, listen to this it’s a very impressive record, three of the most successful films of all time, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, and Independence Day, his latest motion picture, entitled Holy Man, opens Friday. Here’s the always-entertaining Jeff Goldblum. Jeff....

(Jeff walks out to cheers and shakes Dave’s hand then sits down)

LETTERMAN: I’m so happy you’re here, I’m always happy your here. I wish every night could be Jeff Goldblum night here because I find you fascinating, I find you interesting, I find you provocative, I find you enigmatic, you’re a human conundrum, I, I love having you on the show because there’s always something good going on.

GOLDBLUM: Thank you, so good to see you, that’s so sweet.

LETTERMAN: That’s true, I feel that way.

GOLDBLUM: Thank you. I mean, it’s a bright spot in my night when I watch you.

LETTERMAN: Oh you’re the one.

GOLDBLUM: Ohhhh, not true.

LETTERMAN: See how I do that, put that little zing there.

GOLDBLUM: Yeah, a little zing, nice way to go.

LETTERMAN: Did you see John Melloncamp backstage?

GOLDBLUM: No I didn’t, but I know he’s here.

LETTERMAN: (Laughs) Yeah he is here.

GOLDBLUM: He is here, and I wouldn’t want to lie to you, I didn’t see him. But I knew he was going to be here, and it’s his birthday today.

(Audience cheers)

Did you know that?

LETTERMAN: Yes I did know that, he’s 46 today I think.

GOLDBLUM: He’s 47 I think today.

LETTERMAN: 47.

GOLDBLUM: I’m 46 next couple of weeks.

LETTERMAN: Good for you.

GOLDBLUM: Yeah, the umm, yes. He used to be called Cougar yeah?

LETTERMAN: I made the mistake earlier of referring to him as Johnny Cougar, but he’s not Johnny Cougar, he’s John Melloncamp.

GOLDBLUM: Yeah...

(Audience laughs)

Should I put a cougar in my name?

(Dave and the audience laugh)

LETTERMAN: Please do, please do. Put a weasel in your name and see what happens.

(Audience laughs)

GOLDBLUM: (To crowd) Thank you, Thank you. I feel so good to be here, thank you. You know I had a dream last night.

LETTERMAN: Lets here what it is.

GOLDBLUM: You know, no this absolutely true, I dreamed that I was, I was like one a movie set with all women strangely enough, and it was kind lunch time, true enough, it was kinda lunch time and there was had a griddle going and they were making hotcakes and they look so good, and I called them oatcakes or they called them oatcakes or they were known as oatcakes and I said, they said "oh do you want something?' They gave them to me on a paper plate I remember, but they were so good and I ate them up. They were the best things I had ever eaten.

LETTERMAN: Now, what do you suppose -- is there meaning to that or is it just random neurons firing?

GOLDBLUM: Probably a little of both, but I imagined that it -- I started to think about it in the morning as I remembered it and I thought, well gee this is a good sign because I’m going on the big event of the day, of course it’s this event, and I had thought about it and planned for it, and I thought, gee on your show isn’t hotcakes a very funny you know thematic reoccurring thing, how perfect. There’s something perfect and right about this.

LETTERMAN: (Dave laughs) It’s too bad you couldn’t have worked a ferret into the dream, you know. You know you did something that I have great admiration for you having done this. I would have never done this in a million years. You went a trip with 400 people, most of them strangers to Alaska. You were invited by a man, I think you probably didn’t know before. Tell people about this. It seems like a real Odyssey. I would never do this.

GOLDBLUM: Really?

LETTERMAN: No I would never do this.

GOLDBLUM: Well, I, I don’t know that I would have done it. But recently friends have said, you don’t -- I travel for work and this and that, but they said you know you should take major trips.

LETTERMAN: Really?

GOLDBLUM: Yeah, I mean, have you gone to the major places in the world. Down the Nile, to see the pyramids, the --

LETTERMAN: I’ve been to the Pocono’s.

(Audience laughs)

GOLDBLUM: Really?

LETTERMAN: They’re nice.

GOLDBLUM: Oh...I’ve never been to the Pocono’s.

LETTERMAN: You gotta go over there.

GOLDBLUM: Really? (Laughs) So people have urged me and lo and behold I get this invitation in the mail, and this was one of the places people told me to go, it was one the big trips that you should see, Alaska.

LETTERMAN: Yup, yup

GOLDBLUM: You haven’t been have you?

LETTERMAN: No, no. Did you go up the inland waterway or whatever that is, the inland passage?

GOLDBLUM: Yes, and I know hardly anything about it, I should know more, but I didn’t read that much, but anyway yes I did see...so I said yeah, and I was invited, this fellow Paul Allen, a very wealthy and generous and lovely fellow, he invited a bunch of people, for three years now, last year it was Venice Italy.

LETTERMAN: Oh, I’da gone on that one.

GOLDBLUM: Oh see.

LETTERMAN: Yeah, I’da gone on that one.

GOLDBLUM: Yeah, yeah have you ever been there.

LETTERMAN: Yeah oh yeah, I like Venice. I’da gone there.

GOLDBLUM: I was working at the time and couldn’t go.

LETTERMAN: I’d get off the boat and ditch those losers.

(Dave and Jeff laugh)

GOLDBLUM: I’ll tell you all about it.

LETTERMAN: But tell people who this guy is.

GOLDBLUM: Paul --

LETTERMAN: He’s Bill Gate’s little buddy, right?

GOLDBLUM: Yeah, well, little buddy...it’s not like their Gilligan, and uh, and uh, the skipper but I think they did something together, they invented you know, stuff.

LETTERMAN: He’s worth billions this guy.

GOLDBLUM: I think he’s very, very rich.

LETTERMAN: And every year he invites a group of people.

GOLDBLUM: Can you imagine that, like 400 people, invites them --

LETTERMAN: From different walks of life.

GOLDBLUM: Different walks of life, there’s like plane, a chartered plane to Los Angeles for the movie and showbiz uh, types, and one to New York, and London, and Seattle where he’s from and all sorts of people go up and this year, it was, they flew us up to Juno Alaska, then they got....and it was all secret.

LETTERMAN: Oh, I wouldn’t like that.

GOLDBLUM: Like you know, whose gonna be there? They wouldn’t tell you who was going to be there --

LETTERMAN: I wanna hear about this, hold on, we’ll get you some oatcakes, we’ll be right back.

(Commercials)

LETTERMAN: Jeff Goldblum Ladies and Gentlemen.

(Dave holds up Emperor New Clothes book)

LETTERMAN: Now, did you write this Jeff?

GOLDBLUM: No, they gotta lot --

LETTERMAN: What have you done here, it’s the Emperors New Clothes.

GOLDBLUM: You know that story, they gotta a bunch of --

LETTERMAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You wrote one in there?

GOLDBLUM: Yeah.

LETTERMAN: Let me see what yours is, Jeff Goldblum, I’ll find it.

(Flips in book)

Maybe it’s an index...do they have like a table of contents?

GOLDBLUM: Well sort of.

LETTERMAN: Nathan Lane, oh he’s very good Nathan Lane, he’s very entertaining.

GOLDBLUM: Isn’t he funny? He is funny.

(Jeff starts to grab book to help Dave find page, but Dave won’t let him)

LETTERMAN: Angela Landsbury.

GOLDBLUM: Yeah (Laughs)

LETTERMAN: Harrison Ford and Melissa Matheson.

GOLDBLUM: Yeah.

LETTERMAN: Not coming to yours.

GOLDBLUM: Umm, I think you’re going the wrong --

LETTERMAN: Liam Neeson, Liam Neison.

GOLDBLUM: I know, yeah, fabulous...I’m the other way.

LETTERMAN: You’re the other way? I’ve heard that about you.

GOLDBLUM: Ohhhh. (Rolls eyes)

(Audience “ooohs”)

LETTERMAN: It’s just a joke for heavens sake.

GOLDBLUM: I get it.

LETTERMAN: If we lose the ability to laugh at ourselves, we’re screwed ladies and gentlemen.

(Audience applauds)

LETTERMAN: Well this is a nice thing.

(Dave holds book up)

And the profits from the book go to a very good cause.

GOLDBLUM: Yeah, the Star bright foundation.

LETTERMAN: Good for you.Lets get back to your big exotic cruise up to Alaska.

GOLDBLUM: Amazing, Fallini-esque.

LETTERMAN: Really?

GOLDBLUM: Yeah, I think so.

LETTERMAN: 400 people, you and 400 people.

GOLDBLUM: 400 people the invitation first of all, you know, I mean you’ve gotten invitation from fancy friends and everyone tries to outdo the other, this was like, I’ve never had anything like this in my life. What arrived in the mail was kinda of a suitcase, a small suitcase, a leather thing, and you open it up and kinda take more things out of it, paper and stuff and it was all that, please come to the thing with brochures and stuff.

LETTERMAN: Freaky.

GOLDBLUM: Yeah, very intriguing. Plus you got in this thing, a little totem pole. An unpainted totem pole and they said paint this, decorate it, because on our last nigh we’re gonna have..um. a native American potlatch.

(Dave makes a face)

GOLDBLUM: You wouldn’t have liked to do that? You don’t like the idea?

LETTERMAN: I ain’t going on vacation with 400 strangers to be in Arts and crafts class, it ain’t gonna happen.

GOLDBLUM: I know, I know, it was.

LETTERMAN: Now, did you have any reluctance about this at all because I imagine, once you’re in the boat, I’m guessing you can’t bail, you can’t get off.

GOLDBLUM: They had in the, in the invitation they had a copy of the law, yeah, because we’re going from Canada kinda and we’re going wide...I don’t understand it but you could not get off the boat, it’s like that Vincent Price movie, House on Haunted Hill.

LETTERMAN: That’s a great film, very entertaining... now did you make fast friends on the boat or did you get off thinking oh, what was that all about.

GOLDBLUM: No, not at all, it’s true, up until the last minute I was thinking, why am I doing this, do I really want to go...but it was unexpected thing after another, but yeah, I made a lot of friends, I had a lot of friends who were there.

LETTERMAN: Babes? Lot of babes?

GOLDBLUM: There were very interesting types there, and of course very fantastic women and men, yes, yes.

LETTERMAN: How was the food?

GOLDBLUM: The food was fantastic, it was a cruise, and I had never been on a cruise before. One night it was a 7, 8, 9, 10 course Russian dinner.

LETTERMAN: That sounds pretty good.

GOLDBLUM: Does it, you like that stuff?

LETTERMAN: Well, it sounds good, I’ve never had a 7 course Russian dinner.

GOLDBLUM: It was fantastic, yeah, the original settlers of Alaska apparently were Russian.

LETTERMAN: Well, yeah, I think we bought it through the Russian, Seward’s folly, isn’t that what happened? We bought it from the Russians?

GOLDBLUM: I was not all that familiar with the whole thing I had to be reminded of the whole thing, I’m still shaky on it. There were dancers, there were big Russian dancers that night who would come by your table.

LETTERMAN: Do you want that though?

GOLDBLUM: I never, not ordinarily, this was an out of the ordinary thing, I don’t go to these places where there are belly dancers and this and that and there are people playing, but once in a while, it was kind of something.

LETTERMAN: Were there a lot of people running around making Titanic jokes?

GOLDBLUM: You know, there was Jim Cameron there, all manner Hollywood directors and he was there, and one day they got all us all, you know 400 people, they had to get us all in groups of 10, 12 and get us all in different life boats and give us this lesson. We all had our vests on.

LETTERMAN: If it were me and I was doing that and I wouldn’t go on it anyway but just to keep from going crazy, but you know, I’d get everyone and like at noon right after lunch and get them all over on one side of the boat just to see if you could get it to tip a little, "OK lets run over to other side" just to get a little of this (makes swaying motion) going. I don’t know that you could, but --

GOLDBLUM: You’re funny.

LETTERMAN: Listen, this movie Holy Man, you and Eddie Murphy and Kelly Preston and you play the guy, the TV executive who hires the Holy Man.

GOLDBLUM: Kinda, I work on a home shopping network and I’m kind of in trouble but I’m a good hearted fellow, and I fall in love with Kelly Preston and the holy man comes into my life, Eddie Murphy, and at first I don’t care for him to much but I put him on because my job is in great jeopardy and hilarity ensues.

LETTERMAN: Great cast.

GOLDBLUM: Thanks, I think it is.

LETTERMAN: Listen Jeff, its been good to see you again.

GOLDBLUM: Thanks.

(Jeff and Dave stare at each other)

GOLDBLUM: (Quietly) what can I do for you?

LETTERMAN: Oh, nothing, I’m fine, I’d like to see you in about six months for a cleaning, that’s all Jeff Goldblum, we’ll be right back with John Melloncamp.

THE END

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