They say we are living in a Golden Age of Television, and they may be right. Certainly THE SOPRANOS, THE WIRE, BREAKING BAD, MAD MEN, GAME OF THRONES, and many other shows have risen past anything at the multiplexes in terms of capturing the popular imagination.
But none of them is my favorite TV show of all time. That would be LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, which aired at 12:30 weeknights on NBC, after THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JOHNNY CARSON, from 1982 to 1993.
I am not talking about LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, which ran on CBS at 11:30 from 1993 to the present day. You may have heard that Letterman recently announced he’ll be leaving the show next year, which has kicked off a lot of eulogies for the man’s career, including this one. Dave certainly had more than a few great moments on CBS, but in making the transition to an earlier hour and a wider audience, he sanded off most of the rough edges that made LATE NIGHT so special.
I still remember the first time I saw this show, in probably ’83 or ’84, when I was the only person awake on a sleepover at a friend’s house. Who was this weird-looking dude, smiling much wider than he could possibly mean? Wearing khakis and wrestling shoes with a double-breasted jacket? Being kind of a jerk to his guests? Throwing pencils at the camera? Constantly asking the director if the show was running behind? Ragging on the lame guests? Flirting with the cute ones?
Watching this show as a teenager I always felt like I was getting away with something, like I was in an a private joke. I shamelessly adopted Letterman’s persona as my own, and I don’t think I ever completely shook it off. I stayed up to watch LATE NIGHT at least a couple nights a week in high school — because in the ’80s, that was the only way to watch a late-night show — which I suspect may be why I became such a night owl and have such a difficult time waking up in the morning. It is also why all my worst grades in high school were for the earliest classes.
Volumes have been written about how Letterman brought irony to the talk-show format, how he called attention to all the small details that most shows bend over backward to cover up. He talked to the director from his desk (and always got his name wrong). Segments didn’t have CGI animated intros — Dave would just say “Paul, do we have any music for [name of stupid bit]?” and Paul would basically repeat [name of stupid bit] with a couple of chords and call it a theme song. He roamed the halls of the studio. He took cameras to the roof, to the street, to the NBC cafeteria. He had one of his writers climb out from under the seats and turned him into a star.
He somehow got a phone number for a woman who worked in the building across the street and turned her into a regular guest, calling her on the phone with the camera shooting her across the street, through the window. He strapped a camera to a monkey and let it roam the studio.
He put a decorative fountain, one of the most unimpressive visual props ever, in front of his desk, and never pretended it was anything but underwhelming. He delighted in tormenting the local New York news program that taped across the hall. He turned the stage manager, Biff, into a character. And best of all, he left the studio and fucked with people.
He talked about his daily commute. He talked about the bad food in the NBC commissary. He reminded the viewers that being a TV host is still a job, like any other job, and like any other employee, he sometimes had his differences with management.
It’s hard to think of a body of work that influenced comedy more than the original LATE NIGHT. I don’t mean it influenced comedians — although it certainly did that too — I mean it influenced comedy as a whole. It broadened the borders of what could be funny. Things could be funny precisely because they weren’t funny.
I have to admit I haven’t watched Dave much at all for the last ten years or so. He started mellowing as soon as he went to CBS, and the mellower he got, the less he left the studio, the less he fucked with the guests, the less I watched. But it’s still strange to think he won’t be there anymore. This guy is the cornerstone of my whole sense of humor. Of my whole generation’s sense of humor.
NBC has notoriously refused to authorize the use of the old LATE NIGHT tapes for any kind of re-release or rebroadcast, as it would have amounted to advertising for CBS. But now that Dave’s going off the air, they ought to get rid of the stillborn embarrassment that is LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MYERS and replace it with the entire run of LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, night by night, for the next 11 years. That’s just about the only thing that would get me to watch a network talk show in real time anymore.