Most talk show interviews come with the unspoken assumption that the host either knows a whole lot of background information about their guest or, failing that, is at least able to recognize who they are. Well, a new series from Funny Or Die featuring comedian Tig Notaro is here to make sure that’s no longer the case.
In its first episode, Under A Rock With Tig Notaro demonstrates just how wrong we’ve been to always assume that the old ways are best, as Notaro sets out a paradigm-shifting format where interviews consist of just trying to figure out why this person the host is talking to is famous.
The video, whose description promises that Notaro “cannot recognize famous people,” sees the comedian sitting down with James Van Der Beek and asking him a bunch of questions about who he is and what he does for a living.
“I don’t watch many TV shows or films so I’m really bad at recognizing famous people, Notaro says at the start. This point is made clear when she introduces Van Der Beek with a warm, “Please welcome…this person.”
“I don’t mean to objectify you, but you’re a handsome man,” she begins before going on to flip convention and ask her guest how he knows who she is. As the interview continues, Notaro reads hints meant to help her piece together Van Der Beek’s identity. She asks how old he is; tries to figure out why, at one point in time, Van Der Beek needed police protection to appear in public; and puzzles out the significance of a picture of a Dawson-free creek..
Notaro then stares at a drawing of a van, a shovel digging a hole, and a bird’s face, attempting to decode a name she guesses is “Bus Dig Beak,” “Dig The Beak,” or “Van Dig Beak.”
“Is your name James Van Der Beek? Okay, I’ve heard that name,” she says after cracking the code and getting his first name from a pool of three options.
The show, helped along by Notaro’s jokes and Van Der Beek’s enthusiasm, shows just how much potential talk shows have been missing out on for years. Rather than brief hosts on their guests or provide them cue cards filled with important background information, Tig Notaro shows that it’s way more entertaining to watch celebrities play an elaborate, public-facing game of charades.
[via Vulture]
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91 Comments
James Van Der Beek may go down in history as Pop Culture’s Greatest Sport.
It should be painful watching a former teen heartthrob mock his own image, but he always seems comfortable and delighted to appear as “James van der Beek, mildly obnoxious former heartthrob.”
JVDB is great at this. I think my favorite is David Duchovny (Larry Sanders Show & Better Things) though, with honorable mentions going to Jennifer Grey, Larry David and Matt Leblanc who, like JVDB, also did entire series playing “themselves.”
For Duchovny please also include Zoolander.
Tig Notaro interviews James Van Der Beek despite having no clue who he isDidn’t she watch the WB?
This makes me miss America’s favorite game show, Pick a Choice.
James is fine with this. He know you have to walk away from your past in slow-motion as it explodes behind you, like in a John Woo movie
I miss that show so much.
“Oh, are you taking your vitamins?”
“Yeah, vitamin C for Careless!”
Don’t Trust the B was a perfect show, in spite of ABC horrendously f***ing with it, including by showing the episodes so badly out of order that several subplots became horribly garbled
showing the episodes so badly out of order that several subplots became horribly garbled Did that get fixed when it got to Netflix? I can’t remember. At any rate that show was a delight from beginning to end – wherever it began or ended…
Don’t Trust the B streams on Hulu, but according to JVDB on the show’s imdb trivia page the episodes there are in the (incorrect) broadcast order (I think the DVD has them like that too, but am not sure )
The first season especially was just wonderful. The episode where Dreama Walker gets fixed up with a guy, only to discover he’s Kristen Ritter’s dad? The “Meatballs!” ad for Beek Jeans? The reveal that JVDB seduces women to the Dawson’s Creek theme song? “Tall slut, no panties?” Man, what a loss.
The Thanksgiving episode was incredible, with June getting exposed for sleeping with Chloe’s dad and having an altercation with her wheelchair-bound mom
The Thanksgiving episode was incredible If I’m not mistaken that was the one where they went outside and mimed being angry with each other so Chloe’s family would think she was on the right side of the situation? So hilarious and sweet – something like: “We should TALK to each other like THIS all the TIME! it’s FUN!”
Yes! And I agree, that was the best scene
“Who are you??”
“I’m you’re new boss. You’re fired!” Best episode ever.
When he got that one girl the pantsuit I lost it
I now need Tig to guest star on a revival of DTTB. Hey, Ritter’s free again!
I mean, he got there in stages. First there was that incident with Frankie Muniz.
That’s where I know him from. He was great. The whole show was great.
It’s like he’s got a second career spoofing his first career.
They should do a show where the guests try to figure out why Tig Notaro is famous.
That’s, like, the first thing she does in this interview.
I only know James Van Der Beek from that atrocious NBC miniseries The Storm from 2009.
Go watch “Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt. 23″
That show truly is fantastic. Don’t trust the B and Happy Endings both getting cancelled at around the same time was the point when I lost faith in network comedies… haven’t really watched one since.
I only know Van der Beek from that time he played Ethan in one episode of Aliens in the Family in 1996.
It’s not a new concept for a show. There’s a talk show in Ireland with same idea, but I assume that wasn’t the first either.
This concept is not The Graham Norton Show at all (they research their guests very well) but it works very well when they put their guests together. One great example was when Miriam Margoyles clearly had no idea who will.i.am was and flat out said so.It might seem like they got off to a dubious start (but that’s actually just Miriam being Miriam for anyone not used to her) but apparently they became such good friends just from the time on the show that she ended up staying with him when she later visited the US.
Graham Norton is Irish ( and fantastic) but the show is not made in Ireland. I was talking about the Tommy Tiernan show. Both of them were in Father Ted, of course.
I know. Graham Norton may be Irish but his show is clearly in the domain of the BBC. Just thought this interview fell into the realm of what’s being discussed, Graham Norton is generally great and Tactical Kinja Posting made me think there was a reasonable chance this might get ungreyed if I posted here because of the Irish connection.
I recently had a Twitter interaction with the Beek. Seems like he might have too much time on his hands, but he’s a cool enough dude.
Now im just wondering if JVDB just sits there and searches for himself on twitter.
If you were sitting at home on top of a pile of Dawson money, what would you do with your day?
Luther does the actual searching.
You wrote a paragraph on his clothing choice and HE’S got too much time on his hands? LOL
I’m with you. Most people who hear back from celebrities are excited about it. It’s pretty misguided, this idea that because the internet allows us regular people to broadcast our snark we should feel superior to celebrities with significant professional accomplishments (current or not).
The false dichotomy here being that if the celeb answers back, they’ve got “too much time on their hands” and, if they don’t, they’re either high-handed or unwilling to engage. And this false dichotomy is proclaimed by bad faith interlocuters like the original commenter, because their true goal is a narcissitic proclamation that having engaged negatively with the celeb, they are, in fact, better than the celeb. TL;DR: These motherfuckers are a joke.
Great setup. Reminds me of the show ‘Dog Bites Man’ where someone won a ‘Win a Dinner with a Mystery Celebrity’ contest and Matt Walsh (way before Veep) walked in and the guy had no idea who he was but tried to play it off.
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/6z8ibp/dog-bites-man-dinner-with-kevin
Aw man, “Up In Them Guts” just got stuck in my head.
came here to say james vdb was good in rules of attractionthat is all
He was also good as the Gordon Geckoish Trump employee office bullyjerk in “Pose”.
I enjoyed Tig’s show on Amazon and I understand that she had (or has) a radio show or podcast in real life, plus it seems like she has a comedy set that streams somewhere I’ve listened to in the background, so I’m sure this new show will continue on Funny or Die’s streaming channel for as long as she wants to do it.Speaking of a host or panelist trying to figure out who’s their guest, a person could easily wile away an afternoon skipping through the What’s My Line archives on YouTube. They’ve definitely hit on a tried and true formula for a show.
!!! One Mississippi was amazing.
She’s never seen “Don’t Trust the B in Apt 23″?!?!?
I’m not familiar with either of them, so I guess this is the show for me.
Can someone explain to me how a shovel digging a hole is supposed to be a clue for the “Der” part of his name? I legitimately don’t get it.
You don’t get it, but then you do get it, and spontaneously shout “well, DER!”
I assume it’s mean to be “dirt”
Dirt, I guess?
Guessing they’re going for “dirt” – which yeah… is a stretch
James Van Der Beek is Danish for “Old Shovel Face”
I will be very disappointed if they don’t book Martin Short in character as Brock Linehan.
Notaro, as far as I’ve seen, is a funny writer and great performer. I first saw her on Comedy Central Live in the early 00’s, and I’m happy she had a resurgence back in 2012.However, based on the description above, this show seems to have a more hipster tone than I think I’d enjoy. I mean, she’s just saying she doesn’t know pop culture (though JVB is clearly *old* pop culture). Will a future episode be about her figuring out why Kit Harrington is famous? Or maybe one episode will just be her telling the audience that she doesn’t own a TV and prefers to listen to vinyl records.
“based on the description above,”Dude there’s a whole episode embedded literally right there. It’s seven minutes long. How busy are you?
Honestly, too busy to watch and listen to a 7 minute video. However, I do like Notaro, so I’ll give it a shot when I do have the time. :)The concept still has heavy hipster vibes coming from it, imo, but I’ll be happy to be wrong.
I didn’t get any sense of superiority from Tig for not consuming pop culture, which is my usual problem with hipsters.If anything, the feeling is more like a reformed hipster trying to catch up.
OK, that’s cool. That’s something I can get behind!
Yeah. The description sounds bad, so you’re supposed to watch the video?
no the hell you aren’t
Seems like a nice premise for an ongoing show, as long as they can keep the sort-of-game feel (it’s like To Tell the Truth). And what the hell, Tig Notaro is fun and funny.
Back in Portland, there was a radio station morning show that had a regular Mystery Guest segment where the interviewer only had the name and I think the gender of the guest. The special gag was that the guest did not know they were a mystery guest. The pinnacle was when the mystery guest was Fred Durst. It was a glorious as you might imagine.
It sounds like it’s got a “Hollywood Medium” vibe.How do they know she won’t know somebody?
I asked myself the same question. I imagine she is shown a series of headshots and asked if she can identify them. We’re definitely being asked to take her at her word on this, but as long as she doesn’t try to pretend she doesn’t know who Jennifer Lawrence is, I can suspend disbelief long enough for this to be funny.
Isn’t this essentially what Larry King has done his whole career, except (I’m assuming) Tig is better than it?
I want to see her fail to recognize someone insanely famous, like Barack Obama or Paul McCartney.
I don’t care if this story isn’t actually true because as far as I’m concerned it is. It was where after a long conversation with the person in the seat next to him on a plane, a very famous celebrity was absolutely delighted to be asked, as impossible as it might seem to any of us, “… so what do you do for a living Tom?”.
Awaiting the inevitable Star Wars – Star Trek confusion (ideally, with a guest from each series appearing).
Now we need Taylor Dayne to appear on the show.
James Van Der Beek is the only celebrity I have been told I look like. 2 different people said this. While I don’t really agree ( I am much uglier), there are worse people to look like.
I was often told I looked like Joshua Jackson, until I got old. We should totally hang out at Creek cons.
I really hope creek cons are not a real thing, but I suspect they actually are.
In my 20s people a few people told me I looked like Quentin Tarantino. At least one of them realized its wasn’t a compliment and tried to walk it back.Damn receding hairline.
I’ve gotten David Tennant. I use to cosplay at the Doctor too. Creepy fangirl stalker women at cons would run up to me and start hugging and touching me without my permission.
I’ve been mistaken for an extra from Star Trek the Next Generation season one episode 11001001, but that’s mainly because I was wearing a skant at the time.
People used to say I looked like Matt Damon, now they say I look like Walter White. 🙁
I’m going to admit something. I see his name pop up everywhere but I could not point out James Van Der Beek in a lineup if my life depended on it. Nor can I name a single movie or show he is associated with.
How can you not know who he is? He’s the voice of Vampirina’s dad Boris Hauntley. What? No one else have a toddler obsessed with Vampirina?
As long as the guest is in on the joke, this could be fun.
He’s Chloe’s straight gay best friend, obviously.
He’s 42? Wow.
I’m old. I don’t know who anyone is. My show would be awesome. I couldn’t pick Lady Gaga out of a lineup.
This is a funny take on “oh I don’t even OWN a TV.” I was on a boat with an (American) guy who claimed he never heard of Indiana Jones. Seriously what the fuck.
Can someone explain to me how a shovel digging a hole = “Der”?
Tig Notaro… sigh. Boring stories about your toddler don’t make for good stand up specials.
And who is Tig Notaro?
Tig Notaro seems to still be as unfunny as ever. Some things never change, i guess.
Tig’s 15 minutes is up. Her set only got promoted because of her frankness. She didnt have another good set. She’s a pain to work with and generally just a whack ass person.
Most talk show interviews come with the unspoken assumption that the host either knows a whole lot of background information about their guest or, failing that, is at least able to recognize who they are. Well, a new series from Funny Or Die featuring comedian Tig Notaro is here to make sure that’s no longer the case.Isn’t that the premise of Marc Maron’s podcast?
I’m upset that Tig Notaro is spending her time making Funny or Die skits, and/or shows and/or podcasts, and/or having a life, when by all rights she should be joining Anson Mount and working 24/7 as the only two people able to dig out ST: Discovery from the hole it dug itself into. Seriously, them two were the best decisions Disco ever made, not that the bar is high.