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SEPTEMBER 2012
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HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 71
KIMMEL:
There’s no question that you
have a home field advantage. You set
yourself up to succeed when you’re in
your own studio. The people who come
are there to see you, so you have an
advantage right there. It’s not like
being in a roomwhere there are round
tables and a lot of other interesting
people to look at.
HEMISPHERES:
You are everywhere online.
You have about eleventy billion followers
on Twitter, your YouTube page is mas-
sively subscribed and almost everyone on
Facebook is your friend.
KIMMEL:
It’s empowering to know
you can go directly to your audience. I
started in radio, where the only people
who knewwhat you were doing were
the ones in the local market. If you
make a YouTube video that’s genuinely
funny, you can bet a lot of people will
see it. When you do a TV show, you
assume people are laughing and your
ratings are merely estimates, whereas
online you can see this was viewed
5 million times. It must be something
that people are responding to.
HEMISPHERES:
I always have trouble
remembering how we all did what we did
before there was an Internet.
KIMMEL:
The days of having to beg for
a radio job are kind of gone, because
now any kid with a computer can do
his own radio show. Sometimes I
imagine myself at 17, and I wonder
what I would be doing. Would I be
making li le cartoons or trying to make
funny videos? I almost would like to
erase everything and start again, just
to have that fun.
HEMISPHERES:
You’re a pretty funny guy.
I’m wondering who makes you laugh.
KIMMEL:
There are quite a few guys.
Will Arne makes me laugh; anything
he says, I find amusing. Bill Murray
still to this day makes me laugh. Chris
Ellio is another guy like that, and I
would put Zach Galifianakis in that
category, too.
HEMISPHERES:
Are you buying all this talk
about the Golden Age of Television?
KIMMEL:
Well, “Breaking Bad” is one
of the greatest shows ever. And I’m
dazzled by “Girls.” Not only is it funny,
it’s got so much heart to it. I feel like
I’mwatching something important. I
wasn’t old enough to be aware when
people were discovering Woody Allen,
but I almost feel like Lena Dunham
might be similar to that. Here’s some-
body who’s just supernaturally talented
for her age, doing all this stuff herself,
and it’s just so good.
HEMISPHERES:
Given that you understand
the Web and use it well for your show, do
you still believe in the primacy of broad-
cast entertainment? Every weeknight, you
light a campfire and invite people to show
up. Will that continue?
THE
HEMI
Q&A:
JIMMY KIMMEL
KIMMEL:
I think so. It might become
more rare as the years go on, but if
there’s a show like “The Sopranos”
on, we’re still going to watch it. Or if
there’s a sporting event or these live
talent shows—they capture people’s
imaginations. Those are going to be
things that we all watch at the same
time because we don’t want to be le out
of the discussion. But the days of the
broadcast networks dominating televi-
sion are clearly gone, and they are not
coming back. My daughter doesn’t have
a television in her apartment, which is
mind-boggling to me, but she’s got her
computer. She watches what she wants
to see when she wants to see it.
HEMISPHERES:
You’ve apologized on-air
to Matt Damon many, many times for
running out of time at the end of your
show, as if he were standing by in the green
room. Where did that bit come from?
KIMMEL:
That was early on in the show,
sometime in probably the first or second
year, and I don’t remember who our
guests were that night, but I remember
that they weren’t good guests—they
were C-minus at best. As a joke at the
end of the show I said, “I want to apolo-
gize to Ma Damon, we ran out of time,”
and it tickled our co-executive producer,
Jason Schri , who was standing right
next to me. It was especially funny on
nights when we had really bad guests.
HEMISPHERES:
Was Damon a fan of
the bit?
KIMMEL:
Somehowwe got in contact
and he encouraged us to keep doing it.
Who knew it would pay off in such a big
way? But it was funny. It’s like one of the
first things people think about when
they think of me.
HEMISPHERES:
With apologies to Matt
Damon, that’s all the time we have.
DAVID CARR,
a
New York Times
columnist,
wept deeply when he received a “Traffic
Safety” merit badge in the Boy Scouts.