Six Degrees: The ‘Globe and Mail’ talks with Barry Julien
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Just as some Barry Julien fans come out of the woodwork to bemoan the lack of coverage of their favorite Colbert Report writer, Canada’s Globe and Mail runs a fortuitous interview with the man himself. From the Globe and Mail:
The Canadian at the epicentre of American political satire
INTERVIEW: BARRY JULIEN: STEPHEN COLBERT’S SECRET WEAPON
SIRI AGRELL
November 1, 2008MONTREAL — On May 14, former presidential hopeful John Edwards took the stage to endorse Democratic candidate Barack Obama, and stole one of Barry Julien’s jokes. “You know, I was promised a jet ski,” he told a cheering crowd in Grand Rapids, Mich. “I haven’t gotten it yet.”
Julien had written a jet-ski line for Edwards one month earlier, when the politician appeared on The Colbert Report, the hugely popular satirical news show where the 37-year-old Montreal native works as a writer.
“That was pretty damn exciting to touch the culture like that,” he says of the appropriation, which earned him a congratulatory phone call from Stephen Colbert himself.
When it comes to the culture of satire surrounding this year’s U.S. presidential election, The Colbert Report is about as close to the action as you can get. Along with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Saturday Night Live, it has not only mocked the major players, but occasionally led the election discourse. Tina Fey reduced Sarah Palin to a winking caricature.
David Letterman grilled John McCain about the opportunistic suspension of his campaign. And Colbert ran for president in South Carolina, skewering election-finance rules by promoting his campaign sponsor, Doritos. That effort won Julien and his fellow writers a Peabody Award in a year that also saw them receive a Writers Guild of America Award, and take the stage at the Emmy Awards in September to collect statues for outstanding writing for a variety, music or comedy program. “We were at the Peabody Awards ceremony at the Waldorf, and I felt so weird among those people,” says Julien. “Christiane Amanpour was accepting a Peabody for [her special report] God’s Warriors and I remember thinking, ‘I wrote a poop joke this morning.’ ”
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Thanks for the great insight into what you do, Barry, and hang in there — you’ll get your well-deserved break soon!
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13 Comments
November 1st, 2008 at 4:03 pm
LOL That’s crazy! As soon as I mention him, this interview appears?! haha! Awesome!
Hey, any idea why my comments keep disappearing?
Ps: Recaptcha? “Robert got” Got what?! Tease! :p
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November 1st, 2008 at 11:26 pm
I’m not sure why, but certain of our users seem to have their comments diverted to the “spam” queue on a semi-regular basis. Sometimes it happens when people leave several comments back to back; other times, it’s impossible to tell why. Recently, yours seem to have been getting caught by our spam filter. We do check it on a fairly regular basis and have been marking you as “not spam”, but there’s not much else we can do, and there’s no clear reason why it’s happening.
So your comments haven’t been “lost”, but that’s why they’re often delayed — sorry about that.
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November 1st, 2008 at 11:29 pm
That’s cool. Thank you for the explanation. :) I honestly thought I was doing something wrong when I posted my comments. :D I’m very easily confused by anything technical! lol
Thanks again :)
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November 2nd, 2008 at 1:13 am
I’m one of those users. Sometimes my messages don’t get through either. Not much of a problem now, but it used to happen all the time. You all got it worked out. If I want to post again, I just wait awhile so I’m not marked spam.
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November 1st, 2008 at 5:04 pm
awesome interview! he was under the desk at the taping I was at!
if I lived in Montreal I imagine I’d have a hard time leaving. but then again, he seems really impressed with the very show he now works for!
I’m not sure I get this phrase: “which earned him a congratulatory phone call from Stephen Colbert himself.” if he works there, it’s not like he’s getting some special call from on high…
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November 1st, 2008 at 8:53 pm
He’s Canadian. “Stephen” can’t talk to him directly;)
Yeah, I was confused by that as well.
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November 1st, 2008 at 11:31 pm
I read it as Stephen making a point of calling him to congratulate him for the line’s reception.
I really couldn’t say for sure, but it stands to reason that Barry might have gone home before the show taped (the Jet-ski line was from the Philly shows, after all, and the writers might not have been inclined to stick around for all of the tapings), in which case he wouldn’t have been nearby at the time the show taped and received its big laugh/applause.
Of course, this is all speculation, but it just seemed to me an instance of Barry appreciating an acknowledgment of “job well done” from his pretty outstanding boss. And let’s face it, the workplace would be a happier place if all of our superiors were so thoughtful.
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November 2nd, 2008 at 12:30 am
yeah, I’m sure he could have traveled or been away for some reason. I was just struck by the use of “himself” like Stephen was some extra special person rather than someone Barry must talk to regularly as part of his job. nevertheless, it was a very nice gesture of Stephen! :)
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November 2nd, 2008 at 1:20 am
Hey when is this guy not cool? Makes me want to be a writer.
November 2nd, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Re: the congratulatory call…
I think that refers to when John Edwards used the line about the Jet Ski at an Obama rally a few weeks later, rather than when he used it as scripted for the show.
I think that rally was on the weekend so maybe SC was watching C-SPAN or something and called Barry to say “did you just hear that?”
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November 1st, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Interesting article; thanks for passing it along.
It’s good to hear that:
1. He had to *learn* to be/write funny—>gives hope to us comedy newbs.
I loved his analogy about comedy writing being like performing a magic trick. Watch me pull a punch-line outta my hat! =p
2.He points out how the best political/satirical humour flows from factual takes on the news. So there’s an actual, factual basis to their jokes; they’re not just lying to create a joke.
And he finds the facts behind the jokes depressing.
The writers sound like my kind of people…really. lol
Go Barry!
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November 4th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Here’s another article on Barry … I’ll probably put it into a newer post once the election stuff slows down ever so slightly. This is from the Canadian Press and contains a lot of the same material as the article in the post above, but with some additional stuff that’s a lot of fun.
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November 7th, 2008 at 12:03 am
[...] the Canadian media is loving the heck out of Barry Julien this week. We’ve already featured one excellent interview from Barry in the past week. And we kind of barely touched on another article earlier this week (you know, [...]