The War for Late Night (3 page)

He also weighed in on the early critical reaction to Conan’s 12:35 successor. “I watched the reviews of Jimmy Fallon after one night,” Jay said. “Give the kid six months; give him a year. Conan—give it a year.” Mindful of his own early ratings drubbings at the hands of Letterman, he added, “I mean, Dave was beating me for the first eighteen months or so.”

What about that little frisson of tension with the Boston station? Was there any reason to worry whether other affiliates might bail on him? “I talk to the affiliates,” Jay said. “You know, there is no NBC. There’s only the affiliates. They’re the customers. NBC is just a bunker in Burbank somewhere, and you have all these affiliates. They buy your product. And if your franchisees are unhappy, they close your restaurant. Simple as that.”

At this point, Jeff Zucker, who had been leaning against a wall of the suite, taking it all in, stepped forward. He was having none of any suggestion that NBC’s backing of Jay was anything but unstinting. He turned to a reporter who had persisted with a line of questioning about how long the network would hang on if Jay’s initial ratings were lackluster. “We’re completely committed to this,” Zucker said quietly, adding, “This question comes from a very anachronistic way of looking at it. This is going to be judged on a fifty-two-week basis, not on a first-month basis.”

“There’s a poker player!” a suddenly energized Leno jumped in, pointing to Zucker. “Right there! You know, if it’s not working, kick my ass out! Thank you! I know how it works.”

By no means did Jay see that as a likely outcome, however. He explained how his ten p.m. show would be much cheaper to produce than those hour-long dramas on the other networks—he could do his show for one-fifth of the cost, he promised. And all he really needed to do was improve the ratings for the ten p.m. time period over the lame shows NBC had been programming at that hour—like
Lipstick Jungle
—to be judged an immediate success. “And then you build from that,” he concluded.

Besides, Leno noted, “You have something of a proven product here. Logically it stands to reason you’ll do better at ten than you did at eleven thirty.”

In both his words and his air of assurance, Jay was making it clear that he saw this latest transition in much the same way he regarded every move he had made in his career. At bottom, it was all about doing something he had worked on his whole life and now had complete confidence in: telling audiences—in clubs, on TV—jokes. Lots and lots of jokes.

“It’s like people always say to me: What happens if you go to a club and you just bomb? Well, you know, after a while you don’t bomb anymore. You do better than you might have done, or you do a little worse. But you don’t go out there and just bomb.”

 

Just before Brian Williams stepped onstage at precisely nine p.m., he glanced at the big video monitor in the ersatz greenroom backstage, which showed the Roots pounding through their last warm-up number and the faces of the crowd, now settled into their seats. As he looked around, Williams noticed that in this room full of comics, few ever raised their eyes to the screen. Their demeanor reminded him of athletes at sports events, like Olympic skiers closing their eyes and mentally running through the course before being set loose onto the snow—a cross between that and jittery thoroughbred horses right before being loaded into the starting gate for the derby.

Williams, freshly turned fifty but still youthful looking with his close-cropped hair and lean frame, walked out and greeted the crowd, promising them a fun night with the great lineup that NBC had assembled. He mentioned the big names, leaving out Seinfeld, who was the evening’s surprise. Then he got right to business. One of the men this night was all about, he announced, was the guy about to take his place beside the names of Allen, Paar, Carson, and Leno on the shortest of short lists in television’s pantheon, the next great host of
The Tonight Show
: Conan O’Brien.

With his long-legged, loping stride, O’Brien took center stage to warm, enthusiastic applause. Conan, now forty-six years old (like Letterman, Leno, and Seinfeld, his birthday was in April), fit and relaxed in an unbuttoned blue suit, his pompadour of red hair adding even a couple more inches to his six-foot-four height, loomed high above the fans clapping for him in the orchestra seats. After a few thank-yous and a little salute to the Roots—“an amazing band”—Conan settled into his routine, beginning almost conversationally:

“As you know, folks, I’ve been very busy out in Los Angeles preparing for the June first premiere of
The Tonight Show
. I have just thirteen days left,” he said, his voice starting to rise, adding a note of mock exasperation. “I don’t have a second to spare. But I definitely wanted to fly across the country and be here tonight for one very important reason. . . .” He took a beat, maybe half a second, setting the fuse.

“I wanted the chance—just
once
—to go on before Jay Leno!”

The laughter rolled down from the balcony and through the orchestra, hitting a crescendo before igniting spontaneous applause. It was a full ten-second laugh, one born of the audience’s awareness of just what the ten p.m. relocation of Leno meant for O’Brien. It was a joke crafted with precision for the occasion—and it killed.

“It feels
real
good,” Conan said, extending the joke. Then he shifted into his ultra-high-pitched mock Jay voice for a little coda: “He went, ‘Uh, what’s he talking about?’ ” And Conan was rewarded with a rebound laugh almost as long as the original.

O’Brien let that settle before moving on. “It’s great to be here, ladies and gentlemen, seriously. I am so proud to work at NBC, one of the world’s oldest and most respected”—pause—“nonprofit organizations.” (Another appreciative laugh.) “Of course the theme of tonight’s event is the history of comedy on NBC. So once we get to 1998, feel free to take off.” The lower register of the laughs that greeted this shot included a chorus of
ooohs
at O’Brien’s brazen evocation of his network’s futility since that year.

Feigning nervousness after launching that grenade, Conan scanned the front rows. “Where’s Zucker?” he asked, knowing exactly where the smiling NBC boss was sitting. “Oh, this is going well,” Conan said, shifting into his Ernst Stavro Blofeld impression, with pinched-in face, beady eyes, and, of course, imaginary cat in his lap. “Petting the white cat,” Conan said in his evil genius voice. “Get him off! Get him off! He’s being mean to me!”

In total command of the audience, Conan did about an eight-minute-long monologue, with steady laughs throughout. He had hit only notes that would resonate most effectively with this particular audience—and it paid off for him. He was bathed in applause as he wrapped up. Then NBC allowed him to serve as the introducer of the night’s “surprise guest,” a man Conan described as “one of the pillars” of the NBC comedy tradition, as well as “one of the best things ever to happen to NBC.”

That was Jerry Seinfeld, of course, and the audience was appropriately surprised—and thrilled—to see him. Jerry, looking sharp if slightly older (he had just turned fifty-five) than in his sitcom days, with a thinner thatch of hair and a couple of extra pounds, delivered his five sparkling minutes in a routine about the peccadilloes of married life. The centerpiece was his version of marital discussions that take on the flavor of “a game show where you’re always in the lightning round,” trying to work your way through testy categories like “Movies I Think We Saw Together.” Seinfeld arranged the beats of the laughs like an orchestra conductor: a little more, a little less, big finish, thank you very much.

The other booked acts had a few highs and lows, with Meyers and Poehler scoring with a version of “Weekend Update” from
SNL
that mocked NBCʹs prime-time machinations. Williams then returned to the stage to set up the next of the evening’s highlights: the latest of NBC’s late-night stars, Jimmy Fallon.

Fallon had been on the air since March, displaying typically rocky rookie moments but quickly making his mark by hitting the sweet spot for the
Late Night
audience: the college crowd, which Fallon was expanding by reaching out through his blog and his Twitter account.

He shambled out in his aw-shucks manner, his suit looking maybe one size too big, underscoring how much younger—he was thirty-four—he was than most of the others who’d appeared onstage. Fallon got a quick laugh with a throwaway line directed at Williams: “Thank you, thank you very much—Anderson Cooper, everybody.” Since he had his house band at hand, Fallon was able to lead the Roots into one of the signature bits from his nascent show, “Slow Jammin’ the News”—only, given the occasion, Jimmy made it a slow jam of the NBC schedule.

If that routine played a little arcane for this particular audience’s taste, Fallon had something more surefire prepared, a bit he had actually performed at an earlier dinner.

Grabbing his acoustic guitar, Jimmy explained he was going to do something he did regularly on the
Late Night
show: lure a member out of the audience to come up onstage, where he would make up a song about him or her on the spot.

“Any volunteers?” Fallon asked, looking down into the front rows. “You, sir? You want to get up?”

Jeff Zucker, in his impeccably tailored suit, the fringe of hair around his bald pate buzzed close, clambered onstage, playing his part of looking reluctant.

“What is your name, sir?” Fallon asked, all innocence amid the laughs.

“Zucker” came the reply, accompanied by an “as if” look.

“What do you do, sir?” Fallon asked, pretending to write the information on a card.

“I’m with NBC.”

“And . . . straight or gay?”

After getting the predictable boisterous laugh, Fallon began strumming chords and launched into his song:

After the biggest laugh of the night since Conan’s Leno joke, Fallon squeezed in his last notes:

 

It was a wow finish for a performance that made the impression NBC was seeking. Fallon demonstrated compellingly that he was both funny and appealing; as a replacement at 12:35 for Conan, he just might do.

 

Backstage many of the comics who had finished their spots lingered to watch their compatriots, but mainly, it seemed to one of the stars that evening, out of “a palpable curiosity about how Leno would perform.” Conan, however, had long since departed. He had been happy to get on the bill early so he could hit the road fast, back to the small jet waiting at Teterboro to fly him back to Los Angeles.

Jerry Seinfeld had remained, and he had a small concern that he thought about mentioning to somebody in charge. Jerry hadn’t had any problem connecting with the crowd during his crisp five-minute stint, but he was a bit uncomfortable out there nonetheless. What disturbed him was that throughout his spot—and the entire evening, really—the house lights had been kept all the way up, making the audience totally visible to the performers onstage. For a seasoned professional stand-up like Seinfeld, this was “one of the poison darts of comedy.” For Jerry the ideal setup was light on the comic, audience in the dark, preferably laughing. To Seinfeld, this oversight meant that somebody had been incompetent. But in the theater that night, he didn’t raise the issue.

Leno, still waiting backstage, had noticed the lighting situation as well but had concluded that it was because NBC was taping the event. Indeed, NBC was taping much of the show and wanted lights to capture reaction shots. Jay had expressly asked that his performance not be taped. That didn’t mean the lighting would be adjusted, however. What Jay knew from his own endless stand-up gigs was that if lights were shining on an audience, they tended to become self-conscious—and a lot less likely to laugh.

Whatever running time had been planned, the combination of extended laughs and just general banter and interaction onstage had by now pushed the hour past ten thirty—more than half an hour into Jay time. No one had really noticed except for Leno himself, who, as was his custom, was carefully attuned to the rhythms of audience members.

Jay was well aware that this crowd had already been to one upfront in the late afternoon. Others had come from work, having knocked off at around six to get dinner. That meant it was well past the time they usually headed for home. And they had already been sitting in this theater for over an hour and a half.

Bass had asked Jay to do about fifteen minutes, the longest spot of the night. Jay had said he would do between ten and fifteen minutes. For Jay, doing fifteen minutes was like Bruce Springsteen dashing off a commercial jingle. He routinely dished out hours’ worth of stand-up in his appearances in Vegas. Tonight it was only a matter of which fifteen minutes he chose. For an industry audience, like the one he had performed for at the Super Bowl, he was surely going to rely heavily on his topical-humor file.

As he waited to go on, Jay still looked a bit askew to at least one of his fellow cast members, who wondered what was up with his hair. To this observer “it looked like a Leno-fro.” Jay himself continued to believe that this was one booking that just didn’t make much sense, no matter how he broke it down. But he had a job to do, and if he believed in anything, he believed in the virtue of an honest day’s work.

Jay was off and running from the moment Williams finished the introduction. As he crossed the stage, mic in one hand, Jay began furiously running his other hand through his impressive shock of luxuriantly thick, now mostly gray hair. Just to let the audience know he was cognizant that he was arriving onstage later than planned, he opened with a cheery notice: “We are almost a tenth through the evening!”