THE MISEDUCATION OF CONAN O'BRIEN

The goofiest man on television was once the goofiest guy on campus. Now, he's the king of the class clowns.

SAM -- Student Advocate Magazine -- November 24, 1999 -- Pop Quiz

OF ALL THE STARS who have graced the cover of SAM, few need less introduction than Conan O'Brien. More than any other show on the tube, Late Night with Conan O'Brien is college's fundamental, must-see TV. And now, after six years of genuine nightly brilliance, O'Brien has done what television critics and the talk-show faithful once doubted: he's become as essential and compelling as the man he replaced, David Letterman.

How did he do it? Hard work, for starters. O'Brien regularly worksfourteen-hour days, writing and rehearsing the skits that separate Late Night from your typical interview show. It also helps that he isn't afraid to try anything-no matter how simple, stupid or absurd.

It might not surprise you that O'Brien adopted this wacky comedic approach in college. But what might surprise you was the college: Harvard. It was there, behind the ivy curtain, that a goofy high school student slowly transformed himself into a charming, but still goofy, academic-writing baffling papers on American literature and leading the nation's finest college humor magazine, The Harvard Lampoon. From the Lampoon, he went on to write for a trio of dorm-room favorites: Not Necessarily the News, Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons. Then, in 1993, O'Brien the professional comedy writer became O'Brien the highly doubted late-night host when he replaced Letterman. Six years later, he looks like a natural-and more and more, this generation's king of comedy.

Still, O'Brien says the Late Night offices are not so different from his Harvard flophouse, proving that although he may have graduated in four years, it's thankfully taken a lot longer for him to shed his roots as a college cut-up. Yes, Conan O'Brien is more than happy to let his education shine by taking the SAM Pop Quiz-and delivering perhaps the smartest set of answers in the history of the test.

My Harvard degree: a) was all about legacy admissions, b) has not been as practical as I would have imagined, c) beats a Yale degree every time, d) made for a great pickup line.

Answer: (b) I arrived at this one through process of elimination. When you tell a woman you went to Harvard she knows you're lousy in bed. So you don't bring that up. In fact, I try to make that the last thing that comes up. And the whole Yale rivalry-that's the kind of thing that made Thurston Howell III howl, but it doesn't wash in this complex global village we have. So for me, it has to be "b." I was a history and literature of America major. I actually wrote a thesis on "literary progeria in the works of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor," and to this day I don't know what the hell I was talking about. People can access my thesis-it's available online (idt.net/~damone/gconan.html) -and I'm offering a reward: if anybody can explain to me what my thesis is about I'll get them free tickets to the show, pay for a hotel room and get them all kinds of cool Rosie O'Donnell merchandise because our merchandise is crap.

I have a large and loyal college following because: a) I send each and every enrolled student $50 a month, b) I'd be in real trouble if I didn't, c) they're the only ones up at 12:30, d) it's been six years, so they don't remember Letterman in his prime.

Answer: (c) The only people watching television at 12:30 at night are college students and people who've been institutionalized-and burn victims; they're up because their pain medication wears off. I've always said that the funny thing about being on at 12:30 is that whenever I get a compliment on the show from anybody walking down the street, it's immediately followed by the reason they were up that late. So it's always like, "Oh my god. I saw that you did a really funny staring contest on the show; that's a really funny bit." And before I can say "thanks" they say, "You see we had a baby a month ago and we have to feed it at 12:30, so we have to watch it," or, "I had a stomach operation not long ago and I have to take some magnesium every 45 minutes." It's kind of depressing.

On a serious note, I think one of the reasons college students were the first people to watch our show was that when I first started under the "Who is this guy? He's no Letterman" cloud, they, at eighteen, were making their own decisions and wanted something that was their own. We would do all these weird things that critics and everyone hated back in '93, but college students would say, "We love staring contests, we love Krunk, we love Oldie Olson"-things people bred on all these other shows would find repulsive. We were sort of anticool.

I'm most tired of hearing: a) "The network censors are unhappy with" b) "The show seems to be getting a little funnier these days" c) "Hey! You with the hair! Aren't you Carrot Top?" d) "Gee, you'd think a Harvard guy would be smarter than that."

Answer: (b) I absolutely hate that. We've been funny for a while. I looked it up and actually, the show's been funny for nine months. That's a long time. No, I just think that even if you look at the first year, which most people thought was kind of rough, there was plenty of really funny, odd stuff. A lot of the bits we do now that people kind of like, at least half of them we came up with in the first year. I sometimes feel like if I'm doing this in twenty years-when the show has become a sad spectacle-people are still going to be coming up to me on the street as I drag myself down Sixth Avenue with my walker to say, "Hey, the show's getting funny & stick with it." Then they'll tell me why they were up watching it: "By the way, I had my jaw replaced about two years ago and it really fires up around 12:30."

I spent the least time in college: a) around attractive women, b) in the library, c) in class, d) thinking I'd have a real career when I finished.

Answer: (a) The thing I love most about my job now is not that attractive women want to speak with me-it's that they have to. Contractually, they have to come out and chat with me for seven minutes before the buzzer sounds and they're allowed to leave. In college, I was 6'4", 155 pounds. Do the math. Work it out on a computer in 3-D. It wasn't a pretty sight. It wasn't until later that I started to look a bit more confident around women-actually the fourth year of the show. But I always have the same approach with women. My way of flirting is to growl, make hissing cat noises, lick my fingers and run them across my eyebrows or straighten my tie while making squeaking sounds. Let's just say I had as much success with women then as I do now.

The best thing an aspiring talk-show host could do while in college is: a) find a sidekick, b) hire writers, c) practice interviewing the homeless, d) do anything for attention.

Answer: (e) Can I make up another one? None of those really fits the bill. I'd say "e) study history and literature of America." I suggest studying history and literature of America and focusing on the American South, specifically William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. I am living proof that it's a surefire conduit to the talk-show world. Let me assure you that's what Arsenio studied, it's what Jay studied and what Dave studied. Chevy Chase made the mistake of focusing on the modernist movement in Paris at the turn of the century. As you can see, that was a disastrous choice.

The Harvard Lampoon was: a) the highlight of my college career, b) comedy's best minor-league experience, c) only slightly more funny under my editorship than my Flannery O'Connor/William Faulkner thesis, d) a great way to pick up awkward, emotionally scarred comedy groupies.

Answer: (a) I owe the Lampoon a lot. I didn't know that I could write comedy for a living until then. I was a guy who came from suburban Boston-my family didn't know anybody in entertainment, we'd never seen a celebrity in our entire lives. Nobody in the 2,000-year history of our people had ever performed. So until I got on the Lampoon I thought comedy was something you just did with your friends. It was only after I got on the Lampoon that I realized there were people who took comedy seriously and thought about it all day long. That made a huge difference to me. It made me realize there was life after school doing comedy.

Most Conan viewers wouldn't guess: a) Conan O'Brien offstage is the same as on, b) I spend twelve to fourteen hours a day trying to make this show funny, c) I hit up the musical guests for impromptu guitar lessons, d) nudity isn't just a punchline, but a full-time lifestyle choice.

Answer: (b) Now I'm not complaining, because I love what I do, but because the show is so loose and goofy-looking it's deceptive how much work actually goes into it. I have friends who are in sitcoms or make movies, which is hard work, but they'll be two months between projects sometimes. It's like, "What are you doing now?" "Well, I'm gonna hang out for two months and then I'm gonna shoot my next movie. It's about a guy who goes to Hawaii and falls asleep on the beach and can't get up while women rub oil into his back." "How long will you be shooting that?" "About three months, then I have six months off." I love this job, but I think it would shock people how much I'm here. There's a reason I'm so pale and sickly looking.

They're all my heroes, but I'd rechew gum from the following person's mouth first: a) Johnny Carson, b) Woody Allen, c) Bob Hope, d) David Letterman.

Answer: (b) That's a tough one. But I gotta go with Woody Allen. I've been around him and he has a nice aroma. Really, they're all people I admire a lot. That's what's tough. But I have to pick Woody because he's a guy who was a TV writer who also wrote really funny prose and then started performing. That's kind of what I did. I remember at the time people saying, "You can't do this! You're a writer!" And I always thought, What about Woody Allen and Steve Martin? Even as a kid when I wanted to both write and perform I always seized on Woody Allen as proof that there was no rule.

The worst thing that can happen to my show is: a) a bad guest, b) a flop monologue, c) an unprepared interview, d) it's like pizza-even when it's bad, it's good.

Answer: (d) Actually, I think my show is like sex and pizza. Pizza in that it raises your cholesterol level and is not recommended by the Surgeon General. And it's like sex in that whenever it's over I feel horribly ashamed.

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