I have been here. The very first time I visited New York, I wanted to go but didn't. I was with my mom and sister in law and my mother in law. I wanted to get tickets, but did not because my mom, while insisting that she did know who David Letterman was, said that she did not like magicians.
(LOL even 14 years later.)
Anyway, the second time that I went to New York, I was with my hubby. I went online and found out that you could not buy tickets, but you could submit your name and phone number and you may get a phone call tell you that they would give you tickets. I thought, "Yeah, right" to myself, but filled in the info and hit submit. We were in our hotel room in NYC when my cell phone rang and it was a representative from The Late Show. They said that if I answered the question correctly, I would win 2 tickets to that evenings filming of the show. Again, I thought, "Yeah right." The question was, "Who is Biff Henderson?" Would you have known? I did. I answered the question correctly and they told me to pick up my tickets at 2:00 that afternoon for the 4:00 filming of the show. Totally cool!!!!!!!
So, we rearranged our plans for the day and picked up our tickets at 2:00. They then told us that the show would be filmed at 4:00, but to be in line by 3:00 to be seated in the theatre. So, we rearranged our plans again, and got in line. While we were standing in line, workers of the show made the rounds and just kind of talked to the crowd. At one point, one worker asked for our tickets and put a red mark on them without explanation. Eventually, the line finally started to move and when we got to the entrance, the ticket taker looked at our marked tickets and told us to not go in, but to stand over to the side. I figured they were shuffling us up to the top of the place for bad seats. Just the opposite was true however. After everyone was seated, we were escorted to the very front row along with several other guests. Why? I have no idea, but I was not complaining. This is what I remember most about the experience.
1. It was FREEZING in the Ed Sullivan Theatre. To this day, whenever I watch an episode, I see people in the audience that are blue and I know exactly why.
2. One of the guests that night was Jesse "The Body" Ventura , who had just been elected governor of Minnesota after finishing an illustrious career as a pro wrestler.
or 
Which ever you prefer.
3. The other guest was Spinal Tap which to this day I am still confused about. Are they a band? Is it a joke? Was it a movie? Can anyone answer any of these questions? All I know is that they did play very loud music and sprayed a lot of smoke on the stage while doing it.
4. This one may or may not shock you. I use to really love David Letterman. After seeing his show live...not so much. I thought that his Top 10 lists were really funny and most of his skits made me laugh. I also thought that he made the interviews funny and not just the same boring questions. I was very disappointed seeing him in person. There was a lot of cuing with cue cards and theatre workers cueing the audience when to laugh. They wanted us to laugh at everything and basically just kept telling us, "Laugh! Laugh! Laugh louder!!!!" Another thing was that he did not really interact with the audience or even the guests at all when the cameras were not rolling. As soon as it went to commercial, his make-up people surrounded him and he did not even talk to the guests. Basically, it seemed like it was just a job to him and as soon as the camera turned on...poof, he was back into character. Definitely not the impression you get when you watch the show.
All in all, it was a great experience to see how those shows are taped. They appear live, but are actually taped earlier in the day. For example, on the day that we watched, the MTV music awards were going to be held later that night at Radio City Music Hall. As part of his monologue, he made generic jokes about the awards ceremony as if it has already happened since his show would air after the awards show. Very tricky Dave!
A few years later, Jeff and I returned to New York for a vacation with a different group of friends (2 days before 9/11, but that is a different story). Again, I went on-line to see if we could get tickets to the show, hoping for better guests. This time, Jeff's cell phone got called. Although he likes Dave ok, he is not a regular watcher (interferes with Shark Week :). When they asked him the question, "What color is the announcer's hair?" I think Jeff answered, "Blond." This was wrong...his hair was red as was his nickname, "Red."
Anyway, they said, "Thanks for playing!" and hung up on him even as I was screaming at Jeff from the bathroom, "Red! Red! Red!"
Oh, well!
Morals of this story:
1.Don't believe what you see on TV...they don't call them actors for no reason.
2. If you want to see a taping of the David Letterman show, go to his website and input your information. Believe me, I am not that lucky. I think they try to get people from travelling to NYC for a lot of different areas of the U.S. so us Cajuns should always have a good shot!
http://www.cbs.com/late_night/late_show/tickets/
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