David Letterman: Man of the year

On a Friday Night in Manhattan, not quite an hour after putting Late Show episode No. 211 in the can, David Letterman broods aloud over how the show went. His post-mortem, spilling out in a windowless conference room 12 floors above the Ed Sullivan Theater while taxi horns bay down on Broadway, is a characteristically disgruntled one. "Yeah," he says, "I wasn't very pleased with any aspect of the show. The audience and I never got together. And for me, that's a lost cause. If you can't win those people over, you're not gonna win the folks over at home."

Letterman has his sneaker-shod feet flung up on the conference table and wears his baseball cap pushed back a bit — the tired skipper sipping coffee and sorting out a 7--2 loss. Hadn't guest David Hyde Pierce, the fuss-budget younger brother on Frasier, gone over OK?

"Yeah, he's a very nice guy," says Letterman. "He's actually very witty, quick, very facile mind." Pierce had flown East at the last minute to fill the lead-guest spot, which otherwise might have gone to a marginal choice, George Carlin, and yet the show failed to soar. "It's like a hang glider who can't get an updraft, and you're runnin' with that goddamn kite on your back, and you're runnin' and runnin', and there's not a breeze or a thermal or nothin.' That's what this felt like."

In fact, Pierce had some likable shtick ready, looking dead-on into Camera 3 to reassure his dog, Emma, supposedly watching at home, that he'd be back soon.