11 AM-12:45 PM PRETAPING: ON A CHILLY OCTOBER MORNING, freshly
syndicated talker Jon Stewart and his snaggletoothed sidekick, Howard
Feller, are taping a Baywatch sketch on a busy Manhattan avenue in
anticipation of Pamela Anderson's appearance the next night. It's the
start of another typically long, strange day on the set of The Jon
Stewart Show. Decked out in red swim trunks, with zinc oxide on their
noses and whistles around their necks, Stewart and Feller draw curious
glances from pedestrians.
* "Should my shoes be off?" Feller asks director Beth McCarthy.
* "Yeah, take your shoes off," she says.
* "Take your pants off, too!" yells a husky passerby, carrying a
garbage bag and sniggering to himself.
* "Easy!" Stewart says. "He thinks he's 12 blocks north, in Times
Square."
A lesser man might blanch at such a bizarre public display, but not
Stewart. "After doing stand-up for so long, there's very little people
can do to you in terms of stares to make you feel uncomfortable," he
says later in his office, which is decorated with a poster of his
latenight predecessor at Paramount, Arsenio Hall, and a bubble reading
"Good Luck, Motherf---er."
"Jon's not worried about looking silly," explains producer Madeleine
Smithberg, who started with Stewart on his MTV talk show last year. "I
worked for Letterman for six years, and there was this thing there
called the silly-hat rule: Dave would never want to look like he was
wearing a silly hat. Jon's put on silly hats from day one. And it's
worked in his favor."
Indeed it has. Plucked from the comedy-club hoi polloi by MTV in 1992,
Stewart, 31, quickly put together the loosest, hippest talk show since
the early days of Late Night With David Letterman. With the merger of
Paramount and MTV parent Viacom, and Arsenio's surrender in the
late-night wars, Stewart segued into syndication with a low-profile
launch in September. Though early ratings are low, The Jon Stewart
Show is gaining momentum, thanks to glowing reviews and good word of
mouth. "Jon has this amazing appeal that cuts across all
demographics," brags his longtime manager (and now his coexecutive
producer) Barry Secunda. "Women love him, and guys don't hate him."
1-3:30 PM REHEARSAL: In the show's postmodern yet cozy studio, Stewart
runs through his monologue, testing out jokes on the crew--and on the
Sun City Poms, a trio of elderly cheerleaders who'll be rooting him on
throughout the evening (a researcher suggested the Poms after reading
an article about them in Self magazine). "According to experts...oh,
ladies, you're going to hate this one," Stewart says, worrying the
topic might be offensive, then forges ahead. "All right, forget it.
According to a new survey, married people have the best, most frequent
sex..."
"Yeah!" the Poms cheer.
"I always thought Mom and Dad were just wrestling, I had no idea..."
The Poms fall silent.
"You don't like the wrestling joke?" Stewart asks. "Okay, you'll hate
this one, too..." He bombs out with lines about Warren Beatty and
Annette Bening, and a man who smuggled monkeys in his pants, before
hitting with one: "Next week, Barbara Bush will receive the McDonald's
award for excellence for her work on behalf of children. And--this is
exciting--for an extra 39 cents, she can get the award Supersized."
"Yeah!" the Poms cheer.
"Score! One for the kid!" Stewart celebrates briefly before
restarting. "Beginning in December...aw, boy," he catches himself.
"Man, without sex and death, I got s---. I got nuthin'."
Later, in their dressing room, the Poms sing the Stewart Show's
praises.
"The people here have just been tremendous," enthuses Pat Vick, the
youngest member of the squad at 66. "They've turned over backwards for
us."
"No, no, no," says Foofie Halan, who can still do the splits at 80.
"We've turned over backwards for them."
3:30-4:30 PM LUNCH MEETING: Over a plate of catered sandwiches,
Stewart huddles in his dressing room with his producers to go over the
night's lineup. He gets briefed on interviews with Pulp Fiction
writer-director-star Quentin Tarantino ("If you're talking about
movies, he'll get technical in a second"), Madman of the People star
Cynthia Gibb ("She's really adorable and cute and effervescent and
self-effacing"), and wrestling manager/cult-video entrepreneur Johnny
Legend ("He's going to wear the original Spike Jones outfit, the
yellow-and-white suit"). Stewart studies the pre-interview
transcripts, deciding which topics will provide the funniest answers.
"The more you know, the easier it is to goof around, because you
always know you can go back to something strong," he says.
This preparation helps allow Stewart to create an atmosphere of chummy
informality with guests. "This is not the Barbara Walters interview,"
says Smithberg. "We don't want guests to cry. We just want them to
hang out."
The discussion soon turns to the introduction of the musical guests,
the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. "How about this: 'Hey, kids, do you like
the ska?'" Stewart suggests, aping Letterman's corny,
hey-kids-do-you-like-the-rock-and-roll band intros. "'Paul, do you
like the ska?'"
"No, it's very inside," warns head writer Fred Graver. "And people are
going to think you're being mean."
"But it's so funny," says producer Elyse Roth.
"Why don't you try it this way?" asks Graver, slipping into Jay Leno's
squeaky New England whine. "Hey, here comes a great band! It's the
Mighty Mighty Bawwsstones!"
"Guys, guys," Stewart pleads, calming them down. They decide to go
with a more standard Stewart introduction: "It's time to get out of
your seats and into the pit, and we've got the right band for it...the
Mighty Mighty Bosstones!"
5:45-7:15 PM WARM-UP/TAPING: The guests are mingling backstage, the
studio audience has filed into their seats, and Stewart has secluded
himself in his dressing room. "It's mostly prayer," he quips of his
nightly ritual. "I read the Koran." Actually, he ingests ginseng. "I
used to be such a cynic about anything like that, and now I'm like,
'What, it's dung from Ghana and it gives you more energy? Whatever.
Pour it on me!'"
Stand-up comedian Marc Cohen warms up the crowd ("Where are you from?
Georgia? Well, touch a Jew!" he jests, extending an arm to an
out-of-towner), then shouts, "Ladies and gentlemen, fake it like
you've had a good time for the last 10 minutes and put your hands
together for Mr. Jon Stewart!"
The audience, many of them college students, goes nuts when Stewart
enters, pulling Feller in a red wagon. The duo throw Jon Stewart
T-shirts to the fans and accept gifts (a pumpkin, an NYU T-shirt) in
return. Then the show begins.
With the geri-acrobatic Poms, the thrashing Bosstones, and the
flamboyant Legend (who brings out a masked female wrestler named
Spider Baby), it's a high-energy affair. Most uncontrollable is
Tarantino. When Stewart asks whether he got his acting role in Pulp
Fiction by sleeping with the director, he answers, "Yes, I gave him a
hand job. Thirty-one years of it. Every night." At another point
Tarantino leads the crowd in an impromptu chant of "Margaret Cho
rocks!"
There's no time on the show to explain this paean to the All-American
Girl star, but Stewart gets to the bottom of it later. "Apparently
they've made a bargain with each other that whenever one of them is on
a talk show, they will plug the other one," he says. "But neither did
it on Letterman, oddly enough." And what does he make of this? "You
can play around, but when Papa's in the house, everyone sits nicely
and has tea and crumpets," Stewart says.
After the show, Tarantino compares his Stewart experience with his
Late Show gig one night earlier. "Letterman's got a show he's doing,
whereas this is much more casual," he says. "This wasn't like doing a
talk show. It was like we were just bulls---ting."
7:30-8:30 PM POSTSHOW MEETING: Stewart, Graver, and McCarthy gather in
Smithberg and Roth's office to go over the details of tomorrow's show.
"We have a live-satellite feed to Grand Central station, where there
will be different items stuck in lockers for Bus-Locker
Concentration," says Smithberg of a game-show parody. "Two of them are
the Olsen twins."
"If the Olsen twins fall out, what's our backup?" Stewart asks.
"They're not falling out," Roth reassures him.
"Do they know what the bit is?" Stewart asks.
"They know they're going to be stuck in lockers," Graver says.
"I have releases for them," Roth says. "They're fine."
"Beautiful," says Stewart.
More suggestions for buslocker contents are tossed around--rats,
half-eaten hot dogs, severed fingers--until a call comes in from Judy
Moy, the Paramount executive in charge of the show's production. One
of Tarantino's offhand remarks is being censored. "What'd they
delete--hand or job?" Roth asks. "Okeydoke, thanks." She hangs up the
phone. "We're taking hand out," she announces.
"Yeah, but he goes like this," McCarthy says, making the universal
gesture for masturbation. "That works."
"What was her reason? Was it the hand movement?" Stewart asks.
"She felt it was too much," Roth says.
"You're more mainstream now!" Stewart mockingly reminds himself.
But he accepts the decision. "You have to pick and choose your
battles," he says later. "And the audio drop on hand job isn't going
to be one for me."
Most nights, Stewart stays till almost midnight working with the
writers, but tonight he cuts out at 8:30 p.m. to interview Tarantino
over dinner for Bikini magazine ("I'd interview him for Toilet Paper
magazine," confesses the Reservoir Dogs freak).
"You had a half day today, Jon," Roth teases him.
"Yeah, I know," says Stewart, and he's out the door.