by Nell Scovell
“It’s a big laugh,” Dave said. “A huge laugh. I understand. But I think if I start on this big laugh, how’s the rest of my bit gonna work? I’m just gonna tank.”
My brain went into overdrive trying to think of a way to soothe Dave’s concerns.
“It’s just a light, fun moment,” I said. “You know Leno and Conan were never seen having fun together when that show was in transition—”
“Then let Conan do the bit,” Dave interjected.
“I just think it makes you look like a good guy to be seen with Stephen,” I said.
“But he gets the joke,” said Dave.
What? No. Dave has the line and Colbert slinks offstage. I didn’t know how to react. Flailing, I turned to Lewis.
“You have more experience with the show, Lewis. What do you think?”
“I think people who start on a big laugh gain a lot of goodwill,” Lewis said.
That didn’t appease Dave, either. Just when it seemed like all was lost, the cavalry appeared: George Stevens Jr., who created the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978 and was still producing the show in his eighties, heard there was some tension and stopped by to help. George is a consummate diplomat. He listened intently as Dave repeated his concerns, then assured Dave that the exchange was “warm” and “charming.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” George said.
George soothed and cajoled and eventually, Dave relented. The “Not yet” bit stayed in.
Lewis and I ran back to the stage to watch a rehearsal of the Lily Tomlin tribute. The ending was sweet, as Jane Fonda declared, “We love you, Lily, beyond measure.” Then all four actresses added in unison, “And that’s the truth!” followed by four loud raspberries. Other parts fell flat, including a bit patterned after a chant Lily had done on SNL. Reba McEntire approached me after the rehearsal.
“It’s not working,” Reba said.
“I know,” I said.
“It’s just cheesy,” her then-husband interjected.
Thanks, dude.
“What do we do?” Reba said, staying focused on finding a solution.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just wish they’d let you sing ‘9 to 5.’ ”
Her face lit up. “That’s a great idea! Why can’t I do that?”
I explained that idea had been pitched and rejected. Reba thought we should try again. We found one of the musical producers and she gave it her all. This would be a much better story if Reba’s passionate plea had worked. Unfortunately, the producer explained there wasn’t time to pull together a musical number and we just had to make the best of what we had.
I was frustrated that the tributes were so lopsided. The Tom Hanks salute included Steven Spielberg speaking from the heart, Martin Short telling jokes, Pentatonix singing “That Thing You Do,” three leading ladies of Broadway—Kelli O’Hara, Laura Benanti, Jessie Mueller—serenading Hanks with “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” and not one . . . not two . . . but three marching bands playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” while Martin Short and a choir sang freshly tailored lyrics by clever Amanda Green. While heartfelt, Lily’s tribute was decidedly under-produced. I think most people would agree that when it comes to cultural relevance, “9 to 5” just barely edges out “That Thing You Do.”
The choreographer made some changes to the blocking for Lily’s chant and improved that moment. Jane, Jane, Reba, and Kate headed backstage to keep rehearsing. During dinner break, I grabbed my dress bag and headed to the women’s bathroom. I wet a paper towel and washed under my armpits. I pulled on some control top hose and prayed there wasn’t a run. I slid into a black Max Mara slip dress, and swapped out my daytime Stuart Weitzman wedges for my sparkly Stuart Weitzman pumps. I wet my hands and ran them through my hair to add some curl, slashed at my eyelashes with mascara, and looked in the mirror.
Cringe. Why hadn’t I gotten up early and sprung for a blow out? Suddenly, I heard Penn Jillette’s voice in my head. Penn’s mother, Valda, was a stoic New Englander and whenever her son had concerns about his appearance, she would respond: “Who’s looking at you?” This thought instantly relaxed me. All I had to do was stand near the luminous Misty Copeland in the Green Room and nobody would even know I was there.
The black-tie, blue-ribbon audience filtered in. The honorees took their seats. The Obamas entered the Presidential box and the show began. Colbert got huge laughs with his monologue. Usher performed Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” one of my favorite songs. I wanted to soak it all in, but a nagging fear kept me on edge. Tom Hanks’s tribute came third in the lineup. As Patricia McBride’s segment wrapped up, I leaned over to Lewis.
“I think it’s fifty-fifty that Dave will do the ‘Not yet’ bit.”
“It’s in the script,” Lewis said.
“Yeah, but what if while getting into position, Dave just says to Stephen, ‘Let’s skip it.’ ”
“There’s nothing we can do about that,” Lewis said.
We moved to the wings for a better look as the announcer boomed, “Ladies and Gentlemen, 2012 Kennedy Center Award Honoree David Letterman . . .”
Dave strode across the stage. I held my breath. I’ll let the transcribed notes from the performance, which includes the audience’s reaction, describe what happened next.
Courtesy of Kennedy Center Honors
Dave timed it perfectly. He didn’t rush the moment and he didn’t milk it. The joke required a cultural knowledge of the backstory and that seemed to connect the crowd. When people laughed and clapped, it was because they were in on the joke. Lewis flashed me a smile.
“Happy?”
I nodded. It feels fantastic when a joke lands—like great sex with no messy cleanup.
Colbert nailed his exit, backing into the wings like a chastised boy. The Hanks tribute was big and flashy. As the three marching bands filled the aisles, the cameras caught Hanks mouthing, “This is over the top.” Dave and the Broadway leading ladies came out at the end to wave before the curtains closed for intermission.
Dave wasn’t hanging around for the after-party so I texted Tom Keaney to see if I could stop by and say goodbye. Tom texted yes, but warned me that Dave was ready to bolt. I headed straight to his dressing room. Intermission had started maybe five minutes earlier and Dave was already back in his sweats and engaging in a postmortem with his writer and Tom. I complimented Dave on his performance. He had tweaked the ending to a story since rehearsal and made it better. We discussed a couple of jokes and the audience’s reaction, then Dave stood up and reached out his hand.
“Nice seeing you,” he said. “And congratulations on the book.”
“You don’t know about my book, Dave,” I responded, skeptically.
“Yeah, the one you wrote with that woman,” he said.
“That woman.” ’Nuff said.
We shook hands and, suddenly, it hit me: this was the moment I never thought would happen. This was my chance to ask Dave about my article. Except I didn’t want to bring it up in front of others. I needed a plan. Quickly.
“Dave, could I speak to you for a sec?” I blurted out. “Want to take a walk down the hall with me?”
“Sure,” he said.
Before anyone could protest, Dave and I stepped out of the dressing room. I’d done it! I had Dave’s ear!
Now what? We started down the hall. Dave is much taller than I am and he stooped a little, curious to hear my private message.
“I have nothing to say to you,” I said. “But I thought it would drive Tom crazy that I wanted to speak to you alone. He will always wonder what we discussed. Promise me you will never tell him that it was nothing.”
Dave’s hand moved instinctively to his chest. “This joke hits me right where I live,” he said.
We smiled and made small talk to the end of the hallway, then U-turned back. Now the cool move would’ve been to just leave it at that. But as always, I wasn’t that cool.
“So, I have to ask,” I said. “Did you ever read that articl
e I wrote?”
“No. No,” Dave said.
“It was about the culture of late night and getting more female writers—”
“I don’t worry about that stuff,” Dave said, cutting me off.
I bristled at him reducing gender diversity to “that stuff.” We neared the dressing room door.
“Let’s do another,” said Dave.
Like characters in a Sorkin scene, Dave and I walked-and-talked for one more hallway loop. Maybe Dave didn’t want the discussion to end on that awkward exchange and we resumed our chit-chat. Back at the dressing room, we shook hands again and Dave slipped inside.
As I returned to the green room, I thought about how quickly Dave had gone into full deflection mode. In a way that helped me. I’d always felt guilty that I hadn’t said anything about the show’s culture when Dave asked why I was quitting back in 1990. Former Late Night head writer Merrill Markoe once assured me that it wouldn’t have made any difference. I thought she was trying to make me feel better. Now I believe she was right.
The rest of the Honors passed quickly. Kate McKinnon killed from the moment the spotlight hit her. She struggled to shimmy off Edith Ann’s oversized rocking chair in her floor-length gown.
“There’s no good way to do that,” she said. “It’s sort of like getting off the lap of the Lincoln Memorial.”
The crowd laughed, but unless you were in the Kennedy Center that night, you didn’t get to see this bit. The onstage portion of Lily’s tribute was short to begin with and then edited to the bone. The live performance lasted a scant six-and-a-half minutes compared to Hanks’s twelve-and-a-half. Now I love Tom Hanks as much as the next human, animal or volleyball. He absolutely deserves twelve-and-a-half minutes of celebration. So did Lily.
Years later, it’s still hard for me to let this one go. On my death bed, I’ll gesture to Colin to come close and then whisper in his ear, “You and the boys are everything to me. Oh, and they should have sung ‘9 to 5.’”
At the post-show dinner, I started to crash. The last four hours had been intense. I grabbed a dinner roll and ate it like a Dickensian orphan. They’d seated me off to the side with the lesser donors, but I needed to find someone sitting with the fancy people. I snaked through the crowd, slipping between tuxedos, until I reached the big-ticket tables. I scoured the area. Finally, I spotted her. She was alone and seemed to be searching for her place. I approached.
“Lily?”
She turned and I was looking straight into Lily Tomlin’s beautiful and expressive eyes.
“I wanted to introduce myself. I was one of the writers for tonight’s show.”
Instantly, Lily threw her arms around me and wrapped me in one of the best hugs of my entire life. It wasn’t a Hollywood hug; it was a Mom hug. The kind that makes you feel like everything is all right.
I flew back to LA the next day and put together a package for Tom Keaney. I had promised to send him a copy of Lean In. I threw in a spare copy for Dave, selecting the version published in Finland, which I inscribed:
Dave—I know you’ll never read this book so I’m sending you a copy in Finnish. Nauti!
About a month later, this came in the mail:
Hilarious.
The year after he left the air, Dave started advocating for hiring more women in late night. He grabbed headlines when he told Tom Brokaw, “I don’t know why they didn’t give my show to a woman. That would have been fine.” He even grilled two directors during an interview at Ball State on Hollywood’s “pervasive sexism.” When one of those directors tried to duck the subject, Dave followed up with, “Having been very, very successful, now can’t you devote your career to help others who struggle to be successful?”
Since Jay Leno turned over The Tonight Show to Jimmy Fallon, he has adopted a similar altruistic tone. “I’m really disappointed there’s not more diversity in late night comedy,” Jay said in a 2015 interview. Well, I’m disappointed that when Jay went off the air in 2014, he had zero female and zero African American writers on his very large staff.
It’s great to hear these former hosts promoting equality, but why didn’t they take any action when they held power? If, in the previous three decades, Dave and Jay had showcased equal numbers of female standups and hired equal numbers of female writers, they would have transformed the comedy world. Maybe Dave truly regrets that he didn’t “worry about that stuff” when he had a show, but my sense is that what’s irking both him and Jay can be found at the intersection of ageism and sexism. The two former hosts now know something every woman learns early in her career: it sucks to be pushed aside by a less-experienced man.
Chapter 18
Our Funny President
People say I’m too cozy with Hollywood. I was just laughing about that with Clooney.
—Joke I contributed to President Obama’s 2013 White House Correspondents Dinner, unused
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA KNOWS HOW TO TELL A joke, and at the White House Correspondents Dinner, he got to tell a lot of them. The WHCD is a black-tie fundraiser and celebration of the press that used to be known as “Nerd Prom,” and has now evolved into the “C-SPAN Oscars.” Each year, the dinner books a well-known comedian to play court jester, but first the president is given the chance to dispense with diplomacy and skewer his critics with good humor. For example, in 2011, President Barack Obama said this:
I’ve even let down my key core constituency: movie stars. Just the other day, Matt Damon—I love Matt Damon, love the guy—Matt Damon said he was disappointed in my performance. Well, Matt, I just saw The Adjustment Bureau, so right back atcha, buddy.
Matt Damon missed seeing the joke live, but dozens of his friends emailed him the next day to alert him to the presidential burn. Damon was a good sport.
“I have to say, it was pretty funny,” Damon told GQ magazine. “Whoever came up with it, it was a terrific joke.”
So that was me . . . with some wordsmithing tweaks from the White House speechwriters. The Damon joke almost didn’t make it into the final speech. That Saturday morning, Director of Speechwriting Jon Favreau emailed me that the president was wavering. There was concern that the joke was too mean.
“I saw the Adjustment Bureau last week,” I wrote back. “Truth is a defense!”
I didn’t hear anything further from Jon. That afternoon, I boarded a plane to travel home from Toronto where I’d just finished producing an episode of Warehouse 13. Minutes before the president rose to speak, I arrived home in Santa Monica, dropped my bags, and fired up C-SPAN. I had no idea if the joke was in or out. Halfway through the speech when I heard President Obama say, “Just the other day, Matt Damon—” I shrieked, “He’s doing it!”
The president landed the joke and got a big laugh. Even applause. Then he followed the Matt Damon joke with another line I’d sent in:
Of course, there’s someone who I can always count on for support: my wonderful wife, Michelle. We made a terrific team at the Easter Egg Roll this week. I’d give out bags of candy to the kids, and she’d snatch them right back out of their little hands.
The audience roared as the First Lady shook her head and mouthed, “No.” Her husband seemed to be enjoying the moment and repeated the phrase “snatched them,” stealing a second laugh. The next day, I spoke to Albert Brooks and we both marveled at the president’s delivery.
“He has Johnny Carson’s timing,” Albert said. “The way he repeated ‘snatched them’ . . . That’s what Johnny would have done.”
For a girl who grew up in Newton, Massachusetts—arguably the most liberal city in the most liberal state—writing for President Obama was a highlight of my life. And I owe the opportunity to SpongeBob SquarePants.
Ten days before the 2011 dinner, President Obama took a swing through Northern California, which included a visit to the Facebook campus. The communications team asked me to send in some amusing lines that the executives could use in a welcome speech. I thought it would be funny if Mark mentioned that the president had
nineteen million Facebook followers—“only half-a-million short of SpongeBob SquarePants.”
My Facebook contact gently reminded me that the idea was to welcome their guest, not roast him. That line wasn’t used, but Sheryl Sandberg shared it with Jon Favreau, who was traveling with the president. Jon instantly recognized that the SpongeBob comment would be funnier coming out of the president’s mouth. Sheryl connected Jon and me via email and I was happy to serve my country by contributing a throwaway line. The next evening at a San Francisco fund-raiser, the president used the SpongeBob quip. I know because it was quoted in news outlets. This is one of the differences between writing for a president and writing for a TV character. When the president cracks a joke, it’s news.
The timing of Sheryl’s introduction turned out to be ideal. The White House Correspondents Dinner was coming up in less than two weeks and Jon invited me to send in jokes. It was the greatest moonlighting job ever. After spending the day on a set in Toronto, I’d take a pad of paper to the sushi bar and scribble jokes for the leader of the free world.
My jokes fell mainly into two categories: topical humor (based on the news) and character comedy (based on the individual). If the president is willing to be self-deprecating, you have a classic sitcom character: the most powerful man on earth . . . who doesn’t always get his way. Here’s an example of a character joke I contributed to the Al Smith dinner, which brought together President Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney right before the 2012 election.
Ultimately, though, tonight is not about the disagreements Governor Romney and I may have. It’s what we have in common—beginning with our unusual names. Actually, Mitt is his middle name. (beat) I wish I could use my middle name.
The president punctuated the joke with tight lips, which made it even funnier. He may have been living in the White House with the nuclear codes, but at that moment, we all felt a little sorry for Barack Hussein Obama.
Since it was my first time contributing to the WHCD, I tried an array of jokes, some character-based and some topical. I also threw in a few absurdist jokes to see if they’d fly. Here’s a sampling:
