I routinely watched both of Kilborn's late night talk shows and I've followed his career within pop-culture ever since his SportsCenter days. He's never been my favorite talk-show personality, but he was always interesting.Black Hat wrote:How familiar are you guys with his show?
Because this is exactly how he was on it. He was never biting and 'suave' he was only in a form of parody.
Like I said without the ability to see him his style lends itself to being misunderstood inside the usually sharply structured podcast interview formant, but this was certainly a performance by someone who knew exactly what he was doing.
He also didn't make Simmons uncomfortable. What I heard was Simmons getting a kick out of Kilborn and laughing a lot. If as you say Simmons was 'uncomfortable' there's no way the interview would have gone on for 80 minutes which outside of show regulars is as long as his interviews go.
The Letterman and ESPN stuff were excellent. Points about BIrd & Jordan were smart too.
Simmons didn't really sound uncomfortable to me. While I'm not sure he expected the discussion to unravel quite the way it did, I got the impression Simmons just kind of allowed himself to be amused by Kilborn's manic progression through various topics. Having said that, I'm not sure Kilborn knew exactly what he was doing within this format. I would think it's more like he didn't really concern himself too much with how he was perceived - which is very much a reflection of his general attitude. Kilborn was still kind of all over the map, particularly in that first 20-25 minute stretch. It's not like it was boring and I'll grant you that it was mildly familiar in terms of his prior TV persona, but it was still more erratic than he used to be. It felt more like he was incredibly enthusiastic about being on the Simmons podcast and it got the best of him for a little while. The friends that sent me the link were all joking about the cocaine use, since at least two of them were fans of Kilborn when he had more of a presence within pop-culture.
OK. Good talk. I'll see you out there.