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  • Trump Demands NBC Bring Back Johnny Carson Who Died In 2005

    Trump Demands NBC Bring Back Johnny Carson Who Died In 2005

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    Trump suggested during a rally appearance that NBC bring back Johnny Carson, who has been dead for nearly 20 years.

    Trump said in Indiana, PA:

    He’s not very funny. (Jimmy Fallon)  Can you believe that guy? Those three guys, they’re being blown away by Gutfeld. You know, Gutfeld, totally dominant. Those guys. Do you remember that guy? When I first ran, it was like 2015 thinking about running. I was going to run. I went on his show, right? And he goes, The Tonight Show, which is dying. They’re all dying. Where’s Johnny Carson? Bring back Johnny. It made you appreciate, right? Uncle Sam? It made you appreciate the greatness of Johnny Carson and these guys.

    These three guys, they’re so bad. All three of them. All three of them. But this one, I go on a show and he goes, is that your real hair? I said, yeah, he said, do you mind if I mess it up? I said, I’d prefer no. Do you remember this? I said I’d prefer it if you didn’t, to be honest. But if you have to. So he grabs it and he starts really going crazy, right? And everybody laughed. And it was a big thing and it was a big hit. It was all over the place and he got great ratings and all. And six months later he went out because he was under pressure to apologize because he humanized Donald Trump .

    Video:

    Johnny Carson died in 2005. Even if NBC wanted to bring back Johnny Carson, I’m pretty sure that zombie Johnny would not be a good late night host.

    Comments like this raise the question of whether Trump knows what year it is, or if he is trapped in the 1980s and dying to take the country back there?

    Everything about Trump intentionally screams the eighties. Trump has stolen as much of the Reagan presentation as he could down to Lee Greenwood’s crappy Proud To Be An American song. Trump is a nostalgia act who is trapped by his own obsession with the past.

    Trump doesn’t seem to be mentally all there, and his call for the deceased Johnny Carson to return is another moment where the ex-president demonstrated that he is not mentally fit enough to be president.

    To comment on this story, join us on Reddit.

    Jason Easley
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    Jason Easley

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  • Late Night With the Devil Is a Retro, Occult-y Good Time

    Late Night With the Devil Is a Retro, Occult-y Good Time

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    Just when you think found-footage horror has exhausted its last avenue for something creative and new, a movie like Late Night With the Devil comes along. Styled as a Halloween episode of a 1970s talk show that goes way off the rails, it perfectly captures the aesthetic of the era—as well as its burgeoning fascination with all things occult.

    What Summoned David Dastmalchian to Late Night with the Devil?

    (But first, an important note: if you learned about this movie thanks to its use of AI art, which has been causing a stir online, you can more about that in this Variety piece, in which the filmmakers responded with a statement that reads in part: “In conjunction with our amazing graphics and production design team, all of whom worked tirelessly to give this film the ‘70s aesthetic we had always imagined, we experimented with AI for three still images which we edited further and ultimately appear as very brief interstitials in the film.” They are indeed so briefly used I didn’t even notice that the art was AI-generated while I was watching the film—but if that’s something you don’t want to support, it’s good to have that information ahead of time.)

    Long a “that guy” supporting actor (The Boogeyman, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Oppenheimer, The Suicide Squad), David Dastmalchian steps into the lead (rocking sideburns and a polyester beige suite) as Jack Delroy, host of late-night syndicated talk show Night Owls. He’s found some success, but “Mr. Midnight” hasn’t been able to emerge from Johnny Carson’s shadow—and after several years on the air, he’s desperate to boost his sagging ratings. That’s the context we get from Late Night With the Devil’s documentary-style opening, which then rolls right into the “recently discovered master tape” of the infamous episode, including behind-the-scenes footage captured during commercial breaks.

    Naturally, it being Halloween, Delroy and his team—producer Leo (Josh Quong Tart) and sidekick/announcer Gus (Rhys Auteri)—cook up a special they hope will delight and maybe frighten viewers. Jack’s guests include a famous medium (Fayssal Bazzi) who purports to be able to speak to the dead; a parapsychologist (Laura Gordon) and the young cult survivor (Ingrid Torrelli) who’s the subject of her new book, the ominously titled Conversations With the Devil; and a stage magician turned skeptic (Ian Bliss) who’s there to question everything, and is quite clearly inspired by real-life debunker James Randi. Plus: music, jokes, a costume contest, mass hypnosis, and… demons unleashed?

    Image: Courtesy of IFC Films and Shudder

    Sibling writing-directing duo Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes did their research—you can tell many hours of 1970s talk shows were consumed as part of their research process, and as a result Late Night With the Devil feels eerily authentic. The script also does a good job sprinkling clues to the movie’s last-act meltdown throughout. You know from the start that “a live TV event that shocked a nation” (hat-tip to infamous British mockumentary Ghostwatch) is about to happen, but the build-up is nearly as fun as the chaos when it arrives.

    Late Night With the Devil hits theaters March 22; it arrives on Shudder April 19.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Cheryl Eddy

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  • Kelly Monteith, US comedian also popular in UK, dead at 80

    Kelly Monteith, US comedian also popular in UK, dead at 80

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    Kelly Monteith, a U.S.-born comedian whose observational humor and satirical sketches also brought him a wide following in Britain, has died

    LOS ANGELES — Kelly Monteith, a U.S.-born comedian whose observational humor and satirical sketches also brought him a wide following in Britain, has died at age 80.

    His death was confirmed Tuesday by Marlise Boland, executive producer of the Anglophile Channel, which he often worked with. Boland said Monteith died Sunday in Los Angeles. He had suffered a stroke in 2021 and also battled aphasia.

    Monteith was a St. Louis native who built enough of an audience to appear in the 1970s on the “Tonight” show with Johnny Carson, a major platform for rising young comics. He was also popular on British talk shows and received an offer from the BBC for his own program, “Kelly Monteith,” which ran from 1979-84.

    Monteith combined jokes about everyday life, from hospitals and restaurants to people’s mindless habit of saying “thank you” in casual encounters, to spoofs of old movies. He was also known for “breaking the fourth wall,” allowing his audience to see him in his dressing room before and after a show.

    In 1983, he was among the entertainers at the Royal Variety Performance for Queen Elizabeth II. His other credits included guest appearances on the TV shows “The Love Boat” and “Love American Style” and the comedy album “Lettuce Be Cool,” released in 1984. More recently, he looked back on his career as producer of “Kelly Monteith’s BBC Memories” and co-host of “Brit Flix with Kelly, Paul and Two-Buck Chuck.”

    Monteith is survived by two children whom he had with his ex-wife, Caroline Alexander.

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  • Gallagher, watermelon smashing comedian, dies at 76

    Gallagher, watermelon smashing comedian, dies at 76

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    NEW YORK — Gallagher, the long-haired, smash-’em-up comedian who left a trail of laughter, anger and shattered watermelons over a decadeslong career, has died at age 76.

    Craig Marquardo, in a statement identifying himself as Gallagher’s “longtime former manager,” said that he died Friday at his home in Palm Springs, California, after a brief illness. Gallagher had numerous heart attacks over the years, including one right before a scheduled show in Texas in 2012.

    With a beret on his head and a few simple props, from a can of oil to a bull whip, the man born Leo Anthony Gallagher Jr. built a nationwide following in the 1970s and ’80s, appearing on the “Tonight” show with Johnny Carson and starring in numerous Showtime specials. His act included observational humor (“What about Easter? Whose idea was it to give eggs to an animal that hops”), political commentary (“They don’t call a tax a tax. They call it a revenue enhancer”), invented sports (synchronized Ping-Pong) and his trademark Sledge-O-Matic destruction.

    “Ladies and gentlemen! I did not come here tonight just to make you laugh. I came here to sell you something, and I want you to pay particular attention!” he would call out in his best rapid-fire impersonation of a late-night television pitchman. “The amazing Master Tool Corporation, a subsidiary of Fly-By-Night Industries, has entrusted who? Me! To show you! The handiest and the dandiest kitchen tool you’ve ever seen.”

    Sledgehammer in hand, he would then apply his full muscle to apples, grapes, lettuce and other produce, most famously the inevitable watermelon, with audience members in front showered in food bits.

    Gallagher was a Fort Bragg, North Carolina, native who started out in 1960 as road manager for the comedian/musician Jim Stafford and soon began performing himself, honing his act at the Comedy Store and other clubs. He was not the only funnyman in the family: His younger brother Ron became a comedian, received Leo’s initial blessing and looked and acted enough like his better-known sibling that some audiences were unsure who they had come to see. Leo Gallagher eventually secured a court injunction barring his brother from using his routines.

    The elder Gallagher became increasingly controversial in recent years, chastised for racist and homophobic remarks. Gallagher even cut short an interview in 2011 with Marc Maron after the WTF podcast host confronted him about his statements.

    “I’m the problem?!” Gallagher said at one point. “Do you think when I’m dead, gays will finally have an opportunity in America? Have I really been holding them down?”

    In 2003, Gallagher was among more than 100 candidates running in the recall election for California governor, won by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Over the past decade, Gallagher appeared in a Geico commercial and in the movie “The Book Of Daniel.”

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  • Trevor Noah’s ‘Daily Show’ exit signals a changing view of the late-night throne | CNN

    Trevor Noah’s ‘Daily Show’ exit signals a changing view of the late-night throne | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Johnny Carson’s 30-plus-year reign as late-night TV’s king hosting “The Tonight Show” exerted enormous influence over the hosts who followed him, who behaved as if reaching that “throne” was the pinnacle of show-business success, battling over it accordingly.

    Trevor Noah’s decision to walk away from “The Daily Show,” following James Corden announcing his plans to leave CBS’ “Late Late Show” next year, indicates that for a newer generation of comedians, reaching the late-night perch is no longer necessarily considered a life sentence.

    The direct heirs to Carson, David Letterman and Jay Leno, clearly saw “The Tonight Show” as the most coveted prize in TV comedy. The third member of the trio who ascended as part of the late-night shift after Carson bid everyone “A very heartfelt goodnight” in 1992, Conan O’Brien, exhibited the same workhorse mentality, hanging around (albeit in different venues), like his idol Letterman, for more than three decades.

    Those who took the baton pass from that trio, spiritually if not literally, seemingly remain equally committed to their seats, with Jimmy Kimmel recently extending his ABC contract through a 23rd season, and Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon ensconced at CBS and NBC, respectively.

    Yet that reflects a mindset rooted in an earlier era of television, where people were perceived to be creatures of habit, going to bed watching Carson year after year, regardless of who the guests were or how many weeks of vacation he took toward the end of his run.

    In that sense, “Saturday Night Live,” while a somewhat different animal, represents a symbol of the inertia that ruled television when it made its debut during Gerald Ford’s administration, plugging new faces into the machinery but rolling onward as the show prepares to launch its 48th season.

    Still, having taken the reins from Jon Stewart seven years ago, Noah made clear he still has comedic hills to climb that don’t include sitting behind a desk.

    “After seven years, I feel like it’s time,” he said. “I realized there’s another part of my life I want to carry on exploring.”

    On the plus side, more turnover in latenight will create opportunities for fresh voices and diverse talent, at a time when there has been some retrenchment in latenight series after everyone seemed to be piling into the boat.

    Notably, the recent generation of latenight talent is dominated by those who got their starts working on Stewart’s version of “The Daily Show,” including Colbert, perennial Emmy winner John Oliver, Noah, and Samantha Bee.

    After a time in the wilderness Stewart has settled on his version of a second act, one that has included plenty of activism for causes he believes in – highligted by his advocacy on behalf of veterans – as well as a show for Apple TV+. Letterman and Leno, too, haven’t emulated Carson’s choice to truly retire when he left “Tonight.”

    Where Noah and Corden go from here remains to be seen. Compared to the era of late night that Carson defined, though, we’ve moved into a different game of thrones.

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