Guest Programmer: Conan O'Brien
Monday, July 4
"When I come home at night I don't
want to watch another talk show,"
Conan O'Brien tells TCM host Robert
Osborne during the comic
superstar's stint as Guest
Programmer for July. "I want to
watch you talking about classic
movies." Emmy award-winning
writer, comedian and talk-show host
extraordinaire, O'Brien currently
hosts Conan, the late-night show on
TCM sister station TBS.
"This is probably the movie that made me want to go into show business," O'Brien says of his first film pick, Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)--a felicitous choice for Fourth of July programming. "I saw it as a kid and it just grabbed me. I wanted to be the character that Jimmy Cagney is playing, George M. Cohan." O'Brien also loves Cagney in The Roaring Twenties (1939). "It was his stock in trade, playing gangsters, but he does it with such a light touch."
O'Brien kids that he selected his third film because he thought the tagline "Conan O'Brien choosing Network" would be an attention- getter. He feels that screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's caustic take on the ruthless world of television in the 1976 movie is no longer satire. "We're there--we're really there, right now!"
Growing up in the 1970s in Brookline, Mass., O'Brien was often taken by his father--a fan of vintage comedies--to watch classic performers including the Marx Brothers. "When you get comedians and comedy writers together, talk always turns to who's the best," he says now. In his opinion, his final choice, the Brothers' Duck Soup (1933) is "the best movie by the best comedians that ever lived."
"This is probably the movie that made me want to go into show business," O'Brien says of his first film pick, Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)--a felicitous choice for Fourth of July programming. "I saw it as a kid and it just grabbed me. I wanted to be the character that Jimmy Cagney is playing, George M. Cohan." O'Brien also loves Cagney in The Roaring Twenties (1939). "It was his stock in trade, playing gangsters, but he does it with such a light touch."
O'Brien kids that he selected his third film because he thought the tagline "Conan O'Brien choosing Network" would be an attention- getter. He feels that screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's caustic take on the ruthless world of television in the 1976 movie is no longer satire. "We're there--we're really there, right now!"
Growing up in the 1970s in Brookline, Mass., O'Brien was often taken by his father--a fan of vintage comedies--to watch classic performers including the Marx Brothers. "When you get comedians and comedy writers together, talk always turns to who's the best," he says now. In his opinion, his final choice, the Brothers' Duck Soup (1933) is "the best movie by the best comedians that ever lived."
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