Has Jimmy Fallon Ever Had a Guest Meltdown?

[hajario]

Obviously people change and I haven't had any contact with Crispin since we were 18 but he wasn't an egotistical kid at all. He was very humble, interesting and more than a little strange. His dad, Bruce, was a working character actor and that's all the Crispin ever wanted to do at least since we met when we were maybe 14 years old. Bruce wouldn't allow him to be a child actor or start his career until he was 16. I remember when he was in a McDonald's commercial and one for a video game arcade. His "big break" was playing one of the kids in a version of The Sound of Music that toured California. I was so happy for him when he started appearing in movies.

[hajario]

Oh, I totally forgot that I saw him in his first ever acting appearance. He was the lead in his Jr. High's version of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

[etv78]

Originally Posted by Saint Cad

He won when he said, "The show leading into me is puppets making prank phones calls."

Read the post directly above yours.

[AClockworkMelon]

Originally Posted by Acsenray

Didn't Clive Anderson host a travel program in the early 1990s in which he went around the world being rude to people?

You mean Fightin' Round The World?

[typoink]

Not quite a total meltdown, but if you like extremely awkward, off-balance interviews, check out Diane Keaton's recent appearance on The Colbert Report. She was on there ostensibly to promote a memoir, but spent the whole time half-insulting him, giggling, and rambling.

I can only assume she was drunk, high, or incredibly sleep-deprived.

[Queen Tonya]

I opened this thread wondering if anyone had seen that interview. I like Diane Keaton. I like Stephen Colbert. I don't know what the hell that was.

Although I did enjoy when it moved past awkward into funny. I can only imagine she was high.

[Becky2844]

This is old, but Flip Wilson destroyed Johnny Carson's desk. Didn't go over very well.

[ftg]

Originally Posted by Queen Tonya

I opened this thread wondering if anyone had seen that interview. I like Diane Keaton. I like Stephen Colbert. I don't know what the hell that was.

Although I did enjoy when it moved past awkward into funny. I can only imagine she was high.

Yeah, I watched that episode last night and this thread came to mind immediately.

One thing to remember is that Diane Keaton is extremely tense during interviews. She tilts her head down, talks about how nervous she is, etc. Usually a withdrawn guest. Seeing her gush like that at the start made my "She's on something!" lights flash. Then it just got worse and worse. Way too many happy pills.

Colbert couldn't get her to say anything about the content of her book. I think she was too wasted to remember what was in it.

Link: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-col...2/diane-keaton

[Ashley Pomeroy]

Although it wasn't a meltdown - more a kind of slow, awkward fumble - top bluff Yorkshire chat show host Michael Parkinson had an infamously disastrous interview with Meg Ryan a few years back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blpq-Iwu25s

It's an interesting clash of approaches. In the UK Parkinson was, at the time, a kind of television legend going way back, but from Meg Ryan's point of view he was probably a fungus. They really didn't get on and I'd love to see them trapped in an elevator together.

I've always wondered how Hollywood stars feel when they're interviewed on British television. It must be like Captain Kirk being asked to address a planet where the dominant species resemble tiny furry slugs. He has to pretend to treat them with respect, as if they were people - with kings and warriors and a history and so forth - but they're just furry slugs.

As mentioned before, Oliver Reed. This kind of thing happened again and again, to such an extent that it wasn't funny as a spectacle, and (assuming it was a big put-on) it wasn't funny as comedy. I will always remember him as the man who made it hard and ultimately impossible to sustain an erection whilst watching Amanda Donahoe cavort around nude in Castaway, the 1986 Nicolas Roeg film.

Now, I remember watching a piece of breakfast telly several years ago with Derek Jameson, former editor of recently-scrapped Sunday tabloid The News of the World and (at the time) television personality. It was about the media coverage of Princess Diana, and he was making a quite reasonable but blunt point that she sold newspapers, and that breakfast TV was as obsessed with her as anybody, and that her death had sold lots of papers as well. Eventually this turned into a heated argument and they cut to an advert break, obviously before things go nasty. I seem to be the only person who remembers this. It was striking because Jameson was off-script but right, and it was an odd intrusion of reality into the fake environment of breakfast TV.

[Acsenray]

Originally Posted by Ashley Pomeroy

I've always wondered how Hollywood stars feel when they're interviewed on British television. It must be like Captain Kirk being asked to address a planet where the dominant species resemble tiny furry slugs. He has to pretend to treat them with respect, as if they were people - with kings and warriors and a history and so forth - but they're just furry slugs.

I don't see this as an American-British thing. Watching that clip, Parkinson's style of question doesn't seem all that different from "serious" American interviewers like Terry Gross, James Lipton, Charlie Rose, or even Dick Cavett.

[Nobody]

Off topic, but for a while now I've been thinking that if I became a celebrity then I'd love to go to the UK and be on The Graham Norton Show.

[ftg]

Originally Posted by Ashley Pomeroy

Although it wasn't a meltdown - more a kind of slow, awkward fumble - top bluff Yorkshire chat show host Michael Parkinson had an infamously disastrous interview with Meg Ryan a few years back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blpq-Iwu25s

Umm, Parkinson was being a real jerk. Ryan might have been having an off day, but Parkinson was deliberately trying to cause something. In particular, explicitly pointing out how she wasn't enjoying the interview is a big talk show host no-no. Once she realized he was being a jerk, she handled herself quite well.

[MyFootsZZZ]

there's some good examples I and others posted here...

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...hlight=kaufman

...of 'WTF interviews'.


Daily Show interviews:

Here's Owen Wilson:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/in...le=Owen-Wilson

Spice Girls:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/in...le=Spice-Girls

John Cusack:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/in...le=John-Cusack

Other:

Kaufman vs Lawler:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11T_-k7ckrg

Harvey Pekar on Letterman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBr4NxujLvw

Richard Branson on Colbert:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-col...ichard-branson

Tom Selleck on the Rosie O'Donnell Show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtkgoGY4Cm4

[MyFootsZZZ]

Ugh, not all of them work anymore.

[MyFootsZZZ]

John Cusack:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/th...02/john-cusack

Spice Girls:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tu...01/spice-girls

Owen Wilson:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/th...06/owen-wilson

Richard Branson on Colbert:


http://www.colbertnation.com/the-col...ichard-branson

[Acsenray]

Originally Posted by ftg

Umm, Parkinson was being a real jerk. Ryan might have been having an off day, but Parkinson was deliberately trying to cause something. In particular, explicitly pointing out how she wasn't enjoying the interview is a big talk show host no-no. Once she realized he was being a jerk, she handled herself quite well.

I don't see it that way. He seemed to me to be conducting a perfectly fine interview but Ryan for whatever reason refused to respond to anything at all. it appeared as if se has never heard of an interview before. I think she was the one being unprofessional. It was only at the point that he gave up on her that he broke the fourth wall (in a sense) to point out how shitty a guest she was being.

[Súil Dubh]

Originally Posted by MyFootsZZZ

Harvey Pekar on Letterman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBr4NxujLvw

Pekar was always great on Letterman. I've seen every interview Pekar did, when it was broadcast, except for one. I even had an "American Splendor" comic with Pekar's take on one of his Letterman interviews. Great stuff.

Brother Theodore was another guest who would get into bitter arguments with Letterman. Theodore was awesome in his crankiness.

I used to get excited when I heard either of those names mentioned as being guests.

Letterman during that really long writers' strike in the late 80's or early 90's (my memory fails me on the exact year) was compelling viewing. Lots of weird guests and performances. Not many meltdowns, but lots of weirdness.