The world of late-night TV will never be the same.
The week of David Letterman's retirement, Jimmy Fallon paid tribute on his own program, NBC's The Tonight Show. "I want to take a minute to talk about David Letterman, who I'm sure everyone here knows will be retiring after 33 years of innovation, fun and just plain weirdness—but mostly fun," he said. "I, like many of you, grew up watching Dave. Everybody did. I mean, if you saw somebody throw watermelons off a roof and you go, 'Oh my gosh. Adults get paid for doing that?' That type of stuff had never been done on TV before. This is at 12:30. This is after The Tonight Show. All you had was Johnny Carson, so this is kind of like unexplored space. This is like the Wild, Wild West. I think this show and what late-night has become is a result of him playing with the genre and experimenting and exploring and doing that stuff. I, like every kid who grew up watching him, will miss him."
Fallon then pulled out his eighth grade yearbook from St. Mary of the Snow School in Saugerties, New York. "At the end, my teacher makes predictions about what her students were going to go on to do...It says, 'James Fallon will replaced David Letterman on the Late Night show.' I want to go to the racetrack with this teacher in two weeks. It's pretty close. It's so weird because I never thought I was going to do a job like this...so when they offered me to do the Late Night show before this show, and I was like, 'God.' I talked to my wife and I go, 'I don't know. Should I do this thing?' And she goes, 'Yeah! You'd be great.' She goes, 'Take a chance. If anything, the list is short. There's only two other people who've done it before you: Conan O'Brien and David Letterman. So even if you fail, it's still a good list to be on.'"
Of course, Fallon "ended up doing it."
"It changed my life, because now here we are at The Tonight Show and everything's going great," he recalled. "I remember we were doing Late Night and it was a hit, and they asked me to Dave—The David Letterman Show. I knew it was going to be my last time because now I'm in playing the same game he is. You don't want to see a talk show host go on another guy's talk show to talk about their talk show."
According to Fallon, being a guest on Letterman's show is "an odd experience."
"I don't even know if this is true, but they said, 'Dave doesn't want to see you before the show. He doesn't want to see anyone. He wants to save it for the stage.' So I said, 'Sure, whatever.' And I've been on the show numerous times; I actually guest-hosted one time. But you go there, and it's just kind of scary. They rush you into a dressing room. I think it's white. There's no artwork on the wall. It's like going to a hospital, to be really honest. Not the worst one, but not the greatest one."
When Fallon was ready to go on stage, comic Biff Henderson stopped him.
"Biff came over to me and he goes, 'Jimmy, Dave wants to say hi to you.' And I go, 'Before the bit? I'm just about to do my segment.' And he goes, 'No, he's at his desk.' So I peaked out from behind the curtain and he just [waved]. That just made me laugh, and I'll always remember going on Dave Letterman's show," Fallon told viewers. "I just don't know how to describe him. I think he taught us how to do something smart and stupid for comedy. There's comedy that can be smart and stupid. He just wants to have fun and be goofy. I'll always remember that. He's always just there when you need him."
Fallon then shared a more serious memory with viewers. "I remember after 9/11, we needed somebody. The city was in shock. We're all looking for answers. We wanted to see what Dave had to say and we looked at him to say something," noting that Letterman was the first late-night host to return to air after the terrorist attacks. "He said something, and I don't want to misquote him, so I printed it out. He said, 'There is only one requirement for any of us and that is to be courageous, because courage, as you know, defines all other human behavior.' That is so nice. We needed that. David Letterman is courageous."
"Have a nice retirement, Dave," Fallon said.
Letterman's final Late Show airs tomorrow tonight on CBS.
(E! and NBC are both members of the NBCUniversal family.)