On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with midnight movies from any moment in film history.
First, the BAIT: a weird genre pick, and why we’re exploring its specific niche right now. Then, the BITE: a spoiler-filled answer to the all-important question, “Is this old cult film actually worth recommending?”
The Bait: That Time I Bombed Standing in for Stephen Colbert
For reasons I won’t speculate about in print, the complete July 31, 2017 episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is no longer available on Paramount+. That’s a shame, because it’s our pick for this week’s After Dark, and the only time I ever performed on the Ed Sullivan stage… and bombed. Badly.
At least, that’s how I felt then. I was an intern during “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” Season 2, moving from Atlanta to Manhattan for the job immediately after graduating from college. Nearly a decade later, I still don’t think any professional call has made me happier than learning I got that internship. New York represented everything I’d imagined adulthood could be and more. Late night television felt not just impossibly glamorous but also casually cool. Plus, the Ed Sullivan stage itself was sacred ground.
An excuse to walk the same hallways David Letterman once haunted, that summer brought out a level of ambition and desperation in me so powerful, I routinely became a caricature of myself. Yes, long before I was an effortlessly chic indie film critic and reporter in Los Angeles, I was essentially a post-graduate Tracy Flick looking for any and all “Late Show” odd jobs. I volunteered for every task I could find, and even engineered several of my own — reorganizing closets, offering my tech services, and generally behaving like someone Stephen probably shouldn’t let follow him home.
Nobody required that…