Yesturday evening my girlfriend and I went to our first taping of a show in New York, “The Colbert Report”. I arrived at about 3:30pm and was tenth in line. It was a very warm afternoon, but thankfully the ticket holders get an under cover awning to hide from the weather during the long wait outside. After about an hour an intern from the show came down and took everyones names from the ticket holding queue, whilst making some small talk with me about my accent. Shortly after 5pm my girlfriend showed up (some of us had to work) and was allowed to join me up the front of the line.
At 5:30pm we were directed inside the building to a bag scanner/metal scanner area, just outside the Colbert filming studio, and were informed of what was requried of us once inside the stuido…. mostly LOTS of yelling! We ending up waiting for about an hour inside this holding area. Whilst we waited to enter the studio there was a TV on the wall playing classic clips from the show. Everyone was laughing and getting into the mood.
Around 7pm we were directed into the studio and into our seats. We were seated towards the left center of the stage in front of his desk. It is very interesting to note how small the entire taping studio actually is for the Colbert Report. The audience seats only 120 people (a third the size of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), and because of this laughing/cheering is STRONGLY encouragred “even if you don’t understand a joke!”.
A comedian was the first out onto the stage to warm up the crowd. He spent most of the time making fun of people in the crowd and everyone was laughing along. One kid in a jacket and white singlet was singled out for being an “eastern european coke sniffer”. It was all very fun and when Stephen Colbert eventually took to the stage everyone was very excited! Stephen feeds of the excitment of his crowd and tonight it seemed like he was more excited than his usual cheery self, which was great fun to see! First off Stephen had a brief Q and A session, where he spoke out of character about some of the bizarre people he meets and then fielded a few questions.
The episode for today was primarily about the “birther movement”, namely a bunch of weirdos not believing Obama is entilted to be the president of the United States because he was not born in this country… despite the fact that his ‘Certificate of live birth’ from Hawaii has been provided, aswell as two inserts in Hawaian newspapers annoucing his birth on August 4th 1961. This movement is so bizarre that even staunch Republican Bill O’Reilly has debunked it himself!
The person to be interviewed tonight was Arrianna Huffington, founder of the liberal news website “The Huffington Post”. The interview was interesting as I visit this site ocassionaly and didn’t know anything about it’s origins.
The taping lasted for about an hour and by 8pm we were done, three and a half hours before it is to be edited and shown on Comedy Central! We left the studio via the same holding area and walked towards home, enjoying a beautiful warm night in New York City.