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The following articles are scanned in as .jpgs. They're big, but they're worth it! Some great pictures too. All are pre-1994, and came as part of a press kit pitching Jon's upcoming show to potentional station buyers (hence some creative license with the layouts). See further down the page for some text versions of other articles. TV Guide People Magazine (page 1) People Magazine (page 2) USA today Entertainment Weekly Nov. 11, 1994 Jon Stewart and crew crank up for another day on the late-night shift by Bruce Fretts "Should my shoes be off?" Feller asks director Beth McCarthy. "Yeah, take your shoes off," she says. "Take your pants off, too!" yells a husky passerby, carrying a garbage bag and sniggering to himself. "Easy!" Stewart says. "He thinks he's 12 blocks north, in Times Square." A lesser man might blanch at such a bizarre public display, but not Stewart. "After doing stand-up for so long, there's very little people can do to you in terms of stares to make you feel uncomfortable," he says later in his office, which is decorated with a poster of his late-night predecessor at Paramount, Arsenio Hall, and a bubble reading "Good Luck, Motherf---er." "Jon's not worried about looking silly," explains producer Madeleine Smithberg, who started with Stewart on his MTV talk show last year. "I worked for Letterman for six years, and there was this thing there called the silly- hat rule: Dave would never want to look like he was wearing a silly hat. Jon's put on silly hats from day one. And it's worked in his favor." Indeed it has. Plucked from the comedy-club hoi polloi by MTV in 1992, Stewart, 31, quickly put together the loosest, hippest talk show since the early days of Late Night With David Letterman. With the merger of Paramount and MTV parent Viacom, and Arsenio's surrender in the late-night wars, Stewart segued into syndication with a low-profile launch in September. Though early ratings are low, The Jon Stewart Show is gaining momentum, thanks to glowing reviews and good word of mouth. "Jon has this amazing appeal that cuts across all demographics," brags his longtime manager (and now his coexecutive / producer) Barry Secunda. "Women love him, and guys don't hate him." 1-3:30 pm rehearsal: In the show's postmodern yet cozy studio, Stewart runs through his monologue, testing out jokes on the crew-and on the Sun City Poms, a trio of elderly cheerleaders who'll be rooting him on throughout the evening (a researcher suggested the Poms after reading an article about them in Self magazine). "According to experts oh, ladies, you're going to hate this one," Stewart says, worrying the topic might be offensive, then forges ahead. "All right, forget it. According to a new survey, married people have the best, most frequent sex " "Yeah!" the Poms cheer. "I always thought Mom and Dad were just wrestling, I had no idea " The Poms fall silent. "You don't like the wrestling joke?" Stewart asks. "Okay, you'll hate this one, too " He bombs out with lines about Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, and a man who smuggled monkeys in his pants, before hitting with one: "Next week, Barbara Bush will receive the McDonald's award for excellence for her work on behalf of children. And-this is exciting-for an extra 39 cents, she can get the award Supersized." "Yeah!" the Poms cheer. "Score! One for the kid!" Stewart celebrates briefly before restarting. "Beginning in December aw, boy," he catches himself. "Man, without sex and death, I got s---. I got nuthin'." Later, in their dressing room, the Poms sing the Stewart Show's praises. "The people here have just been tremendous," enthuses Pat Vick, the youngest member of the squad at 66. "They've turned over backwards for us." "No, no, no," says Foofie Halan, who can still do the splits at 80. "We've turned over backwards for them." 3:30-4:30 pm lunch meeting: Over a plate of catered sandwiches, Stewart huddles in his dressing room with his producers to go over the night's lineup. He gets briefed on interviews with Pulp Fiction writer-director-star Quentin Tarantino ("If you're talking about movies, he'll get technical in a second"), Madman of the People star Cynthia Gibb ("She's really adorable and cute and effervescent and self-effacing"), and wrestling manager/cult-video entrepreneur Johnny Legend ("He's going to wear the original Spike Jones outfit, the yellow-and-white suit"). Stewart studies the pre-interview transcripts, deciding which topics will provide the funniest answers. "The more you know, the easier it is to goof around, because you always know you can go back to something strong," he says. This preparation helps allow Stewart to create an atmosphere of chummy informality with guests. "This is not the Barbara Walters interview," says Smithberg. "We don't want guests to cry. We just want them to hang out." The discussion soon turns to the introduction of the musical guests, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. "How about this: 'Hey, kids, do you like the ska?'" Stewart suggests, aping Letterman's corny, hey-kids-do-you-like-the-rock-and- roll band intros. "'Paul, do you like the ska?'" "No, it's very inside," warns head writer Fred Graver. "And people are going to think you're being mean." "But it's so funny," says producer Elyse Roth. "Why don't you try it this way?" asks Graver, slipping into Jay Leno's squeaky New England whine. "Hey, here comes a great band! It's the Mighty Mighty Bawwsstones!" "Guys, guys," Stewart pleads, calming them down. They decide to go with a more standard Stewart introduction: "It's time to get out of your seats and into the pit, and we've got the right band for it the Mighty Mighty Bosstones!" 5:45-7:15 pm warm-up/taping: The guests are mingling backstage, the studio audience has filed into their seats, and Stewart has secluded himself in his dressing room. "It's mostly prayer," he quips of his nightly ritual. "I read the Koran." Actually, he ingests ginseng. "I used to be such a cynic about anything like that, and now I'm like, 'What, it's dung from Ghana and it gives you more energy? Whatever. Pour it on me!'" Stand-up comedian Marc Cohen warms up the crowd ("Where are you from? Georgia? Well, touch a Jew!" he jests, extending an arm to an out-of-towner), then shouts, "Ladies and gentlemen, fake it like you've had a good time for the last 10 minutes and put your hands together for Mr. Jon Stewart!" The audience, many of them college students, goes nuts when Stewart enters, pulling Feller in a red wagon. The duo throw Jon Stewart T-shirts to the fans and accept gifts (a pumpkin, an NYU T-shirt) in return. Then the show begins. With the geri-acrobatic Poms, the thrashing Bosstones, and the flamboyant Legend (who brings out a masked female wrestler named Spider Baby), it's a high-energy affair. Most uncontrollable is Tarantino. When Stewart asks whether he got his acting role in Pulp Fiction by sleeping with the director, he answers, "Yes, I gave him a hand job. Thirty-one years of it. Every night." At another point Tarantino leads the crowd in an impromptu chant of "Margaret Cho rocks!" There's no time on the show to explain this paean to the All-American Girl star, but Stewart gets to the bottom of it later. "Apparently they've made a bargain with each other that whenever one of them is on a talk show, they will plug the other one," he says. "But neither did it on Letterman, oddly enough." And what does he make of this? "You can play around, but when Papa's in the house, everyone sits nicely and has tea and crumpets," Stewart says. After the show, Tarantino compares his Stewart experience with his Late Show gig one night earlier. "Letterman's got a show he's doing, whereas this is much more casual," he says. "This wasn't like doing a talk show. It was like we were just bulls---ting." 7:30-8:30 pm postshow meeting: Stewart, Graver, and McCarthy gather in Smithberg and Roth's office to go over the details of tomorrow's show. "We have a live-satellite feed to Grand Central station, where there will be different items stuck in lockers for Bus-Locker Concentration," says Smithberg of a game-show parody. "Two of them are the Olsen twins." "If the Olsen twins fall out, what's our backup?" Stewart asks. "They're not falling out," Roth reassures him. "Do they know what the bit is?" Stewart asks. "They know they're going to be stuck in lockers," Graver says. "I have releases for them," Roth says. "They're fine." "Beautiful," says Stewart. More suggestions for bus-locker contents are tossed around-rats, half-eaten hot dogs, severed fingers-until a call comes in from Judy Moy, the Paramount executive in charge of the show's production. One of Tarantino's offhand remarks is being censored. "What'd they delete-hand or job?" Roth asks. "Okey- doke, thanks." She hangs up the phone. "We're taking hand out," she announces. "Yeah, but he goes like this," McCarthy says, making the universal gesture for masturbation. "That works." "What was her reason? Was it the hand movement?" Stewart asks. "She felt it was too much," Roth says. "You're more mainstream now!" Stewart mockingly reminds himself. But he accepts the decision. "You have to pick and choose your battles," he says later. "And the audio drop on hand job isn't going to be one for me." Most nights, Stewart stays till almost midnight working with the writers, but tonight he cuts out at 8:30 p.m. to interview Tarantino over dinner for Bikini magazine ("I'd interview him for Toilet Paper magazine," confesses the Reservoir Dogs freak). "You had a half day today, Jon," Roth teases him. "Yeah, I know," says Stewart, and he's out the door. Moving from MTV to the mainstream, Jon Stewart makes late night look easy. By Chris Mundy US Magazine, December 1994 (Meg Ryan on the cover) Side note: This article ran with a great full-page picture of Jon's face. The night it hit the newstands, Jon came out for his monologue to find his entire crew wearing his photocopied face as masks. Back issues of this issue are available from US Magazine Click here. The first sign that all might be right with the world comes early. It�s 19 minutes to air time, show No. 1 of The Jon Stewart Show, and outside, maintenance men are taking down the enormous flag proclaiming the studio complex to be the home of The Maury Povich Show. Sure, it might just be one small step for a well-trained staff, but, at least metaphorically, it�s one giant leap for quality television. Inside, champagne is waiting on ice. Members of Public Enemy pick at crudit�s before changing into Army fatigues, while hunk du jour Ethan Hawke paces nervously back and forth, cracking jokes and running his hand continually through his hair in that way that only hunks du jour know how. Yes, things are definitely changing. The Jon Stewart Show, the hilariously biting, pop-culture-addled talk show on MTV, is about to become the hilariously biting, pop-culture-addled talk show of late-night syndication. But despite all the hoopla � represented in this particular instance by a gaggle of suits from Paramount, the show�s new benefactor � our hero remains humble. Or nervous. Or both. �I don�t thing there�s anyone on our show who thinks we�re going to go on the air and have everybody go �Wow�,� says Stewart. We�re shooting for �Hmm. That�s kind of interesting�.� What will probably be most interesting to loyal Stewart fans is that the more things change � did we mention replacing Arsenio Hall in national syndication, all the hoopla, Ethan Hawke hanging around backstage? � the more things stay the same. Howard, the announcer who reminds everyone of the relative they most want to avoid at holiday dinners, still lurches in the wings, stage left. Guests will walk onstage to the sound of bands like the Breeders and the Dambuilders cranking on the stereo. And the humor, thankfully, has not taken an upscale turn since graduating from cable. Where last season, Stewart blindfolded Playboy�s 40th-Anniversary Playmate � the Dutch-born Anna-Marie Goddard � to discover whether she could discern the difference between Edam and Gouda cheese, this season he has already enlisted Nipsey Russell to coach New York Met Bobby Bonilla as a stand-up comedian. Where the cable show treated its audience to three movie-saturated college boys who possess the ability to connect Kevin Bacon to any other actor in the free world � �Joe Piscopo worked with Danny DeVito in Wise Guys. Danny DeVito worked with Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo�s Nest. Jack Nicholson was in A Few Good Men with� Kevin Bacon� �- the new show offers pina colada night, featuring the drink�s inventor serving cocktails and Rupert Holmes singing his big hit � can you guess what it was? � as each guest is introduced. In the turf wars between late-night talk shows featuring 31-year-old hosts, the line between Stewart and Conan O�Brien has clearly been drawn. And while it�s true that at six feet four, O�Brien has a decided height advantage [Stewart measures in at only five feet seven], Stewart will always be much looser, if only because he will never have a suit � or a staid format � to constrict him. �I�m as competitive as a next guy, but my feeling is that unless people are totally sick of seeing shows like this, then it�s OK,� says Stewart. �I don�t feel like it�s us against them. We�ve already seen hints of competition. It does bum me out. I wish it didn�t have to be that way because the reality of it is, I know those guys and I like those guys.� In the meantime, though, Stewart has been doing some serious preparation. �I think you have to be an evil soul who sold yourself to the devil in order to be a talk-show host,� says Denis Leary, a Stewart friend and guest during week one. �And Jon, if I�m not mistaken, sold his soul in 1988. People think it looks easy, but getting it to look easy and also being funny is really difficult. Jon is an edgy, funny guy, but at the same time he has the likability and charm to pull it off.� Meet Mr. Nice Guy. It�s a few days before the show�s premiere, and New York is being hit with a rain of biblical proportions. Stewart, meanwhile, has decided that this moment is perfect for picking up his laundry near his Greenwich Village home. He pulls a hooded sweatshirt over his head and ducks around the corner, only to run into his interrogator, who is hovering, soaked by the deluge. �Do you need a warm shirt?� says Stewart, steering toward his apartment. �How about a sweat shirt? I have a whole bag of laundry.� He stops and opens the door to his palace � a modest one-bedroom apartment with exposed brick, a loft area, two cats and a Counting Crows CD blaring all too unapologetically in the background. �Are you sure you don�t need anything? At least a towel?� he asks before pausing. �You know, it�s so sad,� he says finally. �I�m becoming my grandma. I find myself saying things like �Do you want some soup? Come on, you need some soup, just sit down�.� There�s no getting around it, Jon Stewart is good folk. This is a man, his every action suggests, whom Cher would never call an asshole. He cracks jokes with ease yet without the overbearing feeling that he is always �on.� He answers most questions quickly and straightforwardly. The rest he dodges politely, if not altogether transparently. He�s smart. He�s a smartass. And most important, Jon Stewart�s a man who would give you the shirt off his laundry pile. With the aforementioned clean clothing neatly nestled at home, Stewart once again trudges into the eye of the monsoon, this time toward a frequent neighborhood haunt. Finally settled, with beer and sandwich in hand, he is ready to talk. As it turns out, before there was Jon Stewart, there was Jonathan Stewart Leibowitz of Lawrence, NJ. He is the second of two sons; his mother was a teacher and his father a physicist. The youngest Leibowitz, in turn, was comic relief. �If you have a brother that nobody has to worry about, it takes the pressure off you,� says Stewart. �I was allowed to be �phase� boy because my brother was doing real nicely. My parents thought I�d go through this [stage], go to law school and make them proud. But now things are fine.� A great deal of Stewart�s material comes from his childhood, with his father frequently serving as a punching bag. His parents divorced when he was nine, and it was a defining moment that still resonates with a great deal of tension and pain. �There�s a lot of weirdness that I didn�t find out about until much later,� says Stewart. �Finally, when you�re 18 and somebody sits you down and says: �You know that whole thing that you thought happened? You�re wrong. Here�s hat really happened.� Anytime you have a mother and father that don�t like each other, it�s tough.� Eventually, Stewart found his way to the College of William and Mary, where he switched his major from chemistry to psychology and spent most of is time smoking pot, playing on the soccer team and hating all things William and Mary. And although this is the point where an epiphany is supposed to hit our young hero, none was quick in arriving. After graduation he toiled around New Jersey for a couple of years in a series of hell jobs before eventually moving to New York to try his hand at comedy. It was here, secluded in the din of the big city, that young Jonathan Leibowitz became Jon Stewart. �I have many f---ed-up issues tied to it,� says Stewart when asked about his name change. �I think part of it was thinking it was what you�re supposed to do in show business and part of it was me just getting away from that part of my life. People think it�s the whole self-loathing-Jew situation. That didn�t have a lot to do with it. It was other factors.� He pauses and lets out a long laugh. �There are people who take great pleasure in calling me by my given name,� he says. �Just to let you know. �Hey, Leibowitz. I know your little secret. I know your game, man. I�m on top of it.�� Stewart landed his first big break as the host of Comedy Central�s Short Attention Span Theater, which led to another hosting stint on the short-lived MTV show You Wrote It, You Watch It. If you missed the show, consider yourself lucky. That program, however, led to Stewart�s third and actual big break, MTV�s first successful talk show and his first chance to really get in touch with his inner child. You see, Stewart�s true gift, as it were, is cross-referencing contemporary comedy and dated, pup-culture kitch. In a world in which guilty pleasures like The Brady Bunch have given way to sheepish diversions like Melrose Place, Jon Stewart just wants to be your cruise director for an hour every night. Where other talk-show hosts seem labored, Stewart has the ease of your most comforting couch-potato friend. This is a man, the show seems to scream, who has had way too much free time. �As long as I can remember, I wanted to sleep late, stay up late, and do nothing in between,� says Stewart. �Go slowly, have some drinks until around two in the morning, then watch Kirk Cameron movies on Showtime. Now that�s a day.� As the waitress brings another drink, though, those days seem further and further away. Like so many Starsky and Hutch episodes, the endless summer of Jon Stewart�s youth is fading before his eyes. Gone are the days when he would introduce himself to guests before the show, just to make sure they�d know who would be interviewing them. These days Stewart has a potential acting career (he just finished a small role in Nora Ephron�s Mixed Nuts); he as his own show, although, as evidenced by him spending his days off sipping beers at the neighborhood bar, he hasn�t parlayed it into a dating life. (�You go up to beautiful guests and say: �Hey, that was great. We�re going to this bar,� and they look at you and say; �My boyfriend and publicist are here and we�re going back to California. How could you not know, you dork?��). About all he doesn�t have are friends willing to cover up his darker side. When he gets a little bigger,� says Leary, �it�ll all come out, and the lawsuits will be filed. The abuse of his mother, the kidnapping thing, the prison years.� But now, in the eye of what seems to be New York�s first hurricane of the new season, Jon Stewart, despite many self-deprecating �short� jokes, is living large. �It�s a very disposable medium,� he says. �All you can be proud of is the overall atmosphere you set up. My whole deal with Paramount is: �Let us go up in flames with the show we want to do. If you get to a point where you don�t want to do the show anymore, you can fire me.�� He stops and smiles the contented smirk of a man getting away with a practical joke. �I cannot believe I�m allowed to do this with my life,� he says. �I wake up, I go to work, I think of jokes. It boggles my mind. I�m waiting for someone to wake me up and tell me that Monday at nine I have to report to the city as a contract administrator.� By John Hughes Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel (as printed in the Winnipeg Free Press, Jan. 21 �95) There are no suits on The Jon Stewart Show. No adorant woof-woof-woofing. No house band and no unwarranted sucking up to talents. Sarcasm, kitsch, and anti-idolatry are staples, underscored by the music of the unnamed generation of bands not yet mainstream enough for Dave or Jay�s playlists. And running the show, as if running to the next house party, Jon Stewart is less host than audience representative, playfully tweaking guests like a frat boy on a beer bet. When it moved from MTV recently, The Jon Stewart Show took with it a decidedly irreverent edge looking to carve a place for itself through the smooth veneer left by Arsenio Hall. Stewart is an unlikely corporate soldier (the show is produced by Paramount) in the talk-show battle, thick with those scrambling to be second to King Dave. �When we started this, people kept talking about the talk show war,� Stewart said recently from New York, �and I�m saying �What? Is anybody gonna end up in a body bag? No. It�s just a TV show.�� That�s all. Just a TV show, aimed at an audience for whom the routine of television (including alternative TV) has long lost any aura of mystery. But even freshness, in the big business of television, comes with a price. Somewhere between market surveys and dealing for dollars, Stewart finds himself in a world clearly distinguished from that of his rascal peers. �The sales guys can sit me down all the way,� he says, �and I still don�t understand syndication.� What�s to understand is whether The Jon Stewart Show makes a significant inroad into the well-worn, and crowded, late-night tracks. And that assessment isn�t easy, since the show appears at different times in different markets, with different competition � what Stewart calls �the wacky world of syndication.� (On it�s first night, in markets where The Jon Stewart Show was up against Late Night with Conan O�Brien, Stewart�s show matched O�Brien�s in ratings.) �We definitely should not be up against (Letterman and Jay Leno) yet,� Stewart says, adding that the show is still finding itself. It is by design that little was made of its arrival on the late-night lineup. �Some people here wanted to do a big press conference and make some announcement,� Stewart says. �And I said �Why? Are we invading someone?� I didn�t think fanfare was appropriate.� Entertainment Weekly June 30, 1995 by Jessica Shaw |