Television: Dick Cavett: The Art of Show and Tell

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Many of his fans clearly do delight in the absence of jackass antics on the show. His nightly 90 minutes of generally intelligent conversation may not really be a cause for soul searching: they assume the shape of an intellectual peak partly because the rest of the TV schedule is so flat. Cavett himself has at times fumbled badly, by letting his guests run away with the show, by standing too much in awe of their prestige, or by being unprepared. He can also be a little less than sophisticated when he feels the spirit. Radical Jerry Rubin moved him to say "Politics bores the ass off me." He once cut off an LSD sales pitch from Timothy Leary with "You're full of crap."

There are times when Cavett envisions taking over The Tonight Show if Johnny Carson should ever retire. Then there are occasions when Dick feels like buying a long-term Eurailpass to oblivion. Running his show, he says, "is really like an actor being in repertory but where in one day—one performance—you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy. It's a satisfaction in one way in that you get to use all the arrows in your quiver, or strings in your bow, or bats in your belfry. But it's also very wearing. Your transmission begins to wear out from all that shifting."

Is it really that difficult? It doesn't appear to be. In fact, it looks like a snap. But then how does one know until one has tried? One did: see following story.