THE "NEE-HA!" CONAN O’BRIEN INTERVIEW:
17 FEBRUARY 1999

PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3

~CONAN ON THE SHOW~

Question: How long does it take to prepare each show? (Jen M)
CONAN: Well, it depends. Some pieces we work on for a couple of weeks. Sometimes where we do a piece like "Satellite TV" where we have lots of different weird channels, sometimes if we're doing a show like that it might take two weeks to put together. So one of the writers is just off working on that for two weeks, setting it up before we actually show it on the air. Other pieces like those fake newspaper ads we show, Actual Items, or Year 2000, or any of those, some of those we can start putting together the night before. Or at least a day or two before, you know, so it really depends on the piece. More complicated complex pieces take a long time to do. So you kind of stagger things, you have some people working on something for a week and some elements of the show they started working on the day before. You very rarely are working on tomorrow's show today, we're usually a little farther ahead than that.

Linzi: Can you tell me who came up with the idea for the "Bill Reilly Jump & Choke Channel"?
CONAN: I think that was Tommy Blacha, he's the one that play's Bill Reilly. We love that channel. I think the ones that really work is the ones that are really stupid but also they have some intelligence to them that you can't really put your finger on where it is. That was just a natural. It was kind of like the "Clive Clemmons Inappropriate" the minute we saw it we knew we had something. And we love that one.

Question: How did you feel the day the Clinton Scandal broke? (Jen)
CONAN: Well it's a little tricky, some people think that comedians love this kind of thing, but it's a little tough because when there's a story that big it means that everybody's making jokes about it, so it's harder to be original. So it can actually be a little irritating sometimes because… I was happy when they finally acquitted President Clinton because I felt like "good, it's over now" we tried not to have our whole show revolve around it. I think people get tired of it, it's too many jokes about the same thing.

Question: When did you first meet Robert Smigel? (Damone)
CONAN: I first met Robert Smigel in January of 1988. I know it was January in 1988 because that was when I got my job at Saturday Night Live. I went to Saturday Night Live and Robert Smigel was one of the writers there and he was very quiet and he didn't say much, he was kind of shy. But over the next couple of weeks we started to realize that we had a similar sense of humor and we worked well together. That summer Robert and Bob Odenkirk from "Mr Show", who was another writer on the show, were doing a stage show in Chicago and they said "do you wanna come with us and do it with us?" and I said "Yes, I'd love to do that." So I drove to Chicago and I did a stage show called "Happy, Happy Good Show". And "Happy, Happy Good Show" had a lot of silly sketches in it and one of them was the Year 2000, which we did as part of a stage show. And it was a very silly show where we'd wear diapers. I had to wear a diaper at one part and do a piece called "Kennedy Baby" where I played Ted Kennedy as a baby and I wore a diaper and went [does *that* accent] "Dab, dab, dab, dab…" Just really silly things but we did "Year 2000" and that summer I think Robert and I started to bond and we got really close and then we started writing together a lot and because we started working well together we decided to write a TV pilot together. We wrote a TV pilot for Adam West called "Lookwell" and even though it never became a TV show we just got in the habit of working with each other. Years later I left and I did "The Simpsons", and years later after I auditioned for this show and the audition went well and I got the job the first thing I did was call Robert Smigel and said "I got the Late Night show you have to be the head writer, you have to be." Coz I knew that he would have a similar sensibility as me. We both like cartoon-y things, we both like puppets and cartoons and that kind of sense of humor, so then he agreed to do it. So that's how we got the Clutch Cargo and the puppets, Conan Babies and all these silly things, but it all started back in 1988.

~CONAN ONLINE~

Question: Do you use the internet?
CONAN: Not too much. I go and look at it sometimes, but I'm not very good with computers so I always need someone there to show me how to do things.

Question: What are your thoughts on the internet fan groups out there? (From Everyone)
CONAN: Oh it's great!! It's really gratifying because we work very hard on the show and we try and do things… we put a lot of work into it, I know the show often looks like oh they're just fooling around and having a good time, and we are having a good time, but it's also a lot of work. People work very hard here, so when you look at all the work that people put into their websites and how they're paying very close attention and they have the things they like and they don't like, but you can tell they're passionate about it. That's very gratifying. Because we're here in the studio, and I don't get out much, I come here in the morning and last night I went home at 10:30 at night, you know, so it's not like I get that much feedback, so it's nice to see that people care about the show. I think it's great.

Question: Do you read your own fanmail? (Katie)
CONAN: Yeah! My assistant does-I can't read all of it-she goes through it and if there are particularly nice ones or particularly interesting ones or requests or anything like that, I read those ones. If it's people just writing "hey, love the show, I live in Texas…" she doesn't show me all of those, but if someone writes and it's a really good letter or they've sent me something they want me to see or they ask "could I sign this" for them, I always look at those ones.

~INFLUENCES~

Question: How have such people as Ernie Kovaks, Dave Letterman and Regis Philbin influenced you? (WilcoxJsn, Lynn, Aimee, Dan)
CONAN: Ernie Kovaks was not an influence because I never saw his shows. So he wasn't a direct influence on me. He was probably an indirect influence in that he influenced other people who then influenced me, but I never saw Ernie Kovaks until after I had this show, and that's when I started to see tapes of Ernie Kovaks.

David Letterman was a very big influence on me. I started watching David Letterman when I was a senior in highschool and he had his morning show on NBC, that would have been in 1980-81. So I started watching him then, and then he started his "Late Night" show when I was a freshman in college and I used to watch that show and I was very aware that he was the person who inspired me a lot. He showed me that you could do a late night TV show that had a lot of strange elements in it. Coz Johnny Carson was, of course, great, his show was more sort of straight-ahead entertainment and David Letterman I think was the first person to combine some of the strangeness and sort of fringe-comedy of Saturday Night Live with a late night talk show format. So I credit him a lot. He really influenced me. Inspired me to think, I don't wanna do a show exactly like his but there's room to do a really odd late night TV show one day. I used to watch him and think "boy that's something I'd like to do"...

Question: Would you like to see the show move up an hour to 11:30?
CONAN: I kinda like it where it is. I think there might come a point in my life where if it's possible for me to go earlier then it would be fun to do. Right now I don't know if in America the "Jump & Choke Channel" would work at 11:30. There'd be too many middle-aged people sitting around their TV watching going "what the hell is this?" There's something about 12:30 that people know if they're up watching television comedy at 12:30 at night in America it means they deserve to see something weird. I think we're better off where we are right now.

Linzi: What would you like to do outside of the show that you haven't yet done?
CONAN: I've always wanted to go to Africa. I've never done that and I never have time to because we always get just a week off and you can't really go to Africa during a week off. I'd like to wrestle an Ape I think that'd be really fun. That's always been my lifelong dream to wrestle an Ape, show him who's boss. And then on the show, I really want us to do, you know sometimes we do bad claymation on our show? I want do a whole episode of our show that's all claymation. Bad claymation and that's something I think we're going to try and do.

Question: What do you think you'll do when the show actually ends?
CONAN: I don't know, it's depressing.

Question: Would you go back to writing? (Nos)
CONAN: I don't think so, I really like performing, I really like being in front of an audience. I think that's my favorite thing, I love being in front of an audience and it just makes me happy to be out in front of a crowd. Even if things aren't particularly working too well, I still like to be out there trying. I think I've ruined myself for writing, I think I'd never be content to be a writer again. So I don't know what I would do.

Maybe I could come to Scotland… I've never been to Scotland. Everybody raves about the comedy festival in Edinburgh… I really want to go to that sometime. I've talked to Rich Hall about it, and one of my producers goes to it, Frank Smiley, and he says that it's the best, there's really funny comedians…

Linzi: Yeah, Ed Byrne does it every year and he's just brilliant
CONAN: I love Ed Byrne he's great. When Ed Byrne came to the show, the whole show was over and Ed Byrne was standing out in the hallway and I was walking out just to go home, actually I was going to go upstairs to go to a meeting and Ed Byrne said [adopts Irish accent] "What happens now? Do we all go out to a pub or something?" And I said "Well actually we don't, but if you want to… Let's go!" and he said ok. So, me and a few other writers and we all took him to a bar and we ended up having a really good time. But I thought, being stupid, we go to the bar, and I thought well I'm here with Ed Byrne and he's going to want a Guinness or something like that. So I ordered him a Guinness, and Ed Byrne said "I don't want a Guinness… if you're from England or Ireland you get Guinness all the time… I want a Budweiser." If you're in America, you don't want a Budweiser. He was a lotta fun.

Question: What's going to happen to the "YEAR 2000" bit in the year 2000? (Everyone!)
CONAN: I don't know, what do you think we ought to do? I think we're going to want to keep doing it, I don't know what we're going to call it though. We keep thinking shall we just keep calling it "year 2000" even when it's the year 2000? Should we call it "In the Distant Future…" I think we're going to put off what we do about it till the problem is upon us. We're open to suggestion.

Question: How did you and Andy meet? (Kelly)
CONAN: Well I got the show, they hired me to do the show, and I came to New York - No, I wasn't in New York yet, I was still out in Los Angeles trying to meet with people who could help us do the show. And we were hearing about different funny people when I was meeting with them and I heard about this guy Andy Richter and Robert Smigel talked to him and said well "Conan, you should talk to him and see what you think." So, I called Andy on the phone and we talked on the phone and I said "do you wanna get together and meet?" and he said "OK" and he suggested that we go to a Deli in Los Angeles. He said let's meet there for lunch, so I said Ok, so at the appointed time I drove to the parking lot and I walked into the Deli and Andy Richter stepped up and said "Hi, I'm Andy Richter" and I immediately liked him. He's got this great face, he's got this great manner about him, he's just really funny. Now, at the time we were talking about a writing job, but even while I was chatting with him I was thinking "You know, he might be a good guy to be a sidekick, to be out there with me…" and I didn't bring it up at the time, but we just hired him and then over the course of the summer I just started to realize that I just had a good chemistry with him. So when we started doing test shows, even before the real show started, we started doing test shows and I said "Andy, do you wanna just sit up here next to me," he wasn't sure but he said "ok, I'll try it," and we had him sitting up there and it just felt right. It was one of those things, a good relationship, it just felt right right away.

I think our relationship improved a lot, you know at first only hard-core fans saw it, but it took a little while to develop, but now people think that Andy and I were always friends. They think that we went to highschool together or something. And when I tell them that oh, no, no, I got the show and then I hired him they can't believe it.

Linzi: Do you and Andy ever hang out together after work?
CONAN: No not too much because he's got a wife - who can't stand me! No, he's got a wife and he lives downtown with his own circle of friends. We sometimes do things together but I think it would be a little overkill coz we're here all day together and we're working together and if at night we hung together we'd probably start bickering on the air. "Why did you say that to my wife?" "Well she had too much to drink!" We'd have these fights on the air.

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