Showing posts with label Entertainment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Entertainment. Show all posts

Trevor Noah addresses Wyatt Cenac comments, defends Jon Stewart


What does future Daily Show host Trevor Noah have to say about his predecessor cursing out a colleague in public?
“What happened there with Jon (Stewart) is exactly what the writers room is for,” Noah said at a Television Critic Association panel, which our Bill Keveney attended.
Noah was referencing the story former Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac told on the WTF podcast, about how Stewart made him, a correspondent, cry for expressing concern over a segment’s racial insensitivity.
But Noah understands why the heated exchange happened, and thinks it’s OK.
“You’re supposed to fight about things,” he said. “What you’re trying to do is find the best way to tell the best joke about what’s happening in the world we’re living in. … You hope you get to a point where you’re really passionate about a subject because then when you get the show on screen, we’ve already had this fight. … It’s being handled.”
He went on:
“Any joke can be seen as offensive. That’s the great thing about ‘The Daily Show.’ We have a diverse staff: male-female, black-white, young-old. The whole point of having a great writing team is trying to find the best voice for the show.”
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How Jason Segel transformed for 'Tour'


There were serious doubts when Jason Segel was cast as the tragic genius David Foster Wallace inThe End of the Tour.
Segel, 35, has made a career portraying affable, endearing personalities — from Gary, BFF to a muppet named Walter in The Muppets, to goofy Marshall in TV's How I Met Your Mother.
But in Tour (opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles), Segel steps up to the complex role of Infinite Jest author Wallace, who struggled with depression and killed himself in 2008 at age 46. The film depicts a five-day interview with Rolling Stone writerDavid Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg).
"We sometimes buckle when someone we know takes on a more dramatic role," saysTour director James Ponsoldt. "Perhaps it shows the limits to our imagination."
The doubts have turned to accolades for a performance The Hollywood Reporter calls "heartbreaking" and even early awards talk for Segel.
Here's how Segel made the transformation.
Employing the hair and bandanna: Wallace's unorthodox look is striking right off and a significant discussion point in Tour. Segel couldn't grow his hair out while shooting the end of Mother, so he relied on hair extensions.
"You can take the bandanna, the long hair or those clothes, individually," says Segel. "But when they all came together, that's when I felt really comfortable to walk out as David Foster Wallace."
The filmmakers took pains not to fixate on a physical imitation of the author. "We basically tried to get as accurate as possible without making it feel like an impression or a sketch," says Segel.
Reading Wallace's work: The voluminous writings — especially Wallace's seminal 1,079-page Infinite Jest — were key to understanding the author. Segel, who wrote The Muppets and is working on The Lego Movie spinoff Billion Brick Race, started there.
"It's a massive undertaking as a reader. And that puts in perspective what a massive undertaking it was as a writer," says Segel.
Every week, he'd read 100 pages and discuss the work on Sunday with three friends in a book club. "It was one of the best experiences I have ever had," says Segel. "To have four people with different life experiences and having this (book) resonate speaks so much to the writing's universality."
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