http://www.youtube.com/wa...klcNEnwshM

HuMpThAnG said:

so, what´s the deal?

ahh the famous interview. I know I was very young then, but I remember people giving Arsenio shit for this interview. I think he was just real about how he felt about that fake ass Vanilla Ice.

missfee said:

there was nothing "real" about arsenio hall...did he clock his powertop eddie murphy for dragging mj out? nope...

i look at someone like letterman who handles these types of interviews with depth and skill and look at this interview and see...well, i don't know what i see...but halfway through the interview hall's body language changes from aggressor to bitch.

...oh yeah, ice looked, talked and and acted a fool too.

sosgemini said:

depth and skill? isnt letterman the one who basically clowned paris hilton off the stage?

TheBoyfromtheBand said:

when you are putting the weight of a nation's racism on someone's shoulders a bit more gravitas is called for IMHO. dave's shows after 9/11, his surgery and interviews following the iraq war, michael richards and oprah are examples of handling dead serious issues and light celeb scandals (richards and harpo) with much more weight then hall.

sosgemini said:

uhh letterman don't mean nothing to me, he's not a professional.

I lost any respect I had for Arsenio after seeing this. Entertainers have no responsibility to be "real" whatever the hell that really means... Arsenio's treating Vanilla Ice as if the guy's a member of the KKK or something...

missfee said:

and arsenio is?

I think Arsenio, handled this interview very well. He asked the questions that needed to be asked, and when Vanillia tried to get out of them, he continued to probe. I saw nothing in his Arsenio's body language that said, "I'm a bitch". During his time on the air, Aresnio, did what he had to do. If you wanna talk about interviews that got him in trouble, let's talk about the one that he did with Louis Farakahn. This is the one that really did him in and led to his show being pulled off the air, IMO.

shorttrini said:

what happened on that show?

Arsenio wasnt a bad interviewer he just really was a double standard at times. I remember when he had on "Dice" Clay and it was right around the time of Dice's breakthrough and platnum albums, and that obviously gave Arsenio ratings but Arsenio instead of doing a smart interview it was more like 60 minutes. He was asking questions like "dont you think your jokes offend women and gays" i mean talk about double standard, he hung with Eddie who had tons of jokes about gays, and it never came up on the show like that.

As far as interviewers for talk shows, i see Letterman really as the only good one, he's topical but also he makes you remember its his show, his house. I mean asking Paris Hilton jail questions after she came out of jail, may have offended some people, but why shouldnt it, he also spun it back to her as a positive experience but she was too dumb to realize it. The other interviewers dont really do that, Jay kind of does but steps away from too many things, Conan is just a clown and i dont really watch him for interviews, Craig Ferguson is cool but people cant understand him, Carson Daly shouldnt be employed and Jimmy Kimmel is the worst host of a show ever probably since that network let David Brenner have a talk show for a short period of time. Kimmel is terrible.

sosgemini said:

yup.

shorttrini said:

Exactly. It's easy to point and judge him when you aren't in his shoes.

missfee said:

you have to be kidding me...i can't think of anyone on this earth besides you whom would claim arsenio to be the better interviewer against letterman.

that's just silly.

sosgemini said:

Arsenio Hall a professional? Has anyone in here ever seen an episode of In Loving Color when Keenan Ivory Wayans would satire Arsenio? That there impersonation speaks volumes with how serious Arsenio Hall was taken.

FarrahMoan said:

If you didn't actually see his show, it's kinda inaccurate to form and post an opinion based strictly on an In Loving Color skit. When Hall took over for Joan Rivers, he was a breath of fresh air - when he got his own show, it was something to be proud of. In retrospect, it's easy to point out his inconsistencies and hypocrisy, but at the time, it was something to look forward to.

He was taken pretty seriously - even with that lame dog pound s**t...

Arsenio a professional? That ignorant fucker was a joke! He was a comedian and a bad one at that! Even as a teenager I would get uncomfortable watching him try to ask deep probing questions.

Both he and Robert Van Winkle come off appropriately idiotic in this interview.

I actually dont have a problem with him interviewing Ice that way, because thats the way he should have been interviewed, my problem was that Arsenio, was a constant double standard in every interview, whether it was the Dice interview and then his interviews with Eddie Murphy which totally contradicted himself, and tons of others, he just wasnt consistent for everyone. But i didnt care how he treated Ice, shoot, I mean i was cheering when Letterman got Timberlake all "pissed", you see you cant use media and then expect it not to use you, if Timberlake is gonna say shit like "i was smoking this and that" why shouldnt Letterman grill him on it and make him squirm a bit, why shouldnt Letterman ask him about the superbowl, im sure if he didnt everyone would say, damn dave how come you treated him with kid gloves, like how Leno interviews.

JesseDezz said:

I've seen the shows and most of them were ! But, they were entertaining. Just entertaining for mostly all of the wrong reasons. I actually sort of miss shows like that, though. Guilty pleasure, I suppose. Maybe that's only because of the era of music and other forms of culture that it had strongly reflected during the Late 80's/Early 90's. The performances on his show from Prince and many other artists were always the highlight of the show, though. No denying that.

The way Letterman handled Paris Hilton was classic. He takes digs, but doesn't get all super-serious and confrontational like Arsenio did with Mr. Ice. He does it with a sort of crankiness that's humorous in itself.

With the exception of the Hugh Grant interview, Leno never asks any hardball questions. He's sort of like Larry King and James Lipton in that regard. They mostly ask surface questions, nothing deep.

Conan 'O Brien is the worst, imho, for the way he constantly interrupts his guest in an attempt to be funny. You can almost see him straining to over talk his guest.

Daly and Kimmel - eh...

FarrahMoan said:

Yeah, he gave cats like Eric Gales network exposure and let a lot of musicians sit in with the band. I also like the way he would let the band get funky and jam as he would announce the guests.

That In Living Color skit was on the money, though

Yeah the great thing about Letterman also is the fact that he doesnt let the guest be bigger than him, people watch letterman and have stuck with him for his style and his humour and his ways of interviewing. Jay i always would be better than he is but he went the other way with his style, if you see Leno's early appearacnes on Dave's old show you see this guy could have been a tougher interviewer. I totally agree on the Conan point, his such a comedian that theres no need for guests, he really should just have a variety show, i have never come away from a conan show and said "wow did you see conans interview with..." because its not memorable, and Daly and Kimmel well no comment on that, it couldnt be worse, i mean i didnt like carson because he was always a fake to me, and then when he go his own show, i would tune in if he had someone i wanted to see, and this past september i saw him interview actress Sarah Shahi and i was like cool since no one had her on yet, but Carson did nothing but act like a total horny fuck who was trying to get laid, asked maybe one question and the rest was humour that national lampoon would say even sucked.

I acutally really enjoyed Arsenio's show a lot. It was fun and it was something new for late night television. His show was, at least in the beginning, cutting edge. He focused heavily on the musical guests also, which is something the other late night shows did not do. He fizzled out eventually but most things do over time. Give him some credit.
I am no fan of Vanilla Ice but it did seem like he only brought him on the show to try to punk him on TV because he thought that is what his 'public' would have wanted. One bad interview doesn't mean his whole show was crap.

shorttrini said:

Tell the TRUTH

Lets not 4get the intersting part here...

Barbara "Wicked Bitch Of The South, North, West, East And Every Direction" Walters did an interview with Minister Farrakhan in the SAME period, and her viewer ratings hit the roof.

Arsenio's show on the other hand was taken of the air FOR GOOD right after his interview with the minister; guilty by association, no matter how you put it

I think people here are taking shit and running with it like reading Arsenio body language whateva happend to enjoying an interview for what it is? Neither Arsenio nor Letterman make DEEP interviewees, both are equally tired and a step away from being "shock jocks", they weren't ment to be taken seriously to begin with, PLEASE!. The comparision is a fuckin' JOKE from the get-go. If you wanna compare a GOOD multi-dimensional TV host against Arsenio, you should've at least picked somebody like say Tavis Smiley or Charlie Rose. Even that is unfair because Arsenio himself doesn't take himself so seriously to be compared with Smiley or Rose.

Harlepolis said:

I never enjoyed his interviews. I just don't think he was very good at it, but I do love his first interview with Madonna because they were making each other uncomfortable and it made for good viewing. What was always good to me was his musical guests. He didn't allow lip syncing on his show and always asked them to perform live. I liked that much of it. That's also why I liked him as host of the VMA's.

His interviews, on the other hand, were embarrassing. It always seemed as if he were pretending to be a journalist.

lastdecember said:

Operation failed miserably!

He was outed, upstaged and OWNED by none other that Madonna who made a complete helpless bullied fool out of his ass in his OWN show.

No!

None of these so-called TV hosts owned their territory, NONE. The only person who demanded the guests as well as the audience's attention and respect was late Johnny Carson, the rest are just a bunch of self-important puppets.

sosgemini said:

Arsenio, was one of the first people to get The Minister on his show. At the time, this was not only ground breaking but, controversial. In that interview he also asked the questions that no one would dare asked. Not long after, his show was taken off the air. I miss his show. He had a lot of firsts.....Prince, Mariah, and other all made appearances on his show, before anybody elses.

RipHer2Shreds said:

Others might wanna disagree with you on this point he was considered a threat, point blank, lets call it what it is.

As for the pretence part, I understand what you're saying but people were the ones who took him seriously whereas he never did. He always presented this tongue-in-cheek vibe whenever he goes too deep into ?uestions, so I never really viewed it as pretence, just silly-ness.

shorttrini said:

I've been trying to find this interview in the net since god knows when.

I'm supriced it didn't hit daily motion/youtube yet.