Chris Smith (2016)

thanks, happy cadaver. the bulk of the reporting and writing of the book was done in seven months--a real sprint. but i first wrote about jon in 1993, and several more times when the daily show became a big deal, so in some senses i've been reporting it for 23 years. jon is very much what he appears to be on camera: funny as hell, smart as hell, occasionally self-righteous, but entirely down to earth.

oh, most definitely trevor and the show have a future. one thing i tried to describe in the book, which is easy to forget all this time later, is that in jon's first year as daily show host many episodes weren't very good. he also had the benefit of working out the problems with very few people watching--cable was a tiny part of the TV world in 1999. trevor took over in just about the opposite context--following a huge success, with a big civilian and media audience paying close attention. that's tough. not syrian refugee tough, but show biz tough. trump may turn out to be terrible for the country, but he's already given trevor and the show a needed target.

you may. there are a bunch of fun anecdotes that probably won't sound fun here, which is kind of why they're not in the book--they were more fun to hear out loud than they came across in print. one is about a joke jon made many years ago about billy joel announcing he was giving up playing his hits to write classical music. the joke on the show was something like, 'billy joel, have mastered rock, schlock, and crap, is moving on to classical.' not a great joke. but the truly funny part was that billy joel showed up, unannounced, at the daily show studio the next day asking to see jon. when billy--and his bodyguard--arrived in jon's office, he said he just wanted to prove he could take a joke. and the three of them stood there looking at each other, not sure what to do next. see--i told you it was funnier hearing jon tell it.

one of many favorite moments writing the book: josh lieb, a former daily show producer and writer who is now the showrunner for jimmy fallon's 'tonight' show, took me to the friar's club for dinner and his interview. nothing quite like sitting in a classic comedian's hangout, under a framed photo of dean martin, downing martinis with an extremely funny guy.

hey! thanks gusmoreno15. it's possible, in some small way. the red states that swung the electoral college seem to have lots of folks who think the entertainment and journalism establishments are against them or out of touch. but i think the media in general is getting too much credit/blame in the election. people with real lives and real problems made up their minds on their own. and it's important to remember that hillary got 2 million more votes--yeah, she lost, but a lot of those folks are likely daily show/bee/oliver watchers.

ha. haven't read it, but norm's definitely an acquired taste. interviewed him years ago, when he was on SNL, and thought he was really funny, but it takes a bit to get on norm's wavelength.

fight it, sure. change it, no. the biggest possible effect i think jon could have had would have been to draw earlier, sharper attention to how a lot of the tv media, in particular, was giving trump free, unchallenged air time. maybe that would have toughened the tone of the coverage sooner.

depends. how much cash is involved?

ah, i should leave the jokes to the professionals. but jon's out and about, so if you're ever passing through jersey, maybe you'll bump into him.

thank you! really appreciate people reading it!

fine question, signalptde. after jon decided he would be leaving the daily show, he asked me if i'd be interested in putting together an oral history. i'd know jon since 1993, written about the show a bunch of times, and most recently done a cover story about him and 'rosewater,' the movie jon wrote and directed. so i guess he thought i knew what i was doing. ha.

with former daily show staff, it was a matter of tracking down folks who were on movie shoots (ed helms, steve carell, rob corddry) or working behind the scenes on a host of new shows (for instance, jo miller, a former daily show writer who is now exec producer of 'full frontal'). the staff, on camera and off, that stayed as trevor took over was incredibly cooperative as well, just incredibly busy ramping up the new era. folks in both groups were incredibly generous, though, both with interview time and in contributing the backstage photos we used in the book. for me, it was a year of sitting in a small room and dialing the phone a lot, then wading through thousands of pages of transcribing interviews. glamorous!

thanks again. when the above tactics didn't work, it really came down to assembling a first draft, then a second, then going back for more interviews to fill in holes, then a third draft. wish there'd been a magic trick, but it was a lot of hours.

thanks, I'mthelibrarian. bunch of good questions there. jon was and is trying hard to be retired and spend time with his family. but he was totally accessible when i needed him--some interviews in person, most on the phone, about 20 altogether, ranging from 15 minutes to 3 hours. sure, he feels he and show made mistakes, more in approach than factually. a couple examples: treating the mainstream media with too much deference early on. getting too hostile during his infamous 'crossfire' appearance. not focusing on the financial news networks, particularly cnbc, soon enough. and perhaps most of all, which he goes into some detail about in the book, allowing donald rumsfeld to get off the hook when the former defense secretary was a guest on the daily show. oh, and lots of fashion choices.

roughly eight. maybe ten. the studio experience was really interesting and different (duh) from watching the daily show on tv. primarily because of the interactions with the audience by jon and the correspondents. jon would take questions before each taping, and you really saw his standup skills on display. and there's just great energy when jessica williams or lewis black or jason jones are in the room with 200 people. you can seem them feeding off the crowd.

most of the correspondents are ambitious, competitive people, so sure, several wanted the shot that oliver got. jason jones, in particular, seems to have felt slighted. the dynamic was somewhat different when the job went to trevor, because by that point many folks wanted to go make their own mark somewhere else, and knew that following jon was going to be a major challenge.

thanks--that's a major compliment. sometimes it's because i did interview people in pairs or threes, because i wanted that conversational feeling. but most were solo interviews, so i tried to simulate the back and forth by telling, for instance, colbert what carell had said about him. or by choosing events where i knew there'd be multiple perspectives, like the jim cramer interview or the political conventions.

no destruction, in my view. thought trevor made terrific, substantive points, and was a whole lot calmer than i would have been. tomi probably scored too, certainly with her fans, simply by appearing to have gone into the 'lion's den' of liberalism or whatever she called it. she's pretty slick, but there's no sugarcoating the ugly line she's selling.

that free speech is unpatriotic, that black lives matter is the new KKK...more generally, the 'us against them' narrative that fox news and others have perfected.

my law license has lapsed, unfortunately. but if the plant is of age, i have no problem.