The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [135]
Other assessments were harsher. One of Jay’s bigger supporters of that era among NBC’s late-night participants, based on Leno’s many jousts with Letterman, was astonished by the overwhelming lameness of the production, which the supporter knew had been shepherded by Jay’s then manager Helen Kushnick. (Helen and her husband, Jerry, both received executive producer credits on the special.) “Helen got him the special,” the late-night player said. “This was Jay left to his own devices. That was Jay’s sensibility, everything. It was a horrible show.”
Somebody else had been watching the Leno special with intense interest. Sitting around with some of his “comedy nerd” friends from the Lampoon , Conan OʹBrien had made it a point to catch The Jay Leno Show. Like all hard-core Letterman devotees of that era, Conan looked forward with excitement to Leno’s bookings on Late Night, because his spots with Dave were so consistently electric. But this? For Conan and his Lampoon coterie, the Leno special was a total disconnect between the hip, hilarious comic who appeared with Dave and this clearly uncomfortable, imaginatively flailing guy. He was out of his milieu.
If anyone at NBC in 2009 had dug out the old Jay Leno Show from some dusty network remainder bin marked “Misbegotten and Forgotten,” would it have raised any questions about Jay’s trying something so clearly out of his comfort zone, something so different from his Tonight Show? Almost surely not—because, in 2009, NBC’s top executives were convinced that Jay ranked as one of the most beloved entertainers in America. That wasn’t just their own opinion; the research had told them so.
As for Jay, he never had reason to worry that his upcoming ten o’clock show was going to be some stab in the dark like that ghastly 1986 effort. For one thing, the terrible ideas conjured for that show were banished from his memory. For another, he had long since learned: Dance with the one who brung you.
“Even though it’s ten o’clock,” Jay said in outlining his plans for The Jay Leno Show of 2009, “we’re going to pretend it’s eleven thirty.”
As the weeks slipped away between his final Tonight Show in May and his big-splash premiere set for September, Jay—along with the steadfast Debbie Vickers—had to find a way to satisfy an ever expanding roster of constituencies. Left to his own, he likely would have kept most of the elements of his Tonight Show intact—all the way down to sticking around in the ancient studio he (and Carson) had occupied for years. But he pulled up stakes and moved a few hundred yards across the Burbank lot, from Studio 3 to Studio 11, a vast, barnlike room. NBC had sold the entire Burbank complex, moving most of its production operations over to the Universal lot, where Conan now worked. But everyone could see the potential conflict if the two shows occupied the same gated community. So NBC rented back the big Studio 11 in Burbank just for Leno. Jay, who didn’t “want to go to some amusement park” (and preferred not to change his drive-in routine anyway), stuck around his old digs, kicking around the potential changes for ten p.m.
Some seemed utterly cosmetic. He would enter from what looked like the glass doors of an insurance agency, flanked by huge, square wooden columns—which made it look like an insurance agency in the Roman forum. And of course, there would be no desk. That was the major concession to Conan and The Tonight Show, the program that had invented the host behind the desk. That move, like several others, was made, Vickers explained, entirely out of respect for Conan. She had great personal affection for Jeff Ross, her counterpart on Conan’s show, and believed the two shows could coexist without any issues. If Conan succeeded, it would be best for Jay, the network, and everybody, Vickers was convinced.
Without his desk, though, Jay would be compelled to talk to guests sitting