Joaquin On Letterman

If you missed the Late Show with David Letterman featuring an interview with Joaquin Phoenix, you missed an exercise in squirmingly uncomfortable comic gold. Oddest interview ever? It was certainly odd, but wasn't the infamous Crispin Glover interview odder? Or Farrah Fawcett?
more HERE

David Letterman's Mea Culpa

Wracked with guilt, David Letterman apologized profusely Friday night about censoring Bill Hicks 15 years earlier on The Late Show. "I'm sorry that I did it," he said several times. "It was a mistake... The decision was mine."
Letterman aired the censored five-minute standup segment from Oct. 1, 1993 and interviewed Hicks' mom Mary, who stated, "I will tell you it was a very hard time 15 years ago when that happened."
Letterman reportedly was offended by Hicks' Jesus jibe, but on the show he chose not to be specific, calling it "an error of judgement on my part. I made the decision I think born of insecurity more than anything else. I said I don't think we want to have that on the show. So we removed it from the show.
"Seeing it now raises the question, what was the matter with me?" Letterman went on. "What was I thinking? This says more about me as a guy than it says about Bill because there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's just perfect."
The Texan-born comic appeared on Late Night 11 times. "We always loved Bill," Letterman added. "He was tremendously funny with a great energy. We just got a big kick out of him." Hicks died of pancreatic cancer on February 26, 1994. He was 32.
more video...Part 1 HERE ...Part 2 HERE
CBS transcript & video HERE

Empathetic Dave

David Letterman, the CBS host who has competed with Jay Leno every weeknight for 15 years, now feels empathy for his late-night challenger.
In an interview with Rolling Stone on newsstands this week, Mr. Letterman, the longtime “Late Show” host, expresses bewilderment about NBC's decision to replace Mr. Leno next year.
“Unless I’m misunderstanding something, I don’t know why, after the job Jay has done for them, why they would relinquish that,” Mr. Letterman said in the interview. “I guess they thought it was a less messy way to handle what happened to me at NBC. I don’t know.”
Mr. Letterman famously moved from NBC to CBS in 1993 after Mr. Leno replaced Johnny Carson on NBC’s “Tonight” show, establishing one of the foremost rivalries on television which was documented in the book "The Late Shift"
New York Times article HERE