BEHIND THE CURTAIN BEHIND THE CURTAIN BEHIND THE CURTAIN (20 page)

I booked Tony to do the show two weeks later. He updated Jay about his cancer, saying it was in remission after chemotherapy treatments and was treatable, but not curable. He said he would miss the small things about his job, like walking into the Oval Office to visit with the president or watching the Marine One helicopter lifting off from the South Lawn of the White House. Still, he believed cancer was the best thing that ever happened to him; it taught him to count his blessings, and he realized how much he loved and cared about people.

Tony then revealed that he was moving on from his position not because of his illness but because he just wasn’t making enough money in his government job. He was planning to give speeches and write books, which would be much more lucrative. It seemed like an odd statement to me. When Tony went to work for President Bush, he knowingly gave up a much higher-paying career as a journalist. I worried that the cancer was worse than he had led us to believe.

After the show that night, Mary and I had dinner with Tony to celebrate his successful appearance. That’s when he confirmed what I had suspected. The cancer was fatal, and he was on limited time. The real reason he needed to boost his earnings was to ensure his young family’s financial security when he was gone. There was no sadness in his voice, only cheerfulness, which I believe was rooted in a deep and abiding religious faith. Tony called me several times after that, mostly to cheer me up when the show was going through a rough patch. But I never saw him again. He died on July 12, 2008, at the age of fifty-three

After his first appearance on
The Tonight Show
in 2001, Chris Matthews quickly became our go-to news person. Steeped in Democratic politics before becoming a commentator on
Hardball,
his MSNBC show, he had been a speechwriter for the Carter administration and a top press aide to House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Chris had strong, edgy opinions and was a fast, enthusiastic talker. Fellow guest Chelsea Handler once teased him by asking if he could speak any faster. Without missing a beat, he replied, “My dear, you’re beautiful, but if you concentrate, you can keep up.”

Off the air, carrying on a phone conversation with Chris could be challenging. He would speak continuously in one long sentence, jumping from subject to subject. In one conversation with me, he rambled on for thirty minutes, cutting from President Obama to the Republicans to his upcoming airline reservations before I could even ask one question. There seemed to be no editing going on. Sometimes Chris engaged in stream of consciousness on MSNBC. While covering a 2008 speech by Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate, Chris said, “I have to tell you . . . it’s part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.” Chris never tried to distance himself from that remarkably honest remark, saying Mr. Obama represented to him the opportunity for the country to move beyond its racial divide. From that point, Chris appeared to take a turn to the left as a commentator. Then, in 2011, he started shifting to the right, calling the national media “a little liberal.” And by 2013, the thrill in Chris’s leg was a little less intense: “[President Obama] obviously likes giving speeches more than he does running the executive branch,” he said on
Hardball.

During his many visits with Jay, Chris discussed his struggle with liberal and conservative ideas, calling himself a liberal in his heart and a conservative in his mind. It was fascinating to watch. I believe he would have made an excellent moderator of
Meet the Press
. He had already been hosting a similar syndicated weekly program (
The Chris Matthews
Show
) with much success. His interviews were tough but fair, in the great tradition of Tim Russert.

Unlike Chris, Rush Limbaugh never had any doubt about his political worldview. He was a conservative, through and through. From his earliest days on national radio, starting in 1988, Rush was a force to be reckoned with. He had tapped into a backlash against liberalism in the media like no one else before him, using sardonic humor and biting satire. He re-framed conservatism as an
us v. them
cause and re-defined mainstream media as posers who were actually “liberals” running America into the ground. His daily radio show rocketed to number one in the nation with twenty million weekly listeners, making him the most popular radio personality ever.

But at
The Tonight Show,
I couldn’t sell Rush as a guest to save my soul. My colleagues thought he was too polarizing, too mean, and too bigoted. They were just citing what they had read in the media and heard from their friends in Hollywood. They didn’t listen to Rush, as I did. Then one day Debbie Vickers, the executive producer, said she thought booking Rush was a good idea. She had heard from friends and family who were regular listeners and fans of the conservative talk show host. We ran the idea by Jay and he approved it. By this time, I had already been reaching out to Rush’s chief of staff, Kit Carson. The popular radio pundit had his own doubts about Jay and his intentions. After all, Jay was in the mainstream media. Rush didn’t get on board for months. Eventually, Roger Ailes, the executive producer of his television show, persuaded him that a spot on Leno could introduce him to a lot of potential new listeners.

In February 1994, Rush sat down next to Jay and talked about his early days as a disc jockey, when he got fired for playing “Under my Thumb” by the Rolling Stones too many times. Then he turned to politics, saying he would never run for office despite his strong political views. Why? To begin, “candidates have to spend too much time raising money,” he stated. But if he ever did run, it would only be for one term. “That way no one would get any special favors,” he said. This show, which did well in the ratings and got heavy press coverage, represented a sea change in our approach to bookings. My colleagues were now more willing to book controversial pundits they disagreed with. As for Rush, he was happy with his interview and even did a comedy bit with us shortly after that. Then a few years later Jay did a joke implying Rush was a racist and a Nazi. I got a call from Carson the next day saying the joke went too far and that Rush was deeply hurt by it. It would take years to mend that fence. Rush did not return until September 2009 for the new
Jay Leno Show
prime time program. This time my colleagues welcomed Rush with open arms. Our ill-fated 10 p.m. show was struggling from the beginning, and we needed all the help we could get.

Rush had agreed to be part of an ongoing feature called “The Green Car Challenge.” In this bit, the guests drove an electric Ford Focus prototype around a track in the parking lot outside the studio, racing against the clock. The driver with the fastest time was the winner. The idea was to promote the “environment.” A cutout of environmentalist Al Gore was placed on the track as an obstacle. If a driver hit “Al,” they lost points. Rush, never a fan of the former vice president or electric cars, went out of his way to smash into “Al Gore.” Then he backed up and hit the cutout again before completing the course with a record slow time, which was his intention. Rush turned the bit into a satirical farce, his stock-in-trade. It was a rare funny moment for a bit that was very unfunny and intolerably preachy.

Sometimes we just got off to a bad start with our guests. In 1994, liberal documentary filmmaker Michael Moore showed up for his scheduled guest spot with a short, “funny” videotape he was planning to show during his segment. He had our permission to do it, but we hadn’t seen the tape until that day. When we watched the video, we killed it because we thought it was mean. The future Oscar-winning director wasn’t happy with our decision, but he accepted it . . . until about forty-five minutes before the start of the show, when he walked into my office threatening that he would bolt if we didn’t run his tape unedited. He knew as well as we did that he had us over a barrel, as there was no time to bring in another guest. So we gave in. I remember thinking during the confrontation that it felt like a stunt he would pull in one of his documentaries. We did not take kindly to Michael’s demand, and we had a falling out with him that lasted ten years. By then he was an established documentarian and never made another unreasonable demand.

Like Rush Limbaugh, Michael made his final appearance on
The Jay Leno Show.
We gave him high-profile promotions, which surprised even him. He posted this message on his website: “Last night Jay Leno premiered his new prime time show on NBC. His in-studio guest was Jerry Seinfeld. Tonight (Tuesday), for his second show, his guest is . . . me! I know—that’s crazy. My friends are taking bets on the exact hour today the executives at GE will call and pull the plug on this insanity. Or not.” During his segment he sang Bob Dylan’s “The Times, They Are a Changin’
.
” He was not a good singer, and his rendition was rough, even by Dylan’s standards. It was part of the format in the prime time show called “Earn Your Plug,” which required a guest to do a “stunt” if they wanted to show a clip from their film or hold up their book. Like most ideas on the show it was so bad, it was embarrassing. But Michael was a good sport, and he tried his best. This time, he didn’t back us into a corner. We did that ourselves.

Jay used to warn comedians who were political activists, “You start out as a comedian, then you become a political humorist. Then you become a political satirist. Then you become a commentator. Then you’re out of show business.” That’s what happened to Al Franken, who made seven appearances on
The Tonight Show
starting as a comedian in 1992 and ending as a commentator in 2005. In 2009, he was elected to the US Senate in Minnesota and out of show business. By his last appearance, Al was hosting the premiere show on the now-defunct liberal radio network
Air America.
He made little pretense at being funny, and backstage his behavior was very controlling. He wanted to see every single page of the show notes in my hands, demanding that Jay not ask any other questions than what we had agreed to. Jay could ask anything he wanted, and he often did. I didn’t tell Al that. Confrontations just before show time were never a good idea. I just said Jay would stick to the list. The interview went on as planned, except Al wasn’t funny.

Bill Maher, host of HBO’s
Real Time,
followed a similar path. Like Al, he was a comedian who became more and more political, leaning to the left. But unlike Al, Bill never forgot that his job was first and foremost to be entertaining. He often blurred the line between being a comedian and a pundit, and we sometimes didn’t know if he was making a joke or a serious point. Usually, it was both, and he did it skillfully. He was a consummate professional.

Next to Terry Bradshaw, Bill made more appearances than any other guest. He debuted as our first comedy correspondent in New York on New Year’s Eve 1993. He and Jay were competitive but supportive of each other, eventually becoming friends. In 2002, ABC cancelled Bill’s late-night show,
Politically Incorrect,
when he agreed with one of his guests that the 9/11 terrorists were not cowards: “Staying in the airplane when it hits the building. Say what you want about it. Not cowardly.” It was a poor choice of words, but that can happen when you’re doing an unscripted show called
Politically Incorrect.
Bill did not intend for his remarks to be anti-military, but that’s how they were perceived. Jay backed him throughout the ordeal and booked him in 2003 to plug his return to the air as the host of
Real Time.

At the height of the controversy with Conan O’Brien in 2010, when NBC offered
The Tonight Show
gig back to Jay, Bill came to Jay’s defense on
Larry King Live
: “The one place I would criticize Conan and David Letterman was when they did these jokes along the lines of . . . ‘You can have anything you want, unless Jay Leno wants it.’ Okay, you’re not a kid who had his ice cream knocked onto the sidewalk by Jay Leno. Jay Leno beat you for something because, for whatever reason, Jay Leno has his finger on the pulse of mainstream America better than anybody.” I always enjoyed working with Bill and considered him a friend. Some of my colleagues thought he was testy, but I found him surprisingly friendly and supportive, although he was a bit idiosyncratic. He was a strict vegetarian and refused to appear on the show when animals were featured. He was also a night owl, so I could never reach him before 2 p.m. An avowed atheist, he despised organized religion. This was a subject Jay tried to avoid, but Bill slipped it into the conversation whenever he could. Atheism was his passion; in a way, it was his religion.

When I left
The Tonight Show
in 2010, Bill was the last guest I ever worked with. Although we were friends, I was at the opposite end of the political and religious spectrum from him, though I never let him (or any other guest) know my views. I decided on a whim to fess up to him that day. I told him I thought he was one of the funniest, most thought-provoking, and kindest people I ever worked with. Then I said: “I basically don’t agree with anything you stand for. And besides, I teach Sunday school every week. I’m glad I got to work with you.” He came over and hugged me, saying he hoped we could work together again someday. When I introduced him to my replacement he said, “You don’t teach Sunday school, do you?”

Jay liked the ladies of
The View,
and so did I. Their daily “Hot Topics” segment, which featured their differing views about popular culture and politics, was entertaining. So I extended them a standing invitation to come on the show any time. But the women only made two appearances together, one in 2003 and the other in 2004. After that, Joy Behar said she wanted to be booked as a solo act. She considered herself a comedian and said she couldn’t do her jokes while the others were out there with her. Trouble is, Joy’s material was uneven, and she often forgot the first rule of comedy: you have to be funny. And being mean isn’t being funny. In a 2010 appearance, she and Jay were talking about Glenn Beck, then a host on
Fox News Channel.
Joy claimed Glenn hated her. Jay said he often had people on his show whom he disagreed with and wanted to know if she would consider inviting Glenn to appear on her now-cancelled HLN cable show. She said she’d like to give Glenn a message: “Glenn Beck, from the bottom of my heart, I don’t hate you. I don’t give a flying f— about you.”