Episode 163 - Conan O'Brien
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF?
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fuck in ears?
Marc:What the fuck, Knicks?
Marc:How's everything going?
Marc:This is Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:I'm sitting naked in a hotel room in Madison, Wisconsin.
Marc:I spent the day out on the Capitol, hanging out with the protesters a bit, picking up on the energy, watching democracy in action, people fighting for what they believe is right, fighting for their future, union workers, people who are supporting union workers.
Marc:These are public jobs.
Marc:State workers, nurses, social workers, teachers, all just wanting the right to function as a union in a democratic society, to be able to have the right to collectively negotiate for their pensions, for their jobs, for when the state imposes layoffs, for what happens to those workers, how they are treated.
Marc:It's an amazing thing to see.
Marc:This is my job.
Marc:My job includes me sitting in a hotel room naked, but I'm certainly not as naked as the anger and desperation that I see out there on the state capitol today.
Marc:In terms of what the unions are fighting for, it's convoluted, it's difficult, but it's basically the rights to be protected.
Marc:To have their pensions protected.
Marc:And is that important?
Marc:Among other things.
Marc:I think it's important.
Marc:I mean, example.
Marc:Yesterday, I made a mess in my hotel room.
Marc:I spilled some coffee.
Marc:It was a fucking disaster in the bathroom because that's where the coffee maker is.
Marc:I felt awful.
Marc:And I walk out into the hall.
Marc:I'm about to leave.
Marc:I see a maid.
Marc:And I said, look, I'm sorry.
Marc:I'm sorry that it's a mess in there.
Marc:She goes, look, nothing's going to surprise me.
Marc:I was a nurse, an emergency room nurse for 30 years.
Marc:I've seen everything, every mess a human being could make in the worst possible way.
Marc:I've seen it.
Marc:You're not going to surprise me, honey.
Marc:And then I thought for a second, like, is she challenging me?
Marc:I mean, I can make a bigger mess.
Marc:But then on a deeper level, I thought, holy shit.
Marc:Why is a woman in her 60s who was an emergency room nurse for 30 years cleaning my hotel room?
Marc:What kind of country is this?
Marc:I don't know her backstory, but if this were a decent country, a woman in her 60s who had done a noble job, like being an emergency room nurse for 30 years, saving lives, would not be cleaning up my fucking coffee mess.
Marc:I felt ashamed.
Marc:This is my job.
Marc:I have fought for my job on some level.
Marc:I have fought for the right to sit in a hotel room naked in the middle of the day and prepare for a couple of shows tonight.
Marc:I've dedicated almost half of my life to being able to draw people to come see what I do.
Marc:And it's starting to happen.
Marc:It's only taken 25 years.
Marc:Let me mention that today is a special day because today our guest is Conan O'Brien, who obviously fought for his job as well and made some difficult choices in his life.
Marc:And I got to be honest with you, I didn't know whether he was going to make good on his promise and come on my show.
Marc:He promised it in front of you, in front of America.
Marc:He said he would come to my garage.
Marc:I really thought that I would end up going to his office and sitting down with this rig that I got right here in Madison and just getting what I get.
Marc:But he is a man of his word.
Marc:And he came to my garage and he sat down with me.
Marc:And I always assumed that I kind of knew the guy.
Marc:But, you know, I assume that a lot with my guests.
Marc:And sometimes I'm not right.
Marc:And sometimes it's very hard for me to let go of my assumptions.
Marc:I want them to be who I think they are.
Marc:And that is not always the case, no matter how hard I push.
Marc:But that wasn't the case with Conan.
Marc:I always knew he was a sensitive guy.
Marc:I always knew he was a hardworking guy.
Marc:I always knew he was very hard on himself.
Marc:But he's a very decent human being.
Marc:He's got a lot of personal integrity, and it was great to talk to him.
Marc:And I feel very close to him because I feel like we sort of came up together in a way.
Marc:I mean, it's taken me 25 years to sell tickets in this business, to get work on a regular basis in my business.
Marc:It's taken me a long time to find my voice in this world of comedy and what I'm doing now in the entertainment business or whatever it is you want to call it.
Marc:I struggled hard.
Marc:I've gone broke many times.
Marc:I've been desperate, but I didn't know what else to do, so I hung on.
Marc:And at the beginning, when Conan was first on, he was under fire.
Marc:He was awkward.
Marc:He was having a difficult time finding his legs on TV, on camera, with his own voice.
Marc:And I was one of the original guests as a comic in that first year of the Conan O'Brien show on NBC.
Marc:And he had me on three or four times a year during the entire run.
Marc:And I felt close to him.
Marc:I felt grateful to him.
Marc:And then I went to meet with...
Marc:the head of Conan's production company, on some other business, and I went to the new set of the new show, and I saw all the old people from the old show.
Marc:I really had to fight back tears, almost, because I was connected to these people.
Marc:I'd been doing that show for so many years, and I missed it.
Marc:I hadn't seen any of them in about a year during the whole Tonight Show run.
Marc:I was sort of amazed at how emotional I got.
Marc:And then when they asked me to do the new show...
Marc:When I got there, I was I was ecstatic in a way that wasn't just about doing television.
Marc:It was I felt like I was back with the like it was a reunion of some kind.
Marc:And Andy was there and I felt like I was among friends.
Marc:And again, I had to fight back tears before I went on the air.
Marc:it was great it was it was like being with old friends and conan said he'd come on the show and he came on the show and it was great and we just hung out and we talked and you're gonna hear that now and it was it was weird because we i do feel close to the guy and you know we chatted a little before we went into the garage in the kitchen then we did the interview and then we we had this long talk and then we're back in my house in the dining room and we're having chit chat and you know he came after he recorded the show it was seven at night and
Marc:There was this weird, awkward moment where we're just talking and we're standing there.
Marc:And in my mind, I'm like, holy fuck, Conan O'Brien is in my house.
Marc:What do I do now?
Marc:What happens now?
Marc:How long is this going to go on for?
Marc:I literally got sort of awkward.
Marc:But, you know, I thanked him and gave him some coffee, some justcoffee.coop and said goodbye.
Marc:And I was thrilled that we were able to do that.
Marc:And by the way, JustCoffee.coop is here in Madison, Wisconsin.
Marc:I went over there today, spent some time at the warehouse looking at the machinery.
Marc:What a great operation.
Marc:So go to JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:And now let's go to the garage and listen to me and Conan O'Brien.
Marc:Well, gotta play by the rules.
Marc:In my garage is Conan O'Brien.
Marc:I'm a little nervous.
Marc:Why is that?
Marc:Well, you know, I've known you a long time.
Marc:I've done your show a lot.
Marc:People often assume that we are our best friends or we're buddies because I'm on the show a lot, but we don't really have a relationship off screen, do we?
Guest:No.
Marc:Not that I know of.
Marc:I mean, unless I've been at dinner and I didn't remember.
Marc:You've tried.
Guest:This is several times when I've quashed it immediately.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's funny because I have that same, there's, you know, for years, I mean, thousands of hours and people will come on and there are certain people, you're one, you come on a lot and we talk and we know each other and we get into this nice zone that can last 11, 12 years.
Guest:minutes, and then we've done that so much over the years, and then we don't hang out outside the show.
Guest:I don't really hang out with, I don't have lots of, like a rat pack of comedy pals.
Guest:I never did.
Guest:How the hell are you gonna have time?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I would do the show, but even when I had time, I didn't do it.
Guest:I would just go home and sort of go into a funk and eat cheese popcorn.
Guest:Nap.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:So this is nice.
Guest:We'll finally get to know each other here.
Marc:Well, the interesting thing is, and it won't surprise you because I think you have a sense of how my brain works, is that...
Marc:I just read the book, The War for Late Night.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Literally out of concern for you.
Marc:I was like, what did he go through?
Marc:I wasn't really concerned with a whodunit.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I have a very self-centered view of show business.
Marc:Now, when you were hosting The Tonight Show, I knew I was slotted for some point in the future.
Marc:And when all the shit went down, I literally had a moment where I'm like, well, I wonder if Conan knows that I was slotted to do it.
Right.
Marc:you know what it was it almost i almost decided to stay because of that right um i don't know what the hell prepared you to deal with even the first wave of stuff this is always something i've been obsessed with with you is that where do you get the fortitude to to deal with that
Guest:You know what I have found over the years, and it's going to sound like I'm making a joke and I'm not.
Guest:You can make a joke.
Guest:No, no, no, I won't.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Because this doesn't pay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So you're going to get the serious interview because no one's paying for the funny stuff.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But I swear to God this is true.
Guest:Get yourselves into situations where you don't have a choice.
Guest:And I really believe that's the definition of accomplishing a lot of things in this life, as I have some part of me, because I'm not a brave person, I don't even think of myself as someone who has a lot of guts, but I will get myself into situations where
Guest:the house is on fire and there's only one way out, which is through the front door.
Guest:And then people later on give you credit for going through the front door.
Guest:And you say, well, there was really nowhere else to go.
Guest:I mean, there was no, in 93, when I replaced David Letterman from Complete Obscurity, I got myself into a situation and I was very aware that, man, this is a fucking serious situation I'm in.
Guest:And the only way out was to survive it.
Guest:That's the only way out.
Guest:Because if I had been taken off the air after six months,
Guest:I would just become a trivial pursuit question.
Marc:But also survive it, but do your job.
Marc:I mean, and excel at that.
Marc:I mean, that, like, when I really think... Like, for some reason, I get hung up on...
Marc:On Harvard, you know, because I saw the social network.
Marc:And is there some sort of secret wisdom?
Guest:No.
Guest:God, no.
Guest:Well, first of all, the Harvard you saw on the social network doesn't exist.
Guest:It doesn't?
Guest:That's good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There are no... Women don't look like that.
Guest:Twins?
Guest:A lot of sets of twins?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I mean, I looked at that movie and I thought, I don't know where I was.
Guest:This was clearly a different time, but lots of incredible looking...
Guest:supermodels walking around, taking off their underwear and giving guys blowjobs.
Guest:They bust them in apparently.
Guest:Yeah, bust them in and there are guys with headsets.
Guest:Now it's possible that existed somewhere, but nobody I know ever saw that.
Guest:Nobody, we all had cold sores and we had diphtheria and it was cold and we wore shitty clothes.
Guest:Scarves.
Guest:Scarves and the guys looked horrible.
Guest:The women looked like, you know, Emily Dickinson after a bike accident.
Guest:I mean, it was a sham.
Guest:The whole thing was a, and we all survived it.
Guest:It was always gray and raining and they were tearing up the subway the whole time I was at Harvard.
Guest:What year were you there?
Marc:I was there from 81 to 84.
Marc:Because I was around then.
Marc:I was at, yeah, I was at, well, Boston University.
Marc:It's across the river there.
Marc:From 81.
Guest:I've heard.
Guest:I've heard tell.
Guest:Yeah, but it's, but you know, they, they, the whole place was under construction the whole time I was there.
Marc:But there's no, like I, I, I want to demystify Harvard.
Marc:I mean, so what is this idea that there's some sort of Harvard camp within comedy?
Marc:Is it just because relationships are built?
Marc:There's no secret sort of like, this is the secret comedy puzzle.
Guest:No, there is a, first of all, there is a secret comedy puzzle.
Guest:And you know how to do it?
Guest:Yeah, and I can tell you, but I can't say it on the air.
Guest:Okay, all right.
Guest:Or have my ass, but there is a trick to it all, and only you and Howie Mandel are going to crack it.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But the...
Guest:What is true is that there's the Harvard Lampoon within Harvard, and that is the country's oldest tumor magazine, started in 1876.
Guest:That is a place from Doug Kinney and Henry Beard, and it's attracted some really funny, it's attracted some talented people over the years.
Guest:When I was there, I fell into that organization.
Guest:you submit comedy to get in.
Guest:So it is a meritocracy.
Guest:They're looking for funny people that can write stuff.
Marc:You gotta be smart.
Marc:You gotta be funny.
Guest:You gotta be funny.
Guest:And you can get accepted as an artist.
Guest:You can get accepted.
Guest:Some people get in on the business side.
Guest:But I got into that.
Guest:And that changed my life.
Guest:That was 1981.
Guest:And what is true is when I got out to Los Angeles, there was a couple of people that I...
Guest:had graduated years before me, but they were on the Lampoon.
Guest:I mean, Jim Downing, one of the funniest people I've ever met, who's head writer forever at Saturday Night Live, and he's still there doing stuff.
Guest:He was a Lampoon guy.
Guest:And so you'd know a couple of these guys, and I heard these names, Max Pross, Tom Gamble, George Meyer, and these are, it helped to know a few of those names.
Guest:So I'm not gonna lie about that.
Guest:It does help to have a few connections.
Guest:So it's a skull and bones of clowns.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:It's a skull and bones of nerdy, self-effacing comedy geeks.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:So it's just about it.
Marc:It's just really about a network.
Marc:It's not that because I've always wanted to believe that you're imparted secret wisdom at Harvard, but really you're just introduced and socialized with some of the smartest people around.
Guest:But also some of the dumbest.
Guest:I'm the first to demystify or demythologize Harvard.
Guest:I don't think ... I met some really smart people there.
Guest:I met some dumb people there.
Guest:I met people that had no emotional intelligence.
Guest:I met some of my best friends there.
Guest:I also met horrible people there.
Guest:It's a big melting pot.
Guest:It is not ...
Guest:Many people would agree too.
Guest:I don't think it's like the greatest undergraduate education you could ever have.
Guest:I think it all depends on what you're looking for.
Guest:But it has some cache.
Guest:It has some cache and it attracts some very interesting people.
Guest:I would say it was no surprise to me when they caught the Unabomber and he turned out to be a guy from Harvard.
Guest:Someone said, oh, they caught the Unabomber and he was a lone weirdo.
Guest:He went to Harvard and I thought, well, of course he did.
Guest:The media was saying, how could this be?
Guest:I knew seven Unabombers.
Guest:Well, they're going to do big things either on the dark or the light side.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're going to achieve something.
Guest:And he was the best of the bombers.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He was one of the greats.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Lived out there by himself in a small cabin.
Marc:Somewhere there's a Yale random bomber who's furious.
Guest:My time has been taken.
Marc:Well, is it weird to you that on some level that, you know, or does it make sense on some level that all these people that went to Harvard and all these people that you knew sort of rise at the same time?
Marc:I mean, I had no idea that, you know, Jeff Zucker went to Harvard.
Marc:I mean, is that odd to you?
Guest:No, it's not odd in a way.
Guest:It kind of makes sense that everybody, you know, if you made a movie, when you see a lot of classic movies that tell a tale,
Guest:And this is the format they used in the 1930s in classic movies like the Roaring Twenties.
Guest:Everybody meets each other in the first scene in World War I and they're doughboys fighting together in a trench.
Guest:And then they split up and shake hands.
Guest:And then 10 years later, they're all robbing a bank and they run into each other in an alley.
Guest:And then they run into each other again in 10 years and one's the district attorney and the other one.
Guest:And it's kind of how it works.
Guest:So yeah, it doesn't, and you know what?
Guest:In comedy, when I came out to Los Angeles, I met all these people.
Guest:85?
Guest:In 85, I came out here, and over time, I met all these people, and it's the same cast of characters.
Guest:I mean, everyone just keeps popping up,
Guest:And it is funny that you're assigned a set of characters when you're born and they keep showing up in your life.
Guest:And that's just how it works.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, it's you again.
Marc:Isn't that weird though?
Marc:I mean, it's, it's strange to me that, that it's, do you think it's insulated like that?
Marc:Is that protected?
Marc:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:I do think, I do think God and whatever God means, but there's some, I really believe that some, there is a force in the universe that has a sense of humor.
Guest:Because these things are just too weird.
Marc:Yeah, it's beyond coincidence that it's such a small world and we keep running into each other.
Marc:But when you were younger, what kind of track were you on?
Marc:I mean, were you going to Harvard?
Guest:Did you have that kind of pressure at home?
Guest:I was not.
Guest:I had no, I'd always been fascinated in comedy.
Guest:I'd always been fascinated in being an entertainer.
Guest:I had, I used to, you know, it's kind of, it sounds weird now, but I constantly wrote plays and bugged my school to let me put them on.
Guest:How old?
Guest:I would star in them.
Guest:I was like, you know, I was like nine.
Guest:You know, I mean, I was constantly... Do you remember any of the... I remember when I wrote some, I wrote a show about, you know, where a buddy and I meet and become big stars.
Guest:And, you know, we wrote songs to it.
Guest:We basically just ripped off popular songs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you performed it?
Guest:And then we performed it, and I remembered insisting that it have a real, the whole play was only about 15 minutes long, but I had been to a play, one play in New York, and I had known that they had an intermission that lasted 25 minutes, so I insisted on a 25-minute intermission seven minutes into our 15-minute show, and the teachers got so pissed at me.
Guest:They were, afterwards, I was like, well, that was quite a show, wasn't it?
Guest:Fuck, it's stuck.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:So I had these weird ideas about being in show business.
Guest:And then I basically, I think I was an anxious kid.
Guest:It's not glamorous, I was not the class clown.
Guest:I was funny for my friends, but quiet in the classroom.
Guest:And I worked really hard and I was kind of grim.
Guest:And I have to say, I didn't really enjoy my childhood.
Marc:Socially uncomfortable?
Guest:I was not socially uncomfortable, no, because I could make my friends laugh, but I just,
Guest:I was not easygoing.
Guest:From fourth grade till when?
Guest:Till like now.
Guest:I mean, I'm not an easygoing... And, you know, it's interesting because I think people... Me neither.
Guest:People... You know, but people have this idea when they get to know you or they think you're in comedy, they think, oh...
Guest:You know, you must be some freewheeling fun.
Guest:And I always took things very seriously, got very down on myself and went into kind of a dark place.
Guest:And then the flip side of that would be comedy was my escape.
Guest:Comedy was the way that I would burst out of that.
Guest:So I was a very serious student.
Guest:I had no intention of getting into, you know, when I went to Harvard, I didn't even think about going on the Harvard Lampoon until literally my college roommate, David, you know, John O'Connor said, I'm going.
Guest:And I said, I guess I'll go along with you.
Guest:And that changed my life.
Guest:What were you thinking about doing it?
Guest:I was thinking about I'd go to the school of government or I'd- What'd you major in?
Guest:I majored in history and literature of America.
Guest:I wrote a thesis called literary progeria in the works of Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner.
Guest:I still don't know what that means.
Guest:I don't know what progeria means.
Guest:Progeria is the disease where you age prematurely.
Guest:You know, kids get it and they become- That's fucking deep, man.
Guest:And so I thought there were, I thought that the South had a unique literary device where
Guest:Southern writers put the children in Southern literature were prematurely old because it captured the experience of the American South, which is that they were part of a powerful nation, but they were poor.
Guest:They were part of a nation that had never been defeated, yet they had known defeat.
Guest:And then so there was this dichotomy.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:I thought it was pretty good.
Guest:Did you do well in that?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I did well, and I actually graduated magna.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like a serious, and I was running the lampoon at the same time.
Guest:I drove myself really hard.
Marc:Well, Faulkner was like, I became obsessed with Faulkner for a while.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because I was an English major, but I was not a good student.
Marc:But the Quentin section of The Sound and the Fury, I obsessed over.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, did you relate to that?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes, I did.
Marc:As a man-child.
Marc:Well, no, that was the other guy, Benji.
Marc:That's Benji.
Marc:But Quentin was the sort of existential Harvard student that ended up jumping off that bridge with the irons on his feet.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And it was so weird and morose and hard to read.
Marc:And Faulkner was so...
Marc:It makes me want to do that.
Guest:Well, yeah, and then you realize he also looked the part.
Guest:Faulkner looked like the great Southern writer.
Guest:He looked like a Civil War general.
Guest:But then, I've been to his house.
Guest:He has a house.
Guest:In Rowan, what's it called?
Guest:It's in Oxford, Mississippi.
Guest:Oxford, Mississippi, right.
Guest:And you can see where he wrote.
Guest:So you went on sort of a pilgrimage?
Guest:No, I just did a road trip once with my friends and I realized we were driving through Mississippi and I said, we've got to stop by.
Guest:I've got to see his plantation and see the room where he wrote all that stuff.
Guest:I mean, he literally, you know, it's old school.
Marc:What a fucking mind though.
Marc:I mean, like, you know, he wrote, you know, paragraph long sentences.
Marc:I used to just get obsessed about these sentences, like the Reavers even, which is like probably the most accessible book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you ever read that stuff now?
Guest:I have not read him in a long time.
Guest:Did you like it?
Guest:I did, I did like it, and I also was frustrated.
Guest:I actually preferred Flannery O'Connor.
Guest:She was, I don't know if you've read much of her, but she's great, and hardcore, completely unsentimental and tough, and you'd never know.
Guest:If you read it, you'd think this is some cynical, it sounds like a sexist thing to say, but you read it, and you realize it was written in the 50s, and you think, well, this is some cynical
Guest:hardcore, alcoholic asshole, and then you find out that it's a very religious, frail young woman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she was kind of funny.
Guest:Yeah, very funny.
Guest:I mean, darkly funny.
Guest:Wickedly funny, yeah.
Guest:So, yeah, I...
Guest:That's the thing that... The one thing, the one quality that I like to take through life is not to be a snob one way or the other, and also not to be a reverse elitist.
Guest:I think Flannery O'Connor is really funny, and I can appreciate that, but I also can appreciate the Three Stooges.
Guest:It's just trying to...
Guest:I think there's some people that are always trying to demarcate, you know, in a kind of a angry comedy bully way.
Marc:I think there's a lot of people that, and I was talking to someone else about this today, that there seems to be this, you know, this cultural propensity to create conflict, to create competitions where there aren't any, to challenge people to do this or that.
Marc:That seems to have taken the place of human interaction now.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's fucking, it's annoying.
Guest:Well, within the, you know, I think also, this is the theory I've come up with, which is that you see it in politics now and you also see it in pop culture.
Guest:A strong opinion, there's so much noise out there that the only thing that cuts through is a strong opinion.
Guest:So everyone has strong opinions.
Guest:So, you know, this sucks.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This person's a god and this person sucks.
Guest:Right, that's it.
Guest:And that's really it.
Guest:And I think you see it in politics.
Guest:Like there's no room for a nuanced view anymore.
Guest:It's just- Which is what it's supposed to be.
Guest:It's supposed to be nuanced, but now it's you're either, you know, it's the right and the left, both.
Guest:have sort of giant paper mache puppets that exaggerate and people enjoy that.
Guest:It's almost like you can generate more energy with that.
Guest:And I think in comedy too, there's a lot of, that's the thing, the one aspect of the social media and the web that depresses me is you just see the,
Guest:you know, flamethrowers that go through and they've got to love something or hate something.
Marc:It's annoying and it's reactive and it's over emotional and it's ultimately shallow, you know, because you can't appreciate stuff.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Now, when you were a kid, like, what did all your siblings end up doing?
Marc:How many you got?
Marc:I'm one of six.
Marc:That's a lot.
Marc:Were you really Catholic?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, we were hardcore Catholic growing up.
Guest:Church every Sunday?
Guest:Yeah, my parents are, yeah, the whole nine yards.
Guest:It's in my bones.
Guest:I mean, as much as I've tried to evolve past it in certain ways, it's in my bones.
Guest:What are the liabilities of it, carrying it with you in your mind?
Guest:Body shame.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's funny because- On what level?
Guest:I've been accused over the years of, oh, you're self-deprecating and that's your act.
Guest:And I was like, that really comes from finding myself very flawed.
Guest:I think that's at the root of Catholicism is we're just flawed.
Guest:There's nothing we can do about it.
Guest:And there's nothing we can do about it.
Guest:And so I grew up just, you know, having a very dark self-view.
Marc:Because you were too tall or too what?
Guest:Too skinny, too tall.
Guest:You know, my dick's too big.
Guest:You know, it's just going to hurt somebody.
Guest:Well, I hate to get that out there as a rumor, but do you know what I mean?
Guest:My dick is huge.
Guest:It's got a lot of birth.
Guest:Hurt people.
Guest:You don't want to hurt people.
Guest:Well, no, the thing is, and I was so worried for a long time, and I actually had doctors say, you're gonna hurt someone with that, and then it was only later in life that I found out that, you know, this is a great gift, but.
Marc:For years.
Guest:For years, but for years I lived with the shame of this, you know, my penis is too big, I hope no woman ever finds out.
Guest:Handicapped, horrible handicapped.
Guest:And so, you know, you live with these things, and then you eventually learn to work with them.
Marc:But do you think it had anything that it also propelled you, that your drive is somehow to transcend all that shit?
Guest:Yeah, I think I have a lot of, I did not, I'm always suspicious.
Guest:I'll say this.
Guest:I'm always suspicious when, if I think a comedian's too good looking.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they were a great athlete when they were young.
Guest:I almost, I just can't believe that they're going to be any good.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:I really believe that.
Guest:Dude, I definitely.
Guest:You know, and I'll sometimes- I know a few.
Guest:I'll have some really good looking intern on the show who tells me that he's also a great basketball player or something, will say, yeah, I'm thinking of going into standup, and I just want to say, well, no, no, no, no, this is for us.
Guest:This is our consolation prize.
Guest:That's so hilarious.
Guest:Our consolation prize is that we couldn't do all those things, so we had to hyper-develop this weird self-abusive
Guest:Charm.
Guest:Yeah, whatever it is.
Guest:My father said to me once, he watched me do some interview or something.
Guest:Recently?
Guest:No, this is a while ago, but I really was being very left brain and got out there, but people laughed a lot and my father afterwards said, it's funny.
Guest:He said, you're making money off of something that really should be treated.
Guest:And I thought, yeah, that's really the essence of what we're all doing.
Guest:Is he a doctor?
Guest:He is a doctor.
Guest:What kind of doctor?
Guest:He is a microbiologist.
Guest:Works with the World Health Organization, travels the world.
Guest:He's a brilliant guy.
Guest:Is it about diseases?
Guest:Yes, yes, and antibiotic resistance.
Guest:That's his big specialty.
Guest:We've overused antibiotics.
Marc:We're in trouble with that now, right?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I never take them.
Guest:Do you take them?
Guest:No, but the problem is that it's not us taking them, it's- The cows?
Guest:Yeah, it's the cows, them giving them, you know, and also just the more people that are out there taking gobs of them, they're creating resistant, antibiotic-resistant bacteria that you will get.
Guest:They're petri dishes of- That will kill you, yes.
Marc:The apocalypse.
Guest:Yeah, so you can take good care of yourself, but it won't matter.
Marc:I had a dad who was a doctor.
Marc:Now, this is just between me and you.
Marc:I found that my father was a bit distant because he was very busy saving lives and whatnot.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Were you ever a hypochondriac to get your dad's attention?
Guest:Wow, that's a good question.
Guest:I think I was not a hypochondriac, but I probably feigned illnesses to get my parents' attention.
Guest:But I don't think I was... I didn't believe I had the illness.
Guest:When you're one of six, you got to do anything to get some face time.
Guest:So I was not beyond trying to just...
Guest:have something, I mean, I remember envying, I read Death Be Not Proud.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With the John Gunther Jr.
Guest:story.
Guest:The baseball player?
Guest:No, Death Be Not Proud is about the boy who's like 14 and he gets a brain tumor and it's really touching and everyone, you're supposed to read it when you're 13, 14 years old and you're supposed to just feel so terrible for the boy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I read it and I thought, man, that guy's getting so much attention.
Guest:I remember envying a kid with a brain tumor, and he dies at the end of the book, and I remember thinking, man, brain tumor, that's the way to go.
Marc:The presence he got.
Marc:Yeah, that's bad.
Guest:And you were the middle kid?
Guest:Yeah, kind of the middle.
Guest:What did everyone else end up doing?
Guest:Let's see.
Guest:My brother Neil restores automobiles.
Guest:My brother Luke is a lawyer.
Guest:My brother Justin's a lawyer.
Guest:My sister Kate was just in the fighter.
Guest:She is a teacher.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:She was one of the sisters in The Fighter.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she, when on the Oscars, she'd never acted in anything.
Guest:And then she did a local commercial in Boston for the Bruins.
Guest:She went to a cattle call and just got picked.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then that person remembered her and said, hey, you might want to try out for this other thing.
Guest:So my sister called me about a year and a half ago and said, I'm going to be doing a movie.
Guest:And I thought, oh, she'll be doing a movie, like a student film probably.
Guest:And I said, who's directing it?
Guest:And she said, David O. Russell.
Guest:And I said, David O. Russell?
Guest:Not the same David O. Russell.
Guest:And she said, I think so.
Guest:And I said, well, is anybody in this thing?
Guest:And she was like, well, Mark Wahlberg's in it.
Guest:I said, really?
Guest:Mark Wahlberg?
Guest:And she said, yeah, and Christian Bale.
Guest:And so she made this movie and then we all kind of forgot about it because they were putting it together.
Guest:Did she call it the fighter?
Guest:The fighter.
Guest:She's one of the sisters in the fighter.
Guest:She doesn't talk like that though.
Guest:No, she doesn't.
Guest:But she can.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She can when she needs to.
Marc:Well, if you grow up there, you can.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, I'm watching the Oscars the other night and they show the clip from Melissa Leo and it's my sister's one big line in the movie.
Guest:Where she talks back to her?
Guest:And it's a giant single of my sister, Kate, up there on the screen delivering this line and then they cut to Warren Beatty applauding.
Guest:I'm like, oh my God.
Guest:It's the story that must infuriate every actor out there who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on classes and was a waiter and did everything.
Guest:And my sister,
Guest:walks into the casino, rolls the dice.
Guest:Was she thrilled?
Guest:She's thrilled, yeah.
Marc:And your little sister?
Guest:Jane worked here for a while in Los Angeles doing some comedy writing on shows and then she moved up north and she works on spec scripts and things like that and she comes down here occasionally and takes meetings.
Marc:But you're all still close?
Guest:Yeah, we're all pretty close.
Guest:And your parents are still alive?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Yeah, my dad's 82, I think.
Guest:He'll be horrified if I mention that.
Guest:My dad is 52.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:I misspoke.
Marc:We can correct that in post.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, are they happy for you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, they are.
Marc:They are.
Guest:Was there a period where your father was like, what are you doing?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I will tell you.
Guest:I think there was a moment of trepidation, but I started earning a check almost immediately.
Guest:When you were writing for- Not necessarily the news, which was my first gig.
Guest:My writing partner, Greg Daniels, who's gone on to half the shows and TV- Do you guys still talk?
Guest:Oh yeah, all the time.
Guest:But he and I decided to, as we were graduating, hey, let's try it together.
Guest:So we got a job almost immediately on that sort of the news.
Guest:And the minute you are getting a check, your parents don't care what you're doing.
Guest:It's more than a phase.
Guest:Yeah, they don't care.
Guest:You could say, you know what, I'm a hit man.
Guest:I murder people for the mafia, but I'm getting paid, making my own rent, and they're happy.
Marc:Was there that sense of competition, though, that you needed to do something more intelligent?
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:No, I didn't have that.
Guest:Clearly, you're working through some personal issues through me.
Guest:Did you have that?
Marc:Well, I had the thing where, because my dad was a doctor, there was the sort of sense that that was a path.
Marc:That was a noble path.
Marc:It was a sort of guaranteed path.
Marc:You studied hard.
Marc:You dedicated your life to this thing, and then you got this reward.
Marc:Well, he's now working out of a strip mall in a pain management clinic, but that's a whole other story, and that's my issues.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:But you didn't have that, your father didn't have that impact on you.
Guest:No, he didn't.
Guest:My dad, to their credit, my parents were very much people that believed you got to do what makes you happy.
Guest:So there was no sense.
Guest:My dad never acted as if medicine was the family business.
Guest:Right.
Guest:His parents hadn't, no one in his family had been a doctor.
Guest:So he found his own thing, and my mother was a lawyer, but there was no sense that, oh, I've gotta do that.
Guest:And no one else seemed to be doing it, so I didn't have to.
Guest:So you had like a healthy family for the most part.
Guest:It's interesting.
Guest:And you're still kind of dark.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, you know, it's funny, because you can say, you know, there's, you know, I remember growing up when I was a kid thinking, my family's weird.
Guest:We're just weird.
Guest:I don't know how to put my finger on it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I grew up thinking we're not, and maybe everyone grows up that way, but I remember thinking we're kind of like an Irish Catholic Addams family, like there's something off with us.
Guest:So I very much grew up feeling where, now my mother would be horrified.
Guest:Jesus, that's not true.
Guest:Oh dear, my mother is Margaret Dumont in the Marx Brothers movies.
Guest:Well, I don't know why you would say that.
Guest:That's not true.
Guest:But that was the feeling that my brothers and sisters all had.
Guest:We're an odd family and we never quite knew what we were because
Guest:We lived in a nice house, but it was near where the Irish Catholic kids lived, whose parents were mowed lawns for the town.
Guest:You mean like the working class Irish Catholics?
Guest:Yeah, and so, who wore the hockey jackets.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Did you get along with them?
Guest:You know, it's funny.
Guest:I kind of did.
Guest:Fucking O'Brien.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remembered they, you know, when I was, there's a whole phase where people realized my name was Conan and that that matched up with Conan O'Brien, with Conan the Barbarian, which was like around when I was.
Guest:Conan the Barbarian.
Guest:And there was, there was a lot of like, hey, where's your sword?
Guest:Where's your sword?
Guest:And, but I remember, yeah, but I remember, no, I get knocked around every now and then.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Like fistfights?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I completely, this is not my nose.
Guest:My nose was completely rebuilt.
Guest:Shattered.
Guest:No, it was.
Guest:I was beaten up- Serious?
Guest:Yeah, I'm not kidding.
Guest:I ran into a street gang, and I was wearing a t-shirt that had the Irish flag on it, and they were Italian, and this was right near the aquarium in Boston.
Guest:Down by the water.
Guest:Yeah, I was with my friend at the time, John Medeiros, and this is late high school.
Guest:So it's near the north end kind of.
Guest:Yeah, and they beat the shit out of me.
Guest:Got hit him too?
Guest:No, left him alone.
Guest:Cause I was a little bit of a wise guy.
Guest:They said they wanted 50 cents and I said, no.
Guest:And they said, why not?
Guest:And I said, I don't feel like it.
Guest:And just as I finished that,
Guest:It, the tuh sound.
Guest:I got hit so hard in the face.
Marc:Did you fight back?
Guest:I mean, I got hit a bunch of times so hard in the face that I don't think I did much.
Guest:I don't remember.
Guest:And I remember it was over pretty quickly.
Guest:And then I had to have mine.
Guest:I went to the emergency room and the doctor, I'll never forget his name, Dr. Constable.
Guest:He had a British accent.
Guest:and he looked kind of crazy, had crazy hair, and he looked like the poet Ezra Pound.
Guest:And I said, and I says, my dough's broken.
Guest:And he said, broken?
Guest:Good God, man, it's a bag of bones.
Guest:I'll never forget that.
Marc:That's a true story.
Guest:Bag of bones.
Marc:It's a bag of bones.
Marc:Well, you seem so fucking relaxed.
Marc:Do you feel relaxed?
Guest:Just in general, in life?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I think I've been, I'm more relaxed now than I was,
Guest:I think I've just, I've been through a lot of things, I've been through a lot of change, I've been through, and I think I'm starting to wise up a little bit.
Guest:I do think I'm starting to feel a little bit like,
Guest:I used to believe that worry was a talisman against something bad happening to you and I think I've had way too many experiences where as I'm a worrier and I'm a guy that prepares and I'm a guy that really tries to plan it out and make sure that I take care of everything and you can do that and things can still go to shit so you relax a little bit as you get older.
Guest:Because you realize?
Guest:Yeah, it's no guarantee against things so why not try and enjoy it a little more?
Marc:And you don't have control over everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because I remember, and I got to be honest, the new show is great.
Marc:You seem relaxed.
Marc:It was fun doing it.
Marc:I was actually happier that I was on this show than the Tonight Show.
Marc:It was great seeing Andy, and the bits you're doing are back to edgy bits.
Guest:You can feel that, right?
Guest:Yeah, I think...
Guest:You know, there's a nice thing, which is, I realized, someone pointed this out to me, and I hadn't realized it, that every other show I've done, I've inherited from someone else.
Guest:And what happens when you inherit a show, you know, it's a franchise.
Guest:Either the late, late night, with Conan O'Brien, had been late night with David Letterman.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's a show with Conan O'Brien, had been, and was again.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Guest:And what happens when you inherit a show is you have to go through this period of sort of course correction where you have to go through a lot of effort to sort of transmogrify it into your show.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Which takes a long time.
Guest:It takes a while.
Guest:You're always going to be compared against the other guy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so what happens with this show was this is the first time that it was a completely new show.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It was a show and they said, you can call it whatever you want.
Guest:You can do whatever you want.
Guest:And there was the sense that, okay, I'm not, this is the first thing I'm doing.
Guest:It's not a hand-me-down.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I got to go make my own suit of clothes.
Guest:And I think there's a lot of comfort there.
Marc:I mean, when I went over there just to visit that time, I was like, you know, before you had me on,
Marc:There was this moment where I saw everybody from the old show, and I almost teared up a little bit.
Marc:I literally almost teared up doing the show.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Is that ridiculous?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, there's an emotional connection.
Guest:I think there's also something nice, which is we were both in New York.
Guest:Do you remember how crazy you were at the beginning?
Marc:yeah what do you mean crazy like in what way crazy well I just mean like like because I did that I did your old show in the first year right I did stand up and I think I did my first panel maybe in the second year but like there was like I you're still a very intense person but there was a you I mean you would sit at your desk and your hands would be clenched yeah yeah yeah I mean I was I was uh I remembered has that gone away
Guest:Yeah, oh yeah.
Guest:It never goes away.
Guest:I think that's the one part of me that would be the biggest surprise to people.
Guest:My friend,
Guest:Robyn Flender made a documentary of this tour we just did last year, a year ago, and he followed me around, and the biggest surprise is just how intense I can be about everything related to my work, and I think people, it's a bit of a disconnect.
Guest:People think, well, he's the happy-go-lucky, silly guy with the funny hair, and he's like, yeah.
Guest:But in 93, 94,
Guest:I remember realizing, or I very much knew that I've gotta make this work.
Guest:Because if I don't survive this, there's nothing else.
Guest:And I really did have that feeling.
Guest:Because you decided, what was the evolution of deciding to perform?
Guest:The inclusion was I had always been doing it.
Guest:It had always been this thing that I'd been pushing for, but was trying to figure out what is it I do?
Guest:I knew that I was not a standup.
Guest:I knew improvisation was the one thing that came the closest to feeling this is me, but how do you do that?
Guest:I worked at Saturday Night Live.
Guest:I was friends with Dana Carvey and John Lovitz, and I used to look at them and think,
Guest:I'm not a Phil Hartman.
Guest:I'm not a Dana Carvey.
Guest:I don't do what those guys do.
Guest:I also don't think that I'm a comedic actor.
Guest:I don't think I should be in a movie.
Guest:I don't think I should ever be in a situation where I'm telling a woman on camera, I love you.
Guest:You're the reason that I decided to run this summer camp for kids.
Guest:And I could never do that.
Guest:I realized...
Guest:I went through in my early career checking off things that I wasn't.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's what I remembered.
Guest:And then I remembered the one thing, and this is going to sound like I'm making this up, but I'm not.
Guest:In the 80s, I remembered seeing, in the early 80s, I'd watch Letterman and I'd say, I don't know what it is he's doing, but I feel like I had this just feeling that
Guest:I have a certain point of view, and I have a certain comedic voice, and I can kind of write, and I'd like to present sketches and tell some jokes, but also be able to talk to people because I like to be in the moment with them and riff.
Guest:And that job looks like it combines a bunch of those things, but I have no idea how you get one of those jobs.
Guest:I still don't know how you get one of those jobs.
Marc:Well, you were a writer at The Simpsons, right?
Marc:And then you came back to SNL?
Guest:I had done Saturday Night Live.
Guest:No, I didn't come back to SNL.
Guest:I did Saturday Night Live, and that's where I got to know Lorne, and that's Lorne Michaels, and that was the key to the story, is that Lorne, then I was on The Simpsons, and then immediately NBC needed a host right away.
Guest:I don't think they were prepared for David Letterman to leave.
Guest:But you kicked ass on The Simpsons.
Guest:I don't know if I, I mean, I think I did a good job there, but I was in a room with great, I mean, those writers, John Schwartzwelder and Vidi and Jeff Martin and Reese and Jean and George Meyer.
Guest:I mean, those are just some of the best comedy writers, I think, of our time.
Guest:And so being in a room with them was humbling.
Guest:I mean, I didn't think I was like the hot shot in the room.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It wasn't like Top Gun.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So the call from Lauren, was that a surprise?
Guest:Yeah, initially he called me up, and he was interested in having me produce the show, and I didn't want to do it.
Guest:And I remembered that I had just turned down, and my agent had wanted me to get an overall deal at Fox to keep working on The Simpsons.
Guest:And I said, I don't want to do that.
Guest:And I'd been talking to Lisa Kudrow.
Guest:She and I had done improv together for years in...
Guest:And this is obviously before Friends, and we talked about maybe putting together our own show.
Guest:Can you date it a bit?
Guest:Yeah, so you can say that.
Guest:Let's see what you're doing.
Marc:No, I'm not doing anything.
Marc:You're the Chuck Woolery of podcasts.
Guest:Oh, come on.
Guest:Chuck Woolery?
Guest:How did I get Chuck Woolery?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Your jacket's similar to his.
Marc:I'm just trying to confirm bits and pieces of information that I have with the guy that knows.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:Yeah, no, you can ask me anything and I'll sort of... Deflect it and make fun of me?
Guest:Deflect it and make fun of you and put you on the defensive and hurt you in some small way.
Guest:No hurting.
Guest:Not with the hurting.
Guest:So, okay, so you... And then...
Guest:Lorne came back and said, I think he didn't know what to do.
Marc:He hadn't found anybody or he hadn't- But you just turned down your agent.
Marc:You said, no, I don't want to deal with Fox, which would have been money.
Marc:And you turned down Lorne Michaels, which really is not an easy thing to do, I would imagine.
Guest:No, but I have, if I have one thing, it's instincts.
Guest:I just have instincts about,
Guest:And they often don't make sense to me, but I have instincts.
Guest:The last year and a half of my career has been all me just having a strong feeling for what's the right thing for me to do, and I do it.
Guest:And I don't even know what the consequence is gonna be, but it tends to work out.
Guest:It tends to... Because you know you couldn't live with the other thing.
Guest:Yeah, that's all I know.
Guest:And I knew that I didn't wanna do that.
Guest:And then Lauren called me back and he said, do you want to audition for it?
Guest:And I remember thinking, well, I'll audition for it.
Guest:What's the harm in that?
Guest:And I think I was so loose in my audition because I thought I didn't really have any chance of getting it.
Guest:And I had a really great audition.
Guest:I mean, I was funnier in my audition than I was on the late night show for like a year and a half.
Marc:Was your relationship with him, I mean, because he's sort of an intimidating Buddha-like, you can go evil or good Buddha, I guess on any given day.
Marc:Did he impart wisdom in you?
Guest:Lorne is, I mean, I have a lot of respect for him and he's probably more than anybody in show business influence, had been a huge influence on me.
Guest:And yeah, he does impart, Lorne has very good taste.
Guest:Lorne has very good taste and he has a good, he has, he's a thinker and he thinks a lot and I think he has a good intuitive feel for what people should do and what they shouldn't do.
Guest:And early on in the late night show, there wasn't too much he could tell me.
Guest:I think he knew you just have to survive this period.
Guest:And if you survive it, you can only learn by doing.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:There's no book that you can read that tells you what to do.
Guest:You just have to go in and...
Guest:I probably have a Catholic need to suffer.
Guest:That helps me.
Guest:So the trials and tribulations that I went through in 93, 94 probably was my way of paying whatever dues I felt I needed to pay to keep that show.
Guest:And then once I had suffered enough, there was part of me that was like, all right,
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now I could move on to another level.
Guest:That's probably what happened.
Marc:So that really did have that, you know, Catholicism has that kind of effect.
Marc:Because I have no familiarity with it.
Marc:But the idea of suffering, that's part of life, is really something that's plowed into your brain?
Guest:Yeah, it gets into your DNA.
Guest:And I'm really trying very hard in the last couple of years.
Guest:Like you're not doing it right if you're not suffering?
Guest:Yeah, I'm trying to, and you know what?
Guest:My escape from that was always comedy.
Guest:Comedy was always something that I could get into a zone, and you can have a really good time, and people can really be laughing, and I would think later on, wait a minute, people liked that, and I was enjoying myself.
Guest:And I was in the moment, and I wasn't self-conscious, so comedy was always my escape valve.
Guest:And then the tricky thing was I turned it into a career, and when you turn the thing you love into a career, you're playing with fire.
Marc:Well, I think also that's like the nature of what you were talking about, about how you do it.
Marc:Because it seems like the way you execute your comedy, it's almost as if you're running for your life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think that... Does that make sense?
Guest:It's not meant as an insult.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I get as intense... People think...
Guest:doing the show would be nerve wracking, but giving a toast at a wedding wouldn't be.
Guest:And you've probably had this feeling.
Guest:Anytime you get up in front of people and whether or not your funny is being put on the line, you're intense about it.
Guest:And people don't understand.
Guest:I've seen people say, well, you're just giving a toast at a wedding.
Guest:Why are you getting nervous about this?
Guest:And I'll say, because it needs to be really great.
Guest:I've done things that have been broadcast in front of whatever 10 million people or something.
Guest:And then I've gotten up at a wedding that there are only 35 people there.
Guest:But if you're speaking in front of a group of people, it's life or death to me.
Guest:And the reason I'm not an athlete is that I don't give a shit
Guest:if the ball goes in the hoop or not.
Guest:I never cared enough.
Guest:And truly great athletes, yes they're born with innate ability, but the thing that makes them great, the thing that made Pete Rose great is that he was willing to crush his rib cage if it meant catching the ball.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:He was willing to, where that ball is and him catching it or him hitting it was the most important thing in the world and I never had that in sports, but I did have it about
Guest:making a room full of people laugh.
Guest:That was the most important thing to me.
Marc:Yeah, I can see it.
Marc:Because it's interesting when you look at, because I've talked to you a lot on camera.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And I know when there's one of those dead moments with me,
Marc:for anyone yeah that you're gonna have to pick up like it's not it's not just gonna be a word like you know you're gonna you know it's gonna be you yeah yeah and and when you do something even in conversation it you know you go all out yes and you feel it and and that's just because and you describing it as this idea that like i'm in the present i'm not in pain now there's no suffering and people are laughing yeah that's but that's but you know it's funny that i have always been i commit
Guest:I commit, when I'm in, I'm in 100%.
Guest:Or I don't, but I don't know how to do things part way.
Guest:And it's been a problem for me because part of the world that we're in is you do your job, but then people say, hey, can you do this benefit?
Guest:Can you do this?
Guest:Can you do that?
Guest:And I've always envied musicians because if you're Paul Simon,
Guest:And someone says, can you come by our benefit?
Guest:You pick up your guitar.
Guest:Yeah, you sing an old song.
Guest:And you get up there and you sing Mrs. Robinson and everybody wets their pants.
Guest:And then you go and you have a drink.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But if you're a comedian, you've got to try and think of what's this event?
Guest:What's it going to be?
Guest:How am I going to integrate this?
Guest:And I really sweat these things.
Guest:Oh, hell yeah, man.
Guest:And so as a result,
Guest:They ruin my marriage a little bit.
Guest:They ruin my time with my kids.
Guest:So I've had to start saying no more often because people don't realize what they're asking of you.
Guest:They're asking for some of your bone marrow when they're asking for your- Yeah, hours of your life.
Guest:And it's gonna make me miserably unhappy.
Marc:Because you're stressing about it.
Guest:Yeah, and the big change for me is I'm trying
Guest:To me, having kids is a big, you know, there's part of you that thinks, I just gotta grow up.
Guest:I gotta evolve.
Guest:I have to evolve.
Guest:I have to get to the point where I can do my work and not have it- Consume you?
Guest:Consume you or be too painful.
Guest:And especially the last year or so and all the drama and everything, I've started to think, what's the point?
Marc:The energy it takes is fucking mind blowing.
Marc:I mean, even when I read that book,
Marc:You know, it taught me a couple of things in that, like, I had no idea of the political dynamics of show business in general.
Marc:Now, I don't know how much you knew, but, you know, even as, you know, we all start out with agents, and, you know, you have a very, you know, powerful and aggressive manager.
Marc:But, I mean, when I read this thing, I'm like, it's more complicated than politics, than genuine politics.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That, did you...
Marc:Was your history education, were you aware of all this shit?
Marc:I mean, I know Jeff Ross, your producer, is a sweet guy.
Marc:I just couldn't believe the politics of the situation.
Guest:Yeah, I was aware that there's a lot of moving parts.
Guest:I was aware that there's a lot of moving parts and that there's a lot going on below the surface because I'm not naive about those things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this is something I want to be clear about.
Guest:There's... That I've tried to be really clear about in the last year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is that I've always accepted that when art and commerce come together, you're going to get... It's going to get messy.
Guest:And you just have to accept that.
Guest:You know, I am not... That's why...
Guest:I try very hard to remind myself that it was always a relationship.
Guest:It was always a business relationship.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:I don't own the cameras.
Guest:General Electric wasn't doing me a favor.
Guest:This was an exchange and I got something out of it and we were together able to come together and make this work for whatever, 16, close to 17 years.
Guest:There's a lot of tension in the business.
Guest:The business is going through a lot of change.
Guest:There's a lot of panic.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I always try to remind myself I'm not, Thoreau just got to go up to his room and write something and no one bothered him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if I want to do that, I can go in my backyard and do some stuff and no one's going to bother me or say boo.
Guest:I always knew that I was playing with big forces.
Guest:And I don't mean that in a conspiratorial way.
Guest:I mean in a very, my eyes were open and I knew that a lot of people that work in show business have had a rough time.
Guest:It can go well for a while and then it can get nasty.
Guest:The dismount can get really ugly.
Guest:And so, I don't know, I was very aware that
Guest:Did I see this one coming?
Guest:No.
Guest:And it took me a while afterwards to process it.
Guest:And I think I'm still processing some of it.
Guest:But I'm a big boy and I get that it's complicated.
Guest:And what I'm trying to avoid is that thing where you get a story in your head that's very clean.
Guest:Right, of course.
Guest:I think too many people- A plus B means I got fucked.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And I think there are too many people that come up with a story, almost as a defense mechanism or survival mechanism, a very simple story where they're the hero and then they get it set and then that's in their head for the rest of their lives and they don't learn anything.
Guest:And I'm trying really hard to,
Guest:to not do that.
Marc:In the darkest moments of it all, I mean, where did your brain go?
Guest:To all the, I mean, the thing is, now there are certain things, I was reading some piece by Malcolm Gladwell, and he was talking about, man, I wish I could remember the name of what he called it, creeping something, creeping determinism, I think.
Guest:And basically what he was saying is that after an event,
Guest:You watch a football game and your team loses because they go for it on fourth down.
Guest:Later on, you become convinced that you knew that that was a mistake to go for it on fourth down.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You create that story in your head.
Guest:Whereas if you can really truthfully go back to that time, it's a great idea if it works.
Guest:So...
Guest:There's a quality you can get sometimes afterwards where you can see, I knew this would happen, or I had a suspicion that this thing would happen, and a bunch of people do that.
Guest:And probably in Bill's book, there's a lot of creeping determinism where people are after the fact saying, I knew if I had only done X, Y, and Z that it wouldn't have happened.
Guest:But basically they're- You won't read it?
Guest:No, I won't read it, no.
Guest:I mean, I've had some, I have a lot of people around me that I really trust and they read it and they said, you know, it's- Are you mad at me for reading it?
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Again, it's about you.
Guest:No, no, no, everyone's, my parents, I went home for Christmas and my parents were like, oh, we're reading the book.
Guest:And they were acting like, isn't this, you're gonna love it, we're reading it and we're almost done.
Guest:And I, you know, I just thought it's,
Guest:For them, they didn't quite understand that I don't want to even see it.
Guest:But what is your fear?
Guest:I don't have a fear, it's just that it was painful to go through and I don't want to.
Guest:I felt that pain for you.
Guest:Yeah, I don't want to.
Guest:And that's the thing is now I see how everything is played out and a lot of people say you've come out
Guest:or it's worked out for you.
Guest:And I say, in the moment when things were really dark, I had no concept that it could all work out.
Guest:I didn't know what was gonna happen.
Guest:I didn't know if I was ever gonna get back on TV again.
Guest:I didn't know if I was gonna get a nickel.
Guest:I didn't know that I had no idea
Guest:But again, that thing I have that I've had all my life is I get a feeling about the right, what I need to do and I do it and I don't obsess about it.
Guest:You know, when I finally decide what I'm going to do, I do it and I move on.
Guest:So, and then I'm pretty confident that somehow it'll work out.
Marc:But in those darkest moments, were you just sitting there clenching, going, I'm fucked, I'm fucked, what the fuck did I do?
Marc:Or were you actually like, I'm going to spend a year in Europe?
Marc:I mean, was there a plan B in your head?
Guest:No, that's the funny thing is that that tour,
Guest:Got you out of... Got me.
Guest:That was really good for me.
Guest:I needed to work through stuff and I needed to work through stuff in front of people.
Marc:Were you talking candidly about that stuff or just blowing some steam off?
Guest:I didn't see any of the shows.
Guest:No, there was a lot of... No, I wasn't... I was not talking... You know, there were people that thought it was going to be a talk about what I had been through and it was really just an excuse to do comedy.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because I thought, you know... Yeah.
Guest:Get out of your head.
Guest:It touched on it a lot, but really, but just being in front of people and playing music and doing comedy and I lost like 20 pounds on that tour and I didn't sleep and I was very intense and I think I was burning off something that was in me that needed to be burned off.
Guest:And, you know, when it was done, my wife took a picture of me when I came home from it, and I was, I think it was like 171 pounds or something, which for me, it's six-four is really thin.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And kind of hollowed out, and I just, you know, I looked like I'd been on meth or something, and I think it was just burning through something that had to be burned through, and so...
Guest:I was really grateful that I got to do that, but that was, again, that was something that I improvised off of the last show, the last Tonight Show, playing with Will Ferrell, playing Freebird.
Marc:But also the thrill of, like we said before, when you do live comedy and you give it your all, and you actually get into the present, get out of your head, and you have the task of entertaining, probably in a way you hadn't before.
Guest:You know, it was a different puree.
Guest:You know, I've always thought,
Guest:My whole career has been, it started with just, oh, you're a writer, and you're in a back room, and then you have no contact with the actors, and then I evolved finally to, okay, you're a writer, and you get to work with the actors on a live show called Saturday Night Live, and occasionally you get to be in something, and then I drifted further away with The Simpsons, and I was determined, I'm not gonna drift further away, I've gotta get closer to this thing that I really wanna do, I just have to figure out how to do it and what is it,
Guest:And then doing the late night show really got me close to doing vaudeville, but not still close enough.
Guest:And then the tour got me to vaudeville.
Guest:And I think I just always wanted to get to vaudeville.
Marc:To go back.
Guest:I like playing old theaters.
Guest:I like everything about it.
Guest:I like coming in through the stage door.
Guest:I like thanking the crew afterwards in every city.
Guest:We'd get on a bus.
Guest:I'd try and sleep on a bus.
Guest:I had backup singers.
Guest:Show business.
Guest:We're backstage.
Guest:It was show business.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I loved it.
Guest:I've actually tried to take some of that spirit and that energy and take it into the new show, which is I just want to do a show, like the way Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland did a show.
Marc:Well, you always sort of did.
Marc:Even back in the NBC days, I used to love being up there because of how extravagant some of the bits would be.
Marc:It wouldn't be unusual to see a horse.
Guest:No.
Guest:I always wanted to be in the kind of showbiz where you're backstage and there's a guy in a Nazi costume, smoking a cigarette, there's a horse, there's a showgirl, there's guys dressed as Siamese twins who are about to go out there.
Guest:There's a Gandhi who's about to be shot out of a cannon.
Guest:And people backstage in ridiculous costumes shouting at each other angrily is my favorite thing.
Marc:Yeah, there was always that there.
Marc:It definitely feels that way.
Guest:And I think that was definitely a feeling of... I don't know, I finally got to have that experience that I always wanted to have where you run away and join the circus.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because...
Guest:To me, that was what that tour was all about.
Guest:And like you said, that got me out of my head.
Guest:And I really enjoyed it and almost forgot about everything I had just gone through.
Guest:And then of course the problem is when the tour ended, it started to creep back into my head.
Marc:So how do you feel now about the show you're doing?
Guest:I really love the show we're doing, and I love that there was a lot of discussion with what bits can Conan do from the old show.
Guest:And I remember thinking, fuck it.
Guest:Let's actually not do anything from the old show.
Guest:Even if I was allowed to do stuff from the old show, which I might be.
Guest:We haven't legally tested it.
Guest:I thought, screw it.
Guest:I want to...
Guest:I don't want to do bits for 30 years in a row.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we did a bunch of things that people really liked on the old show, and I think, okay, but we did them all.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And now it's time to try and make something new.
Guest:So we have a self-imposed, don't do anything from the old show.
Guest:Ever.
Guest:From any of the old shows?
Guest:Either of them?
Guest:From any of them.
Guest:We don't do anything.
Guest:We just only do, we try and think of new stuff and we try and make it a lot more immediate.
Guest:And tonight I work off the crowd a lot and I find people in the audience and I do things.
Guest:We used to be too clever for that.
Guest:The old show is too clever for that.
Guest:And we're trying to be, my whole thing is, no, let's just try and find these real moments.
Guest:Let's make it.
Guest:That's interesting.
Marc:Was it too clever or were you guys just nervous about it?
Guest:In the early days, we had a mission, which was on the late night show, I didn't want to do anything.
Guest:I wanted it to be a completely different show from what David Letterman had done.
Guest:And we really wanted it to be packed full of cool ideas.
Guest:Who were the minds behind that?
Guest:You and Smigel?
Guest:Robert Smigel and Louis C.K.
Guest:Dino?
Guest:Dino Stamatopoulos.
Guest:We used to just... Get as weird as possible.
Guest:Try and get as weird as possible and really try and put in... It's that old saying that I love, which is, God is in the details.
Guest:I always thought the really great comedy that I admired, like SCTV, just had...
Guest:so much nuanced detail in there, and I thought, that's what we want to do, and we want to make the show that... I want people watching it to think, I can't believe they went to all this trouble.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so what happens is you do that for a long time.
Guest:We did it, and I do think we're in kind of a different era now, just as a...
Guest:I've done that, and I've worked through it, and then over time you start to realize, okay, I'm probably not that guy anymore, that's up to someone else to do the really crazily weird thing that you spent 17 hours making, and it's only on TV for 15 seconds.
Guest:I don't think I have that in me anymore.
Guest:I have a different thing now, and I gotta, you know, it's like- Well, you're a grown up.
Guest:Yeah, exactly, but also it's like, you can't, I always think the best analogy is probably a pitcher.
Guest:You can't be a 55 year old that's blowing people away with your fastball, but you learn to throw all kinds of weird junk, and still you can win the game.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Now, this broadening of the show in the sense of... I imagine it has to do with two things.
Marc:The experience of hosting The Tonight Show and the weird pressures that came with that, but also the experience of realizing that you've got a fan base that is passionate, they're young, they showed up for you on the road, they showed up for you in a very human way.
Marc:Do you feel that you owe them the humanity that you're now showing?
Guest:That's a really good question.
Guest:I feel that...
Guest:I think some of it, it's not so much that I owe it to them.
Guest:I am a guy that really wants, I will walk over hot coals for people that have tolerated my comedy.
Guest:And I'm very appreciative of people that come up to me anywhere and say, I saw X, Y, or Z that you did over the years.
Guest:I do feel like a real strong connection with them.
Guest:But I think it's just also the point that I'm at in my life, which is... The way in which The Tonight Show ended was everybody knew the story and it was a very human situation.
Guest:And I think I allowed it to be a human situation.
Guest:And I think...
Guest:realize that opened me up to, it's okay, people can know that I'm disappointed or whatever, as long as I'm not self-pitying and as long as we try and make it funny.
Marc:As opposed to a business situation.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I felt like I can be honest with people and I think,
Guest:Some of the stuff that I talked about on the last Tonight Show resonated with people and it was honest and I felt like, all right, well, let's keep going with this.
Guest:Let's just keep trying to let people in, let people in a little bit and on the road, let them in.
Guest:And I don't mean in a,
Guest:I don't want to exploit anything that's happened to me, but I want to try and turn it into comedy in some way.
Guest:And the other thing too I've learned is that not everything, there was so much pressure on me early on in my career, I felt like everything had to be funny all the time.
Guest:I'm less that way now.
Guest:I don't think it's realistic.
Guest:And I think it's also kind of, you know, that's hard to watch when someone's, you know, let there be moments, let things draw out, let things, you know, find the good stuff.
Guest:And also you have to make it.
Marc:You have some wisdom.
Marc:You've been through some shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're, you're more available emotionally.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, you don't have to be, you know, flailing and afraid anymore.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:So, I mean, you know, it makes sense to learn how to communicate in that way.
Marc:Like, did you, I mean, do you go look at, like, who are your biggest influences in retrospect?
Marc:I mean, that, you know, in terms of show business?
Guest:Well, I think the, you know, when we were growing up, I want to say we, when you and I grew up together in that shack.
Guest:Sure, that was great.
Guest:Walden.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I was very influenced by a lot of people, but you know, Carson was on, he was sort of the only game in town.
Guest:I remember thinking, you know, that he made my dad laugh.
Guest:Who'd you watch that with?
Guest:I watched it with my dad.
Guest:And he made your dad laugh?
Guest:He made my dad laugh.
Guest:I remember thinking, you know, you're really interested as a kid.
Guest:Like to me, it was very important to know who's making my dad laugh.
Guest:Could you?
Guest:Yeah, I could, yeah.
Guest:But I remember thinking like, okay, that was probably my first hook into looking at what that guy was doing and thinking that'd be cool.
Guest:And much later on, obviously Letterman was an influence, but just a kid growing up, I mean, I was...
Guest:I remember just my brothers and I were very much interested in comedy and so, Early Sound Out Live.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:SCTV, SCTV was huge for me.
Guest:I remember that really- Broke it open.
Guest:Delighted, yeah, broke it open for me.
Guest:I just saw, man, the level of, it influenced everything so much.
Guest:It was the closest thing we had to Monty Python.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Did you study the old, the talk show host though, like Jack Pars, Steve Allen?
Guest:No, I never studied them.
Guest:I saw them and they all did it very differently, but I always thought,
Guest:Everyone's working in their own time that it's very hard to learn lessons from them.
Guest:The medium is so different, the culture's so different, that I never really believe in learning from the old masters.
Guest:I mean, basically, I like to keep it really simple.
Guest:Does somebody make you laugh?
Guest:Jonathan Winters in Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World makes me laugh.
Guest:Have you talked to him?
Guest:I've never, and I haven't spoken to him, no.
Marc:I had a weird thing, like, you know, Dan Pasternak knows him, the guy from IFC, and I want to have him on the show, and I was gonna go to Santa Barbara to interview him, and I got this call on my cell phone, it was Jonathan Winters.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:And I called him back, and I was hysterical.
Marc:I mean, he, you know, there's, and he's still got that thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's got an amazing story.
Guest:You know, I saw him in a restaurant.
Guest:I want to say like six months ago.
Guest:And I'm not shy, but I didn't want to bother him.
Guest:And sometimes when I see these really great comedians that made me laugh when I was a kid, I don't want to bother them.
Guest:And then later on I told people, I said, why didn't you go up to him?
Guest:I don't know, he might not know who I am and I don't want to bother him and stuff like that.
Guest:And people said, you know, you should have.
Guest:And I don't.
Guest:I feel like there's an aura around someone like that.
Guest:I saw him up in Santa Barbara at a restaurant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't want to invade his space.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think when people made you laugh as a kid, you deify them.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:And I remembered being in the Four Seasons in Los Angeles in like 1987 and looking across the room and Don Knotts was sitting there with this like very attractive woman and he was, you know, eating a Cobb salad or something.
Guest:And I just couldn't believe, I mean, Tom Cruise could have been at the next table and I wouldn't have cared.
Guest:It was Don Knotts.
Guest:It's Barney Fife.
Guest:It's Mr. Limpet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's always amazing when you see those people.
Marc:Isn't it weird when you see them up close?
Marc:Do you find that in show business sometimes?
Marc:Even if I go on Letterman or even on your show, and I'm talking to you like this when we're just people, but when you're in the lights and things are about to happen, when you see them as just people, you're like, oh my God, he's just a guy.
Guest:What's funny too, I don't know about you, if I meet really famous people, I become obsessed with
Guest:you just look at their knuckle or something.
Guest:I was in a situation once where I'm at this very small dinner party and then before you know it, Paul McCartney's there, and all I can do is just, I was looking at his hand.
Guest:That's the hand that was at the Woolton feet when he met John in 1950.
Guest:You know, like, okay.
Guest:That hand is traveled.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:What does he, you know, that's the same knuckle.
Guest:And then you realize, okay, you gotta just back out of that world.
Guest:The minute you start to go into that world, you gotta back out of it.
Guest:Into the knuckle world?
Guest:Yeah, and I've had the same experience of, you know, you see these people, you see like a David Letterman in person, and you're just, you know, yeah, you're struck by that nostril.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, okay, just back away, just let it go.
Marc:Have you ever had someone on the show that you were just like, oh my fucking God, I can't believe this is happening?
Guest:Yeah, you definitely have sort of an out-of-body experience.
Guest:And like I said, it's not with people like a Brad Pitt or something, because I don't have that feeling for my contemporaries.
Guest:But I did have it for Richard Harris when he was on our show.
Guest:I did have it for Andy Griffith when I interviewed him.
Guest:There's just sort of a little bit of an out-of-body experience where...
Guest:You're seeing someone that you watched from a high chair.
Guest:You look like bologna strips in a bowl in front of you.
Guest:In the magic box.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And now they're with you and none of it's real.
Guest:And you know what?
Guest:It isn't real.
Guest:It's all ridiculous.
Marc:It's all show business.
Guest:But I mean, it is magical.
Guest:It is strange and fantastic.
Guest:It's a heightened reality.
Guest:But you know, I think if you can't connect to...
Guest:you know, I'm not a cynical person and I don't, I do, I'm still connected to, I can't believe we're all here.
Guest:That's how I feel.
Guest:Like I feel like, you know, tonight driving out here to your garage,
Guest:I have a little bit of a feeling of it's so weird that I knew you, you and I are in 6A in 1993 in front of a mustard colored set, making our way through something in front of, and now here it is almost 20 years later and
Guest:We're in Los Angeles in this weird magical land that I'm coming to here.
Guest:And I believe in staying connected to that stuff.
Guest:That's the thing that makes it all sort of, it's a weird ride.
Guest:I don't know where it's, and it's getting weirder all the time.
Guest:It is.
Guest:I don't know where it's going.
Guest:I don't know, but I want to see it through.
Marc:Well, you seem great.
Marc:You look great, and you're doing good work, and I'm glad you came by.
Guest:Oh, thanks for having me.
Marc:Okay, man.
Okay.
Marc:Okay, that's our show.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:I want to thank Conan O'Brien.
Marc:What an amazing privilege and treat it was to have him in here.
Marc:I hope you're all well.
Marc:If you're in Australia, I will be at the Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne Comedy Festival, the 24th.
Marc:through the 12th.
Marc:How's that?
Marc:Let's go backwards.
Marc:Isn't that how it works in Australia?
Marc:The 12th through the 24th of this month.
Marc:On the 8th of this month, I will be in Milwaukee at the Turner Ballroom with Eugene Merman and Kristen Shaw.
Marc:And as always, thank you for listening.
Marc:And better yet, remember, if you go to MergeRecords.com slash store, this is the label that has Arcade Fire, Spoon, Super Chunk, Destroyer.
Marc:Go to MergeRecords.com slash store, get 20% off with the code WTF.
Marc:Man, what a fucking show.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's all of it.
Marc:Okay.
you