I don't know about you all, but me, personally, I was squarely on Conan O'Brien's side in the whole Tonight Show fiasco that came to pass back in 2010.
From the ignoble forced exit of Johnny Carson, to David Letterman's hose-job, to turning the reins over to some boob who wouldn't know funny if he accidentally tripped over it, twice, the brass at NBC can just suck it. And suck it hard.
Now, before Conan got the boot a friend of mine told me about one of his new Tonight Show features, a take on Oprah's Book Club, where the host would recommend a movie to the masses; and his inaugural pick was an old, Made-for-TV turd-burger of a movie from the 1970s about a possessed 30-ton piece of homicidal diesel-powered machinery that managed to keep sneaking up on people to pounce on them called -- wait for it -- Killdozer (1974).
This news got a huge chuckle out of me; and when my friend asked what was so funny, I told him that was probably my copy of Killdozer Conan was watching.
It's true. Well, it could be. And to get the full picture of this strange and somewhat twisted story, we're gonna have to back up about another ten years to an April, 2000, interview Conan did with actor Robert Urich about his association with the notorious movie in question:
Like Conan, I too watched Killdozer when it premiered back in 1974 and this wonderful piece of gonzo cinema struck such a primal chord with me that it got permanently stuck in my brain, which is why it was one of the first films I ever reviewed when I started posting my film write-ups on the mothership way, way back then.
Now remember, this was some 25 years ago and the internet was just beginning to stretch its legs, and things like YouTube, Dailymotion and pirate streaming were a mere pipe-dream, and a person really had to dig to find these old obscurities, and often pay out the nose once you found them.
So, imagine my surprise one Thursday morning not long after I initially posted that review, when I received an email from a Sharon Hardy, who claimed she was a junior producer for Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
Apparently, Urich was set to return for the following Tuesday’s show, and they wanted to take a trip down memory lane by showing clips from Killdozer. And to do that, Ms. Hardy wanted to know if I could get her a copy of the film as soon as possible.
Now, it wasn’t until 2010 when Killdozer got an official home video release as part of Universal Studio’s Vault Series. And then in 2020, Kino Lorber released the film on DVD and Bluray. And so, back in the day, I had obtained my VHS bootleg off of eBay for an amount of coin that, frankly, I'm a little too embarrassed to reveal.
Anyways, I was a little suspicious since I got a lot of requests for dubs of hard to find films back then; and as a rule, due to time constraints and legality issues, I usually just turned everyone down flat. But after a few email exchanges, with Ms. Hardy's bona fides firmly established, I agreed to dub a copy for a little website plug and an autographed picture of Conan.
Alas, they couldn’t plug the site but I was promised several souvenirs and reimbursement for my trouble. And Conan’s autograph.
Enh, what the hell.
With that, I sent the dub via priority mail to guarantee receipt by Monday, the day before taping, and then proceeded to tell everyone I knew what had happened. After the weekend passed, I got a confirmation email on Monday from Sharon, saying they'd received the tape, it looked great, and that payment and the promised souvenirs were on their way back to me.
Fairly excited with this near brush of celebrity, when I got off work Monday night I went out and bought a new blank tape to preserve Tuesday’s episode of Late Night for my own personal posterity.
That’s right. Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, was gonna be a big day.
The phone rang early that following morning, and so I let the machine get it. It was my boss calling, who left a desperate message for me to call back into the office ASAP. Fearing I was in some kind of trouble, I rolled out of bed, called her back, and when I jokingly apologized to the Chief (-- a nickname I’ve cursed her with --) for whatever I did wrong putting the newspaper to bed the night before, she said, “You haven’t been watching the news have you?”
No, I hadn’t. I just got up.
“Terrorists have crashed planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.”
It took a couple of minutes for that to sink in. I turned on the TV just in time to see the first tower collapse. Then, it sunk in hard. Dumbstruck, I continued to watch as the second tower fell, transfixed, until the doorbell rang.
It was the Fed-Ex man, who needed me to sign for a package. Taking it inside, I opened it to find a thank you note from Sharon, a Late-Night T-shirt, and a check for my trouble.
Then, as I looked back at the TV and realized that Conan probably wouldn’t be on tonight, or for many nights to come, and as the same devastating footage kept replaying, over and over and over again, all I could think about was, damn, Thursday seemed like a really long time ago.
Needless to say, the interview never happened, the tape I sent left unused. In the grand scheme of things, it didn't really matter anymore. Shortly after, Robert Urich lost his fight with cancer and passed away. Conan eventually came back. We all came back. Time passed. I kept writing film reviews. And eventually, Conan got promoted, which brings us full circle back to The Tonight Show and Killdozer.
And then he got canned.
Sorry, man. You deserved better than that.
Originally posted on March 21, 2010, at Micro-Brewed Reviews.
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