Kiley talks comedy with Conan

A mix shuffled from Vampire Weekend’s “A-Punk” to Vanessa Carlton’s “White Houses” as a crowd of about 50 gathered and chatted among themselves.

The music preceded the entrance of Brian Kiley, a comedy writer who worked for Conan O’Brien for 16 years during his “Late Night” run. Kiley’s appearance was sponsored by Union Board Comedy and consisted of a question-and-answer session about Kiley’s rise to prominence, the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike and the battle between NBC and O’Brien.

After a brief introduction, a red curtain swung open for Kiley. He joked that as a former stand-up opener for Jerry Seinfeld, he was used to a crowd of 4,000.

Kiley earned a spot as a comedy writer for O’Brien’s “Late Night” show after another writer was fired. The two comics met while attending the same Catholic Sunday school near Kiley’s hometown in Newton, Mass.

“When working for Conan, people assume because he went to Harvard, I went to Harvard,” he said.

It was not so, Kiley claimed. He said his job of writing 40 or 50 jokes daily functions similarly to a daily newspaper, where there is no time to worry about quality because of deadlines. The added perks of working with O’Brien involved silly moments where he pretended to light himself on fire with a glass of scotch and drapery.

Kiley sketches such as the Gaseous Weiner character and O’Brien shooting at NBC executives around the time his show was under re-negotiations, earned him 12 Emmy nominations. But he only won one.

“We stopped going,” Kiley joked. “It was overwhelming to fly halfway across the country to L.A., lose, take the red eye back to the office and write more jokes.”  
He won the 2007 Emmy Award for Writing in a Comedy/Variety Series.

The Writer’s Strike was well underway by this point, and Kiley was one of many affected.

“You don’t get paid when you’re on strike,” he said. “Paychecks are important. It’s stressful when you’re on strike because you don’t know how long you’re working unpaid.”

Last year, O’Brien took his writers with him as he continued his version of the “Tonight Show.” But after NBC wanted to re-negotiate times, O’Brien called it quits this January.

Kiley said at the time this was happening he was unemotional. Reality didn’t set in until his wife’s birthday dinner.

“I didn’t speak for like an hour and 15 minutes,” he said. “And of course, I love ruining my wife’s birthdays.”

Freshman Anastasia Halajcsik said she misses O’Brien’s show for his “incomparable physical humor” and came to see Kiley not knowing what to expect.

“I liked hearing the admiration in his voice when he speaks of Conan and his intelligence,” Halajcsik said.

Sophomore Anthony Smith, a performer for IU’s Awkward Silence Comedy Troupe, said he enjoys the innovative and wacky character-driven routines that O’Brien performs and applies it to his own interest in comedy writing.

“I’m learning a lot about how being a professional and comedy writer works,” he said.