The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [118]
Again, to Ebersol, that attitude seemed a signal that Conan had circled the wagons and was including within the circle only those who shared the faith and had signed a religious pact to travel west with him. That did not include Jay’s fans, of course, who were effectively being disinvited. When Kevin Nealon, another long-absent SNL vet, turned up on the couch the next night, Ebersol was simply dumbfounded.
In general, Ludwin did not disagree with these concerns. But he always approached his role in trying to manage Conan and his team from a point of unfettered admiration for the comic’s talent. He believed Conan was brilliant, pure and simple; he saw Conan as the future. Still, even in the Late Night days, Ludwin himself had felt the need to prod the staff in terms of bookings. It seemed to Rick that Conan’s booking department still had a 12:35 mentality, that they sought out what he saw as the more quirky, less mainstream kind of showbiz guest. He wasn’t sure they understood, or simply didn’t embrace, the arm-twisting clout that The Tonight Show could wield over top guests.
In theory Ludwin had no issue with someone like Norm MacDonald as a lead guest. He knew how funny Norm had been with Conan on many occasions, and every host had those guests who simply played so well with them that they made for attractive and frequent bookings. For years Letterman had booked Charles Grodin because of the killer shtick the two of them had developed, not because Grodin was a big star. Rick’s own reservation was about the approach Norm sometimes took to his visitations with Conan, when he would come on and simply tell old jokes, rather than extending himself a bit and being more topical, which might lure in a larger audience.
The disconnect over booking policy did not spring from arrogance, Ludwin was sure. Conan and his staff wanted the show to be organic, he believed, always consistent within Conan’s sensibility. Nothing should look as though he was merely taking network notes, because then the fans really might believe he was selling out. And Ludwin never underestimated the effects of the heat from the cauldron Conan had stepped into. The Tonight Show remained the pinnacle of show business for the NBC late-night executive. As he saw it, only five men could ever really know what it was like to assume the mantle of hosting that institution—and how much pressure that inflicted. So he continued to nudge Conan and Jeff Ross gently toward broader, more 11:35-style guests, toward finding ways to “make the show bigger.”
Lorne Michaels, meanwhile, was watching the show and having a different reaction: In some ways it looked too big. The move to a soundstage had undoubtedly opened up the show, but maybe not all to the good. In New York, with its tight quarters, set builders and directors did everything they could to make studios look larger, the same way New Yorkers try to use space wisely to make their apartments look more spacious. In LA, the soundstage space was so wide open, the show did not look intimate anyway. Michaels knew the center of the show was always going to be Conan O’Brien, not some sprawling set that some viewers might suspect came from a page in Architectural Digest.
Once, when filming a scene from a movie in an Indian casino in the Southwest, Michaels and his cast and crew had been struck by how grim and tawdry the setting seemed, with old women betting quarters and six-hundred-pound people playing slots. But in that room at night, on every TV monitor, Lorne noticed that Leno was playing—and that seemed right. “Oh, this is America,” Michaels concluded. Picturing Conan on those monitors threw the imagery off somehow, for Michaels. Something about it sent a message that this old familiar show had gone upmarket.
Knowing and recognizing television was like knowing and recognizing candy bars, Michaels reasoned. You anticipated what you