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Oh, my God — fantastic! They're calling from the Museum of the Moving Image. We have couriers on motorcycles on the way!" It's an early evening in late August, and David Letterman is giving a predictably sarcastic post-mortem on tonight's taping of Late Show, which ended just a few minutes ago. He's sitting in the sparsely decorated midtown Manhattan office of his business manager, Fred Nigro, and he's exchanged his tailored on-air suit for a logoless navy-blue T-shirt and a baggy pair of khaki shorts. Tanned and relaxed, he looks like he could be renting windsurfers at a beach shack; a few sunburn patches fleck his nose. He recently returned from a vacation in his Montana home, where, among other things, he hosted a doctor and nurse who'd helped perform the emergency quintuple-bypass heart surgery that saved his life in 2000. "These are people who were complete strangers when they opened my chest," he says. "And now, eight years later, they're among my best friends."
Letterman is now in his 26th year in late-night television — the longest run in the arena besides that of Johnny Carson, who walked away when he'd done a tidy 30. Though Letterman began his career as a wiseass talk-show arriviste — mocking the staid form with Monkey Cams and giant suits made out of Alka-Seltzer tablets, he has become, at 61, the standard. His old rival Jay Leno, who famously beat him out for The Tonight Show, dominates him in the ratings, but Letterman's irreverent influence resonates in everything from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and, yes, Leno. A night with Letterman isn't as enterprisingly wacky as it once was, but it's still capable of greatness. Every time the "Dave's lost his relevance" whispers start, there's a moment with an Oprah, a Bill Clinton or a Paris Hilton — or, going back, his nervy performance just one week after 9/11 —that reasserts his rare place as one of TV's last great broadcasters, a Midwest-raised wall between America and showbiz BS.
In a pair of interviews with Rolling Stone — one in person in New York and another on the phone to Montana — it became clear that these are energetic days for Dave. The foremost reason, of course, is Harry, his four-year-old son with his longtime girlfriend, Regina Lasko, whom Letterman occasionally prides over on air. There's still an afterglow from his surgical recovery. Professionally, there's a tantalizing shift in the late-night world — next spring, O'Brien will take over The Tonight Show desk, with Leno prematurely setting off for destinations and networks unknown. It's an unsettled, exciting time, and Letterman's infamous self-laceration streak has been supplanted by . . . well, maybe not total happiness. He is David Letterman, after all. But it's something close.
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The first time this magazine did a Comedy Issue was in
1988, and you were photographed for that cover with Johnny Carson.
It's a great photograph. Do you remember much about that
shoot?
I was nervous —I felt like Johnny only might have been doing
it because he sort of liked me, but it didn't occur to me that
maybe he was sort of interested for his own reasons. That picture
was literally two exposures — two clicks and we were out of
there. They put Johnny on some sort of a box so that he and I would
appear to be the same height. As I left Burbank that day, I just
felt like, "At least Johnny is a little shorter than I am." That
was the only way I could feel good standing next to him.
Carson, of course, was hugely influential on you. But
how did it feel to develop a personal relationship with the
guy?
You know, there are people in everyone's life who you can't believe
you have a relationship with, and you are truly in awe of them,
because they are so iconic and so influential that you're just kind
of pretending. You know if you behave the way you really behave,
they would recognize that you're a complete dope and they would
never have anything to do with you ever again. That was kind of the
way I felt about Johnny. I was so worried that I would say
something idiotic and he would just pull me out of his Rolodex. I
remember the first time I was on his show. It's like all of a
sudden after seeing Abe Lincoln on the five-dollar bill, you look
over and you're sitting next to Abe Lincoln on a bus. He had that
effect on comics for many, many years. I never got out from under
the feeling that he and I really could be friends, because I
idolized him and I knew by any measure I would always fall
short.
When Carson died, people didn't know that he had been
pitching in on the Late Show here and there, writing some
jokes for you that you used on-air.
It started a long time ago, when I was still at NBC, and more so
after he retired. In the beginning, I thought, "For heaven's sakes,
Johnny Carson is going through the trouble of calling in these
jokes, you absolutely have to have them!" And so the more we would
do them, I think Johnny was pleased by that, and so it sort of took
on a bit of a life.
Now you're on the cover of a Rolling Stone Comedy Issue
with a pair of comedians — Tina Fey and Chris Rock —
who have that kind of respect for you.
There are people in show business who are very successful who may
not necessarily be absolutely funny, but these two people are. For
me, I feel like the fact that I'm in this picture — it can
only make me look good. I'd like to see the list of people that
turned down the offer before it got to me. But it was fun, I got a
real kick out of it.
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Your late-night legacy is secure. But do you ever miss
those old days — the seat-of-the-pants stuff, not knowing if
you'd keep your job?
A little. But there was also great uncertainty about it because we
never knew: Do people want really peculiar things on TV? Or does
that make people uncomfortable? The pendulum would swing almost
nightly — we were like long-haul truckers driving in the
fog.
I'm comfortable knowing that I've been able to do this for a long time. I've done pretty much everything I ever wanted to do, and when it's time — when the network says, "We're not interested in going forward," I'd say that makes perfect sense. I don't feel that I got cheated.
How are you feeling about Late Show right now?I like it. I like the people I'm working with. It's a completely different show than it used to be, it's more host-friendly than it ever has been. . . .
What do you mean by "host-friendly"?
I'm not working as hard as I used to [laughs]. All I have
to do, really, is pick out a tie and sit down.
Are the best nights when there's that great guest? When
it's a Hillary or Bill Clinton, or Howard Stern, and you just feel
that energy in the theater.
Early on, I always had some trepidation about Howard. He seemed
like he was without the capability of empathy. And then, when I
realized he's just kind of a goofball like everyone else, that
leveled the court. We have an expression . . . he can take a punch.
And when you realize that neither of you are gonna get hurt too
bad, then it's a lot of fun. People like Bill Clinton . . .
intelligence just leaks out of him, it forms a cloud around him.
You can't penetrate it. I'm thinking about cartoons and he's
talking about how to save the planet, so I always feel in over my
head there. I feel like Hillary and I have a little more rapport,
and I think maybe that's just because she's been on more times than
her husband.
Madonna, of course, is another famous Late Show
regular.
I remember being very intimidated by Madonna, because I didn't
know anything about popular music, and I didn't know whether we
should even worry about her after her first appearance. And then
there was that time she came on and she was angry with me because
I'd been telling a lot of jokes about her sex life, because she had
published a book about her sex life. I'd felt that was kind of fair
game —here's not only a book, it's a coffee table, a 300-page
book, photo pictorial —"Here I am, naked, bent over. Here I
am in a costume, naked, bent over. Here I am, the UPS guy. . . . "
Now we find out that she's outraged, and she comes on and was
unpleasant and all of that. I think she kind of realized that she
had underestimated the impact of doing that. But now that seems so
long ago that we're both like, "Who cares?" It's like ballplayers.
You can't get too upset if you lose two or three games in a row
because, good Lord, you're playing 162.
Then the other fact is that it's all artificial. We're all pretending. We're putting on a show and trying to be cute and trying to say funny things, and we don't really mean much of it.
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Probably the biggest guest in the past few years was Oprah Winfrey, whom you begged and begged to come on. What is the state of Oprah/Dave relations these days?
[Laughs] Well, I would hope it would be good. I saw Oprah when she interviewed Tom Cruise recently at his home in Colorado, and, wow, that was just bizarre. I kinda felt bad for Oprah, because it looked like she went into that with her hands tied, but it was reassuring to me because I thought, "Oh, I'm not the only one who gets myself into things you can't get out of."
Was there really a rift between you and
Oprah?
Yes, I think there was. I think that she, like anyone would, got
tired of me making jokes about her. Also, years ago, we were doing
the old show in Chicago —she came out and somebody in the
audience heckled her, and I think she resented the fact that I
didn't rise to the occasion and, you know, beat up on the guy.
Which I probably should have, but I was completely out of control
and didn't know what I was doing. So she had a real reason not to
want to come back on.
The show you did with Warren Zevon, when he'd been
diagnosed with terminal cancer and only had months to live: He'd
been on many times. Was it a difficult show to do?
Oh, it was awful. Warren was so good about it. After the show, it
was heartbreaking —he was in his dressing room, and we were
talking and this and that. Here's a guy who had months to live and
we're making small talk. And as we're talking, he's taking his
guitar strap and hooking it, wrapping it around, then he puts the
guitar into the case and he flips the snaps on the case and says,
"Here, I want you to have this, take good care of it." And I just
started sobbing. He was giving me the guitar that he always used on
the show. I felt like, "I can't be in this movie, I didn't get my
lines." That was very tough.
On a lighter note, it seems that you are also enjoying
this new generation of guests, like Paris Hilton, who's made
several appearances on your show, and Lauren, Heidi and Spencer
from "The Hills."
Well, you know, Paris Hilton is kind of an open book, or seemingly
so. The Hills show I knew nothing about. When we were
going to have them, I started watching the show — I don't
know how many of them you've seen, but pretty soon your jaw goes
slack, and you realize that something very strange is happening.
And when I realized that, I got all excited. I couldn't have been
happier to have them on, and I'd like for them to be on again. And
talk about being able to take a punch! You can say almost anything
you want and they're smart enough not to care. Because you're
grandpa and they're, "We're 24 and more popular than you'll ever
be, so, yeah, say whatever you want."
Did you have any regret about how you roughed up Paris
Hilton? When you asked her on the air about her prison experience,
she was clearly not prepared to discuss it.
At the time, I thought we were just goofing around. Later, when
somebody told me she was in tears, I got upset with myself. I sent
her a letter and apologized. And then she called and she wanted to
come back on the show and, you know, to her credit, she said, "Oh,
you were so mean to me, I'll come back on, but you can't be mean to
me like that." And I said, "OK, I'm sorry." I desperately wanted
her to come back. I thought it would be great if she came on and
jumped all over me for being inconsiderate. So, you know, I loved
all of that. What can I say, she's still kind of cute.
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How are you getting along with CBS? There hasn't been
much rumbling with your bosses recently — you have to go back
a few years to the days when you were mocking CBS chief Les Moonves
for visiting Fidel Castro.
[Laughs] Yeah, Les and I had a big showdown. We were like
high school kids that were gonna do everything but throw punches,
and that went on for a couple of days. He was upset that I was
making fun of him, and maybe it was more than making fun, maybe it
was just making ugly comments, which for me is great fun. At the
end of the day, I realized I needed to grow up and be a little more
mature. Through all of this I feel kinda bad for everything I
subjected these people to. But to answer your question, from my
point of view, things are very good with CBS.
Sometimes, however, I imagine it's hard to help
yourself. Making fun of your bosses has long been part of your
show. And sometimes Les Moonves must do things that seem like a big
fat strike coming down the middle.
Yeah, you're exactly right, but I've taken enough batting
practice.
In the past you've described yourself as suffering from
anhedonia, the inability to feel happiness. Where are you on the
anhedonia index these days?
Well, I think it has always been a defense. If you mention often
enough how disappointed you are in your own behavior and your own
performance, then you've pretty much just pulled the rug out from
under people who were just about to say, "Jeez, that was really
disappointing, we're not pleased with his performance."
Isn't that just false modesty?
Jeez, no. I don't think it's a false modesty. It's just everybody
has their own mechanism for getting through the day, and I guess
it's easier for me to pretend to be a perfectionist. Or, maybe, I
really was a perfectionist and there's no difference there.
Is it fair to say that becoming a father has made you
more serious-minded? You talk more these days about big issues,
especially the environment.
I resist giving in to that a little because I know that happens to
everyone who has children. But you see things and you say to
yourself, "What effect will these things have on my
four-and-a-half-year-old son?" and, "Jeez, is there anything I can
do besides trying to raise the child the best I know how?" Well,
maybe very little other than to talk about the environment, talk
about the economy, talk about the war and on and on. So it has been
a factor. Again, I'm always uncomfortable trying to influence
people in matters of conscience, and I feel so ill-equipped because
I'm not as smart as I oughta be for this job.
How are you doing as a father? Years ago you were asked
about your own father, and you talked about him being "the battery
to which all the cables were hooked to," this tremendous source of
energy. How do you compare?
I remember my father's energy because of his job, working six days
a week, 10, 12 hours a day, he didn't have the luxury of spending
the kind of time that I can with my son. I do try to re-create that
energy, because I think in this world to turn my son loose without
having him been exposed to a lunatic like myself would be a
mistake.
What's domestic life like in the Letterman
home?
It's a living hell.
Six Flags? Olive Garden?
The current project is a treehouse. A year ago, my son was out
walking around and found a tree, and he said, "That would be
perfect for a treehouse," and I didn't know that he knew anything
about a treehouse, and I had a treehouse when I was 12 or 13, so I
thought, "My God, I'll build one." I've always heard from friends,
"You're too old to be a father," and I say, "I don't feel too old,
I can do this and that," and I'm here to tell you that at my age,
you're too old to build a treehouse. The thing is still under
construction, it's coming up on a year.
Did you always want to have a family?
Yes. I thought for sure I would, [but] it looked for a long time
like that was not going to happen. Now that it has happened, I have
no regrets other than...it's not even a regret, but now that I have
one, it would be fun to have two. That's not really a regret, but
it's an observation. And there's no chance of that happening
— I mean, look at me.
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How are you feeling these days?
I was across the road picking up fence posts all morning in the
90-degree heat, so I'm feeling pretty good.
After the major heart surgery in 2000, did you always
feel that you were going to come back to the show?
There was never a doubt. It was the chief motivator — just to
come back and show myself that I could do it. I loved the nature of
the project: Today, you walk four feet. Tomorrow, you walk 20 feet,
by the end of the week you're walking a quarter mile, with the
ultimate objective of coming back to work.
Did you watch when people like Regis and Bill Cosby were
filling in for you?
No.
Why not?
My doctor said, "You have a brand- new life ahead of you, don't
waste a second of it [laughs]." I don't know. I knew it
would be troubling one way or the other.
Too good, or...?
I suppose. Or maybe I couldn't stay up that late, I don't know. I
never did watch them.
You called your surgery "the most exciting thing" that
had happened in your life. But a lot of people go through a
depression after a traumatic event like that.
I'd heard that as well. I'd heard because of the barbaric nature of
open- heart surgery, that you would almost automatically be
depressed by it. In my case, it was this grand excitement, and then
I would just burst into tears for no reason — just racking
sobs. But even that, I loved. It was such a relief.
Do you look at the surgery as being a major delineation
in your life?
Of course. I have always said that there are four things I am just
thrilled about in my life. I always put the heart surgery first,
because the other three wouldn't have happened without the heart
surgery. Then there's the birth of my son, and the third was
winning the Indianapolis 500. Maybe there were only three. I can't
remember the fourth. I guess talking to you.
I recently went back and watched the show you did a week
after September 11th. That show was highly praised, but it was
really unnerving, very raw, and takes you right back to that very
difficult time. Did you want to do that show?
No, I didn't want to, and maybe this is human nature, but I wanted
other people to do it. I wanted the president to do things, I
wanted Mayor Giuliani to take care of everything....You always look
for a leader in every situation. You're stuck in an elevator, you
look for the guy with a Swiss army knife. I didn't want to be any
of those guys. I just wanted somebody else to make everything
right. I didn't want to go back because I didn't know what to say,
and I didn't feel like going back and it felt like a mistake. If
they had said, "All right, we're not gonna have any more television
for another six weeks," I would have thought, "OK, that's about
right." Then a few days after the attack, the Mayor said, "You've
got to continue living your lives, you've got to go on," and I
decided I had to go back. But I was just filled with trepidation
and, "Oh, jeez, this is when you need Johnny Carson to come back on
the air."
In recent years, you've also been praised by some for
confronting people who aren't terribly used to being confronted,
like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly.
It's been so long since I even thought about Rush Limbaugh. I
remember in the beginning I had the impression that here's a guy
who clearly knows better than what he is saying, but knows it's a
show-business hook. I sort of feel the same with Bill O'Reilly. I
even said so much to him. Maybe he feels that way, maybe he
doesn't, but I made the mistake of taking Bill O'Reilly way too
seriously, because he's just like any other boob. I hope he's
coming back on the show because I would treat the whole thing
differently now.
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In which way?
Well, I think in the beginning I felt like I had some sort of
responsibility to attack everything he said and try to counter it
with my own intelligence, but that reservoir is pretty shallow. So
now I think, "Well, here's a guy who really is no different than
Paris or Regis, so I'll just sit there and make fun of them." It
doesn't make any difference what they're saying, I just make fun of
them.
As much as you've made fun of the current White House
occupants, it's obvious that as the Iraq War progressed, they've
also made you angry. Not long ago, you wondered aloud if there was
"any humanity" to Bush or Cheney.
Right. Yeah, that is [something] I wonder about. I don't know, you
wonder how can they go to bed at night. We're talking about a lot
of people who are dead. We all know that's the nature of war, but I
don't know. It's very confusing to me, because obviously something
needed to be done. I'm very ill-equipped to comment, but I do
question the humanity of everyone involved.
You seemed to have supported the war at first, as did a
great many people who wanted to feel like they were doing the right
thing and supporting the country.
I think I'm no different than everyone else. I'm just a hothead
reactionary and I wanted to see something done. The question that I
like to ask people is, "What if Al Gore had been president? Who
would we have attacked? And when? What mistakes would a Democratic
president have made?"
Does it anger you a little more because some of these
people have been on the air? Bush has been on the show, and McCain
was on in 2001 linking the anthrax to Iraq. Does it feel personal
to you?
Yeah, it does feel very personal to me, maybe more so than it
should. When you sit down there together more than once or twice,
you've created a camaraderie. I'm just waiting for a guy to explain
to me how things are going to be OK. This is going to sound nuts,
but the guy that I believe is Al Franken. I don't know why —
believe me, I've asked myself this question, but when he talks and
he says something, I believe him more than I believe anybody who
currently holds a seat in the Senate. He may not be elected. Maybe
it's because we're peers, we're the same age, we're in the same
business, but I believe Al.
You've had fun with McCain on the show, as a guest and a
subject. Is Obama harder as a comedic subject?
I've heard that, and maybe so. It's certainly easier to make fun of
John McCain in the obvious sense: He's an old guy. Every time we
have these jokes about him being old, I always think to myself,
"This is not entirely fair." In terms of Barack Obama, I think
you're right, I don't think people have a way to get in there.
There's nothing automatically that you can go to.
We don't know as much about him at this
point.
He's been on our show a couple of times, and he wore a suit the
second time he was on, where I thought, "Holy cow, I'd like to have
that suit." It was stunningly beautiful. So I'd vote for him on the
strength of that suit.
Are you voting for Obama?
I can't tell you who I'm voting for. I don't know who I'm
voting for.
The late-night landscape is moving around in a big way
in the next year — probably the most since you moved over to
CBS. On NBC, you have Conan O'Brien going from his 12:30 slot to
take over The Tonight Show, with Jay Leno stepping aside,
and it's not clear what he's gonna do, maybe a new show with
another network. How closely are you following this?
Well, it's interesting. It was always hard to imagine what NBC was
up to, facilitating Conan to 11:30 — what would become of
Jay? I'm not quite sure why they would do that, so much so that one
wonders if that's actually what's going to happen. I'm glad that
I'm not involved directly, because after a while that can be
wearying. It's nice not to have a dog in this fight.
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Do you mean that NBC might blink and say, "Hey, we're
gonna stick with Jay"?
Well, I think we're getting pretty far down the road for that. But
unless I'm misunderstanding something, I don't know why, after the
job Jay has done for them, why they would relinquish that. I guess
they thought it was a less messy way to handle what happened to me
at NBC. I don't know. I like Conan, I think he's a very funny guy,
but it seems...
It seems they're stuck in an unenviable
position.
I guess it's possible that Jay recognized this opportunity that
would give him a blank check anywhere else he wanted to go. But I
wouldn't think that, I would think he'd want to stay there, where
he's been so successful.
Do you empathize at all with the situation that Jay's in
at NBC? He's made no secret of course about loving The Tonight
Show job and doesn't seem ready to retire at
all.
I guess empathy is the right word. It's hard to know what he felt
about it. I have to believe he was not happy about it.
Could you ever envision a scenario where you have Jay on
your show again? He used to be a guest years ago.
It'd be interesting. I think he'd be a great guest on the show. The
first night that he is out of a job, I think that would be a great
situation.
How much do you care about the ratings battle with
The Tonight Show and Jay anymore? Does it matter to you
who comes first in this whole game?
Well, absolutely. I wish that we — and when I say, "we" I
mean "me" — I wish I could have prevailed. I think it would
have made things easier for us. But the reason is the difference
between me and Jay. I think more people are responding to Jay than
will ever respond to me, and after a while you have to face that.
I'm doing the best I can, I enjoy doing what we do, and we get a
certain amount of recognition for it, but the truth is, if there's
a difference between the shows, it just comes down to me and Jay. I
think he has greater appeal for more people than I do.
That's a contrast to years past when people in your camp
explained the ratings gap between Jay and you by saying it was
because of the lead-in programming or 11 o'clock news and so on.
Now you're saying, in your view, that it really does come down to
personality.
I think so. As much as I would like to point the finger and say,
"Well, here's the real story" — and everything's a factor,
really — maybe years ago I was unwilling to recognize the
difference in Jay and myself as being more meaningful. But I just
think that we've been at this long enough. I have a tremendous
staff, I have tremendous writers, tremendous producers, so what
really would make the difference? Well, the answer is me. I just
think that Jay has a wider appeal than I do and, you know, good for
him.
I get the sense that this is not something that agonizes
you anymore.
Yeah, and also it seems unlikely that now, after years and years of
trying under a wide variety of circumstances and advantages and
disadvantages, that suddenly I'm going to prevail. You can't go
through life fooling yourself, you have to be honest with the
situation. That's fine. I can say it's fine, because I've been
lucky enough to do the show and I've had a lot of fun doing it. So
if I didn't get this, well, that's too bad, a lot of people suffer
far greater than I have.
Do you basically develop a respect for anyone who can go
out and do a show every night?
Yeah. It's a pretty small group of folks, and only the people who
do it know how difficult it can be. I remember when Conan O'Brien
was first on our show — and he'd been on maybe about two
years, and he said, "It's going great, we've now done 18 shows in a
row that are tremendous," and I thought, "Holy Christ, he's either
lying or insane." At the time I'd been on the air close to 15
years, and I don't think I've done 18 shows that were tremendous in
the whole time. It's not easy. I wish I was one of those guys who
made it look easy. I don't have that gene.
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It's likely that this time next year, you'll be facing
off with Conan. Have you envisioned that
competition?
I haven't given it much thought, but I guess it's because I still
find it hard to believe that Jay won't be there. It's only until
recently that I felt this thing had traction. It just seemed so
preposterous to me. It will be weird to see Conan at 11:30, don't
you think? Which is not to say he can't succeed, but, no, I don't
know what the competition will be like. I hope we're able to do
OK.
How do you feel about Craig Ferguson? The sense I get
from your folks is that he's been a pleasant
surprise.
Well, all credit to [former Tonight Show Starring Johnny
Carson producer] Peter Lassally — it was his
recommendation, and we went with Craig because of my regard for
Peter, and I will guiltily tell you that I didn't pay much
attention to him. And then I started finding myself up late —
I guess it was during the writers' strike — and I realized
that here is a guy who has tremendous energy doing the same thing
that everybody else is doing, but he's doing it so differently that
it doesn't seem like it's the same thing. He has no budget, has no
real resources that everybody else has and, jeez, I think he does a
tremendous job. I started calling people and saying, "Have you
seen..." and everybody else had the same feeling.
Your contract is up in 2010 — do you have a sense
for which way you're leaning, Packers or Jets?
[Laughs] Boy, what's the deal there? Honestly, really is that what
[Brett Favre] wanted to happen, the poor guy? A friend of mine said
he'll never get off his back — every game flat on the
turf.
Well, the way I feel now, I would like to go beyond 2010, not much beyond, but you know, enough to go beyond. You always like to be able to excuse yourself on your own terms. If the network is happy with that, great. If they wanna make a change in 2010, you know, I'm fine with that, too.
So you are motivated to keep doing this.
Yes. The way things are, the way I feel physically, I would love
to continue, so we'll just see what happens.
Jon Stewart's name comes up as a possible successor, if
and when you decide to step down. If you were running CBS, would he
be someone you'd take a look at?
Absolutely. I don't know this for a fact, but I have a feeling that
all of that has been taken care of or discussed. I would be
surprised if there's anything like what is happening at NBC taking
place at CBS. People have had a lot of time to consider this in a
cooler environment.
They don't bring you in on that
conversation?
No. There may have been a time where I wanted to be involved in
that, but I just feel like, "Thank you and goodnight," and
everybody parts friends is what I'm looking for.
What will you do when you stop doing
this?
Well, I have Regina and I have Harry, and we have a little couch
and a little desk in the living room. I can continue to do the show
at my house for quite some time, until they absolutely refuse. And
I control the money, so they really can't refuse. So I don't see a
need to ever actually stop.
Who would be the first guest on the home
show?
Of course, it would have to be...I guess it would be Regina. I'm
not saying she would be the best guest, but she'd be the first
guest.
Hearing you talk like this, about fatherhood, about your
job, I get the sense that there is real hope and things that are
heartening for you. There are many things to get up out of bed in
the morning for.
Yeah. For the first time, two days ago, my son got up on a horse,
and now we can't get him off. I don't know if that exactly fills
the category you're describing, but for me, that was more than
enough to get out of bed the next day, because there was great
hope.
[From Issue 1061 — September 18, 2008]
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