Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Columnist Lisa Ferguson: Brogan shares funny friendship with Leno

For nine years Jimmy Brogan helped determine what workers huddled around the nation's water coolers would be talking about each day.

From Monica Lewinsky and O.J. Simpson to hanging chads and cloned sheep, the comedian -- who headlines The Improv at Harrah's Tuesday through June 26 -- worked from 1992 through 2001 alongside his longtime pal Jay Leno, selecting the jokes that composed "The Tonight Show" host's nightly monologues.

President Bill Clinton "was a godsend all those years," Brogan recalled recently from his Los Angeles home.

"My job," he explains, "was more picking the jokes than actually writing them. There were 14 (staff) writers writing the monologue, and someone had to act as editor of all that stuff, so that was my job -- and Jay's."

That work took place not at "The Tonight Show's" famed Burbank, Calif., studios, rather at Leno's home, where he and Brogan toiled into the wee hours each night after the show was taped.

"Jay would read 500 jokes a day and cut it down to maybe 150 that he would like by the time I came into work in the afternoon," he explains, "and then we'd go over the 150 and argue them out to get it down to about 20 or 25 jokes that he would do in a monologue."

Leno's abode had long been a second home of sorts for Brogan. In the early '80s they, along with a handful of other up-and-coming comics (Jerry Seinfeld, Larry Miller and Carol Leifer among them), would gather there following gigs at L.A.-area comedy clubs to "watch TV and talk comedy and stuff."

"Jay and I would actually play video games until all hours," he recalls. "We would play this tank game where we would each have 100 tanks, and it was the slowest-moving video game. It would take us hours to eliminate the other's hundred tanks. So Jay would call me up and say, 'Come play video games,' so I'd come up."

Later that decade, when Leno began regularly guest-hosting "The Tonight Show," "He'd say (to Brogan), 'What do you think about this joke? How 'bout this joke? Yeah, we'll get to the video games in a minute. How 'bout this joke?' So I would just give him advice, and it turned into like a regular thing."

Brogan, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, began his comedy career 30 years ago in New York as part of a comedy team called The Brogan Brothers, which included a friend "who was of Chinese heritage. Our big joke was that I was the adopted one."

The partnership fizzled when his buddy "just froze up" onstage during an open-mike night performance. "That was the end of The Brogan Brothers."

The true Brogan persisted, however, and began a solo comedy career. He moved to Los Angeles in 1979 after landing his own short-lived ABC sitcom, "Out of the Blue," on which he played an angel named Random. ("We did 13 episodes and they showed nine. I think they're holding four for sweeps," he jokes.)

Briefly starring in a sitcom "was a wonderful experience," he contends, largely because it "brought me out to California and got me started in the clubs out here. It took me from obscurity in the clubs to all of a sudden being on TV ... In that process, it really established me."

Brogan went on to guest a half-dozen times on "The Tonight Show" under the late Johnny Carson's watch.

"Johnny had a much different way of interacting with the guests" than Leno, he says. The former "didn't want to see the guests until you were out there onstage," whereas the latter "goes into the dressing room and makes everybody comfortable and has some laughs with them" prior to showtime. "Just different personalities, but both great at doing the show."

Throughout the 1980s Brogan claims to have made "a very nice living" working as a warm-up guy, telling jokes and chitchatting with studio audiences that attended tapings of "Taxi," "Cheers," "Newhart," "Seinfeld" and "The Golden Girls," among other hit series.

When Leno took over as host of "The Tonight Show" in 1992, Brogan recalls: "He said, 'Why don't you come on full time and help me with the monologues?' I said, 'Yeah, I'll do it for six months to help you get started,' and I was there for nine years."

For five of those years Brogan also booked all of the comedians -- including Ray Romano, "The King of Queens" star Kevin James and Anthony Clark of CBS' "Yes, Dear" -- who performed on "The Tonight Show."

"Generally, there's comics that are good writers and not very good performers; and others comics that are good performers but not very good writers," he explains, "so I tried to balance the two -- people that had good stuff and could perform it with some skill."

Since leaving his "Tonight Show" post in 2001, the 56-year-old Brogan has kept busy performing his stand-up act mostly in and around Los Angeles.

His material is heavy on observations "about my own life, basically," he explains. "I went to Payless shoe store this week, and I saw the shoes and I realized I'd rather pay more. I don't need cardboard shoes that badly -- I'll pay a little more."

He also hits the road for occasional gigs with fellow comedians as part of ongoing comedy tours, including "The Good Humor Men," co-starring Vegas frequenters Evan Davis and Wayne Cotter; "The Laughing Irish," featuring a pair of Brogan's fellow Notre Dame alums; and most recently "The Midlife Crisis Tour," including comics Buzz Nutley, Cathy Ladman and Brad Upton, which has additional dates scheduled for this summer.

In 2003 the comedian collaborated with Yakov Smirnoff on the Russian comic's one-man show, "As Long As We Both Shall Laugh," which enjoyed a brief Broadway run.

Brogan says he's also penned a pair of screenplays -- one a comedy, the other a drama -- that he's shopping to Hollywood execs. "When I give them to people I say, 'There's one of each, and I'll let you decide which one is which.' "

On Sundays, you'll find Brogan at The Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, Calif., where he has a standing gig opening for his auto-enthusiast friend Leno.

"It's great fun," Brogan says. "I go over to his house and we drive down (to the club) in whatever fancy new car he's got that week ... or we drive one of his old classic cars, like a '53 Hudson or something." During the drive, "We catch up on the week." A conversation that, these days, isn't likely intended for the viewing public.

Out for laughs

Speaking of Leno, he performs at 9 p.m. tonight and 10:30 p.m. Saturday at The Mirage. Tickets are $85 plus tax.

Following up on an item featured in last week's Laugh Lines about Bob Golub: The comic, who headlines The Improv at Harrah's through Sunday, recently wrapped production on his first leading role in the flick "Bottom Feeders." Also, look for Golub on the big screen this fall in "Art School Confidential" starring John Malkovich.

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