Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/081792/08179934.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 6KB | 118 lines

                                                                                TELEVISION, Page 62

The Bad Boys of Summer


Arsenio attacks, Leno cries foul, and Dennis coaches from the
sidelines in the late-night wars

By RICHARD CORLISS -- With reporting by William Tynan/New York


    They're baa-ack. After a vacation for NBC's Olympic
fortnight, Jay Leno returns to The Tonight Show to find his
competition with late-night rival Arsenio Hall fiercer than any
jock grudge match. Consider the events. The javelin backstab.
The 100-m bad-mouth. Synchronized sniping. Follyball. And --
given Leno's 33% ratings advantage over Hall -- the uneven
parallel talk shows. Who needs Barcelona? These are the games
of summer.

    Suddenly the midnight air is hot and stormy. Hall, whose
syndicated show brought a young, mixed-race audience to late
night, disses Leno for unspecified crimes against him. The two
shows' staffs charge each other with demanding first dibs on the
most desirable stars. Dennis Miller, whose talk show was
canceled after six months of low ratings and C-list guests,
blames The Tonight Show for strong-arm booking tactics. David
Letterman, NBC's later-night wit who couldn't conceal his
chagrin at being snubbed for Johnny Carson's job, now has other
networks and syndicators strewing his restless passage with
blank checks. NBC has already retained Saturday Night Live's
Dana Carvey as Letterman's potential replacement.

    The infotainment press is busy stoking the one-way feud.
In April, just before Leno replaced Carson, Entertainment
Weekly ran a cover story with Hall proclaiming, "I'm gonna kick
Leno's ass"; this week the cover copy blares LENO GETS EVEN, and
the Gibraltar-jawed comic stares out in a Raging Bull pose. The
Washington Post's Tom Shales rags Leno for going "all ponderous
and stony" and, bizarrely, for overloading his opening
monologue with political humor. (Memo to Jay: Better do more
7-Eleven jokes. Memo to Tom: Pssst, it's an election year.)

    For Arsenio, the grievance is personal, though he won't
reveal its nature. For Leno, the response is bafflement. "People
keep calling me and asking, `What is this fight between you?'
I don't know! I don't know! I haven't said anything bad. This
is someone who used to be at my house every day. Although we
haven't talked much in the past three years." In a recent phone
conversation -- in show-biz terms it was a summit meeting --
Leno asked Hall, "So what's the problem? If you're going to do
something, do it in a funny way."

    This was not the way it was supposed to be. As Carson's
heir, Leno would bring both familiarity and freshness to the
slot. He would book hipper musical guests and reclaim part of
Arsenio's audience. And with his camp-counselor personality, he
would retain Carson's senior fans. All this has indeed come to
pass. If Hall gets the headlines with shows featuring Ice-T on
the hot seat or Bill Clinton torturing a saxophone, Leno still
wins where it counts: equaling or surpassing Carson's ratings
and ad revenue. The difference is that all this was to be
accomplished without sweat or rancor. Who, after all, could get
mad at Jay? Everyone knew him as a stand-up comic who was also
a stand-up guy.

    But that was when Carson still reigned as the F.D.R. of
talk-show hosts, imposing through his majestic aloofness and the
length and strength of his tenure a benign passivity among his
courtiers. Now the President-King is dead -- or, rather,
involuntarily retired; NBC nudged him out to make room for Leno.
And the Dauphin gets no respect. "No one has taken over with the
authority that usedto exist," says Garry Shandling, whose new
HBO comedy series about a chat show deals with backstage
politics and booking wars. "So it leaves a disarray that causes
everyone to be a little edgier than they were when one person
dominated. Now it's like anarchy."

    Miller, the former SNL anchorman who gave his own show an
ingratiating edge, has the best view for appraising the
survivors. "Arsenio I find to be a classy, nice guy," he says.
"I've always loved David. Jay, I had a great time with. But The
Tonight Show is tough." Miller reluctantly blames Leno for the
bad vibes his staff sends out. "At some point in all of our
adult, big boy-big girl lives," he says, "we have to take
responsibility for what emanates from us. It's a misassumption
to think you have a staff that you don't control. Everything
that goes on in a show, every tiny detail, comes from the host."

    Leno agrees. "You're the captain," he says. "It's your
watch." It annoys him that Arsenio, who reportedly makes $12
million a year to Jay's $3 million, is perceived as the
underdog, but Leno can't help being amused at the insignificance
of "the feud." As he told Hall on the phone, "It looks like two
millionaires throwing silver dollars in the ocean. With
everything going on inthe country, this seems awfully silly."
He adds, "I can't believe that people pick up the paper and hear
millionaires whining, `He got Harrison Ford first!' "

    What's funny is that a talk-show host can't realize that
he, not the guests, is the star. He is the reason people watch
this anachronistic hybrid of variety show and interview show,
of Ed Sullivan and Edward R. Murrow. The host is the crooner of
TV's comic lullaby; he sets the mood for viewers who want to go
to sleep with a smile. And if they don't like him, the screen
goes black.

    Jay Leno's memo to talk-show hosts: "Do the best you can.
If you do good, great. If you fall on your face, great." And
then, in his mock-angry tone: "But just shut up!"