LOS ANGELES – For you fans who can't get enough of Conan O'Brien on his late-night TBS show, and who are game to revisit the tumultuous time when NBC's squeeze play put him out of a job while reinstating Jay Leno at "The Tonight Show," a new documentary film should be right up your alley.
For anybody else, "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop" is simply an engaging, breathless road-trip portrait. It candidly captures the abruptly-unemployed TV host as he embraces a new challenge: mounting and headlining a 32-city concert tour to fill the void and nurse his wounds after he left NBC in early 2010 and, according to the exit deal, was barred from being on TV for six long months.
The film gives its audience a front-row seat for glimpses of the show (wryly titled "The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour"). It also goes behind the scenes as this seasoned TV veteran reinvents himself for an untried kind of show-biz gig: entertaining paying audiences out in the real world in theater after theater, from coast to coast, missing his wife and kids and lots of sleep - and, at times, wondering what he had gotten himself into.
Along the way, the film provides fresh insights into the psyche of O'Brien, who, ever since landing on the air at NBC in 1993, has been considered one of TV's nicest, most levelheaded personalities.
"Conan O'Brien Can't Stop" doesn't undermine that image, but instead humanizes it with flashes of bitterness, crankiness and flat-out exasperation on Conan's part.
The miracle is that he doesn't vent more spleen.
"Sometimes I'm so mad I can't even breathe," he says rather mildly as the tour is being hatched. He is still stewing over losing the "Tonight Show" chair to a host who had willingly abdicated eight months earlier. But he decides that hitting the road could be a "sort of positive expression" as he ponders his next TV move.
You see him huddled with colleagues as they send out the first tweet announcing the tour.
"It's 7:20," Conan cracks. "By 7:40 I'll be out of the business."
But no! A "Team Coco" groundswell is in force, and Conan's concerts are quickly selling out.
This, too, makes him nervous: "Nothing motivates you to figure out what your show is like than selling a whole bunch of tickets to it."
They figure it out while you watch. Then the tour begins in Eugene, Ore., with sidekick Andy Richter, Conan's house band and two just-hired backup dancers dubbed The Coquettes.
As O'Brien surveys a seemingly deserted downtown stretch before show time, he muses, "Should I be worried that I'm opening in a town where nobody lives?"
But the hall is packed, and during one snippet of the show, he is seen in a funny, high-energy sendup of "Polk Salad Annie," testifying that growing up for him in Brookline, Mass., was tough, because most residents were upper class "and we were upper-MIDDLE class. It was hell!"
When the show is over, he is visibly relieved. Pumped. And chastened: "I have to do 44 more of those," he observes.
As tracked by director Rodman Flender, the rest of the film charts an odyssey that is full of fun for the performers. At the same time, it's a grueling endurance contest that may cure the film's viewers of any dreams they may have had for their own stardom on the road.
The dramatic arc of the film: Will Conan make it to the finish line?
His obligations seem endless.
In Los Angeles, he's committed to do a private show before the REAL concert.
"Who entertains people BEFORE a show? I'm tired now," he declares.
And later, in his dressing room, he moans, "It's not the show that's gonna kill me. There's this culture of backstage - I have real friends that I want to talk to, but other people just come in, and I don't even know them."
On a rare day off, he has agreed to make an appearance at the talent show for his Harvard University class on its 25th anniversary.
And near the tour's end, at Tennessee's Bonnaroo festival, O'Brien is seen sweltering as he performs in a tent where the air conditioning is on the fritz.
"In six months, I've gone from hosting 'The Tonight Show' to performing at a refugee camp," he tells the crowd.
After that, he learns that he's expected to introduce other acts at a different show the same night.
"I'm always disheartened when the people that actually made the arrangement are never here," he snaps. "It's always, 'Yeah, yeah, it'll be fine.' And now Jeff's on a plane." He's talking about his longtime producer, Jeff Ross. "I hate Jeff right now."
By tour's end, all is forgiven. Painful memories are mostly healed. The tour has concluded in triumph, and watching "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop," the audience can't help celebrating the victory along with Conan and his troupe: His grand adventure is at an end and a new one - his TBS show - will soon be starting.
"I'm ready to go home and drive my kids to school," he says gratefully, then seals his victory with a wisecrack: "Or have my agent drive them to school."
"Conan O'Brien Can't Stop," an Abramorama release, is rated R for mild rude language. Running time: 89 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- Comment
