We Had A Stalker List
I
couldn’t really fault him for being standoffish from his staff. Back in 2005 a man named Steven Rubenstein
was hired to do some work on Letterman’s estate and then took the opportunity
to plot the kidnapping of his son.
Luckily Rubenstein was arrested before he could carryout the plot. It’s still a scary experience for someone to
go through. I completely understand why
a guy would prefer to keep his distance and keep his confidants to a small
circle.
There
was a list of names all the pages needed to memorize and notify security if we
came across those people. The list
consisted of people who mailed death threats to Letterman or sent one too many
fan letters. It wasn’t a physical list
we could keep so we were made to orate it out loud like a choir during a
preshow meeting for 2 weeks straight. The
only name I remember was most likely the made up name of Katie Jacklyn Bovier
Onasis Kennedy Cosby.
Fans
would sometimes bring gifts for Letterman.
Our instructions were to take the gifts and tell the fan we would pass
it along. Sadly, the gifts never got to
him and would just sit in the box office.
Sometimes they were flowers other times food. I never saw anything extravagant but others
pages told me stories about some nice artwork or personalized mugs and other expensive
stuff they helped themselves too.
Whatever to gift was, rest assured the pages made good use out of
it.
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| UPDATE: It turns out she's a real person who plays bridge with my mother every other Sunday. She was just very upset that Letterman smoked cigars on the air. |
I
was always reluctant to eat the food fearing that it might be poisoned but that
didn’t stop others from scarfing down the grub.
Was it wrong of me to want someone to contract minor food poisoning from
eating a tainted box of chocolates? Most
of them were from middle America and a bit too trusting. Having grown up in Queens and it being only three/four
years after 9/11, I was convinced everyone was just waiting for the opportunity
to kill us all.
I
had a different upbringing then many of my Late Show colleagues. I grew up in New York City. Queens to be
specific. Most of them came from the
Midwest to try and hit it big in the TV industry. The best they could land at this point in their lives was a part-time job on
a late night talk show. They had student
loans closing in on them, dropping $800+ a month on rent while sharing an
apartment with 3 other roommates. They
could barely afford a $50 monthly cellphone payment let alone support
themselves. I’m certain many of them
were eligible for welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. I could guess it was a disappointing
transition when only a year ago they were living the fun and fancy-free college
dorm/party life and dreaming about how they will break into the entertainment
industry. They left behind their family
and friends only to realize life’s a cruel bitch and experience it first
hand.
I
was going through a different life experience than they were. I was still in college and hadn’t yet been
kicked in the balls with the job-hunting vacuum. I was fortunate to be graduating college
without student loans to pay thanks to a partial academic scholarship and my
parents paying the difference. I also
lived with my parents in Queens and wasn’t charged any rent while I was in school. Financially, life was relatively easy for
me. I only had to juggle my classes and
part-time job.
Double Thursday/Double
Monday
The
Late Show used to tape two shows on Thursday, the Thursday and Friday
show. Then one day Letterman had to do some
Nascar thing and needed to leave early on Thursday. They decided to tape Friday’s show on
Monday. So Double Thursday became Double
Monday for one day only. But Letterman
liked the early dismissal on Thursday so much he made Double Monday the
standard. The double shows were always
tough because while one show was being recorded with half the pages monitoring
the audience the other half was performing the line-up for the other show that
would tape immediately after. They
bought the pages pizza on the double show days because we were working through
dinner. That was really cool of them to
do.
I
felt the quality of those Friday shows were weaker than the rest. That 4 day difference caused the jokes to be
less relative because they were missing out on key current events. Letterman would sometimes take the
opportunity to poke fun and the faulty time change like the time he interviewed
Tony Danza on Monday for a show that was airing Friday. Danza was promoting his live morning show and
playing along with Letterman, pretending it was Friday. Danza mentioned the guest he had on the show
and said it was a fun episode. Letterman
decided to up the stakes and asked Danza for a specific event that happened on
the yet to be recording live Friday broadcast.
Danza stumbled for a bit, which caused a giggle in the audience. Danza then said people would need to tune in
if they wanted to know what happened on his show.
 |
| I'd ask you all to call me Wayne Brady but I only play guys named Tony. |
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