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Garry Shandling was asked and passed Toronto Star -- February 8, 2004 -- Section: Entertainment, pg. E02 To O'Brien, writing just wasn't enough. Who is this Conan O'Brien guy anyway? And why is his arrival here in Toronto (for shows airing Tuesday to Friday this week) being celebrated like the Second Coming? Answering the second question, in addition to sounding somewhat sacrilegious, would involve several side-issues, like SARS-initiated bad p.r. and our own shared sense of low self-esteem. But the first bears further exploration. Who is Conan O'Brien? And how did he become the master of his late-night TV domain? Could there have been a more unlikely candidate to take over Dave Letterman's coveted slot when the latter switched networks in 1993? Even now, 11 years later, O'Brien himself remains somewhat aghast. "You know, coming in to Canada, you have to fill out these forms," he marvels. "And where it says 'Occupation,' I have to write down 'Talk-show host.' I mean, what is that? What does that mean?" Eleven years ago, it meant having to win over skeptical network executives - and an army of hostile Letterman loyalists. "I wouldn't recommend that first year or two," O'Brien can now laugh. There was a lot he had to overcome. His name made him sound like an Irish Schwarzenegger character, and he looked like a cartoon - Archie Andrews with a Tintin cowlick, stretched out over a lanky 6-foot-5 frame. He was also way too smart for the room, the son of a Yale-educated lawyer and a Harvard med-school professor, and himself a Harvard grad, magna cum laude, in 1985. Majoring in American history and literature, he began writing for the prestigious campus humour magazine, Harvard Lampoon, in his freshman year, and was elected president an unprecedented two terms in a row. Which was perhaps the towering, carrot-topped brainiac's most damning non-qualification - the guy was a writer, and a good one. And very rarely do comedy writers successfully step out in front of the camera. Chevy Chase would be one exception. Larry David another. But as a talk-show host, Chase would later prove himself astoundingly incapable of what Conan O'Brien does so apparently effortlessly (Larry David, one can safely assume, could not be less interested in what other people have to say). O'Brien, on the other hand, quickly distinguished himself among the ranks of Saturday Night Live's Emmy-honoured writing staff, where he toiled from 1988 to 1991, proving particularly adept at providing material for frequent guest host Tom Hanks, including the classic girl-watching routine with Jon Lovitz and the "Mr. Short-Term Memory" sketch. In 1991, he wrote and produced an unsold pilot, Lookwell, a cop comedy starring ex-Batman Adam West as a TV actor turned real-life detective. Until its recent resurrection on Trio, the American cable channel, it was widely considered among its many fans to be the best TV shows never aired. With Lookwell not looking particularly well, O'Brien resigned himself to a two-year stint writing for The Simpsons. But the latent performer inside of him was itching to get out. "My friend Bob Odenkirk, who was also a writer, was starting to perform," O'Brien recalls. "And I'd go and see Bob and I'd think, 'Bob's doing what I need to be doing. I just don't know exactly what that is.' "Lisa Kudrow and I - this was before (Friends), when we were just doing improv together - we were talking about, you know, 'Well, maybe we should just write a show for ourselves, and go perform it in Santa Monica.' "But I was very aware of what I wasn't. I mean, I would work with Dana Carvey, and I would think, 'Well, I'm not a Dana Carvey. I'm not a guy who does a million impressions, or a million sketch characters ... I'm not this, I'm not that ... ' It was almost the process of elimination." Interestingly, it was right around that time that his old SNL boss, Toronto's own Lorne Michaels, was starting to look around in earnest for a Late Night replacement for the departing David Letterman. Garry Shandling was asked and passed. So, ironically, did Dana Carvey. O'Brien was initially approached - not to host, but to produce. "Lorne calls and asks me, 'Do you want to produce this thing?' And I'm thinking about it, and everybody's saying, 'Gee, this is such a huge opportunity' ... but then I'm thinking, 'You know what? It's just not sitting with me. I just need to go do my thing.' So I turned him down. "Three weeks go by. And I guess Lorne was getting frustrated because he hadn't found exactly what he wanted, and one day in a meeting he says to NBC, 'You know, I think Conan could probably have done it ... ' "And they're like, 'Conan O'Brien the writer?!' And he says, 'Well, it wouldn't happen overnight. But he's got a sensibility and he's got a look ...' "The audition was what did it. Before the audition, it was just a silly notion. The audition was better than any show I did for the first year. Honestly. Because I had nothing to lose. I was completely myself. I just walked out, and was self-deprecating, and made fun of the whole idea of me doing it. I was getting laughs, and I was doing it the way I do it now, which is through my personality, and spouting out weird imagery." Having won over the network brass, he then had to win over America. They were, shall we say, somewhat less than embracing. "Everybody was saying, 'Oh, you're so brave.' 'Oh, you must be fearless.' But I'll tell you, once you make the choice to do it, and you're in it, there's no way out except forward. Literally, it was like being dropped in the water and told to swim. The other option is not desirable." He could only hope that, as in life, he'd eventually start to grow on people. "I was never the guy that walks into a room and blows people away immediately," O'Brien admits. "I was never the class clown. I was the guy in the back who was quiet, but at the end of the semester everyone would say, 'Oh, he was the funniest guy.' "So gradually, I started spoon-feeding them my sensibility. And you get to a point where they're familiar with it, and they like it, and they'll follow me into those weird places ..." It is a sensibility he feels he shares with Canadians, perhaps even more so than his own comedic countrymen. "I think that, like SCTV, there is something of the Field Of Dreams philosophy of, 'If you build it, they will come,' he offers, "I think you have to have that faith. And I think one of the things that benefited us early on, and I think is a little akin to that Canadian comedy sensibility, is 'This is what we like. This is what we do. And we just have faith that if we do it well and we do it well consistently, people will come into the tent.'" 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