Jim Downey

27:06It was for a bank that would just make change. Oh, yeah. Change Bank. And it occurred to me there was something that just delighted me so much. And it's very popular online. And you can you can you should go and check it out because you're you star in the piece because no one could do it as well as you. And you are the spokesperson for Change Bank. It is you over explaining. Yeah. Yeah. What we do at Change Bank. Like, if you know, if you give us a five, we'll give you four ones and four quarters. We'll also give you and and and breaking it down into all the denominations. And I remember talking to Jack Handy about this and he was like, nobody loves to.

27:47No one loves the comedy of over explaining more than Jim Downey telling you much more than you need to know. And it's a very specific way. And there's a music to it. You have a musical ear for that kind of comedy. But it is something that always made me laugh, just deliberately wasting someone else's time. Yes, yes, yes. Explaining something to them that needs no explanation to begin with. We got it. We got it. And I've done a number of pieces where that is like a thread. And I remember one that I'm even sure if it got on, but it was when the Padres, I think it was like I was a big Cubs fan. when the Padres eliminated the Cubs in 1984.

28:32It was 1984? I don't know. I don't care. Anyway, okay. But anyway, the Padres, and the Padres were owned by Joan Kroc, the widow of Ray Kroc, who started McDonald's. It was Joan Kroc, and the joke was that she didn't know anything about baseball, so she asked to address the team for the game, and it's like, and to the players, I can't stress this enough, when you're at bat, hit a home run. hit a home run and i'll tell you why i'll tell you why i say that because i'll tell you why because when you when you hit a home run you get to run around all of the bases all of them you get to run you don't know you don't have to stop at all and and so and uh and the players are like uh mrs crock i mean we like to get started here you know um and then so So Changeback was just, and I wrote that for Kevin Nealon.

29:28Yeah. And I'm afraid it was a case of like, I mean, you know me. I'm not like a bully kind of director guy. But I was giving Kevin a lot of notes. And Kevin is like, you know, he was the most beloved. Yes. It remains. I just saw him yesterday. Everyone, you know, loved the guy. And I got even on Kevin's nerves a little bit. and none it wasn't like a blow or anything because jim maybe maybe why don't you do it i mean you i mean i'll be in it you know and and i actually and that was one of the very few times where i i went like you know actually i mean i actually would be good for that just because you need it doesn't hurt to be played by a person with no camera presence you know you look like someone working at a bank yeah it's yeah i just and i had on the nerd and it was like the really talking a little too fast and too excited about something.

30:20And, um, and so that was, I have this theory that virtually anyone can act in the right part. Yes. And, and there's a genius in, in recognizing what someone would do really well and, and putting them in that right position and, and a great, you know, there's a continuum that ends, say it, you know, Daniel Day Lewis say, you know, who can do pretty much anything, you know? And then I'm down more the other end of that. But here and there, there are things that I can do where I use my lack of camera presence. Well, I'm going to, just because you brought it up, I'm going to skip way ahead of what I wanted to talk about next and just say, quickly remind people that in 2005, you're in There Will Be Blood, which remains one of my all-time favorite movies.

31:11I love There Will Be Blood. Of course, Paul Thomas Anderson. You think of it as a Daniel Day Lewis movie? Yes. But I'd be wrong. Some might even give it to the child. Who goes deaf? It's a movie. And I remember going and seeing that movie and absolutely loving it. It's so in my wheelhouse. And you have these scenes with Daniel Day Lewis. And I completely believe that your job was selling land in California in 1903. And it was a real thing because I was like, that's Jim Downey. That's my friend. He gave me my start. Oh, my God. I lost myself in the scene. I forgot it was you. It was great. Well, I had known Paul Thomas Anderson, weirdly met him when he was 10 years old, when his father, Ernie Anderson, I arranged to be booked at Letterman when I was the head writer at Letterman in 1983.

32:00Ernie Anderson used to be the, back in the 80s, was the voice of ABC. If you remember those, it's the love boat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Vegas, Dan Tana, it's the mob. It's the love book. And so he brings Paul as a 10-year-old kid. And because he's, I'm my son, this is my son. And I remember meeting him. And then I saw him again. That was 1983. I saw him again. No, he wouldn't have been 10. Whatever. 1983 to 1998, 15. Yeah. No, it was something like that. And he might have been younger then. Doesn't matter. No, it does. Oh, okay. I need to know his exact age. Or this story doesn't make it to the final cut.

32:41I don't know Paul Thomas Anderson The whole thing falls apart And you weren't even in There Will Be Blood Give me that You never wrote for Saturday Night Live But it says here A close friend of Epstein That is true That is true But can I say something Because I need to get you to I gotta corral you a little bit here Can I do it fast? I don't think you can I meet him again when he's doing Boogie Nights and going out with my Rudolph he decides I have some kind of look that he simply has to have in his movie so years later he's casting There Will Be Blood and he basically is holding up the entire production trying to find me and it had been a year a kind of a drinky year for me and I kind of disappeared and he tracked me down and that's what sort of pulled me out of my situation and I flew me out to El Paso And then I drive seven hours to Marfa, Texas.

33:42And that night was in a fitting room with Daniel Day-Lewis. Can I just say that's the craziest intervention I've ever heard of in my life. I'm really worried about Jim. He's really hit the bottle. Go get him and put him in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. Put him with Daniel Day. And it seems with Daniel Day-Lewis, the greatest living actor. Yes. That'll snap him out of it. And I remembered saying to him like, Paul, this is fucking madness. It's fucking Daniel Day-Lewis. And I go, I don't want to just ruin your movie. And he goes like, no, no, he won't let you. He won't let you be bad. And I go, okay, I mean, well, I'm going to see how good he is.

34:21The only time I ever heard him use his actual speaking voice, which is incredibly soft and gentle. It's like he should, it's very whispery and it's very delicate. I can't do his accent as well, but it's incredibly cultured and upper class. or anything was when he introduced himself the first time we met, which is literally in a dressing room. And he's pulling on his pants and stuff, and I'm getting fitted. And then when he introduced me to his wife a couple weeks later when she visited the set, and all of the times he stayed resolutely in character. Wow. Which was like he was doing John Huston kind of.

34:59Yeah, yeah. And so I remember we had to, every morning, it was shot on the set where they filmed Giant outside of Marfa, Texas, is a ranch that had been, it's been like a 50-year drought there. And so they had all these rules, like you couldn't drive more than like 10 miles an hour. And that's an excruciatingly slow pace to be in a car. And you had to, it took like 40 minutes to drive to the set from our home base. And so every morning I would be driving with Danny D. Lewis and he's in character talking about what he did over the weekend. So it's just like, I got to tell you, we went to the Rihanna.

35:35that was the best damn hamburger i've ever had and but it's just coming out of that face it was really that's hilarious he wouldn't and and he's talking about totally never absolutely yeah do you follow soccer and uh he arranged he arranged the world cup what happened that summer and so he arranged to have the world cup finals pumped into the um right to the little theater my clear memory of that movie is my my head writer mike sweeney saw it first and he came out and he loved it and he called me up and he said i just saw a movie and it's about you and i said what so i went and saw there will be blood and it's of course plain view is just this maniac and and i said what are you He beats a guy to death at the end with a, I said, that's how am I like that?

36:30And he went, no, no, no, no, not that specifically. Just the like, you're the kind of guy that would drag yourself through the desert with a broken leg. You know what I mean? It was something about the will. You have this like crazy iron will. But he's got more intensity. I mean, man, he, you know, here's the thing. I have the original script. I can prove this if you need me to. The original script ended with me, me. I'm working with him, supposedly. he's brought me along when he moved to LA. Yeah. And I come upon the crumpled body of Paul Dano. Not the waiter. Yeah. Not the butler. Yeah. I'm the butler.

37:06And I, I'm not a butler exactly, but I come in and I, I carry Daniel who's like six, seven or something. I mean, he's, you know, big guy. And, and I carry him out and I, you know, I feel okay. I think I can handle it. He helps me a little bit. Right. The movie ended on my reaction to the horror. Yeah. That was supposed to be, the shooting draft and we started to go are you fucking kidding me yeah yeah i mean fantastic that's great and so i and then they decided because i was they at one point paul said you know what we're not gonna we're not gonna need you for the la shoot in the doheny mansion which is where they shot it and i said i i wasn't hurt because i thought i always thought it was a lunatic idea to fucking end the movie on me right and and and he said but he said like he's so abusive to you in the early earlier in the movie that it just didn't track that he would forgive you and then bringing him along in his later career.

37:57Yeah. One other thing I'll say about that is Robert Smigel actually knocked on my apartment door, you know, bang, bang, bang. Because he knows Paul Thomas Anderson, yeah. He knows him from Punch Drunk Love. Yeah. He says, Jimmy, Paul's been trying to get a hold of you. We're like, for what? Oh, Paul Thomas Anderson, what? And he goes, yeah, he really wants you to do this movie and they're holding up the casting and the studio is really angry because he won't cast the part and they want to get started and I go, what? This is insane. It's a joke. And he goes, you should do it. You should do it. It's Danny Lee Lewis.

38:27And so I said, okay. And then later that afternoon, I have to get an early fitting at a studio in New York. And then I flew like the next day, Saturday to El Paso. But that night I get fitted. And on Monday at 6 a.m., we did our first scene on camera. My proudest boast is that I couldn't have ruined the movie because you'll notice he got the Oscar.

38:50All right. So I have to bring up, I can't go anywhere in this world without people stopping me and saying, I'm sorry about Norm MacDonald. I always think in those moments, because he had so many amazing appearances on my show. And I think, well, the person who really needs to be hearing this is Jim Downey, because you were the one that pretty much holed up with Norm. You identified Norm as a brilliant guy very quickly. You wanted him to do Update. and then you and norm really crafted that update which has become i think the iconic performance uh recognized today as the iconic performance on update of all time there's a quote here i just want to read back to you what i did like about the way we approached update was that it was akin to the punk movement what the pump movement was for music just stripped down we did what we wanted there was nothing there that was considered to be a form of cheating we weren't cuddly we weren't adorable we weren't warm we weren't going to do easy political jokes that played for claptor and let the audience know we were all on the same side we were going to be mean and to an extent anarchists and i think that's a perfect distillation well of of what i don't know where i said that basically um the thing with with norm there were so many uh first of all he was really really smart he was very intelligent he could land things he was clipped and precise you know his older brother neil um is a cbc newscaster yeah and so norm had the perfect what we call the perfect straight line going for in terms of his look and he just had a great sensibility also he hated he hated easy laughs and and what my colleague seth meyers coined the term claptor i think he did i give him always give him credit either him or tina fey i can't remember i'd hear different people or Oppenheimer.

40:39One of them came up with it. But claptor is a perfect thing for that kind of like lazy sucking up to the audience. Trump sucks. Yeah. And then you get a clause. We just, we might even agree with that politically, but you know, come on. They deserve more than that kind of shit. So just challenge them with stuff, even if it's going to maybe make them uncomfortable. like um i don't like laughing at that but that's fucking funny so i'm gonna have to laugh you know yeah and of course the oj jokes well here's the thing huge part of that so the oj trial happens and you and norm are writing these jokes that are so fucking fantastic they're just razor blades norm is the perfect person to deliver them um there's one you wrote which i'm i could i could try and do but you might remember it exactly but it's a picture came up of johnny cochran testifying and uh and and oj sitting next to him and cochran standing there and he's holding the knit cap the knit cap that was found at the scene and norm in his norm-esque way says well you know uh the defense uh had a bit of a had a you know a bit of a bad day today uh the defense file when johnny cochran uh testified and held up the uh knit cap that was found at the scene of the murder he was going on about the knit cap when suddenly was interrupted by oj who said hey hey easy with that that's my lucky stabbing cap yeah and i remembered that being an ice bullet that went through my heart it was so that's my lucky stabbing hat that's my lucky stabbing hat and and we and the thing is and and you know this too he would say something like that and i don't know where my camera is.

42:23It's there, I guess. That's my luck in stabbing hat.

42:28And he would hold in this way that nobody does. Hold and hold and hold. And he would do it for a joke that killed, as that one did. But he'd also do it for a joke that he liked or that you liked or that you guys liked. Yeah. And if it got nothing. It was like, it wasn't. Some people said, you're punishing the audience for not liking the joke. No, we're giving them enough time to appreciate it. There was one that was like, was O.J. Simpson high on drugs the night of the murders? Absolutely not, says a defiant O.J. And a simple test of any of his blood found at the crime scene will prove it. You know?

43:11And then there was one like... Indignation. Indignation is so good. There was one when O.J. Simpson had been criticized because the first Mother's Day after the murders, he played golf in Scotland. Yeah. And it's like this weekend, O.J. Simpson playing golf in Scotland was heavily criticized and not spending the first Mother's Day since Nicole Brown Simpson's murder with his children. And angry Simpson responded, idiots. I didn't spend Mother's Day with my kids because I killed their mother. There were two more I wanted to bring up because I was very... Norm and I would spend insane amounts of time obsessing over the precise wording of a joke.

44:01And I remember there was one that I thought actually benefited from our kind of neurotic attention to tail. But it started off as a joke about Penthouse Magazine had this cover story, which even if you didn't read Penthouse, you would see the cover on newsstands. And it was, you know, this week, shocking photos, alien autopsy. This is Penthouse Magazine. So they claim to be actual photos of an alien autopsy. So the joke we started out with, which I think would have been good enough, was this week Penthouse Magazine released its much-awaited photos of an alien autopsy. According to those who have seen the issue, the photos were sharp, clear, and easy to masturbate to.

44:50So anyway, then I thought, like, you know what? That can be better. there's a better rhythm to that so i so i suggest i first suggested that it should be and uh well tony's and quote easy to masturbate to because i just liked it for rhythm and then i came up with one of my greatest contributions of the season which was i added the word surprisingly so that so that the joke became the joke became kind of different so it was like according to those who've seen the advanced copies the photos are sharp clear and quote surprisingly easy to masturbate to. You got this image of a guy going, you know, at first I didn't think this would work, but God damn it, God damn it, this is fucking hot.

45:56i think the work that you and norm did on update is proof that you guys worked really hard you got fired for it you know one of the people at the top at nbc was a good friend of oj's closest friend was his closest friend. Uh, and, uh, you got fired for that. And, um, but you've always thought that was a kind of a proud moment for you because a lot of people reached out when that happened and identified that that was the wrong move. I had so many, I have to say, I, Norm, I know, took it much harder than I did. I, I, I sort of looked at it philosophically and said, you know what? It's like, you know, the A.E.

46:34Hausman poem to an athlete dying young before fame outran the man. kind of thing and and if that's maybe i have that backwards too but but anyway um we were yanked off and maybe it's that's better than risking that where you peak and then it's downhill yeah and and we didn't get that we weren't put in that position of having to you know to make that decision it was made for us but um i know that um norm that story about that i know you know this story um but i think people who are fans of norm deserve to know this about him the network went to norm and said we want to get rid of jim downey and and and we just want you to to know you're cool with that right he said no no you can't fire him if you fire him i quit and they go that's crazy i mean you know he's he's not helping you you know uh the segment's too mean or whatever and um and he said well no i'm i'm not doing it without him and he never told me that and I didn't hear that for years.

47:34I heard it from some network executives and part of everything else, if that had been me, that would have been, you bet Norm would have heard. You would have talked about it. Yeah, of course. I mean, come on. Norm didn't, I mean, he was a very stoic old world. He came from a different century. Oh, yeah. I mean, I remembered when he died, you called me and you said, you were mad at me initially. You said, I can't believe you didn't tell me, Conan. And I said, I didn't know. None of us, None of us knew. Laurie Jo knew. And Mark Gervitz, his manager, knew. Well, Gervitz knows everything. His mother and his son knew.

48:09Yeah. And his brother. So outside of family, it was like three people. And he didn't, and I know why he didn't, I mean, I've been told and it made perfect sense, so I believe it. He just didn't want it to ever be about anything but being funny. He didn't want to be brave or fighting the good fight or, you know, he didn't want to do heartwarming stuff. I was a little hurt that he didn't tell me, but I mean, I talked to him, I guess. I know you may have talked to him more recently than I'd had, but I'd talked to him certainly the summer of 2020. We were trying to get him on my last late night show.

48:44It was not long before he passed and we were trying really hard to get him to be, because I wanted nothing more than to him to be one of the last guests. And he was considering it, but then wouldn't do it. And then, and I think he didn't, he knew that he didn't. He also didn't, he knew that his appearance was kind of changing and he didn't want to, but you know, if I, I know this is shifting from one kind of bravery to another, but he, one of our, my proudest moments was a joke we did. And I think it was a Frank joke, Frank Sebastiano. It was a joke where we took the world's most innocuous kind of C-section news story.

49:18And it was, it was, we would clip a real news story and show it on the monitor so that the audience knew this is a real thing. We didn't make it up. And, We did that for most of our things. The story was like, Denver City Council approves traffic light for Martin Avenue. It goes enormous. This week, the Denver City Council finally, on its third attempt, voted funds for a new traffic light on Martin Avenue. Then he turns dramatically to another camera and goes, maybe they would have voted the funding earlier if instead of a traffic light, it was for rich white men. and then and then we bring up a lower third applaud now

50:04but that's the kind of stuff that there's not really a great place to laugh in that joke right that's a thing that like norm we would we would do our our run through like we would work on the jokes a bit during the week but mainly friday night and we would that's when especially I would do a lot of rewriting and refining. And then I'd run through stuff with Norm. And then Saturday, we'd do a run-through. And they were always screaming. We were always kind of late, getting in the studio really late. Because they were, come on, guys, we're losing time. So we'd come down to our run-through. And we'd make a few kind of changes, maybe think of some things for Norm to add.

50:38Then we'd have a dress. And then my attitude with Lorne Michaels, the producer, the big guy, was always like, tell us how long you want the segment to be. We're like, because we're the most easily bologna sliced segment. And at my attitude, and Norm kind of agreed, it's like, Norm wanted a certain, he didn't want to feel that like, we had to have a, we were entitled to a certain amount of the show. But I always argued like anything, if we're cutting lean, we're in good shape, you know? So I mean, sure, we'll always cut the fat that you, everyone should do that. But if we're also have to give up something we don't want to give up, it's probably a good indication.

51:12No, no. A lot of our stuff can be done next week, you know? You know, we used to, we would do six-minute updates. I think we did a five-minute. They do like 12-minute updates now, you know, and they did them before us. And Norm, I will say this, Norm was not crazy about features. He wasn't crazy about having other people on the segment, you know, always, and sometimes I had to like get him to be more involved with the guests. But Seth Meyers was the best ever at interacting with, I mean, he was great at that. I wish Norm had been a little more playful like that. Be a good straight man. But what I always took away from you and I you're in my head a lot over the years that I've been writing and all the years that I've been doing things.

51:52And you're surprisingly easy to masturbate to. No, you're. But you're also in my head for another reason. No, you're in my head because there's an ethic that I got from you. And I also got from Robert Smigel. and I try to pick from the best, which is if I can lose it, yes, trim the fat, but also sometimes cut into the muscle. Norm would totally throw out something if he came to suspect it was not the kind of laugh we wanted. And by the way, that doesn't mean it was dirty or something. If it was like cheap or easy or whatever. And the thing is, you could give Norm a choice of like, okay, this is absolutely guaranteed to kill.

52:34It'll get a mini standing ovation, but it's hacky. and we both know it this is guaranteed to die i promise you we'll get you know death camp silence but it's fucking brilliant norm would unhesitatingly yeah go for the silence and i but i would go yeah i would too but i'm not the guy out there yeah he is and i always fucking love that about him he would never reject something because it's funny but they're not gonna get they're gonna you know and i i had fights with even with people that you and i both respect who just oh man it killed it killed you go yeah but come on man right and and and a lot of that is is these days especially anything political it's just so the temptation because this is coming up with stuff is hard you know you have to fill time it doesn't feel good you're out there in front of people and you tell a joke and everyone applauds, it's a terrible feeling.

53:28It doesn't feel good. You want to just really catch them by surprise and make them laugh. It's very Soviet to go with the applause. I know. And Stalin was funny, which is sad. Stalin? Occasionally. Yeah, he could be funny. Don't kid yourself. Joe, Joe. Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe. Ask your husband. He's a funny guy. Oh, my God. But Cousins grew up in the Soviet Union. He was 11. Yeah. Oh, but he was highly active in the Soviet Union. I'll ask him about Stalin. He was on the Politburo. Was he a funny guy? Yeah. Lorne Michaels. This is a quote from Lorne Michaels. He called you, Jim Downey, the best political humorist alive.

54:10Well. That was before the birth three years ago of a hilarious child. Ogla V. Johnson. Well, let's just. I've seen the kid's stuff. yeah you're so principled and you're right now um so much political comedy now which is wailing one way or the other and i find that it's just a i don't know it doesn't feel to me like a satisfying time to be a comedy writer if you're trying to do politics because there's there's so much that's just attitude there's a temptation to enrage the audience i mean you know i mean i I don't, I mean, personally, you know, I just fucking loathe Trump as a human being. But it doesn't mean that every just attacking him is funny.

55:01There are interesting ways to attack him, you know. I always like John Mulaney's thing about there's a horse loose in the hospital. I mean, just as sort of an interesting. Mulaney had a great run about Trump and his president was like, there's a horse loose in a hospital. And just how odd that was. uh it was such a metaphor it was a great metaphor for for trump being president and what i loved about it was it captured the absurdity of it all but it did it in this way that there was no bile it was and and it's very hard you need to sometimes it was purely comedic which i loved so let's just end this by saying that john mulaney is better than anyone we know is that the point you were trying to make i was very good very funny man um he when when mulaney first came to the show as a writer um you were talking about like my you know i like to sort of identify people and i didn't i didn't find him or hire him but i was walking through and this is really about mulaney and not me but i was walking through the studio and it by the end of my career i was you I was like 60 years old, and I was aware of the age gap between me and having once been the very youngest writer, I was now massively the oldest writer.

56:19And so I didn't hang out. I didn't do the late-night things. I wrote from home. I live in upstate New York near Cooperstown, and so I would be at home Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and then I'd write my piece, and I'd dictate it. I always dictate my pieces because they have to be spoken, and they have to be speakable, and they're going to be heard and not read. And so you need to, when I'm dictating them, I'm changing them. I go, wait a minute, hang on, I'm changing it. And anyway, they have it at read-through, and then I'm told if it's in or not. And if it's in, I drive down to New York. Anyway, so I was in the studio on Saturday, and I don't even sure I'd met Mulaney.

57:02It was like the second show. and I'm walking through the studio and they're rehearsing one of his, he had a piece on, I think it was like his second show. And he had this hilarious piece on and there's a great sort of, the host was Tim McGraw, who's a really good actor, very funny guy. And he, it was like a country kind of a show where he does like practical jokes, but he's such a soft-hearted sweet guy. He keeps like apologizing for, it's hard to explain. you'd have to see the face but and i heard it and i know this makes me sound like an arrogant asshole but it reminded me of that there was a story about ted williams when hank aaron was a rookie ted williams is playing uh he was somehow involved in i didn't know they had interleague games or anything but but um hank aaron is is is warming up and ted williams is sitting in the dugout and hears from the way the ball is coming off hank aaron's bat that he's never heard that before and he storms out there who's who was just taking batting practice and it was hank aaron and and ted williams like and i sort of had that it was akin to that i'm not comparing myself to ted williams no i am comparing john mulaney to hank aaron though he's a lot like hank aaron and but i i'm saying that i walking through the studio and i hear this and i go that's a new writer that's a new we don't that's not a writer i know yeah yeah that's we have a new writer or a guest writer because that wasn't, that's not, and I'm listening to the piece, and I go, that was not written by a writer whose work I'm, so, and I was right.

58:35I was right. It turned out it was John, and he went on to write a lot of great stuff. Yeah, and then he's trying stand-up, but whatever. He's young, he's young. He'll get it, he'll get it. He will get it. Hang in there, sir. Jim, I will, the highest compliment I can pay you is that I wasn't joking. You're in my head a lot, and I think that's true of every comedy writer of my generation and for generations before and after me. I think, what would Jim think about this? Would this meet Jim's standard? And that's a real gift you've given to all of us, an incredible gift. Seriously, you've given us a, you are uncompromising and proud to know you.

59:23Thanks for giving me a shot way back in 1988. It would have been a crime not to. Well, I'm glad you feel that way. Crime against comedy.

59:33Okay. But seriously, I'm just, I'm thrilled when you agreed to do this. I thought this is a - We've been talking about my doing this for quite a few years. Yeah. So I'm glad. 22 years. And this doesn't have to be the last time I do it. No, this is the last time. Yeah. Yeah. It really, it's been a nightmare. I never want to see you again. This is it. Oh, man. Yeah. Sorry. that's really I'm duly harsh

1:00:01next time you're on I want you you dubbed with your own voice the whole time Conan it is a pleasure to be here I must say the last time these microphones these microphones are too long Jim thank you so much for doing this thank you thank you Sonam thanks everybody I get a special thank you Conan O 'Brien needs a friend with Conan O 'Brien Sonam of Sessian and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Nick D 'Leal, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf. Theme song by The White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy.

1:00:43Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering by Eduardo Perez. Additional production support by Mars Melnick. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Britt Kahn. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, and you might find your review read on a future episode. Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco hotline at 669-587-2847 and leave a message. It, too, could be featured on a future episode. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O 'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.