For comedy scholars and devotees of late night television, the failed hand-off of NBC’s “Tonight Show” from Jay Leno to Conan O’Brien had a clarifying effect. As Leno, bumped from the chair he had occupied for 17 years, moved to reclaim it, and O’Brien, who had patiently waited for his turn, lost the faith of his fickle bosses in seven short months, opinions hardened.
Leno, that amiable slob, was recast as a hack, and a treacherous one at that. O’Brien, a beacon of good-natured, ironic wit during his many years as host of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” was a kind and regular guy who was outmaneuvered — and then humiliated — on a national stage. (David Letterman, who delighted in chronicling the carnage from the sidelines as NBC’s disaster unfolded in January 2010, remained a very funny sadist.)
In the weeks that followed Leno’s return to the “Tonight Show,” O’Brien became a folk hero, with the protests and placards to match: he was just one of us, give or take a reported $32 million severance package and a majestic halo of orange hair. But as “Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop,” a new documentary from Rodman Flender, shows, there are no real folk heroes in show business — just incredibly needy men and women trying to cope, with varying degrees of success, with the weird and demanding exigencies of fame.
Set in the months after O’Brien resigned his commission and embarked on what he called “The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour,” Flender’s documentary is a fond portrait of a person who might well be the world’s nicest and most self-aware egomaniac. The film begins with O’Brien pulling up alongside an open-topped Hollywood tour bus and shouting at its startled inhabitants: “Hey, it’s me, Conan O’Brien of the Tonight Show!” (A beat, and O’Brien turns to the camera: “I should have said, ‘Formerly of the ‘Tonight Show.’ ”) It ends with the comedian ensconced in his new day job, jogging out in front of a TBS studio audience, applause resounding all around him.
In between, O’Brien embarks on a multi-city comedy tour, an exercise that Flender depicts as somewhere between public self-flagellation and an onanistic quest to reclaim the attention of the thousands of people to whose living rooms he’s recently lost regular access. “That’s all I know,” O’Brien says. “I really like being in front of an audience.”
This turns out to be a profound understatement. On one level, “Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop” is just the same scene over and over again: we are in a room with the comedian as he grimly contemplates confronting his hordes of loyal faithful, whether in Eugene, Ore. (“Should I be worried we’re opening in a town where nobody lives?”), at the Bonnaroo festival (“In six months, I’ve gone from hosting ‘The Tonight Show’ to performing at a refugee camp”), or Radio City Music Hall, where O’Brien’s dressing room overlooks a cheering horde of fans outside.
Then, inevitably, he goes to them, disappearing into crowd after crowd of autograph seekers, amateur photographers and Hollywood glad-handers, reveling in their love even as he mocks their ardor. He’s ruthless about his friends, too: Of the unlikely backstage pair of Jon Hamm and his old co-worker Jack McBrayer he says it’s like seeing “the Monopoly Man with a pig on a leash.”
This scene is played out in microcosm with O’Brien’s beleaguered staff, who have the competent yet long-suffering, slightly stressed affect of professional soldiers or emergency room attendants. At one point, O’Brien conducts a meeting in which everyone is forced to do their jobs and hash out tour logistics or whatever while passing around, and speaking into, a banana; at another, enraged about what he perceives to be a penchant by his employees to overschedule his time, the comedian compares himself to Anne Frank.
These moments unfold like particularly uncomfortable (though undeniably funny) skits, which is in one sense what they are. O’Brien’s team, long-practiced, know that a laugh is everything in their line of work. They also attempt to deflect or placate their boss at nearly every turn. But the fact remains that there is no graceful way to sit silently and be humiliated by the man who pays your salary, even if it’s in service of a bit, and even when you’re in on the joke.
O’Brien, whose uncommon intelligence is even more evident outside a television studio, is far from unaware of this paradox. “I am extremely hard on myself,” he says. “That’s something that spills over onto other people.” And how can it not? One of the recurring themes of “Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop” is how the outsized demands on the very famous come inevitably to characterize their everyday reality. There is no gas station, airport tarmac or backstage area O’Brien can go without being stopped by nearly every human he encounters; his thirst for love and attention, which is never less than hugely apparent here, is nothing compared to how much people want out of him.
In its meditation on fame and its sometimes-exhilarating, sometimes-caustic effects, Flender’s “Conan O’Brien” has more in common with D.A. Pennebaker’s Bob Dylan documentary “Don’t Look Back” than it does with comedy concert flicks like “The Original Kings of Comedy” or “Eddie Murphy Raw,” even if one of O’Brien’s best bits in the film is having Murphy’s infamous leather suit from “Raw” remade for his 6’4” frame. The sight of a bored O’Brien waiting for hours at the alumni talent show portion of his 25th college reunion to go onstage for a few minutes in front of his old classmates tells you nearly everything you need to know about the warring threads of need and ego and kindness that do battle inside the man daily. In the end, for Conan O’Brien, need always wins out.
Leno, that amiable slob, was recast as a hack, and a treacherous one at that. O’Brien, a beacon of good-natured, ironic wit during his many years as host of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” was a kind and regular guy who was outmaneuvered — and then humiliated — on a national stage. (David Letterman, who delighted in chronicling the carnage from the sidelines as NBC’s disaster unfolded in January 2010, remained a very funny sadist.)
In the weeks that followed Leno’s return to the “Tonight Show,” O’Brien became a folk hero, with the protests and placards to match: he was just one of us, give or take a reported $32 million severance package and a majestic halo of orange hair. But as “Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop,” a new documentary from Rodman Flender, shows, there are no real folk heroes in show business — just incredibly needy men and women trying to cope, with varying degrees of success, with the weird and demanding exigencies of fame.
Set in the months after O’Brien resigned his commission and embarked on what he called “The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour,” Flender’s documentary is a fond portrait of a person who might well be the world’s nicest and most self-aware egomaniac. The film begins with O’Brien pulling up alongside an open-topped Hollywood tour bus and shouting at its startled inhabitants: “Hey, it’s me, Conan O’Brien of the Tonight Show!” (A beat, and O’Brien turns to the camera: “I should have said, ‘Formerly of the ‘Tonight Show.’ ”) It ends with the comedian ensconced in his new day job, jogging out in front of a TBS studio audience, applause resounding all around him.
In between, O’Brien embarks on a multi-city comedy tour, an exercise that Flender depicts as somewhere between public self-flagellation and an onanistic quest to reclaim the attention of the thousands of people to whose living rooms he’s recently lost regular access. “That’s all I know,” O’Brien says. “I really like being in front of an audience.”
This turns out to be a profound understatement. On one level, “Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop” is just the same scene over and over again: we are in a room with the comedian as he grimly contemplates confronting his hordes of loyal faithful, whether in Eugene, Ore. (“Should I be worried we’re opening in a town where nobody lives?”), at the Bonnaroo festival (“In six months, I’ve gone from hosting ‘The Tonight Show’ to performing at a refugee camp”), or Radio City Music Hall, where O’Brien’s dressing room overlooks a cheering horde of fans outside.
Then, inevitably, he goes to them, disappearing into crowd after crowd of autograph seekers, amateur photographers and Hollywood glad-handers, reveling in their love even as he mocks their ardor. He’s ruthless about his friends, too: Of the unlikely backstage pair of Jon Hamm and his old co-worker Jack McBrayer he says it’s like seeing “the Monopoly Man with a pig on a leash.”
This scene is played out in microcosm with O’Brien’s beleaguered staff, who have the competent yet long-suffering, slightly stressed affect of professional soldiers or emergency room attendants. At one point, O’Brien conducts a meeting in which everyone is forced to do their jobs and hash out tour logistics or whatever while passing around, and speaking into, a banana; at another, enraged about what he perceives to be a penchant by his employees to overschedule his time, the comedian compares himself to Anne Frank.
These moments unfold like particularly uncomfortable (though undeniably funny) skits, which is in one sense what they are. O’Brien’s team, long-practiced, know that a laugh is everything in their line of work. They also attempt to deflect or placate their boss at nearly every turn. But the fact remains that there is no graceful way to sit silently and be humiliated by the man who pays your salary, even if it’s in service of a bit, and even when you’re in on the joke.
O’Brien, whose uncommon intelligence is even more evident outside a television studio, is far from unaware of this paradox. “I am extremely hard on myself,” he says. “That’s something that spills over onto other people.” And how can it not? One of the recurring themes of “Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop” is how the outsized demands on the very famous come inevitably to characterize their everyday reality. There is no gas station, airport tarmac or backstage area O’Brien can go without being stopped by nearly every human he encounters; his thirst for love and attention, which is never less than hugely apparent here, is nothing compared to how much people want out of him.
In its meditation on fame and its sometimes-exhilarating, sometimes-caustic effects, Flender’s “Conan O’Brien” has more in common with D.A. Pennebaker’s Bob Dylan documentary “Don’t Look Back” than it does with comedy concert flicks like “The Original Kings of Comedy” or “Eddie Murphy Raw,” even if one of O’Brien’s best bits in the film is having Murphy’s infamous leather suit from “Raw” remade for his 6’4” frame. The sight of a bored O’Brien waiting for hours at the alumni talent show portion of his 25th college reunion to go onstage for a few minutes in front of his old classmates tells you nearly everything you need to know about the warring threads of need and ego and kindness that do battle inside the man daily. In the end, for Conan O’Brien, need always wins out.
