PLUME: How involved were you in the writing and production of the field pieces that you did then, as opposed to now?

COLBERT: In some ways, I was more involved, because there were less other things for us to do.

PLUME: As far as different segments within the show, or editorial content?

COLBERT: In the olden days, I wasn’t doing things in the studio at all. So, if I wanted to fill my days, I filled them with the field pieces, and I was far more involved in the conception and the execution and the editing and the preparation for them. But now, as much as I’d like to do that, I have less time because I might get a call from the head writer at 11:00 saying, “Can you come up with three minutes on the weapons of mass destruction hunt for tonight?” And that will take the rest of the day to write that, so I can’t go to the editing room anymore.

PLUME: Do you think that’s also, to some extent, allowed you to be more engaged and focused on the show, as opposed to going off and doing a piece?

COLBERT: I would say I’m more involved with the show, just because the show is really what happens in the studio. The field pieces these days are additions to that. The more you do in the studio, the more involved you are with the true tone of the show. Because the tone of the show is Jon’s tone, and so the in-studio stuff is all interaction with Jon, so you seem more integral to the show that way. Field pieces are valuable addenda.

PLUME: How do you feel about the fact that The Daily Show has – especially in the last year – almost become a valid news source?

COLBERT: I hear that. I hear people say that. It’s a repackager of news. In that way, I suppose, it is in some ways a valid source. As long as people can understand when we’re goofing and when we mean it. If they’re not reading the normal news, I doubt that they can. People say, “Was that story real?” And I’ve thought, “Oh, you should really watch the real news before you watch our show, if you can’t tell whether our stories are real.” I wish people would watch the real news before they watch our show, because we have two games. Our game is we make fun of the newsmakers, but we also make fun of the news style. They’re missing half our joke if they don’t keep up with the day to day changes of mass media news.

PLUME: Do you think, for a large segment of the audience, The Daily Show almost becomes their primary news source?

COLBERT: I don’t know. People tell me that… mostly people who are interviewing me. If it’s true, it’s a very interesting aspect of what’s happened to the show. But I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t know what the source of that is, do you know what I mean? I don’t know what the primary evidence of that is. It sounds apocryphal, a little bit, to me, but I like the idea.

PLUME: There are more insightful interviews coming out of Jon’s interview segments than there are on MSNBC, or FOX, or CNN combined.

COLBERT: Oh come on – “Scarborough Country”? Come on…

PLUME: I love news that sounds like a cigarette ad. I think that’s a good indicator of where our culture’s at right now, that that could be a valid way to carve out a block of time on a news network. I guess in comparing The Daily Show to real news – when you talk about “Scarborough Country,” here’s a whole block of time where it’s not news – it’s all editorial… so, it’s like The Daily Show writ large, and they’re completely unaware that it’s editorial masquerading as news.

COLBERT: I don’t know if it’s unaware of it. I think it’s completely aware of it. I don’t think it concerns itself with being news.

PLUME: Much to the public’s dismay… or the public just eats it up, do you think?

COLBERT: I don’t think the public cares. I don’t. I think concerns over what is editorializing and what is news are the concerns of editorialists and newsmakers.

PLUME: How difficult is it for you, when you guest host for Jon?

COLBERT: It’s great. Great writers, a crack staff that knows exactly what they’re doing – what more do you want? “Just don’t flub your lines, mister.”

PLUME: How often do you have to arm wrestle Steve Carell for stories?

COLBERT: He loves doing the stories. He’d come back any time he could, it’s just that he had the opportunity to do Watching Ellie out in California, and he’s got a wife and his child, and he can’t go popping back all the time, so he’s out there. The show uses him whenever he feels like he can come back to the East coast. When he comes back, they have him do a ton of in-studio stuff …

PLUME: And paired up often with you.

COLBERT: Yeah, we’re old friends. I was his understudy at Second City.

PLUME: Oh really? So he actually predates you at Second City?

COLBERT: Yeah, he was like – you might say one class ahead of me at Second City. Then we did The Dana Carvey Show together, and now The Daily Show. We’ve worked together a lot.

PLUME: He’s also your co-voice on Ambiguously Gay Duo, right?

COLBERT: Right, he’s Gary and I’m Ace. That was from The Dana Carvey Show… that’s when that started.

PLUME: What lead to the decision to leave The Daily Show to go do Strangers with Candy?

COLBERT: Well, when I was hired at The Daily Show – almost at exactly the same time – we had done this pitch… this after-school special pitch. It’s a long process from pitch to development and all that. I don’t know if it’s longer in cable or network, but it certainly was long. They were developed at the same time. Strangers took so long to get going that by the time that was committed to series, I had been sort of ensconced at The Daily Show, and I was a regular there as opposed to a temporary guy. I was sort of a used-as-needed guy when I first started. It just so happened that I had to do double duty. I mean, I never really left The Daily Show – I just went down to like 20 pieces a year instead of 120.

PLUME: Was Strangers shot locally, in the New York area?

COLBERT: That was shot in New Jersey.

PLUME: At a school you basically were given, right?

COLBERT: We shot at two different abandoned schools in the Rutherford area.

PLUME: Both of which are gone?

COLBERT: One of them is completely gone, and one of them has been rebuilt for something else. I can’t really remember.

PLUME: So you don’t have either one to use for the movie.

COLBERT: No, we’d have to find a new location.

PLUME: Tonally – and in execution – was the show essentially what you had originally conceived, or were there any drastic changes in the development process?

COLBERT: Did you see the pilot?

PLUME: Yes, I did see the pilot.

COLBERT: Well, you can see the tonal difference between the pilot and the series. The pilot’s a little more cartoony …

PLUME: And also it seems not as subversively brutal as the show eventually became.

COLBERT: Well, you know, comedy writers have to keep upping the ante for themselves. Whatever the game is, they have to make the game more extreme – they get bored with their own writing, I think. So, that’s why the show became progressively more brutal. I have to say the brutality of the show doesn’t appeal to me.

PLUME: Do you think it went as far as it could within the TV concept?

COLBERT: Absolutely. I think we had a good time, and we were as lucky to get as many, you might say good games, out of the idea as we did. But, when we saw the writing on the wall and knew that we were going to be cancelled, it was refreshing to be able to say, “Okay, so it’s coming to an end. How would we want to end it?” And then to be able to put a button on it, which a lot of shows don’t ever have the opportunity to do. We had 30 episodes, which is a healthy number of shows.

PLUME: And they still hold up well on the DVD.

COLBERT: I hope so.

PLUME: So now what are the challenges of translating that into a film?

COLBERT: I don’t know. I don’t know. We haven’t done it yet. Really, I suppose I can tell you know what I guess they’re going to be. I guess they’re going to be taking the simplicity of that, and stringing that simplicity out into a film length. Because the shows were really simple – simple moral dilemma. How will Jerri deal with it? Three acts later, she’s learned something. Or she’s got something to say. We want to maintain that level of simplicity, but still having something of a large enough scope that it’s worthy of being on film. That’s going to be the hardest part. None of the characters have to change. I don’t think the visual language will change that much. I think just finding an issue large enough to hold a film.

PLUME: And I guess it will be constructed for the uninitiated?

COLBERT: Yes, we’ll have to be very expository.

PLUME: We’ll have to see how much odder Jerri’s hair is on the big screen.

COLBERT: Well, we’ll shoot in cinemascope, just for her overbite.

PLUME: I got quite a kick out of the book you wrote with Amy and Paul, Wigfield. What was the genesis of that? Living in the area I do, the character types are quite archetypal to the area. I guess they’re quite archetypal to the entire country…

COLBERT: Right, but you know, it’s interesting. People from all over have talked to us about it, and I don’t know – they tend to think that it’s from their part of the country. People from upstate New York, or people from Southern Illinois, or people from the Pacific Northwest, or people from the deep South. We keep on saying, if you listen, the characters are from all over the country. There’s not a particular place that they’re from. They’re just people who are, you know, sort of ignorant, weak – losers who are not self-aware of their own predicament.

PLUME: But I think that strikes a cord as an archetype in any area within this nation of ours…

COLBERT: Maybe so.

PLUME: Are there any plans to expand it beyond book form?

COLBERT: We might. We wrote it to be a book, and there’s been some interest to do it elsewhere, but everything’s so preliminary that it’s not even worth talking about.

PLUME: And what is the live tour?

COLBERT: That’s just to promote the book.

PLUME: At this point, what does the immediate future hold for you?

COLBERT: Well, we’re going into the election cycle for 2004 for The Daily Show. We’ve got to write a script for the Strangers with Candy movie, to see whether that’s any good. We might develop Wigfield and do a larger performance piece for stage or for TV. For the next two weeks, play with my kids. That’s on the immediate horizon for me.

PLUME: It’s a good life.

COLBERT: Yeah, it’s a great life. I couldn’t ask for more. I’m so very lucky.

10 QUESTIONS

1. What is your favorite piece of music?
I’d say it is the song “Hem of His Garment” by Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers.

2. What is your favorite film?
Probably Network.

3. What is your favorite TV program, past or current?
I’m a big fan of The West Wing.

4. What do you feel has been your most important professional accomplishment to date?
Continuing to be employed.

5. Which project do you feel didn’t live up to what you envisioned?
Everything that I have written. It never looks the way that I imagined.

6. What is your favorite book?
Lord of the Rings.

7. If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be?
All that California nonsense.

8. Who – or what – would you say has had the biggest influence on your career?
My mom.

9. What is your next project?
Writing the Strangers With Candy movie.

10. What is the one project that you’ve always wanted to do, but have yet to be able to?
A Man For All Seasons, by Robert Bolt.

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