The Late Show with David Letterman, March 17, 2008

During a (very) recent work trip to NYC, I had the opportunity to attend a taping of The Late Show with David Letterman. I’ve been a fan since the NBC days, so this was really a dream come true for me. I could not have been more excited. While Letterman now is not the Letterman of 1992, he’s still more interesting (and famous) than nearly any guest he has on. Plus there’s Paul Schaeffer, himself funnier than Leno and his whole pack of writers. I’ll save the reader the endless hoops prospective audience members must jump through and cut to entering the auditorium. By the time we entered (a group of ten) the auditorium was largely filled. I ended up in the balcony. We received brief instructions, then a warm-up comedian came out, followed by the CBS Orchestra and Paul. Finally, Dave sprinted out manically with just two or three minutes before show time. After taking a question from the audience, he literally ran behind the curtain as the show was starting.
The opening monologue was only adequate (as usual with Dave), with some time spent on the Spitzer case, but not as much as the previous week, when Letterman’s schtick on the subject was the funniest I’ve seen (“Banging whores” was his mantra). Still, it’s at his desk that Dave shines, and this night was no exception. His talk centered on a tick he had just had removed from his back. At first I found this disgusting, but soon I was laughing hard. As we got to the first break, an inner circle consisting of the warm-up comedian, the producer of the show, and some dude that looked for all the world like Dustin Hoffman moved around Dave. The whole time Paul and Co. is blasting away with an arrangement of the ‘Stones Brown Sugar.
Rainn Wilson of The Office (Schrute Buck inventor Dwight Schrute) was the first guest (see the interview here). While some feel his brief role in Juno was overdone (admittedly, it was), he is hilarious on The Office and solid on his inaugural outing on Letterman. That said, he came across as too chummy concerning Dave’s son and seemed to me to start annoying Dave a bit. Maybe that was the reason he only made it through one segment instead of the usual two for the opening guest. The second guests were Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic of ESPN Radio’s Mike and Mike in the Morning. I wasn’t familiar with them beyond their names, but they were funny and entered into a pretty good debate with Dave on whether or not golfer’s are athletes—an issue I’ve argued on more than one occasion.
The musical guest was Irish band Bell X1 (view their performance here). I’d never heard of them, but the lead singer had a great voice and the band sounded tight if fairly predictable in the Coldplay rock/pop mold. The most memorable thing about the band was the set-up, which took about six minutes from empty stage to starting to play. The stage is much tighter than it appears on TV, with barely enough room to get the small group between Dave and the CBS Orchestra. Part of the Letterman backdrop, a model of NYC, is wheeled out of the way while the rest is pulled straight into the air to allow the crew to push the instruments into place.
After the show ends, Dave thanks the audience and the band played the audience out as we left. Overall, it was a great experience I’d highly recommend to anyone going to New York with an afternoon to kill. The show has the feel of something being done just for the live audience, with the rest of America invited to look in.
*On a cool side note, we walked by the Hello Deli to see Rupert G out front smoking a cigarette. He seemed quite nice and gamely posed for pictures with several pedestrians, including a couple of guys from our group.