WESTBROOK, Maine — The sound of impassioned, felt-tipped markers squawking and scratching over poster boards filled the air inside Danny Cashman’s dressing room a few hours before a taping of “The Nite Show” at the city’s performing arts center last month.
Cashman, who hosts the late night television program, was in a hurry, hunched over a batch of cue cards, struggling to finish them before showtime. But he kept getting distracted.
A musical guest was late, then took way too long at sound check. Another had to be picked up at a hotel just as a local television news crew showed up to interview Cashman. Two huge cups of coffee then arrived, both loaded with cream and sugar, even though Cashman takes it black. He drank one anyway. After that, Cashman called a radio station and did a live promo spot for his show.
Then there was his hair.
“Ugh. It looks like I stole a hippy’s toupe,” Cashman said, glancing in a mirror.
Between the interruptions, he kept scribbling away at the cue cards, harried but clearly having a ball.
“I love this,” Cashman, 46, said. “I still love doing all of this.”
Despite the love, Cashman is calling it quits, pulling the plug on the nation’s only locally produced late night television talk show, which he started 27 years — and almost 700 episodes — ago as a 19-year-old college freshman in Brewer.
Cashman is doing it now because, he said, it’s just time — and also because there’s not enough time.
Splitting life between hosting “The Nite Show,” working a day job in public relations and being a dad to 9- and 12-year-old daughters has become too much. Something has to go, and that’s the show, which can easily add 40 hours to his already stuffed weekly schedule. Cashman not only hosts the show, he does the booking, writes most of the jokes and even sells the commercial slots which pay for it.
As Cashman began the show that night in Westbrook, his oldest daughter made her stage debut as a squirrel for the Penobscot Theater Company in Bangor. He wasn’t there to see it.
“That didn’t feel good,” he said, a week later. “I know work can create those kinds of situations. But that’s work. This is the show. It doesn’t pay my mortgage.”
Though Cashman is clear-eyed about his decision, giving up the show means giving up a childhood dream come true.
It was born when late-night television talk show host David Letterman moved into the 11:30 p.m. time slot on CBS in 1993, going head-to-head with Jay Leno on NBC in a battle to fill the void left when Johnny Carson retired. For teenage Cashman, Letterman was the clear winner.
“I watched him every night. I was sleep deprived. That was the era when Drew Barrymore flashed Letterman on his desk, when Madonna went on the show and wouldn’t stop swearing and wouldn’t leave,” Cashman said. “As a kid who liked television and liked to laugh, Letterman made it look like it was something anyone could do.”
By 1997, 19-year-old Cashman was the mascot for the Bangor Blue Ox minor league baseball team which had a show on WBGR, Bangor’s local WB Network television station. There, the ambitious teen made connections, then hustled and talked his way into his own show, which was taped at a Brewer theater.
The show lasted two years, going off the air in 1999.
In the meantime, Cashman graduated from the University of Maine in 2000, then brought “The Nite Show” back for a year on Bangor’s UPN affiliate in 2001. Cashman then worked in local radio for a spell before taking a job as Gov. John Baldacci’s assistant press secretary in 2005.
In 2010, still pursuing his after-hours television dream, Cashman partnered with Husson University’s New England School of Communications to create a slicker, more professional version of “The Nite Show.” Taped at the school’s state-of-the-art broadcast facilities at the Gracie Theater, Cashman’s half-hour program now airs weekly on broadcast stations in Portland, Presque Isle and Bangor.
It’s the only local, late night talk show of its kind in the country.
Taping dozens of times a year, both in Bangor and at other locations around the state, hundreds of communications students have helped produce Cashman’s show since then, with many going on to professional careers in television and theater.
“NESCom will post pictures of students all the time who are working at some major tour, the Grammy Awards, the Super Bowl or the Olympics,” Cashman said. “I always look at them and say, ‘That person worked on “The Nite Show.”’ It really is a strong source of pride for me.”
The show features a live band and a traditional late-night mix of comedic monologues, zany pre-taped sketches, musical performances and behind-the-desk interviews with interesting Mainers and celebrities — an eclectic mix that has included Patrick Dempsey, Ed Asner, Gov. Paul LePage and Noel Paul Stookey.
On the night of the Westbrook taping, Cashman delivered his monologue standing on a tile procured from David Letterman’s New York City theater. He then showed a taped sketch parodying the long-running television show “Law and Order,” where he pretended to arrest Maine broadcast icon Bill Green.
Later, Cashman called two women up from the audience and convinced one to hit the other in the face with a pie. He then interviewed Westbrook basketball legend Lisa Blais Manning before introducing Tom “Bones” Malone, who was sitting in on trombone with the house band. Malone was once part of Letterman’s band, as well as a member of the Blues Brothers band.
At one point, amid the merriment onstage, Cashman mentioned to the audience that the Westbrook appearance was to be his final road taping, as he winds down the show.
“It’s the first of many lasts,” he said, before emotion overcame him for a moment.
Cashman won’t officially end the show until next spring, but he devised a long exit ramp, so as not to surprise the university. He also wants time to tie up every loose end and celebrate every “last” on his list.
When the Westbrook show was over, Cashman raced to the lobby, where he shook hands and took selfies with fans as they left the auditorium. Many stood in line to get a private moment and say they’d miss him.
“You do good work Danny Cashman,” one man bellowed on his way out.
Afterwards, the visibly spent host sat in his dressing room, coat off, with a bottle of water, amid a stack of spent cue cards. A colleague breezed in, giving him a quick hug.
“I guess I got a little misty there onstage,” Cashman said. “I’m feeling it — it’s hard to let go of something you love.”
Cashman then picked up his phone, and checked his messages. There was one waiting: His daughter’s two-line stage debut as a squirrel went well.
He didn’t miss her second performance.
