Jon Stewart will return to The Daily Show next week following a sabbatical. He
was in the Middle East this summer directing a film called Rosewater. For the eight weeks out of twelve after Stewart’s departure that the show was not on hiatus, writer/correspondent John Oliver stepped in to host in his stead.
If you don’t already know that, you may not be interested in the video I’m sharing of John Oliver’s appearance on Charlie Rose from Monday, Aug. 8th, just as John-with-an-h was starting his final week as Jon-without’s substitute.
Me, I love this kind of process talk. I’ve been reading behind-the-scenes stuff about
how comics, music, film, and television are crafted (theater and prose, to a lesser extent, too) since I was a kid. It’s not really the gossip, which in on-air conversations like this one is incidental to nonexistent, so much as it is the plain old nuts-and-bolts of how creative work — and in particular collaborative creative work — is made that fascinates.
You think you’re done with “Call Me Maybe”? You cringe when your car radio lands on it for even a moment? You swear that no cover, mashup, or parody could ever get you to listen to that song again?
I’m here to sympathize but also to tell you that you must hear it one more time, at least if you haven’t yet seen the Night of Too Many Stars duet between Harvey Keitel and Carly Rae Jepsen. Keitel pulls a William Shatner by doing his part as a spoken-word performance exactly as you’d imagine Harvey Keitel would.
Night of Too Many Stars is the biennial variety-show founded by Robert Smigel and hosted by Jon Stewart to benefit autism programs. This year’s edition aired last Sunday on Comedy Central as a live telethon with clips from a show held the previous Sunday at New York City’s Beacon Theatre. Other standout moments included Katy Perry singing “Firework” with 11-year-old Jodi DiPiazza and Louis CK auctioning off a holiday-card photo with Al Pacino.
[Update: My links have unfortunately all gone bad, although if you find and enjoy the material elsewhere online you can hopefully likewise find a way to donate.]
Related: Gift Rap • Muppet Monday • Crazy Talk
If you’re looking for a laugh amidst pre-Oscar fatigue (or just because), I direct you to
a gallery of doctored movie posters over at The Shiznit.
Ali Gray has reworked posters for the annual glut of prestige films to give them titles and taglines bluntly reflective of what the viewing public and/or the promoters think about them.
I was glad to see a relaxed but not too relaxed Vice-President Joe Biden on The Daily Show last night.
Screencap © 2009 NBCUniversal Media.
The VP was articulate, knowledgable, and good-humored, a far cry from the gruff-voiced, gaffe-prone parody in the cold open of Saturday Night Live three evenings prior. Biden has made his share of painfully inartful statements, for sure, and it’s fine to razz him for his tendencies to speak too long or say too much. He’s smart, though, and Jason Sudeikis’ impression of him as a gravelly loudmouth sounds nothing like Biden — to me, a fatal error, because good impressions are far more about the voice than the visual. I’m thinking of Dan Aykroyd’s unlikely evocation of Jimmy Carter even with a mustache on early SNL, Gary Cole nailing Robert Reed’s tone as Mike Brady in the big-screen Brady Bunch flicks, or Frank Caliendo’s quick changes from John Madden to Charles Barkley to George W. Bush when visiting David Letterman on The Late Show. (Caliendo is better at stand-up than he was on his short-lived cable series.)
The “fake news” block of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central is a great one-two punch of laughter four nights a week — spiked punch, to mix a metaphor. Last Wednesday’s Daily Show had a first act that’s a perfect example of Stewart and his crew at work, eviscerating the bizarrely persistent idea that our current President was not born in the USA.
I’ve put those quotation marks around “fake news” because the shows offer “fake” reportage and commentary in much the same way that Spinal Tap is a “fake band”: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, & Harry Shearer actually compose songs, play instruments, record albums, and even perform in concert, but as characters poking stone-faced fun at the whole enterprise. While parody, Spinal Tap also entertain as accomplished practitioners of what they’re parodying. Adding satire to that mix, Report’s would-be conservative pundit Stephen Colbert (the alter ego of actor Stephen Colbert) and The Daily Show’s smug, stentorian correspondents are insightful as they’re being inciteful; anchorman Stewart may be the only person in the entire TDS/TCR troupe who isn’t putting on a persona.
Has it really been a month since Conan O’Brien’s debut as Tonight Show host?
I took a look out of curiosity — as well as respect for both Conan and a late-night institution that dates back to before even Johnny Carson. The filmed opening was funny, but the rest of the taped bits offered diminishing returns and my Will Ferrell tolerance is low, so the main take-away for me was merely a vague excitement around the zeitgeist. One also has to wonder exactly what NBC has done to the TV landscape by slotting Jay Leno at 10 p.m. (ET) weeknights come the fall.
The Daily Show on Monday night was a great example of Jon Stewart and his
writers at the top of their game. Stewart’s rant at CNBC and Jim Cramer in particular is the best excerpt. You could also just watch the whole megillah. [see below]
