Dave Vs. Dave

Burnett free-lanced a few jokes, at $25 apiece, to comedian Wil Shriner and then began contributing lines to Letterman's monologues, becoming a full-time writer in 1988 and head writer in 1992. He made his bones supervising remotes, scripting situations that could serve as a launching pad for Letterman's interactions with people in the street.

Last summer, Letterman asked Burnett to move to L.A. (uprooting his wife and infant daughter) to supervise Bonnie, a sitcom Letterman was executive-producing for his pal Bonnie Hunt. She and Burnett wound up clashing. "I think it was one of those things where we probably should have dated first before we got married," says Burnett. "If I speak German and she speaks French, how can you collaborate?"

"It just wasn't working," says Letterman. "Bonnie is a very strong, smart, talented woman. And so is Rob, oddly enough. But it wasn't compatible."

Burnett moved back east and began developing his own Worldwide Pants-CBS sitcom, Ed. During the long, hard months that Letterman's ratings sagged, the host began looking for fixes, finally offering Burnett executive-producer status alongside Morton, a symbolic share in the company and presumably a big raise (though probably nothing matching Morton's reported $2-million-a-year salary).

Amid murmurs about Burnett's supposed ambitiousness, amid a passel of conspiracy theories including the thesis that Letterman's CAA agent, Lee Gabler, was looking to increase his client's dependence on him, the bottom line may be that Letterman simply was trying to get back to what worked for him over the years — and wanted 100 percent commitment from whoever was asked to take him there. "Rob's raring to go," says Letterman. "He deserves this under any circumstances. I'd go anywhere for Rob. He's the guy you want to be stuck in an elevator with. He'll not only figure out a way to escape, but he'll do it in an entertaining fashion. We've been in some tight spots in our lives together, and I just think the world of him."

"It's been said before that comedy is no joking matter," says Hal Gurnee. "It's serious stuff, and the people who do it best seem to be unhappy people. I think Dave always was clever, witty — the smartass in the back of the classroom. That separates you, but it also gives you a place, it gives you status, gives you something that other kids can point to. And he's carried it on into his adult life and into a fantastic career."

Now that Letterman's playing catch-up, that smart kid in the back of the class can turn, to use Dave's word, "berserko." Some recent monologues have been marked by mugging, false hilarity and a sense that, as someone close to the action puts it, "there's something unpleasant there."

It's true that lately some of Letterman's less heartfelt heh-heh-heh-heh snickers can sound as flat and mean as someone emptying a .22 into a rabbit. One source thinks Letterman is probably castigating himself for the ratings dip: "It's such a cliché, but I think it's coming from insecurity. And self-loathing — which is an ugly, maybe too strong a word, but it all has to do with not believing in yourself and not going with your strength. His strength is not in being frenetic; his strength is to sit back, observe and then say very smart, funny things. He's a very smart observer, and he's losing that. Now both the Jay Leno show and the Letterman show are frantic, and both are filled with scripted comedy. Dave's strength was the thing that Jay Leno can't do — be truly funny on the spot."

Robert Morton used to incessantly point out that much of Leno's updated format was lifted from Letterman's. On any given night each host can be seen scampering out of the studio on some prepared gag. (Letterman's bits, thanks to his improvisational élan and deftness at physical comedy, usually score better than Leno's.) Letterman has complained that in the hellzapoppin' days when he debuted at CBS with bits like Debra Winger's stripping down to a Wonder Woman outfit, he created a monster he called Dave's Big Top — a mood he saw as, "Let's see what Party Boy is doing tonight!" With Burnett in place, the trend will be toward darker comic fare like "Weird Guy in Elevator" ("I like cheese"), as opposed to the sheerly zany. "For me," says Burnett, "the goal of all the comedy we do is just, 'Let's put Dave in situations where he can be himself.' "

Given the difficulties of attracting the film and TV stars to whom the L.A.-based Leno has ready access, Letterman has muddled through with some guests who clearly don't interest him. ("Sometimes he would just stop listening," says Gurnee, "and it would amuse me and I would get pissed off at the same time.") Though Letterman clearly enjoyed gripping Elle Macpherson around the torso when she turned up recently, he introduced her somewhat sardonically as "truly one of the world's most beloved leggy supermodels." (Instead of showing the clip from Jane Eyre she'd brought along, Letterman grinningly aired an embarrassing snippet from her workout video.) Glamorous guests bring out the host's enjoyable geekiness, as he shares confidences like "A squirrel tried to mate with my hairpiece" and "Je suis le grand garçon."

"Dave doesn't like show business," says Gurnee, who's often sat in Dave's Batcave and watched college baseball or bass-fishing shows. "He doesn't like people in show business, because he's from Indiana. The first time I met him, he was supposed to interview me about doing the show, and we spent about 15 minutes talking about how his father used to make sauerkraut and pickles in their basement. Then he said, 'Gee, I'd really like to have you do the show.' He knew that he could talk to me. I think some old lady who comes on has a lot more to say to him than a stand-up comic who is out there just selling himself with that whole phony show-business mantle."

Normally charmed by and solicitous of kids, Letterman clearly took a dislike to the uncommunicative 13-year-old actress Anna Paquin on a recent visit, staring over her shoulder with his lips set in a cartoonish "this sucks" expression. The show had opened with a guy trying to sink a basket from the three-point line for $10,000. He anticlimactically missed, so Letterman later gave Paquin a shot from closer in. When she heaved in an off-the-glass line drive, the host gleefully handed her the 10 grand. The producers took it away backstage, resulting in what Burnett calls Paquingate. Her parents beefed to the local tabloids, and Paquin came back two nights later so Dave (with thinly veiled disgust) could hand the dough back for a donation to the Make-a-Wish Foundation. A few minutes later, addressing himself to anyone who'd been bothered by the incident, he spat out, "Get over it, all right?"