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By Brad Goldfab -- Interview Magazine -- February, 1998 As an insecure youth, Conan O'Brien was quick to learn the art of defense via wit. Now, after being written off as a flop, his has become one of the most admired comedy shows on the air, one which has millions of late-night hearts in the right place: in front of their television sets. BRAD GOLDFARB: During your first couple of years on the air, there was an expectation that your show was about to be canceled at any minute. Why do you think NBC stuck it out? CONAN O'BRIEN: Well, what really happens when you do these shows at 12:30 A.M. is that you need middle-aged people hearing their kids talk about you over and over before they get it. For instance, I'm quite sure that the network executives at NBC didn't like the show and didn't like me, but they have teenage children, which saved my ass. There was one executive from NBC who came to read me the riot act once, saying, "You'd better start shaping up. This show, it's no good. You've really got to try and fix it," that sort of thing. And then he went and visited his son at college, and his son's friends asked him what he did, and he said, "I work on Late Night With Conan O'Brien," and they were like, "That show is great!" He changed his tune a little bit after that. BG: How much more freedom do you think you have compared to other talk shows because you're on so late? CO: Simple math. I don't have to make as many people happy. We do really well for a 12:30 show - better than anything else at 12:30. The network's really happy. Of course it's NBC, which means GE, which means they're still trying to figure out a way to have me do the show wearing the same suit every night. BG: After having been a writer for so long, why was it so important for you to get in front of the camera? CO: It wasn't. If NBC had been casting a sitcom instead of a TV show, I probably would not have tried to get that. I'm someone most things don't feel right to. You sense when something's right. There's a reason, for example, why I never tried out for football: I just knew I would suck. BG: Was hosting a show something you'd always aspired to? CO: I remember watching Letterman once and getting this feeling while I was watching him, like, Yeah, what he's doing, I could do that. Or watching Johnny and thinking, Maybe that's it. I'm a very specific person. I didn't want to be a stand-up comic. Not because I don't like stand-up, but because my skill is sitting down, playing with ideas, interacting with people and maybe getting something funny out of them. I was an improvisational performer for years, which helped me learn how to listen. When you're on the air, you can't be thinking about what joke you're going to make next. You just have to shut up and listen and wait until they say something you can play off of. BG: Do you like the celebrity interviews part of the show, or do you find it limits the comedy quotient? CO: There were certainly times early on when we didn't quite know what we were doing - when we thought, Man, we could have a great show here if only we didn't have to talk to these celebrities. What's great is when you can get the comedy and the interviews to work together in some way. You can't do a pure comedy show for an hour every night. You'd never get the material. BG: You're known for doing a lot of homework on your guests. CO: My favorite interviews, though, are where I do all this preparation and use none of it. I'm at my best when I don't know where we're going or what we're doing. BG: Isn't that scary, with the pressure of the camera recording your every move? CO: What a lot of on-camera jobs are about is figuring out how to be yourself in very unnatural situations. BG: What is it about comedy that attracts people who are tortured? CO: Rage. BG: Rage? CO: I said once - my dad says this is one of the truest things he ever heard me say - "When you're in comedy, you're getting paid for something that should probably be treated." It's a cliche that comedians are crazy. They're not crazy, they just don't know any other way to communicate. I'm Irish Catholic. Personally, I don't really tell people off. I can't confront people - it's my biggest problem. I can't talk about sex in front of my parents. That's who I am. The other day I was home and I was watching the show with my dad. I knew this sketch was coming up about a masturbating bear - which was funny, but I didn't want my dad to see it - so I said, "Dad, why don't you go to bed?" And he was like, "No, I'm fine." I was like, "No, come on ? And I got him out of the room. BG: You couldn't Just say, "Dad, something's coming up in the next segment that I'm really embarrassed about watching with you and I'd like you to leave?" CO: No. I can't talk to my dad like that. I was probably a pretty repressed person in a lot of ways when I was younger. Comedy was the thing that kept me sane. BG: Then I'm especially curious to hoar how you'll react to the news that this interview is for our heartthrobs issue, and that you're our television heartthrob. CO: All right! But where were you guys when I was in high school? Life is all about timing, isn't it? When you're in high school, you dream, What if I had my own show and some girl thought I was cute and there was an article about me? When you start to get that, a crazy thing happens and it's like, Oh - too late! BG: Did you ever imagine ten years ago that there would come a time when you would suddenly be getting love letters? CO: Well, no . . . I look a lot better now than I did when I was eighteen. BG: We all grow into ourselves. CO: I'm always talking to models and actors on the show who say, "I was a real dork when I was younger," and you look at them and go, "No, you weren't." I was six feet four inches, 155 pounds. I looked like I had been liberated from some camp. I had a giant pompadour. I was a caricature. But I could always make girls laugh. One of the motivating forces for me to get into comedy was to get attention from women. BG: So what do you think your image is today, besides being the funny guy? CO: I guess what I'm always going to be is the thinking man's "blank." That's my runner-up prize. They say, "He's the thinking man's . . . John Tesh." Although I think John Tesh is supposed to be the thinking man's Bill Walton [basketball commentator for NBC Sports]. But I'll take that designation. My grandfather, who was a policeman in Worcester, Massachusetts, had an old saying, which was, "Take what you can get, and ask for more." COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc. COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group |