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Authors: Bill Carter
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in the business—among the interested parties for Conan’s services.) Ari was sending these little messages to Zucker “just to utz him—make him realize that if he fucked this up there would be other places for Conan to go.”
To Zucker, all of this amounted to standard practice from his buddy Ari. The calls came in; Ari was threatening him with something or other; that meant what—it was Tuesday? Zucker was neither surprised nor overly irritated. He knew how he was supposed to interpret these calls on behalf of Conan: “They wanted assurance that they were gonna get The Tonight Show or else they were gonna leave.”
In truth, NBC didn’t need much utzing. Internally, there was little resistance to Ari’s nudging. Some way was eventually going to be found to keep Conan in house.
The first real movement came from Jay’s direction, though. He was a creature of habit so ingrained that he was rarely seen offstage in anything but the same denim work shirt, faded jeans, and $14.99 pair of black Payless SafeTStep work shoes. These, Jay explained, he bought “by the crate” because they were “impervious to oil and gas”—a feature important to him because of all the time he spent working on the fleet of vehicles in his automotive shop in a converted hangar at the Burbank airport. As he did with all his other habits, Jay had such a regular timetable for rolling over his Tonight contract that Marc Graboff could all but put the next negotiation on his calendar the day a previous deal was concluded.
And the Jay negotiations were, without question, the easiest Graboff had ever conducted. It had been that way ever since Jay had fired Helen Kushnick and sworn off all representation for his future television career. That decision played to some as foolishness, arrogance, or parsimony on an epic scale: To try to manage a career involving so many millions without a formal agent or manager seemed ludicrous. But it was a source of pride for Jay, one more example—to himself if no one else—that deep down he was an unpretentious working man. An insanely well-paid one, certainly, but still a guy with a boss and a job and a salary.
But beyond its symbolism, or whatever else the antiagent stance meant to Jay, there was a compelling logic to his position. What did he need an agent or manager (or their bills) for at this point in his career? He had no plans to do anything on television other than what he was already doing. What other job was a manager going to win for him? Helen had secured the Tonight position for him; now she was gone. (After splitting from Jay in 1993, Helen passed away from cancer three years later at only fifty-one.) He still had the job.
Alan Berger, a well-liked agent from CAA, represented Jay up until the late nineties, but only for his stand-up appearances. As a favor to Jay, however, Berger took the formal meetings with NBC about extending Jay’s deal, along with Jay’s lawyer, Ken Ziffren. One late-nineties instance stood out to Berger as representative of all of these “negotiations.”
Berger and Ziffren had sat down to lunch in Beverly Hills with John Agoglia, Graboff’s predecessor as head of business affairs for NBC and one of Jay’s stalwart backers in the bitter battle with Letterman in 1993. As they gathered in the restaurant, the three men greeted each other warmly, schmoozing for a while about kids and families and things that were going on in their lives. Then Agoglia said abruptly, ʺOK, boys, let’s do business.” Berger and Ziffren grabbed a napkin and quickly wrote a figure on it—Jay was asking for a small bump, up to about $14 million a year at that point. Agoglia took one look at the napkin, stuck it in his pocket, and said, “Deal—now let’s order.”
The NBC money, as Jay always professed, had little impact on his daily life because he never spent a penny of it. He banked it all—either in his own accounts or in the small charitable foundation he had established. It
To Zucker, all of this amounted to standard practice from his buddy Ari. The calls came in; Ari was threatening him with something or other; that meant what—it was Tuesday? Zucker was neither surprised nor overly irritated. He knew how he was supposed to interpret these calls on behalf of Conan: “They wanted assurance that they were gonna get The Tonight Show or else they were gonna leave.”
In truth, NBC didn’t need much utzing. Internally, there was little resistance to Ari’s nudging. Some way was eventually going to be found to keep Conan in house.
The first real movement came from Jay’s direction, though. He was a creature of habit so ingrained that he was rarely seen offstage in anything but the same denim work shirt, faded jeans, and $14.99 pair of black Payless SafeTStep work shoes. These, Jay explained, he bought “by the crate” because they were “impervious to oil and gas”—a feature important to him because of all the time he spent working on the fleet of vehicles in his automotive shop in a converted hangar at the Burbank airport. As he did with all his other habits, Jay had such a regular timetable for rolling over his Tonight contract that Marc Graboff could all but put the next negotiation on his calendar the day a previous deal was concluded.
And the Jay negotiations were, without question, the easiest Graboff had ever conducted. It had been that way ever since Jay had fired Helen Kushnick and sworn off all representation for his future television career. That decision played to some as foolishness, arrogance, or parsimony on an epic scale: To try to manage a career involving so many millions without a formal agent or manager seemed ludicrous. But it was a source of pride for Jay, one more example—to himself if no one else—that deep down he was an unpretentious working man. An insanely well-paid one, certainly, but still a guy with a boss and a job and a salary.
But beyond its symbolism, or whatever else the antiagent stance meant to Jay, there was a compelling logic to his position. What did he need an agent or manager (or their bills) for at this point in his career? He had no plans to do anything on television other than what he was already doing. What other job was a manager going to win for him? Helen had secured the Tonight position for him; now she was gone. (After splitting from Jay in 1993, Helen passed away from cancer three years later at only fifty-one.) He still had the job.
Alan Berger, a well-liked agent from CAA, represented Jay up until the late nineties, but only for his stand-up appearances. As a favor to Jay, however, Berger took the formal meetings with NBC about extending Jay’s deal, along with Jay’s lawyer, Ken Ziffren. One late-nineties instance stood out to Berger as representative of all of these “negotiations.”
Berger and Ziffren had sat down to lunch in Beverly Hills with John Agoglia, Graboff’s predecessor as head of business affairs for NBC and one of Jay’s stalwart backers in the bitter battle with Letterman in 1993. As they gathered in the restaurant, the three men greeted each other warmly, schmoozing for a while about kids and families and things that were going on in their lives. Then Agoglia said abruptly, ʺOK, boys, let’s do business.” Berger and Ziffren grabbed a napkin and quickly wrote a figure on it—Jay was asking for a small bump, up to about $14 million a year at that point. Agoglia took one look at the napkin, stuck it in his pocket, and said, “Deal—now let’s order.”
The NBC money, as Jay always professed, had little impact on his daily life because he never spent a penny of it. He banked it all—either in his own accounts or in the small charitable foundation he had established. It
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