Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

funnyman

mediabistro.com has a fun interview with Stephen Colbert, “senior correspondent” for The Daily Show, talking about his career (little-known fact: he had a brief stint as correspondent for Good Morning America) and the behind-the-scenes workings on The Daily Show. (“So What Do You Do, Stephen Colbert?” - 05/06/03)

…for so many people The Daily Show is a primary source of news. How you feel about that?
I don’t buy it, necessarily. For two reasons. I think you have to have some handle on what’s happening in the world to get our jokes. Because we only do the most cursory explanation of what the issue is in order to set up our punch lines. We don’t talk in depth about any stories. I suppose you could watch our show and sort of get a sense of what’s going on in the world, but you’d also be missing half of our joke. Half of our joke is the way news is reported, not just what the news is.

Colbert also touches on planning/writing process for the show — a process that sounds a lot like working for a “real” news organization:

Writing for The Daily Show is wonderful because as a correspondent you have to come up with a particular take on a specific issue. There is an actual event in reality that you’re spoofing or an actual event in reality that you’re talking about … And I think one of the reasons that it is a little easier to turn out material … is that you can’t feel precious about it. Because you know there’s another one tomorrow and we’ve got to get this damn thing on by five o’clock. It has got to be written by three, and the story just broke this morning. So, you can’t be like egotistical about it and be precious about your words. Which is probably one of the reasons why it’s most liberating.