Pick of the Week: Conan O'Brien Can't Stop

By Horacio Garcia

We all know what happened. First Jay Leno said he was leaving for prime time, but it turned out he was less funny than Law and Order or Chuck so he went back to The Tonight Show and Conan O' Brien had no other choice but to go away….with 32 million dollars in severance payment.

Apparently the money was not enough to appease this extremely impatient man and so he launched himself into a frenzy of creativity, launched a comedy tour, and as a result we ended up with that crusade of irreverence that is The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour.

Then, of course, it had to be filmed so the future generations could appreciate the creative Irish genius in full display, and that's how we ended up with this hilarious piece of movie-making that is at times real documentary, at times a making of the tour and at times seems like Conan’s therapist's tapes.

O'Brien himself recognizes in the film that he worked with a kind of frenzy that had nothing to do with fear for the future (he had just collected the 32 million so he wasn't that worried) but with a necessity to prove himself on stage in front of people. Not to mention the fact that, as you can see in the movie, they didn't had the whole thing ready when they announced in Conan's Twitter account that they were going on tour.

The film gives us a rare look at the pandemonium of creative writing and is a tribute to the Conan O'Brien show's staff and his personal leading style. Conan is a hyperactive, tireless whirlwind of ideas that is always pocking fun at his writers (men and women of infinite patience…) and especially to his assistant Sona who appears to be the completely impervious to any joke. She probably acquired that level of resistance through the years with him.

But beyond all the "behind the scenes" usual treats, the movie exposes very well the kind of humor Conan likes to do, even more than in television. Certainly there is lot of the Conan shows in the tour, usually with
the names changed do to copyright issues, but we have The Texas Ranger Lever, renamed "The Chuck Norris Rural Policeman Handle" or The Masturbating Bear, in his new version as "The Self Pleasing Panda", but Conan really goes overboard with new things like his performance of "I Will Survive."

As expected, basically the entire cast of Conan's show went with him on tour, so Andy is there most of the time (he declined going to the finals of Celebrity Jeopardy to do the tour) and also Max Weinberg's Band
with their new name: The Legally Prohibited Band. A family business, as they say.

We now know that after the tour Conan opened his new Conan O'Brien Show on TBS and things have gone uphill for him since then, but this is a rare moment of vulnerability in his life in which despite the 32
million dollars (yeah, I know!) he was actually worried about his career. I don't think he'll ever be worried again after all this.

Tags blogger: Horacio Garcia, Conan O'Brien, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, Max Weinberg', The legally prohibited from being funny on television t