I always told people he wasn’t funny if they brought it up. I hate any show he’s in. I just don’t find a need to randomly rain on their parade if they can stand him. You can watch him twice and have my share.
I honestly have never really liked late night talk shows; I used to watch Conan O’Brien’s show in the late/mid 90s because it was fairly unlike your typical late night show and was pretty funny. Aside from that, I’ve never really thought much of the late night talk shows in terms of entertainment value. (I quit watching Conan because, while funny, it wasn’t funny enough to watch 5 nights a week forever.)
That being said, I’m not sure why one’s skills as a stand up comedian would necessarily mean much in terms of ability as a late night host. Johnny Carson, to my knowledge, didn’t have much (any?) experience as a stand up. AFAIK Carson got his start doing funny bits on his radio show in Nebraska and was discovered by someone at a network and he then worked his way up doing various things until he ended up as Tonight Show host.
O’Brien has no back ground as a stand up, at all.
So while Leno may have been a funny stand up, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he’d be a good host. However, from everything I’ve seen Leno brought in the ratings. Once he passed Letterman in the mid-90s he never looked back, and some people ascribe that to the Hugh Grant affair. Maybe, but in my experience an audience wouldn’t continue to watch Leno for a decade after the fact just because they got “hooked” because Leno had an exclusive with Hugh Grant.
Ultimately I think Leno brought in the ratings because he successfully tailored himself to have mass market appeal. The comedy snobs can bemoan that fact, and I think maybe the fact that he comes from a traditional stand up comedy background makes some comedy snobs feel “betrayed” by Leno completely remaking his image.
I don’t really see why, though. Leno doesn’t have to give you, the audience, control over how he decides to shape his career. He made choices, probably to broaden his appeal and bring in viewers, and by and large they worked. NBC would probably still be leading in the late night ratings if they had never moved Leno out of his spot.
To be honest I think it is dumb that NBC did so much to keep Conan O’Brien. I’m not sold on the fact that Conan had that many options in terms of making a jump. Fox affiliates are already starting to chime in on the prospects of a Conan show on Fox and many of them are against it. (News Corp. owns a very small % of the 200+ Fox affiliates, so if the majority of them are against a Conan late night show on Fox it probably won’t happen.)
I just think Leno was lucky, charismatic and down to earth behind the scenes, and had a really good manager. That’s why he got the spot, certainly wasn’t for looks, originality, or initiative. He wasn’t a funny comedian… just a political comedian, aligned to Johnny as a buttbuddy. Same as Seinfeld… time and place, they really weren’t cut out as stand-ups.
Demonstrably untrue. He wasn’t, and everyone knew it.
I’m sorry Jay killed your brother.
It’s plain you never saw him before the Tonight Show, as Jay Leno was possibly the least political comic out there. If you’re going to do a bit every single night, politics and celebrities are pretty much the only options. Personally, I like my political humor to be a bit more political, thus I watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.
I saw him live many, many (more than 20) years ago in a small venue in a small, small town. FWIW, he was hilarious. No profanity, no gross out humor, no raunchy jokes. Just hilarious. I was in pain from laughing by the time I left.
I didn’t really watch him much as a host but his humor doesn’t seem to have transferred very well IMO.
I suggest you take my comments in context and with full parse… He was a political comedian within the ranks of “Johnny’s Favorites”- Machiavellian, even. As his latest antics and manouvering seem to prove rather than disprove.
I recall reading that at the time he was guest hosting The Tonight Show in the late 80s he was still doing over 300 stand up gigs a year. He had been in the business since the early 70s. It’s hard to imagine that anyone working that much wasn’t funny to a fair slab of the public. People buying tickets to his show knew what they were getting from his frequent TV appearances.
By that metric, one might argue that Carrot Top is a very funny fellow. Right.
No, they’ve been saying this for a long time. It’s not a reflection of current situations.
At the risk of being stoned, vilified, and being told I am completely wrong and out of the loop, I will say that I *really[/ui] like Leno, and always have. I really don’t see a huge doifference between what he did on the Tonight Show and what he did on TV before (I haven’t caught a lot of his current prime-time show). And, despite what everyone seems to be saying, I really do think his stuff is much closer to Carson than Letterman ever was – despite the fact that Carson was actually sending Letterman material at the end, and never appeared on Leno’s show.
I saw Jay Leno live at the Hollywood Comedy Store in 1983/1984 time period. We didn’t really know who he was at the time. My brother and I were standing in line at the time and this guy with an enormous chin pulled up on a Harley and one of those skull cap, strap on helmets. As he went inside he sort of worked the line and said hello to a bunch of people, so we got a good look. He looked vaguely familiar, so we’d probably heard of him or seen him somewhere, but weren’t sure where (we thought for a bit that it might have been Fred Travellina (sp?) that sort of looks like him and appeared as a celeb on a lot of game shows in that time frame.
Anyway, Leno was the “headliner” that night. We were visiting family so not even sure if it was a weekend. He had the crowd in stitches. Unfortunately I don’t really recall his routine, but I do remember having a very good time and laughing until my sides hurt.
FWIW, I never really much cared for his show and have barely ever seen it. I’d prefer Conan but if I’m up late I generally only watch Jon Stewart or Craig Ferguson. Maybe I just prefer guys whose last names end with an ‘n’?
I was thinking the same thing. One night on Letterman, he went on a rant about circuses. All I can remember is something about syphilitic clowns, but at the time it was really funny. He & Letterman played off each other very well in those days.
I saw him in a small venue in 1991 or so, with maybe 200 people there. He did (mostly) PG-rated material, and was very funny. I’ve never seen him that funny since.
I saw him on my college campus in '89 or '90. He was very funny, especially riffing off of q&a with the audience.
I was excited when he took over the Tonight Show (although I loved Letterman). However, he was never nearly as funny on the show as he was previously as a standup.
Jay Leno fans think his stand-up is funny.
Carrottop fans think his stand-up is funny.
Gallagher fans think his stand-up is funny.
Larry the Cable Guy fans think his stand-up is funny.
Jeff Dunham fans think his stand-up is funny.
And they are all correct. It doesn’t matter in the slightest if you don’t think they are funny. Humor is subjective. Take whoever you think is funny, Conan O’Brien, Sarah Silverman, Brian Posehn, or the dead brigade or Bill Hicks, Sam Kineson and Andy Kaufman, anybody who is “hip,” and there will be millions of people who disagree.
How do you prove a famous comedian who sells tickets to thousands or millions of people isn’t funny? You don’t. It’s a ridiculous argument.
If I were going to try and quantify this, I’d poll a random sample of people, having them rate how funny they thought each comedian was. The one with the highest score is the funniest.
Seeing as I don’t have the resources to do that, I often use another method: I quantify and qualify the laughs each comedian gets. (The assumption being that each comedian is mostly going to pull in their target audience.) Multiply this by the actual audience, and I think you have a pretty good quantifiable score.
That said, I’ve never done it on any of the people you mention.
Letterman famously called him “the funniest man in America” back when they were still buddies.
His mom was afraid of starting a fire with the remote.
Jay: It’s not a phaser, Mom!
I can see his comedic moments, bits and whatever funny, but what balances things out is the fact that he’s pretty sleazy in the business side of things from what Howard Stern, Letterman, Rosie O’donnell and others have said. It’s hard to ignore that when i hear his voice or see his face.
When my brother told me back in the days that he thought Leno was funny on the Tonight Show, i lost all respect for his comedy tastes.
Not really true since I would consider myself a Letterman fan. I’ve watched him from the beginning (I’m not kidding… he was a local weatherman here) and remember when he had Jay on his Latenight show. I was in college when he gave a plug for his appearance in Indy during “Motor Week.” Dave ribbed him quite a bit that nobody in Indiana called the Indy 500 that.
So, several of my college buddies and I saw him at Cracker’s Comedy Club in Indy on Memorial Day weekend in 1983. We sat in the seats that bellied up to the stage. He wore a black Latenight with David Leterman hat that we were trying to figure out a way to steal (no luck) and he called me a nerd. He noticed all the college kids along the stage and started talking to us, eventually asking our majors… business, business, business… then he hit me… Computer Science. So I was the nerd of the bunch. He followed up with something about getting the girls back to my room because I had Pac Man.
I remember most that my face hurt when we left from the smiling and laughing :D. I’ve seen many stand up acts, and I would put him in second place. The only one better was Brad Garrett. If you only know him as Robert from Everybody Loves Raymond… that is quite a good acting job. He is the bluest comedian I have ever seen.
Oh yeah… I also got a speeding ticket on my way to see Leno. It is now about 1/2 mile from where I now live. At the time it was over an hour from my parent’s house and also a little more from where I lived at school. It is still a major speed trap.
I still watch Letterman when I get the chance, but rarely watch Leno… never watch Conan, and would love to see Craig Ferguson at a time I can stay up for.