Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Alan Yang

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

Writer/director/producer Alan Yang feels like he’s weirdly fulfilling a childhood dream-thing about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Alan sits down with Conan to discuss writing for the full span of Parks and Recreation, growing up the son of Taiwanese immigrants, and unexpectedly introducing certain catchphrases into the popular lexicon. Later, Conan peers into the inner mechanisms of TikTok fame as achieved by his assistant David Hopping. Check out Alan's new podcast Parks and Recollection here. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone].For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.

Hi, my name is Alan Yang, and I feel like I'm weirdly fulfilling a childhood dream thing about being Conan Brine's friend. That's how I feel right now. This was something that was prophesized. You met an old man on a bridge and he said, one day. It was a troll. It was underneath the bridge. Hey there, I'm Conan O'Brien, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.

We have a terrific episode for you today. And as always, I'm joined by Matt Gorley, our Fearless producer. Hey, Matt. Hi, boss. That's nice of you to call me boss to show, to acknowledge my alpha status. Well, you get one of those a year. As opposed to the hey shit head. You get 50 of those a year.

I get 50 of those a year. And of course, filling in for Sona, who's off-minding. She calls them the two little gentlemen. Those are Mikey and Charlie, her twins. She says, they're my little gentlemen, which is a very nice way to describe two infants that are just shrieking and pooping all over the place. That's all they're doing. Speaking of shrieking and pooping, here is, well, I'm sorry, you do both.

Okay. David Hopping. Hi. You're doing a great job, David. Oh, thank you. Yeah, you really do. Just as we were starting, I was about to tell the group that I saw this great documentary last night on the painter who used to be on PBS and he would paint portraits.

I don't know. You're a very young fellow, David. I don't know if you're aware of him. Bob Ross. Yeah. Do you know what I'm talking about? I do. Yeah.

Did you see this documentary, Matt? Yes, I sure did. I'm a huge fan of Bob Ross, not only as an artist, but just like someone to put on in the background when I need to like calm anxieties, just like, yeah, he's incredible. It's a really great documentary about Bob Ross. I never knew the whole story, but it's all about where he came from, how this guy came to be just painting landscape portraits on television and how it went on for years and years and years and he just became incredibly successful.

But of course, the part of the documentary that's tragic is how he was exploited by these people around him and this husband and wife team exploited him and got his name and likeness and they got the rights to all of it and they really screwed him over and screwed over his family. It was just a very powerful documentary and it just got me thinking, what if this happens to me? Oh. Because I was watching it and you know how you have this tendency, Matt, whenever I

look at anything, I immediately make it about me. Yeah, I do know that. Yeah. That's sort of, that's called pulling a conan. So I'm watching this and I'm watching this really sweet just font of creativity and talent. That's where your theory falls apart though, I think. Excuse me. What?

Sorry. I'm not done yet. I'm going to start with your zings and your barbs and your har-hars, okay? I saw Bob Ross was well known as being just this incredibly talented guy and just a magnetic, you know, once in a century talent and he's on television and people love him and he's very sweet and all he cares about is the work. Sound familiar, Matt? All he cares about is making a good podcast or a good late night show.

I'm sorry. I forgot. I'm not talking about Bob now, but all he cares about is putting out quality and connecting with people and being real and spreading his infectious joy and connecting people to his God-given talent and bringing their people of Earth closer together, but then these people come along and say, hey, we could monetize this, you know. Who are you getting at? Well, I'm just saying it's something I worry about, but you know, our podcast guru, Adam

Sacks, I don't even know if he's here. Is he here? Is he here at all? I'm always here. Oh my God! For God's sake, announce yourself if you're here. He's right behind me. Oh my God!

He's in the apartment with you. He's calling from inside the podcast. Adam, I'm just going to ask you right off, have you been secretly conspiring to get full rights to my face, likeness, and vocal characteristics? Yes or no? No. No, no. Absolutely not.

Spoken like someone who was doing exactly that. Like two weeks ago, it was very late at night and Adam showed up at my house and he said, quick, sign these papers. Now Adam knows I start drinking at around 7 p.m. That's true. You start drinking and wielding an ink pen around in the air. Yeah. Well, it's one of my affectations when I've been drinking a lot is I get a Mont Blanc

pen and I wave it around and I say, I'll sign anything. Sign anything I will. Ding dong. It's 11 o'clock at night. My wife says, who could that be? I open the door and it's Adam with all these papers and I didn't see much. I saw a name, likeness, ownership for all of eternity, something like that. And then I just start signing stuff and I said, what is this stuff, Adam?

And Adam said, don't you worry, don't you worry, sleep, sleep. So I did. I went to sleep. So anyway, then I see the Bob Ross documentary and I start to worry. Now Adam, I don't know what's going on, but I just beg you, please, if you're conspiring to destroy me, because I'm up there. I'm not conspiring. I think it's my job to protect you.

That's what I'm doing is protecting you. Oh, man, oh, man. That's what the people say. That's the talent. Like a godfather protects small businesses. Oh, Adam ever says to me is, don't you worry, I'll protect you and I'll say, well, just tell me what's going on. He goes, sleep.

Sleep. And a lot of the time it's like when he's saying that to me, it's one o'clock in the afternoon and we're standing in a brightly lit parking lot in Los Angeles and I'm like, sleep. And he just goes, sleep. Is he petting you? You know, he has this. It's weird.

He takes out what I thought at first was a watch fob, but it's just a little medallion and he swings it like a pendulum in front of me and he says, sleep. And I always wake up like three hours later. So wherever you are. And there's ink all over my hands, because I guess I've been signing like crazy. Just sign with you. Yeah. I can't wait for this documentary.

I want to pitch this as a documentary of a, and a documentary that will just infuriate people because it'll be presenting me as in this way that people don't see me. Adam, why don't you make it? You have his rights. And you're loaded now. This will be my first project. Yeah. This will be my first project is the destruction of Conan O'Brien, a beloved national treasure.

Immediately reviewers like, what the fuck? It goes straight to some unknown streaming service. Yeah. Sell it to a streaming service that may not even exist. CISO. Coming soon on CISO, the destruction of Conan O'Brien. Wait. So how will you ever know if Adam has given up or cease control of your name and likeness?

You know what? I would go by sitcom logic. If you watch any sitcom from the 60s or 70s, the minute a character comes into money, any money, that character immediately enters the set wearing the same thing every time, which is a yachting cap and a blue blazer. That was the 1960s. And they always say things like, well, I know such and such a character just came into a lot of money, but he saw it as a rock.

It won't change him. And just then they go, hello, it's yachting cap and blue blazer. So I'm always looking. And that goes for all the way through all the sitcoms in the 70s and 80s. Yachting cap, blue blazer, that's when you know people have come into a fortune. So I've got my eyes peeled. I don't have an accountant. I don't do any forensics on the books here at Team Coco.

I just look for any employee who's wearing a yachting cap and a blue blazer and suddenly talking in a very cocky accent like Thurston Hell the Third. That's how well know. All right. Well, I'm very excited. My guest today is an Emmy Award winning writer, director and producer who has worked on such shows as Parks and Recreation, The Good Place and Master of None. Now he's hosting a new podcast with Rob Lowe right here on the Team Coco podcast network.

It's called Parks and Recollection. And it is the definitive Parks and Recreation rewatch podcast. It premieres tomorrow, September 14th, and the trailer is already up, so check it out and subscribe now so you don't miss the premiere episode. I am very excited to talk to this gentleman today. He is very talented. Alan Yang, welcome. You were interested in comedy at a very early age, right?

Yeah. It's a thing where, again, this is just, we were talking about David Letterman earlier. For me, you were like Letterman because I didn't watch Letterman. So I just, that was comedy. It was, to me, it was The Simpsons, S&L, Seinfeld, and Kona was late night to me. So this is a weird thing for me. Well, that's very cool of you to say. And we're just going to put that on the loop if you don't mind.

We're just going to put that over and over and over again. Truly, it's more a function of my age. It's not like I like you better than Letterman. I just didn't want to. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. You just weren't alive when Dave was hitting it out of the park.

That's all. I'll start, first of all, by congratulating you on the podcast you're doing with Mr. Rob Lowe. And it's called Parks and Recollection. This is a show that I'm very excited about, yes, full disclosure. It's part of our Team Coco Empire, if you will. But you guys talking about that show, which I really admire, which you wrote on. And so you have all this access to how it was put together, as does Rob from a different

angle. Sounds like a very cool project. Yeah. And you producing has nothing to do with me being here. Zero. Oh, not at all. Just zero. I had, you know what?

Let me tell you something, Alan. I'm at a point in my career where I don't even know what I'm involved in anymore. It's an empire. It's an empire. It's not a land you, you know, it really is. It really is. And so there are times where people remind me, hey, Conan, you have a big part of ExxonMobil. Like you're a major stockholder.

And I'm like, oh, I didn't know. And that's when you encourage them to just forget safety precautions, send the boats out there, no matter what the weather conditions are, just, hey, they're getting paid. The last time I checked, they were getting money. And I say, if there's rough seas in the North Atlantic, get out there and get the oil. That's what I say to them. Who cares where the icebergs are? No, but the podcast, no, the podcast has been really fun.

We just started recording it. And at first, to be honest, I was like, I don't know if I want to watch all these episodes again. It's a lot of time. Let's bring people up to date. You, you worked for, were you there the entire time at Parks and Rec? I was there for 125 episodes. As far as writers go, Mike, you're the co-creator and me, I think we're the only ones who were

there the whole time. Right. Yeah, so. And so you were there at that show. And I remembered, I'm obviously very good friends with Greg Daniels, who, who was responsible for bringing the office to the United States. And then of course, you know, had a hand in, in getting Parks and Rec going. And so I was very familiar with both shows.

And I remember the office had kind of a slow start initially and then took off Parks and Rec. It didn't happen right away for Parks and Rec. It's still taking off now. It's 2021. I think, you know, it, it was though, season one, it was, it was definitely almost an identical trajectory to the office. And I think for similar reasons, because if you look at the office, what Greg did with

the office, again, a brilliant show, he's adapting it from a British one. And so the first season is a little bit closer to the British one. And then the second season kind of sprouts its wings and, and flies on its own and becomes its own thing. And Parks and Rec started as was conceived at first was maybe going to be an office spin off. And then it wasn't. And so that first season, I think Mike and Greg were still trying to work out kinks and

trying to be, okay, how different from the office tonally, et cetera. And then second season, it really starts taking off. And part of that was taking on Amy Poehler's personality as well and, and making use of her. And a really good TV show, in my opinion, is not a finite thing. It's an organism. The shows I've always really loved, if you look at the Simpsons, for example, you can look at the first season and Dan Castellaneta does not have Homer's voice yet.

His way into Homer was he sort of thought of his voice as being a Walter Mathow kind of voice. And you can listen to that first year of the Simpsons. And it's a lot of boy. Yeah, it's a lot of boy. Boy, get here a boy. Now listen to me and then it, it changes and then they find it. And I think shows like a lot of things and probably like a restaurant or, you know, so

many endeavors, you need to figure it out. You need to, you find it by doing it. And I think people sometimes misunderstand and think it's a widget. It's something that's manufactured and you're cranking them out and you do 22. And then the next 22, the only way you really know what your show is, is by doing it. My late night shows were constantly changing and morphing and often sometimes not by design. It was just sheer desperation. We don't have anything today.

I know let's what if a bear masturbated and then suddenly you're off on that and you've hit what many call a renaissance of television, television in general, just as far as masturbation humor goes, I think are quite fairly a renaissance, but, but yeah, it's, it's, it's fascinating to me that these things and evolve and it's, it was not all assigned on day one. It's fascinating. It's exactly what you said, which is, and you lived on the long end of this, right? You're doing a daily show, a show. You can really react to what the audience is thinking, you know, how they're reacting,

what you're like as a host, what Andy's doing, whatever, all of that stuff. You can react. It's a read and react type thing. And so with a show like parks, they don't make that shows that run that long anymore. So you know, we, we went on to do master of none. It's been six years. We've done 25 episodes of master, you know, it's like, it's so crazy. Aziz, Aziz is now, I tuned in the other day, he's 65 years old and he's on his third hip.

Yeah. Yes. That kind of television where you're just cranking it out every day and going through massive arcs, sort of creative arcs over three month periods. Yeah. And, and, you know, people saw it or they didn't. There was no checking it out later on online. Now when you go back and watch it, and for a lot of people for the first time, they say,

wait a minute, there's something going on here. And I think that's what's happened with Parks and Rec is that it's enjoyed a renaissance. I'm friends with Nick Offerman and he said the same thing. Like this is, this is fascinating that people are finding the show now. And we, it's been, what has it been, 10 years since you guys made one? Yeah. And it's a fun as hell rewatch. That's what I'm realizing while rewatching it.

It's almost perfectly designed for right now, 2020, 2021, the darkest time in a long time where everyone's indoors. You're looking for something warm, something heartfelt, something comforting. It's a great rewatch. I sound like an NBC executive right now, but literally like while watching it, it's- Yeah. I was going into night terrors. Yeah.

Yeah. Just- Something. I smell sulfur in the room. There are people like Nick Offerman, as good as he is, there's going to be part of him that's always Ron Swanson because the show was so written towards him. Yes. I knew Nick before he did Parks and Rec and I had once gone on a bicycle ride with Nick.

And his chain exploded while we were riding and this was in Seattle, long story, but I didn't even know him. He wasn't a famous actor. He was still a couple of years away from doing Parks and Rec and he went and he found a stone and said, well, hang on now, I have to rebuild this chain using a stone. And I watched him forge a new chain using stones. Come on. I'm not kidding.

And he fixed the chaining and he went, well, there you go, off we are now. There you go. And with his mustache and I thought, this is unbelievable, what an unbelievable character. It's like if Theodore Roosevelt came back to life because he's so self-reliant, so self-sufficient. And then you guys wrote to him, which is fantastic. The bike is faster now. It's better than it was before. I just made it into an electric bike.

I found some carbon and I was able to make a crude but effective battery. It also purifies water as we go. Yes. Some fresh water made from my urine, but now free of all nitrogen. But I was actually going to mention something very similar, which is you go back and re-watch that show and you see Nick Offerman as Ron Swanson, you see Amy Poehler, you see Aziz, you see Aubrey Plaza, you see Chris Pratt, you see Rashida, you see Rob Lowe, you see Adam Scott.

I think every one of those actors has gone on to lead their own show or starred movies or both. Yes. And that is extraordinary. It's extraordinary. It's a fantastic cast. What cracks me up is, of course, Rob Lowe. I know you're doing this podcast with Rob Lowe and I always have, Mike, I'm very different

from Rob Lowe. How so? Well, let me explain. I have what you'd call a normal person's bone structure and face. It's rotting as I age. I have things about me that don't look so good, you know, beady eyes, thin lips, a massive prominent eye vein, a pallid complexion. And then there's Rob Lowe and it's hilarious.

He's been the most handsome man in the world forever. And I remember talking to him once and I made some sort of off hinder of mark about, I just imagine you, Rob, reaching into your pocket and being able to pull out a small vial of creams and oils that you rub into your skin constantly. And he looked at me with that great Rob Lowe deadpan, reached into his pocket and pulled out a vial of creams and squeezed them out and then applied them under his eyes. And he went, it's actually my own brand. You might like to check it out, Conan.

And of course, it wouldn't work on me. My head would just catch fire, but Rob Lowe is not like you or I. He is a different species altogether. He exists outside of time and space. I was doing a photo shoot yesterday for this podcast and his photos were done. I was like, I'm a little younger than Rob and I'm like, God damn it, like why does he look better? There's no way you're ever going to look like that.

There's just no way. So, you know, you accept it, you're like, this is a movie star. There's a guy who looks like a movie star. God bless. But also, you know, in terms of the pod and like knowing him as a guy, it's very, it's just interesting. Similar to just even talking to you where, you know, Rob Lowe was in movies, right? When I was a kid and you don't ever expect to meet someone like that.

But he is so funny on the podcast because he's genuinely excited and enthusiastic, much like his character in the show is about everything. And by the way, he's not in a lot of the episodes to start and then he starts joining the show in season two. So, it's his commentary when he's not in the episode, this could sure use some Rob Lowe. He's like, you know what, there's a lot of handsome guys in the show, could use a little more, could use a little bit more.

You know what this show is missing? Rob Lowe. Because you worked pretty closely with Rob, obviously. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think he says he remembers the first time he came to set, Mike assigned me to take him around and like give him a tour of the set. And I think he kind of took a liking to me and like we exchanged info and he would call me sometimes.

So, yeah, you know. What if he mistook you for his, he just thought like, well, I guess you're my personal assistant. Well, here we go. You got to drive me to work and say, he's like, why isn't Alan outside my house at Santa Barbara to drive me to work? Alan, could you carry me to the men's room, please? I don't like walking there myself. But it's interesting because I don't know if this is true, but I've heard that Rob's

character, Chris Traeger, was somewhat based on how people perceived you. Is that true? I would say there are very sort of bits and pieces because I would say I would credit a lot of it to Mike Shore who came in and was like, what if he's like kind of a health nut and you know, very positive and all this stuff. But certainly I did a few things in the room that I think were probably fairly annoying to people, but I was always a pretty upbeat person, but I had an office that adjoined the writer's room, which is like a big area with couches where people sit around, pitch ideas

for the show. And I'm a very active person. I like to walk around, I like to walk in circles. I just need to burn off energy. I put up a pull-up bar in my office door. And again, I retroactively apologize to the people in the room. Why don't you just put up a sign that says, don't like me? But I would do pull-ups all day on the pull-up bar.

Oh my God. Which is really like, I know it's annoying. But by the way, I continue. Shirtless? Well, then, well, at a certain point, you know, so we kind of put that in the show as something that Rob Lowe's character did. And then at a certain point, Chris Pratt was training to do, you know, Zero Dark 30 and Jurassic World and Guardians and all this stuff.

And then he would come in and sometimes you pull-ups on it. So we had, again, this is kind of antithetical, I think, to a lot of writer's rooms where it's like, how much can I lie down and how many snacks can I eat? This goes against, I mean, every writer's room, I think things have probably changed. I know they've changed, but in my era, and which encompasses almost three decades, or over three decades, actually, it was always fried food, writers not moving or moving as little as possible. And then every five or six years, one of the writers would get their cholesterol checked

and go through a health phase for a month and then go right back to the fried food. I never did pull-ups. You need muscles in your upper body technically to do a pull-up. That's what's always discouraged me from doing it. This is the worst superhero origin story ever, is like a meaningless superhero. So when I was a kid, I couldn't do any pull-ups. My upper body might be hard for you, but it was very weak, it was very skinny. I was like 50 pounds, I was like four foot nothing.

I think just to become normal, I had to try to start lifting weights and working out a little bit. Again, Conan's looking at it right now. I am not a big man. I'm probably 140 pounds. But what I got- You fainted three times just walking to the podcast studio. Yeah.

We had to bring you around with smelling salts. I'm pretty slight, but no, I got the pull-up bar. I literally like, you know, it's like, okay, now I want to work my way up, so I do a hundred a day. That's good. That's fantastic. You know, I went from zero. You ever do, remember what Robert De Niro did in Cape Fear when he's upside down and

he's doing these crunches hanging upside down from a rod or early? He suspended in his apartment alone and he has all these crazy tattoos. I do that and I do all of the attempted murdering. So I do. Which burns a lot of calories. Yeah. You know, attempted murder burns more calories than murder. Yeah, it's the running around.

It's the missing. It's a lot of swinging and missing. That really gets you shredded, man. Failing to kill someone burns 1,500 more calories and actually killing them. Hiding under people's cars, like sneaking under their boats, that's my next workout. That's my next thing, man. He clung to a car that drove like 800 miles to the bottom of a car. You're holding on tight, man.

Yeah. Yeah. Isometric. It's a movie and it's a fantastic movie, Cape Fear, starting with the Robert De Niro Scorsese version, but whenever he climbs underneath the car and just decides to hang on to it for 800 miles, you know, Nick Nolte's driving over those things that prevent you from backing up out of a parking lot without paying. He's just getting shredded.

You could splice in little clips of him driving over increasingly high slash sharp things. I think we did. Oh, it's so funny. No, when I was at the Simpsons, we did a Cape Fear parody. Yeah, Sideshow Bob. Yeah, and Sideshow Bob clung underneath a car and I don't remember and I'm sure people right now are being like, are you totally, of course this would happen, but I remember, I think the family did probably drive over shit.

Yeah. So you're not, I'm not thinking of it. Yeah, I just, I plagiarized an episode that I worked on and there you go. Time to hang it up. It's time to hang it up. Trust me, it was time for me to hang it up in 2006. But you'll see in show business, the joy is to keep hanging around long after no one wants you.

That's the part I love. Yeah, the Grim Aftermath. There you go. We should call this the Grim Aftermath with Conan O'Brien. Your next pot. Yep, I'm still here with Conan O'Brien. You've accomplished a great deal at a very young age. We have the same alma mater.

We both went to Harvard College. I graduated at 22, like a normal person. You majored in biology, wrote comedy for the lampoon, and graduated at 19. How does one do that? I think I had turned 20. So, you know, look, I may have turned 20, but... I think your bio says 19. So someone's...

Someone's fudging on my behalf and it wasn't me, but yeah, I went to college young and... How does one go to college young? Did you, were you moved up a grade early on because you were... I actually skipped senior year of high school. So it was probably... I don't know why I did this. So I went to... I grew up in Riverside, California, and I went to a bunch of massive public schools.

They weren't like the best academic schools in the world. You know, my high school is probably, you know, 2,500 kids or something. Very, very diverse. Yeah, socioeconomically. That's 2,500 kids in one classroom. In one... In English one. English 101.

It's a big auditorium. Everyone has headphones. It would just throw ground beef. Yeah. Into the aisles to feed everyone. Yeah, exactly. It's like you basically got a better education if you sat towards the front because you could hear the teacher.

Yeah. But no, it was... So near the end of my high school, my counselor was just like, you're running out of classes. Like you don't have math and science classes to take. So they're like, one option is you could apply to college and just take your tests and stuff. So I was really torn because I liked high school and I would miss my friends and stuff, but I figured, you know, do I stay one more year and just take English and five electives or do I apply to college and just see what happens?

No, you were like someone who got drafted earlier in high school and decided it's time to go pro. It's basically me, Kevin Garnett, LeBron James, Colby. Yeah, yeah. Got it. Got it. Your name is always listed with them, by the way. It's the same kind of guy.

But when they talk about comedy writing, that's the weird part. But I was scared. So I applied to these colleges and I ended up getting to Harvard and I was terrified. I was like, these kids went to good schools, they went to private schools, and I got there and my fears were kind of upheld because I'm like, yeah, a lot of these kids know each other. They're like, they like know each other and they're like, do it all. They all went to prep schools together.

Yeah. So I was like, man, I'm a time when East kid from Riverside and I didn't know anyone there. So I kind of just put my head down and tried to work, right? So I was like trying to do biology, whatever, working in labs. And then I was like, I got good grades freshman year, I was like, damn, I did it. And then I was like, I'm miserable still. I don't want to do this for my life. What else can I do?

So that was when I started pursuing other creative stuff. I played in a punk rock band and we would tour around the Boston area and I tried to get on the lampoon. And then when I got on the lampoon, that really changed my life. So I want to explore this for a second. Your parents are from Taiwan, is that right? Yeah, they're immigrants. They're immigrants.

And so what were their lives like in Taiwan? What was your dad's life like in Taiwan? So my dad grew up in a really, really small town, almost like a village. It's called Huwe and the English translation is Tiger Tail and he grew up really poor. So he grew up, his mom had three kids and his dad passed away when he was one. And so everyone in the sort of village told her to give him up for adoption because it's like, you can't take care of three kids. She worked at a sugar factory.

So she made the bags that the sugar came in and she was stubborn. So she's like, I'm not giving up my youngest son, I'm keeping him. It turned out to be a good decision because my dad was a really bright kid. So he was really bright. He grew up and he helped her out in the factory a little bit, but he was really good at school. So in Taiwan, it's all test-based. So he took a test and at a certain point, he did really well in the test and he got to go to college.

And so he not only went to college, then he went to medical school. So this was all test-based in Taiwan. So he kind of helped out and took care of the family. He even ended up moving to America. He met my mom in Taiwan. So her family was a little better off, but still not crazy. So they moved to America and they moved to the Bronx. So they moved to like a tiny apartment in the Bronx and that's where my dad and my mom

had my sister. So all of this is chronicled in a movie that I directed called Tiger Tail, which is my dad's hometown. But it's just kind of a love letter to my family and Oma's just some Asian cinemas as well, some Wong Kar-Wai and Edward Yang and Hoshou Shen. And so, yeah, because I just remember very distinctly my dad telling me those stories and I would consider the fact that in one generation, he didn't have enough food to eat as a kid.

And then the next thing, you know, his son gets to create TV shows and host podcasts, which is absurd. His son gets to sit with Conan and talk about his life, which is totally absurd. Yeah, but what's- No, to be fair, your dad, even when he was very poor and young, he said one day my son is going to have a podcast. One day Team Coco and Stitcher are gonna come ringing at Alan's door. That's the dream of many immigrants is I want my child to have the podcast I couldn't have.

Well, this begs the question though, which does fascinate me. When immigrants come from great poverty and they come to this country and they have to figure it out and they have to make themselves and the struggle is so difficult and the stakes are so high and then their son is accepted to, you know, the oldest and one of the most prestigious colleges in the country and goes and is going to major in biology, what happens when you go to them and say, I've got a different idea now? I want to write comedic light situations for television. I want to be broken unemployed in Hollywood.

Yeah. Basically, I will give my parents credit for this. They hid their profound disappointment at the time when I told them. I mean, they, I told them and again, I was, again, like I said, you know, before I was younger and I think they were like, look, let him get this out of his system, right? Let him be hungry for a while and we'll see what happens. And, you know, my mom is really funny. My mom, you know, she's gone through her, her life arc is so interesting.

She, you know, she, my dad got divorced when I was like 15 or so and she, she was like, what do I do now? Like, what do I do? Like I, you know, I came to this country, like my English isn't the strongest, not fluent. And so she, she, she kind of put her head down and started learning. She went to, you know, junior college, she went to college and she ended up getting a teaching credential and, and she became a teacher. So she became like, like a high school teacher and, and, and started teaching math and her

thing with her students, she's a great teacher, but she recently retired, she's a great teacher, but she would say like, this country is so easy. You have no idea. She's like, she's like, my kid, don't even work that hard. They're all going to Harvard. Like they go to Harvard and she's like, that's your best college. That's the best you got. Like that's the best you have.

So they kind of had a sense of humor about it and they were like, I'm joking, but they are always so supportive and I think really in the back of their minds, cause I think they're at their core, very, very open minded people. I think they were like, why did we come this country? Except for the fact that our son would have the freedom to make a choice as stupid as this, right? It's like, make that choice and, and, and try. And I think they were, I think they're actually weirdly kind of, they didn't say anything

at the time because they, they, they would never say this in person, but they were, I think they were kind of weirdly proud that I was taking the chance. And so. I'm sure they are. Yeah. So well, you know, I go back to this idea because you're doing good work and, and sometimes I've encountered people that have said to me, really, you went to, you went to this really good school and, you know, why aren't you off curing cancer?

And I think, well, first of all, I didn't have that brain. So it's not that there was a cancer cure out there. I could have figured out and, and supplied it. And second of all, there are plenty of people that graduate from these highfalutin schools that go out and invent napalm and stuff. Or come up with. I like that counterfactual. Yeah, yeah.

It's like, I'm not taking Zinski. I'm not the unabomber. Yeah. I mean. You feel lucky, you know. Or I mean, you know, I didn't figure out, I didn't invent fracking. There, there are plenty of, and so, you know. That's the bar.

Super villain. Well, I'm sorry, but all the good supervillains went to Ivy League schools. They really, if you look it up. That's true. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Evil went to Brown.

Yeah. Right? It's like, that's not a coincidence. No, it's not a coincidence, by the way. So I always notice when people, they're not just flailing around saying, I wrote for these 35 terrible shows before I started writing for good shows, when people sort of have a sense of where they might fit in. So the Parks and Rec gig, was that, was that the first show where you felt like, yes, I

fit into this world? It was extraordinary to get that job, number one. And number two, it definitely felt like, wow, it's a great fit. I'm learning a lot. And I credit Mike and Greg, I mean, you know those guys really well. They really look at it as a place, a staff, a writing staff is a place where they can nurture younger writers and guide them and teach them. And that is where I learned so much.

And I talk about that, you know, with the Z's all the time, it's like, man, thank God, we got a show when we were 30, instead of 24 or whatever, and, and, and learned, and worked on 100 episodes of TV, you know, I, it's like, I started as a staff writer, which for those of you who don't know, that's like a first year writer, essentially. And, and, you know, by the end of the show, Mike let me run the room sometimes, I directed episodes, I helped edit, you know, all that stuff. And then you get to make your own show, you're not quite as lost, you're still lost because you don't know what it's like to, to be the actual boss, but you know that helps.

There are different kinds of show runners out there. I mean, it's one of the things I always loved about Sound Out Live is that Lauren would say, you're in charge of the sketch. I know you're 23 or 24 years old and you just got here and you know nothing, but you thought of the sketch. So you're, it's up to you to go talk to Wardrobe. It's up to you to talk to the set designers. It's up to you to watch the blocking of it.

It's up to you to check out the props. And I thought, this is insane. None of us know any, but it was your producer now. Yeah. That's what it is. You're in the water and say, you're either going to drown or you're going to swim. And I thought when you give someone a ton of responsibility and says it's yours to fuck up or be a hero, it's amazing how quickly you can grow if you're determined to make

it. And hopefully you're the right person, right? Cause like that's, that's, but by them giving you that confidence, it's, it's kind of self-perpetuating in some ways. I remember being on set at Parks and Rec and I was there, it was probably my second or third episode that I'd written and I was there with Dean Holland, who was an editor on the show, but then started directing. So it was his second episode and we didn't, there was some problem.

We didn't know what to solve. And we looked around. No one was, Mike wasn't there, Greg wasn't there, Morgan Sackett, the line producer wasn't there. We're like, this is it, man. You and me kind of figured this out. And we just do it. And the same thing happened on Masters.

Like, I mean, it's easy to look around. We're the, we're the dads. We're the mom and dad of the show, right? We're going to do it. So, so let me ask you about this cause you're working on Parks and Rec and then you gravitate obviously to Aziz and it's funny because you guys have, you have a similar energy to Aziz, you know? In some ways.

In some, no. Yeah. Yeah. But like you guys, there's a, there's a certain, I see it. I see how there's like a faux cockiness to this, to the sense of humor, which can be really enjoyable and fun and you gravitate towards Aziz and then you guys find your way into making Masters of None and that ends up being sort of this pitch perfect show. And I do think that show, you know, it was a good fit with Netflix too because Netflix

had, had three shows. It had a, when we pitched to Netflix, they had House of Cards, they had Orange is the New Black and they had that show Lily Hammer, which was about a gangster in Norway. Yeah. It was a Steve Van Zandt show. Yeah. So. That was the show I pitched.

Yeah. That was it. That was it. I mean, it was actually a pretty good hit rate, two out of three, like made it. I still consider that show a hit and the money's just pouring in. I mean, that's that's. Sixty-six dollars I made last year. Most of their market cap, right?

Ted Serrano still calls you about Lily Hammer. Can we get the Lily Hammer reboot? What about a gritty Lily Hammer reboot? What if it's a Norwegian gangster in New York City? I want to ask, who watched Lily Hammer? Did anyone? I never checked it out. I saw a scowling Steve Van Zandt, who I knew from the Sopranos and from the East Street

band scowling in a snow bank and it just said Lily Hammer and I never checked it out. You're going to get so many angry Lily Hammer fans. The Hammerheads are going to come after you. The Hammerheads are coming for you. They're going to come after you. No, but it was. Bring it on, I say. Bring it on.

Weirdly, we got lucky because we were talking about Master No and we were going to make the show. Netflix bought it. We were so excited. We're going to make the show. Then Parks and Rec got picked up for another season. So got picked up for its final season, essentially. And we were kind of bummed because we were like, oh, well, we were going to go do our

own show. Netflix was cool about it. They said, just, it's okay. You can put a pin in it. So we went and worked on Parks for a season. But during that whole time, we were just freaking out because we were like, oh my god, we have this show. And to be totally honest, the show we pitched to Netflix was completely different.

Right. It was, it was easy. It was like, you know, kind of more of a normal show and it was just like a comedy, a standard show, like maybe he's dating, whatever. And then we started panicking and we said, oh my god, we're going to get to make this show. Parks was ending, Parks was ending. But is this the show we want to make?

It's just a normal ass show. Like, could it be better? Like, and we really pushed ourselves. And that was when, you know, we took a trip to New York and we're walking around just racking our brains. Oh my god, we got pressure on us. We got to make this show. And we went back to our hotel room.

We were talking about the show and, you know, I kind of talked to my dad, who I alluded to earlier. He didn't even have no food to eat as a kid, like, you know, he had pets, he had pet chickens and he killed the chickens and ate them for dinner. And it made him really sad. And he's like, is that story really true? And I was like, yeah, man, like he lived in a hut, like the size of the corner of his room.

And he's like, forget everything we're talking about. Let's just make that show. I don't care about my life in New York City, eating at good restaurants. Like that's actually interesting. So that became the second episode of the show. And that really sort of broke open in terms of any episode could be about anything. You know, I'm curious about, because now with the Parks and Rec podcast, you're looking back at shows, and you're a very young guy, especially from, I mean, by any stretch of

the imagination, you're a young, very young man. But from my perspective, you know, you're fetus. I'm the oldest guy on the right as we're right now. No, I'm close to it. I'm close to it. You're a very charming and sharp fetus. And I think you're going places, fetus, but we've been through like six, I feel like six cultural revolutions just in the last five years.

Last three months. Yeah. And then you look at TV shows from 10, 15 years ago, and you must already be seeing things where you think, well, we wouldn't do that today. Yeah, man. In multiple episodes, Polar's character asks his ease if he's Libyan. He's like, no, I'm Indian. He's like, you can't do that.

He's like, I'm Indian from South Carolina. There's tons of stuff you would never do today. There's tons of stuff that like, but by the way, like I think some things to me fall in the category of like, yeah, I don't want to watch that anymore. Right? Like there's tons of stuff where it's like, I don't think I can watch that anymore. Parks for me, when I watch it, it's like, yeah, there's the odd joke every few episodes like, I don't think that would, that would fly in 2021.

But for the most part, it's like, you know, it's a pretty warm show. It's pretty diverse and like, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's hard. It's in the right, it's in the right place. And I'm not just saying that because I worked on it, but it, it, it is. You're saying it because you're doing a podcast now about it. I'm doing a, I'm doing a rewatch podcast. I'm sitting with team Coco's people talking about trying to monetize it again. No, no, it's basically, um, you know, it really is what you said, which is all, I mean, look

at, you look at airplane, you look at blazing saddles, you go even further back, you look at stuff like, are we not going to watch Billy Wilder? Are we not going to watch, you know, what, how we're far back you want to go it again. It's all context. There was a, there was a piece the other day in the New York times that really stunned me because the, um, I think the, the headline was in the art section was which classic, classical paintings or paintings from the Renaissance era should get a pass. Oh wow.

And I, and I said, I thought, what? Yeah. That's, I don't know that flipped me out, but to be fair, like most things, I didn't read it. So you, you read the subhead, you're like, you know what, it's worth bringing up with Alan though. No, I'll bring it up with Alan and, and look, maybe it goes on to say really brilliant things and I wasn't paying attention.

I just want people to know, I read the headlines of the New York times pieces, but who has time to read all that stuff? I guess the takeaway is Conan doesn't want you to look at Botticelli anymore. You can't look at it. I just don't. It's over. I just think it's offensive. It's over.

No birth of Venus. Done so. I just think it objectifies Venus. They just put this, close that shell up, close that shell up. You have the misfortune slash fortune of being the writer who wrote the iconic treat yourself episode of Parks and Rec. And I remember that episode and I remember it also, you know, feeling like, oh yeah, that's going to be a catchphrase.

And then it became a catchphrase. And it's a mixed blessing, probably not as much for you, but for Aziz walking around. Aziz and Retta, man, and again, when you say I wrote, I put in quotes because my name might be on that episode, but everyone pitches for every episode and I don't even know who came up with treat yourself like I credit, I attribute that to the room. So, but I will say it is wild to walk around like Trader Joe's and it says treat yourself. And then I'm sure Aziz and Retta, when they walk around and move through the world, they get it a lot.

Because it's like, was that not even, it wasn't a thing before the show, right? Like it wasn't really a thing. You're asking, you know, I don't even, I just read the headlines of the newspapers. So I... Yeah, the New York Times had a piece about it before... Until the New York Times has a headline about it that explains itself completely in the headline, I can't help you. No, but I do think that's, there's an interesting thing for there to become like a catchphrase

out of it. I talked about it with Rob a little bit where his character had literally, right? So like his character, people would say literally to him now, so it's like, okay, well that's his, it's a gift and a curse, right? It can be a burden on you. Hey, mine, I don't know when I said this, but when I walk around, people say, you suck. And I guess that was my catchphrase at one point. You gotta own it.

It's a legendary, it was, I know you mainly for you suck and masturbating bear, the legendary you suck. God, you suck! Shooverine, masturbating bear and you suck. Shooverine, those were good times. This was really fun. I admire you, I think you're a really nice, talented guy and I'm happy that you're out there making good stuff.

It just, it fills me with delight. So thanks for hanging with me and thanks for, you know, many of us don't want to sit next to Rob Lowe because we just look like those plastic turds that you could buy as a practical joke. Yeah. You're a good man. You're a good man. I'm taking the bullet for all those normal looking guys, man.

Let's get a two shot. Let's get Alan Yang and Rob Lowe in a two shot and see which way the camera goes. Actually you clean up pretty nice. Yeah. So I think you do all right. I'm all right. I'm all right. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Well, I just tricked you into complimenting yourself. You know, thank you so much for having me. You know, so we'll see. We'll see if we'll still remain friends. Well, last episode, David, you kind of, you're a youth with your finger on the pulse, right? And you helped us understand a little bit about what TikTok is.

Team Coco now has a TikTok, it's at Team Coco on TikTok and you're going to. And by the way, I'm going to be really honest with people listening. I didn't even know this. This is. I didn't either. This is how out of touch I am. In the end, they say Howard Hughes really didn't understand what was happening in his business because he was naked sitting in a reclining chair watching the same movie over

and over and over again and being attended to by Mormons and collecting urine. I'm at that stage. Yeah. I was naked right now. We should. I am naked. I have jars of urine around me. Mormons attend to me.

And I'm watching I station zebra again and again. I just watched that. I'm sure you did. And I'm a crazy germaphobe with really long fingernails. And that's the stage I'm at. And now I'm being told that I have at Team Coco, I have a TikTok account and that you say it's blowing up. Yeah, you're doing really well.

Okay. I mean, I'm not. No, they're not, you know it. No, no, please. Yeah. It's just stunning to me. And as I said in the last installment, I thought TikTok meant people singing, lip syncing and dancing around and making fools of themselves and posting it and embarrassing their children.

And you say that is a chunk of TikTok, but that there's so much more to it. A lot more. Yeah. You're going to take us through some of those. Yeah. Show us some of your, these TikToks you've made. Yeah. So I had started to, you know, like I said, I was super addicted to it.

And then I posted a video from the Madame Tussauds wax museum that did really well. So then they invited me to come back to the museum to take more TikToks. So I think that the next one is a video of the Kylie Jenner wax figure. So this little curation is like the first ever on podcast TikTok film festival basically. This is crazy. Okay. So this is fascinating. So you're going to play us now.

This is Madame Tussauds and you went there and who are we looking at here? This is going to be a Kylie Jenner. And which Jenner is that? I don't know. There's like 75 Jenner. The youngest one. The one who's like a billionaire. No.

She's not a billionaire. Is she not? No. Didn't they expose that? Oh. Let's just say they monkeyed around with the numbers there. She's still doing really well though. No.

She only has like $22,000 in the bank. Wow. This is true. The mom, Chris manipulated the numbers and said it was a billion and the Forbes list fell for it. But she only has $22,000 in the bank and they just repossessed her old dodge. I don't know. And I saw she's pregnant again.

So that's bad timing. Yeah. I mean, you just heard it here first, but she's really got next to nothing. That's an exclusive. Yeah. That's an exclusive. Yeah. She's one of nine people that lives in a studio apartment in a TikTok mansion in a TikTok

mansion. Okay. Wait, get us up to speed. How many views does this video have and how many followers do you have on TikTok? I think I have 126,000 followers and this one got, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, how many did you say that I had? Uh-oh. You have 158,000.

Wait a minute. Okay. I'm sorry. You just told me Conan, you're killing it on YouTube, you've got 158,000. My assistant in the room has almost the same number. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. That's impressive.

This is not me putting you down, but it's absurd. I am an entertainer who's been working in one capacity or another to entertain America and the world for well over three decades. Sure. And how old are you? 29. A 29-year-old can come in and say, oh, I like this platform too. God, let me give it a try.

Oh, look, as many as Conan O'Brien, a man who, if I lived in England, would have been knighted by now. You also only have $22,000 in the bank, though. I know. I made really crazy investments, it's my fault. Theme restaurants, it's my weakness. So well, congratulations, David, you're doing really well. And so show us this TikTok and tell us about it.

So this one got over one and a half million views. Jesus. Good God. What are these people? I really liked the Kylie Jenner wax figure. OK, so explain what we're about to see. OK, so it's the Kylie Jenner wax figure, and then a whole part of TikTok too is figuring out the best audio to put behind it.

So I had seen a video clip of Kylie singing, so I saved that audio and then used it for this. I'm going to get wasted. I just finished a whole cup of 42, and I'm about to go for my second one, Courtney. What the f*** are you on? I don't know what. And that's me with Kylie for a second. Wait, that's it?

That's it? All it is is you took a video of a Kylie Jenner wax figure, and then your big contribution was to add a song that's out there of her singing to it, and it lasts, I think, six seconds. Because nobody can figure out the TikTok algorithm, so sometimes it works in your favor. That one just got sent out to a bunch of people. And then you peek in at the end. Of course, you're wearing a mask.

She is not. Yeah, she's not. The wax statue is rife with COVID. The wax statue is made of solid COVID and some wax. And that got how many? A million and a half people? And then one of the ones I did was a whole view of the entire floor of the wax museum. And so part of TikTok, too, is you can do video replies to comments.

So someone saw your wax figure, so then I tried to get the same success with Kylie out of yours. Let's see. Someone had posted a clip of you and I on the show, so I used that audio. A friend of the show, working, come on in, David. I forgot that there's a wax statue of me. Oh, my God. That one didn't do as well as Kylie.

Jesus, thanks a lot, David. So you bring it up, and then with the minute you get me to bite, you dump a giant bucket of manure on me. How many views did that one get? I think like 1,000, maybe 2,000. 1,000? What? As opposed to a million and a half?

See, that's the thing. Nobody knows how it works. I don't know why. No, I think we know how it works. I don't know why that one didn't get sent out. Part of it is that that wax statue looks like Larry King doesn't look like you. Yeah, it's Larry King with an orange wig. So that's an easy idea, though, that you could do, because I just replied to that person's

comment. You could go and reply to people's comments. I'm not going to engage in this. I was just humiliated, and I had nothing to do with it. I did nothing. You followed up a very wildly successful Kylie Jenner TikTok by shooting my wax statue, and instead of getting a million and a half, which is what Kylie got, I got 1,000. That's not my fault.

You did this to me. You put me out there, and then you shamed me. I've been made. You made a fool out of me. And he did it all on your time. So sorry. I hang on your dime. I love this.

While you were destroying my credibility, you were being paid by me. Wow, you funded your own shame. This is an amazing coup. This is, wow, this is, I cannot, I don't understand any of it. I'm very, I don't understand. I don't understand, and I'm very worried. Other people are worried about things that I think are legitimate, you know, global warming and, you know, just the polarization of our country.

I'm worried about this now. I think this is going to destroy us. Because everyone's just, everyone's just walking around, you're just walking around, and everyone is, I guess, shooting their water bottle and then, and putting like a three stooge's track to it for eight seconds, and it gets seven million views. And meanwhile, no one's manning the cash registers, no one's growing the food, no one's driving the trucks, no one's doing anything. Yeah, how do you feel, David, about ushering in the decline of civilization?

Well, here's the thing. I did post a video about being, that you had me on the podcast, and Melissa Joan Hart liked it and then followed me, so I'm fine with it because I got that follow from Melissa Joan Hart. Wait, Melissa Joan Hart is following you? Yeah, if you look at it, it says that we're friends now, Sabrina and the Teenage Witch. I've tried to be her friend for years. She's at my place right now.

This is ridiculous. And she commented, she must listen because then she commented on something that she was going to Disney with her family. Okay, so... You're so depressed right now. So depressed. Oh, I just, it's over, it's over, it's over for me. David, why am I...

It's not, we're gonna, we're gonna get you on here. No. Here's the question, why isn't this, hey there with David Hopping and I'm your sidekick. This is all backwards. I'm an old wretched fool who doesn't know what's happening. My wax, I'm gonna say it, my wax statue got a thousand, a thousand, a thousand likes. Is that what they're called? Yeah.

Yeah. Likes views, yeah. And I don't even want to know what the comments are. I'm sure they are dreadful. That's crazy to think that, that David's TikTok of Kylie Jenner got a metropolitan area's worth of people and yours got a small high school that sat down in an assembly and watched that TikTok video. Do you want to describe this in more detail, Matt?

You satisfied with that? This is, I am, I'm being very honest with everyone listening right now, I'm shattered. This is a watershed moment for me, you know, the talk show, I left the talk show I thought with some grace and aplomb and now just weeks later I'm being forced to realize that David Hopping is a superstar and I am an old husk, dried out husk, lying on a dirt road. Crumbling in the wind. I bet everyone should follow you on... Yes, yes.

Follow me at Team Cocoa. Hey, if you want more, drawing husk, follow me at Team Cocoa. You guys, you should put up a TikTok of just a husk and a wind. Conan O'Brien needs a friend with Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian and Matt Gorely. Produced by me, Matt Gorely. Executive produced by Adam Saks, Joanna Salatarov and Jeff Ross at Team Cocoa and Colin Anderson at Ear Wolf. Theme song by the White Stripes.

Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering by Will Bekton. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista and Britt Kahn. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts and you might find your review read on a future episode.

Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Cocoa Hotline at 323-451-2821 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. This has been a Team Cocoa Production in association with Ear Wolf.