No one knows late night television quite like LateNighter’s editor-at-large Bill Carter, whose two books on the subject—1994’s The Late Shift and 2010’s The War for Late Night are revered among industry insiders and fans alike.
In a special episode of Inside Late Night, Mark Malkoff catches up with Carter, with whom he shares a Webby Award for their work together on the companion podcast to Carter’s 2020 CNN docuseries, The Story of Late Night.
In a wide-ranging conversation, the two discuss SNL’s landmark 50th season, the current state of late-night talk, and the one person both agree is the obvious first choice to replace Lorne Michaels at Saturday Night Live when the time comes.
Click the embed below to listen now, or find Inside Late Night on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Follow Bill Carter on Twitter/X, and read his articles for LateNighter here.
Show Transcript
Mark Malkoff: Bill Carter, good to talk to you.
Bill Carter: Hello, Mark. It’s been a while. Nice to see you. There’s your home, and your pictures behind you, and your books. I hope one of those books I wrote, but I don’t know.
You’re the first to acknowledge my set dress, and it was mainly my wife, Christine, who produces, works on this show. But, um, yeah, we have the, the CNN, we did that show together. We did, uh, the..
Oh, yeah.
That was, that was a lot of fun, The Story of Late Night ,when we did the podcast, which was really, really fun. Behind the Desk.
And, and, and I won a Webby award.
So did I, because I was a producer on it.
Nice.
You acted, like surprised. There were like six producers. I, they gave me a producer title. I don’t, but you did.
I did go to the ceremony, Mark. So, so I, you know, I could claim my trophy.
Did you pay the 250 or whatever?
No. CNN coughed up for it.
And I still hear from people that, uh, talk about it. So I haven’t talked to you in a while publicly. I mean, we, it’s been, we did a bunch of episodes with The Carson Podcast. Um, the landscape, even from the last time we talked, a couple of years ago, uh, is so different in late night. I want to start just with Saturday Night Live because it’s just the buzz on it. It’s the 50th. The show is, I mean, especially this season is almost unrecognizable in terms of bringing people back from different casts, which I understand.
Yeah.
I mean, if you want to get those ratings up, I thought that they were going to bring Dana Carvey to do Joe Biden four years ago, I was convinced they were going to do that to try to get. The demographic to get back to the show, um, it took a while and I’m glad that they went. Well, I’m glad they went with him at the same time, you want to see the cast members propelled.
Yeah. And they’ve, they’ve used alumni like, like I, I’ve never seen. I mean, why was Kyle Mooney on the show this past week?
Why was Punkie Johnson in goodnights? It was nice to see her. Yes. But, um, Yeah, I was just like, oh, that’s Punkie. Yeah. Kyle was in the monologue for like seven seconds
He’s not on the staff anymore.
Not that I know of Uh, not that I know of but the bringing the people back I get it like Maya Rudolph.
Oh, that was great
Yeah, she was fantastic um It is one of those things where like a Gaffigan made sense because he plays to every demographic you go to a Gaffigan Gaffigan show there’s kids in the audience up until you know people and that are seniors. I mean, yeah You It made sense, it seems to me, obviously, bringing Samberg back and Lonely Island, it’s like, we want to try to get everyone that was watching when they were in high school.
Kind of, yeah.
Because a lot of people, maybe college, high school, and some people stopped watching. We want to bring everybody back for the 50th to get some, like, energy. Is that what you, your take on it?
Well, that’s part of it, for sure. I mean, I think they just cast those guys because, you know, I think they cast him because he could pull off, uh, Doug [Emhoff] and, uh, but also because he has a phone and then they had him do a, you know, Lonely Island film this past week. So he’s back on the show. It seems like more or less. And maybe he has. You know, uh, a gap in his, uh, professional schedule.
You never know, but to get that, I think that was such a strange thing to have somebody who’s never hosted the show do one of those recurring things. I don’t know if that’s ever been done before, that they brought somebody in to re
Yeah, cause Maya has hosted, right?
Maya has hosted, yeah. I think that was probably, um, the first time and I wouldn’t be surprised if they brought him. Can we talk about the writing last time we were talking? I think Kate McKinnon might’ve still been there where it was very big character-y pieces. And right now it seems like the writers in the cast, it’s like kind of even, and they’re doing more writerly pieces. I, I think like Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell and like Mike, uh, DiCenzo, it, it, it, it really, it seems like it’s, um, it, it’s almost has a, a feel back when Smigel and Downey and Franken were there more writerly pieces. Do you agree with that?
Well, I, I, I know what you’re talking about. Maybe not everyone knows, but a writerly piece, but, uh. Yeah, it’s, it’s not so much a breakout character that they’re, you know, bringing back. And to me, I, I assume that it has something to do with what they deliver every week. I mean, I think, you know, they, now they like Domingo, like Domingo’s a character. He’s going to be back all the time.
That’s rare though. I mean, for them, it seems more the concept premise pieces that I want to see. Listen, Kate McKinnon showing up. Um, it was the Kate McKinnon show. It was the Will Ferrell show when he was on, it was the Kristen Wiig show. I personally like when you have a balanced group of people, not to take anything away from, from Kate McKinnon, but it just seems like, I mean, you do have that layer of the celebrities doing the cold open and people, but I, it definitely has a feel where, um, that, that, that grounding the plane thing’s over the top doesn’t exist anymore on the show.
It does. Well, I don’t know if it doesn’t exist, but I think it’s going to be sort of a field thing. I mean, I think, you know, Kate McKinnon just blew up, tremendous, like Kristen Wiig. So, you know, Once they start doing a few and they say, Oh my God, this. She can do anything and they give her anything. And you know, who’s getting to that point is Sarah Sherman.
She’s fantastic. She’s phenomenal.
This last week, I said, wow, they used her a lot. They used them when they, when she came on as Gaetz, I was like, Oh, this is fascinating. They’re using her as Gaetz. They didn’t use one of the guys, you know, and she was just in a lot of bits. She obviously did the huge bit at Weekend Update. And she was in the song she was in, you know, she did a lot of bits. And I thought. If I, if I was new to the show, I’d say, wow, that girl’s doing a lot of work.
Big range. Very confident. Again, she’s one of those people like Dana Carvey that got rejected from the show the first time and came back the second time and got the show. IIt seemed the timing was really right for her. What did you think of, uh, uh, Ms. Harris when she did her cold open, um, a couple weeks ago?
Oh, I thought that was a great move and she was very comfortable. I thought she was comfortable, uh, and they didn’t ask her to do too much, which was good. You know, I thought she handled it fine. You know, they obviously made their preferences pretty clear. It didn’t matter as it turns out, but they did make their preferences clear. Um, I guess for somebody like Maya Rudolph, it’s kind of, uh, passed now. She doesn’t have to be on the show nearly as often. Uh, maybe she prefers that. I don’t know. Uh, but, uh, James Austin Johnson is a very good Trump, I have to say.
He’s phenomenal. What did you think when the, um, the first, uh, Saturday, after the Tuesday, when the cast was playing themselves for the cold open? What were, what were your thoughts? I didn’t think they were gonna, they definitely had to acknowledge something with the, um, kind of like the feel of their show for, um, I think it’s, Kind of obvious, maybe, that they weren’t, uh, in, in terms of the writing, pro-Trump.
Pretty obvious, yes.
They had to acknowledge it. I think that’s fair to say, but I, I really thought they were going to play up the comedy more and it was, it worked. I just thought there
It was just a big setup for the joke. Who the joke was. Okay. So now we’re going to kiss your ass, but you know, that was, that was a big setup for the joke. As it started, I was thinking to myself, this isn’t sincere that I did feel like they were doing that and I thought, no, no, this isn’t, this isn’t like. Uh, when they had, uh, uh, Kate McKinnon doing the, uh, song, the Hillary Clinton song, which was much more overt kind of, uh,
There were no jokes whatsoever. It was..
No jokes at all. This, this was, it kind of felt like a setup. Uh, and I was like, well, I, you know, I guess they came up with that because they got a lot of people into it and they could sort of like play up to it. I didn’t feel like it was then. A signal that they were going to be softer on Trump going forward, and boy, they are not.
Oh no!
If you go from Weekend Update this past week, which was really big swings at Trump, uh, in those jokes, so.
I have to go back to this, and we’ve talked about this before, but 50 years, how? Zero competition series competition with somebody taking them on mad TV, probably the closest, but different demographic. They were making it for 12 year olds. It was on at 11 o’clock and they purposely kept the writing. Um, and I’ve talked to cast members and writers on the show and, uh, the people, at least I’ve talked to very frustrated in terms of the stuff that was, that was getting on. In terms of the tone, it wasn’t a direct competition with the show whatsoever.
It wasn’t live, was it, Mark?
No, no. They would do these tapings and they, I mean, big advantage. But it was in terms of the style of what they were doing versus what SNL was doing. And it was just, you know, SNL would do references. I don’t want to say play up to the top of their intelligence, but they were doing, they would do references that maybe a 12 year old or a 14 year old wouldn’t know.
Absolutely.
It’s just a different style. It’s a different approach. But how do you have 50 years without any?
Fifty years without somebody really taking them on? I said the magic word there live. I mean, I think that is the absolute total secret sauce for that show because Everyone knows watching that show. We’re like in the audit, we’re actually sitting there like everybody else. This is actually happening while we’re watching it. And it’s a bit of a high wire act. And once in a while, things go a little haywire, which is fine. That’s… people are fine with it, but it runs fabulously for the most part. And this is, I mean, you can praise Michaels for, for a whole lot of things, but running that show is extraordinary. It’s an extraordinary feat and you only know it when you go and you see it and you spend time like I have done and watch them doing it. And you’re like, this is insane.
It really is.
The hallway has enormous sets lined up in this business buildings, hallway that they have to roll out and get set up in between a commercial. It’s really a fantastic magic act. And I do think the movie got a little, the sense of that, that it was this Very electric kind of feeling and it’s always had that. I mean, it’s always had that.
There’s no reason in Los Angeles that they couldn’t, with like a big stage, do something similar like that.
If somebody was capable of it. You gotta have somebody really, a producer that’s really, really capable of it and really will commit to it. But because you know when, when Dick Ebersol took over for whatever those three, four years he did it, he started out, he was doing a live show, and as time went on he did more and more taped pieces because it’s very hard to do. And I, and I think that’s one, one big factor, anyway.
Yeah, I, it’s one of those things with the networks and stuff, like, I, no one has even tried, I mean, The State, CBS signed them for, like, a, a moment, and they did a Friday primetime, and they were talking about putting them on, but, like, did, Fox tried something with Roseanne, I think, for four episodes, it was.
Yeah.Well, the most serious one was Fridays.
Yes, but I mean…
That was on for several years. It was on for several years.
But it wasn’t a competition in terms of the time slot.
No, it wasn’t head to head because they, they tried to stake out their own night. I think thinking that would give them a little Safety from being going head to head and you know, they found a few performers that were very good, but it’s really hard to do and I have to say, I think being in New York is an advantage for that. I’ve always felt like the late night shows in New York have more electricity.
I like the energy for sure. I do think that in terms of, listen, your show of shows, there’s been, there were sketch comedy shows that was not. an invention. The thing that Lorne Michaels has, which, uh, is just the, you know, the format of the host, music, and Update everything else. Doing a sketch show, like I heard a former cast member say Mad TV was a ripoff of Saturday Night Live, and I’m like, are you kidding me? They’re just doing sketches. Yes, they’re on Saturday, but the sketch shows have been on way before 75.
Right, they were, and it’s interesting because I’ve been doing a series of, uh, of pieces with people who have been on the show in the background, and I did one with Alan Zweibel, and, uh, and he talked about how, you know, Carol Burnett was on, right? Carol Burnett was brilliant, really, brilliant sketch comedian. Uh, and you know, Sonny and Cher was doing a show, you know, but Lorne was, Lorne said, well, we’re, we’re like the off Broadway version of this. We don’t have bright lights. We don’t have, you know, some big garish, uh, looking stuff going on. It’s like the lighting was different, there was depth to the sets. You know, he brought in a Broadway designer, Eugene Lee, and he made it much more singular and standout. And that’s interestingly why when they do the bit in the movie where Milton Berle is on, and Milton Berle was not in any way near that first show and didn’t didn’t even host till the fourth season, but they have him doing a variety show downstairs and you see the difference. And he’s like, like showing you that that vibe was over once Saturday night Live came on
Yeah, by 1975 for sure. I am one of those people, and I know a couple people that worked at the show, that just, Jason Reitman, I like his work, and I know it’s going to be a fun movie, but I just know too much, and I know it’s going to be tough for me to go in knowing what I know.
Yes, me too!
I know so much about the show, and I literally saw the first show when it came on. So I know, I was really, and I was bothered by, it was fictionalized. In terms of timing, tremendously, tremendously fictional. I mean, he, he, he, he finds Zweibel in a bar, you know, in between the dress and he gets a joke on that kind of stuff, but what they got and by the end of the movie, I, I’d thrown most of that out because. I, I went with it and, and I liked the vibe, but Laraine Newman, when I talked to her, she was like, Oh my God, I sat, I watched the movie and I said, Oh my God, this is pure fiction. This is pure fiction. And she said, by the end, I was so with them that when Chevy says live from you, I started to cry because it got it from her point of view. It just got it. And I think that that’s why I think it was the right kind of, when I first watched it, I was like, this is dumb. You you’re throwing all this garbage and it didn’t really relate to what was going on. But then I realized he was doing, he was not making a literal movie about the first show. He was making a movie about revolutionizing television. That, that’s what the movie’s about.
I’ve heard people call it cosplay a little bit. And, um, the performers were great. The set was great. Um, I really did enjoy the trailer. It was just certain things like Milton Berle and, uh, the Zweibel thing. That part, I was so against. I was like, Milton Berle, for God’s sake, he was the enemy of the show because he came on and he tried to do his own shtick and they hated him, right? So I knew that, and I thought, how can you work that, shoehorn that into the first show? But the way he did it, I understood what he was doing. I, I came away thinking, this is pretty good. I felt something for it by the end.
The network could not have been more supportive of Lorne Michaels. To make Tebet out to be like that. Herb Schlosser…
They make Tebet out to be such a villain, yes.
I sat down with Herb Schlosser and I’ve heard Lorne Michaels talk, complete support!
One hundred percent. Lorne says nothing but great things about Herb Schlosser. He was so on their side.
I, I get they needed somebody to be able to play, um, kind of like the
The villain! It needed that.
And Ebersol? I, I mean
Oh, they, they really treated Dick badly, too.
I was really surprised by that. And I mean, it’s just what it is. I, I, I just know too many people to go to movies like this one based on a true story or
And they think it really happened. Yeah,
I remember, um, my dad saw, um, Harry Houdini, a movie, where he dies at the end and doing one of his tricks. I think it’s like the water torture chamber thing. And he started telling me when I was a kid that that’s how he died. And I’m like, learned at school. I’m like, no, that was a movie. Yeah. They change things.
Didn’t he have a burst appendix or something?
It was, yeah. I think he was punched in the stomach or something, but like, my point is, is people see these things and it was, in terms of the casting, in terms of fun, at some point I think I will see it, but I just, uh, I don’t know, I didn’t want to, uh, to do that to myself.
I think this is truly a case of suspend your disbelief.
I think so.
You know, it you’re going to enjoy it. You really have to do that.
What was your take on the Bill Burr monologue on SNL from a few weeks ago?
I didn’t like it.
My take is that the cold open, which was the cast talking about Trump as themselves, it did okay. It didn’t do fantastic over the top, less. It did. Okay. When something just does it. Okay. It’s very hard when the host comes out for their monologue, the energy.
Good point.
I’ve seen it time and time again. Now, I think it probably wasn’t his strongest. It definitely wasn’t his strongest, but I definitely think when people hear Trump The audience laughing. As long as they’re laughing, people are like, Oh, that must be funny. That that’s how it seems a lot of the time is the audience reaction. If there are laughs, it is funny, but I think he was a bit of a disadvantage.
Well, I, I, I just felt like his read of the situation to be sort of a bro guy. He’s a bro comic. That’s what he is, right? For the audience that was clearly a Saturday Night Live audience was going to be a pro Harris audience. I mean, they just are, you know, that’s, that would be like, you know, coming on Jimmy Kimmel’s show and doing kind of bro stuff to support Trump. It would be people, the audience would be like, well, it’s Colbert even more so, or, uh, The Daily Show even more so. So I thought it was, it just, to me, it just didn’t read the room right. And that’s fine. Actually, that’s good. If you then kill. You know what I mean? If you then kill, if you, if the audience is not with you completely, and then you kill, and I didn’t think his material was that good so that it was going to kill. So, and it’s interesting because I saw, I just was watching clips recently for some reason, a bunch of late night clips about funny interviews and Burr was on, I think he was on with Conan back in the day. And, uh, You know, he was that kind of edgy kind of bro guy, but it was better material. I thought.
I mean, I definitely think, I mean, yeah, it’s hard to turn out that much material. And normally I feel like the audience is with the monologue, no matter what, but it definitely seemed like a disconnect. I wanted to talk about Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show. So I was talking to a high person up a couple of years ago. And I was just, you know, just talking, just kind of like, um, saying some ideas I had for the show. My first suggestion is you have to do a primetime anniversary show every year. And this was just a couple of years ago, to remind people why this show, his skillset and why people need to watch this show. And I cannot believe it took as long for 10 years for it to finally happen, but they should be doing that every year. And it was highly successful. I’m glad they did it, but. He tries to definitely emulate some of Johnny Carson’s style, and Carson did it every year. And I hope going forward, they do, because no other show does it.
That’s a good point. I don’t know, I don’t remember if they used, also used material from when he was on Late Night, um, because, you know, it was basically doing the same show before he got to The Tonight Show, right?
I think they did. I could be off, but my, I,
I’m not positive, but he did some very great stuff back then that would be very, you know, highlights for him, but it would make sense to me, but I think, uh, since it worked, you can imagine someone’s going to say, well, that was a good idea, let’s do it. It does seem like you don’t want to like do it, maybe not every year. Cause I mean, Fallon doesn’t have Johnny’s long history, but I don’t want John, I can’t remember when Johnny did his first anniversary show.
Carson started doing the clips with Rudy Tellez when he came in, and I think it was probably maybe five or six years in.
That soon, okay, yeah.
And it was a lot easier though, I mean, in terms of like, you didn’t have to have these clips kill. I mean, there was not much competition, you could be really slow. Um, and he had a lot of guests that were on the show that he would actually talk to. It wasn’t all a clip show.
Well, the other thing though, Mark, is that the clips now are available very easily, you know, aren’t going to just see them on the anniversary show. You know what I mean? If you go on his YouTube channel, it’s full of those clips.
I would say though, in terms of the NBC audience, which the people that watch network television, I don’t know how aware they are necessarily staying up til 1130. And I thought it was the best infomercial to get people starting to watch the show.
Yeah.
I wanna say another thing I would do if I were them right now, and especially because now they’re down to four days a a week, they’re not gonna do this. But if they really, really wanted to change the energy of the show and build up excitement, and I think it would really change the show, the trajectory from the energy for the audience and for Jimmy is to move into 8 H and do this show Monday through Wednesday, two shows on Wednesday. And for him to play the 400 people thrust stage like Leno did when he moved to Studio 3. It, it, when Jay did that thing, it changed the show and I feel like it would change the show for Jimmy, what are your thoughts?
Well, a couple of things. I don’t, would Lorne let them use it?
Why not? They don’t do anything Monday through Wednesday.
Well, Lorne runs the show anyway, I guess he would
They’re not doing anything Monday through Wednesday.
Uh, you’re right. They, they don’t really block until later. It would give them a bigger crowd. Yes. The difference with Leno, it felt like to me, it was Leno is a standup, right? That’s what he is. That’s what he was born to do. And honestly, when he was doing the show. I don’t know how many years he did it before he did this thrust stage. It was many years, right?
It was a couple. He, I think it was only two, maybe. I think…
Maybe two. Okay. Maybe two, but very interesting. I know this is sounds crazy, but he w he was not him. I didn’t think he was himself.
He was doing Johnny’s show. He was trying to do Johnny
Exactly. He was coming to a curtain and standing on the square, the X where Johnny was. Right. And of course, when he subs for Johnny, he did that. It didn’t look like he was the comfortable. I’d seen him in, you know, clubs many, many times, right? I went to the Comedy Magic Club many times and saw him there on Sunday nights and I actually said to him at one point, I said, why are you doing this that way? Why aren’t you emphasizing your own standup? Why aren’t you doing something closer to the audience? When I see him in the club, you’re right on top of them. And then he went to New York. He did a week in New York. As you, and he did it in 8H
I was there. No, it was, I was in the second row. I mean, I saw that the energy and it was,
And there was tons of energy and he was close to the audience and they rebuilt the set and they had him do that. And it, and that enhanced the rest of his career. It was absolutely essential. But Jimmy, I don’t think is that. He doesn’t have a super emphasis on his monologue and he does stuff on the stage more. I mean, you know, he does shtick more, you know what I mean? He might have dogs come out or, you know, whatever. Uh, and he interacts with the band a whole lot and all that. So I’m not sure what, I would do something else though, to, to make the energy, up the energy, I actually wrote a piece, uh, for the site of a couple of months ago saying somebody should do the show live. They should do it live. Why not? Why not do it live? Because it’s not, it’s much harder on the lifestyle, et cetera. Right. You know.
I just think that, I mean, so many of those shows every night, some of them do post production and it’s for something to air live to tape. I mean, the last show I know is occasionally, I guess, an election show with Colbert or a super bowl, but going back, Jay Leno’s Tonight Show did the first two weeks live, I believe.
Yeah, and he did he did some after political conventions live. Disastrously.
And The Daily Show, we, but I mean that’s yes That is late night. I’m talking more network television.
How long did Johnny Carson do it live?
Did he do it live… live to tape? It was live to tape the entire time, but he never did the show live.
He never did the show at 1130 in New York? He only did it to my knowledge He only did an 1130 show maybe two or three weeks ago Two or three times. And one of them was early on. They did a new year’s show at 1130, but going on in the six days, they were pre taping the new year’s show and making it look like they were cutting to a time square when it was happening.At Letterman and all the, a lot of those people just, it’s harder to do it live. And the risk factor.
It’s way harder. It’s way harder. And it’s really hard on your lifestyle.
Johnny Carson. And it was sometime in the seventies that the press releases went out that they were going to start doing the show live. Um, Carson was gonna, you know, give the show more energy and Frank Sinatra was going to be on show number one, from Las Vegas, live. So Sinatra’s booked and it was. I think it was just a couple days before that it was Carson’s staff and people were just like, this is going to be too hard for our families and Johnny caved. And I think they made the right decision but for a while Johnny was convinced we’re going to do this live and it would have been interesting to see what would have happened with that.
Yeah, I just feel like, let’s face it, these shows are, are threatened going forward because of everything that’s going on with their networks. I think they are super important for their networks, by the way, and growing more important, because you have a signature star now. Your late night guy is a face in the network. But I just think, You know, you, you can’t ignore the fact that people say, well, I don’t really have to stay up to watch this. I can watch this tomorrow and you can watch the monologue tomorrow. And that’s, that’s unfortunate. I think that that used to be a thing. I gotta stay up to see Letterman. I have to see it, you know?
There was danger in Letterman and there’s not really as much danger on those shows where a reason to stay up necessarily versus watching it the next morning.
Yeah, that’s, that is absolutely true. So the whole word of mouth thing is different. You know, if you were in college when Letterman was on, you had to watch Letterman.
It was groundbreaking. It was incredible. And I still think the show still holds up that late night from February of 82 to June of 93. I mean, it’s to me, it would, it still works. Um, and Dave on that show was amazing. I want to go back and I know we talked about it once. Uh, I kind of forget a little bit, but, um, I wanted to bring up the broom closet with Jay Leno when he was eavesdropping on NBC. It was not a closet. It was a small office, correct?
It was a small, it wasn’t, I wouldn’t even call it an office because it had no windows. It was, uh, kind of a room off the office, but it had kind of, uh, you know, office cleaning supplies in it. As well as a desk, a bit of a desk, small desk and a telephone and the real use for it was when someone was there negotiating something with a client and needed a private line, they would say, Well, you can use the phone in there, you know, and you could close yourself in there. It was pretty small. I was in it.
How did it get to be this whole folklore that he was in a closet?
Because it, it had closet like things in it, as well as a desk. It is the only thing I can say, because when he, he described it as a closet himself, he described it as a closet. And when I was there subsequently, when I was writing the book, I can’t remember how I did this, but I snuck into the office, into the room. Someone left the room and I, I opened the door and looked around it so I could describe it. And, uh, And it was small. I mean, it was really small. You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t call it a bedroom. I mean, like, yeah, there’s no windows in it, you know, it was small, but it wasn’t a closet. There wasn’t like, you know, uh, files piled up or anything like that. But that was his description of it. It was a closet and NBC kind of referred to it as he got, you know, he, he must’ve been, in that closet that we use for the phone calls.
I was talking, I had a former, uh, Fallon writer, Jon Rineman on the show, and he was saying when he was teaching at Emerson a couple of years ago, the students that the shows that they watched were John Oliver and Seth Meyers. Those were the two shows. And I found that interesting. I, I had no idea what college audiences would necessarily gravitate to, but that was interesting with Seth. I’m guessing the, the Closer Look stuff especially might play to that demo.
Yeah, that’s, that’s certainly part of it, but it’s also interesting cause it is on late, okay. Uh, so , you know, the college people are the most likely to maybe done other stuff before that. Um, that’s, that’s a factor. And there’s been sort of a tradition of, of that. ’cause co the Conan was their guy for sure.
Oh, 100%. The 12:30 slot on NBC from 82 until, uh, 2009 or whenever it was, was, yes, that was the slot for the college.
That was the slot. And, uh. I don’t think Seth is Individually, the same kind of appeal to younger, to that crowd as Letterman was at all, because I think Letterman was a spectacular breath of fresh air for that, uh, era. And, uh, and I think Seth is a very good host. He’s a very solid host. Um, but he’s so point of view. Seth is really, really point of view.
I like his interviews a lot. I really do.
He’s good. He’s good. He’s a very bright guy. Most of these guys are really bright guys.
Alex Baze over there is a machine. A joke-writing machine. I want to talk about Colbert’s show. It seems that you have maybe two different performers. You have Stephen doing the monologue, which, you know, to his audience is amazing. But if you watch the interviews, without that, it seems like it’s almost a different person, and you wouldn’t even know their political side. Is that a fair assessment?
Yeah, kind of. Uh, I do think that, that show is a little odd. Uh, they, they don’t do it all every night as a live on tape show. They don’t. They often have a bit that they tape and it comes back the next night and he puts a suit back on to make it look like it’s the show. A good example, fairly recently, I saw Paul Simon on the show. And, uh, Simon sang a song, which was not familiar, but then he sat and talked. It was a good interview. And in the interview, uh, Colbert said, you know, uh, my mother used to really, she reacted so much to your song Slip Sliding Away because there’s the lyric and Simon knew what he was going to say. I know a woman, uh, you know, change their life. Here’s, here’s just so many things. She said, a good day ain’t got no rain. A bad day is when you lie in bed and think of things that might’ve been. And he said that, that really resonated with his mother. And Simon says, well, I’ll, you know, I’ll sing it for you. And then they just went on with the interview and he didn’t sing it for them. But it was only like a week later. He said, and now we have a special song from Paul Simon. And I was like, whoa. So they did do it, but they brought it back. It wasn’t the same audience, you know, and they do that. They do that quite a bit. I’ve been told.
I didn’t know that.
So there’s not, it isn’t like a seamless show. So it does seem like his energy can be different. You know, after the monologue and he doesn’t do a lot of other comedy besides he does that Meanwhile bit, but he doesn’t do a whole lot. You know, he doesn’t do that many desk bits and he does basically a very long monologue, sometimes a very good monologue and a very sharp monologue. And he’s a, he’s a, such a trained sketch guy. He does a whole lot of shtick. Um, he always does, you know, any fake prop he has, which I guess, they’re trained to do like, you don’t just stop, you give it to somebody as though it’s real, you know, and he’s and he does all that. He’s very comfortable doing that. And he’s not a bad interviewer, but it just seems, you’re right. There seems to be a different the commercial ends and then he comes and he brings out the guest and it seems he’s a little bit of a different guy.
It’s a huge accomplishment that the show is number one to rise to something that people forget normally when something is a success, Conan took a long time, people were criticizing the whole year of Colbert, the first year people were like, why did you make this decision? This was a terrible decision. Um, completely criticized. And then he takes aside. And is number one and it just amazing that they’ve been able to keep that and for people to say, why does he do that? I’m like, if you’re number one, you have 200 employees that are, you know, you’re taking care of and it’s, you know, it, I do think that if you are at number one and it’s working, why, why would you change it?
Well, what’s fascinating about Stephen is that he did a show on Comedy Central, which was, he did it for nine years.
I was there for. That was there for four years.
He was a character. It was doing a sketch for nine years and he was fabulous at it. If you look at the best of those Colbert reports, they are gut bustingly funny. He was fantastic at it. And then he gets hired at CBS. And the big question is, can he be funny as himself? Right? And I remember interviewing him about that. And he said, well, yeah, it’s a little concerning to me. And I said, but why the, the whole idea of the right, everyone else in late nights, they’re not playing a character. They’re just being themselves. Why would it be hard? And he said, I don’t know. And then maybe it won’t be, but it was.
It was, it took him a year. I think a lot of times it takes Leno. It took him a while to, to, to get it. If somebody is not. a full year to be good right away. You know, Letterman was good right away at late night in ‘82 because he guest hosted for Carson all those times. And he had the morning show.
That was a big thing.
And you can see the evolution of his interviewing.
Jay, Jay guest hosted a million times. He still wasn’t sharp when he did it.
I was talking to somebody recently, I think it was Arthur Meyer who wrote for Fallon that was saying it still took Dave on late night, a couple of years to get the interviews to be really, really good at them. And comfortable.
Oh, he wasn’t good at interviews at all initially.
And he became this other thing.
And that’s an interesting thing too, Mark, because if you’re a stand up, you are trained in your mind to go for the gag. You go for the gag, you go for the gag. So if you’re with a guest and the guest says something, you… if you think somebody’s funny you say it and you blow up the interview you could blow up the interview that way You don’t you blow whatever the flow of the thing is And you have to really get to the point where you’re listening to that person You’re not just thinking of the next funny thing You’re gonna say and I think that was particular with Letterman Letterman had a weird thing with He didn’t want people in the audience that he would recognize…
That’s true. And if you worked on the show, like I I worked on the show it would throw him off. He didn’t want anybody if they were…
He would not let me sit. I wasn’t, you know, on his staff, I’d interviewed him. He would not let me sit in the audience, because if he saw you, his brain would click and it would go off into some tangent. And he didn’t, he just didn’t want that. And I think that’s part of being good. And you got to go with that person. You got to listen to a very funny story Ben Stiller told me, right. Cause Jay was terrible at this. He really was bad at it. And he, because Jay would not be thinking, he wasn’t that curious about the other person. And he would have a list of questions and he’d try, you know, stick with your list. You know, they tell him you’ll be better, you know, and he was so off with this that Ben Stiller told me he was on the show and, uh, he was sitting with Jay and Jay was like here, right? So he’d be talking to him like this, but Jay was looking like this. So Ben, tell me about your latest movie. Ben is over here, right? And he’s like, this is weird. There’s no eye contact. What’s going on? And he tried to go with the interview, which was really jumpy and incoherent, kind of. And then during the break, he looked around and the cue card guy had the questions on the cue cards.
Debbie Vickers was off to the side a lot, writing notes for him.
And they didn’t want him looking down all the time. At the, at his card for the question. So they thought, let’s put them up, but that was worse because then he didn’t look at the guest at all.
Debbie was writing notes and he was always in his head trying to come up with a joke to at least.
Yeah.
I mean, as a comic, I stand up. I do to get that it was just a different style.
It is.
And I, and it worked. I mean, he was number one.
I was accidentally watching clips. And it was a whole bunch of things from funny, funny interviews from Conan and funny interviews from, uh, Craig Ferguson was one with Ricky Gervais, and it was very funny, very, very funny because Gervais was quick and, you know, and they were just riffing on each other and those are great. Those are great. And. You do think, you know, the show has to be entertaining. That’s what the idea is. Even though they say it’s a talk show, it has got to be entertaining. Once in a while, there’s a serious guest, and it’s very interesting. But Johnny used to do like an author at the end of the show. And
90 minutes to fill. Sure.
90 minutes. Of course, you can’t have an entertaining show nonstop for 90 minutes every night of the week. But it has to be entertaining. Lassally used to always say to me, you know what? That was a good show because it was entertaining. It was entertaining. And I’m like, yeah, that’s the idea. That’s the idea. And when it works, it’s really good entertainment.
The thing with Lassally talking about that was entertaining, is this doesn’t happen today just because it’s completely different, is they would put people on like Calvin Trillin was a good talker. They would put people like Orson Bean that were not alien actors, but they could, they were really charming and amazing storytellers.And that doesn’t exist anymore.
Very rarely.
You are not going to get a Fallon booking. You’re not going to get a Colbert or Kimmel booking based on that.
No, no, you’re right. They just would put on a witty person, you know, and often that would work.
Yeah. I mean, as long, that’s what Peter told me. He’s like, we did not care about who had the number one movie. It was just like he said, some of those were the worst guests, especially people if they were under, you know, certain people like Tom Hanks or Michael J. Fox were charismatic and funny enough where they could get booked and do those stories, but they were very skeptical to put somebody in their twenties. I mean, Brooke Shields was really good at it, but for the most part they were, they didn’t want to take the risks to put somebody that didn’t have that life experience.
Letterman again did this. He, he would bring on somebody. Who was kind of really a goofy person, you know, like just a completely goofy person, like Harvey Pekar, right?
Oh, on the NBC show you’re talking specifically?
Yeah. Yeah. And, and he, and his stuff with Grodin was just amazing. I’m like, fantastic. I mean, Grodin’s an actor and everything, but he wasn’t on there to be an actor. It was just to be a curmudgeon.
He was playing a character. He was doing a Stephen Colbert-type character.
Yes.
He, he would just go and there would be a portion of the public that thought it was real. It was professional wrestling and they bought it.
Yes. And it was very funny. I guess I started that with Johnny. I think
He did.
Yeah. But, but I mean, he just did that and that made him a great guest. He was just a great guest. If he was on, I wanted to watch, I knew it would be funny.
There were certain guests like Rickles I would put in that situation. I would say Howard Stern. On the NBC show and the CBS show.
Sure. Well, he’s a comic and Rickles is a comic. What we’re talking about is like just a person who’s in the, either a celebrity or just in the news or in Grodin’s case, kind of a B level actor, you know, who just had a thing that would work, you know, and that was great for that. Letterman wanted a person who came to play.
And somebody that was prepared like a Tom Hanks who had didn’t have to go in prepared or Bill Murray showing up out a couple hours early to work with the writers or Bruce Willis did the same thing.
Bruce Willis was an excellent guest. No question. Yeah. And I miss that. I miss that. You don’t see that so much. If I said, who is Stephen Colbert? Who was a bunch of his signature guests? I don’t. I don’t know that I could come up with somebody. I mean, you know, Seth does like his brother or something, which is funny. You know, Norm Macdonald was with Conan. You know, and he was a great guest.
And Ebersol, Dick Ebersol, I think it was in your book, criticized that because Norm at that point was not, didn’t, I don’t think he had his own show and he said that you could have had Norm Crosby on instead of Norm Macdonald, which I disagree with.
A hundred thousand percent. And that was… Norm was a very good guest.
He was incredible. I do understand at 11:30, you have to make some changes though. And when I’m looking back at The Tonight Show, Andy Richter made sense on paper, but I don’t know, I don’t know if that helped The Tonight Show with his role behind the podium, if that necessarily worked or didn’t work. Andy’s great. He worked on the 12:30 show really well, and I know he’s still tight with Conan and works on stuff. But in terms of, of looking back at Conan’s tenure on the Tonight show, I don’t know if..
I feel like Conan was in between a rock and a hard place. They wanted him to be more of an 11:30 host, which meant expand your monologue, particularly, right?
And he did it at the NBC show near the end. I mean, he made those tweaks.
He did, but what Conan was, was a, he, and I wrote this the other day. He, he was, sophisticated silliness was his thing. That’s what his thing was. I like that. And he was really good at that. And he needed to do that. I mean, they didn’t want him to do the string dance. Right. Which he would do at the end of monologue sometime. And it did look sort of dorky. Right.
At 11:30. I, I mean, yeah. I understand where Dick Ebersol was coming from.
I do too. But there’s , the audience. Really liked him doing that.
He would have succeeded if he got as much time as Leno.
Just let him, leave him alone. Just leave him. The same thing happened when he was on at 12:30 and I liked him enormously as a guy from the beginning. I thought he was so awkward at first. I was uncomfortable at times watching him.
He had no performing experience other than some improv classes and he acknowledges that and you saw this guy develop on air and I do want to point out. Andy Richter on the Tonight Show, if they took away the podium and just had the Ed McMahon microphone stand.
Yeah.
I think it was the podium.
Well, that, that was right. But then Andy would sit on the, on the couch and I think he was good.
Very funny on the couch.
I think he’s very funny and Andy’s very funny guy. But Conan, if you left him alone, he’s so smart. Conan is so, so, so smart. He didn’t get into Harvard because he was a funny guy. He’s a very smart guy. And he was going to find it. He was going to find it. He was going to find it. The problem really was Jay, because Jay failed so spectacularly at 10 o’clock that the affiliates were going to cancel their 10 o’clock show. They had to get Jay off the air and Jay had a guarantee, huge guarantee. So they, they, they were stuck financially and Conan was not, Conan was falling a little behind Dave at that, at that point. And, and they just said, let’s come up with this solution where we got to get Jay, we have to keep Jay on the air because we, otherwise we have to pay him a fortune.
Jay denies it, uh, by the way.
Jay denies what?
I talked to him on the phone, very nice to me. Uh, we had a, a long conversation. And, uh, he told me in terms of why I, cause you know, he has his version of things and I know some things and I just pointed out certain things. And one of them was in terms of Conan. I said. That NBC would have had to pay you, whatever that was, like 200 million. He’s like, that’s not true. Maybe he was saying he wouldn’t have taken the money. Um, I’m not sure if that was it, but, um,
Well, you know, maybe not. That’s a good, that’s an interesting question about Jay. If they had said, no, you’re fired. Right. We just said we can’t, you’re canceled. Right? You’re canceled and we’ll pay off the three year deal, whatever, and no penalty. But you know the pay or play.
Oh, 100%. It would have made NBC look ridiculous.
But this was not pay or play. This was pay and play. That was in the contract. Pay and play. You have to put him on. That was in the contract. So his lawyer would have been able to say to them, you’re not putting him on. You have voided this contract and they could have been sued for a whole lot of money.
It would have been a disaster for NBC.
I’m not saying would have or wouldn’t have happened But I think that was very possible So I mean and but I also think nbc was not committed to conan They were not they were not committed to conan the way they could have been.
They weren’t committed to Carson in the beginning They weren’t committed to Leno in the beginning. It’s one of those things once they become I mean, Johnny was running NBC in the beginning. They’re like, you were going to these conventions or going to these on the weekends. I mean, the guy was doing it an hour and 45 minutes then, and on the weekends, they were still having them run around the country and getting on airplanes. And the guy was absolutely exhausted. And Johnny, he did have a good relationship with NBC, but it, they, he had the leverage and there were times where he was like, no, we’re not doing that. And he became a power where Johnny was way more, had way more power than NBC.
Oh, totally. He basically dictated them. You know, it’s going to be four nights a week. Bingo. Okay, it’s four nights a week, Johnny. Then it’s going to be three nights a week. Okay, Johnny. Like, it was like, at that point, he could say anything, you know, I need, I need to have my own production company. Well, yeah, of course. And we’ll give you this commitment. He had them, you know, there was nobody bigger than that guy. Nobody bigger than that, that guy. I think he’s the biggest star in television history.
Isn’t that amazing to look back and somebody like that, that had that much recognition.
It’s remarkable
In terms of, of, of wherever they went in the country.I mean, he could go to England and, um, once he started doing the Oscars, it was a little bit more difficult for him because people would, but pre doing the Oscars, I would say when he was going to Europe and started, I think in 1976,
They didn’t know he was.
Even with the Oscars, he still,
He still was, yeah, they weren’t that aware of Johnny Carson the way it was in America, but he was. And if you look at the whole breadth of the history of television, you can find a star who was like Lucy, right? Who was, who was enormous and had two enormous hit shows, but she is not as big as Carson was. Carson was there for 30 years, absolutely dominating his area. Nobody could enter. He was dominant. You talk about no competition for Saturday Night Live. They tried everything for, against Johnny.
I will say the only threat, the real threat that would have happened is if. When they had Letterman after the morning show, they kept him on contract and they paid him a million dollars a year for a million dollars for two years. And they didn’t have any real estate for him. They just paid him. And Dave was, you know, Getting really restless. And then he started, they started negotiating with Westinghouse and other networks were interested. And that is when Carson, uh, put him at 12:30. I mean, cause I, if I had to guess, I just, I, that was Johnny’s nightmare, to go against Dave. I mean, everybody in the press was like, this is the heir to Johnny. And he, Letterman had the skillset where he could have easily taken that gig.
He could’ve but a syndicated show. I don’t think could take Johnny down.
He might not have taken Johnny down, but he, in terms of like a demographic and in terms of, cause you’re not playing to as many people, if you’re syndicated back then, Westinghouse, you did not have a hundred percent of the markets.
No. Well, Mark, Arsenio made that kind of move. He did make that move as a syndicated show. And he did have a lot of urban viewers that and younger viewers.
He didn’t come close to Johnny though.
Johnny was much older at that point.
Johnny had a network show and Arsenio was getting, I think Arsenio was like at a three, maybe 3.2. And Johnny was like at a 5 or something like that.
But he was getting an audience that didn’t watch Johnny, obviously.
Arsenio the first couple years. Oh my goodness. In terms of the press coverage, in terms of being hot as a comic and press and stuff, it’s unbelievable to look back at that and then how quickly it was over.
Yes. He didn’t have what Johnny had. He didn’t have that. He was a very good host and a good performer, but he was not Carson. He was not Letterman.
I will say that Arsenio, that he was never canceled. He left on his own. I mean, he might’ve been eventually, but you, he, I mean, he did the same thing with Parr, with Ferguson.
Well, he was, but he was going, no, no, the real, what happened to him was that Letterman left and now he had to compete with Letterman and Carson. That’s what really, where he just said that he couldn’t be in the, in that. In that fight, it would be Letterman and Leno actually, Letterman and Leno he had to compete with and he was like, you know, he’s going to kick Jay’s a**, remember? Well, then you have to kick Jay and Dave’s a**. That would be really hard.
Daily Show with Jon Stewart, it’s one of those things where if he had to do it four nights a week, it wouldn’t be the same, but just to see him, the one, have all that energy and just do it once a week, um, it’s a beautiful thing. I think it’s great that he’s doing it.
I really think it’s great. I think it, cause The Daily Show really is challenged because look how cable is challenged, but I think it’s really helped overall the show. And, you know, the other people who would like to be the host, they must be kind of feeling have mixed feeling that he’s coming back for another whole year, at least right. I think it’s good for them. I’m like, I watched last night. I thought Desi Lydic was really good.
Very. Yeah. She’s extremely, extremely funny. She could take over the show if she had to easily.
I wasn’t totally convinced until I watched last night’s show. I thought, boy, she was very, very good. They had very good writing last night. But I mean, if you, if, if you have Jon Stewart once a week and it gives you, it lifts the attention, that’s very important for them. They really need that. And Stewart is committed. I can, I can tell he’s in there and he makes fun of himself for only working one day a week, but he, I think he loves it. He missed it. Let’s face it. He missed it. You know?
I, I never would see in a million years him going back to that thing, to that show. Um, it just, it didn’t occur to me. The Daily Show. I never thought he would ever go back.
I didn’t think he would go back.
I know Apple didn’t work. Um, well, it worked. It just, you know, he, he left on his own. I guess he wanted to do, um, cer certain topics that they weren’t, they didn’t want to do
Exactly. No.
And in terms of a forum, I guess the Daily Show did make sense.
Yeah, he still hadn’t many, I’m sure many of his writers were still there, so.
Yeah, I think so. What are your thoughts on, um, After Midnight?
I don’t like that it’s “fake unscripted.” I, that doesn’t really work for me. Interestingly, CNN does its, uh, riff on the news and it’s unscripted, more unscripted and it has a little more flavor to it than the comics having they’re, but I do think they’re tinkering with it and making it better, and they’re finally letting her do a real monologue. You know, she was supposed to be a hot comic that they didn’t, to me they underused her, but now she’s doing it, and I think it’s improved the show. Again, Mark, leave it alone. You know what I mean? Leave it alone.
Taylor Tomlinson, really, really funny. And I think it’s one of those things where if Stephen, uh, did choose to leave the show, which I mean, he’s number one, why would you leave? She could say she could, um, move up and succeed on that.
Maybe.
If she was given a year,
She needs more time.
If she was given. A year. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it is interesting to, to me cause there’s certain, um, shows that they just did not have, don’t have enough time to succeed. They tried with Busy Phillips the first time, and just, they tried with Pete Holmes. And unless you are given those slots, the only person I saw succeed right away in terms of being good right away was Spike Feresten. I could not believe a guy with no performing experience could do that Fox show and just be as likable and as comfortable on camera.
Well, I liked Amber Ruffin, too.
Oh, she’s fantastic. She was phenomenal. That’s a good point.
I would have left her alone. I mean, but that’s, that gets into the whole thing of how difficult this is to do on a, on a streaming channel.
Do you think a Tom Snyder, do you think a Bob Costas later thing could, would even exist on network TV with podcasts that it would even be, why would anybody even tune in, I guess, unless they have like, I don’t know, a guest that doesn’t normally go on.
Well, that’s the thing because you said, I mean it’s, there’s how many podcasts that have interviews. I mean, it’s just, they’re endless. So I don’t think it would be feasible to just say, now we’re gonna put it on tv. ’cause all the podcasts are on, are video on video anyway. So it’s not really, well, I gotta see this person instead of having a radio interview, you know, Fresh Air has been on forever. You didn’t see them . At least. At least you saw them on the Tomorrow Show.
If you were the head of a network, and you had to have a few people that you would offer a late night show to, and you had to do an 11:30 show, is there anybody in mind, because what happens is a lot of times they’ll go to a Tina Fey, they’ll go to a Bill Burr, they go to, all those people say no because they know how hard, time consuming, and it’s just, it’s so exhausting, but is there anybody that’s never done that at 11:30, that you would think that might have that skill set, that you would, Do you try out?
You have said the name, Tina Fey. And the reason I say that..
She would never do it.
Well, now here’s, here’s something interesting, Mark. I have something to tell you because I wrote at one point when they named Corden, right? When Corden came on, I was like, this is, this seemed to have been the opportunity for a woman. And, and instead they picked a guy who I didn’t even, I never even heard of that guy until he was given that show. And I thought, uh, I’ve been writing about late night and they picked a guy I’ve never heard of, and actually he’s very talented. And, and he eventually was, was pretty funny. But at the time I said, obviously they must’ve thought of women and um, what’s her name who had the show on, on E?
Chelsea Handler.
Chelsea Handler
Could handle one of those shows easily. And, uh, I mean,
But they, they, they looked into Chelsea Handler and they found out what a handful she was and they didn’t want to deal with her, okay?
Is that true?
This is my reporting at the time. Okay. I don’t know whether it’s true, whether they really felt that way or not, but Handler was pissed and Anyway, remember Norm Macdonald, he kind of had a campaign to try to get the show and
We both love Norm, but there’s no way
He’d be great in the monologue and the rest of the show would not work. But, but so I, in this story, I said, you know, you would think they would go to a woman, but obviously this is an issue for a woman, especially one who has somewhat young children. And I said, you know, Amy Poehler. I would give it, I’d love Amy Poehler, maybe she could work, but Tina Fey is a home run. She would be a home run, but obviously she doesn’t want to do it, and people don’t go to her. So, I write that in the New York Times, okay? I get a call from Tina Fey’s manager.
David Miner?
David Miner, who I’ve known a little bit. And he’s like, um, if you write that again, don’t say that. And I said, really? Don’t say that? He said, yeah, we’d appreciate it if you didn’t say she’s not interested. And I was like, I see, okay, so I filed that away, like, like somewhere in there, there was something that maybe Tina would consider, you know? I don’t think she’d consider a show on Peacock or whatever, but The Tonight Show? Maybe. I would not write it off. Okay? If you want, if you said to me, pick, I would say, I’m going to call David Miner about Tina Fey. That’s my first phone call because to me, there’s a woman that will kill in that format. And I would take a shot. I would take a shot at that.
My prediction, 100 percent when Lorne leaves is Tina Fey is going to take over. Not even, I mean, I know that Seth Myers and Steve Higgins could do it, but I think it’s Tina’s. They’re going to give it to her. Whether she says yes, I’m not sure, but
Of course you have to approach her first for that. That, but that also, Mark, becomes, that is a really life changing thing to do in my opinion.
It is, but her kids are older and she has a skill set. You have to have a skill set for an eye for how to do sketch comedy and how to talk to the network. Yes. And how to run things, and she has all that experience.
I agree, but I think Tina likes to perform now, you know, why is she doing a, a, a Hercule Poirot movie? You know, like, like, why, why I think she likes to have her hand in that and she’s good at that too. She’s very, very good at that. Listen, if you, again, if, Lorne should go to at least 90 as far as I’m concerned. But if eventually they, the show’s still on and they need somebody, she is so the logical pick that if she in any even gives a slight nod, you have to pour all the money on the table and get her because she is so gifted, a writer, so, so gifted that I think you, you’d have to put her in that position. It’s, it’s a position of incredible demands, but…
She lives in New York. She has the skill set and in terms of when she was a head writer on that show, her assertiveness and putting her in situations where she had to make decisions where she wasn’t the most popular person. Sometimes she was able to do that job and put aside..
And, Mark, when you talk about Lorne, all the people who have done the show, with few exceptions, are all in awe of that guy, right? They’re just, there’s no questioning. Yes. He knows what he’s doing. He’s the best. And that would be the case with her. People know how tremendously talented she is. They would just say, you got to go with what she says. You got to go with that. And so that, that’s why I, you know, to me, that would be great. But if, if I was doing a host, if, if Jimmy, if something happened to Jimmy Fallon, I should be at least my first call and to see what would happen.
Yeah, it is one of those things she could do the job. Um, Chelsea Handler could do the job but in terms of of what you were saying about, um, people perceived her to be more difficult. I mean, that is one of the reasons, at least that
I’m not saying it’s true.
No, but you’re saying what you heard. And that is why at least part of the reason why Leno was hired over Letterman. I mean, Letterman was making fun of NBC execs. He was making fun of GE yet he wanted the gig and he, you know, wasn’t going to be doing those, going to the affiliates and doing that type of stuff. It just made sense.
I can just tell you that at a very high level of CBS, we are not interested in Chelsea Handler. Boom. They didn’t give it a shot.
That’s all you can, I mean, yeah, you know, every network’s different. They all, um, have their reasons. Um, I thought, yeah, she, I know she could do the show. There aren’t, I mean, in terms of skillsets…
Would she have been as good as Colbert?
I don’t know. We, no one will know. I mean, I don’t know. She definitely had was the closest would be closest to like a Letterman, Kimmel in terms of like that type of humor.
Well, I’m all for giving women a shot. I, to me, that’s why when Amber Ruffin was on, I was like, this is fantastic.
Yeah. She’s phenomenal.
Very talented black woman. What a perfect hire. You know what a perfect hire, but she was given almost no attention. And, you know,
Yeah, no promotion and stuff maybe, but she was, uh, yeah, absolutely phenomenal. Um, I am excited to watch the Oscars because in terms of Conan, you just know, in terms of the material and it’s not to take away anything from any, what anyone else does is that I’m going to get some, uh, like a home run grand slam in terms of writing, in terms of a cold open what he did with the tonight show with that cold open when he went across the country. I mean, it’s just like to make somebody, to make the audience that in awe. I mean, he, he delivered.
Well, I tell you, I, I, when he got the thing and I wrote a piece about it, I just went back and I saw the clip where he hosted the Emmys and he had Bob Newhart in the glass booth. Right. You know what I’m talking about?
I was there. It was the first time and the only time I’ve been to the Emmys and that cold open was phenomenal. It was phenomenal.
So I was like, this is Conan, this is so Conan, and he will do, he will do something like that at the Oscars that will be original creative stuff. And he’s a home run hire in my opinion. I mean, just the, and, and we miss him. He has some doing this. Like, let’s, let’s go, let’s give him a shot.
Isn’t that strange that the guy who leaves late night is more popular than anybody that’s behind the desk to the younger people? It seems.
I think that’s true.
I could be off on that, but it does, it definitely seems for him.Um, what I see people talk about and stuff that just that podcast and the timing. And I don’t know what would happen if he got into podcasting now. Uh, just there’s so many, I think he got in at the right time. I definitely had the talent, um, beyond, uh, just to showcase that side of him.
Well, which, you know, you saw him on Hot Ones.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was just so fantastic. I mean, and again, it’s just him. He’s just going to do that off the wall. Silly, you know, I can’t help but laugh at it and, uh, and that I miss. I mean, you know what, when I was doing The Story of Late Night thing and interviewing some of the people that wrote, they would just bring up crazy nutty things. They did that. I completely forgot. You know, we did this bit about. When there was a lot of cable channels and they would just turn on some crazy cable and it would be like some bizarre, bizarre things.
Yeah, there’s a lot of surreal Ernie Kovacs type stuff.
Really, really, really original stuff. So I’m, you know, that is missing from late night for sure. Somebody that wild.
If a publisher came to you and maybe they have and they’re like, here’s the wheelbarrow full of money, lots of money to write a book on the current scape of Late Night, What would be your angle in terms of the last 10 years? What would be the, your point of view that you would take, uh, to make something like that work if there was something?
The obvious thing is the shift to very heavy political stuff. Um, and was that wise or unwise? Because I mean, and it’s going to happen again, presumably, with Trump back in office, but he provides material that is just, you can’t not make fun of it. You just have to write to it since that you want topical humor. He dominates the conversation by doing insane things like, you know, talking about bleach and all of that. And you know, how would you not comment on that? How do you not make that prominent? And they, they did that. I mean, back in the day, I mean, I would watch Colbert and he would do 11 straight minutes of a monologue, totally Trump jokes, a hundred percent Trump jokes. And I’m like, did, while it works and an audience that hates Trump likes that it does cleave your audience a bit. And so I, I do think that has been a very big factor as well as the tightened budgets, because, you know, how many people are going to do remotes now, you know,
That’s a good point yet. Nobody is doing those.
Nobody’s doing that.
Well, Guillermo, they’ll send out sometimes, but
Once in a while, yes, they’ll still do that a little bit.
But they’re not sending them out. Like Letterman would send people out to like, I don’t know, in the middle of nowhere
Yes. He would just find this crazy store and go do some off the cuff stuff and be very funny doing it. And I just don’t, there’s no budgets for that. I mean, if they’re, if they’re cutting your band out and you’re like, you know, there’s probably not much in the prop department anymore. And, you know, they, you know, I’m, I talked the last time I talked to Fallon, I saw him do something and they built some elaborate set for a sketch. And I was like, uh, you know, how much of that can you do? And he said, well, you know, we have to be pretty judicious about it. I mean, they don’t really do that anymore. And, and I think that’s another thing. Their budgets are, or they’re hyper aware of that. And I don’t think they’re making a whole lot of money.
So I would still, I, we, neither of us know how much they’re making, but they still have to be, they’re not as much cash cows as they were, but still paying the AFTRA minimum for talent, I would still think with the online, it’s not as lucrative as the advertising on Nielsen, but I would still think for them to be paid what they are and those large staffs is that they’re still making lots of money.
I think that well, when Conan was leaving the air and I spoke to his producer, Jeff Ross, who I’m very close to, uh, he said, I’m concerned going forward. I don’t know how much money these shows can make. I really, he was concerned about, and that’s now going back years. I will say this, if there were fewer of them, like if it was just John, back in the day, Johnny, you’d have a pretty good audience and make some real money.
What has it been like, uh, being the editor at large of Late Nighter?
Uh, that, it means a title that is not an accurate description. I’m not, I’m at large. I remain at large, but I’m not, I’m like, you know, uh, on the loose, but I have done no editing. I’m only writing. That’s just a, like a contributing editor in a magazine tends to be a writer. So I just write and, uh, I love doing that because, uh, I still love writing. And even though, when we started this, there was like, you know, as late night going to provide enough, there’s been tons of things happening, tons and tons of things. And I still think it’s really relevant. The Trump election will probably have impact. We can’t guess yet, but it’s going to be there. Obviously we picked a great year because of Saturday Night Live, having all this happening, which I love. And, uh, and it’s just lets me basically do what I’ve always done, which is find a little interesting story and write about it. And I don’t have to do as much reporting. Like I won’t report the news that Conan was appointed, but I can then write a piece evaluating why I think it’s a good idea. So that’s more what I’m doing. And I like that.
I’m so glad that we got to do this and I’m honored to be a part of LateNighter. And I know people, I can’t say who, shows and stuff, but I know people at, um, at different shows that, um, we’re really excited that you’re, that you’re doing this.
I’m glad to hear that. Um, it is interesting that certain topics get a lot of reaction. If I write about Johnny, a lot of reaction.
It’s amazing that a guy that’s been off the air for over 30 years, that people still been…
Yeah. Off the air longer than he was on The Tonight Show, yeah.
I can’t even imagine that there is a mystique about that man and people just miss him is like ability was off the charts.
Yeah, and just a fascinating character that people thought they knew and didn’t, which they kind of like that there’s still new things being told about them, you know, like that, that’s a factor. And, uh, television history. So he’s gigantic.
You got to interview him.
I have interviewed Johnny. Yes, I did. And, uh, and I, I sort of feel like when they say about the Bill Zehme is the only person to interview Johnny after he left the Tonight Show. Not true. I did interview Johnny after.
Tom Shales had, um, had conversations with him and they were published and I know he was talking to Army Archerd that variety. Yes, there were a few people whenever people say he was JD Salinger, um, in retirement, he was out and about. He definitely liked his alone time and he was on the yacht a lot, but he was still talking to people. And, um, the first two years that he was off the show was he was doing the Simpsons. He was doing Letterman cameos. He was doing the teacher awards. He did the Bob Hope, uh, special. So, I mean, yeah, we miss him, but, um, I was glad that he did at least a little bit. Um, and then he disappeared.
I guess he’d be a hundred years old now or just about.
Yeah. It would be October. It’ll be 100 years old. Yeah. We miss him. Bill Carter. Thanks for doing this.
Always great to talk to you, Mark. Best of luck with the podcast.
Thank you, sir.
Hope you have a bigger guest sometime.
I’m working on it!
Okay.
