Conan O'Brien Can't Stop 2011
In 2009, NBC decided to have Conan O'Brien take over The Tonight Show and Jay Leno moved to a primetime show. It failed miserably and so they wanted to put Leno in a new 30-minute show at 11:30 PM and move The Tonight Show to 12:00. O'Brien wanted no part of that and reached a settlement with NBC where he would leave NBC and they would give him a bunch of money. He also had a 6-month non-compete agreement where he could not appear on television. He immediately started planning a concert tour which sold out before he even knew what the show would be like. This movie covers most of that very briefly and then shows Conan and his crew (who were also paid to leave NBC) figuring out that show and then going on tour with it. Conan makes a point of acting like a jerk, but then generally being pretty nice. While some late night hosts will tour, I guess Conan never did, so we get to see him adjusting to that, loving the huge crowds and adulation, and hating all the public relations crap that goes with it. I don’t know that you usually see that side of a tour in movies, but it makes you sort of see the two halves of the addicting love from the crowds and the soul-stomping demands of people with enough power and influence to elbow their way into the dressing room. Meanwhile it seems like he put together a pretty good show and then TBS almost immediately agreed to have him do a late night show for them for the next 10 years (apparently still on the air, who knew?). For me Conan was always enormously talented, but his show seemed like a bunch of the same tired gags (I don’t doubt it is very hard to come up with new comedy on a daily basis). Too much of the movie is Conan having tantrums, but it also shows how even though he hates the PR stuff, he doesn’t want to disappoint anyone either, which makes it all that much more wearing for him. It is an interesting insight into a celebrity who had a hard time keeping a network show, but in the mass market of the United States, still had a million fans, which is not nothing.
Written: 01 May 2021
Owned on: Blu-ray