Television

Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop (Director: Rodman Flender): I haven’t watched late-night tele­vi­sion with any con­sist­ency since the 70s, when I would tune into The Tonight Show to see Johnny Carson, but even I knew about the recent trav­ails of Conan O’Brien. Brought in to replace Jay Leno as host of NBC’s The Tonight Show in June 2009, he was gone just seven months later, a result of some epic bungling on the part of the network’s exec­ut­ives. Leno’s prime­time show was doing poorly in the rat­ings and the net­work decided to push his show later, to 11:35pm, with Conan’s show pushed to 12:05am. The Tonight Show would actu­ally be airing tomorrow, in reality if not in name, and Conan was unhappy with the plan. In January 2010, he reached a deal to leave NBC, returning Leno as host of The Tonight Show. In exchange for a $45 mil­lion set­tle­ment, Conan was leg­ally pro­hib­ited from appearing on tele­vi­sion until September 2010. Boredom and anger at the network’s hand­ling of the situ­ation led to inspir­a­tion, and soon he and his staffers were working on plans for the Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour, a 30-city tour across the US and Canada which would put him in front of the many fans who had sup­ported him during his dis­pute with Leno and NBC.

Even before the tour kicked off, he’d lined up his next gig, as host of his own latenight show (Conan) with the TBS Network, and it wasn’t like he needed the money, so why take things on the road for the first time in his life? Flender’s doc shows us all we need to know. What’s not per­haps obvious is that Conan’s depar­ture from NBC put a lot of people out of work. He had his own writers and his own band, plus various assist­ants and other sup­port staff. While he got a gen­erous set­tle­ment, he wanted to keep his friends employed, and although not dis­cussed in the film, he took none of the pro­ceeds from the tour him­self, pre­fer­ring to pay his staff. As well, the tour gave him a chance to work out some of his anger and bit­ter­ness toward the net­work, and as a result the comedy, while likely not his fun­niest work, is some of the most personal.

The title of the film also reveals a lot. For a born enter­tainer like O’Brien, it’s impossible to simply “switch off” as a result of some legal agree­ment with a former employer. He’s a guy with a patho­lo­gical need to enter­tain, and the tour wasn’t just cath­artic, but thera­peutic in many dif­ferent ways. That doesn’t mean to say it was neces­sarily a well-advised move. By the latter stages, Conan’s clearly run­ning on fumes. He’s 47 years old and a road newbie, and the pan­cake makeup can only hide the exhaus­tion for a few hours at a time. Onstage, he gives everything, but as he slumps off more and more drained after each stop on the tour, the strain begins to show. Although unfail­ingly polite to fans, he begins to chafe at all the meet-and-greets and back­stage visits that inev­it­ably go with the rock star life­style. By the time the tour stops at the Bonnaroo music fest­ival in Tennessee, he’s fried. When the organ­izers tell him he’s been sched­uled to intro­duce each musical act in addi­tion to per­forming his own show, he crumples, but then he gets on with it. Although we def­in­itely see the fra­gile, whiny, needy side of Conan, he keeps it between him­self and his staff. And it’s also nice to see that even after 25 years in show busi­ness, his con­fid­ence is still fra­gile when per­forming new material.

Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop shows us a side of the man that we don’t get to see on tele­vi­sion. At per­haps the most vul­ner­able time in his pro­fes­sional career, he lets a film crew follow him around the country as he per­forms every night without a net. In his incred­ibly rare and pre­cious moments with his wife and young chil­dren, he lets us in. When he’s having a blast and killing the crowds, we’re there, but we’re also there when he slumps off­stage and bitches at his long­suf­fering assistant Sona (who really comes across as the heroine of the entire film). Flender’s film, though not cine­mat­ic­ally ground­breaking, achieves a level of intimacy with the man that allows us to see a fully-fledged human being rather than just a wise­cracking comedian. And did I men­tion that it’s quite often hilarious?

As a fellow member of the Irish Fraternity of the Ginger Cowlick(™?), I’ve always looked up to Conan O’Brien as my much taller, much more tal­ented, and much more extra­verted twin brother. After seeing this film, I’d be proud to count him as a member of my family, for real.

Tagged as: #hotdocs11, celebrity, Television

{ Comments on this entry are closed }