Tonight's guests are Juan Zarate & Kathryn Bigelow on The Daily Show and James Corden on The Colbert Report.
Juan Zarate is is a national security expert, formerly Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism during the George W. Bush administration.
Kathryn Bigelow is a film director, film producer, screenwriter and television director best known for The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.
The reason theses two are on tonight is to promote lastdaysofivory.com which is a short film / PSA about illegal ivory poaching. Warning the film may be animated but is very graphic. Viewer discretion is advised.
Bigelow says: “Last year I was made aware of the very real connection between elephant poaching and terrorism. For me it represented the diabolical intersection of two problems that are of great concern - species extinction and global terrorism. Both involve the loss of innocent life, and both require urgent action. To make a feature film about such a topic would likely take years during which more elephants would die, so instead I approached a team of fellow filmmakers and we made LAST DAYS as an animated piece, which we thought would give it a broader audience (besides, the internet is filled with graphic images of slaughtered elephants and yet the killing continues.) There are real things we can all do to stop wild elephants from disappearing from our world while cutting off funding for some of the world’s most notorious terrorist networks.”
The anti-poaching effort calls for an end to the killings, an end to trafficking in ivory, and an end to the demand for ivory. Kathryn Bigelow’s three-minute film, written by Scott Z. Burns and made in collaboration with concept designer Samuel Michlap, head of layout Lorenzo Martinez and Duncan Studio, takes the viewer, in reverse chronology, through every step in the blood-curdling process, and, at its most disturbing, identifies the sale of ivory as a funding source for terrorist organizations like Boko Haram, the Lord’s Resistance Army and al-Shabab.
Kathryn Bigelow's 'Last Days' Premieres Alongside Launch of LastDaysofIvory.com
If the terrorism aspect helps get republicans on board to stop the ivory trade then they can highlight that all they want because we need to stop it.
James Corden is an actor, writer, producer, comedian, television host and will be Colbert's tag team partner on CBS, hosting The Late Late Show after the Colbert hosted Late Show. Tonight he is on to promote Into the Woods
Into the Woods is a modern twist on the beloved Brothers Grimm fairy tales in a musical format that follows the classic tales of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Rapunzel-all tied together by an original story involving a baker and his wife, their wish to begin a family and their interaction with the witch who has put a curse on them.
This is of course, the movie version of the Stephen Sondheim musical, I have not seen either the movie or the original show But I thought that the original would be a bit too dark for Disney. Apparently it was and cuts were made.
Into the Woods, as the film warns in its tagline, twists our favorite childhood fairy tales to arrive at a lesson: be careful what you wish for. Happily ever afters, as it happens, have consequences. Into the Woods explores what happens after Cinderella finds her prince, Little Red Riding Hood has the wolf killed, and Jack discovers a land of wealth up the beanstalk. Not to spoil much, but it turns out that once upon a time there were philandering royals, pedophilic wolves, and giants on a murderous rampage, too.
For those who have been moved by Into the Woods’ journey into the darker, more human side of fairy tales, those elements—the sex, the death, the unhappily ever afters—are the key to the musical’s lasting resonance. So at the first murmurings that some of those storylines or songs would be cut or altered, theatre fans charged at Marshall with their social-media pitchforks.
I’m from the theatre,” he says. “I’m a huge fan of Into the Woods. I made sure to have James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim involved throughout the whole process. So I was careful about it—I daresay more careful than anyone else would’ve been with the material.”
Careful, yes. Truer to the source material than anyone would’ve imagined Disney would allow, certainly. But the fact remains that things have changed. Songs were cut. Characters were altered.
Like Fosse did with Cabaret, Marshall excised two major characters: the Narrator and the Mysterious Man. He’s not precious when talking about killing the darlings, either. The narrator? Same fourth wall problem: “Just doesn’t work.” And the Mysterious Man? “We eliminated him because we just needed to consolidate for film.”
A major sore sport for fans of the stage play will be the cutting of the Baker’s ballad “No More,” about confronting the responsibilities of fatherhood. Part of that was due to the elimination of the Mysterious Man. “When that goes, then ‘No More’ doesn’t make sense, because the line ‘No more riddles / no more jests’ doesn’t make sense, because that’s not part of the fabric of the piece anymore,” Marshall says.
But more than that, it was a pacing issue. “You have a series of ballads in a row at the end on stage: ‘No More,’ ‘No One Is Alone,’ ‘Children Will Listen.’ On film, that’s very hard to make work. I always feel on film you have to earn a ballad, because it’s a different kind of pace. So you have to really be aware.”
Rob Marshall Defends ‘Into the Woods’
I would have to see it to know if the cuts work out or not. It is true that live shows grab the audience differently than films and when live shows are adapted to film changes will need to be made.
This Week's Guests
THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
We 12/10: Suki Kim
Th 12/11: Mick Foley
THE COLBERT REPORT
We 12/10: Sarah Koenig
Th 12/11: TBA