Oh, no, it’s Dave again.

March 6, 2017 8:59 AM

David Letterman in Conversation
posted by jacquilynne (60 comments total)

dave's beard game is strong
posted by entropicamericana at 9:04 AM on March 6, 2017 [10 favorites]

This interview made me laugh out loud multiple times. I miss this man.
posted by painquale at 9:10 AM on March 6, 2017 [9 favorites]

Nice insights on Trump too.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:16 AM on March 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

This Dave I miss. But this Dave was gone for years before his retirement already. Still -- this is a good read with good points.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:24 AM on March 6, 2017 [13 favorites]

Oh my god, he hasn't changed a bit. I love this man.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 9:41 AM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

This is the best. He is the best.
posted by Mavri at 9:43 AM on March 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

Can you explain that a bit more? How does satire protect us from Donald Trump?

The man has such thin skin that if you keep pressure on him — I remember there was a baseball game in Cleveland and a swarm of flies came on the field and the batters were doing this [mimes swatting at flies] while the pitcher was throwing 100 miles an hour. Well, that’s Alec Baldwin and Saturday Night Live. It’s distracting the batter. Eventually Trump’s going to take a fastball off the sternum and have to leave the game

Never leave us, Dave.
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:52 AM on March 6, 2017 [24 favorites]

I'm glad that he isn't doing what Carson did -- sit and wait for the world to come kiss his ass and hand him another opportunity. I get the sense that he's done and not waiting around for the phone to ring, but doesn't mind doing the occasional interview or showing up for something interesting. I hope he stays public for a while still.
posted by briank at 9:55 AM on March 6, 2017

Wasn't this interview marvelous? I miss him.
posted by droplet at 9:59 AM on March 6, 2017 [5 favorites]

Just a schmo!

Hilarious.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:01 AM on March 6, 2017

I'm laughing on the outside, crying on the inside.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:24 AM on March 6, 2017

Now I want Dave to do—not a new show—a podcast. He could do it from his house in his bathrobe if he wanted.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:29 AM on March 6, 2017 [22 favorites]

I'm so glad Dave came for Fallon in this, even if he said that wasn't what he was doing, because fuck that dude. He should be shunned by everybody.

briank: I'm glad that he isn't doing what Carson did -- sit and wait for the world to come kiss his ass and hand him another opportunity.

What? Where do you get that from? Carson pretty much disappeared into his retirement, on purpose, and spent the rest of his life on his boat or playing his usual card game with the same group of people he'd been playing with for years. Other than lending his voice to an episode of the Simpsons, sending Dave a few jokes as suggestions for the Late Show (which Dave would use, and treasured), and his famous, silent appearance on The Late Show (Which many of us took as an unofficial nod that he supported Dave over Jay Leno), Carson never went near show business again. He retired hardcore and basically wanted nothing more to do with any of it.
posted by tzikeh at 11:39 AM on March 6, 2017 [9 favorites]

Now I want Dave to do—not a new show—a podcast. He could do it from his house in his bathrobe if he wanted.
Or he could assemble a group of composed of him, Larry King, Jon Stewart, and Craig Ferguson, storm 30 Rock and claim the Tonight Show as theirs.
posted by lmfsilva at 11:42 AM on March 6, 2017 [6 favorites]

I miss Dave, I miss Cavett, and Johnny. Talk, humor, a few hi-jinks, maybe a performance, maybe an honest-to-god intellectual, esp. on Cavett. I can't watch Fallon; he's cute, but it makes my teeth hurt. Maybe I'll give Colbert another watch.

Anyway, thanks for posting.
posted by theora55 at 12:05 PM on March 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

Lord, a Dave podcast would be so great.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 12:11 PM on March 6, 2017 [4 favorites]

"This is like visitors’ day at prison for me."
posted by bertran at 12:38 PM on March 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

What a great article. Can even hear his voice in the words.

...and his famous, silent appearance on The Late Show (Which many of us took as an unofficial nod that he supported Dave over Jay Leno)...

link
Thanks for this - I'm not sure I'd ever seen it.

_{aaaand now I'm down the youtube rabbit hole on Carson. If I'm not back tomorrow, send help.}
posted by ApathyGirl at 12:41 PM on March 6, 2017 [8 favorites]

I would like to live in the timeline where David Letterman is president and Donald Trump is a former celebrity who takes potshots at him that do no real damage.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 12:42 PM on March 6, 2017 [22 favorites]

This made today better.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:46 PM on March 6, 2017

Nobody was better than Dave.
posted by bondcliff at 12:57 PM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Dave has achieved Slack. It's as though "Bob" Dobbs grew his beard out.

Here's hoping he continues to share his Slack with others.
posted by the matching mole at 1:01 PM on March 6, 2017 [21 favorites]

I'm with Capt. Renault, and this was good to read. Dave's combination of goofy humor and ascerbic wit has inspired me since I started watching his morning show when I was 19 or 20 (I had a noon-9pm job, so I could stay up late and watch Carson then wake up and watch Letterman before I went to work). He's right up there in my personal pantheon with George Carlin and Robin Williams.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:38 PM on March 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

he could assemble a group of composed of him, Larry King, Jon Stewart, and Craig Ferguson, storm 30 Rock and claim the Tonight Show as theirs.

King, really? How about Craig Ferguson instead?

never having watched King, I'm willing to be educated on his merits
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:56 PM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

he could assemble a group of composed of him, Larry King, Jon Stewart, and Craig Ferguson,
⤷ King, really? How about Craig Ferguson instead?

Already claimed? I mean, I like Ferguson and all, but within the constraints of quantum reality.

Nice piece with Uncle Dave.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:08 PM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

There is something so touching and reassuring knowing that Dave and Paul have dinner together once a month.
posted by funkiwan at 2:18 PM on March 6, 2017 [15 favorites]

Comedians with Beards Getting Grouchy.
posted by artdrectr at 2:28 PM on March 6, 2017 [8 favorites]

Apparently, Norm MacDonald has an interview with Dave in the can. His YouTube show's been on hold for months and my guess is that he's negotiating with Netflix. I can't wait to watch Norm and Dave unleashed.
posted by davebush at 2:45 PM on March 6, 2017 [7 favorites]

This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.

Aww, man. But I want all of it.
posted by chillmost at 2:50 PM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

"...my wife, who is also a schmo"

Dammit Dave I miss you.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:01 PM on March 6, 2017

Or he could assemble a group of composed of him, Larry King, Jon Stewart, and Craig Ferguson, storm 30 Rock and claim the Tonight Show as theirs.
No, swap out King for Dick Cavett (who IS still alive), and leave him in the Green Room with Regis Philbin.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:41 PM on March 6, 2017

Don King?
posted by wenestvedt at 3:45 PM on March 6, 2017

I like Ferguson and all, but within the constraints of quantum reality.

I'm new here—are we supposed to read the entire comment we're responding to?

blush
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:17 PM on March 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

I am starting to think that there is a contest going on between Dave and Michael Stipe.
posted by 4ster at 5:24 PM on March 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

Can we create a Letterman led team with multiple Fergusons?
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:40 PM on March 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

This was marvellous across the board but my favorite part by far was

"The other day, I said, “Harry, I get the sense sometimes you don’t like going places with me in public.” And he said, “Well, you have bad people skills. Just be normal.”

I think Harry and my 14 year old daughter would have a lot to commiserate on.
posted by hearthpig at 5:41 PM on March 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

I have often thought that Letterman and Obama are alike in how they're sincerely charmed and fascinated by children.
posted by Caxton1476 at 6:02 PM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

I apologize for the wall of text that follows, however, as soon as I read that he and his son calls him Trumpy, I immediately thought "hey, that's an elephant's name" and the following story sprang into my head:

There once was an elephant named Trumpy. He was a fat old elephant who got to thinking that he was a great elephant, the best elephant , and if only he could get the other elephants to support him, he could make the savannah great again… for elephants.
Trumpy really didn’t know anything about the ecosystem underlying the savannah or how, in many ways the savannah was much better than it had been before for many creatures, like the meerkats, who moved in from the deserts and could now see further to avoid predation by eagles and snakes.
And the hyenas too, were better off, as they were given more free rights to the rotting carcasses of the many wildebeast who were felled during the great migration. This migration of millions of grazing animals looked like an important part of what makes the savannah the savannah.
From the giraffes to the senuti, every animal was striving to make their way and improve their lives in the savannah and contributing to the ecosystem along the way.
However, the elephants that Trumpy was able to talk to, in loud incoherent blasts from his disproportionately small trunk, agreed that the savannah was in dire straights, from a being-comfortable-for-elephants standpoint. Trumpy’s advisor, a hooded vulture named Steve told him that the only solution was to get rid of all the non-elephants. As Trumpy lacked any coherent vision of the savannah for himself, he readily agreed. Trumpy and all the other elephants who supported his platform of “Elephants First” then started to stamp around and scare away all the other creatures.
•Late one night elephants stamped all over the meerkat colony while they slept, collapsing its delicate structure. Fortunately, the meerkats were all able to escape and scatter into the forest.
•Whenever Trumpy’s elephants saw hyenas gathering around a carcass, they would stampede them away to deny them what they called a “undeserved handout” for them that refuse to work hard and bring down their own kills.

Less and less though, would they find the hyenas at a wildebeast carcass, because by Trumpy convincing the crocodiles and hippos to turn back any migrating ruminants at water crossings, the great migration was no longer passing through the Elephant’s Savannah.
Soon, the savannah began to wither and die. The plants were no longer being fertilized by the dung of migrating animals and there was no new growth. Fire then ravaged the ungrazed grassland. Acacia trees began toppling as the ecosystem crumbled around them. This incensed Trumpy, as Acacia leaves were his favorite, and he stamped around, blaring baseless accusations that the meerkats had sappered underneath the trees to fell them.
While he was stamping, however he stepped on a branch and jabbed a huge acacia thorn right into the soft meatus between his elephalanges. Oh, my that hurt. And Oh how he howled… that there was a meerkat conspiracy afoot that got him to step on that thorn.
Limping, sullen, Trumpy went to the savannah’s edge and called to the many creatures that had sought refuge there from the elephants: Come help me, little hyenas, pull the thorn out of my foot and I’ll help you find a carcass.
No. you’re an herbivore, they said, you know nothing about carcasses, and your advisor steve already has his head in the offal of an elephant who didn’t make it through the dry season.
Little meerkats, can you help me pull this thorn out? I’ll let you back into your colony.
No, the stamping undermined all the colony’s infrastructure, it’s unsafe for us to return.
All the animals Trumpy called to refused his requests for help, as he offered them nothing of value comparable to what he had destroyed. So he limped on, still wounded and slowly starving, as all the Acacia’s were now dead.

All the while Steve looked on with increasing interest.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 6:04 PM on March 6, 2017 [11 favorites]

King, really?

Never much cared for King even in his golden years and I have even less use for him now, in his RT-hosting dotage. So yes, Cavett, Rose, Moyers, Stern, Chelsea Handler, Ru Paul, Queen Latifah, anyone but King.

But I read the piece again and it's just as wonderful and terrible (in the classic sense of the word) as it was the first time. If the road to the White House still went through Dave, as the Founders intended, then we wouldn't be in the trouble we're in.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:06 PM on March 6, 2017

multiple Fergusons?
Well, there's also Colin Ferguson, who played the Sheriff on Eureka, Sarah Ferguson, former wife of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, historian Niall Ferguson, and voice actor Keith Ferguson, most notable for doing Harrison Ford's voice when a production can't afford the real guy.

I'd add Maynard Ferguson, the horn player who made a top 10 record with a flugelhorn and Art Ferguson, the DJ/announcer who used the stage name Charlie Tuna, but they have both passed away.

Or you could do multiple Craigs, that could include Kilborn from the prehistoric Daily Show, Charles from Red Dwarf, Newmark of List fame, Robinson of The Office and Hot Tub Time Machine, T. Nelson of Coach and The Incredibles, and any of multiple Craig Joneses.

And if anybody's going to put together a chat/panel show where all the guests have the same first or last name, it's gonna be me... I'm getting the concept copyrighted in the morning...
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:14 PM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Jay Ferguson (of Jo Jo Gunne/"Thunder Island" fame) and/or Craig David.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:28 PM on March 6, 2017

I assume the King thing was a joke or an entry for colour. The man is a complete idiot, 100%, top to bottom, moron.
posted by Cosine at 6:29 PM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

"The only person I can trust anymore is Al Franken, who has a great brain and a great heart. I believe what he says."
posted by carmicha at 9:18 PM on March 6, 2017 [6 favorites]

Yes please. A Letterman podcast. With Obama as guest.
posted by persona au gratin at 12:04 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've mentioned King because for a talk show host (albeit different) he did appear on pretty much everyone else's.
Also, he could be the Trojan Horse. Fallon thinks he's going to interview King, he sneaks out the green room to open an emergency exit where the others are waiting to storm the building.
posted by lmfsilva at 6:35 AM on March 7, 2017

This cracked me up:

I needed a pair of shoelaces. And I thought, Hell, where do you get shoelaces? And my friend said, there’s a place over off I-84, it’s the Designer Shoe Warehouse. So I go over there, and it’s a building the size of the Pentagon. It’s enormous. If you took somebody from — I don’t know, pick a country where they don’t have Designer Shoe Warehouses — blindfolded them and turned them loose in this place, they would just think, You people are insane. Who needs this many shoes? It’s sinful. It’s one of these places where there’s no employees and every now and then there’s just a scrum of shoe boxes. I’m not finding the damn shoelaces, and finally I think, Maybe it’s one of those items they’ve got at the counter. I go up there and I’m nosing around the counter and, by God, there’s shoelaces. This is after about an hour. So now I’m waiting in line and the woman checking people out says in a big loud voice, “May I help our next shoe lover, please?” I just started to tremble.
posted by andromache at 6:39 AM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

Was the Seinfeld thing a joke?
posted by amanda at 7:07 AM on March 7, 2017

multiple Fergusons?

And how could you forget Turd Ferguson? It's a funny name.

My uncle claimed to have been the person who gave Dave his first job in broadcasting, at an Indiana Public television station as a cameraman I think, but I'm not sure that's true, going off his wiki page. Dave definitely needs a podcast for sure.
posted by Billy Rubin at 8:15 AM on March 7, 2017

Was the Seinfeld thing a joke?

My guess is that it was a joke.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:24 AM on March 7, 2017

Dave Letterman appeared on Comedians in cars getting coffee, so likely a joke.
posted by natasha_k at 8:33 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

Was the Seinfeld thing a joke?

I'm pretty sure it is just from reading it, but also, I follow North American copyright litigation pretty closely, and if there was an actual Letterman-Seinfeld lawsuit, I'd almost certainly already know about it.

I think he's just saying it's a really good idea, one he'd like to own. There's a small possibility that they once discussed the idea before Seinfeld's series launched and he's riffing on that, but I think if that were the case, the interview itself would have gone much more in depth into the backstory. It reads like the line about being deep in litigation was so obviously a bit of sarcasm that the interviewer never needed to actually follow up.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:08 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

As an interesting tangent, Seinfeld did once get sued for defamation over something he said *on* Letterman. It had to do with the disputes over his wife's cookbook.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:09 AM on March 7, 2017

Still -- this is a good read with good points pants.

Fixed that for you
posted by sylvanshine at 9:13 AM on March 7, 2017

I like the idea, oneswellfoop, but referring to Niall Ferguson as a "historian" without further adjectives/invective makes me sad. Maybe "revanchist fuckwit" Niall Ferguson?
posted by aspersioncast at 9:48 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'd heard some good things and some terrible things about Niall Ferguson, so I kept it as brief as possible but included him because I like the name "Niall". It was either him or Iain Ferguson.

And I am semi-shocked that I forgot Jay Ferguson because the low point of my short radio career was disc jockeying at a station where every third song to be played was either Thunder Island, Baker Street or something Bee Gees. Maybe I had it nearly forgotten after 39 years. Thanks, octobersurprise.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:11 PM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

I am starting to think that there is a contest going on between Dave and Michael Stipe.
posted by 4ster at 8:24 PM on March 6 [3 favorites +] [!]

Hang on, Paddy McAloon just put out a song this week, and I think he's also thrown his beard in the... I don't know, wherever it is folks with beards throw them for competition. I remember fresh-faced, cutie-pie Paddy of the 80s, so seeing this photo in my FB feed this week was quite the shock!

And let me take the opportunity here to say just how much I like the photo of Dave at the beginning of the article. He looks happy. So happy. And as much as I'm used to clean-cut, be-suited, Italian-loafered Dave, that beanie he's wearing really works for the whole look.
posted by droplet at 6:36 PM on March 7, 2017

David Letterman: secret hipster
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:23 PM on March 7, 2017

Larry King was terrible on tv. But on radio, on his overnight Mutual Radio show? Not bad. Journeyman interviewer. Good storyteller. But enough about King. On CNN he would sometimes get good guests but the show was only good if the guests were interesting.

Letterman is a hero. I was a fan of Late Night. He kept me sane in high school. He was smart and funny and strange and had Andy Kaufman & Sandra Bernhard & Harvey Pekar on. He gave us the suit of velcro, Chris Elliot, Larry Bud. He was silly but smart. And yet, had the work ethic of a Broadcaster with a capital B. He was a good goofball about the rules of broadcasting, but he knew this he rules to begin with.

This interview was a delight, may Dave outlive us all.
posted by artlung at 10:59 PM on March 8, 2017

The podcast idea is a great suggestion because it would appeal to the broadcaster in Dave and give him the outlet of talking to friends in the bidness in the comfort of his home, pants optional. I mean, clearly he's given up on caring about his looks (nothing wrong with that!) but his wit and intellect is as sharp as it ever was.
posted by BeBoth at 7:04 AM on March 9, 2017

The episode of 'Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee' is pretty good. Letterman's car is a Volvo 960 wagon with a ford V8 which Paul Newman convinced him to buy.
http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/david-letterman-i-like-kettlecorn
posted by evilelf at 1:10 PM on March 14, 2017