jay leno Archives - Joe Toplyn

How to Create a New Comedy/Talk Show

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Joe Toplyn

You have a host. Your assignment is to build a new comedy/talk show around him or her. How do you even begin to do that?

Recently The New York Times went behind the scenes to give a glimpse into how James Corden and his staff are creating their version of Late Late Show, premiering on March 23, 2015.

And soon Stephen Colbert and his team will begin to shape a new Late Show, to debut on September 8, 2015.

New comedy/talk shows are also being created around Chelsea Handler, Grace Helbig, and other hosts.

I know what that process is like. I assisted in the birth of The Chevy Chase Show and The Caroline Rhea Show.

And I saw what worked and what didn’t work during my many years on the writing staffs of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Show with David Letterman.

So how would I go about creating a new comedy/talk show? I’d start by asking questions like these:

What is our host good at?

You want your show to have your host doing what they do best as often as possible. That way your host will have fun and perform at the top of their game, which means the audience will enjoy watching them.

Take James Corden. He’s a Tony Award-winning Broadway star, so his Late Late Show will probably have him performing many comedy scenes and songs. A clue that this is true: the Times article mentions that James hired writer David Javerbaum, with whom I worked on Late Show with David Letterman. In addition to his extensive experience in late night, D. J. is also an award-winning musical-theater lyricist and librettist.

What is our competition doing?

TV viewers crave familiarity but also freshness. Ideally your new show will offer viewers types of entertainment they’re not getting anywhere else in late night.

For example, Stephen Colbert and his Late Show team may look at Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show and sense an opportunity to do more barbed comedy about politics, celebrities, and current events.

What is physically possible to produce week after week?

The time and money available to produce the show are limited so you can’t always do what you want.

That’s the way it was with Saturday Night Live alumnus Chevy Chase. He’s a gifted sketch performer, so ideally The Chevy Chase Show would have resembled SNL. But no late-night show has the writing budget, production resources, and rehearsal time to air even a half-hour of scripted sketches five nights a week.

How much time is our host willing to devote to the show?

Producing elaborate comedy pieces, like taped TV show parodies, takes up a lot of a host’s time. Producing comedy pieces like field pieces outside of regular business hours also takes a host’s time. If your host can’t or won’t put in that time, they’ll be limiting what comedy you can present on the show.

Jay Leno could only perform a thirty-joke monologue on each episode of the Tonight Show because he devoted every free moment during the day, and several hours at night, to working on it.

Okay, fine, but what should we actually do on the show?

Use the answers to the above questions to create your new show by customizing the generic comedy/talk show template. In addition to your host, these are the elements of that generic template:

Sidekick
Other staffer-performers
Guests, including musical guests
Studio audience
Desk
Comedy pieces

To tailor your comedy pieces to fit your new show and host, get my book, Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV. It’s a comprehensive manual of ways to pack a comedy/talk show with laughs:

cold openings and cold closes
the monologue
the main and second comedy pieces
guest segment extras
bumpers

Good luck to the new entrants in late-night!

How the Two Jimmies Can Prepare for Colbert

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Joe Toplyn

As I write this, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is dominating its competition. Since its premiere on February 17, 2014, Tonight has earned a 1.28 rating in Adults 18-49, compared to a .65 for Jimmy Kimmel Live and a .51 for Late Show with David Letterman.

But the game is changing. Sometime in 2015 Stephen Colbert will take over Late Show and he’ll be a formidable opponent. Here’s why:

Colbert is versatile. He’s done stand-up and improv. He’s a sketch performer and a writer. He’s a savvy and quick-witted interviewer. That means he can do whatever it takes to keep his show entertaining month after month.

Colbert is hard-working. He’s been doing The Colbert Report for almost nine years, so he’s proven he can handle the demands of a late-night comedy/talk show.

Colbert is smart. He and his team know how to turn out a quality show. Last year The Colbert Report won two Primetime Emmys.

So what should the two Jimmies and their staffs do to get ready for Colbert? Here are a couple of suggestions:

Don’t coast on what’s working now. Over the next six months, develop lots of new comedy pieces. You want your show to be as fresh as possible when Colbert gives viewers another option. For example, when I was co-head writer of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno I spearheaded the addition of characters like Mr. Brain. That new, popular comedy material helped Tonight catch up with Late Show.

Shoot lots of taped pieces, particularly field pieces, in the weeks leading up Colbert’s premiere. Then air those taped pieces during the first couple of weeks after the premiere. Field pieces tend to score big with audiences; learn why in my post “5 Reasons to Do Field Pieces.” Late Show with David Letterman used this tactic very successfully to launch itself against The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Tonight took months to recover from the prerecorded onslaught, as described in my book Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV.

So those are some ways the two Jimmies can prepare for the premiere of Colbert’s Late Show: develop lots of new comedy pieces and air a lot of taped pieces.

And, by the way, I’d make the same suggestions to Colbert and his team.

The Hugh Grant Fallacy

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Joe Toplyn

Hugh Grant's mug shot This week, on June 18, Access Hollywood perpetuated a longstanding misconception about The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. A voiceover referred to “the game changer, when in 1995 Hugh Grant came on shortly after his dalliance with a prostitute. Jay beat Letterman in the ratings that night and stayed number one for nineteen years.”

Game-changer? So Hugh Grant’s appearance on Tonight was solely responsible for the show’s ratings dominance for almost two decades? Ridiculous.

In fact, the night Grant appeared (July 10, 1995) wasn’t even the first night that Tonight topped Late Show in the ratings. By that time Tonight had been routinely beating Late Show every single Thursday night for months thanks to the huge lead-in provided by the hit show ER. And many weeks the ratings gap between Tonight and Late Show was only a tenth of a point.

So why do the media keep trotting out Hugh Grant? Because he makes for a fun, easy-to-follow story: “Ain’t life crazy? The only reason Jay got to number one is because some dumb Hollywood actor got caught with a hooker.” And Grant did play a role in a ratings milestone: the week he appeared on Tonight was the first week that the show beat Late Show when measured over an entire week of head-to-head original episodes. But Tonight won three nights that week, not just the night that Grant guested.

The truth is, Access Hollywood, that no one single “game changer” led to Tonight taking the late-night crown from Late Show. Many factors changed the game. I describe one of those factors in my post “When O. J. Simpson Killed, So Did Jay Leno.” For more, read my book, Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV.

When O. J. Simpson Killed, So Did Jay Leno

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Joe Toplyn

As a host of the Tonight show, Jay Leno was typically regarded by the media as dull, not edgy. For example, a February 2014 article by Daniel D’Addario on the website Salon bears the headlines: “Jay Leno thrived by being America’s dullest man. With less edge than David Letterman or Conan O’Brien, Leno was the perfect host for one of the last huge franchises.”

I never understood that “dull” assessment of Jay. One reason is that the main job of the host of the Tonight show is to keep the show number one in the timeslot. And that means appealing to as many American television viewers as possible. And that means performing comedy that most viewers want to watch, comedy that most viewers find interesting, the opposite of dull. A Tonight show host who most viewers actually found dull would soon be out of a job. And Jay realized that. So he put on a show that, as the ratings prove, wasn’t dull. Year after year, it attracted the most viewers. Jay did his job.

I also never understood how the media could claim that Jay wasn’t “edgy.” Jay did a lot of risky comedy. For example, back in 1994 and 1995 he and his writers (myself included) regularly mined a grisly double homicide for jokes. I’m referring, of course, to the O. J. Simpson murder case.

Think about that. Every night for months Jay invited the audience to laugh about aspects of a tragic, bloody act of butchery. Does that mean that Jay was “America’s dullest man”? Not when one of the Tonight show’s signature bits, the Dancing Itos, lookalikes for the trial’s Judge Ito, made it into People magazine. Does it mean that Jay had “less edge” than the other late-night hosts? Not when Jay was the only one of them routinely wading into the dark and treacherous waters of homicide humor.

Jay’s show even included several parody videos that treated the O.J. murder trial as a sitcom. See one here, followed by a look at the Dancing Itos in action.

The fact is, the O.J. comedy on the Tonight show killed, in the “got huge laughs” sense of the word. It killed because it was edgy and the late-night audience at the time craved edgy. Jay gave most late-night viewers what they wanted to see. Jay did his job.

And now O. J. Simpson is back in the news because this week is the 20^th anniversary of that heinous crime, the prelude to The Trial of the Century. So, for old times’ sake, I wrote this new O.J. joke:

“According to a friend, O.J. Simpson has gained a lot of weight in prison. The good news is O. J. finally found the real killer…and ate him.”

That was the job.

For more on how the Tonight show handled O. J. comedy, read my new book, Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV.

5 Reasons To Do Field Pieces

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Joe Toplyn

Why aren’t Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers doing more field pieces on their shows?

Field pieces, or “remotes,” are comedy pieces that are shot outside the studio. They’re great for comedy/talk shows. Here are 5 reasons why.

1) It’s fun to see the host out in the real world for a change. Watching the same guy behind the same desk on the same set night after night can be boring. Getting the camera out of the studio breaks that visual monotony.

Joe Toplyn, Jay Leno, and Charlie Sheen's trainer, Kim, make their way down the hill to the Hollywood Sign.

I help Charlie Sheen’s “athletic trainer,” Kim, down the hill to the Hollywood Sign.

2) Shooting only in the studio building limits your comedy options. Sure, you can produce a lot of fun comedy pieces indoors. I was once responsible for Dave Letterman and Paul Shaffer racing down a hallway inside 30 Rockefeller Plaza on dogsleds. But I also persuaded Dave to drive a rental convertible through a carwash with the top down. The world is your playground. Why stay cooped up in the clubhouse?

3) Field pieces don’t have to be expensive. To produce most field pieces all you need is a camera operator, maybe an audio technician, maybe a director, and your on-camera talent. And you’re already paying those people.

4) Field pieces don’t have to be time consuming. Jay Leno and his staffers could shoot a semi-scripted remote involving civilians, like “Jaywalking,” in an hour-and-a-half. Even a more elaborate remote is often producible in a couple of hours.

Joe Toplyn, Jay Leno, and Charlie Sheen discuss a stunt at the foot of the Hollywood Sign.

I discuss the proposed stunt with Jay and Charlie “Major League” Sheen.

For example, one time I took Jay and Charlie Sheen up to the Hollywood Sign, where Charlie threw a baseball through the D; the Olympics were underway and we made that Charlie’s event. We shot the piece in the morning, edited it that afternoon, and rolled it into the show that evening during Charlie’s interview.

5) Field pieces can be edited. If, say, the piece involves the host using unpredictable civilians for comedy, all the weak material can be cut out before the piece airs. That’s why finished field pieces tend to have a high laugh density.

Jay Leno did field pieces often. Dave Letterman, Conan O’Brien, and Jimmy Kimmel (or one of their correspondents) do field pieces. The streets of Manhattan are certainly a convenient and target-rich environment for comedy.

So here’s hoping that Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers take advantage of the pleasant weather and get out more often.

Jay Leno watches Charlie Sheen hurl a baseball through the D in the Hollywood Sign.

Jay watches Charlie hurl a baseball through the D. Success!

With their improv skills I think they’d be terrific at field pieces. Feeding the late-night beast every day is harder than it has to be if you’re only ordering off one side of the comedy menu.

Learn more about how to create successful field pieces in my book Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV.

Comedy Writing Is Not Rocket Science

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Joe Toplyn

If you know the techniques, tricks, and rules, comedy writing isn’t as hard as it looks. When I was co-head writer of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno I directed a sketch featuring Jay and astronaut Story Musgrave. The sketch was a comedy tour of Space Center Houston, the official visitor center of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. (In the photo, that’s Story in the NASA jumpsuit and me with the microphone boom on my face.) We finished taping around lunchtime and I found myself in the cafeteria with Story. As a kid I wanted to be an astronaut so I was thrilled when he invited me to bring my plastic tray over and join him. What a gracious, smart, impressive guy. We chatted about the taping and then he observed, “It must be really hard to come up with comedy every night, week after week.”

This STS-61 crew portrait includes astronauts (top row, l to r) Richard O. Covey, Jeffrey A. Hoffman, and Thomas D. Akers and (bottom row, l to r) Kenneth D. Bowersox, Kathryn C. Thornton, F. Story Musgrave, and Claude Nicollier.

Story Musgrave and part of the team that repaired the Hubble Space Telescope

I was almost struck speechless. Here was an astronaut, a crew member on one of the most complex missions in the history of the Space Shuttle, a veteran spacewalker who had helped repair the incredibly intricate Hubble Space Telescope so scientists could use it to unravel the secrets of the universe. Here was this guy telling me that my job seemed hard. I replied to Story that my job had to be much easier than his. I pointed out that, as with any job, you get better at comedy writing the more you do it, and I had been doing it for years. And I explained that a show like Tonight has a large staff of writers so even if a few of them are off their game on any given day there are plenty of others around who can pick up the slack. But years later I realized that part of the reason comedy writing seems so difficult to Story, and to so many other people, is that the process is so mysterious. To me, repairing the Hubble Space Telescope seems mind-bendingly difficult because I have absolutely no idea how I would go about doing it. To Story, the same task is relatively easy because he knows all the steps involved and has practiced them over and over.

Joe Toplyn and other writers of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" in Las Vegas, November 1995.

Joe Toplyn and part of the team that wrote “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”

The process of writing comedy was a little mysterious to me, too, until recently. I had created thousands of jokes and bits for the four late-night comedy/talk shows I’ve worked on but at the time I didn’t completely understand how I was doing it. The idea of understanding how, and of setting down the techniques, tricks, and rules for creating short-form comedy, began to appeal to me. I thought writers could use a book that would help them unravel the secrets of the comedy universe. So I wrote Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV. Story, if you ever read the book you’ll understand better than ever why I said comedy writing is way easier than your job.