I have to be honest - I fondly remember watching him in college with my girlfriends, where he was the cool new kid on the block compared to Johnny Carson, but I hadn’t watched him in years. Most of the buzz in the last 10 years has been about Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and of course Stewart / Colbert (who competed in a slightly different space). I wouldn’t have known til recently whether Letterman was still on or not.
doschicos:
They interviewed people to see what kind of enthusiasm they had, really! How much did they want to be in the audience…how loudly they could clap, etc. They were looking for engaged people that would laugh at the jokes and be intense clappers and laughers. So there you have it! Like I said, I was glad to have the experience one time. Once was enough! 
I’ve been a Letterman fan since way back, and will miss him a lot. The Joaquin Phoenix interview was a classic because Joaquin came on as a character instead of himself and Dave just went with it. Joaquin later came back as himself and apologized. Dave really changed the genre and you can see his influence in what the “kids” are doing today.
I tried to explain to someone why “Will it Float” was funny – it sounded like such a silly bit but it still got me laughing.
I saw a little snippet of that yesterday. At one point Dave says “Joquin, I’m sorry you couldn’t be with us tonight.” You see just a miniscule tug on the side of Joquin’s mouth. He’s clearly trying not to smile.
I didn’t watch his show. But I guess it is the end of an era.
I’m not sure JP was really being “in character” that night in his DL interview. I think he was high as a kite and unprepared and unresponsive and it is established that guests have some “material” with them in exchange for promoting their latest projects. Mr. JP decided to come on and just sit there. What ensued next with him and DL is the stuff of late night TV show legend.
It was painful to watch! And even though JP nearly laughed a few times he also looked like he might cry or walk off the set. You didn’t know what was going to happen next. It was riveting actually and very little of TV is.
Dave tried, repeatedly, to butter him up with compliments but JP was unresponsive and even though Dave was trying to be nice, he was barely restraining his anger either so again it is Dave in a nutshell, the good, the bad, the ugly, the teetering on the edge.
His comedy bits about driving around NY and breaking things and top 10 lists and everything else are great stuff in a busy sometimes tough world. We all need to love comedians more. Even the way he came out of stage, awkwardly, fidgeting, fooling with his suit, clearly uncomfortable, wearing sneakers or shoes that don’t go with the suit, looking like he didn’t have enough confidence to pull it off yet being totally in charge is pure DL.
The interview where Drew Barrymore flashed him is also late night TV show legend as is when Cher told him he was a bastard or bitch or A-hole or whatever she said to his face. He was a goofy guy. He had a child at age 59. I think he just wants to be a dad now. He doesn’t talk about his kids much on his show, he does a little, but not much. He did one segment once where he had set up a fort in the living room so his young son could “camp out” and he was telling the audience what his son was saying that night because, as we all know, kids are natural comediennes. We learn to laugh, and cry, before we can talk. It is ingrained in human nature to laugh.
All I remember is the kid and Dave had flashlights and they were camping out and they thought they heard a ghost so the kid suggested they throw poop at the ghost to scare him off. Dave was saying it all so dead pan that it was even funnier. He has a habit of repeating things for Paul and just being stupid. Yeah, I love him. Also, as someone else reminded me, when he had his mom cover the Olympics is another good memory.
My all time favorite guest moment was Crispin Glover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dYjdKbMT_c
Poetic, @GoNoles95. :)>-
I hope someone puts together a dvd or something of all the best tidbits of the 30 years. It would be quite lengthy.
Jack Hanna and Dave. The animals and Dave. More priceless moments.
GoNoles85, that was all an act: JP had created a character as “performance art,” as he admitted afterwards. He wasn’t high – the awkwardness and unresponsiveness and mumbling were all part of the created character. The whole thing was a joke, but it apparently fooled a lot of people.
I watched Letterman faithfully for many years, from the beginning of his late night show on NBC, when I wasn’t much older than my son is now. Two good high school friends of mine were actually writers for him for a couple of years early on, so the humor was definitely something I got! I stopped watching late night TV years ago, but watched the finale last night and was reminded by the clips of how much – and why – I used to love Letterman.
I saw Letterman interview Jane Seymour a few years ago and he was so rude to her I couldn’t believe it. He was just completely hostile and disrespectful. She looked stricken and the whole interview made me very uncomfortable. He must have hated Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman or something. I never really liked him after that because I thought he was so unfair to her.
I was not a huge fan in the early years, but when D1 was born in 1986, and we started having a lot more late nights when she wouldn’t go to sleep, Dave is who we turned on to keep us entertained. There was something reassuring about knowing if I had to walk my daughter for a half hour or more to get her to sleep, I could be entertained at the same time.
I would say, of his generation of talk show hosts, I was most impressed with his choice of musical guests, and I know I’ve got songs on my iTunes that wouldn’t be there unless I’d seen the group perform on his show. I’d say the same thing about Colbert, but I don’t really consider him part of Dave’s generation.
I agree about his taste in music. Some of it not what I would have picked at all, but I usually would listen and learn.
Harry, his only child, was born when DL was 57, I believe.
Harry was so cute on the final show last night and it was great when Dave gave a shout out to Harry’s friend.
There have been some great articles in the NYT the past few weeks. One mentioned that part of the deal with Johnny Carson putting him on after The Tonight Show was that Dave wouldn’t compete for guests. In those early years he gave a lot of people their start who ended up being big stars… it’s the reason Tom Hanks and Jerry Seinfeld are such good friends. The musical guests are similar. Warren Zevon credited Dave with his career and they were very close.
I’m also from the Midwest and have a similar dry humor that focuses on reacting to events going on around you. I’ve met people here in the Northwest who can’t relate at all, so I understand why he’s not for everyone.
Wow, I wonder what the deal was!
The kids segment was the highlight of the show last night, and the highlight of the segment was the “upholstery farm” tale. I’ve started giggling helplessly over it several times over the course of the day today.
I thought the clip of the toddler saying hi to her sister was absolutely hilarious.
The Taco Bell drive-thru clip was the funniest, though.
I think those were my two favorite kid clips, too!
And I loved Jay Leno. To me, Dave is an arrogant you-know-what. Glad he’s done. If I watched, it was for the guests, certainly not for him.
We loved, “You are not, you are not, you are not funny.”
Some of the stuff Chris Elliot and Larry Bud Melman did on the original NBC show were hilarious. Too bad he had to leave that “intellectual property” behind at NBC.