If you want to be a guest on the “Late Show,” it’s best not to make jokes about kidnapping David Letterman.
That’s a lesson four Canadian college students learned the hard way when they received a police escort from The Ed Sullivan Theatre on Tuesday.
Aspiring filmmakers Ben Nemtin, David Lingwood, Jonathon Penn and Duncan Penn have been lobbying to tell a joke on Letterman’s show as part of a sequence for their upcoming MTV series “The Buried Life.”
But when producers poo-pooed their official request, the undaunted foursome packed up their rehabbed purple passenger bus (the same one Keanu Reeves drove in “Speed”) and headed to Broadway to appeal directly to the host.
“We were out on the street shooting around 8 am and talking about ways to get his attention,” Nemtin tells The Post. “We were joking about how we were going to kidnap him when he comes to work. It turned out their (security) was picking up our audio.”
New York’s Finest were quickly summoned to the scene and Nemtin’s crew was sent packing.
Hours earlier, the attention-seeking twenty-somethings popped up in the crowd outside “The CBS Early Show” wearing Letterman masks and carrying signs in support of their cause.
Telling a joke on late-night TV is one of a hundred Bucket List-like tasks they hope to accomplish on the series, which premieres in December. Others include appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone, swimming with sharks, and camping at the Playboy Mansion.
“We are not trying to be comedians,” Nemtin assures. “We just feel like the people under (Letterman) kept him from hearing about what we wanted to do. We really feel like if he hears about the project and why we are doing it, he will go for it.