An awkward interview
Christina Ricci was on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote Speed Racer last night and she was visibly nervous and kind of blathering on at some points. Toward the end of the interview she warmed up when she was talking about her physical preparation for the role, but you can tell she’s not used to doing talk shows and that it was difficult for her. The interview was very awkward and I felt kind of sorry for her watching it.

On being scared of a bobcat in her neighborhood
She met a cougar that was on earlier with an animal handler and said she didn’t pet him when Jay asked about it because “that cougar could eat me.” She sounded kind of ditsy about it, and also said there’s a bobcat in her neighborhood and that she runs into the house from her car because “they eat people.”

On her press tour for “Speed Racer”
Ricci said it was her first worldwide film tour, and that she rode on a private jet for the first time along with the cast of the film. When Jay asked her if she’d done that kind of press junket before she said “I did big movies when I was a kid, but I never went on a private jet before.”

She said she won $70 playing blackjack on the jet and beat everyone.

On being a neat freak and cleaning other people’s houses
She said she has a packing list for when she travels and has to make sure she has all the items listed out ahead of time. As for dating men who are slobs, she says “I like when you don’t have to sanitize yourself after you go over to a man’s house. Some boys don’t really value clean [sic]”

Leno asked her if she was at someone’s house and their kitchen is messy would she clean it, and she said “I will and if I don’t really know the person I’ll kind of say ‘I’m not trying to be pushy or controlling or anything, but would you mind if I took that into the kitchen did did your dishes?’”

On her closet, with shoes organized by designer
“I have one room that’s all shoes and bags… it’s a small room.”

Jay asked her how many pairs of shoes she had, and she said less than 100, and less than 90 when Jay asked about that, but he didn’t really narrow it down to exactly how many pairs. She said “they’re all organized by maker… like the Manolos are in one place.”

She said she has a built-in ladder in her closet, but that it’s not her dream closet, and she made a reference to the moving closet in the 1987 movie “Overboard” with Goldie Hawn that was completely lost on the audience and she kind of went on about it.

On doing her own stunts for “Speed Racer”
Ricci said she learned karate, did a lot of cartwheeling and learned how to pick up a gun mid-cartwheel “which was the best moment of my life.”

Jay asked her to do a cartwheel and she said she would if she wasn’t wearing a short skirt. She bragged that she can do one arm pullups and pushups, “and that’s pretty impressive.”

Ricci didn’t give the impression of an experienced movie star or even someone that’s comfortable being famous. She seems more like an average person who happens to act and finds the whole press process new and a little intimidating. I was surprised and came away with a much different opinion of her, like she’s not a fake person at all.

The NY Post notes today that Ricci left the Costume Institute Gala celebration right after she learned that Anna Wintour neglected to seat her next to her boyfriend, Kick Gurry. It’s possible she also felt intimated being in a room full of people she barely knew. It’s a shame because her dress was amazing.

Thanks to WENN for this photo of Ricci at The Costume Institute Gala.

Here’s the video:

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.

I heard this story last week, but People Magazine is reporting it now, so we may as well cover it: A gay blogger and playwright is slamming Jay Leno for careless remarks he made when Ryan Phillippe was on his show. Ryan played the first gay teenager on television in his first acting job. He played Billy Douglas in the opera soap opera “One Life to Live,” and said that it caused some controversy with the Baptist church in his small town in Delaware. (Phillippe later told Ellen Degeneres that he received letters from gay teens saying he saved them from suicide, but he didn’t realize the importance of his role at the time, because he was 17 and was just glad to have a job.)

Jay told Ryan to show the camera his “gayest look,” but he was talking about the way that soap operas make everything melodramatic for effect, and how the actors look at the camera with piercing eyes. I took it in that context and not as something he came up with as a stereotype of a gay man:

Apparently attempting to become playful during his interview with guest Ryan Phillippe (whose appearance was keyed to his new movie Stop-Loss), Leno, 57, said to the actor, “Can you give me, like – say that camera is your gay lover …”

Despite Phillippe’s instant discomfort, Leno went on to say, “Can you give me your ‘gayest look’? Say that camera is Billy Bob – Billy Bob has just ridden in shirtless from Wyoming.”

“Wow,” replied Phillippe, 33. “That is so something I don’t want to do. Are you just going to embarrass me tonight, or … ?”

“No,” said Leno. “I got more stuff. This is the least of it.”

Among those in the home audience who quickly took offense, reports USA Today, was Tony-winning Avenue Q librettist Jeff Whitty, 36.

On his personal blog, Whitty flashes Leno what he considers his “gayest look” – which involves a well-known gesture with his middle finger. Whitty also asks, “Would you ask a guest to make their ‘blackest face?’ Their ‘Jewiest face?’ ”

Following suit, others have posted their “gayest looks” for Leno – also involving the same gesture – at the newly created Web site, My Gayest Look.

[From People.com]

I didn’t cover this when I first heard it, because I watched that whole interview carefully and even transcribed some of it, and the comments Leno made did not seem offensive or targeted at gay men to me. Jay was talking about the way that soap operas exaggerate things, from my perspective. Plus I didn’t want to stir up a controversy. Sure Jay Leno made some stupid remarks, but I felt that as a semi-straight woman I’m not the one to say whether it was offensive to gay people or not, and frankly I felt stupid for not recognizing it as potentially offensive in the first place.

Whitty has some valid points that Jay wouldn’t ask someone to make their blackest or Jewiest face, and Leno even seemed uncomfortable when Halle Berry said that a photo of her with her nose photoshopped to look big was her “Jewish cousin.” Producers recognized that Berry’s remark was offensive and removed it prior to the show being aired, but someone has to hit them over the head to see that Jay is doing a similar thing here.

The best thing to come out of this is the website My Gayest Look, which involves tons of people giving Jay the finger. Now that this has some media attention, expect an apology from Jay. Maybe this will make media personalities think twice before making offhand stupid comments about groups of people. Also - I think that Asians are routinely stereotyped and made fun of in the media and that it gets hardly any attention. It’s good that people speak out and let us know when someone is out of line and I feel enlightened in this case, but am kind of humbled that I didn’t see it myself.

Update: Leno has apologized for his comments, saying that he agrees that it was dumb and that is came out wrong. He should have said “most melodramatic look” or “best soap opera stare”

“In talking about Ryan’s first role, I realize that what I said came out wrong,” the host of NBC’s Tonight Show said in a statement to PEOPLE. “I certainly didn’t mean any malice. I agree it was a dumb thing to say, and I apologize.”

[From People.com]

Here’s the video. The “gayest look” comment is about 2 minutes in:

Ted, whose shirt made me lol

They should paginate that Gayest Look site and add advertising, because it’s a lot of fun to look through all the photos of people giving the brid.

Ryan Phillippe was on Jay Leno last night, and his interview was pretty entertaining. Leno opened up with the statement that he’d Googled Ryan. Ryan said that he stopped doing that because it’s depressing and people say hateful things online since they’re anonymous.

On “hateful comments” online
“I’ve stopped Googling myself. Some of the stuff that you see when you are someone who is known is so depressing. Just the comments. People make really hateful comments sometimes, because there’s anonymity and you can get away with it.”

On his first role, a gay teenager on a soap opera
Ryan didn’t elaborate and then Leno told him that he found out that Ryan played the first gay teenager in a soap opera on “One Life to Life.” Ryan said he was 17 and came from Delaware and it was his first paying job as an actor. He said that the local Baptist church “had a little bit of a reaction to it.”

Ryan said his character’s name was “Billy Douglas,” and Leno asked him to give the camera his gayest look and he laughed and said he wouldn’t do it. Ryan fidgeted in his seat and said “are you just going to embarrass me tonight?” and then got up jokingly like he was going to leave but sat down again.

On his “naked commercial”
Leno said “You also made a naked commercial” and Ryan countered “I am not kidding, I am going to walk off this stage right now.”

Ryan then said “I feel kind of cheap actually… it was for Armani jeans. I was probably only 19, and David Lachapelle who is a like real serious photographer… it was a commercial that he was doing and he saw me at a restaurant and put me in it, and I didn’t know that I would end up being naked in skid row at 2:00 in the morning with rats crawling around.”

Then Leno showed this commercial:

After the break Leno asked Ryan how he spent his money when he first started making it and he said that he bought a lot of CDs and music and that his first big purchase was a house for his parents.

On his kids
Then Leno brought up the fact that Ryan is a Frank Sinatra fan and he said he has a 12 year-old bulldog named Frank and that his daughter, Ava, was named after Sinatra’s second wife Ava Gardner. Leno said he used to open for Sinatra and that they did North Carolina once and the crowd wasn’t receptive to Sinatra’s jokes.

Ryan called Ava “amazing, beautiful,” and said “I can’t believe I have an eight year-old daughter.” He also mentioned his son, Deacon.

He was promoting his new film Stop Loss which is about a soldier called back to war in Iraq after his tour of duty ends. It is out in the US on March 28.

Here’s his full interview on Leno last night, thanks to clipper monkeyboy on Redlasso.

Ryan Phillippe on Leno part 1

Ryan Phillippe on Leno part 2

Ryan is shown at the Stop Loss premiere on 3/17/08, thanks to PRPhotos.

Minnie Driver was on Leno last night, and she sang a song from her last album, “Seastories.” When she came off to talk to Jay afterwards he joked about her weight and she confirmed that she was pregnant.

Driver’s CD came out in July of last year so I assumed that the real reason she was on Leno was to confirm her pregnancy, but she also is promoting “The Riches,” her show on FX. The second season will only have seven episodes due to the writer’s strike, and it starts airing on March 18.

“Are you pregnant?” Leno asked, after joking about her weight.

“Yes, I am,” she replied. “I don’t know why they call it morning sickness… I am sick morning, noon and night, but it’s a fair trade-off.”

Driver said she likes being pregnant “more than anything else.”

[From US Weekly]

According to Splash News’ description with the picture above, Driver “told Leno that she wanted to keep the father private and away from the media glare.” I’m kind of hoping there’s some sort of scandal to go along with this one, like the guy is some famous married actor, but it’s probably just that Minnie doesn’t want a big deal made out of her pregnancy. She’s been followed by the paps more after the rumor came out that she was pregnant, and she often looked annoyed in those pictures. Maybe she just doesn’t want to become a target of photographers or the gossip press, and figures the best way to do that is not to say much.

Driver is 38 and this is her first child. Congratulations to her and the unnamed dad.

Here’s Driver singing “Mockingbird” last night. I am looking but haven’t been able to find the clip of her coming on to talk to Jay.

Reese Witherspoon was on the Tonight Show last night and told Jay Leno her TV viewing habits. It sounds like she pretty much watches television all day, because she said she watches a little of The Today Show, a little Good Morning America, then she catches The View, then Regis & Kelly, then soaps, also Martha Stewart’s show. She said she loves crafting and that she watches Martha Stewart for that, but that she flips the channel a lot. She also likes Project Runway and Amazing Race, and said she has a male friend who is going on Amazing Race who is a writer who she does yoga with.

She also talked about how she has trouble as a producer getting money and asking for favors, but when Jay asked her about demanding actors asking for things like bigger trailers and better TVs she said she understood that and doesn’t mind getting small comforts for actors, like their favorite coffee in the morning.

Reese said her worst auditions were when people put her down personally, and said things like “you’re not pretty enough,” or “smart enough,” or “tall enough.” Then Jay told the story of his worst audition, where he had to wait 2 hours for the casting agent to tell him that they were looking for a Woody Allen lookalike and he didn’t fit the bill. That was the most interesting part of this interview, considering that Reese didn’t tell any cute stories other than the fact that she watches TV constantly. As an Internet addict, I can’t relate.

Here are the videos.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Reese is promoting Penelope, a fairy-tale type film about a girl born with the face of a pig. It is out in the US on February 29, and Reese plays sidekick to Christina Ricci’s title character.

The header image is an older one of Reese promoting Rendition at the Rome Film Festival on 10/21/07, thanks to PRPhotos.

Just like the strikes in the olden days, the WGA strike is leaving people scrambling for guests. Wait, no. The strikes in olden days left people scrambling for food, not actors. It’s close, though, and certainly every bit as frightening. Human beings can live for months without food, but can only live for a maximum of seven days without Brad Pitt. Around day 5 your kidneys shut down, and the liver tends to go around day 6. The hosts of late night television, back on the air but without any actor guests, have been scrambling to fill their vacant spots in a desperate attempt to save keep us alive. The Screen Actors Guild has cruelly forbade any of its members from appearing on any non-WGA sanctioned shows. That effectively means they can only show up for David Letterman and Craig Ferguson, whose production company Worldwide Pants has come to its own agreement with the WGA. So what’s a late night host to do? Bring in other late night hosts as guests of course!

The talk-show hosts, who both returned to the airwaves last Wednesday without their respective writing teams and with picketers outside their respective studios, are turning into unlikely allies in the late-night race, with both agreeing to appear as guests on each other’s shows next Thursday, in the wake of a writers’ strike-induced guest drought.

“If Jay and I can come together and guest on each other’s shows, surely there is hope for peace in the Middle East,” Kimmel said in a joint statement released by ABC and NBC Sunday morning.

“There are only a few people in the world who know how tough this job is,” Leno said. “Jimmy is one of them. It will be fun to discuss who’s a good guest, who’s a difficult guest and everything else that comes with sitting behind these desks.” The mutual back scratching will help fill not only headlines but what’s proving to be hard-to-populate guest slots for the late-night shows since their return to air.

[From E! News]

I’m no expert, but it seems to me that writers and actors are incredibly loyal to their unions. And something tells me they have long memories. Jimmy Kimmel seems to have done himself quite the disservice recently by voicing his opposition to the writer’s strike.

And while Leno has teetered on the brink of violating guild rules since returning to the air, penning his own monologue jokes, despite supposedly standing in solidarity as a striking writer, Kimmel himself has voiced disapproval of the strict code and unwavering solidarity he’s meant to display with his unemployed wordsmiths.

“I don’t want to depart too much from the party line, but I think it’s ridiculous,” he said on his first night back of the strike and SAG’s insistence that members avoid the late-night shows that did not score a WGA-sanctioned agreement. “Jay Leno, he paid his staff while they were out. Conan did the same thing. I don’t know. I just think at a certain point you back off a little bit.”

Later, he stripped his opinions of all party-line vestiges, saying flat out, “I’m pissed off, I’ll be honest with you.”

[From E! News]

I’m pretty sure Jimmy Kimmel is going to find concrete in his shoes within the next three days. Wait, these are writers… so he’s probably going to find ink in his shoes. Maybe a few random letters stripped off his computer’s keyboard. Nothing teaches you to shut up like some blue ink stains and your favorite S and A keys smashed to pieces.

Jay Leno is in a world of hurt. Apparently he didn’t quite understand the WGA’s rules about writing material for his show. All of the late night acts are going back on the air in the next week or so, with Leno and Letterman back on this past Wednesday. Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, came to a separate agreement with the Writer’s Guild, essentially agreeing to honor all of their demands in terms of royalties and web payouts. That allowed him (and Craig Ferguson, who’s show is also produced by Letterman’s company) to go back on their air with his usual team of writers. The blogosphere was alive with excitement: lots of people noting that Letterman would finally beat Leno in the ratings. However the general consensus is that Jay Leno did a better job with just himself than Letterman did with his whole team. Ouch.

Technically, Leno’s only option was to perform his monologue spontaneously. That’s a tall order. As a writer and member of the WGA, he was not allowed to pen anything beforehand. Though it’s likely that late-night hosts Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel wrote something before they stepped on stage, Leno openly violated the rules, admitting that he wrote his monologue beforehand.

“Tonight Show” host Jay Leno could face disciplinary action from the Writers Guild of America for writing his monologue while the nearly 2-month-old writers strike continues.
Leno, a member of the guild, met Thursday with WGA West President Patric Verrone to discuss his decision to pen his opening segment. During the meeting, Leno was told that “writing for ‘The Tonight Show’ constitutes a violation of the [WGA] strike rules,’ the WGA said in a statement.

“[Leno] was pretty flagrant in saying he wrote his monologue,” said Sherry Goldman, a spokeswoman for WGA East. “The other hosts … found a way around it.” It’s not yet clear what would happen to Leno if he continues to write monologues in the midst of the strike, but he could be brought before the WGA’s disciplinary committee, Goldman said.

[From MarketWatch]

The WGA’s strike contract is notoriously hard to interpret, however most people outside of the WGA (including NBC) agree that anyone outside of prime time is allowed to write their own material.

“The WGA agreement permits Jay Leno to write his own monologue for `The Tonight Show,’” NBC said in a statement Thursday. “The WGA is not permitted to implement rules that conflict with the terms of the collective bargaining agreement between the studios and the WGA.”

[From the Associated Press]

This strike is getting pretty tiresome. And I say that not as a reflection on the writers, but on the corporations. The WGA is fairly rigid: I’m pretty sure they’d get mad if one of their members wrote so much as a grocery list at this point. Remember that note you jotted down on a Post-it, reminding you to call your aunt? Violation. But they have a point. If they start making a bunch of exceptions, pretty soon the strike won’t stand for anything. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers website has a counter on their website of how much money the writers are losing in the short term by striking. What they don’t have a counter for is how much money the writers would lose in the long term if they didn’t strike. This is pretty much a battle between principles (writers) and egos (the alliance). Get ready for a lot of game shows and reality TV next year.

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.

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.