Hubster Sharilyn has sent us this wonderful “Taping ReporT” of her trip to the “The Colbert Report” way back on July 19, 2006.
I turned the corner onto 54th St., approached the blue awning, went up the stairs, and opened the office door. Yes, I was in the right place. No, I still can’t believe it either.
It was an insane beginning to what would be 13 taping experiences. I had become a big fan of the Report in those first 100+ episodes, though the Daily Show was still #1 in my heart. That was about to change.
I was hosting a radio show about comedy, and was working on a series of interviews with people who had largely unrecognized roles in the industry. I wanted to talk to an audience coordinator, and everyone online said that I simply had meet Mark Malkoff at Colbert. Mark is, “like, THE best,” they told me. I abandoned my initial plan to reach out to another show, and a few emails and a phone call later, it was set.
Security gave me a generic “Hello my name is” sticker, and the receptionist called for Mark. My eyes darted around the office, in disbelief that I was looking at the same red brick walls that I’d seen in so many behind the scenes photos of the Daily Show. Near the front door was a set of shelves lined with small props, and I was slightly starstruck by the box of Formula 401.
Mark started off by giving me a tour of the studio. I’d been running around tv studios since I was a kid, so it wasn’t an entirely new experience for me. But this was Colbert, dammit. And the last time I was there, it was the Daily Show. Both its past and its present carried serious weight. However, I fully intended keep my excitement under wraps.
We went into that grey concrete stairwell connecting the studio and the offices, and for some reason Mark showed me a bulletin board. Hanging there on pink paper was a tentative rundown of that week’s shows. My gaze landed on that day’s episode, which I’d see taped in just a few hours.
Temporarily forgetting to be cool, I gasped and pointed at the word “TAD.”
Busted. Mark, proving he is indeed the best, mercifully didn’t mock me. He did, though, warn me that plans don’t always stick, and there’s always a chance they’d move the segment to another day.
Downstairs, he led me through the middle hallway that used to exist between the two sets of bleachers, to give me a first look at the studio. The same hallway that Stephen’s eyes would drift to when a bit went better or worse than expected – surely settling more $50 bets with Allison than we knew about.
We grabbed a seat in the green room, which was even smaller than any backstage photos or videos made it seem. My eyes kept drifting to the sad little veggie plate, in disbelief that this is all that Joe Scarborough would soon be munching on.
We had a lovely chat, and I left to go for a bite to eat before joining the lineup outside for the taping.
Fastforward to 6 p.m. We stood in the holding room for almost an hour watching Tivo’d episodes of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune dated January of that year (this was, after all, before the Best Of dvd existed). Finally, we were seated.
Mark (again, the best) gave me what had to be the best seat in the place: front row, on the interview side, but on the aisle. Essentially front and centre.
From my vantage point, I was able to sneak a few glances back to the little prep area down the aisle where I’d stood earlier. And most importantly? I was able to watch two of the crew guys debate the mark vs. the lighting on a particular spot right next to me.
The warmup guy was mediocre (some hacky premises), and I never saw him at subsequent tapings. He paced himself, because he had a hell of a lot of time to kill. When all was said and done, he’d been talking to us for almost an hour, and he’d made his way through every person in the audience (myself included). I could tell you either what everyone did for a living, how long they’d been married, or what their college major was.
Finally Stephen came out. He ran! He danced! He tossed his handheld mic in the air! He high-fived everyone in my row! Twice! I touched the man! Twice! More exclamation marks!
The warmup guy pointed out the woman in the audience celebrating her 70th birthday, and Stephen kind of sang a little hymn-style celebration song (still no clue what it would’ve been).
“Does anyone have any quest –”
I shot my hand up.
Stephen was right in front of me, and looking directly at me. Gulp.
My chosen-weeks-earlier question:
“Do you get mad at yourself when you break character?”
You have to remember, he’d done so only a handful of times at that point. Muffman was still fresh fodder in the fandom.
His answer:
“Only if it doesn’t get a laugh. If I screw up, and if everybody doesn’t go ‘ahh, that’s adorable,’ then I get mad. Because then it’s a waste of an inept moment.”
So there’s two things to note about that answer:
1) Clearly, he was on to us.
2) And he didn’t want us to stop.
But what actually (seriously) pleased me about that answer was that it illustrated – just a tiny bit – how he embraces failure. It would become one of the things I admire most about him, but at the time I hadn’t really heard him talk about it. After all, we were still six months away from the first telling of the infamous Second City “Whales” story on Charlie Rose.
I didn’t quite catch the next question. I think it was about memorizing bible verses? Stephen went into reciting some Godstuff at break-neck speed, though he needed help from the priest in the audience at one point.
There weren’t any more hands raised – a far cry from the years to come – but he asked for another question.
The stoner kid beside me piped up and asked whether he gets to pick the pictures on the bookcase. Stephen said no, other people pick them for him. He went over the three pics and everyone cheered for House.
Stephen jumped up, did a bell kick (which he always used to do pre-WristSrong), and went over to the desk. He looked over his script briefly, and returned his attention to us, making goofy faces at individual people in the other section.
I was struck by how engaged he was, and how much fun he seemed to be having with us. I’d known a lot of comedians and had seen a lot of live comedy, but I sensed an intense joy for connecting with an audience that I’d never witnessed before. It’s not hyperbole to say that I was overwhelmed. The experience impacted me in ways that I won’t bore everyone with, except to say that it was perspective-changing and would ultimately prove to be life-changing.
The top of the show was great, and the Word was surprisingly easy to watch on the monitor while still watching Stephen in real life. But then came Tad.
I glanced over and saw Paul hit his mark. How close was I? The top of my head appears below him in the entire piece.
Random: the button on his jacket was just a TCR sticker, which looked like it got a little creased from the tumbling bit a few weeks earlier.
During the next break, Stephen called him out to take a bow. There seemed to be some recognition when he said “Paul Dinello.” Paul waved to the woo-ing mass, looked a little awkward, and ducked back into the hallway.
Joe Scarborough was seated in the guest chair, and got his makeup touched up. Stephen waved at him and flashed a big smile. Joe waved back. He was wearing bad shoes and no socks.
The interview was hilarious. Stephen broke a handful of times that weren’t on camera, because they stayed on Joe. Again, this is something that would happen often through the run of the show: Stephen laughing and smiling while the camera stayed on the guest.
The interview went so well that Stephen went back to his desk and tossed his script in the air in celebration. And he was really animated with everyone who was talking to him (looking back, I imagine that had to have been Allison, Rich, and Mark McKenna).
When they spotlit him for the next segment about Al Gore, he was standing right in front of me. I had to have been the only person with a perfect view of him, in between the cameras and the crew. There was one mistake — he said “oops,” and there was no graphic for “oops.” They fixed that in post.
In act 4, he finally screwed up! When he put the picture up on the shelf, he flubbed a line.
“Shit!,” he laughed, and walked out of the shot. When he redid it, he started with “welcome back … again.” Once more, embracing the fail.
And just like that, it was over.
I thanked Mark, floated out of the studio on cloud 9, and thought to myself, “y’know I think I’ll have to do this again someday.”
July 19, 2006: The Taping ReporT!
Hubster Sharilyn has sent us this wonderful “Taping ReporT” of her trip to the “The Colbert Report” way back on July 19, 2006.
I turned the corner onto 54th St., approached the blue awning, went up the stairs, and opened the office door. Yes, I was in the right place. No, I still can’t believe it either.
It was an insane beginning to what would be 13 taping experiences. I had become a big fan of the Report in those first 100+ episodes, though the Daily Show was still #1 in my heart. That was about to change.
I was hosting a radio show about comedy, and was working on a series of interviews with people who had largely unrecognized roles in the industry. I wanted to talk to an audience coordinator, and everyone online said that I simply had meet Mark Malkoff at Colbert. Mark is, “like, THE best,” they told me. I abandoned my initial plan to reach out to another show, and a few emails and a phone call later, it was set.
Security gave me a generic “Hello my name is” sticker, and the receptionist called for Mark. My eyes darted around the office, in disbelief that I was looking at the same red brick walls that I’d seen in so many behind the scenes photos of the Daily Show. Near the front door was a set of shelves lined with small props, and I was slightly starstruck by the box of Formula 401.
Mark started off by giving me a tour of the studio. I’d been running around tv studios since I was a kid, so it wasn’t an entirely new experience for me. But this was Colbert, dammit. And the last time I was there, it was the Daily Show. Both its past and its present carried serious weight. However, I fully intended keep my excitement under wraps.
We went into that grey concrete stairwell connecting the studio and the offices, and for some reason Mark showed me a bulletin board. Hanging there on pink paper was a tentative rundown of that week’s shows. My gaze landed on that day’s episode, which I’d see taped in just a few hours.
Temporarily forgetting to be cool, I gasped and pointed at the word “TAD.”
Busted. Mark, proving he is indeed the best, mercifully didn’t mock me. He did, though, warn me that plans don’t always stick, and there’s always a chance they’d move the segment to another day.
Downstairs, he led me through the middle hallway that used to exist between the two sets of bleachers, to give me a first look at the studio. The same hallway that Stephen’s eyes would drift to when a bit went better or worse than expected – surely settling more $50 bets with Allison than we knew about.
We grabbed a seat in the green room, which was even smaller than any backstage photos or videos made it seem. My eyes kept drifting to the sad little veggie plate, in disbelief that this is all that Joe Scarborough would soon be munching on.
We had a lovely chat, and I left to go for a bite to eat before joining the lineup outside for the taping.
Fastforward to 6 p.m. We stood in the holding room for almost an hour watching Tivo’d episodes of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune dated January of that year (this was, after all, before the Best Of dvd existed). Finally, we were seated.
Mark (again, the best) gave me what had to be the best seat in the place: front row, on the interview side, but on the aisle. Essentially front and centre.
From my vantage point, I was able to sneak a few glances back to the little prep area down the aisle where I’d stood earlier. And most importantly? I was able to watch two of the crew guys debate the mark vs. the lighting on a particular spot right next to me.
The warmup guy was mediocre (some hacky premises), and I never saw him at subsequent tapings. He paced himself, because he had a hell of a lot of time to kill. When all was said and done, he’d been talking to us for almost an hour, and he’d made his way through every person in the audience (myself included). I could tell you either what everyone did for a living, how long they’d been married, or what their college major was.
Finally Stephen came out. He ran! He danced! He tossed his handheld mic in the air! He high-fived everyone in my row! Twice! I touched the man! Twice! More exclamation marks!
The warmup guy pointed out the woman in the audience celebrating her 70th birthday, and Stephen kind of sang a little hymn-style celebration song (still no clue what it would’ve been).
“Does anyone have any quest –”
I shot my hand up.
Stephen was right in front of me, and looking directly at me. Gulp.
My chosen-weeks-earlier question:
“Do you get mad at yourself when you break character?”
You have to remember, he’d done so only a handful of times at that point. Muffman was still fresh fodder in the fandom.
His answer:
“Only if it doesn’t get a laugh. If I screw up, and if everybody doesn’t go ‘ahh, that’s adorable,’ then I get mad. Because then it’s a waste of an inept moment.”
So there’s two things to note about that answer:
1) Clearly, he was on to us.
2) And he didn’t want us to stop.
But what actually (seriously) pleased me about that answer was that it illustrated – just a tiny bit – how he embraces failure. It would become one of the things I admire most about him, but at the time I hadn’t really heard him talk about it. After all, we were still six months away from the first telling of the infamous Second City “Whales” story on Charlie Rose.
I didn’t quite catch the next question. I think it was about memorizing bible verses? Stephen went into reciting some Godstuff at break-neck speed, though he needed help from the priest in the audience at one point.
There weren’t any more hands raised – a far cry from the years to come – but he asked for another question.
The stoner kid beside me piped up and asked whether he gets to pick the pictures on the bookcase. Stephen said no, other people pick them for him. He went over the three pics and everyone cheered for House.
Stephen jumped up, did a bell kick (which he always used to do pre-WristSrong), and went over to the desk. He looked over his script briefly, and returned his attention to us, making goofy faces at individual people in the other section.
I was struck by how engaged he was, and how much fun he seemed to be having with us. I’d known a lot of comedians and had seen a lot of live comedy, but I sensed an intense joy for connecting with an audience that I’d never witnessed before. It’s not hyperbole to say that I was overwhelmed. The experience impacted me in ways that I won’t bore everyone with, except to say that it was perspective-changing and would ultimately prove to be life-changing.
The top of the show was great, and the Word was surprisingly easy to watch on the monitor while still watching Stephen in real life. But then came Tad.
I glanced over and saw Paul hit his mark. How close was I? The top of my head appears below him in the entire piece.
Random: the button on his jacket was just a TCR sticker, which looked like it got a little creased from the tumbling bit a few weeks earlier.
During the next break, Stephen called him out to take a bow. There seemed to be some recognition when he said “Paul Dinello.” Paul waved to the woo-ing mass, looked a little awkward, and ducked back into the hallway.
Joe Scarborough was seated in the guest chair, and got his makeup touched up. Stephen waved at him and flashed a big smile. Joe waved back. He was wearing bad shoes and no socks.
The interview was hilarious. Stephen broke a handful of times that weren’t on camera, because they stayed on Joe. Again, this is something that would happen often through the run of the show: Stephen laughing and smiling while the camera stayed on the guest.
The interview went so well that Stephen went back to his desk and tossed his script in the air in celebration. And he was really animated with everyone who was talking to him (looking back, I imagine that had to have been Allison, Rich, and Mark McKenna).
When they spotlit him for the next segment about Al Gore, he was standing right in front of me. I had to have been the only person with a perfect view of him, in between the cameras and the crew. There was one mistake — he said “oops,” and there was no graphic for “oops.” They fixed that in post.
In act 4, he finally screwed up! When he put the picture up on the shelf, he flubbed a line.
“Shit!,” he laughed, and walked out of the shot. When he redid it, he started with “welcome back … again.” Once more, embracing the fail.
And just like that, it was over.
I thanked Mark, floated out of the studio on cloud 9, and thought to myself, “y’know I think I’ll have to do this again someday.”