Jan 9, 2018
In this special, bonus episode of The Turnaround, Jesse speaks to the legendary Dick Cavett, whose eponymous The Dick Cavett Show debuted nearly fifty years ago. Throughout his storied career, Cavett distinguished himself as the consummate interviewer, and has played host to the most interesting and compelling figures of his era--Salvador Dali, Jimi Hendrix, Betty Davis, Groucho Marx, Angela Davis, Katharine Hepburn and more.
Cavett shares what it was like to interview a murderer, how he
responded to an expletive-laden piece of hate mail he received and
the difficult challenge of maintaining a conversation on camera
while dealing with myriad distractions off camera. Before Cavett
launched his show, he received a call from Jack Paar, who gave him
this piece of advice: “Don’t do interviews...make it a
conversation.”
On Friday, January 12th, The San Francisco Sketchfest will pay
tribute to Dick Cavett at the Marine’s Memorial Theater. John
Hodgman, Lance Bangs and Dave Hill will join Cavett on stage to
commemorate his show’s 50th anniversary. Tickets
are still available.
Be sure to visit CBS
Decades to watch The Dick Cavett Show.
The Turnaround is a production of Maximum Fun in partnership with
the Columbia Journalism
Review. Visit their website to learn more about their "mission
to encourage excellence in journalism in the service of a free
society," and to read edited transcripts of our
other Turnaround episodes.
Hosted and created by Jesse Thorn
Produced by Kara
Hart and Nick Liao
Jennifer
Marmor produced the Dick Cavett episode
Senior Producer: Laura Swisher
Managing Director: Bikram Chatterji
Music for The Turnaround provided by Mobius Van ChocStraw.
Special thanks to Kyle Pope and his team at CJR, Darrel Frost, and
Emilie Erskine.