“I’m starting to sweat with the amount of info you’ve got on me!”

December 29, 2019 1:49 AM

Brian Linehan was a Canadian celebrity interviewer known for his exhaustive pre-interview research. Perhaps some may only remember him from the SCTV parody interpretation, "Brock" Linehan, performed by Martin Short.

"Brian was not only the best at what he did, but he was the last at what he did, because today there are no job openings with that job description. Nobody wants a well informed, intelligent interviewer who can talk to somebody for half an hour or an hour."
- Roger Ebert

After his death in 2004, it became difficult to find his thousands of hours of interviews fom his City Lights (1973-1988) and Linehan (1996-1998) television shows. However, in 2015, The Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation signed a deal with Reelin' In The Years Productions to make his work available again with licensing proceeds benefitting the training and promotion of young actors.

Here are just a few of Brian Linehan's classic interviews:

[Rabbit Hole Warning]

Ella Fitzgerald (1974)
Richard Dreyfuss (1974)
Clint Eastwood (1974)
Sammy Cahn (1975)
John Frankenheimer (1975)
Richard Pryor (1976)
Robert Evans (1977)
Frank Capra (1977)
Martin Short (1977)
Peter Sellers (1978)
John Travolta (1978)
Anthony Hopkins (1978)
Farah Fawcett (1979)
Arnold Schwarzenegger (1979)
Carrie Fisher (1980)
Sissy Spacek (1980)
Steven Spielberg (1982)
Barbra Streisand (1983)
Eddie Murphy (1983)
Jim Carrey (1983)
Robert Duvall (1983)
Ian McKellen (1984)
Tom Hanks (1984)
Robin Williams (1984)
Steve Martin (1984)
Rob Lowe (1985)
John Candy (1986)
David Lynch (1986)
Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon (1987)
Oprah Winfrey (1988)
River Phoenix (1988)
Dustin Hoffman (1988)
Spike Lee (1989)
Tim Burton (1996)
Courtney Love (1997)
James Cameron (1997)
Martin Scorcese (1997)

posted by fairmettle (11 comments total)

I guess Greg Jackson knew a good thing to copy on the old CBS Cable when he saw it.
posted by zaixfeep at 3:18 AM on December 29, 2019

I loved his earlier interviews. It really was unusual at the time to have 30 or 60 minute interviews with just one guest. He had his own style but people appreciated being interviewed by someone who actually knew their work.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 7:04 AM on December 29, 2019 [3 favorites]

Watch the first couple of minutes of the Martin Short parody.....then watch the opening minute or so of the Peter Sellers interview.
posted by gimonca at 7:38 AM on December 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

Listening to him talk to Anthony Hopkins, there's a careful, precise drawl in Linehan's voice that reminds one so much of Hannibal Lecter, it's actually shocking to close your eyes and listen to.
posted by mittens at 7:40 AM on December 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

Michael Silverblatt (host of Bookworm on KCRW), in a Believer Mag interview about interviewing writers:

"I never want a fight. I just don’t have the human meat to want to engage in some kind of gladiatorship on the air. I don’t like hearing it either, and I hear it plenty. It’s almost all you hear, but it always embarrasses me because when people are fighting they say things they don’t mean. I want people to say things they mean, and I want them to make meaning in the course of the conversation. I like significance. I like resonant significance, and I don’t like snap or flash judgments. What’s more, 99.5 percent of my guests are not criminals or politicians. They’re not people who’ve committed crimes or disappointed public trust. They don’t need to be interrogated. They need to be taken on a beautiful walk or ramble."
posted by oulipian at 8:13 AM on December 29, 2019 [4 favorites]

I really came to like Brian Linehan as a film-obsessed teenager, but his manner is a kind of classic Toronto-based intellectual that takes a bit of time to get over.

I came to like it at the time because, as an audience member, his rambles are also informational, because they're accurate, and they push sort of interview-and-junket-weary celebrities into a different conversation. Remember that at the time he was forming his style, this was not an era of Internet research, on-demand video, or social media. Getting that amount of thought and context was pretty nice. I remember my parents letting me watch the Carrie Fisher interview and that he asked her about her writing and that made a big impression on me.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:23 AM on December 29, 2019 [5 favorites]

The American equivalent was Dick Cavett, who was a brilliant, exquisitely prepared, empathetic interviewer whom I still miss.
posted by PhineasGage at 8:34 AM on December 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

Thank you for the links, so interesting, thank you!
posted by Meatbomb at 10:47 AM on December 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

As much as his "Toronto intellectual" demeanor (what I'd now call "NPR delivery") was a bit eyerolly for me back when I was too cool for that, I still always loved how well-prepared he was, and how in almost every interview he asked something that the interviewee hadn't been asked before. You can see the moment in almost every interview where the interviewee suddenly realizes this isn't a typical junket interview, and becomes actually intrigued by talking about something that actually matters to them.

He really was incredibly good at his job.
posted by biscotti at 5:49 AM on December 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

The American equivalent was Dick Cavett, who was a brilliant, exquisitely prepared, empathetic interviewer whom I still miss.

You scared me there for a moment with your use of the past tense!

Fortunately, Mr. Cavett is still with us. Here he is reading the poem "So This Is Nebraska" earlier this year, and from last year, his thoughts on "What Talk Shows Are Doing Wrong These Days".
posted by fairmettle at 12:06 AM on December 31, 2019 [3 favorites]

Dick Cavett is more like the American Peter Gzowski, I think.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:42 AM on December 31, 2019 [1 favorite]