Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - John Wilson

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

Filmmaker John Wilson feels very fortunate about being Conan O’Brien’s friend…? John sits down with Conan to talk about the oddest discoveries made producing his show How To with John Wilson, the authenticity of old home videos, and indulging in propaganda-machine reality TV. Plus, Conan trains David Hopping to do the things Sona does, and should do. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone].For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.

Hi, my name is John Wilson, and I feel very fortunate about being Conan O'Brien's friend. Okay, well, why did you put a question mark at the end? Do you feel at all apprehensive about being my friend? Yeah, no, I shouldn't have gone up at the end. I should have gone down. I feel very fortunate about it. The question mark was more like, did I do it right, you know? Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell, brandy shoes, walk in the lose, climb the fence, books and pens, I can tell that we are going to be friends, I can tell that we are going to be friends.

Hello, and welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. I'm going to start today's episode with a question. Has anyone here had acid reflux? Have you guys had that before? Oh, my God, yes. Oh, I've never had anything like that in my life, and I don't know what's going on with me, but I have had something, like this feeling in my throat for a while now, for like weeks and weeks, and all the symptoms line up with acid reflux. Oh, jeez. Now, would that be because I'm anxious about something?

Would that be because I'm drinking lye, which is something I do before I go to bed every night? No, I don't know what it is, but I'm wondering if you can hear it in my voice, and if it makes my voice sound more mellifluous, maybe a little more raspy, then I'm going to not treat the disease. Had you heard it all, Matt, you're an expert at, you hear anything in my voice that's a little different? Yeah, it's sultry, it's whiskey voice, you're just de-barrel-throated. I want to ask you this, as you know, I don't love the sound of my voice, and that's true of a lot of performers, but I think I have good reason, and I'm wondering if I should start experimenting with lowering my tone a little bit on the podcast, if that might be something that people like hearing. You're lowering your voice, but you're also kind of changing your dialect a little bit. Well, I don't intend to do that, I'm just trying to lower it, but I think once it gets lower, it's almost like there's a certain attitude that comes with it, a certain big D energy. Oh boy, I don't like it.

That wasn't what I was thinking. Matt, can you just lower it when you edit the show? I can pitch shift you down if you want, and you'll kind of sound like put the lotion in the basket. Well, I'm going to, do me a favor, Matt, I'm going to start talking, and you pitch me down, and maybe, and we'll find a tone that people out there find exciting, I'm going for kind of a confident guy, a guy who looks back at his life and knows that he's had great achievements. Are you doing an accent? I'm not sure what I'm doing right now. And I can tell you that this will be pitch shifted, and you will sound like, basically like Barry White, so if you want to say something kind of to the ladies, feel free. Just a shout out to all those ladies right now who are listening.

This is Conan O'Brien, I don't know why soon he's giggling, but I'm just having a good time right now kicking it in my crib. Can you try something else, and I swear to God I will pitch this lower, and I promise I won't pitch this high like a chipmunk at all, so go ahead and just do something real sultry. Yeah, last night I was with three of my lady friends, let's just say it was quite an evening. We played part cheesy, and then we all had some grape snapple, and they left quite satisfied. That's all I can say about that incident. Yeah, I have no doubt that our listeners are weak in the knees from that. Well, here's what I want to do. I do wonder is there anything I can do to make my voice sound sexier. Have you tried just doing a little breathier, a little more aspirated kind of like that? I did notice when we were talking to Bill Burr recently that he's got this thing. He talks like he's missing most of his lungs, have you noticed that?

Bill Burr is like, you got people. They're wondering, you know, what's that all about? And it's like he's got to get more air into the four tiny sacks left he has to suck air. I don't know what they're doing. I think it's us. We ride a subway then, ride a bus. And it's like he's got to grab more air, and he takes little sips of air, and then he gets out what he can. I don't really get it. Why do people need to? Why does everyone need to comment on it? I mean, I'll work on it. It's better when he's around and I can hear him. But he's got that thing like I've only taken a very short gulp of breath, and I got to get it out real fast before I take another breath. People play sports anyway. They root for sports, and then you're like, what are you doing? I don't know about that. That's not a good way to go. No, I don't think so.

I could be kind of breathy. That's good. That works. Is that something that that's kind of more of a, this is more of a will our net kind of thing. Yeah, that's nice. What if you were to just like, like, I'm going to call in with a love song request and you're the breathy DJ. Okay. All right. So hi, I'd like to play Wilson Phillips. Hold on for my husband. All right. And what's your name, darling? My name's Sheila. Sheila. All right. We're going to play Wilson Phillips right now. This is.

Wow. Are you single? I mean, I know I'm married, but wow. Well, I'm married too, but that never stopped me from jumping in the game, if you know what I mean. Oh, my. We're going to play, yeah. The game. Yeah. I mean, I like to play a hacky sack, even though my foot's occupied. I can juggle two sacks at once. Okay. I have to go. I have to go. You can cancel that request.

That God that went the wrong way. Yeah. I don't think it's your voice. I think it's the things you say. Yeah. I say terrible things. Yeah. Like you were, we had your voice pitched down and you talked about having girls over and we're like, oh, yeah. And then you're like, great soda and Parcheasy. I don't think, I just don't have it in me. And I think my voice probably is a true reflection of who I am. I like your voice. I honestly don't think you should feel that way about your voice.

I kind of have this like deep, I don't know, there's a little crackle in there that's alluring, you know, you got a nice voice. That's very nice of you. That's very kind. I will try to accept myself more as I was made or as to quote, you know, the great James Lipton as God made me. That's right. God made him. Conan as God made me. And I think you're going to age into even a finer voice. Yeah. That's nice to think about.

Maybe my voice will get better as my face rots off my skull. Well, at least you're podcasting, so you're covered. I timed this just perfectly because, as you know, the Irish, our faces don't age well. So this is, this was the good move, I think, as the face rots, the voice deepens. And, well, listen, we have so much to talk about today and I will do my best to give you my best vocal performance. But a terrific guest today. And I'm anxious to begin this portion of the show. OK.

My guest today directs, writes, films, produces and narrates the brilliant HBO documentary series, How To with John Wilson. You can stream the first season now on HBO Max. I'm absolutely thrilled to talk to him today. John Wilson, welcome. Let me begin by complimenting you, saying anyone if you're listening and you haven't seen yet How To with John Wilson, go and watch this right now. Not right now. Listen to all the ads and buy all the products. But then when you're done doing that, watch How To with John Wilson, which is absolutely a delight.

Thank you. It's still very, very surreal hearing this from you and, I mean, just being face to face with you. I mean, I think you're the first celebrity that's consented to meet up with me since your show came out. Consented to meet with you. Instead of me filming them on the street or something. That's right. I should also mention that you're part-time gig as you work with TMZ. No, I'm not sure. Yeah, if they'd have me.

Yeah. One of the things if you work with TMZ is you have to be able to keep asking inane, pointless questions over and over and over again, even if you get no response. Yeah. I'm only bringing this up because recently I was somewhere I was doing a show at the Largo Theater and I came out and there was a TMZ guy there. And it wasn't like he was mean or anything. It's just that clearly they had told him just fire off as many questions as you can because you might get something interesting. So I'm out there and he asked a couple of questions. New HBO show.

And I said, I really don't know what that's going to be at. I'll let you know. And then within seconds he's saying, Teek, would you stain Teek or would you leave Teek alone? Does it still bead water if it's unstained? And I'm like, huh? I don't know. Is it onomatopoeia or onomatopoeia? I mean, just literally anything.

I feel like I have a similar approach sometimes in a weird way. I'll be meeting up with someone, say like a car collector or something like that. And they might think that I'm here to talk about the cars, but there's something completely different going on in my head. And I might ask something like whether or not they think Teek should be stained or something like that. And it'll kind of catch them off guard and they'll give a really honest kind of answer in the moment because they just don't really know kind of why I'm asking. And that ends up being the one moment sometimes that we end up using in the show because I'm shooting like six episodes at once all the time. So if I have someone who's willing to talk to me usually, I'll cycle through six or seven different topics so that if it turns out to be a dud for one episode, then... It may fit perfectly someplace else.

Yeah. It's almost like the farther away it gets from the subject matter, the funnier it gets. Well, one of the things, I'll back it up a bit again and then say your show. And again, this is for anyone out there who's the uninitiated. Your show is essentially you and now you have some people helping you. But you walking around with video camera and seemingly you shoot thousands of hours of stuff that you find kind of fascinating and interesting in and around New York. It's the most honest depiction I've ever seen of New York. It's New York works and all.

But you're not making fun of New York. You clearly love New York. Yeah. There are shots in your show that are absolutely haunting of like a trash bag that's caught on a broken mannequin that's lying in the street and it looks ghostly or a rat eating a smashed cannoli and then scuttling away. And you narrate the show. We never really see much of you. Yeah. We start with a topic and it's how to you'll say this is an episode that's how to make small talk, which is all about.

I'm John Wilson. I'm going to teach you. I'm going to investigate how do I make small talk. But very quickly, this leads you to meeting a guy who's determined to capture child predators. Yes. And you're suddenly meeting with this guy and he's taking you to his house. Now, I know that that took hundreds of hours of shooting and some crazy good luck and you keep at it. But when you put it all together, it's taking this serpentine strange journey as a viewer.

I'm watching it. I don't know where it's going to go. I don't think you know where it's going to go. I mean, that's what excites me the most about the work is that that kind of like weird thread that you just have to follow. You know, we just have the freedom to do that in the show and I feel like a lot of other productions might not have that. But I just wanted to make sure that we preserved it because that is when I feel most alive. You know, it's like when I feel like I'm kind of documenting something or seeing something that kind of no one else has seen potentially, you know, and following this thread.

I don't know. It just like as long as I'm surprised while I'm doing it and I'm confused and I don't know what's happening. I feel like the audience, it translates to the audience, you know, and that suspense, you know, that's all like packaged into it. Some of the funniest moments just happen. It's the mistakes that are beautiful. Yeah. And whenever I would look at great moments from, you know, like a talk show sort of God, Johnny Carson, most of the great moments were accidents. It was not the sketch that they had written.

It was something going off the rails. Someone misspeaking, something happening, a monologue joke bombing. That's where the magic would happen. It was not by design. You had a show that said how to cover furniture. After a bunch of twists and turns, you're talking to someone who's telling you how you can restore your foreskin and how he has dedicated his life to restoring people's foreskins with different, different device that he's made. Yeah, pulleys and weight systems.

Pulleys and weights. And I was watching it as thinking, again, you can't write that. And if you had written it, it wouldn't have been nearly as funny. That just happened. Yeah. Yeah. It's really just, you know, I always say it's just kind of like a numbers game. You just really have to try a lot of different things and just follow the most interesting threads.

I don't know. And, you know, it's like when I was in college, I made this documentary. I was trying to make a documentary about a strip club, you know? You know, it was just, it was really boring. Were you really trying to make it, or were you just wanting to go to the strip club? Yeah. Yeah. Air quote.

Yeah. Documentary. Because that was always my excuse. I'm always there saying it's for a documentary. They say you have no camera. I say, well, we don't use the camera right away. Yeah. Just doing a sketch.

They then point out that I've never done documentaries. It's not really my field. Yeah. And once we got over that. You know, I found that there was like, they would host these parties where they had balloon fetishists come. And, you know, people that were attracted, sexually attracted to the inflation and the popping of balloons. Is that a thing really? Yeah.

I mean, I know everything's a thing, but I've never heard of people becoming aroused by the inflation and popping of a balloon. You look it up, they're called Lunars. It's like a well-established fetish. And I went to the strip club and I was, and I found this kind of subculture. And I became friends with the leader of, I guess, one of the biggest message boards on the internet. And I ended up making kind of, the documentary just became about that, you know? And it's just kind of like, it's about just saying yes to, you know, instead of like being very narrow and trying to like, you know, like just do what you originally had planned out to do. You know, it may sound like cliche advice, but it's really just like, you just have to be willing to throw everything out that you thought it was going to be and, you know, follow whatever like appears.

It's just so, you know, during the first season of the show, so much like truly like relied on pure coincidence in this way that like absolutely terrifies me and made me think that it wasn't like reproducible maybe, you know? But like, and then I'm just like, how could we possibly kind of bottle this much magic kind of like all over again, you know? And we have a shorter amount of time with season two as well because with COVID, our production schedule was extended. But there's just something that happens. Do you like what you're getting so far? Do you really like it? I really like it. I was so, I was such a ball of kind of nerves at the beginning before production started on season two. And, you know, I don't want to get too much into it, but it's like once we started shooting, it's like, it's, oh my God, it's happening again, you know?

Like, I don't, I can't explain why, but like the universe is just kind of like kind of offering these things to us. I also think it's, I think the way I look at it is you have a tuning fork inside you. I don't mean that in some disgusting way. I don't know what you're into. Yeah, I should. You talk about balloon fetishes. I'm trying to get it removed. I'm a tuning fork.

I have a tuning fork fetish. I'd like to have them inside me and then see if I can get them to vibrate. But listen, that's my business. And if you ever want to put that in your show, but... Sure. Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of people like you. Yeah, there's a lot of us. Yeah.

You should come to a meeting sometime when we all start vibrating in A-flat at the same time. But the way I interpret it, I think, is that these things are available to everybody, but you're able to see it. And we're all walking around the same New York City, and I've been walking around the same New York City all day today. And you're walking the same streets as I am. You're seeing things that I'm not seeing. A really good example of this is...

Which might be a curse as well, you know? All blessings are a curse, and all curses are a blessing. A curse that I feel like I've cursed people with a side of scaffolding in one way or another. That's what I was going to bring up. You know, I scaffolding, I live in Los Angeles now, but I live for 20 years in New York City, and I just stopped noticing it. It went away because my retina, my cerebral cortex, something just said, this is not doing us any good, so let's delete it.

So I never saw it. In one of your shows, you talk about how scaffolding is omnipresent in New York. It's everywhere. It doesn't seem to be temporary. Then you talk about why that's the case, because you do some research, and then I start seeing it through your eyes. And since I've been back in New York City walking around, all I see is the scaffolding, and that's because of you.

So fuck you, John Mason. That's why I learned you in here. Well, on that note, I have something, I brought something for you. Oh. It's the scaffolding of the month calendar. Oh my God, this is fantastic. 2021. Look at this, I got a character, a calendar.

Yeah. This is fantastic, scaffolding of the month. Yeah, so it's got a different neighborhood, a different kind of scaffolding. I know we're halfway through 2021, but you know, I figured it better late than never. I love this. Oh boy, this one's beautiful. Soho, you've really got some. Did you take all of these?

I did not take all those photographs, but you know, it's real scaffolding. Real scaffolding. Yeah. You know. So now you'll be, yeah, cursed with the sight of it even when you're not in New York. Well, it's, you know, but it's also, I think there's a visual poetry to the show that I get, I just get entranced with when I'm watching it. But I very much think that you capture these images, you'll capture someone wearing practically

no clothes and just, you know, like under, you know, just a guy wearing underwear is completely unselfconscious and he'll be eating a massive sandwich with mayonnaise and you've got him framed kind of beautifully. And he's not noticing you looking at him and then you notice that no one notices him. You find all these things that nobody else seems to see, which are completely absurd. You know, like a, I don't even know if I've seen this on your show, but it's the kind of thing like a giant sofa with a toilet perched on top of it that's leaning against the side of an alley and no one else pays it any attention.

But you find it and you shoot it. It's like when I first started making the movies in this style, it was like, you know, it's like I just didn't have any money. I was just like self-producing everything. I couldn't pay anyone to like be a sound person or, you know, like really like each, each to make 10 minutes, you know, before the show came out, it was like to make 10 minutes, it would take like a year, you know, of just like harvesting like footage on the streets. And, you know, it's just, it's, it's collage, right?

It's, it's just like, it takes no money. It's just like, you just get some newspaper, you just like cut things out, you know, just like all the, so like all the raw material was just, it's just always there on the street and you just need to like know how to kind of like arrange it and interpret it. But I mean, I hope it's inspiring for like other people who like are like, you know, feel like some kind of like they, like they don't like to have the money to do something or like the resources is just, it's so easy. You know, you don't have to do this exact same thing, but it's like, I just had, you

know, I had ambitions early on, like when I was younger to just like have to make these kind of big bloated movies that involve like big crews and stuff like that. And, and like, you know, fiction, you know, all these like fictional elements and stuff, but like this just felt the most honest and, you know, like it just something I could just reliably do, like without any buddies help really. And that means no interference too. Yeah. But, but, but not to say that like with, with the show now, I have like this unbelievably

talented group of people that like help me like that, that they shoot part of it. You know, I have editors now, I have like a whole, there's a whole apparatus around it that like I basically had to teach everyone to kind of see things in a certain way or kind of like cut things in a certain way. And they're all just amazing. I think it'd be, it just occurred to me when you were talking about how you used to have ambitions to do sort of a big fiction movie that it would be hilarious. And I would love to see if they gave you the next Fast and Furious movie.

Oh, F10. Yeah, they're just doing like hot keys now. Yeah, yeah. Cause I got fascinated a couple of years ago with the Fast and Furious movies and how insane they are. Mostly how they, they seem to not, no one has, understands how physics works and those, and I know that's not the point, but I just recently took my son to see F9. Oh yeah.

How was it? It's the finest movie I've ever seen. What do you mean? They're absolutely off the wall bananas and things happen that you just can't believe happen and you can't believe everyone's just watching this happen. So it's kind of like my show. It is. And so, but I thought it'd be really great if because you've got this heat now of, wow,

John Wilson, he's this incredible auteur in the past, what happens is when someone gets some heat as a director, they give them a big movie like this. If you shot your version of a Fast and Furious 10 and you were standing around with Vin Diesel and all those stars and you were saying, guys, we just have to wait to see what happens. And I'm going to go and I'm going to shoot this rat eating a piece of baloney in the corner. Yeah. Well, I would just tell them, right.

Yeah. I mean, dream, yeah, Vin, if you're listening, yeah, I would just tell them to make Fast 10 as they were going to. And then I would just, yeah, I would just document it and then we would trash all the footage that they shot. Yeah. They would get like 15 Maserati's and they would be having them all climbing up the Eiffel Tower and it's a stunt of racing up the Eiffel Tower to the top to defuse a bomb.

And it's a stunt that costs well over $600 million. And just as it begins, your camera would drift over to the side and push in and you would see, you know, a decaying eclair that's been stepped on in the mud and you would hold on that. And in the background, we'd hear this amazing stunt. Yeah. And we missed all the pyrotechnics. You were making your films, you were putting your stuff together and you were putting it

out there. And who sees it? But Nathan Fielder, who's one of my favorite people, he's absolutely brilliant. And I think he's done some of the most original work of anybody. Nathan, for you, is an absolute incredible show. And he's very so funny and so smart. So he finds your work. And I think you guys are a great team and you found a great writer, producer, and Michael

Coleman, who used to work with me. And I think there's a real sensitivity to, we want to help John do his thing his way and assist him and realize his vision as opposed to what often happens when other people get involved is it gets twisted or perverted. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that they were going to potentially recast me as Tim. Right.

I was offered the role. Yeah. You, Tim Robbins, whoever. I don't know. Why do I always, I almost got Shawshank. No. Yeah. It's true story.

Yeah. I auditioned for it. And then they said, wait a minute. You're not an actor. I'm too gullible. They said your eyes are greedy. You don't know how to act. Get the fuck out of here.

Yeah, no, they were really good at kind of like isolating what worked and what could, where there was room for improvement, like more or less. They realized that, like, I guess the charm of it, a lot of it was just in that it truly felt like, you know, like the stuff where I'm just actually alone and nimble and able to get into certain places without the kind of like, without the kind of awkwardness of a production, you know, kind of shadowing you all the time. That was like, that's like where most of the life is in it. And they just like, I don't know, they just, they were really good at like, even, but I

was like, it was tough at first, you know, I was like, I was like, I was really nervous and like, I also like, I was just going to know Nathan and Coleman and like, I had a hard time like separating kind of like Nathan's character in his show from like the actual Nathan, you know, at the same time, and just because like, I hadn't really like collaborated with anyone in like a really long time, like I, by design, like I wasn't collaborating with anybody, but they were just so, they were so good and like, they knew when to kind of like tell me I was being ridiculous or, you know, unprofessional or stuff like that. And I think like the, yeah, and it really shows in the work.

One thing that occurred to me is you have to have, you have to have people shooting stuff for you because there's no way you can shoot all of it on your own. But it's the way you shoot things is so personal to you. Did you have to train people when you're out shooting, let's say B-roll, like we need, I need help. We need many more shots of scaffolding and I need you guys to go out and look at it. You'd almost have to train them how to think or see like you. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, my team, I got, you know, Nelly Clues, Chris Maggio, Brittany, Leia, you know, like everybody is just so like, I hope I'm not forgetting anyone, damn it. I'm going to cut all those out anyway. Do you think we have time for that shit here? Well, anyway. I want to thank a few people too who have been instrumental in my career, but I'm not going to.

Okay. I might as well not. I should. Well, I'm trying to, yeah, I'm trying to be good. You know, I'm going to thank as many people as you think just to get you back. Yeah. Well, they thank my father for teaching me that human contact isn't necessary. Yeah.

I also like to thank my parents too. Mom and dad. Thank you so much. I want to thank your parents for always encouraging me. Yes. They sent me letters back in the 80s. Yeah. They showed me your work.

But yeah, they go out and they, they, they, they film, you know, I'd say they film a quarter of the show because a lot of it is like, you know, a lot of it is like very first person like stuff that I'm doing, but then they picked it up like almost immediately. Well, I've noticed you don't like to indicate. You like to let, you like to shoot it a little wide so that it's up to me to see the thing that you're seeing sometimes, rather than, which is I think a lot of people in comedy like to shoot in, like to push in on the funny thing. And I've always thought, don't push in on the funny thing.

Let me discover the funny thing. Yeah. It's, it's, yeah. You, you got to let people like, people shoot so tight on stuff and, and, you know, I feel like I come more from like cinema and kind of like documentary and, and like my favorite imagery is, is just like the more information, the better for me. And I just like, I just never see cities shot in like, you know, you watch the French connection or something like that.

And it's just like people, like I love that movie. People love that movie. It's just like, because it's such an amazing artifact of like a very specific time in New York. You see so many panoramic kind of like big wide shots of like New York. And that's not the only thing that makes it good, but it's like, like stuff like that, like, like the archival qualities of a piece of work are just like sometimes just as important to me.

You know, that makes me think about something that I'm a little obsessed with, which is as a culture, I think we love things to look shiny and fancy and rich and affluent. So most movies you see, and I'm just going to, I know I just brought up fast and furious, but any most movies depict New York city or they depict, they love to cut around and you see these, you know, now we're in Dubai, now we're in, you know, Rio and everything looks so beautiful and sexy and the cutting is so fast. And then I think about these movies like what you said, French connection or movies from the seventies that showed you what New York looked like back then, sweet smell of success.

If you know that movie with Tony Curtis and Bert Lancaster, it shows you New York in like 1958 and I, it's a great movie, but I love just how they captured like a news crew. They captured what New York was like, what it was like back then and it's not all pretty. Yeah. Even the, you know, the narrative stuff that, you know, tries to show the gritty New York a lot of the time, you know, they still close down streets and stuff like that. And it's just like, you know, there's some kind of weird artifice there. I just rewatched Marathon Man and was just also remarking on, oh, that, okay, wait, that's

what the Diamond District looked like. Yeah. Oh, wait, that's what the Upper West Side looked like. Oh, look, they're, they're over there. They're in Central, he's in Central Park. That's what Central Park looked like in 1975, 76. It looks so different than what we're seeing now. Even just like TikTok, whatever, like home video stuff, everyone's like, when people

film each other these days, it's like, even just on like cell phones, it just, like, there's like a performance. Yes. Like, you know, and it's not like, when I look back at old home videos that like, you know, my parents shot or whatever, it's just like, this is an event, you know, I'm gonna shoot the event and like, no one's like performing and this is just like, here's what all these people look like sitting in chairs, here's what the street looked like and, you know, it's more kind of raw and it's not like someone doing a dance or something.

I've noticed that if you, they'll occasionally find this great footage from like 1915, 1916. Amazing footage. The one thing I noticed when I look at that footage is that people are not hamming it up for the cameras. Yeah. People are being themselves and they're noticing the camera and a motion picture camera is a relatively new thing, so they're all sort of staring at it. But can you imagine turning a camera on a crowd today?

Everybody would be striking a pose, being ironic, being obscene. Everyone would be doing shtick. It's so amazing to look at footage where people know they're being documented, but they don't know yet to be ironic. They're not conscious of the camera. They don't even know what a camera is and there's something really beautiful about it. Yeah. We'll never get back to that place again, but now, and who am I to talk?

I made my living like becoming more animated in front of a camera. No, but like, I'm not, you know, there's a place for all this and it's like, I consume this stuff all the time. It's like, I watched, you know, I was just watching the Bachelorette, you know, I watched the Bachelorette. What? I was just watching that. You're watching the Bachelorette?

I watched that. Yeah. I watched the Bachelorette or the Bachelorette whenever it's on. There's just something so funny of, you know, I love watching. I love, first of all, I just need to stop for a second. I love hearing this. This makes me really happy that you are, I'm just picturing you because I know your apartment from watching the show, so I can picture you in your apartment and you're watching the

Bachelorette. Yeah. Well, I'm not, you know, I'm not the only, you know, there's a lot of people in kind of, I guess, the Bachelorette Nation, you know. I am not shaming you. I'm not shaming you at all and I'm glad to know you're in Bachelorette Nation. And you prefer Bachelorette or Bachelorette, which show? You know, it's been strange since the pandemic started, but I don't know, I really don't

favor one over the other. I just like watching the show because I just think it's so funny that, like, if they were conducting the same experiment but there were no cameras, like, they would get a hundred years in prison. It's like this is, like, it's like sex trafficking. Yes, yes, it is. It is sex trafficking. Imagine if they were on, like, a compound in the desert and there was no production,

you know, it just, and, like, there was a challenge this week, you know, hopefully this doesn't date it too much, but, like, where the Bachelorette decreed that none of the men could masturbate while on set. And the first thing I was like, it was the first time they acknowledged that the men masturbate off camera. And then, I'm glad that's finally being acknowledged. Well, yeah, but it's just so strange that, like, but now they weren't allowed to. Like, imagine that, like, again, if there were no cameras, that would be psychotic.

Yes, yeah. To tell that to a room full of people that they couldn't, and she's like a sex positive Bachelorette. This is like, she's a sex positive Bachelorette, but she's telling the men they can't masturbate. It's very strange. And like where the men masturbating in the woods before, like, what were they doing? I don't know if you have any answer. Well, I do because...

The look in your eyes, you don't have any answers. No, no, that's just me. Whenever people talk about masturbation, I go to another place. But I'm back now. I don't know. I can't tell you. But you haven't been watching yet. No, but listen, my thing is, if you were there, if you were there on the set of the

Bachelorette and you were shooting your own footage, and we could see that, we'd have the answer to all these questions. You'd be shooting in the woods when men were pleasuring themselves. You would have that footage. And then we could see the whole, I mean, that's a whole other documentary in and of itself, which is the shooting, you shooting one of these shows that's frankly quite insane. I would give anything to document a production like that, but I just think that would be like a major kind of existential kind of issue for them if they had someone kind of like

filming, exposing what actually happened. It's like, I know how the, I feel like we probably have a good idea too of how these shows are made. And they just, the whole reason it succeeds is because you have absolutely no idea how it's kind of Frankenstein together, or they try to obscure that from like the normal audience, I guess. Correct me if I'm wrong though, but at some point, I want to say it was in the 90s, probably with the real world, and I've put this theory out there before, but they were shooting the

real world and they were just trying to capture the reality of people living together in New York in an apartment they're not paying for. But then at one point, they had a character on in the San Francisco episode who was named Puck, who was completely off the rails, refused to play by the rules, kind of a Trump figure that just came in, knocked all the pieces off the board, acted like a lunatic, and everyone wanted to know about Puck. This then, everyone's goal on one of these shows is to behave as insanely as possible. And these shows also look for people who have problems with addiction, alcohol, rage, borderline

personality disorders, and then they put them all in bikinis on an island, and they give them a lot of alcohol, and they say, did you hear what that guy just said about you behind your back, and then they shoot it. Yeah. When you wonder, like, what are the aliens that are watching us do this, wouldn't they launch the attack now? Isn't this the time to take humanity out of the equation? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's like, it's torture.

It's like, I can't believe that it's, I mean, I watch it, you know. What else are you watching on TV that most people wouldn't expect you would be watching? I really like watching shows that are just very efficient propaganda machines. The Bachelor is the nuclear family propaganda, and then Shark Tank is free market propaganda, and then you have, I've been watching this show called Lakefront Bargain Hunt, which is kind of- Lakefront Bargain Hunt, I don't know. Is it like an American Pickers, but it happens on a lakefront?

It's like a family that goes and looks at lake houses, and they try to pick which lake house they want. It's like a million other shows, but it's just one of the, you know, it's like ASMR, it's like extremely soothing, and kind of like boring, and, you know, you just look at these houses, and they pick one. Or there was another show called Super Size My Pool, that I think Mario Lopez has hosted. I just love that you're watching this, this makes me happy, I don't know why it makes me happy.

I, you know, something happened, I don't know, it's stuff I really enjoy, and I feel like sometimes I learn more things from that than I do, like, you know, like some kind of artsy movie that I would have pursued before. Do you have a favorite documentary of all time? Or not one, but just, is there a documentary out there that comes to mind when, I have one? Oh, gee, the ones that come to mind. I love the Endless Summer, it's about surfing, even though I don't surf, I love The Client

of Western Civilization part two, which is like, the lady that directed Wayne's World directed it. And, you know, it's just about like 80s hair metal, it's really great. I would say my all time favorite might be Crumb. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Crumb, just because you think the documentary is just going to be about Crumb, and it was probably started out to be about our Crumb, the amazing sort of counterculture, late 60s and 70s cartoonist, keep on trucking guy and all that, and you think, and Mr. Natural,

you think that's what's going to be about, and he is a documentary, because he alone is incredibly fascinating, and then you meet his brothers, and then you find out about his childhood, and then you start to meet several of his, you know, his two brothers, and what would have been a great documentary becomes, to me, one of the great documentaries of all time, and really hit a lot of notes with me in so many different ways that when the lights came up, I think I was crying, and like had to be escorted out of the theater. I cannot agree more. It's also, yeah, it's one of my favorites, and it's really grim, but it's also just

like, yeah, it does so much right. I'm curious now that you've had, success is a tricky thing. I'm very happy for you that you're having success, but of course, also, success can alter things, and I think you've been very smart to keep yourself off the screen, because for you to do your work, you need to blend in. Do you worry at all about people recognizing you? Do you get anxious if people recognize you? I mean, I kept myself off the screen just because, I mean, A, I'm the camera person,

but then also, yeah, I didn't really want people to recognize me, maybe, but then, you know, once the show came out, HBO put me on the splash image for the homepage for the show, and that kind of went out the window. And also, I did appearances. It wasn't just them. I did appearances and stuff, and it's honestly not a problem. People I talked to for season two, a lot of them have seen the show, you know, and their behavior is no different than it would have been if they hadn't seen it, you know.

I really have nothing to hide, really. If I'm talking to somebody, it's like I'm not pranking them. It's like I'm having an earnest conversation a lot of the time, and, you know, we may drift in and out of kind of strange subject matter, but it's not like I'm really transforming what's happening in the scene too much or that there's like a gotcha in the same way. So a lot of the time, in season two so far, it's like opened up doors that we would not have been able to open up before. And that is an important distinction.

You're not pranking people into thinking that there's a different reality happening, and then, you know, sort of pulling the rug out from under them. And look, those shows also, or those kinds of things have their value, those kinds of movies, and when it's done right, it can be really beautiful, but yours is very earnest and you are yourself, and I think your superpower is you are exactly who you put yourself out there to be, which is you're a very curious person with an interesting eye and you want to know more. And so what's wrong with that?

So people who know and love your show would be happy to talk to you on the street or show you their collection of devices that increase what was once a healthy foreskin. Yeah. I mean, you know, he like, he knew what the episode was about before and kind of where we ended up there. You know, I try to be very transparent with people. You know, if people have a story to tell, you know, like, and you put a camera in front of them, a lot of the time they'll just take that opportunity, you know, and it's like

some people have just been waiting for that moment. I have to ask you as a fan, I got to know you a little bit during the episode. You were just shooting a regular episode when COVID breakout broke out. And what fascinated me was seeing, I thought it was the best depiction of how strange that time was because you're shooting your episode and then all of a sudden you see people, stores are getting clogged and people are buying lots of toilet paper and people are buying lots of hand sanitizer and then masks are going on. And so you see the whole thing kind of happen naturally, which was really fascinating.

But I got to know your landlady in that episode. Is she doing okay? Yeah, she's doing okay. That's great. Yeah. I don't want to spoil too much for season two. Okay. No.

It is painful for me. There's so many stories I would love to tell you and talk to you about right now. But you know, I guess we'll just have to wait until I'm finished with everything. I'm not having you back. Okay. What kind of assumption is that? You get to come back, but I'll just wait until you have me back again. I'll just...

You know, I'm learning that you are a very, yeah, entitled person. Entitled presumptuous, I know. Well, I can't wait for the new... I really can't wait for the new episode. I really can't. And like I say, you're a true artist and I really admire what you do. And I'm so happy your show is out there and that you're making more of them. It's a real delight. And I hope we are friends, you know?

I'd say at this point, sure. Jesus Christ. It's a tough nut to crack. No, I'd still find it so surreal that you have any idea who I am. Like the transition, when I finished the show, it's like the transition out into the real world. It's been so bizarre. Well, I will tell you this.

I can relate that I've been on TV for 28 years and when I meet people that were on television before me, I still find it weird that they know who I am. Yeah. So that never goes in a good way. I don't think that should go away. It is surreal. Yeah. There's something about that line where it's like, even if you're like the bachelor, it's

like, I still think even though the contestants are like 23, 24, I still think they're all older than me. Yeah. Or like with the real world or something like that. Like there's something about like there's, I am really good with that. When I watch any young person who's really confident with women, I immediately think they're older than me. Even though I am a very old man at this point and they're 24, if they're confident with

women and they know what to say and they know what to do, I assume that I'm 16 and they're 19. Yeah. So I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Or like a three-year-old who speaks a different language or something. Well, I'm such a fan of your show. It just occurred to me.

I am determined to be on and at some point. So I'm going to keep, I'm going to find out where you guys are shooting and I'm just going to keep walking into the shot and eventually you're going to have to, have to bring up. And occasionally you'll encounter a Conan O'Brien and then you'll pan up from a dead rat, smushed into a crashed wedding cake and you'll see me. Which you'll be, you'll be taking a, you'll be taking a piece out of. I'll be taking a piece out of it and I'll look right to camera and wink and ruin the whole show.

Exactly. Yeah, during your, during your like, your worst moment, I will be there just when you think it. Yeah. You'll catch me when I, I'll, I'll do a thousand things to try and get on your show. And then when I don't think you're around and I'm, I'm defecating behind a dumpster because I have E. Coli, you'll capture that moment and put it in. I'll be there.

Hey, John Wilson, congratulations and thank you so much for being here with me in person and to meet you. It was a real treat. Thank you. Hey, thank you. It feels good to finally be your friend. There we go. Who took a lot of globe?

Was that you? Sorry. Listen, David. It's my first time in a podcast studio. Okay. But you just took a audible schlerp and then I think it was the straw. The point is you held it right up to the microphone. I take discreet sips and I do it away from the microphone.

Now you have this, um, I think it's the largest water bottle I've ever seen. It looks like you stole a prop from land of the giants. It's from home goods. 60s reference TV show. Anywho, you took a giant schlerp and then I could feel the water being pushed down your esophagus all the way into your belly. So just be a little mindful of that. Okay.

How dare you? I'm so sorry. If you're just joining us, uh, we're mid conversation with David Hopping who's going to get transitioned into Sona's role as assistant and that's what this segment is. It's the second part of a major cliffhanger from last episode. Major. Major. People have been beating down our doors to find out what happens here.

Oh, wow. That was me just trying to get in to kill you. I, um, for calling this a cliffhanger, the crux of the matter here is that one Sona Tallene Misesian, I used your middle name. But not her last name. It's just something weird of my last name. Also Tallene is my first name. I know, but you were, you go by Sona Tallene Misesian, but your real name is Tallene.

See this, I just took us into a cul-de-sac. We didn't have to go into, let me try that again. What we're going to do today is, uh, as you all know, I think you're aware that Sona is carrying twins at this very moment to unborn, uh, children in her belly who have to listen to this podcast. Right now. Some parents play Mozart to the parents. Yes.

I was going to say, I was going to say, kids hear Mozart, they hear Chopin, they hear Beethoven. Your two children have for months during the, uh, you know, most important stages of their cerebral development, listen to us bicker and self-obsess and waste time. They're going to know your voice more than they're going to know tax, and that makes me really sad. That's right. They'll never listen to your husband tack, and so you'll have to call me and put, and hold the phone out to them and I'll say, go to your cribs, and they'll both immediately

like little soldiers march off to their cribs. Oh my God. But, um, no, we're really excited for you. We're really happy. Thank you. And, uh, it's, this event is going to happen very soon. So, obviously, uh, we need to find someone to temporarily replace you. And the man for the job is David Hopping, who has been, uh, working in our office for

five years. You've been working as Jeff Ross's assistant. He's our executive producer. Mm-hmm. A man of few words. Very few words. What's up? What's going on?

What are you doing? Let's go. I gotta go. I gotta go. Let's come in. And he is, uh, what is he? He's not the opposite of... Ice?

No, he's an oven mitt. Oh. I am a flame that needs to be controlled, and he just, he just comes down like a big oven mitt and extinguishes that flame. Okay. Yeah. Oven mitt extinguishes the flame. I mean...

He's a fire blanket? Like that kind of thing? Yeah. I was thinking something that cuts off the oxygen to the fire. Okay. All right. Okay, he's up. Dome.

Well, this is the cliffhanger resolution people have been screaming. This is a waste of everybody's time. David, let's try to get to the heart of the matter. David, do you know what your duties are as far as being my assistant? Not really. Because I'm very different. You're working now for Jeff Ross, the executive producer of the show. Yeah.

Okay. And he's a guy who probably wants to have a dinner reservation, probably wants you to tell him what's in his appointment book, what he has to do. Son and I don't have that kind of relationship. No. Okay. 90% of what Conan is going to tell you and talk to you about is complete and utter nonsense. Wouldn't you say?

I call it gibberish. Lots of so many bits. Then you have to like weed through a huge dense amount of bits to get to something that has any sort of sort of substance. I call Sona often as other people. I'm constantly saying I was using the restroom and I walked out and I had forgotten to pull up my pants and I walked into a restaurant and I started braiding a waiter with no pants on and TMZ was there and they have all the footage.

And I panicked at that point and said some stuff that was against America. And I was like, I keep making the story worse and worse and worse. I'll spend 15 minutes on that and then I'll say, oh, and by the way, the medication that keeps me alive, I'm completely out of that. I don't lead with the most important things so you have to be patient and listen to my bits. Okay. I can do that.

So many bits. What do you do? You just sit? I just sit there. I literally just sit there and just listen to it. Okay. That's all you can do. But I think David's asking a much more intriguing question is, what is it you do?

Oh. I mean, I don't mean just with what I'm telling you a story because that's occasional. But when I'm around putting a show together, crafting a comedic sensibility that will guide a generation to higher heights, what are you doing? That's a good question. And you know, there's things that I should be doing and then there's things that I do. So I think those are two completely different ideas that you have. That was very good.

If you were in front of the Senate being grilled, they would not be able to pin you down. Yeah, that was amazing. That was amazing, man. I should be doing and then there are things that I do. So most of my day, and David and I have worked very closely for a long time. Most of our days spent talking about what we're going to get for lunch, then ordering lunch, then sending someone out for lunch, then eating lunch. So that already sucks up like half of our day.

Yeah. You know, if you have shows to catch up on or movies you want to watch, then that's important. So I started out as Conan, your production assistant, and Sona one day told me, if I'm ever just waiting at my desk for her to tell me to do something, it's fine if I watch TV. I don't fire me for saying this, but I sat at my desk and binged 14 seasons of Grey's Anatomy. Wow. Is Grey's Anatomy still on?

Yeah, they just got renewed. It's amazing that show is still on, but it's like gun smoke. It's so good. It's like a show from the 50s that's still going. It's good thing that it's still on because you're going to have a job where you need to watch it. Yeah. Yeah.

And now I'm basically a doctor. So you watched 14 seasons of Grey's Anatomy. That's incredible. Yeah. And on my dime, I was paying you. Yeah. Well, I was waiting for Sona to tell me if you need a lunch or something. I'm watching Chicago Hope right now.

Chicago Hope? I don't know. Was it still on? I've never seen that. Was that the big competitor to Grey's Anatomy? I don't know. And then it went away after like a year or is it? I don't know.

These shows that are on conventional television, you know, channels two, four, seven. When's the last time I stumbled onto one of those? Yeah, me either. I was always on some streaming platform watching Steisel. Took a chill, actually. I like it. I like my weird European shows, you know, with subtitles. I do too.

And then after I watch them, I feel like I know the language. I was watching. And that's not how language works. I was watching some show, I forget what it was, but it was on Netflix and it was this foreign obscure show with subtitles and it was like Dutch or something. And then after a while, I realized this is just Grey's Anatomy. Yeah. They're just coming in through the side door.

You know, it was very similar people and it was really no different. But I was giving it all this cred because it had subtitles. It's much better. I watched Call My Agent, which is in French, then I watched Summertime, which is in Italian. And then I also had watched Money Heist, which is in Spanish. And I really feel like after I'm done with all those shows that I can speak all those languages fluently. None of that.

But I studied abroad. Exactly. I watched the Bureau and Money Heist and I felt like, yeah, I'm just a classics enthusiast. I got all the romantic languages down. You know what happens? I watch those shows. I watch shows like that and I like to watch on a treadmill and I'm running it full tilt and I'm reading that tiny, you know, subtitles going by.

And my eyes are like on fire by the time the show is over because my head's bouncing up and down because that's how I run. I lope more than I run. I lope like a great wildebeest. You have to mention full tilt too, didn't you? You just have to like make sure everybody knew, like, it's the toughest one on that treadmill. Did I flex?

I mean, for me, full tilt might not be for, you know, an Olympic athlete full tilt. Oh, you compared yourself to an Olympic athlete. Oh, I just said an Olympic athlete would be full out running. My fast walk feels to me like full, you know, full on. Your one-tenth tilt. Yes. Anywho, we're learning a lot about you, David. I mean, nothing about David.

David, quickly, just tell us, do you think this is going to be an easy job? I think so. I'm not a demanding guy, am I? No. I think I'm emotionally demanding, but I don't ask for a lot of stuff. I've also, after five years, never seen you get mad. I don't think so. Well, not really mad.

I get fake mad all the time. That's true. I get fake mad constantly, you know, but... You're not like a... You're not a yeller. You don't throw things. I'm going to though, now. Why?

Why would you do that now? It's going to be a whole new Conan when you come back. Yeah, why? I don't know. I feel like David will just understand. And David, you quickly tell us your obsessions. I know that you're obsessed with Disneyland. I love Disneyland.

I haven't been back since they reopened, but... David. They will. There was a story halfway through the pandemic about someone who broke into Disneyland and went to that island, like swam to the island and was living there, and the workers at Disneyland found him, and I sent it to you and said, David, was this you? That's how much David Hopping loves Disneyland and Britney Spears. I do.

I'm curious, had you thought of it? Are you the type of person who would have broken into Disneyland and lived on that island for a bit? No, because I wanted it to risk getting banned for life. That's the only thing that would have stopped you. Yeah. Okay. That's true.

You would have been banned for life. Yeah. He'd have come back with like a big fake mustache. Just get tons of plastic surgery. I'm schmavid. Yeah. I'm schmavid. I'm schmavid, and I don't work for Schmone and O'Brien.

Schmavid schmopping. I'm schmavid schmopping. I've never heard of schmone and O'Brien. That makes no sense in any way. All right. Well, I think you're going to work out fine, David, and I'm really rooting for you, and I think you're going to be a wonderful, permanent replacement for Sonoma. Permanent.

Wow. Keep saying permanent. Well, whatever. It's a Freudian slip. It's when you accidentally say your deepest desire. Okay. Not permanent. Maybe.

I know. I'll be fine. You'll be back. You just love working with me. I know it. I mean, I don't know, love is the right word, but I tolerate it. You don't hate it. I don't hate it.

That's good. It's nice. You know, when we go to lunch or something, I find somewhere really expensive. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah. You got to look for $4 signs. Because he's rich. Yeah.

Because rich is a relative term. As celebrities go, I'm actually quite impoverished. I don't say impoverished. I'm going to start to go fund me. For what? We've got to get Conan up to Clooney levels. He's got that tequila. The sad part is people would do it.

I know. I want my own. We've got to help Conan out. He's not at Clooney level. He got that tequila. I tried to come out with my own knockoff of Snapple. I was going to say, do you think you have the right brand for tequila? No.

I don't know. I think a pomade. I keep thinking a pomade. I think a pomade is right. I don't think they can do it. Or like a little wine cooler or something. That'd be good. Yeah.

Sort of a fizzy. A nice rosé. Yeah. It kind of tastes like an apple juice. And it's actually, it's such a tame wine that it's been approved for children by the FDA. All right. Well, let's move on.

But David, I'm very good to have you aboard. Thank you. 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 Sacks, Joanna Solotarov, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Earwolf. 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 Beckton. 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 Coco 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 Coco production in association with Earwolf.