The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [75]
Jay swore he was getting no help, not even from the faxers who could have made more than the usual hundred bucks (though at the risk of never being accepted into the Guild). One of Jay’s longtime writers, out on strike but watching carefully, explained his method. “Jay takes the premise from some old joke, plugs in a current name from the news, and sells it as a new joke.”
Even that process seemed to violate the spirit of the rules the Guild had set down, though Jay argued (supported by one of his writers who was present) that he had been given assurances in a private meeting with union leaders that they would not “hassle him.” After the strike Leno was called to a hearing by the disciplinary committee of the Guild and was unanimously cleared.
During the strike Leno proved again how sturdy and loyal his audience really was. A couple of weeks in, he averaged 5.2 million viewers to Letterman’s 4.1, despite all the advantages Dave enjoyed. In private Jay took great pride in that achievement. He was enjoying himself, feeling resourceful, and even took to comparing it to another moment when he had had to rely on his own devices when under the gun. In 1993, when NBC engaged in last-minute dithering about whether to dump Jay and install Letterman in The Tonight Show, Leno had initiated his own little espionage mission, listening in surreptitiously on a conference call during which NBC executives thrashed out the relative merits of the two comics. Jay reveled in that episode because he was able to tweak NBC’s executives with the information gleaned from his eavesdropping, leaving them flummoxed about how he had learned what had gone on in a meeting on the other side of the country.
What became known as Jay’s “closet moment” did carry a little stigma, one he largely ignored. However, a number of his friends, like Jerry Seinfeld, occasionally brought it to his attention, warning him that some of the characterizations in the press, and those of other comics, of Jay as an unprincipled schemer sprang from the closet story. Instead of making him look wily and determined, they suggested, the tale made him come across to some as sneaky and guileful. That didn’t really bother Leno, any more than did questions about whether he really was putting together those long, polished monologues all by himself. During the strike he had symbolically hidden in a closet again, refusing to let events control him. People had looked forward to tuning in to see him die on the air—and he had showed them. One competing host shrugged at the issue, saying, “Jay was cheating.” No one ever proved that. But the strike proved something else: Jay was still winning.
In New York, Conan O’Brien did not reconstruct old jokes, but the strike did seem to inspire him to reconstruct the old Conan a bit. Left completely to his own devices, O’Brien became more instinctive and inventive, with results that energized him. He found humor in the picayune—like spinning his wedding ring on his desk each night, timing it in the control booth as if it were an Olympic event, trying to set a new record each attempt. He led audience members out into the halls to the vending machines. He flashed a light to try to turn the studio into a German disco. One night he set up his desk in the back row of the studio, presenting the show from a reverse angle and interacting with the fans in the upper rows. (He even brought them doughnuts.)
For guests, he marched through the same assortment of animal trainers, athletes, and NBC standbys, with the Today showʹs Al Roker piling up more appearances on top of his already impressive total. One night