The First 5:10 of My 15 Minutes of Fame

Appearing on Late Night With David Letterman in 1990

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It was 30 years ago today that the phone call came.

“Hi, this is Madelyn Smithberg from Late Night with David Letterman. Do you have a minute?”

I’d just had a book published by HarperCollins so I knew what it was about.

Nicki Shivell had put somebody up to calling me as a prank. So I listened to her questions and gave my responses. I think we were about five minutes into the call when I finally realized the call wasn’t bogus, Nicki wasn’t playing another trick on me.

This was real. This was the David Letterman Show calling to “pre-interview” me, to see if I would make an interesting guest for Dave’s little show.

I passed the audition, mainly because I didn’t tense up, thinking this was a big deal and could land me a guest spot on Letterman.

I passed the audition because I thought it was a joke.

Madelyn had called HarperCollins’ publicity office to get my home phone number but my publicist had decided to go to lunch before letting me know to expect the call.

So I was in the dark about my audition call. No nerves because of no knowledge.

And that is the short version of how I ended up sitting across from David Letterman on his program of August 8, 1990.

It was apparently a big deal to more than just my immediate family because the local newspaper, the Louisville Courier Journal printed an item about my pending network debut in the People column on page A2.

  

The newspaper asked me to write a story about my experience. 

Here's what I wrote on an early laptop (Toshiba Satellite) on the plane ride back to Louisville"

This is my life: At age 43, I finally do something that warrants a guest shot on "Late Night with David Letterman" and - what? – all my friends are too old to stay up and watch me.

And then when I get to New York and get introduced on the show, Dave mispronounces my last name.

But this past Wednesday night, after being bumped from two previous shows, I finally - at 1:37 in the morning - got to sit in the chair next to Dave and tell my stories and promote my book. And I didn't even embarrass myself, throw up on the set or anything.

It went as smoothly as any Letterman show. But there were many times in the past four weeks when I doubted it would ever happen.

The first time I was supposed to be on, July 10, I was bumped for a horse that lip-synced "Indian Love Call.” Actually I didn't mind. I would have been disappointed if I had been bumped for, say, Sonny Bono. But not that horse. That horse was good.

I was five minutes away from going on the air-five minutes - when segment producer Josh Tane and talent coordinator Madelyn Smithberg sidled up and surrounded me. I could see it on their faces. Before they said anything, I said it. "I've been bumped, right?" They nodded and told me I could come back on Aug. 7.

I flew home and told all my friends, including a few who actually stayed up to see me, that I had been rescheduled.

"Right," they said, with just the slightest hint that maybe they didn't believe me, maybe I really hadn't been in the green room after all, maybe I just made it up.

"I didn't make it up," I swore. "I couldn't make up getting bumped for a horse that lip-synced "Indian Love Call.'"

When this past week's TV Guide hit the stands and I was listed in the Tuesday, Aug. 7, highlights - "Late Night With David Letterman. Scheduled: Travel-guide author Vince Staten ('Unauthorized Amer. ica')" - a few of my skeptical friends perked up: Hey, maybe he really is going to be on Letterman.

I was more skeptical than they were. I noticed that word: "Scheduled."

I'd done the dance once. I remembered Madelyn's promise: "We never bump anyone twice, except stand-up comedians."

But I also remembered her other comment: "We never have any idea how long the show is going to run."

Tuesday began ominously.

I had taken a two-day detour for a speaking engagement through Atlantic City, the New Jersey resort town that's sort of like Las Vegas without the class. When I called the guest-relations desk at the hotel that morning to check on a shuttle to the airport, the concierge tsk-tsked that I should have been on the one that left half an hour before.

So I hustled and caught the next one, nervously checking my watch as I rode. I arrived at the airport in plenty of time, only to discover that I was at the wrong airport. I was supposed to fly out of a small commuter field that was about five blocks from the hotel. So I grabbed a cab and headed back into town, nervously checking my watch as I rode. The cabbie promised no problems, and there weren't. Unless you consider riding in the back seat of a cab that is barreling down the New Jersey Turnpike at 90 mph a problem.

It got me there on time. That's when I discovered that my flight had been fogged in at Newark. But it should make it back and put us only 30 minutes behind schedule, they said. Maybe only 15. I started checking my watch even more nervously now because it was noon and Letterman tapes at 5:30. And not in Atlantic City, but 120 miles up the coast in New York.

I considered renting a car, but after recalling my 90-mph ride down the New Jersey Turnpike, I thought better of it. That cabbie might still be out there.

I arrived in Newark at 1 p.m., but I couldn't find the limo the show had sent to pick me up. I was really starting to get nervous now. I'd just spent 70 bucks in Atlantic City on cabs to and from sundry airports. That was more than I'd lost in the slot machines. I didn't know if I had enough cash to take a taxi into the city from Newark.

That's when Leo the limo driver found me and things seemed to be on track again.

The producers wanted to talk to me again. So Leo took me directly to the studio. Josh felt sure I'd make it onto the show, even though I was one of four "scheduled" guests. The others were football legend Tom Landry, blues legend Etta James and pie-baking legend Helen Myer. Madelyn wasn't so sure I'd get on. But if I didn't, she said, they'd just hold me over for Wednesday's show.

And then Thursday's show. And then Friday's show.

I was beginning to feel like a hostage of the David Letterman show.

I was also concerned that I hadn't brought enough clean underwear to live in New York for the next week.

After his opening monologue, Dave announced me as a guest, pronouncing my last name STAT-en, instead of STATE-en. But as the evening dragged on - Tom Landry, the pie lady, "Small Town News" - it became apparent Tuesday was not my day.

At the end of the show Dave apologized for not getting me on, even pronouncing my name right. He said they would re- schedule me, then as he read down the list of Wednesday's guests, he exclaimed "And Vince Staten! It must be part of God's great plan."

When I arrived at the studio Wednesday night, I had this sinking feeling that I was on my way to setting a record for being bumped, that I would become a national joke by never making it onto the Letterman show.

Josh was more upbeat. He felt confident I'd make it. Madelyn was noncommittal. "You never know."

There were only two other guests scheduled: movie legend Beau Bridges and comedy legend Bob Sarlotte.

I was in makeup when the show came on. Dave mentioned I was making my third attempt at getting on and promised I would make it this time. Bandleader Paul Shaffer wasn't so sure. As they continued to talk about whether I would make it -- on the air, they're talking about this - Candy the makeup lady continued to pile on the pancake. She was voting I'd make it. Voting with her makeup.

I sat in the green room, watching Bridges and Sarlotte, and a calm settled over me. I was going to make it.

Then I had a flashback to the sixth grade. It was the class play, "Mr. Hadley Eats His Hat," and I was Mr. Hadley.

I remembered the big day; the entire school was there, all the parents. And Mr. Hadley fluffed a line, skipped three pages of the script, and two kids never got on stage.

But that was 31 years ago. The flash of nerves passed. The next thing I knew, Biff the stage manager was leading me out of the green room, Dave was announcing my name and the studio audience was applauding wildly. It seemed they were giving me a bigger hand than they had given Beau Bridges. Of course, he hadn't been bumped twice already.

Dave kind of tossed it to me and got out of the way. I told my now-familiar stories, the one about the place in South Carolina where the Air Force accidentally dropped an atomic bomb in '58, the one about the Kentucky place where space aliens supposedly got into a shootout with a bunch of good old boys in '55, the place in Florida where Jim Bakker met Jessica Hahn.

And then it was over. Dave was shaking my hand, Josh was congratulating me and the studio audience was filing out.

It wasn't 15 minutes of fame; more like five.

But the best part had arrived: It was over.

The three questions I have been asked most about my experiences with "Late Night With David Letterman" are:

1. What is Dave like? 

2. How did you get on the show?

3. What's it like being on the show?

And my answers are:

1. I have no idea what Dave is like. He didn't come by and say hello before the show. He didn't stop in afterward either bump night to apologize. We didn't go out afterward for drinks.

He didn't talk to me during the break. My wife, who was in the audience both nights, sald he never talks to the guests during the break. She said sometimes he gets up and walks away.

But I don't think he does this out of rudeness. I think Dave, like many talk-show hosts, doesn't want you to leave the interview in the green room. Dave wants everything fresh on the air.

And on the air he was gracious and funny even though he had a sore throat and obviously didn't feel his best.

2. A staff researcher bought my book at a Greenwich Village bookstore. He planned to use it to come up with some offbeat story ideas, in particular a story about the Thermometer Museum. But when he talked to talent coordinator Madelyn Smithberg about it, she said, "Why don't we do the guy instead?”

She called me up, out of the blue, to kind of 'pre-interview" me, see if I could tell a funny story. When I first answered the phone, I thought it was one of my old high school friends playing a prank on me, and I was about to blurt out. "I know it's you, Nickl." But soon I figured out it was for real. Fortunately, by then it was too late to get nervous. I'd already told her my stories.

Madelyn said she liked my low-key humor and wondered II would be on the show.

Would I? Uh, yes, I might be able to fit it in.

She promised to get back to me with a firm date. The next day my publicist at Harper & Row called with the date, Aug. 7.

3. To begin with, the green room isn't green. It's gray, and no one dresses in the dressing room, even though they assign you one.

When I was a kid watching Jack Paar and Steve Allen and all the great talk-show hosts, I used to Imagine how exciting the green room must be: Sammy Davis Jr. and Sinatra harmonizing before going on the show, Jack Douglas spinning yarns. I imagined it must be like the old Algonquin Roundtable for talk show guests.

Wrong. Jackson Browne never came into the green room, although his public relations people did. Morgan Freeman stood in the door way for a while, but he never acknowledged anyone else. Etta James stayed in her dressing room. Beau Bridges sat down on the green room couch for a couple of minutes. Bob Sarlotte dropped in occasionally to watch on the monitor.

But for the most part, the guests are too nervous to mingle in the green room. Instead it's filled with staff members and PR people.

The only guest who sat in the green room with me for any length of time was Tom Landry, the longtime Dallas Cowboys coach. Tom is no scintillating conversationalist.

I don't think he had ever seen the show before. We watched the opening monologue and a bit called “How's the Weather?” together. Dave picked random phone numbers out of distant cities phone books and then called to ask the person, "How's the weather?" Tom had this quizzical look. I could almost hear his brain waves asking: Why the hell am I going on this show?

When the time to go on the show finally came, I really didn't believe it was happening. Neither did Dave. He had been running a pool with bandleader Paul Shaffer the entire night on whether I would get on.

In those moments before you go on, it's what I imagine it must be like for a boxer in the last few moments before a championship fight. Everyone is crowded around, encouraging you, giving you last-minute reminders. And then you hear your name. And you go get 'em.