IRISH INDEPENDENT ARTICLE: The Blarney Kid
(Appeared in the Irish Independent on Wednesday, March 25th 1998.)
Young Irish American's chatshow the hippest in US Conan O'Brien's incisive blend of humour and chat is powering him to the top on TV in the US and it has increased his European audience by 50% in just 12 months. His Irish roots are very important to him. How Irish is he? How Catholic is he? He says his roots are the basis of his success...
With just ten minutes to go before Late Night with Conan O'Brien goes on air, all is calm at the talk show's New York studios. Backstage, researchers are goofing around, even though one of tonight's guests is snarled up in Manhattan traffic. Resident band leader, formerly drummer with Bruce Springsteen, is chatting about the seven operations he'd had on his hands, the result of the four-hours gigs in the eighties.
The only man looking less than relaxed is the host himself Conan O'Brien. Gangly and auburn-haired, he seems troubled as he stalks the studio floor, strumming a guitar to calm his nerves and eyeing the young, 300-strong audience. There is always something for him to worry about. Tonight, the cult rock bank Phish are the musical guests and O'Brien is concerned that their obsessive fans may grow restless during the rest of the show.
Such anxieties figure large in the genetic make-up of the American talk-show host, that strange breed which The Larry Sanders Show once described as ``half-man, half-desk''. No matter that O'Brien's nightly show on NBC is currently the hippest programming on the US networks. No matter that his incisive blend of humour and chat has increased its European audience by 50 per cent in just 12 months. Torment, paranoia and insecurity are all part of the job.
O'Brien has good reason to fret. The late-night talk show wars are the most brutal on US television. Each show's ratings are measured minute by minute, and O'Brien must constantly struggle with rivals Jay Leno and David Letterman to attract the most illustrious guests and to crack the sharpest gags.
Ninety minutes later, however, O'Brien is a changed man. The show has gone well, his 6ft 4 inch frame is sprawled on a sofa in his office, and he's happy to talk at length about his beginnings in the business. The third of six children born to professional Irish-American parent just outside Boston, he credits his family background with shaping his style of humour.
"My Irish background has had a huge effect on my comedy,'' he reflects. "Irish Catholics are very repressed so we have a hard time confronting one another and there is a lot we can't talk about. I grew up in a large family and there was a lot we can't talk about. I grew up in a large family and there was a lot that went unsaid, so the way we would communicate was through humour. When I was a kid, we were all trying to outdo each other at the dinner table to see who could be the funniest. It was the only way we could really express ourselves.''
O'Brien, 34, began writing comedy while studying American history at Harvard. His two-year stint editing the university's satirical magazine, Lampoon, led to his first TV job writing episodes of The Simpsons, where Homer and Bart's antics allowed him to indulge his taste for surreal slapstick. "When people hear I was a Harvard history graduate, they assume my comedy is very cerebral and verbal,'' he explains. "Actually, I've got a childlike sense of humour. I've liked physical comedy ever since my father took me to see old Charlie Chaplin moves when I was young.''
O'Brien's talents were soon noticed by NBC executives, looking to fill their late-night vacancy after David Letterman defected to rival network CBS four years ago. It was a huge risk, particularly as O'Brien had never appeared on TV before and had no interest in massaging the egos of Hollywood's elite. "Even now, the last thing I want to do is promote my guests' movies. It's good the interviews only lasts for six minutes. If I had to talk to a lot of these actresses and actors for half an hour I'd go insane.''
At first, the network's gamble looked like it had backfired. Initial ratings were low and NBC executives were worried that O'Brien's awkward collection of mannerisms including nervous tics, finger-tapping and braying laugh were turning off the viewers. Sources in the industry predicted the show would soon be cancelled.
"The first year was difficult, perhaps because it's not a typical American show,'' recalls O'Brien. ``It was more experimental than other shows and sometimes we did things that may have alienated more conservative people. The network tried to groom me, even telling me to change my hairstyle. Certainly, the show isn't as extreme now as it used to be, but we've kept the same energy and spontaneity.''
Despite O'Brien's need to modify his humour, Late Night has continued to provide an eclectic mix of visual gags, sophisticated irony and downright silliness not least a regular spot featuring a choir of ventriloquists and their dummies. As word spread among college students, O'Brien began to deliver the all-important Generation X audience that the advertisers demanded. He now proudly points out that Late Night's audience has a higher percentage of 18 to 49-year-olds than either Leno or Letterman.
With the show in its fourth year, O'Brien can relax sufficiently to enjoy the rewards of his success. There are certainly plenty of blessings to count the $2 million salary, the beautiful girlfriend, the fashionable SoHo loft where his neighbours include Linda Evangelista and Cindy Crawford. Yet, even so, he still suffers from the neuroses which invariably plague every talk show host.
"There is a big depressive side to me,'' confesses O'Brien. "I even get depressed during a show if it's not going well. Sometimes I'll go to my dressing room during a commercial break and smash something or hit something to get it out of my system. I spend more money on my therapist than I do on food but because I'm Irish, it means I don't tell her things that I'm really worried about because I think I might offend her."
"To make things worse, my therapist is also from Ireland. Whenever I go there, we spend the first half-hour having a pleasant Irish chat, talking about the weather and our families. We never get to talk about the nightmare I had the night before when I dreamed I did the show naked in front of my mother.''
**Late Night with Conan O'Brien airs Monday-Friday at 22.00 in Ireland and the UK. It is available on NBC on cable and the Eutelsat satellite in Ireland.**
Copyright The Irish Independent 1998
**This information has now changed. See KEEP EUROPE CONETASTIC!! for further details.