Comedian and late night talk show host Jay Leno

DATE November 28, 2002 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Filler: By policy of WHYY, this information is restricted and has
been omitted from this transcript

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Interview: Jay Leno discusses his career in comedy
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Like just about every young comic of his generation, Jay Leno's early dream
was a guest spot on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson. A lot of Leno's
friends got their chance before he did, but he's the one who finally inherited
the show. Leno is a longtime friend of Jerry Seinfeld and is featured in the
new documentary about Seinfeld, "Comedian."

I spoke with Leno in 1996, after the publication of his memoir, "Leading With
My Chin." We started with an excerpt of the audio version of the book.

(Soundbite of audio book "Leading With My Chin")

Mr. JAY LENO: (From audio book) I'm a half-breed of the oddest sort: one
part Scottish, one part Italian. The combination makes no sense because each
side couldn't be more diametrically opposed. My mother, Catherine, was born
in Scotland, and my dad, Angelo, was a first-generation Italian-American. And
I seem to be divided right down the middle: my Scottish side--practical,
analytical, even a bit frugal; the Italian side--loud, outgoing, ready to
laugh and be laughed at. Of course, my mother never really understood the
Italian part of my behavior. When I was a boy, she would always scold me,
`There's a time to be serious and a time to be funny.' But in truth, there
was never a time to be funny. We could be at Disneyland, my mom would say,
`Not now.' `Not now, Ma? When am I supposed to be funny? We're at
Disneyland. Seems like it's always time to be serious.'

She would later watch me do my stand-up comedy, making little notes. I'd ask
how she liked the show, and she would say, `Well, why can't you sing a little
song and do a little dance? Nobody likes jokes all the time. Nobody wants
someone to be funny all the time.'

The most entertaining spectacle of my youth was to watch both sides of my
family try to interact. Each side, obviously, had totally different attitudes
and approaches to life. At the Italian functions on my father's side, there
would be hundreds of meatballs for maybe eight people, more food than anyone
could possibly eat--huge pots, huge portions. My mother's sister, Aunt
Nettie, would be incensed by this: `Look at the food, Jamie, the food that's
going to waste. The waste!' If there were more than two lights burning in
any room, she'd scream, `I can't believe it. All these lights--the waste of
electricity, Jamie. The waste!'

GROSS: I asked Jay Leno if he remembered the first time he got a laugh from
an audience.

Mr. LENO: The first adult laugh, I remember I was doing things. I remember
the first thing I ever said that got attention, and I remember it was--I
couldn't have been more than maybe four or five, but I remember I was over at
one of my aunt's house, and my mom was there and, you know, (makes noise) all
the women were fussing around. There was some sort of get-together going on.
I can't remember if it was just getting together for coffee or what it was.
But it was, like, me and, like, five women, all my aunts and everything.

And I remember saying to my mom, just making this observation--I said, `Mom,
why do girls have humps like camels?' And, of course, `Whoa, oooh.' All the
women, `Oh, my, did you hear what the child said? Whoa!' I had no idea what
I said. But I remember all the women running around, my mom going, `Oh, my
God. My goodness'--and hustling me out of the room and people laughing
hysterically, and I'm thinking, `What did I say? What did I say that caused,
"Whoo-hoo, whoo"?' You know, my aunt--you know those kind of big women that
would fan themselves when they heard something funny: `Whoo-hoo-hoo'--like
this. They said, `Oh, the child--you should have heard what he said.
Whoo-hoo-hoo.' And I never got an answer to my question, but I just remembered
that getting this tremendous reaction.

And, you know, as a comic, I have a sort of a theory about comedians. They
always remember everything that got a reaction, any kind of reaction. Just
like it makes an etch in your brain, you know? And that was the first thing
that ever got a reaction.

And then the second time I remember it happening, it was in the fourth grade.
And it was a joke; I didn't think it was that funny a joke, but at the time,
it was the first joke I think I ever said that sounded like an adult joke. It
wasn't just a kid joke. We were in Ms. Allen--who is still a great friend
of mine--she was my fourth-grade teacher, and she's still teaching now. I
realize now that must have been, like, her first year. And she was teaching
us about Robin Hood and, you know, the sheriff of Nottingham was very cruel.
And I remember her saying that when the sheriff of Nottingham would catch
Robin's men, he would boil them in oil. And I remember putting my hand up,
and I remember saying, `Well, he couldn't do that to Tuck.' And she said,
`Why?' And I said, `Well, he was a friar,' you know? Just a stupid joke, and
it got kind of a laugh. And then I got scolded for it.

But I remember, later, in the hall, I was walking down the hall and one of the
other teachers said, `Hey, Jay, come here. What did you say in Ms. Allen's
class? What was the joke you told?' I said, `Oh, you can't boil him in
oil. He was a friar.' `Oh, yes, that'--and then another teacher asked me
about it, and I said, `Jeez, I like this. You know, this is great, this sort
of feeling of influence. This is terrific.' And it just always kind of
stayed with me.

GROSS: Was your humor ever considered a behavioral problem?

Mr. LENO: Yeah. As a kid, I was one of those hyperactive kids, and, you
know, I was the classic: `Jay has the ability, but does not apply himself.
You know, if Jay spent as much time studying as he does trying to be funny'--I
mean, I still have that on my report card from Mr. Simon, my fifth-grade
teacher; that if I spent as much time studying as I do trying to be funny, I
would be a big-time comedian or something like that. And, of course, I hear
from Mr. Simon all the time now about, oh, how prophetic he was back then, you
know, and it just kind of makes me laugh.

GROSS: When you were starting in comedy, there weren't comedy clubs yet, not
as we know them. Some of the venues that you played included retirement
homes, prisons, mental hospitals--this is through a state program in
Massachusetts...

Mr. LENO: Yes.

GROSS: ...where I think you got, like, 10 bucks or...

Mr. LENO: We would get 10 bucks a show to do old people's birthday parties
for the state.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. LENO: We used to do prisons. I did a show at, like, Walpole State
Prison. And prisoners are not a good audience, you know, because comedy is
based on a certain civility: `Hi, folks. How are you?'--you know? And when
you've got a guy sitting in the front row, and he's got a little blond kid on
a choke-chain wearing underpants sitting on the floor next to him, that's not
an ideal audience, you know.

GROSS: What material would you do in your prison...

Mr. LENO: You'd just do your regular act. I only had my act, "Growing
Up," whatever. You know, I used to do these psychiatric homes, and they
get like--you know, and this is not to make fun of psychiatric patients, but,
you know, you go there, `Hi, everybody. How you doing?' And then, like, in
the middle of your act, there'd be a guy in the corner going (screams). And
then orderlies would come in, and, of course, this would just break the mood
of the whole room, you know. `Hey, anybody here from Boston?' (Screams) You
know, `Hey, hey, calm down there, fellah. How you doing?' You know...

GROSS: Well, did this give you confidence performing in front of people who
have their...

Mr. LENO: Well, it was fascinating because...

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. LENO: ...you realize--it wasn't till I performed at, like, this place
called Lenny's on the Turnpike in Boston that I ever got a professional
audience. You know, I could always say in my own mind, `Well, you know, the
audience--it's a psychiatric hospital. They didn't laugh because there's
obviously something wrong with them.'

GROSS: Right. You could say, right, `They don't laugh. They're crazy.'

Mr. LENO: Yeah. It was like a strip club.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. LENO: When I would play strip clubs, they wouldn't laugh or applaud or do
anything, but it gave you the confidence just to stand on stage because the
people weren't paying any attention to me anyways. I mean, there's a story in
the book about playing this club called The Mine Shaft(ph), where--it was in
Minnesota--people would pay $5 to get in, and then for another $5, the
customers would get a miner's hat with a light on it. Now there were no
lights in the club; it was just a big, empty building. And the women would
come out and dance, and, of course, the guys had the lights on their heads,
and they would look at whatever part of the woman they wanted to look at with
the light. And I would just be standing in the darkness telling jokes, `Hi,
everybody. How you doing?' Occasionally somebody would look over at me, and
I couldn't even look at them because they had the bright light on their heads.
So if they looked at it--Ow!--it burned my eye; I had to look away. So most
of the time, for the whole week, I was just standing in darkness while guys
look at these women with these miners' hats on.

GROSS: My guest is Jay Leno. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Let's get back to our 1996 interview with Jay Leno.

You were probably one of the most hardworking comics in show business when you
were getting started, just performing anywhere and everywhere...

Mr. LENO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...to get experience. But sometimes you'd get booked in really
inappropriate places, and my favorite story about that is when you were
booked--I guess it was in a Catskill resort at an Orthodox Jewish resort.

Mr. LENO: Yeah. There was this...

GROSS: And you were booked as what? `Tonight--Jay Leno, Jewish
story-teller.'

Mr. LENO: I was billed as a Jewish story-teller.

GROSS: What did you do?

Mr. LENO: Well, this agent in New York would come into the clubs, and he'd
say, `I need a comic this Saturday. Pay's $50,' you know. And I remember one
time, before I get to that, though, this guy sent me up to a job, and it paid
a hundred dollars for the weekend. And I thought, `Well, that's pretty good,
a hundred dollars for the weekend.' And I remember afterwards the owner of
the hotel came over and said, `Boy, that was very good. You know, normally we
don't like to spend $1,200 on an act, but we really enjoyed you.' And I
realized the agent took, you know, $1,100 commission out of my hundred
dollars. You know, that was a nightmare.

Anyway, that was the last time I worked for him. The first time, he sends me
up to the--`Yeah, Catskills at the La Chaim Resort(ph) or something like
this.' I said, `Well, what is it? It's just a nightclub.' I said, `Well, what
kind'--I said, `Is it mostly?'--`Oh, no. You go up there.' So I finally find
this place, and it's all these cabins way back in the woods and nice people,
but it's a Hasidic resort. And I pull in there, and it says on one of those
bad signs that, you know, you pull on a trailer and it's got the flashing
lights on it: `Tonight--Jay Leno, Jewish story-teller.'

And I go--so I get there, and I walk out on stage and it's all Hasidic, you
know--and I don't even speak Hebrew or I--you know. And I said, `There's been
a big mistake. You know, I'm not really a story-teller. I'm not even Jewish.
The guy made a mistake.' And a lot of (makes noise). And then this guy says,
`Oh, do your act. Let's see what you do,' you know. So I did my--and they
were very nice. I mean, they were polite. You know, you just--I felt bad for
them, and they felt bad for me. And they were nice people. It just wasn't
what they had bought, you know. You know, this was a horrible job.

GROSS: You know, I think it's funny, in your book, you talk about how when
you were getting started in comedy, or maybe this was even before you got
started--when you were growing up, that comics meant adult guys usually from
New York, usually Jewish, who spoke more to your father than they spoke to
you.

Mr. LENO: That's true. When I was a kid, you had Alan King, you had Rodney
Dangerfield. And these guys were always funny, but they always came from the
point of view, at least to me, was, `Hey, these kids today with the long hair,
you can't tell the boys from the girls. I'll tell ya,' you know--and all that
was funny. My father would laugh at that. And then I remember seeing Robert
Klein and George Carlin and David Brenner and Steinberg, and these guys would
come out and suddenly I noticed I was laughing more than my dad because their
humor was coming more from my point of view, especially Robert Klein. He was
a guy who was, I felt, like me: middle class, normal parents, not crazy, not
rich, not poor--just normal. You know, watched the same TV shows as a kid
that I watched, joked about the same kind of things that I watched, and that
was a big change in comedy, at least for me.

GROSS: So how did you figure out where your material was going to be?

Mr. LENO: I figured it out from watching those guys. You know, I said to
myself, `Boy, these guys make fun of the same kind of things that I think are
funny. These are the same things I talk about with my friends.' I mean,
prior to them, I don't think you would have seen Alan King come on "The Ed
Sullivan Show" and do jokes about Jimi Hendrix. You know, it just didn't
happen. You know, it didn't happen.

GROSS: Oh, it would be about Jimi Hendrix mowing his lawn.

Mr. LENO: Right, right, right. `Jimi Hendrix with the hair like that'--you
know. But, I mean, suddenly here were guys on mainstream television talking
about things only kids--you know, now adults buy Rolling Stone albums. You
know what I'm saying?

GROSS: Yeah, yeah.

Mr. LENO: But back in the '70s, there were adult records. You know, you had
Henry Mancini and Frank Sinatra, and then you had, for the kids, you know,
Rolling Stones and The Beatles, whatever. And nobody ever did jokes about The
Beatles on mainstream television. These were the first comedians to sort of
parody younger people's lifestyles.

GROSS: You know, we were talking about how hardworking you were as a young
comic, just trying out everything that you could, playing every place you
could play. When you moved to Los Angeles, you moved there before you had a
home, before you had any money, and you often ended up just, like, sleeping on
the steps of the comedy clubs or sleeping in the alleys near comedy clubs.

Mr. LENO: Yeah. I used to get picked up in LA for vagrancy, and what the
cops would do is they'd just put you in the back of the car and you'd just
drive around with them on their shift all night. And being a comic, you know,
this worked, well, somewhat to my advantage, but actually no. The first time
I got picked up, you know, they'd say, `Yeah, let's move along. Where do you
live?' `I don't kind of live anywhere.' `Ah, get in the car. What do you
do?' `I'm a comedian.' `Oh, yeah? Tell us a joke,' you know. Then you'd
sort of try and come up with every dirty joke you could think of to tell these
cops all night. And--har, har--that was la--and that worked pretty good, and
they'd let me go. But then two or three nights would go by, and the cops
would go, `Hey, are you that comedian guy our partner picked up the other
night?' `Yeah.' `Get in the car. You know those jokes you were
telling'--so, you know, two or three nights a week, I'd have to ride around
until dawn telling jokes to different cops because they would say, `Hey, have
you seen that kid on the street? Pick him up. He's got some funny jokes.'

GROSS: You used to be very close with David Letterman. I think you used to
write for his show years ago?

Mr. LENO: No. No, I didn't write for his show. Dave and I used to write for
Jimmy Walker on "Good Times."

GROSS: Oh, oh, oh. So it must be very strange to be rivals now, to both have
these kind of like publicity machines in front of you and between you--you
know, getting between whatever relationship you had.

Mr. LENO: Well, you know, it seems like it should be odd. I mean, it seems
like it should be more fun, to me. But it...

GROSS: More fun than it is?

Mr. LENO: Well, you know, both these networks have huge amounts of money
riding on these things.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. LENO: And, you know, the odd thing is, when we were losing, we were
losing by less than a rating point; now that we're winning, we're winning by
less than a rating point. But America has this rather bizarre mentality that
there's number one, and then number two is a million miles away, bloodied and
beaten into the ground. And it's not that way. Both these shows are
extremely successful, and both make a lot of money. If, one year, one show
makes a couple of million dollars more than the other, so what? Who cares? I
mean, late-night television is better because both these shows are on. I
mean, to me, nothing would be funnier than to switch shows one night; I mean,
to have Dave walk out on my stage and me walk out on his stage simultaneously.
It would seem like the funniest thing in the world.

But, you know, it couldn't happen because--I don't know--networks would go
nuts or something. Oh, hey, I would love to go on Dave's show and do a
`What's My Beef?' segment, like I used to do in the early days, but then NBC
would say, `Oh, "The Tonight Show" ratings would go down that night. We'd
have to put a rerun on. Then CBS' ratings would be huge,' or vice versa. So
you just sort of have this odd kind of standoff thing that goes on, which
seems rather silly to me 'cause I'm a fan of Dave's show; I watch it probably
three or four nights a week. And sometimes I think we have the better jokes,
and sometimes I think, `Ah, you know, Dave had the better joke on that one.'

I mean, what it comes down to is he makes me laugh. And the other thing is
there are only three or four people that you can actually joke about this job
with because they're people who have done it: Arsenio Hall, Letterman, Pat
Sajak, Johnny. There's only a few people out there that, when you bring up a
certain phrase or a certain guest, that know exactly what you're talking
about. And it's odd that we can't all get together and laugh about that, the
way we used to when we were stand-up comedians.

GROSS: You strike me as more secure, less insecure, than a lot of comics.

Mr. LENO: Yeah, I think I'm pretty secure that way.

GROSS: Less neurotic.

Mr. LENO: No, I'm not neurotic at all actually. I'm not neurotic at all. I
mean, Rich Lewis is a friend of mine, and he--you know, I watch him agonize,
you know, over a joke.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. LENO: He agonizes over every little thing. And, `Was the joke good? You
like that joke?' You know, Rich will say, `Here's a joke.' He'll tell you
the joke, and you go, `Eh, it's funny.' `No, you didn't think it was funny.'
`It was funny.' `Yeah. How funny was it?' `It was really funny.' `No, it
wasn't that funny. You're being coy.' And this will go on for days; it'll go
on for weeks if you let it. And you know what I say to myself? `My God,
where does this come from?'

GROSS: So you don't understand neurosis?

Mr. LENO: Well, I mean, I understand it, and I'm lucky I don't necessarily
suffer from it.

GROSS: My guest is Jay Leno. We'll be back after a break. This is FRESH
AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Let's get back to our 1996 interview with Jay Leno.

You're kind of famous for hating vacations, for not liking to not work. You
like to work a lot. Is that still true, that you still don't like vacations?

Mr. LENO: I'm not a vacation guy. You know, I was somewhat dyslexic as a
kid. And I always remember my mom saying to me, `Well, you're just going to
have to work that much harder than the other kids to get the same thing.' And
when you brought up being insecure before, I never thought I was insecure. I
just thought I was being lazy. And that might sound silly, but to me, if
something didn't work, it didn't work 'cause I wasn't working hard enough like
when the whole thing with "The Tonight Show" was going on, `Is Jay going to be
replaced?' `Is he going to get fired?' `Are they going to replace him with
Letterman?' Well, obviously 16 hours a day is not enough. Maybe I need to do
18 hours a day. And it works, you know? I mean, that's what works for me.
You know, I never said I was the best. I never said I was the funniest. I
just said, `I will work at this harder than anybody else.' And that seems
fair. I mean, that's sort of the American way, you know?

I've always been a guy that worked on commission even when I was washing cars
or had regular jobs. I was never a salary guy. I was always the kind of guy
that would say, `Listen, why don't you pay me by whatever.' You know, when I
took over "The Tonight Show," when I used to go into bars with the $50. `If
you think it's good, pay me what you think it's worth.' And eventually--do
you get screwed at the beginning? Yeah. But everybody gets screwed at the
beginning.

You know, to this day, people say, `Oh, you're getting screwed.' `Really?' I
mean, I do very well. I host "The Tonight Show." I got the job I wanted. I
mean, it's what works for me. And in my mind, if I'm one of those guys--like,
if I take a--yeah, I went to Hawaii once. This is, like, a nightmare. I was
doing a gig in Hawaii, and I had to stay down there, like, three days. And
the second day I'm sitting on the beach, you know? I look at my watch, 10:00.
I'm sitting on the beach about four hours and then I look at my watch and it's
10:30 and I go, `Great. My watch broke. Battery's dead.' And I ask someone,
`What time is it?' and they said, `It's 10:30,' and I said, `Really? I've
only been sitting here for half an hour? I thought it was, like, 2:00. This
is like a nightmare. Get me out of here.' And, you know, I'm not a vacation
guy.

GROSS: It must be strange for you knowing so many comics so well and having
been in the position of being a young, hardworking comic, really wanting their
big break to now be the guy who can give a young, hardworking comic a big
break.

Mr. LENO: Oh, man, it's a nightmare.

GROSS: And I'm sure you don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. On the other
hand, you want to have the best show you possibly can. So it's...

Mr. LENO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...probably a really awkward spot.

Mr. LENO: No, it's horrible because I used to think, `Well, now that I'm
hosting "The Tonight Show" I can go anywhere,' but now you can't go anywhere
because you walk in and you go, `Oh, gee, there's Larry. I've got to hide,'
you know? I mean, that's what it is. I mean, you know, you have friends that
come up to you that--you know, when I first got the job, men, women,
comedians, would come up to me and they'd go, `Hey, Jay, you know, Johnny
would never put me on, but now you've got the show. It'll be great. Man, I
can come on all the time.' And I'd have to say, `But, you know, if you
weren't good enough to get on with Johnny, it's not good enough to get on with
me. You got to make it funnier.' And, you know, I lost a lot of friends that
way. I mean, it's just there are people that I love dearly as friends, but
the material is not strong enough or maybe it's really old-fashioned, you
know? It's just, you know, old jokes about, I don't know, hippies or the
airline food or whatever it is, and you just say, `You know, you got to update
the stuff.' And they just don't get it.

GROSS: Jay Leno recorded in 1996 after the publication of his autobiography,
"Leading With My Chin." Leno is featured in the new Jerry Seinfield
documentary "Comedian." The soundtrack of the film features an interesting
collection of jazz and rock. The movie ends with a recording that's very
popular in the FRESH AIR office, "The Waters Of March," as sung by the late
Susannah McCorkle. It's featured on her posthumous collection "Most Requested
Songs." Here it is.

Ms. SUSANNAH McCORKLE: (Singing in foreign language)

(Singing) A stick, a stone, it's the end of the road. It's feeling alone.
It's the weight of your load. It's a sliver of glass. It's life. It's the
sun. It's life. It's dead. It's a knife. It's a gun. A flower that
blooms, a fox in the brush, a knot in the wood, the song of the brush, the
mystery of life, the steps in the hall, the sound of the wind and the
waterfall. It's the moon floating free. It's the curve of the slope. It's
an ebb, it's a bee, it's a reason for hope. And the riverbank sings of the
waters of march. It's the promise of spring. It's the joy in your heart.

(Singing in foreign language)

(Singing) A spear, a speck, a stake, a nail--it's a drip. It's a drop. It's
the end of the tail. The dew on the leaf in the morning light, the shot of a
gun in the dead of the night. A mile, a must, a thrust, a bump--it's the will
to survive. It's a jolt. It's a jump. A blueprint of a house, a body in
bed, a car stuck in the mud. It's the mud, it's the mud of fish, of flesh, of
fish, of going. It's a hawk. It's a dove. It's the promise of spring and
the riverbank sings of the waters of March. It's the end of despair. It's
the joy in your heart.

(Singing in foreign language)

(Singing) A stick, a stone, it's the end of the road, the stump of a tree.
It's a frog. It's a toad. A sigh of breath, a walk, a run, a life, a death,
the rain, the sun, and the riverbank sings of the waters of March. It's the
promise of life. It's the joy in your heart.

(Singing in foreign language)

GROSS: Singer Susannah McCorkle.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross. All of us at FRESH AIR wish you a happy
Thanksgiving.
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