In Late Night, Culture Changes Through Comedy
Late night talk shows have long been a destination for some of the sharpest minds on television. They come to terms with the events of each day, using humor and insight. These long-running programs are effectively variety series that touch on topical issues, but mostly provide comedy, color, and celebrity interviews and performances. They sell stuff as guests hawk their new projects, but they also help us process the world.
But this TV landscape is also wildly out of date. A woman has never hosted a late-night network show, for one. The evolving television landscape — and an increasingly volatile political climate — are putting new demands on what used to be a pretty innocuous format.
LATE NIGHT, written by Mindy Kaling (herself a network comedy veteran), is kind of an alternate universe story. It stars Emma Thompson as the one woman who was able to become a star hosting a talk show after prime time. The film targets all of the ways TV programming has failed to evolve and forges a funny path forward.
Glass Ceilings
[Credit: Amazon Studios]
LATE NIGHT begins with an idea that bridges two real and fictional images of nightly talk shows. Emma Thompson stars as Katherine Newbury, a no-nonsense personality who has hosted her own show for 30 years. But she is resolutely old-school — she’s got no social media and no desire to appeal to new audiences — which threatens her show. Her one-liners and stodgy guests just aren’t cutting it.
Given an ultimatum by her producer that says she needs to develop new demographics or go off the air, Katherine finally takes a drastic step: She hires a woman for her writing staff. Enter the sweet Molly Patel (Kaling), who brings in a new perspective. Katherine doesn’t see any value in hiring a woman beyond the idea that it will make her look good — and in fact, she rose to the top without ever giving other struggling comedians like herself a helping hand.
A Grey Canvas
[Credit: Amazon Studios]
Katherine Newbury is essentially like David Letterman or Jay Leno — a host who came onto the scene in the ’80s, after the original late night pathfinders like Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson had given way to new talent. But the structure of late night has always been more or less the same. These guys beamed information and entertainment into millions of living rooms, with the power to shape opinions and purchasing decisions. (Ed Sullivan, remember, brought the Beatles to America and ignited a massive cultural change by doing so.)
By the time Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert earned their own shows, the internet had taken over, making it more difficult for shows to compete. That’s where Newbury finds herself. While LATE NIGHT looks surprisingly progressive at first, Katherine is really just like any real-world personality — she just happens to be a woman. Her writing staff is homogenous and uninspired. Time to shake things up.
New Material
[Credit: Amazon Studios]
In culture, and especially in comedy, change is good. As in the real-world late night landscape, the film envisions an environment where everyone has become so comfortable, they don’t even realize they’re on the verge of losing it all. The culture has calcified, but it isn’t too late to inject new life into the system.
As Molly shakes things up with new ideas, and Katherine warms to the fact that people actually like her again, naturally there are elements that threaten to derail it all. Kaling’s script, directed by Nisha Ganatra, avoids the stereotypical setups that your average comedy might use to resolve some of the conflicts. In doing so, the film is a metaphor for addressing a bigger cultural change, as Katherine gets the chance to project Molly’s ideas to a huge viewership and to address her own mistakes.
LATE NIGHT opens on June 7.