Brian Stack has been a writer and performer on all of Conan O’Brien’s late night comedy shows, and has been consistently responsible for some of the funniest moments on each and every one of them. Recently, Nerd City had a chance to speak with him about his career, comedy, his Chicago roots, and what it’s like to have The Masturbating Bear walk out of your house…plus a Big Five!
So, first off, you’re a legitimate veteran of the Conan shows…
It’s a little hard for me to believe. I started in April of ’97, and I remember feeling so new and I kind of have to pinch myself when I realize how many years I’ve been with Conan…I mean, it’s hard to believe.
You’re a member of an ensemble, so it must be a little different than being on another show, in regards to recognition, people knowing who you are…
Now and then I do get recognized. A lot of my characters have elaborate costumes and wigs and stuff, so they don’t always recognize me for some of my characters, but some do look more like me than others. People dont usually know…. well, some of the hardcore fans do know the writers’ names, but if I do get recognized it’s more for the character name than knowing our names. It’s very anonymous, you know?
The anonymity must be interesting. On other shows there are opening credits, things like that…
Yeah, like on SNL or MadTV or something where the cast members are named, we’re sort of writers first and foremost… the performing we’ve done is just a nice bonus. I’m very grateful for the chance to do it. I always loved performing in Chicago, and here and there in theaters, doing improv work…it’s one of the nicest things about the show…the chance to perform in addition to write , and I’m very grateful for it, even if it is anonymous.
I’ve noticed you’re in quite a bit on the new show.
Yeah, I’m pretty grateful for people asking me to do their bits, and sometimes I’ll ask them to do mine, the ones that I write, and it can vary in that way. But I’m very grateful. I always try to make sure to deliver what they had in mind. I like to do characters I wrote myself, but I’ve always enjoyed doing other people’s ideas too, and sometimes, that’s even more fun. You kind of…, you might add something of your own, but a lot of times, you’re just trying to deliver what the writer had in mind.
A little less responsibility, maybe?
Yeah, like I’ll, sometimes I’ll get… you still want to do the best job possible, but there is always that added level of nervousness when you’re presenting something you wrote in addition to something you’re performing. I remember that Sting said in an interview once that when someone says they don’t like your song they’re kind of like saying that your child is ugly. It’s kind of how you feel when a sketch doesn’t go over or work. it just kind of lays there. It is kind of like someone insulting your child. and I think a lot of us do take it very personally, and it’s one of the things that motivates us to do the work. But it makes it very painful when it doesn’t work.
It must be tough when something doesn’t do well.
But on the other side, when something does work, and sometimes it is a surprise how well some things work, it’s a wonderful thing. I think it all evens out, and you hope that those things outweigh the other. And you know, if you don’t have the possibility of total failure, than the things that work wouldn’t be so fun. It’s almost like skydiving and knowing for sure you’re gonna land safely. It just wouldn’t be as thrilling. There has to be a chance of failure. There would be no possiblity of the elation of something working… it wouldn’t even be possible if you weren’t worried it was gonna fail.
The show certainly has seen some well-publicized ups and downs. However, the new show has this really noticeable energy, this sort of rejuvenation…
I’m so glad that’s coming across. It definitely feels that way. The show has a real loose, experimental feel that’s similar in some ways to the feel we had at “Late Night”. At “Late Night” we might have done a little more character-based sketches and stuff, and I miss a lot of that…but we do still do some. I think it’s much more in the direction that we should be going than “The Tonight Show” was. “The Tonight Show” always seemed too big to me. Nothing against “The Tonight Show’s” history. I have a lot of respect for all that… but it always felt too big a show, and too big a studio. It just never felt right.
I kind of knew, even before we went to do it, that it probably wasn’t going to feel right. I was grateful for a chance to be part of it, but I really don’t miss it. We had a great budget…I miss our budget. But the TBS executives are really down to earth. They’re very supportive. They pretty much leave us alone to do the kind of show we want to do. They’re thrilled to have Conan on TBS and they’re very… they’ve been nothing but great to us, which is really nice.
And doing the show on the Warner Brothers lot is a lot of fun… there’s a lot of history there. As an old movie Nerd, I just walk around kind of in awe at all the films they’ve made there. But yeah, there’s a good general vibe at the show, and I’m glad that comes across to the people watching.
The general vibe at the show among the people that work there has always been really good. Everyone from the band to to the crew to the office staff has a real family feel to it. I was really hoping when we took the show to L.A., that a lot of these people would get to come and that they wouldn’t just be replaced by L.A. people. People like our script supervisor Suzie Santomauro… she’s one of these people who is the heart and soul of the show, even though most people at home won’t ever know who she is. And I think those people are so important to the overall feel of the show, even if people at home don’t see them on camera. So it’s a real good vibe, and I’m really glad it comes across that way.
As everything with “The Tonight Show” was going down, I think a lot of people in the comedy community, and fans, were worried about all the people who had been brought out to L.A., and what was going to happen with them… I think everyone’s just really glad to see the staff and show land back on it’s feet in the way that it has.
Thanks a lot, Max. That means a lot to me. It’s good to know that there is such good will for the show, especially from Chicago, which is my home. I think one thing that I’ve always loved about the show is it’s always had a feel that reminded me of the ensemble improv and sketch feel that I had working back in Chicago. Conan always said that the show has a very Chicago feel. He came out of improv himself. You know there’s an ensemble feel where you want to make other people look good, and serve the piece as a whole as opposed to trying to out-shine other people , and I think a lot of that came with us from Chicago to New York, and hopefully it’s still carrying on here in L.A. Actually almost all of my old friends from N.Y. and Chicago live here in L.A. now…which you know, everybody’s here now.
One thing that is really amazing about Los Angeles right now is that you can see so much talent, movie and television talent, all on the same stage, performing live, for cheap.
It really is. I did a show last Sunday at UCB. They charge $5 for people to get in, and Michael Cera was in it. Jennifer Carpenter from “Dexter”, David Cross, Ellie Kemper from “The Office”… they’re just getting up there to do this little improv show at UCB… a five dollar show, and they just do it cause its really fun. You’ll get people like that routinely stopping by IO and UCB, and it’s pretty crazy… it’s hard to get used to at first. But yeah, they love being a part of that world, and I think a lot of them miss doing live performance and they miss that feedback from the audience that you get with immediate laughter.
A lot of times they’re sitting in trailers all day, and they just want to get out there and have fun. It’s very inspiring to see that, you know, because they’re not doing it for any money, just doing it because they love it. You know, while L.A. doesn’t get much respect in general as a theater town, it’s pretty remarkable how many cool little shows are being done all around town at little theaters and the backs of comic book stores… alternative rooms.
Why don’t you tell us about what goes in to a day at “Conan”?
Well, we usually have… our hours are a bit different than they used to be at “Late Night”. At “Late Night”, we tended to work very, very late. It wouldn’t be odd for us to get out at midnight or one a.m. Here, we get out earlier, but we tend to get in earlier. We usually have a meeting in the morning and talk over what’s going to be on the show. Some times it’ll be stuff we’ve been working on for the previous couple of days. Some times it’ll be an idea that comes up that morning, and you try to scramble it and make it happen.
Because we tend to do a little more topical stuff then we used to, there tends to be more of that last minute stuff based on that day’s headlines or some story that’s in the news or some pop culture that everyone’s talking about . Usually, we have rehearsal in the early afternoon, where we’ll go over what’s going on for the day…things often get changed, or get tweaked. And Conan you know… being a brillaint writer himself, often has ideas for improving things, or re-shaping something. His instincts for what will work are pretty amazing. I’d put him up with anyone. I think it’s the reason he lasted through those really difficult days, even when he was green as a performer, his instincts as a writer have always been right on the money.
Then we tape at 4:30. We usually get together after the show to talk about what we’re going to be doing the next day. Again, a lot of stuff will change in the morning and there will be new ideas coming in. The monologue writers work separately from the sketch writers… if I have time I’ll talk to them… I had a monologue joke in the show yesterday, but that’s you know, not the norm. Except for like when Conan hosts “The Emmys”, and we’ll all toss in monologue jokes.
So, the monologue joke writers usually get together with Conan right before the show, where they have all the jokes on cue cards, and they decide on the ones that they think are the strongest and…yeah, that’s pretty much how it works. That pretty much leads us up live to tape at 4:30.
The internet and Team Coco have had a huge impact on the show…
It’s really been amazing to see how big that world is. With the fans online, with “The Tonight Show”, it was really eye-opening to see how there are all these fans out there and they really just kind of rushed in to show us this support. Even though they couldn’t save the show, it was still really eye-opening and gratifying to see all these people who were really on our side, and really on Conan’s side. My amazement with that online community has only grown and the people who work on our show who just work on the Team Coco website. There’s a pretty big group of people who just do that, and it shows how important it is to Conan and the show….and that it’s just become such a big part of the show. I was pretty stunned by how big that side of our fan base is.
Do you have any upcoming shows? Anything we should now about?
I do a bi-monthly show called Joel Murray and Friends, which is all old Chicago friends, that we do at IO West. And I some times do ASSSSCAT at UCB still. That show I mentioned earlier, we do the first Sunday of every month, and that show is called Gravid Water, and that’s my favorite show to do. Partly because we don’t do it that often. It’s an actor and an improviser, and the actor memorizes lines from a play, and the improviser doesn’t have a clue what the play is. We get some wonderful actors for it and that’s a really fun show to do.
I shot a little bit for the show Eagleheart. Two of my friends from Conan created that show, Micheal Koman and Andrew Weinberg, and they were nice enough to have me play a part in an episode on that show on Adult Swim. I think it’s a brilliantly created and funny show. It’s funny because people you meet on the street might not have heard of these shows, but they get a rabid following. The people who like them really, really love them and I think again, it’s a case of being left alone to do what you think is funny, and that’s definitely what these shows are doing. There’s nothing watered down about them, and I think it’s great that Adult Swim let’s them do it.
The Big Five:
What are you listening to?
It’s funny, I still listen to a lot of my favorite bands, like The Replacements.
In terms of new music, Wild Flag, Carry Brownstein’s new band. I always loved Sleater Kinney and I’ve been amazed at how funny shes been on Portlandia…wait a minute, she’s hilarious and a great comedian too? I also love the Hold Steady. A lot of times I’ll get introduced to bands when they play the show. St. Vincent played the show, and I knew of her, because Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein are in her video… I’ll get introduced to music through comedy and comedy through music.
It’s funny, because a lot of times, these really big musicians will turn out to be the biggest comedy Nerds. Conan said when he went to shoot a White Stripes video, he wanted to talk about the blues and old guitars and Jack White just wanted to talk about “The Simpsons”…” but yeah, yeah, in the monorial episode…”, and that just cracks me up.
Watching?
I often find myself, maybe because I work in comedy… I’m often times drawn to dramatic shows, maybe as a release, or an escape, or something, “Breaking Bad” may be my favorite show on television right now, as far as dramas are concerned. I love “Saturday Night Live”, and I always have since I was a kid, and I think it’s really strong these days… they’ve got some great writers and they’re doing some great stuff.
Reading?
I recently read Keith Richards’ autobiography, which is fantastic. It’s so great. It’s written so in his voice, like he’s just sitting at a bar stool telling you these stories… he’s so much smarter than people really give him credit for. Another great book is “Waiting for The Sun”, which is the rock and roll history of Los Angeles, the history of bands in LA.
Another thing I was reading over the weekend were some of Woody Allen’s old books, like “Without Feathers”, “Getting Even”, and “Side Effects”… one of the few books that had me laughing until I was crying, like, on trains. His ability to create an image… I was reminded of one of my all time favorite jokes by anybody… it’s in “Without Feathers”, when he’s describing a mythical beast called The Great Roe… it’s a creature with the head of a lion, and the body of a lion… but not the same lion. It’s such a weird joke, and you can’t even really process it.
Drinking?
When I’m at IO, I’ll usually have a Sierra Nevada. If I’m just hanging out at home or with friends, just some red wine like Yellow Tail… nothing fancy. Maybe because I’m getting older, I can’t handle hard alcohol anymore. When I was in the improv world back in Chicago, it was very beer soaked, and I was very beer soaked, and I still am, but beer was about as hard as I got.
Excited about?
I’m excited about doing a week of shows in Chicago in June. I’m really looking forward to that. When we brought late night to Chicago several years back, that was by far my favorite road week that we had ever done. It was so nice, because you know, Chicago is home for me. To come home, when the weather is nice, and we’re going to be at the Chicago Theater again, which is such a beautiful place… so I’m very excited for that week of shows.
And I’m excited and freaked out that my oldest daughter is turning fourteen next month, which is crazy to me… just boggles my mind. And I’m also really excited about that little part I did on Eagleheart, just because I think that show is so funny. I think the next season of that show starts airing in April.
But yeah, that week in Chicago should be really fun. Our recent week in New York was really fun, and a little bittersweet going back, because I miss it a lot. The vibe was really good, and the fan support was really great. By the way, when we shot the thing with The Masturbating Bear living a suburban existence, he’s actually coming out of my actual house, which is so funny, to think The Masturbating Bear came walking out my house in a suit.
Thanks so much, Brian!
Follow all of Brian’s latest work @ Team Coco here.
January 27, 2012
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