I had a revelation the other day while reading an interview in an American magazine between two chat-show hosts, the suave ’70s intellectual Dick Cavett and the cool Saturday Night Live veteran Jimmy Fallon. The dialogue featured this exchange:
JF: I don’t think people understand that you’re forced to have a conversation in a time constraint. They have six minutes. There’s a person behind them going, “Wrap it up.” So once a guest gets going on a story, it’s like, “Get off-stop your story!” I don’t know how to tell them.
DC: Your nails go into your palms. You know there are only fourteen seconds left, and they’re ending a sentence, and then they go, “And there are two reasons for that … ”
JF: There can’t be two! Let’s just stick with the one reason!
DC: How about half a reason?
JF: We’ll be right back with those two reasons! It’s just a tricky thing. I think you said in your book it’s like having a conversation with someone on the subway track when their train is coming.
DC: And it’s everything that’s opposed to real conversation. Most times you talk to people, you don’t have to worry they’re going to say a long sentence. And to the viewer, it looks like you have all the time in the world. They don’t see any pressures. It’s a tribute to the human brain that anyone is able to function out there on television in a talk situation that is entirely artificial.
Neither Cavett nor Fallon are parents, and it’s a shame – because they’d be excellent at the art of dad conversation. Replace the rambling celebrity with the schoolyard gossip. Then swap that hypothetical subway train, or the producer with his eye on the clock, with a newly toilet-trained toddler crossing his legs. Or a crawling baby heading for the stairs. Or an eerie silence coming from the playroom… In fact, give me an evening in Fallon’s chair and I’ll show him a thing or two about “artificial” conversation. With one hand peeling off a clingy youngster. Naturally. Ellen Himelfarb is a freelance writer and mother of two. You can reach her at ellen.h@mac.com
