Rich, Famous and Relaxed
For all you culture vultures missing the ABC Sunday arts programs, ABC2 is showing Inside the Actors Studio (6pm on Sundays), a program that comes from Pace University and is hosted by James Lipton, who interviews successful and accomplished actors, directors and writers, and shows excerpts of their work. Actors have assumed lofty positions in the entertainment industry, even though their skill is pretending to be someone they are not and mouthing a writer’s words. Unlike most celebrity interview shows, Inside the Actors Studio concentrates on the craft of the performer and it’s a welcome relief to hear actors talking about their profession, rather than postulating about world events.
James Lipton, writer, executive producer and host, is the dean of the Actors Studio Drama School, which gives acting degrees in association with the studio, which is famous for being the United States home of Method acting. Lipton, who looks like a flesh-coloured Shrek with a Vincent Price beard, asks well-researched questions, although he always seems to know the answer and tries to lead his subjects a little too much. So famous has Lipton become (Inside the Actors Studio is seen in over 125 countries by 89,000,000 people) that Will Ferrell did a devastating impersonation on Saturday Night Live that highlighted his occasionally irritating obsequiousness. Lipton’s sycophancy is nothing compared with that of the students who ask questions at the end of the show. Starting their questions with ‘I’m a third year acting honours student...’, the pupils appear to think that talking with the famous and successful will somehow be their big break, and spend as much time talking about themselves as they do asking a question.
Inside the Actors Studio has featured all the top entertainment people: past highlights have included Al Pacino constantly giving credit to the writers (bless the big heart in his tiny body) and the biggest number of students ever attending the show for the Johnny Depp interview (sex sells). Recently, Ricky Gervais was relating the story of when an interviewer asked if he had advice for people wanting to get famous and he told her they could shoot someone. Gervais couldn’t understand people just wanting to be famous, rather than fame being a by-product of being a skilful performer.
Denis Leary, whom I once saw perform in a small comedy club in London, was on the show the following week. When I saw him, his wife was due to have their baby, so they couldn’t return to the United States, and he ended up doing his No Cure for Cancer show in Edinburgh in 1990 and became a big success. He stunned audiences at the time when he said that seeing Kylie Minogue made him want to snap off the top of her head and pull a bong through her skull.
Inside the Actors Studio presents a safe environment for actors to relax and tell mischievous, heartfelt anecdotes that are normally too outrageous for mainstream interview shows. This makes it compelling, intelligent, insightful and candid television.
This piece originally appeared in ‘The Big Issue’.
Matt Quartermaine is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. With Matt Parkinson, Tim Smith and Andrew Goodone, he produces ‘The Chat’, a weekly podcast in which four grown men in comfortable chairs spill their guts. Click here to download it for free at iTunes.
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