David Letterman talks with Billie Eilish [Media Notes 163]

Watch the whole thing. See how Billie and and brother work in the studio. Listen to her talk about her career and about performing. She talks about her tic too. Who'd've thought? It's on Netflix and it's wonderful.

Seinfeld and Letterman discuss "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee"

This is an hour-long discussion between David Latterman and Jerry Seinfeld about Seinfeld's web show "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee". It took place on June 9, 2014 in New York City at the Paley Center for Media. Among other things we learn:

• the conversation is unscripted
• they get roughly 3.5 hours of footage for each episode
• it takes roughly two weeks to edit them down to the 8 to 20 minutes that air
• Seinfeld himself is in the editing suite the whole time
• Each episode costs c. $100K
• The guests are paid
• it started as an "experiment" – Seinfeld had no idea whether or not it would work

It's an interesting conversation. Who knows, maybe I'll transcribe bits of it one of these days. There's some raw footage and what it gets edited into, which makes it clear that editing is all. Well, not quite all, but it's crucial to turning raw stuff, which would be mostly boring, into a watchable show.

At one point, near the end I believe, Letterman remarks that there are guys in comedy who are much funnier in informal private conversation than they are in their act. This leads Seinfeld to observe that there's a world of difference between being funny and a comedy act. An act is a well-tuned machine and "being funny" is the fuel it runs on – Seinfeld's analogy.

There's also some discussion of the difference between this format and the traditional talk show, that is live and before an audience. Seinfeld argues that "get" things out of a guest that wouldn't happen in a regular talk show. In a regular talk show, with the audience, the comedian would also go for a laugh and that limits what they say.

I could go on.

More Obama/Seinfeld & Grace, w/ a Michael Richards Coda

I can’t stop thinking about that coffee conversation between Obama and Seinfeld.

But let me come at it sideways. Somewhere on YouTube there’s an interview with David Letterman where he talks about doing a talk show. He talks about his admiration for various talk show hosts, Johnny Carson of course, but also Regis Philbin (I agree with him on both), and about the craft of it. YOU are the host; it’s your job to keep the conversation going.

Some guests understand that, yes, this is entertainment; it’s an act that merely appears to be spontaneous conversation. The conversation, if it goes well, IS spontaneous. It is also IS an act and the good guest works it like that. The bad guest just sits there, the proverbial lump on a log, and the host has to pull teeth to get something going.

Well, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” is a talk show. It doesn’t look like the standard talk show. There’s no live audience and the host isn’t behind a desk. But make no mistake, Seinfeld is the host. It’s his job to keep things going.

THAT’s what’s behind his remark to Obama (see the transcription in yesterday’s post), “Come on, you do some work”, with a pitch and slight volume raise on you. He says that in response to Obama’s, “Why is that do you think? Let let let me ask you.” Obama was thus asking for the lead role and Seinfeld granted it to him.

And what happens? A couple of seconds later we get this:

BO: But, I’m gonna’ probe this. The question is, how did you calibrate dealing with that [wealth and fame]? At a certain point you might have thought to yourself “You know what, I’m more than just a comedian...

JS: Nah.

BO: I’m gonna make a Jewish version of Citizen Kane.” You know. How did you keep perspective?

JS: I’ll give you the real answer. It’s gotta be similar to your life. I fell in love with the work.

BO: Um huh.

JS: And the work was joyful. And interesting, and that was my focus.

BO: So, now that you’re like a quasi-retired man of leisure...

JS: I work a lot.

BO: Do you?

JS: Yeah.

BO: Are you still doing stand-up?

JS: Are you still making speeches?

And what’s with that word calibrate? That keeps popping up in my mind. It comes from a whole different universe than the rest of the conversation, a very technical universe. And what’s Seinfeld’s answer, what’s his method of calibration? He loves his work. Love and calibration.

But why with Obama? Perhaps because all Seinfeld’s other guests – talk show, remember? – are in show business, but not Obama. Seinfeld could assume a certain common ground with them and so didn’t have to express it. With Obama that assumption fails, so they had to work toward it. Or maybe it’s that, while Obama’s not rich (something Seinfeld did remind him of), he’s got a whole different order of recognition and power from Seinfeld. So again, they had to work at common ground.

And were willing to do so.

Is that it? Don’t really know. I just made it up.

* * * * *

But I’ve watched a few more episodes of the show. And I think maybe the Michael Richards episode is as good as the Obama, though the dynamic is very different. Seinfeld knows Richards quite well, at least professionally, as they’d worked together on Seinfeld for nine seasons. Thus they have quite a lot in common.

As you may recall, Richards imploded on stage back in 2006:

Confronting black hecklers, Richards bellowed the word “nigger” seven times, an outpouring caught on camera. In the controversy that followed, it was hard not to see the rant as a moment of unfiltered ugliness, but Seinfeld says this interpretation reflects a category error. Speech on a stage, delivered in a performative context, is unique, he argues, and bits — even those that come off the cuff — are different from straight confessions. “It was a colossal comedic error,” Seinfeld said. “He was angry, and it was the wrong choice, but it was a comedic attempt that failed. In our culture, we don’t allow that, especially in the racial realm. But as a comedian, I know what happened, he knows what happened and every other comedian knows what happened. And all the black comics know it, and a lot of them felt bad about it, because they know it’s rough to be judged that way in that context. You’re leaping off a cliff and trying to land on the other side. It was just another missed leap.”

Without directly mentioning the incident, they talked about it, and its effect on Richards. It devastated him: “I busted up after that even. It broke me down.” They had a good, perhaps even a healing, conversation about that.

However you think of that, Seinfeld couldn’t possibly have that intimate kind of conversation with Barak Obama. The shared context isn’t there. But note that Seinfeld and Richards could have that kind of intimate conversation over coffee while the cameras were rolling.

* * * * *

What Letterman Thinks about the Mind

As we all know, David Letterman is retiring from the "Late Show" after, well, not forever, but a long time. He gave a long interview to the good folks at The New York Times and they then boiled it down to 11 highlights. I've picked two of them.

On his heart surgery in 2000:

I was concerned that I’ll never be able to run again — that was my big concern. Because I had so relied on running, all my life, to get myself clearheaded. And of course, I was worried that somebody would go on while I was off with my heart surgery, and be good enough that they didn’t want me back. As I’m trying to recover from quintuple bypass surgery, I’m paranoid that my life is ending. And then, six weeks after the surgery, I ran for five miles. So let’s face it, I am a hero. There’s no two ways of looking at it.

The general issue is, of course, we all need ways of keeping in balance. But just what IS that about? What're we trying to balance with what? What is it about brain and body that's getting balanced, what chemicals and connections?

On what he’ll do after his final show:

I will be completely in the hands of my family. I will be going, later in the month, to the Indianapolis 500. And then beyond that, for the first time since Harry’s been alive, our summer schedule will not be dictated by me. It will be entirely dictated by what my son wants to do. And I think that’s pretty good. After you take a good, solid punch to the head, you’re just a little wobbly. I think in that state it would be good to have others making my decisions. That’s how he’s describing his retirement. A good solid punch to the head.

This is about balance as well, but from a different angle. For the last two decades this TV show has dominated his life; it's been one of the things he's been balancing against/with his running. And now it's gone. Whoosh! There's a big hole. How do you fill it?

I remember how, back in my university days, the Spring semester would come to an end and I wasn't teaching anymore. Teaching no longer took up a big chunk of my tine and mind-space. I spent the summer doing research. And it would take me a good two or three weeks to transition to an efficient and focused research mindset. I figured my brain was reorganizing itself around my new regime (I've got some more remarks along these lines at the end of "The Evolution of Narrative and the Self").