creation of the Peace Corps for the Kennedy administration, put aside her legal career to raise her children, and returned to law and became only the second female partner at the well-regarded Boston firm of Ropes & Gray.
Their third son did not spring from the womb funny—nor academically driven, despite the parental example. Though well loved in his supremely functional and warm family, Conan felt awkward and out of place for much of his childhood. He started out with a deep distaste for school, until he saw it as a route to recognition for achievement. Then he applied himself toward excelling with a steely purpose. Too gangly to be an athlete, unwilling to turn himself into a bookish nerd, and not confident enough yet to exhibit publicly the wiseass within, he was a kid without a natural constituency through most of his precollege years.
His sense of humor was initially more defense mechanism than personal statement, and it certainly did not seem an avenue to show business for the young O’Brien. But then, what did a kid in Massachusetts, with two professional parents, know about getting into show business? “You might as well say I’m going to Mars” was how it seemed to Conan. But he loved the idea of show business. He loved comedy, loved to make his family and the other kids laugh. He loved comedy movies, watching them obsessively, especially the classics featuring the Marx Brothers or W. C. Fields. He took note of everything about comedy—pratfalls, verbal byplay, pure wit.
The young Conan thought the way you became an entertainer was by learning the basics—like, for example . . . tap dancing. How could you be in show business without being able to tap dance? His doting—but likely confused—parents found a protégé of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Conan diligently took tap lessons for several years, the distinctly odd kid out, one white face among a group of inner-city black youths.
When that ended—as it had to, once the realization set in that vaudeville was dead—Conan channeled most of his deep reservoir of energy into shining in school. He became a grinder, especially in high school, when Harvard loomed as his goal. (The role of class clown had zero appeal; Conan always maintained that “the class clown is killed in a motel shoot-out.”) He focused on schoolwork with an intensity that few of his contemporaries could match. His mother noticed and started to believe her son was a person who would never take things lightly. Conan wanted Harvard because no one in his preposterously high-achieving family had ever gone there. But mainly he wanted Harvard because that was where all the smartest people went, and this was a smart young man who wanted to get someplace.
High school was the last time Conan was unsure where he was ultimately headed, but it helped get him on the road. He did, inevitably, give the class speech as valedictorian—and, yes, he got some laughs.
Being funny onstage may have been something of a drug, but from the day he left Harvard, heading for LA and a career, O’Brien recognized that one form of comedy did not fit his particular specifications—or vice versa.
He knew he wasn’t a stand-up. He had a different kind of mind, one that truly sparked only when touched to another. He was interactive—he was funny with people, and he made other people funny. Stand-up seemed a different art form, one he respected, but did not want to practice.
The notion of improv, however, intrigued him. He knew little about it, had never taken a class, or even seen it performed. But it sounded like him. So when he and his best Lampoon writing buddy, Greg Daniels, landed in LA in the summer of 1985, already hired as writers for the HBO sketch comedy series Not Necessarily the News , Conan spent part of his first day at the Sunset Gower Studios trying to wheedle his way into a class given by the improv troupe the Groundlings.
Crushed to learn that all the classes were filled, Conan said
Their third son did not spring from the womb funny—nor academically driven, despite the parental example. Though well loved in his supremely functional and warm family, Conan felt awkward and out of place for much of his childhood. He started out with a deep distaste for school, until he saw it as a route to recognition for achievement. Then he applied himself toward excelling with a steely purpose. Too gangly to be an athlete, unwilling to turn himself into a bookish nerd, and not confident enough yet to exhibit publicly the wiseass within, he was a kid without a natural constituency through most of his precollege years.
His sense of humor was initially more defense mechanism than personal statement, and it certainly did not seem an avenue to show business for the young O’Brien. But then, what did a kid in Massachusetts, with two professional parents, know about getting into show business? “You might as well say I’m going to Mars” was how it seemed to Conan. But he loved the idea of show business. He loved comedy, loved to make his family and the other kids laugh. He loved comedy movies, watching them obsessively, especially the classics featuring the Marx Brothers or W. C. Fields. He took note of everything about comedy—pratfalls, verbal byplay, pure wit.
The young Conan thought the way you became an entertainer was by learning the basics—like, for example . . . tap dancing. How could you be in show business without being able to tap dance? His doting—but likely confused—parents found a protégé of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Conan diligently took tap lessons for several years, the distinctly odd kid out, one white face among a group of inner-city black youths.
When that ended—as it had to, once the realization set in that vaudeville was dead—Conan channeled most of his deep reservoir of energy into shining in school. He became a grinder, especially in high school, when Harvard loomed as his goal. (The role of class clown had zero appeal; Conan always maintained that “the class clown is killed in a motel shoot-out.”) He focused on schoolwork with an intensity that few of his contemporaries could match. His mother noticed and started to believe her son was a person who would never take things lightly. Conan wanted Harvard because no one in his preposterously high-achieving family had ever gone there. But mainly he wanted Harvard because that was where all the smartest people went, and this was a smart young man who wanted to get someplace.
High school was the last time Conan was unsure where he was ultimately headed, but it helped get him on the road. He did, inevitably, give the class speech as valedictorian—and, yes, he got some laughs.
Being funny onstage may have been something of a drug, but from the day he left Harvard, heading for LA and a career, O’Brien recognized that one form of comedy did not fit his particular specifications—or vice versa.
He knew he wasn’t a stand-up. He had a different kind of mind, one that truly sparked only when touched to another. He was interactive—he was funny with people, and he made other people funny. Stand-up seemed a different art form, one he respected, but did not want to practice.
The notion of improv, however, intrigued him. He knew little about it, had never taken a class, or even seen it performed. But it sounded like him. So when he and his best Lampoon writing buddy, Greg Daniels, landed in LA in the summer of 1985, already hired as writers for the HBO sketch comedy series Not Necessarily the News , Conan spent part of his first day at the Sunset Gower Studios trying to wheedle his way into a class given by the improv troupe the Groundlings.
Crushed to learn that all the classes were filled, Conan said
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