The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [12]
If he noticed this display of rudeness—and with all the house lights on, it was hard to miss—Jay didn’t show it, nor did it slow him down in the least. Instead he tacked toward absurd side-effect warnings on drug labels, including one for restless leg syndrome and another that threatened “explosive diarrhea and possible sexual dysfunction,” which he used as the perfect setup to explore how this could affect someone’s love life. “For some reason women are not attracted to men with explosive diarrhea.”
Another ping from Graboff’s BlackBerry. Braun again: “Make him stop!”
At twenty-seven minutes the chair squeaks were spreading and the stream of exiting guests had grown steadily, with the evacuees looking less embarrassed as they fled. Jay turned to a tried-and-true source of laughs for him: “How fat are we getting!”
Down in the front row, Zucker had one thought: Is this gonna end?
Finally, thirty-two minutes into his monologue, Jay looked around and said, “Well, let’s see, what else can we talk about?” He added to this awkward transition by observing, “I guess I’ve answered all the questions about the new show!” Then, looking down at the audience again, he asked, “Does anybody have any questions?”
A woman not far from the stage had one that no one else in the theater could hear because she wasn’t mic’d. Jay’s answer was also muffled, though it drew enough of a laugh from the spectators in the first few rows for Jay to close the proceedings. He offered a big-voiced thanks and good night to the crowd, bowing briefly to applause that sounded respectful, even warm. He had been at it for more than half an hour, working it and sweating, and he was, after all, the guy in America’s bedroom for the past seventeen years. Jay waved and exited, stage left.
After returning briefly to thank everyone for coming, Brian Williams felt he had to say something about Leno’s performance: “Jay, Bea Arthur called; she needs her hair back.” It drew what sounded to Williams like “a relief laugh—the kind of laugh you get in church when you’re allowed to laugh at the sermon.”
Out in the lobby, moving among the departing crowd, NBC executives exchanged looks of chagrin. No one knew what exactly had happened. Jay had always been Mr. Reliable—not only in politicking for his show with affiliate managers and admen, but also in joke delivery. This night he had swung big—and missed.
Marc Graboff, cornered by a couple of reporters, didn’t dodge the obvious. “Jay was just off,” he said. “He didn’t read the audience and had the weakest act of the night.”
Jay himself wasted no time in jumping into a car and heading for Teterboro, where his plane was also waiting. He was still disturbed by the house lights, how alienated the audience had seemed with the lights on them. Even though this upfront—like all others—was dominated by ad buyers, not affiliate managers, Jay was still convinced that many of the people in the audience that night were from the same crowd he had performed for at the Florida event. And the earlier acts had stretched the evening out, leaving him to appear so late that people were eager to get home on a work night. It had turned into a disaster pretty much all the way around.
But Jay was too much a pro to make excuses for himself. He knew the night had not gone well, but he did not view it as a setback. There would be other nights—there were always other nights.
Some of the comics stayed backstage while the crowd left, more than one of them somewhat aghast. Most would have agreed with Jay’s assessment at the mini press conference that evening that comics of his rank and experience never really bombed anymore, but what had they just witnessed happen out there? Some were flabbergasted that Jay had seemed to violate a fundamental comedy prohibition in his wrap-up by admitting that he had no more jokes and then asking the audience if they had any questions. That was the stuff of lectures, not comedy acts.
The worst