Kimmel offers insights into guests, late-night show

In front of a DePauw University Ubben Lecture crowd of some 1,200 students, friends and faculty Saturday night at Kresge Auditorium in the Green Center for Performing Arts, comic and TV host Jimmy Kimmel (right) answers questions from moderator Tom Chiarella. Kimmel and Chiarella, who interviewed the popular TV host for Esquire magazine earlier this year, engaged in conversation for some 30 minutes before DePauw students asked questions and interacted with the host and executive producer of ABC television's "Jimmy Kimmel Live." (Courtesy photo DEPAUW UNIVERSITY)

Besides sharing his humor and college insights with a DePauw University audience Saturday night, Jimmy Kimmel offered a glimpse at what makes his popular late-night show tick.

Like Guillermo Rodriguez, who basically has become Kimmel's Latino version of David Letterman's old Larry "Bud" Melman character.

Before finding late-night fame, Guillermo was a studio parking lot attendant, Kimmel said, who was known to sleep in the cars while the ABC show was unfolding.

One night, he was tricked into sleeping in Kimmel's new car without knowing it belonged to the comic host, Kimmel said.

"Most places that kind of thing gets you fired," Kimmel suggested, "but not with us."

Instead Kimmel made Guillermo a celebrity of sorts, putting him in a bit the next day where he was supposedly Michael Jackson's chef. He was a natural, funny and innocent.

"Guillermo is a genuinely funny guy," Kimmel said, adding that he misses that his sidekick no longer calls him "Yim-ee" as he did in the early days.

Like Letterman's Melman before him, Guillermo is often sent out to do interviews without full knowledge of who or why he is doing the interview. Sometimes Kimmel mines comic gold that way.

"It's just luck," he admitted. "But Guillermo's delightful and adorable, and he does impressions of about everyone we work with."

Kimmel, host and executive producer of ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live," was also asked to expound on the ongoing Matt Damon situation.

"It's an entirely fake dispute," he said, prefacing details on how the matter unfolded.

It all started as a joke one night as Kimmel was signing off after a particularly uninspiring 60-minute show.

"It was a particularly miserable night," he allowed, "and I was standing there, saying good night, with two D-minus celebrities" when he offered an on-air apology that because other segments had run long an appearance by Matt Damon had been bumped from the show. An assistant producer about died laughing, Kimmel said.

"Word got back to Matt Damon, and he thinks it's funny and that we should keep doing it," he explained.

"So there's no good reason for it, but it goes on and on."

Until one night it seemingly would be resolved as Damon was scheduled to appear after three years of the running gag.

"But when he came on," Kimmel said, "I had this really long intro that took up all the time."

People still think the whole thing is real and Kimmel has even been chastised, he said, for being so mean to Damon.

Meanwhile, Kimmel revealed some of his favorite guests to the Kresge crowd at the request of interviewer Tom Chiarella Saturday night.

"Charles Barkley is a great talk show guest," he said, adding Mike Tyson and Kathy Griffin to that list as well.

"And for an A-list celebrity, Dustin Hoffman is one unbelievably great talk show guest," Kimmel added.

And Meryl Streep as well.

"As great an actress as she is," he said, "she still just wants to have fun like the rest of us."

Sounds like Jimmy Kimmel as a DePauw University guest.