Conan O’Brien on What Can Go Wrong at the Oscars
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This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Please welcome four-time Oscar viewer Conan O'Brien. Hosting the Academy Awards is not an easy gig. Everybody delights in panning it. It's always endlessly long. And it's often a parade of self-congratulation and sanctimony, and the musical numbers are Busby Berkeley on acid when they succeed. And yet, as host of the Oscars last year, Conan O'Brien really nailed it.
It's Hollywood's biggest night that starts at four in the afternoon. Everyone here just had brunch.
O'Brien's resume starts out as president of the Harvard Lampoon and goes right through writing for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons. And then, of course, he was host of The Tonight Show. The years have gone by, and now he's one of comedy's wise elders. Ironic, self-deprecating, zany. His sensibility translated perfectly to podcasting, too. On his show, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. And yet you can still imagine Johnny Carson or Bob Hope delivering some of O'Brien's best lines at last year's Academy Awards. I remember him saying, during a very long show, if you're still enjoying the show, you have something called Stockholm Syndrome. And I guess we all do. And he's hosting the ceremony again in March.
Have you started writing and rehearsing for the Oscars?
What challenges does Conan O'Brien face when hosting the Oscars?
Yeah, I started writing a while ago and what happens is it's just ideas are like RAF pilots in 1940. You have to generate a lot of them A lot of them fall by the wayside and then some endure. And so we've been going for a while. We got a great writer's room. I've already started going to clubs to try out material, which is really fun. And it's good to keep you in shape or get you ready. Does it really help? I think it does, but I couldn't prove it to you. Having watched the Oscars- Have we started yet, by the way? Yeah, yeah, we're in. Oh, we started? Yeah. Oh my God, none of what I just said was true.
It's a high-risk, maybe even low-reward gig, isn't it? I mean, I think back over the years.
I choose not to see it that way. But you killed. Yeah, it was really fun. I mean, I grew up watching Bob Hope do it, Johnny Carson do it, and so it's a very cool thing to be connected to. I'm, as you know, very interested in history, and this thing has been around for 100 years, and so... Almost 100 years. So let's have fun with it.
Anybody give you some good tips, whether it's Billy Crystal or anybody else on how to deal with an audience? I don't even know how big that audience is now.
You know, no one's pulled me aside and said, OK, here's the secret. Smile. You know, exactly. Yeah. What I've learned myself over time is that I can't fake enjoyment. I need to find ways to make sure that I'm having a lot of fun. I need to prepare. I mean, I'm a big preparation person. I work with this brilliant team of writers who are just downstairs from where I'm doing this podcast. and they're cranking away, and it's kind of, it looks like they're working on the Glengarry leads. You know, I go down there, and they're all around a long table, and these premises are no good. Yeah, these premises are no good. We got to get the Glengarry premises. And I yell at them. I'm the Alec Baldwin who comes in, gives that great speech up front.
I'm talking about the movie now. I think we all know that.
Not the play. Where does politics play a role in the way you're thinking about that kind of night?
It's tricky. I've done political comedy over the years. Certainly, I've done two White House correspondence dinners on late night. We used to do... Lots of political comedy would do it on the TBS show as well. It's never been in the front of my comedy brain. I don't think it's what drives me. I, for better or worse, have a brain that scrambles things, loves cartoon imagery. I'm probably as influenced by old movies or literature as I am by, frankly, Warner Brothers cartoons. When I do political comedy or I make a political joke, it has to really resonate with me. And I can't tell you what that is, but it has to feel true to my comedic voice.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–1:43
2
What challenges does Conan O'Brien face when hosting the Oscars?
1:43–6:34
3
How does Conan prepare for the Oscars performance?
6:34–8:39
4
What insights does Conan share about the evolution of late-night television?
8:39–16:46
5
How does Conan view the impact of political events on comedy?
16:46–33:49
Speakers
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