I remember that! A big old smackeroo on the lips, leaning across the table.
Lady Gaga interview with Larry King, just before he retired. It was done via satellite. Larry King at one end, (and frankly either totally uninterested or actually starting to lose some of his faculties) bellowing questions: “So! Lady Gaga! Tell us, how did you get that name, Gaga???” … and on the other end, Lady Gaga looking equally out of it, actually looking high as a kite! And those awful, dark sunglasses totally askew on her face! There was an agonizingly long delay between questions and answers…“Well, Larry, I picked that name..” and so it went. It was one of the longest, most cringe-worthy interviews I’d ever seen on Larry King, hilarious in its way. Not that anything bad was said or done, but both of them held my attention!
It’s an interesting aside about someone mentioned in a thread but not sufficiently so to warrant a thread of its own. I see no problem with the remark.
The worst interview I ever heard was Gene Simmons (of Kiss) interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air. It wasn’t boring, but he came across as the world’s biggest boor and pretty much confirmed every preconceived notion I had of him as a self-centered misogynistic asshole.
First I leap to Robin Williams’ defense, now it’s Viggo’s. Sheesh.
Anyway, Viggo Mortensen is, in addition to being an actor, a published writer and poet, musician, artist, and photographer, and was also once married to Exene Cervenka, who is awesome in her own right (half of the legendary punk band, X), so…I don’t think “no personality of his own” is the issue. Dude’s probably just shy.
There was one interview I saw of James Brown that was just awful(I don’t remember who the interviewer was). He was very obviously drunk/high/cracked out and answered every question in song lyrics. Sung song lyrics. Badly.
Any interview that includes Jonny “Rotton” Lydon is going to be a tramatic and uncomfortable experience for the interviewer. I thnk it would probably be a lot easier to get through it drunk as a skunk.
I saw an interview with Nastassja Kinski once in which she came off as having an IQ of about 80. I was giving allowances for the probability that English was not her first language, but even so, the interviewer kept reducing the level of the questions to the point where all she had to do was paw the ground with her hoof.
Her Wikipedia page says she speaks five languages, so she can’t be as dense as she came out in the interview, but I was wondering how she remembered to blink.
The ability to speak multiple languages is a natural skill of all humans. It doesn’t have any necessary correlation to overall intelligence of an individual. It could just mean that you were exposed to many languages in your youth. It doesn’t mean that you will be able to carry on an interesting conversation in any of them.
Perhaps one of the oddest, I don’t know if I’d say WORST, is Brian Wilson…at least, he’s unpredictable. Get him on a good day, he’ll talk up a storm. Get him on a bad day, he’ll give you one-word answers and answers that don’t make sense (like, how he’ll mention that he just took his daughters to see Norbit, then when asked what his favorite movie ever is, he’ll say Norbit). Basically, if he doesn’t feel like talking, he’ll clam up. He’ll even end the interview: “This was supposed to be ten minutes, right?..well, it’s been ten minutes now. That will be all.”
When she was younger, Meryl Streep was so obviously uncomfortable, solemn and serious in interviews that they pretty much ground to a dead stop. She’s loosened up a little over the years, but her talk show interviews still seem to be set up so that she can tell a well-rehearsed story or do a little business to show she’s just folks after all.
I did a lot of interviewing for *Movieline *in the '90s, and the two who stand out in my nightmares are Sean Young and Jill Clayburgh.
Sean Young managed to be simultaneously spacey, unpleasant and boring. Jill Clayburgh was one of the nicest ladies I have ever met, but she had *nothing *interesting to say–at least, not to me and not on the record. Pulling teeth.
Well, then, I’m satisfied that I can return to my original conclusion: She’s either as dumb as a saltine cracker, or she was on some major pharmaceuticals.
