Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Quote of the Day (Dick Cavett, on Talk-Show Hosting and Anxiety)



“It's a wonderful job for people who have never had a nervous breakdown but have always wanted one.”—Former talk-show host Dick Cavett, on being a talk-show host, quoted in John Heilpern, “Out to Lunch with Jimmy Fallon,” Vanity Fair, January 2013

And you thought that The Larry Sanders Show was fictional? Even one of the more successful practitioners of the art of the talk show, David Letterman, admitted to Charlie Rose that he has seen a psychiatrist.

Now, Seth Meyers is going to replace Jimmy Fallon on Late Night, as the latter takes over the throne for Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. Only time will tell if this turns out to be a success—or if Meyers ends up making the same big, anxiety-producing mistake that Chevy Chase did with his brief fling with the gabfest form some years back.

(The image accompanying this post is a publicity photo from 1973 of Cavett with onetime Tonight Show host Jack Paar, who had come on to announce that he would be jumping into the talk-show fray again. That lasted all of a year. We’ll see if Meyers has better luck.)

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