Just the Funny Parts

by Nell Scovell

  “Everyone wants to go the other way,” Gavin said.

  “I know. But I want to write for the funniest man on television.”

  I took that Friday off from Married People and flew east. My first meeting was with Steve, whose office had papers piled on every surface and even spilling onto the floor. I’m not an organized person myself so the mess put me at ease. Also, Steve is one of the most affable and quick-witted people on earth. I spoke fondly of his equally clever twin brother, Mark, who drew cartoons for SPY (and wrote novels and plays including the Tony-award winning book for Hairspray). Steve walked me down the hall to Dave’s office and handed me off to an assistant. That’s when I realized that I’d be meeting with Dave alone.

  I’d seen photos of Dave’s office in magazines, so the first thing I did was look up to see the dangling pencils that he famously tossed into the acoustic tile ceiling. For the rest of the meeting, the pencils hovered above me like little swords of Damocles. Dave sat behind his desk, wearing sweats and clutching a football. I’d prepared some jokes, but my main task was to convey that I could fit in. I mentioned my sportswriting background. We talked about favorite teams while Dave tossed the football into the air. When an employee walked in, he threw the ball at her without warning. She caught it.

  Before long, Dave signaled the interview was over.

  “Thanks for stopping by,” he said, standing up.

  The meeting seemed to go well. I hadn’t startled Dave by making any sudden moves. Later that day, Gavin called. He sounded angry.

  “Congratulations. You got the job. Now turn it down.”

  I screamed with happiness.

  Gavin told me I was nuts. The job was a 75 percent pay cut for me, and, by extension, for him. I told him that this was my dream job. He reminded me that I already had a job and a two-year contract that my bosses might not let me break. I returned to LA and talked to the Married People showrunners. I told them that I had a chance to write for Letterman, and they gave me the reaction that my agent hadn’t.

  “You have to take it!” they both exclaimed.

  I moved back to my rental studio on Fifty-Seventh and Eighth, walking distance from the Late Night offices at 30 Rock. The night before my first day, I opened my closet to figure out what to wear. After trying on a dozen outfits, I decided to go with Levi’s, a monochromatic shirt, and shiny patent-leather Oxfords from Fiorucci. People say, “Dress for the job you want,” and since I wanted a job that guys had, I dressed like a guy.

  On the walk to work the next morning, I felt a combination of excitement and pride. Only later would I learn what journalist Alexandra Petri perfectly expressed in this tweet: “wish I could shake younger me and tell her ‘if you are the only girl in the room it doesn’t mean you’re better. it means something is wrong.’ ”

  I now understand some of the factors that helped me slip through the gates. Studies show that men are promoted based on potential and women on experience. For most of the male writers, Late Night was their first TV job. I had already racked up credits on five TV series, including The Simpsons. I had proved myself to the point that Late Night was willing to take “a chance” on me. Second, I was a good “culture fit”—a popular and flawed hiring strategy that considers a candidate’s background in addition to their skills. A good culture fit allows a new employee to slide into an existing team. It’s also a great way to keep out the weirdos. The Late Night writers’ room was filled with college-educated, white, cisgendered men who liked sports and were always up for pizza. I rifled through my credentials. Harvard degree? Check. Hetero? Check. Sports fan? Check. Up for pizza? Check. Penis? Well, I’d had my share.

  There’s no doubt that my privileged background and skin color helped get me the job. Years later, I worked on a short-lived sitcom with the stunningly talented Larry Wilmore. One day, Larry and I got into a friendly argument about who had it tougher in TV writers’ rooms: women or African Americans. You can probably guess who took which side. Larry and I argued our cases to a stalemate. We did, however, agree on one thing: African American women had it the hardest.

  Today, I would concede to Larry that, at least at Letterman, it was preferable to be a white woman. The show ran from 1982 to 2015, and the writers’ room never included a person of color.

  That first morning, I got to work early and settled into my office, which was located on the main hallway, across from the copy room. A stack of papers was sitting on the desk—New York Times, Daily News, New York Post—the tools of a topical joke writer. Other writers started streaming past my door. Most waved and kept going. One stopped to introduce himself and chat about mutual friends. It all seemed friendly until just before he exited when he made an offbeat prediction.

  “Before this is over,” he said, pointedly, “I will see a tampon fall out of your purse.”

  I felt strangely shaken as he walked away. Over the years, when I’ve repeated this story, friends usually react confused.

  “Why would he have said that?”

  I had no idea . . . until about twenty years later when I was working on Lean In and learned about “stereotype threat.” It turns out that when members of a group are made aware of a negative stereotype, they are more likely to conform to that stereotype. For example, our culture perpetuates the myth that girls don’t excel at math so when asked to check off a box marked M or F before a math test, girls perform worse. Simply reminding girls that they’re girls creates anxiety which disrupts cognitive processing. Our culture also perpetuates the myth that women aren’t funny. Perhaps this explains why that male writer went out of his way to remind me of my gender that first day. If he were simply trying to shock, he could’ve said, “Before this is over, I will hear you fart.” It’s the same joke construction (i.e., in the future, some bodily function will embarrass you) but nongender specific. I don’t think he acted consciously, but by mentioning a tampon, he singled me out by what set me apart.

  In a more hospitable gesture, someone on the production staff stopped by my office to give me a welcome gift: an old-timey, pinstriped Late Night baseball shirt made of scratchy white wool flannel. The shirt had an “8” on the front and back commemorating the eighth season. I tried it on and it fell to mid-thigh. Most show jackets and t-shirts billow on me. They always give me a “small” but it’s often a “men’s small.”

  Late Night 8th season baseball shirt

  Courtesy of Colin Summers

  Dave also paused at my door to greet me. Actually, I caught a glimpse of the boss almost every day when he passed my office at about 10:50 a.m. Dave walked briskly, like a guy hurrying home in a rainstorm. In those days, Dave rarely set foot in the writers’ room and preferred to hear pitches over the car phone on his drive home. The writers would generate ideas during the day, then we’d break for that night’s taping. After the show, Dave would return to the office for a postmortem. We’d wait until we saw him hustling past the writers’ room, head fixed straight ahead to avoid any eye contact. About seven minutes later, Steve would gather his papers and say, “Well, I guess I’ll go call Dave.”

  Even this minimal interaction was reduced when the show switched networks in 1993 and relocated to the Ed Sullivan Theater. In the new offices, Dave and the writers were no longer on the same floor. At first, a glass security door to the executive suite required a card swipe, but supposedly Dave kept forgetting his ID so they switched to a thumbprint recognition system. At CBS, relations between the host and the writers grew even more strained. A former intern told me that Dave once dispatched him to hand back pitches for the top ten list to the writers with the message, “Like this. Only funny.”

  Despite Dave’s bullying tactics, everyone in the office was eager to please him. It was practically built into the job description, which boiled down to “make Dave happy.” When you’re working that hard to please one person, it starts to feel like infatuation and the women—and men—who worked on the show routinely fell in love with the boss.

  Since retiring, Dave
has grown a long white beard and looks like his home address is a deserted island. But back in the day, he made sneering sexy. Dave combined a Midwest “aw-shuckness” with a New York City “fuck-youness” and the result was irresistible. Movie stars threw themselves at him. Julia Roberts and Drew Barrymore openly flirted with him onscreen. Behind the scenes, a stunning, Emmy-award winning blond actress once complained to a Late Night producer, “Why won’t Dave fuck me?”

  Dave was catnip to nonfamous, brainy women, too. A book editor friend pleaded with me to get her a date with my then-boss.

  “He seems so miserable on the show,” she told me. “But I think I could make him happy. We’d have fun!”

  My friend’s complete confidence that she could soothe Dave’s anxieties led me to coin a proverb: “A woman who thinks it would be fun to date David Letterman is a woman who knows nothing about show business.”

  Show business attracts performers driven by the need for attention, the need for praise, the need for approval . . . the need . . . the need . . . See the through line? The creative process is often wrapped up in bottomless anxiety and when the world applauds the result, it lessens the anxiety. Briefly. Then the need returns and even intensifies. Dave’s superpower was being able to cling to his neurotic insecurity in the face of staggering success. It made no sense to me. He was consistently funny and the best interviewer in late night. Yet his perception seemed to be that every joke tanked and every show was lame. One Friday, Dave finished taping what I thought was a fine and entertaining hour of television—a perfect kickoff to a weekend. A few minutes later, I heard Dave storming from the elevator to his office.

  “You know what I’m gonna do?” he blared. “I’m gonna go to Connecticut, shut all the doors and windows, and pump my house full of snot!”

  Another time, Dave was so distressed that during the show’s postmortem, he made a group of producers and staffers line up. He stood at the head of the line and announced that he wanted each of them to take a swing at him. Nobody wanted to hit their boss, but apparently, he insisted. He moved down the row, stopping in front of each staffer and encouraging them, “Harder. No, harder!” as they delivered uncertain punches to his shoulder. This story perfectly captures Dave’s unique spin on the power dynamic: he’s the bully who makes you punch him.

  Truth is often the best basis for comedy, so I embraced the “Dave is a bully” conceit for many of my sketches. In one viewer mail bit, I had Dave hold a magnifying glass over a tiny sunbather in the miniature NYC cityscape until the sunbather exploded in flames. Another letter asked, “How many pairs of glasses does Paul Shaffer own?” Dave answers that Paul actually wears a new pair of glasses every night. Dave tries to badger Paul into telling the audience why, but Paul is reluctant to explain. Dave tells Hal Gurnee (the director) to roll some “bogus” explanatory videotape. We cut to a pre-taped segment of Paul exiting into a hallway where Dave is waiting, his jacket slung over his shoulder.

  “Well, well, well, look who we have here. If it isn’t Paul Shaffer,” Dave says menacingly.

  Dave proceeds to shake Paul down for money. Paul swears he doesn’t have any so Dave roughs him up, shoving Paul face-first into a wall. When Paul turns around, his glasses are mangled. Dave looks on and laughs as Paul shakes his head and mutters, “Every day we seem to go through this.”

  Although Dave played a convincing tormentor on TV, he was always nice to me. Sometimes while racing to his office in the morning, he’d break his stride and pause outside my door.

  “Hey, how’s it going. Do you need anything? Would you like some soup?”

  Once Dave dropped in to let me know that one of my Top Ten pitches surprised him. I looked forward to the occasions when he stopped by, until one day in the writers’ room, we landed on a timely idea. Some of the writers wanted Steve to pitch it to Dave immediately so we could run with the premise that night. Steve seemed reluctant. He preferred to wait and call Dave in his car.

  “Or,” he said, “perhaps Nell could pitch it to Dave the next time he’s in her office.”

  I was mortified at being singled out. It was just an offhand comment, but I took it as an insinuation that I was forming a less-than-professional relationship with the boss. My response was to start shutting my door at 10:30 so that when Dave strode down the hall, there’d be no reason for him to pause.

  My hyper-sensitivity probably stemmed from my experience with Stafford. I had a deep distaste for colleagues blurring the line between personal and professional, and lines were being blurred like crazy at Late Night. To me, the office resembled Versailles. It was a culture of palace intrigue with whisper campaigns, shifting alliances, and sexual liaisons. Dave reigned supreme, enjoying the rights and privileges of the monarch. It was admirable of me to shut my office door to remove any appearance of impropriety. It was also incredibly stupid. I cut myself off from having direct access to the king.

  Like many, I tried to ignore the intrigue and focus on the work. That had its own frustrations. Writers would submit sketches by slipping them under Steve’s door, which explained the papers I’d seen on the floor of his office. Months would go by without a reaction. I joined the show in July and my first week there, I wrote a script for an elaborate pre-taped trailer for a summer blockbuster Late Night: The Movie. The bit featured Dave as an action star being chased by fireballs down the halls of 30 Rock while tossing out his catch phrase: “Aw, man, would you look at this?” The trailer also starred Michael Douglas as “Morty,” Denzel Washington as “bandleader Paul Shaffer,” and Glenn Close as “the lovely assistant Rose who betrayed them all.” I never got any response, yes or no. Summer turned into fall and an action movie trailer no longer made sense.

  I contributed in every way available. For immediate gratification, there was always the “Top Ten List.” A bigger thrill was when Dave included jokes I wrote in his monologue. One gag started with Dave complaining that his mom was cleaning out the attic and had tossed a bunch of his things even though there was “some valuable stuff in there.” The audience imagined Dave pining over his Golden Age comic books or baseball cards, and then he delivered the punchline, “I said, ‘Mom, Mom, did you have to throw out my collection of Krugerrands?’ ”

  Prop from Viewer Mail

  Courtesy of the author

  Thursdays were my favorite because we tackled Viewer Mail. One week, a viewer noted that Dave seemed to have “an extra air of giddiness” about him. I created a new cologne for Dave to hawk: “Uncork the bottle and release the giggly schoolgirl inside you! Dave Letterman’s “Giddiness”—available at all fine perfume counters. By Prince Matchabelli.”

  A more elaborate sketch involved a pre-tape of Paul at the “People’s Choice Awards,” winning in the category, “The Celebrity You’d Least Like To Have Dinner With.” I got to sit behind Paul in my only on-camera appearance for Late Night.

  Me, top left-hand corner, appearing in a Viewer Mail bit, featuring Paul Shaffer.

  Late Night with David Letterman courtesy of Universal Television LLC

  In October, Steve let me know that the show was picking up my option for the next cycle. Unlike at Newhart, I hadn’t been worried. The increased job security meant I could upgrade from the studio I’d been living in since my divorce. I found a one-bedroom rental in the back of an Art Deco building on Central Park West and signed a two-year lease.

  That night, I couldn’t sleep. The thought of spending more time at Late Night made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t quite pinpoint the problem, but the show’s creative process was wildly inefficient and the overall mood was unhappy. This wasn’t just my perception. Years later, Dave greeted a new writer by saying, “This is a terrible job, but it will look good on your résumé.”

  I’d been so concerned about whether I would suit Late Night that I hadn’t contemplated whether Late Night would suit me. Lots of talented people—male and female—managed to become long-time denizens of what one producer dubbed “Crazytown,” but I just couldn’t see me thrivin
g there. Roughly five months after I got my dream job, I decided to quit. I only wish I’d come to this realization before I signed a new apartment lease.

  Samples from Two Submissions for Top Ten Lists

  Top Ten Ways You Know You Have a Bad Doctor 10/25/1990

  He bets you five bucks that it’s two livers and one kidney

  Combination diploma/cab driver’s license

  As he writes out prescriptions, he says, “One for you and one for me . . .”

  He wears a rubber glove on his head (Oh sorry, that’s the way you know a bad comedian)

  When you mispronounce his name and he tells you it’s a hard g in “Mengele”

  He makes you do your own pelvic exam while he watches

  When she giggles she was a stewardess before she met her husband, Dean of Yale Medical School

  He insists on holding the specimen cup

  After I gave notice, I was summoned to Dave’s office.

  “I hear you’re moving on,” Dave said. “Seems like you just got here, so I was wondering why.”

  I considered pouring out my frustrations, but didn’t see an upside. Only an idiot would complain to the owner of a donut shop that donuts are unhealthy. Also, Dave’s office door was open and his assistant, one of his rumored mistresses, was sitting within earshot. I figured any complaints I voiced would be repeated and used against me.

  Top Ten Ways McDonald’s Is Getting Healthier 7/25/1990

  Fresher salads, fewer snipers

  Reducing radiation emitted by Golden Arches

  Fired all lepers on staff

  Less horse tallow in the beef tallow

  Ended tie-in promotion with Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer