Well, it's still another two-day competition, so it's really important to show that you're ready. Every meet is really important right now. You've got to keep showing you can hit.
The talk show, as a genre, has been in decline for a while. It started with Jerry Springer, when the talk shows suffered a metamorphosis, going from the real and social issues to the hair-raising.
I always improvise with the crowd. Sometimes it will be a 50 percent show, sometimes 70 percent, sometimes it's almost a whole show where I wing it. It depends on my mood, the energy in the room. For sure, a portion of it is just kind of winging it.
I will love to be called a foolish man of peace, than to be named a wise man of war. Show me your weapons of war and I will show you my Bible of peace!
One reason I do the live shows - and the monthly speeches at public radio stations - is to remind myself that people hear the show, that it has an audience, that it exists in the world. It's so easy to forget that.
Having a show get canceled is like, 'Oh, you have caviar between your teeth,' you know what I mean? Because you had a show in the first place.
Their argument is that most shows are losers, which is true, but it's also disingenuous to say, 'We are not going to take the risk unless it is totally covered by the few successful shows that are out there.'
Trying to get the talk show, looking back on it, we had to beg a lot of station managers to pick up the show because people thought no one would watch it because I'm openly gay.
When you're working on a film, it's not theater; you don't have a few weeks of rehearsal. A lot of times you are showing up on set, and you've never been to the place; you've never met the other actors you're working with.
I had it in my contract with CBS, a very weird clause that was never written before and certainly not since, that if I wanted to do a variety show within the first five years of the contract, CBS would have to put it on for 30 shows.
In the UK and the US especially you've got a lot of throwaway artists who have their 40 million dancers and they do their show. There's many artists who would not do a live show because they know they can't.
I think especially with the Internet and the amount of reality shows that are going on, there's no way to keep a secret anymore, so I try to let my project be as much as reality show as I can allow it to be.
We need to, you know, restore people. We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that's the mercy you're going to be receiving.
Statistics show that many people watch our show from the bedroom. and people you ask into your bedroom have to be more interesting than those you ask into your living room. I kid you not!
There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don't really think most people really understand what they've seen.
I've always been switching around the show to accommodate the audience, and you know it really makes it a lot more fun for me and keeps it fresh so that I'm not complacent with the same show every night and with every audience.
When I was on Broadway, people would really just recognize me around the theater. When you're showing up on commercials and posters, the scope of people recognizing you gets a little wider.
I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles.
The fact is that daytime television is less valued than nighttime, and it's partly because of the product that we produce. We do a one-hour show in 12 hours. Nighttime produces a one-hour show in seven to nine days.
People of my generation who became photographers in the late fifties, early sixties, there were no rewards in photography. There were no museum shows. Maybe MOMA would show something, or Chicago. There were no galleries. Nobody bought photographs.
I was pretty new to the Broadway world once I began working in it. I hadn't really grown up being too aware of that many shows or that many actors in shows. I was always obsessed with Judy Garland, though.
