BEHIND THE CURTAIN BEHIND THE CURTAIN BEHIND THE CURTAIN (26 page)

The next thing I noticed was his feet sticking straight up from behind the steering wheel. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I wish I had thought to take a picture, even though I have an indelible imprint of that moment in my memory. Jay then got out of the car, wiped off his hands on a rag, and said: “Yea, it’s a bad starter.” Then he rushed off to his phone interview.

I paid to have my car towed to the shop, and the next day my mechanic told me he would cover the cost of the tow and the new starter he was installing to replace the defective rebuilt starter he had originally put in. He also asked me if Jay wanted a job at his garage.

Chapter Fifteen

Trying Times

I would never trade my eighteen years at
The Tonight Show
for anything. I met and worked with people who were making a difference in the world, and it was exciting. But from my first day on the job to my last, I could never relax. Not one single day. The work environment was constantly unsettling and frenetic for my colleagues and for me.

We never even felt comfortable going out to lunch, though we could order in any meal from any fine restaurant in town at the show’s expense. I usually just had soup and salad. In that environment, I was too distracted to taste my food.

Were we paranoid? No. Worst case scenarios such as last-minute guest cancellations frequently happened while producing a daily comedy program. But throughout the show’s twenty-two-year lifespan, we were also dealing with constant threats to our survival. Most of them came from within, starting with Helen Kushnick
, the original executive producer.

Helen established a bunker mentality from the day she took over, wreaking extensive havoc during her short reign of terror. Her aggressive, often underhanded approach resulted in short-term gains but would soon do her in and tarnish Jay’s nice-guy image.

In February 1991, a story appeared on the front page of the
New York Post
that said NBC was pressuring Johnny Carson to leave so it could replace him with Jay Leno, who was attracting younger audiences as the show’s guest host. There was just one problem: Kushnick, then Jay’s manager, had made up the story and planted it in an attempt to strong-arm NBC into signing Jay as Johnny’s successor. When Jay heard rumors that Kushnick was responsible for the story, he confronted her, but she denied having anything to do with it.

In the spring of 1991, CBS offered Jay an 11:30 p.m. show to compete with Johnny. Kushnick used this as leverage to secure a deal with NBC, guaranteeing that Jay would get Johnny’s job when he retired. Soon after, Johnny announced
that he would be stepping down in May 1992, which, of course, meant Jay would be the new host of
The Tonight Show.

Lost in the mix was David Letterman, then the host of a late, late show that followed Johnny on NBC. David had not actively pursued the position, assuming NBC would give it to him. In reality, he hurt his cause by bashing NBC executives on the air. Jay had spent years lobbying for the job, and as Johnny’s guest host he visited each and every one of the more than two hundred NBC stations around the country. Affiliates are an important part of every network, and keeping them happy is important. Jay spent time with general managers and news departments, shooting promotional videos and schmoozing. While the reclusive Letterman would never have considered pressing the flesh with the locals, Jay, who had always thought he would be a salesman, was happy to make the rounds. His efforts didn’t go unnoticed by the NBC brass, who were impressed.

I had a good feeling about Jay, as well. I was thrilled when I learned he and the staff for his new show had moved into an
office right down the hallway from mine at NBC in Burbank. I had just been laid off after working seven years as a producer for NBC News and three years as West Coast bureau chief for CNBC. The business cable network allowed me to use my old office to look for a job, but so far there didn’t seem to be many.

I called my wife, Mary, to tell her about my new neighbor. She asked me when I would be stopping by Jay’s new office to fill out an application. In response, I told her that
The Tonight Show
would never hire me, a journalist with no experience in entertainment. “What do you have to lose?” she asked. She was right, but I had heard horror stories about Kushnick.

Later, Mary called again to find out if I had been down to Jay’s office. I told her I was too busy but planned to drop by first thing the next morning. Besides, it was already 4:45 p.m., and I didn’t want to be late for dinner. She told me dinner could wait. I grabbed my resume, headed for the offices of
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,
and tried to put Kushnick out of my mind.

When I got there at 4:50 p.m., the receptionist said I was the last person applying for a job there. All applications had to be in by 5 p.m. The next day would have been too late. I started mumbling nervously. “I’m with NBC News. You’re an entertainment show. Could you use somebody like me? It doesn’t hurt to ask, right?” I often tell people it’s a lesson in how
not
to get a job.

It wasn’t exactly the best sales pitch, but I was hoping to find out if there were any openings I was even remotely qualified for. Then I heard a voice—loud and shrill—coming from a nearby office: “Get in here now. I want to talk with you!”
That’s Helen Kushnick
, I thought. She didn’t look scary, just frenzied. She quickly greeted me without any pleasantries, grabbing the resume from my hand as if she had been expecting me and I was late. She scanned my resume, nodding her head in approval while saying “good.” Then she looked me straight in the eye, and said, “I think you’re the person I’ve been looking for.”

“Really?” I said incredulously.

But she didn’t hear me. She just kept talking: “I want someone with your background. Jay likes the kinds of people you’re around every day: journalists, economists, people in the news. Guests like this would make Jay look smart, and you don’t see them on Johnny. But I’m going to change that. I’ll be changing a lot of things.”

Then she abruptly ended the conversation and said she’d be calling me soon. I walked out of the office, stunned. A few minutes earlier I had absolutely no job prospects. Now I was certain I had a good chance of becoming a producer for Jay Leno. When I told Mary this she, ironically, tried to tamp down my enthusiasm: “It’s
The Tonight Show
. Don’t get your hopes up. I know I told you to talk with them, but it’s a long shot!”

But it wasn’t a long shot. The very next day, Kushnick called and asked me to come down to meet Jay. When I saw him, I was overwhelmed.
What am I doing here?
I thought. I admitted my self-doubts to him, which he quickly dismissed. He told me he was glad Kushnick found someone with my background. Kushnick again emphasized she would be making changes and that I would have a big part in it. Then she hired me. It was the easiest job I ever got and the hardest job I ever had.

Kushnick threw a barbeque for the new staff of about one hundred fifty and their families at her beautiful ranch-style home in Hidden Hills. She owned several acres and kept horses on her property for her twelve-year-old daughter, Sara, who liked to ride. I arrived with my wife; my seven-year-old daughter, Melissa; and my three-year-old son, David. We were all dressed in new summery outfits Mary had purchased just for the party. When Jay saw us, he quipped, “You guys look like you’re right out of the Sears catalog!”

That’s exactly what we looked like, but I was embarrassed because I thought he somehow didn’t approve. This was our first Hollywood party, and I wasn’t sure how people were supposed to dress. But I would soon learn that Jay often joked about what people were wearing—and anything else that came to mind. We all came to love those jokes, which helped ease a lot of tense moments over the years.

Kushnick was a gracious host that day, smiling as she introduced her new hires to each other and making sure we got enough to eat. But just below the surface lurked a deeply troubled person we would all soon get to know better. At forty-six, she had experienced numerous personal tragedies, including the loss of her husband, Jerry, to cancer and her three-year-old son, Sam, to AIDS from a tainted blood transfusion. She herself was battling breast cancer and had undergone a mastectomy.

Helen’s dark side began to emerge at the office as she bullied
and embarrassed staffers, often in front of others. She was even insulting to Jay, often telling him to go away and work on his “little monologue” so she could get some work done. She was fond of saying that Jay liked steak and that she was the one who butchered the cow. But he didn’t need to know how it got done.

Her contempt for Johnny Carson never faded. She regarded him and his inner circle as members of the “old boys’ club” who would never willingly let her or Jay in. She believed the Carson crowd dismissed her as a woman who was too pushy, and Jay as a comedian who was too ethnic and not from the Midwest.

Johnny was a god at NBC, and I always winced when she spoke ill of him. Still, she was drawing on a grain of truth. An appearance on his show could make or break entertainers, and his producers knew it. They could be arbitrary and arrogant; comedians resented it, but they had no choice. There was nowhere else to go. Jay himself turned in a substandard performance in his fourth appearance on Johnny and was not invited back for eight years.

When Jay’s show debuted on May 25, 1992, it drew a whopping sixteen-million viewers. We were off to a great start, except for one thing: Jay never mentioned Johnny’s name. It wasn’t an oversight; Kushnick was adamant that Jay should not acknowledge Johnny in any way since Johnny had not mentioned Jay on his final
Tonight Show
broadcast. Critics picked up on Jay’s faux pas, which would haunt him for years.

Kushnick never realized how incredibly petty and foolish it was to disrespect Johnny Carson. Like him or not, he was a living legend. And she insisted Jay had made major changes to the way Johnny had been doing the show. In truth, our format was almost identical to Johnny’s.

The changes we did make were cosmetic: There was no sidekick, like Ed McMahon. Our announcer, Edd Hall, was off-camera. And our music director, Branford Marsalis, played more contemporary jazz than his predecessor, Doc Severinsen. Gone was the multi-colored curtain from which Johnny emerged at the top of the show. In its place were pre-taped multiple curtains. And there was a new backdrop featuring an illustration of the Pacific Ocean.

In time, Jay would put his own unique imprint on the franchise with a longer, more politically relevant monologue and the addition of newsmakers to the guest mix. Kushnick laid the groundwork for these achievements, as she understood and encouraged Jay’s passion for politics and news. But none of it would happen on her very short, chaotic watch.

A speech by Ronald Reagan on the opening night of the Republican National Convention in August 1992 marked the beginning of the end for her career as executive producer. The former president was delivering the closing speech, and running long. Kushnick insisted that NBC News pull out so
The Tonight Show
could begin on schedule. The news division refused, and rightly so. They had no problem putting
Tonight
on a little later. You don’t pull the plug on a beloved former president. But there was no reasoning with her. She cancelled
The Tonight Show
that evening and sent the studio audience home, prompting NBC executives to decide then and there she had to go.

Soon after that,
Entertainment Weekly
came out with a cover story about Jay’s late-night competitor Arsenio Hall, featuring his face under the headline: “I’m Going to Kick Jay Leno’s Ass.” Arsenio’s nasty remarks about Jay were largely a reaction to Kushnick’s underhanded tactics with publicists who had booked their clients on Arsenio’s show. She was demanding that the bookings be cancelled if the clients ever wanted to come on Leno again. She had already carried out her threats against NBC News talent Maria Shriver, singer Rodney Crowell, and her own personal friend Elizabeth Taylor. Kushnick called the Oscar-winning, legendary actress herself. My colleagues and I could hear her yelling from behind her closed office door. When the door opened, Kushnick came out swearing like a sailor about the audacity of Taylor to appear on
Arsenio
.

She also put the screws to lesser-known performers, such as Travis Tritt, an accomplished country guitar picker and singer but not a big star, even among country artists. His manager, Kenny Kragen, was shocked when Kushnick called him and threatened to permanently bar Tritt from Leno if he didn’t cancel Arsenio: “You and I will be in this town for a long time and we’ll see each other, and we’re never going to talk again. It’s your loss and the record company’s,” she said, according to Kragen. Then she hung up.

After that, a
Tonight Show
producer told Kragen that Kushnick would be cancelling a booking he had made for another client, country singer Trisha Yearwood. Kragen, a respected, experienced manager, didn’t like to play games, so he took the story to the
Los Angeles Times.
The article quickly resonated with publicists, managers, and agents who were also victimized by Kushnick’s high-pressure tactics. They went public, as well. Warren Littlefield, the president of NBC Entertainment, supported Jay and saw this as the perfect opportunity to fire Kushnick. She had gone too far, and she wasn’t showing any signs of letting up.

Helen made a bizarre appearance on the Howard Stern radio show, denying Kragen’s allegations and accusing NBC executives, Arsenio Hall, and others of a sexist conspiracy against her. When she came into work the following Monday, she received a letter of dismissal. But she told me and several others that everything was fine and that she and Jay would be staying. Later, she said Jay would walk out with her if she was fired.

Throughout the day we heard noises coming from behind the closed door to her office, as she was presumably throwing things against the walls. Jay went in to talk with her and closed the door, but we could still hear her screaming at him.

Meanwhile, we had a show to do with guests Scott Bakula, Paul Reiser, Kristoff St. John, and Blue Man Group. Somehow Jay put on his game face and got through the monologue and interviews as if it were any other day. After the taping, Helen left the lot, never to return. At every entrance, guards posted a black-and-white head shot of her with a message that she was banned from the lot. The photo looked like an FBI poster of a wanted criminal. It was surreal.

The next day, Jay spoke to the staff at our noon production meeting. He acknowledged that something was wrong with Kushnick and apologized for the “insanity” she had caused. Then he took responsibility, saying he didn’t know about the problems, but should have.