The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [9]
Leno, still waiting backstage, had noticed the lighting situation as well but had concluded that it was because NBC was taping the event. Indeed, NBC was taping much of the show and wanted lights to capture reaction shots. Jay had expressly asked that his performance not be taped. That didn’t mean the lighting would be adjusted, however. What Jay knew from his own endless stand-up gigs was that if lights were shining on an audience, they tended to become self-conscious—and a lot less likely to laugh.
Whatever running time had been planned, the combination of extended laughs and just general banter and interaction onstage had by now pushed the hour past ten thirty—more than half an hour into Jay time. No one had really noticed except for Leno himself, who, as was his custom, was carefully attuned to the rhythms of audience members.
Jay was well aware that this crowd had already been to one upfront in the late afternoon. Others had come from work, having knocked off at around six to get dinner. That meant it was well past the time they usually headed for home. And they had already been sitting in this theater for over an hour and a half.
Bass had asked Jay to do about fifteen minutes, the longest spot of the night. Jay had said he would do between ten and fifteen minutes. For Jay, doing fifteen minutes was like Bruce Springsteen dashing off a commercial jingle. He routinely dished out hours’ worth of stand-up in his appearances in Vegas. Tonight it was only a matter of which fifteen minutes he chose. For an industry audience, like the one he had performed for at the Super Bowl, he was surely going to rely heavily on his topical-humor file.
As he waited to go on, Jay still looked a bit askew to at least one of his fellow cast members, who wondered what was up with his hair. To this observer “it looked like a Leno-fro.” Jay himself continued to believe that this was one booking that just didn’t make much sense, no matter how he broke it down. But he had a job to do, and if he believed in anything, he believed in the virtue of an honest day’s work.
Jay was off and running from the moment Williams finished the introduction. As he crossed the stage, mic in one hand, Jay began furiously running his other hand through his impressive shock of luxuriantly thick, now mostly gray hair. Just to let the audience know he was cognizant that he was arriving onstage later than planned, he opened with a cheery notice: “We are almost a tenth through the evening!”
Maybe the awareness that the hour was late pushed him to pick up his pace, but from the moment he started talking, Jay seemed in hyperdrive, pacing from one side of the stage to the other, fluffing his hair, spraying jokes like a water cannon firing into the crowd.
“Well, good to see everybody. As you know, President Obama, first hundred days, pretty exciting. It’s been a fascinating year. To see a black man born to a white woman—see, that’s the decision Michael Jackson made . . .ʺ
Boom: next one. “Of course, Hillary and Barack, now best friends. Not always that way. Remember, seven to eight months ago they met in Unity, New Hampshire. To show unity, they met in Unity, New Hampshire. Bill could not be there.” Pause. “I believe he was in Intercourse, Pennsylvania.”
Passable laughs to kick the act off, though they didn’t last long. Jay marched on double-time to Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, targets of choice from recent monologues on The Tonight Show, followed by one about the decision to close the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay. “See, that’s when you know the economy’s in bad shape. When even the terrorists are losing their homes!” The jokes were coming so quickly that it was hard for the audience to laugh at one and catch the start of another. Jay was also moving, moving, traipsing around the stage, bending at the waist, leaning forward