TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Last December, Conan O'Brien was selected by the Kennedy Center as the next recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. In February, newly reelected President Trump dismissed the Kennedy Center's chairman and president and appointed himself as the new chair. Invited performers, guests, and O'Brien himself had to decide whether to attend the March 23 Awards ceremony under the Kennedy Center's new leadership. They did, and Netflix recorded it and unveiled the resultant TV special May 4. It's called "Conan O'Brien: The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize For American Humor," and our TV critic David Bianculli has this review.
DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: Bob Smigel was a writer for "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" in its early days and was and still is the man providing the voice and barbed humor of the sarcastic hand puppet known as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Triumph opened the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Award presentation by subtly acknowledging the controversy caused by the recent restructuring of the Kennedy Center Management as Conan O'Brien, waiting in the wings to be introduced, laughed loudly.
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BOB SMIGEL: (As Triumph the Insult Comic Dog) Good evening, and welcome to the Kennedy Center. Thank you all for coming, and shame on you for being here. That should cover it, yes?
BIANCULLI: That tension and concern about partisan political interference towards the arts was unavoidable. But because this was a gathering of comics celebrating the brave and outspoken legacy of Mark Twain, it was not unmentionable. Here's how John Mulaney, the first of many comics to pay tribute to Conan, alluded to it.
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JOHN MULANEY: Congratulations to my friend Conan O'Brien on receiving the 26th and final Mark Twain prize for American humor.
BIANCULLI: The Max Weinberg 7, led by Conan's old "Late Night" and "Tonight Show" drummer, provided the music. Former sidekicks and opening acts, such as Andy Richter and Reggie Watts, were given time to pay their respects. So were three former recipients of the Mark Twain Prize - Will Ferrell, David Letterman and Adam Sandler.
Other comics both toasting and roasting the evening's guest of honor included Sarah Silverman, Stephen Colbert, Will Forte, Nikki Glaser, Bill Burr and Kumail Nanjiani, whose appearance was staged like a version of a TED Talk, complete with projected graphics and lots of statistics. He pointed out how Conan was widely recognized for launching his career as a staff writer on "The Simpsons." Then Nanjiani took a deep dive into the numbers to hilarious effect. Even Conan, in the guest of honor box but miked up, could be heard laughing at the mathematically accurate comedy bit and its pie charts.
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KUMAIL NANJIANI: Well, there are 781 episodes of the Simpsons. Conan wrote three.
(LAUGHTER)
NANJIANI: You know what? Let's zoom in so we can see it a little bit more.
(LAUGHTER)
NANJIANI: Let's zoom in a little bit more. There we go.
(LAUGHTER)
NANJIANI: That is a whopping 0.38%. By comparison, Charles Manson wrote 0.41% of the songs released by The Beach Boys.
(LAUGHTER)
NANJIANI: Charles Manson is a bigger part of The Beach Boys than Conan is of "The Simpsons."
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BIANCULLI: Just about everyone on stage scored big and provided an original approach. Stephen Colbert brought along "Hot Ones" host Sean Evans to replicate Conan's viral hot wing-eating interview from that show. Sarah Silverman - well, you have to see what she did to believe it. And by the time David Letterman showed up at the end to hand the prize to Conan O'Brien, comics preceding him had combined to present the funniest Mark Twain Prize show in its 26-year history - and one with lots of messages.
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DAVID LETTERMAN: The Mark Twain Prize - oh, my God, let me just say one thing, and I'm not a historian, but I believe that history will show this will have been the most entertaining gathering of the resistance ever.
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BIANCULLI: The strongest points were saved for last, when Conan took the stage to accept the award. More than any previous recipient, he articulated an understanding and appreciation of what the author Mark Twain wrote and represented. Conan, after all, had graduated from Harvard, majoring in history and literature. And without once evoking the name of Donald Trump, Conan cited Twain's works and put them into a context that reflected our times as much as Twain's.
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CONAN O'BRIEN: First and foremost, Twain hated bullies. He populated his works with abusers such as Huck Finn's alcoholic father, Tom Driscoll in "Pudd'nhead Wilson," and he made his readers passionately hate those characters. He punched up, not down, and he deeply, deeply empathized with the weak.
BIANCULLI: Conan then brought it full circle by bringing things back to his perspective and his profession.
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O'BRIEN: Above all, Twain was a patriot in the best sense of the word. He loved America, but knew it was deeply flawed. Twain wrote, patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it.
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O'BRIEN: Now, some of you might be thinking, what does this have to do with comedy? It has everything to do with comedy. Everything.
BIANCULLI: It was as much a lecture as an acceptance speech, and it also may have provided a clue to a hidden motivation behind Conan's travel series "Conan O'Brien Must Go," which started its second season May 8 on Max.
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O'BRIEN: Twain empathized with the powerless in America - former slaves struggling in reconstruction, immigrant Chinese laborers in California and European Jews fleeing antisemitism. Twain's remedy for ignorance about the world around us was to travel at a time when travel was very long and very difficult. Twain circled the globe, and he wrote, travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.
BIANCULLI: From Triumph to Letterman, every speaker on that Kennedy Center stage that night explained why Conan O'Brien was a worthy recipient of the Mark Twain award, yet no one explained it as well as Conan himself. Afterward, when he closed the show by jamming on guitar, playing Neil Young's "Livin (ph) In The Free World" with Adam Sandler and The Max Weinberg 7, he looked like he was having the time of his life. And as this special proves, as a comic and even as a student of Twain's writings, Conan O'Brien has led quite a life.
GROSS: David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed "Conan O'Brien: The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize For American Humor." It's streaming on Netflix.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Ladies and gentlemen, this man can play guitar. Don't we want to see the man jam a little bit?
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GROSS: Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, our guest will be ProPublica reporter David Armstrong. He'll explain why some critically needed prescription drugs are so expensive in the U.S. It's a subject he knows from personal experience. A single pill of the cancer treatment he takes costs roughly the same as a new iPhone. I hope you'll join us.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Here we go. It's Conan O'Brien.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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