Conan Comes of Age

After three years on NBC, Letterman's successor has finally parlayed high-risk comedy into a stable contract

by Geoff Edgers �-- �Boston Phoenix �-- �no date, presumably 1996

Lips flaring, hips swaying, Conan O'Brien is showing, if nothing else, that he can scare a woman with a single verse of his Elvis impression. He runs into the crowd at 5:22 p.m., eight minutes before Late Night starts taping, and spots her near the front. �The tall, thin talk-show host extends his hand to her, and, suddenly, we're at the sock hop. � The woman jumps from her seat into the aisle, and O'Brien kicks into "Burning Love."

The audience laughs, the woman dances. Then everyone realizes that the host -- singing, jiving, leering at the object of his pre-show affection -- is not about to let up. By the second verse, there are a few nervous titters throughout the crowd. The woman, winding down to an awkward, slow-motion twist, glances back at her husband. Wisely, he has not left his seat.

O'Brien doesn't stop because, while it may not be comedy or rock 'n' roll, it is certainly entertaining. "Just-a-hunka hunka," he howls in the final section, ending with a long, high-pitched scream. The woman retreats without a word.

"So were you frightened by that or sexually attracted?" O'Brien asks, not even breathing hard. "Be honest."

She's getting back to her seat and doesn't hear him. A friend nudges her to turn back, which she does, asking the host, "What did you say?"

"Exactly. Thanks very much," he says, sliding into sarcastic self-depreciation. "I'm John Davidson."

O'Brien doesn't always do a song before the show, but when he does, he does it all the way. "When I commit to something, that's it," he says afterward. "If you go halfway with something like that, you're fucked."

O'Brien's attitude cuts to the heart of �Late Night and the reason, after a rough start three years ago, it's become the latest hit in NBC's decade-plus of dominance at 12:30 a.m. "Committing," whether to a premise for a sketch or a style of comedy, means sticking with a joke that's bombing and remembering, through all the bad reviews, that things can only get better.

This is a show that stages staring contests on network time, has a man in an ostrich costume lay a gooey egg containing the list of upcoming guests, and features a 75-year-old sketch player limber enough to flashdance.

What makes Late Night funny is a mix of fresh improv, over-the-top visual bits, and a firm grasp of pop culture (Saturday-morning cartoons, Ozzy Osbourne, and Ouija boards, for example). Most nights, it seems like a group of grammar-school pranksters and their slightly unbalanced history teacher have taken over Studio 6A.

"You just have to do your kind of show and hope they don't cancel you before you get into the `zone,' " says Nick Bakay, the sidekick on Dennis Miller's short-lived Fox show. "The writing was always strong on Late Night, but they've just got enough reps in at this point. They're willing to be abstract and strange and intelligent. They're willing to go out there with a bit even if it dogs."

Late Night has found its place. More than the bits, many of which were there from the start ("Talking Lips," "If They Mated"), the show's success is about the emergence of its star. O'Brien, who had no on-air experience when he got the job, at first looked like he was massaging his palms raw during the uncomfortable monologues. He seemed to confirm the suspicions of many critics, who couldn't believe that NBC execs had lost Dave Letterman for Jay Leno. The most vocal critic had to be Tom Shales of the Washington Post, who wrote: "Hey you, Conan O'Brien! Get the heck off �TV."

Shales is also an essential voice when discussing the turnaround. Sometime last year, he flipped on the show and immediately noticed a dramatic transformation. O'Brien was comfortable. His sidekick, Andy Richter, was funny. And the bits were imaginative, more experimental than anything else on late-night TV.

"Conan's the most ingratiating performer. He's the most charming," says Shales. "Leno is unpleasant and loud. Letterman is bouncing off the wall like Woody Woodpecker on speed. At that hour, when you don't really want television jumping down your throat, Conan is just perfect."

Two million people watch Late Night regularly, about half of what Letterman pulled at NBC during his peak, but nearly 20 percent more than the audience for O'Brien's first season. The best news for Late Night is that a higher percentage of the viewers are younger -- ideal for advertisers -- than those tuning in to Letterman at CBS or Leno's Tonight Show.

This winter, NBC signed on through the end of 1996 after stringing Late Night along with a series of 12-week contracts.

"I feel like somebody's played a practical joke on my behalf," Richter says About his network gig, "and I'm still curious as to how far I can push it."

Letterman's ghost

There is a huge pickle -- comically oversized, as they say in the biz -- on a counter behind O'Brien's desk at NBC. His office is full of stuff: Spacehog's new CD, a mini-basketball hoop, Brookline High School's hard-cover alumni directory (he's a member of the Class of '81), a 1963 Gretsch Tennessean guitar. But that pickle has special significance. It came from Letterman.

A pickle is the way a new writer would be welcomed aboard Late Night with David Letterman. A pickle is what Letterman's then head writer and now executive producer, Rob Burnett, sent when O'Brien took over.

Letterman's ghost should haunt these halls. He did turn a traditionally losing slot - one which had crushed Joey Bishop and Dick Cavett -- into must-see time for four million people. Letterman's brand of cynicism and his sniping interview style had never been used in the talk-show format, and they paid off. When he left NBC in 1993, pissed off and passed over, the network had a crisis on its hands. Carson and Letterman had been a dynasty. Leno and To Be Announced were a question mark, at best.

NBC had failed to lure Dana Carvey and Garry Shandling, then decided against such stand-ups as Jon Stewart and Drew Carey. It was NBC executive producer Lorne Michaels, in particular, who made the surprising selection.

Michaels had worked with O'Brien on Saturday Night Live, which he also produced, and he originally wanted him as the new Late Night producer. But O'Brien, then 29, had long wanted to step in front of the cameras.

"I remember always being unsure about what to do," O'Brien says. "I would think, `I don't want to be an actor. I like telling jokes, but not that many. I like to just be myself and present weird comedy, but I also like talking to people. What kind of job is that?' And then -- bang -- this is what it is."

Banking on O'Brien's personality, knowing that he was funny and an intensely likable guy -- more than anything, taking a chance -- Michaels closed the deal. When a reporter at his introductory press conference asked what it felt like to be a relative unknown, O'Brien shot back: "Sir, I am a complete unknown!"

Since graduating from Harvard in 1984, he had written for HBO, Saturday Night Live (where his pleas to appear on camera resulted in a cameo in the "handsome guy" skit), and The Simpsons.

O'Brien knew, as Letterman's replacement, that he'd be under the microscope from the start. (Unlike Letterman, who had almost no pressure when he took over in 1982.) When Late Night with Conan O'Brien premiered on September 13, 1993, everyone was watching.

O'Brien admits he wasn't ready. He felt awkward with guests and jittery during his monologue. A little Irish Catholic guilt poked through: "Do I deserve this? Why should this big celebrity want to talk to me?" He says the struggles were inevitable.

"If I had been the way I am now during my first week, I think people still would have taken the shots," O'Brien says. "A guy comes from complete obscurity, after Letterman, and is like, `Hey everybody, how are you? I've got a good one tonight.' It would be like, `Who is this asshole?' "

O'Brien, Richter, and writer Robert Smigel had a simple plan when they started developing the show in early 1993: do their thing and hope that NBC was patient.

Letterman invented the deconstruction of the talk show -- tossing pencils, bashing network officials, reminding viewers they were watching TV (and not particularly TV at that). The new Late Night needed something different.

"What we try to do here is more like a sketch show, try to commit to a lot of running characters and don't take it apart and tell you it sucks," says Jonathan Groff, 33, a longtime Boston comic who is the show's head writer.

Even the first show, as awkward as O'Brien appeared at times, had its moments. For the opening, the host, left alone in his dressing room, cheerfully stepped into a noose. To wrap, O'Brien crooned "Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music, driving a nun and a Nazi, who just happened to be in the studio audience, to tears.

"Dave's sensibility -- and he's been a genius about it -- is an ironic detachment," O'Brien says. "Dave doesn't put on silly wigs. He would never do a sketch where it called for him to break down crying. He's sort of saying, `This is a TV show, and, come on folks, what do you want?'

"This show is more about taking a full swing. Yesterday I came out in a chariot wearing a toga. We did a bit the other day where it's revealed that I can't read, and I'm crying my eyes out. We'll try anything."

Earlier this winter, they tried a 47-day "search" for Grady, Fred's buddy on Sanford and Son. They set up an 800 hotline, brought in Robert Stack for a full production of Unsolved Mysteries (the highlight was a re-creation of an argument between Fred and Aunt Esther outside the junkyard), and updated a sightings map that placed the sitcom actor somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

When Grady, played by Whitman Mayo, finally showed up, he was greeted by an exploding cannon, hip-hop, and a massive sign that spelled out "Grady" in fluorescent lights.

Anatomy of a show

O'Brien gets in by 10 every morning. Three days a week he works out in the NBC gym. Then there's a production meeting, where the staff reviews the "grid," the line-up of bits and guests. By 2 p.m., O'Brien has finished any pieces that need to be taped ahead of time. He's also talked to producer Jeff Ross, head writer Groff, and the segment producers about what the guests might want to discuss -- as well as to the three writers who put together the monologue. Rehearsal runs from 2 to 3:30 p.m. in a virtually empty studio. Then add a half-hour in make-up -- and time for last-minute changes.

A half-hour before a recent taping, men in togas wander through the hallways.

Stagehands wheel ceiling-high plastic columns into place behind O'Brien's desk. It's time-travel week on Late Night. Tonight's episode: ancient Greece. (Later in the week, Late Night will travel to the Civil War, the '80s, and the future.)

The audience is upstairs by five. Mike Sweeney, a writer who also plays Todd, a recurring character who can't believe that O'Brien isn't gay, does a fast warm-up that includes a lesson in applause. ("Give yourselves a big hand. . . . Now give yourselves a bigger hand than that.") Then the band. Then "Burning Love."

The show opens with a pre-taped sketch in which O'Brien and Richter, wearing pajamas for a supposed sleepover, stumble upon a time machine in the prop room. The Late Night theme sounds, and it's showtime.

Two Greek goddesses, wearing prop snakes on their heads, pull a chariot carrying a toga-clad O'Brien. During his monologue, O'Brien has the camera pan the famous ancient Greeks who -- thanks to cheesy, superimposed graphics -- have taken seats in the audience. (Hey, there's Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, and, yes, Telly Savalas!) Afterward, O'Brien cuts to a "live" shot of his writing staff rolling through the streets of New York City in the show's own Trojan Horse. (They intend to sneak into the Ed Sullivan Theater and sabotage Letterman's show from within.)

The first guest is Martin Scorsese. He turns out to be the perfect interview, talking eloquently about his films, telling humorous personal anecdotes, and remaining calm while being questioned by a talk-show host in a toga. Most important, Scorsese appears thrilled with a taped spoof of a famous scene from Taxi Driver: Tony Randall, army coat and all, asks the camera, "Were you addressing me? Ruffian. Hoodlum."

Conan unplugged

The next night, O'Brien is sitting in his office, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a light V-neck sweater. He's tired, knows there's work to be done, but he perks up at the mention of Scorsese.

"There are shows where you have that feeling, and it's great. It's like a ride," O'Brien says. "The show's over, and I was happier there than I was after the show or before the show."

Late Night is his obsession, O'Brien admits. Yes, he loves to read, play guitar, listen to old rockabilly, go to movies with his girlfriend of two years, Lynn Kaplan, 27. (Perhaps a measure of how serious they are is that she got him to see Dunston Checks In.) But everything revolves around the show.

There's no relief during nightly taping because there's no way to know which jokes, bits, and guests will click. Sometimes, everything works out. More often, only a few pieces of the show come together just right.

"This is like a gambler's addiction," O'Brien says. "Can I get all the plates spinning nicely at the same time? If you don't, you get two out of three spinning, or nine out of 15, or whatever. You're obsessed with getting eight out of 15 again and then nine out of 15. And when you go out there the next night and, no, you get seven out of 15, you're like `ah' -- and then you're obsessed to go out again and get 15 out of 15."

In the unpredictable world of semi-live TV, the most memorable moments often occur off the grid, by chance, because something has gone wrong -- a broken prop, a flubbed line, a strange guest. Like the famous hickey episode, three years ago, in which Breeders bassist Josephine Wiggs shocked O'Brien with a true neck suck.

"He put out his hand to me," says Wiggs, recounting O'Brien's visit to their dressing room after the show, "and he said, `You understand the concept of live television.' "

But no matter what happens during the show, there's work to be done later. The writers usually assemble in the conference room next to Groff's office. About 300 index cards hang on the wall, each naming a bit done in the past, from "Conan Babies" to "Who Stole the Fudge?"

By 9 p.m., after the ancient Greece show, the writers sit at a table eating $355 worth of sushi. (O'Brien ordered raginna yaki.) They're ready to work. Most nights, he gets back to his apartment on the Upper West Side before midnight, in bed by 1 or 2. And he's comedied out.

"When I get home," O'Brien says, "the drier and more boring the documentary, the better. If I see a documentary on how Benjamin Disraeli redefined the role of the Exchequer in England in the late 19th century, I'll be like, `Cool.' "

As calm as he might seem on the air, there's a tightly coiled side of O'Brien. It's why he can't relax even now, at age 32 and in one of the most coveted spots on television.

But Conan O'Brien isn't so fidgety that he's looking for movie parts or his own sitcom, and he promises to turn down record deals, no matter how hard the industry knocks.

"I've actually asked the people around me to put a bullet through the back of my head if I ever start to take myself seriously as a singer or a musician," he says.

O'Brien is surprisingly noncommittal when asked whether he would ever do an 11:30 show. He shrugs off the idea, explaining why midnight is best for Late Night. There's less pressure, and the comedy doesn't have to be adapted for wide audiences.

But Tom Shales doesn't mind tossing out his choice, if, say, he ran a network.

"Letterman and O'Brien are very compatible, funny in different ways," he says. "To me, the ideal setup would be Letterman followed by O'Brien. Of course, that's the way it plays in my house already."

As far as O'Brien's concerned, the Late Night staff has enough to worry about.

There's a monologue to write, bits to film, and a guest list to keep updating. The grid goes on.

"I try to stop every now and then and say, `It's amazing that I got to do this much,' " he says. "I know I should be happy for that, but if I was that kind of person, I don't think I would have lasted as long as I have."

"You always want to change everything. You always want it to be better," he says. "I'm very moody. My girlfriend and people who work on the show and anyone who's known me in my life has known that my highs are high and my lows are low, and I probably should be on some chemical."

Article about Andy that appeared with this

copyright: The Boston Phoenix