The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [45]
NBC didn’t even have a photograph of him that could be sent out with its press release, as Conan had never bothered to take a head shot—the principal calling card for any would-be performer. Every story wound up being illustrated with the same picture, lifted off the air: Conan with a goofy smile on his face towering over Leno on the Tonight stage. Conan found himself suspecting he was coming off like the Chauncey Gardiner character Peter Sellers played in the movie Being There. He pictured the CIA going though his suits in his LA apartment, ordering people to “pull the file on Conan O’Brien! There is no file? Pull the tape! There is no tape?”
NBC scheduled his press debut at the Rainbow Room in 30 Rock for a week later, on May 3. That day Conan proved he had some mettle. When he entered the building, he stepped into an elevator and was immediately confronted by a reporter from the New York Post, who taunted, “I counted how many laughs Letterman got in his press conference leaving the show and I’m gonna count how many you get!” Far from throwing Conan, the encounter relaxed him. It was when things were calm that he leaned toward depression or panic. When his back was against the wall, he seemed to do things he didn’t know he could do.
The press was charmed. Far from shrinking in the spotlight, Conan seemed to grow in it. He acknowledged being a “complete unknown.” He sparred with John Melendez, “Stuttering John” from Howard Stern’s radio show, exposing the silly disguise he was wearing. Conan seemed boyish, clever, fast with his wit, and fully appreciative of the absurdity of the position he was in. To buck him up, Lorne told him that day of an observation one of his fellow SNL writers, Bonnie Turner, had offered: “All I know is that guy will charm the shit out of any crowd.”
For Conan O’Brien nothing would ever quite match the thrill of that first time—his introduction to the American television audience on September 13, 1993. The first look anyone got of him was a pretaped cold opening—a segment run before the credits—in which young Conan strolled cheerfully through Manhattan, greeted by vendors, cabbies, and passers-by, all of whom had the same helpful message: “Lot of pressure—you better not screw this up.” When he arrived at the NBC building, he ran into the news anchor Tom Brokaw, who was sterner, and more specific: “You better be as good as Letterman—or else.”
Finally alone in his dressing room, showing no ill effects and whistling merrily, Conan pulled out a chair, stepped up on it, and in the same cheerful way swung a noose around his neck. In perhaps an inadvertent callback to the night of the Radcliffe Pitches, a stagehand knocked on the door to say it was time to go on. “Right now?” Conan asked meekly and then climbed down with a shrug, ready to step out onstage.
That introduction stamped him as an entertainer with obvious charm and pluck, and it was those qualities that dominated the early comments about the show. In The New York Times John O’Connor assessed the opening night as better than anyone could have expected, observing, “There’s a fine lunacy here that bears watching.” Others interpreted that lunacy as an indication that Conan was jumpy, tense, and ungainly. But in truth, he had not been overly anxious that first night. What looked like nerves was actually excitement. A charge had been lit under him; he was exploding with the thrill of knowing: Yes! This is it!
Of course it was near impossible not to start out rooting for a guy who seemed to have been pulled off the subway and handed a television show. Conan’s other early advantage was his relatively low profile in what had become a barroom brawl between the leading men in late night. Letterman stormed onto the air on CBS—as NBC suspected he would—and was already battering a reeling Leno. A bit later in September,