As I've mentioned someplace here, I wasn't a huge watcher of David Letterman the last ten years or so. I still admire the hell out of the guy as a brilliant, clever man…but I thought his show in its final decade became way too predictable and that the characterizations of him as grumpy or crabby were often not unfounded. Mostly though, he seemed to me uninterested. I'd tune in for a great guest, partly for the great guest but partly because a Steve Martin or a Tom Hanks would usually cause Dave to actually act like he was enjoying his own show. When he didn't, I couldn't.
On Facebook the other day, I got into a bit of back-and-forth with a friend who was declaring it a Cosmic Injustice (or something on that level) that the innovative, edgy show of Mr. David Letterman was beaten in the ratings by the (to him) non-innovative, safe show of Mr. Jay Leno. I told him that if it had been Dave's shows from the previous century being beaten by Leno's shows from this century, I'd probably agree with him. But the Dave of this century was not, to me, the Dave who did things no one — except maybe Steve Allen — had ever done before on TV. Too often for me, he was not even the guy who did things he himself had not done the previous week.
I offer as support for my position that amidst all the well-deserved tributes upon his retirement, few of those who hailed him as a great groundbreaker mentioned any groundbreaking from the last ten years. They all mentioned the Suit of Velcro (1984) or sending Larry "Bud" Melman to the bus terminal (1983) or the 360° show (1986) or crushing things with a steamroller (1983) or the Monkey-Cam (1986) or bits with Andy Kaufman or even a few things from his early days at NBC. Even the clips Dave himself showed of great moments were mainly from 10+ years back. Remember the clip he had on the last show of him working the drive-thru at Taco Bell? That was from 1996.
When the tributes mentioned more recent moments, they were almost ones where outside circumstances forced Dave into unprecedented territory: Dave returning after his heart attack, Dave revealing that he was being blackmailed, Dave holding our hands after 9/11, etc. He was terrific in how he handled them but then the next night, the comedy bit would be to send Pat the Stagehand up to throw something off the roof. Once in a while, a guest would do something to shake things up like Joaquin Phoenix clamming up or Drew Barrymore flashing — and by the way, I have now seen the clip of Drew exposing her breasts more than I've seen the one of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon.
Handed a challenge, he was almost always great but the show he did most nights was configured to not challenge him in any way. There were no surprises for Dave. Penn Jillette wrote a piece about a time he and Teller were on the old show at NBC…
After Penn & Teller's first appearance on his show, Letterman himself took us aside and told us privately to hit him as hard as we could in our next appearance. He asked us to be as mean to him as possible and not to let him know in advance what we were going to do.
Teller got an idea. We called the producer and told him our idea. The producer said it was too mean, we couldn't do it. We asked him to tell Dave that. The producer called back right away and said that Dave wouldn't hear the idea, he just wanted us to do it. We dropped hundreds of live cockroaches all over David Letterman. He freaked. He lost his s—. When we went to commercial, Dave swore at us and pushed us away from him. He wouldn't even look at us. He didn't say goodnight to us. But he called the next day to thank us and tell us we had done exactly what he had wanted. He said it was great TV and he welcomed us back any time.
That was the David Letterman of NBC. That was not the guy on CBS. My friends who prefer Dave over Jay all say, "I loved the old Jay." Well, I loved the old Dave. I thought both those guys took to coasting but it bothered me more with Dave. He was so good improvising on the fly.
Before at least ten of those friends write and tell me, "I loved Dave even when he was coasting," let me say I understand that. He was a fascinating presence on our TV and I even enjoyed the early stages of that coasting after he seemed to decide he would not venture outside a controlled environment. I hope you can understand how some of us who'd been watching him avidly from the days of his morning show just felt too much déjà vu and also that a guy with his power shouldn't be acting like he was doing his own show under duress.
At some point, I realized that I had a filter available to me…a way of watching for Dave's good moments without sitting through the interviews he clearly didn't want to be doing, the monologue jokes he did without enthusiasm and the desk spots when he complained about things that shouldn't be troubling a guy with his clout and dough. All I had to do was unSeason-Pass my TiVo, not watch the regular telecasts and catch the great, filtered excerpts on YouTube.
Here's one from 2007. I think I was still TiVoing Dave every night at this point but I was watching with a less effective filter — my Fast Forward button. He did not venture out from behind his desk for this one…just sat there and made smartass remarks, but I did laugh out loud at it. They sent guys dressed as Spider-Man — and when they ran out of those costumes, other characters — into a Jamba Juice outlet across the street. The joke, of course, turned out to be that no one in New York City seemed to care one bit. (It helps to remember, by the way, that this was four years before the Spider-Man musical down the street. Guys walking around in Spider-Man costumes were a little more unusual then than they would soon be…but still, no one cared.)
That was funny enough but there were two added elements to the joke for some of us, one being that this Jamba Juice was located in the building that then housed the offices of DC Comics.
Also, you'd never know it from much of the publicity but Spider-Man was co-created by a very gifted man named Steve Ditko who, as was too frequent in comics once upon a time, received neither proper credit nor moola for his contribution. His contributions included designing that iconic costume and much, much more.
Watching this, I was aware that Mr. Ditko's office was (and I believe still is) not far from that Jamba Juice. He could well have been walking down that street at that hour. He might even have decided to stop into that Jamba Juice for a refreshing Mango-a-Go-Go® Smoothie. The bit's even funnier when you imagine that and his reaction…
