Real Time with Bill Maher - Scott Carter

Our next Real Time is August 19th so I’m working on a special that’s going to be a co-production between TBS and HBO about global warming which is going to be taped in November. It’s called Earth to America and it’s going to be done from Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Among the people who are going to be in it are Ben Stiller, Martin Short, Leonardo DiCaprio, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Black, Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, Larry David, Ray Romano, Christopher Guest, Will Ferrell, Robert Kennedy Jr. and there’s other people who are going to be confirmed later on.

Yes, we are solving it on that day. There will be no global warming problem after we get done [laughs].

Anyway it’s going to be a two-hour awareness raising special with comedy and music and a lot of it will be about this topic that many people just don’t know enough about.

We just filmed all day Sunday with Jack Black for a piece written by Mike White and directed by Jay Roach. Actually some of the most talented comedy writers in America are working on this project because they believe in the cause like Adam McKay, George Meyer, all of the Everybody Loves Raymond staff and Larry David of course

Yeah his wife, Laurie David, is really the producer. We hope that it’s something that gets this on people’s radar and then prompts politicians to pay more attention to it.

No what happened was that the last time we took a break Laurie David called me and said “We’ve never really met” even though I’ve known Larry for 15 years. She said “Look I’m doing this benefit fundraiser at the Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles, Tom Hanks is going to host it and we’ve got Leonardo DiCaprio, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, and all these people, would you like to work on this?” I said “You’ve called me at exactly the right moment. I have one writing assignment, but otherwise I’m free for the summer and I’d love to do this.” So we did this one event last July, Tom Hanks was the host and we raised three and a half million dollars in one night.

That was for environmental causes in general and the NRDC, Natural Resources Defense Council. They’re the people who sue polluters. It was to raise money for lawsuits and try to prompt environmentally friendly legislation. Laurie is the one who came up with the idea of trying to get Governors across the country to make a diamond lane for people who have hybrid cars.

One of the comedy bits that Tom did is when people have adapters and it’s plugged in it’s using juice all the time. Whether or not you have your stereo or radio or whatever turned on. It’s sapping electricity and just a small thing that anybody can do now is, when you’re not using the device take the adapter out of the wall.

I’m one of the executive producers and I was the original executive producer of Politically Incorrect. Bill and I have worked on and off since February of 1993.

What it means is you are ultimately responsible for everything. You’re managing every aspect of whatever happens. You’re managing what issues come up on the show, you’re managing the writing staff, who gets booked and you’re responsible to the network. One of the main tasks of a politician’s job is to get himself re-elected so an executive producer’s task is to get the show renewed. When we come back in August so one of my main goals right now is to be picked up for the fourth season which would begin in January of 2006.

I think that they are very happy. I would say the caliber of guests that have appeared on the show has been getting more and more impressive. This last season we’ve had Jane Fonda and Madeline Albright, all sorts of people who had not been available to us in the past. One of my main mandates in developing this show was to have it be distinctly different from Politically Incorrect.

Bill often cites Carrot Top but I think Carrot Top actually is a really bright guy and always was a really great guest for us on PI. But it’s a bit convenient to say Carrot Top because then people sort of know what you’re referring to. We would do things that would be a little bit more gimmicky on PI where we set up a scientist or politician next to a raw comedian, such as Carrot Top and it kind of said a certain something. I feel that over a period of time we used up all of the different combinations that were really intriguing. When you’re working with 20 guests a week, you’re saying “yes” sometimes when you don’t want to and you’re also saying “yes” to people who you don’t know very well.

That was great because to my knowledge he has only done three interviews. He did Campbell Brown, Anderson Cooper and Bill.

He watches the show and after Bill has made a reference we always hear from him the next Monday. It’s interesting that we were able to see that he was interested in doing that. We got Jose Canseco right when he was hot and Ward Churchill who didn’t do very much. I was happy that some of these people like Maureen Dowd have become somewhat of a regular for us, where for ten years she never really wanted to do it.

We know a few people who are likely, but we only have a couple of people confirmed so I actually wouldn’t probably want to get into that right now.

That was probably me talking to Eddie. I was always sort of the pit crew during the commercial breaks and that’s both good and bad. With Politically Incorrect we did four segments and during those commercial breaks I was always able to deal with adjustments. We’d use the commercial breaks to decide, “What are we going to talk about next?” The way we generally plan our shows is we try and plan a lot more things to talk about than we’re ever going to get to, so during the course of the show we have choices. Sometimes I knew that a guest had more to say on a topic and I would say, “Stay with this subject” and other times I would say, “You know what, we’re done with this topic let’s move on.”

Generally I would talk to them before the show started and sometimes what I’d be doing is reminding them of things that I’d heard them say that maybe they’d forgotten to say on air.

Well with Politically Incorrect by virtue of having five shows and coming up with 20 guests per week every night there were people who I or Bill had just never met before. On Real Time we only have to do three quests per week on the panel, so generally it’s people we know really well and there isn’t that kind of crap shoot that there could be on PI, where you could really luck out but you could also have the non-talker. The good part also about not having commercial breaks is that a discussion keeps going as long as it’s vital and then Bill will shift it when he feels like it’s out of steam.

We actually never lived in the same city. I moved from LA to New York at the same time he moved from New York to LA but we had dozens of friends in common. I had been producing other shows first for the Comedy Channel and then it was merged with Viacom so it became Comedy Central. I had done a couple of other shows for them and Bill did a special in November on election. The network liked it so much they said, “We’d like to pursue doing a series with you.” He and I were paired up in January of 93 and we started working together in February and then Politically Incorrect started taping I think in May of 93 and the first show aired in July of 93.

In the last couple of years whenever I talk about the show the first reaction that everybody has is “I like Politically Incorrect and I like this show even better.” I just got an email from Chris Rock, yesterday about how much he likes the show and at this Jack Black taping Larry David said “It’s one of the few shows I watch.” I think the way we describe it is there’s a smaller spectrum than we would often have in 1993. Sometimes we had people on way at the ends of the political spectrum and other times it wound up that people were yelling at each other. We now have a more considerate and maybe more mature panel so it’s more moderate. It’s the sort of dinner party you would want where you might have some people who disagree with you but you still would want to be at the table with them. To respond to your first point about some of the liberals not being on the same page with Bill. Bill’s a Libertarian and he’s probably liberal on 60% of the issues and conservative on 40%. The good thing about that for me as a producer is it allows me to book people around where he stands and it keeps you guessing. In other words, he’s not like someone on Fox News like Sean Hannity where it’s party line conservative on every issue, nor is it some of what you might hear on Air-America where it’s party line liberal on every issue. Bill will go back and forth then there are even issues where he’s even shifted. Certainly he’s shifted a couple of times on Iraq which makes sense depending upon where things are.

Let me answer this by saying that I think in the last year that I was with Politically Incorrect we did some research and we found that of the people who watch Politically Incorrect regularly, only 14% of those people describe themselves as agreeing with Bill on most issues. But what I think people tuned into and they continue to tune into was having the issues explored. Sometimes Bill will be maintaining my personal viewpoint and sometimes it’s someone on the panel who’s maintaining it. I just have to make sure that it’s there, to get both sides represented.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck