LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN TRANSCRIPT
In short: Conan O'Brien = CO'B, Kevin Spacey = KS
CO'B: Alright everybody, we are back. My first guest tonight won an Oscar for his role in The Usual Suspects. He has also appeared in the films L.A. Confidential and Glengarry Glen Ross. Currently he can be seen in the critically acclaimed American Beauty. Please welcome Kevin Spacey!
[crowd cheers and applauds loudly as Kevin walks out and takes his seat]
CO'B: (re: cheering) That's nice.
KS: -- very nice.
CO'B: Not a bad thing.
KS: Not a bad thing.
CO'B: We're very excited to have you here in the programme.
KS: Thank you.
CO'B: Thank you very much for being here. And it was... it was fun - I met you for the first time, I guess, just the other night at the Saturday Night Live's 25th anniversary party, which was quite some experience.
KS: It was like a smorgas board of celebrities.
CO'B: I've never seen that many famous people in one place.
KS: No, no... It was like a celebrity deli. It was like, ah... [crowd laughs] It was, it was like, 'I'll have a Steve Tyler, two Claire Danes and give me a Catherine Zeta-Jones on the side. Oh no, somebody else is getting her on the side. Sorry!'
[applauds, cheers]
CO'B: We'll get you a little drum next time on that. Did you, ah, I was talking the other night on the show that I saw all these amazing celebrities and then I went and sat down with my little hotdog or whatever I grabbed from the counter and I sit down and I'm accosted by Gary Busey.
KS: I got accosted by Gary Busey.
CO'B: Seriously?
KS: He did. He kept saying to me, [doing an impression] 'If you wanna be brave man, book me on your show!'
CO'B: [laughing] He did not.
KS: I was like, 'Gary, I don't have a show.' I don't know what that meant. What did that --
CO'B: Yeah, yeah, he just thinks we all have a show.
KS: Yeah, I mean, if I had, I would book him if I had one. But I said [I] don't and he finally went away.
CO'B: Poor man.
KS: I'm kidding, of course I'm kidding.
CO'B: No, not at all. He's a genious. Chris Walken, Chris Walken performed on the SNL show --
KS: [falling into a CW impression] That's right. He did.
CO'B: [laughing] You can't help it.
KS: I took a nap today, that's the problem.
CO'B: Right, right, well you know, the funny thing is - you're famous, you did him on the SNL, and such a dead-on impression. Did you bump into him and was he happy with the impression?
KS: Well, I bumped into him, and he went, 'Yeah, I saw your little impression. Ha ha.' [laughter] So... I thought... Maybe I'd better stop that. So, I'm, I'm working on my Gary Busey.[does his GB impression again]
CO'B: He does that for everything. So, ah, I, I always feel weird about saying this, 'cause I saw American Beauty last night, and I was telling you in the hall that this was one of the best films I've seen in quite a while. It's an amazing movie, and I don't say that often. But this - what's weird about this movie is you see it and you think, 'this, Kevin Spacey, I think he's gonna get another Oscar for this' but you're hesitant to bring it up because some people are very superstitious about it and they think 'oh no no, don't mention it, I don't wanna hear about that' --
KS: I wouldn't be one of those people. In fact, in fact you could say it again. Go ahead, say it again.
CO'B: You're going to get an Oscar for this.
KS: Thank you very much.
CO'B: I can have a recording made for you.
KS: Put it on a loop.
CO'B: I'll put it on nice DVD sound quality, over and over again.
KS: Thank you.
CO'B: You've won an Oscar once. Does that, I mean, how would you feel about winning another one... I mean, what - would it be a diminished joy?
KS: No, no, no. But, but I think it would be great because the books would finally stop falling on the other side of the shelf... I could.. Get the book end. No, ah, it's... It would be incredible. I'm really proud of this movie, and I hope that if it does do well come award time that it'll be inclusive and it'll include a lot of the other actors and an incredible cinematographer --
CO'B: -- everybody's good in the movie --
KS: -- an extra-ordinary director and a great screenplay. So I, I hope they spread it around.
CO'B: Now, we have a clip here from the film. We should probably set this up, in fact I'll let you do that since you're in the movie.
KS: Oh, okay. I think this a clip where I think I'm getting baked.
CO'B: You're getting baked... You're enjoying...
KS: I'm enjoying... I'm enjoying the mowey-vowey (sp?) as we know it.
CO'B: Okay. (re: audience's cheers) I don't know why people are applauding that. It sickens me. But, ah, anything else we need to know?
KS: Well, this is a... It was a funny scene to do because this actor named Wes Bentley who was in the scene with me, we had to pretend to get stoned in the scene, and we weren't stoned but everyone on the crew thought we were completely baked the entire time we were shooting the scene. Just baked out of our minds, which made us laugh even harder.
CO'B: So you're not, nothing --
KS: No, we're not, of course we're not.
CO'B: Just, it's the level of acting.
KS: It's the level, it's the quality of the acting.
CO'B: What do you draw [on] as an actor to create this pot-enduced state?
KS: [singing] Memories...
CO'B: ..okay...
KS: No, no, well, run the clip and get us out of this.
CO'B: Run the clip, please. This is a clip from American Beauty.
[cut to a clip of AB in which Lester works out in the garage and Carolyn finds out he's smoking pot now]
KS: just a bar on a loane [?]...
CO'B: There were fishing lines lifting those bar bells, I know.
KS: That's right.
CO'B: There's, ah, people are already talking about, there are two scenes in the movie that are controversial, as if pot smoking isn't controversial enough. Scenes in which you are gratifying yourself.
KS: Oh. My. God. Well, somebody had to.
CO'B: You're, ah, and there's a scene you have with Annette Benning where you use quite a number of euphemisms for it.
KS: Well, because I, the character Lester, who I play, he's a bit of a schmo and so I thought he probably wouldn't know the terms that, you know, people would use, he'd get them wrong. So I was saying different ones during every take, you know, shaving the twinkey, spanking the monster --
CO'B: [laughing] Shaving the twinkey!
KS: -- shaving the wood - why, aren't those your terms? Just me, right.
CO'B: No, ah, never me, no. I've heard Andy say it. Well, ah, the last thing I wanted to bring up it with you, which is just... I grew up obviously watching Johnny Carson and idolizing him, and you, as a young man, used to sneak into the audience of the Tonight Show and --
KS: yeah...
CO'B: And I heard you used to get tickets in an interesting way. I just want to hear how you did it.
KS: Well, ah, one of the... sometimes I'd stand in line like, like these people. I'm sure, stood in line, right? [audience cheers]
CO'B: We, we actually got them from a prison.
KS: Ha, ha... I have nowhere to go with that.
CO'B: Sorry.
KS: The, ah, but I used to stand in line. I would get up and stand in line, seven o'clock or... sometimes, if I was being really sneaky I would call the Tonight Show office just before taping and as Johnny Carson I would say, 'Hey Betty, look, I've got two friends from Omaha coming in tonight. Can you just put two tickets on the front row, I'll have them pick them up in a minute, I gotta go do the monologue, bye!' And I got in.
CO'B: That worked? You think, you think you could get something more with a Johnny Carson impression. 'Wire me six hundred thousand dollars from my personal account.'
KS: Yeah, that's true, that's true. I should have tried harder.
CO'B: Yeah, no, just tickets. American Beauty is in theatres now and I think, you don't need to hear it from me, go see this movie. And Kevin Spacey, thank you so much for coming. Real pleasure having you here. Kevin Spacey, everybody!
also on the show...
In the beginning of the show, after the monologue (or conologue as the fans call it) Conan and Andy talked about how they always have to try and please the affiliates, who air Late Night at the local stations. Apparently their affiliate in Pompano Beach, Florida, requested that Late Night have more pieces featuring oranges (as Florida is the citrus capital of the US). To their luck (and our amazement), Andy and Conan found an ultra-rare example of classic orange porn [!!!].
INT. AN OFFICE
A chesty blonde stands next to a xerox machine.
WOMAN: This stupid machine. It never seems to work.
ORANGE (VO): Excuse me...
Cut to an orange at the doorway.
(continued) Maybe I could help.
WOMAN picks up the ORANGE, and places it on the xerox machine. She takes off her glasses and starts kissing the orange. We hear the ORANGE moaning.
ORANGE: Oh yeah... Ah...
FADE OUT.
Starring: Kevin Spacey as Orange
and...
as if this weren't enough, KS makes yet another appearance. The second guest on the show was Christina Applegate. In very beginning of the segment, Conan asks her if she'd ever met Kevin before. She replies that they haven't actually been introduced to one another, but she has seen Kevin's underwear. Turns out that they work out at the same gym in Los Angeles, and while doing crunches opposite each other Kevin was flashing at her. Suddenly, Kevin enters the stage from the side door, and walks up to Christina, hugs her and whispers something like this into her ear: "You couldn't have seen my underwear if we hadn't actually met. I should probably see yours." He escorts her off the stage. It takes about 30 seconds before she comes back. When asked what they did backstage, she replies: "That's for Kevin and me to know."
A relatively good show for KS fans, wouldn't you agree?
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