Tonight, after having worked out double to make up for my slackness this week, I sat down with some oven pizza and decided to watch Conan O'Brien Can't Stop. This movie has been in my queue since it was added to Netflix. Unfortunately for Conan, my attention span tops out at half an hour now (probably part of my clinical depression, but who's counting?). The first 15 minutes or so really spoke to me and I kicked myself for being late to the party.
Here is a nice guy (most of the time) who gave years of his life to a company and was then fired without a good cause. He talked about being angry and being in a "fuck it" period (both of which I am very aware of). Over the next fifteen minutes, we see him organizing an elaborate tour (which I got to see the end of in Atlanta). I stopped there but plan to finish it later. The early thesis of the film (which is not shocking as Conan gladly cops to it) is that he runs off of public adulation. Even in the writers room, he seems to get pissy if people don't find him funny. He talks about having an improv background and acting "as if." As if I deserve to be interviewing the president or playing guitar with Bruce Springsteen. So, it seems he has some neuroses and inferiority issues. And the definition of him not stopping seems to be him not stopping as an entertainer to feed these insecurities. That was where I started losing sympathy.
As I turned off the TV, I started thinking about the multi-million dollar settlement he got from NBC. They weren't so much taking food out of his children's mouths as taking away his outlet for public approval (which he had worked very hard for, don't get me wrong). It is hard to find inspiration in his tale because it seems mostly self-serving. The documentary was not made to be encouraging to unemployed people but I had started to read that into it myself. If he doesn't go on this tour, the worst that will happen is that no one will applaud him for six months. If I don't find a job, well, the worst can get pretty bleak.
I got angry with some of my unemployed friends because they found some jobs were beneath them. At the time, the length of their unemployment was such that I judged them to be ridiculous. But, after only a month, I am looking intently at gas station jobs and competing with high schoolers just to get some money going. I wonder if Conan would have just been shucking and jiving on a street corner if he couldn't have gone on tour? Anyway, I will finish the movie soon and provide an update if I change my mind about one of my favorite funny people's motivations.
UPDATE: Don't know who would see this since I won't publicize it but I finished the documentary tonight. I think I painted Conan a little too harshly in the first review. The arc of the documentary is about him finding out where his limits are. There is an incident with a pre-show party, the show and then the post-show meet and greet stuff that exhausts Conan. My sympathy was a bit limited in that he was living out a "be careful what you wish for" scenario. There was even a nice prophetic bit in his comedy about "blaming everyone around him" when he lost his show. As the tour drags on, he focuses his anger on his producer, Jeff Ross, and blames him for allowing signing Conan up for all these events and shows he asked for in the first place.
The whole thing doesn't paint Conan in too flattering a light. There is one scene with Jack McBreyer where Conan just mocks him relentlessly in front of John Hamm for what seems like an eternity. We are never given the release of a wink from McBreyer, who seems genuinely hurt by the treatment. I got the feeling it was all in good fun but it looked a lot like picking on someone for no reason.
At one point Conan says (of himself), "I am a genius!...or the world's biggest dick...probably both." That should be the tagline of the movie.
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