Can I mention, one of my favorite door victories.
And I'm curious about the disposition of a particular item,
The 2006 Emmy awards.
Conan challenged all the writers.
Conan hosted Emmy's in 2002.
And then he got asked to host them again in 2006.
Okay.
And so I guess I having one under this belt
he was really attacked writing the show with Gusto
and he is like, he's like, you know what,
"I'm gonna give just to motivate all the writers."
I'm gonna give a gold coin to the writer who comes up
with the best bit for the Emmy awards.
And we're like, what is this a game show?
A gold coin. Yeah.
Okay. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about that.
We were already the writing process
for Conan hosting The Emmy's was underway.
And the difficulty that was emerging
was we couldn't find a live thing
for him to do in the run of the show.
Like we had a lot of pre tape little bits.
We had Pre tapes of the Yin Yang...
But no big live. But nothing live.
And so, you know, the word had gone out,
come on, guys live stuff.
All right, so we'd had one meeting, nothing.
We'd had another meeting, nothing.
Then we were called into Conan's presence.
And Ahab like, if for Moby Dick fans out there.
Right.
Ahab like he said, I have now have a gold, a $50 gold...
Cougaran.
Coin, which he showed us, US mint gold coin he'd gotten,
and it was still in its wrapper and everything.
So it's like a 50, you know, $50 gold coin.
And he's like, I will give it to the person that comes up
with a live thing for me to do.
So that's how it started.
It wasn't just for the best thing in the show.
It was for a live thing. Yeah, okay.
And it was an intentional Ahab,
it was an intentional thing that he made up.
He made a big dramatic show.
He was being funny about it.
It was really funny.
But at the same time, but it was also a real challenge.
Yeah.
Like his baseball manager,
it was real and funny at the same time.
Yes, Yes.
The way he talked to those baseball players
was pretty much the way he was talking to us.
Right, right. Yeah.
That's not, that wasn't unreal.
He'll sending me out there with nothing.
Yeah, Pay you for top chop,
and you give me chump rump, you know, those are things
that were said to us indefinitely in earnest.
Repeatedly. So yeah.
So he says, there's gonna be a gold coin in it for you.
If you can come up with a life thing,
then I pitched the idea of someone likable or even lovable.
And I said, "Likable or lovable,
everyone had pitched a thing to do with Will Ferrell."
Like that had already happened a lot.
'Cause it was just a thing at the time,
will Ferrell was this, Will Ferrell was that.
Right, right.
'Cause he was very useful and he's always game,
so his name's come up.
So I pitched, we have a person not Will Ferrell
but who's very well liked, but not Will Ferrell who has
to sit in a booth that only has two hours of air in it.
And then that will be the basis of our, keep it short speech
for the winners.
Like keep it short or that person runs out of air.
And dies. Oh, that's so funny.
Because I had said not Will Ferrell.
I didn't have the right answer for their person would be
but the room took it from there
and everyone started throwing out names
and I'm pretty sure Dan Cronan said Bob Newhart.
And the idea of Bob Newhart with two hours
of air and keep it short, Bob Newhart dies completely
and instantly seemed like the right way to go.
Yeah.
Sweeney left the meeting went,
you know, 20 feet over, down the hall
to talk to Conan about it and came back within a few minutes
and said, "That's where we're going."
So it was a yes right away.
And then Conan, like, I'm pretty sure he drafted a letter
on bonded paper and I'm like, FedEx it to...
He typed it?
Yeah, the whole, like, it was really very, very official.
And he, like, he put the request in like bonded letter form
and sent it to Bob Newhart and ah, and...
Yeah, he wrote a personal letter.
It was really, really neat. And Newhart said, yes.
That's great.
And so that's how that came to be.
And then I believe Sweeney and Gordon
just dealt with it at the Emmy's.
So I wasn't there for the production week.
But did you get the gold coin?
I Did.
I was given the golden coin.
Did you have it appraised?
You could look up the value of the coin every day.
'Cause the value of an ounce of gold was, well...
Turn it into an NFT.
We lived, you know
our office was like two streets away from 47th street
but you could go turn the coin in for cash any at any time.
And I kept it for several, several years.
'Cause that was a great show.
The 2006 Emmy's. Is rock solid.
And that really was, I just watched someone put together
all the Bob Newhart bits 'cause then Conan introduced a bit
and Bob Newhart's rolled off and looking panicked.
It's like, it's funny 'cause Bob's learning about
the bit while Conan's describing it.
And he has that great Bob Newhart face
of like, oh shit, wait, what I'm going?
And then Conan like, you know
an hour later does a bit where he goes, Ugh, I'm sorry.
That was a waste of everyone's time.
And then it just hard cuts
to Bob Newhart backstage in the booth.