Jay Leno: The best advice I received from Johnny Carson | Trending Now

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0:39Soon, people will doom scroll you. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Terms apply. Hey guys, Graham here. It's Friday, which means we get to share with you another one of our most popular clips from a past interview. What you're about to listen to is trending this week on our Facebook page. Hope you enjoy.

1:05Take me to everything you recall from the moment Johnny Carson walks in to the L.A. Improv and then going up to his table at the end of the night. Johnny, he was a comedian, and he liked comedians. One day he said, look, you're a funny guy, but your jokes are a little weak. And he says, here's what you do. Write your joke out like a three by five card or something. Read it as flatly and as boring as you possibly can. If it gets a laugh, then you know you've got a funny joke. Now, take your performing skills, the character, hey, what's that, Bob? You know, whatever it is. And apply that. Now you have a joke that works on two fronts.

1:54It's physically funny and it's verbally funny. That was the best advice I ever got from Johnny. What stands out to you most from your first appearance on Carson? Well, just the fact he got through it okay. I was going to say, when I interviewed Seinfeld, what he remembered most was just the abject terror, to use his words. No, I didn't have that. I've been fortunate in that way. I don't really get nervous or anything, or like, oh, God, who are these people? You know, I'll tell you the best example of that was ours at the White House with Reagan. That's how long ago it was. Okay. I'm standing backstage and this general comes back.

2:37He's got all of them. He goes, hey, you're a comedian? Come here. You understand who that is, right? That's my commander in chief. That is the president of the United States. He's got to say, you don't make fun of him. You don't dedicate him. He's poking me, you know. I go, well, I'm a comedian. Oh, I don't care. I don't care. He's my boss. He's president of the United States. And he leaves. Okay. I'm thinking, oh, man, I got to change my, what am I going to do here? And then what was his name? Schultz? Yeah, George Schultz. George Schultz comes back, and he's got a drink. And he's like, he goes, Leno, when you get out there, you nail Ronnie's ass to the wall.

3:10You know, and I go, well, that guy, that guy works for me. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Now, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. But I remember the joke that got a big laugh from Reagan, was I said, I want to congratulate Nancy Reagan on being named Humanitarian of the Year. I'm glad she beat out that conniving little bitch, Mother Teresa. And Reagan, wow, he fell off the chair. And I went, oh, okay, I'm in. I'm in now. I'm in now. So you appear in Carson a number of times, but one thing that seemed to happen for comedians, and Seinfeld talked a little bit about this as well, that he would always see comics blow their best material on their first appearance, and then their second one was a little worse.

3:57Right. If they were so lucky after that, the next one was a little worse. And the same thing, as I understand, kind of happened to you. That happened to me, yeah. All of a sudden you aren't invited back. Well, you're getting called every couple of weeks. Right. And Johnny's material is different than Dave. With Dave, you could take a chance and be a little ruder, whereas The Tonight Show was a different animal. But yeah, that's true. Because they would call you, can you do it next week? And you didn't want to say no. So you quickly put something together. And yeah. So what do you do then when all of a sudden that call doesn't come again?

4:35Well, you do it and you hope it goes okay. And it didn't. A couple of shots were not particularly strong. I mean, but for a lot of comedians, that's kind of it. But you kind of pivot in a way. Well, I mean, I worked a lot, and you try to just get better, and, you know, you can't hit a home run every time. Well, some people can't every time you get it bad. But, yeah, that's it. But there were other shows, too. There was Merv Griffin. There was Mike Douglas. There were all these other programs you could do. Waylon Flowers and Madam had a show. I did every show. How many? I'm doing this show. You know, the interesting thing is, you always get more work from other comedians than you'll ever get from agents or managers.

5:24What? You know, people think it's a horrible cutthroat business. It's really not. I mean, Steve Martin brought Johnny Carson in to see me. So did Harvey Korman brought him in again to see me. Because as a comedian, you can't play every gig every day all the time. There's enough work out there. I remember Seinfeld and I one day saying, what if we went on vacation and we liked it? Then we're screwed instead of working. But he and I will tell you there's nothing better than being on stage. It really is far superior to anything else. Go on vacation or you can do a show. I'll do a show. And now you get paid for it.

6:05You had in your head back then that everybody goes on vacation, right? So when somebody goes, that could be your opportunity to get another gig. Well, my life is a vacation. I mean, when you have to go to Hawaii for three days, that's a vacation. I mean, you're working, ooh, an hour, ooh, an hour a day. That's all the work you're doing. So when I say I don't take vacations, but I go to vacation places all the time on somebody else's dime, which is the way to do it, really. That's the best way to do it. So it's not like, oh, I don't go on vacation because I'm working. It's just that my work happens to be this.

6:45You know, I mean, it's not fair that the worst comedian in the world makes five times the money of the best teacher. You know, it seems very unfair, but that's the way it is. And, oh, OK, I'll take it. You know, one of the benefits of the job is it pays pretty well if you're any good at it. And it's really the only measure of if you're any good or not. How much do people really pay to see you? You know, so. In a classroom of sodas, most stay quiet. Then there's Mr. Pibb. Sweet cherry, bold outbursts, the kind of flavor that gets attention. Bold kick of cherry. And you're Mr. Pibb. K-pop Demon Hunter's Saja Boys Breakfast Meal and Huntrix Meal have just dropped at McDonald's.

7:30They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day. It is an honor to share. No, it's our honor. It is our larger honor. No, really. Stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side. And participate in McDonald's while supplies last. As always, thanks for listening. To see more trending clips from my team, go to youtube.com slash Graham Bensinger.

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