BEHIND THE CURTAIN BEHIND THE CURTAIN BEHIND THE CURTAIN (2 page)

Whenever he used me as a sounding board, Jay would often do a slightly off-color joke and see if I was offended; I was considered to be pretty straight-laced, at least by Hollywood standards. To Jay, I represented our conservative, middle-of-the-road viewers, which I appreciated. But sometimes I think he was just yanking my chain.

Jay used cue cards for his monologue, which I thought was odd at first. Teleprompters had already been around for years, even in the smallest stations. I had used one years earlier to give the farm news and commodity prices in Green Bay, Wisconsin; Sioux City, Iowa; and Omaha, Nebraska.

So why did Jay insist on using cue cards? I think it was because of another condition—dyslexia, a reading disability. He would often flub words and complicated phrases. It was hard enough for him to read static words, but moving words would have been even worse, resulting in a confusing jumble of letters.

Jay was open about his dyslexia and became very adept at making fun of himself when he made mistakes, which only reinforced his image as a likeable guy. I asked him one day if it was what prevented him from using a prompter. He quickly dismissed the idea, which didn’t surprise me. He tended to instinctively reject any perceived attempt to pigeonhole him.

He struggled so much with dyslexia that I think he even memorized most of his monologue jokes, referring to the written words only for an occasional cue. That didn’t mean he could get by on his memory alone, though. One night the cue card guy didn’t show up on time for the monologue, and we had to stop the show until he arrived.

Many entertainers do not like the grind of a daily program, but Jay never saw it that way. Because of his short attention span, he was easily bored and liked moving on to a new show every day. Whether an episode was good, bad, or just okay, the next day he didn’t think much about it other than the ratings.

He was already concentrating on that day’s show, which was something new and different. Besides, he didn’t like resting on his laurels. Just because the monologue “killed” today didn’t mean it would tomorrow. Or as Jay put it, “You’re only as good as your last joke.”

Jay’s attitude about doing a daily show reflected his very essence, his philosophy of life. A reporter for
GQ
magazine once asked him a telling question: if he could be any of the many engines he owned, which one would he be? On the surface this appeared to be a contrived question, which Jay would normally deflect with a joke. But he took it seriously, saying he would most likely be his 1866 steam engine: “Steam engines are probably my favorite, because they chug along at the same speed. They don’t get too up. They don’t get too down.” That short answer revealed more about his character and personality than anything else I ever heard him say. I think it could be his epitaph.

Jay appeared in a number of films early in his career, and not just cameos. He had some decent parts in such films as
Silver Bears
(1978),
Collision Course
(1989), and
American Hot Wax
(1978). But he disliked film acting because of the endless retakes, which could take days. He just didn’t have the patience for that kind of repetitive work, so he didn’t stay with it.

Instead, he put all of his effort into his stand-up comedy and, eventually,
The Tonight Show.
Ironically, he would do a number of films during his time as the show’s host. He mostly made cameo appearances, which he enjoyed, especially if they were shot in
The Tonight Show
studio, where he had to be every day anyway. (Such films include
Space Cowboys,
2000;
Calendar Girls,
2003; and
Mr. 3000,
2004.)

Jay also liked doing voiceover parts in animated films and voiced characters in
The Flintstones
(1994)
, Cars
(2006), and
Ice Age: The Meltdown
(2006). However, he didn’t like watching these films. He was a very literal guy, and he could never get over the fact that cartoon characters literally weren’t real people; they were just moving pictures. He even had a hard time with the idea of interviewing animated characters on the show and rarely did it.

Other than animated features, Jay loved watching films and talking about them—usually at the same time—during film screenings. Since many of the show’s guests were actors who were promoting projects they starred in, Jay felt he should watch their films. Attending a screening with Jay, usually at NBC, was an experience I will never forget. Not only did you get to see a movie before it was released in theaters but you also often got Jay’s thoughts about it while the film was playing. And there was always pizza, Jay’s favorite food.

His running commentaries during the screenings could be annoying, but they were often more entertaining than the films themselves. He would say things like, “Would anyone do that in real life?” Or, “Who didn’t see that coming a mile away?”

While Jay thought most films were flawed, he had no agenda. He was equally passionate about films he liked and those he didn’t like. One time he was so upset by how badly a film was made that he just wouldn’t stop ranting about it. So I told him, “Hey, it’s free.” He responded, “Yes, but I’ll never get my two hours back.”

After a screening, he would sometimes corner the first person he encountered and engage them in conversation about the film. If you were in a hurry to get home, it was best to avoid Jay. Sometimes he would go on for fifteen minutes. He even did this with my children, Melissa and David, who were teenagers at the time. They were thrilled that Jay was interested in talking with them, but at the same time they didn’t quite know if they had permission to disagree with him.

They still remember Jay’s thoughts about
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
(2003), the first in the series. He told them he loved it partly because the director didn’t put in too many CGI “ghost pirates.” There were only about eighteen, which made the flesh-and-blood soldiers’ battle scene against the “ghost pirates” more realistic than if there had been an endless swarm of them. That was a critique they could relate to as teenagers.

Jay genuinely enjoyed having film critics as guests, including the late Gene Siskel, the late Roger Ebert, and Richard Roeper. They weren’t always the biggest ratings draw, but Jay so enjoyed bantering with them about films, both on and off the air, that they were frequent guests. And in many ways, his views were similar to those of the professional critics. Like them, he tended to favor smaller, independent films that featured actors rather than action.

In 2006, Richard Roeper invited Jay to fill in for Roger Ebert while he was in the hospital and serve as a guest co-host on his show,
At the Movies with Ebert and Roeper
. I thought Jay’s performance on the show was one of the best things he had done, but it wasn’t as entertaining as sitting through a screening with him.

While critics tended to dismiss Jay as the middle-of-the-road guy, he is actually more complicated than he appeared and is very quirky. I don’t mean phony, Hollywood, “I-must-have-Coke-in-a-bottle-and-only-green-M&Ms-in-my-dressing-room” quirky. I mean he is genuinely idiosyncratic. Much of it is probably related in some way to his dyslexia and short attention span.

But as odd as he seemed, Jay’s behavior worked for him and the show. His quirks generally reflected his desire to be in total control of his life. He wanted to spend as much time as possible writing jokes and working on cars and as little time as possible doing things that prevented him from that.

Jay had no interest in owning the rights to
The Tonight Show
while he was the host, as Johnny Carson had done before him and as David Letterman has done with
The Late Show.
Instead, Jay just wanted to be an employee so he could spend most of his time actually working on the show.

He is a workaholic and genuinely liked his job more than anything else. Jay once asked me if I was familiar with the math seventh graders were doing, which he described as impossibly difficult. I had to agree, as I had seen my own kids’ math when they were in junior high school and remembered being unable to help them with some of it. “Imagine if we had a real job where we had to know how to do actual work,” he told me. “We’re lucky to be in show business.”

Jay almost never took a day off and detested even the thought of going on vacation, which he considered a “nightmare.” Were it up to him,
Tonight
would have original episodes fifty-two weeks a year. At his first contract renewal he asked for less time off but was turned down for his staff’s sake.

The show took six weeks of hiatus, while Letterman stops production for twelve weeks, which helped Jay’s ratings since reruns drew fewer viewers. Letterman works four days a week, recording two shows in one day, while Jay insisted on doing a show every weekday so the monologue jokes and guest segments would be timely and topical.

Jay rarely seeks leisure time. While the show was in reruns, he usually made stand-up appearances. He told
Fortune
magazine that he once decided to spend a day on the beach in Hawaii while he was there on a gig. He said it felt like he was there for hours, so he checked his watch only to find he had been there just ten minutes!

His parents grew up during the Depression, and Jay said he had a fear of running out of money. As such, he never spent a penny of his
Tonight Show
income while he was host. Instead, he lived off his stand-up earnings. Jay didn’t buy anything on credit; he purchased his house outright and to this day doesn’t invest in stocks.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t think of himself as a rich person. Once while in New York, he and I shared a limo to the airport. As we headed down 5th Avenue, we passed some very expensive department stores. We were both amazed at some of the fine clothes, furniture, and other items we were seeing in the store windows. Finally, Jay said, “Wow, if you had a lot of dough you could get some nice stuff here.” “Jay,” I responded, “you do have a lot of dough.” “I guess I do,” he said.

Despite his dough, he wore the same clothes—jeans and a denim shirt—all the time, except when he did the show or was making a scheduled stand-up appearance. Though he admits he’s a little overweight, Jay hasn’t actually weighed himself since 1973, saying he’s already married and doesn’t need to impress women. For such a hard-working guy, he doesn’t sleep much: four to four-and-a-half hours a night is his maximum.

Jay’s quirkiness is also reflected in his diet. He never drinks hot liquids, such as coffee or tea, and he doesn’t eat soup. No alcohol or drugs, either. He hasn’t had a raw vegetable since 1969 when his mom finally stopped trying to get him to eat them, and he proudly claims he has never had a salad.

He likes beef, chicken, potatoes, pasta, pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs. He would eat the same thing for lunch every day for a year at a time. One year it was chicken legs and thighs. The next year it was turkey from the fast-food chain Koo Koo Roo. Jay did this so he could spend more time thinking about jokes and less time worrying about food.

He frequented the original Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank, not far from the NBC lot. People occasionally see him with his wife, Mavis, at an Italian restaurant, but Jay generally avoids exotic or exclusive establishments. He once gave this impression of a European restaurant to
Fortune
magazine: “
Excuse me, I didn’t order this! Excuse me!
Will you be having the eel’s head in some kind of butter cream sauce?”

A creature of habit, Jay generally preferred to keep things the same, especially in his
Tonight Show
office or dressing room. This may have to do with superstitious tendencies, common to many celebrities. His first office, which he used from 1992 to 2009, had a pile of papers and other items approximately five feet tall and five feet wide, as did his dressing room.

He also had a corkboard in his office that was only anchored to the wall at the top left corner. The bottom right corner
rested diagonally on the floor, where it had fallen on January 17, 1994, during the enormously destructive 6.7 magnitude Northridge Earthquake. After that, Jay continued to use the corkboard, but he never had it horizontally reattached to the
wall.

When Jay began guest-hosting for Johnny Carson in 1987, Joe Drago, a props man, would stand backstage with a cup of ice water for him just before the show started. The first few times, Jay ignored Joe and the water. Finally, Joe asked if he should continue bringing the water, which surprised Jay. “Was that for me?” he replied. Jay thought Joe was drinking the water himself. During the monologue that night Jay even mentioned Joe’s kind gesture and how he had stupidly misunderstood Joe’s intentions.

From then on, Jay drank from the cup prior to making his entrance for every single show. He did it methodically, waiting for the first note of the show’s theme song before taking a sip and then bowing to Joe in appreciation. Jay continued the ritual when he took over as host on May 25, 1992, through the end of the first run on May 29, 2009, when he poured the water on Joe’s head instead of drinking it. Jay and Joe continued the practice during
The Jay Leno Show
and the second run of
The Tonight Show.

According to Joe, Jay also had a tendency to touch things while waiting to go on stage. He was particularly fond of little corners and certain pieces of the set, such as a railing that held camera cables back. He also liked to sweep his foot over electrical outlets.

Jay has an affinity for numbers, although I wouldn’t say he’s a numerologist. He married Mavis on November 30, 1980, the same day his parents were married. Jay once told Larry King: “They were married for fifty-seven years, and my wife and I got married on the same day because it seemed to work for them. They were the funniest people I ever knew.”

Before he met Mavis, Jay lived at different times with five women. All six were born on September 5. Cathy Guisewite, creator of the comic strip
Cathy,
once appeared on the show as a guest. In her dressing room before the show Jay told her that he was happily married but was attracted to her in a non-sexual way. (He did this in front of me so she wouldn’t think he was flirting.) Then he asked her if she was born September 5. Turns out, she was.