Jimmy Kimmel’s trusty laptop saved last night’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” from disaster.
The talk-show host recorded last night’s entire show on his MacBook computer after a partial power outage snuffed out the show’s nerve center — leaving the star’s studio with lights, but no cameras to record the show.
“It was basically a show about a man and his laptop,” says “JKL” executive producer Jill Leiderman. “Because we’d made a commitment to the studio audience and our guests, we wanted to do everything we could to get the show on its feet — and Jimmy found the best way to do that.”
The calamity of errors began Monday night, when the show was set to air with guests Seth Rogen, “Wipeout” host John Henson and country star Dierks Bentley.
About an hour before airtime, the power outage knocked the show’s control room, broadcast transmission center and tape operations area offline.
“It was a partial outage so we still had lights in the studio . . . we had an entire [studio] audience amped up and ready, but we had no cameras or the ability to play back clips for Jimmy’s monologue or for the ‘Green Hornet’ trailer,” which Rogan stars in, Leiderman said.
So she went up to Kimmel’s office to tell him what was happening, then went back down to the control room, where engineers were going to try to divert power from elsewhere on the lot into the “JKL” studio.
“Then I called Jimmy to tell him we had to wait for full power or run a standby show, and he hung up the phone, grabbed his computer and shot his own show on his Webcam,” she says.
“He was resourceful and creative and shot all six acts on his laptop using MacBook Photo Booth.”
Leiderman says the studio audience was told the show was having “technical issues” and was surprised to see Kimmel come out with his computer and start “taping” the show himself.
“In between each time he paused the program, our senior IT specialist grabbed the laptop, copied the footage and uploaded it and transferred it to our editors,” says Leiderman.
“JKL” airs the same day it’s taped, but Monday’s snafu meant that a repeat, which was originally supposed to air last night, aired that night instead.
And Leiderman says that while last night’s show certainly looked different, that’s what made it all-the-more special and quirky.
“It was incredibly endearing and low-fi and was stripped down . . . it certainly wasn’t as polished and as seamless as a normal show,” she says.
“But Jimmy made an incredible show out of minimal technical resources.”