Dave Vs. Dave

We're used to seeing David Letterman's eyes antic, unbespectacled and camera-ready. To sit in a small, windowless and nearly sound-proof room with him, looking across a bare wood table under unsparing fluorescent light, is to risk getting spooked. Fatigue and the complete absence of Letterman's manic onstage zeal make him seem emotionally near-naked. His dentist-style spectacles magnify his eyes' size and intensity. He's wearing a T-shirt, sneakers and khakis rather than the double-breasted suit and gleaming shoes we see on television, and the mood might be more casual if those eyes (except for scattered moments of grudging amusement at his own offhand riffs) didn't look so very grave and tired. "I'm so exhausted," says Letterman. "I'm too old for this."

For the first time since Letterman began bringing audiences such phenomena as haunted pancakes 14 years ago, it's possible to believe that. The crossroads he's speaking of is both personal and professional; for Letterman, the two are hard to separate. Not the least of his problems is a serious slide in the ratings. He burst out of the gate with the Late Show's debut on CBS, on Aug. 30, 1993, beat Jay Leno's Tonight Show solidly for almost two years and then, in the aftermath of his much-dissected debacle as host of the Oscars, began to lose in the ratings race not only to Leno but often, on big news nights, to Ted Koppel's Nightline.

This sweeps month of May finds Letterman hoping for a ratings surge after a Late Show road trip to San Francisco. He's punching away at the lead Leno holds. "Make no mistake about it," Letterman says, "we would rather the rating situation was the way it was six months ago. It's not that way, and it may be a long time before it is again.... It's like, OK, we got new cards. Let's take a look at the hand we got and go. Now the pressure is on me to perform up to the level of what is being given to me."

It's a pressure Letterman is responding to with ferocious energy, working long rows of 14-hour days and running around city and suburb to shoot the taped "remotes" that take advantage of his quicksilver comicimprov skills. We'll be seeing more of the Letterman who slurps engine oil (actually chocolate syrup) off a dipstick to try to get a rise out of a mechanic.

But the problem, to many close observers, is that the pressure has created a kind of Creepy Dave who's increasingly frenetic, splenetic, self-flagellating and squirrelly on the telecast. If Letterman were an action movie, now would come the shots of the bolts in the engine mounts breaking loose, the switch at the junction getting thrown the wrong way. But in the movies, hostile forces monkey with the hero's fate; Letterman seems to be driving this current career rattletrap himself. If he's still got his cigar clenched in his teeth at a jaunty angle, and if the Taser-quick wit still makes him a man "who eats punks like you for breakfast" (per a recent show intro), many of those who know him best have lately begun to worry about his steering.

But who's going to tell him? The exit door at Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants, has been swinging fast. He recently fired his longtime sidekick and executive producer, Robert Morton, so abruptly that Howard Stern swore he heard "Morty bouncing on the awning on his way to the sidewalk." A significant percentage of writers have left for other shows, along with segment producers Daniel Kellison and Mary Connelly. Longtime director Hal Gurnee left in June to free-lance, and former resident sage Peter Lassally now produces Tom Snyder's show in L.A. (Meanwhile, CBS president Howard Stringer, instrumental in bringing Dave to the network, moved on, and Dave's agent, Mike Ovitz, took an executive post at Disney when it merged with ABC.)

"I think it's very dangerous to shake up a staff," says a show veteran, "because it's always felt on the air." Indeed, to go by the Internet postings that serve as electronic worry beads for the show's producers, the changes are both visible and audible to the fans. "It was Dave's little clubhouse," says the veteran, "and these were the members of the club: Robert Morton; Paul Shaffer; Bill Wendell, the announcer; Hal Gurnee, the voice in the control room. And one by one, Hal is gone, Bill Wendell is gone, Robert Morton is gone. Dave's clubhouse is just really Dave now and Paul. And it's a little different."

The Defenestration of Morton took place on the evening of March 8, not long after the week's last show had wrapped. Both Letterman and Morton had vacations scheduled ? Letterman to his usual retreat on the Caribbean island of St. Barts, Morton to his rented villa in Tuscany. Those close to Morton paint the event as a cold surprise coup; from Letterman's side, it was the only possible response to a power grab by the gone-Hollywood Morty. "This was not," says Letterman, "'Let's go downtown and lynch him, get the rope.' As with everything else, there is a back story and some drama and some intrigue.

"Bob had told me on many occasions," says Letterman, "that he was getting to a point where he no longer wanted to produce the show on a nightly basis. In addition, he wanted to bring a friend in, who I know of but had never worked with, to take over that job. I found that unacceptable. We've got to step up our game. I don't want to do that with a stranger. Bob had been very useful to us, just great for us, but we had so many things going on, so many people leaving, so much difficulty with the writing staff — every aspect of the show absolutely needed attention."