Pop Culture Confidential

Episode 4: The Letterman Late Night Legacy

Guests: Mary McNamara & Joe Toplyn After 6,028 episodes and nearly 20,000 guests, on May 20th, 2015 David Letterman will host his last night of "Late Show with David Letterman" on CBS. We believed that this momentous occasion deserved a show all of its own. This David Letterman special dives into his 30+ year career and the moments that have made it so influential for pop culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Duration:: 34m
Broadcast on:: 15 May 2015
Audio Format:: other

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Hi, I'm Kristina Yarling-Biro, and on this edition of Pop Culture Confidential, I look at the TV institution that is David Letterman as he steps away from his desk after more than three decades. It's that dry sense of humor, his mix of midwestern guarded vibe and that New York edge that has earned him his place in comedy history. Let's take a look at some facts. In 30 years, David Letterman has had nearly 20,000 guests. Bill Murray was his first guest on the premiere of Late Night with David Letterman in 1982 on NBC. Later, when Letterman got passed over to replace his mentor Johnny Carson on NBC, that was Jay Leno who became the host of The Tonight Show, Letterman started his own 11.30 show but over at CBS. The Late Show with David Letterman debuted on August 30, 1993, with Bill Murray as his first guest. And now, Bill Murray will honor David Letterman as one of his last guests, along with other big stars and fans during these last few shows. A-listers like Julia Roberts, comedy legend Don Rickles, and even the POTUS himself, President Barack Obama. But before Stephen Colbert can take his place behind the Late Show desk in September, let's talk about the Letterman comedy, writing, the crazy stunts, the top ten lists, the guests, the scandals and the laughs and the tears that Letterman has brought to Late Night all these years. Later, I'll talk to someone who knows all the Late Night angles. Joe Topplin was not only a writer and head writer for Letterman on both his Late Night shows, he was also head writer for Leno and has written for the iconic Larry Sanders. But first, I talk to Pulitzer Prize winner Mary McNamara, TV critic at the LA Times about the Letterman legacy and his place in popular culture. Stay tuned. I'm so pleased to be joined by Mary McNamara, a television critic for The Los Angeles Times, and you actually just won a Pulitzer Prize this spring. Congratulations. Thank you so much. How would you describe what has made David Letterman so popular and for so many years now? Because he's really, really funny. I am a big fan of Letterman. Obviously, he was the dryer, writer alternative to Carson and then Leno. He was this really unexpected host. And then here comes Letterman with his very laconic style, with his almost a smirk, this kind of like impress me, and then this very wry humor, this very wacky humor. And it worked really well because he was able to do it in a way that wasn't a performance. It wasn't like he wasn't doing a character. This is who he was. And he was just this very kind of show me Midwestern boy. I'm not going to be swept away by all of the glamour. Let's talk about what's really going on here. And he just managed to do it year after year. And it was just a really nice, unique voice. And he was also incredibly funny himself. His monologues were very witty and smart and dry and not the kind of over the top or jocular. You wouldn't call him jocular in the way that Jay Bennett was. So it was just a really nice balance. And so for people who found the enthusiasm over the top often, enthusiasm of other hosts, Letterman provided this really nice alternative. It's a sort of cranky truth teller. Cranky, curmudgeonly. Yes. And as he grew older, that became even more natural, but he had it from the beginning. I mean, I remember his morning show when I was a child. My father was huge fan and it wasn't on for very long, but it was just so unexpected. You know, especially in the morning, amid all of, you know, it's like, "Goodbye. We're going to talk about all these wonderful things and we're going to go to the mall and watch, you know, Easter be celebrated." And it's like, "And here's Letterman." He's just kind of like, you know, very, you know, jaded, but in a, in not a mean way, but also just kind of like, you know, this jaundiced eye on popular culture, including his place in popular culture, which has been very interesting to watch as we go through the final weeks in which, you know, the sort of standard panoply of A-listers coming to tell him how wonderful he is, including the precedent. And you really do see that it wasn't an act. I mean, Letterman is one of the few people when, you know, Obama came out, what, two weeks ago and was applauding for Letterman. You could see he was genuinely uncomfortable with the idea that the president of the United States was applauding him, you know, it's kind of like, so he is part of, you know, sort of a media elite, and yet he doesn't feel comfortable with the blurring of importance in terms of, you know, what drives this country. You were talking about Carson before a big piece of the Letterman history is when the talk show legend, Johnny Carson, retired and most people expected Letterman to inherit that institution, the Tonight Show, but it went to Leno, which was a pretty big blow. Why was he passed over? He was so different from Johnny, I mean, he too was kind of a roof. He wasn't like a fan, you know, like now we have a sort of a tendency towards fandom in those feet, whether it's Jimmy Fallon or, you know, Ellen DeGeneres, I mean, this is very, oh, you're so great, and it's so wonderful, and we're so happy you're here. And Carson wasn't like that. Carson took himself very seriously, he took his show very seriously, he saw it for what it was, which was, you know, a paste making show, a vehicle to prop emerging voices, to make careers, to break careers, and he saw himself as a very specific kind of person, you know, a very unique kind of person, and he wasn't pressing his face up against the glass and going, oh, you guys are so amazing, he was like, now I'm going to allow you to be on the Tonight Show, and we'll see what you have, and, you know, and Dave was a much more, like, sort of, he takes it seriously, but not that seriously, it's all kind of like, this is just entertainment, why is everybody getting so excited, and this is kind of ridiculous? I mean, there is a kind of, you know, underlying, this is kind of ridiculousness to Dave's presentation, so I don't know if that's what Carson wanted, you know, for his legacy, I don't know that he didn't want, like, sort of the more jaded view, if he wanted somebody who was going to, you know, see the show as this very special opportunity, and celebrate the show, and he, you know, very, I don't want to say arrogant, but proud, you know, that this is this big deal, and Letterman just wasn't like that, and part of his charm was, like, yeah, it's a big deal, but we're just sitting here talking, and let's, you know, this is kind of absurd. Letterman, he's weathered some heavy drama with his triple bypass, and he was quite comforting after 9/11, he seems like a very reserved person, but would you agree that he's pretty good in those honest moments? Absolutely, and I think, you know, when he, for me, like, one of the greatest moments on television is when he came out, you know, and confessed to his affair, and explained why he was confessing, because he was in a position where he was potentially being blackmailed until he wanted to make her, and it was just such a wonderful kind of model for how you, you know, we see, you know, time and time again, people having to come into the public eye and confess to bad behavior, and it was just perfect, it was, like, you know, okay, this is what happened, this is why I'm telling you, otherwise it's none of your business, I'm very sorry, I screwed up, I hurt my wife, I hurt the people that I work with, but I'm not going to be held hostage by this mistake, and we're, you know, we're just going to move on from here. Like, you know, I don't know why anybody doesn't just look at that as the complete template for how to do it, because it was so perfect, and yes, he was, you know, wonderful with 9/11, because you do feel like he, he's a very genuine person, and he hasn't, you know, he is, you imagine he's the same off camera as he is on camera, and that level, he always appears, you know, a little uncomfortable on camera, which is kind of amazing considering how long he's been on camera, but you do feel, you know, he does have like this kind of self, you know, healthy, self-loathing, when something very real and disturbing happens, he, you know, reflected it as a person, because that's what he does. Yeah, you were talking about the new landscape now, which is for a sort of variety show, the jimmies of things going viral, with Letterman stepping down, is it sort of the end of an era? Everything that is, you know, very exciting is that everybody's experimenting with everything right now in television, and it is nice to see that late night, which has been so calcified, and is still very calcified, it's still all white men, you know, doing basically the same thing, which is a monologue, and then famous people, and then maybe you have famous people to do things with you. I think it is time to have things kind of shaken up again, and so we'll see what Colbert does. Do you remember another, a single interview or something through the years that has really made an impression on you? Wow, well, there have been some of me that drew very more moment, you know. That was when she pulled up her shirt. Yeah, when you see somebody like kind of lose control of their own show, I mean the thing about him is that he was, you know, with other hosts, there is, you know, this sense of control, and that if that control gets broken, they become angry, you know, or what kind of, I mean, Letterman was like, he kind of went with it and reacted in a very real way. I just was so impressed with just recently when the president came out, and his, you know, and even as, you know, other people come out, like, you know, Ray Romano was just on and was, you know, getting all periodied, and you could just see that Letterman was very uncomfortable taking any kind of credit for anything, you know, he, and it didn't seem fake. It didn't seem like false modesty. It seemed like, you know, you almost think that he would be happier just to have done his show up until the end, and then just go, okay, that's it. Pulled the plug. Is there one you like to ask? I mean, I love everything that, when Rickles comes on, I think that's, in terms of funny, I think that's funny, but that all the ones that almost make you a little uncomfortable, like, with Cher, Madonna, those type of things, those, I think, are so interesting because I feel that a lot of the new shows, they feel much more staged. No, absolutely. And I think that you just, you know, you just kind of put your finger on it. So he was not afraid to be uncomfortable. He was also not afraid to have people be uncomfortable on his show. And I think that that's what made it funny, and that's what made it, you know, such something to talk about because, you know, Carson was not about to ever be uncomfortable on his show. I mean, there were moments when, you know, other people were uncomfortable, and Jay was very much, you know, and that was his thing was like, you know, he was the jocular uncle who maybe he would ask the hard questions, I mean, like when he grand came on or whatever, but he was there to, he was more of a comforting presence, you know, Letterman was not a comforting presence. He was not there to hold your hand, he wasn't there to, you know, make this easy for you. He wasn't challenging you or anything, but it was, it was very much like, you know, he wasn't coddling. He was not a coddling host by any means. And because he, that's not what he would want for himself, you know, you could see he was willing to show that he was just not comfortable with whatever was happening. And that's what, you know, in that tension is where a lot of humor is in between, you know, those kinds of like awkward moments. When you say that, I realize how much I'll miss him. I know. I know. Thank you so much, Mayor, for talking about him. I'm sure, my pleasure. Ladies and gentlemen, the top 10 list tonight, this is a collection, a compilation of silly favorite top 10 interviews over the years. Number eight. Ladies, I will make in the White House George W. Bush. Make sure the White House library has lots of books with big print and pictures. Number five. Things you don't want to hear from a guy at a bus stop. This is Will Ferrell, the guy at the bus stop. And now to someone who knows the Letterman comedy very, very well. I'm very happy to speak to Mr. Joe Topplin. Joe Topplin is a Harvard alumni and multiple Emmy winner for his comedy writing. For many years, he was a writer on Late Night with David Letterman on NBC, and then head writer on The Late Show with David Letterman on CBS. But Mr. Topplin may be one of the few that can say that he's also been co-head writer on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno for two years. And he's written for The Larry Sanders Show and was executive producer on the TV series Monk and the list goes on and on. He's also taken all these experiences and written a book, Comedy Writing for Late Night TV. I'm so thrilled to speak to you. Thank you for being here, Mr. Topplin. Thank you. Thank you for having me and thank you for that detailed and accurate introduction. Oh, good. Were you surprised to hear about Dave's retirement? Not really. He has had such a long career and it was just only a matter of time. Eventually, you can't go on forever. You can't keep doing what you're doing forever because these things end and people retire. So the question was, when was Dave going to retire? And I actually recently read an interview with him where he talked about the new face of Late Night since Jimmy Fallon took over The Tonight Show and now there's Jimmy Kimmel and James Corden and Seth Meyers, it's like a whole new and Stephen Colbert will be taking over for Dave. Basically, the landscape has changed in Late Night and the old guard like Dave, they've gone away. Jay doesn't have The Tonight Show anymore and Jay for a long time was Dave's main competitor. And Dave said in the article that it seemed like a different environment and it just seemed like the right time for him to leave, to retire and let the new flock of hosts do what they do. What would you say makes Dave Letterman laugh? What's his sense of humor? Well, it's a very smart sense of humor. It was fun writing for him because he appreciated a clever turn of phrase, an odd combination of words. And I like to think of myself as kind of a word Smith, I like putting language together in an interesting, entertaining way and he did too. So I would say that smart, obviously irreverent, he loved and I think a lot of comedians are the same way, but he loved taking shots at people and things that he felt deserved to be joked about and ideally the audience would agree with you that you're taking a shot at a target that deserves to be mocked or made fun of. He was always very important for him to do fresh comedy, comedy that you hadn't seen before, types of comedy that were innovative and unexpected and that way the show would always have something new to offer the viewer and be entertaining. How much is he involved in the writing himself? He is more of an editor of the material. On a bigger level or a larger plane, he's very influential on the writing because when we're writing, we're writing for Dave. We're writing material that he will think is funny, that he will then agree to do on the show and then you'll get your material on the air and you won't get fired. So his tone, his point of view, the outlook he has on the world, all of those influence everything that's on the show and really this very little that is on the show that doesn't reflect his sense of what is funny. So in that respect, he influences the writing quite a bit. On a more practical level, what he does day to day is basically approve ideas, make suggestions about ideas that we pitch him. And when we actually write the script, he'll edit the copy, he'll edit the words, he'll ask for something to be shortened, for example. If it's a taped piece, we will always go over the taped piece with him before it's aired and he'll have comments about jokes that he thinks work or jokes that maybe he knows that he taped when he was out doing the piece that we didn't include. He shapes the material, he makes suggestions, but he doesn't actually sit down and write monologue jokes, for example, or contribute jokes to the top 10 list, which is one of the regular comedy pieces. He probably has, in fact, there are a few pieces I know that were his idea, but over the... In general. In general, no. Is it true that he's very set in his ways? I've heard that he has the same routines, he likes a procedure to be the same every day? And he had a certain way of doing things. But then Jay Leno did also. I think the host having a routine makes it easier for the entire staff and crew to get the show out. If you know where Jay is going to be at a certain time or where Dave is going to be at a certain time, then you know how much time you have to get ready or how much time you have to pitch him an idea. So they all have a routine of, oh, by this time I have to be in my dressing room. Well, let's go back to your beginnings here. The Late Show, which is that NBC show that we were talking about around until 1993, it had been on the air for just about a year when your Harvard buddy, Jim Downey, who worked there, contacted you about sending in a writing submission for a job there. Do you remember any of the material that you wrote? I do. And I think you said Late Show that time. It was late. No, I didn't. The confusion came. Oh, see? Everybody buzzed it. It's hard to keep it straight. No, that was late night. You're right. Late night, right. And I do remember very clearly some of the material that was in my writing submission. And the reason I remember it clearly is because when I came into the writing staff of Late Night, my friend from college, Jim Downey invited me and about four or five other writers he knew to submit material to the show because Jim knew that a bunch of writers were going to be leaving the show. Jim was going to leave. A few other writers were going to leave to do other things. He went on to be an SNL legend. Yes. Absolutely. Long time a writer for SNL, before Dave Letterman and after Dave Letterman, just a major influence on my career and just a really, really funny guy, great writer. So, Jim felt that if he was leaving and a lot of other writers were leaving, he didn't want Dave to have all these open slots on his writing staff. So Jim reached out to his friends, people he knew and respected the work that he had seen and said, "Would you like to work on Late Night?" And I said, "Well, yeah, I'd love to." So I wrote a submission and when I was lucky enough to get hired, Dave liked the submission. I talked to him for maybe 10 minutes and had a little interview and then he hired me. The show had to keep going and the writers had just left and new writers had just come on and the show was desperate for material. So what the show wind up doing is about half of my writing submission actually wound up on the air. It was actually produced and used on the show. So I remember those jokes pretty well. I did. Can you tell me one? Sure. It's the first joke, you know, how you ask little children, "What's your first memory?" "Oh, when I was four years old, I remember." Well, this is what I remember as my first laugh that I ever got on television. And it was a laugh from a joke that I wrote in my submission. The piece was new gift items, which was what we called wacky props. It's basically silly things that Dave claims that you can buy in the stores. And one of my wacky props was Dave was standing in front of a refrigerator and there was something on top of the refrigerator that was covered by a cloth. You couldn't tell what it was. And Dave said something like, "Everybody knows when you close the door on your refrigerator, the little light goes out. Or does it? Now you can be sure with this, the refrigerator periscope." So he takes the cloth off the top of the refrigerator and there's this German U-boat periscope fastened to the top of the refrigerator. So he swings it around, he pulls down the little handles, he looks in and he says, "Yep, the light's out." And then he falls the handles back. So it's a periscope that shows you the inside of the refrigerators. You can check to make sure the little light went out. So that's what got you the job. Well, that's one of the stupid jokes that fooled Letterman into giving me my first show business opportunity. And I remember I was actually standing inside the studio when Dave performed the joke. I can see it in my mind's eye because I'm looking at, looking at it from the angle standing by the studio door. And the audience laughed and I thought, "Wow!" I wrote that, he did it and they laughed. This is amazing. So yeah, that was a great introduction to television. But that was sort of the premise of the show. It felt like it was a lot of stunts and you had total freedom, the writing staff of late night to do sort of what you wanted. There wasn't a lot of competition back then. That's absolutely true. We never felt that we were competing against another show. I actually forget what shows were airing opposite us at 1230, but we really felt that we had total freedom. And I specifically remember thinking anything, any form of short comedy, like a joke or anything under 10 minutes, there was a way to find a place for it on late night with David Letterman. After about six years, you decided you wanted to move out west and what you wrote for many sitcoms. You wrote for Chevy Chase. But then after a while, you ended up on another late night show, and that's his co-head writer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. What was the main differences in writing routines between those two staffs? So when Jay called me and said, "Would you be interested in joining the Tonight Show?" I was thrilled. And so I joined the Tonight Show staff and at that point, Jay had had the Tonight Show for about a year and a half, and Dave had been on the air at CBS doing the late show for maybe six months. So for the first time, Dave and Jay were competing head to head, and Dave came on very strong. His ratings were very high. He made a big splash. He made a big impression with the critics. He aired a lot of remote pieces that were hilarious. And so the Tonight Show was taking some serious hits critically and in the ratings. But I've always admired Jay. I've admired his sense of humor, and he's just hilarious, and he's such a hard worker. So when I got there, one of the great parts of being there at The Tonight Show at the time was they were very open to ideas. Because this was right in the middle of that big feud we've all read about, or not the feud, but where Letterman had been passed over by Carson, and this had given to us. So this was bubbling all over the place. Correct. Yes. Letterman had been passed over. He said, okay, then I'm going to get my own 1130 show over at CBS. And they were thrilled to have him. Don't you feel that tension in the writer's room that you were working with this whole drama behind you? When I got to the Tonight Show, there was a very clear sense that the show could be doing better in the ratings, and maybe the comedy could have been sharper, and there could be more of it. And it was directly due to Dave doing so well at CBS. So yeah, we were very, very aware of that. It was like a little chess game. It was like, okay, what can we do on The Tonight Show? What comedy can we do that Jay will be good at, that he'll enjoy, that the audience will like, and hopefully that'll start making a dent in the ratings, and we'll start to close the gap. What makes Leno laugh, but what's his sense of humor? So his sensibility is it's a very broad, what will make a large audience laugh kind of broader than Dave's, I guess. Yes. It's interesting that Jay and Dave have different approaches to the monologue in terms of cue cards. Jay has a joke on cue cards for the monologue. He has worked over, he and his writers have worked over the wording so that every word is exactly where he wants it, and the entire joke is printed on the cue card. Dave on the other hand, we'll work on the joke, we'll get it to where he wants, but on Dave's cue cards, it's really more bullet points, just the key elements of the joke are listed. I think the idea is that when Dave reads the joke off the cue cards, it'll be a little more conversational. So basically the bottom line for Jay is if the audience is laughing, it works. And he was willing to try anything that he thought had a good chance of making the audience laugh. At the time, Jay would do things like we started doing one of the categories of comedy pieces that I introduced on the Tonight Show was the characters, was characters who could deliver jokes. Like Jay's predecessor, Johnny Carson used to have the character Karnak, the Magnificent, Floyd R. Turbo, and these were what I call joke delivery characters. Their characters were the host portrays a character and delivers a series of jokes. Dave on the other hand would probably not do that sort of thing, he wouldn't put on a wig, he never liked to do characters. After this, you actually went back to Dave to the later, you're like a spy between the two. You're between both of them, you're now head writer at the age of the one CBS, this iteration that is now. What was the difference between the first time around with Dave, was this a bigger show? Could you feel a different type of writing or did you have to... I think the big difference was Dave wasn't doing as many of the sort of pieces he did when he was at NBC at 1230. And at this point, your head writer for these years, how was your role different? When your head writer, it's not only making creative suggestions and suggesting different creative directions to take the comedy in, but it's much more of a management job. These shows are, they're like little comedy factories, and it's not enough to just write the jokes. You have to make sure the comedy is produced and say the graphics department doesn't have too much work, because otherwise they're not going to get the comedy done in time. If the prop department hasn't done a wacky props piece in a while, a head writer has to be able to say, "We like wacky prop pieces, the prop department isn't working on a major project right now. Let's have the writers write a wacky prop piece," and then in a few days, we can give those approved jokes to the prop department, and then two weeks after that, we'll have a nice fully produced comedy piece. How do you think Dave's going to handle retirement? Well, I think he'll be fine. I think he will really miss being in front of the camera. He said several times that his favorite part of the day is that one hour when the camera is on and he's in front of an audience. You don't think he'll be back doing something else really soon? I think he will. I don't know how soon, but I think CBS has to be thinking of how can we still work with Dave and keep his talent on the network and at the same time do it in a way that isn't five days a week, week in and week out, which is such a tough schedule. Yeah, in fact, I just read that Dave might be open to the idea of doing maybe a once a week Sunday morning show, something like that, where he still gets to talk to his audience and enjoy it being on camera, but it isn't quite the same crushing schedule because he does have a family and I think he is going to appreciate having more time to spend with them. American celebrities never really retire. They say they're going to retire, but they don't. They work until they just die in one of the cameras. It's interesting. You should say that. I think for the most part, you're correct, but I think Johnny Carson was pretty well-known after he left it tonight, so he didn't do any specials, he didn't host anything. That's true. Listen, but that was sort of an odd bird there. Yeah, on the other side of the coin is someone like the late Joan Rivers, who just loved to work and just couldn't conceive of a future that didn't involve performing and being on camera and would never voluntarily just retire, I don't think. And what about you, Joe? What are you doing now? New book? Possibly a new book. Right now I have a new idea for a TV show in the comedy area that I'm pitching. The pitching season isn't quite here yet. The networks are kind of involved in up-fronts and that sort of thing, but I have been pitching it and I will continue pitching it. I'm working with a producer, which I think it's a great idea. It's in the ballpark of things I've done before, but I think it's fresh and a different spin on it. So let us know when things start moving so we can talk to you again. Oh, I would love to. That would be so much fun. And thank you so much for taking your time, Joe. This was really, really fun to get behind the scenes of this sort of legacy show that's now ending. Thank you, Christina. Thank you. You're talking to me. And thank you to all my guests. So Letterman's last show airs on May 20th. Don't miss that. Thank you to all the listeners and the subscribers and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This show is edited by Tom Hanson, Sound Engineering to Masiyu, Music by Carl Bory. The show is produced by René Vitechet and myself. I'm Christina Yerling-Biro. Until next time. Hello, podcast fans. It is I, Bruce Volanche. For over 25 years, I worked on the Academy Awards, so you didn't have to. Even that time, I've seen and heard things that should not be seen or heard or certainly felt. And now, for the first time, I'm sharing all my behind the scenes stories and firsthand knowledge about the Oscars, the blood, the sweat, the tears, the slap, all the things you didn't see. So join me as I use humor and insight to break down the Oscar Awards of the past to explain how and why your favorite movie didn't win. Why some actors and some directors had to fire their agents and how the whole process works or sometimes doesn't work. This is the Oscars. What were they thinking? Available wherever you get podcasts. [BLANK_AUDIO]