For 33 years, I’ve known this day would come, yet nothing could prepare me for the overwhelming sadness I feel about the departure of David Letterman from late night television. After tonight’s episode of Late Show, at the age of 68, Dave is retiring.
Late Night with David Letterman premiered on NBC on February 1, 1982, a little more than a year after his misunderstood attempt at a morning show was cancelled following a four-month run. I don’t remember exactly when I started watching Late Night, but I believe it was in the spring of 1983 when I was a sophomore in college, because I distinctly remember my room in the fraternity house and the Betamax hooked up to my TV when I first saw it. From that day forward, I either watched or recorded every single episode, up until this very day.
I also remember it was 1983 because of two specific episodes that brought laughs to my group of friends when I returned home that year for summer vacation. The first included a bit where Dave was testing new catch phrases. Even now, you’ll occasionally hear me speak with a nasally whine, “They pelted me with rocks and garbage.” The second was an interview with Billy Idol where an obviously perplexed Dave told the sneering punk rock star, “Your parents must be awfully proud of you.”
David Letterman was the physical embodiment of my sense of humor at that formative age, and I feel like we grew up together. As his humor matured, so did mine. (As he aged, so did I.) At some point, I wonder if he must have stopped representing my sense of humor and started influencing it instead. There came a point that no matter what he did, I believed Dave was funny. Sure, he may have become less cranky or edgy, but he was evolving and I never betrayed him by switching to another late night TV host.
In fact, I don’t believe I’ll start watching anyone else when Dave is gone. I never set out to watch a late night talk show. I started watching David Letterman. There’s not a vacuum to be filled in the absence of his show. No one or no show can ever fill the vacuum that the man will leave.
I had the great pleasure of attending tapings of David Letterman’s shows twice in my life, and both have significant memories attached to them. The first time was at NBC in 1991. I had read that Dave would come out before the show to chat with the audience and if you said something funny, he might refer to it later and you would be shown on TV. I wanted to be on TV and I wanted to be on Late Night with David Letterman, but I didn’t know what I could say that would be worthy.
We had great seats that night: front row center. Sure enough Dave came out before the show and stood directly in front of me, towering like a god. I was nervous as could be, but when he asked if there were any questions about the show, my hand shot up into the air. I fumbled a little, intending to say that my wife (Cincy) was pregnant and I wanted to know if she would be all right during the taping. He asked when she was due and I replied, “August.”
He turned that awkward exchange into a joke during the monologue, “I’m no medical man, but it generally takes 9 months (to have a baby).” The camera focused on Cincy… and my right arm. I never got my moment on TV. (Later, he made another joke about a couple of women sitting on the other side of Cincy. Even they got their screen time, but not me.) I had arranged to record this episode back home in Kansas City and I still have it on VHS, even though I no longer have a machine on which to play it.
The second time I attended a taping was after Dave’s move to CBS. In January of 2000, I planned a trip to New York based on the date for which I got tickets. It had been nine years since the last time, and my life had changed drastically. I was no longer married and was instead living with my partner, Michael. In the days before our trip, Michael and I learned that Dave had been rushed to the hospital for quintuple bypass surgery and would likely not be taping a show during our trip.
With such short notice, we didn’t change our travel plans; I mean, there are plenty of other things to do in New York. However, while there, I received a phone call from a Late Show intern. It was the day Dave was returning after his time off and he wondered if we would still be able to use our tickets. Are you kidding? Of course! It was such a memorable show with guest star Robin Williams and everyone in the audience receiving special t-shirts to commemorate Dave’s return.
In the last couple of years, I haven’t been watching Late Show from start to finish. I originally disliked the Top Ten List because I thought it was too gimmicky and commercial. However, it was recently the only thing I consistently watched from my daily recordings (now on DVR via Google Fiber). I found the Top Ten lists to be the best way to get a quick, yet vital, fix of my Dave. I also watched interviews with my favorite celebrities, though they grew less frequent. I could “skip through” an entire episode in 5 minutes. (One day, I caught up with 11 episodes in less than an hour.)
Not only did I get humor from Dave, he was often my only source for news and news commentary. David Letterman’s politics, though not stated outright, became apparent to me, especially in recent years. At a certain point, my “favorite celebrities” on Late Show included newscasters like Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams, Rachel Maddow, etc. Dave had a way of getting them to explain complicated issues. On topics with which he didn’t agree, he didn’t argue, but was able express his view with common sense.
I first began paying more attention to the political issues on Late Show when Dave’s son, Harry, was born. He suddenly seemed more interested in environmental issues, expressing what seemed to be a genuine concern for the future of the planet. He frequently hosted “no-name” guests to talk about global warming and other concerns. After that, he started asking the tough questions; the ones everybody thinks, but won’t really speak. He grew increasingly persistent, refusing to let anyone off the hook, rephrasing his questions until he either got a response or was interrupted by a commercial break.
These questions were mostly rhetorical and had no concrete answers, yet by asking them so passionately, he shined a light on nonsense and hypocrisy. I’ve never been a political guy, but I consider Dave my elected representative. I’ve never disagreed with him. He seems to believe in a matter of fact fairness toward all people, perhaps best demonstrated when he talks about gay marriage. Exasperated, he speaks as if it makes no sense that you can’t marry whom you want to marry. The audience normally applauds following his displays of humanity and I’m doing it at home right along with them.
How am I taking Dave’s departure? Not well, I’m afraid. I can’t watch an episode the last few days without crying. Seriously. To be honest, I haven’t been in a hurry to watch his final shows. Ironically, I currently have 33 episodes on my DVR. I intend to save them and watch one whenever I need to. That way, even when he’s gone, I’ll still have something new to watch. I’ll keep last year’s Christmas show forever and make it a holiday tradition to watch it so I can relive the Late Show Football Challenge, hear Jay Thomas’s Clayton Moore story, and listen to Darlene Love sing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”
I wonder if I’m being silly about how I feel. But David Letterman is not just a late night TV show host to me. He’s been with me through good times and bad, always making me smile. When I’ve experienced life changes… graduations, new jobs, births, deaths, marriages and divorces… Dave has been there. As many times as I’ve literally dreamed about being a guest on his show, or said his name as the one person living or dead whom I want to have dinner with, he’s like a best friend to me. It seems like I’m eulogizing him and, in a way, his retirement is like his death. In which case I say, “Thank you, David Letterman. Thank you for the laughs, the life, the love.”
