Stewart’s comedy show mining pay-for-view

BUTTE – Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” is taking on the idea of the Berkeley Pit as a tourist attraction.

The parody news show plans to air a segment Wednesday on a decision by the Butte Chamber of Commerce this year to charge people $2 to view the pit – one of the country’s largest bodies of toxic water.

Correspondent Jason Jones and “Daily Show” producers spent hours interviewing county planning director Jon Sesso, Montana Tech chemistry professors Andrea and Don Stierle and people at the pit’s viewing stand for the segment.

Fritz Daily, a longtime critic of how the Environmental Protection Agency has handled the Superfund site, also was interviewed.

“We’ve got tons of material,” Daily Show producer Miles Kahn said.

The roughly 20 hours of tape will be boiled down to a four- to five-minute segment.

Some of those interviewed are worried about the final product, but Daily Show officials say they aren’t out to make fun of small towns and that most segments cause a short spike in tourism after they air.

“If Butte has a good sense of humor about the things that are good and bad about Butte, they shouldn’t be scared,” Kahn said.

Interviews for the segment were done twice. The first time, questions were relatively serious and the camera was fixed on the interview subjects. When Jones gets his turn on camera, he plays around with the questions and adds gestures – even dropping his pants in front of the Stierles.

“Their goal was to make this thing edgy, but I thought they went a little beyond the edge,” Andrea Stierle said.

“That was truly not what I anticipated.”

She doesn’t regret agreeing to the interview, but adds, “I may change that once I see it.”

Butte Chamber of Commerce Director Marko Lucich backed out a few days before his interview after several residents and chamber members urged him not to get involved.

“I think that everything I do should be positive and I would have no control over how they would piecemeal this together and what the final product would be,” he said. “It’s just not the appropriate thing for the chamber director to be doing.”

Lucich said he would have loved to be on the show if he had a different job.