Just when you thought it couldn’t get any crazier… Sacha Baron Cohen shows up. So far, in his Cohen’s epic world tour to promote Bruno, Cohen has showed up in character all over Europe - and now he’s brought his act to America. We’ve already seen Sacha as a well-endowed bull and some kind of not-so-well-endowed pink-clad furry, so you know Bruno had to bring it big time for the Los Angeles premiere at Grauman’s Chinese theater. So what did he do? He came riding down Hollywood Boulevard on some king of large, mirrored tank. That tank must have cost a fortune to … rent? Buy? Lease? How in the world do get a mirrored tank? Bruno left the furry costumes at home, instead opting to wear some kind of sketchy faux-military uniform which looks like a low-cut vest and Daisy Dukes. Oh, Bruno. I was kind of hoping for another furry costume.

But that’s not all! Bruno also showed up last night at the new Tonight Show, all to be interviewed by Conan O’Brien. And when I say “interviewed” I mean “give Conan some kind of crazy strip tease on his desk”. At the beginning of the interview, Conan tried to compliment Bruno by saying he has a “sexy whisper” but honestly, Bruno is starting to sound a little bit like Austin Powers. After some more talking, Conan asks Bruno to dance for him. Lady Gaga comes over the speakers, and Bruno then dry-humps the desk (that poor desk). Dancing on the desk, then Bruno straddles Conan and … dry humps him. That poor Conan. While I admire Sacha’s commitment to character - and really, I do, he’s a performance artist at this point - the whole thing is a little over-the-top. But that’s how you do performance art, Joaquin Phoenix.

Photo credit: Fame Pictures

As the years go by, I find it very difficult to watch late-night programming. The only people I really enjoy are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and too often I catch the reruns of those shows the next day. I don’t even remember the last time I stayed up to watch David Letterman or Jay Leno, much less Conan O’Brien. Out of all of those guys, Letterman is the only one who really makes me chuckle. Jay and Conan, not so much. It’s not that I’m a snob - I get why Jay is popular, with his middle-of-the-road, G-rated comedy. And Conan with his collegial, prank-and-pratfall sense of humor - it’s just not my humor. I get more enjoyment out of humor that’s bitter, sardonic, crass and dirty. It’s not for everyone, and if I were trying to make a hit late-night show, I might go for Jay Leno or Conan O’Brien.

So it’s surprising to me that critics didn’t seem to enjoy Conan’s debut on The Tonight Show last night. Didn’t they know what they were getting? They signed up for humor that would offend no one, and what they got was humor that didn’t amuse anyone. US Weekly has a rundown on what the nation’s television critics are saying about Conan’s debut:

Conan O’Brien made his Tonight Show debut Monday — but critics weren’t exactly roaring with laughter.

“After one show, let’s say he’s a work in progress,” wrote Randee Dawn of The Hollywood Reporter.

“O’Brien commanded the stage, but seemed more comfortable laughing it up with erstwhile sidekick-turned-announcer Andy Richter than in interacting with his 380 audience members.”

O’Brien’s opening monologue mostly consisted of “sketch upon sketch” — notes The New York Post’s TV critic Linda Stasi — most of which were “at times, painfully unfunny.”

In one scene, O’Brien — who spent the last 17 years as host of NBC’s Late Night — was shown jogging across the country from New York to Los Angeles. “I think I’ve timed this move perfectly,” he quipped. “I’m on a last-place network, I moved to a state that’s bankrupt and The Tonight Show is sponsored by General Motors.”

Other clips showed him giving a tram tour of Universal Studios, sitting in the last row of a Lakers game (to show how well he’s acclimated to L.A.) and paying homage to his beat-up 1992 Ford Taurus.

“Again,” said Stasi, “not a million big laughs.”

David Hinckley of New York’s The New York Daily News said the bits “lasted too long.” Said Hinckley, “He’s from the world of sketch comedy, not monologues, and he sticks with an idea as long as he feels something funny could happen.”

Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly got a chuckle out of the sketches.

“All in all, a large-scale, impressive debut,” he wrote. “But we all know that success in late-night depends on the long haul — Conan knows this as well as anyone. So now I want to see how he follows up his glitzy debut.”

Added USA Today’s Robert Bianco: “Overall, the show wasn’t O’Brien at his funniest, but it was funny enough to get by.”

David Letterman definitely took notice of his new competition.

“I’m still here,” Mr. Letterman told his audience on his show Monday night. “I knocked off another competitor.”

He said that his mother had called him to say, “Well, David, I see you didn’t get the Tonight Show again.’” When he said he told his mom that he had Bill Cosby as his guest, his mother replied: “‘OK, maybe I’ll switch from Conan.’”

[From US Weekly]

Yeah, Conan will get better, I guess. Or not, and people will still watch. The other day, I heard that ABC’s 11:30 p.m. Nightline still has great ratings, and that the show’s often beat Letterman and gone market-share to market-share with Leno. Personally, when I do stay up, it’s usually to watch Charlie Rose - my crazy local PBS programmers started putting Charlie on at 11:30 about a year ago, and I hate it. It used to come on in the early evening, and I could geek out on whoever Charlie was interviewing the night before.

Here’s Conan and his wife Elizabeth and kids Neve and Beckett spend a little family time at the park on Sunday in L.A. Images thanks to Pacific Coast News.

Steven Colbert did a parody of the Christian Bale rant on his Comedy Central show “The Colbert Report” last night. Colbert went off on Steve Martin, telling him he was distracting him from his talking. It was a loose interpretation of Bale’s tirade, with Colbert repeating the famous line “We are done professionally.”

James Lipton from The Actor’s Studio played both Bale and the subject of his ire in a brilliant word for word reenactment on Conan last night. You can tell what a great actor Lipton is just from this brief performance.

There’s buzz that Bale’s leaked outburst may cost him an Oscar next year. He’s slated to star in Public Enemies with Johnny Depp, which comes out this summer. It’s not likely people are going to forget Bale’s rant, whatever the circumstances that prompted it.

Thanks to popcrunch for featuring these videos.

Kanye West was on Conan O’Brien last night to promote his new CD “808s & Heartbreak.” He was wearing sunglasses and was soft spoken and hard to understand at first. Conan initially talked about his fashion and asked about the photo where he has his hoodie zipped up over his face. Kanye said it was a warrior hoodie from his clothing line, Pastel, for Rocawear. He joked that it’s an option to zip it up all the way in case “you want to rob somebody or something.”

Kanye said he has always liked fashion and even picked out his outfits in kindergarten.

Conan then asked Kanye about his latest paparazzi incident and that’s when he started to speak clearly and became a little animated. He wasn’t upset, but you could tell it bothered him.

On his altercation with paparazzi
“I put my hand up to stop him from taking a picture and I guess in all the commotion, the camera must have grazed his nose or something. It was like this super small scratch, but they ended up coming to my hotel room three hours later and arresting me because he filed a complaint. There was just like [makes gesture with hands like a headline] ‘Oh Kanye West gets arrested again…’

On how the paparazzi endanger people
“The thing about the paparazzi is the law hasn’t caught up to the technology of the Internet. All these people are going out just buying cameras trying to catch these shots of celebrities - not even professional photographers. They’re like exploiting, and it’s called an ‘by any means necessary’ type of behavior. The same type of behavior that killed Princess Diana where people are jumping fences and completely violating you.

On celebrities as “museum animals”
“The problem I have with the paparazzi if they’re right in front of you and you’re like ‘Can you please not take a picture of me?’ [gestures like someone taking a picture] and they’re like ‘Dude, I’m not really taking a picture’ and they just keep on doing it and they’re talking to me like I’m stupid and stuff. If you’re like… [gestures like someone taking a swipe] I’m just going to grab the camera. You don’t expect that to happen with a celebrity because we’re like a museum animal and stuff. It’s like, don’t shoot the animals then maybe, I don’t know.”

Conan pointed out that Kanye has painted himself in a corner by lashing out against the paparazzi and said that “the problem is once you do something like that, the word’s out and these guys know that a shot of you losing your temper is worth ten times more than a shot of you remaining calm, so it’s kind of no win situation a little bit.”

Sort of compares fight with paparazzi to civil rights movement
“Except for the fact that I’m going to do something about it, and I’m going to make a change. I think it’s my responsibility. My mom, she got arrested for being in the sit-ins at age 6. My grandfather drove the first car at the marches leaving out of Oklahoma. My father was an activist, so I think they just messed with the wrong celebrity just now… [audience claps]

“Even if they never take another picture of me I’m going to take the responsibility to say, Ok look, at a red carpet event, there should be photographers. If you go to a basketball game, there should be a sign ‘all these pictures are public domain, to be used at the photographers discretion.’” [All quotes transcribed from Kanye West's appearance on Conan O'Brien, aired 11/25/08]

Kanye wasn’t exactly comparing his fight with the paparazzi to the civil rights movement, he was saying that his family has a long history of fighting for what they believe in.

At the end of the interview Kanye talked about his stage shows and how he makes music. He explained that likes to blend in different elements like autotune and monk choirs and that it’s similar to making art for him and he considers himself a pop artist. Then he worked in a non sequitur that he had go to the bathroom and didn’t get enough time before the interview. He said “I have to use the bathroom really bad right now. This entire interview.”

The guy has a point about the paparazzi harassing people, but he’s not a one person movement and if he wants to make a difference he’s got to join with other people and celebrities to change the law. That would require stepping down from the pedestal he’s put himself on. He could start by taking off the sunglasses for interviews and making sure to take care of his business before he goes on the air.

West is shown on 6/29 and 6/19. Credit: Bauergriffin

Word has it – and by “word” I mean the sorta-reliable people over at Fox News – that Jimmy Fallon will definitely replace Conan O’Brien when O’Brien moves over to host The Tonight Show in 2009. Jay Leno is being “forced” into retirement according to Fox, and a lot of gossip has been whispered over the past year or so regarding O’Brien’s replacement.

The word is out among the NBC brass: As rumored and bounced around for some time, Jimmy Fallon is set to take Conan O’Brien’s job as host of “Late Night” in 2009. It’s a done deal. Conan, of course, will be taking over for Jay Leno, who will leave the “Tonight” show in May 2009 as part of a forced retirement.

There’s much debate about letting Leno leave NBC etc., but right now let’s just concentrate on Jimmy. He’s the perfect successor to Conan and should have just as big an audience when he takes the reins. Fallon is one of those great underrated performers. This should be the right milieu for him. Fallon, who recently married producer Nancy Juvonen, is said to be thrilled and ready, if not a little scared, about taking Conan’s desk. He still has to pick a producer and a band, among other things.

[From Fox News]

NBC is expected to make the formal announcement in mid-May when they present their Fall schedule in New York. Though NBC is “forcing” Leno into retirement, it appears he’s just retiring from NBC. He may do a show on ABC that would replace Nightline and push Jimmy Kimmel’s show back a half hour, into the 12:30 slot. He also may go back to promoting Doritos, which is pretty much the only thing I knew about him before he started hosting the Tonight Show.

Jimmy Fallon is pretty funny, and does have a bit of a following. But he hasn’t really done much since he left Saturday Night Live in 2006. He was in an independent film called The Year of Getting to Know Us that was screened at Sundance to terrible reviews. Aside from that, it seems that he’s spent the last couple years… just… chilling. Makes you wonder why NBC decided to go with him – but either way, he’s pretty funny, and hopefully will thrive in his new job.

Here’s Jimmy Fallon in Beverly Hills on March 20th. Images thanks to WENN.

David Letterman, Craig Ferguson, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert will return to their respective talk shows this week. Letterman’s company has struck an agreement with the Writers Guild of America that allows him to use writers for “The Late Show.” Craig Ferguson’s “Late Late Show” is controlled by Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, and also has the advantage of falling under the interim agreement and being able to use writers. Leno and the rest of the late night hosts will have to make due with whatever they can muster that doesn’t violate the WGA contract. That is expected to entail longer celebrity interviews and more off the cuff audience interaction. “On the street” segments are also anticipated.

The first celebrity guest booked on Letterman’s show is Robin Williams. Both Letterman and Ferguson have an added edge over their talkshow host competitors in that guests don’t have to cross picket lines to appear. Williams is one guest who certainly wouldn’t need a scripted Q&A to appear, however. He is particularly gifted in off the cuff absurdity which can sometimes be hard to follow.

Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart are expected to be scrambling to come up with material that’s not prepared. They rely on scripted segments for their shows and will be hard pressed to ad lib. Under the WGA contract they can’t even use ideas that are prepared ahead of time by writers. These two strike me as cleverer than most, so we’ll have to see how they deal with the situation. It will also be interesting to see if Letterman and O’Brien have shaved their “strike beards,” or if they’ll grace us with their unshaven faces at least for one night.

As for how the writer’s strike continues to affect television, I read an interesting article that compared the 1988 strike to the current strike and said that there’s evidence that television lost 10% of its viewership almost permanently after the five month strike from March to August. This current strike could result in a nearly 30% drop in television viewers and could go a long way toward strengthening the audience for online content and web-based shows. And we may have to make due with more open-ended interviews with lesser-known celebrities on the talk shows. Maybe that’s an added benefit to refusing to cross picket lines - celebrities don’t have to worry about sounding stupid if they can’t rehearse their answers ahead of time.

Here’s a link to a wikipedia article that has an updated list of how many episodes are available for specific shows.

Thanks to the NY Times and The Wall St. Journal for the details for this story.

Letterman is shown on 10/20/05 with a horse, but I swear to you this picture is captioned “Madonna Visits The Late Show with David Letterman” by the photo agency, PRPhotos.

The Huffington Post had screenshots of the celebrity Christmas cards shown on “Live with Regis and Kelly” on Friday morning, and some are quite inventive and well designed.

Paul Reubens better known as Pee Wee Herman’s card shows the fallen kid’s star with his trademark raised eyebrows expression looking like he’s about to throw a snowball.

Courteney Cox and David Arquette’s card is bright pink on the outside with a big picture of their daughter Coco smiling and the words “Joy to the World.” The inside features a full page photo of Coco lounging on a Saint Bernard and says “And a peaceful New Year, love David, Courteney and Coco”

Tony Bennett’s card is of a winter scene the singer painted himself

Conan O’Brien’s Card has a close view of a cute cartoonish ornament of the talk show host hanging on a tree with other ornaments of the same style

Katie Holmes designed this simple bow-adorned Christmas card for the Cruise family. She was said to have had differently designed cards for friends, family and business associates and to have “kept her staff busy doing the shopping.” It sounds like she kept her staff busy making the cards too. (image and description from US Weekly)

Paris Hilton posed in what would look like a parody of herself if we didn’t know better. She wore a red wrap dress, posed in front of a cone-shaped tree with giant red velveteen bows, and clutched one of her chihuahuas, which was dressed in a little red Santa hoodie. (image found at CelebWarship)

Last week we briefly mentioned that there was a possibility that the late night talk show hosts would return to work in the next few months. It’s looking like that will definitely happen, and all five of the hosts are trying to coordinate their return so they all come back on the same night. Their hope is to avoid some of the ire of the WGA and skirt the criticism that Ellen DeGeneres and Carson Daly received when they returned to work. Ellen hardly stopped work at all – a week at the most – and Carson returned a few weeks ago. Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and Craig Ferguson are all talking with each other behind closed doors, trying to agree on a date when they’ll all go back to work.

If the late-night shows go back into production before the strike is settled, at least some members of the Writers Guild will understand - the late-night comedy writers themselves. “We will never be able to repay [Letterman] for what he did for us,” says “Late Show” writer Bill Sheft, who also serves as the show’s union rep for the Writers Guild. “Dave Letterman on the air without writers and pissed off about it would be as powerful as anything we [union members] can do. He will rail nightly at the greedy pinheads that put him in this position.

“He made the right decision, and when and if he decides to come back, it will be the right decision,” Sheft said. Letterman was the first late-night host who said he would continue to pay his staff out of his own pocket while the strike was on. The other late-show hosts soon followed when the networks began informing the idled late-night staffs that they would be laid off. “We understand the ‘Late Show,’ ” Sheft says. “The fact that other shows fell in line after him is enormous . . . We can march in a circle all day and blog all we want, but, to me, he’s been an off-air supporter. Maybe his greatest potential is as an on-air provocateur.”

“Believe me, all these guys are going crazy,” says one late-night talk show executive. “They’ve had to sit on the sidelines for the last six weeks and watch the world go by without having their soapboxes. It’s hard for them, and it’s getting harder “The fact is they’re talking, but no one wants to be first or the only one, for that matter,” says a knowledgeable network executive. “But I think their power will come in their solidarity. It’s a hot potato.”

[From the New York Post]

It actually does make a lot of sense that the late night hosts could be very vocal advocates for their writers if they choose to come back on the air. It seems like they’ve done the best job they could, and will have stayed off the air for several months in a show of support. A lot of crew and staff members lost their jobs, and most of the late night hosts covered their salaries themselves. If they’re on the air and able to plug their writers every night, that could actually be a good thing. And considering how supportive all the hosts have been so far, I think that’s a reasonable expectation.

In more lighthearted news, both Conan O’Brien and David Letterman have been showing off their “Strike Beards.” Conan even made a YouTube video plugging the strike beard. That’s really not fair, as a woman I can’t show my solidarity by growing a strike beard. I’m trying to figure out what I could do instead… strike hairy legs? Yeah, I’m going with that. “No I’m not lazy, I’m supporting writers!” I will be so extra-dateable now.

Jay Leno is one of many entertainers who is refusing to cross picket lines while the Writer’s Guild is on strike. NBC has essentially stated that if Leno doesn’t cross the lines and return to work, they will lay off the rest of the “Tonight Show” non-writing staff. NBC making it clear that they’re more than willing to save some money by firing long-time employees that have nothing to do with the strike. It also seems like they’re doing some really dirty dealing and putting completely unethical pressure on Leno to return to work to save his staff’s jobs. The other alternative is for the “Tonight Show” to use guest hosts – certainly there are entertainers out there that are willing to cross the lines. NBC has also said the same thing to Conan O’Brian’s staff.

NBC informed the nonwriting staff of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that it will be laid off at the end of next week in the wake of the show shutting down for the writers’ strike. And with Leno still refusing to cross the picket line, the show is looking at coming back on the air Nov. 19 with guest hosts so that it can save the jobs of the nonwriters. “All sorts of things are being discussed, including guest hosts,” Tonight Show executive producer Debbie Vickers said. “Our preference is that we return to production of The Tonight Show with Jay as host as soon as possible.”

But Vickers also wants to save the jobs of her nonwriting staffers. “We want to protect the staff, who have been loyal to this show for decades, in the same way that Johnny Carson reluctantly returned without his writers in 1988,” she said. Late-night shows have gone into repeats since the strike began Monday as the hosts walked out in solidarity with their writing staffs. With the shows shut down, networks can cut costs by laying off most of the rest of the staff.

And Leno’s chief writer doesn’t expect Leno back anytime soon. “I talk to Jay every day, and he will not be the first [late-night host] to cross the picket line,” said Tonight Show head writer Joe Medeiros, also a strike captain for the Writers Guild of America. “So they are looking at guest hosts as one possibility so all those people don’t have to lose their jobs.”

[From Broadcasting & Cable]

That is really low of NBC. CBS and FOX have both tried to put similar pressure on many of their employees, by telling people that are producers/writers that they still have to honor their producing contracts and go to work each day, despite the strike. Since most of those people started as writers, they have a lot of sympathy for them – and most of them are still members of the Writer’s Guild and can’t work during the strike. So they’re between a rock and a hard place.

I’ve heard a lot about all the things the writers are doing, all the talent that’s lining up behind them, and how long the strike will likely go on. What I haven’t heard much about are the entertainment execs that should be sweating bullets and giving in to their more than reasonable demands.

I’m pretty sure in Celebrity-land, having a stalker is a sign that you’ve arrived. Now of course you hope for one of your more benevolent varieties – the guy that carries around the telescope and night binoculars and somehow always manages to be in a window directly across from you. No one wants the guy who strangles you from behind – I mean yeah you’ve really made it, but your royalty checks will be going to your next of kin and that’s just not worth it. Conan O’Brian has finally made it. No he wasn’t actually successful before this, because only now does he have a stalker. And like the funny man that he is, Conan’s stalker is pretty funny too. Because he’s a priest. And not in some nutball offshoot cult. He works for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.

A priest from Boston has been charged with stalking and harassing the talk show host Conan O’Brien, law enforcement officials said last night. The suspect, David Ajemian, was arrested on Friday when he tried to attend a taping of NBC’s “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” program at Rockefeller Center, the police said. The priest is being held in jail for a court-ordered psychiatric examination, and is due back in court tomorrow. Court papers quote from menacing postcards and letters — at least some written on a parish letterhead — that Father Ajemian is alleged to have sent to Mr. O’Brien’s home and television studio for more than a year. The letters continued even after the priest was asked to stop, law enforcement officials said.

A Feb. 20 letter said: “I’m told by some of those officious little usher people that you’re overbooked. Is this the way you treat your most dangerous fans? You owe me big-time, pal. I want a public confession before I even consider giving you absolution.” An April 26 letter, signed Padre, said, “I am not Seung Cho,” apparently alluding to the gunman at Virginia Tech. The letter continued: “Even if I did once look out on that dark and dreaded doorway on West 72 Street, remember Frank Costello once dodged a bullet in your building, and so can you.”

[From the New York Times]

Frank Costello was a gangster in the fifties. He was shot (but lived) in the lobby of the Majestic on West 72nd. It sounds like the New York Times only quoted part of the Ajemian’s sentence about absolution. Us Weekly reports that the entire sentence was, “I want a public confession before I ever consider giving you absolution - or a spot on your couch.” I don’t know much about stalkers – but this one seems really mad. I wonder what it is that Mr. Crazy wants a confession about? Not letting him into the theater? It seems doubtful that’s when the anger stalking. Ajemian says he has followed Conan’s career since the two attended Harvard. Creeeeeeeepy. He’s been put on leave by the Archdiocese, which seems like a pretty good idea. Do they have mental health screenings before you can become a priest? I know they’re kind of desperate these days, but come on! The guy has only been ordained since 2001. You’d think they would have started doing some mental health checks by then. Even though you don’t want to encourage a stalker, I really am curious what his beef is with Conan. And why he wants on his couch so badly.

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Conan at the Stand Up For Heroes A Benefit For The Bob Woodruff Family Foundation in New York last night. Images thanks to PR Photos.