We have Jay Leno joining us here in the TV hotel. Jay, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Business, no science. Thank you.
Yes. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate you coming down.
We're shooting porn. Wow.
Why is that? Just the studio. Just the studio is a little, a little DIY for you.
Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me.
What does it take to make a great studio?
I'm not really sure, but this was certainly qualified. My GPS said Cahuenga, somehow it read Cochran. I'm going, why am I downtown?
Oh, okay. Sorry. I'm happy to have you. We're hanging out. Let's talk. What did you drive here?
I drove a 2012 McLaren. Yeah, one of the first ones. I've been involved with the company since the beginning. So, yeah, really good. I enjoy them. Terrific cars. Terrific cars.
What do you like about them most? What do you think of the criticism? It's the rich guy go fast car.
Well, I'm a rich guy and I go fast. So, I mean, I said guilty.
Well, no. Well, you know why I like it? I like it because I was in on the ground floor. I find customer service has been great. You know, when I bought the car, I'm speccing it out. And I said, 'Let me carbon fiber.' He goes, 'Do you track the car?' I go, 'No, this is going to be a show car.' He said, 'You don't need the carbon fiber brakes. You can save 20 grand.'
Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Instead of trying to upsell.
I did that. I had the car six months. They called me and said, 'Oh, there's an upgrade from whatever it was to 617 horsepower. You want that?' I said, 'How much is it?' They go, 'It's free.'
And you know, I bought it. I bought the P1. I bought the new W1. Track-only W1, not a street car. You know, I don't want to be that guy, the fat guy in the leather racing suit that doesn't quite fit. If I'm going to race, I'm going to race Miatas. You know, I did a celebrity race once with Dan Gurney, right? So, right behind Dan. One of the things, they gave everybody a Toyota Celica, you know, right behind Dan Gurney. Okay, I'll do brake lights. Brake lights, turn, turn. Okay, good. And then he's a little bit ahead of me. Okay. And now he's in my rearview mirror. I go, 'How did that happen?' And then he passes me. He lapped me. I have no idea how he did it. I go, 'Okay, that's not... I'm not a race car driver. I enjoy automobiles. I work on them, but I am not a race car driver.' You know, driving is like sex. All men think they're good at it. They're not.
No, it's the most... actually driving on a track is the most humbling thing ever. Plus, you know, there's something about cars. It's like the reason that F1 is still, I would say, almost unchallenged as a sport is that in almost every other sport, you can tell what the athlete is going through, and you can tell how intense it is. You can see the sweat. You know that they're running back and forth, all these different things. And in a race car, you can't... one, you can't tell that it's physical unless you've been in a race car. And two, they make it look so easy that it almost... and it's just like, oh, they're just going around in circles.
Well, that's... we live in an era now where everybody thinks everybody else's job is easy.
You know, no matter what you do, like Tonight Show, so you come in at like three, you've got jokes to read, and then you leave at like 5:30. No, no. I get there at 7:00 in the morning, I leave at midnight, you know. Why? Well, I got to see the movie. I got to read the book. I got to prep, you know. I mean, yeah, but that's kind of... See, I'm a huge believer in low self-esteem.
You know, it's the key to success. If you don't think you're the smartest person in the room, you just shut up and you pay attention. And that's what I did when I got to the Tonight Show. Give me the best lighting guy. Give me the best director. Give me... and please tell me when I suck. Just tell me when the show sucks. The show sucked. Okay, look what we got to do to make it better. But you know, I have friends of mine in the business and you know, nobody lies. Nobody tells them the truth. They go, 'No, you were good. You were really good.' No, you weren't. Whatever you're doing, change it because it's not working. So that's what's worked.
Did you have any rules for the Tonight Show? I was listening to an interviewer. He said he has one rule, which is that the current guest cannot trash talk the previous guest. He didn't want his show to be in place. This is a random podcaster, Joshua Citerella, but he was saying that he didn't want each guest to be a referendum on the previous one, trying to score points on the last interviewer that he...
Oh, no. I never... that was never a problem.
Okay. But did you have any like rules that you felt?
Well, the rule I had was anybody can pull a cord and stop the train. You know, we had interns. You guys are in your 20s. Okay, I'm old. Tell me if a joke sounds corny or if it's that dated, or you just let me know if I sound like an old...
I'll tell you if it's cooked.
Yeah, yeah. And they'll go, you know, 'That's kind of an old reference,' you know. I remember one day I'm watching TV and the Stones are on, their endless comeback tours, you know, and I said, 'My God, they look pretty good,' you know. And I look over and the interns are... they're all laughing. They go, 'Mr. Leno, they're really old.' Well, I'm like, 'Yeah, but they don't...' No, they don't look... It just made me laugh. Just made me laugh. I go, 'You know, you're right. You're right, guys. They look like old guys playing guitars,' you know.
Yeah. So, uh, back on cars, the ZR1X, I know. Fabulous. You know something? That is the greatest performance bargain in the history. Yeah. For less than the sales tax on a Ferrari, you get a car that's faster.
Not quite as sophisticated and all the things that go with it, but you know, it's very, very good. Yeah.
And the nice thing about American supercars is you get in with your phone or your devices and everything syncs up right away. You get in even McLaren or, you know, Koenigsegg, Bugatti, hang on, 'Oh, my phone...' They forgot about that.
It doesn't quite work, you know. And plus, you know, a lot of them don't meet emissions or don't crash standards. Do the phony Montana plate thing. Okay, now you're in jail. You know, that's the great thing about it. It's... and it's extremely well made. You know, the greatest thing that happened in Detroit was going bankrupt. Yeah. Because they fired all the marketing guys, the guy from Whirlpool, and you know, 'I'm with Maytag, but I can sell cars.' And it's all engineers now. Even Mark Reuss, the president of GM, he's at Nürburgring like once a month. Yeah. He went 233 the other day in the new Corvette around Nürburgring. What CEO, what company would allow the CEO to run 233 miles an hour? So, and it makes for a better car, a better vehicle. Same.
Is that worth chasing? Because the ZR1X has, you know, track car performance from just a few years ago and now it's a road car. Is that worth the automation?
Well, here's the thing. I don't think you've ever seen an ad for the ZR1.
Because they're all sold out. GTD Mustang sets a record at Le Mans. I've never seen an ad. The new Mustang with the guy, you know, with two days' stubble and the girl looking over, you know, none of that. If a product's any good, it sells itself.
And you know, in the early days of automobiles, it was race on Sunday, sell on Monday. Yeah. And that kind of fell out, it just didn't work anymore. They just stopped. GM had a ban on racing and, you know, all that. But once they got back into racing, once you could see American stuff as competitive, people like to root for the home team. I mean, I do. I mean, I love my McLarens and everything, but I'd love to see Ford and Chevy...
Cadillac's doing an F1 now.
I know. How hilarious is that? I mean, you know, the last... the last...
You go to the race on Sunday, you buy an Escalade on Monday.
That's right. Or, well, or you know, the great one is the Blackwing.
That's what I got outside.
Isn't that a great car? Fantastic. You know, it's fantastic. The last stick shift Cadillac was 1948.
Been a long time. And now you go up to... and you know, and the fact that...
Who ever thought that Cadillac would have a stick, but Ferrari, BMW, Lamborghini? No.
Well, they're bringing them back. What do you think of the e-manuals? The manual by wire.
Well, same as what I think of a blow-up doll. If you can't get a real girl, I guess it's okay, you know. I mean, yeah, it's kind of embarrassing and hope nobody sees you, but you know, no, you know...
Seems like the young people might still... it might be good enough. I don't know.
Well, they won't know the difference.
Well, the young people, you know, when I was a kid, every guy pretended to be interested in cars because it got you girls. So, even if they knew nothing, 'Hey, what's the mill?' You know, all this kind of stupid. Now, when I meet car guys, boy, they're committed. Men and women, YouTube videos, all the data, more information they can learn.
Like Sydney Sweeney, you know her, the actress.
She is a welder, a fabricator, right? I mean, she really knows her... it just makes me laugh. Now she's like, oh, the sexy girl. She was always attractive, but she used to... well, she worked for Rod Emery and... I work with him, I guess, you know. But she apprenticed in his shop and he taught her a lot. It just makes me laugh. So the young people I meet, men, women, that are really into cars.
And unfortunately, manual sells. I mean, it gets them in the showroom, you know, and then the wife goes, 'I'm not driving this.' All right, honey. My wife doesn't like the stick we got over there.
What do you think of the idea that the car industry is currently going through their equivalent of the quartz crisis, where auto customers will either be buying an appliance, which will be a self-driving Tesla probably, or something that's completely manual, completely, you know, real engine, just emotion, and they'll have that?
Well, yeah, I think what you have now, electric cars are the quartz vehicles and mechanical cars. I mean, I think supercars will be like snowmobiles or any other recreational vehicle. You take it out on weekends and people will continue to buy the one with the most valves, the most cams. I mean, this watch I'm wearing, I mean, it's the most complicated way to tell time. Yeah.
A Timex or Citizen for $50 is even more accurate because it's electronic.
But there's a certain... I enjoy winding it. It has a certain feel to it. I like it. So, and I think people will seek out the car. You know, like I've got the Dodge Demon and I've got the Challenger, and the Challenger is six-speed manual, and obviously the 10-speed is quicker with the automatic, but I like driving the stick better.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you like watches? Go for it. Do you like driver's watches, historic?
Yeah, I've got a Heuer from 1921, and we have the Jay Leno watch we actually put out. It sold out three times. We're on our third or fourth...
Amazing printing. Do you think going to the track, participating in motorsports will become more popular as more of the cars on the road are self-driving?
I don't know. I think so. You know, we have a situation now where unfortunately the whole economy, there's no middle anymore. You have poor people or you have rich people that can afford... you know, I'm like with the Mission S, the new Porsche.
I see Porsche moving upscale.
They want to be like Ferrari. Sell fewer cars for more money to fewer people. I'm starting to see... in the old days, every Porsche, you know, Ferrari had 800 built and Porsche had 60,000. A Corvette, same thing. They used to do these shootouts, which is fastest. The only ones that showed up would be Corvette and Porsche. Everybody else just didn't, you know. And now you have cars like people buy a GT3 and I'm putting it away because they know it's going to be... okay. I mean, that's the sad part. I would hate to see them become... Porsches have always been expensive, but they're not rare.
There's a lot of them around. They make a lot of cars.
But using that Ferrari model, well, you can make more money with fewer cars.
Yeah. But now you have this elite clientele. And you know, the great thing about Corvette is it's an aspirational car. If you're a guy with your own plumbing business, boy, you can aspire to own one. Yeah. It's over 100,000, but it's not a million. Yeah. So at some point in your life, you can get one. You can get one. And that's what I like about it. I hate... and everything is that way now. Hotels are either... you're either Motel 6 or the Four Seasons.
Yeah. The middle dies, you know. Yeah. Restaurant, fast food or top-end restaurant, the Applebee's, the Denny's. Yeah.
Just regular restaurant, because we have no middle class anymore. And that's the sad thing.
Yeah. Sad. Uh, were LA's roads always horrible or have you felt them getting...
No, they've always been horrible.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I joke, I joke about the G-Wagon being like the LA car because you need like a 4x4 to get around.
Well, that's because, gee, these roads are awful. That's what people say.
You know, it's so funny. And there's no excuse for it. I mean, I go to Detroit and you got frost heaves and it's winter. Okay, understandable. It's a beautiful day every day except for that Thursday when it rained. I don't know why the roads have to be so awful. I mean, it's really a... and Tesla's especially susceptible to this. I've had five blowouts.
Just bam, you hit a pothole and you got... and just huge, and it'll take weeks for the pothole to be fixed. Yeah.
And when you hit the same one twice, that's when you really go crazy.
There's a huge pothole on my commute here. We hit it every day for a year constantly. I need to report it or something.
Our friend Jason had the idea of like going and doing a performance art, going and filling up, overnight filling up all the potholes with dirt and flowers.
As a way to try to, you know, draw attention to it. I don't think it would fix it. Maybe LA has bigger problems.
Do you think Mission S will be fun to drive?
Yeah, I think so. All Porsches are fun to drive. The electric one is nice, but that's the classic example of quartz versus mechanical. Porsche people don't like electric. It's just... I mean, it's fast. It does everything it's supposed to do. You know, I drove the Rimac, that's... and it's... although it's two and a half million dollars more, it's a tenth faster than the Plaid.
And it's... and that's it. There's no... there's no click to the shifting. And you know, the same way when you wind these, you hear the...
It's... you either get it or you don't.
Well, it feels like Mauve learned a really valuable lesson from that project, which is double down on heritage and mechanics and the emotion. And it doesn't seem like he's going to be going deeper down that path.
No, I think... because remember they were all supposed to be electric by 2030, everybody.
Yeah. And that went away.
No. So now I think you'll have your high-end, extremely complicated mechanical cars, which is what people like, the more valves, the more pistons, the more weight. Yeah.
It's interesting. What do you think of the Tesla Roadster demo? The circus act of the kick-flipping car.
Well, I think people don't want electric cars. They put rocket engines on it. That's not technically electric.
No, but I think you're saying Tesla moved from a car company to a space company.
Yeah. I mean, what you're doing is showing off your space technology.
Okay. Because you've got cars from China, you've got cars...
Tesla's getting hit on every side.
Plus, the politics of it somehow getting involved in that totally cost him a lot. But with the gas prices, well, Tesla sales are back up again, so they did okay. But I think the car business is... it'll be hard to make money because somebody will always have something cheaper, you know. So I think that's their transition into driverless and outer space. I think.
How did you grapple with the pull of politics through your career as a talk show host? It feels like there's a lot of pressure from audiences to address the current political... take a stance and...
Well, yeah. I'm, you know, write joke, tell joke, get check. It's very simple.
Very simple. It's very simple.
You know, it depends. Johnny and I had the same theory. I'm not putting Johnny in his class. I just mean the fact that you make fun of both sides equally and that worked fine.
And then all of a sudden other talk shows come out, 'You got to take a side.' Well, it's not my job. It's not my job. You know, when you go out in the real world, when you perform in Hollywood, well, you get exactly the audience. You do a Trump joke and they all cheer. Okay, fine. You go to Indiana and half of them or a third of them boo. Yeah, that's unfair. It's whatever. And when you sell real tickets to real people, so, you know, I announced I'd just taken politics out of the act. I made a few references first, you know, and ticket sales are up 20, 30 percent. Because people just... It's like when I go see James Taylor, I don't want to hear a lecture. Well, yeah, I like the rainforest. Yeah, it's good. I don't know, that's a tree. And... Yeah. Yeah. You know, I can't hear Sweet Baby James, you know. I want to hear the music. Yeah. So, it wasn't that hard when I did it. It wasn't that... I mean, when I knew Carson, 'You and your Republican friends, I hope the Democratic party...' When both sides like you and hate you at the same time, well, then you know you're doing something right.
Yeah. What else did you learn from Carson? Well, I mean that as a model, that format is dead. I mean, podcasting is the new thing.
Sure. I mean, the thing that really killed it is not the fact that Letterman and I were so good or any of that nonsense. We just happened to be there at the right time.
They passed a law since they weren't making as much money after 11:30 at night, you could have another eight minutes of commercials in an hour.
You know, if I see Jake from State Farm again, I'm going to shoot myself in the head, you know? I mean, I try to watch late night. I watch their monologue.
And then there's six minutes of commercials, and the 30-second spots are so well done. Yeah. They look like two minutes. They have cars and explosions and airplanes. Okay, really? And I go, jeez, it's still... then we come back.
And the market open on CNBC is brutal too, in that you have like one minute of content and then back to ads for lots of it. It's actually... and it's funny because TV used to be... you'd go out and say, 'You ever see that commercial with a guy?' 'Oh yeah, it's...' Nobody knows.
Oh, that's right, because everyone's seeing slightly different ads. Nobody sees... it's really hard for the... the only breakthrough, the only thing where...
Network or traditional sports.
And some event happening right now. Let's go with our cameras right now. And that kind of... everyone used to know like the Clydesdales or the Coca-Cola polar bear and like those. For example, they shoot game shows now in Ireland.
And they fly Americans over.
Whoa. To be in the audience.
To be in the audience. So you think it's shot in America, but it's shot in Ireland. Yeah.
I don't know why it costs so much. You know, we did a... I did an awful show for Mattel. This Hot Wheels show wasn't a very good show. And we, for two years, three years, we shot at my garage, and I donated the garage and they made a donation to a charity. It was cheaper to send 175 people to Ireland, put them up for two months, pay them a per diem, than it was to shoot in my garage for two days.
That's crazy. Is that taxes in Los Angeles and California?
Well, that's all tax incentives. Well, all the things the other... get the incentives here. Like here, if you go down Cahuenga, it's $5,000. You make a left, oh, it's another 7,500, but you can go right, but there's a formula. They figure out where you want to shoot. You can just go on those streets. You go down the other street, the guy, 'I saw you go down the other street.' You know, I mean, it's starting to change a little bit now, but it's a bit like the barn door, you know, the horse has left. I mean, everybody's in Atlanta and every other place now. Yeah.
How did you navigate this relentless nature of show business? Is this something, you know, we start... you find it relentless to midnight every day?
I had real jobs. They suck.
You know, you get paid pretty good.
You know, if you're a cop or a nurse, your days are hell. You get hurt, you get beat up, and you make $400 a week.
You know, I always tell people the way show business is, you're going to get screwed, but when you get screwed, you get a big pile of money. Okay, see, here's the thing. You're going to get screwed. You know, I always tell guys, don't fall in love with a hooker because that's what show business is. Eventually, it's going to end badly, but when it does end, hopefully you have a big stack of cash.
You know, my favorite joke, I did a joke about Charlie Sheen. You know, Charlie Sheen went through $200 million. Remember when he did that whole thing? And the joke was he spent it on cocaine, gambling, and women, and the rest of the money he just wasted. That's my favorite joke. My favorite joke.
What... can you explain to me the difference...
Between what it takes to perform at various time slots, 10:30, 11:30, 12:30? This informed so much of the late night wars, and I never fully understood why someone would work at midnight but not 11 p.m. We came up in the on-demand era. Well, it doesn't matter. What was it?
Well, who's up late at night? College kids, out-of-work people, whatever it might be.
So, the audience is different.
Who goes to bed at 9:00? This person, that person, you know? I mean, that's really the way they do it. Yeah. Because when you watch every ad now, it's Advil and all kinds of pain relievers. Yeah. Yeah.
For the late nights. Yeah. Got it.
And so you would see that feedback of someone took a particular slot and they're not performing well in the ratings because they had a more mature or maybe a younger target audience in mind for those jokes and they weren't landing.
Well, I mean, it's really you see what people laugh at. This is why I went... This is why I was on the road every weekend because when you're in the studio, a guy pushes a button. Laugh.
So, you do... Exactly. I rest my case.
Yeah. We just got... Yeah, I was about to ask. I mean, it's so much... It's actually... people that make content today have it so easy because you put something out.
Yeah. Like we'll get text messages live from our friends that are laughing, whatever, something's funny, or 'hey, you should have this person on right now,' or 'this thing just happened,' or the chat will update us, or someone will leave a review and say, you know, 'John just talked for 10 minutes straight, no one else said a word,' stuff like that. And we take all that. Some of the stuff you naturally take to heart, other stuff you ignore, whatever. But you guys, you're just kind of like in a bubble. And so for you...
Well, the trick is not to be in the bubble.
So you go on the road and you just deliver.
Yeah. You try, if this is really... and you get a sense of where people are and what's fair or unfair. When you... the joke should be pure. You know, people always say to me, 'I bet you wish you were on TV now with Trump.' I go, 'No, because I don't like Trump. I can't stand the guy.' And when you don't like someone, it's harder to be... you know, with George Bush, I go, 'You know, I don't think President Bush quite understands.' And people would start to giggle because you're alluding to the fact that maybe he's not the brightest guy, but you're not just saying he's a big jerk, he's stupid, you know, you're not doing that. You just go, 'I don't think he quite gets it.' And then there's snickers, snicker, you know, and that's what worked for me, you know. When you truly dislike a guy, it's hard to be funny about it. I used... there was a comic, I won't say who he is, but he got divorced. It was the worst thing that happened. He'd be... I'd say, 'Anyway, my ex-wife,' you know, and she... and the joke wouldn't get funny because like I finally...
Yeah. Did you ever have... is there anybody that stands out as somebody that you would sort of joke at or criticize on the show, but in real life you got along really well?
Well, that's just about everybody. I mean, that's what the show is, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. That's basically what you did. That was your living, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's fair to say.
How do you think about the importance of repeatable formats like top 10 lists and certain headlines?
Well, if something works, you do it again. Headlines work for us. Yeah. The man on the street worked for us because we never talked to... and we never had a ringer. We never talked to more than 20 people a night.
You know, 'How was Mount Rushmore formed?' 'Erosion,' you know. Really? Like not only five... five of our greatest presidents. I mean, the wind, the rain.
And in the right order. Yeah.
In the right order. Yeah. I mean, what's the odds of nature doing that? You know, people on the street.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that... Yeah. You know, Letterman had the top 10 list and we had headlines and the jaywalking and some of the other stuff. Yeah. I enjoyed it. It was fun.
Did you and the team try and incubate those, like think of new formats that would be repeatable?
Yeah. And you try some of the ones that are not repeatable, you don't repeat. And if they don't work, don't keep doing it. Yeah, you know that comics are inherently lazy and they'll get, you know, 'this joke worked in Denver two years ago.' Okay, that was in Denver two years ago. Okay, it hasn't worked in two years. You can either move to Denver and keep doing the joke or you can come up with something new, you know.
Yeah. The Holy Trinity, I want to hear your reflection on the Holy Trinity and then...
Supercars. We're back to cars. Sorry.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I want to hear, do you think we are about to enter the new Holy Trinity with the W1, the F80, and the Mission S? There's been some grumblings about that, but people are debating.
Well, I mean, that's kind of... I think the P1 has proved itself.
But now the standard GT3 911 is faster than the 918 were.
I mean, progress moves. It moves tremendously fast. So you never quite know what it's going to be, what it is to one generation.
I mean, when I was a kid, the 427 Cobra, that was it. You know, Carroll Shelby used to put a $100 bill on the dashboard and he'd nail it. If you could get the $100 bill, you could keep it. And nobody ever could because you just, you know... So that was sort of the standard bearer. Before that was Aston Martin, 0 to 60 to 0 in like 9 seconds or something. Oh, the brakes and it goes fast, you know. Now those are, you know, an old lady in a Nissan Altima can do that, you know.
Yeah. I mean, I don't really buy the Holy Trinity, you know. Holy Trinity. It sells magazines. People want to take a side. Your dad likes Ferrari or you like red or whatever it might be.
