The George Lucas Talk Show

The George Lucas Talk Show is an improvised cult talk show in New York City hosted by comedian Connor Ratliff, who appears as George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, and he interviews real guests as themselves in a panel format.[1][2] He is joined by sidekick Star Wars characters: initially Jar Jar Binks, played by comedian Shaun Diston; and in current shows, Watto, played by Griffin Newman.[3] The show premiered in 2014, and was performed monthly live on stage at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.[3] The show is produced and booked by Patrick Cotnoir.

The George Lucas Talk Show
Genre
Show typeresidence
Date of premiere2014
Final show2020
LocationUpright Citizens Brigade Theatre, New York City, US
Creative team
CreatorConnor Ratliff
Starring
The George Lucas Talk Show: Streaming Edition
Genre
Created byConnor Ratliff
Starring
Theme music composerRyan Miller
Production
Executive producerPatrick Cotnoir
Producers
  • Bryson Wallace
  • David Szarejko
Release
Original networkPlanet Scum Live
Original releaseMay 4, 2020 (2020-05-04)
External links
Production website

On May 4, 2020, after a brief hiatus due to the Coronavirus Pandemic, the show returned in an online format on the comedy network Planet Scum Live to host a more than 30 hour live stream in which Lucas, Watto, and Cotnoir (now acting as an on-air co-host), live from their own separate homes, watched every Star Wars movie in chronological order to raise money for the out of work employees of the UCB Theatre.

History

Conception and development

In an interview with We Are Trash People, Ratliff stated that he had begun playing the character of George Lucas "starting back in the late 1990s, when George Lucas was doing special editions of the original trilogy. I started doing a Lucas character for my friends, explaining why the changes being made were great", and continued to do the George Lucas character for friends to argue the artistic direction and changes made in the Star Wars universe.[4] Talking with Village Voice, Ratliff said that he conceived of the idea of portraying Lucas "sort of as a preemptive strike against feeling bad about the prequels". He said "maybe Lucas had reached a point of absolute creative control and no one to really tell him if something is a bad idea, I started doing this character" and also that Lucas is renowned for some of his large failures that were wildly successful.[5]

In 2013, Ratliff unsuccessfully attempted to mount a one-man show called Local Authors Night at the Mid-Missouri Library[6] at the UCB Theatre. After its rejection, Ratliff decided to audition a new show that had a bigger popular culture hook to draw in audiences. In 2014, Ratliff brought the first iteration of the George Lucas Talk Show to various New York City venues, which he said were "high quality comedy-wise, low quality attendance-wise".[4]

Ratliff, Griffin Newman, and Patrick Cotnoir had known each other through their work on The Chris Gethard Show[7] and ASSSSCAT 3000[5] at the UCB Theater. During the early days of the show, Cotnoir attended as an audience member and acted as a last minute fill in warm up comic during the first show. Ratliff asked Newman to be a guest as himself to promote his work in the film Draft Day, wanting a guest to be there "promoting a thing".[4]

Theatre show
See also: List of The George Lucas Talk Show episodes

Ratliff launched the show in the spring of 2014 at the UCB Theater East venue in New York City, with Shaun Diston playing Jar Jar Binks as co-host. Ratliff's costuming as Lucas consists of his frosted hair and beard, and lumberjack-fashion clothes, while Diston wore a Jar Jar Binks costume and a pair of large ears on his head. The shows ran monthly at midnight. As Lucas, Ratliff would perform monologues and host guest interviews that often referred to Lucas's own work in the entertainment industry, from filmographic references to his pioneering special effects and audio companies in Industrial Light and Magic and THX.[3][4][5]

Cotnoir had been helping minimally behind the scenes of the show, and during a conversation, Ratliff referred to Cotnoir as "my producer", unbeknownst to Cotnoir.[6] A few years into the Theatre show, Diston moved to LA. Ratliff and Newman had performed together in a show at the UCB Theatre called Star Wars Improv, where Newman had dressed in a costume of Watto, the merchant from The Phantom Menace, he had assembled to attend a midnight screening of The Force Awakens, while Ratliff dressed in a high quality Boba Fett costume; halfway through the show, Ratliff removed his Boba Fett helmet to reveal himself in full George Lucas makeup and performed the remainder of the show as George Lucas. After this, Newman eagerly "pestered" Ratliff to let him join as the cohost: "If Diston's Jar Jar was doing Kevin Eubanks, laughing at all of Georges jokes and supporting him, then my Watto is going to be the more cantankerous, ‘is he even paying attention’ Ed McMahon cohost”. In 2016, Newman worked on both The George Lucas Talk Show and the Amazon's television series The Tick. He said after finishing a shoot with The Tick, “I have to put on my Watto nose and do a comedy show!”[4]

Featured guests of the theatre shows included Jon Hamm, Janeane Garofalo, Nicole Byer, Sonia Manzano, Ira Glass, Chris Gethard, Ben Schwartz, Peter Serafinowicz, Bobby Moynihan, David K. Harbour, Solo writer Jon Kasdan, Meredith Vieira, and musicians like Aimee Mann, Mike Doughty, and Will Butler.

The show has been performed at the UCB theater in Los Angeles.,[8][9] had shows at South By Southwest and New York Comic Con,[10][11][12] and in London.[13] On November 13, 2019, The George Lucas Talk Show held a show inside New York City's Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.[14]

Streaming show

In March 2020, while Connor was performing on tour with rock band Guster,[15] the Coronavirus Pandemic escalated to the point where the remaining dates of the tour had to be postponed. While Connor had been on tour, Griffin Newman had been performing one man musical revue shows at the UCB Theatre as Watto,[16] with a May the 4th episode of The George Lucas Talk Show being prepared as their first show after a brief hiatus.[6]

Ratliff, Newman and Cotnoir put together a May the 4th Show on Chris Gethard's Planet Scum Live comedy network;[1] Connor was not interested in the prospect of taking the live show to an online format, thinking that “it was going to be bad and more people would see it (than the live show) and it would diminish the reputation of the live show as retroactive bad press”.[6] He presented two ideas to Griffin and Patrick; one would be to book George Lucas himself as a guest, and the other was to do a show for charity. A GoFundMe page had been set up to benefit the out of work UCB Theatre employees and it solidified the interest in bringing the show back in a new format. During discussions on what exactly the would do during the live stream, Connor brought up the idea to watch all fourteen canonical live action Star Wars film in chronological order, including: all 9 films of the Skywalker Saga; Solo; Rogue One, the two Ewok movies; and the Star Wars Holiday Special. Said Ratliff: “If we don’t do the Ewok movies, the whole thing isn’t worth doing.”[6] The marathon ran over 30 hours and featured multiple guests, raising funds for the UCB Theatre's unemployed staff.[1]

Since the Star Wars marathon fundraiser, The George Lucas Talk Show has continued a weekly four-hour Sunday evening broadcast[17] which typically includes two guests for the show proper, and additional surprise guest appearances during the after show;[18] once every month, the show hosts additional marathon fundraisers watching TV shows like Arli$, 1600 Penn, Big Lake, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Muppets Tonight, and On The Air. During the marathons, some of the cast and crew of the related series make guest appearances. Through these fundraising events, The George Lucas Talk Show has raised over $167,000 for various charities and organizations.[3][19][20]

Reception

Reception for The George Lucas Talk Show has been generally positive. Comic Book Resources[1] writer Annalise Yip says it is "equal parts hilarious, weird and entertaining". David Axe from The National Interest found the show to be "weird, And very very funny." He wrote "Loosely mimicking the famously uncharismatic Lucas, Ratliff delivers a profoundly bad monologue then interviews comedians, actors and musicians while -- in the early episodes, at least -- his sidekick Jar Jar Binks, a human version of the racist CGI character from Lucas’s The Phantom Menace, chortles on the couch."[3]

Writing about their marathon fundraisers, Liz Shannon Miller from Collider says "anything can happen... The one thing you can count on is that while watching all 22 episodes of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a good time will be had".[19] Paige Kiser from Flip Screen wrote that it is "a new kind of show that offers accessibility and silly, entertaining moments you won’t likely see anywhere else (what other show has Lea Thompson showing off her Howard the Duck costumes from her house?)... The George Lucas Talk Show is reminding some of us why we loved Star Wars in the first place."[17]

On their new live streaming format, Sean L. McCarthy of The New York Times writes "One thing Twitch allows that live theater never can: light-speed interactivity among performers and the public alike... audience members contributed fan art and memes related to discussion topics in real time, while Newman was able to display a cup topped with a Watto figurine as soon as one of the guests, the actor Taran Killam, mentioned once owning one as a child."[21] Julia Blyth of Just Resting My Eyes says it is "fresh, inventive and surprising every week... (a) shiny kernel of beauty thats both a comfort and, weirdly, an inspiration",[22] and The Comedy Bureau notes that the show "naturally fits into the Twitch-verse of comedy."[23]

On the November 15th, 2020 episode of The George Lucas Talk Show, when talking about name dropping on the George Lucas Talk Show Wikipedia page being removed by editors, guest D'Arcy Carden stated: "...that actually name dropping is really one of the things that actually is good, its good when you’re a talk show, that’s a good thing you know?" In response to this statement, guest Cameron Esposito stated: "D'Arcy Carden has stated that it's good that you dropped names on the show. I can’t understand; the thing is, what D'Arcy Carden stated is that “yes! And that’s the thing!". Later, on the November 22th episode of The George Lucas Talk Show, guest Niccole Thurman said about the name dropping criticism from the Wikipedia editors: “Isn’t the whole point of Wikipedia to drop names? How are you gonna judge, wikipedia? That’s your whole thing. Quit being haters, wikipedia.” Scott Aukerman then said:" Hey Wikipedia! More like wiki-pedi-duh! Of course there should be this many names! That’s what its all about! If proper names weren’t allowed, then no one would have a page! Shsheeuyeaueah!"

References
  1. Yip, Annaliese (July 30, 2020). "The Internet's Coolest Talk Show Host Is... George Lucas?". Comic Book Resources.
  2. Quah, Nicholas (May 5, 2020). "Rejected by Tom Hanks? Start a Podcast About It". Vulture.
  3. Axe, David (April 19, 2020). "George Lucas Is the World's Worst Talk-Show Host in This Hilarious Sketch". The National Interest.
  4. Ratliff, Connor; Cotnoir, Patrick; Newman, Griffin (April 14, 2020). "Check Out Our George Lucas Talk Show Watch Along!" (Interview). We Are Trash People. Retrieved 2020-10-17.
  5. Scherstuhl, Alan (January 4, 2016). "UCB's Connor Ratliff: What I've Learned From Pretending to Be George Lucas". The Village Voice. Retrieved October 15, 2020.
  6. Findlay, Joe (August 14, 2020). "The Complete Interview with Connor Ratliff and Patrick Cotnoir". Miscast Commentary. Retrieved 2020-10-17.
  7. Wright, Megh (May 11, 2016). "Chris Gethard and Tony Hale Help Connor Ratliff Confront His #1 Fear".
  8. UCB Theatre LA [@ucbtla] (January 20, 2017). "The George Lucas Talk Show – Tonight's guests: @aimeemann @rejectedjokes @adamconover @ucbsunset 10:30pm $7 sunset.ucbtheatre.com/performance/51349#reservation" (Tweet). Retrieved October 20, 2020 – via Twitter.
  9. "The George Lucas Talk Show: L.A. Edition!". Retrieved 2020-10-17 – via Facebook.
  10. https://schedule.sxsw.com/2015/events/grid?day=15&conference=&event_type=showcase&category=comedy
  11. "Comedy Dynamics Partners with Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre for 4 Days of Comedy at SXSW 2015". NewJerseyStage.com (Press release). February 26, 2015.
  12. "tours announced: Leon Bridges, Sea and Cake, Will Butler, RJD2, Brian Fallon, more". BrooklynVegan.
  13. "Live in London: The George Lucas Talk Show!" – via Facebook.
  14. November 2019, Tariq Malik 13. "UCB's 'George Lucas Talk Show' Lands at NYC's Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum Tonight". Space.com.
  15. Bushnell, Addie (March 8, 2020). "Guster entertains Englert audience with an evening of hit songs and musical improv". The Daily Iowan.
  16. "Watto 'Bout Me? A George Lucas Talk Show Story".
  17. Kiser, Paige (September 14, 2020). "'The George Lucas Talk Show' (2020) is an Earnestly Silly Celebration of Star Wars". Flip Screen. Retrieved October 14, 2020.
  18. McCarthy, Sean L. (October 29, 2020). "8 Things to Do This Halloween Weekend". The New York Times.
  19. Miller, Liz Shannon (September 19, 2020). "Watching 'The George Lucas Talk Show' Watch Weird TV Live Is a 2020 Highlight — Here's Why". Collider.
  20. Colburn, Randall (September 18, 2020). "The George Lucas Talk Show is livestreaming all 22 episodes of Studio 60 this Sunday". The AV Club.
  21. McCarthy, Sean L. (October 29, 2020). "8 Things To Do This Halloween Weekend".
  22. Blyth, Julia (December 18, 2020). "Trying To Eff The George Lucas Talk Show's Ineffable Charms". Just Resting My Eyes.
  23. "The 100 Best Things in Comedy (Despite a Pandemic) That We Were Witness To in No Particular Order of 2020". The Comedy Bureau. January 1, 2021.
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