Former Tonight Show With Jay Leno segment producer David Berg has one of those tell all books out called Behind The Curtain, dishing out gossip on all the memorable guests over the years.
The interesting bit to me was the existence of a thing called the “Jay Bar.” From The New York Post:
To help with stage fright, Leno came up with the idea of The Jay Bar, a mobile station loaded with beer and wine to help guests unwind before the show. But some guests didn’t know when to turn off the spigot. In 2003, Quentin Tarantino hit The Jay Bar so hard that he was slurring and “occasionally incoherent” on air.
If Tarantino was hitting it hard, imagine what guys like Artie Lange or Nick Nolte were doing. The “Jay Bar” probably stayed with him at all times, like a lifeline to a better time in life.
Elsewhere is all the dirt on who was a crappy guest and who was a diva. Helen Hunt and Terri Hatcher both seem a little thin skinned according to Berg, but Eddie Murphy was probably one of the biggest divas to grace the show:
Eddie Murphy handed over an entire page of necessities for the 45 minutes he spent in his dressing room prior to his appearance.
It included, “4 Snapple Fruit Punch, 4 Snapple Orangeade, 4 Snapple Grapeade, 4 Dr. Browne’s Cream Soda, 4 Dr. Browne’s Root Beer, Coke in glass bottles, bananas, cherries, Evian bottled water, Juicy Fruit Gum, Snickers, Milky Ways, peppermints, York Peppermint Patties, writing pads/pencils/pens, regular-sized towels, washcloths/small.” (via)
And one of the worst potential guests was probably Christian Bale who couldn’t even pass the pre-show questionnaire to get to Leno:
Berg recounts a 2002 pre-interview with the surly Brit that ended abruptly because the questions were “too personal.”
What were these probing questions? “I had asked him where he grew up (Wales), how big his family was (three sisters), and what his first gig was (a Pac-Man cereal commercial). [He] didn’t seem to have even a basic understanding of how ‘The Tonight Show’ worked,” Berg writes. “I was glad he dropped out, thus averting an awkward on-air exchange with Jay.” (via)
Can you really blame the guy? You bring up his Pac-Man past and expect him to just take it lightly? Are you insane? Pac-Man fever was devastating in the early eighties. He’s lucky he made it through alright. Look at what happened to Corey Feldman.
(Via New York Post)
