It’s been better ‘Late’ than never for Stephen Colbert
Q: When a talk show is without its host at the last minute, as happened with Stephen Colbert recently, why isn’t a guest host brought in rather than have repeat episodes scheduled? – Tim Donnelly, via e-mail
A: Though Jimmy Kimmel has been taking summers off from his ABC show with guest hosts subbing for him, it’s become the norm for the hosts whose names are in the shows’ titles to remain the ones seen behind the desks, new episodes or not. There’s a consistency that comes from that, and with the rivalry as it is between Kimmel, CBS’s Colbert and NBC’s Jimmy Fallon — friends though they are off-camera — that’s very important to maintaining audience loyalty in an age where there’s already sufficient viewership fragmentation.
Late-night viewers were accustomed to seeing repeats for much of 2023, given the Hollywood strikes that prevented production of new episodes for some time. It’s always preferable to have something fresh to present, but in a situation such as Colbert and the surgery he needed for his appendix (which came after another bout with COVID-19 for him), life sometimes overrides the best intentions professionally.
Q: I recently saw “Youngblood” with Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze on cable. Didn’t they make another movie together? – Danielle Scott, Colorado Springs, Colo.
A: They certainly did, and it’s widely regarded as a modern classic. Three years before they made the 1986 hockey drama “Youngblood,” the two actors were in the ensemble cast of the Francis Ford Coppola-directed drama “The Outsiders,” based on the popular young-adult novel by S.E. Hinton. They played brothers in the story of Oklahoma youths trying to find their way in their socially separated locality.
“The Outsiders” is famous as a launching pad for many young talents of that time. Also in the group were Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, C. Thomas Howell and Diane Lane. It’s interesting that an appeal from a Fresno, California, school librarian and many of the school’s students inspired Coppola to consider making the movie; a short-lived Fox TV-series version followed in 1990.