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No one was given short shrift. By working ahead, and devoting sixteen hours a day to the task, I was ready for Brooke Shields, Sarah Jessica Parker, Mike Myers, Goldie Hawn, and Dave Chappelle -- and you’ll be seeing the results on Bravo. They are five exceptional guests, and they’ve provided us with five exceptional episodes.
Dave returned to our stage to help us celebrate our 200th episode, and I can confidently promise you that when you see this show, it won’t look or sound -- or feel -- like any Inside the Actors Studio episode you’ve...]]>
April, spring … and another blog.
Spring is my favorite time of year. I explain why in my book Inside Inside:
I confess that I am hugely fond of beginnings and, by logical inference, averse to endings. I don’t know whether this makes me an optimist or a pessimist, but I’ve long since reconciled myself to the fact that it’s there and it’s never going to go away.
April may be the cruelest month to Eliot, but to me it’s the kindest, with its portents of spring, which is crammed with beginnings. Of holidays, I enjoy Memorial Day because it officially begins the pleasant summer season, and dislike Labor Day because it ends it. Thanksgiving is welcome because it begins the Christmas season, of which I confess to being inordinately fond, and I’m resistant to the compulsory joy of New Year’s Eve, because it ends it.
This affection for beginnings has had a predictable...]]>
Once again, my thanks to those of you who have taken the time to respond to my blog.
It’s great to be back on stage with Inside the Actors Studio. Last week Brooke Shields joined us with some startling revelations as we shot our first show since the end of the strike, and you’ll be seeing it soon.
The subject of this new blog is acting, for an odd and interesting reason: With increasing frequency, I’m being invited to revisit the profession with which I began my career.
This unexpected development started with Conan O’Brien. My first appearance on his show was as a guest, to talk about an upcoming episode of Inside the Actors Studio. Apparently, Conan felt that we were compatible, so he invited me back -- not as a guest but as a kind of ex-officio cast member, to perform a comedy sketch with him.
The call from Conan’s show always...]]>
The strike is over!!!
Some reflections … but first, the best part of blogging: the opportunity to meet our audience -- you -- and share some thoughts.
To those of who have read my book and been kind enough to e-mail me about it, my deepest thanks. Writing a book (or a movie or a play or a television show) is, I suspect, like giving birth to a child. After the long period of gestation, you emerge with it in your arms and a wary, hopeful smile on your face. What will people think? What will they say? Will they welcome your creation or shun it?
The critical and public reaction to Inside Inside has been all I could have hoped for -- but nothing can beat the immediate, person-to-person response of a Web site.
Kristen, Darlene, Dave (from Vienna!), Patty P., Karina (from Rome!), my heartfelt thanks for your kind, considerate words.
Susan,...]]>
Once again, I must begin my blog with gratitude to all of you who have gone to the time and trouble of reading my thoughts and, most important, responding to them with yours.
As I’ve moved into cyberspace, like Alice venturing warily through the looking glass, I’ve discovered its foremost virtue: It breaks through the television screen and brings us face to face. Since Inside the Actors Studio is in 84,000,000 homes in America and 125 countries around the world, the audience is a vast, mysterious, faceless crowd. Cyber-space pierces the darkness and shines a light on both of us: on me because the blog is, literally, a glimpse into my thinking, for whatever it’s worth -- and is equally a forum for your thoughts, which are worth a great deal to those of us who launch each episode of Inside the Actors Studio on its voyage into uncharted waters.
Among the many responses...]]>
As I undertake my fifth blog, the holidays recede into the past. For Kedakai and me, they’re a deeply satisfying memory. I hope the same can be said for you.
Now we face the considerably less jolly prospect of winter’s long cold grip. Of all the months of the year, I suspect that January and February are the least anticipated and, in the northern hemisphere, the least appreciated, as we await, with growing impatience, the first glimmer of Spring late in March.
As an antidote to these lackluster days I hope you’ll accept an excerpt from my book Inside Inside -- which, thanks to tens of thousands of you out there, is enjoying sales that fulfill the publisher’s and my wildest hopes.
One of the chapters of the book that has leapt from the pages to the headlines is the account of the rites of passage I underwent as a very young man...]]>
Time for another blog … and by happy coincidence, here comes Christmas. About which, more in a moment.
First, as always, I want to acknowledge and thank those of you who have gone to the time and trouble to read my musings -- and respond.
Thanks, Debbie and the several Marys. Glad you liked the Geico commercial, Judith. It’s astonishing how many people have seen it, and commented on it. I’m very glad you like my book, Gina. Maybe we’ll meet in Nantucket.
Now to the subject of Christmas, which is, hands down, my favorite day of the year. It has been since I was a kid.
As I write in Inside Inside:
In my novel Mirrors, I seized the opportunity to express my feelings through the character of a young woman: “You know what I like best about Christmas? It’s so -- whimsical: normally sane people dragging messy, living trees into...]]>
I’m back -- greatly encouraged by your responses to my first two blogs.
In my second blog I expressed my surprise at both the level of interest and acumen of the correspondents who took the time and trouble to weigh in on our Web site. Blogging, I’ve discovered, is like finding rooms full of friends you didn’t know you had.
Thanks, Judith, for your shared admiration of Dickens. And, 1hotgranma, the “OTHER James Lipton” you found in the Bob Hope writing credits doesn’t exist. Which is to say, I am that James Lipton -- a product of twelve astonishing years during which I was Executive Producer and one of the writers of Bob’s Birthday Special, which took me on a magic carpet ride with Bob to the White House (twice!), all around America, London, Paris, and the Great Wall of China, where I produced the first American entertainment show, “The Road to...]]>
Since Inside the Actors Studio began its career in 1994, I’ve had many surprises, principally because, thirteen years ago, I made a decision that, unlike nearly every other talk show, this one would have no pre-interview. The result is that neither the guest nor I know what’s going to happen next. It’s as if our stage were a circus tent, with a rope ladder at each side. As the evening begins, the guest climbs one rope ladder and I go up the other; then we meet up top in the middle of a high wire -- with no net -- for four or five hours (that’s how long we’re together at each taping). Since neither of us knows what’s coming next, it’s an exhilarating experience filled with surprises.
By way of illustration, here’s one you’ll find in my new book Inside Inside:
In interviews, I am invariably asked, “What’s the most surprising thing...]]>
As you may know, near the end of each episode of Inside the Actors Studio, I ask my guest, “If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?”
This moment feels a bit like that, as I arrive for the first time at the portals of cyberspace, staring apprehensively into the void, with no deity waiting to take up the conversational slack. In De Niro’s -- and Scorsese’s -- famous words: “There’s nobody here but me.” And nothing but this ominous silence that, I’m told, I’m supposed to fill.
With what? The question is: how to fill a vacuum without being vacuous?
Where’s Will Ferrell when you need him, ready to take over and be the garrulous me that seems to have an answer to everything?
At this moment, I feel as if I have the answer to nothing! Where to start? A friend said...]]>
