We'll get to some sketches now.
Real sketches.
Levi, are you here?
♪ Levi left a note the day. ♪
Why don't we do the house plant?
Do you remember this, Andy?
No.
Oh wait, the plant kills himself or something?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Why don't we explore in real time.
What's the set up?
You'll see.
(upbeat music)
Hey, Conan O'Brien here for another edition
of "Behind the Nonsense."
This is where we review some sketches
that we love to think about, talk about, remember.
And we do it with the people that helped make them happen.
And today, Andy and I are sitting with Levi MacDougall.
Hey, guys.
And this is a sketch that you wrote.
I don't wanna give anything away.
But
I don't know, I just saw it for the first time
since we aired it,
so I'd completely forgotten it,
and it really made me laugh.
And you wrote it with Todd Levin.
With Todd Levin.
Yes, you wrote this with Todd Levin.
Todd Levin, Levi MacDougall.
The Lennon and McCartney of the Beatles.
Take a look.
(upbeat music)
A team of botany professors
from the University of Western Australia
just released a study, true story,
that reveals plants have long-term memory.
Wait, is that really true?
This is an absolutely true story.
And according to the study,
plants can actually remember being harmed.
They have a memory of being harmed.
Huh.
(audience laughs)
They say plants can even remember something
for several weeks.
Imagine if this whole time,
plants were watching our behavior
and remembering everything.
Isn't that weird, Andy?
(audience laughs)
Andy?
(intense music) (dishes break)
I can't take any chances!
You gotta die, little tree.
You gotta die!
Die!
Sorry, pal.
No witnesses.
(gun fires)
(audience laughs)
(audience laughs) (Conan laughs)
(audience laughs)
(car screeches away)
(gun fires) (audience laughs)
(guns fires)
(tire bursts)
(audience laughs) (car horn honks)
(car explodes)
(audience cheers)
Sorry, I had a, a,
a bathroom emergency.
No problem, Andy. No problem at all.
Wow.
I have to say, that is a sketch I completely forgot,
and just was watching it now,
and really, it made me happy.
Yeah, it's a funny sketch.
It's my favorite kind of sketch.
It's completely insane and silly.
What I love about it is,
I like...
Well, there's so many things,
but early in a comedy career,
you can be thinking that you need
to kind of make things sort of make sense.
Mm-hmm.
And then you realize, no, you really don't.
Right.
So there has to be some internal logic.
At least on our show.
Yeah, but you realize that,
okay, Andy has done some horrible thing.
We will never find out what it is.
But then there's so many things in there,
like the blood that comes shooting,
that is inside a plant, when you shoot it.
Really makes me happy.
And then, I love the plant getting in a car,
taking off,
and then it's that thing you see in movies a million times.
You clearly would get in your car,
but you're easily 40 seconds behind.
But no, you're immediately right behind him.
Right, right.
And then, of course, the insanity of going over the cliff.
And the gun, the plant's gun,
shooting around the corner.
That was really a nice little gimmick, yeah.
Yeah, it's really nicely shot.
And apparently this went through some kind of change.
Yeah, the first cut of it,
that we did in rehearsal,
it went great, but it ended after the blood shot.
So it went with you killing the plant,
and then the blood shot was like,
the extreme thing that ended it.
But it went so well, that remember,
we cut back to you and you were laughing,
you were like, "Oh, I want it to keep going."
Yeah.
And then, there was a conversation,
it was like, "No, let's really, like,
"we could show it like this,
"but it could go so much further."
So the next day,
we shot the chase where the third plant slips away
and you see its leaf go under.
And this was one of the first times,
I was still pretty new to the show,
that it really felt like we were on a movie lot.
'Cause remember, you were driving your own car,
and we were doing like, a little chase on a wide street.
And they had security clearing the way.
And you know, you're seeing the tours go around,
telling you about all the car chases,
and we were doing one for our show.
Yeah, being on the Warner Brothers lot,
we could go to a New York street.
We could go to the jungle.
We could go to, you know, a town square.
You know, they were just a literally
five minute golf cart ride away.
It's sort of a good lesson
that sometimes you see something
and you think, "Oh, that's perfectly fine.
"That could have ended with the blood.
"But let's give them more
"than they think they're gonna get."
Yeah.
And that means waiting a day, or two days.
So let's not...
I love that piece,
and we could have used it probably that night,
but let's wait,
because I always remembered being,
whatever I was, 12, 13, 14,
and seeing SCTV, and seeing something go here,
then here, then here,
then all the way over there,
and being just blown away.
And you can't do that all the time,
but when you see an opportunity to do it,
take the time, hold it,
add that next part,
and it's so satisfying.
It's also good to listen to like, your instincts.
Having, you know, especially the two of us,
having sat there and looked at a zillion sketches,
and to have the feeling of,
"I want more," and to then follow-
Say like, "Yeah, that's enough, but I want more."
Like, yeah, let's see more, you know?
And especially watching it,
it's like what a bummer it would have been
to have not gone that extra mile for it, having seen it.
But it's the same thing.
It's like, you know,
there's so many times when there'll be a sketch,
and it's like, there's a feeling, it should end there.
Like, even though, you know, like, you just...
There's a rhythm and an instinct that you get,
learn to listen to it.
And now I see it and I think it could go further.
(all laugh) Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, Andy could be there-
Like, the plant could have come back.
The plant survived the crash.
It's burned and one of its stalks is in a sling.
Yeah.
And it puts a knife through Andy's back.
[Andy] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But that's for another time. We'll do that next time.
Or it comes with two plant cops.
And the plant cops arrest me.
It's a new "Mare of Easttown".
There you go. Yeah, exactly.
There you go. Could be the new "Mare of Easttown" parody.
Which we couldn't do then
because that show didn't exist.
And a plant can't learn a bad Philadelphia accent.
At that point in time.
(upbeat music)
Great.
All right, now Levi, get the fuck out of here.
I'm leaving. Thanks for learning my last name.
♪ MacDougall left a note, ♪
the day that Levi left that chair.
If I'd known you were Scots,
I would never have let you work here.