The Death & Future of Late Night: How Chasing Trends Ruined Comedy

i'm not saying my other my compatriots are in the dark ages but well come on do the math you know what i'm saying more and more today the hatred towards late night tv hosts is felt ellen is culturally canceled youtube commenters can't stop hating on jimmy fallon's supposed fake laugh i'm so sorry i just can't stop laughing dude and jimmy kimmel has been canceled on twitter for the same blackface multiple times although there was a time when late night comedy was a warm place in america's heart so what happened although johnny carson was not the first person to do this tv format following jack parr he was the first to really capture america's attention so unanimously during his time as host of the tonight show everyone watched in 1992 johnny carson's final week as host he received 19.45 million viewers the next time a host would break 10 million views was jimmy fallon's first week premiere as tonight show host in 2014 right now many hate on these shows for two main reasons which are that one they're essentially irritating and dislikable things about the host or two that this is simply an old medium that we don't need anymore i've always liked the medium and with all things i think that you can do it well or not well and currently what is being pushed to the front of our viewership is the not good version it makes sense that in this new world people want something different which explains the success of long-form conversation podcasts like joe rogans who gets a hundred million downloads a month and a billion downloads a year making him literally the most successful form of episodic media in human history however i think something deeper is happening than just the idea that talk shows are a dead medium doomed to be bad no matter what you're i just don't know how you got to planet of the apes from our trumpet player speed of light conan years ago did a web exclusive long-form interview sideshow called serious jibber-jabber and it proved him to be a strong conversationalist as the show was basically a podcast however it is inherently different than how he performs on his main show which i also love this is important to note that long-form conversation and talk show conversation are simply two different art forms and performances both of which can be done well or poorly [Laughter] you know conan um here's the deal i'm happy to come on your show i'm happy to talk about the movie uh get hard i'm happy to talk about you know anything but i don't want to talk about my personal life okay i think a large issue with our current iteration of late night aside from our new hosts many flaws is that corporatism and executives seem to be deeply intertwined with our modern comedy pushing for things that they think will work and are safe choices this is why it makes sense from a business standpoint to get fallon on the trending page by playing the same game over and over yet again with a new celebrity instead of trying something new and avant-garde like the old late night fallon bits which were much more experimental and wacky david letterman and his successor conan o'brien handled this medium better than anyone and there are key strengths that they learned over the years that their peers simply lack making their shows feel disingenuous in an internet age one thing that may turn young people off of these types of shows is how grandiose they are and self-serious they seem to be without delivering because if james corden or jimmy fallon do some awful jokes clearly targeted at middle america older people but with this giant suit and tie with long silk curtains backdrop young people will be left thinking you want me to laugh at this of amazon's own original products made for their amazon basics line of electronics have been bursting into flames yes but free shipping if you've got prime so you've got to take the good with the back i mean i've heard of kindle fire but this is ridiculous wow this is a disaster however this is an issue letterman avoided even in the era when these shows were still universally accepted there's been a lot made of the fact that you're moving to 11 30 and you have to appeal to sort of a more mainstream audience that your wacky quirky sense of humor may not translate that's what some of the naysayers want to think are you going to change the tone at all of the show to appeal to a broader range of people you just do what you can do and see how it works with a combination of self-deprecation and a lack of interest in celebrity culture letterman and conan both made a mockery of this lavish medium their whole careers what do you think it's not racist it's just stupid where johnny carson would walk out as america's dad from his rainbow curtain to the call of johnny letterman and conan would make fools of themselves and how ridiculous this setup is almost in protest to the idea that they are deserving of something like this but now our mainstream current hosts seem to roll around in the fun and glamour of having a show like this but miss all the opportunities to push against it for comedy it could be hilarious that colbert's studio is massive like a catholic cathedral covered in his own face until when it comes up it's just not really played for comedy and is rather an aspect of the show the show has always been formatted as monologue a signature desk side comedy bit the guess and the musical act and within these chapters of the late show dance there is opportunity for the host to create comedy experiment and showcase their personality and why you should be watching them colbert is the most puzzling to me in this regard because i found steven to be much much stronger a performer on his first show the colbert report before he accepted the late show as letterman's replacement and if you watched the earlier clips of steven's late show even that was much more reminiscent of his comedy central self than what we have now which is often less funny and more repetitive in an interview with jerry seinfeld a 2015 bearded stephen colbert reveals that after nine years of doing the colbert report he was ready to retire and that is why he left his show because i've been doing this show for nine years and my body has started burning my teeth for fuel only after making this decision did he get offered the late show gig which he felt he could not turn down i gotta say though following david letterman that must be intimidating yeah you must have some balls the implications of this are huge as with more context we now know we aren't watching a man who left his show to scale up in life but rather a man who was ready to put down the torch only to reignite it moments later it's hard to believe that this guy is actually five years younger than this guy on the rapport colbert was a well-polished machine playing his alter-ego character who was a republican self-obsessed narcissist he basked in his applause and made his guest wait for him as he walked across the screen and he would often play with the interview format by interrupting guests with a sharp wit for comedic effect colbert has made political humor the main staple of not just his monologue but his whole show's identity as even when he comes to the desk it feels like a continuation of what he was doing moments ago essentially creating a trumpethon tv network this has allowed him to quickly rise to the top even beating fallon however while fallon got to the top falling on repetitive expected celebrity videos designed to trend on youtube colbert is essentially doing the same thing by using a topic as salacious as trump this is in a sense the antithesis of conan and letterman's self-deprecation that kept them grounded or letterman's refusal to adjust to the mainstream it is also extremely ironic because colbert early on made a rapport style joke about how indulging in trump comedy is like snacking on junk food and he shouldn't allow himself to overindulge before it becomes an unhealthy addiction okay anyway one is enough um that is the only trump story i'll be treating myself to tonight well maybe just one more you know and now that it's obvious that her hosts are beholden to ratings and numbers which are maintained by chasing trends colbert has firmly forced the entire competition ecosystem into keeping up with this subpar political humor comedy has gone in two completely directions you know there are people that have been it's all about i mean all about politics the entire show is politics and so when you see the roundup for what they talked about it's blank took down donald trump today so and so roasted you know uh this person the administration it's all that and some of it's very clever and very good but it's all that and then there's another kind of comedy which is completely escapist let's play games let's have fun and then i feel like i just found my own thing that i like which is really silly comedy that i've been doing since 1993 where i'm doing the show and maybe someone interrupts me and it's an old coal miner this used to be a completely separate world of its own from late night where jon stewart and colbert were masters of what they did but on their own island but now that these worlds are increasingly less separated both the networks and us as an audience look at jimmy kimmel trevor noah bill maher james corden all as part of the same genre as direct competitors which is not a good thing i actually believe fallon when he says he never used to pay attention to ratings and that he was really just having fun all the way to the top of his tonight show success all until the executives wanted him to pay more attention once colbert came encroaching in it is a major strength that colbert interviews politicians and intellectuals so well and brings this discourse to a mainstream audience but he falls short majorly when it comes to the comedy of his monologue celebrity interviews and having a distinct show identity with desk side comedy after years of doing his alter ego character him transitioning to himself is a bit confusing to the audience as we don't really know exactly who he is other than witty and political in celebrity interviews he's really bad at creating comedy or chemistry and i think this is a result of taking someone who used to play a character who made a mockery of celebrity and now he has to sit still and play it serious to entertain america but i find that steven has an inability to care about the guest or relate to them and often shows himself to be self-aggrandizing in an awkward way that may work for the studio audience but falls flat at home right yeah do you know who the number one guy like knight is right now you that's right it's important to remember that this is not so much a conversation as it is a conversation performance and the host's job is to play to the guest and what they want to do as best as possible with fallon i don't think his laugh is fake so much as i think he is simply just that guy the guy who loves everyone and wants them to know but just listing out what is so great about somebody to their face does not leave us with chemistry or comedy and just feels like an infomercial you're so great you're great you crushed it the host's job isn't really to ask good questions but rather to be a good reactor and only talk in a way that aids them when bill burr comes to conan and has salacious takes conan knows how to either egg him on or push back against his premises not to shut him down but to highlight what's funny about what is being said and if anything let bill double down you know how i would do it what i would i would randomly sink cruise ships yeah what what wait a minute yeah let's hear him out why would you randomly think cruise ships because you'd get like 2500 to 3 000 people of whack right and i don't think i think it's a good mix of people to get rid of ironically i think laughing at the guest is a vitally important part of the show but jimmy's over saturation of this with a lack of any interesting questions has caused audiences to grow numb to this because once something begins to feel artificial an audience can tell and start to size you up just because we hear the studio audience having a good time because they're in the presence of celebrity that does not mean we will automatically laugh at home jimmy kimmel and james corden are like the [ __ ] yin-yang twins of stalling culture where they represent two sides of the same coin of redundant media jimmy kimmel represents normie culture being the squeaky clean generic box of cereal dictionary definition of a talk show host with no discernible personality to his show in any way only creating comedy by regurgitating and reacting to the pop ethos around him emperor lemon did an entire deep dive on jimmy kimmel and i highly recommend it and i know he came from the man show and it kind of makes sense that he has weird clips like this from his past squeeze maybe it would be easier if you put your mouth on yes oh my god women will only have to deal with harassment all the time at every other place they go even though he's supposedly matured and is better now his poor interview skills and airheadedness still lead to weird moments like this what are you supporting tonight i don't know i'd have to look in later on we'll look you'll go through my pants and we'll see what i'm wearing meanwhile james corden represents the all too common issue in media of being a copy of bad pop culture essentially acting as a jimmy fallon clone following the formula of repetitive bits designed to trend on youtube and thriving almost entirely off of celebrity culture and fallon is an overexcited golden retriever who can completely ruin the momentum of a joke by asking a stupid question but at least he's authentically himself yes because i don't take a nap because i need one i i just love it's my favorite thing you like it better than sleep you better it's sleep is like the ultimate nap you really that's stupid you just said that there's something to say such a dumb thing to say and colbert has the most interview issues of all ranging from sometimes being alienating such as when he pointed out that 50 cent is rich over and over again despite his own 50 million dollar fortune you got two rolls royces did you buy yourself some new houses too you just did something in monaco do you like rich people do you like hanging out with british people you're a tycoon who else is a tycoon is donald trump oh brother this guy stinks he is often a bad listener which ruins what the guest was trying to set up but then you didn't you didn't listen okay i'm not doing the show again what do you think about that he can even be narcissistic and try to put down the guest in a completely off-putting way this is like a vacation i just asked you one question and and we're we're how many is we're nine minutes in to your answer they turn off the cameras halfway to that horse story it's just all of this but i understand you wanted to be a serious writer like what happened to the series i'm answering your questions now the hell is that but worst of all he just seems to be overly aware that he is the number one slot in late night right now and because of this he does not play to the electricity of the moment and will even shut down a comedy premise if it is somewhat non-pc i was doing a joke i go i saw this lesbian walker to a rest restaurant and me they'd be like oh my god it's like it was undeniable that it was a lesbian yeah she was dressed like john goodman on roseanne yeah she was a construction worker she wasn't her hands weren't like as clean as mine it's just like while in comedy you can have a comedy duo of a straight man and comedian where the straight man pushes against the comedian's stances for comedic effect as conan does with bilber what colbert is doing here is not that he is more so just not allowing the joke to even happen feigning ignorance to what's being said and because colbert isn't laughing the audience isn't laughing and then in turn we don't laugh at home either in their prime these shows are supposed to be fun and unexpected the host and the guest are taking the show's format of promoting products whether it's a new movie or an album and they're tearing it up to have fun with the format and ride the electricity of the moment in other words it's okay if the interview goes off of the rails if it's in service of entertainment or [Music] comedy [Music] [Laughter] all right this 11 minute bradley cooper clip is by far the hardest i have ever laughed watching jimmy fallon where jimmy and bradley attempt to talk about something as tragic and dark as the elephant man you know what it's not funny this guy was horribly deformed let's see what's good it's really it's not funny at all it's all it's horrible and the poor guy we're laughing about him but only after forgetting that they were wearing these absolutely inappropriate visor prop hats from this segment before the movie there's prosthetic but i love that we still have these on but uh but it just feels good tell me it doesn't feel good they then are trapped in a loop of attempting to start this portion of the interview over and over again as they simply cannot take off the hats as it would ruin the editing continuity i'll just i'll cut to zoom in on this and then we'll get it around this is based on it you know we got it we got it we got it you can feel the visceral laughter from the audience as they feel like they're part of a comedy club seeing something unexpected and hilarious they get to be a part of how to do this [Applause] rather than just cheering for the mere fact that celebrity is before them this is what conan and letterman were so good at creating moments with their guests by playing to their personalities and running with the moment by being a strong listener instead of just phoning it in like kimmel or only thinking about the next question not really listening at all like colbert this is where i really have to hand it to seth meyers because where he is not that funny of a conversationalist himself you can tell that he's very respected and he's good at making the guest feel comfortable and playing to what they want to do creating a very organic atmosphere which only makes sense as he's a massive comedy fan and was the head writer of one of the most beloved eras of saturday night live there ever was as for host guest chemistry and not doing what is expected craig ferguson may have been the absolute best at this where he not only had the most avant-garde version of a show like this but he tore up the blue cards with the show's pre-made questions every episode to have an off-the-cuff conversation and even disrespected the sacredness of his show by sitting this casually letterman even knew how to get a joke out of the musical guest segment whether it was him chasing down future come on hey don't be like that now we'll never be able to open the teen center hey tyler how you doing good okay yeah that's that's good thank you very much you guys ever been to bend oregon i don't know i don't worry about it it's fine we're asking every drummer whether or not they owned their drums or if they were rentals boy those are great are those yours of those rentals are those your drums great cool nice drums how are you good looking drum thank you very much we have established that the issue is not that this style of show is outdated and doomed to fail but rather our current iteration of them are filled with missed opportunities and chase trends whether or not it is political culture or celebrity culture and that these shows should leave more room for play in taking chances it is still worth asking what about the future will this format ever change or need to change in order to work conan has already thought of this himself and to his own volition scaled down his one hour show to a half hour program with only a single guest he had the least ego of all realizing that in the youtube generation it is better to have a more accessible short show that people can love he also started his own podcast where you can listen to him have longer conversations which now have been praised in variety magazine this was taken the wrong way by many as the podcast industry has been huge and under-reported for a long time and conan by no means is the real trailblazer of this moment however it's worth noting that he is a trailblazer in the late night circuit for pushing things forward and this is a part of that it feels significant that the guy who is best at talking to his guests on a performed tv format would also want to do extra work on the side having longer less artificial conversations online in this podcast format you can attain this kind of connection you can't attain any other way so i absolutely love it the biggest reason he scaled down his show is that it leaves more opportunity for them to do his conan without borders version of the show where he travels the world and makes comedy in new countries while learning the culture and connecting to those around him what's incredible is that he seemingly has fans everywhere he goes and they love him for his character but what's more incredible is the laughter he gets out of people who have zero idea who he is wherever he goes he has the charisma to make people laugh and to me this glaringly points out the difference between him and his competitors do you really think you could put stephen colbert or jimmy kimmel into the middle of china and make a random bystander laugh i do not at best i think that they would make humor about the foreign world around them and find something to point at versus how conan manages to make the world point at him a few years ago conan even helped his comedian friend pete holmes start his own late night show that came on before his own it didn't last long but you can tell that it had authenticity and some of this forward thinking already packed into it from pete's lack of a desk to the complete and utter refusal of taking itself seriously this is beautiful by the way i haven't seen your set yeah in person yes yet this is a fantastic steak restaurant this is the best steak restaurant in seattle beautiful stonework that they've done in fact almost every episode featured another comedian absolutely roasting pete to his face and him loving every moment of it you're dressed like like you're you're the ceo of a pumpkin patch pete actually laughed a ton almost to a fallen level but the main difference is that in youtube comments you can actually find people who love it because when you listen to the laughs pete gets it sounds more like you're listening to a room full of people eager to see what happens next this is completely different from the canned applause of jimmy fallon and james corden or the self-seriousness of stephen colbert however there are rays of hope for the future even outside of conan and his camp when i first saw the promos that you were running years ago on the vice land outlet thing i thought these guys this is it this is the future this is the way it ought to be and it makes me so happy that it has come to pass that way for both of you this is bro wow jesus and miro are an amazing duo and their vice land show to me was the perfect reaction to this ever-changing market where they were loose cannons improvising drinking on screen commenting on things from the internet and declaring that yes they are a part of the late night family by saying more show a late night no more show at late night this is why it is so ironic and painful to me to see that already after them scaling up in their career switching from viceland to showtime that the quality of their show has already gone down where before it was jesus and miro [ __ ] around with themselves as if no one was listening now it is them with a studio audience who largely does not laugh as hard as i used to in my bedroom watching their viceland show now in this age of quarantine content i'm seeing more and more people create shows like this by themselves from home and the pressure will only continue to be on our mainstream hosts in this age the future of our late night comedy's success will not lie only with who is funniest but most importantly who dares to be the most authentic this is zane berry from tall skeleton have a nice night

Channel: Tall Skeleton

Views: 3,711,993

Keywords: late night, eddie burback, eddie burbak, conan, letterman, craig ferguson, jimmy fallon, bill burr, norm macdonald, james corden, steven colbert, stephen colbert, donald trump, pop culture, pete holmes, seth meyers, knee of the curve, desus and mero, desus & mero, hot ones, video essay, nerdwriter, joe rogan, podcast, commentary, emplemon

Id: a1mH-WLKt74

Length: 26min 38sec (1598 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 16 2020