With just days to go before hosting the 98th Academy Awards, Conan O’Brien says there’s one Best Picture nominee his writers simply can’t crack.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Wednesday night, O’Brien revealed that despite many attempts, his all-star writers room has yet to land a joke about Train Dreams that actually works.
“There are times where there’s certain areas we cannot crack,” he said. “One of them is the movie Train Dreams.”
“I think they’ve written 5,000 jokes around Train Dreams. Not one of them is any good,” he added, before joking, “I blame Train Dreams.”
The challenge, he suggested, is that the film’s premise doesn’t lend itself easily to punchlines.
“It’s a movie about a lumberjack, boo-hoo!” O’Brien joked, quickly adding that the film itself is “beautiful.”
Pressed by Kimmel to share one of his discarded jokes, O’Brien reluctantly delivered what he called the best of the rejected batch:
“Train Dreams was nominated for Best Picture. Finally, a movie that proves being a Pacific Northwest lumberjack in the early 1900s wasn’t as fun as it sounds.”
The line earned applause from the audience—before O’Brien quickly shut it down.
“No, no! Pity applause doesn’t work,” he said. “That’s why you’re not going to see this joke.”
Whether Train Dreams ultimately finds its way into O’Brien’s Oscars monologue remains to be seen—but viewers tuning in Sunday will now know at least one punchline that didn’t make the cut.
Watch O’Brien’s full conversation with Kimmel below—including an inspired retelling of the story he previously shared on his podcast about the prank he wisely chose not to pull during his first guest shot on David Letterman’s Late Show.
