MAKE 'EM LAUGH
O'BRIEN HAS BIG SPOTLIGHT TO FILL

By Susan Bickelhaupt  --  Boston Globe  --  September 13, 1993  --  Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN

Conan O'Brien doesn't look too flashy or too smart or too boring in his blue jeans and white T-shirt. But this 30-year-old Brookline native is the guy who will march onto TV screens tonight and hope to persuade a couple of million viewers all over the country to stay awake. Stay awake and laugh, that is. The admitted dark-horse host of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" has the heady job of filling the 12:35 a.m. slot vacated by David Letterman, now installed at CBS. And the TV audience will be the final judge. The viewers will like O'Brien or they will switch the station, easy as that.

O'Brien, sitting in a restaurant in Rockefeller Center less than two weeks before his debut, sounded so earnest, so well-intentioned, when he said, "I just want to do my first show honestly and give it my best shot." But if it flops, the good intentions won't matter, and he knows that, too. "If it's not working out, someone will tap me on the shoulder and say, 'You're out, there's a car waiting for you downstairs to take you back to Boston' ."  He laughed at the picture he had painted. "But I can't afford to think about that; it's like thinking about how to hit the golf ball. Just hit it."

It was last winter that Letterman failed to reach an agreement with NBC and announced he was leaving his TV home of 11 years for more money (a reported $16 million) and a better time slot (an hour earlier) on CBS.  For the next few months, NBC scrambled to find a replacement, and when it finally did, in May, the reaction was: Conan who? Since then, O'Brien has met the press, met the NBC affiliates, posed shirtless in Vanity Fair and been written about in magazines. Just last week, he was the topic of a question in Parade magazine's Intellectual Report. But four months after his name was announced, with his premiere show just hours away, people are still wondering: "Who is this Conan guy?" Even the promos for his show poke fun at him and stumble over his name: An announcer says, ''Coming soon, Conrad O'Brien," whereupon O'Brien shakes his head, sighs and says "That's Conan . . ."

Even at 6 feet 4, he's not imposing, because he's so painfully polite. He says he has to go in a minute; 15 minutes later, he's still chatting. While he would probably flinch at being described as sweet-looking, he does look like the kind of guy you'd want to go with to Fenway Park, maybe shoot some baskets with.

So there's some irony that he's been swept into the network scene, taping practice shows and comedy bits, thinking up ways to keep viewers tuned in, lining up guests. Tonight, he'll have Drew Barrymore, John Goodman and Tony Randall.  NBC bought him three suits and gave him a haircut before he met the press in New York, and his sometimes shaggy hair looks carefully coiffed and blow-dried in photographs, but O'Brien insists, "I'm much less handled than anyone would think."

He'll probably vary his wardrobe depending on his mood or the tenor of the show that night, he says..  "If I was going to wear a jacket and tie, or a suit, I'd probably wear it the first night. It's kind of like my confirmation." He imagines the big night with the entire O'Brien clan -- his mother, Ruth, father, Tom, and his three brothers and two sisters -- all sitting in the audience, and it makes him feel more like a kid than a network big shot. "Yeah, my parents will probably take me to the Sizzler afterwards."

O'Brien seems resigned to the fact that almost every article written has referred to him as a  "virtual unknown." "I accept that I'm an unknown. I'd be an arrogant fool if I was angry that people don't know who I am," he says. But then he considers that at least the name "Conan" is becoming well known and takes solace in that: "At least I got that name thing going . . . I'm like Cher, I'll be a one-name celebrity."

O'Brien is a Harvard grad (class of '85); that's been well documented, as well as the fact that he was two-time president of the Harvard Lampoon. That's where he got his first paycheck, for "something like $240.39 for a Newsweek parody. I brought it home, copied it and thought, 'This is what I want to do with my life.' "

Friends from as far off as Italy have called to congratulate him. Aspiring writers have flooded his office with resumes. Former colleagues have phoned to tell him jokes they ordinarily charge a lot of money for, saying, "Go ahead, Conan, you can have it." Jake Fleisher, who hung out with the star when they were in grammar school, called to tell him "Oh my God, Conan, this is amazing!"

Amazing in some ways, Fleisher says -- to see O'Brien on TV and read about him in magazines -- but not in others.

"Even when we were kids, I suspected he was on top of things," he says of the neighborhood pal who turned out to be managing editor of the high school newspaper and a member of the debate team before moving on to network TV.

A few months ago O'Brien was writing for Fox's "The Simpsons," a few years ago he was writing for "Saturday Night Live" and before that he was writing for HBO's "Not Necessarily the News." All the while, though, he was looking for a camera.  So while he admits to being "unknown," he does bristle when people equate that with inexperience.  "I think there's always been a sense that I should be doing this, I used to talk about this all the time," O'Brien says. "I was the one who'd get done with a day of writing and go to a Groundlings comedy class, or an improvisation workshop down in Santa Monica. Or when I worked at 'Not Necessarily the News,' I'd work a full day, then drive for an hour and 15 minutes and be an actor in industrial films."  It's important, says O'Brien, that his audience know that he's not someone who is stepping on stage for the first time.

By last winter, in fact, with his 30th birthday nearing, O'Brien decided to think about life after "The Simpsons," and signed with an agent in LA to help point him in the direction of performing. When Lorne Michaels, creator of ''Saturday Night Live," was named executive producer of the new 12:35 a.m. show, Michaels called on O'Brien to produce it. As flattered as O'Brien was, he was determined to follow his urge to perform.

But O'Brien was not on the short list of NBC candidates for the new host. Big names like Garry Shandling and Dana Carvey were, and when they bowed out, there were names like standup comedians Paul Provenza and Drew Carey. Michaels pulled out O'Brien's name again and had him tape a test show. NBC reached a decision in late April, and the torch was passed to O'Brien.  He dropped his job on "The Simpsons," was introduced on the "Tonight Show," then headed East to be presented to the media. The network has tried to keep O'Brien's debut low-key except for a few promos, and they've been blase about his appearance.

"There's been no talk about the shape of my face or that my hair wasn't the right color, and at the affiliates' meeting, they never asked me what I was going to say," he says.

The press, on the other hand, has not been quite so lenient. "I'm picked on a Thursday, and on Saturday the media want to know, 'What's your band going to be?' and 'Who's your sidekick?' " says O'Brien, smiling but exasperated. "I'd be a fool if I declared all that right away. They think I'm being evasive -- I can see the headline, 'O'Brien Dodged Questions' -- but do they think I have a sidekick hiding somewhere?" All he's revealed so far is that Max Weinberg, a former drummer with the E Street Band, will be the music director.

O'Brien says some of the comedy bits will entail going out in the street, but "it's not me walking around with a microphone saying, Excuse me, miss . . . they're more, uh, they're a little odder." When pressed to be more specific, O'Brien just smiles.

OK, just one more question about the set. Will the New York skyline be on a mural behind his desk, as on Letterman's show, or a scene of Hollywood, as on Leno's?  O'Brien obviously considers the question a silly one and starts to shrug it off. Then he senses that a great straight line has just been handed him, and he starts to smile.

"New York? No, Boston," he says, starting to laugh at the image.

"Yeah. All I want is the Citgo sign right behind me."

copyright: Boston Globe