We have to admit there's something insidious and detestable
about late night television, a kind of vicious circle.
It's hard to realize until you actually go to a taping
and the warm-up comedian gauges your laugh on a 1 to 10 volume scale,
and instructs you that you're only in about a 7
and you need to keep it up and turn it up for every little joke you're about to see
because the microphones are way up in the ceiling and they won't hear you otherwise.
It begins to dawn on you after about 10 cheerless guffaws
that you came to the taping because you thought the show was funny,
and you thought the show was funny because all the jokes were followed by laughs and cheers,
and the laughs and cheers were forced to make
are what's causing the audience at home to think the show is funny,
and it's why they want to come to the taping themselves, which they do and they laugh,
and this cycle begins again.
Disappointing as this is,
it's also truly absurd.
A self-generating absurdity that appears normal to us because it's all we know.
And if a really smart and innovative comedian
wanted to draw attention to the normalization of this absurd American ritual,
perhaps the first thing to do would be to grab hold of the absurdity dial and turn it way up.
"You get it? All right, let's just- oh"
"That's the biggest joint I've ever seen at Hogwarts.
"I don't think this is the right eh- edition. "
"We're gonna keep going with this and we're gonna see
"when we hit the pixelation. How are we doing here? "
"This is a very strange show. "
"Lonely unmarried looking for love, life was passing me by
"So I sent off my photo hobbies and age, magazine marriage I tried
"They say for centuries lovely Japanese girls have been trained in the art of pleasing men
"Be lonely no more open destiny's door for one dollar they arrange a meeting"
For 10 years the brilliant Craig Ferguson has lit a fire from within the late-night talk-show universe,
Systematically deconstructing all its elements,
whether it's the deferential sidekick, the live band or the pre-interview
"In this show more than any, the pre-interview means nothing. "
"It means nothing, it's meaningless. The pre-interview is a formality like wearing a tie or underpants. "
Indeed it seemed like the biggest enemy to Ferguson sense of comedy
was the very foundation of late-night TV-
structure itself.
"Who's that at the door? "
Ferguson actively sought out the unrehearsed, the spontaneous.
He encouraged the awkward the weird the difficult .
"You know, we should start rehearsing this show. "
He'd recognize and despise late-nights' deification of celebrity
and took every opportunity to mock us for buying into them.
"It's a short time on this planet, man. It's a date and then a hyphen and then another date.
"And we are the hyphen, and I'm like,
"I'm not spending the whole time talking to [beep] celebrities, man. I'm not doing it. "
Now this isn't to say that hosts like Jimmy Fallon, who I do like, is somehow bankrupt
because all he does is pay homage to the format by putting it in terms young people of today can understand.
It's just that he and Ferguson sit at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Or rather Ferguson more than anyone else willingly places himself outside the spectrum
and his relationship to late-night is of an altogether different quality, a revolutionary one.
"What gives you the right to let Americans not hear cuss words? You- [beep]
"What gives you the right? "
Indeed the tension between Ferguson and late-night was what made Ferguson so funny.
His ability to express contempt for his position, his network, his job,
his willingness to admit his failures, to dwell on them, was for many of us, extremely liberating.
And that's because late-night TV is a fantasy,
a fantasy of sophistication and charm and fun,
a standard to which, after enough time, we hold ourselves unwittingly.
No one knew this better than craig Ferguson.
For 10 fucking awesome fucking weird years,
he tried to show us that life bears far less resemblance to a string of funny stories
than to the long awkward pauses that exist between them.
Well, I hope we've done is- is-
is maybe trying to- maybe art is a very grand word,
but- but- but what I was trying to do here
and what I think that we've managed to do here is make something that wasn't here before.