Jose’s Blog

18 Years Working For Conan. Now What?

That’s a wrap! Last night Conan O’Brien taped his last TBS talk show in front of a rousing crowd at the Largo Theater in Los Angeles. It also marked the end of my time as a writer of late night comedy. 

I could have stayed on. Conan’s next show will be on HBO MAX, and I was invited to help shape it but I declined for two reasons:

1. - I’m an idiot! What was I thinking? I loved my time working with Conan. I loved the people I got to work with, and the chance he gave me to travel with him on his terrific CONAN WITHOUT BORDERS specials. Why would I say “No thanks” and leave his team to go in a different direction?

2. - It’s time to pivot to story-based comedy writing.

Staff writers on late night shows make the humor equivalent of donuts: what we put out is best consumed the day it’s made. In 18 years I’ve written and produced thousands of comedy donuts: monologue jokes, desk pieces, sketches, parody ads, songs—even stop-motion animated peanut re-enactments. I looked for laughs in news stories that floated across our national consciousness for a few days, only to pop like soap bubbles and disappear for good.

Remember Planking? Balloon Boy? Gold or Blue Dress? Man Buns? Late night material is fleeting by design. I even wrote a meta sketch about it called “Memba This?” where Andy Richter entertains the crowd simply by projecting images of Grumpy Cat or Pharrell’s tall hat and saying, “Memba This?” (In the sketch, when Conan tries to do the same thing, Conan’s  nostalgic images are awful. Andy saves the moment by saying “Memba This?” and showing pictures of Conan’s extreme discomfort only minutes before.)

I love topical comedy. It was fun to write and it paid my bills for years. But over time I found myself wanting more and more to create comedy that had a longer shelf life, premises that sustained themselves over thirty minutes, not just three or four. I know it’s possible to make that pivot. Several Conan writers have successfully moved from late night to scripted shows, including former colleagues Allison Silverman, Dan Goor, Melanie Boysaw and Berkley Johnson. If they can do it, then by God, I have no idea if I can, but I have to try.

My head is telling me it’s not too late to turn back and keep making comedy donuts. But my gut has been nudging me for years to leave the comfort of the familiar, reassemble my skills, and go in a new direction. Today my ratio of Excited to Nervous is 70:30, which is pretty high for a comedy writer.

EPILOGUE

NARRATOR: After his lofty blog post, Jose began work on his TV pilots, dreaming of creating the next Bojack Horseman, Fleabag, or Ted Lasso. Six months later, however, he found himself in a conference room at midnight with four other staff writers trying to come up with a plausible reason for a man to marry his tractor on a show called Uncle Bobo’s Fart-Powered Farm. (Also on TBS)