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Conan Christopher O'Brien (born April 18, 1963) is an Emmy-winning American
comedian, writer and television personality best known as host of NBC's late-night
talk/variety show Late Night with Conan O'Brien. NBC has announced that O'Brien
will take over for Jay Leno as host of The Tonight Show in 2009.
 Background
Conan was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, to
Ruthe Reardon, an attorney, and Thomas Francis O’Brien, M.D. O'Brien excelled at
English; he served as managing editor of his school newspaper and interned for Rep.
Barney Frank.
After graduating from high school, O'Brien entered Harvard University and, in his
three upper-class years, lived in Mather House. Throughout his college career, he
was a writer for the Harvard Lampoon humor magazine. During his sophomore and
junior years, O'Brien served as the Lampoon's president, making him only the second
person ever to serve as president twice, and the first person to have done it in 85
years. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1985 with a B.A. in
History and Literature.
While attending Harvard, O'Brien was roommates with Damon Krukowski, who later
became drummer for the indie band Galaxie 500. O'Brien had previously bought
himself a drumkit, but had only recently given up playing it. He lent it to
Krukowski, whom he knew would get more use out of it. O'Brien's drum kit can be
heard on many of Galaxie 500's early recordings.
Career
Television Writer
O'Brien moved to Los Angeles after graduation to join the writing staff of HBO's
Not Necessarily the News. He spent two years with that show, and performed
regularly with improvisational groups like The Groundlings. He also acted in
corporate infomercials to earn money during this period.
After Not Necessarily the News, O'Brien partnered with Harvard classmate Greg
Daniels (who went on to be the executive producer of King of The Hill and The
Office) as staff writers on the short-lived Wilton North Report for Fox
Broadcasting. He also occasionally served as that show's live audience warm-up
person. Wilton North, with former Letterman producer Barry Sand as executive
producer, lasted only four weeks, and is noteworthy mostly as the show that bumped
the Arsenio Hall-hosted Late Show off the air.
In January 1988, Saturday Night Live's executive producer Lorne Michaels hired
O'Brien as a writer. During his 3 years on SNL he wrote such recurring sketches as
"Mr. Short-Term Memory" and "The Girl Watchers," the latter of which was first
performed by Tom Hanks and Jon Lovitz. O'Brien also wrote the sketch "Nude Beach",
a sketch in which the word "penis" was said or sung at least 42 times.
While on a writers' strike from Saturday Night Live following the 1987-1988 season,
O'Brien put on an improvisational comedy revue in Chicago with fellow SNL writers
Bob Odenkirk and Robert Smigel called Happy Happy Good Show. While living in
Chicago O'Brien briefly was roommates with Jeff Garlin.
In 1989, O'Brien and his fellow SNL writers received an Emmy Award for Outstanding
Writing in a Comedy or Variety Series.
O'Brien, like many SNL writers, occasionally appeared as an extra in sketches,
including a role as a doorman in a sketch in which Tom Hanks was inducted into the
SNL "Five Timers Club" for hosting his fifth episode. Years later, when Hanks was a
guest on Late Night, O'Brien showed the clip and jokingly claimed their appearance
together was the source of all of Hanks' subsequent success.
From 1991 to 1994, O'Brien was a writer and producer for The Simpsons, credited as
writer or cowriter of four episodes Of all the episodes he wrote while writing for
The Simpsons, he considers "Marge vs. the Monorail" to be his favorite. Years
later, in his speech given at Class Day at Harvard in 2000, O'Brien credited The
Simpsons with "saving" him, a reference to the career slump he was experiencing
prior to his hiring for that show. As of 2004, Conan's office at The Simpsons was
being used as storage.
Late
Night
On April 25, 1993, Lorne Michaels chose O'Brien to be David Letterman's successor
as host of Late Night with David Letterman, with Andy Richter signed on to be his
sidekick. Conan auditioned on the set of The Tonight Show, where he interviewed
Mimi Rogers and Jason Alexander. O'Brien resigned his position on The Simpsons,
despite the fact that his contract had not expired.
Premiering on September 13, Late Night with Conan O'Brien received generally
unfavorable critical reviews for the first 2 to 3 years after its debut. O'Brien
himself, an almost total unknown among the general public before being named host,
was seen by many as not being worthy of the program. NBC even poked fun at this
perception in a radio ad which aired shortly before the show's debut and had Conan
relaying an anecdote where someone recognized him on the street and said, "Look,
honey, there's the guy who doesn't deserve his own show!" Another source of
criticism was the fact that Conan himself appeared to be very nervous and awkward
during the show's early days. As a self-deprecating nod to this, the original
opening sequence for Late Night With Conan O'Brien was animated and featured a
caricature of Conan who sweated and pulled at his collar nervously. O'Brien was a
guest on The Howard Stern Show, where Stern and his crew mocked him by throwing a
going-away party for him, brought on by newspaper reports that NBC was already
looking for someone to replace O'Brien.
The show was reportedly canceled by network executives, but was allowed to remain
on a week-to-week basis when NBC realized there was no programming available to
replace it. By 1996-97, O'Brien's writing and comedic style was thought to have
improved, and he began to develop a growing fan base, especially with high school
and college students, as well as the respect of critics and his peers. O'Brien
would later poke fun at the first three years of the show when on his 10th
Anniversary Special, Mr. T appeared to give O'Brien a gold necklace with a giant
"7" on it. When Conan tried to point out that he's actually been on the air for ten
years, Mr. T responded, "I know that, fool...but you've only been funny for
seven!"
Since then, O'Brien and the Late Night writing team have consistently been
nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Writing in a Comedy or Variety Series, though
they have not won as of 2006. In 1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2004 he and the Late
Night writing staff won the Writers Guild Award for Best Writing in a
Comedy/Variety Series.
In 2001, he formed his own television production company, Conaco, which has since
shared in the production credits for Late Night.
On the first episode after September 11th, O'Brien went out of character and told a
story of how he went to pray for the first time in eight years, the previous time
was after he was announced as the host of Late Night. O'Brien was noticeably shaken
up, however he did not cry on the air. He talked about a need to have faith and
even said "God Bless" at the end of the show.
After meeting Finnish actor/director Lauri Nurkse on October 11, 2005, O'Brien
discovered that he was popular in Finland, and began a long running joke that he
resembles the first female President of Finland, Tarja Halonen. After joking about
this for several months, O'Brien traveled to Finland and appeared on several
television shows, and met President Halonen. The trip was filmed and aired as a
special.
Conan ad libbed the fictional website name "hornymanatee.com" on December 4, 2006,
after a sketch about the fictional Florida State University manatee mascot and its
inappropriate web-cam site. NBC opted to purchase the website domain name for $159,
since the website did not previously exist. The network was concerned that someone
might register the domain name and post content with which NBC would not wish to be
associated, or that people would get upset and sue NBC when they found out the
website is fictional. NBC now owns the rights to www.hornymanatee.com for 10 years,
as per Conan O'Brien. According to Conan, it was decided that, since NBC owned the
name, they might as well create the website. Late Night has since developed an
actual website, which now has received millions of hits, reaching 4 million page
views in four days. People send in "horny manatee" artwork, poems, and other
content. According to the Alexa website ranking system, Hornymanatee.com has had
over 10 million web hits.
In 2005, Jay Leno named Conan as his replacement when he leaves the "Tonight Show"
in 2009. Leno stated on the show that he had done this to avoid a repeat of the
controversy and hard feelings that resulted when he was chosen by NBC to host the
Tonight Show over David Letterman. According to speculation, NBC had asked Leno to
do this so Conan, who was a vital asset to the network, wouldn't jump ship for a
more lucrative offer. It was rumored that at the time of the announcement ABC was
talking to Conan about possibly replacing Jimmy Kimmel.
As of October 2006, Late Night with Conan O'Brien had for eleven years consistently
attracted an audience averaging about 2.5 million viewers.
Personal
life
On January 12, 2002, O'Brien married former advertising copywriter Elizabeth Ann
'Liza' Powel of Seattle, Washington. Officiating at the wedding was O'Brien's
long-time friend, Father Paul B. O' Brien, with whom he founded Labels Are For
Jars, an anti-hunger organization based in Lawrence, MA. Conan and Liza have a
daughter, Neve, born October 14, 2003 and a son, Beckett, born November 9, 2005,
both born in New York City.
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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