Charlie Rose did the interview, which was okay. They showed a photo of O’Toole as Petrucchio in “Taming of the Shrew” in his pre-movie days. What a performance that must have been!
They played the clip of him on the David Letterman show a few years ago. He rides a camel in while the band plays the theme from “Lawrence of Arabia.” He offers the camel a can of something (looked like Heineken). The camel takes the open end in its mouth, tilts its head up, and drinks it. O’Toole says to Letterman, “I think that’s called a Stupid Pet Trick” (articulating both Ts in “pet” and “trick”).
They also mentioned that he had been nominated for the Best Actor Oscar seven times but had never won. I think the same thing happened to Richard Burton eight times.
However, there was one real clinker here:
Well, DUUUUUHHHHH!!!
Chuck, just what part of your audience did you think wouldn’t get that metaphor so that you felt you had to EXPLAIN THE FREAKIN’ OBVIOUS? A simple brief pause would have been better. Sheesh!
I just saw this again. They reran the entire one hour interview on the Charlie Rose show on PBS, but without the Letterman clip. It was fantastic. The guy’s been everywhere and seen everything, and he can get laughs out of the story of his father’s death. And, with Richard Harris, he’s the last of that generation of hard living actors.
And I don’t know any interviewer that could have held his own in that situation. When there’s a pause, and the silence starts to build up a little tension, you know that Charlie Rose is going to crack first. And there’s just no way he’s going to get through a full hour without occasionally being banal and glib as hell, at least in comparison.
And in the end, I can forgive that, because he got enough brilliant stories out of O’Toole that the interview works as a whole.
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