conan o’Brien
Conaco
Conan: “Do you
want something
to drink?”
Me: “Sure, water
would be great.”
Conan: “That’s
not happening.”
Conan:
“This
sounds
disgusting.”
ling who wrote the indie film Paper
Heart, are on. Adding to the fun is a
television first: When Conan airs at
11 p.m. on the East Coast, O’Brien will
live-blog on Team Coco’s Facebook
page, commenting on the show he
spent all day creating.
For the King piece, O’Brien suggests
introducing him instead of being interrupted. “If we were doing a show that
was more controlled, like an SCTV or
Kids in the Hall,” O’Brien says, “I would
be interrupted. It’s a little more elegant.
But in this environment, where we’re
doing vaudeville, it might be confusing.” Sweeney sends the new script to
King, who’s due to arrive at 3: 45, less
than an hour before he goes on.
By Chuck Salter
Conan
[flicking the
list]: “This is
like Confederate
money in 1865.”
The monologue isn’t written and the
sketches are nowhere near ready, but
Conan O’Brien isn’t worried. Or if he
is, he isn’t letting on. There’s none of
the mock outrage you see on camera,
just mock rudeness. There are no puppet strings attached to his hips, no
nipple rubbing. It’s nearly noon on a
Tuesday in April, and he’s sitting at his
desk on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, California, dressed in a brown
short-sleeve knit shirt and jeans, sipping a Starbucks coffee and looking
over tonight’s comedy rundown: Andy
Richter imitating a viral video of a
baby sliding down stairs on his stomach. Larry King in the theater’s rafters
hosting a call-in show. On paper, the
bits sound deliciously silly. Pure Conan.
And there are more in the works, more
than can fit. Which means that the
rundown O’Brien holds in his hands
is worthless.
Creating a nightly comedy show
like Conan, he says, is like turning
carbon into a diamond: “You need an
incredible amount of pressure, and as
you get closer and closer to the show,
the pressure increases.”
O’Brien’s comedy mine is Stage 15,
the cavernous soundstage where Blaz-
ing Saddles and Ghostbusters were
filmed. And where at 4: 30 p.m.—in less
than five hours—Richter will belt into
the mic, “Conan O’Briiiiiien!” Pressure?
What pressure? Beneath the desk,
O’Brien’s leg is now bouncing like mad.
monday af Ternoon: Some comic elements are prepared days ahead of
time. “Larry King in the Rafters” is an
idea that has just been awaiting King’s
availability. When he learns that King
can do Tuesday’s show, Mike Sweeney,
O’Brien’s head writer, emails him the
script after Monday’s taping. King,
perched 30 feet or so above the audience, will interrupt the monologue
and take calls as if he’s back on CNN.
The only hitch? King can’t (or
won’t) make rehearsal. He’ll do the bit
for the first time when the show tapes.
10 a.m.: The writers hit the brown
couches in Sweeney’s third-floor office
and try to channel the boss’s comic
sensibility. “They need to marinate in
the essence of Conan,” O’Brien says.
With the Tonight Show debacle
well behind him, O’Brien is enjoying
his fresh start at Conan on TBS. It’s
the first show he hasn’t inherited, and
he’s creating all-new material. “The
thing I keep telling everyone is ‘The
only way we can screw this up is to
not be bold enough.’ ” The walls in
Sweeney’s office are covered with
index cards scrawled with ideas—
some failed, some in need of an
ending, some “runners” (i.e., regular
bits) waiting to return: ANDY HAS A
SIDEKICK. CAN ANDY NAP HERE? THE
Conan: “He’s a
former lawyer,
so no one can
argue like Mike
Sweeney.”
Tuesday, around 9: 30 a.m.: O’Brien calls
Sweeney en route to the office from
somewhere on the 110 freeway, and
they go over the show. “Sometimes
he’ll disagree, then we argue about it,”
O’Brien says. Typically, Sweeney
arrives an hour before his writing staff
to read over scripts.
Today’s show should be fun. Come-
dic polar opposites Tracy Morgan and
Charlyne Yi, the quiet, deadpan dar-
“there’s A yin-
yAng between
improvisAtion
And prep. A lot
of my cAreer
hAs been
About finding
the bAlAnce.”
