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Post by petrolino on Feb 18, 2024 23:10:20 GMT
'Late Night With Seth Meyers' (first aired on February 24, 2014)
“I get super stressed, I genuinely do, because I like about my show that it’s all written, and I do feel like I have a writer’s mind, even though I came from improv. I like knowing what the plan’s going to be, and with ‘Day Drinking,’ you can’t. So the good news is I’m super stressed when it starts, and then I kill that part of my head with alcohol.”
- Seth Meyers, The Hollywood Reporter (article published June 23, 2022)
Oscar nominee America Ferrera speaks with Seth Meyers
"Given their similar backgrounds on Saturday Night Live — particularly the fact that both are former "Weekend Update" hosts — it didn't seem unreasonable to expect that the first week of Late Night with Seth Meyers would have felt a lot like Jimmy Fallon's tenure in the 12:30 slot. Instead, what audiences got was something that was arguably smarter, less mainstream, and definitely less comfortable ... but was it good?
The jury's still out on that one. Neither Meyers nor the show really felt as if it had found its rhythm by the first week, but that's understandable. It's the first week, unlike Fallon's Tonight Show, which was essentially his Late Night, only an hour earlier and with a different stage. For all the uncertainty and stiffness, though, there was much to enjoy about Meyers' first five Late Night episodes."
- Graeme McMillan, Wired (article published March 3, 2014)
Episode 1, Series 1 : Vice President (and current President) Joe Biden discusses the 2014 State of the Union with Seth Meyers & Amy Poehler
"When did Late Night with Seth Meyers become so good? No, really. It happened so insidiously, like the temperature of a bathtub creeping to cool or Jonah Hill being considered a serious actor.
His appointment to the Late Night desk in 2014 was met with a wave of collective internet eye rolls: Oh look, another white man joining the ranks of late night talk show hosts. It also didn’t help that Mr. Meyers was coming from the Weekend Update desk at Saturday Night Live and his transition to a seemingly similar gig skewering political figures and celebrities monologue-style made the open hosting position, which had been so rife with possibility, seem foregone already. But while we haven’t been looking, Mr. Meyers has tweaked his show over the past two years, building upon his strengths and those of his diverse writing staff to create the most progressive and interesting show on late night, doing a damn good job filling out the Jon Stewart-sized hole this election desperately needs filled.
I sat down with Mr. Meyers in a Chelsea photo studio where he emerged from a back room in a t-shirt and jeans, a handshake already extended. “I’m Seth.” It should be mentioned that his eyes are as blue as the sea. I ask about his son, just eight-weeks old. “You know, he can’t talk or walk or anything so it’s not like there’s a highlight reel of achievements, but I feel like he’s on a good path,” he laughs. Whereas the Late Show with Stephen Colbert has brought on only white, male fiction writers, Mr. Meyers has been spectacular in his elevation of female literary voices, interviewing half a dozen female novelists – including Helen Oyeyemi, Hanya Yanagihara, and Azar Nafisi – most of them women of color. Other fiction writers he’s interviewed: Sunil Yapa, Alexander Chee, Marlon James, and Junot Díaz.
“Authors are probably my favorite guests,” said Mr. Meyers. “Better than I thought they’d be, but I should have realized they’re all natural storytellers. Even though a lot them have not been on television before, they’re just great. They have a mastery of language … and they’re all so different. I’m always going to be fascinated talking to people about writing process.” It’s quite understandable, even expected, to interview an author like Stephen King (which both Mr. Colbert and Mr. Meyers have), but it’s something else to pull an author who hasn’t received a tremendous amount of media attention and talk about the type of literature that might have gone otherwise unacknowledged on network TV. After Ms. Yanagihara appeared on the program, sales for her 720-page epic novel, A Little Life, rose 54 percent.
“It is nice, the different kind of voices we have. I think it’s nice to try to avoid overlap when you hire people.” Mr. Meyers told me he always tries to read every book that’s promoted on his show, in its entirety. “Sometimes you read it and you still don’t know what to ask because I’m not smart enough to understand it in a way to ask an interesting question, but they don’t need much, authors, to tell good stories.”
- Dana Schwartz, Observer (article published May 26, 2016)
Seth Meyers shares some stern words with the 'Late Night' staff
"Stefon Zelesky — movie star?
Seth Meyers said this week that a movie based on Bill Hader‘s popular Saturday Night Live character was discussed but scrubbed, leaving the club kid who appeared on the late-night staple often from 2008-13, and a couple of times after, to linger only in fans’ memory. And YouTube. In an interview for Las Culturistas, the podcast hosted by comic actor Matt Rogers and SNL‘s Bowen Yang, the Late Night host said he would have had a small part in the pic but that his “Weekend Update” anchor would have died early on — after a long night of partying with Stefon. So someone else would have had to co-star. “There was a moment in time where the idea of a Stefon script was being discussed,” he said. “This was not a scene that was written, but I did have a pitch for myself and Stefon because I knew it was going to be Stefon and James Franco or whoever. It wasn’t going to be me and Stefon.”
Meyers added that the plan was for Hader’s Stefon to take him out on the town. “Just come out,” the party boy would have said, “have a night me and you together — Stefon’s New York.” Meyers added, “And I’m like, ‘All right, one night.’ And then you would do these super-fast cuts of he and I at all these crazy clubs. That would be the opening montage, and then it would end with me in a body bag, and Stefon would say, ‘He’s dead!’ Then the splash: Stefon: The Movie.”
- Erik Pedersen, Deadline (article published November 23, 2023)
The unravelling of Seth Meyers continues to manifest a better world ...
"Lots of unexpected things can happen in the wee hours of the morning. But NBC is keeping at least one element constant. The network recently renewed its contract with Seth Meyers to host “Late Night,” the post-midnight perennial that has been on the air since David Letterman launched it in 1982. The new pact calls for Meyers to continue hosting the program through 2025."
- Brian Steinberg, Variety (article published February 26, 2021)
David Letterman & Seth Meyers Celebrate 40 Years Of Late Night ('Late Night With David Letterman' first aired on February 1, 1982)
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Post by petrolino on Feb 24, 2024 2:18:47 GMT
📝 A Small Selection Of Writers 📞
Judy Blume (February 12, 1938, Elizabeth, New Jersey, U.S.)
Joyce Carol Oates (June 16, 1938, Lockport, New York, U.S.)
Margaret Atwood (November 18, 1939, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)
Senator Bernie Sanders (September 8, 1941, New York City, New York, U.S.)
10th Anniversary Celebrations : Pernice Lafonk (date unknown, place unknown)
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'Bum Notes' 🎵 : Seth Meyers ^ Will Forte
Former colleagues Will Forte & Seth Meyers clear the air with a health & wellbeing exercise ...
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'MacGruber : Sensitivity Training'
Gregg Almond sits in with Jimmy Fallon's house band
'Smorgasbord' [The Food Network]
Open recording on Channel 23 [Duluth, Minnesota]
'Doppelganger' [Digital Films]
'Seinfeld' session bass player lays down grooves in Studio C ...
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Chippendancers : Will Forte, Andy Samberg, Finesse Mitchell & Seth Meyers entertain Rachel Dratch, Lindsay Lohan, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig & Tina Fey
'Day Drinking' with Will Forte (June 17, 1970, Alameda County, California, U.S.)
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🏋🏻 John Irving : 'The Wrestler's Writer' 🤼
I'm not sure that John Irving ever saw himself as being a political writer, which might be connected to his emergence as a novelist and short story writer in the 1960s. It seems like politics at the time tended to become a part of everything, even if it was being read in to it after the fact. In recent years, he's been criticised by some, appreciated by others, but there's also been a number of written articles suggesting he was somewhat ahead of the curve when it comes to today's political hot topics. His first published novel involved ideas of conservation, animal welfare and environmentalism ('Setting Free The Bears', 1968), though more generally, it was a historic tale of liberation. Questions of identity ('The World According To Garp', 1978) and faith ('A Prayer For Owen Meany', 1989) lay at the heart of his work moving forward. He explored ideas around mental-physical metamorphosis ('The Water-Method Man', 1972), alternative lifestyles ('The Hotel New Hampshire', 1981) and reproductive freedoms ('The Cider House Rules', 1985) in his novels, ideas which continue to raise eyebrows today, though he did so within stories about people who were really just trying to figure some things out. I've often ruminated on the nature of existence upon reading Irving's novels, but I think the bigger ideas I've tended to think about only after I've turned the last page. His experiments with framed narratives have always delighted some, while infuriating others, but I find this to be one of the most interesting aspects of his work. Within his best work, I love the situational descriptions, and the terse, rhythmic dialogue exchanges, which are rarely adjunct (if that's the correct word). "In John Irving's "The Water-Method Man" (1972) the main character is Fred Trumper, described as a floundering graduate student with serious honesty issues that earn him the nickname Bogus. Of course that's apropos of nothing - but an interesting coincidence just the same."
- Spot On Jay, Twitter
"Whom the gods would destroy they first call promising," a famous English critic once wrote and so many young novelists are driven by a kind of malicious inevitability to live up to this prophecy that when one like John Irving does not, his achievement is all the more astonishing.
Irving's first novel, "Setting Free the Bears," received the kind of critical praise that makes one approach his second, "The Water-Method Man," with a certain amount of caution. But the first few chapters of this new work dispel any doubts about the sustained vigor of his talent. He quickly reasserts his inventiveness, wit and obvious ability to devour new experiences, digest them rapidly and convert them into imaginative symbols and lively literary episodes.
The title "The Water-Method Man," is one tinged with irony. It derives from the treatment (the water-method) that a French specialist in urology had prescribed for Fred Bogus Trumper, the principal character in the novel. A birth defect had turned Trumper's urinary tract into "a narrow, winding road."
... "The Water-Method Man," a rambling, episodic novel, is held together almost miraculously by the skill of an author who is a born writer. The reader is bombarded with a surfeit of imaginative images, symbols and events. And after putting down the novel and allowing some time to elapse, the characters, the kaleidoscope of events assume a cohesive and even more meaningful form."
- Jan Carew, The New York Times
John Irving cooking up a storm at home in Vermont
Wrestling is one of the key themes that runs throughout John Irving's work. There's been several film adaptations of stories he's written including George Roy Hill's 'The World According To Garp' (1982) in which Irving appears as a wrestling referee (Garp, played by Robin Williams, is an aspiring writer and amateur wrestler). I'm a big fan of the movie, as well as Tony Richardson's 'The Hotel New Hampshire' (1984). Mark Steven Johnson's 'Simon Birch' (1998), Lasse Hallstrom's 'The Cider House Rules' (1999) and Tod Williams' 'The Door In The Floor' (2004) are the others. 'John Irving is a writer who has historically been fearless in his focus. The American-born Irving's first novel, 'Setting Free the Bears', was published in 1968 at the age of 26. His books have been translated into more than 35 languages. While known as a novelist, he's been an Hall of Fame wrestling coach, an English professor and an Oscar-winning screenwriter.'
- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
"I loved Hotel New Hampshire. It’s an acquired taste, that film. I think it made people feel really uncomfortable because it’s, like most John Irving things, it has a fantastical element and a really mundane element to it, and you don’t know which one you’re in at all times. But I love that about that film, and I guess I have such fond memories of Montreal. I keep friends from that film."
- Jodie Foster, Chud.com
"You don't get to choose your obsessions; your obsessions choose you."
- John Irving
The Sportsman & The Cheerleader : Rob Lowe and Jodie Foster in 'The Hotel New Hampshire'
John Irving speaking with Stephen Colbert
I think the best book to read for wrestling, for anyone new to John Irving's work who might be interested, is 'The 158-Pound Marriage' (1974). For me, it's one of the great novels when it comes to the discipline of wrestling.
"For the writing of my first four novels — when I was not a bestseller — I was a full-time English teacher and wrestling coach. I never thought, on the evidence of the writing of those first four books, that I would ever be self-supporting. And I liked coaching wrestling. I liked teaching English.
When I was writing The World According to Garp, I resented that I had two hours a day to write, and not every day. I thought, how much more could I do if I could write seven days a week and I didn't have these other jobs? It's easy now, at 80, to look back and say it was fortunate that I didn't have a breakout book — a bestseller with my first novel. It's because the privilege, the good luck of being self-supporting in the world of literary fiction, is something I don't take for granted."
- John Irving speaking in October 2022, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
"If my ideas mattered to me, I wouldn't write novels. I'm not an intellectual; I'm a carpenter - I build stories."
- John Irving, The Guardian
John Irving speaking with Seth Meyers
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🧮 'It's Only Rock And Roll' : 3 Songs Inspired By The Pen Of John Irving 📚
(Left To Right : John Irving, J.K. Rowling & Stephen King)
'The World According To Garp' (1978)
"As funny as it was when it was written, and more tragic, and more true. One of my favorite laugh/cry novels, and one I talk about with friends and teach to my students."
- Jeanette Winterson on 'The World According To Garp', '10 Favourite Books' (article published at Vulture on October 4, 2017)
'The album 'There's Always Another Girl' (2011) was originally going to be titled Speeches Delivered to Animals and Plants, in reference to a passage in the John Irving novel The World According to Garp, but later Juliana Hatfield herself changed it to There's Always Another Girl, in reference to a song in the album of the same name she had written as a defense for Lindsay Lohan after watching her flop I Know Who Killed Me.'
- Wikipedia
'I was born one day under skies of gray and called New England my home,
And the single name that my mother gave was all I had of my own,
I was taught the rules of steering school though they all fell short of the mark,
But these things never meant too much in the world according to Garp;
Bunky grows older, the nights they get colder,
The lights burn low and the nurse is home,
And the days won’t wait, you can’t make them slow,
See how they go, see how they go ...
See how they go, see how they go ...'
'The World According To Garp' - Al Stewart
'A Prayer For Owen Meany' (1989)
'Uncertainty
A foundation built on nothing
I could see
Secure in your
Immaculate perception
The last resort I thought
I'd ever exercise
Now, all that I have
To stand on
Grieving from a different
Point of view
I learn its meaning from you
In life and death
And continue ...'
'Owen Meaney' - Lagwagon
"Lyrically, the song "Goodbye Sky Harbor" is based on John Irving's brilliantly poignant "Prayer for Owen Meany". The novel's cathartic ending takes place in Sky Harbor Airport. When I heard this song the first time, in that context, I had to pull off the road, overwhelmed by the way the universe sometimes can be so benevolent."
- Doug Bowman, Youtube
"I first read Owen Meany as a senior in high school, probably a year or two after first buying this album. After reading it I was sitting in math class listening to it on my Walkman when this song came on. I literally jumped out of my chair and yelped when I realized what the song was about. One of my favorite albums and one of my favorite novels."
- Ty Hunt (in reply to Doug Bowman), Youtube
'Goodbye Sky Harbor' - Jimmy Eat World
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🕯 {PRE-DISASTERED} CODA 🖋
'John Irving published his first novel at the age of 26. His fourth novel, The World According to Garp, won the National Book Award in 1980. His screenplay adaptation of another one of his novels, The Cider House Rules, won him an Academy Award. Millions of copies of his novels and short stories have been printed, sold, and read worldwide.
You would imagine that words would come easy to a tremendously talented and skilled master storyteller such as John Irving. But for Irving this was not the case. Writing was not automatic, but he has made it work for him. “To do anything really well, you have to overextend yourself,” Irving observes. “In my case, I learned that I just had to pay twice as much attention. I came to appreciate that in doing something over and over again, something that was never natural becomes almost second nature. You learn that you have the capacity for that, and that it doesn’t come overnight.”
As a student at Phillips Exeter Academy, a prep school in New England where his stepfather taught, he worked hard to earn C-minuses in English, and except for a rare few who saw sparks of his potential, his teachers regarded him as “lazy” and “stupid.” Irving remarks on those times during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s in an interview for Dr. Sally Shaywitz’s book, Overcoming Dyslexia.
~ "I simply accepted the conventional wisdom of the day — I was a struggling student; therefore, I was stupid. I needed five years to pass the three-year foreign language requirement … I passed Latin I with a D, and flunked Latin II; then I switched to Spanish, which I barely survived …
It wasn’t until my younger son, Brendan, was diagnosed as slightly dyslexic that I realized how I had been given the shaft. His teachers said that Brendan comprehended everything he read, but that he didn’t comprehend a text as quickly as his peers …. As a child, Brendan read with his finger following the sentences — as I read, as I still read. Unless I’ve written it, I read whatever “it” is very slowly — and with my finger.
I wasn’t diagnosed as dyslexic at Exeter; I was seen as just plain stupid. I failed a spelling test and was put in a remedial spelling class … I wish I’d known, when I was a student at Exeter, that there was a word for what made being a student so hard for me; I wish I could have said to my friends that I was dyslexic. Instead I kept quiet, or — to my closest friends — I made bad jokes about how stupid I was. Brendan knows he’s not stupid; he knows he’s the same kind of student I was."
It was wrestling, and his wrestling coach, Ted Seabrooke, who kept him in school. “He gave me enough confidence in myself — through wrestling — that I was able to take a daily beating in my classes and keep coming back for more,” says Irving. “An Ironic blessing of my having to repeat my senior year at Exeter was that I finally got to be captain of the wrestling team — my sole distinction, my only honor, in five years at the academy.”
While wrestling gave him his edge in prep school, Irving’s dyslexia has helped him develop his edge in his very successful writing career. “It’s become an advantage. In writing a novel, it doesn’t hurt anybody to have to go slowly. It doesn’t hurt anyone as a writer to have to go over something again and again,” he explains.
Irving continues, “One reason I have confidence in writing the kind of novels I write is that I have confidence in my stamina to go over something again and again no matter how difficult it is — whether it is for the fourth or fifth or eighth time. It’s an ability to push myself and not be lazy. This is something that I would ascribe to the difficulties I had to overcome at an early age.”
- Dyslexia Education (Yale University)
~ A Bedtime Story
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Post by petrolino on Mar 1, 2024 2:44:58 GMT
When you're having fun. I guess everything comes full circle ...
10th Anniversary : Seth Meyers & Amy Poehler
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Post by petrolino on Mar 30, 2024 3:05:06 GMT
'Day Drinking & Daydreaming (Before & After)'
Tina Fey voices genuine concerns over day drinking ...
'Tea Drinking' with Larry David
'Late Night' Turns 10 : Sheryl Crow joins the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame
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'Day Drinking' with Kristen Stewart
'Memory Loss Recall' with Seth Meyers' "good buddy" Kristen Stewart ...
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