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David Letterman | page 1, 2, 3

"Hey, I'm no armchair historian," Scott Dikkers, editor of the Onion, recently told the New Yorker, "but it was Letterman who made the world a sarcastic place. Because of Letterman, everybody I know is sarcastic all the time, in everything they say -- never genuine." This remark gets to the heart of Letterman's legacy and his present-day dilemma. The sarcasm Dikkers speaks of, the pervasive irony that informed every second of Letterman's NBC show, was so influential throughout television and pop culture in general that it has, by now, exhausted itself. And at times, it's seemed to have exhausted Letterman himself.

"We know the show is tired; it's the same crap night after night," Dave fairly roared one evening this past September, sitting at his desk. "But here's the thing," he said, turning to the camera with a grin whose twitchiness slid somewhere between arch playfulness and suicidal self-contempt: "We just don't care." Seven months later, on a balmy April night, Letterman sauntered out onto the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater, waved away the cheers, took his limbering-up, touching-his-loafers bow and said, "I'm Dave Letterman, I'm the host of 'The Late Show,' and you think you've got a rotten job." The sense that Letterman genuinely believes he has -- that is to say, does -- a rotten job has been evident in the past: usually whenever he's not talking about how miserable he is, when he's smiling gap-toothily and throwing himself into comedy bits with zesty enthusiasm. Letterman invariably signals his disenchantment by feigning a chipperness so awkwardly that it is instantly perceived as false.

Read more about David Letterman at BARNES & NOBLE

At his truest, he is a worrier, a fretful perfectionist and the most neurotically modest Manhattan person-of-note since New Yorker editor William Shawn. (He shuns interviews, parties, even off-camera palaver with celebrities -- his commercial-break frostiness was lifted brilliantly by Garry Shandling on "The Larry Sanders Show" as one of Larry's salient traits. At the same time, Letterman is a generous donor to charitable causes, loves dogs and cars, likes kids and audience members who don't live in Manhattan or Los Angeles and was notably humane to Margaret Ray, the woman who stalked him for years, right up to her suicide in October 1998.)

But it's when the quality of Letterman's show is high, as it has been over the past year or so, that he feels freest to indulge his favorite comic persona: that of the cranky misanthrope, the whining complainer, the middle-aged, Midwestern goofball who likes to use the power his show has to promote big-name guests to, instead, cut those stars down to size. Letterman still will brook no pretensions or banal product plugging -- when you come on Dave's show, you'd better have a few choice anecdotes that don't have to do with your current movie project, lest the host end your segment with a quick cut to a commercial. But he resorts less and less to the bullying and cajoling that used to characterize his interviewing style. Over the past year, he's shown more of an interest in engaging guests in serious discussion (New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani seemed caught off-guard when Letterman pressed him on police brutality recently), yet without going all Charlie Rose on us.

Once again, Letterman is going against the prevailing style. Let Kilborn, O'Brien and Jon Stewart ("The Daily Show") continue to strip-mine irony ore; except for the often exhilaratingly loony O'Brien, their styles already seem tired. Letterman, by contrast, currently seems more comfortable in his own leathery skin, and -- even as he continues to sink in the ratings -- his show is all the better for it. With the irony burned off, his comedy now breathes fresh oxygen; he's getting big laughs by doing things like revitalizing old forms, such as an entire monologue consisting of "It was so hot today" gags ("It was so hot today, the rats at Dunkin' Donuts moved over to Ben & Jerry's" -- badda-boom! rim-shoots Paul Shaffer and the band, Vegas-style.) I warn you: Years from now, when Dave has retired to Indianapolis to jog 10 miles a day and wave the first-race flag for the opening of the Indianapolis 500, you'll all be moaning about what a loss he is to television, just like all those weepy keepers of the Carson flame. For a guy whose current favorite catch phrase is "I wouldn't give your troubles to a monkey on a rock," Letterman is one monkey who'd turn into your favorite uncle if you gave him half a chance.
salon.com | July 20, 1999

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