The first sign that punches aren’t going to be pulled comes right up front. “I’d push Sajak over a cliff if we could get Leno,” says CBS Broadcast Group president Stringer (Peter Jurasik) to his late-night exec, Rod Perth (Ed Begley Jr.). They’re watching Leno on NBC and bemoaning their own network’s pathetic competitor: “The Pat Sajak Show.” So they offer Leno a huge pile of money to stop subbing for Johnny and do his own show at CBS. Enter Helen Kushnik (Kathy Bates), Leno’s longtime manager. Kushnik uses the CBS offer to bulldoze NBC into signing a contract guaranteeing that when Johnny retires, Jay gets “The Tonight Show.” She then leaks it to the press that NBC can’t wait to bump Johnny and hand over the mike to Jay. Letterman – who’s been doing “Late Night” for 10 years and marinating in boredom – freaks. The war is on.
By this time it’s easy to forget that we’re not watching the real Jay and Dave here, but extremely effective impersonations by a couple of unknowns. John Michael Higgins reads Letterman as a scowling, manic mess who doodles “I hate myself” on a note pad during commercial breaks. After “Late Night” tapings, he goes on a warpath of self-loathing. “It sucked! The whole show sucked!” Dave bellows at his terrified staff. After hearing that NBC is going with Jay, not him, he totally deflates: “I’m finished. I’m f—ed. My time is up.” You can almost hear the air hissing out of that gap between his teeth.
As Leno, Daniel Roebuck’s big challenge is acting under a prosthetic chin the size of Long Island – and opposite Bates’s Kushnik, who crashes through scenery like a rhino in heat. Jay, Mr. Nice Guy, frets over whether Carson “likes” him. Kushnik’s response: “Go do your f—in’ jokes.” It’s a deeply dysfunctional relationship. Jay’s codependency enables Kushnik’s abusive obsession with the F word. When NBC Entertainment president Littlefield (Bob Balaban, who played the same part on “Seinfeld”) persuades Jay to fire her, he calls it an “intervention.” Yikes. No wonder Jay doesn’t want people watching this thing.
The only one who comes off like a hero is Mike Ovitz (Treat Williams). The infamous uber-agent scores Letterman his $14 million salary at CBS by rethinking what he dubs “the geometry of the deal.” In full comeback mode, Williams is prince of the city again, only this time the burg is Hollywood. After his first session with the serenely omnipotent Ovitz, an awed Letterman giggles, “It was like meeting with the Godfather.”
Is “The Late Shift” too inside? This is, ultimately, a story about contract negotiations. But it would have been a mistake to make the movie a feature-length version of “The Larry Sanders Show,” HBO’s mordant mock talk show. Director Betty Thomas lets Carter’s exhaustive reportage tell the story. They’re going for verisimilitude. Look-alike actors play all the network suits, even though the average viewer would never know the difference. One of the few false notes is Rich Little’s bloated Carson, because he looks nothing like the original. Before the movie starts, a title comes up that reads, “Believe it or not, the following is based on the truth.” Leno really did hide in a closet so he could eavesdrop on NBC execs debating his life or death at the network. And to paraphrase Voltaire, Mike Ovitz already exists, so there’s no need to invent him.
