TVSquad

This is the full version of my interview with Kathy Griffin, for those who clicked over from the "short" version. Again, Griffin started out by asking me a question.

So is this interview going to run anywhere or is this just for your personal collection?

It's going to run on TVSquad, AOL's TV blog.

You know what? I have an exciting announcement. By the way, I'm looking at it myself, I knew, but it was officially announced today. I am hosting the Shmemmys this year. Now if you recall, two years ago when I won a Creative Arts Emmy, I got in a little trouble for telling Jesus to suck it. And now, two years later, when The D-List has its highest ratings ever, they want me to host. And that is what I love about Hollywood.

For four seasons on Bravo, Kathy Griffin has been trying to crawl her way off of what she called "The D-List," taking humiliating gigs and opening up a lot of her personal life to the cameras to try to get some attention. Truthfully, though, Griffin has been off of the D-List for quite some time, which makes tonight's season five premiere of My Life on the D-List (8 PM, Bravo) a bit puzzling. What list is she on now?

Griffin has now won two Emmys for the D-List, had a string of popular stand-up specials on Bravo, and her comedy album For Your Consideration, was nominated for a Grammy this year (she lost to George Carlin's It's Bad For Ya). And this season features appearances by Paris Hilton, Rosie O'Donnell, T.I., Bette Midler, Lily Tomlin, and Christina Aguilera - quite a cast for someone supposedly fighting obscurity. Plus, her book Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin, hits stores in September on Ballantine Books.

Movie actors are a unique bunch of characters in Hollywood. Adept at script memorization, method acting, and being snobby little princesses (the males included), they are somewhat limited in their performance venues. They can switch pretty easily and thrive in theater productions because most of them began their acting lives on the stage in front of adoring audiences. Decades ago they could also do radio pretty easily; most likely because they could read right from the script and no one listening would know any different.

Television? Well, that's a whole different loaf a bread! For some reason, big-named movie stars with their Oscars and Golden Globes just tank when they decide to jump to the small screen. Their failures could be due to the show they've decided to star in, who they play on the show, or the fact that they are catering to a different audience than film-goers. Whatever the reason, some of Hollywood's most famous film stars had some famously big television flops. Here are but a few of them to digest.

If you've ever seen Bette Midler on stage in concert or on one of her TV specials -- when they used to really do musical specials that were more than just filmed concerts -- you know that The Divine Miss M knows how to put on quite a show. There are songs, dancers, hula skirts, motorized wheelchairs, weepy ballads, clackers, Soph jokes and ukuleles. And the music is all live!

Currently, Bette's encamped at Caesar's Palace doing The Showgirl Must Go On. Talking about state of today's divas and referred to The Buggles song "Video Killed the Radio Star" to take a broad shot as MTV. No, she wasn't turning all prudish and complaining about the morality of MTV. No way.

Lately, the only Katie Couric most people have been seeing is the one that's depicted in the picture to the right: serious, sober, possessing whatever gravitas she can muster in her role as anchor of the CBS Evening News. But where can you see the goofy Katie, the one that people came to know -- and some got sick of -- for fifteen years on the Today show?

Why, on YouTube, of course! In fact, Katie has her very own page on the leading video sharing site, where she posts extended Evening News interviews and behind-the-scene footage. The behind-the-scenes stuff is where you see Katie at her most impish, doing things like snapping Larry King's suspenders as he leads her to the set of his show, singing with Bette Midler, and meeting with mommy bloggers in her office (check out the huge Warhol-esque portrait of herself she has hanging near her desk!).

It must have been hard to put a set together for a show like The Tonight Show. It's not the type of show you can do by season (way too many episodes), and Johnny Carson was host for 30 years (1962-92). A set like this is bound to disappoint some fans. But you know what? The set is just individual DVDs that have already been released in another form, and now they're packaging them under the Definitive DVD Collection title. That might tick off some fans who already bought the discs, but the set is well-done and has a variety of material to recommend it.

Well, the new Today Show host has officially had her most embarrassing moment on the show, on the annual Halloween show.

Of course, I'm not sure what's more embarrassing, the fact that Vieira got stuck in a giant clam that was supposed to come out from behind a glittery curtain (you can see the stagehands trying to pull the clam out from behind the curtain) or the fact that Vieira decided, for some reason, to dress like...Bette Midler??

You get to see Matt Lauer dressed as Jack Sparrow and Al Roker as that squidface (?) thing from The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Natalie Morales was Madonna, and Ann Curry was a very annoying Cher. Click here, then click on "Video: Today crew reveals costumes."

[via TV Newser]