The War for Late Night

by Carter, Bill

  But Conan’s defenders also included many in the comedy world who had never embraced Jay because of his workmanlike style. Even one voice from the Carson camp weighed in. Jeff Sotzing, Johnny’s nephew, who managed all the Carson business activity after Johnny’s death, called Debbie Vickers and told her he agreed with Conan.

  Like most others backing Jay, Vickers questioned the logic in the pro-Conan argument, and told Sotzing, “If Conan is doing well and they have to push him back, you go, ‘No, I’m not doing it.’ But if you’re not doing well, don’t you have to look in the mirror and say, ‘What’s my part in this?ʹ ʺ

  Jerry Seinfeld provided the sternest defense of his old friend. Speaking at NBC’s press tour about his new reality show, The Marriage Ref, Jerry defended Jay’s ten p.m. show as a good idea, worth trying, one that was simply ahead of its time. But he also poked holes in Conan’s defense of his own ratings and how they were damaged by weak lead-ins from Jay. “I don’t think anyone’s preventing people from watching Conan,” Seinfeld said. “Once they give you the cameras, it’s on you.” He added, “Conan had a chance to destroy everybody. Go ahead! You’re out there. You’ve got to hit the ball. They can’t hit the ball for you. They can only give you the bat.”

  The commentary back and forth—mostly nasty and mostly directed at Jay—disturbed the NBC executives, who were already getting antsy over the lack of communication from the Conan side. To them, this smacked of Team Conan trying to get a message out there that was intended not to enhance their own position, or even to challenge NBC on its decision, but purely to trash Jay. Certainly that was Zucker’s view. That Monday he picked up anti-Jay threads in the media that he believed could be traced right back to Gavin Polone. This would not do.

  That same Monday Conan paid a visit to the writers’ room, one of the places he felt most comfortable, surrounded by like minds. He talked briefly about how wretched he felt over this Hobson’s choice he faced. He took his own poll of the room, adding the option that NBC hadn’t given him—at least not officially: Accept the move to post-midnight, or take a hike. This vote was almost unanimous: Tell NBC to shove it.

  Conan thanked them, using a line he would dredge up again later: “I think they cured me of my addiction to The Tonight Show.”

  At that evening’s taping Conan walked onstage to thunderous applause that he finally had to stop by saying, “You keep that up, and this monologue won’t start until 12:05.” He had a passel of jokes related to the news on everyone’s mind: “This weekend a 6.5 earthquake hit California. The earthquake was so powerful it knocked Jay Leno’s show from 10 to 11:35.” (Over in Burbank, Jay was firing away as well: “I take pride in one thing. I leave NBC prime time the same way I found it—a complete disaster.”)

  After he wrapped that night, Conan dragged himself back upstairs to the conference room next to Ross’s office, where his brain trust had reconvened, this time accompanied by the formidable Patty Glaser.

  Conan had found himself more and more beaten down as the days passed. He had learned of Zucker’s blast directed at Rosen, including the threat to keep him from working again. Sure, it was just business, but Conan still found himself shocked by what was transpiring. He had put in almost twenty years at NBC, devoting himself body and soul to the network and its needs, and now he was being told—in effect—that soon they would be posting his picture on NBC’s properties with orders to give him the bum’s rush if he ever showed his face. He recalled how, when Late Night had finally burst through and all the heat it generated was pumping cash into the basement at 30 Rock, NBC came and asked him what kind of gift they could give him—probably expecting he’d say a Porsche or a yacht. Instead, he had asked if NBC happened to have a vintage microphone hanging around somewhere; he would like to have something like that. They managed to dig one up, an old-fashioned mic with the letters ʺRCAʺ on it. He had been thrilled and treasured it. Now, suddenly, that was another memento headed for a scrap heap somewhere as this long marriage threatened to be blown to pieces.

  It struck Conan that Jay had played it well, in his passive-aggressive way, and wound up winning again. And maybe, in contrast, he himself had simply played it all wrong.

  In the conference room, Glaser, accompanied by an associate, sat at one end of the big table with a Bluetooth pinned to one ear. The lawyers, Rosen, Polone, and Ross were all discussing the contract dilemma—how it might all come down to what had been in earlier drafts, and whether they could find something there to at least throw out a charge that NBC was in breach, in order to gain leverage. Conan sat silently listening, slowly getting more and more worked up, until he was all but shaking with emotion.

  Finally Glaser, way at the opposite end of the table, looked to where Conan was sitting and asked him, “What do you want to do?”

  His chest muscles were so constricted, Conan wondered briefly if he was having a heart attack. “What I want to do,” he said, haltingly, his voice rough and raw, “is something that all of you are going to tell me I can’t do.”

  He had their full attention now, all eyes pinned to him. “I want to write a statement that says exactly how I feel about it. You guys are going to tell me that I’m giving up all my leverage if I’m supposed to go to another network or something; but I can’t wait. I don’t want to play games here, and the whole power of this thing is that I don’t really know what my options are. That’s what I want to do.”

  During the long pause that followed, Conan was aware of the eyes on him, the uneasiness around the table. He expected that the next words he would hear would be, “That’s stupid.” Instead, Glaser, calm, totally in control, asked, “What would you say?”

  All his life, Conan O’Brien had lived through periods of debilitating self-doubt and insecurity, knowing that when the moment came to stand up for himself, when he was truly pressed against a wall, he would find a way to push all that aside, straighten his long Irish backbone, and be at his best. He started to speak and a boiling lava of emotion spilled out.

  He described how much the show meant to him, the legacy of Carson, the offers he had passed up to get this chance, and how losing it would be crushing—and unfair. Because they were never really given a chance, not with complete lack of ratings support from prime time and the obvious lack of faith on the part of a network pulling the plug only seven months in.

  The words came freely; he composed them on the spot. But they flowed, syntax perfect, no hesitation between each sentence. His voice grew softer, even more strained with emotion when he got to the core of his message: He could not accept a postponement in a nightly habit Americans had participated in and shared for six decades; he would not be accomplice to the destruction that this idea of NBCʹs might inflict on the greatest franchise in television history. Not to mention the fallout on the other great NBC late-night showcase, the show David Letterman had created and Conan himself had devoted so much of his life to sustaining. If it truly came to this, if NBC would truly force him to decide whether to give up his dream or play a role in undermining a cultural landmark, then maybe it would be better for him to try to find someplace else to work, someplace that prized the art of late-night television more than NBC now apparently did.

  When Conan finished, his group sat silent. Jeff Ross, his eyes welling up, looked around and saw no dry eyes on the Conan team. Throughout Conan’s speech Ross had found himself overcome with discomfort, thinking, They’re never going to let you do this—so stop. Don’t finish this. But he knew Conan, and the powerful way he could use words. So he was not surprised at the impact he had on the room.

  Patty Glaser finally broke the silence. “I like it,” she said. And then she added, “If you do one thing for me, Conan, don’t quit. But I like this as a statement.” She paused again, then said definitively, “Let’s do it.”

  Her quick assent was the last thing Conan expected to hear, but it stunned—and disconcerted—Jeff Ross, who still quaked at the obvious implications if Conan ever went public with those sentiment
s.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “Really? We’re gonna do this?”

  “Why not?” Glaser said. “It’s from his heart. It’s what he feels.” She turned back to Conan. “Why don’t you write it, and we’ll look at it.”

  That was all Conan needed to hear. He stood up, ready to leave; Ross put up a hand.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” he said. “I love the idea, but let’s all of us in this room understand that if we do this, we’re taking the toothpaste out of the tube, and it ain’t going back in.”

  Conan nodded at Ross with assurance. He said, “I get it.”

  In his car driving home, Conan felt the words burning straight out through his forehead. He knew what he wanted to say: nothing self-pitying, just an honest statement—because you can’t argue with the truth. And it came down to one simple truth: He did not want to be the guy who, accepting a start time past midnight, brought The Tonight Show into tomorrow.

  At home, he gushed it out almost all at once to Liza before sitting down at the computer to write. But he struggled; the formality of actually typing out the words presented unexpected mental roadblocks, and he kept getting stuck. When he told Liza, she said, “When you talk about it, it’s so clear. So I’ll just sit at the computer and you just walk around and say it.”

  Between the tension and the pressure, Conan had been close to throwing up for several days. Now the same sensation overcame him as he tried to speak the words he knew would convulse his career.

  He dictated; Liza typed; he rewrote. He tossed out an opening address of “People of Earth,” because he was a comedy writer, after all. He figured he would change it later, until Liza liked it so much she urged him, “Leave it in.”

  After midnight he called Ross, who was already in bed with his wife, Missy. Conan told him he would be e-mailing his draft of the statement. Sitting up in bed, Jeff and Missy each read it on Jeff’s BlackBerry and both were impressed. Ross called Conan with a few suggestions. Conan got back to editing and rewriting. Around one a.m., he was exhausted and decided to leave it and go to bed. But sleep was impossible with his brain chugging away like an overstoked engine. At around three he got up again and went back to the screen, playing with the words, looking for perfection.

  When Jeff Ross woke around five thirty he found a message on his BlackBerry: ʺIf youʹre up, call me.ʺ He did. Conan said he wanted to e-mail his more or less finished version. Ross read it while he walked his black Lab though his neighborhood. He had no doubt this was a pretty great piece of work, but he also had no idea what the lawyers would think of it.

  The entire Conan group, now nine strong, counting Glaser and her several associates, gathered in the Tonight Show conference room again early that morning, ready to consider the message Conan wanted to deliver to the people of the planet. The sleepless Conan got in early as well and settled into his chair at the end of the table. Ross had printouts of the statement in hand for Glaser and her group to read as soon as she sat down.

  One of her associates started reading and immediately set to lawyering up the language, making suggestions out loud.

  “Leave it alone,” Glaser commanded. “It’s perfect. It’s him.”

  The meeting quickly took the form of a strategy session. Gavin Polone assumed control of coordinating the press contacts—when they would release the statement, and to whom. Leigh Brecheen, Conan’s contract lawyer, would prepare an e-mail to send to Marc Graboff stating that Conan’s team believed the network was in breach of his contract, based on earlier drafts of his agreement to assume the host job of The Tonight Show. Rick Rosen would call Jeff Zucker minutes before the statement went out to inform him of what Conan was going to say and of the e-mail at that moment arriving in Graboff’s mailbox from Brecheen.

  Rereading the statement numerous times with utmost precision, Glaser had, in the end, only two minor grammatical corrections she wanted to make. She continued to endorse the statement as ideal for their purposes. It laid out Conan’s point of view unequivocally, but without compromising his legal options. Nothing in there overtly said he was quitting, so he could not be accused of forsaking his contractual obligations.

  Polone believed that the statement could only work out in their favor, serving to fuel what was already a growing wildfire of support for Conan—and derision for Jeff Zucker. Gavin had a metaphor for Zucker and his sojourn in Hollywood. He was the Wicked Witch in the land of Oz, and Conan was Dorothy. Even those working for the witch were grateful when Dorothy tossed water on her and made her melt, Polone explained. In the meetings that weekend, Polone and others suggested that this was finally the blunder that would melt Jeff Zucker away at NBC.

  Jeff Ross could not help himself; he cringed at that notion. Was this really the reason his friend of eighteen years would lose his job? Throughout the meetings Ross had mostly sat silent as others characterized Zucker in terms that ranged from nasty to ugly. A couple of times, Ross couldn’t hold back. He spoke up, saying how bad he felt that his long relationship with Zucker was sure to be damaged, probably irreparably.

  The others had jumped him: “Are you nuts? He’s trying to fucking kill you!” They couldn’t believe Ross could actually be concerned about Zucker’s fate, when it certainly seemed like Zucker didn’t give a damn about his (supposed) friend’s fate. But Ross did not see Zucker as a cold, calculating boss—or a witch. He saw him as his friend, who happened to be the CEO.

  Ross had always accepted the fact that Zucker, no matter how good a friend, might someday have to break off the personal connection, only because Ross would possibly become a casualty of some choice Zucker felt he had to make. Ross had spent years trying to counter much of Hollywood in its often over-the-top dislike of Zucker. To the others, this move against Conan was playing like some awfully ungrateful payback for Ross’s good intentions. But Ross could not completely blame Zucker. As painful as this was, it was business. Still, there was no escaping the fact that Zucker had signed off on a decision that seemed to contain nothing but disregard for the creative work Ross and Conan had put into their show. For Jeff Ross that was the worst of it—and it tore him up.

  The noon hour approached. Each member of the group around the conference table had an assignment. They all gave the statement one last read, checking for potential land mines. ʺOK,ʺ Glaser said. “Let’s send it out.”

  Conan and Jeff Ross had similar thoughts race through their minds at that moment: Conan was about to step off the roof of a building, not at all sure where he’d find a net to land in. Fox was all noise at this point; nothing like a serious approach had come from their direction, no matter what hints that network was floating in the press. Did any other realistic options even exist? Ones that wouldn’t look like Conan was going from late-night star to hired clown making balloon animals at birthday parties? They were about to stand up, tell the world their employers had their heads up their asses, threaten to sue the network that contained all their friends and associates, the place that had been their home for seventeen years . . . and then what? Hope for the career-rescue squad to show up? How many stars had disappeared without a trace after grandstanding, breast-beating moves like this?

  Conan had an urge to run. ʺOK,ʺ he finally said. “You guys do what you need to do. I just need to go into my office.” He stood up and made for the door, intending to say not one more word about it—just let it happen.

  For Ross, the room all but spun. He was light-headed; he couldn’t remember the last time he felt this nauseated. “OK, everybody, hang on,” he said at the last minute, before a set of fingers pressed the buttons to send out the first press leak of the statement. Ross had to speak out; he wanted one last moment of consideration of just what it was they were about to do. Conan stopped at the door.

  “Let’s all be aware of this—we’re about to blow this fucker up,” Ross said, full of portent. “This is going to blow this fucking thing up.”

  There was only one reaction that mattered, only one pair of eyes for Ross to che
ck out. Conan stood outlined by the doorway of the conference room, his swoop of copper hair almost touching the frame. He looked directly at Ross, unblinking.

  “Blow it up,” he said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MANIFESTO DESTINY

  Just before noon on Tuesday, January 12, Rick Ludwin and Nick Bernstein were headed over to the Tonight offices, hoping for a last-ditch conversation that might convince Conan O’Brien to accept the reconfigured NBC lineup. They didn’t hold out much hope, but they both valued Conan so highly they felt they had to try.

  Marc Graboff was in his office, waiting to hear something more from the Conan camp. The last word he’d had from Rick Rosen was that Team Conan was arming up with a litigator in the wake of Jeff Zucker’s threat to remove Conan and bench him for two years. To Graboff it sounded a bit like Mafia families going to the mattresses. He hoped he would have an opportunity to head off a war that surely would not be good for business.

  In his own office at 30 Rock, Jeff Zucker remained near the edge of his patience with the Conan camp, concerned about how they were using the press to assail the network and Jay Leno.

  David Letterman and all the other players in late night were meeting with their writers, continuing to follow the events at NBC with the kind of glee usually reserved for political sex scandals. Dave prepared a couple of pointed jokes for that night—“I got a call just before I came out here from NBC. And they said, ‘Look, look, we still don’t want you back’ ”—and the show was also putting together an elaborate promo parody for a series called “Law & Order: Leno Victims Unit.” It opened with a stentorian announcer intoning, “In the television industry there are two kinds of talk-show hosts: Jay Leno, and those who’ve been victimized by Jay Leno.”