Stephen Colbert, page 2
The next time the audience sees Colbert, it is on its feet, cheering, as he lopes in from the wings of the stage just as on television, looking, between his conservative dark suit and his huge grin, “like a gleeful bank manager who's just won the lottery or possibly lost his mind.”8 He tosses his microphone high in the air like a cheerleader's baton, encourages the cheers, and the audience plays along, finally breaking into a rhythmic chant of “Stee-phen, Stee-phen, Stee-phen!” before calming down for the show to begin.
Tapings of some television shows can be deadly boring. There are takes and retakes, flubbed lines, messy camera angles. A half hour program can take over an hour to record. The Colbert Report is not one of those shows. What is seen on television is essentially identical to what the studio audience sees. There is not a lot of time for editing afterward; each night's live show must be ready for its television airing at 11:30 p.m. That evening, as Colbert finishes one particularly long, breathlessly rapid-fire monologue, he begins to crack up on camera. “That's a lot of words!” he says, recovering. As the crew looks through the tape to the point where he would like to start a second take, seated behind his desk Colbert mimics the sound of a tape recorder in rapid rewind. On the retake he also tweaks the segment's final joke. It is much funnier the second time through.9
Commercial breaks are busy times on the set. Writers huddle with Colbert, shuffling the papers of the script, pointing and whispering. Staffers escort guests to their seats and make them comfortable. Not a moment is wasted on this soundstage. At times like these, the studio audience sits forgotten. But at any time when Colbert the character is “on,” he occasionally tosses his audience a glance, a wink, a grin, a classic raised eyebrow. He is playing to them, and they are definitely not forgotten.
After all, it's his fans aka Colbert Nation who have gotten Colbert to where he is today.
NOTES
1. “The Eagle's Nest.” Wikiality, the Truthiness Encyclopedia. Web. 31 July 2011.
2. Rabin, Nathan. “Interview with Stephen Colbert from The Onion's AV Club.” Enter Tony's “Strangers with Candy Companion.” 26 Jan. 2006. Web. 31 July 2011.
3. Strauss, Neil. “The Subversive Joy of Stephen Colbert. (cover story).” Rolling Stone 1087 (2009): 56. MAS Ultra School Edition. EBSCO. Web. 13 Oct. 2011.
4. “ The Colbert Report' (2005) Soundtracks.” The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 08 Aug. 2011.
5. Edwards, Gavin. “Colbert Country.” Rolling Stone 986 (2005): 68. MAS Ultra School Edition. EBSCO. Web. 16 Oct. 2011.
6. The Colbert Report. New York. 13 July 2011. Performance.
7. The Colbert Report. New York. 13 July 2011.
8. Sternbergh, Adam. “Stephen Colbert has America by the ballots: The former Jon Stewart prot created an entire comic persona out of right-wing doublespeak, trampling the boundary between parody and politics. Which makes him the perfect spokesman for a political season in which everything is imploding.” New York 16 Oct. 2006: 22+. General OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010.
9. The Colbert Report. New York. 13 July 2011.
Chapter 2
BABY OF THE FAMILY
On May 13, 1964, the Colbert family of Charleston, South Carolina, welcomed baby Stephen Tyrone into the world. It may have been a portent of his future as a comedian with one finger on the pulse of the political scene that he was born, not in Charleston, but in Washington, D.C. Stephen's father, James, trained as an immunologist, was also vice president for academic affairs at the Medical University of South Carolina. His mother, Lorna, was a stay-at-home mom. The Colberts already had a big family of 10 children: Jimmy, Eddie, Mary, Billy, Margot, Tommy, Jay, Lulu, Paul, and Peter. Stephen, number 11, would be their final child. The family lived just across the harbor from Charleston proper, on James Island. The island is the site of Fort Johnson, where the first Confederate shots were fired on nearby Union-occupied Fort Sumter, marking the opening engagement of the Civil War. There is actually a section of the community that is called Secessionville.
Growing up on pleasant, suburban James Island, Colbert enjoyed the busy, bustling household that comes with being part of a large, unabashedly affectionate family in which he was known as The Prince. His sister Lulu compares having a baby Stephen in the house to getting a new doll.1 Colbert agrees. “I was very loved. My sisters like to say that they are surprised that I learned to walk and that my legs didn't become vestigial because I got carried around by them so much.”2 It would be easy for a child's personality to be lost among 12 other people, but Colbert had a special talent: he could make the people around him, especially his mother, laugh. He also thought he was good at making up stories, though his sisters and brothers would have disagreed. “You listen to his stories!” Lorna would admonish her older children. Dutifully, they humored their youngest brother.3 But in no way was Stephen the only talented member of the Colbert clan. While he definitely had competition when it came to storytelling, he found himself envying his older siblings for many things their senses of humor, their glorious singing voices. “I think my brothers and sisters are way funnier than I am and they think they're funnier than I am, too. Ask them, and they'll tell you. I wanted to tell stories like Ed, tell jokes like Billy, have a rapier wit like Jim, be quick like Mary, or sing like Margot.”4
The Colberts were, and are, a staunchly Irish American Catholic family, going to Mass every Sunday and observing religious rituals like Lent and confession. Colbert's first stage experience came early. While in kindergarten, he was in a Christmas pageant. And leave it to him to rewrite the Bible: he played a fourth Wise Man.5 When he was seven years old, he became an altar boy at the family's parish church. He continued to serve at Masses, weddings, and funerals for the next 11 years, until he went away to college. In some ways Colbert regretted missing out on the altar boy experience his older brothers had had, pre-Vatican II. When it was his time to serve, the parish had switched from traditional Latin to a guitar-playing folk Mass. “I really wanted to wear the black cassock with the white surplice over it because…you look like a mini-priest when you've got the cassock on,” he recalls. Instead, as an altar boy he wore a sort of monk's robe, complete with rope belt.6
His early upbringing also set the stage for the way Colbert now questions truth and authority. “I grew up in a family that valued intelligence,” he says.7 For some fiercely religious people, doubts are a sign that you don't truly believe. For the Colberts, doubting and inquiry were encouraged. Dr. Colbert raised his children to believe that asking questions, even about matters that are supposed to be accepted without question like religion is the only way to really understand your beliefs. Stephen and his siblings grew up aware that skepticism can be a healthy thing.
While he was still young, his parents discovered that Colbert had difficulty hearing out of his right ear. Depending on what source one believes, the problem was either a tumor (removed “with a melon baller,” adult Colbert has quipped)8 or complications from surgery for a perforated eardrum. Whatever the true cause, Colbert has no eardrum in his right ear and continues to be deaf on that side. The handicap has not affected his career. In fact, if he wants to he can turn his bad ear into a potential comic prop: he claims that he is able to twist that ear inside out, then pop it back into shape with a squint of his eye.9 The lack of an eardrum did, however, prevent him from participating in water sports as a child. He longed to learn to sail in a waterfront town renowned for its regattas and races. When he was 20 and fully healed, his mother did offer to pay for sailing lessons, but he did not actually get involved in the sport until he was in his 40s.10
Today, Colbert seldom discusses his childhood during interviews, and there is a reason. His earliest years were uneventful, nothing special; he was just the youngest kid in a big, Catholic, southern family, just another student at Stiles Point Elementary School. But when he was 10, tragedy struck, and the painful memory and its long-term effect is not something he chooses to reveal frequently.
September 11 is a day of sad remembrance for many Americans because of the events of 2001. But that date has marked a day of mourning for the Colbert family for a much, much longer time.
On the morning of September 11, 1974, Dr. Colbert and two of his sons, Peter and Paul, said good-bye to Lorna and 10-year-old Stephen and drove to the airport to catch a plane. The boys were on their way to the Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. Canterbury was, and still is, a highly regarded Catholic college preparatory boarding school. Peter and Paul, at ages 15 and 18, respectively, were the closest to their youngest brother in age, and he would miss their companionship while they were away at school. Dr. Colbert and the boys boarded the Eastern Airlines plane. The first leg of their journey was a short one, to Charlotte, North Carolina.
The weather in Charlotte was foggy, and the plane was using instrument guidance to come in for a landing. Meanwhile, the pilot and copilot were having a casual conversation, when they should have been watching their instruments more closely. Just a little over three miles short of the Charlotte runway, the DC-9 crashed in flames. Only a handful of the 82 passengers on board survived. James, Peter, and Paul Colbert were among the casualties. The crash sparked the Federal Aviation Administration to put the sterile cockpit rule into effect: once a plane has dropped below 10,000 feet, there is to be no frivolous, unnecessary conversation between the flight officers.11
In the blink of an eye, the big family Colbert had grown up in had been tragically reduced. It had lost its strong leader. And Colbert, just 10 years old, had lost his closest brothers. His other siblings were grown or away at university. At home, it was now just Stephen and his mother. Years later, in college, an acting professor would comment to Colbert that serious dramatic roles require the actor to tap into deep emotions, and he did not seem to be able to do this. In an almost casual way, he explained that it may have had something to do with the sudden deaths of his father and brothers and that, after the accident, alone with his mother, his “main mission became to make her laugh.”12 The professor had been completely unaware of the tragedy.
Stephen coped with the loss in his own way. He recalls returning home on the day of the funeral with a terrible headache. He secluded himself in his room and found a book to read quietly for the rest of the day. That set the pattern for the next five or six years of his life. He immersed himself in reading; his favorites were science fiction and fantasy novels like J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. (Since then, he has read LOTR 40 times and can quote extensive passages by heart. Faced with such proof of her husband's geek status, his wife has said, “How do you even know how to breed?”)13 The imaginative worlds of fantasy and sci-fi helped Colbert through that difficult time in his life. “It was a great escape. I'll think about anything you've got other than what there is.”14 Physically, he was present in his elementary and middle school classrooms. But school life, full of childhood rivalries and concerns about popularity and tests, seemed trivial to him. He had a personal knowledge of death that was much closer to home than that of most of his classmates. Colbert was very much in his own little world. “After they died, nothing, I was 10, you know? I was still in school. It was in elementary school. But nothing seemed that important to me. And so, I had immediately had sort of a, I won't say a cynical detachment from the world. But I would certainly say I was detached from what was normal behavior of children around me. It didn't make much sense. None of it seemed very important. And I think that, you know, feeds into a sense that acceptance, or blind acceptance of authority, is not easy for me.”15
Making his adjustment even more difficult, Lorna and her youngest son moved from the big family home on James Island to the city of Charleston.
In seventh grade, Colbert recalls being verbally bullied. Though he definitely liked girls, “I got called queer' a lot. Just sort of the word that got thrown as a weapon at people when I was a kid and just the most hurtful thing that, I think, the bullies could think of calling you.” But when the bullies used the same word against Pat, one of Colbert's friends, the tables turned: Pat announced that he was, indeed queer' and offered to kiss the bully to prove it. It defused the situation. And Colbert realized the power of words. “If you don't give power to the words that people throw at you to hurt you, they don't hurt you anymore and you actually have power over those people.”16
Grieving for his father and brother over many years, Colbert did not apply himself in school but got by on sheer intelligence. One of his friends from his teen years remembers him as “brilliant. He was always the smartest guy in the room, and he was always smart enough not to let you know he was the smartest guy in the room.”17 Colbert's older siblings had attended private secondary schools, and he would as well. When it came time for him to go to high school, he and his mother chose a highly respected all-male institution, Porter-Gaud School, in Charleston. True, its religious affiliation was Episcopalian rather than Catholic, but that was not a deterrent. Boarding school in general, and the Canterbury School in Connecticut in particular, was out of the question, after what had happened to his brothers. In high school, Colbert gradually began to emerge from the shell he had built around himself. In fact, during his senior year he was named class clown.18
Colbert does not have fond memories of his time at Porter-Gaud: “I had a very poor high school experience.” For instance, one of his teachers was jailed for molesting dozens of students over the years. The man was involved in the school's athletic program, and Colbert recalls a running sick joke among his fellow students: if a boy hit his head on the playing field, this coach would ice the student's groin. (Colbert, incidentally, was not among the school's star athletes.) When the extent of the teacher's abuse became public, the school's headmaster committed suicide. That sort of absurdity would eventually flavor one of Colbert's projects, the Comedy Central series Strangers with Candy.19
In high school Colbert turned his budding talent for writing into a subversive and romantic activity. When he learned that a girl he had a crush on was having difficulty with a teacher, he began writing her letters. In each, the offending teacher would suffer a horrible and violent, James Bondian demise. He wrote poetry, too just not for the girl. The snuff letters were reserved for her.20
In high school, his interest in science fiction and fantasy novels, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, led him to discover role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, which he started playing the very week it appeared in the Charleston area. He embraced the games wholeheartedly, even if the association with fellow players labeled him a geek. He still revels in his own geekdom, with a degree of pride. But his interest in role-playing opened up a new avenue for teenaged Colbert: drama. He has elaborated on the similarities between D&D and acting. “It's a fantasy role-playing game. If you're familiar with the works of Tolkien or any of the guys who wrote really good fantasy stuff, those worlds stood up. It's an opportunity to assume a persona. Who really wants to be themselves when they're teenagers? And you get to be heroic and have adventures. And it's an incredibly fun game. They have arcane rules and complex societies and they're open-ended and limitless, kind of like life. For somebody who eventually became an actor, it was interesting to have done that for so many years, because acting is role-playing. You assume a character, and you have to stay in them over years, and you create histories, and you apply your powers. It's good improvisation with agreed rules before you go in.”21
Or perhaps he inherited the acting bug from his mother, who had a youthful interest in theater but never pursued it. In any case, Colbert got himself involved in his school's dramatic productions. But his role preferences belied his future talent as a comedian. He tried out for, and won, straight dramatic lead roles (his first professional acting gig was in the title role in a serious play called The Leper), and that was the direction in which he thought his talent would take him.
In high school, Colbert also discovered that he had a gift for music. He had a good bass voice and sang in the school choir. In his four years at Porter-Gaud, the choir was invited to perform one of Gian Carlo Menotti's one-act children's operas, Martin's Lie, at the Spoleto Festival USA, an annual highlight of Charleston's rich cultural calendar. (No, Colbert did not sing the part of Martin, who is a boy soprano.) While he was not in any starring roles, Colbert was also involved in musical theater in high school. Robert Ivey was the ballet and theater director at Porter-Gaud School. He directed a production of Damn Yankees and recalls a teenage Colbert, dressed in a baseball uniform, singing in the chorus.22
Menotti was not all Colbert could sing. He had a taste for Mick Jagger, too. Colbert and some friends formed a band, which they called Shot in the Dark. While they were not officially a Rolling Stones cover band, Stones tunes were among their favorites. Colbert was, of course, the front man, parading about in a snug, Jaggeresque jersey. A big zero was displayed on the front of the shirt, Colbert on the back. The shirt was not a random choice; even though nearly a decade had passed since the deaths of his father and brothers, Colbert was still in his dark days. The jersey beloved by Shot in the Dark's lead singer had belonged to Peter, one of the boys who had died in the plane crash.23
