Hi, Becca. Hi, Stephen. How's it going? It's going pretty well. This is our podcast intros for our last break before the end of the Late Show. Yeah. This is it. This is the last even for us. The final hiatus. Yeah, yeah. It is. It is. After this, every break I have is semi-permanent. We're not talking about the end yet because here, it might be the last podcast, but I still got another five weeks of hanging out with you. That's true. We're not the hanging out, so we're not saying goodbye. The thing is, people are like, what's it like at the end of the show? I go, well, every show is just as hard as the last show or just as fun. It's not to put it on the downside. It doesn't, physically, it doesn't feel like the show is ending because you've got to run through the tape every day. Well, also, we've done, what, 1,700 of these at this point? At the end, it'll be 1,810. Yeah. It's the total number. It's the normal day because we're doing what we always do, which is a show that day. Engaging in recreational exhaustion. Something happened the other day where it hit 80 for the first time and everyone kind of had a senioritis. It's almost summertime. Oh, you mean 80 degrees, yeah. Yeah. It was almost 80 degrees and there was just a vibe of like, oh, it's summer. This is an exciting time. But then also, oh, it's summer and we all know what happens this summer. So emotions were high yesterday, but nice. And we got, we won the softball game. Can we get a whoop-whoop? You beat John Oliver's last week tonight? Yes, we did. Was Oliver there? He was not there. He was not there. But I think he's ending his regards. Oh, no, it was busy. You were partying all night with Billy Crystal at the show. The crew barely made it to the game. Oh, that's right. We went kind of late. I was sitting there while Billy was telling the stories and I thought, what was this, what was this hurting? And I forgot that it was a baseball game. First game of the year. We got a game every week. We got to see out there. Wow. One note. This is just a fun thing we do at the Late Show. Me and Steve have been doing these podcast intros and I'm going to hit you now because we got to enjoy every minute of our time together. Very little time and a lot to get done here. Yes. Okay. Guess the guest. Okay, great. This night's podcast is the first guest of the Late Show. Clooney? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to talk about the first episode. Sure. Oh, come on. And the guests, George and Jeb. Jeb. Jeb Bush. Yeah. Remember, he was going to be president. Yeah, crazy, crazy, crazy time. I recently rewatched the first episode. Wow. Crazy time. So I was in here. I watched the, that holds that, so the first act about, or was it the second act about, it was largely about Donald Trump. It was about that the news could not fight the temptation to talk about Donald Trump. And I was criticizing them, but then in the course of actually doing the act, I can't fight the temptation to talk about him either. Yeah. And I'm likening him to garbage food. Oreos. Well, yeah, in this case, it was sucking down a sleeve of Oreos. Yeah. And I ended up just dumping it on my face afterwards. Yeah. It all worked. Yeah. It all made sense. You know, it still makes sense, but it really made sense for the time. It's really time. Okay, so what, you were not here for it. Would you want to know something about it? I mean, yeah. I guess, what did you wake up that day thinking? First day of the late show? Well, I mean, we were, comedically, we were loaded for bear because we weren't, we weren't like daily topical at the time because we weren't doing a true monologue. I was trying not to do a monologue because I thought, well, like everybody's a monologue. I don't want to do a monologue. Yeah. Just do it. Like literally right before the first show, he goes, well, you're not doing a monologue. I said, no, I don't want to do something totally different. You're going to like change like a 70 year tradition and not do a monologue. Yeah. I just want to do something that's, that's different. He goes, okay, you might enjoy the monologue. I'm like, I'm not a stand up. I don't think that's a thing for me. And he's like, okay, well, this is your opportunity to, and it turned out to be right that I ended up loving the monologue. It's a ton of fun. So there was no monologue. So we had everything kind of ready to rock for that night. I was much more curious about like, what was Jeb going to be like or I knew the Clooney would be fine. And, yeah. And what I was not prepared for was the fact that the show would not feed to the network. And what that means for people who don't know, that means we have it in the Avid, these computers here where everything gets edited on, these Avid computers, the program is called Avid. And we were all at the time. And then Jason Baker, who was editing one of the, I forgot which act it was, it wouldn't export. It was the first act. It was the very first act. It was the first time that I was able to export to a file that could then be sent to master control at the network where other things happen to it. There's some sort of QC quality control happens or something like that. Or I don't know. They put the bug in the corner that says like PG-13 or whatever. I don't know. And then it goes out to the world. It wouldn't export. And I am like, contractually, I was executive in charge of production. You know, that we didn't have a showrunner. It was me. Yeah. And there was a network liaison. I just directly dealt with the network at the time. I don't recommend that. And I remember it was like 11.15. And we go on 11.35. And my whole family, like I'm one of many, many children and brothers and sisters, everybody is at this party. Yeah. And all my friends are at this party. Opening night. Opening night. I didn't ever go. Because I can't leave the building until I know that the show is going to be on the air because it would crash. They would play it and one minute and like 19 seconds into the monologue, it would crash every time. And they can't figure out what's wrong. And they can't figure out what's wrong. Because you feed it live. Like you feed it as you play it. And I finally, 11.15, I went, well, somebody's got to a network. And I went, oh wait, I'm executive in charge of production. And I said out loud, somebody get me less moon vases number. Because I got to tell him that there may not be a show tonight. Oh my God. And all I could think of is this is going to be the shortest late night career anyone's ever had. To be canceled without ever broadcasting a show is what I thought. Oh my God. And I think that was actually not a crazy little pot of fear to sit in at that moment. And Jason kept on saying, guys, I'm going to hit this. We've got to feed it directly from this computer. We can't go to master control. It has to go directly from this computer to the satellite feed. And that's going to go out to the world. He goes, I'm going to push this button, pointing at his keyboard. I'm going to push that button. And it's going to show up on TVs all over America. And I'm like, you don't know that. You can't prove that that's going to happen. And Eric, Akramam, who is one of our technical directors here, he, I don't know his actual title is please forgive me, Eric. And he came up to me and put his hands on my shoulders and was like, hey man, we're going to figure it out. And I said, Eric, it's 1122. But he was telling me, don't call us. He was saying, don't call us. We're going to figure it out. And that was 13 minutes before we go in the air. And so we eventually gave up. Like, we didn't know when to figure it out. We gave up and we believed in Jason Baker, who we call the bake shop, his editing room. So we believed in the bake shop. But we didn't know if it was going to work because of course it was going to play on his computer. That's where he edited it. So we had to get to a TV. There wasn't time. By the time we made the decision, there was not time to get me elevated to go to my office to watch. We had to go down the hallway here on this floor. And I kicked open the door to one of the accountant's offices because it was locked. I kicked. Sarah Mullinari was the accountant at that time. I kicked open the door and we went in there and we had a big bottle of old Forester bourbon. And we were passing around this bottle of waiting for it to happen. And then the moment we get to where it crashed, it didn't crash. And we have a photo of Jason Baker standing up with one fist in the air and he's got this great rock and roll hair. One fist in the air and he goes, deal with it. So that's all I remember from that first night. In retrospect, I should have had like a rick roll ready to go. If we actually, we would just drop that in there. But that gave birth to one of my favorite late show sayings, which is I'm going to press the button and it's going to go on the TV. Right. That's where that came from. That's where that came from. Hey man, I'm going to push the button and it's going to end up on the TV. Whenever anyone's like, how are we going to fill out this all in the show tonight? Or like, oh, this edit's going to be a bear. Or like, oh, we're still rewriting and it's 6 p.m. Everyone just says, you're going to push a button and it's going to go on the TV. And it's all going to be okay. And that's the moment it came from. Yeah. All right. Well, this is the first interview on the late show. Please enjoy. John Baptiste. Come on. Stay human. Welcome back everybody. You know, speaking of maintaining one's humanity, my first guest is an Oscar winning actor, screenwriter, producer, director and activist. Please welcome Mr. George Clooney. Thank you. Wow. Thank you so much. Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being here on such a big night. Big night. Big show. I'm really grateful that you could be here. Yeah. Couldn't have worn a tie. You feel bad about that. What do you got? What do you got? You got a little cookie. Little cookie. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. You have to pay someone a fair amount of money to do that. Thank you, George. And I'm not cheap. No, thank you. Thanks for being here. And thank you for coming dressed up as your evil twin. Yeah, exactly. That's my move. Oh, yes. I'm George Clooney. Of course I am. Shoot him, not me. No. I'm particularly grateful that you're here because you don't actually have a project to push or anything. I have nothing to push. You're just here because you're a nice guy. I'm just here to see you. So thank you very much. And I think that's what everybody else is. All right. All right. Thank you very much. He's the guest. Not me. Let's talk about you for a second, please. But there's always something to talk about, even if you don't have a project. And we have time for one more question. We might, we might, I'm afraid. One of the affiliates, we might be going along tonight. There's always something to talk about with you, because you're one of those rare famous people who cares about something other than himself. How did that- This is not true. Really? No, no. You don't like to care about yourself? I care about me, me, me, me. Okay, so tell me how you're working to help people, say, in Darfur, because you were the guy who I first found about Darfur from. How did that come about? How did somebody who's in a business where generally when the camera's not on, you're looking for your reflection in a shiny surface? That's why it's come alive. Why do you care about something going on in another country that doesn't pay for movies? Well, they pay, it's just very, very little, and the films are translated terribly. You know, I was, I found out I was reading Nick Kristoff articles in The New York Times, and this was in 2005, I think. And they were talking about a genocide at the time going on in Darfur, and I thought it wasn't getting enough play for a genocide that should get a lot of airtime, I thought. And since I don't, I'm not responsible for making policy or anything, you've got Jeb Bush, he can talk about that later, but. My feeling was I can bring attention and make it louder, and so that was a lot of our, there was a lot of youth groups and a lot of church groups and people. Everybody was really trying to put it on the map because we were worried about it. And it was a very hard thing to put on the map and keep on the map. Now, can I talk about your wife, Mal? Sure, yeah. What is it like to be the arm candy in a relationship? Because she's the very serious person. Yes. You must just say like, we're gonna meet some extremely intelligent people tonight. Smart people. These are not show folk, please. Don't talk. More of this, less of that. Yeah, exactly. Just be shiny, okay? Shiny and pretty. Yeah. That's mostly what I do. Congratulations. Congratulations on getting married last year. Thank you. Hasn't been quite. Not quite a year. Not quite a year. Not quite a year. They said it wouldn't last. Mm-hmm. I didn't say I knew it would last. I knew it would last. Is it going well? It's going really well. I knew that would happen. Yeah. Now, it's, my understanding is that within one year of someone getting married, you can still give them a wedding present. Yes, that's right. Okay, and so I got you something here. I got you something and. Oh, it's a Tiffany block. Thank you, yeah. I wasn't invited to the wedding. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I'm. No. Yeah, we don't know each other. No, no, no. I don't know you. I don't have to for you to come to the wedding. I don't know. I just met you tonight. It would have been really odd, actually. So I don't think, I know I don't know you, but I just wanted to give you something. Okay, well thank you. And so I'll be you and you can share that with your wife. Oh, well, can I open it now? Yeah, you go ahead, please, please, too. Is it, wow, it's, it is really a Tiffany thing. It's really, oh, come on. I'm on network now, man. Of course it's gonna be Tiffany. Swag, wow. It's engraved. It's engraved. What does it say? It says, I don't know you. All right, all right. And I believe, it's a paperweight. It's a paperweight, exactly. And that's just to remind you that we don't know each other. We don't know each other. But I was very, very grateful that you came on. Right. And I don't want to be that celebrity thing where we pretend we know each other. No, no, no, we don't know each other. And you can pass that on to another celebrity who you don't know but have to pretend that you do know them. Oh, okay. I will do that. It's a reminder that we don't actually know each other. Perfect. I'm such an honor to have you here because again, you don't have anything to push. Well, no, it's easier to come on these shows when you do have- Really, could it be easier? Do you have a project to push? Sure, it depends on the project, obviously. You want something that you could talk about. Right. But obviously we would always have something to talk about because we're famous. Right.哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎 and Secretary General of the UN, how about that? Okay, all right. All right, okay, the whole world is on the brink of destruction and my character's the only one that could stop it. All right, that sounds exciting. That sounds exciting. Mm-hmm, I like it. I think we have a clip, Jim. Really? Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not now, damn it, I'm defusing a nuclear bomb. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's great. Amazing. That was powerful. George, I've got to say. I've got to say George, for a non-existent movie, that's powerful stuff. Thank you. Well, you know, it's all, mostly was the direction. Who's the director? I was. And I wrote it and. Triple. Triple. Triple. Triple. Triple. Triple thread. Okay. Now is this movie, is this movie all action or is there any romance in it? There's plenty of romance. I think we have a clip. Not now, I'm making love to a woman. It's very romantic. Come on. Oh. Wow. Wow. That was pretty. Yeah. That was pretty hot stuff, George. Well, sex sells, Steven. Sex sells. Now, is any of that CGI or did you do your own sex in the movie? I did my own sex. Okay. I did my own sex. In fact, I do all of my own stunts. I think the audience deserves it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. I can't talk right now. I forgot we were on an airplane this whole time and I got sucked out the door. I must get these launch codes into the bird's beak to the girl that I had sex with earlier. So she can make the decision. Wow. That's amazing. George. Unbelievable. Incredible. Please. Don't. Please. Do not tell me what happens next. I won't because the movie does not exist. And the sex scenes? No, those happen. Okay. I want to sincerely thank you for being my first guest. That's one down and please come back many, many times. Thank you so much. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to the Late Show Pod Show with Steven Colbert. Just one more thing. If you want to see more of me, come to the Late Show YouTube channel for more clips and exclusives.
