Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:36 pm
From today's New York Times:
MISS CONGENIALITY WANTS THE OSCARS TO BE FUN
By Jacques Steinberg
BURBANK, Calif., Sept. 29 — With her famously straight hair ensnared in a curling iron just before a taping of her talk show on a recent afternoon, Ellen DeGeneres was peering into the future and describing how she plans to approach her gig as host of the 79th annual Academy Awards early next year.
Hollywood, she suggested, could already breathe easy, safe in the assurance that she did not intend to follow the templates laid out by the most combative of her predecessors. These include Chris Rock, who insulted the Oscar audience from the get-go two years ago by suggesting that only four actors could consider themselves legitimate stars, and even Jon Stewart, who, while shelving his most politically sharp material at this year’s ceremony, still drew an onstage rebuke from George Clooney by daring to suggest that show business might be “out of touch” with America.
“I want to be respectful,” Ms. DeGeneres said from her dressing room here on a studio lot that includes the sets of “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and “Access Hollywood.” “I know what the job is. It’s to honor movies and to honor people who worked hard. Those people take it seriously. I’m there to make them feel good and take their minds off it a little bit and make it a fun night.”
She might have been describing her syndicated talk show, called “Ellen” by most, which, as it embarks on its fourth season, has won the allegiance of a critical mass of viewers, to say nothing of A-list stars and television critics, by offering itself up as a safe harbor in a craggy television landscape.
In the process Ms. DeGeneres may not have reinvented herself — as a sitcom star in the 1990’s, and as a stand-up comedian before that, she was generally regarded as quick-witted and nice — but she has managed to play down the most explosive entry on her résumé (her decision in 1997 to out herself and her television character as gay) while playing up a talk-show persona that is positive, exuberant and encouraging.
The feel-good environment she has created on her show — when combined with her soothing turns as host of the Emmy Awards ceremonies after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina — made her an ideal candidate to host the Oscars. She could prove the perfect tonic for an entertainment industry generally despondent over the year’s box-office returns, as well as the state of affairs in Washington and abroad. “She’s got the best laugh in show business,” Robin Williams, a periodic guest on Ms. DeGeneres’s show and an Academy Award-winner himself (for “Good Will Hunting”), said in a telephone interview. “I think she’s genuinely having a good time. If it felt fake, or put on, I think people would pick up on it.”
“She picks stuff that’s silly and fun,” he added, citing appearances on her show in which she had him ride a bike onstage. “You feel like you’re with a really brilliant 12-year-old.”
In that vein, on this season of “Ellen” (officially “The Ellen DeGeneres Show”), Ms. DeGeneres, 48, has been goading celebrity guests and audience members alike to write “life lists,” compilations of all those things they have always wanted to accomplish, but never have. In a running bit, she has been crossing off the entries on her own ledger, like learning Spanish, which she did — on camera and to comedic effect of course — at a nearby middle school.
“I have a certain philosophy,” she said in an interview, this time sitting cross-legged on a comfy, olive couch in a bright office down the hall from her studio, “that if it feels good, that if I feel good doing it, then it will just feel good to watch.”
At the least she has demonstrated that her show’s stock-in-trade routines — whether it’s dancing through the audience with the abandon of someone in her kitchen with the blinds drawn or showing slow-motion replays of her inadvertent falls — have fueled a mini cottage industry.
During the last year or so, her representatives said, she has sold more than 10,000 pairs of boxer briefs with the name Ellen emblazoned on the waistband ($24.95) mostly through the show’s Web site, ellen.warnerbros.com. And, since being released in early September, the DVD of highlights from her first three seasons (titled “DVD-licious” and priced at $24.98) has been a top-seller at Target, where it is available exclusively through November.
So far this season “Ellen” has drawn an average daily audience of about 2.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. During the last 12 months the show ranked among the top 15 daytime talk and game shows, below “The View,” but above “Martha.” While up by an average of nearly 350,000 viewers a day when compared with her first season, Ms. DeGeneres’s audience has fallen a bit since last season, at least partly because NBC stations in New York and Los Angeles are pitting her, for the first time, against the top-ranked “Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Since NBC announced in 2004 that Conan O’Brien would succeed Jay Leno as host of “The Tonight Show” in 2009, Ms. DeGeneres’s name has occasionally been floated by industry executives as someone ABC might hire to develop her own late-night show.
When asked about that possibility, Ms. DeGeneres, whose contract with Warner Brothers and Telepictures, which produces her daytime show, does not expire until 2010, did not rule out relocating to nighttime.
“I’ll see what I feel like in three years and what the show is doing in three years,” she said.
A moment later, though, she said: “There’s no reason for me to move to late night. It’s not like I would do anything differently than during the day. Most people think you could do more at night, get away with more, but I don’t really do that.”
Perhaps the most obvious contrast to how Ms. DeGeneres conducts her daytime talk show can be found on ABC, where Rosie O’Donnell — a fellow stand-up comic whose Warner Brothers show preceded Ms. DeGeneres’s — has taken up residence this season on “The View.” On that show Ms. O’Donnell has been overtly political (her views are decidedly liberal), provocative and open about her relationship with her longtime partner, Kelli Carpenter O’Donnell.
By contrast Ms. DeGeneres almost never discusses politics. “It’s not because I have these strong opinions that I hold back talking about,” she said. “I’m just not a political person.” She added, “I really am aware that no matter how strongly I feel about something, there’s someone else who feels just as strongly about the exact opposite.”
Unlike Ms. O’Donnell, Ms. DeGeneres makes only rare references to her romantic life on her show — she shares a home with the actress Portia de Rossi — mindful that the way she came out as a lesbian (with a Time magazine cover featuring the headline “Yep, I’m Gay”) drew much criticism in some circles and concerned some station managers who now carry her show..
“Maybe because I was penalized in a way when I came out, there are certain areas that I am aware would get me in trouble,” she said. “I talk about my life and I talk about Portia and it’s not a big deal if it comes up. But it really doesn’t come up.”
In recent weeks, for example, Ms. DeGeneres omitted any reference to Ms. de Rossi from two stories she told during her monologue, one about a car accident (she was driving and Ms. de Rossi was a passenger) and another in which their French bulldog, Pig, who is prone to flatulence, devoured a bowl of Parmesan cheese. (Ms. de Rossi had been cooking pasta and inadvertently left the bowl within Pig’s reach.) That Ms. DeGeneres may be holding back a few details from her daily life does not seem to bother her show’s core audience, particularly those who began lining up as early as 5:30 a.m. with hopes of getting a good seat (and perhaps the chance to dance on camera with the host) on a recent day.
“She’s like us, real people,” said Esther Perez, 47, a school cafeteria worker from San Diego whose husband left home at 3:45 a.m. to hold a spot in line for her. “And she’s very clean with her jokes.”
“It’s that positivity,” said Nan Einarson, a life coach who had traveled to the show from Toronto as a 58th birthday present from her daughter. “Ellen’s always upbeat.”
MISS CONGENIALITY WANTS THE OSCARS TO BE FUN
By Jacques Steinberg
BURBANK, Calif., Sept. 29 — With her famously straight hair ensnared in a curling iron just before a taping of her talk show on a recent afternoon, Ellen DeGeneres was peering into the future and describing how she plans to approach her gig as host of the 79th annual Academy Awards early next year.
Hollywood, she suggested, could already breathe easy, safe in the assurance that she did not intend to follow the templates laid out by the most combative of her predecessors. These include Chris Rock, who insulted the Oscar audience from the get-go two years ago by suggesting that only four actors could consider themselves legitimate stars, and even Jon Stewart, who, while shelving his most politically sharp material at this year’s ceremony, still drew an onstage rebuke from George Clooney by daring to suggest that show business might be “out of touch” with America.
“I want to be respectful,” Ms. DeGeneres said from her dressing room here on a studio lot that includes the sets of “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and “Access Hollywood.” “I know what the job is. It’s to honor movies and to honor people who worked hard. Those people take it seriously. I’m there to make them feel good and take their minds off it a little bit and make it a fun night.”
She might have been describing her syndicated talk show, called “Ellen” by most, which, as it embarks on its fourth season, has won the allegiance of a critical mass of viewers, to say nothing of A-list stars and television critics, by offering itself up as a safe harbor in a craggy television landscape.
In the process Ms. DeGeneres may not have reinvented herself — as a sitcom star in the 1990’s, and as a stand-up comedian before that, she was generally regarded as quick-witted and nice — but she has managed to play down the most explosive entry on her résumé (her decision in 1997 to out herself and her television character as gay) while playing up a talk-show persona that is positive, exuberant and encouraging.
The feel-good environment she has created on her show — when combined with her soothing turns as host of the Emmy Awards ceremonies after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina — made her an ideal candidate to host the Oscars. She could prove the perfect tonic for an entertainment industry generally despondent over the year’s box-office returns, as well as the state of affairs in Washington and abroad. “She’s got the best laugh in show business,” Robin Williams, a periodic guest on Ms. DeGeneres’s show and an Academy Award-winner himself (for “Good Will Hunting”), said in a telephone interview. “I think she’s genuinely having a good time. If it felt fake, or put on, I think people would pick up on it.”
“She picks stuff that’s silly and fun,” he added, citing appearances on her show in which she had him ride a bike onstage. “You feel like you’re with a really brilliant 12-year-old.”
In that vein, on this season of “Ellen” (officially “The Ellen DeGeneres Show”), Ms. DeGeneres, 48, has been goading celebrity guests and audience members alike to write “life lists,” compilations of all those things they have always wanted to accomplish, but never have. In a running bit, she has been crossing off the entries on her own ledger, like learning Spanish, which she did — on camera and to comedic effect of course — at a nearby middle school.
“I have a certain philosophy,” she said in an interview, this time sitting cross-legged on a comfy, olive couch in a bright office down the hall from her studio, “that if it feels good, that if I feel good doing it, then it will just feel good to watch.”
At the least she has demonstrated that her show’s stock-in-trade routines — whether it’s dancing through the audience with the abandon of someone in her kitchen with the blinds drawn or showing slow-motion replays of her inadvertent falls — have fueled a mini cottage industry.
During the last year or so, her representatives said, she has sold more than 10,000 pairs of boxer briefs with the name Ellen emblazoned on the waistband ($24.95) mostly through the show’s Web site, ellen.warnerbros.com. And, since being released in early September, the DVD of highlights from her first three seasons (titled “DVD-licious” and priced at $24.98) has been a top-seller at Target, where it is available exclusively through November.
So far this season “Ellen” has drawn an average daily audience of about 2.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. During the last 12 months the show ranked among the top 15 daytime talk and game shows, below “The View,” but above “Martha.” While up by an average of nearly 350,000 viewers a day when compared with her first season, Ms. DeGeneres’s audience has fallen a bit since last season, at least partly because NBC stations in New York and Los Angeles are pitting her, for the first time, against the top-ranked “Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Since NBC announced in 2004 that Conan O’Brien would succeed Jay Leno as host of “The Tonight Show” in 2009, Ms. DeGeneres’s name has occasionally been floated by industry executives as someone ABC might hire to develop her own late-night show.
When asked about that possibility, Ms. DeGeneres, whose contract with Warner Brothers and Telepictures, which produces her daytime show, does not expire until 2010, did not rule out relocating to nighttime.
“I’ll see what I feel like in three years and what the show is doing in three years,” she said.
A moment later, though, she said: “There’s no reason for me to move to late night. It’s not like I would do anything differently than during the day. Most people think you could do more at night, get away with more, but I don’t really do that.”
Perhaps the most obvious contrast to how Ms. DeGeneres conducts her daytime talk show can be found on ABC, where Rosie O’Donnell — a fellow stand-up comic whose Warner Brothers show preceded Ms. DeGeneres’s — has taken up residence this season on “The View.” On that show Ms. O’Donnell has been overtly political (her views are decidedly liberal), provocative and open about her relationship with her longtime partner, Kelli Carpenter O’Donnell.
By contrast Ms. DeGeneres almost never discusses politics. “It’s not because I have these strong opinions that I hold back talking about,” she said. “I’m just not a political person.” She added, “I really am aware that no matter how strongly I feel about something, there’s someone else who feels just as strongly about the exact opposite.”
Unlike Ms. O’Donnell, Ms. DeGeneres makes only rare references to her romantic life on her show — she shares a home with the actress Portia de Rossi — mindful that the way she came out as a lesbian (with a Time magazine cover featuring the headline “Yep, I’m Gay”) drew much criticism in some circles and concerned some station managers who now carry her show..
“Maybe because I was penalized in a way when I came out, there are certain areas that I am aware would get me in trouble,” she said. “I talk about my life and I talk about Portia and it’s not a big deal if it comes up. But it really doesn’t come up.”
In recent weeks, for example, Ms. DeGeneres omitted any reference to Ms. de Rossi from two stories she told during her monologue, one about a car accident (she was driving and Ms. de Rossi was a passenger) and another in which their French bulldog, Pig, who is prone to flatulence, devoured a bowl of Parmesan cheese. (Ms. de Rossi had been cooking pasta and inadvertently left the bowl within Pig’s reach.) That Ms. DeGeneres may be holding back a few details from her daily life does not seem to bother her show’s core audience, particularly those who began lining up as early as 5:30 a.m. with hopes of getting a good seat (and perhaps the chance to dance on camera with the host) on a recent day.
“She’s like us, real people,” said Esther Perez, 47, a school cafeteria worker from San Diego whose husband left home at 3:45 a.m. to hold a spot in line for her. “And she’s very clean with her jokes.”
“It’s that positivity,” said Nan Einarson, a life coach who had traveled to the show from Toronto as a 58th birthday present from her daughter. “Ellen’s always upbeat.”