And Now...An Oral History of "Late Night with David Letterman," 1982-1993 Quotes

“Fred Silverman gave Dave a contract to sit around and wait [to fill in] for Johnny Carson — beautiful.”
― Brian Abrams, And Now...An Oral History of "Late Night with David Letterman," 1982-1993

“When I got there, David was buried. He was lost in the ensemble cast. He was just another player. My job was to prune the staff, prune the on-camera people so that David would shine. He was the star, and when I got there, he wasn’t. He was feeding and servicing a cast of characters. It was more like SCTV than it was The David Letterman Show.”
― Brian Abrams, And Now...An Oral History of "Late Night with David Letterman," 1982-1993

“think NBC miscalculated on what Dave’s talents were. If he had gone along with them, he would have made a great daytime game show host and we wouldn’t have heard of him after that.”
― Brian Abrams, And Now...An Oral History of "Late Night with David Letterman," 1982-1993

“There was a rope by Dave’s desk. The chimp would come around and up to the desk, and he’s trying to talk to someone. The guest was Dr. Ruth, and she uttered this single sentence, which was everything you needed to know about talk show guests and maybe everything you needed to know about celebrities or maybe everything you needed to know about human vanity. She said, “Don’t look at the monkey, Dave. Look at me.” I want that on a T-shirt.”
― Brian Abrams, And Now...An Oral History of "Late Night with David Letterman," 1982-1993

“Don’t look at the monkey, Dave. Look at me.”
― Brian Abrams, And Now...An Oral History of "Late Night with David Letterman," 1982-1993

“I thought the deeper joke was that all TV is wasted innovation and a grotesque squandering of the human spirit.”
― Brian Abrams, And Now...An Oral History of "Late Night with David Letterman," 1982-1993

“For the first three years of the show, Larry “Bud” Melman had a day job at a methadone clinic as a receptionist. Finally, we just hired him full time.”
― Brian Abrams, And Now...An Oral History of "Late Night with David Letterman," 1982-1993

“RANDY COHEN I thought the deeper joke was that all TV is wasted innovation and a grotesque squandering of the human spirit. I think certainly all of popular culture is that.”
― Brian Abrams, And Now...An Oral History of "Late Night with David Letterman," 1982-1993