People who are successful should never forget that its 90 per cent luck. Youve got to be an eejit to be an egomaniac. I had my glory years - Blankety Blank, the talk show, when I was winning every award going.
I really enjoyed playing Vinny Vedecci, the Italian talk show host. He was the first character I ever came up with where I gave him a name and a way of dressing.
Its fun for me to go on other folks talk shows. When youve endured the ups and downs and tensions and pitfalls of hosting, being a guest is a piece of angel food.
I'm not against TV; I don't go on the morning talk shows because I'm not invited. If I was, I might go.
Hosting a show, even a talk show or a game show, there's so much business you have to conduct. There's so much guiding you have to do.
I get asked to do stupid things like panel shows and talk shows and things.
FM signals and those of broadcast television...travel out to space at the speed of light. Any eavesdropping alien civilization will know all about our TV programs (probably a bad thing), will hear all our FM music (probably a good thing), and know nothing of the politics of AM talk-show hosts (probably a safe thing).
The talk shows are stuffed full of sufferers who have regained their health--congressmen who suffered through a serious spell of boozing and skirt-chasing, White House aides who were stricken cruelly with overweening ambition, movie stars and baseball players who came down with acute cases of wanting to trash hotel rooms while under the influence of recreational drugs. Most of them have found God, or at least a publisher.
I cannot imagine where we would have been without BET. Many like me who operate in black America can only get our balanced story told nationally on BET talk shows.
What was really great with Eleanor Roosevelt - I mean, of course, we all have this stereotypical, really satirical almost, version of how she speaks. What was really interesting to me was I found various radio and TV appearances of hers, but there was one talk show that I saw her on; she was the only woman, it was all men. They were talking about policy - I think it was after she was First Lady. I think it was more in the U.N. days.
I'm reminded of an interview Larry King had on his talk show with one of Michael Jackson's sisters. He's talking about how many millions she made on her latest record, and all of a sudden, she looks at him tearfully and says, "Larry, you know, I'm not interested in money or sales or songs. I'm a spiritual person." And I thought, "Oh my god..."
If you listen to the talk shows, which are rabid right-wing, and very interesting, an important fact about the United States, they reach a huge audience. And they're very uniform. So right wing, I don't think you can even find an analog in your, but they reach a mass audience, and their view is that the corporations are liberal. Their appeal to the population is, "the country is run by liberals, they own the corporations, they run the government, they own the media, and they don't care about us ordinary people."
In fact, for the majority of the population, wages and incomes have stagnated and conditions have gotten worse. So they are asking, "what did I do wrong?" And the answer that the talk show host is giving them is convincing, in it's internal logic. It's saying, "what's wrong is the rich liberals own everything, run everything, they don't care about you; therefore, distrust them" and so on.
About a year after I moved to Los Angeles, I decided I wanted to be a joke writer for a late night talk show. So I met with a late night joke writer and he told me that I should start by doing stand-up comedy, because that would really hone my sense of humor and joke writing ability. Eventually I took a stand-up class and a few months later I had a seven-minute act.
It's like being a stand-up comedian is what leads to being a talk-show host. That life is not cut out for a woman, being on the road at these disgusting hotels. What girls want to do that? Gross guys want to do that. I think that the dearth in female comics is just the nature of the business, but there certainly isn't a dearth anymore, so I think it's just silly.
I've always been willing to take risks and chances. Often I'm on talk shows and hosts will ask 'How do you feel about it, when people say you're controversial?' And I say that, 'I think if I stop being controversial, I wouldn't be doing my job.
It's fascinating to see how things have changed. Basically, every time the US government gets off the soapbox of the Sunday-morning talk shows, the average American's support for the surveillance revelations grows.
I look up to Jimmy Fallon. He hosts talk shows as a fan himself, and that's how I do it. When the celebrities come in, I'm excited that they're there. It's not just like a formal, 'Hey, how are ya?' It's like, 'Dude, what the hell! So happy to see you!' That's what Jimmy Fallon does every time.
If I was doing a talk show, I would do the kind of show that comes on just once a month, with amazing guests.
Talk shows are proof that conversation is dead.
One reason I avoid the American TV talk show circuit, when I'm over there, is that the tabloids and the gossip mill are always churning with new, true, or untrue stories about new loves, old loves, pending marriages, divorces, trial separations, flings and affairs with people of every description. I'm not into any of that.
I don't do research for my novels. Obviously, in my other line of work as a reporter and a columnist, I've had the opportunity to get to know both social workers and TV talk-show hosts.
I've never told anyone this, in an effort to run from my past and disguise it, I got rid of all of the scrapbooks my mother kept going back to when I was a baby. Truly. So that's why whenever talk show hosts or a producer asks for these pictures, there are barely any. My sister had a few, but that's it, and this was before digital. I've never told anyone that, but that's the truth.
Sir Julian Huxley, one of the world's leading evolutionists, head of UNESCO, descendant of Thomas Huxley - Darwin's bulldog - said on a talk show, 'I suppose the reason we leaped at The Origin of Species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores.'.
When I was younger I wanted to be a big movie star who'd get to be funny on talk shows and then I wanted to retire and write science fiction.
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