Tom Shales Article

Tom Shales - David Letterman Article

Among the many admirable qualities that help offset David Letterman's irritating eccentricities, fearlessness ranks high. He may
be frightened by the limitless perilous possibilities that arrive with each new rising of the sun, and paranoid about traffic cops
and faces around the office that might suddenly seem unfamiliar, but he comes across as a guy who would stand up to anybody and let no one seriously intimidate him.

Not even Bill Clinton, who, as anyone who has met or even stood in the same room with him knows, is gigantic, ominous,
huge. He is literally larger than life, or at least life as we know it. And so when Dave met Bill on Letterman's "Late Show" last week, it was an encounter filled with titillating tension. There is no reason to see the meeting in combative terms, except that in this country we tend to see everything that way. If you insisted on knowing who won-well, everybody won. It was a night of victory, an exceptionally compelling hour of television, a thought-provoking yet respectful way to end the first anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001.

Letterman and his producers are adroit at finding the right tone at difficult times-which is then often emulated by the "creative" team over at Jay Leno's "Tonight Show." Dave spent the bulk of the show with Bill Clinton while Jay spent it with Sen. John McCain. Now not everybody watched Dave, of course, but the next morning, was anybody talking about Jay and the senator? People may repeat jokes from Leno's masterful monologues, but they don't talk about the show. Leno is simply an inherently uninteresting guy. He's the solid, dogged professional incapable of springing a true surprise.

But this column is about Dave and Bill, who did not appear to have great rapport nor indeed great mutual respect (Letterman didn't even look Clinton in the eye when Clinton came out and they shook hands) but who are both extremely smart in their
own ways. They had the kind of substantial, engrossing, clarifying conversation that used to be common in talk TV and now is mercilessly scarce. Letterman asked great questions, the kind of questions real people would ask if given the chance to talk to
an ex-president, and Clinton rattled off responses in cogent, persuasive, illuminating ways. His mastery of facts and history and context was awe-inspiring. Watching and listening, one could hardly help thinking, "This guy would make a great president."

And he would be perhaps remembered as a great president if not for the personal peccadilloes and ghastly transgressions that
kept Letterman and all other topical comedians overstocked with comic fodder for eight roller-coaster years. Nixon's life and career had overtones of a Shakespearean tragedy. Clinton's have overtones of a Sidney Sheldon tragedy. Ugh, such a pitiful waste.

Letterman made no references to the Clinton sex scandals, though his dirty-minded studio audience laughed smuttily near the
start when Clinton talked about the pleasure of unbridled "blowing;" he meant playing the saxophone. Once that hurdle was jumped, it was smooth sailing and smart talk. Clinton was charming, at ease, adroit and well-versed to an encyclopedic degree. And Letterman kept the questions coming, aided by notes but also clearly following the kind of instincts that would have made him a good journalist, not that he would have wasted his life on such a low-paying profession.

One of the "annoying eccentricities" surfaced the next night, when Letterman denigrated the show he had done with Clinton
the night before and through remarks and gestures essentially called Clinton a blabbermouth. Wait-he's criticizing Clinton for answering his questions? Or for answering them so well?

Yes, Clinton is a notoriously windy speechifier, but with Letterman he had been remarkably concise and certainly not wordy.
He had been terrific.

Dave later allowed as how Clinton was probably "10 times smarter" than Letterman and by this time seemed to be trashing his own performance as well as Clinton's. But the remarks early in the show seemed ungracious, like making nasty cracks about a party guest who has just left the room. Also, Clinton had saved Letterman's skinny ass by saying "yes" to the invitation to
appear. The producers really didn't have much of a show planned if Clinton had not come through.

One of the little mysteries about the Clinton appearance was why it got so little advance ballyhoo. But then, one must remember: It was the 11th of September. Ballyhoo would have been unseemly. "It didn't feel appropriate to do a flood of promotion on
Sept. 11," says Rob Burnett, Letterman's longtime executive producer, from his office. "This wasn't the time for normal show-business stuff."

Burnett said the Clinton appearance wasn't really a lock until nearly the last minute: "We were up against it, for sure. We held
out and held out and held out to wait for President Clinton. Finally it was confirmed on Tuesday, the day before the show.
There had been a standing offer for him to appear and we intensified our efforts as Sept. 11 approached. We wanted someone with real stature to be on the show. There was a very short list of possibilities and Clinton was at the top."

Letterman had joked in his monologue that Clinton wouldn't have agreed to appear on "Late Show" if he had ever seen it, but Burnett thinks Clinton probably has watched once or twice at least, certainly the night Letterman had Hillary as a guest.

Nobody at the Letterman show or CBS is making a big loud boast about this, but Letterman's ratings did get a boost from the Clinton appearance-even with very little, practically no, advance promotion. According to overnights from metered markets, Letterman had a 4.6 rating and a 13 share vs. his season-to-date average of a 3.5/9. Jay Leno and John McCain did a 4.4/11.

However, NBC doesn't want to admit it lost a night to Letterman, not even the night of Sept. 11 when you might think competitive zeal would be held in check, so NBC "specialed out" that night's edition of the Leno show in the Nielsen tally. That means it's as if the show did not exist that night. The rationale given is that Leno came on late and therefore it wasn't a representative night. But Letterman came on late too. Everybody was delayed because of George W. Bush's seven-minute
speech that seemed like a 70-minute speech from Ellis Island at 9 o'clock.

Leno still regularly bests Letterman in the ratings, but Letterman's frequently whined assertion that he is being hobbled by the poor performance of CBS's 10 o'clock shows is supported by the fact that when the 10 o'clock show gets big numbers, Dave gets a lift. Since episodes of "CSI," even though reruns, have been playing on Monday and Thursday nights, Burnett says, Letterman has been doing better on those nights-28 percent better on Mondays, 18 percent on Thursdays.

In Washington, the local CBS affiliate, which is owned by greedy Gannett, tries to chase viewers away from the Letterman
show by having roughly six minutes of solid commercials at the end of its 11 o'clock news. The newscast essentially ends, a parade of commercials begins, there's a brief interruption for a recap of the weather and goodnights from the anchors, and
then the parade of commercials continues.

Letterman is almost always worth the wait, but that was especially true on Sept. 11. (Actually, the station suspended the clutter for that night only.) He and Clinton made a fascinating pair. Might Clinton come back? "He said he would," says Burnett. "We asked him on the way out." Clinton told Letterman he has decided not to pursue the idea of having his own talk show.
That's OK; this arrangement seems much, much better.

Late Show With David Letterman Webpage>

Tom Shales
Article

September 16th 2002

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