The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [104]
But best of all, in mid-May Conan, Jeff Ross, Mike Sweeney, and all the guys got down to doing what they loved best: late-night shows in front of regular people. To break in the studio—the sound, the lighting, the camera angles—Ross wanted to produce a series of test shows. The first couple had a few ragged moments, but that was to be expected. It didn’t matter to Conan, who was invigorated by them. It felt so good to be back. The new space, open, ornately decorated—even including a little art deco mural rimming the top of the stage design, harkening back to 30 Rock’s lobby—was much more expansive than good old 6A in 30 Rock. “Elegant” was how Conan summed it up, though he added that he was sure he would have no trouble being “a jackass in an elegant space.” When he stepped out onto the new stage for the first test show, it came on him like a rush: Oh yeah, this is what we really do.
More than anything else, Conan expected the lavish new lighting to shock people. He’d been told often enough by fans how much better he looked in person and had concluded that that was because they had only seen him performing in a shoe box with a light on him from about two feet away.
The experience of coast-to-coast relocation did have one big advantage, Conan decided. Almost nothing really captured people’s imagination anymore, but somehow this pasty Irishman pulling up stakes in New York and having a go in sunny LA struck a nerve. Everywhere that Conan had been, the talk was all about his moving to California—what would that be like? Conan pictured Osama bin Laden in a cave somewhere saying, “I wonder how it will be for Conan in LA. It’ll be different. We’ll have to see.”
On the other hand, the massive buildup did have its downside. Conan had the impression that some people expected to see him “jump the Snake River Canyon” on his first night, instead of what they would actually get: “a guy making a few adjustments in a better-lit space.”
The move of Jay Leno to ten had certainly altered some of the equations and expectations. What had begun as Conan vs. Dave was now Jay-into-Conan vs. Dave. “There’s a period of realignment now,” Conan explained. “These things aren’t decided in a night or a week. It’s a marathon. We’re going to bring some people with us and we’re going to have to find some new people, and it’s not going to happen right away. But I’m interested in getting to that part. Let’s get to that part.”
Not that the present didn’t offer some stop-the-heart moments, like seeing crates rolling by to be installed in the new studio or office building, all reading on the side: “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.”
Conan pulled back to remind himself, “It’s unbelievable that I got here. It’s a Catholic word, but sometimes it’s a sin not to acknowledge, sometimes, for just a minute: Hey, you got this far.”
But of course, the dark nights could provide their own distractions. Conan also acknowledged spending his share of time wide awake at three in the morning, picturing Martin Sheen in the movie Apocalypse Now. In those moments, Conan said, he stared up at the ceiling fan in his bedroom, “thinking about my trip upriver—and we all know how that worked out!”
Team Conan had its own share of concerns, not about how Conan would perform on Tonight—they all believed in him without reservation—but about how committed NBC really was to him. The move of Jay Leno to ten p.m. had stunned Rick Rosen and the rest of the Conan support