'Daily Show' goes to China. Really
"Our motto was 'Let's just go until they tell us to stop,' " says the show's Rob Riggle.
NEW YORK - Being a foreign correspondent for the fake news of
The Daily Show
usually amounts to standing in front of a video screen on the New York set, a few steps away from Jon Stewart's desk.
But for the Olympics, the show's Rob Riggle went to China. Really. His skewed travelogue unfolds this week on the Comedy Central hit.
That's when they find out whether they've created any international incidents.
"It was an opportunity to go over to China and do something that has probably not been done in the past - go to China and do some comedy," said Riggle, who served in Afghanistan with the Marines and is still on reserve.
Riggle, who last year traveled to Iraq for "Operation Silent Thunder," started planning by applying in January for a journalist's visa. With the intercession of MTV executives in China, he got the go-ahead less than 24 hours before his plane was due to leave on July 29.
"There were days when we got promising news and days when we got not-so-encouraging news," said Glenn Clements, field producer and Riggle's traveling partner. "But we decided to stick it out until the end, and it paid off."
Trying to explain what
The Daily Show
did would have been difficult. They just delivered a list of places where they planned to do filming.
They were able to film segments on the Great Wall of China and within Tiananmen Square, the latter historic site the focus of debates with Chinese authorities over access.
"Our motto was 'Let's just go until they tell us to stop,' " Riggle said.
Riggle and his crew were followed almost everywhere by Chinese police, although only once was a hand placed over a camera lens and they were told to go away. It was a moment the comedy writers probably couldn't have made up: They were filming the outside of a 7-Eleven convenience store.
Other times when police expressed concern about what the crew was doing, Clements essentially hid behind the language barrier.
When they stopped on the street to do some filming, crowds would immediately form around them, attracting more police.
But any time Clement's crew tried turning the camera around and speaking to Chinese citizens, the crowds would scatter. They would literally turn and run away, Riggle said. As a result, only a foreign journalist and a Chinese newscaster were interviewed for the series.
Even for an ex-Marine, the police-state atmosphere was intimidating.
"There were moments where you were just being watched very closely," he said. "We still did what we wanted to do, but I was hurrying it up, saying 'Come on, come on, let's go.' It was a subconscious thing."
Riggle also had the somewhat unexpected experience of being recognized on the street. Twice. One young Asian couple came up and said how much they enjoyed watching him on Stewart's show, leading him to wonder where they had seen it.
His first segment, today, will be a mock "up close and personal" look at Riggle and his journey to the Olympics. They also plan a tongue-in-cheek look at the exotic and mysterious places in China, hence the trips to 7-Eleven and Western-style shopping malls.
The team will also take some shots at China's authoritarian government and a critical look at its history, much the same way as
The Daily Show
satirizes the U.S. government, Clements said. The four segments, prepared over the weekend between bouts of jet lag, is called "Rob Riggle: Chasing the Dragon."
"Jon always has a very good sense of what's in good taste and bad," he said, "and we'll try to stay within the bounds of what we think is good taste. We didn't go in there to make fun of the Chinese people at all."