But it is also worth watching for Ferguson’s candor about staying sober for 20 years (and fighting the urge to drink again).

Only King would say (discussing the prospect of being brought back from death in a new body): “What if you had Alzheimer’s?” and then laugh.

Man, imagine what it would be like if he interviewed Robert Blake.

When I found out that the folks over at Ironbound Films had made Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie, a documentary about one of the most unique television hosts from the 1980s, I was intrigued. Then when I learned the documentary was going to have its world premiere this month at the Tribeca Film Festival, I was fortunate enough to email interview one of the three creative forces (and directors) from Ironbound, Jeremy Newberger.

Tim O’Shea: Was it hard to track down folks that had worked on the production of his show, or are many of them still active in the industry today?

Jeremy Newberger: Finding the producers of “The Morton Downey Jr. Show” was easy. Getting them to overlook twenty years of repressed rage and therapy bills was a little trickier. Most of them are still in production on everything from theSPEED Network to “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” Show creator Bob Pittman is now CEO of a little company called Clear Channel.

O’Shea: Much has been made of the bigoted/anti-gay slur that Rev. Al Sharpton uttered (and was the subject of some coverage for the documentary last year). While I know Sharpton declined to be interviewed, were there other reluctant interview subjects that you were able to convince to participate? Don’t you expect once the film premieres at Tribeca and gains wider attention that Sharpton will have to comment on the clip in some regard?

Newberger: Often with documentaries, potential interviewees decline. Most people we approached were ready and willing to participate. In some cases, it seemed as if they were waiting for our call. Reverend Al Sharpton will speak volumes about our project, with either his words or silence.

O’Shea: I had long forgotten that present day presidential hopeful Ron Paul was on Downey’s show. What other present day movers and shakers were you able to feature from Downey’s shows?

Newberger: We have often referred to “The Morton Downey Jr. Show” as spring training for today’s pundits. In addition to Ron Paul, we feature Gloria Allred, Pat Buchanan, Stanley Crouch, Alan Dershowitz, and Curtis Sliwa, to name a few.

O’Shea: What did you learn about Downey in the research of the project that genuinely surprised you?

Newberger: One of the biggest surprises was the Downey family’s relationship to the Kennedys. Morton Downey Sr. and Joe Kennedy Sr. were neighbors and best friends. Clearly Morton Downey Jr.’s upbringing helped shape hisworldview.

O’Shea: How early in the project did you realize you wanted to include Chris Elliott among the interviews for the doc (because of his Downey imitation)?

Newberger: In the late ‘80s, all three directors watched “The Morton Downey Jr. Show” and Letterman after. At the time, a 28-year-old Chris Elliott was doing a hilarious Mort impression on Letterman. He loved Mort, and was one of the people I mentioned who was “waiting for our call.” We interview Chris at Manhattan’s Bowery Poetry Club. His performance had us rolling on the floor.

O’Shea: You attended many of the tapings of the show yourself (in fact, as noted here) “Jeremy even played Morton Downey Jr. Show dress-up with his high school friends.”) When the cameras were off, was there a substantial shift in the demeanor of folks involved in the show? What insight did you gain (which helped inform your work on this doc) from attending those tapings?

Newberger: None of the three of us ever actually made it to a taping, either because we weren’t allowed or couldn’t get a ride. We were forced to watch (and imitate) it in our living rooms. Our friends (then heroes) who did attend are featured in our film. We gather them for a therapy session in Downey’s old studio.

O’Shea: In the doc, are you able to draw parallels between some of Downey’s tactics with tactics employed by TV and radio talk show hosts of today?

Newberger: We visit a Tea Party media conference to tap into the latest crop of Morts. The cultural critics in the film detail the anatomy of a populist entertainer. Mort’s producers reveal how one is forged.

O’Shea: How challenging was it to convince Bob Pittman to license the Downey footage to you?

Newberger: The founder of MTV, Bob Pittman we believe was convinced by our creativity. We didn’t just want to make a Morton Downey Jr. documentary, but an in-your-face, take-no-prisoners cult classic. We took a gamble that Bob would share our vision. He rewarded us with the show footage.

O’Shea: Creatively, was there a debate whether or not to include animation in the documentary to recreate moments in Downey’s life that had not been filmed?

Newberger: The three of us were all on board to animate parts of the film. Not necessarily to recreate un-filmed moments of Mort’s life, but to portray his demons. Our South African animator Murray John employs a hand-drawn,“Heavy Metal” style.

O’Shea: Were there other challenges to overcome in getting this documentary made?

Newberger: The biggest challenge we faced was combing through more than 400 tapes of show footage to not necessarily capture the finest moments—as if putting together a “best of” compilation—but to sculpt a narrative and get inside Mort’s mind and motivation.

O’Shea: Anything you’d like to discuss that I neglected to ask you about?

Newberger: ÉVOCATEUR: THE MORTON DOWNEY JR. MOVIE is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2012. We encourage your readers to attend a screening:

Wednesday night viewers of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon were witness to the brief return of Conan O’Brien to NBC. O’Brien, temporarily back in New York, is prepping for a week-long run of his TBS show at the Beacon Theater, starting on October 31.

While barely two minutes in length, the short visit made for a great TV moment, along the lines of Paul Newman’s “Where the hell are the singing cats?” bit (shown in this YouTube clip at the 6:55 mark) from David Letterman’s first CBS show back in 1993. Wednesday night’s Conan appearance clearly took the audience by surprise. But he and Fallon were savvy enough to interact for so brief a time, it did not become awkward for the audience.

The visit ended with Conan retrieving Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, from behind one of Jimmy’s sofa cushions. Judging by the comments section at the TeamCoco blog many Conan fans hope that this is a sign that Triumph might be returning to the show’s comedic team. (Oddly enough, TeamCoco fans seemed divided on the fact that Conan had grown a beard again while on vacation).

When Conan left NBC in early 2010, NBC forbid Conan from using certain characters (The Masturbating Bear, for example) in his post-NBC creative pursuits, as the network claimed intellectual ownership of characters and sketches developed as part of the show. In terms of intellectual property, however, there is some question if NBC actually owned Triumph, given that the character was developed by Robert Smigel.

Back when I saw Conan in the final Atlanta stop of his 2010 Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour, I was surprised to see a taped Triumph bit, as well as a Walker, Texas Ranger clip montage (though the Lever was renamed the Chuck Norris, Rural Policeman Handle). Of course, this was not on television. But I still hold out hope (along with many other Conan fans) that the physical retrieval of Triumph might be a precursor to his comedic return on Conan. Time will tell.

Ironbound describes itself as “Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, and Jeremy Newberger are Ironbound Films. Headquartered in an old inn on the Hudson River opposite West Point, Ironbound crafts video for theaters, television, museums, and the web.”

Here’s a preview:

The blog, Nothing But the Doc, noted that the project “will feature interviews with Sally Jesse Raphael, Chris Elliott, Al Sharpton and Pat Buchanan”. Some sites say it will be ready in 2011, others say 2012. Either way, given how much Downey fascinated me many years ago, I would be curious to hear the perspective from his former friends and associates.

David Susskind: A Televised Life

Very rarely a great interview opportunity lands in my comments section. Such was the case when Stephen Battaglio, author of David Susskind: A Televised Life, posted a comment in a recent Susskind post of mine. From there, I contacted Battaglio and he agreed to do an email interview about  the book (here’s its official description): “David Susskind was the first TV producer to become a TV star. His freewheeling discussion program, Open End, later known as The David Susskind Show, brought the turbulent issues of the 1960s and the wild and often wacky social trends of the 1970s into the nation’s living rooms at a time when viewing choices were scant. Susskind grilled everyone from a Mafia hit man to transsexuals to a famously hilarious Mel Brooks. His legendary interview with Nikita Khrushchev at the height of the Cold War inflamed both the political and media establishments and would have made his name if nothing else did … David Susskind: A Televised Life is as much a chronicle of a glamorous time in the entertainment industry as it is a biography of one of its most colorful, important and influential players.” My thanks to Battaglio for an immensely enjoyable and insightful discussion about Susskind.

Tim O’Shea: This book grew out of a piece you wrote for the NY Times back in 2001, what motivated you to grow it into a book?

Stephen Battaglio: I had wanted to write a book about the history of television. When I researched the story about Susskind, I realized that he was a great vehicle to tell the story of the medium in its early years. What I didn’t realize until I researched the book, was that his personal story was so dramatic. I think it will surprise readers who thought they knew him.

O’Shea: You interviewed more than 150 of his peers–among them were there any that really surprised you in terms of the insight or clarity they provided?

Battaglio: People’s perspectives on Susskind depended on their relationship to him. Some were jealous or resented him for taking credit on projects he didn’t have much to do with – which is the nature or producers. But people who worked at his production company, Talent Associates, loved the experience. He was an exciting guy to be around. He encouraged risk-taking.

O’Shea: Were any of them reticent to discuss him, but warmed to opening up after you gained their trust?

Battaglio: Jean Kennedy, the woman who produced his talk show for 28 years. She was always very protective of Susskind and it took more than a year to get her to cooperate with me. Her health was failing as well. When she finally decided to talk with me it was only over the phone, even though she lived close by in Manhattan. Her memory on the early years wasn’t great, but her insights and voice were really vital to the story. She died in 2009 on December 19 – which is Susskind’s birthday. I’m sad that she never got to read the book.

O’Shea: As noted by this New Yorker review, Susskind’s talk show was never a serious money maker, but yet he still did it. Why was he so dedicated to the show for so many years.

Battaglio: Today, there are hundreds of channels and talk shows. During Susskind’s era, there were only a few and he had one of them. It was a platform to promote himself, his projects and satisfy his own curiosity about the world. Performing on the air came easy to him. It was another way to distinguish himself from other producers.

O’Shea: Of course, as your book reveals, he was more than a talk show host. As you note, he “fought the network practice of blacklisting, exposed audiences to provocative subject matter and introduced great actors such as Sir Laurence Olivier to TV. Two of his landmark network series, East Side/West Side and N.Y.P.D., shattered the casting color barrier…” In researching his career, which was the riskier gamble for him, bucking blacklisting or the crossing the casting color barrier?

Battaglio: If conservative sponsors such as DuPont and Armstrong learned that Susskind was using blacklisted writers on the shows he produced for them, they would have dropped him fast and that would have been the end of Talent Associates. In 1964, Susskind had a series canceled – East Side/West Side - because southern CBS affiliates were dropping the show due to the casting of Cicely Tyson and the show’s focus on urban issues involving black Americans. I report in the book that he could have had the show renewed if he fired Cicely Tyson. The failure of that show didn’t stop him from casting Robert Hooks in N.Y.P.D., a cop drama for ABC. By that time, the networks knew they had to give black performers more opportunities.

O’Shea: This recent New York Times review observed that Susskind’s professional and personal relationship with women was complicated. That’s not to say he did not promote and advance the careers of some women. How hard was it to grasp his attitude toward women overall?

Battaglio: Everyone who worked with him knew he was a compulsive womanizer. But he liked the company of women and saw women as an untapped resource of talent. He could hire them, pay them less and get great value out of them because they were grateful for the opportunity. Having a lot of women work for him and being a womanizer created an interesting set of office politics, which evolved over time. It makes for some interesting stories in the book.

O’Shea: How hard was it to gain substantial access to Susskind’s personal papers? Can you share some of the highlights of insight you gained from his papers?

Battaglio: Susskind had been donating his papers to the University of Wisconsin since the mid-1960s. The archive is open and other writers have used it for research. But no one had ever gone through it as thoroughly as I did with an understanding of what was in there. His appointment books and phone logs provided leads on stories that I was able to piece together or draw out of interview subjects.

Correspondence helped substantiate a lot of things I was told about his company, but there wasn’t a huge amount of it. The papers did give you a sense of the creative process at Talent Associates. There were a lot of wild proposals for shows that never got made. My favorite was for an interactive show called The National Sex Test.

O’Shea: I know Hulu airs some of Susskind’s old shows online, but do you think there’ll ever be a point where some of it will be released on DVD?

Battaglio: I doubt it. Susskind’s children control the rights to the shows. If they could have made money by restoring the shows and putting them out on DVD, it would have happened by now. I was told that Historic Films, which licenses the show for stock footage, was going to make digital downloads available at some point, but I don’t know where that stands.

O’Shea: In researching his talk show and the shows he produced, are there any in particular that grew to rank among your favorite?

Battaglio: The famous Jewish Sons show with Mel Brooks and David Steinberg is still funny 40 years later, and the back-story is told in detail in the book. The George C. Scott-Cicely Tyson series East Side/West Side has some truly amazing moments, especially when they shot out on the streets of New York in the 1960s. I’ve seen the powerful episode Who Do You Kill? – with James Earl Jones and Diana Sands as the couple whose baby dies from a rat bite – at least a dozen times, and I’d watch it again. A 1959 TV special, A Moon and Sixpence, with Sir Laurence Olivier, is also brilliant.

O’Shea: After spending so much time on a subject like Susskind, do you walk away from the process sick of the subject or with a deeper respect for him (or a mixture of both)?

Battaglio: I have written the first and what will probably be the only biography of Susskind, so I am linked to him for the rest of my life. But I really enjoyed living in his world during the four years I worked on the book. The people who’ve read the book who knew him said I succeeded in capturing his spirit and understanding his flaws. I’m still promoting the book with public appearances and radio interviews and probably will be for a while, since there will be a paperback edition later in the year. So he’s going to be in my head for a long time.

O’Shea: I was astounded to learn that Susskind worked with Scorsese, Altman and Pekinpah–how much are you able to delve into those three?

Battaglio: Susskind never worked directly with Sam Peckinpah, but his company, Talent Associates, developed Straw Dogs, which was produced by Susskind’s partner at the time, Dan Melnick. The project changed the course of his company, as told in the book. Martin Scorsese directed Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and the book tells how Susskind, the producer of the film, was banned from the set. Both films are covered in a chapter about how the movie business was changing during the 1970s, and the difficulty that Susskind had in adapting to it. Feature films were problematic for Susskind throughout his career even though he was involved in some very good ones (Edge of the City, A Raisin In the Sun, All the Way Home, Requiem for a Heavyweight, Lovers and Other Strangers, Fort Apache The Bronx).

I listed Buffalo Bill and the Indians in the appendix, but it was really not a Susskind film even though he is credited as executive producer. What happened was Susskind teamed with Paul Newman and his producing partner John Foreman to buy the play Indians by Arthur Kopit, for around $500,000, a staggering amount of money in 1969. The property languished for several years as Susskind was unable to get a decent screenplay written. He eventually got Dino De Laurentiis to take over the property and kept an executive producer credit. Once Robert Altman was hired to direct, he really took over every creative aspect of the production.

O’Shea: Not everyone has a blurb of endorsement from Kurt Andersen, how did that come to pass?

Battaglio: I worked for Kurt when he co-founded a media news Web site called Inside.com. I was very proud to have his name on the cover of the book.

O’Shea: Looking at the current talk show landscape, do you think there’s anyone close to doing what Susskind did with the medium?

Battaglio: There is a little bit of Susskind in quite a few of today’s hosts.

Charlie Rose is seen as the successor to Susskind’s style of doing serious lengthy chats with a variety of guests. Oprah Winfrey uses her talk show to promote her productions and topics and ideas that generally interest her. The confrontations you see on cable news shows really grew out of the kind of panels Susskind put together for his shows. There will never be anyone like him again. But in some ways, he’s never really left us.

I really hope “Don’t be a hooch!” becomes a popular phrase.

I wonder if Larry King could become the Tony Randall for this incarnation of Conan’s show.

Understandably the Late Show is not allowing folks to embed this web exclusive content, but I am able to embed Dave’s 2010 Halloween costume sketch instead. This sketch is one of those rare ones that Letterman does every year where he gets to work with kids. I love when Letterman works with kids.