Late night laughs

Late night comedy’s two biggest shows have new faces. Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report ended in December as Stephen Colbert began preparing for his new gig as host of CBS’ Late Show, where he’ll replace David Letterman in September. And Jimmy Fallon took over NBC’s The Tonight Show from Jay Leno last year, where he has won the ratings game in every demographic over other late night shows, including Letterman’s. Fallon’s show does particularly well among young people.

Fallon has a little bit of the edginess of late night comedy, but he is cleaner and more cheerful and has more wide-ranging talent than his immediate predecessors. Letterman and Leno couldn’t sing in a barbershop quartet or do rap battles.

I attended tapings of both The Colbert Report and The Tonight Show, the toughest ticket to acquire in the late night scene. All tickets to these shows are free, but you have to be a fast clicker when they become available online. Each month NBC doles out Tonight Show tickets for the following month, and they’re usually gone in about a minute.

On the day of the taping the Fallon audience had to arrive at 30 Rockefeller Center by 3:30 p.m. The audience had a lot of standing in line and waiting before the actual taping began. Most seemed to be tourists, laden with shopping bags from places like the M&M’s store in Times Square.

NBC staff members sternly instructed everyone to turn their phones off, resulting in a flurry of last minute selfies outside Fallon’s studio. When staff finally directed the audience into their seats in the studio, I won a front row seat right in front of Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter of The Roots. Seeing The Roots, the Grammy-winning hip-hop and soul band, perform live is one of the best parts of being in the Tonight Show audience.

As the Fallon writers finished last-minute rewrites and a crew member filled Fallon’s coffee mug with water, a stand-up comic from the New York comedy club scene appeared. His job was to warm up the audience so they would laugh big at Fallon’s jokes. The Roots played a quick set before the taping began. Then Fallon made his grand entrance from behind the blue curtains and the “applause” sign flashed, but no one needed any encouragement after the two-hour wait to see the man himself.

Watching late night comedy hosts do the work of recording their shows gives you a different view of their skills and talents. Hosts have to be both performers and show runners. I left the Fallon taping thinking of him in a more managerial way.

On camera, he laughs constantly and looks like a teenager who can’t believe the fun he is having. But between takes, he makes decision after decision in a few seconds. Swarms of people come to talk to him about what’s going to happen next: Publicists for celebrities (in this instance, Sigourney Weaver) go over questions he’ll ask. He quickly negotiates on bits with his sidekick and longtime collaborating writer Steve Higgins. A makeup artist comes to do a touch-up. A crew member shuffles through cue cards, SNL-style. The taping wrapped in about an hour.

The businesslike approach to taping was true for Colbert’s show too, but he engaged the audience more between takes. The stakes felt a little lower at a Comedy Central show that was second string to The Daily Show. Colbert was invariably collegial, laughing at his writers’ jokes as they rewrote on stage and chatting with the audience.

Colbert lost his cool at one moment during taping when a large bug fell from the ceiling into his hair. Although the editors cut the segment of the bug falling, Colbert later incorporated the bug into a joke in the show that aired—a side comment only the live audience would get. His background in improvisational comedy is apparent every moment.

Colbert is also a sharp-witted interviewer, one area where Fallon flails. At this taping he interviewed longtime Oklahoma meteorologist Gary England.

“How do you become a famous—can I say weatherman or is that an insult to meteorologists?” Colbert asked.

“Whatever you want to call it,” said England.

“OK, cloud jockey,” Colbert returned.

When the show finished taping, Colbert came close and took questions from the audience, many of them longtime fans. Colbert fans are famous for their devotion. When NASA asked the public to vote from among four options for the name of a room in the International Space Station, Colbert fans won the voting with write-in votes for “Colbert.” The space agency agreed to compromise by naming a space station treadmill after Colbert; it named the room Tranquility.

In the question time after taping, one fan familiar with Colbert’s obsession with J.R.R. Tolkien asked if he knew any poems from The Lord of the Rings series. Colbert, without a pause, launched into a recitation of a long Tolkien poem. No one else will ever see that performance.

Fallon didn’t do question time after taping Season 1 Episode 214 of The Tonight Show. He ran through the crowd giving high fives and exited. In September, Colbert will see if he still has time to take questions from his audience and recite poems. For Fallon, there was no dawdling because he had another top-rated show to record tomorrow, and the day after that.