Doug the Neighbor
Hey, everybody! I haven’t posted in a few days because I’ve been knee-deep in holiday deadlines, but I decided to break my silence with a brief anecdote.
I was in the middle of transcribing my recent interview with Robert Smigel and found myself with an anecdote which, even as it was originally being told to me, I knew would never make it into the piece, simply because it’s a total sidebar story that’s less about the topic Smigel and I were discussing - I’m doing a piece on TV Funhouse for The Dipp - and more about the show that provided Smigel with erstwhile employment prior to that, namely Late Night with Conan O’Brien. That said, it’s still a very funny story, particularly if you’re a Conan fan, and since I know many of you fall into that particular demographic, I thought I’d go ahead and share it with you here.
The set-up: Smigel is explaining how he came to hire Doug Dale as the host of TV Funhouse.
Robert Smigel: We had used [Doug] on the Conan show in the very early years as a recurring character.
What character was he?
He was Doug the Neighbor. [Laughs.] It was emblematic of the kind of shit we would throw at Conan that he was not experienced enough as a broadcaster to handle. I mean, we couldn't have made it harder for him. It was like... Do you remember when Robert DeNiro was the first guest on Jimmy Fallon's late-night show?
Yes. Yes, I do.
It was just this incredibly excruciating interview, and it was almost like Lorne was playing a prank on Jimmy. [Laughs.] This was not quite that, because I knew Conan as the funniest guy in the office at Saturday Night Live, so I didn't really think that he couldn't handle anything. But it's a different thing when you're on TV and you've never really been on TV and you've got an audience watching you. It's never as easy as you think. Now you hear him on his podcast, and he's the Conan that I worked with, this free-spirited, free-associating, mindbogglingly-funny and quick performer.
So Doug... We threw all kinds of craziness at Conan back then, because in my mind, I wanted it to be the comedy show with talk, I didn't want it to feel like a talk show where it's, like, "Now we're gonna throw to this funny bit...and now we're gonna throw to this funny bit!" I wanted funny bits to just happen. So one of those bits was Doug the Neighbor, who would just interrupt interviews.
Literally, Conan would be talking to Gore Vidal, and he'd hear in the middle of it, "Hey, Conesy!" And Conan would have to explain to Gore Vidal, "Oh, hi, Doug. Excuse me, Mr. Vidal, this is my neighbor, Doug." And then they would have a pre-written exchange that was... Well, perhaps it was funny, but then he had to go back and talk to Gore Vidal for four more minutes! [Laughs.] And he just... He just wasn't ready to care that little about Gore Vidal's interview to make it funny. You've got to be in that mindset where you have to give so few fucks that you're willing to let a goofy character interrupt an interview with the guy who got into a fight with Norman Mailer! And Conan wasn’t there yet.