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On Friday nights,\u00a0IndieWire After Dark<\/a>\u00a0honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with\u00a0midnight movies<\/a>\u00a0from any moment in\u00a0film<\/a>\u00a0history.<\/p>\n First, the\u00a0BAIT: a weird genre pick, and why we\u2019re exploring its specific niche\u00a0right now.\u00a0Then, the\u00a0BITE: a spoiler-filled answer to the all-important question,\u00a0\u201cIs this old cult film actually worth recommending?\u201d<\/p>\n The Bait: That Time I Bombed Standing in for Stephen Colbert<\/p>\n For reasons I won\u2019t speculate about in print, the complete July 31, 2017 episode of \u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert<\/a>\u201d is no longer available on Paramount+. That\u2019s a shame, because it\u2019s our pick for this week\u2019s After Dark, and the only time I ever performed on the Ed Sullivan stage\u2026\u00a0and bombed. Badly.\u00a0<\/p>\n At least, that\u2019s how I felt then. I was an intern during \u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert\u201d<\/a> Season 2, moving from Atlanta to Manhattan for the job immediately after graduating from college. Nearly a decade later, I still don\u2019t think any professional call has made me happier than learning I got that internship. New York represented everything I\u2019d imagined adulthood could be and more. Late night television felt not just impossibly glamorous but also casually cool. Plus, the Ed Sullivan stage itself was sacred ground.<\/p>\n An excuse to walk the same hallways David Letterman once haunted, that summer brought out a level of ambition and desperation in me so powerful, I routinely became a caricature of myself. Yes, long before I was an effortlessly chic indie film critic and reporter in Los Angeles, I was essentially a post-graduate Tracy Flick looking for any and all \u201cLate Show\u201d odd jobs. I volunteered for every task I could find, and even engineered several of my own \u2014\u00a0reorganizing closets, offering my tech services, and generally behaving like someone Stephen probably shouldn\u2019t let follow him home. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n Nobody required that intensity of me, and in hindsight, no full-time staffers were particularly demanding of my intern class. Still, any live performance environment \u2014\u00a0particularly one that satirizes politics \u2014\u00a0can grow tense, and I was terrified of screwing up. That\u2019s why I was already running on fumes when I got called downstairs from the production offices for a mysterious assignment inside the main theater.<\/p>\n The daily \u201cLate Show\u201d workplace and actual Ed Sullivan stage operated as largely separate worlds when I was there, and after an incident involving a high-profile band manager (whose identity will remain buried in the NDA I probably signed while onboarding), the interns weren\u2019t exactly encouraged to wander around the set. That made any excuse to enter the auditorium special, and I needed to feel special.\u00a0<\/p>\n That day, Colbert wasn\u2019t onstage. Instead, there was a mostly empty theater and a replica set from Colbert\u2019s earlier sketch series, \u201cExit 57.\u201d He made that scripted show even before \u201cThe Colbert Report,\u201d and guest Matthew McConaughey had apparently requested they recreate one of his favorite bits from it as part of his upcoming appearance on \u201cThe Late Show.\u201d Another intern and I were handed scripts and asked to stand in for the performers while various departments worked out the segment\u2019s logistics.<\/p>\n As the crew rehearsed camera moves, prop placement, and blocking, my anxiety nearly bubbled over. The scene took place in the cramped office of a top news editor (Colbert\/me), where he was confronted by an angry weatherman (Mitch Rouse<\/a>\/McConaughey\/intern No. 2) who was upset that his most recent forecast had been sensationalized in the paper\u2019s latest edition.\u00a0It\u2019s a funny idea in theory, but reading directly from the page, every joke we tried landed with a thud. My fellow intern and I weren\u2019t being recorded, and no one expected us to be funny. But I remember feeling crushed that we hadn\u2019t torn the house down.<\/p>\n At 21, I wanted so badly to belong inside the Ed Sullivan Theater that even bombing during a fake rehearsal for an audience that wasn\u2019t there felt like a professional catastrophe. Leaving the stage, I remember trying not to cry and wondering if Colbert could even make the scene funny. That night, he and McConaughey hit the material full force and their fans filled the room with laughter (but I\u2019ll admit, even watching the clip on YouTube now, I\u2019m still a little mystified by the sketch\u2019s absurdist setup.)<\/p>\n The irony is that one of my favorite things about working at \u201cThe Late Show\u201d was watching Colbert himself finesse jokes that, for whatever reason, weren\u2019t working. I\u2019d arrived at the Ed Sullivan Theater as more of a Letterman freak than a Comedy Central aficionado, but seeing Colbert rewrite and refine material during rehearsals permanently changed how I thought about the precision of timing and language in storytelling. One of Colbert\u2019s assistants once said she thought he was a \u201cgenius.\u201d Watching him adjust pacing, sharpen punchlines, and reshape segments in real time made me certain he was.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert\u201d also taught me something else. As much as I admired production, I didn\u2019t actually want to spend my career making late night television. I wanted to write about TV<\/a> and movies, and possibly do interviews of my own. By the end of my internship, I\u2019d been hired elsewhere in the building to work on Showtime\u2019s \u201cOur Cartoon President\u201d (another Colbert-produced project that\u2019s even harder to see than my long-lost episode of \u201cThe Late Show\u201d). But the more time I spent watching how both series got made, the more fascinated I became with the people behind them.<\/p>\n Late night programming has been magical for decades because it makes every evening on planet Earth feel like a sleepover. Looking back now, I only wish I\u2019d enjoyed actually being inside that theater more completely in the moment. \u201cThe Late Show\u201d felt like an exclusive club that\u00a0I just had to get into \u2014 making even the fun assignments, like standing in for a silly acting joke, skew slightly existential back then. <\/p>\n Years later, whenever my new role in the entertainment world felt difficult, I maintained a private fantasy. One day, I told myself, I\u2019d return to the Ed Sullivan\u2026 as a guest. Colbert would sit down across from me at his real desk, and we\u2019d talk about movies, politics, maybe both. And the best part? He would remember me. Not as a nervous intern who wouldn\u2019t stop stealing yogurt cups and notebooks, but as a witty conversationalist who band leader Jon Baptiste himself once called \u201cpretty funny\u201d long ago. \u00a0<\/p>\n Now, I find myself nostalgic for the version of me who really stood on that stage already feeling the draft of Colbert\u2019s absence.\u00a0Pop culture is always changing, and even now, it\u2019s not unusual for Hollywood institutions to disappear. But I\u2019m still heartbroken that \u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert\u201d is gone, as a show and a place. If CBS wants to remove the one episode I ever saw as \u201cmine\u201d from streaming, too? That\u2019s fine. We didn\u2019t deserve to spend our nights with the real king of comedy, anyway (that\u2019s the job of one Mrs. Evelyn Colbert, who, yes, smells really good<\/a> in person.) \u2014Alison Foreman<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The Bite: A Vital Blast From the (Not-Too Distant)\u00a0Past<\/p>\n Late night has long been the most ephemeral of art forms. Produced\u00a0rapidly\u00a0and in response to\u00a0breaking headlines,\u00a0for decades\u00a0talk shows built their\u00a0legacies\u00a0on hundreds and thousands of episodes, rather than\u00a0the strength of one specific standout installment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The emergence of the internet and digital avenues\u00a0to preserve\u00a0art has made it easier for late\u00a0night to be\u00a0revisited, but\u00a0has conversely\u00a0reduced the average viewer\u2019s experience of these shows to bite-sized chunks. Nowadays, younger audiences\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0sit down to watch 30 minutes of \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live\u201d or\u00a0\u201cLate Night\u00a0with\u00a0Seth Meyers\u201d while eating dinner or folding laundry. They consume these shows via clips distributed to the\u00a0internet \u2014\u00a0with the highlights and most memorable moments chopped up and sent out to the online void in the hope something goes viral.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n With all episodes of \u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert\u201d removed from Paramount+ outside of the most recent season, you\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0watch the full July 31,\u00a02017\u00a0episode of the long-running talk show without\u00a0searching\u00a0very, very hard\u00a0in some illegal\u00a0places.\u00a0That said, you can go to \u201cThe Late Show\u00a0with Stephen Colbert\u201d YouTube page and crawl through\u00a0its\u00a0archives\u00a0for the six clips that have been uploaded.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0a\u00a0viewing experience\u00a0that\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0really capture what makes late night valuable,\u00a0the sweat and effort that goes into producing\u00a0an hour of comedy and conversations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, watching fragments of this specific episode proved an enjoyable blast from a not\u00a0too-distant\u00a0but somehow\u00a0very different\u00a0past. If this is a slightly offbeat choice for a midnight movie column,\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0something to be said about the surreality of viewing such an immediate and reactive artform from\u00a0nearly 10\u00a0years of distance. Does anybody think much about Anthony Scaramucci anymore? I had totally forgotten about the very brief tenure of the White House Chief of Staff, who lasted just\u00a010 days\u00a0at the job in 2017. But in this episode, which premiered shortly after his dismissal, it\u2019s the breaking news of the moment: the opening skit<\/a> shows his nameplate on an office replaced by Ted Nugent, the Twitter logo, and \u201cVoices in my head,\u201d while Colbert\u2019s monologue is a light and cheerful roasting of \u201cthe Mooch,\u201d complete with a parody version of \u201cBohemian Rhapsody.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n To some extent, this\u00a0material reads a little\u00a0soft now, but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0also in its own way important that\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0preserved. Late night can offer a\u00a0valuable\u00a0window\u00a0and historical document of\u00a0what people were thinking during the first Trump administration, let alone the second. And with Colbert\u2019s\u00a0cancellation, it also serves as a bitter reminder of how even mild satire can feel radical now.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n And it\u00a0goes without saying\u00a0that watching these clips\u00a0demonstrates\u00a0what made Colbert an excellent\u00a0late night\u00a0host for 11 years.\u00a0He\u2019s\u00a0quick on his feet in his monologue,\u00a0and warm, inquisitive, and natural in his interviews with Matthew McConaughey and Vanessa Bayer. Even if the projects the\u00a0guests are promoting are old news (I laughed out loud when I realized McConaughey was there\u00a0for\u00a0\u201cThe Dark Tower\u201d\u00a0press run),\u00a0it\u2019s a pleasant to slip into these conversations and see a\u00a0seasoned pro guide an interview properly.\u00a0<\/p>\n With \u201cThe Late Show\u201d\u00a0over after\u00a0a 33-year-run,\u00a0late night feels like a nearly dead art form, but crawling through Colbert\u2019s YouTube page reveals plenty of jewels.\u00a0Take the time to go through and see why he\u2019s amazing, and why late night is still vital \u2014 for however long Paramount lets it stay up. \u2014Wilson Chapman<\/p>\n \u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert\u201d Season 11 is now streaming on Paramount+. <\/p>\n Read more installments of After Dark, IndieWire\u2019s midnight movie club:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday nights,\u00a0IndieWire After Dark\u00a0honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with\u00a0midnight movies\u00a0from any moment in\u00a0film\u00a0history. First, the\u00a0BAIT:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,6713,348],"class_list":["post-703336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"LONG](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/TCDLOST_ZX010.jpg\")
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<\/a> <\/p>\n![\"THE](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/TCDLASH_EC201.jpg\")
Stephen King and Stephen Colbert on \u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert\u201d (Season 1, aired 2015)\u00a9CBS\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"LATE](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/TCDLASH_EC156.jpg\")
\u201cThe Late Show with David Letterman\u201d (Season 22, aired 2015)\u00a9CBS\/Courtesy Everett Collection \/ Everett Collection<\/p>\n