sundance

How to be a TV talking head

I’ve spent half my adult life appearing as a talking head on various TV channels, so by now I have the art of on-camera gabbing down to a T and know just what to do, what to avoid, and whether to watch the clip afterwards with one eye covered.

Live appearances on cable news are way different than pre-taped ones (like “101 Celebrity Meltdowns” or “The Fab Times of Lindsay”), so I’ll separate them in offering my unsolicited but extremely useful advice to anyone brazen enough to want to join the unpaid talking head population.

For live shows:

*Have your first answer ready. The worst thing imaginable on live TV is dead air, so you want to avoid ever pausing to think or stammering stuff like “Um, uh…” If your first answer doesn’t match the first question, then say it anyway—and make it match the question.

*Speak in four or five sentences at a time, trailing off when you’ve sensed that you’ve had your say on that particular subject and it’s time for someone—anyone–else to speak. Don’t be a monosyllabic caveman, but don’t monopolize the whole show either. Find a happy medium.

The Five Worst Celebrity Interviews

Interviewing movie stars is an Olympic-caliber game whereby you gently toss questions at them and they volley back by delivering succinct, crisp sayings that are informative, funny, and make great copy too.

Alas, that doesn’t always happen and you sometimes feel like you’re engaged in a battle of wits with a half armed opponent. Not me, mind you. My interviews have always been sheer perfection, cough cough. But a friend of mine who’s a longtime reporter has had some awkward star encounters that left his tape recorder metaphorically burning, and he anonymously agreed to share them with me.

His five worst have been:

The GQ interview with Rielle Hunter

Have you read the no-holds-barred GQ interview with Rielle Hunter, John Edwards’ mistress during his presidential campaign and father of her only child? It’s required reading. Not necessarily for the intimate behind-the-scene details you learn about Edwards’ relationships, both with Hunter and his wife Elizabeth, but for the voyeuristic door it opens into the mind [...]

Jazz history in iTunes U

I’ve been using the iTunes Music Store pretty much since the day it launched, but I’ve never really spent any time poking around iTunes U, the section of the store devoted to podcasts, videotaped lectures, and other content from universities, museums, and similar institutions. Participants include the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, the [...]

The un-zeitgeist interviewer

Like a Rip Van Winkle from the late ’90s, comic Gil Ozeri conducts interviews with random strangers in the streets of New York City asking untopical questions about Friendster, Enron, and the “Rachael” haircut, among others. [Via]