[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE] THOMAS MCNAUGHT:
So good evening. I'm Tom McNaught. I'm the Executive Director of
the Kennedy Library Foundation, and on behalf of Tom Putnam, who
is the Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential
Library Museum, we would like to welcome all
of you to this wonderful forum. It is my great
pleasure to welcome you to this special
Kennedy Library forum, with the legendary, the
awesome Conan O'Brien. Or as he is best known by his
5.7 million Twitter followers, the Voice of the People. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] Now, there are many similarities
between Conan O'Brien and President Kennedy. Both grew up in large
Irish Catholic families in Brookline, Massachusetts. And both spent much of
their use goofing off, while somehow still managing
to get into Harvard. Not only did Conan manage
to get into Harvard, he graduated magna cum
laude with a degree in US history and literature,
and at the same time, he served as editor
of the Harvard Lampoon for two years in a row. As great a comedic genius in
his writing as he is in person, Conan wrote for Saturday
Night Live and The Simpsons before going on to host
Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Tonight
Show, and now Conan, which you can follow
weeknights at 11:00 PM on TBS. [LAUGHTER] [COUGHING] "People asked me why
I named the show-- people asked me why I named
the show "Conan," he said. "I did it so I'd be
harder to replace." [LAUGHTER] We are so very proud
that Conan O'Brien serves as a member of the Kennedy
Library Foundation's board of directors,
how that came to pass was his friendship
with Caroline Kennedy. Caroline tells us
that the more time she spent with Conan, the more
she came to appreciate not only is keen sense of humor,
but his deep interest in history, and in particular,
presidential history. These interests
ultimately convinced her that Conan would
accept her invitation to join the board of directors. She knew that anyone who
has busts of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt
in his office, a Dwight Eisenhower mug
on his talk show desk, and photographs of
her father hanging on the walls of his home,
would be an easy sell. Our moderator tonight
is Wesley Morris, a film critic at
The Boston Globe, and recipient of this
year's prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Criticism-- a body of work which-- [APPLAUSE] His body of work was described
by the Pulitzer judges as "Smart, inventive
film criticism, distinguished by pinpoint
prose, in an easy traverse between the art house and
big-screen box office." End quote. A graduate of Yale,
Wesley went on to write film reviews and
essays for the San Francisco Examiner and the San
Francisco Chronicle before joining the staff of
The Boston Globe in 2002. We are absolutely delighted to
have him with us this evening, and, again, we congratulate
him on his Pulitzer. Before closing, I wanted
to note that in addition to serving on our
board of directors, Conan O'Brien serves as the
honorary chair of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
Foundation's New Frontier Network. And the purpose
of that network is to bring together
young leaders committed to advancing President
Kennedy's ideals of civic engagement in public
service to new generations. I want to welcome the many
members of the New Frontier Network who are with us
in the audience tonight, and to share with you why
we asked Conan for his help in reaching out to
your generation. It is because he believes so
strongly in your potential to make this world
a better place. In his closing words at the
final broadcast of the Tonight Show with Conan
O'Brien, Conan had this message for his younger
audience, quote, "And all I ask is one thing," he
said, "and this I'm asking this particularly
of young people that watch. Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it's my
least favorite quality. It doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets
exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really
hard, and you're kind, amazing things will happen. I'm telling you, amazing
things will happen. I'm telling you,
it's just true." Please join me in welcoming
to the Kennedy Library, Wesley Morris and Conan O'Brien. [APPLAUSE] WESLEY MORRIS: Hi. CONAN O'BRIEN: Hey. WESLEY MORRIS: How's it going? CONAN O'BRIEN: It's great. I want to thank you for
stepping in and doing this. This is amazing. WESLEY MORRIS: Yes. You're welcome. CONAN O'BRIEN: I
think this illustrates everything that's wrong
with our country right now. The Pulitzer Prize winner
is asking questions of the idiot on television. [LAUGHTER] I think this should be
the other way around, but maybe I'll come back
and I'll talk to you. WESLEY MORRIS: No,
I think what you'll discover in the next
59 minutes is that I have no idea what I'm doing. [LAUGHTER] No, I mean, one of the things
I was interested in talking to you about was your
comic persona, which is this self-deprecating way
of going about being funny, that actually kind of belies
your ambition in some ways. I mean, before you
your career had gotten started you actually
were the valedictorian in your high school,
Brookline High School, you were the editor of your high
school paper, is that right? CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. Let's just say, yeah. WESLEY MORRIS: Yeah? Is that true? CONAN O'BRIEN: I don't remember. It was a long time ago. WESLEY MORRIS: OK, so I believe
the answer to that question-- CONAN O'BRIEN: It
was the early 1940s. There was a war on. I don't remember. [LAUGHTER] It was a long time ago. WESLEY MORRIS: Your
parents are here. Anything that that's
not true, someone will-- CONAN O'BRIEN: I love this. My parents are sitting in
the front row judging me as we speak. [LAUGHTER] Just shaking their heads. WESLEY MORRIS: Is it true? Did he edit the paper. CONAN O'BRIEN: I think so. My mother doesn't know. There were six of us. They're not sure which one I am. [LAUGHTER] It was a kind of chaotic
It's-A-Wonderful-Life house, with everyone running around,
and so they don't remember. They're a terrible authority
on what I did when, and who exactly I am. [LAUGHTER] But you know, I
have a lot of people ask me about the
self-deprecating thing over the years, and
a lot of people say, almost like it's an act. And I say, no, my people
come by this very honestly. [LAUGHTER] We really do. It's not an act. And I think your personality
is formed at a very young age. I mean, your core personality-- scientists will claim that it's
by the age of two or three, but easily by the time
you're 15 years old, you have established
who you are, or 90% of what your core
personality is going to be is all downloaded. And I was not an
impressive person at all. If I am at all now,
certainly 15 was not the time to take the core sample. [LAUGHTER] I was a very skinny, gangly kid. I had acne. I had this giant mop of hair
I still don't know to do with. I had an odd name, which
is my father's fault, and I didn't know where I really
fit into the scheme of things. So being self-deprecating
was a defense mechanism, and I came by it honestly. Then later on you
achieve these things, and you're still working-- to this day, I'm working
from the personality of a 15-year-old who's
6" 4' and 111 pounds, and who can't seem to get
eye contact with any woman in the United States. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: I'll give you
some-- just go like that. CONAN O'BRIEN:
Just go like that? I've tried that. I just crouched down. It's not the same. So it's tough. I really believe that this part
of my personality is very real, and whatever happens to
me in life is not going to change it at this point. WESLEY MORRIS: Well, I think
that's the thing that people respond to though, right? I mean, that it seems genuine. CONAN O'BRIEN: I thought
was my good looks. Wow. That's an indication
that that was wrong. No, I think people-- a long time ago, when I
first got the late night job, and this is hard to believe,
it's almost 20 years ago, but when I first got that
late night show nobody knew who I was, and everybody
was saying, who is this guy? And there were a lot of
people, they were calling up my friends, they were
calling up roommates, people who had known me. I mean, they didn't really
even have a picture of me, the media. They called my college
roommate, Eric Reiff, and they said, tell
us about this guy. Who is he? And he said, the one
thing I'll tell you about him is that he doesn't
like to be funny at people. He likes to be
funny with people. He likes to join with them and
make something funny happen. And I think that's the core
of what I do on my show, and what I've like
to do over time, is just is make a
funny situation happen with somebody else. And I don't know
if that's coming from the family I come
from, or big family, but I like to make things
happen with people. It's sort of a communal
thing as opposed to-- I'm not comfortable
sitting next to someone and just shooting a laser
beam at them of comedy, and maybe making
them the victim. It makes me uncomfortable. WESLEY MORRIS: Right,
well, because then you have to get out of
that situation too. CONAN O'BRIEN: Just
go to commercial. [LAUGHTER] That's how all the
other ones do it. But yeah, there's always-- and it's not even
really a moral choice. It's what you--
everybody in this room finds out at a certain
point in their life what they're good, at what
they're not good at it. You arrive at that, and it's
kind of a mystical experience. So I didn't choose-- there are people who are
brilliant at dissecting someone and taking them
apart with their comedy. I'm not very good at that. That's not what I do. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. CONAN O'BRIEN: I'd love to
say it was a moral choice. I don't even think
it's a moral choice. This is just what I do. WESLEY MORRIS: But when did
you figure that out though? Well, first of all,
I mean, I don't know if everybody
knows this, there's some other impressive
things about you that seem to have nothing
to do with your comedy. Like the fact that you wrote
your senior thesis on children in Faulkner and O'Connor. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. It's a thesis that-- I worked really
hard on this thesis. It was a history and
literature major, and you need to write a
thesis your senior year, and it comes time and
I wrote this thesis, and it's the most pretentious
title you've ever heard. It's Literary Progeria in
the Works of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. And I wrote this thing
that's like 90 pages long, and it's about the
prematurely aged child in southern literature as a
metaphor for the south, which knew defeat in a country
that had never known defeat. Yeah, right. [LAUGHTER] People are filing out the back. People are jumping into the
ocean and swimming away. WESLEY MORRIS: No,
there was an agent calling your phone right now. That's a book! CONAN O'BRIEN: That's a book! That's a movie! But I wrote this
thesis, and then flash forward to this
tour I did two years ago, and I'm living the rock
and roll lifestyle. We get all these
great guest stars, and I'm playing
5,000 seat houses, and were sold out
across the country, and we're flying around or on a
bus, and it's like a rock show. And after the show,
people would hold up T-shirts to sign,
and sign my arm, and sign this, and sign that. I'd come off the show
and someone said, I've got your thesis! [LAUGHTER] Sign your thesis! And I just had
this amazing flash from working away on one of
the earliest word processors in 1984, which looked like a-- I mean kids today
wouldn't believe it, but it looked like-- it was like a phone booth. And you had a keyboard attached
to it, and you'd type away, and you had to keep
putting quarters in it. It was in a room
at Mather House. This is all true. And an alarm would
go off, so you'd be starting to get an idea
and you'd hear [BEEPING].. You'd put more quarters in. And I wrote this thesis-- and the idea of that misery,
and then knowing that sometime later an 18-year-old girl would
be handing me my thesis after a rock show was-- well, she was older than that. [LAUGHTER] 19, easy. But, yeah. I don't know how I
got started on that. You brought it up. WESLEY MORRIS: I
brought up the thesis. CONAN O'BRIEN: I had
a flashback, yeah. WESLEY MORRIS: I mean,
it's a great idea. And I think that-- what we were talking about-- you
get this idea that you are not as smart as you-- the thing is that you don't
seem as smart as people-- as you actually are. [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] But that's your thing, right? CONAN O'BRIEN: Has anyone ever
mean walked out of one of these before? No, I know-- WESLEY MORRIS: You
might be the first. CONAN O'BRIEN: I know exactly-- Yeah. WESLEY MORRIS: I mean-- CONAN O'BRIEN: I know exactly
what you're talking about. WESLEY MORRIS: You make people-- you make it easier for people
to be around you by underplaying all your virtues and
strong characteristics. CONAN O'BRIEN: Well,
also, the other thing is, I really do honestly, the
more-- as anybody knows-- the more you learn, the more
you realize what you don't know. So when I first moved
out to Los Angeles. I started teaching
myself the guitar. I went and bought the Mel Bay
chord book and a $90 guitar, and started sitting
in my boxer shorts in my $380 month
apartment after work, and teaching myself the
guitar, and living off ramen noodles and tuna fish. And I remember
thinking, all I want to do is know three chords. What happens is, once you
start to get to a level that you never thought
you'd reach before, all you know is how
terrible you are, because you just keep getting
exposed to new levels. And I really do have that
feeling constantly of-- I'll think I'll
have a funny show, I think I've done
something funny, and then I'll see one of
Woody Allen's best movies, or something Bob Hope
did in the 1950s, or I'll read something
that James Thurber wrote. I mean, just
constantly be reminded that I don't know
anything, and then you just go back to square one. And the more you think
you know about history, the more you realize, I
really don't know anything yet about history. So there's a constant process,
and it's just probably my personality, but
I like to be humbled. I like to realize I am
never that far from the kid from Brooklyn High School who
felt very insecure about going to Harvard. When I went to
Harvard, and I met people who had gone to
Exeter, and Andover, and they'd taken Latin. I hadn't taken Latin. There wasn't Latin
in my high school. I was very intimidated. And it's that process
over and over again, and I think that just keeps
happening throughout life. You think you've got it figured
out, and then you have kids, and then you're presented
again with you know nothing. You know nothing, and
you have a lot to learn, and they look at you
like you're an idiot. And half the time
they've just watched you do something really stupid. So that's a humbling experience. So I like that. I like to constantly be
brought back down again. WESLEY MORRIS: And we get that. I mean, I think that that's-- I mean, that's all
I was really saying before is part of
your brilliance as a comedian is to
underplay your brilliance. You know what I mean? You're may not be
consciously doing it, but you wouldn't have gotten
this far if there weren't-- CONAN O'BRIEN: Well,
you know what it is? Everybody has-- in
every famous person that you're ever going to
meet or see, all they've done is hyper-refined the
defense mechanisms that they used when they
were on the playground, and they wanted to
use the parallel bars, and someone hit
them in the face. [LAUGHTER] My experience was you go through
a checklist when you're young-- and I don't know how many
young people we have here-- but you go through a checklist
of, what am I not good at? And that fills up
really quickly. I mean, that was for me. Very quickly it gets sorted out. Let's play ball for the
first time with other kids. I'm not good at that. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: Yeah. CONAN O'BRIEN: Let's go
talk to the pretty girl. That didn't work. [LAUGHTER] And it's just a constant list. And I went down the
list, and it just kept going and going and going. And then I found
out, you know what? I can kind of just diffuse
that situation by being funny. WESLEY MORRIS: Mm-hmm. CONAN O'BRIEN: And he was about
to strike me in the face-- this is my dad
we're talking about. [LAUGHTER] Come on. He loves it, and it's true. [LAUGHTER] This is this morning
I'm talking about. [LAUGHTER] But you're working
your way down the list, and I diffused the
situation, and I remembered the nickel drops. And everybody in this
room had that situation, whether it's humor,
or being an athlete, or you're a good cook, whatever. You figure out what it is,
and when you're a kid, you-- man, I've got that. And I kept looking
for other things and they weren't showing up. So I kept-- I'll work
on that some more, and I'll work on that some more. And that leads to a TV
show and mental illness. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: But
I mean, what was the moment when you
realized that that was what was going on with you? CONAN O'BRIEN: I realized
that I knew that I had something I really liked to do. I liked to perform. I did that. And then at some point,
like in fifth grade, I remember, or
fourth grade, I used to be in plays all the time,
and I used to write things. And I thought, this is
something I'd like to do, and I was fascinated. For some reason, I had a
out of time fascination with movies from
the '30s and '40s, because they were
shown a lot here in Boston, on the UHF stations. I don't know if
anyone will remember, but in the days
before cable there was there was the ABC affiliate,
the NBC affiliate, the CBS affiliate, and then
channel 56, and channel 38. And they would show old movies. That's all they would show. And I used to
watch those, and it was lost on me that these
were made 50 years ago. And so, I would
watch these movies like Yankee Doodle Dandy
where Jimmy Cagney is talking real fast, and he's
dancing, and he's singing. And I would say,
that's what you need to know to be an entertainer. Of course, it's the 1970s. [LAUGHTER] Like an idiot, I don't
understand there's been a huge cultural movement. And I go to my
parents, and I said-- I'm even talking like
Jimmy K, and I'm like, now, see here you! [LAUGHTER] And I said, I need to learn
how to be a tap dancer. My parents were like, what
are you talking about? And I said, I want to be
in show business someday, and this kid's got to know
how to tap his toes, you see? [LAUGHTER] And they were like,
well, are you smoking? [LAUGHTER] Why are you in black and white? We'll get to that later! You shut your yap, see? I got to learn how to dance! So they went and they got
me a tap dancing teacher, God bless them. They went and they
called all around, and they found this
guy Stanley Brown, who had been the protégé
of Bill Bojangles Robinson. And this is all completely true. [LAUGHTER] And I went, and he's this older
African-American gentleman, who was a great
tap dancer, and he lived in a dilapidated studio. Everyone there was a jazz
dancer, and everyone was black, and then this white
kid with orange hair would show up with tap
shoes under his arm. It's like, hey, you! WESLEY MORRIS:
How tall were you? CONAN O'BRIEN: I grew. I was short, and then I grew
overnight, like the Hulk. I grew like three
feet in one year. And you could hear it. My parents could hear bone
knitting up in the attic. WESLEY MORRIS: But when you
were taking this tap class, you were just a little guy. CONAN O'BRIEN: I was still
small, and I was learning tap, and I thought, this is
what I need to know. Then a few years later,
I thought, I'm in Boston. And at the time, show
business could not have felt further away. The only experience
any of us had had with any kind of
celebrity was Robert Urich was in Spencer for Hire, and
they shot a few exteriors around here. And that was my experience
with show business is that I knew someone, who
knew someone, who saw Robert Urich in Filene's Basement. [LAUGHTER] So I remember thinking,
this isn't going to happen. And my dad, he's a scientist,
and my mom's a lawyer, and forget it. So I buckled down to be a
really hardcore student, and really worked hard,
and was very serious, and then got into
Harvard thinking I'm going to be a serious
writer of letters, and I'm going to
do great things! And within days of
getting to Harvard, my roommate John
O'Connor said, I'm going to the Harvard
Lampoon to check it out. I didn't really know much
about the Harvard Lampoon, but I went along, and the
rest of it just happened. And then the next
thing you know, I was blown away that people
valued humor as something other than just, this is what
you do for your friends to make them laugh. And then I started to hear
tell that you could go places, and they would maybe
pay you if you did this. And you'd think,
is that possible? I mean, that sounded crazy. And I ended up going out to Los
Angeles, and lots of twists, and turns, and ups and downs. So there was never a conscious
decision for a long time, to get into this business,
I think until the Lampoon. And then, I started to feel
like, this is interesting. This seems to have some
merit beyond getting people not to hit me. WESLEY MORRIS: Right, right. Right. CONAN O'BRIEN: So that
changed everything. WESLEY MORRIS: No,
it's interesting. I think a lot of
people who figure out what they want to do
figure it out by accident. CONAN O'BRIEN: Mm-hmm. WESLEY MORRIS: And it's
sort of reverse ambition. I think a lot of it is luck. So if you're in the right
place at the right time, or you think you might like
something, so you tried it and it sticks. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. WESLEY MORRIS: But at various
points, I'm sure that you-- once you were in Los Angeles,
I mean, it sounds at some point that you became a comedy
student in some way. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yes, yeah. Well, I'd always paid attention. My dad has always been
interested in comedy, and had always been interested
in why did this work? And why did that not work? And still loves to call me
occasionally and explain to me why something I
did on television didn't work or did work. [LAUGHTER] No, but he had an ear
for it, an eye for it, and I adopted the same thing,
which is we just both love to watch Johnny Carson. A lot of people in my
family loved to watch him, and my dad loved late night
television, and the Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies. And so wildly different stuff-- the movie Sleeper, Woody Allen. And we would all appreciate
the same moments. So you don't even realize you're
a student of these things. Your passion takes you this way. If there's one theme you could
maybe take away from tonight, is I think, very little
of this is decision. I think a lot of it
is passion, and you have very little control
over that as an individual. You just find yourself
being drawn certain ways, and you keep refining
that and working at it. And I've always said, I'm
very unimpressed by talent. And by that I mean, I have
many people over the years say, my kid's going to be great! He's got a lot of talent! And I think, I do
nothing but meet people with lots of talent. It's what you do with it. There's a lot of
talent out there. There's a lot of talent in
Los Angeles and New York. There's a lot of talent
throughout the country. And you can see
this all the time and in sports, people have
incredible amount of talent. How many times have
you heard the story that the person with the most
natural talent disappears? And it was the person
who was largely ignored-- Hard work, there is
no substitute for it. And that's the thing I'm
always telling young people and interns that work on the
show, that that's the bad news, is that they've found no
substitute for working really hard. I worked my ass off when I was
a kid, and in my 20s, and 30s, and I still work really hard. And I think there is
no substitute for it, and I think that is the
good news and the bad news. I mean, I have no
idea if they someday invent a talent meter that tells
you how much natural talent you were born with. I'd be afraid to go near
it, because I don't know. It might say, not that much. But you worked your ass off
and you compensated this much. Or you had some, but,
man, did you maximize it! And I think that was my
obsession, was whatever I have, I want to max it out. I want to see what
I can do with this. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. CONAN O'BRIEN: And
that's probably what made the
biggest difference. WESLEY MORRIS: So we should
say that this is a conversation with Conan O'Brien. I'm Wesley Morris
from The Boston Globe, and we're talking. CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh, that was for
the-- was that for the radio? WESLEY MORRIS:
That's for the radio. CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh,
I thought you just had a seizure of some kind. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: I
warned you about this! CONAN O'BRIEN: I thought
your doctor told you, once in a while tell yourself
who you are and where you are. WESLEY MORRIS: Yeah. CONAN O'BRIEN: And proceed. WESLEY MORRIS: Yes. CONAN O'BRIEN:
I'm Conan O'Brien. WESLEY MORRIS: Yeah, a
Pulitzer Prize fell on my head. I forgot who I was. CONAN O'BRIEN: Exactly. That scared me. [LAUGHTER] But I'm OK now. WESLEY MORRIS: I was, like a
lot of people, a couple of years ago, when that whole
Jay Leno thing happened, I was sort of struck by-- and this, it's in line with
what we have been talking about, which is what makes
you so likeable and so relatable in a lot of ways. And a lot of it has to do with
this defense mechanism you developed, a comedy style. But when that whole
thing went down, and I think the version
that we got anyway, very much made
people able to relate to your side of the story,
and made it really difficult to have any sympathy
for Jay Leno. And that, I don't
think had anything to do with either
one of you, I think that just became how the
media-- well, I mean, you might beg to differ. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS:
What-- what's your-- say it. CONAN O'BRIEN: I remain silent. WESLEY MORRIS: OK. But it was just interesting that
the nation had chosen sides, I think. And you seemed much
more sympathetic, both because I think of who we
imagine you to be, as a person, and also I think we really
were able to relate to what we thought was you having something
promised to you, given to you, and then rescinded. CONAN O'BRIEN: Right. WESLEY MORRIS: And
I was just curious if there was anything
about yourself during that entire fiasco that
you learned that surprised you? CONAN O'BRIEN: I think
the biggest surprise in that whole thing,
or the best thing that I was able to take
away from that was I come from people pleasers. We aim to please, we O'Briens. We are nice people,
where we tend to try and make everyone
around us happy. And especially in
a work environment, we're very deferential. We just want to work
harder than we are expected to work, and get less. We're comfortable in that role. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. [LAUGHTER] CONAN O'BRIEN: It's true. We don't want a
lot of attention. It's just the culture. It might be a very Irish
Catholic culture, I don't know. But work this hard, don't
stick your head out too much, do a really good job,
make people happy. And I think I had
always been that way throughout my entire career. And I think what was interesting
about that moment was it was the first time in my entire
career where I was being told we need you to go-- and
that in that situation-- we need you to slide
over and move the show-- move The Tonight Show
into the next day. And I think because they knew me
so well, they just said, look, he's done everything else,
he's going to do this. And I didn't. And that was almost a
surprise to me, as well. But I just decided, I don't
know what's going to happen. I may be completely
through in television, but I can't do this. This doesn't feel right, and
so, I'm not going to do it. And that was, I think,
the healthiest-- whatever-- personal moment
that I took from it. And I think, in terms of other
people responding to anything, it was always really
important to me, and it's still important
to me, that people understand that I did not
feel entitled to anything. I don't believe in that. I really don't believe in, I
was promised The Tonight Show, and so I get to,
it's my right to. There was a bunch of
circumstances behind the scenes that made that not work
out in that situation, and I wasn't happy about it, and
it was a major disappointment. But we live in a culture of
entitlement a lot of times, where people-- how dare you? This is my right! And I've always been
very clear about saying, it's nobody's right to
host The Tonight Show. It's absurd. That was an opportunity. It didn't work out for a
million different reasons. Some known, some unknown. What the hell? Life is short. A lot of people have
a lot of problems. Keep moving. And I think that may
have been the tone that a bunch of
people responded to, was just this feeling
of don't pity me. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. Well, you also didn't-- There were two things that came
out of it, the first of which was your explanation, which was
really about The Tonight Show legacy, right? It wasn't framed as you
being a great person, it was there's this show
that I loved as a kid. I've always wanted to host it. I got to host it,
but you guys want to move it to 12:05, which is no
longer tonight, it's tomorrow. Then it's Matt Lauer and
Ann Curry, but really early, which would make Carson Daly. I don't know. CONAN O'BRIEN: Right. WESLEY MORRIS: It's not the
thing that you wanted to do. And so, it really
ultimately became about into the institution
of The Tonight Show, which was also charming, and
it's a really good case to be made for that. And then there's the
embargo which happened, and that was the
thing that you meant to turn into great comedy,
which was the thing where you couldn't be on television. CONAN O'BRIEN: Right. For a period of time, yeah. WESLEY MORRIS: Which made people
mad and sympathetic to you. Can you talk about the
process to exploit that? CONAN O'BRIEN: It was,
again, it's all the best things are accidents. We finished the
last Tonight Show, and at the spur of the moment
we ended up doing a live jam. I said those final
words, and then I went over to the
performance area and I jammed with Will Ferrell,
his very pregnant wife, who gave birth a few hours later. [LAUGHTER] And then these amazing
guitarists, Beck, we had ZZ Top, and it was
this fantastic jam band. And we sang Freebird, and it was
just this very silly, jubilant Viking funeral for the show,
which felt like it's my tone, it's silly, it's up note,
it's not a down note. And it's saying, this
is absurd and funny, and we get a minute left
of this Tonight Show, let's really have fun with it. So we that. It was over. I love playing music, and
I knew that I my producer was standing off to the side. And I said, now, I'm not
allowed to perform comedy on television, or
the radio, I'm not allowed to do this or do that,
am I allowed to perform live? And he said, yeah, I think so. And I said, I think
all I want to do is just put on a fake
mustache and play in different rockabilly
bands in nightclubs for a couple of months,
just as a weird Andy Kaufman thing that I would do. And so, he said, sure, whatever. That's pathetic. [LAUGHTER] But I thought, that's
what I want to do. And then what happened
is, he mentioned it to my agent, who happened
to work at Endeavor, which just happened to merge
with a company that did live performances. And someone punched into
a computer and said, if you went out on the road,
you should bring a real band with you, and you could
sell out across the country. And we thought, that's
kind of interesting, like this performance art to
just go across the country. And my whole career
has been, to take you back to that kid who's
trying to tap dance in 1978, I've always been out of time. I've always been trying
to get back to Vaudeville. I've always wanted
to be a vaudevillian, and so, this is my
chance to actually tour vaudeville theaters
across the country, and do song, and dance,
and comedy review. And so, I did it, and there
was a whole grassroots movement behind it. And we thought, we
have to keep this pure. And we had some offers
from big corporations. We'll help underwrite
this, but you have to let us have corporate
ticket sales for day first. And we said, we can't do it. Can we just have the money? [LAUGHTER] Turns out that's not
the way it works. But we ended up-- American Express ended
up saying, we get it. That's cool. Well, all right. We just want to help. And it was great. And that was one of the best-- that might be the single best,
most interesting, fascinating time of my life creatively,
and it was all an accident. It was just one thing
following another, and the next thing
you know, I'm playing with Eddie Vedder in
front of 5,000 people, and thinking, how did
any of this happen? He's from Pearl Jam, people. [LAUGHTER] Sorry. It just didn't go well. I just looked out
at a sea of, what is this Vedder you speak of? Tell us more. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: But
did you feel free? I mean, were you scared? CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah,
I'm always scared. I think it's good to be scared. WESLEY MORRIS: Yeah. CONAN O'BRIEN:
Unfortunately, that's what I tell my child when
she is crying at night. [LAUGHTER] It's good to be scared! [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: Can't we ... that's gonna be a great memoir. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. They're already medicated. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, no. I believe in being scared. I think the minute--
especially if you're not-- whenever anybody-- I
don't know if as a writer, you run into people who tell
you how much they love writing? WESLEY MORRIS: Yeah. CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh,
I just love writing! WESLEY MORRIS: I don't
know who those people. CONAN O'BRIEN: And
I think, I don't want to read what you write. WESLEY MORRIS: Yeah. CONAN O'BRIEN: I
have no interest. It can't be good. Whenever someone tells
me that, just the act of being out in front of people
and performing is exhilarating, the preparation and
the before part is not, and I think that
should never change. So I think it's
good to be scared. I think it's good to
be doubting yourself. I think it's good to
constantly be holding things up to the light and
saying, is this any good? Does this work? And unfortunately,
it's also good to fail, which is very hard to explain
in this culture to people. [ONE PERSON APPLAUDS] Wow. [LAUGHTER] You just exposed yourself. This person over there in rags. Finally! Uh-oh! [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: No, but
that actually is true. So I wanted to-- initially, I wanted to
start by talking about this, because we're in the
JFK Library, but I mean, it's a good a time as
any to talk about it now, which is something
that I had read that you'd talked
to my colleague Mark Shanahan, maybe yesterday. CONAN O'BRIEN: Mm-hmm. WESLEY MORRIS: And
one of the things you discussed with him
was this Irish pride that you had growing up in the
JFK era, or around that time. CONAN O'BRIEN: Right. WESLEY MORRIS: And
in how that family-- how you lived in
a household that had the full Irish
American experience. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. WESLEY MORRIS: Your
grandmother was not well to do. She came over, and-- CONAN O'BRIEN: She actually
had been born here, but we I had said that a
great experience for me was my mother's mother lived
with us for a period of time after my grandfather
passed away. And she lived well into,
I think, her late 90s. So she had had really-- I think she'd been born in 1890. And so, she had had
the full experience of witnessing firsthand
discrimination against Irish Catholics. And when you think about
someone who's born at that time, you think about what
that generation saw. I mean, she's born in a
world of ice wagons being pulled by horses, and Irish
Catholics being discriminated against. And she dies 20 some odd
years after President Kennedy, and there's a space shuttle, and
that's an astounding lifetime, to see all of that happen. But it's very interesting
too, when you read history and you think about history,
and I'm a real history buff, I'm always struck by how
things weren't that long ago. Do you know what I mean? WESLEY MORRIS: Mm-hmm. CONAN O'BRIEN: And I
think that because I work with a lot of
young people who think that the Reagan
administration was 50 years ago-- [LAUGHTER] It may as well be to them. Time has sped up so
much in the digital age, that things that
happened 15 years ago seem like 100 years ago. I think that's a byproduct
of the digital age we're in, is people's attention spans
are so short that suddenly it's like, tell us more of this
Jimmy Carter that you speak of. And you're like, well, OK. They don't know, which can be
a little frightening at times. But you look at
the transformation that happened in 1960, and
what an issue John F. Kennedy's Catholicism was when he's
running for President. Today, people just
think that's absurd, but I remembered my
grandmother would be going off to school, at the
Michael Driscoll school, and it's this incredibly
liberal school system, and one of the best
school systems in the United States. Integrated, and
they're constantly hypersensitive to everyone's
ethnicity and background, and discussing it constantly,
and are you comfortable? And I'm headed off to
school, and my grandmother said to me, well, it's St.
Patrick's Day, so be ready. And I said, be ready for what? She said, the
Protestants are all going to taunt you at school. She said, they're going
to put chalk in your milk. [LAUGHTER] Just then my African-American
friend with a giant Afro shows up. It was a crazy experience. That was her experience, was
that on St. Patrick's Day you could get teased. I had friends that were from
Iran during the Iranian hostage crisis that went
to our high school. That's how diverse and
integrated everything was. But I didn't take
it for granted, because my grandmother
gave me that experience. She gave me that snapshot
into things changed a lot. I never took it for
granted that this was something that had
always been this good for us. WESLEY MORRIS: Right, right. No I mean, and I
read that, and I just thought about my
grandmother and the fact that she still can't
believe that there's a Negro in the White House. CONAN O'BRIEN: Right. WESLEY MORRIS: She's
still beside herself. And I just found
that very touching, the idea that you grew
up in this house where-- CONAN O'BRIEN: There are
these transformative moments in American politics, and
we're in the midst of one. I think that was a big
moment that everyone could relate to a few years
ago, was Obama's election. Now, the nice thing
is the byproduct of that, is going to be
young people who don't think that's such a big deal. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. CONAN O'BRIEN:
Everyone in this room knows, no, that's a huge deal. After everything this
country's been through, that is still a huge deal. But the byproduct
will probably be people, in a good way,
thinking that that is not as momentous a change
as it really was, which is probably what we
eventually need to get to. WESLEY MORRIS: Yeah, no. I mean, it's fascinating. One of the other things
that I wanted to talk about was some of the guests
you've had on your show. CONAN O'BRIEN: Mm-hmm. WESLEY MORRIS: And I think that
my personal favorite guest, mostly because you
didn't know what to think of her
beyond what we were supposed to think of her
until she came to visit you-- it's Martha Stewart. CONAN O'BRIEN: Right. WESLEY MORRIS: You guys have-- I mean, you've got Andy and
you and Andy have your thing. CONAN O'BRIEN: Right. WESLEY MORRIS: But I feel like
you and Martha Stewart have-- I don't know what it is. It's just really good comedy. I don't know if you really
love her and think she's great. But the thing that-- CONAN O'BRIEN: We are lovers. We are lovers. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: It
didn't seem kinky to me. CONAN O'BRIEN: No, it's
very kinky and erotic. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: I'm going
to have to eat later. Tone it down. CONAN O'BRIEN:
She's a terrific-- it's the oldest
rule in the book. I do best with a authority
figure who has some gravitas. WESLEY MORRIS: Yes. CONAN O'BRIEN: That's the best
person to me to bounce off of. I am the silliest. And you think about it, who's
better than Martha Stewart? She is one of the biggest
brands in the world. She's efficient. It's all about, this
is how you do it. You do it correctly. You don't make a mistake. This is how it's done,
and it's perfect, and on to the next thing. And then you put her next to
me, and I'm already an ass, but around someone
like that, I could become much more of an ass. WESLEY MORRIS: Yeah. CONAN O'BRIEN: And suddenly,
I'm going way out of my way to ruin the chiffon
cake we're making. And she knows it's comedy,
but she can't stand it. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: She
just can't stand it. CONAN O'BRIEN: So
it's fantastic, because she knows
there are cameras, and she knows there
are people there, and she knows it's
Conan O'Brien. And she's always saying,
well, he's very funny, and he's a little
bit of a mad man, so you'll have to excuse Conan. But anyway, we're
going to make the cake, and then it's very important
to put that right like that. And I'll go, you mean like this? And she'll be like, no! [LAUGHTER] No! And she can't help it. She just can't help it. And it's so funny. And then people laugh. It's funny to see. And it's just perfect when
someone just reaches over and ruins it. WESLEY MORRIS: But
the thing that's funny is the thing that you're
getting at before, which is that it's not mean to her. CONAN O'BRIEN: No. WESLEY MORRIS: It's
not mean spirited. You're just being
obnoxious, and you know-- [LAUGHTER] CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. WESLEY MORRIS: You know,
how long until Martha detonates in this segment? CONAN O'BRIEN:
There was a segment we did for the old
Late Night Show, where she's taking me through
her place in Connecticut, which is where she makes all the food. WESLEY MORRIS: Turkey Hill. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, exactly. You've never seen
anything like it. I mean, no offense mom, but
it's an amazing kitchen. [LAUGHTER] And there's just--
everything is perfect. And at one point, she's
showing me all of these spoons in a drawer, and they're
all perfectly laid out. And she said, it's important. I have a system. And I can feel my
hands trembling. I can't help it. And she's like, these are the
soup spoons, and they're "s," so they're here. And these are the tea
spoons, but it's a "t," so we put them here. And that's number one,
and number five goes here. And I just reached
over and I went-- [LAUGHTER] And something inside her died. It was absolutely fantastic. And I know that then nine people
came in and spent all night putting it back,
while Martha slept in her hyperbaric chamber. [LAUGHTER] But yeah, I'm just
always looking for people that I bounce off
of in that way. And like I say, authority
figures are fantastic. I just love to-- and then I become more of
a child for some reason. WESLEY MORRIS: Is there somebody
else that does that for you? CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah,
I'm trying to think. There are lots of
people who do that. I'm trying to think
off the top my head. There's a lot of,
I sometimes think, revered actors
when they come on. If someone's revered
in certain ways, that it can just be funny. WESLEY MORRIS: Yeah. CONAN O'BRIEN: Because I
don't have that belief. I don't revere them as
probably as much as I should. I'm having trouble thinking-- I'll think of a
name in a second. WESLEY MORRIS: Well, I-- CONAN O'BRIEN: Pauly Shore. [LAUGHTER] From Biodome. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: Revered, yes. CONAN O'BRIEN: Revered. WESLEY MORRIS: Is
there a difference in being on TBS, versus
being on NBC for you, in terms of maybe
how free you feel? CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, definitely. I think there is a-- WESLEY MORRIS: Because as a
viewer, I notice a difference. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, definitely. There was a lot transformative-- what I went through was
transformative in a lot of ways. I think one of the other things
was, it was a reality check on, I'm just very grateful to
have a television show. And so, if you work in
television for a long time, especially in
comedy, and you start to get a lot of clicks
on the odometer, you can start to feel--
it sounds crazy-- but you can start
to feel like, I've got to go in and do that today. And that just
builds up over time. Like gunk builds
up in an engine, if you're burning long
enough, and fast enough, and hard enough, you
start to build up this-- it's almost very
natural the build up a, I've got to go do that! And I think that starts to creep
into your life a little bit. And plus, over
time, you can start to feel like this
institutional weight of things. And I think going
through everything I went through just
made me realize I really love doing this,
and now I'm getting to do it. And I think there's
a lot of joy. That I get to come back to
a place of I get to do this. I'm really lucky
to get to do it. I don't know how much
longer I get to do it, but let's really have fun and
try everything we can think of. WESLEY MORRIS: Do you think
it's all clicking now? I mean, not that it
wasn't previously. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah,
I think it just does feel like we went from being-- when you're in a big network
institutional system, it can feel like the
boat turns more slowly. And we went to a little
cigarette boat that zips around, and pirouettes. And I think with the social
media everything we've done, we're much more agile. We're able to be much more agile
than we used to be able to be. I think we're able to respond
more to the way the media culture exists now. And so, that's all
very liberating. It's really fun. So I'm never someone
who will tell you it's all clicking,
because I've always have that, it could be better. WESLEY MORRIS: Sure. CONAN O'BRIEN:
Just push and push, and we're almost-- it's
the thing that I'm always repeating at my show
is, we're getting there. We're getting there. And you know they all
just laugh at me now, because they know
they'll come and visit me in a home when I'm
in my 90s, and I'll be like, we're getting there! They know that that's
just my mantra, is that we're getting there,
but we're never there. WESLEY MORRIS: Do you get
to watch the other guys? CONAN O'BRIEN: No, I don't
find that helpful to me, and it's also the last thing
I want to do when I come home. WESLEY MORRIS: Sure. CONAN O'BRIEN: And as I
mentioned, I am a history buff. I know Robert Caro
was just here. This is how much of a geek I am,
when I heard that Robert Caro's book had been finished
but not published yet, I made all these
backchannel calls. Other people are trying to
get to the Playboy Mansion, I made all these calls to get an
editor's draft of Robert Caro's book. And it came in this big tablet,
and I read it under the covers like it was porn. WESLEY MORRIS: For
some people it is porn. CONAN O'BRIEN: It is. It is for me. And so, I love that. And when I come home, I like
to watch a Frontline piece, or I like to watch
a documentary. I like to watch something that's
the complete opposite of what I do for a living. That's what recharges
my batteries, is watching the Tsar's
empire crumble in 1917. And my wife, I always
come home, and she says, hey, I've got 30 Rock saved up. Let's watch it. It takes place in 30 Rockefeller
Center about an NBC show. And I'm like-- [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS:
The PTSD kicks in. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah,
that's not how I want to spend my time relaxing. I want to see a World War II. I mean, there are all
these channels now that feed my addiction. I want to watch a
long documentary about Johnson or whoever. I just want to learn more
about American history. That's my hobby. WESLEY MORRIS: And I guess this
is a fairly reductive question, but I mean, do you
wish that there are ways that you
could integrate those two things more actively? Or do you like
keeping them discrete? CONAN O'BRIEN: I like
keeping them discreet. Every now and then I get to
do something interesting. A few years ago, I was asked
to speak alongside an academic about Lincoln's humor. I had done all this reading
about Lincoln's speeches, and trying to explain what it
is that made Lincoln so funny. And so, I agreed to do this
event, and then they said, OK. And I said, where are
we going to perform? They said, it's in Washington. I said, that's great. And then they told me
it's at Ford's Theater. [LAUGHTER] I got creeped out,
and then I thought, I guess it's a theater. So we did it there,
and it actually ended up being a great
evening of just talking about trying to bring
his comedy to life, bringing Lincoln's
humor to life. And what was it about his
writing and a sense of humor that I thought was actually kind
of modernist, and of our time, rather than of his time? And so, we ended up
talking about that, and it was really fun. And I got access to getting
through the back door of some museums, and
looking some documents. And I thought, OK, that's great! Other than that, I like to
leave it to the professionals. I mean, there are people that-- I'm aware that I'm an
amateur, and I like to read and I like to read history-- but there are people that
really know this stuff, and they should be
up talking to people. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. CONAN O'BRIEN: And
every now and then it just informs my comedy a little
bit, but that's about it. WESLEY MORRIS: Mm-hmm. But I mean, one of the
things, as a person who watches something like movies,
for instance, professionally, and you get a lot of
movies about history, but you get very few movies
now where the people making it have some perspective on the
history actually, that's funny. CONAN O'BRIEN: Right. WESLEY MORRIS: There are
very few good satires. There are very few good farces. Those are all on TV now. CONAN O'BRIEN: Right. WESLEY MORRIS: And I feel
like your sensibility might lend itself-- CONAN O'BRIEN: Every
now and then we do-- WESLEY MORRIS: --
with some structure. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, it
finds its way into the show, and we have certain obsessions,
but for the most part, I don't consciously
try to do that. It's something that's just my
hobby more than anything else. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. CONAN O'BRIEN: If it ends
up coming into the show, it's usually an accident. WESLEY MORRIS: So I think
it's about question time. So I'm going to read
questions that you guys have given to me or to the
library for Conan. There's a lot. CONAN O'BRIEN: It says, who
the hell do you think you are? WESLEY MORRIS: Well, if that's
one of the questions then-- CONAN O'BRIEN: Who
do you think you are? WESLEY MORRIS: Let's see. I can't read that one, sorry. OK, how about this one? I grew up watching
your show for years, and love your sense of
funny and comedic timing! Exclamation point. Have you ever considered
doing a movie or a sitcom? CONAN O'BRIEN: No. [LAUGHTER] I don't have the
temperament for it. I don't think anybody
really wants to see it. WESLEY MORRIS: I don't know if
I agree with that, but go on. CONAN O'BRIEN: Well, no. Like movies. Movies are-- I burn
fast, and so, I'm actually in the
right medium for me, which is we think of
something at 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon, we
tape two hours later, and then you see it at
11:00 o'clock at night. That's my temperament. I've watched people
that go in, and they-- if anyone here watched
a movie you get made, it's just maddening. And they sit there-- WESLEY MORRIS: OK,
then you would die. CONAN O'BRIEN:
Yeah, I would just-- my soul would leave my body. I also don't think that
that is what I meant to do. I don't think I would-- I think I've found the
right format for me. And me in a sitcom,
where I share an apartment with a chimp-- [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: You
are good with animals. CONAN O'BRIEN: It's
in development, yeah. That will be on TV. WESLEY MORRIS: You and
Jack Hanna have a thing. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, we're good. WESLEY MORRIS: OK,
so, Conan, please comment about
President Kennedy's wit and his ability to
make people laugh. Thank you. CONAN O'BRIEN: That's very
presumptuous, the thank you. [LAUGHTER] It will be done! In advance, I thank you. Now, do as I say! [LAUGHTER] I've been thinking
about this a lot. I really think that he
is up there with Lincoln as one of the funniest American
presidents we've ever had. WESLEY MORRIS: I
think, by the way, most people-- you're blowing
some minds right now. I don't-- Do we all know
that Lincoln is funny? CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah,
Lincoln's really funny. Lincoln's-- we can't
go into it now. I'm doing something at the
Lincoln Library next week. [LAUGHTER] I don't got a lot of time here. I think Kennedy is truly
one of the most naturally funny presidents that we've
had, and we have not had a lot. It's not something-- we do not
tend to elect funny people. And I think now, we have
a media savvy culture, so presidents are getting
better at coming across as funny when they need to,
but I don't think it comes from a natural place. And I think everything I
know about John F. Kennedy is that he was naturally quite
funny throughout his life, but he also experienced a lot of
problems you know in his youth with his health, and
he had to develop-- talk about a defense mechanism-- I think he almost
died many times as a young man of
different diseases and different ailments,
and he was very sick. And that was something that he
learned at a very young age. I always thought
that that probably sharpened his sense of irony. And he'd been in World War II. He had experienced firsthand
how screwed up things can be in the military
and in the Navy. And I think he learned
his ironic sense of humor. It came by naturally,
but he also developed it
through experiencing a lot of these hardships. And it made him see the
world, I think in a very-- he had an ironic, amused, and
some thought, almost detached wit about how screwy
the world can be, which I think is invaluable
as an American president. I don't ever get the sense that
he took himself that seriously, in a good way. He was immune to
that a little bit, in a way that I think some
American presidents haven't been. He was able to be a
little detached from that, and see everything is as being
somewhat humorous or twisted. WESLEY MORRIS: Then there's
the opposite, where everything is funny with some presidents. CONAN O'BRIEN: In what way? WESLEY MORRIS: Well, I'm
thinking of a specific person who-- whatever. We'll just move on
to the next question, because then it turns into
a different conversation. CONAN O'BRIEN: You mean
unintentionally funny? WESLEY MORRIS: Yes. CONAN O'BRIEN: OK. We'll leave it alone. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: So
what are your views on the intersection-- this
is a related question-- what are your views on the
intersection of comedy and politics? Is the Daily Show
good for the country? CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh, it's great. I think the Daily
Show and Colbert, I mean, those guys are
extremely talented. WESLEY MORRIS: You had a
little mock thing with them. CONAN O'BRIEN: I had
a mock feud with them during the writers'
strike, where we all ended up beating each other up. They're extremely
good and very good for the country, because
they're intelligent. And whenever someone intelligent
is doing comedy that's popular, I believe that that's
good for the country. So I think-- and what Colbert is
doing right now with the Super PACs, I think, is brilliant. He's such a fun person to watch. The times I've gotten
together with him, he almost feels like,
yeah, he could have been another brother in my family. He's very physically
funny and silly, and would have fit right in. So yeah, I think it's
very good for the country. Everyone's got a
different strength. I've always gone in
this more, some critics have liked to say, almost
like a dada streak. I like to comment on
politics comedically, but it is not my lifeblood,
it's not in my bone marrow. I think we do it, and I do it
when it strikes me as funny, but we also do a lot of
comedy that is very silly and doesn't really have
much to do with anything, and probably is of no
benefit to this country. [LAUGHTER] I've always said to people,
if you're getting a message from my show, you're wrong. [LAUGHTER] There's no message to my comedy. We're just we're here to amuse. WESLEY MORRIS: OK, that's fair. OK. This is a Brookline High School,
or Brookline alumni question. What's your favorite
high school memory? It's from Jason, who
graduated in 1996. CONAN O'BRIEN: He's a kid. Let's see. My favorite high school memory. It might be that
I got to do the-- this just in-- [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: Breaking
news at the JKF Library! CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, I got
to be in this school talent show my senior year. I got to MC it. And my co-MC was the
school's janitor. [LAUGHTER] And I don't remember
even how that happened, but that was my introduction
to show business, was MC'ing seeing
the senior show. And I have an old black
and white photograph of it, where we're doing
what looks to be-- I have no memory
of it, but it looks to be the lamest routine in
the history of show business, where the janitor
had this big beard and I'm made up to look like
a ventriloquist's dummy. And I'm sitting on
his lap, and we're doing a bit that looks
absolutely dreadful. [LAUGHTER] And so, I remember that being
just a big moment for me. WESLEY MORRIS: Who is the best
comic we don't know about, and why aren't they famous yet? CONAN O'BRIEN: Every time
I say that, it turns out they're really well-known. I mean, I've said that
about Louis CK, years ago. WESLEY MORRIS: I mean,
you said that years ago. That didn't really happen. CONAN O'BRIEN: It happened
because I said it. [LAUGHTER] Welcome to delusion theater. I'm trying to think. WESLEY MORRIS: Well, who are
some people you really like? CONAN O'BRIEN: Pete
Holmes is really great. Right, Sona? SONA MOVSESIAN: Yeah. CONAN O'BRIEN: Pete Holmes is
someone that we're working with right now, who's a very talented
comedian who people don't-- I think he's starting
to become well-known. He's a very good
comic, so I would put Pete Holmes in that category. And I'll stick with him for now. WESLEY MORRIS: OK. CONAN O'BRIEN: I was
going to see someone else, but I don't like that guy. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: Poor guy. CONAN O'BRIEN:
Nah, he'll be fine. He'll do very well. WESLEY MORRIS: Let's see. I just had a-- I should actually remove
the ones that I've asked. CONAN O'BRIEN: It looks
like there's one word per-- WESLEY MORRIS: Right. You should see some of these. CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh my, God! WESLEY MORRIS:
That's a short story. CONAN O'BRIEN: That's a
proclamation of some kind. WESLEY MORRIS: What is your
opinion of the homogenization of network television to
quote, "play to the Midwest slash middle America," unquote. That's from Mary Ellen
Walsh, from Weymouth. CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh. I don't really think
that's the case these days. I think that there is-- I mean, television,
in a way, you could say it used to be more
homogeneous, because there was only three networks. So I think it's less
homogeneous now. I think there's so
much on television. There's so much
variety, and there's so many people playing
to certain niches that I think it's the least
homogeneous television's ever been. The fact is it's
art meets commerce, so there's always going to
be an attempt to get the most people under the tent. You can't fault
networks for doing that. WESLEY MORRIS: Are you
thinking about an audience when you do the show? CONAN O'BRIEN: No. I don't think about it at all. I don't think about it. To me, that's an abstraction. WESLEY MORRIS: And
there's nobody-- is the difference maybe between
TBS and NBC the notes you get? CONAN O'BRIEN:
There's not much-- yes, there's less
of that like, it would be really
good if you could, but I've never even let
that sway me too much. I do my thing my way. That's the only thing
I know how to do. I don't know how to
do it another way, frankly, so I like
to pretend that it was my high sense of moral
purpose, but it's not. Again, it's just that this
is how I know how to-- this is what strikes me as funny. This is the way I like to do it. This is how I know how to do it. I don't know how to
do it any other way. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. CONAN O'BRIEN: So these are
the people I find interesting. This is the kind of
show I want to do. So if that becomes untenable,
and there's no place to do it, it's time to learn
something else. WESLEY MORRIS: But you also
don't strike me as necessarily a czar-like figure. I mean, if I disagreed with
you about the direction a particular segment or
something was going-- CONAN O'BRIEN: I'd crush you. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: OK. CONAN O'BRIEN: I'd
crush you like a bug. WESLEY MORRIS: No,
but, I mean, you'd be open to the possibility. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah,
I like to collaborate, but I'm also going to be honest. I have some people
that work with me here. I'm strong willed, and when
I see things a certain way, and I think it's the
right way to do it, it's all I can do to just-- and
people are saying dissenting things-- when I see things a certain way,
I become a little like Stalin in my economic policies. [LAUGHTER] I believe in
collectivizing grain. Other than that, I'm quite kind. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: OK. So we have time to take
some questions from people who've left them on Twitter. If somebody could-- CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh, my God. WESLEY MORRIS: There's a
screen that's coming down. Look out. STAGEHAND: Don't worry. CONAN O'BRIEN: I
wasn't told about this. This is like something
in a James Bond lair. That they would-- All right. Oh, thank you. That's terrific. WESLEY MORRIS: So I mean, how
about you pick some of these actually? You can't - can that
scroll up and down? CONAN O'BRIEN: The
first one I can see is, what you see as a celeb's
role in political activism? Prolific like Clooney, reserved,
or something in between? From Kevin Slane @kslane. Sorry. [LAUGHTER] There is his photo
that he's chosen. WESLEY MORRIS: You
guys can see the photo. CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh, you
can't see the photo. WESLEY MORRIS: He's
having a great time. CONAN O'BRIEN: He's having
a great time in this photo. He's just coming off the
slopes and he's high. And it's all good. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: I think
is wearing a colander. CONAN O'BRIEN: He thinks
he's skied but he didn't ski. [LAUGHTER] I'm not a big believer-- contrary to why I'm being here-- I'm not someone
who is comfortable being a big activist,
or someone who-- I've never felt like I
was elected to anything. And so, I'm always for
myself a little wary of that. Actually, as a fan of
19th century history, I know that back in the 19th
century, actors and comedians, we were treated as
second-class citizens. I think we should go
back to that time. [LAUGHTER] I really do sometimes
think we've elevated-- we're asking Khloe Kardashian
what about the euro. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: Well, she
spends a lot of them. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. WESLEY MORRIS: She's entitled. CONAN O'BRIEN: It's
just ridiculous. There's a reverence for
what celebrities think, and anyone who is-- whenever there's a tragedy
of some kind in the nation, or something horrible
happens, sometimes I've been at events where someone
says, can you tell us, define courage for us. And I think, don't ask me. I have not earned the right
to answer that question. And there's these
sections now in US magazine, and all these
different magazines where they-- or people tweet about
a national crisis. WESLEY MORRIS: Conan,
give us your thoughts about the tsunami. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, exactly. And then these people start-- Snooki tells us what
should happen with TARP. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: TARP for her
is a hair gel, isn't it? CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. I become despondent
when that happens, and so, I, myself, like to-- I think it's just all-- I'm much more
comfortable one-to-one, or in a room like this
talking to people, and telling them at least
what my experience was like if they're interested. But when it gets
much beyond that-- and I'm going to get out there! And I'm going to raise
awareness on this issue! I've never been quite
comfortable with it. Maybe I just haven't
found the right issue, but I haven't been
comfortable with it. WESLEY MORRIS: Is
there a guest you haven't had on for somewhat
similar philosophical reasons? Is there somebody that you
just don't want to deal with? CONAN O'BRIEN: Yes! [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: Or
you've had them on, and after things went the way
they did, you said never again. CONAN O'BRIEN: I
mean, I really do-- I'm not being cagey, just
like thousands of people. WESLEY MORRIS: You
needn't name them. I'm just wondering-- CONAN O'BRIEN: No, I think
it's important to name. [LAUGHTER] There are people who
are very self-serious. And there's an
attitude sometimes when a guest comes out, and
acts like, well, I suppose this is what I'm supposed to do. Have at it, you clown. [LAUGHTER] And they roll their eyes a
lot, and a lot of, yes, well. WESLEY MORRIS: At you? CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah,
they have that-- it's an aura that's
coming off of them, and I have no patience for it. I think, well, why did you come? And they have a little bit
of a feeling of they're lowering themselves to
be part of this farce, but I suppose this
is what people do. So there are people like
that who, the segment's over, and I say, please, I just
never want to see them again. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. CONAN O'BRIEN: But for the most
part I get along with people, and I can try and make it work. WESLEY MORRIS: OK. I mean, I've seen the
discomfort that you've had with some people
who I won't name, but, I mean, you can feel it. And I don't recall ever seeing
that person back on the show, on either network. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, or alive. WESLEY MORRIS: Stalin speaks! Stalin speaks! CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. After the show, I'm just
always like, get rid of them. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: That explains-- CONAN O'BRIEN: This
isn't a cat, by the way. [LAUGHTER] I'll leave it at that. But yeah, I don't know. You need the right conditions. These shows require--
there's a lot of variables. There's the right kind of guest. There's, how's the crowd today? What happened in the news? Sometimes they all line up. It doesn't happen often, but
when everything lines up, it's magical. And you're getting
this taste of a drug, that you'll do anything
to get that taste again. That's the secret
of these shows. You keep fighting
back to even get all nine tumblers to
come up on the bell, and then you're just ecstatic. And sometimes you get close,
but no, you just missed out. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. Bit CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. I'm in the "life is too
short" category now. I just don't have-- I used to be willing to pretty
much do anything and try and make anything work. And then you get
to a point where you've been through
a lot, you've been doing it for a long
time, and you think, I don't think I'm going to
win having this person on. I think it's going to
be a little bit of a-- it's not going to
be so much fun. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. CONAN O'BRIEN: This
person is a huge ego. This person is
wearing sunglasses during the interview. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: This person
is sitting like this. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, we're
about Madeleine Albright. [LAUGHTER] Impossible. Impossible woman. And yeah, and they just
have that attitude, and you just think, I just
don't want to do it anymore. WESLEY MORRIS: You don't
have to deal with it, because it's not really-- it's your show. CONAN O'BRIEN: Exactly. WESLEY MORRIS: Let's do
another Twitter question. Oh, this is somewhat related to
what you had mentioned earlier. Comedy aside. How would you convince
youth of today-- I'm rewriting it-- to not
be cynical about politics? CONAN O'BRIEN: I think that
relates a little bit to-- I think cynicism comes
a lot from people thinking they have no voice. So you retreat to cynicism when
you think you're not going to-- nothing's going to
change if I get involved, and the whole thing's rigged. And I think that was, going
back to really the reason that we're here, that I
think President Kennedy was so brilliant at, is I think, you
look at the political landscape leading up to his
presidency, and really the biggest change overnight
was that he very much inspired people. And people talk a lot about it
now, and it's become so famous. It's been talked about so
much that it can almost start to sound trite,
but at the time I do think that his wit and his
ability to inspire young people was something that was
markedly different. I mean, he's coming out of
this, what many people now think of as this very staid
Eisenhower culture, and then suddenly there's
this very young president, and he is telling people,
you need to get involved. And there's the Peace
Corps, and there's his famous inaugural address,
and he's telling people that it's really up to them. And I think that
is electrifying. And so, I think
the biggest way to for people not to be cynical
is to convince them, which is true, that being
involved actually does make a difference. I mean, look at the
world we have now, where Mark Zuckerberg
changed our culture. This is someone who, I don't
think it's been 10 years yet, and he completely changed
the culture overnight. Literally, almost overnight. And I'm always telling
people that work for me, you would be shocked at how
much older people don't know. We don't really know
what we're doing. And I tell them, when you
watch us working on the show, we've got some knowledge
from having done this a couple of thousand times,
and we're working hard, but up to the last second,
I'm trying jokes out on the 21-year-old interns that
work on the show, and saying, does this makes sense to you? Do you think this is good? I'm always looking
for the answer, and I'm always telling them,
I might be working for you in five years. That's the world we
live in right now. The media culture is changing so
rapidly, anybody in this room-- a 19-year-old could be
running the world in 10 years, or have revolutionized the
way we experience media. So it's a very volatile but
also really exciting time. And I think the greatest
weapon against cynicism is to convince young people,
it's amazing what you can do, what you can accomplish
if you get involved. And if you don't-- being detached and cynical
is a defense mechanism. It's a lot easier to
do that, than to try. So why not? Why not be cynical? It's easy. WESLEY MORRIS: You have this
really amazing connection to young people. I mean, I remember being
really excited when your NBC show started. I was a freshman. And it was this
thing, that we all had to go see what
this guy Conan O'Brien was going to be like. And it started in
college for me, I continued to watch the show-- it's a gateway drug to
nighttime television. CONAN O'BRIEN: That's
how we designed it. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: But
you have managed to be the young person's
late night person. And a lot of people support
you, a lot of young people are huge fans of yours. They support you in
ways that you don't see people supporting Letterman. You also were
somewhat scandal-free. CONAN O'BRIEN: So far. WESLEY MORRIS: All right, yes. Yes. Don't do anything
to screw that up. CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh, it happened. [LAUGHTER] You just don't know about it. [LAUGHTER] WESLEY MORRIS: There are some
journalists in this room who will dig that up. But I mean, I think
the power that you have with young people and the
relationship that you have-- part of it is social
media, but I mean, it existed before
there was Twitter. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, I think
the thing a lot of people respond to, which,
again, I'm not trying to sell anybody
anything in a way. I think there is a sense-- I've always been very clear. This is who I am. These are the flaws. That didn't go so well. In the show, if
something doesn't work, I'm the first one on the show
to tell you it didn't work. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. CONAN O'BRIEN: And
maybe to go on at length about how it didn't work. There's not an attempt to
convince people and market to them. I think young
people are extremely sensitive to being
marketed to, or conned, or sold on something. They're always been intelligent. They're hyper-intelligent
about someone older than them trying to
convince them of something. So rule number one
is just be yourself. And that's actually
the first thing-- when I got The Late Night
Show-- and I bring him up now because they just
did this great documentary about Johnny Carson, but one
of the first people I talked to was Johnny Carson. He said, just be yourself. He said, it's the
only way it can work. He didn't say, it "would" work,
because he's being honest. He didn't know me. He thought, you
might be yourself and it would be terrible. But he said, be yourself. It's the only way. And there's an
honesty to that, and I do think that that's
a little bit timeless. I think if you-- when you're putting
on a persona, there's a lot of
people in television that have a persona that is
almost the exact opposite of who they really are. And, again, I'm not
going to name names, but there are
people that are just pushing on you this idea
that they're really happy, and they're great, and they're
super nice, and they're not. And you experience
that and you think-- What I've always
been interested in is the shortest amount of
distance between who I really am and what people see. And I think it's
impossible to have people see the exact real you, and they
probably shouldn't, but this is pretty close. And I think there's a sense
there that maybe people think, at least he's being honest. And that show wasn't great,
and that didn't go that well, but he made fun of himself,
and was honest about the fact that it didn't go well. And everything that happened
two years ago, whatever anybody thought of it, it was honest. This is what
happened, and this is how I reacted day, to day, to
day, and this is where I went. And I think it's a
reaction to that. So I think there's something
about not trying to project something fake to people. WESLEY MORRIS:
Well, what did you-- going back to The Tonight
Show situation-- what did you hope to do with that show? CONAN O'BRIEN: Keep
it for a while. [LAUGHTER] This is a true story over an
elliptical machine in my house, because it helps me
calm down to work out. And so, the whole Tonight
Show thing happens, and then I go on this tour, and
then I come back from the tour, and then we're going to
make this new show with TBS. And my daughter-- I never really even talked to my
kids about what was happening. They just knew daddy, this
crazy stuff is happening, but it's all fine,
it's all good. And I'm working out on my
little elliptical machine, and my daughter Nev, who
at the time was seven, wandered into my room. And I'm on my
elliptical machine, and I'm going to start the
TBS show in about three weeks. And I'm just working on
my elliptical machine, she came in. And she said, daddy? I said, yeah. And she said, you're
starting a new show? And I said, yeah. I'm starting a new show
in about three weeks. And she's looking at me, and I'm
on the machine, and she said, can you try and keep this
one longer than the last one? [LAUGHTER] Get out of here! [LAUGHTER] So she's getting her
allowance back in nine years. [LAUGHTER] But it's just this great honest
moment, where I was like, yeah, I'm going to really try. Like I say, all TV shows, even
if you been doing them forever, are a work in progress. So you get a show, you start,
you have your problems, you start working through them. And I always thought,
well, I won't really know-- because it was a process
that was interrupted-- but we'll do it here. We'll do it at TBS. So we'll find it here. WESLEY MORRIS: OK. I don't know-- oh, wait. Yeah, so the screen does move. How important do you
think your social media team has been to your success? CONAN O'BRIEN: It's been huge. I have great people. I found social media
as a necessity. I was not-- I'm kind of a Luddite. I'm not good with-- WESLEY MORRIS: Do you remember
the day someone walked up to you and said, Twitter! CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh, I remember
exactly what happened. We were thinking about
launching this tour. And I was off the air,
and I was forbidden-- it was legally prohibited
from television, radio, and these different
media things. And someone said, you
should go on Twitter. And I said, I don't know. Go on Twitter. Then I started
thinking about it. I started looking into it. The first thing we did
is find out, legally, can I go on Twitter? We find out that-- Now, trust me, lawyers,
they'll put that in. But this was such a new
world we were in, that they hadn't prohibited Twitter. It wasn't in there. So it it was actually-- you imagine yourself
being locked in a tower, and there's no other way
except you find a little crack and you can slip
a note through it. It was the one way I
could talk to people. So I started to-- I realized it's just a
joke-writing exercise. It's actually a
very good exercise. You get so many characters,
you can't go beyond that. And if you can't
say something funny, it's like writing a haiku. If you can't do it in that
form, it's a great discipline. Jokes probably shouldn't
be longer than that. So it forced me to-- how
many characters is it? It's-- WESLEY MORRIS: 160. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, I'm
constantly writing something, and then someone on
my team would be like, that's one character too many. Ah! But then you realize
a way to shorten it, and it's shortening
it, and shortening it, and shortening it. And it's actually
why I believe the one person whose speeches endure
more than anybody is Lincoln. He just obsessively-- everyone
else in his era was verbose, and would speak for-- famously, the guy who spoke
before Lincoln at Gettysburg spoke for four hours,
and everybody was just melting into their beards. And then Lincoln gets up and
gives the Gettysburg Address. And I defy anyone to find
an extra word in there. He just boiled things
down, and had a little bit of a run, and then a short
phrase that just punctuates it, and is haunting. And so, I actually
think-- it's crazy. I think people were going to
write these really prophetic, amazing things on Twitter,
because it's going to force them to be economical. It's going to force them to
say what you want in a very-- it's like the same
rule for everybody. It's very democratic. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. And so, you obviously embrace
it, but I mean, do you do all-- is everything that I
get in my Twitter stream from you, from you? CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah,
they're all from me. What I do is, if I talk
to the writers about like, who's got funny ideas? Because it is every
day, so I'd be lying if I said every single
thing that I come up with was my idea, because it's not. So I get help
writing them from-- I work with really
funny, creative people. But I write a lot of them. I help craft a bunch,
sort of the tone of it. Because it's got to be me. It can't just sound
like somebody else. WESLEY MORRIS: Oh,
they sound like you. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. And the social media
thing has been-- everyone's wondering,
how is TV-- and I talked about
this a little bit yesterday at this
cable convention, but it's worth
repeating-- everyone's wondering how TV
and the social media is going to work together,
and does it work together? And here's an example of when
it really worked together. About a month ago, Will
Ferrell called me up and said, I want to announce that
I'm doing Anchorman 2. Can I come on your
show as Ron Burgundy, and interrupt the
show, and announce that I'm making a new movie? And I said, no. [LAUGHTER] I said, that would be fantastic. So we worked it out. And then we decided-- old school television is you
don't give anything away. You say, tune into Conan for
a special surprise at 11:00. That's not the way the
media works anymore. It is completely changed. So what we did was we put
together these pictures of me with Will as Ron
Burgundy, and we tweeted to the 5-point-something
million people that we have, and put on Facebook
for all the people we have there, that, look who
is coming to my show tonight. And it's me with Ron Burgundy. We started to drive this
huge wave of interest through social media, that
came back around and created a wave that gave us the
highest rating that we had had at that point for a
year on the Conan show, which then generates more
interest on the social network. So it's a biosphere where
everything's working together. It doesn't happen that
often, but I got a glimpse-- I thought I had a quick
glimpse of, this is the future. That everyone's on social media,
and that's maybe driving him to an event over here. They see that. That creates a number of
viewers for that show, but then that feeds into
other social media sites. WESLEY MORRIS: Well, can I
tell you the downside of that? CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. WESLEY MORRIS: There was
so much Ron Burgundy-ness during that period, I thought
Ron Burgundy had died. CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh. WESLEY MORRIS:
I'm like, oh wait! He's not even real. CONAN O'BRIEN: Right, right. WESLEY MORRIS: I
mean, it was it was so saturated that I actually
didn't know what was going on. CONAN O'BRIEN: Well,
that's the other thing too, is that it's a culture where
people go from, I'm interested, to, I'm sick of it, in
about eight seconds. So that's the downside. WESLEY MORRIS: It got
me to the show though. I'll say that. Did you know marrying Scott
and David on your show would prompt POTUS to
support marriage equality. CONAN O'BRIEN: No. I don't think it did obviously. That was just another thing
that happened accidentally, is we had two people-- someone who works for me
on the show, Scott Cronick was intending-- while we were
in New York, because it's legal there-- to marry his partner. And then someone said,
Conan you can go online and you can marry them
if you want to do that. And we just looked
into it, and I was able to go online and get
the ministerial certificate. And I was able to go
on a neighboring site and become a Jedi knight. [LAUGHTER] And got like a dental degree. I mean, it was just-- it's scary. In about 20 minutes I was the
most learned man in the world. [LAUGHTER] But we did that, and I
actually really liked it because it was a real
thing, and it meant a lot to Scott and to his partner. And we did it in a real way. We didn't do it
in a comedic way. And it was something
that they wanted to do. So I thought, that
was really nice. But it didn't come from
an activist spirit. It didn't come from a-- again, the best
things just happen. They just happened because
life takes you that way. WESLEY MORRIS: But isn't that
a really good example of what we were talking
about before, which is this organic idea of the way
politics can work in comedy? I don't think that-- this is it
is readable as a political act. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. Oh, yeah. WESLEY MORRIS: But the nature
of it, from your standpoint, was just humanist. CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. WESLEY MORRIS: And that's
the whole thing about-- CONAN O'BRIEN: I think that's-- there's a place we're
getting to in our country where things are so
polarized, and everything is-- we've always been a
polarized country. It seems to have gotten
to an extreme right now. But you do think that-- people seem to be
able to tell when something comes
from a real place, and it's not just doctrine. WESLEY MORRIS: No,
that seemed really-- CONAN O'BRIEN: I
need to say this in order to fit into
this party or that party. People seem to know
the difference, and they seem to accept it. And that's probably the way-- eventually, that's how
most change happens, is it comes from-- it's not Hollywood
actors are comedians making change, it's individual
human beings organically coming to a place, and taking
a leap of faith. That's what gets us there. It's not someone from a movie
telling us what we should do. WESLEY MORRIS: You
mean Chuck and Larry, their big wedding didn't-- Adam Sandler-- CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh, that. Yes, yes. I'm sure that had
a huge influence. WESLEY MORRIS: Did
you get any feedback? CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, we had
a lot of positive feedback. WESLEY MORRIS: Was there any
feedback that surprised you, I guess? CONAN O'BRIEN: No, I wasn't. I was more surprised
that it did feel like there was not a lot of-- there was more of just
an acceptance, I think. And not that I was exposed
to that much criticism from people who
wouldn't like that, but it did feel like this
country's been moving that way for quite a while. And obviously,
the big debate now is whether this is something
that people nationally want to make an issue,
and how should this be treated constitutionally. But I think that was
just a moment, that was a moment with
real people, and it was I think accepted that way. WESLEY MORRIS: Have you come
to regret the level of candor and honesty on display in the
documentary Conan O'Brien-- CONAN O'BRIEN: No, that
was always the intention, was not to make-- when I went
and met with the director, he said, I don't want
to make Rattle and Hum. I don't want to make
anything that deifies. I was like, neither
do I. Let's just-- WESLEY MORRIS: You went in the
opposite direction, actually. CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh, yeah. We went to actually-- just showing how much-- I mean, he actually edited
it to show much more fatigue, the most exhausting-- he
only use the moments when I my most tired and
most exhausted. But I think people need to know
that this is how hard it is. There's a lot of work, and
the theme of that movie, Conan O'Brien Can't
Stop, is I cannot-- I am constantly pushing
myself, and pushing myself, and then complaining
to people around me that I'm being pushed too hard. And then when people around me
say, well, do you want to stop? I snap at them and say, how
dare you suggest I stop? So you get a nice insight. They should study it. Psychiatrists should study it. [LAUGHTER] It's an interesting
look at someone who's resenting how hard they're
working, when no one's making them work that hard. It's all coming from
within, and ultimately they blame their parents. [LAUGHTER] I'm glad you're in the
front row for that. WESLEY MORRIS: So
we have to wrap up. CONAN O'BRIEN: Mm-hmm. WESLEY MORRIS: But I've been
given a request in closing. You sort of did it a
little bit earlier, but someone wants you to
do your JFK impersonation. CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh, it's
funny, it's not-- it's funny, it's really not
a JFK impression. I used to do-- when I worked on The
Simpsons, there's a Mayor Quimby who's
clearly a Kennedy. And I noticed that whenever I
would go into that on the show, I'll tell a joke, and if
it does particularly well, and the crowd's
cheering, I just start to go like, we can do
better! and we'll do better-- And they start cheering more,
and it became this thing. And I think it's a
whole generation that thought that it came from
me doing Mayor Quimby, which was a Simpsons thing. WESLEY MORRIS: Right. CONAN O'BRIEN: And it
always worked on the tour, and it was something that
just morphed out of-- there was a very, very silly
piece that I did on stage years ago, where I played
Ted Kennedy as a baby. [LAUGHTER] I did this in my 20s. And I would-- literally, the
lights would come up on stage, and it was the silliest
dumbest thing ever, but I'd be wearing a diaper
and a bonnet, on my back, and I'd be going-- a
deb, deb, deb, deb, deb. [LAUGHTER] Deb, deb, deb, deb. Deb, deb, deb,
deb, deb, deb, deb. Deb deb. And then I'd stop for second,
and everyone would wait. And then I go, ah,
deb, deb, deb, deb. [LAUGHTER] And it was so ridiculous. And you just got
me uninvited here. [LAUGHTER] Caroline's going to--
what did he close with? [LAUGHTER] You don't want to know. WESLEY MORRIS: You
don't want to know. [LAUGHTER] CONAN O'BRIEN:
Deb, deb, deb, deb. [LAUGHTER] But It's just silly. WESLEY MORRIS: Yeah. Well, thank you guys for coming. Thank you, Conan, for-- CONAN O'BRIEN: Thanks for
coming out, everybody. [CHEERING AND APPLAUSE] Thank you for doing this. WESLEY MORRIS: Of course. CONAN O'BRIEN: Great job. That's was great. Thank you for doing it. WESLEY MORRIS: It was good. I'm feeling good. So I think they're going
to take you that way. CONAN O'BRIEN: Go that way? WESLEY MORRIS: Yeah, and then-- CONAN O'BRIEN: Bye everybody! [CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]