My Year as a Page for
The Late Show with David Letterman
Since David Letterman has ended his 30+ year run as a late
night talk show host I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my time as page
for The Late Show. I figured now that
his show is off the air it would be the best time to air all the dirty little
secrets I learned while working there during 2004-2005.
Let me begin by saying that 90% of my experience on the show
was a positive one. I will spend most of
this article talking about the negative experiences because that makes for more
interesting reading. If I talked only
about the awesomeness it would make for an even more boring read than what
you’re about to invest in. That just
wouldn’t be fair to the 5 people who are reading this of their own free
will.
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| For starters, this was the authentic Late Show page uniform. |
How I Got The Job
During my tenure I had a few tricks to tell the true
Letterman fans from the fake ones. It
was based on their reaction to my answer of “How did you end up working here?” I’d always reply “Nepotism.” The true Letterman fans would laugh. The others would stare at me blankly wishing
it was 2008 and they had a fancy phone that could translate that SAT word for
them.
I was a 20-year-old communications major at St. Johns
University and wrapping up my 3rd year. I knew I wanted to work in TV/Film but hadn’t
interned because I am a staunch believer that you shouldn’t have to pay a
school or business organization for the privilege of working for them. As luck would have it my aunt used to work
for CBS and helped a distant 2nd or 3rd cousin of mine,
we’ll call him Bob, get a job there. Bob
took that job and cultivated it into a nice career for himself running the page
program at The Late Show. My aunt was
kind enough to give him a call for me and within a day I was faxing my resume
over to Bob and scheduled an interview for later that week.
I interviewed directly with my distant relative, it was also
the first time I ever met him. It was
like any other job interview except it was possible to trace my lineage back to
the same junction point as the stranger on the other side of the desk. I must have been decreed “not a complete
retard” because I was kicked up the chain to be interviewed by the head of the
Audience Department, David Kay. I would
later find out that no other page had to interview with David Kay to get the position. This was probably due to the fact that my
potential direct supervisor was a relative and to keep things as fair as
possible he should add a buffer to the interview process. David Kay asked me some basic interview stuff
and I did my best to come off as polite, punctual, and a hard worker. A few days later I received a call telling me
I got the job and I should arrive in June for a one-day orientation.
Orientation consisted of me and three other people. Bear with me, or bare with me (I really don’t
feel like googling right now) here because if you hadn’t noticed by now I’m
changing some names so I don’t get angry emails and “defaced” on Facebook. There was Donna, Stephanie, and Danny. Donna was from Austin Texas and staying with
her aunt in Connecticut while she took advantage of this opportunity. She was facing a three-hour daily train
commute back and fourth from CT to Manhattan just to work on this show. Donna got the job through a boss she had
while working at a catering company. She
had the cutest accent, long blonde hair and a nice smile. I debated if I should leave my girlfriend of
the time for a potential upgrade.
Stephanie was from New Jersey and had just come off an internship at
MTV. Her connections their assisted her
in getting the job at The Late Show. She
was also hot…Danny was a graduate from Columbia University and knew a producer
or something that helped him land the job.
My three new coworkers all had something in common that I
did not. They were all college
graduates. They were trying to land
their first fulltime job while I was just trying to scrape together some TV
experience and beer money.
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| Not these guys. |
During our orientation we had to read, aloud, excerpts from
the employee handbook and figure out how to pronounce the word stanchion. Donna kept butchering it, but in her defense
she was the first person who had to read.
We then watched a 20-minute video about sexual harassment. I desperately wanted to laugh at the overacting
and wacky scenarios that were exhibited in the video. My three colleagues sat their stoned faced
watching the video with complete seriousness.
I thought it had something to do with being a college graduate or
“official adult” and I didn’t want to come off as some undergraduate jackass so
I held back the laughter. The video
ended, in the eyes of CBS and Worldwide Pants Inc., we were officially trained
on how to not sexually harass coworkers.
We’re given our brand new Late Show polo shirt and recycled Late Show
Page Jacket and instructed to return the following week to start working.
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| Pretty girls and stanchions make for great crowd control. |
My First Official Day
The first day at any job is the toughest. You don’t really know anyone, you might have
an idea of the culture from the interview process but no direct experience at
that organization, you want to make a good impression and hopefully leave
knowing the job and maybe a new friend or two.
That’s a lot of pressure for one day.
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| This picture is here to play on your sympathy. |
The four of us arrive for work on time. We get a quick tour of where the lockers
are for changing into our Late Show garb and taken to the main lobby where the
real work is about to begin. Bob assigns
all the new employees a buddy who will be training them that day.
My three fellow trainees each have their buddy showing them
around, explaining the ins and outs of the show, making small talk with
them. My buddy, we’ll call her Betty
arrives late and spends 30 minutes hiding in the box office eating. Now in her defense I have no clue how her
day, week, month, or life was going up to that point. She may not have eaten all day and this was
her only chance to scarf down something quick.
From my perspective I am alone surrounded by a bunch of strangers who I
can’t talk to because they are all busy working. So I am left to quietly wait and hope no one
notices that I am not helping setup because I have no clue what I am
doing. Luckily, no one noticed. It just perplexed me that Betty never took a
moment find me and say hello or explain she needed a few moments because her day
was crazy drama and she was going to starve to death if she didn’t eat her
salad. She was pointed out to me early
on but I wasn’t about to rush over to some work stranger who was eating a meal
and harass her with a million questions about whatever it is human beings talk
about because that would be fucking rude.
I did learn a lesson from that awkward first 30 minutes and
when I got more comfortable in the position, I made it a point to talk with the
new people if I saw no one was talking to them during their first few
weeks. I didn’t want them to feel as
ignored as I did during the opening moments in a new job.
Once lobby the doors opened at 12:30pm she found me and went
through all the motions someone would with any new kid in class. She was training me on the audience dotting
system. The dotting system is when pages
would scout out people in the line and chat them up. Typically they would make small talk and
explain the lineup process. This was all
a trick to gauge how cool the person is.
If they were personable and high energy they were given a card and told
to hand that to the person at the desk when they check in as proof the Page
chatted with them. The card really was
an indication this person should sit close to the front of the stage because
Letterman will get good vibes off them.
Yes, that’s right, cool people were sat in the front, closer to
Letterman (the price you pay for a free show). The Letterman Audience was
manipulated into seats that might garner the best cheers and applause
possible. The dots received a special
sticker on their ticket and were instructed to come back at a specific
time. Assholes were also weeded
out. They had a number 2 written on
their sticker and tossed in the balcony.
Sadly not everyone in the balcony was a 2 though. The VIPs were also given balcony
seating. This meant the assholes and
potential relatives of Dave, guests, or the producers were on the second floor
with the assholes.
This seating structure lead to a misunderstanding between
Betty and I one day when I was assisting her in seating the balcony on my third day there. I was given a super fast rundown of the
seating structure. The entire first row
of the balcony was for VIPs then the second row was for VIPs only in the center
and the third row was VIPs up to the 4th or 5th seat and
then every other Wednesday VIPs could sit next to each other, finally on the
full moon VIPs had to be sat boy, girl, girl, boy. This was told to me on day 1 in a mumbled
super fast explanation and never re-explained by Betty despite my asking her
during some downtime. She really liked
to focus on her salads. So by day 3 she
was yelling out numbers to me and I was letting X amount of people she
requested go to her. Betty would sit
them in a specific seat that allowed the VIPs optimal viewing and the 2s shitty
viewing. You have about 20-40 people
flooding through that balcony door when the seating process takes place. Some get a bit overzealous and rush by
you. This happened to me on day 3. I had to make a decision to let Betty deal
with the couple that got passed me or stop the 30 people behind them from
following like sheep and cause “sit anywhere you want chaos.” I wasn’t about to become the guy that caused
the producer’s child’s ballet teacher to have a shitty viewing experience and
thus made the decision to halt the 30 people while Betty repositioned the two
stragglers. Betty immediately corrected
me on the faux pas. She didn’t yell at
me or saying anything rude but you could tell she was pissed. I felt like a color blind 5-year-old who was
getting chastised for using the green crayon instead of the red one. I left that evening thinking I was the worst
employee there.
The following week I was transferred to train with a guy
named Matt. I was thinking Betty talked
some smack about me to Bob and he decided to train me on a different task. Matt was a pretty nice dude, we got to
talking a bit, it turned out he used to work as a page over at NBC and interned
at Late Night with Conan O’Brien. He
landed the Late Show job through a connection he made while at NBC. I am a huge Conan fan so I shook him down for
whatever Conan stories I could get. He
seemed a bit on the cynical side of life but I like a cynical perspective.
I became a pro and making sure people on line did not block
the sidewalk. I would chat them up about
where they were from and answer questions about the ticket process, Letterman,
the show, etc. Audience members would
typically ask me if I ever met Dave.
Early on I would answer honestly, explaining how I don’t have
interaction with him in my position.
That answer always seemed to make them sad so eventually I would just
lie and tell them yes and that he floats around the office and is really
friendly. That made them feel happy and
helped me understand why parents lie to their children about mythical creatures
who bring them gifts and money (e.g. Urkelbot, honest politicians, Vince
McMahon).
The truth is we rarely saw Dave. During the warm up for the show he would run
down the hallway and wave at whatever page was at the bottom of the
stairs. We could place a cardboard
cutout of Margaret Mary Ray at the bottom of that stairs and he would have
waived. He probably would have run by
faster but he still would have waived.
I only had two legitimate interactions with David Letterman and
both times it involved his security team being behind schedule. During the show a page was assigned to the
bottom platform to make sure no audience members wandered anywhere they were
not supposed to be while going to the bathroom.
When the show ends Bill, the head of security, would come down the
stairs and relieve the page standing there.
A page could not leave until someone from security gave the OK.
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| We saw Evil Dave a lot, doing lots of evil things. |
I was on the platform that day and Bill was delayed, my
guess is he was busy busting people who were putting gum under the seat [NOTE
TO SELF: MAKE SURE TO FIND A BETTER JOKE BEFORE POSTING THIS ON THE WEBSITE] or
practicing his African Ant Eater dance for the big fall formal. Either way, he was delayed and the page’s
post show meeting was adjourned. As the
pages made their way down the stairs to take the elevator to their lockers Letterman
and his personal assistant walk by. I did
try to tell them security and Letterman had not walked by yet. But it was too late. What followed next was about 20 pages stopping
dead in their tracks on the lower lobby steps while Letterman walked by and
looked at me and then up at them. You
could not tell if Letterman was upset because he always looked upset. The few times I caught a glimpse of the guy
while the show wasn’t filming he looked physically tired and/or pissed
off. No one ever said anything to me
about it so I am going to assume no one got in trouble for that timing
issue. The pages seemed a bit shaken by
the encounter, mostly because we rarely saw Letterman with the exception of
when the show was taping. The senior
level pages told everyone to hold back from taking the elevator for about 5
minutes so as to not bother Letterman. I
always wondered if it was a hard rule that we needed to avoid Letterman at all
times or something that developed from managers that took their role too
seriously or idiots who had no clue that people are human beings who understand
sometimes they end up on the same elevator.
The
next interaction was when Letterman accidentally said hello to me. It was after
the show wrapped for the night and Bill was running late. When Dave walks by he is expecting the head
of security and quietly mutters "Hey how's it goin.'" I replied
"Hello." He gave me a "who the hell are you" look and kept
walking. I’ll always remember the look
of confusion on his face. It said to me
that he’s a complete introvert, which is the complete opposite of a guy who
runs out on stage and entertains a room full of people for a living.
"I Like To Play With Toys" Productions®
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