My Tivo is probably a little tired of grabbing Guber & Bart's Sunday Morning Shootout every week. The guys are okay TV... they have much the same problem of Comedy Central's Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn... smart guys in desperate need of a host. It's an interesting coincidence, but I've been watching the Super Bowl preview show in between Tivo catchup and the Fox (and other) football pre-show(s) tell the story better than anything I could write. James Brown is not all that interesting. But he knows how to get the four other loudmouth know-it-alls moving through discussion and keeps it moving at a pace. Sunday Morming Shootout has been making minor format changes almost weekly since it started... currently you have 10 paid extras on the fake coffee house set watching the guys talk to talent... they aren't even pretending to be talking amongst themselves anymore!
Anyway...
My point is that this morning, they had on Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton and it was easily the best episode of the show ever. It was one of the best TV half hours about filmmaking that I have ever seen. It was an image-creating appearance by Amy Pascal, who may already be regretting being so honest and open, but the simple truth is, she was tremendous. And Michael Lynton was fresh and smart and honest. If I were Sony, I'd send out tape of the appearance to every journalist they work with.
And it brought out the best in Bart and Guber, who were more focused and more aggressive in their questioning and more into the interview than I have ever seen them.... no sucking up... not overly aggressive... just right.
The answer to the show may well be eliminating the crosstalk completely... or turning the crosstalk into a journalist's roundtable. But to do that properly, the show really would need to be an hour long... and it might deserve to be an hour long.
According to the AMC site and my Tivo research, there is no repeat of the show during the week anymore. But this was really strong, interesting television.
Good show.
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