Conan O'Brien: Encyclopedia II - Conan O'Brien - Biography

Conan O'Brien - Biography

Conan O'Brien - Early life

Conan Christopher O’Brien was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He is the third of six children in an Irish American family, one of four boys. His father, Dr. Thomas O’Brien, was a research physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, specializing in infectious disease. His mother, Ruth Reardon O’Brien, is a former partner of the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray ^[1]. His sister Jane is a comedy writer and producer.

After graduating as the valedictorian from Brookline High School (Brookline, Massachusetts), O’Brien entered Harvard University. Throughout his college career, he was a writer for the Harvard Lampoon humor magazine. During his sophomore and junior years, O’Brien served as the Lampoon's president, making him only the second person ever to serve as president twice, and the first person to have done it in 85 years. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1985 with a concentration in American History and Literature.

Conan O'Brien - Television career

O’Brien moved to Los Angeles upon graduating from Harvard to join the writing staff of HBO's Not Necessarily the News. He spent two years with that show, and performed regularly with improvisational groups like The Groundlings. He also acted in corporate infomercials to earn money during this period.

After Not Necessarily the News, O’Brien worked as the warm-up comic for The Wilton North Report, a Fox show that was on the air for just four weeks. O’Brien then moved on to the Happy Happy Good Show, a stage show being put on in Chicago, Illinois at the time.

In January 1988 Saturday Night Live's executive producer Lorne Michaels hired O’Brien as a writer. During his 3½ years on SNL he wrote such recurring sketches as "Mr. Short-Term Memory" and "The Girl Watchers", the latter of which was first performed by Tom Hanks and Jon Lovitz. O’Brien also wrote the sketch "Nude Beach", which became infamous due to the fact that the word penis appeared in it no fewer than 42 times, much of it in the form of song ^[2]. He also appeared as an extra in some skits, occasionally with a speaking role. In 1989, he and the other SNL writers were awarded an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy or Variety Series.

In the spring of 1991, O’Brien left SNL to write and produce a pilot for the television show Lookwell, starring Adam West. It was broadcast on NBC in July but was not picked up as a series. That fall, O’Brien signed on as a writer and producer for the Fox series The Simpsons, where he also became a supervising producer. In a speech he gave at Harvard on Class Day in 2000, O’Brien credited The Simpsons with "saving" him, a reference to the career slump he was experiencing prior to his hiring for that show ^[3]. During his time as a writer for The Simpsons, he created the character of Captain Horatio McCallister (the Sea Captain). Of the episodes he wrote while there, he considers "Marge vs. the Monorail" to be his favorite.

Conan O'Brien - Late Night

On April 26, 1993, Lorne Michaels chose O’Brien to be David Letterman's replacement as host of Late Night with David Letterman (with Andy Richter as his sidekick), and the show's name was changed to Late Night with Conan O’Brien. It received generally unfavorable critical reviews for the first 2-3 years after its debut. Indeed, the show was reportedly cancelled by network executives, but was allowed to remain on a week-to-week basis when it was realized there was no programming available to replace it.

Since then, however, O’Brien and the Late Night writing team have consistently been nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Writing in a Comedy or Variety Series, though they have not won as of 2006. In 1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2004 he and the Late Night writing staff won the Writers Guild Award for Best Writing in a Comedy/Variety Series.

In 2001 he formed his own production company, Conaco, which has subsequently shared in the production credits for Late Night.

In the 2003-04 television season, Late Night with Conan O’Brien averaged 2.5 million viewers each week, easily beating out every other show in its time slot.

On September 27, 2004, NBC announced the planned 2009 retirement of Tonight Show host Jay Leno. O’Brien was named Leno's successor ^[4].

In 2005, O'Brien appeared in The White Stripes' music video, "The Denial Twist". The band had previously been a week long musical guest on Late Night when they were promoting their 2003 album, Elephant.

Conan O'Brien is also notably lampooned on the comedic site Conan vs. bear, an on-going gag in which artists create depictions of him fighting or competing with bears in various ways.

Conan O'Brien - Guest appearances

O'Brien has appeared as a guest on many shows. He has appeared on equally surreal (and late) talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Episode 77: Fire Ant, in which he and Space Ghost argue between themselves about a number of things, including whether or not anyone actually watches SGC2C. Space Ghost later quips "Well that's very stupid, and you won't make it in television," an obvious parody of early reviews of O'Brien's show. After a while, Space Ghost ignores the interview entirely to follow a fire ant that bit him (for about 11 straight minutes). As Space Ghost is crawling out of the studio, O'Brien gripes that "For all these people know, my show is...a...cop...show...on Fox...or something," to which Space Ghost replies "...Isn't it?"

Conan O'Brien - Marriage and children

On January 12, 2002, O’Brien married (former) advertising copywriter Liza Powel in her hometown of Seattle, Washington, in a nuptial Mass at St. James Cathedral. They have one daughter, Neve, born on October 14, 2003 in New York City and a son, Beckett, born November 9, 2005 in New York City [5] [6]^[7].

O’Brien is a distant cousin of Denis Leary through marriage.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Biography", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki