The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [199]
“Some papers are reporting that I’m legally prohibited from saying anything bad about NBC. But nobody said anything about speaking in Spanish. NBC esta manejado por hijos de cabras imbeciles que comen dinero y evacuan problemas.” (Translation: “NBC is run by brainless sons of goats who eat money and crap trouble.”)
Even as he was urging everyone from writers to other staffers to fans to make the last week all about fun, Conan found himself tortured by the endless delays in getting the final settlement accomplished. The broad parameters had been in place for days. All the picayune details of what he could say on the air, which guests he could and couldn’t book, on what date he could return to television, and when and to whom he could grant interviews only underscored the pettiness of it all. He wanted it over.
But Sunday’s anticipation melted into Monday, then Monday’s into Tuesday. His people kept telling him they were on the one-yard line, or right at the goal. At one point Conan just shouted to his group, “If one more person tells me we’re two inches from the goal line, I’m gonna fucking kill them, because I can’t hear it anymore.”
All he wanted at that point was to be able to announce in public that Friday would be his last show. Then they could lock the bookings they wanted and ready the show they wanted to produce as a farewell.
Wednesday began like the previous seven or eight before it, with the message that this again would almost surely be the day. Then more rumors swirled about holdups; Conan learned for the first time of GE’s qualms about the settlement.
Showtime came with no resolution, so Conan could not go out and tell his audience the definitive answer; he had to keep saying, “This looks like the final week.”
After the show, the lawyers told him this time they were very close and urged him to stick around the office. Conan got some food and hung out with Jeff Ross and Mike Sweeney and some other writers. By midnight all the staff had left—except Ross, of course, always by Conan’s side. Leigh Brecheen was holding down the legal front in the conference room along with an associate of Glaser’s. At loose ends, Conan started wandering the halls alone, playing his guitar. Occasionally he would jump up and sit on cubicles, strum a few notes, jump down, lay flat on the ground, then jump back up and continue on his way.
He stepped outside onto the deserted Universal lot. There he stood, in the dark, entirely alone, waiting to hear if he had successfully given up The Tonight Show. He had his cell with him, and as he ambled aimlessly he took some pictures with the phone. At one thirty a.m. he held the phone out and took a picture of himself. Behind him was one of the tiny cafés on the lot. It was closed but there were some lights on inside, just enough for the picture and enough to see a poster for some long-forgotten movie, indecipherable in the photo, illuminated behind his head in the foreground.
When he looked at the photo, Conan thought, This is just me at one thirty in the morning, on the Universal lot, waiting to hear this news, and looking like: What the fuck?
Conan had no way of knowing it, but at just about the time he was snapping that photo, Ron Meyer was on the phone at his home, conferenced in with Jeff Zucker and Jeff Gaspin, to let them know that at long last he had everybody agreed on a final deal. But he also had a message he wanted to convey to the two Jeffs:
“You’ve got about ten minutes here before I call back to say we’re closed—ten minutes to say, ‘We’re staying with Conan, we’re going to get rid of Jay.’ ” Meyer had witnessed the national display of Conan mania during the previous ten days. “There’s a big outcry out there,” he told Zucker and Gaspin. “Think about it. I’m not suggesting it. That’s not my job. I’m just suggesting you think about it. There’s a moment here.”
Both Zucker and Gaspin had such regard for Meyer’s counsel that they did pause—or at least, out of deference to Meyer, made a show of pausing—and took the opportunity to consider, one last time, the implications