Leno On Oprah: The Ten Quotes Meant To Convince Us He's Not A Monster Who Stomped On Coco's Dreams
6. On still not understanding that "fired" means "having a job taken away," rather than "getting back the better job you've always wanted and didn't really want to leave in the first place" :
"You fired me twice. How valuable can I be?"
7. On using O'Brien's "destructive to the franchise" reason for not accepting a Tonight Show move to 12:05 as an another excuse to remind people this was really Conan's fault for not performing following NBC's devastated primetime lineup:
"Well, if you look at where the [Conan 'Tonight Show'] ratings were [long pause], it was already destructive to the franchise."
8. On -- quite admirably! -- choosing to endure Jimmy Kimmel's withering takedown on his own show without complaint, and not editing it out just because Kimmel took Leno's ass, gift-wrapped it with a cute little bow, and handed it back to him as his audience squealed with delight at how brutally awkward the situation was:
Leno: "[W]hen you get sucker punched, you just get right back up again. You don't whine or complain -- 'Oh, I'm going to take that out, he said something bad about me.' That's all right."
9. On blaming the affiliates, and the numbers, and the money for "taking away Conan's dream," and once again reminding people this mess was really Conan's fault for not performing following NBC's devastated primetime lineup:
[A]gain, this is an affiliate decision. Affiliates felt that the ratings were low. This was the first time in the 60-year history of 'The Tonight Show' that 'The Tonight Show' would have lost money. And that's what it comes down to. It's really just a matter of dollars and cents. If the numbers had been there, they wouldn't have asked me. And they only asked me after Conan turned down moving ['The Tonight Show'] back half an hour."
10. On working through the tricky questions about "the right thing," self-interest vs, selfishness, what it means to be a "good guy," why people care so much about a "television show," self-delusion, self-aggrandizement, messianic complexes, why any of us give a sh*t about two multimillionaires fighting over one really really shiny toy, why he's sitting on a couch across from Oprah having to explain to America why he did the entirely reasonable thing of taking back what he wanted from a guy who took it from him before he was ready to give it up, how funny life is sometimes, how exactly you got here, how much longer it's gonna be before people figure out it's been Mavis pulling the strings from behind the scenes for 30 years and that she's actually just a split-personality you've concocted for yourself that emerges only when tough decision must be made, or why the air tastes just a little better when you're puttering through the Hills in a 1913 Mercer Raceabout while wearing the actual pair of flight goggles the Red Baron donned when he made his last confirmed kill, and hey, whose internal monologue is this anyway GET OUT OF MY MIND! OPRAH, YOU THOUGHT-PILFERING WITCH!:
"I always thought, 'You're doing the right thing.' I always felt I was doing the right thing. How can you do the right thing and just have it go so wrong? Maybe I'm not doing the right thing, I would think. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. This many people are angry and upset over a television show. I mean, I had a show. My show got canceled. They weren't happy with the other guy's show. They said, 'We want you to go back,' and I said, 'OK.' And this seemed to make a lot of people really upset. And I go, 'Well, who wouldn't take that job though? Who wouldn't do that?' It was really agonizing. I would spend a lot of time just thinking about it, going, 'I think I'm a good guy. Am I a good guy? Maybe I'm one of these guys who thinks I see everything with rose-colored glasses and the world is falling around you.' Yeah, it was a real agonizing time. [...] I mean, I like the job, I like all that goes with it. I fight for the people who work here. I fight to keep the jobs here. OK, is that selfish? Maybe it is, because it's self-aggrandizing, maybe because it's pumping me up."
Jay Leno tells his side of the story on Oprah [chicagotribune.com]
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Ironic, isn't it? As shown by this article (and unfortunately for Mr. Leno and his bosses at NBC), the basic story of their programming fiasco just won't go away. And their endless stream of carefully worded explanations - much less, soul-searching interviews on 'Oprah' - don't seem to be helping much, either. I think a big part of that is all of the history between Leno, NBC, and The Tonight Show.
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For any readers too young to recall (or maybe just not interested in late night TV, at the time), it might help your perspective on the current Leno vs O'Brien mess to read some background on the original Leno vs Letterman feud. Here's the full story of how Jay Leno took over the 'The Tonight Show' hosting gig from long-time host Johnny Carson, way back in 1993.
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http://bit.ly/6FjAQq (complete article - NY Times; 1994)
Thought this was interesting:
via tvguide.com schedule for the current Tonight Show repeats:
Tonight Show w/ Conan O'Brien - The former 'Late Night' funnyman hosts the venerable talk show featuring celebrities and music acts. O'Brien followed Jay Leno as host in June 2009.
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And Leno is a corporate 'Yes man' if there ever was one. Maybe the reason it was a big deal is because the story resonated with a lot people out there who have been in similar situations, esp. I'm sure with Conan's younger audience who are seeing their futures squandered by Leno's Boomer/geriatric fan base. Pretty neat packaging of culture and ageist clash really, all for free.
Oh, and I hope Conan doesn't go to Fox. A Stewart/Colbert/Conan lineup on Comedy Central would be golden I would think.
That photo makes me think they're doing a sequel to Mars Attacks!
I loved the way he said the big reason he was taking the show back was that he was thinking of his staff, and making sure they have jobs. Yet he admitted he NEVER EVEN THOUGHT about the thousands of jobs that he killed by taking the 10 pm slot five nights a week. Idiot.
And "the key is to not be bitter." WTF? He's deranged.
Jay Leno doesn't own The Tonight Show; he's an employee too. He and Conan are victims of some really stupid decision making on the part of NBC execs. WHY would you move around two #1 TV shows (The Tonight Show & Late Night w/Conan). It's because of decisions like that that NBC is all screwed up now. In addition, if ratings were up on The Tonight Show with Conan, this wouldn't have happened. Is there a slight possibility that Conan just didn't fit the bill for the traditional Tonight Show audience?
See, he's talking, but all I hear is, "Blah, blah blah, blah blah blah." He set Conan up for failure; he knows it, and anyone who's smart and pays attention knows it. I just recently read "The Late Shift" and boy does it have some gems in there about how Leno laughed uncontrollably and bragged about how he planned and spied on the executives to hear their opinions on what makes a successful show and host and shoved it in their faces, how people in t.v know that viewership is notably low in the summer time and to avoid premiering a new show in the summer (Conan's Tonight Show premiered June 1, Leno's suckfest premiered in September), how Leno and his manager schemed to get Carson removed form hosting, and boy are there some others. Leno knows he's an a-hole, otherwise he wouldn't feel the need to go on Oprah to try to redeem himself.
I'm relieved Oprah didn't lob softball questions. The one thing I wish she would have asked, is if Leno thought The Tonight Show should have been taken from him in the first 18 months in the early 90's when his ratings were tanking. A fair question, since he kept insisting that it all comes down to numbers. I'd like to have seen him try to sidestep that issue.
“I think the show failed because it was basically a late-night talk show at 10 o’clock. You’re competing with dramas that are $3 to $6 million an episode.”
Um, wasn't this why he was supposed to be the "future of television" as per himself before his show tanked?
i don't buy that one bit. Jay didn't need the job. And he wasn't in a position where he couldn't say no. NBC wanted to cancel his 10 pm gig. fine. Cancel it. But he could have shown some respect and said "the torch has been past and it's not fair to Conan and his staff to just pitch them out. You want me to do something else, fine. But leave Conan alone." Jay could afford to not work, he won't be bankrupt for saying no.
He could also have admitted that his low numbers meant that folks were changing the channel and yes that hurt the local stations and might have hurt Conan. That Conan's low numbers weren't simply because he wasn't Jay Leno (who clearly doesn't have that big of a devoted following since they didn't follow him to 10pm)
Leno is not a monster. He's just talentless. Credit his Machiavellian agents and half decent writers for his career.
COCO rocks!
Great post. Thanks