After the lights went down in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on March 23 to signal the beginning of the Mark Twain Prize ceremony, an announcer on the PA system explained that the Kennedy Center — recently taken over by President Donald J. Trump, who stacked the board of directors with Trump loyalists who voted him in as board president — has become an arts venue more reflective of “American values.” “This vaunted stage will now showcase distinguished, elegant, and revered entertainment that we, as a nation, can be proud of,” the announcer said, at which time a bear wearing a diaper walked onstage and began to jerk himself off to the tune of the classical composition “Sabre Dance.”
Yes, the two-and-a-half-hour tribute to the most famous six-foot-four American redhead to have hosted The Tonight Show for less than seven months began with a performance by the Masturbating Bear, a character made famous on Late Night With Conan O’Brien, the first and most influential of O’Brien’s three late-night talk shows. It was simultaneously absurd and an expression of affection for the gonzo mayhem that has been central to O’Brien’s comedic sensibility for the past three decades or so.
It also, perhaps, sent a sly message of resistance. Those who remember the period in 2010 when Jay Leno essentially snatched his Tonight Show gig back from O’Brien will recall that when O’Brien stepped down from his NBC late-night perch, he was initially told he did not have the rights to the various characters created during his tenure on the network, including the Masturbating Bear. If one squinted a little at that creature going to town on himself on the Kennedy Center Concert Hall stage, one could see an attempt to acknowledge the current political moment by reaffirming that free speech ultimately can’t be suppressed by corporations and/or political leaders. Maybe?
If that weren’t the intent of the Masturbating Bear kickoff — which was immediately followed by Robert Smigel as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog declaring, “Thanks so much for coming, and also shame on you for being here. That should cover it, yes?” — it certainly seemed to be a guiding principle of an evening in which the assembled lineup of comedians acknowledged the Republican elephants in the room without letting the political commentary overshadow the main reason everyone was there: to revel in the intelligent-yet-relentlessly-silly lunacy that O’Brien has unleashed on television as an SNL and Simpsons writer as well as celebrate his place as one of the greatest late-night-talk-show hosts of all time over the past 30-plus years.
Despite all the uncertainty hanging over the Kennedy Center at a moment when Trump and his administration are attempting to exert control over an institution embraced by a largely liberal community, this Mark Twain ceremony, which will start streaming on May 4 on Netflix, did not feel all that different from previous ones. There were no protests in front of or inside the Center, at least that this writer could see. No one publicly boycotted the event, nor was the ceremony in any way disrupted.
The anti-Trump calls instead came from inside the Concert Hall, where, with few exceptions, every famous funny person who sang O’Brien’s praises during the program fired at least one shot at the Trump administration and/or the new Washington Establishment. David Letterman, who presented the Mark Twain statuette to O’Brien at the end of the ceremony, called the night “the most entertaining gathering of the resistance ever.” Other presenters included Sarah Silverman, Bill Burr, Will Ferrell, longtime Conan sidekick Andy Richter, John Mulaney, Tracy Morgan, Kumail Nanjiani, Nikki Glaser, Adam Sandler, Reggie Watts, and Stephen Colbert, who ate increasingly spicy chicken wings — “right wings,” he emphasized — during a bit with Hot Ones host Sean Evans.
“It’s an honor to be here at the Kennedy Center, or, as it will be known next week, the Roy Cohn Pavilion for Big Strong Men Who Love Cats,” said Mulaney, the evening’s first presenter, who congratulated O’Brien later in his speech for “receiving the 26th and final Mark Twain Prize.” Ferrell, a frequent and deliberately unhinged guest on all of O’Brien’s shows, fake-screamed at O’Brien for promising that he would never accept the Mark Twain Prize out of respect for the star of Anchorman, who received it in 2011. “I don’t have time for this,” Ferrell asserted. “I’m supposed to be shutting down the Department of Education.”
“Nothing says comedy like the free-flowing, creative vibes of the District of Columbia,” deadpanned Burr. “I don’t know what it is. There’s something about starting and prolonging wars while crushing the workingman for your own self-interest that really inspires all who gather on this fertile ground.” Glaser, the other comedic figure who crushed an awards-show hosting gig this season and was immediately invited back to host again, as O’Brien was with the Oscars, did a political bit with a classic ridiculous character from O’Brien’s late-night years, the Interrupter, played by one of his writers, Brian Stack:
Glaser: “Don’t you have a —”
The Interrupter: “Cabinet meeting to get to?”
Glaser: “Wait, so you’re the new —”
The Interrupter: “Director of Housing and Urban Development?”
Glaser: “Even though you —”
The Interrupter: “Never even lived in a house.”
Glaser: “And you’re also —”
The Interrupter: “A registered sex offender.”
Glaser: “Which this administration actually considers —”
The Interrupter: “A massive plus.”
But no one punched up as forcefully as Silverman, who recalled how she, a famously Jewish comedian, appeared in character as Adolf Hitler defending himself from comparisons to Donald Trump on an episode of TBS’s Conan. “I am actually not an obvious choice for Hitler,” Silverman explained. “I mean, I am an obvious choice for Hitler, but I’m not an obvious choice to play him. But they chose me, and it’s this way of thinking that makes Conan great again.” As she looked up at O’Brien seated in a box with his family, she added, “I really miss the days when you were America’s only orange asshole.”
Silverman then recalled another bit she did on Conan, in which she took a picture of O’Brien’s lips that revealed how much, in close-up, they look like a vagina. On cable television, the cell-phone image between her legs was pixilated, but now that the Mark Twain Prize will stream on Netflix, Silverman felt liberated to reveal what that uncensored image actually looks like — to the point where she had placed printouts of it beneath many of the Kennedy Center’s attendees’ seats and urged patrons to pick them up and place them between their legs. “If you can go ahead and keep those photos on your seat when you go, the guy who took over loves grabbing pussy,” she added. (In a double play of sorts, Silverman also managed to sneak in a Louis C.K. joke. “Not all redheaded comedians can endear themselves to us through public masturbation,” she said, referring to O’Brien’s Masturbating Bear gag. “I have had another friend who tried it, and it did not work.”)
As abundant as the Trump jokes were, albeit largely without mentioning Trump’s name, the evening struck an appropriate balance between commenting on the current political moment and celebrating the largely apolitical and certifiably silly history of O’Brien’s comedy. For the hardcore members of Team Coco, there were plenty of references to the bits most beloved by fans. In addition to appearances by the Masturbating Bear, the Interrupter, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, and O’Brien’s original house band, the Max Weinberg 7, which played throughout the event, the presenters and prerecorded clips featured homages to Pimpbot 5000; the Late Night With Conan O’Brien effort to track down Whitman Mayo, the actor who played Grady Wilson on Sanford and Son; the FedEx Pope; that Walker, Texas Ranger scene in which a young Haley Joel Osment abruptly announces that he has AIDS; and, in a special video starring Paul Rudd, not one but two replays of that scene from the movie Mac and Me that Rudd has repeatedly forced O’Brien to play since 2004.
There were plenty of sincere moments, too. Mulaney and Nanjiani both called O’Brien their hero. (In a TED Talk–style presentation, Nanjiani noted that O’Brien’s name is mentioned on the internet 93 percent of the time when people talk about Simpsons writers, even though he actually has a writing credit on just three out of the long-running sitcom’s 781 episodes. “The names of the Simpsons episodes that Conan wrote are ‘Marge vs. the Monorail’ and two other episodes,” Nanjiani said.) O’Brien’s longtime friend Adam Sandler — whose familiar, gravelly voice shouted “Conan!” into the darkness just before the ceremony began — recalled how happy he was for his SNL buddy when he got the call to host the 12:30 a.m. late-night slot that once belonged to Letterman. “Everyone was going, ‘Who’s it gonna be? Who’s it gonna be?’ Right when they said Conan, I swear to God — every fucking guy, every comedian — there was no jealousy. We were like, ‘Fuck yeah! He’s the best, man!’ We loved you. You’re faster than all of us. You’re nicer than all of us. And I’m so happy this life was yours, buddy.”
The so-called “most entertaining gathering of the resistance” ultimately expressed itself most eloquently when it was O’Brien’s turn to speak. After thanking his wife, kids, and late parents, who “missed witnessing this by three months” (they died in December within three days of each other), O’Brien expressed his gratitude toward former Kennedy Center chairman David Rubenstein and president Deborah Rutter, “the people who invited me here several months ago,” before they were both dismissed from their positions after Trump’s takeover. “A special thanks,” he continued, “to all the beautiful people who have worked here at the Kennedy Center for years and who are worried about what the future might bring. My eternal thanks for their selfless devotion to the arts.” That comment drew the loudest, most sustained standing ovation of the night.
O’Brien then noted the qualities that made Twain such a great humorist and American: his hatred of bullies, his interest in comedy that punched up rather than down, and his fervent opposition to racism. “Twain was suspicious of populism, jingoism, imperialism, the money-obsessed mania of the Gilded Age, and any expression of mindless American might or self-importance,” O’Brien said. “Above all, Twain was a patriot in the best sense of the word. He loved America but knew it was deeply flawed. Twain wrote, ‘Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it.’” That last quote was the same one that Letterman, who presented O’Brien with his Mark Twain Prize, cited when he received the award in 2017, shortly after Trump was elected to his first term.
The night was capped off by O’Brien performing “Rockin’ in the Free World,” by Neil Young, one of his musical idols, while joined on guitar by Sandler. Young filed a lawsuit against Trump for using the song without permission during his rallies, a case he dropped in 2020. Last year, the singer gave Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz full permission to use the song on the campaign trail. Was O’Brien thinking about this when he chose to make the song the night’s closer? Unclear. But as he jammed while surrounded by a dozen dancing Mark Twains, including SNL vet Will Forte, the joyful noise invited everyone, for a moment, to do the same thing O’Brien urged us to do when he signed off as Tonight Show host 15 years ago: not to be cynical.