Ellen DeGeneres gave the slightly pregnant Gwyneth Paltrow a pram on a Dec. 8 segment of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” She also teased her about “some horseplay with Coldplay.” (Coldplay is the band led by Chris Martin, whom Paltrow had secretly married a few days before the show was broadcast.)
On Dec. 10, DeGeneres asked Tom Cruise to re-create his famous air-guitar slide from the film “Risky Business,” and he did, pointing out that this time “I’m gonna leave my pants on.”
The next day DeGeneres had a request for the newly minted couple from the reality show “Average Joe”: “Would y’all make out for us right now?”
Then she ended the week drinking champagne with Diane Keaton, who was promoting her film “Something’s Gotta Give.” “We figured if we got you likkered up enough,” DeGeneres said, “you’d do that nude scene here.”
DeGeneres, 45, is an expert at getting to the heart of things, in a playful, good-natured way, and since the September premiere of her syndicated talk show, which WMAQ-Ch. 5 airs from 10-11 a.m. weekdays, that has made her a hot commodity in daytime television. Many stations haven’t seen daytime ratings like this since — you can probably guess — “The Rosie O’Donnell Show,” which ended last year. Both ratings and market share for “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” continue to climb. If there has been any discord in DeGeneres’ life recently, it has been the way her two cats reacted to Lucy, her mixed-breed puppy. They were “not thrilled with having dog energy” around the house, she said, “especially puppy energy.” So she had to find Lucy a new home.
Only one Ellen
In the 1980s, when DeGeneres was a struggling stand-up comic, she did a routine about a telephone call to heaven. “Hello, God?” she’d say. “It’s Ellen.” That used to be funny, but these days she almost doesn’t need a last name. There is only one Ellen, the one whose voice as a fish with short-term-memory problems stole the animated movie “Finding Nemo” earlier this year, whose book “The Funny Thing Is . . .” made it to the best-seller lists and whose talk-show personality has clicked big with a diverse array of audiences and guests.
Now, during the holidays, she is probably gaining more fans, people who are not usually at home during the day.
“Ellen is literally a comic genius,” said Jim Paratore, president of Telepictures Productions and executive vice president of Warner Brothers Domestic Television Distribution, producers of the show. He first thought of doing “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” he said, when he saw DeGeneres as a guest on O’Donnell’s show.
“She had the skills to do this kind of show,” Paratore said, naming intelligence and the ability to relate to people as the most important requirements. And just by the way, he reported, “she’s as happy as she’s ever been.”
DeGeneres confirmed that in a telephone interview from her office at the NBC studios in Burbank, Calif.
“I’ve come from a place where there was so much criticism, so much negative stuff,” she said, adding that she really had thought her career might be over. “Now it seems like everything is so flattering and positive. I’m savoring this.”
DeGeneres’ life and career had looked like a train wreck for the last five or six years. After the most highly publicized coming out in modern history (the cover of Time, no less) in 1997, DeGeneres became a hero to gay men and lesbians, but soon lost her NBC sitcom “Ellen” and then her lover, the actress Anne Heche. A second sitcom, “The Ellen Show” on CBS, came and went with a blink of an eye in 2001.
Career strategy
So it is unlikely that DeGeneres’ current success is the culmination of some carefully planned career strategy.
“It’s interesting, you try to plan every step when you have a career,” she said. “There is no controlling it. To think that we’re ever controlling anything is just ridiculous.”
Well, maybe just the opening monologues.
“I only watch MTV when I work out,” DeGeneres tells the audience. “And I haven’t worked out since — well, Olivia Newton-John was on.”
In a softer moment, she says, “Isn’t that what life is? It’s memories.” Then, as sentimental applause begins, “Because without memories, how can your therapist help you?”
She doesn’t understand why anyone would bother making the bed, since you’re just going to get right back in it. But, she concedes, “if you’re gonna wash the sheets, you should take them off the bed.” Then she adds, “I learned that the hard way.”
She continues to discuss the urgent issues of the day: why 8- to 12-cup coffee makers yield only two cups; why pears are sold in fishnet (maybe to make them sexy, even “if you’re not normally attracted to fruit”); how to communicate with a man in a reindeer suit; the prevalence of explicit sex in movies (she assures viewers that in “Finding Nemo” there are “no spawning scenes”); wearing denim with denim; the unexplained unpopularity of paprika as a holiday gift; and appropriate occasions for wearing a tiara.
“The Ellen DeGeneres Show” is not a brave reinvention of the daytime talk-show form. It presents the usual product plugs, product giveaways, audience games, musical segments, hip but cheerful musical sidekick (Tony Okungbowa, a British disc jockey), on-camera bits for personable young staff employees and the occasional exercise or cooking segment. Not to mention that audience members do seem to get inordinately excited when they learn that they are getting a free “Freaky Friday” DVD. But maybe the form doesn’t need reinventing.
DeGeneres prefers not to analyze the show’s success. “I don’t want to dissect it,” she said. In the age of TiVo, VCRs and DVDs, she believes, if there is a good show on the air, people will find it. “And there’s a large group of thinking people out there who want to be challenged.”
