hell’s paving stones

HPS once attended a very grand cook-off at Joe’s at which David Letterman, and his Show which is Late, sustained a certain amount of derision and irritable dismissal - which can flow easily when the room is full of jaded twentysomethings and the paella is beyond reproach.

We begged to differ - or at least we would have if we weren’t essentially cowards. The Late Show is very often a shambles, and Letterman himself may indeed be “rude and bald and megalomaniacal” as someone put it that night. In fact, generally speaking, about five nights a week the writers and Dave himself completely phone it in. But from time to time there comes a night where the show crackles with energy and glee, and these are the times when Letterman actually glories in the poor writing, the ill-conceived interviews and segments and especially, especially his unhidden contempt for anyone that he takes a dim view of, and wears these things like a goddamn cloak. In moments like these, he might be acknowledging that he’s essentially a servant monkey for the promotional, lowest common denominator machine of late nite variety, but damned if he’s going to be there in spirit. And then he’ll do something like look down at the desk for, like, a tenth of a second and just despair - that’s the point where someone might see that what powers this man’s blackened heart is, surprisingly, a profound sense of secular decency.

So we’re initiating an occasional roundup of the Late Show, because, we dunno, something about the dude seems to fit in with our sensibility. That a good enough reason?

The first roundup is of an episode that aired in Melbourne on Thursday, 5 January at 1.00am. Begins after the jump.

Titles: Tonight’s guests are Fox agit-prop talk show host Bill O’Reilly and Australia’s own Eric Bana “from Munich“. Couldn’t have picked a better night to start this thing.

Monologue: The sun rises in the morning. The Pope is Catholic. David Letterman does jokes about how cold New York is right now. The only slight difference is that tonight’s are a little dirtier than usual…North Face condoms and icy pole dancing or something. Some guy in the audience can’t get enough of the North Face condoms gag. Dave makes an awkward, oblique and poorly understood reference to - possibly - the birth of his son. Some lazy political swipes follow and the band strikes up.

Desk: Dave sets up the guests again. His expression of extreme concentration as he announces O’Reilly’s name suggests that he might be struggling to refrain from prefixing it with an obscenity. The night’s first drip of sarcasm comes when he reminds the audience that O’Reilly hosts The O’Reilly Factor where “this guy tells it like it is. He tells it like it is, Paul.” Oh. Boy. This interview is going to be like Godzilla vs. fucking Mothra. But the moment is swift, and after making a very odd New Year’s joke, Letterman moves on to introducing the first segment for the night.

Segments: Mid banter between Dave and Paul, a man comes screaming out of the wings, runs in a circle and then back into the wings. The joke is that he’s a stunt man who would have been set on fire, but for the fact that they couldn’t get a permit to do it. It is a crushing failure with the crowd.

The first segment is “Have you broken your New Year’s Resolution yet?” and it’s a Hello Deli thing. Rupert Jee’s friendly, polite, blank and utterly timorous face answers all Dave’s pleasantries in the shortest possible way, then scurries in and out of the shop to do Letterman’s bidding. The segment involves compelling a contestant to break a New Years resolution, in this case a young lady who has decided to give up smoking is ordered by Dave to light up and start puffing. There is an evil, sadistic pleasure derived from this segment, which should be disturbing but is offset by the complete happiness with which the participant violates her own modest ideal of self-improvement. Her friend is a little too confident in front of the camera but the segment is over too soon for us to really care.

The fire-less man comes back. And off.

A cat and a telephone are on a table for the next segment. Apparently they’re trying to replicate some news story where a cat dialled 911. Dave persists for, like, five minutes to try and talk the cat into doing it. We thought this was funny last night but on reflection, not so much any more.

Top Ten List: “Top ten ways New York will be different if Donald Trump is elected governor”. Absolutely none of the items are funny except when Dave says to Paul that “I think he’s just a kind of a snake”.

First Interview: After the break is over, Dave is clearly jazzed. Then in a move of completely petty genius, he reaches over the desk and stirs what is soon to become Bill O’Reilly’s coffee several times with the rubber end of his pencil. He announces O’Reilly, and the latter strolls onto set. The band plays “Baba O’Reilly” by the Who as he gets into his armchair. O’Reilly is looking jovial, like he’s lost in one of his Carribbean shower fantasies. The first part of the conversation goes something like this:

DL: So how was your holiday season?

BO: I had a good (leaves a pause so heavily pregnant that the baby is already on the floor for all to see, writhing in amniotic fluid)… Winter Solstice.

DL: (stares blankly) Uh…okay.

BO: You’re not allowed to say “Christmas” anymore. Isn’t that insane? (Stretches and grabs some notes from his jacket pocket) I’ve got some examples here…

At this point O’Reilly launches into a number of examples at schools and choirs etc. where Christmas has been secularised. Dave looks bored and pissed.

DL: (interrupting) But isn’t this just a case of people like you taking something that happened here and something that happened there and then saying that “oh my gosh, we’re under threat”?

The situation is reminiscent of the neighbourhood bigot coming round to try and talk your Dad into going to the footy. At this point Bill is looking like he’s suddenly changed gears.

BO: No, I’ve got a million examples…

DL: (abruptly) Oh, you’ve got a million examples. Okay. (lapses into silence as O’Reilly continues)

O’Reilly, seizing the opportunity, proceeds to take a lengthy sip of his coffee, apparently unaware of what has happened to it. The audience, which has so far not been sure what to laugh at, and audibly wincing at the tension, now laughs. There is a sympathetic Republican sitting somewhere to the right of the screen, judging by the timing of his laughter. Possibly the same guy that liked the North Face condoms.

Dave irritably moves the subject onto Iraq and “your buddies in the Administration”. Bill denies that he is close to the Administration, then holds forth about how “we don’t like it when people are saying ‘hate Bush’ and calling Iraqi terrorists ‘freedom fighters’, like Cindy Sheehan”. Letterman then asks if O’Reilly has lost a family member in combat, and given an answer in the negative, proceeds to ask him why he has the right to judge Sheehan that way. O’Reilly suggests that he thinks Sheehan’s been used and that he does actually “feel sorry for the woman”. He goes on the counterattack:

BO: But what about those others who have children still fighting, and who hear this stuff from people like her? What about their feelings, sir?

DL: Well, then I would ask, why did we put them there in the first place?

A discussion ensues about pre-war intelligence, which catches O’Reilly off guard. Then…

DL: Y’know, about 60% of what you say is crap.

BO: You have to respect my opinon…I respect yours, so you have to respect mine.

DL: Yeeaaaah, but I think that sometimes…

BO: (interrupting) Do you know what they say about you?

This is getting ugly. Somehow, things get wrapped up before a punch is thrown.

DL: Billy, always a pleasure.

Letterman drums the table and for a beat stares into the camera before preannouncing the upcoming Eric Bana interview. In that beat the viewer is exposed to the radiation of David Letterman’s dark and troubled soul.

Bit:. Biff Henderson, dressed up as a swami, makes some joke about dead DJ Wolfman Jack. It is disasterous.

Second interview: Eric’s interview is utterly uneventful, but civilised and pleasant. He talks about Australian Christmasses, eating prawns and oysters, being on the beach and watching cricket.

DL: It sounds idyllic…tell me, do you watch cricket and enjoy it, or do you just watch it?

Eric proceeds to explain the rules of the game quickly. Dave, despite the impertinence of his remark, is attentive and proceeds to ask Bana about his motor racing. Apparently Eric had his first crash recently.

They talk about Spielberg’s Munich, which Bana stars in. Dave reminisces about Black September and appears still somewhat disturbed by it. They show a clip and that’s it for Eric.

After the final break, the fire-less man is, astoundingly, back again. Dave grins in silent displeasure. He proceeds to thank “some” of the people who came on the show. Tomorrow night’s guests Pierce Brosnan and Marv Albert. We might give it a miss.

Update: Despite what we said about giving the following night’s Late Show a miss, we watched it, and astonishingly, the man-who-is-not-on-fire was back.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2006 at 5:03 pm and is filed under The people's opiate, Roundups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.