On July 13, 2007, Alan Zweibel appeared on David Letterman’s CBS show and did something I had never seen on late night television before — he read from his book, “The Other Shulman.”
The excerpt was so clever and amusing I got the book and liked it enough to invite him onto my show to talk about it. He agreed and we had a fun hour on the air, including Zweibel explaining how the unusual booking was arranged.
After discussing the book, its origins, and how much of it was autobiographical, I steered the conversation towards Zweibel’s career as a TV comedy writer. We talked about “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show” (which he co-created) and the earliest years of “Saturday Night Live,” where he got off to an inauspicious start by hiding behind a potted plant.
That led to the topic of Zweibel’s relationship with Gilda Radner, both professional and personal, from “SNL” through the eulogy at her funeral to his book “Bunny Bunny,” which became a stage show and may become an HBO movie. In her memory, he’s been a big part of Gilda’s Club, a series of cancer support centers around the country.