The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [214]
One other late-night host strongly disapproved of the promo. Watching the game that night at a party at his house, Jimmy Kimmel couldn’t believe his eyes. Dave was throwing Jay a life preserver. He later went on Dave’s show as a guest and tweaked him about it, after Dave said how much fun he’d had bashing Jay. Jimmy said Jay had been drowning; they could have finished him off. The two of them had a laugh about it all.
Kimmel had thought about it a lot and realized the ad represented Dave sending a message: This is still about two guys at the top; I don’t need these other hangers-on cluttering up the late-night stage. When Letterman had slammed Jay with the joke comparing him to Americans stealing the Indians’ land, it had thrilled Kimmel; it was television with a real edge. Jimmy had even admired Jay for coming back with nasty stuff about Dave as well, though, as might be expected, he didn’t think it was as funny as Dave’s hits on Jay.
For Kimmel, the late-night war had been pure joy. There was something primally funny about it, something that played to his own instincts. His haranguing of Jay on Jay’s show had been, in his estimation, the best thing that had ever happened to his own show. He had broken through into a story being dominated by two other late-night network stars, with Dave guest-starring as the outside agitator. Thrusting himself into the discussion had made Jimmy a host of new fans. Previously, he knew, Conan’s fans had viewed him as something of a lummox: Conan was the smart guy; Jimmy was the jack-off. Now he was being flooded with messages and e-mails from Conan’s people. Writers on Conan’s show, on Letterman’s show, and on The Simpsons, congratulated him, as did big names like Will Ferrell, Martin Short, and even Paul Shaffer, Dave’s bandleader.
Kimmel at first denied Jay’s charge (to Oprah) that he had sucker-punched Jay with that “10 at 10” appearance. Then, to Dave, he acknowledged that, having checked the dictionary, yeah, he had sucker-punched him. But he had to quibble with Dave’s ultimate assessment that it was all fun and “nobody got hurt.”
“I think Conan might disagree,” Jimmy said.
In the days before his return to The Tonight Show on March 2, Jay Leno and his staff found themselves treading lightly. They were all feeling the heat of Team Coco and the blasts still coming over the Internet. Jay and Debbie Vickers both accepted the likelihood that they would face some damaged-goods issues. And they feared that Letterman had built up a wave of momentum that might be hard to break. Maybe it would take another eighteen months before Jay returned to the top—if he ever reached there.
Rebuilding the show seemed less challenging than rebuilding Jay’s image, because they all knew how to do a Tonight Show. Debbie had already returned the better comedy bits to act two. The guests would come back; the familiar routine would be reestablished.
During the three-week break for the Olympics, they fiddled with the set, brought in a desk and chairs for the old panel look. The studio still had the overall ambience of The Jay Leno Show, because there wasn’t time to make it look radically different.
One big question was how to play the return—obviously it had to be for laughs. The Dallas promo had been ditched, but they all kicked around that idea and eventually turned it into a Wizard of Oz parody: Jay would have hit his head and gone to a strange land—ten p.m.—but had now come home. It might be a screamingly obvious idea, but those were usually the kind that had the broadest appeal, and reinstalling Jay was all about recapturing that broad appeal.
Another question demanded to be addressed: Would Jay say anything in the first show about Conan, salute his efforts on the show, again toast him for being a good guy? Nick Bernstein, among others, pressed the case for some kind of mention of