Last night’s Oscar show was so stunningly awful that even though I had to be up and out of the house by 4 AM this morning, the stink of the whole program couldn’t be allowed to stand before I hit the hay. Washing it off took a double feature of “Annie Hall” and Manhattan” that lasted long after midnight but was well worth it after that embarrassing catastrophe.  To no one’s surprise, last night’s viewership was 7% below an already anemic 2010. Worst still, the youthful 18-49 year-old demographic Oscar hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway were specifically hired to lure, dropped even lower, a full 15%.

The problems with last night’s show were legion, and much of the media agrees that what we might’ve witnessed could well rate as the worst  Oscar telecast ever.  My memory isn’t good enough to say that for sure, but that the show was dreadful isn’t in dispute and while a post-mortem isn’t what this write-up is about, I will say that James Franco’s arrogant, sleepy, cooler-than-thou attitude that forced the usually delightful Anne Hathaway to over-compensate with the cute factor, was only half the problem. The other half was in the producing (and writing). This was a horribly produced three-plus hours. But rather than complain further, I’m going to offer constructive suggestions. No one cares what I think. I get that. But I’m going to offer them anyway.

1. The Host

The host is crucial, not only to the success of the overall show but also to the ratings. The cynical grab of Franco and Hathaway in an effort to attract younger voters was beyond stupid. Neither is a standalone box office draw, neither has captured America’s imagination, and both are inter-changeable as a dozen or so other actors in that same age range. I hate to tell Hollywood this, but (and the ratings back me up) young people aren’t stupid. They really don’t want to “watch people their own age” host the Oscars. Like the rest of us, they want to watch a good show. Upon hearing Franco and Hathaway were hosting this year, even the squealiest of teenagers was likely as confused  by that choice as the rest of us.

There’s two ways to go with a host.

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By now, you’ve probably heard about what Politico is billing as a potential “October surprise” – a “Rally to Restore Sanity,” planned for October 30th on the Mall in Washington and hosted by the brilliant comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

The day before Halloween? I’m sure it’ll be a solemn occasion, where people intend to reflect upon the real problems that face our nation, dressed up in costumes mocking conservative movers and shakers like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. In fact, I can just imagine the oh-so-clever people who will be dressed up like Christine O’Donnell as a witch. (Funny, isn’t it, how when a conservative admits to “dabbling” in something like witchcraft as a teenager it’s a big scandal, but progressive, leftist PC dictates that we should be sensitive to the beliefs of those who declare themselves pagans and Wiccans.)

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert – your hosts

Oh, but I’m being cynical. The Comedy Central guys don’t really “mean” anything by the whole thing. It’s just a big joke, doncha know:

“We’re not provocateurs, we’re not activists; we are reacting for our own catharsis,” Stewart tells [New York magazine's Chris] Smith. “There is a line into demagoguery, and we try very hard to express ourselves but not move into, ‘So follow me! And I will lead you to the land of answers, my people!’ You can fall in love with your own idea of common sense. Maybe the nice thing about being a comedian is never having a full belief in yourself to know the answer. So you can say all this stuff, but underneath, you’re going, ‘But of course, I’m f*cking idiotic.’ It’s why we don’t lead a lot of marches.” (emphasis mine)

Perhaps that’s why the Comedy Central overlords have asked Craig Minassian, former Clinton administration press aide who is now a consultant to Comedy Central, and Chris Wayne, a former Clinton White House event organizer who works on large-scale media events and promotions, to help them file their permit for the October 30th event. But I’m sure they won’t be helping them actually run the event… (more…)

I think Craig Ferguson is the funniest, smartest most innovative host on any of the big three networks today. To me he has clearly been the star of  Late Night talk for a number of years. What those of you with day jobs may not realize: he is also an unapologetic American. 

In the entire gaggle of Late Night Hosts, I believe that Craig is the only one who comes close to filling the big empty shoes left behind when Johnny retired. While Leno and Letterman each have some of Carson’s characteristics, Ferguson is able to capture both sides of his genius. He is warm and goofy like Leno, but he’s also cool and sophisticated like Letterman. Like Johnny, he can handle a shy guest with disarming charm; hold his own against a tough guest; then put on the buck-teeth, the big fake ears, and do an impression of Prince Charles that is both ridiculously silly, and satirically eviscerating.

Craig Ferguson’s latest book is entitled “American on Purpose.” It’ spans his career  from the beginning as an alcoholic punk rock drummer, to becoming one of Late Night’s brightest stars. There are some marvelous insights about what it’s really like growing up in Europe, from a person who has seen the side that the tour buses usually avoid.

He grew up in one of the bleak concrete housing projects that popped up all over Europe in the wake of World War II. (You’d think a continent so ravaged by central planning, would have lost their affection for it.) Craig talks about his longing to be an American from the time he was very young, and made his first trip abroad; admiring the Americans for their beautiful straight teeth. Because he isn’t here by accident of birth, he is the only network talk host who recognizes American Exceptionalism. (He is also quite visibly the only host who actually had to pass a test on the U.S .Constitution.). (more…)

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First off, David Letterman should never feel the need to remind us he’s ignorant.

And good for Donald Trump, who hits the nail on the head when he says that the Ground Zero Mosque builders would engender a tremendous amount of goodwill if they would, of their own volition, move someplace where — as Roger Ebert was good enough to remind us – the ashes of the dead don’t still lay.

Below the fold you’ll find a video of Letterman taking a shot at His One. This makes a total of two jokes (I’m aware of) Letterman’s told at the expense of chronic vacationer Barack Obama. Think about how divisive and biased Letterman is that the strange occasion of his making a joke about our sitting president is found worthy of a mention. (more…)

“Fuzzy Gun” by James Jackson

“Guns are tools.  They are no better or worse than the person holding them.” W.P. Wessel 

I have a gun.  It has never shot anyone.  Not even people I’m mad at.  It just lies there, like it’s sleeping. 

I bought it in 1986 when Richard Ramirez was on a killing spree in Los Angeles and I had a new baby.  You know, the guy who used his victim’s blood to paint pentagrams on their walls? They said he liked yellow houses.  I lived in a yellow house in Laurel Canyon.  It was hidden in the trees far away from other houses so no one would even hear us scream. 

So, I bought a gun to protect my daughter. 

Some people think owning a gun is bad. 

I sure wish I would have had a gun the night I got held up by the six foot tall man in the parking lot of the Variety Arts Center.  I was 21 years old.  All I had to protect myself was my scream.  The man was holding a gun to my head and trying to push me into a dark alley.  Fortunately, my blood curdling scream scared him away.  A friend ran out of the V.A.C. to help me and said he thought he’d heard a siren. I filed a police report and used the experience as material for my next Johnny Carson appearance.  (more…)

Conan supporters gathered outside NBC stations across the country to protest the move of the Tonight Show from 11:35 to 12:05.

If there is any real blame it should go to Conan’s attorneys who didn’t think of writing a specific time slot for the show into his contract. Yet Conan’s supporters insist that Jay Leno is at fault.

Jay is being caricatured as a cry-baby by Conan supporters. In my opinion, Conan is the one being immature, acting like a sixteen year old, who can’t believe his parents are taking the car away … after he wrecked it.

Few remember that Conan isn’t a pacifist. When his contract was up for re-negotiation back in 2003, he told NBC that he wouldn’t sign the contract until the Tonight Show seat was added to the contract. Jay never really raised a stink about being forced out, because he remembered how he got the Tonight Show in the first place. (more…)

Lilian Gish, Broken Blossoms, 1919, a genuine Hollywood star.

Americans admire excellence and authenticity.

The rise of the Hollywood movie star was built on powerful performances that projected the idea of authentic emotions. Film audiences experienced a magical connection—often, deeply intimate—with scores of charismatic actors.

Lillian Gish’s heartbreaking performance as the abused daughter in Broken Blossoms (1919) cemented the image of a sensitive and vulnerable child/woman. It did not matter that Gish was, in fact, rigid and hard-headed. The huge shadows on the silver screen settled the matter in the public’s mind. (more…)

The star of Smokey and the Bandit was, of course, Burt Reynolds, a man of great passions, great flaws, and ultimately great loyalty to the people and place he came from. “I love the South,” he emphatically states to this very day. His is a career that — sometimes for worse but more often for better — stands as a testament to that simple heartfelt sentiment.

The man who would become one of the most popular movie stars of the last quarter century was born in 1936, the son of a small-town police chief in Florida. He grew up handsome and tough, randy and reckless — by fourteen, he had lost his virginity to a much older woman, and soon after knocked up the prom queen (his attempts to cajole her into marriage were rebuffed by the girl’s society-maven mother, who forced her daughter to abort the baby). Such antics were an early harbinger of both the charismatic charm and voracious, self-destructive appetites that would define (and sometimes decimate) his later career (a typical joke — Q: Why didn’t Burt Reynolds ever take Loni Anderson out to dinner? A: He made it a rule never to date married women.) (more…)

The death of television personality Ed McMahon at the age of 86 marks the passing of a true original. McMahon was one of the very first Americans to enjoy the postmodern status of being a celebrity solely by virtue of being famous.

As announcer and second banana to host Johnny Carson during the NBC Tonight Show’s years of greatest prominence and cultural influence, McMahon exemplified what was then a relatively new phenomenon: the ability to become famous, wealthy, and admired without having any particular talent.

That’s not to say there was anything dishonorable about his career or something wrong with McMahon’s public persona. Quite the contrary. He was quite likable, pleasant, well-mannered (an underrated virtue these days), and overall a boon companion both for Carson and the audiences in the studio and at home.

However, he was liked for what he was, not what he could do. He couldn’t sing, dance, tell a joke, or even read the news. His turns as straight man to Carson’s various comical characters were most notable for their, well, charming ineptitude. (more…)

Picture it.  After passing through the Pearly Gates, Ed McMahon spots his long time friend and TV partner.  With a wide grin and outstretched arms, he greets him. “Heeere’s Johnny!” The affable, genial, self-described “Second Banana” to Johnny Carson on the “Tonight Show,” has passed away at age 86.

In a November 2007 radio interview I did on The Andrea Shea King Show with McMahon to talk about his then newly published book “When Television Was Young, Live, Spontaneous and in Living Black and White,” we talked about his life, and what it was like to share the NBC “Tonight Show” set with The King of Late Night.

McMahon was dealing with a bout of layrngitis, but it didn’t stop him from opening the interview with the famous words that announced to American viewers it was time for their eagerly anticipated nightly entertainment — “Heeere’s Johnny!” (more…)

Although I rarely find any interest in the entertainment industry, I am very glad to see Conan O’Brien become the head of the “Tonight Show.” His ascension to the throne continues a tradition that Johnny Carson brought forth and Jay Leno continued. The new host of the “Tonight Show” is a nice guy. (Steve Allen was as well, but many would consider he and Jack Paar to be less relevant since they came before Carson. I avoid this debate since, again, I am not in the industry.)

Yes, Johnny Carson preferred that David Letterman get his job (I watch Letterman, although less so lately), but the network saw Leno as the logical heir. Letterman is just too acid-tongued. It makes for some fun comedy, but the “Tonight Show” is about harmless and lighthearted fun. It made sense that Craig Kilborn, who was harder-edged than Conan, followed Letterman. Craig Ferguson, like Letterman, let’s his liberal political ideology affect his monologues. (more…)

David Letterman was just rising – earlier than you might think for a guy who’s show is on late enough for college partiers and “freelancers” to enjoy without fear of feeling tired the next day. You’d think that only if you didn’t know the show is taped earlier in the day – and what was taped this week certainly stirred the pot.

“You think maybe you would have edited that, David?” Mr. Carson asked, standing in the lavish bathroom.

“I mean your producer had the time. They could have cut it, right?”

Carson looked very young. Circa ‘66 young.

Letterman was incredulous.  “Johnny… what the heck are you doing here, how can this be possible?” the aging late night host queried. (more…)

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To be amazed at how low David Letterman will stoop in order to humiliate Sarah Palin means we still think of him as an entertainer, instead of what he is: a leftist ideologue willing to do whatever it takes to destroy a perceived threat to the Democrat majority. Letterman’s nothing special or unique. He’s merely joined the whole of the entertainment industry in sacrificing his place as an entertainer and legacy as an artist to wage ideological war.

Maybe our first step in fighting back is to wake up to this fact and stop being amazed. (more…)

Conan O’Brien played it safe in his debut as host of NBC’s Tonight Show last night. That’s a good choice, actually. The big question is: Will it last?

As I noted in an article reporting on NBC’s choice of personable Saturday Night Live alum Jimmy Fallon to host its Late Show as O’Brien moved to the Tonight Show, Fallon was closer to the style that had worked so well for the latter program in the past: intelligent, likable, and not too challenging or edgy.

O’Brien, I noted, was much less winsome and much more ambitious in his comedy, and for the Tonight Show to have success, either he or the audience would have to change, with the latter being highly unlikely except through serious shrinkage. And of course that would be a disaster for the Peacock Network.

Fallon has done well at Late Night since taking the reins on March 3, in both entertainment value and audience ratings. Late Night appears to be in very capable hands, and although it’s simply a timewaster, that’s all it is intended to be, while delivering consistent audience numbers for NBC’s advertisers. (more…)

Kids, you might not believe me, but there was once a point when Dave Letterman was considered funny.

You know what really destroyed Letterman for me? For years Letterman coasted on the same gag — “Look at how much precious network time I’m wasting with comedy bits intended to go nowhere and provide zero entertainment to the audience.”

Now, the thing of it was, we, the loyal Letterman audience, thought we were in on the joke. We laughed along with Dave as he wasted our time, because we were digging that he was also wasting the network’s time. All those “found comedy” moments that yielded nothing but awkward silence and stilted interaction with deli owners. (more…)

The Great Buck Howard is a funny, knowing gift for anyone who loves old-fashioned show business: It celebrates the entertainer who is in it for the fun of putting on a good show, and for bringing a little pleasure to anyone who cares enough to come out and watch. 

Buck Howard the man is an old-fashioned show-business type: He is a mentalist—a magician who does mind-reading tricks. But he is preternaturally good at what he does (in contrast to his complete lack of self-awareness), and he was once a pop-culture fixture, a regular on The Tonight Show. (“The real one—with Johnny Carson,” he constantly reminds—this will have its intended melancholy effect only on those over 40 or so.) Now he plays half-empty halls in third-tier markets. Not that this tempers his enthusiasm, or that of his fans. Which is exactly the point. (more…)

Good news for the Motion Picture Academy. Despite the fact that the five Best Picture nominees had combined to gross less than $300M domestic by showtime, Oscar ratings were up considerably from last year’s all-time low. Early numbers show that the ABC telecast scored a 27 share, surging by 11% overall and by over 14% with TV’s “money demo” 18-49s. Compare that to last year when the show was down 25% in households from 2007 and down 30% among 18-49s.

The credit should go to producers Lawrence Mark and Bill Condon, although I can see why the streamlined show is a bit of a Rorschach test for viewers. If you love movies, and especially actors, last night’s show was respectful and enlightening. If you are inclined to dislike awards shows and actors, then the telecast would be pretty dreary.

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