The Colbert Report

So, Stephen Colbert is taking over for David Letterman. Colbert is a fine actor, comedian, interviewer-even a good song and dance man, I'm told. And it's those talents that will be on display as star of "Late Night." His choice as successor to Letterman does not portend tectonic changes at media megalith CBS, which airs the program. His slyly transgressive persona will be persona non grata.

Can anyone believe that CBS will adapt it's basic economic structure to accommodate Colbert's shtick as a left-liberal masquerading as a right wing wingnut? Will they happily sacrifice a broad swath of their demographic, as the good natured political ribbing that has dominated the show-with resounding financial success-goes right in the dumper and the character Colbert played on Comedy Central is given free range to acerbically dissect the foibles of the American power structure? Rather than the usual fawning treatment, will the cavalcade of Hollywood guests (whose movies are produced and distributed by the same company that owns CBS) now be in for the kind of ironic diss served up on the Colbert Report?

Sure, it could happen. If the sponsors of the Late Show decide they'll be happy to pay the same rates for a smaller and smaller but hipper and hipper audience. I'd be surprised. More likely, they will shave down Colbert's canines and reduce his bitter irony to a wholesome pap. Not too quickly, though. No doubt the network, the sponsors and producers will devise a strategy to woo Colbert's old viewers while reassuring the mainstream audience by slowly mutating Colbert from his current complex persona into something with the ring of the renegade, as has been perfected by the ad industry to sell jeans.  

Colbert might change the multi-billion dollar culture of late night TV; and Chris Christie might get a job as a tolltaker on the George Washington bridge, but I'm afraid my money's on Proctor and Gamble, Mercedez Benz and Sheldon Adelstein. There's just too much money at stake. Meanwhile, good luck, Colbert, we love you, er we love your persona, we think we love you, but we hope that what we love is really you [voice trails off to infinite recursion]...

"Like, So Not Swingin', Gate" By Steve Provizer

Insomnia can be educational. Early risers or the sleep-deprived might want to know that from 5:30-6:00 AM, you can catch Dobie Gillis on one of the Pronoun channels on cable TV-"Us," or "We," I forget which. The episode I saw had Dobie and Maynard both wearing ROTC uniforms. Like, for real. It brought me back to this old post I wrote a couple of years ago. Speaking of re-runs...

Yankee Dog mentioned Frank Gorshin's hep cat role in "Where the Boys Are." I have no doubt that there's a large sub-division of the Academic Culture Industry that has chewed on the subject of jazz/beat portrayals in film and TV like a chia pet on a licorice rope. But boys, if you're reading, try to chill. I'm not trying to grab anybody's dissertation. This is just personal flashback and speculation based on such ephemera as I recall from adolescence.

The steadiest diet of jazz-beatnik-hipster my cohort got was from Maynard G. Krebs, Dobie Gillis' pal. Each on-screen appearance by Maynard (Bob Denver, who eventually reincarnated as Gilligan) was signaled by a very cool little blues motif played on flute. Maynard (Ferguson, anyone?) threw in an occasional "man" and "cat," but his most salient character trait was, as Washington Irving said of Rip Van Winkle,  his "insuperable aversion to any and all kinds of profitable labor." If the notion of getting a job was mentioned, he would stammer out "W-W-W-work?!" He was lovable and ineffectual. If there was any cultural danger represented by jazz-loving beats, Maynard was there to reassure us they represented no real threat.

Gorshin was slightly more threatening because to me, no matter what he played, he always exuded a barely-controlled murderous impulse (see his 'Riddler'). But in "Where the Boys Are, he was an egghead loser, with thick horn rimmed glasses. Shoot-his name was Basil. The rest of the gang was rock and roll. He was jazz and out of it. Impotent over-intellectualizing, thy name is Beat.



In Roger Corman's "Bucket Of Blood," the hapless Walter Paisley kills a few folks and covers them with plaster so he can be accepted as an 'artist' by the crowd at the beatnik coffee house-a dupe of the fast beat crowd. That crowd, while not homicidal, was shown to be steeped in bohemian self-delusion and was really just there for cultural sport. The presence of real jazz musicians Paul Horn and Fred Katz in the house band undermines that conceit-the music's too good.


The only really evil character in the beat movie milieu that I know of was played by Peter Falk in his first big movie role-The Bloody Brood-1959-same year as Dobie on TV. This is a picture riddled with sado-masochism, and a very confused message. On the one hand, the filmmakers want to blame the wayward milieu of the Beats for

providing ripe soil for evil, and yea, maniac faux-beatnik Falk wanted to get his "kicks" (beat code), but they dressed him in a suit, he smoked a cigar and his name was Nico. The feeble Beats murdered, but only because their lack of will made them powerless to stand up against Falk. Eventually, someone with a sane haircut brought them to their senses.

The final characters in this cultural menagerie are Steve Allen, first host of the Tonight Show and Soupy Sales. Allen was half yenta/half aspiring hipster, a composer and decent jazz pianist who had an odd lot of people on his show, including Frank Zappa,  Lenny Bruce and Jack Kerouac.  Soupy had a serious array of jazz folks on-Hawkins, Armstrong, Bird... Let it be noted that the only Clifford Brown footage I know of is from Soupy Sales' show. But these guys are less about Hollywood dealing with jazz/beats than the jewish/jazz/hipster conspiracy-a discussion that needs its own space.

In the meantime, I'd be willing to bet my tattered copy of "Howl" that when drugs and beats are part of the plot of any movie made in this era, jazz is the soundtrack-not rock and roll.