As busy as I am lately, I've somehow found time to work my way through a book and a half. The half is Finishing the Hat, the first volume of Stephen Sondheim's lyrics, heavily annotated by the man. For those who prize and study his work, it's an absolute treasure trove not just of lyrics but of insights dispensed in his commentary. Getting through the entire volume will take a while and I'll probably be reading and re-reading for some time…with some effort since the tiny font makes that difficult. (I have 20/20 vision and I'm having trouble with it.)
My awe of Mr. Sondheim's facility with words and his dedication to making them perfect has always been grand…and it's nice to have so many examples of cut or rewritten songs and to see that even he's had trouble at times meeting the standard he set for himself. So have a lot of people, apparently. It says on the cover that the book contains, "Attendant comments, principles, heresies, grudges, whines and anecdotes" — and it does contain all that. He might have also tossed in something about snarky criticisms of lyricists who don't follow his rules for how a song has to be written.
A friend of mine who's quite literate in the theater doesn't sing the praises of Sondheim the way some others do, likening him to an author whose characters all speak in exactly the same voice — that of the author. I never felt that criticism was true…or at least to the extent it was true, one could overlook it the way one overlooks the wire attached to Peter Pan or the fact that a character in Act Two is obviously just an actor from Act One back in a different costume. Experiencing so many Sondheim lyrics in any one sitting, and watching him lecture the world on how lyrics must be written, I'm starting to see what my friend meant.
This is not a firm opinion on my part…just something that's on my mind every time I pick up this book. It's subject to change as I read more…and will probably change — in what way, I do not know — Monday evening when I attend an interview of Mr. Sondheim up at UCLA. I still admire the man. I just may need to rethink the limits of that admiration.
And I've thought a lot about all the central players in The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy, the new book by Bill Carter about the whole mess with Jay and Conan and time slots and such. There will be folks who'll read this book and decide that whichever host they find less funny was the villain. I think it makes a strong case that neither Jay nor Conan did anything unethical…nor anything particularly noble. They were just two guys trying to get or hold onto the best possible jobs as others moved them clumsily around a big chessboard.
O'Brien, like Leno and Letterman before him (with Helen Kushnick and Mike Ovitz, respectively) had killer agents and attorneys running around trying to nuke anyone or anything that stood in the way of their client(s) getting Johnny's old time slot. That's kind of the way the game is played — it kinda has to be since the network is certainly lawyered-up — and I guess I lost a little respect for Jay, Dave and Conan whenever they used the old "It's not me doing that, it's my agent" excuse. One of the worst things said in this book about O'Brien is that a lot of the anti-Leno rhetoric that turned up on the Internet was planted there by Conan's reps…and not even to try and help their client keep the 11:35 job but just to hurt Jay as much as possible. I suspect Conan will be unhappy to be associated with that.
What I think most will take away from the book is that Jeff Zucker made a bad mistake to shove Leno aside and give the Tonight Show to O'Brien. At one point in the book (I can't find the exact quote at the moment), Lorne Michaels makes a comment about how fortunes have been lost underestimating Jay Leno. That may be a pretty good summary of the entire affair…although the book also makes a credible case that for all the angst and ill feelings engendered, the shuffling-about of hosts still made financial sense for NBC.
Near the end, Michaels and Jerry Seinfeld both make the argument that O'Brien should have taken the offer to do his Tonight Show at 12:05 following a half-hour Leno program…an argument also made to me by a friend who worked for O'Brien and lost a job he'd counted on because Conan said no. I don't think I agree…but then I also don't buy that he turned it down because of some principled stand against despoiling the heritage of The Tonight Show. I think it was just plain a humiliating demotion and a lose/lose proposition for Conan: If the ratings didn't improve, the next step was to fire him or shove him back to 12:35. If they did improve, he'd (at best) forever be the guy who couldn't make it in the big time…and execs would be wondering how much better the numbers would be with a full hour of Leno before him. My friend on Conan's staff sort of agrees with me and says, "If Conan had really been concerned about preserving the glory of The Tonight Show name, he wouldn't have handed it back to a guy he thought did a crappy program."
Carter's book certainly does not support the proposition, which members of Team Coco will probably believe as long as Obama haters insist he was born in Kenya, that O'Brien lost the 11:35 gig because Jay's 10 PM show tanked and Jay demanded his old time slot back. Nor does Carter make it sound like Jay was particularly Machiavellian in any of this. I suspect the player who'd be most upset with how he comes across if he reads the book (which he probably won't) is David Letterman.
It is also interesting to note some developments that have happened since this book went to press. All of the ratings for the late night shows are down and Leno has been hurt more than most. He's now being tied or occasionally beaten by Dave, which can't make anyone at NBC too happy or confident. Also, the shows now ensconced at 10 PM on NBC are all tanking. Much was made throughout this drama about how Jay's bad numbers in that slot were hurting Conan. I never thought that…and not just because Conan's ratings were poor before Leno even went on at that hour. In the book when O'Brien complains about "shitty lead-in" ratings, I wonder if anyone said to him and it just wasn't quoted, something like, "Yes…and what was there before got shitty ratings and what we can replace him with is going to have shitty ratings and recovering from them is part of the job description of hosting the Tonight Show. Jay usually had bad lead-ins and managed to win the time slot in spite of that." What happens with Conan's ratings on TBS in the next few weeks will further advance this whole drama beyond where Carter's narrative leaves off. One gets the feeling the story wasn't over. They just wanted to get the book out in time for Christmas.
In fact, I'm starting to think that there's a whole 'nother chapter coming in this story and that none of these central players will be in the same job five or maybe even three years from now. Bill Carter may get a trilogy out of this yet.