Word: letterman
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Interning for "Late Night with David Letterman" is kind of like going to Harvard--you are never quite sure how to mention it in casual conversation. When people ask me what I did on my semester off last spring, I invariably tell them something like, I worked in New York, or for television or at NBC. It is very similar to saying that I go to school "up North...
...mention of "Late Night," however, evokes a much stronger explosion of spontaneous curiosity. Brushes with famous people are exciting; part of their appeal is that we want to know what they are like in real life--a kind of People Magazine syndrome. A nightly talk show like Letterman offers innumerable opportunities for future name-dropping, and that's not even counting the people you can meet just walking around the hallways...
...snuck off to intern for "Late Night with David Letterman" last winter. I was there for about five months working in the talent department and generally doing whatever they needed me to do. Now that I'm back in school, I have been getting a lot of questions about my experience. So I thought it would be a lot easier to answer them in bulk...
Late night melodrama: An hour or so later, David Letterman says, "Before we continue, I think we should congratulate our friend Jay Leno for being selected as the host of The Tonight Show. And the good news for us is, we get Stump the Band." This hoariest of Carson time fillers is no silver medal for Letterman, in his 10th year as star of his own NBC chatfest. The world had long known that the anvil-jawed Leno, Tonight's exclusive guest host since 1987, was bound to succeed Carson. But press tattle hinted that Letterman, who gave Leno...
...more guest spots. "This is probably the only job in the world," the peninsula-jawed Leno wryly notes, "where you get the job and they go, 'O.K., good! You'll be starting . . . in a year.' " At least Leno knows the job will be his. Letterman, in his later slot, must stew. The other night, he made a mistake, then groused, "That's why I don't get 11:30!" He must be content with what he has: the best talk-show...