I can't say how I got started on it. No one led me to the Late Show. I didn't get the jokes about John Sununu or Joey Buttafuco. I couldn't see most of the movies his guests were hawking. I watched because of Dave. This guy pulled me in. At nine years old, this was my show.
Had you asked me then who I would most like to meet, the answer was Dave. Twenty two years later, nothing has changed. Everything I understand about what's funny is rooted in him. As television slowly dissolves into the internet, Dave is the last of his kind. Now that he's gone, there's really no reason to own one anymore.
Nobody talked like Dave. He was the perennial outsider. A guy who on one hand was a master of the format, on the other, the least likely man to be in the chair. By the time he hit full stride in the '90s, his show had the prestige to attract Presidential candidates, but was still zany enough to drop a bowling ball off the roof into a bathtub full of chocolate pudding. That was the kind of thing you could expect on any night. On the same night, often.
Dave was never safe. He interviewed thousands, laughing with them all, but terrifying just as many. "I love you," Jennifer Anniston said in a 1998 appearance, "but I'm scared of you."
Guest appearances are usually scripted out in advance by segment producers, but Dave had little interest in sticking to the pre-approved. When Paris Hilton came on in 2007 to promote a fragrance, Dave only had questions about her recent stint in jail. The audience roared.
"But I've moved on with my life," she eventually pouted. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."
"Well, this is where you and I are different," Dave returned, "because this is all I want to talk about."
He then continued with five more questions about jail.
The Late Show had its own comedic ecosystem. It was a separate planet of comedy. Dave was the master of ceremonies to the strange cast around him. This is what made the show legendary to me: The entirety of it.
There was Paul Shaffer, forever behind a wall of keyboards and dark sunglasses. There was easygoing stage manager, Biff Henderson. Next door at the Hello Deli was Rupert Jee. There was announcer Alan Kalter, who was portrayed for years as either a sexual deviant or an explosive hothead, but never both at the same time. Disinterested stagehands Pat and Kenny smoked cigarettes in the wings. Producer Barbara off to the side. Tony "Inky" Mendez. Calvert DeForest. Intern Todd. The list goes on.
This was the world I wanted to live in. When Dave came on, I put reality on hold for an hour and took everything at face value. I took the jokes literally. Each Spring, when Dave would make a variation on the same dumb joke, "On my lunch break today, I saw a squirrel putting suntan lotion on his nuts," I let myself believe him. I pictured a TV icon strolling through Central Park, spotting a most-unusual moment and rushing back to the theater to share it with his friends. This made me truly happy.
Through the show's frequent (and often pointless) comedy bits, this ecosystem thrived. I remember hundreds of them and can recite dozens. There were the staple games like "Know Your Cuts of Meat" and "Will It Float?" The creepy-slash-cool Lyle the Intern who would wander onto stage unannounced and plop down beside Dave. Alan Kalter's Celebrity Interview always dissolved into a flurry of profanity with Kalter storming off the set. And, of course, the nightly Top Ten lists.
Dave had bits so simple and odd that I would repeat them over and over out loud trying to figure out where the joke ended and where it began. One evening, a discussion of Harry Potter cut to a middle-aged, overweight version of Potter who shrugged, "If you losers need me, I'll be at the dog track."
I was in awe. I repeated the line to everyone. Most people didn't laugh. Was it even a joke? It didn't matter.
I remember the bit one summer night in 2004 when my sleepy eyes were jolted awake by the sight of my old high school crush, Krystle. There she stood in the Hello Deli beside Rupert to play a game called, "Would You Like to Tell Regis to Shove It?" Dave chatted remotely with Krystle for a few minutes about her upbringing in Africa and move to Virginia. Then, as promised, an uninformed Regis Philbin was patched in for Krystle to say, "Hey Regis...Shove it."
In my opinion, truly great comedians are funny even when their jokes don't work. In his 6,000 shows, Dave launched more than a few lead balloons. The audience would politely clap in the wake of each and then, from nothing, Dave would scrounge together something twice as funny. He could do it with a head tilt over to his producers. Or a comment to Paul. Or he might just break into an uncomfortably-long hacking cough. To me, this was as good as the A+ stuff. Because anybody can read a joke off a cue card and get a laugh. Dave could read the phone book and make it television worthy.
Ironically, it was Dave's two unfunniest moments that are the show's most important. After September 11, Dave was the first of his peers to return to the air. The show opened cold without the usual horns and monologue. There was just Dave, at his desk, talking unscripted about the pain around him.
"I'm being told the people that did this did so out of religious fervor...If you live to be a thousand, will that make any sense?"
The other major moment started like so many of Dave's famous bits. "Would you like to hear a story?" he asked the audience. They cheered and laughed. Six minutes later, Dave had unpacked a chilling tale of blackmail, extortion and an extramarital affair. He admitted to having had sexual relations with former staffers--the very info the blackmailer threatened to unleash. He then reported, to thunderous applause, that the man had been arrested earlier that day.
Dave's handling of his sex scandal was perfectly executed to the point that instead of being defined by it, it barely even registers with the mention of his name. Dave, a married man and a father, had messed up and nearly lost it all, but he never got knocked out. It had always been his show, on his terms, and damn it if someone else was going shake him down and take it away.
I was lucky enough to step into the Letterman ecosystem twice. I saw two tapings of the Late Show in New York. I clapped and cheered from the balcony in 2007 as Jim Carrey ran around the stage below begging the audience to see his new film.
Back in 2004, my luck was even greater. My family and I were ushered to the very front row of the Ed Sullivan Theater. There were three seats and we occupied them. We were probably fifteen feet away from Dave's desk. No cameras or producers in the way. I had the perfect view.
Dave did his monologue and a bit about Donald Trump's hair. Matthew Broderick sat down for a two-segment chat. Late in the episode, Alan Kalter, to my right, exploded into yells and stormed off the stage. This was it. I was breathing their air.
To be honest about it, that episode from '04 was one of the weakest I've ever seen. I'm okay with that. The Late Show's hundreds of greatest moments will live on the internet forever. This one will never see the light of day again. It belonged to me. Like a small, personal legend.
As the lights went dark at the end of the taping and we filed out of the theater, a stagehand tapped my mom on the arm. I recognized the guy from years of watching the show. I couldn't believe he was speaking to us. He held out two cue cards: A joke about Bill Clinton that Dave had read earlier in the monologue.
"Would you like these?" he asked.
Last night, after 33 years of broadcasting, David Letterman hosted his final show. He did a monologue, several comedy packages, said some goodbyes and then the Foo Fighters played his favorite song. The episode capped off a month-long run of special guest appearances. Big stars. Most all of them taking an extra moment to tell Dave how much they love him (final standup guest Norm MacDonald's being the most touching of all).
Those final shows were significant not just in their star power, but in Dave's performance. He was enthusiastic, quick, smart and engaged. His next-to-last show with Bill Murray and Bob Dylan is easily the best that I've seen from him in ten years. Here was a guy who knew the minutes were running out. He savored every one of them. I could tell that he wasn't ready for it to end either.
Even through the pain of watching him go, I know that 33 years is all one can ask for. Dave went out on his time, by his choice. He survived a quintuple bypass surgery that could have taken his life fifteen years ago. He was forgiven for a scandal that could have led to a dismissal. His ratings slid early in the CBS run behind Leno where he would remain until Leno's departure. He never grasped the YouTube craze that Fallon and Kimmel thrive on. He aged. The landscape changed. There are so many reasons he could have faded or disappeared. Yet, it never happened. He endured. He was always himself. His show. His world.
There will never be another David Letterman.
My mom took the cue cards from that taping and framed them for me. I'll have them until the day I die. I enjoy showing them to people and reading the joke like Dave did. Going forward, they'll be more to me than just a keepsake. They'll be a portal back to that ecosystem.
Back to those late Friday nights alone in my room. My teens. My twenties. Brazil. No matter what kind of day I was having. No matter what kind of day he was having. I always knew where to find him. He was always there. Today hurts so much because, at 31 years old, it's my first day alive without him on TV. My life and my world will never be the same.
I'll go home again in a few months and get those cue cards out. I'll trace my fingers over the words and hear his voice in my head. I'll close my eyes. All I'll want, for just a second, is to go back.
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