THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE: WHAT THE LATE SHOW MEANT TO ME

This morning, I woke up in a different world. I milled about my home realizing that I would have to alter my routine. I quaked at the thought that my son wouldn’t get the excitement of seeing the monologue from the night before while he gets ready for school. The world that I knew, was gone forever, and as I pondered that thought for a while, I realized I was feeling sensations that were all too familiar to me. This wasn’t just a foolish melancholy over the loss of a daily routine or the disappearance of a favored TV show. This was the end of an era, and much to my own surprise, I was in mourning.

As a kid in the 90’s, staying up late was a rare privilege usually reserved for the weekends, and by chance one night after finishing what must’ve been my hundredth block buster rental of Star Wars the Special Edition from Blockbuster and having my fill of stuffed crust pizza and popcorn, my channel surfing brought me to the comforting comedy of The Late Show with David Letterman. Until this time, TV for me had been a combination of Nickelodeon, The Price is Right hosted by the legendary Bob Barker, and primetime movies that were heavily edited for network viewing audiences. But what Letterman offered was the news in a fun and digestible format, music I was drawn to performed by Paul Schaeffer and the CBS Orchestra, and segments that provided a variety content that made current events not only understandable to me, but fun.

I soon expanded my fillings of late night television once I got my own room at my mother’s house with a TV in it. I would stay up late with my door closed and watch Letterman during my weekends with her, which eventually turned into watching The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, which paired with is gay robot skeleton sidekick Geoff offered something surreal and hilarious. As I grew into adulthood, this habit of late night television viewing and made it a daily part of my end of day routine. It was the best way I’d found to unwind and lull my mind into a sense of security at the end of my day regardless of what stresses the day had brought.

In 2015 when David Letterman announced the end of his run as the host of The Late Show, like many I approached the future of one of my favorite past times with hesitation and concern. Who could succeed someone who had been such a staple in late night television for 22 years? Of course, like many fans, my money was on Craig Ferguson, but those dreams were quashed when Ferguson confirmed his own retirement and that he would not return to take the helm of The Late Show even if it was offered. In retrospect, I can see that was probably the right decision. But that still left the most important question unanswered.

Then, when Letterman announced that Stephen Colbert was to succeed him as host of The Late Show, the news gave me pause. The Colbert Report guy? Mr. Comedy Central? How could he come from a show format like that and take over for David Letterman? I found myself in a state of questioning that I didn’t readily understand. Of course, there were other late night greats I enjoyed, not the least of which was Conan O’Brien, but when his show also ended, I was left with fewer options. Jay Leno had also left The Tonight Show and had been succeeded by Jimmy Falon, whose style was a little too chaotic for my taste. Jimmy Kimmel was there as was Seth Myers, but I admit I only gravitated to them in short bursts. While I tried to enjoy James Corden as the new host of The Late Late Show replacing Craig Ferguson, his reported behavior which became more apparent by the power of social media turned me off to him almost immediately.

So, in a round about way, I was forced to give Colbert a fair chance.

And I’m so very grateful I did.

What Late Night TV Gives Us

Late Night television has been such a staple of the modern first world experience that I dare say it remains a veritable necessity to this day. Even in Europe, personalities such as Graham Norton allow for an end to the work day that millions of viewers still rely on. In the United States, much of late night programming follows in the footsteps of Letterman and Leno, who made light of daily current events and took great pride in jabbing at anyone who came into their crosshairs. From petty criminals to presidents, those men took a step away from the late night programs that preceded them, most notably away from The Tonight Show’s first host, the great Johnny Carson, who never truly gave any weight to his political views at all.

While the news as reported on most outlets can be dull, contrived, and usually leave us more depressed than anything, the interpretation of current events are given on late night shows such a levity that through the worst times, such as war or tyranny, gives a levity that allowed me to believe that we could indeed make it through our worst the times.

How Has Late Night Influenced My Writing

Late Night shows are notorious for cramming a lot of information into just an hour’s worth of programming. What’s more is that they deliberately try to make the content funny and accessible to multitudes of people. Jokes and segment scripts are punchy, illicit reaction, and get audience investment. Aren’t those all things you want in your writing?

As my own writing matured, I realized that there was a place for this point especially in fiction. One of the most daunting things that I found in initial drafts of my stories was that much of my background as a poet was creeping into my prose. While this isn’t a terrible thing, there are indeed things that I had to learn about being a novelist vs a poet.

Late Night television writing taught me how to cut out the fluff in parts of my writing. It taught me how to be cognizant of where I need to get to the point and where I need to let things linger. In addition, it taught me that words on their own, depending on structure and lexicon, can have an effect on how a reader perceives the speed upon which they should be experiencing the story as it’s being told. Combining those lessons with what I knew about meter in poetry forced my prose to mature in a way that I never thought possible.

Finding Truth in the Absurd

The late great George Carlin once said that in every joke, “there has to be one thing that way out of proportion.” Nothing can be more an example of that than Late Night comedy. While finding places for comedy, even in serious writing, is important, there was an even greater lesson I took from that one statement that changed the way I saw the world.

As fiction writers, there is a certain romance to building your own world. Even if your brand of fiction doesn’t take place in that galaxy far far away, or if your characters unexpected journey doesn’t begin in a hole in the ground, there is a level of serenity in stepping onto the blank page and finding out where your truth should come from. Whether we are following James Bond to some far away country on a covert mission of espionage, or we are following Damien Amarin on his quest to Mage city of Miren to find his beloved Misty’s killer, the ability to create a world and fill it with the things and characters that mean something to us is special.

Geography aside though, locations mean little to nothing if you are not populating your world with certain things that you find to be true to you, and perhaps even more importantly, absurd to you. Can we not look around the world today and see an ever changing landscape of changing countries, tyrannical leaders, and abuses of power? Of course we can!

In this, listening to segments of Meanwhile on Colbert’s Late Show, taught me how to understand that thing that is way out of proportion in the joke and utilize that methodology in constructing my own world, its characters, and ultimately its conflicts. By taking the things that we normally experience in subtlety and exaggerating them exponentially, the world feels lived in, real, and just as mysterious as our own. It also allows us to make true human commentary on current events or our own philosophies through the lenses of our characters as they interact with the world we’ve placed them in.

For example, in my fictional world of Evelyn, we meet our protagonist at the end of a nine year war to suppress a mage rebellion that rose after the Imperial government stripped them of their rights, their lands, and even their freedoms, going as far as to deport or even execute known magic practitioners regardless of whether they were born in the Empire or not. At first that may sound absurd. But when you actually give it some thought, doesn’t it sound slightly familiar?

The Power Shift

The final thing I learned from The Late Show was how to drop facades and speak directly to the audience without leaping off the page. In Late Night, it is a common thing to occasionally see the host drop comedy to address serious and emotional issues. Jimmy Kimmel has had his fair share of this, having broken down into tears on several occasions during a monologue, especially on days of considerably trying news.

I particularly remember a time when Craig Ferguson addressed the audience with a serious tone during his cold open, as opposed to the silly antics he usually got up to, which took place during one of the 9/11 anniversaries where he specifically stated that he would not be using his signature catch phrase, “it’s a great day for America,” because 9/11 would never be a ‘great day’ for America. Letterman and Colbert did this numerous times during the course of their respective tenures on The Late Show, most notably during the Covid 19 pandemic.

What this taught me, is that there is a time when you have to be serious. In storytelling, we have to remember that though the plot is what brought us here, the characters are what make us stay. How they process trauma, heartbreak, triumph, and defeat are things that must be taken seriously and must be communicated in such a way that the reader lives it with the characters. This is not dissimilar from how many of us lived the pandemic right along Colbert when he was recording the late show from a janitor’s closet in the Ed Sullivan Theater, or how we lived so many other crises with our favorite late night hosts because they are people too.

In taking the time to pull back the curtains of the plot and write a chapter where we are simply living with our favorite character in tears over the loss of a dear friend, we show that stories are about so much more than just the plot, but the people that are living them, just like we have lived through our stories.

What’s Next?

Though no one knows what’s next for Stephen Colbert, or Late Night shows as a whole, what I can say is that the spirit of those shows will continue. I doubt that this was the last we’ve seen of Colbert and I find it difficult to believe that the spirit of what Late Night shows are will ever be able to be fully extinguished.

As much as I choose to use my stories to communicate a message to those who would read them, Late Night has done the same thing for decades and certainly long before the polarizing environment that we live in now.

Wherever Colbert ends up, I will be sure to tune in and I look forward to learning and experiencing so much more. I look forward to living so much more, because that is where writing comes from.

It comes from living…

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