Or maybe it’s always been at odds with the rambunctious essence of comedy. Such deference to tradition seems out of step in an era of viral videos and podcasts. O’Brien said he wouldn’t move it to midnight because that would damage the franchise and legacy of the show. O’Brien’s precocious career had been spent almost entirely in prestigious comedy institutions, like The Harvard Lampoon, “Saturday Night Live” and “The Simpsons.” When his upwardly mobile trajectory stopped at “The Tonight Show,” Mr. But what’s become clear from his new show is the extent to which he is a traditionalist at heart. O’Brien, who turns 50 next year, has matured. Ferguson’s freewheeling monologues are far more daring. It was consistently, wonderfully odd.īy contrast, on “Conan” rarely is there a joke you could never imagine on another show. Sketches were frequently integrated in a way that tried to reinvent celebrity chat. O’Brien that he had better be good, or a waiter’s interrupting an interview with Kevin Nealon for a wine tasting. A premium was put on the unexpected, whether it was Tom Brokaw’s crushing saltines in his hands for a bit in which New Yorkers warned Mr. K., Bob Odenkirk and Robert Smigel, those raw shows played nothing straight. With a writing staff that included Louis C. Critics focused on his greenness, not the exciting flurry of ideas packed into each show. the Monorail”), but the early years of his NBC show, “Late Night,” are vastly underrated. Not only did he write one of the best “Simpsons” episodes ever (“ Marge vs. O’Brien has one of the most inventive comic minds of his generation. What makes the modest ambition of “Conan” so strange is that Mr. Morris responded that Conan dominated the discussion so much that he had only one minute to talk. He himself seemed to acknowledge as much in a blandly sober, Charlie Rose-style interview show he started online this year, “ Serious Jibber Jabber.” In the only episode so far, he told the historian Edmund Morris that the seven minutes they talked on his show was insufficient.
That same jittery energy shows up in his interviews, where he often doesn’t seem to trust the conversation and interrupts with a gibe or by mugging. O’Brien’s hectic need to please can wear on you. Letterman’s refusal to pander can come off as fascinatingly grumpy, Mr. His monologue, however, remains standard fare, mostly banal topical jokes delivered in between familiar manic tics, like his string-pulling dance or his overreactions to ordinary audience responses. O’Brien has produced a fairly conventional talk show, albeit with less famous guests. He didn’t need to worry about living up to a legacy or beating “Late Show With David Letterman” in the ratings. O’Brien after NBC abruptly pulled its support.īut when he moved to TBS, he was liberated from the pressure of network television. That common wisdom helped fuel the outpouring of support for Mr. His brand of heady silliness was long suspected as being too quirky and rarefied for mainstream tastes. O’Brien’s fixation on what he lost also reveals something about what he gained. Leno and David Letterman appeared on the shows of Craig Ferguson and Jimmy Kimmel last week, the late-night wars settled into a tense peace. O’Brien wouldn’t go along with the plan and left, though with a hefty severance (reportedly $32 million) in hand.īut let’s face it: jokes about Mr. Leno on “The Tonight Show,” he was told by NBC that it would reinstall Mr. Watch the entire thing up above.Certainly he went through a public ordeal in early 2010, when, only seven months after replacing Mr. The conversation then moves through White’s well-documented background in upholstery, the dangers of coming off as pretentious, Catholic guilt, and the inspiration behind the Stripes’ peppermint color scheme. To kick the 35mm-filmed episode off, O’Brien recalls when the two first met, at a bowling alley in Detroit in the late 1990s (yes, the very same bowling alley Jack White and the Bricks once played).
Now, the two have reunited for a 75-minute (!!!) chat over drinks as part of O’Brien’s “Serious Jibber-Jabber” interview series, which has previously featured This Is 40 director Judd Apatow, statistician Nate Silver, and presidential biographer Edmund Morris. The White Stripes played a four-night residency on O’Brien’s Late Night show back in 2003 (the host memorably quipped that the duo dressed like Batman villains) in 2005, the carrot-topped funnyman cameoed in the Michel Gondry-directed video for “The Denial Twist” Jack and Meg helped Conan close the curtain on Late Night in 2009 with a rendition of “We’re Going to Be Friends” the Blunderbuss bluesman ushered in the NBC castoff’s current TBS era and White returned to Conan for a jittery gig just last month. Jack White and Conan O’Brien have a long history.
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