Jay Leno's NPR Interview - Is He Crazy?

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I wasn't criticized Carson's work ethic either - just commenting on differences: if you compare Carson's last decade and a half - possibly longer - to Leno's - Jay works much more often.

Carson never had the rambunctious, go for broke style on air. A bit laid back. A bit calm, cool and collected. So, not working every day of the year kind of fit his style looking back on it. You could envision Carson sitting at the Kentucky Derby sipping a Mint Julep.

Leno on the other hand.... reminds me of a guy working 7 days a week running a 24-hour-a-day Shell station back in the days before self-serve. The kind of guy who would say: "Pull the hood release so I can check the oil while the gas is pumping. By the way your front tire looks like it needs some air. And from the looks of the bug streaks on your windshield maybe we ought to replace the wiper blades. And did you see that Razorbacks game last night?"

 

[landtuna]

...though being an old hippie

I'm shocked! (Looks like I got out of SF just in time. ).

I wasn't criticized Carson's work ethic either - just commenting on differences: if you compare Carson's last decade and a half - possibly longer - to Leno's - Jay works much more often.

I agree, but I wasn't criticizing Jay's work ethic either. Only comparing Carson to other comedians of his day.

I still wish someone would give Leno an hour or so each week to cruise through his auto museum and tell stories about all his vehicles. I would find that very interesting and it is something he does very well.

 

[KP]

I just saw Leno last night on Craig Ferguson. He mentioned that he can't sleep. He refused to discuss what he's doing post-Tonight Show, but he said he will continue to tour, as he does now.

As someone who has worked in the Comedy world as a publicist, I can tell you that many comedians hardly sleep. Their brains are in overdrive a lot, and for those who aren't addicts, like Leno, they don't sleep. Leno has mentioned in the past he goes for a lot of late night walks.

He also said on Ferguson that he doesn't want any kind of reality show about his cars or anything like that.

 

[skipeastport]

The only current late night talk show host I care for is Craig Ferguson, and even him I could take -or-leave. For me the true king of late night was the legendary Tom Snyder. Erudite, quirky, classy, and just a great guy. I used to stay up writing term papers for school while sprawled in the floor watching Tomorrow.

But, to jump in this Letterman/Leno fray, I'm gonna put in my two cents. I don't see how Leno stabbed Letterman in the back. Whether it was money or Leno's tactics or whatever, Johnny and NBC went with him, not Lettermen. What was Leno supposed to do, say no? Sabotage his own career? Seriously? The entertainment industry is cutthroat by nature. If you want to succeed, you've gotta do what you have to, and Lettermen would've done the exact same thing if the situation had been reversed. I guarantee it. Besides, Carson had originally planned to go with Joan Rivers as his replacement anyway. Lettermen was always a second banana.

Feel sorry for Lettermen? I don't. He still got his own show. He started out with a much higher salary than Leno. I believe Lettermen made like five times more with CBS than Leno did at NBC. The sole reason Lettermen's bitter is because he's for the most part always trailed Leno in the Nielsens, and that eats him up. His daytime show tanked, and his late-night show is generally second best, so he acts like a spoiled whiney child. Conan must've studied under Lettermen because he's just as spoiled and classless.

I wouldn't go out of my way to watch Leno, but compared to Lettermen's bitterness and the frat-boy immaturity of Jimmy Kimmel, I'll definitely side with Leno.

 

[radiojomo]

Heard he's quite an insomniac. Maybe that's how he makes that happen.

 

[michael hagerty]

I just listened to the clip. Leno does say "5 to 600" other jokes but also says "that everyone prepared that day...and not all are jokes, some are just punch-lines, some are just set-ups"....in other words, they're fragments.

Counting Jay, there are 17 people writing on that show today, and since there were much-publicized budget cuts a couple of times, I'll guess it was 20 or 25 people 15 years ago. Is it possible that every one of those people generates 20 or so jokes, fragments of jokes or story ideas a day? Yeah. It's not only possible, but if they're comedy writers on the Tonight Show, they'd darn well better.

I'm betting Jay and Jimmy Brogan had a shorthand down that allowed them to blow through 10 or more ideas per minute. That'd get the conversation down to an hour.

 

[Gregg.]

Even with shorthand or fragments of jokes, you can't go through 500 to 600 ideas in an hour. You simply CANNOT discuss ten jokes per minute, six seconds per joke. After all, if you do come up with a good joke, or even the potential for an idea, it takes time to write the lines down. It took me about ten seconds to type that last sentence. If the joke isn't written down clearly, or typed onto a computer, how will we remember it tomorrow?

It's clear, Jay was inflating everything he told Terry Gross in the interview. Even an insomniac gets SOME sleep. I'd bet you a steak dinner, Jay is not at the studios at 8:30am either. You simply can't write jokes till 3am, then be up, showered, shaved, drink some coffee and be back at the studios, with Los Angeles traffic, at 8:30am. Unless he's totally ignoring his wife, he HAS to spend some time at home. An insomniac still catches up on sleep somewhere along the line. Maybe you're not averaging eight hours a night. But surely you're in bed more than four hours a night, even if you're only sleeping part of the time. How else could a 60 year old man function?

The reason I am analyzing these statements is because Leno's need to hyper-inflate his work process is part of his mania. He WANTS us to believe he's working so much harder than everyone else because he thinks it will give him an advantage on everyone else. As a TV viewer, I really shouldn't be told comedy is such hard work. It's supposed to be FUN. Carson and Letterman tried/try to make us think they really haven't seen the monologue or other bits, so if they bomb, they can join us in laughing at how bad they are.

Modest people UNDER-estimate their work process. They don't need to tell us they're awake 20 hours a day and working most of those hours, to deliver a ten minute monologue, produced with the help of 16 other writers.