The Tonight Show writers insisted that Johnny thought of our endeavor as primarily a comedy show.
I'm just as certain that the talent coordinators would say that we were primarily a talk show.
Of course, they were both right. People tuned in each evening for the monologue -- if they were interested in seeing that evening guests, they would stay on through until the end of the program. It was important to hook them at the beginning, keep them in the material spot, and tease them to the end.
Even though in those pre-Jay/Dave/Jon days we were pretty much the only game in town (despite what Fox tried to throw at us), there was pressure on the talent folks to book the best and most interesting guests. I remember when Pope John-Paul II was about to visit L.A., one of our talent guys was calling the Vatican, in a vain attempt to get him into the chair with Johnny.
In my opinion, the toughest job on the staff belonged to the talent coordinators who specialized in booking our "civilian" guests -- you know, the lady who collected potato chips (yes, I remember the production meeting when the idea was discussed of having Johnny eat a chip -- from a bowl placed behind the desk)... the 5-year-old history buffs... the folks who made their local news for doing something extraordinarily difficult (or foolhardy).
I thought the writers had to read a lot of publications for their material: the L.A. Times, Herald-Examiner, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Variety, Hollywood Reporter daily -- plus the Star, Enquirer, People, Us, Time & Newsweek, Harper's...
...but the civilian talent bookers were subscribing to small town papers from all over the United States, which they culled through in order to find civilians who could be fodder for an entertaining interview. This wasn't easy.
Prior to the Tonight Show, I had been the writer/producer of a syndicated radio program, which required me to interview quite a few pop musicians (some of whom were quite famous). With that experience, I felt qualified to judge Johnny's skill as an interviewer, and I was always impressed. I appreciated his ability to put his guests at ease, elicit entertaining stories AND get laughs -- ALWAYS making his guests look good... WOW.
Yes, he was prepared. After all, he was a professional and I think felt a responsibility to the audience to put on a good show. So the talent coordinators would conduct a pre-interview with each of the guests, celebrity and civilian alike. These would be typed up as notes and delivered to Johnny several hours before taping. The notes were very basic, a couple of pages consisting of the questions asked and paraphrases of what the guest might answer.
The writers also received copies of the notes. They only ever worked with the ones for civilian guests, coming up with possible one-liners off the guest's possible answers.
And the thing that surprised me was that Johnny hardly ever used them - he was a good enough ad libber to come up with great lines of his own -- often better than the ones the writers suggested. I suppose the annotated notes served as insurance -- just in case.
Recent Comments