The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [182]
Conan nodded at Ross with assurance. He said, “I get it.”
In his car driving home, Conan felt the words burning straight out through his forehead. He knew what he wanted to say: nothing self-pitying, just an honest statement—because you can’t argue with the truth. And it came down to one simple truth: He did not want to be the guy who, accepting a start time past midnight, brought The Tonight Show into tomorrow.
At home, he gushed it out almost all at once to Liza before sitting down at the computer to write. But he struggled; the formality of actually typing out the words presented unexpected mental roadblocks, and he kept getting stuck. When he told Liza, she said, “When you talk about it, it’s so clear. So I’ll just sit at the computer and you just walk around and say it.”
Between the tension and the pressure, Conan had been close to throwing up for several days. Now the same sensation overcame him as he tried to speak the words he knew would convulse his career.
He dictated; Liza typed; he rewrote. He tossed out an opening address of “People of Earth,” because he was a comedy writer, after all. He figured he would change it later, until Liza liked it so much she urged him, “Leave it in.”
After midnight he called Ross, who was already in bed with his wife, Missy. Conan told him he would be e-mailing his draft of the statement. Sitting up in bed, Jeff and Missy each read it on Jeff’s BlackBerry and both were impressed. Ross called Conan with a few suggestions. Conan got back to editing and rewriting. Around one a.m., he was exhausted and decided to leave it and go to bed. But sleep was impossible with his brain chugging away like an overstoked engine. At around three he got up again and went back to the screen, playing with the words, looking for perfection.
When Jeff Ross woke around five thirty he found a message on his BlackBerry: ʺIf youʹre up, call me.ʺ He did. Conan said he wanted to e-mail his more or less finished version. Ross read it while he walked his black Lab though his neighborhood. He had no doubt this was a pretty great piece of work, but he also had no idea what the lawyers would think of it.
The entire Conan group, now nine strong, counting Glaser and her several associates, gathered in the Tonight Show conference room again early that morning, ready to consider the message Conan wanted to deliver to the people of the planet. The sleepless Conan got in early as well and settled into his chair at the end of the table. Ross had printouts of the statement in hand for Glaser and her group to read as soon as she sat down.
One of her associates started reading and immediately set to lawyering up the language, making suggestions out loud.
“Leave it alone,” Glaser commanded. “It’s perfect. It’s him.”
The meeting quickly took the form of a strategy session. Gavin Polone assumed control of coordinating the press contacts—when they would release the statement, and to whom. Leigh Brecheen, Conan’s contract lawyer, would prepare an e-mail to send to Marc Graboff stating that Conan’s team believed the network was in breach of his contract, based on earlier drafts of his agreement to assume the host job of The Tonight Show. Rick Rosen would call Jeff Zucker minutes before the statement went out to inform him of what Conan was going to say and of the e-mail at that moment arriving in Graboff’s mailbox from Brecheen.
Rereading the statement numerous times with utmost precision, Glaser had, in the end, only two minor grammatical corrections she wanted to make. She continued to endorse the statement as ideal for their purposes. It laid out Conan’s point of view unequivocally, but without compromising his legal options. Nothing in there overtly said he was quitting, so he could not be accused of forsaking his contractual obligations.
Polone believed that the statement could only work out in their favor, serving to fuel what was already a growing wildfire of