Fall 2010 - California State University, East Bay

features
In the casual office environment at The Daily Show’s New York City studio, comedy writer J.R. Havlan brings
his Australian kelpie, Charlotte, to work daily. Most days he wears shorts on the job.
When Stewart served as master of ceremonies for the
2006 Academy Awards, for instance, it was a pop culture
reference written by Havlan that critics applauded in
newspapers and broadcasts the next day. “I do have some
sad news to report,” Stewart deadpanned. “Björk couldn’t
be here tonight. She was trying on her Oscar dress, and
Dick Cheney shot her.”
Editor’s note: At the 2001 ceremony, Icelandic singer
Björk attracted global attention by wearing a wacky, white
swan-inspired dress, while Cheney became the target of
jokesters following his accidental shooting of a fellow hunter
in 2006.
Set piece
As Havlan types, a regiment of 50 colorful, plastic
Simpsons cartoon figurines oversees his progress from a
nearby window ledge. A silver lava lamp filled with yellow
globs bubbles lazily on his desk, while
at his feet, Charlotte, his well-trained
Australian kelpie, dozes, ready to leap
up and scamper after him when he
heads down the hall for a rare trip to
The Daily Show set.
Weaving through the show’s
warren of offices, narrow corridors and
occasionally sloping hallways, Havlan
arrives at a nondescript door. Pushing past
it, Havlan enters a short dark hall before
veering into the brightly lit, red-andblue
themed Daily Show set familiar
to viewers. “We just told the designers
we wanted something that Ted Koppel
would want for Christmas,” Havlan says.
The wall to the right features
a large-scale scene of the New York
skyline at night. Straight ahead, a
platform containing an executive-style
cherry wood desk sits like an island
at the center of the set. It’s here that
Stewart delivers his nightly parody of
the news to a live audience. The gallery
sits empty during the day, but at 5 p.m.
each evening audience members stream
in — often after an hours-long wait queued up around the
block. An oversized, digitized globe dangling overhead
flashes a nonsensical string of words. This week it’s Juneau,
Junizawa, Junedale, and Junejani.
To the left, a green screen stretches toward the
ceiling. During rehearsal a couple hours later, the show’s
correspondents will act out a bit called “The Spilling
Fields” in front of the blank screen. Audience members
at home, however, will see a scene of Louisiana wetlands
projected on the screen, as if the correspondents were
reporting about the gulf oil spill on location. On air,
Stewart wears a suit, just like a network anchorman, but
while running through lines for the correspondents’ bit
he sports a comfy gray T-shirt. Most days, the confident
Stewart requires no rehearsal, but this afternoon the cast is
helping correspondent Olivia Munn warm up for her first
appearance on the program.
“A lot of times, Jon goes through rehearsals with his feet up on the desk,” says
Havlan, noting that Stewart’s casual appearance and demeanor reflects a credible
and easy delivery style that doesn’t require him to “sell anything.”
While the atmosphere in the office and on the set appears relaxed, the cast and
crew take their jobs seriously — to an extent. And Havlan’s respect for Stewart, who
took over as host in 1999, is evident.
Political player
“In the beginning of 2000, the content became far more political,” Havlan says.
“When the election came up, we were in a unique position, and Jon realized this is
what we’re here for. That’s when we started to focus on media coverage.”
Over several episodes, Daily Show correspondents spoofed politicians and
press coverage of the presidential election campaign. Its take on “Indecision 2000”
earned the show, including Havlan, the first of two Peabody Awards for excellence
in broadcasting. (“Indecision 2004” received a Peabody in 2005.)
Given such accolades, perhaps it’s not surprising that the program also
has become the subject of serious study. The Pew Research Center’s Project
for Excellence in Journalism, for instance, studied the show’s content for a year,
comparing its agenda to traditional news outlets’. The center’s analysis included the
following observation:
The Daily Show aims at more than comedy. In its choice of topics, its use of
news footage to deconstruct the manipulations by public figures and its
tendency toward pointed satire over playing just for laughs, The Daily Show
performs a function that is close to journalistic in nature — getting people to
think critically about the public square.
“Different outlets have been saying that for a while or claiming studies
(demonstrate) the show’s influence on the public,” Havlan says. “We don’t sit
around thinking about it … We don’t come in and say, ‘How are we going to affect
the media landscape Are we going to increase the number of kids who get their
news from The Daily Show’ There’s no insidious plan.”
East Bay beginnings
As a kid growing up in Danville, Havlan didn’t yearn for a career in show biz
and never expected one day he’d get paid to be funny.
He didn’t take acting classes or perform stand-up comedy until after graduating
from Cal State East Bay, although for Halloween one year in grade school he
dressed up as mute comic Harpo Marx. By the time he enrolled in business courses
at then-Cal State Hayward in the 1980s, Havlan assumed he’d spend his career at a
typical office job.
“My sense of humor was there, but I didn’t think of being a comic,” he says. “My
idea was to go to college and get a business degree.”
Havlan’s professional fate may have come as less of a surprise to his closest
friend from college, attorney Bill Schott ’88. Schott remembers well Havlan’s
On winning Emmys: “Few if any accomplishments
in my life have measured up to the honor
of winning an Emmy Award. It is literally a
reflection of the respect people in your industry
have for the work that you do. It is indeed a
humbling experience. With that said, once they
give you the trophy they have almost no say over
what you do with it.”
— J.R. Havlan
22 Cal State East Bay Magazine | FALL 2010
Cal State East Bay Magazine | FALL 2010
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