Preparing the obituaries of the prominent and famous, especially the prominent and famous of New York, has long been a creepy, yet accepted, form of telling a person's story after they pass on.

But now the New York Times wants the staff to get interactive … by tracking down the creme de la creme of New York's elite and get them to give a video confessional before they bite it.

The idea was to give an old Times tradition– writing comprehensive obituaries of prominent people in advance of their deaths–a 21st-century punch. What if we not only wrote the obits in advance but interviewed the subjects on camera? What if we built on our impressive file of advances and created a video archive as well?

Ask the most significant, celebrated, influential people of our time to agree to a videotaped interview. Get them to talk candidly about their lives and their times, in the tradition of Studs Terkel. Then, beginning the day the paper publishes the obit, stream the video, excerpted, onto the Web; make it available for documentaries and to scholars; create oral history in audio and print.

Paging Conde Nast editors! NYT needs to snag Anna Wintour, Graydon Carter, and David Reminick now … before the close-ups are too terrifying for viewers to handle.

New York Times Video: Tomb Raider [New York Observer, Media Mob]