Big American prize galas almost always take too long, the Oscars presenter also knows this year: Conan O’Brien (1963). When O’Brien presented the Emmy’s in 2006, he did not take half measures. He open With the remark that the presentation should absolutely stay within the time limit. To reinforce that, the beloved comedian Bob Newhart (1929) was driven into the stage in a large glass tank “with enough oxygen for three hours”. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s very simple: if the Emmy’s last one second longer than three hours, then Bob Newhart dies,” said O’Brien. “Keep those speeches short. Mr. Newhart’s life is in your hands. ” During the broadcast there was occasional switching to a panikating Newhart while a clock indicated how long he still had oxygen. Newhart survived the evening and only died in 2024, at the age of 94.
This Emmy-Jas is typically Conan O’Brien: cartoonesk, absurd and uncomfortable. For almost thirty years it was the style of the talk shows that he presented on various large TV channels. He managed to distinguish himself by disrupting the tight format of the American evening talk show. Interviews with celebrities were less slimy than with colleagues and jokes and sketches were less focused on current events and politics. When TV bosses complained that his program was too coarse, his program introduced Late Night with Conan O’Brien A new character: Masturbating Bear, a man in a bear suit that could suddenly appear to disrupt the broadcast (masturbating).
Discomfort humor, his specialty, will almost certainly become an important part of the 97th Oscargala. The 61-year-old presenter never saves himself and likes to make himself the sad figure as possible on stage or during a report. “I like to be a strange duck in the bite, someone who doesn’t fit it,” O’Brien told Vakblad in 2024 The Hollywood Reporter. “I spoke to someone who looked at my skin and my freckles and said,” Are you sick? ” I find situations like that amusing. ” He likes to be the punchline. During the Oscars that comes in handy: Hollywood stars would rather not be tackled hard by the presenter.
‘The Simpsons’
O’Briens interest in comedy started during his history and literature at Harvard University, where he was the editor of the renowned satirical student magazine The Harvard Lampoon. After his studies he received various writing jobs for TV programs. His breakthrough in the comedy world came in 1988, when he became a sketch writer for Variété program Saturday Night Live (SNL). There he formed a writing duo with Greg Daniels, who later the American The Office would make.
After three years of SNL, O’Brien ended up at another TV institute: The Simpsons. At that time, the animations’ item was a pop cultural sensation and creative at a peak. O’Brien wrote episodes that are among the best in the series. Such as ‘Marge vs the monorail’: a parody of musical The Music Manin which a singing and dancing scammer is the inhabitants of the town of Springfield a defective train. O’Brien’s signature was clearly visible: humor on the border of intellectual and childish fool. “Never like this had never been done,” Simpsons producer Josh Weinstein told the site Vice. He thinks it is the best episode in the history of television: “There were so many different comic layers in it.”
Late Night
Although O’Brien never intended to appear on television himself, he was asked in 1933 by Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels to become a presenter of the talk show Late Night on the nbc channel. He succeeded David Letterman, a spirit of O’Brien who shared his love for disruption.
The daily program was only broadcast at half past twelve, after the more traditional talk show The Tonight Show. Due to the extra late time, there was more room for experiment. Not that there was no pressure: the first years O’Brien thought he could be fired at any time. He sorted for the criticism after his first episode a submitted letter Unpleasant The New York Times to send with the head ‘O’Brien Flops!’ “I was not impressed,” wrote O’Brien about himself. Critics shared his opinion. Only after three years did that change, and O’Brien found his audience: young people, many students, for whom his exciting, unpredictable start is still cult television. They say that first show was also the humor of comedians such as Bill Hader, John Mulaney and Nikki Glaser.
The self -mockery remained, even when O’Brien became part of hard channel politics and in 2010 left NBC. He received a new talk show on channel TBS. In it he moved more and more with the changing media landscape by cutting his shows in short fragments for YouTube. It became the blueprint for many modern talk shows.
In 2021, O’Brien stopped as a talk show presenter. The medium felt old -fashioned, he said. Instead, he focused on the podcast Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend and the comic travel program Conan O’Brien Must Go for streaming service HBO Max. For the latter he visits listeners from his podcast in other countries: Argentina, Norway, Thailand and Ireland. In the introduction of the program, the famous German director Werner Herzog describes him in a voice-over as “clown with dull eyes” and “once he was a proud talk show presenter. Due to a changed ecosystem, it is driven to a harder climate: the weekly podcast. ” On March 23, O’Brien will receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor due to his “immense legacy.”
But first the Oscars: a notorious difficult presentation job. O’Briens Toon will probably be something more modest than the audience is used to, partly because the Hollywood community is still processing the devastating natural fires that ravaged Los Angeles in January. And although he does not do much in political humor, he will at least also have to refer to the division and unrest in the US since the inauguration of Donald Trump. He himself says in an interview: “It is a difficult show and a difficult time. I’m going to do my best. If it doesn’t work, you will never see me again. “