I've been meaning to do more posts on late-night talk shows in general and, in particular, Craig Ferguson ever since Colbert and Kimmel brought the genre back into the news.
If you are a fan of Anthony Head's work or are simply curious about the man, this is a charming piece of video. Head and Ferguson co-starred in the London revival of The Rocky Horror Show in the early '90s and are clearly having a great time catching up.
Though he was always a strong interviewer (scroll down for examples), like Dick Cavett, Ferguson
was at his best when he had some kind of relationship with his guests,
such as having dropped acid together 20-plus years earlier.
Or an even closer relationship than that...
What
we now think of as late-night talk was basically created by three
hosts: Steve Allen, the erratic Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson, with
considerable input from various producers and writers such as Fred de
Cordova. By the mid-'70s, the template was set.
Despite the
enormous audience that these shows pulled in over the decades, the
demand for syndication and repeats has proven vanishingly small.
Arguably no other comparably popular form of programming ages so badly
as conventional talk shows.
I've gone back and tried to watch
some, but it's next to impossible. A few Steve Allen segments are
interesting because Allen was interesting. Selected bits of Jack Paar
are worth checking out either because the guest was interesting in
retrospect (Richard Nixon obviously jumps to mind) or because Paar
himself was so obviously close to one of his notorious mental
breakdowns. For me, at least, Carson, despite being the undisputed king,
has aged the worst.
The trouble with the format is that, between
the desire to keep things under control and the focus on promoting
either an actor's brand or their latest project, with the notable exception
of Cavett,there was almost no
room for genuine, spontaneous conversations. It turns out that it's the unexpected, the spontaneous, and
the real that has the greatest staying power.
The Late Late Show
with Craig Ferguson was always a bit subversive, but it still started
out as a fairly conventional late-night talk show. It was only after two
or three years that Ferguson started openly and gleefully
deconstructing the format, symbolized by him tearing up the note cards
at the beginning of every interview and giving guests the option of ending the segment with an awkward pause.
The result was an increasingly chaotic and improvisational show, particularly when something went wrong, such as a power outage...
Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson 11/9/2012 Eric Idle, Emily VanCamp
A leaky roof...
Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson 2/5/2009 Garry Shandling, Ed Alonzo
[It's
worth noting that Shandling (no neophyte when it came
to talk shows) commented that, if he were producing the show, he would
cancel all the guests and just let Ferguson riff on the conditions in
the studio for the rest of the show.]
Or a missing guest.
As a
footnote to this episode, here is Ferguson years later interviewing
that producer on his podcast. One point that comes up in the follow-up
is that Ferguson would have killed the original segment had the producer
been uncomfortable or had it come off as excessively mean.
Lisa Ammerman (Late Late Show with Senior Producer) | Joy with Craig Ferguson
Ferguson
addressed the meanness innate in the culture of talk shows in one of
his most famous monologues following the highly publicized breakdown of
Britney Spears, where he talked about his own addictions and their toll, including the
Christmas morning when he fully intended to commit suicide. It is an
extraordinary piece of television.
Ferguson didn't take himself
or the medium seriously, but he did take his job seriously, something
that came through in probably his most famous interview.
Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson 3/4/2009 Archbishop Desmond Tutu
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