The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the last transcript with Conan

Sent to us from NBC, the official passing of the baton in the last "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," the recorded transcript with new host Conan O'Brien. 11/20/2008 - Conan O'Brien - The final episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno aired Friday night (5/29) - new host Conan O'Brien will be the last guest before he takes over on Monday. © Sylvain Gaboury / PR Photos

11/20/2008 - Conan O'Brien - The final episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno aired Friday night (5/29) - new host Conan O'Brien will be the last guest before he takes over on Monday. © Sylvain Gaboury / PR PhotosJAY LENO: All righty. My first guest, the Emmy-winning host of "Late Night" for 16 years. Starting Monday, he'll be taking over as host of "The Tonight Show." Couldn't be prouder of him. Terrific guy. A good friend. Please welcome Conan O'Brien, ladies and gentlemen.(Applause)CONAN O'BRIEN: Oh, yeah. Thank you.JAY LENO: Good to see you.CONAN O'BRIEN: Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, that's -- please. That's frightening. Thank you.JAY LENO: I know -- I've seen you've been doing a lot of press lately. What are people asking you about? Is it driving you batty yet?CONAN O'BRIEN: You know, this is a compliment to you. I keep hearing over and over -- because I've done about 800 interviews in the last three days, and all I keep hearing over and over again, which is a compliment to this man, "Big shoes to fill. You've got big shoes to fill."(Applause)Over and over.JAY LENO: But you've got big shoes. Look.CONAN O'BRIEN: I've got big shoes.JAY LENO: Those are big shoes.CONAN O'BRIEN: But I realize -- and it's over and over again. I went through this in '93 when I took over "The Late Night Show." Reporters were saying, "Big shoes to fill there, yeah." Because I was talking to reporters from the 1920s.JAY LENO: Right, exactly.CONAN O'BRIEN: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, now, see." And now I'm doing it again.JAY LENO: Right.CONAN O'BRIEN: And I'm realizing I want to -- some day in my career, I want to try to fill little shoes.(Laughter) JAY LENO: Yeah.CONAN O'BRIEN: Some day I want to replace a local weatherman who's been on the air for about three months and who is no good and everybody hates. Just once I would like to do that.JAY LENO: Very good. Speaking of that, I found a tape. Do you remember -- this is when I first met you. I don't even think you'd been on TV.CONAN O'BRIEN: No, no, no.JAY LENO: Tell the story.CONAN O'BRIEN: This is a crazy, crazy story. It was an improbable, crazy story. And they announced me overnight -- they picked me from obscurity. I won a contest, I think.JAY LENO: No, you were an excellent writer on the "The Simpsons." And I should say, you know, they were very smart in picking you because usually the mistake sometimes people make, executives, they pick somebody who has performance, but no writing or no comedic skills. But they -- not that you don't look good. You look fine. But --(Laughter)-- you were a writer. You always had material.CONAN O'BRIEN: I got this job for my looks, see.(Laughter)JAY LENO: But I mean, you were a writer. You always had sharp material.CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. JAY LENO: And writing for "The Simpsons," you always had funny stuff. That's what I thought was so smart about picking you. But you hadn't had a lot of performing skill at that point.CONAN O'BRIEN: No, no, no. And they announced -- improbably, they announced that "The man who is going to replace David Letterman on the 'The Late Night Show' is Conan O'Brien." And I get a phone call at "The Simpsons" that says, "You're replacing Letterman, see." Same guy. "Big shoes to fill."JAY LENO: Apparently Edward G. Robinson was running the network.CONAN O'BRIEN: "Yeah, yeah. Where's your messiah now?"(Laughter)And the next thing they said is, "Report to 'The Tonight Show.' You're going to go on stage with Jay Leno." I'd been in show business now -- on-air show business for about 40 seconds. They threw me in a van. They drove me over here and threw me out onto national television.JAY LENO: Here it is.CONAN O'BRIEN: It's horrendous.JAY LENO: April 26, 1993.CONAN O'BRIEN: 1993.(Clip shown.)(Applause.)Yeah. Those were some good times, Jay.JAY LENO: Good times. (Laughter.)Now, you are not, obviously, coming to this studio. They've built you a brand-new studio on the other side of town.CONAN O'BRIEN: Right.JAY LENO: You're at Universal.CONAN O'BRIEN: Yes, I'm at the Universal lot.JAY LENO: Are you getting ready? Is it all set? I know you start Monday.CONAN O'BRIEN: You know, we are having the kinds of problems that I did not think we were going to have.JAY LENO: Exactly.CONAN O'BRIEN: They've built a brand-new studio. It's absolutely gorgeous, but all the equipment is new. We're having some troubles. And this is -- honest to God, this is true. About six weeks ago, I get a call that the chairman of General Electric -- this is the bigwig who owns NBC; the company GE owns NBC -- is coming. His name is Jeff Immelt, and he is coming to do an inspection of our studio, and I am to lead the tour. This is Jeff Immelt, chairman, GE. I'm supposed to do it. They said -- it's like a military operation -- "He's going to be there at 11:15 in the morning, and you must be there to meet him and give him the tour." I'm there. We're all there, spiffy, ready to go. At 11:14 all the lights in the building (indicating lights going out).(Laughter)No windows. It's a studio. So total pitch blackness. Thirty seconds later I hear, "He's here." A shadow --a shadow -- I don't see anything -- a silhouette walks into the room. It's Jeff Immelt, the chairman of General Electric, the people that invented the lightbulb.(Laughter.)And he was saying, "What's going on?" I said -- and he's big into leading the green initiative for GE. And I said, "Hey, you wanted to go green. We're doing this show with no electricity."(Laughter.)"That is how we're going to do the new "Tonight Show."JAY LENO: We'll take a break. More with Conan right after this.(Applause.)Welcome back. We're talking with Conan O'Brien, the man who will inherit this job on Monday.Now, I've got to ask you -- and I love watching -- I notice there are a lot of network suits in the halls standing around.CONAN O'BRIEN: They're everywhere, yes.JAY LENO: They're everywhere now. Are you getting a lot of notes from -- that's my favorite thing, when you get the notes from the executives.CONAN O'BRIEN: You know, we did some test shows. And people, for the most part, seemed happy. Of course -- and it's not just the network -- the thing that's been out there in the ether, it's been in the media, is I've been doing my show for 16 years, and we have a younger crowd that watches. And people say, "Well, how will Conan play with some older people? How will that go over?" It's the big question. People want to know "How is this going to work?" And I decided I wanted to find out. So we shot a piece for the "The Tonight Show" next week that I was going to show maybe sometime later in the week. And this is an interesting idea. We held a focus group. This is a real focus group where we got some -- a few senior citizens together who weren't that familiar with Conan O'Brien. And we showed them clips of me doing some of my -- the kind of shtick that I would do on "The Late Night Show." This is all real. We got a real focus group room. We got these people together. And I wanted to be there, and I wanted to hear in person what they had to say.JAY LENO: Right.CONAN O'BRIEN: But I thought if I'm there and they recognize me, they might not be honest. So we got an Oscar-winning makeup person to turn me into a different person completely. My name is Stewart Wexler.(Laughter)And I conducted a focus group with some older people. I'm going to show you just a tiny taste.JAY LENO: Take a look.CONAN O'BRIEN: This will be --(Clip shown.)Applause)JAY LENO: You can't please everybody.CONAN O'BRIEN: You can't please everyone. Probably you can't please a lot of people. You'll see more of that next week.JAY LENO: Now, has anyone from your show moved out now from New York?CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah. We've brought pretty much everybody out here.JAY LENO: How's the transition for you? Because I think of you -- I know you're a Boston guy. Then you go to New York.CONAN O'BRIEN: Lived in New York, yeah.JAY LENO: Now you're here, sunshine, birds, the whole bit.CONAN O'BRIEN: What's with these strange creatures? These birds, you call them. We don't have those on the East Coast. It's been good. The biggest adjustment is that the people with the cameras -- the paparazzi thing is everywhere here --JAY LENO: Yeah.CONAN O'BRIEN: -- which doesn't happen in New York. You'd think it would, but it really doesn't. And that's been an adjustment. And I don't even mind. I understand it's part of the business. There's the people that take the photographs. The thing that I have -- and you must have this too -- you leave a restaurant, and there's the people with the video cameras. And they ask you questions, and they've got a big light on you.JAY LENO: Right.CONAN O'BRIEN: And that's a big adjustment. And one of the things that I find odd about it is they never quite know when you're coming out, and they always got there a second before you came out of the restaurant, so they're not prepared. So they've got a light on you and a camera, and they're asking questions. They're like, "Did you just have some food?" "Yeah, yeah, I had some food." "What did you have?" "I had fish." "You had fish. What did you have with fish?"(Laughter.) "I had potato." "You had fish and potato. You like fish and potato?" "Yeah, I like fish and potato."(Laughter.)And then they put it on television, and it's the least interesting thing in the world. It always reminds me -- it's like being in a conversation at Christmas with an aunt you don't know that well. "Did you have some fish?"JAY LENO: Right.CONAN O'BRIEN: "Did you have fish and potatoes?" "I had fish -- " "Yeah." And then it's on the Internet.JAY LENO: Right, right.CONAN O'BRIEN: It's a very hard thing to get used to out here. I'll do my best to come up with better stuff. Do you have that too? You must have that.JAY LENO: You get that. You know what I find works? I go like this (silently mouthing).(Laughter.)They think something is wrong with the camera.CONAN O'BRIEN: Sure. Oh, something's wrong with the sound.JAY LENO: Now, you had somebody in the audience you wanted to --CONAN O'BRIEN: I wanted to acknowledge somebody. I was watching "The Today Show" this morning, as we all do, because it's on NBC.(Laughter.)As I said, there are suits everywhere. And there's a gentleman that was waiting in line to see your show. This gentleman was at the last taping of "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson."JAY LENO: Okay.CONAN O'BRIEN: He was at your first "Tonight Show." I'm told he's here in the audience tonight.JAY LENO: The guy with the gun? Yeah.(Laughter.)CONAN O'BRIEN: Yes, yes, the fellow with the gun, yes. And I'm told that this gentleman was saying on the air that he would love it -- because he's been to all these shows, he would love to come to my first taping of "The Tonight Show." And I think he's here, and his name is -- is Christian Bobak here?JAY LENO: Christian, are you here?CONAN O'BRIEN: Christian, are you here?JAY LENO: There he is right there. Look out, he's got a gun.(Applause.)(Conan hands tickets to man in audience.)CONAN O'BRIEN: That's two tickets to my show; all right?(Applause.)I can also get you into "Wheel of Fortune" --(Laughter.)-- or "The View." You let me know what you prefer.JAY LENO: Listen, I know you've got to get back to your studio because I know you guys are doing more test shows. I just want to say I couldn't be happier. You were the only choice. You were the perfect choice. You have been an absolute gentleman in private and --AUDIENCE MEMBER: Conan rocks.JAY LENO: I agree, Conan rocks..