Zaller Interview Wishlist

by Garrett Hargrove

The Zaz’s Matt Zaller has proven he is willing to go that extra mile with his interviewees.  He made HUGE waves in the entertainment community by interviewing Matthew McConaughey… shirtless.  The entertainment world wants more of this.  Not specifically seeing more Zaller nipple, but more of Zaller going above and beyond the norm for groundbreaking interviews.  Here now, is my Zaller interview wishlist (with corresponding interview technique/gimmick):

• Christian Bale - Breaks the interview by threatening to have the cameraman fired for interrupting your comedy flow.  “Who told you it was OK to eat pop rocks whilest I be interviewin’!  Christ you’re an amateur!  Do you think I can properly interview Bruce Wayne if I keep hearin’ poppety-pop-pop coming from your candy?!?!  You’re unbelievable!  Are you a professional?!?!  I’m gonna <bad word> kick your <bad word> ass you <bad word> amateur!”
• Quentin Tarantino - Go on a long rambling diatribe and don’t let QT get a word in edgewise.  And do it on about 17 Red Bulls.
• Leonardo DiCaprio - Show off all of your Interviewing Award nominations, then try to keep your chin up and act like you’re not horribly pissed off that other journalists keep winning awards instead of you.
• Keanu Reeves - You do the entire interview without a single vocal inflection.
• The Guys Who Made Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Date Movie and Meet the Spartans - Just keep making pop culture references without being being remotely funny. Then every once in awhile kick them in the gonads.
• George Lucas - You have a long, brilliantly epic three part conversation.  You discuss every in and out of filmmaking.  You ask him insightful questions that change the way journalism is taught in schools.  Then you digitally edit that conversation, remove any sense of humanity from it, change who shot who a question first.  Then tack on three episodes of a bad kid’s show to the beginning of the original conversation.

Make it happen, Zaller!