Remembering David Brenner's "Nightlife"

It falls somewhere within the x-y axis of insult vs. compliment to be called "ahead of your time". It means you and your work weren't that popular or appreciated in your time but was discovered and appreciated later on in -- or after -- your life, and that it influenced others who went on to become more successful than you.

For example, The Velvet Underground's music wasn't popular in its time but it was deeply appreciated by, and greatly influenced, later generations of big bands like U2 and REM.

David Brenner's career was definitely ahead of its time. A standup comic, he broke out in the 1970s doing something most comedians hadn't done before -- observational humor. Before that most standup comedy was either "da dum bum" one liners like Henny Youngman and Jack Benny or deeply existentialist stuff like Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce. Brenner's was totally different -- not shallow jibes, not deep insights, but simple questions. He looked at the world right in front of him and did routines like, "Hey! What's the deal with tic tacs? How can you walk around carrying them without annoying people?" Long before Jerry Seinfeld made hundreds of millions of people of laugh -- and hundreds of millions of dollars in his bank account -- with observational humor in the 1990s, David Brenner was bringing this new style of comedy to audiences in the 1970s with numerous Tonight Show appearances.

In 1986 (until 1987), Brenner had his own late night show called Nightlife. Before the Johnny Carson/Joan Rivers dust up, before Arsenio Hall shook up the old boys network of late night, before the generational defining wars of Leno vs. Letterman vs. Conan, before The Daily Show and other topical shows redefined the purpose of late night, Brenner quietly made a big contribution to changing the face of late night comedy.

And it reeked of NYC. Nightlife was different in every way from most late night shows at the time. It was filmed here, it was syndicated, it didn't have a studio audience or an opening monologue. It was just Brenner, his guests, and comedy. It was rebellious and hip. It had a great attitude. It was very ahead of its time.

Perfect example: Nightlife was one of the first shows to put Howard Stern on TV. Besides a few appearances on Letterman, the shock jock was barely known outside NYC at the time. Brenner totally understood Howard Stern's unique comedic genius and gave him a platform when few others dared. Brenner wasn't just ahead of his time in his own comedy or with his own late night show but he recognized revolutionary comedy in others -- and celebrated it.

David Brenner died in 2014, age 78. His days as a talk show regular and host, as a big-time comic, were long over. He never achieved the gigantic success of observational comedians like Seinfeld or Paul Reiser, and was largely unknown to younger comedy fans. But David Brenner was a true comedic pioneer as his short-lived talk show proved.

And his influence lives on.