Denzel Washington Once Refused To Leave David Letterman’s Couch – For A Great Reason

Once upon a time in late night television, it was customary for talk shows to fill up their couches as the evening’s episode progressed. The first guest would do their segment and then move down a spot on the adjacent couch, making room for the next guest to yap with Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett or whoever. What with the barnacle presence of sidekick Ed McMahon, Carson’s couch could get especially crowded some nights. Sometimes this got tense (like the time Burt Reynolds inexplicably went after “Double Dare” host Mark Summers on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”); sometimes it was chaotic comedy bliss (which is what happens when you ask Carson to rein in the irrepressible duo of Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters); and sometimes it was just plain surreal (like Cavett pairing film critic Rex Reed with Mark Frechette and Daria Halperin, the vapidly beautiful leads of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Zabriskie Point”).

This tradition started to fade out of fashion in the 1980s when “Late Night with David Letterman” introduced its one-guest-at-a-time approach. Letterman was a man of many gears. He could banter with the best comics out there, make sparkling small-talk with actors, navigate the moodiness of a true original like Harvey Pekar, and give a phony like Donald Trump all the room he needed to make a braying ass out of himself. So, it made sense that he didn’t want to be distracted by keeping his first guest (who was typically the biggest name of the night) somehow involved in the conversation. And with the rise of overly protective power publicists like Pat Kingsley, he was just lucky to get an A-plus-lister like Tom Cruise on his show in the first place.

Letterman stuck with this formula when he brought “The Late Show with David Letterman” to CBS. As such, I was low-key blown away one winter evening in early 2008 when the episode’s first guest, Denzel Washington, was still seated next to Letterman when they came back from the commercial break following his interview segment — especially because I knew who was coming on next. Was this really happening? Was the typically congenial, but occasionally feisty two-time Oscar winning Washington really going to leave himself vulnerable to shrapnel from legendary insult comic Don Rickles?

He was, and it was clear from the start of the segment that no one wanted this more than Washington.

Insult comedy was already in its meta phase by the time Denzel met Don. Robert Smigel began lampooning the form in the 1990s via his cigar-chomping hand puppet Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, while Gen X stand-up Jeff Ross had become the Friars Club’s go-to emcee for its famous celebrity roasts. Rickles used to be a fixture on these roasts, but he was turning 82 in 2008 and generally saved his energy for his live performances (he was still, amazingly, appearing semi-regularly in Las Vegas). Rickles was as sharp as ever whenever he took the stage, but everyone knows Father Time is undefeated. Sooner or later, Rickles would lose his fastball and eventually retire. So, if you ever dreamed of getting insulted by “Mr. Warmth,” time was getting to be of the essence.

That Washington was a Rickles’ admirer shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise. He was born in 1954 and grew up during the comedian’s talk show heyday. He was in his 20s when NBC began airing “The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast,” and, given his glee at getting to share the stage with Rickles, no doubt watched the man lay waste to an entire dais with his withering disses.

This means he also knew Rickles was an equal-opportunity offender. Everything that made you you was fair game: your race, religion, physical uniquenesses, romantic misfortunes … god forbid if you’d ever been arrested. Rickles let you have it, and he wasn’t suave or sparing. He also didn’t care how big of a star you were. He got famous mercilessly roasting Frank Sinatra to his face, at the peak of his Rat Pack fame, for his mob connections, propensity for violence, and multiple failed marriages.

So, when Washington dropped by to promote his 2007 film “The Great Debaters” (the second film he’d ever directed after “Antwone Fisher”), he told Letterman’s producers he’d like a front row seat to the Don Rickles experience. And, man, did he ever get his money’s worth.

Rickles often visited Letterman to talk up a local appearance, basically just to let people know he was on tour and to keep a lookout for him, should he be performing in their neck of the woods. But this night he was there to push John Landis’ documentary “Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project,” which was airing on HBO. As usual, the bullet-headed Rickles entered to the strains of “La Virgen de la Macarena,” a tradition that started during Carson’s run on “The Tonight Show.” A beaming Washington got to his feet to shake Rickles’ hand and was greeted with a warm hug and a peck on the cheek. Rickles repeated this twice before giving Letterman a limp handshake and making small talk with Washington before sarcastically telling the host it was nice to see him.

Washington laughs and claps his way through the entire segment, which is some of Rickles’ strongest talk show work of that decade (and you can trust me on this because I rarely missed a Rickles appearance). If you thought Rickles might tone it down a tad because he’d been the voice of Mr. Potato Head for Pixar’s “Toy Story” franchise since 1995, you must be thinking of some other Don Rickles. He wonders aloud why Washington is still on stage (“Does he have to clean up?”) and later reminds the star that he’s never been in one of his movies (“I could’ve played the guy picking the cotton; we could’ve faked it”). Anyone else says that to Denzel Washington and they’d be collecting their teeth from the floor. From Rickles, it’s an honor just to be worthy of the insult.

Aside from poking fun at Washington’s son and his professional football career (John David Washington had yet to transition to acting), and making references to “Denzel the Doctor” (the star must’ve discussed the medical field during his segment), Rickles goes after Letterman. He jokes about the host’s noted reclusiveness (he hadn’t been a scenester since the early 1980s, but he’d become even more of a homebody since the birth of his son Henry in 2003), and calls attention to his nervous verbal tics. Letterman finally gets him to lay off by asking him to retell some old Sinatra anecdotes (like the time Ol’ Blue Eyes saved Shecky Greene’s life). We’ve seen this show before, and it’s only ever a treat.

As for why Washington was so eager to put himself through this, well … you kind of had to be there to understand the appeal of Rickles.

One reason Rickles could get away with making fun of people’s race and ethnicity is because he was Jewish, and freely made fun of himself for being a funny-looking schlub. But with Rickles, there was always affection. Take his appearance at Martin Scorsese’s American Film Institute tribute: after tearing into the filmmaker for a solid five minutes, he closes on a sentimental note; he tells Scorsese that “Casino” was a Cadillac (i.e. the top of the industry), and that he is a special artist. He also tells Marty how much he loved getting to know his mother, and that he knows she is looking down on her son with love and pride.

There are comics out there that can still get away with some pretty vicious insult comedy (Ross, Lisa Lampanelli, and Jamie Foxx are particularly deft in this regard), but no one could do it like Mr. Warmth. He was revered by his peers, adored by his friends (his bestie, Bob Newhart, just left us), and a one-of-a-kind entertainer who was playing to packed houses at an age when most people are getting packed up and sent off to a home.

Denzel Washington has two Oscars, pulls down over $20 million per movie, and only has to work when he wants to. Even so, I’ve never been more jealous of the man than watching him take it on the chin from The Merchant of Venom.