9.1.1 What is The Michael Moore Show?
Description
This article is from the Michael Moore FAQ, by Edward Champion edchamp@slip.net with numerous contributions by others.
9.1.1 What is The Michael Moore Show?
Recently, Moore shot over two days a pilot for a proposed weekly talk
show to be aired on FOX featuring Jon Stewart, Sheryl Crow and many others.
The most notable appearance on the show was by O.J. Simpson, who appeared
at the end of the show to a completely stunned audience.
>From a post by Peter Shafran <pwslaw@worldnet.att.net> on alt.tv.tv-nation:
"I was in the audience of the pilot last night. I enjoyed the show for the
most part. let me tell you about it briefly.
The set was very simple--it was a typical talk show set (desk, chairs, etc.
and a small area for musical guests). It was done in early
industrial/garage. It also had a huge monitor/screen for the audience to
watch the taped and live segments.
After a short (somewhat lame) monologue/intro, his "henchman", Lucky and ???
gave out guns to the audience in a "right to bear arms" segment. It was
pretty funny.
Then they went to Angola Prison in Louisiana via satellite for an interview
and tour of the facility with the warden. The subject was prison
labor--sort of similar to the NAFTA/Mexico segment from TV Nation. They
went back to the prison several times and then finally, supposedly lost the
feed for the last segment.
The musical guest was Sheryl Crow, who talked about Wal-Mart's effective
censorship of her second album because it contained a reference to
Wal-Mart selling guns to children. Then she sang the song. I
originally thought she sounded somewhat dopey, but by the end she won
me (and most of the audience) over.
BTW, she looks really hot!
There was a lame segment involving pitting 3 Wall St. investment types
(obviously actors) vs. a chimp in picking an investment stock. needless to
say, the chimp won. Usually, the chimp would be funny--here, the bit
fizzled.
There was another segment pitting the NY (i.e., poor hip) audience vs. the
LA (rich out-of-touch) person-on-the-street (obviously pre-taped) and, of
course, the NY audience won.
There was another segment involving tainted meat left over from the summer's
recall and MM's attempt to sell it to 3rd world countries at the UN (pretty
funny) and trying different ways to use the meat, e.g. subway seat cushions,
corking baseball bats, birthday cake icing, etc. Then they went back to the
studio and passed out "free tainted meat burgers". The taped portion was
really funny.
The final segment was a "surprise" guest---O.J. Simpson. They did a typical
guest interview and it got a little uncomfortable and then downright ugly as
the audience started yelling things out to OJ. He took it in stride and
then the staff came around with mikes to ask OJ questions. I, personally,
don't believe it was really OJ, but an very convincing lookalike or
impersonator who was very knowledgeable about the trial, etc. It really
brought the audience down and I felt like I was watching an Andy
Kaufman-type bit with MM challenging the audience. Whether or not it really
was OJ, I think it was a terrible move on MM's part to use this segment in
his pilot. First of all, it was taped out of order, that is, they purposely
taped the show ending first and asked the audience to wait around for
another segment to be taped out of order. I think they did it this way,
because they knew that many people would have walked out (as many did)
before the show would be over and then when they would have taped the show
ending, there would be many empty seats!
All in all, I think the show would be a welcome alternative to late night TV
(it's being presented to FOX for the Fall '98 lineup). However, many of the
taped segments had a Letterman-esque feel and look. Also, albeit that this
is MM's first attempt with a talk show format, he looked obviously nervous
and a little too laid back at times. The audience, though pumped up for
most of the show, was down for the whole OJ segment."
Continue to:
My Books
