On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 7:38 AM, Jon Delfin <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thought I'd get 2013 started with a fight. > > http://www.newsfromme.com/2012/12/30/another-dave-n-jay-post/ I'm not sure if I have ever fully and adequately expressed on this list how much I dislike Oprah. Today I watched her for two hours (Colbert and Dave), and while it was quite distasteful, it was much less bad than I expected. I thought she was somewhat better with Dave than Colbert, as there were long intervals when she actually seemed to be listening to him, and interested in what he was saying, rather than thinking of the next cliche designed to try and make him cry. Apparently the target audience of OWN is assumed not to know very much about Colbert, as she seemed to feel the need to explain his act and persona about 100 times. I have heard apocryphal stories of people who think that Colbert is being serious on his show, and now I learn that all 500 of them watch the OWN. I give her credit - I thought the Dave interview was really interesting, probably the most interesting I have seen him due. The Leno stuff was put in its appropriate context, but for me, partially out of professional interest but also as a long time fan who has followed his development over the years, the real meat was in his discussion of his use of therapy to make sense of his "sexual scandal" and his discussion of his depression. The depression stuff was great, but also pretty much the standard testimony that one hears from those who have suffered from episodes of actual depression (and in my job I hear this a lot). But I also talk to a lot of people who are in therapy for a variety of reasons, and have sought out interviews of famous people who are asked about why they are in therapy, and I found Dave's comments here to be not just insightful but relatively rare. He said something to the effect that he used to think of himself as a good person, and he wanted to figure out a way to be that good person that he always thought he was (realizing that his sexual behavior demonstrated that he was not). Even though he later talked about some pretty serious depression, he did not cite that as the reason for being in therapy, though no doubt that is part of it. You often hear people say they want to figure things our, or make sense of their life, or find meaning, or happiness. Dave's answer was specific and accurate. Nice touch to do it at Ball State - universities love that kind of exposure, and the students get a real kick out of it. I wish that she had asked him to talk a little more about how, if at all, his sex scandal has affected how he tells jokes about other celebrity scandals. We know he still does it, but does he do it any differently, or does he feel any differently about it? I am surprised that I am going to write this, but I also wanted her to ask him a little about his father; she had a whole soft-focus segment on Çolbert's family tragedy that included the death of his father; Dave repeated what I have heard from him several times before about his father being the really funny one in his family growing up, but she did not follow up with asking about what it was like for him when he died - I wonder if he has let it be known that he does not want to talk about that? I know there is at least one person here who knows the answer to this question: Who were the two guests already seated when Dave first appeared on the Tonight Show (they showed the clip, and it looked like James Garner and some dark haired woman I could not place - maybe Natalie Wood, or was she dead already?) One technical question - I have been involved in a few small time media interviews, and have been surprised how often they have had to stop to change film - but those were filmed. It looked like (at least with Colbert) that she kept referring to something like "lets stop and change the tape"; if it is videotape, do they really have to stop that often to change it? Or did they shoot like 6 hours of tape that got edited down to the 1 hour we saw? -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
