The Hollywood Reporter has an interview out today with Jerry Seinfeld in which the comedian essentially drops his pants and takes a dump all over modern TV, but he drops most of his load all over modern late night television, which he said leave him feeling sad, which he says is part of the reason why he launched “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”
I felt like the talk show needs its next iteration, and I don’t know if this was it. This was a personal experiment of mine. Talk shows as we know them are performances, and so I wanted to try to do one without an audience, clips and something to promote.
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I have to say that most talk shows leave me with a sad feeling, and I don’t think that’s the goal. When I was a comic in the 1980s, I was on the road somewhere every day, and I’d get back to the hotel and it was Carson and Letterman, and I looked forward to that all day. Those shows made me happy. I’m not quite sure what happened. It’s probably just proliferation and fragmentation.
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These shows are promotional vehicles for the industry. They’re not talk shows, per se, they’re kind of setup talk shows. “I’m gonna ask you this, then you say that.” The shows are pretty cheap, too, so until it becomes an unworkable business model, I don’t think you’ll see change. Same as the movie business. Until this thing implodes from within, which feels like it’s not too far off.
While Seinfeld does have some valid points, the late night shows have always been promotional vehicles for the industry — they just probably weren’t as shameless and overt as they are now, not to mention that there were fewer shows back in the day and the hosts of those shows were arguably better.
Regardless, it’s still fun to gossip and speculate about them all. And Leno sucks, obvs.
(Hollywood Reporter via Splitsider)
