Tag: ek Humor

So the question arises- why did I decide to write about Jon and Stephen instead of Dave?

Many of the reasons are petty.  Jon and Stephen had an existing community on Daily Kos where I could coin the mojo and rack up the comment count (which despite years of tinkering are still your surest defense against the O-bots, A–holes, and Trolls that populate the place.  I never once ran out of mojo, all my bans were Administrative.) and, at least initially, I didn’t have the confidence as a writer to just up and invent my own franchises.

Another petty reason is laziness.  Even today with a hat full of ideas and all the vanity in the world I find that there are just so many hours in a day, and a finite amount of energy to fill it.  If you’re going to cover the Late Show how do you justify not including The Late, Late Show which is often funnier and even more inventive?  Pretty soon it’s not dark anymore and the birdies are singing and I hate that, especially when I have a morning shift of things to write which even today happens more frequently than I might wish and at some points left me without sleep for days except for brief naps which are no substitute.

Also 5 days a week, not 4.

Additionally I’m just really not that interested in celebrity gossip and the constant whoring of their new projects.  You may object and say Jon and Stephen do it too and you are quite correct.  It’s my least favorite part of the program.  With a network talk show it is the program and the monologues and bits are simply there to keep you awake long enough that you can drift off to dreamland with the constant murmuring of buy, buy, buy sleep conditioning you until your alarm goes off and your screen is filled with people who are waaay too perky talking to the same celebrities you saw the night before, only packaged as news with recipes, weather, and ‘human’ interest, along with the one or two tragedies that are deemed worthy by ‘suits’ with the attention span of a gnat, a corporatist agenda, a thin Rolodex of the sluttiest self promoting attention hounds in D.C., and a remote crew who ‘better get some god damn pictures on the air, these things cost a lot of money you know’.

The television business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.

Oh, how do they do it?  Do they simply stay up partying?  Well, some do, but mostly they pre-tape the late night stuff.

And now we come to my substantive criticism.

It’s been argued that Dave has a liberal bias and not only by Faux Noise types, many people who call themselves ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ think that too.  Certainly, as I mentioned in Part One, Jay Leno’s style of humor appeals to the conservative type.  It is safe and predictable and designed to make you feel superior because of it’s predictability.  That which is not conservative is liberal Q.E.D..

But the thing is, late night talk is neither conservative nor liberal.  I’m sure Jay would point to the many times he gave the Republicans a zinger, just as Dave would the Democrats.  Here for instance is Politico’s list of Dave’s most memorable political guests.

The primary purpose of these shows isn’t even comedy, let alone political.  It is to push product.  They are hour long infomercials and you don’t put cash in the drawer by pissing off your audience.

So you get what Jon Stewart’s audience derisively calls being fair and balanced.  You don’t push hard because your booker won’t let you.  Do you really want to tear up Bill Cosby’s card by asking about the rapes?  Do you want to get booted from the locker room by asking Brady about his balls (sorry, been saving that one)?  The business that we call show says no.  As funny and entertaining as David Letterman is, what he represents is the mainstream that has been so warped by 55 years of Military Industrial Imperialism and 40 years of Neo-Liberal Economics that they wouldn’t know a liberal idea if it bit them in the ass.  This is why I call myself an Anarcho-Syndicalist and not a Liberal, even though my political thinking is thoroughly grounded by my primary education in American History and Civics.  My character is static.  

This is of course my greatest disappointment about Stephen Colbert’s coming tenure on Late Show.  By inhabiting the character of a right wing pundit he was able to expose the hypocrisy, moral bankruptcy, and intellectual incoherence of their positions.  With out his ironic protection any criticism will have to be expressed more directly, with more danger to his career.  Will he be brave enough?  Brave or not the format mitigates against it.  Late Night is not an hour long Colbert Report, you get 10 to 15 minutes of standup, a bit, 2 or 3 guests, and a musical guest.  Now hopefully Stephen will be able to bring on the kind of thought provoking and knowledgeable ones he had on The Report, at least for the 2nd one, there’s certain to be a lot of pressure from the Sea World class of advertisers to avoid controversy entirely.

Finally, will I miss Dave?  Of course I will.  I was a Letterman fan long before it was cool and while my viewing habits have been inconstant, ratings are not the reason he’s retiring.

It was comforting to know that in some little corner of TVLand Dave was out there, doing wacky things.  That he was still able to pack a theater every night.  That he would take it to the streets and didn’t exist in an air conditioned plastic bubble in the middle of the desert talking to air conditioned plastic bubble people about their air conditioned plastic bubble lives.  I’ll miss Paul Schaeffer and Biff Henderson and Chris Elliott and Calvert DeForest.

Will I miss Dave?  More than I hope you’ll ever know.

In attendence tonight-

• Wednesday, May 20th: Steve Martin, Payton Manning, Jim Carrey, Jerry Seinfeld, Tina Fey, Barbara Walters, Chris Rock, Alec Baldwin, Bill Murray, and Julia Louise Dreyfus

Some of whom will be involved in Dave’s last Top Ten List.

• Musical Guests- The Foo Fighters

I have written Letterman diaries, probably more than you think.

By 2007 I was a regular participant in The Daily Show / The Colbert Report diary series at Daily Kos.  When those shows were on vacation or Tia Rachel needed a break, I would cover the repeats, fill in the gaps, and handle the new shows.  I looked on my activity as similar to that of a lighthouse keeper or a convenience store clerk, you don’t expect much business but you keep the door open for the poor souls who really need it.  I don’t celebrate holidays much so it was no hardship for me.

Now when David Letterman signed with CBS in 1993 he did two incredibly smart things.

First of all he hired anyone from his old show who wanted to come along.

Second he hired anyone from his old show who wanted to come along.

Let me explain that a little.  He started his own production company, World Wide Pants, who contracted to provide a work product, Late Show to CBS.  CBS could air it or not, they could extend the contract or not, but employees of World Wide Pants worked for David Letterman.

Not CBS.

David signed their pay checks, he decided who was hired or fired, and if any of the ‘suits’ from the network didn’t like how you were doing your job they could take it up with the boss or go pound sand.

So at the end of 2007, after many years of fruitless negotiation, the Writer’s Guild of America went out on strike.  Most longer term productions simply shut down to wait it out.  Networks ran re-runs.  However there is a substantial amount of scripted television, like talk and reality shows that were expected to continue providing fresh content.  Reality TV tried to argue that it was not scripted to which the reply was- yeah, and Professional Wrestling isn’t either, so they had to shut down too.  Also the initial part of the strike took place over holiday season when many talk shows would be on hiatus anyway.

Some talk show hosts, like Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert used this time to feign solidarity with greater or lesser degrees of sincerity, but there came a time when their corporate masters said- hit the set or the street and we don’t care how sucky the show is.  As I recall Jay sucked a lot because he’s the most over rated comic of his generation and is nothing without his writers.

I don’t know how Jon and Stephen fared, I’m not a scab.

The concept of the ‘suits’ was that if you could inflict pain on the writers by demonstrating television would go on and on making money without them forever, they’d give up.  The hosts were ordered back to work under their ‘performers’ contracts to inflict that pain and to be fair to Jon and Stephen they did publicly offer to pay what it took to get their writers back.  That request was refused because it didn’t bring enough pain.

They didn’t have David Letterman contracts.

Before the strike even began Dave inked a separate deal with the WGA (Is that all you want?  Here’s the check.).  His show ran seamlessly and when CBS started talking about bringing the pain he looked at them and said- See this contract?  You can take me off the air or you can go pound sand.

I was on watch at the beginning of the strike and had quickly switched to Late Show as an alternative inspiration.  When it was announced that Jon and Stephen would be crossing the line Tia who’d been sitting it out said- Ok, they’re back.  Thank you for your service.

Um… strike’s not over yet.  Until the Union writers are in their cubicles I am covering the real deal and not scab shop replacements.

She has probably never forgiven me, I wouldn’t have because now it wasn’t enough just to do it, I did it better.

As is the case now in my exile.  Everything I write is crap, but it’s quite practiced and craftsman-like crap and I do it more regularly than almost anyone I can think of.  Once in a while I’m tempted to write more or deeper but that would simply raise everyone’s expectations.  I’ve been doing this for over 10 years now and while I don’t imagine I’ll have a Letterman like 33 year streak I’m not as tired as I used to be and less tempted by bright and shiny objects.

Tonight’s guests-

• Tuesday 5/19: Bill Murray and Bob Dylan

There will be at least one more piece tomorrow.

So it’s the last 3 days of David Letterman, and I must admit it’s a develoment I have complicated emotions about.  I’ve been a great fan of his subtle subversion of the talk show format ever since Late Night with David Letterman started appearing after Johnny Carson in 1982.

I felt he was badly served by NBC when it came time to choose Carson’s successor on The Tonight Show in 1992 since he was so clearly Johnny’s favored replacement and had devoted 11 years to preparation.

Moreover I found Jay Leno to be crass and shallow.  If you say that was totally in the Carson tradition of zingers that didn’t zing and lame sketches that went horribly wrong; well, yes, but at least Johnny seemed to have a clue when his material was less than stellar while Jay displayed a profound ignorance of it and a complete disregard for his audience as he blundered through an avalanche of one liners that, in the sentiments of one reviewer, rewarded you only with the predictable unexpected so you could smugly congratulate yourself on how intelligent you were to ‘get it’.

In short Leno was boring and still is.

David on the other hand was novel.  You never knew what to expect and were rarely disappointed.  If you didn’t ‘get it’ it wasn’t like failing a test, it was more like a ‘wow, I had never considered that’.

A skill that Johnny and Dave share and that Jay totally lacks is interviewing.  Jay simply parrots the PR the Publicity Flack has prepared and gushes.  Dave actually listens and has conversations.

When Dave accepted a contract with CBS in 1993 I was was happy for a number of reasons.  First, I thought he would kick Jay Leno’s ass which he did for a number of seasons.  Also he was moving back to New York.  I understand why Johnny moved to Los Angeles, better climate for him, easier to get the movie stars and Las Vegas entertainers who were his bread and butter guests.

Still, I felt the Tonight Show really lost its edge as an interesting show when it moved out of The Rainbow Room.  I have this private theory that too much sunshine makes you kind of, well, impaired, and not only the monologues declined but so did the IQs of the guests with many of them seeming barely able to work out which bit of the couch they were supposed to be sitting on.  In its Western iteration The Tonight Show has all the charm and wit of one of the more forgettable 80s sit-coms like The Hogan Family.

So Dave was coming back to New York!  And we would get Broadway and Theater Actors!  People from Overseas!  Politicians and Business Titans!  Also your regular average New Yorker who was right there on the street outside instead of baking in a traffic jam on a Los Angeles spaghetti highway miles and miles away from the studio in suburban Burbank.

Oh and the regular Hollywood types too, so sorry you had to fly First Class breathing the same air as the Hoi Poloi.

And Dave did it right too.  Renovated the Ed Sullivan Theater, a cavernous space just as big as it seems on TV that he never had any trouble filling.  He set up his own production company, Worldwide Pants, and hired everyone from Late Night who was willing to leave.

He wrote the checks and made the hiring and firing decisions.  CBS had no one to deal with except for him which would prove significant as we’ll see in part 2.

Tonight’s guests-

• Monday 5/18: Tom Hanks and Eddie Vedder