The best thing about David Letterman’s retirement so far has been the random David Letterman sightings. He’s turned himself into a late-night Sasquatch, popping up for a quick interview in the pages of the Indianapolis Monthly (his hometown magazine), appearing onstage to moderate a Q+A on the campus of Ball State University (his alma mater). He’s even grown a big furry beard, though truthfully, it makes him look more Amish than Sasquatch.
The latest David Letterman sighting may be the most random yet: He gives a lengthy interview in the new edition of the Whitefish Review, a small nonprofit literary journal based in Montana. Why, you might ask, did David Letterman do an interview with the biannual Whitefish Review? Because he really, really likes Montana. (He’s right! Montana is great! Also, he has a vacation home there.) Over the course of a long and affable conversation with the review’s editor-in-chief, Brian Schott, Letterman talks about fatherhood, Montana, skiing, retirement, how to be a good houseguest, Montana, comedy, the Montana town of Whitefish, specifically, and mortality. He also explains that Amish Sasquatch beard, and the reaction it's been getting: "Everybody hates it. My wife hates it. My son hates it. But it’s interesting. I’ve kind of developed a real creepy look with it that I’m sort of enjoying. And I can tell that people are off-put by it. And the more people implore me to shave, the stronger my resolve is to not shave."
And kudos to the review for scoring one minor showbiz scoop: how Letterman felt when The Late Show came back, but with someone else hosting it. “I can remember the first day that Stephen Colbert took over,” he tells Schott. “I thought I would have some trouble, some emotional trouble, or some feeling of displacement, but I realized, hey, that’s not my problem anymore. And I have felt much better. It’s something for younger men and women to take on. So I haven’t missed it, the way I thought I might. And I do little things here and there to sort of keep me up and moving. But no, I don’t miss it the way I thought—and then I think, holy crap! I’ll be 69 next year and I’ve been doing this for 33 years. What did I want? Like you work until you’re a hundred? So there’s a lot of practical reasons why a person wouldn’t miss this.”
For the most part, though, the conversation sticks to Letterman’s life after late night, and it’s startling to hear him sound so uncharacteristically chill. One endearing moment comes when Letterman talks about imploring his 12-year-old son to get out in the world and “do stuff,” like “jumping into any body of water we come across when we’re hiking in Montana,” even if it frightens him, even if it’s “too cold for any form of life other than fish.” “Because I want him to know that it’s okay for him to just jump in,” Letterman says. The man doesn’t just sound chill—he sounds happy, like a man looking forward to vanishing again for a few more months. See you when we see you, Dave.
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