4/17/2023 0 Comments Late night host writer on simpsons![]() If Letterman had not fallen under the influence of Markoe, with her bohemian love of ideas and oddball sensibility, Zinoman suggests that his life and career might have traveled down a very different, much more conventional path. Markoe is a hero among comedy people and comedy writers, revered as the woman behind the man, the cult figure behind the household name. Letterman is a true pop culture original, but Zinoman argues persuasively that his comic sensibility was shaped and molded by a series of talented, distinctive collaborators, most notably Merrill Markoe, Letterman’s longtime head writer and girlfriend. The New York Times’ Zinoman is particularly savvy in chronicling the ways in which Letterman has revealed himself through his work, the way there really does not seem to be any real separation between Letterman the prickly and cantankerous comic genius and beloved performer and Letterman the famously prickly and cantankerous human being. This is a biography of a career as much, if not more, than a biography of a man. How do you plumb the depths of someone so ferociously private? How do you barrel past walls as formidable as the ones Letterman has built over the course of his career? Zinoman’s answer is to explore Letterman almost exclusively through his work, through his shows, through his comedy. Letterman’s fundamental unknowability poses a challenge for biographers. Letterman came into our homes every night for longer than some of his fans have been alive yet he is fundamentally, unknowable in the way we secretly demand our legends to be. But decades into one of the most influential and accomplished careers in all of show-business, Letterman remains an enigma. What all of these icons and visionaries shared was an ironic distance from show-business and show-business conventions that allowed them to simultaneously inhabit, subvert and mock the role of the smarmy, insincere show-business phony. The Simpsons and Late Night with David Letterman shared a number of writers, often egghead recent graduates of The Harvard Lampoon, most notably George Meyer, but they also shared a sensibility at once irreverent, absurdist, deeply satirical and filled with richly merited contempt for hypocrisy and phoniness in all its forms, but particularly of the show-business variety.ĭavid Letterman helped create the groundwork for The Simpsons and The Simpsons Decade. The Simpsons changed television forever but it was building upon the innovations and attitude of Late Night with David Letterman. I chose the title The Simpsons Decade for my column on post-modern, meta-textual 1990s comedy for Rotten Tomatoes because, in addition to being the greatest TV show of all time, The Simpsons refined and perfected a comic sensibility that would define the Clinton Era.
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