Posted on 01/28/2014 6:08:19 PM PST by rickmichaels
Those old enough to remember Johnny Carson will recall copious tears over the course of his two-day Tonight Show goodbye – capped by Bette Midler’s serenade of One For My Baby.
That was how people felt about Carson. He’d been a part of a nation’s lives for three decades, the last person besides their spouse many people saw before going to bed.
I can’t imagine Jay Leno’s final Tonight show Feb. 6 generating that much emotion. Guest (and heir apparent) Jimmy Fallon will be amiable and polite. Billy Crystal will ladle on Hollywood schmaltz about Jay’s 21 great years (subtracting six months for the nasty Conan O’Brien experiment).
But in the end, I expect there won’t be a wet eye in the house.
Leno was an odd success. He was a consistent ratings winner, yet was never exactly loved by the viewing audience. His unlovable side lurked near the surface. After out-manoeuvring David Letterman for the Tonight host job, Leno fired his long-time manager Helen Kushnick as Tonight Show executive producer four months in.
He was obsessed with the press and seemingly read everything anybody wrote about him (in the ‘90s, pre-Google). Leno once phoned the Toronto Sun after then TV critic Claire Bickley had interviewed a Canadian Tonight Show intern, who claimed to have written a joke that was used on-air. “(Leno) denied he ever used the intern’s joke,” Bickley recalls. “He was quite livid about it, very angry. I wondered why he wouldn’t just let it go. That call was like using a jackhammer to kill a gnat.”
But it was his fellow comics who fell out of love the hardest. From early complaints that he was stingy with the time allotted to comics on his show, to the widespread opinion that the once-edgy Leno had softened his persona to mush, to vicious public feuds with the likes of Jimmy Kimmel and George Lopez, Leno lost the cachet he once had as a Comedy Store pioneer and comic’s comic.
No one knows where the Lopez feud started, but at Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival in 2007, he told us simply, “I hate him,” when asked about Leno. The hard feelings deepened after Leno approached someone he thought was Lopez at a party, intending to mend fences. It turned out to be Paul Rodriguez, another Chicano-American comic.
“That is the kind of guy he is,” Lopez said. “He’s known Paul Rodriguez for 25 years. There’s people who think he’s a f---in’ a-----, and I’m one of them. He can spend the rest of his life wondering why people don’t like him.”
Andy Kindler is famous for his State Of The Industry Address every year at Just For Laughs. His regular targets at the roast-like event include Leno, who he says, “is in the Guinness Book of Records for going the longest time without an authentic moment.”
A few years ago, Kindler said, “Leno’s car broke down near where my wife was living at the time. I looked at his car and tried to walk past him, and he said, ‘That’s the guy who hates me!’ He really does know everything that people say about him.”
But it was Kimmel who said it to his face. When Leno still had his 10 p.m. NBC show, but the announcement had been made to boot Conan from Tonight and put Leno back in the chair, Kimmel came on as a guest.
Asked about his favourite prank, Kimmel told Leno acidly, “I told a guy, ‘Five years from now, ‘I’m going to give you my show.’ And then when the five years came, I gave it to him, and then I took it back almost instantly.”
Later in the interview, Kimmel said, “Listen, Jay, Conan and I have children. All you have to take care of is cars. We have lives to lead here. You have $800 million. For God’s sake, leave our shows alone!”
great post
I feel like Rip Van Winkle. I haven’t watched late night TV in many years.
I just remember Leno as possibly the best standup comic ever. And he did it through hard work. He wasn’t very good in the 70s, but by the mid 80s, he perfected the craft.
I was disappointed that he & Letterman even wanted the 11:30 slot. I thought they were too cool for that. Boy, was I naïve.
Lopez is a hack and a terrible person in real life. He’s the guy other comedians make jokes about, not Leno. Some leftie nobody at some Canadian paper wants to smear leno, but it’s a little late.
“———Kimmel said, “Listen, Jay, Conan and I have children. All you have to take care of is cars. We have lives to lead here. “
This infuriates me. Just because Leno has no kids he has no life??? Kimmel is an ass.
.
Leno was/is funny
I will miss his show, pretty sure he’ll be just fine
Leno is a gear head, his first love his car collection - how nice is that?
I always enjoy stepping over a critic to collect my trophy or big check.
He wasn't a Johnny Carson...but he was good.
Conan’s ratings were in the tank. It had nothing to do with Jay Leno wanting his show back.....even if he did. It’s always about ratings...and Leno got them, period.
It's Leno's own fault for going off the reservation and making fun of Obama. Three hundred years ago you lost your head for making fun of the king. Now you just get smeared by the MSM.
All these lefty critics fell out of love with Leno when he started telling jokes about Obama and ridiculing Obamacare. Jimmy Fallon is a lefty toad who will lick lefty feet to get the love.
I must be good with you because I don’t think punkass
George Lefty Lopez is worth two dead flies.
I haven’t met Leno myself, but I know a few people who have (I’m an SCCA member, we provide volunteer support for pro-level races, and Jay’s a regular at the Monterey Motorsports Reunion). Pretty much all of them thought he was a pretty good fellow.
He is one of the few celebs I envy, mostly because he’s a car guy like me and has the wherewithal to indulge that interest. :)
I’ve never understood Leno’s constant disparagement of fat people. He ain’t the thinnest guy I ever saw. I haven’t really been interested in any late night host since Carson stepped down. Carson was truly one of a kind.
I suspect that all these guys hate Leno because he’s not politically correct 24/7 like they are. Once in a while he’ll make a joke about Obama or some other Democrat.
That's really kind of a disgusting low blow.
The only funny thing about The George Lopez Show, was his mother.
Letterman always had a bitter side to his comedy, and Leno didn't. As a successor to Carson, NBC wanted to continue the legacy of sweetness and light-hearted comedy as people were drifting off to sleep, and that wasn't Letterman.
The irony is, this article aside, that I think that Leno as a person is much nicer than Carson was off-camera. Carson was reported to be a very nasty drunk, who got mean. The closer you were to Carson, the meaner he was to you when he got drunk. Which was often.
I don't recall hearing things like that about Leno. These few specific feuds excepted.
-PJ
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