Anyone else think the guy in the center of this picture looks like Mike Sweeney with a beard?
Here's an interesting analysis of the unscripted late night shows.
LATE-NIGHT TV HOSTS: WITHOUT THE WRITERS
Who's lame, who's smug and who wins?KATE TAYLOR
January 12, 2008
globeandmail.com (Canada's National Newspaper)
Leno is unrepentant. Kimmel is unmoved. Stewart is unhappy. Colbert is almost giddy. O'Brien is erratically brilliant ... and Letterman is very, very smug.
After a two-month absence caused by the continuing strike by American film and television writers, the late-night talk shows are back with a variety of approaches to producing laughs without scripts, most of which seem to involve prolonged jokes about facial hair.
These days, a few hours staying up watching TV can be deeply revelatory about the venerable formula that is the late-night talk show and the comic talents of the incumbents. Yes, apparently, Jay Leno can dream up lines all by himself about threesomes with Hillary Clinton and weather so bad you have to keep one hand on the steering wheel. On NBC's The Tonight Show, the grand-pappy of the bunch, Leno seems set to ignore the strike by the Writers Guild of America and continues to produce an opening monologue filled with the rather predictable cracks about politics, sex and driving that are his trademark. Seems the Spears family is mighty relieved that Britney's sister Jamie Lynn is pregnant at 16. They were starting to worry she might become an old maid. Bada boom.
Over on CBS, David Letterman seems to be more conscious of the strike, and he's the one who has his writers. Because Letterman's production company Worldwide Pants owns his show and Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and thus was able to make his own deal with the guild, both programs are back in full swing. But that doesn't stop Letterman from making repeated gags about the strike, including trying to stuff as many striking writers as possible into the trendy juice bar across the street this week. As actor and guest Tom Hanks told Letterman Monday after he shaved off his bushy strike beard on air: "Shaving beards off on TV, that's what shows without writers do."
Generally, there's been an air of camaraderie-in-crisis on Letterman as an A-list of Hollywood liberals that has included Hanks, Robin Williams and Morgan Freeman express their support for the strikers by doing their bit on the legit show. All these shows are formulaic, as they move from the desk to the couch to the bandstand and back again, but at its most cozy, that formula can produce an enviable sense of fellowship among the host, musicians, guests and audience. Despite his sometimes caustic wit, Letterman is better at producing that relaxed sociability on air than his rivals and the past two weeks have been particularly chummy on the Late Show.
Meanwhile, NBC hosts Leno and Conan O'Brien are left conducting extended interviews with a seemingly endless parade of reality hosts from their own network including Howie Mandel, Hulk Hogan and Donald Trump - when they aren't being entertained by big snakes and dancing dogs. Thursday, Leno even interviewed his ABC rival host Jimmy Kimmel on his show and then returned the favour half an hour later. It was a hostage exchange that might seem heavily weighted in ABC's favour, but since Leno is the better host, NBC got the livelier interview as the usually catatonic Kimmel played guest. O'Brien, meanwhile, is trying to break his 41-second record for spinning his wedding ring on his desk.
(Despite the sometimes desperate antics, Variety reported yesterday that the traditional ratings position of the top shows remains unchanged: Leno and O'Brien are still beating Letterman and Ferguson.)
Over in the cable universe, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central had an even tougher job to perform as they joined their fellow hosts back on air this week. Both men are satirists, not stand-up comics. They depend heavily on their scripts and on both shows you could almost hear the sighs of relief this week when they moved from their solo segments to interviews, even if the guests represented a pretty low tier of American punditry.
You might have thought Colbert, a brilliant comic playing the role of the self-congratulatory, right-wing broadcaster on his Colbert Report, would have the more impossible task: His character is, after all, a fictional creation. Turns out the man, who got his start in comedy doing improv, has no problems improvising in character. It was Stewart who looked the most uncomfortable at the start of the week as he fiddled with his pen, frowned at the camera and devoted a long segment to a largely serious interview about the strike with a labour-relations expert from Cornell University. Colbert, meanwhile, bounced along more happily on his first show, gleefully playing up footage of his many anti-union statements, while resorting on Tuesday to a script about the meteorite market that had been written before the strike. Both men brightened considerably Wednesday when they had the results of the New Hampshire primary as fodder.
Stewart also got in a few jabs against the writers at the top of the week, suggesting the earnestness of their ads would be more appropriate to an AIDS charity, although he didn't spare the network bosses either. Generally, the late-night hosts support the writers and have been vocal about it on air. Only Kimmel has been overtly critical, suggesting on his first night that the writers were overly harsh in picketing shows such as O'Brien's and Leno's.
Still, unlike those hosts who are clearly preparing jokes before they step on set, Kimmel is largely sticking by guild regulations that forbid members - and all the hosts are also guild members - from preparing material for struck shows. While Leno keeps those zingers coming despite protests from the guild, and Stewart certainly appeared to have prepared material available by Wednesday, Kimmel has largely abandoned the monologue, settling for the odd jab at some news clip or other. His show is now relying heavily on re-running previous gags under the title Greatest Moments for Which Residual Payments Are Made to Our Unemployed Writers.
Seems like he and Letterman will soon be the only two left making strike jokes: As this week wore on, obligatory references to the strike on all the talk shows grew fewer and guests no longer felt compelled to announce that they supported the writers (even if they had crossed the writers' picket lines to be there.) For all that the talk shows are now providing the starving networks with some fresh meat, their return would seem to do the writers' cause more good than harm, publicizing the strike. This is one where nobody seems to have sympathy for the producers' refusal to give writers a share of Internet profits. Even Guillermo, the security guard on Kimmel's show, can explain to you what a residual is.
The other winner in this often-bizarre exercise is O'Brien, king of the often bizarre. He's the only host who does any real physical comedy on his show, which has helped him in this instance as he entertains the folks with his new beard, his moon walk and his eye-twitching imitation of a psychotic studio boss manically stroking his cat ŕ la Dr. No.
O'Brien has also been the most forthright about the strike. He announces calmly at the start of each show that sadly he lacks his writers and he wants them back but that in the meantime he will attempt to entertain you himself. He considers it an opportunity to rethink the show, he says.
Last week, he was doing just that with a silly segment in which he eavesdropped on the NBC pages as they led tour groups into his studio and another in which he flung himself out into the audience to deliver all kinds of tasteless junk he had bought discounted in the NBC gift shop. This week, he introduced a light show like one of those he insists they have in German discos - who has ever been to a German disco? - and now delights in unveiling it to German-accented cackles. Too much of that and a particularly bland interview with The Donald made Tuesday's show a weak one, while Wednesday's interview with associate producer Jordan Schlansky threatened to disintegrate into a sordid exercise in humour by humiliation as O'Brien uncovered the health freak's hidden Pop-Tarts. Still, two weeks into this exercise, O'Brien comes off looking good as the host who is both most honest about the strike's impact and most willing to take some risks with the talk-show format.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner in the best stand-up-comedian-c.um-talk-show-host-unsupported-by-large-writing-staff category: It's the elongated leprechaun with the spinning wedding band and the demonic laugh.
Host-friendly Huckabee
Just call him a late-night s.lut.
As his colleagues on the left and on the right stay well clear of the Writers Guild of America strike, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is busy making appearances on late-night talk shows. He was on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last week, was on the Late Show with David Letterman Monday, and Wednesday he showed up on The Colbert Report. The writers on Letterman's show are no longer on strike, but those other two appearances required Huckabee to cross Writers Guild of America picket lines - most other presidential hopefuls have stayed away. It's a move that might lead some to question the judgment of this would-be president, who apparently believed all the talk shows had settled - if they weren't already pretty dubious about the question because the guy has repeatedly offered comic Stephen Colbert a spot as his running mate.
The two men, one of whom is a clever liberal satirist pretending to be a right-wing pundit and the other of whom is apparently for real, kept this gag going Wednesday in an interview in which Colbert asked Huckabee to confirm that they were the guys who think Jesus and the Devil are brothers. Just to show he can take a joke, Huckabee explained that no, that was not their ticket, but offered to send Colbert a memo on this issue with all the important parts underlined in red. (In all seriousness, Huckabee has said elsewhere he does not believe in evolution.) Colbert then offered Huckabee a graceful exit from the gag, saying he need only repeat the offer again and Colbert would then finally decline it. Huckabee obliged, at which point Colbert cackled "Yes, a thousand times yes. ... I've got my hooks in you mister. See you at the altar."
The only other candidate who crossed the picket lines was Republican Ron Paul, who came on The Tonight Show Monday to ponder with Leno why the Fox network had excluded him from its televised debate. Under Leno's tender ministrations, Paul emerged as honest, sensible, sincere and a real gentleman, but he's also a flaming libertarian and fringe candidate: He probably figured he had nothing to lose by appearing on the struck show.
In good times, if all goes well, these talk-show forays can provide a real boost to a candidate. The phenomenon can be traced back to Bill Clinton's 1992 appearance, with his saxophone, on The Arsenio Hall Show where he unleashed a youthful sex appeal that did him no harm in his bid for the presidency. With Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as governor of California five years ago, the confusion of entertainment and politics in American public life was complete: Today, these late-night performances are a commonplace for politicians, and if they can play an instrument, so much the better.
But talk-show hosts can turn on dull or insincere guests - Letterman most notoriously - and the optics of these political appearances have to be carefully considered at the best of times. Hillary Clinton clearly knew what she was about when she taped the opening words of Letterman's show last week on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. "Dave has been off the air for eight long weeks because of the writers' strike. Tonight he's back. Oh well, all good things come to an end." That was all she said, but with those deftly delivered lines she demonstrated not only her sense of humour but also her leftie credentials: She understands that Letterman is the only guy who has settled with his writers.
I think we're all just upset for so many people.
I love FANTASTICKS too! Yes, only one week away. sniff tear...
Except I feel, taking the DVD increase off the negotiation table was wise because they were asking for Double the amount of what they were getting when their main issue was the internet profits-- or so it seems.
