Inside the Late Night Bumpers of Marc Karzen

For late-night TV viewers of a certain age, the irreverant photo bumpers used on Late Night with David Letterman are instantly recognizable. Depicting various street scenes and still lifes that creatively incorporate the show’s title, they were one of the most identifying parts of Late Night—and they were all the work of photographer Marc Karzen.

Karzen joined Late Night as a staff photographer when the show launched in 1982. Prior to that, he’d been freelancing at SNL. SNL’s Season 6 logo—“Saturday Night Live” written in wet cement—was the first photo he ever shot for television. But working two floors down at 30 Rock, Karzen soon stretched his clever logo placement skills even further.

Along with graphic designer Bob Pook, graphics coordinator Edd Hall (who would later became the announcer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno), and subsequent graphics coordinator Pami Shamir, Karzen would ideate a shot list with ideas for Late Night bumpers—often themed to fit various holidays and seasons. Once approved, the team would set out to shoot the photos, taking advantage of other photo opps that happened to pop up in the moment.

“When we would go out and shoot, we would aim for 10 bumpers in one night,” Karzen tells LateNighter.

But coming up with the concept was only half the challenge. For some bumpers, the team would find a way to insert the words “Late Night with David Letterman” into the real-life scene before snapping the photo. For others, they found creative ways to add it in post.

After members of the Late Night staff suggested he publish a coffee table book built around the bumpers, Karzen set out to get Letterman and NBC’s permission.

“Everything was buttoned up,” he recalls, until “my deal kind of went up in smoke once [Letterman] moved over to CBS… So for literally 30 years, we kind of just sat around and thought about it.”

When Letterman announced his retirement from CBS, Karzen revisited the idea, and managed to get NBC’s approval. The result is the Late Night Bumpers book, which compiles some of the show’s best-known bumpers and offers behind-the-scenes anecdotes on how they came to be.

With this Saturday marking the 43rd anniversary of Late Night With David Letterman‘s premiere, Karzen sat down with LateNighter to reminisce about some of our favorite Late Night bumpers—from the one that inspired the iconic Letterman letterman jacket, to the one that helped bid the host farewell 33 years later.

His comments, edited for length and clarity, follow below. (All photos copyright Marc Karzen.)

Graffiti

This bumper was photographed in a hotel room the crew had rented as a location.

The hotel was kind of an epic shoot for us because we covered so much ground in one night. In addition to getting so much material, we kept the room for, like, three days. I think we shot on a Friday night, and kept the room for the whole weekend. Bob Pook and his girlfriend stayed in the room for the whole weekend and just ran up room service. It became, like, this $6,000 hotel bill that came into accounts payable. 

We were there just to see what we could get. [We’d take] before-and-after shots of room service, nice and clean, and then we’d eat all the food and get wild, and then shoot the aftermath. That became part of our style of shooting.

This one specific shot was totally improvised. We were looking at the room with everything astray. And I said to Bill Shortridge, who was one of the designers who was with us that evening shooting, “Bill, I’ve got an idea. Take this beer can and hold it like it’s a can of spray paint. Stand on the back of the bed and just act like you’re tagging the wall.”

In this case, all that airbrush was done on a C-print. We would do a print and then literally, with an actual airbrush, paint “Late Night with David Letterman.” [The image on the TV] is a photo that’s just glued onto the print.

That one was used on the air many times. Some were one-offs, but that shot was used millions of times. 

Freezer

The beer cans in the freezer were a prop that we built in advance. We made a six-pack and stuck it in the freezer, which actually was the freezer in my apartment—a bachelor-looking apartment. So that’s 100% in-camera.

We made six of those beer cans and reused that many, many, times. We would cut and paste those beer cans and put them into other shots, because it was just fun. I actually have [one of the cans]. Not for sale, not on eBay!

Carved

That was an actual [carving]. We had three or four pumpkins. Our prop guy, Dan Bleier, brought these props. We sat there and each one of us cut a pumpkin. I think this one, I’m kind of proud to say, was the one that I cut. Simple and big and fat. That’s in-camera, and then the “with David Letterman” stuff across the bottom, that’s literally cut-and-paste. That’s glued onto the print.

Union Square

This is an epic bumper. First of all, it was photographed the very first night we went out and shot. We had a loose list of locations. We had scouted this location, so we showed up with those snipe posters of Dave that said “Late Night.” They didn’t say “with David Letterman,” just “Late Night.” They’re literally staple-gunned across that wall.

This was in Union Square. That’s a wall that doesn’t exist anymore. And then you can see on the print where it says “with David Letterman,” that’s on the print. That was cut and glued onto the print after where we decided every bumper had to say “Late Night with David Letterman,” not just “Late Night.” 

Morty’s Pool

That’s Morty’s pool. [Late Night producer] Robert Morton had a rental house out in the Hamptons, and we were out there shooting a bunch of different things. We went over and hung out at his place, and shot that of him lying on a float in the pool.

For the Late Night logo, we shot that on a Polaroid at an angle. It was Pook who did the graphic. Old Polaroid SX-70s, as they’re developing, you could mess around with the emulsion and squish it, and it’ll ripple. So that’s what Pook did, and then [we] put it onto the print. So it looks like it’s underneath the water, but it’s actually on the print. That logo is all just glued on, but those ripples are done by hand, and then [we] airbrushed on top of it. 

Bus Stop

This is the original, very first show logo, cut out [and] stuck onto a jacket. It was a crude version. The logo idea, I actually drew one night in the art department at NBC. We were hanging out watching SNL, and then we were going to go to the afterparty.

On the table in the art department were a set of logos for all the Major League Baseball teams—because in the art department, they did graphics for sports, for late night, for news, and all sorts of things. So I just started drawing this logo in the style of the Dodgers and the Baltimore Orioles with the woosh underneath.

I just took this little hand-drawn logo and said, “Pook, what if we do a letterman jacket for a bumper?” And he’s like, “Oh, that could be interesting.” So he cleaned up the logo and we gave it to the wardrobe department, and they cut out this logo. We stuck it on a jacket and shot a bumper of it. Dave loved the look of that and said, “Great! Why don’t we make these and hand them out as Christmas presents?”

The Late Night jackets [which were eventually made for the crew] didn’t say “with David Letterman.” You can see in the [movie theater] bumper, “with David Letterman” is hand-drawn. But the “Late Night” part, that’s the actual jacket itself embroidered. [The jacket] just became this thing, and it ultimately became the logo for the show over the years. 

Lampshade

We were going to shoot some bumpers for one of the anniversary shows—like the first or second year, I don’t remember—so we had the props at my apartment. And I literally came home from New Year’s Eve on January 1st morning in a tuxedo, and I thought, “What if we…”— And then I just hung this stuff and set up my camera on a tripod, and shot this bumper of me with a lampshade on my head.

The Late Night champagne bottle is a prop. [The “Happy Anniversary” sign] is in camera, and [“Late Night with David Letterman”] is on the print, and looks like I’m holding a magic marker. This got used a lot. 

Letterman’s Last Bumper: Heel Napkin

There was an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side called Holbrook’s, 75th and 3rd. When I first moved to New York, I got a waiter’s job there to pay the bills. As I started getting busier, I just was friends with those guys. I said, “Hey, can we do a shoot here?” And they said, “Sure.” So we just came in one night and cranked out four or five bumpers, and this was one of them. 

In the finale episode of [Late Show with David Letterman], they had a bumper coming out of one break, and it was the high heel on a cocktail napkin. I was just blown away. So they used a bumper from Late Night in the final Late Show

Marc Karzen’s Late Night Bumpers book is available for purchase on Amazon and Blurb. Prints are available at LateNightBumpers.com. Karzen offers more behind-the-scenes anecdotes of his Late Night bumper shoots on Instagram and Facebook.

1 Comment

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  1. JVH says:

    Wow! Those were the days