The one thing that really rubbed me the wrong way about being at the taping of The Late Show is the rather adamant insistance that you laugh at everything. Seriously: they have an Alec Baldwin video at the start that basically says the audience should laugh at anything they think might be funny. I understand why they do that, but the problem with laying that at the start is that you wind up getting these moments where Dave's trying to be serious, and the audience keeps making nervous chuckles because they've been trained to believe that they should laugh at anything that even looks like it might be funny. That kept happening during Dave's interview of Lindsey last night, and I kept wanting to reach through time and tell the folks in the audience to shut the hell up.
Interestingly, the only reason I knew Lindsey Lohan was going to be on Letterman was a promo during the NCAA Basketball Championship Game on Monday night, and the only reason I was watching that was because I was hosting trivia at a bar and had to work around the game. For some reason, I remembered that this afternoon and went to look for the video. It was a surprisingly powerful interview. Letterman knew he could've gone in a certain direction (and had the ammo right there at the desk). The file photo of Lohan on the old show as "Things Found On The D Train" was great. I think he liked the fact that Lohan refused to go into detail on the rehab issue despite him going back to that well a couple times, and he decided to change tacks, which caught Lohan off-guard. The more honest he became, the more she seemed to drop her guard. When he complemented her about showing up despite being how much he'd serve up on her, the audience's sustained applause went on for a good 15 seconds until Dave (quite irritated), told the audience, "Alright, alright! That's enough!" These were two flawed people, and Letterman decided he was going to go ahead and peel back a little more than he normally would (the reference to psychiatry, which was followed by Dave grinning into the camera, was rather amusing). Which made the whole thing just a little more special. It reminded me of when Teri Garr was on the show, and he came over to help her, and you just saw a different Dave: the one that made most of us fall for him. The one question I have: I wonder how the decision to not have her come out with a price tag on her dress went down, since Dave lit up like a kid on Christmas when she told him. Did the staff really run out of time and weren't able to get to Letterman in time, or did they decide not to? I remember reading about Penn & Teller's appearances on Late Night a few years back and how Letterman told Robert Morton that he didn't want to know what they were going to do, only that they had his permission to do anything. Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEF53jCmL3c -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
