(A Much Less Depressing) Requiem for a Dream

Ever had a dream crushed? Awful, isn't it? Especially when it's a dream that you've held onto for a while. Maybe it wasn't all that likely ever to be fulfilled, but damn it, it was yours, and as long as some small part of it was alive, it was a haven, a little alcove of fantasy in the often punishing ocean of real life. And then, just like the crack of a whip, it's gone. I'm nauseated just thinking about it again. You see, my former dream lasted for nearly a decade, and then, in just over ninety minutes, one documentary film unceremoniously destroyed it. That film is Conan O' Brien Can't Stop.

In high school, I watched Conan almost every night, rarely going to sleep until he had at least made it through his first guest. I paid for this late night habit as I dragged my exhausted carcass through the school day and came to rely on afternoon naps just to maintain the energy for another episode, but it was totally worth it. I loved Conan. In fact, the more time I spent watching Late Night, the more I actually started to believe that if age and geography and fame were removed from the equation, Conan O’ Brien and I could - nay, would - be friends.

Each new episode only convinced me further. Besides our height (both of us are over 6’4”), our highly compatible senses of humor (I laughed when he talked), our love of classic cinema (he mentioned Citizen Kane or The Godfather every once in a while), and our mutual respect for and study of the titans of literature (he famously graduated from Harvard after writing his thesis on William Faulkner and Flannery O’ Connor; I had read and been confused by both of these authors), there was an overwhelming sense that Conan had somehow, despite the endless parade of celebrities who graced those ugly, blue-green chairs next to his desk, remained normal, like he might decide at any moment that one more seven-minute segment with Parker Posey would kill him and hang up his pompadour, returning to real life to hang out with real people.

When Jay Leno and NBC pushed Conan from his seat at the Tonight Show last year, I was among those trenchant supporters who proclaimed, “I’m with Coco!” and watched with glee those last few glorious episodes as he skewered Leno, the network, and the absurdity of the situation itself, ironically reaching the pinnacle of his run on the show just as it was ripped from his grasp.

Then came The Speech. During his last telecast as host of the Tonight Show, Conan used his last few minutes one-on-one with the camera to speak directly to his faithful viewers and those casual, curious observers rubbernecking at the carnage. His last direct correspondence with his audience was as follows:

To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I'll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don't be cynical. I hate cynicism -- it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen.

There could have been no more perfect ending to Conan’s most public moment. The shield of celebrity briefly dropped, and in a moment of choked-up honesty, Conan affirmed everything I had suspected about him. He left NBC, went on a live tour (which, of course, came nowhere near Kentucky, save for a secret Nashville show in a 400-seat record store), and filmed the aforementioned documentary Conan O’ Brien Can’t Stop. Though I watch Conan’s TBS show with some regularity (unfortunately, these days the feasibility of staying awake until 12:30 is essentially nil) and make it my business to keep up with Conan’s doings, until two days ago, I had not seen the film. Until that time, my dream had lived on.

Conan O’ Brien Can’t Stop is everything Conan’s television shows have been: funny, smart (in that special, stupid way), energetic, and warm. It is also, however, dark and disconcerting. The quality most immediately apparent when watching the film is Conan’s compulsive desire to be a nice guy. He never says no to fans, signs everything put in front of him, poses for picture after picture, and frets constantly about providing a quality show while on his “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television” Tour. This is consistent, of course, with everything I have come to know or suspect about the man. But behind the nice guy, in those moments when he has just boarded his bus after snapping hundreds of photos and pouring his soul into entertaining his biggest fans, is a guy who, just like every other celebrity in his position, just gets tired. Tired of the endless requests and hectic schedule. Tired of being away from his family and moving from stop to stop. Tired, in a weird way, of being himself. It isn’t that Conan doesn’t honestly appreciate his supporters (it’s clear that he understands the causal relationship between his fans and his status), it’s that nobody, no matter how pure their intentions or how kind they are at heart, can maintain the level of sincere connection that Conan attempts with his fans.

So how did watching Conan struggle with fatigue and frustration as his tour dragged on end my dream of our eventual friendship? It would be easy to see Conan as disingenuous because he very often displays real anger towards many of the people who seek interaction with him when he’s out of their sight, but that isn’t it. I give him immense credit for continuing to oblige them time after time, despite his exhaustion. No matter how bothered he is, he never lets it show except in private with his most trusted compatriots. No, it wasn’t really anything Conan did. It was his fans.

Conan’s fans, especially his most vocal, are a unique breed. They mirror his quirkiness, his sarcasm, his intelligence (mostly), and even his faux-outsider persona. Watching these people approach and interact with Conan time after time revealed something to me that I guess - even though I’d never have admitted it previously - I had always known. Conan O’ Brien isn’t Conan O’ Brien. Or, more precisely, Conan the man, the husband, and the father, isn’t Conan the performer. They’re both funny and smart and they both love great music and films and books, but because there is such a thin line between those two Conans, people like me have been fooled into thinking that if we ran into Conan in line at the grocery, we could make just the right remark about As I Lay Dying and be welcomed as a friend. There wasn’t one person who Conan spoke with, outside of his assistant, his producer, or his crew, for whom he was not performing. Every encounter was a show, and the only way to get beyond that curtain would be years of proximity that might slowly pull it back.

It’s probably this way with every celebrity of much note. At that level of fame, the world must seem your stage, but all the folks clamoring for your autograph are not your fellow poor players, but the groundlings, to be pandered to at best, wholly ignored at worst. There was a time when I would have found fault in this view, but since Conan O’ Brien Can’t Stop, I can’t do it. We adore them for their performances, and that’s what draws us in, the adoration of the persona, not the person. We create the distance between the real versions of these people and the version projected to the rest of the world, then we want them to bridge the gap and become bitter when they can’t or won’t. Conan’s Tonight Show farewell rang in my ears as the credits rolled on the documentary. I won’t be cynical. I’ll just let Conan do what he’s always wanted to do: entertain me.

Here’s lookin’ at you, Conan. We’ll always have the string dance. And the masturbating bear. Oh, and the “Let’s Go Mets!” chant guy. It makes me laugh just thinking about it.