Sometimes I think the only reason I pursued this career was to be able to appear on late-night talk shows. I grew up in the ’70s, a time when patrons were both the newest, most exciting talents and legends of bygone eras – some going back to Broadway, some even going back to silent films. That was my first glimpse behind the scenes of show business, where all these entertainers were telling me about their world: Bob Hope, Sly and the Family Stone, Dolly Parton, Sammy Davis Jr., Robert Klein. After school I was able to watch Dinah Shore and Mike Douglas. Then in the evening Merv Griffin and Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett. When I started high school, talk shows were on until half past one in the night. During a turbulent time in our home – my parents’ marriage was falling apart – it felt good Watching Jeff Altman do stand-up on “Merv Griffin.”
I was just as interested in Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter on a talk show as the comedians. I’d like to say most of what I know comes from books – but I guess 80 percent of it came from talk shows. Later I began to understand why they work. Why is Johnny so incredibly funny, even when the jokes not ignite? I was drawn to the crisp attitudes of the guests – George Carlin and Richard Pryor talked about what was wrong with America and delivered observations about the normal madness of everyday life in the most brilliant way.
Then David Letterman came along when I was in middle school and he dismantled the entire form from the ground up. Letterman had fake guests – he interviewed an author who claimed to be Michael Crichton, and in the middle of the interview the guy started crying and shouted, “I lied! I’m not Michael Crichton! I’m a bad person!” I had the feeling of being there live as something was invented. When they gave Letterman his own late night slot, to me it was like Star Wars every night of the week. You could never tell whether he liked his guests or not. People came in, Madonna or Cher, and it became confrontational. We all wanted and were allowed to be David Letterman, to dismantle everything and call the whole scam what it is.
Garry Shandling and the Curtain
Probably the biggest highlight of my career was working for Garry Shandling on his satirical talk show “The Larry Sanders Show.” Garry had observed all the behind-the-scenes intrigue in this world and thought it was the perfect metaphor for life. The curtain and what lies behind it, the way we all put up a facade and present ourselves on the outside very differently than we feel on the inside. A way to talk about human weakness in a wonderfully funny way.
As my career took off, I was invited onto these talk shows and got to know them from the inside. The first was “The Dennis Miller Show.” I was a guest with the band Live, who were making their debut there – incredibly exciting. I sat next to Usher during “Jay Leno.” Jimmy Fallon had me do a sketch with Keanu Reeves. Last year I was on “Jimmy Kimmel” with Tim Walz right before the election. “Craig Ferguson” was particularly fun because there was no preliminary talk at all and you really had no idea what was going to happen next.
My whole family has been a guest at “Stephen Colbert.” I was in there, my wife Leslie [Mann] was in there. Then our daughter Maude came, and they played her a montage of all the times Leslie and I had joked about the problems with her as a teenager. Then Colbert asked if she wanted to say something back, and Maude said, “I won’t say anything about them. I’m not that petty!” I felt like I had come full circle. You only know whether you have done everything right as a parent when your child is on a talk show.
Letterman after 9/11
This is also where we turn when someone needs to classify the day’s events. We saw Letterman talk about 9/11. We have seen political convulsions through the eyes of these people. I’m always amazed at how talk show hosts write jokes that make us laugh at something dark and disturbing. You can’t appreciate Kimmel and Colbert and Fallon and Seth Meyers enough for what a Herculean achievement this is. Imagine if your job was to get up in the morning, look at what happened in the Iran War, and then deliver an 11-minute monologue about it. It’s almost incomprehensible that they could ever pull this off.
I wish Arsenio Hall was still on the air. When he appeared, it was as if a huge part of the culture that had been denied access to the airwaves for years suddenly exploded. He had Public Enemy and Prince and Andrew Dice Clay. Miles Davis and all the early rappers. We are all poorer for not having that right now.
But the hosts we have now – you can tell they will fight to the last breath to be allowed to express themselves. This is the essence of America. It should be the place where these voices are heard – all voices across the political spectrum. That’s why there was panic when there was talk of removing Kimmel from the program. But the outcry after Kimmel’s suspension brought him back, and that was really encouraging. If a million people cancel Hulu, those in charge realize that there is no limit to how many more will cancel if they actually cancel the show. In the USA, money wins – and it works both ways.
Is the late night format dying?
Some say late night is dying out – but I hope not. I love the host at the desk, with the band, doing the monologue. I love it when the monologue works. I love it when he doesn’t. I hope that one day our country will be stable enough so that some monologues no longer have to be about all the terrible things that happened that day. But when almost everything that happens is terrible, you really need to get together and talk about it.
So I pray that when the entire entertainment industry one day belongs to one man, a bizarre half-human, half-robot creature who makes all the decisions for us in our surveillance state, that man likes talk shows. And even if it doesn’t make economic sense, I hope he leaves at least one of them on the air.
