WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2015 | THE BALL STATE DAILY NEWS | BALLSTATEDAILY.COM | PAGE 3
LETTERMAN FEATURES@BSUDAILYNEWS.COM
Alumnus plans future after 33-year career Letterman reflects on career highs, lows before last show | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK (AP) — You don’t think of David Letterman as a stop-and-smell-the-flowers type, but here he is, at a major turning point yet savoring his chocolate milkshake. Perched on a stool in a fastfood restaurant beside the Ed Sullivan Theater, where he has hosted “Late Show” for two decades but will do so only a bit longer, Dave unwinds from that day’s taping while, more than once, he comments on his shake’s deliciousness. He also thinks today’s show was excellent, a surprising appraisal from this famously self-critical star. Cher did a surprise walk-on. Martin Short brought down the house with his musical eulogy to Dave. Norah Jones sang “Don’t Know Why” and everyone got misty. “I wish tonight’s show had been the last show,” Letterman said. “Tonight should have been the last show. I don’t know what we’re gonna do for the next two weeks.” It isn’t hard to detect, or understand, the simmering ambivalence in Dave’s decision to take his leave after 33 years in late night and 22 years hosting CBS’ “Late Show,” on May 20. But by now he’s done it all.
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Rent gave Letterman a job at the station writing biographies for classical composers to preview them before the station played their songs. The station primarily played classical music and news at the time. “As he got his chops and felt more confident, he started writing his own biographies of the composers so he started making up things about their lives,” Rent said. “Then we started getting calls from music faculty saying Mozart was not illegitimate.” After receiving calls from music professors, Bill Tomlinson, chairman of the radio and TV department, asked Rent what was going on. The conversation ended with Rent becoming the, “first guy to hire [Letterman] and the first guy to fire him.” Rent moved him to writing news, but Letterman continued to make up stories. “He would slip in absurd stories about whatever his mind allowed him to,” Rent said. “It would be like him doing a stand up bit today or a monologue on his show.” Not long after Rent moved Letterman off writing news, Letterman’s first program, “Make It or Break It,” began. Letterman told Rent that
Letterman has carved a place in cultural history with his pioneering brand of postmodern silliness that collared “Late Night” fans on his arrival in 1982 and subsequently was absorbed into the Age of Irony he played a major role in charting. This legacy-in-the-making was long ago coined “Lettermanesque.” But don’t talk legacy with Dave. He swiftly raises his deflector shield. “The real credit goes to the writers,” he said. “It was their show that I was doing, especially early on. And then I got to a point I knew how to do what they were wanting me to do. “We had guys who had worked at the Harvard Lampoon,” he said, flashing a grin. “I attended university in Muncie, Indiana.” Now he’s nearing the end of a record-breaking, surely never-to-be-matched run that exceeds even Johnny Carson’s 30 years on “The Tonight Show.” “God, it’s been 6,000 shows,” he said. “I used to have these conversations with [wife] Regina: ‘How much longer can I do this? How much longer do I want to do this?’ “But it was so much fun tonight, just really fun,” he said again. “I’m really, really torn. I know why I shouldn’t be doing it anymore, but these last few months have been soooo easy.” No wonder. As the days count down, love for Dave is escalating. “With a simple retirement announcement, every day I’m Salesman of the Month.”
WBST needed to start playing rock and roll. Rent refused at first, but eventually Letterman convinced him — but only after midnight. So, Rent advertised the show and the two arrived at the station at midnight on a Monday — even though the station signed off at 10 p.m. “We played rock and roll for an hour,” Rent said. “I don’t know what I was thinking, I don’t know why I wasn’t scared, but he DJed it and then he would play his game called ‘Make It or Break It.’” Each night, Letterman would play a song from the B-side of a record, which Rent described as usually “very average to awful.” Letterman asked the audience to call in and vote to make or break the song. If they voted break it, Letterman would break and crunch the record on the air. “We got somewhere between 75 and 150 calls on a night, and that’s a lot of calls in a short period of time,” Rent said. “Just, constantly, all the lines were ringing.” For the first two nights, the audience voted to break the record. But on Wednesday, they voted to make it. So Letterman said he would give the record to the first person to come into the radio station at 8 a.m. the next morning. The next morning, there was no Letterman. More than 40 students were lined up at the station, and it was up to Rent to figure out what to do. Tomlinson was there, and he asked Rent what had happened. Tomlinson did not know about “Make It or Break It,” and Rent didn’t want him to. So Rent “didn’t lie. I just didn’t
Ball State often mentioned on Letterman show Host made weekly comments during 21-game loss streak DANIEL BROUNT FEATURES EDITOR | features@bsudailynews.com
PHOTO COURTESY OF YOUTUBE
In 2000, David Letterman mentioned Ball State many times because the football team was on a 21-game losing streak. On Oct. 6, 2000, Letterman asked his guest, Magic Johnson, to give a pep talk.
Letterman’s life was anything but easy in October 2009, when an extortion plot compelled him to acknowledge on the air that he had been sexually involved with women on his staff. He weathered that storm, largely thanks to a candid and contrite accounting to his viewers. “It was the worst time of my life,” he said. “I remember just thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’ve ruined my family,’ and that became the only concern. And then: ‘Oh, yeah, you could get fired.’” But on Dave’s crisis meter, the scandal far exceeded his emergency quintuple bypass operation in January 2000. “The heart surgery was fun,”
he said. “People would come and see me and bring me things. And the doctors were wonderful. Those people — I mean, who does a job that well?” Another miracle of medical science: An antidepressant he’s been taking in recent years. “It saved my life. I used to wonder how other people weren’t always screaming and punching the Sheetrock. And then I started this, and I felt like, ‘Ahhh, I see!’ And now I don’t punch Sheetrock and scream as much.” But nothing, no drug or elixir, can turn back the years. “There’s no cure to being 68,” he said. So May 20 is closing night.
«in He has constantly showed his pride the university ... He is so prideful of his education and his opportunities and his time here. » AL RENT, Director of Relationship Marketing and Community Relations
fill in all the facts.” He told Tomlinson that they “conducted a survey. We wanted to know if students liked the music we were playing.” When Letterman came in that day and said he was ready for Thursday’s “Make It or Break It,” Rent told him they were ending the show. “We tried a lot of different things, we had no fear in those particular days and Dave had a lot of humor,” Rent said. “That was my time with Dave. And we had good fun together, but then I graduated and he continued on.” Later on, Letterman started another radio station, WAGO, with some of his friends. It was a carrier-current station, which meant it was only broadcast to campus and was not technically on the air. Because of that, normal radio station regulations did not apply. “It was bizarre, but it was their station and they could do with it what they wanted to because it wasn’t ‘on the air,’” Rent said. “And that’s how he began sort of honing his craft and having that kind of Letterman freedom that he always needed.”
LETTERMAN’S LEGACY
Since Letterman graduated from Ball State in 1969, he has started an endowed scholarship program at the university, had the David Letterman Communication and Media Building named after him and started a Ball State lecture series. Former Ball State president Jo Ann Gora
and the Board of Trustees decided to name the media building after him in 2007. Letterman initially denied the honor, but later accepted and visited campus for the building’s opening. “He has never forgotten his alma mater,” Gora said in a 2007 interview. “He has always wanted to support the students and he has always had a special place in his heart for students like himself who are aspiring for careers in radio and television.” But he started giving back to Ball State long before 2007. In 1985, he created an endowed scholarship for telecommunications students at the university. The scholarship provides three awards each year at $10,000, $5,000 and $3,333. In 1986, he donated money to start the campus’s current radio station: WCRD. The station’s last three call letters stand for “Cardinal Radio Dave.” Zach Huffman, a senior telecommunications and journalism news major, served as general manager of WCRD in 2014-15. He said “there would not be a student radio opportunity” at the university without people like Letterman. “It’s been an amazing opportunity to work for WCRD, to have it as a backbone and a staple of CCIM for Ball State, and none of that would be possible if it wasn’t for [Letterman],” Huffman said. “He’s been a pivotal aspect and a pivotal component to
Between “Late Night” and “Late Show,” David Letterman has more than 6,000 episodes worth of experience on the late-night talk show circuit. This will come to an end with his final episode of “Late Show” Wednesday night. During his show’s run, the Ball State graduate mentioned his alma mater several times. In 2000, he had segments on the Ball State football team’s 21-game losing streak every week. Before each game, he gave the team a pep talk. After each game, he showed the highlights. Letterman had contacted Al Rent, Ball State director of relationship marketing and community relations, to ask for the highlights each week. Rent and Letterman were classmates at Ball State in the late 1960s. “David asked the show to call me — so part of that was I was thrilled that he even remembered where I was — to call me and see if they could have highlights of the games,” Rent said. “So we took the highlights, and ... we sent them every Saturday after the game.” The night before Ball State’s
the success of Ball State.” Then, after the Letterman Building was named after him in 2007, he started the David Letterman Distinguished Professional Lecture and Workshop Series. A few times a year, the series brings in professionals and industry leaders to speak to students. Letterman himself visited campus to talk with three of those speakers: Biz Stone, cofounder of Twitter, in 2010; Rachel Maddow, host of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” in 2011; and media proprietor Oprah Winfrey in 2012. As Letterman continues to thank Ball State with his donations, Ball State returns the favor. “From my standpoint, and really I speak for the institution too, we couldn’t be more proud,” Rent said. “Not only of his success but the fact that he has gone on to talk about the opportunities and the education that he had here in such a positive way ... We are so appreciative about what he’s done.” Beyond direct contributions to campus, Letterman has also mentioned Ball State numerous times on his shows. “If you look at the other celebrities, how many of them do you know where they went to school? He could have just sort of forgotten and never brought it up,” Rent said. “But he has constantly showed his pride in the university ... He is so prideful of his education and his opportunities and his time here. He keeps talking about it.” In 2000, Letterman included numerous “Late Show” segments on Ball State football during team’s
game against Miami of Ohio on Oct. 7, 2000, Letterman asked his guest and basketball hall of fame inductee, Magic Johnson, to give that week’s pep talk. “First of all, you got to think like a winner,” Johnson said on the show. “Forget what happened in the past, ‘cause nothing matters but tomorrow. You gotta go out there, you gotta fight. ... You gotta get down there and say, ‘You know what, we’re gonna win this game tomorrow. We’re gonna win this game.’” The next day, the football team won 15-10 and broke its losing streak. After the win, Rent, Charlie Cardinal and Hudson Akin, vice president for university advancement, flew to the New York show to give Letterman the game ball as a thanks. “We went in the stage door [of ‘Late Show’], and this entire production meets us and says, ‘We cannot believe you’re here ... We are including the game ball presentation on the show. And Dave says you two went to school together ... he would like you to come on the show and present it to him.’ I went, ‘Oh, yes. Thank you, dear lord. This is incredible,’” Rent said. On the show that day, Letterman said about the win, “I’d like to think I had more than a little something to do with this.” He continued his Ball State football segments for the rest of that season.
21-game losing streak. “If I had to spend money to market the university on national television on a show like Letterman, at least during the football time,” Rent said. “... we calculated how much time he gave us on the air and how much it would be worth at national ad rates, and it was over $12 million for that time. We don’t have $12 million to spend on advertising on a national level.” Letterman has raised the university’s profile, Rent said, because he constantly talks about the university on his show. “For Dave and us, in my mind, it was always I don’t care what he says about us, just say something about us,” he said. “And it becomes a marriage. So if you like Dave, you like Ball State. If you like Ball State, you may like Dave.” Rent expects Letterman’s contribution to continue after his retirement. He said he thinks Letterman will come back to Ball State, whether it is for his lecture series or for something else. “Dave has allowed our profile to gain significant height, just by being associated with him and him with us ... We would love to have more winning athletic teams, and we will, that comes cyclically,” Rent said. “But Dave is a constant.”
DN FILE PHOTO BOBBY ELLIS