With the current Hollywood writers’ strike making headlines, discussion has often turned to the last time this happened, the 2007-08 writers’ strike. Earlier this week, a clip from “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” filmed near the beginning of the strike sheds useful light on how things went 16 years ago.
It’s a moment of TV history, and a moment of “TV history” in which O’Brien gave a master glass in how to continue to entertain television audiences without scabbing — meaning, without violating the strike — with just his wedding ring, and a willingness to look foolish.
When the 2007-08 strike began, many talk shows didn’t close down, at least at first. However, aside from exceptions like “Ellen,” the talk shows that continued airing new episodes avoided crossing picket lines by not using scripts of any kind. So long as there was no content created by a writer, the show could honor the strike and still make new episodes.
This resulted in a lot of improvisation — riffing, really — by these shows’ hosts and performers. But the need to fill airtime with something is a huge challenge, especially when a show lasts for an hour. Enter O’Brien, who became known for particularly creative means of entertaining his audience.
And in the clip above, resurfaced on Tuesday by NBC reporter Ben Collins, you can see an inspired example of that. O’Brien manages to fill airtime by attempting to spin his wedding ring around for 47 seconds. “If we do it this will be television history,” O’Brien quips.
Alas, O’Brien was only able to get it to spin for 36 seconds despite a heroic effort. When his failure was confirmed, a member of his band played a shrill noise on a muted trumpet, prompting this memorable comment on the situation:
“It’s hard enough without writers to lose a ring spin, but then to have a horse laugh at me… ultimate indignity,” O’Brien joked.
Watch the clip above now.
