Life ain't the same without Dave
Late Night with David Letterman was just not to be missed
For much of America, the greatest of all late night hosts was Johnny Carson. For 29 years and 302 episodes (with plenty of guest hosts), Carson’s breezy, homespun humor and wide assortment of guests - actors, writers, singers, jugglers, politicians, impressionists, comedians - ruled The Tonight Show, the 11:30 hour in America, for a long, long time.
Carson was great, classy, funny, able to make his show work when guests were boring, weird or just plain odd. There were lots of hilarious moments on his shows, especially when his monologue went awry. Which seemed to be often enough to make you wonder if they wrote it that way on purpose.
With streaming TV and YouTube and ways to record a show so you could watch it when YOU wanted, there are lots and lots of stories these days about the end of the Late Night wars. It may yet happen.
If I ever needed something to convince me of my age, looking at the guest lists for tonight’s late night shows - Walton Goggins, FKA twigs, Gabby Thomas, Pepe Aguilar, Liz Moore, Julian McCullough, will.i.am (who I wouldn’t care to see even if he capitalized his name) and RuPaul (Oh yeah, I’ll stay up to see that) — I have absolutely no idea who these people are or why I’d want to stay up to see ‘em.
Give me DAVE!
While I occasionally catch Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon or Stephen Colbert, let’s be honest, once David Letterman stepped down, late night TV got a lot less interesting. These guys have done their level best, but for me, there was only one David Letterman. He had a renegade spirit that seemed to run through everything he did. And since it was Late Night, he pushed the boundaries until there weren’t any.
Whether it was having window-to-window conversations with lovely long-haired Meg across the city or sending Rupert Jee out with a hidden camera, Dave giving him hilariously rude advice/orders/suggestions or the fun he’d have with his New York City neighbors Mujibur and Sirajul, would it be too sappy to say he helped all of America warm to these friendly, willing immigrants? He was welcoming to every New Yorker out there. He was diverse before it was expected to be.
Of course, the show was unpredictable, in a lot of ways, the anti-Tonight Show, in part, Dave explained later, because the Carson show had certain restrictions on what they could do and what they couldn’t. Stupid Pet Tricks, Stupid Human Tricks, the famous Top Ten List, throwing watermelons off the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater, whatever looked like fun, Dave — and all of us who stayed up with him — were up for it. What haven’t we seen before? Hmmm…let’s give it a try. What have we got to lose?
One way or another, Dave was on network TV for 33 years and has insisted in recent interviews that he was mailing it in the last ten years (I disagree!) Thanks to Netflix, he’s still on every so often with “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” where he sits for a long-form interview with some newsmaker.
At 77, he’s not quite the scamp he used to be but hell, he just went to Ukraine! He just did a wonderful show in Dublin with U2. And he even sat for an interview with Kanye West (skipped that one.) And Miley Cyrus!
For most of us, we loved it when Dave went out of the studio to work a shift at McDonald’s - “What do you get with a Happy Meal?” “First, you’ve got to prove to me you’re happy.” Or “Veal shank, lime jello and a pack of cigarettes.” He was mocking all of these conventions, manners, politeness but all of it done with a wink and a toothy-grin. And it was fun seeing him bring a camera crew into the General Electric offices — and having AUTHORITY throw him out, him loving every minute of it, knowing WE were loving it even more.
Of course, he was defiant, sarcastic, a smart ass with a capital “S” and “A” but never mean or cruel. It was as if when he looked at the world around him, there were so many things that struck him funny, he wanted to share them with us, see if we would laugh, too. And we couldn’t wait to see what he’d come up with next.
It was somehow very freeing, liberating, subliminally telling us that maybe we could get away with just about anything as long as it was funny. Even though we’d never do it. We knew he would.
In his later years, when he was handed compliments about his groundbreaking shows, how many people in America he entertained, sent to sleep with a smile and a chuckle or a good story to tell at the water cooler the next day, he would shrug it all off and say he wished he’d done something better, more important with his life.
Uplifting the spirit of a good chunk of the nation on a weekly basis for over three decades — well, I’m glad I grew up in a time when I got to see him five nights a week. While I don’t know that you’d ever suggest for a moment that he was a performer who sought our affection — his lovely Mom was pretty chilly, as he suggested many times over the years and so was he — whether he sought it or not, he won it. Night after night. That’s something, isn’t it?
Here, thanks to the wonders of YouTube, are a few of my favorites:
DAVE AT MCDONALD’S
DAVE AT TACO BELL
DAVE WITH RUPERT JEE