The Playboy Interview: Late-Night Talkers
Editors of Playboy Magazine
Language: English
Pages: 392
ISBN: 2:00192266
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
About the Series: In mid-1962, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner was given a partial transcript of an interview with Miles Davis. It covered jazz, of course, but it also included Davis’s ruminations on race, politics and culture. Fascinated, Hef sent the writer—future Pulitzer Prize–winning author Alex Haley, an unknown at the time—back to glean even more opinion and insight from Davis. The resulting exchange, published in the September 1962 issue, became the first official Playboy Interview and kicked off a remarkable run of public inquisition that continues today—and that has featured just about every cultural titan of the past half century.
To celebrate the interview’s 50th anniversary, the editors of Playboy have assembled 13 compilations of the magazine’s most (in)famous interviews—from big mouths and wild men to sports gods and literary mavericks. Here is our collection of 12 interviews with the most engaging nighttime hosts.
Home Cinema Choice (November 2015)
Soap Opera Digest (30 May 2016)
Investigating Farscape: Uncharted Territories of Sex and Science Fiction (Investigating Cult TV)
I say, “No, the class clown is always killed in a motel shoot-out. That ends badly.” Playboy: The class clown is Chris Farley or John Belushi? O’Brien: I’m thinking Ted Kaczynski or the Green River Killer. I’ll never forget the time I met Steve Martin. I was at Saturday Night Live, and they said, “Go pitch an idea to Steve Martin.” I was petrified. All I could imagine was the guy with a fake arrow through his head, this incredible extrovert. Instead I got this thoughtful, quiet man
now and again will see me and say, “You know, my wife and I think you’re a very fine announcer.” In the minds of many people, everybody who’s on TV who doesn’t sing is an announcer. And that’s basically what we are. Some of us do talk shows, some of us anchor the news, some of us do station breaks—but in the minds of many people who watch us, we are just announcers. And I’m not uncomfortable with that term. Playboy: Do you take your responsibilities as a TV journalist seriously? Snyder:
businessman, has a wonderful wife and son who are dear people. Recently, we talked on the phone and he said, “You know, I’m getting goddamn sick and tired of people asking me if I am your brother and if I am on television.” Playboy: Can you empathize with him? Snyder: Sure. I love him and I know what he is saying to me. Just as when I was married. You know, it was horrible for my wife, because wherever we would go, she was just somebody who was with Tom Snyder in the minds of people who
the big move to Hollywood in 1975 in the further pursuit of your childhood dream. Letterman: I told everyone, including myself, that I was going out there to become a TV scriptwriter. I thought that would be my best entry point into the business. But the thing you discover is that you can write all the scripts you want when you’re living in Indianapolis. People aren’t going to meet you at the L.A. city line saying, “Can we see those scripts? We’re dying to get scripts from people who live in
With the censor sitting right there? How far would I get? By the time I had her blouse ripped, the stagehands would be on top of us and her agent would have thrown down his mangy gauntlet and it would be pistols at dawn in the Bois. Of course, if the show were live, it might be worth it anyway, just to see if there would be a jump in the ratings—as it were. The sad fact is, I’m often unaware of how sexy a guest is until I see the show at home and notice she was stunning. As I’ve said, there’s a