There are gags you keep making over the long haul, and then there’s the prank Paul Rudd has been pulling on Conan O’Brien since 2004. You probably know the drill: The actor and ageless time lord goes on his late night show to promote his latest movie or show. He laboriously, with straight face, sets up a traditional clip, and instead of said clip you get a bit from Mac and Me, the disastrous E.T. knock-off at least partially financed by McDonald’s, which prominently appears.
The movie, released in 1988, died a quick death at the box office, but its legacy has lived on, as a bad cinema classic eviscerated last year by the Mystery Science Theater 3000 revival, and by Rudd, who’s immortalized the scene where our young, disabled hero loses control of his wheelchair and plummets (non-fatally!) into a lake. The prank is now celebrating its 15th year — he first pulled it while promoting the series finale of Friends — and it’s good to see, on Tuesday night’s show that he’s still at it.
You can watch the clip above, but you know what to expect. The one twist? (Other than that he’s so good at deadpan that he somehow gets away with it every time.) Because he was promoting his Netflix show, Living with Myself — in which Rudd battles his even better, though also ageless, clone — the clip ends not just one of the nightmarishly designed alien buddy, but two of them.
May this gag live another 15. You may celebrate the anniversary by watching this compilation of past gags, in which Rudd does not age a day.
