BEHIND THE CURTAIN BEHIND THE CURTAIN BEHIND THE CURTAIN (10 page)

Most child actors have no childhoods, instead growing up on movie and television sets. They have few friends their own age and are educated by studio-hired teachers. So when they were on the show, they were essentially acting the way they thought children should act. On the other hand, Abigail and Spencer, who experienced all the joys and frustrations of being kids, were for real, and they told Jay all about it. Abigail loved to chide Spencer for his unromantic treatment of his long-time girlfriend Skye, suggesting that he do such things as give her flowers. In turn, Spencer called out his sister for having a secret boyfriend, which she adamantly denied.

Jay had watched the Breslins grow up over the years, and there were many heart-warming, genuine moments with them. During the Christmas season, Abi often brought him homemade gifts, such as cookies and gingerbread houses. And when she was nominated for her amazing performance in
Little Miss Sunshine,
she told Jay it wouldn’t have happened without him. The director gave her the part after he saw her on
The Tonight Show.

Shia LaBeouf

We began booking Shia LaBeouf at age seventeen after his first starring role in the Disney film
Holes.
The Emmy-winning actor went on to star in
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
and the
Transformers
franchise. I believe his best work is still ahead of him, if he decides to continue making films. He has done well as a young actor despite growing up poor in Los Angeles with “hippie parents.” Shia once brought his divorced parents to the show to introduce them to Jay and me.

His dad, Jeffrey, had long, unkempt hair and looked like a homeless guy. He had once worked in the lower rungs of show business as a rodeo clown and as the opening act for the Doobie Brothers. During Shia’s childhood, Jeffrey didn’t work much and wasn’t often around. When Jay and I met Jeffrey, he was living in a car.

Shia told me he was very close with his mom, Shayna, who he affectionately called a “gypsy.” When we met her, she was wearing a tie-dyed dress and lots of beads. She had essentially raised her son alone, selling fabrics and brooches to earn money. As one would imagine, Shia had a colorful childhood and often talked about it with Jay at the panel. He never spoke about his background in a negative way, though. Shia found humor in every experience. He said that he was the only white kid at his school, making him the minority, and that he did whatever he could to stay out of fights. He even shaved his head, figuring that would help him be accepted. It actually had the opposite effect as his schoolmates then thought he was a skinhead.

Shia sought to become an actor as a way to escape poverty. He began searching for an agent at the age of twelve by looking
through the phone book. The first name he decided to call was John Crosby
. Disguising his voice to sound older, Shia
told John
he was the manager of a great European actor named Shia LaBeouf
. John
knew right away Shia
was lying but was impressed with the young man’s resourcefulness and took him on as a client. John
continues to represent Shia
to this day.

The Civet

Animals were the perfect guests. Unlike actors, they never showed up saying “I have nothing to talk about with Jay today
.
” They didn’t have demanding publicists. They didn’t ask for anything. They and their handlers, or animal ambassadors, were usually a pleasure to work with. And their appearances usually resulted in higher ratings. We worked with many potentially dangerous and unpredictable wild animals over the years and experienced only one minor incident: A civet once ran away and hid under the set during an appearance by zoologist Jarod Miller. After the show, Jarod and his crew were unable to coax the two-foot-long, cat-like mammal out. So Greg Elliott, the prop master, drove home and got his “varmint trap,” which Jarod baited with the civet’s favorite food. Later that night, they heard the trap snap, and the civet was captured unharmed.

The Bigfoot Playmate

I once booked a Playboy Playmate who claimed she had seen Bigfoot—and had video to show for it. When I pitched the idea for Thanksgiving Day 1995 I fully expected to get shot down, but my colleagues were intrigued, and wanted to know more. Besides, we were having a hard time booking the holiday, and the Playmate sounded as good as any of our other choices.

The Playmate, Anna-Marie Goddard, was a beautiful Dutch model who had made a successful appearance with Jay two years earlier, telling funny stories about working as a milkmaid in her childhood. My colleagues were understandably concerned about the legitimacy of the five seconds of night footage Anna-Marie had sent me, which was grainy, dark, and shaky, but definitely showed a large, eight-foot tall, hairy creature walking on its hind legs. She had made a very convincing argument to me that she actually believed she had seen Sasquatch, even though at the time she had never heard of the hominid and thought it was a bear. She, her husband, Colin, and a crew had been in the California Redwoods near the Oregon border filming a pilot for a show she was hosting. They had wrapped the shoot and were returning home in their recreational vehicle late at night when they got lost deep in the woods. That’s when “Bigfoot” made his cameo, crossing the road in front of their vehicle.

While my colleagues liked the idea, they thought the video—shot by the crew’s videographer—could have easily
been faked, even though I had statements from Bigfoot experts
that the footage appeared to be genuine. I thought they were
missing the big picture. To me, the story was that an
attractive model had seen a big, hairy monster and had video to
back it up. Maybe it was a true story. Maybe it was a publicity stunt. Maybe it was both. But she sounded like she believed it. My colleagues remained skeptical, but as Thanksgiving Day approached and we still couldn’t find a big-name guest, they warmed up to Anna-Marie
, and I booked her.

Jay didn’t buy the story at all but was concerned that if he made fun of Anna-Marie on the air it would look like he was picking on her. So he decided he would be a neutral observer. Besides, the story had an angle that was perfect for late-night humor, which appealed to Jay. It seems one of the so-called scientists who had examined the video was able to discern a prominent appendage, convincing him the creature was an excited male. Jay mined that comedy vein for all it was worth, and the segment was very entertaining.

While my colleagues never let me forget about the Bigfoot Playmate, Sasquatch experts took her footage and story seriously, initially naming it the “Playmate video.” Dr. Jeff Meldrum, an anthropologist and Sasquatch researcher, found the footage compelling and renamed it the “Redwoods video” to give it credibility. Loren Coleman, a respected Bigfoot chronicler, wrote a book in 2003 called
Bigfoot!: The True Story of Apes in America
and devoted almost an entire chapter to Anna-Marie and her account of the incident on
The Tonight Show.
Coleman wrote a blog in 2010 commending Anna-Marie for “her bravery in coming forward as an eyewitness” on
Tonight.

Greg Kinnear and the Donkey

Oscar-nominated actor Greg Kinnear once hosted an NBC
late-night talk show called
Later,
which
debuted in 1994. It was taped in a studio adjoining
The Tonight Show.
One time, Greg
was shooting a comedy sketch for his show that involved putting a surprise donkey in the dressing room of one of his guests. The segment didn’t quite turn out as planned. With the camera rolling, Greg
went in to check on the animal. As if on cue, the donkey lifted its tail and let loose a projectile of diarrhea like water from a fire hose. Greg
was horrified as he bolted from the dressing room, slamming the door behind him. When you’re working with animals, it’s always a crap shoot.

Chapter Six

Gets I Didn’t Get

People are always surprised to learn that not every celebrity wants to appear on
The Tonight Show.
Most come on only if they have something to promote. A few prefer other shows. Some of the country’s biggest stars, such as Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, and Woody Allen, just don’t like the process and rarely show up on any programs.

Some of the biggest “gets” never did Leno because they didn’t like his monologue jokes—about them. The late Michael Jackson, even in death one of the world’s biggest stars, would have been ratings gold. But Michael also made great monologue fodder, and there’s no way he would have ever done an interview with Jay while he was regularly reeling off jokes like these:

It looks like the Democratic field is really starting to get narrowed down. For Democrats it’s going to be Barack Obama versus Hillary. So it’s a black man or a white woman. You know, this is the same decision Michael Jackson has to make every morning of his life.

Good news for Michael Jackson, not guilty on ten counts! The bad news—he’s going to Disneyland.

Early today Michael met with his priest—not for spiritual advice. They went on a double date.

During Michael’s 2005 trial on child-molestation charges, Jay was listed as a possible witness, and the judge put him under a gag order not to discuss the trial publicly. That technically meant Jay couldn’t tell monologue jokes about Michael, so instead Jay brought in comedians Roseanne Barr, Dennis Miller, and Brad Garrett to do the job. The judge allowed it.

When Jay was finally called to take the stand, ironically as a defense witness, he talked about it on the show: “Apparently, they’ve never seen the program.”

He was asked to discuss “suspicious” calls he got from a boy who was Michael’s accuser. Jay testified he got several phone messages from a twelve-year-old male cancer patient who called the late-night host his hero. Jay often makes calls to children who are ill, but he had reservations about this boy. “I’m not Batman,” he said. “It seemed a little unusual.
”

Michael’s attorney, Thomas Mesereau Jr., said Jay told Santa Barbara police he thought the boy’s family was “looking for a mark,” although the boy didn’t ask Jay for money. Michael was eventually cleared of all charges, and Mesereau, an extraordinary attorney who fervently believed in his client’s innocence, agreed to come on the show to discuss the case with Jay. The lawyer was a great guest. Still, he was no Michael Jackson.

Bill Clinton would have been compelling, but he never appeared. I made him offers for ten years that he neither declined nor accepted. In the political world people rarely say no. Instead, they just never give you an answer.

This put me in a perpetual state of limbo, because to Jay and executive producer Debbie Vickers
, only “no” meant “no.” So I had to keep trying. What is it with Bill Clinton
and two-letter words? He famously told a grand jury his answer would depend “on what the meaning of the word
is
is.”

I made countless offers to the forty-second president. Each was pegged to dates I knew he would be in Los Angeles and to events he would want to promote. I called him when he

1. left the presidency and was establishing himself as a speaker;

2. published his 2004 memoir,
My Life
;

3. published his 2007 book,
Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World
;

4. built his presidential library in 2004;

5. set up his foundation;

6. campaigned for Hillary in senate and presidential races;

7. campaigned for Barack Obama for president;

8. raised funds in 2005 with former president George H. W. Bush for Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina relief.

The list goes on for pages, but you get the idea. All the while, Mr. Clinton was making himself available to many other shows, including Letterman, so he probably wouldn’t have made a big difference in the ratings. It’s just that you always want what you can’t have.

We tried to reach out to him by sending elaborate flower arrangements with notes, having Jay call his people directly, and going through political confidants like James Carville and Paul Begala. In the fall of 2004, the former president had quadruple bypass surgery and was sent to his home in Chappaqua, New York, to recover. We decided to give him a practical gift that would help him regain his strength, so we bought him a twelve thousand dollar, custom-made tandem bicycle. I cleared the idea with Oscar Flores, the operations director at his home. Gifts to politicians can be sticky because of federal restrictions, so you always have to check. I got approval to ship the bike because Mr. Clinton was no longer in office. However, our present was soon returned to us. It seems his legal adviser was concerned that a bike with two seats was really meant for both the former president and his wife, then Senator Hillary Clinton, who legally could not accept a gift exceeding fifty dollars. So we built Mr. Clinton another bicycle with one seat, which he accepted. Still, he never did our show.

Jay always believed Mr. Clinton rejected our offers because we once turned him down. In his first presidential bid against President George H. W. Bush in 1992, Mr. Clinton approached
The Tonight Show
requesting an appearance, which would feature him playing the saxophone. But the late Helen Kushnick, then the executive producer, said no. She reasoned that if we were to book him, at that time a long-shot in the campaign, then we would have to do the same for the other candidate, President Bush, which she thought was a bad idea. She assumed no one would be interested in watching either candidate.

We had only been on the air a few weeks at the time, but Helen’s decision would stand as the worst one in the show’s twenty-two-year history. A successful Bill Clinton guest spot would have established Jay early as a late-night force to be reckoned with, a host worthy of following Johnny Carson.

In June, Mr. Clinton took his tenor saxophone to
The Arsenio
Hall Show
,
where he played Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” while wearing dark sunglasses. He then did a remarkably frank interview with Arsenio, discussing his infamous statement that he had smoked—but never inhaled—pot. He said his explanation was so absurd that no person in their right mind would have dared to use it, unless it was true. His answer was pretty convincing and very funny.

Arsenio’s ratings that night were spectacular, resonating with young and minority viewers. Shortly after that, Mr. Clinton moved ahead of President Bush in the polls for the first time. Many analysts believe the appearance galvanized his campaign and led to his eventual victory, making it the most important guest spot in late-night television history.

I don’t agree with Jay that Bill Clinton snubbed us over the years because we refused to book him in 1992. He simply didn’t like Jay’s never-ending Monica Lewinsky
jokes. I confirmed this with several former Clinton
aides, but it took me years to get them to admit it, and they would only do it anonymously.

Another former president, George H. W. Bush, also declined my long-standing offers. I understood Mr. Clinton’s reluctance but not Mr. Bush’s. He invited Jay to visit the White House during his presidency and later to perform at the 2009 commissioning of the
USS
George H. W. Bush
nuclear aircraft carrier in Norfolk, Virginia.

Mr. Bush said he was interested but only available by satellite from Houston. Since our guests always appeared before a live audience in the Burbank studio, it wasn’t really an option, which was a shame. Any former president who at age eighty-five parachuted out of a plane, as Mr. Bush did, was worthy of an interview.

Multi-billionaire Warren Buffett, once ranked at the top of the
Forbes 400
list of America’s 400 richest people, was always right up there with Bill Clinton on my guest wish list. What I admired most about the Sage of Omaha was that even though he was the world’s greatest financial wizard, he was a regular guy. He lived in the same Omaha house he bought for $31,500 in 1958 and took home a modest one hundred thousand dollar yearly salary from his company, Berkshire Hathaway. In 2006, he announced he would give away his entire fortune.

I had many conversations with his secretary, Debbie Bosanek, inviting her boss on the show—all to no avail. I liked the idea that I didn’t have to go through a high-powered, self-important publicist to reach him. I could just call Debbie, who was always pleasant when she said Warren just didn’t do shows like ours
.
She never failed to invite me to call back in a few months, which I did for about ten years.

Jay would sometimes phone Debbie himself. One time he even got through to Warren, who wanted Jay’s opinion of a comedy routine he had shot for an upcoming shareholder meeting. The 2009 bit featured Warren as a mattress salesman at his subsidiary, the Nebraska Furniture Mart. After failing to sell a woman a couple of mattresses, he offers her the Nervous Nellie model, saying: “This has been the best seller ever since the Dow fell below 10,000.” It was a reference to the country’s Great Recession that began in September 2008, precipitated by the stock market implosion. The woman is not convinced at first, but then he shows her a hidden compartment—called the “Night Depository”—built into the foundation of the mattress. She notices it’s full of cash, presumably Warren’s, and then announces she wants the mattress. Warren calls the warehouse to order a mattress for the woman pronto, but she insists on the floor model. She then temporarily leaves the scene, at which time Warren clears out his money as well as his stock certificates and a couple of
Playboy
magazines, which he quickly pages through.

Turns out Warren himself wrote the bit, and the mattress would become a best-seller after the ad hit YouTube. What did Jay think of Warren’s performance? “We’re talking Emmy here,” he told the budding, billionaire thespian on the phone, as he smiled at me.

As for Debbie Bosanek, she would become a celebrity in her own right after Warren wrote a well-circulated op-ed in
The New York Times,
pointing out she unfairly paid a higher tax rate than he did (34 percent
v.
17.4 percent). President Obama saw this as a great example of how rich people weren’t paying their “fair share” of the taxes and invited Debbie to be his guest at his 2012 State of the Union address. As he spoke about her plight, the camera showed her sitting next to First Lady Michelle Obama.

One thing the president and Warren neglected to mention was that Debbie wasn’t exactly poor. According to the
Wall Street Journal,
she was earning an estimated $400,000 in adjusted gross income, which made her a so-called one-percenter. Not bad for a secretary. She would have made a great guest, as well.

Many of the world’s greatest athletes stopped by to chat with Jay, including Michael Jordan, Dennis Rodman, Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley, Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Terry Bradshaw, Troy Aikman, Brett Favre, Joe Montana, John Elway, Steve Young, Kurt Warner, Drew Brees, Tim Tebow, Lance Armstrong, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, the Williams sisters, John McEnroe, Wayne Gretsky, the Chicago Blackhawks, the Chicago Cubs, Cal Ripken Jr., Dale Earnhardt, and David Beckham, to name a few.

Some of them were regulars, like Dennis Rodman and Terry Bradshaw. Still, I wanted the sports greats who consistently turned down my invitations. Like Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks Payton Manning, Eli Manning, and, especially, Tom Brady, a California guy who grew up watching his idol, 49ers quarterback Joe Montana. I’ll bet Tom even saw Joe on our show, which he always chose to do over Letterman. Tom’s agent, Steve Dubin, frequently asked me for VIP seats to the show for his friends. I obliged him, hoping he would eventually reciprocate by offering us Tom. But it never happened.

I was big on world leaders, but I was never able to book any of them. For many years we assumed Americans didn’t care about foreigners, so we didn’t make offers to them. But thanks to the Internet and the global economy, the world got smaller in the two decades we were on the air. Suddenly international politicos didn’t seem so remote, and I got the green light to go after some of them.

I extended an invitation to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and was surprised—no, shocked—to learn he was interested. I was curious if the guy who tore down the Berlin Wall and won the Nobel Peace Prize genuinely wanted to make an appearance with Jay, or if he just thought it would help him sell more copies of his latest book. At first, there were months of discussions as to where we would do the interview. He insisted that it be in San Francisco. It seemed strange to be negotiating with the man who hammered out the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with President Reagan.

Obviously, I was out of my league, but I held fast to my position that we could only do the show before a live audience at Studio 3 in Burbank, so Gorbachev would have to come to our location. He eventually agreed. Then he insisted on speaking Russian during the interview. I knew he could speak English fairly fluently, but he denied it. I tried to explain that having a translator would be cumbersome on a late-night entertainment show, but I think my explanation got lost in translation. He never did the show.

Other international luminaries who passed on my offers included the Dalai Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. But two Israeli leaders interested in appearing with Jay actually contacted me: the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the then prime minister Ehud Olmert. My colleagues thought Mr. Olmert was boring and Mr. Netanyahu was polarizing, rejecting them both. I wish I had pushed harder. Netanyahu was educated at MIT and was a former anti-terrorist commando who took part in a dangerous rescue mission of a Sabena airliner that had been hijacked by Palestinian terrorists at Ben-Gurion Airport in 1972. He was an important voice in his country and would be re-elected prime minister in 2009, becoming a powerful, high-profile world leader. Mr. Olmert, on the other hand, would not have been a good get. After leaving office, he went on to face seemingly endless charges of corruption.