Kevin Marousek, the red-headed former NBC page and Peace Corps volunteer to Kazhakstan, has taken up the gauntlet of defending Jay Leno, his work ethic and his style of late-night TV
Inevitably, it seems, no matter what people on the tvbarn2 mailing list are talking about, sooner or later the conversation turns to the topic of Dave and Jay. Kevin Marousek, the red-headed former NBC page and Peace Corps volunteer to Kazhakstan, has taken up the gauntlet of defending Jay Leno, his work ethic and his style of late-night TV.
Earlier, the discussion had been of NBC’s strategy to plaster its airwaves with Olympics coverage (and not just its air, either), and someone (OK, me) observed that “The Tonight Show” would not even get six minutes for a monologue, as Leno had done during the 2000 Games. And someone made a wisecrack about NBC having to buy Leno a motorcycle to ease his pain. And that’s where Kevin jumped in.
“A lot of people make fun of Leno’s work ethic,” he Kevin. “I think the difference between Leno and Carson (OK, one of many) is that Carson didn’t dream about replacing Jack Paar. Carson was an entertainer; he took a gig which allowed him to earn a living doing that. He had outside interests.” By contrast, Leno only wants to be host of “The Tonight Show.”
This single-mindedness, he allows, has made Leno pale by comparison next to other hosts. “Whereas Carson had a seemingly infinite curiousity about people famous and otherwise, Leno clearly doesn’t. Life beyond the walls of Studio 3 matter very little to Leno. It’s also why his monologue, though considerably longer than Letterman’s, is limited in scope. The latest celebrity drug addict, the latest silly statistic, the latest box office bomb, etc. As an NBC Page we called the jokes the Leno 25; we had a list of fill in the blank jokes, sort of like Mad Libs.”
