>From Chicago: No admittance without hard hat ... it's --------------------------------------------- LATE SHOW NEWS for Tuesday, March 1, 1994 Issue #3 A weekly electronic sheet by Aaron Barnhart --------------------------------------------- 4. THE LINEUPS LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, CBS, 11:35 P.M. EST 3/2 Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Larroquette, Bonnie Raitt with Ben E. King and Jerry Butler 3/3 Geena Davis, Aerosmith, Mark Leyman 3/4 Anthony Hopkins, Denis Leary, ZZ Top 3/7 Luciano Pavarotti, Marisa Tomei, Wayne Cotter (rerun of 12/15/93) Yep. Dave's going on vacation again. THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO, NBC, 11:35 P.M. EST 3/1 Tom Arnold [A], Gipsy Kings [M] 3/2 Glenn Close [A], George Foreman [A/S], CeCe Peniston [M] 3/3 Phil Hartman [A], Iggy Pop [M] 3/4 Tim Robbins [A], Tracy Lawrence [M] 3/7 Fitness guru Susan Powter, Trisha Yearwood [M] LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN, NBC, 12:35 A.M. EST 3/1 Kevin Pollack [A], Donny Osmond [A] 3/2 Tony Toni Tone [M] 3/3 CNBC President Roger Ailes, John Larroquette [A], NRBQ [M] LATER WITH GREG KINNEAR, NBC, 1:35 A.M. EST 3/1 Martin Short [A] 3/2 Phil Hartman [A] [A] Actor or actress [A/C] Actor/comedian [C] Comedian [N] TV or radio broadcaster [M] Musical group or guest [S] Sports figure [W] Writer -- thanks to S. Trowbridge The E! entertainment television cable network broadcasts reruns of _Late Night with David Letterman_ "seven Daves a week" at 10 p.m. Eastern time. Monday through Friday, reruns can also be viewed at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. Eastern. The following schedule was taken from the E! update line. We now believe that the people at E! have secretly replaced the fine scheduling staff they normally use with highly trained chimps. In the first place, you will notice a conspicuous absence of original air dates for the following programs. That's because E! didn't announce them. Secondly, alert viewers are writing us that the 1 and 7 reruns are apparently a complete grab-bag, just pulled out of a burlap sack there in Sausalito and jammed into the SuperVHS player about two minutes before airtime. You takes your chances. Tue 3/1 PeeWee Herman, Colin Fisher, Elizabeth Devine Wed 3/2 Pierce Brosnin, Henry Heinlich Thu 3/3 Richard Lewis, Jack Hanna, Francisco Fernandez Fri 3/4 Robert Klein, George Clinton Sat 3/5 Phil Donahue, Joan Jett Sun 3/6 Molly Ringwald, Emo Phillips, Danny Sullivan 3. THE LENNY BRUCEING OF MARTIN LAWRENCE We are somewhat puzzled and even disturbed to learn that comedian MARTIN LAWRENCE, the little man with the ferociously big mouth, has been disinvited, unbooked, from March 9th's _Tonight_ show. As you may know, Mr. Lawrence deviated from his scripted monologue as he was hosting NBC's _Saturday Night Live_ Feb. 19th. He spoke for about five minutes on the evils of Lorena Bobbitt and the virtues of thorough feminine hygiene. The monologue, which airs live in New York and Chicago, was missing major portions by the time it was rebroadcast to Denver and the West Coast. On Monday, NBC weasels denounced Lawrence and scribbled up a new tape-delay policy they say they will use for future broadcasts featuring controversial figures. (No word on whether network officials, in true grandstanding fashion, had faxed copies of their statement to the FCC.) And now, to top it off, Martin has apparently been made _persona non grata_ with Jay Leno. As an NBC spokesdweeb put it, "It's inappropriate for him to be on *any* of our shows," emphasis added. We saw Martin give his monologue live. Even by the standards of _Def Comedy Jam,_ which he hosts on HBO, it was pretty rough, just minus the swear words (unless you count "Wash your ass!"). And it's unlikely we will be shelling out seven-fifty to see his new NC-17 concert film, "You So Crazy," though the notion of someone in 1994 getting an X rating for talking dirty intrigues us. But banned from a *prerecorded* late-night talk show? Pardon us for thinking out loud, but couldn't Jay's people have just told Martin to can the monologue and made him spend his time allotment in the guest chair, where Jay could keep an eye on him? Being forced to interact with the host is an effective way to keep Martin in line and neutralize his shock, as the _Tonight_ folks would've known had they reviewed the tape of his uproarious appearance Jan. 31 on the _Late Show._ Also, if you've watched SNL from the beginning like we have, this Lawrence episode cries out for some historical perspective. In November 1975, on the show's second-ever broadcast, the guest host was Richard Pryor, and NBC didn't even pretend that he might not try pushing the edge of the envelope on live national television. The network had Pryor on a seven-second delay all night. Sure enough, Standards & Practices bleeped his monologue twice. But no blackball ensued. NBC knew it had a winner on its hands in SNL, and the more controversial the show, the better. (That same night, Pryor and Chevy Chase performed the famous "Word Association" sketch which, if recreated today, would land you in disciplinary hearing at just about any major university.) Granted, Martin Lawrence is not Richard Pryor, but if NBC -- once the most sophisticated and creative of the three major networks -- cannot find some way to accommodate one of the country's hottest comic talents, that's their problem, not Martin's. Banned from the _Tonight_ show, indeed. We wish we were old enough to remember if Lenny Bruce ever made it on the air with Paar or Carson. Somehow we suspect not too often, though back then we had the government to blame for that. (We know, we know, Martin is no Lenny Bruce either. Go eat your Weasel Chow already.) A sad postscript: We were comparing Martin Lawrence's NBC hijinks to comedian Bill Hicks's appearance October 1, 1993 on the Letterman show, which never aired due to the content of his monologue, and wondering if Bill might not have been better served if, like Martin, he'd done all of his comedy from the guest's chair, when we learned that Bill had succumbed this weekend to pancreatic cancer. 2. DAVE WITH HIS (ROSE-COLOURED?) GLASSES ON Consider the following a minority opinion. Our initial scan of the Net determined that many of you who watched Monday's edition of _Late Night with Conan O'Brien_ featuring special guest David Letterman were not at all impressed with the young carrot-topped host. You think he's not a very good interviewer and that some of his comedy falls flat, and that if it weren't for Dave's appearance, last night's show would just be another in a long string of embarrassing time-wasters for NBC. In fact, many of you stayed up later to catch the hosting debut of Greg Kinnear and decided right then and there you'd just seen Conan's replacement. We will simply reprint what Dave himself told Conan in the middle of their conversation last night: "You guys do an incredible amount of comedy ... that is very high-level, and the volume and the quality of the stuff just knocks me out. There's nothing like this show on television and I really, really appreciate that." Hear hear. For those of us who don't catch Conan all that much, Monday's show bore out Lorne Michaels's strategy of hiring a sketch writer over a standup comedian: he may not have the snappiest comebacks, but those sketches are funny and original. (Well, the guy "dressed" as a streaker was less than memorable.) *And,* as a bonus, Conan actually had a great interview with Dave -- though true to his old _Tonight_ show guesting form, Dave appeared ready with twenty minutes of material in case things started to get slow. Conan got Dave to explain why he had lined the windows of his old 14th floor office at NBC with half-inch-thick hockey rink plexiglas. And when Dave prefaced a story about Johnny Carson with, "Remember *Johnny?*" and got a big laugh, Conan played along, saying: "I'm fourteen years old! This tie is a clip-on!" The interview ended with Dave confessing that he always enjoyed being a guest on Johnny's show during the old _Late Night_ years, and that he'd like to renew that tradition ... at the *new* _Late Night._ We were pleasantly surprised by what sure sounded like Dave's sincere endorsement of the show. (It happens so rarely, our ears actually prick up like an Airedale's when we hear one.) Conan O'Brien on his best nights, and last night was one of them, exceeds all expectations set for him. Otherwise, he's still a successful comedy writer. His sidekick seems badly miscast, but that error is more than offset by the tunes coming out of Max Weinberg's shiny little ensemble. As for those rumours of Greg Kinnear assuming the _Late Night_ slot six months from now ... well, we watched his first show, and even after giving Greg what we feel is a very generous benefit of the doubt, we think Conan can breathe easy. (More on this next week.) 1. SPECIAL REPORT And just so we can say that you probably read it here first: the Feb. 20 _L. A. Times_ reports that Letterman and Leno will swap coasts three months from now. Jay will go to New York and Dave to Los Angeles for the May sweeps ratings period. Oh, and Joel Chen reports that the overnights for Wednesday the 23d's _Late Show_, following on the heels of the first night of ladies figure skating, commanded a 12.6 rating -- a whisker's breadth away from the rating for Dave's premiere telecast on CBS last August 30th. --------------------------- Send Letterman news and comments about this electronic sheet to letterman@mcs.net Entire contents Copyright (C) 1994 by Aaron Barnhart. You may redistribute this article only in its entirety, so long as a fee is not charged for retrieving or viewing this article other than on-line time. LATE SHOW NEWS is available by anonymous ftp from ftp.mcs.net in the directory /mcsnet.users/barnhart/letterman/late-show-news. If you have e-mail only and can't get this sheet off Usenet, send mail to letterman@mcs.net to be added to the LATE-SHOW-NEWS mailing list. For now, please don't subscribe unless you need to; we're maintaining the list manually, and 3-by-5 cards get expensive. -- Aaron Barnhart letterman@mcs.net