Sensing that he's losing the late-night PR war -- somehow, disingenuously joking about being "fired" by NBC when he stood to possibly regain both his old time-slot and Tonight Show desk hasn't won many converts to his side -- Jay Leno today responded to Conan O'Brien's withering, fist-pumpingly received open letter to the People of Earth, hoping to persuade O'Brien partisans to cast aside their ginger-tinged bouffants of support in favor of a Team Leno chin-prosthetic. For reasons we can't fully comprehend (did he sense a slight crack in our resolve?), Leno issued his statement exclusively!* to Movieline, which you can read in full after the jump:
*Please put on your 3-D glasses now and enjoy another fully immersive Movieline Fakery Experience™.
People of Earth (Especially Those Between The Ages Of 35-65),
In the last few days, my phone hasn't been ringing nearly as often as I'd hoped it might with sympathy calls, so I wanted to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me, even though they're yanking me out of my cherished 10 pm time-slot and putting me back in late-night, completely against my will. For 17 years, I've been getting paid to do what I love fourth-most, after doing Vegas shows, trying out new material in Hermosa Beach and rebuilding the engines of vintage Fiats with parts I fabricate in my awesome 3-D printer. And in a world with real problems, I've been absurdly lucky to Jaywalk through so many high-rated, first-place (did I mention I beat Letterman for a decade and a half yet? Oh, I didn't?) years. That said, I've been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses demanded an immediate decision, which I made on the spot, because hey, I've always been nothing but a team player.
Six years ago, I selflessly agreed to step aside, with only the barest minimum of wheedling, and let Conan O'Brien take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009, even though I was still in first place. (I was still in first place!) Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair seemed like a really great career move for me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity -- I guest-hosted whenever they needed me, hid in closets to eavesdrop on NBC executives' plans for Johnny's successor, fought tooth-and-nail to make sure they picked me over Dave, whatever was asked of me! -- passed up far more lucrative offers to move to Vegas full time to do nightly shows in a stand-alone theater at The Mirage shaped like my head, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking about ways to get back this franchise, even if that meant biding my time in an utterly ill-conceived show in a time-slot where sexy-doctor shows and police procedurals belong. It was my completely correct belief, that with NBC's primetime and late-night schedules in total disarray, they would eventually beg me to go back to 11:35.
And then, amazingly, after only seven months, with Conan's Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC decided to react to their terrible difficulties by pulling the plug on its late-night incubator, because while it would be nice to nurture a younger talent, who has time for that when the entire network's melting down just as they're closing a sale to another media conglomerate? Babies are nice and cute and all, but it's not like you're gonna let them host a talk show when there's a perfectly good adult hanging around.
Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move The Jay Leno Show to 11:35, and make it a half-hour, but only because they knew that Conan would never accept those terms, freak out, and hopefully quit in a huff, because pushing The Tonight Show to 12:05 really makes it The Tomorrow Show, as many smarty-pantses have rightly pointed out during this whole mess. Then they'd give me The Tonight Show back at the correct time, Conan would probably wind up at Fox with a bunch of penalty money, and everyone would be happy again. Carson Daly would even get to keep his show, if that's even still on! I, of course, was horrified about such cold machinations, but ultimately I went along with it, because I've always just been a blue-collar guy at heart who does what the boss tells him is best for everybody, especially when that plan includes making $20 million a year indefinitely. I mean, I have sort of a weird relationship with money, but I ain't gonna sneeze at eight figures, you know? That's a lot of Fiats.
So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoyed hosting The Tonight Show before Jeff Zucker lost his damn mind and decided to put me on a weird, five-year death-march towards an unwanted retirement, which he eventually forestalled by sticking me at 10 pm out of fear I'd go crush him at ABC. During that five-year limbo, I enjoyed it a little bit less, but my staff and I still worked unbelievably hard to never mess with comfortable success, efficiently churning out Headlines, lukewarm (don't scoff, lukewarm is just warm enough!) monologue jokes, and bits where we laugh at the ignorance of tourists who represent my typical audience members. OK, "enjoyed" is kind of a funny word, because really it's just about showing up to work and doing your job, and I'm always been all about getting the job done. Do you not get the whole denim shirt deal by now? Maybe I need to add a dirty bandana and start collecting antique bulldozers.
There's been no real speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, why would I bother going through that silly dance when I knew they were handing me back The Tonight Show the minute Conan's lawyers sorted out his departure? There are currently no other offers because I'm going to die at that desk. Maybe you laughed when I said that back in 2004, but now that I'm picking red hairs out of my teeth, do you still doubt me? There's even a velvet-lined chamber inside it when you lift up the top, so that they can just shove me in when I finally go, bury it beneath the stage, and then figure out how to shaft Jimmy Fallon, because you know he's never getting that gig. Anyway, my hope is that NBC and Conan can resolve everything quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can move into that awesome new studio at Universal. My designers are salivating at how we're gonna redecorate.
Have a great day and, for the record, I'm truly sorry about my chin, which has been the subject of a lot of cheap shots lately; it's always been that way: sure, it's enormous and offputtingly anvil-shaped, but let's not harp on it anymore. Mavis thinks the chin talk is a little hacky.
Yours,
Jay