Transcript of Staff Review With Todd Levin

Konan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Konan? Visit teamcoco. Com/callkonan. Okay, let's get started. Hey, welcome to a Thursday episode of Konan O'Brien Needs a Friend. Usually, these are fan episodes, but we've been mixing it up a little bit recently. I'll tell you why. Getting ready for the Oscars, and I have my A+ elite writing staff downstairs in the building working hard on concepts, riddles, quizzes, recipes for the Oscars. I am very fortunate. I'll just come out and say it. I work with the best writers in the world. One of them, I want to come up and hang with them. We did this with Brian Kyly a couple of days ago, and now we're going to do it with Mr. Todd Leven, about as sharp a writer as you will find. You really are.

That's really nice.

You're a crazily talented, and I'm so glad that you're helping me with the Oscars. I think you joined me. Did you say it was 2009? Was when you came on board?

2009, just as you were wrapping up late night in New York.

I was wrapping up late night, and I was headed to take over the Tonight Show for a 30-year run.

We had jobs for life.

I remember I hired you and you said, Tonight Show hosts last forever. You said, Count me in. You started spending money like crazy.

Most of it was spent before he even got to California.

Yeah, he showed up and the first day he got, he said, I'm buying a Bentley. He got a license plate that said, Tonight Show for Life. I said, I looked it up, it was way too many characters for a license plate.

It wasn't even legal. It was actually Tonight Show for Life 3 because two other people had gotten the same Bentley plate.

Two I have two other writers for my Tonight Show. You are all so sure. You are with me for the end of Late Night, Tonight Show, then the TBS thing, and now Oscars. You will be my writer for life, whether you want to be or not. Happy to be. Let's get into this a little bit because there are different types of writers. They're the kinds that chatter constantly. I'm sorry to say I was one of those. What? Oh, my Doing bits in the room and dancing around like a chimp on crack. Then, Todd, you're that... I call you, you're like a Ninja, an assassin. You're quiet, you're taking things in, and then you'll say something that's really hilarious, and you'll write something that's really great, but there's not a lot of babbling and, Hey, look at me, which I really admire.

It's not demonstrative because I believe in my work. Oh, wow.

I am I'm very much like a bad musician, and I'm also a bad musician, but I'm a bad magician trying to distract you. I'm like, Whoa, look at this. Because I'm afraid someone will really look and see there's not a lot of protein here.

No, but I I think it's also just because I've never been uncomfortable with that part of performing stuff. Even when I was doing standup, I was the guy who just hugged the microphone. I just held it dear to me. I wasn't a big act out guy.

You'd often try and leave with it.

Yeah, exactly.

You'd be like, Todd, you've got to keep that here.

Come back with the mic.

Well, tell me about your journey a little bit because this happens so often. I work with these really talented people, and I get to know them. We're in the trenches together, and I think, Hey, I don't really know your origin story, but when did you know, Oh, Comedy is for me?

I think I always knew it as a kid, but I didn't know... I think you probably hear this a lot, and I think a lot of people who are in comedy say this, but I didn't know it was a career. I didn't grow up in that environment. My parents were both state workers in Albany, New York. I loved Comedy as a kid, and my dad was really instrumental in that because my dad had... My parents had a terrible record collection. They had a couple of John Denvers, a couple of Barbra Streis His End. But then my dad also had-David's saying, What's wrong with that? It sounds great to me. Not much. I love your parents.

When can I come over? David, settle down.

But my dad had Bob Newhart records as well. There you go. He was my introduction to comedy, so I would listen to his records all the time. He had Cosby records, too. You could say that. But those were also huge A huge influence on me. Huge, yeah. Then my dad also had this rule, we had this really strict bedtime. But we had HBO when I was growing up, and if there was a funny movie on at nine o'clock, he would let me stay up to watch it him. I'd watch a lot of comedies with my dad.

Everything you're saying resonates completely with me because my parents had nothing to do with show business. I'm growing up just outside Boston. Show business is this thing that exists on Jupiter, and it's done by aliens. But my father was very interested in comedy. He was an infectious disease scientist, doctor, but he loved comedy. He loved New Heart. We had those records. They also had a terrible record, I mean, no records. But he loved comedy. When a movie like Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad the year, we weren't allowed to watch TV at night, if it was a school night, if we had school the next day. But he would say, When this comedy came on, he would say, We could all watch it. I mean, this was unheard of, but that was sacrosanct. If there was a really good classic comedy, we could watch that. I think New Heart, what a great person to learn from because the jokes and the concept, it's about jokes and concepts. He's like a matador. He didn't move that much. It's all the power of the joke and a stillness to it. Yes, for sure. And a musical ear.

Yeah, I loved him. My dad turned me on to Bonnie Python, to SNL, all those things. I was really into it as a kid and had no idea that it could be a thing you could do for a living. Then when I moved to New York, which was just a place I knew that I wanted to be in New York eventually. I didn't know what I wanted to do there. I just knew I needed to be in New York eventually. Then when I got there, I just gravitated toward people who were doing improv and doing stand-up. I don't even know how or why I befriended these people, but I started to get in with that world. My friend were just encouraging me to get out on stage and just do stuff. That's That's great. Yeah. In the beginning, I wasn't even... The beginning of my stand-up career was me reading bits. It was very much like a New Heart thing where I was just... I would prepare a written bit that depended on the page because I was so scared. I just was like, I need the words to be perfect. I would structure it like, Well, I got these letters in the mail, and I thought I'd share them with you.

I found these old diary entries, so something that was... It had to be read. Then as I continued to do it, I just got more comfortable being in front of people and being spontaneous, and the pages started drifting away.

But you have to find a special place to do that because-Yes, you can't go to a club. There are comedy clubs where it's very confrontational and you have to almost fight them to prove that you're funny, which can breed a certain style. Then there are places you can go that are more open to experimentation.

A hundred %.

Where were you finding those places?

In In New York, there was a place called Rafefe, which was in the back of a... It was like they showed movies there, and there was also burlesque nights. It was a really weird place. There was a bar in the front and a little theater in the back, and there was a big thriving alternative scene there. I would do shows there, UCB, places like that. There's a place called Luna Lounge that had a very famous alternative show on Monday nights. Marin ruled the roost there. He was an older gentleman. A generation of comics before me. There were all these little rooms. You could do that. Then once you got comfortable, there still was an expectation that you do clubs. I never really wanted to do clubs. But if you're trying to get into a festival or get on TV, then you have to be in clubs. It is. It's different. It's like, I have to make you like me. Whereas in the alternative rooms, you're like, Well, this will make you... The words I'm saying will hopefully make you like me, but you have to be this person that's approachable. It can be combative, but it's more of a struggle.

I have to make these idiots like me. You're mudbrained.

You morons. How are you morons tonight? You working class scum. Hey, why the crowd wasn't that good tonight? Yeah, they were. They were really good until you screamed at them.

In your wool suit.

You dropped your Hornrim glasses at one point.

I waved a newspaper at them.

Don't you idiot, read? Yeah, everyone has to find their own way, and you do that. Then did you do TV jobs before you came to me?

This was my first TV job. I had been doing pretty well as a stand-up, and I'd gotten a TV gig just performing, and I got an agent through that. But as soon as I got an agent, I said, I want to write. That's what I want to do. I like stand-up, but I love writing. This, late night was my first TV job, and I almost didn't take it because I thought, Well, shouldn't I have a job on a worse show first? I had that. That's my own insecurity and growing up in this working middle-class family. I was like, Shouldn't I have started on something smaller? Because I was such a huge fan of the show when I got hired that I almost didn't take it.

Then the week that week, I got- You got the job and you I was like, Hey, this show isn't that good. I think I'll be just fine.

Yeah, exactly. I don't know what the fuss is all about.

I think Konan's on pills.

But yeah, I had gotten a job on another TV show, a VH1 TV show that same week. I almost took that job, and then I got a call from Sweeni about this show. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, it was crazy.

I'd love it if you had turned us down and worked on ridiculousness. I know. Oh, my God.

I would be rich.

Picking the clips of people in bikinis falling down.

I would be rich beyond my wildest dreams.

You'd be so rich. You'd refuse to come on this podcast now. I'm not talking to him.

How much does this pay? Yeah.

Talk to me about some of the bits that you… Like your experience working on the show, what were some of the bits that you got on early days or just in general that you were really proud of?

Well, I would say the first thing that I got on that… Well, there are a couple of things. There are a couple of things, Irland, that I got… I like, but the first thing that I got on that I was really proud of that really broke through was Minty.

Minty the Candy Cane. Oh, my God, I love minty.

It just made people happy.

It was so…

It made me happy.

Great. Now, refresh us. Take us through the... Minty is a candy cane, but not any candy cane, and he's played by McCann.

He's played by Brian McCann. Basically, I had so much insurance for that bit, though, because I had Brian McCann, who was an incredible performer.

Such a great performer.

Playing this candy cane that had fallen... The idea is that he had fallen on the ground briefly.

Briefly. He briefly fell on the ground.

He had a few things stuck to him, like a cigarette butt and a penny.

Then the song was... Can you do the song? I'm trying to remember it. Hentin Kamerana, Minty the Candy Cane who Briefly fell on the Ground. It was done in that old-Minty fell on the Ground.

Oh, Minty fell on the Ground.

That's what I remember.

Now he's covered in goo.

Now he's covered in goo. Oh, my God.

Mccann played him, Brian Stack, also an amazing performer, sang the song, and Jimmy Vivino arranged it. I can't sing.

It's a great song. It's a great song. Of course, near and dear to my heart because my favorite era of singing is about 1914.

Megaphone singing.

Megaphone singing. It was great. He had just the perfect thing stuck to him. Immediately, people loved him. I loved him. I would always dance along with Minty. I think Minty threw things at people.

He threw. He had a little basket of candy canes that he passed out in the audience, and then he would whip them. And then he would whip them at me. He would violently whip them at you.

Quick shout out to Brian McCann, who I got to get in here at some point because he played... He was such a... That early, early, late night show, he was on and would just play these hilarious characters that really helped us put our stamp on the humor we liked. One of my favorites was the Man his bulletproof legs. So good. Mccann would come out wearing super short shorts and an incredibly self-satisfied expression. He would sing a song about how you can't hurt me because I've got bulletproof legs. Yes, I've got bulletproof legs. You can't. Then, blam, he'd get shot in the chest and collapse and dies. It was one of my favorite things because he would make his legs elongate.

Yes, he would almost do this beautiful swan walk.

Yes, you do this long-legged swan walk, bragging about how his legs were bulletproof, and then he'd get shot in the chest. It just delighted me. That's one of maybe 10,000 things McCann did for us. What do you got there, Eduardo? You want me to play it? Yeah. If you want to see one of these minty sketches come to life, go on the Team Coco channel. Look up Mindy, the Candy Can. Come on, let's hear him. Happy holidays, everyone.

The voice he chose. You can hear the sound of minty, the candy can't move, minty fell on the ground.

Minty fell on the ground, now minty's covered in Because minty's come on the ground for just a moment or two. That's it.

Just a moment or two.

My favorite was, minty's covered in goo, and it's this goo. That made me so happy.

Another early thing, I don't want to talk about this that much, but was the human centipede minora. Yes. That It was like it might have been the same year.

Human centipede had just come out, which was one of the most horrifying and still remains one of the most horrifying movies of all time. Sona made me watch it on the tour bus. I did. Oh, really?

I've never seen it. I won't It buffered a lot, so it took us four hours to watch it.

It was really not worth it. It was a labor of love. Schumann Centipede, Menorah. Did this get you tossed out of any religious affiliations?

The two things I remember about it were that Pat and Oswald had tweeted something about how horrifying it was. I was like, If that got him, that's good.

If this horrifies Pat and Oswald and got him not sleeping, then we know we're in the right territory.

Then the other thing was that we did it multiple years. For some reason, I guess because the costumes fit, they always tried to hire back the same nine guys. Except for like, One of them, they all came back. It was like they had Stockholm syndrome.

The one that didn't come back, Timothée Chalamet. Yeah, exactly. He won't acknowledge it anymore.

No, he doesn't talk about it. But it was crazy because those Those guys, they all stayed in touch with each other. It was like a shared trauma. They all kept in touch.

If you want to see the human centipede, Minora, go on the team Coco, and then don't look at the clip because it was horrifying. It's so horrifying. It's everything you think it is. Yes. Wow.

But I like to do... That was a thing that I think that I would go back to a lot, which was take something monstrous and make people have to celebrate it. Yes, that's true. Or take something sweet and make it monstrous. Which Wiki bear was a sweet thing that Stack and I wrote. Oh my God, I love Wiki Bear. That was like, you love it when you see it and his voice is cute, but he's a monster.

Yeah, what was Wiki Bear was when I would take It was like the bear that they were selling. It was a real bear that they were selling that you could ask it questions.

It was based on a real thing.

There was a bear that could connect to the Internet. It was obsessed with murder. Wasn't it constantly? The wiki bear was always giving anecdotes, not anecdotes, but stories.

It would give you facts. You would ask it very innocent questions. It would answer them and then pivot off the question to something absolutely horrible.

Give me an example. I'm trying to remember. I know.

You would ask it like... It was always...

I wish I could get the example. Because it was a cute kid's toy. I was saying, Hey, Wicked Bear, how are you? And then it would, I'm fine, Konan. And then it would pivot off that really quickly.

Speaking of blah, blah, blah.

It would be like something Ed Geen made lampshades out of human skin.

I'd be like, Wicked Bear. Speaking of bright ideas, yeah, it would be like something like that. He was a clever fella.

I think one of the reasons you fit in so nicely is that I think my whole life, so many bits were me trying to be the innocent talk show host who was doing something sweet. It's almost like we didn't have rehearsal if you followed that logic. I'm going to try out Wicked Bear. Hey, Wicked Bear. Then I'd be I'm trying to be like, Okay, well, let's just move it along, Wicked Bear. Did you know that the second night of the mansion murders? I'm like, Hey, hold on a second, Wicked Bear. But if you look through it, that's a theme that runs through the entire show for years and years and years, any version of it is me trying. I'm trying to put on a nice show for these people. I'm trying to put on a nice show, and I don't understand what's going on here.

But that was a bit that you helped a lot, actually, because the original draft was… I don't think it was unfunny, but it wasn't focused. Then when we were doing in rehearsal, because the bear would move, they could control its mouth, so it could always move, and Stack was in the voiceover booth, and you guys just started talking about the Manson family. It just became a funny thing at rehearsal. Then Stack and I locked into that. We're like, That's what the bit is.

It's going to be-Yeah, you have to find it sometimes.

It changed the whole thing, and it was so much fun.

What surprised you? You went from watching the show to then working on it. What are some of the things that struck you as, Oh, this is different, or what were your impressions?

The thing that, I'll tell you a thing that terrified me at first, but then became my favorite thing about the show was that the writers have a lot of autonomy and that you're expected to not just write your bits, but to produce them and in a sense, direct them as well. You're working with the editors and you're working with all the departments. In the beginning, if you've never done that before, it's so scary. Yeah, it is. Because you're like, There's a thousand ways to mess this up and a couple of ways to get it right.

Well, that is something I learned from Lorne Michiels. When I went to work on Saturday Night Live with Greg Daniels, it stunned us. I was, I don't know, 23, maybe, or 24. Suddenly, yeah, it would have been 24, I think. But we pitched a sketch. They said, I did well at read through. The next thing you know, you're talking to set designers, wardrobe people. You're telling them, Lorne would say to me, What What restaurant is this? I'd be like, I don't know. I just get pizza at the corner, around the corner. I get a slice. Are we at Orso? Are we at Elaine's? Oh, my God. Are we downtown at Le Bon? I'm like, I don't know.

I only go to three restaurants.

I don't go to restaurants. I've never been to a restaurant. I have two pairs of jeans and a 1973 Plymouth Valiant. Don't ever tell me that again. But yeah. Lauren threw us into the deep end of the pool, and it It felt like insanity. Then I realized no one's going to care more than the people who thought of it.

Yeah, it's a great idea.

You should be the one that's anal and like, exact about what it has to be because it's your vision. Yes. Then I think it leads to so many things. I think you have a really good director's eye. So many of the writers do. You develop that really quickly because you know what you want.

Yeah, that's very true.

Sometimes even when you didn't think you were that person, you find out really quickly if you have to produce the sketches.

I totally agree. The downside of it is that you also waste so many resources. There's so many times because you're in control of it, there's no one to say, Are you sure you need all that? Absolutely.

Why is minty made out of silver? Because that's the way I thought of it. Exactly. Do it for me. Do $800,000. Yeah.

Now, it's- It would be a lot of times. There was a thing that Dan Cronin and I worked on that was so needlessly ambitious. It was just a parody of a commercial. What was it? It was like a Not El Pollo, DelTaco. That's what it was. It was the idea that it was a Del Taco delivery system so that it was so stupid on its face. It was a a special device on your toilet that when you flushed it, it could recognize when your body had room for another burrito. I knew the toilet was going to come in a flight. Then it would immediately provide you with that burrito once you had cleared enough room out of your body for a new burrito.

Trust me, this is something DelTacos is thinking about.

I think it was off some story about how Nike or Reebok had developed these sneakers that you could press a button and it would get dominoes for you. It was connected to dominoes. This was like Del Tako's version of that.

Synergy, man.

It was so stupid on its face, and it became so ambitious where it gets so in sync with your body's needs that it opens up a third eye and takes you to this place of nirvana where everything's perfectly in sync. It was so expensive.

But that's what Jim Downey was really good at this. He loved the comedy of take something very simple and then make it needlessly complicated. But that in itself is funny. So a long commercial about Change Bank, where Jim Downey is explaining to you that if you give us $5, we'll give you this many quarters, this many singles, or we'll also give you this many nickels, this many quarters, and over explaining it. And I think there's something to an idea that's stupid that then probably uses animation, computer graphics to explain how it works. Huge green screen. Green screens of like, once this area been voided, then this area is created and this area of your brain. You're like, This is such a stupid idea. I cannot believe that you would go to this much trouble. That's where the funny stuff comes from, I think, a lot of times.

I think the show, for me, at least, taught me some of that, too, because so much of what I felt like I was trying to do as a writer was to break you because you've seen so much. You just have seen so much, and that there's that line between, Okay, that'll work for the show, and I want to see that on the show. I think we're always trying, and I knew you were rooting against us.

You know what? I'm running against you right now. This is what I wanted to say is something. You're having such a respectful conversation with Todd, and it's very confusing to me.

When he was being nice in the beginning, I thought it was an ambush.

I know. Oh, it is. This is an IRS sting operation.

Has he ever made fun of you for a piece not working out?

Can Can we talk about that? Trust me. Can we talk about you making fun of him? Trust me. What is his respect? Eduardo, can you kill her mic, please? No, no. I would have this. There was this relationship with the writers where if something was really tanking, you could see me licking my lips. Oh, yes. This is going to be delicious. I remember, I think we were doing... I forget. We were doing shows at Comicon, and one of the writers had come up with, it's R2D2, but he's gone Hollywood, and he's like, Hey, make sure you get me a good table at that. And he had a cigar. Where's my limo? Yeah, she, she. And it just wasn't working and felt like an old take. People said they saw me licking my lips and rubbing my hands together. I was so like, Oh, we've got to have more R2D2 gone Hollywood.

Yes, you would sometimes interact with the thing more than needed. Yes.

Tell us more. Artu Gitu, who's gone to Hollywood. Whoever wrote it was like, Okay, fuck you, Konan. But No one is more delighted by left-brain crazy ideas that tickle me. That's a religious experience. You've written much more than your share of those. Let's hope we can do it at the Oscars. Can we? It's going to be so much fun. But yes, I will ridicule you in an hour when I come back down. I will mock you.

Time flattens everything.

There is no past. There's only the present. Exactly. Time is a loop. But I cannot thank you enough. Honored to work with you and get back to work.

Thank you so much for having me. Konan O'Brien needs a fan. With Konan O'Brien, Sonam O'Sessian and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gourly. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Jeff Ross, and nick Leal.

Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino.

Take it away, Jimmy. Supervising producer, Aaron Blaird. Associate talent producer, Jennifer Samples. Associate producers, Sean Doherty and Lisa Burm. Engineering by Eduardo Perez. Get three free months of SiriusXM when you sign up at seriousxm. Com/conin. Please rate, review, and subscribe to, 'Conon O'Brien Needs a Fan' wherever fine podcasts are done.