The old man set it up masterfully. He mentioned that his 67th birthday was coming up and waited for the “APPLAUSE” sign to flicker off. Sixty-seven. He’d been hosting a late-night show for half his life, he realized, so he grabbed an index card and counted up the shows. When he mentioned making more than 4,000 shows for CBS, everyone clapped like trained seals, because that’s what David Letterman’s audiences were trained to do. They thought they were getting an I can’t believe how many shows I’ve done bit. They had no idea what was coming.
Once upon a time, NBC Dave flipped the talk-show format upside down, re-created it and turned it into something else. You never knew what you were getting from night to night. He turned his staffers into running characters, answered letters from viewers, wandered into his audience for bits, brought cameras outside his studio to explore the hallways. For guests, he gravitated toward up-and-coming bands, quirky celebrities and comedians looking for their big break. If he found chemistry with someone — like Teri Garr or Jay Leno — he’d bring them back over and over again. He shined most with his revolutionary pretaped bits, like the time he wandered into the “Just Bulbs” store and harassed them for shades, or when he tortured everyone working for a McDonald’s drive-through, or his fake “after-school” special about a little kid finding out that an awful show called Voyagers had been canceled.
That version of Letterman was something of a tortured artist. You always felt like he felt he was a failure, that his show would never amount to anything, that within a few months, he’d get canceled and everyone would say, “Well, at least he tried some stuff.” At times, he couldn’t hide his disdain for a boring guest or a comedy segment that failed; he was always the funniest whenever it happened. He’d even turn on his audience whenever it applauded something unworthy. You could feel him bristling.
How could you applaud that? Stop it, just stop it.
Once Late Night took off and Letterman’s star ascended, it became harder for him to be self-deprecating. You don’t get celebrated on magazine covers for being a massive success if your show sucks. You don’t have a six-month waiting list for tickets if your show sucks. Eventually, he blossomed into a bigger, broader host, a real broadcaster, the next Carson … only he foolishly assumed that he’d succeed Carson without locking it down contractually. His old buddy Leno swooped in and stole the show away, a strangely seismic moment immortalized in Bill Carter’s excellent book The Late Shift, as well as an equally entertaining HBO movie with the same name. A hardened Letterman limped over to CBS, still devastated over losing The Tonight Show, determined to destroy Leno in the ratings. He broadened his show in subtle ways, guessing that signature bits, a roomier theater, A-list guests and constant applause would make his show more accessible. And for a while, he was right.
To everyone’s delight, Letterman grabbed first place for about 18 months. Leno closed the gap by shamelessly emulating Letterman’s show, even rebranding Letterman gimmicks like “Small-Town News” and “Stupid Human Tricks” as “Headlines” and “Don’t Try This at Home.” And Leno tirelessly networked with local affiliates, something Letterman never bothered to do. Everyone who loved comedy, and by extension, Letterman, was absolutely appalled when Leno finally passed him. What did this mean? What did this say? Was this a reflection on America itself? Were people really that dumb?
For a while, we dismissed Leno’s achievement because he leveraged a better brand and a more popular network. But when CBS started trouncing NBC, Leno kept winning. Letterman would always be second. Maybe that’s when he gave up. These last few years, CBS Dave stayed on autopilot 90 percent of the time. The constant clapping told you everything you needed to know. NBC Dave would have detested it. CBS Dave didn’t care.
But on Thursday night? Retiring Dave was going out his own way. No more gimmicks. He begged the audience to stop clapping. Practically yelled at them.
No more clapping. Please.
Everyone stopped clapping. They listened to him count up every show for 33 years — more than 4,000 for CBS, nearly 2,000 for NBC, and 90 for his ill-fated morning show. Close to 6,000 in all.
Suddenly he was telling a story about his 10-year-old son. They were outdoors one weekend and noticed an incredible bird. Was it an eagle? Was it something else? They couldn’t figure it out. They snapped a picture and searched on the Internet. Nothing. Letterman went to work the following day and asked his staff for help. They finally came up with the answer — or, what they thought the answer was. A bald eagle. He went home and excitedly told his wife. She heard the answer, then asked him blankly, “So who’d you have on the show?”
Everyone laughed. They didn’t catch Letterman joking that the moment made him wonder if it was time to leave, or how he derisively worried about becoming an old man who obsessed over birds instead of running a network show. If you’ve been following Letterman these past few years, you know his son was the greatest thing that ever happened to him. That bird story was really about being a father, about the day-to-day stuff that makes you realize your kids matter more than anything else. You begin your life and it’s exciting, and then it starts to get boring, and then your kids show up and you get to relive everything through them. The point of the story wasn’t the bird. He wouldn’t have cared about the stupid bird 10 years ago; he only cared about his show. Everything had flipped. Even his wife couldn’t see it. That was the point.
Her response triggered … something. It made David Letterman wonder if it was time to step down. When he admitted as much on Thursday night, everyone laughed nervously. They were feeling this might be something bigger now. He mentioned telling his son about wanting to spend more time with his family, followed by his son answering, “Which family?” More laughter. He mentioned calling his boss, Les Moonves, before that night’s show. They always had a great relationship, Letterman said. They’d always discussed the timing of this moment. And now, that moment was here.
“I phoned him just before the program,” Letterman recounted, “and I said, ‘Leslie, it’s been great, you’ve been great, the network has been great, but I’m retiring.’”
Wait …
What?
You could hear Paul Shaffer ask in the background, “This is — you actually did this?”
“Yes I did,” David Letterman said.
And what followed was one of my favorite television moments ever. Just emitting those three words — Yes I did — briefly sapped Letterman’s energy. Like he couldn’t believe they finally came from his mouth. Nobody in the theater made a peep. There was stunned silence. Two solid seconds of quiet felt like two hundred.
Letterman stared into the camera with a classic deer-in-the-headlights gaze, with every conceivable emotion in play: tears, sniffling, laughing, you name it. He settled on an exaggerated smile. Letterman always had that great, goofy, distinctive face — squished nose, gap between his front teeth, perpetually ruffled hair — which he used to enormous advantage over the years. This particular grin disarmed everyone in the theater. It was silly and heartfelt and astonished and sentimental and everything else it needed to be. It was perfect. It made them laugh.
Suddenly, it wasn’t so awkward anymore. Paul overreacted for effect and joked about calling his accountant. Letterman announced that he would leave in 2015, finally allowing him and Paul to get married. (That brought the house down.) He thanked the staff, the band and the audience. Everyone stood and cheered. They went to commercial. The spiritual king of late night was stepping down, and even better, nobody in the room saw it coming. I can’t remember another 10 minutes of television quite like it.
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