Ex-'SNL' Star Finds Career Resuscitation As Viable Late Night Jimmy-Alternative
Confirming rumors that his appointment as Conan O'Brien's Late Night successor was a "done deal," a press event at 30 Rock today presided over by dark SNL overlord Lorne Michaels, NBC rock star Ben Silverman, and badly-in-need-of-a-distinguishing-nickname Marc Graboff, made official their intention to hand over the 12:30 a.m. programming block to one Jimmy Fallon. Goodbye, Masturbating Bear and Pimpbot 5000, hello, masturbating Barry Gibb and '80s radio hits set to "You Can't Touch This." From The Observer:
The crowd had just sat through a three-minute highlight reel of Mr. Fallon's SNL career, featuring "some of the most memorable characters in the history of Saturday Night Live," according to Ben Silverman, Co-Chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios. (NBC's President and CEO, Jeff Zucker, was present, but did not speak.) [...]
The clip reel was heavy in impersonations of people like Pat O'Brien, Howard Stern, Larry King, and Jerry Seinfeld. The journalists sat mostly stone-faced (a bad sign), except when Fallon appeared as himself (a good sign), interviewing Paris Hilton and offering one-liners as part of 'Weekend Update' alongside Tina Fey. [...]
Mr. Fallon claimed his kindergarten yearbook featured his photo above the caption "Most Likely to Take Over David Letterman." (Someone in the crowd, possibly auditioning to be Mr. Fallon's sidekick, let out an audible "Wow" at this point.) When asked what kindergarten had yearbooks, much less ones with references to David Letterman, Mr. Fallon joked, "It's a magical kindergarten. It's taught by a unicorn, a talking unicorn." Getting serious, he said, it was St. Mary of the Snow School in Saugerties, NY. A quick call to the school and a chat with Principal Christine Molinelli (who was not principal when Mr. Fallon was a student) didn't turn up the Letterman line from his kindergarten year (at that age, students appear in class photos only, according to Principal Molinelli), but his eighth grade yearbook photo from 1988 featured the line "Future Goal: To be an Entertainer."
Whether Fallon's prophetic kindergarten yearbook caption was perhaps embellished over the years seems utterly beside the fact, for who can bother getting bogged down in pre-elementary Most Likely To minutia when, as soon as next year, we'll have two late-late-night Jimmy talk show options. If ABC's Ben Affleck-fucker isn't to your liking, you'll have NBC's far-more-eager-to-please, delightfully brogue-free Jimmy offering.
[Photo Credit: WireImage]
