The War for Late Night Read online

  In full spin cycle Zucker stressed, emphasized, underscored that Conan was still getting The Tonight Show, at 11:35 each weeknight; nothing in the least would change for him.

  Although Zucker didn’t say it, he believed that just about everyone, including Conan’s agents at Endeavor, preferred this outcome to that three-headed competitive monster, with Letterman factored in. It made no real sense to him to go into that now, though. He had always steered clear of any Dave vs. Jay comparisons in front of Conan and his team, having long since picked up from Conan and his staff what Jeff perceived as a visceral dislike of Leno. They all more or less dismissed him as a hack. It bothered and disappointed Zucker that at the same time they openly celebrated and embraced David Letterman, they denigrated NBCʹs guy. Zucker put it down to their artistic, higher-brow, New York-centric point of view; but to him it merely meant that they never understood or appreciated Jay Leno’s broad appeal. Still, he expected Conan and his people to be better team players than that. You’re on the team, you shouldn’t be revering the other guy and disrespecting your own guy.

  The meeting broke up quickly, with Conan saying little and revealing even less.

  After Zucker and Ludwin left, the somewhat dazed Ross and Conan took stock. Ross couldn’t help but think back to a phone conversation he had had with Fox’s Gail Berman years earlier when Conan had turned down their offer, preferring the long-range chase of The Tonight Show.

  “Remember I said this to you,” Gail had told Ross. “You’re never gonna get The Tonight Show.” At the time Ross had been convinced he was dealing with honorable people and promises would be kept. Who could have foreseen this? Jay at ten? What did it mean, really?

  As for Conan, he instantly had a bad feeling. After sixteen years of following Jay Leno, after finally being released into the free air of 11:35, Conan had been hit with the news that NBC was reviving the old lineup order. This was more like a time shift than a programming change; certainly it wasn’t a commitment to a new star over the old. It amounted to going from daylight savings time back to eastern standard time—move the clocks back an hour. For Conan, the decision reeked of NBC’s apparent ongoing strategy, which was like a car with headlights that shone only three inches in front of it, leaving the driver always reacting only to anything appearing a few feet ahead—look out, jerk the wheel this way or that. Never would they try a brighter light, shine it farther down the road, scan the horizon for what’s really ahead.

  For almost two hours Conan, Ross, Mike Sweeney, and some of the other writers sat around Ross’s office parsing the decision out, trying to discern what it really meant for them, until Conan’s assistant buzzed with some news: Jay Leno was on the line.

  Jay did everything he could to be gracious, saying all the right things. “Are you all right with this, Conan?” he asked. “Is this good for you?”

  Conan returned the graciousness; he knew it was the right thing to do. Jay ended the call by saying he was sure they’d be seeing each other down the road.

  Even after he put down the phone, Conan could not get past the uneasiness he was feeling. But what were his options? Quit and go to ABC himself? Or Fox? On what basis? He had a contract, and NBC had not taken The Tonight Show away from him.

  That realization calmed him a bit, and he told himself that something had changed for NBC, but nothing had substantially changed for him. Finally he asked Jeff Ross, “In this scenario, am I still hosting that show that Johnny Carson had that I watched with my father in my living room in Brookline, Massachusetts?”

  “Yes, you are,” Ross said, looking for the right message.

  “Then, I’m good,” Conan replied.

  In the remaining weeks before he closed shop on his Late Night show, OʹBrien offered several explanations of his feelings about how it all went down with Jay and the whole ten o’clock plan. Mostly, he was at pains to say how much he preferred this outcome, with Jay not driven from the home he loved.

  “I had always hoped that something could be worked out where Jay could stay, because it’s just a better scenario for all of us—just on a human level. On a human level I’m not comfortable with people being unhappy. It’s not in my makeup.” Conan never wanted to “walk into some restaurant and have to avoid anybody.”

  He said that he liked Jay and that Jay was doing “a great job.” It was important, he said, that no matter what happened, he could always “feel like I didn’t say anything or do anything to get The Tonight Show that I couldn’t happily tell anybody about. And Jay knows that; I’ve always had great rapport with Jay.”

  If the ten o’clock solution still left him with an uneasy feeling, he wasn’t expressing it publicly. “Of all the alternatives in the universe, this one does honestly work the best for me,” Conan said. “I’ve known Jay for a long time, and we’ve been friends. I was not going to be comfortable in some Hatfields-McCoys situation. I don’t think Jay would be comfortable in that situation. So life is short and I’m getting to host The Tonight Show, and the fact that Jay Leno and I can still be friends is the best resolution for me.”

  O’Brien acknowledged the competitive environment would be different, but that was OK too. “I think a lot of it is up to me. If I do a good, funny, and fresh Tonight Show every night at 11:35, I think that’s going to be successful, and I think it’s going to be irrelevant what everybody else is doing.”

  That was not a prediction, however. “Anyone who sits back and tells you exactly how this is going to play out is crazy.”

  On February 20, Conan O’Brien said farewell to Late Night after sixteen years and 2,725 shows.

  The emotion was all-consuming. Andy Richter returned to a warm embrace from the fans—and the host. Will Ferrell, who had been probably the signature guest on the show, the ideal match of emerging talent with growing audience, did one final turn by stripping down to outrageous leprechaun undies.

  Conan played the last of several weeks of highlight clips, including probably the archetypal taped remote of the Conan era, when the host covered—and then played in—a game of old-time baseball, circa 1864. He called it his favorite piece of all time.

  In the best anarchic spirit of the show, Conan had a work crew come in and rip a section of the set’s backdrop apart, to hand out tiny pieces to members of the final studio audience. Later his brother Neal walked off with the Conan half-moon logo from the set. His dad was there, as was his mom, hobbling with a cane. Liza waited in the hall outside with Missy, Jeff Ross’s wife, and several of the other staff’s family members. Tears flowed.

  On the air Conan fought them. In the closing moments, he summoned up thanks for everyone from Bob Wright to Lorne Michaels, whom Conan credited with rolling the dice on one of “the most ridiculous chances in the history of the medium.”

  Conan said, “Lorne Michaels single-handedly made my career in television. I don’t know what I did. I must have saved his life at some point. He certainly saved mine.”

  Then it was time for Jay:

  “Jay Leno from day one has called me constantly and offered his support. Every night at the end of The Tonight Show, Jay Leno says, ‘Stay tuned for Conan O’Brien,’ and he has done that since 1993. The Tonight Show under Jay Leno has been a powerhouse. His success turned into success for us. I owe that man a great deal. I’m thrilled that we get to be friends for all of our time in television and that he will continue to be my lead-in, and I’m thrilled that we are on the same network.”

  But OʹBrien brought out the unreserved encomiums for a different late-night host:

  “David Letterman invented this Late Night show, and he is one of the most brilliant broadcasters of the last century—and certainly this century and for all time. I have a terrific amount of respect for him and what he did. He set the bar absurdly high for everyone in my generation who does this. Living in his shadow has been a burden and an inspiration for me for years, and I think we need to acknowledge that it all started with David Letterman.”

  Conan saved the last he
artfelt thanks for his forever producer and friend Jeff Ross, “the man who gets the show on every night.”

  Struggling with his emotion to the end, Conan closed with a message, to his fans and anyone else who wanted to know what to expect from a Conan O’Brien Tonight show:

  “There are people that have hosted these kinds of shows who are better than I am. Nobody has enjoyed it more than I do. It’s an incredible, amazing honor to do this show for you people. We’re going on to this next gig, and sometimes I read that it’s time for Conan to grow up because he’s going to eleven thirty.” And here he paused for maximum effect.

  “I assure you, that’s just not going to happen. It can’t. This is who I am—for better or for worse.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CONAN ROCKS

  When he finally got to work inside the vast, sparkling new studio created for NBCʹs Tonight Show, just inside the Universal gate off Lankershim Boulevard, where the studio had resided for the eighty-five years since Carl Laemmle settled his fledgling film company there, Conan O’Brien could feel his psyche shift down into a familiar gear.

  After weeks of pushing, straining, and grinding his way through meet-and-greet sessions with affiliates from Cleveland to Oklahoma City, through rounds of interviews with the supportive but sometimes skeptical press, through the slog of buying a home, moving the staff, relocating his family, nesting in a new office, Conan was finally back to what he called “the organizing principle” of his and his staff’s lives, “the magnet that organizes all the particles”: making a funny show.

  The weeks between the end of February and mid-May of 2009 had represented the longest period he had been off TV in the last third of his life. And yet he had never worked harder. People would see him and say, “Hey, so you’ve had a nice break.” And he would respond, “You have no idea.” Despite all the logistical heavy lifting, Conan had not slackened his creative efforts in the intervening weeks, throwing himself into preparing comedy pieces for the first weeks of the new show. Again taking inspiration from David Letterman, who charged out of the gate in his remade 11:35 CBS show with a series of tightly edited taped segments that had electrified late night and compelled the nation to tune in, Conan was banking a similar store of taped bits. He was extravagantly proud of them and confident they would help create the opening buzz the new show needed.

  But best of all, in mid-May Conan, Jeff Ross, Mike Sweeney, and all the guys got down to doing what they loved best: late-night shows in front of regular people. To break in the studio—the sound, the lighting, the camera angles—Ross wanted to produce a series of test shows. The first couple had a few ragged moments, but that was to be expected. It didn’t matter to Conan, who was invigorated by them. It felt so good to be back. The new space, open, ornately decorated—even including a little art deco mural rimming the top of the stage design, harkening back to 30 Rock’s lobby—was much more expansive than good old 6A in 30 Rock. “Elegant” was how Conan summed it up, though he added that he was sure he would have no trouble being “a jackass in an elegant space.” When he stepped out onto the new stage for the first test show, it came on him like a rush: Oh yeah, this is what we really do.

  More than anything else, Conan expected the lavish new lighting to shock people. He’d been told often enough by fans how much better he looked in person and had concluded that that was because they had only seen him performing in a shoe box with a light on him from about two feet away.

  The experience of coast-to-coast relocation did have one big advantage, Conan decided. Almost nothing really captured people’s imagination anymore, but somehow this pasty Irishman pulling up stakes in New York and having a go in sunny LA struck a nerve. Everywhere that Conan had been, the talk was all about his moving to California—what would that be like? Conan pictured Osama bin Laden in a cave somewhere saying, “I wonder how it will be for Conan in LA. It’ll be different. We’ll have to see.”

  On the other hand, the massive buildup did have its downside. Conan had the impression that some people expected to see him “jump the Snake River Canyon” on his first night, instead of what they would actually get: “a guy making a few adjustments in a better-lit space.”

  The move of Jay Leno to ten had certainly altered some of the equations and expectations. What had begun as Conan vs. Dave was now Jay-into-Conan vs. Dave. “There’s a period of realignment now,” Conan explained. “These things aren’t decided in a night or a week. It’s a marathon. We’re going to bring some people with us and we’re going to have to find some new people, and it’s not going to happen right away. But I’m interested in getting to that part. Let’s get to that part.”

  Not that the present didn’t offer some stop-the-heart moments, like seeing crates rolling by to be installed in the new studio or office building, all reading on the side: “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.”

  Conan pulled back to remind himself, “It’s unbelievable that I got here. It’s a Catholic word, but sometimes it’s a sin not to acknowledge, sometimes, for just a minute: Hey, you got this far.”

  But of course, the dark nights could provide their own distractions. Conan also acknowledged spending his share of time wide awake at three in the morning, picturing Martin Sheen in the movie Apocalypse Now. In those moments, Conan said, he stared up at the ceiling fan in his bedroom, “thinking about my trip upriver—and we all know how that worked out!”

  Team Conan had its own share of concerns, not about how Conan would perform on Tonight—they all believed in him without reservation—but about how committed NBC really was to him. The move of Jay Leno to ten p.m. had stunned Rick Rosen and the rest of the Conan support group, and set them to thinking through all the implications of that decision.

  Rosen had quickly called Ari Emanuel and Gavin Polone to discuss the issue. Ari told Rick he thought NBC was fucking Conan over, pure and simple. Gavin believed it was partly the result of Conan’s always agreeing, “OK, I’ll play ball”—a pattern he had long established with his employer: OK, I won’t take the Fox offer because I want to chase The Tonight Show. OK, I’ll hang around for five more years and take way less money even when they do give me The Tonight Show. Now, Polone concluded, Conan was swallowing the network’s latest bow to Leno because it was all still worth it to host The Tonight Show.

  NBC continued to insist that the show Jay would be doing had no chance to affect Conan’s show, because it would be so different. Polone and the others didn’t buy this disingenuous portrait of Leno, how he would steer clear of conflict with Conan over guests or content.

  Conan did worry about it anyway despite the network’s assurances. Conan told Polone he suspected NBC might still try to pay him off the $45 million and give the show back to Jay. Polone was accustomed to glimpses of Conan’s darker side, when he would get down and start worrying about things that weren’t really about to happen. Polone simply dismissed the payoff idea as absurd. How could anybody think of doing that? Only a complete idiot would think of doing that.

  Rosen, for one, didn’t write off NBC’s potential for possessing an idiot factor. When he pressed Zucker on the payoff issue, Zucker flicked away the notion. “It’s never going to happen,” he told Rosen. The people talking about it were just “those Hollywood people.” Zucker repeated, “It’s never going to happen to you guys. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Conan did his best to embrace the idea that ultimately this Jay stuff didn’t matter. What mattered was hosting The Tonight Show. His representatives would assure him: of course, that was true. But among themselves, with Conan out of earshot, they all agreed: Jay at ten was bad, and it was going to stay bad. Not one of them could offer a single positive note about NBC’s plan—other than that Jay wouldn’t be at ABC at 11:35, of course. Sure, it might be better to be in the same boat with Jay, rather than on opposing warships; but it would be better still if Jay sailed away entirely.

  For Jeff Ross, the situation was much more complicated. He had to get a show—and his guy�
�ready to knock America dead, so it did no good to waste time stewing over getting leap-frogged by Leno.

  He had made his own discomfort plain to his pal Zucker and then moved on. For the sake of the show, and Conan, Ross allowed himself a few sips of the Kool-Aid.

  Maybe it would mean a broader audience for Conan, Ross told himself. Who the fuck knows?

  On May 12, less than a month before Conan’s premiere, and only a week before Conan’s trip to New York for the comedy showcase for the advertisers, Dick Ebersol, in LA for some other business, dropped by the new Tonight studio. The ostensible reason for the meeting was to nail down ideas for Conan’s participation in NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics from Vancouver, set for February 2010. Ebersol was more than just the executive in charge of the Olympic telecasts—he would personally produce every hour of prime time for the games. Both Conan and Jeff Ross were enthusiastic about the additional exposure Conan was sure to get during those hugely watched events.

  But Ebersol had another message he wanted to convey, one he had told Jeff Zucker he was determined to get across to Conan. Since his lunch with Jeff Ross in April 2008, Ebersol had only grown more worried about whether Conan & Co. grasped the nuances of difference between shows at 11:35 and 12:35. Ebersol became especially worried after he watched Conan’s farewell show on Late Night in February and heard him promise, straight out, in his closing address to his fans—one that, to Ebersol, seemed to ring of defiance—that he didn’t care what people suggested, he wasn’t about to change.

  A conversation about Olympics exposure would serve as a convenient pretext for Ebersol to offer his theories of what made for late-night success or failure directly to Conan.

  Ebersol had fond feelings toward Conan—almost everyone at NBC did, of course. But Dick’s affection touched another level. When Ebersol and his wife, the actress Susan Saint James, had suffered the shattering tragedy of losing their young son Teddy in a private plane crash—one that had almost killed Dick as well—Conan had handwritten a note to the couple that they remembered as extraordinarily moving. So Ebersol put Conan, as a person, at the highest level.