Conan O'Brien
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Conan "CoCo Christopher" O'Brien (also known as "Coney Island," "Jay Leno," "Stephen Colbert,", "David Letterman", "That Guy Who Comes On Before Jimmy Fallon", and "Jimmy Fallon") is an American talk show host, television personality, comedic performer, writer, singer, dancer, butcher, baker and candle stick maker, and is the current host of The Tonight Show on NBC. He rose to fame as the host of NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien from 1993 to 2009, before leaving to succeed Jay Leno to The Tonight Show helm, airing his first broadcast on June 1, 2009. Prior to his hosting career, O'Brien was a writer for Saturday Night Live and the animated series The Simpsons.
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[edit] Background
O'Brien was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, the son of Gertie, a writer for Steve Allen's The Tonight Show, and Thomas Jefferson O'Brien, a physician, epidemiologist, professor of medicine and stand up comedian at Harvard. He is the fifth of three children. O'Brien's family was Irish Catholic and descended from pre-Civil War era immigrants; in a Late Night episode, O'Brien paid a visit to County Kerry, Ireland, where his ancestors originated. He learned that to escape from the Famine, his ancestors became talk show hosts with really bad hair. Their quick wit made them very popular with the occupying English forces and they were allowed one potato a month, or a trip to America. They chose the trip.
[edit] Education
O'Brien attended Brookline High School. After graduating in 1981, he entered Harvard University.
He graduated magna cum laude in 1985 with an A.B. in History and Literature and a C.D. of Ethel Merman. His senior thesis concerned the use of Jay Leno's chin as a method of feeding the third world.
Throughout college, O'Brien was a writer for the Harvard Lampoon humor magazine. This evolved from an earlier magazine, Harvard Lamp Owners. Conan found himself at the receiving end of abuse and an angry mob of lamp owners for his disrespect of their tradition. Fortunately for him, the mob used lamps instead of flaming torches and so could only travel eight feet from an electrical outlet at any given time, allowing Conan an easy escape.
[edit] Career
[edit] Television Writer
O'Brien moved to Los Angeles after graduation to escape the mob and join the writing staff of HBO's "For Legal Reasons, We Cannot Claim That This is The News, But Due to Other Legal Reasons we Cannot say It's not the News as it Might Occassionally Coincidentally Parallel the Actual News, so It's Not Necessarily the News". He spent two years with that show and performed regularly with improvisational groups. Most of the other comedians told him he could never make it in comedy, that anyone with ginger hair was useless, and that moving his limbs wasn't funny. He reminded them that they were in America and anything can be funny if it's stupid enough.
In January 1988, Saturday Night Live's executive producer Lorne Michaels hired O'Brien as a writer. During his three years on SNL, he wrote such recurring sketches as "Mr. Loose Limbed Red Haired Man" and "The Tonight Show is as Good as Mine". O'Brien also co-wrote the sketch "Nude Beach" with Robert Smigel, a sketch in which the word "penis" was said or sung at least 42000 times. Conan dropped any intelligence he had as he realised dirty words were twenty times funnier than anything that required thinking.
In 1989, O'Brien received an Emmy Award for Most Sketches Including Loose Limbed Red Haired Writers, narrowly defeating The Tonight Show.
From 1991 – 1993, O'Brien was a writer and producer for The Simpsons, credited as writer or co-writer of four episodes. Of all the episodes he wrote, he considers "Homer Saying D'oh While Marge Grumbled" to be his favorite and most revealing.
[edit] Late Night
As executive producer, Michaels invited O'Brien to audition to host the successor show to Late Night with David Letterman. Premiering on 13 September 1993, Late Night with Conan O'Brien received awful reviews for the first two to three years after its debut. Gradually, Conan's style was seen as very funny, due to the drug culture taking hold on America.
On the first episode after the September 11th attacks, O'Brien told a story of how he saw the planes over New York. He used the paleness of his skin to reflect sunlight into the pilot's eyes. It worked, but unfortunately the plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
Some of the even-more-hilarious-than-the-not-very-hilarious-earlier-sketches included "Dan Quayle is Silly" and "Judi DenchFalling Down the Stairs 2: This Time, it's Sexy". During this time Conan invented what is perhaps his most famous set of moves, a set of moves so fantastic, so marvellous, so ingenious, so off-the-wall and completely hilarious that it was banned in China for six weeks. I am of course talking about the brilliant...the one and only...completely unique...and utterly hilarious...stringy....dancey... String Dance! This involves Conan being hooked up to a gigantic invisible rope that somehow controls his limbs. "Triumph the Insult Dog" was created by Conan himself in response to demands for more political satire on his show. Triumph was a dog controlled by Don Rickles. "Moving Lips" was another memorable sketch where Conan blackmailed celebrities by forging video evidence of them making outrageous claims and statements. It was famously used to impeach Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Woody Allen. Americans found all of these completely and utterly hilarious.
[edit] The Final Episode
Conan's output over the next few years gradually became more intelligent, witty and scatological. His sketches improved as did his mobility. He and his team, which included the sultry announcer Andy Richter, created many more wonderful and award winning sketches. Andy had sadly left the show in the year 2000 to live out his childhood dream of becoming a home owner and a leading man. He failed on both counts. Andy broke down in tears on the episode, exclaiming he had finally realised his only talent was being a sidekick to Conan. Conan assured him he would have a place on The Tonight Show.
[edit] The Tonight Show
[edit] First Episode
O'Brien was a guest for Jay Leno's final episode of The Tonight Show on May 29, 2009, where he repeatedly punched Jay Leno in the face to ensure he couldn't come back to host. Jay left crying, but no one noticed as his chin caught all the tears. On Conan's first episode on June 1, 2009, Conan spent the first twenty minutes reading a list of what he consider his achievements. The next twenty were made up of songs and dances about Conan's greatness and how smart he was, while the final four minutes were given to comedy.
[edit] Television writer/producer (2002–present)
In 2002, O'Brien helped write and produce shows for the departed Andy Richter. It was cancelled mostly due to poor ratings. None got past the second episode and Andy gradually realised he was useless outside of being a sidekick for Conan.
In 2004, O'Brien had to apologize to Canadians for engaging in Quebec bashing, something which some felt to be racist towards Francophones. His exact words were "Fucking Quebec bastards. Who the fuck are you? Fuck off you fucking fuckers. Where the fuck is Quebec anyway? Fuck off, fuckers." His language was called "inappropriate" by the Quebec Bestiality Times.
Americans found all of these completely and utterly hilarious. Conan was even forced to abandon one show due to being too funny. When Conan walked out on stage, the crowd simply wouldn't stop laughing, even though he didn't say anything. Conan evacuated the building after two hours, and Late Night was put on hiatus for a month until all of the audience, who just wouldn't move, died of starvation.
[edit] Personal Life
O'Brien was in a relationship with Phoebe from Friends, until O'Brien decided to move to New York (even though that's where Phoebe lives) to pursue a television show. After chasing it for six months, he finally caught it with a butterfly net. O'Brien met Elizabeth Ann 'Liza' Powel in 2000 when she appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in a porn spoof involving, of course, Andy Richter. Conan was amazed by her techniques, and even moreso by Andy's. They married in 2002 in a lavish ceremony atop the Space Needle in Powel's native Seattle. Max Weinberg, the leader of Conan's Late Night band, actually fell to his death during the ceremony, causing Conan to quip "he made quite a splash, if you know what I mean", causing the congregation to break into laughter and forget to call an ambulance.
O'Brien repeatedly affirms his Irish Catholic heritage on his show. On a 2009 episode of Inside the Actors Studio, he stated that both sides of his family moved to America from Ireland in the 1850s, subsequently marrying only other Irish Catholics, and that his lineage is thus 100% Irish Catholic. This explains why he devoted twenty minutes of each show to silent prayer, shouting the Hail Mary and the Rosary, and flogging children in state run institutions.
In January 2008, after his show was put on hold for two months due to the strike by the Writers Guild of America, he reemerged on late-night TV sporting a beard, which guest Tom Brokaw described as making him look like "a stupid cunt." He grew the beard in support for his writers. In one hilarious episode, Conan's beard got caught in some cogs that were left on stage. After struggling for an hour, he had to have his head amputated and re-attached, now beardless. He won an Emmy for the episode.
[edit] Comedy and Mannerisms
Conan's humorous delivery and laughable appearance, coinciding (or should that be Conanciding? See what I did there?) with his top notch writing and ever inventive mind made Late Night one of the worst shows on television. Conan was praised by critics for his confidence in years 3 to 7, but balked at the condition under his contract that stated he must appear naked in every episode. The shows decline from witty satire into sexual deviance gained international attention. Conan's humor often involved insults, self deprecation, mime, one liners and saying words that sounded like rude words but were actually perfectly normal words.
[edit] Off Camera Personality
Conan has been described as having a very shy, yet aggressive personality off camera. He describes himself as "lacking in self esteem". He seems to suffer from mental illness stating "it'd be a lot easier to be paranoid if everyone wasn't out to get me." He uses comedy as a form of therapy, allowing his neuroses out in the form of comedic dances. He cries anytime anyone mentions anything funny that he didn't write exclaiming "why didn't I think of that? My brain!". Conan's body and appearance is often a source of self-derision for him. However, while his appearance is often mocked by Conan himself, he fiercely defends his honour, and partakes in up to seven duels a year.
[edit] Future
Conan now hosts "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno". Conan says he hopes one day to make it in the world of expressive theatre, with comedy merely being a sideshow for him. "I really want to express myself" he announced on his show. "Comedy is not something I want to base my life around. I want to make a play about the Famine in Ireland and how not to catch it. I myself am immune, but I want to help people". Going on, he explained "I know I'm really, really, funny and really, really, Bill O'Reilly rich, but I want more. I don't want to be a clown. I can write comedy, and I know people are stupid and will laugh at anything I do, but I want to be serious." An audience member asked "So no more human clowning then?" "Why didn't I think of that? My brain!" Conan quickly retorted, his legendary wit and comic touch evident. So what does the future hold for Mr. O'Brien? Quite a lot. By restoring America's self esteem in these turbulent times by showing fart gags are always funny, he can bring us into the new century. Maybe even into the year two thousand. Who knows? From humble beginnings he gave so little, to so few and asked for so much. We only ask long may he continue inventing, changing and just being an all-round wonderful guy.
