Speaker 1: Kalaroga Shark Media.
Speaker 2: Happy Jay Leno Day. I'm Johnny Mack and the Saturday
Speaker 2: Deep Dives are back. Today we'll take a look at
Speaker 2: Jay Leno. It is Jay Leno Day. Jay hosted the
Speaker 2: Tonight Show at NBC Studios in Burbank for more than
Speaker 2: twenty years. The city's home to his famous garage, hosting
Speaker 2: more than one hundred rare cars. He regularly performs at
Speaker 2: Flapper's Comedy Club in Burbank, and he is being honored
Speaker 2: by the city. It is Jay Leno Day now for
Speaker 2: this deep dive. In particular, I'm going to skip the
Speaker 2: Tonight show, so we're not gonna talk Tonight Show and
Speaker 2: we're not gonna talk Conan. The reason is this fall,
Speaker 2: I'm going to do a series about the late night
Speaker 2: hosts and we will cover that in detail, so we're
Speaker 2: not going to bog down on that. Today we will
Speaker 2: talk about the man that I jokingly call the worst
Speaker 2: person who ever lived, because for some reason, people don't
Speaker 2: like this guy I do. Jay Leno has said multiple
Speaker 2: interviews over the years consistently enough that it's cloing not
Speaker 2: a bit. He never spent a dollar of the money
Speaker 2: NBC paid him for the Tonight Show, not one dollar.
Speaker 2: During that time, he was making somewhere between twenty and
Speaker 2: thirty million dollars a year, and yet he was living
Speaker 2: off his income from stand up. The NBC money went
Speaker 2: into the bank. Jay Leno toured on the weekends, kept
Speaker 2: doing clubs in theaters, and kept treating stand up as
Speaker 2: the actual job rather than the thing he used to
Speaker 2: do before TV, and he used that income for his
Speaker 2: operating budget for everything. The Tonight Show money sat there
Speaker 2: and accumulated. His fortune is now estimated at around four
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty million dollars. Jay Leno, underneath all the
Speaker 2: Late night stuff will cover this fall, is fundamentally a
Speaker 2: stand up comedian with an extraordinary work ethic, a strange
Speaker 2: and consuming passion for machines with engines, a husband of
Speaker 2: forty five plus years that is currently one of the
Speaker 2: more quietly moving stories in show business, and a guy
Speaker 2: with a financial philosophy that treats television as a bonus
Speaker 2: rather than his career. Understanding all that tells you more
Speaker 2: about Jay Leno than hosting The Tonight Show ever did.
Speaker 2: Born James Douglas Muir Lean I know April twenty eighth,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty in New Rochelle, New York. Raised in Andover, Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: the son of an insurance salesman father of Italian descent
Speaker 2: and a Scottish mother who immigrated to the United States
Speaker 2: alone at eleven years old. His mother's response to his
Speaker 2: comedy ambitions was, Jay, we're not show people. His fifth
Speaker 2: grade teacher wrote in his report card that if Jay
Speaker 2: Leno spent as much time studying as he did trying
Speaker 2: to be a comedian, he would be a pig star.
Speaker 2: Jay had dyslexia. The experience of being told repeatedly that
Speaker 2: you're not smart, of having to compensate for how your
Speaker 2: brain processes written language by developing other skills, by talking,
Speaker 2: by performing, by being funny enough that people paid attention
Speaker 2: to you all shaped Jay Leno. He went to Emerson
Speaker 2: College in Boston on a speech therapy degree. That makes
Speaker 2: more sense than it sounds when you think about somebody
Speaker 2: who struggled with written language and decided to master spoken language.
Speaker 2: He started a comedy club on campus. He was doing
Speaker 2: stand up in Boston clubs while still a student. After
Speaker 2: graduating in nineteen seventy three, Jay Leno moved to Los
Speaker 2: Angeles and spent the early years building an act in
Speaker 2: whatever rooms would have him. The comedy store, the improv,
Speaker 2: the small clubs. It was that short time post Richard
Speaker 2: pryor pre cable TV, jay Leno did three hundred nights
Speaker 2: a year. Do the math. That's roughly five shows a
Speaker 2: week every week of the calendar year. Fifty two times
Speaker 2: five gets you to two sixties. He got to double
Speaker 2: up some nights, and it was at the comedy store
Speaker 2: in those years where jay Leno met David Letterman. Letterman
Speaker 2: drove a red pickup from Indiana to la in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five, looking for his shot. Jay Leno had been
Speaker 2: out there three years and had established himself as one
Speaker 2: of the more comfortable and confident performers in the room.
Speaker 2: Jay Leno has described that encounter saying Letterman had genuinely
Speaker 2: funny material, really clever wordplay, the kind of writing that
Speaker 2: was immediately recognizable as something different. But he was awkward
Speaker 2: performing it, visibly uncomfortable on stage in a way that
Speaker 2: jay Leno wasn't. Letterman's version of that story describes jay
Speaker 2: Leno's stage confidence as something Dave genuinely envied and tried
Speaker 2: to understand, adding get up there and just be comfortable.
Speaker 2: Leto's answer, more or less was that stand up had
Speaker 2: always felt like a natural place to him, the room
Speaker 2: where he met, which is not a skill you can
Speaker 2: teach someone who doesn't have it.
Speaker 3: I'm originally from the United States, and the United States
Speaker 3: people hit a night. That's great, It's Freddy mentioned I
Speaker 3: have a slight call.
Speaker 4: I have to apologize for that.
Speaker 3: When I can't, I have. I've had it about two weeks.
Speaker 3: I went to the hospital over here, one of the
Speaker 3: large hospitals in California. I don't want to say the name.
Speaker 3: Just shows you what healthcare is in this date. This
Speaker 3: is absolutely true. I went in, man charged me forty dollars,
Speaker 3: gave me some pills to take, and on the way
Speaker 3: out as a doc, my throat is still really sort.
Speaker 3: Do you think I should have my tonsils out? And
Speaker 3: this man is a specialist, and I'm showing the best
Speaker 3: hospitals in California?
Speaker 4: Says to me, well, what do you think.
Speaker 3: It's? Watching the local news before I came in and
Speaker 3: I got to kick out a local newsman. You haven't
Speaker 3: noticed how all newsmen use the same metaphors.
Speaker 4: Another senseless killing early today in mid Manhattan.
Speaker 3: Senseless as opposed to what sensible? Killing? A man was
Speaker 3: beaten an oob of twelve cents on the west side?
Speaker 3: A senseless killing?
Speaker 4: Where's the east side? One thousand dollars killing?
Speaker 3: Very sensible?
Speaker 2: All came out of that friendship was something both described
Speaker 2: as mutually instructive. Jay Leno was a better performer than
Speaker 2: he was a writer. Letterman was a better wordsmith than
Speaker 2: he was a performer. Each one watching the other work
Speaker 2: understood something about the craft more clearly for having seen
Speaker 2: the opposite approach done well. Letterman eventually said, I was
Speaker 2: a broadcaster who worked as a comedian. Jay was a
Speaker 2: comedian who worked as a broadcaster. By the time Letterman
Speaker 2: launched Late Night with David Letterman on NBC in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two, the two were kind of the elder statesman
Speaker 2: of the comedy store generation, not old, but experience enough
Speaker 2: to be the ones the younger comedians were watching as
Speaker 2: an example of how to do it. And then Letterman
Speaker 2: gave Jay Leno a platform that introduced him to a
Speaker 2: completely different audience than one had been billion clubs.
Speaker 1: We have a good show. Jay Leno is a very
Speaker 1: very funny young man, and he will be out here
Speaker 1: in just a second as soon as I introduce him.
Speaker 1: He is my first guest. He is a good friend
Speaker 1: of President Reagan. Also a very talented comedian. He will
Speaker 1: be appearing this weekend at the Carlton Backstage in Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: Please welcome Jay Leno. There. We have your magazine or
Speaker 1: do you do You want to take a minute to
Speaker 1: clarify this good friend of President Reagan.
Speaker 3: What happened was the last time I was on the show.
Speaker 3: President Reagan had seen the show and one of his
Speaker 3: staff called me to ask me about a joke. Now,
Speaker 3: if I took time out every time I had a stake,
Speaker 3: called me, good, heavens I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: But you know that he really called. No, he didn't
Speaker 1: call me if he doesn't stay up this late, does.
Speaker 3: He not when you're on, But when I'm a guest,
Speaker 3: occasionally he does that. He says, I don't get a
Speaker 3: chance that often, but when you're on.
Speaker 1: Okay, well that's very nice. I have a copy here
Speaker 1: of something called Writer Writer Magazine. This is a motorcycle
Speaker 1: Enthusiasts publication interview. All right, let's see ye here it
Speaker 1: is funny David. Picture of Jay right on the inside. There,
Speaker 1: nice nice drawing, nice story. I guess I happened to
Speaker 1: see you in Playbook magazine.
Speaker 3: You know, it's so funny. You know, it's so funny.
Speaker 3: While we're talking about magazine, you know, the people from
Speaker 3: Playboy called me and they asked me to do an
Speaker 3: interview for Playboy. And rather than do my interviewing Playboy,
Speaker 3: I did mine in Women Are Our Equals magazine.
Speaker 2: Who's who's on the cover there.
Speaker 3: Well, let's see this Geraldine Ferrero. Then there's a story
Speaker 3: in here in Margaret Meade. Here's here's an interview with
Speaker 3: Gloria Steinhem.
Speaker 2: Now let's see who's in your magazine.
Speaker 3: Muffy, Muffy, Muffy doesn't like guys who are turn offs.
Speaker 3: Muffy's favorite movies are Bambi and The L Shaped Room.
Speaker 2: I used to love when Jay Leno would show up
Speaker 2: on Late Night. There was a version of Jay Leno
Speaker 2: in the early to mid eighties that people who saw
Speaker 2: him on Letterman remember very specifically. It's different than the
Speaker 2: who settled into the Tonight Show. The early Letterman appearances
Speaker 2: featured a comedian who was sharper edgier, not a word
Speaker 2: usually here with Jay Leno. More willing to take the
Speaker 2: material somewhere uncomfortable. It was closer to the voice he'd
Speaker 2: been developing in the clubs, where you don't smooth things
Speaker 2: out because the room will tell you immediately if you've
Speaker 2: gone too far. Dave and Jay worked off each other
Speaker 2: in a way that brought something out in both of them.
Speaker 1: Now is this possible? When is the last time you
Speaker 1: were on this television program?
Speaker 3: I was here about a month and a half ago,
Speaker 3: and I haven't been home since that. I haven't I've
Speaker 3: been on the road the whole time.
Speaker 1: Isn't that awful?
Speaker 4: It's not awful, Dave, Not for us comedy foot soldiers
Speaker 4: who are out there in the trenches.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: I'm not one of your big time comedy generals with
Speaker 4: some cushy desk job wringing three four hundred a week,
Speaker 4: come out there in the trenches doing the club.
Speaker 2: People who watched those early Letterman appearances and then watch
Speaker 2: Jay on The Tonight Show in the nineties notice the difference.
Speaker 2: People in the comedy community said Lenno was a toned
Speaker 2: down version of the act he used in the clubs
Speaker 2: in order to reach the broader and more traditional Tonight
Speaker 2: Show audience. Which is a calculation completely understandable. I don't
Speaker 2: think that's crazy at all. The version of jay Leno
Speaker 2: that a certain generation I'll raise my hand discovered on
Speaker 2: Letterman younger, less polished, more specifically funny in the way
Speaker 2: the comedy nerds mean when they say specifically funny. That
Speaker 2: version is worth acknowledging as a real thing that existed
Speaker 2: before the TV institution softened some of the edges. The
Speaker 2: Letterman friendship eventually turned into something more complicated. We will
Speaker 2: get to that. If you've listened this far, you probably
Speaker 2: know about Dave and Jay, and then Jay and Conan.
Speaker 2: We're not going there today, but that early friendship at
Speaker 2: the comedy store, the mutual education, the Letterman years, that's
Speaker 2: a whole different part of the Jay Leno story that
Speaker 2: you don't hear these days. It's hard to talk about
Speaker 2: jay Leno without spending time on the cars. The Big
Speaker 2: Dog Garage and Burbank started as a property jay Leno
Speaker 2: bought in nineteen ninety one seventeen thousand square feet. It
Speaker 2: is now one hundred and twenty two thousand square feet,
Speaker 2: expanded by a factor of seven over thirty years. I
Speaker 2: know currently has more than two hundred cars and over
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty motorcycles. He has sold exactly one
Speaker 2: car in thirty years, a Tesla model S he auctioned
Speaker 2: on bring a trailer, and he invited the new owners
Speaker 2: to a private garage tour after the sale. That's how
Speaker 2: Jay thinks about the cars. They're not investments, they're the point.
Speaker 2: The collection ranges from a nineteen oh oh four curve
Speaker 2: to dash Oldsmobile to current hypercars. He doesn't keep them
Speaker 2: in climate control rooms. He's a mechanic who happens to
Speaker 2: be famous, who bought a property in Burbank and filled
Speaker 2: it with cars. Jay Leno's Garage started as a web
Speaker 2: series for NBC before moving to CNBC as a proper
Speaker 2: TV show or It ran for seven years before eventually
Speaker 2: moving to YouTube. The format works because Jay actually knows
Speaker 2: what he's talking about. The knowledge is specific and real
Speaker 2: and comes from thirty years of working on the cars.
Speaker 2: One car sent him to the hospital. That's the nineteen
Speaker 2: o seven white steam car November twelfth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Inside the garage, Jay was working on the car and
Speaker 2: it caught fire. The fire burned Jay's face in his
Speaker 2: hands seriously enough that he was hospitalized and required treatment
Speaker 2: at a center. Then, in January of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: he fell off a motorcycle and broke several bones. People
Speaker 2: were wondering what is going on there, But it seems
Speaker 2: like it was just back to back accidents, and we
Speaker 2: need to talk about his wife, Mavis. Jay Leno met
Speaker 2: MAVs at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six. He said she laughed at all his jokes
Speaker 2: at the right time, which for a comedian is meaningful.
Speaker 2: It's not just polite laughter, but genuinely timed laughter that
Speaker 2: tells you someone actually understands what you're doing. They got
Speaker 2: married in nineteen eighty. They never had any children, but
Speaker 2: for a Hollywood couple to be together forty five years,
Speaker 2: that is amazing. In January of twenty twenty four, Jay
Speaker 2: Leno filed for a conservatorship over Mavis's estate after she
Speaker 2: was diagnosed with advanced dementia. Jay has been her primary
Speaker 2: caregiver since he limits his travel. When he does go
Speaker 2: somewhere for work, he comes home the same day. He
Speaker 2: doesn't want to stay away overnight anymore. He makes MAVs lunch.
Speaker 2: She's home every evening. Jay has talked about how hard
Speaker 2: this would be if for roughly three years, Mavis would
Speaker 2: wake up and it would be the day her mother died.
Speaker 2: Should learn it fresh every morning, cry through it fresh
Speaker 2: each morning because the memory couldn't hold overnight. Jay says
Speaker 2: he enjoys taking care of her. It gives him purpose.
Speaker 2: When someone asked Jay Leno if he was going to
Speaker 2: get a girlfriend, he described it as the most Hollywood
Speaker 2: thing I'd ever been asked. He said, you take a
Speaker 2: vow when you get married, and people are stunned. They're
Speaker 2: so shocked that you would live up to it. He
Speaker 2: said he would rather be with her than doing something else.
Speaker 2: He said, I'm not just with someone because they're attractive
Speaker 2: and sexy. At some point in my life, I'm going
Speaker 2: to be called upon to defend myself. That's really what
Speaker 2: defines a marriage. That's what love is. That doesn't sound
Speaker 2: like the worst guy in the world to me. Jay Leno, Happy,
Speaker 2: Jay Leno Day back tomorrow with a normal episode.