Stupid Rerun Tricks
July 5, 2023 7:09 PM Subscribe
[MLYT] During his run on Late Night, David Letterman would do intros before reruns - but occasionally, he'd go a little further. Speeding up the episode to cram extra footage in, watching the episode alongside the viewer and offering commentary... but these pale in comparison to the time he had a rerun redubbed by different people - including voice actors from the 60's Speed Racer dub.
Merrill Markoe in Time magazine, May 15, 2015:
"'The Dubbed Show' was an idea by the brilliant Randy Cohen who decided to try to bring something new to a standard re-run. The show remains the same in all respects except one: It contains a perfectly synced new audio track dubbed by the people who dub foreign movies into English. To make this happen, Randy painstakingly created a script of the original show to give to professional voice-over actors who would dub it from English into other English. Watching Dave and his guests say the same things, only in slightly different voices, made me question everything I ever knew to be true in the universe."
Merrill Markoe in Time magazine, May 15, 2015:
"'The Dubbed Show' was an idea by the brilliant Randy Cohen who decided to try to bring something new to a standard re-run. The show remains the same in all respects except one: It contains a perfectly synced new audio track dubbed by the people who dub foreign movies into English. To make this happen, Randy painstakingly created a script of the original show to give to professional voice-over actors who would dub it from English into other English. Watching Dave and his guests say the same things, only in slightly different voices, made me question everything I ever knew to be true in the universe."
The dubbed show and the show that slowly rotated the camera one full turn were the most hopeful television events of the nineteen eighties. Dashed hopeful, of course.
posted by hexatron at 7:47 PM on July 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by hexatron at 7:47 PM on July 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Mental Floss had a list of Late Night innovations. Alas, many videos have been taken down by Worldwide Pants.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:35 PM on July 5, 2023
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:35 PM on July 5, 2023
The anime Pop Team Epic has a 24 minute run-time, because the 12 minutes of animated sketches are repeated with different voice actors. I had no idea it owed this debt to David Letterman.
posted by robcorr at 12:47 AM on July 6, 2023
posted by robcorr at 12:47 AM on July 6, 2023
I just want to say this gives me a warm feeling. Steve Jordan Letterman is OG first-discovery Dave. It's not Hiram Bullock, but it's still in the pocket. There's just no way to convey how magical this version of the show was.
posted by rhizome at 12:50 AM on July 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 12:50 AM on July 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
The early Letterman show was a foundational part of my pubescent development. Not an exaggeration. I worshipped this show and nearly everything about it. For better and worse, I based so much of my developing personality on Dave's TV host persona and attitude. I used to stay up and watch it every single night that I didn't have to get up for school the next day. All summer long. Every school break of every kind. And I would very often VCR record the show and watch it after school. We had the official (cheap-o) paperback Late Night with David Letterman book. Probably worth something these days, but it's long gone. I even started my Letterman fandom with his short lived morning show when we started watching it randomly one time during a school break.
My folks would drive to a news stand and buy the Sunday paper every Saturday night. And I would always immediately pull out the TV Week insert and check the Letterman lineup. I was really disappointed when they would go on breaks and show reruns. I remember a couple of these rerun-gags, but haven't thought of them in years. I've revisited a lot of the show's early years on YouTube, but thanks for these. Now I have more time I need to waste.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:54 AM on July 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
My folks would drive to a news stand and buy the Sunday paper every Saturday night. And I would always immediately pull out the TV Week insert and check the Letterman lineup. I was really disappointed when they would go on breaks and show reruns. I remember a couple of these rerun-gags, but haven't thought of them in years. I've revisited a lot of the show's early years on YouTube, but thanks for these. Now I have more time I need to waste.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:54 AM on July 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
I remember a rerun where he interviewed Tom Brokaw and the whole thing was dubbed in Spanish with English subtitles.
posted by pangolin party at 4:54 AM on July 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by pangolin party at 4:54 AM on July 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
The early Letterman show was a foundational part of my pubescent development
Came here to same the exact same thing, SoberHighland. Well said.
In my opinion the morning show was a critical part of what Late Night eventually became, and it's important to look back at the summer of 1980 to see what Dave and his writers were doing. They were literally tearing TV apart from the inside. Carson had his back and the 1980 run was really a workshop to see where he could go with a post-Tonight Show slot. I'm just glad Johnny stuck with him.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:13 AM on July 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
Came here to same the exact same thing, SoberHighland. Well said.
In my opinion the morning show was a critical part of what Late Night eventually became, and it's important to look back at the summer of 1980 to see what Dave and his writers were doing. They were literally tearing TV apart from the inside. Carson had his back and the 1980 run was really a workshop to see where he could go with a post-Tonight Show slot. I'm just glad Johnny stuck with him.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:13 AM on July 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
The early Letterman show was a foundational part of my pubescent development
Came here to same the exact same thing
When I saw SoberHighland's comment, I immediately had an impulse to post, "That explains so much about some of the guys I met in college." That and the occasional Stephen Wright adorer.
Then JoeZydeco yesanded Letterman acolytism, and, yeah, Letterman has, I think, had a profound effect on how a lot of Generation X processes the world. Him, and Saturday Night Live, and a lot of other cultural influences are the farmland that grows some cultural crops and dooms others.
The output of Generation X is, I think, profoundly created by these forces; we don't even think about them, but they make us feel ridiculous if, for a moment, we consider engaging with something sincere. You may notice that we make comedy, we comment on the world, we slyly ridicule the foibles of those who are dangerously extreme and those whose helpful ideas are obviously doomed.
It doesn't stop there, though. Dave has to do a whole monologue every night, and late night talk shows have hours to fill every week. Once you've set the tone, it's really very funny to notice any new idea and present it an extreme way, or to notice any sincere person and allude to the obstacles of which they must be ignorant.
All that plays endlessly in our idle musings, and comes up by reflex if we imagine, for a moment, some action that might help anything outside our own tiny personal spaces. Give to someone who needs food or clothing? Tell a politician your point of view? Contribute your time to an environmental protection project? Oh, suuuure! The paradigms we have internalized mean that those attempts at helping never end well, in our minds: the person begging is, hilariously, just laughing at our naievete as they get into their expensive car (and drive back to the studio to broadcast our stupidity at trusting them).
Being emotionally detached is what makes you cool. Dave didn't invent this; it's probably part of the cognitive hardware we're running our brains on. Other things, though, are 'cool' too: passion, love, beauty, work, the thousands of people who built a world that, while it has a lot of injustice and tragedy and awfulness, is a lot more just, interesting, and forgiving than much that came before. Pointing out that nuance, though, or even allowing someone else to point it out, is what gets you on a top 10 list.
Quick, detached, punchy, sly, condescending - not only does that wit not allow nuance, it finds people attempting nuance wordy, unconfident, dweeby, matronly, naive, jealous, repressed, annoying. It's a gift, truly it is, to feel yourself reacting to one of those qualities and then make light of it. There are many much worse reactions one could have.
There are many better, more thoughtful reactions one could have, too, but those need safety and space to breathe and think. Someone needs to be there telling you they are possible, encouraging you to try engaging even though you might not succeed all the time. Every once in a while, if you keep trying, you will succeed, and you'll get better and better at trying; the second or third project you help will succeed; the second or third person you try to persuade will listen.
Instead of that thoughtful influence, or an encouraging voice in our heads, though, Generation X has Dave.
That said, the velcro wall was genius.
posted by amtho at 8:12 AM on July 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
Came here to same the exact same thing
When I saw SoberHighland's comment, I immediately had an impulse to post, "That explains so much about some of the guys I met in college." That and the occasional Stephen Wright adorer.
Then JoeZydeco yesanded Letterman acolytism, and, yeah, Letterman has, I think, had a profound effect on how a lot of Generation X processes the world. Him, and Saturday Night Live, and a lot of other cultural influences are the farmland that grows some cultural crops and dooms others.
The output of Generation X is, I think, profoundly created by these forces; we don't even think about them, but they make us feel ridiculous if, for a moment, we consider engaging with something sincere. You may notice that we make comedy, we comment on the world, we slyly ridicule the foibles of those who are dangerously extreme and those whose helpful ideas are obviously doomed.
It doesn't stop there, though. Dave has to do a whole monologue every night, and late night talk shows have hours to fill every week. Once you've set the tone, it's really very funny to notice any new idea and present it an extreme way, or to notice any sincere person and allude to the obstacles of which they must be ignorant.
All that plays endlessly in our idle musings, and comes up by reflex if we imagine, for a moment, some action that might help anything outside our own tiny personal spaces. Give to someone who needs food or clothing? Tell a politician your point of view? Contribute your time to an environmental protection project? Oh, suuuure! The paradigms we have internalized mean that those attempts at helping never end well, in our minds: the person begging is, hilariously, just laughing at our naievete as they get into their expensive car (and drive back to the studio to broadcast our stupidity at trusting them).
Being emotionally detached is what makes you cool. Dave didn't invent this; it's probably part of the cognitive hardware we're running our brains on. Other things, though, are 'cool' too: passion, love, beauty, work, the thousands of people who built a world that, while it has a lot of injustice and tragedy and awfulness, is a lot more just, interesting, and forgiving than much that came before. Pointing out that nuance, though, or even allowing someone else to point it out, is what gets you on a top 10 list.
Quick, detached, punchy, sly, condescending - not only does that wit not allow nuance, it finds people attempting nuance wordy, unconfident, dweeby, matronly, naive, jealous, repressed, annoying. It's a gift, truly it is, to feel yourself reacting to one of those qualities and then make light of it. There are many much worse reactions one could have.
There are many better, more thoughtful reactions one could have, too, but those need safety and space to breathe and think. Someone needs to be there telling you they are possible, encouraging you to try engaging even though you might not succeed all the time. Every once in a while, if you keep trying, you will succeed, and you'll get better and better at trying; the second or third project you help will succeed; the second or third person you try to persuade will listen.
Instead of that thoughtful influence, or an encouraging voice in our heads, though, Generation X has Dave.
That said, the velcro wall was genius.
posted by amtho at 8:12 AM on July 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
Letterman really brought back the spirit of Ernie Kovacs, who I think may have been the first to really get that television was different, it wasn't just a stage show broadcast, it wasn't "like movies but smaller". It was its own weird thing with its own technology and tropes that could be subverted in all sorts of fun ways.
posted by Ayn Marx at 8:25 AM on July 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Ayn Marx at 8:25 AM on July 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
Dave talks about the shame of the city Indianapolis with fellow hometowner Jane Pauley on the NBC Today Show in 1982.my comment above was dubbed by the renowned and award-winning Monospace font
posted by zaixfeep at 8:33 AM on July 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
By the time I started watching Letterman in the 90s, he was already established so I didn't really experience the change he wrought to the late night TV environment.
I did experience that when I started watching Craig Ferguson, especially after a year or so in. The cold open, the riffed monologue, the hand puppets, the tearing up of the interview notes ... there still isn't anything comparable on TV.
posted by indianbadger1 at 9:04 AM on July 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
I did experience that when I started watching Craig Ferguson, especially after a year or so in. The cold open, the riffed monologue, the hand puppets, the tearing up of the interview notes ... there still isn't anything comparable on TV.
posted by indianbadger1 at 9:04 AM on July 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
the "rerun dubbed by different people" video made me think of this gem.
posted by xedrik at 10:22 AM on July 6, 2023
posted by xedrik at 10:22 AM on July 6, 2023
I once met a Letterman writer and I told him a joke I wrote that I thought was Dave's style and he told me it could have been used:
"You all know Tim Tebow, the football quarterback who's very religious. I was wondering, if Tim Tebow scrambles for a 40-yard touchdown run and then kneels in the end zone to give a little prayer of thanks, but it turns out there was holding and it calls back the play ... does that also call back the prayer?"
posted by hypnogogue at 11:16 AM on July 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
"You all know Tim Tebow, the football quarterback who's very religious. I was wondering, if Tim Tebow scrambles for a 40-yard touchdown run and then kneels in the end zone to give a little prayer of thanks, but it turns out there was holding and it calls back the play ... does that also call back the prayer?"
posted by hypnogogue at 11:16 AM on July 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
The videos linked in this post are from Don Giller's Youtube. When I was working on my Masters of Science in Information, we were assigned to to write a research paper about a collection of some type. Because this was 'library school,' the expectation was that most would write about collecting books, but many people broadened their scope, including me.
I wrote about Don Giller and his collection of nearly every episode of the various versions of David Letterman shows. Don was famous for his archive and vast knowledge of all things Dave on alt.fan.letterman newsgroup. Writing that paper was the perfect melding of my love of information, hanging out with the other fans of Dave, and, of course, Dave's quirky sense of humor. Thanks, BiggerJ, for making this post and bringing back all of these fond memories!
posted by BeBoth at 5:08 PM on July 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
I wrote about Don Giller and his collection of nearly every episode of the various versions of David Letterman shows. Don was famous for his archive and vast knowledge of all things Dave on alt.fan.letterman newsgroup. Writing that paper was the perfect melding of my love of information, hanging out with the other fans of Dave, and, of course, Dave's quirky sense of humor. Thanks, BiggerJ, for making this post and bringing back all of these fond memories!
posted by BeBoth at 5:08 PM on July 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Adding: Letterman is a white cis het guy from the midwest. I was and am a white cis het guy from Chicago, though I was born in 1970, much younger than Dave. I had a more urban upbringing, but I think a lot of the humor style was already in my family. My dad (both his folks were born in Sweden, very poor) was often compared to Bob Newhart in his joke telling, humor style. (He didn't do monologs or tell jokes routinely, but when he was trying to be funny, he was Newhart-like).
My family and ancestors were northern European. They didn't go for sincere, or hugging or displays of affection. There was and still is an emotional distance in my family life. And a lot of anger. This is all part of the Letterman style. I have steered away from that through therapy and my wife was a big part in helping me open up. I have let go of a lot of my anger. But it's still in my bones.
I'm not tremendously proud to be this way, but it's the way my family was and the way I still am in many senses.
posted by SoberHighland at 5:48 PM on July 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
My family and ancestors were northern European. They didn't go for sincere, or hugging or displays of affection. There was and still is an emotional distance in my family life. And a lot of anger. This is all part of the Letterman style. I have steered away from that through therapy and my wife was a big part in helping me open up. I have let go of a lot of my anger. But it's still in my bones.
I'm not tremendously proud to be this way, but it's the way my family was and the way I still am in many senses.
posted by SoberHighland at 5:48 PM on July 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
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