Banana Dance

So you want to see this for real? Well I found it and you can view it below, hopefully. You can skip ahead to the 48 minute mark but the premise is that Chris Elliott is pretending to be Marlon Brando and is talked into doing his famous "banana dance." As I said, this is a deep cut. 2025: Motherfucker! YouTube took it down so now I have to explain it. So, Chris Elliott's dad is a famous comedian who was the Bob in the comedy duo Bob & Ray. I am not saying there was nepotism involved but somehow he got a job as a PA on Letterman, turned that into a writing gig and then became a performer, doing whatever weird shit the writers could think up. Like if they wanted to have someone in the audience ask a stupid question so Dave could make fun of them, they would put Chris Elliott in a wig, sit him in the audience and we were all supposed to pretend we didn't know it was Chris. If you were not a regular viewer, you may not realize it was the same guy over and over.

Anyway, they decided to do this bit where Letterman says he is very excited to have famous actor Marlon Brando come on as a guest. Back in those days you didn't always know who the guests were going to be and maybe someone thought the famously reclusive Marlon Brando would come on. Instead, Chris Elliott would come out with cotton stuffed in his cheeks and do a terrible Marlon Brando impression while Dave interviewed him. At some point he talks about doing a famous banana dance, which Dave has never heard of. Chris does the banana dance and then leaves. You have to understand that for most of this bit, the audience doesn't really know wtf is going on and neither does Letter or Chris Elliott for that matter. Anyway, Chris Elliott had his own TV show where he was an adult living with his parents called "Get a Life," he has been in a bunch of movies (including the infamous Cabin Boy, which was supposed to be a Pee Wee Herman type thing but ended up being something way worse). He was on the cast of SNL and he was really funny in There's Something About Mary. All of this is to say, the man has a long history in showbiz and when my wife thinks of him, the only thing she remembers is this one bad impression from Late Night with David Letterman from the 80s.

YouTube keeps changing their mind about whether they want to allow this video or not so my apologies for forcing you to use your imagination.