Late Night's Alright for a Fight

Blame Haiti. I don’t think this whole late night television feud with Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno and NBC would’ve gotten so much play if the media didn’t latch onto it as a diversion from the constant misery inherent in the humanitarian disaster in the country.

Or perhaps it would’ve gotten even more attention – I don’t have cable and I haven’t followed the late night talk shows, aside from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, for a while. The whole thing is irrelevant to this movie blog, of course, except that reading about O’Brien’s acrimonious exit from NBC got me interested enough to watch the made-for-HBO movie The Late Shift, the story behind Jay Leno beating out David Letterman to become Johnny Carson’s successor as The Tonight Show host in 1992.

The movie is based on the book of the same name by Bill Carter, a New York Times media reporter. I vaguely recalled this film and was pleasantly surprised to see John Michael Higgins playing Letterman. You probably don’t know Higgins by name, but if you’ve seen any Christopher Guest films, you’d recognize him immediately; in Best in Show, for example, he’s part of the silk bathrobe-wearing gay couple, along with Michael McKean. In The Late Shift, he nails Letterman’s mannerisms and speech, even if he is about fifteen years younger.

Leno is played by Daniel Roebuck, who you probably wouldn’t recognize, especially because he’s wearing a prosthetic chin. According to the film, which begins with the message “Believe it or not, the following is based on the truth,” both Letterman and Leno love the Tonight Show deeply, both are insecure and intimidated by Carson’s legacy, but Leno needs to grow a backbone – particularly when it comes to his manager. Kathy Bates won a Golden Globe Award for her portrayal of Helen Kushnick, a woman whose repertoire of negotiating tactics ranged from strong-arm to steamroller. She’s seen as being the cause of Leno winning the Tonight Show and Letterman jumping ship from NBC to CBS.

Some background. Before Carson retired, Letterman had followed him for a decade on The Late Show, his dream since he was a boy, apparently, that he would one day host it. Due to Carson’s health issues, Leno was a frequent guest host on The Tonight Show and proved popular. At the same time, CBS’ late night talk show run had failed miserably with the The Pat Sajack Show, and they were looking for someone. Knowing that that CBS would be eager to give Leno a show in the coveted time slot, Kushnick used this as leverage (some would say a threat) to get Leno in The Tonight Show chair and herself on as executive producer. As Letterman grapples with his disappointment and gets himself a powerful agent for a new show in a competing slot on another network, Kushnick bullies her way right to the top of everybody’s shit list. (On a side note, the real Kushnick sued Carter and was given a settlement; she died of cancer at age 50, the year the film was released.)

A bunch of recognizable faces play the various agents, executives and other suits in the flick, including Treat Williams as Hollywood Michael Ovitz, who becomes Letterman’s agent; Rich Little, doing his spot-on impersonation of Carson; plus other Chris Guest collaborators Bob Balaban, as NBC bigwig Warren Littlefield, and Ed Begley, Jr., as a CBC exec.

The Late Show is rife with studio politics, dirty backdoor dealing, power struggles, head games and the-secret-lives-of-stars-type stuff yet comes off as only slightly more dramatized than reality. In one sequence, Leno is even depicted as listening in on NBC executives through the wall, and apparently this really happened. Although he comes off as a nicer guy than he is in the press right now (which is downright dickish), there’s a weasel-y quality underneath the version of him in the film. (That irritating high-pitched voice doesn’t help matters, either.) The movie definitely sides with Letterman, and he’s shown to be a deserving guy who got a raw deal because he didn’t have a ruthless agent.

Although it’s a decent TV movie that offers a good background to the pre-Conan era, I was surprised to read that The Late Shift was nominated for seven Emmys. It’s decent but definitely has that TV movie staginess to it.

Regardless, after seeing it, you get a better idea of why O’Brien was quick to tell NBC to leave his Tonight Show alone or he’d leave altogether. It was a win-win for him – he either keeps his show, or he gets a fat payout and another show on a different network, and both the network and his competition look bad. Worse for NBC, they get stuck with Leno, who’s obvious brand of punch line humour is about as funny as an episode of Corner Gas – the edgiest thing the guy’s got going for him is his chin fer chrissakes.

See – that’s a total Leno-style gag. His A-game wouldn’t even make Conan’s playbook. Well, at least to the best of the knowledge of a guy without cable.

 

-Dave Alexander