by Carter, Bill
In the midst of these considerations, Letterman, Morton, and Lassally went west to take a look at the CBS studios in Television City in Los Angeles. Their eyes were knocked out by CBS’s state-of-the-art facility there. The studio would be bigger, the office space was fresh and comfortable, and the offices even had windows. Morton began wondering if Letterman could get at least as much mileage out of lampooning the inanities of the show business world as he had out of poking fun at New York. Certainly Peter Lassally, who had made Los Angeles his home for more than twenty years, wanted to go back.
Letterman began thinking about the implications of uprooting his entire staff. “Oh man,” he said to himself, “this is going to be awful.”
The pressure on the decision was stoked up several notches when David Dinkins, the mayor of New York, jumped in to say that Letterman’s continued presence was of utmost importance to the city. In several interviews, Dinkins pledged to take any steps necessary to keep Dave in New York, including, the mayor said, “doing back-flips off my eyebrows” if that would be enough to convince Letterman to stay.
But Howard Stringer had a vision of just what the Ed Sullivan Theater could be: a big marquee right smack on Broadway permanently announcing the presence of the David Letterman show, a line of avid fans out in the street waiting to get in, new excitement in the city—even, in Stringer’s wildest fantasy, something that could be read as a rebirth and revitalization of the fabric of the city. With the Letterman staff leaning toward LA, Stringer urged them to reconsider the Sullivan Theater.
Stringer promised CBS would buy the building and fix it up to whatever specifications Letterman and his staff would want. An office building was already attached to the theater, so he could have all the new offices right there. It was on Broadway, right in the heart of midtown Manhattan; whatever connection they needed to the CBS news shows being shot at the broadcast center could be worked out somehow, Stringer said.
As Letterman evaluated it, doing what Stringer wanted would at least mean no one had to be uprooted. And if it wasn’t working, California would still be there in a year. Finally David Letterman said yes, he’d try it at the Ed Sullivan Theater.
Howard Stringer’s vision of new, exciting television for New York City was intact. Now all he had to do was try to steal a theater for David Letterman before the current owner realized it had become the centerpiece in the plan to keep the star in New York.
Months before the final show on NBC, Letterman and his staff began thinking about what they wanted to be able to bring with them to CBS. NBC had been extremely vague about what ownership rights the network was going to claim. The only public statement about it was Warren Littlefield’s comment during his press conference with Jay in January, when he said NBC certainly would retain the title “Late Night.” Otherwise, he said, the network had not yet decided what part of Letterman’s material it was going to preclude him from taking to CBS.
In early May, Jim Jackoway, the attorney for Letterman and the show, began framing a letter to NBC spelling out all the elements of the show Letterman wanted to retain. In the letter Jackoway said they wanted to continue using some fictional characters they had created, starting with Larry Bud Melman, the gnomelike character, played by an obscure New York actor named Calvert De Forest, who had been raised to the status of cult figure on the show. Jackoway told NBC that Paul Shaffer’s group wanted to continue using the name World’s Most Dangerous Band. He even asked if they could take Dave’s old wardrobe and the microphone from his desk. Dave, who had once built a microphone with his Tinker Toy set as a boy, was especially attached to the mike he used on “Late Night.” As for the show’s most famous routines and comedy concepts, including the nightly Top Ten list, the letter said explicitly that the show planned to continue using all of those.
John Agoglia responded to the letter by telling the Letterman staff that NBC wasn’t ceding the rights to anything that had been created for the show. NBC would respond, Agoglia said, in a letter that would be delivered after Mr. Letterman’s final appearance on NBC. The Letterman crew thought that it was childish to be held hostage that way—but that it was typical of the show’s relationship with NBC. They knew they had one last fight with NBC and John Agoglia on their hands.
Letterman wound down toward his last show with a minimum of nostalgia. Dave insisted the last show not be some sort of farewell festival of memories, for several reasons. That had just been done a year earlier by Carson, and Dave wasn’t about to try to compete with such an emotional parting. Dave also knew that NBC wasn’t about to celebrate his final show right before he started competing against them by pouring out the promotion for a Letterman finale. But mainly Letterman felt that this exit should not be treated as the end of something, but only as a transition to something new.
“It’s not like I’m retiring,” Letterman said. “I do have another job to go to.” Most of the emphasis Letterman and his staff were putting out to the press in the show’s final weeks was on how similar his CBS show would be to his NBC show. They had already settled on a new name, and it was designed explicitly to demonstrate just how much things would remain the same. Instead of “Late Night with David Letterman,” viewers would be treated to “Late Show with David Letterman.”
Dave did consent to having some clips from his eleven years of “Late Night” used on the last couple of weeks of the show. But that wasn’t entirely for nostalgic reasons. Since those shows were owned by NBC, Dave realized he would soon be losing access to all that work, all his classic comedy bits. So he thought they ought to trot some of them out one last time while they still had some control over the material.
The only thing that really came together to make the finale an event was a booking pulled off by Lassally. He wanted to find something, one element that would make the last NBC show special—as much for Dave as for the viewers. Lassally knew there was one star Dave had never been able to book, though he had always wanted to. Without telling Dave what he was up to, Peter made some phone calls. It turned out to be surprisingly easy. Bruce Springsteen said of course he would do the show, as long as his appearance could be kept a total secret.
All Dave said before the finale was that the show had come up with a “wonderful surprise,” a guest, he said, who was “someone in my life who has meant a great deal and someone who had never been booked on the show before.”
The press speculation centered on Johnny Carson (he’d been on the show before), Dave’s mom (she’d been on, too), Joey Buttafuoco (he’d only meant a lot in Dave’s jokes, not in his life), and the woman who made frequent headlines—and frequently found herself arrested—by breaking into Dave’s Connecticut home and pretending she was his wife.
Tom Hanks was the lead guest that night and he had stored up some hilarious stories about his days as a bellhop. Dave kept the secret right to the end of the show and then, with genuine excitement and gratitude, he introduced Springsteen, who in one of Dave’s favorite descriptions, “blew the roof off the joint” one last time with “Glory Days.” Letterman did one last Top Ten list for NBC: “Top Ten Real Reasons I’m Leaving NBC.” The list included: “I’ve stolen as many GE bulbs as I can fit in my garage”; “Tired of being sexually harassed by Bryant Gumbel”; “Can’t convince them to do another Triplecast”; and “CBS had the best Amy Fisher movie.”
The show, and David Letterman’s NBC career, ended with a shot from his eighth anniversary special in which Dave rode off the stage on a white charger.
They held a party on the stage after the audience had left. Lassally told Dave he had to make an appearance, despite the star’s deep-rooted resistance to such social occasions. Dave agreed, and surprised Lassally by being gracious to everyone, even standing for pictures with every member of the staff and crew who wanted a memento of the night. It was a night full of emotion, but no real sadness. Lassally thought Dave looked content and even happy as he graciously thanked everyone for all they had done for him and the show. He seemed a man who knew he wa
s taking a step in his life he had long needed to take. And as Peter Lassally stood off to the side and watched, he was delighted and proud of his talented, accomplished, deservedly celebrated professional son.
Warren Littlefield didn’t feel like Jay’s dad; he was only three years younger than Jay, after all. But he certainly believed in him, enough to stick his professional neck out to save him. Warren was convinced that Jay would continue to produce strong ratings, even after Dave went on the air. Still, Warren never stopped being a television entertainment executive, and as he watched Jay’s show, he detected certain flaws he felt should be addressed—especially before Letterman came on the air. The two-month period between the end of June and the end of August was the time for adjustments in the “Tonight” show. After that, anything that was done would surely be read as reaction to whatever Dave was doing.
Littlefield didn’t say it, but other NBC executives, who were scrutinizing Jay’s performance more closely than ever, felt one main change was needed in Jay’s material. As one senior NBC program executive put it: “The guy needs a shit detector.” Littlefield agreed to the extent of suggesting that perhaps it was time for Jay to consider adding a true executive producer. Helen Kushnick had been out for almost a year. The show could use an experienced production hand who could also take some of the decision-making workload off Jay. Quietly Warren began exploring the possibility of bringing in Don Misher, who for a generation had been one of the top variety producers in television. Warren had been impressed with Misher’s sure-handed balancing of a very delicate assignment NBC had asked him to take on earlier that spring: trying to get together a big special for Bob Hope’s ninetieth birthday. The show was in near chaos when Misher took over and turned it into something of a triumph. Littlefield knew Misher usually worked on a free-lance basis, but he thought the producer might be getting ready to tie himself to something more permanent. When he made some inquiries he was happy to learn Misher was interested.
Unfortunately, Jay wasn’t. Leno didn’t see it as more ammunition for the fight to come with Dave; he saw it as implicit criticism that the show wasn’t quite working—or at least he suspected the press would interpret it that way. Jay felt the press was already out to bury him. A special edition of the “Tonight” show that NBC had him do to mark the end of the run of “Cheers,” on location from the Boston bar the series was based on, had turned into a fiasco. The “Cheers” cast had sat around the bar drinking all evening, and many were pie-eyed by the time the show started. Most of the bits Jay had planned had to be scrapped, and he could barely get the “Cheers” cast through the interviews. The show was ragged and nearly out of control. Then Jay had made things worse in an interview with a Boston paper, offering some critical remarks about the cast. Jay later said the reporter had used the remarks even though Jay had asked that they be kept off the record. After that episode, the last thing Jay wanted to do was supply the press with another reason to question how well he was doing as host. When Warren raised the notion of Misher, Jay simply said, no. “If the ratings were bad, okay. I need the help. We’ve got a problem. But we don’t need the help right now.”
Jay also thought he should be loyal to his two producers, Bill Royce and Debbie Vickers, who he felt had been extremely loyal to him during the dark days with Helen. He told Warren he didn’t want Don Misher. Warren backed off.
But the concerns about the direction of the show ran even deeper in some circles at the network headquarters in New York and Burbank. After months of watching Jay on the air, some executives were raising questions about his comedy range. For these in-house critics, Leno seemed so attuned to the setup-line/punch-line style of pure stand-up comedy that many other things he tried after the monologue looked either poorly conceived or lamely executed. From some writers on the staff, the executives picked up the information that Jay resisted attempts at conceptual humor. “The stuff that might be a little weird,” one executive said, “the more Letterman-type stuff, Jay doesn’t get. He wants the joke. He has to see the joke.”
In April Jay tried a sketch called “The Crying Game,” which was a one-joke idea based on the then-hit movie. The premise was that the old TV game show “The Dating Game” would have a lineup of three “bachelorettes,” one of whom was quite obviously a guy in drag. The contestant, who was never identified as being on the show’s staff or being picked out of the audience, clearly got the point right away, making it look as if he were in on the joke. But, as the nearly silent audience indicated, there weren’t any jokes, just the kind of silly questions always asked on “The Dating Game.” Worst of all, Jay was all but left out of the sketch, standing on the sidelines as the “host” of the game. The piece was roundly excoriated by the NBC staff members who saw it.
Others said it was somewhat typical: The show’s material simply seemed weak, too weak to serve Jay well. And NBC executives with all that experience watching Letterman knew Jay would soon be up against some very strong comedy material on CBS. Jay openly said he devoted “ninety percent of my effort” to the monologue, which he considered not only his own signature, but also the traditional signature of the “Tonight” show. Some Burbank executives felt that even the monologue needed better writing. They believed that Jay recycled too many premises during the week and sometimes went on too long with a monologue that used weak jokes, when a shorter, punchier routine would have played far better. They granted Jay’s strength in delivering the monologue, but they questioned why he couldn’t spread his effort out a little more evenly.
One problem, it was suggested to the NBC executives, was that Jay didn’t have a head writer, and so he accepted too much material that someone else might reject before it got to him. Jay, again citing loyalty to writers already on his staff, and questioning the need for change when the numbers indicated things were working just fine, resisted the appointment of a head writer just as he had the appointment of a new executive producer.
Forget the head writer, some of Jay’s harshest critics at NBC said: Jay himself is the problem. These critics said Jay frequently failed to maximize the comedy material. They reported that the writers were frustrated at times because Jay didn’t present the material as written. He had a habit of messing up the premises for some material so that the jokes that followed couldn’t possibly pay off fully. The complainers cited one night when Jay was in the audience and was playing off Bill Clinton’s penchant for making up excuses for things that had happened. The idea was to get some of the best excuses from audience members. The card in front of Jay said that he should ask the audience members to give the situation and then give the excuse used to get out of the situation. But in one instance Jay got the audience member’s name and then just asked, “What’s your excuse?” He forgot to ask for the situation that set up the excuse.
It was not an isolated incident. Some of the writers whispered to some Burbank executives that all comedy material beyond the monologue had to be simplified so that Jay wouldn’t get an element twisted and undo the joke. Nobody said this to be cruel. Almost everyone liked Jay for his sweetness and vulnerability; and no one questioned his willingness to do whatever it took to make the show work. But the tougher critics in Burbank and New York did question Jay’s instincts for any comedy that wasn’t the kind he had been trained to do so well: stand-up monologue. Certainly, these internal critics said, Jay never seemed to improve the joke by his delivery or to add to it by doing a funny take into the camera the way Carson had—the way Letterman did.
Still, it was the interview segments that were of most concern to NBC. What no one could completely understand was why the affable, likable Jay that they all encountered in the office, in the hall, or at certain events seemed so mechanical with people when he was on the air. Partly his attention span, which he himself acknowledged was distressingly short at times, seemed responsible. But others said Jay just didn’t seem to have a wide enough range of interests to conduct really satisfying interviews.
Certainly he wanted to do better
, as always. And this time he was willing to go along with an NBC suggestion. The network wanted to bring in some experts from the Frank Magid Company, the nation’s leading media consultants. They were asked to evaluate Jay’s technique and give him some help. The Magid people looked at tapes of the show and made notes. Then they met with Jay and went over some ideas with him in a long, two-hour session. They didn’t want to resort to the familiar critique that Jay simply didn’t listen well enough; Jay had heard that point a dozen times over. Instead they tried to stress the point that he never seemed to be in present time while he was interviewing someone. Instead he always seemed to be rushing on, going to the next thing. He always seemed to be getting ahead of himself. What it came down to was not being focused. They hammered the points to Jay: Stay focused, pay attention, stay in present time with your guests. You’re there for an hour, you’re not going anywhere, and you might as well apply yourself. There’s no reason to space out. And if possible, Jay ought to share more of himself—things from his own life—with the guest. That would not only make the exchange livelier, it would also help the viewers warm up to him more.
The only problem with these suggestions, some of those worried about the show concluded, was that Jay was a guy who seemed to have a lot of trouble making meaningful conversation, because he apparently had not had a lot of them earlier in his life.
None of these problems seemed insurmountable to the NBC executives overseeing the show. Jay was obviously giving the audience what they wanted for the most part; the numbers proved that. Still, the staff was told to work out the kinks in July and August, because come September, the heat was going be turned up high.