By Chris Ryall
August 25, 2003
Right turn, Clyde: In which Chris Ryall watches James Lipton get INSIDE Clint Eastwood's head and then just misses Tony Hawk's final 900 at the X Games.
Inside the Actors Studio
I've seen James Lipton live one other time -- he was feted in San Francisco last year at a special ACTORS STUDIO that celebrated his accomplishments (he's huge in France!) and was full of highlights of his Bravo show. While the show itself might be a help to students, it's hard not to be taken aback by the pomposity of the guy with the deck of blue cards. Will Ferrell's SNL parody of the man (reprised in the extras of the OLD SCHOOL DVD) is spot-on, yet it's hard to be more intentionally funny than what Lipton unintentionally manages.
He choses his words with the care and diligence that only those truly in love with the sound of their own voice can pull off. He over-enunciates and pauses between seemingly every word while fawning over the guests on his show to a degree that makes Charlie Rose come off as a real bastard. A subject's past movie is never "good" when it can be "marvelous," a performance is never solid, it's "astoundingly magnificent and truthful." Ahh, yes, James Lipton...a more pompous load is hard to find.
And man, do I love him. The humorless gravity he brings to his show is a sight to behold, and every now and then, the overly serious veneer cracks o-so-slightly (like when he played himself in an SNL skit with Ferrell, also playing himself.
So when Mr. Lipton took his show on the road and appeared at the Geffen Playhouse recently to tape a show with Clint Eastwood, the potential gravity of the situation between the host and the interviewee threatened to break California off into the Pacific Ocean.
Luckily, only half the couple took it overly serious.
When you have a chance to attend a taping of the show with Clint as guest...you go. It's pretty hard to be awed by most actors, even some vets--folks like Dustin Hoffman and even DeNiro to some degree have lost some mystique--but Clint still has it. I needed to see Clint for myself.
Outside the theater, I'm not sure if it was a sign that they've arrived or only that they thought they have, but THE BATTLE OF SHAKER HEIGHTS directors and PROJECT GREENLIGHT whipping boys Kyle and Efram were standing outside the place, looking like they just wanted to be seen. I actually intended to go say hi and ask a few questions ("How'd you do that bit with the dog on your reel?"; "How could you lose the group hug in the movie?") but the chance never really came up. Although we did sit directly behind them (well, just off to the side of Efram's left shoulder) during the taping, so we'll see if any of us make the final show).
James Lipton took the stage and drank up the applause like a man who's stumbled onto a watering hole after a month in the desert. His self-adoration also has room for others to admire him, it seems.
He introduced Clint ("a tall drink of water," as the fiancee said), and he came out looking vibrant and healthy -- he makes 73 years old look good.
Now Clint...Clint ain't necessarily the most verbose of subjects. One could almost feel for Lipton when he asked a long, intensely researched and carefully worded question and then sat back with a self-satisfied smugness and then heard his subject respond "Yes."
It was almost comical, but Clint himself admitted that he's not the most talkative sort ("except after a couple beers").
The show started with a look back at Clint's Depression-era childhood as he grew up in various parts of Northern California. He lived a bit of a nomadic life as his dad searched for work. And he never intended to be an actor (why do most actors say this?). But he nevertheless found himself cast in small roles in forgettable movies. Then he accepted a part in a western being shot in Italy and started down the road of becoming "Clint Eastwood." (By that, I mean the Clint Eastwood we all know and love--his birth name, he said, is Clinton Eastwood.)
Lipton ran through all the major events in Clint's life, or more specifically, in his filmography. Of PLAY MISTY FOR ME, Clint said that he's flattered by movies like FATAL ATTRACTION that lifted so liberally from this movie. It was also here that Clint's love of jazz and r&b music started really working into his films (culminating in his biopic of jazzman Charlie Parker, BIRD).
Of DIRTY HARRY, Clint named a few other people that were offered the part before he (including Frank Sinatra, among others). Naturally, this had to lead to talk of his "Go ahead, make my day" line, which he said he knew would have the (sudden) impact that it did.
Even when he ruminated on movies that really captured the public's attention, like this, or UNFORGIVEN (given lengthy discourse in this show), he never comes off as arrogant about the work he's done. Lipton asked Clint how it felt to win an Oscar for UNFORGIVEN, although he found a way to make this trite question sound erudite. Clint's stoic veneer cracked a little more when he admitted what a great feeling it was. There was some technical talk of his direction of the movie -- in fact, overall, this episode seems as beneficial to aspiring actors as it does directors. Clint never barks out "Action!" or "Cut!" on his sets, see -- rather, he has the proper folks wear Secret Service-like wires so when he feels a vibe or a rehearsal is heading in the right direction and he'd like to roll him, rather than break that vibe, he just quietly (of course) says "Let's start taping this" and ends with "That's enough of that." He described his sets as quiet and lacking the chaos he's seen on other sets, and the solid performances he seems to coax from actors lends you to believe this is a sound technique.
The segment ended with a discussion of Clint's new movie, MYSTIC RIVER (there's no air date for this episode yet, but I expect it to coincide with that movie's release in the Fall).
After the segment ended, that's where the Q&A with the audience begins. And if you've ever seen the show, you know how ponderous those can be. Even as Lipton returns to the stage and admonishes people to be direct and brief and ask their question straight away, that's never the way these things go. Knowing this, we moved to the balcony because, after a three-hour taping so far, there was no way to bear all the students' questions, too.
Before opening the floor, though, Lipton does his own Q&A thing, inspired as it was (as he never fails to over-enunciate) by "Bernard Pivot." This is where he asks his subject their favorite word and least favorite word and so on. And Clint seemed pretty pained and unfamiliar with the whole process. He talked for a good fifteen minutes (after the break, Clint was amazingly more talkative and jovial...a couple beers backstage?) about hating "in" words like the currently overused "ubiquitous" but he never quite answered the question. The editors should have fun with this segment. The only answers I reall recall are two:
"What is your favorite curse word?"
"JAMF." (Jive-Ass Mo Fo, as he explained.
"Assuming Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say to you?"
[Something about a round of golf]..."and here's 72 virgins. No, wait, wrong religion."
Onto the students. The first person to be handed the mike signaled us that we'd be leaving soon. Her question meandered around as she talked about teaching an acting class, and respecting Clint's work, and teaching Laura Dern, and...I'm not sure she ever got to an actual question. Things continued apace for about fifteen more minutes when we had to duck out. No word on whether or not Efram or Kyle ever asked any questions about directing, but it's clear from watching Clint and comparing their actions on PROJECT GREENLIGHT that they have a lot to learn.
The X Games
Imagine you got up to go to the bathroom while in attendance at the Bulls/Jazz NBA Finals game a few years ago. (For this scenario to make sense, and it will in a minute, you have to also imagine that Michael Jordan stayed retired after hitting that game-ending shot, his elevated shooting hand still raised for all eternity.) Imagine you get to your seat just after Michael has hit that historic shot and walked off into the ages. That's a little bit like what going to the X Games last weekend was like.
We got to Staples Center in L.A. on Sunday afternoon just shortly after Tony Hawk nailed his first-ever 900-degree spin in "official" time, meaing he did it during the skateboarding event's 45-minute limit. He nailed this move and then walked off the ramp and into the ages (or at least into the movies, which he's now shooting in Australia).
Now I know basketball purists are saying that it's blasphemy to compare Michael Jordan to a skateboarder, but the point is, we got there just after the best athlete in his sport ended his career by perfectly executing his signature move.
On the other hand, so what?
I admit I only have a passing interest in these so-called "action sports" -- sure, they're great to watch, but I couldn't name more than a half-dozen skaters or BMX riders and I had no vested interest in who won what. Still, the crowd was still a-buzz after Hawk's move, so it was too bad we missed it.
[Side note: I just happened on the replay a few days ago and I have to say, it's an amazing piece of tape. Not just for the move but for the announcing, too. As soon as Hawk dropped in, one of the announcers yelled "The birdman is in the building! Ka-KAW! Ka-KAW! Ka-KAW!" That's right, he made these piercing, high-pitched squaking noises that finished just as Hawk completed his 900-degree flip and planted the board back down. You have to see and hear tape of this -- it's one of the most ludicrous things I've ever heard.
It makes soccer announcers yelling "GOOOOAAAALLLL!" sound like a golf tournament. Hawk completes his flips, plants the board, slides up the side of the ramp and lands on his feet and then just flings his board behind him in celebration, never mind the fact that other skaters are down on the vert ramp where his board goes flying. I'm telling you, it's a great piece of tape. Luckily I was able to hit the TiVo and save it forever. That announcer...manoman, is it ridiculous.]
Knowing none of this at the time, we got to our seats soon before the rollerblader's Stunt Vert competition was to begin (bear with me here--there's almost as many non-words for the moves these guys do as there is in professional wrestling. You tend to feel like an outsider listening to it. I was able to figure out that a half-pipe is now called a "vert," though. I'm quick like that.
The way the Games were set up is, there's the vert ramp indoors, next to the big dirt mound for the BMX and motocross events (the BMX'ers also use the vert ramp). And then outside is another area for skateboarding. Outside actually seemed to attract the larger crowd, but maybe that was due to the number of food vendors and merchandise booths that were out there, too.
Watching the rollerbladers do what they do, and it's much more impressive in person than even on TV, it all looks so easy. You sit there and tell yourself that it can't be that hard, and then you think back to the last time you threw on blades and a flat surface proved tricky. So you sit back down in your seat and admire what these people are doing.
After the rollerblading was done, it was time for the Bike Stunt Vert finals, and going in, the crowd favorite, and odds-on favorite, was Dave Mirra (a guy I've even heard of!). But England's Jamie Betwick was just insane on his bike, doing his trademark "tailship flair" and winning the gold medal (and the $25K that accompanies it).
There's still a sense that this is a lower-tier athletic event, even though it's essentially the Olympics of action sports. Maybe it's the young kids that compete, or the haphazard feel of the whole thing, or maybe it's just the fact that the announcers use bad faux-cool lingo and squawk like mental patients, but whatever it is, it has that feel. Which isn't meant as a negative -- announcers that sound like rejects from a strip bar DJ booth aside, the laid-back feel of the entire show makes it a fun sporting event to attend. And the amount of teenagers competing is easier for the many kids in attendance to relate to than your typical millionaire athlete. Of course, I'm sure that after attending, parents are then patching up an increased number of skateboard and BMX injuries on their tykes...remember, that 900 should be left to the professionals. Or to the PS2 game.
Next Week: A stop-in at the set of Will Ferrell's new comedy ANCHORMAN and a look at an Askew-less Jason Mewes in his just-released-on-DVD release, R.S.V.P.
/chris
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