Here’s a roundup of the guests that graced the couch on the Tavis Smiley set in September 2012.
Coming on the heels of the big presidential election, we had some political guests and some actors who commented on politics as well.
From actors, to TV hosts, musicians and actors-turned-teachers, we had them all. Check out the Seen & Heard gallery below, featuring guitarist Ry Cooder; singer-songwriters Dwight Yoakam and Wyclef Jean; journalist Hedrick Smith and Washington Post managing editor, Chris Cillizza; actors Jeremy Irons, Richard Gere, Jamie Lee Curtis, Penny Marshall and Elizabeth Banks; TV host Iyanla Vanzant; author Salman Rushdie; and actor-turned-teacher, Tony Danza.
All images by Van Evers, Tavis Smiley Media, Inc.
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- ‘Martin Luther King, I remember in a speech he said, ‘If you can do something, do it,’ in times of crisis, which this is. If you can write a speech, write a book, sing a song, anything, do it. Don’t just sit there.’ – Guitarist Ry Cooder, on the need to be proactive, particularly in politics
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- ‘L.A. is infectious. Once you’re here for very long, it’s a weightier place than what people realize, too.’ – Singer-songwriter Dwight Yoakam, on how he was drawn to Los Angeles, the place he called home for the last 30 years
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- ‘…after that experience I understood the importance of life past death. Before that, I didn’t get that. Moving forward, I just, sometimes, blunt honesty is going to hurt a group of people, including myself, including a lot of others. But history will tell a story if you don’t tell it yourself, and as much as we give life value is as quick as we will leave Earth.’ – Singer-songwriter-activist Wyclef Jean, on his firsthand experience of the devastation in Haiti and his memoir
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- ‘Abraham Lincoln said, ‘A house divided cannot stand.’ We’re divided by money, power. We’ve stopped thinking of America as a family. We’re in this together...We’ve got to bring it back home.’ - Journalist-producer Hedrick Smith, on America’s need for unity
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- ‘…ultimately, the campaign is the construct of the candidate…The candidate should be the person deciding on what the message of the day is…I don’t think you can say, ‘Well, the candidate’s good but the campaign’s bad.’ If one is good, the other is typically good. If one is bad, the other is typically bad. They follow one another directly.’ – 'The Washington Post' managing editor, Chris Cillizza, on politics and the presidential election
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- ‘I’ve always thought of characters like advent calendars...you have all the little doors over the windows and every day you’re allowed to open one more as it gets towards Christmas and you see more and more about what’s inside that house. I try to let the audience do that with the character, so you keep some things in and slowly let them out...’ – Actor Jeremy Irons, on being an enigmatic actor
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- ‘…friends of mine were calling me up very angry with me that they were rooting for this guy. Of course I was delighted by that, because it means you’re identifying. It’s holding up a mirror, somehow, that it’s not a sociopath; it’s us we’re watching.’ – Actor-activist Richard Gere, on the reactions from his friends about his role in ‘Arbitrage’
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- ‘I was stunned by this kid who basically was like fully owning her past…she was talking about her youth like she was talking about the good old days the way we talked about James Taylor back in the day or bell-bottoms or a shag or something that happened to you in the past. The idea that my daughter who was little, who was four, had a past was astonishing to me because she was so little to me. She was just a baby.’ – Actress-author Jamie Lee Curtis, on the inspiration for her children’s books
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- ‘He’s a great guy. I wouldn’t have a career without him. He told me go have lunch with this person; go take acting classes from this person. I said, ‘Mommy wants me to change my name.’ He said, ‘Why?’ ‘Because she doesn’t want me to embarrass the family.’ He said, ‘Don’t listen to her, she’s nuts.’ He called her nuts too. – Actress-director-producer Penny Marshall, on how her brother, Garry, jump started her career and their mutual feelings about their mother, as detailed in the memoir, ‘My Mother Was Nuts’
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- ‘It’s okay to lose. Losing teaches you something. Having to try and going through the trials and tribulations to actually overcome, to get there to win, to triumph, that’s what makes life interesting.’ – Actress-producer Elizabeth Banks, on the human tendency to be competitive, as seen in the film ‘Pitch Perfect’
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- ‘My vision is to elevate the consciousness of humanity one mind, one heart, one life, one spirit at a time…and I am not seeking anything but service to my creator. So as long as I stay committed to that vision, share the gifts God gave me, hey, I can’t fail. Failing, as Eminem said, is not an option.’ – TV show host Iyanla Vanzant, on her faith in OWN and her commitment to the network’s vision
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- ‘…my life kind of unfortunately became interesting, and there was clearly a story there which was oddly exciting…I knew that, which is why I kept a journal all those years, and I hoped – I wasn’t even sure that there would be a time when I’d be able to tell the story. There’s a bit of me that worried that something terrible would happen and I wouldn’t be the person telling the story.’ – Author Salman Rushdie, on writing autobiographies
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- ‘…the thing that really strikes me is the emotional grind...But what really happens is that now, you show the kid you care...Well, that gives the kid license to open up to you, and they tell you stories that’ll crush you. I’ve got a couple of stories in there that you go home and you have to sit and just veg to try to come down from this emotional stuff.’ – Actor Tony Danza, on teachers also playing the roles of mother, father, social worker, best friend and confidant
![‘…actually I bear none of [our country’s enemies] any ill will at all, in fact, including the people shooting at us…You know, in a war, you don’t kill individual, you know, pop-up targets. You kill brothers and fathers and mothers and daughters and that’s how the game works.’ – War veteran Brian Castner on his the lasting effects of war and his experience fighting in Iraq](http://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/files/2012/10/SH_BrianCastner.jpg)
![‘[People] think that just because they want Obama to win that they can’t pull him in the direction of tens of millions of desperately deprived and economically suppressed working Americans. Well, that means Obama can take all of you for granted, not even look back, because he knows he’s got your vote…Put demands on the people that you’re going to vote, and put demands on the people that you’re going to vote against.’ – Consumer advocate Ralph Nader on the need for voters to fully exercise their rights and demands on presidential candidates](http://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/files/2012/09/SH_RalphNader.jpg)
![‘To connect to voters in that way would be huge for [Mitt Romney], but he will not go there. He thinks this election is just about the economy. The economy, the economy, the economy.’ – CBN’s David Brody on the narrow scope of the Romney campaign](http://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/files/2012/09/SH_DavidBrody.jpg)
I say, Densmore, You’ve done it again! Wonderful, John. Keep the spirit alive…Thanks for the memories.
