Life lessons at UB from late night host
GREG CONNORS -- The Buffalo News -- April 23, 2006 -- Section: City&Region
Late night television host Conan O'Brien was the students' choice for UB's Distinguished Speakers Series, and they didn't regret it Saturday night.
A day after his appearance at the University at Buffalo, Conan O'Brien might still be trying to figure out how his name was called when UB set the roster for its Distinguished Speakers Series.
The short answer is that the late-night talk show host was chosen by the student body, which gets to pick one of the speakers in the series. On Saturday night in Alumni Arena, O'Brien made every one of the 8,000 or so in attendance glad that he was the people's choice.
O'Brien joked about the contrast between the prestigious sounding series and the way he makes his living, "basically acting like an idiot."
Rather than deliver a speech, he said hello to the crowd - "I love this school, it's the crown jewel of the SUNY system!" - and then took questions from students. Dennis R. Black, UB's vice president for student affairs, acted as moderator, and O'Brien soon turned Black into a comic foil.
As Black read from his pack of index cards, O'Brien joked, "You with your little cards! That's a tidy little world you live in, isn't it?"
Black seemed to enjoy being part of the act. O'Brien, as a graduate of Harvard University and a television celebrity, is at once a member of the establishment and a step removed so that he can make fun of it. His basic good nature assures that people rarely take offense.
The student questioners were obviously fans of the show. They asked about O'Brien's trip to Finland, where he met President Tarja Halonen, a woman who bears a strong resemblance to O'Brien. O'Brien last year did a series of mock ads for Halonen during her re-election campaign. Many of them were seen in Finland, where O'Brien's show is apparently a ratings hit. Halonen won the election by about 3 percentage points, O'Brien said.
"I'm not sure if I helped or hurt her," O'Brien said. "The important thing is just that I had an impact. I don't care what kind of impact it was."
He then admitted how incredible it is that an unlikely TV star like himself is making overseas trips to meet world leaders.
"ABC Nightly News' actually reported that I was having an effect on the Finnish election," he said. "It turned into a state visit. There were huge crowds outside the presidential palace. The crowd cheered me like I had done something, when I basically just wasted the time of a whole country for like a month."
O'Brien at times let down his comic guard, sharing some lessons he has learned in his 43 years on earth, the last 13 of them as a talk-show host.
"It's shocking how little you really have to lose [by taking a chance]," he said. "You might as well just try, listen to the voice telling you what to do and just jump right in - unless the voice is telling you to murder someone."
O'Brien had veered into comedy while at Harvard, where he was head of the Harvard Lampoon for two years. He said it wasn't easy explaining his career choice to his parents, a doctor and a lawyer from Brookline, Mass.
"But then I landed a little cable TV show and I learned an important lesson. Once you start getting paid, your parents don't care how you make a living."
O'Brien recounted his early career, which included stints as a writer for "Saturday Night Live" and "The Simpsons" (he wrote the famous "Marge vs. the Monorail" episode). He said it was pure luck that he ended up as the successor to David Letterman when Letterman left NBC for CBS.
"There was no way I was going to get that job," O'Brien recalled. "I went to that audition completely relaxed, the most relaxed I've ever been in my life, at least without the aid of some kind of substance. I was just totally myself, and NBC didn't find anyone they liked better, so they offered me the job. Forty-eight percent of me was thrilled," he said, "and 52 percent was scared to death, but I just went ahead and did it."
One of the few impressions that O'Brien does is of a hyper Tom Cruise, whose daughter was born on O'Brien's birthday.
"I'm sure I'll be hearing from the Cruises any day now," he joked, adding an imitation of Cruise the Scientologist ("Three more injections and you'll be one of us").
O'Brien said older people don't always get his jokes, but many do tell him they are big fans - "because I remind them of someone who sold them a newspaper during the Depression."
e-mail: gconnors@buffnews.com