Do Mad Max 'cause that's short.
I was not in the show when you guys did Mad Max.
So, if you wanna.
It's okay, we're all gonna be here for everything.
That's not, we can't play musical chairs all the time.
(upbeat music)
Hey, Conan O'Brien here
with another edition of Behind the Nonsense.
Where we go behind the scenes of some of the bits
that we've really enjoyed over the years.
We talk about them and maybe we hear
some of what went into creating the madness.
I'm sitting here with not all the writers,
just the ones that had nothing better to do.
We're going to be talking first
about the cold open we did at Comic-Con number of years ago
when Mad Max: Fury Road was all the rage.
We went down to San Diego.
Our cold open was a tribute to the aesthetic
of Mad Max: Fury Road.
And so, maybe we should just show it and then talk about it.
Sounds good. Let's do it.
(upbeat music)
God, I look good.
Oh. Oh!
Hey, Andy! Hey, Conan.
I'm heading down to San Diego to Comic-Con now.
You ready?
Sure. You gonna take the train?
No, you know, it's only a little over two hours,
so I thought I'd drive.
You know, listen to some tunes on the way down.
Driving sounds fun.
Can I tag along?
Of course.
Are you ready now?
Yeah.
Let's go to Comic-Con.
I think it sounds fun. Let's do it.
(crowd cheering)
(thunder rumbling)
(vehicle revving)
(crowd laughing)
(crowd cheering)
(drum rolling)
Like (indistinct), are you hitting the drums?
Yeah.
(crowd cheering)
(electric guitar blasting)
I don't know where we got lost.
(people laughing)
Still can't see them.
I'm coming down.
(people laughing)
You see, we past San Clemente.
Yeah, we're off the five.
We passed San Clemente.
(people laughing)
We should've hit the La Jolla by now.
You know, well, the thing is,
is the guitar is so loud,
I can't hear the GPS.
I'm sorry.
It's so much fun, I get carried away.
I know, I know, but it's okay.
Hit me up before we go.
Here we go.
(people laughing)
Take me up, fellas!
On to La Jolla on the Fury Road!
(electric guitar blasting)
(people laughing)
(crowd cheering)
Yeah, that was a great idea.
I had nothing to do with it.
How did, how was that hatched?
Levi, you came up with it.
I came up with it during a walk with Jose.
Where we had walked by a Fury Road billboard
and I had just seen it,
and we were talking about different way.
And it went through a few incarnations, I think.
Incorporating the cars and maybe having,
I remember at one point we were maybe
gonna be strapped to the front of it.
The way that Tom Hardy is in the movie,
we went through that.
And then once the Doof Warrior thing came in with you.
And then once our special effects team jumped on
and we're like, "Oh, we can,
we will make a real flamethrower guitar."
First of all, I like it when the parody fits
what needs to happen for the cold open.
The idea that Andy and I just need
to get from LA to San Diego, where Comic-Con is,
and well, what's drive down,
I think the directing here,
the shot selection is so incredible.
That shot where you move up and you see our band
and they're banging away,
I mean, we're mimicking what happens in the movie,
but we're doing it with our band,
and they're still wearing their fedoras,
and they're not really wearing
a post-apocalyptic desert wear.
And then that you swing around and you see Andy,
and then you see me,
and it's just beautiful tracking shots.
There's so much we do that's,
that's improvised and silly,
and remotes things that are played really loose.
And then, this was just all about precision.
We shot it all in one day
and there's so many moving parts.
We drove out to Lancaster.
Eric Allard, our special effects wizard at the time,
just, you know, had a ton of like pirate techniques
that you had to deal with and fast moving cars.
And then shot it with one of those dolly trucks.
And Seth, who's behind right now,
was, we're doing a whole remote control thing
with this special dolly truck that they rented.
They had a camera on an arm,
which we'd of course never worked with.
It was such a movie set.
You can jump out for a second, Seth.
Can't you or you're still busy shooting this?
Yeah, we've strapped Seth into the side of the van.
Come on in here and take a bow, Seth!
(people clapping)
The Seth Saint Vincent, here we go.
Good to see you.
Just to me, if you're gonna do parody,
the shots have to be just right.
And if I'm not mistaken,
there's also a way that it looks like
the color saturation is messed with.
We tweaked all the levels.
Yeah. Tweaked all the levels, so it's got that same.
That's your answer to everything.
Every time I ask you anything,
you say we tweaked all the levels.
And I'm like, "Oh good."
And then, that was also Rob Ashe
with Seth working on the colors.
'Cause when it first opens,
the sky has that kind of post-apocalyptic look,
which the original shot, of course, didn't,
and that was you and Rob Ashe, our head editor.
Just changed the whole world of those.
And we just give it a dusty feel and.
You know, It's so nice palette.
Yeah. It's got a lot of,
it feels like the grays and.
I mean, to set the stage,
I mean, you're, you're playing this a Comic-Con.
So, you guys had to pay attention to all this detail
because you're playing it
in front of 1500 diehard movie fans.
Yes, at Comic-Con. Exactly.
And it's the Spreckel,
this is Spreckels Theater,
which is huge and beautiful and packed and I'm backstage.
You're in it, first time.
Yeah. And I was so excited to be backstage.
'Cause I knew when we have something all loaded up
and ready to go, and we know we've got it.
The crowd is there and they're really excited,
and we dip to black and we wait a second,
and then we come up and we know we've got it.
That was sweet.
Rest of the show was absolute.
(people laughing)
It went downhill. Great opener.
It was a real challenge
because we shot it all in single camera.
Yeah. And I mean,
we had a huge day.
We, I mean, basically we're there at sunrise
and then didn't leave until sundown.
Did it take like three years to shoot the Fury Road
and Seth could've shot it in 12 days.
(people laughing)
Yeah. Hey, message to Hollywood.
Whatever you're doing is wrong, get Seth.
The whole 10 Pages a day without staff.
Yeah. Get Seth and just shoot 10 pages a day
and it's gonna look that good,
and you've got it all.
You've got, you know, your fools.
I'm selling your fools right now.
The whole thing came in under five grand.
(people laughing)
It is apparently the most expensive thing.
It's the most expensive thing we've ever got.
And he was one of the first things I'd worked on
'cause I was new to the show.
One of the most expensive things we've ever done.
I think so, yeah.
You know us. Because of the hotdog.
GD actually missed their profit predictions
because of it. Yeah.
We gotta think of what's the piece
we spent the most money on
for the least return in terms of laughs.
I'll come up with that.
I'll find it.
Or the writer you spent the most money on
that gave the less.
(people laughing)
And the search is over.
(people laughing)
You know, Eric Allard,
we just all thought.
Sweeney, why don't you come in?
You can come in.
You're allowed to be seen.
Sweeney! Sweeney! Mike Sweeney.
Hello! Yeah.
These things are supposed to be losing casual.
(Conan laughing)
I happened to be in the neighborhood
and dropped by.
We all assumed we'd have the flames to that guitar and post,
which we do all the time.
And we went back to look at the truck
and he was testing out the guitar,
and it was shooting flames.
We're in Southern California,
which is constantly plagued by drought.
They handcuff you here
if you've got matches from a restaurant in your pocket,
and Eric Allard built a real flame-throwing guitar.
Now, forest fires aren't a big problem
in the Australian Outback after the apocalypse,
but this is a different situation.
And as you can see in that,
I had to ride down the road
and there were telephone poles on either side of me.
And I was with electrical wires and I was shooting it.
And remember people saying,
"Just remember, whenever we come up to a telephone pole,
try and cut it.
Cut the flames, try."
Hey, comedian with no experience
and very little three-dimensional coordination.
When you see the telephone poles come up,
try and stop it
because if you light one of those,
the fire we'll knock out the power.
For all of Lancaster.
For all of Lancaster,
which would be a tragedy.
(upbeat music)
We add the hotdogs in post?
We added those flames for effects.
The hot dogs are real.
Oh, the hotdogs were real.
I was hoping they were fake
because the fact that we've built the flamethrower,
but added the hotdog.
(people laughing)
Yeah. We had a real flamethrower,
but the fake flames for the hotdog costs $700,000.
On to La Jolla on the Fury Road!
Take me up, fellas!
All right. Here we go.