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I’m Not Getting Paid Enough

Okay, I see the bus coming right at me, so let’s be clear: this was His ad lib.

I tried to stay to watch the “Tonight Show” taping, but I was given the bum’s rush like everyone else. That said, I did get to watch some rehearsal time, and man, Leno really rehearses. I mean, he doesn’t leave anything to chance. He’s all about timing. In other words, Jay doesn’t leave much to chance.

And it isn’t just this particular show where Leno is a control freak. I’ve got a cousin out here in LA; he’s an Autoscript GP-15P GoPrompt, with a High-Bright Color LCD screen. He mostly does commercial work, but he does okay. No White House Commission with commisary privileges, but hey, there’s always Schwarzenegger if Auto wants to dabble in politics. But I digress. Auto tells me that Leno’s prompters tell him that Leno and his team do this kind of rehearsal and briefing for every show. So it wasn’t like My Man didn’t have a chance to think about a better line ... and PUT IT ON MY SCREEN!!

It’s days like this that make me miss the days when He and I would walk the streets of Chicago, doing community activism. Sure, it took Him 30 minutes to set me up, and sometimes he couldn’t get the extension cord to reach an electrical outlet, or the folks he wanted to talk to would walk off because they had better things to do, or the glare off my screen made his remarks unreadable. But it was a simpler time, when he could stay on script and didn’t feel the need to “speak his mind,” and we were a team. All I know, is it’s going to be a long flight home.

Posted by Tele Prompter at 7:42 PM 25 comments