late night with david letterman-related stories
Posted Oct 27th 2009 7:32PM by Brad Trechak
Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities, Reality-Free
A former female writer at
Late Night with David Letterman has dropped a bombshell in
a Vanity Fair article in which she complained of a "hostile work environment for women". While he didn't hit on the writer, she claims that she noticed Letterman paid "extra attention" to her and had a reputation of sleeping with female workers.
While this could be a legitimate complaint, I find it somewhat suspicious that she waited until now to write about this. It could be a case of jumping on a bandwagon or she may have been afraid to say anything for fear of repercussions (as in "you'll never work in this industry again").
There is also that fine line between taking advantage of a subordinate and flirting. Not having been there, it's difficult to access what the case actually was. Mind you, flirting with subordinates at the workplace is probably not a good idea in this litigious society, but he was likely so busy with the show, how else was he going to meet single women? Match.com?
Posted Oct 23rd 2009 1:02PM by John Scott Lewinski
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Industry, Celebrities
What happened to David Letterman?
I don't mean the endlessly publicized sex scandal or the Sarah Palin controversy. I don't mean the ham-fisted and unfunny political commentary -- or even the strange tales of stalkers around every corner. I mean what happened to the guy from the mid-late 1980s who seemed so above and beyond any such tired showbiz cliches?
When Letterman followed Carson during the Golden Age of NBC late night TV, his show was admittedly quirky. But it was one of the best examples of post-modern comedy in the medium's history.
Late Night with David Letterman not only mocked TV entertainment while being a part of it, but the show made fun of the very idea that people get paid to gab or act silly in front of millions of people.
Continue reading Letterman tragedy fouls grand memories of Late Nights past
Posted Oct 7th 2009 7:02PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Late Night, News, Reality-Free
One notably close figurehead in David Letterman-gate seems to have gone overlooked, a shiny bald one.
Letterman's longtime sidekick and band leader Paul Shaffer has just released a new memoir called
We'll Be Here the Rest of Our Lives about his rise to late night music infamy. He talked more than a few ears off about his own life in music, but he's kept very hush-hush on the whole Letterman brewhaha.
"You know, I just can't talk about it," Shaffer told a
Time reporter in a recent interview. "There is a legal proceeding going on. I've been advised that I can't comment on that stuff."
He couldn't even tell
Harry Smith on CBS' Early Show on his own network just what the mood is like around
Late Show central. However, the rest of both interviews offer a very interesting peak into a life in music that has spanned just about every end of the TV dial and a very funny diversion from Smith's persistent reporter powers to get something out of him about the whole scandal. Something tells me Shaffer would have made one hell of a good press secretary.
Posted Sep 14th 2009 7:05PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Late Night, Celebrities, Reality-Free
The Internet's series of tubes were glowing red hot last week when a video surfaced of
Sen. Al Franken drawing a map of the United States totally from memory.
It's one of those tasks that may look easy on the surface, but becomes increasingly difficult as you try to do it, as evidenced by the efforts of our sister (heh) site,
Lemondrop.com. Some of their staff tried to do the same thing and ended up with what looked like mutated twin brothers of the U.S. that their parents keep locked in the basement and feed a bucket of fish heads once a week.
But Franken's mutant power (his X-Men name would be "Sketchy") dates back farther than his recent days of pandering to voters in an election that made the Dade County, Florida recount look like a jelly-bean counting contest.
Continue reading Franken's cartography skills date back to his SNL days
Posted Dec 29th 2008 2:03PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Late Night, News, Industry, Ratings, News and Gossip, Reality-Free
Remember the good old days, when becoming a joke in Johnny Carson's monologue was considered a bad thing for politicians? Some wily, horny old goat on the Senate Subcommittee for Restocking the Senate Office Supply Cabinet would get caught with a hooker nest in the middle of an underground speakeasy. And before you could say "Heavens to Teddy," he would be the punchline of some joke that involved a gallon of bathtub gin, a forklift full of Chinese geishas, and at least two camels.
Those days are deader than disco. 2008 marked an historic turning point in American politics, since
politicians quadrupled the number of appearances they made on late night comedy shows.
Oh, and America elected their first African-American president, too.
Continue reading Late night no longer a threat to politics - VIDEO
Posted Aug 11th 2008 2:27PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: TV Royalty, Daytime, Video, Talk Show, Reality-Free
I think I'm one of the very few people - maybe not even David Letterman himself - who remembers the very first
David Letterman Show with a real fondness. No, not NBC's
Late Night with David Letterman, I'm talking about his morning show, which ran on NBC for a very short time in 1980. I'm not quite sure how I watched this show. I would have been in high school in 1980, so I don't know if I skipped school to see some episodes or what (it was way before I had a VCR). Anyway, I thought it was quite good and had some real style, fun regulars (Edie McClurg!) and great guests (Steve Allen, Andy Kaufman). It's interesting to see how much this show resembles later Letterman. I wish he'd bring back some of these segments (like viewer mail and videotaped humor) on his current show.
After the jump is the first part of the September 12, 1980 episode (with original commercials!). After you watch that check out the other three parts
here (on the right). If you've never seen this particular show it's quite intriguing.
Continue reading Check out David Letterman's first show - no, not that one! - VIDEO
Posted Aug 4th 2008 12:05PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.
- Hiram Bullock: He was a veteran session guitarist probably best known to TV fans as being a guitarist in Paul Shaffer's band during the first couple of years of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC. He also played on classic albums by everyone from Billy Joel and Steely Dan to Barbara Streisand and Sting. He died in New York at age 52.
Continue reading TV Obits: Bullock, Powers, Caray, Ackerman, Whitehead
Posted Jun 12th 2007 10:45PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries
Don Herbert taught science on television to kids on the 1951-1964 series Watch Mr. Wizard. I was a little young to remember that show, but I do remember watching him when the show was revived in the 1980s as Mr. Wizard's World. There was also another version of the show in Canada titled Mr. Wizard that ran from 1971-1975, and a short-lived ABC Saturday morning show in 1971 called Curiosity Shop.
Continue reading Don Herbert, aka Mr. Wizard, dead at 89
Posted Jan 29th 2007 3:01PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: CBS, Late Night, TV Royalty, Celebrities, Talk Show
Wow, I feel really old.
David Letterman celebrates 25 years in the talk show seat (it's actually more, if you count his short-lived morning show that no one seemed to love but me) on February 1, and Bill Murray will come back to the show to help him celebrate the milestone. Murray was Letterman's first guest on the old NBC show in 1982 and his first guest on the CBS show in 1993.
The other guest on the February 1 show will be LeBron James. I'm not sure how that ties into the special day, but there you go. I'd rather see a regular, like Amy Sedaris, Steve Martin, Charles Grodin, Regis Philbin, or Tom Hanks. Hopefully they'll be some clips.
[via TV Tattle]
Posted Apr 3rd 2006 10:13AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: CBS, Late Night, TV Royalty, Programming, OpEd, Music and Variety, Watercooler Talk
It's a pretty well-known fact that,
even though
Late Show is on five days a week, David Letterman and his crew don't work on Fridays. For
years, I've thought that the show taped two episodes every Thursday, one at 5:30 and one at 7:30, with the latter
episode airing on Friday. Dave and crew would cleverly hide the fact that the show wasn't quite up on the latest events
by doing general monologue jokes (like stuff on Bush's malaprops) and by going into the audience for the show's twisted
take on "Stump the Band" or "Know Your Cuts of Meat".
But what I've been hearing lately,
from more than one source (Gary Dell'Abate of Howard Stern's show mentioned this after his boss' latest
Letterman
appearance, for instance) is that Dave and company now tape two shows on
Monday and one show on each day
from Tuesday through Thursday. Now, I don't doubt that this is true, but can the second Monday show be the one that
airs on Friday, five whole days later? It would seem that, no mater what they do to hide the fact that the show's
not current, five days is a long time in the world of late-night to hold a show. Can anyone who's either been in the
Late Show audience or just knows the taping schedule confirm this for me? Do they tape multiple shows on other
nights of the week? Let me know in the comments.
[Photo: AP]
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