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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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?
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Chapter 2: 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?
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Chapter 3: How does Conan prepare for the Oscars performance?
I'm sure you are. You wouldn't believe it.
That's the... Yeah, SNL, you know, they're crazy talented. Jon Stewart, crazy talented. So these are all really good people that do that extraordinarily well. When people talk to me about it, I say, well, I have to, all I can do is come out of my own personal experience, which is, this isn't inspiring a lot of chuckles for me. Now, there's a different thing.
There are comedians who, when they talk about Trump, they get, they quickly get very angry And I've said this before, but I think it's possible to surrender your best weapon. Your best weapon is to be funny. And if it just evolves into name-calling, I'm all for people trying. And when there's a really good...
joke about the president or the administration, if there's a joke about the right or the left, and it's a good one, I'm elated. So I just think that in the current climate, it can be, things have gotten so stretched out. You know, think about that Dolly melted watch that it's hard to find purchased. You know what I mean? It's hard to get a grasp on what's the straight line here. And...
Where does the network get involved? There's always some issues. I've been dealing with networks for most of my life. So there'll be stuff, and then that's when you roll up your sleeve and you start arguing back, and it can be... Do you win? Yeah. Oh, yeah, you can win. You can also lose.
But on what basis? Are there rules, or is it just human persuasion?
Certainly there are rules about... what can be said and what can't be said.
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Chapter 4: What insights does Conan share about the evolution of late-night television?
The Academy has rules. The Academy has rules about what you can do with the image of an Oscar or can't. I mean, everyone has rules. Once you've lived in New York for a period of time, you come to this awareness that, oh, everything ultimately is a New York co-op. You know, they have their rules. They have their, you know, you can...
you can say, hey, but on this other award show, I got to do this. But you're living in... Let's say I'm living at... I'm going to make it up. I'm living at 172 West 89th Street. And they'll say... And it's a place called, you know, the... This is the Drake. This is the Drake building. And we're, you know, you live here at the Drake building. Yes, yes, I do.
You know, what I'd like to do is put in my kitchen window. No, no, no, no, no. We don't have, we don't let people alter the windows here at the Drake. And you'll say, oh, OK, well, you know, it's funny when I lived over at the Macklemore over. Yes, we know that's the Macklemore.
And so it's OK for Nikki Glaser and Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes.
Yeah. Every award show probably is like, oh, that's fine for the people's. And I'll say, well, you know, I once did the People's Choice Awards. Oh, yes. We know. Yeah. People's Choice Awards. They don't have standards. Their windows and their kitchens are horrid. You're now, and so it's not just the Oscars. Every show probably feels that way about the other shows.
Ever since the Will Smith incident, the slapping incident, do you, and when we were kids, you had the streaker incident. Do you worry about the kind of unplanned disaster happening?
Now, I'm someone who likes, you know, I don't want anyone to slap me. But you'd like a streaker. I'd like a streaker. And you know what I'd really like? A streaker to slap me. That would just satisfy so many of my dormant Catholic hangups. It's a weird duality here. It's a weird thing, but I like to plan and I like to prepare and then I love it when something goes off the rails.
Give me an example in performance.
Oh, just for years and years doing my show, if accidentally a light falls, you can make a whole show about that. Do you know what I mean? People, I don't know what it is about human beings, but they instinctively know when something happens. is real and of the moment.
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Chapter 5: How does Conan view the impact of political events on comedy?
And I know that I, how much I love my parents And I know what a lovely person Will Arnett is and Jason Bateman. And, but this, none of this is real, but it's this way of doing business and connecting. And when they all came out that I had thrown Kate under the bus and said, go get her where she lives and make it look like a robbery. She texted me and said, you don't think I could take Bateman?
I'm speaking with Conan O'Brien and we'll continue in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.
Simone Sanders Townsend and I have known each other for more than a decade, tussling over politics and policy when she worked in the White House and I reported on it. And now we're friends and colleagues. And on our new podcast, MS Now Presents Clock It, we are positioning ourselves at the intersection of culture and politics.
Clock It is where we talk about what we see and hear in the news so you can start to clock it too. MS Now Presents Clock It. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop Thursdays.
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I've been speaking today with Conan O'Brien.
What mode do you want today, sir? Do you want grim, foreboding, or do you want a more optimistic tone?
Since leaving late night TV in 2021, O'Brien has been busy. His hit podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, commands maybe even a bigger audience than he had on late night. He launched spinoffs to the podcast, and then the travel series Conan O'Brien Must Go was on HBO Max. Last year, he was even in a movie.
He played the therapist of Rose Byrne's tormented character in If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You. Let's return to my conversation now with Conan O'Brien. How old were you when you recognized this inbuilt irony, whatever it is, as a way of being in the world?
Well... When you're a kid, I think we all do this. You go through your checklist, you know, you emerge into the world. It takes a bunch of years just to figure out what the hell is going on. And then very quickly things start to get sorted out. Am I an athlete? No, I am not an athlete. Do the girls go crazy for me? No, they do not. Am I a math whiz? No, Conan, you are not. Am I a tough guy?
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