Behind the Curtain: An Insider's View of Jay Leno's Tonight Show Read online

  PELICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY

  GRETNA 2014

  Copyright © 2014

  By Dave Berg

  All rights reserved

  The word “Pelican” and the depiction of a pelican are

  trademarks of Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., and are

  registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Berg, Dave, 1948-

  Behind the curtain : an insider’s view of Jay Leno’s Tonight show / by Dave Berg ; foreword by Jay Leno.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-4556-1996-2 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-4556-1997-9 (e-book) 1. Tonight show (Television program) 2. Celebrities—Anecdotes. I. Title.

  PN1992.77.T63B47 2014

  791.45'72—dc23

  2014007910

  Print version printed in the United States of America

  Published by Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.

  1000 Burmaster Street, Gretna, Louisiana 70053

  For Beverly Berg, my mom (1924-2012)

  Thank you for teaching me to appreciate

  the wondrous art of storytelling.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter One: James Douglas Muir “Jay” Leno

  Chapter Two: Funny Is Funny

  Chapter Three: The Dangerous Art of Booking Guests

  Chapter Four: Guests

  Chapter Five: The Real Reality Show

  Chapter Six: Gets I Didn’t Get

  Chapter Seven: Spying on Dennis Rodman in Nashville

  Chapter Eight: John F. Kennedy Jr., the Favorite Guest

  Chapter Nine: Mr. Sitting President

  Chapter Ten: Political Moments

  Chapter Eleven: News People

  Chapter Twelve: Sports Greats

  Chapter Thirteen: The Audience

  Chapter Fourteen: Jay Leno’s Garage

  Chapter Fifteen: Trying Times

  Chapter Sixteen: The Future

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  I met Dave Berg the day we hired him as a segment producer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, which would soon be debuting. He was nervous that he wouldn’t fit in because he had no experience in show business. He had been a journalist for NBC News.

  I told him not to worry and that we were actually looking for someone who had worked in news. In general, we were seeking out people with diverse backgrounds. I’m not sure that made him feel better, but it was true.

  We wanted to bring a little more variety to The Tonight Show’s lineup of guests. The show was known for its popular entertainers, but we were hoping to add more journalists, commentators, politicos, and others to the mix. We assigned Dave to help us book and produce the segments that would feature some of those guests. As a veteran journalist, he had worked with them.

  But it would take a while for Dave to feel comfortable in his new gig. The lead guest on our first show was Billy Crystal, who was very funny. The second guest was Dave’s responsibility. He was an economics reporter who had anecdotes about Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. He didn’t exactly kill after Billy’s performance.

  It was a rough start for Dave, but eventually he would get the idea. During his eighteen years with the show, he booked some of our most memorable guests, including Barack Obama, the first sitting president ever to do a late-night show.

  Dave was passionate about politics, an interest that goes back to his days as a news producer. As time went on, he encouraged us to get more and more politicians, both Democrats and Republicans. He was always professional while working with the guests. None of them had any idea about his political views—or mine, for that matter.

  Among his colleagues at the show, though, he made it very clear where he stood politically. He was a conservative and was very vocal about his beliefs. I didn’t always agree with him, and we had many spirited discussions, which I really enjoyed. Sometimes I shared his opinion but would play devil’s advocate just to get him going. It was great fun.

  Dave wasn’t the only conservative at the show. He was joined by other Republican and Libertarian writers. We also had our share of liberal writers, including a former Democratic speechwriter. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I think our friendly disagreements helped us relate to our viewing audience, which held a wide spectrum of political views.

  On the pages that follow, Dave has written about his experiences at the show as well as his thoughts about what it all meant. To be honest, I haven’t read it. I’ll read it when everyone else does. Who knows, I might even disagree with some of his points. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  But I trust Dave, and I’m certain he’ll do right by the show. We both grew up watching Johnny Carson. Being part of The Tonight Show, one of television’s few icons, meant something to me, and I know it did to Dave, as well.

  Jay Leno

  Burbank, Ca.

  Chapter One

  James Douglas Muir

  “Jay” Leno

  In all my years at The Tonight Show, Jay Leno never raised his voice to me or anyone else. He was generous, fair and loyal. And, of course, he was always good for a joke—no matter what the circumstances. Did he have a big ego? Of course. So does every prominent person in show business, politics, sports, business, religion—you name it. But ego is not what drives Jay Leno.

  What drives—and defines—Jay is an amazingly short attention span. It’s about ten seconds long. Thirty seconds, tops. He’s very intelligent and professionally successful but is simply incapable of paying attention for a long period of time; he gets fidgety and can’t sit still. One knee is constantly bouncing up and down to a staccato rhythm. I believe this is because he has some form of ADHD. I don’t claim to be an expert on the condition, but I’m very familiar with its symptoms. Many people in show business have it.

  Jay’s condition—whatever it is—affects almost everything he does. It may have even been a blessing in disguise for the show. Whenever I had to brief Jay or pitch an idea to him, I had to keep it short or risk the danger of losing his attention and not getting it back. This was good because I often tell long, meandering stories. With Jay I had no choice but to stay on topic and keep it simple.

  His restlessness was perfect for the monologue. Each joke was short enough to keep his attention but long enough to keep him challenged to the point of obsession. He and his writers turned out hundreds of jokes daily, up to as many as 1,500, but only the twenty-five or so funniest ones made it into the twelve-minute monologue. The strategy was to keep throwing pasta on the wall until some of it stuck.

  Consistently delivering relevant and funny jokes was a relentless, demanding, and tireless task, although Jay never looked at it that way. Whenever someone asked him how he was able to do it, he would say: “Write joke. Tell joke. Get paid.” Of course, his answer was a joke in itself that always got a laugh because, obviously, there was more to it than that. But in a way, his glib answer was true. He did his job by making it into a routine.

  Jay usually began crafting his monologue at his home in Beverly Hills the night before a show. While his approach appeared to be casual and relaxed, it was actually quite regimented. In fact, it was the same almost every night. He wanted it that way so nothing interfered with his job.

  A typical day for Jay actually began in the evening. Driving himself, he would leave the NBC lot after the show, usually about 6 p.m., and head for his home in Beverly Hills, where he would heat up lasagna for dinner. Then he would begin the work of putting the next day’s monologue together by
reading through hundreds of jokes. When he had enough material for at least half the monologue, he would go to bed, usually about 2:00 a.m., and get up the next morning about 6:00.

  After arriving at the studio around 8:15, often before anyone else, he would work out with a trainer—usually with little enthusiasm. Then he and his head writer would go over the jokes that came in from the writers overnight. Jay’s search for material would continue off and on throughout the day until show time at 4 p.m. He would try out jokes on as many people as possible. Anyone caught near his office, where the door was usually open, was fair game.

  Whenever he used me as a sounding board, Jay would often do a slightly off-color joke and see if I was offended; I was considered to be pretty straight-laced, at least by Hollywood standards. To Jay, I represented our conservative, middle-of-the-road viewers, which I appreciated. But sometimes I think he was just yanking my chain.

  Jay used cue cards for his monologue, which I thought was odd at first. Teleprompters had already been around for years, even in the smallest stations. I had used one years earlier to give the farm news and commodity prices in Green Bay, Wisconsin; Sioux City, Iowa; and Omaha, Nebraska.

  So why did Jay insist on using cue cards? I think it was because of another condition—dyslexia, a reading disability. He would often flub words and complicated phrases. It was hard enough for him to read static words, but moving words would have been even worse, resulting in a confusing jumble of letters.

  Jay was open about his dyslexia and became very adept at making fun of himself when he made mistakes, which only reinforced his image as a likeable guy. I asked him one day if it was what prevented him from using a prompter. He quickly dismissed the idea, which didn’t surprise me. He tended to instinctively reject any perceived attempt to pigeonhole him.

  He struggled so much with dyslexia that I think he even memorized most of his monologue jokes, referring to the written words only for an occasional cue. That didn’t mean he could get by on his memory alone, though. One night the cue card guy didn’t show up on time for the monologue, and we had to stop the show until he arrived.

  Many entertainers do not like the grind of a daily program, but Jay never saw it that way. Because of his short attention span, he was easily bored and liked moving on to a new show every day. Whether an episode was good, bad, or just okay, the next day he didn’t think much about it other than the ratings.

  He was already concentrating on that day’s show, which was something new and different. Besides, he didn’t like resting on his laurels. Just because the monologue “killed” today didn’t mean it would tomorrow. Or as Jay put it, “You’re only as good as your last joke.”

  Jay’s attitude about doing a daily show reflected his very essence, his philosophy of life. A reporter for GQ magazine once asked him a telling question: if he could be any of the many engines he owned, which one would he be? On the surface this appeared to be a contrived question, which Jay would normally deflect with a joke. But he took it seriously, saying he would most likely be his 1866 steam engine: “Steam engines are probably my favorite, because they chug along at the same speed. They don’t get too up. They don’t get too down.” That short answer revealed more about his character and personality than anything else I ever heard him say. I think it could be his epitaph.

  Jay appeared in a number of films early in his career, and not just cameos. He had some decent parts in such films as Silver Bears (1978), Collision Course (1989), and American Hot Wax (1978). But he disliked film acting because of the endless retakes, which could take days. He just didn’t have the patience for that kind of repetitive work, so he didn’t stay with it.

  Instead, he put all of his effort into his stand-up comedy and, eventually, The Tonight Show. Ironically, he would do a number of films during his time as the show’s host. He mostly made cameo appearances, which he enjoyed, especially if they were shot in The Tonight Show studio, where he had to be every day anyway. (Such films include Space Cowboys, 2000; Calendar Girls, 2003; and Mr. 3000, 2004.)

  Jay also liked doing voiceover parts in animated films and voiced characters in The Flintstones (1994), Cars (2006), and Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006). However, he didn’t like watching these films. He was a very literal guy, and he could never get over the fact that cartoon characters literally weren’t real people; they were just moving pictures. He even had a hard time with the idea of interviewing animated characters on the show and rarely did it.

  Other than animated features, Jay loved watching films and talking about them—usually at the same time—during film screenings. Since many of the show’s guests were actors who were promoting projects they starred in, Jay felt he should watch their films. Attending a screening with Jay, usually at NBC, was an experience I will never forget. Not only did you get to see a movie before it was released in theaters but you also often got Jay’s thoughts about it while the film was playing. And there was always pizza, Jay’s favorite food.

  His running commentaries during the screenings could be annoying, but they were often more entertaining than the films themselves. He would say things like, “Would anyone do that in real life?” Or, “Who didn’t see that coming a mile away?”

  While Jay thought most films were flawed, he had no agenda. He was equally passionate about films he liked and those he didn’t like. One time he was so upset by how badly a film was made that he just wouldn’t stop ranting about it. So I told him, “Hey, it’s free.” He responded, “Yes, but I’ll never get my two hours back.”

  After a screening, he would sometimes corner the first person he encountered and engage them in conversation about the film. If you were in a hurry to get home, it was best to avoid Jay. Sometimes he would go on for fifteen minutes. He even did this with my children, Melissa and David, who were teenagers at the time. They were thrilled that Jay was interested in talking with them, but at the same time they didn’t quite know if they had permission to disagree with him.

  They still remember Jay’s thoughts about Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), the first in the series. He told them he loved it partly because the director didn’t put in too many CGI “ghost pirates.” There were only about eighteen, which made the flesh-and-blood soldiers’ battle scene against the “ghost pirates” more realistic than if there had been an endless swarm of them. That was a critique they could relate to as teenagers.

  Jay genuinely enjoyed having film critics as guests, including the late Gene Siskel, the late Roger Ebert, and Richard Roeper. They weren’t always the biggest ratings draw, but Jay so enjoyed bantering with them about films, both on and off the air, that they were frequent guests. And in many ways, his views were similar to those of the professional critics. Like them, he tended to favor smaller, independent films that featured actors rather than action.

  In 2006, Richard Roeper invited Jay to fill in for Roger Ebert while he was in the hospital and serve as a guest co-host on his show, At the Movies with Ebert and Roeper. I thought Jay’s performance on the show was one of the best things he had done, but it wasn’t as entertaining as sitting through a screening with him.

  While critics tended to dismiss Jay as the middle-of-the-road guy, he is actually more complicated than he appeared and is very quirky. I don’t mean phony, Hollywood, “I-must-have-Coke-in-a-bottle-and-only-green-M&Ms-in-my-dressing-room” quirky. I mean he is genuinely idiosyncratic. Much of it is probably related in some way to his dyslexia and short attention span.

  But as odd as he seemed, Jay’s behavior worked for him and the show. His quirks generally reflected his desire to be in total control of his life. He wanted to spend as much time as possible writing jokes and working on cars and as little time as possible doing things that prevented him from that.

  Jay had no interest in owning the rights to The Tonight Show while he was the host, as Johnny Carson had done before him and as David Letterman has done with The Late Show. Instead, Jay just wanted to be an employee so he could spend most of his
time actually working on the show.

  He is a workaholic and genuinely liked his job more than anything else. Jay once asked me if I was familiar with the math seventh graders were doing, which he described as impossibly difficult. I had to agree, as I had seen my own kids’ math when they were in junior high school and remembered being unable to help them with some of it. “Imagine if we had a real job where we had to know how to do actual work,” he told me. “We’re lucky to be in show business.”

  Jay almost never took a day off and detested even the thought of going on vacation, which he considered a “nightmare.” Were it up to him, Tonight would have original episodes fifty-two weeks a year. At his first contract renewal he asked for less time off but was turned down for his staff’s sake.

  The show took six weeks of hiatus, while Letterman stops production for twelve weeks, which helped Jay’s ratings since reruns drew fewer viewers. Letterman works four days a week, recording two shows in one day, while Jay insisted on doing a show every weekday so the monologue jokes and guest segments would be timely and topical.

  Jay rarely seeks leisure time. While the show was in reruns, he usually made stand-up appearances. He told Fortune magazine that he once decided to spend a day on the beach in Hawaii while he was there on a gig. He said it felt like he was there for hours, so he checked his watch only to find he had been there just ten minutes!

  His parents grew up during the Depression, and Jay said he had a fear of running out of money. As such, he never spent a penny of his Tonight Show income while he was host. Instead, he lived off his stand-up earnings. Jay didn’t buy anything on credit; he purchased his house outright and to this day doesn’t invest in stocks.

  Surprisingly, he doesn’t think of himself as a rich person. Once while in New York, he and I shared a limo to the airport. As we headed down 5th Avenue, we passed some very expensive department stores. We were both amazed at some of the fine clothes, furniture, and other items we were seeing in the store windows. Finally, Jay said, “Wow, if you had a lot of dough you could get some nice stuff here.” “Jay,” I responded, “you do have a lot of dough.” “I guess I do,” he said.