0:00

Hey, Conan O'Brien here. Be honest, we could all use a

0:02

friend. That's why I started an entire podcast

0:04

about it. It's called Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend,

0:06

and I really do. Each week I do my best to try to find

0:09

some real friendships by hanging out with people

0:11

like Tom Hanks, Maya Rudolph, Bruce Springsteen,

0:13

Jack Black, and hundreds more. You can

0:15

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Zero dollar delivery fee and percentage off discounts subject to

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still apply.

1:05

And now. It's time for.

1:09

Inside Conan. An

1:11

important Hollywood podcast.

1:20

Welcome to Inside

1:22

Conan, a very important

1:25

Hollywood podcast. Oh, radio voice.

1:28

That was what I beg your pardon. The

1:31

voice I usually use is my radio voice.

1:33

This is my real voice. I don't know

1:35

why I haven't showed it off to you

1:38

all these years. Hello, Jessie. Hello. I'm

1:40

here with Jessie

1:41

Gaskell. Yes, hi, Mike Sweeney. Hello, we're

1:43

writers for Conan in some

1:46

form or another. And now

1:48

we host a podcast. Now we're mostly

1:50

a gas. A parasitic podcast.

1:52

We're no longer solids. No, we are gas. We

1:56

are molecules very far

1:58

apart from each other. This

2:01

whole season we've been talking about Conan on

2:04

the Road. Conan O'Brien. Conan out

2:06

in the wild,

2:08

doing remotes, going on travel

2:10

shows, outside Conan. Yeah,

2:12

we mostly stuck to that theme. We have.

2:15

I think we've been pretty good for us. I

2:17

know, for sticking to anything. Yeah,

2:19

exactly.

2:20

It's been a really fun season and this

2:22

is actually our season finale today. This is the finale

2:24

today. So I know

2:27

it went awfully fast. It

2:29

did. It started slow

2:31

because we were also in the middle of

2:33

filming new travel shows.

2:36

Right, for Max. For Max and

2:38

we went to Norway, we went to Thailand

2:41

and I thought, oh, there's no way we're gonna

2:44

be able to finish this podcast because we're just

2:46

simply too busy. Yeah. And

2:48

then the writer strike happened.

2:50

Yes, and now? And now I have nothing

2:52

but time and I can't believe it's ending. Now we're

2:55

each doing 20 podcasts. Yes.

2:59

I know, I wish this could just continue. I

3:01

know, I know, but yeah,

3:04

so we're kind of up in the air but season

3:06

five is gonna be amazing. That's

3:10

when we're gonna rewatch every

3:13

episode. Every episode of Conan. It's a rewatch podcast,

3:15

yeah. All to 4,000 episodes. Over 4,000

3:18

episodes. It's gonna be a long

3:21

season. The

3:24

strike needs to last that long. Yeah,

3:26

it's gotta last 58 years. I

3:30

calculated that's how long it's gonna take.

3:31

And then once we finish that, we can go back and

3:35

listen to all the podcasts and then give commentary

3:38

on each podcast episode. We'll

3:40

do the re-listening of

3:42

Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend episodes. With

3:44

director's commentary, yeah. And we're

3:47

covered for the next 150 years. We

3:50

have a great final episode. We do. For

3:53

the season. Yeah. It's a continuation

3:55

in a way.

3:55

It is a continuation. If you listened last

3:58

season, we ended with. with

4:01

a special guest named Conan O'Brien

4:03

and Jeff Ross. His

4:06

executive long-time executive

4:08

producer. And they told

4:11

us the origin story of

4:13

Conan taking over late night, way back.

4:16

Taking over from David Letterman.

4:18

Yeah, in 1992 to 1993. Yeah,

4:22

and they went into such detail that

4:26

we only got up to the point where it was

4:28

announced that Conan- We basically got

4:30

through the auditions and then Conan

4:33

got the phone call that he was getting

4:35

off for the gig.

4:36

Yeah, and that's where we stopped. And it's

4:39

a pretty great cliffhanger and we're picking

4:41

up right where we left off.

4:42

Yeah, I mean, I love

4:45

hearing them talk about it because they both have incredibly

4:47

sharp memories of that time. Yeah, it must

4:50

have just, every day

4:52

must have been etched in their, because

4:54

it was all so new. I know, you can tell. They're

4:56

under so much pressure. And so this

4:59

is all about them that summer trying

5:01

to get the show ready to premiere.

5:02

To launch right

5:04

on September 13th, 1993. Yeah,

5:07

and they had to build sets. They had to start from scratch

5:10

with no writers staff and no

5:13

staff at all. And there was no

5:15

band, they had to put together a band. They

5:18

were given an empty studio and an

5:20

empty floor. And $5,000. Do

5:25

a show boys. And

5:28

this is- Get to work designers. Yeah, and

5:30

I mean, you know, you just see a

5:32

show appear on the air. You

5:34

don't think of, I can't imagine

5:36

anything harder than

5:39

creating a show from scratch. Especially

5:42

when- That's the scenario. You're following

5:44

Late Night with David Loew.

5:45

Yeah, and you're trying to not be the same

5:47

thing that he was, but also kind

5:49

of appeal to the same audience.

5:51

Yeah, no, you're taking over for a

5:53

Titan. I

5:55

would never do it. I would never do it. Okay,

5:58

I would do it. Well, let's get right into it. with

6:00

Conan and Jeff Ross, Conan

6:02

O'Brien and Jeff Ross. Oh,

6:05

that Conan. Yeah.

6:06

Yeah. Yeah. Here

6:10

we are. We are back with two of our most popular

6:12

guests in the history of this podcast. It's

6:15

true. Look at the stats, the

6:18

metrics, they don't lie. We're

6:20

here with Conan O'Brien and

6:22

Jeff Ross. It's about time Conan

6:24

was on inside Conan. That's right. The

6:26

snake eats the tail. Yeah,

6:29

no, it's nice. We

6:31

enjoyed it last time. It was fun. We

6:34

came on and it's like you put us in a trance and we started

6:36

regurgitating the crazy story

6:38

of how we- It was amazing. How I went from

6:40

being a Simpsons writer

6:42

to being the replacement for David

6:44

Letterman, which was

6:46

one of the crazier stories I will still

6:48

maintain in the history of show business. Yeah. And

6:51

I got to tag along. Yeah. You were

6:53

part of the-

6:53

You were the radioactive spider that bit him. Exactly.

6:57

That's right. Well, no, wait, Lauren's

6:59

the radioactive spider. And then

7:02

Jeff is Aunt May. That

7:05

works. It all goes down to the- It's

7:07

all in the spider verse, look into it.

7:09

Yeah, so we got to last

7:11

time we had you here, we got to- You

7:13

had just gotten the offer

7:16

to host and take over for Letterman. And you

7:18

said, yes, you

7:20

took over the ninth floor. It was a totally empty

7:23

office. It was you at one corner, Jeff

7:25

Ross at the other corner.

7:27

And you happened to be there when Letterman

7:29

taped his last show down on the sixth floor.

7:32

And so you went down and

7:35

it was a powerhouse last show. Springsteen

7:37

was on at Tom Hanks and you

7:39

went down, I think, and

7:42

Robert Smigel and Bob Odenkirk, you

7:46

three went down to hang out.

7:48

Well, Smigel was down there already. He was down

7:50

there and he called me. Yeah, Robert

7:52

was down there and he's a huge Springsteen fan. And

7:54

of course Letterman fan, he went down and he called

7:56

me in my office. And this is before,

7:59

I mean, I didn't have-

7:59

I don't think he just called me in my

8:02

office where I was sitting there alone

8:03

watching the last show and it ended. And

8:05

then he called me and said, you really should come down. Dave

8:08

would like to see you, which I thought,

8:11

I would not, I don't think I would have gone down on my own,

8:13

but he said, no, he would really like to see you. So I went down.

8:16

I could see you not going down on your own. No,

8:18

yeah, it's not quite my speed. You worry.

8:21

You don't know linger out there in the foyer. Yeah.

8:26

But anyway, so I think we covered all that. I

8:28

think I went down there Well, the

8:30

way you ended it, the way we ended

8:32

last time basically was Tom Hanks was on

8:34

the show came up to you and

8:36

you said, he put his hand on your

8:38

shoulder and looked right at you and said, I wrote

8:41

it down. Sorry,

8:46

what just happened to you doesn't happen. It

8:48

never happened. Yeah, yeah,

8:50

yeah, he did. He did say that. And

8:52

then Jeff was saying- He didn't stammer as much

8:54

as you. Cause he was sober.

8:58

I don't have my glasses on, I couldn't read it. I love that.

9:01

Well, let me read back to you exactly what he said.

9:03

It's habit, habit, habit, habit, I do what I do

9:05

what I do

9:06

what I do what I do. I'm sorry, I don't

9:08

have my monoclin.

9:09

And

9:11

then Jeff said, they immediately started tearing

9:13

down. Yes, they started tearing it down. And

9:15

that's where we left last time. And

9:17

you were like, I think there was a moment of

9:20

walking around this empty studio. It might've been the next day,

9:22

but everything was ripped out and it was just completely

9:24

empty. It was- We were just like, this is too weird. Studio

9:27

6A was completely ripped out.

9:29

And I maintain, we have,

9:33

think about it now, it

9:35

seems insane to me that I'm

9:38

completely green. I've

9:41

never hosted a late night show. I've never hosted anything.

9:44

And Jeff's

9:46

never produced this kind of show before.

9:49

And we're taking over for

9:51

Letterman.

9:52

Everyone's upset because of the way Letterman

9:54

left. They felt like he was denied

9:57

his rightful position. as

10:00

the Tonight Show host. So people

10:02

were upset about that. To succeed

10:05

Johnny Carson. Yeah, to succeed Johnny Carson

10:07

instead. That went to

10:08

that other guy. And then,

10:12

so there was a lot of Sturm

10:15

and Drang and angst. And

10:17

yeah, I remember very

10:19

clearly looking at this, Jeff and I

10:22

are looking at this big, empty concrete

10:24

rectangle.

10:26

And it's May. You

10:31

could look up the date or I think it's

10:33

May. It might even be late

10:35

May. I don't know. Probably

10:38

late May. Sweeps. So it would

10:40

be late May back then. And then, so

10:42

if you think about it, we

10:46

already had, we had a premiere date set because the affiliates

10:48

needed that, which was September 13th.

10:51

So we don't have, we think about it, May

10:54

is almost gone. So we've got June, July,

10:56

August. And then we have three

10:58

months and then test shows have to start.

11:01

Wow. And to

11:04

this day, I think that's just not

11:07

enough time. And

11:09

we didn't have, I didn't have

11:11

wanted Robert Smagel to be the head writer,

11:14

but he wasn't signed up yet. And

11:16

it was a question of whether or not the deal would even

11:18

happen.

11:19

We didn't

11:21

know what the set was gonna be. We

11:23

didn't have a band, no writers,

11:25

no

11:26

sidekick, nothing. And

11:28

I think, and I

11:30

just did this interview in New York with

11:33

Paul McCartney, where he was showing photographs of

11:36

the Beatles and 63, 64, and

11:39

when they're coming to do the Ed Sullivan show. And the

11:41

point I was trying to make to him was that we all look

11:43

at these photos differently. We look at them as here,

11:45

the Beatles are, and everybody knows it's

11:47

going to work out.

11:49

So we are watching it with that bias.

11:53

But, and

11:55

anyone now when I talk to young

11:57

people and I say, well, I didn't think I was gonna make

11:59

it, they think, well,

11:59

Well, of course you were gonna make it, but

12:03

it's 30 years later and they're going by

12:05

the bias of, all I see is your shit

12:08

bouncing around different places and you're just- I

12:11

can't turn it off my stamps

12:13

on TV. Yeah, this tired old shoe

12:15

that's been around forever. What do you mean you didn't

12:17

think you'd become a shoe? You're trying

12:19

to be modest. Yeah, and

12:23

it seemed like it was a miracle that we would ever

12:25

get this together in such a short amount of time.

12:28

Didn't you think so? I had nothing, it was like two

12:30

of us, maybe one or two other people

12:32

in this cavernous office with nobody,

12:35

empty. Empty. Yeah. And-

12:38

Did you take turns getting each other their lunch? Probably.

12:42

Yeah. Yeah. True turn. I

12:44

mean, we really didn't have any idea what we were doing. Right.

12:47

It's terrifying. Yeah, it was terrifying. It was

12:49

terrifying. And I would go routinely

12:51

from a memory, I didn't have

12:53

much time,

12:56

there was no time. And so

12:59

there was this order of things that had to happen, which is,

13:01

gotta get the head writer

13:03

first. And I

13:06

knew it had to be Robert Smigel, because Robert

13:08

and I were very, we had worked

13:10

together on Saturday Night Live, we had done

13:12

this pilot Look Well with Adam West, and

13:15

we could kind of finish each other's sentences comedically.

13:18

And I knew we both

13:21

had this very crystal clear idea of

13:24

what the show needed to be, and

13:27

how it needed to be silly, and it had to be

13:29

post, I don't know, post Letterman,

13:34

meaning not ironic, all

13:37

this kind of stuff. And, but

13:39

we had to, there was so much that we

13:41

had to do, and I remember it was a while

13:44

getting Robert's- It took

13:46

a little longer than we wanted to. To get Robert's

13:49

deal made. Yeah. September 12th. And

13:52

so we couldn't hire writers till we got Robert on

13:55

board. And I remember it was just, it's just the

13:57

bureaucracy of deal-making

13:59

and- Yeah.

13:59

back and forth and it didn't happen quickly.

14:02

And then I remembered at one point,

14:04

a guy that worked at NBC saying, well, let's just move

14:07

on from Robert. And I thought,

14:09

meaning this deal was taking a while. So

14:11

who else

14:12

will you bring in? And I said, there isn't

14:15

anyone else. Yeah. You know what

14:17

I mean? It's just felt like there isn't another, it's gotta

14:19

be Robert and

14:20

man. Well, it did have to

14:22

be. It did, no, but I was, I

14:28

was having heart attacks all

14:30

the time. So when

14:32

you said yes to, hey, I'm gonna take this over

14:34

and now you're- I didn't say, no,

14:37

that's a misstatement. Okay. Because

14:40

to be clear,

14:41

there was no like, would you like to do it?

14:43

I auditioned for

14:46

it. Which means you like it.

14:48

And then wasn't sure until I did the audition

14:51

and thought,

14:52

God damn, that felt right. That felt really

14:54

good. And Jeff was there

14:57

and Jeff was running it kind of, and Jeff came

14:59

up after the

15:01

monologue and was like, oh,

15:03

okay. Suddenly Jeff was looking at me differently.

15:06

He's not- I don't know if we spoke about it last time,

15:08

but I remember between the two guests,

15:10

I forget who went first.

15:12

I wrote on the, we had a script

15:14

and on the back of the script, I wrote, you're killing

15:17

and just slid it in front of him. Right. I

15:19

thought it said, my glasses weren't on. I said, you will be

15:22

killed. You don't even need glasses. No,

15:24

I didn't need glasses. And you got excited.

15:27

So what happens is they don't call and bring you into room and

15:29

go, so would you like to do this or not? What

15:32

happens is I got a call that said, you've

15:34

got it. You're doing it.

15:36

You're gonna go on the tonight show

15:38

tonight and be announced. So there was no,

15:41

so it just

15:43

happened.

15:44

And I'm not complaining because I definitely

15:47

asked for it. But once it happens, it's so overwhelming.

15:51

And yeah, we didn't have. I

15:53

just was remembered thinking, this is no

15:56

time at all. Anyway, I think a big

15:58

turning point was.

15:59

Robert's deal got made,

16:03

then we could start looking at packets,

16:05

everyone was sending packets in. And

16:09

we were looking at them. I think the first person hired was

16:11

Dino Stematopoulos, was the first writer.

16:14

And I remember being elated because

16:17

Dino, we liked his packet,

16:19

he had never worked on anything.

16:21

He came in and I remembered exactly which office he

16:23

had. He had the office right next to mine. And

16:26

he went and he sat at his desk and

16:28

started writing it down ideas. And

16:31

I thought, we have a writer. And

16:33

he knows how to write. And he's writing something

16:35

with a pen. We're

16:38

on our way. I was so grabbing

16:41

at any good news.

16:44

I was busy running around making

16:47

believe I knew what I was doing. Yeah,

16:49

yeah. No, but- I did a lot of making

16:51

believe. Well, there's one thing we needed was we needed

16:54

a band and a set.

16:56

So I think Robert and I were really

16:59

focused on getting these writers and

17:02

you were saying, okay,

17:05

cause Lauren Michaels is the executive producer.

17:08

We got to get this set together. And Lauren Michaels had

17:10

a designer named- Eugene Lee. Name

17:12

Eugene Lee and Lauren- Who recently passed away.

17:15

Yeah, who recently passed away. Eugene

17:17

Lee-

17:19

Eugene in all his, he

17:22

came with Keith and Leo as a whole group of

17:24

people. They were all from SNL. We

17:26

had a lot of SNL people at the time helping us. And

17:28

I remember, yeah.

17:31

Which could cut both ways. No, but what

17:33

I'm saying is they, this

17:35

began the first major question, which was

17:37

Robert

17:39

and I both, we didn't

17:41

want this to be like

17:43

an extension of SNL. We wanted it to

17:45

have its own identity. Right.

17:47

So all these, when the SNL

17:49

people came in who were great and super talented,

17:52

one of the first things we said

17:54

to Eugene Lee was, we

17:56

just want to make sure it doesn't look like SNL. Right.

17:59

And Eugene Lee had a lot of people.

17:59

had famously come up with this

18:02

design ethic for SNL, which

18:04

was sort

18:05

of urban- Very

18:07

New York. Very New York, outside

18:09

spaces. Girders, a

18:11

lot of- So we gave him that

18:13

mandate and that story will continue

18:16

later. But so he goes off

18:18

to work on that.

18:20

And I remember

18:22

for some reason, I think someone had given

18:25

me,

18:26

I have very clear memories of certain things. Someone had given

18:28

me kind of like a

18:29

metal briefcase

18:32

that looked like it was made of aluminum. It

18:34

wasn't that expensive, but I had gotten it for

18:36

Christmas,

18:38

like the year before from

18:40

one of my brothers or one of my sisters had given

18:42

me this metal briefcase.

18:44

Like kind of like the kind

18:46

of drug dealer we use in an 80s movie.

18:49

And you click it open and you'd open it. It was

18:52

just like this aluminum case. It should be full of cash.

18:54

It should be full of cash. And it should

18:56

be releasing a kidnap victim. I

18:59

remember really clearly, I had this office, there was

19:01

nothing in it, but like an iron desk that

19:05

I think had been around since like the fifties

19:08

and

19:10

a crappy chair. And

19:12

then I had that briefcase and I had writer's

19:14

submissions in it. You're all set. But I walked

19:16

around with this iron briefcase and I remembered every

19:19

night I would leave the office, I would pass 6A

19:21

and then be in there. You

19:24

should have handcuffed it to yourself. I know, but

19:27

every night there was nothing

19:29

happening in there yet. You know

19:31

what I mean? And every night it would

19:33

get getting closer and closer. The studio was just

19:35

still an empty machine. I

19:37

would go home and just think, I

19:40

mean, I wish I had used recreational

19:42

drugs. I think that's the way I could have gotten through

19:44

it, but I didn't. I just ate potatoes

19:46

and

19:47

fried beef. The truth is when you have

19:49

a set, new designer set, nothing

19:52

happens for a long time. Right. And

19:54

then when it's supposedly done,

19:58

it all gets installed in like a day. So

20:00

there was a lot of time where there was nothing there. And

20:02

it's being built in a- Also, we were having,

20:05

this is- Conan

20:10

is- I'm drawing a rectangle. Conan is drawing. And

20:12

I'm holding it up. And you can look this up online, but this is a rectangle.

20:14

And here's those famous double doors that characters

20:17

walk in and out of right there.

20:19

And the Letterman setup

20:21

had been, you know, I think whatever

20:24

desk here, blah, blah, blah, and then audience here,

20:26

you know, and this is all the audience and everything is

20:28

angled that way, right?

20:31

Of course, Robert was

20:33

like, wouldn't it be cool? Cause this isn't going to be enough

20:35

space for all the great comedy ideas we have. Shouldn't

20:38

we do it the other way?

20:40

Shouldn't the audience be here?

20:43

And that way the

20:45

desk

20:47

can be here. And we have all of this room-

20:50

Super wide. Super wide. And

20:52

I remember thinking, yeah,

20:55

yes, I agree. So

20:57

the first thing we start doing is we start saying,

21:00

we want to completely reorient the way

21:03

Six A is set up. So it

21:05

goes a different way. And of

21:07

course we're dealing with Rick Ludwin and

21:11

who has also passed away, but was an amazing

21:13

champion of mine and Jeff's and the

21:15

show and- Late night

21:17

executives. Just a great, great man.

21:22

We showed it to him and he was like, what are you talking

21:24

about? This means you have like next to no

21:27

audience. Right, right. Giant, long

21:29

and Robert and I are- You need more characters.

21:31

Yeah, and Robert and I were like, well, we just, we want plenty

21:34

of room so that when 35 characters

21:36

come out, dressed as a Pope and a mule,

21:39

and there's also a cartoon character and there's a Zeppelin,

21:42

there's plenty of room for them. And then Conan can just

21:44

be in the corner for the occasional

21:46

guest interview. You

21:49

also couldn't move the seats. No room for the guests. You

21:51

couldn't move the seats.

21:52

Oh yeah. They were like built in like there, you know,

21:54

there was, remember the rake of the studio? It's

21:56

all like, you know, the

21:59

huge job to- We orient the entire- So

22:01

that all stayed in. Yeah. I

22:05

believe that the, yes, the

22:07

way it was set up was just next to impossible

22:10

to change around.

22:11

And yet we were, what are we doing?

22:14

We have so much to do. Right, right. And

22:16

the first thing we're saying

22:18

is, I know this is a great boat, but can we

22:20

make it a car? And-

22:23

There was a lot of- There was a lot of that. It was another

22:26

one I remember,

22:27

which is we really wanted to not be

22:30

in Letterman's shadow. I didn't, you know, and

22:33

Robert would say a lot, I just, you know, you don't want to be

22:36

compared to Letterman and you think, well, there's no, I'm

22:38

replacing Letterman. There's nobody would avoid that.

22:41

And there was this sense that I'm gonna get killed by

22:43

the press and everybody, because

22:45

Dave is at the height of his powers and I'm

22:47

like an amoeba, you know? He's this

22:51

fully formed

22:52

falcon that can see 10,000 miles and

22:55

can see- An apex predator. An apex predator. He's

22:57

a Tyrannosaurus Rex and I'm three-celled

23:01

piece of algae that's just replaced

23:03

him. And I'm gonna need a million years

23:05

to grow a couple of legs. And

23:08

so the funniest

23:09

thing

23:12

was, I

23:14

remember it was Robert's ideas, like we should change the name

23:17

of the show so it's not late night.

23:19

So we were thinking- Oh, my home. And I was like, oh

23:21

yeah, yeah, yeah. So we came up, we

23:23

came up, we start planning and then we come up with

23:25

the name that we wanted, which was

23:27

Nighty Night. Yeah,

23:31

Nighty Night with Conan O'Brien. Like Nighty Night,

23:33

which we thought was just really cartoony and

23:35

funny and arch and kind of pee-wee's

23:38

play. And so we had a meeting, I'll

23:40

never forget in this

23:41

office in 30 Rock, not in our offices,

23:44

but a special office that Rick had. And-

23:47

Just where they take you to yell at you. Yeah,

23:49

we told Rick, we wanted to meet with him. I

23:52

don't think Jeff was there for this. I think he knew better.

23:54

I think he was like, yeah, why don't you guys run along and pitch

23:57

that? So we went up and we went, you know, we're

23:59

worried about being compared.

23:59

and he goes, ah, well, let me tell you something. That

24:02

is a, we own that name late night. It's

24:04

a franchise. It is a very popular franchise. It's been

24:06

very good to us since 1983 or 82.

24:09

And it's for 11 years.

24:12

It has been a benchmark. And I think we own that. We wouldn't

24:14

get rid of it unless there was a spectacular new name.

24:16

And we said, well, strap yourself in. Strap

24:19

yourself, Rick. You're sitting down, Rick, because here we

24:21

go. And we're going to be like, oh, I'm going to be like, oh, I'm going

24:23

to be like, oh, I'm going to be like, oh,

24:26

strap yourself in. I'll strap yourself in. You're

24:28

sitting down, Rick, because here we go. And we said, we want

24:30

to call it

24:31

nighty night with Conan O'Brien and

24:33

Rick start going. And he's, do you remember

24:36

Rick wrote, Rick, Rick Lubin's

24:38

a very proper exec.

24:41

Like he's the cartoon of an executive.

24:44

Again, wonderful guy, but he's wearing a tie.

24:46

He looks like a- He's like clipart. Yeah, he looks like,

24:48

yes, exactly. He looks like he should be a page. And

24:52

he's wearing like a tie and his jackets

24:55

buttoned. And he's wearing his,

24:57

you know, his chinos and his shoes. And

25:03

I'm saying it's nighty night. Robert's like, yeah,

25:05

nighty night. And Rick starts to go, remember

25:09

this thing he would do? He starts- I think I

25:11

was actually there. He starts scratching the back of his head and going, ah,

25:14

okay, ah. Oh, nervous sick. And I think he

25:17

had a thing. And I think I could see like he was

25:19

tearing flesh. And he

25:21

went, okay, okay. I'll

25:23

tell you what this, I'll tell you this. It is late night.

25:26

It's going to be late night. It's going to

25:27

remain late night. It is late night with Conan O'Brien.

25:30

It's not going to be nighty night.

25:31

And we're like back down the room. And

25:34

then, okay, so quickly,

25:38

our two first attempts to put our own stamp

25:40

on this are terribly misguided. Yeah.

25:44

But then writers start showing up. We start

25:46

finding really great people. And-

25:50

I do remember at one point the

25:52

sound effects guy, what was his name? It'll come

25:54

to me. And right around the same

25:56

time, we start meeting the crew and he comes up and

25:58

he says, Guys,

26:01

I was the guy on the side, I hit the

26:03

crack and let him throw the pencils through

26:05

the window. I would do the- Crashing.

26:08

The crashing of the window, the breaking of the window. So

26:10

if you want to do that, I know how to do that. And

26:13

I remember us both going, yeah. No,

26:16

it was so funny because- That

26:18

we will keep. Constantly people were saying- You remember

26:20

that? Yes, I remember that. And I remember also

26:22

hearing, you can

26:24

do top 10 list because

26:26

that belongs to NBC. And

26:29

I thought,

26:30

what are you fucking talking about?

26:32

As a creative person, I don't

26:34

want to do top 10 list. And also I'll

26:37

get, like, I don't want to do it, A,

26:39

it's great thing, but it's Dave's thing.

26:42

What are you talking about? But the, so you were

26:44

hearing, I mean, first of all, there was,

26:46

it was so, there was so many misguided

26:49

ideas. We had

26:51

some writers started showing up and

26:53

someone had a cat.

26:55

So we had a late night cat that was

26:57

living with us which is completely

26:59

illegal. There was a cat living,

27:02

you know, in 30 Rock, the

27:05

art deco- It's like a halfway house. It

27:08

was the art deco, you know,

27:11

shrine to broadcasting. And we've, we're

27:13

hiring,

27:14

all the writers we hired had never worked

27:16

in television before. And

27:19

so, but- Odenkirk

27:22

was part of it. Odenkirk was,

27:25

came in and was helping. Louis CK

27:28

was an early hire.

27:31

Andy Richter, I mean, I've told

27:33

this story a million times, but he, we heard

27:35

from Jeff Garland.

27:41

Jeff Garland said, oh, you might,

27:43

you should, guys should talk to this guy, Andy Richter.

27:46

He's really funny. He's in the annoyance theater in Chicago

27:49

and he's out in LA. And so I

27:52

think Robert had met with him. So

27:54

I had to go meet with him.

27:56

So I just met with him at a deli, like in the valley.

27:59

And- Yeah, I remember you guys eating borscht. No,

28:02

not you guys. It

28:04

was a really hot day. And I walked

28:07

in and I said, you know, I'll have whatever. I'll have a Coca-Cola

28:10

and you know, whatever a corned beef sandwich,

28:12

typical Irish. That's good for hot weather. Yeah.

28:15

And he was like, he said, I'll have the borscht.

28:18

And I said, he sounds like Rosanne.

28:23

But I remember, what I remember is immediately,

28:26

immediately, I mean, it's just like a good date. It

28:28

was just chemical.

28:31

I just liked him right

28:33

away.

28:34

And we fucked around and talked to the table. And I left

28:37

the meeting and I said,

28:39

I called Robert and I said, we got to hire him. And

28:41

Robert said, he hasn't submitted a packet.

28:44

We have to see his writing. And I was like,

28:46

I don't know that we do. He just seems

28:48

like a guy we need. And Robert said, nope,

28:50

we got to see his packet. So we asked for a packet.

28:53

Andy wrote up some stuff and

28:55

we read it. It was good.

28:57

And so we said, I was so relieved. Because once

28:59

Andy showed up,

29:01

I started to feel like it's like Robin Hood. We're

29:03

starting to get our people and

29:05

we have a cat. And

29:08

then it's time to, it's getting later

29:10

and later in the game to start. Test

29:13

shows. We're not there yet because we

29:16

have, it's time to see

29:18

a design

29:20

for the set. Oh, right. And so.

29:23

Right. And there's been people off working

29:25

on this. Well, working on the design. So

29:28

we had said to Eugene Lee,

29:32

I

29:34

want to say Eugene Levy, which

29:37

don't get Eugene Levy to design your set. Yeah,

29:39

Eugene Lee. And Eugene Lee, again, I will

29:41

stress Eugene Lee, a very talented

29:44

guy and he'd done stuff on Broadway. And he

29:46

had done all those iconic sets for SNL.

29:48

So really brilliant guy. And he came in and

29:51

we just kept saying, what we don't want is the outdoor

29:53

New York architectural like wrought iron

29:55

kind of thing. SNL, we don't want

29:57

that. Yeah. And

29:59

so.

29:59

He came in and he had this cardboard

30:02

thing and it was under a blanket,

30:05

like

30:05

a blanket. He'd explode. He'd

30:07

reveal it. Voila, he wanted to do a voila. So

30:09

we get into a room and it was the room that ended up being,

30:11

you would know it, it was the big meeting conference. The

30:14

conference room and the other end of the hall. So

30:16

we're in that conference room. The show is now

30:18

like, has to premiere in like six

30:21

weeks. Test shows start in

30:23

four weeks and Eugene

30:26

comes in

30:27

and he says, okay, well, here it is.

30:29

And

30:32

we're all much younger than this guy. And he's like, okay, well,

30:34

here it is. He puts it down and he goes, and

30:37

voila. And he removes it and it's an

30:40

iron spiral staircase.

30:42

It's SNL. It's SNL. It's SNL.

30:45

It's the SNL set and he's- But it's iron instead of

30:47

copper. But he's telling- It actually leads to that

30:50

set. But he's also, he's telling us,

30:52

this is what I'm gonna do. And

30:56

my heart sinks the minute I see it. And I can

30:58

see all of Robert, Jeff. And then we're just

31:00

like, and then so I start to say, okay, well,

31:03

the

31:05

thing is it looks a lot like SNL

31:08

and we're really hoping to go in a

31:10

different

31:11

direction than that. I didn't- I

31:13

don't think you got the whole set. No, no, what I did is I said

31:15

to say like, we don't wanna do the whole, and he

31:18

said, I'll never forget, I said some sentence

31:21

and Eugene went, okay, well,

31:23

and he was holding it. He said, well,

31:25

okay, if you don't want it, then

31:28

maybe you can get someone else to build the fucking set.

31:30

And he tore it up and like threw it against

31:32

the wall and stormed

31:35

out,

31:36

door shuts, pieces

31:39

of cardboard on the floor. Yeah.

31:43

And where I know exactly that it faces south,

31:46

it's now six weeks out,

31:47

the designer just tore up the set. He's

31:49

an older guy than me. He's an

31:52

adult, screamed at me, ran out of the room.

31:54

I looked out the window and it's

31:56

the closest I've come. I swear to God,

31:58

I thought,

32:00

I could just go, I could just like go out

32:02

the window because-

32:04

And he would win the argument

32:06

then. Have Eugene come back and throw you. It

32:08

was the beginning of a few low moments

32:11

to come. And there were many low moments to come,

32:13

but that was- Did he apologize?

32:16

Did he?

32:17

Well, no,

32:20

not really. All right, not really. Wow.

32:23

No. That's so dramatic. He did

32:25

come back. He didn't really

32:27

come back. About a year later

32:29

after we were on the air. We needed a set. So

32:31

he didn't do the set at all? No, Keith Raywood did

32:33

the set. Oh, Keith Raywood did it. Yeah.

32:35

So he didn't,

32:37

so yeah, we ended up,

32:39

now of course on our own, we made plenty

32:41

of goofy decisions because exit

32:44

that decision. And then what do we do? We

32:46

talked to Keith Raywood and he builds basically,

32:48

and again, this was a lot of at our direction. He was

32:51

under the gun and he didn't have time. Yeah,

32:53

so Keith is, this is not on Keith. And this is on us

32:55

saying kind of what we want. We

32:58

get this, it's

33:00

like a nice little room. If you watch the beginning

33:02

of the show, the late night show,

33:05

I still have a lot of affection

33:07

for it because there's, but it looks

33:10

like a Dean's office. And

33:13

the other funny thing is the color

33:16

that we went wanted. There's a lot of law

33:18

books. I

33:21

was looking for any other job at that point.

33:23

But the color. The color. The color

33:25

was mustard. Now,

33:29

here I am. You always refer to it as a

33:31

mustard colored set. I don't know much about,

33:33

of course I don't know anything about anything.

33:36

If I know one thing after all these years,

33:38

it's put a guy with my coloring, super

33:41

pale, it has blue eyes and red hair against blue.

33:46

It just works.

33:49

Don't overthink it. No,

33:52

say the young idiot. Opposite

33:54

of the color. I wanted to reorient

33:56

the studio, call it 90 night, get a...

33:59

a cat, you know, just

34:02

making all these crazy decisions left and right,

34:06

mustard yellow.

34:07

And I think it just, I think a lot

34:10

of viewers, when they ended up

34:12

airing the show, thought I had jaundice. You know,

34:14

I think his liver's

34:16

failing was the most common. I

34:20

think we might've changed it like six months in. No,

34:23

we did. No, no, no. Well, I mean, you can see

34:25

if you see those, it lasts for a while.

34:28

It lasts for a while. We were more

34:30

worried about us lasting, rather than

34:32

we just thought someone else would be on this. I guess it was the idea

34:34

of asking for a new set was, at

34:36

that point, down on the list. Yeah, it was way down

34:38

the list. But we start

34:42

to get the set squared away.

34:45

Meanwhile, there's no ban. I was gonna say,

34:47

did you have the ban yet? No. No,

34:49

but what happened there was I was staying

34:52

in Midtown.

34:54

And- Riga Royal Hotel. At the Riga

34:56

Royal Hotel. I'm

34:58

looking, I mean, I'm under so much pressure. Oh, so you

35:00

don't even have an apartment yet? No, I have

35:02

a hotel. Oh, wow. So I'm under a lot of pressure.

35:04

You really weren't planning on staying long. There's

35:07

under a lot of pressure. And I remembered I never get

35:09

headaches, but I was getting headaches. And I'm up

35:11

in my hotel

35:13

and trying to figure out how

35:16

are we gonna get through this? Or how are we gonna hire

35:18

these people? Or how are we gonna shoot? What

35:20

should be the sketches that we do that are gonna really represent

35:23

who we are right away? And

35:26

I have a headache

35:28

and there's no aspirin. I'll never

35:30

forget, I like asked for aspirin at the front desk

35:32

and they said, we don't have it. So I went, okay.

35:34

So I went out and I walked down the street

35:37

and I run right into

35:38

Max Weinberg from Bruce Springsteen. And

35:41

he's walking with his wife and

35:43

I recognize him. And he

35:45

recognizes me and he goes, Conan. Hey,

35:48

Conan. Yeah. What's what

35:50

he called me for 30 years after that. Conan. And

35:54

we chatted a little bit and he said, I'm telling you, I

35:57

know

35:58

how to put this band together for you. And I

36:00

was, I just thought, well, I don't,

36:03

I mean, maybe he does. He got right into

36:06

it with you on the street. Pretty quickly. Yeah,

36:08

he had been there for three weeks. Yeah, he

36:11

was the one that stole the Asper from that job.

36:13

And said, make sure he walks out. No, but

36:16

whatever happened, we were chatting, he said, I could

36:18

do it. And I said, okay, well, you know,

36:23

definitely we're looking. And I

36:25

thought,

36:26

I know that he had, he

36:28

was no longer drumming with Springsteen. Springsteen

36:30

had gone solo at that point. Right.

36:33

He had famously fired the band. Yeah.

36:36

He had gone all Nebraska. What's that? Yeah,

36:38

no, no, it was just would be Tunnel of Love. Okay.

36:41

But yeah,

36:44

he says he can do it. I

36:47

don't know much. And there's a lot of craziness,

36:50

behind the scenes craziness that would take forever

36:52

to explain. But basically there ends up being an

36:54

audition and there's a couple of bands

36:56

that are put together. And

36:59

we videotaped them. We videotaped them. And-

37:01

Probably videotaped four or five,

37:04

really. So we're sitting in there and I'll

37:06

never forget, John Lurie

37:08

was one.

37:09

What's the name of his band? John Lurie and the

37:11

Lounge Losers. Was it the Lounge Losers? So it was

37:14

a band he put, I don't remember. Maybe it was a band he put together. And

37:16

they were really good, but it was ironic

37:19

and kind of- Very hip.

37:21

It was very hip and very downtown. And

37:23

I remember like thinking, these guys

37:26

are amazing. And I know a lot of respect for John Lurie.

37:28

He's great. I remember thinking, I don't know that's the way

37:30

to go. And then we're looking at someone else. And

37:32

then I

37:34

hear Max Weinberg's here and he comes in

37:36

and he's with Jimmy Vivino, his

37:38

brother, Jerry Vivino.

37:40

He's with that crazy horn

37:43

section, the bass player. And then I- You

37:46

knew them. The Lebamba

37:48

and Pender, the trombone

37:50

player. Lebamba of year 2000. Year 2000 fame.

37:53

And Mark Pender, the trombone player, when I was

37:55

Diana Russ's road manager, like 10 years earlier,

37:58

they were the Horns, they were the Asbury. the Juke's Horn section,

38:00

which she hired to go on the road with. So I

38:02

was on the road with those, I knew them. And

38:05

I walked in and we hadn't seen each other in like 10 years. It

38:07

was like,

38:08

I was thinking to myself, I didn't say out loud,

38:10

I was like, is this like an omen

38:12

of some sort? Right, right. They run into these

38:14

guys. So they launched

38:16

into it. And I wanna say they played,

38:21

I think they played the Peter Gunn theme.

38:23

Correct. And I wasn't,

38:25

they sounded amazing. Now

38:27

I wasn't crazy about that because that was a

38:30

song that GE Smith used to play at SNL. So

38:35

a sketch would end that had no ending. Grapefruits,

38:39

I thought this was a deli. No

38:41

laughs.

38:47

By the way, that would be a sketch that I wrote.

38:49

And then, but then we said, then

38:54

they said they had something else they could play and

38:57

they played. And they played a few songs. And they

38:59

play this thing that goes,

39:00

da-da-da-da da-da-da.

39:03

So sort of an occasion. Like, da-da-da-da-da

39:06

da-da-da-da. Everybody.

39:09

Da-da-da-da-da da-da-da. And it was- Oh

39:11

yeah, yeah. And then it kicks into this whole thing.

39:13

It does that. And then it kicks into a whole thing. And

39:15

I swear to God, I

39:18

was like, this is it. It

39:20

was obvious. And I leaned over to Jeff and

39:22

I said, buy me this band. Oh. Like,

39:25

no question.

39:27

No fucking question.

39:30

I don't know if you remember this. They had a

39:32

second keyboard player. There

39:34

was two keyboards. And that

39:36

when we got into it, it

39:38

was like, we can't have two keyboards.

39:41

Right. For whatever reason. I just got Healy shot

39:43

the other guy. He did, it's no joke.

39:47

But anyway,

39:48

so suddenly we have that band. Yeah.

39:51

And then I'm starting to think like, maybe there's hope.

39:55

We'll have the band play for an hour. Yeah. And

39:57

then, yeah, all these little buildings.

39:59

once they started assembling

40:02

had to- Oh, and you know,

40:04

Lorne, I would weigh in on different things.

40:06

Lorne

40:08

wasn't crazy about

40:10

the band. Right. He didn't

40:12

have a problem with the band. He just knew that I was

40:14

hiring Bruce Springsteen's drummer. And

40:16

he said, the press will go after you for

40:19

making a seventies move. You know, it's 1993 and

40:21

this is a- I think he said eighties.

40:24

Oh, I remember he said seventies. I

40:26

was like, he- Pretty big

40:28

in there. But anyway, he

40:30

said it's- He was trying to make a point. Yeah.

40:34

And

40:35

he wasn't thrilled about it.

40:37

And I think he was also getting some, maybe advice to

40:40

go a different way from someone. And

40:45

I dug my heels in.

40:47

I dug my heels in on Robert and said

40:49

it had to be Robert. And I dug my heels in and said,

40:52

it has to be Max

40:53

and these guys. And-

40:55

Which I'm sure took a lot for you to do when

40:57

you're there. And already kind of feeling grateful

41:00

to be there. You know what's interesting? Not when you know

41:02

you're right. Like that's the weird thing

41:05

is if I don't know I'm right, I

41:07

don't know. But when you know you're right, you're

41:09

right. And you just- You sensed

41:11

it. Well, it's also conviction. I mean,

41:13

there were stories later on that we'll never get

41:16

to that

41:17

decisions were made based on conviction and not

41:20

anything much more than that. Yeah. There

41:23

was a real, almost, it

41:27

was in its own way, very an ideological

41:30

show. There was a lot of,

41:33

this is what the show has to be. And-

41:36

Almost like a thesis was written. Yeah. Well,

41:38

it was like, there could be a,

41:41

you know, there could be like a Bible almost written about,

41:43

this is the kind of comedy we do. This is the comedy kind

41:46

of comedy we don't do. And I think I

41:48

felt that way, Robert felt that way. And

41:51

it's gotta be,

41:53

you know, Letterman's thing, which was so brilliant

41:55

was, there was the talk show, which

41:57

is Johnny Carson. Then there's-

42:00

the anti-talk show, which

42:02

people thought which was more Letterman, which is ironic.

42:05

Right. And then this has

42:07

to be what's next. And it was almost this sort of postmodern,

42:10

it's gonna be a mix of Pee-wee's

42:13

Playhouse and SCTV. When

42:17

we do false reality, I won't wink at the camera

42:20

and say, like Dave

42:22

had this way of always letting you know, I'm David

42:25

Letterman, I'm not buying any of this shit.

42:27

So people can rant and rave around me. It's all happening.

42:30

But we all know what's happening here.

42:32

And our thing was, he's

42:34

brilliant at that. It's great, but

42:36

ours has to be, if

42:39

I'm in the audience and someone stands up and

42:41

he's a sea captain, I need to completely

42:44

believe that he's a sea captain.

42:46

Or if a sketch calls for me to be

42:48

suddenly broke and

42:51

crying and wondering,

42:53

and at my wit's end,

42:55

I have to really commit to that. Yeah, you can't break character.

42:58

I can't break. And so

43:01

there was a lot, we wanted animation, we

43:03

wanted puppets, we wanted real silliness.

43:07

And what was really important is that

43:09

nobody was watching over us. Oh,

43:12

right. No, and that's true. We were, I

43:14

mean, other than Rick, who was in LA, we

43:16

were in New York,

43:19

we just kept going

43:21

and nobody was really paying attention. And I think

43:25

that might be the most crucial point that

43:28

Jeff made, because everyone,

43:33

even if I was not in that situation

43:35

and someone told me, yeah, they picked a guy

43:38

who was 29 when I auditioned

43:40

and has

43:43

no experience.

43:44

And they picked a producer who's done

43:46

some work with the kids in the hall, but most of his work

43:49

has been in music. And there's

43:51

no way

43:53

that they're not all over them. But

43:58

we were in New York and most of the people,

43:59

people are in LA and-

44:02

It's still a little surprising.

44:04

No one- You guys must have given off some sort

44:06

of confidence. But-

44:09

Well, at least when they were, when these other people were around- Well,

44:11

yeah, that's when I say I spent most of my time faking

44:14

it and making like I knew what I was doing until I figured

44:16

it out. You know who actually was helped? Morty was helpful.

44:18

Yeah.

44:19

Bob Robert Morton who produced the Letterman Show at

44:22

NBC and then went with him to CBS. It's

44:25

a close friend of mine and I was, I would

44:27

call him about certain things and

44:29

his basic advice was ignore everybody. That's

44:32

crazy advice. Which was true. Yeah,

44:34

cause otherwise you let all those voices

44:37

in. Yeah. But there wasn't even anybody really

44:39

interfering. No, no, it was, it was, you know,

44:41

and also I think there was another element here too,

44:43

which is

44:45

if you get too

44:47

close and it's a disaster, you

44:50

don't want to get blood and brains on. Yeah,

44:52

there was a lot of- So I think there was a little bit of- A

44:55

lot of- That's- I'm gonna say actually

44:57

a lot of,

44:59

there's me and there's this feeling of like, this

45:02

kid could get killed. Right. Literally

45:04

killed on television in

45:07

a month. I don't want to be in the blast zone.

45:09

I don't want to be in the blast zone when people say, how the fuck

45:11

did this happen? So

45:13

I'm happy to kind of

45:16

hang back. And then I remember another

45:18

thing from that summer was there,

45:20

some marketing guys came in and told us what

45:23

their marketing plan was. Because

45:26

they say, no one knows who you are. So we're going to tell them. And

45:28

it was mostly about how I'm tall.

45:32

And it was this whole, they had these boards like, he's

45:34

taller than average. He's six

45:37

four, you know, and- You

45:40

can touch the rim when he jumps. Exactly.

45:43

And I, that

45:45

was another moment where my heart was sinking. And I

45:47

was thinking, when people watch

45:49

television, they don't care how tall you are.

45:51

It doesn't really translate. That's great. That's

45:54

what I'm trying to read. We've learned that. We've learned that everywhere

45:56

I go in life, people cannot believe that

45:58

I'm a large man.

45:59

because my personality is that of a very small

46:02

petty man. I felt like I was like, personally,

46:05

I was a, like a blender

46:07

and I was like the cover of a, you know, when you,

46:09

when you make a shake and you put everything in there and

46:11

you hold the thing on, so it doesn't become

46:13

a mess. I think I was that.

46:15

Yeah. For a long time. I was just

46:17

holding it all in one place. So it didn't become

46:20

a mess. Robert

46:23

was some kale and protein powder.

46:26

Andy was maraschino cherries, which

46:29

are not doctor advised. Hey, Conan

46:31

O'Brien here.

46:35

Be honest, we could all use a

46:37

friend. That's why I started an entire podcast

46:39

about it. It's called Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.

46:42

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46:44

some real friendships by hanging out with people

46:46

like Tom Hanks, Maya Rudolph, Bruce Springsteen,

46:48

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46:53

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48:40

I remember some of the moments I remember a lot

48:42

from this summer was, okay,

48:46

this is where the Ford Tourist comes into the picture.

48:49

I had left Saturday Night Live

48:51

and gone to the Simpsons about two years earlier

48:53

and needed a car.

48:56

So I bought a, don't

48:59

ask me why. I'd saved up

49:01

all my money. I never bought anything. And

49:04

I decided I want that. I heard there was a Ford

49:06

Tourist that had a stick shift. It was kind of, say

49:09

no more. That was the part I couldn't believe. Yeah.

49:11

And so, and I just remembered thinking, this is so

49:13

me. This is right up there. The ladies will

49:16

love this. This is right up, oh, this is a real panty dropper.

49:19

This is, I always had to be

49:22

that guy. I couldn't just go out and get like, I

49:24

had the money to get a

49:27

nice BMW or something, but no,

49:29

I got a, I was like, wait a minute. You

49:31

got an ironic car. Yes. I got an ironic

49:34

car and I thought it was

49:36

cool. Cause it has this special engine.

49:38

It's really, it's fast. It's got a stick shift,

49:41

but no one knows. Because it looks

49:43

just like a Ford Tourist that a mom

49:45

would like drive his soccer. It's a metaphor for you. Yeah. Exactly.

49:48

Exactly. No, who knows? It's a Ford

49:50

Tourist, S.H.O. That's what I'm saying. Super

49:52

high output. It was called the show. And

49:54

so I get that. So then I take

49:56

that. I

49:58

have that and it's in the. parking

50:01

garage, it's on the South

50:03

side of

50:05

across from the marquee of NBC.

50:07

Right. And I remembered I

50:10

would,

50:11

and I'll never forget the cell phone would just make kids

50:13

laugh today.

50:14

It was this giant, I was, it was the first time

50:16

I had a car phone. Oh, cool. Well, I had

50:18

one installed and they were giant.

50:21

Some of us would not remember those days. Some of

50:23

us would. Jesse, I'm telling you,

50:25

you would laugh really hard this thing. It's really big. Yeah.

50:29

Doesn't really work. Is

50:32

the other thing. So I remembered I, Cause no one else

50:34

had the curly antenna on the, the curly antenna on the,

50:36

on the back of the, Right. Right.

50:39

Like a CB radio. So I would,

50:41

when there was a weekend, I would just get

50:43

in that thing, that

50:45

Ford Taurus and just drive. Because

50:48

the city, so much energy

50:50

and nervousness, and everywhere I went, people

50:52

were like, you're that fucking guy who's going to

50:54

die in a couple of weeks. And so I

50:57

would just

50:57

drive out of. I saw him while he was still alive. I

50:59

saw him. You could tell he was going to die.

51:02

And yeah, I'd see. So I

51:05

would drive out and my parents had a place

51:07

in Westerly, Rhode Island, and I would go there

51:09

on the

51:10

weekend. And I remembered Lauren would call

51:12

me, you know, to sort

51:15

of check in on how

51:17

it's doing and everything. Have you

51:19

run away yet? You know, and really

51:21

Max Weinberg, and I'm driving and I'm holding

51:23

the phone, but it's terrible

51:26

technology. And there's probably three cell towers

51:29

in the Northeast at that point. So he'd be

51:31

like, and the one thing you need to remember to do is.

51:33

And I'm. And

51:35

whatever you do, don't. And whatever you do, don't. And

51:40

I think one thing you need to obviously

51:42

do is. And

51:44

I'm also trying to shift. And you can't

51:47

shift and talk on this big clunky thing. There's no hands

51:49

free. So I crashed a lot. It

51:52

was just a big disaster.

51:53

I love this mental picture of you. And

51:55

then I went to my parents' house and

51:57

they had this white house with us.

52:00

a little picket fence and

52:02

I get there and the show

52:04

is in a couple of weeks and I've parked my

52:06

Ford Taurus in the backyard and

52:08

I'm just sitting on the front porch the next morning trying

52:10

to stay calm. And

52:13

I'll never forget this, I'm sitting on the front porch with my dad

52:15

and there's this little white picket fence that has a little ivy

52:17

around it. And I'm just

52:20

telling my dad, I'm just so, he was like, well, you

52:22

know, I think it's, remember it's all gonna

52:24

be okay. And I started to relax a little bit when

52:26

this big truck came around the corner, misjudged

52:29

the turn and

52:31

knocked down the picket fence right

52:34

in front of us, crashed it, knocked it all

52:36

down. And we're both sitting

52:38

there and my father went,

52:39

you should go inside, you're

52:42

a known person now. Like I

52:44

shouldn't be there in case someone comes by and they

52:46

might go, oh, wait a minute, it's that guy who's gonna die in a couple of

52:48

weeks. You know, maybe it's- Was that

52:50

his fault? It wasn't his fault. So I remember going inside

52:53

and thinking, this is an omen.

52:55

Yeah. Then, you know, Lauren was like,

52:58

you should get a truck in there and kill him. Eugene

53:00

Lee, drive up to- Yeah, it was Eugene. We need

53:02

you in Rhode Island. Get in

53:03

like myself or you're gonna die.

53:06

So things like that were happening all

53:08

the time. I did get an apartment

53:10

that was right across, I sublet an apartment.

53:13

You remember it was? 65th and 55th. 65th.

53:15

It's right across the street from Tavern on the Green.

53:18

Right. Oh, okay. On the park. On the park.

53:21

But when I looked out and I could see the air conditioning

53:23

fans

53:24

and all the lights on Tavern on the Green. And

53:27

I used to look out that window and just think, I

53:30

don't know. I just don't know.

53:33

Would you walk? If I jumped, would they shred me? Right

53:36

now, I know. Shoot, there's a grate over

53:38

them. God damn it. You were gonna ask, did we walk

53:40

to work? Cause I live in the neighborhood also. Yeah, yeah, you

53:42

do a lot of walking to work. Oh, I bet.

53:45

It's a great walk. It's also a great way

53:47

to just grind through everything in

53:49

the morning and burn up some energy. You

53:51

know, the walk to work became the cold

53:54

open, which I think was really important.

53:56

Because I

53:57

mean, that's coming later on, but. Right.

54:00

It's not time to maybe go over that one yet,

54:02

but the cold open for the show is basically

54:05

me walking to work

54:06

and people saying, you better be as good as Letterman. And

54:09

that was basically what

54:12

I was, it was very autobiographical. It

54:14

was heightened and made

54:16

ridiculous, but

54:19

it was very true and- And

54:21

very well done. Yeah, I remember when I watched that, it's

54:23

like, oh, you just

54:26

believe that's,

54:27

that's why it was so funny right away. Because you

54:29

know that's, that was what everyone

54:32

was saying. Exactly where your mind was. Also, I'll

54:34

tell you this, I was told in no uncertain

54:37

terms,

54:38

do not mention Letterman, and don't talk

54:40

about how you're replacing Letterman

54:42

at the beginning of the show

54:44

and talk about digging in your heels. Robert

54:47

and I write this thing where

54:50

I'm walking, it's, you know, it starts

54:52

with, I wake up, it

54:54

says September 13th,

54:57

and people on, I

54:59

think we got real people like John Tesh or whatever

55:01

to say like, well, you know, entertainment tonight, you

55:03

know, big day, Conan O'Brien is gonna take over and

55:05

he better be as good as Letterman. And then

55:07

me walking to work and everyone saying, you better be

55:09

as good as Letterman. And I just knew that

55:12

I needed to play it total cheerful.

55:14

Oh, of course, that's true. You

55:16

better be as good as Letterman. Broca

55:19

did it. And yeah, and then Broca came

55:21

in and did this great thing where,

55:23

and it was important that

55:25

I just be like, you bet, like

55:28

super happy and super cheerful and not

55:30

breaking at all. And then Broca said he would,

55:32

and he was great.

55:34

He comes off the elevator and he walks

55:36

up to me and he goes,

55:37

Conan and I just want to say welcome to MB. And it's a big

55:39

deal, like for Tom, and Tom Broca was close

55:41

with Letterman. So it was a very cool

55:43

thing that he did this. Yes,

55:46

he was always great. He's great, he's a great

55:48

guy. And he, but he walked up to me

55:50

and went with that incredible voice, Conan, Tom

55:52

Broca. I just want you to know that, you

55:55

know, you have my utmost confidence, whatever. Everyone

55:57

here at NBC is rooting for you. And I say, thanks a lot,

55:59

Tom.

55:59

And then he says, but remember, and he

56:02

screwed up his face and he went, you better be

56:04

as good as Letterman. And he held up a, we

56:08

told him this note, but he held up a saltine cracker

56:10

and crushed it. And then

56:13

lets all the pieces fall. Yeah.

56:15

Which is what I, but that was so our show.

56:18

I love that that was in there because it's

56:20

so stupid. It's great.

56:21

And our show was all about gravity,

56:24

gravitas, and then deflate

56:26

it with a little piece of stupidity and he walks off.

56:29

But also you finally get off

56:31

the street where everyone's saying it to you and you're

56:33

like, okay, I'm in the building now. I'm safe now. I'm away

56:35

from that. And it's Tom Brokaw. It's Tom Brokaw. And

56:38

then I, the part that was dark, but I think people

56:40

liked as I go into the dressing room, everyone's

56:43

and I, and

56:46

you can't see what I'm doing. And then you realize I'm making

56:48

a noose and I'm

56:50

get up and I put my head in the noose and I'm just about to

56:52

hang myself when they say it would have been

56:54

Hollander. Hollander,

56:57

no. Conan, you're on. And

56:59

I went, oh. And then I realized

57:02

there

57:03

isn't time for me to kill myself. And so,

57:05

tomorrow maybe. Yeah. And that's, I

57:09

remember like playing that and

57:11

being backstage and hearing it kill, like

57:15

an audience really laughing

57:17

hard. And that helped so

57:19

much to come out. I remember

57:21

I was, I kept thinking I have

57:23

to show this to Ludwin to wreck Ludwin.

57:26

And I know he'll think it's

57:27

hilarious up until the end.

57:31

Okay. And that I would know that, that dark ending.

57:34

He'll want to pull back. And so we sort of waited

57:36

as long as we could wait. I think it might've been, I

57:38

don't think it was the day of the show, but it was late when

57:41

we showed it to him. And I

57:43

remember him going, he's like laughing. And

57:46

then it gets to the end and he's like, oh. And I go, and

57:49

then I'm like, oh, and

57:51

then I'm like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

57:54

And I go, and

57:56

then he, but he didn't like, he

57:58

went, okay. He didn't say no. No, he went. He went, okay, but he went,

58:00

oh. I have a really funny,

58:03

someone, every now and then someone

58:05

will find photos. Someone

58:07

was taking photos that day. Oh,

58:10

wow. And so we're sitting on Central Park West

58:12

where the benches are.

58:13

You know, the stone

58:16

wall's there and the park is over the stone wall.

58:18

And we're waiting for the next shot to be set

58:21

up because that's how I'm walking down

58:23

to work. And there's like, you

58:25

know, photographers from the post following

58:27

us and everything's just, it was back in the crazy days.

58:30

Everyone was like wondering, what's this guy doing? What's it gonna

58:32

be?

58:33

But I'm sitting there, you're

58:36

on a cell phone that looks really funny because it

58:38

looks like you're in the Korean War.

58:41

It's got like an antenna. Yeah, and

58:43

you've also got this curly fro. You

58:45

got a curly fro and

58:47

I look 19. And

58:51

I'm wearing the style at the time was this kind of

58:53

big show. I'm wearing a jacket,

58:55

but it's got kind of like padding.

58:58

And then like this, you know,

59:00

wide tie.

59:02

It was just a weird transitional time for

59:04

men's fashion. My

59:08

hair is this big floppy thing in front

59:10

of me. And we're just sitting there

59:12

and we're making this thing. And I was always as

59:15

anxious as I was and rightfully afraid.

59:18

And

59:19

I was always okay when we were making

59:21

something. And so that's

59:23

also when we started shooting, getting close

59:25

to the premiere. We had this idea that we wanna

59:28

do this kind of, cause we were kids of the of

59:30

70s television. Shows

59:33

used to say, you know, last

59:35

week on CoJack and they would

59:37

show dramatic stuff. So we decided

59:39

we wanted to shoot

59:41

very labor intensive, but unrealistic

59:44

things

59:44

last week on Conan O'Brien.

59:46

And it would be

59:49

me saying to a woman, I'm sorry,

59:51

my dear, you know, I'm leaving you

59:53

and she'd throw champagne in my face and I'm wearing an Ascot.

59:55

And it was all shot like dynasty or.

59:59

Really ambitious. Oh, guns

1:00:02

and craziness. We worked so hard

1:00:04

on these things and shots

1:00:07

of me laughing maniacally, Andy firing

1:00:10

guns, me, you know,

1:00:12

passionately kissing a woman and

1:00:15

then someone jumps in with a knife, enter

1:00:18

cut with car explosions, all this kind of stuff.

1:00:21

And the

1:00:24

whole time we were making those, I was happy.

1:00:27

Yeah. Because I knew how to play that attitude.

1:00:29

I knew how to play, frankly,

1:00:33

my dear, I have to, you know, that soap opera kind

1:00:35

of bullshit. And pre-tapes, you have

1:00:37

all that control over it. Pre-tapes, you have control

1:00:39

and we were shooting them. And God, when

1:00:42

we were doing that or shooting the cold open, we worked

1:00:45

our asses off. We were busy. And we did

1:00:47

a ton of preparation. Yeah, no, no, we

1:00:49

were busy. I mean, it was crazy. I

1:00:52

mean, even after we went on the air, it

1:00:54

was crazy. It was, we were there all, you know, till

1:00:56

midnight every night. Oh, we were never left. Well,

1:00:59

once the show started, it's just this. Well,

1:01:01

that's the whole other

1:01:01

thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was wondering leading up,

1:01:04

how much were you banking, comedy, or were

1:01:06

you able to? We were banking as much as we could. And

1:01:08

I will say, we banked

1:01:10

as, given those parameters, we

1:01:12

banked as an impressive amount. And

1:01:15

not really knowing

1:01:18

what type of thing, you

1:01:20

know, like things were too long, things

1:01:22

were, didn't make sense. You know, like we didn't

1:01:24

really, till you're on the air and you're

1:01:26

doing it, as you guys know,

1:01:29

you don't really know what you're doing. Also,

1:01:31

yeah, and we were testing things out.

1:01:33

Like we tested out Clutch Cargo, which

1:01:36

was an idea that, Clutch

1:01:39

Cargo was a terrible cartoon

1:01:42

from the 60s, early

1:01:45

60s, where they couldn't even afford

1:01:47

animation. They would just draw the people

1:01:49

and then they would burn their real mouths in.

1:01:52

And it was a guy- So real lips. And

1:01:54

his name was Clutch Cargo. And he was like, all right,

1:01:56

we better get going. And literally the head would slide

1:01:59

out

1:01:59

They're like footsteps, terrible. And

1:02:02

so we thought it'd be really funny. And we

1:02:04

came up with some, we

1:02:06

were testing out the clutch cargos. We had a lot

1:02:09

of ideas. Year 2000 was something

1:02:11

that Robert,

1:02:14

he's a Robert idea that

1:02:16

we had done in Chicago.

1:02:20

The live show there. The live show there,

1:02:22

a couple of

1:02:24

years earlier in the summer of 88, and

1:02:27

there was a rider strike. And so we went to Chicago and

1:02:30

did this show. And

1:02:34

it was people making predictions

1:02:37

about what was then the distant future in

1:02:39

the year 2000. You know,

1:02:42

pigeons will be extinct and bald

1:02:44

eagles will darken the skies, which is weird,

1:02:47

you know, like Jack Handy's

1:02:49

small thoughts.

1:02:52

So we knew we were gonna do that. We'll do it with flashlights.

1:02:55

We had a lot of ideas

1:02:59

and we were shooting a lot of content.

1:03:01

We shot a really funny piece where,

1:03:05

I mean, Bob Costas did a great thing for us where

1:03:08

we showed a clip of him.

1:03:11

Yeah, cause he was doing later with Bob Costas and he agreed

1:03:13

to do a shoot a thing where he's interviewing

1:03:15

the old tree

1:03:17

in Wizard of Oz that has the old apple

1:03:20

tree that ends up throwing apples. They did a good job. I

1:03:22

mean, there's a guy with great comedy.

1:03:25

Bob Costas has great comedy chops. He was really

1:03:27

funny. And along with Brokaw,

1:03:30

to get these, these guys are established.

1:03:33

I'm the

1:03:35

person who really shouldn't be there. And

1:03:37

they were also established and they were

1:03:40

fantastic. Yeah, they were very helpful. Yeah,

1:03:42

Brokaw, sorry, go ahead. Oh, we shot

1:03:45

something, we

1:03:46

had an idea and we started to bring in audiences

1:03:48

for test shows.

1:03:50

And I remember that

1:03:52

was fascinating cause people were coming in just

1:03:54

basically to see.

1:03:56

They weren't told what they were gonna see.

1:03:58

And I remember- I

1:04:01

did him in 8-H, I think a bunch of them. Really?

1:04:04

No, we did. Those weren't the test show, test

1:04:06

shows. Those were like- Pre-test

1:04:08

test shows. Those were pre-test test shows where they set me up

1:04:10

in 8-H. And I was literally interviewing like anybody

1:04:13

would grab someone who was in the corner. Right.

1:04:16

That was just for you to practice. 8-H being the- I think Robert

1:04:18

was in the lives. That's where you first

1:04:21

played around with Andy being the sidekick. Yes. Yes.

1:04:24

Ah, yeah. And I remember, so we were there and

1:04:26

those weren't really, those were just kind of for us,

1:04:29

but then we brought, sort of bringing audiences and I want

1:04:31

to say we did eight of them. Probably.

1:04:33

We might've done four and four. Cheryl Crow did one of them.

1:04:35

Cheryl Crow did one and she was a complete,

1:04:39

I mean, talk about me being an unknown. I

1:04:41

said like, and who's the musical guest? And they said, well,

1:04:44

she's an elementary school teacher,

1:04:47

but she's got an album coming out. Cause she's been, you

1:04:49

know- She's a backup singer. And they was

1:04:51

a backup singer. She was a backup singer, but I think she also had

1:04:53

a gig teaching or something. And she's, and

1:04:56

you know, it was, I mean, she's a bank teller. She's

1:04:58

a blacksmith. And

1:05:00

I remember thinking, oh, she's beautiful

1:05:03

and really, she sounds good.

1:05:05

Yeah.

1:05:06

But- She's got something.

1:05:08

Yeah. And so she did a test show

1:05:10

and we were getting the craziest people to do the test shows.

1:05:13

It was

1:05:14

Mickey Rooney did

1:05:17

a test show. Grandpa Al

1:05:19

Lewis from the Munsters did

1:05:21

a test show and he's the

1:05:23

first person we try to clutch cargo out

1:05:26

on. Yeah. And so we

1:05:29

thought it'd be fun to have Herman drop down

1:05:31

and say like, oh, hi grandpa. And

1:05:34

we didn't tell him about this and

1:05:37

what we didn't know, or we hadn't really

1:05:40

thought it through.

1:05:42

I think we mentioned to him something like

1:05:44

this would happen. He's like, fine, fine kid, fine.

1:05:47

So Fred

1:05:49

Gwynn who played Herman

1:05:51

Munster had died like that summer.

1:05:55

And like literally two months

1:05:57

before. And so, The

1:06:01

screen comes, Al Lewis is talking and he's got

1:06:04

his big cigar. And

1:06:06

the screen comes down and go, we got someone you want to talk to.

1:06:08

And we just thought it would be about you talking to Herman.

1:06:11

And he went- The character. The character.

1:06:14

And that he'd be like, oh, Herman, you idiot. And then go back

1:06:16

and forth, it'd be a lot of fun.

1:06:17

He starts to mutely go on, what are you doing here?

1:06:20

You're dead. Oh. You're

1:06:22

dead. I saw you

1:06:24

in your box. You're dead. And

1:06:26

then he said something

1:06:27

to this day, the audience just gets quiet. Who'd

1:06:30

you make it with last night? A woman?

1:06:35

And I, like Annie's,

1:06:38

Annie's been, who'd you make

1:06:41

it with last night? A woman? And

1:06:46

then the guy doing Herman Munster's

1:06:48

like, oh, oh, oh, Grandpa, Grandpa,

1:06:50

Grandpa, how can you talk if you're

1:06:52

dead? You had cancer.

1:06:55

You know, it was just- The first

1:06:57

rule of improv. Yeah, first rule of improv

1:06:59

is call out death. So the thing

1:07:02

goes up and oh my God, I- So

1:07:06

there were, I remember the very- We're gonna tinker with that. The

1:07:08

very first test show

1:07:09

went really well. And I remember being elated,

1:07:12

thinking, this isn't so hard. And

1:07:14

then I think the second test show was not good

1:07:17

at all. That sounds classy. And

1:07:19

then the third test show was rough. And

1:07:22

it was

1:07:25

a lot of huddling, a lot of trying to fix

1:07:27

things. And then eventually

1:07:29

it's like, oh, it's tomorrow. Wow.

1:07:33

And no one saw the cold open until

1:07:35

then. No one, I don't think so. I don't

1:07:37

think we showed anybody the cold open, which actually

1:07:39

became kind of a tradition because- Right.

1:07:43

I pride ourselves on our cold opens and

1:07:46

we never showed them all those

1:07:48

years, all those cold opens when I would travel

1:07:51

shows, when I would do the Emmys, when I would, you know, we'd

1:07:53

never showed any of that stuff

1:07:55

to people, we always wanted to wait. You didn't

1:07:57

even want to show them in rehearsal. No.

1:07:59

Yeah.

1:07:59

No, like don't waste. If there's any magic

1:08:02

in it, if there's any magic in it, if there's any

1:08:04

gold dust on that thing, just

1:08:07

let it all come off. And if you really like it,

1:08:09

then it's like, yeah, we don't need to

1:08:11

test this. Right, we would test it internally

1:08:14

on people. Like the writers watch

1:08:16

them or you'd call in some people. Yeah, I'd call in

1:08:18

Paula Davis, I'd call in different people.

1:08:22

And then also I should mention, there

1:08:24

were people that were hired that summer that are still

1:08:26

with us. So I remember one of the

1:08:28

first

1:08:29

people that we hired was

1:08:32

Jeff came in and told me,

1:08:34

it was just total coincidence, but he said,

1:08:37

I hired Paula Davis to

1:08:40

be the booker. And I thought, wait a minute,

1:08:42

I know Paula because Paula had worked

1:08:45

at Saturday and I live when

1:08:47

I was there. And I remember walking in meeting Paula in 1988 and

1:08:53

chatting with her and thinking, she

1:08:55

reminds me of my sister Kate, she's really

1:08:57

funny, she's got something, she was like quick. And

1:09:01

she and I were going back and forth and I

1:09:03

was like, I like that Paula Davis. And then we see

1:09:05

each other at SNL, but then I move on,

1:09:10

I go on to other things.

1:09:12

And then now I'm hearing Paula

1:09:14

Davis and I thought,

1:09:16

that's great, oh good Jeff, I like

1:09:18

Paula Davis. And

1:09:20

then I'm like, I'm like, oh good Jeff, I like Paula Davis.

1:09:23

And then you came in and saw me like, maybe

1:09:26

just a couple of days later and said, I got us a second

1:09:30

producer. And I said, who's that? And

1:09:32

you said, his name's Frank Smiley. And

1:09:35

I thought, wait a minute, I

1:09:38

know Frank Smiley. Total coincidence,

1:09:40

I had been at a party when I was on The Simpsons in

1:09:42

LA and was this big party. And

1:09:45

I got introduced to this guy who was very

1:09:48

memorable

1:09:49

named Frank Smiley.

1:09:50

And I was kind of doing

1:09:53

shtick with him just as a Simpsons writer

1:09:55

and a guy who does shtick 24 seven. And

1:09:58

I remembered him kind of not.

1:09:59

like laughing but not giving it up all

1:10:02

the way. And then kind of giving me like a, yeah,

1:10:04

you're not bad kid, you're not bad. And

1:10:06

so you told me you hired Frank Smiley. And literally

1:10:08

I just know him as a guy I met

1:10:10

a year before at

1:10:13

a mid Hollywood party where

1:10:15

there was a keg, like some dumpy

1:10:18

party. And so

1:10:21

things started to congeal. Frank Smiley

1:10:24

still with us here today. Paula

1:10:26

Davis still booking. I mean, it's 30 years

1:10:29

later and I can't shake these people.

1:10:31

Jeff's

1:10:34

still here. Max and Jake just hangs

1:10:36

out. I'm a bad cold. Yeah. You

1:10:39

were the original COVID. There's nothing I

1:10:41

could do to,

1:10:43

and then

1:10:45

there's a couple of people who've been there almost that long. I

1:10:47

don't know who else is in the gym pit was

1:10:50

hired that summer to do music. And he

1:10:52

still works with us on the podcast, on

1:10:57

the podcast radio channel. Anytime I'm talking

1:10:59

to anybody in music or doing any of that stuff,

1:11:01

that's Jim Pitt. And

1:11:03

he was just with me in

1:11:05

New York when I interviewed

1:11:07

Paul McCartney for the podcast.

1:11:11

And I think, oh, we've been doing

1:11:13

this for 30 years. It's crazy. It's

1:11:16

not late night anymore, but it's all

1:11:18

the same to me at this point. Right. So

1:11:21

anyway, this gets us to, it

1:11:25

might be a good place to stop. This

1:11:27

might be a place to like the test shows,

1:11:31

all the madness.

1:11:31

We haven't had our first airing

1:11:34

yet. Yeah, the first

1:11:36

airing hasn't happened yet. And

1:11:39

maybe we save that for the next time.

1:11:42

This is a good place to cut it. But I will say

1:11:44

there was some crazy shit that happened.

1:11:47

There was a reporter, I think from USA Today

1:11:49

who snuck in. Yep. And

1:11:52

that's not cool. Like you're not supposed to do that. I think

1:11:54

a pie chart about you. Yeah, and it wasn't

1:11:56

a nice pie chart. So this guy

1:11:58

came in and looked at a test.

1:11:59

Oh, yes. And wrote

1:12:02

a review. And I wanna say his name is something

1:12:04

Frazier. Huh. Yes,

1:12:07

I think he was an AP or he was- He's

1:12:10

either AP or not a BUSA today.

1:12:12

There was a lot of apologies that came after

1:12:14

that. But you gotta remember there was a different time

1:12:17

because it was a time when a newspaper critic

1:12:20

had like- It meant something. It meant something.

1:12:24

It really meant, I mean, today, you wouldn't

1:12:26

think that much about it. Your feelings would get hurt,

1:12:28

but this guy snuck in,

1:12:31

you don't do that for Broadway shows until

1:12:34

they invite the critics. And this person

1:12:36

came and wrote a review saying,

1:12:39

I hate this. And-

1:12:42

They mentioned worms. No,

1:12:44

but he didn't see that one, but he said- Frazier

1:12:47

Moore. Frazier Moore, yeah. And he went

1:12:49

after Andy- Oh boy.

1:12:52

In a way that was not

1:12:54

cool.

1:12:55

And I think, I mean, Andy could

1:12:57

tell you this, but I think later on he reached out

1:13:00

to Andy to go like, hey buddy. And Andy was like,

1:13:02

ah, no. I

1:13:05

don't think so, man. That was not

1:13:07

good. But the test shows

1:13:09

were horrifying.

1:13:10

And then this gets us right up to,

1:13:13

I think we took the Friday off. I wanna

1:13:16

say we took the Friday off. We had a Saturday and Sunday.

1:13:20

And I was, it's

1:13:24

so funny because I was just back in New York and

1:13:27

I always pass the old haunts.

1:13:29

And I walked right past where I lived. And I remember- Oh,

1:13:32

wow. My friend who I met in college,

1:13:34

I'm really tight with Eric Reif.

1:13:37

He hung out with me on the Sunday

1:13:39

and we like took a football

1:13:42

and just tossed a football back and forth in the park,

1:13:46

just so I wouldn't be alone and I could

1:13:48

unwind. And then I remembered

1:13:50

us walking back

1:13:53

and it's Sunday. So the show is gonna be the next day.

1:13:56

And I'm walking up to my apartment.

1:14:00

across the street from Tavern on the Green and

1:14:02

run right into Eric Mink, who was the New York

1:14:04

Post. TV guy. TV guy.

1:14:07

And not a bad guy or anything, but just it's the New York Post,

1:14:09

which is, you know, can be

1:14:12

at the time,

1:14:13

can be real tough.

1:14:15

And I saw him and he just looked

1:14:17

at me and he said, are you ready for tomorrow? Like,

1:14:20

here I am just trying

1:14:22

to, and I have my football. And I went, yep,

1:14:24

I think we're ready. Yep, I think we're ready. And

1:14:26

he was like, well, good luck to you then. And kept

1:14:28

moving. And I thought, well, there goes my, there was my fun

1:14:31

night out. Yeah. But

1:14:33

I will say that- He's just lying in wait

1:14:35

for it. I know. I don't know if this is

1:14:37

a, just to get you up to that day,

1:14:40

I read a book, slept

1:14:42

like a baby that night. Wow. No

1:14:44

idea. Well, this is what I remember. It's crazy. We

1:14:47

were, that first show, we

1:14:49

were loaded for bear. And

1:14:51

to this day, you can look at that first show, but

1:14:54

there's the cold open. We had

1:14:56

so much pre-packaged comedy. We

1:14:58

also had so many great funny ideas.

1:15:01

John Goodman. A lot of guests. George

1:15:03

Went, Drew Barrymore. Tony

1:15:05

Randall. Tony Randall, and he and I were gonna sing Edelweiss,

1:15:08

and there were gonna be Nazis in the audience crying, and

1:15:10

nuns. And I mean, it was,

1:15:14

we just put everything into that to

1:15:16

make sure that that first show was fantastic.

1:15:19

So I remembered, I just wanted

1:15:21

to, there

1:15:25

was a famous convict who petitioned,

1:15:28

he's like, I don't wanna do life in prison, Gary Gilmore

1:15:31

in the 1970s. He said, I just

1:15:33

wanna be executed. And

1:15:35

so they finally, the Supreme court, because they weren't

1:15:37

doing any executions anymore, finally said, okay,

1:15:41

you can die by firing squad in Utah.

1:15:44

And so I'm going somewhere with this. They,

1:15:47

there's this moment for a while where Gary Gilmore

1:15:50

got to talk to his family and everything, and I never forgot this.

1:15:54

He just looked at them at one point and said, let's do

1:15:57

this, and got up and went out and

1:15:59

sat down in a chair and got down. and killed and I remember having,

1:16:02

this is a horrible comparison, but I remember

1:16:04

thinking,

1:16:05

let's do this. Like if I'm gonna go out, it's

1:16:07

time to find out. It's time

1:16:09

to find out because I can't live like this anymore.

1:16:12

It's been months, months of

1:16:15

who is this guy? What's it gonna be? I

1:16:18

think we were blessed by the short

1:16:21

amount of time in a way.

1:16:22

Right. Yes. Yes. You

1:16:25

would fill as much time. You would have filled the space. Yeah,

1:16:27

exactly. It would have

1:16:29

been worse. We would have built it in the round. We

1:16:31

would have called it 99. That's right. The

1:16:34

cat would have had Andy's part.

1:16:37

You know, no, I think that is exactly

1:16:39

right. We didn't have enough time, which is

1:16:42

as it should be. Yeah. And so.

1:16:44

Which is what these shows are. Those shows are.

1:16:46

Right.

1:16:47

It continued once it started. Next time

1:16:49

we talk, I guess

1:16:51

we'll go from, we'll start at the first show,

1:16:53

September 13th, 1993. Yeah.

1:16:56

Wow.

1:16:58

Yes. Yeah.

1:17:00

Nicely done. Beautiful. Talk

1:17:03

to you in a year. We got us out. Now I wanna see that

1:17:05

show.

1:17:06

Well, thanks to Conan and Jeff for

1:17:08

joining us. I

1:17:12

mean, I feel like we were kind of joining them on

1:17:14

that ride. Yes. I

1:17:17

almost started to talk at one point and

1:17:19

Conan was just like looking at me like, you're

1:17:21

gonna interrupt this? I'm like, all right, just go.

1:17:23

Yeah, I got some, I thought I got some good ahas in

1:17:25

there. I got some of my best ahas.

1:17:28

It is a great story though. I have not. It

1:17:31

is. Yeah.

1:17:32

Well, I don't think that exists anywhere else.

1:17:34

It's this oral history that's

1:17:36

being. I love it. Cataloged.

1:17:39

Only here on Inside Conan. That's right. And

1:17:41

again, with our rewatching

1:17:44

season coming, we

1:17:47

can get up to the next chapter

1:17:49

of Conan and Jeff. That's right. Maybe we'll get to October

1:17:52

of 1993. That is my dream. I'm

1:17:57

telling you, we're in business for hundreds of years.

1:17:59

As long as. Because we keep them talking. Yes, and we keep

1:18:01

them alive. Yes. Lots of

1:18:03

electrolytes. Yeah. Well,

1:18:06

hey, and we're

1:18:08

still taking lists or questions for hopefully

1:18:11

a next season. Please. So if

1:18:13

you have a question for us, give us a call or just,

1:18:15

you know, you could call and just compliment us too.

1:18:17

That'd be great. 323-209-1079 or email

1:18:19

us at insideconanpod at gmail.com.

1:18:27

And if you like the show, you can support

1:18:29

us by rating Inside Conan, an important Hollywood

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podcast on iTunes

1:18:33

and leave us a review. And so this is

1:18:35

farewell for now. Farewell, but I'll see

1:18:37

you soon. Yeah, we'll see you soon. I'll

1:18:40

see you soon. Yes. And

1:18:42

to everybody still with us, we

1:18:45

love you. We love you.

1:18:49

Inside Conan, an important Hollywood podcast

1:18:51

is hosted by Mike Sweeney and me, Jessi Gaskill.

1:18:54

Our producer is Lisa Burr. And

1:18:57

Team Coco's executive producers are Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross,

1:19:00

and Nick Liao. Engineered

1:19:03

and mixed by Joanna Samuel. Our

1:19:06

talent bookers are Gina Batista and Paula

1:19:08

Davis with assistance from Maddie Ogden.

1:19:10

Thanks to Jimmy Vivino

1:19:13

for our theme music and interstitials.

1:19:15

You can rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts.

1:19:18

And of course, please subscribe and tell a friend

1:19:20

to listen to Inside Conan or an enemy on

1:19:23

Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts,

1:19:26

or whatever platform you like

1:19:28

best. I'm not going to tell you what to do. Put

1:19:33

on your hat, it's the Conan Show.

1:19:36

Try on some spats, you're going to have

1:19:38

a laugh. Give birth to a calf.

1:19:41

It's Conan. This

1:19:43

has been a Team Coco

1:19:46

production.

1:19:49

Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. Wake

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up and bagelize. Get your taste buds

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ready for McDonald's breakfast bagel sandwiches. Now

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just $3, only on the app. Choose

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from a delicious steak, egg, and cheese.

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cheese bagel, bacon egg and cheese bagel, or

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sausage egg and cheese bagel. Just $3

1:20:04

when you order ahead on the app. Hurry and seize

1:20:06

this breakfast steal before it's gone. Offer

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valid 717-2023 through 813-2023 at participating McDonald's. Valid

1:20:14

one time per day or per person or any other

1:20:16

limitation. Must

1:20:17

opt into rewards.