Letterman Podcast 002 Marc Karzen

greetings and welcome to the letterman podcast my name is mike chisholm and i am as always excited to be here i'm excited to uh to take time out of uh my life and all the things that i got going on around me and talk about david letterman the impressions um the imprints that he has left on uh on me as a person on the folks that uh come on this show uh whether they are a fan whether they've had a brush with the show whether they actually worked on the show eventually hey you never know maybe if even dave comes on the show whatever it is it is always fun to sit down and talk a little bit about this iconic piece of culture of television culture of broadcasting culture very very excited to be here as always very excited for already the response i mean technically the podcast hasn't launched at the time of this recording and the response that i'm already getting for the podcast is uh really good the groundswell as they like to say in the business is doing its thing i'm so excited about that and today oh my god am i excited about our guest um i don't think i'm stretching when i say that our guest is responsible for helping to create the tone of late night with david letterman and late night with david letterman is really at the end of the day the revolutionary vehicle that carried dave into becoming the legendary broadcaster that he became in that show they did a lot of things that were different than the norm a lot of things that um were outside the box part of that were because of constraints of uh the carson group that uh that oversaw the show said hey it can't be too much like the tonight show with johnny carson you got these kind of rules we're going to give you some fences here and as long as they kind of uh stayed within those fences of being different they could continue and they could thrive well well one of those things was the tone that was set not just by dave in the presentation and and some of the guests and things but also the band that played also the um the different graphic presentations that the show would present and in that a big part of that was the bumpers if you don't know what a bumper is that's uh as the show leaves to go to commercial or the show comes back from commercial there's a graphic that's put up and you know carson's uh johnny carson's legendarily said more to come on late night with david letterman those bumpers were very creative and very fun and in my opinion did a really good job of setting the tone of the show and actually sort of became a character in the show the guy responsible and not just one guy he's going to first thing he's going to tell you is he's part of a team but the person who was responsible for those bumpers is a guy by the name of mark carson now mark um has released a book and i don't know how he did that we're going to talk about this i actually talked about this on one of the other podcasts that we did uh i did a foe this show was brought to you by um look at this this is the late night bumpers book now if you're a fan of david letterman uh of late night with david letterman and any of the content that they have put out you need to get this book late night bumpers.com is where you get it um i love this book and everything contained within it um is in my opinion one of the greatest ancillary products the outside of the show that has ever been released that captures the spirit of the show i highly recommend it not only am i able to recommend the book and pretend that they're a sponsor of the show but i'm actually able to talk to the author and the creator of these bumpers mark carson thank you for taking time out of your busy day i know you're still such a busy guy in the entertainment world thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be part of the letterman podcast great to be here mike thanks for having me man i uh i got so many questions to ask you so little time now i'm gonna get off right from the get-go um you're gonna be on this show today but this won't be the only show that you're on we'll set the table a little bit and maybe the next time that you're on we can talk deeper about some of the specific bumpers and go through some of the memories of creating some of these beautiful pieces of art um but first and foremost i guess the first question i have for you is uh there's a lot of red tape when it comes to iconic pieces of art like this that were made for a television show owned by a network owned by a multi-conglomerate uh business like nbcuniversal you releasing this book uh to me is a triumph never mind the contents within the book was it difficult to get this book released um well it's something that has you know been a part of what i did you know since the very beginning um a year into the show a local restaurant on the upper east side who you know knew me as a photographer said oh let's have a show let's hang some of your you know they love the show and the show played during you know while the restaurant was open so we had a little photo show there and a lot of you know dave showed up and the staff and friends and family this is just one year into it and everybody started saying at that point wow this would be great in a coffee table book you should do a book when are you going to do a book i'd love a book so from that point forward the idea of you know making a book you know and who knew how long the show was going to be on the air right and as dave's discussed you know six weeks 12 weeks hey you know once the show hit a year i don't know if it got picked up for another year how that would work but you know once we were into it for several years and and this stuff started coming to life um you know i started talking to the people internally jack rollins you know helped me and navigate the waters and dealing with nbc and getting everybody to feel comfortable about it so along the way um you know i had conversations going and everybody seemed keen about it but it literally took forever and this is obviously before it you know internet email this is letters sent by mail yep and someone walking a letter over here and approving and things took months and months to happen so it's like three years later and then towards the end of the nbc show things were actually coming together and then um obviously everything changed and and it was looking like i was going to be able to make a book of some sort and have bigger exhibitions um and dave decided or whatever not dave decide but yeah the teacher decision the decision to go to cbs happened and so that was the end of my deal so that was it right and so over the years while you know the show was at cbs there was nothing to talk about and it wasn't until dave um announced that he was leaving cbs then all of a sudden um there may seem like there might be an opportunity and i revisited quickly and got nbc and dave and everybody to agree that yes okay go ahead make your bumper book and but that you know was all happening super quickly and by the time i got um approvals dave was literally leaving the air and it was you know too late to get a book going right you know in the for for publishers and so here we are you know like a few years later five years later we were on a zoom call someone or i think uh zoe um friedman organized a zoom call and i said hey guys who's doing the documentary for the 40th anniversary of the show and everybody said you are mark you do the documentary okay so anyway i was just trying to get some moment some uh traction yeah and um at that point i thought you know this might be the time to try to revisit so that's that's basically you know it's been a you know up and down off you know it's like a movie you know you hear about movies that take forever this is like the movie that took forever to get going you know so from the fan perspective i gotta tell you um i very much appreciate the fact that you have so much resilience in getting this done uh like and it says right on the book like check out the bottom of it the official 40th anniversary edition 40 years since late night first went on the air uh like i said the the the bumpers were a character in the show and i can't wait to get into the the minutia of that and how how that evolved uh because i really do believe they set the tone and i hope i hope a lot of people tell you that when they realize uh your place in broadcast history here as as a part of this um i i'm grateful that you guys were that resilient to getting it out there uh there's a forward in the book by david letterman uh which is delightful to read that because i mean it's not like dave writes a lot of stuff and puts a lot of stuff out there it's pretty private guy um was there any pulling teeth with that or was that an easy easy ask easy uh easy yes just back and forth and back and forth and you know talking about you know what is the book and how you know is the book about the show or is the book about the bumpers and i've always um you know stayed in my lane and you know this is not about the show it's about the bumpers in the show and how they were created and you know especially 40 you know 30 and 40 years ago yeah free photoshop yep you know hand done graphics graphics on the prints you know shot on film proof sheets you know all of that process which you know people you know we obviously take for granted nowadays so uh you know the book is about the the creative process and and how the show how how the images worked within the show which really happened over time it was that no nobody really envisioned how the bumpers could be used to punctuate the show it was more at first it was just more like incidental like you know like here's a picture of a pizza box not that that referred to anything but as brian mcaloon who was the ad on the show started to realize he could punctuate something that um i guess would say or you know if he you know if a baseball player was on and would cut to a shot of yankee stadium or a hockey player or something related to a birthday or a holiday that's where these things started to pop yeah i want to talk about that now now okay so let's um for the viewers here a lot of people don't understand how the tv industry works and and and there are folks who worked on the show that worked directly for the show they worked for nbc on a variety of other projects back in the day or worldwide pants later on when uh when they moved over to cbs um were you an nbc employee were you an employee directly just with late night how did that work and uh did it evolve over time where you spent more time with late night than other projects um i worked for the show directly um and i also worked on saturday night live so the reason that that i got um on the letterman show was because i'd done some work for snl right so i was friends with bob puke who was the art director for the show and so we started talking about you know you know this idea of having no logo as the concept for these bumpers so the graphic would be integrated into the uh image you know whether it happened to be a you know a beer can or the side of a bus or the front of a museum would sort of naturally integrate but over time this other logo kind of evolved and then became a bigger part of the um concept but the the answer question yeah i worked on the show directly for the show um i worked in snl but i worked for tons of magazines as on top of all that i worked for rolling stone and kind of nest magazines and newsweek and time and new york times and stuff like that so i was you know i ran around town i feel like you've got a memoir in you as well you just named uh between snl between late night between rolling stone you've just named some pretty iconic uh publication or broadcasting institutions um there's a lot of stories in that brainy years ever thought about releasing a memoir with some of those stories um i don't know about a memoir i mean i'm thinking about you know doing a bigger book that covers a little more ground but um you know my career has my my career is a constant work in progress and always has been so um you know on top of shooting i do lots of other things i uh well i appreciate that and i i i'm grateful that you are a friend of the show and as time goes we can evolve that and we can talk about some of those other projects you do um even the advice that you've given me about this uh this year i appreciate you sharing your your vast experience um i want to get into the bumpers here in a second now let me set the table a little bit if i can the idea was uh the show's on at late at night late night that's what it shows called um the idea is everybody's gone to sleep um and so there are scenarios that are happening in new york at that time and at that time the idea of the bumpers would be a snapshot of one of those scenarios happening at that time of night with the le the late night with david letterman uh either the logo or just the even the idea or the text late night with david letterman be integrated into one of that one of those scenarios have i summed up uh the the mission of what a late night bumpers uh project would be yeah i mean the the the theme and the tone of the show which you know was designed into the main title sequence um you know hal and puke and you know i certainly i had a a toe in it but the idea was that nothing else is going on in new york so you know the fountain's going down and lights turning off at lincoln center yep um and then the camera tilting up to 30 rock and all the windows are out except for one and pushes in uh the concept was everything's shutting down nothing's happening in new york except for this show and so that and that title sequence uh aired for five years i think yeah before um hal did the second you know version which was much more um kind of uh helicopter type shots pretty sure and nowadays with drones obviously we could do a lot more but it was that that was the idea that looked great uh well and you yeah drones uh but you alluded to it earlier photoshop like back then getting some of these shots i'm gonna just look at the cover image again uh which is inside the book i think today maybe we just focus on this guy here because there's some iconic stuff that has come out of this the presentation of the book is incredible and i can't i can't state that enough so there's a bumper and there's a story behind the bumper in each one um but this is the cover of the book and i mean at the end of the day there was no photoshop back then you can't just find some guy uh to to to to give some uh some lovin to his lady and just photoshop that logo onto the back of the jacket it's it's a different time in a different place um the other the other you know we'll get into some of the other ones that you did to integrate the logos and things like that this this is a very very much an art project each one of them is a piece of art um how much work went in to say the cover there how many hours was that well the story this this shot has a big story behind it yeah um this and the story is that you know one night in the art department in the graphics department at nbc during snl we were hanging out you know and watching the the live feed in the art department uh getting ready to you know walk up on stage and hang out and then go to the after party which you know we we all did a lot um and on the table of one of the you know workbenches were all of the major league baseball logos like on a photo stat sheet and i was just looking at it and there was you know i kind of thought wow what we should do like a letterman jacket for the letterman show and looking out at all these logos the baltimore orioles logo and the dodgers had that whoosh look and i just started drawing it so late night with the whoosh underneath and took that um sketch and you know gave it to puke and i said what if we do like a letterman jacket and so he gave it to one of the designer i don't know poop did it or one of the other designers cleaned it up uh gave it to wardrobe and they cut out a logo stuck it on the back of a jacket and we did the first bumper with that quote letterman jacket and dave who approved everything saw it in this and he said christmas presents oh my god and so had you know a few hundred made and gave them to you know staff and crew and you know some execs and so forth and and then we started shooting them that that you know actual physical letterman jacket and putting it into the bumpers and so what you're seeing here is one of the jackets but it didn't say dave didn't like his name all over the place you know one he wanted his name to be kind of discreet so even david letterman letterman's not on the logo and so with it but within the bumper we needed to have his name so his name on the on the print is hand drawn so if we're looking at it right there the late night was was what you designed but then they you actually hand drew that on the jacket the with david letterman and if you look at like you've never seen it look like that since then on any of the other uh late night with david letterman uh logos that's that's hand drawn that's one of a kind where is that jacket now well that jacket probably i don't know who owned that jacket but i you know i have one you know a lot of people have the original one and i don't i don't i think maybe it's i there was a second run i think maybe a year later or so i gave one to my sister and um but um but then but that that was it and then there were no more made for the longest time yeah lakeshow obviously got into the you know letterman jacket business big time which was always cool fun to watch absolutely but the original ones from leighton um were you know few and i've i've been fortunate enough to become uh uh close with some of the some of the members of the show and and and the ones who have the late night ones uh you know pictures that they've shown me of theirs it's just so cool to have like like from a from a a letterman fan perspective you've got the people on the surface you get the people who go just below the surface i don't know how many feet down under the surface it is where people are aware of all of these letterman jackets uh i've got four of them um as a as a collector and and i i love them i i'm always looking for uh ways that i can apply whenever i do stand up i wear one um and i love them and there are a certain level of letterman fans under the surface where they're like oh my god i covet one of these so much and i think the assumption is that the original idea for it came from dave because of his last name and yeah it's a good idea oh maybe i can just just give people letterman jackets as gifts or the crew or whatever we can create a new one it evolved into like you said it evolved into quite the thing um but it came from you like i've got one that says thank you and goodnight on the front of it in that same writing that jacket doesn't exist if you hadn't been sitting watching baseball one night late night in 30 rock like that is crazy uh i am very very grateful that we get an opportunity to uncover the fact that the the origin of the letterman jackets actually came from you and the bumpers of the show that's really awesome when i was a little kid growing up in louisville kentucky the big kids i you know i was like in fourth grade the big kids who went to the local high school had letterman jackets yes eastern high school the eastern eagles and i always just thought that was the coolest thing and i never ended up at that high school and we moved and all this stuff but in my mind that was just like something that you know you kind of wanted to grow into and so they're you know they kind of came back to life absolutely uh so cool that little footnote right there i just i wanted to make sure we nailed that in our conversation today and and there is no pressure because you are going to come back and i keep saying that but it's because i'm excited about it um that's that's that's fantastic um the very first bumper though wasn't this one no no no this is that that's a few years into it yes the very first actual bumper i don't know which one was the first i can tell you from our first shoot though yep the um union square wall which is no longer in existence which was also part of the main title sequence this one yep that was from the first shoot there we go and and you can see that there's the posters of dave so those we pre-printed went to the location staple gun them on the wall and and then shot it and so you can see graffiti and posters for all sorts of other things but there where it says with david letterman that's glued onto the print so we shot it and then looked at the print and thought let's you know where did we put david letterman and so that was just cut and paste and glued onto the print and again to go back to that other question so we're talking you're talking minimum kind of 24 hours put into that picture i would think minimum like when you include the shoot and all all that stuff a long freaking time to get each one of these bumpers that had character and life to themselves and i think you know sometimes we lose that with photoshop these days when we when we manufacture things um a lot of these pictures here and i think about you know some of the pictures from a party or or from a sporting event or whatever that's all real authentic feeling and i think the feelings come out in those pictures the manipulation actually was very um very minimal well it varied i mean some of we we'd always go in with a shot list yeah locations um but uh things always popped up i mean we grabbed moments on the fly all the time while we were you know going to another location i mean um i'll show you a break one of the best pickup shots along the way yeah was the car wash i always loved this shot specifically we're literally driving down the west side highway and saw this car wash and pointed at it and made a left-hand turn and drove up and ed walked into the office of the car wash and asked if we could shoot they said yeah what that hole yeah at all yep and so we shot and then we were in my car so it was a mitsubishi montero and oh that's great and that just could not be simpler unplanned and we drove my car through the car wash snap snap daylight there's i don't think there's a i don't think we used a flash in that it was daylight and then the graphics were all done on the print but it's you know glitter actual glitter paper cut and paste hand painted it's you know it's a lot of work but the shot was picked up on the fly shot simply and quickly and then in post our analog post production you know we brought it to life um you mentioned the crew uh was it always the same crew that was with you you mentioned ed hall of course that's a guy that we want to uh talk about in the future episodes that sort of thing was it always the same crew that you had with you ed well ed was there from the beginning he um and worked for i don't remember how many years but at a certain point he left the show and moved to la and became the announcer on the tonight show with uh jay leno yes and then uh pammy shamir took uh his spot and she became the graphics coordinator bob pook was the uh graphic art director uh throughout and then we had other um bill shortridge who was an nbc uh staff graphic designer was worked on the bumpers forever and then arlen schumer who also was there at the beginning he worked on the show for i think about two years and then he left and went to another network so i shot everything that's the one thread i shot everything puke oversaw everything uh ed left after a while um bill shortridge i think bill was there for the whole time as well and then arlen left after two years um this is a this is a fanboy question um but at the end of the day it's a fascinating one to the fanboys or to many of us maybe just to me i don't know but um the question is this how long did it take you because i mean sometimes when you're in it it's hard to see the reaction you know it's it's like the uh the person who's the assistant with the magician you know they get the curtain pulled back and it's all there you're part of the you're watching the sausage get made um but i imagine there must have been a time as dave and company i don't even say just dave it's dave and company because all y'all were a part of the tapestry of of this uh of this iconic imprint um really went on an upward trajectory and uh and and that's where the momentum really started kicking in at what point did you realize that was happening and did you know that you were such a part of that in creating that tone with these bumpers and the other things that you did on the show um you know the show started to really i mean once there was confidence and momentum and everybody who was you know on the edge of pop culture not to mention saturday and saturday night live being shot in the same building absolutely you know and guests are and cast members from snl coming over not to mention bill murray you know in the first episode and so forth and writers who also came from the first five years who came over to letterman for a while and then when lauren came back then some of them went back over to snl like jim downey and so forth so pros and camel so there was this incredible ecosystem of creativity and for me as a photographer who is just working on this one aspect of the show to be surrounded by this you know this world of um creative people who were working on so many levels i you know i'd never been inside of a tv show prior to that i mean it worked freelance a little on snl but that was just you know a few shots here and there sure but to be a part of this world and have access to the show is uh late certainly career changing and life-changing for me i mean it's i went to you know nbc university i mean that's where i learned television and working with you know a large team of people you know bookers and you know hair and makeup and the you know post people and and the live production crew and sitting in the control room i mean that was um unbelievable for me i uh i hate that time is so slippery when i turn this uh uh this recording technology on but it is it's slippery um there's only two other things i want to cover here before we uh uh before we say goodbye well before we're not saying goodbye we're seeing see you later uh but before we finish this episode um the first is uh we're intentionally everybody we're intentionally not showing a ton of stuff from the book right now get the book uh late nightbumpers.com and then the next time when mark comes on you can have your book and we can go through it together as we as we do this we're not doing a read along for it get the book it's worth it it's fantastic late night bumpers.com is where uh you can go to get it um so the second and last thing i want to talk about is the legacy of these bumpers they are art pieces i think you're talking about uh going down to union and putting these letterman gig posters up uh i mean there are people out there who would freak out to have one of those um things like that but these bumpers themselves you actually have exhibitions where some of the originals and prints are available um the legacy of this thing is it's it's uh it's still continuing and you actually have the ability to um to allow some of us to uh to share in that uh talk a little bit about that is uh other than getting the book uh what are some other options for us yeah so coming up on uh may 15th here in los angeles where i am uh there will be a photo exhibition and auction of some bumpers um six of them to six um so there'll be the bumper a print um and a book as a combination set oh wow and on top of that we're working on attaching an nft to them as well oh here we go bringing the web 3 right on so web 3 um moving its way into the future um and so it'll be an exciting event the work is so this is at bergamot station and actually if you go to lettermanbumpers.com you'll be able to click and see a preview of the images and uh i've had shows there in the past and had great times and we're probably going to do a book signing and a talk the week before so that'll be on may the let me just look at my calendar real quick that's the day i'm meeting david letterman hopefully i'll be down in la seeing him that night great so on that date we're going to probably do a book signing stay tuned yep on that um and um it'll be a lot of fun that's amazing um man that's that's very very cool did you know dave's in town that day i you know i've heard things about his move yeah he's doing a couple shows down at the flonda theater for the netflix it's a joke uh festival very very excited uh excited about that um and uh so that event so if you're a letterman fan man lots of cool stuff going around the first week of may uh very very cool uh late uh late night bumpers late show late night bumpers.com is where you go to get that um and that's a very neat thing that you're doing with the nft i added on that we hadn't talked about that previous i didn't know that that's fantastic that you're adding that element uh to this project look uh time is slippery we're a little bit over but i'm gonna ask to finish up with this i gotta ask um off the cuff give us a story give us a behind-the-scenes story somewhere uh that's a highlight for you doesn't have to be necessarily about the bumpers because i know you saw a lot of the shows and you were always a part of things back then um if i say hey give us a regale us with a tale from late night uh with david letterman uh what's the first thing that comes to your mind mark um you know uh we i don't know we used to have christmas parties down at the ice skating rink you know and guess if the show would show up and there we are skating out on the ice those were crazy i mean it was a real you know kind of family feeling for a long time and you know we would play softball and you know parties you know in in the office and at restaurants and run around new york city i don't know it's just a real um kind of uh wild time to be in new york and making this show the the story there's you know lots of things are popping to mind i'll talk more next time we get on i love it that's a great tease um i'm gonna finish up by saying this the family thing uh that you talk about 100 i identify with it because i felt like i was part of that family like i felt like from dave as the host uh who was kind of the lightning rod of of of electricity that that that then would spread everywhere it would spread to the crew it would spread to the art within the show would spread to the musical guests it would spread to all of that stuff and and part of that was the audience you know everything from viewer mail to maybe walking along new york in a payphone rings and somebody picks up and it's david letterman on the other end we as the audience were part of that family too when you talk about that softball team i would have come out to spectate that um and and and i appreciate the fact that you're finishing with that uh that it is a family that's exactly what we're trying to encompass with this show because there's a lot of us who are part of that audience family that now want to give love back and we've all gotten together and some of us who have had brushes with the show i've had a brush with the show other people had brushes with the show and we're still talking about it 5 10 15 20 years later we're part of your family too and and it's great to be able to reach out and say hey uncle mark thank you for everything that you did and thank you for letting us be part of your family thank you for taking time to be on this uh edition of the letterman podcast mark i can't i can't tell you how grateful i am and i really look forward to the next time that we can do this and talk a little bit more about things thanks for having me mike great to be here and look forward to the next time as well outstanding okay they uh they go that quick ladies and gentlemen that is another episode of the letterman podcast uh thank you very much for being a part of it if you enjoyed the podcast heavens if you didn't enjoy the podcast please subscribe and share uh you know wake the kids and tell the neighbors to do the same and i'm very grateful for everybody uh supporting the way that they have and giving encouraging criticism or even not so encouraging criticism because you know i'll take it into account too uh for the letterman podcast my name is mike chisholm thank you and good night