Heeeeere’s Johnny Carson’s Biography, 20 Years in the Making

Bill got the “gets” no other interviews did. Johnny rarely did interviews. How did Bill land him?

He had a lot of work to back him up. He was persistent. He had patience. He spent years just showing up at Johnny’s retirement office and he got to know the staff. Once in a while, Johnny would come through and they would shoot the shit. It was never a proper sit-down until Bill talked to him for Esquire. He played the long game on that, man. I found the first letter he ever wrote to try and get Johnny to talk, in 1991, for Rolling Stone. Johnny was entering his final year on The Tonight Show. It took Bill a decade, but he finally landed him.

This book was Bill’s passion project. Did you share his zeal for Johnny?

I wasn’t as intense a fan as Bill, but I appreciated Johnny’s place in the late-night firmament. Few people are as intense fans as Bill was. He watched Johnny as a teenager. I knew that Dave [Letterman] idolized and learned from Johnny. So doing this book, I learned more about Johnny the man. All I knew was Johnny the performer. This is as far underneath the surface as anybody is bound to get. Bill’s great skill is that tightrope walk writing about these flawed but hypertalented guys and separating the art from the artist.

One of Johnny’s most indelible legacies is the break he gave to stand-up comedians, for whom doing The Tonight Show was a rite of passage.

They wanted Johnny to like them. A successful shot on Tonight meant the next day you might get booked everywhere. You might have a TV show offer.

I imagine sources you went back to were thrilled that the book would finally be completed.

People had this love for Bill, and he had earned their trust. I went to folks to fact-check and for additional details. I just wanted a little further illumination on stuff. Mike Barrie, one of his monologue writers, gave me this great explanation on how they crafted Johnny’s return-to-TV special that was supposed to air in 1994 and never did. I had a draft of it, and I wanted to know more about crafting it. People were very eager to help.

Does Johnny still matter?

Of course Johnny still matters. He influenced everyone who came afterward. He influenced Dave, he influenced Kimmel, he influenced Conan [O’Brien], and now they are influencing somebody else. And there are reruns and he’s all over the web. If you want a Johnny fix, he’s out there somewhere.

What was it like to come to the end of the project?

I think the moment for me was getting the physical book and seeing both our names on the cover. I’m in the acknowledgments of all the books we worked on, but he and I have never been on the cover together. That was the ultimate full-circle moment.