Link This | Email This | Blog This | Comments (0)
Night and Day
Jay Leno supports the Writers Guild of America. Conan O’Brien does, too. So professes Jimmy Kimmel, as well. Leno and O’Brien are even Guild members. And have paid their late-night talk show writers’ salaries, while they have been out on strike.
But such support is a bit hard to swallow, when – in the end – you go back on stage and, in action, obviate the need for writers for your show.
Jay Leno’s first opening monologue was clearly as thought-out and, you feel safe to say, written-out as on a normal show, back in the day.
There were the Jew, Muslim and Christian joke, Paul McCartney divorce joke and the jab at NBC being confronted by more picketers than viewers to start off. There were the cutaways to Bob the Light Man, Richard the Scary Stage Hand and the “behind-the-scenes” girls who have “gone to the wall for the guys.’’ There were drop-in videos of a mansion purporting to be NBC chief Jeff Zucker’s house and slums where writers are supposed to live (with “Lost,” “The Office” and “Desperate Housewives” logos doubling as identification signs for their homes), and a very slick animated montage against the backdrop of “We Didn’t Start the Fire,’’ the Billy Joel tune. He proudly claimed that he wrote his own stuff (at night); and ran it by his wife, as his taste tester, before using it. And told the crowd to blame her if the stuff isn’t good. Ha ha.
Now this upsets the Guild because he shouldn’t be doing any work as a member of the union that other unions do not normally carry out. When they’re not on strike.
So much for solidarity.
Now, Leno, O’Brien and Kimmel are in tough spots (as are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central, who come back Monday night). They have to keep their shows viable and their share of attention intact, to keep the future as bright for writers when they come back as when they left. And to keep the futures of hundreds of nonwriters intact as well.
But they had their hands (and mouths) forced back into action by David Letterman, who owns his late night show and made a deal with the writers.
The others couldn’t back off their plans to come back on, when Letterman and his CBS cohort Craig Ferguson said they would come back on – with writing staffs. That would be too much to ask. Even if they’re not in position to actually settle the strike or make pacts with the writers.
Is it too much to ask, however, for Leno, O’Brien and Kimmel to call on their networks’ executives to negotiate with the writers every day they are asked to do their jobs, until this thing is settled?
Haven’t heard that happening. And that’s no joke.
There shouldn’t be talk at night, if there isn’t talk during the day.
–
