Wed, October 15, 2003
Lately on Letterman
The new fall season has wreaked havoc on my TiVo viewing. (It took me over two weeks to finally see Trading Space$ 100 Grand, for crying out loud!) By now all of the shows outside of the Fox "delayed by baseball" stable have premiered, so things should have calmed down a little. However, due to the near total flameout on the sitcom front, I've been desperately forgiving with the dramas, meaning there are still at least ten hours of new dramas that I'm recording every week, hoping that if I stay with them at least a couple will end up being good enough that Fall 2003 (Part I – I feel our first mid-season coming on in another week or two) won't be a total loss.
For the most part, this is fine. It's okay if I fall behind on the narrative shows, because they're not particularly timely. I can catch up on two or three episodes on a Saturday afternoon and be okay. Plus, most people aren't watching; it's unlikely I'll be caught stammering by a friend or co-worker asking "Hey, did you see The Handler this week?" But with Letterman, I start to notice when I fall behind. (Plus, Letterman is valuable when I'm in a hurry to free up space on TiVo. With the ability to read the monologue on closed captioning while fast-forwarding, plus skipping the musical guest, The Late Show maximizes my Time Deleted-to-Time Spent Viewing ratio.)
Monday's episode featured headline guest Robin Williams, which reminded me why I had taken a few days off watching Dave. I really used to adore Robin Williams, but lately he seems to be trying desperately to catch up with Eddie Murphy in the race to accept terrible roles in abysmal comedies and retroactively invalidate his legacy as one of the all-time great humorists. Or at least overtake Billy Crystal for second place. It's only as a result of such praiseworthy dramatic performances as Insomnia the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting and – to a lesser extent – One Hour Photo that I can even manage to take him seriously at all. He's particularly unwatchable on Letterman because he launches into this stream-of-consciousness tirade of accents and characters that just never lets up. (And rarely causes a laugh.) It gets to the point where I'm literally blushing with embarrassment on his behalf, and looking away from the TV screen. He's up there yammering along – the Boisterous Southerner, the Ghetto Homey, the French Guy, the Queer – Dave can't get a word in and the audience, apparently relishing the novelty of his affected spewing, actually encourages him by cheering and laughing.
So, lately I've adopted the practice of cataloging Williams's madness in order to take my mind off the "comedy." Attempting to weather the storm as best I can, I keep track of how many characters/accents he does and how many times he jumps out of his seat. This appearance included no less than 47 accents – including Babe Ruth, a French bumblebee, and a man looking at Barry Bonds's penis. (I generously gave Williams credit for only one character if a group of five Frenchmen were uninterrupted by other characters, allowing for the unlikely chance that he may have intended them all to be the same guy.) I haven't been keeping track for that long, but I believe 47 is a record. It defeats the nearest score in my memory by at least twenty. As a result of all that, he was only out of his seat four times and one of those was a passably entertaining (if comedically unoriginal) rendition of "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" from Cabaret as sung by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
What saddens me so much about Williams's appearances with Letterman is the same thing that saddens me about his recent work in comedic films or his recent HBO stand-up special: The emphasis of "zaniness" over substance. I wouldn't mind his marathons of split personality if the material was as funny as his stand-up routines from the late '70s and early '80s. But he trades on the silly accent and not on anything funny he has to say. Repeating "I'm gon' caul yew 'Daddy Dave'" in his backwoods southern accent doesn't qualify as humor. The tortured, finely nuanced characters we've seen in his recent dramatic work indicate that Williams is in fact a deeply fascinating man; I wish we could see any of that in an interview with him. Instead, his frenetic performances (on The Late Show and in comedies) have begun to devalue the sharp and groundbreaking comedy he was once known for. Before long, the present will outweigh the past and it will be impossible for me to give him credit for the fine work he once did in the light of his current oeuvre.
Interestingly, his cringe-inducing appearance left me secretly wishing for Tom Dreesen, an old pal of Dave's from his stand-up roots, and a favorite of mine because of his stories from the old days. Dreesen is one of those guys who just tells stories well, and embodies the style of a bygone era. It's impossible for me to describe him without using the term "dapper." He looks for all the world as though Dean Martin has just stepped out of a time warp – lean, crisp, and perfectly composed. He has this perfectly glimmering hair and these bright, sparkling eyes. And watching him reminisce with Dave feels like another fleeting glimpse into what Letterman must really be like, which is always a thrill. Exceeding my wildest fantasies, Dreesen actually appeared on the show later in the week, which is impressive considering how infrequently he drops by. He talked about his divorces and his grandkids and told some old Sinatra stories and it was just great. His stories are always perfectly constructed, with just the right pace and some too-good-to-be-true punch line at the end. It was great to see him, and his effortless class was a ringing contrast to the chaos of Robin Williams.
Finally, the week featured a standout appearance by Jessica Simpson. This was initially impressive simply in the fact that she didn't come to sing, she just came to talk. I'm no great fan of her music, but I've watched an episode and a half of her MTV show Newlyweds, and although I've successfully resisted becoming a regular viewer I have been captivated by the way she's portrayed. She comes off as a rich, spoiled, rock-stupid diva who is self-involved to a fault. I know it can't be that bad because the dude she's married to (Nick Somebody from 98 Degrees) would have taken off if she were really so awful. As with any reality show, the producers can only tell so many stories in the allotted time, so they have to choose how they want to represent things and then edit out the footage which doesn't support that view. I don't know Jessica, but I strongly wanted to believe there was more that we weren't seeing.
Which is what's great about Letterman. It is very easy to tell which guests he has a real rapport with, and which ones he barely tolerates. Particularly with the cute girlies, the Dave chemistry goes a long way towards indicating if a guest actually has a head on her shoulders. A Letterman appearance turned me around on Selma Blair, from indifferent to adoring. Dave is a big reason, aside from the Lyle Lovett connection, that I continue to adore Julia Roberts – and his chemistry with Jennifer Lopez has helped me cut her a lot of slack. He brought Natalie Portman and Samantha Mathis to our attention. And Jessica Simpson was pretty damn fantastic with Dave. She managed to appear extremely self-aware about some of the idiotic moments that have been portrayed on Newlyweds laughing about the infamous chicken/tuna incident and explaining it pretty convincingly. She seemed bright and attentive and kept up with Dave's jokes and off-balance interview style. And, when she slipped up and mentioned that she had been on Oprah, she held her own as Letterman abandoned the rest of the interview and just focused on that. "I still can't believe you were on Oprah," Dave intoned, bringing back memories of his Oprah Log from last year's failed attempt to get invited on her show. Without batting an eye, Simpson volleyed back, "Well... I have a successful TV show." She's no Bonnie Hunt, but for a plastic teen pop idol, it was pretty impressive banter.
Also, Dave dropped 20,000 ping pong balls off the roof of the building, which is like a dream to me because it's the kind of stunt I wish he'd do every night. It's one of those throwbacks to the old Late Night era and it reminds you of the Dave that did stuff just out of the fun of having a show.
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