Letterman did a lot of innovative comedy on his NBC Late show. Elevator races is one I recall fondly. Remember his visits with the "neighbors? A couple businesses that were open when his show taped. One of the clerks became pretty popular for a few weeks.
The show lost a lot of that creative spark after moving to CBS. The college crowd wasn’t his target audience anymore. It got safe and predictable.
The “visits with the neighbors” that you’re thinking of may have happened after he moved to CBS. The move to the Ed Sullivan Theater allowed him to get out more and interact with the neighborhood (e.g. Mujibur and Sirajul, Rupert Jee).
I wish I had watched him more. He’s a brilliant writer and comedian and excellent interviewer. I just wish he wasn’t so bitter about not getting the Tonight gig. There are plenty of networks out there and he did well at CBS. What’s the big ass deal about Tonight?
OMG, babies they were. Interestingly, in the second clip (of So. Central Rain) Dave interviews Mike Mills and Peter Buck while Michael Stipe is sitting next to the drums in the background. I wonder if Stipe was intentionally trying not to outshine the others, as lead singers frequently do.
I’ve seen Lou Reed, Tom Waits and John Prine on as musical guests, just a great legacy.
Yes, thats the people. They were random night-shift clerks at businesses in that building. Quite popular for a few months.
That type of out of the box creativity dried up as the years went by.
Some of the aforementioned recurring bits were meta-bits. In particular Dave knew that everyone hated “Will It Float?” Even the staff were really against it. He did it just to annoy people.
That era was the beginning of the decline of the show. He no longer wanted to do many bits like the old days, so he revolted against the pressure to do them.
He stopped pushing the envelope and started walking away from it.
He even admits that he still does the Top Ten just to kill time.
It is indeed time to hangup the gray socks.
I would argue that Mr. Letterman represents pretty much the last remnant of late night “talk show” hosts from the era when they were relevant. Maybe it’s just a function of my age, but I don’t know or care who any of the new guys in this field are, and I remember knowing and caring in the past.
So maybe it’s not “when they were relevant” so much as “when they were relevant to me.” But either way, I feel sad more for the passing of the era than I do for Letterman retiring, per se.
If my memory serves me properly, in the earliest incarnation of his late night show (before he started booking celebrities) he used to bring in random local New York characters for interviews.
I don’t think that any other late night show would devote an entire show to a single performer, the way that Dave did with Warren Zevon.
I guess this means that if Hillary wins we won’t be subject to 8 more years of worn out pantsuit jokes?
I don’t think Craig Ferguson ever did it with a musical performer, but he did devote entire shows to Desmond Tutu and Steven Fry.