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Caloroga Shark Media. Hey, I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News, daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. A sentence the algorithm love, so I keep saying it. The Oscars are tomorrow night. They will be hosted by Conan O’Brien for the second year in a row.
Conan said, it’s not just about being funny moments a moment, it’s also about acknowledging what there is in a larger sense. As the host, I’m sort of the human avatar or whatever. I’m the entryway for the person watching at home, the person the audience member can relate to. I’ve been working for a really long time on material for the show with my writers, and it’s still evolving. Because we live in a very fast paced world.
Jokes we thought of two months ago are relevant now. There might be things that happened this week that will find their way into the show. He recalled last year there were a lot of challenges. The LA wildfires had him working well displaced. Conan said, so this year, I get to wake up in the morning in my own room, which sounds like a small thing, but it’s a huge thing.
So this year, all the movies are so different, they’re also vibrant. There’s so many different voices, so much artistry went into them. I think it’s one of the best film years that we’ve had in memory. As for a hosting, he doesn’t see the job being punchlines all the time. He explains, it’s not necessarily about being one hundred percent funny all the time.
Sometimes there are moments where it’s my job to move us along to the next moment. He and the team talk a lot about prep and design and getting everything just a certain way and practice practice, practice, But when this show happens, it’s an organic thing that’s unfolding in real time. The show will be a living organism, for better or worse. Conin did several interviews during the week. When with The La Times, they talked about the elephant in the room, which is the ongoing war in Iran, Conan said, my job is to always try and hit this very very thin line between entertaining people and also acknowledging some of the realities.
It’s a dance that goes on up until the show begins. Between us, and he referenced his executive producers. We’ll find the right tone. Conan recalled when Johnny Carson hosted the Oscars during the Iran hostage crisis. When I was a boy, Johnny Carson parodied ABC’s Nightline with the joke It’s Day four hundred and forty four of the Oscars.
Conan said, it was such a funny, topical joke that touched on something everybody was thinking about and at the same time got a big laugh and was unifying, and that was meaningful to me. Now, what about the rumored safety threats. One of the showrunners said, every year we monitor what’s going on in the world. They have the support of the FBI and the LAPD. The show runner said, this show has to run like clockwork.
Everyone is coming on the show that is witnessing the show, even a fan of the show. They’re standing on the barricades. Who want everybody to feel safe and protected and welcome. On Late Night or Bill Carter spoke with Conan. You can listen to that entire interview on the Late Night or Podcast Feed Wednesday’s episode the Bill Carter Interview.
Conan O’Brien, I just added that to my cue. Let’s see how absurd my cue is. Right now, this is a real number. If you follow me on LinkedIn and or the substack. I’ve been mentioning, this is a real number.
Okay, Right now I have two hundred and sixty nine episodes of podcasts downloaded to my phone. That would take two hundred ninety hours and twenty eight minutes to listen to all of them. However, it’s getting warmer out. Johnny Mack will either walk the dog or sit out in the yard, or fall asleep in the art, or sit on a beach, or sit up at the new summer place that I bought. So don’t worry that number is going to get lower.
I’ll eventually listen to Bill Carter and Cone and I digress. Carter asked, is it true that the Motion Picture Academy asked Conan to come back before he even left the stage last year? Conan said, not quite, but it was pretty quick. He talked about being a complete unknown back when he took over for David Letterman. He said, now we live in an arrow where there’s no such thing as a complete unknown.
Anyone like me starting out today would have six hundred hours of YouTube clips. Conan described his resume back then. He said, a writer, but he’s got an interesting vibe. Will there be a cold open on the Oscar? Conan said, you can expect some things.
We have more than one thing. We have some pieces I really like. We have some live things I’m really excited about. Very vague, Conan said, what I love most is the process. I love hanging around the writer’s room in my post late night life.
The two things I’ve missed most are having a writer’s room and having a band. When first asked to host the Oscars last year, Conan said, I was intrigued right away. I had done award shows in the past. I like the format. I like being out in front of people.
I like the feeling of ceremony because you can kind of play against it. So when they asked, yeah, I have to try this, I’m curious about it. I know it’s a lot of work and I’m gonna put myself through some misery, but let’s do it. And as for the second ask, yeah, I like to try that again. I had such a good time the first time.
I’m glad I did it. They talked about it being a tough room. ConA explained, the people in the room, you’re literally the last thing they’re thinking about say his barometer. If I’m having a good time and feeling the flow of it all and I’m making myself laugh ninety nine percent of the time, it means it went well. I call that the hallway ratings.
I used to talk about this. It’s serious a lot. If I was walking down the hall and feeling good about a show and people stopped me in the hallway to talk about what they had just heard on the radio, That’s how I knew we had a good show. And like this show here. You know, you do it every day.
Some episodes are better than others. Be realistic. You know. Some days I find a muse and the episode is a little more fun. Sometimes I’m just going through the headline.
Some days there’s nothing to work with. Some days I’ve find inspiration on the fly, so I know what Conan is saying. Conan says it’s even better if something unexpected comes up during the show. It’s a little like Olympic diving. You get grated on the difficulty if something just happened, people are looking for the host to guide them through that.
If you could do it in a funny way, the potential payoff is much greater than anything you thought of three months ago. Does Conan miss standing in front of an audience daily? Hmm, he says, no, I do not. You get one life. I spent a long chunk of my life doing that.
I really enjoyed it. It was thrilling, and now I like trying out all these other things. I thought I would miss it, but I do not. As for a late night, he said, my assumption has been that it’s gonna morph as everything does. Now.
People are watching their favorite comedian who no one else in the room has heard of. Had he worked Linden Late Night in the fifties or sixties, I would have left after the tonight show and you wouldn’t have heard from me. Again. Would Conan consider hosting SNL asked Bill Carter, And again you can hear that whole interview on Late Nighter. Conan said, good question.
I never want to be that guy comes back and says, hey, this is my old high school. I used to go here. Hey kids, I’m groovy. But never say never. If it came up, it could be exciting to try.
I’m not banking on it, certainly not asking for it. Conan got a big cover piece in the Hollywood Reporter under the headline, Conan O’Brien just can’t help himself. Conan said, we work in an industry where everyone’s constantly hyper analyzing where they are on a certain scale. All I can say is I get to do the thing that, for better or worse, I was put here to do. The article quotes John Mulaney, who said, I don’t watch a lot of these things, but I just remember thinking, is this the greatest Oscars ever?
Conan is a true artist and an incredible broadcaster. He’s also got one thing you cannot fake and can’t only earn, which is stature. Jeff Ross is quoted he had told Conan when the first offer came in. I told him you don’t need to do this. You’ve got nothing to prove.
When we quit late night, the goal will only do things that are fun, things we want to do well. This is what Conan wants to do. This is interesting. Mike Sweeney was Conan’s head writer and says, if anybody knows O’Brien’s tail when an idea tanks, it’s him. Sweeney explains his tell his tail is that he mocks at mercilesly for at least five minutes.
He’s most delighted in rehearsal. When things go wrong or they’re just bad. It’s like delivering fresh meat to lines gauge. If it’s your bit that’s getting eviscerated, you’re laughing as hard as anyone. You may be curious, how much do you get paid to host the OSCAR?
Is not all that much in the scheme of things. A twenty thirteen article in The Hollowod Reporter suggested a number between fifteen and twenty five thousand dollars. Seven years ago, Jimmy Kimmel said I got paid fifteen thousand dollars to host the OSCAR. Wanda Psyke said hosting the twenty twenty two ceremony actually left her out of pocket. I find that hard to believe.
But okay, by the way, remember twenty twenty two. Now, that was the year with the famous slap. Every time I see this sentence, it’s just my brain fries your host that year Wanda Sykes, Regina Hall, and Amy Schumer. Amy Schumer hosted the Oscars. Let’s just all ponder that for a second.
I just wanted to just stop and think for a second. Now, if I said to you, hey, you know who’s hosting the Oscars tomorrow, Amy Schumer, you’d be like what, wouldn’t you wouldn’t you be like what? Well? Twenty twenty two, Amy Schumer hosted the Oscars. That’s the thing that happened.
The New Yorker asked Conan O’Brien, it’s a high risk, maybe even the low reward gig, isn’t it? And Conah said, I choose not to see it this way. It was really fun. I grew up watching Bob Hope do it, Johnny Carson do it, so it’s a very cool thing to be connected to. And as you know, I’m very interested in history, and this thing has been around for one hundred years, almost a hundred years, solet’s have fun with it.
That’s my attitude. What I’ve learned myself over time is I can’t fake enjoyment. I need to find ways to make sure that I’m having a lot of fun. I need to prepare. I mean, I’m a big preparation person.
I work with this brilliant team of writers who are just downstairs from where I’m doing this podcast. I go down there, they’re all around a long table and they’re like, these premises are no good. Yeah, these premises are no good. We got to get the Glengarry premises, and I yell at them, I’m the Alec Bald when it comes in and gives that great speech upfront. I’m talking about the movie now.
I think we all know that, not the play. They asked Conut about the slap and he said, well, you know, I don’t want anyone to slap me. I’d like a streaker, you know what. I’d really like a streaker to slap me. That would just satisfy so many of my dormant Catholic hang ups.
But it’s a weird duality here. It’s a weird thing. I like to plan and I like to prepare, and then I love when something goes off the rails. If accidentally a light falls, you can make a whole show about that, you know what I mean. And I don’t know what it is about human beings, but they instinctively know when something is real enough the moment, and then they say, you react in real time like a human being and make something funny out of it, and that has ten times the value of anything you could have written.
So you have to be open for things to slightly go wrong, and it’s fun and electrifying. My whole life has been prepared, but then, like any good quarterback, be ready for the whole play to fall apart and then wing it. The New Yorker asked Conan about the performance of it all being a heightened you. Now, I’m just a dude in the podcast. But this is how I teach this.
I teach, you know, I’ve been a media executive for thirty something years, and I teach the college class and I always tell everybody, you have to be real, but you ramp u up to one hundred and five percent. And you know, I’ve talked about this candidly. John doesn’t like Adam Sandlor movies. I don’t find them funny, and I just go on with my life. But Johnny Mack, who records this podcast in the basement, as you know, Johnny Mack hates Adam Sailor movies and loses his mind and they even exist.
You can even hear how it just changed my speaking delivery. You know, I’m getting more animated, so that that’s the performance part of all this. Conan said, I’m always this guy. There’s a heightened me, but it’s really not that much different. I routinely would just t to people on the street, complete strangers, and then that will lead to me doing a bit and trying to get them into it, trying to do improv with random people on the street.
And I’ve been maced. That’s funny. Well it’s not funny. But you know, wait, John, you’re hanging yourself here, is it. Do you think it’s funny that Conan O’Brien got mased?
No, not at all, that’s not funny. I was just laughing at the way I imagined Conan telling the story. But of course it would be horrible if someone maceed Conan O’Brien. Did I dig enough of a holy yet? Coda said, Yeah, there’s a height in me, and there’s a depressed me that just wants to crawl in a corner and read a book.
But I have access to this guy a frightening amount of the time. My father, who was a very smart man and very analytical and a scientist, was looking at me once and he watched every late night show and he said, oh, I see you’re making a living off something that should have been treated. And he wasn’t choking. He said, I see your synapses. Is the rhythm of your circulatory system, and then you found a way to be compensated, and I thought, thanks Dad, it’s probably a good time to remind you.
If you like this program without the commercial interruption, open up the Apple podcast app. There’s a banner there it says uninterrupted listening. Click on that, and then for just five bucks a month, you get this show and a bunch of others on the network. I also host five Good News Stories, and I’m the writer on Palace Intrigue. We have a lot of fun making these things, but all those would be commercial free for just five bucks a month.
It’s a great way to support the show. South By Southwest Comedy tonight at seven o’clock at the Creek in the Cave. It is the Don’t Tell Comedy all Stars in partnership with a sponsor name. Everything has to have a sponsor at south By Southwest. It’s very corporate.
I think the people that go there think it’s really cool and like in a fun sense. It’s not cool. It’s very corporate. It’s all about money. None of this is about art, none of it.
None of it. None of it, none of it, none of it. Anyway, You Don’t Tell Comedy all stars include Sophie Buttle, Paris Cichet, Chloe Radcliffe, Antonio Kareem, and Gavin Mattz. That’s seven o’clock at the Creek in the Cave. At eight o’clock Esther’s Folly’s hosts Funny or Die Approved.
Now who has Funnier Die approved? Funnier Die has approved. Pete Lee, Paris Cichet again, She’s gonna all over town, Tone Bell, Alex English and Jared Freed. Then at ten o’clock at Esther’s Folly’s, The Stand presents Pete Lee, Devin Walker, Gavin Mattz and Jamore Neighbors. Then you can catch Devin Walker and Alex English at the Dead Show at eleven at the Creek in the Cave.
That’s your south By Southwest Comedy tonight. One thing I’m noticing in the past there have been like pretty shiny comedians at this thing. I don’t see them this time unless they’re all doing like podcasts, so they’re not showing up on the comedy tab as I check on that. How about that south By Southwest again? Oscars tomorrow.
Tomorrow will be a normal episode in Oscar’s recap obviously on Monday morning, and then Monday at noon Eastern the results of comedy Survivor meets you back here in the morning.