Conan O'Brien needs a fan.
Want to talk to Conan?
Visit teamcoco.com slash call Conan.
Okay, let's get started.
Hey, welcome to a Thursday episode of Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.
Usually these are fan episodes, but we've been mixing it up a little bit recently.
I'll tell you why.
Getting ready for the Oscars, and I have my A-plus elite writing staff downstairs in the building working hard on concepts riddles quizzes, recipes for the Oscars.
And I am very fortunate.
I'll just come out and say it.
I work with the best writers in the world.
And one of them, I want to come up and hang with them.
We did this with Brian Kiley a couple of days ago.
And now we're going to do it with Mr. Todd Levin about his sharper writer.
As you will find, you really are.
That's really nice.
You're crazily talented, and I'm so glad that you're helping me with the Oscars.
And we've, I think you joined me, did you say it was 2009 was when you came on board?
2009, just as you were wrapping up late night in New York.
I was wrapping up late night and I was headed to take over the Tonight Show for a 30-year run.
We had jobs for life.
I remember I hired you and you said, you know, Tonight Show hosts last forever.
And you said, count me in.
And you started spending money like crazy.
Oh, yeah.
Most of it was spent before I even got to California.
Yeah.
Oh.
Yeah, he showed up and the first day he got, he said, I'm buying a Bentley.
Yeah, and he got a license plate that said, Tonight Show for Life.
And I said, I looked it up.
It was way too many characters for a license plate.
It wasn't even legal.
It was actually Tonight Show for Life 3 because two other people had gotten the same vanity plate.
Two other writers for my Tonight Show.
Yeah, so you were with me for the end of Late Night Tonight Show, then the TBS thing and now Oscars.
And yeah, so you will be my writer for life, whether you want to be or not.
Happy to be.
Um, so I'm just, let's get into this a little bit because there are different types of writers.
They're the kinds that, that chatter constantly.
I'm sorry to say I was one of those.
What?
Oh my God.
Doing bits in the room and dancing around like a chimp, a chimp on crack.
No way.
And then, Todd, you're that, I call you, you're like a ninja, an assassin.
You're quiet, you're taking things in, and then you'll say something that's really hilarious and you'll write something that's really great.
But there's not a lot of, you know, babbling and, hey, look at me, which I really admire.
It's not demonstrative because I believe in my work.
Oh, wow.
I am very much like a bad musician magician and I'm also a bad musician, but I'm a bad magician trying to distract you.
I'm like, whoa, look at this, wee, wah, wah.
And then because I'm afraid someone will really look and see there's not a lot of protein here.
I was.
I think it's awesome, just because I'm I've never been uncomfortable with that part of like performing stuff.
Yeah.
Even when I was doing stand up, I was the guy who just hugged the microphone.
I just held it dear to me.
And I wasn't like a big try and leave with it.
Yeah.
You've got to come back.
Come back with the mic.
Well, tell me about your journey a little bit, because this happens so often.
I work with these really talented people and I get to know them.
We're in the trenches together.
And I think hey, I don't really know your origin story, but when did you know?
Oh, comedy is for me.
I mean, I think I always knew it as a kid, but I didn't know.
I think you probably hear this a lot.
And I think a lot of people who are in comedy say this, but I didn't know it was a career.
You know, I didn't grow up in that kind of environment.
You know, my parents were both state workers in Albany, New York.
And I so I loved comedy as a kid.
And my dad was really instrumental in that because my dad had My parents had a terrible record collection.
They had very, they had like a couple of John Denver's, a couple of Barbra Streisand's.
Right.
But then my dad also had.
David's saying, what's wrong with that?
Sounds great to me.
Not much.
I love your parents.
When can I come over?
David, settle down.
But my dad had Bob Newhart records as well.
And so he was my introduction to comedy.
So I would listen to his records all the time.
He had Cosby records too.
You could say that.
But those were also a huge influence on me.
Huge, yeah.
Yeah.
And then my dad also had this rule.
We had this really strict bedtime.
But we had HBO when I was growing up.
And if there was a funny movie on at like nine o'clock he would let me stay up to watch it with him.
So I'd watch a lot of comedies with my dad.
Everything you're saying resonates completely with me, because my parents had nothing to do with show business.
I'm growing up just outside Boston.
I, you know, show business is this thing that exists on Jupiter and it's done by aliens.
But my father was very interested in comedy.
He was a, you know, infectious disease scientist, doctor, and he, but he loved comedy.
He loved Newhart.
We had those records.
They also had a terrible record.
I mean, like no records.
But he loved comedy.
And when a movie like Mad Mad Mad Mad, Mad Mad World would come on once a year, we weren't allowed to watch TV at night.
If it was a school night, if we had school the next day,
But he would say when this comedy came on, he would say we could all watch it.
And I mean, this was unheard of, but that was sacrosanct.
If there was a really good classic comedy, we could watch that.
So, and I think Newhart, I mean what a great person to learn from, because the jokes and the concept, it's about jokes and concepts.
Yeah.
He's like a matador.
He didn't move that much.
It's, you know, it's all the power of the joke and a stillness to it.
Yes, for sure.
And a musical ear.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I loved him.
Yeah.
So my dad turned me on to Monty Python, to SNL, all those things.
So I was really into it as a kid and, like you know, had no idea that it could be a thing you could do for a living.
And then when I moved to New York, which was just a place, I knew that I wanted to be in New York eventually.
I didn't know what I wanted to do there.
I just knew I needed to be in New York eventually.
And then when I got there, I just gravitated toward people who were doing improv and doing standup.
And I don't even know how or why I befriended these people, but I started to kind of get in with that world.
And people, my friends were just encouraging me to get out on stage and just do stuff.
That's great.
Yeah.
So in the beginning, I wasn't even...
My the beginning of my stand up career was me reading bits.
It was very much like a new heart thing where I was just I would prepare a written bit that depended on the page because I was so scared.
And I just was like, I need the words to be perfect.
So I would structure it like well, I got these letters in the mail and I thought I'd share them with you, or these
I found these old diary entries.
So something that was sort of it had to be read.
And then, as I continued to do it, I just got more comfortable being in front of people and being spontaneous.
And the pages started drifting away.
But you have to find a special place to do that because- Yes.
You can't go to a club.
There are comedy clubs where it's very confrontational and you have to almost fight them to prove that you're funny, which is, you know, can breed a certain kind of style.
And then there are places you can go that are more open to experimentation.
100%.
And so where were you finding those places?
So in New York that was, there was a place called Rafifi which was in the back of a.
It was like they showed movies there.
And there was also like burlesque nights.
It was a really weird place.
There was a bar in the front and a little theater in the back.
And there was a big kind of thriving alternative scene there.
So I would do shows there, UCB, places like that.
There's a place called Luna Lounge that had a very famous like alternative show on Monday nights.
Marin kind of ruled the roost there.
And he was an older, kind of a generation of comics before me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So there were all these little rooms you could do that.
And then once you got comfortable, there still was an expectation that you do clubs.
I never really wanted to do clubs.
But if you're doing, if you're trying to get into a festival or get on TV, then you kind of have to be in clubs and you have, and it is, it's different.
It's like, I have to make you like me.
Yeah.
Whereas in the alternative rooms you're kind of like well, this will make you like I.
This, the words I'm saying, will hopefully make you like me.
But like you have to be this person that's approachable and it it can be combative.
But it's just it's more of like a struggle.
Like I have to make these idiots like me.
You just mud brain.
Yeah.
You morons.
How are you morons tonight?
You working class scum.
Hey, why the crowd wasn't that good tonight?
Yeah, they were.
They were really good until you screamed at them.
In your wool suit.
You dropped your horn rim glasses at one point.
I waved a newspaper at them.
Don't you idiots read?
Yeah, everyone has to find their own way.
And you do that.
And then what did you do TV jobs before you came to me?
This is my first TV job.
So I had been doing pretty well as a stand up and I'd gotten like a TV gig just performing and I got an agent through that.
But as soon as I got an agent, I said, I want to write like that's what I want to do.
You know, I like stand up, but I love writing.
And this late night was my first TV job.
And I almost didn't take it because I thought, well, shouldn't I have a job on a worse show first?
Like I had that.
That's my own, like you know, insecurity and growing up in this kind of like working middle-class family.
I was like, shouldn't I have started on something smaller?
Because I was such a huge fan of the show when I got hired that I almost didn't take it.
And then the week that, That week I got- You got the job and you were like hey, this show isn't that good.
I think I'll be just fine.
Yeah, exactly.
I don't know what all the fuss is all about.
I think Conan's on pills.
But yeah, I, so I, that I had gotten a job on another TV show, VH1 TV show that same week.
And the, and I was, I almost took that job.
And then I got a call from Sweeney about this show.
Yeah.
And yeah, that was crazy.
I'd love it if you had turned us down and worked on ridiculousness.
I know.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
I would be rich.
Picking the clips of people in bikinis falling down.
I would be rich beyond my wildest dreams.
You'd be so rich.
You'd refuse to come on this podcast now.
I'm not talking to you.
How much does this pay?
Yeah.
Uh, so, um, talk to me about some of the bits that you, like your experience working on the show.
What were some of the bits that you got on early days, or just in general, that you were really proud of?
Well, the first, I would say the first thing that I got on, that well, there are a couple of things like there are a couple of things early on that I got on.
I liked.
But the first thing that I got on, that I was really proud of, that really kind of broke through, was Minty.
Yes.
Minty the candy cane.
Minty the candy cane.
I love Minty.
And that was like, it just made people happy.
Oh, it was so.
It made me happy.
Great.
Now refresh us.
Take us through the, Minty is a candy cane, but not any candy cane.
And he's played by McCann.
He's played by Brian McCann.
I had.
Basically, I had so much insurance for that bit though, because I had Brian McCann, who is an incredible performer.
Such a great performer.
And so funny playing this candy cane that had fallen.
The idea is that he had fallen on the ground briefly briefly, briefly.
He briefly fell on the ground so he had a few things stuck to him, like a cigarette butt and a penny, and then the song was can you do the song?
I'm trying to remember it uh uh, panting camaraderie minty, the candy cane, who briefly fell on the ground, and it was done in that kind of old timey on the ground.
Oh, minty fell on the ground.
Now he's covered in goo.
Now he's covered in goo.
Oh my God.
So McCann played him, Stack sang.
Brian Stack, also an amazing performer, sang the song and Jimmy Vivino arranged it.
I can't.
It's a great song.
And of course, near and dear to my heart because my favorite era of singing is about 1914.
Megaphone singing.
Megaphone singing.
And it was great.
He had just the perfect thing stuck to him.
And immediately people loved him.
I loved him.
I would always dance along with Mindy.
I think Mindy threw things at people.
He threw.
He had a little basket of candy canes that he passed out in the audience, and then he whipped them.
And then he would whip them at me.
He would violently whip them at you.
And quick shout out to Brian McCann, who I got to get in here at some point because he played.
He was such a That early, early late night show he was on and would just play these hilarious characters.
That really helped us put our stamp on the kind of humor we liked.
And one of my favorites was the man with bulletproof legs.
So good.
And McCann would come out wearing super short shorts and an incredibly... self-satisfied expression.
And he would sing a song about how you can't hurt me because I've got bulletproof legs.
Yes, I've got bulletproof legs.
You can't... And then, blam, he'd get shot in the chest and collapse and die.
And it was one of my favorite things because he would make his legs elongate.
Yes, he was like...
Like almost do this kind of beautiful swan walk.
Yes, you do this long legged swan walk bragging about how his legs were bulletproof and then he'd get shot in the chest.
And it just delighted me.
And that's one of maybe 10,000 things McCann did for us.
What do you got there, Eduardo?
You want me to play it?
Yeah, if you want to see one of these Minty sketches come to life, go on the Team Coco channel.
Look up Minty the Candy Cane.
Come on, let's hear them.
Happy holidays, everyone.
The voice he chose.
Yeah.
You can hear the sound of Minty the Candy Cane.
Minty fell on the ground.
Minty fell on the ground.
Now Minty's covered in pool.
Because Minty fell on the ground for jumping.
That's it.
Just a moment or two.
You know, my favorite was, Minty's covered in goo.
And it's just goo.
Yeah.
Oh, that made me so happy.
Oh, another early thing.
I don't want to talk about this that much, but was the Human Centipede Menorah.
Yes!
That might have been the same year.
Human Centipede had just come out, which was one of the most horrifying and still remains one of the most horrifying movies of all time.
Sona made me watch it on the tour bus.
I did.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
I've never seen it.
I won't watch it.
And it buffered a lot, so it took us four hours to watch it.
Yeah, yeah.
It was really, really not worth it.
It was a labor of love.
And so, yeah.
Human centipede menorah.
So did this get you tossed out of any religious affiliations?
The two things I remember about it were that Patton Oswalt had tweeted something about how horrifying it was.
And I was like, if that got him, that's good.
If this horrifies Patton Oswalt.
And got him not sleeping.
Yes.
Then we know we're in the right territory.
And then the other thing was that we did it multiple years.
And for some reason they always I guess because the costumes fit, they always tried to hire back the same nine guys.
Yeah.
And except for like one of them, they all came back.
It was like a Stockholm syndrome.
Yeah.
The one that didn't come back, Timothee Chalamet.
Yeah.
He just, you know, and he won't acknowledge it anymore.
No, no, he doesn't talk about it.
But it was crazy because those guys would, they all stayed in touch with each other.
It was like a shared trauma.
And they all kept in touch.
If you want to see the human centipede menorah, Go on the Team Coco site and then don't look at the clip, because it was horrifying.
It's so horrifying.
And it's everything you think it is.
Yes.
Wow.
But I like to do.
That was a thing that I think that i would go back to a lot, which was take something monstrous and make people have to celebrate it.
Yes, or take something sweet and make it monstrous.
It's like wiki bear was like a sweet thing.
That stack and i wrote that was like you love it when you see it and his voice is cute, but he's a monster.
Yeah, what was it?
Was it?
What was wiki bear was?
When i would uh, take the, it was like the um, The bear that they were selling.
Yeah, yeah.
It was a real bear that they were selling, that you could ask it questions and could it?
Yeah, it was based on a real thing.
There was a bear that could connect to the internet.
Could connect to the internet.
It was like obsessed with murder.
Wasn't it constantly... The wiki bear was always giving...
Anecdotes, not anecdotes, but like stories.
It would give you facts and you would ask it very innocent questions.
It would answer them and then pivot off the question to something absolutely horrifying.
So give me an example.
I'm trying to remember.
I know.
So you would ask it like, it was always, I wish I could think of an example.
Because it was a cute kid's toy.
So I was saying, hey, wiki bear, how are you?
You know, and then it would, well, I'm fine, Conan.
And then it would pivot off that really quickly.
Speaking of, blah, blah, blah.
Ed Gein made lampshades out of human skin.
And I'd be like, wiki bear.
Speaking of bright ideas.
He was a clever fella.
I think one of the reasons you fit in so nicely is that I think my whole life so many bits were me trying to be the innocent talk show host who was doing something sweet.
Yes.
It's almost like we didn't have rehearsal.
If you followed that logic.
I'm going to try out this wiki bear.
Hey, wiki bear.
And then I'd be trying to be like, okay, well, let's just move it along, wiki bear.
Did you know that the second night of the Manson murders?
They, you know, and I'm like hey, hold on a second wiki bear.
But if you look through it, that's a theme that runs through the entire show.
For years and years and years, any version of it is...
I'm trying to put on a nice show for you.
I'm trying to put on a nice show, and I don't understand what's going on here.
But that was a bit that you helped a lot actually, because the original draft was like kind of it was.
I don't think it was unfunny, but it wasn't focused.
And then when we were doing in rehearsal, because the bear would move, like they could control its mouth so it could always move and Stack was in the voiceover booth.
And you guys just started talking about the Manson family.
It just became a funny thing at rehearsal.
Yeah.
And then Stack and I kind of locked into that.
We're like, that's what the bit is.
Yeah, you have to find it sometimes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It changed the whole thing and it was so much fun.
So what surprised you?
You went from watching the show to then working on it.
What are some of the things that struck you as oh, this is different.
Or I mean, what were your impressions?
Well, the thing that I'll tell you, a thing that terrified me at first but then became my favorite thing about the show, was that the writers have a lot of autonomy and that you're kind of expected to not just write your bits but to produce them.
Yeah.
And in a sense, direct them as well.
And you're working with the editors and you're working with all the departments.
Yeah.
And in the beginning, if you've never done that before, it's so scary.
Yeah, it is.
Because you're like there's a thousand ways to mess this up and you know a couple ways to get it right.
Well, that is something I learned from Lorne Michaels.
When I went to work on Saturday Night Live with Greg Daniels, Um, it was, I mean, it stunned us.
I mean, I was, I don't know, 23, maybe, or 24.
And suddenly, yeah, it would have been 24, I think.
But, um, you know, we pitched a sketch and, They said, you know, I did well at read through.
And the next thing you know, you're talking to set designers, wardrobe people.
You're telling them, you know, Lauren would say to me, what kind of restaurant is this?
And I'd be like, I don't know.
I just get pizza at the corner, around the corner.
I get a slice.
Are we at Orso?
Are we at Elaine's?
Oh my God.
Are we downtown at Le Bon?
And I'm like, I don't know.
I only go to three restaurants.
I don't go to restaurants.
I've never been to a restaurant.
I have two pairs of jeans and a 1973 Plymouth Valiant.
Don't ever tell me that again.
But yeah.
And so Lauren threw us into the deep end of the pool.
And at first it felt like insanity.
And then I realized no one's going to care more than the people who thought of it.
Yeah, it's a great idea.
And so you should be the one that's anal and exacting about what it has to be, because it's your vision.
Yes.
And then you just... I think it leads to so many things.
I mean, I think...
You have a really good director's eye, so many of the writers do.
You develop that really quickly because you know what you want.
Yeah, that's very true.
Sometimes even when you didn't think you were that kind of person, you find out really quickly if you have to produce the sketches.
I totally agree.
And the downside of it is that you also waste so many resources.
Like there's so many times, because you're in control of it, there's no one to say are you sure you need all that?
And you're like, absolutely.
Why is minty made out of silver?
Because that's the way I thought of it.
Exactly.
Do it for me.
Do it.
Eight hundred thousand.
Yeah.
No, it would be a lot of times.
There was a thing that Dan Cronin and I worked on that was so, so needlessly ambitious.
It was just a parody of a commercial like a, was it?
It was like uh uh, not el pollo uh, del taco.
That's what it was.
It was the idea that was a del taco delivery system.
So that it was.
It was so stupid on its face.
It was a, a special device on your toilet that when you flushed it, it could recognize when your body had room for another burrito.
Yeah, I knew the toilet was going to come into play.
And then it would immediately provide you with that burrito once you had cleared enough room out of your body for a new burrito.
Yes.
And we, and it became this.
Trust me, this is something Del Taco's thinking about.
I think it was off some story about how Nike or Reebok had developed these sneakers, that you could press a button and it would get dominoes for you.
It was like connected to dominoes.
So this was like Del Taco's version of that.
Synergy, man.
Yeah, yeah.
And it was so stupid on its face and it became so ambitious.
Where there's this, It gets so in sync with your body's needs that it opens up like a third eye and takes you to this place of nirvana where it's like everything's perfectly in sync.
It was so expensive.
But that's what...
Jim Downey was really good at this.
He loved the comedy of take something very simple and then make it needlessly complicated.
But that in itself is funny.
So a long commercial about Change Bank where Jim Downey's explaining to you that if you give us 5, we'll give you You know this this, this many quarters, this many singles, and or we'll also give you this many nickels, this many quarter, and over explaining it.
And I think there's something to an idea that stupid that then probably uses animation, computer graphics to explain how it works, green screens of like.
Once this area has been voided, then this area is created and this area of your brain and you're like this is such a stupid idea.
I cannot believe that you would go to this much trouble.
And that's where the funny stuff comes from.
I think a lot of times I think the show kind of for me at least taught me some of that too, because so much of what I felt like I was trying to do as a writer was to break you, because I I knew cause you've seen so much, you just have seen so much, and that there's always there's that kind of line between okay, that'll work for the show.
And I want to see that on the show, you know?
And I think we're always trying and I, and I knew you're rooting against us.
And you know what?
I'm ready against you right now.
Yeah, this is what I wanted to say is something.
You're having such a respectful conversation with Todd and it's very confusing to me.
When he was being nice in the beginning, I thought it was an ambush.
I know.
Oh, it is.
This is an IRS sting operation.
I know.
Has he ever made fun of you for like a piece not working out?
Can we talk about that?
Trust me.
Can we talk about you making fun of him?
Trust me.
What is this respect?
Eduardo, can you kill her mic, please?
No, no that is.
I mean, I would have this.
There was this relationship with the writers, where if something was really tanking, you could see me licking my lips.
Like, oh yes, this is gonna be delicious.
And I remember, I think we were doing I forget we were doing shows at Comic-Con and one of the writers had come up with it's R2-D2, but he's gone Hollywood.
And he's like- hey, make sure you get me a good table at the, you know, and he had like a cigar.
And, you know, yeah, and where's my limo?
Yeah, she, she, and it was just, wasn't working and felt like kind of an old take.
And I, people said they saw me licking my lips and rubbing my hands together.
I was so like, oh, we, we've got to have more R2-D2 gone Hollywood.
And... Yes, you would sometimes interact with the thing more than needed.
Yes.
Tell us more.
R2-D2, who's gone to Hollywood?
And whoever wrote it was like, okay, fuck you, Conan.
But...
No one is more delighted by left brain crazy ideas that tickle me.
Like those things, that's a religious experience.
You've written much more than your share of those.
And, you know, let's hope we can do it at the Oscars.
Can we?
It's going to be so much fun.
But yes, I will ridicule you in an hour when I come back down.
I will mock you.
Time flattens everything.
There is no past.
There's only the present.
Time is a loop.
But cannot thank you enough.
Honored to work with you and get back to work.
Thank you so much for having me.
Conan O'Brien needs a fan.
With Conan O'Brien, Sonam Ovsessian, and Matt Gourley.
Produced by me, Matt Gourley.
Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and Nick Liao.
Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino.
Take it away, Jimmy.
Supervising producer, Aaron Blair.
Associate talent producer, Jennifer Samples.
Associate producers, Sean Doherty and Lisa Byrne.
Engineering by Eduardo Perez.
Get three free months of SiriusXM when you sign up at SiriusXM.com slash Conan.
Please rate, review and subscribe to.
Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.
