Charlie Rose is about the only “talk show” I watch on a regular basis. Not only is he a great interviewer, of guests that I’m actually interested in hearing from, but his show comes on PBS where I don’t get driven off by constant commercial interruptions. And his The Brain Series, featuring Nobel Laureate Dr. Eric Kandel, is an absolute “must see” for for anyone interested in one of sciences final frontiers: the study of the human brain.
The show even has a phenomenal theme song, which I finally found an embeddable version of after more attempts than I can count:
But of course it’s the interviews themselves that make this show so worth watching. Unfortunately, the best ones are usually too long for me to tax my readers with. Which is why I was so happy when this short clip from last night’s show was uploaded to the Charlie Rose YouTube Channel:
By the way, the show was about Woody Allen’s new movie To Rome With Love, with guests Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, Greta Gerwig, Ellen Page, and producer Letty Aronson. The “social media” bit evolved from a discussion about one of the characters in the movie, Leopoldo Pisanello, who discovers that he has somehow become one of the most famous men in Italy, with paparazzi plaguing his life at every turn.
The idea of Mr. Pisanello’s plight is particularly funny to me, in an embarrassing, “inside (my head) joke” kind of way. You see, when I first started this blog back in 2008, I rather naively thought that my quirky personality and outrageous political positions would make me very famous – if for no other reason than having lots of people wanting to see me strung up (hence the frequent references to “torches and pitchforks” in my earliest posts).
I even wrote, but never published, a post describing what I imagined being interviewed by Charlie Rose would be like. I looked for the text file for that post right before I started this one, but I couldn’t find it. I don’t actually remember deleting it but, considering my incredible “lack” of infamy, it’s not inconceivable that I did…
I want ice water.
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hmmm, looks like an interesting show, will see if I can get it here in the UK…
Good luck with that my friend. I wanted to post a clip from last night’s The Daily Show too, but I already knew that too many of my readers wouldn’t be able to see it!
Happy summer, IzaakMak!
I have been watching Charlie Rose (both him and his show) since the 1990s. I respect his intellect, wisdom, charm and, of course, his journalism training. A fascinating chemistry forms between Charlie and his interviewee right there in front of our eyes, and IMO, I get the feeling that the interviewer is quite engaged and enjoying himself! I usually have a steaming cup of tea waiting on the coffeetable — and, yes, despite the time, it (the tea, not the table) is of the caffeinated variety.
Last night’s broadcast was a hoot. How could it not be with the charismatic Alec Baldwin as part of the ensemble of interviewees. And just to get off-subject for a mo-mo, I have adored Alec since his run on “Knots Landing,” no matter how maniacal his character (the son of Julie Harris’ character) was! I loved Alec’s little snide remarks as well as his astute ones — of the latter, his advice TO ROME WITH LOVE co-star Greta Gerwig to leverage her authentically wistful and neurotic Florence experience (when she took a day trip to the city on a break from shooting the film) into a future role in another Woody Allen movie.
To wander off-topic again … I wonder how much wealthier Charlie Rose has made Ralph Lauren. Oh yeah, I read ALL of the end credits!
Wow, you sound like an even bigger fan that I am. That’s cool. Thanks Chantale!
No probs. Yeah, big fan (of both Charlie and Alec) going back a ways.
I’m so glad I stopped working on my short story yesterday long enough to check out your article. I really enjoyed it! I’ve given myself a deadline on two other pieces, so I will be doing catch-up reading on your blog and, like, six others, whenever I take a quick break during each short story’s development.
For now, take good care, man.
It’s always great to have you here Chantale, and I look forward to your coming back. Good luck with your writing projects!
Merci!
Charlie Rose is one of the few journalists left that I really respect and admire. He conducts interviews that a pleasant, intelligent, low-key way, proving that you don’t have to yell, be rude and insulting, talk over people, or be generally loud and obnoxious to be entertaining and informative.
So true PT. I couldn’t agree more!
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Indeed, seems like I should be checking Mr Rose out… usually can’t stand the interview format – the questions and such are always so predictable, etc… I liked the music too… reminded me of Joe Sample:
Wow, his music really is similar. Thanks for the intro Janet!
Awesome – I actually intro’d YOU to some great music!!! And many thanks for coding and embedding this vid for me too!!! (Just got my HTML for Dummies book and it says right on the front: “works with content management systems like… WordPress…” .)
Actually, what I did was remove the coding that wasn’t needed. Unlike images, which WP blocks for some reason. all you need to include a video in a comment is the URL. I always add a blank line as well, for appearances sake.
Good luck with the HTML studies. I was just out, earlier today, searching around for ways to improve the looks of the quotes I add to my posts. Check out this great post: HTML for Dummies, Part 3: Effects with Borders and Padding, and Replacing Tables with Divs. You can bet that I subscribed to that one!
If you find it, hope you post it! I can relate–I also started my blog in 2008, and have never focused it on one thing, it’s meant to be eclectic. Alot of bloggers (“mommy bloggers”, for example) focus on one thing, and one thing only. And I must admit I feel sorry for them. One needn’t feel restricted to a single subject for his/her blog.
Thanks Scott. I have far too many interests to limit myself to just one, or even a few. They must have had me in mind when they said “a jack of all trades and a master of none!”
As for the imaginary interview post, I’m hoping it’s still on the old Win98SE machine I was using at the time I wrote it. I’ll have to dredge it up again to check…
Hey, I first saw Alec Baldwin on this godawful soap opera, 1/2 and hour, can’t remember the name on NBC. He played a bad boy who got the doctor’s good girl pregnant. Noooo.
Speaking of Daily Show clips, I cannot post them any more. How do you include them? That gigya thing doesn’t work because the code doesn’t have the whatchamacallit in it. Tech savvy enough for you?
Someone else mentioned his stint in a soap opera too, but I just can’t recall it. To my knowledge, the first time I saw him was in The Getaway, which I absolutely loved.
Like so many others, The Daily Show has switched from the Object type embeds, that can be converted to work with the gigya shortcode, over to the iFrame embeds that can’t be. Being stubborn, I ignored the “it can’t be done” warning from the guy who taught me how to use the shortcode and wasted most of a day “experimenting” to find a way.
The scary thing to me is this: what happens to the posts I’ve done using the Object style code when the site that gave me that code changes over?!?!