#my mom came to me and said 'do you know who stephen colbert is' and i was like 'yes obviously' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 5 months

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Well here's a fucking Chortle headline for the roundup:

Holy fuck. I cannot believe that. Never for a moment did it cross my mind that this might happen. It's been nearly ten years since he left, and this never once seemed like a possibility.

I remember exactly when he left. I know it was announced in February 2015, because I was sitting in my bedroom in the city where I lived in 2015, where I'd moved to join their bigger and more impressive sports team and ended up just being miserable and lonely for two years because I did not have any of the skills required to fit in there. Anyway, it's fine, not the point of this post. The point is I know it was 2015 and I know it was February because I vividly remember sitting in that bedroom and scrolling on Facebook, and seeing a mock Valentine's Day card that said "May Jon Stewart be the only man to break your heart this week." And that's how I found out he'd announced he was leaving The Daily Show.

I know when he actually left, too. It was August 2015. Because Donald Trump walked down that fucking escalator in June 2015, and announced he'd be running for president. I remember watching The Daily Show that night, and Jon Stewart, incredibly pleased at the comedy gold mine that was about to befall all political comedians, looked into the camera and said to Donald Trump: "Thank you for making my last six weeks the best six weeks." Then he stayed on for six more weeks and made Trump jokes every night, then he left, and the world immediately ended. Looking back with a bit of perspective, Jon Stewart really did happen leave the show right as the Western world was on a precipice of having the norms as we thought we knew them all crumble at once. I'm thinking of that timeline that says 2000-2015=nostalgia, 2016-2019=2016, 2020-present=plague. Those are pretty much my life's eras. And Jon Stewart was there for a hell of a lot of that first one. (Not actually the first era of my life, there is also 90s=childhood, but I'm pretty sure everything was fine then, right?)

It's a bit weird to me now to see Jon Stewart as having an individual career, if that makes any sense at all. If you'd asked me in 2009 who my favourite comedians were, it wouldn't have occurred to me to say Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, even though I watched them both every night and loved those shows. I hardly even though of those as things that people had to make by being comedians and writers. They were just fixtures. Part of the landscape. I was so confused when he left the show, I didn't think it could exist without him. It didn't really feel like television could exist without Jon Stewart coming on at the end of the night. I remember learning some time ago about Marc Maron's feud with Jon Stewart over their days on the comedy circuit, and that was so weird. Jon Stewart didn't have days on the comedy circuit. He didn't have a career you could object to or admire, or opinions you could agree with or disagree with. He was just a fixture in the landscape.

I remember the first time I saw Jon Stewart. I think it was probably 2006, maybe 2005. I was really into Rick Mercer, this Canadian comedian who did TV shows where he made fun of the news. My mother put on a TV show, pointed to the guy behind the desk, and said, "That's Jon Stewart, he's like an American Rick Mercer." It only occurred to me relatively recently how funny it is to call Jon Stewart "an American Rick Mercer". But anyway, I watched that episode with my mom and then I kept doing that every night for many years.

I remember watching his final Daily Show episode with my mother, in August 2015. Bruce Springsteen came on live and played him out. My mother and I both got fairly emotional.

I kept watching The Daily Show for a long time after Jon Stewart left. I even followed a lot of the similar spinoff shows by its correspondents. I watched Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, and Larry Wilmore's The Nightly Show, and Hasan Minhaj's Patriot Act, and Michelle Wolf's The Break. Obviously, I followed John Oliver to Last Week Tonight (and would also if necessary follow him to the ends of the Earth, but that's beside the point).

I quite like Trevor Noah too; when he took over the show I read his autobiography and watched his stand-up specials and the documentary about him. I even saw him live in 2019. So I wasn't one of those people saying the show could never recover from Jon Stewart leaving. I watched a lot of the Trevor Noah years, and only dropped off from following it so closely fairly recently. It was around 2022, I think, when I just stopped keeping up with it. I had so much Britcom going on, and the world was so fucking depressing, getting all my news from actual news sites (as everyone should always always do, do not get your news from comedians, use political comedy as a way to lighten the mood of the regular news that you should first get from actual journalists, for the love of God please do not let the industry of actual journalism be steamrolled by entertainment) was stressful enough and I didn't want to keep having this other way of going over it.

So, those are a few disjointed memories that came into my mind when I saw that story this week. Here's another memory: I remember reading an interview with Jon Stewart from just after he left The Daily Show, in which he was asked if he would ever watch Fox News again. He replied that if he were ever in some post-apocalyptic scenario where Fox News was the only way to find out where to find vital life-saving information, he still wouldn't watch it. Because doing that job that required him to watch so much Fox News had destroyed him mentally and he could not wait to never ever ever ever ever do it again.

I was one of those people, after he left, saying, "I get it, it's high-pressure and difficult, I see why he wants to move on and have a break. But I would pay to have Jon Stewart just broadcast once a month in his sweatpants from his living room couch. He can't just be gone. He needs to keep telling us about the news, what will we do without him?"

We did do without him for nine years, and the world we thought we knew has crumbled around us in about twenty-five different ways since then, and I have absolutely no idea how the fuck Jon Stewart could fit into the landscape as it exists today. Like. I don't know what to do with this information. It wasn't on my radar. It's like finding out they're rebooting Buffy with the entire original cast and writing crew. Or if the girl I had a crush on from the ages of 9 to 14 showed up and told me she was in love with me. Of course it's what I wanted, but... what? Really? Why? Why now? Do I even still want this? You mean everything pre-2016 wasn't just a dream and we still technically exist in the same world as that one and the things in it are still out there and could just come back?

...There are people like @lastweeksshirttonight who actually know things about the US late-night comedy show scene, who have always understood that Jon Stewart is a person with a backstory who entered and then left an industry that also had a backstory and those things affected each other and this will have a significant effect on the ecosystem. Those people will have intelligent takes on what's happening right now. But I do not. Jon Stewart was on TV when I was in high school. He can't be on TV now because I am no longer in high school (even though I was 24 when he left in 2015). What the fuck?

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saleintothe90s · 5 years

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381. It Came From the Daily Show: one episode from August 1999, and one from September 1999

(June and July here)

August 26, 1999

I have a treat for the episode for August -- I uploaded my vhs copy of it!

By August, Jon is still walking to his desk at the beginning of the show -- I still can’t remember when he stopped doing this. Jon has to get through the show quickly tonight, it’s their back to school episode, and he has to go out and buy notebooks, binders, and toughskins. Sometimes he chafes! Ya’ll are like what on earth are toughskins? Toughskins were these ugly pants for kids that Sears used to sell in their catalog back in the day. They were supposed to be more durable, but I can’t imagine they were very flexible. Here’s a commercial.

Headlines - Pilot to Coke-Pilot : American Airlines employees caught smuggling cocaine. There may of been an incident of cocaine leaking out onto the food in a food cart...”resulting in an entire coach section running up and down the aisles with sandwiches held aloft screaming, ‘WOO-HOO! HAM AND CHEESE! YEAH!’.”

American Airlines had to change their slogan:

Clinton Vacation Diaries: Day 5 - Bill is on vacation golfing at Martha’s Vineyard. People were watching him and began singing “God Bless America”, which is creepy.

Tough Glove - Little League World Series heats up. Kids from all over the world come to a little town in PA to learn new ways to call their teammates homophobic slurs. Hey, Jon said it, I didn’t. Winners will either be sent to their rooms ... or their looms depending on where they are from. This is one of the crueler segments that I’ve covered from this series, and something Jon and crew got away from come late ‘99 and into 2000.

Correspondent Piece - Stilt Stalkings: Stephen Colbert interviews Uncle Sam who says that his ex wife is stalking him. “I want you to leave me alone!” he says.

Stephen: Did you ever go through his garbage?

Ex-wife: no....

Stephen: Good, because he peed all over it.

After commercials, Jon asks, “...is it a bad sign if someone in the audience says to me, ‘GET IN MAH BELLY!’?”

Other News - Going Going, Gun : “Los Angeles bans gun sales at gun shows. Gun Lobbyists say, ‘gun shows don’t kill people, people shows kill people.’”

Interview - Nia Long: I usually skip the interview in these entries, due to time constraints, but this one is special. Nia teaches Jon what a ho bag is. Nia lost her luggage three times on this promotional tour. However, she says that he mother always told her “no matter where you go, always carry your ho-bag”.

Nia: you know, your toothbrush, your condoms, a clean pair of underwear, your protein drink...

Jon: My apartment is a ho-bag!

Jon was just reading Family Circus.

This Just In - Nice Cans: Campbells introduces a new soup label. Because that was news in 1999. I love this stupid thing so much, Jon and Crew makes something as trivial as soup funny. This was the Daily Show I loved for years that sadly went away.

“Many say collectors will be rushing out to stores to buy the old cans, and place them on a trophy shelf alongside the bittersweet dream that was Crystal Pepsi.”

“The new label also features a photo of soup in a bowl, which will come as a revelation to the millions of consumers who up until new always ate their soup of out a hat!”

I actually remember those new labels, haha. The Campbells can had stayed the same all my life until then. So when that changes, you notice it.

Out at the Movies - Summer, 1999 wrap up: Jon says in the introduction that Frank will tell us why the Summer of 1999 movies went so “horribly, horribly wrong” -- but I’ve read articles where people declare 1999 as one of the best years for movies. Maybe 20 years ago, people were focused on the disappointment of The Phantom Menace, and Eyes Wide Shut? I mean, in the How Did this Get Made podcast episode about Lawnmower Man, Jason Mantzoukas even says that he CRIED when he saw how bad Phantom Menace was.

[from my hometown newspaper, Daily Press]

September 30, 1999 -- I uploaded this one from my old tapes too.

Here we are, bby. This is one of my all time favorite episodes. Jon learns all about Garth Brooks’ alter ego, Chris Gaines. Oh boy, Chris Gaines. Garth Brooks like, wanted to be a rock n roll star, and star in a movie or something so he created this character named Chris Gaines? Garth even went to make believe land, and gave him a whole backstory. I remember one was his mom or his dad coached swimming in Australia? There was even a faux Behind the Music on VH1 about Chris and how his bandmates died?! It was seriously one of the dumbest things from 1999. By the way, The Lamb never became a movie.

Headlines - Alter Egomaniac: Garth puts on a TV concert of his alter ego, but he performs on stage as Garth? Will he ask himself for an autograph of Chris Gaines?

I found the entire interview that played in between songs for the special, including the music video for Chris’ first band Crush (because that’s an original name for a band). Garth is totally lost in Chris Gaines when he’s explaining the faux musical video. You have to watch it. The bizarre “did you know?” about Chris’ fictional life are also in the clip. Was this music video made for the movie that never got off the ground? So many unanswered questions.

Jon says we can’t care about this stuff because CHRIS DOESN’T EXIST.

Media Responsibility - The correspondents are here to criticize the media. Yada Yada, this is all Chyron jokes:

It also includes a clip of a guy in a bullfight where his pants were removed by the bull. Classic Daily Show clip.

Stephen Colbert has to go freak on some bones? I wanna know where that shower was. Is it the one in Jon’s dressing room? Did they got to a co-workers apartment just for that shower scene?

Ooh! This episode has its commercials intact! There’s gonna be an SNL marathon Friday night in honor of Superstar. Also, a Phantom Menace Playstation game came out about four months too late.

Other News - Web of Receipts: amazon.com becomes an internet flea market with the launch of z shops. They’re gonna offer more than just books n cds. e.

(the interview is missing from my clip)

Out at the Movies with Frank DeCaro: For the Love of the Game - My boy Frank didn’t like it. Kelly Preston looks like Lisa Loeb, Kevin Costner has a bunch of crow’s feet.

“Isn’t this a long way to go just for a full head of hair?”

For more entries similar to this, check out my Daily Show favorites from 1999-2001 zine over at my etsy shop.

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angelofberlin2000 · 5 years

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by Natalie Finn | Fri., May. 17, 2019 3:00 AM

When Keanu Reeves was asked the other night, "What do you think happens when we die?" interviewer Stephen Colbert probably wasn't expecting such a deep—or assured—answer from the movie star.

"I know that the ones that love us will miss us," the 54-year-old actor said sagely, rendering the Late Show host unusually speechless.

It was a sincere, thoughtful response—vintage Reeves, really—from someone who's had reason to think about such things.

"I haven't really thought about my career future, or what was going to happen, until really recently," he also told GQ in February. Asked why he started thinking about it, he replied, "Death!"

Watch https://www.eonline.com/videos/289305/how-keanu-reeves-training-for-john-wick-3-compares-to-the-matrix

How Keanu Reeves' Training for John Wick 3 Compares to The Matrix

The still eerily youthful-looking Reeves, who's back in theaters Friday in the third installment of the blockbuster John Wick franchise, has become a brand unto himself, the name "Keanu" signifying not just movie stardom but also a certain kind of performance and even a state of mind: chill, zen, blissfully checked out ("Sad Keanu" meme notwithstanding). His name—which has lent itself to a comedy about a cat and a recent hit song by Logic, and which of course a studio exec wanted him to change when he first came to Hollywood—does mean "cool breeze over the mountains" in Hawaiian, after all.

But still waters run deep, and despite being in the public eye for more than 30 years, he's one of the least-known people whose chiseled face you would recognize anywhere. Few play it as close to the vest as Reeves, who, though he does the occasional interview and shows up to fulfill his side of the bargain in promoting his films, does not talk about his personal life. And not in the way that most celebrities don't really talk about their personal lives.

As in, it's entirely unclear if he even has one, although—look at him—he must.

"I came to Hollywood to be in movies," Reeves told Parade recently. "I feel really grateful that I've had that opportunity, but I'm just a private person, and it's nice that can still exist."

He doesn't even publicize his charity work, but his causes include children's hospitals, fighting cancer, the arts and the environment.

"I always find it surreal that complete strangers come up and ask me personal questions," he told Parade back in 2008. "I don't mind speaking about work, but when the talk turns to 'Who are you?' and 'What do you do off-screen?' I'm like, 'Get out of here.' I've been in situations where people have felt they had a relationship with me or something and I didn't even know who they were."

Not that Reeves is an anti-star. He lives in the hills above West Hollywood, spent plenty of time enjoying the local nightlife in his youth and has starred in countless quotable action movies—and gets paid handsomely for them, enough so that he can take off and do passion projects like his first (and only, to date) directorial effort, 2013's The Man of Tai Chi, or show up unheralded on a Swedish sitcom (Swedish Dicks, now on Pop) or in any indie film he so desires, like the recent Destination Wedding, an acerbic comedy that reteamed him with Bram Stoker's Dracula co-star Winona Ryder.

He's perfectly congenial yet usually looks somewhat serious, but not because he's taking himself seriously—more as if he wants to answer even the most lighthearted of questions with respectful gravity. But hey, as Stephen Colbert just found out, if you ask Reeves a potentially loaded question, prepare to get an answer.

Asked by Parade in 2008 if he believed in aliens, because he was playing the alien Klaatu in a remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, he replied, "Some days I do. Some days I don't. There's so much unexplained and unexplainable phenomena that's presented to us. But beyond that, the cosmos is so vast. We can't be the only sentient entity. It might not look like us, but it's going to be out there."

His signature Keanu cadence used to be mistaken for a sign of vacuity, but Reeves attributed however he came off in interviews to his overall discomfort with talking about himself.

"I've never played stupid to keep someone distant," he told Vanity Fair in 1995. "I don't play stupid. Either it's been a failure on my part to articulate, or my naivete, or ingenuousness, or sometimes it's the nature of the form... And you know, I find myself more able to give an explanation of a project five years later than in the middle of it. It's so present-tense! I can tell you how I feel, but its context is harder to explain... Sometimes when I'm interviewed I'm not ready to do that. So you say...'excellent!' And you know what, man? It's OK."

It certainly was.

Ted Theodore Logan, Johnny Utah, Jack Travern, Neo, John Wick: all characters that had to be played by Reeves. He's done everything from Shakespeare to sports flicks to A Scanner Darkly, and soon you'll be hearing his voice as Duke Caboom, a motorcycle-riding stuntman with a wistful backstory, in Toy Story 4, which will probably sneak in to top The Matrix Reloaded, which made $742 million worldwide, as his single highest-grossing movie.

"So I made Duke a little more gravelly but still tried to give him energy and a big personality," Reeves shared with Entertainment Weekly in March. "I just thought that Duke should love what he does. He's the greatest stuntman in Canada! I wanted him to be constantly doing poses on the bike while he was talking, to have this great extroverted passion."

He turned down Speed 2 to play Hamlet onstage in Canada. He was one of the first big stars who memorably jammed on the side with his own band, Dogstar, in the '90s and now he co-owns a custom bike shop called ARCH Motorcycle in Hawthorne, Calif, because he loves motorcycles as much as you think he does.

"Riding can be a place to think and feel. It's a way to work things out," he recently told Parade, noting that inclement weather doesn't stop him. "I like riding in the rain. It's a little more sketchy." He rides mainly alone, but he and the ARCH crew cruise Pacific Coast Highway on Sunday mornings.

And if motorcycles provide one soul-soothing salve for Reeves, acting provides another.

"In acting, you're constantly discovering new feelings and thoughts and exposing yourself to them," he told Parade in 2008. "I guess it could be considered psycho-therapy. All I know is that, as an actor, I can tell you a story that you'll listen to. Maybe it won't just entertain you, it might also teach you something. I think film has the power to change your life if you want to let it.

Combine his real-life inscrutability with his is-it-genius-or-does-he-just-do-the-same-thing-every-time approach to acting, and he's become more myth than man—and that, too, is a huge part of his appeal. He's just so Keanu.

"I don't own a computer and I don't e-mail," he said in the 2008

Parade

interview. "I'm fascinated by people who freak out when they don't get an instant response to an e-mail. It's like they expect as soon as they send an email to get the answer back and if they don't it's like awful. I just hope people won't totally lose the ability to write letters because it's a good way to communicate."

He preferred typewriters, Reeves said—and we can only hope he and Toy Story star Tom Hanks had a chance to talk about typewriters together.

"I only have good things to say about him," Swedish Dicks star Peter Stormare, who met Reeves doing Constantine in 2005, which led to the actor's role on his show, told GQ. "Once a year, we'll have a beer together and talk about life and things. He's very private. He leads his life the way he wants to lead it. And I guess it can be lonely sometimes. But I think he's just like me. There's a comfort in being alone sometimes, especially when you're working on something."

"We bonded over motorcycles, bass guitar, and Harold Pinter," Alex Winter, the Bill to his Ted, also told the magazine. "Reeves had a really good book collection."

Reeves was born in Beirut, to a Hawaiian father and English mother, but they divorced when he was about 2. Mom Patricia remarried in the US., but after that didn't work out she settled with a 7-year-old Keanu and his younger sister, Kim, who was born in Australia, in Toronto. Reeves reportedly hasn't spoken to his dad since he was 13.

"We were latchkey kids," he told Esquire in 2017. "It was basically 'leave the house in the morning and come back at night'. It was cool." But, he told Parade, "Even for a runaway English girl, my mother gave us a proper upbringing. We learned manners, respect for our elders, formal table settings. I also learned a nonprejudicial, nonjudgmental acceptance of other people."

His favorite part of school was doing plays and studying Shakespeare in English class, so he dropped out at 17 to try his hand at acting.

"My attendance record was very bad. I was lazy," Reeves told Vanity Fair. "I knew I wanted to act when I was halfway through grade 11, I guess, and school wasn't important."

His first acting job came on the Canadian series Hangin' In in 1984. Then he moved to Los Angeles and made his big-screen debut in the Rob Lowe-starring drama Youngblood in 1986. Later that year he won his first major role in the gritty teen crime drama River's Edge, which went on to win Best Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards.

So it was off to the races for Reeves, who in the next five years made a wildly diverse array of movies, including the very-'80s comedy The Night Before, Dangerous Liaisons, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (and its sequel, Bogus Journey), Parenthood, Point Break and My Own Private Idaho.

He was very much living the fast Hollywood life, and it wasn't all charmed.

In 1993, River Phoenix died of an accidental drug overdose—another painful thing Reeves didn't want to talk about, but he spoke fondly of his friend and My Own Private Idaho co-star.

"I enjoyed his company. Very much," Reeves told Rolling Stone in 2000. "And enjoyed his mind and his spirit and his soul. We brought good out in each other. He was a real original thinker. He was not the status quo. In anything."

As for Phoenix's death, "It's something he thinks about all the time, something he never really talks about," a friend told People. "Friends know not to go there with him."

In 1994 his estranged father, Samuel, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for drug possession in Hawaii, but was released in two. "Jesus, man. No, the story with me and my dad's pretty heavy. It's full of pain and woe and fucking loss and all that s--t," he told RS around that time. In 1995, he told Vanity Fair, when asked why he didn't want to know more about his dad's case, "Why would I want to find out what I didn't know?" He called the situation "pretty incredible," and that was that.

Reeves has a massive scar on his abdomen from when he suffered a rupture spleen in a motorcycle crash while riding in L.A.'s Topanga Canyon in 1988. He went into a hairpin turn going about 50 mph.

"I call that a demon ride," he reflected to Rolling Stone. "That's when things are going badly. But there's other times when you go fast, or too fast, out of exhilaration...I remember saying in my head, 'I'm going to die.'"

"I remember calling out for help," he continued. "And someone answering out of the darkness, and then the flashing lights of an ambulance coming down. This was after a truck ran over my helmet. I took it off because I couldn't breathe, and a truck came down. I got out of the way, and it ran over my helmet."

Also while his star was on the rise, his sister Kim battled cancer for years starting in the late '80s. "He helped me through," she told Vanity Fair about her brother. "When the pain got bad, he used to hold my hand and keep the bad man from making me dance. He was there all the time, even when he was away."

Actor and Dogstar bandmate Roger Mailhouse told Rolling Stone about Reeves in 2000, "He's a really giving person. He'd give you his last shoe. Really smart, too. He's incredibly booksmart. He's a really interesting person who doesn't talk a lot of s--t."

Asked how his friend had changed over the past decade, i.e. the '90s, Mailhouse said, "I don't worry about him as much. I used to worry about him. Because I think of him as one of my best friends in the world, was he going to crash his motorcycle, or this or that. We did some wild things. I guess it's just growing up. I don't know—maybe it had something to do with River Phoenix, maybe. Losing someone close to him. But now I'm just proud of him. He's getting to do it the right way."

For years you'd be much more likely to see Kim or Patricia on Reeves' arm at a premiere or other big event—such as when he got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005—than any girlfriend, and the actor hasn't been publicly involved with anyone for years.

Not that he hasn't been linked to a bevy of his co-stars, including Sandra Bullock and Charlize Theron, but if he's in a serious relationship, it's not with a celebrity.

On The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2013 he was wearing what anyone would take for a wedding band on his left ring finger, but no revelations ever sprang from that accessory choice.

When Parade asked recently if he remained a bachelor, Reeves replied (squirming a bit, according to the magazine), "Well, I'm not married."

Through the interviews he's given over the years, a theme running through them is the visible discomfort he starts to evince when the conversation veers toward the too-personal. And some topics are just off-limits altogether.

Reeves started dating actress Jennifer Syme after meeting her at a party in 1998 and they were expecting a baby together—but the child, a girl they named Ava, was stillborn at 8 months. They laid her to rest in January 2000, according to People, and broke up weeks later.

Read

Sandra Bullock Almost Starred in The Matrix Instead of Keanu Reeves

They remained close up until Syme, who suffered from severe postpartum depression, died in 2001 when she crashed her Jeep Cherokee into several parked cars on a L.A. street and was thrown from the vehicle. In 2002, her mother, Maria St. John, sued Marilyn Manson, who had thrown a party that Syme attended that night, for wrongful death, alleging he had given Syme the cocaine that an autopsy found in her system.

"After Jennifer was sent home safely with a designated driver, she later got behind the wheel of her own car for reasons known only to her," Manson, who knew Syme through filmmaker David Lynch and had worked with her on Lost Highway, said in a statement.

The rocker continued, "This lawsuit, which is completely without merit, will not bring back Jennifer's life. It serves only to reopen the wounds and the pain felt by all who loved Jennifer. It is a pity that St. John sullies her own daughter's reputation by filing this baseless claim."

They reportedly reached a settlement out of court, but Manson maintained he had nothing to do with Syme taking drugs that night.

Reeves has never spoken publicly about his relationship with Syme, which certainly fits right into how he was before, let alone since. But he grieved. And he eventually had something to say about that.

"I think, after loss, life requires an act of reclaiming," he told Parade in 2006. "You have to reject being overwhelmed. Life has to go on."

The actor continued, "Grief changes shape, but it never ends. People have a misconception that you can deal with it and say, 'It's gone, and I'm better.' They're wrong. When the people you love are gone, you're alone. I miss being a part of their lives and them being part of mine. I wonder what the present would be like if they were here—what we might have done together. I miss all the great things that will never be."

So he knew exactly what he was talking about when he told Colbert, "I know that the ones that love us will miss us."

Calling it "unfair" and "absurd," Reeves told

Parade

, "All you can do is hope that grief will be transformed and, instead of feeling pain and confusion, you will be together again in memory, that there will be solace and pleasure there, not just loss."

"Much of my appreciation of life has come through loss," he concluded. "Life is precious. It's worthwhile."

He said at the time that he would like to have a family, and reiterated the sentiment a couple years later, but Reeves told Esquire in 2017 with regards to "settling down": "I'm too… it's too late. It's over." Asked to clarify, he added, "I'm 52. I'm not going to have any kids."

Famous last words from a litany of 50-something men, and he was reminded of that. Reeves just said, "That's a whole other… But no. I'm glad to still be here."

"I'm every cliché," he continued. "F--king mortality. Ageing. I'm just starting to get better at it. Just the amount of stuff you have to do before you're dead. I'm all of the clichés, and it's embarrassing. It's all of them. It's just, 'Oh my God. OK. Where did the time go? How come things are changing? How much time do I have left? What didn't I do?' I'm trying to think of the line from the sonnet… 'And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er / The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan / Which I new pay as if not paid before.'"

"So, yeah," he added, reportedly with a smile. "I'm that guy."

In turn, Reeves can't help but come off as the solitary figure he so often plays in his films, from Constantine to The Matrix to John Wick. Heck, even Duke Caboom sounds a little melancholy.

At the same time, you're just as likely to see him in a romantic tear-jerker or a quirky comedy as a shoot-em-up. He's played heroes and hustlers, sweethearts and cruel villains, teachers and slackers, doctors and lawyers.

"For me, it's just continuing to be able to work with great artists and tell stories that people enjoy," Reeves told Parade. "I was always hoping, even when I was young, that I could do different things," he says. "I'm really grateful for that. I'm

Though he had no idea John Wick would be such a hit, Reeves was in top form in the 2014 action extravaganza as a retired hit man who goes on a revenge spree after gangsters kill the beloved dog that was a gift from his late wife.

It made almost $89 million on a reported $20 million budget. Sequel time!

"You hope and you dream but the reality is even sweeter," he told E! News in 2017 about the first film's surprise success when he was promoting John Wick: Chapter 2. "It's great to be involved in a project that has so much affection."

Chapter 2 made $172 million worldwide.

Now back for John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum, Reeves has revealed that he started training heavily about three months before filming began to get back into dynamo shape, and he still goes whole-hog (or horse, in this movie's case) in the action sequences, right up until a car runs into him.

"I'll do some fight scenes and then John Wick will get hit by a car," Reeves explained to Colbert on The Late Show, "and that's Jackson Spidell, who's an amazing stuntman." Spidell has been Reeves' stunt double in all the John Wick movies. "He gets hit by the car, then I'll get up from the car, then I'll do a whole bunch more of, like, gun-fu and whatever, jujitsu, judo—and then, if I get thrown off something, Jackson does his thing."

Even more exciting for some fans, however, depending on whether you like your Keanu dark or more dude-like, is the news that he and Alex Winter are finally set to start shooting Bill & Ted Face the Music, the much-discussed follow-up to 1989's Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and sequel Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, which came out in 1991. The years-in-the-making comedy is tentatively due out in 2020.

And so on his latest press tour, Keanu Reeves left his usual trail of breadcrumbs. They may not lead you straight to his door, but they'll definitely keep you on the path.

#keanu reeves #Inside Keanu Reeves' Inscrutable Private World-Tragedy Motorcycles and Epic Movie Stardom

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psychospeak-blog · 6 years

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Won’t Go Slowly // 2

A/N: I promise I’m working on other stuff, too. Just slightly addicted to this series at the moment.

Being in Tyler's house alone was weird.

Not that you were alone, not really, with three large dogs practically constantly surrounding you.

But it was weird to be there in the quiet, especially because 90% of the time you were over there, there was at least one other person hanging around, too, whether it was someone actually there to hang out with him , or if it was a friend just crashing at his place.

You'd actually stayed there a few times on your own though, when you were watching the dogs. Mostly because it was just easier. But also because, as he claimed, he didn't want them destroying your place.

You'd protested that they'd never destroyed anything in their life, but he claimed that they had, you just hadn't seen it. Which seemed doubtful, but you also hadn't met any of them until they were a few months old, so you supposed it was possible. And, he also pointed out that the dog hair alone was a mess. You hadn't told him that even though they'd never even been in your house, you frequently pulled their hair out of your vacuum, because Lab hair was so insane that it literally got embedded in your clothing.

It was a small price to pay, really, though.

You typically had no problem making yourself at home when he was there - grabbing yourself a blanket if you were cold, or helping yourself to a drink. But, somehow, it felt different when you were there alone. In the quiet. The first time you'd stayed there alone, you'd actually brought yourself meals over, and he came home and questioned you as to why there was no food missing, laughing when you said you already had food made, so you just brought it over. After that, you'd gradually gotten more comfortable. This time, though, you'd spent the first night there hunkered up with all three dogs in his guest room, ending up watching a comedy special on Netflix, followed by an episode of Stephen Colbert.

You thankfully got off work early on Friday. You worked as a an academic advisor at The University of Toronto and, since it was nearing the end of the semester, your work load was really cut down quite a bit. You still worked throughout the summer, of course, as there were summer students and incoming freshmen, but it wasn't as constant and was also super flexible. Which was kind of convenient because it pretty much synced up with when Tyler would be back, so you tended to spend a lot of time together in the summer.

When you got back to his place on Friday, you pretty much immediately took all the dogs for a long, leisurely walk, enjoying the shade and quiet of a local park. When you got back to his place, you decided to bake muffins, especially considering you were definately not cooking tonight. All of the dogs had gone to sleep except for Gerry, who kept running around and dropping your all over the floor, and you were doing your best to not trip over him or any of the toys while trying to find the ingredients you needed. Occasionally you picked up a you, tossing it away so he'd go to chase it before coming back.

You'd turned on "Throwback Hip Hop Dance Party on Spotify, which was your go-to playlist for dancing and baking, and had sung along to "Golddigger" as you mixed the dry ingredients. "Drop It Like It's Hot" came on next, and you were, well, dropping it like it's hot, squatted down down on the floor, Gerry's front paws in your hands, dancing with him as you sung along. And then a pair of male legs came right in front of your eyesight and you screamed, loudly, the rest of the dogs coming running in from the other room barking at the same time you looked up to see that the legs were attached to Tyler's dad. "Shh....boys!" you yelled, but it wasn't really effective over the loud music. All three of them were barking, running around around the kitchen and looking around for a threat, sniffing Tyler's dad skeptically. You got knocked over by the force of them around you, falling back onto your butt, reaching up to the counter for your phone and shutting the music off.

"Shh...it's okay," you said, your voice calm this time, trying to pet them all at once, the hair on the back of their neck standing up and their tails poised, ready for action. "It's okay, I'm okay."

Two tongues licked your face at once, and then you were pushed down onto the kitchen floor, laying on your back with paws stepping all over you and noses in your face, and on your shoulders, as if investigating that you were indeed, alright. Finally, you managed to get what had to be at least 250 pounds of dog off you, sitting up and raising yourself to your feet.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," he said with a laugh, looking at your face closely, "Tyler didn't tell you I was coming, did he?"

"Nope," you said trying to force the redness from your cheeks with your mind, "Which means it's his fault, not yours."

He laughed again, holding up what was in his hands, "I was coming to do something on the pool. Is that alright?" He asked the question like it was your house he was coming to. "Yeah, of course," you said, shrugging.

He went outside, and you went back to your baking, turning your music back on, but a little quieter this time, and you kept your dance moves more G-rated this time. He came back in as you were taking the muffins out of the oven, setting them on the cooling rack, and you glanced at him out of the corner of your eye. "Everything alright?"

"Yep," he said easily, "Smells good in here." You smiled, "You should take a couple with you."

"Oh, that's okay. You must have worked hard on them." "I can't eat them all myself," you replied honestly. "And they're best when they're warm."

You sent him off with a couple in a plastic baggie, and then ordered your pizza. The night went much like the last, other than the half hour you spent debating whether you should download Tinder or Bumble to your phone again. And then the 15 minutes you spent trying to determine whether Tyler would care if you borrowed his dogs for a selfie to use as your profile picture to show that you were a dog person.

The following afternoon, you were chopping vegetables, because you'd finally decided to get your life together and meal prep seriously (plus Tyler's knives were sharper than yours, so the process went much quicker). But you kept getting this twinge of pain in your side. At first, you thought it was because you took all three dogs for a run this morning, which was not as pleasant as it sounded, and assumed you pulled something. But the pain continued to build and build until it morphed into something familiar that you couldn't ignore any longer.

You called Tyler's Mom as you were cleaning up your the kitchen, stopping every few minutes to bend over, hand clutched at you side, finally stopping and driving yourself to the hospital.

************** You rolled to your side as you heard movement. It was so dark in your bedroom that you didn't know what time of day it was, and assumed it must be your sister coming over to stay with you for the night. You heard your bedroom door open and shut your eyes, pretending to sleep. There was a stumbled, followed by a "shit."

"Tyler?" you asked, opening one eye, your hand across your forehead, seeing him bent over, rubbing his knee where it had likely collided with your dresser. "Geez, you Seguin men really like to sneak up on people." He laughed. "Yeah, I was really disappointed he didn't have any video footage of that," he said.

You rolled a little more to the other side of the bed, pulling the blankets up tight around you, realizing that you were wearing pyjamas, and hadn't brushed your hair or showered for three days. "What are you even doing here?" "My mom said you were sick," he stepped closer to the bed, " I brought popsicles."

You smiled weakly, thinking that he'd assumed you had strep throat, which you seemed to get once a year, and always knocked you out for a couple of days. You frowned a little more, shifting onto your side, "how'd you even get in here?" "You gave me a key, remember?"

You were thinking that you hadn't, but then you recalled that you had given him a key, because he was supposed to take care of your mail when you went to Europe after you graduated with your Bachelor's degree. Which was four years ago. "I thought you said you lost it." He shrugged, "I found it."

" Oh," you said quietly, and let your eyes slide shut, like an extended blink. Before you could even fully open your eyes, you felt your bed dip as Tyler pressed his arm on it, leaning over like he was going to ask you something and you made a little noise of pain, seeing him frown with a concerned look on his face as you winced, rolling over away from him. "That is not something you do to someone who just had surgery," you moaned.

You heard him something but couldn't decipher it, and then felt his hand on your shoulder for a brief second like he want to roll you back over, but thought better of it. "You had surge

ry?" He asked, disbelief growing in his voice with each word he spoke. "Yeah," you responded, and you felt him sit down gently on the edge of your bed, near your feet. " Why...why didn't you call me?"

"I called your Mom," you said. You'd even double checked as soon as you could that she had the dogs. She'd even texted you to offer to bring you something, but you assured her you were all set.

He sighed heavily, "I didn't mean about the dogs, I meant about you."

"You weren't even here, what were you going to do?" "I could have come home," he said, enunciating each word. "You shouldn't be alone."

" I'm not alone." He looked around the room dramatically, "You look pretty alone to me."

It should have been funny. But he looked- and sounded- pissed off. And you didn't have the energy to deal with him pissed off right now.

"My mom stayed with me for two days," you said, "she just left this morning. And my sister is coming over after work to stay with me tonight."

His face seemed to relax a little at that, and you felt his hand over your leg through the blanket, giving your ankle a little squeeze. "I didn't hurt you, did I?" You shook your head, "It was just laparoscopic. It's just kind if tender if I move the wrong way."

He pursed his lips, still looking down at you, "Was it what you had in high school?" "Yep," you said softly. You'd had a similar procedure then, when you where first told you'd had endometriosis.

He laid down softly on his side on the bed next to you then, his head propped up on his hand looking at you seriously. "Are you okay?"

"Mhm," you murmured, but his eyes will still searching yours for a moment, until the alarm on your phone started blaring from your nightstand, and you groaned at the loud noise. Tyler got up from the bed, and a second later the annoying noise stopped.

"I need to take my pain meds," you said, easing yourself up on to your elbows. "I'll get them," he said, "where are they?"

You wanted to argue - you really did - because, of course you could get them yourself. But you were also really tired, so you just gave in. "In the kitchen." He turned to leave and you laid back down on your back, head against the pillows. "Tyler?" "Hmm?" "I think they're on the counter by the fridge."

"'K," he said, and you shut your eyes again, recalling what had happened back in high school, the last time you'd been recovering from surgery. For some reason this guy, Chris, had apparently started a rumour that you'd had an abortion, which was absurd, really. He'd always been pretty annoying, and was totally into Kirsten, which he didn't even hide. But, apparently, Tyler had completed decked him as Kirsten told you, since you weren't there to see it anyways. You were pretty certain that he was suspended for a week, and grounded for a month. You weren't entirely sure if he was just looking for a reason to punch the guy and finally found it, or if he actually morally objected to this guy and was trying to set him straight, but now you couldn't figure out why he hadn't just told his mom what had happened. Surely she would have at least reduced his punishment. And you knew that being grounded had pissed him off, because you very clearly remembered him complaining about it every lunch hour, between classes, and during classes.

Now, though, Tyler came back into your bedroom. He had a glass of what looked like juice in one hand, your stainless steel water bottle shoved under his arm. You sat up again, holding out your hand, and he pressed the pill into it. You popped it into your mouth, taking the glass of juice from his hand, swallowing the pill quickly. You didn't even have time to think about setting it on the nightstand, because he'd already taken it from you, setting it there next to the water bottle he must have set there already.

"Have you eaten today?" he asked, as you were fixing the pillows to lay back down on your back. "Yes," you answered honestly. Your mom had made you eat some oatmeal this morning before she'd left, and you'd also had a couple of chocolates from the box your good friend, Becca, had dropped by the hospital.

"Do you want me to get you a popsicle?" "No," you said, shutting your eyes, and then adding, "thanks."

You opened your eyes again and he was still just standing there, and you couldn't figure out why he wasn't just leaving.

"Do you want me to help you onto the couch?" he asked, "We could watch a movie or TV or something."

You shook your head, running your hand over your face. "I just want to sleep." He was shifting his weight back and forth between his feet. "Yeah, okay. So, I'll just be in the living room, so just yell if you need anything." "What? Tyler, you don't have to stay."

"It's no big deal. I'll just hang out until your sister gets here." "I'm fine," you made clear, "do you really think my mom wouldn't be here if I wasn't?"

He was looking down at you, a wrinkle appearing in the middle of his forehead, running his hand through his hair quickly, "Like you've never helped me after I had surgery."

"You would be helping because I just want to be alone," you croaked, and then took a deep, albeit shaky breath, "Seriously, I just want to sleep. And these pills knock me out anyways."

He said something, and you think it was "yeah" or "okay" but it could have been your name, and your eyes felt both way too try and way too watery, and all you wanted to do was shut them and go back to sleep. And you didn't want anyone there watching you or hovering over you or asking if you were okay.

To set your point straight, you pulled the covers, hard over your shoulder, rolling away so you were facing the wall, turning your back to him and shutting your eyes and trying not to think of anything. Finally, you heard the front door shut and, knowing that he left, let out the breath you had been holding, letting the pills make you wonderfully drowsy.

You woke again in a daze, like you had been every couple hours, but this time you heard snoring and your bed felt way too heavy and warm, and you weren't exactly sure where you were. You opened your eyes tentatively to see Marshall laying down by your feet and you let out a little laugh in disbelief. You turned over, reaching for the water bottle that was on your nightstand, and piece of paper covered with an unmistakable scrawl set under it and you read it as you took a few sips. I left him food and water in the kitchen. Call me if he starts being a shit. I'm serious. You smiled, setting everything back onto your nightstand and sitting up, rubbing your knuckles along the dog's snout until he opened his eyes, staring back at you. You patted the bed next to you as you laid back down, and Marshall got up, turning in a circle before curling up against chest. You were still smiling as you set your head back down against your pillows, resting your arm over him and petting him absentmindedly, running fingers through his fur as you fell back to sleep.

#wont go slowly #series #tyler seguin imagine #tyler seguin #hockey imagines #hockey imagine #nhl imagines #nhl imagine

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maybeshelives · 5 years

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gay things up

We should acklowledge more often the importance of queer represantation in mainstream media. (For the right reasons)

Sure, I can binge watch all six seasons of the L Word - and, trust me, I have - but I still have this undying thirst to gay things up a little. I feel unbalanced occasionally, as if there are still parts of my sexuality I haven’t really addressed, understood and embraced, which consequently urges me to focus more on my gay side rather than my sexuality as a whole: my preferrences in the type of people I sleep with, the type of sexual relationships I form, the things I (dis)like in bed, you know, the list is endless. It makes me think that all these years of repressing my sexuality have made me keep it in a box and just narrow it down to the gender I’d rather have sexual encounters with, which is a rabbit hole itself, all things (gender norms and stereotypes, personal beliefs etc) considered, and just get elated even by the implication that two men or women on TV are queer; neither examining if I like them as people, nor caring about their chemstry or the quality of their relationship, no.

Just keep my standards to the lowest point possible and MAKE IT GAY AS FUUUUUCK.

Being queer in a world of heteronormativity is sometimes a double-edged knife; even your best LGBTQ+ allies are ignorant of your reality.

Yeah well, my straight friends support me on my same sex relationships. But they also don’t really get them most of the time. “What are you talking about?” you will asked surprised, “romantic relationships don’t differ based on the gender of the people involved. It’s the personalitites that matter”.

Well, yes. But also no.

My straight friends can’t really understand the consequenses of being closeted for years, the fear of stigma, the fact that even in 2019 there are still people wishing all of us “degenerates” a slow and painful death (just watch Ellen Page’s amazing show called “Gaycation”; during the Brazil episode, the two hosts interview a serial killer who specifically targets gay people, because he believes that they’re worse than animals and the world should be cleansed by their filthy presense).

There are several bagages following us around, issues that straight people (thankfully) never had to face, like the fear of flirting with the wrong person (especially while being closeted), the fact that our sexual orientation is often times not being taken seriously, the fact that for ages there was a very small amount of LGBTQ+ representation in media, and sometimes it was played out for laughs, or even blatantly killed off (lately, there’s also the issue of “queercoding”or “queerbating”, which is rather complex itself), the fear of violence used against us on the street just for holding hands with someone; being marginalized at any level, a minority, ANY KIND of minority, sucks. Because the majority doesn’t even see you, at times.

But we exist. This should be written in enormous neon letters, and not in 8-sized Arial Narrow ones, as it very often is right now.

No, J. K. Rowlling, I don’t want to have to wear rainbow-coloured strap-ons covered in glitter (wink wink, Sense8) and do my YMCA dance in order to have the revelation that Albus Dumbledore is fucking gay back in 2007. It’s not on print, it’s only a few words said during a sold-out book reading. You had your moment of gay-friendly glory and inclusiveness, but that’s it. During an entire franchise with dosens of presumably heterosexual characters, the single outed person (and one of the most important for plot progression purposes, too) doesn’t even get to have their own moment of gayness. Not even in the prequel, apparently (if you’re new to this, please watch the videos on queercoding I’ve linked above and you’ll be right on track). And you have the audacity to keep on doing it.

No, I don’t want to fucking speculate if Captain Marvel is queer either. No, I don’t want to wonder if Thor: Ragnarok’s Valkyrie is indeed bisexual. (Fun fact: It is being speculated that the two aforementioned characters will hit it off in the new Avengers: Endgame movie). Or the two Teen Wolf guys. Or Dean and Michael from Supernatural. Or several characters from Riverdale. Ugh, it’s exhausting.

And even though it might come off as just another lesbian who’s trying to make it all about her sexuality, shoving it in straight people’s faces, I have to say that heterosexual people are pretty ignorant regarding even their own sexuality from time to time. And that’s problematic for everyone.

Please, let me explain.

Not fully exploring and “owning” one’s sexuality primarily means that they’re missing out experiences they could, in fact, enjoy A LOT. From having sexual partners of all genders to being the proud owner of the best buttplug collection in an entire city, a good sexual experience that never takes place is a missed opportunity. I personally wouldn’t like to miss out on that, like the dirty, dirty hedonist I am.

This missing-outness, self-deception and ignorance can go on for years, decades even. Just simply ask popular YouTubers or my (formerly gold star lesbian) ex-girlfriend (yes, the opposite is also possible).

But, such a personal issue becomes public when queerness and gender & sexuality spectrums are not even seen as something that can be part of anyone’s psyche, especially in the majority of the population. Hence the marginalizing. LGBTQ+ substance, accodring to many people, is something out of this world.

That’s what makes queercoding so annoying. Because it sends off the message that LGBTQ+ characters, romances and storylines are not important enough to be portrayed as openly and clearly as their heteronormative counterparts; they’re pictured as something that will never fully grow and be explored, since it isn’t as significant.

So,why does mainstream representation matter?

In a world soaked in and based onto heteronormativity and whiteness, being LGBTQ+ inclusive has been mislabeled as “pushing an agenda”, where even childhood is being used as a deterrent, a queerness-repellant, which can also breed internalized homophobia.

“Don’t publicly show pictures of faggots kissing, children might see them”. “Dykes shouldn’t be allowed to adopt children, because they [the children] won’t have the right role-models, I mean, who will be the mom and who will be the dad? Plus they will also be bullied by other children”.

I was watching an Ellen Page interview on Stephen Colbert that took place almost two months ago, and I couldn’t help but notice how emotional she still gets every time she talks about LGBTQ+ problems (she has been very vocal about them since she came out as gay in 2014). “This needs to fucking stop” she says.

And, goodness, it does. When the, among others, argument that equality for everyone shouldn’t be debatable still is seen as “cringey activism” by some, it becomes more than apparent why representation of any minority in the mainstream media matters.

Pop culture is like a huge educator. We tend to internalize images shown to us from an early age, we learn to normalize toxic behaviors and worldviews in the exact same way, and even if we can’t really control anyone’s parenting (and homophobia and lack of understanding and acceptance, unless it becomes abusive for the minor, and this abuse is apparent to other adults), there’s still hope that pop culture can bring the bigger picture, all the vieriety of human identity and experience, into our homes.

As I’m thinking about it, I realize that I had never seen a (happy) lesbian couple on television or movies until I was about fourteen or sixteen. Ever. Like, ever. Needless to say, I have my fair share of images depicting straight couples in multiple situations.

So, if you’re not a queer person, a trans person or a person of colour or someone with special needs or mentally ill, and you’re also not convinced by my long-ass rant, consider this: What if you had never ever seen someone like you in a film before until you were fifteen? Or what if you had only seen stereotypical images and expectations of people like you, as a side story to someone else’s bigger and more “important” story? A side story as seen and perceived by the heteronormative gaze?

Or maybe as a joke? A joke that wasn’t made by people like you, people who truly understand what it’s like being you and the actually funny aspects of your own identity and struggles.

Wouldn’t you grow up thinking that you’re a little bit of a monster?

"Like when someone says he wants to watch the world burn. You only get to watch when you have the privilege of not being on fire. It's edgy, but it's not The Darkness. The Darkness is finding a way to laugh about being on fire". - Natalie Wynn

---------------------------------

PS: I know that I’ve used too many embeded referrences, but if you’re interested in this topic, please take your time to examine them. They have broadened my horizons a lot, and gave me comfort and the validation that I’m not insane for feeling and seeing life that way.

#queercoding #representation #lgbtq #ellen page #mainstream media #minority #marginalization #queer

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couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name · 7 years

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Thoughts from the Tony Awards

(that I forgot to post last night whoops)

Okay so the opening number was...cute, but I feel like it just went on for a little too long?? Idk idk

“Gee, Whoopi, how long have you been in the closet?”

I feel like Stephen Colbert emerging from a bed dressed as a groundhog is something that’s definitely happened before in my life

Honestly the best parts of the show was when the camera would cut to Ben Platt in the audience for some reason and he always looked vaguely afraid for his life

I’m just putting this out there but Josh Groban...is more powerful than he appears. I truly think Josh Groban is just a cover-story for an ancient deity that just wants to sing these days.

My mom, upon seeing Christian Borle with no hair: “He looks like that little animal from that Kim Possible show you used to watch!”

Listen Andrew Rannells and (goblin king of my heart)Mike Faist both deserved the Tony but...I truly forgot Gavin Creel existed for a bit and seeing him win had me so over come with emotion so like I can’t complain I’m proud of my man

I’ve never been a fan of Miss Saigon and I have no idea who that girl performing was but like...we’re getting married and she’s serenading me at our wedding reception this is cannon

Come From Away like...I’m sorry. I feel like it’s trying too hard to be #Edgy or something?

“Dicks out for Falsettos” - Andrew Scott Rannells, 2017, the Year Of Our Lord

It was a great performance though like 1) Put Tracie Thoms in anything and I’m a fan and 2) I never knew I needed to see Christian Borle and Andrew Rannells as Sporty Boyfriends(tm) but now I can’t imagine living in a world without it and 3) everyone was so talented don’t touch me

Lmao they finished their performance and my mom’s only comment was “That Andrew boy has great legs”

THE DEAR EVAN HANSEN WRITERS WERE SO FLIPPING CUTE WHEN THEY WON OMG

“We’re gonna announce this next performance as the cast of Dear Evan Hansen, but the gag is....it’s actually a solo performance by Ben Platt(tm)”

I mean was I sobbing the whole time??? Yes. I still would have picked a different number idk. ‘Waving Through A Window’ is great but it’s getting overplayed at this point

Lmao the second he finished his performance and me, and the rest of the audience both live and watching elsewhere, were freaking the fuck out- my mom just calmly took a sip of her wine and said “Oh, he won the Tony.” 😂

Okay listen...I truly think Spacey gave it his best. He wasn’t awful. I did notice something that didn’t exactly help though- He really went for the impressions. Like, whatever, but most of the other Tony’s usually involve the hosts having some singing skits???? Why did none of that happen?

I don’t know who the hell the guy singing from Groundhog Day was but like...that was a VOICE.

Leslie Odom Jr. and Cynthia Erivo. Nice.

Ben’s reaction to the Hilary Clinton email jokes tho

“All award shows have to give out food these days!”

Hello Dolly’s weird one-man performance was apparently caused by Bette Middler refusing to perform in the theater where they host the Tonys??? Like she wanted it pretaped???? Wild.

My mom refused to accept it all night like for the rest of the show she was like “When’s the Hello Dolly number” and I kept telling her it already happened and she was like “No that was Kevin Spacey in a wig it was a bad joke when is Bette going to sing” omfg

“You’re not even Christian Borle, you’re the understudy!”

When Colbert came out to present an award he had more stage presence in two minutes than Spacey had all night so I’m not saying Colbert for Tony’s 2018 but like....#Colbert4Tonys2k18

“My edible nephews”

Honestly Ben Platt’s entire acceptance speech quite literally cleared my skin and healed my soul that beautiful boy is so gentle and pure and I do not understand how I can feel so proud of him when he’s never even graced me with his presence

Also- Ben Platt, barely holding back tears, declaring “I’ll fight you” on national television: Big Mood.

Bette Middler’s speech...what in the fuck

Like no???? You cannot just tell them to shut the music off???? If everyone else can keep their speeches short than you damn well can too??? Everyone in that room is talented???? You aren’t The Special One there???? There’s people trying to make a show run smoothly and there’s time constraints???? Just say thanks and get off the stage oh my GOD. Also what the fuck with the ‘Hello Dolly never went away because it’s always in our hearts’ bit like find me ONE person who can unironically say Hello Dolly is their favorite show??? It’s a lame show high schools perform a lot because the script is cheaper calm down.

My mom, who had finished her fourth glass of wine and fallen asleep 15 minutes ago: *jolts wide awake the second she hears Lin-Manuel Miranda’s voice* “Finally.”

When Spacey came out doing the president gag like...Lin truly looked like he hadn’t been warned about it beforehand lmao like I’m sure he was but the poor boy looked so confused 😂😂

I know there was a lot of debate but personally I was not shocked Dear Evan Hansen won best musical and I was pretty excited about it lmao

(The Great Comet had a cool performance though I hope I can see that show someday; Also, since I realize I forgot to type it earlier in this list- Falsettos was robbed)

The big finale number he did with Patti felt...too lowkey. Idk. Just a very mellow ending to the award show like I’ve already forgotten what they sang.

All in all: There have been worst award shows but this was not as lively as the Tony’s have been in recent years. For all the jokes about NPH and Corden not being there, like...it just calls attention to the fact that they did in fact host way more entertaining shows??? That kinda backfired on him. I’ll give it like a 5/10. Can’t wait to see what this upcoming season/next years awards will hold!

#tony awards #tonys 2017 #broadway #musicals #ben platt #molly mumbles

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 5 years

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BTS lit up Stephen Colbert's stage again and it's pretty clear everyone's a fan

There's no such thing as too much BTS.

Mere days after taking the world by storm (again) with a Beatles-inspired performance of "Boy With Luv" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, K-pop phenomenon BTS returned to the talk show for a second special appearance to perform "Make It Right."

And you guessed it: BTS fans (aka ARMY) couldn't get enough of the pretty boys and their beautiful voices.

youtube

Unlike their "Boy With Luv" performance, BTS skipped the dancing and instead stuck to a vocals act to let each of their voices shine.

As with seemingly everything they do, fans praised the boy band for their natural live singing abilities, especially their skillfully-timed harmonizations.

MAKE IT RIGHT PERFORMANCE ON THE STEPHEN COLBERT SHOW!!!!!!! The flavor, the harmonization, the vocals, the look!!!! 😍😍🥰😍

— 𝒢𝒾𝑔𝒾 is seeing BTS tomorrow! 🥰 (@majestic_gigi) May 18, 2019

Make It Right live performance on Colbert show is the perfect way to shut down those who say BTS can't sing live

— 𝓻𝓲𝓻𝓲 ✿ 𝕻𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖔𝖓𝖆 (@Glitchykv) May 18, 2019

just some of the BEAUTIFUL and NICE comments I found under @BTS_twt's Make It Right performance on the Colbert show pic.twitter.com/qB1cQPx3Kn

— 🅹🅰🆉 with luv 💜 (@jeontaegious) May 18, 2019

Omg bts got a standing ovation on Colbert 🥺🥺

— 꾹's adrianna (@loveygguk) May 18, 2019

Others, however, were just upset they missed it:

NOOOOOOOO I FELL ASKEEP AND MISSED BTS ON COLBERT!!!!

— Karu💜 (@serenchim) May 18, 2019

BTS and the values they're sending through their music isn't just for the teens. The boy band's inclusive messaging is something everyone can appreciate and the main reason they're so beloved by fans across the world.

my auntie said that she watched bts on Stephen Colbert yesterday nd asked me if I already watched it so I said yes, on livestreams and she also said that she was supposed to film it and send to me but she knows that im always updated about them so she didn't,,, so supportive 😂😂

— ᵉᶜˡⁱᵖˢᵉ 🌕🌔🌑 (@igotbts_7) May 18, 2019

CAN U BELIEVE MY MOM NOT-SO-SECRETLY WATCHED BTS AT THE LATE SHOW STEPHEN COLBERT ON HER PHONE WHEN I HADN’T EVEN WATCHED IT

— k (@nemoonkei) May 18, 2019

i just came back home and the first thing my mom asked me was “have u watched bts’ late show with stephen colbert” JSHSHSSH my mom has now watched bts vids before me this has never happened before!!!!!

— jas ♥ (@slushvtae) May 18, 2019

Even if you don't like BTS, don't be an asshole. The last thing anyone needs right now in today's troubled world is, as one Twitter user astutely put it, negative vibes:

Please go on Stephen Colbert's official FB page and leave some positive comments that'll make people wanna check BTS out. There's loads of uptight white males with toxic masculinity who are hating on their vocals, their rap, and are calling them girls. https://t.co/JhTXoxaz5c pic.twitter.com/wK9z6c675I

— 🍀134340 miles from sanity🇳🇬 (@naija0329) May 18, 2019

WATCH: BTS to release their own mobile game

#_category:yct:001000002 #_uuid:270f3f60-58de-37ce-be36-b0291807cf08 #_author:Raymond Wong #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_revsp:news.mashable

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driveneed17-blog · 5 years

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The 7 Most Awkward Emmy Speeches of All Time

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Emmys: Every Best TV Drama Since 1970

The Emmys are about excellence in television, and as nerve-wracking as it must be to stand in front of thousands of people gawking and clapping at you like so many Nicole Kidmans, viewers want nothing more than to see winners nail that acceptance speech — to soak up the glory under the spotlight and sail through a gracious speech with ease. This seems like not that big of an ask for people who literally get paid to read lines for a living but god bless those precious celebs, not everybody gets it right. Though truly terrible Emmy acceptance speeches are rare to non-existent, there have been some seriously uncomfortable ones over the years. TV Guide dug through the archives and found the seven most cringe-worthy.

7. Bertram van Munster, 2014 The speech The Amazing Race co-creator gave for winning Outstanding Reality Competition was short and mostly fine — at first. But he ended a boilerplate statement about the joys of travel with, "The world is not a bad place and you can travel safely." Say what now? It was just bizarre.

The Best Emmy Speeches Ever

6. Kathy Griffin, 2007 In accepting her Outstanding Reality Program trophy for My Life on the D-List, Kathy played off the worn awards show trope of thanking Jesus by uh, not thanking Jesus and instead saying, "Suck it Jesus, this award is my god now!" Hmm. Kathy does edgy and confrontational like nobody else in Hollywood, but disrespecting some 173 million Americans' sacred figure veered off the cliff from edgy into the deep depths of awkward.

5. Chevy Chase, 1976 Chase won Best Supporting Actor in Comedy for his work on Saturday Night Live, but Chase's time was already short since he and fellow nominees ran up on stage in a silly bit. By the time he got to his speech, if you can call it that, Redd Foxx was giving him the "Hurry it up" sign. Not really known for being a gentle sweetheart, Chase joked that his win was "totally expected" (how humble!) and mumbled out a few seemingly sincere thanks before leaving the stage. Granted, this was the anything-goes '70s and everything about that period was awkward, but still.

2018 Emmy Nominations by the Numbers

4. Jon Stewart, 2012 In his win for Best Variety Show at the 64th Emmys, Jon Stewart came to the mic panting, out of breath after doing a bit with Jimmy Fallon, and then huffed, "Free. Sandwich." Uh, okay then? After congratulating peers including Stephen Colbert, he joked that after Earth had burned, people would "find a box of these [statues] and they will know just how predictable these f---ing things" were in moment that kept censors on their toes. Not only did Stewart get bleeped, his hard-working, anonymous (to people at home) team went unacknowledged while he acted silly. This isn't the Golden Globes, Jon. Calm down.

3. Sally Field, 2007 Yup, one of the most memorable speech-makers of all time — Ms. "You like me!" — Sally Field started out on a poignant note in winning for Lead Actress on Brothers & Sisters. But after starting her speech talking about the value of moms and women, she started discussing women waiting for their children to come home from war and then lost her place as the audience clapped. That prompted a mini-freakout, more stammering and her shouting, "If mothers ruled the world there would be no goddamned wars in the first place," which may be true (here's hoping we get a chance to the theory) but on the whole, it was all very clumsy.

Emmys 2018: Stars React to Their Nominations

2. Patty Duke, 1970 Winning for the TV movie My Sweet Charlie, Patty Duke gave an acceptance speech that included long dramatic pauses and seemingly unconnected ideas like when she said, "I've always been told not to say thank you for too long but the best words I ever learned were hello, enthusiasm and thank you." Some people at the time speculated that Duke was on drugs or drunk, and the moment had a small affect on her career. However, Duke's career didn't suffer too much in the long run. In fact, she went on to win two more Emmys and she became a prominent mental health advocate after she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1982.

1. Allison Janney, 2004 Everyone loves Allison Janney; it's a fact. But few people love her acceptance speech when she won Lead Actress in a Drama for The West Wing in 2004. Accepting her fourth Emmy (she's got seven now) Janney said she'd spoken to her competitor, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit's Mariska Hargitay, before the ceremony and promised she'd give her Emmy to Hargitay if she won. Once Janney got up to the podium, though, she realized how silly that would be in the moment (her words) but asked Hargitay to come on stage with her nonetheless. Cut to Hargitay, wearing a "Durr, I guess?" expression, getting out of her seat only to stand awkwardly at the margins of the stage while Janney finished her speech. It almost made sense, but when Janney then said she'd love it if Edie Falco and the rest of the nominees would join her on stage too, you realized that no, none of this makes sense. "I'm serious," she persisted, while the others very wisely stayed in their seats. Janney certainly gets points for humility and trying to foster a sense of community, but she didn't think this through. Who'd want to stand on stage doing nothing as the winner drinks in applause? Inviting all your homies on stage might be cute at the BET Hip-Hop Awards but at the Emmys, Allison, it's super awkward.

Ready to see who'll deliver the next bad Emmy speech? The 70th Primetime Emmy Awards will air Monday, Sept. 17 at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT on NBC.

Source: https://www.tvguide.com/news/awkward-emmy-speeches/?rss=breakingnews

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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jasminenoack · 7 years

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“There are songs I’ll never listen to again but you can’t take all the thing that make me the way I’ve always been”(The Doubleclicks): The longest war

So I am going to talk some more about feminism. With some Rebecca Solnit quotes.

“One girl raved about a nice voice mail a guy had recently left her. I kindly requested she play it and heard this gem: ‘Hey, Lydia. It’s Sam. Just calling to say what’s up. Gimme a ring when you get a chance.’ THAT WAS IT.” - Aziz Ansari

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Okay so that’s a little bit of Aziz. But now on to more serious things.

Here in the United States, where there is a reported rape every 6.2 minutes, and one in five women will be raped in her lifetime - Rebecca Solnit

I went out a bit ago with a guy. And he was complaining about there being way more women than men in New York City. Which appears to not actually be true... And I said something off hand about not noticing because to be honest I’m so busy trying to filter out creeps that the pool seems relatively small. And the response I got was that women being concerned about men was bull shit. Basically word for word.

There is, however, a pattern of violence against women that’s broad and deep and horrific and incessantly overlooked. - Rebecca Solnit

I wasn’t attacking this guy in particular, in fact i was actively not talking about him. I was talking about refusing to give someone my name, which I’d given him. Which is something I do. I’m relatively easy to find if someone was trying, as you can see by this url I have a reasonably strong presence online. Not to mention that my profile on OkCupid says I’m a web developer and my first name and that career easily land you at my linkedin and a bit more research will get you my email, my phone number, and a slightly out of date address last time I checked. And I don’t really want step one of vetting someone to be “Here please have all of my personal information, and my picture”.

There are exceptions: last summer someone wrote to me to describe a college class in which the students were asked what they do to stay safe from rape. The young women described the intricate ways they stayed alert, limited their access to the world, took precautions, and essentially thought about rape all the time (while the young men in the class, he added, gaped in astonishment). The chasm between their worlds had briefly and suddenly become visible. - Rebecca Solnit

Now I don’t want to misrepresent, I’m extremely lucky. Nothing truly terrible has happened to me. I get creeped out a lot. On the funny end, I got a message from a guy named “Mr. Goodbar” which I kind of wanted to reply to with “maybe google Looking for Mr Goodbar”. I get messages, FIRST MESSAGES, on OkCupid that say things like “Give me your address I’m coming over now”, but I’m smart enough not to. I also get pushy guys that after two messages ask to meet immediately to have sex, and are sometimes extremely pushy, which is why I tend to not give out personal details early in a conversation(a lot of men send their name in the first message). Basically, I’m extremely careful, but I am like that because I know what happens when you’re not.

It offered advice like this: “Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone ‘by accident’ you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can call for help.” While funny, the piece points out something terrible: the usual guidelines in such situations put the full burden of prevention on potential victims, treating the violence as a given. You explain to me why colleges spend more time telling women how to survive predators than telling the other half of their students not to be predators. - Rebecca Solnit

When I was in junior high my friends mother left her abusive husband, well she tried to and he murdered her in front of my friend and her two younger brothers. I know this because she showed up at another friends house while I was there to ask us to call the police for her when it happened.

Happily the five publicly pro-rape Republicans in the 2012 campaign all losttheir election bids. (Stephen Colbert tried to warn them that women had gotten the vote in 1920.) But it’s not just a matter of the garbage they say (and the price they now pay). Earlier this month, congressional Republicans refused to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, because they objected to the protection it gave immigrants, transgendered women, and Native American women. - Rebecca Solnit

When I was 19 and home from college for a couple months a guy asked a friend if she was me and she told him she was meeting me(he knew my brother, ergo asking, at least that’s the story I was told). He followed us around for that whole day, then came home with us(he was 26) then informed me the next day we were dating. Over the course of the next 2-3 months I attempted to break up with him repeatedly, every time he would tell me I couldn’t do that without his consent. Then he would show up outside my house, outside my work, and in the small town I lived in, in the park where I met my friends. His cousin was my boss(who was so excited we were dating). So every time I had to go back to dating him. He told me that we weren’t allowed to spend a night apart, so I had to sleep with him every night, etc. I don’t want to get into it. My mom made fun of me for dating someone “stupid” but never stopped him from sleeping at our house. Neither did his parents who he lived with. I told my mom once I couldn’t get rid of him, and she laughed. I was terrified of losing my job. I was terrified that he was bigger than I was, and it was Maine, no one locks their doors, or windows, or cars. I dated him because it felt safer to know the rules then to see what he would do. I didn’t even break up with him in reality. I moved back to New York and stopped answering his calls. He threatened to “come to New York and find me” on a bunch of voice mails, but in New York I always felt like I was safe, 8 million people after all. And after a few months he stopped calling.

Women’s liberation has often been portrayed as a movement intent on encroaching upon or taking power and privilege away from men, as though in some dismal zero-sum game, only one gender at a time could be free and powerful. But we are free together or slaves together. - Rebecca Solnit

When I was 15/16 there was this guy I knew he was 26 and had been in jail for statutory rape. Now when I was that age I was actually very religious. I had had one boyfriend and we hadn’t even gotten close to sex. My friends mother introduced him to us as someone her daughter might want to date, she knew his aunt or something. Her daughter wasn’t into it, so she decided to set me up with him. I thought he was cute, but he freaked me out. He called me from jail once to tell me he had beaten up a friend of mine who was also in jail. He use to sit on me, and hold me down, not in a explicit sexual way but it scared the shit out of me. One year on Christmas Eve I was at her house and he was there getting drunk. I learned later that someone had promised him they’d set me up with him that night. When I left around 1am to go home he followed me out to my truck, which honestly already made me uncomfortable. And when I went to get into it, he pushed me up against it and started aggressively making out with me. I had some difficulty stopping him, because 16 vs 26... I ended up kneeing him in the balls so I could get in my truck and drive away. I continued to see him for the next 2 years until I went away to college. This was not considered an issue by any of our mutual friends.

We have far more than 87,000 rapes in this country every year, but each of them is invariably portrayed as an isolated incident. - Rebecca Solnit

I moved out of my mother’s house halfway through my senior year of high school. I lived with my best friend, my ex-boyfriend, and 2 other male friends of theirs in a 1 bedroom apartment. As the only girl I slept in the room. But everyone used the entrance through my bedroom, no one ever knocked. When one of the “friends” would get drunk he would crawl into my bed in the middle of the night and start to “cuddle” me. I would pretend to be asleep as long as possible and hope he would fall asleep. If that didn’t work I would get out of bed and sit at the kitchen table and read a book until morning and just not sleep that night.

What’s love got to do with it, asked Tina Turner, whose ex-husband Ike once said, “Yeah I hit her, but I didn't hit her more than the average guy beats his wife.” - Rebecca Solnit

When I was around 14 my friend’s older brother would buy us beer. His parents knew and were fine with it. I found out when I was 19, from his mother, that the reason he did that was that he had a crush on me and was hitting on me, and she knew. Again he bought us beer so he was in fact 21.

We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it’s almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern. Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender. - Rebecca Solnit

My ex-boyfriend who is generally a nice guy. One of his best friends beat his wife. Every time he brought it up I would say “that’s not okay”. And he would reply “It’s not really my business”.

Now like I said I’m lucky. I’ve never been seriously hurt. I’m lucky that I grew up around male step cousins and we fought I knew how to hold my own. I’m lucky that the guys were never super violent to me directly. I’m lucky that I was careful, I’m lucky that I got to move away from that small town. I’m lucky that I have some of the friends I did who told me, “You deserve better”. I’m lucky that I believed them. I’m lucky that I’m not a victim. But we are all unlucky where we live in a world where these things happen. Where we aren’t equal.

There are so many great men and women in the world, but it’s so hard to be willing to even give people a chance when you are afraid of all the terrible things that could happen. And what doesn’t help is people denying these things.

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#feminism #rebecca solnit

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njawaidofficial · 7 years

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Stephen Colbert Caps Comeback Year Hosting Emmys: "I Just Wanted to Do Jokes" (Q&A)

http://styleveryday.com/2017/09/11/stephen-colbert-caps-comeback-year-hosting-emmys-i-just-wanted-to-do-jokes-qa/

Stephen Colbert Caps Comeback Year Hosting Emmys: "I Just Wanted to Do Jokes" (Q&A)

The CBS host on his start in comedy, how Bill O’Reilly inspired his ‘Colbert Report’ character, David Letterman’s gracious handoff of ‘The Late Show’ and its comeback from a year-one fizzle: “I’ve allowed myself to become a pure performer.”

Just under two years ago, Stephen Colbert debuted as host of CBS’ The Late Show. And it hasn’t even been a year since sluggish ratings, an Emmys snub and a lack of buzz prompted some to begin writing off the onetime Comedy Central star whose Colbert Report had previously picked up two Emmys for variety series. His Late Show was so challenged that there even were whispers he’d be asked to swap time slots with James Corden.

What a difference a year — and a presidential election — can make. The Late Show (not NBC’s The Tonight Show) finished the season atop the late-night ratings for the first time in 22 years; The Late Show (not The Tonight Show) earned a series nom; and Colbert (not Corden) is set to host the Sept. 17 Emmy Awards, where The Late Show is also nominated for directing and writing (though both his series and Showtime election night special fell to the likes of Corden and Samantha Bee at the Creative Arts Emmys over the weekend).

In a wide-ranging August interview, Colbert kept his telecast plans close to the vest. But he spoke frankly about how he discovered comedy, the path that led him to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and Colbert Report (led by a character modeled on Bill O’Reilly, “a well-intentioned, poorly-informed, high-status idiot”), that rocky first year on The Late Show (“I lost my mind!”) and the joy of becoming “pure performer.”

Below is an edited version of that conversation, which you can hear in full here.

You grew up in a large, observant Catholic family. How do you think you were shaped by that?

What is the role of religion in the life of the Colbert family? Where to begin? What is the role of marble in the shape of a statue? It was so important. On a certain pedestrian level, we went to church every Sunday, but we also said our prayers. Prayers every night. Prayers all the time. Offering it up to God, if there was something wrong, if you had some trouble. Well, Mom would say, “Offer it up. Offer it up. Whatever you’re suffering through right now.” She would say, “There’s another jewel in your crown, when you get to heaven.” Because we all have crowns when we get to heaven. We’d all say, “Oh, come on, that crown’s going to be so heavy when I get up there!” My mom made Halloween costumes of the saints, whatever your saint is — like Saint Stephen would wear rags and carry a stone because he was stoned to death. It was sort of infused in every aspect of our lives. My father was an intellectual. A real one, I believe. His idea of fun was reading French humanist philosophers, like Jacques Maritain. Christian Humanists. Faith was just enormous. My father and two of my brothers died when I was younger, and that brought home the needs of the faith. The faith served my mother and myself and my family in a profound way, because you’re faced with this enormous suffering.

How do you think you were changed by that tragedy?

I have said to myself more than once, “Gosh, I hope I live long enough to figure out what that did to me.” It’s almost like that event created a labyrinth in my mind, in which I could hide when I was younger. No one could find me if I went into the labyrinth of that experience, but I was also lost in there. Comedy was a relief. Every night for years, I played either George Carlin’s Class Clown or Bill Cosby’s Very Funny Fellow or Bill Cosby’s Wonderfulness or David Frye’s Richard Nixon: A Fantasy, Steve Martin’s Wild and Crazy Guy, Let’s Get Small… Comedy albums were the greatest drug. Religion is the opiate of the masses? Religion’s got nothing on comedy in terms of its opiate abilities. Comedy was my opiate. Comedy became… not my religion, but certainly, I heard a vocation there, like I wanted to be part of that. I wanted, in a way, without consciously knowing it, I wanted to be the person who made everybody feel better, and I saw comedy as a way to do it.

You started doing comedy professionally as part of Chicago’s Second City and later on the sketch show Exit 57, then The Dana Carvey Show, then a stint on Good Morning America, of all places. How did that happen — and how did that lead you to The Daily Show?

Somebody from ABC calls me and says “Hey, somebody from Good Morning America is going from the entertainment division to the news division,” because GMA had been entertainment. They said, “As we were metaphorically sort of handing over the keys, before we locked the door between the two divisions, somebody from news said, ‘Hey, is there anybody in entertainment who kind of looks straight, but could probably look like a reporter that we send out to do comedy pieces?’ And somebody said, ‘Stephen Colbert!’” I went over there, and they didn’t want me to be funny. They didn’t really want me to be funny. I did two pieces, and then they shot down 25 pitches in a row. But they had to pay me, so I was very grateful, because I could make rent.

While I was doing that, I got a call from my agent saying, “Do you want to go meet with The Daily Show? People are looking for correspondents.” I was like, “This is my career now? Now I’m a reporter?” I didn’t know anything about The Daily Show. This was before the first anniversary with Craig Kilborn. I watched it the night before I went. I didn’t like it. But I went over there and said I just loved it. I thought it was fantastic. The people there said, “Hey, so, you were a member of the Second City?” Yeah. “And you like, wrote and produced a TV show, a sketch show?” Yeah. “You were on The Dana Carvey Show?” Yeah. “And you’ve written for Saturday Night Live?” Yeah. “And now you’re a reporter for ABC News?” I go, “Yeah.” They were like, “You’re genetically engineered to do this job!” So I get the gig and I did that for a while, off and on. They weren’t thrilled with me.

You were also doing Strangers With Candy.

The third season of Strangers, I really wasn’t around there at The Daily Show, because it was really intensive and Paul Dinello and I were writing every word and breaking every story for Strangers. During that period, this guy named Jon Stewart took over The Daily Show. I knew Jon around from Short Attention Span Theater. My wife knew Jon, which was strange. When he got the gig, she was like, “What’s Jon Leibowitz doing up there?” She knew him back when he first came up to New York. His roommate dated her roommate or something like that, so he’s this quiet guy in the corner drinking an Amstel Light all the time. “He’s not funny. What’s going on?” So she knew him before I did. When I came back for the 2000 campaign, I remember the first day I really came back to the Jon show — I didn’t do much his first year — we hit it off immediately. I could feel that he was injecting the show with purpose. He invited us to put our own thoughts, to put our own feelings, to put our own editorial position in what we were doing. We weren’t widgets to him. We were creative partners. I realized immediately that I had kind of stumbled into the best possible job on TV, in the second greatest campaign of all time. We thought, at the time, “How could it possibly be stranger than this?”

So Indecision 2000 — was that the first introduction of the character Stephen Colbert?

In the ’90s, but specifically after 9/11, in the early aughts, punditry became this tremendous cash cow, because the nation’s whipped up into an emotional froth as it well should be, and punditry harvests emotion for profit. The folks at The Daily Show — I remember [co-creator] Madeleine Smithberg saying to me, like, “We want to do something that’s pundit-based and we think it should be you.” And so we started doing a commercial called “The Colbert Report” within The Daily Show. It was just an ad for a show that didn’t exist, called The Colbert Report, and I was “Stephen Colbert.” “Some people give you the truth, some people give you opinion, well, he’ll give you neither!” I forgot it was, something like, “It’s the no-fact zone!” That was when we first came up with the “no-fact zone,” and “Colbert: It’s French… bitch.”

And Bill O’Reilly was your primary model for the character?

Oh yeah, well he’s the king! If you’re going to model punditry, there were other people, like Aaron Brown, in a way, Anderson Cooper, bright as a shiny new penny, Aaron Brown, who would kind of like mull over the news and just have his moment of somewhat Ed Murrow-esque reflection on the day, but a little bit also adjunct professor of poetry, but there was no denying was O’Reilly. The number of words that could come out of that man’s mouth, and with seeming sincerity — I’ve never been able to figure out if O’Reilly meant what he said — over the years I have different levels of belief.

What were your personal feelings about this guy?

O’Reilly? I mean, I watched him professionally. I don’t think I would’ve watched him for pleasure. I watched him professionally, he was a model [for the character]. He just seemed like a bully. I don’t like bullies. I was bullied. Like a lot of people in comedy, I was bullied when I was younger, so he just seemed like a lot of bullies I knew growing up. It’s incredibly enjoyable to inhabit that skin, because then you just give yourself over. It’s sort of easy to improvise that person, because you are giving into your appetites, including your appetite to always be right, which is one of the greatest appetites. I really enjoyed him, because I really do think he’s a well-intentioned, poorly-informed, high-status idiot, which was my model.

So how did it become a show?

 I really liked where [The Daily Show was] going with Jon, but I wanted to leave because there’s only so much I could do. Jon was always going to be the guy with the ball, and well he should be. There’s no greater runner. He’s the master, but I knew I could only do so much for him. It was a beautiful note, but only one note that I could do for him in his chorus of correspondents, and he wanted to do something with me. First, we pitched a show to NBC, which they bought the pilot idea — it would’ve been a good old sitcom — and then didn’t make the pilot. Then Comedy Central said, “Do you want to do a spinoff show of The Daily Show?” Jon and I talked about it and we said, well, “What about The Colbert Report?” We literally met for 45 minutes and — I have this page still on my Microsoft Word — and that page is just a scattering of words, but you look at it and go, “Oh yeah, that’s The Colbert Report.”

And the thesis was there from the start — truthiness, calling people out for their bullshit.

To be the bullshit. That was it. Everybody can smell bullshit. Our attempt was to manifest the turd. I am the turd in the punch bowl of our public discourse. That’s what I was trying to be. The thing we used to say is, “If you see something in politics or in entertainment or in the media, the closer it looks like me, the less you should trust it.”

You and Jon, separately and together, as much as you guys often like to downplay it, really became a primary source for a lot of people who maybe don’t consume traditional news media. When along the line did you realize that was the relationship a lot of people had with you and did it add a sense of responsibility on top of being funny?

I don’t want to speak for Jon, but I never heard him downplay, or I wouldn’t want to downplay, if people said they were informed by the work that I did. I think what I would say — and I think I’ve heard Jon say the same thing — is that we’re not downplaying where people got their information, but that’s not our intention. The information is there so that we can do the jokes on this information that’s very interesting to us. You can’t do these kinds of shows — The Late Show or the shows that I did before — without caring. Without giving a damn what you’re talking about. I mean, you can, but boy, that’ll get to pretty grinding work if you don’t have some emotional attachment to it. We’re running our jokes off of something that people care about and that is given a status of importance because it’s in the news. If people say that we influence them, that’s fine. I can’t dictate how people feel and what people get from the work that I did. I would only say that’s not the intention. Our intention or my intention and my responsibility always remains the same. It’s to tell jokes.

So it’s April 2014 and David Letterman announces he’s going to retire. How soon did you think, “I’m interested in this”?

Well, the very first thing I said to my agent [James “Baby Doll” Nixon] when I found out that they were making some overtures — it wasn’t a certain thing — was, “Baby Doll,” I said, “Baby Doll, the last thing I ever thought I’d do next is something harder.” And he said, “This won’t be harder! It’ll be easier. It’ll be easier, because you don’t have to do the character or anything like that.” Well. God bless him, he was wrong. It is a harder job. It is a harder job. But, as I said, I was wondering if they’d ever ask me. It was not my ambition, because I thought, I have always been something of a selective taste. I’m an acquired taste. That’s why cable seemed right for me. Do they really want to take a risk on me? On CBS? Because they know they’re higher, right? And Les was like, “No, this is what we want. We want to do something different.” My sister Mary was in town, and I was like, “Listen, I’ve got this thing, it’s all happening very fast, it’s possible.” And she just smiled. And I went, “Ugh! If I end up getting this gig, and this thing ends up being successful, somebody at CBS should send you flowers. I’m taking it because you just smiled.”

How was the handoff? Was Dave friendly, helpful, whatever?

He was so nice. Dave had always been really nice to me when I would come over. I was lucky enough to come on his show 10 times. A nice round number. Oh God, I always loved coming on! I’d go home and watch the show and just watch Dave’s face, to see, is he was really interested in what I was saying? Did I really make him laugh? That was a huge joy, if you could make Dave, for real, laugh. Really surprise him with a story. That was the greatest feeling in the world. So he’d always been really nice to me, and as soon as I got the gig and it was announced, he called me up. Actually, my assistant just found the transcript of our conversation. As soon as I got off, I wrote down everything that we said to each other so that I could remember it, and she found it the other day. Shortly before he left, I said, “Can I come talk to you?” And he’s like, “Sure.” I came over and I met him in one of these offices on this floor, and just had a couple bottles of water, and we sat there and talked and I asked him a ton of questions. He was extremely gracious about it. At one point, I said, “Do you mind me asking you all these questions?” And he said, “Nobody’s ever asked me these questions before.” And I said, “Really, never?” And he said, “Who would know to ask and who’d care what the answer is?” I was asking things about how to play this space and what his decisions have been — literally, “Why’d you put your desk there? Where do you put your producers? How do you deal with the balcony as opposed to the floor?” I’ve always thought that must be hard to deal with two separate audiences like that, because this theater is split up in a very interesting way, as I’ve discovered. “Where do you hide from your producers when you don’t want to be found?” That made him laugh. He was like, “I’ve got a great place for you and told me it later.” I haven’t used it yet.

You didn’t want a Late Show showrunner at first.

Absolutely. Why would I need a showrunner? I ran my old show. I’ll run the new one.

So eventually what made you recognize the need?

I lost my mind! What are you talking about? I couldn’t sleep at night, because A) clearly, aesthetically, or in terms of having an editorial intention, the show was not coalescing. People didn’t know what they were going to get. They didn’t know what it was about, because neither did I. I’d thrown out the baby with the bathwater in trying to be my character. I also threw out, kind of, my interests, which led to the character, which was politics, or just what happened today? What is the conversation that’s happening today?

What were you doing instead? 

I don’t know. Very light, small stories. Maybe one big story, but we weren’t telling it in a story form. Just a couple of jokes and then we’d move on. Whereas, what we really are, as my exec Tom keeps reminding me, “Well, we’re storytellers!” We can’t just do one joke. We want to tell the story to the audience of why we even wanted to tell one joke about this thing, or why it’s interesting. It might be something that is the conversation. But also, we came to this realization that we’re not there at the old show because, I don’t know, we were often not doing the story that Jon did that night. We were doing other stories or stories with a little bit of a longer build to them, like more long-read kind of stories. We had to inform the audience a lot. We were breaking news to the audience unintentionally. Here, we learned that that’s not the job. Really, what works in one of these shows — at least, in my experience — is I’m going to talk to you about the thing you’ve already been talking about today and we’re going to give you our take on this thing that everybody’s been talking about, to give you some context, and maybe calm you down about it. That took a long time for for us to figure out, and we didn’t have the time or the space to figure that out until Chris Licht came on. Until I had an honest-to-God showrunner.

April 2016, you now have a showrunner, so you can focus more on the comedy?

Purely. Our deal was, he said, “Any moment you’re not thinking about comedy, I’ve failed.” And I said, “Let’s shake on it. You want the job?” You can boil down a two-hour conversation to that sentence. It’s a deal.

Last year, you were not an Emmy nominee; this year you’re an Emmy nominee, your primary competition has flipped and people can’t seem to get enough of it. How are you different?

I hope so. I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of things that have changed. I have an even deeper respect for Kimmel and Fallon and Conan and the people who came before us. I always respected their comedy, but I really respect them professionally. I didn’t know what they were doing until I got here. I’m in awe of a guy like Dave, doing 32 years, or Kimmel — what is Kimmel, now, 17 years? 15 years. Like that. I’ve always been friends with those guys. In late night now, people get disappointed that there isn’t a feud, but now I actually have a deeper respect for all of them than I did before. I’ve learned to trust my staff, because, being a control freak is mild form of distrust, if you know what I mean. Doing the live shows — we’ve done 17 or so over the past year — made me trust the staff and goddamnit, they’ve just killed it. They’ve done a fantastic job. I so admire what they’ve achieved and how the show now is far more bottom up, how they bring the ideas. I’m so grateful for the work that they’ve done. I’ve allowed myself to become sort of a pure performer now. I don’t try to produce the show in my head. People ask me, what’s going to happen today? I say, I just work here. I’ve been able to let go of the reins of control to — I don’t know if I can say to a large degree, that’s for someone else to say — but for me, it feels like an enormous degree. I walk into a meeting and Chris might say to me, “You’re not part of this meeting.” I go, “OK, I’ll leave,” which I think was a shock to people, because there was no meeting I was not in before. For years, for a decade. Letting go and just enjoying being on stage with the audience. That’s kind of where I realized why I took this job. I wanted to change as a performer. I wanted to change what my responsibilities were on a daily basis. I just wanted to go out there and do jokes for people. They might be about things, like I said, people think aren’t significant, but I want to go out there and do jokes for people. I want to go out there and be interested in my guest. The last two years has allowed me to do that. I could not do that for that first year. Chris gave us the space to do it, and then me trusting my staff allowed me to let go and just be the guy on stage. That’s the only way I could reveal myself, I could be myself for the audience.

And are you enjoying it more?

Oh, I love it! I love this job. I couldn’t love it more. This feels, right now, like the first year of the old gig. There’s a sense of excitement, and I hope, I hope that is throughout the whole building, that people feel like they’ve created something new, that wasn’t here a year ago and they paid their dues in that first year. It was hard on everybody. It’s just as hard if no one’s watching.

#Caps #Colbert #Comeback #Emmys #Hosting #Jokes #QA #Stephen #Wanted #Year

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