Hello, Colbert News hub!
After six years and more tapings than there were supposed to be, I’ve just returned from my final one. And let me tell you… I couldn’t have picked a better way to end my visits to the show.
People showed up EARLY; I happened to walk by the studio mid-afternoon on my way somewhere else, and there was already a small crowd gathered so I stayed. Since this was my last time, I even felt nostalgia for the waiting-in-the-freezing-cold part of the day. I always meet interesting people in the audience, and today was absolutely no exception. I also got to watch several audience members talk about the show to a CBS film crew, who were there working on a piece about the show’s finale next week.
We spent an inordinate amount of time in the holding room – I got to see parts of the best-of reel I’d never seen before! Before today I’d made it up to the apocalypse debate with the fog machine, but after that they aired the Maurice Sendak interview, Sir Ian McKellan’s hobbit week interview, and I think another one or two but I can’t remember because I was listening to the loud booms on the other side of the studio door.
The warm-up comic did a short set (I’d only seen him once before at Last Week Tonight, and unfortunately can’t remember his name), and then Stephen ran out, slapped our hands while Cheap Trick blared. His fly was down. Mark (the stage manager) pointed it out and he broke down laughing, and said he’d been checking his fly for 9 years and this was the first time it had actually been down!
There were a few different Q&A sections in this show, and since I can’t remember which ones came when, here they all are (in no particular order):
Q. Can I sing the National Anthem with you?
A. Sure, later. (It didn’t actually happen)
Q. I was a big fan of you in Company, what was that like?
A. It was an incredible experience, and fast. Stephen originally said no, but Sondheim convinced him. They only rehearsed for like 10 weeks, and one of the performances was the first time the whole cast did it together.
Q. Are you thinking of bringing the character to Late Snow?
A. No.
Q. Can you read my shirt?
A. Stephen recognized it as Elvish but asked which dialect. The audience member didn’t know and said he got it off the internet. Stephen said that he only speaks one dialect of Elvish.
Q. How would you solve [some problem that came up in Lord of the Rings]?
A. Stephen had a solution. I understood none of it.
Q. If you could take something from the set, what would it be?
A. Stephen could take anything he wanted! He’d take a picture of his father, and the banner from the 1963 Freedom March. His mother was there, and pregnant with him, so technically he was there! He said that one of his favorites was the shofar, and he picked it up and blew into it several times (many of them unsuccessful, but eventually it worked!)
Q. What was up with Diane Keaton?
A. She came in character. As Stephen was backstage getting into character, she was too. He said something to her backstage as the character, and she replied as a character of her own. He loved it.
When it was time for the show, Stephen shot Wriststrongs into the audience and then faked someone out with the dagger, then said that there were too many jokes in the show for the Table of Contents. He then proceeded to mess up a line in the first sentence or two, I think it was the word “governor”, and broke down laughing and said that as long as we’re not on Twitter, nobody would ever know he’s incompetent. We started again, only to have Stephen flub another line, go back and forth with Mark about how to fix it, and then we started the whole show over again. This time, A block went without a hitch.
The commercial breaks were relatively short this time; a few writers came up to the desk and conferred as usual, but not for long. They hit another snag during the bit about the auction, because Stephen’s face didn’t pop up in the fire at the right time (I think.) We re-took it, and Stephen apologized for the fact that we were seeing how the sausage was made. A funny moment: the model asked if she should leave before they re-taped the segment, and Stephen waved her back going “Take away the beautiful woman? That’s not how television works!”, or something to that effect.
Then the awesome part. They moved the cameras to the side, and Stephen said they have the guest that he’s been most excited about, ever. Including Obama (sorry, Obama, but he was right. This was f***ing cool. Maybe if Obama were CGI, and in the Hobbit.) Stephen took a few more questions while they got the video set up, and we didn’t know what was coming until they brought it up on the big screen. Stephen sat in the audience for the first few minutes of the interview, then went back to his desk to watch. He was grinning like an idiot the whole time just like I was!
After the segment was over we all went nuts, and they got the cameras and the fire extinguisher set up for the goodnight segment. Stephen had some trouble reading the names of people to thank, but they didn’t tape it twice so I guess they decided it was fine/they were running so late with all the re-tapes and the late start that it wasn’t worth a do-over. Plus, they’d already lit the corners of the paper on fire. There was a lot of playful squirting of the fire extinguisher between takes. Then one last question (“How did you put that interview together?” “We filmed it before you got here!”) And then we filed out one last time.
December 11, 2014: The Taping ReporT!
Hello, Colbert News hub!
After six years and more tapings than there were supposed to be, I’ve just returned from my final one. And let me tell you… I couldn’t have picked a better way to end my visits to the show.
People showed up EARLY; I happened to walk by the studio mid-afternoon on my way somewhere else, and there was already a small crowd gathered so I stayed. Since this was my last time, I even felt nostalgia for the waiting-in-the-freezing-cold part of the day. I always meet interesting people in the audience, and today was absolutely no exception. I also got to watch several audience members talk about the show to a CBS film crew, who were there working on a piece about the show’s finale next week.
We spent an inordinate amount of time in the holding room – I got to see parts of the best-of reel I’d never seen before! Before today I’d made it up to the apocalypse debate with the fog machine, but after that they aired the Maurice Sendak interview, Sir Ian McKellan’s hobbit week interview, and I think another one or two but I can’t remember because I was listening to the loud booms on the other side of the studio door.
The warm-up comic did a short set (I’d only seen him once before at Last Week Tonight, and unfortunately can’t remember his name), and then Stephen ran out, slapped our hands while Cheap Trick blared. His fly was down. Mark (the stage manager) pointed it out and he broke down laughing, and said he’d been checking his fly for 9 years and this was the first time it had actually been down!
There were a few different Q&A sections in this show, and since I can’t remember which ones came when, here they all are (in no particular order):
Q. Can I sing the National Anthem with you?
A. Sure, later. (It didn’t actually happen)
Q. I was a big fan of you in Company, what was that like?
A. It was an incredible experience, and fast. Stephen originally said no, but Sondheim convinced him. They only rehearsed for like 10 weeks, and one of the performances was the first time the whole cast did it together.
Q. Are you thinking of bringing the character to Late Snow?
A. No.
Q. Can you read my shirt?
A. Stephen recognized it as Elvish but asked which dialect. The audience member didn’t know and said he got it off the internet. Stephen said that he only speaks one dialect of Elvish.
Q. How would you solve [some problem that came up in Lord of the Rings]?
A. Stephen had a solution. I understood none of it.
Q. If you could take something from the set, what would it be?
A. Stephen could take anything he wanted! He’d take a picture of his father, and the banner from the 1963 Freedom March. His mother was there, and pregnant with him, so technically he was there! He said that one of his favorites was the shofar, and he picked it up and blew into it several times (many of them unsuccessful, but eventually it worked!)
Q. What was up with Diane Keaton?
A. She came in character. As Stephen was backstage getting into character, she was too. He said something to her backstage as the character, and she replied as a character of her own. He loved it.
When it was time for the show, Stephen shot Wriststrongs into the audience and then faked someone out with the dagger, then said that there were too many jokes in the show for the Table of Contents. He then proceeded to mess up a line in the first sentence or two, I think it was the word “governor”, and broke down laughing and said that as long as we’re not on Twitter, nobody would ever know he’s incompetent. We started again, only to have Stephen flub another line, go back and forth with Mark about how to fix it, and then we started the whole show over again. This time, A block went without a hitch.
The commercial breaks were relatively short this time; a few writers came up to the desk and conferred as usual, but not for long. They hit another snag during the bit about the auction, because Stephen’s face didn’t pop up in the fire at the right time (I think.) We re-took it, and Stephen apologized for the fact that we were seeing how the sausage was made. A funny moment: the model asked if she should leave before they re-taped the segment, and Stephen waved her back going “Take away the beautiful woman? That’s not how television works!”, or something to that effect.
Then the awesome part. They moved the cameras to the side, and Stephen said they have the guest that he’s been most excited about, ever. Including Obama (sorry, Obama, but he was right. This was f***ing cool. Maybe if Obama were CGI, and in the Hobbit.) Stephen took a few more questions while they got the video set up, and we didn’t know what was coming until they brought it up on the big screen. Stephen sat in the audience for the first few minutes of the interview, then went back to his desk to watch. He was grinning like an idiot the whole time just like I was!
After the segment was over we all went nuts, and they got the cameras and the fire extinguisher set up for the goodnight segment. Stephen had some trouble reading the names of people to thank, but they didn’t tape it twice so I guess they decided it was fine/they were running so late with all the re-tapes and the late start that it wasn’t worth a do-over. Plus, they’d already lit the corners of the paper on fire. There was a lot of playful squirting of the fire extinguisher between takes. Then one last question (“How did you put that interview together?” “We filmed it before you got here!”) And then we filed out one last time.