Between now and Wednesday the Internet will be overrun with think pieces, remembrances, appreciations, and retrospectives about David Letterman. It’s already been happening in fact. And at some point you’ll think “enough already!”. But the thing is this is the rare case when it can never be enough. Every last inch of space on the Internet could be filled with tributes to Dave and it still wouldn't feel sufficient. Because with the possible exceptions of Lucille Ball and Johnny Carson, David Letterman is the single most important and influential entertainer in the history of television. He single-handedly changed what was possible on TV and what the medium could be. He invented a totally new comedic sensibility. And on a personal level, he very well might have changed my life.
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It’s not inaccurate to say that I was raised on The Late Show with David Letterman. I definitely grew up with it. It was the first “adult” TV I remember really being into. “The Late Shift”, about Dave and Jay’s battle for the Tonight Show job, was one of the first “adult” books I remember being obsessed with. One of the first things I remember doing on the Internet was figuring out how to go to The Late Show’s website. And throughout junior high and high school my bed time was dictated by Dave’s show. At first I could only stay up for the first half, unless there was a particularly good guest, in which case I could talk my parents into letting me stay for the first interview segment. Then as I got older I could regularly stay up for the second guest. And then finally I knew I was a grown up because I could always stay up for the musical guest. I rarely missed an episode; it was what my family did together every night. My Dad and my sister would come and go, but for my Mom and I, it was our thing. Even in my later high school years, when I was in the angsty I-hate-my-parents phase every kid goes through, I still looked forward to the opportunities I had to watch The Late Show with my mom. Then in college it was the thing that kept my connected to my past. Whenever I felt homesick I could stay up and watch Dave and it felt like home. And even though I haven't watched the show with any regularity in at least ten years now, it still feels like a part of me. Because it wasn't just a TV show to me, it was a ritual and a worldview.
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Of all the bits Dave did over the years the one that will always stand out with me the most, the one my Mom and I still talk about regularly to this day, is Campaign 2000. Literally the only clip of Campaign 2000 I could find online is the one embedded above. So to give some context, Campaign 2000 started because Dave wanted to get Al Gore and George Bush to both make appearances on his show prior to the 2000 Presidential election. So every night he would have a segment devoted to updating his progress on making that goal happen. But, of course, it pretty quickly drifted off into something else entirely. As you'll see in the clip above by the summer of 2000 he had frequently stopped using the segment to discuss Bush and Gore at all. Often he would say it was time for Campaign 2000 and then launch into some absurdist comedy bit. But most nights he would set up Campaign 2000, the “sponsors” would be introduced, he would ask Paul and Maria Pope if they had any news, they never did, then the bit would end with Alan Kalter telling the audience who it had been “brought to you by”. I swear I remember a night when there were five different “sponsors" of the bit (including the nightly “Larry King, he looks like an owl!”) and then eight different other entities it had been “brought to you by”. And that was night when literally nothing happened in the bit itself. It was all set up, no punchline. Except for the fact that the set up WAS the punchline. And even after it continued well past the election and into mid-2001, it was all played more or less with a totally straight face. It was absurd and weird and amazing. And seeing things like Campaign 2000 on TV nearly every night helped make me who I am today.
See, as an artsy, thoughtful, introverted kid growing up in Houston, Texas, I never felt like I quite fit in. I knew I wasn't into the same kinds of things my peers were into, but I didn't know what choice I had. Convention was all I knew. In the pre-Internet days I had no real sense of any wider world out there. I only knew the reality with which I was presented. But then I started watching The Late Show, and seeing someone do what’s basically performance art on a show on a major network that comes on right after the local news kind of blew my mind. It showed me that there was another way. That there are in fact no rules; that you can subvert convention. That art and comedy and television could be whatever you want them to be. That it was ok to be different and color outside the lines. But mostly it made me feel less different. “If this is on TV”, I thought, “then that must mean other people out there like it too. And if other people like it too then I must not be so weird after all.” It helped all us weirdos out there know that we weren’t alone. That we were all watching this strange gap-toothed man throw watermelons off a roof together. And that if this was possible, then anything was possible. And that thought was my salvation.
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Prior to Dave people had been doing bit and pieces of his style. Monty Python, Saturday Night Live, Andy Kauffman, Steve Martin, Samuel Beckett, Eddie Kovacs, and others, were all doing, or had done, some of what Dave would do. But he’s the one that put it all together. He didn't invent anti-comedy, or meta-comedy, or irony, or absurdism, but he was the first to put them all together on network TV five nights a week. And there was no real precedent for Dave’s unique vision. He was the first of his kind in way that few people ever have been. He basically created modern comedy, in a way that it’s impossible to overstate. A direct line can be drawn from David Letterman to every truly great piece of comedy from the past 30 years. This is a fact.
New York Magazine just published a great piece where former Late Show writers look back at ideas they tried to pitch to Dave over the years that were rejected. There are some great ones - reading out loud from The Encyclopedia of Carpet Samples, an in-studio zip line, a radio station for dogs, “All Week Long William F. Buckley Rates the Mustard”, and so on - but whats most striking is how modern they all sound. And yet nearly all the pitches in there are from over 20 years ago. In the article Dave says that the single most brilliant idea in the history of his show was to stage a battle between a humidifier and a dehumidifier. They ran both machines all show long and then at the end checked to see which had been better at its job. That was done in 1983 and it STILL seems ahead of its time 30 years later. I mean would any late night host actually attempt an idea like that today? I really don’t know that they would. I think comedy is still trying to fully catch up with what Dave created. We’re all still grappling with the possibilities.
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One of Dave’s classic bits from circa 2001 was something called “Is It Anything”. He would lift up a screen and flanked by Grinder Girl and Hula Hoop Lady (my names for them) would be a random person engaged in some random activity. Then the screen would go down and Dave and Paul would discuss whether they thought it was "anything" or not. There was never any criteria for what constituted “anything” or even what “anything” exactly meant. The whole bit was nebulous in meaning and intention. Was it meant to be a total joke or was it a legitimate competition? Was it supposed to be funny or just weird? Who were these people and what exactly were they doing there? Like Campaign 2000, it was silly and pointless and strange. And it was a perfect encapsulation of Dave’s entire ethos.
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After Dave goes off the air on May 20th the sun will still rise and set. Time will march on and his influence and importance will gradually be forgotten. And quite honestly his show hasn't been anything other than phoned in for years now. I tried to watch an episode about a year ago and it was almost painful. In the era of viral videos and silly games and lip synch battles Dave seems hopelessly old fashioned and out of touch. I’m sure kids today don’t quite get right now what all the fuss is about. Same thing happened to Carson once upon a time. And thats how life goes I guess. But for those of us who were there, we know attention must be paid. That few people have ever been more worthy of it. That no tribute can ever do him justice. Because David Letterman’s shows weren't just anything - they were everything.
So thank you Dave. For all of it. You’ll mean more to me to you’ll ever know.
