Welcome to Better Know a Guest, your weekly guide to the wonderful and diverse array of personalities appearing on ‘The Colbert Report’ and ‘The Daily Show’ each week.
Hey there Hubsters! As our favorite shows are coming back from spring break, I hope you all had wonderful spring breaks yourselves (if you participate in such things). I myself have been in break from college since last Friday, though I just went home to hang out and write some papers. You know, the extreme stuff.
There is a lot that has happened in the past week. I think probably the biggest thing Stephen and Jon could talk about is the drama between Russia and the Ukraine, but is there anything else you guys think they should be talking about? Let us know in the comments below! Also, share your thoughts on the new ‘Daily Show’ and ‘Colbert Report’ website re-designs.
Stephen’s guests at the table this week include two actors, a former US president, and a director.
Jon’s guests include a news editor, an author, a band member, and an actor.
Monday, March 24 (2014)
Bryan Cranston (Actor: “All the Way”)
Bryan Cranston is an American actor, voice actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. Famous for his roles in Malcolm in the Middle and in Breaking Bad, he is currently starring as president Lyndon B. Johnson in the Broadway play All the Way. The play is written by Robert Schenkkan, directed by Bill Rauch, and focuses on LBJ’s role in the US Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Other figures who make an appearance in the play include LBJ’s wife Lady Bird Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert McNamara, Governor George Wallace, J. Edgar Hoover, and more who played a key role in the turbulent 60s. The play has received good reviews, with praise for Cranston’s portrayal of Johnson. Variety critic Marilyn Stasio noted that “Cranston … owns the role of LBJ, cracking the politician’s hard shell to expose the man’s personal crisis of conscience.”
Born: 6 March 1956 (Canoga Park, California, United States)
Education: Canoga Park High School | Los Angeles Valley College
Filmography: Dead Space | That Thing You Do! | Saving Private Ryan | National Lampoon’s Thanksgiving Family Reunion | Seeing Other People | Illusion | The Lincoln Lawyer | Drive | Detachment | Larry Crowne | Contagion | John Carter | Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted | Rock of Ages | Total Recall | Argo
Television: Seinfeld | The Louie Show | The King of Queens | Malcolm in the Middle | Fallen | Breaking Bad | The Cleveland Show
Theater: The God of Hell
Awards: Emmy Award | Satellite Award | TCA Award | Critic’s Choice Television Award | Saturn Award | Screen Actors Guild Award | Golden Globe Award
Previous ‘Colbert Report’ Appearance(s): Interview – 2 August 2013
Previous ‘Daily Show’ Appearance(s): Interview – 13 April 2010
Follow: @BryanCranston
Tuesday, March 25 (2014)
Jimmy Carter (Author: “A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power”)
Jimmy Carter is an American politician, a member of the Democratic Party, and the 39th President of the United States. Since the end of his presidency, he has devoted his time to charitable causes, especially his project ‘The Carter Center’. His new book A Call to Action focuses on abuses of women’s rights worldwide, from lack of equal opportunity, being treated as property, servitude, child marriage, and other issues. Carter draws upon his own experiences, and the testimony of courageous women from all regions and all major religions. Rebecca Denova of the Post Gazette, states that “Mr. Carter has presented a tour de force of the global abuse and manipulation of women, including statistics that will stun most readers with details that cannot be ignored,” further that he makes the important argument that the “treatment of women in world societies cannot and should not be justified by religious texts or appeals to ancestral tradition.”
Born: 1 October 1924 (Plains, Georgia, United States)
Education: Plains High School | United States Naval Academy | Union College | Georgia Institute of Technology | Georgia Southwestern State University
Books: Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis | Beyond the White House | We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work | White House Diary | Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
Awards: Nobel Peace Prize | Presidential Medal of Freedom | International Institutes for Human Rights Gold Medal | Martin Luther King, Jr. Noviolent Peace Prize | International Human Rights Award| Conservationist of the Year Award | Harry S. Truman Public Service Award | Ansel Adams Conservation Award | Human Rights Award
Previous ‘Daily Show’ Appearance(s): Interview – 10 April 2013 | 21 September 2010 | 27 January 2009 | 29 April 2008 | 6 December 2005
Follow: Website | href=”https://twitter.com/CarterCenter” target=”_blank”>@CarterCenter
Wednesday, March 26 (2014)
Errol Morris (Director: “The Unknown Known”)
Errol Morris is an American film director and documentarian, whose latest film The Unknown Known, features interviews with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and discusses his long career in Washington, D.C. and his planning of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in August of 2013 and screened at the 70th Venice International Film Festival, receiving mixed praise from reviewers. Robbie Collins of the Telegraph described the project as “what happens when an unstoppable filmmaker meets and immovable subject.” Many reviewers cited Rumsfeld’s unrevealing answers to Morris’s questions as a major setback for the film; if he had been intending to trip-up the politician, it did not work.
Born: 5 February 1948 (Hewlett, New York, United States)
Education: The Putney School | University of Wisconsin-Madison
Films: Gates of Heaven | Vernon, Florida | The Thin Blue Line | The Dark Wind | A Brief History of Time | Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control | Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. | First Person | The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara | Standard Operating Procedure | Tabloid
Books: Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography | A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffery McDonald | The Ashtray
Awards: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007 | Jury Grand Prix Siilver Bear, Berlin Film Festival | Academy Award | Emmy Award | Guggenheim Fellowship | MacArthur Fellowship | Edgar Award
Follow: Website | @errolmorris
Thursday, March 27 (2014)
Darren Aronofsky (Director: “Noah”)
Darren Aronofsky is an American director, screenwriter, and producer. His latest film Noah, recounts the biblical story of Noah (Russell Crowe) and his Ark (with some artistic license). The release of the film has been banned by censors in some Islamic countries, including Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE where it is a principle belief that you can not make stories or render images about the Prophet. In America, the film has met with mixed reviews and controversy for avoiding mentioning “God” altogether, referring instead to the much more neutral term of “The Creator”, and leaving out altogether, the message of man’s sin and all the things that walked the earth. The film carefully dances around the religious overtones of the story and instead focuses on notions of family, ecology, and a “creator” who tells Noah to build his ark.
Born: 12 February 1969 (Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States)
Education: Edward R. Murrow High School | Harvard University
Filmography: Pi | Requiem for a Dream | Below | The Fountain | The Wrestler | Black Swan
Awards: Sundance Film Festival Award | Independent Spirit Award | London Critics Circle Film Award | San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award | Scream Award
Follow: Darren Aronofsky | @DarrenAronofsky
And now, let’s check in with our good friend Jon Stewart over at ‘The Daily Show’!
Monday, March 24 (2014)
Arianna Huffington (Author: ” Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder”)
Arianna Huffington is the chair, president, and editor-in-chief of the news outlet ‘The Huffington Post’, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author. Her new book Thrive is a call to redefine what it means to be successful. She fears that being successful as it is defined by today’s world comes at immense personal costs; for Ms. Huffington, this expense was her health and well-being, making her realize that there has to be more to success. Through this, she contrived a concept of success as a three-legged stool. Money and power are the first two legs, the ones everyone seems to pursue, but a third leg – well-being – is needed to keep people sitting tall and to enjoy their hard-earned successes. UCLA School of Medicine Prof. Daniel Siegel states the book is “filled with cutting edge scientific research, captivating stories, and straightforward everyday practices, this book is a call-to-action that informs, invigorates, and inspires all at once.”
Born: 15 July 1950 (Athens, Greece)
Education:Girton College, Cambridge
Books: The Female Woman | After Reason | Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend | The Gods of Greece | The Fourth Instinct | Picasso: Creator and Destroyer | Greetings from the Lincoln Bedroom | How to Overthrow the Government | Pigs at the Trough | Fanatics and Fools | On Becoming Fearless…In Love, Work, and Life | Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe | Third World America: How Out Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream
** All pre-oders of the book out March 25th, 2014 get a $26 DonorsChoose gift.
Previous ‘Daily Show’ Appearance(s): Interview – 6 February 2003 | 8 October 2003 | 23 April 2004 | 4 December 2008 | 29 September 2010
Follow: @AriannaHuff
Tuesday, March 25 (2014)
Amy Yates Wuelfing (Co-author: “No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes”)
Gibby Haynes (Lead Singer: “Butthole Surfers”)
Amy Yates Wuelfing is an American author, whose new book No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes gives an oral history of 80s alternative, metal, and punk rock music at Trenton New Jersey’s City Gardens Club, where Jon Stewart worked as a bar tender. The club was a haven for artists who never made the airwaves, and has been sorely overlooked, until now. Gibby Haynes is the lead singer of the Butthole Surfers, one of the bands who used to play at the City Gardens. In fact, his band nearly set the venue on fire during a live show in 1987. The book has been praised as a “a treasure trove of anecdotes from the golden days of Punk and alternative rock as seen through artists and regulars from City Gardens”.
Wednesday, March 26 (2014)
Jude Law (Actor: “Dom Hemingway”)
Jude Law is an English actor, film producer, and director. His latest movie is Dom Hemingway, a black comedy-crime drama which premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. Law plays the titular character Dom Hemingway, a safe cracker who is back on the street after 12 years in prison. Traveling with his best friend Dickie (Richard E. Grant), they find crime boss Mr. Fontaine (Demián Bichir) to claim a reward for not talking to the police. Due to some mishaps along the way, Hemingway decides that instead of collecting the reward, he should try to reconnect with his daughter Evelyn (Emilia Clarke). The film received mixed praise, and currently holds a 59% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 52% rating on Metacritic.
Born: 29 December 1972 (Lewisham, England, United Kingdom)
Education: Alleyn’s School
Filmography: Wilde | Gattaca | The Talented Mr. Ripley | Love, Honour and Obey | Enemy at the Gates | A.I. Artificial Intelligence | Road to Perdition | Cold Mountain | I Heart Huckabees | Alfie | Closer | The Aviator | Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow | Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events | All the King’s Men | The Holiday | The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus | Sherlock Holmes | Repo Men | Contagion | Hugo | Sherlock Holmes | Anna Karenina | Rise of the Guardians | The Grand Budapest Hotel
Theater: Bodywork | The Ragged Child | The Little Rats | Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat | The Caucasian Chalk Circle | Captain Stirrick | The Fastest Clock in the Universe | Pygmalion | The Snow Orchid | Live Like Pigs | Death of a Salesman | Les Parents terribles | Indiscretions | Ion | ‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore | Doctor Faustus | Beckett at Reading | Hamlet | Anna Christie | Henry V
Awards: Cesar Award | Theatre World Award | Critics’ Circle Theatre Award | South Bank Show Award | Falstaff Award
Previous ‘Daily Show’ Appearance(s): Interview – 30 November 2004 | 17 March 2010
Thursday, March 27 (2014)
TBA
Please remember to vote in our weekly favourite guests polls, and don’t forget to let us know which guests you’re looking forward to! Also please try to comment with any tips or suggestions that you have for this post. Thanks! Here’s to a great week of shows! That’s all for this week Hubsters! See you next time!
Better Know a Guest: March 24 – 27, 2014
Hey there Hubsters! As our favorite shows are coming back from spring break, I hope you all had wonderful spring breaks yourselves (if you participate in such things). I myself have been in break from college since last Friday, though I just went home to hang out and write some papers. You know, the extreme stuff.
There is a lot that has happened in the past week. I think probably the biggest thing Stephen and Jon could talk about is the drama between Russia and the Ukraine, but is there anything else you guys think they should be talking about? Let us know in the comments below! Also, share your thoughts on the new ‘Daily Show’ and ‘Colbert Report’ website re-designs.
Stephen’s guests at the table this week include two actors, a former US president, and a director.
Jon’s guests include a news editor, an author, a band member, and an actor.
Monday, March 24 (2014)
Bryan Cranston (Actor: “All the Way”)
Bryan Cranston is an American actor, voice actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. Famous for his roles in Malcolm in the Middle and in Breaking Bad, he is currently starring as president Lyndon B. Johnson in the Broadway play All the Way. The play is written by Robert Schenkkan, directed by Bill Rauch, and focuses on LBJ’s role in the US Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Other figures who make an appearance in the play include LBJ’s wife Lady Bird Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert McNamara, Governor George Wallace, J. Edgar Hoover, and more who played a key role in the turbulent 60s. The play has received good reviews, with praise for Cranston’s portrayal of Johnson. Variety critic Marilyn Stasio noted that “Cranston … owns the role of LBJ, cracking the politician’s hard shell to expose the man’s personal crisis of conscience.”
Born: 6 March 1956 (Canoga Park, California, United States)
Education: Canoga Park High School | Los Angeles Valley College
Filmography: Dead Space | That Thing You Do! | Saving Private Ryan | National Lampoon’s Thanksgiving Family Reunion | Seeing Other People | Illusion | The Lincoln Lawyer | Drive | Detachment | Larry Crowne | Contagion | John Carter | Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted | Rock of Ages | Total Recall | Argo
Television: Seinfeld | The Louie Show | The King of Queens | Malcolm in the Middle | Fallen | Breaking Bad | The Cleveland Show
Theater: The God of Hell
Awards: Emmy Award | Satellite Award | TCA Award | Critic’s Choice Television Award | Saturn Award | Screen Actors Guild Award | Golden Globe Award
Previous ‘Colbert Report’ Appearance(s): Interview – 2 August 2013
Previous ‘Daily Show’ Appearance(s): Interview – 13 April 2010
Follow: @BryanCranston
Tuesday, March 25 (2014)
Jimmy Carter (Author: “A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power”)
Jimmy Carter is an American politician, a member of the Democratic Party, and the 39th President of the United States. Since the end of his presidency, he has devoted his time to charitable causes, especially his project ‘The Carter Center’. His new book A Call to Action focuses on abuses of women’s rights worldwide, from lack of equal opportunity, being treated as property, servitude, child marriage, and other issues. Carter draws upon his own experiences, and the testimony of courageous women from all regions and all major religions. Rebecca Denova of the Post Gazette, states that “Mr. Carter has presented a tour de force of the global abuse and manipulation of women, including statistics that will stun most readers with details that cannot be ignored,” further that he makes the important argument that the “treatment of women in world societies cannot and should not be justified by religious texts or appeals to ancestral tradition.”
Born: 1 October 1924 (Plains, Georgia, United States)
Education: Plains High School | United States Naval Academy | Union College | Georgia Institute of Technology | Georgia Southwestern State University
Books: Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis | Beyond the White House | We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work | White House Diary | Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
Awards: Nobel Peace Prize | Presidential Medal of Freedom | International Institutes for Human Rights Gold Medal | Martin Luther King, Jr. Noviolent Peace Prize | International Human Rights Award| Conservationist of the Year Award | Harry S. Truman Public Service Award | Ansel Adams Conservation Award | Human Rights Award
Previous ‘Daily Show’ Appearance(s): Interview – 10 April 2013 | 21 September 2010 | 27 January 2009 | 29 April 2008 | 6 December 2005
Follow: Website | href=”https://twitter.com/CarterCenter” target=”_blank”>@CarterCenter
Wednesday, March 26 (2014)
Errol Morris (Director: “The Unknown Known”)
Errol Morris is an American film director and documentarian, whose latest film The Unknown Known, features interviews with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and discusses his long career in Washington, D.C. and his planning of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in August of 2013 and screened at the 70th Venice International Film Festival, receiving mixed praise from reviewers. Robbie Collins of the Telegraph described the project as “what happens when an unstoppable filmmaker meets and immovable subject.” Many reviewers cited Rumsfeld’s unrevealing answers to Morris’s questions as a major setback for the film; if he had been intending to trip-up the politician, it did not work.
Born: 5 February 1948 (Hewlett, New York, United States)
Education: The Putney School | University of Wisconsin-Madison
Films: Gates of Heaven | Vernon, Florida | The Thin Blue Line | The Dark Wind | A Brief History of Time | Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control | Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. | First Person | The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara | Standard Operating Procedure | Tabloid
Books: Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography | A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffery McDonald | The Ashtray
Awards: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007 | Jury Grand Prix Siilver Bear, Berlin Film Festival | Academy Award | Emmy Award | Guggenheim Fellowship | MacArthur Fellowship | Edgar Award
Follow: Website | @errolmorris
Thursday, March 27 (2014)
Darren Aronofsky (Director: “Noah”)
Darren Aronofsky is an American director, screenwriter, and producer. His latest film Noah, recounts the biblical story of Noah (Russell Crowe) and his Ark (with some artistic license). The release of the film has been banned by censors in some Islamic countries, including Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE where it is a principle belief that you can not make stories or render images about the Prophet. In America, the film has met with mixed reviews and controversy for avoiding mentioning “God” altogether, referring instead to the much more neutral term of “The Creator”, and leaving out altogether, the message of man’s sin and all the things that walked the earth. The film carefully dances around the religious overtones of the story and instead focuses on notions of family, ecology, and a “creator” who tells Noah to build his ark.
Born: 12 February 1969 (Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States)
Education: Edward R. Murrow High School | Harvard University
Filmography: Pi | Requiem for a Dream | Below | The Fountain | The Wrestler | Black Swan
Awards: Sundance Film Festival Award | Independent Spirit Award | London Critics Circle Film Award | San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award | Scream Award
Follow: Darren Aronofsky | @DarrenAronofsky
And now, let’s check in with our good friend Jon Stewart over at ‘The Daily Show’!
Monday, March 24 (2014)
Arianna Huffington (Author: ” Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder”)
Arianna Huffington is the chair, president, and editor-in-chief of the news outlet ‘The Huffington Post’, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author. Her new book Thrive is a call to redefine what it means to be successful. She fears that being successful as it is defined by today’s world comes at immense personal costs; for Ms. Huffington, this expense was her health and well-being, making her realize that there has to be more to success. Through this, she contrived a concept of success as a three-legged stool. Money and power are the first two legs, the ones everyone seems to pursue, but a third leg – well-being – is needed to keep people sitting tall and to enjoy their hard-earned successes. UCLA School of Medicine Prof. Daniel Siegel states the book is “filled with cutting edge scientific research, captivating stories, and straightforward everyday practices, this book is a call-to-action that informs, invigorates, and inspires all at once.”
Born: 15 July 1950 (Athens, Greece)
Education:Girton College, Cambridge
Books: The Female Woman | After Reason | Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend | The Gods of Greece | The Fourth Instinct | Picasso: Creator and Destroyer | Greetings from the Lincoln Bedroom | How to Overthrow the Government | Pigs at the Trough | Fanatics and Fools | On Becoming Fearless…In Love, Work, and Life | Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe | Third World America: How Out Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream
** All pre-oders of the book out March 25th, 2014 get a $26 DonorsChoose gift.
Previous ‘Daily Show’ Appearance(s): Interview – 6 February 2003 | 8 October 2003 | 23 April 2004 | 4 December 2008 | 29 September 2010
Follow: @AriannaHuff
Tuesday, March 25 (2014)
Amy Yates Wuelfing (Co-author: “No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes”)
Gibby Haynes (Lead Singer: “Butthole Surfers”)
Amy Yates Wuelfing is an American author, whose new book No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes gives an oral history of 80s alternative, metal, and punk rock music at Trenton New Jersey’s City Gardens Club, where Jon Stewart worked as a bar tender. The club was a haven for artists who never made the airwaves, and has been sorely overlooked, until now. Gibby Haynes is the lead singer of the Butthole Surfers, one of the bands who used to play at the City Gardens. In fact, his band nearly set the venue on fire during a live show in 1987. The book has been praised as a “a treasure trove of anecdotes from the golden days of Punk and alternative rock as seen through artists and regulars from City Gardens”.
Wednesday, March 26 (2014)
Jude Law (Actor: “Dom Hemingway”)
Jude Law is an English actor, film producer, and director. His latest movie is Dom Hemingway, a black comedy-crime drama which premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. Law plays the titular character Dom Hemingway, a safe cracker who is back on the street after 12 years in prison. Traveling with his best friend Dickie (Richard E. Grant), they find crime boss Mr. Fontaine (Demián Bichir) to claim a reward for not talking to the police. Due to some mishaps along the way, Hemingway decides that instead of collecting the reward, he should try to reconnect with his daughter Evelyn (Emilia Clarke). The film received mixed praise, and currently holds a 59% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 52% rating on Metacritic.
Born: 29 December 1972 (Lewisham, England, United Kingdom)
Education: Alleyn’s School
Filmography: Wilde | Gattaca | The Talented Mr. Ripley | Love, Honour and Obey | Enemy at the Gates | A.I. Artificial Intelligence | Road to Perdition | Cold Mountain | I Heart Huckabees | Alfie | Closer | The Aviator | Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow | Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events | All the King’s Men | The Holiday | The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus | Sherlock Holmes | Repo Men | Contagion | Hugo | Sherlock Holmes | Anna Karenina | Rise of the Guardians | The Grand Budapest Hotel
Theater: Bodywork | The Ragged Child | The Little Rats | Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat | The Caucasian Chalk Circle | Captain Stirrick | The Fastest Clock in the Universe | Pygmalion | The Snow Orchid | Live Like Pigs | Death of a Salesman | Les Parents terribles | Indiscretions | Ion | ‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore | Doctor Faustus | Beckett at Reading | Hamlet | Anna Christie | Henry V
Awards: Cesar Award | Theatre World Award | Critics’ Circle Theatre Award | South Bank Show Award | Falstaff Award
Previous ‘Daily Show’ Appearance(s): Interview – 30 November 2004 | 17 March 2010
Thursday, March 27 (2014)
TBA
Please remember to vote in our weekly favourite guests polls, and don’t forget to let us know which guests you’re looking forward to! Also please try to comment with any tips or suggestions that you have for this post. Thanks! Here’s to a great week of shows! That’s all for this week Hubsters! See you next time!