Interview with Leno reveals an ordinary man behind the laughs

"So I heard today on the news ..."

With these words, Jay Leno begins his monologue, full of the most interesting news and biting interpretations of that news, on "The Tonight Show" every night. In the nearly seven years that he has been host of "The Tonight Show," Leno has greeted thousands of celebrity guests and told tens of thousands of jokes. His show is a popular late-night study break for many students flipping through the talk-show choices.

In a recent interview, Leno discussed his career and his tricks to keep the humor fresh and engaging for his audience.

Finding material for his show, Leno said, is not usually as difficult as it may seem. "You just have the TV on and you look for things," he said. "You know, the real trick ... obviously, material for the monologue is different than material for the

Courtesy of NBC Entertainer Jay Leno is just an everyday guy - or at least that's what he would have all of us believe.

rest. When you do a show like 'The Tonight Show,' you see, the trick is not to know everything.

"People say to me, 'You must read up on everything.' Well, to a certain extent you do, but the trick is not to know more than everybody else," he said. "It's to know exactly what everybody else knows. I mean if you have CNN on, if you have USA Today or if you have The New York Times, and they all have the same story as the headline, well, chances are most Americans know what you're talking about, you know what I'm saying? You just try to familiarize yourself with what the big issues are."

Of course, finding humor in the big issues is not always easy, although Leno claims that funny material can be found everywhere when people know how to look at things. Some situations lend themselves easily to jokes, and some jokes are always popular, he said.

"Let me tell you what people like," Leno said. "People like sex, people like money, people like power. So any time you have an O.J., when you have a Monica Lewinsky or any other situation that combines all three - Ah, you have a million jokes! People don't know anything about social security, nor do they really know anything about Serbia or Kosovo. But they know sex and they know money and they know power. So you try to cover a lot of subjects. But you always have one or two subjects which are sort of your big ones."

Those big subjects may not change much over time, but there's always a new story giving a new spin to them, he said. The trick for the comedian and his staff is to pick out the funny stories and to see the humor in events they see during the day. That task is not always very difficult.

"You see something and say, 'Hey, that's funny!' every day," said Leno. "I mean, I just saw a thing on the news about Susan Sarandon working with dolphins, and a male dolphin tried to have sex with her. Well, I'm going to try and come up with a bit about that for tonight, so we'll see what we come up with. We're knocking some ideas around here, and we'll see what happens. So I'm sure we can come up with some variation of that. I mean it's a silly story, it's a real story, I think there's probably something funny there."

The humor of dolphins' sex lives will probably endure over time. But some jokes do get old, and Leno's job becomes more of a challenge when the news stays the same over time - no matter how humorous or shocking the situation is at the beginning.

"Take the Monica Lewinsky situation," Leno said. "Sometimes the news doesn't change for months. It's the same story and there are only so many variations of a joke that you can do. But you've got to do a show every single day. You need about 22 minutes of material every night for a monologue. So you try to find a new way to cover the story, or come at it from a different angle. But yeah, I mean a lot of times you go, 'Guys, we can't have any more oral sex jokes! There are just no more we can do. I mean, you know, enough!' So yeah, that does happen."

Obviously, a career as a talk show host has many perks. Leno feels particularly strong about the monologue, however, as his way to connect to the audience - an important factor when it comes to the success or failure of a talk show.

"I like doing the monologue, that's kind of my favorite part," Leno said. "Because the one thing about doing a show like this - people have to have a reason to turn it on. And I don't think anyone's insane enough to think they're turning it on to watch them. They're turning it on to hear what 'The Tonight Show' has to say about a particular subject.

"You know, when you sort of trace the history of these talk shows, and why they're successful and why they're not, the ones that aren't successful are usually traced to the first few minutes of the show," he continued. "Because if people come out and they don't present something fresh or something funny or something different, boom, you know. I mean, when I would watch the old shows, and the host would come out, and about two minutes into the show they'd say, 'Hey, band leader or whatever, how are you doing? Hey, can you give me some good music, hey, can you play this for me?' and then they disappeared. You know, if people watch a story on the news, when they check into 'The Tonight Show' they want to hear about the news they just saw. 'Hey, look, Monica Lewinsky said she had oral sex with the president, oh look, let's turn on 'The Tonight Show!'' And then you try and have a funny joke for them."

Leno gives his staff of writers their rightful credit for the part they play in the development of his show. A group of comedians helps research and write all of the material every night - even his monologue.

"Everybody works on it," Leno said. "I mean, it's pretty much a group effort ... all comedians have writers, even when they say they don't. I mean, you do, you can't, nobody can do it by themselves. When I go on the road by myself and I do my act I do all my own jokes, sure. But doing it every single day, you can't! Well, maybe some people can, but I can't. No, we all, everybody pitches in. Obviously, I'm the final arbitrator."

04-15-99