![]() Damon later took up the story: “He came backstage, and I asked him what that was about. Kimmel has said it simply to inject some life into a dreary 60 minutes of banter. For example, towards the conclusion of one particularly underwhelming episode Kimmel declared, off the cuff, “my apologies to Matt Damon – we ran out of time”.ĭamon wasn’t supposed to be on the show. Yet that pragmatism was combined with gonzo energy that set him apart from other US talk show hosts – most notably giggling celebrity tickler James Corden. “Then it turned into a big moneymaker for them. A comedian who hadn’t wanted to sell out was now a pitch-man for household brands. For instance, he once said he’d “kill himself” if forced “to interview c-list celebrities”.īut a few years later he suggested that ABC incorporate into his comedy routines advertisers’ products. Twenty years later, Kimmel counts Jennifer Aniston and George Clooney as friends and is now the establishment figure to which he used to set himself up in opposition. “I’d mow through them and then their publicists would never bring anyone back.” “I didn’t understand that you had to be nice to the guests,” Kimmel told Vulture. They were feuds too – with Kanye West, who objected to being mocked in Kimmel’s sketches, and with the city of Detroit, where his show was yanked from the schedules after he joked about rioters burning it to the ground if they lost a big basketball game. But it was less appreciated by the Hollywood establishment which quietly blacklisted him for several years. This went down well with the sort of people who stay up until 12.30 am watching TV. But they were of a piece with the anarchic energy of his early years as television when he would lay into his guests with performative brusqueness. Neither the vomiting nor the f-bombing was the fault of Kimmel. Yet, as with the free booze, this quickly misfired, when, in 2004, Boogie Nights actor Thomas Jane said “f–k” on air. He pushed for his new vehicle to go out live (US talk shows typically record in advance). Kimmel seized the opportunity with both hands. The gap in the schedules was initially supposed to be plugged by future Daily Show host Jon Stewart: instead, ABC decided to return to the talk show format for the first time since the Dick Cavett Show in the Seventies. An advertisers boycott resulted in ABC giving him the heave. Jimmy Kimmel Live! was parachuted into the slot previously occupied by Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect, when Maher was fired for saying that the 9/11 bombers, while terrible people, were “not cowards”. Kimmel had suggested his audience be plied with free alcohol to make for a raucous atmosphere – a strategy that backfired on night one when a woman vomited loudly and at length. And when that somehow led to Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2003 the chaos continued. That was followed by a turn as sidekick on the comedy quiz show Win Ben Stein’s Money. Kimmel, Brooklyn-raised son of an IBM executive, came up in the gonzo world of morning radio, where edges were as sharp as they came: he was sacked twice in his early radio career for being too over the top and abrasive. The crucial sentence here is that Kimmel’s edges “aren’t too sharp”. “He’s funny, he’s respectful, his edges aren’t too sharp”. “It’s important to have a host who knows how to handle live television and a live audience,” said Academy chief executive Bill Kramer, explaining why the gig had gone to Kimmel, 55, whose day job is fronting Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC. He returned as Oscars MC 2018: and now saddles up for one more rodeo as anchor of the 2023 event. And yet, as all around crashed and burned, the host road off into the sunset, his good name undiminished. Kimmel was as speechless as any of them – almost as shocked, indeed, as Chris Rock when Will Smith walked up and slapped him at the 2022 Oscars. Warren Beatty, a Hollywood icon humiliated before the whole world when handed an envelope with the name of Emma Stone as Best Actress rather than Moonlight as Best Film. ![]() PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the consultancy giant whose one job was to ensure the correct envelopes ended up in the hands of the correct people. The La La Land/Moonlight meltdown damaged a lot of reputations. “Why can’t we just give out a whole bunch of ’em?” His face a blank space full of shock and fright, Kimmel turned to regard the Oscar statuette gleaming balefully in the hand of one of La La Land’s producers. “Guys… this is very unfortunate what happened,” stuttered the visibly stunned host as it became clear La La Land had erroneously been named Best Picture instead of actual winner, Moonlight. It was 2017 and, on his watch, the Oscars were falling apart. For the first time in his life, Jimmy Kimmel was lost for words.
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