David Letterman

As David Letterman ends his remarkable 33-year-run on late night television, the encomiums are pouring in. I can't add to that, really. Yes, he changed the landscape of late night TV. Though he revered Johnny Carson, he took the template of the host-behind-the-desk-chatting-with-celebrity-on-his-right and remade it. With Letterman, the guests were superfluous, at least at the start of his career. He was like a guy told to paint a house who then painted it paisley.

What I can do is recall how I perceived him over the years. I'm about the typical age of a Letterman acolyte, I expect. I actually watched his morning show, which was as big a mistake as there has ever been. Not that Letterman's show was bad, on the contrary, it was genius. It was just--in the morning?

That was rectified in 1982 when Letterman was given the post-Carson slot. I've seen a rerun of that show, which featured Bill Murray as his first guest (Murray was also the first guest on his CBS show--I'm guessing he may be on his last show Mary 20th). It was raw and not yet formed, and interestingly Paul Shaffer, who doubled as bandleader and second banana for 33 years, didn't say a word on that show.

I was in college then, and Letterman was the hip guy to watch. He broke the boundaries of the talk show (well, really, he didn't--Steve Allen did a lot of this stuff in the '50s). The dropping objects from a three-story tower. The elevator races. The use of staff as comedy gold (most notably this has been stage manager Biff Henderson). Letterman is a master of "found humor," which entails using what is all around you. This includes his frequent use of neighbors of the show. When on NBC, he would sneak around 30 Rock, sometimes interrupting "Live at Five," which was a local New York news show. Once he took Harvey Pekar with him, and he really scared anchorwoman Sue Simmons.

At CBS, he did this with neighboring businesses, most notably Rupert Gee of Hello, Deli. Letterman also wanted to see if a guy in a bear suit could get into Flashdancer's, a strip club across the street. The answer was yes. He staged many athletic contents in the street--I remember when Regis Philbin fell off a motorcycle.

There have been many other humorous bits over the years, some dropped do to quaintness, I suppose. I fondly remember Small Town News, when Letterman would find some interesting item in a small-town newspaper and get them on the phone imagine, a bit done over the phone). Or Viewer Mail, when he would toss the card behind him and get a breaking glass sound effect. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard at Fun Facts, in which bizarre "facts" (none of them remotely true), would be read aloud.

Of course there was also Stupid Pet Tricks, The Guy Under the Stairs, Will It Float, and many, many others. But beyond the bits was the presence of Letterman himself. He was proud of his Midwestern roots, and his frequent appearances of his mother only solidified this. But he also couldn't help but show that he's probably a very difficult man to be with; a curmudgeon and sourpuss (Krusty the Clown is said to be modeled after him). In the early years especially, you could see he hardly could tolerate the celebrity interviews. Only after he became a big deal did he get big stars, and if the interview wasn't going well he'd turn on his guest. Madonna had a famously profane appearance that Letterman clearly didn't enjoy.

In his later years, Letterman suddenly found himself the eminence grise of the late-night talk show hosts. Jay Leno, far his inferior in every way, was never taken seriously as any kind of thinker, but after 9/11 Letterman suddenly had gravitas. He could inject himself into the political fray, such as when he excoriated John McCain for a no-show, or his verbal sparring with Sarah Palin. Though Letterman certainly has taken shots at Democrats, his liberal leanings can't be denied.

He goes out, if not on top of the ratings, on top of the estimation of anyone who matters. No one will ever sit behind a desk and simply exchange anecdotes with a guest anymore. Now you have to work it, whether it's attaching a camera to a monkey or hurling yourself against a wall in a suit of Velcro. David Letterman was a pioneer of television, even well into the television era.