Staff Review With Todd Levin

conan o'brien needs a fan want to talk to conan visit team coco.com slash call conan okay let's get started hey welcome to a thursday episode of conan o'brien needs a friend usually these are fan episodes but we've been mixing it up a little bit recently i'll tell you why getting ready for the oscars and uh i have my a plus elite writing staff downstairs in the building working hard on concepts riddles quizzes recipes for the oscars and uh i am very fortunate i'll just come out and say it uh i i work with the best writers in the world and one of them i i'm i want to come up and hang with them we did this with brian kiley a couple days ago and now we're going to do it with mr todd levin about as sharp a writer as you will find you really are that's really nice you're you're uh crazily talented and i'm so glad that you're helping me with the oscars and we've i think you joined me is it did you say it was 2009 was when you came on board 2009 just as you were wrapping up late night in new york i was wrapping up late night and i was headed to the to take over the tonight show for a 30-year run and you had jobs for life you said i remember i had hired you and you said you know tonight's show hosts last forever yeah um nothing you said count me in and you started spending money like crazy oh yeah it was most of it was spent before i even got to california yeah yeah he showed up and the first day he got he said i'm buying a bentley yeah and he got a license plate that said tonight show for life and i said i looked it up it was way too many characters it was for a license plate it wasn't even legal it was actually tonight show for life three because two other people had gotten the same two other writers from my tonight show uh yeah so you were with me for the end of late night tonight show then the tbs thing and now uh oscars and yeah so you will be my writer for life whether you want to be or not um so i'm just let's get into this a little bit because there are different types of writers there are different types of writers there are the kinds that they chatter constantly i'm sorry to say i was one of those what oh my god doing bitch in the room and uh dancing around like a chimp a chimp on the track and then um todd you're that i call you you're like a ninja an assassin you you're quiet you're taking things in and then you'll say something that's really hilarious and you'll write something that's really great but there's not a lot of you know uh babbling and hey look at me which i really don't like about you it's not demonstrative because i believe in my work oh wow i am very much like a bad magician and i'm also a bad musician but i'm a bad magician trying to distract you and then because i'm afraid someone will really look and see there's not a lot of protein here no but i i was i think it's awesome just because i'm i've never been uncomfortable with that part of like performing stuff yeah yeah even when i was doing stand-up i was like a guy who just hugged the microphone i just held it dear to me and i wasn't like a big you'd often try and leave with it yeah exactly you've got to keep coming back with the mic uh well tell me about your journey a little bit because um this happens so often i work with these really talented people and i get to know them we're in the trenches together and i think hey i don't really know your origin story but when did you know oh comedy is for me i mean i think i always knew it as a kid but i didn't know i think you probably hear this a lot and i think a lot of people who are in comedy say this but i didn't know it was a career you know i didn't grow up in that kind of environment you know my parents were both state workers in albany new york and i so i loved comedy as a kid and my dad was really instrumental in that because my dad had my parents had a terrible record collection they had very they had like a couple john denver's a couple barbara streisand's right but then my dad also had david saying what's wrong with that yeah sounds great to me not much i love your parents when can i come over david settle down but my dad had uh bob newhart records yeah as well and so he had he was my my introduction to comedy so i would listen to his records all the time he had cosby records too uh you could say that like but those were also like huge a huge influence on me yeah and then my dad also had this rule like we had this really strict bedtime but if we had hbo records we would listen to his records and we would listen to his records when i was growing up and if there was a funny movie on at like nine o'clock he would let me stay up to watch watch it with him so i'd watch a lot of comedies with my dad everything you're saying resonates completely with me because my parents had nothing to do with show business i'm growing up just outside boston i you know show business is this thing that exists on jupiter and it's done by aliens but my father was very interested in comedy um you know he was uh you know infectious disease scientist doctor and uh he um but he loved comedy he loved new heart we had those records he they also had a terrible record i mean like no records uh and um but he loved comedy and when a movie like mad mad mad mad mad mad world would come on oh yeah uh once a year we we weren't allowed to watch tv at night if it was a school night if we had school the next day but he would say when this comedy came on he would say we could all watch it and i mean this was unheard of but that was sacrosanct if there was a really good classic comedy we could watch that so and i think new heart you know what a great person to learn from because the jokes on the concept it's about jokes and concepts yeah he's like a matador he didn't move that much it's you know it's all the power of the joke and a stillness to it yes for sure and a musical ear yeah yeah i loved him yeah my my my so my dad turned me on to bonnie python to snl all those things so i was really into it as a kid and like like you know had no idea that it could be a thing you could do for a living and then when i moved to new york which was just a place i knew that i wanted to be in new york eventually i didn't know what i wanted to do there i just knew i needed to be in new york eventually and then when i got there i just gravitated toward people who were doing improv and doing stand-up and i don't even know how or why i befriended these people but i started to kind of get in with that world and people my friends were just encouraging me to get out on stage and just do stuff that's great yeah so in the beginning i wasn't even my the beginning of my stand-up career was me reading bits it was very much like a new heart thing where i was just i would prepare a written bit that depended on the page because i was so scared and i just was like i need the words to be perfect so i would structure it like well i got these letters uh in the mail and i you know i thought i'd share them with you or these i found these old diary entries so something that i was like i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do that and that was sort of it had to be read and then as i continued to do it i just got more comfortable being in front of people and being spontaneous and the pages started drifting away but you have to find a special place to do that because yes you can't go to a club there are comedy clubs where it's very confrontational and you have to almost fight them to prove that you're funny yes uh which is you know can breed a certain kind of style and then there are places you can go that are more open to experimentation a hundred percent uh and so where were you finding those places so in new york that was there was a place called refifi which was in the back of a it was like they showed movies there and there's also like burlesque nights it was a really weird place there's a bar in the front and a little theater in the back and there was a big kind of thriving alternative scene there so i would do shows there the uh ucb places like that um there's a place called luna lounge yeah that had a very famous like alternative show on monday nights yeah marin kind of ruled the roost there yeah and he was he was at an older gen like kind of a generation of comics before me yeah um yeah so there were all these little rooms you could do that and then once you got comfortable there still was an expectation that you do clubs i never really wanted to do clubs but if you're doing if you're trying to get into a festival or get on tv then you kind of have to be in clubs and you have and it is it's different it's like i have to make you like me yeah whereas in the alternative rooms you're kind of like well this will make you like i this the words i'm saying will hopefully make you like me but like you have to be this person that's approachable and it it can be combative but it's just a it's more of like a a struggle like i have to make these idiots like me you just mud brain yeah you morons how are you morons tonight you working class scum hey why did the crowd wasn't that good tonight yeah they were they were really good until you screamed at them in your wool suit you dropped your horn rim glasses at one point um i waved a newspaper at them yeah everyone has to find their own way uh and you do that and then what did you do tv jobs before you came to me this is my first tv job so i had been doing pretty well as a stand-up and i'd gotten like a tv gig and i was like i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do this and i'm just performing and i got an agent through that but as soon as i got an agent i said i want to write like that's what i want to do like you know i i like stand-up but i love writing and this late night was my first tv job and i almost didn't take it because i thought well shouldn't i have a job on a worse show first like i had that like that's my own like you know insecurity and growing up in this kind of like working middle class family i was like shouldn't i have started on something smaller because i was such a huge fan of the show when i got hired um that i almost didn't take it and then the week that that week i got you got the job and you were like hey this show isn't that good i think i'll be just fine i don't know what all the fuss is all about i think conan's on pills but yeah i so i that i had gotten a job on another tv show vh1 tv show that same week and the and i was i almost took that job and then i got a call from sweeney about this show yeah and yeah yeah it was crazy i'd love it if you had turned us down and worked on ridiculousness i know oh my god i would be rich clips of people in bikinis falling down rich beyond my wildest you'd refuse to come on this podcast now i'm not talking how much does this pay yeah uh so um talk to me about some of the bits that you like your experience working on the show what were some of the bits that you got on early days or just in general that you were really proud of well the first i would say the first thing that i got on that well there are a couple things like there are a couple things erlan that i got i liked but the first thing that i got on that i was really proud of that really kind of broke through was minty yes minty the candy cane and that was like it just made people happy oh it was so it made me happy great and now refresh us to take us through the minty is a candy cane but not any candy cane and he's played by mccann he's played by brian mccann i had basically i had so much insurance for that bit though because i had brian mccann who's an incredible performer playing this candy cane that had fallen the idea is that he had fallen on the ground briefly briefly briefly he briefly fell on the ground he had a few things stuck to him like a cigarette butt and a penny and then the song was can you do the song i'm trying to remember it uh uh minty the candy cane who briefly fell on the ground and it was done in that kind of old time on the ground oh minty fell on the ground it was now he's covered in goo now he's covered in goo oh my god and but like so so mccann played him stack sang brian stack also an amazing performer sang the song and jimmy vivino arranged it i can't sing it's a great song and um of course near and dear to my heart because my favorite era of singing is about 1914 megaphone singing oh and you know uh and it was great he had just the perfect thing stuck to him and immediately people loved him i loved it and he was like oh my god i can't sing it anymore i would always dance along with minty i think minty threw things at people he threw he had a little basket of candy canes that he passed out in the audience and then and then he would whip them at me violently whip them at you and quick shout out to brian mccann who i gotta get in here at some point because he played he was such a that early early late night show he was on and would just play these hilarious characters that really helped us put our stamp on the sand with bulletproof legs so good and mccann would come out wearing super short shorts and an incredibly um self-satisfied expression and he would sing a song about how you can't hurt me because i've got bulletproof legs yes i've got bulletproof legs you can't and then blam he'd get shot in the chest and collapse and die and it was one of my favorite things because he would he'd make his legs elongate yeah when i was like almost do this kind of beautiful swan walk yes you do this long-legged swan walk bragging about how swan walk bragging about how his legs were um bulletproof and then he'd get shot in the chest uh and it just delighted me and that's one of maybe 10 000 things mccann did for us what do you got there eduardo you want me to play it uh yeah if you want to see one of these minty sketches come to life go on the team coco channel look up mindy the candy cane come on let's hear him the voice he chose yeah that's it just a moment or two that's you know my favorite was minty's covered in goo and it's this goo yeah oh that made me so happy oh another early thing i don't want to talk about this that much but was the uh the human centipede menorah yes which was that was like it might have been the same year and human centipede had just come out which was one of the most horrifying and still remains one of the most horrifying movies of all time uh sona made me watch it on the tour bus oh really yeah i've never seen it and um i won't watch it and it buffered a lot so it took us four hours to watch it yeah yeah it was really really not it was a labor of love and so uh yeah so human centipede menorah so um did this get you tossed out of any religious uh affiliations the two things i remember about it were that like pat and oswald had tweeted something about how horrifying it was and i was like if that got him that's good if this horrifies pat and oswald and got him not sleeping yes uh then we know we're in the right territory and then the other thing was that we did it multiple years and for some reason they always because i guess because the costumes fit they always tried to hire back the same nine guys yeah and except for like one of them they all came back it was like a like they had stockholm syndrome yeah yeah the one that didn't come back timothy chalamet he just you know and he won't acknowledge it anymore no no he doesn't talk about it doesn't talk about it but it was crazy because those guys would they all stayed in touch with each other it was like a shared trauma and they all they all kept in touch and i if you want to see the human centipede menorah go on the team coco and then don't look at the clip because it was horrifying so horrifying and it's everything you think it is yeah yes uh wow so but i like to do that was a thing that i think that i would go back to a lot which was take something monstrous and make people have to celebrate it yes or take something sweet and make it monstrous which like wiki bear was like a sweet thing that stack and i wrote that was like you love it when you see it and his voice is cute but he's a monster yeah what was it was it what was wiki bear was when i would uh take the it was like the um the bear that they were selling yeah there's a real bear that they were selling that you could ask it questions and then you could ask it questions and then you could ask it questions and yeah it's based on a real thing there was a bear that could connect to the internet could connect to the internet it was like obsessed with murder wasn't it constantly the wiki bear was always giving anecdotes not anecdotes but like stories it would give you facts that you would ask it very innocent questions it would answer them and then pivot off the question to something absolutely give me an example trying to remember i know like uh so you would ask it like it was always i wish i could give it because it was a cute kid's toy so i was saying hey wiki bear how and then it would i'm fine conan and then it would pivot off that really quickly speaking of blah blah ed gain made uh lampshades out of human skin and i'd be like wiki bear speaking of bright ideas yeah it would be like something like that like yeah i was a clever fella i think one of the fit in so nicely is that i think my whole life so many bits were me trying to be the innocent yes it's almost like we didn't have rehearsal if you followed that logic i'm gonna try out this wiki bear hey wiki bear and and then i'd be trying to be like okay well let's just move it along wiki bear did you know that the the second night of the manson murders they you know and i'm like hey hold on a second wiki bear but if you look through it that's a theme that runs through the entire show uh for years and years and years any version of it is me trying to put on a nice show i'm trying to put on a nice show and i don't understand what's going on here but that was a bit that you helped a lot actually because the original draft was like kind of it was i don't think it was unfunny but it wasn't focused and then when we were doing in rehearsal because the bear would move like they could control its mouth so it could always move and stack was in the voiceover booth and you guys just started talking about the manson family it just became a funny thing at rehearsal and then stack and i kind of locked into that we're like that's what the bit is yeah you have to find it sometime yeah yeah it changed the whole thing and it was so what surprised you you went from watching the show to then working on it what are some of the things that that struck you as oh this is different or i mean what were your impressions well the the thing that i'll tell you a thing that terrified me at first but then became my favorite thing about the show was that the writers have a lot of autonomy and that you're kind of expected to not just write your bits but to produce them yeah and in a sense direct them as well and you're working with the editors and you're working with all the departments yeah and in the beginning when if you've never done that before it's so scary yeah because you're like there's a thousand ways to mess this up and you know a couple ways to get it right and then that is something thing i learned from lauren michaels when i went to work on saturday night live with greg daniels um it was i mean it stunned us i mean i was i don't know 23 maybe or 24 and suddenly yeah i would have been 24 i think but um you know we pitched a sketch they said you know i did well at read through and the next thing you know you're talking to set designers wardrobe people you're telling them you know lauren would say to me what kind of restaurant is this and i'd be like i don't know i just get pizza at the corner around the corner i get a slice are we at or so are we at elaine's oh my god you know we downtown at le bon and i'm like i don't know only go to three restaurants i don't go to restaurants i've never been to a restaurant i have two pairs of jeans and a 1973 plymouth valiant don't ever tell me that again um but uh yeah and so lauren threw us into the deep end of the pool and at first it felt like insanity and then i realized no one's going to care more than the people who thought of it yeah it's a great idea and um so you should be the one that's anal and like you know exacting about what it has to be because it's your vision yes and so uh and then you you just i think it leads to so many things i mean i think you have a really good director's eye so many of the writers do you develop that really quickly because you know what you want yeah that's very true sometimes even when you didn't think you were that kind of person you find out really quickly if you have to produce the sketches i totally agree and the the downside of it is that you also waste so many resources like there's so many times because you're in control of it there's no one to say are you sure you need all that absolutely why is minty made out of silver because that's the way i thought of it exactly do it for me do it eight hundred thousand yeah no it would be a lot of times like like i there was a thing that dan cronin and i worked on that was so so needlessly ambitious it was just a parody of a commercial like a uh what was it it was like uh uh not el pollo uh del taco that's what it was it was the idea that was a del taco delivery system so that it was it was so so stupid on its face it was a a special device on your toilet that when you flushed it it could recognize when your body had room for another burrito i knew the toilet was gonna come and then it would immediately provide you with that burrito once you had cleared enough room out of your body for a new burrito yes and we and it became trust me this is something del taco's thinking about i think it was off some story about how nike or reebok had developed these sneakers that you could press a button and it would get dominoes for you it was like connected to dominoes yeah so this was like del taco's version of that man yeah yeah and it was so and it's so stupid on its face and it became so ambitious where there's this it gets so in sync with your body's needs that it it opens up like a third eye and takes you to this like place of nirvana where it's like everything's perfectly it was so expensive but that's what jim downey was really good at this he loved the comedy of take something very simple and then make it needlessly complicated yes but that in itself is funny yes so a long commercial about change bank where jim downey's explaining to you that if you give us five dollars we'll give you you know this is this this many quarters this many singles and or we'll also give you this many nickels this many quarter and over explaining it and i think there's something to an idea that's stupid that then probably uses animation so computer graphics to explain how it works green screens of like once the this area has been voided then this area is created and this area of your brain and you're like this is such a stupid idea i cannot believe that you would go to this much trouble and that's where the funny stuff comes from i think a lot of times i think the show kind of for me at least taught me some of that too because so much of what i felt like i was trying to do as a writer was to break you because i yeah yeah i knew because you've seen so much yeah you just have seen so much and that there's always there's that kind of line between okay that'll work for the show and i want to see that on the show yeah you know yeah and i think we're always trying and i and i knew you're rooting against us and you know what i'm running against you right now yeah this is what i'm i wanted to say something yeah you're having such a respectful conversation with todd and it's very confusing to me because i don't think being nice in the beginning i thought it was an ambush i know oh it is this this is an irs sting operation has he ever made fun of you for like a piece not working out can we talk about that trust me making fun of him trust me delighting can you eduardo can you kill her mic no no uh that is i mean i would have this there was this relationship with the writers where if something was really tanking you could see me licking my lips like oh yes this is gonna be delicious and i remembered i think we were doing i forget we were doing shows at comic-con and one of the writers had come up with it's r2d2 but he's gone hollywood and he's like hey make sure you get me a good table at that you know and he had like a cigar and uh you know yeah and where's my limo yeah she she and it was just wasn't working and felt like kind of an old take and i people said they saw me licking my lips and rubbing my hands together i was so like oh we we've got to have more r2d2 gone hollywood and um yes you would sometimes interact with the thing more than needed yes tell us more r2d2 who's gone to hollywood and uh whoever wrote it was like okay fuck you conan but um no one is more delighted by left brain crazy ideas that tickle me like those things that's a religious experience you've written much more than your share of those and um you know let's hope we can do it at the oscars you know i like it's gonna be uh so much fun but yes i will ridicule you in an hour when i come back down i will mock you flattens everything yeah there is no past there's only the present time is a loop um but uh cannot thank you enough uh honored to work with you and uh get back to work thank you so much for having me conan o'brien needs a fan with conan o'brien sonim of sessian and matt gorley produced by me matt gorley executive produced by adam sacks jeff ross and nick leo incidental music by jimmy vivino take it away jimmy supervising producer aaron blaird associate talent producer jennifer samples associate producers sean doherty and lisa berm engineering by eduardo perez get three free months of serious 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