Conan the comic-barbarian visits Yale

People can never accurately express in words certain sounds that they make in real life. If your hand gets caught in a windshield wiper, you might scream "waaahhhhgg"--but come on, it's not the same. "Waaahhhgg?" Seriously, onomatopoeia sucks.

But I really can't figure out any other way to explain the bizarre sound that spewed from my mouth when Conan O'Brien turned to me and said "Sure, I can give you an interview." I think it was something like "Uhmuhhmwahhhnumuh...wow...uh huhhhhhnaaaah...thanks."

And there you have it. I apologize if some of the following questions don't make a lot of sense. It's kind of hard to speak with your foot in your mouth.

The Yale Herald: Your show seems to concentrate more on sketch comedy than on the stand-up that's typical of other late night talk shows. Why is that?

Conan O'Brien: It's just more about where I come from. Our show comes after Jay Leno and David Letterman, and both of them base their show on a monologue. If we did something similar it would be kind of redundant. So instead, writers come up with some opening jokes and I do the ones that I like. The sensibility of the show is not to do joke-jokes-- the short ones that get a laugh and then that's it. I like it when certain jokes don't go well. Sometimes I think I'm actually funnier when they don't.

YH: So you're meeting with your writers and one of them turns to you and says "Alright, I have this great idea--it's called `The Masturbating Bear.'" How do you react to something like that?

CO'B: As long as the idea makes me laugh, I don't really care. I'll push for a skit if it's funny and original. Shocking just to be shocking is a totally different thing. You can't just do something because no one's done it before. We tend to use sketches with actual good ideas behind them.

YH: Regarding the "In the year 2000" skit: what are you going to do with it when the year 2000 finally arrives?

CO'B: We're still figuring that one out, and we've been thinking about it for awhile. We might take it in a totally different direction, or we might simply retire it. A sketch is good as long as it doesn't get old, so we'll have to see if we can think of something else that we should do with it.

YH: That's what happens a lot with Saturday Night Live. It seems like they'll just keep doing a sketch because it was funny at one time.

CO'B: Yeah, if people come to me and say that they really liked something we've done, maybe we'll do it two or three more times. But there comes a point when you need to come up with other stuff.

YH: How the heck did anyone come up with the idea for Triumph, the Insult-Comic Dog?

CO'B: It was basically a combination of a lot of different ideas. We try to think of really idiotic characters and the things we might be able to do with them. Triumph came about the same way--just a bunch of writers working together.

YH: Are the actors in the different sketches the writers on the show?

CO'B: Yeah, most of the people in the skits are either writers for the show or friends of ours. A lot of times the actor is a person who worked on the skit.

YH: Where did you find Andy Richter?

CO'B: I met Andy while searching for writers and I really liked him immediately. He has the classic young Ed McMahon kind of sidekick look, and a dark sense of humor. I hired him as a writer, and while we were preparing for the show we thought it would be a good idea to have him as a sidekick. I never thought I was going to have one, but it seemed like the natural thing to do.

YH: Before the show began, I remember seeing a picture of you standing in the street, wearing a sign that said something like "Hi, I'm about to have a talk show and I need a band." It seems like you were getting out there and just winging it.

CO'B: Yeah, that picture was in Vanity Fair. It was a really interesting situation because no one had any idea how the show was going to do.

YH: So, honestly, how long did you think your show was going to last when they gave it to you?

CO'B: You know, I hoped that I would make it, and I didn't think a lot about getting canceled. I was determined to make the most with what I had. Like I said [during the tea], the worse thing they can do is fire you. But I really didn't think about that. You have to think about what's going on now, not what could happen. When you're in a house that's on fire, you don't think about dying. You think about trying to get out. You have to concentrate on what's going on now.

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