Audience warm up: Friendly, heavyset man in his 40s with slicked-backed hair and good rapport with tourists Seating: Cramped, theater-style chairs Taping: January 30, 2008 Air date: January 30, 2008 (I think) A few weeks ago, a NY Mag piece articulated what were at the time my thoughts on David Letterman: he is the polar opposite of Jay Leno. Leno is the champion of the status quo, who hams it up with jokes about how "blondes are dumb, gay men are silly," while Letterman is a "renegade" who delights in "absurdist" comedy. Nowhere is this more striking, the story notes, than in their respective monologues. Both do one every show, of course, but Letterman shows open disdain for his shoddy material, while Leno embraces it. When channel surfing on weekdays at 11:30, a circumstance that really doesn't happen too often to me, it's obvious why I always choose Letterman.
I was standing in line to see another show when I got a call from somebody at Worldwide Pants. He needed me to confirm absolutely I'd attend Late Show and asked me a very simple trivia question that I nearly missed. If I'd gotten it wrong, I wouldn't have been able to attend! That's when I realized that when it comes to its studio audience, this is no normal show.
Most shows treat their audiences as afterthought, a gimmick to augment their show. Not so with Letterman. It's held in the Ed Sullivan theater, which gives the whole process more of an air of regional theater than of those cheaply made TV studios: fancy staircases, a nicely carpeted lobby, and an astonishingly high number of pages, all of them wearing fancy "Worldwide Pants" jackets. While waiting, we were shown this vintage Letterman clip:
As is standard, I waited for hours in line. As is not at all standard, I got a ticket proclaiming me in the "red zone". Not everybody was in the red zone. Some were relegated to the yellow or orange zones. And each zone stood in its own line, and the red zone's line was closest to the entrance and entered first.
Awesome, I thought. Red zone? More like red carpet!
The Late Show isn't filmed in a normal TV studio; it's in the historic Ed Sullivan Theater. There's not just one tier of seats, but two. Two! And they took us to the second tier! That turned out to not be such an honor.
It hit me while I was sitting in that famed Ed Sullivan theater, in the nosebleed section, wondering why there was a nosebleed section to begin with. I was listening to kindly goomba of a warm-up guy talk about how Dave is such a stand-up guy, adjusting my girlfriend's head while she dozed on my shoulder, when I realized I don't have to like Letterman just because I despise Leno. That whole "whose style monologue do you prefer" thing is a false dichotomy. Letterman shows disdain for his monologue because it's a lower form of comedy, but hestill does a monologue every time. I'd prefer Matchbox 20 to post-drugs Aerosmith (I guess), or a Dane Cook movie to one starring Robin Williams, but my God, that doesn't mean I'd voluntarily sit around for any of those. "Ladies and gentlemen, we don't have a very good show tonight," Letterman said to us before taping started. At first I thought he was joking, and says that to each audience. Anti-comedy, right? But in retrospect, I doubt it. It was actually a bad, bad show. The guests were Dr. Phil ("We're all nuts here!" Dave quipped in a manner suspiciously like his rival), Lena Heady (Sarah Connor from the Chronicles; we discovered she's actually British!), and Gary Allan (a Wal-Mart country star hopeful who powerfully gushed blandness; I believe he sang an ode to malls). If I hadn't been taking notes for this blog, I would have forgotten the entire experience within a few days.
To be fair, right after the Super Bowl, I managed to catch Letterman interviewing Eli Manning, and it was freaking awesome. Dave's been at it for 25 years; maybe this was just an off night.
Arrived/Departed: 10:30/1:45 Audience warm up: Standing in line, walking through metal detectors Seating: Long, painted benches Taping: January 29, 2008 Air date: January 31, 2008
Oh my God. The bright, multicolored lights, the music. Total sensory overload. It's candy. Pure sugar. A quick rush, without any substance, rapidly gobbled by kids and utterly garish to adults. This is Total Request Live--TRL, MTV's red herring to pretend it's still music television. The show doesn't show full music videos, just clips. It also represents youth culture for many. That's a harbinger, surely.
I'm a white male in his twenties who considers his music tastes discerning. I am no way the target demographic for this show. So it's hardly fair for me to hate here.
Fortunately, life is also not fair. And similarity to life has nothing to do with television. I don't know where this analogy is going, but let me be clear: TRL is terrible in every way, and the kids these days are disgusting and immoral, and their role models are smut peddlers and scum.
I arrived late because my train was stuck underground for half an hour. I didn't realize it at the time, but this was the highlight of my day. Like with many shows, we waited outside for a while. And after that, we waited inside for a while. The show is advertised as for people 16-24 and you need ID to prove you're in that range. I was not checked, and neither was anyone else I saw. Most seemed about fourteen. This is relevant. No kids said anything to me, but I can't imagine my thick beard and mild bald spot went unnoticed.
If I actually arrived on time for the show, I would have waited about an hour and forty-five minutes around before even being seated. I learned two things while waiting:
The kids today do not respect my personal space.
The kids today still state falsehoods to their friends, then, as said friends are sufficiently hoodwinked, yell "psych!"
When you're an audience member, those in charge of the show don't give you much respect, and this was even more apparent with TRL. The Audience Coordinator had a palpable contempt for her clients. It's very high school: Empty your pockets for the metal detector. Stand in line. Shh! Stop talking! Sit down there. Scoot down. Stand up. Sit down. Yell wooo when I say. Stop yelling wooo.
TRL is shot three-quarters in the round, which I guess is impressive. That mostly meant that kids had to keep scooting one way or the other to fill the background of a given shot. In case you caught the episode I attended, I'm sitting next to the heavyset guy in a yellow t-shirt who whooo-ed even louder than the rest, always with his fists raised triumphantly above his head.
This episode was "10 Influential Music Videos" in anticipation of Missy Elliott's latest, Ching-A-Ling, which is in 3-D and therefore may prove influential. Our host is Damien Fahey. He's a perfectly affable jackass and perfect successor to Carson Daly. He's opposite of a Colbert or Montel in that I probably wouldn't mind hanging out with him in real life, but he's a total tool to watch. He was helped by a Lyndsey Rodrigues, an Australian whose job was apparently to smile and be tall and pretty and occasionally speak in her charming accent. She was perfectly cast. Halfway through the show, the Aussie said announced to the cameras, "Karen from Kansas writes, 'Dear TRL. My boyfriend has a great body, but mine could use some work. I'd like to get some exercise but he won't work out with me. What do I do?'
Karen, you are oh-so-lucky. Because today we have the queen of erotic aerobic workouts, Carmen Electra!" They cut to commercial. Don't think the show is live; taped shows frequently stop for roughly the amount of time as commercials. Some TRL staff came out, rearranged some of the kids sitting in one corner, and placed a cheesy, heart-shaped bed.
The Aussie gestured to the bed and leered at Carmen: "So, Carmen, would you mind showing us an erotic aerobic dance? Woooo!"
And Carmen Electra seemed genuinely surprised by this request. Was she not earlier informed earlier than this that she would be "dancing"? Did the bed in the middle of the stage not raise a red flag? What about the fact that, besides a meager acting career (in fairness, she stars in the recent "Meet the Spartans"), most of her post-Singled Out and Dennis Rodman notoriety come from these videos?
(Disclaimer: I hate to be a prude about this. But look at who's sitting behind Carmen in this picture. This is the target audience for her Aerobic Striptease DVDs?) "Gosh," Carmen said disingenuously, suggestively, and sadly. "I'm wearing this short little dress. I'll give these people behind me a show." At this, most of the guys commenced hooting and hollering. The fists of the guy beside me became ever-more triumphant.
"Well," she said coyly, "I guess I can give a little demonstration."
Then, this is what she did:
She flopped on the bed.
She rolled around a little.
She grabbed a pillow.
She threw the pillow a foot and a half in the air.
The pillow landed near her head.
She slowly waved her arms in a a way that was less effeminate, more freakishly weak.
She giggled.
She stood, finished with her routine, and giggled.
Show: Colbert Report Date: 1/30/08 Arrived/Departed: 4:30/7:45 Audience warm up: Funny but mean comedian Seating: Spacious!
I started out with a show that’s easy to watch: the Colbert Report. Save Letterman (coming up in two entries), Colbert is the only one-man TV show I appreciate but had never seen live. And one-man it is. The writers are still striking, and the WGA members picketing outside are doing it only for the sake of viewers like me. (And principle, I guess.) They’re making no impression on the intern who guides the audience-to-be to wait outside in a line; in fact, she says her crew provides them with daily hot chocolate. [Note: Yes, I realize the strike has since ended.]
We waited outside for about an hour, shielded by the studio building on one side and a heavy tarp against a fence on the other, before being ushered into a waiting room. There the Audience Coordinator, a guy allegedly famous for some web video where he pretends to live in an Ikea, reminded us several times that Mr. Colbert works entirely without papers or a script, and that he really feeds off the audience’s energy.
Then he gushed praise for his boss, painting him as both nice and fallible, the opposite of his TV persona. “I have worked for a ton of famous people, and Stephen is the nicest guy.” He said his boss struggled as an actor, and that things looked pretty dim before he was picked up on the Daily Show, but now, “Stephen’s landed his dream gig. We’re all so proud of him.” The marked distinction between the human actor and the character who shares his name was a theme repeated through the night, which surprised me, given that on TV, Colbert seems at pains to always appear in character.
We were ushered in to a very spacious studio. Seating is stadium-style and spacious, going about five rows back. The stage largely consists of a series of slightly angled walls, angled to create a desk room, an interview room, and two walls of paraphernalia, like a hockey jersey from the Saginaw Spirit, the team with a Colbert-themed mascot. “I Fought the Law” played semironically over the speakers. Other pump-up songs of the evening included "It’s the End of the World As We Know It" by R.E.M., The Ramones’ Blitzkreig Bop, and "Holland, 1945", by Neutral Milk Hotel. The music is obviously designed to pump up the audience, not immerse them in Colbert-ness.
As I think is the norm for comedy talk shows, they sent a standup comedian to warm up the crowd. He also peppered his talk with praise of Colbert and reminders that he was working entirely sans script. He was as funny a comic as I’d expect to see in a club, though he did casually engage in the two pet peeves I have for standup. First, he made a few “you’re in this demographic, so you must have these characteristics!” jokes (here, a Pakistani guy who shocked our comic by choosing to become an accountant, rather than an engineer or doctor). Second, he harassed a member of the audience in order to impress the rest of us (to the same guy: “I don’t hate you because of your accent. I hate you because I cannot stand your fucking hair,” while reaching over to mess up the guy’s hair, which I thought crossed a line.) It was definitely funny, but I’m pretty sure it was a big damper on the accountant’s night. To the comedian’s credit, he was obviously called on to stall for far more time than is usually necessary, and he kept it going smoothly.
Finally, Colbert came running out, arms held high in self-celebration. That’s his thing, in case you don’t watch him. It’s weird to see TV personalities in your line of vision but made up for the camera. Their faces look plastic and their bodies look stumpy. Colbert looked older than my mental image of him.
He addressed the audience. “I’d like to answer some questions before I turn into that awful, mean character.” Someone jumped right in with a Lord of the Rings question. Colbert answered almost immediately with something like: “Yeah, well, Faramir wouldn’t have lost that ring! Twelve thousand years, people! If you read the Similarian—and I trust you all do—you know what I’m talking about.”
As his show is progeny of the Daily Show, Colbert begins with a segment joking about current news stories. Then he went on an ongoing bit, probably his best of the night, detailing that since the nonagenarian leader of the Mormon Church recently died, and apparently had a thing against a group of writers, then it follows that Colbert’s own writers are guilty of murder.
Since we’d been so frequently reminded by the administration that Colbert was responsible for all his own material, we’re left to assume that he comes up with all his jokes and has to meet with someone in the art department to convey that when he does the “Ron Paul is the Pope’s Puppet” bit, he’s going to need someone to Photoshop in a puppet with Benedict XVI.
The interviews were funny but strained for being stretched to make up for lack of written material. The first guest was Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-born writer of the comic book Persepolis, now a very good animated movie in theaters. The second was a heavyset, badly goateed Christian author and apparent spiritual leader, whose theology had something to do with God loving us and being vague. I paraphrase the most interested exchange:
Guy: “God’s not just smiling at us when we’re in church. God’s smiling at us whenever we’re doing what we’re made to do.” Colbert: [Some sort of characteristic, self-aggrandizing remark.] Guy: “See? God’s smiling at you when you act like you’re a nine year-old in a forty year-old’s body, because apparently that’s what you’re supposed to do.” Colbert: [Grins silently, stunned.]
The show ended soon after. All was quiet on the set while Colbert reshot a single line of dialogue. Then he put on his sincere face, thanked us so much for being a great audience, and before he finished his sentence, rushed backstage. The Audience Coordinator told us we were a fantastic audience—is there any other kind, I wonder?—and the show was over.
If you have ten minutes and want proof of the extent of Colbert's chutzpah:
If you've ever had a conversation with me about music that lasted more than a few minutes, you probably know say I keep a running list of the most despicable bands on the planet.
"Easy for you to say!" you might say. "If it's in your head, how do we know you didn't just make it up?"
Well, here's my money, right near my mouth.
