Letterman On Letterman Dave Talks About The Oscars, Ratings And Drew Barrymore

David Letterman was pretty thoroughly savaged by the press, including this columnist, for his performance as host of the Academy Awards broadcast. And he’s ready to do it again.

“If they asked me to do it again, I’d do it in a second,” Letterman said in his first interview since the Oscars.

“Overall, I enjoyed the experience, as strange as that may sound. The only thing that is sort of residually troubling to me is the notion that I embarrassed myself, and, you know, nobody likes that. But having developed fairly thick skin over my 48 years, that’s not too much of a problem.”

What was a problem, he said, was the attempt to create the same kind of seat-of-the-pants feeling of his “Late Show” on CBS.

“What I realized shortly thereafter was that we did not have that flexibility,” Letterman said. “These folks (the Oscar production team) had been working long and hard on this show and were not really prepared to be goofin’ around with me. It was clearly nothing that they did. It was an error in my judgment.”

Meanwhile, Letterman has got in plenty of shots of his own at CBS’ prime-time ratings collapse.

“In the beginning,” he said, “when I saw the way this was going, it was very troubling. And then you have to recognize what is under your control and what isn’t. Clearly, much of this is not anything we can do anything about.”

One thing he and his Worldwide Pants production company can do is offer shows for CBS’ schedule. Pants has two pilots in contention for the fall. One stars Bonnie Hunt and is produced by her and former “Late Show” head writer Rob Burnett. The other, “Emmett & Earl,” is the creation of former Letterman writer Adam Resnick.

Still, Letterman is definitely unhappy about the impact on “Late Show” ratings of CBS’ prime-time woes, poor ratings for late news on some CBS stations and surging numbers for ABC’s “Nightline.”

“I think it’s pitiful. It’s depressing as hell that things have crumbled for us. But if you look at the breakdowns, you know, nobody is gaining ground on us; we have just had it blown out from under us. If there’s anything to hang onto, and sometimes it’s hard to find a ray of hope here, it would be that,” he said.

And what did Letterman really think when Drew Barrymore flashed her breasts at him during his birthday broadcast on April 12?

“You know, I’m 48. And my history with women, uh, I’m not exactly Warren Beatty. Let me ask you this: Has anything like that ever happened to you? No. And if I didn’t have a television show, it wouldn’t happen to me in a million years,” he said.

“You know, I think the world of this kid. I think she’s delightful. And I guess an argument can be made that it was in bad taste, but I have to say from a professional standpoint and also from a personal standpoint, it was certainly one of the delights of my adult life.”