Having watched David Cross and Will Ferrell spoof this guy mercillesly, I know this is not exactly an original question, but just what is the deal with James Lipton?
I have watched Inside the Actors’ Studio a few times, and–no offense intended to his fans–I find him intolerable. He’s so pompous that I feel like it must be a put on or something.
Is he one of those guys whose a great teacher and great administrator of a great school but he just comes across wrong on television? Do all his former students love him and go on and on about how he really cares about the students, and how his class changed their life?
Or is he despised by everyone that knows him and nobody can figure out how he possibly ever got to teach anything, much less host his own tv show? Is he like Sy Sperling, the hair club for men guy, in that most people watch the show just to goof on him?
If you really like him, again I promise I don’t mean any offense. It’s just that to me the guy is so completely, utterly, [insert 45 more adverbs], incredibly pompous and self-important that I just can’t get past it.
Does he have great qualities that I’m just not seeing?
All I can offer in reply is that (from a friend who has met New School students who actually have James Lipton as a Prof.) his students say “Yes, he’s really like that.”
“Yes, he’s really like the way you see him on the television show, so… if you think he’s interesting on the show you’ll think he’s interesting in person, BUT if you find him annoying on the show then you will also find him annoying in person”; OR
“Yes, he really cares about students, is a great teacher, etc.”
The best I’ve seen of James Lipton was when he was interviewed by HBO’s Ali G.
Of course, Lipton wasn’t in on the joke. His facial expressions when Ali “axed” him why “bitches be better actors dan da mens…‘Oh, Ali, ye fucked me best friend. Ow could ya do dat’?” was priceless.
My theory is that what the South Park episode that revealed John Edward to be “The Biggest Douchebag of the Universe” didn’t tell us, was that Edward was unseating James Lipton, the previous year’s winner.
BTW, Lipton was the force behind the whole “An Exaltation of Larks” trendlet of about fifteen years ago (books, posters, etc. touting fanciful collective nouns of various critters). In that spirit, I’d define a “Lipton” as “a group of insufferable [pseudo-]intellectual poseurs”.
I thought he handled himself suprisingly well in that interview. My ex gf is a producer and knows him and says he very prickly. My goodfriend just did a photoshoot with him yesterday - I’ll have to see what he said.
When he and an equally pretentious performer get together the level of bloviation is particularly comical.
Sharon Stone, who is a fine looking woman and is most well known for crossing her legs, appeared and the level of adoration reached alarming levels. I expected to see him bowing before her and offering to lick her toes (which wouldn’t be a bad gig if you could get it).
My favorite parody was Will Ferrell on SNL as Lipton interviewing Tobey McGuire as Dustin Diamond (Screach from SAVED BY THE BELL). “You are, without compare, the greatest actor…who…has ever… lived… and now we’ll close with the best survey ever created by the best writer who ever lived, Oadnaorhooaf du afFouafna fouan for the Parisien periodical Uo adjf oPJO joJ ojfnj…”
Eh? I’m a fan of both shows, and they are dimetrically opposite in style. Indeed, “ITAS” is so stuffy and low-budget, it plays more like a PBS show.
Lipton isn’t a great host, but his “frumpy” style must be the key to his appeal. Same reason why Phil Collins and Tobey Macguire are famous, too. It’s part of a phenomenon I can’t explain.
I was just asking a friend about Lipton! Who is he and how does he get these (rather big named) actors to appear on the show? Does he have some secret connection? It could be the editing, but he’s not that good of an interviewer. His questions zoom from topic to topic and instead of natural follow-ups, it’s like he’s got this list of questions and he’s going to answer them no matter what.
That said, I was very happy to have caught the interview with Dennis Quaid. sigh
That sketch was undoubtedly, unequivically the finest, most shining example of comedy the human race has ever been fortunate enough to compile.
My first semester of college I took a Film Studies class, and after watching The Piano (wherein I saw more of Harvey Keitel than anyone ever should), we were treated to Lipton’s interview with Holly Hunter. If you don’t think listening to him ramble on about what an exquisite experience it must have been to play for the composer in a private studio was a new peak of boringness, you are in for a surprise.
Part of it is that it’s The New School, which is a prestigious institution for the Performing Arts. Many, though not all, of the guests are graduates of The Actor’s Studio, or know Lipton through the various schools and workshops he’s been involved with in his almost 40 years as an actor and instructor. As an aside, he was once played a character on the soap The Guiding Light (when he was pretty young).
I don’t know what the beef with him is. I like his show because I get to see actors talk about their craft, from script choices to character devlopment to idiosyncratic techniques–like Christopher Walken confessing that he puts a dance move (however small) in every movie as a tribue to dance. It was fun watching him dance for the students as well. It’s entertaining to see these men and women sort of behind the scenes, and not filtered through the mundanely voyeristic lens. Then again, it’s fun getting a peek of that at end and seeing what curse word is a favorite.
Anyway, it’s probably a case of teaching best what one most needs to learn (I hear he’s not a good actor). His students seem to like him, he certainly does his homework, and he seems to be good natured about his campy image. He actually participated in one of those Will Ferrell skits and he’s usually a bit self-deprecating on the show. I don’t know if anyone caught the 100th show, but it was a great and hysterical collage of the history of the show. One of the best.
Wow, I hadn’t made that connection! Although I share the forum’s general disdain for Lipton and his fawning manner on the show (I find his routine set of questions at the end of each interview – what is your favorite word, etc. – excruciatingly embarrassing and unenlightening), I must say that I’ve been a fan of An Exaltation of Larks for about 20 years.
If you haven’t seen the book (originally published in 1968, and greatly expanded in 1991) it’s a rather interesting and enjoyable look at “terms of venery” or the words used to describe groups of various animals. It is not a game invented by Lipton, but a literary tradition with a history dating back to the fifteenth century.
Many of these terms are commonplace expressions, e.g. a school of fish, a gaggle of geese, a pride of lions, etc. But most of the examples Lipton presents from centuries past are unexpected and poetic: a murder of crows, a skulk of foxes, and note that it’s a gaggle of geese on the water, but a skein of geese in flight. Lipton recounts the history of the art and explains the derivations of some of the more obscure terms (a cete of badgers). The main point being that the proper term often (but not always) provdes a poetical insight into the critter in question.
The Ultimate Edition of 1991, with more than 1,100 terms, includes a host of newly coined terms submitted by his readers of the previous two decades. Most of these deal with categories of people (a stud of poker players, a twaddle of public speakers), and are more contrived and less charming than the historic batch.
I suspect, Scrivener, that Lipton would not grant that “a Lipton of [pseudo-]intellectual poseurs” meets the his criteria for a proper term of venery. But you’ll have to read Chapter V of the Ultimate Edition to find out why.
Lipton’s writing style is nowhere near as pretentious as he appears on TV, as long as you can keep his ponderous voice out of your mind while reading. But get a load of the self-important author photo on the back flap of the dust jacket!
So say what you will about Lipton and Inside the Actors Studio, IMO* An Exaltation of Larks* is an interesting and enjoyable read.
One more point in his favor: he appeared as himself on The Simpsons and did a fairly interesting interview with the cast of the show.
To answer the question of his credentials, he has written plays, TV shows, and films. His IMDB entry. He was an actor on The Guiding Light (a U.S. soap opera) from 1952-62, and writer on two other soaps in the 1960s. No wonder he’s so pretentious.
So he’s a bit pompous, somewhat of a stiff interviewer, etc etc. The show itself is pretty good, and if people could get past their prejudices they might enjoy it. I get the sense the actors who come on the show don’t really do it for the exposure, and for the most part enjoy themselves. You’ll learn far more about the interviewee than you will in 10,000 People magazine articles combined.
Also - he does tend to dig up a lot of interesting little factoids about his guests’ pasts.
