Craig's Contract with his Audience

Only a few days remain until "The Late Late Show" is no longer hosted by Craig Ferguson. It's been a great ride. I've written posts that contain some of my favorite things from the show. What I want to point out today isn't the bust your gut funny moments, but those moments he made it real. That's one of the things that made Craig's tenure with the show so very special. Perhaps it was the main thing because it enabled because it enabled Craig to connect with his audience on a deeper level using his own feelings on a national or personal tragedy. It was cathartic for both host and audience.

Again, in no particular order, are ten examples.

This is the first monologue that I saw that Craig opened up about something troubling and it turned out to be a fantastic mix of humor and social slapdown. It's when I truly realized how special this show was with him at the helm.



David Letterman's production company, World Wide Pants, is the company that produces "The Late Late Show" which follows his own "The Late Show with David Letterman" every night. In 2009 news broke of Letterman's affairs with various female staffers over the years. As Craig himself says, this left him in a very difficult position since it was his job to comment on the news of the day.



This is just for fun. Apparently there was a power outage during the taping of his show. What do you do when a power outage occurs during the taping of your monologue? You take a few nips at the hand that barely feeds you.



Craig shared a lot with his audience. A lot.



I mean, a lot!



Five years after 9/11, an immigrant, two years shy of his U.S. citizenship, shared his memories of that horrible day. 



On July 20, 2012, a man went into a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. and shot 82 people, killing 12 of them. Two years ago an some change, we were still horrified by such an event (sadly I fear we've become a bit too accustomed to it now). A pre-recorded show of "The Late Late Show," including jokes about "The Dark Knight" (The film being shown when the event occurred) was scheduled to run, leaving Craig and his staff in a dilemma. So he decided to tape a new opening to the show that would address the shooting (and in fact his dilemma). It's the sort of sincerity that made his show so special.



And in a companion piece: On April 15, 2013 two pressure cooker bombs went off during the Boston Marathon. It was a horrific and cowardly act that left everyone shaken. Craig presents that confusion and anger perfectly.



Craig's mother and father had been on his show, his mother partaking in a particularly charming bit in which she went shopping with RZA of Wu Tan Clan. When his mother died, as he so often does, Craig shared his feelings with his audience. And he almost made it through without breaking.



Of course two years prior to the send off for his mother, fresh from the funeral, he spoke about his father's death. (The show that night actually became a wake for his father).





And of course honorable, and sad, mention belongs to his announcement that Craig would be giving up the reigns of "The Late Late Show."



Whether it was joy, frustration or grief, what you got with Craig Ferguson was an honesty and wit that couldn't be contained on a cue card. It was indeed his contract with the audience.

Craig Ferguson's Party

Craig and Secretariat bust some moves

Recently The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson released the guest line up for Craig's final shows and it reminded me of how bitter/sweet the next several weeks will be.

James Corden

Ferguson's last show will be Dec. 19 and frankly I don't want him to go. Oh he'll probably move on to something else (at the moment he's got some game show thing that he's hosting on another station) and the next host (James Corden) of The Late Late Show will probably do a good job, but this show with Ferguson has been magical since he took over in 2005.


I remember early on in Craig's (I call him Craig cause he makes me feel that I can) tenure trying to tell a coworker about the show. I had a hard time explaining the show because it was so atypical of talk shows. What you normally see is rote: Host is introduced, host does monologue, host does wacky banter with sidekick/bandleader (of course hard for Craig to do since he's had neither for some time. Technology solved that problem eventually). After the break the first guest comes out, there's a bit, then the next guest, then maybe a musical act, then end of show. It stays that way for years.

The Dreamboyz

Maybe it was Craig's punk sensibilities left over from a misspent youth that led him to break that format. (During the 80s he played in a band called the Bastards of Hell, later renamed Dreamboyz, which also featured current Doctor Who Peter Capaldi). Sensibilities which apparently also flavored his life some years after. Not only did he depart from standard talk show format with his television show, Craig often departed from the formats that he himself would establish for his own show. 


An early sketch featuring Ewan McGregor




It was like watching one big comedy bit being tried, tested, tailored and trimmed to offer a tighter result.


The show was constantly evolving and it was brilliant to see what he and his staff came up with.


Consider the evolution of Geoff Peterson, gay robot skeleton sidekick. The lack of a sidekick had never hurt the show or Craig's performance. In fact, he seems to have the mutant ability to be entertaining without sake of sidekick, cue cards, band or other late night paraphernalia (which he often joked were lacking due to the cheapness of CBS). Deciding at some point it might be fun to have a sidekick, he took Mythbuster's Grant Imahara up on his offer to create a sidekick. In the beginning, Peterson's vocabulary consisted of seven pre-recorded phrases (one of them the often played "balls"). Craig would interact with the robot using the buttons at his desk which set off the phrases. Later, writers handled Peterson's dialogue using an iPad to control it offstage.






Over time, Peterson's vocal abilities were tweaked as were his motor skills (somewhat) and now voiced by Josh Robert Thomas, he's become an integral part of the show. With comedy and improv skills as sharp as Craig's, Thomas is able to keep up in whatever direction the host goes.






What could have been a prop for a bit lasting a few months evolved into a favorite part of the show for many viewers. But comedy evolution is exactly what the show has been about. Quick, pre-opening bits with puppets turned into puppet lip synching songs which turned into elaborate, choreographed lip synching performances featuring puppets, Craig and members of his staff. I think that's when the show really became a party. There was a sort of "oh well, what the hell, let's try it" attitude not seen since Letterman started the Late Show in the 1980s and went on fast food road trips with Zsa Zsa Gabor or tossed stuff off the top of buildings.


Only Craig takes the attitude to the next level, encouraging the audience to stick with him by sheer force of his enthusiasm for life. Every sketch and monologue is an invitation to join the party. It's clear right from the theme song.





It could be his enthusiasm for life that leads him to share so much of his personal life with the audience. Craig has led a life, and come close to death, and as with most people recovering from something he's almost evangelic with his openness.


When Britney Spears was going through some issues, Craig stood apart from the crowd capitalizing on it with "Britney is so messed up" jokes by delivering a monologue in which he encouraged people to cut her some slack. Using his own, misspent youth as an example he encouraged everyone to just let her work it out. And he was able to deliver the lecture in his usual, funny, disarming way.


On Feb. 1, 2008 Craig became an extremely proud citizen of the U.S. and later showed clips of himself taking the test and his swearing in. 







We met the members of the Ferguson family when he had on his show his nephew, his sister, and his parents. He even arranged a filmed outting for his mother and RZA of Wu Tang Clan and the two actually corresponded afterward. When his father died, followed later by his mother, he opened respective shows with eulogies for them both.


It was instances such as this that helped Craig achieve an intimacy with the audience whether in the studio or at home. It's perhaps that intimacy combined with his comedic inventiveness that will be missed the most.


He addresses all his guests with an easy familiarity as if they are old friends just hanging for a chat. In most cases this easy familiarity is able to loosen up even the stiffest of guests. By the end of the interview they are willing to choose between ending on an awkward pause, playing the mouth organ, a moment of meditation or one of the other interview-enders Craig and his staff has come up with.





But even during the interview he seems genuinely interested in the guest and most times he probably is. If he uses the sort of guest question cheat sheet found on the desk of other talk show hosts you wouldn't know it. His is a very stream-of-consciousness style of interviewing which helps make the interview more enjoyable for the guest, the audience and more than likely himself as well.




So, I'm going to miss my friend, TV's Craig Ferguson. Late night won't be quite the same without him. Though I look forward to what he has in store for his next incarnation. I'm sure it'll be a party.

Music While Writing

One of the questions I've been asked a few times in interviews for To Touch the Sun is "What music do you listen to while writing?" It's funny cause I never gave it a thought before. I listen to music frequently but I never really popped anything on to inspire me in the writing process.Well, actually years ago I was working on a novel about a psychic and at the same time had picked up the album "Gold Afternoon Fix" by The Church. On it is a song 6:07 song called Grind which is haunting and melodic and I completely fell in love with. The mood was perfect for the mood of the psychic. So I was often listening to this album and that song in particular while writing this novel (a novel I never got around to finishing).



When answering the question, it doesn't help that I can be so indecisive. Answering a question regarding a favorite anything is impossible because...well I love too much. My tastes are too varied and while I may be obsessed with something one day that doesn't mean it won't be put aside the next for something else.

I have a vast collection of CDs. I'm sure there are those whose collections are larger but mine is large enough for the CDs to be squirreld away in various spots in my apartment.

Blade stands guard over some of my collection

My CD collection increased dramatically when the Chicago Sun-Times closed the suburban offices of Pioneer Press where I worked as an editorial assistant, and moved the operation downtown. The Diversions Department which included the Entertainment section of the newspapers, in cleaning for the movie, put out for people to take hundreds of CDs that had been sent to them over the years. Most were promotional, sent out in the hopes of a favorable write up in the paper. Others were more professional. Most had collected in the desks and drawers of the editors and reporters who would not have the same amount of room for storage in the Sun-Times building downtown.

Across from the piano

Music for a little kitchen dancing

Music for the ride home

I took those that I thought seemed interesting and spent several days test driving them to see if I was right in my guess. Some did not appeal to me but I had a feeling they might appeal to the tastes of some of my friends so I started making little piles of CS that I hoped to dispense among my friends.

A few were played on the way home from work and never made it out of my car. One in particular by a band called Late of the Pier I listened to constantly for weeks whenever I drove. It's particularly good in summer.



That's another thing I do. If I come across a CD that I love I'll listen to it for weeks. Currently I'm on a Sia jag. I first saw her when she was a musical guest on The Late Show with David Letterman and was blown away by the melody of the song and the power of her voice.



I obtained a copy of her album "Some People Have Real Problems" and played it whenever I could. Recently I obtained her album "We Are Born" and it's equally as brilliant. So I play it quite frequently, writing or not.

It was the same way when I heard Sean Lennon's "Friendly Fire" (another album I was turned on to by the star's appearance on Letterman's show).



When I sit down to write though and I decide to pop on some music, I guess I do have a few regular staples I reach for. Elvis Costello can do no wrong in my ears. Midnight Oil, Madness (I like a lot of 80s bands). Sometimes I revisit my youth with the Best of ELO. Maybe some David Bowie or Blondie. Of course my problem is that often when I listen to music I find myself either singing along with the CD or dancing. I'm a firm believer in the fine art of kitchen dancing. It's a little hard to write if I'm bouncing around the kitchen like an idiot.

I'm generally not much into soundtracks but over the holidays I found myself listening repeatedly to a couple of soundtracks. "Shaft" by Issac Hayes and Curtis Mayfields' "Superfly." A particular favorite I remember listening to when I was a kid with a transistor radio tuned to WCFL in Chicago was the song "Freddie's Dead" off "Superfly."



Some of my favorite soundtracks are those of Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns. I have a two-disc set of The Ennio Morricone Anthology which is a particular favorite of mine. I remember watching "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and "A Fistful of Dollars" and the like on tv years after their theatrical release and being blown away just as much by the music as by the images presented by Sergio Leone. Morricone, who scored non-Westerns with equally fantastic compositions, is very much like John Williams in that his score becomes just as much a star of the film as the actors themselves. Consider the scene in "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" in which Morricone's "Ecstasy of Gold" washes over the scene where Eli Wallach hunts through a cemetery for the right name on a headstone. The music puts across the desperation of Eli Wallach's character as much as the cinematography and the actor himself.



This CD set opened me up to the variety of Morricone's work. He didn't just score westerns but rather a whole host of movies. One particular favorite is the end theme to the 1987 movie "The Untouchables." When they describe a piece as stirring, it's this:



It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.

So more than a little frequently I'll bliss out to this anthology.

And of course there's so much more. Which is why it's hard for me to do a list of favorites. Cause there's so much more.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some kitchen dancing to do.