S ometimes I think I only worked to have this career so I could get to be on late-night talk shows. I grew up in the 1970s, a time when late-night guests were both the new, cutting-edge people and people from previous eras, going back all the way to Broadway and even silent-film stars. That was my first peek at showbiz, where all of these entertainers told me about their world — Bob Hope, Sly and the Family Stone, Dolly Parton, Sammy Davis Jr., Robert Klein. After school, I could watch Dinah Shore and Mike Douglas. Then in the evenings, it was Merv Griffin and Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett. By the time I was in high school, you could watch talk shows until 1:30 in the morning. At a chaotic time in my house — my parents’ marriage was coming apart — it felt good to watch Jeff Altman do stand-up on Merv Griffin.
I was just as interested in Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter being on a talk show as I was the comedians. I wish I could say most of what I know I learned from books, but I bet 80 percent of it was from talk shows. Later on, I became interested in why they were funny. How come Johnny’s so hilarious when the jokes don’t work? I was drawn to the guests’ strong points of view — George Carlin and Richard Pryor talked about what was wrong with America and delivered observations about normal life in the most riotous way.
Then David Letterman started when I was in middle school, and he basically deconstructed the entire form. Letterman would have fake guests — he’d be interviewing an author who would say he was Michael Crichton, and in the middle of it, the guy would start crying and saying, “I lied! I’m not Michael Crichton! I’m a bad man!” I felt like I was watching something being invented. When they gave Letterman a late-night spot, to me it was like Star Wars coming out every night of the week. You couldn’t tell if he liked or disliked a lot of the guests. People would come on, like Madonna or Cher, and it would get confrontational. We all wanted to be David Letterman and be allowed to break everything apart and call out all of the bullshit.
Probably the highlight of my career was working for Garry Shandling on his talk-show satire The Larry Sanders Show. Garry had observed all of the backstage machinations of that workplace, and he thought it was the perfect metaphor for life. The curtain and what’s behind the curtain, the way we all put on a face and present ourselves one way when we’re actually feeling something completely different inside. It was a way to talk about human frailty in a hilarious manner.
Once my career got going, I was invited onto these talk shows, and started seeing them from the inside. The first one I did was The Dennis Miller Show. I was on with the band Live, making their debut, and it was so exciting. I was on Jay Leno with Usher. Jimmy Fallon had me do a sketch with Keanu Reeves. I was on Jimmy Kimmel last year with Tim Walz, right before the election. One of the most fun was Craig Ferguson, because there was absolutely no pre-interview and you really had no idea what was going to happen.
My entire family have been guests on Stephen Colbert. I went on, my wife, Leslie [Mann], went on. And then our daughter, Maude, went on, and they played her a montage of all the times Leslie and I did jokes about problems we had raising her as a teenager. Then Colbert asked if she had a response, and Maude said, “I’m not gonna say anything about them. I’m not petty like that!” I felt like life had come full circle. You don’t really know how you did as a parent until your child succeeds on a talk show.
This is also where we turn for someone to interpret the events of the day. We watched Letterman talk about 9/11. We went through political events through the eyes of these people. I’m amazed at the way talk-show hosts are able to write jokes that allow us to laugh at something that is dark and troubling. You can’t give enough credit to people like Kimmel and Colbert and Fallon and Seth Meyers for the Herculean feat that is. Imagine it was your job to wake up in the morning and look at what happened in the Iran War and know you have to go do an 11-minute monologue about it. It’s almost unbelievable that they pull it off, ever.
I wish we still had Arsenio Hall on air. When he arrived, it was like an enormous section of the culture that had not been given access to the airwaves suddenly exploded onto the scene. He’d have Public Enemy and Prince and Andrew Dice Clay. Miles Davis and all the early rappers. We’re all poorer for not having that right now.
But the hosts we have now, you can tell, are going to fight until their last breath to be allowed to express themselves. That’s what America’s all about. It’s supposed to be the place where we have these voices — all voices on the political spectrum. That’s why people panicked when they were talking about taking Kimmel off the air. But the backlash to Kimmel’s suspension got him back on, and that was really heartening. If a million people get rid of Hulu, the powers that be understand, there’s no limit to how many people will get rid of it if they follow through and really cancel the show. Money wins in the United States, and that works both ways.
Some people say late-night is dying out, but I hope not. I love the host with the desk, with the band, doing the monologue. I love it when the monologue works. I love it when it doesn’t. I hope one day our country is stable enough that some of the monologues don’t have to be about all the horrifying things that happened that day. But when almost everything that happens is horrifying, you really do need to gather and talk about it.
So I pray that when all of the entertainment industry is owned by one man in the future — some bizarro creature who’s half man, half robot, who makes all decisions for us in our surveillance state — that he likes talk shows. And even if it doesn’t make economic sense, I hope he lets at least one stay on the air.
此内容由惯性聚合(RSS阅读器)自动聚合整理，仅供阅读参考。 原文来自 — 版权归原作者所有。