Jimmy Kimmel to Play Leno?

Joe Cool · 05-25-2005, 02:56 AM

It looks like Jimmy Kimmel has been hired to play Jay Leno is the Michael Jackson trial re-enactments on the E! network. No I am not joking. Anyone else see this as a jab to Leno for beating him in the talk show ratings?

Quote:

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) The man himself would have had a nasty commute from Santa Maria, and had his own show to do this evening. Daniel Roebuck, who played him in the HBO movie "The Late Shift," has moved on to "Lost." And Joe Fatale, Little Jay Leno from "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," was presumably in New York.

So, when E! needed someone to play Jay Leno in its re-enactment of the Michael Jackson trial Tuesday (May 24), the role went to Jimmy Kimmel, who has a late-night show of his own (on ABC) and works less than four miles from the E! studios in Los Angeles.

For those of you who haven't watched the daily re-enactments, E! puts on a fairly serious affair, with Court TV's James Curtis hosting and legal analysts Rikki Klieman and Shawn Chapman Holley offering opinions. All the re-enactments are taken straight from trial transcripts.

Kimmel himself did a credible Leno, hitting the up-and-down voice inflections and head shakes of the "Tonight Show" host that you've seen other comics do. And with the prosthetic chin and gray wig, he looked enough like Leno to sell the impression too.

It was all fine and good and played as down the middle as a highway stripe. But still.

I have to believe that Kimmel saw the chance to play his late-night rival as a way to point out the absurdity of the spectacle surrounding the dead-serious allegations being aired in the case. I also now believe that if there has ever been a better argument for allowing cameras in courtrooms than these re-enactments, I have not heard it.

Early on in the re-enactment, the E! team talked about how excited they were to have an actual celebrity playing a role in their mirror trial, then projected their feelings onto the jurors who saw the real Leno. It gave me the sensation of being stuck on some weird media Mobius strip, where a comic who makes jokes about the case played another comic who makes jokes about the case and who plugged his own show before leaving the witness stand, which the E! host was forced to clarify wasn't an ad-lib on the first comic's part. And then there's the certainty that each comic will make jokes about their role or meta-role in the trial on their respective shows.

My head hurts.

Mr. Kennedy · 05-26-2005, 02:41 AM

I saw the re-enactment, it was really funny. I laughed my ass off at hearing that Leno actually plugged his show while on the witness stand.
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Joe Cool · 05-26-2005, 02:46 AM

What's sad is that Kimmel auditioned for this role. He actually went in and read for the part in front of casting people.

His show must be on it's way out and he's desperate for work. Otherwise why would he do this sort of thing?

Maybe he owed someone a favor? I dunno...

Jimmy Kimmel to Play Leno?

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