There was a thread here once about the Jerry Springer show, which implied that a lot of the outrageous people there were just college students (esp. theater students) who invented crazy stories just so they could get on TV.
What about Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” segments? He asks the simplest questions, and gets the stupidest possible answers.Are these rehearsed skits, or are they for real?
And do the people who are shown as fools ever regret it?
They are not rehearsed but they still may be people acting like fools just to get on TV in many cases. Remember that they ask the same questions to a large number of people and then only show the ones that are truly outrageous. Some of them are truly that dumb, others just realize what the deal is and fake it to get on TV no matter how dumb they look. There is no need to pay actors and rehearse to get those types of responses.
Don’t foget that the camara and lights are distracting, and probably cause a temporary drop in IQ.
I am sure that a fair percentage of these people are dong this afterward :smack:
What Shagnasty said. Say you’re on the street. Leno comes up to you and asks you who’s the Prime Minister in the UK. You know how the segment works. If you answer correctly, you don’t get on TV. If you quickly think up something funny but that’s still remotely plausible that a dumb guy would believe (e.g., Hugh Grant), you have a chance of getting on TV. These days, it’s better to get on TV as a dumb guy than it is to not get on TV at all. Ergo, Leno will never lack for material.
Yeah, some people really are that stupid. And yeah, the editing of that segment is self-selecting; if he asks an obvious question to fifty people, and forty-eight get it right, the two dumb guys with funny responses are picked for the show. But it would be pretty easy to fake it and get shown, if you have, paradoxically, your wits about you.
There was a fellow a couple years back who Jay talked to on the street. Thinking it would be funny, the guy acted like he was from Ukraine and new to America. Jay hired him to do reports on various aspects of LA life for a couple of weeks, until the local Ukrainian community thought his accent was fake. Jay caught him by bringing in a Ukrainian speaker from Lviv. The young guy’s reaction on hearing the language? “Wow, he is speaking a different Ukrainian then me!”. Afterward he 'fessed up that it was a prank. Funny stuff.
UnuMondo
…and, along that same road…the nightly newscasts seem to bring out all the morons who have witnessed the lead crime stories. Tonights edition reported a drive-by shooting in broad day light. One boob reported seeing ‘…lot’s of bleed everywhere, man…the bleed the dude was bleeding was making bleed all over the road…’
I kid you not.
Was there bleed on his bling?
Even though the gig was up, Jay still liked the guy (especially since he got them so good), he conducted a viewer poll to see whether to keep him or dump him, and the overwhelming response was to keep him, so they continued to use him, calling him “The Fake Ukranian Guy”.
critter42