Jay Leno

[snegledmaca]

What type is Jay Leno? I ask because my friend is his type.

[Rocky]

ENTP

[Fermi]

There is a certain way to type in these certain circumstances.

Is the person a celebrity?

No? Move on to question 2

Yes: ENTp

[snegledmaca]

No, seriously, what's his type? I'm thinking xSTx something. Not sure.

Besides he couldn't be ENTp. He's funny. And intelligent.

[Fermi]

For V.I purposes..
he has a very distinct jaw.




[/b]

[Rocky]

No, seriously, what's his type? I'm thinking xSTx something. Not sure.

Besides he couldn't be ENTp. He's funny. And intelligent.

LOL.

But ENTPs can be really funny. And I was serious when I said he was ENTP.

[Dioklecian]

Jay Leno

ENTP

Agreed

[Creepy-pokeball]

I saw Jay Leno in person once. He was horrible whatever type he may be. Not one simgle laugh from the three of us that went. And his uh.... "suit/jacket combo" made him look like he was walking with prostate cancer lol. He definitely looked different on tv than in person.

[tereg]

WARNING THIS IS LONG

So, this is pretty much how I spend my weekends. Watching sports and spending hours doing and collecting stuff for random things like this.



Anyways, I saw this thread: http://the16types.info/vbulletin/sho...48&mode=linear

and it seems that many people see him as ILE.

I saw this interview he did back in 97 with Charlie Rose which was an hour long, and I just wanted to see if you feel like this is still ILE.

This video is an hour long, and the audio starts to get out of sync about 5 minutes into the clip. So, if you can't stand to watch it, I wrote out some things that Jay said in the interview that I feel are very telling.

Here's the video:

And here are my notes (spread over 2 posts since I am exceeding the maxiumum length):

"I'm tired of rich celebrities whining and complaining. I mean, it's annoying to me."

Noticed diametric opposites of his parents.

Dad loud, Italian insurance salesman.

His mom - "There was nothing worse to my mom than calling attention to yourself"
His dad - "What better thing than to be singled out in a crowd."

His mom was his best friend. Made their house the "house she never had"

"She always had a good ear for when a joke was a little too mean... 'Ooh, Jay, the man in the joke, it sounds like maybe you hurt his feelings.' 'Well, mom, it's an imaginary man' 'Well that might be a man really who did that.'"

"My mom always had a good sensitivity to the average person in the audience. When I think a joke has gone too far or maybe I've gone over the edge, that's more my mom's influence than my dad."

"The funny thing about show business is it's one of those rare professions where people who know nothing about it feel free to give you advice." -- referenced in a rejectionary way

The part at ~8:30 about arrogance and Bill Hicks, qualities that the best comedians have.

"The one thing that they all have in common is they like doing it; the ability of just telling the jokes. Whenever I meet these comedians, sometimes they're pretty funny and they'll say 'I'm just doing this until I get a sitcom deal. I'm really trying to get a sitcom deal.' And I realize, well this is all they'll ever have, this 5 or 10 minutes of funny stuff. It's not going to grow because they're not interested in the art of being a comedian or profession. They're interested in being an actor or a movie star. Most comics I know, like Jerry Seinfeld and those guys, they like the work. The work itself is satisfying. And then going out and doing the work is also satisfying."

"I'm a comedian that has a talk show. I'm not a broadcaster that's funny. That's the way I look at it."

~11:00 the comedy of being in the middle of a diverse family.

"It was always fun as a kid to sit in the middle and watch one side make fun of the other side."

~13:00 "The worst thing you can do in comedy is make 25 or 30 or 40 thousand dollars a year doing something else. Because you get extremely comfortable."

When considering going to L.A. to pursue a career being a comedian.
"Eventually [my friends] wanted to get a nicer apartment and they wanted to get a nicer car. And then pretty soon they couldn't go to New York for that open audition that might be a 1 in a million shot because 'I gotta work. I've got this apartment I've gotta pay for.' And then pretty soon, 'Hey, let's go to L.A.' 'I can't I've got a new stereo, I've got this... I've got a mortgage' and that's it.

My attitude was, let's just pretend we threw a match to the place and get on the plane."

"I saw this comedian who I had seen in New York, was a nice guy with that same sort of arrogance, I didn't think he very good. At least I thought I was as good as, if not, better. I said 'You know what? That's it. Why am I sitting here and this guy is in L.A. and I'm here?" Left the apartment behind and went to L.A.

"[Letterman] was a good wordsmith if there is such a phrase ... I don't think [Letterman] liked 'blue comedy' or comedy that's dirty not because it's dirty but because for me it's primarily uncreative. You know to call somebody a four letter word, I know what that means. To form some sort of word picture, you know 'syphlitic clowns standing like druids, in a something or other', I mean I like those kinds of phrases where I conjure up something in my mind. And Letterman never used obscenity. He always had a way of coining a phrase that was a bit ironic, you know almost English type humor like John Cleese."

"I always loved cars, motorcycles, anything that moved. The idea of doing two things at once, like eating in a moving car, there's nothing greater. I used to pull in a Rolls Royce and go 'Eating while moving' I don't know what I thought I was accomplishing, but I was doing two things at once. So I always liked that thing of moving and doing something at the same time."

~21:00 Asked about his "big break" -- "I was fortunate in that there was no one break, I had a series of sort of little breaks that led up to it ... There's nothing worse than a "big break" because very few people are prepared for it, I think. I see a lot of times on the Tonight Show these guys that get seen in New York, fly out to L.A., you know in some bad, wool suit with a vest, and get out there and just have no idea. Just that nervousness. I was fortunate, the first 50 times the Tonight Show saw me, they didn't like me and think I was ready. But I learned how to do it. I learned not to be nervous when that guy was in the room because he had been in the room 49 other times and said no."

~22:00 "Johnny Carson gave me the best advice ... after a show Johnny said 'You're very funny but you're not quite ready for the show. You're not what we're looking for.' But he gave me good advice. 'Your jokes are good, but they're too far apart.' What it means is, well, what I did was I went home and studied Johnny's monologues for weeks; I'd sit there and watch it and I realized he had 25 or 30 jokes in a place where I had 10." And he explained it like this "The way I see it there are two types of stand ups. There are those attitude guys that come out and go 'Hey folks, how's it goin? HEY NICE TIE PAL.' and be loud and get a laugh, but "nice tie" is not a joke. And then there's other guys like Steven Wright that can come out ... and just utter these brilliant observations. To be a good comic you need both those talents ... my thing was, I had the attitude, and I didn't have that many jokes. ... if you put it on paper, it wouldn't read funny. That's when I realized, 'Oh, that's what I gotta do.' ... It was a wonderful learning experience ... Failure really is the best teacher."

~24:00 relationship and impact of Helen Kushnick (Jay Leno's agent), who sounds like a Beta

"Helen's style was not my style. And I thought 'Well, maybe I needed that. Maybe I needed someone overly aggressive.' Because I was always like 'Well, ok. Sure, whatever you need' ... I'm a performer, my natrual inclination is to please. I mean, one of the things I pride myself in, is I've never lost money for any promoter. It's like this book deal, I'm doing 15 cities in like 7 days because I want to please the people who put the book out ... I want it to work ... I've never understood that attitude when I meet somebody that does a project and they go 'I'm not doing that. I don't want to meet those people. I don't want to shake hands.' This is the business you're in, you know? And consequently, any future job you get is always based on your last job."

~26:00 "If you do [the business] for the money, you're also screwed. It's not about money. Please, show business will pay you more money than you need. People will ask 'Are you annoyed that you work for half of what Letterman makes?' No, doesn't bother me at all. I don't care what anybody else makes. I know what it takes to make me happy."

"The great thing about the Tonight Show is whatever Johnny would say on TV is his real life. You know when I walk down the street and people ask me like you asked me about cars and motorcycles, I don't say 'I just play a car enthusiast on TV. Actually, I know nothing about them.' I can have a discussion. The position I'm in, I like meeting people, because everything they ask me is true. When they ask about my mom, it's not my TV mom. When they ask about my wife, it's not my TV wife. ... I don't have those sort of problems."

"I don't like rehearsing. I have the attention span of a gnat."

[tereg]

~30:00 Asked about the first 6 months as full time host:

"My thing was, I'm new at this, let me listen to a lot of people around me. And a lot of them had good advice. But, unfortunately, you were getting advice from so many sources that the whole show got watered down. ... And consequently it was just a hodgepodge. I mean it took us a while to figure out how to do it."

"I realized, when I do the Tonight Show there are performers and comedians I love dearly as friends. But their stuff isn't quite good enough yet to be on the show. And they look at me like a dog in the window being led off to the pound. ... You know how many people said to me 'I could never get the show when Johnny had it, now that you've got it, I can finally get on.' I'd have to say, 'No! You have to be at least as good as you were with Johnny. If Johnny didn't like your act, I'm not going to like it. I like you, but I don't like.... so I understand that."

~33:10 asked about having to part business relations with Helen Kushnick

Charlie: "Do you think she thought you were just going to sink without her?"
Jay: "I don't know. I mean she was soooo.... you know I never came from a family of people that yelled. My father never had a temper towards us kids. My father had a temper in terms of yelling at other people outside the family. But never in the family. And consequently when Helen would just scream at things, to me it was always 'All right, look let's... we'll figure this out.' and it was relentless. You know people always say 'Why didn't you go to [Helen's] funeral?' I mean I didn't go because in the interim I had had both parents die. You know, if I had gotten one little note that said 'Sorry to hear about your father.' But, you know, Helen had to win every argument all the time, and usually did because 'All right, all right.' I didn't grow up in a house where men fought women. ... and I didn't know how to deal with it. I take responsibility for it. At the funeral Helen asked someone to read this nasty thing about me. 'Who would ask to read a nasty thing about you at a funeral.' But I said 'All right, ok, that's fine.' That's why I didn't go because, you know, with Helen it was all or nothing. You were either with her 100% or against her 100%."

"When it ended [she got like $8MM] and I said 'Here, take all of it. Thank you for everything, but this doesn't work.' But with her it had to be 'Nope! We're all quitting NBC! We're all walking out!' 'We can't all walk out. It doesn't make any sense. You're wrong.' 'I'm not wrong!' 'You're wrong.'"

Jay: "You know something? If you like the game... I love the game."
Charlie: "The game is what?"
Jay: "It's show business. It's show business. It's the game. ... On the worst day of the Tonight Show in the worst horrible conditions, you're still writing jokes. And you're laughing. You know, this isn't ER ... you're writing jokes. And it's fun. It's a fun show to do. Let's see what we need to do to bring this thing out of the hole [in the early stages of his show when it seemed to struggle]"

~38:00 "You don't have to be Scrooge, you can run a company and treat everybody ok. ... People always led me to believe that you didn't have to be, and you don't have to be. ... You know when Helen was there there were all these, I'd pick up the paper and read something that was said in a private meeting between me and maybe the staff. I'd go 'How did this get in the paper?' You know, when you're fragging your own troops... when you're own people don't mind going down as long as they're taking you with them, you're in a lot of trouble."

~39:30 Jay: "A lot of comedians like to work with the audience in the dark. So they just hear the laughs and they don't like to see the faces. I like to see the faces. With this new studio I said 'How physically close can I get to the audience?' and they said 'Well you know, people are gonna touch you' and I said 'They'll be fine' But at this point I can reach down and slap a guy around if they're a problem. And that's great fun to me. That whole beginning where that tongue comes out of the stage and you're literally standing two feet from the crowd. And you can work the room. I mean I like being able to work the room and brining the audience into it. Neither one is right or wrong, it all depends how you like to work. I was working wrong. I was doing somebody else's show they way they did it. ... I remember they brought in these guys 'Jay, we brought in some people to analyze the program. Here's what we think is wrong. BLUE TIES!'
Charlie: "They've had a couple of weeks experience in comedy and they're going to help you (inaudible)"
Jay: "I said 'Ok let me figure it out' But I listen to everybody and be a nice guy, you know."

~49:00 "I've said this before, but you don't change anybody's mind with comedy. You just reinforce what they already believe. When you start trying to change their minds, you become a comedian, then a humorist, then a political satirist... and then you're out of show business."

~52:30 "I was mildly dyslexic as a kid. And my mom would always say to me, 'You're just going to have to work harder than the other kids to get the same thing.' Which was a great tool, because for me like when times were terrible and things were bad, I never thought I was bad, I just thought I was lazy and I wasn't working hard enough. I mean I know other performers that ... Rich ... beats himself up. He gets in these moods about this or that. And I see these other comics that go into these fits of depression and they're no good. And my attitude was 'It's not that I'm not any good. Obviously, I'm just lazy.' I didn't work hard enough. If I'm there 16 hours, if I stay 2 more hours and work 18 hours, that'll probably work. And you know, it has. That's what works for me. The idea that it's not that you're not good enough you just not working hard enough, you're just... you're lazy."